11/08 Links: Israel, the Palestinians and the Myth of Deterrence; When “End the Aid” Isn’t Enough: The Rising Political Movement to End Israel Itself; Israeli city sues Iran for $65 million in war reparations

From Ian:

Israel’s politicians must put national unity before personal ambition

A 79-seat government would strip away those excuses. No small faction could dictate national policy or threaten the government's survival whenever its demands were rejected. More importantly, neither bloc would be able to unilaterally force policy on the other bloc.

Most importantly, such a coalition could finally address key issues threatening Israel's future.

With Shas participating, a unity government can negotiate a realistic, enforceable framework for haredi military and national service that respects legitimate religious concerns while ensuring a fairer sharing of the national burden.

Instead of unilateral judicial reform legislation and mass protests, a unity government can pursue meaningful reform through broad consensus, safeguarding judicial independence while clarifying the proper balance between the courts, Knesset, and government.

Israel needs a comprehensive program to create affordable housing. Such a program needs to address land availability, planning delays, infrastructure, construction costs, and housing supply. Young families should not have to choose between financial security and owning a home.

The country needs a coherent national policy regarding Judea and Samaria, balancing historical and security interests with demographic and diplomatic realities. Decisions of such consequence cannot depend on the survival needs of a narrow coalition.

Israel must rebuild and modernize its education system, strengthening mathematics, science, technology, engineering, English, and civic education. Every Israeli child, regardless of background, deserves the skills necessary to participate in a modern economy.

These challenges require long-term thinking, difficult decisions, and the parliamentary strength to withstand pressure from special interests.

A broad unity government offers that foundation.

The "just not Bibi" obsession of the change bloc has contributed to political paralysis and divided the nation. Israel has endured two successive governments that left approximately half the population feeling excluded. The Bennett-Lapid government alienated much of the Right, while the most recent Netanyahu government alienated much of the opposition.

Israelis with opposing political views fought together in Gaza and Lebanon, suffered tragedies together, and demanded unity following the October 7 massacre. On October 8, we promised ourselves that Israel would never return to business as usual. We understood that political division, institutional complacency, and failures of leadership had exacted an unbearable price.

Netanyahu, Eisenkot, Bennett, Lapid, Liberman, Smotrich, and Deri must decide whether their personal ambitions and grievances matter more than the country's future. They do not need to agree on everything. They must agree that Israel's security, prosperity, and social cohesion transcend their disagreements.

A unity government will require painful compromises, but compromise is not weakness. It is the essence of responsible democratic leadership.

The arithmetic is there: 79 seats. The national challenges are undeniable. What remains to be seen is whether our political leaders have the courage to put the country and national responsibility before personal ambition and ego.

Israel has voted. It is time to stop campaigning and start governing.

As Kalman Liebskind remarked in Makor Rishon, Israel faces a historic opportunity to end its internal political warfare. Failure to seize it now might have consequences for generations.

When “End the Aid” Isn’t Enough: The Rising Political Movement to End Israel Itself

A quick look at a social media post from the newly-elected Democratic Rep.-elect Dariavila Aliza Chevalier is all it takes to understand what awaits Israel in the wake of Tuesday’s Democratic swing in America’s Midterm elections. Mere minutes after Pres. Donald Trump announced an end to American foreign aid to Israel, Chevalier posted on X: “Military aid is not enough. We need to end U.S. taxpayer funding for Israel’s war crimes, a full arms embargo, and the Palestinian right of return.”

Huh?

While there is nothing new about cutting American economic assistance, demanding an arms embargo, and weaponizing the term “war crimes,” Chevalier’s insertion of the phrase “Palestinian right of return” is a new form of escalation. Because while the majority of newly-elected Democrats may actually be centrists like Jon Ossoff of Georgia and Texan James Tallerico, Chevalier’s words still managed to lay bare the dramatic shift of antisemitism and antizionism across American culture and politics.

New Demands
What’s so telling about Chevalier’s rhetoric is both the timing and intent. Her message is chilling: Nothing but the coordinated dismantling of Zionism — in this case a “return” of Palestinians to their former homes presumably occupied by Jews — will satisfy incoming Democrats. Particularly those, like Chevalier, who are part of the party’s Israel-obsessed far-left fringe. Indeed, fellow Congressional newcomer Colorado Rep.-elect Melat Kiros spoke nearly the exact same words during an appearance on PBS this summer — she advocated for a “one-state” solution, an end to Israel as a Jewish “ethnostate” and that right of return for Palestinians. She even went one step further, provocatively suggesting Palestinians be awarded “reparations as a result of the [Israeli] genocide.”

Three months on, Chevalier was particularly clever to tether these “right of return” demands to Trump’s aid announcement. While the media was busy framing Trump’s move as a watershed moment in U.S.-Israeli history, Chevalier turned the ending of one era into the demand for a new one. It’s an era filled with anti-Zionist totems such as “war crimes,” a “one-state solution” and — most chillingly — an end to Israel’s Jewish majority. As she turns political performance into protest, Chevalier makes clear that nothing will ever satisfy protesters like herself except Zionism’s uncontested defeat.

Yes, extremists such as Kiros and Chevalier are still Democratic party outliers. But like so much of woke culture and identity politics, these extremists exert outsized power and influence by ensuring they’re the loudest voices in the room.

Jake Wallis Simons: Why the UN should pick a Palestinian over a Jew to be its next chief

Nusseibeh, formerly the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the UN, understands the dangers of tyranny: the UAE was the most heavily targeted Gulf state during the Iran war. Surprisingly, she also understands Jews, having studied Israeli and diaspora studies at university in London. She speaks Hebrew, as well as Arabic, French and English.

Unlike most of the UN, she was unequivocal in her condemnation of October 7. In addition, she has backed the Abraham Accords peace agreements, and consistently called for the Jewish state’s full integration into the Middle East. “There is an outstretched hand, despite all of this misery, in the region to Israel,” she insisted in September last year, as war raged.

This openness is something of a family tradition. Her grandfather (who opposed Nazism) and uncle (who opposed suicide bombing) were both prominent Palestinian figures who maintained close relationships with their Israeli counterparts. Her father, an adviser to the Emirati ruling family, has an extensive private library that includes a rich section on Jewish history.

Sure, she isn’t perfect. At times, Nusseibeh has been deeply unfair, calling Israel’s campaign in Gaza “inhumane” as early as November 2023, and – bizarrely – condemning the “cruel” evacuation orders issued by Israeli troops to protect Palestinian civilians from the fighting.

Moreover, human rights groups have denounced her because of the UAE’s alleged support for Sudanese rebels, who are battling the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned regime in a bloody war that has been described as genocide (the UAE denies this).

Yet international diplomacy is about shades of grey. In the absence of clean options, this unlikely candidate may prove the best hope of sanity in the madhouse.

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11/03 Links Pt2: The battle for the soul of Israel… and Britain; Australia heightening security for Chanukah after Bondi Beach massacre; Boy George at Nova memorial: ‘I stand with the Jews’

From Ian:

Australia heightening security for Chanukah after Bondi Beach massacre

Australian police are dramatically increasing their security presence for Chanukah next month following last year’s deadly holiday attack.

The police have deployed a newly established 250-member unit armed with assault rifles to conduct high-visibility patrols at major public events, places of worship, and crowded spaces.

The move comes after it emerged that only a handful of general-duty police officers were on duty during the Bondi Beach Chanukah attack in December 2025, despite earlier warnings by the Jewish community over a heightened climate of incitement to violence.

“There is no denying that seeing such heavily armed police officers on the streets of Sydney is deeply confronting, and as someone who experienced firsthand the horrific attack at Bondi, I wish it did not have to come to this,” Arsen Ostrovsky, head of the Sydney office of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) and a survivor of the Bondi terrorist shooting, told JNS on Monday.

“But the reality is that these measures have become necessary to protect not only the Jewish community, but all Australians, from the ongoing threat of terror.”

Australian Jewish organizations have long condemned the government for allowing a climate of incitement to violence following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre to run unchecked, saying it led to a series of hate-based assaults across the country that culminated in the Bondi attack.

Fifteen people, including a 10-year-old girl and an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, were killed by father-and-son gunmen in the shooting at Bondi Beach on the first night of Chanukah 2025.

About 110,000 Jews live in Australia, primarily in Melbourne and Sydney. This year, the holiday begins at sunset on Dec. 4.

Germany sees sharp rise in Islamist-motivated antisemitic crimes since October 7

Islamist-motivated antisemitic crimes are on the rise in Germany, according to a newly published response by the German government to a parliamentary question, citing Federal Criminal Police Office data.

German authorities recorded 670 antisemitic offenses classified as Islamist in 2025, a 6% increase from the previous year.

Greens MP Lamya Kaddor asked the federal government last month what figures it has regarding antisemitic incidents in Muslim or Islamist contexts before and after October 7, 2023.

Parliamentary State Secretary Christoph de Vries responded with data from the Criminal Police Reporting Service for Politically Motivated Crime (KPMD-PMK). This revealed 16 cases of Islamist-motivated antisemitic crimes in 2022 and 33 from January 1, 2023, to October 6, 2023. In the just three months following October 7, 2023, there were 331 incidents. This almost doubled to 631 in 2024, and now 670 in 2025.

Outlet WELT AM SONNTAG gained access to the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) breakdown of incidents. It reported that almost half of them concerned the use of signs of banned organizations such as Hezbollah and the so-called Islamic State. In addition, the BKA registered numerous incidents of antisemitic graffiti, insults, and threats. The most serious was attempted homicide: a knife attack by a Syrian on a Spanish tourist at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin in February 2025.

6,548 antisemitic offenses reported in Germany across all ideological categories
On X/Twitter, Kaddor said: “Islamist antisemitism must be decisively combated, without placing Muslims under general suspicion.”

“For this, effective prevention, reliable data, and cooperation with Muslim communities are needed, instead of cuts and generalizations,” she added.

It is important to note that 670 is not the total number of antisemitic crimes in Germany in 2025. The nation recorded 6,548 antisemitic offenses across all ideological categories last year. Of these, 3,163 (48.3%) had an Israel-related connection. Right-wing extremism remained the largest ideological category.

Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews, told German media: “Today, Islamist-influenced hatred of Jews is being unleashed quite openly on the streets, at universities, and on the Internet.”

Toronto Conference Glorifying October 7 Massacre Hints at Terrorist Speaker Line-Up

Several terrorists have been teased as potential speakers a November conference in Toronto organized by a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, according to social media posts from October and November promoting the “Three Years of Al-Aqsa Flood Conference.”

The November 28-29 Canadian conference, organized by Masar Badil Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path, aims to advance “revolutionary” efforts in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attacks. In posts published in October 20 and November 3, keynote speakers were described as “liberated Palestinian prisoners.”

The term “liberated Palestinian prisoners” and similar phrases have previously been used by Masar Badil and its sister group Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network to refer to terrorists released as part of deals for hostages held captive by Hamas.

Code for Terrorist Guest Speakers
Masar Badil described Hamas international spokesman Hussam Badran as a “liberated Palestinian prisoner” in a February statement. Samidoun used the same phrase in its own statement about a Masar Badil webinar with Badran, who had been released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal. Samidoun used the exact phrase again in a November 2025 statement about terrorists released in exchange for October 7 Massacre hostages. In contemporaneous statements about the release of terrorists during the October 7 War, Samidoun consistently described them as “liberated prisoners.”

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine subsidiary groups have repeatedly hosted or organized talks featuring terrorists released in exchange for October 7 hostages. Hamas terrorist Othman Bilal, who was reportedly involved in the planning of bombings that killed 12 people, was featured alongside Masar Badil co-founder and Samidoun founder Khaled Barakat in a December 2025 webinar. Bilal spoke alongside alongside PFLP commander Nader Sadaqa in an April 2026 webinar in Argentina co-organized by Masar Badil. Fatah terrorist Nael Barghouti, who had been released in both the Shalit and October 7 War deals, spoke to participants in Madrid and Budapest in April events organized by Masar Badil’s youth movement Tariq El Tahrir and Samidoun-linked organization Alkarama Palestinian Women’s Movement. The latter group described Barghouti as a “freed prisoner.”

Samidoun and Palestine Action
Beyond the so-called “liberated prisoners,” other terrorism-tied individuals are expected to speak or attend the two-day conference. On Tuesday it was announced that Barakat, who was previously identified by the PFLP as a leader of its organization, is set to speak at a panel about the “red-green alliance” between revolutionary Islamists and socialists. Barakat was specifically sanction by the U.S. Treasury alongside Samidoun. Samidoun was listed by Canada as a terrorist entity, due to its close links to the PFLP, in a joint October 2024 action with the U.S. Treasury. Barakat’s wife and Samidoun international coordinator Charlotte Kates is also listed as a speaker.

Another speaker are representatives of Palestine Action Canada, a branch of the United Kingdom-based political vandalism network Palestine Action. Palestine Action was designated a terrorist organization by the UK in July 2025 and by the U.S. in August. Palestine Action Canada only recently claimed responsibility for an October attack damaging infrastructure belonging to GeoSpectrum, an Ontario subsidiary of Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems.

Another Palestine Action-link expected to speak at the conference is Calla Walsh. Walsh was one of the founders of Palestine Action US, and like Kates appears to now be based in Beirut. According to the Free Press, she is on a suspicious persons watch list, and regularly appears on Iranian-state media.

Other speakers appear to include participants in the protest encampments that paralyzed academic campuses worldwide during the height of the October 7 War.

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10/08 Links Pt1: Andrew Roberts: I documented the crimes of October 7. Too many still believe the lies of Hamas; After Oct. 7, Israel Rewrote the Rules of the Middle East

From Ian:

Andrew Roberts: I documented the crimes of October 7. Too many still believe the lies of Hamas

As the Red Army closed in on Auschwitz, the Nazis blew up the crematoria to hide the atrocities they had committed. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas did the opposite. Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar ordered his fighters to film their killing and broadcast it to spread terror. With GoPro cameras strapped to their chests, they filmed themselves gleefully slaughtering, burning, and raping Israeli citizens, young and old, and uploaded the footage in real time.

In three decades writing about war, I have rarely encountered an atrocity documented in such detail. The 7 October Parliamentary Commission Report which I chaired, and the evidence that underpins it, runs to more than 300 pages. Yet the same organization that broadcast its own atrocities in real time began denying the specifics within hours. Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya told the BBC that Hamas never targeted women and children, and called footage of terrified families Israel's invention.

These same men now lead Hamas's negotiations, and their assurances sit at the heart of the diplomatic process. A movement instructed to showcase mass murder, not conceal it, cannot expect its word to be trusted - least of all on disarmament. Disarmament cannot depend on assurances. It must be verified: inspectors must have access to every depot and tunnel, a timetable must be published, and each missed checkpoint must trigger consequences, not renewed negotiation.

Hamas leaders have vowed to repeat Oct. 7 "again and again" until Israel is destroyed. Those are not the words of a movement reconciled to peace, but of one waiting for its next opportunity. Peace does not require trusting Hamas; it requires ensuring Hamas no longer has the means to break it.

Bret Stephens: When Criticism of Israel Goes Off the Rails

Zealous criticism of Israel goes off the rails when it somehow imagines, or pretends, that blame for the crises in the Holy Land falls on one side alone and that Israel's security challenges are either a product of its imagination or payback for its own policies.

Israel came into existence with its enemies avowing its extermination, and nearly eight decades later those intentions remain unchanged.

The experience of Israelis in this century is that every time they have vacated territory, whether in southern Lebanon in 2000 or Gaza in 2005, they have gained neither international grace nor physical security.

Instead, their retreats created staging grounds for the kind of horror that so many Israelis experienced firsthand on and after Oct. 7 - horrors that many of the world's so-called humanitarians and justice-seekers chose to celebrate, downplay or flat-out deny.

Constant critics of Israel might try to remember that Israelis aren't simply hallucinating their own peril.

Weaponizing the charge of genocide fuels an increasingly dangerous antisemitism

Genocide, the intentional annihilation of a group of people, is the gravest of crimes. As malicious actors weaponize the term and endanger Jews everywhere, meticulous use of the charge is more essential than ever.

We are honored to serve as the current and former chairs of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, an institution memorializing history’s most well-documented genocide: Nazi Germany and its collaborators’ attempt to systematically murder every Jewish man, woman and child in Europe. They almost succeeded. Two-thirds of European Jews – 6 million – were killed. The global Jewish population has yet to recover, with fewer Jews alive today than in 1939, when World War II began.

Holocaust survivors fervently hoped antisemitism would wither when Germany was defeated and its crimes exposed. Yet, they knew from centuries of persecutions long before the Nazis, this ancient hatred is impossible to eradicate. Even so, after World War II, antisemitism became socially unacceptable. The shocking reactions from many quarters to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, three years ago, show this is no longer the case.

On that day, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel intending to murder as many Jewish people as possible, bringing about the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. As Israel defends itself, we reiterate our wholehearted conviction that Israel has not committed genocide, reflecting the United States government’s consistent and prevailing view. Rescuers and police escort elderly woman and others after synagogue terror attack in Manchester.

At the same time, we cannot forget the terrible tragedy many innocent Gazans have experienced as a result of the war. The loss of tens of thousands, including many children, is horrific.

As we mourn so many innocent lives lost, we cannot ignore that Hamas puts civilians in harm’s way as a central part of its strategy to demonize Israel. Despite this deadly strategy, Israel has made efforts to warn civilians when to evacuate, provide food and relief, and facilitate vaccine distribution.

Israel, like any country, is not exempt from criticism. And yet, whether out of ignorance or malice, people from all walks of life, often with little knowledge or legal expertise, including in the specific definition of genocide, continually wield the term. Others weaponize it to delegitimize the world’s only Jewish state. Regardless of their intention, the impact is a terrifying eruption of antisemitism and a more dangerous world for Jewish people everywhere.

Furthermore, state actors like Iran, Qatar, China and Russia spread antisemitic and anti-Israel conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial to stir hatred of Jews and sow chaos in democracies. They are succeeding. Antisemitism is no longer lurking at society’s fringes. It is marching openly through its institutions. Violent antisemitism is at levels not seen since the Holocaust. From Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue to Bondi Beach in Australia, to Manchester, England, and far too many other places, Jews are under deadly attack. And every day, Jews face relentless harassment and threats on streets, campuses and online.

Talk about "Genocide" Should Start with Israel's Murdered Mothers and Children

When I heard that students were planning a pro-Palestinian march through London on the third anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, I thought how grotesquely insensitive is it possible to be? What is wrong with people?

You want genocide? Young women at the Nova peace festival, half-naked, strung up from trees the better to defile them. Twin baby boys, their mother slaughtered in the kitchen, their father riddled with bullets; the orphaned babies used as bait for 14 hours, little Guy and Roi, 10 months old, left to scream so they would lure neighbors to rescue them and those brave souls were then picked off by the terrorists lying in wait. Killing parents in front of their sobbing children, then setting the house on fire so those children are burnt alive.

Here we are, three years on from one of the darkest days in history, and it's Jews - not Islamists - who are either fleeing the UK or living in fear. Their children attend heavily fortified schools and worship in high-security synagogues.

I am not Jewish, but I believe the Jews deserve and need a homeland. I hate their enemies because they are our enemies. So that makes me a Zionist. If you have any sense of what history teaches us, you should be a Zionist too. No more "Yes, buts." Today, Oct. 7, of all days, let us stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters.

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10/04 Links: Douglas Murray: Israel Is Winning; The Green Party is now an openly anti-Jewish party; ‘Evil incarnate’: Israel’s top forensic pathologist reveals unseen Oct. 7 evidence; IDF Dismantles Claims in "NAZA" Documentary

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Israel Is Winning

The attempted hijacking of a Flydubai plane en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv is a reminder that Israel and the West remain at war with Islamic radicals, and that it is a war we are winning. The online world is filled with shrill declarations that Israel has lost this war. But on the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel and its allies have been winning the war on the ground even as they have lost the PR war around the world.

The PR war matters. But it matters less than the war itself. Better to win the ground war and lose the PR war than the other way around.

Piece by piece, the Israeli government took apart the Iranian axis. First, they took apart Hamas in Gaza, despite constant attempts to make them stop, which came not just from Europe but from President Joe Biden's White House. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran in July 2024. Then, while Netanyahu was in New York speaking at the UN, Israel bombed the compound where the head of Hizbullah, Hassan Nasrallah, and almost all his remaining senior colleagues were gathered.

Two years into the war that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar started, the Israeli air force took out the majority of the Iranian regime's air defenses, then came back and struck thousands of regime targets, opening the route for American B-2 bombers to attack the main Iranian nuclear sites. Then the Americans and the Israelis returned. They not only targeted the Iranian nuclear program again but also killed the supreme leader.

Everybody alongside and above Sinwar in the chain of command is now dead. Neither Hamas, Hizbullah, nor the Iranian regime has a noose ready to pull around Israel's neck anymore. A large share of the Israeli hostages were eventually returned alive. Three years ago, this set of victories would have seemed unthinkable.

What happened in the skies above Saudi Arabia on Wednesday stands as a metaphor for three years of war. The Israelis saw an existential threat, took matters into their own hands, and decided their own course. The rest of the West will have to decide whether it will follow the Israeli model or let its own future be dictated by terror and the hijacking of its entire society.

Israel’s Growing Allies on the Ground—and in the Sky

Israel is no stranger to diplomatic isolation, but the widespread condemnation it has received after Hamas's October 7 atrocities has been unusually strong and meritless. Last week, the dozens of delegates walking out on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at the United Nations seemed to dramatize Israel's diplomatic plight. Bibi defied the well-heeled "moral cowards" of Turtle Bay and defended his policies against Iran and its terrorist minions. But even as many of Israel's friends applauded him at the rostrum, their eyes darted nervously to the swelling exodus in the aisles.

A different set of images portrayed a more important reality this week. When an Omani terrorist attempted to hijack an airplane bound for Israel from Dubai, an improvised multinational coalition sprang into action. This was largely the work of brave individuals, but it illustrates the larger forces affecting Israel's foreign policy. The Jewish state faces many enemies, but a growing number of countries are attracted to it because of Israel's battlefield prowess, technological skill, and shared values.

The terrorist aimed to kill Jews, but his first target was an Indian. The pilot, Captain Smit Machchhar, fought off his treacherous copilot long enough to open the cockpit door. Israeli passengers then rushed their would-be murderer, subdued him, pulled the Boeing 737 out of its fatal dive, and stabilized the stricken aviator. The plane landed safely in Saudi Arabia, where medics tended to the injured civilians until another plane brought them to Tel Aviv.

Much like Captain Machchhar and his passengers, Israel and India are becoming a dynamic duo. Although India still expresses plenty of sympathy for the residents of the West Bank and Gaza, the Jewish state's value is too obvious to miss for a country with hostile neighbors and severe terrorist threats. India is Israel's top destination for defense exports, and it has reciprocated with nearly 3,000 shipments of defense equipment and components since October 7. During Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit in February, he and Netanyahu announced a bevy of agreements on technological cooperation and that a free trade agreement is in the works. Together, they form one half of the I2U2, a quadrilateral that includes the United States and the United Arab Emirates.

Of course, the flight only occurred because of Israel's relationship with the UAE, which has deepened because of the immense damage Iran is inflicting across the Middle East. In fact, as the pinstriped diplomats stormed down the aisle at the U.N., the Emirati delegation remained.

Less symbolically but perhaps more importantly, the military leaders of several Arab countries reportedly met with U.S. and Israeli generals in Germany a few days before the walkout. No countries have formally joined the Abraham Accords this year, but the Saudis and even the Qataris attended this meeting. Iran's belligerence across the wider Middle East is forcing previously implacable foes to coordinate militarily with the Jewish state.

Like-minded friends in the Global South are rallying to Israel too. Argentina's Javier Milei excoriated "the alleged defenders of human rights" at the U.N. who "have systematically voted against Israel while remaining silent in the face of Islamic terrorism and the genocide of Christians in Africa."

Brendan O'Neill: The Green Party is now an openly anti-Jewish party

‘Tell me what you accuse the Jews of [and] I’ll tell you what you are guilty of’, said the great Soviet writer Vasily Grossman. Today, that grim, eternal truth was starkly illustrated by the Green Party’s passing of a motion saying ‘Zionism is Racism’. To throw around the word ‘racism’ even as you single out Jewish sovereignty as uniquely demonic, to pose as an enemy of bigotry even as you dream of the erasure of the world’s only Jewish state, takes moral duplicity to sickening new heights. In their snivelling whisperings about ‘racism’, these scumbags reveal their own.

It was at their conference in Brighton that the Green Party of England and Wales voted in favour of the ‘Zionism is Racism’ screed. The motion expressly defines the Greens as an ‘anti-Zionist party’. It says Zionism is a species of racial hatred, and will henceforth be ‘treated as any other form of racism’. Most obnoxiously of all, it commits the Greens to campaigning for the scrubbing of the Jewish nation from the face of the Earth. It calls for ‘the establishment of a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine, with Jerusalem as its capital’. So no more Jewish homeland. No more tiny patch of land, a poxy 263 by 71 miles, for the Jews to call their own. All of it would disappear. Imagine accusing others of being ‘genocidal’ even as you agitate for the total dismantling of the ancestral kingdom of the Jews.

Anyone who thinks this is ‘just about Israel’, that the Islamo-left’s demented hatred for the Jewish nation has no impact on the Jews of the West, needs to pay closer attention. One of the most chilling events in Brighton today was the enthusiastic voting down of an amendment that would have offered protection to Jewish Greens who attend Zionist synagogues. Designed to ‘safeguard Jewish membership’, the amendment warned against ‘indirect discrimination’ against ‘practising Jews’ on the basis of the ‘synagogues, community centres or denominational groups’ they are aligned with. It was smashed, defeated by 1,026 to 648 votes.

Think about this. Really think about it. A mainstream party, and a supposedly progressive one, has just voted against an amendment that would protect its own Jewish members from discrimination on the grounds of the religious institutions they attend. I cannot remember anything like this in my lifetime: a party effectively greenlighting the harassment of Jews who commit the ‘sin’ of attending synagogues that believe in the right of Jews to nationhood. It is stunning. It’s a moral crisis. Not since the BNP has a party so openly committed itself to hostility towards certain Jews.

The historic gravity of today’s events cannot be overstated. We now have a party in Britain wholly devoted to the moral annihilation of Jewish sovereignty. A party committed to the abolition of Israel. A party content to hang a target sign around the necks of its own Jewish members who continue to patronise institutions that believe in the continued existence of a Jewish State. If the Tories overnight devoted themselves to the removal from the Earth of the state of Pakistan, and the moral isolation of every pesky Pakistani in Britain who likes that nation, it would be leading the news. Every progressive would cry ‘racism’, and rightly so. Will they do likewise here? Don’t hold your breath – you’ll die.

I’ll say it, though. I’ll say that if Jewish nationhood makes you vomit, if the right to self-determination of the Jews keeps you awake at night, then you are a bigot. You might consider yourself woke and good, but your frothing animus for Jewish nationhood betrays the blackness of your soul. For that’s all Zionism is: the belief that the Jews, like every other people, have an inalienable right to build and flourish in the land of their forebears. That the same people who tilt their heads in bourgeois indulgence of every native claim to territory then puke into their matcha when the Jews say ‘What about us?’ tells you everything you need to know. It is impossible to explain these double standards without using the word ‘anti-Semitism’. Go on, try.

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08/18 Links Pt2: What Happens When Jews Don’t Fight; Judge attacks IHRA antisemitism definition as ‘detached from reality’; Israeli flag ‘symbolizes Jewish race,’ judge rules in assault case

From Ian:

What Happens When Jews Don’t Fight

On Friday night, a maniac named Larry Montes stormed into Manhattan's Central Synagogue, shouted obscenities, spat, punched a congregant in the face, and smashed a bunch of candles before being escorted out by security. Watch the footage from the synagogue's livestream cameras, and you'll see Montes as he runs up and down the aisle uninterrupted. You'll also see a host of congregants, men and women alike, recoiling in horror, receding deeper into the pews for safety and looking desperately for the guards to intervene and save them.

Jewish pride isn't about being safe. It's about being free. This means refusing to turn our synagogues into nightmarishly fortified bunkers, which teaches our children that Judaism is interchangeable with anxiety and fear and which signals to our neighbors that hunting Jews is simply the norm in America these days.

It means bringing in a few Krav Maga dudes to teach congregants of all ages what to do next time some pogromist rolls in and starts acting up. It means conditioning congregation membership on the willingness to get trained and volunteer to become part of an organic security detail that doesn't rely on outsourcing our safety to others.

The FBI's recently released report on hate crimes in the U.S. shows that Jews, 2.4% of the population, are the target of 64% of all religion-based hate crimes. A Jew is currently 190% more likely than a Muslim to be the victim of a hate-based attack.

Somewhere, the next attacker of Jews is watching the footage, taking great pleasure in seeing the terrified looks on the faces of helpless Jews, and taking comfort in knowing that the worst that can happen to anyone storming a synagogue is being manhandled by some paid guard reluctant to inflict too much harm. The part we can control is what happens when the next attack on a synagogue occurs.

Once Rejecting Israeli Citizenship, the Golan Druze Are Now Getting Ready to Vote

Walid, 35, a resident of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, said, "For 60 years, people here were afraid to speak out against the Syrian regime, fearing harm to their relatives across the border," before mentioning the massacre of Druze in southern Syria's Sweida province by government and Bedouin forces a year ago.

"I feel we're nearing the completion of the Israelization of Druze society in the Golan - toward a new era."

In 1981, when Israel annexed the Golan, most Druze there refused to accept Israeli citizenship, declaring loyalty to Syria.

Three decades later, the Syrian civil war broke out and the number of Druze who requested Israeli citizenship steadily increased from single digits to hundreds annually. Still, by 2023, only a fifth of the Golan Druze were Israeli citizens.

But in 2024, 572 residents from the four Druze towns requested Israeli citizenship, a number that ballooned to 3,750 in 2025. In the first half of 2026, 1,444 Druze from the Golan requested citizenship.

Now 44% are citizens. The main reason was the massacre in Sweida and the Israeli airstrikes in the province and Damascus that followed.

"I think the Druze in the Golan had an epiphany, mainly because Israel was the only one that stood by the Druze in Syria," says Salim Brik, a political scientist at the Open University of Israel. The sharp increase in Golan-Druze citizenship is probably also linked to the disaster of July 2024, when 12 children in Majdal Shams were killed by a Hizbullah rocket, he says.

Cambridge University-linked project erases Israel

An academic project hosted by Cambridge University promotes an “Islamic curriculum” which tells 12-year-olds that Hamas is an “excuse that Israel uses to justify its attacks on the Gaza Strip,” calls the civilian hostages taken by the terror group on October 7 “prisoners of war” and publishes in pupils’ course material a map of the region from which Israel has been erased.

The project also publishes a guide aimed at parents and children, written after the attacks, which asks: “What is the reward of a shaheed [a martyr]? How does this make you feel when you think of all the children of Gaza who are now shuhada [martyrs]?” and states, quoting the Quran: “Never say that those martyred in the cause of Allah are dead – in fact, they are alive but you do not perceive it.”

The project which promotes the claims, the Islamic Educator Learning Community (IELC), is led by Cambridge’s assistant research professor of education, Farah Ahmed, a member of the same faculty which employed Jason Arday and a former activist in the now-banned terror group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

This article marks the third in our continuing series about the deep problems in the subject of Education at Cambridge. It follows our disclosure of Ahmed’s long record of bigoted, extremist and separatist views on Tuesday and our revelation on Saturday that Ahmed’s unit has also promoted support for creationism and attacks on evolution.

Ahmed’s IELC is “hosted by” and “partners with” a university body called the Cambridge Teacher Research Exchange, Camtree. Camtree is a project of Hughes Hall, the Cambridge University college where Ahmed is a governing fellow. Ahmed is also an “affiliate” of Camtree.

IELC’s website promotes something called the “Islamic Curriculum Initiative,” describing it as a response of Muslim educators to the 7 October attacks. As IELC puts it: “We know that silence, neutrality, and business-as-usual in education are no longer options. The events following October 7 made that painfully clear. What we see today is not new: it is the continuation of a colonial legacy, now repackaged in modern forms, and it demands a clear, principled response from educators.”

For its own part, the Islamic Curriculum Initiative (ICI) says that “Palestine is not just a cause – it is a litmus test of our moral clarity, a reflection of our connection to faith, justice, and the Ummah…Our curriculum places Palestine where it belongs: at the heart of how students understand justice, faith, and responsibility…making Palestine not a footnote, but a formative part of identity.”

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08/06 Links Pt1: VDH: The Long View of Iran; Bribing Hamas Will Not Bring Peace – It Will Finance The Next War; New Gaza nutrition data coordinated with UNICEF ‘shows facts prevail over fiction,’

From Ian:

Victor Davis Hanson: The Long View of Iran

One day, the United States seems ready to unleash a Curtis LeMay-style devastating bombing campaign of Iran. The next, it appears trapped in endless haggling with Iranian dissimulators.

Of the roughly 150 days since the first strike, about 90 have passed without major military operations.

Iran believes time is on its side. The Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted, gas prices are too high, and antiwar House Democrats seem poised to win the midterms and bring Trump’s war to a halt.

Trump, by contrast, believes Iran can talk all it wants while sanctions, embargoes, and military pressure steadily weaken the regime.

The war has become so politicized in an election year that several basic realities have gone largely unnoticed by the media.

First, the cycle of bombing, pausing, negotiating, and bombing again may seem endless. But the confusion obscures the continuing effects of the embargoes, sanctions, blockade, and financial isolation imposed on Iran. Together, they are costing the theocracy more than $400 million a day in lost revenue, money that it can ill afford to lose. By haggling, Iran believes it can run out the clock until the midterms, but it may be only prolonging its own miserable situation.

Second, so far the bombing has not descended into a ground war. There are no embedded reporters and few Western journalists in Iran. So the world knows little about the true extent of the damage to the Iranian regime and its military-industrial-nuclear complex.

Nor do we know the mood of the once-restive Iranian street. But whether or not there are future allied military attacks, tensions will only increase as Iran runs out of money and basic goods. Whatever the outcome of negotiations or further combat operations, the Iranian military and economy have already been wrecked and will take years to rebuild.

Third, however the war ends, Iran will remain at a terrible disadvantage for years in dealing with the neighbors it has so gratuitously attacked. The regime currently has no effective combat aircraft or air defenses—and no allies.

In contrast, the Gulf states can field more than 700 combat aircraft, including F-15s, F-16s, F/A-18s, Rafales, Mirages, and Tornados. Israel has another 300, including late-model F-35s, F-16s, and F-15s. U.S. bases in the Middle East are home to some 300 more, including F-22s, F-35s, F-18s, F-16s, and F-15s—not counting carrier-based aircraft.

In sum, the United States and its allies have some 1,300 late-model combat aircraft in the region. They should therefore be able to hit Iran hard for years to come if it resumes drone and missile attacks against its rivals.

Amb. Gordon Sondland: America's aid to Israel isn't charity — it's a bargain for US security

Every few years, Americans ask the same question: Why do we send billions of dollars to Israel?

Given a national debt approaching $40 trillion and an annual defense budget of roughly $1 trillion, it is a fair question. Every dollar spent overseas deserves scrutiny. But the debate almost always focuses on one side of the ledger — what America gives Israel — while largely ignoring the other: what America receives in return.

That is the wrong way to evaluate any investment.

Before making my case, let me disclose my own perspective. I am a cultural Jew, but not a practicing one. I don’t keep kosher. I rarely attend synagogue. I raised a family that is half Jewish and half Christian. I have no financial interests in Israel. My support for Israel has never been based on religion or ethnicity. It rests on a far simpler question: Does this alliance make America stronger?

After serving as a U.S. ambassador and spending a lifetime in business, I believe the answer is unequivocally yes.

The United States has many indispensable allies. Britain provides extraordinary intelligence cooperation through the Five Eyes partnership. Japan anchors our strategy in the Indo-Pacific. South Korea deters aggression on the Korean Peninsula. Australia is an increasingly important military partner as China expands its reach. Poland has become one of NATO’s strongest front-line allies. Every one of those relationships advances American interests.

Yet Israel occupies a category almost by itself.

Few allies combine world-class intelligence, battlefield-tested military innovation, cutting-edge cyber capabilities, missile-defense development, entrepreneurial technology and democratic resilience while sitting at the crossroads of the world’s most volatile region. If Israel did not exist, the United States would spend decades — and likely hundreds of billions of dollars — trying to recreate the strategic advantages it provides.

Obstacles to Implementing the Hamas Disarmament Agreement

Despite the celebratory announcement of an agreement providing for the complete disarmament of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza, deep gaps remain between the parties, compounded by flawed assumptions on the part of the mediators. Hamas does not view disarmament as a unilateral obligation. In addition, Hamas demands guarantees that it will be integrated into Gaza's governing mechanisms as a condition for relinquishing its weapons.

Israel insists on the full disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza (which includes removing the weapons and not leaving them in the Strip) as a precondition for withdrawal.

The International Stabilization Force faces significant recruitment difficulties, stemming from the refusal of states to deploy troops to areas where Hamas remains armed. The National Committee for the Administration of Gaza is reluctant to enter the Strip in the absence of an effective security mechanism to protect its members.

Hamas sources revealed that it formulated its hardline positions - foremost among them its refusal to disarm before a full Israeli withdrawal - in close coordination with mediators Turkey and Qatar. The mediators' strategic objective is to preserve Hamas as a legitimate political actor. They strongly oppose conditioning Gaza's reconstruction on Hamas's complete disarmament, while seeking to assume a leading role and secure a major share in reconstruction projects in the Strip.

Hamas's apparent willingness to show greater flexibility can reasonably be attributed to the IDF's sustained military pressure, including targeted killing operations and the expansion of Israel's hold over Gazan territory from 53% to 65%. In practice, however, this does not represent a substantive change, but rather a calculated strategy of delay and "tactical flexibility" whose sole purpose is to ensure Hamas's political and military survival.

Hamas has effectively exploited the diversion of regional attention toward Iran to rebuild its military and civilian systems: it has restored its chain of command, resumed weapons production and tunnel construction, and expanded its ranks to 30,000 armed operatives. These are not the actions of an organization preparing or intending to disarm.

There is serious concern that the mediators are playing a dangerous double game. Their apparent objective is to push the U.S. and the Board of Peace into a confrontation with Israel and to place responsibility on Israel for derailing the Trump plan because of its insistence that its withdrawal take place only after the complete disarmament of Hamas. It is even possible that Turkey and Qatar persuaded Hamas to accept the framework on the assumption that Israel would reject it.

No picture today because blogger sux

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08/04 Links Pt1: Iran’s Most Powerful Weapon Is Time—Here’s How To Turn It Against Them; The Not-So-Special Relationship; Piers Morgan to Hamas spokesman: Why kidnap a baby?

From Ian:

Gen. David Deptula: Iran’s Most Powerful Weapon Is Time—Here’s How To Turn It Against Them

Destruction Is Not the Same as Leverage
American airpower can inflict devastating damage on Iran’s military establishment, but that does not constitute a strategy. To be productive, military effects must be connected to a defined political purpose.

If Iran believes it only needs to survive until the American political environment changes, then retaliatory strikes alone can be waited out. To be effective, the U.S. must convince Tehran that waiting will make its position progressively worse—not better.

This requires persistent military pressure against the regime’s ability to attack and regenerate. The United States should continue attacking the production, storage, command-and-control, and launch architecture supporting Iran’s missile, drone, and maritime operations. Electrical-power infrastructure that directly and effectively supports those military capabilities constitute a lawful military objective when targeted in accordance with the principles of distinction, proportionality, and feasible precautions, and provide a highly leveraged means of neutralizing them consistent with the law of armed conflict. Maritime restrictions should be sustained and enforced consistently, with clearly defined humanitarian provisions and consequences for violations.

Most importantly, military pressure must be integrated with a sustained economic campaign directed at the revenue streams that finance the regime and its military reconstruction.

Iran’s petroleum trade remains its central economic lifeline. Tehran depends on front companies, financial intermediaries, foreign refineries, ship-to-ship transfers, and a shadow fleet to disguise the origin and destination of its exports.

The Treasury and State Departments have already taken significant action against these networks. Recent Treasury measures target vessels, companies, financial intermediaries, and procurement networks supporting Iranian petroleum sales, missile production, and unmanned aircraft programs. Those actions provide a strong foundation for a campaign that connects economic pressure directly to military and diplomatic objectives.

Washington should continue systematically inhibiting the banks, insurers, port operators, brokers, refiners, and shipping networks that enable Iranian revenue. This forces foreign companies and governments to choose: access to the American financial system or assist in Iran’s sanctions-evasion economy. It must be clear you cannot do both.

Enforcement matters more than announcements. A sanctioned tanker that continues delivering oil represents unrealized leverage. Closing the gap between designation and enforcement is essential to maximizing pressure and strategic effect.

The Long Game Is the Path to a Durable Win
President Trump has long emphasized speed, deadlines, and measurable results. That approach can create valuable urgency and prevent bureaucratic drift. Iran, however, is attempting to turn that preference for rapid results to its advantage by arguing an agreement must be reached within a narrow political window.

The administration should resist and decouple the midterm election calendar from Iranian negotiations.

A 100-day benchmark can be a useful management and communications milestone, but it is insufficient for compelling a revolutionary regime to turn its back on decades spent absorbing sanctions, suppressing domestic opposition, and waging war through proxies and asymmetric means.

For President Trump to secure a durable victory, the United States must be prepared to play the long game. This does not mean accepting an endless war. It means establishing conditions under which Iran’s choices are steadily reduced while America’s are preserved.

The administration can reinforce its position by making clear that economic and military pressure will continue beyond the midterm elections. It should expand interceptor and counter-drone production on an emergency basis, build regional stockpiles, strengthen partner defenses, and shift the cost-exchange ratio in America’s favor. It should continue degrading Iran’s capacity to manufacture and employ offensive weapons while tightening enforcement against the regime’s oil, shipping, and financial networks.

The objective should not be destruction for its own sake or an agreement that trades substantial economic relief for temporary or unverifiable promises.

The objective should be to change Iran’s strategic calculation.

Iran must come to believe that each additional month of resistance will carry increasing cost, resulting in less revenue, fewer military options, greater isolation, diminished military capability, and a weaker negotiating position. At the same time, the United States should make clear that a verifiable agreement remains available if Iran abandons the behavior that created the crisis.

This combination—relentless pressure and a credible diplomatic solution—offers the best prospect for achieving the administration’s objectives.

The decisive question is not whether the Pentagon has a secret technological breakthrough waiting in the wings. It is whether the United States has the strategic patience, economic discipline, and political determination to ensure that Iran cannot simply outlast it.

If Washington demonstrates that determination, time will cease to be Iran’s most powerful weapon and become America’s. (h/t MtTB)

The Not-So-Special Relationship

Benjamin Netanyahu placed two bets on Israel’s alliance with the United States.
One bet was on Donald Trump. The two leaders’ past feuds and the American’s erratic temperament looked like minor points compared to Trump’s record as the president who recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights and Jerusalem and ordered the airstrike that killed Iran’s terror chief, Qassem Soleimani.

From his first term, Trump broke with many of the dysfunctional norms that had governed U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East for decades. Washington’s bipartisan foreign policy establishment had approached the region’s conflicts as a management problem. Their goal was to lower the intensity of conflict by engineering a rough equilibrium that would prevent any party, including Israel, from getting too strong. Attempts to balance the interests of existential foes were supposed to produce stability. Instead, they ensured the periodic reeruption of war between actors like Israel and Hamas who proved unwilling to adopt the norms of Western bureaucrats.

Trump initially rejected this path by enforcing clearer lines between friends and enemies. His approach was to pick winners and take tributes, rather than to work through State Department offices and NGOs to build complex subdivisions of imperial administration.

Siding with Trump promised Israel not only greater external support, but a freer hand to pursue its own war aims after Oct. 7. In return, Netanyahu offered something that he believed Trump wanted: a powerful ally to project power in the Middle East on behalf of U.S. interests. If Netanyahu’s first bet paid off, Israel stood to be promoted from first among American client states to U.S.-backed regional hegemon in the Middle East.

The problem for Israel was not necessarily that Trump decided to end the war with the Iranian regime still in power. Rather, it was that he was bribing the Iranians by bartering with Israel’s vital security interests.

At the same time as he was drawing closer to Trump, Bibi placed a second bet to make Israel less dependent on Washington. In January, he vowed to wean Israel off U.S. military aid over the next decade (the aid Israel receives comes in the form of credits that it’s required to spend on U.S. weapons companies). Last December, Netanyahu told a graduating class of the Air Force Academy that he had approved an investment equal to $108 billion over the next decade to build up Israel’s domestic munitions industry. “I don’t know if a country can be completely independent but we will strive to ensure our arms are produced as much as possible in Israel,” he told the new pilots. His goal was “to build an independent arms industry for the State of Israel and reduce the dependency on any party, including allies.” When U.S. officials tried to dictate Israel’s war plans, for instance by demanding that the Israeli army not enter the Hamas stronghold of Rafah, Netanyahu proved that he was willing to defy Washington.

When Israel and the U.S. launched their joint war against Iran in February, it looked initially like both wagers were paying off. Israel was demonstrating its independent capabilities while acting in concert with the global superpower to defeat a common enemy. The American and Israeli militaries operated with an unprecedented level of cooperation. Pilots from the two countries flew side by side to strike precoordinated target packages. Intelligence-sharing, planning, and rehearsals took place in joint command centers.

But we know how this story ends. After enduring the devastation of their top leadership and military infrastructure, the Iranians brought the war to a halt by shutting down maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. Fearing the costs of a prolonged closure and unwilling to risk the escalation necessary to reopen the strait by force, Trump offered the Iranians a deal. Effectively, the U.S. would pay Iran a ransom. In return Trump would extricate America from a broadly unpopular war before the midterm elections. By the terms of the deal, hundreds of billions of dollars would be released to Iran. The U.S. made other promises to restore Iran’s military capacity and deterrence, including a pledge to force Israel to call off its operations against Iran’s Lebanese terror proxy, Hezbollah. In return the Iranians would reopen the strait. At a later date, American and Iranian officials would reconvene to negotiate terms of a broader agreement.

Instead of neutralizing the Iranian threat and crowning Israel the dominant power in the Middle East, the first of Netanyahu’s gambles went bust. With Iran on the ropes, Trump’s deal revived the regime’s fortunes. The agreement was loose enough that its terms could easily be nullified or rewritten, but its immediate impact was a win for Tehran. For the Arab leaders who pay careful attention to even subtle power shifts in the region and had endured Iranian missile barrages during the war, the message was clear. American security guarantees were provisional at best. The Iranian regime, whose survival had been in question, was reestablishing its claim to be the region’s dominant actor.

Yet this outcome is less surprising than the furious allegations about Trump’s betrayal suggest. Trump, who once decried the weakness of bribing terror states, calculated that it was now in his interest to do so and simply reversed course, albeit with the implicit understanding that he might abruptly reverse again at some future date. There was a clear precedent for both his personal inconsistency and the substance of his policy. He was reverting to the standard U.S. approach to the region, which aims to manage conflicts within a concert of powers.

The problem for Israel was not necessarily that Trump decided to end the war with the Iranian regime still in power. Rather, it was that he was bribing the Iranians by bartering with Israel’s vital security interests—namely the freedom to aggressively deter Hezbollah.

The point was made clearly when Trump told a reporter at the Financial Times that Netanyahu “won’t have any choice” and would be forced to accept whatever deal Trump made because “I call all the shots.” In other comments, Trump accused the Israeli leader of nearly sinking the deal by carrying out counterattacks inside Lebanon. Bibi, whom Trump had once praised, was now attacked as a bloodthirsty warmonger; an obstacle to peace just as Democrats had always accused him of being.

Simply put: Bibi’s two wagers proved incompatible. Taken as far as it could go—to joint operations aimed at toppling the regime in Iran—the bet on Trump stopped short of Israel’s strategic goals. Moreover, it did so in its final act by threatening Israel’s freedom to act as a sovereign power in defense of vital interests on its own borders.

That leaves the bet on independence as Israel’s path moving forward.

Washington Post Claims Support for Israel Is Dangerous to America

On August 1, 2026, the Washington Post reported that Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, the head of U.S. European Command, had warned the Pentagon that he lacked enough naval forces to keep defending Israel against ballistic missiles.

He said that without another Aegis-equipped destroyer, he might eventually have to choose between defending Israel and defending the American "homeland."

This followed a May Post report titled "U.S. Bears Brunt of Israel's Missile Defense, Pentagon Assessments Show."

It said the U.S. had consumed a substantial share of its most advanced interceptors while defending Israel from Iran - more, he said, than Israel itself had expended.

Omitted from the report was that American missile-defense systems in and around Israel were not protecting only Israeli civilians and military installations.

They were also protecting American aircraft, crews, fuel, munitions, communications nodes, and support personnel operating from or through Israeli bases during the campaign against Iran.

The dozens of KC-46 and KC-135 refueling tankers at Ben-Gurion airport and Uvda and Ramon airbases, together with their crews and fuel infrastructure, enabled American combat aircraft to reach Iranian targets and return.

Any Iranian ballistic-missile attack on the Israeli airfields supporting those operations threatened American combat power directly. The U.S. was defending a joint military operation, including exposed U.S. assets.

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07/23 Links Pt1: Americans Keep Buying the Same Used Car from Iran; Trump: US-Saudi nuclear deal contingent on Abraham Accords acceptance

From Ian:

Due to blogger's wobbly, yesterday's (22nd) links are in the comments here.

Iran Must Never Have a Nuclear Weapon

For months, the Commander-in-Chief has repeated a clear endstate: Iran will never possess a nuclear weapon. That objective is the only outcome consistent with American security, Israeli survival, and the prevention of nuclear-armed theocratic blackmail of the global energy system.

Iran's nuclear program is not a technical problem that can be solved by bombing centrifuges or stockpiles. It is a political-military program driven by a regime whose founding ideology and operational doctrine treat the acquisition of nuclear weapons as a means to destroy Israel and, ultimately, confront the U.S. As long as that leadership remains, the program can be reconstituted.

The June 2025 U.S.-Israeli strikes and the far larger February 2026 campaign severely damaged Natanz, Fordow, and related sites. Yet, the regime's scientific cadre, its archival blueprints, and its procurement networks survived. With residual scientists, data, and institutional knowledge intact, Iran can drastically shrink the timeline to a nuclear weapon in the near future despite recent setbacks.

"Managing" or "monitoring" the regime over time is a strategic illusion. It places the burden of eternal vigilance on future administrations that may lack the will, the congressional majorities, or the public support to act when Iran next sprints for the bomb. We have already watched this movie with North Korea. The difference is that a nuclear North Korea can be contained; a nuclear Iran cannot.

The permanent elimination of the regime's nuclear weapons ambition is achievable only by removing the regime that harbors it. Unconditional surrender of the Axis powers in 1945 is the relevant historical precedent. Germany and Japan were not "managed." Their regimes were destroyed, their ideologies discredited, and their war-making capacity permanently dismantled.

Leaving the Iranian regime in power after we have already killed its Supreme Leader and degraded its military is not prudence; it is strategic incoherence. Continuing to pursue diplomatic settlements with a proven non-compliant actor simply defers the day of reckoning.

Americans Keep Buying the Same Used Car from Iran

In Washington, negotiations are viewed as a pathway to an agreement. In Tehran, negotiations are viewed as another means of waging conflict. For Americans, an agreement represents the finish line. For the Iranian regime, it is, at most, an interim waypoint. Americans seek a resolution; Iranians seek an advantage.

For more than four decades, every time the U.S. has sought progress, the same Iranian "hardliners" have suddenly emerged as obstacles that must be appeased. Another small concession. Another limited sanctions waiver. Another symbolic gesture. Only then, perhaps, can the talks continue. From the Iranian perspective, this is the negotiating strategy.

There is little sense of defeat in Tehran. The regime's internal narrative is one of resilience. From the regime's perspective, the mere fact that the world's leading superpower continues to seek its consent constitutes a psychological and strategic victory in its own right. The U.S. increasingly appears to be responding to a tempo set by Tehran. Instead of rewriting the rules of the game, it seeks to negotiate more favorable terms within the existing framework.

In nearly every negotiating cycle, Americans convince themselves that an agreement is just around the corner, while Iranian leaders conclude that a little more patience will improve their bargaining position even further. Perhaps the question in Washington should no longer be, "What new proposal should we put forward?" Instead, policymakers should ask, "Why do we continue to assume that the other side views negotiations as serving the same purpose that we do?"

An operational alternative does exist. The U.S. possesses ample military capabilities to place overwhelming pressure on the Iranian regime. Rather than pursuing a costly ground invasion, Washington could impose a sustained maritime blockade.

Such an approach, however, would require strategic patience, political endurance, and a willingness to absorb retaliatory costs - qualities that successive American administrations have lacked. Consequently, the U.S. will most likely pursue yet another negotiated agreement.

Netanyahu’s insistence offers a clear hint of what lies ahead

“Call us when you’re serious,” U.S. Secretary of State James Baker told the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in the early 1990s.

Under the current Republican administration, with the current Likud prime minister, Washington is still answering the phone. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump are speaking, although no longer every day.

Something has been amiss in relations between the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office since the war with Iran became more complicated. The president’s inner circle is smaller and more closed than in previous administrations, and gaining access to it has become increasingly difficult. The Americans are making it clear to the Israelis that they are running the war and that everything is fine, thank you very much. But it is evident to everyone that Israel is moving into the back seat.

As a seasoned politician, Netanyahu presumably knows how to recognize deliberate distancing. One example came when Vice President JD Vance said, “Israel’s standing in America is not good, and I don’t think anyone can dispute that.” Last week, Vance had already made clear that he occupied the “sensible center,” between those who see Israel as a problem and those who see it as an asset. That is interesting, but the president’s silence is even more so.

And then there is Saudi Arabia. This week, Trump granted the kingdom the civilian nuclear program it had long sought, contrary to Israel’s position and without the broader package deal Israel had wanted. Former President Joe Biden held up a similar move in an effort to link that incentive to the Abraham Accords. His successor went ahead without tying the two together. Lindsey Graham must surely be turning in his grave.

This is already the second time that has happened. After all, lifting the sanctions on Syria also eliminated the possibility of securing a peace agreement with Israel. And all this is unfolding while the departure of Wing of Zion, Israel’s official aircraft for the prime minister and president, is delayed again and again.

The situation also has implications for the election.

I once heard a campaign strategist say that as far as Israelis are concerned, everything happening in the Middle East is foreign news until missiles begin landing here.

Mossad says it foiled Iranian plot to infiltrate Israel, attack senior officials

Working with foreign intelligence services, Israel foiled an Iranian plot to send operatives into Israel to harm senior Israeli officials, the Mossad intelligence agency said in a statement on Thursday.

The effort, led by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, involved turning to criminal organizations, who would in turn recruit people inside Israel or who could enter Israel for gathering intelligence on a target, then carrying out an attack.

Two criminals living in Iran under the protection of the Intelligence Ministry — Baba Mahuzadeh Haji Jafan, also known as “Babak”; and Mehmet Nadim Ya’it, also known as “Nadim” — recruited Turut Ozkor, a criminal living in France who went by the nickname “Philip.”

The handlers of Babak and Nadim in the Iranian Intelligence Ministry are named by the Mossad as Asadollah Behzad Oskhari, Vahid Matzoumi, Mohammad-Hossein Zoghi and Hamid Qasemi.

Oskhari was killed in Israel’s 12-day bombing campaign against Iran in 2025 and was a key figure in plots to attack Jewish and Israeli targets worldwide, said the Mossad.

Philip was tasked with recruiting a cell of foreign nationals who would enter Israel, it added.

He traveled to Iran on several occasions to meet handlers and be paid, according to the statement.

Philip was expelled by France, while Babak and Nadim remain in Iran.

“Despite the attempt to avoid an Iranian fingerprint, the proxy method repeatedly demonstrates the carelessness of the operatives on the ground, leading to the exposure of their handlers in Iran,” said the Mossad.

The Mossad worked with Shin Bet and foreign intelligence agencies to uncover the network, the statement added.

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07/20 Links Pt2: Ireland’s hypocritical anti-Israel law is a win for Hamas — and a challenge to Trump; Rare burnt First Temple-era beams unearthed in Jerusalem after 2,600 years

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Ireland’s hypocritical anti-Israel law is a win for Hamas — and a challenge to Trump

In 1977, Congress prohibited US companies from participating in boycotts of countries with which the United States maintains friendly relations.

Decades later the Trade Promotion Authority law, passed during the Obama administration, specifically condemned “state-sponsored unsanctioned foreign boycotts of Israel.”

That’s exactly what Ireland’s law is.

US laws ban American companies from complying in any way with an impermissibly discriminatory boycott like Ireland’s.

That puts American companies operating there in a legal bind.

Moreover, the law requires the Treasury Department to maintain a “current list of countries which require or may require participation in or cooperation with an international boycott.”

American companies doing business in countries listed as boycotters face tax and other penalties if they abide by their requirements.

Until now, Treasury’s list was made up solely of Arab states like Syria and Iraq — and it’s gotten steadily shorter, as more Arab countries have made peace with Israel and started normal trading relationships.

Now Treasury must promptly add Ireland to its official list of boycotting countries: If Dublin wants to act like Damascus, it must be treated as such.

Irish legislators seek to pressure Israel to completely withdraw from Judea and Samaria, and to dismantle all Jewish communities there.

But Israel did exactly that with Gaza in the 2005 Disengagement — and Hamas turned it into a terror base.

Ireland claims its move upholds international law, but its hypocrisy is glaring.

It has imposed no similar rules on goods from other disputed territories — or on China, despite Beijing’s massive and ongoing human rights abuses.

Ireland isn’t about to shutter its movie theaters showing “The Odyssey,” even though parts of it were filmed in Western Sahara, which the United Nations regards as occupied territory.

Its ban applies only to Jewish towns.

President Donald Trump’s first administration clearly stated its opposition to Ireland’s law — heck, even the Biden administration warned Dublin of “consequences” if it moved forward.

But animosity to Israel runs so deep in Ireland — the only criticism the law got from opponents was that it doesn’t go far enough — that its legislators decided passing a symbolic Israel-bashing bill is more important than good relations with Washington.

Perhaps they think America is bluffing?

Regardless, imposing trade restrictions on a US ally as it fights alongside us in a hot war is deeply disrespectful.

But Britain’s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham is reportedly considering a similar measure — so Trump must nip this trend in the bud.

The United States must make it crystal clear that no matter which countries choose to impose sanctions on an ally, they will face the consequences of US law.

Ireland's Antizionism

In the sports world, opposition to Israel has grown significantly in the past few weeks and months. Nowhere has this been truer than in the ongoing campaign to cancel the upcoming Ireland-Israel football match scheduled for October. Left-wing politicians and the establishment media took the lead in advocating for a complete cancellation of the game, even if it would hurt Irish football in the long run. The media ran with the story every day, all with the same ideological bent.

When the game was moved from Dublin to a yet to be determined neutral venue, the very same people who complained about Israeli football players and fans visiting Ireland’s largest city argued that moving the game deprived them of the right to protest the Israeli team in person. The country’s largest trade union has even called on the national broadcaster not to air the game. This demonstrates that these activist groups were not interested so much in the outcome as in the process, for it allowed them to keep the issue alive in public discourse, with the establishment media eagerly amplifying the most extreme antizionist voices.

This gets to the heart of antizionism, for it doesn’t purport to offer constructive solutions to deeply entrenched problems, so much as to provide an ongoing justification for a constant campaign of vilification directed against Israel and the majority of the world’s Jews who support its right to exist in peace and security. Quite a few of those who agitated against the game being played in Dublin, who have been silent on the Islamic Republic’s massacre of their own people, couched their opposition as being borne of out of a commitment to being “anti-genocide.”

This implies that Israel’s war against Hamas was a deliberate act of genocide rather than the result of having to fight a war in a densely populated area, in which the enemy deliberately used civilian infrastructure to wage battle. This is a key component of antizionist discourse, which has employed “genocide” as a rhetorical weapon and as a libel. Nothing exemplifies the degree to which antizionism has taken over the Irish public sphere quite like the degree to which sundry politicians and journalists have used this term as a factual representation of what has occurred in Gaza over the last three years, with little regard to international jurisprudence. Those Irish antizionists who employ the term “genocide” do so not to highlight civilian suffering in Gaza — which is indeed very real — but to whip up hatred against Israel’s very existence and to downplay the Holocaust’s place in western collective memory. This is especially alarming, considering the lack of historical knowledge about the Holocaust among many in Ireland, particularly young people.

Antizionism, once institutionalized, limits the spaces in which Jews, if they identify with Israel in any manner, can freely operate. One recent incident which showcases the depth to which antizionist thinking has taken root in Ireland is the cancellation of a Dublin fundraiser for Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross. The Dublin National Concert Hall, which was meant to host the event, which was to include the performance of a play about October 7, decided to cancel the event following an antizionist campaign by local activists who accused MDA of being “complicit in genocide.” Significantly, no other venue has stepped up to offer to host the event.

While it is certainly true that antizionism has infiltrated the public sphere in numerous western democracies, there simply is no equivalent to the degree to which it has taken root in Ireland and in the Irish media, which focuses disproportionately on Israel in its news coverage. This is not meant to be a slight on everyday Irish people, many of whom have expressed alarm at the speed at which antizionism has become normalized in myriad aspects of Irish society. Rather, it should be seen as a warning sign for all those interested in promoting pluralism and tolerance and the viability of a peaceful, long-term settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Most of all, it is a reminder that antizionism remains a distinct manifestation of Jew hatred, one that continues to threaten both the viability of Diaspora Jewish communities and the classical liberal underpinnings of western democracy.

David Collier: How an Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory Became a Community Note on X

The risk of long-term reputational damage needed to be addressed. I went back to the site where the graffiti had been drawn. Several days had passed, and I had no idea what I would find. The graffiti itself had gone, but two freshly painted patches on the pavement were immediately visible. Someone had covered it over. It was a relief. I may have been fighting a nonsensical conspiracy claim, but the approved Community Note had given the allegation the appearance of official endorsement.

I posted footage of the covered-up graffiti on X and requested a review of the Community Note. Thankfully, that was enough for the note to lose its approved status. It wasn’t, however, enough to stop the abuse or silence the conspiracy theorists.

There was one more thing I could do to close this case completely.

The FOI Request That Closes the Case
If park staff had painted over the graffiti, there should be a record of it. Because Trent Park is managed by Enfield Council, that record would be obtainable under the Freedom of Information Act.

On Saturday 27 June, attaching the photographs in my possession, I submitted the request.

I have now received the response.

As the brilliant fictional detective Adrian Monk would say at this point in the investigation: “Here’s what happened.”

On 24 June at 19:08, just over two hours before members of my family walked through the park, a concerned citizen sent an email to Councillor Alessandro Georgiou, the Conservative councillor of Cockfosters ward and leader of Enfield Council. The email is explicit in its detail, mentioning both the swastika and the Star of David.

To his credit, at 22:42 that night, Cllr Georgiou sent a response, thanking the sender, and copying in an official council account, asking for the graffiti to be cleared “ASAP.”

At 10:35 on 25 June, Lisa Smart, Head of Urban Green Spaces at Enfield Council, responded that the council aims to remove offensive graffiti within 24 hours and that she would instruct officers to deal with it.

I was also provided with timestamped images, showing that the council workers had arrived to deal with the graffiti within that 24-hour window, at just after 8:00 on the morning of 26 June.

The timestamps show the graffiti thirty-five hours after my photograph had been taken. Both the swastika and the crossed-out Star of David remain clearly visible, along with the stain in the centre of the pavement. So much for the claim that the markings had simply been drawn in water. According to the council’s account, the combination of the heat and the way the graffiti had embedded itself into the surface meant officers eventually had to paint over it, as the photographs show:

By 11:44 on 26 June, the graffiti had been covered over.

The following day, I returned to the site and filmed the footage I posted on X.

Case closed.

The Bigger Lesson
The disturbing aspect of this story is that a system intended to combat misinformation elevated a conspiracy theory into an apparently authoritative statement with real-world consequences.

The burden was then reversed. Those making the accusation produced no evidence. The Jewish target had to spend weeks obtaining official records simply to restore the presumption of innocence.

This time, documentary evidence happened to exist. Had the graffiti been removed some other way, the Community Note would likely still be there today, giving permanent credibility to a baseless accusation.

Systems that determine “truth” are vulnerable to organised falsehoods, popular prejudice and institutional bias. When the subject is Jews or Israel – where hostile narratives already circulate widely – that vulnerability becomes especially dangerous.

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07/13 Links Pt2: Human rights groups ‘tolerating terrorism against Israel’; The people who know nothing know everything; "He's a Lying Liar." Haviv SLAMS Ro Khanna's Political Stunt in Israel

From Ian:

Human rights groups ‘tolerating terrorism against Israel’

Human rights groups are tolerating terrorism against Israel, the UK’s independent reviewer of terror legislation has said.

Jonathan Hall KC said Left-wing activists regarded violence towards supporters of Israel as a “kind of exemption” because their brains had been “scrambled by Gaza”.

He said that many civil liberty NGOs had abandoned their “traditional” focus on “domestic issues” and instead become “sucked in” to an obsession with the Palestinian struggle.

Speaking at an event at Parliament, he said that some human rights groups had “lost this really precious neutrality and ability to be consistent” on the subject of Israel.

Mr Hall said: “I’ll be able to tell you from my own experience, I barely have any engagement with these sorts of groups. You’d think that Amnesty UK would be right in the forefront of saying: ‘There is an amendment to this legislation, what should we do?’ No, they’re involved in really defending one particular sort of protest.

“And I think that it’s an example of something that we’ve seen with the Palestine Action group response, where people on the whole get their brains scrambled by Gaza.

“So they tolerate behaviour, very violent behaviour, which they would say, if it was being done by the extreme Right or an Islamist group, ‘yes, of course that would amount to terrorism’. But they seem to regard it as a kind of exemption.”

Earlier this year, six Palestine Action activists were cleared of committing aggravated burglary after a break-in at the UK headquarters of an Israeli-owned arms company.

The six activists were found not guilty over allegations that they had used or threatened unlawful violence.

They had used an old prison van to ram-raid an Elbit Systems factory in Bristol in the early hours of Aug 6, 2024, and attacked police officers with sledgehammers, according to Avon and Somerset Police.

They “genuinely believed” their demonstration at the factory would help the Palestinian cause in Gaza, the court heard.

Mr Hall urged humanitarian groups to “pull themselves back from the brink and remember what they really are there to do”.

He said he had spoken to senior executives at British NGOs who are “worried about the direction of travel” but are being “pushed” in that direction by younger members of staff.

Lee Smith: The Culture of Loserdom

The United States saved Egypt from a humiliating defeat in 1956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered French, British, and Israeli forces to evacuate the Suez Canal, which they’d easily taken from Egyptian forces. But not even Nasser’s Soviet patrons could save him in 1967, when Israel destroyed Egypt’s air force on the ground, seized Sinai, and remade the Middle East in six days. His successor Anwar Sadat lost the 1973 war when Ariel Sharon nearly encircled Cairo and only Henry Kissinger’s intervention stopped him.

And then Sadat turned it around, briefly. He won a Nobel prize for making peace with Israel, got back the Sinai—and then terrorists killed him for it. The country’s only other Nobel prize winner, novelist Naguib Mahfouz, was stabbed in the throat on a Cairo street for writing a book that Egyptian terrorists didn’t like. In other words, Egypt cannot abide winning. And thus, naturally, Egypt renewed the contracts of Hossam Hassan and his twin Ibrahim, thereby rewarding the coach responsible for one of the most spectacular chokes in sports history and consequently one of the most repulsive displays of sporting conduct.

People, nations, aren’t supposed to lose like Egypt does, by embracing loserdom as a collective gestalt deployed to blame others for the failures that are only their own. Perhaps the most crucial job of any parent, and coach, is to teach their children how to lose gracefully and what to learn from it so that they may reap victory in the future. Sports is part of that tuition—even the best teams lose sometimes. You can do everything right, execute every play perfectly, but the other side, the other athlete, is simply better. Or you were better, but the calls went against you, or the weather was bad, and that’s just the way it goes.

But if you wanted to breed psychopaths, if you wanted to build a mummy army fed on a strict diet of resentment, you’d tell them nothing is their fault because every outcome is controlled by a mysterious force: colonialism, or Zionism, or voodoo, etc. And then, when things went against them—and things always go against those whose minds and souls are cut to fit the jagged-edged pattern of paranoia—they’d erupt in fits of predictably maniacal rage.

It’s the instrumentalization of those pathological furies that drives the politics of the Middle East. For instance, because of Egypt’s will to lose, Washington pays Cairo $2 billion a year not to send the millions of young men who blame the Jews for everything, from Mossad dolphins to soccer defeats, to their death in another war with Israel. It’s the same throughout the Muslim Middle East, which is why from Iran to Gaza, the Palestinian cause—the global standard of loserdom—is celebrated like victory.

And now the third-world migrants who have overrun Europe’s shores have brought the same culture to the continent. After Morocco’s loss to France, for instance, North African immigrants surrounded an Amsterdam hotel believed to be hosting Israelis and shouted threats, holding them responsible for the loss. And here, in the United States? It’s not a good sign that the man elected to run America’s greatest city can’t tell winning from losing and gives evidence he thinks like the third-world mobs drenched in resentment, that Egypt was robbed.

The people who know nothing know everything

I knew the evening was in trouble when the hostess described the table as “a safe space for difficult conversations.”

Nothing good has ever followed such words.

A safe space for difficult conversations is usually a space in which everyone is free to express precisely the same opinion, provided they do so using slightly different therapeutic vocabulary. Disagreement is welcome in the way vegetarians are welcome at a barbecue: theoretically, warmly, and without any intention of accommodating them.

The dinner was being held in an immaculate apartment overlooking the city. The furniture was Scandinavian, the lighting was flattering, and the books had been arranged not alphabetically but morally. Edward Said sat beside Frantz Fanon. Judith Butler leaned against a large volume on decolonising architecture. There were several books about Israel, none by Israelis, historians, military analysts, Arabic speakers, Hebrew speakers, or anyone who had recently burdened themselves with the region’s chronology.

The apartment belonged to Oliver and Beatrice, who had invited 12 people for what they called “an evening of food, friendship and necessary conversation.”

I had been included, I later realised, as the necessary conversation; the one in need of “education.”

Beatrice greeted me at the door with the expression of a person welcoming a recently rehabilitated extremist.

“We’re so glad you came,” she said, touching my arm. “We were worried you might feel uncomfortable.”

“I’ve been to family weddings,” I replied. “I’ll survive.”

The other guests had already assembled around a huge island bench. They held champagne flutes and spoke in low, solemn tones about suffering in places they would never visit.

There was Julian, an international lawyer who specialised in commercial leases but had recently developed strong views on the laws of armed conflict. Nadia worked in branding and referred to herself as a storyteller. Marcus was a documentary producer whose documentaries had never been produced. Eleanor taught postcolonial literature and had perfected the academic art of converting adjectives into accusations. Simon was in finance and considered himself politically courageous because he had once criticised capitalism at Davos.

There was also Theo, a surgeon, who knew nothing about Israel but knew it with clinical confidence.

I was introduced around the room.

“This is our pro-Israel friend,” Beatrice announced.

When celebrity ignorance gets a stage

You can criticize Israeli settlement policy in Judea and Samaria. Plenty of Israelis do, loudly, in a free press, which is more than can be said for any of its neighbors. That is a real debate, and I welcome it.

But a nation that has voluntarily relinquished more territory than it currently holds is a strange poster child for expansionism. Name another country in history that won defensive wars and then handed the land back just for a signature on a peace treaty.

I’ll wait.

That’s the thing about Casablanca’s Oxford speech: It is the statement of a man who has never had to know anything, explaining to a room full of university students who the Jews really are. He got the biography of his subject wrong because he never learned it. He got the map wrong because he never looked at it. Although he does note that some of his closest friends are Jewish.

The danger isn’t that a rock singer holds uninformed opinions and mumbles through them to an audience who knows even less. Everyone is entitled to those. The danger is the machinery around him: the host who says “100% agree” without a beat, the comment sections calling it brave, the prestigious institutions handing Casablancas a lectern, the total absence of anyone in the room asking a single factual question.

When ignorance gets a stage, applause and an Oxford invitation, while the people it targets get stabbed on a London street, we are not having a policy debate. We are watching a line move.

So, I’ll say it again: Say something. You don’t need a position on settlements to notice that the facts here are wrong and that the target, once again, is the Jews.

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