Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 09, 2025

October 7, Two Years On: How Social Media Mainstreamed Antisemitism (And How It Can Be Fixed)

Two years after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, the Online Hate Prevention Institute’s new report, Social Media and the Normalisation of Hate, shows that antisemitism hasn’t merely surged online: it’s evolving, metastasizing, and embedding itself into the fabric of digital culture.

Drawing on nearly 11,000 antisemitic posts collected from ten major platforms—including X (Twitter), TikTok, Reddit, and Telegram—the report shows an average 833% jump in antisemitic content in the months following October 7, 2023. Even as 2024 saw a partial decline, hate levels never returned to baseline. By mid-2025, antisemitism was rising again almost everywhere.

On Gab, BitChute, Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok, antisemitic content has reached record highs. Even mainstream platforms like X and Facebook show a steady upward trajectory. LinkedIn is the lone exception—holding roughly steady—but even there, antisemitic narratives persist.

The researchers identify 27 categories of antisemitic content, grouped into “traditional,” “Holocaust-related,” “incitement,” and “anti-Israel” forms. The most common narratives are:

Traditional antisemitism—blood libels, “Jews killed Jesus,” and slurs—remains the most prevalent (36% of all antisemitic content).
Jewish world conspiracy theories have rebounded, especially on far-right platforms.
Israel reframed through antisemitic tropes—the “Zionist blood libel” has become the new mainstream.
Control narratives (Jews or Israel manipulating media, finance, or government) dominate fringe networks but leak into mainstream comment threads.
Dehumanization, portraying Jews as “rats,” “snakes,” or “parasites,” remains endemic.
Denial of Jewish self-determination—“Zionism is racism”—has resurfaced in academic and activist spaces.
Holocaust glorification and “Hitler was right” rhetoric circulate openly on TikTok and X.
Incitement to violence, often couched as “resistance,” is now routine.
Comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany—a form of Holocaust inversion—persist across platforms.

October 7 also reshaped online hate:

October 7 denial and “false flag” claims mirror Holocaust denial, dismissing or mocking reports of sexual violence and civilian massacres.
Glorification of Hamas: graffiti, memes, and posts proclaiming “October 7: Do it again” spreads both on- and offline.
Racist Anti-Zionism, a mutation of far-left “anti-colonial” rhetoric, now justifies violence against Jews as “anti-racism.”
Nazi Glorification has reemerged, fueled by the mainstreaming of antisemitic discourse.
Iranian disinformation networks amplify all of it, through Telegram, fake “anti-hate” channels, and propaganda blending anti-Israel and sectarian messaging.

The report highlights chilling Australian case studies: the 2024–2025 Melbourne synagogue arsons, traced to Iranian funding, triggered a wave of online denial and victim-blaming. Posts called the attacks “false flags,” mocked Jewish grief, and even suggested the victims torched their own buildings for “insurance money.” Such reactions illustrate how digital hate desensitizes real-world violence.

The report’s message is clear: the platforms are not just hosting antisemitism: they are shaping it. TikTok’s virality, X’s chaos, and Telegram’s opacity each incubate distinct strains of hate, while moderation systems lag far behind. The authors urge continuous monitoring, public accountability, and renewed civic vigilance, warning that the normalization of hate is eroding the social immune system against violence.

Two months ago, I created a social media policy - based on my recent work in ethics - that would respect both posters and readers on social media, keep freedom of speech but drastically reduce the spread of hate. Any social media company should look at this policy as a way to use AI intelligently to flag potentially inflammatory posts and give the posters a chance to rewrite them or allow them to have their reach reduced, among other ideas.

We need this policy more than ever. Because the hate begets more hate.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

CAIR-LA issued a press release:

The Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) today condemned the University of Southern California (USC)’s “disturbing” sale of human cadavers to the U.S. military for surgical training for the Israeli military, which has been engaging in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza for nearly two years.

When you look at the details, you find out that for years, USC has hosted the Navy Trauma Training Center (NTTC), where the US Navy sends medical professionals to learn how to handle trauma cases. They use cadavers, often from homeless people or those who donate their bodies for this purpose, as this is the best way to learn the subject.

The NTTC is primarily for the Navy, but it also offers its facilities and training for others. Just as in medical schools, cadavers are the best way to train. (Non-US medical students are not allowed to touch live patients in trauma centers under the current law.) This is all legal.

Since Israel has a shortage of cadavers for training, the IDF avails itself of the NTTC, and pays to use their facilities and for the cadavers they can provide, two per course. There is nothing unethical about this, just as there is nothing unethical about the Navy or medical schools training on cadavers. Until someone figures out a way to build androids that have perfect replicas of organs and the circulatory system, this is the only way that doctors can learn (outside of using live bodies.)

But when Jewish lives are the ones being saved, suddenly CAIR is most upset. It is "disturbing" that military medical personnel save the lives of their soldiers - but only in Israel. CAIR doesn't have a problem with the NTTC, but only with it working with the IDF, proving that its only "ethical" concern is in saving the lives of Israelis, not in using cadavers.

CAIR, which brands itself as so moral, has not once condemned Hamas, and certainly not Hamas keeping bodies of Israelis as bargaining chips to allow Palestinian murderers to go free.

Which all goes to prove that the only "ethics" that major Muslim advocacy organization cares about are the one that cause Israelis to die.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Palestinians instruct journalists and NGOs not to publish photos of Palestinians with weapons

I found a guide to media companies, social media and NGOs from the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy called Communicating Palestine that essentially tells news organizations to not take any real news photos - like pictures of Hamas, or any Palestinians who have not given specific permission to be staged and photographed.

In short, it pretends to enforce "ethical storytelling principles" but instructs the media and NGOs not to use any photographs that show Palestinian violence, and to only use photos where the Palestinians shown are aware that they are being photographed - meaning, only photos that are carefully staged to tell a specific narrative aligned with the PIPD's directives.

This is the exact opposite of real journalism.

How many media organizations - or photojournalist stringers for major media - follow these instructions? Because these are exactly what Hamas wants all news photos to look like as well.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

10/08 Links: Trump announces Israel-Hamas deal; 7 October: a war for the soul of the West; Manchester synagogue terrorist pledged allegiance to ISIS in call during rampage

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: What have we learned since Oct. 7?

Oct. 7, 2023, was the worst day in the history of the State of Israel and will be remembered as such for all time. But as New York Times columnist Bret Stephens noted in a column analyzing the lessons of that day and the war that followed, “For all its undoubted horrors, this war may ultimately be remembered as liberating.”

Israel responded to Hamas’s day of genocide by waging war to destroy the Iran axis of which Hamas was a member. Stephens explained how Israel’s war had liberated the peoples of the region.

In Lebanon, thanks to Israel’s decimation of Hezbollah, the people are free from Iran’s proxy for the first time in 20 years. Hezbollah’s decimation fomented the fall of Syrian dictator and Iranian proxy Bashar Assad, providing the people of Syria their first shot at freedom in living memory.

Living under the protection of the IDF, the Druze in southern Syria have an opportunity to navigate their future safely. Following Israel’s successful military operation campaign—joined by the United States— to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and amassing an arsenal of tens of thousands of ballistic missiles, the Iranian people have their best opportunity in 46 years to oust their regime of terror and build a future of freedom for themselves.

And with Hamas crippled, Gazans have their first chance in 20 years to live a life free of the jihadist regime, if they choose to grasp it.

While his list was comprehensive, Stephens shied away from mentioning how Israel achieved this list of dazzling victories following the greatest disaster in its history.

On Oct. 8, when IDF forces were still fighting inside the kibbutzim that had been overrun by Hamas the previous day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his still stunned cabinet that Israel would recover from the savage carnage of the previous day and it would transform the Middle East.

At that same meeting, the top military commander told Netanyahu and his ministers that they must forget about seeing the 251 men, women and children who had been taken hostage the day before ever again.

Netanyahu rejected his claim and insisted that with the proper mix of massive force and negotiation, Israel would defeat Hamas and return all of the hostages. So far, Israel has returned 205 hostages, 148 alive and Hamas is on the verge of total destruction.

Thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump, Israel may see the return of the last 48 hostages within days.

Brendan O'Neill: 7 October: a war for the soul of the West

It was 2023 and they were burning Jews to death again. Once more, humanity found itself scouring the smoldering wreckage of a burnt-down building for some remnant of the Jews that once lived there. Those who call this day of barbarous racism an ‘attack’ have forfeited the right to be taken seriously. Those who call it ‘resistance’ have exposed to the world their own demented sympathy with Jew murder. As the German novelist Herta Müller said, even calling it ‘terrorism’ feels woefully insufficient. It was a ‘total derailment from civilisation’, she says. There was an ‘archaic horror in this bloodlust that I no longer thought possible in this day and age’.

This is what we should be commemorating today. Not an ‘attack’, not a ‘tragedy’ – an act of Nazi-like savagery. A genocidal burning of Jews. The violent intrusion of the crimes of history into our complacent century. The most fitting tribute we could pay to the grieving of 7 October on this second anniversary would be to give this atrocity its rightful place in the black pages of human history. To acknowledge, at last, that it was an epoch-defining crime against humanity, the raw heir to the era of the Holocaust. It compounds the grief of Israel to continue to deny this truth of 7 October.

Then we come to 8 October. That other dark day, two years ago, when mobs danced outside the Israeli Embassy in London in joy at the mass murder of Jews. When Islamists gathered at the Sydney Opera House to cry ‘Fuck the Jews’. When the righteous dusted down their Palestine flags and waved them with abandon, hours after women had been raped under that flag, hours after children had been murdered under it. When students in America cried ‘Glory to our martyrs’. When professors said they felt ‘exhilarated’ by what had happened. When leftists called it a ‘day of celebration’. When that suicidal alliance of genderfluid activists and Jew-hating Islamists took to the streets to call for further ‘jihad’ against the Jewish State. One pogrom was not enough. A thousand dead Jews was not enough. They wanted more.

This horror, this moral atrocity that followed the physical atrocity, continues to this day. On Saturday, a mere 48 hours after two Jews perished in an act of anti-Semitic terror in Manchester, the mob was back on the streets hollering ‘Long live the intifada’. We are not only in denial about the historic inhumanity of 7 October but also about the glee it ignited among those who call themselves ‘progressive’. We would remember if people had poured on to the streets of London to celebrate Kristallnacht – so we should remember that they did so for 7 October, a pogrom in which 10 times as many Jews were slaughtered.

7 October confirmed that Israel faces an existential threat on its borders. 8 October confirmed that the West faces an existential threat within its borders. From a cultural establishment, a liberal elite, a left and an Islamist mob who have turned their backs on the virtues of civilisation and fallen under the spell of barbarism. Israel is winning the war against the fascists that invaded its lands two years ago. We, alas, are not winning the war for the soul of the West. We struggle even to admit we are in such a war. Two years on, the good ship Israel has been steadied while the West still pitches on the high seas of counter-Enlightenment.

There’s one more thing I will recall today: the heroism of the young on 7 October. Alexander Lobanov, who helped evacuate people from the Nova music festival, leading to his capture and later his murder. Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who picked up the grenades that Hamas threw into a bomb shelter and threw them back out again, causing him to lose an arm. Almog Sarusi, who refused to leave his girlfriend’s side after she had been shot, leading to his own capture and his own murder. Shiri Bibas, who held her babies to her breast and comforted them as they were dragged into the hell of Hamas-ruled Gaza. And too many more to mention. There is an alternative universe, one where the West has not yet abandoned reason, where our young wear t-shirts with these people’s faces on them, and cry out their names, and agitate for the erection of statues to these valiant Jews who resisted fascist terror as best they could, just as their forebears in the ghettos did. Making that alternative universe a reality is the task of all of us two years on from 7 October.

October 7 showed Jewish people who their friends are

October 7 unleashed a torrent of antisemitism. Synagogues were firebombed, Jews doxxed, and vile threats were made by nurses, of all people.

Jews arrived in Australia with the First Fleet. Despite being so few, we have contributed mightily to this nation, giving it its greatest military leader, Sir John Monash, two governors-general, Supreme Court justices, scientists, businessmen, winners of the Nobel Prize and Olympic gold and so many of our philanthropists.

Many Australian Jews are now contemplating leaving or at least questioning their place here. Ironically, Israel which has endured two years of war is seen as a safer bet. I regularly get asked for advice on this issue and it’s hard to dismiss people’s safety concerns.

I counsel people that Australia is worth fighting for.

It’s true that October 7 exposed the antisemites in Australian society, and there are many, but it also showed us who our friends are. It’s been heartening to see support from so many ordinary Australians, mostly from the centre and right and often identifying as Christian.

Every other day our office gets a call from the Western Australia wheatbelt or an email from someone in far north Queensland to express support for the Jewish community and outrage at what the government has done.

The Jewish community discovered friends in the conservative media, in politics, from One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson to the entire Coalition. Again, none of this was a particular surprise to my organisation, as these were the people we had already worked with.

October 7 was also a wake-up call for many ordinary Australians. The attacks on Israel were an attack on the West. Anti-Israel actions here often explicitly targeted Australia. The battle against radical Islam and the Woke, is a fight we must all take up, or our country will be next.

Across the West, in countries like Britain and France, millions of patriotic people want to take their countries back. They are crowding the streets and the voting booths.

It’s been heartening to see ordinary Australians take up this battle for our future, with a rapidly growing movement of patriots.

It’s true that there is a loud but small group of neo-Nazis attempting to subvert the movement. Several current and former politicians on the right have also turned on the Jews, thinking that it will give them popularity. The sensible centre must disavow these extremists or risk losing credibility.

October 7 showed Jews who our friends are. It showed us who our enemies are. It showed all Australians what we must fight for if we want to save our country.

Jake Wallis Simons: Israel has never been stronger. For Europe, it may already be too late

Militarily, Israel has probably not been in such a powerful position since 1967. Culturally, it is a nation that understands how to hold a strong sense of peoplehood within the norms and freedoms of a secular democracy.

Economically, it is robust. Its birth rate is one of the highest in the developed world. Its crime rate is remarkably low. Its people are unified and doughty. OK, so the politics and international reputation aren’t so great, but an election will take place within the year. With a fair wind, this could be Israel’s century.

The same cannot be said of the West. After the Second World War, the vow taken by the civilised world could be summed up in two words: never again. But the meaning of this pledge was evidently profoundly different for Jews and others in the democracies.

In Britain and across Europe, a consensus developed that the nation-state was the source of fascism and had to be downplayed or dismantled. For Jews, however, “never again” meant that the nation-state was crucial and had to be defended.

From this single fork in the road, our fates developed differently. While Israel advanced along the path of strength and confidence, meeting challenge after challenge with resilience, the West slipped down the route of self-undoing...

10/06 Links Pt2: Eli Sharabi: A Hero Of Israel And The Jewish People; Qatar, Under Pressure From Trump, Pushes Al Jazeera To Curb 'Incitement' to Terror

From Ian:

Memoirs of a Mossad Mastermind

REVIEW: ‘The Sword of Freedom: Israel, Mossad, and the Secret War’ by Yossi Cohen
"People with no fantasy," the late Israeli politician Shimon Peres once observed, "cannot create the extraordinary." The Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, has become legendary for its extraordinary feats, some of which could be pulled from a James Bond novel. But as Yossi Cohen reveals in his new book, The Sword of Freedom: Israel, Mossad, and the Secret War, the agency’s stunning capabilities are the result of Israel’s unique place in the world.

The Mossad is uniquely capable because it has to be, Cohen notes. "We have the ultimate incentive to prevail, because our struggle is existential," he writes. And Cohen knows of which he speaks—he had a front row seat for events that shaped the region.

After a stint in the Israel Defense Forces, Cohen spent decades as a Mossad operative before he was chosen by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to serve as his national security adviser. In 2016, Cohen was appointed to lead the Mossad. During his nearly five-year tenure, Cohen oversaw the agency’s operation to steal Iran’s nuclear archive and served as one of the chief negotiators for the Abraham Accords.

Memoirs written by former spies—especially top spies—are seldom revealing. In fact, they shouldn’t be. Readers looking for a "tell all" book, divulging precious secrets and tradecraft, should look elsewhere. No former public servant worth his salt would write one anyways. Accordingly, Cohen is exceedingly careful in recounting his exploits and experience. He also largely refrains from partisan sniping and score-settling—no small feat in today’s hyper-partisan age, let alone in the maelstrom that is Israeli politics.

Yet this isn’t a dull book. Far from it.

Cohen’s account of the operation to retrieve Iran’s so-called nuclear archive is worth the price of admission alone. For decades, the Islamic Republic had been developing a nuclear weapons program. In 2015, the United States and others agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran Deal, which sought to curtail Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Jerusalem suspected perfidy but required proof. Enter the Mossad.

Campus feminists have rebranded rape as ‘resistance’

A glance at the Feminist Library’s ‘statements’ page reveals that it rather likes making them. Its social-justice catalogue is not just limited to support for ‘Palestinian resistance’ – it also includes the entire range of middle-class left causes, from transgenderism to immigration. It remains rather silent on anti-Semitism, however – which is curious considering Goldsmiths admits it has an anti-Semitism problem, for which it has apologised. Due to the pro-Palestine ‘occupation’ of campus last academic year, members of Goldsmiths’ Jewish Society were too afraid to hold any events and effectively had to disband the society. With graffiti across campus featuring swastikas and the phrase ‘gas the Jews’, it’s not difficult to see why. An independent inquiry into anti-Semitism at Goldsmiths published in May provides a damning indictment of the prevalent campus culture.

Goldsmiths is not the only university whose best and brightest will this week don their keffiyehs on the anniversary of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Not a week after the Yom Kippur terror attack on a Manchester synagogue, students from Queen Mary, King’s College London, Strathclyde and Sheffield will partake in pro-Palestine rallies, marches and lectures.

It seems we are now seeing the culmination of years of ideological capture – and the results are sick-making. Students now issue calls to ‘globalise the intifada’, celebrate ‘Palestinian resistance’ on the anniversary of Hamas’s atrocities in Israel, and suggest that rape is sometimes, in some places, just a teensy bit justified.

In a statement issued after the Southport stabbings last year, the Feminist Library claimed that ‘we understand how fascists use faux concern for the “safety of women and girls” as cover for white-supremacist violence’. Perhaps it’s this faux anti-fascism that salves the conscience of these putative feminists as they turn a blind eye to the hundreds of women who, on 7 October 2023, were hunted, tortured and sexually humiliated, before being thrown into the backs of vans like cattle. One victim was raped by a Hamas militant who then passed her on to a friend. Together they sliced off her breast, threw it into the street and played with it. Another militant then raped her again, shooting her in the head as he ejaculated. This is the ‘resistance’ the Feminist Library and others will be proudly ‘remembering’ tomorrow.

Of course, It’s not just these student pseudo-radicals refusing to look barbarism in the face. It took the United Nations almost two years to concede, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that extensive sexual violence took place on 7 October. In the meantime, UN Women – supposedly the leading global body for ‘women’s empowerment’ – focussed all of its energies on pandering to Western men with pronoun confusion.

It was Maya Angelou who said ‘when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time’. How many times, I wonder, can feminists excuse the rape of Israeli women before they cease to be feminists? How many times do our compatriots have to dance on Jewish graves before we believe they mean it?

It’s time to hold the media to account

The public has a right and a need to know that a dangerous fraud is being perpetrated upon it. Just as the government has required tobacco and alcohol companies to place warning labels regarding the potential harm their products may cause, the public should be informed about the dangers of misinformation from news sources that claim to be trustworthy but that have chosen to present jihadi propaganda as facts.

Consumers have a right to know what product they are purchasing, and when a product is misrepresented, consumers in a democracy have recourse through government entities like the Consumer Protection Agency or Better Business Bureau. They can also turn to the courts for redress. This, however, is no ordinary consumer matter. Issues of free speech play heavily against government intervention here. Who’s to say what’s propaganda and not just an alternative narrative? Who’s to prioritize “factual” over “narrative” journalism? Given the partisan ferocity currently prevalent, surely not the government.

On the other hand, this issue is unprecedented in the history of democracies and their foundational free press: the Fourth Estate. Our current “free press” consistently purveys the war propaganda of a movement profoundly hostile to any form of press freedom and joins them in their attack on the only participant in this regional conflict with a free press. Who could imagine that our news media would align their narrative with a jihadi propaganda campaign promoting a political culture that has eliminated any trace of a free press?

As we have painfully learned over the last 250 years of democracy, rights come with responsibilities. In order to claim the mantle of professional journalism, our “free” press needs to observe professional standards of scrutiny that their current approach systemically violates. At no time in the history of modern journalism has this happened on such a scale and for so long.

We have witnessed a devolution from professional war journalism to wildly unprofessional own-goal war journalism—from providing an honest check on the three branches of government to running enemy war propaganda as news, and from Fourth Estate to Fifth Column. How do we bring this startling inversion of the profession and the news it produces to the fore? How do we assess the danger to a free press that their advocacy constitutes? How do we counter so perverse a trend?

Congress not only has a role to play; it has a responsibility to bring this dangerous and shocking scandal to the attention of the American public. It is time to hold congressional hearings and hold the purveyors of this hateful propaganda to account. Let consumers see how often our journalists take staged footage, and edit and crop it to make it more believable. Let them see things the pack media won’t cover, like the shocking genocidal hate speech that pervades the Palestinian public sphere. And then let the heads of our news agencies explain why they consider these items unfit to print while simultaneously reporting Hamas lies.

We are calling for accountability—for light to be shed on a suicidal brand of journalism that any sane audience, exposed to their folly, can and will reject of their own volition. Let this suicidal, advocacy news media be exposed for their impersonation of journalism. And let the viewing public—the American consumer—choose whether they wish to ingest the poisonous and deeply unprofessional fare our current news media have to offer, or look for other, more honest and accurate sources to understand our current troubling times.

10/06 Links Pt1: Israel’s Forgotten Army; Hostage families endorse Trump for Nobel peace prize; Why do Jews’ warnings keep falling on deaf ears?

From Ian:

Israel’s Forgotten Army

A full, honest accounting of the post-Oct. 7 period would highlight the extraordinary accomplishments of the modern Israeli security forces as well as critiquing its failures and weaknesses. The dismantling of Iran’s regional proxy network, including Hezbollah, as well as the crippling of Tehran’s nuclear program both relied on the application of long-term deception plans and strategic power projection that would have made Ben-Gurion proud. In Gaza, the fusion of tactical early warning systems and advanced intelligence capabilities has accomplished a targeting and maneuver capability not seen before in modern wars.

Yet, despite the sacrifices and devastation of the past two years, the IDF has not yet achieved the total victory that Prime Minister Netanyahu has promised since the start of the war. Nor has it managed to fully evict Hamas as a ruling power in Gaza. Many IDF commanders have displayed the characteristic aversion to territorial control, routinely spending blood to conquer areas of Gaza only to relinquish them weeks or months later, dooming soldiers to repeat costly clearing operations.

Moreover, the IDF has not yet demonstrated the capacity, nor the will, to fully sustain its own operations. Instead, it continues to rely on the network of volunteer groups that it can neither fully deputize nor live without.

This in turn enables what has become a toxic relationship between the U.S. and Israel. Aryeh Leib Shapiro, a milluimnik born in the U.S. and a member of an Israeli organization called the Vision Movement, dedicated to what it calls the cause of Jewish liberation, spoke with me about how American Jews influence Israeli security. “The way that many American Jews want to contribute to the IDF’s success is by remaking them in their image. Just like in general Israeli politics, the Reform movement wants Israeli religious law and immigration law to reflect American Jewish sensibilities.The IDF is no different, except that these diaspora Jewish orgs no longer have much influence over the Knesset anymore so they’ve been putting more funding into education and the army.”

Much of that influence is exerted through what appears to be philanthropy. The way it works, said Shapiro, is “by sending our top and most promising commanders in the IDF to learn what it means to be a Jewish leader in the 21st century from the Wexner Foundation or at the Harvard Kennedy School.”

The IDF, greatly influenced by fashionable but disastrously misguided ideas that have been popular among the American ruling class, has turned its official partner in the American diaspora into a piggy bank to subsidize those ideas. The shiniest monument of this failed two-way konceptsia is the FIDF. The organization gives American Jews an illusion of helping that actually handicaps Israel.

The best scenario for Israel would be one in which it acts like an independent and sovereign nation by taking full responsibility for its military supply needs. Instead of relying on logistical backup from unregulated volunteers, it could then funnel diaspora support into less sensitive areas. That will require wisely analyzing the current political and security situation in its own region and at large, separate from the interests of its patrons. Having done so, Israel can then make plans that are founded on a realistic vision of the future, which would be one that does not assume that land will no longer be important in warfare or rest on other similarly dangerous hallucinations.

How Hamas’s hostage tactic checkmated Israel’s war strategy

Whatever happens now, there is one element that Israel and other Western states can learn from this stalemate, and that is to apply a set of preventive measures to make it less likely that any terror organization or rogue state (think Iran/Turkey/Yemen/Libya or others) will try to emulate the actions of Hamas in the future.

It is actually quite surprising that Israeli legislators have not yet found the time to address this burning issue. To be successful in preventing future strategic hostage-taking by its enemies, Israel needs to revise legal, military, political, and diplomatic practices. And it shouldn’t be doing it alone, since it is likely that other Western countries and their civilian population will be targeted by jihadi abductors as well.

Needless to say, yet difficult to achieve perfectly, Israeli security organizations must adjust intel collection, combat operations, and responses to prevent their enemies from abducting Israelis in Israel or abroad. This is mostly a matter of priorities within existing capabilities.

Legally, Israel needs to make it illegal and impossible for elected officials with executive power to fulfill the demands of terrorists in order to release hostages. Israel also needs to declare to its current enemies, neighbors, and detractors that the abduction of its civilians is an act of aggression that will be met with disproportionate and punitive measures that will extend well beyond the combatants who actually abducted Israelis. Anything and anyone that supports or facilitates the abduction or incarceration of Israeli hostages will be a legitimate military target.

A future Israeli government with better international standing should focus on building a global coalition to deprive terrorists of the benefits reaped from hostage-taking, which includes severe punitive measures against any state that supports such crimes.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Israeli leaders and institutions need to adapt to the reality that this and the next war will be fought and won primarily on the cognitive battlefield, where local, enemy, and international media, including and increasingly more on social media, is where reality is forged and decided.

Israel may be able to maintain its qualitative military advantage over its many enemies, but without monumental improvements in all facets of soft power, Israel will find it increasingly challenging to exist, thrive, and enjoy its past military victories.

Jonathan Conricus: Is Egypt on a collision path with Israel?

‘Just rhetoric?’
Wasserman Lande told JNS that the cessation of operations by the U.S.-led international force in the Sinai Peninsula is a great cause for concern.

According to Israel Hayom, the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO), the body entrusted with overseeing the terms of the Israel-Egypt peace deal, has stopped carrying out reconnaissance flights over Sinai or inspecting the contents of the tunnels in the peninsula ever since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.

Wasserman Lande said that to prevent the situation from deteriorating further, the Americans, as guarantors of the peace treaty, must reinstate the mechanism of the MFO effective immediately. Moreover, Israel must insist that military presence in Sinai that exceeds the 1979 terms be dispersed, she added.

Additionally, to calm things down, the highest echelons in Israel must inform the Egyptians that Jerusalem has no interest in relocating Gazans to Egyptian territory. However, “it is an Israeli interest to have them potentially move via Egypt into third countries, with full Egyptian coordination and supervision that they don’t remain in Egypt,” the expert continued.

Lastly, “Israel must demand that the indoctrination of the Egyptian public [against Israel] ceases. This must be demanded by Israel without any concessions,” Wasserman Lande stressed.

Cohen enumerated five reasons why an Egyptian offensive is unlikely.

First, under the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, misuse of U.S.-delivered weapons can lead to suspensions and cancellations of further deliveries, which would harm systems requiring regular maintenance. Much of Egypt’s U.S.-made military equipment would be less effective if this were implemented.

Second, Egypt receives more than a billion dollars annually from the U.S. thanks to the 1979 peace deal. War would cut this revenue stream, to the detriment of debt-laden Egypt.

Third, the American role in the supervision of the peace deters Egypt from breaking it.

Fourth, war would further strain Egypt’s shattered economy.

An fifth, the Egyptian Armed Forces have not fought a real war since 1973. Despite its “propaganda videos,” Egyptian soldiers are largely inexperienced, Cohen said.

The orientalist stressed, however, that after Oct. 7, no one can be certain about the future. “Threats with words can lead to threats with guns,” he said.

Hassan noted that Israel had recently begun to take “practical steps” against the peace treaty violations. Decisionmakers in Jerusalem have brought up the topic with Washington, and the IDF has openly commented on the repeated drone incursions from Sinai into Israel, he said.

But, he warned, while “Israel is taking the threat seriously, it is not taking it seriously enough.” The defense establishment still seems to dismiss Egypt’s threats as “just rhetoric that won’t materialize.”

Israel’s top security personnel have built up an assumption that “Egypt will never go to war against Israel because it would mean that Egypt would be destroyed …, [so] they start dismissing actual threats, saying, ‘This will never happen, everything is OK,’” Hassan said—“which is very similar to the ‘conception’ Israel had before the Yom Kippur War.

See you on Wednesday night!

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Ahmed Al-Darini writes about an unsettling experience he had in the major Al Masry al-Youm Egyptian newspaper:

A Jewish rabbi began circling around where I sat at the dining table, chanting his hymns, swaying his body forward and backward, appearing to be immersed in something spiritual. As if he were fortifying the place or summoning the celestial angels whom Jews believe possess extraordinary power to do anything.

Naturally, I felt uncomfortable while eating my meal in a Chinese hotel restaurant in the historic city of Samarkand, while a Jewish rabbi wandered around the dining hall spreading his recitations, calling upon angels or summoning demons, or even pretending or imagining that he was doing so.

Perhaps my sensitivity to the situation stemmed from the difference and what it stirs in the human psyche of suspicion toward "the Other," and perhaps my disgust arose from the Jewish Zionist crimes in Gaza, and perhaps because eating requires some peace and tranquility—not having to eat cheese and bread while your eyes follow someone circling around you making suspicious gestures, whether to the angels of hell or to the waiter.

Later, I learned that there was a celebratory event for an Israeli company to be held in the hotel's vast garden in a few days, with the rabbi blessing it or securing it preemptively.

The last thing I expected to encounter in Samarkand—deeply rooted in Islamic history—was a Jewish rabbi circling around me with his murmurings and incantations!

Maybe we should all send Al Adrini some nonsense Hebrew and tell him it is a Kabbalistic incantation that was designed just for him. He'll clearly believe it.

(Because I couldn't resist, I looked up what Israeli company this might have been. It seems a travel agency called Asia Travel Israel has helped create a non-stop weekly flight between Tel Aviv and Samarkand last May and it held celebrations, so this seems likely.)

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Here is how Amnesty-UK responded to an arson attack on a mosque in the UK:

Amnesty UK condemns the horrific attack on the East Sussex Mosque this weekend. We offer solidarity to Muslim communities who will be shaken by this act of violence.

This follows months of increasing hostility to racialised and migrant communities in the UK – boosted by anti-migrant rhetoric across the political spectrum and in the media.

According to @TellMamaUK there has been a significant rise in the number of Islamophobic hate cases in the United Kingdom between June and September 2025.
Not including the most recent horrific attack, there have been 17 reported cases that have involved attacks on mosques or Islamic institutions in this time period.
We are watching the real-life consequences of outpourings of hatred.
A year after the 2024 racist riots, there is an urgent need for a reset in our national debate.

The overall impression is outrage, and Amnesty blames the arson on increasing hostility to minorities by bigots. It ties it to increasing Islamophobia. It says that hatred leads to attacks like these.

Here is how the same group reacted to the deadly synagogue attack last week:

Amnesty International UK is deeply saddened by the news of this morning's attack at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue in north Manchester. We condemn this horrific act of violence that has taken the lives of two innocent people and injured many more.

Our hearts are with the Jewish community and all those affected by this appalling attack on such an important and holy day in the Jewish calendar.

Acts of violence have no place in our society and only deepen division among communities. It is essential that politicians, leaders and the media ensure their actions in the following days do not stoke hatred and division further.

We must focus on the solidarity and humanity that connects us all.

- Sacha Deshmukh, CE Amnesty International UK

In this case the emotion is sadness, not anger.

Unlike the reaction to the mosque attack, Amnesty-UK doesn't blame anyone in particular. They don't mention rising antisemitism in the UK in recent years. They don't consider that anti-Israel protests might contribute to antisemitism.

Look carefully at who they are worried about stoking hatred: "politicians, leaders and the media." The word that is missing is "activists." This means that instead of warning about increased antisemitism - a word that is noticeably missing from the tweet - Amnesty's instinct upon hearing about an attack on Jews is to protect Muslims from backlash!

The tweet was posted after the anti-Israel, pro-flotilla protests in England that day. But Amnesty didn't warn the protesters not to do anything that might be used as justification to attack Jews. On the contrary, Amnesty is all for protests, and incitement to violence in (left-wing) protests are (as far as I can tell) never condemned. On the contrary, they oppose any restrictions on protests - including, implicitly, incitement to violence against Jews like "globalize the intifada."

For both tweets, Amnesty sent out a message to protect the Muslim community from violence - and for neither did they call to protect the Jewish community from violence. For Muslims, the violence is preventable; for Jews, the violence is simply a sad part of life that they must learn to live with.

Even when Amnesty tries mightily to sound like it is unbiased, the bias cannot be denied.

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Can Neturei Karta "wear" protest signs on Shabbat?

I saw this video where Nate Friedman visits an anti-Israel and communist protest in New York City.

He tried to interview the usual Neturei Karta crowd, who refused to speak to him because they didn't want to speak into a microphone on Shabbat. (Their leader told him this...on the microphone.)

I was more interested in their signs.

Carrying anything outside an "eruv" (enclosure) on Shabbat is strictly prohibited, but wearing clothing is permitted (obviously.) They "wear" the signs as if they are ponchos, with a hole in the middle for their heads.

But can protest signs be halachically considered clothing, even if "worn"?

Almost certainly not. No one would consider signs to be real clothing, even if "worn," and clothing is only permitted when it is used for the normal purposes of clothing: protection/warmth, decoration or modesty. "Decoration" is for jewelry and the like. These signs cannot be considered decoration, as no normal person wears anything looking like them.

So I cannot see a possible leniency that would allow these "religious Jews" to publicly profane the Sabbath. They are doing the equivalent of carrying something by putting it on a string, typing it around one's neck and calling it a "necklace" just to be able to carry it.

A more interesting question is the one Friedman asked them - how they came to Manhattan. They almost certainly didn't walk from Williamsburg, and in fact they probably couldn't cross the bridge on Shabbat. This means that they are staying in hotels or rent an apartment in Manhattan, both of which are quite expensive. So who is bankrolling them?

Given their meetings with the leaders of the Palestinian Authority, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, it seems likely that at least some of their funding comes from antisemites.

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L'Orient Today has an interview with an international legal expert who states unequivocally that Israel's naval blockade of Gaza is illegal.

1. Are these ship interceptions legal under international law?
First, we must highlight the fact that the blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip is totally illicit. It is indeed a unilateral, indiscriminate, punitive action targeting the civil population. This kind of action is a serious violation of International Law.

Regarding the competence of a State over the sea, there is a basic principle stipulating that a State is only allowed to take action within the limits of its territorial sea of 12 nautical miles from the coastline [baseline].

On the one hand, the flotilla was heading towards Gaza and not Israel. But most importantly, on the other hand, the flotilla’s boats were intercepted at 43 nautical miles from the Gaza shore, which is in International Waters. Israel has, hence, violated International Law norms.

According to the Montego Bay Convention on the Law of the Sea, no state has the right to scuttle any other ship, even military ships, non-aggressive, of course, in the High Seas. The Israelis have the right to board foreign ships only in their own territorial waters. This is an application of the sacred principle of the Freedom of Navigation, the seas belonging to all.

Israel has violated all the norms of the International Law of the Sea. It scuttled foreign boats in the High Seas, especially since these boats were on peaceful humanitarian missions, and even in territorial waters, they would have had the “right of innocent passage.”

It turns out that even the UN stated, unequivocally, that Israel's 'naval blockade of Gaza was legal - in 2011.

This was in the Palmer Report, discussing the Mavi Marmara incident, which occurred far further from the Gaza shore than the "Sumud Flotilla" - 75 nautical mile away.

The Palmer Report said:

The first issue we consider is the legality of the naval blockade imposed by Israel.

The Panel notes in this regard that the uncertain legal status of Gaza under international law cannot mean that Israel has no right to self-defence against armed attacks directed toward its territory. The Israeli report to the Panel makes it clear that the naval blockade as a measure of the use of force was adopted for the purpose of defending its territory and population, and the Panel accepts that was the case. It was designed as one way to prevent weapons reaching Gaza by sea and to prevent such attacks to be launched from the sea. Indeed there have been various incidents in which ships carrying weapons were intercepted by the Israeli authorities on their way to Gaza.

Israel was entitled to take reasonable steps to prevent the influx of weapons into Gaza. With that objective, Israel established a series of restrictions on vessels entering the waters of Gaza. These measures culminated in the declaration of the naval blockade on 3 January 2009.

As a final point, the Panel emphasizes that if necessary, the civilian population in Gaza must be allowed to receive food and other objects essential to its survival. However, it does not follow from this obligation that the naval blockade is per se unlawful or that Israel as the blockading power is required to simply let vessels carrying aid through the blockade. On the contrary, humanitarian missions must respect the security arrangements put in place by Israel. They must seek prior approval from Israel and make the necessary arrangements with it. This includes meeting certain conditions such as permitting Israel to search the humanitarian vessels in question. The Panel notes provision was made for any essential humanitarian supplies on board the vessels to enter Gaza via the adjacent Israeli port of Ashdod, and such an offer was expressly made in relation to the goods carried on the flotilla.

The Panel therefore concludes that Israel’s naval blockade was legal.

The Panel is satisfied that extensive and genuine efforts were made by Israel to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian supplies from the flotilla to Gaza thus obviating the need to challenge the blockade and thereby avoiding the prospect of violence.

For Israel to maintain the blockade it had to be effective, so it must be enforced. That is a clear legal requirement for a blockade. Such enforcement may take place on the high seas and may be conducted by force if a vessel resists. To this point in the analysis no difficulty arises.

This is unequivocal. The naval blockade is legal and Israel has maintained it, as it is required to do for it to remain in effect. It has the right to impose the blockade to stop weapons transfers to Hamas. It has the right to intercept any Gaza-bound boats on the high seas. Anyone who wants to bring aid to Gaza must coordinate with Israel.

The legal logic has not changed in 14 years.

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10/05 Links: Trump: Hamas faces ‘complete obliteration’ if it clings to power; Howard Jacobson: The left are 'responsible' for antisemitism rise in the UK; Eli the Survivor

From Ian:

Dr. Mordechai Kedar: The Central Obstacle to Peace between Israel and the Palestinians Isn't Politics

While Palestinians declare they want statehood in the West Bank and Gaza, they make abundantly clear that their real aspiration isn't independence but the destruction of Israel, regardless of its borders.

Hamas - an Islamist, jihadist, and fundamentalist movement - took over the Palestinian parliament in January 2006 democratically and Gaza in June 2007 violently. Hamas's religious ideology complements the national ideology of the PLO, injecting a religious element into the conflict. The result is that what might otherwise be a solvable problem of borders and demographics takes on almost cosmic meaning as a struggle between Islam and Judaism that began in the 7th century between Mohammad and the Jews of the Arabian city of Medina.

Given the strength of the religious element, and the weakness of the national element, it is almost impossible for Palestinians to accept a two-state solution. National independence has limited appeal, and anything short of a complete victory over the Jewish state fails to satisfy the need for a victory of Islam over Judaism.

Westerners tend to ignore the religious element when dealing with the Muslim world, viewing it as secondary or purely rhetorical. In truth, even groups like Fatah - which often employs secular nationalist rhetoric - are deeply informed by Islamic beliefs and ways of thinking. For Palestinians, national and religious aspirations are inseparable, and, for many, Hamas's affinity with Islam grants it greater legitimacy as a political movement.

Hamas and other groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood have a fixed set of ideas about Jews and Judaism that make any compromise or mutual recognition with a Jewish state anathema. The advent of Islam in the 7th century CE rendered Judaism void. The adherents of this superseded faith do not constitute a nation or people. Therefore, there is no logic or legitimacy to the existence of a Jewish state.

Moreover, once land comes under Muslim rule, it ought to remain Muslim in perpetuity. Islamists believe this to be true of Sicily, the Iberian Peninsula, and Greece, but especially true of the territory of Mandatory Palestine and its holy sites. The Balfour Declaration and subsequent decisions by the League of Nations and the UN granting sovereignty to Jews in this land are thus an offense to Islam.

The spectacle of a return of Judaism - in which the Jews regain their land, pray where the Temple once stood, and act as a sovereign people rather than a scattered religious minority - strikes many Muslims as an intolerable offense. As long as Israel continues to exist in any form, the affront remains, and it must be combated through jihad.

This religious perception also underlies the hostility towards Israel among the rest of the Arab peoples and Muslims more generally. Thus, Palestinians feel that recognizing Israel as the state of the Jewish people would be a betrayal of Islam that would earn them the contempt of their coreligionists.

Benny Morris: Nothing from Israeli-Palestinian History Suggests Trump's Peace Plan Will Work

President Trump's peace plan to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza implicitly proposes Israeli-Palestinian peace on the basis of a two-state compromise. Yet since 1937, the Palestinian leadership has successively rejected numerous international and Israeli peace plans, believing that all of Palestine belongs to the Arabs, and that the Jews have no right to sovereignty in any part of it.

Trump's plan is a non-starter because the raison d'etre of Hamas is the destruction of the Jewish state and the Islamization of Palestine (as expounded in the group's foundational Charter of 1988). More importantly, Hamas - like Lebanon's Hizbullah - has from the first said it will never give up its arms.

Trump's plan nowhere explains how Hamas will be disarmed or who will do it. Few observers believe that any Arab force will engage in battle against Hamas to disarm it. Any who try to do so will immediately be branded by their own people as "collaborators" with Israel. It is also a matter of "honor," a very important concept in the Arab world; you do not give up your Kalashnikov in the face of a mortal enemy.

Two years later, October 7 remains an ongoing trauma for Israel and world Jewry

Only Jews are told to suffer in silence because others oceans away suffer more. For their friends, sympathy; for their enemies, suffering is always relative. It is only one side that offers a bridge of empathy, acknowledging the pain of Palestinians living in a battlefield. Still, it has never crossed the other way to accept the suffering of Jews and Israelis.

Others lie, saying that the suffering was self-inflicted, creating alternate realities that drive all to madness. They gleefully try to rewrite the events that left the wound on Jewry's body, and though it aches and bleeds, we're told that it was never there.

Jews bear the wound, desperate to have their experience acknowledged so as to affirm their sanity in a world gone mad, but acknowledging Jewish suffering is treated as ground ceded in a battle. When it suits such people, then October 7 was a necessary means toward a just end, to right a grocery list of grievances whose debt the entire world couldn't pay.

Those murdered, mutilated, or beaten were settlers, soldiers, or Israeli. No matter what, there is always another justification for the abuse of Jews. When the abuse is denied, and the victim devotes all their effort to maintain the truth, it is impossible to fully grasp what one has endured. The issue is the same when the pain is belittled because it is inconvenient to the war effort. While there are some righteous among the nations, by and large, the suffering of Jews is a Jewish concern.

It is impossible to make those who deny, justify, or diminish the ongoing trauma of October 7 understand why the wounds go so deep. They don't care that in Israel, everyone knows someone who was killed, or maimed, or has one degree of separation from those taken hostage.

Israel is a small country, and it is impossible not to have been impacted by the pogrom even in some small way.

Every day, the impact seeps deeper as October 7 continues to unfold. The Diaspora is not disconnected. Israel is smaller than the Jewish nation at large, but not by much. The ties that bind have become ties of loss for a great number of Diaspora Jews. Family, friends, colleagues; everyone has an October 7 story that no one hears.

I don't know when the Sukkahs were removed in Kissufim, but it had to have happened eventually, when the site was relatively secure and the residents returned home. They were temporary after all, but their end date had become uncertain.

In war, nothing is certain except for uncertainty, according to the common refrain bandied about in my reserve company. The Jewish people are still at war, and so the right time to address the trauma is unclear. When reminders are constant, when there is no time to mourn properly, when the merit of sacrifice is in question, when you are hounded and then gaslit about the persecution, then the point at which one can move on becomes obscured.

It is uncertain when October 7 will end, but that day is not today. It is still October 7.

82% of American Jews do not feel entirely safe. The @WashingtonPost didn't think it was worth mentioning.

The Washington Post published a poll of American Jews, but the most important finding was left out of the article—and what they did highlight was deeply misrepresented.

They led with this headline grabber:

“Many American Jews sharply disapprove of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, with 61 percent saying Israel has committed war crimes and about 4 in 10 saying the country is guilty of genocide…”

But what the Post doesn't say is that 24% of respondents do not identify as religiously Jewish, and of the remainder, 29% say they have no religious denomination. That means 46% of respondents are either not religious or religiously unaffiliated - a group whose connection to Jewish identity is often cultural or nominal.

Only 32% of the full sample said being Jewish is “very important” in their lives.
That raises an obvious question: If a large portion of respondents don't feel particularly Jewish, why are their opinions treated as authoritative “Jewish” perspectives on Israel?

We’ve seen this framing tactic before: use low-attachment Jews to imply that “the Jewish community” is turning against Israel. But the real trend is this: many American Jews are turning away from Judaism, and their views on Israel are more reflective of that disaffiliation than of Jewish identity itself. These Jews get their news from the mainstream media that has been emphasizing false stories of Israeli war crimes and "genocide" - of course their opinions will reflect the biased coverage they read from outlets like the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, the most sobering number in the entire poll was completely ignored in the Post's article.

To the question: “How safe do you feel as a Jew in the United States today?”

Only 18% said “very safe”
51% said “somewhat safe”
26% said “not too safe”
6% said “not at all safe”

The poll results aggregate “very” and “somewhat” into a deceptive “net safe” category - but since when is “somewhat safe” good enough for any American citizen?

This isn’t abstract geopolitical opinion - it’s first-person emotional reality, and it tells a clear story: By more than 4 to 1, American Jews do not feel completely safe in their own country.

That’s a headline.
That’s the real story.
And the Washington Post buried it.

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