Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 30, 2025

Kevin Roberts' Defense of Tucker Carlson: Partisanship over Principle (and an antisemitic dog-whistle to boot) @KevinRobertsTX

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts made a video that demonstrates how partisanship has trumped principle, and in this video he has done more to damage the conservative movement than anyone else.

Here is the entire transcript:

I'll have more to say on this in the coming days, but today I want to be clear about one thing. Christians can critique the state of Israel without being anti-Semitic. Of course, anti-Semitism should be condemned. My loyalty as a Christian is to Christ first and to America always. When it serves the interest of the United States to cooperate with other allies, we do so with partnerships on security, intelligence, technology. But when it doesn't, conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or their mouthpieces in Washington. The Heritage Foundation didn't become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians, and we won't start doing that now.

We don't take direction from comments on X, though we are grateful for the robust free speech debate. We also don't take direction from members or donors, though we are inherently grateful for their support, and we're adding more every day. This is the robust debate we invite with our colleagues, movement friends, our members, and the American public. We will always defend truth. We will always defend America. And we'll always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else's agenda. That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains, and as I have said before, always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation. The venomous coalition attacking him are sowing division. Their attempt to cancel him will fail. Most importantly, the American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right.

I disagree with, and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says. But canceling him is not the answer either. When we disagree with a person's thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas and debate. In debate, and we have seen success in this approach as we continue to dismantle the vile ideas of the left. As my friend Vice President Vance said last night, what I am not okay with is any country coming before the interest of American citizens. And it is important for all of us, assuming we are American citizens, to put the interests of our own country first. That's where our allegiance lies. And that's where it will stay.

WTF? Platforming Nazis is now a principled position?

Yes, neo-Nazis must be canceled. That is not even a question. To pretend that they are entitled to be platformed as legitimate is exactly the same argument that the "progressive Left" uses to justify calls to murder Jews and to praise Hamas - speech that the Heritage Foundation is very much against.

In the early days of the conservative National Review, its founder William F. Buckley Jr. banned antisemites from writing in its pages. It wasn't canceling. It wasn't censorship. It was a principled stand against hate.

It is most troubling that the head of the Heritage Foundation is against that stand.

This video is problematic on other levels too. No one argues that the US should do what is best for America. But Roberts is implying that he knows what that is - and that Israel is sometimes or often on the wrong side. That is a valid opinion, it is not fact. The pro-Israel camp is not arguing for the US to go against its best interests, but that wholehearted, public support for Israel is exactly in America's best interests.

Worse, Roberts is implying that his position is the Christian position, marginalizing tens of millions of fervent Christian Zionists.

But the most disturbing part of the video is where Roberts says "conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or their mouthpieces in Washington." Is there any interpretation of this statement that doesn't mean "Jews" and "AIPAC"? "Globalists" are a popular euphemism for Jews in the antisemitic Right, it seems unlikely that Roberts doesn't know that.

And these same opponents, seemingly Jews, are later described as "bad actors who serve someone else's agenda" and a "venomous coalition...sowing division."

Heritage says its mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense." There is no listed principle to elevate Nazis.

He says "When we disagree with a person's thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas and debate. In debate, and we have seen success in this approach as we continue to dismantle the vile ideas of the left. " Okay, that principle is good. Now, where on the Heritage site do they challenge the ideas of Nick Fuentes? Where did Tucket Carlson challenge him? I can find no criticism on the Heritage site of today's far-Right antisemites, and its criticism of right-wing antisemitism altogether is muted at best.

If their only debate is against the toxic ideas of the Left, then they are not principled. They are enabling and platforming hate.

There has been speculation that @Heritage is distancing itself from @TuckerCarlson over the past 24 hours.

I want to put that to rest right now—here are my thoughts: pic.twitter.com/F8bcxBIqKI
— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) October 30, 2025

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

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10/30 Links Pt2: Tokenism and Anti-Zionism After October 7; Why I’m going to stop using the term ‘antisemitism’; New York holds its breath

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Tokenism and Anti-Zionism After October 7

She certainly might be right about what lies ahead. But she is stacking the odds against it. How does one celebrate Jewish holidays without mentioning the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel? Where do you tell your kids the Israelites were going when they escaped Pharaoh’s clutches, Portland? Where were the temple sacrifices made, Katz’s Deli? Jewish history happened where it happened, and there isn’t much you can do about that.

As her mother says to her in that interview: “But how do you square that with the ancient history that I’ve been taught—that Jews were from Israel, that all those years we wandered in the desert and then finally came back to Israel. Is all of that false?”

To which her daughter responds: “That was many, many years ago!”

Yeah, that’s kind of the point. Full commitment to Diasporist anti-Zionism requires the jettisoning of everything that happened before this moment.

But the larger obstacle to the future envisioned here is that this young lady will no doubt be spending her time with peer groups hostile to Jewish tradition and practice and history. Forget the Muslim Student Union; the Times story discusses her conversations with canvassers from Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a progressive political group designed to reinforce her priors.

This is the problem that Rabbi Blumofe appears to put his finger on. It’s not that liberal Jews can’t or don’t exist. It’s that the structure of American politics is such that if one aligns with anti-Zionism, one is unlikely to encounter anything else. Indeed, the progressive gate-keeping has become so intense that anti-Zionism is now a litmus test for activists on any issue. It’s why climate prophetess of doom Greta Thunberg spends her time on boats challenging the Israeli navy.

The Diasporism advocated in these groups is a closed circle. As Vladimir Jabotinsky said when confronted with the argument that Jews ought to be a light unto the nations from within those nations but without a nation of their own: “England… has enriched the world with a valuable social idea: self-rule of free citizens, that is, the parliamentary government. However, how did the English nation teach other peoples to understand and run such a government? Certainly not by being scattered among the nations and convincing them; just the opposite.”

The same goes for being in groups whose entire reason for being is to critique the Jews. Embracing tokenism is a form of extreme self-exile and self-negation. The proliferation of political spaces that use anti-Zionism as their litmus test is one of the great challenges facing American Jewry. And the first step to overcoming that challenge is to acknowledge it.

David Harsanyi: Why I’m going to stop using the term ‘antisemitism’

There was no longer a need to invent blood libels tied to the Jewish faith, though doing so would never really go completely out of style. Indeed, Marr and other socialists like Eugen Dühring would blame Jews for the rise of unfettered capitalism, and national socialists and other xenophobic factions blamed them for spreading worldwide communism. But no matter how secularized or German or patriotic or apolitical a Jew might become, they still could never escape their “race.”

Later, some of the Nazis, devotees of the racialist outlook, objected to the use of “antisemitism” because they sought “Semitic” allies like the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who would join them in egging on the murder of Jews in Bosnia and elsewhere. Not all “Semites” were the same.

And the “Semitic” designation is ridiculous. Coined by German historians in the late 1700s, it bunches together wildly divergent groups of ancient people by similarities in language. An “anti-Semite,” then, technically speaking, is a person who is hostile to Hebrew or Aramaic or Phoenician. Over the years, Jewish organizations have prodded people to remove the hyphen to create a more generic term for a prejudice against Jews. Now, I’m sure “Semitic” is useful for linguists or historians trying to make sense of the movements and relationships in the ancient world, but in contemporary usage, it’s about as valuable as calling Hungarian or Finn haters “anti-Uralics.”

“Antisemitism” is reminiscent of another vaguely scientific-sounding word meant to mislead, “Islamophobia.” Defining Jews as “Semites” strips them of religious, cultural, or intellectual traditions and reimagines them as a race. “Islamophobia” treats criticism of the cultural and intellectual traditions of Islam as if it were tantamount to irrational racism. Islam isn’t a race; it’s a theology with numerous strands. Jews aren’t a race, either. They are, because of their ancient origins, an ethnicity and a faith.

Orwell warned that language decays when our thoughts become foolish — and that corrupted language, in turn, makes foolish thinking easier. Words have meaning, and using them precisely matters. A person who despises others for unchangeable traits such as skin color is a racist. One who rejects Catholic beliefs with hostility is anti-Catholic. Someone who instinctively dislikes all Dutch people is a bigot. Hatred of women is sexism. An irrational fear or hatred of men is androphobia. When we distort or dilute such words, we don’t make the world kinder — we simply make our thinking less clear.

If you believe Jews control space lasers for Israel and are behind every nefarious plot you’ve conjured up in your fetid imagination, “anti-Semite” doesn’t really do you justice. You’re probably just a “Jew-hater.” There’s really no reason for anyone to soften the blow by adopting Wilhelm Marr’s preposterous verbiage.

Melanie Phillips: New York holds its breath

The fear that the wider community might turn against Jews has meant that—even now that it has indeed done so at an unprecedented level—these cowed Jews don’t blame the haters, but instead blame Israel for allegedly turning the community against them. As Levin states, even some Jews genuinely concerned with Israel’s well-being are thus sickeningly blaming Jewish victimization on other Jews.

For similar reasons, there’s a fixed belief among Jewish leaders that the principal threat to diaspora Jews comes from the extreme right, despite the fact that most of this threat emanates from the progressive radicals of race, gender and climate politics.

This helps explain why there has been no concerted opposition to Mamdani from America’s Jewish community leadership. Many of these leaders believe not that people like Mamdani have incited the current explosion of antisemitism but that Israel has tarred their own standing in society, particularly among the intelligentsia, media and other cultural icons with whom they identify.

Levin calls out a range of U.S. communal bodies and leaders, including the Anti-Defamation League, the New Israel Fund, J Street and Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the leader of Reform Judaism, for effectively siding with the mortal enemies of Israel and the Jewish people or failing to do enough to counter them.

Rather than call out the demagogic black community leader Al Sharpton, who has spewed anti-Jewish invective and has been involved in anti-Jewish violence that goes back to the Crown Heights riots in 1991 in Brooklyn, N.Y., Levin notes that Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, effectively embraced him as an ally against the right.

Along with the campus-based Hillel organization, says Levin, the ADL has also failed to take adequate action to counter the threats to Jewish students on campus, and no other legacy Jewish organization has stepped up to fill this void.

And none of them has called out the rampant antisemitism that is standard fare throughout the Muslim world. Instead, these organizations parrot the leftist denunciation of anyone critical of Muslims as a bigot.

There’s another reason that Jewish community leaders don’t call out these enemies within. The Jewish world tells itself that the greatest threat it faces is disunity, which has brought disaster upon the Jewish people in the past because it has fatally weakened its defense against its enemies.

While it is undeniable that disunity is disastrous, an even greater catastrophe is surely threatened by Jews turning against their own. This provides both lethal weaponry and a protective shield for the mortal enemies of the Jewish people.

These anti-Jewish Jews have, in effect, joined forces with those who are intent upon the extermination of the Jewish state. They sanitize and incentivize these enemies while gaslighting Jews who support Israel and whom they demonize as nationalist bigots.

The damage that’s been done by Jews who have a pathological impulse to damage their own people, and who hurl against Israel and Zionism the same malevolent lies deployed by those who want Israel and the Jews removed from the world, is unconscionable.

The willful refusal by the Jewish community leadership to address this amounts to a betrayal of a Jewish community that’s under siege. If Mamdani is elected, they will have much more to answer for.

10/30 Links Pt1: Amiram Cooper, Sahar Baruch identified as slain hostages returned to Israel; The War that Rewrote the Middle East; Italy blasts Francesca Albanese: “Entirely devoid of credibility and impartiality”

From Ian:

The War that Rewrote the Middle East

Over 24 months of sustained combat, Israel demonstrated an unexpected capacity for prolonged warfare - politically, economically, and psychologically. Moreover, the notion that Israel cannot wage war in more than two or three domains simultaneously was shown to be outdated, as it operated across seven domains: Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, and the West Bank, without losing strategic coherence. Israel ceased to behave like a besieged enclave and emerged as a regional power with expansive capabilities.

The war also destroyed the myth of sanctuary. From Tehran to Yemen and even Doha, Israel struck its enemies with ease and precision. The era of "safe havens" for planners and financiers of anti-Israel operations has ended.

In addition, the legend of underground invincibility collapsed. Iran, Hizbullah, and Hamas poured vast resources into subterranean networks they believed impregnable. Yet the killing of Hizbullah's Hassan Nasrallah in a fortified bunker last year put an end to this myth. The Israeli-American strikes on Iranian facilities also underscored that even the deepest tunnels and bunkers may no longer guarantee safety.

Under U.S. CENTCOM, several Arab militaries quietly joined missile-defense efforts against Iranian strikes, an event unthinkable prior to this war. The U.S., too, shifted from a passive supporter to an operational partner, with the alliance maturing into a working, action-based partnership reminiscent of U.S. relations with NATO members.

Israel Did What the U.S. Would Have Done Had a Genocidal Enemy Launched an Attack on Us

After two years of intense conflict, Israel is substantially better off than it was on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel confounded its mortal enemies by inflicting defeat after defeat on the revolutionary, virulently antisemitic Iranian regime and its primary surrogates - Hizbullah and Hamas.

Israel persevered heroically in defiance of the Biden administration's relentless pressure to restrain its response. The IDF waged a series of brilliant campaigns - decapitating, with surgical precision, Hizbullah's leadership; degrading its thousands of missiles; and devastating Iran's air defenses, thereby facilitating U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear sites that significantly set back its nuclear weapons program.

Israel also secured the return of the remaining hostages without sacrificing its prerogative to crush the unreconciled remnants of Hamas should they resume violence. The shock and awe of the IDF's military victory has incentivized more moderate Arab regimes to cooperate with Israel and abandon Hamas. Israel's resounding victories against Iranian proxies contributed mightily to the weakening of Assad's bloody tyranny in Syria.

The U.S. and its democratic allies are also substantially better off now that Israel has won its existential war against its genocidal adversaries. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz expressed his gratitude for Israel's attacks on Iran: "This is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us....This regime has brought death and destruction to the world."

Thus, Israel did what I hope and pray the U.S. would have done had a genocidal enemy launched a proportionally equivalent attack on us - murdering 40,000 Americans; raping, torturing, and beheading victims; casting babies into ovens - without a shred of remorse. Surely we would and should have vanquished such a perpetrator, settling for nothing less than complete and utter destruction of the regime that perpetrated the attack - just as Churchill and FDR rightly did with Nazi Germany and Japan.

It is rank hypocrisy to begrudge the right of Israel to do what we and any other morally sane nation would have done in response to a comparable attack.

The great scholar of war Geoffrey Blainey instructs us in The Causes of War that the longest and most durable periods of peace occur when the results of war are most decisive, eliminating the root cause of the conflict. We ignore these lessons at our peril.

The Age of Amnesia By Abe Greenwald

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Should JNIM capture Mali, add it to the list—along with Russia’s war on Ukraine, unprecedented aggression by Iranian proxies, and jihad throughout other West African countries—of nightmares made possible, in part, by Joe Biden’s catastrophic decision to surrender in Afghanistan.

But I’m beginning to think that Biden’s withdrawal was only a symptom of something much larger. Many dispiriting circumstances here and abroad—including this latest development in Mali—are pointing to an unavoidable realization. It’s beginning to seem as if the West (with the heroic exception of Israel) has forgotten everything about 9/11 and the nature of jihadists. And we’ve forgotten everything about the necessity of fighting terrorism except for one detail—it’s hard and unpleasant work.

You see it in the pro-jihad mobs that flooded through the United States over the past two years. You see it in the dilapidated polities of Europe, where Islamist thugs tyrannize by terrorist veto. You see it in Donald Trump’s encouragement of a new Syrian regime ruled by a former al-Qaeda fighter (this, too, was an inspiration to JNIM). And you can look back and see it in Trump’s first-term decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Somalia.

And, yes, this must be said: I can’t help seeing it right now in New York City. The city that was once devastated and traumatized by Islamist terrorists is about to elect as mayor a man with a long and loud record of support and sympathy for Islamist terrorism.

Twenty-four years after 9/11, the Taliban is in power, al-Qaeda is on the verge of state governance, terrorists are on the march, and their fans are everywhere—including, all too soon, in Gracie Mansion.

From Kul al-Arab, an Israeli Arab news site:

A Jordanian citizen made a controversial statement regarding the Western Wall in Jerusalem, saying that "the Western Wall is a holy site for Jews." These remarks come at a time of escalating religious and political tensions in the region.

How dare he say something lie that!

His family in Jordan was quick to disavow his horrendous statement and emphasize that, unlike him, they are good Jordanian citizens:

The Al-Mualla Al-Ziyoud Bani Hassan family issued a statement today, Thursday, regarding the appearance of a person standing near the Western Wall in Jerusalem, performing prayers that endorse the Israeli narrative hostile to Palestine and Jordan.

The family stated that they learned of this individual through the media and affirmed their unwavering support for the Jordanian state and its fearless Hashemite leadership.

The statement reads as follows:
Statement from the Al-Mualla Al-Ziyoud Bani Hassan Family :

We have seen through the media videos of a person standing near the Western Wall in Jerusalem, close to Al-Aqsa Mosque, performing Talmudic prayers and adopting Israeli narratives about the Holy City.

We, the members of the Al-Mualla Al-Ziyoud Bani Hassan family, stand today, as our fathers and grandfathers did, with the Jordanian people behind their state and their fearless Hashemite leadership.

We affirm that we will not be a rift or a crack in the wall of our nation, and we will remain at the heart of the state's project and its major national, Arab, and humanitarian choices.

In conclusion, we emphasize our pride in the sacrifices of Jordanians and their Jordanian Armed Forces on the soil of Palestine and in Old Jerusalem—blood and sacrifices that will forever remain a symbol of honor, dignity, and pride.

The video is shooting around social media with angry comments.

Notice that there are Jews at the Kotel in the video, and no one is upset to see a Jordanian there. No one is throwing rocks or screaming at him. He has no need for police protection to visit the site.

Unlike the situation for Jews who visit only a few meters away on the Temple Mount.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The @NYTimes simply cannot help itself, singling out Israel in article on Syria displacements

The New York Times says:

When Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war ended last year with the ouster of dictator Bashar al-Assad, many Syrians rejoiced at the chance to finally return to the homes and lands they had abandoned.

The war had displaced more than half the country’s population, as millions fled to other countries and many more sought safer ground within their own borders.

But now, the country’s rocky transition to new leadership has brought fresh waves of displacement, driven by acts of revenge, sectarian violence, decades-old property disputes and Israeli occupation of land in southern Syria.

Between December 2024 and July 2025, more than 430,000 people in Syria were newly displaced, according to the United Nations. No single group among the country’s diverse religious and ethnic communities has been spared the turmoil, which stretched across multiple regions.

Later in the article it circles back to those displaced by Israel's actions on the border, and spends five paragraphs on Israel, quoting Human Rights Watch.

How many were displaced by Israel? "Dozens of families."

Compare that to the 430,000 total displaced since December.

Compare that to the 1,300 people killed in Sweida Province in that timeframe.

The NYT also includes this photo:

Children heading home from school in the Syrian village of Suwaisah in southeastern Syria, where there was an Israeli incursion soon after the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad

Israel doesn't occupy Suwaisah now. The article doesn't mention that village at all. Israel did perform raids against militants there but nothing is happening now, and these schoolchildren are obviously going to school. The only reason for the photo is to imply that Israel is a major reason for Syrians being displaced - and it isn't, by any rational analysis.

But the real anti-Israel bias comes from what the NYT doesn't mention: the huge Turkish occupation in northern Syria. Since December, at a minimum, 120,000 (and some estimate much more) have been displaced by Turkish-backed militias.

That is a lot of people to ignore in an article on displaced Syrians.

The article was co-written by Raja Abdulrahim, who normally writes her anti-Israel invective from Israel itself. Her bias has been clear since before the Times hired her.

This article fits her bias profile: Nothing is inaccurate, but the facts are highly curated to give an impression that is completely wrong. At the most, Israel's displacement of dozens of families is worth a sentence, compared to the hundreds of thousands displaced and thousands killed by other actors in that same timeframe. And five paragraphs highlighting Israel, which is occupying a tiny slice of land on its border, while ignoring Turkey's occupation of 4,000 square kilometers land in the north is not journalism - it is malpractice.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Libyan newspaper Alsa'ah 24 Newspaper has an interview with Raphael Luzon, the head of the Union of Libyan Jews.

I don't know the newspaper's orientation but the fact that this was published altogether is interesting.

Rafael Luzon said in a post on "Facebook": "We, the Libyan Jews, demand our legitimate rights that were seized unjustly and aggressively, from confiscated properties, souls that were taken, and forced displacement that took place in broad daylight without any right, just because we carried a different religious identity. These are horrific crimes committed against innocent Libyan citizens, for no reason other than being Jews. They lived on this land for centuries, contributed to its renaissance, culture, and economy, and were an authentic part of its social fabric," according to his claim.

He continued, "We categorically reject linking our issue to what is happening in the Middle East between the Palestinians and the Israelis, for our issue is a clear humanitarian and human rights issue with no relation to politics or regional conflicts, and no party can confiscate our natural right to justice and citizenship under the pretext of solidarity or national stance. We are talking about a purely Libyan national file that can only be resolved by acknowledging the mistake, apologizing, compensating for the damage, and returning the rights to their owners."

He went on, "The racist approach that seeks to deny these rights or incite against us is completely rejected from a legal, ethical, and international perspective, as all international agreements and charters of human rights organizations criminalize discrimination based on religion or origin and condemn any act or speech based on hatred or incitement to violence. Therefore, we affirm that the hate speech directed at us through social media or media platforms by some extremists can be subject to legal prosecution under international laws that ensure protection of individuals from bullying, incitement, and verbal violence," as he expressed it.

He concluded, "In conclusion, we say it clearly without ambiguity: We will not accept any one-upmanship from any party, nor any deliberate mixing up of the cards. We, the Jews of Libya, are sons of this authentic homeland, raised on the values of patriotism and loyalty, and we have never and will never sell or betray the land of our ancestors that we loved and lived in for centuries in peace and love. Our demands are nothing but right, justice, and fairness, and we will not be silenced by the voices that exaggerate with slogans to hide the truth of the historical injustice inflicted upon us. Libya is our homeland, and we will not stop demanding our rights, because the right does not expire with time, and justice does not die no matter how long the time may be," according to his speech.

I find it interesting that he seems to be speaking the language of Palestinians who demand rights. Perhaps he is trying to point out the hypocrisy by mirroring their rhetoric.

Because the chances for any compensation or an apology from Libya is just about zero.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

10/29 Links Pt2: The Cinema of October 7th; Media Complicity: Hamas Breaks the Ceasefire, Israel Gets the Blame; Ben & Jerry’s co-founder making his own ‘Palestine flavour’

From Ian:

Mini-Series "Red Alert" Chronicles the Hamas Oct. 7 Attack from the View of Four Families

Hollywood producer Lawrence Bender, 68, from a Jewish family in the Bronx, has produced a taut, gut-wrenching four-part drama series, "Red Alert," which chronicles the Hamas terror attack from the perspective of four families caught up in the horror.

"We just wanted people to see what it's like to be an ordinary, everyday person and be woken up by a terrorist in your house," says Bender.

We meet a family taking refuge in their safe room in Kibbutz Nir Oz; an Arab man driving near Gaza with his family; a husband and wife from the security forces separated in the chaos; and a mother evacuating the wounded as she searches for her son.

"They're basically all family stories," says Bender, who was nominated for an Oscar three times. "We wanted to show real heroes."

The purpose of "Red Alert," says Bender, is to expand the audience that is aware of the events of the day, rather than relay them blow for blow. "It's just too triggering. It's too much."

He felt a drama would be the most appropriate vehicle to convey a message instead of a documentary.

"I thought, the people who would not normally go see a documentary might see this. You know, it's called 'Red Alert.' In a sense, it's a thriller. But when you watch it, it actually becomes very emotional, and you realize it's the truth."

The Cinema of October 7th

It is no surprise that the first artistic response to the events of the Seventh of October, put in cinematic context and sufficiently sublimated, was a film by Nadav Lapid. Yes!, Lapid’s fifth feature film, and in some ways his most sophisticated and radical to date, is a macabre, grotesque morality tale about a young couple with a baby, trying to survive in a monstrosity of a country, a near-future or current Israel. Lapid’s alternative Israel is an oligarchy of sorts, in which the young are ruled by the elderly who consume them for sexual pleasure and entertainment. The young must sell themselves to servitude or else be doomed to bankruptcy.

It is also no surprise that Lapid was able to accommodate this colossal event, a catastrophe, in his unique brand of cinema. That’s because Lapid’s films, politically, were there long before any of this happened. His first film, Policeman (2011), starts as a group portrait of a small team in an anti-terrorist police unit. Most of the time, the officers are seen hanging out in barbecues, tackling extreme sport challenges, or at home going about their respective romantic lives. Though the premise is that of an action film, Lapid’s camera seems more intent on examining their rituals and rites, watching how they bond and how they deceive one another.

Most of the time, we see them faking it, though the feeling of the film is not that of a satire or a parody. Instead, there is a kind of overriding strained ambivalence, wherein it is hard to judge what might be the right attitude on the part of the viewer toward the subject matter and characters. The perverse is ever present in Lapid’s filmmaking, which makes it harder on the audience to tell right from wrong. The director also has a way of cutting shots together that is more reminiscent of French Nouvelle Vague than Hollywood’s version of realism, which further complicates the relation between space and time.

‘Yes!’ is an explosive, taboo-crushing novelty of a film that explores how we drag on with our lives in the wake of catastrophe.

At times, the film lends itself to some extreme oddities; the commander of the anti-terrorist crew is trying to hone his skill at vaginal massage on his pregnant wife. Maybe the best scene in the entire film takes place in one of those get-togethers, wherein the main character, the team commander, “snatches” a baby from one of the sleeping wives of his buddies, to check out in front of the mirror how to hold the baby right so as to best accentuate his muscle tone.

We are bound to ask, what could that baby-holding-in-front-of-the-mirror scene mean, strange as it is, both to the movie and to our better senses? Obviously, Israeli machismo is being ridiculed, exposed as narcissistic and false. The scene has an eerie feel to it, like something that should have been cut out of the movie and never seen. Yet it is these very insertions that make his films interesting, both as political critique and as a form of grotesque art. These moments undermine the plot, which is probably what Lapid was aiming at in the first place: to foil our self-indulgences, to wipe out our heroes.

Seth Mandel: Tarek Bazrouk and American Domestic Extremism

In 2024, he was arrested for attacking pro-Israel protesters and in fact assaulted another one as he was being arrested. This lovely ball of hate was at it again later in the year, ambushing a Jew near a Columbia protest. Then in January of this year, he got his hat trick.

All of the episodes were uncontrovertibly violent; not only was Bazrouk not protesting peacefully, but in all cases he physically assaulted peaceful protesters. Nevertheless, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the hate group at the center of other high-profile pro-Hamas incidents, posted that Bazrouk “has been locked up for over five months for speaking out against genocide,” and they claimed it an example of “political repression.”

The Palestinian Youth Movement unsurprisingly filed a petition for leniency, announcing it “stands in solidarity with Tarek.” Students for Justice in Palestine, probably the most extreme collection of Hamas boosters, “demands his immediate liberation.” (Note the word choice: liberation being the euphemism du jour for spilling Jewish blood.)

SJP says Bazrouk “has been targeted by the United States government for his activism.” Which in a way is true: Pro-Palestinian activism in the U.S. is indeed marked by its violence and incitement.

It’s no surprise, then, to see at the courthouse 200 supporters of a man who admitted to a string of assaults. And it is important for us all to acknowledge this support. These “pro-Palestinian” groups conflate violence with speech, and have been fooling free-speech groups for years with the ruse.

Now, however, they are using Bazrouk’s case to make plain what everybody should have seen all along: They do not support free expression but rather respond to free expression with violence, just as their heroes in Gaza do. The movement has one main organizing goal: attacking Jews’ freedom of speech, expression, and association.

Additionally, they reject their naïve defenders’ claims of nonviolence. The Palestinian advocacy groups in the U.S., and the wider progressive movement in which they are now fully embedded and integrated, do not believe they are being targeted for mere speech. They simply believe that speech and violence are equally legitimate forms of expression. And, considering their welcome reception in American political culture, why wouldn’t they?

Seth Mandel: Why Some Academics Are Told Not To Acknowledge Jewish Holidays

A lot of effort goes into finding creative ways to discriminate against Jews on college campuses, but this is a new one. The Telegraph has interviewed several Jewish professors in Britain, and one of them tells the paper that her school’s diversity team sends out greetings on Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh holidays, but not Jewish ones. When she asked them to include Jewish holidays as well, she got a pretty incredible response:

“I was told that Jews could only be mentioned when marking a religious festival that makes no reference to the land of Israel—which possibly leaves one, a minor festival called Purim.”

The article chronicles several other recent incidents, most notably the ongoing harassment of Michael Ben-Gad, an economics professor at a University of London-affiliated school, including activists storming his class and threatening to behead him for the crime of being Israeli.

Ben-Gad is standing his ground quite well and keeping his sense of humor throughout this ordeal. But it is an illustration of a counterintuitive new reality: The pro-Hamas demonstrations have been much reduced (though not eliminated entirely) but the bigotry itself has accelerated.

Take for example what happened recently at Pomona College in California. Pro-Hamas protesters stormed an event commemorating the October 7 attacks featuring a survivor of those attacks, Yoni Viloga. A group calling itself Claremont Undercurrents then took credit for the attack with an open letter that, the Algemeiner reports, appears to threaten Viloga with murder.

Unsurprisingly, the letter accuses Viloga of being “a settler on stolen land” and says his “fictitious ‘state’ destroyed 92% of Gaza.”

Viloga, of course, lives in Israel. To the pro-Hamasniks in the West, it remains a crime to be a Jew living in the Holy Land.

This is no mere land dispute. It’s an argument over whether the educational institutions of the West will persist within established reality—Israel exists, the Jewish holidays mention Israel because the people of Israel are indigenous to that land—or within a bubble of genocidal science fiction.

One can’t help but notice just how much the truth of history bothers these zombies. Their concerns have nothing to do with the lives and the rights of anyone living there now; they simply can’t handle that the people of Israel are living in the Land of Israel, as they have for thousands of years.

10/29 Links Pt1: Phase II of the Gaza Agreement: The American Vision and Israel's Security Considerations; UNICEF data show there was no famine in Gaza

From Ian:

Jonathan Sacerdoti: A "Two Gaza Solution"

The war in Gaza has not ended; it has changed shape. The American vision that has emerged is vast in ambition and uncertain in outcome. President Trump's envoys have constructed a regional framework that joins the recovery of Gaza to a broader project linking Arab capital, American protection, and Israeli restraint. For the moment, it works. Hostages have been released, the guns are quieter, and the promise of a new Gaza is being drawn on every conference table.

Yet on the ground, two Gazas now exist. To the west, the remnant of Hamas authority. To the east, the zone under Israeli control. Eastern Gaza will be demilitarized and reconstructed under international sponsorship. Western Gaza is left to Hamas's residual power and the patronage of its regional allies.

Dr. Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, insists that Hamas, as an Islamic jihadist movement, "will not lay down its arms voluntarily because that would be tantamount to erasing its identity" and argues that the only realistic agent of disarmament in the short term is the IDF. What remains now for Israel is to secure the gains, shape the reconstruction, and prevent the return of illusions.

Jake Wallis Simons: Hamas and the luxury of freedom

Imagine the horror of discovering that you have been rubbing shoulders with terrorists. No, I’m not talking about those gullible souls who join the Gaza marches in London, but about the British airline crew who had an unfortunate brush with Hamas at a five-star Marriott hotel in Cairo. Full marks to the Daily Mail, whose veteran photographer Mark Large snapped several of the 154 jihadis freed by Israel as they lived it up at the inexplicably named Renaissance Cairo Mirage City.

What’s a terrorist to do? You recruit suicide bombers, oversee a bus bombing or murder a police officer, get banged up, luck out with early release as part of an exchange for innocent Israeli hostages who had been kept in Hamas catacombs for two years, you’re just enjoying the first luxury buffet you’ve had in years – then the British press turns up! Frankly, it made me miss my time as a reporter on the road. The Marriott, we are told, boasts of being the ‘preferred air crew hub hotel in Cairo’, hosting six airlines regularly due to its proximity to the airport. Or perhaps that should now be ‘boasted’, as one imagines that its time catering to air crew has rather passed.

Cabin staff at the hotel, where rooms start at £200 per night, told the Mail that they were contemplating piling furniture in front of their bedroom doors just in case 7 October came knocking. And who can blame them?

Among the terrorists enjoying the Marriott’s facilities were Mahmoud Issa, who founded Special Unit 101 of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, a Hamas kidnap unit, and had been in prison since 1993; Islamic State hijacker Izz a-Din al-Hamamrah; bus bomb mastermind Samir Abu Nima; kidnapper Ismail Hamdan; and Yousuf Dawud, who murdered a border police officer. These monsters have now apparently been sent packing, leaving Marriott to (presumably) call in the crisis management bods as their customers desert them in droves. Chief foreign correspondent Andrew Jehring, Middle East correspondent Natalie Lisbona, snapper Mark Large: sterling job.

Aside from the sheer journalistic accomplishment, however, there is much to be said about this darkest of stories. Think about it from the point of view of the victims, or the families that survive them.

Why Aren't Human Rights Groups Denouncing Hamas Atrocities Against Gazans?

Following the ceasefire in Gaza, numerous corroborated testimonies - some supported by filmed evidence - have emerged of Hamas's executions of political opponents, particularly brutal torture of civilians in broad daylight and killings or beatings of civilians who merely expressed gratitude toward the U.S. or criticized Hamas.

Given these facts, I was astonished to look at the X accounts of two of the world's largest human rights organizations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and find that there has been not a single reference to these atrocities. Every day more atrocities occur, and silence confers a degree of legitimacy upon them.

Initial statements about atrocities have in the past been issued far more rapidly by human rights organizations. Yet two weeks after the ceasefire there was still no comment, not even a demand that Hamas comply with international humanitarian law.

As human rights activists, our message should be clear: We will not ignore any atrocity; we will not abandon Gazans now that Hamas is attacking them; we will not hesitate in voicing strong condemnation. I call on the human rights community to urgently denounce Hamas's atrocities against Gazans.

Sorry I haven't been blogging quite as much; I've been working feverishly on my book on ethics and philosophy, which I am very happy with so far.

But there are a lot of great pro-Israel accounts out there nowadays, some I follow, some I am unaware of (especially on platforms besides X.)

So put in the comments your favorites you follow, with a brief description and link. nclude places like Reddit, Substack, TikTok and others.

I'll make a post and (when I get a chance) I will update my blog sidebar.

Thanks!

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Even among the devastation of Gaza, the "genocide" and the "famine," Palestinians think it was all worth it for the privilege of killing 1,200 Israelis.

Either there is no genocide and famine, or Palestinians really, really hate Jews.

Or both.

The latest PCPSR poll shows that 53% of Palestinians say that Hamas' decision to attack Israel on October 7, 2023 was the correct decision.

In Gaza, the percentage has increased since the last poll, from 37% in May to 44% today. This is despite the fact that 87% of them said they have been displaced by the war, nearly all of them multiple times. This is despite the fact that 72% of them claim that at least one of their family members were killed or injured during the war.

They still think Hamas attacking kibbutzim and a music festival was the right decision.

These supposed victims of mass starvation and genocide also aren't very keen on ending the war permanently. When asked whether they support or oppose disarming Hamas in the Gaza Strip in order to permanently end the war, an overwhelming majority of 69% (87% in the West Bank and 55% in the Gaza Strip) said it is opposed to that; only 29% support it.

Can you imagine the victims of any real genocide saying that they would prefer not to end it?

At the same time they deny that Hamas did any atrocities on October 7. Hamas' own videos showing them shooting civilians don't convince them, even the ones who have seen the videos claim that Hamas did not do any war crimes. Given that the previous poll showed that a majority agreed that attacking civilian families is indeed a war crime, the only conclusion is that either they do not believe there are any civilians in Israel - or they do not believe that Jews are human to begin with.

Hamas is a death cult, and the majority of Palestinians enthusiastically support a death cult - even at the cost of their own families' lives.

And the same brainwashing techniques that cause such a warped vision of reality is steadily spreading in the West.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

From an article in Yemen's Saba newspaper:

History tells us, throughout its various eras, that Jews are a people who cannot be trusted, and are not governed by principles, values, or ethics. They live in closed communities within global societies, conducting their lives according to their opportunistic methods of seizing opportunities and weaving intrigues and conspiracies within the societies in which they reside. This makes them disliked by these societies, and examples, both ancient and modern, illustrate this. For instance, their hostile reaction to the message of Muhammad in the Arabian Peninsula led to a military response against them by Muslims, and the same applies to modern times with Hitler's actions against them.

Now, Jews are digging their own graves in American and European societies, as they do not feel a sense of belonging to the human race and do not seek integration, falsely claiming superiority over other people. They also adopt a stance against anyone who criticizes them under the pretext of anti-Semitism.

The Houthi government is wedded to antisemitism, with "Curse the Jews" part of their motto.

But even though Human Rights Watach and Amnesty issue annual reports on all countries, they never mention Houthi antisemitism (HRW did offhandedly mentioned the chant based on the slogan in 2010 and in 2014. In neither case did it say anything negative about it. Neither HRW's and Amnesty's reporting of Houthi missiles to Israel mention the antisemitic angle.)

Compare this to the State Department annual report on all countries. In 2024, it said,

The Houthi movement regularly used antisemitic slogans. The Houthis’ anti-Israel rhetoric often blurred into antisemitic propaganda. The Houthis continued to propagate such materials and slogans throughout the year, including adding anti-Jewish slogans and rhetoric into the elementary education curriculum and books. Pan-Arab media outlets reported children in Houthi summer camps were instructed to shout the Houthi slogan, which includes “Death to Israel, curse the Jews.”

You almost have to go out of your way to not mention antisemitism in Yemen. Yet the two most important human rights organizations manage to do exactly that.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

10/28 Links Pt2: Islamo-socialist alliances don’t last, just ask the Iranians; The ADL’s Medicine Is Causing the Disease; The Jewish academics living in fear of anti-Semitic hate mobs

From Ian:

Islamo-socialist alliances don’t last, just ask the Iranians

Instead of the Ukip demonstration, large masked groups of young men took to the streets chanting “Allahu Akbar” as they vowed to “defend our community”.

Among the protestors were pockets of Left-wing activists, one of whom, witnessing the tension, attempted to appeal to some sense of shared solidarity.

“There’s no need for that, bruv,” he was filmed pleading with his megaphone. “We’re on the same side”. The reply from a balaclava-wearing demonstrator was swift and unambiguous: “No, we’re not.”

That short exchange captured the heart of the problem. The Left in Britain believes it has found allies in political Islam – fellow “oppressed” fighting a common enemy in the so-called “far-Right”. But many Muslims, including those increasingly taking an active role in politics, do not see it that way. Their vision for society is diametrically opposed to the progressive ideals the Left claims to champion: free speech, gender equality, secularism, and LGBT rights.

What we are witnessing is the same fatal miscalculation that took place in Iran.

And another reverberation from 1979 is the weakness and incompetence of the political establishment. In the final year of the Shah’s rule, the regime tried desperately to appease its enemies. It jailed its own supporters and released violent radical prisoners in a futile attempt to calm the streets. In its fear of seeming repressive and its eagerness to appease the radical Islamists, it caused its own downfall.

Does that all sound familiar? Today in Britain, our own leaders are doing something similar.

The police, terrified of being accused of “Islamophobia”, have become hesitant to enforce the law evenly. Peaceful demonstrators carrying “Hamas are terrorists” signs are arrested, a Star of David is treated as a provocation, while those who issue threats and incite violence are indulged and appeased. The Government, concerned about losing votes from its Muslim constituents, neglects the threat of extremist networks openly recruiting in mosques, prisons, schools and online. It does this while lecturing ordinary law-abiding Britons about “extremism” and labelling them “far-Right”.

Just like Tehran in 1979, Left-wing elites are too weak to confront the forces that seek to overthrow their own values, and too naïve to recognise that those forces are not partners in progress but architects of regression.

The Left in Iran learned the hard way that when you go to bed with Islam, you do not wake up in a democracy. You wake up in a theocracy. Britain’s Left should take heed.

The Soviet role in turning anti-Zionism into a popular cause

According to Ion Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet bloc officer ever to defect to the West, this campaign was deliberate and crafted by the KGB. Its chief, Andropov, realized that Islamic societies were particularly receptive to anti-Western rhetoric. He channeled this natural hostility against Jews and Israel, deliberately reframing the conflict not as a religious jihad but as a nationalist struggle for human rights and self-determination. This new language appealed to Western intellectuals, activists and politicians as well.

The campaign deployed thousands of Soviet bloc agents across the Middle East to spread propaganda in Arabic, including editions of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated and vile document, while providing funding and ideological guidance to local Arab movements.

At the center of the project was the Palestine Liberation Organization. Founded in 1964 under Soviet patronage, the PLO became the perfect vehicle for constructing a new national identity. Pacepa later revealed that the 1964 Palestinian National Charter, the PLO’s ideological foundation, was written in Moscow.

Strikingly, the charter did not call for sovereignty over the West Bank or Gaza, which it explicitly recognized as Jordanian and Egyptian, respectively. Instead, it focused entirely on the destruction of Israel. It was in this Soviet-written document that the modern political term “Palestinian nation” first appeared.

Yasser Arafat, an Egyptian engineer mentored by Soviet intelligence, became the face of the newly created identity. He admitted that Palestinian nationality was being formed “through the conflict with Israel.” His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, later revealed as a KGB agent, defended a dissertation in Moscow downplaying the Holocaust and portraying Zionism as a collaborator of Nazism, directly adopting Soviet propaganda themes. Both men presented themselves in the West as pragmatic politicians, while at home they supported terror and rejected genuine peace with Israel. Zuhair Muhsin, a PLO executive committee member, candidly admitted the artificiality of the Palestinian identity in 1977: “There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. The existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new weapon in the ongoing battle against Israel.”

Through its propaganda, Moscow created one of the greatest political myths of the 20th century. The Palestinian movement is historically unprecedented: The only “national” project whose aim is not to build its own state, but to destroy another.

The Soviet anti-Zionist campaign spread through leftist networks, NGOs and Islamist movements. It used Communist-front organizations that organized conferences linking the Palestinian cause with other “anti-imperialist” struggles, from Vietnam to South Africa to Cuba. Delegates from Third World countries and the Non-Aligned Movement, as well as Western radicals, adopted these narratives and brought them back home, pushing them in political, academic and activist circles.

Soviet-Palestinian propaganda ranks among the most successful in modern history, having fused ideology, history, and moral symbolism into enduring narratives. It presented anti-Zionism as morally noble, connected it to anti-imperialism, and cloaked it in the language of “global peace.” Propagandists skillfully exploited Western guilt over colonialism. The continuity is visible today: Russian disinformation campaigns on Ukraine employ the same tactics of denial, inversion of reality and moral manipulation. The KGB may be gone, but its most successful operations live on.

Soviet propaganda not only undermined Israel’s legitimacy on an international basis but also corrupted the very language of human rights. It turned the Jewish national movement into a supposed symbol of oppression, a stark reminder of propaganda’s destructive power when left unchallenged. The persistence of these narratives lies in the fact that the networks and structures that spread them never disappeared. Today’s leftist anti-Zionism is less a response to events in Gaza than a continuation of recycled Soviet ideological nonsense, passed from one generation of intellectuals and activists to the next. The liberal West, victorious in the Cold War, largely failed to confront this legacy.

Moscow turned Zionism into a slur, and from this lie emerged the modern face of antisemitism. Zionism is exactly what the Soviet narratives denied: a national liberation movement of the Jewish people, grounded in the universal right to self-determination, a right that is unquestioningly granted to every other nation.

The Anti-Semite in Plain Sight By Abe Greenwald

Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here. It's the definition of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory: All of life’s discontents can be traced back to their Jewish source, no matter how imaginary. The IDF’s connection to alleged NYPD brutality is as real as Mamdani’s traumatized aunt. And the only thing original about his iteration of the charge is the faux-poetic imagery of Israeli bootlace—if he didn’t pick that up from someone else.

But there are some NYC voters who don’t watch such trends as closely as others and, perhaps, haven’t yet realized that Mamdani thrives at the cross section of the radical left and radical Islam. And maybe some of them haven’t voted yet. But we’re not talking about a critical mass.

It also came out today that Mamdani’s father, Mahmood, sits on the advisory council of an organization called the Gaza Tribunal alongside key Hamas operative Ramy Abdu and other assorted Jew-haters tied to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and various terrorist groups. Mahmood Mamdani’s position with the Gaza Tribunal isn’t news; that was reported back in July. But no one bothered to look more thoroughly into the group’s makeup.

Why?

The answer gets to the deeper frustration of all this. What’s more maddening than these late-breaking stories is that I’m not so sure they would have made much of an impact had they dropped months ago. It’s not as if there wasn’t already a virtual anthology of Mamdani’s collected works of Jew-hatred and anti-Zionism readily available to anyone with the slightest interest. Is his blaming alleged NYPD tyranny on Israel worse than when he confessed his “love” for the Holy Land Five, who were convicted of funneling millions of dollars to terrorists? Is his father’s association with a Hamas figure worse than Mamdani’s own chumming around with the confidantes of the 9/11 planners? These things, and much else, have been known for the entirety of the mayoral race. None of it mattered.

If you’ve known who Zohran Mamdani was all along, this moment actually feels more punishing than validating. Being proved right when it’s too late to do anything about it is a special kind of torment. And it’s sickening to think that the truth might never have made a difference anyway.

10/28 Links Pt1: Make Believe 'Global Justice'; Hamas’s Latest Barbaric Stunt; In truce violation, Hamas returns further remains of hostage recovered in 2023

From Ian:

Make Believe 'Global Justice'

The events of October 7, 2023, one recalls, began on a quiet, peaceful holiday morning. Innocent Israelis near the Gaza Strip were either still asleep in their homes, had just started going about their day, or were enjoying the Supernova music festival. All at once, thousands of rockets launched from Gaza came raining down, terrorists flew in on motorized paragliders, and bulldozers crashed through the Gaza border fence, followed by pickup trucks and motorcycles pouring over the border carrying murderous hordes intent on slaughtering them. As a result, Israelis of all ages, babies included, were cut down, raped, burned alive, and beheaded – for no reason other than living in Israel.

Israel retaliated, as any normal nation would have done. Nonetheless, it was viciously blamed, starting the next day, for defending its people and homeland, and pursuing the perpetrators of atrocities.

The use of the term "global justice" for charges against Israel is therefore an artifice -- a slogan designed to deceive the public into believing an invented people is a "just cause," as the late senior Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official, Zuheir Mohsen, admitted in 1977:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

Israel's war against terror, if one regards it as a fight between a civilization with laws vs. seventh-century terrorism with machetes, is the quintessence of a just war. Unfortunately, for its critics, it happens to be a righteous, justifiable, act of self-defense...

If Israel is committing genocide, they're really, really bad at it. They could have had genocide on October the eighth.... It's absurd. If they were trying to commit genocide, it would not have taken them 22 months." — US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, CBS News, August 8, 2025.

"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters." — Antonio Gramsci, Italian politician, 1924.

Many of Europe's leaders, in pandering to terrorists for votes, can be considered complicit in the rise of Jew-hatred and are therefore culpable for the consequences – which, ironically, look as if they will be worse for their countries than for Israel, the country they have been trying to undermine.

The "Gaza Tribunal" Brings Together Western Academics, Journalists, and UN Officials With Convicted Terrorists

While the Gaza Tribunal is filled with speakers and organizers linked to terrorism, it also counts a number of former UN officials and prominent academics among its ranks. The Istanbul conference featured Richard Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Territories, Craig Mokhiber, ex-Director of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ New York office, and scholars such as David Whyte, Ussama Makdisi, and Wadie Said.

The tribunal’s leadership includes figures with UN experience like Hilal Elver, former Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and Michael Lynk, former Special Rapporteur on human rights in Palestine. Its advisory council is populated by seasoned UN veterans, including Mouin Rabbani, Christine Chinkin, Georges Abi-Saab, Aslı Bali, and Karim Makdisi. Their participation provides institutional credibility to an event otherwise dominated by individuals with direct or familial ties to terrorist organizations. UN Special Rapporteur Micheal Lynk – Sadaka, The Ireland Palestine Alliance

Shedding light to the rott at the UN, a WHO doctor just went public, revealing that UN officials had decided since December 2023 to fabricate a narrative of famine in Gaza. This raises serious questions about whether elements of the UN, at its highest levels, are implicated in the same alleged coordination described in the Baroud lawsuit.

The lawsuit currently facing Ramzy Baroud alleges a broad network of coordination between media, academia, NGOs, and Hamas — an operation the Gaza Tribunal exemplifies. Last year’s Gaza Tribunal included UN Francesca Albanese, who also co-founder of a legal network whose board includes Baroud and several others with known links to terrorist organizations.

Taken together, the Gaza Tribunal, its participants, and the involvement of international organizations illustrate the lawsuit’s claim: that a coordinated network of media, academia, and terror-linked figures is working systematically to amplify Hamas propaganda under the guise of scholarship and humanitarian advocacy.

In 2023, Palestinian filmmakers and others boycotted the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam after the IDFA issued a statement saying it did not agree with the slogan "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" which was unfurled by demonstrators interrupting the opening night ceremony. In response, the IDFA said that they were against all forms of censorship:

IDFA is about giving the stage to outstanding artists to be critical and free. IDFA is an open platform and not a censor. Our aim is to make sure everybody feels welcome and safe to express themselves and to listen openly to others, even when in disagreement. Our hope is that everybody feels entitled to use this platform, seriously and responsibly, lovingly and sincerely.

My, how things change.

Variety reports:

Israeli industry figures from major institutions, including DocAviv Festival, the CoPro market and public broadcaster Kan, have all been turned down from attending the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, one of the world’s leading documentary festivals.

IDFA, which is under the new leadership of Isabel Arrate Fernandez, has endorsed the Israeli film industry boycott, which was prompted last month by the organization Film Workers for Palestine and signed by nearly 4,000 entertainment industry names.

A telling detail from the head of the IDFA, Arrate Fernandez:

She said the IDFA assesses “independent films and filmmakers individually and on a case-by-case basis” and “this also applies to request from institutions,” adding: “If a project has demonstrable ties to governments responsible for serious human rights violations — for instance, through direct state funding — it is generally not selected.”
“Exceptions have been made as well, including two Israeli films last year that received state funding but were selected because of their critical subject matter,” she said.

So, one year after the 2023 defense of free speech and against censorship, the IDFA decided that their rules against human rights violating state-funded films can be bent if the documentary aligns with an anti-Israel stance. (One of the films shown last year claimed that building in Jerusalem with Jerusalem stone is colonialism, and the other was about the 1956 Kafr Qasim massacre that Israel has apologized for multiple times.)

The idea that the IDFA's "principles" can be bent because the films are "critical" perverts the entire idea of documentary filmmaking - the IDFA is saying that it will only consider films that align with one political viewpoint.

I think that is called "censorship," and the head of a prestigious film festival just admitted that this was their guiding principle last year.

This year, however, there is full censorship of Israeli films, even those that are highly critical of Israel. No exceptions.

Their principles evolved from "no censorship" to "censorship of films we don't approve of" to "censorship of entire countries that we decide we don't like."

But notice how each of the contradictory positions are all principled!

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)