Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Elder of Ziyon
|
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
 |
Wednesday, June 11, 2025Elder of Ziyon
The graves of Palestinian leaders Ahmed Jibril and Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) were destroyed in the Martyrs' Cemetery in Yarmouk Camp, south of Damascus, in an incident that sparked a wave of anger and condemnation in Palestinian and Syrian circles.Local sources reported that, in recent days, unknown assailants destroyed the tombstone of Ahmed Jibril, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), who is accused of participating alongside former Syrian regime forces in the siege of Yarmouk Camp and Eastern Ghouta during the war.The tomb of prominent Fatah leader Khalil al-Wazir, known as "Abu Jihad," was also vandalized. He was one of the most prominent architects of the first Palestinian intifada, which erupted in December 1987, and a prominent military leader in the Palestine Liberation Organization.
|
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
|
Wednesday, June 11, 2025Elder of Ziyon
Greta Thunberg dismissed the viral image of her receiving a sandwich from an IDF soldier as a 'PR stunt' by Israel as she arrived in France, shooting back at allegations of moral grandstanding after her 'freedom flotilla' was intercepted on Monday.The activist, 22, spoke to reporters about her experience after being detained by Israel along with 11 others. They had attempted to sail from Italy to Gaza to deliver a symbolic amount of aid and raise awareness of the enclave's humanitarian crisis.Pressed on how her opponents in Israel had accused the activists of performative theatre, Thunberg dismissed the allegations as 'ironic coming from them', considering 'the PR stunt of them handing out sandwiches or whatever'.
|
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
|
In other words, she posted a picture of herself celebrating the worst daylong mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. Since Israel had not yet gone into Gaza—by Oct. 12 they were still collecting bodies—her caption was at least revealing: The “genocide” accusation has no correlation whatsoever with what was actually happening on the ground. But a false accusation of genocide is the less-egregious part of a post in which the other part celebrates an attempt to wipe out the Jewish people.Seth Mandel: The Crypto Jew-Haters
As for the “anti-Zionist vibes only” part of her message: At American universities, “Zionist” means “Jew” and no one really pretends otherwise. Even in the best possible explanation, this professor was announcing that she “only” hated about 90 percent of Jews.
After Finkelstein got the call from the provost, she decided to go all-in. She added to her Instagram stories a post written by a Palestinian-American who had this to say: “Do not cower to Zionists. Shame them. Do not welcome them in your spaces. Do not make them feel comfortable. Why should those genocide loving fascists be treated any different than any other flat out racist. Don’t normalize Zionism. Don’t normalize Zionists taking up space.”
These are the words of a person who is deeply dispirited by the fact of Jews continuing to live. It is a barbaric thing for a professor at a famously Jew-friendly university to endorse. It is a barbaric thing for a professor anywhere at any time and at any university to endorse. It is a post that at least implicitly threatens her students, which I assume is a big no-no even at elite universities.
Writes the Times: “Finkelstein was told not to return to campus and locked out of her email. Her classes would be reassigned to an adjunct professor while the college hired an outside firm to investigate.”
I would think so!
After an investigation, she was fired—and as we now know, it was not for her politics. You may believe a teacher shouldn’t be fired for alerting her students that if they are Jewish they should expect to be publicly shamed in her presence, but you cannot say she was fired for her opinions or beliefs, rancid as they are.
The fact that Finkelstein made that insane post right after being told by her provost that the school was under federal investigation (likely) for her anti-Semitism demonstrates another relevant fact: she was trying to get fired, and she was doing so by publicly telling her boss to take a long walk off a short pier.
So Finkelstein got what she wanted. What, then, does the writer spend the remaining thousands of words of the article on? Well, the rest of the piece is about the cases of other professors who have over the years been fired for actual speech. In other words, the entire article is framed around Finkelstein, but Finkelstein is the one example that does not fit the thesis. This is the making of a martyr, and the people who claim Finkelstein was wronged are doing great damage to the cause of academic freedom by equating it with lunatic behavior that has nothing to do with it.
Whenever someone says “couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” they always mean “literally anyone else it could have happened to would have deserved it less.” And that’s why, when I read that an anti-Semitic crytpo-currency company started by a white supremacist was imploding over credible allegations of financial fraud, I thought: that couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.'Idle' worship Israeli Embassy shooter Elias Rodriguez’s has sick ‘fan club’ growing online: ‘Not people, they are demons’
The guy in question is Stew Peters, a true American renaissance man. He first tried his hand at a hip-hop career, but that didn’t get far. He went on to become a bounty hunter, and a fairly infamous one at that. But the bounty hunting, too, ended in tears.
Peters is now finding some success as an internet personality and podcaster—think Father Coughlin with a spread collar and a YouTube channel. Although the popularity of anti-Semitic influencers has been climbing, Peters isn’t too happy about it, grumbling on a recent show that the more mainstream personalities dabbling in the “Jewish Question” were mere “controlled opposition.” Not Stew Peters—he was a slimeball before it was cool.
But like a skinhead version of Icarus, Peters appears to have flown too close to the sun.
In April, Peters launched $JPROOF, a digital currency of a kind known as “memecoins.” These are like Bitcoin but meant to capitalize on some ideological trend. It’s a great vehicle for financial grift. “This serves as a moment in which we break away from this Rothschild Jew-run Talmudic cabal financial system,” he announced, essentially just vomiting a string of neo-Nazi buzzwords.
As if this wasn’t enough of a red flag, some crypto commentators began sounding the alarm right away. One called attention to the fact that Peters controlled most of the token supply, opening it up to manipulation. Essentially the concern was that Peters could buy up the coin and then transfer and sell it, which would drive down the value just as it would a stock that saw a substantial sell-off. In that case, Peters would profit off of the initial buy-up and get to re-invest his money in a more stable currency—again, similar to the manipulation of a young stock. Peters also reportedly didn’t follow the transparency process for legitimate crypto currency.
Well, this pump-and-dump scam is pretty much what JPROOF customers are now alleging happened. Lucas Gage, another prominent white nationalist in Peters’ circle, announced he’d lost big on JPROOF, and then he and others investigated and found that the coin’s insiders were intentionally “draining [its] liquidity.”
Said Gage: “I feel betrayed.”
Well that’s a shame. Others in the white-nationalist crypto community said much the same. And if you can’t trust a burned-out bounty hunter who broadcasts anti-Jewish tirades on the internet, who can you trust?
Elias Rodriguez is accused of brutally murdering two Israeli embassy staffers — but a sick fan club cheering on his action is growing around him.
A twisted online community has exploded supporting the suspected terrorist: Writing him letters in jail, petitioning for his release, and celebrating his crime as part of the so-called “global intifada.”
The Post infiltrated several popular Telegram channels which circulate op-eds, petitions and even stickers in support of the accused murderer.
Rodriguez, 31, is charged with shooting Yaron Lichinsky, 28, and Sarah Pilgrim, 26, late on May 21 as they were leaving a Young Diplomats Reception held at the Capital Jewish Museum in DC.
The victims, who were a couple, both worked at the Israeli Embassy. Chicago native Rodriguez is now charged with two counts of first-degree murder and is being held in jail as prosecutors determine a full list of charges against him.
Depraved Rodriguez, who had ties to radical left-wing groups, reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack that night while chanting “Free Palestine” which has since made him the subject of praise online.
A video of Rodriguez’s arrest posted to Resistance News Network, a pro-Palestinian Telegram channel with more than 165,000 followers, received tremendous positive attention. 404 users reacted with a heart-on-fire emoji, and 192 more with a salute emoji.
Individuals on the Tariq el-Tahrir Youth and Student Network Telegram channel were encouraged to print out stickers of Rodriguez and to “distribute them everywhere! Long live the armed anti-imperialist resistance!”
Especially disturbing strings of comments about Rodriguez and racist hate directed towards Lichinsky and Pilgrim were left by members of GAZA NOW IN ENGLISH, a Telegram channel with more than 200,000 members.
An image of Rodriguez posted to the channel the day after the attack praised him for, “in a moment of courage, [deciding] to make his voice heard and [confronting] the murderers with boldness,” despite both of his victims being entirely innocent diplomats.
“Great man even though he’s a Christian/atheist worm,” one channel member responded. Another wrote, “Blessed… two zionists off to their promised land in HELL!!!”
“Go go go rodriguesz [sic], another shooter are welcomed,” a third user wrote. Another said, “This should happen all over the world in each and every country.”
There was a glimmer of good sense when Israel offered to provide some education to the activist, who had famously abandoned her free schooling at the age of 15. You care so much about suffering? Come and watch what happened on October 7. Be educated. But now we hear that she refused to do so. Closing her eyes to the reality of what caused this war in the first place, and what continues to perpetuate it today? Priceless.Hamas Plans Attacks on US Aid Sites In Gaza, Telegram Messages Show
It was typical of the global effort to erase the casus belli of this conflict and rewrite history to make the victims the aggressors, the victims of attempted genocide the perpetrators of the same crime, the people who had their babies murdered the true baby killers. To be fair to Thunberg, she’s hardly the only person at it.
This week, our most distinguished foreign correspondent, Jeremy Bowen, produced a major piece of journalism – journalism? – which was criticised by the Board of Deputies as containing “unacceptable bias”, as it “seemed not to consider the Hamas war crimes which started and sustain this conflict,” not to mention the gratuitous Holocaust references. For shame.
If we are facing a monstrous NGO-media-digital industrial complex of propaganda, in which Bowen commands the broadcast arm, Thunberg is the brigadier general of its activist wing. In fact, her transition – may I use that word? – from climate campaigner to Gaza obsessive has been as revealing as it is opportunistic.
The juncture between the two identities was quite amusing: for a while, she was chanting “no climate justice on occupied land”, as if the top priority for Hamas was a net zero policy. (Not that Gaza has been “occupied” since 2005, but you know what she means.) Then she simply jettisoned the climate guff, which was feeling rather dated, and went full keffiyeh. Identified as a Gaza campaigner, I suppose.
Let’s stop beating around the selfie yacht. It was never truly about the climate, any more than it was truly about the conflict in the Middle East. Closing her eyes to the October 7 footage crystallised the sustaining principle of Greta Thunberg: she is absorbed in a world of her own. It is a world that began with hating her teachers; went on to hating the establishment; and has ended with hating the Jews and the West, powered by endless selfies.
This spectacular teenage tantrum is most often indulged by people like Gary Lineker, like Dawn French, like Jeremy Bowen, like Thunberg herself, who all supposedly left their teenage years behind a long time ago.
While Israel’s youngsters were murdered at the Nova festival and are putting their lives on the line daily for their country, enduring unbelievable quantities of hatred and bigotry around the world, their greatest critics have never grown up themselves. That’s the final irony.
Hamas and its terror affiliates in the Gaza Strip plan to attack American aid distribution centers, Telegram messages confirmed by a senior U.S. official show, threatening to draw the United States into direct conflict with Palestinian militant factions.UN aid trucks reached homes of senior Hamas terrorists
"Resistance security is authorized to firmly confront anyone who cooperates with the enemy or its agents, and agents and mercenaries will be legitimate targets," Hamas affiliates said in a statement issued late Sunday to "Palestinian resistance factions" active on Telegram, a social networking site terrorist groups regularly use to coordinate their activities.
The terrorists directed their threats at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a joint U.S.-Israeli aid effort formed in February with private contractors to replace the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which is known to collaborate with Hamas.
A senior U.S. official confirmed that the Trump administration has monitored the situation to protect Americans working with GHF in Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid.
"These reports of Hamas threatening the GHF and its workers, many of whom are Americans, are deeply concerning," the senior administration official told the Washington Free Beacon. "Hamas should think twice. We are watching closely."
The Palestinian terrorist groups claimed that GHF centers established throughout Gaza "have become traps targeting our hungry people. Their goal is to end UNRWA's mission and turn the Palestinian cause into a humanitarian one to facilitate forced displacement and ethnic cleansing in Gaza."
They further demanded "the resumption of aid distribution through UNRWA—and international institutions, given their legal competence and expertise that guarantee the lives and dignity of our people."
Israel formally banned UNRWA from operating in January after it became clear that the U.N.-backed aid organization employed dozens of Hamas terrorists who participated in the Oct. 7 attacks and helped keep Israeli hostages hidden in Gaza. The Trump administration supported this move, citing additional evidence showing that Hamas systematically steals UNRWA supplies and resells them on the black market to generate profits.
Information obtained by Israel Hayom details how Hamas, in collusion with UN agencies, seized humanitarian aid at the expense of Gaza's two million residents, right under the nose of Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT).
Hamas had a consistent method of identifying vulnerabilities in the entry process of goods into the Strip. The group created a parasitic mechanism to smuggle items like communication equipment and cigarettes into Gaza via trucks belonging to international aid agencies. This method brought millions of dollars into Hamas's treasury, even as Israel was actively waging a war to dismantle its infrastructure.
Monitoring of Hamas's methods revealed direct clandestine collaboration with UN organizations. Throughout 2024, there were continuous communications between Hamas-linked smugglers and staff from the UN's World Food Programme.
Hamas deliberately used the WFP's aid supply route to smuggle cigarettes hidden inside aid sacks. Internationally gathered documentation paints a clear picture of tight cooperation masked by a public facade of Hamas having forcibly taken over aid operations. In practice, Hamas terrorists routinely seized control of incoming aid trucks, looted their contents, sold the goods to Gaza residents, or stockpiled them for their own use.
UN staff looked on
On several occasions documented in northern Gaza, Hamas took de facto control of aid convoys and goods, publicly declaring it was managing distribution. UN workers reportedly stood by passively.
Astonishingly, some aid trucks, at times up to 600 per day, were directed straight to the homes of senior Hamas officials or to the group's warehouses. The data point to a systematic pattern of collaboration between Hamas and the UN aid agency, operating freely much like its pre-October 7 relationship with UNRWA.
Throughout the war, even after senior Hamas figures publicly declared their takeover of UN facilities and redistribution of aid, the UN never issued warnings or statements condemning the seizures. On the contrary, the UN and its Secretary-General António Guterres are now pressuring the American humanitarian fund operating in Gaza, an Israeli-American initiative aimed at severing Hamas's grip on aid distribution.
Instead of supporting this new organization's efforts to prevent aid from reaching terrorists, the UN is reportedly undermining it, seeking to preserve the system that had long enriched Hamas and its operatives under the guise of humanitarian work.
Data gathered just in the past month show not only Hamas's direct control over aid but also an operational arrangement between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the WFP. Under this deal, each group received an agreed-upon share of the trucks officially entering Gaza. Absurd display
Tuesday, June 10, 2025Elder of Ziyon
David Miller
Press TV show Palestine Declassified obtained private correspondence sent to the Glastonbury Festival, attempting to intimidate the organizers into cancelling Kneecap.Marked “Private and Confidential,” the email states that the authors wanted to “raise” Glastonbury’s “awareness” about Kneecap. The message further claims the band is “propagating hate” and therefore should not be protected by “free speech,” a notion the letter writers claim to support.
|
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
|
Tuesday, June 10, 2025Elder of ZiyonJewish ethics
|
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
|
Tuesday, June 10, 2025Elder of Ziyon
|
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
|
Monday, June 09, 2025Elder of Ziyon
The Government Media Office in the Gaza Strip denied the Israeli occupation army's allegations regarding the existence of a tunnel under the European Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip .
It confirmed that army forces had excavated the site and placed a pipe, which they later claimed was a tunnel, and filmed a mock scene near the hospital's emergency department.The government office said in a statement on Sunday that the occupation's narrative is "fabricated, flawed, and full of loopholes and fabricated allegations, and does not stand up to even the slightest degree of scrutiny and logic."The office explained that the video published by the Israeli army shows the mouth of the alleged tunnel as "a narrow iron tube, too narrow for even a person to pass through, containing no stairs or equipment, and in no way suitable for a tunnel."He confirmed that the area shown in the video clip is a "rainwater drainage area."Refuting the Israeli narrative, the government office said that Israel "previously announced its intention to destroy the health system and admitted to using bunker-busting bombs weighing more than 40 tons to destroy the infrastructure of the European Hospital. So how could intact, unburned bodies be displayed at a site the occupation claims to have bombed with such ferocity?"The office pointed out that the video clip published by the Israeli occupation army included an unprofessional cut-and-paste process, as the scene at second 14 is completely different from what it appears at second 15.
|
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
|
This article is not about the conflict – it is about the international community .Richard Kemp: Trump is running out of time to crush Iran’s nuclear ambitions
The war – whatever you think of it – is ongoing. Israel rightly or wrongly seeks to eliminate the Hamas threat from Gaza and successfully return every single hostage (whether alive or dead). That is a given. And it is true, everyone does have a right to oppose the Israeli action and call on them to stop.
But that is only part of the equation. This war has been going on now for over 19 months. The world’s human rights NGOs argue that many of the people trapped inside are ‘refugees’. Legacy media have been running (real or imagined) massacre stories non-stop for 18 months. Yet not one of them has run a campaign to get the refugees to safety.
This is nothing to do with the Gazans. The international Palestinian solidarity movement, the hard-left, and the Islamist extremists, all want Gazans to stay in place. Not one of them, actually thought about the people of Gaza, what they wanted, or what was safest for them. Instead they wanted the civilians to remain caught between Hamas and the IDF. Just as Hamas use these people as human shields and want a high casualty count – that same accusation can equally be placed on the shoulders of the entire industry of ‘human rights’.
Israel did not want this. Israel did not seek this conflict. Hamas did. And Israel would much rather be fighting Hamas with no civilians around. So ask yourself why on earth the self titled bastions of moral virtue in the international community have done everything they can to make sure that the civilians have stayed in an area of urban conflict – and then they all express absolute outrage and pointed a finger of blame at Israel when anything happens to them?
And I will leave you with this one simple thought.
If your reflex opposition to this idea of Gazans leaving Gaza is also to reject it because ‘it is what Israel would want’ – then the Palestinian cause has turned you into an absolute monster. It really is that simple.
Iran’s nuclear programme threatens the world and especially the Middle East, with Sunni Arab countries viewed as sworn enemies in Tehran’s maniacal eyes. But Israel is most immediately in Khamenei’s cross-hairs with his repeated guarantees to annihilate it. It is the only country other than the US that is capable of damaging Iran’s nuclear project, but is now on the horns of a dilemma.‘For Dummies’-style manual aims to equip college-bound Jews for campus life
Israel can hardly attack while its number one ally is in negotiations on exactly this issue. And if Trump eventually agrees a deal which does not fully dismantle nuclear production facilities – which is a distinct possibility – it will be faced with a decision on whether to go ahead anyway against Trump’s likely desire.
Israel is also certain to face obstruction from European leaders who will cravenly do what they can to avoid conflict no matter the consequences. If Trump’s negotiations grind to a halt and snapback sanctions are imposed, they will no doubt demand that these are given a chance to work and meanwhile Israel should refrain from attacking.
Such vacillation can be more easily swept aside than hard objections from the US, from which Israel would anyway need support including with potentially large retaliation from Iran.
On that subject, Tehran’s ballistic missile stockpiles have been severely depleted by two major attacks against Israel last year, the IDF’s strikes against Iranian ballistic missile production facilities and by export of missiles to Russia to attack Ukraine. But Iran is not sitting on its hands over that challenge any more than it is over uranium enrichment.
Earlier this year it took delivery of shipments of ammonium perchlorate from China and has reportedly ordered thousands of tons more, expected to arrive in the coming months. This is an essential component for solid fuel ballistic missiles, including nuclear armed missiles. As well as direct use against Israel, Iran will also send missiles to Lebanon to rebuild Hizballah and to its other proxies in Iraq and Yemen to attack Israel and potentially US forces in the region.
All this means the time for effective military action is now. Iran will do everything it can to spin out talks with the US, doing its best to lead the negotiators along while manipulating Europeans to throw a lifeline.
As well as building up its offensive capabilities, it will be trying to replace its Russian-supplied air defences shattered by an IDF counterstrike last October. It will also be further hardening and dispersing its nuclear facilities.
Trump needs to understand that, even if a deal is agreed, it won’t be worth the paper its written on. Tehran has repeatedly breached the terms of Obama’s deal as well as its obligations under the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. Whatever obfuscation it comes up with, Iran will not voluntarily surrender its nuclear weapons programme.
All these negotiations will therefore achieve is to obstruct and delay the inevitable. It is imperative that the US now gives a green light to Netanyahu to do what he has to do, and provide him with whatever support he needs.
The consequences of failure to act go beyond Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Trump’s moves will also be measured in Moscow and Beijing. Anything other than a hard line with Tehran will be taken as a sign of weakness. It will encourage Putin to continue to refuse to negotiate over Ukraine, believing the cost to be low.
And it will show Xi that even the most bullish and unpredictable president the White House has seen for many years may not stand in the way of his own imperial ambitions. Ultimately, deterrence comes down to demonstrable political will. If a (not yet) nuclear armed state can’t be prevented from endangering the world by the American superpower, then what hope is there for anyone deterring two nuclear states.
Targeting college-bound Jewish students and their parents, two American immigrants to Israel penned a “For Dummies”-style primer on being a Jewish collegiate during times of surging antisemitism.
The authors of “10 Things Every Jew Should Know Before They Go to College” — Emily Schrader and Blake Flayton — were each at the center of antisemitism scandals on their respective college campuses. Although they now live in Israel, Schrader and Flayton remain closely connected to the scene on American campuses.
In an interview with The Times of Israel, Schrader said the antisemitism at her former campus — University of Southern California — spurred her to move to Israel in 2015.
Incidents ranged from antisemitic Tweets to chants of “Death to Israel” on the USC campus quad, said Schrader. The journalist quickly became an outspoken opponent of Students for Justice in Palestine, the anti-Israel network that has been banned on several campuses in recent months.
“The administration did nothing,” said Schrader. “I knew the trajectory was going the wrong way even at schools like USC.”
Although “10 Things” is most relevant for North American Jews, the book makes note of campus developments around the world. Anti-Israel university activities often migrate from Europe to North American campuses, said Schrader.
“It’s worse in Europe. What happens in the UK is sort of a precursor to what happens in North America,” said Schrader.
The book is divided into 10 chapters based on topics including the media, the West Bank and the United Nations. There is content regarding campus support networks — including Hillel and Chabad — as well as warnings about Israel’s campus opponents and their activities.
Please read the following headline and subhed on a New York Times report today:Brendan O'Neill: Good riddance to Greta’s Gaza ship of fools
“The Tunnel That Leads Underneath a Hospital in Southern Gaza
To Israelis, the location of an underground passageway highlights Hamas’s abuse of civilians. To Palestinians, Israel’s decision to target it highlights Israel’s own disregard for civilian life.”
Just so we’re all clear on what happened: The leader of Hamas was using a bunker directly underneath the emergency department of a hospital. Israel took out that leader with a strike that avoided the hospital itself, after giving advance warning of its intentions. Then Israel cleared the area around it and retrieved the body.
According to the Times, the preceding scenario is open to interpretation.
But to really understand what’s happening here, one has to rewind slightly to the moment of the strike and its aftermath. Last month, Israel struck the tunnel under the European Hospital in an attempt to eliminate Muhammad Sinwar, the leader of Hamas and successor to his brother, Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks. News agencies insisted Israel was lying about the presence of Hamas leadership or an underground bunker, relying on fake “experts” whose expertise I debunked here.
Then it turned out that, as usual, Israel was telling the truth. Then journalists complained that Israel was keeping journalists out of the war zone, a kind of veiled justification for why they keep making up stories. Israel responded by giving journalists a tour of the underground bunker itself. Journalists responded by saying, essentially, ah well, nevertheless!
So here’s a question worth repeating: Will these news agencies still continue to platform the fake “experts” who keep making fools of them? Will they still use the same reporters and anchors that keep getting these stories wrong while behaving unprofessionally on-air?
It’s brilliant to see the fizzling out of this summer jaunt to the Med masquerading as a moral crusade. For nothing has ever captured the lazy theatrics and fake virtue of modern activism as much as Greta’s dumb boat did. This so-called freedom flotilla would have done precisely nothing to assist the suffering people of Gaza. That was never really its aim. The ship of fools was always more interested in raising awareness about itself and its moral brilliance than about the needs of Gaza’s civilians.Seth Mandel: Free Palestine from ‘Free Palestine’
Indeed, as Greta and Co crossed the choppy Med with their ‘tiny amount of aid’, Evil Israel handed out millions of meals in Gaza. In the first 15 days of its operations, the US-Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has given more than 10million meals to the needy. You couldn’t write satire like this: 12 woke fainthearts on a boat wail ‘Feed Gaza!’ as Israel does exactly that. As Greta and her smug chums bloviated on their boat to any media channel that would listen, Israel did the hard graft of feeding a war-whacked populace. As they took selfies of themselves sobbing into their keffiyehs about hungry Gazans, Israel was giving those Gazans food. They did moral pantomime, for likes on Instagram; Israel did aid, with no thanks at all.
Tell me that doesn’t sum up 21st-century activism. Tell me it doesn’t shine a brilliant light on the self-serving shitshow that is modern ‘leftism’, where the aim is always to accrue greater virtue for oneself rather than to improve the lot of others. As Greta was snapped dangling her legs off the hull of her boat in the glorious sun, young IDF troops were risking their lives guiding food trucks through a warzone. And you want us to cheer her? Forget about it. To some of us, it feels like the people on that boat were primarily interested in rebuilding their moral brand on the rubble of a bloody war. That’s not admirable, it’s sick.
Yet even as we cheer the interception of this ship of pricks, we need to get real about what it tells us about our times. This flurry of keffiyehs in the sea, and the cheering of it by the media elites, confirms that your virtue is now measured by how much you hate Israel. The old omnicauses of climate change and gender bollocks have withered away, to be replaced by the new omnicause of raging against the Jewish State. Hence, Greta has swapped her childish baloney about billions perishing at the altar of modernity in favour of lamenting Israel’s ‘genocide’ and the threat it supposedly poses to us all. You don’t need a PhD on 20th-century Europe to recognise how dangerous it is for the self-righteous of the West to define themselves in direct and furious opposition to the world’s only Jewish nation.
The great left-wing monocause of anti-Zionism is the chief organizing principle of progressive protest and it is currently the closest thing the movement has to a genuine litmus test. But for a time this could be expressed by simply banning Jewish symbols from progressive gatherings. Now, the iconography is an affirmatively Palestinian one.Andrew Fox: Moby Dickhead
The way this happens is a two-step process. Step one: The angsty activist left grabs on to someone else’s readymade cause and rides along, adopting an approach of basic mimicry. Step two: Youngish, progressive American activists soon outnumber actual Palestinians in the movement, and the “for Gaza” world is absorbed by the progressive Blob. Like the merger of a brand with a sales infrastructure, the issue is now owned by the conglomerate.
Is this a happy marriage? I doubt it, because everything done by Western activists makes life actively worse for Palestinians in the long run. But now the keffiyeh and the Palestinian flag are contributions to the intellectual property of the Blob.
Sales are excellent, but actual Palestinians don’t see a dime from the keffiyeh bubble, and when it bursts, they’ll be blamed. That’s how the Blob works. Don’t take it personally; it’s just business.
And until the bubble bursts, that stuff will be everywhere. (Intersectionalism, baby!) Every other progressive activist is treating the keffiyeh craze like spring break in the ’90s, coming home wearing a Señor Frog’s t-shirt. The marketing possibilities are endless: I Accused Israel of Genocide at the Hague and All I Got Was This Stupid Shirt.
Pretty soon, everywhere someone is denouncing the United States or assaulting a police officer or torching cars or vandalizing houses of worship, the Palestinian flag and keffiyeh will be there. Not because Palestinians want it that way, but because the Blob’s merchandizing department does. Meanwhile, any capital spent on the Palestinians will be spent defending and buttressing Hamas, the fascist death grip currently squeezing the life out of everything it finds in Gaza. But cool shirt, bro.
This is not activism; it is narcissism masquerading as the rhetoric of moral urgency. It is the political equivalent of a wealthy teenager running away from home to make a statement, only to call the press for coverage and an Uber for the return journey.
Just like that, the climate crusader became a freedom flotilla freedom fighter, in a saga that feels less like history and more like an overwrought TikTok skit: “White Girl Finds Herself on the High Seas.”
Let us dispel the fantasy that Greta is some generational prophet. She is a product of PR handlers, of post-ideological Instagram politics, of a generation that confuses virality with virtue. Her interventions have consistently carried the theatrical air of a school play written in crayon and directed by individuals with saviour complexes. This latest escapade merely confirms what many suspected: Greta has outgrown climate change. The original cause, having reached its peak in moral clarity, no longer satisfies the appetite for drama. Now, like any brand in decline, she pivots. Gaza is the new climate; victimhood is the new activism.
If you want to play with fire, expect to get burned. Reports suggest that Greta, along with other detainees, will be shown footage from the 7 October atrocities, the defining trauma for Israelis still reeling from the bloodshed.
Good.
She should watch it: every gory frame; every slaughtered festival-goer; every burned corpse; every grandmother dragged from her home. She should watch it all and sit in silence for a change, instead of trying to turn every global tragedy into another Greta-centric chapter of her self-authored mythology.
This is not about denying the suffering of civilians in Gaza or about opposing protest. It is about proportion, decency, and reality. Greta’s self-aggrandising stunt insults the real victims on all sides. It reduces the complexity of a brutal, decades-long conflict to a teenage morality play with herself at the centre.
Greta was not kidnapped. She was interrupted.
For the rest of us still trying to live in the real world, to make sense of its horrors without resorting to cosplay and Instagram reels, that is at least some small mercy.
Monday, June 09, 2025Elder of ZiyonMPs are holding a debate on banning halal and kosher slaughter of animals, after thousands of Britons signed a petition demanding better animal welfare. It will be held in Westminster Hall, meaning that while there won’t be a vote it will be the first debate of the religious practice in parliament for years.The showdown was forced as a result of a public petition on the parliamentary website, entitled: “Ban non-stun slaughter in the UK”, which garnered 109,018 signatures. It read: “In modern society, we believe more consideration needs to be given to animal welfare and how livestock is treated and culled. We believe non-stun slaughter is barbaric and doesn't fit in with our culture and modern-day values and should be banned, as some EU nations have done."A Government response on January 10 defended the practice, arguing that while it would “prefer all animals to be stunned before slaughter… we respect the rights of Jews and Muslims to eat meat prepared in accordance with their religious beliefs.”
|
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
|
Monday, June 09, 2025Elder of ZiyonJewish ethics.jpg)
Upon further thought, I suggest that the entire idea of rights is a fiction, and Jewish ethics shows this to be the case. Moreover, the discourse of rights is damaging to society.
Firstly, without even invoking Jewish ethics, a little thought shows that while rights discourse assumes that rights are universal and even unalienable, it is not true. The best example is the one right everyone would agree on: the right to life. Does a soldier in a (legal) war have the right to life? No, he is expected to risk his life, and his very job is to do dangerous things - perhaps even missions that are tantamount to suicidal. If the opposing army has the right to kill the soldier, then what does "right to life" mean? Partial or provisional rights are not rights.
Furthermore, as we've discussed, , the idea of rights makes people feel a sense of entitlement. It makes people think in terms what they are owed, not what they can contribute. Each person's rights can clash which makes everyone potential adversaries - free speech vs. privacy, for example. When rights are absolute, how do you decide between competing rights?
Moreover, the very language of rights makes no distinction between what is allowed and what is ethical. For right-based moral systems, anything that is a "right" is also moral by definition. This means that there is no ethical barrier to speaking ruinous gossip for no positive purpose, for example.
I’m not the first to question the idea of rights. Jeremy Bentham, a prime architect of utilitarianism, called natural rights “nonsense upon stilts.” Hannah Arendt noted that rights are dependent on being a citizen, which means that there are no universal rights at all. Alasdair MacIntyre, who recently passed away, ridiculed the entire concept of rights, saying “there are no such rights and belief in them is one with belief in witches and in unicorns.”
Jewish ethics offers not only a critique of the rights-based model, but something richer: a system rooted in relationships, responsibility, shared obligations and covenant. It reframes the moral conversation not around what we are owed, but what we owe each other. What looks like a "right" in Jewish thought is often the visible result of others’ duties.
In this framework, what we call "rights" are the shadows cast by others' obligations. You have a "right" not to be stolen from because others are forbidden to steal. You have a "right" to safety because the community is obligated to protect you. These are not abstract entitlements but the byproduct of relational duties.
There is no “right” to life in a vacuum. But murder is categorically forbidden—except in edge cases like self-defense or war. And there is no contradiction because the priorities and triage principles are defined.
Instead of total, inalienable rights, Jewish ethics offers instead a layered structure of moral obligations - personal, communal, national - that interact to protect dignity, preserve justice, and respond to human need.
If there is any “right” in Jewish ethics, it is this: the moral freedom to act within the bounds of ethical obligation. That’s it. You are free to do anything that doesn’t violate what you owe to others.
This is not license—it is liberty with responsibility. And it’s enough.
So what about education, healthcare, wages, safety?
These aren’t rights in Jewish ethics. They are obligations - duties the state or community owes when individuals or families can’t fulfill them.
The state is obligated to provide a court system. It must support the poor. It must provide healthcare for those who cannot afford it. Workers must be paid and protected from being abused. Public infrastructure must be built. These are all community or state-level obligations to the people in exchange for the covenantal agreement of following the law, and of paying taxes.
The question of who is responsible for providing essential services is an interesting one. The answer goes beyond pure ethics into political theory,. It is worth thinking about it in terms of Jewish ethics principles we have already discussed. After all, if Jewish ethics are universal, and can apply to every imaginable situation - which is my thesis - then it should have something to say about how a government is built and run, at least as an aspirational model.
Ideas for a democratic government that is centered on Jewish ethics
Consider the following paragraphs a trial balloon describing one way that a democratically elected government can adhere to Jewish ethical standards. It is not complete but it is aspirational. There may be other models, but this is a thought experiment to see how truly universal the Jewish ethical framework is. Most other secular ethical systems do not get close to even thinking about these sorts of issues.
It seems to me that the obligations of government to citizens follow the same tiered structure of obligations of citizens to others. In short, the concentric circles of responsibility that everyone has - to themselves, to their families, to their community, to their nation, and to the world - applies in the obverse: the state should only step in and provide services when the smaller units like family and community cannot do them for any reason.
The state is the safety net when the other systems fail.
This means that the primary responsibility of care belongs to the individual. But some things, like infrastructure or self defense, cannot easily be done by all but the wealthy, and that is where the government steps in. Similarly, if caring for orphans or the chronically ill is too onerous for the family or community, only then should the state subsidize or provide the care. People should always think of themselves as the primary responsible party and the state as a backup.
This is similar but not identical to the Catholic concept of ethical subsidiarity, but instead of defining which group has authority to act, the Jewish system describes who has the obligation to act and when. Each actor fulfills what they can in an outward direction of concentric community circles, and the state steps in precisely where failure occurs.
Interestingly, this also means that the person most responsible for themselves as individuals is themselves. Personal responsibility is the default, as opposed to modern society where everyone blames everyone else (their parents, their boss, their spouse) for their own perceived shortcomings.
This is how to build a better society.
There are still practical problems that would need to be solved, but this framework gives us a refreshing prism to view old problems anew.
One major question relates to changing government roles in response to new needs that it must provide for logistical, financial or practical reasons. Whenever the government is needed to provide a new service, there is always a cost which typically is seen in new taxes. But is this a new covenant between the people and the government? What happens if people don't want this new program? How, in a democratic government, can we keep the spirit of the covenant alive when it changes often?
Jewish tradition offers possible ways to solve this.
One is the idea of takkanot and g'zeirot, new laws enacted by the leaders to handle new situations. (Takkanot would be new positive laws, g'zeirot are new protections around existing ethical concepts, "fences" around laws, termed as "negative" laws.) Takkanot (as a generalized term for both) were only issued for exceptional circumstances. But crucially, these laws were given along with the reasons they are enacted, with the idea that when the circumstances change, the new law can and should be canceled. So new laws and services should be a last resort when necessary.
Another, more novel idea for negotiating new laws and services without holding a referendum for each one is a twist on the idea of representatives. In Jewish law, a "shaliach" is an agent who is empowered to act on behalf of an individual. Perhaps the representatives should have formal roles as shlichim, agents, who can decide on behalf of their own (local) communities which laws and services make sense to them. These agents are not lawmakers, they are not the government, and their only power is to decide on behalf of their people what laws are worthwhile knowing the tradeoff of increased taxes or other additional responsibilities.
But how do we protect minorities in such a system? How can the representatives who are representing their people ensure that everyone is treated fairly? Because legislation cannot override ethical principles. Major values like value of life, human dignity and freedom from persecution are basic functions of society and any proposed law that violates these would not be allowed at the outset. There is no concept of a "mandate" by a government elected with 53% or so of the vote to do whatever they want - every law must adhere to the basic ethical principles.
New laws and new services would be, by default, temporary unless a supermajority supports a permanent new service. Each one would have a mandatory periodic review to see whether it should continue. New organizations should not build new buildings but lease or rent; employees should typically not expect a job for life but be contractors.
This is a curious combination of libertarian and social centered government. Some services to help those most in need are not negotiable because they fulfill basic ethical requirements and the community level cannot pay for them. But the default behavior is that any new program is considered temporary except under exceptional circumstances.
The very existence of a Jewish ethical framework often shows how the current partisan divides between right/left or libertarian/socialist are not necessarily accurate reflections of the choices one can make. If you think that some parts of the liberal ideology makes sense and some parts of conservative thinking makes sense, it is nice to see that there are more than two choices in how to look at issues. Very possibly, the Jewish framework can provide a way out of the binary thinking that dominate American political life today and show that you can care for the needy, minimize government and still be consistent in your ideology.
This obligation-based framework:
Protects dignity without flattening context.
Allows for compassion without collapsing into relativism.
Encourages moral creativity without moral chaos.
Jewish ethics isn’t stingier than rights-based models; it’s deeper and more real. By asking, ‘What do I owe?’ instead of ‘What am I owed?’ it binds us together in ways no list of rights ever could
That’s not just more realistic. It’s more human.
|
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
|
Buy EoZ's books!
PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
Buy 
