Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 11, 2026

02/11 Links Pt1: Hamas’ World Vision Operative and the Campaign to Obstruct His Trial; Guterres faces backlash for congratulating Iranian regime; France calls on UN rapporteur Albanese to resign

From Ian:

James Kirchick: The Chutzpah of Yoram Hazony

The thrust of Hazony’s argument is that combatting anti-Semitism is as alienating or more alienating to voters than anti-Semitism itself. This reasoning is both morally and tactically wrong. Polls continue to show that a large majority of conservatives support Israel and oppose anti-Semitism. And yet Hazony believes that the 25 percent of the party that is exercised about anti-Semitism should avoid hurting the feelings of the 10 percent who are anti-Semites. Tucker Carlson, Hazony said, is “a very smart, passionate, and very likeable man when you meet him in person.” At the first NatCon conference in Washington, D.C., “he gave one of the best speeches we have ever hosted.” Moreover, “Tucker has been saying—as clear as the day—that he is not an anti-Semite.” Acting like the tough Israeli sabra, Hazony is the cowering Jew of the shtetl, furious at his fellow Jews for provoking anti-Semites.

Hazony’s analysis of American politics and history—epitomized in his laughable claim that Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz, and Mike Pompeo are the ideological heirs of Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsay—is as apt as his prognostication skills. In a November interview with Ross Douthat of the New York Times, Hazony said that he was “hoping” Vice President Vance will have “the skill of determining what the boundaries of the coalition are.” The following month, Vance decried “endless, self-defeating purity tests” and righteously affirmed that he would not “bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform.” Hazony also told Douthat, “I assume that Heritage is going to solve the problem [of anti-Semitism]. I know a little bit about what steps they’re taking, and I think it’s very, very likely that Heritage is going to get on an appropriate and excellent path.” As of this writing, more than 60 senior Heritage staff have left the think tank since Roberts avowed the institution’s unflinching loyalty to Carlson.

While Hazony feigns at playing a moderating force within the movement, what he’s really doing is covering his own tracks, desperately attempting to retain his influence by whitewashing the egregious behavior of his allies and the logical outcomes of his own philosophy. Through his books (The Virtue of Nationalism and Conservatism: A Rediscovery) and conferences, Hazony has been a principal figure in the drive to undermine universalist Enlightenment values as the basis of the American founding. According to Hazony, those who believe such hogwash are “imperialists” who support “the ideal of an international government or regime that imposes its will on subject nations when its officials regard this as necessary.” Proper nationalists, by contrast, believe that “nations should be free to set their own course in the absence of such an international government or regime.” Into the former category Hazony places the Third Reich, the European Union, and the late Charles Krauthammer.

Furthermore, American conservatives have got their history all wrong, a failure for which they must “repent.” The real intellectual fathers of the American Revolution are not John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, whose classical liberalism Hazony conflates with the antinomianism of the 1960s, but rather the 15th-century English jurist John Fortescue and the 17th-century John Selden, whose writings he uses to endorse the concept of America having a state-backed religion (Christianity). If this fake history sounds like a right-wing version of the 1619 Project, that’s because it is.

The rise in anti-Semitism on the right is attributable to a handful of individuals whom Hazony is too cowardly and embarrassed to condemn. Like a vengeful alcoholic at an intervention, he is lashing out and blaming everyone but himself for the wreckage he helped create—the mirror-image of the left-wing Jew who makes excuses for his anti-Semitic comrades. Imagining himself a world-class intellectual, he is, for lack of a better term, a moron. How else could he have thought that forging alliances with European-style blood-and-soil nationalists would be good for the Jews, or America?

Hazony sees himself as a scholar-statesman on the level of a Jabotinsky or Ben-Gurion when he’s really an arriviste. In a reprehensible attempt to protect his access to power, Hazony is willing to gainsay his American co-religionists, who know better than him the threats they face. Watching Hazony’s Jerusalem speech reminded me of no one so much as Rabbi Lionel Bengelsdorf from Philip Roth’s novel The Plot Against America, in which Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election and keeps the country out of World War II. The oleaginous Bengelsdorf, who supported Lindbergh, becomes the new president’s court Jew. “I have encountered considerable hostility from members of the Jewish community for allying myself in the 1940 election with the Lindbergh campaign,” Bengelsdorf tells a Jewish family, one of whose sons lost a leg fighting with the Canadian army against the Nazis. “I am pleased to tell you that it took no more than two or three sessions alone with the president to get him to relinquish his misconceptions and to appreciate the manifold nature of Jewish life in America.”

Alas, not even Bengelsdorf’s obsequiousness can outweigh the fact of his Jewishness, and the FBI arrests him for being “among the ringleaders of the Jewish conspiratorial plot against America.” At the end of the book, Bengelsdorf is released and writes a face-saving memoir in which he admits the error of his ways. At this point in his intellectual career, a mea culpa is the least Yoram Hazony can do.

Commentary PodCast: The Price of Chutzpah

Today we are joined by Commentary's new Washington commentary columnist Jamie Kirchick to discuss his new piece on Yoram Hazony. Plus the positive job report, Trump's deal-making obsession on the backdrop on Netanyahu's visit to Washington, and John once again recommends Natan Sharansky's Fear No Evil.

Human Rights Watch’s Frankenstein moment

Shakir’s tactics were not deviations. They were the logical outcome of habits the institution had long tolerated — even rewarded — when they advanced approved narratives. Over time, small permissions sent a clear signal: toxic behavior was acceptable, limits were flexible, standards negotiable.

I saw those habits take hold firsthand.

In 2019 and 2021, I raised concerns with multiple senior staff members about what I saw as a growing “lack of proportionality, context, and balance” in work. I warned that internal discourse was drifting away from HRW’s stated values and that published work “in structure, content, and tone does not meet basic standards of balance and professionalism.” There was no meaningful response.

By 2022, resistance to internal scrutiny was more explicit. The Israel-Palestine chapter of the World Report — HRW’s global review of abuses that I oversaw — became a battleground.

One exchange involved the trial of Mohammed al-Halabi, a World Vision employee. The draft described the proceedings as a “mockery of due process.” But it did not mention the charges against him — that he was accused of funneling money to Hamas. When I asked Shakir to note the charges, as per normal standards of balance, he declined, saying, “The charges are wild.”

In emails sent over my head, Shakir said my review “smacked of being selective.”

A manager reminded him that I reviewed all chapters, including his, and backed my position: “We should never mention a case without mentioning what the charges are. If we think the charges are not credible, we should explain why.” It was a relief — but rare.

For the most part, managers placated, ignored, and excused. “This has been mostly instructive as to how things appear to work with Omar and who calls the shots,” I wrote to a manager after several bruising rounds with Shakir. “Three of us raised issues, including yourself, and in a call to me, you said various elements that remain are not acceptable. And yet you totally back down.”

Accommodation often reflected ideological alignment. But it also sometimes reflected quiet capitulation by an older guard increasingly overwhelmed by strident activist tactics. Watching them try to restrain the shift was like watching Canute try to hold back the tide. “I’m torn between saying the future is clear and I’m not part of it — and taking a stand,” one told me. “It depends how much energy I have on any given day.”

Whatever energy did exist proved insufficient; an increasingly divisive, outraged, aggressive way of doing business continued to gain ground. Foreshadowing last week’s petition signed by 200 staff, Shakir played a key role in rallying some 120 employees after October 7 to pressure senior managers to include references to Israeli “apartheid” in a press release about hostages.

“Argumentation” and “balance” were giving way to “messaging” and “narrative” — increasingly amplified by a new, under-the-radar partner: celebrities.

In the days after October 7, staff referenced talks with “Disney,” “top-tier celebrities,” and the “Hadid sisters” — American-Palestinian influencers Gigi and Bella Hadid, whose rhetoric since has included very familiar language: Israeli “apartheid,” colonialism, and ethnic cleansing.

Human Rights Watch’s own methodology holds that while individuals commit abuses, responsibility ultimately rests with the institutions that enable, direct, or fail to restrain them.

Its public fallout with Shakir is a lesson for institutions that believe they can harness ideology and activism — even when doing so strains their own standards — without those same forces eventually turning inward and coming for them too.

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

“We’re not experts in Islamic law — but we’re pretty sure scamming the American people for a living violates every religion,” declared Republican National Committee Press Secretary Kiersten Pels.

She said it with that familiar Western confidence—the kind that assumes every faith, deep down, plays by roughly the same moral rules we do. In this case, the remark came as people were asking hard questions about Rep. Ilhan Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, whose wine venture eStCru allegedly defrauded an investor out of $300,000 (settled in court), stiffed winemakers, and limped to its grave with just $650 left in the bank. Mynett converted to Islam to marry Omar. Yet he built a business selling bottles named “The Devil’s Lie” and “Blockchain.” Alcohol. Straight-up haram. Forbidden.

Somehow these details get hand-waved away while the financial sleight-of-hand is the thing that raises eyebrows.

And this is the crux of the problem.

Too many in the West look at something like Omar and Mynett’s improprieties and think, Dishonesty is wrong in every religion, right? As if Islam were just Christianity or Judaism with different holidays. As if the moral grammar is identical.

It’s nothing new. We’ve heard the soothing bromides about Islam coming out of Westerners’ mouths since forever.

George W. Bush, for example, called Islam a faith that inspires “honesty, and justice, and compassion,” insisting that we all share the same beliefs regarding God’s justice and human responsibility. Barack Obama stood in Cairo and spoke of justice, compassion, and tolerance, as if these were universal values—as if Muslims see these things the same way as Jews or Christians.

Some bigwigs, notably Pope Benedict XVI and Kofi Annan spoke of the overlapping commitments of the three major religions, to dignity, charity, and basic human goodness. Assumptions that are demonstrably untrue and that lull Westerners into complacency, dangerously unprepared for the wall they keep slamming into. Repeatedly. Without learning anything about Islam in the process.

American policymakers consistently misread Middle Eastern dynamics shaped by Islamic history, tribal loyalties, honor culture, grievance narratives, and religious doctrine. Western negotiators prioritize signed agreements, institutional trust, and reciprocal transparency. Regional actors often prioritize long-term positioning, tactical ambiguity, and fluid alliances built on immediate interests rather than enduring value alignment. Sunni Hamas cooperates with Shi’ite Iran despite doctrinal hostility. Iranian negotiations repeatedly coincide with continued proxy warfare and nuclear advancement. Statements frequently serve strategic positioning rather than candid moral declaration.

The negotiations with Hamas are illustrative of the West’s misunderstanding of the Islamic mindset. Donald Trump has been pushing hard on his 20-point peace plan for Gaza that began with a ceasefire that isn’t. There are daily Hamas breaches targeting IDF soldiers. Yet Trump continues to express total confidence that Hamas will disarm in Phase 2.

In Davos last month, Trump warned that Hamas must hand over weapons and hostage remains “within weeks” or be “blown away very quickly.” His team, including Jared Kushner, assured us that “Hamas signed a deal to demilitarize; that is what we are going to enforce.” Trump even floated a two-month ultimatum, seeing disarmament as the “linchpin” for peace—assuming compliance based on initial agreements and mediator optimism—an assumption that was wildly overoptimistic.

Just this week, in fact, senior Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal rejected Trump’s demand for disarmament outright. Mashaal called disarmament “an attempt to turn our people into victims, to make their elimination easier and to facilitate their destruction at the hands of the Israeli side.”

Mashaal framed the concept of disarmament as victimization. “Questions about the resistance’s weapons are being raised forcefully. Some want to place it in the context that whoever carried out Oct. 7 must be cornered and made to pay the price... As those who participated in the resistance, we must not accept this.”

And he tied it all to deeper roots: “Protecting the resistance project and its weapons is the right of our people to defend themselves. The resistance and its weapons are the ummah’s [Islamic nation’s] honor and pride.” Senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzouk jumped on the bandwagon, saying “Not for a single moment did we talk about surrendering weapons”—insisting the issue was never even raised in negotiations.

That flat-out denial exposes the gap between the West and the Middle East: Trump’s banking on an “agreement” that Hamas leaders say doesn’t exist, leaving the president chasing a fantasy of compliance that would never be realized.

The divide runs deeper still. Sharia law is built on a historical memory of expansion as glory, a division of the world into realms of Islam and realms of war, and—in certain contexts—religious justifications for violence against those outside the fold. In many Muslim-majority countries, large numbers say they want Sharia as the law of the land. Integration challenges, no-go zones, blasphemy riots, persecution of Christians and other minorities are not poverty or political grievances—they’re more closely related to religious ideas the West has trained itself not to name.

Even when the West gets a glimmer of the truth, it chooses appeasement over censure. In January, for example, President Trump designated key chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon as terrorist organizations. This is because the Muslim Brotherhood is a political-Islam network with ties to Hamas and an agenda of gradual supremacy. Europe, however, keeps inviting them to conferences, funding their organizations, treating their violent proclamations as just another voice in the world community.

The West needs to stop imagining that Middle Eastern moral and strategic frameworks line up neatly with its own, to stop assuming that “every religion” rejects dishonesty or violence in the same way. Else, we all pay a terrible price: botched policies, eroded security, societies overtaken by immigrants who do not share their values. And of course, cruelty and horrific violence, such as we saw on October 7. Such as we see now with Iran’s treatment of those who protest against Khamenei’s “vision” of what an Islamic republic should be.

The West needs to stop leaning on comforting platitudes about shared Abrahamic values. Instead of assuming that all people, everywhere, are the same, the West needs the courage to look straight at where Islam diverges from Judaism and Christianity—on alcohol, on “resistance,” on diplomacy and deception, on supremacy, on the status of non-Muslims—and deal with reality as it is, not as it wishes it were.

Western values are rooted in goodness. Take Americans—they’re nice. They want to be kind and open-minded about Islam, while in reality they are only being naïve and reckless at their own peril. The cost of Western blindness to Islamic values continues to climb as Western leaders rack up missed warnings and policy failures—as they fail to make peace while claiming they already did, and taking credit for something that never happened. The future looks grim, because misunderstanding Islam, tends to lead to violent reprisals.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Al Jazeera "investigates" Israel supposedly vaporizing thousands of Gazans. An examination of their lies.

Al Jazeera reports:

According to the Al Jazeera Arabic investigation, The Rest of the Story, Civil Defence teams in Gaza have documented 2,842 Palestinians who have “evaporated” since the war began in October 2023, leaving behind no remains other than blood spray or small fragments of flesh.

Experts and witnesses attributed this phenomenon to Israel’s systematic use of internationally prohibited thermal and thermobaric weapons, often referred to as vacuum or aerosol bombs, capable of generating temperatures exceeding 3,500 degrees Celsius [6,332 degrees Fahrenheit].

Does the article give any proof that Israel used thermobaric weapons in civilian areas (not aiming at tunnels, for example)? Not at all.

But let's first look at how the very specific number "2,842" was calculated.

The figure of 2,842 is not an estimate, but the result of grim forensic accounting by Gaza’s Civil Defence.

Spokesperson Mahmoud Basal explained to Al Jazeera that teams use a “method of elimination” at strike sites. “We enter a targeted home and cross-reference the known number of occupants with the bodies recovered,” Basal said.

“If a family tells us there were five people inside, and we only recover three intact bodies, we treat the remaining two as ‘evaporated’ only after an exhaustive search yields nothing but biological traces—blood spray on walls or small fragments like scalps,” he added.

What are the chances with any explosion that there will be three intact bodies and two completely incinerated? With conventional explosives it is almost impossible to have full incineration - there is a very high temperature but it lasts for a very short time which isn't enough to make bodies disappear. And for thermobaric explosions, it is extremely unlikely that three bodies would be intact and two evaporated in an enclosed area.

What are the chances the family is lying to claim "martyr" money, or covering up for a Hamas member who was killed separately? Very high.

The article then quotes a Russian military expert:

Vasily Fatigarov, a Russian military expert, explained that thermobaric weapons do not just kill; they obliterate matter. Unlike conventional explosives, these weapons disperse a cloud of fuel that ignites to create an enormous fireball and a vacuum effect.
“To prolong the burning time, powders of aluminium, magnesium and titanium are added to the chemical mixture,” Fatigarov said. “This raises the temperature of the explosion to between 2,500 and 3,000 degrees Celsius [4,532F to 5,432F].”
According to the investigation, the intense heat is often generated by tritonal, a mixture of TNT and aluminium powder used in United States-made bombs like the MK-84.

The first two paragraphs are about thermobaric weapons. Then Al Jazeera switches to conventional weapons like the MK-84 - which has nothing to do with what the expert stated. In fact, the article lists several specific bomb types it identified in Gaza, and not one of them are thermobaric.

The investigation identified specific US-manufactured munitions used in Gaza that are linked to these disappearances:

MK-84 ‘Hammer’: This 900kg [2,000lb] unguided bomb packed with tritonal generates heat up to 3,500C [6,332F].
BLU-109 bunker buster: Used in an attack on al-Mawasi, an area Israel had declared a “safe zone” for forcibly displaced Palestinians in September 2024, this bomb evaporated 22 people. It has a steel casing and a delayed fuse, burying itself before detonating a PBXN-109 explosive mix. This creates a large fireball inside enclosed spaces, incinerating everything within reach.
GBU-39: This precision glide bomb was used in the al-Tabin school attack. It uses the AFX-757 explosive. “The GBU-39 is designed to keep the building structure relatively intact while destroying everything inside,” Fatigarov noted. “It kills via a pressure wave that ruptures lungs and a thermal wave that incinerates soft tissue.”

Why can't they name the thermobaric bomb type that they are accusing Israel of using? Why are they using evidence of conventional bombs to support their thesis of thermal weapons?

If Israel used thermobaric weapons on urban areas, the blast crater would be distinctive. It would be very shallow and show burn marks around the perimeter. None of the many media examinations of craters in Gaza mention anything like that.

The next section shows how unserious this analysis is:

Dr Munir al-Bursh, director general of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, explained the biological impact of such extreme heat on the human body, which is composed of roughly 80 percent water.

“The boiling point of water is 100 degrees Celsius [212F],” al-Bursh said. “When a body is exposed to energy exceeding 3,000 degrees combined with massive pressure and oxidation, the fluids boil instantly. The tissues vaporise and turn to ash. It is chemically inevitable.”

This is not true. It takes time for water to boil. A conventional weapon hits 3,000 degrees for microseconds; a thermobaric weapon for much longer, milliseconds. But actual vaporization of bodies requires enough time to heat up all the fluids to boiling point. This is unlikely even if Israel was using thermobaric weapons - which Al Jazeera could not show at all.

There is also an underlying assumption here that is pure antisemitism. There is no military advantage for Israel to target civilians in this or any other way. The entire article rests on the reader believing that Israel is evil enough to divert military goals to kill Gazans. And if they only managed to kill less than 3,000 Gazans by thermobaric weapons in two years, that is a pretty inefficient use of the most powerful non-nuclear weapons in existence.

I would be most interested in seeing the list of 2,842 supposed victims. If they were really vaporized by thermobaric weapons they should be mostly women and children. I would bet that this list shows mostly adult males - Hamas members who were buried in tunnels, or perhaps they really were incinerated by localized thermobaric explosions that Israel used to destroy tunnel networks.

This is a propaganda piece, pretending to be a scientific investigation. And the same Dr. Munir al Barsh also accused Israel of leaving booby trapped toys in Gaza. He is a Hamas employee and a major part of Hamas' information war who first made the "vaporization" accusation in 2024 , not an objective observer.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Insane Jew-hatred still routine in Turkish media

It's been a while since I looked at Turkish media for antisemitism, and things are at least as bad as they have ever been.

Here are some recent published articles:

Açıksöz, a respected regional newspaper in northern Turkey, has an article "Why are Jews powerful?" where it includes such gems as:

Investigate those who spread usury, exploitation, banking, oppression, immorality, and all kinds of corruption, and you'll find Jews behind it. That's why the Jews are guilty. The Jews have inflicted the scourge of usury, which pits the poor against the rich, upon the world. To take revenge on nations, the Jews have invented all kinds of corrupting organizations (capitalism, communism, materialism, Zionism, positivism) and anarchy (terrorism).

Yeniakit is promoting a popular Turkish paranoid fantasy that crypto-Jews are controlling the nation:

The behind-the-scenes details of the dirty games being played against Turkey continue to be revealed. Associate Professor Dr. Ahmet Kavlak, in a program he participated in, drew attention to the existence of "Crypto-Jews" who have infiltrated the most critical points of the state since the founding of the Republic of Turkey, and who present themselves as Muslims. Kavlak emphasized that this structure has severed the nation's vital artery, bringing shocking truths to light.

Turkish media is loving the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, using it as proof of Jewish evil.

An email between Epstein and a Rutgers professor Robert Trivers about using drugs to help people transition genders is headlined "Jews are behind the LGBT movement!"

Ahaber compares Epstein's abuse of children with a blood libel that never happened. It claims that in the 17th century, Jews lived in Trabzon until Sultan Selim's era, when two children went missing. After a prolonged search, signs in the market (painted leather hides with hidden writings) led to the discovery of the children in an underground cave beneath tanneries, and the sultan then expelled the Jews from Trabzon. There is no historic record of any of this happening, but Turkish media is claiming that this proves that Jews abuse non-Jewish kids.

Habervakti makes a similar accusation with the same fictional blood libel case, and also compares it to the tunnels under Chabad episode that was so popular with antisemitic conspiracy theorists.

Sabah says that the Mossad used Victoria's Secret models employed by Epstein for espionage.

It is almost refreshing, though, to see pure antisemitism that doesn't masquerade as "anti-Zionism" or fake "concern for Palestinians."

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/10 Links Pt2: The case for a three-state solution; IDF brings Syrian child across border into Israel for emergency medical care; EU okays Google’s $32 billion Wiz deal

From Ian:

The case for a three-state solution

In the closing months of his first presidential term, Donald Trump pushed hard for an Israel/Palestine deal. Although well-intentioned, it was widely disparaged – perhaps unfairly – as unworkable, and there remained little opportunity to refine the terms before he left office. But he now has plenty of time to impose a sensible settlement. His rollercoaster approach to international relations may not be to everyone’s taste. Yet flagellation and flattery, bombast and bribery, and hard-cop-soft-cop may be just what is needed here.

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan would be a key player in any such deal. For almost its whole lifetime, the “Palestine” Mandate included Transjordania, the region east of the River Jordan. The British had initially earmarked the whole territory of the Mandate for the Jewish national homeland, but, to the despair of the Zionists, from the Mandate’s very inception they instead devolved autonomous control of Transjordania to the Hashemite Emir Abdullah. In April 1946, the Emirate was finally severed from the Mandate when the old League of Nations, at its last meeting, recognised the new Kingdom (“Transjordan” until 1949, when it took control of the West Bank).

That was the real partition. Jordan was the Mandate’s Arab legacy state. Britain’s Labour government then washed their hands of the problem of the Mandate’s western remnant and dumped it on the United Nations, which, in Resolution 181 of November 29, 1947, voted to sub-partition it. However, by an ironic twist of fate, Israel nonetheless attained sovereignty over the whole remnant. This was through the default operation of a long-established principle of customary international law known as uti possidetis juris.

The rule was automatically triggered by the failure of the Arab community’s leadership to declare a state of their own in the areas allocated under 181.

They knew that doing so alongside Israel would signal implicit agreement with the resolution, and they wanted the lot. But the decision had consequences. It left a sovereignty vacuum in two-thirds of the Mandate’s remnant territory, and as Israel was the only state which came into being on the critical date of the Mandate’s expiry – May 14, 1948 – its sovereignty automatically filled out the vacuum to absorb the whole remnant.

By the end of the 1948 war, Israel could probably have taken control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank salient with comparative ease. But it preferred to concede their occupation, respectively, by Egypt and Jordan under the terms of the 1949 Rhodes Armistice, retaining sovereignty in absentia. Although it seized them in 1967, its statesmen have usually been reticent about making express claims of sovereignty for fear of alienating friendly powers. Most recently, Prime Minister Netanyahu vetoed moves in the Knesset to ratify Israel’s sovereignty over substantial areas of the West Bank after Donald Trump and J.D. Vance voiced stern warnings that it would jeopardise the Abraham Accords.

Yet decades ago, U.S. policy had been more indulgent of Israel’s sovereignty rights over at least some of the West Bank. In 1982, echoing the sentiments of Britain’s Lord Caradon at the UN in 1967, President Ronald Reagan movingly declared that he would never ask the bulk of Israel’s population ever again to live in a territory barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point, within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. Then, in the wake of the Oslo Accords, the terms of the Jordan/Israel peace treaty brokered by Bill Clinton in 1994 expressly recognised in Article 3 that the “international boundary between Israel and Jordan”, defined in Annex 1(a) as the River Jordan and the Dead Sea, was “the permanent, secure and recognised international boundary between Israel and Jordan, without prejudice to the status of any territories,” and as such was “inviolable.” The “without prejudice” saving merely reflected the possibility of an eventual negotiated settlement over sovereignty between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, envisaged under Oslo. The treaty could not have enunciated a clearer acknowledgement of Israel’s sovereignty over the West Bank, not merely that it was an occupier.

Arguing over Gaza war death tolls is a fool’s game that hides the real question

Why no one knows who were killed in Gaza. Hamas’s Health Authority, a notoriously untrustworthy source, estimates some 70,000 Gaza deaths, but it does not distinguish fighters from civilians. They would prefer the public to conjure an image of 70,000 dead women and babies, not tens of thousands of ruthless, raping terrorists. But separating bodies of fighters from those of innocents is highly imprecise since Hamas terrorists not only operate among civilians in civilian structures but also dress as them. Likewise, Israeli estimates, which are known for being reliable and made in good faith, suggest that 25,000 fighters were killed, though this number is also imprecise. Thousands of both fighters and innocents are still buried under tons of rubble from collapsed buildings.

Why we don’t know whether a death toll of 70,000 is good or bad. In the Armenian Genocide (1915-1917), some 600,000 to 1.5 million were killed, accounting for 90% of Ottoman Armenians. In the Cambodian Genocide (1975-1979) victims totaled 1.5 million to 3 million, including 99% of Vietnamese Cambodians. More recently, in the U.S.-Iraq war (2003-2011), total deaths are documented at around 460,000. That’s 650% more fatalities than estimated for the Gaza war.

Still, hearing that 70,000 people (of 2.2 million in the Strip) were killed in a war is disturbing, even with the clarifier that “only” 45,000 of them were innocent women, children and seniors. But we certainly can’t assess the magnitude of death without context compared to other modern wars. In perspective, the Gaza war toll, with its far more favorable combatant-to-civilian ratio, was a minor disaster—and certainly, no genocide—compared with Armenia or Cambodia.

Why arguments over blame for Gaza war deaths are nonsense. When a country like Israel is attacked, unprovoked, by its bordering neighbor, as Hamas did on Oct. 7, 2023, there’s little question of responsibility for the conflagration. Hamas was the aggressor. When that aggressor fails to take precautions to protect its citizens in case of war, as Hamas failed to do, responsibility is again clear. Finally, if the aggressor uses a war strategy of human shields—deliberately operating within or around its civilian population, in residences, schools, mosques and hospitals—which is a crime, then that becomes a trifecta of unforgivable barbarism.

In short, civilians who died under these circumstances, no matter the number, are the full responsibility of the aggressor: Hamas. To debate the actual death toll as though it has some inherent moral meaning is irrational. To blame any of the deaths on Israel, which fought strictly according to the rules of war—and, in fact, exceeded what is required in providing humanitarian aid—is irresponsible … and dead wrong.

United Hatzalah Treats Five-Year-Old Boy from Syria with Head Injury

United Hatzalah EMT first responders provided urgent medical care on Tuesday to a five-year-old boy from Syria who sustained serious injuries after falling from a height in the Syrian village of Hader.

The child was transferred across the border into Israel by an Israel Defense Forces ambulance and brought to a soccer pitch in Buq’ata, where United Hatzalah volunteer EMTs were awaiting his arrival.

According to United Hatzalah EMTs Ali Tarbiya and Amin Abu Saleh, the boy arrived in serious condition suffering from traumatic head injuries. Family members reported that he had fallen from a significant height prior to evacuation.

“Our teams immediately initiated emergency medical treatment upon his arrival,” the EMTs said. “Following stabilization efforts at the scene, the child was airlifted by an IDF medical evacuation helicopter to Rambam Health Care Campus for further treatment.”

Two Druze EMTs responded to the incident.

United Hatzalah volunteers provide humanitarian medical assistance regardless of nationality, religion, or background.

The child remains under medical care at Rambam Hospital, where he is undergoing further evaluation and treatment for his injuries.

02/10 Links Pt1: Australia must face up to its anti-Semitism crisis; Hamas’s Boasting Indicts the West; Mamdani and the collapse of ‘liberal Zionism’; What Did You Expect, Starmer?

From Ian:

Hamas’s Boasting Indicts the West

Oct. 7, 2023, displayed something different. Far from hiding its brutality, Hamas advertised it, filming and broadcasting sadistic cruelty. It touted the torture and execution of Israeli women and children as a great moral accomplishment, using the killing as a recruitment tool.

Recall the enthusiastic tone of that young man who called his parents from the phone of an Israeli woman he had just murdered, imploring his mother and father to open up WhatsApp. “Look how many I killed with my own hands. Your son killed Jews!” he told his father. His parents were overjoyed. “My son, God bless you,“ his father said. “I wish I was with you,” his mother added.

Rather than a coverup, this was a media event.

What explains the difference between Hitler and Stalin, who denied their atrocities, and Hamas? Could it be that Hamas knew that many in its Western audience, unlike in Hitler’s and Stalin’s time, would celebrate its crimes as noble resistance? If so, Hamas’s openness indicts our own culture or, at least, its intellectuals.

Within days after Oct. 7, American campuses exploded with anti-Zionist and antisemitic rhetoric. Almost immediately, more than 30 Harvard student groups endorsed Hamas’s actions as justified. University presidents testified that the acceptability of calling for the annihilation of the Jewish people “depends on the context.”

When New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani argues, however implausibly, that the call to “globalize the intifada” is somehow ambiguous, he is at least paying La Rochefoucauld’s tribute to decency. That wasn’t the case at a rally at the Sydney Opera House held two days after the Oct. 7 massacre, when the crowd burned Israeli flags and chanted “Where are the Jews?” On the first night of Hanukkah in 2025, they were at Bondi Beach.

Today’s mass murderers no longer need to hide their crimes from the West’s educated elites, who applaud them. Terrorist boasting testifies to our own moral decline.

Sir Michael Ellis: Israel Thrives While Its Haters Flounder

The mullahs say they have their "fingers on the trigger" and most regional states are rather nervous. Meanwhile, Israel seems to shake it all off and get on with life. One supposes there is nothing like being attacked multiple times over the decades to build resilience. Despite leading a country only the size of Wales, Prime Minister Netanyahu has pointed out that within a decade, Israel's economy will be worth $1 trillion.

While the Iranian regime has been busy murdering protestors by the thousands, haters of Israel prefer to focus their efforts on trying to introduce a boycott of Israeli avocados. At the same time, the Government under Sir Keir Starmer has indefinitely paused a UK trade deal with Israel, thereby doing itself out of business with one of the world's leading high-tech innovators.

Egypt and Israel have recently signed the biggest natural gas deal in Israel's history, worth $35 billion. The Israeli Leviathan gas field will soon supply a substantial proportion of Egypt's energy needs. The UAE has signed a defense contract with Israel worth $2.3 billion for a new, highly sophisticated defense system to protect its civilian and military aircraft. This follows the German parliament approving a $3.5 billion expansion of the Arrow 3 deal with Israel. In total, the deal was valued at $8 billion.

Israel's military, diplomatic, economic and tech strength is extraordinary. But the nation's true strength rests on the happiness, positivity and industry of its people in the face of those who hate them. Israel is one of the world's players. The future bodes well for them. For the haters - not so much.

Australia must face up to its anti-Semitism crisis

This would be a betrayal of Jewish Australians, who this week were reminded once again what a radically different place their country has become to the one in which their parents and grandparents once sought refuge. On Monday, Israeli president Isaac Herzog arrived in Australia for a four-day visit, having been invited over following the Bondi massacre. He was met with enormous counter-protests. Signs were waved depicting Herzog and New South Wales premier Chris Minns – who, with his public displays of solidarity with Jewish Australians, has been an admirable outlier in the Labor Party – as Nazis. Speaking at the Sydney Town Hall, Grace Tame – an activist and former ‘Australian of the Year’ – said Herzog had ‘signed bombs sent to kill innocent civilians’. Nine protesters have been charged for various violent offences, including one man who is alleged to have bitten an officer.

Australia is now a nation that refuses to tolerate the presence of a leader of the world’s only Jewish state, yet at the same time, publicly mourns the death of Hezbollah chief Ismail Haniyeh – a man who dedicated much of his life to killing Jews. To say Australia has a problem with anti-Semitism would be an understatement. This is a full-blown crisis. The protests offered further proof, if any more were needed, of just how necessary it is to hold a royal commission into anti-Semitism.

McCarthy’s call for the commission to also focus on anti-indigenous hatred was not just a blow for Jewish Australians. Many Australians, regardless of background, would also have found her demands curious. There are, of course, small and odious pockets of Australian society where you’ll find racist attitudes towards indigenous Australians. Yet there is no shortage of attention directed at this form of racism, as any recent visitor to Australia could testify.

Great strides have been made towards indigenous advancement. Every public event begins with a Welcome to Country ceremony. More than half of Australia has been returned to indigenous Australians through native title agreements. As McCarthy’s own ministerial title testifies, there are entire government departments dedicated to ‘closing the gap’ between the living standards of indigenous Australians and white Australians. The wrongs visited on indigenous people, from settler violence to the forced integration of the Stolen Generation, were indisputably terrible. But Australia’s recent attempts to atone for them can hardly be faulted.

The royal commission must explore one issue – and one issue only. It must be laser-focussed on the explosion of anti-Semitism in Australia since 7 October 2023. This horrific development has already cost lives. It is the very least Australia’s Jewish community deserves.

Of course, a royal commission won’t bring back Alexander Kleytman, the Holocaust survivor shot multiple times trying to protect his wife on Bondi beach. It won’t bring back 10-year-old Matilda, the youngest victim of that dreadful pogrom. But it might help to prevent a similar evil from happening again. Albanese and the Australian Labor Party must be given no opportunity to worm their way out of it.

Answering Carrie Prejean Boller's questions about anti-Zionism and antisemitism @CarriePrejean1

Yesterday, the White House Religious Liberty Commission gathered in Washington for the body’s first public hearing focused on antisemitism.

One member of the commission. Catholic conservative activist and former Miss California Carrie Prejean Boller who is a strident critic of Israel, interrogated the witnesses about whether anti-Zionism is antisemitism.

Her questions were designed to embarrass the witnesses, but a lot of the problem was that they were speaking past each other. While her questions were incredibly disrespectful, I will attempt to answer them as respectfully as I can.

Here are the most contentious parts of the exchanges with my notes:

Carrie Prejean Boller: Thank you. Mr. Frankel, this is for you. You had very painful experiences at UCLA and I take it seriously. And at the same time, the students who I talked to in those encampments, they're protesting the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza and university ties to that war. So I need to ask you: In a country built on religious liberty and the First Amendment, do you believe someone can stand firmly against anti-Semitism—including what you experienced—and at the same time condemn the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza, or reject political Zionism and not support the state of Israel? Or do you believe that speaking out about what many Americans view as genocide in Gaza should be treated as anti-Semitic? Because in my view, the United States cannot and must not make loyalty to a particular theology about Israel a litmus test for protected speech or moral legitimacy.

Boller is purposefully (and consistently, as we will see) conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Zionism. The witness, Yitzchok Frankel, answered that there is no problem with allowing free speech on campus, and the problem with the encampments was that they violated other university policies like prohibitions against masks, against stopping free passage by students, against amplified sounds that disrupt student life.

Carrie Prejean Boller: I'm grateful that we're having this discussion because I think it's a topic that's affecting so many Americans. Rabbi Shapiro is based in New York, I invited him here today, but he's not here today. He says, I would love your opinion on this:

"American Jews are increasingly treated as less fully American, and belonging made conditional because Zionist claims nation state of Jewish state everywhere and tied to it. He says this framing is anti-Semitic at its core, recasts us as foreigners in our own country and arms anti-Semites with divided loyalties and collective guilt for actions we neither control nor condone. No other foreign country does this, no other sovereign states claims to protect a worldwide group defined by heritage and Jews alone bear this unjust burden, that must be opposed firmly. The remedy is clear, civic education that teaches un-American belonging, citizenship alone not through ethnicity, we're Americans full stop and reject any doctrine that treats us otherwise."

Would you say that statement is anti-Semitic?

She is quoting a Satmar rabbi who has practically no following of his own but lots of antisemites love him.

This quote exposes a double standard for Jews in the US. It blames US antisemitism on Israel's policies, which is itself antisemitic. It justifies antisemitism as a reasonable reaction to a false claim of dual loyalty, which is antisemitic. It implies that Jews who are Zionists are un-American, which is antisemitic. The double standard is that Shapiro as well as Boller are saying that Americans who hold political opinions against Israel are simply exercising free speech, but Americans who hold pro-Israel opinions are illegitimate and responsible for attacks on Jews. That double standard is indeed antisemitic, since it does not apply to any other Americans.

Carrie Prejean Boller: To be clear is anti-Zionism anti-Semitism?

Rabbi Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University: I would love to speak to that. Undoubtedly anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. One does not have to support the specific policies of the government of Israel, but to not support the right of Israel to exist, which is what anti-Zionists do, while not taking that same stance to the 28 Muslim countries and 13 Christian countries in this world, is a double standard, is hypocrisy and it's absolutely anti-Semitism.

Boller: I think it's also important that we not make Islamophobic remarks while we're here today. I would appreciate that.

Berman: I would say God forbid with anything like that. [If] the Jewish people are the only people that you deny the right to have its own state, that is absolutely a double standard hypocrisy and anti-Semitism.

While I am trying to show respect for Boller's position by answering her questions without rancor, but this is pure hypocrisy. She is saying, repeatedly, that opposing a Jewish state is not antisemitic but using the exact same logic that she espouses for Muslim states would be Islamophobic.

Carrie Prejean Boller: Well, as you know, I'm a Catholic, I'm a Catholic and Catholics do not embrace Zionism, as you know. Are all Catholics anti-Semites?

Here she is again conflating non-Zionism with anti-Zionism. The definition of anti-Zionism has been given - saying that Israel does not have the right to exist as a Jewish state. She ignores that and then claims that the definition includes not supporting Zionism as an ideology, which is not the same as anti-Zionism. And she appears to know that.

Berman: What I'm saying is, if somebody states they're an anti-Zionist, they are saying about themselves, that they have a double standard and hypocrisy and they're taking anti-Semitic positions.

Boller: I don't agree with that. As a Catholic, I don't agree the new modern state of Israel has any biblical prophecy meaning at all. So that's my stance and I am Catholic.

Again, saying that Israel is not the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy is not the same thing as anti-Zionism. Not even close.

Her positioning herself as a representative of all of Catholicism is a bit absurd.

Later, in a followup question to Shabbos Kestenbaum:

Boller: Since we've mentioned Israel a total of 17 times, are you willing o condemn what Israel has done in Gaza?

Kestenbaum had not spoken about Israel, so to demand a purity test from him because he is a Jew is pretty much antisemitism.

Boller: As a pastor, are you worried or concerned at all that certain parts of the Bible, particularly the New Testament, would be considered antisemitic, specifically in referring to the killing and crucifixion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?...That would be considered antisemitic under the IHRA, are you aware of that?

This is simply not true. The IHRA definition does not list merely reciting or discussing the New Testament accounts of the crucifixion, or stating the historical Christian claim in a religious/theological context (without targeting contemporary Jews), as antisemitic. It focuses on manifestations that express hatred toward Jews as such, specifically saying it is antisemitic to refer to the charge of deicide or the blood libel to characterize Israel or Israelis today.

Boller also defended Candace Owens, saying "I listen to her daily. I haven’t heard one thing out of her mouth that I would say is antisemitic."

Here's only a small portion of what the ADL has documented about Owens:

Owens also claimed that Judaism was a “pedophile-centric religion that believes in demons...[and] child sacrifice ...” She added that she is “waking people up to the fact that pedophiles are in power.”

Owens also said Sigmund Freud used psychoanalysis to tell women (presumably female Jewish patients) who revealed that they were raped as children that it was just an attraction to their father. “No, they were being raped when they were seven years old because that’s what you do when you worship the Kabbalah,” she said.

She then argued that people who questioned information about Kabbalists (presumably Jews) were silenced and labeled insane and insinuated that some were even killed. “They’ve realized the voices that cannot be controlled have to be shut up.”

Owens also promoted the “blood libel” conspiracy, the false charge that Jews used the blood of Christian children for ritual purposes, which in past centuries led to Jews’ being violently attacked. She claimed that the family of Leo Frank (a Jewish man lynched in 1913 by a mob in Georgia after being wrongfully accused of murdering a young girl who worked at his factory) believed in pedophilia and incest “as the sacramental rites and they would commit these acts, things that would normally be termed blood libel were actually happening.”

This is not including her recommendations of antisemitic texts mistranslating the Talmud, "liking" posts accusing Jews of drinking Christian blood, casting doubt on the experiments Josef Mengele did to Jews in Nazi Germany as "bizarre propaganda."

Why would a person who defends these sorts of statements be on a religious liberty commission in the first place?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

From the New York Times:

Israel’s government has taken unilateral steps to give itself greater control over the occupied West Bank, challenging President Trump’s opposition to Israeli annexation of the territory in a move widely considered a violation of international law.

...The new actions mainly ease the way for land purchases by Jewish settlers, beginning with the repeal of a pre-1967 law banning the sale of West Bank property except to local, meaning Palestinian, residents.

Um, no. The "pre-1967 law" was Jordan Law No. 40 of 1953 that restricted sales of land to Jordanians (with limited exceptions.) It wasn't only for the West Bank - it was for Jordan.

And who could be a Jordanian citizen? Well, not Jews.

Any person who, not being Jewish, possessed Palestinian nationality before 15 May 1948 and was a regular resident in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan between 20 December 1949 and 16 February 1954.

So for nearly sixty years, Israel enforced a Jordanian law that was explicitly racist and antisemitic. No one seemed to have a problem with that.

But now that Israel has rescinded a racist law, and the NYT is very upset:

The measures, which make it easier for Jewish settlers to buy land and undercut the Palestinian Authority in parts of the West Bank that it administers, appear to flout important agreements that Israel signed under the Oslo peace process decades ago.

Hmmm, very interesting. Because in 1973, Jordan strengthened the law to say that anyone who sold land to a Jew (they used a euphemism) would get the death penalty. Israel never applied that law because it already controlled the territory, but when then PA gained autonomy, it eagerly adapted the Jordanian law to extend the death penalty to anyone who sells land to a Jew.

And only a Jew, not an Israeli. Israeli Arabs buy land and homes in PA-controlled areas.

Now, this is a violation of the Oslo Accords. Specifically, Article XVI, paragraph 2 of Oslo 2 requires that Palestinians who have “maintained contact with the Israeli authorities” will not on this account be subject to “harassment, violence, retribution or prosecution.”

When Israel takes away an antisemitic law, the New York Times says it is a violation of the Oslo Accords, meaning it is defending the racist law. When the PA adopts an explicitly antisemitic law that really is in violation of the Oslo Accord, the NYT has noting bad to say about it.

Apparently, the New York Times rejects bigotry on principle - unless it is against Jews, when it justifies it.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/09 Links Pt2: The Truth About American Police Training in Israel; Francesca Albanese: the sneering face of international Israelophobia; Israel's Obligation to Protect Archaeological Sites in Judea and Samaria

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Truth About American Police Training in Israel

The report itself turns out to be quite interesting, though more for what it says about the state of LA Times reporting and the bad faith of groups like CAIR.

It is true, for example, that Israel is one of the countries to which LA police have traveled. One of 32 countries, to be specific.

So why the focus on Israel? Perhaps Israel is the only Mideast country on the list? No, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are there, too.

Then maybe Israel is the most common destination for LA cops? Again, no. And it’s not even close to some of the competition: The UK gets twice as many trips, Canada three times as many as Israel.

Well then surely Israel is the only country accused of “genocide” on the list? After all, it’s the only country accused of genocide in the article. But no—China, a country carrying out an actual genocide, is there too.

Since we all know where this is going, let’s just get there already. Israel accounts for 7 percent of “total activities” of LAPD personnel going abroad, about the same share as France and far less than some others.

The numbers of LAPD officials participating in such events abroad follows the roughly the same pattern. Trips to France account for about a quarter of all employees who went abroad in the decade under investigation, with Canada close behind and the UK not too far in the rearview. Israel is a small part of the exchange program.

One could easily find some non-Israel details for concern, if that’s truly all one was looking for. Thailand, for example, is rated by Freedom House as “not free,” having transitioned from military rule to a “military-dominated, semi-elect government” known to use “repressive tactics including arbitrary arrests, intimidation, lèse-majesté charges, and harassment” to quell protests. One might look at the IG report and see that the LAPD apparently went to Thailand to “train” the royal police and ask what the story is there. But one would only be tempted to do so if one were actually concerned about any of this rather than trying simply to spread unfounded conspiracy theories about Jews.

If the LAPD is displaying a tendency toward mishandling public order, is it more likely that they learned such behavior from, say, Israeli K-9 training programs and bomb-squad instruction, or from their time spent at the “Austrian Police Academy Public Order and Riot Control Conference”?

Would you look to where they are learning particular skills, in other words, or would you simply draw attention to vague insinuations that the Jews must have taught them to hurt people? With regard to CAIR and the LA Times, we already know the answer. But perhaps others should ask themselves the same question.

Jake Wallis Simons: Francesca Albanese: the sneering face of international Israelophobia

Albanese sits squarely in the tradition of this Soviet anti-Zionist agitprop. Born near Naples, she grew up in the world of ‘progressive’ academia, with a master’s degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, which is dominated by pseudo-radical thought to this day.

Naturally, she went on to join the UN, where she found her calling as its foremost anti-Israel provocateur. She has frequently accused the Jewish state of ‘apartheid’, one of the principal smears invented by Soviet propagandists, seemingly overlooking Israel’s Arab politicians, leaders of industry, soldiers, judges and footballers on the national team. (The Israeli state even recognises and funds Sharia family courts to cater for its Muslim minority.)

Again echoing Soviet disinformation, Albanese has compared Israeli actions with the Nazi Holocaust and in 2014, contended that the US had been ‘subjugated by the Jewish lobby’. After a global backlash, she apologised, but it set the tone for much of her perspective since.

It was 7 October that catapulted her to new heights of provocative extremism. On the day of Hamas’s massacre of Israelis, she posted that ‘today’s violence must be put in context’, but never extended the same dignity to Israel’s military response. This, of course, she wrongly labelled a ‘genocide’, wilfully ignoring the ‘context’ of a just and defensive war.

Bizarrely, Albanese even argued that ‘the victims of 7/10 were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression’, making a defence of Hamas that even the jihadis themselves have, to my knowledge, failed to make.

Last year, US secretary of state Marco Rubio sanctioned Albanese for ‘illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt International Criminal Court action against US and Israeli officials, companies and executives’. In a resolute post on X, Rubio added: ‘Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated. We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defence.’

That summed it up. Setting aside China and Russia, in crude terms, the great global power struggle of our age places Israel and the US on the one side, much of the Muslim world on the other, and Britain / Europe pulled hither and thither in the middle.

People like Albanese hold fast to an ideology that causes them to kick against the pillars of our civilisation relentlessly. What they don’t seem to realise is that if they are successful, and the roof comes crashing in, they will end up just as dead as the rest of us.

Yisrael Medad: Recalling a father of the ‘Zionism is settler-colonialism’ theory

In the mid- to later years of the 1960s, as a young member of the Betar Zionist youth movement that recently suffered an act of bureaucratic, progressivist legalist oppression and discrimination in New York City, I would drop by far-left bookstores and pick up the latest pro-Arab literature. Already then, the name of Fayez Sayegh, a Christian Arab born in Syria, was familiar to me.

His 1965 pamphlet charging Zionism as being “settler-colonialism” was republished, as if received at Sinai, in edited form in 2012. I consider Maxim Rodinson’s analysis more challenging. It, too, preceded the 1967 Six-Day War, and Israel’s subsequent extension of its administration of Judea and Samaria (and, until 2005, over Gaza as well), having been first published in French in July 1967 but written previously.

Still, Sayegh represents a more genuine Arab voice of negation, rejection and desire for Jewish elimination. Whereas Marxists applaud killing “Zionists” in the name of “resistance,” Arabs are those mostly doing it.

In the 1920s and ’30s, the Communist Party platform had been asserting that the Mandate of “Palestine is a colony of British imperialism.” This was based on earlier resolutions, such as the Second International’s Fourth Congress in London in 1896, which condemned colonialism, and at the Sixth Congress in Amsterdam in 1904, which positioned the party as “against the colonial and imperialist policy.”

Moshe Machover, born in pre-state Tel Aviv—a Communist and the author of the 1961 anti-Zionist tract Peace, Peace, When There Is No Peace, which uses the colonialist paradigm—more recently spins the conflict differently. He writes that he sees it as a collision between “a Hebrew settler nation and a single indigenous Palestinian Arab people.”

A few counterpoints underlining Sayegh’s propositions are in order.

As New York Times columnist Bret Stephens recently remarked, “the fight against antisemitism … is a well-meaning but mostly wasted effort. We should spend … efforts toimprove pro-Israel advocacy, helping raise a generation of young Jews who are conscious of their Jewishness … .”

Highlighting a few basic irrationalities, historical corruptions and misleading “facts” should illustrate to younger Jewish generations that the ideology and anti-Zionist backlash they face are not new. Such misinformation has been disproved decades ago; modern-day misconceptions are just another form of anti-Jewish fulminations.

02/09 Links Pt1: Israeli President calls out protests against Australian visit; ‘Sham’ anti-Zionist ad against Herzog’s Australia visit includes names of Nazi kapos

From Ian:

Israel’s President Herzog visits Australia after Bondi Beach terror attack Herzog: 'when one Jew is hurt, all Jew

Israeli President Israel Herzog has begun his visit to Australia in the wake of the December terror attack against Jews at Bondi beach, placing a wreath at the site of the attack as well as memorial stones, in the Jewish tradition, which were brought from Jerusalem.

The Israeli President, alongside his wife Michal, placed the stones at the memorial outside Bondi Pavilion, describing how the Jewish tradition of placing stones at gravesites represents “the endurance of memory, the weight of loss and the unbreakable bond between the living and those we have lost”.

The Israeli President went on to say that “these stones … will remain here at Bondi for eternity in sacred memory of the victims and as a reminder that the bonds between good people of all faiths and all nations will continue to hold strong in the face of terror, violence and hatred.”

Herzog went on to meet family members of those killed during the terror attack, with video footage showing him embracing Australian Jews who thanked him for coming.

In a speech given at Bondi Beach, Herzog described the “fifteen innocent souls who gathered to celebrate Chanukah, the festival of light, were massacred in cold blood by two Islamist terrorists.

“The world’s only Jewish state, the State of Israel and the nation of Israel, stood together with the Australian people. We stood with Australian Jews, for we are one big family – and when one Jew is hurt, all Jews feel their pain. That is why I am here today, to embrace and console the bereaved families.”

President headlines moving evening of reflection

“We have come here not simply to tell you we are with you, but to show you that we are with you,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told a packed ICC Sydney Theatre on Monday night.

As hate-fuelled protests against his visit with calls to “globalise the intifada” raged just blocks away, inside the theatre the mood was one of unity, family, strength in togetherness, and of a yearning for peace.

“There are certain emotions one can only fully convey through action. Only by doing. By showing up. And so, in the wake of the horror at Bondi Beach, we felt we must come to Australia to look you in the eye. To show up for you,” Herzog said.

“We have come to be with you, just as you have always shown up for us.

“Australian Jewry has been with us in our greatest hours of need. This community is inspirational in its connection to Israel, in its proactive Zionism.”

The President said the hatred that triggered the Bondi terrorist attack on the first night of Chanukah last year “is the very same, age-old, plague of antisemitism endured by our parents and grandparents”.

“It began long before October 7, generations before even the State of Israel was born. Yet somehow- the October 7 massacre, the greatest mass murder of Jews since the Shoah, emboldened closeted antisemites, here in Australia and around the world,” he said.

Herzog also paid tribute to all those who helped in the aftermath of the massacre.

“To all the heroes of Bondi, those who lent a hand, those who prayed for their wounded neighbours, those who gave blood, those who brought flowers and wrote letters, those who sent a meal, those who embraced this incredible community—each and every one of you has the deep admiration, the respect and the prayers of the Israeli people—for you are the finest of Australia,” he said.

“And I am here also to re-invigorate the important relations between our two strong democracies. I know that by working together we will find the way to expand collaboration and increase understanding and upgrade our relations. During my visit, I intend to discuss it with your national leadership.”

Oh look. @Amnesty is lying again about Israel.

Last week, Amnesty International's Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy & Campaigns Erika Guevara Rosas tweeted, and Amnesty reweeted:

Older people in Gaza are facing a brutal, overlooked health crisis amid Israel’s ongoing genocide. A new joint investigation by @Amnesty and @HelpAge reveals how Israel’s continued blockade of aid and essential medicines is causing a devastating collapse in older people’s physical and mental health.

Amnesty's press release about the report says in its headline "Israel’s ongoing blockade of aid and medicines." It describes "Israel’s ongoing unlawful, cruel and inhumane restrictions on the entry of life-saving aid" as being proven fact. It says, "Internally displaced older people also described to Amnesty International how their lack of access to nutritious food, adequate shelter and healthcare was causing extreme harm due to the continuing blockade imposed by Israeli authorities."

The HelpAge report says none of that.

The report was a limited humanitarian survey of older people in Gaza, a needs assessment of 416 older individuals. It relies heavily on self-reported information. It acknowledges methodological limitations. It was designed to understand how older people are coping with displacement, chronic illness, food insecurity, and disrupted services.

At no point does this survey claim that there are any restrictions of aid into Gaza. It was not designed to evaluate border policy. It was not designed to assess whether medicines are being systematically denied entry. It contains no shipment data, no border denial logs, no inspection statistics, no inflow-versus-need calculations, no comparative pre- and post-ceasefire import figures. It does not even attempt to quantify total aid entering the territory.

In other words, it is taking individual interviews about the very real challenges older people have in the wake of a devastating war and claiming that it proves an "illegal blockade" that is part of an "ongoing genocide."

In reality, aid has been pouring into Gaza. Thousands of trucks of aid, including over 600 trucks filled with medical aid, have entered since the ceasefire, as COGAT shows.

Even during the war there were no restrictions on medicines or on medical aid that could not be repurposed for weapons.

The problems have been in distribution, which is the purpose of the NGOs in Gaza, Israel coordinates closely with them to ensure that Gazans, including the elderly, can get the aid they need without compromising on security needs.

Which is more than any other country at war has ever done.

What the report does document is hardship. Older people report difficulty obtaining medicines. Many report interrupted treatment for chronic disease. Many report weight loss, displacement, and overcrowded shelters. None of this is surprising after a war that devastated infrastructure and displaced the vast majority of the population. No serious observer believes that life in Gaza instantly became normal the moment hostilities paused.

What Amnesty has done is take those documented hardships and present them as proof of an ongoing genocidal policy driven by a blockade of aid and medicines. That is simply a lie.

War destroys systems. Infrastructure does not rebuild overnight. Chronic disease management does not resume instantly. Supply chains remain fragile. Distribution networks require stabilization. These explanations are mundane, structural, and tragically common in post-conflict settings. They do not require a theory of ongoing genocide to make sense of observed conditions.

Amnesty has shown yet again that it is more interested in making unfounded and slanderous accusations against Israel than in actually helping the people of Gaza. At least in the Middle East, it is not a human rights organization: it is an antisemitic political organization that hides its hate of Jews in Israel behind human rights.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

By now you have probably seen the Super Bowl ad produced by Robert Kraft's Blue Square Alliance Against Hate.

When was the last time that you heard anyone use the epithet "dirty Jew?"

Well, it's going to happen a lot more now, as a result of this commercial!

In the real world, Jewish students are called genocidal racists. And not by bullying students, but by teachers. In many schools and universities, frameworks used in DEI and decolonial programming categorize Jews as privileged oppressors and supporting Israel is supporting apartheid and genocide.

Being proud Jews helps. Knowing the facts helps. But in the end, how can a student fight something like this on his own?

He cannot. Because the problem isn't the bullying. The problem is that schools, and universities, and NGOs, and most of the media, have abandoned their mission to tell the truth.

But it is even worse than that. Because no one is even learning what truth means. As I've been mentioning, in significant parts of academia, especially within decolonial and critical frameworks, coherence within the ideological system often functions as the operative test of truth, displacing correspondence with external reality.

As I've been working on my Derechology framework based on Jewish thinking, I've been exploring basic questions. One of those questions is as basic as it gets: what is truth? The gold standard is the scientific method, but even the methods scientists use are not provable. Math is based on axioms that are asserted and not provable, science uses methods like deduction, induction and abduction that are pretty good but not proof.

Jewish thinking says that absolute truth exists but is not knowable to man, only to God, so we can only approximate truth and approach it asymptoticly. Modern philosophy is starting to catch up, specifically critical realism which was only developed in the 1970s is very similar.

But this brings up an interesting and critical issue. Typically falsehood is defined as "not truth." But if we cannot know absolute truth, how can we define falsehood?

I have been arguing that falsehood requires its own epistemology. We cannot always prove absolute truth. But we can identify frameworks that contradict themselves, that rely on missing preconditions, that fail to produce necessary consequences, or that depend on structurally impossible assumptions. When a theory survives only because contrary evidence is reinterpreted as further proof of oppression, it ceases to be an explanatory model and becomes a closed narrative system.

This is a very high level of what I'm developing, but the point is that today's academics, pundits, many politicians and students are basing their opinions of Israel on things that are provably false - but they are consistent with other false ideas about Israel, which creates a self-perpetuating coherent framework that is all based in the end on lies. Yet they do not even have the tools to prove them false.

I've been showing that these accusations are structurally false. For example, I've used these methods to show how the idea that Israel is a settler colonialist state is false (and that the claims of settler colonialism itself are provably false as well.) I've shown that the claim that Israel is guilty of genocide is impossible not because of counter-arguments but because for it to be true it depends on assumptions that are impossible to be true. These coherence-based arguments are, in the end, indistinguishable from conspiracy theories.

Today's antisemitism is not simply based on lies. It is based on people not even knowing how to determine falsehood. And we need to return academia to become what it is meant to be - seeking truth - before we can uproot antisemitism at its core.

It is a little more difficult that square blue stickers.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)