10/09 Links Pt1: Natan Sharansky: Is the Whole World Wrong?; October 8: The war Israel still has not learned to fight; The Nobel Committee Just Made a Mockery of Its Peace Prize, and President Trump Called It Out

From Ian:

Natan Sharansky: Is the Whole World Wrong?

This morning the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that it has awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2026 to South African judge Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, who led the 2025 U.N. commission that found Israel guilty of genocide against the Palestinians. This appears to be the greatest possible legitimization of the now-established consensus about Israel’s war in Gaza.

As Jews around the world react with despair, I am reminded of an excellent article by Ahad Ha’am, written in 1892 and titled “Half Solace.” Observing the renewal of the ancient blood libel in his own time, the great cultural Zionist notes that “philosophers know that there is no lie and no evil that cannot obtain ‘general agreement’ if only the conditions of existence are suitable to it.” Unfortunately, however, “only philosophers know this, and in the eyes of the masses, even now there is no greater authority than ‘consensus.’”

It was a general consensus for hundreds of years that Jews killed Christian children to collect their blood for the Passover Seder. In Russia, for example, in the so-called Velizh affair of 1823, 43 Jews were arrested and interrogated over a period of 12 years on charges of killing a 3-year-old Russian boy. Many spent almost a decade in prison, and some died there. Of course, the accusation was a lie, and those who survived were eventually released without guilt. But what is particularly interesting about this episode is that even the Tsar Nicholas I, who personally signed their release, remarked in a postscript to his signature that he was not fully convinced these men were innocent, because there were so many similar Jewish crimes throughout history. How could all of these reports be wrong, he asked?

Or take another example, from a very intelligent Christian activist whom I met in a Soviet labor camp and who would become my best friend. He told me that while he knew Jews no longer used Christian blood, they must have done so a few hundred years earlier. Otherwise, how could such a widespread belief have come to be?

Ahad Ha’am concludes his essay with the same question. Is it really possible, he asks, that the whole world is wrong and the Jews are right? “It is possible,” he answers, “and the blood libel proves it.” It is therefore precisely here, he says, that Jews can find a useful lesson and some consolation. We can free ourselves from the power of false prejudices and find strength in the conviction of our own moral cause.

As I write, Israelis and Jews around the world are marking the genocidal campaign waged against us on Oct. 7, 2023, and mourning the thousands of innocent lives taken that day. A genocide, according to the legal definition, comprises acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. This is exactly what the sadistic terrorists who rampaged our communities, raping, burning, torturing, and murdering everyone they could reach, intended to do that day.

Yet at this very moment, the masses are busy accusing us of genocide against our enemies. On university campuses and in the streets of capital cities, protesters used our day of somber remembrance to amplify the growing consensus that we are the ones committing unspeakable atrocities.

I’ve seen Naza and it’s a nasty piece of propaganda

The horrors of October 7, 2023, are almost impossible to comprehend. Behind the staggering scale of the Hamas massacres are individual stories of unimaginable cruelty and suffering. Stories that must not be forgotten.

Baby Kfir, for example. Or his brother Ariel. Or their mother, Shiri. The two red-haired Israeli boys were just nine months and four years old when terrorists from the Palestinian Hamas abducted them to Gaza. Videos of their kidnapping show the shock and boundless despair in their mother’s eyes as the Islamists, shouting “Allahu Akbar”, violently forced the young family onto a pickup truck and took them to Gaza.

Months later, news spread around the world that the terrorists had murdered the two brothers and their mother with their bare hands. In an act of breathtaking cynicism, Hamas handed over the Israelis’ bodies to the Red Cross. The event was staged as a family celebration, complete with music and cheering. On the boys’ coffins were images of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu depicted as a vampire drinking the blood of the Bibas family. Instead of returning the body of the murdered hostage Shiri Bibas, Hamas handed over the remains of a Palestinian woman.

It is difficult to imagine anything more despicable.

Yarden, the father of Kfir and Ariel and Shiri’s husband, survived 484 days in Hamas captivity. He will never see his children or his wife again. Nothing will ever be right again for Yarden. Nothing. Ever.

Or Vivian Silver. The Israeli peace activist lived in Kibbutz Be’eri, right on the border with Gaza. Throughout her life, the 74-year-old campaigned for the Palestinians in Gaza and for a two-state solution. Every week, she drove to the border to collect children suffering from cancer and take them to Israeli hospitals for treatment.

On October 7, Hamas terrorists stormed her home, opened fire and then threw several hand grenades into the safe room where Vivian Silver had sought refuge. It took weeks to identify her remains. Her teeth were found beneath a pile of ashes.

Or Shani Louk, the radiantly beautiful 22-year-old German-Israeli woman who had gone to the Nova festival to dance and celebrate, only to be beaten, abused and shot by Palestinian terrorists, like so many other Israeli women. Afterwards, as Hamas triumphantly paraded her body before the people of Gaza, a mob of Palestinian civilians beat, spat upon and desecrated her remains.

A reminder: On the morning of October 7, 2023, Hamas breached Israel’s border with a single objective: to kill as many Jews as possible. The genocidal terrorist organisation murdered more than 1,200 Israelis in southern Israel. At the same time, hundreds of rockets were launched at Israel from the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian terrorists were supported by Hezbollah, the heavily armed militia in Lebanon supplied by Tehran. From Yemen, Iran, Syria, Iraq and the West Bank, Hamas’s allies also sought to destroy the Jewish state and its citizens – precisely as the slogan goes: “From the River to the Sea!”

Israel was surrounded by a Shiite ring of fire. Overnight, it found itself fighting a war on seven fronts. Once again, the country was forced to fight for its very existence.

At the same time, Hamas abducted more than 250 innocent Israeli civilians and took them into Gaza. Accounts have documented how hostages were raped, abused, subjected to horrific torture and starved to the brink of death.

For weeks, Hamas ignored Israel’s offers to secure the hostages’ release. Jerusalem responded to Hamas’s war of aggression, or, more precisely, Israel did what any state in its position would have done. It defended itself, sought to end the relentless rocket fire from Gaza and attempted to bring its kidnapped citizens home alive.

Why this lengthy introduction to a film review?

Because none of this is shown in NAZA (a title derived from the Hebrew word for “collateral damage”). That is the filmmakers’ prerogative. But it is dishonest.

Would a film depicting the Allied attacks on Nazi Germany be credible if it failed to explain why those attacks took place? Would a film be credible if it gave the impression that the Allies had attacked Nazi Germany for no reason whatsoever? Or even suggested that they had done so out of some bloodthirsty impulse to kill other human beings?

October 8: The war Israel still has not learned to fight

On Wednesday, October 7, like many Israelis, my wife and I made the long drive from Jerusalem to the Nova music festival memorial. We wanted to offer support to families whose tears, understandably, have not dried up three years later.

We met the ZAKA commander who led teams recovering human remains from the devastated festival grounds. With extraordinary dignity, he described what his teams encountered and carefully showed us what was appropriate to see.

A crowd gathered. Fighting back tears, he asked everyone to stand together, united as one nation.

On our drive home, his words stayed with me.

Because as Israel approaches another election, we are doing something we do extraordinarily well.

We are fighting among ourselves.

Who knew what exactly, before October 7? What did Netanyahu know? Which agencies and/or intelligence officers failed? Who ignored the warnings? Why are these accusations only appearing now before the elections? Why, three years later, are we still fighting over a credible commission of inquiry?

These questions demand answers. Accountability is essential. But instead of allowing October 7 to strengthen our common purpose, we risk turning its memory into another political battlefield.

Meanwhile, we are overlooking something potentially more consequential.

October 8.

Two dates. Two different wars.

October 7 was a catastrophic failure within a world Israel understands.

Israel knows armies, terrorism, intelligence, deterrence, and military technology. We built an extraordinary defense ecosystem: the IDF, Mossad, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), defense industries, reserves, intelligence organizations, and alliances.

That ecosystem failed catastrophically. But we understand how to repair it.

October 7 revealed the failure of an ecosystem Israel already knew it needed since its inception.

October 8 revealed something entirely different.

An ecosystem we had never adequately built.

Before Israel’s military response in Gaza could explain the international reaction, anti-Israel demonstrations and narratives were already spreading.

The vocabulary of colonialism, apartheid and resistance was ready. Campus organizations, activists, influencers and digital networks were prepared to mobilize.

This did not require one giant conspiracy.

It required an ecosystem.

Foreign governments fund academics who produce ideas. Activists translate them. Organizations create campaigns. Influencers generate content. Algorithms amplify it. Demonstrations produce images. Media broadcast them. Politicians respond.

And the cycle accelerates.

Sinwar’s victory beyond the battlefield
Yahya Sinwar did not launch October 7 expecting Israel to remain passive.

He knew Israel would retaliate. He accepted the prospect of devastating consequences for Gaza while seeking a confrontation that could ignite additional fronts.

In effect, he launched a suicidal strategic gamble, sacrificing Hamas’s military position and exposing Gaza’s population to catastrophic consequences in pursuit of a larger objective.

Sinwar and his colleagues were killed. Hamas suffered enormous military losses. But we should not confuse military defeat with defeat on every battlefield.

Sinwar achieved a consequential victory in the battle for international perception.

Whether he anticipated every dimension of the international response is debatable. What is undeniable is that a preexisting pro-Palestinian ecosystem was capable of exploiting the war at extraordinary speed.

And where were we?

Still explaining. Still correcting. Still reacting.

A September 2026 Marquette Law School national poll found that 59% of Americans now view Israel unfavorably, compared with just 29% favorably. Only 18 months earlier, Americans were evenly divided, 43% to 43%.

It is a dramatic deterioration in Israel’s standing among the American public. The consequences are for the political and social environment in which American Jews must live, and for Israel’s ability to manage current American government support.

Not all this change can be attributed to propaganda. Israel’s decisions, the war’s humanitarian consequences, and changing American attitudes matter. But that makes our strategic failure more urgent, not less.

We failed to build a sufficiently competitive ecosystem before the crisis arrived.

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The Anti-Zionist Master's Thesis That Says It Doesn't Need to Prove Its Thesis

There is a peculiar epistemic move at the center of the claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Genocide is one of the gravest accusations imaginable, so ordinarily it should require an extraordinary amount of proof. Instead, the moral force of the word is often used to reverse the burden. “Genocide” is treated not as a conclusion to be established but as an obvious fact that decent people are expected to recognize. Anyone who questions the evidence risks being treated as morally suspect merely for asking.

Once that happens, counterevidence loses its normal force. Evidence inconsistent with genocidal intent can be dismissed as irrelevant, deceptive or insufficient. The accusation is morally privileged before it is empirically demonstrated. Emotion is substituted for proof. The outrage attached to the word overwhelms the ordinary process by which evidence is supposed to test a claim.

A 2026 University of Lethbridge master's thesis, Palestinian Erasure in Alberta Schools, offers an unusually explicit example of the same epistemic method in a very different context. Deema Abushaban argues that Palestinian “erasure” has come to “dominate school and curricular discourse in alberta” and attributes this to dehumanization and “Zionist settler colonialism.” 

That is a major empirical claim. One would expect such a claim to be based on evidence: a survey of school materials and websites, interviews with principals and curriculum designers, systematic examination of textbooks, lesson plans, teacher materials, board policies, classroom observations or comparisons with how other foreign conflicts are treated.

This paper has none of that.

Instead, the thesis is centered on interviews with only three people, two former students and one teacher. All of them are Palestinian. One teacher says she was told not to teach about Palestine, but we are not told whether the same rule would have applied to other contentious topics. One student says “Free Palestine” was omitted from her yearbook quote, but even she wonders whether other political slogans like "Trump 2020"  would also have been barred. Another says Palestine was barely discussed in class, but the same interviews indicate that all international current events generally received little attention.

That is about it. A sample of three Palestinian participants, with no control group and no comparative curricular analysis, is close to useless for establishing the thesis that Palestinian erasure “dominates” Alberta schools. 

Also, how does not teaching something be considered "dominant?" If the schools also didn't teach about Belgium, does that mean that Belgian erasure "dominates" the curriculum?

But Abushaban does claim that “Zionist propaganda” dominates Alberta schooling. Again, no evidence is given. She does not establish that Alberta schools teach Israel positively—or even that they teach much about Israel at all. Her own evidence more often suggests that the subject is avoided.

But the real point is that she actually defends her lack of evidence! 

In the abstract she writes:

“The purpose of the thesis is not to prove Palestinian erasure, as facts speak for themselves.”

Later she is even more explicit:

“This is not a thesis in the general sense, in that it is not a hypothesis I have to prove.”

She describes her claims instead as “nonnegotiable truths.”

And when introducing her analysis of anti-Palestinian racism in schools, she again says she does not intend to prove its existence because it is an “undeniable, non-negotiable truth.” 

This is the epistemic playbook in unusually pure form. The strongest claim, the very title of the paper itself, is placed outside the realm of proof. Evidence does not test the thesis; it is gathered afterward to illustrate a conclusion already declared true.

That is exactly what happens in much of the genocide discourse. Ordinarily, the greater the accusation, the greater the burden of proof. Here the relationship is inverted: the greater the moral gravity of the accusation, the less acceptable it becomes to demand proof.

It isn't remarkable that an activist graduate student thinks this way. Activists are free to begin with whatever convictions they like.

The remarkable part is that a university accepted a paper that explicitly claims it does not need to prove its argument as a master's thesis.

What does it say about modern academia when a thesis can explicitly state that its central proposition does not need to be proven—and still satisfy the requirements of scholarship?

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10/08 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The Jewish fifth columnist; David Collier: The BBC’s Spiteful Hamas Propaganda; NY Jews deposit hostage tags into new art installation on Oct. 7

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The Jewish fifth columnists

This movement has made a fetish of these Jewish fifth columnists. They include politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.); talking heads like journalist Peter Beinart; political operatives like former Obama administration foreign-policy adviser Ben Rhodes and J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami; left-wing activist groups like IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace; nongovernmental organization stalwarts like Human Rights Watch’s former executive director Kenneth Roth; and others.

Kerstein calls such people, who enjoy high social, economic, cultural or political status, “Jews of Privilege.” Such Jews, he writes, have always strongly disliked and often hated Zionism, feared its potential impact on their chances of assimilation and the preservation of their privilege, and have felt little or no solidarity with other Jews.

Kerstein gratifyingly skewers such people. He quotes journalist Ezra Klein sanitizing the Muslim fanatic Mamdani as being “thoroughly if banally liberal.”

Klein, writes Kerstein, has endorsed the ultimate conviction of the “Jews of Privilege” that only minority status is moral, only powerlessness is redemption, and that multi-ethnic democracy guarantees the safety of Diaspora Jewry.

But, of course, the past three years in Klein’s Western multi-ethnic nirvana have been a nightmare for Diaspora Jews. As Kerstein witheringly writes, the “Jews of Privilege” are facing demographic collapse while the Jews of Zionism are burgeoning in a state that has proved itself “remarkably resilient and successful.”

Kerstein’s account is all the more powerful because he himself originally shared these anti-Zionist views. Although he didn’t come from a privileged background, he was alienated from his Jewish identity and, as a teenager, believed that Israel had no right to exist. Much of his book is an account of how his personal voyage of the soul led him to move to Israel, discover the complexity of the Middle East—and find himself as a Jew.

Indeed, the nature of Jewishness is perhaps the most significant and least understood element in anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionist Jews want to detach Zionism from Judaism to uphold what they refer to as “Jewish values.”

What they’re actually doing is swinging a wrecking ball at those values.

For Judaism consists of a fusion of three elements: the religion, the people and the land. Judaism holds that the Jewish people were given a divine mission to establish a particular society in “Zion,” the land of Israel.

While Jews don’t need to prove their Jewishness through religious observance, living in Israel or even just supporting it, detaching the land from Judaism is to dismember it. Anti-Zionism is an attack on Judaism itself.

Anti-Zionist Jews want to reframe Jewish values—the most particularist set of principles on earth—as universalist. This inevitably privileges the values and interests of non-Jews over those of the Jews.

This is because, writes Kerstein, anti-Zionist Jews have decided that it’s impossible for the “vast and kind” non-Jewish world to be wrong and the Jews to be right. And the outcome of that attitude is the belief that Israel must be dismantled and the Palestinian Arabs granted domination over everyone else.

Kerstein has performed a vital service in holding such people to account. Jewish community leaders refuse to do so because they are terrified of disunity and of washing dirty linen in public.

Undesirable though that is, there’s worse. We are living through an unprecedented cultural emergency for Jews and for the West in which they live.

While it’s vital not to lose focus on the battle against those who are out to destroy the Jewish people, it’s suicidally reckless to turn a blind eye to those Jews who, in their abysmal ignorance and pathological confusion or worse over their Jewish identity, are assisting them in their infernal aim.

Inside NAZA’s Activist Network and Its Calls to “End Zionism”

NAZA, the documentary film that won Venice’s Special Jury Prize in September, grew from a reporting network whose editors and writers have publicly advocated ending Zionism and rejecting Israel’s nature as a Jewish state, according to a new Jewish Onliner investigation.

The documentary portrays Israeli military operations in Gaza as a system of “calculated mass killing.” Produced by The Guardian and JW Films, it draws on reporting published by +972 Magazine, Local Call and The Guardian between 2023 and 2025. These institutional connections place the film within an openly activist media network, parts of which pursue political goals extending far beyond the documentary’s stated focus on Israel’s military conduct in Gaza.

A Local Call Editor Explicitly Demanded an End to Zionism
One of the clearest statements came from Orly Noy, an editor at Local Call, the Hebrew-language publication whose reporting helped underpin NAZA. In a September 2025 essay published by +972, Noy wrote:
“Zionism, in all its forms, cannot be cleansed of the stain of this crime. It must be brought to an end.”

She demanded a process of “denazification” across Israeli society and rejected the country’s combined Jewish and democratic identity. Her position explicitly targeted Zionism itself, not simply the government in power.

The Guardian Published Calls for the “End of Zionism”
In an August 5, 2011 column, David Hearst, then a Guardian foreign editorial writer, envisioned “The end of Zionism, no less.”

An April 24, 2024 essay by Guardian US columnist Naomi Klein called Zionism a “false idol” and declared: “So tonight we say: it ends here.”

In July 2024, the newspaper published Ahmed Moor’s essay calling for the “end of Zionism.”

The newspaper’s involvement in NAZA went beyond commentary: it produced the film, drawing on reporting by The Guardian, +972 and Local Call.

David Harsanyi: America owes Mahmoud Khalil nothing

Pro-terrorist activist Mahmoud Khalil was asked by CNN the other day if he would condemn Hamas. He, of course, would not, calling the question “silly” and “disingenuous.” It is not “black and white,” he whined.

Even if you oppose Israel’s reaction to the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, the answer is still black and white for any person with a conscience. Certainly, it should be for any person who wants to become a naturalized citizen of the United States. After all, Hamas is designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization for, among other things, murdering Americans. Stay informed.Stay ahead.

But the fact that Khalil can’t condemn Hamas — and anyone paying attention understands that he supports the terrorist army — not only tells us that he deserves to be deported but also that it’s imperative we deport him.

During the 1960s and 1970s, immigration officials grilled newcomers to the U.S. and elsewhere about their affiliations with communist parties. Why would we import people who want to destroy our system? Newcomers were, and still are, compelled to disavow associations with illiberal movements, violent groups, and ideologies. They were also required to promise not to engage in any subversive or revolutionary activity.

Well, Khalil’s entire job as an “activist” is to engage in subversive or revolutionary activity.

Khalil is an Algerian, incidentally, not a Palestinian, though he is a champion of Palestinianism, one of the most nihilistic, bigoted, violent, anti-Western ideologies of the age. There’s no anti-American or Marxist protest or riot anywhere in the world these days where Palestinian flags are not prominent.

The French, of course, don’t need much impetus to riot. But protests that began over a lack of school funding a few weeks ago have now escalated into increasingly destructive and violent riots across France, clearly fueled in part by Marxist pro-Palestinian elements. The red-green alliance between Islamists and communists isn’t new — it’s just more popular than ever. France has over 5 million Muslims.

What you see happening on the streets of Paris is exactly what Khalil hopes to see in the U.S. We saw as much when he was the lead “negotiator” for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which rioted at the school in 2025. The group’s goal is to fight for the “total eradication of Western civilization,” “global intifada,” and the “armed resistance” of Hamas. That doesn’t sound very American.

Khalil’s friend, Mohsen Mahdawi, another leader of CUAD fighting against deportation, reportedly has a propensity to make Hamas-like statements, such as “I like to kill Jews,” “soon, very soon, we will annihilate the Jews,” and that “servants of the Jews or the Americans” will have their heads “cut off.” Would we give citizenship to a foreigner who said, “I like to kill blacks” or “I like to kill Christians”? I hope not.

Khalil is being deported for lying on his application, though he was initially picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers for threatening U.S. foreign policy. These deportations should not be treated as a matter of botched paperwork but as a matter of national security.

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

From Ian:

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

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

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

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

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

Bret Stephens: When Criticism of Israel Goes Off the Rails

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

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

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

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

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

Weaponizing the charge of genocide fuels an increasingly dangerous antisemitism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Fecal Bacteria Insulted By People Using Election Flyers To Wipe (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook  and  Substack pages.

Jerusalem, October 8 - The microorganisms prevalent in human excrement begged Israelis today to stop using political promotional materials as toilet paper, as the practice - however cathartic to the humans involved - delivers a grievous insult to those microorganisms.

A representative of the gut bacteria in homo sapiens issued a desperate plea on Sunday to stop wiping with election flyers because, in addition to whatever damage may result to the colorectal tissue from using harder paper, the flyers are inherently offensive and make the bacteria sick to their own stomachs, rendering them unable to perform their metabolic and ecological role.

"We understand that it's free paper and toilet paper actually costs money," acknowledged Faecalibacterium prausnitzii. "We also realize that such materials are unworthy of any dignified use, leaving few options. Certainly we appreciate the need to maintain the dignity of bird droppings by refraining from lining cages with the flyers. We simply ask that humans show the same consideration for their microbiome, and not subject us to the repulsiveness that is political campaign 'literature.'"

The statement, released through a consortium of colonic residents and timed to coincide with the final week of flyer distribution, described the paper stock as “aggressively glossy in sentiment if not always in finish.” Bacteroides fragilis, speaking for the more numerous gram-negative faction, said the problem is not merely abrasive fiber or residual ink but the rhetorical content itself. “A slogan about 'Bibi the criminal' or 'we removed existential threats' arrives already warm,” the organism noted. “By the time it reaches us it has been folded, pressed, and rhetorically exhausted. We are then expected to process both the cellulose and the platform. One of those tasks lies within our competence.”

Environmentalists warn that in addition to profligate waste of paper, the use of flyers for any purpose pollutes the discourse and and streets. The movement has succeeded in preventing the incineration of trash as a power source, and, according to horticultural experts, the processed nature of the paper stock renders it ineffective as mulch even in shredded form.

Other proposals call for using at some of the vast quantities of printed, toxic detritus as filler for graves - but burial societies and traditional communities balk at the suggestion of letting loved ones' remains suffer the eternal humiliation of proximity to such heinousness.

Already, piles of the flyers have gathered in landfills, where scavengers that willingly consume dung and rotting flesh refuse to go near anything as horrific as political dross.

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The amazing hypocrisy of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies

The British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, BRISMES, spent years warning that vague political standards, investigations of academics’ speech, and institutional pressure over controversial opinions threaten academic freedom.

But when it comes to Israel, suddenly its opinions do a 180.

In its 2023 report on Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom in UK Higher Education,, which crtiicized the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, was produced with the European Legal Support Center. The report strongly criticized universities for investigating academics over political speech. It warned that even investigations that end without punishment can damage careers, chill speech and make academics afraid to discuss controversial issues. It objected to vague standards being used to determine when political expression crosses some poorly defined ethical line, and emphasized that academic freedom exists precisely to protect the right to question received wisdom and advance unpopular opinions.

Whether or not they apply to the IHRA definition, which includes a lot of caveats, these are reasonable principles. The problem is that BRISMES no longer seems to believe they should constrain BRISMES.

Its current “Mandatory Policy on Ethical Publishing and Participation Standards” gives BRISMES the power to exclude scholars from publication and participation based not merely on their scholarship but on their outside political speech and conduct. An academic may be excluded if BRISMES considers them “reasonably suspected of involvement in public incitement to war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide,” or if they engage in advocacy of hatred amounting to incitement. BRISMES explicitly reserves the right to demand clarification or additional information about an academic’s activities.

In other words, BRISMES created precisely the sort of investigatory mechanism whose chilling effect it had previously condemned.

The policy goes even further with scholarship itself. BRISMES says it will reject work that “glorifies or justifies” war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide. But “justifies” is an extraordinarily dangerous word in an academic publication. Scholars constantly dispute whether particular acts actually constitute war crimes. A scholar arguing that an Israeli military operation complied with international humanitarian law could easily be accused by someone who begins with the opposite conclusion of “justifying war crimes.”

That is how an academic question becomes a loyalty test: first determine what the correct political and legal conclusion is, and then decide whether scholarship disagreeing with that conclusion is permissible.

Obviously, this policy is aimed at Zionist academics or anyone who justifies any of Israel's military activities.

The contradiction is even clearer in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, which BRISMES publishes with Taylor & Francis. BRISMES now has a mandatory territorial or land-acknowledgement policy requiring certain authors to include acknowledgements expressing BRISMES’s preferred political characterization of the land on which their institutions are located. Authors who refuse can remove their institutional affiliation instead.

BRISMES itself describes these acknowledgements as an “ethical and political gesture.”

That is compelled political speech as a condition of normal academic publication.

Curiously, BRISMES apparently recognized the problem when the same issue arose with its conference. After academic-freedom groups objected to mandatory land acknowledgements, BRISMES made the conference version voluntary. Yet the comparable requirement for journal authors remains mandatory.

The irony gets deeper because BRISMES has repeatedly argued that controversial anti-Israel and anti-Zionist expression must be protected from institutional censorship. Its 2023 academic-freedom report argued that universities should not suppress lawful political expression merely because it is offensive or deeply contested. Its 2025 statement defending academic boycotts likewise invokes academic freedom and open scholarly debate as core principles.

If BRISMES believes universities should be extremely reluctant to investigate Palestinian activists or anti-Zionist academics for controversial speech, it cannot simultaneously give itself broad discretion to investigate other academics for supposedly “justifying” crimes. If vague speech rules chill academic freedom when applied to Israel’s critics, they also chill academic freedom when applied to Israel’s defenders.

And BRISMES has created another problem for itself. Its ethical standards do not apply merely to outsiders. They expressly cover authors, presenters, reviewers, editors, editorial board members, committee members and others involved in BRISMES activities.

That makes consistency testable.

BRISMES maintains a large public Database of Expertise containing hundreds of scholars, while its journals and conferences have published or hosted many academics writing about Hamas, Palestinian resistance, armed struggle, October 7 and related subjects. There is nothing inherently improper about any of that; these are legitimate subjects of academic inquiry. But under BRISMES’s own standards, the relevant question now becomes whether it applies the same scrutiny to scholars who justify Palestinian violence, like describing it as "resistance,"  that it reserves the right to apply to scholars accused of justifying Israeli violence.

I have not gone through the individual cases here. That deserves a separate investigation.

The institutional contradiction already exists without them.

In 2023 BRISMES warned that vague political standards, investigations of controversial expression and professional penalties produce a chilling effect incompatible with academic freedom.

By 2025 it had constructed a system containing all three.

BRISMES wrote an excellent critique of its own censorship policy two years before adopting it wholesale.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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10/07 Links Pt2: Who still fights the war on terror?; Simon Sebag Montefiore: Iran, America, Israel, and the End of Khomeinism; Iran’s sickening celebration of October 7

From Ian:

Clifford D. May: Who still fights the war on terror?

Addressing Congress nine days after Sept. 11, President George W. Bush declared: “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there.” He added: “It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.”

A dozen years later, President Barack Obama announced that what had become known as the global war on terror “like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises.”

History doesn’t actually advise, though it can reveal patterns—and Obama drew the wrong one. Wars against an enemy driven by an ideology of conquest rarely end until that enemy is decisively defeated or abandons its demands.

Since 2001, some Islamist terrorist organizations have been diminished by the United States and its partners. But not one has surrendered. Nor have any forsworn what they call the jihad—the holy war that began in the seventh century and for more than a millennium drove the expansion of vast empires.

As for the Islamic Republic of Iran—long described by the U.S. State Department as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism—it, too, is committed to jihad. Only three years ago, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the late supreme leader, said plainly that “Death to America!” should be understood as “not just a slogan; it is a policy.”

His challenge was to develop the capabilities necessary to implement that policy. If you understand that, you grasp why U.S. President Donald Trump, unlike his predecessors, decided to take concrete steps to end Tehran’s nuclear-weapons development.

The U.S. military and the Treasury Department have been depriving Iran’s rulers of the oil revenue they need to rebuild a missile arsenal that would shield their nuclear-weapons program, support their foreign terrorist proxies and utilize the Strait of Hormuz to hold the global economy hostage.

Meanwhile, more good news: Within a few days of one another, three attempted terrorist attacks—one in the Middle East, one in Europe and one in the United States—were foiled.

Jonathan Tobin: In Michigan, the issue is erasing Jewish interests, not the Jewish vote

Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s (D-Mich.) decision to campaign on behalf of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in her state, was, she says, a function of a desire to help someone who would be on what she calls “Team Fight” rather than “Team Flight.” By that, she meant someone who would battle President Donald Trump alongside her in the U.S. Senate, rather than seek compromises with the Republican administration like her more moderate colleague Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.).

In taking this stand, she has fallen in line with the rest of her party in backing El-Sayed. But in framing the question as one of “fight” or “flight,” she was deliberately avoiding the historic implications of her choice. One more Democrat in the Senate could give her party control of both houses of Congress, and make it easier for them to impeach and try Trump, regardless of the partisan nature of such a procedure.

Given that even under those circumstances, a conviction and his ouster from office would likely be impossible, the stakes won’t involve the future of the republic as much as handing Democrats the sinecures and power that come from being in the majority.

But electing an open antisemite like El-Sayed would be truly momentous not just for the Jewish community, of which Slotkin is a member, but for its implications for the future of her party and the nation. From that perspective, characterizing the decision as one of “fight” or “flight” is actually quite apt. But the truth is that what she and a host of other Jewish Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, are doing is engaging in “flight” rather than fighting to hold the line against antisemitism inside her party at a time when it is surging around the globe.

‘No such thing as Jewish voters?’
What made her decision to join forces with El-Sayed particularly interesting was revealed during a joint interview with him on the MS NOW cable-TV channel.

In it, Slotkin didn’t just play the loyal Democratic soldier swallowing the indignity of endorsing a man who seeks to drive the overwhelming majority of American Jews out of the public square. In doing so, she is supporting someone who embodies the illiberal red-green alliance of leftists and Islamists that is taking control of liberal parties around the world.

When asked about the fact that most Michigan Jews, including the majority who are loyal Democrats and politically liberal, simply won’t go along with electing an antisemite, Slotkin’s reply was succinct.

She said, “There’s no such thing as the Jewish voters, just like there’s no such thing as the Muslim voters or the black voters. People have their own views, and the things that they prioritize are going to drive their vote.”

In a sense, she’s right. Citizens vote as individuals and not as part of groups. And, indeed, most American Jews have not voted in lockstep on issues like Israel, even if the majority of them are supporters of the Jewish state. That is especially true of Jewish Democrats, who have always placed Israel’s security below many domestic concerns, whether it was health-care costs or legalized abortion. It’s something that has particularly frustrated Trump, whose pro-Israel policies and efforts to fight antisemitism in education have not been rewarded by most Jewish voters.

To some extent, that’s also true of other groups, like Muslims and African-Americans, though both of those constituencies have been more likely to treat issues relating to their community’s safety as a priority. By contrast, liberal Jews tend to treat universal concerns as more important than those that personally concern them. As writer Cynthia Ozick famously said, “Universalism is the ultimate Jewish parochialism.”

Tolerating antisemitism
But as Jews in Michigan and elsewhere have come to learn in the three years since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attacks on Israeli communities incited an unprecedented increase in antisemitism, El-Sayed’s candidacy is not, strictly speaking, about voters’ views about the Jewish state. It’s about their willingness to tolerate the mainstreaming of Jew-hatred here in the United States.

So, when Slotkin seeks to deny that there is such a thing as “Jewish voters,” she’s signaling something very different from the fact that not all Jews cast votes solely on the basis of a candidate’s views on Israel. Along with other Democrats, both Jewish and non-Jewish, she is seeking to establish something far more important.

'Not yet out of danger': Israeli envoy to US shares update on son following terror attack

Israel ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter, whose son Neria was seriously wounded during a car-ramming terrorist attack in September, said Wednesday that his son “has severe head injuries, but in recent days he has begun breathing on his own.”

“He remains unconscious,” Leiter added in a video recorded for the Evangelical Christian community’s memorial ceremony honoring the victims of October 7, held in Jerusalem.

In an additional statement shared by the ambassador, the family clarified that despite several encouraging signs, Neria remains in very serious condition and is not yet out of danger.

The Leiter family said Neria is receiving the best possible medical care in the intensive care unit at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. The family thanked the medical staff and the public for their prayers and immense support and asked people to continue praying for the recovery of Neria Dov ben Chana.

Seriously wounded in terror attack
Neria Leiter, an IDF reservist and American citizen, was seriously wounded in a terrorist attack at the Bell checkpoint on Route 443.

He underwent several hours of brain surgery at Shaare Zedek Medical Center, where his family later received a visit from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, The Jerusalem Post previously reported.

The family also received numerous messages of support on X from Israeli leaders, including President Isaac Herzog, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.

From bedside of his son on life support from terror attack, Israeli envoy to US decries Mamdani’s ‘dangerous lies’

Yechiel Leiter, Israeli ambassador to the United States, was so put off by the statement that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released on the third anniversary of Oct. 7 that the envoy decried it from the hospital in Israel, where he is at the bedside of his son, who is on life support after a Palestinian terrorist hit him with a car.

“It’s actually hard to find a sentence in Mamdani’s post that isn’t a lie,” Leiter stated.

“Paying lip service to the victims of Oct. 7 just to spread blood libels about Israel might play nicely to the red-green/communist-Islamist alliance that he promotes in the United States, but those of us who know better see his perverted language for what it is,” the Israeli envoy stated. “This man is a defender of Palestinian terrorism, a promoter of antisemitism and an advocate of anti-Americanism.”

Even on the anniversary of the bloodiest day for Jews since the Holocaust, the anti-Israel mayor “can’t help but attack the Jewish state with absurd accusations and outright propaganda,” according to the Israeli envoy.

“The only attempted genocide in this conflict was perpetrated by the barbarians he supports, Hamas, who butchered, raped and murdered in the most horrific ways imaginable,” Leiter stated. “There is no genocide, ethnic cleansing or famine in Gaza. Hamas embeds itself among, behind and beneath the people of Gaza, knowing that the IDF will not, ever, intentionally target civilians. It robs its own people of the humanitarian aid that Israel has facilitated into Gaza since the war began.”

Leiter called the mayor, who campaigned on having the Israeli prime minister arrested, an ally of Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror organization since 1997.

“Hamas knows that its allies, including Zohran Mamdani, will regurgitate its lies, demonizing Israel and endangering Jews everywhere,” the Israeli envoy stated. “Israel and its allies will not be deterred from defending civilization against terrorist savagery. Those of us who envision a peaceful and prosperous Middle East will root out the evil that is Islamic terrorism and build a better future for all, Jew and Arab alike.”

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10/07 Links Pt1: How will we remember October 7?; In Israel, even fear and grief can become courage, resilience and joy; Mamdani chose to play Hamas’ spokesman on Oct. 7 anniversary

From Ian:

How will we remember October 7?

Three years later and at times October 7 still feels like yesterday.

For the victims and their families time has stood still, stuck in the moment of the last hug, smile and time they heard the sound of their voices. For the survivors and for the first responders who answered the call for help that morning, time has not moved forward either. Trauma from the scenes of death and destruction still haunt their minds eye. But the calendar still says three years has past since that infamous day.

Across Israel and the Jewish world, we are still trying to make sense of what happened. Many conversations focus on how such a catastrophe could have befallen the Jewish state, defended by one of the strongest armies in the world. Others focus on how our enemies still seek our annihilation. Then there are the quieter conversations focused on stories of sacrifice, selflessness and survival that are intertwined with the horrors of the day.

Our Jewish tradition commands us to remember. It has been woven into our national consciousness. We remember slavery in Egypt. We mourn the destruction of the Temples. We recall attempted systematic extermination of our ancestors, both recent and ancient. But with each tragedy we cling to the hope that the suffering also paves way for moments of jubilee. The story of slavery is juxtaposed to the birth of the Nation of Israel. The desecration and destruction of both Holy Temples in Jerusalem has served as inspiration for millennia of prayer and hope of rebirth. Even the attempts to annihilate the Jewish people are interconnected to our return to our ancestral Homeland. It's like the age old Jewish joke, they came tried to destroy us, G-d saved us, let's eat.

So how will we remember October 7?
We do not have to look very far for an answer.

Even before Israel’s leadership fully grasped the magnitude of what was happening that morning, hundreds of United Hatzalah volunteers had already made a decision. They were going south.

There was no grand order telling them to go. For many, the decision was intensely personal. They heard the call for help and understood that people were in danger. They put on their orange vests, grabbed their medic bags and drove toward the gunfire.

By the end of that first day, more than 1,500 United Hatzalah volunteers were engaged in treating and evacuating the wounded.

Three years later, United Hatzalah founder and president Eli Beer retraced the steps taken by some of those volunteers. We returned to the Nova festival grounds and to communities along the Gaza border whose names were once familiar only to those who lived there, but are now etched into our national story.

At every stop, another story surfaced.

Gil Troy: In Israel, even fear and grief can become courage, resilience and joy

The image of a plane plummeting toward certain doom, then soaring up thanks to gutsy Israelis and a courageous pilot, captures the whiplash emotions we all experienced this Sukkot. Or, as the comedienne Dana Perry Segal dryly put it, “in Israel, we just call this Wednesday.”

Many of us olim – immigrants to Israel – particularly appreciate Sukkot in our restored old-new homeland. The rabbis called it Z’man Simchateinu – our joyous season. But, in the Diaspora, it often feels like Z’man Schikateinu – our burnout moment. After skipping work or school for the High Holy Days, Sukkot – with four more down days – can be burdensome.

In Israel, with schools out, glorious weather, sukkahs popping up like mushrooms everywhere, it’s a delight. Last Wednesday, many Israelis were sitting in their sukkahs when they heard this breathtaking story about an attempted kamikaze suicide bombing with 174 passengers flying to Israel, including 27 children.

One friend rushed out of her Sukkah to get Psalms to pray for everyone’s safety. By the time she returned, she heard the news that dazzled the world.

Naturally, through tears of joy, prayers of thanksgiving, and happy high-fives, we Israelis wondered – again – “why do so many hate us,” “what kind of people would want to kill so many of us just flying home from vacation,” and “boy, that was too close a call.”

When courage rises in moments of terror
Our pride in the Israeli passengers who responded instantly – as well as the plucky pilot – commingled with despair that so many of our fellow citizens need that instinct to react, the grit to try, and the fighting skills required to subdue a knife-wielding co-pilot in seconds, then stabilize the plane.

And as we entered a searing week of October 7 commemorations, we linked those fighting instincts that saved the plane to the same instincts that kicked in for so many heroes who saved the country three years ago when Hamas barbarians invaded – often at the cost of their lives.

Fortunately, my wife and I had tickets that evening for the perfect event matching those mixed emotions: “Comedy for Koby.” This sold-out Jerusalem Theatre performance marked the 25th anniversary of the Koby Mandell Foundation.

The Foundation was founded by Rabbi Seth and Sherri Mandell in 2001, after Palestinian terrorists brutally murdered their beloved 13-year-old son Koby and his friend Yosef Ishran.

Seeing how emotionally isolated their other kids were, even at summer camps that lovingly embraced them, the Mandells launched this marvelous effort to help families suffering from these kinds of heartbreaking losses.

Since 2001, they have hugged, cried with, processed with, and laughed with 28,742 recovering family members from 9,500 families – with 11,233 siblings, parents, widows and widowers participating in 140 healing retreats, and 13,742 campers being bolstered at Camp Koby & Yosef.

Eliana Mandell Braner, Koby’s sister, now directing the foundation, noted that before October 7, they were helping 750 families; it’s now 2,500 families.

Opening the evening, Sherri Mandell recalled how, after the horror, “the Jewish people became our Sukkah, the place where we could feel safe.”

Afterward, this inspirational powerhouse told me that in 2001, many Israelis were in denial about the trauma caused by Palestinian terrorism. They – and the massive extended family they’ve raised since – were trailblazers in developing what Rabbi Seth Mandell calls “a community of resilience.”

So there we were, 760 of us, mourning Koby and Yosef, empathizing with the saved-but-obviously-rattled passengers and crew, bracing for the grief waves already hitting us as we approached Simchat Torah and the third anniversary of October 7.

Then, in the spirit of Israel, capturing the whiplash many of us experienced when dancing around the Torahs last Friday night hours after visiting gravesites, came five magical, uplifting words: “Are we ready to laugh?”

Phyllis Chesler: Thinking about Oct. 7 from Geula Cohen’s point of view

Israel needs heroes and has always had them in abundance. We still do.

Once, I was “chosen” by one of Israel’s heroes, none other than Geula Cohen, who took me on a tour of Judea and Samaria way back in 1980. I now think that a mutual friend might have told her that I was “one of hers.”

I doubt that I would have had the sheer physical courage and reckless daring to break out of jail—not once, but twice—as membership in the Jewish underground fighting organization Lechi in the 1940s demanded. Geula’s story as a member of Lechi, translated into English, is free and available online. Lechi fought the British, who were, at the time, murdering Jews and supporting Arabs in their murder of Jews in Mandatory Palestine. The British tortured, jailed and hanged members of the underground, even exiling them to Africa.

The Jewish underground exacted “measure for measure.” After they, too, tortured a British soldier to death, that practice among the British stopped, but the jailing and hanging did not.

Geula wrote, “For every murderous British law the Hebrew underground will enact an opposite and equally cruel law of its own. There will be quick justice and no mercy for all British criminals. The foreign regime has decided that prima facie evidence is no longer necessary in order to condemn a man to death. We have decided the same! The foreign regime has decided that membership in an enemy organization is punishable by death. We have decided the same!”

When the British put her on trial, here’s what she said in the courtroom: “The accused does not recognize the authority of the court. I am a Hebrew fighter of the Freedom Fighters of Israel … you are intruders subjugating our homeland. We have our own set of emergency regulations: Any British soldier in this land is our enemy, and there is only one sentence that can be given him—death.”

Yes, I know some might think this sounds just like a Palestinian terrorist, but Geula was opposed to real colonial oppression. The Arabs have fabricated a new narrative, based on the Big Lie, claiming they are fighting the Jews who “colonized” their country—even though the Arabs have never actually had a country called “Palestine.”

Geula was one of the two voices of the Jewish underground radio broadcasts. I learned that Lechi had an anthem: “Hayyelim Almonim” (“The Anonymous Soldiers”). However, Geula named each precious person, and she knew most, if not all, of them.

At the time, Britain was also turning back and shooting down the “illegal” ships that were trying to bring European Jews to Palestine during and after the Holocaust. Britain also refused visas to Jewish survivors. It was always a heartless colonial power.

According to Geula, British official “Lord Moyne in Cairo refused one million Jews. ‘What would I do with them?’ He ordered the sinking of Jewish refugee ships. Two members of Lechi assassinated him—and were hanged.”

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San Diego's Islamophobia Definition Could Make Criticizing Terrorism Islamophobic

San Diego recently adopted an official definition of Islamophobia. Definitions are important, but they must be defensible.

Here is the actual wording:

"Islamophobia is a form of racism, prejudice, discrimination, hostility, or hatred directed toward Muslims or those perceived to be Muslim, or their property, that targets expressions of Muslim identity or perceived Muslim identity and may manifest through speech, conduct, institutional practices, exclusion, intimidation, harassment, or violence."

There are some serious problems here. The definition doesn't merely prohibit discrimination against Muslims. It extends to hostility that "targets expressions of Muslim identity," without defining what those expressions are, who determines them, or how to distinguish hostility toward a practice from hostility toward the people who practice it.

That is an enormous loophole. And it becomes particularly striking when we compare it with the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, which critics have spent years attacking for supposedly suppressing legitimate criticism of Israel.

The double standard with IHRA

Critics of the IHRA definition routinely complain that it is too broad, too subjective, and too easily weaponized to silence legitimate political criticism. They argue that it conflates criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews, creating a chilling effect on free speech.

But IHRA explicitly anticipates that concern. It says that "criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic." It also introduces its examples with the qualification that they "could, taking into account the overall context," constitute antisemitism. And it explicitly states that manifestations of antisemitism "might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity."

San Diego's Islamophobia definition contains no caveats whatsoever. There are no limitations, no discussion of what is not Islamophobic. There is no explicit protection for criticism of Islam or Islamic practices.. No statement that criticism of Islamic teachings, institutions, religious leaders, or practices is not necessarily Islamophobic. No requirement to consider the overall context. No examples distinguishing legitimate criticism from religious prejudice.

If the objection to IHRA is that its language could be misused to suppress criticism, the San Diego definition presents that problem a hundredfold worse.

What counts as an expression of Muslim identity?

This is where the definition becomes particularly problematic.

There is no single, universally accepted interpretation of Islam. Muslims disagree about religious law, political authority, women's rights, sexuality, religious obligations and the relationship between religion and government. Practices that one Muslim considers essential to Islamic identity may be rejected by another Muslim as cultural distortions or outright violations of Islam.

But San Diego's definition doesn't limit its protection to mainstream Islamic practices. It doesn't say that an expression must be approved by a recognized religious authority or accepted by a majority of Muslims. It doesn't even require that the practice actually be mandated by Islam.

It simply says "expressions of Muslim identity or perceived Muslim identity."

Consider what that could mean.

Polygamy. Islamic law, under traditional interpretations, permits a man to have up to four wives under specified conditions. A Muslim man who considers polygamy part of his religious identity could argue that someone campaigning against polygamy is expressing hostility toward an expression of Muslim identity. Is a feminist who opposes polygamy engaging in Islamophobia? The definition offers no clear answer.

Honor killings. Honor killings are condemned by many Muslim religious authorities and are not unique to Muslim societies. But some perpetrators invoke religious or traditional justifications for them. If a person regards such violence as part of his religious identity, could he characterize condemnation of the practice as hostility toward that identity? Again, the definition contains no explicit exclusion for conduct that violates human rights.

Female genital mutilation. FGM is practiced in some Muslim and non-Muslim communities, and many Muslim scholars oppose it. Nevertheless, some defenders regard it as a religious obligation. Would an activist campaigning to eradicate FGM be targeting an expression of Muslim identity? Under an expansive interpretation of the city's language, that accusation could at least be made.

Slavery. Slavery existed in historical Muslim societies, and classical Islamic jurisprudence regulated it. Contemporary defenders of slavery have sometimes invoked those precedents. If someone criticizes religious arguments used to justify slavery, is that hostility toward an expression of Muslim identity? The definition never explains why it would not be.

Terrorism. This is the most revealing example. Islamist terrorist organizations explicitly justify their violence through their interpretations of Islam. ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hamas and other jihadist organizations have portrayed their actions as religious obligations. They do not merely happen to be Muslim; they affirmatively claim that their violence expresses their understanding of Muslim identity.

An extremist could therefore claim that condemnation of his religiously justified violence is hostility toward his expression of Muslim identity.

Would a reasonable person accept that argument? One hopes not, but in the wake of the justifications of October 7, that is unclear. But a definition is supposed to help us distinguish reasonable claims from unreasonable ones. Here, the necessary distinction is conspicuously absent.

And if the answer is that terrorism, slavery and honor killings are not authentic expressions of Islam, who decides what authentic Islam is? The San Diego City Council? CAIR? Religious scholars? The Muslims themselves?

The city has opened a theological question that it has neither the authority nor the expertise to adjudicate.

Even ordinary criticism becomes suspect

We don't need extreme examples to see the problem.

A feminist argues that compulsory hijab laws are oppressive. An atheist argues that Islam, like every other religion, makes false theological claims. A historian discusses slavery in Islamic history. An animal-rights activist opposes certain forms of halal slaughter. A gay-rights activist condemns religious arguments used to justify criminal penalties for homosexuality.

All are criticizing beliefs, practices or historical conduct. None necessarily expresses prejudice against Muslims.

Yet each criticism could be characterized as hostility toward something that at least some Muslims regard as an expression of their identity.

There is also a problem with ordinary government decisions. A city enforces noise ordinances against mosque loudspeakers. A public university refuses to segregate classrooms by sex. A school teaches evolution despite religious objections. A school cafeteria serves pork. A store in a Muslim neighborhood sells food during the day on Ramadan.  A public institution declines to accommodate a particular religious practice because doing so would conflict with other people's rights.

Someone could allege that these decisions constitute institutional hostility or exclusion targeting Muslim identity, even when the same rules apply to everyone.

To be clear, the definition does require hostility or prejudice directed toward Muslims, not merely disagreement with a practice. A careful interpreter could reject many of these accusations. But that is precisely the problem: the essential distinction has to be supplied by the interpreter rather than by the definition itself.

A useful definition should make clear that criticizing a practice is not the same thing as discriminating against the people who practice it, even when those people sincerely believe the practice is religiously required.

The problem of proving motive

There is another serious weakness. How does anyone establish that adverse treatment was actually motivated by hostility toward Muslim identity?

Suppose a Muslim employee is fired after saying they support Hamas or ISIS. Or a Muslim is denied a promotion, a Muslim student is disciplined, or a Muslim speaker is disinvited from a university event without a clear reason given. Any of these incidents could involve anti-Muslim discrimination. But they could also have perfectly legitimate explanations.

The definition offers no evidentiary standard for distinguishing the two.

Someone who experiences adverse treatment may sincerely believe that religious prejudice motivated it. But experiencing discrimination and knowing the discriminator's motive are two different things. A claim about motive needs evidence, not merely an assertion.

Discrimination law recognizes this distinction. Relevant evidence can include statements revealing bias, different treatment of similarly situated individuals, inconsistent explanations, or patterns of discriminatory behavior. The mere fact that a Muslim was treated adversely does not establish that the treatment occurred because the person was Muslim.

The definition does not explicitly say otherwise. But it fails to explain the causal connection that must be established. That omission becomes especially troublesome when combined with its expansive references to hostility, speech, exclusion and institutional practices.

An accusation of Islamophobia should be taken seriously. That is precisely why it should require serious evidence.

The CAIR connection

There is also a troubling question about how this definition was adopted.

According to an October 5 investigation by the Middle East Forum, based on public records obtained from San Diego, the Council adopted language drafted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The investigation reports that the adopted definition was nearly identical to CAIR's proposal, while the resolution did not identify CAIR as its author. It also raises questions about the procedural review preceding adoption.

CAIR is an advocacy organization with its own institutional interests and positions. It does not condemn Hamas. 

We don't have to speculate about how broadly CAIR interprets Islamophobia. In its 2021 report, Islamophobia in the Mainstream, CAIR explicitly includes among its criteria for identifying Islamophobes those who claim that violent extremist groups have the correct interpretation of Islam. That means a scholar who argues that ISIS has a historically defensible interpretation of certain Islamic texts, even while condemning its atrocities, could be labeled Islamophobic for making a theological argument CAIR disagrees with. CAIR also includes the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a Muslim-led reform organization, in its "Islamophobia Network," demonstrating that even Muslims themselves can be accused of Islamophobia for challenging interpretations of their own religion. And CAIR's criteria extend beyond the alleged offenders to organizations that fund, partner with, or provide platforms for them. This is not merely a theoretical concern about how vague definitions might be abused. CAIR has already published a framework in which disagreements over Islamic theology and religious reform can become evidence of anti-Muslim prejudice. Now San Diego has adopted a definition drafted by the same organization, without explicitly protecting legitimate criticism of Islamic beliefs or practices. The city may not intend such expansive applications, but CAIR's own published methodology gives us good reason to ask where the boundaries are.

Similarly, CAIR flatly says that individuals like Bill Maher, Daniel Pipes or Ayaan Hirsi Ali are Islamophobic. They do not attack Muslims, they criticize Islam. It is clear that CAIR does not distinguish between the two, and their definition is not meant to make that distinction, either. 

Protecting people is not protecting their beliefs from criticism

My own definition of antisemitism is "hostility towards, denigration of, malicious lies about or discrimination against Jews" as individuals, as a people, as a religion, as an ethnic group or as a nation, meaning Israel.

The object is Jews. It does not say that hostility toward anything a Jew regards as an expression of Jewish identity is automatically antisemitic.

The purpose of a definition of bigotry should be to identify hostility, prejudice and discrimination against people because of who they are. It should not provide ideological or religious beliefs with immunity from criticism, and it certainly should not offer even a plausible rhetorical defense for practices that violate the rights of others.

San Diego could have written a definition that clearly distinguished anti-Muslim prejudice from criticism of Islam and conduct undertaken in Islam's name. Instead, it adopted one that blurs those categories.

The irony is that people who object to IHRA for allegedly blurring the line between antisemitism and criticism of Israel should be especially concerned about a definition that blurs the line between Islamophobia and criticism of Islam itself.

If the principle is that definitions of bigotry must not be used to silence legitimate criticism, it must apply consistently. Otherwise the objection was never really about protecting free expression. It was about deciding whose beliefs deserve protection from criticism.

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10/06 Links Pt2: Three years since October 7: Why Zionism is more relevant than ever; Dancing on Jewish Graves: Protesting on October 7th Is Obscene; Christians plant millions of Israeli flags in 14 countries ahead of Oct. 7

From Ian:

Jpost Editorial: Three years later, October 7 is still not in the past for Israelis

Life after October 7 is more about learning to live with what happened
For much of the country, then, the past three years have been less about moving on from October 7 than about living with its consequences – and with the questions it left behind.

But for many Israelis, October 7 is not simply something they have been living with. They are still living it.

For former hostages, freedom itself remains a daily reminder of what was taken from them. Emily Damari, abducted and wounded from her home in Kfar Aza, has spoken about how captivity changed her relationship with the most ordinary parts of life.

“Today, I open the fridge, and I say thank you,” Damari said. “I drink cold water, and I say thank you.”

Eli Sharabi spent 491 days in captivity after being taken from Kibbutz Be’eri. His wife, Lianne, and their daughters, Noiya and Yahel, were murdered on October 7. His brother Yossi was taken hostage and died in Gaza. After his release, Sharabi said he had learned in captivity “how precious every moment and every choice can be.”

“I choose life,” he said. “I choose to keep living fully, while carrying Lianne, Noiya, Yahel and Yossi with me in everything I do.”

For Hagar Brodutch, who was abducted with her three children and a neighbor’s daughter, returning to life has been a more complicated process than the word “freedom” might suggest. She has described the immense daily struggle, particularly for children, and recently began taking pastry-baking classes as a way to build something new.

“This is about much more than learning how to bake,” she said. “It is about finding a new path, creating something with my own hands, and slowly building a future.”

Then there are those for whom there can be no return to the life they had before October 7.

Michal Negri’s son, Maj. (res.) Roee Negri, 28, was killed fighting Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Be’eri after spending the day rescuing civilians.

How can Israelis hold their government accountable after October 7?
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Negri said that three years had done little to diminish the questions raised that morning. Above all, she wants those responsible for the failures leading up to October 7 to be held accountable through a state commission of inquiry.

“Everyone that was in the government, in any position of management, has to take responsibility and be inquired into, so we will be sure that it will never happen again,” she said.

“How can you be sure that it will not happen again if you don’t inquire and ask questions?”

That question is larger than one bereaved mother.

Israel has changed dramatically since October 7, with the country’s political and defense establishments learning painful lessons about its enemies, its defenses and its own institutions. But lessons must be implemented, failures examined, decisions questioned – and responsibility determined.

Three years later, Israel still has no state commission of inquiry into the worst national disaster in its history.

That means October 7 remains unfinished business. For many Israelis, October 7 is not three years ago – it is both the past and the present.

Ahead of Israel’s national elections, Israelis must remember that our enemies aren’t within, but those seeking to destroy us. May the memory of those killed on October 7, 2023, and since, be blessed.

Three years since October 7: Why Zionism is more relevant than ever

ZIONISM DID not promise that Jews would not be attacked. It sought to ensure that when they were attacked, they would not be helpless.

This is perhaps the deepest expression of the meaning of Jewish sovereignty. When communities in Israel were attacked, there was no need to wait for the mercy of a foreign ruler, hope that another government would send forces to defend the Jews, or rely on the willingness of the international community to intervene.

The State of Israel, despite the terrible failure of that morning, was able to mobilize hundreds of thousands of soldiers and reservists, fight back, and defend its citizens. For centuries, that possibility was simply unavailable to the Jewish people.

Yet October 7 and the period that followed also raised another question concerning the status of Jews in the Western world. Many Jews, both in Israel and in the Diaspora, were shocked not only by the scale of the attack but also by the responses to it.

At some of the most prestigious universities in the West, the massacre was quickly translated into familiar ideological frameworks of “oppressors” and “oppressed,” “colonialists” and “indigenous peoples.” Instead of beginning with the facts and the moral responsibility of those who carried out the massacre, some rushed to interpret the events through theoretical frameworks in which the identities of victim and aggressor are almost predetermined.

The US congressional hearing in which the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT were required to answer questions concerning calls for the genocide of Jews on their campuses became, for many, a symbol of a deeper crisis. Institutions accustomed to speaking with great confidence about justice, equality, and the protection of minorities suddenly appeared hesitant precisely when Jews were the targets of threats.

For many Diaspora Jews, this was a deeply unsettling experience. Those who believed that their full integration into Western societies had made their Jewishness a secondary component of their identity discovered that, in the eyes of parts of the societies around them, Jewish identity still carries profound political and social significance.

Not because their American, British, or French identities are not genuine, but because Jewish history teaches that Jewish identity is not always something the individual alone can determine the significance of, in the eyes of those around them.

The international arena also exposed the limitations of relying on external institutions. Shortly after the massacres, resolutions were adopted at the United Nations calling for a ceasefire without including an explicit condemnation of Hamas. UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated that the Hamas attack “did not happen in a vacuum.”

Proceedings in international courts placed Israel at the center of some of the most serious accusations in international law, while organizations responsible for defending women’s rights struggled for a considerable period to give adequate expression to the evidence of sexual violence committed during the Hamas-led attacks.

THE CUMULATIVE picture recalls a truth that Zionism understood more than a century ago: the international community can be a partner, a friend, and an ally, but Israel cannot entrust its existential security to it. This was one of the fundamental principles of political Zionism, and since October 7 it has taken on renewed significance.

For generations, the Jewish people witnessed the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires, often without having any meaningful ability to influence the forces that determined their fate. They survived, and at times even prospered, but time and again it became clear how fragile their achievements could be when their security depended on the goodwill of others.

The State of Israel changed that equation. It does not guarantee that the Jewish people will not be attacked, that antisemitism will disappear, or that the world will always stand by their side. It gives them something more fundamental: the ability to act, defend themselves, and take responsibility for their future.

Three years after October 7, this is perhaps the most important Zionist lesson: the principle that the Jewish people are no longer mere spectators in their own history. Responsibility for our fate rests, first and foremost, in our own hands.

Three years later, I still think about the stories the 'Post' did not tell on October 7

There are families who wrote to me after October 7 and never received an answer. Others heard back too late. They sent photographs, names, and stories of people they loved, hoping we would write about them in The Jerusalem Post. Some of those stories never appeared.

To those families, I am sorry.

I understood what they were asking. After a terrorist attack, part of our job is to call the families and write about the people who were killed. An article can stay with a family for years. Somebody searches a name and finds something about the person: what they did, who loved them, what their friends remember.

After October 7, the numbers kept going up. Hundreds, then more than a thousand. We did not even know who had been killed, who was missing, and who had been kidnapped. Meanwhile, we were covering a war and trying to explain to readers abroad what had happened.

I remember looking through casualty lists and wanting an article about each person. Families were sending messages, press releases were arriving, and we used what we could get to. Sometimes a relative reached a reporter who had time to make the calls. Sometimes a message was buried under hundreds of others.

More accounts of heroism, faith, and horror than we could handle
I don’t know how many more reporters we would have needed just to write those stories. We had more than we could handle, every day. That still bothers me, especially when I think about how much harder it may be to find those families’ stories years from now.

Take Tamar and Yonatan Kedem-Siman Tov and their children Arbel, Shahar and Omer, who were murdered in Nir Oz. Yonatan’s mother, Carol, was murdered there too. The kibbutz’s memorial page recalls that Yonatan, known as Johnny, made sure the field was watered before its kite festival to keep the dust down. I wish we had published more of those details about more people.

When we looked through testimonies for our October 7 cover, there were accounts of heroism, faith, and Hamas’s antisemitism. Others described Arab and Jewish Israelis helping each other. There were so many powerful stories. Naama’s hit us in the stomach. She was 17, from Kfar Aza, and she thought she was going to die. On her grandfather’s prescription, she wrote:

“Naama of a few hours from now, if you are reading this, you are alive.” 0710JDN01

She couldn’t find a pen, so she used eyeliner. We kept coming back to that: her grandfather’s prescription, whatever she had available to write with, and the thought that she might survive to read it. At 17, she had left a message for herself on the small chance that she would get through those hours.

It was also very visual. A prescription is familiar to readers almost anywhere. They can imagine that piece of paper in their own home, belonging to a parent or grandparent. These ordinary details helped explain what we wanted the cover to convey about the everyday people caught in the attack.

Testimonies, hope for a future
There was hope in her sentence, too. She allowed for a future, even one only a few hours away, and lived to describe what she had written. The illustration on our cover is based on that account, recorded by Edut 710.

We chose one testimony for the cover knowing how many others deserved that space. I hope readers who look up Naama’s account will stay with the archive and listen to someone else as well.

Edut 710 began as a volunteer initiative after the attack. Witnesses can tell their accounts at their own pace, including life before October 7 and what followed. Their consent governs publication and use. A detail that a reporter might have left out to meet a deadline can remain available to someone studying the account decades later.

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