Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

10/29 Links Pt2: The World Doesn’t Care About Your Partisan Politics; Trump or Kamala? Ben Shapiro and Sam Harris Debate; Don't Call It a Hate Crime Against a Jew

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The World Doesn’t Care About Your Partisan Politics

American foreign policy is always something of a hostage to the domestic politics of the moment. While this might be the unavoidable byproduct of democracy, it can greatly distort our understanding of the world and the coherence of strategic planning.

The Israel-Iran-Ukraine-Russia linedance provides a steady stream of examples, but never has it brought as much clarity to the mismatch between U.S. partisan politics and American grand strategy as it has in recent days. Republicans tend to favor Israel but not Ukraine, and Democrats, the reverse. Our enemies, of course, see it very differently.

Just before the weekend, the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Russia has supplied the Houthis—the Iranian proxy in Yemen that has been shooting missiles at commercial shipping vessels in the Red Sea—with “targeting data” to help sink ships, kill civilians, and sabotage the supply chain. “The data,” the Journal explains, “was passed through members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who were embedded with the Houthis in Yemen.”

That sentence is a handy organizational chart. The Houthis aren’t merely supported by Iran, the Houthis are Iran. And the Russia-Iran alliance has become so tight that Vladimir Putin is helping the Iranians retaliate against the U.S. and Israel for having the temerity to counter Hamas’s invasion of Israel, and, more specifically, for America’s modest support for Ukraine’s existence against Russia’s eliminationist war machine.

Russia wants to bleed Western resources in the Middle East because Moscow is bleeding resources in trying to destroy part of Europe. Russia is angry that it is bad at war, so it is making more war.

And birds without feathers flock together, so Moscow and Iran have expanded their partnership wherever possible. That includes Russia’s provision of air-defense systems to Iran and Iran’s provision of ballistic missiles to Russia.

Both of which took a literal hit over the weekend.

As the Times of London reports, one of Israel’s targets in its recent strikes included fuel mixers for missile production: “Early analysis of the impact of the strikes suggests that Iranian missile production has been badly affected, reducing Tehran’s ability to export weapons. Without the ability to mix fuel, Iran may be forced to appeal to China or other suppliers to help it restock, a process that could take many months.”

The Times saw the records for one Iranian missile delivery to Russia, in late August, about three weeks after Reuters reported that the two countries had signed a contract for Iran to provide several hundred to Putin’s forces. That could be delayed by as long as two years now.

And what of the air-defense systems provided by Russia to protect Iranian airspace? Gone. Israel destroyed one in April, and “on Saturday Israel systematically destroyed the remaining three S-300 batteries at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport and the Malad missile base.”

The fact that Iran might become dependent on China to rebuild its ballistic missile stock is another piece of the puzzle. China already buys most of Iran’s oil exports. Beijing has also been boosting Iran in the propaganda war, especially on social media where China has the largest user audience and a repressive censorship regime.

Author coming to St. Louis urges Jews to rethink alliances amid rising left-wing antisemitism

In Benjamin Ginsberg’s latest book, “The New American Anti-Semitism: The Left, The Right, and The Jews”, he urges Jews to “wake up” to the threat posed by left-wing antisemitism in the United States.

Ginsberg is the David Bernstein Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Center for Advanced Governmental Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the author, coauthor, or editor of 36 books.

The Jewish Light spoke to him in advance of his appearance at the St. Louis Jewish Book Festival at 1 p.m. Nov. 7. Some of the conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What is the new American antisemitism you explore in your book?
“Most Jews are accustomed to right-wing antisemites, going back to the Nazis and the antisemitism of the right in Europe. What’s new for Americans – and I don’t think American Jews have quite wrapped their heads around this – is that the main antisemitic threat today comes from the left. We see thousands of students and some non-students screaming about Zionism in the streets of New York and Philadelphia and other cities. And I was horrified when I watched the testimony of the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT – let’s call them ‘The Three Stooges.’ They were not willing to say whether students running around screaming ‘death to the Jews’ are in violation of their campus speech code, and the reason for that is that they’re afraid of liberal forces on their campuses. I thought, ‘This is sort of the end of things as we know them.’ We are at a point in American history where people can be openly antisemitic, certainly on college campuses and some elements of the news media. It’s become possible once again – it hadn’t been for decades – to publicly criticize the Jews. So we need to rethink our position in the United States, and think about who our friends are and who our enemies are, before it’s too late.”

You argue that Jews in the U.S. should forge alliances with evangelical Christians and other Christian Zionists who vocally support Israel. Why are those alliances important?
“When I say to Jewish friends, ‘You should take seriously the Christian Zionists,’ they say, ‘Oh, no, they just want to convert us.’ I talked one couple into going to a little convention where you had Jewish leaders and Christian Zionist leaders. They came away amazed and said, ‘You know, these people do have some strange ideas, but basically they are incredibly supportive of Israel.’ And that’s right. We need people who support Israel; doctrinal differences we can argue about later. Liberal, well-educated Americans sneer at this, but it’s not to be sneered at: There are millions of Bible-believing Christians who view the creation of Israel – and the astonishing victory by Israel over its foes in the 1967 Israel-Arab war – as things that were predicted in the Bible. And they’ve put pressure on the U.S. government (to support Israel). I think Jews are always reluctant to shift their alliances, to realize that their friends of yesterday aren’t their friends today.”

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: Please answer my burning questions

Did you see Michelle Obama stump for Kamala Harris? She is really one angry woman. Her fiery appeal was to "y'all," and perhaps she mainly had black folk in mind. What do y'all think? What has Michelle got to be so angry about?

Obama? He's the former President who barely acknowledged his white mother and white grandparents who brought him up. In his first book, he focuses mainly on the black African father who abandoned him and never looked back. What kind of man does this? Did you ever notice this, ponder upon it? And why did he unleash Iran's evil power? Choose the mullahs to stabilize the Middle East?

Why do I keep doing it, reading the NYT? Am I a masochist? Do you read it too? Well, some of us have to keep up with the daily anti-Israel libels, the kind of lies that always, always, lead to violence and then to pogroms--and worse.

Yesterday, the NYT's described Israel's "foray" into Iran as "retaliatory" and as an example of "Israel's Shadow War." That's their lead front page story. Add to that an article that is sympathetic to Gazan cancer victims in Jordan who are facing psychological battles of displacement (five photos of them); two articles that are actually sympathetic to Iran (!!!), which praise the mullahs for their "muted response" and "restraint.

The largest state sponsor of global terrorism is described as a country that is "aware of its 'responsibilities for regional peace and security.'" Oh yes, there's another article about how outraged media groups are about the Israeli strikes that (inadvertently) killed journalists in Lebanon--Israel's actions are described as a "war crime," and as "deliberate aggression."

As usual, but Oh My God! Not a word about Iran's aggression and that of its' many terrorist proxies; no sympathetic photos of displaced Israelis, wounded Israelis, murdered Israelis. There are now 769 mostly very young soldiers and reservist fathers who were killed in battle; 891 civilians who've been murdered; 76 police officers and ISA agents who've also been murdered. There are 101 Israeli captives still being held hostage in Gaza. An offer of 100K for the release of each one, no questions asked, has led nowhere.

10/29 Links Pt1: Cry Me a River, UNRWA; VDH: The Ordeal and Triumph of Mr. Netanyahu; The JW3 protest is a new low for the ‘anti-Israel’ set

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Cry Me a River, UNRWA

The proper response from UNRWA would be: Thank you. For an agency funded by hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money alone, and which does nothing but perpetuate the conflict so it can continue collecting other people’s hard-earned money and spending it on terrorists, any punishment shy of closure and the prosecution of its directors is a gift.

The UN, of course, is furious. But honestly, who cares? For posterity, here’s the crux of the world body’s complaint: “The vote by the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) against UNRWA this evening is unprecedented and sets a dangerous precedent. It opposes the UN Charter and violates the State of Israel’s obligations under international law.”

An unprecedented precedent-setter! The legislation, we’re told, “will deprive over 650,000 girls and boys there from education.” An education from literal Hamas political leaders? Or accused hostage-takers? Anyway, the “education” provided by UNRWA schools teaches children to venerate terrorists and to hate Jews, which is really no education at all.

Finally, UNRWA says, “Putting an end to UNRWA and its services will not strip the Palestinians from their refugee status. That status is protected by another UN General Assembly resolution until a fair and lasting solution is found to the plight of the Palestinians.”

About that “refugee status.” Palestinian refugees, according to the agency’s own definition, are “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.”

UNRWA then sneaks in that the descendants of refugees are “eligible” for refugee benefits as well. The common claim that there are millions of Palestinian refugees from 1948 is very obviously false. There were perhaps as many as 750,000 refugees. Palestinians are the only refugee class with their own UN agency. It is no coincidence at all that that agency has inflated the number of refugees even though its own definition of a refugee makes that number impossible.

According to Jonathan Schanzer, COMMENTARY contributing editor and vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, members of Congress have been trying for years to pass legislation that would apply the actual definition of a “refugee” to Palestinians. A 2012 amendment would have required “the secretary of state to report to Congress on how many Palestinians serviced by UNRWA are true refugees from wars past — those who could prove that they were personally displaced. That number is believed to be closer to 30,000 people. This new tally would then become the focus of America’s assistance to UNRWA for refugee issues.”

UNRWA could, that is, service Palestinian refugees. But it isn’t designed to do that. It is designed be a Palestinian agency. Which is why it has been subsumed by Hamas in Gaza (and Lebanon). UNRWA counts nearly 6 million Palestinians among its refugee population—which is higher than the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Actual refugees deserve every bit of help they can get from refugee agencies. But that work isn’t being done by UNRWA, which is why UNRWA should not be doing any work at all.

Alan Dershowitz: The Media Is Implementing Sinwar's Genocidal Strategy Although they could easily distinguish between combatant and non-combatant deaths, Hamas refuses to do so.

They [Hamas] fail to acknowledge that many of these so-called children were also combatants.

They do the same with women, conveying the impression that only men are terrorists.

Without the support of the media, this strategy would not succeed.

And useful ignoramuses on university campuses, along with bigots in international organizations, falsely accuse Israel of genocide, despite the successful efforts of the IDF to reduce civilian casualties to the minimum possible....

In the absence of an honest accounting, the media will continue to do Sinwar's nefarious work in increasing Palestinian casualties in order to increase the pressure on Israel.

Sadly, the media's dangerous cooperation with terrorists tells us more about them than about the war about which they purport to be "reporting." David Singer: UNRWA inflamed Jew-hatred by keeping Gazans penned in Gaza

The continuing failure of the United Nations and UNRWA, its refugee agency that serves only Palestinia Arabs, to remove Gaza’s children, women, the sick and the elderly from 8 refugee camps inside Gaza to the relative safety offered by 10 refugee camps located in Jordan and 12 refugee camps located in Syria - or anywhere else in the world - has been a monumental failure, dereliction of duty and lack of concern for the welfare of the 650356 refugees living in Gaza and already registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Keeping these registered refugees penned inside Gaza for the last year has seen the Israel-Gaza war prolonged and civilian casualties and damage to property substantially increased - as Israel was:
- Slowed down in eliminating those Gazan terrorists responsible for invading Israel and murdering 1200 people, raping and beheading, hospitalizing 14970 whilst internally displacing 150000 Israelis on 7 October 2023
- Hampered in its efforts to release 252 hostages forcefully abducted in Israel and taken to Gaza
- Required to confront Gaza’s civilians being used as human shields by the perpetrators of the 7 October 2023 atrocities seeking to escape being killed or captured
- Prevented from speedily destroying the extensive underground network of attack tunnels containing weapons, manufacturing and storage facilities located under hospitals, mosques, schools, commercial and residential buildings

Unsuccessful attempts by the UN to procure a ceasefire – rather than demanding the unconditional surrender of Gaza’s Hamas Government – underscored the UN’s concern more with allowing Gaza to survive to fight another day rather than see these Gazan terrrorist monsters and their infrastructure wiped out and destroyed.

In 1950, the Chicago Tribune accused 3 Jews of running the "secret government of the United States." On Page 1.

The front page of the Chicago Tribune, May 29, 1950, had the story by veteran reporter Walter Trohan of how three prominent Jews were secretly running the US government.

The article had a source for this antisemitic conspiracy theory. It was a "person with highest State Department connections."

And while the word "Jew" was not mentioned once in the article, it does emphasize the three's Zionist connections.

Sound familiar?

Trohan admits, no, these Jews have not - yet - been accused of being Communists. But they sure smell that way:

Trohan would have of course insisted that he was not antisemitic.

No, he was just...anti-Zionist.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Stina Wollter is a Swedish artist and TV show host who attracted some controversy when she made wildly antisemitic accusations in the early weeks of the Gaza war.

She wrote on social media, where she has over 300,000 followers, that there is a Zionist plot to exterminate all Palestinians. That Zionists have a foothold in every major American company and political position. That the reason Israel is fighting Gaza may be to steal natural gas deposits. And that Swedish media is conspiring to block the real news from Gaza.

Worse, she claimed that "Israel systematically took organs and skin from dead Palestinians" and that "they lied about rape" in connection with October 7.

This caused a bit of a controversy. But not too much of one, because Swedish TV network STV has been working with her in recent months to create a new kind of talk show where - possibly - the guests would have been naked, or maybe she was just going to draw them naked.

The Jewish community that remains in Sweden, and others, got quite upset that this crazed antisemitic conspiracy theorist was getting rewarded with her own TV show.

As a result, the network decided to remove the planned show from the schedule.

At least until antisemites complain and prompt it to change its mind again.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

There are two kinds of social crimes committed by anti-Israel fanatics.

One is that they lie about Israel - incessant, constant, wall-to-wall lies that gain currency by their sheer volume and repetition.

The other, which is far less noticed, is the crime of omission - their refusal to say anything bad about Palestinians, about Hamas terror (except to support it), about Hamas' cynical use of civilians as human shields, about comparing Israeli actions and policies with those of any other Western state at war.

The crimes of omission are in many ways just as insidious as the crimes of commission, because the world simply has no context as to what is going on. When the only news sources only talk about imaginary Israeli crimes without context, the result is the massive wave of antisemitism that we are seeing.

Here is a small but telling example of how a group leading the cultural war against Israel covers up Hamas crimes - even against that group itself.

PalFest, the annual Palestinian Festival for Literature, has organized a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions that is being eagerly embraced by a flock of anti-Israel writers and artists.

The letter that they and others have written insist that they will not work with any Israeli organizations that do not pass their purity test of having forcefully denounced the very existence of Israel (as they put it, "Have never publicly recognized the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people as enshrined in international law" and Palestinians consider all of Israel to be "illegally occupied territory.")

Let's look back upon how morally pure PalFest is in defending Palestinian cultural rights.

In 2012, as always, their annual festival was held in various Palestinian cities, including Gaza City. One of their meetings in a Gaza castle was shut down by Hamas:

Following the opening of the colloquium, a security officer wearing civilian clothes arrived at the place and introduced himself as a member of the Palestinian police investigation department. He cut off the electricity and requested the attendees to leave the place. Shortly after this occurred, a number of security officers were deployed to the place when attendees refused to leave. They confiscated cameras that had filmed the colloquium, chaos spread and the colloquium was broken up.

Egyptian participants were too frightened of Hamas to speak to reporters until they left Gaza, but when they returned to Cairo for the closing ceremony, they slammed the terror group:

Most of the writers who visited Gaza had one opinion with respect to cultural activities in Gaza: “deplorable.” They say the aim appears to be to erase the Palestinian character and culture, which gave the world thinkers and poets like Mahmoud Darwish and Edward Said.
Professor of English Literature Sahar El-Mougy said that there’s a deplorable condition of cultural hunger. There aren’t even cinemas, libraries, or shops that sell books on the arts, philosophy or literature. The only available books are those on Islamic Sharia (Islamic jurisprudence) and Fiqh (thinking).
“There’s a conspiracy against the Palestinian character, to destroy its beauty. Hamas is erasing Palestinian culture, replacing it with an extremist version of Islam. They don’t even allow men and women to be in the same place!” El-Mougy objected.

One would think that PalFest would have condemned Hamas for its raid on their colloquium and in general on Hamas' strangehold on Palestinian culture in Gaza.

Yet in their 16 page report on the 2012 festival, PalFest did not say a word about this incident. PalFest never condemned Hamas for attacking their own colloquium. They also did not say a word about the participants' criticism of Hamas, nor about Hamas repression in Gaza altogether. Their description of the Cairo closing ceremony merely says it was "a report from festival participants to the Cairo audience – telling them what they had seen, [and] what they had heard."

Indeed, throughout the PalFest website I cannot find a negative word about Hamas, even though Hamas has repressed all forms of culture - literature, film, and even meetings - in Gaza.

We learned more about Hamas' repression of Gazans from Egyptians who briefly visited Gaza than from the supposed Palestinian culture warriors.

The same PalFest downplayed the murderous October 7 Hamas massacres this way: " On Saturday, after sixteen years of siege, Hamas militants broke out of Gaza."

The same people who deliberately whitewash Hamas crimes against culture and Jews are spearheading a boycott of the Jewish state pretending to defend Palestinian culture.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

While most Lebanese and Iranian media are quick to claim that Hezbollah is beating Israel, the non-partisan and independent site Critical Threats from the American Enterprise Institute published an article that descries what is really going on in Lebanon.

Excerpts:

Hezbollah’s Military Forces Are Failing in Lebanon

Lebanese Hezbollah is attempting to obfuscate the reality that its military forces in southern Lebanon are disorganized and conducting ineffective military operations against the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Hezbollah’s military forces have been badly damaged and disrupted by Israeli military action. Israeli forces entered Lebanon on October 1 to destroy Hezbollah’s ability to threaten northern Israeli communities. The operation has so far successfully destroyed and disrupted many of the capabilities required for Hezbollah to threaten northern Israel. Hezbollah is attempting to present itself as a competent, confident military organization, but it has so far failed to effectively execute any major military campaign at scale. Hezbollah’s degradation and severe disruption is likely temporary, however, and the group can reconstitute if Israeli operations end soon.

Hezbollah likely planned to execute one of several possible tactical tasks in response to an Israeli ground operation:

Hezbollah could have decided to defend key infrastructure or Shia towns along the border. A defending force aggressively seeks to hold ground or destroy the attacking force. Hezbollah would presumably decisively engage its combat forces and employ more sophisticated tactics in a defense were it executing a defense effectively. Hezbollah has engaged Israeli forces, but it has not conducted any sophisticated multi-stage ambushes. Hezbollah has instead relied upon rocket and mortar shelling to harass Israeli positions. Rockets and mortars cannot defend ground alone, and would need to be combined with infantry to effectively defend against Israeli attacks. These rocket and mortar attacks also are not limiting the IDF’s ability to maneuver on the battlefield or causing the IDF to change its overall scheme of maneuver. Coordinating between infantry forces and artillery is a difficult command-and-control task that may not be possible given the current state of Hezbollah’s communications and command network.

A force conducting an orderly withdrawal evacuates or destroys its supplies to prevent the attacking force from capturing them. Hezbollah did not evacuate even its most prized, high-end supplies, like Kornet anti-tank missile launchers or night-vision goggles, instead allowing these supplies to fall into Israeli hands.

Criticisms directed at the IDF’s slow pace of operations ignore Israeli operational design and lessons learned in the Gaza Strip. Some Lebanese officials implied that the Israeli operation is failing because IDF forces have not penetrated deep into Lebanon. The IDF’s slow movement is a deliberate choice designed to root out and destroy Hezbollah tunnel infrastructure methodically. This approach was presumably derived from a lesson learned in the Gaza Strip, where after a relatively rapid armored assault, the IDF slowed its pace of operations and began methodically reentering areas and ripping out subterranean and above-ground infrastructure.

Israeli forces will need to undertake additional activities to maintain Hezbollah’s degradation and disruption, but current Israeli tactical and operational efforts appear to have routed Hezbollah units at least in the immediate border area. Hezbollah’s degradation and severe disruption is temporary, however, and the group will recover absent sufficient Israeli pressure. If Israeli air operations targeting Hezbollah forces and commanders behind the lines slacken—due either to an IDF decision to prioritize close air support or to a political decision to slow strikes—Hezbollah will be able to reorganize, refit, and become more effective. Persistent IDF airstrikes combined with the IDF’s advances are likely disrupting reorganization efforts, however.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

10/28 Links Pt2: Palestinian Nationalism Uber Alles; Sally Rooney’s Literary Mob; Chicago Jewish man on way to synagogue shot by attacker shouting 'Allahu Akhbar'

From Ian:

Gadi Taub: The Peace Process Failed, but Its Bad Assumptions Live On

IV. Homo Economicus
But misunderstanding runs deeper. It is not only that we imagined the Palestinian national movement in the image of ours. We also projected our own misconceptions of human nature onto the Palestinians. We misunderstood them, in other words, in the same way that we misunderstand ourselves.

Contemporary Western elites mostly assume as a matter of course that we all want, above all, a decent job, food on the table, and a safe environment to raise our children. But when we conceive of all life in these materialistic terms, we lose the ability to imagine the human capacity for the sublime and the evil alike. And, encouraged by fuzzy-headed liberal and socialist assumptions from America, Europe, and the global NGO industry, Israelis failed to believe in their neighbors’ sinister intentions.

When, one after the other, IDF intelligence chiefs reassured us that the Palestinians are deterred because it was not in their interest to risk the economic gains we helped them achieve, it is because they project our ideas of human motivation onto them. So self-evident do their presuppositions seem that they become invisible to those who hold them.

These presuppositions serve as filters by which any contradictory information is labeled as pessimism, fear-mongering, fantasy, absurdity, or deception—and so never enters intelligence calculations. The same projections and misunderstandings predominate departments of Middle East studies throughout the West.

It was on the basis of these Western conceptions of human nature that we assumed our technology would be intimidating enough; it was this view that informed our belief that, once freed from Israeli occupation, Gazans would naturally devote their efforts to nation-building and economic betterment; it is on the basis of this outlook that we also convinced ourselves that they’ll see that perpetual peace was better than perpetual war.

And this is why we did not take seriously their theology of hate, their deep-seated racism, and the depth of their barbaric sadism.

We did not take ourselves seriously either, and so we did not understand the forces within ourselves that were now awakened.

In his masterful essay “Churchill in 1940,” Isaiah Berlin wrote that Winston Churchill did not create the fortitude that the British people displayed in their determination to fight the evil of Nazism. He only awakened something that was already in them, but that they themselves had forgotten. In a less poetic way, but with no less ferocity, Benjamin Netanyahu tapped a force within the hearts of Israeli Jews that most of us no longer remember we possessed. He did it simply and straightforwardly: he insisted on total victory from day one, and has never wavered since.

Unlike Churchill who commandeered the whole of British society, Netanyahu has had to manage the war despite opposition from much of the state and military bureaucracy, fickle coalition partners, a hostile press, and an elite that loathes him. That elite includes much of the top brass of the IDF and Shin Bet, who have more than once tried to undermine him. Instead of the unwavering support Britain received from the Roosevelt administration even before Pearl Harbor, the current U.S. government has repeatedly tried to bring about the end of Netanyahu’s term as well as an end to the war without Israeli victory. It is also undermining Israel’s long-term security with its strategy of appeasing Tehran. Notwithstanding all this, Netanyahu has persisted on the path to the victory and now Israel seems close to achieving it, perhaps even to removing the Iranian nuclear threat. That’s a breathtaking feat of statesmanship by any standard—one that most of us, myself included, did not believe was possible at all.

All the same, October 7 did happen on Netanyahu’s watch. The question of his responsibility awaits inquiry when this war is over. What he did and did not do before that day will have to be weighed against what he did since.

But the truth is that Israelis care very little about that now, which is why the attempts to pin responsibility for the disaster on the prime minister have failed to gain traction. After a string of extraordinary operational successes in the conduct of the war, and after resisting external pressure to buckle in the face of Israel’s enemies, Netanyahu is steadily rising in the polls. That’s because a solid majority in Israel understands the existential danger we are in, and so does not dream of replacing the one man who has never wavered on “total victory.”

Seth Mandel: Palestinian Nationalism Uber Alles

Fatah’s control of the PLO at this time was so consequential because it was created as an umbrella coalition of Palestinian resistance groups. The last major holdout, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, had joined the prior year. Arafat took over at the perfect moment to mold the entire Palestinian national movement according to his methods. Though there would be disagreement and discord, the main point of uniting the disparate factions of the Palestinian “resistance” was to threaten the stability of Arab states that didn’t back total war with Israel.

Fight Club’s first rule was “you don’t talk about Fight Club.” The PLO’s first rule was “you only talk about destroying Israel.” Everything else gets checked at the door.

What Qaddumi’s comments meant was not that supporters of the Palestinian cause should temporarily set aside their devotion to, say, gay rights or feminism. It meant that supporters must permanently set aside their devotion to gay rights and feminism and anything else they believed. Because the true state of a leftist movement, in the Palestinian rendering, is revolution in perpetuity.

This is the danger of the primacy of Palestinian nationalism on campus and among other, mostly but not entirely progressive, activist institutions. Nothing else matters but the destruction of the power structures wherever they are. Permanent revolution means there can be no peace, no compromise. If yet another generation of activists is reared on this one rule, it will apply to everything, not just Israel or Zionism.

Finally, how to reconcile the declared Marxist and socialist bona fides of the Palestinian national movement with its issue ban, which would seem to rule out much that animates the class war? Here Qaddumi shows the cleverness of the movement. The class war exists, but the Palestinians have… invented a new class:

“Because of the evacuation of the Palestinians, Al-Fateh represents the refugees. It is the only revolutionary movement which has transcended the Arab movements, Arab parties and the Palestinian regional movements, and it has done this because it has depended on the refugee class. The bourgeois concept, on the other hand, is one of attributes.”

In other words, in the permanence of the “refugee class” is where the movement finds its greatest strength.

The “pro-Palestinian” activists in the West are not unaware of all this—or at least those who speak for them and lead them aren’t unaware. The point of all this conflict is its permanence and its wide applicability. There are, of course, people who support the establishment of a Palestinian state but who do not support open-ended violent revolution. But of the two groups, the Western activist class tends to elevate and legitimize only the more extreme one, which makes no excuses for its hypocrisies and which cannot be placated by peace and compromise.

We’re All Colonialists Now

Kirsch notes that the massacre of Jews in Israel—instantly transmitted around the world via bodycam footage taken by Hamas fighters—had the effect of reversing “the usual terms” of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. For two decades, the pattern of the conflict saw Hamas casually rocket Israeli towns near the Gaza border with little effect while Israel retaliated with lethal artillery barrages and air strikes. The asymmetry of firepower combined with a similar asymmetry in the protection of civilians left Israel largely unscathed while Palestinians bore the brunt of the Israeli response. These uneven death tolls provoked fierce criticism of Israel around the world. One might have expected, then, that a gruesome and intimate butchery of many hundreds of Israeli civilians would elicit widespread horror and condemnation. In fact, just the opposite happened. The most murderous attack against Jews since the Holocaust inspired “a larger and louder pro-Palestinian response than any previous conflict.”

How to explain this wretched state of affairs? Kirsch admits that some of the indignation toward Israel flows from traditional humanitarian concerns in response to Israel’s retaliatory invasion of Gaza, which resulted in a great many civilian casualties. But in truth, this was an afterthought. The protests against Israel erupted more or less concomitantly with the news of Jewish bloodshed, well before any Israeli military response. Over the years, it had been common to witness excitement and enthusiasm over Hamas’s exploits in Palestinian culture, or even in the political slums of Cairo and Damascus; what made this time different, Kirsch observes, is that now “it was coming from Ivy League campuses, the Democratic Socialists of America, and Black Lives Matter.”

And the forces of jihad returned the compliment to the boutique left, adopting the language of an academic seminar. Three months after its barbaric attack in the Gaza Envelope, Hamas published a memorandum in defense of the war it initiated. “The events of October 7 must be put in their broader context,” it said. That broader context, Hamas explained, is “all cases of struggle against colonialism.” Formerly committed to shedding Jewish blood on explicitly theological grounds, Hamas now fine-tuned its position to opposing Zionism as a “colonial project,” an “illegal entity.”

But the insistence that Israel is part of the same historical process that brought European settlers to various lands wrenched from indigenous peoples belies the historical record. Modern Zionist settlement in what is now Israel took off in the 1880s when Palestine was a province of the Ottoman Empire. Jewish emigration continued after World War I when the land was ruled by the British under a mandate from the League of Nations. Eventually, the Jewish state was established in a manner that displaced Arab inhabitants of Palestine but did not erase them.

Notwithstanding the post-1967 settlements on the West Bank, the State of Israel remains a speck on the regional map surrounded by a vast swath of Arab countries stretching from Morocco to Iraq. Some empire. And since 1948, the Arab population of historic Palestine has swelled from about 1.3 million to about 7.5 million. Some genocide.

Anyone with a tinge of sympathy for Zionism ought to recoil from an ideology that is a fount of historical falsehood and monstrous fantasy at the expense of the Jews. But Kirsch wisely instructs readers how the settler-colonial prism also provides low returns for Palestinians. In short, the rise of this framework generates terrible confusion about that insoluble conflict. By fashioning a radical argument against Israel’s entire existence, the settler-colonial paradigm obviates any legitimate discussion of land swaps and proposed national borders. Given the durable imbalance of power, the implications for Palestinians of remaining locked in rejectionism will be grim. Hence the beginning of wisdom for advocates of Palestinian interests is to recognize that Israel, with no “mother country” to speak of, is staying put.

Ultimately, it is not only the concept of colonialism that people fail to grasp in the modern age but the concept of war. In a century of recurrent conflict between Jews and Arabs, it is long past time for Palestinians to adjust to the reality of Jewish sovereignty. Without that, their aspirations for a better life will remain bound up in an impossible, anti-historical scheme. On Settler Colonialism is a lucid and humane warning against precisely that fate.

10/28 Links Pt1: Western Leaders Should Be Thankful to Israel; Israel outlaws UNWRA; What would you do in our place, President Macron?

From Ian:

Western Leaders Should Be Thankful to Israel

At a bleak time in global affairs, a powerful blow has been struck against the most malign regime in the Middle East. On Friday night the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted a measured, precise but devastating aerial assault on Iran. It was a proportionate response to Iran's missile attack on Israel, and civilian casualties were kept to a minimum.

Israel has reminded allies and enemies alike of just how formidable its military capabilities are. The IDF has established air superiority over Iran and can destroy its military infrastructure with virtual impunity. Having already decapitated Hamas and Hizbullah, Israel has demonstrated that it could do the same to their masters in Tehran at a time of its choosing.

While Europe and America have sought to bully Israel into ceasefires, the IDF has methodically set about eliminating the terrorist threat on its border, while checking Iranian power and influence.

Israeli Strike Could Create Deterrence

Israel has apparently inflicted severe damage on Iran's air defense systems. It is reasonable to assume that they were significantly impaired in the initial wave of attacks, given that the Iranians barely intercepted any missiles or Israeli fighter jets. With its air defenses neutralized in several critical areas, Iranian leaders will have to carefully consider whether to launch a strong attack on Israel and risk a counter-response they cannot stop.

The Israeli strike was deliberately designed to offer the Iranian regime the option to avoid retaliation. The IDF spokesperson explicitly stated the strike was "focused," and Israel has no interest in prolonging the exchange of blows.

The Israeli strikes aimed to achieve a tangible impact on Iranian military capabilities, a clear signal to the regime that it is exposed and vulnerable, which strengthens deterrence, and a severe blow to its prestige in the eyes of its citizens, all while carefully giving Tehran a "ladder to climb down from the tree," providing a justification to halt the cycle of retaliation. Neither Israel, the U.S., nor Iran currently desires a regional war.

The strikes on facilities for the development and production of surface-to-surface missiles and rocket engines were carried out around 2:00 a.m., when no civilians were present. Attacks in Ilam and Khuzestan provinces targeted surface-to-surface missile launch facilities and arrays, from which ballistic missiles were launched at Israel in the two previous Iranian attacks.

Israel's Strike on Iran

Israel destroyed Iran's air defense systems, leaving the country vulnerable to repeated Israeli Air Force strikes. These systems, of Russian origin, also demonstrate the superiority of Western weapons over Eastern ones. Given that Russia needs these systems for its war against Ukraine, it's questionable whether Russia will agree to sell additional systems to Iran.

Israel's offensive capabilities surpass Iran's defensive capabilities, revealing Israel's clear operational superiority over Iran. Israel managed to strike all of its intended targets, while Iran did not.

In deciding whether to escalate, Khamenei must consider key factors: Does Iran have enough missiles to sustain a prolonged campaign against Israel, given that production has been disrupted? Could Israel's next strike target energy and nuclear facilities? No response would signify an historic weakness, while a response would allow Israel to strike where it truly hurts. All this is happening as Hizbullah is weakened and no longer serves as a restraining force on Israel.

Abdullah Kanaan

Jordan's Royal Committee of Jerusalem Affairs, created in 1971 by the late King Hussein, issued a press release during Sukkot:

The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, which is being celebrated these days, embodies a practical model of colonial holidays that are far removed in their meaning and values from the lofty concept of the holiday among all nations. Instead of peace, love and reassurance, this holiday comes in the shadow of a war of genocide practiced by Israel against our people in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and in Lebanon as well..

Secretary-General of the Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs, Abdullah Kanaan, said in a statement to Al Rai that these Jewish holidays are in reality nothing but an environment of hatred, violence, killing and genocide. How can a sane person understand that this is a holiday celebrated on the remains of thousands of martyrs, wounded, detainees, missing persons and millions of displaced persons in Gaza and Lebanon?.

But it isn't only Sukkot that bothers Kanaan. He said something similar on Yom Kippur:

Secretary-General of the Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs, Abdullah Kanaan, said that Yom Kippur, the holy day for Jews, which falls on Sunday [sic], is a religious occasion, but it is dominated by provocative, racist and settlement practices against the Palestinian people, which include continuous attacks on them and intensified incursions into Islamic and Christian holy sites, foremost among which is the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif.

Kanaan added that this holiday is accompanied by religious rituals and strict measures that include preventing the movement of transportation, closing roads, and comprehensive restrictions on the Palestinians, pointing out that mercy, tolerance, respect for beliefs, and freedom of worship are deliberately absent from Jewish holidays, including Yom Kippur, which is accompanied by the occupation authorities and settlers following all forms and methods of racism and the policy of killing, capturing, arresting, and protecting Israeli incursions and attacks carried out by settlers.

He said that the Royal Committee confirms to world public opinion, including legitimate legal and international institutions and the global media, that Jewish holidays have become a haven for the policy of "apartheid", which the media and international legitimacy
places before the responsibility of exposing the Israeli policy and protecting the Palestinian people from those crimes that have left the Palestinian wound bleeding to this day.

In case you are wondering how tolerant Jordan is towards non-Muslims, it is illegal to eat, drink or smoke publicly in Jordan during the day for the entire month of Ramadan, and even tourists can get arrested for eating in public.

Israel has no similar laws for Yom Kippur or other Jewish fast days.

This is not a random commenter on Reddit or X.. This is a Jordanian official, publicly spreading antisemitism, as part of his official duties.

Naturally, none of this is covered in the media.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

In 2017, Politico broke a story that has particular relevance to what is happening in Lebanon today.

In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.

The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.

“This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” said David Asher, who helped establish and oversee Project Cassandra as a Defense Department illicit finance analyst. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.”

The article also notes how the Obama administration was convinced that Hezbollah had "moderate" elements that could be encouraged.

This is all documented. Katherine Bauer, a former Treasury official, testified to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 2017, "Under the Obama administration, however, these investigations were tamped down for fear of rocking the boat with Iran and jeopardizing the nuclear deal."

A major reason Hezbollah is such a major threat today is because the United States looked at it, and Iran, with rose-colored glasses. That policy has resulted in the deaths of many - in Lebanon, Syria, Israel and also the US from illicit drugs being imported. It also resulted in Hezbollah cementing its role as de facto ruler of Lebanon, at least to the extent that it could veto anything it doesn't like.

I'm not seeing any mea culpas from the Democrats over their hero Obama's role of strengthening Hezbollah.

If the US had finished what it started, perhaps there would have been no Lebanese front in this war.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Jews are being hunted in the streets in America. Over 75% of anti-religious hate crime is against Jews. US antisemitism strategy is utterly useless against today's antisemitism. (update)

YNet reports:

A 39-year-old Jewish man was shot in the back while walking to a synagogue in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood on Saturday morning, in what some community members allege may be a hate-driven attack.

The incident, reported by Yeshiva World News, occurred around 9:35 a.m. in an area with a significant Orthodox Jewish population. Witnesses recounted that the shooter, reportedly a 23-year-old man, yelled “Allahu Akbar” as he exchanged fire with responding officers.

At about 0:42 of the Ring camera video, you see a man emerge from between houses in the heavily Jewish neighborhood, shoot at the responding officers and civilians helping the Jewish man who was shot, and then scream something that could very well be "Allahu Akbar."

From all indications, Jews are now being hunted down in America.

Chicago's hate crime statistics show that there have been 80 anti-religious hate crimes in the city so far this year. 70 of them - 87.5% - have been against Jews.

Here is the chart of antisemitic hate crimes in Chicago over recent years.

They have gone up from 6 in 2020 to 70 in 2024 - so far. That is over a 1000% rise in antisemitic crime in Chicago.

The pattern of the over 80% of antireligious hate crimes targeting Jews is consistent in every major city that keeps such statistics.

In New York so far this year, I count 276 out of 325 antireligious hate crimes being against Jews - 85%.

In San Francisco, every single anti-religious hate crime reported this year has been against Jews, and since 2022 87.5% of them have been against Jews.

In Los Angeles, the most recent statistics I could find were 2022, and 83% were anti-Jewish.

Nationwide, according to the FBI, the percentage is slightly lower - about 75% of all antireligious hate crimes in 2023 were against Jews.

The Kamala Harris campaign is touting the US National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism that they are taking credit for in appealing to Jewish Americans to vote Democratic. Yet antisemitism has skyrocketed in the 17 months since the strategy was unveiled. What, exactly, has it achieved? What metrics are they using to measure the effectiveness of this strategy? Because from the raw numbers, things are getting far worse.

If Harris wants to take credit for the strategy, then she must take responsibility for its failure.

There are at least four very specific sources for antisemitism in America today. There is Black antisemitism (which can be subdivided as well), Muslim antisemitism, far-Right antisemitism, and progressive antisemitism that calls itself anti-Zionism. The US National Strategy only addresses the far-Right version specifically - in fact, it generally agrees with the "progressive" falsehood that fighting antisemitism is part of a larger battle to fight all forms of bias.

It cannot even conceive that Jews can be victims of bias from other groups that themselves suffer bias.

If the Chicago shooter is indeed a Muslim - Chicago police have not released his name, and he is in critical condition from the shootout - the National Strategy has done nothing, literally nothing, to stop him and people like him. Adding additional Holocaust education in schools and speaking out against antisemitism is all well and good but when the Muslim community sees these kinds of initiatives, they could easily backfire and make Muslims think Jews control the US.

A significant percentage of violent antisemitic attacks in America are done by Muslims. But the National Strategy, instead of identifying them as a group that must address antisemitism, instead only identifies them as victims of more generalized and ill-defined "hate" along with Jews.

In fact, despite the strategy document, even right-wing antisemitism is worse than it has been for decades. People with millions of followers are spreading the most insane and hateful antisemitic conspiracy theories and getting lots of attention that fall below the radar of the media and most politicians. This trailer for an antisemitic film being released has been viewed millions of times.

It is a hodgepodge of Nazi-level antisemitic conspiracy theories that make it look like religious Jews are behind pornography, not to mention 9/11. But notice also how it places side-by-side Third Reich caricatures of Jews with far-Left language and themes, such as its anti-Israel content and the its very title of "occupied."

Just as with antisemitism on the Left, this is no longer fringe. It is being broadly disseminated among pro-Trump podcasts which are now replete with Rothschild conspiracy theories and libels about the Talmud. All of this is being spread by millions yet flying under the radar.

Far-Right antisemitism has cross-pollinated with far-Left antisemitism. And just as Black, Muslim and progressive antisemitism is being largely ignored by Harris devotees, far-Right antisemitism is being largely ignored by Trump fans.

The danger to Jews in America is real. We are literally being hunted down like animals. Politics is the excuse used to ignore it. And Jews are the ones who are paying the price.

UPDATE: The name of the shooter in Chicago is Sidi Mohamed Abdallahi. Which means, yes, he screamed Allahu Akbar.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

TOI reports:

A man was killed and 32 people were wounded in a suspected terror truck-ramming attack at a bus stop near Herzliya on Sunday morning — five in serious condition, seven moderately wounded, and 20 lightly hurt.

Police said that the driver who rammed his truck into people at a bus stop outside the IDF’s Glilot base in central Israel, north of Tel Aviv, was shot and “neutralized” by armed civilians in the area.

The victim in the attack was later named as Bezalel Carmi, 72, from Rishon Lezion.

Hebrew media outlets named the perpetrator Rami Nasrallah, an Arab Israeli driver from Qalansawe in central Israel.

Many of the injured were senior citizens who had disembarked from the bus ahead of a day trip to a nearby museum to mark the national memorial day for those killed in the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre and subsequent war.

Now see how Iran's IRGC-linked Defa Press reported the same story:

In a martyrdom operation in the north of Tel Aviv that was carried out using a truck, 6 Zionist soldiers were killed and more than 50 people were injured.

The Zionist media further admitted that the injured in the security incident in the north of Tel Aviv are all soldiers.

According to Hebrew sources, all the injured in this operation were from the military intelligence unit 8200 in Glilot base, who were returning to their bases.

Iran's media clearly reads Hebrew media to report what happened. They know that the victims were mostly elderly civilians. But they lie, knowingly, to pretend that this attack was against soldiers.

Noe also the pride that Iran shows in the terror attack.

This is a regime that contributes nothing to the world besides terrorism, and as such it has no reason to exist.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

10/27 Links: 7 October tore at the fabric of civilisation; Why Israel didn’t hit Iran where it would really hurt; Arab Advocates for Israel Speak Out on Social Media

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The war with Iran

But this is emphatically not the end of the existential threat to Israel posed by Iran — a threat that is about to become infinitely worse once the regime acquires nuclear weapons. The Biden-Harris administration regards what’s happening not as a desperate war by Israel against an existential enemy that must be defeated but instead as a set of war games whose rules are set by America.

Those rules mean that Israel must suffer the blows rained down by its Iranian enemy, with the US coming to Israel’s defence only if those attacks threaten to take too many Israeli lives (depending, of course, upon quite how the US calculates the value of Israeli lives against its own strategic goals) — but also forbidding Israel from ending the threat under which its population is therefore sentenced to live in perpetuity according to American diktat. But that’s ok, apparently, because the US has warned Iran not to “escalate” — a warning that the regime in Tehran, regarding with satisfaction the craven Americans grovelling before it, will undoubtedly dismiss with even more contemptuous disdain.

America’s attitude would be unbelievable were it not for the fact that, at every stage in this dreadful year that has just passed, the administration has pressured Israel not to respond in a way that would inflict a decisive blow on Iran or its proxies.

And then there’s the part played by the western media in misleading the public about the war that Israel is being forced to fight. Even in some media outlets whose editorial line is reasonably supportive of Israel, the reporting on its foreign news pages is malign.

Routinely recycling Iranian or Hamas propaganda that’s being pumped out by the UN and many purportedly authoritative security and policy analysts in western think-tanks, academic and other institutions — including western intelligence services — these outlets present the Iranian war of annihilation and Israel’s self-defence against that war as mere “tit-for-tat” exchanges of moral equivalence.

Worse, some of these outlets present Iran’s war of annihilation against Israel as Iran defending itself against Israeli aggression, such as this gem today:
For years, Israel has conducted a campaign of assassinations and sabotage in Iran, including killing the head of Iran’s nuclear programme with a remote controlled machine gun as he drove from his holiday home. Iran has in turn attempted attacks including covert operations and cyber warfare in Israel.

According to Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi, head of the Israel Defence and Security Forum (a group composed of robust Israeli military and security analysts), the US election on November 5 is a crucial factor in Israel’s next moves.

If Donald Trump becomes US president and if (second big if) he were to put America at the head of a coalition to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme, says Avivi, such a coalition could achieve that outcome in a matter of days. If on the other hand Kamala Harris wins the election and America turns unequivocally hostile (or if Trump isn’t willing to participate), Israel will have to go it alone.

This would take longer, would doubtless involve different tactics and would be far more difficult. But Israel would do it nevertheless — because it has no alternative.

In fighting the west’s most lethal terrorist enemy, Israel is of course doing the west’s dirty work for it. In response to which, Israel’s perfidious allies have shown their appreciation in a mighty strange way.

In the US, the Biden-Harris administration has withheld from Israel essential weapon supplies and threatened to throw it to the wolves at the UN. In Britain, Sir Keir Starmer’s “Biden-Harris mini-me” government — following its partial arms embargo against Israel — has now threatened to assist the International Criminal Court in its “lawfare” attack against the Jewish state by making available to the ICC information gathered by RAF surveillance flights over Gaza that were ostensibly undertaken to help search for the Israeli hostages.

In fighting Iran and its proxies in this seven-front war, Israel is sacrificing its own young people — so many of them the country’s best and bravest — who are devastatingly continuing to fall in battle. In response, the young in America and Britain are expressing their own gratitude for thus being enabled to live in civilian safety by screaming that Israel is committing “genocide” and chanting for its destruction.

In deeply traumatised, heroic and steadfast Israel, it is impossible to exaggerate the disgust being felt at such western decadence, de-moralisation and the willed defeat of civilisation.

‘7 October tore at the fabric of civilisation’

The 7 October pogrom was the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, but you wouldn’t get that impression among the Western intelligentsia. Ever since Hamas rampaged through southern Israel last year, the mainstream media have relentlessly presented Israel as the aggressor, for daring to fight back. ‘Pro-Palestine’ protesters routinely smear the Jewish State as a genocidal menace. We’ve witnessed glorifications of Hamas and other Islamist forces on our streets. Anti-Semitism has surged to historic levels. The West as a whole seems to be in a perpetual state of disarray, unwilling to fully defend Israel in its civilisational struggle against barbarism.

Brendan O’Neill’s new spiked book, After the Pogrom, powerfully details how the West’s moral rot has been exposed over the past year. To mark the book’s release, and the year anniversary of 7 October, spiked held an online book launch on 1 October, in which Batya Ungar-Sargon interviewed Brendan. This is an edited extract from their conversation. You can watch the full interview here.

Batya Ungar-Sargon: Why do you think a generation of the most educated people in history failed the great moral test of 7 October?

Brendan O’Neill: Firstly, my book tries to remind people what happened – because I think people have forgotten – on 7 October 2023. But secondly, it tries to put forward some answers for why people failed the moral test. Cast your mind back to the days after the 7 October pogrom, when protesters were on the streets 24 to 48 hours after Hamas’s attack. Israel hadn’t even responded by that point, so why were people on the streets? They were there to celebrate the murder of Jews.

This happened in London, with a celebratory gathering outside the Israeli embassy around 36 hours after the pogrom, with people playing music and dancing. The same happened in Berlin and in Paris and even in the US. We knew at that stage what had happened. We knew that Jewish men, women and children had been raped, murdered and kidnapped. This was as sick and perverse as if people in London had poured on to the streets to celebrate Kristallnacht. It was then that I realised that this was going to be worse than I thought.

The thing that really struck me was those feral attacks on the ‘kidnapped’ posters that Jewish people and their allies had put up in various cities around the West. Everywhere I went in London, I would see these posters torn to shreds. On Finchley Road – in an area in north London heavily populated by Jews – there was a ‘kidnapped’ poster of three-year-old twins taken by Hamas, and someone had daubed Hitler moustaches on them. When that was reported, the anti-racist left said nothing about it. But to my mind, it was one of the worst things I have ever seen. The daubing of Jewish children with a Hitler moustache, the branding of Jewish children as fascists who presumably deserved what they got after they were kidnapped on 7 October by Hamas.

After seeing things like that, I started to think there is a moral rot in Western society. This moral decay, the turn against Enlightenment values, all of this is going to come surging to the surface of society. I think our chickens have come home to roost. We’re now seeing that if you educate an entire generation to look at their societies as institutionally racist, Islamophobic and born from the sins of slavery and colonialism, when you continually educate a new generation to have contempt for the communities in which they live, you are going to turn them away from the values of Western civilisation and possibly push them into the arms of its opposite. This is what we saw on 7 October: a complete tear in the fabric of civilisation. It ended up not being surprising to me that younger generations in the West found themselves warming to barbarism.

We live under a tyranny of the self-righteous

We no longer live in an age of moral relativism, but one of moral absolutism.

That’s one observation made by Canadian academic Eric Kaufmann in his latest book, Taboo, published this year. It’s an arresting inversion of a long-held view. Everyone today does indeed seem to know what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’.

But it also makes it hard to square the argument that postmodernism is at the root of our ethical woes and moral vacuum. Rather than living in a state of doubt and ambivalence, as postmodernism’s most optimistic advocates argued in the 1990s, we now actually inhabit a world where people cleave to firmly held truths and fight over them with righteous fury.

This can be seen most evidently in the present day over Israel and the Middle East. For many, the Israelis – and very often, by extension, the Jews – are the personification of evil. Hence, the precipitous rise of virulent anti-Semitism and of correlating sympathy for the Palestinians. In the minds of many, this is a war of good against evil. The Palestinian flag has itself become a universal symbol of goodness. And when you feel you have good on your side, any sort of appalling or belligerent behaviour or words are permissible.

This Manichean viewpoint is replicated in matters over the environment. Here, those who supposedly have right on their side deem it acceptable to resort to any sort of anti-social behaviour because it’s for a ‘good cause’. Self-righteousness is an intoxicating sensation and a self-perpetuating one. The self-righteous become consumed by their own sense of power. Elsewhere in this regard, others abide by the creed that race determines everything. Others hold to the inviolable sanctity of trans rights.

Luke Conway, another North American scholar, also came out with a book this year. It’s called Liberal Bullies: Inside the Mind of the Authoritarian Left, and it looks at how and why today’s authoritarians do indeed stem from the progressive left. It’s the same story – they believe they are caught in a battle between good and evil. Because they possess virtue, liberal bullies no longer tend to engage in debate with opponents. They give up on argument altogether when possible, feeling the veracity of their positions to be self-evident. This mindset leads to ‘intellectual apathy’ and ‘cognitive rigidity’. As a consequence, they are reliant on slogans, personal intimidation and mob rule.

We should have seen this coming. Indeed, one man foresaw this would come to pass. Just after the 180th anniversary of Friedrich Nietzsche’s birthday last week, it’s worth recalling that it was he who warned of men’s lust for power. He warned of rule by the herd, of the danger of convictions and of the bellicosity of the righteous who believe they can act with impunity. It was Nietzsche who warned that a European civilisation drifting into nihilism would see matters henceforth settled with fists and guns.

It was perhaps no coincidence that Nietzsche was a life-long critic of anti-Semitism. He correctly connected this prejudice with resentment. Anti-Semitism, he wrote, is the emotion felt by those who resent the success of others, for whom ‘someone must be to blame for the fact that I do not feel well’. Of resentment, he continued in 1887: ‘This plant now blooms most beautifully among anarchists and anti-Semites.’