Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 17, 2025

03/17 Links Pt2: The pro-Palestine left is facilitating fascism; The Unbounded Anti-Semitism of the BBC; Are Defenders of Mahmoud Khalil Ready to Defend Speech they Despise?

From Ian:

Phyllis Chesler: How the West was won, and how it can be saved

The Islamification of the West began long ago with Arab and Islamic attacks against infidels, especially the Jews. By the beginning of this century, anti-Zionism characterized the new antisemitism. Israel became the scapegoat of the world for the crimes of their persecutors.

In the last quarter-century, Israel and the Jews have faced large armies, as well as well-funded and relentless propaganda. It has simultaneously been defamed and sanctioned in every language; anti-Israel resolutions and reports have been issued by student bodies, human-rights groups, literary prize judges, academic faculties and the United Nations, whose only accomplishment has been the legalization of Jew-hatred. Students and outside agitators in the West “flood” streets and campuses, Hamas-style; and take over university buildings on behalf of the sadistic and barbarian aggressors they believe are the victims of alleged Israeli apartheid, colonial oppression and genocide.

Thus, as Israel is fighting for its very life and good name, the entire world believes that Israelis are the aggressors and that the true victims are the leaders of an infidel-hating death cult.

How are we to understand such an Orwellian reversal of reality, such a triumph of Nazi-style propaganda? British journalist and JNS columnist Melanie Phillips explains it to us in her new work, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West—and Why Only They Can Save It. In doing so, she joins and updates the work of writers and researchers Steve Emerson, Oriana Fallaci, Daniel Pipes, Bruce Bawer, Douglas Murray and Asra Nomani.

First, Phillips notes that Israel and the West are up against two death cults: one is external and consists of Islamist jihadists; and the other is a fifth column of elite, “politically correct” Westerners who have been persuaded that the West is evil beyond redemption and that barbarians are entitled to destroy what’s left of society. These Westerners refuse to believe that Islamic regimes have been and remain the largest practitioners of gender and religious apartheid. They refuse to believe that various Islamic regimes still own slaves and murder apostates, dissidents, homosexuals and feminists. They ignore any proof that Islamic regimes currently persecute or forcibly convert, but, more often, genocidally murder Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Baháʼí.

Despite all this, Arabs, especially Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, are still always the victims.

None of Phillips’s predecessors had to ponder the world’s unexpected and, at first, unbelievably bizarre reaction to the Hamas-led pogrom on steroids in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. This is something Phillips deftly tackles as she explains why so many “woke” Westerners deny Jewish victimhood, especially the atrocities that took place that day.

The pro-Palestine left is facilitating fascism

Yet, over recent years, anti-Semitism and attacks on the Jewish community have increased because of the ongoing wars in the Middle East. This rise in anti-Semitism and racism towards Jews is coming not from the political right, but from the left and those it chooses to ally with. This includes people who believe themselves to be anti-fascists in their support for Palestine. There has been a sinister turn of events since 7 October 2023, when Hamas soldiers and supporters murdered and tortured civilians in Israel, before taking hostages into Gaza. What followed in the West was a rise in fascist language and ideology among the ‘pro-Palestine’ movements, including the conspiratorial view that a global Zionist movement is pulling the strings of international affairs.

On social media and on pro-Palestine marches, I have seen and heard absurd accusations that Israel has been responsible for all manner of atrocities. I have seen Nazi salutes thrown and heard Holocaust denial. This is clear, unhinged racism. And yet it is rarely called out.

I cannot imagine a situation in which the organised left would march side-by-side with the traditional far right. Yet the pro-Palestine left has been happily marching almost weekly for 18 months with people who are Holocaust deniers, racists and believe anti-Semitic conspiratorial ideology as if it were fact. Who seem to think Hamas is made up of freedom fighters resisting imperialism, rather than far-right, anti-Semitic terrorists. They are turning a blind eye to those who promote fascism and racism among them.

We must confront this dangerous alliance, lest we forget the lessons of the Second World War and allow a new form of fascism to take root in Europe once again.

Seth Mandel: Blame-the-Jews Lawfare Comes To America

Which brings me to the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the green-card holder who has been made subject to deportation proceedings over accusations of support for Hamas. Khalil was part of the larger, functionally pro-Hamas tentifada movement, but the administration has yet to lay out the specifics of its case. Until it does, the courts will keep Khalil here in the U.S.

Taal and the ADC tie their complaint explicitly to Khalil’s case, using it to bolster their claim that the executive order protecting Jewish rights on campus is illegal.

The implication is clear: Blame the Jews.

It just so happens that the executive order in question does not change immigration law in any way, nor does it advocate for the removal of anybody’s due process rights. One provision of the order, late in the text, adds that “the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Education, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with each other, shall include in their reports recommendations for familiarizing institutions of higher education with the grounds for inadmissibility under 8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(3) so that such institutions may monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds and for ensuring that such reports about aliens lead, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.”

The lawsuit claims that the subsequent statements of administration officials displayed bad faith in the form of their expressions of enthusiasm at the possibility of cracking down on “pro-Hamas” aliens.

But the executive order is not primarily about immigration; it is an across-the-board directive to agency heads to report their findings and progress in cracking down on anti-Semitic harassment in each of their legal domains, and to coordinate where necessary. Nothing about the order dissolves any existing legal rights. It is akin to telling a city cop to crack down on jaywalking.

If the law is illegitimate, it should be challenged. But what is being targeted here is the part of the order (and a separate, immigration-focused executive order) that represents a written encouragement to enforce that law. And why? The most likely answer is to delegitimize as unconstitutional the administration’s attempts to protect Jewish students.

The attempt to dismantle efforts to reduce anti-Semitic harassment on campus is entirely gratuitous here. Taal’s rights and the rights of Jews in America can coexist. Taal’s reaction to the events of Oct. 7, 2023, however, would suggest that that would not be a satisfactory solution to him and to the other parties behind this particular complaint.

03/17 Links Pt1: Two Questions for Abbas and the Palestinian Leadership; Lessons for Western Militaries from the Gaza War; Trump to Iran: Stop Arming Houthis or Face US Military Action

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Two Questions for Abbas and the Palestinian Leadership

A possible successor to Mahmud Abbas is warning that Abbas’s successors will abandon peace negotiations with Israel entirely. Which is less a warning than a direct threat.

But a threat of what, exactly? That is, what would change, in a practical sense, under this new regime?

The official is Jibril Rajoub, and he gave a rare, on the record interview to the Times of Israel. Rajoub’s words are carefully chosen; he uses the interview to appear to praise Abbas to the heavens while, in reality, undermining Abbas’s standing among the Palestinian public and promoting himself as a palatable alternative.

But set his motives aside for now and let’s deal with his words. Abbas, he says, “is the last founding pillar of the Palestinian national movement who believes in two things: making historic reconciliation [with Israel] based on the two-state solution [and] that blood-shedding should not be a choice to achieve [that goal].”

The “blood-shedding” part is obviously false: Abbas pays terrorists and their families for attacks against Israeli civilians. But regarding Abbas’s purported support for a two-state solution, I have two questions. The first question is: What would the map of an acceptable two-state solution look like? Please answer in the form of a detailed map to which you would say “yes,” thus ending the conflict. Israel has produced such maps in the past, and they have been based on negotiations with Palestinian leaders who had been invited to make their demands and to respond to Israeli demands.

The last time this happened was in 2008. Here is the map. Abbas’s response to this map was to end negotiations without a counteroffer. So: What, specifically, about this map is unacceptable to the Palestinian leadership, and how would Abbas change it in order to make the entire map satisfactory?

The map is not a secret, nor is the process that led to it. All Palestinian demands are met by this plan—unless there has been some misunderstanding, which Abbas is free to clear up right now on the record.

Of course, I cannot guarantee that after Abbas’s rejection, this exact deal is still on the table. But considering the events of the past 15 years, Abbas would be crazy not to find out for sure. Making an offer would also force Israel to respond.

If Abbas has any desire to achieve full Palestinian self-determination, he would answer my first question. My second question is closely related, and it is also based on Rajoub’s implication that the Palestinian nationalist movement is only getting more radical, and stands on the precipice of ditching even the pretense of a two-state solution: What is Abbas willing to do to convince his supporters of the need and value of a two-state solution?

John Spencer: The Battle for Legitimacy in Urban Warfare

Despite this significant change in strategic imperatives, an interactive report by The New York Times report, “Israel Loosened Its Rules to Bomb Hamas Fighters, Killing Many More Civilians,” failed on two levels. First, the article did not clearly explain the difference between altering the civilian casualty threshold and the ultimate proportionality decision required within that threshold. Second, the article failed to acknowledge how a radical shift in operational context justified this change.

The shift from a counterterrorism paradigm to a large-scale ground campaign fundamentally alters the way the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) targeting framework is implemented, especially at the tactical level. This is not because the law itself changes, but because the conditions for its implementation do. In counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations, especially those heavily reliant on air power, engagements are often deliberate, with targets identified through prolonged intelligence collection, surveillance, and precision strikes conducted with the luxury of time. This includes the opportunity to carefully model anticipated civilian harm. This allows for ‘tactical patience’, enhancing civilian harm mitigation.

However, combined arms maneuver warfare—such as the ground campaign Israel launched in Gaza—demands a fundamentally different approach to LOAC implementation. Close combat against a well-armed, entrenched enemy, particularly one that embeds itself within civilian infrastructure, often compels maneuver commanders and subordinate leaders to make split-second use-of-force decisions in the midst of battle. Unlike an air-centric counterterrorism approach where commanders often have the luxury of time and extensive attack resources to achieve their desired attack effects, ground forces in LSCO operate under a mission imperative to “close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver.” This means synchronizing a range of combat power in real time, often while under fire, in an environment where the ability to conduct detailed proportionality assessments is drastically limited.

Crucially, the LOAC principles of distinction, precautions, and proportionality remain unchanged, but how those principles are implemented must adapt to the realities of high-intensity warfare. In LSCO, a commander may not have the luxury of waiting for a higher echelon to conduct an extensive collateral damage estimate before engaging the enemy. The very nature of combat in dense urban terrain—where enemy forces use tunnels, fortified positions, and civilian structures for military purposes—means that expectations for how LOAC should be applied in a counterterrorism context cannot simply be transposed to combined arms maneuver operations. To do so is to ignore the operational realities that fundamentally shape battlefield decision-making.

Expecting the same level of civilian harm mitigation in a major ground campaign as in an air-dominant counterterrorism operation is therefore not just unrealistic—it is operationally illogical. This does not mean the law is ignored or circumvented. Rather, it means that commanders must make attack-legality determinations based on the circumstances of LSCO, where the need for rapid decision-making and immediate force synchronization demands a different application of the same legal principles. Misunderstanding this distinction leads to unrealistic expectations that can delegitimize even lawful military actions and distort public perception of what compliance with the LOAC truly requires in the context of large-scale urban warfare.

Exacerbating the misleading nature of the NYT article was the way it addressed modifications of other IDF precautionary measures, such as protocols for observing potential enemy targets and warning tactics such as roof knocks: dropping low-yield explosive on top of buildings as warning shots that give civilians time to flee an imminent attack. But again, it failed to explain why extensive strike precautions taken by Israel in pre-October 7th counterterrorism campaign logically be ill-suited to a high-intensity war against Hamas where military requirements might preclude such measures. By not distinguishing between the operational adjustments to civilian risk mitigation procedures, the New York Times report contributed to a distorted understanding of how context impacts LOAC implementation. This oversight underscores the vital importance of nuanced reporting that distinguishes between temporary policy adaptations and enduring legal principles.

In today’s information age, public perception plays a pivotal role in the legitimacy of military operations. When media outlets and advocacy groups conflate changes in tactical and operational procedures with indifference towards international legal standards, they risk undermining the credibility of even well-founded military decisions. Clear communication is essential—not only to explain the inherent differences between the legal obligations and the policies adopted to implement these obligations, but also to contextualize why these distinctions matter in varying operational scenarios.

The long-term negative consequence of such reporting and the overbroad condemnations it contributes to are profound. At a time when U.S. armed forces must once again contemplate LSCO, and some advocate a retreat from the legal and moral high ground, we cannot afford reinforcing unrealistic expectations of what the LOAC demands. Doing so will only provide greater momentum for those who unfortunately fail to recognize the moral and strategic value of the continuing commitment by U.S. armed forces to the rules of international law especially in war, and even when the enemy does not reciprocate such commitment. By recognizing the vital role operational context plays in assessing both actual and perceived legitimacy will ensure that the pursuit of strategic objectives does not come at the cost of eroding the very legitimacy upon which the moral and legal authority of military operations depends.

Andrew Fox: Lessons for Western Militaries from the Gaza War

In sum, the military-intelligence community should cultivate the same agility and breadth of vision that Israel was forced to adopt: expect hybrid and “asymmetric” warfare tactics, respond with creativity and speed, and actively shape the information sphere so that truth defeats falsehood.

The role of cyber operations in Israel’s campaign was unprecedented, blurring the line between digital and kinetic warfare. The IDF launched offensive cyber measures to disrupt enemy command-and-control and communications networks. For instance, as it began ground operations in late October, Israel carried out strikes on Gaza’s telecom infrastructure that plunged the territory into an internet and phone blackout. This combined cyber/kinetic action hampered Hamas’s ability to coordinate forces or broadcast propaganda videos during critical battles.

On the defensive side, Israeli cyber units worked feverishly to harden their own networks after 7 October, when Hamas cyber attacks and Iran-backed hackers sought to exploit vulnerabilities. Throughout the conflict, Israel also leveraged cyber-based intelligence for strategic effect: the military routinely published intercepted communications and hacked surveillance footage to expose Hamas’s tactics and human-rights abuses.

By releasing these materials (with minimal delay) on social media and in press briefings, the IDF effectively countered enemy propaganda in real time. One notable example was the intercepted Hamas call about the Al-Ahli hospital blast, which Israel shared online to undermine Hamas’s false narrative. In essence, cyber intelligence and info-war capabilities became a force multiplier—the IDF not only physically hit Hamas’s networks, but also fought in the information space, debunking the militants’ claims and highlighting the truth of the conflict. Israel’s use of hackers and analysts alongside soldiers shows how modern wars are fought on servers and social platforms as much as in the streets.

Moving forward, the West should fully integrate cyber and information warfare into its military-intelligence doctrine. Any confrontation with a peer opponent will feature a significant cyber dimension—likely far more intense than what Israel faced with Hamas. A Russian campaign, for example, could begin with waves of cyberattacks to knock out European communications, scramble logistics, and spread confusion.

The IDF’s experience demonstrates the value of offensive cyber actions to throw the enemy off balance. Whether that means hacking enemy comms, jamming their signals, or even confiscating illicit funds (as Israel did by seizing millions in cryptocurrency from Iran-backed groups) to sap their finances, cyber tools can erode an adversary’s capacity to wage war.

At the same time, we must be prepared to counter enemy propaganda and disinformation on a massive scale. Moscow has long shown proficiency in information warfare—from deepfake videos to troll farms—aiming to skew perceptions. The lesson from Israel is to proactively put out factual intelligence to challenge lies. This could mean quickly declassifying satellite images or intercepts if Russia tries to fabricate an atrocity or justify aggression, much as the IDF did to set the record straight on Gaza.

Importantly, the cyber defence of military and critical infrastructure needs to be rock-solid. Even Israel, a “Start-Up Nation,” found that its cyber defences had gaps: over fifteen Iran-linked hacker groups launched attacks on Israel after 7 October, hitting targets like hospitals and leaking sensitive data. In one chilling scenario, hackers obtained Israeli soldiers’ medical records and could have altered blood type data, potentially putting wounded troops at risk of mistreatment.

For the West, this is a warning to invest heavily in cybersecurity and inter-agency coordination before a crisis. Drills that simulate communications outages, malware infections, or social-media misinformation cascades are as important as live-fire military exercises. By fortifying networks and educating personnel (and the public) on recognising disinformation, we can blunt the effectiveness of enemy cyber strikes.

Ultimately, the IDF showed that success in cyber and information warfare comes from offence and defence: disrupt the enemy’s systems and lies, while securing your own. Our intelligence community, learning from Gaza and Lebanon, should ensure that, in any future conflict, its “digital frontline” is as robust and agile as its traditional forces—if not more so.

Conclusion
No two conflicts are identical. The IDF fought in Gaza under circumstances unique to Israel’s security situation—against an irregular foe, in a small coastal strip, with both home turf advantages and challenges. Troops operating in Eastern Europe would face a far more conventional enemy operating in expansive terrain. Yet the past months have revealed some commonalities of urban warfare in the 21st century. Drones will swarm. Communications will falter. Tanks will continue to rumble down shattered streets, requiring clever tactics to survive. Civilians will be in the line of fire, testing the ethics and discipline of every soldier. Elite units may find themselves fighting hand-in-hand with grunts. Air power will deliver sledgehammer blows, successful intelligence fusion will decide the outcome of battles, and the court of global opinion will render its own verdict.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza since 7 October 2023 has been a crucible of adaptation. The West is running out of time to absorb these lessons before a future conflict necessitates similar adaptation in the heat of battle. The overarching lesson is balance: integrate the IDF’s tactical innovations with a clear understanding of how engagements would differ against a near-peer adversary. By doing so, our militaries can honour the IDF’s sacrifices by ensuring that if armed forces are ever thrust into a brutal urban fight—whether defending our allies or safeguarding our own national interests—they will be as prepared, lethal, and restrained as necessary. The fog of war will always be thick, but the experiences of Gaza can illuminate the path to better strategy on the streets of any city where our soldiers may one day have to fight.

I don't always agree with Donald Trump nor do I always like his personality. But more than any other president, he has the ability to cut through the bull.

Trump wrote on Truth Social at 11:30 AM:

Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN. Any further attack or retaliation by the “Houthis” will be met with great force, and there is no guarantee that that force will stop there. Iran has played “the innocent victim” of rogue terrorists from which they’ve lost control, but they haven’t lost control. They’re dictating every move, giving them the weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated Military equipment, and even, so-called, “Intelligence.” Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!

DONALD J. TRUMP,
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Everyone knows that the Houthis (and Hezbollah) are funded and armed by Iran. Everyone knows that the Houthis would not do a thing without Iranian permission, and in all probability they don't do anything without being told to by Iran.

Everyone knows it but the world has pretended for years that it isn't true.

Part of the reason is because Iran would constantly threaten the world if it didn't get its way: it has thousands of rockets, it maintains a nuclear weapons program that can make a bomb in weeks or months, it pretends to be unpredictable and irrational so everyone gives it a wide berth.

Those tactics obviously work. Except for Israel's attacks in retaliation for Iran's missile attacks, the free world has steered clear of upsetting Iran.

Everyone had a role in the play where everyone publicly denied what everyone knew. This worked out well for a frightened Western world and it worked out great for Iran.

And when the Houthis started attacking a significant part of world shipping, even though this was a direct attack on many nations, the world stuck to their roles.

Until Trump.

It is another breath of fresh air of plainly saying what everyone pretends is fuzzy.

There is little doubt here. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards forces are on the ground in Yemen, “serving side by side” with the Houthis, the deputy commander of US Central Command Vice Adm. Brad Cooper told 60 Minutes last February.

In January 2024, Semafor reported:

Commanders and advisors from Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are on the ground in Yemen and playing a direct role in Houthi rebel attacks on commercial traffic in the Red Sea.

The IRGC has stationed missile and drone trainers and operators in Yemen, as well as personnel providing tactical intelligence support to the Houthis, U.S. and Middle East officials told Semafor. The IRGC, through its overseas Qods Force, has also overseen the transfer to the Houthis of the attack drones, cruise missiles, and medium-range ballistic missiles used in a string of strikes on Red Sea and Israeli targets in recent weeks, these officials said.

The legal issues on attacking the party that controls the proxy are a little fuzzy but if the US decides to attack, it has plenty of latitude to invoke international law of self defense.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

March 15 was the "International Day to Combat Islamophobia," a UN-proclaimed day between "International Day of Women Judges" and "French Language Day."

The 2022 UN resolution to proclaim this day also mentions "antisemitism and Christianophobia and prejudices against persons of other religions or beliefs." The operative clauses of the resolution has nothing specific about Islam; it "Calls for strengthened international efforts to foster a global dialogue on the promotion of a culture of tolerance and peace at all levels, based on respect for human rights and for the diversity of religions and beliefs, and strongly deplores all acts of violence against persons on the basis of their religion or belief and such acts directed against their places of worship, as well as all attacks on and in religious places, sites and shrines that are in violation of international law."

The first question is, therefore, why this isn't a general resolution against all kinds of religious discrimination?

Because that already existed, in the International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief, August 22, passed in 2019.

So why is there a day specifically against Islamophobia? There is no day about antisemitism or any other hatred of a religious group.

The January 27 "International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust" does not condemn - in fact, it doesn't even mention - antisemitism. It only mentions Jews once, in th epreamble, saying "Reaffirming that the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people" and then adds "along with countless members of other minorities will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice." So it "all lives matters" Jews.

There is a great deal more antisemitism that Islamophobia in the world. The International Day to Combat Islamophobia adds exactly nothing to the conversation that wasn't in the 2019 resolution. So why was it passed?

One reason was it was a reaction to the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings. That just brings up the question of what about the many other attacks against people in their places of worship?

The reason seems to be that the Muslim countries want to make sure that Jews are never viewed as victims, but only as oppressors. By highlighting a day to "combat Islamophobia" they are asserting that Muslims are the paradigm of victims of religious discrimination and all other such victims are secondary, if that.

If you don't believe me, then just imagine the objections that would occur if someone suggested an International Day to Combat Antisemitism - and from which nations those objections would come.

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Poshlost over Palestine: A study in sanctimonious lies

Sometimes there is a happy confluence of truth that together point to a much greater truth than the sum of their parts.

On Sunday night I tweeted this:

The media was wrong when they said Israel bombed the Al Ahli Hospital.

They were wrong for repeating the Gaza health ministry claim that Gaza deaths were "70% women and children."

They were wrong when they reported that 10,000 bodies were buried under the rubble.

They were wrong when they said the Gaza hospitals had no terrorists.

They were wrong when they repeated absurd claims that 186,000 Gazans had died.

They were wrong when they said Hamas was not stealing aid.

They were wrong for saying that Gaza was in the midst of a famine.

They were wrong for repeating the "genocide" claims without rebuttal.

They were wrong for doubting everything the IDF said and giving credence to everything Hamas said.

They are wrong for not admitting that they have been consistently, constantly wrong about every aspect of the Gaza war.

All of their mistakes have been in the same direction - accusing Jews of being inhumane monsters.

Why, exactly, should anyone believe the mainstream media about Israel, ever?

The Israel haters are in a tizzy, responding to my tweet with an amusing combination of strident denial, doubling down on the lies and explicit Jew-hatred.

Then I saw this brilliant article in Commentary by Irina Velitskaya:

Of all the untranslatable words in the Russian language, my favorite is пошлость— poshlost—representing a concept that is ubiquitous, albeit unacknowledged, in the modern Western world. It’s untranslatable because it can’t be summed up in a single word and stands instead for a great many interrelated concepts. But if, in an effort to understand it, one were to dissect poshlost, one would find inside it, wriggling like little worms, the words “smarmy,” “smug,” “superficial,” and “shabby.”

And yet, squirmy as this image is, that’s only half of what’s inside poshlost, because entangled with the first set of meanings is a second set: “self-importance,” “imaginary virtue,” “oblivious narcissism,” “belligerent weepiness,” and “preening self-regard.”

“It is not only the obviously trashy but also the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely clever, the falsely attractive,” as Vladimir Nabokov put it. It’s the mistaken belief, Nabokov continued, “that the acme of human happiness is purchasable and that its purchase somehow ennobles the purchaser.” A literary critic who wrote on Nabokov’s work described the word as “petty evil or self-satisfied vulgarity.”

And what is the “acme of human happiness” for these self-satisfied vulgarians? In the contemporary Western context, and particularly among university students and the intelligentsia, it is the feeling that you are better, more virtuous, and more deeply human than most of the mean-spirited, seething, insensible masses around you.

Which brings us, of course, to the most repellent example of poshlost in the modern world: the thin veneer of ersatz humanitarianism and pathos that Western intellectuals splotch across the nakedly hateful reality of Islamist supremacist rhetoric and violence.

There are ....syrupy emoji assemblages that feature the Palestinian flag, accompanied by one or more of the following: a bright red heart, a white dove of peace, a rainbow, a unicorn, an LGBTQ+ flag, and, of course, a watermelon, often accompanied by a fundraising link for the families of Gaza (though said funds will likely never get further than a Hamas bank account in a place like Qatar, but hey, it’s the thought that counts!).

Often, there is a “land acknowledgment” in the bio—a reference to, for example, “Syilx Okanagan stolen land.” This is a confession that the poster lives on land conquered from its indigenous inhabitants; it’s deployed as a means of expiating guilt while preempting charges of hypocrisy. Needless to say, the poster has no intention of actually moving from the conquered land, thereby reinforcing the very hypocrisy he wishes to avoid. People post these acknowledgments of theft only because they are secure in the knowledge that the indigenous people on whose land they live will not rape them, burn them alive, or behead them. In their minds, the payment for this privilege is merely a nickel inserted into an imaginary vending machine that dispenses virtue.

This is a perfect description of many of the people responding with reflexive anger to my off-the-cuff tweet.

Put the two together and you see how the practitioners of poshlost react to any facts that threaten their self-righteous perch.

Their efforts to climb to the peak of virtue involves consuming a great deal of lies. These lies are a web spun by the media. NGOs, academia and Palestinian socialists (usually traced back to the PFLP) who know the lingo and how to package the most illiberal, far-right wing Islamist terrorists as progressive heroes.

In general, exposure to these lies aren't what caused them to become poshlosters. Their own self-absorption takes care of that. The lies are supporting (and recruiting) material, whose effectiveness is entirely tied to being consumed by a crowd who desperately wants them to be true, to validate their conceit.

Exposure to the truth - learning that the cause that they have spent so much emotional capital to support is illusory - is their greatest fear.

The poshlosters dwell in a castle in the clouds of sanctimony, built from the vapor of Washington Post reports, Amnesty International claims, and UN declarations. A bubble of denial shields them, its seeming solidity their only defense - until someone arrives with a pin.

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

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Aid organizations who have politicized the conflict are complaining Israel is politicizing the conflict

The first two paragraphs of this Washington Post report from Saturday are simply amazing:

Israel will begin implementing sweeping new visa and registration rules for international aid organizations operating in the Palestinian territories, introducing restrictions that humanitarian groups say would politicize their work, put local and international staff at risk and undermine relief efforts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The measures, which Israel announced this week, give officials broad authority to reject the registration of nongovernmental organizations providing assistance to Palestinians using a far-reaching set of guidelines. Among the criteria: whether an NGO or its employees have ever called for a boycott of Israel, denied its existence “as a Jewish and democratic state,” or expressed support for legal proceedings against Israeli citizens in international courts for acts carried out while serving in the military or any security agency.

Virtually every aid agency insists that its mission is non-political. So when Israel is asking them whether they are adhering to their own standards, if they weren't political, they should be happy to be transparent about their positions and their standards for hiring workers who are also unbiased.

It isn't Israel that is politicizing their work - Israel is trying to only work with NGOs who haven't taken political positions against Israel, as they claim they do!

The article goes on to say that "Israel has also repeated, without evidence, its long-standing charges — denied by aid agencies — that the assistance going to Gaza is being diverted to Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that rules the enclave."

There are numerous videos and photos showing that theft.

Hamas members beat civilians and steal the humanitarian aid they received from international organizations—facilitated by Israel.

Hamas puts its terrorist goals over Gazans' needs. pic.twitter.com/lFuaWU0bdx
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) December 9, 2023

No one can deny that goods that entered Gaza and should be distributed for free, like baby formula, diapers and flour, are being sold in the markets at high prices. Earlier in the war Hamas claimed to send out gangs to "confiscate" goods being sold for high prices where they claimed they then sold for reasonable prices - but shouldn't the goods have been given away to begin with?

Gazans know the truth and say it all the time, but that is not good enough for the media like the Washington Post.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

03/16 Links: The deadly ‘conceptzia’ is alive and well; More UN lies about Israel; BBC edited out Hamas's poor treatment of hostages

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: The deadly ‘conceptzia’ is alive and well

The reaction of the protest movement and its deep-state champions to the appointment of Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir to head the Israel Defense Forces was predictable. Anyone approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to replace Herzi Halevi was bound to be discredited as a politically motivated pick, regardless of his illustrious professional credentials.

It’s part of the knee-jerk campaign against the government in general and Netanyahu in particular that keeps the left-wing punditocracy—as well as a slew of former security officials—in business. Not just figuratively. Unfortunately, the horrors of Oct. 7, 2023, didn’t serve to slow the wheels of the disinformation machine. Quite the opposite.

Still, though not surprising, the attitude toward Zamir is cause for alarm where the bigger picture is concerned. Rather than embracing the new IDF chief’s stated mission—to review the thus-far insufficient investigation into the series of incomprehensible blunders on that deadly day, and serve as the country’s proverbial attack dog against any enemy who rises up to against it—the nay-sayers have been casting aspersions on his every syllable.

Given the magnitude of Israel’s failure to anticipate and prevent Hamas’s bloody massacre more than 17 months ago, Zamir’s approach should be welcomed, if not embraced, across the societal spectrum. But the chattering-class choir is refusing to change its tune.

Which brings us to what has come to be called the conceptzia. The Hebrew bastardization of “conception” is best translated as “confirmation bias.”

The psychological phenomenon has been noted by various sources throughout history. Among these was English philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon.

“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion,” he wrote in 1620, “draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects or despises, or else by some distinction sets aside or rejects.”

It’s a perfect description of the Israeli blind spot that enabled Hamas to plan and execute the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust. In the sovereign Jewish state, no less, with an army that’s admired far and wide.

Grasping this sad fact is necessary for rectifying it. Alas, doing so isn’t sufficient.

A comprehensive interview this weekend in the N12 Magazine with Ofer Grosbard, former head of the Research Division of the IDF Intelligence Directorate (Aman), is enlightening. A psychologist with a Ph.D. in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University in Virginia, Grosbard—author of several books and articles on the difference in thinking between the Western and Muslim world—assumed the role in August 2021.

Six months later, he was fired for daring to voice assessments that countered the conceptzia. That’s not how anybody labeled the conventional wisdom of Aman, of course. But it was on full, arrogant display.

Ironically, then, the very expertise for which he was hired in the wake of “Operation Guardian of the Walls” against Hamas—”to provide an original perspective on the enemy’s mindset”—would get him sacked.

Brendan O'Neill: More UN lies about Israel

Most unforgivably, the report castigates the young men of the IDF for wanting to punish Hamas for the crimes it committed against Israeli women on 7 October 2023. Some even refer to Hamas-run Gaza as a ‘rapist regime’, it says. They seem to believe that ‘[Hamas’s] assault on Israeli women harmed a collective honour that must be avenged’. It accuses these ‘aggressive’ soldiers of trying to ‘rebuild Israeli national masculinity’ through ‘retaliation for the attacks carried out by the military wing of Hamas’.

I’m struggling to recall the last time I read something as morally warped as that. Israel can’t do right for doing wrong. If it instructs a male suspect in Gaza to remove his outer clothing, that’s the war crime of gender persecution. Yet when it pursues the Islamists who visited real gender-based butchery on the women of southern Israel on 7 October, that’s masculinist arrogance. What is the Human Rights Council saying, exactly? That Israel should not search fighting-age males for suicide belts? That it should not ‘avenge’ its women who were assaulted, kidnapped and murdered? Tell me, UN: is the Jewish nation the only nation that is forbidden from protecting its soldiers from explosive devices and its women from rape?

Even when the report moves from ‘men and boys’ to ‘women and girls’, its accusations don’t stack up. One of its key examples of ‘acts of sexual violence’ against women concerns ‘the removal of the veil’. The IDF, at checkpoints and in the Gazan towns it has conquered, sometimes instructs women to ‘remove [their] veils’, says the report. And apparently this has a ‘particular negative impact’. Can we get real here? It is sometimes necessary in warzones to check people’s identities. Israel suspected at one point that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar had disguised himself as a woman. It is not ‘sexual violence’ to ask a woman in an incredibly tense war situation to show her face to soliders.

The report discusses ‘reproductive violence’, too. It includes in this category women suffering from ‘vaginal infections’ due to a lack of clean water and lactating women struggling to breastfeed as a result of malnourishment. These are dreadful circumstances. No one doubts that civilians in Gaza, especially mums with young kids, have suffered terribly as a result of this war started by Hamas. But aren’t these things that happen in all wars? Hunger, declining hygiene, ill-health? The rebranding of such tragedies of war as conscious acts of ‘sexual violence’ by the IDF feels profoundly deceptive. It is vilification masquerading as analysis.

There are serious accusations amid the misinformation, including claims that the IDF verbally and physically abused Palestinian women and tortured Palestinian men. Israel says they’re lies, but some of it will need to be investigated. But it is not the aim of this report to establish the truth about Gaza. No, it’s about casting a black cloud of suspicion over everything Israel does. ‘Avenging’ 7 October, protecting its soldiers from attack, interrogating fighting-age men – to normal people this is ‘war’; to those drunk on the Kool-Aid of Israelophobia, it’s a ‘war crime’. Listen, UN – it is not a crime for Jews to defend themselves against an army of anti-Semites that wants to kill them all.

Eugene Kontorovich: The U.N. Is Ripping America Off in New York

The 1947 agreement gave the U.N. tax-free status on some of the world’s most valuable real estate and required the U.S. to admit dictators and terrorists to its territory. In return, the U.S. got the prestige of hosting the organization and assurances that the U.N. wouldn’t fall under Soviet influence. But the Cold War is over, and the U.N. never became the global supercop of the founding generation’s fantasies. If there is still snob appeal to hosting the headquarters, it isn’t what it was 78 years ago.

The language of the agreement shows what a one-sided deal it was. While the treaty acknowledged U.S. sovereignty over the territory, it insisted the “headquarters district” was “under the control and authority” of the U.N. and “inviolable” by American officials. Article 23 of the Agreement provides that “the seat of the United Nations shall not be removed from the headquarters district unless the United Nations should so decide.” Some say this means the U.S. can’t evict the U.N.

But the agreement is a treaty, and the default rule of international law is that a treaty, unless they say otherwise, lasts until one party withdraws from it. If the U.S. cancels the treaty, the entire arrangement disappears. Nothing in the treaty’s text prohibits such withdrawal. Indeed, the idea of an irrevocable agreement seems not to have arisen at all in the negotiations. Congress, which in passing the law needed to approve the agreement, said nothing about it being an eternal concession.

While the treaty refers to the “permanent” headquarters of the U.N., this simply means “durable.” Many international treaties use “permanent” this way, to mean long-lasting, not eternal. The Permanent International Court of Justice lasted from 1922-46.

The U.N. bureaucrats who enjoy residence in the U.S. won’t give up without a fight. They would likely try to get the International Court of Justice to rule that the agreement can’t be canceled. The Hague has consistently rendered poorly reasoned decisions hostile to the U.S. As part of the U.N. system, it will be solicitous to the Turtle Bay bureaucracy. But if the International Court of Justice says the treaty can’t be canceled, then the law authorizing it is almost certainly unconstitutional.

In U.S. law, the only obligations with real permanence are those in the Constitution. Even for those, there is a process of amendment. The U.N. agreement was adopted through ordinary legislation—it isn’t clear how it could be unchangeable by subsequent democratically elected governments.

A recurring argument against U.S. disengagement from the U.N. is that the organization would fall under China’s control. That isn’t an issue with the headquarters agreement. There is no reason to think thousands of U.N. officials would be willing to decamp to Beijing.

Mr. Trump says he wants to take back the Panama Canal, but Turtle Bay is closer. As his administration reviews the U.S. relationship with the U.N. and other international organizations, the headquarters agreement shouldn’t escape scrutiny. There may still be reason to host the U.N., but it need not be on the same terms as in 1947. If Mr. Trump is willing to use cancellation of the agreement as leverage, he can get a much better deal for both New York and the U.S.

Three peer-reviewed studies in The Lancet about Gaza all have severe methodological flaws. They only "trust the science" that fits their politics.

Since the beginning of the Gaza war, The Lancet has published three peer-reviewed studies all to make Israel look as bad as possible.

All three suffer from severe methodological flaws that should have disqualified them from ever being published. All three have been shown to be false by things we found out later. Yet they were not only published, but they have not been retracted nor has the Lancet (as far as I can tell) published any serious criticism of them.

The first one, from December 2023, claimed to support the Gaza health ministry estimates of deaths by comparing the number of deaths per thousand reported of the general Gaza population with the number of deaths per thousand of UNRWA workers during the first month of the war. By showing that the number of deaths per thousand UNRWA workers actually exceeded the rate of Gaza deaths in the first month of the war, the study concluded that the early criticisms of the Gaza health ministry statistics were misplaced.

The major flaw with the study was the base assumption that Israel was bombing everyone in Gaza indiscriminately, not aiming at Hamas. Only if you believe that assumption would the UNRWA deaths be an accurate proxy for deaths altogether. Yet even the UNRWA data belies that, as the majority of UNRWA staffer death were working-age males while the 60% of UNRWA workers altogether in Gaza are women. In other words, the demographics of the UNRWA deaths more closely align with Hamas fighter demographics, and as we've seen since then, some UNRWA workers actually were Hamas as well.

An analysis of the data in subsequent months showed that the methodology does not hold up. In every month afterwards, the Hamas-reported deaths per thousand were far higher than the number of UNRWA deaths per thousand. So either the Lancet's assumptions that UNRWA is an accurate proxy for deaths in Gaza was wrong to begin with, or the health ministry started inflating the death count after the first month by a factor of two.

Either way, the paper's thesis - which was widely quoted for many months afterwards as proof of the MoH's accuracy - was entirely wrong.

The second peer-reviewed Lancet study was from January 2025. It estimated that the true death toll in Gaza up until June 2024 was not the 40,000 reported by the Ministry of Health but actually 64,000 - 60% higher. It based this on a math-heavy capture-recapture analysis. Not to get into the weeds, but capture-recapture only works when all the data sources are independent and random. In fact, two of the sources sites were meant to be complementary, nit independent, while the third - based on social media posts - was never intended to be a representative sample. The math was good, but the inputs were garbage.

Since then, we have seen that the Ministry of Health has had every chance to find all of those missing dead bodies, and it has found about 700, not the 27,000+ that the study assumed were there to be found (based on end of 2024 reported deaths.) Those tens of thousands of dead people never existed, proving that the paper was wrong.

The third study looked at life expectancy of Gaza in light of the war, claiming that it plummeted from 75 for 40. Again, it was peer reviewed, and the peers who reviewed it apparently only reviewed the math but not the cherry-picked data behind the math. The authors chose a 12-month time period from October 2023-September 2024, not taking into account that the first month had far more deaths than any other and that the rate of deaths per month kept going down throughout the war. If it would have chosen the calendar year 2024, the results would have been far different; if it would have chosen the last six months of 2024 the life expectancy would be even higher.

Moreover, since a significant number of those killed were Hamas fighters who were less than 30 years old, this artificially lowers the life expectancy calculations for the entire population, the vast majority of whom are not Hamas fighters. It does not at all reflect how many years a newborn in Gaza can expect to live.

Isn't it interesting that every Lancet peer-reviewed paper is not only severely flawed, and each of them have been proven wrong by subsequent data, but also that each of them are skewed against Israel? If th Lancet randomly published poor papers, one would expect that some would err on Israel's side. That never happens.

I don't pretend to be an expert in statistics or math, but I have asked AI programs to critique my analyses and they have not found anything fundamentally wrong with my logic. The weaknesses of the papers are real, not a result of my own bias, and have been proven by later data.

This is not a coincidence. It is a pattern. The Lancet would never publish papers that disprove these, they would never correct these papers in light of new information that proves them wrong, and from what I can tell, they have not published any letters pointing out these severe flaws.

I believe in the scientific method. This pattern of truly awful papers in The Lancet prove that science itself can be twisted by politics, and publications that are meant to be scientifically objective can be perverted for political purposes.

If hate for Israel outweighs the desire by editors of journals to insist on objectivity, then what good are these journals to begin with? If we cannot trust prestigious science journals, who can we trust?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The @NYTiimes has not written "Hamas-run health ministry" for a year. Today it says the "Houthi-run health ministry."

In the first months of the Gaza war, the New York Times consistently referred to any statements by the Gaza health ministry as coming from the "Hamas-run health ministry."

That ended in February, 2024. Since then it has simply been called the "Gaza health ministry" with no reference to the terrorist organization that controls it.

So it was interesting to see how the NYT covered the airstrikes by the US in Yemen today:

The strikes killed at least 31 people and wounded 101, “most of whom were children and women,” said Anis al-Asbahi, a spokesman for the Houthi-run health ministry.

The casualty figures could not be independently verified, and the United States has not given any estimates for the number of people killed or wounded in the strikes.

Those are reservations that have been largely missing in NYT coverage of specific attacks in Gaza since last February.

Yet even with those caveats, the NYT could have easily cast more doubt on the claims of the Houthi health spokesperson.

Al-Ashahi claimed that that every one of the claimed 31 killed and 101 injured were unarmed civilians, a claim that strains credulity given the Houthis’ military role and the strike targets (e.g., Sanaa military sites.)

Another piece of context that casts doubt on Houthi claims is that here is the graphic on al-Ashahi's X account that the NYT linked to:

The Hassan Nasrallah fan is hardly an objective, sober doctor who would just report the facts, which is how the Times has been treating Hamas health spokespeople.

So while there is some seeming skepticism of the Houthi claims, the newspaper does not fully inform its readers of how likely it is that the Houthis are lying.

Perhaps the reason is that they don't want people to start retroactively questioning the New York Times' credulous coverage of the claims of another bloodthirsty Islamist group that it has been quoting uncritically for over a year.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

In 2006, Judith Butler, the anti-Israel gender studies icon, made one of her most infamous statement at UC Berkeley: “Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important.” She was widely ridiculed for framing terrorist groups as "progressive" and over the years she tried to thread the needle between being against terrorist violence but describing October 7 as "armed resistance."

"Columbia University Apartheid Divest," the umbrella group behind all the anti-Israel actions at Columbia, goes beyond Butler.

In their Substack last August, CUAD wrote, "As the leading force of the anti-imperialist struggle backed by the Palestinian people, Hamas is assessed as principally a progressive force."

They use the same logic to declare that the Houthis are also a "progressive force."

They pretend that Islamist bigotry is a problem for them and then they dismiss it: "Assessing Hamas and Ansarallah as principally progressive forces in an anti-imperialist struggle does not mean that one has to agree with every aspect of the nature of these forces, or that they have always been or always will be principally progressive. These other aspects are secondary to the issue at hand, which is their role in carrying out a national liberation war against their oppressors."

This all puts a lie to the idea that "progressives" are progressive. They mask their antisemitism and anti-Western bile in the rhetoric of human rights and progressivism. They consider groups who insist that women and non-Muslims are second class citizens and who literally execute gays to be on their side. Their supposed "progressive" viewpoints are, according to them, "secondary" to their "anti-imperialist" nature.

The Islamists strive to build a single Islamic 'ummah that would be, by definition, imperialist - the major world power where only Muslim men would have full rights. There is very little ideological daylight between the Islamists and the white supremacists. The 'ummah under Dar al-Islam is their nation—a supremacist, imperialist project demanding loyalty, not unlike neo-Nazi fantasies of a white ethnostate.

Most of the anti-Israel students in Columbia would not be very happy living under Islamic rule of their Hamas and Houthi "comrades," no matter how much they call them "progressive."

The Columbia students who are threatened with deportation are being framed by much of the media as being merely "pro-Palestinian." CUAD represents all of them, and CUAD's article shows that the group is, above all, anti-American. The State Department has every right to deport non-citizens who cheer attacking, kidnapping and murdering Americans.

Calling them a national security risk isn't an exaggeration - their beliefs are spelled out in black and white.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

03/15 Links: The Coalition of the Sentimental and the Homicidal; How American Aid Has Subsidized Terror; U.S. kicks out South Africa's Hamas-linked ambassador

From Ian:

The Coalition of the Sentimental and the Homicidal

The short answer is peer approval, credibility, and a temporary sense of moral righteousness, purchased only at the cost of their prior principles. For these are people who, presumably, once upon a time, were morally opposed to rape, mass murder, and the taking of hostages.

That most of the campus protesters are to be found at the most expensive universities, and thus either come from wealthy families or are the recipients of highly prized scholarships, is not incidental to this hypocrisy; poshlost is a crime of privilege. It is a political statement that serves to please the issuer of the statement while not, in any way, advancing the interests of the cause it purports to represent. It is virtue-signaling in which the purpose is to impress oneself rather than change the opinions of others. It is selective sentimentality, frequently accompanied by astonishing callousness. It is an idle amusement, as it’s easy to cry crocodile tears about a conflict one knows nothing about when there is no job at stake, and no bills piling up, and there is the assurance that, if arrested, bail will be immediately available.

Thus, the term poshlost is even more apropos than Nabokov could have imagined and deserves acceptance as a new English-language portmanteau word: These posh and comfortable protesters, play-acting like children in their keffiyehs and waving flags whose meanings are unknown to them, are well and truly morally lost.

Many of these purveyors of poshlost are not merely falsely sentimental or insincere; they are deliberately manipulative in their lust for likes and clicks. They use their selectively empathetic personas in service of nakedly mercantilistic ends. One professional therapist writes: “Now that we are blocking all celebrities, influencers and businesses that do not support Palestine by speaking out and fighting to end the genocide in Gaza, might I suggest we start following those that do? Like, perhaps my small hypnotherapy practice.”

The novelist Milan Kundera, who well knew the horrors of totalitarian rule, has nicely skewered false sentimentality: “Two tears flow in quick succession. The first tear says: how nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: how nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass.” Put another way, “sentimentality is that peculiarly human vice which consists in directing your emotions toward your own emotions, so as to be the subject of a story told by yourself,” as the English philosopher Roger Scruton noted in his autobiography.

The sentimentalists are playing a double game: They are dispensing, and attracting, warm feelings and approbation for themselves and their kind, while at the same time providing cover for totalitarians and terrorists. Though some are well-meaning, and genuinely naive, the innocents among them have long ago been outpaced by the calculating cynics. The latter dress up evil in a manner no different from that of the directors of the Nazi-run Theresienstadt labor camp, where the Nazis planted pretty gardens and painted barracks in lively colors to dupe inspectors from the International Red Cross. (Not that the International Red Cross, then or now, has ever needed any assistance in overlooking Jewish suffering.)

To be clear, there are many different categories and types of lies about the conflict. The insincere sentimentalism about the Palestinians may not be the worst type, but it is the most insidious because it wraps itself in a phony cloak of decency and compassion that appeals to people’s innate moral narcissism. It infiltrates the psyches of the very people who think of themselves as the most kind, the most sincere, and ostensibly the most peace-loving.

They are, in fact, exactly the opposite of these things.

One folksinger on Instagram, who acknowledges living on Tongva land, sings a song referencing “from the river to the sea.” In a musical litany of complaints about capitalism, Covid, hurricanes, “policing gender roles,” climate change, and Israel’s supposed “pinkwashing,” the singer declares, “Lord, at least we have our souls.” This person, like so many of the poshlost army, has posted nothing about the October 7 massacre or the years of rocket attacks against Israeli communities. Which makes Scruton’s point that “a moral argument must be consistent if it is to be sincere.”

If you plant metaphorical gardens that obscure your view of actual murders and sing poshlost folk tunes designed to paint over and glamorize the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, you have become morally bankrupt. Despite your guitar, your guilt, and your peer-approved opinions, you have long ago lost your soul.

The Bibas Children and Ivan Karamazov’s Rebellion

So powerful is Ivan’s argument that Konstantin Pobedonostsev, chief procurator of the Holy Synod governing the Russian Orthodox Church, wondered how Dostoevsky, whom he knew to be a Christian, could possibly answer it. Pause to consider that the strongest arguments against God ever made are advanced in the world’s greatest Christian novel. But that is the whole point: If one is intellectually honest, as both Ivan and Dostoevsky were, one does not refute one’s opponents’ weakest arguments—any fool can do that—but his strongest ones. And if they have not formulated the strongest arguments on their side, one should do it for them. Dostoevsky was proud that he had made a more powerful case against God than any enemy of religion had. The rest of the novel attempts to answer this case by following Ivan’s own method. It does not advance counterarguments but offers, or aspires to offer, pictures of goodness, love, and meaningfulness more powerful than any argument could be. Whether Dostoevsky succeeded in refuting Ivan is another question.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas went one step beyond those cultured and educated parents who tortured their little girl in secret, under cover of darkness. Hamas filmed and broadcast its crimes as if they were the highest moral feats. Recall the enthusiastic tone of that young man who called his parents to boast about his murders: “Open my WhatsApp now and you’ll see all those killed. Look how many I killed with my own hands! Your son killed Jews!… Dad, I’m talking to you from a Jewish woman’s phone. I killed her and I killed her husband. I killed ten with my own hands! Dad, ten with my own hands!… Their blood is on my hands, put Mom on.”

His mother responded: “Oh my son, God bless you!”

“I swear ten with my own hands, Mother… . Dad, go back to WhatsApp now Dad, I want to do a live broadcast… . Mom, your son is a hero, kill, kill, kill!”

“Their blood is on my hands, put Mom on”: In America and elsewhere, Students for Justice in Palestine and other groups rushed to express their delight at the October 7 murders. The more Jewish blood, the better. And when Hamas returned the bodies of the strangled Bibas children, they did so as a great party. Parents brought their children to a baby-murder parade.

Even Hitler and Stalin never did this. They concealed their crimes. I recall reading that the Nazis taunted their Jewish victims that no one would ever find out what had happened to them. With the help of New York Times reporter Walter Duranty, Stalin succeeded in covering up the deliberate starvation of millions of peasants during the collectivization of agriculture. Photographed with a child hugging him, Stalin conveyed the image of himself as perfectly humane.

La Rochefoucauld famously remarked that hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue: Even the vicious profess to believe in kindness. If so, Hamas—and their American followers—are no hypocrites. They flaunt their barbarity. And not just their leaders, but also ordinary people calling home to boast of killings or joyously celebrating the strangling of little children. Such souls are truly dark.

On October 7, and when the Bibas children were returned, I recalled how shaken I had been decades earlier to learn about the torture of Sylvia Likens and to visit what remained of Auschwitz. We often hear of events that partake of evil, but watching Hamas, I felt once again I had touched on evil’s very heart.

How American Aid Has Subsidized Terror

These legitimate strategic objectives are undermined when aid falls into the wrong hands. The Middle East Forum’s research has identified approximately $164 million in USAID and State Department grants flowing to organizations with extremist ties, with at least $122 million directly benefiting groups aligned with designated foreign terrorist organizations. The systemic nature of these failures is particularly concerning. As mentioned, World Vision continued its relationship with problematic partners even after the Islamic Relief Agency scandal, and the warnings about the terror links to Helping Hand for Relief and Development were ignored while funding continued.

The Trump 47 administration, in coordination with Elon Musk’s review at DOGE, has frozen or reassigned many staff positions at USAID, pending a thorough evaluation of who is responsible for these abuses. Spreadsheets posted by the administration to show the extent of foreign-aid spending have been criticized as “wild” or “inaccurate.” Yet the broad brushstrokes are accurate: Billions have gone to questionable projects, and no single line item enumerates them. That is partly because some managers awarded money to unnamed or shadowy organizations, hidden behind the aforementioned “miscellaneous foreign awardees” category.

Eliminating such chaos will take more than new guidelines on paper. A cultural shift must accompany it. If top-level administrators remain committed to certain ideological crusades at the expense of U.S. security, no new rule will suffice. Some staff may need to be replaced or face criminal investigation. Several subcommittee members demanded that the State Department and USAID begin to itemize every last grant, sub-grant, and sub-sub-grant of the past decade. If that demand is met, the public might be shocked by the individuals or organizations that have lined their pockets.

Several U.S. statutes may apply to these cases. The first is 18 U.S.C. § 2339B, which prohibits material support to designated terrorist organizations. Another is 50 U.S.C. § 1705 under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which criminalizes violations of sanctions against terror groups. Additionally, false statements to obtain federal funds (18 U.S.C. § 1001) and fraud in federal programs (18 U.S.C. § 666) might be relevant where organizations concealed extremist ties to secure grants.

The reform agenda must be comprehensive. Officials should create an organized “Do Not Fund” list merging data from the State Department, Treasury designations, intelligence agencies, and the Department of Justice. If an organization or its top personnel have documented links to extremist networks, they should land on that list. The system must track sub-grantees, not just direct recipients. Enforceable rules should require prime awardees to itemize every downstream partner and publicly file that information. Meanwhile, robust audits must confirm that an NGO cannot claim ignorance about its sub-sub-grantees.

Foreign aid is one of the noblest expressions of American leadership when it is spent wisely. In past decades, it helped defeat Soviet influence, curb infectious diseases, and lift whole regions from poverty. But the hearing on February 26 laid bare a darker side of modern foreign aid. The subcommittee’s findings were a clarion call for a reset. If U.S. assistance does not serve strategic interests and genuinely support threatened populations, it devolves into a slush fund that underwrites our foes or promotes fringe obsessions.

No one wants children to starve in war zones or real disasters to go unaddressed. Nevertheless, if long-standing agencies have indeed participated in funneling support to radical outfits—among them Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda’s affiliates, or Lashkar-e-Taiba—under a cloak of “humanitarian” assistance, then the time has arrived for serious housecleaning. This is bigger than petty politics. The United States’s credibility and citizens’ safety hang in the balance.

A betrayal of American generosity has occurred, but it need not continue. With bold legislative steps, transparent accounting, vigorous vetting, and swift punishment for wrongdoers, the system can be reoriented to its original mission: harnessing American compassion and strategic sense, not abusing them.

“The U.S. has Become One of the Largest Financiers of Global Islamism” - Middle East Forum Report

When we talk about terrorism funding, Iran and Qatar often take the spotlight for their support of extremist groups. However, according to a recent Multi-year study from Middle Easter Forum, in recent decades, the U.S. has quietly become one of the largest funders of global Islamism, channeling billions of taxpayer dollars through its foreign aid programs. Investigations have shown that they frequently end up supporting groups tied to terrorism, with little accountability or oversight. The State Department and USAID have knowingly funded terrorists and their proxies with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

Over the years, the U.S. government has become one of the largest financial backers of global Islamism, with federal funds flowing to Islamist organizations both domestically and abroad. Violent extremists have thrived under U.S. aid programs, often with the agencies’ knowledge. Despite warnings from internal records and watchdogs, little has been done to address this.

A recent investigation by the Middle East Forum revealed that
- $164 million in federal grants: The Middle East Forum's study uncovered that USAID and the State Department approved $164 million in grants to radical organizations, with at least $122 million directed to groups linked to designated terrorists.
- Lack of vetting: Billions of taxpayer dollars have been given to major American aid charities that consistently fail to vet their local partners, many of which have links to terrorism.
- Hamas funding: USAID has funneled millions directly to organizations in Gaza controlled by Hamas, with U.S. officials even visiting terror proxies' offices and launching joint programs.
- Incitement of violence: USAID beneficiaries have called for "cleansing" lands of Jews, with some charity staff openly praising and encouraging violence against Jews.
- State Department funding radicals: The State Department has provided funds to radical domestic groups like the Tides Foundation, accused of supporting pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish violence on U.S. college campuses.
- Complicit charities: Aid organizations such as World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, and advocacy groups like InterAction have acted as vehicles for terror-tied Islamists, knowingly or unknowingly, both in the U.S. and abroad.
- Domestic Islamist funding: Federal funding has subsidized domestic Islamists involved with Hamas, Jamaat-e-Islami, and the Turkish regime, undermining rules designed to combat terror finance in the U.S.
- Lack of transparency: Records of federal funding, especially through USAID, are obscured by poor disclosure practices and deliberate attempts to evade transparency, with millions going to anonymous beneficiaries in terrorist-affected regions.
- Internal concerns at USAID: USAID’s Office of Inspector General has raised alarms about the agency’s failure to properly vet recipients for links to violent extremism and the risk of abuse by armed groups. If USAID merges with the State Department, it is crucial that these concerns are not lost.