Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, April 17, 2025

Lifnim Mishurat HaDin: The Fuzzy Line Between Jewish Law and Jewish Ethics

Are Jewish ethics just a component of Jewish law, or are they overlapping but distinguishable concepts?

At first blush, it appears that from the perspective of Judaism, Jewish ethics is identical to halacha (Jewish law.) Halacha includes lots of ethical imperatives like charity, kindness to strangers, visiting the sick and honoring one's parents. Legal questions come up with each of these - for example, does one have to listen to their parents' advice when it would be detrimental to the child? The same rabbis that decide whether something is kosher also decide how much charity one must give.

But a little thought shows that while Judaism treats ethics and law similar ways, using similar methodologies and anchoring both in sacred texts, ethics is treated as something beyond the law.

In Pirke Avot, one opinions says that someone who says "what's mine is mine and what's yours is yours" is acting like a resident of the wicked city of Sodom. Why should that be? Clearly, from a legal perspective, he is saying something accurate. Why would such a person be considered to be like the famously evil Sodomites?

One commentator, the Bartenura, says the reason is that the Sodomites did not want any visitors, even though their land had lots of resources and could accommodate guests. This character trait is what made them evil. People risk becoming callous towards others when they insist that what is theirs is theirs, and this starts the slide towards being akin to a Sodomite.

This illustrates the tension in Judaism between halacha and ethics: one is expected, urged and - at times - obligated to act in ways beyond the letter of the law.

This is what the Talmudic phrase lifnim mishurat hadin means (Bava Metzia 30b). It says that people not only can but should act beyond the strict interpretation of halacha. It demands a higher ethical standard.

This is a remarkable concept. Lifnim mishurat hadin appears to exist at the intersection of formal law and ethical aspiration. It seemingly accepts the idea that halacha itself can never be an all encompassing system and it requires ethical concepts beyond halacha to cover all potential questions. The halachic system itself acknowledges its own limitations and encourages people to go beyond them. There are cases where lifnim mishurat hadin were mandated by batei din, Jewish courts, others where it is just encouraged, and stories of people who were praised or going above and beyond what was legally required of them.

There are other similar concepts in halacha where strict adherence to halacha itself is strongly disparaged. A "naval b’reshut haTorah" is a disgusting person who does everything within halachic bounds and not one millimeter beyond. The Talmud states an opinion that Jerusalem was destroyed because people followed only strict law and did not go beyond it.

Some examples make it sound like going above and beyond is praiseworthy, some that it is expected, some that it is mandated. What seems clear is that lifnim mishurat hadin goes beyond the halachic system, yet it can justify itself within the halachic framework by using Deuteronomy 6:18, "Do what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord," as an overarching Biblical source for extra-judicial ethics.

A recent responsum by Rav Yosef Zvi Rimon illustrates this idea of Jewish ethics asserting itself independently of halachic detail.

Soldiers are allowed to seek shelter in the homes of their enemies during wartime. One Israeli soldier asked whether he would be allowed to charge his mobile phone while resting in one such home in Gaza, another asked whether he could take items from another home that was about to be demolished and the items destroyed anyway (presumably because it was hiding a tunnel shaft or was booby trapped.) After looking at this through a strictly halachic viewpoint, Rav Rimon adds that when one is engaged in an obligatory war of self defense, one must not gain any personal pleasure from it as that endangers the moral underpinnings of the war itself. He brings as proof the idea from his own teacher, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, that when King Saul ignored the commandment to destroy all of Amalek and he justified keeping some animals, "he turned his entire war into something unethical. The war against Amalek is a decree from God. When a person benefits from the results of the war, there is personal enjoyment, and he is not acting solely according to God’s direction. Consequently, the justified killing becomes

murder."

This part of the response is purely ethical, not halachic, but the language is extraordinarily strong in its insistence that one cannot personally gain from spoils of war, even when those gains will not cause any additional loss from the owners.

Concepts like lifnim mishurat hadin and naval b’reshut haTorah show that Jewish ethics are supra-halachic. This means that they can be examined and studied as an independent system, outside the halachic framework. And moreover, it indicates that, unlike halacha, Judaism's ethical standards can be seen as a model for the world, not only Jews.

The Jewish ethical framework may be based on the halachic framework - but it can be decoupled from halacha itself when applied to the world at large. Its rich and deep sources and its unparalleled maturity makes Jewish ethics particularist and universal, ever timely and timeless.

It is an ideal ethical system for everyone.

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

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Israel cuts Gaza aid. Hamas running out of money. The world doesn't see any relationship between the two.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Hamas is facing a new problem in Gaza: coming up with the cash it needs to pay its rank and file.

Israel last month cut off supplies of humanitarian goods to the enclave, some of which Hamas had been seizing and selling to raise funds, according to Arab, Israeli and Western officials. Its renewed offensive has targeted and killed Hamas officials who played important roles in distributing cash to cadres and sent others into hiding, Arab intelligence officials said.

Salary payments to many Gaza government employees have ceased, while many senior Hamas fighters and political staff began receiving only about half of their pay midway through last month’s Ramadan holy period, the intelligence officials said. Rank-and-file Hamas fighters’ pay had been averaging around $200 to $300 a month, they said.

The shortfalls are creating hardship across Hamas’s ranks in Gaza’s cash economy and signal a deepening organizational dysfunction in the militant group as it also contends with a more aggressive Israeli military strategy.

Once the war started, Israel tightly limited the transfer of physical cash into Gaza, forcing U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas to find ways around the restrictions. Early on, the group was involved in taking $180 million from branches of the Bank of Palestine and other institutions, current and former Palestinian officials said.

Hamas used the flow of humanitarian and commercial goods to build new income streams, according to Arab, Israeli and Western officials. This has included charging taxes on merchants, collecting customs on trucks at checkpoints, and commandeering goods for resale. Hamas also has used overseas cash to buy humanitarian goods that are then sold in Gaza and turned back into cash, the officials said.

For well over a year, Hamas managed to fund its activities. But when aid dries up, it loses that ability.

Gee, you think the two may be related?

This is not the first time we have seen a relationship between aid and Hamas funding its activities. When Israel cut off all aid in the first weeks of the war, Hamas felt the pressure of losing that income stream and this may have been one factor in Hamas accepting the first ceasefire.

Under the laws of armed conflict, even food and medical supplies can be blocked if they are being used the way Hamas is using them. The Geneva Conventions Article 23 says:

Article 23 - Consignment of medical supplies, food and clothing
Each High Contracting Party shall allow the free passage of all consignments of medical and hospital stores and objects necessary for religious worship intended only for civilians of another High Contracting Party, even if the latter is its adversary. It shall likewise permit the free passage of all consignments of essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases.

The obligation of a High Contracting Party to allow the free passage of the consignments indicated in the preceding paragraph is subject to the condition that this Party is satisfied that there are no serious reasons for fearing:

(a) that the consignments may be diverted from their destination,
(b) that the control may not be effective, or
(c) that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy through the substitution of the above-mentioned consignments for goods which would otherwise be provided or produced by the enemy or through the release of such material, services or facilities as would otherwise be required for the production of such goods.

Everyone knew Hamas used aid to fund its operations way before the war.

Israel has proposed methods of bringing in aid to bypass Hamas completely. Hamas strongly protested the idea. But the international aid agencies have not shown support for any plan that bypasses Hamas, either. And the media has not reported on Israel's plan, which paints Israel as the ones who are blocking aid and Hamas as the ones who want to help Gazans.

If Hamas is using the aid to fund its terrorism, Israel has every moral and legal right to stop that aid and propose alternatives. The lack of reporting on real international law, Israel's attempts to help innocent Gazans and Hamas' diversion of aid for its own purposes cannot be explained by anything but deep, systemic bias against Israel.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Hamas tries to get Gazans to protest it being disarmed. Hardly anybody shows up.

Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades posted on Telegram:

#Photos of a mass march in Beit Lahia, north of the Gaza Strip, in support of the resistance and in rejection of the occupation's demands to disarm the resistance.

It looks like maybe 20 people showed up at this "mass march," of whom many were curious teenage boys.

Maybe Gazans want to see Hamas disarmed....

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

04/16 Links Pt2: Josh Hammer: A renewed Jewish-Christian alliance for Western civilization; What the Oct. 7 Survivors Are Going Through

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Trump's plan provides needed solution to combat campus antisemitism

It is worth recalling that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enforced not just with words, but with funding. Institutions that refused to desegregate lost access to federal support.

Today’s crisis demands the same moral clarity. When Jewish students are being intimidated in classrooms and assaulted on quads, the government has not only a right to intervene – it has a duty to do so.

President Donald Trump himself framed the issue bluntly, writing on Truth Social: “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status.... Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”

Critics, including former president Barack Obama, have warned that the administration’s actions represent a threat to academic freedom.

“Harvard has set an example... rejecting an unlawful and ham-handed attempt to stifle academic freedom,” Obama posted on X/Twitter. But his statement ignores the lived reality of Jewish students, who are not enjoying freedom – they are being silenced.

This isn’t about ideology. It’s about restoring the basic promise that all students – Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist – deserve to feel safe, respected, and free to learn.

Trump's proposal offers a chance for course correction
What the Trump administration has proposed is a course correction – a necessary and proportional use of government oversight to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not funding hate.

The time for polite letters and listening circles is over. Action is needed. President Trump’s plan recognizes the urgency and responds with clarity. We support it, and we urge Congress, civil rights groups, and Jewish organizations to do the same.

Protecting Jewish students is not an overreach – it’s the bare minimum.

Jonathan Tobin: Harvard’s ‘resistance’ to Trump isn’t about science or academic freedom

Yet would anyone currently decrying Trump’s moves defend the funding of any medical school, hospital or research facility if it involved giving a seal of federal approval to an institution that discriminated against racial minorities protected by the Civil Rights Act? To the contrary, the same voices raised in defense of the “resistance” to Trump would demand the defunding of any entity—no matter how vital its scientific or medical research—that targeted blacks or allowed a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan to operate with impunity on their grounds or in their school buildings. Yet that is exactly what Harvard, Columbia and many other schools did by allowing pro-Hamas groups that support Jewish genocide to operate freely.

Moreover, as author Heather Mac Donald has pointed out, the impact of the DEI policies being defended by Harvard has led to discrimination and the lowering of standards throughout the sciences and math. That poses a far greater threat to American medicine and scientific research than Trump’s request that these schools give up their woke policies and stop antisemitism.

So, let’s be clear about what’s actually at stake in this controversy. It’s not science or academic freedom. It’s about elite schools wishing to remain in thrall to progressive orthodoxies on race and Western civilization that have fueled the surge in Jew-hatred.

Part of this can also be explained by politics.

The success of the left’s long march through American educational institutions over the past decades has created a situation in which conservatives and Zionists are rarities on college and university faculties. A career in academia for anyone who dissents from DEI and woke orthodoxy, as well as the notion that Israel and Jews are “white” oppressors who must be suppressed, can only do so by keeping their opinions to themselves. To openly dissent against the left’s toxic myths about critical race theory, intersectionality or settler-colonialism theory is to effectively guarantee that you won’t be hired for any post in the humanities and social sciences and to never obtain tenure even if you do get that far. Republicans or anyone who openly supports Trump are virtually an extinct species among those who work in higher education.

That’s why faculties like the ones at Harvard and Columbia have been so vocal in their support for the pro-Hamas mobs that target Jews and in defense of Middle East Studies programs, often funded by Islamist sources like the Emirate of Qatar that have become hotbeds of antisemitism.

However, it also creates a dynamic on campus that makes any accommodation with a Trump administration that left-wing Democrats view as beyond the pale, even on anything as clearly legitimate as a response to the rampant antisemitism that has been on display since Oct. 7, as a betrayal. Indeed, so strong is the pull of partisanship that many leading liberal Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and even Hillel have put themselves on record as having reservations about Trump’s all-out effort to fight antisemitism or even to oppose it. In a country where politics now assumes the role that religion used to play in most people’s lives, opposing Trump is clearly a higher priority for many of those who identify as liberals or Democrats than combating Jew-hatred.

What Harvard is really fighting for
This debate isn’t about Trump’s alleged authoritarian tendencies. It is being triggered by the stubborn refusal of the most prestigious and venerable of American institutions, such as Harvard and Columbia, to ensure the safety of Jews and to give up practices in admissions, discipline and hiring that ensure their continued adherence to leftist ideologies that are at war with the Western canon and Jewish survival.

The cheers for Harvard’s stand are a reflection of the emotional needs of a portion of the American electorate that is overrepresented in the credentialed elites that venerate schools like Harvard. Their anger at the 2024 election results, hatred for Trump and affinity for woke racialism are so deep that they are willing to figuratively die on a hill that involves their support for or acquiescence to the legitimacy of a genocidal war waged against the only Jewish state on the planet. That is a telling indication of, as Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) put it, how “Harvard University has rightfully earned its place as the epitome of the moral and academic rot in higher education.”

Trump’s response to such defiance must be resolute. If Harvard won’t give up its toleration and support for antisemitism, then it must lose every penny of federal funding. And the same should go for any other school that follows its example. The pious platitudes about democracy, science or academic freedom that we are hearing from Trump’s opponents notwithstanding, the only thing they are really fighting for is the right to empower those who seek to harm Jews.

Josh Hammer: A renewed Jewish-Christian alliance for Western civilization

Josh Hammer, senior editor- at-large at Newsweek, discusses his new book Israel and Civilization and makes the case for a renewed Jewish-Christian alliance to preserve Western civilization. Here is my interview with him:

Let’s start with the title of your book, Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West. It sounds like the title is almost a thesis statement – that you’re not just writing a history book or a book of mere social commentary, but you actually have a point that you want to make.

The original title we were brainstorming was actually “Sinai and Civilization.” That gives away the core of the argument. “Israel and Civilization” also makes sense when you understand that “Israel” serves a dual function. It’s not just the State of Israel, but also the Children of Israel, the Jewish people.

The cover features Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea. We wanted to make a statement that this is not a traditional blue and white Magen David hasbara book. I’m an unabashed Zionist, but such books have been written before.

This book was written in response not just to the horrific pogrom on October 7, 2023, but really in response to the world’s reaction to that pogrom. The world had a clear opportunity to choose between a Medieval Islamist death cult and one of the most vibrant, flourishing nations, and the fact that it was so morally confused is telling.

It was time for someone, especially from a younger generation, such as myself, to write a book trying to remind Westerners: “What do you think this is? You’re living in a very flourishing society. Where do you think you got this from?”

The book makes the argument that Western civilization begins with the Bible. The Judeo-Christian tradition going back to Revelation and Mount Sinai really is the core of what we refer to as “Western civilization.” Fundamentally, I’m explaining how the original People of the Book, the Jewish people, have a special and unique role to play not just in Western civilization, but really in the fate of mankind as a whole.

What you’re pointing to is that the reaction to October 7 was like picking up a rock and seeing all the bugs crawl out, realizing there was something very rotten at the core of how so many people in the West think about their own identity. Are Americans your primary audience for this book?

The primary audience is Americans, especially younger Americans. They tend to be more morally confused in public polling when it comes to basic questions like: “Who do you sympathize with, Israel or Hamas?”

Part of the book includes my personal story as someone raised in a very secular setting who has since embarked on a religious journey. Part of that is a message to liberal Reform Jews and secular Jews: To be a true “Light unto the Nations,” don’t just talk the talk – actually walk the walk.

But above all, the number one audience is younger conservatives, maybe especially young Christian conservatives. The evangelicals in America are the Jewish people’s greatest friends, period.

04/16 Links Pt1: Hamas said to reject Israeli ceasefire proposal; Arsonist Targeted Shapiro's Home Over his Support for Israel; Cynthia Nixon wraps herself in Palestinian flag

From Ian:

Arsonist Targeted Josh Shapiro's Home Over Governor's Support for Israel, Police Say

The suspect in the Sunday arson attack on Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro's (D.) residence said he set fire to the home because Shapiro is Jewish and supports Israel, according to a newly unsealed warrant.

According to the warrant, Cody Balmer, 38, targeted Shapiro's home on the first night of Passover because of "perceived injustices to the people of Palestine" and Shapiro's Judaism, PennLive reported.

Balmer, who called 911 after the attack and later turned himself in, told operators that he "will not take part in [Shapiro's] plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people." Balmer also called the governor a "monster" and said he needed to "stop having my friends killed," according to the warrant.

Dauphin County district attorney Francis Chardo (R.) said he will use Balmer's statements as evidence of a hate crime, USA Today reported. Court documents released on Tuesday said Balmer was "harboring hatred" toward the governor, according to CBS.

Shapiro, a prominent Jewish Democrat and a finalist to be Kamala Harris's running mate last year, has sparked backlash from anti-Israel members of his party for condemning Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack and supporting the Jewish state. He also called for the removal of a pro-Hamas encampment last year at the University of Pennsylvania after protesters tried to seize a campus building.

Surveillance footage shows Balmer scaling the security fence around the Governor's Residence in Harrisburg before smashing windows and hurling Molotov cocktails inside. While the fire caused extensive property damage just hours after Shapiro hosted a Passover dinner, the governor, his family, guests, and staff were able to evacuate safely.

Authorities have charged Balmer with eight crimes, including attempted murder, aggravated arson, and terrorism. If convicted, he faces more than 100 years in prison.

Media is About to Make Gov. Shapiro Arson Attempt Disappear

The media got very excited when the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion was firebombed because they were hoping it was going to be somebody with the ‘wrong’ politics, but instead the perpetrator, Cody Balmer, was a self-proclaimed “socialist” who claimed that he did it to tell Gov. Josh Shapiro that he “will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.”

Now Balmer seems like a nutjob, but had he been a nutjob with the wrong politics, we’d never stop hearing about it, but now he’s likely to get a whole lot less attention because he did it for the ‘right reasons’.

And there’s a pattern to this stuff.

Hamas is the latest BLM. A mania that all sorts of loonies, grifters and people looking for some cause to glom on to and fight a war over attach themselves to.

BREAKING: Aliakbar Mohammad Amin, has been arrested after allegedly sending threatening text messages about Gabbard and her husband.

Some of his messages included, “You and your family are going to die soon” and “I will personally do the job if necessary.” pic.twitter.com/JnNW1nHEQu
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) April 16, 2025

Harvard Awards Honorary Degree To Man Who Firebombed Governor Shapiro's House https://t.co/13ExrnQ9eF pic.twitter.com/6hRxCYk6uj
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) April 16, 2025

AI didn't understand that the onion is mixed into the fried matzo batter, otherwise this photo comes pretty close to the real deal

“I should be home in like an hour, is there something to eat?” wrote my baby, really an adult now at the age of 24. The whatsapp message had come out of nowhere, at 7:30pm. We hadn’t been expecting him to be with us for Pesach. Between his duties as an IDF soldier, and his need to kick back with a friend at the end of the holiday, it had looked like we wouldn’t be seeing him at all. But such is the army. I actually never know when I’m going to get that message: “I’m on the way home, what do we have to eat?”

I sent my son a voice message, offering him a variety of options. We had some nice things in the house, including leftover salmon filet from lunch. But of all the things I offered my boy, the one thing he wanted was matzo brie, or as I called it growing up, “Fried Matzo,” the matzo part being pronounced the Lithuanian way, with an “ee” at the end: “matzee.”

I was so happy that of all the things my son yearned to eat on Pesach, it was my fried matzo. It gave me Jewish nachas, an untranslatable word that means something like pride and joy, but also satisfaction. I felt the same way when I watched my grandson eat a bowl of my chicken soup, the quintessential Jewish soul food. He was drinking in our history. Watching him, I knew that my earliest food memories would also be those of my children and their children, too.

I dug out my mother’s recipe for fried matzo, not really needing it—it’s something you just know how to do without a recipe—but for the satisfaction it still gives me to see her neatly typed recipes. My mother was an amazing typist, quick as lightning and the results error-free. Yet her recipe for fried matzo, I had learned, was not typical of what my Jewish friends ate in their own homes.

There were two reasons for this, and pretty much both come down to the same thing: my mother was a Litvak: a Lithuanian Jew. Today, there are almost no Lithuanian Jews left. This is due to the fact that more than 95% of Lithuanian Jewry was exterminated during the Holocaust, a loss more complete than from any other country. I almost never meet a Jew of Lithuanian heritage. The remnants of Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewry are mostly from Galicia.

Galicianers like their food sweet, Litvaks not so much. My mom’s fried matzo is typical of Lithuanian Jewish cuisine, savory rather than sweet, and seasoned with salt, pepper, and chopped onion. The truth is I was appalled when I learned that my friends ate fried matzo topped with sugar or cinnamon sugar. It sounded downright foreign to me. Was it even Jewish?

Of course it was. Probably more than my mother’s recipe actually, considering that we ate it with Heinz ketchup. This latter innovation was likely due to the fact that my maternal grandmother was 100% American born, and 100% Pittsburgh born, home of the Heinz factory, a favorite school field trip for kids growing up in da Burgh. (My homies of a certain age will remember coming home from school with a plastic pickle pin affixed to their collars after a visit to the factory.)

I pulled out my skillet and got busy. I made batch after batch of fried matzo, knowing my soldier boy would have a huge appetite and scarf it down in no time flat. There was none left for me I am happy to report—also for two reasons: A. It was too delicious for my son to resist, and B: Fried matzo is super fattening—and I do not need the calories!

My 45-year old copy of my mother's recipe for Fried Matzo.

Fried Matzo

As handed down by my mother, the late Shirley Kopelman Meyers.

Break matzo (about 1 or two whole pieces per person) into small pieces & soak in water for a few minutes. Beat about 1 egg for each piece matzo, add salt, pepper & chopped onion. Squeeze out water from matzo & and add to egg mixture. Heat butter or chicken fat in large frying pan and fry, stirring occasionally, until browned. If you make a large amount, fry in more than one batch.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

During the Enlightenment, some of the most famous Western philosophers were inspired by physics. The simple beauty of Newtonian equations, like F = ma, caused many to think that if physical laws could be described so elegantly, then human ethics can similarly be reduced to a small set of universal laws.

Immanuel Kant said "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law." Jeremy Bentham said that an action is moral if it tends to promote universal happiness or pleasure and immoral if it tends to produce unhappiness or pain, and proposed a "felicific calculus" to calculate the pleasure or pain from an action. Ayn Rand said one's ethical duty is to maximize one's own benefit in any given situation. They and others attempted to shoehorn all humanity, all decisions, all actions into their moral calculators.

There's only one problem. Ethics are not physics. People are not objects.

These philosophers were recognized as the wisest people in the Western world. Their desire to fit the diverse population of humans, each with their own experiences, their own cultures and their own viewpoints, into a rational structure are laughable. Arguing about which philosophy of ethics is superior is a fun intellectual exercise, but it doesn't mean that any of them are right.

Of course it is seductive to try to find a formula to explain how people should act. That desire to make everything simple has no bearing on reality. In fact, it proves that even the people that are supposed to be the most rational creatures themselves - philosophers - fall for wishful thinking rather than see things as they are.

While they try to fit humans into their worldview, Judaism creates a worldview to accommodate humans as they really are. And you cannot make everything fit on a bumper sticker.

It is true that Hillel said "What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow," which sounds a lot like what some of these philosophers said. But he added, "That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and learn it." The maxim is only the starting point, not the entire philosophy. That "commentary" is a lifetime effort.

Remember that Hillel said this to an arrogant person insisting on a bite-sized Torah. His response showed respect for a disrespectful question and a way to attract him to a lifetime of studying Jewish ethics. His message was not merely his words but also his delivery and the context.

That is real wisdom.

It isn't only human ethics that cannot be boiled down to Newton's equations. Ironically, even physics itself can't be described accurately that way. Quantum mechanics broke that illusion of perfect predictability. The universe is a lot more complex than Newton or the Enlightenment philosophers could ever imagine. If you insist on an analogy between ethics and physics, perhaps you can say that:

The core values of Judaism (life, truth, dignity, responsibility, justice) are like the constants of nature.
The adjudication layer is like the wave function—fluid, contextual, probabilistic, but still governed by laws.
The integrity layer is like the observer effect in quantum mechanics. The outcome depends in part on who’s asking, how, and why. An electron can act like a wave or like a particle, and both of those are correct depending on how it is viewed.

But that is all it is - an analogy. It represents a way of looking at things and it can approximate a view of Jewish ethics but we should not fall for the same fallacy that the philosophers did: wishing that an analogy to physics reflects reality does not make it so.

Physics describes what is. Ethics prescribes what ought to be. Jewish ethics does not treat people like bowling balls dropped from a building or electrons around a nucleus. Equating moral complexity to an equation inevitably produces systems that are brittle, blind to the myriad of circumstances around the issues, and vulnerable to immoral conclusions.

Jewish ethics, by contrast, has always acknowledged that human beings are complex and flawed, that moral decisions are embedded in particular times, places, and relationships, and that principles must be balanced with each other, not arbitrarily prioritized. This flexibility isn’t relativism - it is a principled pluralism with internal consistency. The laws of physics are immutable, while Jewish ethical decisions can and must change to reflect the messy reality that we humans live in.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The German–Israeli Society, Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft, is alarmed:

In a fatwa, the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) declared armed struggle against Israel an individual duty (farḍ al-ʿayn) for every Muslim.

The publication of this fatwa in early April has immediate implications for the security situation in Germany: It obligates every capable Muslim to wage jihad against Israel, the Jewish and democratic state (in Islamist parlance, "the Zionist entity"). The German-Israeli Society (DIG) is alarmed.

The International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) has relationships with well over a thousand mosques in Germany that include its doctrinal authority. Given the call to terror contained in this fatwa, this poses an immediate threat to internal security in Germany .

German politicians (i.e., all federal and state governments) must demand that all Islamic associations in Germany , especially DITIB, the German Muslim Community (DMG), the Islamic Community Millî Görüş eV (IGMG), its Islamic Council, and the Central Council of Muslims , condemn this fatwa as un-Islamic. (All of these organizations have had positive relations with the IUMS in the past.)
Organizations that do not publicly condemn this fatwa pose a threat to public security . Such associations, by refusing to do so, are directly opposing the idea of international understanding (Article 9, Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law).

The draft coalition agreement between the CDU/CSU and SPD emphasizes the fight against Islamism. Now the Federal Minister of the Interior must act in this spirit and take the first steps.

This applies to every Western nation, not just Germany.

The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) and the Islamic Circle of North America have unofficial ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and the IUMS. They issued statements mourning the IUMS' previous leader, Yusuf Qaradawi, who was pro-terror and antisemitic.

It isn't a stretch that Islamists in the West will interpret the fatwa as applying to all Zionists, to all Jewish institutions and to all Jews worldwide. The IUMS site has blatantly antisemitic content, like an article describing 13 awful attributes of Jews ("Anyone who follows the history of the Jews will see the ugly actions and vile morals that characterize these people") and many articles that deny Jewish history. In short, the IUMS incites terror.

The IUMS is considered a terrorist organization in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain.

(h/t Daniel)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The difference between @NorthwesternU truly fighting antisemitism and @Harvard's lip service

Harvard University is defiantly rejecting Trump administration demands that it address antisemitism on campus as a condition for continued federal funding.

The government demands are far reaching and a good case can be made that they go beyond Title VI requirements. They don't just say to comply with the law but they mandate how. For example, they demand changes in Harvard's governance structure. It is indeed a threat to Harvard's independence and I can understand why the university would want to push back on some of the more intrusive demands.

And yet.

Anything Harvard has done to protect its Jewish students since October 2023 has been done in a reactive way, to avoid lawsuits, bad publicity and government threats. At no point has it given the impression that it really cares about the welfare of its Jewish students and their right to be proudly, publicly Zionist.

Harvard's Interim President Alan Garber established a Task Force on Combating Antisemitism (and a separate one on Islamophobia) in January 2024. The task force issued preliminary recommendations in June. Some of those recommendations were partially implemented; there is no evidence that others have been:

Most glaringly, however, is that the task force promised a detailed follow-up report in the fall—but it never materialized

The findings of our Task Force’s summer research will be incorporated into a substantive report that will be submitted in the Fall. Our final report will offer a detailed analysis of how Harvard got into its current crisis of community and lay out proposals to transform our University culture for the better over the medium- and long-term.

Six months later, that final report has yet to appear.

So while Jewish students can now get hot kosher meals on campus, there is little that makes them feel safer.

Compare this to how Northwestern University has handled antisemitism on its campus. It is also under pressure from the Trump administration but it has implemented its protection for Jewish students far more proactively and transparently.

It started its antisemitism task force in November 2023, before there were any threats of lawsuits or significant pressure. Unlike Harvard, it included student leaders from Hillel and Chabad on its task force (Harvard includes one Jewish student with no record I can find of leadership in Jewish or Zionist causes.) It hosted a "MegaShabbat" which attracted 500 students. It mandated training on antisemitism for all students. It modified its policies significantly to address protests. It has transparently publicized the disciplinary actions taken against students who violated the policies.

Perhaps most importantly, Northwestern has been keeping detailed statistics on antisemitic incidents on campus and is now reporting on them. We have no such data on Harvard even today - there are no university surveys of incidents and no metrics on whether the partial steps Harvard has taken actually help anyone.

On the second day of Passover, antisemitic graffiti was discovered at Northwestern. On Monday, its president issued a clear statement of condemnation in an email to the entire campus community.

But when similar acts of hate and vandalism were found at Harvard (tearing down and writing on top of hostage posters in January 2024), a university spokesperson issued a generic statement - not a pro-active email, not from the president.

The overwhelming impression is that Northwestern cares about its Jewish students and their safety. Harvard pretends to care about its Jewish students and their safety.

I would be a lot more sympathetic to Harvard's position if they were doing what Northwestern is doing. But they aren't. They are paying lip service to their Jewish students while publicly defending those who want to attack them.

---

(The chart above was generated by a deep-research AI.)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

I saw in Arabic sites that the Waqf said that 1,732 Jews has ascended to the Temple Mount on Tuesday. When I Googled "1,732 Temple Mount," Google AI rephrased a Hamas news site, Palestine Information Center, saying that "approximately 1,732 Jewish settlers defiled the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Occupied Jerusalem during the third day of the Passover holiday. These settlers, with police escort, entered the mosque through the Maghariba Gate and provocatively toured its courtyards, receiving lectures and performing Talmudic prayers. "

This is above the search results, so the first thing visible is a Hamas propaganda site, promoted by Google.

Saying that this "Generative AI" is "experimental" is not an excuse to parrot the lies of a Hamas website as if it is a news site. AI modified the PIC article slightly to call it the Temple Mount.

The good news is, 1,732 Jews proudly visited their holiest site on Tuesday.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

04/15 Links Pt2: Agam Berger: I Kept My Freedom in Hamas's Captivity; From Gaza to the Ivory Tower: The War on Israel; Trump freezes $2.2 bil in grants to Harvard

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Whose Freedom?

The defenders of these institutions are merely demanding that Trump let them go back to the status quo of having academic freedom for some but not for others. If these groups would as emphatically demand the protection of Jewish academic freedom, we’d know they were sincere. As of now, there are zero such groups.

Same goes for free speech and free expression. On these campuses, Jewish and Israeli students have been repeatedly singled out, student organizations have placed exclusions on Jewish participation and identifiable Jews have been systematically attacked, harassed, and prevented from enjoying the same free expression that is routinely granted the pro-Hamas mobs calling for death to the Jews.

Harvard’s Jews were told they could not keep their Hanukkah menorah up overnight because the school would not guarantee its safety. That’s the status quo Harvard that its defenders seek to return to. Not a single one of them is truly interested in free speech, free expression, or academic freedom.

These institutions also take money from authoritarian, anti-American regimes such as Qatar. A 2022 study found that “as funding from Middle Eastern countries increases — and becomes less transparent to the public — certain campuses experience campaigns to silence academics, an erosion of democratic values, and a lack of response to attacks on students’ freedom of expression.” Harvard was part of this trend.

Does Harvard abhor the deleterious effects of government funding on academic freedom? Or does Harvard abhor the effects of U.S. government funding while ignoring the effects of cash infusions from anti-democratic regimes?

These institutions and their defenders would likely find more sympathy in dealing with the Trump administration’s overreach had they ever defended academic freedom, freedom of speech and expression, and true independence from government when it mattered.

Andrew Pessin: The Greatest Conspiracy Theory Ever Told — And the Real Conspiracy Nobody Talks About

Prior to 1967, much of the world understood it as a conflict between the Jews and the Arabs, the minority Jews struggling against the more powerful majority Arabs, the Jews a David versus the Arabs’ Goliath.

But after 1967, the Soviets began stressing the same propaganda terms with which they had been framing their more general battle against the West. During much of the Cold War and the period of global decolonization, they proclaimed themselves to be “anti-colonialists” supporting “national liberation movements” against the “imperialist” West, and so now the Middle East conflict was deliberately reframed as one in which the indigenous (newly invented) “Palestinian people” were fighting off the “imperialist-colonialism” of the invading Jews.

Overnight, the “Jewish-Arab” conflict became the “Israeli-Palestinian” conflict, where the Israelis looked big and strong and the Palestinians puny and weak, thus instantly reversing the “David-Goliath” framing. Some go so far as to say that the very “Palestinian” identity was formed or crafted in this period precisely to play this role, with the Soviets, via their work with the Palestine Liberation Organization and Arafat, being the central agent.

In other words, the whole thing was a psy-op — an extremely successful one that, to this day, brings the political Left across the globe into the global conspiracy against the Jews.

The second point is once again to emphasize the role of propaganda (in particular, as produced by the “intellectuals,” the “scientists,” the “professors”) in developing and advancing this conspiracy. In addition to the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies Tabarovsky also discusses the “KGB-supervised Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public” (2019), itself producing the literature then translated into other languages and distributed abroad by the Novosti Press Agency, “a news service and an important arm of Soviet foreign propaganda.”

But now to get a more “vivid picture of Moscow’s approach to solving its Zionist problem” we can glimpse at just one example of the many that Tabarovsky (2019) examines, an article from 1969 or 1970 entitled “Anatomy of Israeli Aggression.” Written by Yevgeny Yevseyev, “one of the key ideologues of … Soviet anti-Zionism — the so-called Zionologists,” the article reports on yet another Soviet conference, the “Second International Conference in Support of the Arab Peoples” occurring in Cairo in 1969.

“Protocols”-style, the article frames Zionism as part of an imperialist global conspiracy against the national liberation movement and communism, affiliated with and a continuation of Nazism, and inevitably engaged in “genocide, racism, perfidy, duplicity, aggression, annexation,” and therefore, in essence, an enemy of most of the globe. The goal was thus to mobilize “world public opinion” by disseminating information about alleged “Israeli atrocities.”

If all that sounds familiar, it is because you are aware how the anti-Zionist “progressive” world approaches Israel to this very day, only it was all hatched quite deliberately over the past five decades. What we see in this article is literally a sketch of the playbook — the protocols — of the campaign to destroy the Jews and their national endeavor.

And just as we saw with the Nazis, the campaign against the Jews would borrow many of the methods allegedly laid out by the Jews themselves in the fabricated “Protocols” — while being motivated by (falsely) accusing the Jews of being guilty of them!

And lest you underestimate the true scale of this campaign against the Jews, note that this article was published in the “World Marxist Review — the English edition of the Prague-based Soviet theoretical journal ‘Problems of Peace and Socialism.’ Published in 40 languages and distributed in 145 countries, the journal reached an estimated half million of the most committed leftists around the globe” (2019).

Another way to think about the scale of this: At its peak, the Soviet Union was more than a thousand times bigger than the sliver which is the State of Israel, with nearly a hundred times its population in 1967 (a particularly salient year in the anti-Zionist conspiracy). If it were just the Soviet Union versus Israel, it already would be an enormous Goliath against a tiny David.

But it wasn’t just the Soviet Union; it was the Soviet Union, the entire Arab and Muslim worlds, and most of the Third World. We have nothing less than an actual mammoth global campaign to subjugate the Jews and destroy their national endeavor, all based on the fabricated (and delusional) allegation of that tiny population’s conspiracy to subjugate the behemoth instead.

Gadi Taub: From Gaza to the Ivory Tower: The War on Israel

Right before the war, Haaretz editor Aluf Benn published an op-ed arguing that it was time to remove the word “Jewish” from the phrase “Jewish and democratic.” That was a direct call to abandon Zionism in favour of a non-national state—probably one that includes Gaza and Judea and Samaria—and renounces the Jewish character of Israel.

This wasn’t surprising. They’d been undermining Zionism quietly for years, but now they said it out loud. Why then? Because it was clear that judicial reform had failed, and the power of Israel’s Supreme Court had been cemented—maybe even expanded. The Court holds a radical, progressive, post-nationalist worldview that is sympathetic to a non-Zionist vision of Israel.

The only way to make Israel not Jewish is to subvert its democracy. If you have universal suffrage and a Jewish majority, that majority will always vote to preserve a Jewish state. So Aluf Benn likely saw an opportunity: The danger of democratic reform had passed, and now was the time to push the anti-Zionist agenda more openly. But then October 7th happened, and suddenly abandoning the Jewish state didn’t seem like such a good idea.

Also worth noting: the Israeli Left has shut down a right-wing media outlet. It was a radio station, and it’s the only case in Israeli history where a media outlet was shut down—and it was on the right. When Ben-Gurion tried to shut down a communist newspaper, the Supreme Court protected it. But only the right has ever been silenced like this.

Haaretz, on the other hand, screams “censorship” any time someone criticises them. But why should the government be giving them advertising revenue? Why should civil servants be able to subscribe to Haaretz at taxpayers’ expense? Why should we help fund a newspaper whose publisher is calling for sanctions against Israel in wartime?

So now, finally, there’s some courage to push back—because the case is so clear. But Haaretz is not in danger of being shut down. They can raise their own subscriptions. We just shouldn’t be forced to pay for it.

Even abroad, people are noticing. Jeffrey Goldberg—hardly a right-winger—said he cancelled his Haaretz subscription because he was getting too many links to it from neo-Nazis. And it’s true: if you look at neo-Nazi sites like The Daily Stormer, which sees itself as the successor to Der Stürmer, there are hundreds of references to Haaretz articles. Because when someone like Gideon Levy writes, “Stop Living in Denial: Israel Is an Evil State,” the antisemites say, “See? Even the Jews say it.”

David Duke has cited Haaretz hundreds of times. They’ve become one of the most effective producers of antisemitic material in the world. And because it’s coming from Jews, it’s treated as authoritative—as self-testimony.

What’s also collapsing now, hopefully, is the broader machinery of lies—the same system that promoted the Iran nuclear deal. That’s what Ben Rhodes was famous for: creating an “echo chamber,” planting narratives in the media, and manufacturing a false sense of consensus.

That machine began to fall apart during the Trump–Biden debates. People started to realise they’d been lied to for three years. “He’s sharp as a tack,” they were told. Then suddenly it’s Kamala Harris and Joy Reid we’re supposed to accept as the real voices. The whole thing started to unravel.

A big part of that was Elon Musk buying Twitter. He broke a huge piece of that narrative-control machine.

Then there’s Trump himself. And Netanyahu. And Netanyahu understands something that’s often missed: beyond the battlefield, there’s a war of narratives.

One narrative—promoted by the Biden administration, the Israeli Left, Haaretz, most of the liberal media, and academia—is that Zionism is a relic of Western colonialism. It needs to be dismantled.

The other narrative—Netanyahu’s narrative—is that Zionism is not the rear guard but the avant garde of the West. Israel is the front line in the battle between the West and its enemies.

According to the first view, jihad is just armed resistance—a reaction to Western guilt. And the solution is to make amends and offer reparations.

But Netanyahu’s view is: These are our mortal enemies. They must be taken seriously. And Israel is leading the struggle. That’s what he said in his speech to Congress, where he got 37 standing ovations: “Our war is your war. Our victory will be your victory.” The West needs to shake off its postcolonial illusions, see the threat clearly, and stand with us.

04/15 Links Pt1: Hamas Is Exploiting the Freedoms It Wants to Destroy; Why the UN Must Now Be Placed on Trial; John Spencer on Peirs Morgan!

From Ian:

Why Israel should embrace its role as a regional power

Iran remains the primary long-term challenge. Regime change should be policy, but regime containment must be first. This includes:
Bolstering internal opposition through digital and humanitarian channels;
Continuing cyber deterrence;
Disrupting regional supply lines and proxy funding;
Keeping military options credible and visible;
And most critically, dismantling its nuclear capacity. Diplomacy may stall it, but force must remain on the table.

Engagement from a position of strength is not weakness. If Tehran ever moderates, Israel should be ready to pivot with diplomatic creativity–as long as security guarantees remain ironclad.

Becoming a regional power: Steps to take
National strategy: Form a strategic council on regional influence, composed of defense, diplomacy, economic and tech leaders.
Public diplomacy: Launch an initiative to rebrand Israel regionally, with Arabic content, youth engagement and collaborative platforms.
Infrastructure diplomacy: Lead regional mega-projects in water, food security and AI.
Military doctrine update: Shift from reactive defense to a proactive-plus doctrine with strategic depth.
Educational exchange: Establish scholarship programs for Arab and African students in Israeli universities.

The benefits of thinking bigger
Security: Stable neighbors and joint frameworks reduce existential threats;
Economy: Regional markets and logistics corridors can turbocharge growth;
Prestige: Israel becomes a shaper, not a responder;
Innovation: Diverse partnerships drive tech and research; and
Diaspora Pride: Global Jewish communities see Israel not as besieged, but as a beacon.

The obstacles
Of course, this is not a utopia.
Some Sunni regimes are fragile or duplicitous.
Domestic political fragmentation may block a bold vision.
Iran and its proxies will continue asymmetrical warfare.
Great power rivalries can squeeze policy space.
Regional rivals such as Turkey and Qatar will try to outmaneuver diplomatically.

But as the Arab saying goes, “man jadda wajada”—“He who strives, succeeds.”

And maybe, just maybe, it’s time we stop waiting for the world to hand us legitimacy. Like the Duchy of Grand Fenwick in that delightfully absurd film, we too might discover that acting with audacity creates the reality we seek.

Israel has roared. Now it must lead.

Prof. Efraim Inbar: Time to Revise Israel's Military Doctrine

Israel's original military doctrine, formulated by David Ben-Gurion, emphasized three core elements: deterrence, early warning, and decisive victory. However, Israel suffered major deterrence and intelligence failures in October 1973 and October 2023. In both instances, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) failed to deter its adversaries and Israel's intelligence apparatus did not provide adequate warnings of the impending attacks.

Deterrence is an elusive and problematic psychological concept. Military superiority and the threat of retaliation do not always succeed in dissuading an adversary from the attack. For Hamas, the anticipated benefits of confronting Israel outweighed the costs of potential punishment, as its religious motivations overrode the logic of rational deterrence. Israel underestimated Hamas's resolve to destroy it and its belief that this objective is attainable. Furthermore, Israel failed to recognize that its containment policy, implemented over two decades, had eroded its deterrence.

With regard to intelligence failures, analysts overlooked evidence that did not support existing theories. Israeli intelligence knew about Hamas's attack plan, but this was not effectively communicated to decision-makers with the appropriate context. Analysts misread signals and intentions. In addition, the IDF was overly reliant on technological means of intelligence collection at the expense of human intelligence.

Human beings are inherently fallible. Consequently, we cannot expect to receive early warning about the erosion of deterrence or an imminent attack. Instead, Israel has no choice but to build a better defensive posture while facing a multifront scenario. Israel needs a larger standing army along with larger reserve units in border communities.

The former policy of containment/restraint has proven counter-productive. Containment conveys weakness in a region where the political culture values the use of force. Fear remains the most effective political currency in the Middle East. Kicking the can down the road is rarely a prudent course of action. Despite the inherent risks involved, Israel must use preemptive strikes, a core element of its original military doctrine. Today Israel is paying a staggering price for its delay in mounting a strong military response to the buildup of military capabilities by Hamas and Hizbullah.

Jonathan Sacerdoti: Hamas Is Exploiting the Freedoms It Wants to Destroy

Hamas - the Iranian-backed terror group responsible for the 7 October massacre - is petitioning British courts to lift its designation as a terrorist organization. Aided by British lawyers, Hamas is seeking to launder its blood-soaked record under the false banners of "liberation" and "resistance." This is not mere absurdity. It is a direct assault on the integrity of British democracy - and on the very survival of Western civilization.

We must as a society avoid at all costs giving legitimacy to groups which openly seek the destruction of the very freedoms they exploit. Hamas's legal challenge frames it as a Palestinian Islamic liberation movement. Yet its founding charter, issued in 1988, remains a naked manifesto of genocidal intent. It declares all of Israel an Islamic trust to be reclaimed through jihad, rejects any negotiation, and traffics in classic antisemitic conspiracy theories.

From the suicide bombings of the 1990s, to the relentless rocket barrages against Israeli civilians, to the mass rapes, murders and kidnappings of 7 October, Hamas has been unwavering in its purpose: the annihilation of Jews and the eradication of the Western-style democracy of Israel.

Hamas's attempt to portray itself today as a political movement wronged by Western injustice is not merely dishonest - it is part of a broader strategy of political Islam to manipulate and subvert Western democratic systems. Britain's legal tradition is being cynically weaponized by an organization that would, given the chance, dismantle its very freedoms. If we allow Hamas to succeed in this grotesque charade, we will have surrendered the very principles that make Britain worth defending.

Reuters reports:

Jordan said on Tuesday it had arrested 16 people linked to the Muslim Brotherhood who were trained and financed in Lebanon and had plotted attacks on targets inside the kingdom involving rockets and drones.

Authorities said at least one rocket was ready to be launched as part of an operation that had been under surveillance by security forces since 2021.

A security source said the suspects were connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's largest opposition group, while the head of the cell who trained some of its members was based in Lebanon.

The Brotherhood have been accused of instigating anti-government street protests in Jordan, which has a large Palestinian population.

Security forces found a rocket manufacturing facility alongside a drone factory, according to a statement by the General Intelligence Department released on state media.

"The plot aimed at harming national security, sowing chaos and causing material destruction inside the kingdom," the statement said.

The original version of the story linked the plot to Hamas. That has been excised from the newer versions of the article.

Is there a Hamas connection?

It seems unlikely to me that the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan would want to turn explicitly violent. It knows that Jordan would crack down on them mercilessly. The MB would rather remain in the background, feeding stories to media, quietly supporting anti-government protests, but trying to build an arsenal where the targets are within Jordan seems far-fetched.

Jordanian media is featuring this story with extra details:

The cell, which was preoccupied with dark plans aimed at undermining national security, included three main members. It began its plans after a main instigator named Ibrahim Mohammed proposed the idea of manufacturing missiles in Jordan illegally. Ibrahim, who belongs to the unlicensed Muslim Brotherhood group, according to the confessions of the cell's defendants, is the same main defendant who is being tried before the State Security Court in the case of transporting and storing approximately 30 kg of TNT, C4, and SEMTEX-H, highly explosive materials.

The report indicated that the instigator Ibrahim arranged for two members of the weapons manufacturing cell (Abdullah Hisham and Moaz al-Ghanem) to visit Lebanon. The visits were aimed at connecting with the organizational official in Beirut for planning and training on implementing the plan, while the task of transferring funds from abroad was assigned to the third member (Mohsen al-Ghanem).

The Lebanese connection and funding makes this sound like an Iranian plot with Hamas and Hezbollah, not a Muslim Brotherhood plot.

If this was Iran or Hamas, Jordan would not want to publicize this either way. If it was Hamas as the primary instigator, then the rocket fire would be aimed at Israel and would be an attempt for Israel to respond and, they would hope, start a war or at least drop the Jordan/Israel peace deal.

If Iran was behind it, Jordan would not risk an international incident over this.

Plus, Jordan hates the MB, and would happily pin this on them, especially since Hamas is linked to the Brotherhood as well.

But the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan being behind this? That angle makes little sense.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)