Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, May 04, 2025

Answering comedian @ComicDaveSmith using a Jewish Ethical Framework

On Joe Rogan's podcast, comedian Dave Smith said this about Israeli airstrikes:

“Let’s say somebody broke onto your property and killed your family members, and you want to go kill this guy. If he goes back to his apartment building and there’s women and children inside, and your move is to blow up the building—well, what you’d be charged with is murder in the first degree…You dropped a bomb knowing innocent people were going to die. That is by definition intentional.”

Most people do not directly think on an ethical level. They have a vague idea of what ethics entails; they know what sounds like it is the right thing to do, they allow logic to be overridden by emotions. Unfortunately, most people are not equipped to answer Smith's analogy because they lack the tools to do so.

The analogy is not just flawed but deceitful.

John Spencer wrote an article debunking Smith. I love the guy but I don't think he made the case as clearly as he could have.

This is purely a moral argument, and as such it needs to be answered on that level. To that end, this is a great test for the Jewish Ethics Chatbot I'm building based on age-old Jewish values. So I asked the chatbot its opinion of Smith's argument, asking it to give Smith the benefit of the doubt that he really believes this analogy and cares about morality.

Its answer clearly addresses the fundamental problem with Smith's analogy.

✅ Summary of Confirmed Facts
Dave Smith compares wartime bombing that knowingly causes civilian deaths to first-degree murder, suggesting no moral distinction between wartime and domestic violence.

This argument is applied to the Israel-Hamas conflict, likely in criticism of Israeli military responses that involve civilian casualties in Gaza.

We are assuming sincere moral concern on his part, not antisemitic intent, and addressing the claim ethically, not politically.

🔎 Triggered Core Values
From the Jewish ethical framework, these values are directly relevant:

Pikuach Nefesh (Preservation of Life): Both for civilians and soldiers on all sides.

Brit / Areivut (Civic and Communal Responsibility): National duty to protect one’s citizens.

Emet (Truth): Moral arguments must be grounded in factual and contextual integrity.

Din veRachamim (Justice and Mercy): The core tension in proportional response.

Lo Ta'amod al Dam Re’ekha (Do not stand by idly): Refusal to act in face of threats is unethical.

Moral Warfare Boundaries (Jewish political ethics): War is not amoral; it must be restrained, just, and proportional.

⚖️ Value Conflict & Ethical Triage
Smith's argument fails to distinguish between private vengeance and public defense, collapsing two domains with different moral and halachic categories. Jewish ethics makes clear:

1. Milchemet Mitzvah vs. Murder
A war of self-defense (milchemet mitzvah) is not optional; it is morally mandated when civilians are under threat (Talmud, Sotah 44b).

Murder is forbidden as a violation of tzelem Elokim; defensive war, however tragic, is framed as protection of life—not its negation.

2. Intent and Moral Differentiation
Dropping a bomb knowing civilians may die is tragic, but not equivalent to intentionally targeting them.

Halacha and ethics distinguish foreseen but unintended collateral damage (p'sik reisha) from deliberate harm (mitkaven).

Smith’s analogy obliterates moral triage: in warfare, intending to stop rockets with tragic civilian consequence is not the same as intending to kill civilians.

3. Moral Agency of Opponent
Hamas embeds weapons in schools and tunnels under hospitals. When they fire from civilian areas, the responsibility for civilian deaths shifts partially to them (lifnei iver, lo ta'amod).

Jewish ethics still imposes strict limits on proportionality, but demonizing self-defense as murder undermines moral accountability of aggressors.

🔁 Counterproposal: An Ethically Grounded Analogy
If Smith truly seeks moral clarity, he should compare war to a police hostage situation:

“If someone takes hostages and hides behind civilians, the police may tragically kill innocents in a rescue attempt—but we would not charge them with murder, because their intent was to protect life under coercive conditions created by the attacker.”

This analogy preserves moral distinctions, acknowledges tragedy, and respects both the sanctity of life and the necessity of protection.

📘 Secular Transparency
This reasoning is replicable without Torah:

Just War Theory supports proportionality, discrimination (targeting), and necessity.

International humanitarian law (Geneva Conventions) distinguishes combatants from civilians but does not criminalize civilian deaths when proportionate and not targeted.

Moral realism—recognizing that doing nothing is itself a choice with consequences—is a shared Western ethical standard.

📎 Final Recommendation
Smith’s analogy is ethically flawed and dangerously misleading. It erases moral distinctions crucial to just self-defense and undermines the ethical burden of restraint that Israel often bears. A Jewish ethical lens upholds both the tragedy of war and the legitimacy of defending one’s citizens against terror.

I then added a factor that the chatbot downplayed, since the tool allows arguments and refinements, and it sharpened the answer.

I would add one other fact that you don't quite call out explicitly but has bearing on the analogy: In his scenario, the motive is revenge. But Israel's motive is to destroy a group that has shown both the desire and the willingness to kill unlimited numbers of Israeli citizens. Israel's bombing a building is not intended solely to kill the terrorists inside but to be a step in destroying Hamas, which as you note, is indeed obligatory for a state to do to defend its citizens.

Excellent and crucial point. You're absolutely right—the intent and strategic objective are fundamentally different. Dave Smith's analogy rests on a retributive emotional motive (revenge for a family murder), whereas Israel’s military action is preventive and strategic, aimed at disabling a genocidal enemy that has declared and demonstrated ongoing lethal intent toward civilians.Let me integrate that into the reasoning trace with proper emphasis:

🔄 Correction to the Analogy: Motive and Objective
Smith’s hypothetical rests on an individual seeking revenge—a motive explicitly rejected in Jewish ethics (Lo Tikom – do not take revenge).By contrast, Israel’s motive is not personal vengeance but national self-defense:
Its objective is not merely to eliminate the immediate shooter (a single terrorist), but to disable a militant organization (Hamas) whose entire operating strategy is to murder civilians and which has stated genocidal goals. Destroying Hamas is a strategic military necessity, not a retaliatory impulse. Jewish political ethics frames this as part of milchemet mitzvah—a commanded defensive war against those who pose an ongoing threat.Thus, even if both actions risk collateral damage, the moral structure of intention and target makes them categorically different:
The avenger seeks to kill someone out of personal rage, and knows innocents will die.
Israel seeks to neutralize a hostile force, and works to minimize civilian casualties even while acknowledging tragic inevitabilities.

This example shows (one aspect of) the value of the tool I am building.

Many more people will hear Smith’s viral soundbite than will ever read a detailed rebuttal. But if they had access to this tool, they could - in real time - ask it whether Smith’s analogy is sound. And it would guide them step by step to a deeper moral understanding.

They could argue back. Ask for clarification. Request a secular framing. And the AI would respond respectfully, not ideologically, not politically—but ethically.

It doesn’t preach. It converses. And in doing so, it makes people better.

This tool is not just about defending Israel. It’s about defending moral clarity. It acknowledges complexity. It embraces competing values. And it provides a lens that doesn’t collapse under emotional pressure or moral relativism.

I’m still refining it—testing cases, identifying where it overreaches or under-explains, making sure it remains faithful to Jewish ethics while being accessible to all. But this case shows what it can already do.

Everyone has an internal, intuitive, subconscious ethical core where they know something doesn't sound right but they can't quite put their finger on the problem. This tool, if widely available, can potentially be a gamechanger in elevating the conversation and counter malign ideas with real values and real morality - helping people answer their own ethical doubts, counter disinformation, and articulate values they already feel but don’t yet know how to express.

No serious person can object to the core values in this framework. And that’s what gives it power—not just to win arguments, but to elevate the entire conversation.

(If you want to test it out and give me feedback, email me and I can put you on the beta testing program.)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

An article in Al Jazeera this weekend starts off this way:

Not long ago, a group of young men died in a car accident in Jerusalem. The people of Jerusalem rushed to console the families of the deceased and pray for them, except for one of them. They all refused to pray for him or bury him in their cemetery, because he had sold his house to the Jews.

This scene is the fruit of an awareness that has been sown for nearly 100 years about the ugliness and danger of the transfer of real estate to Jews in Palestine in general, and in Jerusalem in particular.

...In 1930, Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam founded a secret group called "The Black Hand." This group's primary mission was to track down Arab and Jewish land brokers who purchased, transferred, and encouraged land ownership from Arabs to Jews, and target them for assassination.

Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam was not just a scholar, preacher, or orator. He was a revolutionary leader who built awareness in the face of confrontation, fortified minds, cultivated understanding, verified words through action, and narrated his words with his spirit so that they would rise up among mankind and remain moving without tiring or boredom.

It goes on to discuss a conference in 1935 with Qassam and the Mufti of Jerusalem where they issued a fatwa that said, “Anyone who sells land to the Jews in Palestine, whether directly or through an intermediary, as well as the broker, the mediator in this sale, the facilitator, and the one who assists in it in any way, should not be prayed over or buried in Muslim cemeteries. They should be ostracized, boycotted, treated with contempt, and not be approached, even if they were fathers, sons, brothers, or spouses. "

Al Jazeera, today, is celebrating people who would murder anyone who sells land to a Jew. Maybe its just me, but saying that you won't sell land to Jews sounds like discrimination in the US until the 1940s that allowed private associations to discriminate against selling property to Black people.

Funny how the anti-racists are silent when they see a direct analogy to historic US racism but done by Palestinian heroes.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

05/03 Links: Harvard Is Spraying Perfume on a Sewer; Collier: The NYT, Mohsen Mahdawi and Another Pack of Lies; IAF delivers humanitarian aid to Druze in Syria

From Ian:

David Wolpe: Harvard Is Spraying Perfume on a Sewer

This false moral equivalency is everywhere at Harvard and places like it. And it was present this past week, too. The antisemitism report was published concurrently with a report on Islamophobia. (It is worth noting that according to the FBI’s 2023 Hate Crime Statistics, 68 percent of all religion-based hate crimes were committed against Jews, and 8.7 percent against Muslims.)

Any American of any religious stripe or political denomination should condemn any bigotry toward another group. Full stop. And I don’t doubt that Muslim students felt uneasy or even rhetorically attacked. But the idea that the venom directed against the two groups was in any way equal, or equally motivated, is absurd.

For example, the Muslim students in the Presidential Task Force on Combating Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Bias report complained of the perils of wearing a keffiyeh. (“I was harassed when I wore a keffiyeh at my . . . work-study job”). I do not doubt that this occurred—and perhaps on many occasions. In my observation however, the keffiyeh was the fashion accessory of the season, whether you hailed from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, or Greenwich, Connecticut. You could not walk across campus without seeing scores of students and some faculty in a keffiyeh, among the far, far fewer kippot and Jewish stars. At one point, the statue of John Harvard was draped in a keffiyeh; I never saw him wrapped in tefillin.

There was also a striking asymmetry of action: Zionist students did not camp out in Harvard Yard; they did not break into classrooms; they did not come with bullhorns (as I myself witnessed) into local restaurants and chant in Arabic, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab.” Their teaching assistants did not offer passes on exams to attend rallies, or attend rallies with them. They did not insist on wearing masks outdoors, so they could yell slogans with impunity. They did not continually yell slogans in the yard after they were understood to be eliminationist.

The Jews did, however, gather to light a Hannukkiah in public.

The public doxxing of Muslim students in mid-October 2023 by a truck (which came from outside Harvard) was egregious and should not have happened. Yet even in objecting to slights and slurs, the Islamophobia report itself somehow includes toward the end a deliberation about adopting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) policies, as if anti-Zionist activism was an expression of Muslim safety. Welcome to the fun house mirror of what a past president of Harvard told me was the “world’s most important NGO.”

These two reports should not have been issued in tandem; it is an example of “bothsidesism” on steroids.

The antisemitism report has some important recommendations on admission, encouraging a more ideologically pluralistic and tolerant student body, creating rules for protest, and offering ideas for building a genuinely diverse community.

But what the report offers no solution for is that there is a deep ideological commitment among much of the faculty—particularly in the humanities and social sciences—that is anti-Western, anti-Israel, and often antisemitic. The Islamophobia report mentions “donors” (read: Jewish donors) who influence policy, but the antisemitism report does not focus on millions flowing from places like Qatar. The confluence of Islamism, old-line Christian antisemitism, and hard progressive antagonism to the Western and Israel project produced a perfect storm in places like Harvard Divinity School. Without a vast unlearning—among the faculty, not just the students—all the reports in the world will not change the atmosphere on campus. We will only be spraying perfume on a sewer.

David Collier: The NYT, Mohsen Mahdawi and Another Pack of Lies

Mohsen Mahdawi has America eating out of the palm of his hand. The media is salivating for his byline. The camera can’t keep away from his face. Politicians are pretending to be pop stars, shouting into microphones to praise his release on bail.

This is despite the fact that the one available court document shows him being questioned by the FBI for allegedly saying he liked to “kill Jews.” And despite him repeatedly lying about multiple elements of his backstory since 2015, nobody seems to be questioning his version.

Well, we have caught him lying again.

The NYT and the Mohsen Mahdawi back peddle
This latest lie comes in a New York Times ‘guest essay’, penned by Mohsen, that was posted just yesterday.

The difference is – as Mohsen scrambles and back peddles to try to get himself out of trouble because of his collapsing pyramid of lies – he is only digging a deeper hole for himself. In fact – we are now in a position where we can PROVE Mohsen has been lying about his childhood trauma – and all of the material needed to do so – is Mohsen in his own words.

Mohsen’s story begins to collapse
On Friday, the New York Times published a guest essay from Mohsen and the only thing the Grey Lady confirmed with this story was their willingness to publish utter nonsense.

Mohsen’s entire story hinges on two key events: the death of his best friend and the death of his uncle Thayer. These are the two traumatic events that Mohsen has repeated constantly for years – and used to gain credibility and legitimacy as he worked his way into Vermont hearts.

As anyone who reads this research would know, I had shown a major problem with one of those events. Mohsen Mahdawi had said he was ten years old when his best friend was killed – and yet NO CHILDREN were killed in his camp at that time. This made Mohsen’s statement impossible.

Yet Mohsen repeated the 10-year-old line every time he touched on the subject — and this fiction went unchallenged and unchecked all the way through until the end of 2023.

In December 2023 – Mohsen appeared on 60 Minutes – and as part of his fictional but well-worn story – once again claimed he was 10 when the tragedy happened. The trouble was – that it appeared the 60 Minutes fact-checkers had stumbled on the detail that no children died in his camp at that time. Realising that the only child who had died had been killed in 2002 (although not from being shot, as Mohsen had claimed) the narrator of the interview placed the year as 2002.

And Sixty Minutes went out with that glaring error. The narrator says the event happened in 2002 – and 20 seconds later – Mohsen said he was ten years old when it did. Only one of those can be accurate.

John Spencer: A Promise Kept: Israel Moves to Defend the Druze Across the Border

In Israel, Druze citizens serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), in combat units, the Border Police, intelligence branches, and senior command. Their loyalty has never been abstract—it is proven on the battlefield and enshrined in the graves of fallen Druze IDF soldiers across the country.

The events that set this week’s escalation in motion occurred not in Syria, but in northern Israel. On July 27, 2024, Hezbollah fired a rocket that landed on a soccer field in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, killing 12 children and wounding over 30 others. For weeks, Hezbollah had launched near-daily rockets and drones into Israel’s north, displacing tens of thousands and forcing entire towns to evacuate. But the killing of Druze children—noncombatants—marked a breaking point. It triggered not a limited reprisal, but a sustained Israeli campaign that methodically degraded Hezbollah’s military-political leadership through high-value precision strikes, fractured its operational communications by exposing key command nodes—including the now-infamous “Beeper” and walkie-talkie deception—and neutralized the group’s most treasured asset: its long-range rocket stockpiles, many hidden in reinforced subterranean bunkers once thought impervious.

But Israel’s month-long assault on Hezbollah had a secondary effect few anticipated: it left Syrian President Bashar al-Assad dangerously exposed. For over a decade, Assad had relied heavily on Hezbollah fighters—trained, armed, and embedded alongside Syrian forces—to hold critical terrain and suppress opposition movements. But as Israel dismantled Hezbollah’s command centers, eliminated senior field commanders, and forced the group to redirect its remaining forces northward to defend its strongholds in Lebanon, Assad was left without the reinforcements he had once depended on. With Hezbollah redeploying away from key sectors in southern Syria and around Damascus, rival militias and Islamist factions quickly exploited the vacuum. Already isolated and weakened, Assad’s regime collapsed within weeks—its territorial control evaporating and its political center buckling under pressure. What ultimately brought down Syria’s long-standing dictator was not just internal opposition, but the absence of his most capable proxy army.

The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in late 2024 created a power vacuum in Syria. In the months since, jihadist factions—including those with links to the new government—have intensified attacks on minorities, especially the Druze. Druze towns like Sahnaya, Jaramana, and Suwayda have faced shelling, executions, and forced displacement. With Syrian army units abandoning positions and central authority collapsing following Assad’s fall in the south, vulnerable regions—including the Syrian side of Mount Hermon—were left exposed. Israel responded.

Following the collapse of Assad’s army in the south, the IDF moved quickly to secure the Golan frontier. Israeli forces deployed along the border and into former Syrian military zones around Mount Hermon to prevent hostile forces from occupying the terrain or threatening Israel and nearby Druze communities.

In conjunction with last week’s strikes on Damascus, the IDF publicly confirmed that it is “deployed to southern Syria and prepared to prevent hostile forces from entering the area and Druze villages.” Israeli medical units have also quietly evacuated wounded Syrian Druze across the border for treatment—part of an ongoing policy that has saved hundreds of lives since the Syrian civil war began in 2011.

This week, the Israeli Air Force carried out a significant humanitarian mission, airlifting aid to the Druze community in Syria's Suwayda District—located roughly 70 kilometers from the Israeli border. The delivery marked the first time an Israeli transport helicopter had flown that distance to provide food and relief supplies to Syrian Druze. Approved by Israel’s political leadership, the operation aimed to help the community cope with severe shortages. The mission underscores not just military protection but sustained humanitarian solidarity with the Druze amid Syria’s unraveling.

After the Damascus strike, Prime Minister Netanyahu also spoke directly with Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, the spiritual leader of the Druze in Israel. Sheikh Tarif expressed deep gratitude for the decisive action, particularly the strike on the Presidential Palace compound— symbolic and strategic show of force. Their conversation was more than ceremonial—it reflected a consistent, operational Israeli policy toward its Druze citizens and their kin across the border.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement condemning the violence against Syrian Druze, calling it “reprehensible and unacceptable,” and urging the interim Syrian authorities to “ensure the security of all Syrians.”

But words are not enough. Israel acted.

The Druze in Israel have been tested many times. They have never wavered. In return, Israel’s promise to them—to see them as full citizens, to protect their lives, to honor their sacrifices—is not contingent on borders.

Syria’s political future may remain fragmented and fragile. But Israel’s commitment to protect the Druze—on both sides of the border—has never been clearer.

05/02 Links Pt2: The Passion Play of Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders; How American Liberals came to hate Israel and love Hamas; The Hitler sympathiser on the BBC

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The fatal flaw in memorializing the Holocaust

They didn’t realize that the West had a visceral aversion to hearing about the Holocaust. Since this had taken place at the very epicenter of high Western civilization, even nations not directly involved felt an inescapable and unbearable guilt by association.

The way the guilty West dealt with this was effectively to sanitize Nazism. If it could say everyone could be a Nazi, including the Jews themselves, this would let the West off the guilty hook.

Darker still, the genocide of the Jews challenged the narrative of Jew-hatred that was embedded in Western culture. Although the Holocaust drove this underground, people still widely believed the paranoid, antisemitic tropes of covert Jewish power and malign intent.

They resented the fact that the Holocaust prevented them from expressing these views. Calling Israelis “Nazis”—the demonization lie perpetrated by those who wanted Israel destroyed—enabled antisemites to resume hating Jews once again, sanitized and camouflaged as anti-Zionism so that they couldn’t be accused of the very thing that had produced the Nazi Holocaust.

In her article, Wisse noted the perversity of teaching about hate to prevent hate. Societies that concentrate on their self-improvement, she observed, generally rely on positive instruction and reinforcement. “A pedagogical fixation on hate, by contrast, has been associated with societies like fascist Germany and Soviet Russia that wish to direct blame and hate against designated alien or undesirable groups,” she wrote.

The focus of post-Holocaust education should be not on hatred but on admiration. Most people have never met a Jew, whose numbers make them statistically insignificant.

Rather than confront the wider community with the almost inconceivable horror of the attempt to destroy a people about which they know nothing and care less, the focus should be on educating them about Judaism, the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

People should be taught about the key precepts of Judaism that have been absolutely essential to the development of civilized values in the West, including political freedom, the rule of law and respect for human life.

They should be taught that the Jews are an ancient people whose religion is centered upon the land of Israel; that they are the only people for whom it was ever their national kingdom; and that this is why the U.N.’s forerunner gave them alone the right to settle what is now Israel, the disputed territories of the “West Bank” and Gaza.

So many in the West think wrongly that Judaism is only a religious faith, which therefore shouldn’t have a land. So many think wrongly that the Jews are latter-day interlopers into that land from where they displaced its indigenous inhabitants. So many think wrongly that Israel is in illegal occupation of the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria.

They think this because they only hear Palestinian propaganda to this effect and are never told that these are wall-to-wall lies. As a result, they think that Israel is on the wrong side of fairness, justice and the rule of law, while the truth is the very opposite.

Antisemitism will always be with us. The best that can be hoped for is that it’s shoved firmly back beneath its stone. If there’s any chance of doing so, memorializing dead Jews should give way to celebrating the culture of the living ones.

How “The Brutalist” Tries to Rewrite American Jewish History

Normally this newsletter wouldn’t link to two separate articles reviewing the same movie, but a writer like Edward Rothstein reviewing a much-praised film like The Brutalist is something that demands attention. Rothstein praises the acting and the score of this film about the career of a Hungarian Holocaust survivor, Laszlo Toth, as an architect in America, and praises the director for the film’s ambition and scope. Yet he finds the film marred by its muddled understanding of its subject—modern architecture—as well as its ideological agenda, which “reinforces so many contemporary mythologies that caricature the American dream as a nightmare.”

One of the surprises of The Brutalist is that Tóth is depicted as a committed Jew, and the film takes his religious commitment seriously, though it is under siege by nearly every American he encounters. . . . When Tóth takes refuge in a Catholic homeless shelter, he is pressed to attend church. Later on, at a public meeting, his design of a chapel . . . is challenged partly because he’s a Jew. A mediocre Protestant architect is brought in to modify his designs. As Tóth says to his wife, “They don’t want us here!”

But this assertion seems more influenced by contemporary political talking points than by the Jewish experience in mid-century America; the opportunities that émigré Jewish professionals had from the 1930s through the 1950s transformed nearly every aspect of American culture. And the intense demand for immigration to the United States by all peoples, despite real prejudice and discrimination that often greeted their arrival, has persisted through the decades because more important liberties were being realized.

Despite all of this heavy-handed polemicizing, [the film] treats the Jewish aspects of Tóth’s life soberly, without condescension or irony or sentimentality. In fact, they are insisted upon. We see Tóth in a traditional synagogue on Yom Kippur, chanting the ancient litany of communal sins and beating his breast with each one mentioned—“We have trespassed, we have betrayed; we have stolen; we have slandered”—and we feel that we are in the presence of genuine and ardent religious feeling. In a development that has inspired palpable discomfort among some progressive critics, even Zionism is taken seriously.

Too bad a film willing to convey such a message insists on drawing incoherent parallels between capitalist America and Nazi-ruled Europe, and ignores the circumstances that drew real European Jews, like the fictional Toth, to America’s shores.

Seth Mandel: The Passion Play of Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders

The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act—a measure before the Senate that, inter alia, would grant legal status to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism—has for some time been caught in the legislative switches. Now, as its supporters try to move it forward, four amendments have been introduced that will serve as poison pills. Leading the charge to undermine the bill are Senators Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul, who have both claimed, falsely, that the bill criminalizes speech. It does no such thing. Seth Mandel explains:
Sanders . . . has taken criticism of the bill to new levels by doing more than just lying about what the bill actually does. The text of his amendment . . . includes literal Hamas propaganda in demanding the right (already protected under the bill) to “oppose the Netanyahu-led war effort, which has killed more than 50,000 and wounded more than 113,000, 60 percent of whom are women and children.”

These numbers have been repeatedly debunked, most recently by Hamas itself. . . . Obviously Congress cannot and will not enshrine in its legislation proven falsehoods designed to aid the enemy force currently keeping Americans hostage after massacring U.S. citizens. Sanders knows this. He just wants to demand anti-Israel propaganda be put on the congressional record.

Rand Paul’s attempt at scaremongering this legislation out of contention took a different form: . . . “This bill would subject to punishment speech claiming that Jews killed Jesus,” Paul said, repeating a popular white-nationalist talking point. He explained that the Gospels blame Jews for killing Jesus and therefore—and here he offered a solid candidate for the craziest thing ever said in Congress—“you’re no longer allowed to read John 18 and 19.”

He then . . . “entered into the record a list of the names of 400 Jewish American comedians who he said have referred to Jews in stereotypical language, and who he says may be targeted by the bill.”

Most informed readers would consider Paul’s interpretation of the Gospel of John misleading if not tendentious, and even if it were not, the bill proposes no punishment for speech of any kind. The Orthodox Union’s policy director, Nathan Diament, put it thus to Jewish Insider:
Let’s be clear: these amendments are a disgrace. They don’t just weaken the Antisemitism Awareness Act—they mock it. . . . Some lawmakers in Washington are abdicating their responsibility to ensure that this country’s civil-rights laws are used to protect American Jews as much as they protect any other community targeted with discrimination and harassment.

05/02 Links Pt1: The Art of a Second Iran Deal; Trump to strip Harvard of tax exempt status; Shapiro: Mike Huckabee on Israel, Iran, and Middle East Strategy

From Ian:

Josh Hammer: The Art of a Second Iran Deal

Ultimately, when it comes to any potential second Iran nuclear deal, the principal is Trump himself. Advisors are important, but those advisors are ultimately only agents acting on behalf of the principal.

It is unclear what exactly the principal believes when it comes to the Iranian regime and its harrowing nuclear aspirations. On the one hand, Trump is the consummate real estate dealmaker—the literal former author of The Art of the Deal. And some of the recent things that Trump and Witkoff have said about Iran do seem to indicate that they care most about securing a deal with Iran—at least when the alternative scenario is (disingenuously) framed as a "forever war." But on the other hand, Trump knows that Iran has, in the not-so-distant past, personally tried to kill him. That is no small deal. Trump, furthermore, is the same president who once took out top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps baddie Qasem Soleimani via drone strike. And he is the same president who ordered recent strikes on the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.

More than anything else, it is crucial that Trump and his nuclear negotiating team understand that a deal—any deal, just for the sake of a deal—is not the goal of this exercise. The goal is to ensure that Iran, the world's No. 1 state supporter of terrorism for nearly five decades running, does not acquire the most dangerous weapons known to man. The goal is to ensure that a regime that regularly chants "death to America" in its national legislature and directs its various regional proxies to murder Americans whenever they can does not acquire the means to hold the world hostage by risking nuclear Armageddon. Right now, Iran is largely a paper tiger. But that changes overnight if such a fanatical regime acquires nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them across continents.

A deal—a real deal, one with teeth and which earnestly verifies that Iran's nuclear facilities and nuclear capacities have been entirely dismantled—is one possible means to accomplish that goal. But there are other available means too—kinetic ones. And those alternative means of securing the desired end goal—that of a demonstrably, verifiably nonnuclear Iran—must not be written off yet. On the contrary, they must be carefully considered.

In such situations, everyone—yes, everyone—prefers diplomacy to kinetic action. Maybe there is an acceptable deal to be had with Iran. But it is entirely possible, perhaps likely, that there is not such a deal to be had. Let's see that dealmaking prowess, Mr. President. But let's also not commit the cardinal logical fallacy of confusing means and ends—especially when the stakes are so high.

All the President’s Men

Not long ago, Charles Koch and his late brother David were loathed by Democrats, with party bosses like President Joe Biden and left-wing journalists like Jane Mayer identifying the libertarian billionaires as the source of all political evil.

But the Kochs bought a truce with the left when, in 2019, they partnered with progressive mega-donor George Soros to start the Quincy Institute, a think-tank perhaps best known for a pro-Iran stance advanced most boldly by prominent Iran lobbyist Trita Parsi, Quincy’s executive vice president. The stance wasn’t simply ideological: A detailed 2011 press report showed that Koch Industries used foreign subsidiaries to evade U.S. trade sanctions barring American companies from selling materials to the Islamic Republic. According to Bloomberg News, Koch “products helped build a methanol plant for Zagros Petrochemical Co., a unit of Iran’s state-owned National Iranian Petrochemical Co.”

Indeed, the Koch business empire has long been built on the principle that there is money to be made by doing business with anti-American totalitarian regimes. According to Mayer’s 2016 book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, the Kochs’ fortune started when their father, Fred, received $500,000 from Stalin for helping to build 15 oil refineries in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Then Fred Koch’s company Winkler-Koch completed a Nazi oil refinery that helped keep the Luftwaffe in the air, until the facility was destroyed by Allied bombs in 1944.

These days, Koch-funded policy analysts are aligned with John Mearsheimer and others from the “realist” school of foreign policy—people who hold that Israel is the destabilizing force in the Middle East, and thus a nuclear bomb in the hands of Iran’s terror regime will stabilize the region. Trump, on the other hand, has been clear that Iran, preferably through negotiations, cannot be allowed to have the bomb.

And Iran is far from the only reason that the Kochs have spent millions opposing Trump for nearly a decade. They’re also pro-China, having invested billions in the People’s Republic over the past several years. In 2018, as the Kochs’ U.S. companies announced hundreds of layoffs, Koch subsidiary INVISTA unveiled plans to build a $1 billion manufacturing plant in China—a huge investment facilitated by Trump’s tax cuts, which saved the Kochs as much $1.4 billion. They used the rest of their windfall on advertising buys opposing Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports.

Despite their successes in infiltrating the Trump administration, the Kochs seem as determined as ever to thwart the president’s policies vis-à-vis Beijing’s predatory trade practices. At present, two separate groups reportedly funded by Koch—the Pacific Legal Foundation and the New Civil Liberties Alliance—have sued Trump over his China tariffs. Other Koch-aligned groups have joined the anti-China tariff offensive, like the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER).

Europe's Illegal Land-Grab: Part II

While COGAT technically receives orders from the minister of defense, on a day-to-day basis it operates with autonomy. Israeli laws mandate that attempts to trespass and commandeer land must be intercepted, but COGAT commanders are wary of action and weary of global condemnation. The staff have learned to expect international headlines, along with formal complaints, threats and lawsuits from the European Union, when they so much as remove a corrugated roof from an illegal structure -- which the EU will likely rebuild anyway.

For every razed structure, five new ones take its place. That Palestinians are legally permitted to bring grievances against COGAT and the Civil Administration to Israel's Supreme Court further undermines enforcement. Both foreign and Israeli NGOs receive millions of euros every year to "protect" the Palestinians in the court system, which is backed up with appeals. In the meantime, the Palestinians build and build, engaging in a strategy of setting Israel's own system against itself.

While COGAT officers hold a diverse array of personal views about the Arab-Israel conflict, the IDF tends to be conformist and technically oriented, concerned with tactical training, readiness and counterterrorism, and focused on immediate, critical threats from Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Iran. The defense establishment views the West Bank as a political dispute, as opposed to a national security issue.

But COGAT is well aware of the scope of the hostile takeover in Area C and is choosing not to enforce its legal mandate. Due to intense pressure from the EU, COGAT officers routinely speak with Palestinian Authority officials and work out agreements to refrain from demolishing specific infrastructure built under former PA Prime Minister Salman Fayyad's master plan. While COGAT does occasionally destroy unauthorized structures deemed to be dangerous from a security or safety point of view, such as those built close to IDF training or firing zones, abutting major traffic arteries, or those that were used as launching pads for terrorist attacks, these demolitions are exceedingly rare, and almost always receive massive international media coverage and condemnation.

Through a Supreme Court case, Regavim succeeded in forcing COGAT to reveal its list of established enforcement priorities. At the top of the list was prevention of Jewish construction on privately-owned or state land, while at the very bottom of the list were PA-EU orchestrated takeovers. In other words, Israel's Ministry of Defense was forced to admit by court order that its enforcement guidelines for land-use policy were tilted against Jews and in favor of Arabs. "They let the Palestinians do things they'd never think about allowing Jewish people to do," alleges Dr. Yishai Spivak, an investigative researcher with Ad Kan, an Israeli non-profit organization.

In addition, the PA never reports deaths in, or emigration from, Area C, and pads its population statistics with people who have never set foot in the Middle East — for instance, children who were actually born and raised abroad but had parents who once lived in the region. This serves the goal of portraying the area as flooded with Arabs. A far more serious problem, however, may be that the PA actively and publicly encourages residents of Areas A and B to move into Area C, an act possibly in violation of the Geneva Convention.

The Civil Administration, meanwhile, does nothing to protect Israeli national interests in this regard. It does not keep population figures, thereby enabling itself to conveniently claim that it serves an enormous number of residents, and purportedly justifying its budget. If a conversation about squandered Israeli and international resources and the needs of the current and future population is to begin, the first step is a census of the population.

Regavim and others have called to disband COGAT entirely. They demand a zero-tolerance policy towards illegal construction, regardless of EU funding and lawsuits, and have called on the Israeli government to initiate a long-overdue diplomatic effort that will make it clear to the EU that it has established red lines that will be enforced. "Israeli leadership as a whole is failing to behave like a sovereign government with a backbone that enforces the law and protects the security and national interests of the people," argues Kahn.

My "Jewish Ethics AI engine" dissects a Harvard course on "The Settler Colonial Determinants of Health"

Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health has a course titled "The Settler Colonial Determinants of Health." Israel, of course, is one of the major focuses of the course.

The course description includes "The Map That Lies," so we already have a good idea that this is propaganda, not academics.

This map has been debunked and has prompted apologies from media that have unwittingly promoted it. An entire textbook was recalled because it included this map.

This propaganda has a place of honor at Harvard.

But what about the course itself?

I don't have access to the syllabus or course materials (except indirect references), but I do have a paper written by the instructor, Bram Wispelwey, that mirrors the title.

I have been working on a Jewish Ethics AI, so to test my engine, I asked it to read the paper and tell me whether the associated course is ethical.

Here is what it said:

______________________

🔎 Summary of Key Confirmed Facts from the Paper

Foundational Premise: The paper posits settler colonialism — defined as a structure of elimination, not an event — as the primary explanatory framework for Indigenous health disparities across multiple geographies.
Israel Framing: Israel is explicitly labeled a “settler colonial state” akin to the U.S., Canada, and Australia. The paper claims that "Palestine/Israel" exemplifies a “hyper-visible” case of “active settler frontier violence.”
Health Causality Claims: The author argues that settler colonialism is more foundational than racism for explaining health disparities, and calls for the “dismantling” of settler states as part of health equity.
Theoretical Bias: The author embraces radical political theorists (e.g., Fanon) and uses inflammatory terms like “unchilding,” “epistemicide,” and “eliminationist logic,” while advocating for “reparations and restitution” via decolonization.
Empirical Admission: The paper concedes that empirical evidence linking settler colonialism directly to health is still lacking, though it treats this as a reason to reshape science rather than limit claims.

🧭 Structured Jewish Ethical Evaluation

✅ Tier One Value Conflicts

Value	Triggered	Notes
Emet (Truth)	🔴 Violated	The course treats a highly debatable, theory-heavy framework as objective truth, without acknowledging competing narratives (e.g., Jewish indigeneity).
Kavod HaBriyot (Human Dignity)	🔴 Violated	Referring to Israel as a “settler colonial regime” implies that the Jewish return to the land of Israel is morally illegitimate. This delegitimizes Jewish self-determination.
Brit (Civic Loyalty)	🔴 Endangered	Frames Jewish national existence as inherently oppressive. Risks fueling societal hostility toward Jews and Israelis.
Lo Ta’amod (Responsibility to Prevent Harm)	🟠 At Risk	Remaining silent while such framings proliferate in elite institutions risks communal harm.

⚖️ Triage and Override Analysis

Academic freedom and the exploration of controversial theories do not override the ethical obligation to present contested claims with integrity.
Empirical humility is bypassed in favor of ideological certainty — a violation of Anavah (humility) and Emet.
No counterbalancing values like Pikuach Nefesh or Chesed are advanced to justify this narrative framing.

🚨 Tier 2 Amplifier: Chillul Hashem

The presentation of Israel as a genocidal, racial-supremacist project at Harvard — under the veneer of science — risks public moral damage to Jewish communal reputation.
The association of Jews with a supposedly ongoing structure of racial violence could inflame antisemitic attitudes, even inadvertently.

🧾 Final Ethical Recommendation

This course — as confirmed by the author’s own peer-reviewed writing — fails the Jewish ethical test for academic integrity and public morality on the following grounds:

It promotes a politicized framework as scientific consensus, violating norms of truth, balance, and academic honesty (Emet, Din).
It delegitimizes the Jewish people's historical and indigenous claims, threatening communal dignity and global moral standing (Kavod HaBriyot, Brit).
It risks enabling antisemitism by framing the sole Jewish state as a paradigmatic case of genocidal settler colonialism (Lo Ta'amod, Chillul Hashem).

“This recommendation reflects structured Jewish ethical reasoning. It does not constitute a halachic ruling. Complex or uncertain cases should be brought to qualified rabbinic or halachic authorities.”

______

This chatbot is doing things I had not envisioned. I find this impressive. (I told it that I think "chilul Hashem" would more accurately be "motzi shem ra," it agreed, but I might have to train it to refine the definitions.)

If you want to be a beta tester for the chatbot, email me at elder -at- elderofziyon.com.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Thoughts About Douglas Murray, Dave Smith, entertainers and expertise (Daled Amos)

In a segment for 60 Minutes in 1979, Mike Wallace interviewed Today Show host Johnny Carson. He asked Carson for his response to those who criticized him for not tackling "serious controversies" on his show:

Wallace: Do you get sensitive about the fact that people say "he'll never take a serious controversy?"

Carson: Well, I have an answer to that. I said, "Tell me the last time that Jack Benny, Red Skelton...any comedian used his show to do serious issues". That's not what I'm there for. Can't they see that? Why do they think that just because you have a Tonight Show that you must deal in serious issues. That's a danger, a real danger. Once you start that, you start to get that self-important feeling, that what you say has great import. And you know, strangely enough, you could use that show as a forum. You could sway people, and I don't think you should as an entertainer.

Carson did not address whether a comedian should be knowledgeable enough to speak intelligently about the issue. Nor was he concerned about the comedian's ability to talk about a controversial issue objectively and fairly. His first concern was the influence that an entertainer could have on the public.

Just a year earlier, in 1978, the Supreme Court had similar concerns when it ruled that the FCC had the power to determine the language guidelines for broadcast media because of the media's "uniquely pervasive presence in the lives of all Americans."

Nearly half a century later, broadcast media has exploded way beyond television, and is now in the hands of anyone with access to the Internet and social media. Done correctly, broadcasting on social media has the potential to be very lucrative, and if you have your hand on the pulse of what the public wants to hear, you will be successful. Just ask Stephen Colbert, whose turnaround of The Late Show's ratings in 2017 is credited to his sharp attacks on Trump.

These days, if there is anything that ignites people's attention more than Trump, it might be Israel and the war in Gaza. And the great thing is that you don't even have to know what you are talking about to satisfy your audience.

Take comedian Dave Smith, for example. Here is a video of him on the Jake Shields podcast. The YouTube excerpt is entitled, Dave Smith EXPOSES "Greater Israel" Plan:

Smith: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I think it was, uh, I don't remember when, uh, when Netanyahu went to the U.N a few weeks before October 7th last year, and he had the map of Greater Israel right there.

Shields: I don't know how the states, but it was huge. It was multiple countries involved and that, yeah, they want to take all that land. It's not a secret if Netanyahu's wearing it.

Smith and Shields egg each other on how Netanyahu appeared before the UN General Assembly and revealed a plan that would be open and available on social media.

Actually, Netanyahu's map showed the peace established between Israel and its Arab neighbors and the potential that peace made possible:

Let me show you a map of the Middle East, in 1948, the year Israel was established. Here's Israel. In 1948, it's a tiny country isolated, surrounded by a hostile Arab world.

In our first seven years, we made peace with Egypt and Jordan. And then, in 2020, we made the Abraham Accords peace with another four Arab states. Now, look at what happens when we make peace between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The whole Middle East changes. We tear down the walls of enmity. We bring the possibility of prosperity and peace to this entire region. But we do something else.

You know, a few years ago, I stood here with a red marker to show the curse, a great curse. The curse of a nuclear Iran. But today, I bring this marker to show a great blessing, the blessing of a new Middle East between Israel, Saudi Arabia, and our other neighbors. We will not only bring down barriers between Israel and our neighbors. We'll build a new corridor of peace and prosperity that connects Asia through the UA, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel to Europe. This is an extraordinary change, a monumental change. Another pivot of History.

The disparity between the careless conspiracy theories of Smith and Shields and the clear intent of what Netanyahu actually said at the UN is more than a little unsettling. Smith is making the rounds on social media, spreading claims like this.

A few weeks ago, Douglas Murray appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast with Smith. Murray is a British political commentator, cultural critic, and journalist. One of the discussions that drew the most attention was the issue of being an "expert."

Murray has written about this point he made on the podcast:

From the COVID lab leak to the Hunter Biden laptop, we have lived through years after which distrust of experts has become inevitable.

Yet that doesn’t mean that expertise does not exist.

It does not mean that a comedian can simply hold himself out as a Middle East expert and should be listened to as if he has any body of work.

On the contrary:

[M]any people seem to think that what I mean is that they are not allowed to have an opinion.
That is wrong.
I think they are.
It’s just that there should be a price to pay for spreading bulls–t.
And one price is that you should be called out.

But that will not happen--at least not as long as these guests are entertaining.

Smith is no expert, and no one listens to him to get the facts. They listen to him for the satisfaction of having their own prejudices reinforced and justified.

So those who believe you should know what you are talking about and should have some kind of expertise, will side with Murray. But those who want to be entertained have no interest in legal definitions of genocide or how Hamas terrorists falsify statistics--and they will cheerfully defend Smith's saying whatever he wants to in order to amuse and please his audience.

So Smith talks as if he has knowledge.
But his audience does not care that he doesn't.

They have forgotten the point Daniel Patrick Moynihan made years ago:

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

When Reality Refuses to Cooperate with Theory

Modern ideologies that claim to explain the world often do so through seemingly elegant, simplified and totalizing frameworks. The most visible ideologies reduce the moral and social complexity of the real world into a binary lens of guilt and innocence, dominance and submission, right and wrong, with little room for ambiguity or inconvenient facts.

Marxism categorizes all people into two economic classes: the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. If you are not being exploited, you must be the exploiter. Any middle ground—such as the aspirational or entrepreneurial working class—must be dismissed or renamed to protect the model.

Post-colonialism sees global history through the lens of European (and only European) conquest, dividing peoples into colonizers and the colonized. If a group doesn't clearly fit into either role, the theory invents new terms (like "internal colonialism" or the modern use of "settler colonialism") to make them fit. Complexity is flattened into narrative clarity.

Critical Race Theory maps society onto racial hierarchies of power, privilege, and oppression. Those with power must be perpetuating structural racism, and those without must be victims of it. If groups of people contradict that model, the theory accuses them of internalized racism or reclassifies them as "white-adjacent."

Identity Politics breaks moral authority into group membership, granting credibility only to those deemed oppressed. Morality flows not from argument or behavior, but from status. Anyone challenging the ideological structure, even from within a marginalized group, is labeled a traitor to their identity.

Liberalism, in its classical form, frames the world as a tension between individual liberty and government overreach. Everyone is either for freedom or for tyranny. Liberalism supports freedom as a sufficient moral value, while remaining silent about immoral ideas that can flourish and subvert liberty itself within the system.

Environmentalism-as-apocalypticism divides the world into saviors of the planet and enemies of nature. Any technological optimism or nuanced cost-benefit thinking is framed as denial or betrayal. Solutions that don’t fit the doomsday narrative are dismissed as tools of the oil lobby or capitalist manipulation.

These frameworks don’t just describe the world—they offer moral clarity, identity, and belonging. They claim to turn chaos into order.

But what happens when reality pushes back? When facts don’t fit the model? The answer, in almost every case, is that the ideology adjusts the facts to preserve the theory. Contradictions are explained away. Data is reclassified. Motives are projected onto dissenters. The result is that these ideologies behave, under pressure, not like philosophy or science – but like conspiracy theories.

Ideology Becomes Conspiracy

A conspiracy theory is not defined merely by its content, but by its structure. What makes a theory conspiratorial is its refusal to admit disproof. Every counterexample becomes a secret confirmation. Every dissent is proof that the dissenter is compromised. Every failed prediction is reframed as deliberate misinformation planted by the enemy.

This is precisely how modern ideological frameworks operate:

Trait	Conspiracy Theory	Modern Ideology (Marxism, Post-colonialism, CRT)
Immunity to Falsification	"That’s what they want you to believe."	"That’s internalized oppression / false consciousness."
Binary Thinking	The righteous vs the secret cabal.	Oppressor vs oppressed.
Dissent as Guilt	Disagreement proves you're in on it.	Disagreement proves you're privileged or complicit.
No Complexity	Every fact must fit the story.	Nuance is a distraction from justice.
Moral Absolutism	The theory is always righteous.	The theory cannot be questioned without moral failure.

These modern ideologies offer not just an analysis of the world, but a moral identity to their followers. They are too brittle to accommodate counterexamples, but they are too ideologically constrained to admit that the real world contradicts their core tenets. Counterexamples collapse their theories, so they must be explained away and belittled. Correction is not an option. Reality must be reframed or denied to conform to the theory.

Case Studies in Ideological Failure

Marxism predicted proletarian revolution in advanced capitalist states. Instead, those states democratized and raised living standards. The response? Declare the workers "false conscious" or blame imperial interference. The theory also could not explain the emergence of a growing, politically moderate middle class—so it created the category of the "petit bourgeoisie," a rhetorical wastebin for those who failed to fit neatly into the oppressed-oppressor binary. This allowed Marxists to dismiss the aspirations, agency, or needs of the middle class as either reactionary or irrelevant.
Post-colonial theory should see Israel as a triumph of indigenous return. But after Israel's triumph in 1967, the theorists were uncomfortable with victory over Arabs who were viewed as "more" indigenous. So the theory rebranded Jews as white settlers and Israel as "settler colonialist" - a category that no one applied to Israel before 1967. Similarly, the countries of South America, which gained independence in the early 19th century, present a challenge to post-colonial categories. Rather than acknowledge the limitations of the framework, the theory pivots to ideas like "internal colonialism," where creole elites are cast as colonizers despite being native-born. Entire histories of local complexity are flattened to fit the model.
Critical Race Theory cannot explain the success of Jewish or Asian communities, or the antisemitism that emerges from other minorities. So it reclassifies these groups as "white-adjacent" to keep the model intact, even if it requires erasing their distinct histories of persecution.
Identity Politics proclaims that only the oppressed may speak on justice. But when internal dissent arises from within minority communities, it is dismissed as betrayal, not evidence.

In every case, empirical contradictions are ignored, minimized or reprocessed into ideological fuel. New jargon is invented to plug leaks in the framework, not to update or repair it.

The Jewish Exception: When Theories Break

Across these modern ideologies, there is one case that poses a unique and persistent problem: the Jews - and especially the Jewish state. Again and again, the existence of Jews defies ideological categorization in these rigid systems. Jews are both historically oppressed and disproportionately successful. They are both indigenous to the Land of Israel and accused of being foreign colonizers of the same land. They have been scapegoated by both the far right and the far left. No binary framework can contain them.

For Marxists, Jews were inconveniently middle-class or mercantile - neither industrial proletariat nor feudal aristocracy. Worse, they were often upwardly mobile, becoming successful through hard work, which Marxism cannot accept as a possibility. Thus the term "petit bourgeoisie" became a pejorative used to sideline and discredit Jewish shopkeepers.

For post-colonialists, Zionism should have been a triumph: a displaced people returning to their ancestral land to reclaim sovereignty. But the theory could not tolerate a non-European people exercising power, so Jews were recast as white Europeans and Israel as a settler-colonial outpost - regardless of the facts.

For CRT and identity-based ideologies, Jews violate the theories in multiple ways: by succeeding despite persecution, by being targets of hatred from other minorities, and by resisting the white/non-white dichotomy. To preserve the hierarchy, Jews are demoted from oppressed to privileged. Their suffering is downplayed. Their achievements are proof of their being oppressors. Their very visibility becomes a threat - something the ideology must explain away, denounce, or erase

And because the theories cannot adapt, they must scapegoat. Instead of admitting that Jews expose the theory’s weaknesses, the ideologies double down. The result is not just distortion. It is antisemitism. When Jews are reclassified as villains for failing to conform to the narrative, the ancient pattern of blame resurfaces in a modern vocabulary.

This is not a new failure. It is the latest chapter in a very old refusal to let Jews exist outside someone else's system.

What makes this all the more ironic is that these ideologies often present themselves as the cutting edge of modern moral evolution—enlightened, scientific, and intellectually progressive. Yet when challenged, they are more brittle than many of the religious traditions they deride as outdated. These secular ideologies lack any internal mechanism for doubt, contradiction, or change. They are more dogmatic than anything claimed to have been given by God.

Jewish Ethics: A System That Can Learn

In contrast, Jewish ethics is not built to control reality. It is built to wrestle with it.

It supports and encourages arguments and disagreement within its framework. It adapts to new realities, whether they are political, social or technological. It doesn't pigeonhole people into predefined categories but has the built in concept of repentance and self-improvement. It is not fixated on a single value but has a framework that can balance and prioritize multiple values in conflict.

This is what moral maturity looks like.

Where ideology rejects contradiction, Judaism turns contradiction into dialogue. Where ideology shames uncertainty, Judaism elevates it into wisdom.

Conclusion: Against the Theology of Theories

Ideologies that cannot learn are not ethics. They are theologies pretending to be science. They demand loyalty, not inquiry. Their rigidity is not strength, but fragility. Like all closed systems, they fear the free movement of truth.

Jewish ethics stands apart not because it is ancient, but because it remains open. It preserves a memory older than modern ideologies and offers a humility deeper than any theoretical model: that humans are flawed, truth is complex, and justice requires listening.

In an age of moral panic and ideological echo chambers, that humility may be the most revolutionary ethic of all.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Libya UN ambassador calls Gaza a "Holocaust." It isn't the first time - they did it in 2008 also.

Libya Observer reports:

Libya’s ambassador to the United Nations, Taher El-Sonni, came under sharp criticism from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France during a UN Security Council session on the Palestinian Cause, following his description of the situation in Gaza as a “holocaust” and the “Holocaust of the 21st century”—a comparison the three Western powers deemed inaccurate and antisemitic.

US representative Dorothy Shea stressed that comparing any event to the Nazi Holocaust, which claimed the lives of six million Jews, diminishes its gravity and constitutes antisemitism. She also condemned what she called “false accusations” against Israel.

UK's envoy expressed deep concern, emphasizing the specificity of the Nazi Holocaust and stating that it should not be equated with any other event. She urged instead a focus on bridging the gap between Palestine and Israel.

France’s representative, who presided over the session, reaffirmed his country’s recognition of only one Holocaust committed by the Nazis, stressing that its memory must be respected and not used for comparison—even while acknowledging the suffering of Gaza’s civilians.

Dorothy Shea's response was good:

Since Hamas’ egregious terrorist attack on October 7, 2023, this Council has been subjected to constant lies and slanders targeting Israel.
Yesterday, however, the Council saw a new low. The United States condemns the statement by the Permanent Representative of Libya, who called the unfortunate and tragic civilian deaths in Gaza a, quote, “Holocaust.”
Mr. President, let us be perfectly clear: there is no event in modern history comparable to the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism is clear that any such comparison is antisemitic because it trivializes the Holocaust and desecrates the deaths of the over six million Jews and millions of others who were systematically murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.
Those who deploy such comparisons are perpetuating such antisemitism and should not be allowed the dignity of speaking in this Council.
Unfortunately, grotesque antisemitism is a common feature in this Council’s proceedings. We all sit and watch each week as representatives of certain Member States purposefully avoid sitting next to representatives of the Member State of Israel. We hear constant lies targeting Israel, such as blaming Israel for Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket attacks, for example, the one that that killed and injured hundreds at Al-Ahli Hospital and constant demonization of the Jewish state. Too many representatives of Member States refuse to acknowledge Hamas’ misuse of civilian infrastructure under the nose of the UN, or they also refuse to condemn them for the very terrorist group that they are.
Mr. President, in conclusion, this antisemitism and anti-Israel bias is beneath the dignity of this Council and should be unacceptable anywhere.

Interestingly, this is not the first time Libya compared Gaza to the Holocaust.

In 2008, the Libyan representative compared the situation in Gaza to the concentration camps set up by Nazi Germany to exterminate Jews. Immediately after Dabbashi made his remarks, the ambassadors of France, the United States, Britain, Belgium and Costa Rica walked out of the council chamber.

2008 was before any war in Gaza. Which just goes to prove that these antisemites know that they are lying, but they score points by attacking Jews.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)