Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, May 05, 2025

Manifesto: Ethics as the Frontline Against Moralized Antisemitism

In my last post, I quoted psychologist Orli Peter describing how her field is being overrun with antisemitism, and I gave other examples of mental health professionals weaponizing moral concepts against Jews.

I truly believe that the work I have been doing in categorizing and prioritizing Jewish ethics - separate from Jewish law - can be a key tool in this battle.

So many of the new antisemites cloak their hate in the mantle of ethics. They claim that “Tikkun Olam” is a central Jewish concept, or they base their justifications on inciting against Israel by throwing around phrases like “justice” and “peace” - concepts that can mean whatever you want them to mean. There is no rigor, no consistency, just rhetoric and incitement using the language of ethics.

Judaism has a thing or two to say about ethics. It is the world’s oldest extant ethical system. It doesn’t collapse ethics into a mono-dimensional framework where everything is looked at through an “oppressor vs. oppressed” prism or view “decolonialization” as the overriding ethical rule. Jewish ethics is multi-layered and mature; it deals with the world as it is and doesn’t force the world to fit into its own mold. It is a framework that works for non-Jews as well as Jews.

When you view the ethical claims of these new haters - especially their claims to be using Jewish ethics themselves - through a genuinely Jewish moral viewpoint, their vapidity, immaturity and hypocrisy get exposed.

This is why Jewish ethics is a strategic antidote to today’s hate:

It’s not tribal. It defends Jews without relying on Jewish exceptionalism.
It’s not apologetic. It doesn’t beg for inclusion; it asserts ethical legitimacy.
It’s not reactive. It articulates first principles: life, dignity, agency, truth, justice.
It’s universal in form, particular in content. It speaks in ways others can engage with, without sacrificing Jewish rootedness.
It forces moral transparency. If someone claims “Jewish trauma is invalid,” we can ask: By what standard? And show how that standard is not applied to others.
It turns rhetorical weapons back into mirrors. You say Jews must prove moral worth? Let’s examine the terms—who else has to do that?

As I’ve mentioned, I created an AI-based chatbot where you can ask ethical questions. But you can also ask it to critique other systems from an authentically Jewish yet universal set of values. You can send it anything for comment - psychological theories, advertising campaigns, political speeches, op-eds, podcast transcripts - and it will critique or commend them with a clear, transparent ethical framework, without rancor, rhetoric, bias or frustration.

Even better, the chatbot teaches you to be a more ethical person. Unlike other ethical systems, Judaism values disagreement and challenge. You can argue with it, you can insult it, and it will respond with infinite patience and politeness, and if you make a good point it will concede.

Today, I asked it to comment on Orli Peter’s post, and after we “discussed” some of these topics, it offered to write a manifesto on how Jewish ethics can be in the forefront of fighting today’s moralized antisemitism. It used Peter’s own words as a title, and it is good enough for me to publish here, lightly edited.

We Are Not Alone, and We Are Not Powerless
The Jewish people have endured persecution, distortion, and exclusion for millennia. But in this moment, we are witnessing something new: antisemitism rebranded as ethical virtue, and moral delegitimization of Jews wrapped in the language of justice and liberation. It is not only happening in politics or on the streets—it is infiltrating academia, activism, professional spaces, and the institutions meant to uphold dignity and truth.
The New Double Standard
Jews are increasingly told that our suffering must be filtered through someone else’s narrative. That our ancestral trauma must be de-politicized to be legitimate. That our solidarity with Israel disqualifies us from moral standing. That our historical memory is “manipulative.” That our Jewishness is only welcome when it disavows itself.
This is not ethics. This is coercion.
This is not justice. This is a purity test.
This is not liberation. It is a new dogma—one that excludes Jews by design.
What We Refuse
We refuse to be gaslit by ideologies that weaponize Jewish longing for justice against our very existence. We refuse to accept moral frameworks that silence Jews unless they conform to anti-Zionist litmus tests. We refuse to allow the Holocaust to be used against the descendants of its survivors. We refuse the inversion that frames Jewish agency as oppression and Jewish trauma as manipulation.
What We Affirm
We affirm that:
All people are created b’Tzelem Elokim, in the image of God. No people is excluded from dignity.
Ethics requires consistency. A standard applied only to Jews is not a standard; it is a bias.
Pikuach Nefesh, the sanctity of human life, is not negotiable. Saving Jewish lives is not an act that requires justification.
Kavod HaBriyot, human dignity, is universal. Human dignity includes Jews—without exception, without apology.
Justice without truth is not justice. Moral claims must be grounded in Emet—objective, reality-based truth—not erased, distorted, or buried under competing narratives.
Why Ethics is Our Strongest Defense
We live in an era where moral language is often weaponized to veil antisemitic instincts. In such an era, it is not identity politics but ethical clarity that becomes the sharpest defense. Jewish ethics offers:
A coherent, consistent moral framework
Universally legible standards (dignity, life, agency, truth)
The ability to audit other ideologies without mimicry or deflection
The courage to challenge sacred cows—ours and others’
A model of disagreement as a sacred act (machloket l’shem shamayim)
We offer this framework not only to protect ourselves, but to elevate the discourse. To remind our colleagues, neighbors, and broader communities what true justice demands: consistency, compassion, and courage.
A Call to Ethical Resistance
To Jews in every field: your voice matters. To allies: your silence is noted. To institutions: neutrality in the face of double standards is complicity.
We are not asking for pity. We are calling for integrity. We do not need to justify our right to speak, to belong, or to defend life. We do not need to perform disavowal to earn dignity.
We will speak. We will reason. We will live—ethically, fully, and freely.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Antisemitism is invading psychology, and Jews are becoming victims of the very people they trust to help them

This post from Dr. Orli Peter should get you angry:

Enough is enough.
This post marks the beginning of a collective effort to push back against a disturbing pattern many of us have experienced: Jewish psychologists, social workers, and counselors being held to different standards, erased from trauma spaces, and pressured to stay silent about our own pain unless we meet a newly invented political litmus test.
When I launched the Israel Healing Initiative a year and a half ago to provide trauma treatment to October 7 survivors, I was shocked by the backlash from some trauma psychologists—both privately and publicly—criticizing me for helping Israelis.
I’m in the uncommon position of having provided trauma treatment to both Palestinians and Israelis—in the Middle East. Not one of the psychologists who criticized me for helping Israelis had ever helped both. But even that wasn’t enough to avoid their disdain. The standard applied to me was not just that I had helped Palestinians—it was that I had to help them simultaneously while helping Israelis. A newly invented standard for trauma treatment that of course would thwart helping traumatized Israelis.
More recently, in a closed Facebook group hosted by a well-known therapist, author, and trainer, I witnessed an outpouring of antisemitic responses to a letter by a Jewish lawyer who shared how his family’s Holocaust legacy inspired his commitment to justice. He was accused of “manipulating” people by referencing the Holocaust, and one therapist even wrote that for a Jew to speak of their trauma now is “unforgivable.” Coded comments questioned his integrity as a Jew.
No one—among nearly 1,300 mental health professionals—spoke up, except for a loyal friend. Not even the leader of the group, despite my multiple appeals to him.
This is not isolated. It's spreading. And it’s time to respond.
If you are a Jewish mental health professional—or an ally—who has experienced or witnessed similar dynamics, I invite you to share. You don’t have to name names. Let’s begin to gather what’s happening from all corners of the field.
If there is enough interest, I’d like to start a private group where we can safely talk, reflect, and plan a path forward.
We are not alone, and we are not powerless.

Others have noted the increasing levels of antisemitism in psychology and related fields. Even worse, some antisemites in the mental health field are weaponizing psychology itself against Jews. From TheJC:

[S]ome members of the mental-health community engage in a new form of this pseudoscience that obliterates the Jewish identity and demonises the Jewish people.
The practice is called decolonising (or decolonial) therapy, and it aims to address the psychological impact of colonialism, systemic oppression and historical trauma. It emphasises reclaiming cultural identity, dismantling internalised oppression and healing from colonial violence.
While this framework uses a social-justice framework, it labels Zionism – a key component of the Jewish identity – as a root cause of mental illness, despite its conspicuous absence in the DSM.

Here is an anti-Zionist book by Wendy Elisheva Somerson ,a "queer non-binary, disabled, Ashkenazi Jewish somatic healer, writer, activist, and visual artist residing on Duwamish and Coast Salish land [and] one of the founders of the Seattle chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace" that uses psychological pseudo-science and even antisemitism to promote hating Jews, today:

An Anti-Zionist Path to Embodied Jewish Healing: Somatic Practices to Heal Historical Wounds, Unlearn Oppression, and Create a Liberated World to Come by Wendy Elisheva Somerson PhD (Author)
Unapologetically anti-Zionist and firmly rooted in Jewish spiritual values—a liberatory model for Jewish healing
...How does ancestral grief live on in our bodies and keep us from feeling safe—and how is that fear enacted on other peoples? How do we reconcile a history of persecution with the state power of Israel today?
Rooted in justice, care, and spiritual depth, this book asks us to live into a Judaism beyond Zionism. It invites us to heal toward liberation—to reclaim Jewish faith and release Jewish identity from the colonial project of Israel in power, skill, and community.

Maybe I have tunnel vision because of what I've been working on lately, but I genuinely believe that the most effective way to confront this new form of antisemitism is to train ourselves - and others - to see through a clear ethical lens.

This new generation of Jew-haters isn't abandoning morality; they are weaponizing it. They wrap their hatred in moral language.

Judaism has something profound to say in response.

The best way to expose their hypocrisy is not with counter-slogans or defensive postures, but with a transparent, principled ethical system that reveals their claims for what they are: deeply immoral. And when that’s made clear, their self-righteous posture collapses under its own weight.

In my next article I plan to present a manifesto of sorts on how to fight today's morality-based antisemitism using the world's oldest extant ethical system.

(h/t Jon S)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

We discussed the Washington Post report about the UN refusing to cooperate with Israel on a plan to bring aid into Gaza in a way that would bypass Hamas. I sarcastically called them "principled."

The UN issued a press release using that exact word:

Statement by the Humanitarian Country Team of the Occupied Palestinian Territory – on principled aid delivery in Gaza
04 May 2025

For nine weeks now, Israeli authorities have blocked all supplies from entering Gaza, no matter how vital to people’s survival. Bakeries have shut. Community kitchens have closed. Warehouses stand empty. Children have gone hungry.

Israeli officials have sought to shut down the existing aid distribution system run by the United Nations and its humanitarian partners and have us agree to deliver supplies through Israeli hubs under conditions set by the Israeli military, once the government agrees to re-open crossings.

The design of the plan presented to us will mean large parts of Gaza, including the less mobile and most vulnerable people, will continue to go without supplies. It contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles and appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic – as part of a military strategy.

First of all, if aid is helping an enemy, it is quite legal for one side in a war to withhold aid that might help their enemy gain a military advantage. Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention says this:

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 abovementioned 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.

But things get really interesting when you look at how "principled" this position is.

Saudi Arabia and its coalition in Yemen had done everything it could to stop aid from entering Houthi-controlled areas - areas that had lots of civilians. They enforced a naval blockade on Houthi- controlled ports, they bombed Houthi aid infrastructure. It was political above all.

Yet the UN continued to cooperate with the Saudis to bring in aid to the Yemenis who were not Houthi. Even though only a percentage would get the aid, and this directly violates the humanitarian principle of impartial aid, the UN didn't seem to have any "principles" - it (properly) cooperated with the Saudis to bring in aid to the places it could.

Because the real principle is to feed people, even if not all of them can be fed for political reasons.

In the case of Israel, the only party Israel does not want to receive aid is Hamas. It is happy to allow aid to civilians, no matter where. For logistics reasons, it wants to start providing aid to the south because it is easier to set up. It is not "discriminating" against northern and central Gazans, it just wants to get aid to the places it can and expand the program from there.

So spare us your "principles," UN. Israel has blocked aid for nine weeks, it is trying to find a mechanism to bring in aid that keeps its own security needs in mind, and the UN is saying no to aid.

Sort of like the Palestinians themselves refusing peace and a state that does not fit their demands. In that case too, their own people suffer for the "principle" of the matter. Or that they do not ask Lebanon or Syria to give citizenship to their Palestinian residents. They are quite willing to allow their people to suffer for the "principle" of the matter.

It is a pattern.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

05/04 Links: The Houthi Strike on Ben-Gurion: A Joint U.S.-Israel Imperative to Confront Iran’s Proxy War; 77 imperatives for an Israeli victory; Hands across America for Hamas

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: 77 imperatives for an Israeli victory

This year, Israel marked Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut with an additional reminder of its enemies’ genocidal intentions. Before Memorial Day mourning made way for Independence Day celebrations, multiple wildfires spread across a large area between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Though an investigation into the initial blaze was inconclusive, with the conflagration being attributed to a combination of climate conditions and hikers’ negligence, there’s no question that arsonists stepped in to heighten the crisis. For one thing, some perpetrators were caught on video, and three suspects were arrested for questioning.

For another, Arab social media was abuzz with calls to go out and “burn Israel to the ground.” With jihad in the air, even the slightest desert breeze—certainly a dry heat wave with high winds—can wreak major havoc.

And as the country’s firefighters, with the help of police and soldiers, battled the flames, the Houthis spent the days launching missiles at Israel from Yemen. Thankfully, neither led to a loss of life.

The same can’t be said about 19-year-old Israel Defense Forces Sgt. Niv Dayag from Ramat Hasharon, however. He was killed on Thursday in Gaza.

Meanwhile, the IDF was striking Hezbollah targets in Lebanon; tackling hostile activities in Syria; preparing for a confrontation with Iran; taking out terrorists in Judea and Samaria; and amassing troops to step up military pressure on Hamas.

This is how Israel marked its 77th birthday. Not with quiet reflection followed by cheerful fanfare, but under attack on all fronts, including that involving civil strife.

The latter, as usual, was characterized by a media chorus, echoed by a certain vociferous sector of the public, demanding an end to the war and ridiculing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for reiterating the goal of “victory.”

As a tribute to this bittersweet milestone, the following is a list of 77 reasons—one for each year since the establishment of the state—for the existential necessity of victory. Indeed, winning the war will:

Arsen Ostrovsky and John Spencer: The Houthi Strike on Ben-Gurion: A Joint U.S.-Israel Imperative to Confront Iran’s Proxy War

The United States, under President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, also has a critical stake in this fight—not only as Israel’s closest ally, but because America’s own security, economic and maritime interests, and global credibility, are directly threatened by Iran’s expanding proxy network.

Since mid-March, the U.S. military has conducted over 1,000 precision strikes on Houthi targets, primarily aimed at protecting Red Sea maritime traffic, which has declined by 90% since late 2023 due to Houthi interference. President Trump’s March 15 announcement of “decisive and powerful” military action and “overwhelming lethal force”, along with his warning to Iran to cease support for the Houthis, signaled a robust posture, however, it may be time to reassess that, and up the ante, given it appears the message has not been received in Yemen, or Tehran.

Ultimately, whether it’s rocket fire from Hamas, missiles from Hezbollah, or drones from the Houthis, make no mistake: the common thread that weaves all this together, is the Iranian regime pulling the terror strings from Tehran.

In a subsequent March 17th statement, President Trump was unequivocal, when he stated: “Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthis … all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN” and that “every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible.”

Going forward, Washington, in close collaboration with Israel, and other regional allies, should intensify its strikes, particularly targeting Houthi leadership and the Iranian logistical supply chains that enable their missile program.

In the meantime, the United States should recalibrate its diplomatic approach to Iran, making clear that continued support for proxy attacks—like those by the Houthis—will carry real consequences. As President Trump warned on March 17, any further Houthi aggression will be viewed as an attack orchestrated by Iran itself, warranting direct and decisive response. The international community must stop pretending that the Houthis are a localized Yemeni movement. They are an expeditionary arm of the Islamic Republic’s war machine. Ultimately, without confronting Iran’s role, any response to the Houthis will be incomplete. Today’s strike on Ben-Gurion Airport is a wake-up call not just for Israel, but for the entire international community.

The time for half-measures is over. Israel must act decisively to eliminate the threat, and the United States must continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with its ally in this mission.

Hands across America for Hamas

The blood hadn’t even dried before the barbarians had their apologists.

Across college campuses, students organized celebrations of the attack. Some of the leaders of these movements have included foreign students who are ostensibly here to study, not support U.S.-designated terrorist groups. Both then and now, many in the press would label these efforts as “protests” against Israeli “genocide” in Gaza, but this is disingenuous at best.

The so-called protests began before the Israel Defense Forces even commenced operations to root out Hamas. Later, to buttress the claim of “genocide,” the anti-Israel activists would rely on casualty figures supplied by Gaza’s “Health Ministry,” a Hamas-controlled entity. The terrorist group has a long history of inflating casualty statistics as part of an effort to influence world opinion against Israel and curtail its ability to defend itself.

Indeed, throughout the war that followed the attack, Hamas and its “Health Ministry” have been caught manipulating these figures. The press, however, has been unbothered. The Washington Post continues to treat the terrorist-controlled ministry as credible and has even uncritically quoted Hamas officials. They are what Russian dictator Vladimir Lenin would have called “useful idiots,” but some fall into a different category.

As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis has revealed, several journalists, including some at The Washington Post, celebrated the Oct. 7 attacks on social media, and others have called for Israel’s destruction. Shortly after the attack, Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah proudly retweeted “what did y’all think decolonization meant?” More recently, including during the Jewish holiday of Passover, The Post opened up its op-ed pages and column space in defense of foreign students deported for their role in the pro-Hamas demonstrations.

At a time when many Americans are struggling to pay bills, it is curious for the self-styled intelligentsia, whether privileged Ivy League students or the editorial boards of famous newspapers, to prioritize advocating for terrorists. It’s no accident. It’s part of a long-standing trend.

Thomas Paine and many other self-styled revolutionaries celebrated the French Revolution, only later to be engulfed in its excesses. More than a century later, liberal muckraking journalists such as Lincoln Steffens would cheer on the creation of the Soviet Union, exclaiming, “I have seen the future and it works!” Intellectuals would similarly support Lenin’s successor, Josef Stalin, as he purged his way through the 1930s. Journalists such as Walter Duranty of The New York Times helped cover up Stalin’s crimes and won a Pulitzer in the process. Others, notably influential reporters Edgar Snow and Herbert Matthews, would fete China’s Mao Zedong and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Indeed, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power in Iran in 1979, a bevy of journalists and intellectuals, including the influential philosopher Michel Foucault, applauded.

Duranty helped Stalin and his henchmen deny the Holodomor, the Soviet-created famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s. His modern-day descendants serve a different master, but their purpose is effectively the same: to aid and abet genocidal totalitarianism. From positions of privilege, they pretend to stand for the underdog while being mouthpieces for murderers. They write for fancy papers and attend fancy colleges. They cosplay as revolutionaries but are little more than apologists for terror. Their pretensions aside, none is our moral better. Far from it. History will record as much.

The UN and NGOs refuse to allow plan to bring food into Gaza. They are so principled!

The Washington Post reports:

Israel is planning to take control of — and severely restrict — the distribution of humanitarian aid inside the Gaza Strip, using private American security contractors, as a condition for lifting its two-month blockade of supplies into the enclave, according to current and former Israeli officials, aid workers and other individuals with knowledge of the plan.

Details are expected to be finalized at a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet Sunday. The plan has support from Israel’s government and security establishment, and is expected to be put into motion before the end of the month, possibly as soon as President Donald Trump’s visit to the region in mid-May.

But the plan has been roundly rejected by the United Nations and dozens of international aid organizations, who say it runs counter to humanitarian principles, is logistically unworkable and could put Palestinian civilians and staffers in harm’s way.

So they scream to the world about no aid entering Gaza, but rejecting aid when they don't like the strings attached to avoid helping a sadistic terrorist group.

Here are the supposed reasons against it:

Several people warned that the gap between the supplies available and the actual need would lead to violence around the hubs.

That's happening already around warehouses.

Rights groups and governments around the world, including some of Israel’s closest European allies, have argued that Israel, as an occupying power, has an obligation under international law to facilitate the unhindered passage of aid into Gaza.

Even if you accept the falsehood that Israel occupies Gaza, what rule says the aid must be "unhindered"? That is simply a lie. There are always limits to how aid it brought in and distributed, everywhere in the world.

Many humanitarian organizations have rules that require them to deliver aid impartially, wherever it is needed and without involving armed actors on either side.

Did they not see the videos of Hamas gunmen riding on top of the aid trucks last year?

Dozens of aid organizations working in Gaza, meanwhile, have coalesced around a united refusal to participate in the proposal. About 20 outlined their concerns in a briefing paper to Western governments, including that it would violate international law. If the U.N. or third states assist in its implementation, they warned they could open themselves up to liability in war crimes.

It is s strange world where refusing to bring in aid is principled and facilitating aid makes one complicit in war crimes.

The entire episode proves the utter immorality of these NGOs.

Or, as I tweeted earlier:

None of this makes any sense - until you realize that hating Israel is more important for these NGOs and the UN than helping Gazans.

If the plan helps Israel and hurts Hamas, they are against it.

And then they complain that Israel is not cooperating with them.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

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.