Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 08, 2025

05/08 Links Pt2: A Pogrom Is Brewing in Canada; Pulitzer’s Ignoble Prize; The Campus Hamasniks Won’t Have It So Easy This Time; Israel warns travelers to Eurovision to not show Jewish, Israeli symbols

From Ian:

A Pogrom Is Brewing in Canada

What all of this has led to is the suppression of open Jewish life in Canada, the hiding of Jewish symbols, the need to host Jewish events in secret or with even more intense security, and even some people fleeing the country. Students at Toronto Metropolitan University who recently shared that they “can’t be openly Jewish” on campus aren’t the exception. They’ve become the norm. “I went in with people hating me right off the bat and me not being able to make any friends who are non-Jewish in my classes or in my program,” one student said.

What is unfolding in Canada is not a grassroots, spontaneous expression of solidarity for Palestinians, although the press covers it that way.

This is an orchestrated effort to normalize antisemitic incitement under the guise of political activism. The days of exclusionary signs at golf clubs have been replaced by open calls for jihad and terrorist cosplay—all animated by an obsession with intimidating Jews, including in their own neighborhoods.

Pogroms rarely begin with organized massacres; typically, they start with tolerated incitement, with mobs unpunished, and with authorities hesitant to act decisively for fear of political blowback.

And that is perhaps the most alarming thing of all happening right now in Canada.

On more than one occasion, protesters clad in keffiyehs, inciting violence, intimidating Jews and non-Jews alike, and calling for the erasure of Israel have been met with equivocation.

Too often, authorities have hesitated to enforce laws against harassment and incitement when masked by the rhetoric of “resistance.” Political leaders have downplayed the extremist nature of these rallies. Universities and unions have wavered in condemning overt Jew-hatred cloaked in the language of activism, righteousness, and progressivism.

On one occasion, for instance, police officers in Toronto handed out coffee and baked goods to protesters. On another occasion, they allegedly arrested a Jewish man, in a Jewish neighborhood this month, for confronting the terrorist supporters who have taken to the streets every weekend since October 7, 2023. For nearly 600 days, Jews in Canada have been asking themselves: Is the state still on our side? Is law enforcement willing to do what it takes to shut this down?

In this sense, Wilf was perhaps more right than she could have imagined.

Canada now faces a moral test. Our institutions—from police and prosecutors to politicians and civil society—must decide whether to confront antisemitic threats firmly or equivocate and excuse them as protest.

This is not a Jewish issue. It is a Canadian one. A society that allows a vulnerable minority to be openly menaced cannot claim to be safe or just for any of its citizens. Antisemitism is often the first sign of broader social decay. If mobs can intimidate Jewish schools and hospitals today, what do we expect they’ll do tomorrow?

Everyone with eyes is bracing for the explosion.

A New Approach to Dealing with Boycott Activities: Exacting a Price from the PA

For many years, Israel has been the subject of a widespread, coordinated attack to promote Boycotts, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS). The goal of the BDS movement is to undermine Israel's legitimacy as the nation-state of the Jewish people. It is impossible to ignore the fact that the Palestinian Authority (PA) stands at the forefront of this struggle, in breach of all the agreements it has signed. To date, the State of Israel and its representatives have focused their efforts on combating BDS activities in various ways, mainly in the international arena.

Against this background, and as a complementary activity, the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA) has formulated a proposal for an alternative approach to this phenomenon.

The main thrust of the proposal is to exact a price from the PA for its activities to promote BDS by presenting and stressing the fact that BDS activities can be a two-way street.

Palestinian "exports" to Israel benefit the PA because they allow the employment of tens of thousands of Palestinians in various roles to produce the goods sold to Israel. The PA benefits from a situation where it acts simultaneously both to promote a boycott against Israel and to continue to profit from trade with it.

If Israel were not only to stop the entry of workers but also to expand the reduction of trade with PA territories to the point of a complete ban, the damage to the Palestinian economy could be enormous and would lead to an almost complete slowdown and even a rise in unemployment.

Seth Mandel: Columbia Exposes the ‘Academic Freedom’ Hypocrites

What these groups did yesterday at Columbia is, simply, what these groups do. There was no escalation, in other words. This is just what defenders of the tentifada groups have been defending all along.

Here is how new Columbia President Claire Shipman described the scene she witnessed:
“I spent the late afternoon and evening at Butler Library, as events were unfolding, to understand the situation on the ground and to be able to make the best decisions possible. I arrived to see one of our Public Safety officers wheeled out on a gurney and another getting bandaged. As I left hours later, I walked through the reading room, one of the many jewels of Butler Library, and I saw it defaced and damaged in disturbing ways and with disturbing slogans. Violence and vandalism, hijacking a library—none of that has any place on our campus.”

So that’s what’s new—the idea that now, finally, these are not Columbia values.

Shipman continued:
“I am particularly heartbroken, and incensed, that this disruption occurred when our students are intensely focused on critical academic work. At a moment when our community deserves calm and the opportunity to study, reflect, and complete the academic year successfully, these actions created unnecessary stress and danger. I have seen how much our community wants to take back our narrative, to do what they came to Columbia to do—learn, thrive, and grow—not take over a library.”

That part is still up in the air, is it not? Whether the Columbia “community” wants to learn, or at least to change the narrative. It does seem as though Shipman wants to change the narrative.

That narrative has been carefully crafted by the protesters over the past year and a half. They have not spent any energy disproving the allegations against them, and last night they were beyond parody. The main protest group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, put out a message in the middle of the standoff reiterating their cowardice and victim complex, whining that they “refuse to show our IDs under militarized arrest.”

The good news, I suppose, is that that statement proves that nobody in that group has ever been under actual militarized arrest.

Eighty of them were, however, eventually put under regular old arrest once the NYPD got involved. Before that, the school’s security team had done something remarkably wise: They refused to let protesters leave the “occupation” unless they showed their identification. Suddenly, the masks and keffiyehs were useless. These kids weren’t under some kind of Beijing-style surveillance state with facial recognition technology condemning them to a life of low social-credit scores. They were just dime-a-dozen thugs.

Even the groups who are usually highly defensive of the tentifada movement popped up with milquetoast statements about the students having gone too far. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) quietly tsk-tsked the bad behavior. But it would have been nice had the “academic freedom” groups been leading the fight on campus to restore the academic freedom of the Jewish students under siege. Had they done so—had they cared enough about academic freedom to protect it from campus Hamasniks—they wouldn’t be fighting to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to Harvard and Columbia and the rest. Alas, here we are.

Abe Greenwald: The Campus Hamasniks Won’t Have It So Easy This Time

via Commentary Newsletter sign up here There is little room left for pretending that they’re just a bunch of idealistic kids who hate war. Whether Donald Trump wins his fight against university radicalism, the effort itself is serving to bring the woke jihad’s worst actors out of the shadows. The group responsible for yesterday’s occupation at Columbia is none other than Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), the same organization in which pending deportee Mahmoud Khalil was a leader. Because of this case, we know that CUAD is on the record celebrating Hamas’s October 7 massacre, praising Yahya Sinwar, and mourning his death. In March, the families of hostages kidnapped by Hamas filed a lawsuit against CUAD and other activist groups for “aiding and abetting Hamas’ continuing acts of international terrorism.” That suit has brought to light what could turn out to be evidence of ties between foreign terrorists and American protesters.

It's all starting up again. Summer is coming, and that’s often protest season. Additionally, Israel is poised for a huge incursion into Gaza and protesters have now seized on their detained brothers and sisters as a further cause for violence and disruption.

I don’t think, however, we’re likely to see schools and law-enforcement react to these terrorist supporters as they did before Trump’s election. The difference is already noticeable. Thirty-one people were arrested for destruction at the University of Washington, and the school suspended and banned from campus 21 students. Columbia called in the NYPD, who arrested more than 80 people. They’re all going to be fingerprinted, and ICE is monitoring the results. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said State would be "reviewing the visa status of the trespassers and vandals who took over Columbia University’s library. Pro-Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation."

Whatever the ultimate extent of Trump’s success in breaking up the anti-Semitic pro-terrorist network and deporting the non-citizens involved, he’s already made an important difference. More Americans know who these people really are, and authorities are responding with more than words.

05/08 Links Pt1: UN Obstructed Probe into UNRWA Staff Tied to Hamas; Indian forces kill terrorist that murder Daniel Pearl; Why Hamas Wants To Control Gaza's Humanitarian Aid

From Ian:

Overlooked USAID OIG Investigation Found UNRWA Staff Tied to Hamas — but the UN Obstructed the Probe

Instead of cooperating transparently with the U.S. investigation, the United Nations appears to have gone out of its way to obstruct it. The UN’s own Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) did allow USAID OIG to review its internal report into UNRWA staff involvement in the attacks—but only after redacting the names of the implicated individuals. As the USAID OIG bluntly stated: “OIOS redacted the names of subjects, rendering the report unusable for our purposes.”

To make matters worse, UNRWA refused to provide the names of any personnel it terminated in connection with October 7. That means U.S. agencies have no way of knowing whether these individuals simply migrated from one aid group to another—potentially putting them right back on the payroll of U.S.-funded NGOs operating in Gaza.

In response to these findings, USAID OIG referred the information to the State Department’s Office of Inspector General for “administrative enforcement remedies.” While that’s a start, the lack of media scrutiny and broader U.S. government response raises serious concerns about accountability—or lack thereof.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t a case of one or two bad apples slipping through the cracks. This is an institutional failure on the part of UNRWA, compounded by the UN’s refusal to provide even the most basic transparency in the face of a mass terror attack. And yet, even after these revelations, there remains no serious public debate in Washington or Brussels about defunding the agency or holding it to real standards of oversight.

As USAID OIG rightly emphasized, the goal moving forward is to “prevent members of Hamas from circulating from UNRWA to other aid organizations.” That’s a noble and necessary aim—but without full cooperation from the UN and decisive action from donor nations, it may prove impossible.

Former US Delta Force commander backs Judea, Samaria sovereignty

Retired three-star general William Boykin, a former commander of the U.S. Army’s Delta Force and undersecretary of defense for intelligence, expressed support for Israel extending its sovereignty over Judea and Samaria during a tour with the Samaria Regional Council on Sunday.

“What we’re doing here is standing on a time bomb that’s going to go off at some point. It already did on the 7th of October,” Boykin declared, speaking alongside Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan.

“It’s gonna happen again, and that’s why … we need to recognize that if we don’t create a situation where we have sovereignty here, we’re going to see another Oct. 7,” said Boykin, who was tasked with the pursuit of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein by President George W. Bush.

“There are people who have no knowledge or understanding, and they believe that a 15-mile stretch can be part of your defense—and that is not the case,” he stated, Israel’s Arutz 7 outlet reported. “You and we must stand together and say: We will not accept a two-state solution!”

Boykin and Dagan toured Samaria’s major sites, including the Trump Observatory in Peduel, Joshua’s Altar on Mount Ebal, the Mitzpe Yosef point overlooking Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus (Shechem), as well as the Barkan Industrial Zone, Elon Moreh and Har Bracha, the council said.

At the end of the visit, Boykin presented the Samaria leader with a Green Beret pin. “You are a warrior—you fight for what you believe in,” he said, adding: “This is the emblem for the special forces, the Green Berets.”

Indian forces kill terrorist involved in murder of Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl

The Indian government announced on Thursday that its military had killed an Islamist terrorist who was involved in the murder Jewish-American journalist Daniel Pearl.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India's governing party, said that the Indian army killed Pakistani terrorist Abdul Rauf Azhar in "Operation Sindhoor."

A group of Islamist terrorists, including Azhar, kidnapped and murdered Pearl in 2002. The terrorist was affiliated with al-Qaeda and Jaish-e-Mohammed, an Islamist terror group that aims to separate Kashmir from India and fully incorporate it into Pakistan.

Who was Daniel Pearl, Jewish-American journalist?

Pearl was working as the South Asia bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal and was originally stationed in New Delhi. He moved to Karachi, Pakistan, to investigate terror after the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York City.

On January 23, 2002, Pearl was abducted by Islamist terrorists at a hotel in Karachi. His abductors, who called themselves the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, accused him of being an Israeli spy and sent the US a list of demands if they wanted Pearl freed.

The US government failed to meet the demands. In a video, Pearl stated he was Jewish and had visited Israel multiple times, moments before he was executed.

"My father's Jewish, my mother's Jewish, I'm Jewish. My family follows Judaism. Back in the town of Bnei Brak, there is a street named after my great grandfather, Chaim Pearl, who was one of the founders of the town." he said in the video.

India launched "Operation Sindoor" on Wednesday, which it claimed targeted "terrorist infrastructure." The operation was launched after Pakistani terrorists killed 26 Hindu tourists in Kashmir last month.

In the BJP announcement, the party said that Azhar was involved in a number of terror activities, including the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight, the 2016 Pathankot Air Force base attack, and a 2001 terror attack on the Indian parliament.

Dwindling Holocaust Survivor Population Forces Charities To Find Alternative Guilting Techniques (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook and Substack pages.

Jerusalem, May 8 - Israelis who lived through Nazi persecution number in the low six figures at most, statistics indicate, which places fundraising efforts for various welfare projects in jeopardy, as those organizations must begin pivoting away from tugging heartstrings to solicit money by recruiting such aged people in their publicity materials as more and more of them die off or become otherwise incapacitated.

Depending on the definition used by the statisticians in question, somewhere between 115,000 and 140,000 Holocaust survivors live in Israel - with all but a handful of the very oldest having lived through Nazi-controlled Europe or North Africa as children or adolescents. The shrinking demographic can provide fewer and fewer paid or volunteer candidates each year to look poor, lonely, and receiving insufficient care so that the organization producing the fundraising promotion can guilt Israelis into choosing that charity over others. The phenomenon has received increased attention at nonprofit powwows over the last three decades.

Soon, analysts predict, the fundraising models will cease to shame people into thinking their own stinginess might contribute to the substandard living conditions of Holocaust survivors, and charity organizations will be forced to cobble together causes with less general appeal in order to meet their fundraising goals.

"The Shoah remains the only truly universal trauma that can be milked in this way," acknowledged Ronit Hermann, a resource development consultant with Shatil, the NGO-capacity-building arm of the New Israel Fund. "For decades, it's been something of a cash cow. But as it gets harder and harder to find survivors able and willing to serve in this mascot capacity, organizations must identify and develop alternatives - none of which, unfortunately, have the same unifying solidarity underlying them that made Shoah business so effective."

"October seventh certainly resonates in terms of trauma," she explained, "but it's still too raw and looks too exploitative this close in. It'll be a good few years before 'Nova survivor' or 'October seventh survivor' becomes a thing in general charity fundraising work. In the meantime, organizations must fall back on the standbys of distressed children and overwrought, staged scenes of struggle, to get the desired emotional response."

In some political circles, however, the alarm bells mean little. A spokesman for Human Rights Watch assured a journalist that if the group's work succeeds, a second Holocaust will take place soon enough, with the only question becoming whether there will be anyone around afterwards to fundraise off of it.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The UN has a working definition of Islamophobia:

Islamophobia is a fear, prejudice and hatred of Muslims that leads to provocation, hostility and intolerance by means of threatening, harassment, abuse, incitement and intimidation of Muslims and non-Muslims, both in the online and offline world. Motivated by institutional, ideological, political and religious hostility that transcends into structural and cultural racism, it targets the symbols and markers of being a Muslim.

This definition emphasises the link between institutional levels of Islamophobia and manifestations of such attitudes, triggered by the visibility of the victim’s perceived Muslim identity. This approach also interprets Islamophobia as a form of racism, whereby Islamic religion, tradition and culture are seen as a ‘threat’ to the Western values.

This is not the only definition of Islamophobia that leans on it as a form of racism. The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims says:

Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.

This has been a trend in recent years. I cannot find anyone saying anti-Muslim hatred is a type of racism before maybe 10 years ago. but that idea has gained currency.

I dislike the term "race" altogether since there is no scientific basis for saying that people with different skin color have any real differences in their DNA. But saying that Islamophobia is a kind of racism seems especially strange, since there are Muslims of every racial type.

And if you claim that the definition of racism should be extended to include religions, how come no serious definition of antisemitism says that it is a form of racism?

My guess is that this is a result of Edward Said's work that said that the West treated Islam as a monolith and therefore, later scholars would say, anti-Islam positions were akin to racism and ultimately, were in fact racist. He might have had a point about Western attitudes towards Islam, but again, why has that not been applied to antisemitism?

Calling it similar to racism is defensible. Defining it as racism is not. It seems to me that these definitions are not meant to illuminate but to demonize any criticism of Islam or Muslims as being as reprehensible as racism is. Given that skin color is innate but belief is a choice, the terminology appears to be designed to hinder rather than encourage serious discussion about the (very real) discrimination faced by Muslims.

After all, once Islamophobia is defined as racism, that means that existing international law and conventions that are designed to combat racism (like the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination [ICERD]) automatically automatically apply to anti-Muslim discrimination. But if, for example, some versions of Islam teach that their highest aspirations are martyrdom for jihad, shouldn't that affect how non-Muslims approach the Muslims that hold those views? Is it racist to denounce those who support murdering Jews in Israel as Islamically mandated? Is denouncing Al Qaeda or ISIS members and ideology, all rooted in seemingly valid if not mainstream interpretations of Islam, a violation of ICERD?

Some recent discussions of antisemitism also center it as being close to, if not a form of, racism. But the impression I get is that is not meant as a defense of Jews but as an attack on political opponents using Jews as pawns. Antisemitism can manifest as hatred of Jews as a people, as a nation (Israel) or as a religious group. The people who are pushing to inaccurately frame antisemitism as racism are directing their attacks specifically towards racialized antisemitism - i.e., neo-Nazi and far right antisemitism - and ignoring the many other kinds, the types of antisemitism that they themselves might be excusing.

If anything, antisemitism is more akin to racism than Islamophobia since the vast majority of Jews come from common ancestors. But even so, calling it racism ignores the many other kinds of antisemitic hate and can tacitly excuse them.

Racism is reprehensible, but words matter. Politicizing it does not help anyone and it can only end up watering it down, which does not help anyone.

(h/t Irene)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Amnesty Australia recommends pro-Hamas, antisemitic groups to 'educate yourself" about Gaza

Amnesty Australia publishes a "toolkit" on "responding to the crisis" in Gaza.

The site was created within weeks of October 7; I see an archived version from early December 2023.

While it includes a pro-forma demand that Hamas release all "civilian hostages", everything else is anti-Israel and its entire toolkit is for anti-Israel advocacy.

One telling section:

EDUCATING YOURSELF ON THE CRISIS IN GAZA
To be effective advocates, it’s crucial to educate ourselves about the Gaza crisis and its root causes. Amnesty International can be a source of information, but we also want to provide you with additional resources from other organisations. While we share these external resources, please note that Amnesty International may not endorse everything shared on these platforms. These organisations include:
APAN (Australia Palestine Advocacy Network): APAN is a leading Australian organization dedicated to advocating for justice and human rights in Palestine. Visit their website for reports, webinars, and updates on the Gaza crisis.
Eyes on Palestine: This platform provides a unique perspective on the Palestinian situation through art, culture, and multimedia projects. It offers a different way to understand the impact of the crisis.
Stand With Palestine (Australia): This Australia-specific website offers a range of resources, including information on where to donate, how to contact your MPs, events across Australia, and legal aid support for the Gaza crisis.
Palestinians Sharing Their Stories: Listening to the voices of Palestinians living through the crisis is an essential aspect of understanding the situation. Explore personal testimonies and experiences shared by Palestinians here.
Loud Jew Collective: This organisation includes Jewish voices against oppression and for justice in Palestine. Their resources offer insights into the perspectives of Jews supporting the Palestinian cause.
Jews Against Fascism: This group advocates for human rights and justice, particularly in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their materials provide an alternative viewpoint within the Jewish community.
Jews Against the Occupation: This organisation advocates for a just and equitable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their resources provide alternative viewpoints within the Jewish community.
The Jewish Council of Australia: The Jewish Council of Australia provides an independent, expert Jewish voice opposing antisemitism & racism and supporting Palestinian freedom & justice

They want you to "educate yourself" exclusively with anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda.

There is not even the pretense of asking people to learn about the conflict from both sides. There is nothing remotely objective in these sources.

Some of these "resources" are nothing but Instagram or Facebook pages, with no accountability and no information as to who runs them.

As far as I can tell, not one of there organizations ever issued a statement condemning Hamas for October 7.

The very first one, APAN, celebrates and promotes Palestinian terrorism, calling it "resistance." It explicitly says "all forms of Palestinian resistance," which includes Hamas kidnapping, raping and murdering Israeli women and children, are "legitimate" and legally justified.

"Eye on Palestine" incites against religious Jews by using a photo of them peacefully visiting the Temple Mount and calling them "settlers break[ing] into Al Aqsa Mosque."

To Amnesty, the only Jews worth listening to are the loud minority that position themselves as mainstream yet are condemned by most Jews, who themselves have no voice in Amnesty.

Many of these groups, like the "Loud Jew Collective," and "Jews Against Fascism," have no named members, no accountability, no public commitment to truth.

But they hate Israel and proud Jews, and that is the only criterion that Amnesty Australia requires to promote them.

(h/t Jill)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Huckabee visits the red heifers. Arab media freaks out.

Israel Hayom reports:

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee conducted a historic tour of the ancient Shiloh archaeological site Wednesday morning....

This marks the first time in history that an American ambassador has held an official meeting in Judea and Samaria with the representative forum of Israeli authorities beyond the Green Line, which demarcates the area captured by Israel from Jordan during the Six-Day War. It is also the first time that an official US representative has made an official and public visit to a site that expresses the historical message of Jewish rights to the Judea and Samaria regions.

Huckabee began his tour by meeting with five red heifers being raised at the site, in accordance with the biblical commandment and in preparation for the future building of the Temple.

That last sentence was barely mentioned in English language sources - but it was major news in Arab sites.

Al Jazeera has an 18-paragraph article about Huckabee and the Red Heifers, with more halachic detail on the ritual of the cows than nearly all Hebrew sites.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

05/07 Links Pt2: Who Is the Real Mohsen Mahdawi?; How Jew-hate is becoming the norm in the music industry; Columbia’s Pulitzer Disgrace; Israel’s Eurovision star raises her voice from the ruins

From Ian:

Who Is the Real Mohsen Mahdawi?

Last year on Instagram, Mahdawi described a cousin, Maysara Masharqa, as a “fierce resistance fighter” and “dreamer of liberation” who was killed “after a clash with a traitor Zionist force.”

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a network of Palestinian armed groups, said that Masharqa was one of its “most prominent field commanders” in Jenin. The Israeli Defense Forces said Masharqa “took part in shooting attacks against Israeli communities” and was in a vehicle with Hamas’s leader in Jenin when they were killed by the Israeli military in August of 2024.

Israeli court records show that Masharqa also confessed in 2012 to throwing improvised explosive devices and Molotov cocktails at IDF soldiers “on a large number of occasions and from a short distance,” making pipe bombs, and conspiring to shoot and kill. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.

“Justice is inevitable,” Mahdawi wrote in an Instagram post in January of this year when his uncle’s name appeared on a list of Palestinian prisoners expected to be released in a deal that also returned to Israel four female soldiers who were taken hostage during the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas.

The uncle, Yousef Mahdawi, was sentenced to life in prison for planning a 2003 suicide bomber attack in the Israeli city of Netanya that injured more than 60 people. Israeli court documents show that Yousef Mahdawi recruited the bomber and has received about 1.1 million shekels ($311,000) from the Palestinian Authority since his arrest as part of its “pay for slay” program for Palestinian prisoners incarcerated in Israel.

Two of Mohsen Mahdawi’s other cousins died in a firefight with Israel in 2023. An Instagram post last October shows their faces and those of four more cousins and an uncle, all “born, raised, and killed in refugee camps” by “the Israeli Zi0nists [sic] violence in the West Bank,” he wrote.

Then there’s the question of what, exactly, Mahdawi has been doing since he arrived in the U.S. in 2014.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Mahdawi studied computer engineering at Birzeit University in Gaza from 2008 to 2014. He then worked at a bank in New Hampshire for about a year. Mahdawi was at Dartmouth College in 2016 and 2017, and “studied a handful of classes for one year,” his LinkedIn profile said.

But Dartmouth told The Free Press that its records “indicate that no one by that name is or has been enrolled as a Dartmouth student.”

Mahdawi then studied at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania for more than two years, but left in the spring of 2020 without finishing a degree, the college said. His LinkedIn profile said he started a “Middle Eastern student organization” and “a catalyst group to bring change and diversity into the student senate.”

In 2021, Mahdawi began at Columbia. By then he had logged more than 20 semesters as an undergraduate between his stints at Birzeit and Lehigh. After more than a decade in the U.S., he has said he hopes to graduate this month and start a master’s degree program in September in international and public affairs. Columbia declined to comment about Mahdawi.

After October 7, Mahdawi emerged as one of the leaders of the anti-Israel protests on Columbia’s campus. In November 2023, New York magazine described him as co-president of the Palestinian Students Union. A month later, 60 Minutes called Mahdawi a student on the “fight for a free Palestine and the fight against antisemitism.”

Seth Mandel: Dana Nessel, Rashida Tlaib, and a Very Dangerous Precedent

Meanwhile, as the case dragged on, Nessel was left to fend for herself and the “Jewish disqualification” argument persisted. The judge was even considering granting a hearing on it. That same judge, from Nessel’s perspective, had slow-walked the case nearly to a stall while the AG took steady fire from the left.

It was too much for Nessel. This week, she threw in the towel, dropped all the charges, and, according to court observers, surprised even the defendants with her actions.

“Despite months and months of court hearings, the Court has yet to make a determination on whether probable cause was demonstrated that the defendants committed these crimes, and if so, to bind the case over to circuit court for trial, which is the primary obligation of the district court for any felony offense. During this time, the case has become a lightning rod of contention,” Nessel said in a statement. She lamented that the “distractions and ongoing delays have created a circus-like atmosphere to these proceedings. While I stand by my charging decisions, and believe, based on the evidence, a reasonable jury would find the defendants guilty of the crimes alleged, I no longer believe these cases to be a prudent use of my department’s resources.”

If that were all she had said, the statement would have been a run-of-the-mill copout from an official who was under a lot of pressure and who’d been abandoned by her party.

But it wasn’t. Nessel also mentioned a letter that the Jewish Community Relations Council, part of the local Jewish Federation, sent to the court. The JCRC letter criticized the call for Nessel’s recusal: “If it were successful, this would mark the first time a prosecutor would be disqualified from prosecuting a case based on perceived bias due to their religious faith. The notion that AG Nessel is biased against Muslims and Americans of Arab descent is unfounded and deeply offensive.”

The open letter was intended to be copied to the court’s public information office to make sure all parties at least knew the letter went out. But according to the JCRC, it might have accidentally been sent to an address for a court administrator instead. Such letters are turned into official court documents.

The difference is significant. Nessel blamed the letter’s “impropriety” at least in part for her decision to drop the charges: “now, we have learned that a public statement in support of my office from a local non-profit has been directly communicated to the Court. The impropriety of this action has led us to the difficult decision to drop these charges.”

This was an inexcusable attempt to throw the JCRC under the bus. The letter was in response to, not the impetus for, nearly a year of accusations of bias just because Nessel is Jewish. And even if the letter was sent to the wrong address and therefore became a court document, the mistake is easy to explain and would not strike any reasonable observer as disqualifying.

Finally, even if Nessel was right about the impropriety of the letter’s unintended destination, publicly denouncing and blaming the letter rather than taking responsibility for the decision is petty, harmful to the few people actually defending her from allegations of bias, and chilling to the many U.S. Jewish groups already inclined to sit on the sidelines of these battles.

Dropping the charges amid the looming prospect of a bias hearing will only reinforce the religious bigotry at the heart of the demonstrators’ cases. And it will incentivize members of Congress to continue to use Jewish officials’ religion against them in a public setting.

It’s one thing that Nessel couldn’t take the heat. But her larger sin was burning others in the Jewish community along the way.

Amnesty nominates far-left journalist who appeared to hail October 7 for People’s Choice Award

Amnesty International has nominated a journalist who appeared to hail the October 7, 2023 attacks for its People’s Choice Award.

Michael Walker, who works for far-left outlet Novara Media, made and then deleted a social media post on the day of the attacks, seemingly suggesting they were the act of “an occupied people”.

At 8.54 am on October 7, as the attacks were unfolding, Walker tweeted: “So guys, do we support the right of an occupied people to fight an occupier or not?”

Walker has also previously attracted controversy for his comments disputing the scale of antisemitism in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.

In one 2018 post, he wrote: “Many members are genuinely scared of talking about what’s going on.

"They can see many of the attacks on Corbyn are politically motivated, that many mainstream Jewish [organisations] have strong ties with Israel, and that part of this row is to suppress Palestinians and their advocates.”

He also said that Labour’s adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism was a “complete abdication of responsibility by Labour and represents us selling out the Palestinian cause”.

However, in his biography on Amnesty’s site, these controversies was not mentioned. Instead, it read: “Michael is a contributing editor at Novara Media and principal host of Novara Live. He has hosted current affairs shows at Novara Media for over eight years, and has overseen Novara Live to become the most watched online daily news show in the UK.

"He also regularly appears on mainstream outlets, including the BBC, Sky and Channel 5.”

Other nominees include Walker’s Novara colleague Ash Sarkar, who has called Israel’s military operation in Gaza a “genocidal war”, and long-time Israel critic Owen Jones.

05/07 Links Pt1: The Gaza Famine Myth; Police thwart Iranian plot to target London's Israeli embassy; 60 Service Members Were Injured during Biden's Gaza Pier Boondoggle

From Ian:

The Gaza Famine Myth

To help make sense of all this, I talked to Nicholas Haan, who designed the food-insecurity classification system that became the IPC. Haan serves as a volunteer on the FRC, was one of the authors of the report that rebuked the USAID analysis, and is the lead technical adviser in a UN effort to replicate the IPC in areas such as health, hygiene, and shelter.

Famine—like genocide, fascist, and dictator—is a word susceptible to rhetorical abuse that can dilute and even invert its meaning. “My goal was to take famine from being a rhetorical word and make it a technical term,” Haan told me. “When the IPC uses the word famine now, “we mean famine.”

IPC owes its success during the past two decades to the fact that it works. And because it works, nefarious governments and armed groups have tried to sabotage it. Reuters reported last year that when the ruling junta in Myanmar detained several food researchers, the IPC was forced to remove its reports about the country from the internet. In Yemen, Houthi forces hijacked the IPC process in 2023 to exaggerate food shortages and compel aid shipments that were then stolen by the Iranian-backed militia.

“Political actors, for their own reasons, will manipulate information. It’s a truism,” Haan told me. The best response, he said, is for the IPC to uphold its standards and the clarity of its messaging. “The most important, powerful, and necessary tool to achieve this is truth. When you give up truth, you’ve given up all moral standing to end suffering.” He wouldn’t comment on the famine declaration by Fakhri and the other UN officials.

Since the ceasefire in Gaza collapsed and Israel resumed its offensive, the UN’s undersecretary for humanitarian affairs has apologized to Gazans for being “unable to move the international community to prevent this injustice.” Over the weekend, the UN refused to accept a U.S.-Israeli plan to deliver aid directly to civilians. On Tuesday, a senior Hamas official accused Israel of waging a “hunger war.”

The famine storyline in Gaza is like the proverbial bell that cannot be unrung. In September, ProPublica inaccurately said, “The UN has declared a famine in parts of Gaza.” When I asked if the reporter who wrote the article had read the FRC’s reports from last summer, a ProPublica spokesperson said it stands by the reporting, citing statements by UN officials who aren’t part of the IPC process and an FRC follow-up report in November. But that report, like the others before it, warned of “a strong likelihood” of famine, not that famine had begun.

The New Yorker has published roughly 20 interviews that referred to famine or starvation in Gaza—and three that addressed the IPC system and the FRC’s authoritative role. In all that reporting, The New Yorker never mentioned the FRC’s rejection of USAID’s analysis or its no-famine verdict.

As Haan and his FRC colleagues wrote about USAID’s slippery numbers last year, “High uncertainty is compounded through several layers of assumptions.” So many unthinkable tragedies have occurred since Hamas’s massacre on October 7, 2023, but a famine in Gaza isn’t one of them.

How to solve the Iranian problem

If the United States and its allies are serious about preventing a nuclear-armed Iran, then one reality must be faced head-on: Dismantling the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program is not enough. To secure a lasting peace and prevent Tehran from rearming, the regime itself must be removed. Only then can the threat be permanently neutralized, and only then can the Iranian people begin the long-overdue process of rebuilding their country.

America has already demonstrated its ineffectiveness at nation-building in places like Iraq and Afghanistan—countries that, while sharing some cultural and religious similarities with Iran, are far less complex civilizations. With its ancient history and uniquely sophisticated culture, Iran presents an even greater challenge. If U.S.-led reconstruction efforts failed elsewhere, why would they succeed in Iran?

The United States should abandon any notion of managing Iran’s internal recovery and instead focus on two achievable objectives: eradicating Iran’s nuclear program; and removing the fanatically anti-Western, anti-non-Muslim regime from power. Both goals are feasible and essential.

Destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities alone won’t stop the threat posed by the Islamic Regime. Steeped in regional strategies of endurance and deception, the regime would simply wait for the political tides to shift in Washington or Jerusalem. Then, under more favorable circumstances, it would restart its nuclear-weapons program, perhaps more clandestinely but no less determined. That’s why removing the regime is not a supplementary option but a prerequisite.

Some argue that removing the regime might unleash even more radical forces; evidence from inside Iran suggests otherwise. Time and again, when cracks in the regime’s power appear, Iranians pour into the streets in protest. These demonstrations are only crushed when the state reasserts its control through brutal force. The people cannot stand up to this machine on their own. But when the regime shows signs of weakness, the public responds with courage and hope.

So, what do the Iranian people want? All available signs indicate a desire to reintegrate into the international community; redirect resources from terrorism and repression to domestic development; and normalize relations, especially with the United States and Israel. These signals may not always be loud, but they are unmistakable to those who understand Iranian culture.

Police thwart Iranian plot to target London's Israeli embassy

The Israeli embassy in London was the target of an alleged Iranian terror plot, The Telegraph reported on Wednesday.

This report followed two separate operations in which eight individuals, seven of whom were of Iranian nationality, were arrested by UK Police on Saturday, in what Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described as "one of the biggest counterterror operations in recent years," The Telegraph added.

The Iranians were "hours from unleashing an attack" when they were arrested, the report adds.

One of the Iranian nationals arrested in the UK on suspicion of planning a terror attack has

close ties to the Iranian regime, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday, citing Iranian sources in the UK.

The suspect's family reportedly holds major businesses in the Islamic Republic, with the source saying he was “very well connected."

Detained under Section 27 of the National Security Act 2023
All the alleged terrorists were detained under Section 27 of the National Security Act 2023.

According to Arab media, the Iranian Foreign Minister denied reports of an attempt to attack the Israeli embassy in London.

The statement reads: "We categorically deny any involvement in reports of an alleged plot to attack the Israeli embassy in London."

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

In 1938, Eva G., a Jewish student at the University of Vienna, slipped her Star of David necklace beneath her collar before walking into a lecture hall. She was met with swastikas scrawled on the walls and whispers of “Juden raus.” Eighty-six years later, in 2024, a Jewish student at Columbia University pulls his hoodie over his kippah to walk past demonstrators chanting, “Go back to Poland."

Decades apart, these moments are uncanny in their resemblance—almost like a freeze frame. Eva is likely long dead and buried, but the fear she once felt—of being harassed, abused, and hated—remains a chilling reality for Jewish students today. Campuses, once assumed to be bastions of learning and tolerance, have become places where Jews are not safe, where they must hide, if not themselves, then their identity.

Since October 7, antisemitic incidents on U.S. college campuses have surged 477%. That number alone demands attention. But it’s the atmosphere—hateful chants and symbols in combination with administrative silence—that makes the past feel dangerously close. Where does all this hate for Jewish students lead?

During the rise of Nazism, German universities were among the first institutions to adopt antisemitic policies. At Heidelberg, Jewish students were boycotted in 1933. By 1935, lecture halls bore swastikas. By 1938, Jews were gone from campus altogether—expelled or worse. The violence didn’t begin in death camps; it began with students, professors, and rectors who either joined the mobs or stood silently by.

University of Heidelberg lecture hall adorned with swastikas.

A report from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 1933 described one such incident:

“Two hundred Nazi students surrounded the Jewish students in the campus restaurant and, employing chairs, tables, and glassware as missiles, attacked the Jews. Five Jewish students sustained injuries... The Rector of Berlin University failed to intervene.”

“The use of the academic environment to foster extremist views and expression against Jews was essential to the Nazi success in reaching elements of society who could be impassioned, inspired, and ignited towards violent expression through the systematic logic applied in the hate against the Jews,” says Dr. Elana Yael Heideman, Holocaust historian and CEO of the Israel Forever Foundation. “When this began in the decade prior to the rise of Hitler's Third Reich, no one could have imagined that antisemitic riots against students on University campuses in Austria and Germany throughout the 1920s and 30s would have developed into a full-blown genocide of the Jews as the primary targets. Yes, there were indications, but none saw the proverbial writing on the wall. By the time the Nazi regime was in full force by 1935, the social acceptance of the hatred was steeped in the public mindset, thus enabling the subsequent bystanderism that enabled horrific persecutions, and murder by bullet or gas.”

Today, Jewish students in the United States are not being expelled by law. But they are being targeted by hate speech, swastikas, and chants like “intifada revolution,” shouted on elite campuses from Princeton to Tufts. At Cornell, Russell Rickford, an associate professor of history exclaimed to an excited student mob that he felt exhilarated by the October 7 massacre.

At Harvard and Stanford, Jewish students have been harassed, doxxed, or pushed to the margins of campus life. And too often, university leaders respond with moral equivocation or bureaucratic platitudes and do nothing to stanch the flow of hate.

Sometimes history echoes rather than repeats. Then and now, it is the failure of moral leadership that not only allows hate to fester, but gives it permission to thrive and grow. This is not the same as 1930s Europe—but the hate is exactly the same, and it is still every bit as dangerous. As Holocaust survivor David Schaecter, president of the Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA, testified before the U.S. Senate:

“I remember vividly when Slovakian classmates taunted Jewish kids like me, and what’s happening today looks and feels the same.”

When protests devolve into chants denying Jews’ right to exist, glorifying terrorism, or intimidating visibly Jewish students, the line has been crossed. It is not “free speech” to threaten Jewish people with annihilation and it never was.

The most haunting question of course isn’t about what’s happening now—but where this all could lead. In Germany, the radicalization of universities helped normalize Nazi ideology. Academic complicity didn’t just reflect fascism; it fed it. Professors trained bureaucrats and camp guards. Rectors joined the Nazi Party. University violence, once ignored, metastasized into something far worse.

This time things are different.

“As there is no current administration driving the antisemitism on campuses forward into increased violent fervor,” says Elana Heideman, “there is a tentative sense of security that it will not get worse than what is already taking place. That it will dissipate, as sanctions for their actions grow. However there is and should be a palpable hesitance to rest on such baseless confidence that the hate-fests and public demonization of Jews will cease or level out. Rather, we must accept that what will come will not look the same, or be structured the same as 100 years ago.

“Elie Wiesel himself once said, the next chapter will not look like cattle cars and gas chambers. What it will look like, no one can be sure. But indeed, Jews, Israelis, and our allies, will continue to be increasingly listed, targeted, threatened into apathetic compliance with whatever demands are made upon the Jew in order to save them/ourselves.”

The doxing is a particularly frightening and danger-laden phenomenon. “Many of these lists,” says Heideman, “have already been exposed, the Mapping Project for example which now doesn't even mask its intention and has publicly emerged as the Map of Liberation, in which Jewish homes, businesses, and Israel connected institutions are all identified. But even with the efforts put into uncovering these blatant efforts to coordinate this modern genocidal effort against Jews, the lists, the labels, the systematic social and media assaults on truth continue to grow in numbers and in power.”

Where is this going? We know where it led to in Berlin, Heidelberg, and Vienna. Could today’s doxing, protests, and antisemitic chants on campus spiral into Holocaust-like horrors?

Probably not. “The result,” says Heideman, “will be an increasing isolation of Jews everywhere. There will be increased infighting between groups of Jews, as we saw in the Holocaust and as we already see having grown especially since the October 7 massacre, trying to point the fingers of blame and dividing ourselves, which of course weakens us against this enemy which is not a single regime but rather an entire world of totalitarian minded individuals who have been convinced by the propaganda of Islamofascism and who have been enabled sufficiently to achieve dominance, and will only continue to do so as they join forces with the other extremist elements who share the Jew as the common enemy.

“What might the next phase look like?” asks Heideman. “We are already in it. There are more attacks then are reported, out of a desire to remain anonymous or to avoid the inevitable trouble it will bring if they have to chase down every Jew hater that slings their slurs, or shouts free Palestine.”

The Jews, meanwhile, will continue to do what they have always done, find ways to keep a low profile and stay safe. “More Jews will be seeking smaller intimate communities where they are able to find or create a safe space,” says Heideman. “There are those who will seek to emigrate, many attempting to choose somewhere other than our ancestral Homeland in Israel. There are those who will try to convert, religiously i.e., to Islam, politically or socially, as if any of these are a way to save oneself.”

But then there are the others, says Heideman, “Those whose identities will be awakened, whose souls will be empowered. There will continue to be an increase in Zionism as a collective dream, and Aliyah, as Israel will become once again the sole safe haven that was envisioned when our 2,000-year-old dream was fulfilled through political Zionism and the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty at the end of the British Mandate on May 14th, 1948, Declaration Day.

“What will become of the America that we know?” asks Heideman. “Or the campuses and public streets of any country or society that allows this harassment and public expression against Jews, Judaism, Jewish history, humanity and nationhood? Violence will continue, as will the silence.

“But if the Holocaust has taught us anything, we must hope that Jewish response will be different. The existence of a Jewish state, and the vibrant voice of pride and passion in this war for the survival of humanity, will determine what the pending catastrophe to befall the world will look like.”

Will the Trump administration’s financial pressure on Ivy League institutions make a difference? Or will the courts get in the way of these efforts in the name of free speech, leaving Jewish students to twist in the wind? It’s anyone’s guess, but if there’s one thing history teaches us, it’s this: what starts with words can end in atrocities. The time to act is not after tragedy, but now.

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

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Israel's decimation of Hezbollah in Lebanon has caused a huge change in Lebanese politics. Hezbollah has lost its stranglehold on Lebanese politics and its almost unlimited fear for the average Lebanese citizen. But the biggest effect of the Israel's military victory may have been a secondary effect: Hamas and Islamic Jihad are losing their own military control of Palestinian camps.

Up until now, the "refugee" camps in Lebanon have been no-go zones for Lebanese security forces. As a result, they have become mini-battlegrounds between Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah. Fighting between the groups would erupt every few years but within the camps their armed forces had effective control.

Now, after Israel's victory, the Lebanese government has signaled that it wants its army to be the only armed force in Lebanon, especially south of the Litani River. Hezbollah is reluctantly going along but is bitterly opposing any full disarmament, and the Lebanese Armed Forces are skittish about enforcing this new reality against an unwilling Hezbollah that still probably outguns them.

But Hamas and Islamic Jihad are not Hezbollah, and the army can go after them. No one in Lebanon likes Hamas.

Last Friday, new Lebanese President Joseph Aoun held his first meeting of the Higher Defense Council and disarming Palestinian armed groups was the top item on the agenda. It also discussed Hamas firing its own rockets towards Israel and efforts to stop those attacks which endanger Lebanese security. Apparently Hamas is hiding three of its members that Lebanon wants to arrest for a rocket firing in March, they are believed to be in the Ain al-Hilweh camp.

During the meeting, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam spoke of “the necessity of handing over illegal weapons and not allowing Hamas or any other actor to compromise security and national stability.” Aoun also said, “No attempt to make Lebanon a platform for destabilization will be tolerated.”

While the Lebanese army still does not enter the camps, it has recently seized Palestinian weapons outside the camps.

The Lebanese people might be skittish about directly confronting Hezbollah, but they are not as concerned over disarming Hamas and the other Palestinian armed groups. The Lebanese government, for its part, sees disarming the Palestinian armed groups as a trial balloon to see how the same could eventually be done to Hezbollah.

Fatah, seeing which way the wind is blowing, is reportedly willing to disarm inside the camps.

There are also signals that Lebanon might be willing to increase Palestinian rights: allowing more access to education and jobs, and even allowing Palestinians to own their own houses with limitations. Any such move will face opposition from the Lebanese, especially Christians, wo are worried about the influence of the Palestinians and from some Palestinian self-proclaimed leaders themselves who are always concerned about anything that might effect the mythical "right of return" and who readily use Palestinians as pawns in their political power game.

This disarmament will be a major topic of discussion during a planned visit by PA president Mahmoud Abbas later this month.

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

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