Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, July 02, 2025

If you believe that Israel is putting oxycodone in bags of flour, you are an idiot - and an antisemite. There is no other explanation.

Last week Hamas' Government Media Office issued a statement:

*Press Release No. (875) issued by the Government Media Office:*

⭕*Drug pills found inside flour bags from "death traps" - "American-Israeli aid centers" - a heinous crime targeting the health of civilians and the social fabric*

We express our deep concern and condemnation over the discovery of "Oxycodone" narcotic pills inside flour bags that reached citizens from the so-called "American-Israeli aid centers," known as "death traps." We have so far documented four testimonies from citizens who found these pills inside flour bags. What's more dangerous is the possibility that some of these narcotic substances were deliberately ground or dissolved in the flour itself, which raises the scope of the crime and transforms it into a serious attack directly targeting public health.

It is obviously a lie. Oxycodone's street value even in the US is pretty high. What could be gained by putting it in a small number of bags of ...flour? Is it like a Willy Wonka Golden Ticket? Gazans who find oxycodone could sell it and get a lot more food in return!

If Isael wanted to hurt Gazans, wouldn't it be a lot easier just to not send in any food altogether? Why does every accusation against Israel have to be a conspiracy theory?

But Hamas uses this ridiculous rumor to encourage Gazans not to trust the food that they are getting, for free, from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation - food aid that Hamas does not profit from:

We warn our Palestinian people of this crime and reiterate our warning against visiting these dangerous centers, which are death traps and mass luring. We call on citizens to be cautious, inspect food supplies coming from these suspicious centers, and immediately report any suspicious materials. We also urge families to educate their children about the dangers of visiting these centers and using narcotics. We emphasize that community vigilance is the first line of defense against these malicious attempts.

Now, what makes more sense - that GHF is lacing flour with something a thousand times more expensive for unclear reasons, or that Hamas would spread a rumor that conveniently helps it directly?

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation refuted the story:

A new Hamas-backed social media campaign that GHF flour is laced with…wait for it…oxycodone.

The “evidence?” A few photos, a supposed pharmacist, and a claim conveniently pushed by Hamas-linked accounts.

The flour we distribute is commercially packaged and not produced or handled by GHF staff. We have safety protocols that include any box of aid that has been opened prior to distribution can’t be given out.

Any aid that looks tampered with doesn’t get distributed. Period.

And as for the photos circulating on social media? There's no brand in the image, no date, no test results. Just a story from a so-called “health official” who appears to work for the Gaza Health Ministry, also known as Hamas.

The New Arab, The National, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, Turkish media, the Economic Times, Sqwawkbox and others repeated Hamas claims as if they were true. I'm waiting for Francesca Albanese, Amnesty and UNRWA to join the parade.

The same Gaza Media Office that spreads these insane lies has been quoted as authoritative by the UN in reporting casualty numbers as recently as April.

When you believe that Jews are the most evil people on Earth, it is easy to believe the most extreme antisemitic slanders. And when the media repeats those slanders, it is easy for people to believe that Jews are the most evil people on Earth.

(That is not the only absurd story. One claimed that GHF placed its supplies of sugar behind a booby-trapped pit, so hungry Gazans fell into the pit and a bulldozer then buried them alive. (GHF does not distribute sugar bags separately from the entire food packages they distribute.)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

07/01 Links Pt2: Why those Glasto chants felt so personal to British Jews; Virginia School Hit with Civil Rights Complaint over Environment 'Hostile to Jews'

From Ian:

Why those Glasto chants felt so personal to British Jews

I’m just a middle-aged mum, so it should be no shock that I’d never heard of Bob Vylan until the Glastonbury controversy. In all honesty, I don’t care about frontman Pascal Robinson-Foster’s views on Israel or Jews. He’s just another celeb with a microphone and a weird obsession with the world’s only Jewish state. It was the response of the audience that was far more disturbing. Thanks to the good ol’ Beeb’s livestreamed hate, you could hear a Glastonbury crowd only too happy to chant along. Given the middle-aged make-up of that crowd, there were likely many parents there, too, happily calling for the death of teenage IDF soldiers.

How do they square these chants with their no doubt virtuous self-image? What kinds of valuable moral lessons do they think they will be able to offer their offspring when they get their kicks wishing death on a whole nation, while they take selfies and drink overpriced cider in a field? v They will claim that they were just attacking Israel’s military, not the Israeli nation itself. But they’re not fooling anyone. Without the IDF there is no Israel. If you bray and cheer for the death of those standing between Israel and those who want to annihilate it, then we know what that means – you want Israel to cease to exist.

In its ‘diversity statement’, Glastonbury claims to stand against ‘discrimination of any sort’, and states that it was ‘established to celebrate music, culture and togetherness’. That was not what was being celebrated on Saturday. A performer and a large crowd were celebrating the death of Jews.

Those chill Glasto hippies, the ‘cool’ mums and dads and the keffiyeh set might want to think about another music festival that took place less than two years ago, on 7 October. That was the occasion for another group to celebrate the death of Jews, in the form of a real-life massacre. Hamas terrorists raped and killed their way through the Nova music festival, murdering 378 Israelis and taking 44 hostage.

No doubt Glasto’s Israel haters will claim their chanting was a political protest for a progressive cause. But it wasn’t. Whether they realise it or not, they were wishing death on the families and friends of their fellow Brits. Shame on each and every one of them.

David Collier: The NUJ is hostile to Jewish journalists

For several years I had a press card to provide a layer of security while covering hostile street protests. My recent experience with the National Union of Journalists shows how behind the scenes, British Jews are being ‘othered’ by hostile actors and excluded from society. This is a personal journey of abuse and discrimination.

The need to be protected
Those who have been following my work for a long time are aware that I frequently take to the streets to report on anti-Israel demonstrations taking place. This is an important part of what I do. Just to give one example – it was only because I was on the streets reporting from the al-Quds demonstration in 2017, that I captured footage of the IHRC’s Nazim Ali publicly blaming Zionists for the Grenfell disaster. This led to the Pharmaceutical Council’s fitness-to-practise hearings that were to find some of his statements antisemitic. If we are not there – antisemitic ideologies become free to develop and spread unchallenged.

Over the years my identity became known, and with publications such as Electronic Intifada targeting me in several articles, a risk factor entered the frame. Not only was I receiving threats online on a daily basis, but many of the key anti-Israel agitators on the streets knew who I was. At a protest outside SOAS, one of a group who had made online threats to ‘bash my head in with a baseball bat’, made ‘cut throat’ signs when he spotted me. This is the atmosphere I work in and it does not always stop with gestures. I have been physically assaulted on the street twice and my car has been vandalised outside of my home.

As a way of helping to protect myself it became important for me to carry a press card.

The National Union of Journalists
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is the most common press card issuer in the UK, issuing ‘more than half of the cards in circulation’. So back in about 2016 – I joined and received a press card. I was clearly a news gatherer who needed protection – and the NUJ supplied it.

The NUJ are quite clear about the dangers of being a journalist in the rising toxic atmosphere on our streets and has recently launched a new online reporting mechanism to help build up a picture of ‘the intimidation, threats and violence they (journalists) are facing simply for doing their jobs’.

But over time my research had evolved, and the need for me to cover anti-Israel demonstrations on the streets dwindled. As a result I let my last press card expire without renewal. The expiry date? October 2023.

The need for a new application
Everything changed following October 7.

As Jews across the world were still reeling from the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, 100,000s of people took to UK streets waving Palestinian flags. Amongst them were people calling for Jihad, holding up signs of support for Hezbollah, or defending the actions of Hamas.

I went back to the streets. But one evening, as the police tried to control a tense situation – they told me I needed to go and stand with the protestors – forcing me to stand alongside the anti-Israel activists who often threaten me. I did try to explain, but their position was clear. If I did not have a press card to produce, I could either join the protestors or leave. I chose to leave.

It was time for me to reapply. I had done it twice before, so did not give it much thought. I made the application in April 2024 expecting a swift turnaround. This time however, things were going to go very differently.

Hard Rock Singer Makes Bold Political Statement Following Controversial Festival Performance

Hard rock band Disturbed may be best known to some fans for their brooding version of the Simon & Garfunkel classic “The Sound of Silence,” but singer David Draiman is being anything but silent in response to some politically charged statements made from the stage over the weekend at the U.K.’s Glastonbury Festival.

Although he doesn’t mention the artist by name, Draiman is likely referring to rap punk duo Bob Vylan, which led the crowd in chants calling for “death” to the Israeli military during their set.

“ I just wanted to speak my mind a little bit about the events of this past weekend,” Draiman says in a video shared to Instagram. “No one should ever use any stage at any festival anywhere in the world to incite hatred and violence against anyone. I think it's disgusting. I think it's irresponsible and contrary to the whole reason people get together at these festivals to begin with.”

Draiman went on to question the motives of Bob Vylan.

“More importantly, just from a human perspective, what exactly do you really think you're going to achieve here? You know, death to the IDF. Every citizen of the state of Israel has to serve. Every citizen. So you're saying that the majority of world Jews should die, should be killed? That's what you're saying. Good luck with that. Iran saw how easy that wasn't so I'm not sure what you want, what you're trying to achieve other than virtue signaling and instant fame that this selling of Jew hatred has seen to gift everyone with these days.”

07/01 Links Pt1: Trump claims Israel agreed to conditions for 60-day Gaza ceasefire; Trump Ends the Folly of De-escalation; The myth of Israel’s ‘killing fields’

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: Israel: Now the Dominant Military Power in the Middle East?

Israel today sits astride the Middle East because of the air power of the Israel Air Force. Israel’s air defense systems are almost among the most integrated and capable in the world. In terms of ground forces, Israel may not appear to be as large as the Egyptian army on paper. However, the reality is that Egypt has not exerted significant power in the region for decades. It focuses more internally or on dealing with its chaotic neighbors, Libya and Sudan.

The Gulf countries together possess impressive armaments, and many of them have spent lavishly on their defense procurement in recent years. The UAE and Bahrain are peace partners with Israel. Saudi Arabia is expected to be a peace partner one day. This leaves the Jewish state with very few adversaries in the region.

In many ways, Israel’s success in building an impressive defense machine is due to the close partnership with the US and the collaboration between US and Israeli defense companies. Israel’s defense exports, for instance, continue to break new records.

The question for policymakers and Israel’s friends and allies is whether regional hegemony will be good for Israel. A more assertive Israel has still become bogged down in a long war in Gaza. Long wars against insurgents are not beneficial for powerful countries; they tend to erode the country’s strength. The US learned this in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The Soviet Union learned this lesson in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and Napoleon learned it in Spain.

A new sense of regional power could also lead the country not to be as flexible regarding peace talks with Syria or Lebanon. It could lead to a decision to clamp down on the Palestinians rather than work toward two states and peace with Riyadh. This is the choice Israel will face as it feels the future is up for grabs. In addition, nature always abhors a vacuum. Other countries and their influences will pour into the Middle East.

For instance, Turkey is a NATO member and has often been among the harshest critics of Israel’s policies. Ankara is also very close with the Trump administration. Doha helped with the Iranian ceasefire and hosts Hamas. It will also want a say in what comes next in the region.

These are potential challenges for the Jewish state as it weighs its newfound power.

Trump Ends the Folly of De-escalation

Donald Trump’s decision to have American B-2s strike Iranian nuclear facilities wasn’t the beginning of a war. Rather, it was a continuation of what H.R. McMaster describes as a “‘twilight war’ that the Islamic Republic of Iran has waged against the United States, Israel, and its Arab neighbors” since it first took 52 Americans hostage in 1979. McMaster explains that, for too long, the U.S. strategy in this war has been marked by an obsession with de-escalation:
Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden tended to view each of [Iran’s] attacks in isolation, rather than episodes in a long-term campaign of aggression grounded in the Islamic Republic’s foundational anti-American and anti-Israeli ideology. Iranian leaders reinforced U.S. presidents’ reluctance to confront Iranian aggression with false narratives about “moderates” within the government who could counterbalance the hostility of the “revolutionaries” if only U.S. leaders would open the door to conciliation. But these so-called “moderates” were no such thing.

Trump’s decision to strike Iranian nuclear facilities earlier this month was incredibly consequential, degrading and delaying a hostile regime’s path to the most destructive weapon on earth, as well as the missiles designed to deliver it. Those strikes—and Israel’s campaign that preceded them—also decapitated leaders who had blood on their hands from Iran’s proxy wars.

But even more importantly, the Israeli and U.S. military operations directly against the Islamic Republic and its warmaking apparatus reminded officials in Tehran that they cannot antagonize their adversaries in the region with impunity—and reminded officials in Washington that Iran’s theocratic dictatorship cannot be conciliated. “De-escalation” was never a path to peace—it was an approach that perpetuated war on the Iranians’ terms.

Andrew Fox: The myth of Israel’s ‘killing fields’

The report is also suspicious by virtue of what it ignores. Gaza remains the scene of an asymmetrical urban war. It is also a war in which IDF soldiers are confronted by an enemy – Hamas – that is known to use civilians as fodder for its aims. Infamously, it uses hospitals and humanitarian centres as military bases. Yet the Haaretz report, like much of the Western media reporting, treats the IDF as if it is policing a football match in Manchester, rather than navigating the frontline of a war in which soldiers’ lives are constantly at risk.

As someone with firsthand experience of operating firearms and firing warning shots in high-pressure environments, I can tell you what ‘firing toward’ looks like. It is shooting in the air, or far short of a crowd, or well off to the side. It is done to send a warning, not to take a life. Put bluntly, it is crowd control by intimidation. It is not an ideal tactic, and it would not be used if there were better options available. It also has plenty of scope for tragic error. Could a soldier mess it up? Yes, and when this happens, it should be investigated – as the IDF is now doing. That is not the same thing as an order to ‘open fire on civilians’.

What we have here, then, appears to be another one-sided and simplistic report. It has erased all context and difficult but critical details. It is written as though Hamas – the terror group that murdered, raped and kidnapped 1,200 innocent citizens just 20 months ago – does not exist. Nothing, it seems, is allowed to interfere, or complicate, the established narrative that Israel is the source of all evil and suffering in Gaza.

Haaretz is not speaking truth to power. It’s using lazy journalism to land cheap blows against an army doing an incredibly difficult job. It appears to be misleading the public rather than trying to inform it.

Truth is always the first casualty of war. On this front, Israel appears to be facing yet another heavy defeat.

On Monday, I cheekily responded to video snippet where Zohran Mamdani says "I don't think that we should have billionaires” by saying "I don't think that we should have socialists."

It was flippant, and it received a bunch of "likes," but the issue is actually an important one that deserves a respectful discussion about socialism and how it aligns, and misaligns, with Jewish ethics.

Jewish ethics and socialism share a lot of the same moral goals: to care for the poor, to prevent exploitation, to build a just and dignified society. A moral society must protect minorities and the vulnerable, and demand more from the powerful.

The question isn’t whether - but how. And that’s where the real differences lie.

Socialism tries to achieve justice through structural overhaul: abolishing class differences, redistributing wealth, weakening or replacing capitalism, and empowering the state to equalize outcomes.

Jewish ethics, by contrast, starts with something older and deeper: personal obligation. It builds outward - first from the self, then the family, then the community, and only then, reluctantly, to the state. The state is necessary but power corrupts, and Jewish thinking has always been wary of power.

The result is not just a different set of policies. It is a different kind of civilization. Not utopian, not ideological, but rooted in layered relationships, flexible moral reasoning, scalable systems of obligation and recognizing the difference between morality and the civilizational structure required to get there.

This isn’t just a critique of socialism - it’s a proposal. If the moral goal is human dignity and mutual responsibility, then Jewish ethics may offer a better map than most or all forms of socialism today.

Socialism sees real problems. Injustice does exist. So does preventable poverty, humiliation, and systemic neglect. And yes, unregulated capitalism can lead to grotesque disparities in power and wealth.

Jewish tradition agrees. The Torah commands us to leave the corners of our fields for the poor, to remit debts every seven years, and to ensure no one falls through the cracks. Tzedakah is not charity—it is a legal and moral obligation.

In its moral instinct, socialism is not wrong. It’s trying to solve a real problem. But it doesn't prioritize the moral imperatives - it prioritizes the means to reach them.

Jewish ethics asks a deeper question: What kind of system can solve these problems while itself being ethical?

Most forms of modern socialism rest on five assumptions:

That inequality itself is immoral.
That capitalism is inherently unjust.
That wealth is corrupting and private property is suspect.
That only systemic redistribution can produce justice.
That the state is the rightful agent of moral correction.

These confuse structure with justice, and ideology with ethics. And once you confuse them, you can no longer correct your system when it fails

Jewish ethics rejects this. Inequality is not evil - but neglect is. Wealth is not immoral - but hoarding wealth is. Property is not oppressive - but using it without responsibility can be.

In a Jewish ethical society, the first question is not, What system should we use? but, What does each person owe to those around them?

The self is responsible for acting justly and generously.
The family is the primary moral support structure.
The community bears shared responsibility for education, health, safety, and dignity.
The state exists only as a backup—when families and communities cannot fulfill their duties, and for domains that require national coordination, lke defense, lawmaking, and justice

This model is deeply moral but profoundly non-ideological. It does not declare markets good or bad. It asks whether markets are helping people meet their obligations. It does not call for abolishing wealth - it calls for using wealth in the service of others. It resists outsourcing moral agency. The job of care remains personal - even when shared.

Most importantly, the ethics and values themselves drive the solution, not political ideology. If you want to make an argument that capitalism is immoral, that's fine, but sometimes capitalism can accomplish what socialism cannot. If the aim is moral, why take a tool off the table? Instead, use the tool responsibly.

Can this system work without God?

Yes - if the system centers ethics, not structure. Jewish ethics works because it embeds morality in time, ritual, community, identity, even markets. It doesn’t just tell people what’s right—it gives them ways to live it.

I've sketched out some ideas of a secular society that use these ethics as guiding principles. There are potential ways to replace the divine covenantal structure with a secular one that instills a sense of obligation instead of entitlements to everyone. My ideas are community-centric and stress obligations as part of society's moral fabric.

But the structure is not the point. The values are. If an alternative social system can be built that also results in a workable society that makes ethics its guideposts, that's great too.

A Jewish ethical society would not be socialist or capitalist, libertarian or authoritarian. It recognizes that there are positives and negatives with every political system, and it chooses based on the moral outcomes, not straitjacketed by ideology. And every working society is a blend of all: the world capital of capitalism considers social programs like Social Security and Medicare to be untouchable institutions.

Jewish ethics defines a society not by how wealth is distributed, but by how responsibility is shared.

It doesn’t require equality of outcome. It demands no one be abandoned.
It doesn’t abolish ownership. It requires owners to be givers.
It doesn’t suppress pride. It channels it into responsibility.
It doesn’t impose systems. It judges systems by how well they uphold dignity.

Billionaires are not evil. They are obligated, like everyone else, in using their resources to improve their communities and the world. Their ability to do good is much higher than everyone else's - and therefore their responsibilities are also much deeper. Demonizing entire classes of people based on anything other than their own personal actions is just bigotry dressed up as righteousness.

This is not a middle path between capitalism and socialism. It is a different road entirely—one where ideology never outranks ethics.

Socialism wants justice. So does Judaism. But Judaism asks harder questions - about the human heart, the family bond, the fragility of obligation, and the limits of power.

The future doesn’t belong to systems that flatten us or automate us. It belongs to systems that ask more of us - that dignify the act of care, that teach responsibility like a craft, and that reward those who carry others.

Jewish ethics has never been just a religion. It has always been a blueprint for a lived moral civilization. Now, it may be time to build it again: not just for Jews, but for anyone who wants to live in a world where ethics leads, and politics follows.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Bannon’s Israel Blind Spot: The Alliance He Misunderstands (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Among the right-wing republican isolationists weighing in about the Israel-Iran war is Steve Bannon, a former member of Trump's inner circle. Last week, Bannon chimed in on X to inform his followers that Israel was a protectorate--and not a very essential one at that:

BANNON: I’m pretty good at knowing where the puck’s going, and it’s going here—there’s going to be a major reset. It’s going to happen bc the American ppl demand it. Israel is not an ally. They’re a protectorate. They haven’t been involved in any alliance. When Soleimani was… pic.twitter.com/dkcKaf9mgP
— Grace Chong, MBI (@gc22gc) June 26, 2025

Elder of Ziyon points out that Bannon is wide of the mark: of all the things for Bannon to hang his claim of Israel being a protectorate, he rests his case on Israel not helping the US in the assassination of Soleimani.

Bannon is wrong.

Associated Press quotes NBC News about how Israel helped the US pinpoint Soleimani's location. It also refers to Yahoo News, which reports specifically that Israel supplied the US with his cellphone numbers, so they could track him down.

This is not the only detail Bannon gets wrong. Near the beginning of the war, Bannon hosted Yoram Hazony, president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and author of The Virtue of Nationalism and The Jewish State: The Struggle for Israel's Soul, and other books. Bannon tells Hazony that Netanyahu caused Trump to detour from his stated goal to rely on negotiations with Iran:

The course he [Trump] wanted was a negotiated deal as he just said, right there, 'I'm talking to these guys. I'm on the phone. I want to negotiate a deal.' Why suddenly we have to go with where we have 12 or 13 months [till Iran goes nuclear]?

We can give Bannon the benefit of the doubt that he had not yet realized that Trump's public pushing for negotiations was a ruse. But Hazony reminds him that Trump did not limit himself to endless diplomacy.

You and I both remember President Trump in his first speech, laying out this policy. He was already saying it last December, and January, and February, when he came into the administration. President Trump, as far as I'm aware, has not budged an inch, not an inch. He must have said this a hundred times. His policy was Iran cannot get a nuclear bomb.

If we can get it by negotiation, that's what we're going to do, and if we can't get it by negotiation, then we're going to have to do it some other way. We've all heard him say this over and over and over again.

Bannon does not push the issue. Instead, he tries a different tack, hammering away on why Israel had to attack Iran so soon, on Thursday-Friday. He claims that Netanyahu pushed for the attack on Iran for the most crass political motives, and in the process destabilized the region and brought the United States into the mess.

We back Israel more than anybody. And the question still is, why did it have to go Thursday and Friday night?

And now we know it's regime change. The problem the Maga right has with this, it looks like a crass, political move by Bibi Netanyahu, who is vastly unpopular in Israel. I think his popularity is 30%.

Hazony corrects Bannon's mistake immediately:

So let's take this example that Tucker brought up, the supposed 30% popularity rating of Bibi Netanyahu. So I heard that this evening and I went and I checked it and the most recent polls put Bibi Netanyahu at 54 percent, 30 points ahead of Naftali Bennett, who is the number 2 contender for the prime ministership, a 30 point spread. By the way, if you go back a month or 2 and take a look at the same poll before the war, you'll see that it was almost exactly the same.

There's been nobody anywhere near Bibi Netanyahu in terms of popularity as far as appropriateness, to be the Prime Minister of the state of Israel for years.

This could be the poll Hazony is referring to, right after the war started:

Here is their last poll taken before the war:

Hazony continues his point. The issue is more than just election statistics:

So look, we have to get back to the point where all of us natcon, nationalist conservative people, we have different views on different things, but we've got to get back to the point where we're having a reasonable conversation where the information that we're using is information that's based on facts. That's unfortunately, not what's happening.

In response to Bannon's follow-up question as to why Haaretz is a "suboptimal" news source, Hazony responds with a brief history:

Ha'aretz represents the leftmost 5% of the Jewish population in the state of Israel. It's a newspaper with a very small circulation that has a great deal of prestige because it's read by our lefty elite classes. But look into it. Not only is Ha'aretz historically the newspaper that opposed the establishment of the state of Israel, but the Shocken family that founded it was anti-Zionist; they were against the establishment of the state of Israel. It is a newspaper that, over the years, has fought tooth and nail for what we in Israel call Post-Zionism, for the elimination of the Jewish character of the state, for the elimination of the right of return to Jews to the state of Israel, and on political issues.

This raises a "chicken or the egg" question: does the far right attack Israel because they read Haaretz, or do they read Haaretz to get their ammunition to attack Israel? Either way, Bannon's grasp of Israel is flawed.

His claim that Israel is not an ally of the United States, but is at best a protectorate, is also flawed. In a recent podcast, Ask Haviv Anything, Haviv Rettig Gur--political correspondent and senior analyst for The Times of Israel--examines the US-Israel relationship, and how it serves as an example to other countries, and as the implementation of a new US policy.

In A New Dawn In The Middle East, Gur spells out the special nature of that alliance:

What you just saw last night was the latest iteration of how the US-Israel relationship actually works. It isn't Israeli dependence on America, it is the opposite. It's Israeli independence and using that Israeli independence, I want to argue America essentially invented a new security architecture for the world, and it's the old architecture it has always had with Israel. Israel is a very different ally from Japan or Germany, or the Philippines or Taiwan or many, many other countries--South Korea,you name it--that depend on the United States.

Israel does not depend on the United States and israel's enemies need it to be dependent on the United States and constantly argue that it's dependent on the United States and mostly they argue that because of their own egos, because Israel has yet to be destroyed.

The claim that Israel is a protectorate, dependent on the US, is tied to the ideology of Arabs, Muslims, college students, and progressives who label Israel a colonial entity that must disappear. It is a claim that fails to see what is happening. In his post on X, Bannon claims "there’s going to be a major reset," and he is right--but it is very different from what he has in mind. It recognizes the strength and independence of Israel:

This is foundational to Trump's brand of isolationism. The United States can still secure the world, protect the world, and police the world without having to secure, protect, and police it.

And the basic idea is the ally does the heavy lifting. The local ally and the United States comes in to deliver the coup de grâce. That's exactly America's value-added, without all the massive cost to the American people, the American economy, American blood and treasure. And the Israelis have just demonstrated what that relationship could be and Trump was convinced by the Israelis. Not by Israeli begging, not by Israeli dependents, but by Israeli independence.

This strategic strength of Israel is what convinced Trump to send in the B-2s. Israel was not a distraction from Trump's isolationist policy--it spearheaded it:

The Israeli willingness to go it alone, the Israeli willingness to deliver massive strategic successes--that's what brought Trump in. If the Israelis had hobbled along and tried to strike, but hundreds of missiles had hit the Israeli civilian front and Israel had failed to take out launchers, failed to strike a great many of the nuclear sites, failed to decapitate half of the regime's leadership, Trump would not have joined. Trump would have pressured Israel to stop.

This posture by the Israelis, this willingness to go it alone, to do things that don't fit the calculations of others is what first created the American strategic support for Israel.

This paradigm of the special US-Israeli relationship is a model to other countries and can usher in a "reset" far beyond what Bannon thinks he sees.

If I were Taiwan today, I would double and triple down in the Taiwanese capability to face down China. You want America behind you? Make sure it isn't too much American blood on the line, when the war comes. Ditto, Japan. Ditto South Korea. The way you hold America is, by being able to defend yourself. America will come in and deliver its grand strategic element that it can add to your strategy, because it has that scale, because it has that technology. America doesn't put boots on the ground anymore, and America is not going to bleed for anybody. And I don't blame it.

Trump may be on the verge of expanding the Abraham Accords, but there is more here. It is an isolationist policy that does not leave the door open to China, Russia--or even Iran to do as they please. And it does not abandon allies either. But it will require those allies to stand up for themselves, to show some independence. Like Israel.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

UNRWA is mandated to be impartial. And it violates this mandate every single day.

It says, on its "Who We Are" page:

Is UNRWA a political organization?

No. Established by the UN General Assembly (as its subsidiary organ), UNRWA is a United Nations agency and humanitarian organization that operates based on the legal framework applicable to UN entities, including the United Nations Charter, and in accordance with the UN humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and operational independence.

Yet it routinely accuses Israel of a having a deliberate policy of starving Gaza.

This is obviously absurd - no matter what you think about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation methods or problems, Israel has poured enormous effort into bringing in food for Gaza and trying to keep it away from Hamas. Starvation does not serve any Israeli interests, on the contrary, it hurts Israeli efforts to get rid of Hamas.

These facts do not stop UN officials from making that slanderous accusations, that violate their own standards.

UNRWA's head Philippe Lazzarini said Israel is inflicting "man-made" and "politically motivated starvation" on Gaza. And more recently, Tamara Alrifai, UNRWA Director of External Relations & Communications, told BBC World News last week that Israel was starving Gazans "by design."

Non-political? Impartial? Unbiased?

Why doesn't anyone talk about UNRWA blatantly violating its own policies, every single day?

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

I just found a 200-year old article in the Philadelphia Inquirer (July 21, 1825) that describes arguments made in England's parliament against allowing a few Jews to become citizens (the "Jew Bill" of 1753):

"I must beg leave to set forth the consequences of this Bill. With God there is mercy, but with the Jews there is no mercy, and they have 1,700 years punishment to revenge. If this Bill passes, we are all Jewish slaves, and with- out hope of relief from the goodness of God. The Monarch would become a creature of the Jews and the freeholders would be insignificant to him. He would disband our British soldiers, and raise a greater army of Jews, who might force us to abjure our royal family, and to be harmoniously naturalised under a King of the Jews. Awake therefore, my brother Christians and Protestants. IT IS NOT HANNIBAL AT YOUR GATES, BUT THE JEWS, WHO ARE COMING FOR THE KEYS OF YOUR CHURCH DOORS."

William Northey, said:

"this bill will admit the Jews to a share in our Government. A multitude of Jews may have votes for members of Parliament, and we may soon have some of them in this House. They will divide our counties by lot amongst their tribes and become the highest bidders for every estate."

Another member, Mr. Edward Esher, said,

"whatever may seem to be intended, every gentleman must foresee that a general naturalization of the Hebrew Nation will be the consequence. I am persuaded their number will increase so fast, that they will become possessed of a considerable part of our landed estates, and we shall soon have to contend for power as well as property."

After the bill passed, there was such an antisemitic outcry in England that it was repealed at the next session of Parliament in 1754. Jews did not obtain full rights in England until the mid-19th century.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

06/30 Links Pt2: This is an anti-fascist; the Book That Saw October 7 Coming; How Palestine Became the Left’s Omnicause; Europe slams Israel, then buys its weapons

From Ian:

How Israel was turned into the fount of all evil

The conviction that Israel is evil, then, is sustained by several, prominent overlapping arguments: that it is perpetrating a holocaust, that Jews are the bearers of white privilege, and that Israel is no more than an expression of white colonial domination.

These arguments have been germinating in universities and other elite educational institutions for a while. Ideas such as white privilege and Israel being a colonial-settler state have long been taught under the rubric of critical race theory and post-colonial studies. So when students organise anti-Israel protests at universities, they are not ‘rebelling’, as they seem to imagine – they are conforming to what their professors have taught them.

What happens in the university clearly does not stay in the university. Over the past two decades or so, a cadre of graduates has joined our political and cultural elites. They have taken up roles in government, non-governmental organisations, the media and the broader culture industry. Many are all too happy to promote the idea of the Jewish State as exemplifying a malevolent spirit.

That Israel is evil has become the ‘right’ thing to think. Celebrities have been desperate to get in on the act, and proclaim their virtue in opposition to Israel. Superstar environmentalist Greta Thunberg is a prime example. Too old to continue posing as a schoolgirl campaigner against climate change, she can now be found on assorted anti-Israel protests and ventures, including this month’s so-called aid ship to Gaza. Last October she appeared at an anti-Israel rally in Milan, where she proclaimed: ‘If you, as a climate activist, don’t also fight for a free Palestine and an end to colonialism and oppression all over the world, then you should not be able to call yourself a climate activist.’ Obviously she wore a keffiyeh, an Arab headscarf, as an ostentatious symbol of her virtue.

It seems that hatred towards Israel has become a cornerstone of the woke elites’ worldview. No doubt they believe that it is the virtuous pose to strike. That they are on the right side of history. But they’re not. By casting the Jewish State as the epitome of evil, they are perpetuating racial animosity towards Jews in a 21st-century form.

Andrew Pessin: Zohran Mamdani and the Book That Saw October 7 Coming From a Mile Away

The Book That Saw October 7 Coming From a Mile Away: Richard Landes, Can “The Whole World” Be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad (Academic Studies Press, 2022) (November, 2023)

When it’s all over, when Israel is gone, the Jews are gone, the world as we thought we knew it is gone, this is the book people will read in order to understand what happened. Landes is a medieval historian, an expert on millennial apocalyptic movements, which gives him a unique perspective on current affairs. This book attempts to bring you into that perspective and, to the degree that it is successful, suddenly everything might look different to you, like the gestalt switch in perceiving the ambiguous image, the beautiful young woman suddenly yielding to the crone. Once seen, however, you can’t unsee it, and you will now see so many current events through its lens.

And it will terrify you.

Or at least that’s its aim.

The book is too deep and wide-ranging to do it justice in a short review, so I will just a highlight a few points, noting only that Landes supports everything with extensive documentation and argument. In short, it aims to turn everything you think you understand about the Jews, Islam, and the West upside-down—because it exposes how "lethal [activist] journalism" inverts reality in the ways it portrays these issues and conflicts, which in turn informs the left-leaning, progressive mindset largely in charge of Western policy-making. In so doing the book argues that we have been profoundly and dangerously misled by the Western mainstream media, which turns out, in the end, to be working in service to a globalist Islamist movement that in fact seeks to destroy the West, including those same media.

So, can “the whole world be wrong”—about Islam and its relation to the West in general, and about the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular that is at the heart of this book (or as I prefer to call it, to highlight its complexity, the Israeli-Palestinian-Jewish-Arab-Muslim Conflict)?

Landes writes:
As a result of a confluence of intellectual trends (postmodernism, postcolonialism, anti-Orientalism …) the role of honor-shame motivations in key [Arab] decision-making in this conflict since the Oslo Accords has been systematically ignored. Indeed the entire ‘Peace Process’ was predicated on the rational, positive-sum assumption that, offered the right deal, the Palestinians will say yes. As a result, scholars and policy makers alike have ignored abundant evidence of a limbic captivity to honor concerns among Arab patriarchal elites ... (191-2)

Brendan O'Neill: This is an anti-fascist

The name we should remember from this weekend is not Bob Vylan. Or Pascal Robinson-Foster, to give the Israelophobic punk who caused such a stink at Glastonbury his real name. No, it’s Yisrael Natan Rosenfeld. For as Bob Vylan was whipping the smug mob of Glasto into a frenzy of violent loathing for the IDF, this young IDF soldier, himself a Brit, was laying down his life for the Jewish people. He was killed in Gaza on Sunday as he did battle with that army of anti-Semites, Hamas. Now that’s anti-fascism.

Natan – as he was known – was 20 years old. He was born in London and moved to Israel 11 years ago. He was a sergeant in the 601st Combat Engineering Battalion of the IDF. He was killed by an explosive device in northern Gaza. His sister’s boyfriend, also an IDF soldier, died in combat during Hamas’s pogrom of 7 October 2023. Natan’s father paid tribute to him this morning. He was fighting ‘for his parents, his family, his people’, he said. ‘I feel he has a place in history.’

This is the Briton we should be talking about – not the sozzled, moneyed brats of Glastonbury who got a sick thrill from chanting ‘Death, death to the IDF’, but this fresh-faced warrior against Islamofascism. Not that Bob Vylan faux-punk who hollered for the death of the Jewish State’s soldiers, but this soldier of the Jewish State, this British Jew just out of his teens, who ventured into enemy territory to fight the Islamists who butchered so many of his people. Not the fake anti-fascists of Britain’s wet, vain left, but this real anti-fascist who put his life on the line for the Jewish homeland.

That Natan died just hours after thousands of his one-time compatriots chanted ‘Death, death to the IDF’ is chilling in the extreme. One can only hope that in his final few hours he did not see any clips of these privileged, hateful Gentiles in the country of his birth dreaming of the death of Jews like him. How betrayed he would have felt. To look from Natan’s smiling face to the malicious gurning of that Glasto mob is to behold the Two Britains: one brave, optimistic and willing to fight for what it believes in, the other indolent, self-regarding and only able to derive meaning through its hatred of others.

Here’s what horrifies me. Two groups of people were thinking ‘Death to the IDF’ on Saturday – the keffiyeh classes at Glastonbury and the barbarous militants who planted the device that ended Natan’s precious life. Britain’s middle classes were saying out loud what that neo-fascist militia was thinking as it laid its deadly trap for the soldiers of the Jewish nation. There was a meeting of minds, a most sickening meeting of minds, between the fashionably Israelophobic of the West and the murderously Israelophobic of Hamas. ‘Death, death to the IDF’, roared affluent Britons; ‘Okay’, replied Hamas.

‘We have to be united’: Father’s plea at funeral for UK-born IDF soldier killed in Gaza

IDF soldier Sgt. Yisrael Natan Rosenfeld, 20, who was killed during fighting in northern Gaza, was laid to rest at the Ra’anana cemetery on Monday.

According to an initial IDF probe, Rosenfeld, who was known as Natan, a member of the 601st Combat Engineering Battalion, was killed by an explosive device during operations in the Kafr Jabalia area.

Thousands of people joined the funeral procession, holding Israeli flags and paying their respects to Rosenfeld before he was buried.

In a teary eulogy, Rosenfeld’s father, Avi, said: “It’s so hard to stand here, but I am proud of you. You’re a hero.”

“Natan said we have to stay together,” he said. “He said that he is fighting in Gaza because we have hostages that must return home,” he added.

Avi delivered a message of unity to the country, declaring that “it’s not the time to argue.”

“It’s not the time to have arguments in the Knesset or on the streets. Think of our soldiers: they fight every day, they give their lives every second. Be together, give them the respect, the support. We have to be together, united,” he said.

“We suffered the Holocaust, the 7th of October, all the families of the soldiers who have fallen, and all the hostages who are now dead or are still there; the suffering is beyond belief. Hashem, it’s enough! The people of Israel are good people. Hashem save us, because it’s only You,” Avi stated.

“As far as Sam and I are concerned, our boy is still with us,” he added.

In her eulogy, his mother, Samantha, said: “Natan, we hope you are the last sacrifice anyone should have to pay for the price of our land and our freedom. There is no religious, secular, or Haredi person in the army; we are all one people, with one heart. We need to come together and put aside our differences. You shall not die in vain.”

“I can’t actually quite believe that I’m standing here at your funeral. It’s really quite unbelievable in your 20 years, how much you’ve been able to achieve,” she said.

Athalia, his younger sister, said she was “so proud” when Rosenfeld joined the army.

“I always envied you for everything. You were happy and surrounded by my friends. Since you enlisted, I sent you messages every day telling you to take care of yourself. One day, I stopped because I realized you would be OK. I didn’t think it was possible that you wouldn’t be OK,” she said, adding she wished she could have done something to stop him from returning to his service.

06/30 Links Pt1: Karen Diamond dies of injuries from Boulder firebombing; A Twelve-Day War’s Twelve Surprises; The poisonous identitarianism of Zohran Mamdani

From Ian:

David Horovitz: Israel was facing destruction at the hands of Iran. This is how close it came, and how it saved itself

Knowing when to stop
The military and political leadership agreed ahead of time to set achievable goals for the war — which were defined as “Creating conditions to prevent Iran’s nuclearization over time, and improving Israel’s strategic balance.” Twelve days in, the IDF reported that those goals had been attained, and that Israel’s position would weaken, and Iran’s strengthen, if the war continued.

The IDF had assessed that several of its planes could go down and pilots could be captured. That didn’t happen. It had estimated that 400 people would be killed on the home front if the war went to 30 days. The death toll was rising.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — whom the IDF deeply credits with creating the conditions for the US to join the attack — agreed that a war of attrition had to be avoided, and that Iran should not be given time to alter the balance of the conflict. With US President Donald Trump very publicly brokering a ceasefire, the war was brought to an end.

Unlike in Gaza, where the war goes on because the goals of eliminating the Hamas threat and returning all the hostages have not been met, in Iran the specified job was done. The IDF was prepared to put uniformed and civilian lives at risk to face down an existential threat, but not when that threat had been eliminated for at least the near future, and when there was a high probability that further incremental gains would be offset by greater losses.

Israel would like to see a “good deal” finalized by the US with Iran, and would hope to provide input on such an agreement’s necessary provisions. But it does not doubt that Iran will do whatever it can to evade even the most stringent barriers to reviving its bomb-making program. If the IDF has to strike again, it believes it can do so within a matter of days.

No surrender
A new painting has been erected in Valiasr Square in recent days. Rather than a scene, depicted from behind, of the march to Jerusalem, this installation shows Iranians from various walks of life — slain recognizable military chiefs, but also soccer stars, engineers, women — looking out into the streets of Tehran.

This is not a portrait of surrender. The depicted Iranians, civilians and military men, are saluting. Rockets are leaving smoke trails behind them. The accompanying slogan proclaims, “We are all soldiers of Iran.”

But this time, only Iranian flags are shown. And the backdrop is not Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock but Iran’s highest peak, Mount Damavand. This is the regime attempting to convey a message of national unity and, perhaps, even domestic focus.

And yet, it is more than possible that Iran spirited away some, maybe even most, of its 60% enriched uranium far from the major sites targeted in this war, and plenty of centrifuges too. Iran is about 75 times larger than Israel — plenty of room to construct smaller nuclear sites, and enrich and weaponize there, while trying to avoid attention. New scientists will replace the departed. It is not impossible that Pakistan or North Korea could be tempted to try to provide Iran with nuclear weapons.

Fresh, quite possibly more radical, leaders will replace the old for so long as the regime can retain power. And that regime, humiliated over 12 days in June, may be more motivated than ever to either scramble for the bomb or, more akin to its approach thus far, to lick its wounds and patiently rebuild the entire program.

On Saturday, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi predicted that Iran could resume uranium enrichment “in a matter of months.” Israel expects the regime to try to start resurrecting its program far more quickly than that.

‘If we hadn’t acted now…’
Israel has had a narrow escape.

It was only in a position to save itself, moreover, because Yahya Sinwar, fearing leaks, chose not to coordinate Hamas’s October 7, 2023, with Iran and its other proxies, incorrectly gauging that the rest of the axis would pile in when recognizing his “success,” and join the triumphal, Israel-eliminating march to Al-Aqsa. (Israel is not certain, to this day, why Iran held back.)

Defense Minister Israel Katz claimed last week that the Air Force had struck the “Destruction of Israel” clock in Tehran’s Palestine Square, counting down to Israel’s predicted demise in 2040. It’s not clear that the clock was smashed. If it was, Iran will doubtless fix it. And, we know full well, it was aiming to achieve the goal of rubbing out Israel a lot earlier than 2040.

Was. And is.

Netanyahu on Tuesday accurately described the war as a “historic” victory, and has said it opens the door to potential new normalization agreements. He also asserted that it would abide for generations and that Israel had sent the Iranian nuclear program “down the drain” — assessments that the security establishment would not, should not, dare not, complacently endorse.

The prime minister also declared that Israel would have faced destruction in the near future “if we hadn’t acted now.” On that, there is no disagreement.

Nikki Haley: A safe and secure Israel helps us have a safe and secure America

It's important because Israel is such an important partner for us in the Middle East. A safe and secure Israel helps us have a safe and secure America. None of the other countries in the region were saying anything against it. They knew that there was a likelihood that the US could attack, and they didn't say anything. Why? Because Iran is not just a threat to Israel, Iran's not just a threat to the US, Iran has been a threat to their neighbors for a long time. It's telling that they didn't step up, that they didn't say anything, because they've dealt with the threat of Iran's terrorist proxies for a long time

Those in America that worry about why these strikes took place should understand that those strikes were a move to keep Americans safer. That was a move to take out one of the threats that Iran has used against Americans for years. It's naive to say, "Oh, they were never going to use it," because you have to believe terrorists when they tell you something. When Iran continued to say, "Death to America," they meant it. And President Trump acted to make sure they could never follow through with it. The UN came out and condemned the US for strikes. I'm still waiting for the UN to condemn Iran for their use of ballistic missiles; I'm still waiting for the UN to condemn Iran for not complying with the nuclear inspections. I'm still waiting for the UN to say something to Iran about transferring weapons, which is a violation of the arms embargo.

If Trump would have continued to try and take the diplomatic route with Iran, he would have seen the same thing we've seen for years: Iran continues to delay, delay, delay. They always say they want to talk, but the action doesn't match what they want to do. Trump was right that while you could kick this can down the road if you wanted, the threat would only get bigger.

For us to think that more talks would have changed that is naive. We said, "We're done talking, we gave you the opportunity, you didn't take it, now it's time for us to take action on our own to protect Americans and protect Israelis." That was the right thing to do. Trump only had one choice, because if he had not followed up with these strikes, we would be dealing with Iran and their nuclear threats for years to come.

This is not a time where Israel or America needs to let their guard down. We need to now be very vigilant. Americans need to be vigilant of our military bases in the region. we need to be vigilant of cyber attacks that could come our way through Iran. Iran is not done.

82-Year-Old Jewish Woman Dies From Injuries Suffered in Anti-Semitic Colorado Terror Attack

An 82-year-old Jewish woman who suffered severe injuries during an anti-Semitic firebombing attack early June in Boulder, Colo., has died, prompting prosecutors to file first-degree murder and more hate crime charges on Monday against suspect Mohamed Soliman.

Karen Diamond died after Soliman, a 45-year-old illegal immigrant from Egypt, attacked her and 28 other peaceful pro-Israel demonstrators on June 1 using Molotov cocktails and a makeshift flamethrower, the Boulder County District Attorney's Office said in a statement, according to the Colorado Sun.

Colorado prosecutors in the statement announced two new first-degree murder charges against Soliman, who is facing more than 100 other state charges, including 52 counts of attempted first-degree murder, 8 counts of first-degree assault, and 16 counts of attempted use of an incendiary device. Soliman is also facing 12 federal charges, to which he pleaded not guilty during a hearing on Friday.

If convicted of first-degree murder, Soliman will serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Each attempted murder charge carries a penalty of 16 to 48 years in prison, according to 9News.

Many Jews today believe they are defending justice when they oppose Israel. They speak of fairness, human rights, and dignity—and they truly believe they are standing on moral ground. But what if their moral compass is built on fragments? What if they’ve inherited slogans, not systems?

In my essay yesterday examining the New York Jews who support Zohran Mamdani, and identifying a significant proportion of Jews in America who don't believe in God and who seem to have exchanged Judaism for "social justice" or "Marxism," I suggested that the Jewish community must be open to treating these people with respect, since they have lost their sense of community and responsibility to their fellow Jews.

People have asked me how, specifically, this could work. A lot of committed Jews have thrown up their hands in disgust at these "as-a-Jews" whose entire Jewish identity seems to be tied up in using it as a rhetorical weapon.

But as I have been working on my secularized Jewish ethics project, perhaps this is the key to bringing them back. Not as Jews by religion, but as Jews by morality.

Religious Judaism discusses the "pintele yid," the Jewish spiritual spark that Jews cannot extinguish. Organizations like Chabad try to help people find that spark and bring them back to Judaism as a religion.

Can we do the same thing to help bring agnostic and other secular Jews to understand and appreciate Jewish ethics without the trappings of religion?

After all, the most vocal anti-Zionists use terms that are quite familiar to Jewish thought - "justice," "peace," "accountability," "fairness," "human dignity." This is their pintele Yid. They are convinced that their attacks on Israel and support for Israel's enemies are based on morality.

So let's speak with them on their own turf.

Ask them, "What is your moral philosophy? Can you describe it? Is it consistent? Does it treat Israel the same as other countries in identical circumstances?"

Except for hardcore Marxists, most would have to admit that they never really thought that deeply about their own moral framework. Most of them would have to say that it is a mix of liberalism (individual rights), some social justice (power analysis, lived experience). maybe some decolonization theory. But i fit is not a consistent system - if it is merely a moral collage - then it falls apart when examined closely, and people who consider themselves moral should be very concerned if their moral framework cannot consistently answer the world's biggest moral questions in a way that doesn't show contradictions.

Every moral system has values, But values often can come into conflict. Real moral systems don't just name values: they adjudicate between them. They have to. Because justice and peace often clash. Dignity and equality sometimes pull in opposite directions. Jewish ethics doesn’t pretend this isn’t true - it builds a system to handle it. Can today's social justice warriors say the same?

How do their systems deal with the hard questions? If it is all gut instinct, or if the system is based more on catchy slogans than the hard choices that real morality entails, then it isn't a moral system.

If they claim to be acting out of morality, then it their responsibility to define their moral universe. And then ask a simple question: does their moral system have room for Jews as a people, as a religion, or as a nation?

If not, it is not a moral system.

Jewish ethics is a system that handles all those questions. It doesn't flatten morality into rhyming chants, but it can deal with the most complex real-world problems. It recognizes that the real world is messy, and it embraces the messiness, the contradictions, the human element, while providing answers that can be traced back to a clear and logical set of values and rules, far better than any of these modern day moralists can claim to do on their own.

And it has thousands of years of precedent to prove it.

You want to talk about morality? Great, let's have a conversation. But do it with intellectual honesty, humility and curiosity. Because those are not just Jewish values, but human values.

Jewish ethics can handle all the hard questions without faith. But it does ask that people act like adults - that they take responsibility for themselves, for their families, for their communities and the rest of the world, in that order. Pretending to care about the world before your own people is not moral. It goes against common sense. If the priorities are that skewed, then the moral framework that demands it goes against human nature itself - and no real moral system would demand that from anyone.

The people who cannot deal with Judaism as a religion would have a hard time to disagree with Judaism as a moral system. If they are honest, they should realize that they should look for moral truths in their own history and their own heritage. They are welcome to argue with it - that's what Jews do, constantly. But they must have the honesty to define their moral universe and show why it is better than the one that has kept their fellow Jews alive and thriving, against all odds for thousands of years.

We need a secular yeshiva - a place where Jews can grapple with these issues without meaningless slogans. Where the most difficult questions can be explored by including and weighting all values, not picking and choosing them for each occasion. A place that is as intellectually satisfying as it is morally consistent.

How does one deal with a terrorist enemy that uses human shields? How can one negotiate for hostages when the deal will most likely result in more death? Can war be moral, and under what circumstances? Is there any contradiction between morality and legality? How does one deal with opponents who break all the rules themselves? Is there a moral difference between a Jewish state and a Muslim state, or between a Jewish state and an Arab state?

These are the real questions.

Israel means "wrestling with God." Let's invite the people who claim the mantle of morality to wrestle with a real system of morality that accepts their premises - that justice and peace and dignity and human life are all important - and adds layers of depth and meaning that they never even considered.

They don't have to ever enter a synagogue. But they are required to understand exactly what their own ethical systems demand when applied to other situations, and see if it is really as moral as they claim.

If you don't have an expert on Judaism around to have this discussion, my chatbot AskHillel.com is more than happy to talk with you, respectfully, about anything ethics related. Even if you are anti-Zionist. Even if you are disillusioned with Judaism. Even if you are a brilliant halachic expert.

This is not only a challenge to anti-Zionist Jews. The Jews who support Israel reflexively must also answer: are you ready to go deeper than instinct and partisanship? Are you prepared to examine whether your positions are grounded in a real moral framework - or just emotional loyalty?

Can you articulate your views on the debates Israelis are having - hostage negotiations, judicial reform, settlements - in Jewish ethical terms?

Can you meet critics in an argument about universal ethics without dismissing them as naïve or malicious?

Even when the answers aren’t clear, having a shared ethical language lets us define the real points of disagreement. And that elevates the conversation - for everyone.

Jewish ethics can handle the hard questions.

Can you?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Of all the major Iranian military leaders that Israel targeted during the war with Iran, one of them hurt upset Hamas and the other terror groups in Gaza the most.

For the past few days, Palestinian jihadist media has been mourning Saeed Izadi (Hajj Ramadan), describing him as one of the pillars of support for the Palestinian terror movements.

Izadi was the head of the "Palestine Corps," the Quds Force division responsible for operations against Israel from Palestinian territories. He oversaw the transfer of tens of millions of dollars annually to Hamas, trained rocket manufacturing cells in the Gaza Strip, and developed weapons smuggling networks worldwide including via East Africa. He very possibly was involved in the planning of the October 7 pogroms.

Hamas said in its statement that Izadi worked day and night to support the Palestinian cause, and "made tremendous efforts to strengthen the capabilities of our people and their resistance against the Israeli enemy."

The Al-Qassam Brigades also confirmed that Izadi was directly responsible for the Iranian relationship with Palestinian terror leaders. "We mourn this leader, who will be missed by Palestine and its resistance. We recall his prominent role in supporting the Palestinian resistance and working to supply and develop it in every way possible, fulfilling the sincere jihadi duty and the role assigned to the leaders and forces of the nation in supporting and assisting the Palestinian people and their resistance."

Islamic Jihad Movement also mourned him, saying he made significant contributions in providing all means of support and assistance to "resistance movements" in Palestine and the region over many years.

Hezbollah mourned Izadi and lavishly praised him, saying "We knew the martyred Brigadier General Izadi as a waving flag for Palestine and Jerusalem. He lived among us for decades as a fighter, supporter, and developer, during which he devoted all his energies and capabilities to serving the Palestinian resistance. Through his continuous effort and deep faith, he was able to bring about a major renaissance and qualitative progress in the resistance's methods of operation, its capabilities, its manufacturing, and its plans. The martyred general was an example of tireless, relentless action. Through his extensive relationships with various resistance movements and entities in the region, he formed an effective and influential communication network. He frequently held strategic and important meetings to exchange expertise and dedicate it to serving the Palestinian cause and liberating it."

Abu Jamal, spokesman for the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the military wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, also described Izadi as a "key supporter of the resistance's capabilities and a key contributor to providing it with sufficient, qualitative support."

Israel targeted his apartment in Iran, while the electricity still worked in the apartment directly beneath his.