Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, July 17, 2025

Today's conspiracy theory: Israel trains Mossad agents to be imams

A writer in Egypt's Gomhuria Online wins today's contest for the most unhinged antisemitic conspiracy theory:

Israel... and the Game of the Imams!!

Indeed, the Zionist entity has mastered the game of the imams with precision, professionalism, and cynicism. It plays in the field without competitor or deterrent—at least at this level of deception, falsification, manipulation of minds, tampering with religious culture, and the development of theories to stir sedition and cause distress to all of God's creation—believers and non-believers, Muslims and others.

The Zionists have excelled not only in recruiting and embracing pro-Zionist preachers and imams, but in manufacturing a special kind of imam—created from scratch by Mossad and its supporting agencies, chosen from among pure Jews with diverse knowledge backgrounds. They are educated and indoctrinated in a specific form of Islam tailored to Zionist ideology that satisfies the ambitions of the global Zionist movement.

This is not limited to special training courses, but includes dedicated academic institutions openly named “Tel Aviv Islamic University” where subjects such as Quranic interpretation, biography of the Prophet, Hadith sciences, Arabic language, and various dialects (Egyptian, Levantine, Maghrebi) are taught—with special attention to Persian. These curricula are not merely distorted or biased; they are designed to invert facts and historical realities, producing incitement preachers who can fulfill the Zionist narrative and elevate the Jewish story—leaving even the wise bewildered, destabilizing thought and sowing confusion without being exposed for years.

In occupied territory, the task is easier. We saw examples of them leading ISIS and its counterparts in Syria, Iraq, and even Libya. The best example is Sheikh Abu Hafs, who preached, led prayers, and was later exposed as an Israeli spy—Benjamin Ephraim, who was caught in the early days of the revolution.

The most dangerous example was recently uncovered in Iran, following the Iranian-Zio-American war. Amidst a wave of Mossad spies flooding Iran, they succeeded in crafting an Iranian-born Jewish agent, disguised as a Shiite cleric in central Tehran. He gained mass popularity through his weekly TV program “Light of the Quran” with a calm voice and humble demeanor. He spoke on interpretation, Hadith, jihad, loyalty and disavowal.

No one imagined that this “famous imam” Sheikh Mojtaba Shirazi was actually a Mossad agent named Yaqub bin Shimon, a Jew born in Isfahan!

He operated for years until intelligence officials noted his use of unusual phrases—thought poetic by some—but later decoded as encrypted messages. A special unit called “Karbala Unit” arrested him mid-sermon, tried him secretly, and found a booklet with detailed codes used to direct sleeper cells for assassinations and bombings.

"Tel Aviv Islamic University" is a fiction that surfaces every year or so. But this article names not one but two supposed Israeli spies who were supposedly caught.

Last year, the "preacher" that they outed was none other than IDF Arabic spokesperson Avicha Adraee!

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

07/16 Links Pt2: Shai Davidai: Why I’m Leaving Columbia; UNRWA admits Palestinian ‘refugees’ can’t be removed from UN lists; How Israel Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Knowledge

From Ian:

Shai Davidai: Why I’m Leaving Columbia

My colleagues’ silence shows more than a lack of moral integrity. It reveals how costly it is to challenge dominant ideologies on American campuses. Question them, and you’ll quickly be isolated, even by close peers. Tasked with teaching truth, courage, and principled leadership, my colleagues failed to live by those very ideals. One senior colleague, a former vice dean of DEI at Columbia Business School, admitted they might have defended me—but the optics of a white-passing Jewish professor confronting a woman of color president “weren’t right.” By choosing comfort over conviction, my colleagues’ silence shows how wide the gap is between preaching values and living them. That’s the bitter truth about higher education today: Those who can’t, teach.

My colleagues stayed silent even as Columbia retaliated against me. In December 2023, the university launched an investigation after a video of me condemning support for Hamas went viral, accusing me of harassment based on “national origin and/or shared ancestry.” That charge was not only false but absurd. I never spoke against Palestinians, Arabs, or any ethnic, religious, or national group. I repeatedly and clearly distinguished between the Palestinian people and the terrorists ruling them, focusing only on student groups that glorify terror. By caving to a coordinated smear campaign from Students for Justice in Palestine, Columbia didn’t just stand by—it seized the chance to intimidate me into silence. The baseless investigation dragged on for 20 months before closing with no findings of wrongdoing—HR-speak for “innocent.” Meanwhile, my name and reputation were dragged through the mud for all to see. This is what ideological persecution looks like in academia.

The investigation was only the beginning. In April 2024, when I tried to enter the illegal campus encampment—plastered with signs like “With a rifle we will free Palestine,” tributes to terrorists, and a ban on Jewish students who support Israel’s right to exist—Columbia deactivated my ID, barring me from campus while letting the encampment stand. Months later, on the Oct. 7 anniversary, I confronted Columbia’s COO for letting the same group terrorize Jewish students with an unauthorized march celebrating Hamas and its allies. In response, Columbia suspended me again—this time from every building, including my office and the only Jewish space on campus. Terrified of its most outspoken Jew, Columbia made silencing me its priority.

Don’t let the current calm on campus fool you. Even under congressional investigations, lawsuits, and threat of losing accreditation, Columbia’s leaders cling to the fantasy that these problems will fix themselves. By appeasing radical students and faculty who support terrorism, they believe they can wait out the storm. That is their gravest mistake. Beneath the fragile calm lies an extremist ideology that’s waiting to erupt again. I call it “American Intellectual Antisemitism”—the belief that Jews are white settler-colonialists conspiring to ethnically cleanse Palestinians to create a Jewish supremacist ethnostate. Such hatred never disappears on its own. It adapts, evolves, and returns stronger. Look at Mahmoud Khalil, whose first public act after three months in prison—and missing his son’s birth—was to lead another protest. That someone like him is now embraced by Zohran Mamdani, the anti-Israel frontrunner in the NYC mayoral race, signals what’s ahead. The tune may change, but the lyrics stay the same.

Columbia’s failed leadership, morally bankrupt faculty, and indifferent majority have shattered my respect for an institution I once called home. I no longer trust its leaders to do what’s right, or my colleagues to show them the way. With that respect lost, I have no choice but to leave. Staying would betray everything I stand for.

I am leaving Columbia, but not this fight. Freed from the shackles of a tenure-track job, I plan to intensify my efforts against American Intellectual Antisemitism and support for terrorism on campuses. Through live talks, a podcast on Jewish activism, and a book on the roots of this ideology, I hope to mobilize people to demand change. At its best, Columbia is a beacon of truth and discovery. At its worst, it’s a battleground for extremists who can’t stand dissent and intellectual diversity. Together, we can fight to restore its true purpose.

In the end, Columbia made my life so unbearable I chose to leave. But there’s one thing they’ll never do—silence me. My voice is not for sale.

Adass Israel Synagogue firebombing charge laid against 20yo man

A man has been charged for his alleged role in the firebombing of a synagogue in Melbourne’s east.

The 20-year-old was arrested on Wednesday in Williamstown and charged with stealing a blue VW Golf that was used in the attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue.

The operation was undertaken by the Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team (JCTT), which includes officers from Victoria Police, the Australian Federal Police, and ASIO.

The taskforce previously said the attack was likely politically motivated.

That is still the position of the JCTT and the investigation is still into alleged terrorism.

The man was not charged for the actual arson attack, and no one has been charged for that offence yet.

The investigation is ongoing into the Adass Israel Synagogue fire, which police said was a significant priority for them with “significant resources across all agencies” being used.

Following the arrest of the 20-year-old man, police seized items at a Melton South home that will be further investigated.

The man was granted strict conditional bail to appear at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday, October 3, 2025.

Police allege the man stole the car in Melton on November 29, 2024, after which it was used in a series of arson attacks, including at the Lux Nightclub in South Yarra and an arson and shooting attack in Bundoora.

Police previously alleged that it was a “communal crime car”.

Victoria Police do not consider the Lux and Bundoora fires to be politically motivated.

Palestinian ‘refugees’ can’t be removed from UN lists, UNRWA admits

Mo Ghaoui, a Palestinian-American digital creator who immigrated to the United States six years ago and is based in Kent, Wash., entered a nondescript, U.N. Relief and Works Agency office building on a recent visit to Beirut, where he used to live.

He saw about 10 employees and a few working computers in the office, and decided to put the U.N. agency to the test, he told JNS. He wanted to know if he could give up his refugee status; however, concerned about pushback, he decided to pose the question about delisting a cousin rather than himself.

He asked the UNRWA staffer if his “cousin” could delist from the agency’s refugee database. “Why?” the staffer asked him, he told JNS. “There’s nothing to lose. No one does it. No one. We don’t have this procedure.”

Ghaoui told JNS that he didn’t take “why” for an answer.

“He wants to do it because he thinks this is better,” he told the UNRWA staffer. “The guy is British.”

The UNRWA staffer told Ghaoui that his cousin could be both British and listed officially as a refugee, Ghaoui told JNS. When Ghaoui said that his “cousin” isn’t a refugee any longer, the UNRWA staffer told him that the cousin could have his name struck from the Palestinian Authority registry but would remain on the UNRWA list.

Ghaoui told JNS that he challenged the staffer’s logic and asked why UNRWA should keep someone on its registry if the person is no longer on the Palestinian Authority refugee list.

Jonathan Fowler, senior communications manager at UNRWA, told JNS that “registered Palestine refugees can only be removed from UNRWA’s register upon their death or in case of false/duplicate registration.”

“Not upon request,” he told JNS.

The U.N. General Assembly requires UNRWA “to provide assistance and protection to Palestine refugees until a just solution to their plight is reached,” Fowler told JNS. He added that the agency “maintains registration records and issues identification documents for Palestine refugees crucial for their access to services and the legal recognition to which they are entitled.”

Fowler admitted to JNS that other U.N. agencies, including the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which handles all non-Palestinian refugees globally, also don’t allow refugees to relinquish their status upon request and be deleted from the official U.N. list. (JNS sought comment from the High Commissioner for Refugees.)

Non-Palestinian refugees, who are covered under the High Commissioner for Refugees, aren’t considered to be refugees after they acquire another nationality. UNRWA still considers someone a “refugee” even if the person has multiple passports.

07/16 Links Pt1: Gaza is a war; just a war; Biden and Hamas prolonged the war, not Netanyahu; The progressive myth of Francesca Albanese; IDF strikes Syrian regime military HQ over threat to Druze

From Ian:

Andrew Fox: Gaza is a war; just a war

To describe Gaza as “just a war” is not to trivialise it. It is to place it in its appropriate frame: a war with extraordinary suffering, in which errors have been made. It is a war that Israel has politically mishandled, whose government failed to establish a clear end state. It has alienated international allies through poor communication and, at times, has failed to rebut disinformation with the necessary urgency—but it is not a genocide. It is a war against a deeply entrenched, ideologically fanatical enemy operating from within a civilian population.

It is also a war that many commentators refuse to recognise as such. There is a strange moral inconsistency in much of the international discourse. When Western powers bombed Raqqa to oust ISIS, civilian casualties were acknowledged, but the operation was described as a necessary evil. When Russia destroyed Mariupol, the world understood the reasoning behind urban sieges (of course, Russia’s war in Ukraine is illegal, and the Russians have committed genocidal actions, but that does not change the fact the world sees urban combat in Ukraine and judges it as such). But when Israel bombs Khan Younis or Jabalia, it is instantly seen as a war crime. This double standard is not only unfair but also distorts our understanding of how wars are fought and won in the 21st century.

Urban warfare, particularly against irregular forces, leads to devastating outcomes. The IDF has thoroughly studied these dynamics. Its experience in Gaza has provided NATO forces with tactical and doctrinal lessons, such as the importance of combined arms integration, tunnel warfare expertise, and forward-deployed legal oversight. It has also revealed the limitations of airpower and the moral dangers of information warfare. Israel’s campaign has not been perfect, but it has shown a willingness to learn, adapt, and review its actions, including prosecuting soldiers for misconduct, a practice rarely seen in the region.

Indeed, the handful of credible allegations of war crimes committed by IDF personnel remain under investigation. Some will almost certainly lead to disciplinary action. However, the scale is significant. A detailed review of available evidence identified fewer than 100 cases of alleged deliberate civilian killings across a theatre that so far has reported over 56,000 deaths. Many of those reports, upon closer examination, are based on unverifiable claims, dubious witnesses, or sources with a long history of political activism. That does not absolve anyone, but it does provide context for the accusation that Israel is operating a military death machine.

The very idea of proportionality in modern urban combat has been distorted. Proportionality is not about equal casualties. The phrase does not apply to entire campaigns, from a legal perspective. It concerns, on an individual strike-by-strike basis, whether the expected military advantage outweighs the anticipated civilian harm in a specific action or strike. This judgment must be made instantly, based on intelligence and legal guidance. Although it is never flawless, the evidence suggests that Israel has effectively integrated these principles into its command structure. To suggest otherwise is to accuse military lawyers, commanders, and soldiers of a conspiracy on a scale that defies reason.

We should mourn the dead in Gaza. We should press for humanitarian access, accountability, and a political solution that prevents further bloodshed. We should also demand intellectual honesty, reject the cynical manipulation of casualty data, and question the narratives that emerge before the facts are established. Most of all, we should resist the urge to transform tragedy into a theatre for moral grandstanding, divorced from the real choices faced by those fighting in real wars.

Gaza is not the end of the world. It is not the beginning of a genocide. It is a war: bloody, badly handled in many ways, but still a war. One in which a liberal democracy has fought a brutal terrorist group in an impossible environment. That doesn’t mean Israel is always right. It means that when they are not, Israel is not uniquely wrong. If we cannot hold both ideas simultaneously—that war is terrible and that not all war is criminal—then we are not prepared to discuss peace, to create a lasting resolution to conflict, or to face the more difficult question: what happens after the guns fall silent, when war ends and politics pick up again?

Honor Is the Rock of the West

It’s been written that love was the great theme of the Holocaust, perhaps to remind us that, after immense infamy, good matters more than evil to moral historians. I’ve always thought this idea is profoundly mistaken, despite the beautiful lines on love by Frankl, Hillesum, or Anne Frank. Love was important, of course, but honor is even greater and more encompassing, including love, lineage, unity with our own, but also commitment, integrity, dignity, duty, and devotion to others. Think of how many suffering people managed to cling to human dignity, faith, love, and care for others amid the greatest hardships and atrocities, intended to deprive them of all hope. Theirs was the honor of living as a conscientious individual every day, in the face of determined efforts to dehumanize and obliterate them. The honor of secretly praying and educating children in a concentration camp. The honor of those who paid with their lives rather than betray their fellows. The honor of dying in prayer, reaffirming the faith of one’s ancestors while walking peacefully toward imminent death. The refusal to be a number.

More recently, we have before our eyes the example of the honor shown by every one of the youths kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, who shared their single pita a day with three or four others, over hundreds of days, without ever losing their love for each other and their country, and without losing hope. Think of the female hostages who were abused by their captors and then put on a display at the last moment before their release in front of jeering crowds of barbarians—and who turned what was intended as a festival of humiliation into a triumph of unbroken dignity and self-respect. What greater example of honor have we seen in recent times? That is the true light that can guide the West today, even in the face of rampant nihilism and relativism. In tough times, when hatred and violence take center stage, the old inherited morality reemerges, and at the forefront is not love, daring, or tolerance—but honor.

Israeli leaders repeatedly say Israel is fighting in Gaza or Iran to save innocents in France or New York. That antisemites snicker in response and accuse the Jews of “genocide” and the deliberate murder of babies with outrage both real and feigned, is no surprise. They’re on the side of hatred. Like the terrorists they admire, they despise honor, and feel a burning resentment toward those who still have the energy and the dignity to embody ancient codes.

What’s troubling is when European or American political leaders refuse to see that Israel’s fight is a defense of the identity and honor of the entire West. Israel is a wall of dignity against barbarism. Honor also belongs to those Israeli soldiers who give their lives for this cause, which far transcends their own interests and borders.

And yes, that example still retains its capacity to inspire others. Donald Trump’s strike on Iran, followed by swift and effective negotiation, was also an act of honor. The U.S. president knew his enemies would make a loud fuss, painting him as a warmonger, despite his actions in office proving the opposite. He also knew he’d face the usual chorus of murmurs, in Brussels as in Washington, calling for “restraint” and “avoiding escalation”—meaning abandoning the basic necessity of effective self-defense.

Trump ignored all that. He knew striking Iran was necessary: for Israel, for the U.S., for Europe, for peace in the West. Iran is the monster that has infected media and political parties, funded chaos across the West, carried out assassinations on our soil; spreading misery at home and abroad, the regime exists solely to destroy Israel and its allies.

Trump knew someone had to do what he did. Iran cannot have nuclear weapons. Preventing that, while reminding Iran who Israel’s great ally is and what its power is, was fundamentally an act of honor, in the face of which even Europe fell silent.

It may be true that honor is now deeply unfashionable in classrooms, among the youth, at work, or even in personal relationships. If the West wants to revive the moral splendor it once had, if it wants to retain the values and pleasures of its own civilization, and mount an effective defense against the barbarism of the savage Islamists, the totalitarian Chinese, and the cynical Russians, it must start by embracing the ideal of honor again—with respect, with memory, and with courage. Once again, Israel is serving as a light unto the nations. We in the West must open our eyes before it is too late.

Jonathan Tobin: Biden and Hamas prolonged the war, not Netanyahu

The myth of the lost peace
The claim that Netanyahu discarded a chance for peace to hold onto power is particularly disingenuous.

As the Times Magazine article states, a deal concluded in April 2024 would have left the Hamas military formations and leadership in place near the city of Rafah in southern Gaza. There, it would have allowed the continued flow of supplies to Hamas via the tunnels under the border between Egypt and the Hamas enclave.

According to the article, the Israel Defense Force chief of staff at the time, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, thought the capture of Rafah was unimportant. That is a reminder that he—and many more of the country’s military and intelligence leadership—were not only fatally wrong about Hamas’s intentions and primarily responsible for Oct. 7. They also were unprepared for the post-Oct. 7 war in which, especially in its opening months, they seemed to accept the idea that Hamas was an “idea” that couldn’t be defeated rather than an actual terrorist military opponent that could be vanquished.

One doesn’t have to be a military thinker on the level of von Clausewitz to wonder why Rafah wasn’t taken in the opening months of the war to cut Hamas off from a main source of supplies. If the IDF was at times “going in circles” in Gaza in the conflict’s first phase, as the Times alleges, it is the fault of the generals and not Netanyahu, who, unlike an American president, is not the unquestioned commander-in-chief of Israeli forces.

Another myth that the Times article props up is that had Netanyahu buckled under American pressure in April 2024 and allowed Hamas to return to its Oct. 6, 2023 status as the government of Gaza, Saudi Arabia would have then recognized Israel.

Both the Americans and the Netanyahu government treat a Saudi willingness to join the Abraham Accords and exchange ambassadors with the Jewish state as a top foreign-policy goal. Still, the Saudis chose not to join the accords in 2020, and they may never do so. Even the modernizing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman understands that recognizing Israel would open his family’s rule up to attacks on the legitimacy of their status as the protector of the holy places of Islam and betray the extremist Wahhabi strain of Islam that has always been a main prop of their regime.

A lifeline for Hamas?
Nor should anyone seriously take the article’s claims that conceding to Hamas 13 months ago would have boosted Israel’s popularity in Europe or among the left-wing Democrats in the United States, whose hostility to the Jewish state has only grown. The red-green alliance of left-wingers and Islamists seeks Israel’s destruction. Whatever sympathy some might have felt after the atrocities of Oct. 7 evaporated even before the Jewish state rallied and began to defend itself three weeks later, seeking the destruction of the terrorists.

The myth of the lost opportunity for peace also ignores that the reason why Netanyahu’s coalition would have crumbled had he given in to the American pressure was rooted not so much in the demands of his controversial political partners, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, as it was in his duty not to damage the security of the Jewish state. Granting a lifeline to Hamas in April 2024, rather than carrying on the war until its military formations were fully destroyed, and Hezbollah and Iran defeated as well as Assad toppled, would have been a strategic disaster for Israel and may well have ensured that the terrorists would have soon been in a position to repeat the Oct.7 massacre. But it would have helped the Biden administration politically and also bolstered Netanyahu’s opponents.

There are many legitimate criticisms to make of Netanyahu’s decisions throughout his lengthy tenure as Israeli prime minister, in addition to those that contributed to Israel’s being unprepared for Oct. 7. It will be up to Israel’s voters to render the ultimate verdict as to whether or not what he has done since then, which may well constitute the finest hours of his career as a politician and leader of his country, outweighs his mistakes and personal faults.

Whatever one may say about him, the claim that the war has been extended primarily to help him cling to power is a smear that should not go unanswered. Fair-minded historians who are not anti-Netanyahu partisans will be forced to conclude that not only was this accusation false, but that by clinging to his principles, the prime minister did his country and the world, which is materially better off with a weakened Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, an inestimable service.

There are many ways to try to figure out the world.

You can look at history as being a series of events, facts and actions. Or you can look at the world as chronology: either how trends are cyclical or progress towards completion. Some look at the world as simply the sum total of physics and biology with little rhyme or reason. Some modern theories say that the world must be viewed through the lens of power struggles, domination and resistance. And others see the world as a series of narratives.

As I have embedded myself in my Jewish ethics project, I think that these are all very incomplete. I believe that the most accurate way to see the world is as if values are the atoms of our universe.

Time, in this view, simply provides the sequence. Actions are putting the values into motion. But values are the driver for those decisions to act. Values tell us why something mattered, not just when it happened.

The AskHillel AI I built, using this framework, ends up being very good at interpreting things way beyond what we would normally call ethics. It is built with values, so it looks at the world that way. Because Jewish thinking looks at contradiction as not a problem but as something to be understood and reconciled, it naturally tries to find consistent patterns by seeking the underlying values that might explain what seems contradictory.

Jewish thinking, especially Talmudic and halachic thinking, has the concept of a "derech," a consistent way to reconcile rabbinic positions. AskHillel looks for a derech in not only ethics but in history, sociology, psychology, AI - really any human centered field, centered on values. And it does a surprisingly good job when it uses that prism.

Last week I asked Gemini AI to give a list of the most perplexing people in history, and AskHillel gave an analysis of their biographies by seeing how well they lived by Jewish values and by applying a "derechological" framework. The results were quite sophisticated analyses - certainly university political science paper level. Here, for example, is part of AskHillel's comparison of the "derachot" of Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong:

🔍 Moral & Strategic Blueprint Insights
Common Derachot:
Both used revolution as operational permission, ideology to shroud power consolidation, and charisma/institutional cults to maintain control.

Key Differences:
Mao’s derachot were more systemically violent, doctrinally infused into governance, and ideologically totalizing—impacting social structures, economics, and inner-party theology at massive scale.

Castro’s blueprint remained tactically authoritarian but rhetorically revolutionary; Mao’s was philosophically totalitarian, with ideological extremism as a structural necessity.

📌 Final Ethical Reflection
Both leaders present coherent moral-strategic patterns: revolutionary ethics used to justify authoritarian rule. But Mao’s derachot are far more radical and comprehensive. He fused ideology with violence—not just as an occasional tool—but as the engine of sustained political order.

Castro deployed authoritarianism with revolutionary theater; Mao made revolution the infrastructure of authority.

It also did an analysis of the "derachot" of corporations, Supreme Court decisions over time, and Biblical books. It then came up with "chiddushim" - novel insights - as to how charismatic people or some authoritarian leaders bend values around their own ambitions - which are often negative values themselves.

The sophistication of these analyses indicates that values might be the most accurate way to look at many, if not most, human based fields. They are, truly, the fundamental building blocks of our world.

Philosophers call the study of values axiology. Call this theory "axiological primacy."

When you look at the world this way, philosophical problems melt away. Humans don't have values as external properties - we are the sum of our values in a fundamental sense. Values aren't external to us, they are a part of us. If the "is" of Hume's Law are values, then the "ought" comes naturally.

I am not the first one to come up with this idea, but we took it further.

There are a lot of values out there, but it seems that most people have their values set from a young age. Morality isn't that you take on all values - for most people, it is to do the best with the values that your own personality has already adopted.

This fits in with Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory. Rambam (Maimonides) says something similar - that people have different innate temperaments (middot) which form the raw material for their moral development.

In this sense, we can say that for each of us, values are relatively stable and moral growth is learning when and how to act on them. If you are going in the wrong direction, that is where you can re-align - or, in Judaism, do teshuva (repentance.)

The world is not just a series of events or a sequence of time. It is the sum total of our moral decisions, based on our values. A biography is the story of a person's value decisions. History is the interaction between different national or leaders' values. Perhaps psychology is really the study of individual values and therapy is about changing people's derech to aim to fulfill their own personal values.

This is a powerful way to look at the world. It centers our own agency. Natural disaster just happen, but human decisions don't - and history is the story of decisions based on values.

Living up to our values is what gives life meaning. And nothing is more important than that.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

By Daled Amos

The Abraham Accords are perpetually in the news. Sometimes, the pundits suggest a new Arab country is about to join the accords. At other times, an analyst may criticize the whole idea of the accords. This week, The New York Times is attacking the Abraham Accords, claiming the agreement has not lived up to its name, never has, and perhaps never will. In a nutshell:

The 2020 agreements addressed diplomacy and commerce, not conflicts or the Palestinians. Predictions that the deals would produce regional peace were baseless, analysts say.

And those three analysts chosen for the article are very clear on what the problem is:

o Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute: “It’s got nothing to do with peace. Peace was the way it was branded, and marketed. But that doesn’t mean that it makes any sense. This was not an agreement that ends the war.”

o Abdulaziz Alghashian, a Saudi researcher and senior nonresident fellow at the Gulf International Forum: “'Who is involved in this ‘regional peace’?' he said he had found himself asking supporters of the Abraham Accords. He said he realized that for some, it is a concept that relies on 'a complete avoidance of the Palestinian issue.'”

o Marc Lynch, a political science and international affairs professor at George Washington University: "The Abraham Accords were premised on the notion of Arab-Israeli cooperation while skipping past the Palestinians, but 'that was always a mistake, and it wasn’t such a shock when Gaza proved it was a mistake.'”

According to these analysts, the Abraham Accords are an agreement that fails to end "the [Palestinian] war," are a "complete avoidance of the Palestinian issue," and "skips past the Palestinians." That is their complaint in a nutshell. On the opposing side, the article presents the White House's opinion, but does not quote any of the scholars or analysts who support the Abraham Accords.

As for avoiding the "Palestinian issue," it is not as if Israel has been avoiding agreements with the Palestinian Arabs over all these years. If the analysts believe that Israel should be making even more concessions to the Palestinian Arabs, maybe they can suggest what those would be, along with what can be expected from the Palestinian Arabs--such as stopping payments to imprisoned terrorists. At no point in the article do the analysts, or the article itself, accuse Israel of ignoring Palestinian requests to sit and talk.

In the meantime, Israel lives in a tough neighborhood and has interests in that "regional peace" that go beyond just the Palestinian Arabs. While the article suggests, "In effect, the deals bypassed the central conflict, between Israel and the Palestinians," this overlooks Iran's role as the leading state sponsor of terrorism. It is well worth Israel's time to acquire alliances against Iran, contrary to The New York Times and its parochial view of the Middle East.

Besides, the Palestinian Arabs have a stake in the region as well. As Aryeh Lightstone, US envoy to the Abraham Accords and advisor to Ambassador David Friedman, said in an interview in 2023:

We believe the problem is not the Palestinian people. The problem is the so-called leadership of the Palestinians. Anything that enfranchises the leadership is a mistake for the region and the Saudis see that also. If there is something that helps the Palestinians have better jobs and better opportunities, I think Israel would embrace it. I think the region should embrace it.

He goes on to suggest:

If it hadn't been for COVID and if we had had the support of the Abraham Accord countries also, then the Emiratis or Saudis or Moroccans could have come in and built Palestinian Arab businesses and industrial zones -- better than the US or Israel could do it.

The criticism that the Abraham Accords should not be labeled a "peace deal" is understandable. Of the three Arab countries--UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco--Israel has only been in conflict with

Morocco, and even then only minimally during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. You can chalk up that "marketing" angle to having a president who is a businessman. Note that if you do a search for "Oslo Accords peace deal," you get 1,470 hits--even though those accords are an interim deal and are also not considered a peace deal per se.

However, the bias of the article goes beyond picking analysts who all share one opinion.

According to the article:

Sudan, often cited as a candidate to be the next Arab country to join, has not established diplomatic relations with Israel.

This is not accurate. Sudan signed the accords in January 2021 and also went on to repeal its 1958 law banning relations with Israel that April. What they did not do was formally recognize Israel. Sudan’s political instability following a 2021 coup and civil war since April 2023, stalled the process. The article refers to those problems, but cynically presents them as examples of issues in the region in the face of the accords, without ever mentioning the steps Sudan has taken short of establishing formal relations.

An even more ridiculous claim is that:

Years of overtures to persuade Saudi Arabia to join the accords have so far failed. The Biden administration took up that mantle fervently, pursuing a deal built on the United States granting major benefits to the kingdom.

This, of course, is nonsense.

This is the same Joe Biden who publicly called Saudi Arabia a pariah during the Democratic presidential debates:

I would make it very clear we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them. We were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them in fact the pariah that they are. There's very little social redeeming value of in the present government in Saudi Arabia, and I would also as pointed out I would end the subsidies that we have and the sale of material to the Saudis, where they're going in and murdering children. And they're murdering innocent people, and so they have to be held accountable.

Biden did not "take up that mantle." He threw it in the face of the Saudis. and deliberately created distance between his Administration and Saudi Arabia. The Washington Free Beacon reported in June 2021 that the Biden State Department discouraged referring to the agreement by name. Things got so bad that when asked in May 2021, Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters:

We are not following the tactics of the prior administration. Aside from putting together a peace proposal that was dead on arrival, we don’t think [the previous administration] did anything constructive to really bring an end to the longstanding conflict in the Middle East.

This is why, in March 2023, the New York Times quoted the same analyst quoted above, Abdulaziz Alghashian, about the dislike the Saudis had for Biden:

Mr. Alghashian said it was unlikely that Saudi officials would actually facilitate a major foreign policy victory for Mr. Biden while he was still president, given their grievances with his administration.

“The Saudi ruling elite do not want Biden to be the American president to take credit for Saudi-Israeli normalization, but they don’t mind Biden taking the blame for its absence,” he said.

Even then, there were indications that Biden did not have his eye on the Abraham Accords, but on China:

Any U.S-Saudi deal to upgrade relations will have a major economic component. The source said the U.S. wants to make sure that such a deal keeps Saudi Arabia closer to the U.S. when it comes to competition with China.

So when the article goes on to make claims about "a sweeping bombardment of Gaza," two million Palestinians facing "desperate hunger," and "more than 50,000 have been killed" with only a single generous reference to Hamas terrorists as "the Palestinian militia that ruled Gaza and received backing from Iran, led a fierce attack in Israel that killed more than 1,000 people"--The New York Times whitewash does not surprise us.

The New York Times is still pining for the two-state solution.

On June 27. a group of Muslim scholars gathered in Istanbul called to issue the "Al Aqsa Flood Charter," an 86 paragraph document justifying Hamas' murders and rapes on October 7, 2023 and demanding that there be no compromise with Israel.

The Palestinian Scholars Association summarized the Charter: "It defines the jurisprudential and political stance on the Zionist occupation, and outlines the correct understanding of the Battle of the Flood in light of the texts and objectives. The charter affirms that confronting the Zionist project and dismantling its material, intellectual, political and media structure is a duty upon the Islamic nation and a shared human responsibility among the free and honorable people of the world. "

The International Union of Muslim Scholars supported the charter and quoted select parts.

MEMRI translates parts of the charter.

"Islam is the identity of Jerusalem and Palestine, and Jerusalem is part of the Muslims' identity and is at the heart of the Islamic lands. Therefore, when an infidel takes control of [Palestine] and occupies it or any part of it, the Quran, the Sunna and ijma' [the consensus of Islamic scholars] obligate waging jihad against him. Nobody, no matter what his identity, is entitled to relinquish any part of Palestine's territory or abandon even an inch of it. Anyone who does so is a traitor; that is the consensus of the Muslim scholars. Jihad is incumbent upon the people of Palestine in particular and upon the Muslims in general, especially the clerics and the rulers, so as to liberate the [Muslims’] land, the [destination of] their Prophet's Night Journey [i.e., Jerusalem], and their prisoners..."

As far as October 7 is concerned:

The charter's second chapter, titled "Principles of Shari'a Discourse regarding the Al-Aqsa Flood," discusses the legitimacy of Hamas' October 7, 2023 terror attack and its implications, seeking to rebuff the criticism voiced against Hamas in the Islamic world after this attack. .."Those who wage jihad for the sake of Allah – chief of them the jihad fighters in Jerusalem and its environs – are the best of the believers, who carry out this duty on behalf of the [Muslim] nation, and [therefore] they deserve loyalty, assistance and praise. [We must] advertise their virtues and achievements and reject the suspicions raised [against them] by ignorant or biased people. Raising doubts regarding the jihad of the jihad fighters and spreading them in the media and among the public is an act of impaired people who abandon [others in time of need] and avoid fulfilling their duties."
The third chapter, titled "The Al-Aqsa Flood in the Scales of the Shari'a," addresses the claim that the October 7 attack was unjustified in light of the heavy price paid by the people of Gaza. The chapter begins by stating that the attack was defensive jihad, which does not require the approval of a ruler or for the attackers to be equal in strength to the enemy.

But what about the "genocide" and the "starvation" and the millions of Gazans who are dying and suffering because Hamas decided they wanted a war? Oh, don't worry about them. Their deaths are proof that it is all worthwhile.

"The heavy price paid by the people of Gaza in the Al-Aqsa Flood war is no cause for regret or for a mental breakdown. On the contrary, it is a sign of righteous faith and great sacrifice. They sacrificed their lives and their property for the sake of Allah and fulfilled their sincere pledge of loyalty to Almighty God. Their reward is from Allah, Who honors those who give everything [they have] and grants bounty to those who give of themselves…"

Yes, they are saying that Gaza civilian deaths are a good thing.

I don't see these "scholars" picking up weapons and sailing to Israel to fight, which they urge every single Muslim to do. No, they just tell Gazans that they must die for the cause. And be happy about it.

It is worth noting that while Israel has made it clear that it doesn't want to hurt civilians and it is Hamas actions that put them at risk, the Islamic Scholars do not distinguish between Gaza residents and Hamas, painting dead Gaza civilians as having willingly sacrificed themselves as part of the jihad.

The Charter was signed by over 350 Muslim scholars and 39 Islamic organizations.

It is an open call for genocide against Israel. And anti-Israel "genocide scholars" don't seem to find this problematic.

(h/t Jill)

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Great news: Jews will take over the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, because the Muslims refused to provide basic safety for visitors

Israel Hayom (Hebrew) reports:

In an unprecedented move, a significant change was decided in the status quo of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, while taking powers from the Palestinian Hebron Municipality and transferring them by the Civil Administration to the Kiryat Arba Hebron Religious Council - in order to promote structural changes in the complex, Israel Hayom has learned.

This is the first time that massive changes will be made to the Cave of the Patriarchs since the Shamgar Committee's decisions in 1994.

Palestinian and Arab media are having a meltdown over losing control over the second most important Jewish site that Muslims had taken over. How dare Israel take away control of what they consider a Muslim only site?

But when you look at the reasons for the change, it becomes clear that the Palestinian Hebron Municipality has been doing everything they can to resist even the most basic changes needed for worshiper safety and comfort - simply because Jews wanted these things done.

Here are the changes listed in the article that the Palestinians have been opposing for years, sometimes decades:

Put a new roof on the compound
Build a roof over Jacob's Courtyard outside where Jews pray
Install an advanced fire extinguishing system
Install air conditioning
Restrooms near the complex

These should hardly be controversial. But the Arabs fight tooth and nail against any change that Jews want. It took decades to install an elevator there so people in wheelchairs can visit, and the Waqf condemned it and the PA called it a "racist, Judaizing, colonialist, Talmudic crime" even though it would have served Muslims equally.

This isn't a story of taking away Muslim rights. No one is saying that the status quo where Jews and Muslima have equal rights to pray there will be affected.

This is a story of stopping the antisemitism that made the holy site dangerous and uncomfortable.

The irony is that if the Palestinians wouldn't be so adamantly antisemitic, they would still be controlling the site.

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07/15 Links Pt2: How DEI unleashed the monster of anti-Semitism; Elise Stefanik Takes CUNY Chancellor to Task; The Democrats’ Big Tentifada

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: How DEI unleashed the monster of anti-Semitism

It seems to me that the latent anti-Semitism of England’s middle classes has found a fresh outlet in Israelophobia. Under the faux-political cover of hating the Jewish nation, some are giving vent to that old, regressive loathing of Jews. And this is where the report falls down – with its solutions. It calls for the boosting of DEI – Diversity, Equality and Inclusion. Educational institutions and public bodies must ensure, it says, that DEI includes ‘education on anti-Semitism’. This strikes me as a staggering moral contradiction – because it is precisely DEI that helped to birth the new Jew hate.

It is not a coincidence that it is in the very institutions that are rife with DEI that anti-Semitism is now ‘pervasive’. And not just in the UK – on campuses across the US, where DEI is a neo-religion, Jew hatred has surged. We’ve seen students at Columbia call the Jewish nation ‘the pigs of the Earth’ and openly dream of death for their Jewish colleagues. At Penn University, Jewish students have been told to go back to ‘fucking Berlin where you came from’. There’s even been the daubing of ‘swastikas and hateful graffiti’ on campus. In America as well as Britain, the creep of the fascist imagination seems most pronounced in those zones where wokeness rules and diversity is sacralised.

DEI is Dr Frankenstein to the monster of the new Jew hatred. It is the very racial conspiracism of this bourgeois cult that has made life hard for Jews. For this hyper-racialist ideology ruthlessly sorts all ethnic groups into boxes marked ‘oppressed’ (meaning good) or ‘privileged’ (meaning bad). And it views Jews as the most privileged, the people with the most to atone for. It hangs a target sign round their necks, marking them out for the righteous opprobrium of self-styled defenders of ‘the oppressed’. An ideology that damns Jews as unjustly advantaged, and the Jewish State as uniquely barbarous, is an ideology that sooner or later will let the world’s oldest racism off its weak leash. And that has happened.

Anti-Semitism is not only a light sleeper – it’s a shape-shifter, too. There’s been religious anti-Semitism, racial anti-Semitism, and now woke anti-Semitism: a swirling bigotry fuelled by the blind righteousness of a half-mad activist class that genuinely thinks history is on the side of its hatreds. We don’t need more DEI. We need Jews and their allies to prep for the fight ahead. Because while history doesn’t ‘take sides’, it does contain lessons, and none as important as this one: Jew hatred must always be strangled at birth.

Yisrael Medad: Anti-Zionism is not all theoretical - they are violent by nature

Anti-Zionism's advantage is that it is shift changing in its character. It adapts itself to whatever trend of political thought becomes the topic of the day – Left, Right, and/or Center - and it assumes the rhetoric language of various ideologies and trends.

Bob Vylan can shout “Death to the IDF” at the Glastonbury Festival in England and American conservative isolationist Steve Bannon can demand “There needs to be a thorough FARA investigation into Fox’s relationship with a foreign power” and call its Jewish show host Mark Levin, “Tel Aviv Levin.”

On the other hand, the concept of an Arab country of Palestine, with a distinct people, never truly existed, neither in the minds of outside observers nor the Muslims themselves. It was a conquered land occupied by Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Mamluks, and Ottoman Turks.

The region of Palestine was never a defined geopolitical entity, but was fought over by two tribal confederations. Throughout the 16th century, there were frequent clashes between families across Palestine based on Qays–Yaman divisions and there was civil strife involving peasant fellahin, Bedouins, and townspeople well into the 18th century. An “Arab Palestine people” never truly existed, even in the mid-20th century.

The anti-Zionists are violent by nature, seeking to “globalize the intifada.” In Berlin this past week, pro-Gaza demonstrators demanded the return of the Islamist Caliphate.

Commenting on that campaign, pro-Israel British-Palestinian John Aziz said that whereas “Socialism was once the battle cry of factory workers and coal miners… today, it’s increasingly the pet ideology of upper-middle-class urbanites sipping fair trade soy lattes and chanting of their wish to globalize an intifada that they know little or nothing about.”

Anti-Zionism, moreover, is a wave that potentially will submerge more than just the Jews.

How the NYT Tokenizes Jews — and Mandy Patinkin Helped Them Do It

It’s the final scene of The Princess Bride and Inigo Montoya, master fencer and revenge-seeker, is at the window of the castle with Westley and turns to him. “You know, it’s very strange. I have been in the revenge business so long. Now that it’s over, I do not know what to do with the rest of my life,” he says.

At face value, it’s shocking, and your jaw drops. You aren’t hearing these lines within the context of the movie itself, but from the Jewish actor who played Montoya in 1987. Mandy Patinkin is using that line to describe Israel’s war in Gaza during an exclusive feature interview with The New York Times Magazine.

The interview covered a wide variety of topics relating to the Patinkin-Grody family’s lives and careers, including their most recent resurgence to popularity through their TikTok videos. Nevertheless, the NYT decided to clip the portion about their opinions of Israel and antisemitism for social media, making it all about Gaza and fueling a gross representation of a token Jew.

The NYT magazine knew this portion about Gaza and antisemitism would go viral. With approximately 111,000 likes and counting and about 40,500 shares, the tokenization of Jews is a guaranteed win. That’s why clips of any other part of the interview are absent.

Would the magazine have featured it if it had featured pro-Israel sentiments?

07/15 Links Pt1: Reality Was the Cure for ‘Iraq Syndrome’; Most Israelis Want to See Military Rule in Gaza; Terrorists in Uniform: A Study of PA Security Forces’ Terror Involvement

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Reality Was the Cure for ‘Iraq Syndrome’

Two of those three are clear violations of “just like Iraq” catastrophizing. But again, the “just like Iraq” line of thinking isn’t accurate, and now Trump realizes that.

The most hysterical version of the argument against striking Iran’s nuclear facilities was voiced by, of course, Tucker Carlson. Bombing Iran would put us at war, according to Carlson’s line of thinking, and “[t]he first week of a war with Iran could easily kill thousands of Americans. It could also collapse our economy.”

But there was no reason to believe this was a likely outcome at all. Iran had already been killing U.S. service members long before those B-2s soared above Persian skies. And Israel had already taken out Iran’s air-defense systems. The decision to strike was the equivalent of walking through an open door.

After the strikes definitively buried such scaremongering, Carlson announced he was “going to pull back from the internet a little bit.”

Good idea. Meanwhile, Trump learned an important lesson: America’s capabilities far exceed the claims of isolationist doomers. And there is a lot of room between “engage in a land war in a faraway country” and “drop a bomb from a plane on an uninhabited underground facility.”

Such limited displays of U.S. power and effectiveness are likely to do more to prevent full-scale war than removing American power from the equation entirely. Iran’s allies told it to stand down after the strikes and maybe accept a compromise with Trump; either way, they wouldn’t be taking part in any blockheaded attempt at military retribution against the United States. Take the L, as the kids say.

Ukraine is now benefiting from the Iran strikes because reality has dispelled the fog of Iraq Syndrome and the president is seeing more clearly. Asking Vladimir Putin nicely to stop the war hasn’t worked, nor should anybody have ever believed it would. Perhaps helping Ukraine defend its existence won’t stop Putin either, but at the very least it will extract higher costs than Russia is already paying for its adventurism.

Either way, there’s no denying that, in the wake of the successful strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, the president is having an easier time seeing the world as it is.

JCPA: Survey: Most Israelis Want to See Military Rule in Gaza the Day After

Majority of the Public: No to a Palestinian State, Yes to Military Rule

Among all respondents, only 4% believe Hamas should stay in power after the war. The majority of Jewish respondents (64%) prefer the option of temporary military rule. Among Arab respondents, 41% are undecided, while 20% favor a technocratic model. A regional involvement model by an Arab force received only limited support (10%), and more than one-fifth expressed no clear opinion. Wall of Opposition to a Palestinian State

Similar to previous JCFA surveys, the current poll indicates a clear Israeli majority (64%) opposed to establishing a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, even after the events of October 7. Only 8% support a Palestinian state without conditions, and 17% would support it under conditions such as recognizing Israel as a Jewish state and being demilitarized. The strongest opposition was recorded among Jews (77%) and right-wing voters (88%). Conversely, among Arab respondents, 34% support an unconditional Palestinian state, and an additional 26% support it under certain conditions. Even in Exchange for Normalization with Saudi Arabia – Still No

58% of Israelis oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state even in exchange for normalization with Saudi Arabia. 24% support such a scenario if it includes recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and demilitarization, while only 8% support unconditional statehood. Among Jewish respondents, opposition is even higher – 68%. Israelis Don’t Trust the Palestinian Authority

53% of Israelis oppose involving the PA in any future arrangement in Gaza, while only 26% support it. Among Jews, opposition is especially high at 59%, compared to 30% among Arabs. Broad Support for Trump’s Plan for Gaza

U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for Gaza enjoys wide support, with 69% of respondents in favor. including 82% of Jewish respondents. However, among Arab respondents, opposition rose sharply from 50% in May to 56% in July 2025.

Israel: Hamas Removal in Gaza Is Non-Negotiable

Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer interviewed by Dan Senor
Israel's Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer described how his thinking had changed after Oct. 7: "What Israel has to do is build up a wall, an iron wall...and eventually when they realize that they can't beat us, that's when they will actually open the door towards peace."

"The perception of Israel's weakness [after Oct. 7], how that's going to affect calculations in the region, can be very, very dangerous because of all the buzzards that are circling Israel that would love a chance to attack a bleeding Israel....I saw the puncturing of that wall, and the fear was that now everyone was going to rush in, and reversing that was very critical at the beginning of the war."

To close this "breach" in the wall, Israel needs to ensure that Hamas loses its control over Gaza. "It doesn't necessarily mean to kill every Hamas terrorist who's running around there. But if Hamas lost Gaza, that's the minimum necessary in order to achieve a victory...the minimal requirement is: The force that did this to you on October 7 is no more. They've lost control of Gaza because of their decision to act."

Addressing recent opinion polls, Dermer said: "Everybody in Israel wants to end the war. The question is, are you going to end the war with a victory for you or victory for Hamas? When you dig down and you ask people: Wait a second, Hamas will stay in power. We're not going to have any troops in Gaza. They will be able to rearm and they'll be able to do October 7th attacks again. I think the numbers will be different."

Regarding the strikes on Iran's nuclear program, Dermer said, "I think that we have removed that threat for the foreseeable future, particularly if we do the things that we need to do now in the aftermath of that attack. But Iran is not the same country that it was last month."

According to L'Orient Today US negotiator for Lebanon Tom Barrack dropped two bombshells last week.

The first:

He spoke of a 90-day disengagement agreement, a trial period to test whether trust can be established. In the same interview, he hinted that the cease-fire agreement reached in late November is no longer working in its current form.

What was he insinuating? Despite official statements, Lebanon has not upheld the terms of that deal, particularly with regard to dismantling Hezbollah’s weapons south of the Litani, and even north of it.

On the 91st day, it will already be too late.

For those still hesitating or betting on time — specifically, on the outcome of negotiations with Tehran‚ it should be remembered how Donald Trump gave Iran 60 days to reach a deal before Israel took matters into its own hands.

The path Barrack laid out for Lebanon is clear: the country is expected to follow in Syria’s footsteps toward a new Pax Americana. The demands, therefore, go far beyond Hezbollah’s disarmament, which is now seen as a necessary step, regardless of the broader process. Failing that, what lies ahead is abandonment, isolation, explosion, and implosion.

The US is expecting Lebanon - as well as Syria - to at least make peace with Israel, if not normalization.

But Barrack also said something which goes against US policy since 1997:

for the first time, he referred to Hezbollah as a Lebanese political party, drawing a clear line between its political role and its armed wing, which is designated by several countries as a terrorist organization.

This marks a significant shift in the U.S. approach, which maintains sanctions on the party as a whole. In the current context, it also represents a rare opportunity, an unexpected offer for Lebanon’s Shiites to break free from Iran’s grip and reintegrate into the Lebanese fold.

This distinction could offer Hezbollah a chance to build on its considerable parliamentary, administrative, social and economic influence. If the party truly chooses to abandon its military project.

In other words, Washington is not necessarily seeking to dismantle Hezbollah, but rather to bring it into the ‘rules of the game,’ under the logic of the state rather than that of ‘resistance.’

While I have reservations about this, it is a very Trump-like approach. If Hezbollah wants to survive in any form, it has to give up its weapons, and to the US, this is non-negotiable. Once that is done, then it can represent Lebanon's Shiites politically and can lose its terrorist designation from the US (and likely from everyone else.)

It's a gamble, but I can see its appeal. Hezbollah isn't going to disappear in any scenario. Here Barrack is giving Hezbollah both a carrot and stick - if it doesn't cooperate with Lebanon in giving up its weapons, within 90 days, Israel will strike.

It comes down to how much influence Iran still has over Hezbollah. It couldn't convince Hezbollah to attack during the June war, but the loyalty is still there. Severing those ties would have huge positive repercussions. But even if that happens, Iran could still create smaller militias in Lebanon, as they are doing in Syria, that those respective governments simply are not equipped to combat.

Terrorists love chaos. And it is too easy to create chaos in the Middle East. The US has a plan, and it is in many ways as good as any we've seen up until now, but that doesn't mean it can be achieved.

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By Daled Amos

The Arab "victory" in the October War of 1973 created repercussions that are still felt today.

Of course, we know that Israel won that war. In fact, it beat back both the Egyptian and Syrian forces to the extent that the US had to pressure Israel to stop while its army was on the way to Cairo. Yet, according to scholar and author Raphael Patai, the initial success of the Egyptian military not only allowed Egypt to frame the war as a success for itself, but also as a victory for the Arab people as a whole. The dishonor and shame of Egypt's huge loss in 1967 during the Six-Day War were erased by this "victory" in 1973, and gave the Arabs renewed confidence.

Patai writes that this self-confidence contributed to their risking a confrontation with the West by imposing an oil embargo and quadrupling the price of crude oil. Even more important are the consequences of this new self-consequence vis-à-vis Israel. Patai writes:

A manifestation of this new Arab self-confidence is the willingness to enter into disengagement agreements with Israel. It is, in this connection, characteristic that it is precisely Egypt, the country that won what it considers a victory over Israel, which has embarked on the road of negotiation with her, while those Arab countries that have fought Israel without being able to chalk up a victory over her, or have never even fought her, are opposed to all accommodation with her. [emphasis added] (xxiv - xxv)

According to Patai, Egypt's perceived victory in the October War gave Sadat the self-confidence to meet with Menachem Begin and set in motion the events that would result in peace between Egypt and Israel. On the flip side, the Arab countries that have no such face-saving experience or never fought Israel either lacked the necessary confidence to recognize Israel or--having never fought Israel--kept their distance and did not accept Israel's right to exist.

But there is another way to understand what motivates the Arab countries to make peace with the existence of Israel. Last week on the Commentary Magazine podcast, John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary Magazine, made a contrary observation:

Let me let me mention that my father, Norman Podhoretz [former editor-in-chief of Commentary Magazine], said many, many years ago that if you follow the trajectory of the wars, the actual physical wars, that Israel has waged since the beginning of its existence, what you see is that when Israel wins a war, it knocks out enemies.

He goes on to break down the wars as follows:

Following the 1948 War of Independence, the participating countries that were nowhere near Israel's border "basically said, 'We're done. We don't like Israel. We're not for it. We're against it. But you know, don't look to us to play any kind of active role in any military operation against Israel in 1967'".

With the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel knocked out Jordan as a military participant by defeating Jordan, taking the West Bank, and reuniting Jerusalem.

Following Egypt's defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Sadat, four years later, flew to Jerusalem, effectively ending Egypt's participation in the war against Israel.

In 1982, at the end of the Lebanon War, Syria effectively left the battlefield. Israel removes the PLO, and Syria basically no longer plays a role against Israel. When the first and second Intifadas happened inside Israel, there was no effort to open a second front on Israel's borders. Now, there is even talk of some form of normalization with Syria.

According to Podhoretz, there is no perceived victory. Instead, the Arab countries were beaten and they know it, and that defeat is what motivates the Arabs to reach some kind of accommodation with Israel.

Bret Stephens recently put it this way:

A core misconception about Israel’s policy since Oct. 7 is that the country has favored military action at the expense of diplomacy. The truth is that it’s Israel’s decisive battlefield victories that have created diplomatic openings that have been out of reach for decades — and would have remained so if Israel hadn’t won...Wars don’t end because Greta Thunberg gets on a boat.

Where does that leave Iran, Israel's most dangerous remaining enemy?

Khamenei has claimed that Iran defeated Israel in the Twelve-Day War, pointing to the damage wreaked on civilian targets in Israeli cities. This "victory" hardly seems to be an inspiration for the mullahs to make peace with the Little Satan. They have invested too much in an Israeli enemy to suddenly make peace. The conflict is hardwired into their ideology. And as a defeat, it is not deep enough to consider making peace, which again would run into a conflict with their ideology.

Neither framing that war as a victory nor admitting it as a defeat will move peace forward. That may explain why there is so much talk about regime change.

In an interview last week with Iran expert Meir Javedanfar on a FDD [Foundation for Defense of Democracies] podcast, there was a discussion about the deep divisions within the Iranian government between those who want to change the system and listen to the Iranian people and those who want things to stay as they are--and their motivation is not exactly theology. Javedanfar explains:

[T]here are those who want to continue with the same policies as June 12th, which is the same as the status quo, basically to continue with whatever the Islamic Republic was doing before, and they feel very threatened because any change could lead to billions of dollars worth of lost business.

In this context, Jonathan Schanzer, executive director at FDD, asked about the apparent fatwa issued by Iranian religious leaders against Trump's life. Javedanfar responded:

I think it is bluster. This fatwa is part of this struggle within the Islamic Republic for the future of the Islamic Republic, which I said, in my previous comments, there are people who want to make it as difficult as possible for the regime to change direction, because they have a lot of money and a lot of positions to lose.

As long as there are Iranian leaders deliberately standing in the way of any shift, there will be no meaningful change. Even the collapsing economy does not motivate them. And regime change itself seems unlikely, considering the apparent weakness of the opposition. Iran's religious leaders are not so different from Hamas. Both have effectively taken their people hostage, have benefited financially, and will not be easily dislodged.

Jonathan Schanzer refers to the Middle East as a "basket case."
These are two reasons why.

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Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu set up an interview with his own employee, former journalist and international affairs adviser, former journalist Caroline Glick, to push back against his critics within and outside Israel.

From a Jewish ethical perspective, this is a moral failure.

It is absolutely true that Israel's top priority is protecting and saving the lives of its citizens. Tough decisions must be made and everyone will not be happy with those decisions. Those decisions may indeed be the most moral decisions. But that is not all that is needed from a leader.

When a leader speaks during national trauma, especially one who represents the Jewish people on the world stage, we listen not just to what they say, but how they carry the pain of others. In this interview, Prime Minister Netanyahu defends his decisions, rebuts blame, and explains strategic choices. But something is missing.

There is almost no sense that he is mourning with the people. No “I should have seen,” no “we were too confident,” no “this weighs on me.” He doesn’t lie, but he uses truth as a shield. He doesn't minimize loss, but he converts it into debate points.

And that matters: not because we need perfect leaders, but we need them to be accountable and to be able to grow.

He speaks about the failure of security chiefs, about being misled, about what he would have done if told sooner. But he never says: “I carry this.” He never says "The buck stops here." That absence - that lack of responsibility, repentance, humility, and shared grief - breaks trust. And national leaders must be, above all, trustworthy.

He doesn’t need to self-flagellate. But he should say things like, “We all made assumptions that turned out deadly. I bear that" or “This weighs on me every day, and I will spend the rest of my leadership making it right" or “Even though others missed things, I could have questioned more, demanded more.”

Bibi should be saying, "I am with you - not above you."

Netanyahu invokes Donald Trump in the end. There is too much Trumpism in this interview - never admitting mistakes, never showing real empathy, never admitting that political opponents have something valuable to say.

The leader of the Jewish state should not use Donald Trump as his model of leadership. He should use King David.