Video showed that the parking lot was hit, not the hospital. There was no crater, as Israeli munitions would leave.
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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Elder of Ziyon|
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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Elder of ZiyonThe Allied firebombing of Dresden, Germany, in February 1945 has served as a propaganda tool against the West for over eight decades.
No one denies the horrifying scale of destruction: a massive bombing campaign triggered a firestorm that killed thousands of civilians. But almost immediately, various parties began using Dresden as supposed proof that the Allies were just as guilty of war crimes as the Nazis.
Unlike other Allied bombings, where the Nazi regime often downplayed civilian casualties to maintain morale, the Nazis actively highlighted and exaggerated the Dresden death toll. Their aim was to recast themselves as victims.
Propaganda thrives on numbers, especially when they’re unverified. By 1945, concern for German civilian casualties was not a priority for the Allies. The war's aim was victory and the destruction of the Nazi regime.
That moral framing gave Nazi propagandists an opening.
It took 65 years for historians to agree on a realistic death toll in Dresden. Wartime casualty estimates are notoriously unreliable in the moment, and that uncertainty offers a rich opportunity for manipulation.
The media, hungry for numbers, often reports the first figure it finds, regardless of source. In the fog of war, those figures can become permanent fixtures in historical memory, long after the facts are known.
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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Elder of ZiyonIn recent decades, our enemies have been investing great efforts in trying to deny the existence of the Temples on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, in complete contradiction to Muslim tradition itself. Ancient Islam saw the Foundation Stone of the Temple as the location of Solomon's Temple, and the construction of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount was intended to glorify Jerusalem and present Islam as the successor to Judaism. Today, Muslims are trying to rewrite history and erase any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and Jerusalem.
In recent years, there are groups that have attempted to deepen the connection to the Temple Mount by visiting the site. Most Torah and mitzvot observant Jews do not support this approach, given the absolute prohibition of the great men of Israel to ascend the Temple Mount. But this does not mean, God forbid, that the Temple Mount should be left out of the consciousness.
This activity of our enemies should inspire us to take the opposite action. The attempts to deny the connection of the people of Israel to the Temple Mount should serve as a warning bell for us, if we have not fallen asleep a little in cultivating the connection to our holiest place....The attempts of our enemies to deny this are a signal from heaven that we must engage in deepening the awareness of the Temple and instilling it in the younger generation. We must know every detail of the Temple structure and be well-versed in the procedures for working in it. The very act of engaging in these issues will make us feel more strongly about the rebuilding of the Third Temple soon in our day [with the Messiah.]
In response to Rabbi Menachem Brod's claims, Al-Azhar Observatory affirms that the attempts of some rabbis and Jewish extremists to falsify history and claim absolute religious rights to Jerusalem and the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque are nothing more than an extension of a supremacist discourse that seeks to legitimize the occupation in the name of the Jewish faith.The Observatory ...affirms that Jerusalem is an Islamic endowment, and that Al-Aqsa Mosque, whose surroundings God has blessed, is an inalienable right of the Islamic nation, not to be falsified by historical falsification or by force of arms.
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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The pretense for the arrest appears to be nonspecific—that is, these particular Israelis weren’t considered suspect beyond the fact that they, like most Israeli adults, did their mandated national service.Melanie Phillips: Britain waves the white flag to Islamization and illegal immigration
The organization connected to the detainment is a very important part of this story. As I wrote in January, the Hind Rajab Foundation is not actually a human-rights group. Its founder and leader is a former Hezbollah member and military trainee. He fooled Belgian authorities into giving him asylum, where he founded a hate group that was behind anti-Semitic riots in Europe.
Hind Rajab, then, is an outgrowth of Middle Eastern terrorist groups’ strategy of seeding homegrown anti-Semitic extremism in Europe. After the Jewish tourists’ arrest and alleged beating, Hind Rajab celebrated: “The suspects were identified and arrested with a clear show of force at the Tomorrowland festival in Boom.”
Such thuggish talk is perfectly in character for a group that essentially acts as a modern version of 20th century European street fascists.
But in the great spirit of “ISIS in place,” anti-Semites seeking to draw up lists of Jews to harass don’t need to be personally trained by Hezbollah or be located in places so familiar with Nazi tactics. Activists in Canada have created a website (which I obviously won’t link here) seeking to list the names, ages, locations and other personal information of any Canadian Jews who have served with the IDF.
But the site goes a step further, indicating where such “Jew lists” are headed. Visitors to the site are told that Canadians ought to know who these Jews are and “the networks they’re a part of that may have influenced their decision to join the military.”
In other words, the names and locations of their parents, employers and the Jewish schools, Jewish youth groups and Jewish university groups they attended or participated in. Since Oct. 7, 2023, anti-Semites have opened fire on Canadian Jewish schools several times. Other Jewish establishments have been firebombed, stoned and vandalized.
Ever since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led atrocities against Israelis, British Jews have run a gauntlet of hatred, intimidation and attacks, both verbal and physical, as the direct result of incitement based on a systematic campaign of demonization and eye-watering falsehoods about Israel’s behavior in Gaza.Jake Wallis Simons: David Lammy is unfit to be Britain’s Foreign Secretary
Through distortion, decontextualization and outright lies, Britain’s media — led by the BBC and Sky — have channeled Hamas propaganda day in, day out.
They have wickedly misrepresented Israel’s just and agonizing war to defend itself against extermination and its attempts to safeguard as far as possible the lives of Gazan civilians being used as human shields and cannon fodder as genocide and war crimes.
With Israelis being painted as diabolical child-killers, British Jews find themselves being personally accused of “killing babies” and restaurants and pubs refusing to serve “Zionists.”
No other group is spoken of in such a vile manner. No other people is subjected to such profound and obsessional injustice. No other nation is told it has no right to its own country and its national-liberation movement is a source of evil.
Yet instead of defending the country’s Jews against this pre-pogrom incitement, the Starmer government has poured petrol on the flames by parroting the same Hamas lies about Israelis killing “too many” civilians or depriving Gazans of food — this while Israel and America are providing millions of meals to Gazans for the first time receiving food aid that’s not being stolen from them by Hamas.
Starmer’s behavior displays the dire effects of the alliance that’s been forged between Western liberals and Islamist radicals.
It’s laying waste to America’s Democratic Party and found its most alarming expression in Zohran Mamdani, the Islamist poised to become New York mayor.
He too channels Hamas lies about Israel; he too will make his city’s Jewish community more unsafe; he too will undermine America’s security.
Americans should gaze upon Britain and be warned.
Yet Lammy and the rest of this atrocious Government has been entirely taken in by the disinformation. When’s the last time you heard our Foreign Secretary criticising Hamas or their enablers in the West?
UNRWA employees reportedly took part in the atrocities of October 7. At least 1,200 of them, according to Israeli intelligence, are card-carrying members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Has the Foreign Secretary ever made mention of that?
His interview with BBC Breakfast this morning was a case in point. All the usual slurs were present. In an exhibition of preening self-fashioning, he stated that he was “sickened” and “appalled” by Israel.
Jerusalem’s actions were “grotesque”, he said, as Lammy had seen “innocent children holding out their hand for food… shot and killed in the way that we have seen in the last few days”.
The Foreign Secretary might as well have delivered a speech entitled “your foreign policy is in the hands of a man who is fool enough to believe Hamas propaganda”. Lammy declared that if Israel failed to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, Britain would impose further sanctions upon it.
Does Lammy really think that it is purely in Israel’s gift to reach a ceasefire? Doesn’t it take two to fight a war? Again and again, negotiations in Qatar have been derailed by Hamas, which strings the talks along only to scuttle them at the last minute. Why? Because it understands that if it released the hostages, it would soon be out of power.
For Israel to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza now, with its citizens still in the catacombs and the jihadis still clutching the levers of power, would only store up further atrocities, war and unrest in the future.
Israel has tried unilateral withdrawal in the past. In 2005, it pulled all Israelis out of Gaza, handing over the keys to the Palestinians. The result? A terror state in which every aspect of governance was geared purely towards the deaths of the Jews.
Lammy’s short-sightedness is beyond belief. But it is not just Israel that the Foreign Secretary is betraying. It is the West as a whole, which accelerates towards its final decline with every jihadi victory.
Of course there’s plenty of throat-clearing throughout the piece, for example the repeated insistence that Israel hasn’t proved that Hamas steals the aid. Which is weird, because the article is about the writers discovering beyond any shadow of a doubt that Hamas steals the aid. Palestinians in Gaza are risking their lives to detail to American publications what Hamas is doing to them, and the journalists make sure to insinuate that everybody—literally everybody, Israelis and Palestinians alike—is lying and that Hamas is good, actually.Selective Outrage: The World Looks Away from Syria's Atrocities but Fixates on Gaza
Is this just another example of media bias? Ho-hum, right? Not exactly—there’s more to this particular story. The same day the Post ran the preceding story, it also ran a second story on humanitarian aid in Gaza. This one was an attempt to paint the one group delivering aid to Gazan civilians directly—an effort backed by the U.S. and Israel and involving Western companies—as the problem.
The piece repeats evidence-free accusations, parroted directly from Hamas, that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is acting as some kind of lure to hungry Palestinians so that the IDF can shoot them. Rumor-mongering such as this has consistently led to firms backing out of working with the aid group, other aid groups boycotting them, and restaurateurs abroad being physically attacked for providing food for the GHF to distribute to Gazan civilians. Hamas is starving Palestinians, and some of the critics of the GHF are gleefully advancing that starvation agenda.
The main point of the GHF is to provide aid to Gazans without letting Hamas commandeer that aid instead. Here is what this second Washington Post story has to say about that: “Hamas is demanding a return to the U.N.-coordinated system of aid delivery that operated in Gaza for decades. Israel charges that Hamas has corrupted that system.”
“Israel charges.” If only there were some way for reporters to investigate the situation and publish a 2,000-word story in one of America’s largest daily newspapers!
Israel also says water is wet but offers no proof. So who knows.
We don’t have to he-said-she-said the living daylights out of the news. Everybody involved knows the facts, and those facts comport precisely with what Israel has been saying all along.
For the most part, the world did not take much notice of the brutality of Syrian soldiers in the Druze region of Sweida. The first article about the situation to appear on the front page of the New York Times print edition was on July 17. That piece led not with the story of atrocities in Sweida, but "deadly airstrikes" launched by Israel in Damascus.Andrew Fox: The Gaza War and the West's Reckoning
In the 10 days since the incident that spurred the fighting in Syria that claimed more than 1,200 lives, the Times devoted more of its front page to stories and pictures about Gaza and Israel than to Sweida and Syria.
In an age where pictures are more important than words, there were no pictures from Syria but two large pictures from Gaza on the Times front page during this period. The Times' lead story on Monday was "Israelis shoot dozens rushing for aid in Gaza," a piece that relied heavily on figures provided by Hamas, numbers Israel insists are significantly inflated. That same day, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 205 people killed in Syria - more than the number cited in Gaza. Yet it was Gaza that led the front page.
The disparity in international attention is predictable. Gaza leads the global conversation. The fighting in Syria, unless Israel is involved, struggles to get notice. Israel is held to different standards and is judged by a different measuring stick. Moreover, Hamas spokespeople - camouflaged as the Gaza Health Ministry - feed journalists a steady stream of data, images, and interviews.
Gaza fits a frame the media loves: strong vs. weak. That David-and-Goliath template is easy to tell and emotionally resonant. Sweida? It's messy. Bedouin militias, Government loyalists, Druze fighters. No clear villain, no single victim group. It's complex, local, tribal. That makes it harder to explain and easier to ignore.
Pro-Palestinian advocacy is highly organized, heavily funded (thank you, Qatar), and globally embedded - across university campuses, human rights organizations, and social media influencers. The Druze, on the other hand, have no such infrastructure. They're not backed by Gulf money, and they lack a global network of activists lobbying on their behalf. This is, ultimately, about what the world chooses to see and what it opts to ignore.
Here is the key point: these are not just fringe outbursts. If there are Nazi flags at a rally, it becomes a Nazi rally. The same standard should be applied to Palestinian protests: any antisemitism makes them antisemitic rallies.
The West’s openness has become its Achilles heel. Adversaries understand this. Iran, Hamas, Qatar, Russia and their fellow travellers exploit our freedoms with surgical precision. They flood our social media with lies, fund our institutions, radicalise our youth and our immigrant populations, divide the remainder, and then sit back as our societies unravel from within.
Even international law has been weaponised. South Africa, echoing Hamas’s own rhetoric, took Israel to the International Court of Justice over false genocide charges. This was lawfare, pure and simple: an attempt to use legal institutions to delegitimise a liberal democracy defending itself against terrorism. The ICJ, by entertaining these claims, granted Hamas the antisemitic, Holocaust-inverting propaganda victory it sought.
This is not just about Israel. It never is. As history shows, when antisemitism surges, democracy itself is under threat. The Jews are the canary in the coal mine. If we cannot protect them, we have failed to protect the moral integrity of our society.
The Gaza conflict has exposed the fault lines. It has demonstrated that Western democracies are at risk not because we are weak, but because we have become complacent. The antisemitism now widespread in our streets is a reflection of national health. As Jonathan Tobin said, “If as a society we can’t stand up and protect our Jewish communities, we are done for.”
How do we fight back? How do we defend the values that made our societies strong? How can a divided society of strangers restore freedom, reason, tolerance, and truth when a tsunami of malign propaganda and foreign funding floods us?
The perfect example in the last 24 hours: disinformation over Gaza has led to twenty Western governments demanding that Israel immediately cease fire, even though Hamas is the party that rejected the most recent proposed ceasefire deal.
I fear we are lost. Our governments cannot even recognise the problem, let alone conceive a solution. We are ignoring the canary’s warning, and the entire mine is collapsing around us.
Elder of ZiyonSquire Patton Boggs has signed on to do Congressional outreach for the Palestine Monetary Authority.It will especially focus on members of the House Financial Services and Foreign Affairs Committees, and Senate Banking and Foreign Relations Committees, according to the engagement letter.SPB also will provide PMA and the Association of Banks in Palestine with strategic guidance relating to reputational risk and recommendations on PMA’s in-person visits to Washington.The one-year engagement, which kicked off July 1, is worth $500K to SPB. The contract automatically renews for another year.
A leading West Bank businessman has hired Montreal’s Dickens & Madson to lobby the governments of the US, Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Egypt and the European Union to back his effort to become leader of the post-invasion government of Gaza.Samir Hulileh, who heads Palestine Development and Investment Ltd., inked a one-year $300K pact with D&M. The initial $100K retainer was paid on Feb. 20.The 68-year-old, who served in the cabinet of the Palestinian Authority, envisions a Gaza with a political structure approved by the United Nations, Arab League and Palestinian Authority.
William Bennett, the nation's first drug czar and third Secretary of Education, has signed a $180K contract with Qatar’s DC embassy to help develop a communications strategy related to the Gulf State’s funding of US colleges.Qatar is the biggest foreign donor to US universities since 1986, shelling out $6.3B.Top US schools such as Carnegie Mellon University, Georgetown University, Weill Cornell Medical Colleges, Northwestern University, Texas A&M University and Virginia Commonwealth University have established branch campuses in Qatar.Bennett will promote understanding of the funding decisions make by the Qatari government and the nature of the education curriculum, according to his FARA filing.As senior education advisor to the Embassy, the 82-year-old will make “efforts to publicize the fact that Qatari higher education efforts do not support radical Islamicist movements or positions, and his engaging in publicized efforts—potentially including communications to U.S. political office holders—would help dispel contrary notions."He will write op-eds, blogs on educational matters and make himself available for interviews or testimony before Congress.Bennett placed an opinion piece on Fox News last July that was titled “An American education partnership in Qatar brings surprising benefits to the Middle East.”
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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Elder of ZiyonThey are the Jews of Bani Zion, about whom the Holy Quran informed us
Anyone who deals with the Zionists in word or deed is not a Muslim nor a believer in Allah, His Messenger, or the Last Day. They are the ones who fought our noble Prophet, they are the killers of prophets, they are the ones who break promises and covenants, and they are the ones who attacked the children, elderly, and women of Gaza, killing many of them in the most horrific forms of Nazism and fascism. ....They have no creed or principle; their Talmudic teachings permit the killing of the "goyim" (meaning animals), a term they apply to all non-Jews among humanity.They indulge in killing, criminality, and a lust for Arab blood, seeking revenge and venting their hatred, killing our people in Gaza while they sleep, search for a loaf of bread, or sit at breakfast tables, slaughtering families and spilling the blood of households under the fire of their advanced, intelligent American weapons used under orders from the "blonde Antichrist," the leader of murderers and war criminals in the name of false and deceptive democracy.No Arab or Muslim is he who shakes their hands or forgives their crimes. No Muslim is he who possesses a rifle, cannon, tank, missile, or plane and does not aim it at the chests of the Zionist killers. Those who issue fatwas labeling the heroes and mujahideen of Palestine as terrorists, demanding they abandon their land and their heroic achievements in dismantling the myth of the "invincible army," have strayed from their Arab identity and its authentic values.Gazan's cries of pain and disappointment stem from the weakness of the Arab nation and its devaluation of Arab blood, in contrast to the sons of Zion who kill and displace thousands for the death of any of their "pigs." The oppression, defiance, injustice, and the sense of Palestine’s alienation from its nation have led the heroes and mujahideen of Gaza’s resistance factions to a revolution of liberation, God willing. They pave the way for future generations to liberate the land, seek vengeance, and avenge their martyrs, refusing to compromise on blood until the usurper is expelled from the soil of Palestine—its reality, occupation, and settlements—through the power of weapons fortified by faith in God and the spirit of sacrifice.Their Talmud, laws, and teachings grant Israeli settlers the right to slaughter our people in the West Bank, pour gasoline down the throat of a boy and set him ablaze alive, crush the skulls of Palestinian children with stones, and run them over with their vehicles in front of the media and camera lenses.The Holy Quran informed us of their evils and disgrace throughout history; they hate Arab and Muslim children and kill them, collecting their blood in vessels and drinking it because they are the soldiers of the revolution and its enduring fuel. Their souls are molded with hatred, animosity, killing, betrayal, and the absence of values, such that even the prophets were not spared their harm, and their hearts are sealed.O Arabs, O Muslims, Al-Aqsa is in danger, and our constitution, the Holy Quran, has revealed to us who the Jews of Bani Israel are. Nothing excuses them, and no good is expected from them. Repeated attempts at truces and agreements with them in Qatar and other capitals are broken before the ink dries. It is foolishness, stupidity, lack of awareness, and shallow experience with the Jews of Bani Israel. Do not save them from their quagmire in Gaza, no matter the cost. Provide them with money and weapons, stand with them, not against them, for their arms are the ones that will liberate Al-Aqsa Mosque, the first qibla, from the filth and defilement of Bani Zion and those behind them. And you, O heroes of Gaza, O brave resistors defending the soil of Palestine and the dignity of our Arab and Islamic nation, God is with you, and the honorable among the Arabs and Muslims are with you because you defend Al-Aqsa, the site of the ascent to the heavens, and Palestine, the cradle of divine messages. Its liberation from the defilement of the Zionists of Bani Israel is your victory, with God’s help. God does not break His promise. Your arms are blessed, for the day of victory is coming, without doubt, by the right of God’s promise, and God does not fail in His promise. Victory comes only from Him and through His soldiers.
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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Elder of Ziyon|
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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Elder of Ziyon1950s Alexandria: a time of elegance and opennessAt that time, Alexandria was a multicultural city, inhabited by Egyptians alongside Greeks, Italians, Levantines, and Jews. This diversity gave it a rare cosmopolitan character, reflected in its streets, cafes, cinemas, libraries, and even in advertising itself, which could appear in three languages (Arabic, French, and English).Summer in Alexandria was an annual event that everyone awaited, as families from Cairo moved to Rasif al-Raml, Stanley, and al-Asafir, and the beaches were crowded with children and women in beachwear, while horse-drawn carriages roamed the city's quiet streets.
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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I knew it. As soon as I saw that cast member of the Royal Opera House smugly unfurl his Palestine flag, I knew he’d be some privileged they / them with either blue blood or blue hair. And I was right. His name’s Daniel Perry, he’s a they / them, he was educated at a £48,000-a-year high school, and he calls himself a ‘queer dance artist’. Now all we need to discover is that he has ADHD and he really will be a walking checklist of middle-class twattishness.Fania Oz-Salzberger: How to spot an antisemite? Ask about Israel’s right to exist
Mr Perry has got the pro-Palestine set salivating with infantile glee after he whipped out his flag during the curtain call for Verdi’s Il Trovatore on Saturday evening. A stage manager tried to snatch it from him but Perry yanked it back with all the wild-eyed frenzy of a bloke determined to trend online. He got his way. He’s being gushed over by the internet’s Sun-starved army of armchair Israelophobes. ‘Hero!’, they yelp from their bedrooms, the unbelievably sad bastards.
The Telegraph has Perry’s backstory. He attended an eye-wateringly expensive school in leafy Hertfordshire. He’s nonbinary – sorry, they’re nonbinary. He’s a self-styled ‘queer’ dancer. He seems blissfully unaware that if he ever set foot in Gaza the only pirouette he’d be doing is a mid-air one as Hamas hurled him off a tall building. He recently wore a ‘Free Palestine’ t-shirt to a performance of Cabaret, the musical about the Weimar Republic that foreshadows the rise of the Nazis and the burning of the Jews.
It didn’t take any special insight on my part to guess that this flag-waving irritant would turn out to be a knob of the most insufferably bourgeois variety. Because they’re all like that. Perry belongs to that most vexing clique of preening ‘activists’ – let’s call them Posh Twats for Palestine.
They’re everywhere. Venture into London on a Saturday afternoon and you’ll soon be swarmed by affluent tits in keffiyehs talking rubbish about Israel. Our leafier campuses have been all but colonised by plummy youths screaming the new lie (‘Israel is committing genocide!’) with the same demented fervour with which they once hollered the old lie (‘Transwomen are women!’). The am-dram arseholes of Palestine Action loved to splash around their red paint while wanging on in cut-glass tones about the unholy wickedness of Israel. The government calls them terrorists but they’re something far worse: rich theatre kids.
Some are surprised – and of course cock-a-hoop – that the audience at the Royal Opera House cheered Perry’s self-regarding stunt. ‘Crowds cheered for Perry’s protest’, swooned Novara Media – lifetime members of Posh Twats for Palestine – as if a few hundred dickie-bowed opera-lovers clinking their champagne glasses against Israel were akin to the Chartist march on St Peter’s Field. I’m not surprised at all that the rich and cultured of London rattled their jewellery in agreement with the ‘Free Palestine’ schtick, because hating Israel really has become the moral glue of that section of society. You’re no one in polite society these days unless you have keffiyeh in the closet, a book of poetry by Mohammed el-Kurd and a rosy-cheeked daughter who’s been arrested for saying ‘Fuck the Jewish State’.
You think that Israel should never have been founded? Legitimate opinion, even if I dislike it. Just don’t confuse it with the pipe dream of shutting the place down and killing off my national and cultural identity. You’re fine with Jews unless they are Zionists? Unacceptable – as most Jews, and many non-Jews, are Zionists, in the simplest sense of supporting a national home for the Jewish people in its ancestral land. Many of us acknowledge the parallel right of the Palestinians, but do not want Israel to be annihilated. That goes for your constituency too, Mr Mamdani. New York may be made of islands, but no New Yorker is an island, and therefore you cannot cleverly avoid the conversation. We need to see you carefully disentangle your Israel critique from any hint of delegitimisation.Truth, Narratives, and the Middle East
Similarly, it’s time for the responsible media to unpack the “pro-Israel” and “pro-Palestine” muddles. Are those two mutually exclusive? Does each of these “pros” signify “Death to the other side”? Many reporters and commentators are intellectually lazy enough to make this automatic assumption. Few are attentive enough to work around it. As my late father used to say: “I am neither pro-Israel nor pro-Palestine. I am pro-peace.”
The same wisdom applies, of course, to the so-called pro-Israelis who wish death or eternal submission on all Palestinians. Those are far fewer, but equally dangerous – especially when they sit in the Israeli coalition government as partners of the notoriously indiscriminate Mr Netanyahu. I hope that, just like the would-be Israel-annihilators of this world, the Smotriches and Ben-Gvirs will be pushed back where they belong: to the wrong side of the red line of decent political conversation.
Thus, one great lesson to draw from the current murkiness of global debate is: demand clarity. From yourself first, and then from others. If you want Israel (or the Palestinians) dead, make sure you say it, so that I can walk away or block you from my feed – and we don’t waste our time on a useless argument. We come from different moral galaxies.
But even among the well-meaning, it is difficult to heal reality when language is getting so badly distorted. Here is one profound example: debate on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is currently pitting two ancient words and great values – peace and justice – against one another.
“Peace” has become almost solely a “pro-Israel” term. Well-intentioned people use it to support the two-states solution or the shared-homeland solution. “Justice” has become almost solely a “pro-Palestinian” term. It is very often a polite euphemism for ethnic cleansing of all Israeli Jews “back to Europe” – a statement as vicious as it is historically mendacious. Other minds, evil ones, equate "justice" with the genocide of the Jews, pure and simple.
In my view, “justice” is an unreachable Platonic ideal in any international rivalry – especially one as monumental and labyrinthine as the Israeli–Arab conflict. “In the place where we are right,” wrote the wonderful Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, “no flowers will grow.”
By contrast, fair compromise is reachable. A more just coexistence is reachable. A well-intentioned negotiation for peace is reachable. Letting time heal both sides is reachable – provided that clarity, subtlety, some genuine acquaintance with historical facts, and a distinct refusal to kill off the other side are brought into the conversation.
We pro-peaceniks should page each other more assertively. We need every nuanced voice we can find out there.
In the late 1980s, Jonathan Torop, a pro-Israel American Jew, befriended Ussama Makdisi, the son of a Lebanese father and Palestinian mother and the nephew of Edward Said. Makdisi is now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and his comment, after the Hamas invasion of southern Israel—“I could have been one of those who broke the siege on October 7”—was brought up at the recent congressional hearings. Torop recollects the time when he and Makdisi could look beyond their political differences:
Ussama, like his uncle, was a supporter of the PLO and Yasir Arafat. One of Ussama’s favorite refrains was: “The Palestinians never support taking land by force.” Then came the 1991 Gulf War.
Torop confronted his friend over the widespread Palestinian support for Saddam Hussein, who had invaded Kuwait, and the quite explicit support voiced by Arafat:
Ussama’s answer, 34 years later, still sticks with me. “Arafat and the PLO didn’t support Saddam and Iraq. That was a creation of the Western media.” If someone as intelligent and well-educated as Ussama—a Princeton PhD who later became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley—could be so detached from reality, what did that mean for future peace talks?
Of course, the Kuwaitis knew this wasn’t Western propaganda, and got their revenge by expelling Palestinians en masse from their country. Torop would be reminded of this conversation a few years later, when shepherding an American delegation to meet with Arafat in Gaza—at a time when suicide bombings were becoming ever more regular. Someone confronted the veteran terrorist about the terror:
“No! These are not my people!” [Arafat] shouted in thickly accented English. “Everyone knows these bombings are done by right-wing Jews trying to make me look bad! I have proof—I have the identity cards of the bombers. They have Israeli Jewish IDs.” This was the Ussama Makdisi school of thought—the idea that truth was malleable, that reality could be fabricated to fit a narrative.
One cannot forget the heroism of soldiers like Col. Kamal Kheir a-Din, who served with distinction in elite combat units and whose funeral drew thousands of mourners from all sectors of Israeli society. Or border police officer Amir Khoury, a Christian Arab who died while stopping a terror attack in Bnei Brak in 2022. Though not Druze, his sacrifice mirrors the shared sense of duty found among Israel’s loyal minorities.When Carrots Empowered Chaos: How Samantha Power's USAID Strategy Reshaped the Middle East and Syria
Today, as Israel faces threats on multiple fronts—from Hezbollah in the north, Hamas in the south, the Houthis in Yemen, and Iranian proxies embedded across the region—the contribution of the Druze community has become even more critical. During the ongoing war on multiple fronts, Druze soldiers have continued to serve, and the community has once again borne tragic losses.
The feeling of blood brotherhood of the Israeli Druze to their brethren in Sweida is almost palpable. What began as an ethnic dispute between Bedouin tribes in the Druze-dominated center has resulted in more than 1,100 fatalities. Women were taken hostage and raped. Babies were slaughtered, dropped into vats of boiling water. Men were humiliated, having had their mustaches—a sign of honor among Druze men—shaven off. Many were abused and murdered. Some 1,000 Israeli Druze crossed the border into Syria to assist their Druze brothers.
This was their Oct. 7. Their loyalty is not born of compulsion, but of a deep, mutual sense of destiny woven over decades of shared struggle. In villages nestled among the hills of the Galilee and the slopes of Mount Carmel, Druze families raise children with the expectation of service—not only to their own people but to the country as a whole. Tales of bravery and solidarity are passed down from generation to generation, forming the backbone of an Israeli identity that transcends faith or ancestry.
The relationship between the Druze and the State of Israel, however, is not without its tensions. The pride felt in military uniforms is sometimes shadowed by frustration as promises of equality remain somewhat unfulfilled and recognition lags behind sacrifice. The Druze know the price of loyalty and pay it willingly, but their commitment demands a reciprocal respect—a covenant that goes beyond ceremony and commemoration.
In 2018, the passage of the controversial Nation-State Law, which defines Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people, sparked deep hurt and feelings of marginalization among Druze Israelis. They felt, understandably, that a nation they had fought and died for was telling them they would never be truly equal.
To be clear: Israel is, and must remain, the national home of the Jewish people. But it can and must also be a state that honors and uplifts those who defend it, regardless of religion or ethnicity. That is not only a moral imperative; it is a matter of national unity and survival.
Former Israeli President Reuven Rivlin once described Israel as a “shared home” for four tribes: secular Jews, religious Jews, ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arabs. The Druze, he has always said, are the glue—binding together the complex mosaic of Israeli society with their service, loyalty and quiet dignity.
Israel owes the Druze more than gratitude. It owes them policies that reflect their contribution: equal funding for Druze municipalities; expanded access to quality education; full recognition of their villages and land rights; and a greater role in national decision-making.
To walk through the rows of graves in Shefa-Amr is to walk among heroes. Their sacrifice demands not only remembrance but justice. Israel has many allies, but few as devoted, brave and steadfast as the Druze. We must honor that loyalty—not just in words, but in deeds.
Between 2021 and 2025, under the leadership of Samantha Power, USAID underwent a radical transformation. Power, a former U.N. ambassador and a passionate advocate of "moral foreign policy," envisioned development as an instrument of strategic statecraft. Her reforms aimed to fuse humanitarian goals with geopolitical outcomes, particularly in fragile regions like Syria. But in practice, Power's "carrots-first" approach—prioritizing localized aid, rapid deployment, and reduced oversight—unleashed a cascade of unintended consequences that contributed to today's broader regional chaos.
I. Economic Statecraft Redefined
Power reimagined economic statecraft as a way to compete with authoritarian actors such as China, Russia, and Iran. Instead of punitive sanctions or conditionality-heavy aid ("sticks"), Power emphasized "carrots": direct support to civil society groups, local NGOs, and community-led infrastructure. The intent was to build grassroots resilience and loyalty in contested regions.
"We’re not just building roads—we’re building sovereignty." — Samantha Power, CFR Address, 2023
She mandated that 25% of all USAID funding go directly to local organizations by 2025, bypassing traditional U.S. contractors and the extensive compliance mechanisms they brought. The goal was agility, empowerment, and legitimacy. But this decentralization came at a high cost.
II. The Oversight Collapse
Multiple reports from USAID's Office of Inspector General (OIG) from 2021 onward flagged major vulnerabilities in Syria aid programs:
- 2021 OIG Audit: Found USAID lacked a structured fraud-risk framework for Syria. Monitoring visits were limited, implementers lacked vetting, and risk assessments were infrequent.
- 2018-2023: Aid was repeatedly diverted to Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a designated terrorist group. OIG confirmed 27 workers were terminated for enabling food kit access to HTS fighters. Over $4.3 million in suspended contracts resulted.
- Procurement scandals: USAID partners were caught engaging in bid rigging, counterfeit medical supply chains, and duplicate invoicing. $10.5 million in grants were clawed back.
The removal of traditional oversight processes, once handled by third-party contractors and federal compliance officers, created space for fraud, infiltration, and extremist co-option.
III. Syria: A Case Study in Strategic Backfire
Syria became the most vivid example of how Power's new development doctrine collided with the brutal realities of civil war and extremist governance. Her intent was to fund humanitarian relief and support civil society in non-regime-controlled zones. In practice, these zones, especially Idlib and parts of Aleppo, were heavily influenced or outright controlled by HTS.
USAID aid under Power's structure entered these areas with dramatically reduced vetting requirements and minimal on-the-ground monitoring. As a result:
- HTS operatives posed as civilians to receive food and cash assistance.
- Clinics and schools funded by USAID were taxed, staffed, or co-opted by HTS affiliates.
- Local implementing partners were often compromised or under duress from armed factions.
In 2022, the Office of Inspector General suspended several cross-border aid contracts after confirming that over $4.3 million was misdirected in HTS-controlled regions. Further investigations uncovered systematic procurement fraud involving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies, leading to the recovery of $10.5 million and multiple debarments.
Strategically, the failure to secure aid routes not only prolonged the suffering of civilians but also allowed extremist factions to consolidate power, run shadow governance systems, and claim legitimacy through U.S.-funded services.
Elder of Ziyon|
"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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Elder of Ziyon- An elderly-looking Jew chased through London by a youth shouting “Free Palestine,” in what the Campaign Against Antisemitism called “an act of brazen antisemitism.”
- A young diner at a Baker Street Jewish deli was approached and asked if the restaurant was kosher and if she was Jewish. Upon reply, her food was thrown on her.
- Counterprotesters supporting Israel on the London pro-Palestinian march were repeatedly told “f*ck your Jewish State” by an increasingly aggressive crowd.
- A teacher filmed accusing the British government of funding the killing of children by Israel—a classic blood libel—when in fact it funds the pro-Palestinian UNRWA.
- Meanwhile in the Irish capital, an individual who abused what he called a “genocidal Jew” on public transport last week has walked free. This episode, also filmed, is further evidence of an antisemitic turn in Ireland since the October 7th pogrom.
We heard about the noisy demonstrations and how intimidating people find the current environment, but as we dug deeper what really scared us was the increasing normalisation of far more extreme, personalised and sometimes life changing impact directed at individuals purely and simply because they are Jewish. Worrying dilemmas of where Jewish professionals believed that their professional body was actively discriminating against them but where they required membership from this body to be able to work and acquire the necessary protections.
This is how a modern, liberal society is acting today towards its Jews. And if you think that this is not the trajectory happening in the US using Israel as an excuse, you are fooling yourself.
And you know what? All of the "pro-Palestinian"s who claim to be unequivocally, 100% against antisemitism are silent when it comes from their fellow travelers.
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
If you want real peace, don't insist on a divided Jerusalem, @USAmbIsrael
The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
With Palestinians, there is no need to exaggerate: they really support murdering random Jews
Great news for Yom HaShoah! There are no antisemites!