Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, August 05, 2025

The West pretends to know what's best for Israel better than Israelis

There’s an unspoken condescension behind how many of Israel’s so-called “friends” talk about the war.

They don’t really believe Israel wants peace.

They’re convinced Bibi is prolonging the war – and the hostage crisis – just to stay in power.

They think Israel’s goal of destroying Hamas is irrational vengeance, not strategic necessity. "Don't worry, they can't hurt you," they tell Israel - which is what Israel thought on October 6.

They believe the Palestinian Authority – one of the most corrupt and abusive governments on Earth – is a viable peace partner. Its own record of supporting terror, antisemitism, incitement, paying terrorists an their families, human rights abuses against its own people - none of that is considered as important as the abstract idea of a state that will fail before it starts. (It is worth mentioning that the EU has sent hundreds of experts to the PA over the past 30 years to teach them good governance techniques. A generation later, shouldn't they know them by now?)

And they’re sure that if Israel really wanted peace, none of this would matter. There’d be a two-state solution by now and Israelis would be dancing in the streets.

How stupid do they think Israelis are, not to accept the utopia the West imagines?

This isn’t just ignorant – it’s deeply condescending. And the suggestion that Israelis prefer war to peace is borderline antisemitism.

Yes, Israel has done a terrible job explaining itself. But that doesn’t excuse the arrogant delusions of Western elites.

So here’s some news: Israelis are smart. They disagree on many things – but nearly all of them want peace. They don’t want war, nightly running to shelters, or loved ones in combat Gaza or Lebanon for months at a time.

Also, Israelis love their country. Their cab drivers care more about Israel's future than the most fervent of Israel's Western friends. And I would trust the cab driver who has to live with life or death decisions than the diplomat who sits behind his desk in Brussels and can say "oops" if hi ideas turns out bad.

Most of all, Israelis are not suicidal.

They won’t gamble the country’s future on a “peace plan” that could hand the region over to jihadists, Iran, or a Chinese-armed terror state next door. No agreement or even Israeli military might can stop a Palestinian state from acquiring advanced missiles from Iran that can reach every corner of Israel. The Judean Hills provide a high ground where Tel Aviv can be shelled with impunity.

The West's answer is that Israel can invade after a bunch of Jews are killed, so what's the big deal? Israel's answer is that we don't want our citizens to be killed at all, thank you very much.

It is utterly delusional to think that a Palestinian state under current conditions is the solution rather than a bigger problem. Hamas is still the most popular political party in both Gaza and the West Bank. Can the Western leaders who are supporting a Palestinian state really not know this basic fact?

Israelis aren’t stupid. But the leaders of France, the UK, Canada, Spain, Ireland, and others might be - if they think a fantasy state of Palestine will bring peace instead of more bloodshed.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

08/04 Links Pt2: The West is complicit in Hamas’s torture of the hostages; The hilarious breakdown of the Islamo-left alliance; The Red Cross is ‘Abandoning the Very People It Was Established To Protect’

From Ian:

Amb. Michael Oren: Why I Have Hope for Israel

Fifty years ago, I came to a country that had no relations with China, India, and Africa, nor the 12-member Soviet bloc, no peace with Egypt and Jordan, or any Abraham Accords. We had friendly relations with the U.S., but no deep, multifaceted strategic alliance and no high tech. Our major export was oranges.

My historian's eye enables me to see what no people in all of history could have accomplished, rising after two thousand years of statelessness, a mere three years after the Holocaust, to establish an independent nation in our ancient homeland.

I see how that country, shorn of allies and natural resources, repelled a multi-pronged invasion designed to destroy it, absorbed 10 times its original Jewish population in 10 years, created one of the world's only uninterrupted democracies, built seven top-flight universities, a universal healthcare system, and mustered an army more than twice as large as those of France and Britain combined.

I saw Hebrew not merely reborn, but spoken, sung, and written. I saw how a poor, agrarian backwater became a military and technological superpower, the country that could invent Mobileye and Waze while standing up to the lavishly-armed forces of evil.

And during the current war my hope has grown. I've seen close to half a million Israelis leave their homes, their jobs, and their families, pick up a gun and go out to fight for their country, knowing full well that they may come back irreparably altered or may not come back at all. Half a million Israelis is - proportional to the U.S. - the equivalent of many millions more than all the Americans who served along with my father in World War II.

Whether in biblical or contemporary days, we are a nation of flawed heroes, and our miracles often come encapsulated in pain. But based on the empirical evidence, our nation will survive this trying period and emerge, once again, robust. The hope of being a free people in our own land, as our national anthem envisions, has not been lost.

Brendan O'Neill: The West is complicit in Hamas’s torture of the hostages

Hamas’s release of those Nazi-like images of two Jews it abducted, starved and then humiliated for the titillation of the world’s anti-Semites was an assertion of the mad power it enjoys over the Gaza narrative. It knows that no matter the depths of depravity it sinks to, still the story will be that Israel is the problem. It knows it can send a 6,000-strong army to invade Israel, rape Israeli women, kill Israeli civilians, kidnap Jews and subject them to fascistic abasements, and still the influential of the West will point the finger at the Jewish State. David and Braslavski’s suffering was arguably intensified by this ethical disorder in the West – certainly Hamas was exploiting that ethical disorder when it released footage of their suffering in the full knowledge that many would just look the other way.

Worse, Hamas senses that its crimes are not only forgiven but rewarded, too. That it released the clips of David and Braslavski in the days after Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney said they would recognise the State of Palestine was striking – and sickening. Hamas has clearly got the message that persecuting Jews has benefits. That carrying out a pogrom can be fruitful. That killing more Jews in one day than anyone else has since the Nazis has its rewards. Including the reward of nationhood. Starmer’s promise to recognise Palestine proves ‘victory’ is ‘closer than we expected’, gloated Hamas. Ghazi Hamad went further, cheering Starmer’s promise as ‘one of the fruits of 7 October’.

What Starmer, Macron and Carney have done is unforgivable. Yes, all three paid lip service to the importance of disarming Hamas. But to confer statehood on a territory that is still part-ruled by these barbarous militants who take pleasure in the persecution and murder of Jews is a grotesque betrayal not only of Israel but of basic decency, too. The footage of David digging his grave and Braslavski sobbing in pain should haunt Starmer, for Hamas views his promise of recognition as a prize for such savagery. It believes its brutish violence helped to hurry along the process of statehood. And it is right to. How can Western leaders call for the release of David and Braslavski even as they decorate with statehood the monsters who abducted them? It is perverse.

It feels like Hamas is holding not just 50 Israelis hostage but the West itself. Every press release of this monstrous movement is taken as good coin by our media. Its atrocities are overlooked, even forgiven, in the maniacal rush to damn Israel as the world’s wickedest state. Even clear, self-published footage of its crimes against humanity has not been enough to arouse the influential from their Israelophobic stupour. Now we know: our cultural elites didn’t only take the wrong side in this war started by Hamas – they emboldened that side, too.

The hilarious breakdown of the Islamo-left alliance

A lot rests on the answer to this question, at least for the electoral prospects of the Green Party. In recent years, its vote has been bolstered by Muslims, particularly young Muslims, who share the party’s views on economics and Palestine. In the darker and more ideologically dogmatic sections of this Muslim-Green alliance, anti-Jewish sentiment and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have taken root, too. A Times investigation last year found that around 20 prospective Green candidates at the last General Election had made disturbing statements about Israel, Hamas and the 7 October attacks.

The problem is that the two camps were never remotely aligned on other key issues. These include rights and protections for sexual minorities (such as same-sex marriage), the degree to which queer rights and queer theory should be taught in school, and the sanctity of life – both in terms of abortion and assisted dying. It is no secret that British Muslims are more conservative on these issues compared even with the general population, let alone the progressive left.

The British left could have seen these problems coming a mile off by looking across the Atlantic. That this relationship is fundamentally unstable was made clear in November when Donald Trump was re-elected. Michigan – home to America’s largest Muslim population and its only Muslim-majority city, Hamtramck – voted Republican. Exit polls recorded a surge in support for Trump among Muslims in the state. This came after Hamtramck’s city council – which is also majority Muslim – voted to ban the flying of Pride flags on city property in 2023.

For some time, the Democratic Party had complacently assumed that rising racial and religious diversity in America would play in its favour. But this theory of ‘demographic destiny’ has proved to be hugely flawed. Unsurprisingly, many Muslim voters found themselves much closer aligned with Republicans on issues such as gay marriage, abortion, euthanasia and trans rights.

Now, it seems that this divorce is about to happen in Britain. Socially conservative British Muslims should not expect progressive liberals to appease them. Nor should they be expected to sacrifice their values, rooted in their faith and cultural heritage, just to please the left.

Political marriages of convenience like this are a recipe for inept governance and confused priorities. The left and British Muslims were never natural allies – and both sides must now face up to this fact.

08/04 Links Pt1: Netanyahu reportedly approves full military occupation of Gaza; Dismantle the UN Aid State; The Failed Logic in Dave Smith’s Morality of War; Albanese Loses “Blue Check” on X

From Ian:

Eitan Fischberger: Dismantle the UN Aid State

What this narrative ignores is that the other distribution processes employed this far are just as – if not more – chaotic and violent. Just this week, for example, the Daily Wire released a video showing swarms of Gazans overrunning multiple trucks belonging to the UN, while the IDF released footage of armed Hamas operatives looting an aid truck. “Contrary to Hamas’s false claims that the individuals in the video are security personnel,” the IDF said, “they are in fact Hamas terrorists who arrived to seize the aid from Gaza’s residents.”

But the UN, ever the willing megaphone, amplifies the Health Ministry’s narrative, with a complicit media giving them generous airtime.

Even more counterproductively, the IDF claimed this past week that the UN has insisted it will only distribute aid if the process is secured by Gaza’s “Blue Police,” a sanitized way of describing Gaza’s Hamas-run police force. Back in November 2024, a UN spokesperson stated that their workers would become “an even greater target” if surrounded by “armed soldiers from one of the two parties in this conflict.”

Why then would the UN oppose another group handing out food and rely on Hamas’ police force to secure distribution, even after repeatedly accusing the terror group of stealing aid? Why would it echo Hamas’ unproven claims of “aid massacres,” despite the IDF and GHF denying them, and rail against GHF for doing the very thing the UN is supposed to do?

Because GHF’s success is existentially threatening to the UN’s model. If GHF works, the entire paradigm collapses. No more “working through partners” who happen to be terrorists. No more junkets and photo ops for UN officials who get feted around the world for overseeing human misery. And most importantly, no more Hamas exploiting aid to fill its coffers and maintain domination.

In 2024 alone, Hamas made over $500 million from the aid racket, according to both Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and US House Speaker Mike Johnson—by extorting civilians, skimming off the top, and using food as a tool for recruitment. Johnson has said this revenue accounts for half of Hamas’s annual budget.

According to a U.S. official quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Hamas made shutting down the GHF the second item on its cease-fire negotiation list—which tells you everything you need to know about how UN aid fuels Hamas and how successful the initiative has truly been. Another official added that GHF has “caused Hamas more fear than anything else has in the past two years.” That’s because GHF does what no UN body dares to do: deliver aid directly to civilians, cutting out the Hamas middleman.

The UN’s own data reveals just how broken the system has become: between May 19 and July 27, only 13 percent of all aid trucks that entered Gaza actually reached their intended destinations. The rest were intercepted or diverted inside Gaza.

While the UN’s system collapses under the weight of its own dysfunction, GHF distributes aid daily—and films it. Their videos show the (far from perfect) delivery of hundreds of thousands of aid packages per day, totalling nearly 100 million so far.

The humanitarian crisis in Gaza isn’t the narrow result of Israeli policy, but of the international system that treats Hamas like a partner and those trying to bypass Hamas like traitors. And while media outlets and the United Nations insist Israel is starving Gaza, it’s actually the UN that is failing to distribute aid. Not because of war. Not because of the siege. But because of pride, politics, and power.

The fight over aid in Gaza isn’t just about food. It’s about who controls the narrative— and who profits from it.

Richard Kemp: The murderous, thieving overlords of Hamas are the true oppressors of the Palestinians

Israel has no choice but to continue to suppress terrorism in the West Bank, in which Hamas is also heavily involved, to prevent the territory going the way of Gaza. Likewise in Gaza itself there is no political solution; Hamas can be dealt with only by military destruction. That means continuing the war until they are no longer a threat. That might include fostering internal military opposition, which is being tried, and forcing the leadership out of Gaza to a country willing to take them, which is also being planned.

Starmer, Macron and Carney’s demands that Israel ends the war on pain of recognition of a Palestinian state means the fighting is likely to go on longer.

Not only do these politicians encourage and empower Hamas for the immediate fight, they also validate their terrorist tactics. Unfortunately the leaders of Britain, France and Germany are not breaking new ground in their miscalculations. For decades, in the face of violence against Israel, the first resort of the professional peace processors, politicians, diplomats and UN officials has been to appease the aggressors and attack and vilify Israel, demanding concessions while never demanding anything of their enemies. At the same time they have perverted international law to paint Israel as the oppressors and those who oppose them as the victims. That has led to Hamas intensifying and developing their human shield tactics knowing Israel will be branded baby-killers.

That is also why Hamas, in cahoots with the UN, have weaponised hunger in Gaza leading to a successful propaganda campaign falsely accusing Israel of yet more war crimes. This, often disgracefully utilising photographs of young children suffering from unrelated genetic medical conditions to falsely show starvation, is among the most powerful levers applied to push Keir Starmer into his recent actions against Israel. After visiting Gaza, US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff confirmed yesterday that “There is hardship and shortage, but no starvation”.

The shameful truth is that Starmer, Macron and Carney do have sufficient insight into the same reality as Witkoff, but lack the moral courage to stand up against the hurricane of lies about starvation, unlawful killing and the other trumped up charges against Israel. In each case their priority is to appease the anti-Israel mobs among their own electorates. Their eyes are not on aiding an ally under pressure or the dire consequences at home of encouraging jihadism abroad, but on the ballot boxes.

Seth Mandel: When the Narrative Collapses

Last week’s Mideast discourse was dominated by revelations of falsified accusations of war crimes against Israel, this time regarding the lie that the Jewish state is intentionally starving Gazan children to death. Since then we’ve learned more about the photographic hoax at the center of the controversy—and specifically how this new information demolishes the feeble justifications so many of Israel’s critics put forth.

As is now known, a wide array of media outlets used a picture of a boy suffering from cerebral palsy as an example of a child “born healthy” and being starved by Israel. Many of those defending the use of the photo did so based on the premise that even if the media knew it painted a false picture, publishing the image was still a defensible act because the child is suffering from even more than malnutrition, therefore the malnutrition part makes the photo true enough.

But it doesn’t, of course. And it turns out that New York Times editors tried desperately to avoid using a photo of a child with preexisting conditions precisely because they understood it to be unethical. Semafor relates some of the behind-the-scenes discussions at the Times:

“Last Thursday at 3 pm, the Times was preparing to run images of Youssef Matar, a young child in Gaza with cerebral palsy who was suffering from lack of nourishment, alongside its July 24 story that cited doctors in Gaza finding ‘an increasing number of their patients are suffering and dying — from starvation.’

“But the Times’ topmost editors wanted to err on the side of caution. After viewing the gutting photo, according to communications viewed by Semafor, they worried that it might inadvertently call into question the paper’s reporting, which said that many of the children suffering from hunger did not have preexisting health issues.”

According to Semafor, the Times‘ managing editor Marc Lacey asked why they would use a misleading picture “when there is presumably no shortage of images of children who were not malnourished before the war and currently are?” Executive editor Joe Kahn, per internal communications seen by Semafor, put it simply: “The story isn’t framed around people with special needs and the lead art really should not do that, either.”

Absolutely correct, as anyone who has worked in news reporting would know.

Yesterday I wrote about an article in Educational Philosophy and Theory in which a group of academics presented different essays that all agreed on the same thing: Israel is fundamentally evil, and the war in Gaza is the most important moral issue of our time. There was no dissent, no uncertainty, and no acknowledgment of complexity—just a chorus of moral condemnation dressed up as diversity of perspective.

What I didn’t fully articulate is how these essays reflect a deeper crisis in education: the replacement of critical thinking with ideological performance. These supposed educators are not reasoning. They are not testing ideas. They are adopting a narrative and policing allegiance to it. And they are justifying this as morally urgent.

In short, they are doing exactly what educators should not do.

This isn't just happening in elite academic journals. It’s becoming the norm in public education as well. In the United States, what is taught in red-state schools is increasingly different from what is taught in blue-state schools. In many Western school systems—especially in the U.S. and Europe—decolonial theory, Marxist frameworks, and identity-based politics are presented not as topics for debate but as moral baselines.

The loss of factual accuracy is not the biggest problem. It is that the students are not learning to think for themselves. They are being force-fed simplistic, and often wrong, ideas as moral.

What passes for debate today is often just factional disagreement within a shared ideological frame. The EPAT essays, for instance, were not debating whether Israel might be justified in defending itself, but whether Israel’s supposed crimes reach the level of genocide or not. That is not debate. That’s like arguing whether a man abused his wife emotionally or physically—without asking whether he did it at all, or whether she might have attacked him first.

We need a better framework. And that’s where the AskHillel model of ethical reasoning comes in.

AskHillel offers a structured, secularized ethical system built on three tiers:

🔹 Level 1: Core Ethical Anchors: These are universal, non-negotiable values that frame all moral discourse:

Human Life – protection of life and well-being
Dignity – every person has inherent worth
Truth – honesty, accuracy, and intellectual integrity
Justice – fairness, both procedural and substantive
Responsibility – mutual care and accountability

🔸 Level 2: Primary Civic Duties: These are the active obligations of ethical citizenship:

Do Not Enable Harm – prevent systems that cause or conceal damage
Care for the Vulnerable – active support of those at risk
Responsible Speech – avoid dehumanizing or dishonest rhetoric
Support Family and Community – recognize embedded roles and duties
Care for the Self – health and self-respect as public goods

⚖️ Level 3: Contextual Amplifiers: These shape tone, restraint, and wisdom in difficult situations:

Benefit of the Doubt – generosity in interpreting others
Beyond the Rule – ethical flexibility beyond minimal compliance
Moral Modesty – humility and acknowledgment of uncertainty
Gratitude – awareness of moral debts and context
Learning as Duty – curiosity and intellectual growth as ethical imperatives

This approach changes everything.

Rather than fighting over outcomes or partisan identities, classroom debate would focus on what values are in play, and how they were applied. Did each side uphold its stated values? Did they abandon one to serve another? Was that justified?

Students can learn to trace hidden values, not just judge surface opinions. For example:

In studying slavery and segregation, don’t just say the South was wrong. Ask: What values did the South claim to uphold—order, law, culture—and how do those values compare to justice and dignity?
In studying protest movements: When does loyalty to community outweigh personal conscience, and when must that loyalty be broken?
In studying global conflicts: What is the line between national defense and collective punishment? What does “truth” mean when both sides claim it?

Students naturally gravitate toward the better moral path when given the chance to think in value terms - but they also gain respect for the structure of opposing arguments. And nearly every historical conflict is a conflict of values.

Even the worst regimes in history cloaked themselves in values:

Nazi Germany justified itself with appeals to national pride and racial health.
The Soviet Union claimed to uphold worker dignity and economic fairness.

Instead of dismissing them as irrational evil, we should help students analyze how seemingly noble values, when unmoored from other ethical anchors, can be twisted into justifications for atrocity.

This isn’t just about history. Students deal with value conflicts every day:

Do I go home for dinner as my parents asked, or keep playing with my friends?
Should I defend a friend with unpopular views, or distance myself to avoid social blowback?

When students learn that every decision is a balance of values, they develop ethical literacy - a lifelong skill more powerful than any ideology. They also learn to make better decisions and advocate for themselves more clearly.

AskHillel also allows for cultural and moral pluralism. Different communities may prioritize different values. That’s fine, as long as none of those values violate core ethical anchors like dignity and life.

Students can be taught to respect others’ frameworks without losing confidence in their own. This opens the door to real dialogue—not just tolerance, but moral conversation.

Some classical education theorists have proposed cultivating individual virtues like courage or wisdom. But AskHillel is different.

Virtue education centers on personal growth. AskHillel centers on relational obligation - how you affect and answer to others: your family, your community, your country, and the world.

It doesn’t just ask, What kind of person are you becoming? It asks, Whom do you owe? What must you uphold?

This is a better moral foundation for education—because it teaches responsibility before pride, clarity before ideology, and accountability before performance.

Without a coherent moral framework, students are left vulnerable - to propaganda, peer pressure, and moral confusion. They are told what to believe without being shown how to reason. They are punished for dissent without being taught how to argue.

AskHillel offers a solution: a values-based, relational responsibility system that scales from personal life to global politics. It is the foundation of an education system that builds thinkers, not followers—and moral adults, not ideological weapons.

We need this in classrooms now.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

EoZ interviewed by A Philosophical Jew (video)

I had a fun discussion with A Philosophical Jew about my AskHillel Jewish ethics AI project on his podcast. Check it out!

Let's call anti-Zionism what it really is: political antisemitism

We have been looking at anti-Zionism the wrong way. Too many have tacitly accepted the idea that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are separate ideas, perhaps related, but anti-Zionism is a new concept that doesn't fit with traditional antisemitism and therefore should not be judged the same way.

In fact, however, anti-Zionism is not a new concept. It is simply political antisemitism, and it has been around since at least the 19th century.

Nathan Schneider, a professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, wrote an essay about how the word "antisemitism" is being misapplied to valid political expression. He wrote it using the firebombing of the peaceful and mostly elderly Jewish demonstrators in Boulder as a backdrop:

The statements coming from Boulder’s institutions and leaders, from news editors and politicians I have known for years, keep repeating the word “antisemitism” to explain why someone would attack peaceful Jewish demonstrators. But it is a word that draws a line, beyond which lies the unspeakable.

This word has morphed from naming the persecution of a diasporic civilization into justifying the policies of a nation-state backed by the most powerful military in the world; from a cry against genocide into a way to excuse it. The U.S. government, under both major political parties, has used “antisemitism” to carry out assaults on human and constitutional rights—on political protest, on academic freedom, and on immigrants and asylum seekers.

The change that has come over the word is itself unspeakable. One must pretend that the word has not changed or risk accusations of antisemitism. But changed it has. As someone who lost Jewish relatives in the Holocaust, I now fear the exploitation of “antisemitism” to silence and deport political opponents more than I fear actual antisemites.

His support for this thesis actually undermines it:

Locally, the explanation of antisemitism doesn’t compute. When I hear it, I think of a retired Jewish professor in Boulder whom I last saw from a distance, with a sign calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The professor’s ceasefire group was not attacked, although it also demonstrates regularly in downtown Boulder. Both groups include Jews. Why was one group and not the other a target? “Antisemitism” makes this question unspeakable.

His argument then goes to the unspeakable itself - tacitly justifying attacking Zionist Jews:

It is unspeakable that terrorism might have a cause—that however categorically wrong terrorism is, the chances of it rise when our government enables atrocities elsewhere. It is unspeakable that the eventual attacker may have been stewing in helplessness and rage, watching day after day the scenes of families and homes annihilated in Gaza, while hearing again and again in this country that the real problem is “antisemitism.” Every day the flows of media and the speeches of politicians ignore simple evidence.

This is immorality disguised as a philosophical and semantic argument.

The question isn't why Jews who demonstrate for hostages are attacked and those who demonstrate for Gaza are not. The question is why Zionist demonstrations are subject to violence while very few other kinds of political demonstrations would be.

The reason has everything to do with the attackers and not with the attacked. It is perverted to look at a terrorist attack through any other lens. And notice that while he is willing to understand the motivations of terrorists, he shows no such understanding of Israel's ethical imperative to target and destroy Hamas.

Schneider - who mentions that he lost Jewish relatives in the Holocaust - wants to distinguish between the anti-Zionism that he believes motivated the attacker in Boulder and antisemitism, which he carefully redefines as "the persecution of a diasporic civilization" rather than, you know, Jews.

There are two levels of deception by definition here. One is how Schneider redefines antisemitism as "the persecution of a diasporic civilization" rather than the more straightforward "persecution of Jews." He wants to exclude the half of the world's Jews in his definition - the ones who live in the Jewish state.

The other is to define anti-Zionism as justified criticism of Israel. But it isn't. It denies the very concept of national self determination for a group that has been defined as a nation even in diaspora, by Jews, by non-Jews and by the antisemites themselves. It is the only anti-nationalism that justifies attacking the citizens of the nation itself.

There is no problem with trying to create a distinction between traditional antisemitism and politics. But what Schneider and other anti-Zionists do not want to admit is that anti-Zionism is simply political antisemitism.

This puts anti-Zionism in its proper historical context. It isn't a new form of antisemitism at all. Its classic formulation is in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Then as now, Jews are cast as outsiders who support immoral aims and support an ideology of Jewish domination and impunity. Their hidden allegiance is to a group of powerful Jewish political and financial leaders. Today's version is that these Zionist Jews are part of a conspiracy to control Western foreign policy and to dominate the non-Jews - both in the Middle East and in the West. The idea of Jews' disloyalty and their unbridled political greed is a direct line that connects the hate of the past to the hate of the present. Israel represents the Elders of Zion, a tiny group of puppet-masters, and hate for Zionist Jews is an extension of the age-old conspiracy theory that Jews secretly want to control the world.

And this is why political violence against Jews is "understandable" - it is only understandable when you share the premises that underlie the Protocols.

That explains his wonder at why Jews at a pro-hostage demonstration might be attacked while Jews at a pro-Hamas demonstration are safe. It is because anti-Zionism is a subset of antisemitism, and just as no one wonders at anyone attacking Jews, no one is confused by attacking proud Jews who support the Jewish state. The psychology behind the hate of Israel and the hate of Jews is identical, but there is no similar general conspiracy-minded hate of even Hamas.

The question isn't whether a non-citizen should be deported for political opinions. The question is whether those opinions are really just window dressing for hate. And when people style themselves as anti-Zionist that indicates that they are the kind of people who applaud violence against Jews who don't agree with their politics - and as such, deporting them is as reasonable as deporting a German neo-Nazi who is in the US on a green card. And mentioning that there are Jews who agree with them is as perverted as the neo-Nazi saying that some of his best friends are Jewish antisemites.

This characterization of anti-Zionism as political antisemitism clears up the confusion people have over free speech and opposition to Israeli policies. When the attackers call themselves anti-Zionist, and not just critics of Israeli policy, that is the line that they draw themselves to distinguish between valid political expression and rebranding the world's oldest hate.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The International Sociological Association recently suspended its Israel chapter - because it refused to explicitly condemn Israel's actions in Gaza.

ISA Executive Committee Decision on the Israeli Sociological Society
The ISA reiterates its declaration that, as part of its public stance against the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, it has no institutional relationships with Israeli public institutions.
We regret that the Israeli Sociological Society has not taken a clear position condemning the dramatic situation in Gaza. In a decision that reflects the extraordinary gravity of the current situation, the Executive Committee has decided to suspend the collective membership of the Israeli Sociological Society (ISS).
Adopted on June 29, 2025.

This is most interesting, because this violates its own Code of Ethics and its own Statutes.

Its Code of Ethics says:

1. Sociology as a field of scientific study and practice
As scientists, sociologists are expected to cooperate locally and transnationally on the basis of scientific correctness alone, without discrimination on the basis of scientifically irrelevant factors such as age, sex, sexual preference, ethnicity, language, religion or political affiliation.

Group work, cooperation and mutual exchanges among sociologists are necessary for sociology to achieve its ends. Sociologists are expected to take part in discussions on their own work, as well as on the work of other sociologists.
Sociologists should be aware of the fact that their assumptions may have an impact upon society. Hence their duty is, on the one hand, to keep an unbiased attitude as far as possible, while, on the other hand, to acknowledge the tentative and relative character of the results of their research and not to conceal their own ideological position(s). No sociological assumption should be presented as indisputable truth.
Sociologists should act with a view to mantaining[sic] the image and the integrity of their own discipline; this does not imply that they should abandon a critical approach toward its fundamental assumptions, its methods and its achievements.
The principles of openness, criticism and respect for all scientific perspectives should be followed by sociologists in their teaching and professional practices.

Israelis excepted.

Moreover, their Statutes, ratified in 1949 and still in force, say explicitly:

Article One: Purposes
The International Sociological Association (ISA) is a non-profit association for scientific purposes. Its function is to represent sociologists everywhere, regardless of their school of thought, scientific approaches or ideological opinion.

That is a direct contradiction to their rationale for suspending the Israeli branch.

But, hey, bylaws and statutes and codes of ethics are only optional when dealing with punishing Israel, right?

There is nothing in the Statutes that give a procedure for suspending a group member. They have had group members from Syria, China, Pakistan, Iran and Venezuela. (They did suspend Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, and the reasons given were much different - condemning the war, not the Russian sociologists whom they praised - but it still did not fit in with the Code of Ethics and Statutes.)

UPDATE: The ISA's own profile on X says:

International Sociological Association represents sociologists everywhere, regardless of their school of thought, scientific approaches or ideological opinion.

I wanted to tweet this to them, but they have left the platform in favor of Bluesky - for ethical reasons, of course.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

08/03 Links: The war of moral inversion being waged through the western mind; Hamas: Palestinian state recognition ‘fruits of Oct. 7’; Archaeologists decipher ravaged scenes in Negev after Oct. 7

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The war of moral inversion being waged through the western mind

If the west really wants to stop the war it would start putting pressure on the aggressor, Hamas, by supporting its victim, Israel, in its demand that Hamas surrenders.

If the west really wants to stop the war it should end its utterly perverse indulgence of Qatar as an honest broker in this conflict, an attitude that has made all ceasefire negotiations a lethal farce that has significantly contributed to the hostages’ continued incarceration and the length of this war. It should instead call out Qatar as a sponsor and protector of Hamas and as a Muslim Brotherhood Islamist front. It should require the issue of arrest warrants for the Hamas leaders living lives of luxury in Doha. And it should demand that Qatar force Hamas to release all the hostages immediately on pain of losing its US airbase and all influence in the west.

If the west really wants to stop the war, it should acknowledge the malignant role of the Hamas-loving, Israel-demonising UN which the US should defund and kick out of New York City as an affront to civilised values.

But of course, the west doesn’t want to stop the war. It wants to stop Israel. And it is now being consumed by Jew-hatred on a scale larger than anything seen since the Holocaust.

We are witnessing a confluence of Nazi-Islamist ideology with a Soviet-style inversion of reality that has taken over huge swathes of the west that are no longer able to think at all. The total repudiation of reason that’s created this terrifying, looking-glass world has resulted from decades of cultural attrition waged by elites determined to destroy western identity and values.

With the unspeakable rebranding of atrocities as conscience in the west, we are living through a war of moral inversion being waged not through bombs or missiles but through the minds of millions.

When pictures of the Belsen death camp were published after the end of the Second World War, people in the west were deeply shocked by the revelation of the Nazis’ psychopathic barbarism. Today, as it casts scarcely a glance at the pictures of the Israeli hostages that echo those shattering images of 70 years ago, the west is empowering the Nazis’ heirs.

Andrew Fox: This Is What Civilisational Decay Looks Like

We have forsaken the fundamental contract of citizenship—the notion that governments are responsible for protecting borders, maintaining order, and upholding shared values. Instead, we have offered rainbow flags, decolonisation seminars, and activist judges.

Then came social media, which has been the accelerant on the bonfire. The enemy no longer needed to smuggle in agents or spread propaganda by leaflet: now all they need is a smartphone and a network. They weaponised our freedoms against us, knowing we would defend their right to do so even as they used those rights to destroy us.

TikTok has become the frontline of information warfare. Instagram reels have replaced sermons. Hamas and its proxies now trend more easily than democratic leaders. Western teenagers, raised on cultural self-loathing and algorithmic radicalization, march in lockstep with genocidal theocrats and believe they are fighting for justice.

The Mask Falls
Then came Gaza. The mask was torn away. Civilizational rift revealed. Overnight, Western streets flooded with hatred. Synagogues attacked. Jewish citizens were threatened and assaulted. Political leaders hesitated. Media outlets repeated propaganda. Universities turned into centres of open antisemitism. Much of the public just shrugged, numb from decades of ideological confusion.

The Gaza war did not cause this. It exposed it. It was the decisive blow that drove the spike into the Western heart.

We are not merely witnessing protest. We are watching the product of years of infiltration and decay: in demography, in economics, in politics, in media, in education, in culture. This is what a society looks like when it can no longer distinguish friend from foe, right from wrong, civilisation from barbarism. Is it too late? Possibly.

The boiling point has been reached. The water is scalding. The frog is done for. Reversing this will take more than a change of government. It will require cultural rebirth. Moral courage. Strategic clarity. A willingness to endure pain to rebuild what we have lost.

The question is: do we still have the will, or has the long sabotage already done its work?

Niall Ferguson: Accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza is a luxury belief— and utterly divorced from reality when there’s a real one happening in Ukraine

This is what makes French, British and Canadian talk of recognising a Palestinian state such a perfect example of a luxury belief. For nothing remotely resembling a Palestinian state exists today. Nor is one likely to exist at any point in the foreseeable future.

Thirty years ago, under the Oslo Accords, Israel agreed with the Palestine Liberation Organisation on the beginnings of Palestinian self-government — “a separate Palestinian entity short of a state”, in the words of the Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. One of his successors, Ehud Barak, went even further at Camp David in 2000. But then PLO leader Yasser Arafat walked away from the table.

Have the Palestinians strengthened the case for statehood in the subsequent years? No. The Palestinian Authority (PA) is an oxymoron; Palestinians despise it, and it has no authority. Hamas continues to enjoy significant support in both Gaza and (some polls suggest even more) the West Bank. True, satisfaction with Hamas in Gaza was down from 64 per cent a year ago to 43 per cent in May, according to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, but that was still higher than satisfaction with their rivals Fatah or the PA.

Asked if they supported or opposed the disarmament of Hamas in order to stop the war, 64 per cent of Gazans said they were opposed. Yet the true nature of Hamas was laid bare on October 7, 2023, which should be regarded — and is regarded by most Israelis I know — as an event disqualifying the Palestinians from self-government, not entitling them to it. Nine out of ten Palestinians simply deny the October 7 atrocities took place.

A defining feature of with luxuries is that they are expensive. The same is true of luxury beliefs. The belief that Israel is perpetrating genocide in Gaza, like the belief that a Palestinian state can be wished into existence by western leaders, is a Hermès handbag of an idea. It is on a par with the belief that peace can somehow be brokered between Ukraine and Russia without the application of meaningful economic and military pressure on Moscow, an idea that is more of a Patek Philippe watch.

Expend energy on such luxury beliefs and you will not notice the help you are giving the axis of authoritarians to bring about the defeat of the West. Nor will you notice the help they are giving you — through the social media channels they know so well how to manipulate — to be the useful idiot you are.

The academic journal Educational Philosophy and Theory recently published a "Collective Writing" set of mini-essays entitled, "Gaza - We Need to Talk!"

The practice of collective writing is meant to offer multiple perspectives on a topic. Unlike research papers, it does not require peer review, only editorial acceptance.

In this case, the "multiple perspectives" all agree that it is philosophically moral for educators to focus on Gaza and demonize Israel, even when there are plenty of other conflicts in the world that students would not ever know about.

The reasons given vary, but all the mini-essays have one thing in common: the absolute knowledge that Israel is evil. The essays don't say this directly, but there is not one perspective that considers that this war is just.

Instead of truly showing different opinions, these essays all argue (with varying affective tones) that Israel is perpetrating a genocide, Zionism is a racist colonial regime, and Gaza is a symbol of civilizational collapse.

We get a chorus: Israel as genocidal aggressor, Palestinians as sacred victims, Gaza as the new Auschwitz. And if you think I’m exaggerating, read Zalloua, Yancy, Robins, or Maldonado-Torres—pieces that trade in Holocaust inversion, dehumanization charges, and sweeping declarations of collective guilt. (Plus a trace of "As-A-Jew" to justify Holocaust inversion.) Every structural check on academic inquiry - comparative reasoning, counterposition, standard of evidence - has been abandoned. This isn’t discourse. It’s declaration. It’s epistemic foreclosure, weaponized through academic format.

The result is a seamless moral consensus masquerading as dialogue.

No essay defends Israel's right to self-defense.
No one explores Hamas’s ideology or war crimes.
No one challenges the use of the word "genocide."
No one considers the pedagogical risks of reducing complex conflicts to moral binaries.
No one notices the basic fact that Hamas' entire military strategy is to maximize civilian casualties while Israel's is to minimize them

Instead, we get Holocaust inversions, totalizing anti-Zionist frameworks, and the idea that any opposing view is not just wrong - but complicit in violence. The collection creates the illusion of multifaceted discourse, but it is in fact ideologically uniform.

This entire issue echoes a cartoon I drew years ago, titled “You Gotta Start Somewhere”. I satirize exactly this: the endless excuses made to justify singling out Israel, while ignoring others who are far worse by every measurable standard.

The language of moral urgency becomes a smokescreen for ideological obsession. And that’s exactly what’s been laundered through this academic journal.

There is one gentle counter-position that doesn’t challenge the overall framing of Israel as aggressor or Gaza as pure victim. He only critiques the form - the lack of inter-author dialogue, missed educational opportunity, and the unsubstantiated Holocaust analogy. But there is nothing to challenge the premise.

And the premise is not just wrong but antisemitic. It doesn't matter how many "scholars" say Israel is guilty of genocide - when all of them admit that they had to change the definition of genocide to shoehorn Israel's actions into that concept, they are not being honest when they use the term and they know it.

Bias is nothing new, but here it is being laundered into how to transmit hate to students. And that is utterly immoral. This issue replaces inquiry with activism, and turns education into ideology transmission.

Propaganda is laundered here through academic legitimacy. Abandon review standards for “open format, ” curate voices from a single ideological spectrum, present variation in tone or emphasis as “diverse perspectives," exclude a major worldview entirely - but don’t say that part out loud.

That’s not educational philosophy. It's hate disguised as educational philosophy. And it is far worse when it is being presented as a sober justification for how to teach students themselves to be biased and unable to think objectively about Israel.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The double standards against Israel that tie one arm behind its back

War expert John Spencer lists some of the rules that the world applies to Israel at war that have never been applied to any other party in history:

· A neighboring country refusing to allow civilians to evacuate combat areas, thus forcing Israel to fight Hamas while it uses its entire population and infrastructure as a human shield. This is a double standard with no historical comparison.

· Measuring legal adherence to the laws of war by citing daily casualty counts from the enemy force, which is an internationally designated terrorist organization. Many also use other data points, often manipulated or misapplied, to make faulty comparisons to dissimilar conflicts. The purpose is to politically and socially delegitimize Israel’s goals. This is also known as effects-based condemnation. In this framework, no matter what Israel does to prevent civilian harm, or what Hamas does to increase it, only the effects, often reported through manipulated or false data, are judged. This is not how war is assessed for any other nation. This is not how the laws of war apply to any other military. It is a double standard.

· Demanding a postwar day-after plan before the enemy military and government are defeated. The idea that an attacking military must present a plan for replacement governance before the opposing force has been defeated through force or surrender is a double standard. Victory and defeat must come first. Replacement comes after, not before.

· Providing humanitarian aid to the enemy’s population during wartime, while battles are ongoing, while the enemy still controls territory, continues to launch attacks, and holds hostages. Israel has done this out of moral responsibility and to balance military objectives with humanitarian imperatives. However, the argument that this is a legal requirement is a double standard.

· Dictating which legal tools a nation may use to fight an enemy. For example, criticizing the use of large-diameter munitions in an urban area, such as a 2,000-pound bomb, even when the enemy is embedded in dense urban terrain and operating from fortified underground tunnels that require deep penetration. This is a lawful and necessary capability in many conflicts. Yet when Israel uses it, it is singled out. That is a double standard.

· Claiming that there can be no population displacement or border change during or after an armed conflict. The idea that a terrorist army directed by the government of Hamas can cross a sovereign border, invade a country, commit atrocities, take hundreds of hostages, and that in the war that follows there must be no voluntary or temporary displacement of civilians, or any change to border control or security arrangements, is a double standard. The laws of war prohibit forced displacement, not temporary or voluntary displacement during wartime.

· Not allowing civilians the option to escape the war. Preventing civilians who want to leave Gaza from doing so is an unprecedented double standard. It affects both Israel and the people of Gaza.

· Tying a nation’s legitimate war goals to an unrelated political issue. Despite the clear context of this war, the attacked country is pressured to make concessions to a separate political entity that has rejected international mediation. Forcing Israel to link the war in Gaza, which it did not start, to the broader political effort of creating a Palestinian state with a different governing group, the Palestinian Authority, is a double standard.

But his point isn't merely that the world treats Israel unfairly. It is that most of these rules are specifically created to make it nearly impossible for Israel to achieve its legitimate war goals of defeating Hamas.

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

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An account of Jerusalem Jews mourning for the Temple in 1880

Today is Tisha B'Av, the saddest day of the Jewish calendar, marking the destruction of the Temples and many other tragedies.

The Jews of Jerusalem in the centuries before the rebirth of Israel treated every Friday like Tisha B'Av, crying at the Western Wall. There are many accounts by pilgrims who witnessed this scene.

Here's one account from LIGHT FROM THE EAST.TRAVELS AND RESEARCHES IN BIBLE LANDS in 1880 BY REV. HENRY R. COLEMAN:

Every traveler ought to visit the Wailing Place of the Jews at the cyclopean foundation wall of the temple just outside the enclosure of the Mosque El Aska, and near Robinson's Arch. There the Jews assemble every Friday afternoon and on festivals to bewail the downfall of the holy city. I saw on Good Friday a large number, old and young, male and female, venerable rabbis with patriarchal beards, and young men, kissing the stone wall, and watering it with their tears. They repeat from their well-worn Hebrew Bibles and prayer books the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and suitable Psalms (the 76th and 79th): "O God, the heathen they are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps. . . . We are become a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and derision to them that are round about us;" Dr. Tobler gives the following specimen of responsive laments from the litanies of the Karaites:

For the palace that lies desolate,
R. We sit in solitude and mourn.
For the walls that are overthrown,
R. We sit in solitude and mourn.
For our majesty that is departed,
R. We sit in solitude and mourn.
For the priests who have stumbled,
R. We sit in solitude and mourn.
For our kings who have despised Him,
R. We sit in solitude and mourn.Another prayer:
We pray thee have mercy upon Zion.
R. Gather the children of Jerusalem.
Make haste, make haste, Redeemer of Zion.
R. Speak to the hearts of Jerusalem.
May beauty and majesty surround Zion.
R. Incline mercifully toward Jerusalem.
May the kingly rule over Zion soon appear.
R. Comfort those that mourn over Jerusalem.
May peace and delight enter Zion,
R. And may the branch sprout in Jerusalem.
The keynote of these laments and prayers was struck by Jeremiah, the most pathetic and tender hearted of prophets, in the Lamentations—that funeral dirge of Jerusalem and the theocracy. This elegy, written with sighs and tears, has done its work most effectually in great public calamities, and is doing it every year on the ninth of the month of Ab (July), when it is read with loud weeping in all the synagogues of the Jews, and especially in Jerusalem. It keeps alive the memory of their deepest humiliation and guilt and the hope of final deliverance. The scene at the wailing place was to me touching and pregnant with meaning. God has no doubt reserved this remarkable people, which, like the burning bush, is never consumed, for some great purpose before the final coming of our Lord.

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

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08/02 Links: How will Israel find legal justice for the atrocities of October 7; Hamas forces hostage Evyatar David to dig own grave; Hamas vows not to lay down arms

From Ian:

Cochav Elkayam-Levy and Irwin Cotler: How will Israel find legal justice for the atrocities of October 7? - opinion

ISRAEL HAS never shied away from legal innovation. Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann’s trial in 1961 helped forge the modern architecture of human rights law and universal jurisdiction.

The crimes of October 7 demand a similarly groundbreaking legal response. Even before October 7, Hamas repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and the genocide of Israelis, conduct that may constitute incitement to genocide under Article III(c) of the Genocide Convention.

A hybrid tribunal model, comprised of Israeli and international judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, would bring global standards and expertise to bear while remaining rooted in the communities most affected. Such a tribunal would not only try perpetrators but also elevate these atrocities from local tragedy to global reckoning.

In this context, one of the darkest chapters of October 7 was the systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon of terror. Precedents from Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia have shown that such acts must be prosecuted with diligence and victim-centered care.

The sexual violence we have documented for months now at the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes Against Women and Children underscores the necessity of international law in addressing such atrocities.

Over the past decades, the international legal framework has become essential for uncovering and prosecuting these crimes. Hamas’s use of sexual violence on October 7 must be understood within this context. A hybrid tribunal, equipped with trauma-informed procedures, as well as international best practices and liability models, can ensure that these crimes are understood and neither minimized nor forgotten.

October 7 also included the deliberate targeting of families. Our findings reveal distinct patterns: families murdered together and subjected to similar forms of torture; victims forced to witness atrocities committed against their loved ones; entire families abducted; violent and intentional separations of family members; and the use of digital and social media to broadcast abuses directly to the victims’ families and the general public, including through the victims’ own devices and social media accounts.

These were not isolated incidents. Hamas used tactics designed to weaponize the most fundamental human bonds. Above all, this conduct represents an emerging threat in the landscape of modern terrorism that demands urgent international recognition and accountability.

Recognizing and condemning this family-targeted terror, which we have named kinocide, could play one of the most critical roles in legal proceedings for justice, both for the victims and for the world, in the aftermath of the attack. These prosecutions could set a vital precedent that enables the international community to understand this form of cruelty.

SOME WILL say such a tribunal is politically unfeasible. Israel is deeply divided internally, with growing mistrust in institutions and no clear political horizon. Internationally, it faces increasing isolation as the war continues. In addition, questions will arise: What about the crimes allegedly committed by Israel?

However, prosecuting October 7 does not preclude other accountability efforts. Justice is not mutually exclusive, and deferring prosecution in the name of symmetry risks rewarding the gravest atrocities with silence.

A credible legal response to Israel’s conduct will depend on future developments, most critically, whether Israel’s leadership undertakes the necessary steps to investigate alleged violations, establish an independent and effective state commission of inquiry, and prosecute war crimes.

The immediate legal reality cannot be escaped: Israel currently holds hundreds of suspects in custody for the worst crimes committed on its soil in decades. To delay prosecution is to deny victims their rights and to abandon the rule of law when it is needed most. Justice does not always require consensus. In its earliest stages, it requires resolve and clear vision.

Democratic allies in the US, European Union, UK, Germany, Canada, France, and beyond – several of whom have already launched investigations to pursue the perpetrators of October 7 – can serve as crucial partners in establishing an international mechanism.

Such a court, designed in cooperation with trusted international legal experts, would bypass political gridlock and embody the very principles it seeks to uphold: impartiality, justice, and the dignity of victims whose suffering demands recognition and redress.

The Nuremberg Trials didn’t just prosecute criminals; they redefined how the world responded to atrocity. The same is possible now. A hybrid tribunal for October 7 can deliver more than justice. It can deliver history, memory, and perhaps, healing.

NYPost Editorial: Arab nations are getting wise to Hamas — even as others foolishly squeeze Israel

Most media ignored last week’s most important Middle East development: Arab nations for the first time publicly slammed Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and demanded the terrorists surrender power, disarm, and release their hostages.

OK, it’s a low bar. But it’s progress, and a lot more meaningful than British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s threat to recognize a Palestinian state or the other maneuvering over Gaza’s food crisis.

The landmark demands came in a seven-page declaration Tuesday by 17 countries, plus the European Union and the entire 22-member Arab League, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Qatar.

They reflect a willingness — finally! — to publicly acknowledge that Hamas’ ouster is necessary to end the war in Gaza and thus ease the suffering of its civilians.

Hallelujah: We’ve stressed since Day 1 that the conflict can’t end with Hamas in power; the group, after all, openly vows to keep attacking the Jewish state until Israel is destroyed.

Perhaps the Gaza food shortages got the Arabs’ attention — even if most reports misled readers by tacitly (or even openly) blaming Jerusalem for them.

Bigger picture: Nations like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, egged on by President Donald Trump, are now eager to normalize relations with Israel, though they want the Gaza fighting to end first.

Sadly, other parts of Tuesday’s statement are as misguided as ever, calling for Hamas to “hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority, with international engagement and support, in line with the objective of a sovereign and independent Palestinian State.”

With Gaza then seeing “the deployment of a temporary international stabilization mission upon invitation by the Palestinian Authority and under the aegis of the United Nations.”

The Palestinian Authority? The United Nations?

Neither is fit for real responsibilities: The PA is nothing but an autocratic kleptocracy that uses international-aid funds to enrich its leaders and to pay terrorists to kill Israelis; even clueless President Joe Biden insisted it would have to be “revitalized” before it could play any role in Gaza.

UN peacekeepers, meanwhile, have never managed to keep peace anywhere in the Middle East; instead, the world body’s presence — e.g., via groups like the UN Relief and Works Agency — has only fueled violence in the region.

Even more brainless is Starmer’s threat to recognize a Palestinian state, along with France and Canada’s plans to do so next month, “unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a cease-fire and commit to a long-term, sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two-state solution.”

Andrew Fox: Strategic and diplomatic shambles

Israel lost the narrative war not because it was wrong, but because it was outplayed. While Israeli spokespeople cited legal justifications and battlefield data, Hamas flooded global media with images, emotion, and deception. From the Al-Ahli hospital blast to footage of hostages in tunnels, Hamas weaponised perception, and the world bought it. Every misstep by Israel was magnified; every atrocity by Hamas was downplayed or forgotten. Strategic defeats in the court of public opinion overshadowed tactical victories on the ground.

Now, with global support for Israel waning significantly, Hamas has shifted its demands from resistance to statehood. They speak the language of diplomacy while holding hostages underground. Their atrocities are reframed as a cry for freedom. Even more disturbingly, many in the West are buying it.

The recognition of Palestinian statehood under current conditions would be the crowning achievement of Hamas’s propaganda campaign. It would reward mass murder with legitimacy and render the IDF’s sacrifices meaningless. Worse, it would solidify Hamas, not the Palestinian Authority or any moderate actor, as the de facto representative of the Palestinian people. Recognising a state now is not a rebuke of Hamas or a step to their removal; it is to grant Hamas its greatest victory.

This puts Israel in a vice. Capitulate, and it accepts the promise of a genocidal regime on its doorstep, one that openly declares its intent to continue fighting until Israel is destroyed. Resist, and it faces even more resounding international condemnation, lawsuits in The Hague, and the likelihood of severe sanctions. In such a scenario, even basic diplomatic recognition may be withdrawn. That level of isolation could threaten Israel’s very survival.

It did not have to be this way. Israel’s strategy has been abysmal. A ceasefire in November could have salvaged Israel’s international position, preserved goodwill for future hostilities if necessary, and potentially secured more hostages when Hamas was weakened and cornered. That window has closed, but the logic behind it remains valid. More war will not fix the damage already done. More war will not bring the hostages home.

Every bomb dropped now plays into Hamas’s hands. Every Israeli counterattack fuels the narrative of disproportionate aggression. Every day the war drags on, the world moves closer to legitimising Hamas as a political entity. Continued fighting may bring further tactical success, but at what cost? The loss of alliances, the abandonment of hostages, and the global transformation of Hamas from pariah to power broker.

Backing Israel into a diplomatic corner will not end the war. It will prolong it. Recognition of Palestinian statehood at this moment does not pressure Israel into peace: it pressures Israel into escalation. Israel, forced to choose between a potential forever war and resistance, will choose to fight. The result will not be peace, but more death.

Now is the time to return to strategy and to stabilise. Israel must consider another ceasefire; not as a surrender, but as a strategic pause to recalibrate, rescue hostages, and rebuild alliances. International actors must understand that recognising a Palestinian state today, with Hamas at the helm, is not diplomacy; it is appeasement that will bring further violence and death in Gaza, with the inevitable collateral damage that comes with it.

Israel is not wrong to want security. It is not wrong to try to destroy a group committed to its destruction, but it must also be wise. Wisdom means knowing when to stop digging. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. It is time to cease fire, not because Hamas deserves mercy or because Western leaders demand it, but because Israel deserves a future.

However, here is the issue: Israel cannot take that option whilst meddling, performative governments dangle the sword of Damocles over their heads and all but guarantee that the violence must continue. Israel can never agree to the proposal put forward by Hamas. If the international community tries to force them to, Israel is left with no choice but to destroy the source of that proposal, and the violence will continue. The wretched idiocy of self-interested politicians knows no bounds.

From Jerusalem, to Paris, to London, to Ottawa, to Washington: what a shambles.