Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, October 25, 2025

10/25 Links: Trump: Hamas must start returning hostage remains; Rubio visit signals US all-hands-on-deck approach to post-war Gaza stability

From Ian:

Many Jews will be proud to have been by Israel's side after Oct. 7, some will be ashamed

UNFORTUNATELY, NOT all Diaspora Jewry will be able to look back at their response to this period with pride. When the dust settles from the war and the soldiers come home, and all of the deceased hostages are returned, there will be Jews who will be ashamed at their actions and response to the war.

A recent Washington Post survey found many American Jews disapproving of Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war, with 61% saying Israel has committed war crimes, and about four in 10 saying it is guilty of genocide. Almost half, 46%, approved of Israel’s actions during the war, while 48% opposed Israel’s actions.

This poll came on the heels of dozens of Orthodox rabbis issuing “A Call for Moral Clarity, Responsibility, and a Jewish Orthodox Response in the Face of the Gaza Humanitarian Crisis.” Their letter reflected Hamas’s talking points of Israeli extremism, starvation tactics, and distorting basic morality.

Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the US, responded to the letter: “Your statement not only reflects a severe unfamiliarity with the facts, but also relies on the lies of our worst enemies.” He criticized the rabbis “for ignoring the reality that Israel is the one feeding those who are firing on our children.”

Leiter ended with a pointed rebuke: “As Israel fights for survival on seven fronts, faces international pressure, and leads historic changes in the Middle East for security and stability, this is the time to support Israel’s elected government and the people of Israel, not to conduct political criticism rooted in blatant ignorance of the facts. You should apologize.”

In spite of the unfortunate response of some Diaspora Jews to Israel during the war, the Zionist bond, forged over 150 years ago, endures. Diaspora Jewry’s outpouring, from 1967’s bonds to today’s $1.4 billion surge, celebrates our eternal kinship with Israel. This resilient solidarity, a beacon of Jewish unity, promises shared triumph, healing, and unbreakable pride for generations ahead.

Dave Rich: There must be a cost

There’s a part of the interview where Theroux and Vylan discuss the latter’s notorious “Death to the IDF” chant at Glastonbury, and they go back and forth about whether Vylan really meant death, or did he just mean that he wants the end to the IDF as an institution, but “End to the IDF” wouldn’t rhyme, and it’s just a figure of speech, and so on.

Except a month before Glastonbury, Vylan had called for “Death to every single IDF soldier out there”, at a concert at Alexandra Palace in London. In Amsterdam last month he told a concert audience ““F*ck the Zionists! Get out there and fight them! Get out there and meet them in the street. Get out there and let them know that you don’t stand by them.” And at another gig in Spain in August, Vylan said:
We do support the right to an armed resistance. ‘Cause we ain’t no f*cking pacifists. We ain’t the nonviolent type. Because we understand. We understand that in dealing with tyrannical f*cking governments, you need to be violent sometimes… We are for an armed resistance. We wanna make that explicitly f*cking clear.”

I don’t know why Theroux failed to ask Vylan about any of these other quotes. Perhaps he did, and it was edited out. Perhaps he’s lazy and didn’t do his research properly. Or maybe he didn’t bring it up because it would wreck the entire narrative that Vylan is a cuddly peacenik who has been misrepresented by the evil right wing press and Zionist white supremacists. Frankly, I don’t care what the reason is. All I know is that after Manchester, I have much less tolerance for this kind of nonsense.

Incidentally, Vylan didn’t correct Theroux on whether he wants to see Israeli soldiers killed, despite having said at that gig in Spain that he wants to be “explicitly f*cking clear” that he does support violence and armed resistance. So he’s a coward, on top of everything else.

It increasingly feels like this is part of the game. Antisemites, racists and Israel-haters say and do outrageous things that they would never say or do about any other country or people, and when Jews complain, we are gaslit repeatedly. Maccabi Tel Aviv fans are banned from Aston Villa because the police cannot guarantee their safety in the face of threatened protests, and when people point out the appalling implications of this, a narrative suddenly develops that the Maccabi fans are some kind of mega-hooligan firm from the 1970s. An antisemitic doctor rants incessantly about “Jewish supremacy” occupying the British government, and we are told she is just criticising Israel and opposing genocide. Bobby Vylan repeatedly and proudly calls for death and violence, and one of the British media’s best-known and most capable interviewers lays out the red carpet and helps to explain it all away.

And all the while, Jewish voices try to patiently explain the facts, as if facts are all these people are missing. As Jean-Paul Sartre famously warned: “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, and open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly since he believes in words.”

Theroux’s podcast was recorded before the Manchester attack, which he acknowledges in the introduction. But they still went ahead and published it anyway, as if the death of two Jews due to an Israel-hating jihadist doesn’t change the context of an interview with someone who became famous for calling for death for Israelis. Theroux opens his questioning of Vylan with the classic motif of liberal white guilt, saying “I guess my starting point is… we’ve got very different life experiences, I’m conscious of all the privilege I’ve enjoyed”; but when it comes to the life experiences of the Jewish community, experiencing more religious hate crime per head than any other community in the UK, Theroux and Vylan breezily wave it away. It’s a form of privilege all of its own, the ability to be so dismissive of antisemitism and yet retain a sense of their own progressive righteousness.

I don’t think I’m alone in reaching the end of the road on giving people the benefit of the doubt over this kind of thing. I overheard someone say last week that it feels like people have had a free hit against the Jewish community for the past two years, and that has to change. I share that view, and there are, hopefully, some signs that things are shifting. The outcry against the Maccabi Tel Aviv ban went much further than I believe it would have done before Manchester. The antisemitic doctor has finally been arrested. As for Theroux: the most sickening part of the interview, sandwiched in between Vylan’s defence of “Death to the IDF” and Theroux’s offensive speculations about “post-Holocaust Jewish exceptionalism”, was the line “This episode is brought to you by British Airways.” Our national airline, sponsoring offensive garbage about Jews. Well, no longer. British Airways have pulled their sponsorship, of this episode of least.

It’s a start, but there needs to be much more. It’s a reminder that we can try to explain and educate about antisemitism all day long, but it will be meaningless and ineffective unless there is a cost: whether that cost is political, financial, professional or social. The days of the free hit must end.

British Airways withdraws support for Louis Theroux podcast after Bob Vylan episode

British Airways has pulled support for the Louis Theroux podcast after an appearance by the front man of controversial punk act Bob Vylan.

Pascal Robinson-Foster used the interview published on Tuesday to say he would readily repeat his “death to the IDF chant” that brought him to prominence this summer at Glastonbury.

Police launched an investigation the band’s appearance at the festival, which also included a diatribe about working for “f***ing Zionists”, after it was broadcast live on the BBC. The national broadcaster’s complaints unit later said the content “taken in the round, can fairly be characterised as antisemitic”.

During the podcast interview with Theroux, Robinson-Foster said: “If I was to go on Glastonbury again tomorrow, yes I would do it again. I’m not regretful of it. I’d do it again tomorrow, twice on Sundays.”

In what was described as a “softball” interview by the BBC’s former direction of television Danny Cohen, Theroux noted that the Community Security Trust had stated that “29 June [the day after Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury set] saw the highest daily total of anti-Semitic incidents in the first half of 2025”. Vylan responded by questioning what CST were counting as antisemitic incidents, before saying “I don’t think I have created an unsafe atmosphere for the Jewish community. If there were large numbers of people going out and going like ‘Bob Vylan made me do this’. I might go, oof, I’ve had a negative impact here.”

Speaking about identity, Theroux said: “Jewish identity in the Jewish community, as expressed in Israel has become almost like an acceptable quote, unquote, way of understanding ethno-nationalism.

“So it’s like they’re prototyping an aggressive form of ethno-nationalism , which is often rolled out, whether it’s by people like Viktor Orban in Hungary or Trump in the US. It’s become sort of this certain sense of post-Holocaust Jewish exceptionalism or Zionist exceptionalism, has become a role model on the national stage for what these white identitarians would like to do in their own countries.”

Following the outcry, a BA statement to Jewish News said: “Our sponsorship of the series has now been paused and the advert has been removed. We’re grateful that this was brought to our attention, as the content clearly breaches our sponsorship policy in relation to politically sensitive or controversial subject matters. We and our third-party media agency have processes in place to ensure these issues don’t occur and we’re investigating how this happened.”

10/24 Links Pt2: Israel prepares for handover of two deceased hostages; The ‘Church Times’ makes the moral case for antisemitism; Meet Britain’s new Islamo-socialist alliance

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Galloping Islamisation in Britain and America

Like Britain, America has allowed this to build up with impunity. For two years, mosques in Dearborn, Mich., have blasted calls to prayer through outdoor loudspeakers, violating local city laws. Its mayor, Abdullah H. Hammoud, told a local Christian resident, Edward Barham, that he was “not welcome” in the city after Barham raised concerns about new street signs honoring Arab American news publisher Osama Siblani, who he said promoted Hamas and Hezbollah.

Texas, of all places, is now seeing the rise of self-governing Islamic enclaves. East Plano Islamic Center, a powerful mega-mosque, has acquired vast land holdings to construct an autonomous Sharia-adherent Islamic community. Its leadership has said: “We are, Inshallah, going to change the entire dawah scene by demonstrating to the world what it means to be a Muslim living in the West.” Dawah is a strategy for Islamic expansion.

At the American Muslims for Palestine conference last May in Tinley Park, Ill., some 3,000 people openly discussed plans to take over America and bring it to its knees through mass mobilization to shut down events.

Despite its horror over the Birmingham ban, the British government is still refusing to face up to what’s happening. “We will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets,” said Starmer. But the past two years have shown that antisemitism is indeed tolerated on Britain’s streets, with “pro-Palestine” mobs chanting for the eradication of Israel and the murder of Jews.

Britain and America should finally start drawing some lines in the sand. The liberal democratic bargain at the core of Western society holds that minorities are free to form communities of faith and culture, provided they uphold core values such as democracy and the rule of one law for all.

That means proscribing the subversive Muslim Brotherhood, jailing radical imams or throwing them out of the country, binning “Islamophobia,” banning the burqa and outlawing sharia law, which recognizes no authority above itself.

The British are at a boiling point. People can see that serious violence in the streets is now all too likely. This cultural vacuum is a breeding ground for demagogues, grifters and thugs—whose agenda is not democracy but power, and who display accordingly total contempt for the rule of law—to pose as defenders of Western values and the Jewish people. We know from bitter historical experience that when a society convulses in this way, Jews are likely to get it in the neck from all sides.

The real threat, though, to all who value civilization is from a Western world that’s committing cultural suicide.

The Ultras: meet Britain’s new Islamo-socialist alliance

Ideological inconsistencies, however, will be glossed over. A powerful electoral alliance has been born between young progressives and a group of Muslim voters. Your Party and the Greens, now led by the self-declared ‘eco-populist’ Zack Polanski and his deputy Mothin Ali, who once called a rabbi an ‘animal’ for being a reservist in the Israeli military, are already in talks to have an electoral pact, where whoever looks most likely to win the seat will run unopposed. In this venture they will be aided by an organisation called Muslim Vote, which helped the Gaza independents at the last election. For 2029, Muslim Vote has offered to supply the Greens and Your Party with data on the voting preferences of local Muslims in each constituency.

Labour will be the party most damaged by these tactics. Despite a notional peace deal now in place in Gaza, the party’s traditional Muslim vote is unlikely to return. Crucially, a disproportionate number of the cabinet are in seats with a high Muslim population. Wes Streeting, in Ilford, is the most obvious example, with a majority of just 528 after the independent Leanne Mohammad ran him extraordinarily close in 2024. A source close to Ayoub Khan says he is likely to stand again at the next election.

Some in government fear sectarianism hardening and characters like Majid Freeman becoming more prominent in Britain’s politics. There is often a lack of will from Labour ministers to confront the challenge.

Comparisons are often drawn with France, which has been more proactive at dealing with Islamism. Following the murder of the teacher Samuel Paty in 2020, the French government began a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence, which was supported across the political spectrum.

There are rumours that the government is rehauling its counter-extremism policies, particularly after the Manchester synagogue attack. Robin Simcox’s replacement as commissioner for countering extremism has yet to be named, with one senior source suggesting things are ‘on pause’ since that attack. Aside from a 2015 initiative that fizzled out, the Home Office has been hesitant about developing a proper counter-extremism strategy – officials say that the department’s priority was to stop terrorist attacks – but some think that a French-style crackdown on political and radical Islamism is being planned. Civil servants are worried that pushing radical groups underground could have lethal consequences, though. There are those who suggest the work could be done more softly by the Ministry for Housing and Communities, through a social cohesion taskforce. Either way, the work will be low-key. Sources suggest the government is unlikely to want a media blitz, or a Spectator cover story. A Home Office spokesperson said: ‘All forms of religious, ethnic and racial hatred have absolutely no place in our society. We are working with partners and across government to tackle the threat and respond to growing and changing patterns of extremism across the UK, ensuring we have the tools and powers to keep people safe.’

Any such strategy will have been sanctioned by No. 10. Starmer’s appointment of new ministers at the Home Office and Communities over summer was a statement of intent. As one senior source said: ‘Nothing really happened with Yvette Cooper as home secretary and Angela Rayner as communities secretary. I think it will now be a live issue with Shabana Mahmood and Steve Reed.’

Westminster has talked endlessly, in apocalyptic tones, about the rising menace on the right, the carnage that Reform will wreak on the establishment. Yet the coming alliance on the left is every bit as dangerous. All eyes are on Nigel Farage and his gang, who have begun to look quite smug on their green benches in the corner of the chamber. People should be paying just as much attention to who sits behind them.

The ‘Church Times’ makes the moral case for antisemitism

“The explosion of Jew-hatred today is based on deeply held moral objections to Israeli policy.”
“Jews are not detested today because they are outsiders.”
“Jewry today is loathed because of Israel’s merciless onslaught on the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”

These are direct quotes from an opinion piece, by turns extraordinary and appalling, published by the Church Times, a London-based newspaper closely aligned with the Church of England. The author is one Dan Cohn-Sherbok, a U.S.-born Reform rabbi who lives in the United Kingdom, where he is currently professor emeritus in Jewish studies at the University of Wales.

If you are going to blame Jews for the current surge in antisemitism, particularly in an outlet serving the Christian community, it helps to have a Jewish author do so. The thinking here is easily explained—if a Jew says these things, then they can’t possibly be antisemitic.

Actually, the reverse is true. Having a Jew pen this tissue of lies, distortions, omissions and libels serves to legitimize and reinforce antisemitic beliefs, rather than undermining them. The tactic of using Jews or ex-Jews to denounce Judaism and its organic manifestations, which unquestionably include Zionism and the State of Israel, dates back at least to the Middle Ages.

What makes Cohn-Sherbok’s contribution noteworthy is the astonishingly crude sleight of hand he applies to make a distinction between the “old” antisemitism, which he argues revolves around the “outsider” status of Jews, and the “new” antisemitism, which he insists is based on decent moral convictions about supposed Israeli crimes. As he writes, “For more than 2,000 years, Jews have been hated because, in numerous ways, they were different from the general population. But, today, the situation is different: Jew-hatred is largely fueled now by the actions of the Israeli government.”

At no point does he question the assumptions behind this portrait of Israel. His piece takes it as self-evident that the Israeli government, and by extension the Israel Defense Forces, is motivated by a bloodthirsty desire to expunge the Palestinian presence in the Gaza Strip, and Judea and Samaria. Anyone reading his words will simply be unaware of the long track record of Palestinian violence against Israel, rooted in an eliminationist campaign to destroy Jewish sovereignty in a part of the world that belongs, according to Islamic theology, to Dar al-Islam (“Domain of Islam”).

The most glaring omission is, of course, the absence of any mention of the Hamas-led pogrom in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which triggered the IDF’s war against the Iranian-backed terrorist organization in Gaza. But there are other examples from the past century that he could have cited, both before and after Israel’s creation in 1948: the slaughter of Hebron’s Jewish community in 1929; the alignment of the Palestinian and Arab leadership with the Nazi regime in the ensuing decades; the attempt to snuff out Israel at birth through a combined attack waged by Arab armies; the various hijackings, bombings and other terrorist attacks in the last three decades of the 20th century; and the rise of Hamas, which makes no secret of its desire to remove Israel from the map, in this one.

10/24 Links Pt1: Trump Learns the Power of Power: Rubio: UNRWA is ‘subsidiary of Hamas,’; Hotel Hamas: 150 terrorists staying at luxury Cairo resort alongside unsuspecting Western tourists

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Trump Learns the Power of Power

Trump isn’t exactly known for his humility, but here is admitting that an Israeli strike he opposed is the main reason he got his deal.

One reason Trump may have been so open to persuasion is because, despite his realist-leaning statements on the limits of American force, his instincts naturally lean toward taking action or dishing out credible threats.

It helps that most of Trump’s threats at least seem credible. A former adviser to Israeli leader Shimon Peres told Time that Trump’s suggestion to turn Gaza in the Riviera of the region “scared the hell out of” Arab negotiators and focused their attention on getting a deal.

Trump’s willingness to use military force against Iran a few months later would solidify in regional leaders’ minds the idea that the president really wasn’t messing around. Thus, when he warned that Hamas faced “complete obliteration” if it didn’t return all the hostages—and not in stages, but at the outset of a deal—Qatar and Turkey believed him and pressed Hamas to agree.

One other detail from the interview is worth noting. Arab leaders were convinced that Trump meant what he said. But it’s also clear that Trump gained respect for the Israelis when he realized that they meant what they said, too.

The example given by Time relates to the hostages. It’s no secret that Israel’s commitment to redeeming its captives comes at a strategic cost. To someone like Trump, a rare Western leader who exults in military victory (and says the word victory), therefore, it can be unconvincing. When the choice comes down to totally obliterating the enemy or bringing home the hostages, would Israel really choose the hostages? Trump found out the answer was yes.

“Israel was so intent on the hostages, I was actually surprised,” Trump told Time. “You would have thought they would have sacrificed the hostages in order to keep going, right? The people of Israel wanted the hostages more than they wanted anything else.”

Therefore, Trump went to Hamas armed with a record of making good on his threats and said, in the president’s words, “You’re giving us the f–king hostages, all of them.” It’s amazing what a few well-timed displays of strength can do.

The Taliban Are Excused, While Israel Is Accused By Abe Greenwald

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In fact, while liberal Western governments attack Israel and threaten its prime minister with arrest, they’ve increasingly come to accept the legitimacy of Taliban rule. There are more than a dozen non-European embassies in Afghanistan, but European countries now let Taliban officials operate diplomatic missions on European soil and dictate who gets fired and hired at consulates—despite the International Criminal Court’s having issued arrest warrants for Taliban leaders this summer. Funny, when the ICC does the same regarding Israeli leaders, Western liberals seem to take it a lot more seriously.

But most of the Western outreach is informal because the West is ashamed of itself. Europe is reaching out to the Taliban quietly to repatriate its unwanted Afghan asylum-seekers. And both Europe and America have to occasionally try persuading the Taliban to push back on mutual terrorist enemies. The U.S. has even sent officials to Kabul because Americans are still being held hostage there. The Taliban can be secure in its future relations with the West because it’s a monstrous, morally blackmailing regime that was legitimized by American surrender.

Oh, and because Western liberals aren’t heartbroken over the suffering of Muslims. Not in Afghanistan or China or Nigeria or even in Gaza. They’re heartbroken about the survival of Israel because it shames them all by slaying the monsters to which they bow.

The Red Cross abandoned its mission in Gaza

This is not the first time that the Red Cross has failed its own mission. During World War II, it allowed itself to be manipulated by Nazi propaganda at Theresienstadt, failing to report on the horrors it saw. In Srebrenica in 1995, its inaction left it documenting a massacre rather than preventing one.

The Red Cross likes to say it “cannot enforce” but only “advocate.” In the Gaza Strip, it didn’t even advocate with the urgency the situation required.

Hamas committed clear war crimes: kidnapping civilians, denying them food and medical care, and refusing access to international observers. The Red Cross’s silence and passivity effectively normalized that behavior.

Yes, quiet diplomacy has its place, but only when it produces results. In Gaza, it produced nothing—no visits, no medical checks, no confirmation of life. The world learned about the hostages through Hamas propaganda videos, not humanitarian reports.

This wasn’t a failure of logistics but a failure of will.

Real neutrality does not mean standing by while terrorists brutalize innocent civilians. It means upholding humanitarian principles consistently. In Gaza, real neutrality would have meant pressing Hamas loudly and publicly, day after day, to allow visits to the hostages. It would have meant reminding the world that these men, women and children have rights under international law.

Instead, the Red Cross hid behind procedural language and diplomatic whispers. It became a spectator to human suffering, not a defender of human dignity.

If the Red Cross wants to be taken seriously, then it owes the hostages and their families answers:
Why didn’t it demand access to the hostages as it has elsewhere?
Why was it content to act as a courier rather than an advocate?
Why didn’t it publicly call Hamas’s actions war crimes?

Silence in the face of barbarism isn’t neutrality; it’s complicity. And this time, the silence of the Red Cross came at the expense of Israeli lives.

Until the ICRC holds itself accountable to its own charter, its reputation as a guardian of humanitarian values will remain permanently stained by its failure in Gaza.

International aid groups operating in Gaza must be held accountable

With plans for Gaza’s future dominating headlines, those mired in the details of the ongoing war are aware of claims that Hamas made extensive use of hospitals as terror bases. For them, there should be no surprise in learning that recently released Hamas documents, captured by the Israel Defense Forces, directly confirmed this systematic abuse.

But the details delineating the complicity of leading humanitarian groups, such as Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Red Cross, in these war crimes were largely unexpected and require urgent action.

The revelations indict many of the biggest human rights organizations and pose major challenges to Western countries, including Canada. For years, governments have been providing hundreds of millions of dollars annually to an aid industry that has grown cozy with terrorist regimes.

The declassified Hamas records, dated from early 2020 and recently published by NGO Monitor, the independent research institute that I head, clearly depict the terror group’s strategy of using medical facilities and health-care workers as shields. Hospitals, Hamas officials wrote, serve as places of “gathering for many commanders … in times of escalation.”

The documents warn Hamas commanders (i.e., terrorists) of the dangers posed by the presence of foreign medical professionals in hospital wings used as operational and communications centers for the organization. Fighters were told that foreigners, including doctors and other personnel, were to be removed “when there is a case of resistance leaders [present on the premises].” To prevent unauthorized contact, “medical members [of Hamas] from Gaza” would also be assigned to observe and “join incoming delegations.”

Hamas, the records reveal, also required considerable pre-approval procedures for arriving delegations sent by friendly NGOs. They were required to “submit a request … attached with CVs of the doctors, listing the need [of arrival].” And they could work only “in specific places, such as the outpatient department, the specialized departments and operations rooms,” but would be prohibited “from going inside the [main] hospital where [Hamas] is located.”

The list of organizations that look the other way begins with the most “highly respected” and influential groups. The International Red Cross, Hamas noted, “has chosen [to operate] in a wing inside Al-Shifa Hospital that is adjacent to the [Hamas] movement’s offices.” Similarly, according to the terror group’s documents, MSF was located in “the only room in Abu Yousef El-Najar Hospital that has a (safe) communication landline” belonging to Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades.

Set against the wide-open skies of the California high desert, Guns & Moses unfolds as a peculiar, but compelling, hybrid: part Western, part murder mystery, part faith-rooted thriller. In the fictional town of High Desert, California - evoking many real-life Western towns - the film centers on Rabbi Moshe "Mo" Zaltzman, an Orthodox rabbi whose life of pastoral service is upended by violent antisemitic undertones—and who ends on an expedition into moral and kinetic warfare.

The film is directed by Salvador Litvak (with co-writing by his wife, Nina Davidovich Litvak.) It was made under the banner of the production company Pictures From The Fringe, which the Litvaks themselves run, producing films with Jewish-themed content. It is now available on Amazon Prime Video for rent.

The cast includes:

Mark Feuerstein as Rabbi Moshe Zaltzman.
Alona Tal as his wife Hindy Zaltzman.
Neal McDonough as Mayor Donovan Kirk.
Dermot Mulroney as Alan Rosner, a local benefactor.
Christopher Lloyd as Sol Fassbinder, a Holocaust-survivor figure.

The film opens with Rabbi Mo leading his congregation, a multi-generational, observant Jewish community in High Desert. The opening act features a gala at a rented synagogue tent, celebrating a major donation from Alan Rosner to build a new facility. This sets the scene: comfortable faith-based leadership, community cohesion, and a sense of quiet safety.

That safety is shattered when the gala is violently attacked: Alan Rosner is gunned down. The local police quickly arrest a young white-nationalist teen—Clay Gibbons—who has harassed the congregation and made gun-signs at the synagogue. But Rabbi Mo isn’t convinced: he senses there is more behind the attack than a straightforward hate crime. As the authorities settle on the suspect, Mo launches his own investigation, much to his family’s increasing vulnerability. Bodies begin to stack up, and Mo and Hindy must learn how to defend themselves—training in firearms under the aegis of a female bodyguard (Brenda) who teaches both Rabbi and wife the basics of gun-handling—and you just know where that leads.

Mo must wrestle both his role as spiritual leader and the reality that to protect his flock (and his own family) he may have to wield a gun. The late-act arc is a twist on the classic Western: not lone (rabbi) lawman up against bad guys, but his family and others, setting up a standoff and forced confrontation.

What distinguishes Guns & Moses from many Hollywood treatments of Jews is that the Jewish characters are portrayed with texture, authenticity, and dignity. Rabbi Mo is observant, rooted in community, not a side-character or token. He wears his black suit and hat; his faith is not the punchline but part of his identity—yet the film invites him into a trajectory rarely seen: rabbi -turned-gunslinger.

Hindy, his wife, is not sidelined: she too participates in the defensive measures. The film treats their family as a unit under threat, rather than making Mo a lone wolf. The inclusion of Sol Fassbinder (Lloyd) as a Holocaust-survivor character injecting generational memory into the plot gives the film extra moral weight. The film also uses the song Kol HaOlam Kulo as a plot point—this lends a distinct Jewish cultural resonance throughout.

In short: the Jewish angles feel on-target. Many Hollywood films struggle with Jewish authenticity; here the setting, rituals and even the moral vocabulary feel coherently grounded. Feuerstein and company do a decent job with American Jewish Hebrew pronunciation.

The plot is somewhat contrived: the number of coincidences, the “rabbi-becomes-gunfighter” arc, and the final scene between the rabbi and the murderer is a bit out there. This is not to say the film fails, but if you lean too hard into realism you’ll find places where suspension of disbelief is required.

Then again, as the body count goes up, so must the suspension of disbelief.

If it didn't have a Jewish theme, I would probably only give it 3 stars out of 5, but that added an extra dimension making it four stars.

This is almost certainly the first movie that includes in the credits the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Berditchever Rebbe (for a nigun sung towards the climax) and the Holy One Above.

Guns & Moses may not reinvent cinema, but it stakes a claim as one of the more distinctive entries in the faith-thriller genre. Its blending of Jewish communal life with Western motifs—faith, family, frontier justice—gives it something different to say. For viewers tired of one-dimensional portrayals of Jews in Hollywood, this film offers an Orthodox rabbi who is thoughtful, conflicted, and courageous - not a side character but the hero of his story. For that alone, the film merits attention.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

By Daled Amos

Maybe it was inevitable.

Maybe it was only a matter of time before Trump decided to push Israel in the direction he wanted. After all, he wouldn't be the first US president to pressure Israel. On the other hand, he may be the first president to be so blunt about it.

TIME Magazine did an interview with the US president on October 15 and published it on Thursday. One of the questions was whether he thought Israel should release terrorist leader Marwan Barghouti:

TIME: Well, Marwan Barghouti is seen by many as the one figure who could unite Palestinians behind a two-state solution. He tops most polls amongst Palestinians for whom they would vote for in a presidential election. But he’s in prison, and Israel has refused to let him out. He was arrested in 2002. Ron Lauder, a big support of yours, recently encouraged Israel to let him out. Do you think Israel should release him from prison?

Trump: I am literally being confronted with that question about 15 minutes before you called. That was the question. That was my question of the day. So I’ll be making a decision.

I'll be making a decision...?

Besides the fact that this is not his decision to make, there is an implication that the US president is willing to apply pressure on Netanyahu to release a convicted terrorist to further his own personal plans for peace...and for a potential Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump is already getting plenty of cover from Ronald Lauder for pressuring Israel. Lauder is the president of the World Jewish Congress, besides being a Trump ally. He was very clear on his support for Barghouti's release:

I think that the fact that he's thinking about it is a great step in the right direction. A two-state solution is only possible if you have a good leader and Marwan Barghouti will be the right leader for it. Now it doesn't have to happen in one or two years–it could be three, four or five years, whatever time it takes. But once you start having peace between Israel and the Palestinian people, you have the future of a peaceful Middle East.

Perhaps Trump views Barghouti the way Reuters does. The headline of the Reuters report on Trump's comment was Trump mulls whether Israel should free jailed Palestinian political figure. But Barghouti is not some jailed politician, and Lauder should know better than to publicly challenge Israel's security interests.

Barghouti is currently serving multiple life sentences for his 2004 conviction in connection with attacks in Israel that killed five people. He is a senior member of Fatah and former chief of its Tanzim militant faction, playing a key role in the Second Intifada.There are security issues at stake that are for Israel, and only for Israel, to decide.

In addition to Lauder, Barghouti's wife urged Trump to push for his release after hearing that he is ready to make a decision.

This follows the push in Israel for the annexation of the West Bank. In that same TIME interview, Trump said:

[The annexation] won't happen because I gave my word to the Arab countries. It will not happen. Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.

The US president believes he has a say in Israel's plans for annexation since it directly impacts both the peace process that the US is invested in and the agreements that he has made with various Arab leaders. But insisting on freeing a terrorist leader is an entirely different story. We all know that Trump is not a polished impromtu speaker. It is unilikely he would force Israel's hand on such a release. That may explain why there has not been an outpouring of indignation from Israel in response to Trump's comment.

But Barghouti is not a “political figure.” He’s a convicted murderer who orchestrated the killing of innocent Israelis. To even entertain the idea of his release is to erase the line between diplomacy and delusion.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Iran Update from Critical Threats analyzes what's been reported from Lebanon, and it is not good.

Hezbollah may have deterred the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) from disarming the group. A figure close to Saudi officials told Lebanese media on October 19 that Saudi Arabia has grown frustrated with the Lebanese government’s ”slowness” in implementing its Hezbollah disarmament plan and threatened to pull funding for the LAF, which suggests that Saudi Arabia has concerns about the government’s willingness to disarm Hezbollah on a reasonable timeline.

US Special Envoy Thomas Barrack stated on October 20 that the Lebanese government’s principle of monopolizing all weapons to the state remains more of an ”aspiration than [a] reality” due to the Lebanese government’s fear of civil unrest and Hezbollah’s political dominance.

Hezbollah officials, including Secretary General Naim Qassem, have continuously threatened to instigate armed conflict and anti-government protests since the Lebanese government agreed to disarm Hezbollah in August 2025. Hezbollah, for example, informed Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and LAF Commander Brigadier General Rodolphe Haykal in August 2025 that the Lebanese government’s implementation of its plan to disarm Hezbollah would cause confrontation. LAF and Lebanese officials have consistently raised concerns about conflict breaking out between the Lebanese state and Hezbollah during the disarmament process. Haykal previously told Lebanese Parliament Speaker and Hezbollah ally Nabih Berri that the LAF will not ”clash with a key component of the country,” likely referring to Hezbollah. LAF leadership and members of Lebanon’s security forces were also reportedly divided over their willingness to act against Hezbollah, according to unspecified sources speaking to Lebanese and Saudi media in August 2025.Hezbollah’s threats may have exacerbated Lebanese government officials' and security forces’ concerns about internal conflict, which may have deterred the Lebanese government from disarming Hezbollah.

Hezbollah was on the ropes. The people of Lebanon were angry at the party for dragging the country into a war with Israel to help Hamas. Their new leader does not have the respect and influence of Hassan Nasrallah. If the LAF had acted immediately and with authority, it could have disarmed Hezbollah and the Shiites could have done nothing about it because they claim they only act in the best interests of Lebanon.

But Hezbollah played an old game that still works: threats. They would not have started a civil war, but the mere threat was enough to force the Lebanese government to blink. And for every day it delays, it gets that much harder to implement the disarmament plan.

Even worse - the disarmament is not even happening in the South. There have been no reports of LAF raids on any active Hezbollah areas. Lebanon is implementing the other parts of the US proposal but ignoring the main one of becoming the monopoly of arms in Lebanon.

The irony is that Lebanon is complaining that Israel has not fully withdrawn and still attacks Hezbollah positions - but the entire reason Israel keeps attacking is because the Lebanese army isn't doing what it agreed to do. If Hezbollah was excised from south of the Litani River, the Trump administration would almost certainly pressure Israel to abandon its positions. (Not that I think they should, )

If Lebanon had done what it promised, Lebanon and Israel could have become allies. Instead, Lebanon's cowardice almost guarantees the next war.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

NYC hate crimes for Q3 remain overwhelmingly against Jews. And this is BEFORE Mamdani becomes mayor.

The New York Police Department Hate Crimes Dashboard is now updated through the end of September, and the pattern for the third quarter for Jews remains as bas as it was for the first half of the year.

There were 93 hate crimes in the city - and 51 of them, or 54%, were against Jews. In second place was Male Gay, with 12, followed by Black with 10.

There were 4 hate crimes against Muslims in this time period, meaning antisemitism is over 12 times more prevalent than "Islamophobia."

And remember when the media was aghast at increased anti-Asian hate crimes? That problem seems to be solved, with only 2 of them in the quarter, same as transgender.

And this is what New York City looks like before Zohran Mamdani takes over.

In May, current Mayor Adams established the Mayor's Office to Combat Antisemitism, which looks like it is already doing some positive things. But will Mamdani keep it going, or listen to its recommendations? My guess is that he will establish a similar office to fight the nearly invisible Islamophobia, take away resources from the antisemitism task force and ignore its recommendations.

If I ran it, my first recommendation would be "don't allow a socialist who supports Palestinian terrorism and has no problem with globalizing the intifada to become mayor."

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

10/23 Links Pt2: Investor: CNN should fire Christiane Amanpour for ‘antisemitic’ comments; Steven Van Zandt and Gene Simmons: “Never Seen Antisemitism Like This”; Requiem for the Pro-Israel Democrat

From Ian:

Hitler Is Back in Style

There was a time when antiwar meant moral clarity. Now it means moral confusion. Libertarians who once “denounced the empire” now parrot Iranian and Russian propaganda. At a 2023 antiwar rally in Washington, Russian flags were visible among attendees while speakers included Antiwar.com’s Scott Horton and Daniel McAdams. They fly foreign adversaries’ flags at peace rallies and amplify Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” as if it were a libertarian manifesto. When leftists on TikTok were seeing wisdom in Bin Laden’s hatred, libertarians were me-too’ing.

When Putin speaks of “traditional values” or denounces “American hegemony,” there’s a not-so-subtle chorus in American libertarianism nodding along—not because they believe in decentralization, but because they hate the same enemies: Israel and the United States.

These days, the Ron Paul Institute—what I once believed would become a haven for noninterventionist thought—now routinely publishes apologias that find a comfortable home on Russian State television. McAdams of the institution parrots Kremlin framing with such frequency that even mainstream conservatives have noticed.

This Israel derangement syndrome extends beyond America’s borders.

Many of the Israel derangement syndrome libertarians and paleo-populists, for instance, despise Javier Milei, the anarcho-capitalist president of Argentina, not entirely for his policies, but because he defends the West—and the Jewish tradition that helped shape it. Moreover, Argentine libertarians of which I am very fond and in correspondence with have memories of the Islamist Buenos Aires bombings in 1992 and 1994. They are not so naive to the dangers to their rights from Islamic terrorism as their American cousins, who romanticize the musings of Osama bin Laden and claim Hitler was right.

The strange new sympathy for tyrants, the contempt for Israel, the obsession with power hierarchies—all stem from a single contagion: the Howard Zinnification of the liberty movement. Zinn reduced history to a morality play of oppressors and oppressed. Today’s populist-libertarian pundits do the same: Every bomb is a war crime, every Western leader a colonialist, every Israeli soldier a Nazi. It’s not foreign policy—it’s theology.

And Tucker Carlson, once the Buckleyite gatekeeper, now amplifies it all. The man who once fled conspiracy theorists now lives off them. The man who once laughed at “truthers” now platforms them. He didn’t evolve; he adapted. Carlson realized where the audience had migrated—and followed it. The market rewarded outrage, not reason. And so Tucker cashed in his principles for ratings.

Irish president frontrunner accused Israel of ‘Jewish supremacy’ years before current Gaza war

The frontrunner to become Ireland’s next president previously accused Israel of “Jewish supremacy” and said she was reluctant to condemn Hamas.

Catherine Connelly, the favourite to win the largely ceremonial post in tomorrow's elections, told BBC Radio Ulster last month that she was “reluctant to unequivocally condemn” the attack on October 7, when 1,200 people were killed and over 250 taken hostage.

The independent left-wing lawmaker claimed that Sir Keir Starmer should not try to stop the terrorists playing a role in a future Palestinian state.

“I come from Ireland which has a history of colonisation. I would be very wary of telling a sovereign people how to run their country,” Connolly said.

She later said on RTÉ's Morning Ireland that she has "utterly condemned" Hamas "over and over".

Connolly went on to describe Hamas terrorists as “part of the civil society of Palestine”.

"[Hamas] were elected by the people the last time there was an election. Overwhelming support for them back in 2006 or 2007. They are part of the civil society of Palestine. We're reliant on them for figures in relation to the deaths."

She said both Israel and Hamas have committed war crimes and that Israel has behaved like a "terrorist state", and the October 7 attacks were "absolutely unacceptable".

Meanwhile, in October 2021, years before the recent Gaza war, Connelly – then serving as deputy chairperson of the lower house of Ireland’s parliament – wrote in a parliamentary question that Israel was trying to “accomplish Jewish supremacy.”

CNN should fire Christiane Amanpour for ‘antisemitic’ comments, says Warner Bros. Discovery investor

The widower of legendary corporate gadfly Evelyn Y. Davis is calling on Warner Bros. Discovery’s chief David Zaslav to fire CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour over her “antisemitic” claim that Israeli hostages were “treated better” than Gazans — saying her apology last week is “not enough.”

Taking a page from his late wife’s playbook, Patterson, a WBD investor, sent a sharply worded letter to Zaslav on Monday demanding Amanpour’s dismissal.

“As a stockholder in WBD, I urge you to fire Christiane Amanpour for her antisemitic statement that Israeli hostages were treated better than average Gazans,” the investor wrote in the letter obtained by The Post.

“This is an outrage to American and Israeli heroes who are fighting a war against Hamas and other terrorists. It is an outrage to Holocaust survivors and their families. Fire Amanpour to prove you disagree with her vile statements.”

Patterson, a 70-year-old former diplomat, said he was motivated to act after watching Amanpour’s comments, which aired live on Oct. 13 as Hamas released the last 20 surviving hostages under a US-brokered cease-fire.

Amanpour told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that the hostages “were probably being treated better than the average Gazan, because they are the pawns and the chips that Hamas had.”

Hours later, Amanpour walked back the statement on air, admitting her phrasing was “insensitive and wrong.”

“From speaking to many former hostages and their families, like everyone I’ve been horrified at what Hamas has subjected them to over two long years,” she said, recounting their accounts of starvation, beatings and years spent in underground tunnels.

But Patterson told The Post he was unmoved by Amanpour’s statement.

Steven Van Zandt and Gene Simmons Push for Jewish History Education to Combat Hate: “Never Seen Antisemitism Like This”

TeachRock executive director Bill Carbone added, “We’re making American history education more inclusive and engaging by centering it on real people’s stories. Students don’t just learn about immigration — they experience it through Irving Berlin’s journey. They don’t just study the Holocaust — they reckon with it through Anita Lasker-Wallfisch’s survival. That’s history that sticks. By teaching students to see Jewish Americans as the complex, creative, resilient individuals they are, we’re combating antisemitism at its root, before ignorance can become hate.”

In the moderated conversation, Van Zandt was quick to note that “people who take music class do better in math and science, studies show.” Van Zandt’s pitch on education is rehearsed but nuanced: “Testing is not teaching. We need to truly teach the important work of our history to these kids so that they have the right tools to ensure our future is the right one.”

The cross-curricular approach, Van Zandt explained, is predicated on the idea that “if kids like one class and one teacher, they’ll be more engaged.”

“We hope to be that class. We want to figure out a methodology to keep this generation engaged,” he said. “How do you get these kids attention? Curate the education. Give them a reason to be in that classroom.”

Simmons added, “Antisemitism is one domino that connects to the next domino. If we’re not careful, history repeats itself.”

Simmons immediately recalled his mother’s story in the Dachau concentration camp, noting that the past is anything but the past and that educational resources are vital toward breaking the cycle of antisemitic language and tropes.

Speaking of his own Italian immigrant history, Van Zandt added, “Those immigrants planned on assimilating, integrating into the country they were going. We weren’t allowed to speak Italian in the house. Integrate and assimilate and then bring your culture to the land you’ve arrived. We did this so you would keep your culture alive. I think Italian food was an example of something that worked out okay here!”

Van Zandt was quick to note that acknowledging and recognizing the value of different cultures is vital but that education is the necessary catalyst to any real appreciation, particularly for the next generation of students.

Van Zandt’s organization, TeachRock, has reached more than one million students through 80,000 educators in all 50 states, since its inception in 2002. The online educational resource, which was launched to help educators integrate popular music into the classroom, has been free and accessible to anyone online since 2013.

The organization’s next event is Sunday, Oct. 26 at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and will include performances from Van Zandt’s Disciples of Soul band, Jesse Malin, Darlene Love and others.

My speech from our stacked and packed show at @3ArenaDublin last night. @Disturbed #AllAreWelcome pic.twitter.com/nHru6TUGvH
— David Draiman 🟦🎗️🇺🇸🇮🇱✡️☮️ (@davidmdraiman) October 23, 2025

10/23 Links Pt1: Closing the Book on ‘Genocide,’ ‘Deliberate Starvation’ and other Modern Libels; Marwan Barghouti Is Not Your Guy; The Media’s War on Israel - with Matti Friedman

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Closing the Book on ‘Genocide,’ ‘Deliberate Starvation’ and other Modern Libels

One reason is that the war’s end makes it possible to start compiling definitive statistics. And those statistics make it crystal clear that UN-affiliated agencies and their partner NGOs have conducted large-scale fraud, the blast radius of which has incinerated the credibility of much of Western academic and “humanitarian” institutions.

Let’s start with food. Salo Aizenberg—who probably deserves some sort of medal for his painstaking work compiling the true statistical toll of the war—pointed out this week that the UN-backed IPC declared a Gaza famine in August, and that we can now check the numbers against the prediction and verify exactly what the IPC got wrong.

Between the famine declaration and the cease-fire, there should have been 10,143 famine deaths in Gaza. Using Hamas’s own numbers of such deaths—which are obviously not undercounted—the total famine deaths in that period was 192.

That means the IPC predicted about 10,000 famine deaths and was short by about 10,000. The IPC is now at Candace Owens’s level of credibility and statistical reliability.

There was no famine. That’s not an opinion, it’s an indisputable fact. Also indisputable is that there was no near-famine. It wasn’t a close call.

That, by the way, is good news. Although the anti-Israel activist world was hoping for mass starvation, those of us who aren’t monsters are very happy that there was no famine in Gaza. Pay attention to those who dispute this and those who show their disappointment.

Then there is the main event: the accusation of “genocide.” While this has been debunked again and again and again throughout the war—to the extent that anyone accusing Israel of genocide has disqualified themselves from legitimate debate over matters of war and peace—now that there is a cease-fire, we can work with steady numbers.

Aizenberg noted in September that using Hamas’s own statistics, and subtracting natural deaths and fatalities caused by munitions fired by Gazan combatants, one gets a total of about 33,000 civilian casualties. The widely accepted number of combatant casualties is at about 25,000.

Every one of those 33,000 civilian casualties is a tragedy and a testament to the effectiveness and ruthlessness of Hamas’s human-shield strategy. That number also means that there are fewer than 1.5 civilian deaths for each combatant war death, an almost unheard-of level of care for civilians by the Israeli army.

Gil Troy: The "Do It Yourself" Ally: Israel's Victory Is America's Too

While addressing the Knesset, U.S. President Donald Trump correctly called the Gaza breakthrough "an incredible triumph for Israel and the world....We have stood together through thick and thin....We have built industries together, we have made discoveries together, we have confronted evil together."

Other allies depend on America to fight for them; Israel fights independently, defending itself and bolstering the U.S., while saving the world along the way too.

Last January, outgoing President Joe Biden noted: "Did you ever think we would be where we are with Iran at this moment? Iran's air defenses are in shambles. Their main proxy, Hizbullah, is badly wounded....And if you want more evidence that we've seriously weakened Iran and Russia, just take a look at Syria." Since then, Tehran has been weakened exponentially more.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel's many battlefronts - on sea, in the air, on the ground, and online - have served as an extraordinary laboratory for game-changing improvements. U.S. generals have watched the IDF fight in cities and tunnels effectively, losing 470 soldiers in the Gaza ground offensive that many predicted would cost thousands of Israeli lives. In repelling Iran's ICBM attacks and over 37,500 rocket attacks, Israel - with U.S. help - taught the world how to defend a small, densely populated area against massive bombardments. These and many other military and medical breakthroughs will be saving American lives in hospitals and battlefields for years to come.

Since the 1898 Spanish-American War, Washington has repeatedly felt compelled to fight wars worldwide. By contrast, Israel has always been the U.S.'s only "Do it Yourself" ally. The Jewish state usually fights alone, using American technology and know-how, improving it, and, by winning, bolstering Washington's position militarily and diplomatically. In 1967 and 1973, Israel defeated Soviet-trained and armed Arab troops, enhancing the Free World's defense posture during the Cold War.

Despite all the pressuring, demonizing, and naysaying, Israel has won overwhelming victories in the war on terror. Thanks to this two-year war, the Islamic Republic's planned Ring of Fire engulfing Israel, while not extinguished, has been smothered. Israel showed it still knows how to fight hard and win a war. And, once again, Israel's decisive win has boosted America too.

U.S. Plan Splits Gaza in Two - One Zone Controlled by Israel, One by Hamas

The U.S. and Israel are considering a plan that would divide Gaza into separate zones controlled by Israel and Hamas, with reconstruction only taking place on the Israeli side until Hamas can be disarmed and removed from power.

On Tuesday in Israel, Vice President JD Vance said there are two regions in Gaza, one relatively safe and the other incredibly dangerous, and the goal is to expand the area that is safe. Presidential advisor Jared Kushner said no funds for reconstruction would go to areas that remain under Hamas control, and the focus would be on building up the safe side.

The U.S.-brokered ceasefire that took effect Oct. 10 drew a yellow line on the map that marks the Israeli military's area of control. It is essentially a thick cushion hugging Gaza's borders and surrounding the area of Palestinian control. The Israeli zone is supposed to shrink as various benchmarks are hit.

The administration had considered rebuilding areas that Hamas didn't control even before the ceasefire, in hopes it would improve conditions for Palestinians and serve as a symbol of a post-Hamas Gaza, officials said.

The plan to build up Israeli-controlled areas in Gaza could weaken Hamas politically while enabling Israel's military to conduct operations that further erode the group's ability to fight, said Ofer Guterman, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies. "It's doable and optimal," Guterman said of the plan.

Palestinian Victory Brought Closer By Yelling 'Go Back To Poland!' At Iranian-Born Israeli (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook and Substack pages.

New York, October 23 - The epic struggle to liberate Islamic land from the vile clutches of Zionist imperialist settler-colonialists drew nearer today when an activist shouted toward a Jew born in the Middle East, to parents of ancient Middle East pedigree, that he should return to Eastern Europe, observers reported.

Iranian-born Jew Daniel Rahmani, visiting relatives in Queens for several weeks, was overheard on the street in conversation with one of those relatives earlier today, by a frequent participant in various campus protests and pro-Palestine rallies throughout the city, talking about everyday life in Giv'at Massua, a southwestern neighborhood of Jerusalem. The activist, Schuyler Pitts, 30, reacted to the intolerable evidence of a Jew living in the ancestral Jewish homeland, by yelling, "Go back to Poland, you colonizer!" His outburst brought a Free Palestine closer than ever, according to analysts.

Rahmani's parents fled Iran when Daniel was a toddler, in the wake of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. His family had lived in Babylonia and in Persia, as Iran had been known, since the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE and the attendant exile of the Jews from the Kingdom of Judah in ancient Israel. The Rahmani clan members who managed to escape in time initially settled among other Persian Jews in the New York area, while Daniel's parents eventually moved with him and his three siblings to Israel, to join other relatives who had escaped the Ayatollahs. The shouting, while it confused Rahmani and his cousin, nevertheless heralded surely-imminent victory for Palestine over the European usurpers from Poland.

Pitts voiced satisfaction at his accomplishment. "Always gratifying to strike a blow for decolonization and indigenous sovereignty," he pronounced. "That Khazar doesn't belong anywhere but in Poland, or Russia, or wherever it is Jews really come from. They're not real Jews anyway."

The Khazars inhabited a kingdom in Eastern Europe during the early Middle Ages; legend tells that the kingdom, or perhaps only some high-ranking nobles and the king, converted to Judaism. A now-debunked theory charges that Ashkenazi Jews, who lived mainly in Poland, Belarus, Lithuania, and surrounding areas, descend from Khazar converts, and not, as genetic, linguistic, and cultural evidence demonstrates, from Jewish communities that took root in Southern and Western Europe following the Roman destruction of the Second Temple and the attendant exile of Jews from Judea in the first and second centuries CE, only later migrating east at the invitation of the Polish king.

He admitted that he had considered knocking off the Jew's head-covering - in this case a gray flat-cap - but thought better of it upon realizing he could not convincingly connect the gesture with anti-Zionist action. "If it were a yarmulke," he explained, using the Polish-Yiddish word for the Jewish kippah, a word that Rahmani has never known, "it would make sense. But this was just a plain old hat. Knocking it off wouldn't have brought the liberation of Palestine from the River to the Sea measurably closer, the way yelling 'Go back to Poland' does. I should go do it again."

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Every political movement faces moments that reveal what it truly values. The Graham Platner affair in Maine is one of those moments, not because of its particular sordidness, but because of what the response reveals about how political actors actually weigh competing values against each other.

The facts are straightforward:. A Senate candidate backed by Bernie Sanders has an SS Totenkopf tattoo on his chest. He claims he got it drunk in Croatia in 2007 without understanding its meaning, yet acquaintance says Platner explained the Nazi connection to him in 2012. His former political director resigned, calling the tattoo antisemitic and warning Democrats against being "painfully stupid." Yet Sanders deflects, asking whether we care more about a tattoo or healthcare policy. The online left has made supporting Platner a litmus test.

I have been arguing in my ethics articles that values are real - a part of our very beings. Every human issue can be looked at through the lens of what our values are and how we prioritize them. In this case, we are seeing how the Democratic Party is prioritizing its values.

Power is a value in politics, though not a moral value. It is an instrumental value. You cannot enact healthcare reform from the minority. You cannot confirm judges without winning elections. Power enables the pursuit of substantive goals.

But instrumental values must be weighed against moral values. Every political actor does this constantly. It cannot be avoided - but it must be transparent.

The Democratic response to Platner fails badly. Rather than acknowledging the tradeoff, party leaders pretend there is no tradeoff to make. Sanders reframes the question as though caring about antisemitism and caring about healthcare are mutually exclusive. DNC chairman Ken Martin calls the social media posts "not right" but "not disqualifying," as though those categories exhaust the possibilities. Representative Ro Khanna invokes the principle of not engaging in personal destruction "especially in our own party," with that final clause doing all the work.

What would honesty look like here? It would sound something like this: "We believe Senator Collins must be defeated in 2026. We believe the policies we would enact with that Senate seat matter enormously. We have concluded that despite serious concerns about this candidate's judgment and character, the instrumental value of winning this seat outweighs those concerns." One might disagree with that calculation, but at least it would be a real argument about real tradeoffs.

Why don't the Democrats do that? Because they would essentially be saying that they prioritize power over principles, which is not something most voters want to hear.

Supporting Platner means accepting that someone who wore Nazi imagery for eighteen years, who may well have understood its meaning much earlier than he claims, and who demonstrated such catastrophically poor judgment even in the most charitable interpretation, deserves a Senate seat. It means deciding that defeating Susan Collins is worth the message this sends about what behavior disqualifies someone from representing the party. It means concluding that the instrumental value of power outweighs these costs.

Again, politicians make these calculations all the time. Both parties are more than willing to overlook their side's moral lapses. When Marjorie Taylor Greene was still considered mainstream Republican, her own antisemitism was largely papered over by her party. Smaller lapses in judgement are weighed against larger political goals, and in some cases the importance of political power do indeed outweigh those lapses. So does the existence and quality of any apologies. But if the party is not willing to say that out loud, then they have another ethical problem.

In this case, the willful blindness is extreme. Platner's excuse is a lie, and everyone knows it. If a Republican had done something similar the Democrats would be filling up the media with outrage.

The deeper problem is that refusing to acknowledge value calculations of power vs. morality makes it impossible to establish any meaningful boundaries. If there is no honest weighing of power against principle, then there is no way to say where the line is. What level of past misconduct would be disqualifying? What evidence of antisemitism would matter? The answer cannot be "none," but without transparent weighing of values, that becomes the de facto position.

This matters beyond Platner's candidacy. Every political movement claims to stand for certain principles. But principles come into tension with each other and with the practical requirements of wielding power. The test of a serious political movement is not whether it faces such tensions, but whether it faces them honestly.

Values must be weighed. Power is among those values, instrumental but real. The question is whether we are willing to do that weighing in the open, where the costs and benefits can be seen and debated, or whether we will pretend the weighing is unnecessary and hope nobody notices what we have chosen.

But when you look at the world through the prism of values, it is very clear which values the Democratic Party have chosen in this case.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)