Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, November 04, 2025

11/04 Links Pt2: The horseshoe politics of America is coming for the Jews; Melanie Phillips: New York's fateful choice; BBC’s bias ‘pushed Hamas lies around the world’

From Ian:

The "Jews" Are a Proxy for a Bigger Political Fight over the American Future

Since Oct. 7, 2023, American Jews have found themselves squarely in the crosshairs of the political left and the political right, between progressive internationalists and extreme isolationists.

On the left, antisemitism takes the form of anti-Zionism. Universities that style themselves champions of diversity now host chants for Israel's eradication. Encampments celebrating Hamas set the moral tone. When mobs target Jewish students, administrators avert their eyes and invoke "free speech." Yet the same administrators spring into action when non-Jewish groups suffer even a "microaggression."

On the right, Tucker Carlson has updated the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for the 21st century. He elevated the podcaster Darryl Cooper to "the best and most honest popular historian in the U.S." Cooper trivializes the Holocaust as a bureaucratic mishap and depicts Winston Churchill as the agent of rich Jews. World War II becomes the first in a series of misguided American interventions abroad - engineered, ultimately, by Jews.

Israel has always carried a special symbolic weight in America. From the beginning, Americans cast their self-understanding in Israel's image. The Puritans saw themselves as Israelites crossing the Red Sea. When Americans talk about Israel, they are often talking about themselves. Evangelicals still see in Israel a covenantal twin.

Progressives give more attention to Israel than to any other foreign nation, casting Israelis as "white colonizers" and Palestinians as "oppressed people." Yet Israel is not a "white" society. Its Jewish population includes, among others, Yemenite and Ethiopian communities - unmistakably people of color. Their very presence highlights the absurdity of the racial binary on which the progressive coalition depends.

Israel is the archetypal nation-state: God, people, land. Covenant and borders. Israel's miraculous rebirth, and its power and flourishing - despite the destruction of European Jewry, and its multiple wars for survival - stir American nationalism. The very existence of the Jewish state and the excitement it provokes in America shatters the dream of a post-national, multicultural world run by a global managerial elite.

Carlson and progressives are firing at the same target: the bond between America and Israel. To sever it is to rewrite the American story. Arguments about Israel are, at bottom, arguments about America. To be for or against Israel is to choose among competing visions of the American future. When Trump embraces Netanyahu while waving off Carlson, he is not just setting Middle East policy - he is declaring who America is.

Melanie Phillips: New York's fateful choice

I left New York last night as the city braced itself for a fateful decision. Today it votes for a new mayor, and the front runner is Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani is an individual who believes Israel shouldn’t exist as a Jewish state and who doesn’t see anything wrong with chanting to “globalise the intifada”.

He has claimed that the Israelis are behind acts of violence committed by the New York Police Department — a riff on the ancient antisemitic trope that the Jews are responsible for problems that have nothing to do with them.

His pledge to shut down the NYPD’s strategic response group, which broke up the violent anti-Israel protests at Columbia university, suggests that he won’t protect New York’s Jews against the tsunami of antisemitism to which they are being subjected.

Less than three weeks after the Hamas-led atrocities in Israel on October 7 2023, he was rabble-rousing on New York streets inciting the mob against Israel’s “genocide”.

Stephen Daisley: The horseshoe politics of America is coming for the Jews

Alighting on the Jews as the cause of the world’s iniquities is nothing new, but it is significant that both American leftists and rightists draw on antisemitic and anti-Zionist frames for their scorched-earth approach to contemporary politics. Rejecting the gradual reform of liberalism or conservatism, the progressives and the nationalists are as one in their conviction that the reigning order must be toppled. The systemic flaws or injustices that led them to this conclusion no longer matter as much as the zealous pursuit of political destruction.

This year-zero temperament is bound to put its ideologues, whether leftist or reactionary, on a collision course with Jews. Jewish observance and Jewish culture are bound up with ideas of creation and repair, and in the Torah as in Jewish history, destruction is almost always a source of great sadness and loss.

The Tanakh is a story of building, of establishing a people, forging kingdoms, erecting a temple, and instituting laws and customs. The defeat of the kingdoms and destruction of the temple are not cause for abandoning the commandments but the consequence of not hewing to them.

Burning everything to the ground is a punishment, not a plan of action. Destruction is reserved to God, which is why the Aleinu prays for the Lord to obliterate idols and remove false Gods, while it reserves to mankind the duty of tikkun olam — perfecting the world. But the prayer doesn’t stop there. It adds ‘be-malchut Shaddai’, rendering the full phrase as ‘perfecting the world under the sovereignty [or kingdom] of the Almighty’.

That’s the rub. Jewish text and tradition teach an obligation to repair this earthly realm so that it conforms to the designs of the Almighty, not the passing preferences of man. Obligation is exactly what the revolutionaries of left and right are furiously trying to shake off. Obligation constrains and they want to be free to remake the world in their own image and according to their ideological impulses.

There is an angry messianism spreading across American politics, and perhaps our own soon, too. On left and right, among those of all faiths and the fiercely faithless, a zeal to cleanse, purge, smash and bring down — to destroy to save — is taking hold. The world is too defiled to be conserved or reformed. The only salvation lies in smouldering ruins. The tables of the temple must be overturned, and many a self-appointed saviour is only too keen to volunteer.

For those who yearn to destroy, the people of the book and of the laws are a constant reminder of men’s obligations to creation and its perfection. However strong the will to power, there are limits temporal and divine. Those who demolish in spite will be left with only spite for building blocks.

Seth Mandel: Why the Two Parties Have Diverged on Fighting Anti-Semitism

The reason this reaction is important is because the fight against anti-Semitism is a long one. (It’s not called “the world’s oldest hatred” for nothing.) The Labour Party learned the hard way that it could rid itself of Jeremy Corbyn but that would not cure its Corbynism—and it now has no serious internal mechanism to do so.

The Democrats risk falling into a similar trap. The RJC is part of the Republican Party’s immune system. But the Democratic Party was for so long able to take Jewish support for granted that its own partisan Jewish infrastructure atrophied. It had completely let down its guard. Republicans, meanwhile, are benefiting from the fact that they had to build something—arguably beginning in the 1980s—that would be a specifically Jewish part of the party’s organizational world and could withstand resistance from existing groups. Once it had a foothold, it would have the energy of a start-up not a legacy institution.

Start-ups, of course, have their own weaknesses. But at the moment, that start-up energy enables the wider conservative world to multitask. And it’s why those who claim that fighting anti-Semitism is a “distraction” are, for the moment, losing that argument.

11/04 Links Pt1: Israel identifies remains of Israeli-American Itay Chen; The Strategic Fruits of Israel's Military Victory; How the ICJ works as Hamas’s partner in crime

From Ian:

The Strategic Fruits of Israel's Military Victory

The fact that for the first time the Arab Middle East and Turkey have come together to force Israel's enemy to lay down its arms is a sign of a major sea change. It may not be a sign that everyone loves Israel, but it is a sign of respect that Israel has earned through its two-year war with Hamas. Rather than turning the Jewish state into a global pariah, the war has reaffirmed its international standing. Israel had finished its greatest comeback from pain, adversity, and existential danger since the Yom Kippur War.

Israel not only recovered its strength and spirit, but brought the war directly to its enemies with a finality that had been lacking in previous conflicts. In less than two years, Israel managed to break the backs of both Hamas and Hizbullah, and quieted the West Bank. It broke the grip these terrorist regimes had held over both Lebanon and Syria, ending the encirclement by hostile neighbors Israel had faced since 1948. Most importantly, Israel shattered the power of the terrorist groups' main supporter, Iran.

Once again, Israel proved that the IDF is a fighting force without equal. The men and women of the IDF displayed unquestionable skill and professionalism in battle, as well as humanity in dealing with a fanatical enemy. All this, while defying the overwhelming weight of contrary world opinion, even from the U.S. and the Biden administration. The story of how Israel transformed the Middle East after Oct. 7 also contains a valuable lesson for the rest of the West, on how to confront its critics and enemies.

There Will Be No Phase B of Ceasefire Plan in Gaza

The fighting in Gaza has subsided, but the war has not ended. The implementation of Phase B of the ceasefire agreement depends on three miracles: the disarmament of Hamas, the establishment of a non-Hamas Palestinian government to administer Gaza, and the deployment of an international force to maintain order.

But who exactly is supposed to disarm Hamas? The Lebanese precedent teaches us that contrary to the hopes and illusions underpinning the ceasefire agreement signed in Nov. 2024, Hizbullah has shown no willingness to even consider disarmament. Lebanon's government and army are neither willing nor able to compel it to do so. In Gaza, Hamas has declared that it will not disarm. After all, Hamas did not fight for two years only to simply surrender and vanish.

It is now evident that Phase B of the agreement will not materialize, that Hamas will refuse to disarm, and that no international force will enter Gaza to confront it.

The Fall of Hamas in Gaza Begins

On Sep. 15, 2025, ordinary Gazans refused to obey Hamas. Instead, they listened to the IDF's evacuation instructions. Around 800,000 residents of northern Gaza gathered their belongings and walked south as instructed. Hamas tried to stop them with threats and violence, but failed.

Since that day, Hamas has ceased to function as a unified military or governing force. What remains is a collection of scattered, semi-independent cells clinging to the remnants of a once-organized army. The IDF has systematically eliminated most of Hamas's senior and mid-level commanders, leaving the group without strategic leadership or coordination. The mass public executions of alleged collaborators in October 2025 was a show of desperation disguised as strength.

As Hamas's power structure erodes, a political shift is emerging. Ten major clans across Gaza are cautiously but increasingly challenging Hamas's authority. None of these clans possess the military strength to overthrow Hamas on their own. Yet their existence as armed, organized communities with their own interests and leadership represents a serious crack in the system of fear and blind obedience that Hamas built over the years.

The ceasefire violations are isolated acts by local commanders trying to prove that they still have power and relevance. There is no longer a unified military council or strategic command. What remains is inertia, a chaotic pattern of violence driven by habit rather than strategy.

Hamas is at its weakest point since its creation. Its leadership has been eliminated or forced into hiding. Its military power is exhausted, its finances depleted, and its civilian support fading fast. Now is the time to dismantle what remains of its terror network, to remove Turkey and Qatar from the equation, and to secure American backing to prevent Hamas from ever rebuilding. Waiting for the usual cycle of diplomatic negotiations would mean wasting this opportunity and returning to a state of perpetual threat.

Taking Hostages Turned Out to Be Hamas's Undoing

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas dragged 251 hostages into Gaza. The terrorists apparently believed that the taking of hostages and accompanying psychological warfare would force Israel to capitulate, leaving Hamas victorious. Yet the hostage-taking transformed the moral landscape in ways Hamas failed to anticipate.

While hostages remained in Gaza, it was no longer reasonable for international leaders to demand that Israel stop military operations. How could the world ask a nation to abandon its citizens to captivity while letting Hamas hostage-takers and torturers continue to hold them?

True, a politicized battery of UN organizations engineered a massive disinformation campaign, demonizing Israel as it waged a just war by just means. And weak leaders in the UK, France, Australia and Canada succumbed to local and international propaganda, demanding that Israel stop defending itself and rewarding Palestinian terrorism by recognizing a Palestinian state. That appeasement prevented an earlier hostage release deal and prolonged the war.

The hostage-taking prevented the conflict from dissolving into the traditional false narratives about "occupation," "resistance" and "apartheid." Many saw the truth - innocent people being held hostage by a genocidal terrorist organization committed to murdering Jews. The hostage-taking provided a broadly recognized imperative that eventually overcame the propaganda.

The hostage-taking ironically gave Israel the time and space it needed to degrade the terrorist organization drastically. The job isn't finished, but Israel stands stronger than ever.

From The Free Press:

We just completed a study that draws on a database of millions of college syllabi to explore how professors teach three of the nation’s most contentious topics—racial bias in the criminal justice system, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the ethics of abortion. Since all these issues sharply divide scholars, we wanted to know whether students were expected to read a wide or narrow range of perspectives on them. We wondered how well professors are introducing students to the moral and political controversies that divide intellectuals and roil our democracy.

Not well, as it turns out. Across each issue we found that the academic norm is to shield students from some of our most important disagreements.

....Staunchly anti-Zionist texts—those that question the moral legitimacy of the Israeli state—are commonly assigned. Rashid Khalidi, the just-retired Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia, is the most popular author on this topic in the database. A Palestinian American and adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization delegation in the 1990s, Khalidi places the blame on Israel for failing to resolve the conflict and sees the country’s existence as a consequence of settler-colonialism.

The problem is not the teaching of Khalidi itself, as some on the American right might insist. To the contrary, it is important for students to encounter voices like Khalidi’s. The problem is who he is usually taught with. Generally, Khalidi is taught with other critics of Israel, such as Charles D. Smith, Ilan Pappé, and James Gelvin.

Not only is Khalidi’s work rarely assigned alongside prominent critics, those critics seem to hardly get taught at all. They include Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn by Daniel Gordis, a professor at Shalem College in Israel. Despite winning the National Jewish Book Award, Gordis’s book appears only 22 times in the syllabus database. Another example is the work of Efraim Karsh, a prominent historian. His widely cited classic, Fabricating Israeli History, appears just 24 times.

For most students, though, any exposure to the conflict begins and ends with Edward Said’s Orientalism, first published in 1978. Said is the intellectual godfather of so many of today’s scholars of the Middle East, thanks in no small part to this classic book. In Orientalism, Said claimed to be the first scholar to “culturally and politically” identify “wholeheartedly with the Arabs,” and he faulted the West for not recognizing the “Zionist invasion and colonization of Palestine.”

Orientalism is among the most popular books assigned in the United States, showing up in nearly 4,000 courses in the syllabus database. But although it was a major source of controversy, both then and now, it is rarely assigned with any of the critics Said sparred with, like Bernard Lewis, Ian Buruma, or Samuel Huntington. Instead, it’s most often taught with books by fellow luminaries of the postmodern left, such as Frantz Fanon, Judith Butler, and Foucault.

That isn't education. That is indoctrination.

The entire study is here. It finds that when pro-Israel texts are assigned, they are assigned along with many more books critical of Israel; but when texts like Rashid Khalidi's polemics are assigned, it is together with other anti-Israel texts. The truth is the exact opposite of Edward Said's contention that all universities were teaching nothing but anti-Arab texts - and Said is still the king of Middle Eastern studies, with his Orientalism book assigned more than any other.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Hezbollah still manages to get digital payments through sham "charities"

L'Orient Today describes an FT investigation showing how Hezbollah gets around international sanctions to get money - by tying their sham "charities" to non-sanctioned individuals:

Charities linked to Hezbollah, which have been sanctioned by the United States, have regularly directed donors to send funds via Lebanese digital payments providers that have partnerships with U.S. payment card companies, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Sunday.

Several charities in the group’s network of social programs have asked donors to send money to digital wallets held by private individuals through financial company Whish Money, or to donate through its competitor OMT, the British newspaper added.

The FT’s findings highlight how Hezbollah "appears to be exploiting weaknesses in the fight against terrorism financing and money laundering to raise funds", despite coming under intense global pressure since it suffered significant losses during last year's war with Israel.

It is a game of whack-a-mole. Even if sympathetic individuals are reluctant to help Hezbollah (or Hamas or any other terror group) by using their own phone numbers or digital wallets, these are terror groups - they can threaten ordinary people under their control to do the same thing. Which means there are unlimited ways for them to accept money.

I thought the more effective way would be to go after the charities themselves, to deplatform them. But the US OFAC already does that too. They cannot get foreign-hosted sites to be taken down but they can go after their social media. For example, the Shaheed.com.lb Lebanese Hezbollah site is still up, but every single social media link on that page doesn't work - they were all taken down.

So the US and to some extent European anti-terror agencies have made it more difficult for individuals to donate to terror groups. FT apparently didn't find the wallets or phone numbers online; they simply called the "charities" and asked how to donate. The terror fronts provided them with the donation numbers of private individuals.

What about the phone numbers themselves? Can spy agencies watch who is calling them?

Apparently, metadata showing that non-US residents are calling the numbers of the charities can also trigger watching those people for terror ties. For US residents, it is more difficult - a warrant would be needed because of privacy concerns. And there is a loophole - if a foreign person uses a US-based phone number, with VOIP or a burner phone, they would be assumed to be a US resident and it would be more difficult for US agencies to track them legally.

So it isn't that the US isn't trying to shut down these terror financing methods. It is that technology is always a little but ahead of what they can legally do.

---

One amusing thing I found while researching: a Lebanese Hezbollah front charity called the Wounded Foundation is still on Facebook for some reason. It put a notice up warning its donors that scammers are asking for money pretending to be the Wounded Foundation and not using the money for good jihadist purposes of helping Hezbollah members wounded by Israel.

Speaking of, one of the Hezbollah members blinded by the pager attack was blown up by an Israeli missile yesterday as he was being driven. Those are the sort of people supported by the "Wounded Foundation."

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Moral Politician: A Jewish Ethical Reflection on Power, Integrity, and Public Trust

For Election Day, I asked my AskHillel ethical chatbot how an moral politician should act - balancing his or her legitimate competing interests with consistency and morality.

11/03 Links Pt2: Ben Shapiro: Tucker Carlson Sabotages America; The Right’s Immune System Has Kicked In; Yad Vashem has compiled 5 million names of Jews murdered in Holocaust

From Ian:

The Right’s Immune System Has Kicked In by Abe Greenwald

Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here. The backlash was fast and furious. Roberts’s initial statement, in which he labeled Carlson’s critics a “venomous coalition” that is “sowing division,” dropped on Thursday afternoon. By Friday, he was out with a mealymouthed cleanup clip in which he denounced Fuentes. On the same day, he was interviewed by Dana Loesch, whose straightforward questions about right and wrong had him all but malfunctioning in response. On Friday evening, Roberts announced that his chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, would be moving to another position. Today, news broke that Neuhaus is gone from Heritage altogether. Not bad for a few days’ work. Let’s see where this goes next.

It goes without saying that Jewish Zionists will do all they can to excise the rot of Jew-hatred from the right. But it’s the majority of the non-Jewish right that has me so uncharacteristically hopeful about that effort. Carlson told Fuentes that Christian Zionists suffer from a “brain virus” and that he dislikes them “more than anybody.” Well, this country’s Christian Zionists weren’t about to take that slander of their faith lying down. And they’re fighting back with the most glorious array of weapons: their shining decency, their overpowering goodwill toward the Jews, and their love for both Israel and the United States.

This weekend, I’ve pored over dozens of social media posts, articles, and speeches from non-Jewish supporters of Israel. In opposing the right’s institutional acceptance of Jew-hatred, they unfailingly articulate the multiple threats posed by Kevin Roberts’s misguided stratagem. They know that right-wing anti-Semitism is a threat not only to the Jewish people and Israel, but to Christians of faith, to a political right worth saving, and to the future of this country. And without a United States guided by its Founding principle of liberty for all, the world would return to a moral dark age.

And in this moment, in an uncertain political climate, their defense of the good is not without risk. Unlike liberals, who’ve spent years ceding ground to their own Jew-hating mob, pro-Israel conservatives are not only full of goodness but courage, as well.

COMMENTARY receives more “thank you” emails from Christian readers and podcast listeners than you’d ever imagine. Too much for us to respond to adequately. And this won’t be quite adequate either, but there is no better time for me to express my thanks to them. So, to the virtual armies out there who take up the cause of the Jews, Israel, and the United States, thank you! It means the world. It literally means the world.

Seth Mandel: Let’s Put This ‘Legitimate Criticism of Israel’ Claim Under Scrutiny

All right. So we have part of our desire for specifics accommodated here. We do not hear who, specifically, accused Roberts and Heritage of anti-Semitism for asking Israel to “please get to the bottom of” what happened when a shell hit a church in Gaza. Roberts says he asked the question publicly and privately, so we don’t know exactly how he phrased it each time. It’s possible he said “Can we please get to the bottom of this?”

It’s doubtful such phrasing invited much of a backlash, obviously. But even if we suspend disbelief and give him the full benefit of the doubt, the reaction he claims he received from an unnamed “handful of people in Washington, DC” was surely disproportionate to his response, which was to call them a “venomous coalition” comprising “the globalist class” and “their mouthpieces in Washington.”

How do I know this? Because when the church in Gaza was struck, President Trump also registered his disapproval—and he did so in more pointed terms than “can we please get to the bottom of this?”

On July 17, a reporter asked Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt what Trump’s reaction was. She responded: “It was not a positive reaction. He called Prime Minister Netanyahu this morning to address the strikes on that church in Gaza, and I understand the prime minister agreed to put out a statement. It was a mistake by the Israelis to hit that Catholic Church. That’s what the prime minister relayed to the president — and you should look at the prime minister’s statement that will be coming out.”

Indeed, Netanyahu expressed regret for the mistake publicly and even in a phone call to the pope.

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce was asked about it the same day at the department’s press briefing. Bruce said that “President Trump also spoke to the prime minister, and I think it’s an understatement to say that he was not happy.” Bruce said the administration has “asked that Israel investigate the strike.” She added: “Obviously, everyone is appalled.”

Earlier in July, false accusations flew that Israelis had set fire to an ancient church not far from Jerusalem. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called it “an act of sacrilege” and “an act of terror” for which Israel must ensure there are “harsh consequences.”

Perhaps I missed it, but I don’t remember Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio or Mike Huckabee getting “canceled” by mysterious pro-Israel forces in Washington. All three men are regarded by the Jewish community here and in Israel as monumental friends of the Jewish nation.

One more point to make. I reject the idea that being falsely accused of something should make that person choose to become what they’ve been falsely accused of. I fully understand that tempers flare in the heat of the moment, but that is different from embracing ideas one recoiled from the day before. Put simply, I don’t believe someone turns into Pat Buchanan overnight.

If you think Tucker Carlson is being criticized for embracing a guy who praises Hitler because there’s a foreign-aligned cabal of manipulative Jews in Washington, you have stumbled upon the problem—and it isn’t other people.

11/03 Links Pt1: Remains of Omer Neutra, Oz Daniel and Asaf Hamami returned to Israel; How the UN Tossed Out Israeli Intel To Downplay UNRWA’s Ties to Hamas; Zohran Mamdani, Third-Worldism, and the Algerian Revolution

From Ian:

How the UN Tossed Out Israeli Intel To Downplay UNRWA’s Ties to Hamas

The United Nations initiated its investigation in January 2024, after the Israeli government published bombshell evidence detailing the involvement of at least 12 UNRWA staffers in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack and after Western governments began pulling financial support from the U.N. body. UNRWA fired those 12 and another 9 after further probes, but 10 others Israel flagged did not meet the international organization’s standards.

"In one case," the United Nations noted in an August 2024 public summary, "no evidence was obtained by OIOS to support the allegations of the staff member’s involvement [in Oct. 7]. That staff member has rejoined the Agency. In nine other cases, the evidence obtained by OIOS was insufficient to support the staff members’ involvement and the OIOS investigation of them is now closed."

Though U.N. investigators acknowledged the evidence often "provide[d] a factual basis to indicate that the subject UNRWA staff member may have engaged in misconduct," they stated the evidence was "not suitable for the usual human resources review and decision on disciplinary process or other measures."

Sources briefed on the confidential investigation believe these results came from the United Nations' abnormal methodology and self-imposed limitations on its investigation. By choosing to consider only what it describes as "clear and convincing evidence" of misconduct, the international organization set an "impossibly high legal standard for a simple administrative action to be taken, let alone criminal prosecution," a former senior U.S. legal official familiar with U.N. operations told the Free Beacon. "It’s exceptionally frustrating that the U.N.’s standards constrain it from firing an employee where the evidence shows that, more likely than not, he was involved in terrorist activities."

The U.S. Agency for International Development Office of Inspector General (USAID OIG)—a statutory law enforcement agency that continues to operate independently of USAID—has launched its own investigation into UNRWA’s ties to Hamas, sources confirmed to the Free Beacon. This investigation will permit State Department officials to place Hamas-linked UNRWA staff on a publicly available exclusion list, preventing them from recirculating to other U.S.-funded aid organizations, including those seeking to operate in Gaza.

"The USAID IG’s independent investigation is welcomed and warranted," a senior U.S. official responsible for humanitarian assistance in Gaza told the Free Beacon. "The U.N. clearly is unable to investigate itself properly, and the IG’s investigation will protect American taxpayer dollars from funding the salaries of Hamas terrorists shape-shifting as aid workers going forward."

A Western diplomat briefed on the matter told the Free Beacon that shortcomings in the U.N. investigation mean Hamas-tied UNRWA staffers still with the agency could migrate to other U.N. agencies.

"Other U.N. officials have expressed privately that there is no guarantee that UNRWA staff implicated in either the October 7 attacks or members of Hamas will be flagged for hiring officials at subsequent U.N. agencies," the diplomat said. "Nobody wants to become the next UNRWA and onboard individuals linked to Hamas as aid workers, but there are not the systems to protect against such risks."

U.S. government officials are aware of the risk. The USAID inspector general alerted the Biden administration and Congress in June 2024 that U.N. agencies seeking taxpayer assistance are exempt from U.S. vetting procedures.

"It is baffling that the U.N. received a free pass in terms of vetting," a diplomatic official briefed on the USAID OIG's ongoing investigative work told the Free Beacon. "In order to receive one dime of taxpayer-funded aid, any organization, U.N. or otherwise, should be required to undergo extensive vetting of all staff operating in the region."

Khaled Abu Toameh: How Hamas Is Exploiting the Trump Plan to Maintain Control of Gaza

For Hamas, US President Donald J. Trump's peace plan, announced in early October, is evidently nothing but a temporary ceasefire, or hudna, that should be exploited to ensure that the terror group, with the help of Qatar and Turkey, expands its political and military control over the Gaza Strip.

The terror group, however, has not been facing any difficulty in hunting down Palestinians suspected of "collaboration" with Israel or those who dared to criticize Hamas during the war. Hamas, in addition, is not in a hurry because it has a serious problem with phase two of the Trump plan, which requires the terror group to lay down and decommission its weapons.

What we are witnessing is a calculated delay that aims to buy time and exhaust the US administration until Trump abandons the numerous ultimatums he has issued to the terror group. The foot-dragging aims to allow Hamas to reassert control over the Gaza Strip. According to some reports, Hamas has recruited up to 7,000 new fighters....

Hamas's actions and media interviews given by its officials since the beginning of the ceasefire show that the terror group has no intention of disarming or relinquishing security control over the Gaza Strip.

Further evidence of Hamas's total disregard for the Trump plan and ongoing effort to reassert control over the Gaza Strip was provided on November 1 by the US Central Command (CENTCOM): " On Oct. 31, the U.S.-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) observed suspected Hamas operatives looting an aid truck traveling as part of a humanitarian convoy delivering needed assistance from international partners to Gazans in northern Khan Younis. The coordination center was alerted through video surveillance from a U.S. MQ-9 aerial drone flying overhead to monitor implementation of the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. Operatives attacked the driver and stole the aid and truck... The driver's current status is unknown."

"There is no lasting stability or peace until Hamas is removed from Gaza, a step that will require the use of force against this fascist militia." — Ahmed Alkhatib, former Gaza native and respected political analyst, X.com, November 1, 2025.

Even if we reach phase two of the Trump plan, Hamas will undoubtedly try to hoodwink everyone, including the Trump administration. Hamas, for instance, might hand over some of its assault rifles to a third party, but keep most of its tunnels and arsenal of weapons, including rockets and explosive devices. It is also possible that Hamas might try to incorporate its members into a new security force that would be deployed in the Gaza Strip, under the pretext that they are not affiliated with the terror group.

It is time for the Trump administration and the international community to realize that what we are currently witnessing is an attempt to rebrand and reproduce Hamas to ensure its continued control of the Gaza Strip. Hamas should not only be removed from power, but from the entire political, economic, social and military arena.

Australian military companies face new Israel ban as Department of Defence quietly tightens trade restrictions

The Nightly has asked the Department of Defence for details of any new restrictions coming into effect this week, but a spokesperson responded saying: “Defence cannot comment on individual permits (and conditions) due to national security and commercial in confidence reasons”.

Last month Defence told Parliament that 22 permits with Israeli end users have been issued since October 2023, five of which have “expired”, while the remaining 17 are “solely for the purpose of Australian Defence Force and Commonwealth capabilities”.

Prior to the October 7 Hamas attacks, 66 permits were issued by Defence and according to the department, a review ordered by the government of all export items has concluded, with 37 of them requiring no further action.

“Australian law stipulates that the defence minister or their delegate must grant an export permit to anything that we would regard to be a defence item,” Defence Deputy Secretary Hugh Jeffery told a Senate estimates hearing on October 9.

“We distinguish between those items that are lethal, non-lethal or dual use. These items are registered on what we called the Defence and Strategic Goods List,” he explained.

During this year’s election Prime Minister Anthony Albanese again insisted “we do not sell arms to Israel” following revelations the country’s military had completed trials of an advanced remote weapons system made by a Canberra-based defence supplier.

In 2024 Israeli company Elbit Systems was awarded a $917 million contract to provide “advanced protection, fighting capabilities and sensors” for the Army’s new Infantry Fighting Vehicles being built in Victoria by Korean-owned company Hanwha.

The @NYTimes: A bad newspaper in a good country

This is an op-ed in today's New York Times by Masha Gessen titled "How to Be a Good Citizen

of a Bad Country."

When your country pursues abhorrent policies, when the face it turns to the world is the face of a monster, what does that say about you? In my experience, it is strikingly easy to shrug off one’s responsibility for the country where one pays taxes, contributes to the public conversation and, at least nominally, has the right to vote, if that country is the United States. It seems one can just say “Not in my name” and continue to enjoy the wealth and the freedom of movement one’s citizenship confers. But as this country builds more cages for immigrants, deploys military force against civilians in city after city, regularly commits murder in the high seas and systematically destroys its own democratic institutions, that may change. It should change. What does one do then? How can one be a good citizen of a bad state?

On a recent trip to Israel, I talked to a number of Jewish citizens who have grappled with this question. In the last two years, as Israel has carried out a genocide against Palestinians and has all but dropped any pretense of democracy, many Israelis have come to dread telling people what country they are from. Some see this as unfair, having never personally supported their country’s far-right politicians or its prime minister, and having done what they could to change the course of Israeli politics. Others — a tiny minority — are grateful for the scorn of other nations, in hopes it can bring change to their own.

Then Gessen goes on to interview the tiny minority of Israelis who agree that the country is monstrous to ask their advice.

Notice that the only bad countries ever mentioned in Gessen's universe are Israel and the United States.

The entire piece starts from a premise that is utterly false - Ithat srael is acting monstrously, it engages in genocide, it is no longer a democracy. Then it cherry picks "evidence" that supports it.

While this is an op-ed, it violates every standard of even opinion journalism. It asserts lies as fact and doesn't even attempt to pretend that these opinions are anything but proven. and the NYT, by failing to edit the "genocide" accusation as even disputed (which happened last week with the same columnist), is engaging in spreading antisemitism.

I ran this op-ed through my TAMAR framework to identify media bias, and it created this infographic on its own describing the propaganda methodology ss "closed loop morality."

(h/t Brad)

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Iran still insists Haniyeh was killed by a missile - because otherwise the IRGC looks REALLY bad

Sada News reports:

The spokesman for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard said that the assassination of the former head of Hamas’s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, was not the result of an internal sabotage operation.

The spokesman added that Haniyeh was targeted by a missile fired from a specific distance that hit the window directly and then lodged in his body.

He explained that Haniyeh was speaking on the phone at the moment of the strike and that the missile came from the same direction he was looking.

As translated by Sada News, he said: "We tried to warn him about his phones that evening, but he didn't take it seriously."

Multiple Western news agencies, relying on anonymous Iranian officials and others, have concluded that Haniyeh was killed by a bomb hidden in his room and triggered by remote control.

We don't have too many photos to verify whether the blast appears internal or external, but reports indicated an outward explosion with little damage to surrounding rooms.

One piece of evidence shows that the IRGC is lying: they arrested dozens of the IRGC workers immediately afterwards, indicating that they knew this was a bad intelligence lapse. Also, there were no alarms ahead of a missile that would be expected from their own defenses.

The missile theory is more damage control, and the IRGC is keeping it going to avoid shame.

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Wassem el-Sisi, a popular figure on Egyptian talk shows who styles himself as an Egyptologist, made some bizarre antisemitic claims on TV this weekend.

Egyptologist Dr. Waseem El-Sisi revealed the ambitions of the Jews and their positions that defy history and facts, stressing that the Zionist entity has deeper goals than just religious claims...

During his interview with journalist Sherif El-Toukhy on the “Shift” podcast, Sisi emphasized the idea of “historical hatred” directed at Egypt, citing the attempt by Jews to take the statue of Ramses II to France to humiliate it. He pointed to a controversial incident when a French official cut the mummification wrappings from the foot of Ramses II, saying: “You brought us out of Egypt alive, and we brought you out of Egypt dead,” even though Ramses II has no relation to the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

This incident never happened. Ramses II's mummy was indeed flown to Paris in 1976 for conservation treatment due to fungal deterioration, but the rest of the story is completely made up.

He recounted a famous incident that proves Jewish and British influence in archaeological affairs, explaining that after the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, Marcus Pasha Hanna (Minister of Public Works in Saad Zaghloul's government in 1924) ordered the tomb to be closed and prevented the excavator Howard Carter from entering, due to theft and looting. ....Carter went to the Prime Minister and the British High Commissioner, and they refused his request to open the tomb. Then he returned and threatened that he had found papyri that refute the subject of the Red Sea and the stories of the Exodus.

He pointed out that after the threat, the tomb was opened and the papyri that the British had confiscated were retrieved. Carter later retracted his statement, claiming that they were merely the king’s underwear, attributing the theft of the papyri to Lord Carnarvon, who was married to Amy, the granddaughter of the Rothschild family (the largest economic and banking family)..

This is a bizarre story. While there was a dispute over permission to visit the tomb, neither Carter nor Lord Carnarvon were Jewish. There is no record of anything being looted from the tomb. Carnavaron was married to an illegitimate daughter of Alfred de Rothschild named Almina Herbert. She helped fund the excavations but had nothing to do with them. There is no serious Jewish connection to the mostly made up incident.

El Sisi is obsessed with Jews, constantly spewing out antisemitic conspiracy theories on Egyptisan TV.

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

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11/02 Links: Omer Neutra confirmed as one of three slain Gaza hostages returned to Israel on Sunday; The Arab World Rejects Hamas While New York City Glorifies It

From Ian:

When Truth Splits in Two: The Arab World Rejects Hamas While New York City Glorifies It

The Great Moral Reversal
In the Middle East, proximity to Hamas’s rule has produced clarity. People who live under or near Islamist militias know the cost of their fanaticism. They have seen the beheadings, the executions, the corruption, and the cruelty. They know that Hamas, like the Houthis or Hezbollah, does not liberate, it enslaves.

In the West, by contrast, ideological distance paired with obsession of the oppressor vs oppressed narrative breeds delusion. The further one stands from Hamas’s victims, the easier it is to romanticize its violence. Western activists, many of whom would never tolerate a prayer led by a homophobic priest or a law that could affect a woman's right to control her own medical decisions, suspend all judgment when those same forces wrap themselves in Palestinian flags.

It is an irony only modern politics could produce. Arab liberals call for Hamas’s elimination, while American progressives dance beneath its banners.

Why This Matters
The implications reach beyond moral outrage. When American cities normalize pro terror rhetoric, they erode the social immune system that protects against radicalization. When politicians legitimize extremists in the name of diversity, they invite violence and antisemitism into civic life.

One world is waking up. The other is descending into moral sleep. In Riyadh, Cairo, and Manama, journalists write that Hamas’s “role has ended.” In Brooklyn, protesters shout that “resistance is glorious.”

The former seeks peace. The latter seeks purpose. The former has seen war’s reality. The latter plays at revolution from the safety of American democracy.

The lesson is painfully clear: moral clarity still exists, but you will find more of it today in the Arab world than on the streets of New York City, a city now poised to dive even deeper into fanaticism and moral inversion.

The Qatar Problem

Knowledge Production and Narrative Control
Tensions between Saudis, Iranians, and Qataris had simmered for years, and I could still feel the heat at a security forum in Europe in late August 2023. After I led a teach-in on the Middle East, the Qatari ambassador to Canada, Dr Khalid bin Rashid Al Mansouri, approached me to ask if I needed funding for my initiatives. I declined. Mid-sentence, a Gazan social-media activist cut in: “Will you keep financially supporting our people in Gaza even now that Saudi is normalising with Israel?” The ambassador turned, took his hands, and answered, “We will never ever stop supporting our Palestinian brothers.”

That was not a humanitarian promise, it was policy. Qatar has bankrolled Hamas since 2007, when the group seized Gaza after a bloody rampage that overthrew the Palestinian Authority. In 2012, Qatar’s then-Emir made a red-carpet visit to Gaza and pledged US$400 million for projects, a watershed moment that signalled Doha’s unabashed embrace of Hamas’s rule. Patronage matured into a routinised cash flow, and by 2021, about US$30 million per month was entering Gaza, framed as “humanitarian” transfers that sustained Hamas-run salaries and government operations.

At the same time, Qatar was investing heavily in Western knowledge production and narrative control. Since 2001, US colleges and universities have reported an estimated US$6.25 billion in Qatari funding, making Qatar one of the five largest foreign donors in American higher education. Think tanks and policymakers were folded in, too. Qatar gave upward of US$9.1 million to US think tanks between 2019 and 2023. The Brookings Doha Center and related initiatives received US$14.8 million in a single three-year pledge, part of a broader, longer-running relationship that raised persistent questions and prompted FBI investigations about policy manipulation and censorship across the Beltway ecosystem.

Lobbying followed the same template. In a single recent year, Qatar retained 33 FARA-registered PR and lobbying firms, spending around US$18 million to create surge capacity for bookings, op-eds, and Hill and press engagement. To give you a picture of the scale of Qatari reach in DC, I spent several months after 7 October trying to publish a piece titled, “Qatar Is a Leading Saboteur of Regional Integration.” I sent it to everyone I know in media and policy, including Ambassador Dennis Ross who promised, when I begged him at a Washington Institute event in November 2023, to get it published. I had hit multiple walls, including at a think tank of which I am a member.

A friend at one of these publications told me: “I think they [the editorial team] have an issue with the fact that they have an upcoming partnership in December with Qatar. One of the directors flagged it as problematic and might put them in a delicate situation and prefer to go with another piece they had commissioned with a lighter touch on the subject. Sorry for that.” I asked if there was somewhere I could send it where there would not be a conflict of interest. “It is hard in DC,” my friend replied. “Everyone has interests with the Qataris.”

Even public grief was asked to stand down in deference to Doha’s leverage. After 7 October, several planned protests by hostage families in front of the Qatari embassy were quietly shut down. A source close to the Hostage Families Forum in DC told me they were explicitly warned not to “endanger” diplomatic talks with the only mediators deemed capable of securing releases. I do not fault the families for yielding, especially when even Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff continue to celebrate Qatar’s role as the indispensable mediator for peace.

WAPO: Palestinian Talks on Gaza's Future Could See Hamas Help Shape Its Rule

Palestinian political factions are holding closed-door discussions that could see Hamas play a role in shaping a postwar administration in Gaza.

The eight Palestinian factions and armed groups involved - including Fatah, which leads the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank, and Hamas - are working to reach a consensus over key elements of an interim administration.

To avoid a protracted postwar insurgency, Hamas must be included in any political settlement, say Palestinian political factions and mediators from Arab countries.

A pivotal question is whether Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu or President Trump would object to a Gazan government born out of talks between Hamas and Fatah.

For Israel, nearly every aspect of the inter-Palestinian talks is unpalatable.

"The fear for Israel is that Hamas will open the gates of Gaza and say to the PA, 'You're the boss here. Just bring money to Gaza and you can declare yourself the minister of agriculture or education. Just don't touch weapons, and we'll be the dominant player,'" said Michael Milshtein, a former Israeli military intelligence analyst.

Daniel Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, said, "There is a risk that the end state that emerges will be what we wanted to avoid....Hamas is battered and bruised but hanging on to power, preparing for the next round."

WSJ: Hizbullah Is Rearming, Putting Ceasefire at Risk

Hizbullah in Lebanon is rebuilding its armaments and battered ranks, defying the terms of a ceasefire agreement, and raising the prospect of renewed conflict with Israel, according to Israeli and Arab intelligence.

The intelligence shows Iranian-backed Hizbullah is restocking rockets, antitank missiles and artillery. Some weapons are coming in via seaports and still functional smuggling routes through Syria. Hizbullah is also manufacturing new weapons itself.

Under the agreement that ended a two-month Israeli campaign against the group a year ago, Lebanon is required to start disarming Hizbullah in parts of Lebanon, before continuing to the entire country as per a previous agreement.

Israel is losing patience after new intelligence findings highlighted Hizbullah's rearmament. "Should Beirut continue to hesitate, Israel may act unilaterally - and the consequences would be grave," Tom Barrack, U.S. ambassador to Turkey and a key American envoy for Lebanon and Syria, said in October.

The standoff highlights the difficulty of quashing an established militia with a base of support among the population even when it has been badly beaten. The difficulties are also evident in Gaza, where Hamas is resisting demands that it disarm and relinquish power.

Every philosophy student eventually asks: "Why should I be moral?"

It's a reasonable question. If I can get away with something—if no one will know, if I won't get caught, if the benefit outweighs the risk—why shouldn't I?

Western philosophy, built on Greek foundations, has been trying to answer this question for millennia. The responses vary: because reason demands it (Kant), because it maximizes utility (Mill), because it perfects your character (Aristotle), because God commands it (Aquinas), because that's what it means to be human (existentialists).

None of them work. Not really. Not in the moment when you're actually deciding whether to lie, to cheat, to look away from suffering. The answers feel either too abstract (categorical imperatives), too calculated (utility functions), too aspirational (virtue), or too external (divine command).

The problem isn't that these philosophers were stupid. The problem is that they started with the wrong question—which means they started with the wrong unit of reality.

Around 500 BCE, two civilizations were developing radically different approaches to understanding reality, truth, and morality.

In Athens, philosophy began with being. What is real? What is true? What is good? The Greek mind sought to isolate, categorize, and perfect. The fundamental unit of reality was the individual—the substance, the soul, the rational agent standing alone before the cosmos.

In Jerusalem, thought began with relationship. Not "What is?" but "If I am only for myself, who am I?" The fundamental unit wasn't the isolated self but the covenant—the bond between God and humanity, between person and person, between present and future self.

This wasn't a minor difference in emphasis. It was a difference in ontological architecture—in what counts as real.

The Greeks built philosophy like geometry: start with axioms, derive theorems, eliminate contradictions, arrive at perfect forms. Truth was static, eternal, complete.

Jewish thought built like engineering: start with structure under load, test assumptions, expect failure, build in correction. Truth was dynamic, relational, asymptotic—something you approach through integrity but never fully possess. Structure was not to create perfection but to make moral choices more probable.

Western philosophy chose Athens. It's been trying to solve Greek problems ever since problems that don't even arise in the Jewish philosophical mindset.

If you begin with the isolated individual as your fundamental unit, certain problems become unsolvable:

The Free Will Problem: Either your actions are caused by prior states (determinism) or they're random (chaos). There's no logical space for meaningful choice. Philosophers have been trying to thread this needle for centuries. Compatibilism tries to reconcile the two, but it feels like verbal gymnastics—because it is.

The Is/Ought Problem: You can't derive moral obligations from factual descriptions. Hume showed this, and no amount of clever reasoning has bridged the gap. Facts live in one realm, morality in another, and never the twain shall meet.

The Meaning Problem: If you're a collection of atoms following physical laws, why does anything matter? Existentialists told us to create our own meaning, but that just pushes the question back: why should I care about the meaning I create?

The Morality Problem: Why be good if you can get away with being bad? Every Greek answer either appeals to external enforcement (divine punishment, social consequences) or internal perfection (virtue makes you happy)—neither of which actually explains why you should care.

These aren't just abstract puzzles. They're the fractures running through modern civilization:

We can't agree on what rights are or where they come from
Our institutions cannot self-correct and are vulnerable to hijack
We can't make AI systems that remain moral as they scale more towards agency
We've lost the ability to talk about meaning without sounding either religious or relativist

All of this traces back to starting with the wrong ontological unit.

The Jewish intellectual tradition—formalized in Talmudic reasoning, encoded in halakhic structure, lived through covenant—never made this mistake.

It begins with a different axiom: reality is fundamentally relational. You don't exist in isolation; you exist in a web of obligations, connections, and mutual influence. You have a family, a tribe, a community, a nation. The self isn't an atom; it's a node in a network.

Once you start here, the hardest problems of Western philosophy simply dissolve:

Free will isn't about escaping causation—it's about biasing probabilities within structure. You operate in a field of constraints (biology, history, circumstance), but you have the capacity to reweight outcomes toward good. You're not breaking the laws of reality; you're participating in their unfolding. Freedom becomes meaningful because it's freedom within structure, not freedom from everything.

Values aren't separate from facts—they're properties of relationships. To say "cruelty is wrong" isn't imposing preference on neutral reality; it's recognizing that cruelty fractures the relational fabric that makes reality coherent. "Ought" isn't imported from outside; it's the direction that flows naturally from what "is."

Meaning isn't invented—it's discovered in relationship. You matter because others are affected by your choices. Your actions ripple through a network of obligation and care. Meaning emerges from how your choices affect others, not from internal conviction.

But the most important shift is this: we can now answer "what is morality?" in purely secular terms.

Morality is what increases the universe's creative capacity. Immorality is what diminishes it.

Free will comes from our choices in relationships. That means that our capacity for creativity is in our moral choices. By choosing, we can strengthen our bonds with others. Those bonds are new reality - they are created where they didn't exist before. Creativity is the full spectrum of generative human possibility: the capacity to build, connect, imagine, repair, and transform. It's what allows people to participate in the ongoing creation of meaning, relationship, and value.

Why does this work where Greek answers failed?

It's relational by definition: Creativity isn't solitary. A painting has no value if no one sees it. A song means nothing if no one hears it. Even private creativity—writing in a journal, solving a problem alone—is implicitly addressed to someone, even if that someone is your future self. Creativity is always relational, which means morality (increasing creativity) is always about how we affect others.

It solves the is/ought problem: If reality is fundamentally relational, and creativity is the generative capacity of relationships, then morality isn't imposed on reality—it's built into it. To act morally is to align with the structure that makes reality coherent. To act immorally is to fracture that structure. "Ought" becomes the direction that restores integrity to "is."

It explains why we should care: Because creativity is the only dimension where we have genuine agency. Everything else—our genetics, our history, the laws of physics—is deterministic. But in the moral dimension, we can bias probabilities. We can choose what kind of world we're creating. By consistently choosing good, we change ourselves for the better and can climb to the next level of morality. That's not a burden imposed from outside; that's the only arena where we're genuinely free.

It provides a moral floor without metaphysics: Anything that crushes human creativity—murder, tyranny, cruelty, dehumanization, silencing—is wrong not because it violates a rule, but because it destroys the generative capacity in yourself or in others that makes life worth living. You don't need God to ground this. You just need to recognize that humans are creative beings, and anything that systematically destroys that capacity is evil.

It handles constraint: Creativity doesn't mean chaos. Every creative form has structure—sonnets have 14 lines, jazz has chord progressions, engineering has physical laws. Morality isn't about unlimited freedom; it's about finding the structures that channel freedom into generative possibility. That's why even modesty in clothing or choosing not to use certain offensive words aren't opposed to creativity—they are boundaries that enhance creativity.

It's imitatio Dei—without theology: If there is a Creator, the primary divine act is creation itself. To be moral is to mirror that: to make space for others to create, to protect their capacity for agency, to build structures that enable rather than crush. If there isn't a Creator, the pattern still holds: we are creative beings, and morality is what allows that creativity to flourish across the network of relationships we inhabit.

This is what Jewish ethics always understood: saving a life isn't just preventing death—it's preserving someone's capacity to create meaning. Not standing by while harm occurs (lo ta'amod al dam rei'echa) prevents harm and protects generative possibility. Mutual responsibility (areivut) isn't altruistic sacrifice—it's recognizing that creativity is collective, that we create through and for each other.

Humility is an essential difference between Greek and Jewish philosophy. To the Greeks, human perfection is possible. To Jewish thinkers, the idea of human perfection in a world where there is a supremely perfect God is laughable. The best we can do is to keep improving, forever.

The Jewish intellectual tradition has been continuous for over two millennia. It developed sophisticated methods for handling paradox, testing assumptions, maintaining coherence under uncertainty. Talmudic dialectic is as rigorous as anything Aristotle produced—arguably more so, because it doesn't pretend contradictions are always errors.

So why did Western philosophy ignore it?

Partly language—most of it was in Hebrew and Aramaic. Partly prejudice—it was dismissed as "theology" rather than philosophy. Partly Christianity's complicated relationship with its Jewish roots. Partly the fact that Jewish thought doesn't fit neatly into academic categories; it's simultaneously legal reasoning, ethical reflection, and spiritual practice.

But the cost of this oversight compounds every generation. We've been trying to solve problems that only exist because we chose the wrong foundation.

The stakes have never been higher. We're building artificial intelligence—systems that will make decisions affecting billions of lives. And we can learn from AI.

AI, today, is neither deterministic nor does it have full agency. It is probabilistic. It will almost always come up with a reasonable answer, based on probability. And this is how people are, too: we are shaped by our upbringing, by our environment, by our experiences. We are highly unlikely to kill the next person we see walking down the street. Our free will is manifested in a much narrower range - like should we keep the elevator door open for the person down the hall. When we make moral decisions, we change ourselves - it is the ultimate in creativity.

The alignment problem (how do we ensure AI remains beneficial as it becomes more capable?) is essentially the free will problem in digital form: how do you create agency within structure? Greek philosophy can't solve it because Greek philosophy can't handle probabilistic agency within moral constraint. The Jewish model already understands how to optimize moral outcomes within reality instead of theorizing perfect morality.

We're facing institutional collapse—governments, corporations, universities losing public trust because they can't self-correct without breaking. Greek thinking builds perfect forms that shatter under stress. Jewish thinking builds resilient structures that bend, repair, and learn.

We're in a meaning crisis—secular modernity delivered material abundance but stripped away the relational fabric that makes life feel worth living. You can't solve that by telling people to "create their own meaning." You solve it by rebuilding the networks of obligation and care that make meaning real—that allow people to participate in collective creativity rather than drown in individual isolation.

This isn't about Jewish triumphalism or religious conversion. It's about recognizing that one of humanity's oldest continuous intellectual traditions developed a fundamentally different—and demonstrably better—foundation for moral reasoning, and we've been ignoring it.

Derechology is my attempt to formalize this tradition in language that's legible to secular philosophy, applicable to AI ethics, and useful for institutional design. It takes the core insights of Jewish relational ontology and translates them into systematic principles:

Reality is relational structure
Values are part of human reality
Truth is what survives audit of assumptions
Freedom is probabilistic agency within moral constraint
Morality is what increases creative capacity across relationships
Perfection is the enemy of the good
Humility is what keeps systems self-correcting

The book (when it's finally finished, but it is shaping up nicely) will lay out the full framework. But the core insight is this:

We've been doing philosophy wrong. Not because the Greeks were foolish, but because they started with the isolated self and built from there. Start with relationship instead, and the hardest problems of Western philosophy dissolve.

The question isn't "Why should I be moral?"

The question is: "Given that I exist in relationship—that my choices affect others' capacity to create, that meaning arises from generative connection, that the only freedom I have is in the moral dimension—how could I be anything else?"

Morality isn't a burden. It's the only space where we're truly alive.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Hamas still stealing aid from WFP trucks, but not as much - they have other sources of income and power now

Since the Gaza ceasefire, the percentage of World Food Programme trucks that have been hijacked has gone down from 99% to about 6%.

The UNOPS dashboard shows about 1007 tons stolen out of 17,300 tons of food via the WFP since October 11.

Even though CENTCOM released their video of suspected Hamas gunmen stealing an aid truck, Hamas has pivoted to other means of survival.

Hamas used the food as its cash cow during the war, but now that they can be out in the open it is more important for them to control Gaza as the de facto government - the NGOs bringing in aid are crediting their success at being able to coordinate with Hamas to bring the trucks in without incident.

It is in Hamas' interest to control things on the ground - and the reason is that they see that commercial imports are increasing, and will only become a bigger slice of the imports as time goes on.

And you know that Hamas does with commercial goods? It taxes them. Heavily. That was their model before the war and it is the model they are trying to rebuild.

At the same time, now that things quieted down, digital crypto donations from Iran and other Hamas allies are almost certainly resuming and increasing to make it harder for anyone to dislodge Hamas from power, which is already seeming increasingly unlikely. Every day Hamas is in de facto control - like being the interface for NGOs - it becomes more difficult for any international force to even consider doing anything to get rid of them. I would guess that the theatre of returned bodies - sending only parts of bodies or people who weren't even hostages, in dribs and drabs - are a delaying tactic to keep Hamas in power long enough that they become permanent again.

And so far, we are not seeing any serious plans from the US or the international community to get rid of Hamas.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)