Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, November 16, 2025

11/16 Links: Hamas member's diary published, reveals exploitation of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure; Israeli football fans banned over ‘entirely fictitious’ information

From Ian:

Hamas member's diary published, reveals exploitation of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure

IDF soldiers seized the personal journal of a Hamas commander from Beit Hanun in Gaza, N12 News reported on Sunday.

Terrorist Khaled Abu Akram’s diary entries prove how Hamas exploits civilian infrastructure in Gaza. For example, in one entry from May 2024, Akram writes about how he went to set up an ambush at a school after tunnels in the area were bombed.

"I went with Abu Saleh (a unit commander in a different company in the area) to set up a new ambush at the Al-Naim school after the tunnels in the area were bombed, and the previous ambush was destroyed,” he wrote.

Akram also described how Hamas used UN infrastructure in the Gaza Strip to its advantage.

"Additionally, we took the batteries from the UNRWA clinic, removed the solar panels, and prepared the water well," Abu Akram wrote in his diary.

The Continuing Threats to Israel from Syria

As part of my army reserve service, I belong to a unit that is holding a sector opposite Syria, defending Israel on the northern border.

Syria continues to host terrorist organizations hostile to Israel and intent on harming it.

The fall of Assad's regime did not bring peace. Instead, it created a strategic vacuum that was quickly filled by radical Sunni militias.

When Syrian opposition forces took control of Damascus on Dec. 8, 2024, in response, the IDF moved into the demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria established by the 1974 ceasefire agreement and set up several forward posts.

Today, the IDF holds these positions as strategic depth to defend the nearby towns and villages of the Golan Heights from various hostile actors.

Iranian-backed Shi'ite forces are still operating in southwest Syria and are trying to rebuild their capabilities.

An operational arm of Lebanese Hizbullah is attempting to rebuild its capabilities on the Syrian front, with funding from Iran.

ISIS is also facing us in southern Syria, in addition to many small terrorist groups seeking to harm Israel, including organizations affiliated with Hamas abroad.

The flat terrain in the center of the Golan Heights could allow vehicles from Syria quick access to Israeli civilian communities in a very short time.

In the southern Golan, a landscape of deep wadis can enable covert infiltration by terror cells.

The constant presence of the IDF in this challenging terrain allows it to preempt the build-up of hostile forces - a task that would have been impossible had the IDF remained behind the buffer zone fence.

The Israeli presence in the buffer zone is essential to prevent a repeat of an Oct. 7-type surprise attack in the Golan.

Israeli football fans banned over ‘entirely fictitious’ information

Israeli football fans were banned from Villa Park on the back of “entirely fictitious” information, a former attorney general has claimed.

A group of sitting and former parliamentarians including Sir Michael Ellis, a former attorney general, Lord Austin of Dudley, a former Labour MP, and Nick Timothy, a Tory MP, has written to the chief constable of West Midlands Police to express “deep concern about the propriety and processes surrounding the ban”.

Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were barred from attending the Europa League clash against Aston Villa on Nov 6 after the West Midlands force raised safety concerns about hooliganism with Birmingham city council.

The force’s stance provoked an outcry, with Sir Keir Starmer calling it “the wrong decision” and the Israeli government condemning it. Maccabi said they would turn down any ticket allocation even if the decision was reversed.

In the parliamentarians’ letter, seen by The Telegraph, the ban was criticised as “bizarre” and “draconian”.

The group warned that the force risked being accused of “two-tier policing” against Jewish people, and called on Craig Guildford, the chief constable, to explain how the decision was made.

The politicians also said they were “deeply concerned” about the force’s portrayal of violent disorder in Amsterdam in November last year, when Maccabi played Ajax in the Europa League.

Pointing to a police commander’s remarks that the violence in Amsterdam “wasn’t all one way”, the group wrote: “This gives rise to a concern about whether West Midlands Police was operating ‘two-tier policing’ when it comes to Israel, because your force has taken draconian steps against an entire Israeli fanbase for a limited number of reported infractions.

“Suggestions that Maccabi fans provoked the Amsterdam attacks have been previously dismissed as ‘entirely fictitious’ by the UK Government’s independent adviser on anti-Semitism after he met the chief of police in Amsterdam and was given access to their reports.

“West Midlands Police have seemingly discarded this overwhelming evidence. Could you please outline how West Midlands Police have reached such a starkly different conclusion about the roots of the disorder in Amsterdam to the Dutch authorities? In the absence of an explanation, there are many who may conclude that the actions of West Midlands Police are akin to victim-blaming.”

Israel's far-Right ministers are upset that the US has signaled that is is offering a conditional pathway to a potential Palestinian state. Yet there is nothing in the US position that contradicts what Netanyahu himself has said on more than one occasion.

The US Mission to the UN issued a joint statement Friday together with several Muslim countries:

The United States, Qatar, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan, and Türkiye express our joint support for the Security Council Resolution currently under consideration, drafted by the United States after consultation and in cooperation with Council members and partners in the region.

The historic Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict announced on September 29 is endorsed by the resolution and was celebrated and endorsed in Sharm Al Sheikh.

We are issuing this statement as the Member States that gathered during High-Level Week to begin this process, which offers a pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood. We emphasize that this is a sincere effort, and the Plan provides a viable path towards peace and stability, not only between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but for the entire region.

We are looking forward to this resolution’s swift adoption.

The specific language in the leaked versions of the draft Security Council resolution is weaker. It says, "After the PA reform program is faithfully carried out and Gaza redevelopment has advanced, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood."

This morning, Netanyahu responded to the backlash saying that he is against a Palestinian state, saying, "Our opposition to a Palestinian state in any territory has not changed. Gaza will be demobilized and Hamas will be disarmed, the easy way or the hard way. I don't need reinforcements and tweets and lectures from anyone."

Yet in 2011, Netanyahu laid out his conditions for a Palestinian state to Congress, and he ended his speech by saying, "So I say to President Abbas: Tear up your pact with Hamas! Sit down and negotiate! Make peace with the Jewish state! And if you do, I promise you this. Israel will not be the last country to welcome a Palestinian state as a new member of the United Nations. It will be the first to do so."

His speech did include several important conditions that are not mentioned in the US draft resolution, top among them the demand for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, but also that the Palestinian state is demilitarized, Israel maintains a long term security presence along the Jordan river, and Jerusalem remains the undivided capital of Israel. These are all non-starters for the Palestinians and they are all critical Israeli demands.

But the new resolution language does not contradict Bibi's 2011 speech at all. His statement today opposing a Palestinian state "in any territory" is the only contradiction I see. And given that the Palestinians would never agree to his 2011 conditions, even that contradiction is practically meaningless.

Which means everything happening is just political theater. The Saudis et. al. need the pretense of progress towards a Palestinian state, Israel needs to look flexible while holding fast to its conditions that are truly critical which the Palestinians would never agree to, Bibi needs to look tough to his coalition and flexible to the US, the US needs to show progress towards a comprehensive Middle East peace by expanding the Abraham Accords, the Palestinians need to insist on conditions that would ultimately lead to Israel's destruction, and the world will continue to blame Israel for everything anyway.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Israel saves Jordan some $500 million a year on energy costs - but "experts" say Israel is choking Jordan

Last month, the Middle East Research and Information Project published a long research article on how dependent Jordan is on Israel for energy:

As Israeli fighter jets and Western air-defense systems used Jordanian airspace to intercept Iranian projectiles, Jordan’s military also played a decisive role in shielding Israeli cities—even as government officials warned that Jordan would not become a battleground for adversaries. Over the same tense hours, Israel abruptly curtailed natural gas supplies to Jordan and Egypt when it shut down two major offshore gas fields in the Mediterranean, the Leviathan and the Karish. The move was preemptive: Israel feared Iranian retaliation after it had targeted one of Iran’s largest gas fields in the Gulf.

...Israel’s weaponization of water and electricity in Gaza—as documented in South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—has made Jordanians even more wary of their own reliance on Israel for utilities. These fears were born out during the summer’s escalation with Iran. When Israel cut gas supplies in June 2025, the kingdom had to turn to alternative sources for electricity generation at a cost of $1.4 million per day adding strain to NEPCO’s more than $8.74 billion deficit.

Let's do some math. Israel stopped gas extraction for 12 days, costing Jordan $17 million. This is a drop in the bucket compared to Jordan's energy company's $8.74 billion deficit.

In fact, even when Israeli gas is flowing, NEPCO loses some $2 million a day anyway. So an additional $1.6 million a day for a couple of weeks would hurt for sure, but it is hardly where Jordan's problems lie.

In fact, the gas deal between Israel and Jordan saves Jordan some $500 million every year compared to what it would pay for energy from other sources.

The MERIP report doesn't mention that!

Jordanians routinely protest any deal with Israel. And they they protest shortages of electricity and water, which Israel also provides to Jordan.

Why don't the rich Gulf countries give below-market price energy to their Arab brethren in Jordan? None of the protesters of Israeli gas seem to ask that.

You don't see too many stories about how bad off Jordan would be without Israel.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

11/15 Links: 50 years since UN resolution, the world proves anti-Zionism is actually racism; The settler-colonial lie, debunked; Zohran Mamdani and the ugly rebirth of the socialism of fools

From Ian:

Michal Cotler-Wunsh: 50 years since UN resolution, the world proves anti-Zionism is actually racism

Anti-Zionism, as clearly articulated in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism after a long democratic process, is denying Israel’s right to exist as a state and denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination. It is discriminating against Israelis and turning the Jew among nations into all that is evil, a pariah responsible for all that is bad in the world.

Fifty years later, and as the past two years since the October 7 Kristallnacht-moment of our times have made abundantly clear, it is anti-Zionism – denying Jewish identity, memory, heritage, peoplehood, and ancestry – that is racism.

It is racism that has again been normalized and legitimized in the name of “liberation,” “justice,” and “progress,” this time by hijacking, redefining, inverting, and weaponizing foundational principles upon which the UN was founded, betraying all it was entrusted to uphold, promote, and protect. It is racism that not only endangers Israel, but all who believe in its right to exist, and the rights of Jews around the world. To paraphrase the late Rabbi Sacks, what begins with the Jews never ends with us.

“There will be time enough to contemplate the harm this act will have done the United Nations.” Fifty years later, Moynihan’s words have become a devastating reality. The institution entrusted to ensure that “Never Again,” by anyone to anyone, seats the most egregious violators of human rights around the Human Rights Council table. It hosts tyrannical regime leaders who invoke the language of rights, even as they torture, execute, and trample the rights of their people. In what has become a modern-day Tower of Babel, it collapses every foundational principle upon which it was constructed.

In a social-media age guided by a polarizing, fragmentizing business model, in which history has little resonance, what happens at the UN and the human rights industry created to support it does not remain there. Academic institutions, no longer pursuing truth in what has been dubbed a post-truth era, have seemingly replaced the mission of teaching how to think with agendas that indoctrinate generations on what to think. Bot-generated hashtags and buzzwords make their way around the world in TikTok videos, in Instagram reels, and in X/Twitter posts, before the (post)truth “straps its boots on.” Fifty years after the UN declared that Zionism is racism, leaders across spaces and places openly declare that they are not antisemitic, only anti–Zionist, generating popular support and little challenge.

Fifty years later, if we are to learn anything from history that repeats in rhyme, it is not enough to teach what happened. It is vital to understand how it happened, and can happen again, with the same mechanism of demonization, delegitimization, and double standards. It is imperative to insist that the law be applied equally and consistently by the institutions mandated to protect foundational principles. For “Never Again” to mean anything, it is vital to not only remember the past but also recognize present iterations of evil to prevent future recurrence of atrocities.

We must remember, reclaim, and renew the Jewish story, universal principles of human rights, and the commitment to uphold and protect foundational principles. In a raging war of barbarism openly declaring the intent to destroy our shared civilization, it is also a vital step toward protecting humanity and freedom.

The Palestinian Fantasy State

The idea of a Palestinian state exists only in the European imagination; even the Arabs do not truly believe in it.

While Israel recognized the national identity of the Palestinians, they have never recognized the Jews as a people entitled to national self-determination.

Before Israel captured Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem in 1967, those territories were controlled by Jordan and Egypt. Why, then, was no Palestinian state established at that time?

The answer is that the Palestinians never wanted a state of their own alongside Israel. They only wanted a state instead of Israel.

Had the Jews lost the 1948 War of Independence, the Arabs of the region would have slaughtered them as they did on Oct. 7, and then divided the land among themselves - southern Syria, northern Egypt and western Jordan.

Lyn Julius: The settler-colonial lie, debunked

In fact, Israel is the only decolonization project in the Middle East, an indigenous people that has managed to throw off the yoke of Arab and Ottoman dominance. And yet many people assume that political rights only belong to Arab Muslims.

Indeed, there were high hopes at the end of World War I, with the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, that indigenous Christian and other minorities would be given enclaves affording them special protection. The Assyrians and Kurds both expected to have autonomy, if not a homeland of their own. But only the Balfour Declaration of 1917, with its commitment for a home for the Jews, was endorsed at the 1920 San Remo conference and written into the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.

For Khalidi, the settler colonial lie is “not just hypocrisy; it’s historical amnesia. If we truly want justice, we have to stop gaslighting our neighbors and start acknowledging that their story is Middle Eastern, too. Our liberation won’t come from denying theirs.”

Why is it that so few Arab voices of moderation are out there, while Western far-leftists, in alliance with Islamists, almost all espouse extremist positions or traffic lies about Israel or Jews?

The smear that Israel is a white colonial-settler state relies on two false premises: It severs Jews from their Middle Eastern ethno-religious roots and denies that Jews are a people distinct from the Diaspora, in which they spent 2,000 years. Israelophobes brand Judaism a matter of faith, like Christianity or Islam. They refuse to believe that Jews are distinct genetically, culturally, linguistically and historically from the many populations they lived among.

In order to depict Zionism as a European imposter, the anti-Zionists date the rise of modern Zionism to 1882 and the arrival of the Russian Jews of the first aliyah. In truth, Jews never left. Through the centuries, they returned, albeit in small numbers, to Eretz Israel.

To keep the memory of the 850,000 Jews forced to leave Arab countries and Iran in the 20th century alive, organizations such as JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) and HARIF (the Association of Jews from the MENA), along with synagogues and community groups around the world, will observe “Mizrachi Heritage Month” throughout November.

The Israeli Knesset designated an official “Mizrachi Heritage Day” in the calendar on Nov. 30, the day after the U.N. Partition Plan for Palestine was passed in 1947, which triggered riots across Arab countries.

History matters. We must not let the truth be drowned out by crude and dishonest sloganeering. We must keep repeating the facts. And any help from Arab members of society is welcome.

pic.twitter.com/xiv4pzUXa9
— 🚀aunch The Crypto Dog 📈 (@CryptoDogLaunch) November 15, 2025

This might be the single stupidest person in progressive media.

She thinks the UN should run an experiment in 1-state, enforced ‘multiculturalism’ combining Israel and Palestinian territories which would of course devolve instantaneously into chaos, civil war, death, and… https://t.co/pTF5f8xZGg
— Coddled Affluent Professional (@feelsdesperate) November 15, 2025

11/14 Links Pt2: The year Jews stopped believing in a safe West; British universities have failed Jews; Oxford Union ‘labels Israel greater threat to regional stability’ than Iran

From Ian:

The year Jews stopped believing in a safe West

The risk is no longer theoretical: in late 2024, France’s domestic spy agency warned that Hamas and Hezbollah “sleeper” operatives might seek to strike Jews in Europe to send a message.

The safe West, it turns out, is seen by jihadists. This situation is viewed as just another front in their war, possibly an easier one, because Jews in Paris or Manchester are generally less guarded than those in Jerusalem or Sderot.

This reality has prompted a grim recalibration among Diaspora Jews. Synagogues across Western capitals are fortifying like embassies. Jewish schools conduct active-shooter drills and hire armed guards.

In places like Malmö, Sweden, or Toulouse, France, where Jewish populations have shrunk after repeated attacks, the few remaining families must decide if they, too, will leave.

As one Jewish security expert in London remarked, “We’ve had to accept that what happens in Israel doesn’t stay in Israel. If Hamas had the opportunity, they would carry out similar attacks here as they did on October 7 [in Israel].”

In 2025, Europe’s Jews know that no amount of Western liberal values or policing can entirely shield them from the reach of those who wish them harm.

There is no doubt that the mindset of the Diaspora is changing.

As one Israeli columnist wrote to anxious Jews abroad: “Our grandparents in Europe asked, ‘Will it really get worse?’ and lived to regret the answer. Today, we must ask, ‘What if it gets worse?’ and live accordingly.”

For a growing number of Jews in the West, 2025 was the year that the question could no longer be avoided.

The answers they arrive at will shape the future of Jewish life on both sides of the ocean. Once again, the packed suitcases, whether literal or metaphorical, play a part in shaping that future.

Baroness Ruth Deech: Universities must rein in scourge of hate they left unchecked for so long

The cloak of so-called ‘anti-Zionism’ has led them towards the oldest hatred. So blinded by their detestation of the State of Israel, it is now perfectly unremarkable for students to demand ‘resistance’ – naturally appearing alongside Hamas-associated imagery – as well as the genocidal call for the destruction of Israel. The Prime Minister was absolutely right to recently declare “From the River” as antisemitic but it has had zero impact on the actions of university leaders.

And so, left unchecked by British authorities (from the Government and police through to universities and wider society), the anti-Zionists have radicalised. The disgusting - and utterly unchallenged - utilisation of an ancient Jewish blood libel by Dr Maqusi at UCL this week shows that a new line has been crossed. The speaker's reported decision to matter-of-factly cite the 1840 Damascus Affair and the long-repudiated lie that Jews used the blood of non-Jews for religious rituals is grotesque.

Patently baseless centuries-old anti-Jewish hatred is now being revived and repurposed to brainwash the next generation of leaders. Anyone acquainted with Jewish history will know full well that blood libels such as this have been the source of hundreds of years of violence, persecution, and massacres against Jewish communities across the world. The university authorities are complicit in this terrible danger.

StandWithUs UK has documented dozens of harrowing testimonies from students at universities all around the country. They have empowered Jewish students to proactively stand up against this onslaught and they have movingly retold their stories to parliamentarians and the international media. These are the true anti-racist heroes who deserve our full admiration and support.

The problem is clear and many of the tools to tackle it already exist but much like the obstinate leaders at the BBC, it requires university officials to take note of what is being taught on their campuses, accept responsibility and their own failings, and root out this poisonous ideology.

UCL’s immediate and unequivocal response to this shocking incident is welcome and offers a blueprint which I hope other universities will follow. If they continue to fall short, however, the Office for Students must forcefully act, and university leaders should be summoned to Parliament to account for the shameful discriminatory and menacing environment for Jews that they have allowed to take root.

Soros Bankrolling Anti-Israel Drop Site News

The left-wing philanthropy funded by George Soros, Open Society Foundations, gave $250,000 to establish a Middle East desk at Drop Site News, an anti-Israel news startup that touts itself as a "reader-supported" purveyor of "completely independent" journalism.

Open Society Foundations said the grant, awarded last year, would help "bridge a crucial information gap in independent journalism" in the Middle East, according to its spending database.

Drop Site, founded by veteran left-wing journalists Ryan Grim and Jeremy Scahill in July 2024, has filled that purported gap with a steady stream of anti-Israel coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. Its first major story was a series of interviews that Scahill conducted with Hamas leaders aimed at providing the "public deeper insight into [Hamas's] decision to launch the October 7 attacks in Israel."

"The past nine months of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza have spurred an unprecedented global awakening to the plight of the Palestinian people," reads the opening line of Scahill's story.

Drop Site has not disclosed funding from the Open Society Foundations, of which Soros’s son Alex took control in 2022. In its fundraising pitches, Drop Site requests donations through Social Security Works Education Fund, an obscure nonprofit that aims to "educate the general public, media, and policy-makers about the benefits of protecting social security benefits." The organization serves as the "fiscal sponsor" for Drop Site, allowing donors to make tax-deductible contributions to the outlet, which does not have tax-exempt status from the IRS.

The Open Society Foundations funneled its contribution to Drop Site through the Social Security Works Education Fund, earmarked "to support establishing a Drop Site News MENA desk to to [sic] bridge a critical information gap in independent journalism."

Drop Site has provided little coverage of Social Security, or any other domestic entitlement programs. Instead, its bread-and-butter has been coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, from a decidedly anti-Israel viewpoint.

11/14 Links Pt1: UN made ‘Rosetta Stone’ for Jew-hatred in 1975; The Future of the U.S.-Israel Defense Alliance; John Spencer: Hamas can be demilitarized. Here's how

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Future of the U.S.-Israel Defense Alliance

How soon? Well, Bibi said, he was scheduled to have a meeting that very day about planning for the next five years of Israel’s future and beyond.

Five is less than 10, which is less than 20. Again, Netanyahu is conscious of how all this talk might play with the pro-retrenchment crowd.

Where is all this going? As I wrote last year, the Biden presidency marked a turning point for Israel. Biden himself mostly held the line on military aid, but it was clear that he was the last Democratic president willing to take that level of heat from his own party for defending our alliance with Israel.

The real shock was that the more vulnerable Israel seemed to be, the more intense were the calls to cut off the Jewish state from anything it might need to defend itself now or in the future. In the past, U.S. presidents took the position that Israel cannot be allowed to be put in mortal danger by the two countries’ shared enemies. That would be morally repugnant but also strategically reckless. But now, a loud-enough progressive chorus—a minority in the Democratic Party, but an influential one and a growing one—comes right out and declares Israel’s destruction to be a worthy goal.

This changes the calculus. If, in the future, there is going to be an American administration that won’t let Israel break the glass even in case of emergency, then Israel must be prepared for such a moment well in advance. And a domestic weapons production line does not appear overnight. Israel’s survival has long been ensured by a defense establishment constantly peering over the next horizon, and this appears to be no exception.

Jonathan Tobin: Begin reducing US aid to Israel, not extending it

The ideal ‘America First’ ally
That ought to make it, as Vice President JD Vance pointed out in a 2024 speech, the ideal “America First” ally since it doesn’t want Americans to fight for them and also can contribute to U.S. security interests in a variety of ways. A strong Israel that isn’t so dependent on the United States could enable the Americans to pivot to using more of its resources to deal with the pre-eminent 21st-century threat to their security: China.

There is no scenario in which Israel could be completely cut off from the United States. It’s just too small a country, and for all of the benefits of its First World “Start-Up Nation” economy, it isn’t rich enough to be on its own.

Nor would it be in its interests to do so since having a superpower friend—and there is no possible desirable alternative to the U.S. alliance—is essential to maintaining its security in a world where so many nations and people want to kill Jews and destroy their state. Yet reducing that dependence to the extent that it is possible is vital for maintaining that alliance in the long run.

Netanyahu knows this as well as anyone.

In 1996, during his first term as prime minister, he told a joint session of the U.S. Congress that he wanted to reduce American aid and eliminate the economic element—as opposed to the military portion—of the assistance. To his credit, he was able to do just that.

His next challenge is to reduce the U.S. aid package, rather than to enlarge and extend it.

That goes against every instinct of the Israeli military establishment, which is dependent on all those American arms and ammunition. It’s equally true that the Americans, even the Obama staffers who negotiated the last long-term aid deal, like to keep the Israelis on a short leash. Going back to the first Bush administration in the 1980s, the Americans have been less than enthusiastic about the Israelis manufacturing arms that could also be made in the United States.

If Israel is to remain secure and maintain a healthy relationship with the United States, then this must change in the long term. The United States needs a partner in the Middle East, not a vassal or a protectorate. The more independent the Jewish state can be, the more solid its alliance with America will become.

Danny Danon: Israel's envoy to UN Danny Danon: Israel's alliance with US protects both nations

The US-Israel alliance delivers tangible, measurable benefits to American security. Israeli intelligence has repeatedly provided early warnings that have saved American lives.

One pertinent example was former Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil. He had a $7 million bounty on his head by the US government for playing a key role in the bombings of the US embassy in Beirut in April 1983, which killed 63 people, as well as the attack on the US Marine barracks in October 1983, which killed 241 American personnel.

Last year, Israeli forces eliminated Aqil, who had American blood on his hands, because he was a threat not just to Israel and the United States but to Western civilization.

This is what partnership looks like: a democratic ally doing what must be done when others cannot or will not. It is in America’s direct interest that groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad face the kind of consequences that only Israel has the resolve to deliver.

When fringe parts of the American political spectrum – left or right – begin to waver on that basic truth, adversaries notice. The Islamic Republic of Iran notices. Hezbollah notices. So do the forces of extremism and authoritarianism that watch for any sign of Western fragmentation.

When some conservatives dismiss Israel as a burden, or when some progressives tolerate antisemitic rhetoric in their ranks, they are not simply debating policy. They are weakening America’s deterrent posture and emboldening its enemies.

The problem is not just political but cultural. On the Right, some have confused moral clarity with moral indifference, treating alliances as outdated relics rather than as instruments of power. On the Left, outrage has replaced empathy, and solidarity has been warped into tribalism. In both cases, the result is the same: a retreat from responsibility. When America retreats, chaos fills the void.

If this downward spiral is to be reversed, leaders in both parties must act with moral courage and follow in the example of true friends like President Trump. We are eternally grateful for his strong leadership in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, brokering the historic Abraham Accords, and pushing through a hostage release agreement that has seen all our surviving hostages return home.

Other Republicans should also make clear that antisemitism, whether dressed up as nationalism or nihilism, has no home in their movement. Democrats must confront the radicals in their midst who conflate criticism of Israeli policy with the delegitimization of Israel itself. Neither side can afford to repeat the other’s mistakes. Silence is complicity, and equivocation is surrender.

The United States and Israel share more than intelligence. They share values that are intrinsic to each society: democracy, resilience, and a belief that freedom is worth defending. These principles are under attack from forces that despise both nations equally. To abandon Israel now, or to allow antisemitism to metastasize in American politics, would be to forget the lessons of history at a perilous time.

The stakes are clear. If America truly intends to put itself first, it must remember that strength begins with solidarity. Standing with Israel is not selfless charity. It is strategy. It is the recognition that the enemies of the Jewish state are also enemies of the United States. And it is a reminder that sustained peace is built not on retreat but on the shared strength and resolve of allies who stand together.

The New Backlash Playbook: How Antisemitism Reinvents Itself

Something deeply unnerving is happening beneath the surface of recent antisemitic incidents.

It is not merely the rise in raw expressions of Jew-hatred, nor the shamelessness with which people now voice medieval libels and slurs. What is emerging is a new mechanism of backlash that turns the exposure of antisemitism itself into an accelerant of antisemitism. It is a kind of psychological judo: an ugly act is caught on camera, public anger erupts, and the perpetrator is recast as the supposed victim of Jewish overreaction. The more blatant the antisemitism, the easier it becomes to claim persecution, and the faster the narrative turns on its head.

The model case arrived this week in Mississippi. A former university student, Patrick McClintock, approached Dave Portnoy during a pizza review and hurled antisemitic slurs while tossing coins at him, playing off the "cheap Jew" trope. It was not borderline hate nor was it a coded message. It was classic, unmistakable Jew-hatred.

Yet within twenty-four hours, McClintock had become a minor folk hero in certain corners of the Internet. A crowdfunding campaign quickly raised tens of thousands of dollars in his name, promoted through a narrative so inverted that it reads like satire: Jews, we are told, had “overreacted,” had “summoned the authorities,” had tried to “destroy his life for free speech.” None of this was true. Portnoy explicitly declined to press charges and publicly said he did not want the student punished. But the truth was irrelevant once a story could be built around Jewish oversensitivity and supposed “tyranny.”

The lie served a psychological purpose. It recast the aggressor as a victim and the victim as an oppressor. It provided donors with a cause – not the defense of free speech, but the pleasure of striking back at Jews who were depicted as policing public life.

This pattern is not accidental. Over the past few years, research on media and prejudice has shown that neutral or lightly framed news coverage of antisemitic incidents often has a counter-intuitive effect. Instead of generating sympathy for Jews or revulsion toward bigotry, it can produce a backlash among readers who perceive the outrage as excessive. When a story includes the incident and then notes “angry reactions,” or hints at controversy, people inclined to view Jews as powerful or hypersensitive interpret the anger as proof of the stereotype. Their defensiveness sharpens, not softens. Their prejudices deepen, not weaken. The original act matters less than the narrative that forms around the reaction.

In this case, the police reacted quickly and arrested McClintock for disturbing the peace. The fundraisers claim that he was being persecuted for freedom of speech by the entitled, rich Jews.

What the Portnoy–McClintock affair demonstrates is that bad actors no longer have to wait for journalists to provide that framing. They can create it themselves. A viral clip, a fabricated claim that Jews demanded punishment, a call for donations framed as a stand against censorship, and within hours the incident has been rewritten. The backlash becomes more potent than the original hatred, because it is wrapped in a story about principle and resistance rather than open bigotry.

This is not limited to one side of the political spectrum. On the progressive Left, blatant antisemitism like an open blood libel is still difficult to defend in public. When a guest lecturer at University College London, Dr. Samar Maqusi, revived the nineteenth century Damascus blood libel and presented it to students as plausible history, the response from the institution was swift. UCL ended her affiliation and referred the case to the authorities. Most progressives are not prepared to go on record defending medieval fantasies about Jews murdering Christians for ritual purposes.

But if we look back to October 7, 2023 and its aftermath, we can see that the underlying playbook on parts of the Left is remarkably similar to what we are now watching around McClintock. After the Hamas massacres, a significant segment of progressive activists and commentators insisted that the most documented atrocities did not really happen. They claimed there were no rapes, no deliberate murders of civilians, that the attack was a legitimate act of “resistance,” and that Israel’s subsequent response was an outrageous overreaction. When Jews described this as antisemitic – not because criticism of Israel is forbidden, but because denying or justifying the murder and abuse of Jews has a very old pedigree – many of the same voices responded by saying that antisemitism was being “weaponized” to silence debate.

The argument around the IHRA working definition of antisemitism is another version of this dynamic. The text explicitly states that it is a non-legally binding educational tool, not a law and not intended to criminalize or shut down legitimate political speech. Yet for years, critics have claimed that IHRA is designed to outlaw all criticism of Israel and to censor pro-Palestinian activism. The actual words of the definition, which draw a clear line between normal criticism and antisemitic double standards, are quietly pushed aside. What matters is the narrative that Jews are redefining antisemitism in order to avoid scrutiny and to suppress dissenting views.

Once that frame is in place, the structure is identical for both the Left and the Right. First, minimize or relativize the underlying act: insist that the crime was exaggerated, that the facts are unclear, that what happened on October 7 was just another episode in an ongoing conflict, that a blood libel is just a “controversial interpretation of history,” that shouting slurs at a Jew in public is “one dumb mistake” unworthy of consequences. Second, accuse Jews of overreacting and of trying to relabel a political dispute as bigotry. Third, describe institutional or social pushback as censorship and persecution. At that point, the target audience is no longer thinking about what was done to Jews; they are thinking about what Jews supposedly do to others.

The result is a backlash that is especially powerful for a certain minority of people. These are not the committed neo-Nazis or the most extreme ideologues. They are the ones who already half-believe that Jews are influential and oversensitive, but who also think of themselves as fair-minded. When they are bombarded with stories that combine an antisemitic incident, visible Jewish anger, and a narrative of “weaponized antisemitism,” it confirms their suspicions. They come away less inclined to take future antisemitism seriously, more likely to resent Jews for “crying wolf,” and more open to the very stereotypes that these stories were supposedly exposing.

This is a vector for antisemitism that our society has no real defense against. Traditional methods – public shaming, strong institutional statements, educational campaigns – all feed the mechanism rather than weaken it. Silence is harmful; speaking out is twisted into evidence of Jewish overreach. Institutions that respond appropriately are accused of capitulating to “Jewish pressure.” The more antisemitism rises, the stronger the backlash narrative becomes, because every genuine case becomes raw material for the story that Jews are exaggerating.

That's why we see October 7 denial, why people claim Israeli prisoners of Hamas were treated well and even thanked them, why shouting out in public "Fuck the Jews!" is recategorized as a freedom of speech issue. When the crime is minimized, the reactions can be spun as excessive.

If this logic continues to spread, it will become one of the most effective amplifiers of antisemitism in the digital age: a system in which every act of hatred carries within it the blueprint for its own justification, and in which condemnation becomes the gasoline rather than the extinguisher.

Unless we acknowledge this mechanism and find ways to disrupt it, we will continue to lose ground not because antisemitism is growing more sophisticated, but because it is learning to use our own moral intuitions against us.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Philosophical Core of Anti-Zionism Is Antisemitism

We’re told over and over again that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. It’s just politics, we’re told; it is opposition to one state’s policies, not a judgment about Jews as Jews. In fact, calling it antisemitism is a form of censorship, a way to silence a legitimate political opinion.

On the surface, this claim seems plausible. People criticize countries all the time. Saying “I oppose China’s treatment of Uighurs” doesn’t mean you hate Chinese people. So why should opposing Israel mean you hate Jews?

The strongest rebuttal so far has been that anti-Zionism denies the Jewish right to self-determination. But the anti-Zionists answer that by saying that most Jews don’t live in Israel and are happy citizens of other countries. They don’t need national self-determination. That’s just a Zionist ideology, not a universal Jewish claim, and opposing Israel's existence as a Jewish state is therefore a moral political opinion and Zionism is an illegitimate form of Jewish supremacy.

And there the argument usually ends. One side says Jews deserve a state; the other says Jews have no such right and in fact their desire for a state in the Levant is colonialist. It sounds like a disagreement about values, with two legitimate opinions. And if they are both legitimate opinions, then the anti-Zionist side wins by default, because antisemitism is illegitimate but political opinion isn't. Being anti-Zionist cannot be considered truly antisemitic - perhaps some extremists are, maybe Hamas is, but opposing Israel has nothing to do with Jews as Jews and therefore is fine.

Until you dig deeper.

I’ve been developing a new method of analysis called Derechology. It begins with a basic principle: everyone has a derech — a consistent moral path. Even when someone’s statements or actions seem contradictory, their derech is usually more coherent than it appears. Contradictions only appear that way because we haven’t yet uncovered the deeper assumption that holds their worldview together.

Which brings us to Professor Ramsi Woodcock.

Woodcock is a law professor at the University of Kentucky. In late 2025, he was suspended after publicly calling for every country in the world to make war on Israel — not metaphorically, but literally — until Israel surrendered unconditionally to Palestinian rule over the entire land from the river to the sea.

He defended this position:

He said his calls for military intervention against Israel, and his views that the future of Palestine should be determined by Palestinians alone – including Jews who lived in Palestine before large-scale Jewish immigration began in the late 19th century – are consistent with recognizing Israel as a colonial project. Woodcock, who is part Algerian, often refers to that country’s experience of ending French colonial rule as a basis for his argument.

He supports Palestinian nationalism while condemning Jewish nationalism as illegitimate. In his view, Jews who lived in the land before Zionism could be considered Palestinians and equal citizens, but everyone else - including Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab countries and their descendants - are foreign colonizers.

At first glance, this seems like hypocrisy. Why is Palestinian nationalism considered noble, but Jewish nationalism a crime? Why does he support decolonization in one case and not the other? Why does he say that Jews whose families arrived 140 years ago should be subject to a referendum by Arabs but Arabs whose ancestors immigrated to Palestine in the early 20th century are fully Palestinian and have the right to stay?

If we assume his derech is internally consistent, there must be a hidden assumption that resolves the contradiction.

That assumption is this: Jews are not a people.

Jews are merely a religious group. They are not a nation, not an indigenous group. Just a religion. They are merely a group of individuals who have no collective claim to history, land, memory, or destiny.

If you believe that, then Zionism isn’t a form of national liberation. It’s a fraud - a manipulation of categories. There is no “Jewish people” in the national sense, so any attempt to behave like one is inherently illegitimate.

That is Ramsi Woodcock's philosophy. If you ask him if there is a Jewish people, he will have to claim there isn't - because he is a professor who has thought deeply about this and has made anti-Zionism the centerpiece of his identity. The very first word on his personal webpage is "Antizionist."

But if you think about it, this is the underlying philosophy behind all of today's anti-Zionism. Arab media denies Jewish peoplehood explicitly, claiming that Jews are really Khazars with no history in the land to begin with; Palestinians routinely claim that all archaeological evidence of a Jewish people in the land is fake and that every Jewish shrine is really Muslim.

The idea that Jews aren't a people is a fundamental, load bearing premise behind anti-Zionist philosophy. The only way people can believe that Jews have no national rights is if they believe there is no Jewish nation to begin with.

Once you accept the anti-Zionist premise that Jews are not a people, a whole new moral framework emerges. Any Jewish effort to act collectively as a people - even outside Israel - becomes suspect. Jewish summer camp becomes indoctrination. Singing “Am Yisrael Chai” becomes a supremacist chant. Prayers that speak of “Your people Israel” become racist. Chanting "Next Year in Jerusalem" at the Passover Seder is colonialist aggression.

This isn’t an accidental side effect of anti-Zionism. It is the logical structure beneath it, and it is the logical result of following its philosophy. You can’t consistently oppose Jewish nationalism while affirming other forms of nationalism - unless you believe Jews are not a people.

Which means that all consistent anti-Zionism is built on the denial of Jewish peoplehood. Woodcock is not an outlier. He is just saying explicitly what anti-Zionists must believe if they are consistent.

And that’s antisemitism.

It isn't mere criticism of a government. Anti-Zionism erases the Jewish right to exist as a collective - as a “we” - not just in Israel but anywhere.

And when that erasure is dressed up as progressive, anti-colonial, or humanitarian, it becomes even harder to detect - and even more important to expose.

Denying Jewish peoplehood is at the very core of anti-Zionism. If Jews are a people, the entire argument against Israel falls apart. And until anti-Zionism emerged, no one in the world denied that Jews are a people. That denial is a recent invention - a retrofitted premise created to justify a political conclusion.

It is easily possible to criticize Israel and not be antisemitic. But it is structurally impossible to be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic.

Once you realize this, the landscape changes. Anti-Zionism isn’t merely entangled with antisemitism. It doesn’t simply echo older tropes.

Anti-Zionism is antisemitic by definition.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

11/13 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The mainstreaming of Jew-hatred Benny Morris: Anti-Israel Demonstrators Don't See Hamas for What It Is; Literal Blood Libels and the Modern University

From Ian:

Dermer: "I Could Not Be More Confident in the Jewish Future"

Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, who served for 8 years as Israel's ambassador to the U.S., resigned from the government on Tuesday after nearly three years in office.

In a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu, Dermer wrote:
"On the day I was sworn in as a minister, I promised my family I would serve only two years in that position. I extended my tenure twice with their blessing - first to work with you to remove the existential threat posed by Iran's military nuclear capability and second to end the war in Gaza on Israel's terms and bring our hostages home."

"October 7th was indeed the darkest day the Jewish people have known since Israel was established. But the story of our ancient people...has been defined by our perseverance in overcoming the darkness."

"That has been the story of Israel since October 7th. We rejected moral equivocation and fear to confront our enemies with clarity and courage. Two years later, we have dealt a devastating blow to Iran's terror axis."

"One hundred generations of Jews dreamed of living at a time when there would be a sovereign Jewish state. Four generations have had the privilege of realizing that dream."

"With that privilege comes a sacred responsibility: To secure that dream for future generations. I feel eternally blessed to have had the privilege of serving the State of Israel and devoting myself to that sacred responsibility."

"I could not be more confident in the [Jewish] future. Many enemies who reveled in the evil perpetrated on October 7th and vowed to extinguish the flame of Israel have been eliminated, while the light of Israel burns bright across the region and around the world."

Melanie Phillips: The mainstreaming of Jew-hatred

Among the ethno-nationalists, there are also disturbing echoes of the Christian antisemitism that poisoned Europe for centuries. The view that Christian Zionism is a modern heresy is gaining traction among Protestants and Catholics alike, putting into reverse the hitherto ironclad support for Israel by America based upon the reverence for Hebrew scripture among evangelical Christians.

This has all led to a frightening convergence. Left-wingers blame the Jews for capitalism. Right-wingers blame the Jews for liberalism and for denying the divinity of Jesus. Islamists blame the Jews for all the evils of the world. So left, right and Islamists are all now linked to each other by loathing of the Jews.

Alarming as this is in itself, the consequences for politics are likely to be seismic.

America’s Democrats and Britain’s Corbynite hard-left both turn off mainstream voters who reject their extremism. In parallel, if the Republicans are identified with white-nationalist conspiracy theorists, they will also lose great swathes of the public.

However, these extremes of both left and right now have significant and growing traction. In Britain, Corbyn’s hard-left, the ultra-left Greens and the Islamists represent a huge body of feeling that is anti-Israel and anti-West.

Competing with Labour for the same constituency, they will all damage each other. In theory, that would benefit the conservative side of politics. But that grouping is itself divided between the populist insurgency Reform and the Conservative party.

The likely outcome, said the astute political philosopher John Gray in London this week, will be a seven-party split. Reform may emerge as the biggest party in this fragmented chaos, but radical leftists and Islamists will be greatly empowered.

In America, said Gray, after Trump leaves office, the forces of ethno-nationalist radical populism are likely to become even stronger.

At the same time, Mamdani has laid down a blueprint for a merging of radical progressivism and Islamism. That alliance of extremes will damage Democrats and benefit Republicans. But if Republicans are divided between mainstream conservatives and radical populists, they will destroy themselves.

More balefully still, this Zoomer generation—having never been taught the history of the worst that humanity has done to itself—is so profoundly alienated from a liberal democratic culture they believe has badly failed and comprehensively lied about it that they see nothing wrong with authoritarianism and fascism.

The political consensus over reason and morality disintegrated when the left adopted Palestinianism as its cause of causes and turned exterminatory Jew-hatred into a badge of conscience.

That, in turn, lifted the constraints against antisemitism that had previously existed on the right. Antisemitism has exploded on the right because the left gave it permission. In other words, the old guardrails against Jew-hatred have disappeared.

Ideological capture—making impermissible any challenges to the dogma of Palestinianism, identity politics or other “progressive” causes—has turned left-wing views into a hermetically sealed thought system. But on the right, there’s been a parallel retreat from rationality and truth.

Gray says that if politicians continue to fail and thus alienate the public still further, the West could be looking at the rise of real fascism or authoritarianism within a decade.

None of this portends well for the Jews of America and Britain.

The way to respond is to fight like hell: to fight to destroy the progressive ideologies that have hollowed out Western civilization; to fight to turn back the tide of Islamization; and to fight to reconnect Christianity to its Jewish parent by affirming, promoting and celebrating the historic, biblically based identity and culture of America and the West.

Benny Morris: Anti-Israel Demonstrators Don't See Hamas for What It Is

Muslims - whether born in the U.S. or Europe or recently arrived - have been at the forefront of the demonstrations chanting "Death to Israel," "Death to the West," and, occasionally, "Death to the Jews." In many European cities, Muslims feel empowered and, with their growing numbers, are able to cow politicians.

After Hitler's destruction of European Jewry, for a time antisemitism became politically taboo in Western Europe and the U.S. But by the 2020s, the memory and impact of the Holocaust had faded and the Gaza war witnessed a convergence of Western and Muslim antisemitism. Old-style Muslim antisemitism now washed across Europe, persuading ignorant Europeans that their fathers' antisemitism had actually been legitimate.

Anti-Israel sentiment is encouraged by the way the country has constantly been depicted in the Western media. Almost all that the West's largely ignorant young people see and know are images of dead and wounded Arab babies and women - never of jihadi fighters. They know nothing about the Arab terrorism that stalked the Zionist effort to settle in the Jews' ancient patrimony.

They know nothing about the wars Palestinians and Arab states have waged against the Jewish state, nor do they know that the Palestinians consistently rejected the periodic peace offers made by the Zionists/Israel and the international community for a two-state compromise. These young people are probably even unaware of the treaties Israel signed with Egypt and Jordan, to those countries' mutual satisfaction.

Hamas are close cousins of ISIS and though they have had the public relations smarts not to broadcast the slitting of hostages' throats, they have been just as murderous. Hamas kindergartens and schools in Gaza systematically inculcated hatred of Jews and Israel, in line with Hamas's foundational charter of 1988. So the mass slaughter of Israelis by Hamas on 7 October, with its accompanying rapes and beheadings, was prophesied by Hamas documents and ideology long before any blood was actually shed on that day.

Why the keffiyeh-wearing Christian students and professors marching through America's campuses and Europe's capitals don't recognize Hamas's homophobia, misogyny, totalitarianism, and their anti-Christian/anti-Western core beliefs is beyond comprehension. But somehow the demonstrators don't see Hamas for what it is.

11/13 Links Pt1: Body of Meny Godard, 73, returned from Gaza; Erin Molan interviews PM Benjamin Netanyahu; The Cease-Fire and Israeli Sovereignty; In the Israel-Hamas War, International Law Favors the Lawless

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The Cease-Fire and Israeli Sovereignty

Some of the questions around the U.S. role in the cease-fire seemed designed to pick a fight. It was suggested that perhaps Israel was being put in the role of a “vassal” state. Netanyahu had a good response to this: “One week they say that Israel controls the United States. A week later, they say the United States controls Israel.”

Still, questions persisted. An Israeli official complained to the Times of Israel that at Kiryat Gat, the headquarters of the stabilization team, Israel was playing second fiddle, and that Israeli agencies were relegated to “contractor” roles.

Former Ambassador to the U..S Michael Oren expressed similar concerns. He acknowledged that the Israeli military rarely has full freedom of action and that most wars end when the U.S. tells Israel to stop fighting. Still, Oren wrote, “there is a huge difference between receiving an order to stop fighting and the need to receive approval every time we must act. This is the situation today when there are 200 American soldiers in Kiryat Gat and American drones are flying over Gaza.”

Fortunately, Oren says, President Trump knows Israel needs to be able to respond to Hamas’s violations. I would add that Trump has been careful not to ask Israel to do anything that would grant Hamas a loophole around its obligations under the deal. Also, while some fret over the presence of troops from European (read: unfriendly) countries, for now it appears those countries’ leaders are following Trump’s lead consciously and carefully.

The question, then, is less about Trump and the near future than about the post-Trump future. The U.S. isn’t seeking a forever force in Gaza, but no rebuilding mission takes exactly as long as it is budgeted for. Further, any extension—which is likely—of a peacekeeping force will give it an air of semi-permanence, and it will act accordingly.

Trump has positioned himself as the indispensable man of the Gaza cease-fire. On balance, that is surely preferable to the alternatives. But there’s a clock on his presidency and a competition to succeed him that will ensure the “sovereignty” question remains near the front of Israeli minds.

In the Israel-Hamas War, International Law Favors the Lawless

The rules of war were created for a world that no longer exists. They were designed to regulate conflicts between states - actors with borders, uniforms, and at least a minimal respect for order. The Geneva Conventions assumed reciprocity: that both sides would follow the same moral code, even during armed conflict. But what happens when one side rejects those norms entirely? What happens when the law begins protecting those who operate outside it?

The war between Israel and Hamas exposes that contradiction with brutal clarity. On Oct. 8, 2023, Israel did something unprecedented: it declared a formal state of war - not against another nation, but against a terrorist movement. Hamas is not a resistance movement or a political party, but a death cult that massacres civilians, hides behind them, and celebrates it. Yet in the eyes of international law, Hamas remains entitled to protections it has never earned.

That legal fiction has become the foundation of a moral farce. Hamas livestreams atrocities and then hides in hospitals, knowing that each civilian death it engineers will be tallied against Israel in global opinion and international courts. This isn't war - it's lawfare, the weaponization of humanitarian norms to discredit liberal democracies and shield those who commit war crimes.

The International Criminal Court's decision in 2024 to issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders alongside Hamas commanders marked the collapse of legal neutrality. To equate a liberal democracy defending its citizens with a jihadist organization dedicated to genocide is not impartial justice - it is ideological jurisprudence.

The law's neutrality, meant to ensure fairness, now serves those who reject fairness altogether. The result is a grotesque inversion: liberal democracies are treated as war criminals for defending themselves, while regimes and militias that glorify mass murder are treated as legitimate political actors.

If international law can no longer distinguish between those who uphold it and those who annihilate it, then it ceases to be law at all. The challenge of our time is to rescue the law from those who would use it to destroy the very civilization that created it. A world where the law protects the lawless is not a world governed by justice - and democracies will not survive long in it.

Khaled Abu Toameh: How Hamas Is Planning to Deceive the Trump Administration

Hamas lied to President Trump when it said it had accepted his plan for ending its war against Israel. It was simply trying to buy time to reassert control over Gaza and prepare for more attacks against Israel. Now it is arguing that it needs to engage in negotiations about the implementation of most parts of the Trump plan.

Since the ceasefire in Gaza went into effect in early October, Hamas officials have repeatedly emphasized that they did not accept all the points mentioned in the Trump plan. According to these officials, Hamas only agreed to the first phase of the Trump plan, which calls for Israel to suspend military operations and release Palestinian prisoners, and for Hamas to return all Israeli hostages, dead and alive, within 72 hours. It has been weeks, and Hamas has not yet fulfilled that phase-one obligation.

What about the part in the Trump plan that talks about the demilitarization of Gaza and the deployment of an "International Stabilization Force" as a "long-term security solution?" Hamas insists that these issues are "up for negotiation" but that it never agreed to demilitarization or the presence of international experts and security forces in Gaza. Hamas official Osama Hamdan affirmed on Nov. 10 that "What we signed was related to the first phase of the plan, the remaining phases are up for negotiations and discussions."

For Hamas, the longer the negotiations continue, the better. Those who are familiar with Hamas's way of handling things know that such negotiations, if and when they start, could last for months or years. Hamas will likely try to drag out negotiations until the Trump administration is replaced by another that Hamas hopes will be less interested in Gaza.

Hamas is not serious about laying down its weapons or relinquishing control over Gaza. For Hamas, the Trump plan is nothing but a temporary ceasefire that would enable it to get back on its feet to rule Gaza again, and resume its Jihad (holy war) to destroy Israel.

Death Penalty For Terrorists Gains 100% Support If Also Applied To 'Influencers' (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook and Substack pages.

Jerusalem, November 13 - The drive to make capital punishment mandatory for anyone convicted of terroristic murder picked up significant advancement today with the discovery that every lawmaker will vote for such a bill, provided that the same capital punishment applies to those who attempt to make a career out of a social media presence, political analysts observed today.

A nascent legislative proposal still in development, born of an Israeli public no longer hesitant to take all necessary deterrence measures in the wake of October 7, calls for anyone found guilty of murder with terrorist motives to be put to death. Pubic opinion has long remained split on the merits and drawbacks of capital punishment; the recent urge in support for it, however unprecedented, still did not reach a level that could guarantee passage of a law mandating the death penalty even for mass murderers - until this week, when pollsters noticed that support for the death penalty reached effective unanimity when the proposal included executing "influencers."

Even legislators traditionally opposed to capital punishment on either political or ideological grounds shifted position. "Our established concern involves the protection of Palestinian lives," explained MK Ayman Odeh. "We naturally fear that the death penalty will be used in discriminatory ways, and fundamentally disagree with the characterization of Palestinian resistance to occupation as 'terrorism.' But if it means getting rid of the scourge that is social media influencers..." he trailed off.

Israel has employed the death penalty exactly once: in 1962, the courts convicted Holocaust engineer Adolf Eichmann and hanged him. While the penalty remains, technically, on the books, and is available as a sentence, judges have never imposed it on any other convict, no matter how heinous their crimes. However, to put to an end the incentive to kidnap Israelis in order to leverage them to free imprisoned terrorists, the new push for capital punishment has found more receptive ears than ever before - and 99.89% of the voting public supports its use against terrorists even at the risk of "becoming like the killers" if it means eliminating influencers, a force far more pernicious to human society than suicide bombers, mass shooters, and rocket attacks.

Chinese and Qatari influence operations responded to the news with a burst of new content aimed at discrediting capital punishment in general, and the Israeli criminal justice system in particular. Al Jazeera ran a segment critical of the proposal and highlighting the problems inherent in administering capital punishment, followed by gleeful reportage of Qatari and Iranian execution of dissidents.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

MIchigan antisemitic hate crimes skyrocketed in 2024 while anti-Muslim crimes plummeted

Michigan has a hate crime dashboard. While most hate crimes are racial, the number of anti-religious hate crimes has been going up dramatically in recent year - and it is all because of the increase in antisemitic hate crimes.

Since COVID, the climb in antisemitic hate crimes has been dramatic. In 2023, there was a spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes as well, but then in 2024 there was a sharp divergence - the anti-Muslim hate crimes went way down while the anti-Jewish ones kept going up.

In 2024, anti-Jewish hate crimes were 60% of all anti-religious hate crimes in Michigan.

Michigan is an interesting case because it has a large Muslim population - about 240,000, double the Jewish population. This means that the average Jew in Michigan is about eight times more likely to be a hate crime victim than the average Muslim.

The types of crimes between the two groups are also quite different.

20 of the 77 anti-Jewish hate crimes were directed at destroying or damaging property - compared to zero of the anti-Muslim hate crimes. And six of the antisemitic crimes were for aggravated/felonious assault, again compared to zero for the anti-Muslim crimes. Meaning that antisemitism in Michigan is much more violent and much more directed to Jews as a group than anti-Muslim crimes.

The bottom line is that Jews in Michigan have to protect themselves - place locks and gates around synagogues, worry about being attacked for visible signs of religion - while Muslims are pretty free to walk around and worship without fear.

The media still pretends that "Islamophobia" and antisemitism are similar. They are not. They are quantitively and qualitatively different, and putting them in the same bucket is minimizing the real problem that Jews in America are increasingly vulnerable to attack.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)