Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 08, 2025

12/08 Links Pt2: Unapologetic American Jewry Is the Future; F grades handed to 14 colleges in antisemitism ‘report card’ as Jewish students forced to hide identities

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Unapologetic American Jewry Is the Future

So what’s the dog that didn’t bark? That would be the legion of personalities connected to the UJA who ignored the haters and celebrated the gala and refused to consider a groveling apology in the days after the event. No apology was necessary or even appropriate, of course. But it is crucial that the organized Jewish community recognizes this.

Meanwhile Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president and a scion of the Labor left, was in New York last night and delivered an equally unapologetic speech to Yeshiva University.

In New York City, Herzog said, “We see the rise of a new mayor-elect who makes no effort to conceal his contempt for the Jewish democratic state of Israel, the only nation state of the Jewish people.”

Notice the word “Jewish” twice in that one sentence. The attempts by anti-Zionist groups to shame Jews into severing their history and heritage from their modern identity must fail.

Herzog slammed Mamdani’s justification for an anti-Semitic mob that descended on a Manhattan synagogue that was hosting an event about making aliyah. The incoming mayor had suggested the shul was facilitating the violation of international law by talking to prospective emigrants to a sovereign state. Herzog pulled no punches:

“Delegitimizing the Jewish people’s right to their ancient homeland and their age-old dream of Jerusalem legitimizes violence and undermines freedom of religion. This is both anti-Jewish and anti-American.”

Well said. Mamdani, let’s remember, is still vowing to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which would be a truly lawless act. Herzog and Netanyahu were once political rivals, but that could not possibly matter less at the moment. Herzog’s message to American Jewry was to be steadfast, unapologetic, and to be able to recognize those who seek its harm. That message is, thankfully, catching on.

Who You Gonna Call?

Amit Segal is having a moment. A longtime TV reporter for Israel’s Channel 12 and print journalist for Yediot Ahronot, the country’s most widely circulated newspaper, Segal burst into the English-speaking spotlight courtesy of multiple post–October 7 appearances on Dan Senor’s Call Me Back podcast, numerous op-eds in the Free Press, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere, and a popular Substack aimed at a foreign audience. He presents a cogent, witty, and likeable center-right perspective, often in friendly contrast to center-left sparring partners like Yediot’s Nadav Eyal, and he comes across as a happy warrior, a smiling avatar of mainstream, security-minded Israelis.

His latest book follows this blueprint, cheerfully but critically examining the history of leadership (and, at times, lack thereof) in the Israeli prime ministerial class. A Call at 4 AM is about some of the consequential choices of Israel’s premiers during the country’s eight-decade-long existence. “My aim,” Segal writes, “is to describe the political decisions that they made,” like the ones that helped create Israel’s byzantine electoral system under the guidance of its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. In seating the 120 members of their Knesset, Israelis elect by party, not geography, a method used by Slovakia and the Netherlands and no other land on earth. And so, in Israel, Segal contends, “the movement is more important than the man; the party more important than the individual.”

Segal calculates that Israel, in its first 72 years, wasted more than 11 years on elections and coalition negotiations. The opportunity costs are no less steep. Had the 1969 elections been held on a regional basis, Ben-Gurion’s party would have won an astounding 103 seats. In 2020, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party would have secured 92 mandates. Equally striking is “the massive gulf between public opinion on matters of religion and state,” the result of the perpetual horse-trading created by Ben-Gurion.

Still, security questions dominate Israeli politics and have for half a century. The question that means the most to voters is this: “When the red telephone rings at 4:00 a.m., who should answer?” That notion, which provided Segal with his title, arguably originated with an actual 4:00 a.m. call on October 6, 1973, when Prime Minister Golda Meir belatedly came to realize a war was brewing. Her failure to act resulted in military and political disaster.

The prime beneficiary of Golda’s disaster was Menachem Begin, the long-suffering leader of Israel’s national camp, who overcame decades of electoral failure and finally secured the premiership in 1977. He cobbled together disparate center-right parties and appealed to the neglected Sephardi community, skillfully navigating what Segal calls the “multiple identities” possessed by all Israelis. Begin recognized that “internal contradictions do not always impede the creation of victorious political alliances; sometimes they are even a hallmark of them.”

David Collier: The Vermont Hate Crime Fantasy Sweeping the Nation

Who in the world wishes for a hate crime in their community? Apparently, Vermont elected officials do.

With no hate crime charge, no law enforcement or judicial finding of deliberate targeting, and no evidence establishing motive, Vermont U.S Senators Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch, and Representative Becca Balint used the two-year anniversary of the tragic shooting of three Palestinian students to tell Vermonters a divisive fiction – a story crafted to satisfy sectarian political appetites rather than to reflect the truth.

It is not a new pattern. In another era, during the Dreyfus Affair, French elites clung to a narrative too emotionally gratifying to question. The parallel is not the substance of the case but the psychology: when a story feels right, it becomes a story that must be true, no matter what the evidence says. The Shootings and the Race to Interpretation

On November 25, 2023, three college students were shot on a residential street in Burlington, VT – the largest city in America’s second-smallest state. The three, Hisham Awartani (Brown University), Kinnan Abdalhamid (Haverford College) and Tahseen Ali Ahmad (Trinity College) were visiting during their Thanksgiving breaks.

Two are U.S citizens and one a legal resident. All three are of Palestinian heritage. Two of the victims were wearing keffiyeh (the headdress associated with Arab Palestinian nationalism since it was adopted during the Arab Revolt in the 1930s). All three were wounded; Awartani was the worst-injured – according to his family, a bullet lodged in his spine left him paralyzed from the chest down.

Local CBS affiliate WCAX-TV was the first to report that the victims of this tragic shooting were Palestinian – a detail initially unsupported and unattributed, but later confirmed by police.

The anti-Israel movement weaponised the tragedy instantly. Neighbours targeted local Jews online, joking that their whereabouts at the time of the shooting should be investigated.

12/08 Links Pt1: ‘International Law’ Isn’t Real; Israel must refuse phase two of Trump’s Gaza plan until Hamas is fully disarmed; Gaza Fatality Analysis: The Truth Behind the 70,000 Number

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Israel must refuse phase two of Trump’s Gaza plan until Hamas is fully disarmed

The problems, of course, are that Hamas is refusing to disarm, the PA has indeed not reformed from its path (particularly its pay-for-slay policy of financing the families of terrorists), and, as pointed out last week, Hamas is still holding onto the body of slain policeman Ran Gvili.

Trump is banking on all of the parties being on board, including the immediate surrounding countries, the states making up the ISF, and, of course, Israel.

The pressure on Israel is already beginning to mount. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani agreed that there really is no ceasefire in Gaza, and put the onus on Israel.

“A ceasefire cannot be completed unless there is a full withdrawal of the Israeli forces; [until] there is stability back in Gaza, people can go in and out, which is not the case today,” he said on Saturday at the Doha Forum.

Saudi minister Manal Radwan said at the same forum that it’s not the PA but Israel that needs reform.

“We have an Israeli government that opposes the two-state solution. We have an Israeli government that has officials continuously inciting against Palestinians, against Arabs, and against Muslims,” said Radwan. “We don’t see that we have a partner for peace, not even a partner for a sustainable ceasefire. So that is the actual and important reform that we are hoping to see.”

The question now is whether Trump will stick to the 20-point plan and insist on the disarmament of Hamas, or if he will join the ISF partners, like Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who told the forum that disarming Hamas only needs to take place once there is a governance body set up in Gaza.

That’s why Israel must be more vigilant than ever and demand that Hamas be disarmed at the outset of Phase 2 of the ceasefire. The pressure from the Arab partners on the deal is one thing, but with Trump intent on seeing his deal work, he’s likely to join in the pressure on Israel to compromise.

That’s something we cannot do. Others may see the rebuilding of Gaza and the “peace” trophy in the Middle East as the most urgent items on the agenda. For Israel, however, the safeguarding of its borders and removing the Hamas threat, once and for all, is the overarching goal.

Regardless of the pressure, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must defy his closest ally in Washington and insist that the second phase commences with Hamas disarming and no longer posing a threat to Israel.

Gaza Fatality Analysis: The Truth Behind the 70,000 Number

Conclusion
This analysis points to a grounded estimate of 61,125 war-related deaths due to IDF action: approximately 25,000 combatants and 36,125 civilians (plus the 4,000 deaths caused by Hamas and internal actors). Civilian casualties are tragic, and the large number of minors killed cannot be dismissed; however, they overwhelmingly result from Hamas’s human-shield strategy, in which military assets are deliberately embedded where civilians are present, and in which civilian deaths are viewed by Hamas leadership as beneficial to its aims.

A civilian-to-combatant ratio of 1.45 to 1 is remarkably low by the standards of modern urban warfare in Iraq or Afghanistan, and it demonstrates that the IDF conducted a highly targeted campaign against Hamas under extraordinarily difficult conditions. Claims that large numbers of civilian deaths remain unreported do not withstand scrutiny: families had over two years to report fatalities, even without a body, and numerous “rubble” deaths are already known to have been added through the MoH’s notification process.

The evidence shows that Hamas’s headline fatality toll is a distortion. The true picture is of a war in which Israel inflicted massive losses on Hamas’ fighters while carrying out one of the most targeted urban campaigns in modern military history.

More People Died in 1 Month in One City in Sudan Than in Entire Gaza War

So what’s different in the coverage?
1. The media reports on it, but doesn’t make it the lead, doesn’t push the story constantly and treats it as something happening ‘over there’ the way it does most foreign wars. This is very different than the coverage of Israel where even the most minor confrontation, like clashes between Jewish farmers and Muslim/leftist activists in which no one is hurt, somehow become major stories.
2. The reporting doesn’t directly clarify the players in a way that’s easily understandable. That’s opposed to the media’s constant denunciations of Israel. Who is the RSF? Most people don’t know or care. Tell them that the RSF is really an Arab Islamic militia known as the ‘Janjaweed’ and that it’s backed by Muslim countries and they might have more clarity. Which is why the media tends to bury that part. Especially the Muslim racism.
3. Leftist activist groups haven’t taken up the cause, so there are no protests, little in the way of social media posts, little conversation. Whatever conversation there isn’t amplified by the media in the same vicious cycle that saw Gaza take over everything in 2024.

Neither Muslims nor the Left are especially interested in discussing the topic. Some genuine human rights activists care, but they’re not going to get any traction.

And that’s why real Islamic genocides get ignored, whether in Sudan or Nigeria, while any self-defense against Islam, such as by Israel, America or India, are falsely labeled as genocide by the actual Muslim genociders.

We know why this happens. And we can see it happening again. It’s not about the genocide, it’s about the propaganda.

As I continue refining the Derechology framework, I keep uncovering deeper layers of the Jewish mindset that shaped it. One of them is that Jewish thinking has always been keenly aware that there are others who will want to actively attack it, and it built in safeguards to minimize the threats - not just of physical but also of spiritual and intellectual extinction.

Most of the moral philosophies we study today, whether in university ethics courses or in public debate, were built in times of relative comfort. Greek philosophy took shape in the stability of Athenian academies. Christian theology was forged and systematized under imperial protection. Enlightenment ethics emerged from coffee houses and salons among elites who only had contact with other elites.

They all had their insights on philosophy, but they all shared one assumption: that society was more or less stable, that truth could be discussed in good faith, and that moral reasoning happened between equals.

Judaism never had this luxury.

Jewish moral thought was not forged in peace. It was given to a people who suffered under slavery, refined in exile, preserved under threat, and tested in nearly every form of institutional, rhetorical, and physical hostility imaginable. From Egypt to Babylon, from Rome to Inquisition, from Crusades to Cossacks to concentration camps, Jewish communities were almost never the dominant voice in their societies, and they knew that their values could be misunderstood, misrepresented, or used against them. Jewish ethics and philosophy is not simply about being good. It’s about surviving in a world that often punishes goodness, distorts truth, and rewards those who shout the loudest.

In that sense, Judaism is not merely a moral tradition. It is a moral survival system. That’s what makes it so urgently relevant right now.

Today, we are all minorities. There is no nation, religion or ethnic group that predominate the world. We now all face what Jews always faced: misrepresentation, precarity, and the moral burden of visibility. No one has the luxury any more of assuming that their ideas and ideals are universal, and no values can be taken for granted anymore as if they are universally accepted. We have been moving - slowly, and now suddenly - into the very conditions Judaism was built to endure.

Trust is breaking down. Institutions are faltering. Truth itself is under attack, not by one dictator or ideology, but by the very structure of our media and digital ecosystems. Media platforms incentivize distortion. Deceptive persuasion and propaganda techniques are the norm, not the exception. And the people tasked with navigating this new information ecosystem, whether journalists, teachers, politicians, parents, are increasingly defenseless.

Judaism is not.

One of the most profound instincts baked into Jewish ethics as a direct result of always being in the minority is the awareness that your actions, especially in public, carry weight far beyond yourself. This is the concept of Chilul Hashem - the desecration of God’s name - which is centered on public moral responsibility. When you are visibly associated with a people or a moral system, your actions reflect on your entire people and that entire system.

For Jews in exile, this was a survival issue. If a merchant cheated, it wasn’t just a scandal - it could invite a pogrom. If a rabbi spoke recklessly, it could damage the credibility of Torah itself. One person’s pride could cost many lives. So Jewish tradition insisted: behave in a way that sanctifies, not desecrates. This is not an exercise in public relations but of survival itself. In a world that increasingly misinterprets and weaponizes every visible act, this is not just a Jewish value. It’s a necessary ethic for our time.

The legal system was designed with sabotage in mind. The category of eidim zomemim - false collaborating witnesses - didn’t just punish liars. It punished coordinated attempts to weaponize testimony itself, conspiracies to attack the innocent. The Torah requires an unusually high standard of proof for convicting such conspirators, demanding that their lie be exposed by placing them in a location where they could not have witnessed the event. This careful design shows that Jewish law didn’t assume good faith by default. It assumed that truth could be targeted, manipulated, and used as a tool of oppression, and it responded by building defensive layers that could detect, expose, and deter systemic falsehood.

Even timekeeping had to defend itself. The Jewish calendar depends on accurate witnesses announcing the appearance of the new moon, and in ancient times, a decentralized system of signal fires on mountaintops transmitted the news rapidly across the land. But when sectarian groups began lighting false fires to confuse the public, the rabbis shut the system down. They replaced it with a slower, verifiable system using messengers and testimony. In doing so, they sacrificed speed for integrity. The episode reveals a core instinct of Jewish thinking: when truth is under attack, the system must adapt to avoid collapse. It’s better to be slow and trustworthy than fast and compromised.

Closely linked to this is the Jewish suspicion, almost an allergy, toward charismatic leadership. In hostile environments, false messiahs are dangerous. Judaism has had its share: populists who rise up, who promise certainty, triumph, clarity, glory. Every one of them made things worse. So over centuries, the tradition developed an anti-charisma bias. Real leaders were not the ones who sought honor, but those imbued with humility. And as the Talmud teaches, “Whoever runs from honor, honor pursues them.”

Jewish leadership is designed not to dazzle, but to serve. Moses, the greatest leader of them all, described himself as "slow of speech" and is described as a stutterer. David wept publicly and repented. The Jewish scriptures are filled with stories of leaders who fall short. The rabbinic leaders during exile earned their authority through restraint, responsibility, and a willingness to be correct themselves when wrong.

In Jewish political thinking, leadership is never supposed to be about self-expression. It’s about shlichut, mission. Leaders are not picked because they want to be followed. They are chosen because a task needs doing, and they have the tools to do it. The moment it becomes about status or honor, it becomes dangerous. This is not only about the importance of humility, but it is itself a defense mechanism. Ego corrodes clarity, and in high-stakes, adversarial environments, clarity is essential to know what must be done.

This defensive posture is part of a larger pattern in Jewish ethics. It distributes wisdom rather than centralizes it. The Talmud is not a chain of command but a network of dialogue - structured disagreement, recursive correction, and preserved pluralism. No single voice owns the truth. No single authority can crash the system. That decentralized architecture is what allowed Jewish moral thinking to survive the loss of prophets, the fall of the Temple, the fragmentation of communities across continents. When empires fell, the Jews kept learning. When rulers banned Jewish books, the oral tradition remained. This was resilience through redundancy and security through humility.

Judaism also built in a theory of moral repair. Teshuvah is not just forgiveness: it is the formal recognition that systems break, that people fail, that priorities drift. And that these facts are not exceptions: they’re expected. So the tradition doesn’t collapse when humans or institutions fall short. It rebuilds and adapts. Jewish thinking doesn’t seek moral perfection. It seeks derech—a consistent direction, a return path. And that makes it one of the only traditions whose moral identity is not in being flawless, but in being corrigible.

Humility in Judaism isn’t just an emotional attitude or a simple value among many. It’s epistemic scaffolding. Humility allows for mistakes, protects against demagogues, and creates room for slow wisdom. It prevents ethics from turning into ideology, and ideology from hardening into violence.

Of course, Judaism is not purely defensive. It rewards morality, clarity, and community, all of which actively preserve the system and allows flexibility and pluralism that can bend but not break under pressure.

All of this matters because we are already in a world that resembles the one Jews always lived in - a world where truth can be twisted, systems can turn, and mobs can form from a single careless word. Acting with integrity in public may cost you. No one can afford to assume their good intentions will be fairly interpreted. In this world, we don’t just need ethics. We need and entire ethical infrastructure - structures built to handle pressure, ambiguity, distortion, betrayal.

Judaism built them. It had to.

Western moral philosophy assumed good faith. Jewish moral philosophy prepared for its absence.

And so a system that may have once seemed parochial, ancient, and irrelevant is now beginning to look like a prototype for us all. we all need to adopt the lessons from a system designed for survival under siege. And what allowed Jews to survive may now be what helps civilization itself to endure. We are all living in a world Judaism was built to endure. And the wisdom that allowed Jews to survive may now be what helps civilization endure.

In the end, Judaism wasn’t optimized for dominance. It was optimized for dignity under fire. And in an age of accelerating chaos, that may be the most precious form of moral wisdom we have.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Antisemitism today: Mezuzahs torn from senior residents; UK football game suspended because of anti-Jewish insults, and more

Here are some recent news stories about antisemitism that you may have missed, all from the Canadian site TheJ.ca:

Football Match Abandoned After Antisemitic Abuse Targeted Jewish Team In England

London — A Southern League football match between the London Lions and Hitchin Town FC was abandoned after Hitchin players allegedly hurled antisemitic slurs at the largely Jewish London Lions team. According to club representatives and multiple eyewitness accounts, the abuse continued even after the referee intervened, forcing the official to stop the match.

Witnesses say Hitchin players directed insults, including “big-nosed c***s” at their opponents. Match officials temporarily halted play, but after the abuse continued, the referee abandoned the game.

According to those present, the referee confronted players on the pitch after hearing repeated slurs. Even with warnings issued, the verbal abuse continued. At that point, the official followed Football Association protocols for racist and discriminatory incidents and brought the match to an end.

Mezuzahs Torn From Doors In Toronto Seniors’ Building, Prompting Outrage And Fear Among Jewish Residents:

Jewish seniors living in a Toronto Seniors Housing Corporation building at 6250 Bathurst Street discovered that all of the mezuzahs affixed to their apartment doors had been torn off, in what city officials and Jewish community organizations are calling a targeted act of antisemitism. Toronto police have launched an investigation, and community advocates say the incident reflects a worsening climate for Jewish residents across the city.

Norwegian Jews Report Considering Emigration Amid Surge In Antisemitism

On Elpeleg, a prominent Jewish activist in Norway, has asserted that a majority of Norwegian Jews are now considering leaving the country, citing a sharp uptick in antisemitism and failures by political leaders and state media to curb the growing hostility. The claim, which will be aired in a televised debate on TV10, reflects deep concern within Norway’s small Jewish community over their safety and future in the country.

Brampton High School Display Sparks Concern Over Erasure Of Jewish History

A “Christmas in Palestine” display at Fletcher’s Meadow High School in Brampton is prompting concern from parents and community members, who say the exhibit erases the Jewish connection to the land where Jesus was born and presents historically inaccurate claims about the region’s name during the first century.

The display, titled Christmas in Palestine, includes posters referencing “Palestine” at the time of Jesus, Arabic signage, cultural descriptions, and material framed as historical context. One section asks, “What was Palestine called when Jesus was born?” and claims that the term “Palestine” was already in use during the period of Bethlehem and Nazareth.

Historians, however, state clearly that this is incorrect.

Things keep getting worse. And there is nothing at all on the horizon that Jews can look forward to that might turn the tide.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Face it - Jew-hatred is no longer a minus for politicians, as MJT says "they" force Congress to vote against antisemitism

Marjorie Taylor Greene is a poster child for how today's politicians no longer care about antisemitism, not even for lip service.

When she was considered a card-carrying MAGA member she gave her theory on Rothschild space beams causing California wildfires to clear way for a high speed rail project.

To their credit, the House GOP at the time voted to remove her from committees for her crazy conspiracy theories. Many, however, defended her. And now antisemitism is no longer considered a negative for politicians on the Right.

But the interesting thing is that now that she has emerged as a critic of Donald Trump, the Left is suddenly enamored of her. She was praised on The View, by Jimmy Kimmel, The Guardian and even some Democratic members of Congress.

But has she stopped her antisemitism? No, she's doubling down. In a 60 Minutes interview Sunday night, she told Lesley Stahl that voting against antisemitism was “an exercise” that “they force on Congress.”

Hmmm, who could "they" be?

The interview then went even more off the rails. When Stahl asked her whether she didn;'t feel that there was value in standing up in the "face of a growing problem, ” Greene replied, "“We don’t have to get on our knees and say it over and over again—”

“Get on our knees?” Stahl asked, surprised.

“Yes, we do not have to get on our knees,” Greene reiterated.

Then when Stahl said most members of Congress disagree with her, she associated the antisemitism bill with AIPAC: “Well, most members of Congress take donations from AIPAC, and I don’t,” Greene said.

So MJT proves yet again that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are two sides of the same coin.

But now that she is being celebrated for calling Gaza a "genocide," will any Democrats condemn her for her naked antisemitism on national TV?

We'll see. But if her previous antisemitic statements didn't give the progressives pause in embracing her positions on Israel, there is no reason to think that they will consider this interview problematic at all.

Today, partisanship wins over principle just about every time. An antisemitic politician can count on support from their own party.

And in such an environment, Jews are the ones who get victimized first.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/07 Links: The Seven Days that Shatter the ‘Nakba’ Myth; Our Man in Amman; Hamas chief rejects key points of Trump peace plan, calls for Israel’s destruction

From Ian:

David Collier: The Seven Days that Shatter the ‘Nakba’ Myth

In anti-Israel circles, the dominant narrative of the Palestinian ‘Nakba’ rests on a single, almost unchallenged assumption: That a passive and defenceless Arab population was suddenly overwhelmed by violent Jewish militias determined to expel them and seize their land. From this foundational myth flow all the modern accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide, repeated by governments, activists, and even the UN. This is the central pillar upon which the entire pro-Palestinian movement is built

Take this recent post from the UN Palestine account which ties all the different strands together:

But that story collapses the moment you look at what actually happened. Not decades later, not in later stages of the war, but in the very first seven days after the UN partition vote.

Using mostly Arab newspapers of the time, the record is unmistakable: within hours of the UN decision, Arab political factions, militias, and regional actors launched a campaign of violence and mobilisation aimed at preventing the creation of a Jewish state. The civil war that followed – and the refugee crisis it produced – emerged from this aggressive, openly-declared Arab rejectionism, not from a premeditated Jewish plan.

What follows is a look through that history, reconstructed day by day from contemporary Arab and Jewish press.

Day one – November 30 1947
Arab media reacts to partition with mobilisation and incitement.

The morning after the UN vote, neither Ad-Difa nor Al-Wahda reported the partition as a political event. Instead, both papers erupted with outrage and calls for Arab mobilisation across the region. The pages were saturated with threats, anti-Jewish invective, and demands for an ‘Islamic Front’ to rise.

Ad-Difa’s lead built explicitly toward violent resistance. Al-Wahda’s headline declared: “O Arabs, the West has chosen your enemies. Will you remain stunned, or will you prepare?”

There is no ambiguity here. Arab media was calling on the Arab people inside the Mandate area and across the region to mobilise.

Day two – 1 December 1947
Violence erupts across the country. The Palestine Post reported seven Jews murdered in multiple attacks on 30 November.

Arab newspapers themselves documented the killings. Look at Ad-Difa’s own front page on the same date. Ad-Difa was a staunchly Pan-Arab media outlet that was aligned with the Husayni, ‘Holy War’ factions in the mandate area. It eventually promoted open support for the Nazis. At the time, the paper was run by Ibrahim al-Shanti.

Its headline read: “23 Jews killed and wounded in 8 separate incidents in Haifa, Jaffa, Beit Ve-Gan, Sarona, and Jerusalem.”

The article described bus ambushes around Jerusalem, attacks in Lod, Tulkarm, Haifa and Jaffa, and other assaults on Jewish civilians.

The war had begun – and it had begun with Arab-initiated violence.

The scholars fueling the current wave of antisemitism

Former US President Bill Clinton understood this when then-Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat declared that Jerusalem had never been Jewish. Clinton threatened to walk out of the room at the Camp David Summit in July 2000 if Arafat continued uttering such false claims. He recognized the statement for what it was—the purest form of antisemitism.

What Clinton grasped instinctively, these intellectuals refuse to see: that the Jewish people and Israel are inseparable. To delegitimize Israel is to delegitimize Jews. That is why antisemites applaud efforts to weaken IHRA; it leaves them free to proclaim Israel a crime and Zionism a pathology.

Delrio’s initiative represents moral courage at a time when it is desperately needed. The Jewish scholars who oppose him, intentionally or not, provide cover for those who seek to dissolve the line between criticism and hatred, between debate and incitement.

These Jews do not understand that the Jewish people and Israel are the same. The stances expressed by King, Clinton and now Delrio are more Jewish than theirs.

History is watching. And today, as in the past, the refusal to name antisemitism is its most reliable accomplice.

Our Man in Amman

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown that was invented by the British and then funded by the Americans. Constantly lies the head of state who claims to protect the Palestinians while cooperating with the Mossad. Abdullah II is the fourth king of Jordan, the state that Winston Churchill lopped off the Palestine Mandate in 1921 with, he said, "the stroke of the pen one Sunday afternoon in Cairo." The plan, as proposed by Lawrence of Arabia in 1918, was to install the three sons of Hussein, the Sharif of Mecca, as the Hashemite emirs, Britain's proxies in the states it was carving out of Ottoman territory. Abdullah is the last Hashemite standing. He has a pronounced facial tic.

In 1951, the first Jordanian emir, Abdullah I, was shot to death at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque by a Palestinian terrorist. His son Talal lasted a year before being deposed on grounds of mental illness. But Talal's son Hussein saved his family. He saved Jordan too, notably by massacring Palestinians when they tried to overthrow him in 1970, then cutting them loose when the Palestinians in the West Bank rebelled against Israeli control in 1988. Abdullah II inherited the poisoned chalice after his father's death in 1999.

The Most American King, by the journalist Aaron Magid, is the first biography of Abdullah, who will probably still be king by the time your copy arrives. Deeply researched with plenty of interviews, it is both a groundbreaking primer on our man in Amman and a study in timeless imperial politics. Take away the helicopters and Swiss bank accounts, and the Hashemites' relationship to the United States is no different from that of the ancient Moabite and Edomite satraps to their Hittite, Assyrian, or Neo-Babylonian emperors.

The British invented Jordan, but the Americans took over after the Suez Crisis of 1956. Abdullah's mother was the daughter of a British military adviser; she may have met Hussein on the set of Lawrence of Arabia, where she was a typist and he was catching up on some family history. Abdullah was educated at an English boarding school, Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts for high school, and then Sandhurst for officer training, despite not being a British subject. He then read international relations at the University of Oxford despite, a contemporary tells Magid, having shown no academic aptitude at Deerfield beyond being the "incredibly ripped" captain of the wrestling team. Favorite food: cheeseburger. Language he had trouble learning: Arabic.

Abdullah returned to Jordan in 1983, for the first time in 15 years, short vacations aside, and joined an armored brigade. As Magid reports, he put away much "vodka and beer," wore cowboy boots when he listened to country music, and was never seen praying. He built up an extensive collection of Luger pistols, because you never know. In 1987, when he was studying at Georgetown, he impressed his Israeli tutor with a paper arguing that the Israelis had been right to pursue Palestinian terrorists across the Jordan River and into his father's territory in 1968. In 1993, Abdullah married Rania al-Yassin, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian whose family had been expelled from Kuwait in 1991 by Saddam Hussein. They honeymooned in the United States, obviously.

In Amnesty International's infamous, and profoundly deceitful, report accusing Israel of "genocide," it wrote, "Amnesty International’s detailed findings about the crimes perpetrated by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups in the context of their attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023 are the focus of a forthcoming publication."

In a Q&A Amnesty released a year ago, it said, "Amnesty International will issue a report with its research findings and legal analysis in the coming months."

Twenty-six months after the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust (murder, rape, kidnapping, burning families alive, parading naked hostages through Gaza streets), that “forthcoming” report is still nowhere to be seen.

They managed to produce 296 pages accusing Israel of genocide while the war was still raging, but in 26 months they can’t muster a single report on Hamas’ October 7 pogrom.

Why? Because, as The Free Press reported in September 2025, Amnesty officials said releasing it might “be used to divert attention from the current crisis or justify ongoing genocide.” Translation: condemning Hamas could help Israel, and that is unacceptable.

Let that sink in: a “human rights” organization openly admits it is withholding documentation of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and sexual violence because it might politically benefit the victims.

In fact, the bulk of the research had been completed by August 2024, and internal pressure at Amnesty has stopped the report from being completed and released. Initially, memos at Amnesty said it should wait until after the "genocide" report was completed, and use the report on Hamas purely as a means to prove it is objective: "It will strengthen the perception of Amnesty International’s documentation of crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip, including genocide, as an impartial conclusion and lend it greater weight.”

Even when the Free Press article was published, Amnesty said they plan to release it later that month - and it never happened.

There has been internal dissent about releasing the report, and even a petition circulated internally in Amnesty, thinking that it would help Israel in the court of public opinion, something which Amnesty employees are dead set against.

The ceasefire is two months old. But Amnesty is still waiting for the right time to release a report that condemns Hamas for the worst war crimes. Considering that Amnesty's employees and biggest fans happen to also be antisemites, if it ever sees daylight, it will probably be dumped on Christmas Eve 2025, or maybe even Christmas Eve 2028, when Western newsrooms are empty and no one is paying attention.

That’s how much Israeli lives, Israeli suffering, and basic intellectual honesty matter to the world’s most famous “human rights” group.

They aren’t just biased. They’re complicit.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Last summer, at the Socialism 2025 conference, Princeton University professor Lorgia García Peña described how to bring anti-Israel activism into every corner of academia, including science, engineering and math. (As a bonus, she said her goal is to “abolish the university as it is” while getting paid by “the colonizing racial capitalist white supremacist institution that pays my salary, which I very much need.”)

This is already happening. I see lies about Israel being smuggled into many academic papers that have nothing to do with Israel, with "genocide" as the preferred term stated as fact.

A recent example that is especially hypocritical is buried inside a paper on ethics in "Qualitative Research in Psychology."

Ethics, power, and responsibility in qualitative psychology: a duo-ethnographic inquiry
Chiara Fiscone, Guido Veronese ,Desmond Painter & Ashraf Kagee
Published online: 11 Nov 2025

ABSTRACT
This paper emerges from a collaborative duo-ethnographic inquiry into the lived and contested dimensions of ethics in qualitative psychological research. Grounded in our diverse positionalities as researchers situated across disciplinary, institutional, and geopolitical contexts we reflect on the persistent dissonance between institutionalized procedural ethics and the ethical complexities encountered in practice. Through reflexive and collaborative analysis, we identify four interwoven tensions that structure our inquiry: the mismatch between institutional ethics and ethical responsibility; informed consent as a point of ethical and political tension; the challenges of navigating the tensions and paradoxes within ethical practice; and the entanglement of ethics with political structures and power dynamics. Rather than offering prescriptive solutions, we dwell within these tensions – inhabiting the discomfort, contradiction, and uncertainty that define ethical research as an ongoing, situated struggle.

There is nothing about Gaza or Israel in the abstract, but the paper mentions "Gaza genocide" based on a keyword search. And all four of the authors have expressed in different areas (social media, signing petitions, other papers) that they consider the "genocide" in Gaza to be incontrovertible fact.

As I proved last week with the Accuser's Trilemma - a simple logical test exposing the structural impossibility of a "Gaza genocide" under the Genocide Convention - none of this holds water. Any paper, speech, article, children's book, conference or podcast that uses the term "Gaza genocide" without qualification is lying.

Where I come from, lying is unethical. (The crime of using the word "positionalities" instead of "positions" doesn't quite reach that level.)

Even more unethical is smuggling lies into other fields where people are not expecting them. And this is where the modern antisemitic blood libels are jarringly effective - when one reads or hears the term "Gaza genocide" in a context far from politics, psychologically, they think that this must be a proven fact. People expect that what they read has been edited, vetted and is largely true; they may be on guard and able to look critically at the main arguments given but the supporting facts for those arguments are assumed to be given in good faith. And that is no longer the case.

This is just one paper. A recent bibliometric scan of Gaza-war papers found a huge number in top journals like The Lancet and BMJ framing it as "genocide" without caveats - pro-Palestinian pieces dominating by 2:1 over pro-Israel ones, often in unrelated fields like public health. And that paper itself was one of them, repeatedly invoking "Gaza genocide" as fact.

Over the past month, some 47 papers were published in Taylor and Francis publications alone that referred to "genocide" in Gaza. Arguing against the lie is quickly turning into professional suicide akin to Holocaust denial.

And here's the chilling part: This is straight from the Nazi antisemitic propaganda playbook of the 1930s. Infiltrate institutions with "facts" that aren't, normalize the big lie through repetition in "respectable" channels, and watch society fracture until the unthinkable becomes inevitable. The haters aren't innovating: they're executing the script, aiming for those same 1940s results.

We can't let them. Call it out. Every time. Put them on the defensive. Force them to prove every word, every time. Force their editors to act responsibly. Shame the journals that publish these libels. Write letters to each journal showing that their editorial processes have failed, and that these failures have real world harm.

Shine a light on the lies, every time.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/06 Links: American Antizionism; Natasha Hausdorff on Israel Eurovision row, new UN Resolutions and Marwan Barghouti; Scarlett Johansson’s ‘Eleanor the Great’ lives up to its name

From Ian:

American Antizionism

A year after the Six Day War, the French scholar Leon Poliakov published the penultimate volume of his magnum opus, a millennia-spanning four-part history of antisemitism. He concluded Volume 3, From Voltaire to Wagner, with the declaration, “Historians are not prophets, and I will refrain, finally, from making any prognosis. Only the future will show if, and to what degree, a hatred of the Jews, justified theologically until the French Revolution and ‘racially’ until the Hitlerite holocaust, will have a third incarnation under a new ‘anti-Zionist’ guise.”

Poliakov did not refrain for long, perhaps because the future showed itself more quickly than he had anticipated. Before turning to the final volume, which carried the history of antisemitism through the rise of Nazism, he rendered his prognosis on the Jewish question of his own day. “[T]he devil painted on the wall has swapped his name from ‘Jewish conspiracy’ to ‘Zionist conspiracy,’” Poliakov wrote in a 1969 monograph. The title of that book, De l’antisionisme à l’antisemitisme, telegraphed the argument. “Under the pretext of a critical attitude toward the Jewish state and its supporters, an ancient passion inspired by hatred continues to make its way.” A meticulous historian, Poliakov then added a nuance that current debates over antizionism routinely ignore: “However, it does so in different ways, depending on the region and the regime.”

Two years after Hamas’s “Al-Aqsa Flood” (we must confront the name for reasons that I will explain below), it is less the horrors perpetrated on October 7 than the traumas of October 8 that have forced an American Jewish reckoning. What does it mean that, of all places, America’s campuses and cities were the most likely to meet Jews in their grief with rationalizations, exhilaration, silence, abandonment, and shunning? Jews in the United States are now discovering how antizionism makes its way here in this region. The experience has caught them intellectually, emotionally, and politically unprepared. I am neither a pastor nor a politician, so I cannot offer much on the latter two. But to those hoping to gain some intellectual footing, I can offer my perspective as a sociologist who has written on social movement activism, a historian who has studied antizionism in the USSR, and a professor who has been navigating academic antizionism in the US since the 1990s. These shape how I understand what American antizionism is, how educational failures enabled it to gain a foothold, how it has become more dangerous (at least for now) than race-based antisemitism, and how Jewish Americans might begin to blaze a path forward.

Nicole Lampert: All the ways Israel is being cancelled

Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands boycotting the Eurovision Song Contest due to Israel’s inclusion in the competition is only the latest attempt to “cancel” the Jewish state over its war against Hamas.

Indeed, only this week, it emerged that Guinness World Records had informed the Matnat Chaim charity that its plans to bring together 2,000 people to donate kidneys couldn’t become an official record because it is an Israeli organisation. The London-based organisation claimed this was fair, as it was also banning submissions from the Palestinian territories unless they were done in co-operation with the UN (an organisation with which Israel now refuses to work due to perceived bias).

Guinness World Records justified its policy on the basis of “just how sensitive this is at the moment”.

“Sensitivity” has become a familiar refrain, as Israel has been cancelled by individuals and organisations in almost every area of public life since Hamas’s attack on the country on Oct 7 2023.

Academia
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel has been going strong for more than 20 years in academia, led by the University and College Union, which represents lecturers, but it took on a new momentum after the Israel-Gaza war started in 2023.

In general, the attempted boycotts have not worked in the UK, but in Europe, it is a different story. Universities in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain have increasingly voted to suspend agreements with Israeli institutions.

Emmanuel Nahshon, head of an Association of Israeli Universities task force to combat academic boycotts, told The Times of Israel that his organisation tallied 300 instances of boycotts in the year following the Oct 7 attacks, and a year later, that number had more than doubled to 700. This includes boycotts on individual researchers, as well as restrictions on those working with institutions.

In other cases, known as “shadow boycotts”, universities simply stop working with Israeli researchers or avoid engaging in joint projects without giving any reason.

Senior West Midlands Police chief 'apologises to Jewish community in Birmingham for telling MPs they BACKED ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans for Aston Villa match'

A police chief has apologised after appearing to mislead MPs by telling them that Jewish people in Birmingham had backed a ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans attending an Aston Villa match last month.

West Midlands Police assistant chief constable Mike O'Hara told a select committee last week that concerns were raised by the religious community over supporters of the Israeli football team travelling to the city.

He said this contributed to the decision to bar the fans from their Europa League fixture at Villa Park on November 6, which sparked a huge backlash - with claims officials were caving into Islamist thugs.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was among those who condemned the ban, declaring: 'We will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets.'

However, the force has now been accused of using the community as a shield to avoid scrutiny after sources within the local community claimed there was no 'meaningful consultation' before the ban was decided.

One source told The Sunday Times that O'Hara's comments were a 'twisted' distortion of the facts and consultation with Birmingham Jews had been minimal.

The senior officer has since written to representatives of the city's Jewish community to apologise, emphasising he had 'no intention' of implying its members 'had explicitly expressed support for the exclusion of Maccabi fans'.

He also accepted it was 'not the case' that members of the Jewish community had expressed support for the ban and will 'ensure this is clearly articulated' to MPs in further written questions.

In a letter seen by The Sunday Times, O'Hara wrote: 'I am aware that there is some consternation within the local Jewish community about what I presented on Monday. There were a number of questions asked, often with several parts and secondary points.

'Please can I apologise and make very clear that it was not my intention to imply that there were members of the Jewish community who had explicitly expressed support for the exclusion of Maccabi fans.

'Having re-watched the footage, I am sorry if my response has created confusion by suggesting members of the Jewish community had expressed support for the ban. From my perspective that is not the case and I will ensure this is clearly articulated when I respond to the further written questions we are anticipating.'

Sweden’s funding scandal empowered antisemitic networks, endangered Jews

In a country that prides itself on democratic and liberal values, social media discourse has become increasingly toxic, fueled by misinformation about Jews, Israel, and the Middle East conflict, often amplified by the very institutions that received public funding.

A central question emerging from the scandal is how a developed state with a robust regulatory framework failed to detect a phenomenon involving $100 million in misallocated funds.

It appears that Sweden’s commitment to a tolerant and open immigration policy created a dangerous blind spot that allowed extremist groups to exploit the system.

Authorities reacted only after the investigation went public. Schools were closed, arrests were made, and assets seized. But for the Jewish community, much of the damage had already been done.

This affair is not merely a story of financial corruption. It illustrates how ideological organizations can infiltrate state mechanisms to advance hatred.

Like much of Europe, Sweden is waking up too late to the reality that antisemitism is not a marginal phenomenon. It is sustained by funding, ideology, and the absence of oversight – and when granted institutional support, it becomes a threat to democratic society as a whole.

The Swedish government is now being called upon to take full responsibility: strengthen security, remove extremist influence from public institutions, and ensure that taxpayer funds serve their intended purposes rather than fueling hatred.

The $100 million scandal is more than an oversight failure. It is evidence that even advanced democracies can fall victim to networks of radical incitement. Antisemitism in Sweden reached new heights because it was allowed to grow unchecked for years – and once it received public funding, it became a tangible threat.

In a country that fails to protect its Jewish community, it is not only Jews who suffer-the entire democratic order is at risk.

Across North American campuses, Jewish students are facing levels of hostility that would have seemed unimaginable just a few years ago. Zionist students report being ostracized, harassed, and even threatened. Traditional Jewish perspectives are often met with ridicule or dismissal. Meanwhile, the very institutions designed to support Jewish student life are struggling to respond with coherence and conviction.

Over Shabbat I read a sobering story from Commentary about how Hillel - the international Jewish campus organization - has lost its way. In its eagerness to accommodate progressive Jews, Hillel has lost its Jewish soul. The article noted that some Hillel directors couldn't even take a side in the Israel/Hamas war.

Many Hillels have tried to accommodate this difficult climate by adopting a lowest-common-denominator approach. In their efforts to include all kinds of Jewish students - religious and secular, Zionist and anti-Zionist - they have often diluted the substance of what it means to be Jewish. The result is a vague, feel-good version of Judaism that emphasizes cultural identity and social justice but lacks a clear ethical and philosophical foundation. This leaves students spiritually unmoored and intellectually defenseless.

But there is a powerful, underutilized resource that can help: Jewish ethics. The framework I have been developing, Derechology, offers Jewish students and educators tools to clarify their values, articulate their positions, and stand strong in the face of ideological confusion and pressure no matter what their level of religiosity. It replaces partisanship and politics with something Judaism knows something about - morality.

What Hillel lacks today is not good intentions, but a coherent derech - a well defined path and trajectory. Derechology is not a new denomination, ideology, or partisan stance. It is a value-centered philosophy grounded in Jewish tradition, capable of providing moral clarity while honoring pluralism. It offers a Jewish framework that is both unapologetically particular and universally resonant - something that Jews can be proud of and others can respect.

Derechology answers the core problem facing Hillel today: How do you unite a diverse Jewish student body without reducing Judaism to an empty shell? The answer is to offer something substantial, something undeniably Jewish, but flexible enough to speak to different types of Jews. Derechology is that something.

What Derechology Offers

Rooted in halachic principles, moral philosophy, and the lived tradition of Jewish civilization, Derechology equips students to:

Recognize the difference between free speech and hate speech disguised as "just another opinion."
Defend Zionism not merely as a political stance but as a deeply Jewish moral derech.
Engage with opponents without losing sight of their own ethical trajectory.
Navigate progressive spaces without sacrificing Jewish values on the altar of ideological trendiness.

A Concrete Example: Hosting an IDF Soldier

Imagine a campus Hillel invites an Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldier to speak - not a political figure, but someone who served in Gaza and is prepared to give a firsthand account of their experience. The soldier intends to explain how the IDF navigates morally complex combat situations, including rules of engagement, efforts to avoid civilian casualties, and the emotional toll on soldiers themselves.

Predictably, protests erupt. Flyers label the event “Zionist propaganda.” Progressive groups call for boycotts. Some Jewish students feel uncomfortable - not because they disagree with the speaker, but because they fear being associated with controversy. Hillel is caught between wanting to support the speaker and the students, and wanting to avoid a public relations storm.

Derechology equips students and staff to approach this situation with confidence and principle. Instead of caving to external pressure or reacting defensively, they can ask:

Is the act of bearing moral witness to one’s experience in war a Jewish value?
What does Jewish ethics say about truth-telling, responsibility, and moral nuance in the fog of war?
How can we uphold free speech while protecting Jewish dignity and safety?

With those questions guiding them, Hillel could frame the event clearly: not as political advocacy, but as moral testimony. They could prepare students with derech-based tools to understand, engage, and defend the speaker’s right to share their experience. They could also prepare respectful, values-rooted responses to critics, including anti-Zionist Jewish critics, distinguishing between disagreement and demonization. And they can expel those who disrupt the talk and violate Hillel's moral code without apology.

This approach doesn’t just preserve the event. It models moral courage and leadership.

Derech, Not Dogma

Derechology is not about rigid orthodoxy. It's a values-based method that respects diversity within the Jewish community. Whether a student is frum or secular, politically right or left, Derechology helps them ask: What is the moral arc of this tradition? What are its highest priorities in a time of danger, confusion, and change?

It also provides vital tools for distinguishing between authentic Jewish ethics and modern ideological overlays. When everything is framed as social justice, Jewish ethics can be diluted into whatever is culturally dominant. Derechology restores specificity, purpose, and strategic clarity.

The founder of Hillel, Rabbi Benjamin Frankel, believed that affiliation with Hillel meant declaring "I am a Jew," and earning respect on campus through moral strength and Jewish learning. Today, Hillel can rediscover that mission - not by reacting defensively, but by proactively teaching the moral substance of Jewish civilization.

Introducing Derechology into campus programming - through classes, dialogues, fellowships, and staff training - can restore Hillel’s credibility and empower students. It offers a path toward non-partisan, principled Jewish leadership. It helps students stop apologizing for being Jewish and start leading from Jewish values.

Jewish students deserve more than safety. They deserve strength, clarity, and confidence. Chabad does this from a religious perspective, but some want a different approach. By teaching the structured ethical vision of Derechology, Hillel and other campus institutions can meet today’s threats not with fear, but with derech.

Because if we are not for ourselves, who will be?

_______________________________________

(I'm still writing my Derechology book. Let me know if you want to know more about it. Meanwhile, my blog posts about Derechology can be seen here. )

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/05 Links Pt2: Boycotting Fun to Own the Jews; The boycott of Eurovision exposes the racism of the Israel-bashers; Why Hamas Sympathizers Love Ms. Rachel

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Boycotting Fun to Own the Jews

Which brings us back to the ridiculous meetings that took place yesterday among European broadcasters. The gathering voted to adopt a set of contest reforms rather than ban Israel from participation. It’s darkly funny that some of the reforms were aimed at quieting resentment toward Israel for its success—last year, Yuval Raphael finished second overall and won the public vote, leading to protests that the Jews somehow must have cheated. But it mollified enough of the Europeans that Eurovision avoided the nightmare scenario it most feared: having to ban Israel while Austria was hosting the competition.

Still, several countries have announced they will boycott the contest rather than share a stage with the Jewish state: Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and Slovenia. Perhaps more will join them.

How should we judge the countries who stomped out of Eurovision over Israel’s participation? Harshly. A singing competition is not a diplomatic convention. Would you leave a karaoke bar because there was an Israeli Jew there? Will these folks boycott all establishments that serve Israeli Jews?

Aside from emitting a faint segregationist stink, these Europeans are politicizing every cell in their bodies in an attempt to enforce those same artistic limits on everyone else. If rare apolitical music gatherings are impossible, it has a stunting effect on the industry and on the minds and temperaments of the people participating in their own dumbing down.

And the soccer snobs are also—you just know it—coming for the Olympics at some point. Unhealthy people trying to make the planet an unhealthy world through a totalitarian-political mindset. I’d tell them to get a hobby, but they’d just ruin that too.

Andrew Pessin: Onward, ho!

Meteorological Discourse: How Language Erases Jewish Agency and Conceals Antizionist Actors

When Jews freeze under the antizionist gaze, they begin using a vocabulary of atmosphere rather than agency. Instead of identifying who is targeting Jews and why, they often describe anti-Jewish hate as though it were weather. We hear phrases like:
“It’s getting bad”
“Antisemitism is rising”
“This campus is terrifying.”

These are weather reports, not analyses. They lack actors, motives, structures, ideologies, and systems. And this linguistic pattern continues even in descriptions of violence. In an eerie way, events happen to Jews, yet no one causes them:
“Israeli women were raped”
“Nasrallah was lionized”
“A Jew was beaten in Montreal”
“Jewish businesses were vandalized”
“Jewish students were harassed”
“Sarah Milgrim was shot”

Such formulations render the harm without rendering the perpetrator. They mimic the structure of meteorological statements (“It rained,” “The streets flooded”) in which no actor exists and no intention is named. Violence becomes a condition rather than an action; Jews become a medium through which harm moves, not subjects whose safety is violated by identifiable agents.

Contrast this with what Jews should say—language that restores agency to those who commit, legitimize, or amplify anti-Jewish harm:
“Antizionists raped Israeli women”
“The New York Times lionized Nasrallah”
“Antizionists beat a Jew in Montreal”
“Antizionists vandalized Jewish businesses”
“Antizionists harassed Jewish students”
“Elias Rodriguez shot Sarah Milgrim”

This linguistic shift restores agency to the actors who commit, legitimize, or amplify anti-Jewish harm. It makes the ideology and its adherents visible. It generates accountability. And crucially, it reorients the public gaze away from Jewish victims and toward the structures targeting Jews.

'Antizionism Is a Hate Movement': A Conversation with Adam Louis-Klein

Something happened while I was writing a book about how to fight antisemitism. Forget internal arguments over hyphens or whether to call it “Jew-hate.” A new consensus is beginning to form around using the word “antizionism” instead. I always thought that, whatever you call it, this form of bigotry adapts to the times and, like a parasite, hitches a ride on whatever version of anti-Jewish hatred is socially acceptable. I’m beginning to understand that antizionism is different. It gives antisemites plausible deniability for their hatred, and we need a new set of tools to fight it.

At the forefront of this effort is anthropologist Adam Louis-Klein, who has led a push on social media to change the way we think about antizionism and to name it as a hate movement. He launched an organization, the Movement Against Antizionism to advocate for this shift.

I had many questions, so I interviewed Adam last month. I thought it best to let him speak for himself, so here is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

12/05 Links Pt1: How time ran out on Blinken’s plan for postwar Gaza; Hostages as leverage: Iran's secret demand aimed at crippling Israel's agriculture; Did the Red Cross do all it could for hostages in Gaza?

From Ian:

The day after that never came: How time ran out on Blinken’s plan for postwar Gaza

Had the world not been turned upside down, Antony Blinken would have been in Israel on October 10, 2023. Had Hamas terrorists not shaken the Middle East and pulverized plans for its future, the US secretary of state would have flown from Israel to Saudi Arabia a few days later as part of a multi-stop tour aimed at bridging some of the final gaps between the two countries on long-elusive normalization, a deal that could have been as positively transformative as the Hamas massacre and ensuing war were devastatingly destructive.

For months ahead of the scheduled trip, the US had been hard at work crafting a document with Saudi Arabia, laying out what Israel would need to do in exchange for Riyadh joining the Abraham Accords, namely a series of relatively minor concessions meant to assuage Palestinian aspirations for statehood. Blinken planned to bring that document to Jerusalem for approval, two senior Biden officials told The Times of Israel.

Israel was aware of where things stood and was comfortable enough with the modest steps discussed by Washington and Riyadh for the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem to draft a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia, according to the two former US officials and a current Israeli official.

Blinken did end up making it to Israel that week, but under very different circumstances, as then-US president Joe Biden’s administration rallied to support the Jewish state following the Hamas-led cross-border attack on October 7 that cut down some 1,200 people and saw 251 more taken hostage into Gaza.

Documents uncovered by the IDF from Gaza during the war revealed that one of the motivations of Hamas’s leaders in launching the attack was scuttling the US effort to broker that brewing normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

To a great extent, the terror group succeeded. The Biden administration’s normalization push was shelved in favor of, first, providing Israel with the military and diplomatic support needed to restore deterrence against Iran and its proxies, and second, working to secure an end to the war through a hostage release deal. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (L) meets with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jeddah on June 7, 2023. (Amer Hilabi/Pool/AFP)

Many leading figures in the administration saw freeing the abductees as the key to ending the war and accordingly concentrated their attention on the indirect hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas, which largely ran through Qatar and Egypt. But Blinken grew to believe that setting up the security and governing bodies to help administer Gaza the “day after” the war was no less critical.

“Israel needed the confidence to know that [its] security would not be threatened by withdrawing from Gaza, and Hamas needed the confidence to know that the war would end if it gave up the remaining hostages,” said a senior Biden aide, who was one of 10 government officials and well-placed regional sources interviewed for this story.

That logic was the basis for a “Transitional Mission” that Blinken worked to establish, which would steer the Strip after the war. The initiative, as laid out in a 14-point plan that would have been part of the ceasefire agreement, was aimed at “support[ing] the provision of governance, security and humanitarian assistance for Gaza” after the war, according to a never-before-reported US government document outlining the plan, which was obtained and verified by The Times of Israel.

The proposed mission was to involve civilian and military personnel, funding and other contributions from a handful of foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia, whose involvement Blinken hoped would provide an opening to revive the stalled normalization negotiations. Displaced Palestinians stand on a road after heavy rain in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, on November 25, 2025. (Omar Al-Qattaa / AFP)

To ensure strong Arab support, the proposal characterized the initiative as a “first step toward establishing an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.” That made the idea a hard sell to Jerusalem, but Blinken believed the prospect of Saudi normalization could be enough of a carrot to overcome Israel’s likely objections.

The result was a precarious house of cards, but one that Blinken thought could lay the foundation for not just a temporary halt in hostilities, but a durable, lasting peace and a truly transformed region.

The US held months of talks to advance the plan and Saudi normalization, but neither got off the ground by the time Biden left office in January 2025. A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was brokered during the waning hours of the previous administration, helped by critical pressure from the incoming Trump team. But Israel still wasn’t interested in discussing postwar arrangements of the kind Blinken sought to finalize, and the Trump administration backed Jerusalem’s decision to resume the war in March.

Hostages as leverage: Iran's secret demand aimed at crippling Israel's agriculture - exclusive

Iran offered Thailand help in securing the release of Thai hostages held in Hamas captivity on the condition that Bangkok label Israel an “unsafe country” and instruct its tens of thousands of agricultural workers working there to leave immediately, two sources familiar with the matter told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.

The Iranian message was clear: help us apply economic pressure on Israel, and we’ll help you bring your people home.

In the tense and chaotic weeks following the October 7 attacks, while Israel was still counting its dead and searching for missing civilians, a drama was unfolding thousands of kilometers away in Bangkok.

Thailand’s government, shocked by the scale of the massacre in which 39 Thai citizens were murdered and desperate to protect its citizens, began urgent diplomatic efforts to secure the release of the 31 Thai laborers abducted by Hamas and other terrorist groups.

It was a humanitarian crisis, not a political one; Thailand had no direct conflict with Hamas. But as often happens in the Middle East, even humanitarian crises can become bargaining chips.

Tehran, which maintained influence over Hamas, signaled it might be able to facilitate the release of the Thai hostages; however, the offer was not unconditional. Possible damage to Israel's agriculture sector If Thailand complied, it would deliver a painful blow to Israel’s agricultural sector at the very moment it was struggling to recover from the shock of the attack.

Between 30,000 and 40,000 Thai laborers worked on Israeli farms and in greenhouses – some of them in the western Negev and near the border with Gaza, the area hardest hit on October 7.

Their sudden withdrawal would have crippled Israeli food production and inflicted long-term economic damage.

Joshua Namm: Et Tu America? For Israel, No Ally Is Forever

There has been a lot of serious discussion recently about America’s role in the recent agreement between Israel and Hamas. And while I wrote about that topic last month, this month contains my favorite holiday of the year: Chanukah. I wrote about the incredible importance of that holiday two years ago. This year, those two things are connected.

What’s the connection?

As Chanukah approaches there are two, seemingly different, but related reasons that “make this year different than all other years” (sorry about mixing two Jewish ideas in that way).

According to a story in the Jerusalem Post, the United States, obviously under Donald Trump, is planning to build a large military base in Israel along the Gaza border. The aim is purportedly to aid “stabilization efforts” in Gaza during the current conflict, and (more tellingly) to “serve future international stabilization efforts.”

At the same time, the acceptance of Trump’s plan, and the various ways the U.S. has been involved in shaping Israel’s policy during this war, under Biden and Trump, demonstrates an expansion of America’s influence on Israel, representing an increasing Israeli willingness to relinquish sovereignty – in much the same way it has given up land for a phantom “peace,” for decades.

That isn’t as threatening if we’re talking about the U.S./Israel relationship as it has existed for most of the last 50 years. But Israeli/American relations haven’t always been this friendly, and there is no reason, especially given the events of the last two years, to believe that they will remain so in the future.

It is no longer entirely in the realm of fantasy to believe that at some point America could be a significant opponent to Israel’s interests (and to wider Jewish interests). When I was growing up, I assumed that any conflict in which Israel and America found themselves on different sides, would be an America so different than the one I grew up in, that it would be unrecognizable as America. I also assumed this to be an almost entirely theoretical question, one which, if it did occur, could occur only after many, many generations.

That was naively idealistic.

Again, we aren’t there yet, but now we can easily see how things could get there. The rise of the antisemitic left (most recently embodied in the elections of not one, but two Jew hating socialist mayors in New York AND Seattle, with a newly declared socialist mayoral candidate in Los Angeles announcing on November 15), and the rise of the antisemitic right, embodied in the Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, etc., is a wake up call that every Jew should heed.