01/06 Links Pt1: Iran's Friends Are Vanishing: Why Maduro's Arrest Matters for Israel; Israel, Syria, US agree on security cooperation mechanism; Somaliland is a functioning state. Treat it that way

From Ian:

Iran's Friends Are Vanishing: Why Maduro's Arrest Matters for Israel

The arrest of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro likely sent a shiver down spines in Tehran.

It also marks the dismantling of yet another supporting pillar in the global network Iran painstakingly constructed to finance, shield, and sustain its war against Israel.

Through Hizbullah, Venezuela became a critical offshore hub that generated cash, laundered funds, moved operatives, and enabled Iran to project power far from the Mideast.

Hizbullah functioned in Venezuela as a crime-terror enterprise intermeshed in the Venezuelan economy and protected by the government.

Hizbullah trafficked cocaine from Venezuela, transferred weapons, and helped the Islamic Republic evade U.S. sanctions.

Revenue generated in South America was sent to Lebanon, where it helped pay for Hizbullah's military buildup.

Venezuela's most prominent opposition figure, Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, was asked in a November Israel Hayom interview whether a post-Maduro Venezuela would restore relations with Israel.

Machado replied: "Certainly. Venezuela will be Israel's closest ally in Latin America."

Maduro's fall represents another incremental setback in Iran's global posture.

Jonathan Tobin: Venezuela, Trump and the end of the liberal world order

The simple and unavoidable truth is that the only way to defend those values, American interests, as well as the existence of Israel, is to go around or supersede multilateral institutions. Their preservation cannot be allowed to depend on the ideas of a now bygone era. The United States, as Ferguson has also accurately noted, is locked in a new Cold War; only this time, against China and its allies in Moscow, Tehran and Caracas. It should learn from the past, but it won’t win this conflict solely by working with the tools, like NATO, that were invented to cope with the challenges of the last one.

It’s only to be expected that the assertion of American power in South America or elsewhere, such as Iran—where Trump joined the Israeli campaign to destroy its nuclear program and which he has now also threatened should it violently suppress protests—will be opposed by ideologues who think international institutions are more important than national sovereignty. The point being is that if you don’t want rogue regimes to be allowed to export illegal drugs that kill Americans or to be used as bases by Iran or China, the only answer is for Washington to act. Waiting for a global organization to undertake operations that most of its members oppose or the assent of NATO allies is almost always going to lead, as it has on so many fronts, to inaction.

Some administrations, like that of Barack Obama, turned that dependence on multilateralism into something of a fetish. The result was, among other things, the catastrophe in Syria (where Obama walked back his 2013 “red line” threats) and the 2015 Iran deal that set Tehran on a course to have nuclear weapons, with which it could dominate the Middle East and threaten the rest of the world.

The argument that American unilateralism will encourage Beijing to attack Taiwan is nonsense. As Russia showed in Ukraine and Iran proved when it fomented its multifront war against Israel on the watch of a Biden administration that was similarly wedded to multilateral myths, it was U.S. weakness—not tough-minded Trumpian strength wielded unilaterally—that is likely to lead to more wars.

It may well be that Trump’s every utterance and act will continue to send liberals and leftists over the edge, no matter how sound or reasonable his policies (such as his success in halting illegal immigration) may be. It’s equally true that there are no guarantees that American intervention in Venezuela will work. Although by not committing to a full-scale invasion, Trump appears to be heeding his own criticisms of the George W. Bush administration’s blunders in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The most important conclusion to be drawn from this latest instance of Trump’s freelancing while the global establishment clutches its pearls is that it is only by Washington’s willingness to act on its own that the threats to America, the West and the State of Israel can be effectively met. Far from the greatest peril being an erratic Trump let loose on the world stage, the president’s single-minded belief in defending American national interests is the best hope for fending off the machinations of enemies of the West. A mindless belief in the transcendent importance of the solutions that were believed necessary in 1945 to prevent another global war is not going to protect us in 2026 and the years to come.

Stephen Pollard: The loony left’s moral collapse over Maduro

Which brings us full circle back to the specific reason why we Jews should be focused on Maduro. Jason Kenney, the former Canadian defence and immigration minister in the Stephen Harper government – before Canada had a conniption fit and turned to Justin Trudeau – has written this week about how “one of the most fascinating briefings I received as a federal Immigration Minister was from a foreign intelligence agency about the connections between Venezuela and the Iranian terror proxy Hezbollah. And they showed me the receipts.”

It’s worth quoting at length: “I saw in detail how the Venezuelan regime imported raw cocaine from the FARC Marxist terror group in Colombia, and worked with the Al Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps to ship it in ‘dark’ planes to Beirut, where it was then processed in Hezbollah facilities in the Bekaa Valley. The refined product was then shipped to Europe, and the proceeds used to finance Hezbollah operations, including weapons procurement.

“When I asked how a fundamentalist organisation could do this given that narcotics are haram, I was shown fatwas issued by Hezbollah imams indicating that as long as the drugs were sold to kaffirs, and the proceeds used to finance ‘the struggle,’ that it was religiously sanctioned. I was also shown details on how Hezbollah agents were using Canada to launder illicit funds by buying stolen cars with cash from criminals gangs, and then shipping them out of the Port of Montreal for resale in West Africa. All of this was possible because of extremely close coordination between the Iranian and Venezuelan regimes.

“…This was in 2008! All evidence suggests the cooperation between these two abhorrent regimes has only grown since then, with Iran providing Venezuela with arms, helping to sustain its dwindling oil industry, and to market its sanctioned crude. In return, Venezuela has acted as a kind of giant base of operations for Iran in the Western Hemisphere, including the IGRC and Hezbollah's ongoing involvement in drug trafficking and money laundering. And, of course, both regimes have been in lockstep diplomatically, including with their shared enthusiasm for their biggest ally: Putin's Russia.”

So yes, let’s have our debate about the application of international law. But for many of those protesting about the seizure of Maduro, international law is a fig leaf. Their real concern is the very fact that Maduro, who they revere has been deposed. And let’s not forget who Maduro is, what he has done, and who it is who thinks he is a role model.

Leading From the Front Again By Abe Greenwald

Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here. Joe Biden’s presidency picked up where Obama’s left off. Only this time, the American retreat from the global stage was turbocharged by a more radicalized Democratic Party that sought to appease a newly woke left. Biden pursued a fresh nuclear deal with Iran and wasted the possibility of expanding the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia. In August of 2021, he ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. And the world, as many of us had predicted, finally spun out of control.

Russia invaded Ukraine with China’s blessing, and Hamas invaded Israel with Iran’s material and monetary support. The Biden administration’s responses to these crises were at turns somewhat helpful, overly cautious, and ultimately feckless. The U.S. had lost the will to shape events beyond (and on) its borders.

Until now. Although the second Trump administration talks ceaselessly about the folly of foreign intervention, the president has reestablished the U.S. as the prime mover of world events. He’s roused NATO to take on a larger role in defending member nations, even as he backed Israel in its multifront war, destroyed Iran’s main nuclear facility, drew up a plan for a postwar Middle East, and now decapitated the outlaw regime in Venezuela.

The administration can say whatever it wants about foreign adventurism, but the world police are back in business.

There’s a lot, of course, that we don’t know. Will Trump finally become as frustrated with Vladimir Putin as he became with Iran and Maduro? If so, will he be as forceful in ending Russia’s assault on Ukraine? What will become of Venezuela over the course of the year? What happens if and when Trump becomes convinced that Hamas simply won’t disarm? How will the Trump administration respond to what seems to be a slowly crumbling Iranian state? And, finally, what happens if—God forbid—China moves on Taiwan? No clue.

But here’s what we do know: The world has once again seen the American will to act. And everyone has been reminded of the U.S. military’s unparalleled ability to change facts on the ground. A year ago, America’s enemies had reason to believe the U.S. had become a paper tiger. Today, they wouldn’t dare make that miscalculation.

Read More

Rabbi Pesach Wolicki From Inside The MAGA Movement: A New Approach To Israel Advocacy (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Rabbi Pesach Wolicki is Executive Director, Israel365.com, an Orthodox Jewish institution that fosters better relations between Jews and Christians. He is a regular guest on Steve Bannon’s War Room, providing commentary on U.S.-Israel relations, Middle East policy, and the biblical foundations of Zionism.

Anyone who still thought the conservative movement was unified and the place of the Jews inside the movement was secure was disabused of that notion at AmFest. What is your take on what is going on?

Rabbi Wolicki: Well, look, the American right has its antisemitic wing. Just as the American left has its antisemitic wing. I don't think anyone ever thought that the American right was unified, especially the MAGA movement, which is really the dominant and ascendant political force in American politics over the last decade. It is actually a loose coalition of different factions that agree on certain things. They agree on a kind of hatred of the left-wing establishment.

Rabbi Pesach Wolicki. Source: Screen Cap

But beyond that, there are many points of departure between these various factions. You have libertarians, traditional Catholics, evangelicals, and in terms of geopolitics, you have people who are more isolationist and more traditionally Republican -- all pulling in different directions within that movement. Now, in terms of attitudes about Israel and the Jewish people, there are definitely antisemites. Israel and the Jews have really become one issue.

“Israel and the Jews have really become one issue.”

According to the polling of the 50,000 participants at AmFest, 83% of them see Israel as a friend and ally of the United States. So the perception one gets of anti-Israel sentiment on the right is not exactly correct. I personally found that the people I interacted with were, by and large, very friendly. There was a lot of pro-Israel sentiment there.

That said, among the younger generation, let's say under the age of 25 or 30, what you find there is a perception that Israel has an outsized influence on American politics and foreign policy. There is a resentment of that, especially among the younger generations who feel shut out of the economic system and the opportunities for prosperity that their parents and grandparents' generation had. These are all legitimate gripes. They look at the money going overseas. I've made the argument about why it's all in the best interest of the United States. It just doesn't resonate because, as far as they're concerned, they don't want the US involved in these things.

They see the combination of the aid and the fact that they're fighting a cultural war against wokeness and the progressive forces in society that they feel, correctly, have destroyed traditional American life. And unfortunately, the vast majority of Jews in America identify with the progressive left. This younger generation is fighting these cultural wars, and the people on the other side are so often Jews.

Pick an issue, and the Jewish community is advocating for the progressive left, woke agenda. And if you put that together with the fact that Israel is "officially" the largest recipient of foreign aid--and it's a witch's brew that makes it easy for the antisemites in the influencer community on the right to capture a lot of young people. That said, they're not as successful as we would think from watching social media.

You mentioned Steve Bannon, who has been accused of antisemitism. But your organization, Israel 365, honored him this year as a "Warrior for Israel."

Rabbi Wolicki: We didn't honor him. We were honoring other people that evening. Steve Bannon spoke that evening. I think it was misrepresented in the media. He was the keynote speaker at an event where we honored a bunch of pro-Israel activists.

Other than the few months after the 12-day war with Iran, where he was very much opposed to American involvement, and his interpretation that Prime Minister Netanyahu had manipulated American politics and lied in order to drag America into a conflict—which he greatly resented—other than that, Steve Bannon has been an adamantly pro-Israel voice.

Steve Bannon. Source: Screen Cap

From October 7th until the Iran war, he actually stood out from the crowd in that part of MAGA as being extremely pro-Israel. Most Jews don't listen to his podcast, and they don't know, but when everyone else was buying into the genocide claims and all these things, Steve was not buying it. He was advocating for Israel to finish off Hamas and not to hold back. He's been a very pro-Israel voice.

There is an interesting story I heard from Steve, and corroborated with Ambassador David Friedman. When he was Trump's chief strategist and in charge of the plans for inauguration day during the transition, Steve was pushing that the very first thing the president would do, after taking the oath of office and giving the speech, would be to go straight to the Oval Office and sign an executive order recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the embassy there. He wanted that to be the opening act of Trump's presidency. The State Department people got wind of it, and they pressured President Trump to hold off.

Steve gets lumped in with the anti-Israel crowd because he's critical of Israel. He doesn't like Prime Minister Netanyahu, and that's fine. A good 40% of Israelis don't like Prime Minister Netanyahu either, but I don't know of anything antisemitic Steve has ever said. Steve is not an apologist for Qatar and the Islamists. He doesn't talk about Jewish conspiracies and things like that. This is not where he's coming from.

There are also broader issues. I believe that populist nationalism is a wonderful political ideology. Israel is basically a populist nationalist country, more and more so with every passing year. That's why Israel hasn't had a left-wing government in decades, and that's why the younger population in Israel is more religious and more politically conservative than its parents. I believe in a lot of the same political principles that Steve believes in, and he's also a big advocate for Judea and Samaria—he refuses to use the term "West Bank"; he only calls it Judea and Samaria. Steve is a very pro-Israel guy. You can be pro-Israel and also hate Bibi. So the perception that Steve Bannon is an antisemite is really coming from an ignorance of the man. He's a complicated person; he's not a Hasid. He's not a choir boy, but he's certainly not an antisemite. It's an absurd claim.

Ben Shapiro argued at AmFest for boundaries in the conservative movement. He said that not every voice belonged under the same tent. When it comes to antisemitism or being anti-Israel more generally, shouldn't there be boundaries in terms of who's inside and outside the tent?

Rabbi Wolicki: Ben Shapiro’s speech has been taken out of context by people on our side and people on the other side as well.

For example, he did not advocate for boundaries. If you listen to the speech, he never says anything about canceling a voice or not platforming someone. Instead of talking about canceling people, he talked about the responsibility of those who speak in public for a living, and he laid out 5 responsibilities that he believes they have to their audiences. He called out Candace Owens. He called out Tucker Carlson. He called out Megyn Kelly by name. He called them out for violating these principles of integrity to their audience. He never called for anyone to be deplatformed.

Ben Shapiro. Source: Screen Cap

It was interpreted by everyone as a call to deplatform people. Let's assume that Ben Shapiro did call for people to be deplatformed. Let's assume that we should have boundaries. Here's the problem, as I diagnose it—and I say this as someone who is intimately involved in this political movement, and I see it as my responsibility on behalf of Am Yisrael to be there. There is a difference between what is correct on principle and what is effective, and that's a difficult choice that we have to make. We're sometimes faced with a situation where what is correct on principle, because of the political environment and the playing field that we're in, will backfire. Now, one of the animating ideas of the America First / MAGA movement is a revulsion for anything that sounds like cancel culture. They don't believe in canceling any voice. I'm not saying this to defend them; I'm saying this to explain them.

“There is a difference between what is correct on principle and what is effective—and that’s a difficult choice we have to make.”

Charlie Kirk was a pro-Israel person. He used to have Candace Owens speak at his events before she really went off the rails. And when she started going off the rails with the antisemitic conspiracy stuff, there was a lot of pressure on Charlie to stop having Candace Owens speak at Turning Point USA events, and he did; he stopped having her speak. But from Charlie Kirk's perspective, everything should be allowed in the open marketplace of ideas. Personally, I think he took it too far, but he thought every voice should be heard. The answer is never to say that certain voices shouldn't speak because they say bad things; we should platform everybody and let the open marketplace of ideas do its job. This idea, which to a certain extent sounds noble in theory, is taken way too far in the MAGA movement because it's a backlash against what the left was doing, especially around the time of COVID, where there was active work by social media companies to silence voices.

In our current environment, if we stand up and say we have to have guardrails, that we can't have certain voices speak, that stand may very well be--and probably is--correct on principle. But the way it resonates, the way it triggers the younger part of the MAGA movement, is that it sounds like cancellation. Even if they don't necessarily agree with the voice being canceled, they don't want any part of silencing voices, because it triggers them as part of one of the major political points that the movement was founded on, which is an abhorrence for these limitations on freedom of speech and on the cancel culture that the left put into place. It's not normal conservatism, it has its own culture to it—within the MAGA movement, and we have to be very, very careful as Jews about advocating for the cancellation of voices, even if we are correct in principle.

We need to change the way we advocate and change what exactly we're advocating for. In the lead-up to America Fest in the months before Charlie Kirk was killed, we were talking about his planning to have Tucker Carlson speak. A number of us were upset about that, because we really felt he was going to spew more lies, and it was going to hurt, including Turning Point itself. But we never said "cancel him," because we knew that would not work with the way he thinks. What we were arguing for was to give equal time and equal prominence to people to make Israel's case. Now, I have to say the organizers of America Fest failed in that regard. There was no such speaker. They did not have any session at the conference that really laid out and defended Israel properly. I think they failed.

You have described the current anti-Israel atmosphere as an "organized operation." You have also mentioned that pro-Israel voices are "up against a machine we can't compete with." So what do we do?

Rabbi Wolicki: I think we need to make the Israel issue not about Israel. One of the fastest growing issues in America and in the West right now is the threat of jihadist Islam and what it's doing to Western culture. You see what's going on in Minnesota, with the Somali Muslim community, and you see the various Muslim terror attacks, and what happens in Australia.

What Israel and the pro-Israel community have failed to do effectively is frame our war as a war against these same forces. We need to do that because then, rather than trying to get people to be on our side of our conflict, we are instead framing our conflict in a way that we are on the same side as them in a conflict that they are concerned with.

How do you go about doing that? So there's a number of things that Israel can do differently. Charlie Kirk wrote a 7-page letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu back in April, laying out what he thought Israel should do to tell its story differently. One of the main things that Charlie pointed out is that we need more first-person voices from Israel—young people telling Israel's story, talking about their own lives on social media instead of having the IDF spokesman or Prime Minister Netanyahu being the spokespersons for Israel. We need more young, first-person voices.

In terms of fighting against the machine, the Qatari information machine, we need to keep plugging away. The Jewish people have always been outnumbered. We've always been outgunned; that's the case with this also. We have to hope that, eventually, the truth is going to win out. But I really believe that we need to look at the issues that are of concern to Americans—to young Americans, especially—and tether the Israel issue to the issues they are concerned about.

Let me give you some food for thought. If you look around the world at the political winds and the political changes that have been happening around the world over the last few years, one of the things that we're seeing is an ascendancy of right-wing populist nationalism, right-wing Christian populist nationalism in countries all over the world. To a large extent, this is a backlash to the left and to unfettered immigration—not only in America but everywhere—South America, Europe, and also a reaction to the destruction of Western civilization and the decline of the family.

All of these things have led to this right-wing upsurge among the younger generations in these many, many countries. So you see Victor Orban in power in Hungary, the ascendancy of Wilders' party in the Netherlands, the Vox party in Spain, Bolsonaro--the evangelical Christian leader--in Brazil, and Javier Milei in Argentina, and I can go on and on and on. There are many examples of this—of these populist nationalist, Christian conservatives, or even Le Pen's party in France and Tommy Robinson and his followers in England. As Jews, we have to not romanticize our relationships with people politically. The fact that the parents and grandparents of the people in the Le Pen party were antisemites doesn't mean that the people in that party today are antisemites.

Source: Screen Cap

Young Christian conservative nationalists in all of the places I've mentioned, the Christian conservative populist nationalists on the right everywhere in the world--except the United States--are almost entirely pro-Israel. If you Google pictures of pro-Bolsonaro anti-socialist protests in Brazil that have nothing to do with Israel and look at the crowd shots and zoom in, you will see that one of the things they bring to their demonstrations are Israeli flags. They wave Israeli flags at Brazilian anti-socialist demonstrations because they see Israel as representative of democracy, Judeo-Christian Western civilization, and conservatism. Israelis and Jews need more self-awareness about Israel—the way the rest of the world sees us. We're a very right-wing country, increasingly right-wing, with every year. We're an increasingly religious country—we're an ethnic nationalist, religious state. That's the way the rest of the world sees us, and they're all pro-Israel.

By contrast, the only populist nationalist, Christian conservatives in the world who are not overwhelmingly pro-Israel are in the United States of America. And I believe it's for the reasons I said before: the combination of a powerful, pervasive Jewish progressive left in America, which doesn't exist in these other countries, and the fact that the United States gives billions of dollars in aid to Israel, which is also not the case with these other countries. Add in that the Qataris and the other bad actors have no interest in investing billions of dollars to change the way young Argentinians or young Brazilians think—there's not as much skin in the game there—but changing the way young Americans think, that can pay off for them because America is so powerful.

So if you put all these things together, we have this poisonous mix that predisposes a lot of young Americans to not be pro-Israel because of the other associations. I think that we need to break all of that. Jews need to be very open about advocating for an end to USA aid to Israel. It's actually bad for Israel strategically.

“Jews need to be very open about advocating for an end to U.S. aid to Israel. It’s actually bad for Israel strategically.”

Israel has sold $10 billion of air defenses to Greece and Germany in the last month. We just signed a $35 billion natural gas deal with Egypt. We don't need $3.8 billion from the United States every year, with all the strings attached and all of the leverage it gives the US in our strategic decision-making. We need to openly advocate for an end to the aid. It's bad for Israel. The only reason there is aid is that every time America has wanted to force us to make a security concession, they would compensate us by giving aid. The aid to Israel began when Carter used it as an incentive to get Begin to pull out of the Sinai desert. Then Clinton ramped it up again at Camp David with Ehud Barak to get him to agree to make more concessions to Arafat. Every time the aid goes up, it's a concession, because Israel is willing to swallow some compromise on our national security and make us more beholden to the United States. It's actually bad for Israel. So we have to start being open about advocating against USA aid to Israel, and that will help us politically on the right in America as well.

And Jews have to be more open about the fact that we want nothing to do with these progressive left Jews, because that's who these young conservative Americans are—and I feel for them—they want to have good Christian lives. They want to live in a traditional country that isn't under attack by wokeness. And the Jews are constantly fighting against them. I think it's bad that they lump us all together and don't realize that orthodox Jews are with them. We should start saying openly, "We want nothing to do with the Jewish establishment. We want nothing to do with those people; they're destructive. They're our enemies." I think we should say it plainly, and I think that these are things that will help us win back those parts of the American right who have slid into anti-Israel and antisemitic ways of thinking.

---

---

Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

Read More

Mamdani's potential "antisemitism czar" has no idea what antisemitism is

Jewish Insider reports today that New York City Mayor Mamdani is expected to replace the existing head of the city's office to combat antisemitism, and the frontrunner is Phylisa Wisdom, part of Mamdani's team and the head of the progressive New York Jewish Agenda.

An incident from 2022 shows that she is profoundly unqualified for the job. 

In May 2022, Waleed Shahid, then communications director for Justice Democrats, reacted to a Jewish Insider tweet about pro-Israel political donations by joking: “Wait until you hear what happened next in next week’s ‘Goy Outsider.’”

Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, publicly called the tweet antisemitic.  His point was that antisemitic tropes appear across the political spectrum, including on the radical left, and that this language was inappropriate and insulting.

The response from parts of the progressive Jewish world was swift and furious. A letter signed by dozens of prominent progressive Jews accused Greenblatt of smearing Shahid and falsely equating a “lighthearted joke” with far-right violence (which he did not do.) Others insisted this was a distraction from “real antisemitism.”

That framing is precisely the problem. The offensiveness is not subtle, and it has nothing to do with intent.

The word goy is not a neutral synonym for “non-Jew.” In contemporary usage, Jews themselves often avoid it because it sounds dismissive or contemptuous, even when used casually. Many Jews, myself included, deliberately teach their children to say “non-Jewish person” instead.

When a non-Jew uses goy as a punchline, it almost always carries an implication: this is how Jews really talk about outsiders. That implication feeds directly into long-standing antisemitic tropes about Jewish insularity, insider language, and "Jewish supremacy." 

Combine this with a link to an article about Jewish influence in a political campaign, and the trope becomes significantly more dangerous.

If Shahid had said “Gentile Outsider” the joke would not have landed the same way. The choice of goy was the joke. And the joke works only by invoking a stereotype about how Jews supposedly think and speak among themselves. There is a reason the far Right uses the word "goy" so often and ironically refer to themselves that way. For a leftist figure to use the word in the exact same joking way that the neo-Nazis do is not "lighthearted."

You do not need violence, threats, or slurs for something to be antisemitic. Antisemitism has always relied heavily on insinuation, mockery, and claims to secret knowledge about Jews.

Dismissing it as merely a "Dad joke" is missing the point. Humor has always been one of antisemitism’s most effective delivery systems. 

Phylisa Wisdom does not seem to understand these basic facts about antisemitism. 

In response to criticism of the “Goy Outsider” tweet, Wisdom wrote: “This is not antisemitism from the left.” When challenged, she doubled down with a simple question: “What’s antisemitic about it?”

That question is disqualifying.

Someone charged with combating antisemitism should not need this explained. This is not an edge case or a novel controversy. It is a textbook example of how antisemitic tropes function in modern discourse, on both the right and the left.

If you cannot see why a non-Jew publicly using “goy” to comment on Jewish political dynamics is offensive, then you do not understand antisemitism beyond its most extreme, violent forms. And if that is your threshold, you are not qualified to define the problem, let alone fight it.

There is a deeper pattern here that should make Jews uneasy.

In progressive spaces, other minority groups are granted maximal sensitivity. Language that might reinforce stereotypes is scrutinized closely, regardless of intent. Impact matters more than tone.

Jews are treated differently.

Jews are expected to laugh off jokes about insider language, power, and tribalism. When they object, they are told they are oversensitive, divisive, or distracting from “real” problems. Antisemitism is redefined so narrowly that only physical violence counts, while the cultural and rhetorical groundwork that enables that violence is dismissed.

This asymmetry is now embedded in progressive norms - and this incident proved it.

Imagine the furious response from progressive Jews if someone responded to a show on BET saying “Wait until you see next week’s ‘Cracker Entertainment Television.’” There is no difference - but the Jews are expected to laugh when they are the victims of the joke.

This is about competence. If someone cannot recognize why the “Goy Outsider” joke is antisemitic, they do not understand how antisemitism actually works. And someone who does not understand that should not be entrusted with leading the fight against it in New York City.

Antisemitism does not begin with bullets. It begins with permission structures – permission to mock, to insinuate, and to minimize. If you respond to antisemitism by minimizing it, you are not fighting it. You are enabling it.

---

---

Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

Read More

The Executive Order Mamdani canceled specifically said that the First Amendment was the real criterion on speech

Critics of the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, including Mayor Mamdani, claim that the definition chills free speech because it says some anti-Zionist speech is antisemitic. 

It is not true, as we've pointed out many times before and anyone who actually reads the definition can see for themselves.  But the lies have become so pervasive that even media that should know better parrots the false claim. The New York Times wrote on Sunday "One of the executive orders that Mr. Mamdani revoked had codified a contentious definition of antisemitism, proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, that equated some criticism of Israel with hatred of Jewish people." No, it didn't; it equated demonization of Israel with hatred of the Jewish people. IHRA says explicitly that criticism of Israel similar to any other country is not antisemitic.

But the executive order that Mamdani canceled had an additional clause to protect freedom of speech:

This order is not intended to restrict speech or conduct that is protected under the First Amendment.  Antisemitic acts are criminal only when they are so defined by law, and this order does not establish civil or criminal liability for any acts. 

If it clearly says that any speech protected by the First Amendment is allowed, then what is the problem? If a teacher is called out for antisemitism for teaching that Zionism is a "racist endeavor," and that statement is not antisemitic, they should have an ironclad defense from this paragraph, right? 

And this is not the first time this has happened,. Donald Trump's own executive order from 2019 supporting the IHRA definition also had a similar clause:

[A]gencies shall not diminish or infringe upon any right protected under Federal law or under the First Amendment. As with all other Title VI complaints, the inquiry into whether a particular act constitutes discrimination prohibited by Title VI will require a detailed analysis of the allegations.

That's two layers of lies from the anti-Israel crowd - of the IHRA definition and of the regulations and orders saying to use it as a guide.

If they felt that the examples in the IHRA quash legitimate speech, one would think they would be itching to test this in court and destroy IHRA altogether. But they don't. Instead, they lie about IHRA and the regulations invoking it - and they repeat the lies so incessantly that mainstream media (and AI, and Wikipedia...) believe them.

Because why argue facts when there is no downside to lying?

---

---

Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

Read More

01/05 Links Pt2: Tucker Carlson is an enemy of America; From Wikipedia Fiction To Witch Hunt; Maccabi fans ban: Police consulted mosques that hosted ‘anti-Semitic’ preachers

From Ian:

David Collier: The Lie Beneath the Tree: From Wikipedia Fiction To Witch Hunt

In September 2025, a large delegation of U.S. legislators visited Ofakim – a small town in southern Israel and one of the communities devastated during the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023. During their visit, they planted trees – a simple, universal memorial act in honour of the murdered civilians.

That act has since been recast by anti-Israel activists as something sinister. Campaigners immediately claimed the trees were planted atop a “depopulated Palestinian village” – and some have gone further, calling for the legislators involved to be forced to resign.

Through a chain of factual errors, activist myth-making, and the quiet authority of “reference” sources that repeat those errors as fact, a unifying gesture of mourning has been transformed into an accusation of moral wrongdoing.

The fabrication of Ofakim as a “depopulated Palestinian village” was subsequently laundered through a media corps that hounded and interrogated participants – not over facts, but over fictions and libels treated as truths.

The truth is simple and decisive. There was no depopulated village at the site of Ofakim. No erased community beneath the tree. Yet the claim persists because it was never presented as an allegation, but instead stated and repeated as established fact – embedded, cited, and endlessly recycled.

In advancing the false “village” narrative, campaigners are not uncovering a buried injustice. They are erasing the victims of a real one – all in service of a story that never happened.

In the end we are left witnessing a witch hunt for people who visited an ally of the United States and planted a tree in memory of those slaughtered in a terrorist massacre.

MacKenzie Scott Sends Millions to Terror-Tied Nonprofit Network

MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, funneled millions of dollars to a left-wing nonprofit network that supports the nation's most virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic organizations, including some that are under congressional investigation for their ties to terrorist groups, a Washington Free Beacon review found. Scott announced the grant in an essay that cites Hopi prophecy, bird flocks, and sex as inspirations for her latest round of giving.

Scott recently disclosed sending at least $5 million to the Solidaire Network, which supports what it calls "the front lines of social justice movements" by offering grants to an array of left-wing groups. That includes Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the US Palestinian Community Network, and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM). SJP and AMP face investigations in both the House and Senate for allegedly coordinating with the terror group Hamas to spearhead anti-Israel protests in the United States. Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) pressed the FBI to investigate the "virulently antisemitic" PYM in September after its leader, Aisha Nizar, called on supporters to sabotage the U.S. F-35 supply chain.

Scott disclosed the grants and dozens more last month in an essay, "We are the Ones We've Been Waiting For," the title of a Hopi prophecy "written in the year 2000." The prophecy taught Scott the value of being "active participants in the co-creation of our communities." Scott also offered commentary on the "murmurations" of starling bird flocks "constantly creating their direction together."

"Generosity and kindness engage the same pleasure centers in the brain as sex, food, and receiving gifts," wrote the billionaire divorcee.

Scott's support for the network is part of an onslaught of spending that recently saw her surpass liberal billionaire George Soros's lifetime donation totals. Her approach to that spending is unique—Scott allows her grant recipients to use the money "however they choose" rather than designate it for certain projects or organizations. The Solidaire Network has used that freedom to fund radical anti-Israel organizations in the United States.

In addition to her latest donation, Scott gave the network $10 million in 2021 through her organization Yield Giving. The network went on to spend $2.1 million on a campaign called "Unity & Power" that aims to promote "Palestinian freedom."

Read More

01/05 Links Pt1: An Even Better Trump Solution for Gaza; After Venezuela, is Iran Next?; Inside Mayor Mamdani’s sneaky plan to scrap policies supporting Israel

From Ian:

Michael Doran: Giant Abroad, Midget at Home

To those unfamiliar with the anti-Zionist undercurrents of the New Right, the episode might well have appeared as a simple expression of Catholic devotion, which Vance’s online messaging apparatus made a point of rebranding as “Christian.” Lauren Witzke—a “Christian nationalist” former Delaware Senate candidate now aligned with Fuentes—circulated the clip with the caption: “The Vice President of the United States JD Vance opted out of the wall-kissing ritual in Israel, instead choosing to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.” This framing was enthusiastically adopted by other self-styled Christian nationalist influencers like Steve Bannon, who celebrated the need for “a Christian state of Jerusalem.”

Evangelicals, who form the backbone of Trump’s pro-Israel coalition, were pleased by none of this. Protestants contest the historical location of the crucifixion, with some favoring the Garden Tomb and others rejecting both sites as unproven.

The denigration of Israeli national symbols like the Western Wall entirely misreads how evangelicals—and many Catholics—understand the place. Evangelicals do not see a visit to the Wall as an act of submission to Jews. Jesus taught in the Temple; the Gospels and archaeology both attest to the site, and for evangelical theology the covenant with Israel and the covenant fulfilled in Christ are not competing dispensations but a single unfolding promise. To pray at the Wall is, in their view, to stand where Jesus stood and to honor the continuity of God’s dealings with His people.

And Vance, as a Catholic, had no need to play to sectarian sentiments. There is an unimpeachable Catholic precedent: John Paul II’s 2000 pilgrimage, during which he placed a handwritten prayer in the Wall’s stones—“God of our fathers… we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.” When Vance’s allies mocked “kissing the wall” as a humiliation ritual imposed by Jewish donors, evangelicals and many Catholics saw not bravado but a gratuitous rupture with a shared sacred history. In the Vance–Carlson alignment, they recognized an effort to redefine that history—and to sever the covenantal bond that has long anchored the pro-Israel core of the conservative coalition.

This recognition triggered discontent among evangelicals, which erupted into open confrontation. On Dec. 2, 2025, prominent Christian Zionist Dr. Michael D. Evans—founder of the Friends of Zion Museum—told a Jerusalem Post reporter: “Right now we are having a movement within the MAGA movement that is anti-Israel. It is very serious because it is led by Tucker Carlson, who is very close to the vice president. He is coming out and saying worse things presently than the Nazi Party said at their platform in 1920.” Days later, at a gala event attended by PM Netanyahu and Sarah, his wife, Evans pledged to train 100,000 Christian ambassadors to combat antisemitism and defend Israel, signaling the deepening rift inside Trump’s grand domestic coalition.

Vance’s political use of his own religious journey is therefore clever, but brittle. The intellectual circle that appears to shape his worldview—Deneen and Vermeule, the Catholic integralists—has major influence online, but almost none in electoral politics or within the Republican Party. Catholics as a voting bloc are smaller than evangelicals. Whereas evangelicals overwhelmingly vote Republican, Catholics, traditionally, have been split nearly evenly between the parties, and in recent decades have been far less churchgoing. Furthermore, most American Catholics are not integralists; they are not seeking to impose a premodern moral architecture on a pluralistic, democratic society. If all the true Catholic integralists in the United States gathered for an annual conference, they could fill a mid-sized bistro in Lower Manhattan.

That wager—that Vance can maintain operational loyalty to Israel while gesturing toward a post-evangelical Republican future shaped by Tucker Carlson—puts at risk the most indispensable component of the MAGA coalition: evangelicals. Their support is structural, not ornamental. Trump’s original political breakthrough—uniting evangelicals, Orthodox Jews, traditionalist Catholics, married women, and portions of Black and Hispanic churchgoers in a governing majority—cannot survive any project that treats evangelical Zionism as expendable. The reason why is simple math: Subtract evangelicals (and Orthodox Jews) and the Trump majority becomes a minority.

The strength of MAGA was never doctrinal purity. It was breadth—a unity of people who could never come together around a shared theology but could agree that the Progressive elite was assaulting their fundamental beliefs and their place in American life. That coalition survives only if its political vocabulary remains wide enough to include them. When the coalition fractures, so does the political foundation for a China strategy that can endure after Trump leaves the stage.

The United States will not lose the 21st century to Beijing on some distant battlefield. It will lose it here at home—in X posts and podcast studios—while the grand American majority assembled to prevent that outcome tears itself apart debating whether the Jews orchestrated 9/11.

An Even Better Trump Solution for Gaza

The Arab and Muslim countries, including Pakistan, will not disarm Hamas.

Pakistan -- which does not recognize Israel and does not regard Hamas as a terrorist organization –- was the first country to recognize Iran's Khomeini regime in 1979, just as, in 1947, Iran was the first country to recognize Pakistan's independence. Since then, not only has Pakistan had far closer relations with Iran than with Israel, but, after the Gaza War in 2023, has repeatedly called for Muslim nations to "unite against Israel."

Meanwhile, it is simply not realistic to assume that the Palestinian terror groups will voluntarily hand over their weapons.

These Arab and Muslim heads of state will only take action against Islamist terrorists when they pose a threat to their regimes, security and stability.

The Gaza Strip does not need peacekeepers and monitors. US President Donald J. Trump himself came up with the solution months ago, as he did this week for Venezuela: "We're going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. So we don't want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years."

Developers would rush in to create Trump's original vision of a "Gaza Riviera": "Gaza would be under U.S. trusteeship for around ten years 'until a reformed and deradicalized Palestinian Polity is ready to step in its shoes.'"

Those Palestinians in Gaza who wish to leave would be able to do so without fear of being threatened or shot. The US could make sure that any terrorists who refused completely to disarm would, as Trump warned about "bad hombres" in Mexico be "taken care of." If there are legitimate concerns about US troops being put in harm's way, perhaps Gaza's neighbor to the east might help out.

Above all, Trump the master builder could oversee the successful development of some of the world's most magnificent real estate, as he said about Venezuela: "We are going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure... and start making money for the country."

Change the word "oil" above to "real estate development" for Gaza, and Trump will have delivered the most far-reaching peace ever in history -- twice -- to two separate hemispheres.

Arab and Muslim countries might object: it ruins their chances of attacking Israel more easily after Trump leaves office. That is precisely why a pervasive US or Israeli presence in Gaza is the only way to ensure the success of peace in Gaza, peace in the rest of the Middle East, and a spectacular future for the peaceful Palestinians who remain.

Read More

Why “Zionism” Has Become the Progressive World’s Universal Villain

When the US captured Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela's Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said the operation had “Zionist undertones." 

What's not surprising is that this isn't surprising. For years, leftists have reflexively associated anything they don't like with Zionism, no matter how distant from Israel. Whether it is energy pipelines, or police brutality, or climate change, Zionism is the universal bogeyman that can explain everything. 

We’ve seen this film before.

For decades, much of the Arab world used Israel – and later “Zionism” – in exactly this way. Fragmented societies with deep internal divisions needed a unifying theme, and anti-Zionism served that function perfectly. It helped regimes stay in power, redirected public anger outward, and provided a simple explanation for complex failures.

It didn’t matter whether Israel was actually responsible for a given economic collapse, military defeat, or political embarrassment. What mattered was that blaming Israel – or “the Zionists” – reliably mobilized the street  to keep the people on the side of the leaders instead of blaming them.  Leaders would then tell Western diplomats that they had no choice, that public opinion demanded hostility, that moderation would trigger revolt.

Anti-Zionism was not primarily about Israel. It was about coalition management. Anti-Zionism worked in the Arab and Muslim world because it functioned as a symbol, not because it described reality accurately. It compressed multiple grievances into a single target. It allowed wildly different factions – Islamists, Arab nationalists, socialists, Sunnis, Shiites – to coexist under one banner. It required no precision, no policy knowledge, and no internal consistency.

And crucially, the symbolic Zionist enemy came preloaded with a familiar set of attributes: it is foreign, powerful, conspiratorial and morally illegitimate. 

These accusations long predate Zionism and were historically attached to Jews themselves. Zionism simply became a modern, more respectable wrapper.

Today's progressive world have replicated this structure. “Zionism” as a concept has nothing to do with Jewish national self-determination or even as a political movement with a definable history. It has become an explanatory blank slate, a word that can become anything critics want it to mean.

That is why Zionism is now linked to climate change, women’s rights, animal rights, policing, capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism – even when no causal argument is offered. The linkage is symbolic, not analytical. Once something is labeled “Zionist,” moral judgment is automatic.

This is not a coincidence. It is the same coalition logic at work. When a movement is internally diverse and often contradictory, a universal villain is invaluable. It keeps the tent together.

But the Arab world, which the progressives had seen as a reliable partner despite its own anti-progressive policies, changed. 

Arab states, for all their authoritarianism, are ultimately tethered to reality. They face military defeat, economic collapse, demographic pressure, and popular unrest. Over time, anti-Zionism stopped delivering the political results it had in the past. It explained nothing and solved nothing.

Internet access exposed propaganda. Iran became a clearer threat than Israel. Cooperation with Israel increasingly aligned with national self-interest. Anti-Zionism did not disappear, but it lost its power as a governing principle. 

Progressive movements face no such constraints.

They are not responsible for running states. Their primary currency is influence – cultural, institutional, and moral. When something fails, there is no electorate to punish them, no economy to stabilize, no borders to defend. Being wrong has no cost.

In that environment, a shapeless enemy is not a liability. It is an asset.

This also explains why the target is Zionism rather than Israel itself.

Criticizing Israel requires specificity. Policies can be debated. Facts can be checked. Alternatives can be proposed. Criticism can succeed or fail. Saying Israel is behind Maduro's capture requires some level of proof. 

Blaming Zionism avoids all of that. Simply define Trump or the US as "Zionist," and the work is done. Zionism doesn't need to be defined precisely. It can mean whatever the speaker needs it to mean in the moment. It is the black-hatted villain with the twirly mustache – instantly recognizable, morally condemned on sight.

Most importantly, it is non-falsifiable. There is nothing that would disprove the charge, because the accusation is not about behavior. It is about essence. It is a conspiracy theory that explains everything. 

Progressives often imagine themselves aligned with the “Global South” or the non-aligned world in their hostility to Israel. In reality, much of the Arab world has already moved past the stage progressives now occupy.

Nations must eventually confront reality. Movements do not.

As long as “Zionism” can be endlessly redefined to explain every failure and unify every grievance, there is no incentive to abandon it as the universal enemy. Anti-Zionism now occupies the same psychic role antisemitism has filled for centuries. The myth sustains the movement even as it corrodes moral reasoning.

That, more than any single policy dispute, is the real problem.

---

---

Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

Read More

Turkey's top antisemitic incidents of 2025

Avlaremoz, a Turkish anti-antisemitism website, listed the top antisemitic incidents in Turkey during 2025 according to its readers.

#1 was from October, when Özlem Zengin, the ruling AKP’s parliamentary group deputy chair, said that Turkey should ban any Holocaust films from being screened as long as Israel is committing "genocide."

Zengin claimed that films about the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews during World War II by Nazi Germany, are being broadcast “morning, noon and night” on Turkish television and streaming platforms.

“I believe these films should be banned in Turkey until Israel’s genocide in Gaza ends,” Zengin said. “While genocide is being committed in Palestine, we turn on our TVs and constantly see Holocaust films. This should not continue.”

#2 was when a group of anti-Israel protesters assaulted a group of Jews going to a Chanukah lighting ceremony in Istanbul.

#3 came in November when young men dressed in Nazi SS uniforms walked freely along Istanbul’s busy Istiklal Avenue, stopping for selfies and even giving a Nazi salute while passers-by laughed and posed with them.

Other nominees included a columnist likening Jews to bacteria. 

---

---

Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

Read More

If "settlers" are so terrible, why are so many Palestinians moving into Area C?

Yesterday a commenter on my Substack said something about "ongoing despoliation of Area C Palestinians." 

So I thought to look up how many Arabs lived in Area C when it was first defined, and how many live there now.

I found an AP backgrounder from 1997 that said that there were about 30,000 Arabs in Area C at that time.

Today, that number is some 354,000. (And Area C is significantly smaller than it was in 1997, now 62% of the West Bank, not the 73% of the time of this backgrounder.)

That's a twelve-fold increase in less than 30 years, far higher than normal Palestinian population growth, which roughly doubled in the same time period. 

Clearly, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians decided to move into Area C, often illegally, but with the backing of the EU.  It is also a result of the "Fayyad Plan," a 2009 plan by then-prime minister Salam Fayyad to encourage building in Area C to take it over demographically.

This is not natural growth. These are families who had houses in other parts of the West Bank who were encouraged to move to areas that the Oslo Accords said they should not be moving into.

They are the illegal settlers!

And now the world is complaining about how Israeli policy doesn't accommodate hundreds of thousands of Arab residents in Area C - nearly all of them who are illegal squatters!

"Settlers" are not allowed to go to Areas A and B. If Arab life near settlements is as intolerable as we are constantly told, then why are Palestinians still moving their families into those areas? 

The media is not doing its job. As usual. 

---

---

Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

Read More

01/04 Links: Trump’s welcome warpath to peace; Israel Just Exposed The Entire NGO Game; Australian sporting heroes call for antisemitism royal commission

From Ian:

Israel Just Exposed The Entire Game

For two years in this war, and for more than two decades before it, the Gaza narrative machine has operated with ruthless efficiency. Hamas supplied the kinetic trigger. Israel responded militarily. Visuals followed. NGOs translated images into moral urgency. UN bodies amplified. Diplomats echoed. Media synchronized. Each layer fed the next. It felt organic because it was always anchored to something burning.

This time, nothing burned.

Israel did not strike a building. It touched a filing cabinet. It asked who is registered, who is transparent, and who is subject to law. Aid kept flowing. Trucks kept moving. Personnel stayed in place. The only thing interrupted was immunity.

And the system lost its mind.

The reaction was not proportional to reality because it was not reacting to reality. It was reacting to exposure. Without a kinetic event to anchor outrage, the system inflated consequence in advance. Predictive catastrophe replaced evidence. Language about chilling effects and existential threats substituted for facts. The tone was urgent, the claims vague, and the timing instant.

That is what a machine does when it fires without a trigger.

Now that the rules are in force and the predicted disaster has failed to materialize, the hysteria looks almost comical. The organizations that screamed loudest were marginal to begin with. Some delivered virtually no aid. Some delivered none at all during the current and previous ceasefires. Aid volumes are unchanged. Life in Gaza today is no different than it was yesterday.

Oversight is routine everywhere else on earth. The claim that humanitarian life hinged on a handful of unregistered actors evaporated the moment the calendar flipped.

This is the tell.

A neutral humanitarian system would say fine, here is our paperwork. A professional operation would welcome clarity. What we saw instead was panic. Because this was never about logistics. It was about exemption. It was about the quiet assumption that certain actors exist above sovereignty, beyond law, and immune from scrutiny because their narrative utility outweighs their operational relevance.

Hamas understood this arrangement perfectly. Its ground strategy was designed to manufacture content. Dense terrain. Embedded infrastructure. Human shields. Hostages. Every Israeli response produced raw material. The cognitive system harvested the output and converted it into pressure. That partnership required constant shock to remain hidden.

Israel’s regulatory adjustment removed the shock.

By acting non kinetically, Israel denied Hamas visuals and denied the narrative apparatus its fuel. With no rubble to point at and no bodies to display, the system turned inward to protect itself. It screamed before anything happened. It forecasted doom that never arrived. It tried to portray paperwork as persecution. In doing so, it exposed its own wiring.

There is a slight smirk to be had here, not because the issue is trivial, but because the reaction was so naked. The system was not being bombed. It was being asked for ID. The outrage was never proportional to the act. It was proportional to the threat of what would be revealed.

Now that the rules are live and Gaza has not collapsed, the spectacle dissolves. What remains is the uncomfortable truth that much of the international outcry was never about aid. It was about preserving a system designed to perpetuate the crisis it needs to function. A system that has mastered the manufacture of constant emergency, catastrophe, and atrocity to justify its own existence.

And this is where the moment becomes historic.

For years, the Palestinians and their allies fought on two fronts while Israel fought on one. Hamas provoked kinetic responses that activated a ready made diplomatic and narrative machine. Israel won battles and lost framing. Over and over again.

This time, Israel stepped sideways.

It did not rush back into escalation. It enacted a lawfare offensive that normalized scrutiny and exposed corruption. It resisted pressure to provide new images. It refused to feed the machine bodies. It went after the infrastructure that made the reflex possible in the first place.

That is not symbolic legislation. That is adaptation.

Israel finally recognized the non kinetic battlefield and responded with precision. With the stroke of a pen, through a perfectly ordinary regulatory act, it exposed something far larger than any single NGO. It revealed a moral economy built on exemption, opacity, and permanent emergency.

Today it looks like a quiet administrative event. Tomorrow it may be remembered as the moment the Palestinian strategy began to unravel, not because Hamas lost another tunnel or commander, but because the ecosystem that converted its tactics into global leverage was finally exposed and interrupted.

Priti Patel: Starmer’s silence on Iran is shocking

Labour’s neglect of our defence and national security is unacceptable.

As a responsible Opposition, the Conservative Party has a clear and comprehensive plan to tackle the threats posed by Iran. First, we would stand by Britain’s allies to work with them on plans to prepare for all scenarios.

Never again should we be on the sidelines while the USA and Israel defend Western values and interests. We should be working with them, offering UK expertise, capabilities and resources, including the use of our base at Diego Garcia, which we would not be surrendering sovereignty over.

Second, where Iran has failed to adhere to the requirements made of it on its nuclear programme, we would make the autocrats of Tehran and their backers feel the economic pain as a result.

The snapback process needs to be implemented in full and we need to go further with our international partners and unilaterally. We’d also follow the money, the cryptocurrency, and all the other methods Iran is using to circumvent the sanctions and go after those facilitating, supporting and bankrolling this regime.

Third, we’d call out the ongoing cruelty, brutality and repression of the Iranian people. Just as Conservatives backed freedom and democracy for those living under communist tyranny in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, we must speak out and condemn everything the tyrants of Tehran are doing to their own people and give them hope that the torch of freedom will never be extinguished.

And fourth, we’d ensure that our military, intelligence and security services are resourced with the funding and powers to keep us safe and our Sovereign Defence Fund would counter the threats we face, dismantle terrorist plots and bring those responsible to justice.

Maduro, the IRGC, and the Globalization of the Terror Threat to Israel

Venezuela and the Iranian Regime
Iran and Venezuela have maintained a relationship since the 1950s. However, the strength and direction of the relationship increased significantly in 2005. The strategic partnership encompassed the realms of politics, military, and economics. In 2007, then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez signed a formal “anti-imperialist” alliance, alluding to the U.S.

By 2020, a military company directly tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) established itself in Venezuela. Then, in 2022, amid U.S. oil sanctions, Venezuela and Iran signed a 20-year agreement, whereby Iran transferred oil to Venezuela. The two countries have coordinated the exchange of gasoline and gold, providing both regimes with sanctions-evasion mechanisms and alternative revenue streams. The partnership allowed Iran to establish a growing presence in Venezuela while diverting some of the profits it makes in Venezuela to its terror network in the Middle East.

In the years leading up to the U.S. military operation, Venezuela began developing drones using Iranian-trained experts overseen by the Islamic Republic, reflecting a deepening military collaboration. Beyond that, Venezuela’s state-owned airline, Conviasa Airlines, has been involved in the Iranian regime’s global illicit arms network.

In effect, Venezuela became not merely an economic partner but a strategic outpost for Iran, extending Tehran’s influence closer to U.S. borders while reinforcing its global network of illicit trade and terror financing.

After the U.S. operation, Qatar issued a statement of disapproval, knowing that ultimately, the capture of Maduro would have profound impacts on Qatar as well, which is also linked to Iran’s terror network.

Venezuela and Hezbollah
Iran has exploited this connection with Venezuela to expand its terror and criminal networks across South America. Hezbollah, in particular, has leveraged the region as a hub for narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and illicit finance, with Hezbollah-affiliated operatives based in Venezuela playing a documented role in these schemes. Through drug trafficking corridors, Hezbollah has generated significant revenue used to finance its terrorist activities abroad.

Hezbollah’s vast terror network includes clans based in Venezuela and other South American countries that assist in the movement of funds through different banks in order to finance Hezbollah’s terror activities. One major operation in 2011 exposed the scale of this network, resulting in the arrest of approximately 130 individuals and the seizure of roughly $23 million in illicit funds.

Hezbollah’s involvement in narcotics and organized crime led the U.S. government in 2018 to designate the group as one of the world’s top five transnational criminal organizations, placing it alongside major drug cartels. This designation underscored the critical reality that Hezbollah is not solely a terrorist organization driven by ideology, but a sophisticated hybrid entity that fuses terrorism with large-scale criminal enterprise, exploiting weak states and corrupt regimes like Venezuela to fund and sustain its global operations.

Venezuela has also bypassed U.S. sanctions by using Hezbollah to smuggle gold, whereby the IRGC facilitated the sale of Iranian oil and accepted gold as a form of payment, which was directed toward Hezbollah terrorists.

Read More