Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, April 10, 2026

04/10 Links Pt1: The West’s fifth column; Iran war is huge success for Israel - but it is not a victory, yet; How the war struck Iran’s architecture of repression

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The West’s fifth column

It’s been chilling to witness a media and political class—mainly on the left, but also on the right—from the start, willing America and Israel to lose this war. The ceasefire terms have thus been spun as a catastrophic defeat: “the disastrous defining act” of Trump’s presidency.

The stupendous military and intelligence achievements of Israel and America have been brushed aside. The decimation of Iran’s military power is dismissed as merely “tactical” gains with no strategic achievement.

Above all, this Greek chorus of doom (echoed by numerous Israeli commentators on the left, for whom the defeat of Iran is of far less importance than the defeat of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu) assumes the war is now over, ignoring the negotiation that has yet to play out.

It’s hard to see how that negotiation can end in a deal at all. Trump’s terms require Iran’s total surrender. Iran’s published terms require its total victory. The area for compromise between these two maximalist positions is nonexistent.

As ever, reading Trump’s mind is a mug’s game. We can’t yet tell whether he’s being played for a sucker by a regime which—by Trump’s own account—has never won a war but never lost a negotiation; or whether he’s delivering a masterclass in geopolitical chess.

The concern is that he’s negotiating at all with religious fanatics, whose infernal agenda is totally non-negotiable and for whom negotiation merely demonstrates their opponent’s weak-minded refusal to go the military distance.

Maybe Trump is using these negotiations as a strategic feint. The suspicion is, however, that he believes that every conflict can be resolved through a deal. If so, that’s a disastrous category error. Iran has always wrong-footed negotiators because they believe that, like everyone else in the world, the regime is susceptible to appeals to personal or national self-interest.

Not so. The fanatics of Tehran would sacrifice the entire population of Iran if needs be, and they regard their own likely deaths as sanctified by the goal of producing Armageddon and the return to earth of the Shia messiah.

Government approves a record 34 new settlements, as it acts to deepen hold on West Bank

The security cabinet approved the establishment of 34 new West Bank settlements in a meeting two weeks ago, The Times of Israel has confirmed.

The approval of the new settlements — brand new settlements as well as illegal ones retroactively legalized — constitutes the largest number of settlements approved by any government at one time, the Peace Now organization said.

Security cabinet meetings and their decisions are classified, and there has been no official confirmation of the decision to approve the 34 new settlements by the government.

According to the i24 News site, which first reported the story earlier Thursday, some of the slated new settlements are located in areas of the northern West Bank isolated from other Israeli settlements but deep among Palestinian population centers, albeit still within Area C of the territory where Israel has full control.

The security cabinet decision brings the total number of settlements approved by the current government to 103 since it took office in 2022.

This amounts to a 78 percent increase in the total number of government-approved settlements in the three and a half years of the current government’s tenure, said Peace Now, which strongly opposes the settlement movement.

By comparison, only six new settlements were formally approved by Israel in the 30 years between the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and the establishment of the current government.

Only a handful of the 103 newly approved settlements have received approval through the Civil Administration’s planning processes, meaning that they have yet to be fully authorized.

PFLP-linked NGO closes Palestinian branch, citing Israel's red tape

The watchdog NGO Monitor delved deeper into DCIP’s ties to the PFLP. It found that several of DCIP’s board members are also PFLP members.

An example is Mahmoud Jiddah, who was elected to the DCIP board in May 2012, but was imprisoned by Israel for 17 years for carrying out grenade attacks against Israeli civilians in Jerusalem in 1968.

Another was Hassan Abed Aljawad, board member up to 2018, who has represented the PFLP at public events.

Shawan Jabarin, who was convicted in 1985 for recruiting members for the PFLP and arranging PFLP training outside Israel, was on the DCI-P’s board of directors from 2007 to 2014.

The former coordinator of DCI-P’s community mobilization unit, Hashem Abu Mari, was killed during a violent confrontation in Beit Ummar in 2014. Following his death, he was hailed by the PFLP as a “leader,” which issued an official mourning announcement. The PFLP announcement praised his work for DCI-P, stating “he was in the ranks of the national liberation struggle and the PFLP from an early age.”

In June 2018, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) succeeded in preventing DCIP from receiving foreign-currency donations via bank transfers from Citibank and Arab Bank PLC. It wrote to Citibank and to Arab Bank in May 2018, highlighting DCIP’s links to the PFLP, and requested that Citibank and Arab Bank withdraw their banking services.

Caroline Turner, director of UKLFI, said at the time that she was “extremely pleased that we are succeeding in shutting down the transfer of donations to this terror-linked NGO”.

Following the announcement of DCIP’s closure, NGO Monitor released a statement saying, “For decades, DCI-P defended terrorists under the guise of protecting children, and played a central role in systematically promoting heinous false accusations against Israel by portraying teens involved in terror attacks – child soldiers – as innocent victims.”

“The damage from DCI-P’s false allegations will take many years to undo,” it concluded.

Anti-Israel activists are ventriloquists, Palestinians are their dummies

A new flotilla is coming!

The Global Sumud Flotilla announced a new fleet of ramshackle boats set to sail to Gaza with some packages of Band-Aids that they will call "critical medical supplies."

The Spring 2026 Mission
In response to a direct call from Palestinians in Gaza, the Global Sumud Flotilla is preparing to mobilize again, on land and at sea, with thousands of participants, more than a hundred boats, hundreds of trucks, and expanded goals.

When you click on the link claiming that this is a "direct call from Palestinians in Gaza" you are taken to a press release by the Palestinian NGO Network.

PNGO says that this wasn't their idea. The very headline linked says "PNGO Commends Efforts of Solidarity Activists Participating in the new Global Sumud Flotilla to Break the Siege on Gaza."

Those "Palestinians in Gaza" didn't call for the flotilla. They say they support the flotilla organized by outsiders.

The "pro-Palestinian" outsiders explicitly lie by claiming that they are speaking for Palestinians, when in fact they are ventriloquists using Palestinians as their literal dummies.

We've seen this show before. The entire BDS movement was created by anti-Israel activists who insist, to this day, that it was a response to a call by "Palestinian civil society." This is a lie on two levels - their definition of "Palestinian civil society" is mostly made up of groups outside "Palestine" and even hardcore anti-Israel activists admit that BDS was organized way before the supposed "call" by Palestinians.

Ordinary Palestinians eat Israeli foods prominently displayed in their supermarkets. There is no boycott.

These activists don't give a damn about Palestinians. They don't give money to NGOs that actually bring food and aid into Gaza. They don't write op-eds about Egyptian restrictions on the Gaza border.

But they are happy to use Palestinians as pawns for their own purposes.

And we can see it in real time in the Global Sumud Flotilla.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Top Pakistan official spouts pure antisemitism. Media ignores that part.

Pakistan's Defense Minister Khawaja Asif tweeted:

Israel is evil and a curse for humanity, while peace talks are underway in Islamabad, genocide is being committed in Lebanon. Innocent citizens are being killed by Israel, first Gaza, then Iran and now Lebanon, bloodletting continues unabated. I hope and pray people who created this cancerous state on Palestinian land to get rid of European jews burn in hell.

There is coverage of this story, mostly about how Pakistan can portray itself as an honest mediator between Iran and Israel when this is the position of its officials.

But no one, outside Israel, seems willing point out the classic, no-doubt-about-it antisemitism within this tweet.

The idea that Europe created Israel as a means to get rid of its Jews is a classic antisemitic meme popular among the far-Right. These are the people who make charts showing all the countries Jews have been expelled from over the centuries and pretend that this is proof that Jews, as a group, must deserve it.

There is no way to claim that Asif's words are mere "anti-Zionism."

But the progressive Left and Western Muslims insist that Muslims aren't antisemitic, not reporting survey after survey showing they are. So the media which wants to please those groups (or is aligned with those groups) simply ignore the blatant antisemitism spouted by a top Pakistani official - because it doesn't fi their narrative.

It isn't like they can deny what he said. So they just hope you don't look at his full words and understand what he is saying.

(As I was composing this post on Thursday night, Asif removed the tweet.)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

04/09 Links: Murray: We must crush Iran now so it can’t come back and spread terror; The war in numbers: 650 Iranian missiles fired, 24 killed, and 10,800 Israeli strikes; Yoo: Iran's Flagrant Assault on the Rules of War

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: We must crush Iran now so it can’t come back and spread terror

There is a reason why the Middle East suffers from so many conflicts.

Why have there been so many wars in Gaza? Why has Lebanon been in a state of war for almost five decades? Why has the whole region, from Yemen to Cyprus had to put up with Iranian interference for 47 years?

Because while the Mullahs and their proxies are thinking about the end-times we are stuck worrying about the midterms. It is this short-term thinking that has lead the West and its allies to keep stopping hostilities just before the point of total victory.

The present ceasefire looks likely to lead to a return of the pre-war status quo. Which means a return not to peace but to war. If the ceasefire lines stop where they are, Iran will help Hezbollah rebuild its stockpiles in Lebanon. The regime in Tehran will rebuild its other terror proxies in the region.And the Iranian regime will continue its decades-long project to develop nuclear weapons.

President Trump has the ability not just to disrupt but to destroy this cycle. He may be the only person in this era of history who can. It is not as though there is any leadership from any other democracy.

The president may not be able to make the regime in Iran fall. But he has the ability to bring it to its knees. And then to leave them on their knees until time, and events, can take their own course on them.

As another sage once put it, “Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.” To which I might add that any job worth starting is worth finishing well.

John Yoo: Iran's Flagrant Assault on the Rules of War

Iran's response to the war launched by the U.S. and Israel provides a reason beyond pure American self-interest to end the rule of the ayatollahs. Tehran broadened the conflict by attacking civilians in neighboring countries uninvolved in the war. A regime that launches systematic warfare against civilians violates the core rules of civilized warfare. The U.S. and Israel would do the world enormous good by ending a regime that flouts our common moral norms in such a flagrant and destructive manner.

Iran has launched missiles and drones at Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan - nations that had committed no aggression against Iran and posed no threat of attack against Iran. It also attacked neutral vessels in the Persian Gulf and prevented them from passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

The U.S. and Israel have sought to conduct the war with the highest regard for minimizing civilian casualties. Compared to this, Iran has struck major civilian targets in neighboring countries, including residential buildings, airports, utilities, and ports. Iran hit the Aramco complex at Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia, the Ras Laffan LNG facility in Qatar, oil and gas facilities in the UAE, and a water desalination plant in Bahrain, none of which are American military assets.

It fired missiles at the Old City of Jerusalem, landing fragments 1,200 meters from the Temple Mount and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. It struck residential areas in Dimona and Arad, wounding over a hundred civilians, including children. It has fired more than 350 ballistic missiles at Israel, half carrying cluster munitions designed to scatter explosive bomblets in civilian neighborhoods.

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world's most important shipping lanes and a waterway governed by the international law of the sea, which guarantees free passage to all neutral nations. Tehran's disruption of the Strait is pure economic blackmail against the rest of the world. Iran effectively attacks the rest of the world by targeting purely civilian ships.

The rules of war are not complicated. Militaries may strike military targets. Militaries may not deliberately target civilians or threaten the commerce of neutral nations. Iran has crossed those lines repeatedly. Tehran's flouting of all the rules of morality in war explains why the U.S. and Israel were right to confront the Islamic Republic now, rather than wait for its threat to gain in strength in the future, potentially wielding nuclear weapons.

Jonathan Spyer: The Winners and Losers of the Iran Ceasefire Deal

The announcement of a two-week ceasefire in the war between the U.S., Israel and Iran resolves none of the issues which caused the conflict. From Israel's point of view, the Iranian regime has been significantly weakened in its capacities in a number of key areas. At the same time, its intentions remain unchanged. This means that the long war is set to continue.

Israel wants to use the entrance of Hizbullah into the war on March 4 as an opportunity to establish a buffer zone north of the border, inside Lebanon, to put the residents of Israel's border communities out of range of Hizbullah's anti-tank missiles and free of the constant danger of an Oct. 7-style ground incursion. This process is not yet completed and five IDF divisions are currently in Lebanon engaged against Hizbullah south of the Litani River.

For Israel, a lull in operations against Iran with Lebanon still an active front would enable air power to be deployed in greater force against Hizbullah. From Israel's point of view, the ceasefire with Iran does not extend to Lebanon.

The essential components of the regional strategic picture remain in place. Iran remains an aggressive and dangerous power, with the ambition of expelling the U.S. from the region, dominating the Gulf states, and destroying Israel. The U.S., Israel, and the Gulf states remain determined to resist Iranian ambitions. The events of the last five weeks represent a round in this ongoing struggle. Israel and the U.S. have demonstrated their vast conventional military advantage over the Iranians. They have also not yet demonstrated the capacity to turn that advantage into a strategy able to bring the struggle to a successful strategic conclusion by toppling the Tehran regime - the only way that this will end.

What Was Achieved in the War Against Iran?

I suggest that anyone swept up in the euphoria of claims that Israel's war in Iran was a failure should look at the information and analysis coming from American sources.

It is hard to believe that such a large-scale operation, in which, according to the Israel Air Force, target destruction rates were 10 to 20 times greater than in the 12-day war in June 2025, is being portrayed by talking heads as a failure.

By any measure, this was the most successful military operation since the IDF and the Israel Air Force began conducting such operations.

Israel and the U.S. achieved the objective of destroying every production cycle, every component, and every plant and laboratory connected to Iran's nuclear project.

Security needs mean neutralizing the nuclear threat and reducing missile-launch capabilities.

The Iranians could have raced ahead and built a missile wall that would deter Israel and the U.S. from taking military action against them, as North Korea did in its time.

That parallel missile and nuclear race was cut short. This is an enormous success.

Trump and Netanyahu acted against the trend that had prevailed in the U.S. and Israel over the past 35 years. They chose military action, and they succeeded.

The precedent set by this dual alliance, combined with demonstrated military superiority, carries enormous significance.

04/07 Links Pt2: Iron Dome and the ‘America First’ Left; David Schwimmer: Wireless ‘Disgraced Itself’ by Booking Kanye, Calls Rapper a ‘Hate-Mongering Bigot’

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Iron Dome and the ‘America First’ Left

The problem is that it isn’t true that Iron Dome is none of our concern. The America First left is thus living a lie—the very same lie that America First rightists tell themselves. The Horseshoe Theory strikes again.

There are two kinds of benefits that Iron Dome funding brings to America: direct and indirect. An example of an indirect benefit: It is an immensely cost-effective way to prevent escalation in the Middle East, since it allows Israel to absorb rocket attacks that would otherwise necessitate an overwhelming military response. And preventing escalation in the Middle East saves American lives.

One theory behind funding Iron Dome, then, is: It is good to save American lives.

But the indirectness of that particular benefit opens space for naysayers to claim otherwise (though it would be surprising if they actually believed such claims). So if that were where the argument ended, AOC and Khanna and others could claim some kind of “both sides” stalemate in which two legitimate but unprovable claims must coexist.

But it does not end there. In fact, it begins there.

As one Congressional Research Service report on Iron Dome explains succinctly: “In March 2014, the United States and Israeli governments signed a coproduction agreement to enable components of the Iron Dome system to be manufactured in the United States, while also providing the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) with full access to what had been proprietary Iron Dome technology.”

Let’s take the first part first, because it’s so simple even an anti-Zionist could understand it. For about a decade, Raytheon’s plant in Arizona was the critical core of Iron Dome parts production in America. In November 2025, a new plant in Arkansas came online, moving even more of the process from Israel to America. Now, the manufacture of missile components for Iron Dome interceptors is mostly an American process. In other words, just like much of what is called “aid” to Israel, the money is spent on the U.S. economy and in fortifying American manufacturing. Along with the new Arkansas facility, Reuters reports, Raytheon received a $1.25 billion contract to supply Israel.

American jobs, American money, American manufacturing—if these are unimportant to Iron Dome’s critics, they should say so. Ignoring them entirely is an act of profound bad faith.

Meanwhile, access to the missile-defense technology is its own return-on-investment, since the U.S. gets to see data from the tech’s deployment in wartime scenarios. So: Iran fires missiles at Israel, and the U.S. sees what works and what doesn’t without its own civilians being the live targets.

Which is why, in the end, opposition to Iron Dome in the U.S. generally takes an ideological, and not a mathematical or practical, primary basis. One cannot argue that there are no benefits to the U.S.; one can only argue that those benefits—investment in the U.S. economy, job creation, a steady boost to domestic manufacturing, and of course lives saved—aren’t meaningful.

From first intercept to 10,000 combat intercepts: Iron Dome turns 15-analysis

On April 7, 2011 at 6.20PM I was in the southern city of Sderot when the incoming siren blared. Hamas had fired a Grad missile towards the city of Ashkelon. Running to the safe room, I heard a sound that was different than a rocket slamming into the ground-it was the first interception by the now famous Iron Dome missile defense system.

Air defense soldiers gave the call sign “Alpha”- the signal for a successful first intercept of a rocket toward Israel. That interception, 15 years ago today, has changed the face of active defense around the world- especially here in Israel where it fundamentally redefined Israel’s defensive doctrine and its ability to counter rocket threats.

The system has logged more than 10,000 combat intercepts and sustained success rates exceeding 90%.

“Over the past 15 years, the system has changed the face of the battlefield and shielded Israel’s civilians from relentless threats coming from multiple adversaries. Iron Dome is a first-order strategic asset and a central pillar of Israel’s national defense doctrine,” said Prof. Yuval Steinitz, Chairman, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems.

Hilla Haddad Chmelnik was on the Iron Dome’s development team during her service in the Israel Air Force and recalled her first encounter with the system.

“I met Iron Dome a year before it became operational. It was in advanced development of the first interceptor batteries. I was in the Air Force, at the test range, and Rafael and MAFAT came to the Air Force to make it operational with an acceptance test. We had to think: how do we check the system and make sure it works well?”

The primary contractor for the development of the Iron Dome is Rafael Advanced Defense System. The MMR radar is developed by ELTA, a subsidiary of the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), and the command and control system is developed by mPrest.

Its development was completed in roughly two and a half years, an exceptional engineering feat by any international standard.

“It immediately became a different kind of project, a sort of paperless project, because it was developed so fast. It was extraordinary because it required a whole new way of thinking about how an interception system works. It changed the way we test systems,” she told Defense & Tech by The Jerusalem Post.

The first test of the system took place in February 2011 and two months later the first interception took place.

“The interception happened an hour before my wedding in Herzliya,” Haddad Chmelnik recalled. “It was a double celebration. It was amazing.”

Strategies to stop antizionist abuse

The most effective and powerful analogies are always the simplest and easiest to picture.

And during an empowering 90-minute presentation at Sydney’s Dover Heights Synagogue late last month on how to identify, and fight back against, the dangerous tsunami of antizionism that’s enabling the spread of hatred against Jews, Josh Dabelstein – the Australian chapter coordinator of the Movement Against Antizionism (MAAZ) – delivered an absolute beauty.

At the event organised by the Zionist Council of NSW, Dabelstein, who has a unique and deep knowledge of antizionism because he was once an antizionist himself, relayed to the audience of more than 100 this most potent of paragraphs:

“If we think about the highway to Jew hate, one lane is antijudaism, the middle lane is antisemitism and the other lane is antizionism. We [society and the law] blocked those first two lanes. That doesn’t mean that there are still people swerving all over the road. Some people do just hate Jews, right? But the one lane that allows them through today and emboldens them, provides them a permission structure and allows society to really spread all of this stuff, is antizionism.”

To understand why Dabelstein considers antizionism the single greatest threat facing Jews in the Diaspora today, it helps to understand how MAAZ frames the history of Jew hatred as a whole. At his Dover Heights shule address, he explained how those “three lanes on a highway” are related, but also quite distinct, with each associated with different “permission structures”, meaning they utilise a system of language, beliefs and authorities that makes the harm that the protagonists cause feel justified and allows people to adopt positions they once would have vehemently rejected.

Antijudaism, the oldest form, targeted Jews through religion – which is now illegal. Antisemitism targets Jews through race and ethnicity – which is also now illegal.

But antizionism – the dominant form today – targets Jews through demonising the Jewish state – disguising the hate as political criticism, or for social justice. Josh Dabelstein speaking at the event, presented by the Zionist Council of NSW.

In each case, he argued, the hatred operates not by engaging honestly with its stated target – Judaism, Semitism or Zionism – but by inventing a phantom proxy and loading it with libels.

“They take all the things that they hate and they shove them in that word.”

In the antizionist era, today’s libels – genocide, apartheid, colonialism – are directed at the Jewish state, are repeated ad nauseam and, Dabelstein said, “are elevated to fact status through pseudo-academia and institutional adoption.”

The conspiracy theories have shifted accordingly: Israel’s President Isaac Herzog is likened to Hitler during his recent Australian visit; and stigmatising Jews is now “simply achieved through misusing the word Zionist”.

What makes all forms of Jew hatred dangerous, Dabelstein said, is precisely that each presents as fashionable in the context they arise, before eventually being revealed as violent systems that produce violent ends.

While antizionism presents itself as anti-colonial, anti-racist and humanitarian, the violence it invites is moralised the same way it was in medieval and Nazi Europe.

04/07 Links Pt1: Trump: US To Enter Two-Week Ceasefire if Islamic Republic Allows opening of the Strait of Hormuz,’; 1 attacker killed in gun battle with police outside Israeli consulate in Istanbul

From Ian:

Three Things the Consensus Gets Wrong About the Iran War

First, the war has not, despite what many claim, trashed America’s alliances. NATO was battered by Donald Trump well before the war began, and not least by his egregious threats to wrest Greenland from Denmark. No doubt, some of our European allies have bristled at this war and in some cases refused to assist with it. Not all, though: German bases are important for the air bridge to the Middle East. In a moment of candor during Israel’s 12-day war with Iran last June, Chancellor Friedrich Merz allowed that the fight against Iran was “dirty work Israel is doing for all of us.” He understood, in other words, that Iran poses a challenge to European security that Europe chooses not to address on its own. “We are also victims of this regime,” he said.

More to the point: The United States is actually working very closely with a group of allies, just not the Europeans. Israel, of course, is actively engaged in the war, employing an air force twice as large and more than twice as capable of conducting this kind of campaign than the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force. The Gulf states are providing basing, and some Asian nations have been quietly supportive. Several hundred Ukrainian drone experts, who have behind them the most advanced military industry of its kind anywhere, are sharing what they’ve learned. If the Trump administration could only see Ukraine as a powerful partner rather than a charity case, even more could be done. A new partnership, joining Gulf finance with Ukrainian military technology, appears to be emerging from this war, to the advantage of the United States.

Second, the common claim that the war is a boon for Russia and China is exaggerated. Will it provide a short-term boost for Russian oil earnings? Probably, although it will be offset by the spectacular success the Ukrainians are having in hitting its petrochemical industry and its ability to export. Russia has profoundly deformed its backward economy, and now appears to be getting the worst of it on the battlefield. Meanwhile, the prospect that Ukrainian military innovation might be powered by Saudi and Emirati money cannot be a happy one for Moscow.

China, for its part, might indeed be licking its chops at the idea of the United States depleting its stocks of expensive interceptor missiles in this war. If governments choose to attack because they think they know exactly how many exotic munitions their opponents have in their warehouses, then China might well invade Taiwan. But, by and large, that is not how governments decide to launch global wars. Rather, they look at a host of considerations, including the nature of their opponents. In this case, the Chinese will see a president quite willing to wage an unpopular war and employ extreme violence. That president possesses a remarkably capable armed force, and is willing to spend the money ($1.5 trillion in the latest budget) to build an even larger and considerably more modernized one. Sober Chinese analysts, moreover, will have some appreciation of how the United States and its armed forces have a history of innovating and adapting when the pressure is on.

And finally, there are people who argue that Iran has been turned into a great power by this war. But being subjected to tens of thousands of precision air strikes; having your senior leadership assassinated, your air defenses almost entirely destroyed, your navy virtually annihilated; and losing crucial parts of your industrial infrastructure do not make you stronger. Can Iran keep the Strait of Hormuz closed? For now, yes. Perpetually? That is harder to believe. Ukraine has been able to keep its grain corridor in the Black Sea open despite Russian attacks; the U.S. Navy, ill-prepared as it was for the mine-clearing mission that it should have anticipated, is no doubt working full-time on solving what is essentially a tactical problem, albeit one with strategic implications.

Iran’s leaders and their sympathizers may declare that survival means that Iran wins this war, but that is, on the face of it, preposterous. The regime has profoundly alienated its neighbors by lashing out at them, brought the two most powerful air forces in the Middle East into intimate cooperation against it, and suffered new blows to its already impoverished economy. Is Iran’s new leadership—the members of whom have not fallen to Israeli bombs, that is—inclined to take an even harder line than its predecessors? Possibly. But the pictures published this week of the niece and grandniece of Qassem Soleimani—the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force killed in Trump’s first term—who have been living the good life in the United States, should trigger the thought that the elite leadership of Iran might be less pure and hard than one might think. And even committed ideologues have their breaking point; Heinrich Himmler was as hard-core as they come, yet attempted open negotiations with Allen Dulles of the Office of Strategic Services in 1945.

There is so much that we do not know—including which targets have been hit, what damage has been done, and to what effect. But when we see things like the extraordinary rescue of the aircrew of the F-15E shot down over Iran, we need to remember that the military organizations pounding Iran are extremely formidable. That does not guarantee success. But it should make us, at the very least, thoughtful about where this war may go.

Seth Mandel: Unfrozen

Iran’s ability to open and close the strait at will is similar to its attacks on regional energy infrastructure, its demonstration of missile-firing capabilities that threaten Europe, and its use of cluster munitions against Israeli civilians. All three made the West adjust its war aims to prevent Iran from being able to hold the region and near-abroad hostage in the future. To this list we can add a pre-existing goal—the destruction of Iran’s nuclear weapons program—and the recent fixation on the Strait of Hormuz, which seems to have overtaken the others (except for the nuclear threat) in Trump’s mind.

There are two ways of looking at this, and they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The first is that Trump backed himself into this corner by showing his sensitivity to oil prices without having put into place a strategy to preempt Iran’s ability to flip that switch. The second is that Trump’s fixation on the strait is a post-hoc realization that Iran must be divested from its leverage over the shipping lanes.

A cease-fire without a mechanism for enforcing the opening of the strait would make it what Trump seems to really want to avoid: a frozen conflict.

Take Gaza. The cease-fire between Israel and the remnants of Hamas may turn into its own new status quo, which would be less than ideal. But it is far superior to the state of the frozen conflict that was in place on October 7, 2023. If the Israel-Hamas war ends here, then Gaza’s genocidal and barbaric government has paid a permanent price for its aggression.

Likewise, Trump has been surprisingly hawkish on Lebanon, at times more so than Israel, regarding Hezbollah. As it currently stands, either Lebanon will disarm Hezbollah or much of “Hezbollahland” in South Lebanon will remain open space. Israel has proposed the following deal: If Israelis can return to their homes in the north without fear of quickly being displaced again by rocket storms from Lebanon, then the residents of South Lebanon will be welcome to return to their own homes. Lebanon has thus far rejected these terms. Trump, at the moment, is backing Israel’s position—in part, surely, because Israel has proposed a permanent peace rather than a return to the frozen conflict.

Trump’s penchant for finality can be seen in his approach to Venezuela as well. The decision to greenlight the capture of Nicolas Maduro was a bold one, but it was not done in the name of Venezuelan democracy. It was an attempt to permanently alter the relationship between Washington and Caracas. If the remnants of the Maduro regime are willing to play ball with Trump, they’ll stick around. That’ll mean the end of what Trump saw as the Venezuelan tail wagging the American dog.

This template cannot be applied at will—there will be no “Venezuelan option” in Iran, and lord knows what Trump even thinks he is accomplishing in the Russia-Ukraine war. It isn’t a doctrine, or an -ism. But the president does seem to have a preference for avoiding the “pause” button if a status quo can be radically and permanently changed in America’s favor.

Jonathan Tobin: Unlike Israel, many of America’s NATO allies aren’t really allies

Other countries will cheer or jeer from the sidelines, but Israel not only has a powerful military but is willing to use it, along with its unmatched intelligence capabilities and operations, to fight a war alongside America. And it is doing so with the knowledge that Trump could end the war before the Jewish state has achieved the objectives that Netanyahu has set.

Contrary to the largely antisemitic myth that the world’s most powerful man in charge of a superpower was dragged into a war by the prime minister of a country the size of New Jersey with a mere 10 million people, this war was America’s idea. And it is being fought to protect America’s interests as well as Israel’s. Stopping nuclear and missile threats—and the world’s largest state sponsor of terror—isn’t a favor to Israel. It’s vital for the security of the Middle East, which affects the economies of all, as has been shown in Iran’s stranglehold of the Strait of Hormuz and international shipping.

A clear look at the events of the last two months doesn’t just show Israel’s value as an ally, even though there is no pact of alliance between Washington and Jerusalem as there is with America’s 31 NATO allies, which the United States is obligated to defend under that treaty’s Article V provision. It has also done invaluable damage to what remains of American support for the belief that the alliance is vital to the country’s defense.

Israel has friendly relations with other countries, including some in Europe. And it has strong security ties with key regional nations like Saudi Arabia, even though they remain under the table rather than out in the open. But it has only one genuine ally. There are no plausible alternatives, even when Washington is run by those who are lukewarm or worse about the relationship, as under the administrations led by former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

NATO may yet be revived at some point in the future. Even now, it still serves some use, if only to help ensure that Russia’s troublemaking can be contained. But the stark truth of 2026 is that it has largely become a vestige of the past that has outlived much of its usefulness.

At the same time, the idea that Washington’s affection for Israel is a hindrance to the pursuit of U.S. national interests or makes it difficult for it to make friends in the Middle East has been conclusively exploded by recent events.

It is the alliance with Israel that is the one irreplaceable asset for American foreign policy and security needs in the region. And one is hard-pressed to think of another such reliable ally elsewhere with both the military assets—and the willingness to use them in a difficult fight— and common values of democracy. It’s high time that American pundits and politicians, whether seduced by antisemitic tropes and arguments or wallowing in hatred for Trump, stop speaking of Israel as an American problem and start acknowledging this reality.

The Great Zionist Pistachio Conspiracy Theory that a rich Jewish family told the US to bomb Iranian pistachio warehouses

Drop Site News posted this week:

Iran was once the world's leading pistachio producer. Today, USDA data show the U.S., led by California, accounts for roughly 65% of global output, while Iran's share has fallen to about 18%. In the first week of the war, reports and geolocated satellite imagery indicated strikes in and around Rafsanjan, the heart of Iran's pistachio sector, including apparent damage to pistachio warehouse facilities near the airport. The Resnick family, owners of The Wonderful Company and dominant players in California's pistachio industry, have used political influence to secure vast water rights in drought-stricken regions, at the expense of local communities.

The 2025 documentary Pistachio Wars examines their longstanding backing of pro-Israel lobbying groups, arguing that hawkish policies toward Iran align with their commercial interests, as weakening a key global competitor benefits their bottom line.

The implication is clear: a rich Jewish family lobbied for hawkish Iran policy to benefit their pistachio empire, and the U.S. decided to target Iran's pistachio heartland at their behest.

This is absurd from multiple angles. U.S. sanctions on Iranian pistachios date to the 1980s — before the Resnick family built their agricultural empire. The sanctions didn't protect Resnick dominance. They created the market conditions that made Resnick dominance possible. Iranian pistachios haven't been a serious competitive threat in the U.S. for decades.

So the theory requires us to believe that the United States, in the middle of a campaign targeting nuclear sites, IRGC assets, and ballistic missile infrastructure, prioritized targeting a nut warehouse whose financial threat was neutralized forty years ago.

Let's say the warehouse really was filled with nuts. The bulk of Iran's pistachio industry is controlled by proxies of the Supreme Leader and the IRGC. Bonyad Mostazafan — which the U.S. Treasury has described as an immense conglomerate used by Khamenei to enrich his office and reward political allies — claims to own 95–96% of the pistachio collection terminals in Kerman province. IRGC-owned economic infrastructure is a legitimate military target under international law. No need to talk about rich Jews.

This is how conspiracy theories work. They start with real ingredients — the Resnicks do lobby, a warehouse in Rafsanjan was struck, the sanctions did benefit California producers — and connect them into a chain that feels tight when counter-evidence is waved away. Coherence substitutes for truth, and the absurdity that the U.S. military would prioritize the desires of a pistachio empire over other legitimate targets seems to make perfect sense when the audience is primed to believe antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Which is, in the end, what this is.

Pistachio Wars, the 2025 documentary that laid the groundwork for this framing, was made by Watermelon Pictures, a Palestinian-owned film company whose output is nearly all about Palestinians or Arabs. But this conspiracy theory has nothing to do with supporting Palestinians — it is entirely about associating a wealthy Jewish family with power and corruption. Of all the billionaire lobbying operations that shape American foreign policy — Saudi Arabia, Big Oil, the defense industry, Cuban exile groups — the Palestinian documentary filmmakers found it urgent to "expose" one Jewish family's nut business.

Without antisemitism, there would be no Watermelon Pictures. Without antisemitism, no one would imagine the U.S. military is bombing Iran to enrich a Jewish nut family. The "pro-Palestinian" label is cover. The product is the same old thing.

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CNN Arabic on Monday published an interview with Houthi leader Mohammed Ali al-Houthi saying that the Houthis will stay out of the war unless things escalate.

The interesting part is that Yemen's Saba news agency published its own version of the interview, and while some parts line up, every crazy thing he said about Jews was ignored by CNN:

CNN Correspondent: Will the armed forces, led by Ansar Allah, begin targeting ships linked to Israel in the Red Sea, specifically Bab al-Mandab? And are Ansar Allah aware of the potential economic pressure this could have on countries in the region, such as Egypt?

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: The Jews are leading the world toward destruction and are using America to achieve their goals. America should have considered its interests in the region and ceased the aggressive approach that Zionism is pushing it toward.

...

CNN Correspondent: To what extent can Ansar Allah continue to support Iran in this war?

Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: Yemen, along with Iran and the free people of the world, is confronting the Zionist plan because it is aggressive, destructive, and catastrophic for the peoples of our nation. It is the beginning of the downfall of existing civilizations, including American civilization. The Jews who destroyed the civilization of Prophet Solomon and abandoned it, following the magic recited by the devils, still harbor the same destructive and divisive mentality among peoples and nations, just as they separate a man and his wife with their sorcery.

Yes, the Quran mentions that Jews in Solomon's time used sorcery to separate husbands and wives.

CNN could point out the hate and insanity that the Houthi leaders show towards Jews - but it chooses not to. Instead, it treats them with deference and respect as national leaders.

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04/06 Links Pt2: The Jewish Passion for Freedom and Human Rights Was Hijacked by the West; Why Israeli Youth Remain Positive during War

From Ian:

Gerald M. Steinberg: The Jewish Passion for Freedom and Human Rights Was Hijacked by the West

Freedom and human rights are universal values, and Jews have often been at the forefront of these struggles, playing central roles in the creation of the modern human rights movement, forged in the shadow of the Holocaust. They built strong institutions tasked with implementing these principles. But now these institutions and their leaders have betrayed the moral force behind their creation. They stand for and reinforce hate and demonization directed at Israel.

Rene Cassin, a Jewish jurist from France, was a principal drafter of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Raphael Lemkin (who coined the term "genocide") was a principal author of the Genocide Convention.

Peter Benenson, a journalist from a prominent Jewish and Zionist family in Britain, founded Amnesty International, turning it into a political superpower. Robert L. Bernstein, the head of Random House publishers, built Helsinki Watch to report on Soviet compliance with the human rights components of the U.S.-Soviet detente known as the Helsinki Accords. The organization expanded into Human Rights Watch. Bernard Kouchner, a French Jew, helped found Doctors Without Borders.

When the founders of all three institutions retired, their legacy and moral principles were abandoned. The new leaders were anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Israel ideologues for whom the rhetoric of human rights was a convenient political weapon. They went from false claims against Israel of "war crimes" to the poisonous accusation of "genocide" - a heinous form of Holocaust inversion. In 2009, Bernstein began to denounce the organization he created - Human Rights Watch - for turning Israel into a pariah state.

The hostile takeover of the principles of freedom and human rights, and the institutions that claim to embody them, has done tremendous damage, not only to the Jewish people but also to the moral values themselves.

A Jew Among Jews By Abe Greenwald

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During Passover, the Free Press published a beautiful piece by Olivia Reingold titled “I Am an October 8 Jew.” In it, she describes how, after October 7, she began to reclaim the Jewish heritage she had all but abandoned as a child. Eventually, Reingold would find herself moved to tears during a recent Shabbat service, “a day that used to mean nothing to me, except more time to scroll online or work.”

I can’t say that I’m an October 8 Jew, as I was devoted to the cause well before then. But something about my Judaism has also changed since October 7.

I’ve long been a passionate Zionist, and I’ve felt that I owe everything to God. While I am a devoted believer, however, I’m a very negligent observer. Having come fully to embrace my Judaism only in adulthood, I’ve done slightly more than the bare minimum to maintain a personal sense of Jewish tradition.

Beginning a few decades ago, I went about kosher eating in my own way (and I’ve got my biblical justifications for it). I wrap tefillin in phases, the way others might go to the gym, slack off, and then resume. I pore over the Hebrew Bible regularly but in no regimented fashion. I tread lightly and humbly into the Talmud.

All of which is to say, I have cobbled together my own version of observance and continue to fine-tune it. Many Jews do the same.

Judaism, as I came to it, was about my relationship with my God, my place in history, and my inheritance. A lot of “my” was involved in this, but somehow “my people” barely came up.

October 7 changed me in this important respect. Before that day, I had never felt much of an ongoing obligation to my fellow Jews around the world. Of course, whenever I heard news of threatened or assaulted Jews, the bonds of history and faith would take hold. But they would once again recede. I didn’t think a great deal about how my actions or words affected the Jews of Australia, Asia, Europe, and elsewhere.

Betrayal of the Kurds shows why Jews depend on Israel

This is why Jews need the state of Israel. It is a lesson delivered by the Holocaust and by every atrocity and injustice meted out to the powerless ever since. Israel must hold. And its situation is precarious. It is tiny and vastly outnumbered by its enemies. Around 15km wide at its narrowest point, the country has no strategic depth, nowhere for it to retreat to in the event of a military defeat.

So Israel must fight to survive. It can never rest or become complacent. It must be powerful.

But it must also be smart. Tactical brilliance must be accompanied by the kind of strategic and political foresight that has been unforgivably absent for far too long.

And central to this is finding an accommodation, not just with Iran – when the pathologically murderous Islamic Republic is finally gone – but with another of the world’s stateless people: the Palestinians. Right now, there is no leadership – on either side – to make this possible. But Israel cannot abandon peace, not just because it is a moral imperative, but because it is a strategic one.

It is here that my mind returns to a line from, of all things, the TV series The Wire. Gang leader Avon Barksdale is standing by the hospital bed of a comatose friend, talking to his nephew D’Angelo Barksdale about the inescapable logic of “the game” – the brutal system in which they all live. “The thing is, you only gotta fuck up once. Be a little slow, be a little late, just once,” he says. “And how you ain’t gon’ never be slow? Never be late?”

From Rojava to Baltimore to Gaza and Tehran the point is the same: to survive in “the game” – be it drug dealing or the far more brutal world of geopolitics – being strong is unignorably necessary. But it is not sufficient. Avon knows that his only future is jail or death.

Thankfully, Israel’s options are broader. But it must internalise Avon’s words – because no one wins every war forever. At some point, you will be slow, you will be late. You must defeat your enemies. But you must also make peace with them – or you will never find peace yourself.

US Court of Appeals affirms $655.5 million judgement against PLO, Palestinian Authority

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has reinstated a $655.5 million judgement against the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority for supporting terrorist attacks and making payments to the perpetrators.

In a March 30 decision, the three-judge panel reversed its previous decision to throw out the case following a 2025 Supreme Court decision in a similar suit and the passage of a 2019 federal law designed to enable the victims of terrorism to pursue civil court cases against the perpetrators.

The plaintiffs in the case, Waldman v. Palestine Liberation Org, are a group of U.S. citizens injured during terrorist attacks in Israel or the estates and survivors of victims killed in those attacks.

In 2004, they filed suit against the PLO and PA under the Anti-Terrorism Act. After a seven-week trial, a jury returned a verdict in their favor, and the district court judge entered a judgement against the Palestinian organizations for nearly $656 million.

In the succeeding two decades, the plaintiffs have largely been stymied on appeal, with the PA and PLO successfully arguing that the courts lacked jurisdiction.

In 2025, the Supreme Court decided in Fuld v. Palestine Liberation Organization to reverse and remand the 2nd Circuit’s most recent decision to toss out the Waldman case and clarified the jurisdictional question.

The 2nd Circuit’s new decision granted the plaintiffs’ motion to affirm the district court’s original judgement in light of the Supreme Court decision.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry welcomed the ruling on Monday.

“A major step in holding the Palestinian authority accountable for its long-lasting terror support—financially and legally,” it stated.

04/06 Links Pt1: Myths of the Iran War; 5 Men Now Running Iran; Iran rejects Pakistan-mediated truce deal; Russia provided Iran with list of Israeli energy targets

From Ian:

Myths of the Iran War

One myth related to the war is that if enriched uranium remains in Iran, the war has failed. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran possesses 441 kg. of uranium enriched up to 60%. Israel and the U.S. never intended to deploy thousands of troops deep inside Iran to seize nuclear facilities. Absent a comprehensive agreement to remove the uranium as part of a deal, the approach is to monitor suspected sites and, if necessary, act against them from the air.

In any case, Iran's enrichment facilities have been completely disabled, and it is doubtful they can be restored to operation anytime soon. Moreover, Iran has yet to achieve a breakthrough that would allow it to build an actual weapon system. Over the past year, many of the senior scientists involved in these efforts have been killed. Without the ability to develop a weapon, the uranium Iran possesses has no practical significance.

The claim that Trump was misled by Israel reflects a misunderstanding of U.S. decision-making culture. American presidents formulate policy based solely on their country's interests. The decisive consideration guiding the White House is what serves the American people. The notion that a U.S. president makes critical national security decisions based on assessments presented by Israeli leaders or Mossad officials runs counter to longstanding American practice.

Another myth is that it is possible to decisively defeat Hamas, Iran, Hizbullah or the Houthis once and for all. There is no way to guarantee that even a clear military defeat will end an adversary's motivation to pursue its objectives, recognizing that capabilities can be rebuilt. Phrases such as "once and for all" amount to speculation.

Even after Israel's decisive victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, when its military defeated the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, within a few years, Egypt launched the War of Attrition and in 1973, together with Syria, carried out a large-scale surprise attack against Israel. So victories may have an expiration date. As we repeated at the Passover Seder, in every generation there are those who rise up to destroy us.

Winners and Losers in the Iran War

Iran, Israel, and the U.S. have not achieved the goals they set for themselves in their current war. On the Iranian side, the late Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had hoped that by adopting the "Samson option," he would provoke a brief regional war with limited damage to his Islamic Republic because he would step in and offer another of his "heroic flexibility" tricks before things got out of hand. His "heroic flexibility" was designed to come after the first wave of attacks by Israeli and American bombers targeting part of Iran's military infrastructure.

However, as he wasn't there to do his part, Israel and the U.S. had to go for a second wave of bombings and then a third - this time targeting Iran's industrial infrastructure on a scale not known since World War II. Its weapons industry has been decimated, and its vast nuclear project put back by years if not decades.

Worse still, Iran's unprovoked ballistic missile and drone attacks on neighboring countries in no way involved in this war may have done lasting damage to the largely tolerant, not to say benevolent, attitude that many of them had of Iran even under the mullahs.

The outside world has been divided between those who, because they hate Trump or Netanyahu or even America and Israel as a whole, designate the mullahs as victors, and those who, translating their hatred of the Iranian regime into a wish for Iran's destruction as a nation-state, declare Trump and Netanyahu as winners.

Anti-U.S. and anti-Israel circles exaggerate the effect of Tehran's tactic of inflicting economic pain on the world by playing fast and loose with oil exports via the Strait of Hormuz and disrupting overall trade in a chunk of the region. That in turn intensifies the effects of the mullahs' mischief-making.

The U.S. and Israel may lose the Iranian people as one of the few nations known for their positive view of both countries. The theme of "you came and destroyed our industrial, economic and scientific infrastructure, but left our torturers in place" is gaining currency among Iranians both at home and abroad.

There is little doubt that although the Khomeinist regime is badly mauled, the biggest loser in this war will be the Iranian people. The war has destroyed thousands of jobs in Iran. A people facing mass unemployment and shortages of food, water and medicine would not be immediately ready for another attempt at regime change.

Telegraph Editorial: Iran Is Not a War of Choice

The U.S. and its enemies have learned from the last two decades that nuclear deterrence works. The ability of the West to intervene in the defense of Ukraine has been hampered by the existence of Russia's nuclear arsenal.

North Korea watched Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi disassemble his nuclear and chemical weapons programs in 2003, subsequently allowing NATO aircraft to topple his regime as the people he had tormented rose up against him. North Korean state media stated that "powerful nuclear deterrence serves as the strongest treasured sword for frustrating outsiders' aggression."

This same logic has underlaid Israel's approach to regional proliferation for decades. The Begin doctrine laid out after Israel's 1981 airstrike on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor set out precisely why Israel would strike the al-Kibar site in Syria in 2007; it also explained why it struck Iranian nuclear facilities in 2025.

By achieving the full suite of capabilities necessary for a functioning nuclear deterrent - capabilities that it seemed well on the road to attaining - the Iranian regime hoped to build a nuclear shield. A regime built on a fundamentalist belief system devoted to the destruction of the West was not pursuing these weapons as a pathway to moderation.

Instead, a nation sponsoring terrorist militias, launching drone and missile strikes at its neighbors, attempting to hold the global economy to ransom by shutting the flow of trade through the Strait of Hormuz, was seeking to become effectively untouchable militarily.

While the 2025 airstrikes set back Tehran's nuclear program, it was clear early this year that efforts to rebuild its capabilities were well underway. The history of Iran's nuclear ambitions is of diplomacy, time and again, falling short. Faced with the necessity of putting a permanent end to them, it is hard to argue that Israel or America had any other choice.

Susan Abulhawa's hilarious self-own - faking hate mail from a "zio"

Terrorist fangirl Susan Abulhawa writes on X that she received an email threat.

But this is not a screenshot of an email. It is a screenshot of a contact form on a website that the sender would need to have hit a send button for Susan to read it. The red asterisks tell the user that these are mandatory fields to fill out - Abulhawa wouldn't see it on her end if the form was really filled out by someone else.

In fact, it looks suspiciously like Susan wrote this entire vile email on her own website contact form, screenshotted it before hitting "Get in Touch," and then presented it as if it is what she received.

Which means not only that Abulhawa faked her own hate mail, but also that she does not receive hate mail of the type that is vile enough for her to prove that "zios" are as evil as she says.

Another point: if this was a real email that she hadn't botched showing, anyone could have made up any name or email address. Meaning that it is easy for someone to pretend to be someone they hate and fake out a vile email from them. Even if we take Abulhawa at her word, this would have resulted in her followers potentially harassing or threatening an innocent person whose name and email was used by someone else. her claiming to want to put this email out into the light is in fact the height of irresponsibility where she is making someone subject to real harassment. Usually people who make death threats are not stupid enough to use their real names.

(Indeed, there is someone with that name in the US, and for all we know Abulhawa wants to have her followers harass her.)

The only vile person here is Susan Abulhawa.

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What does Judaism look like without Zionism ? The @NYTimes unwittingly provides an answer

The New York Times is running a glowing review today of Molly Crabapple's new history of the Jewish Labor Bund, framed around a seductive question: what does Judaism look like without Zionism?

The answer the book implicitly offers — and the review enthusiastically endorses — is the Bund: secular, socialist, diasporist, proudly Jewish in culture while rejecting both religion and nationalism. It is seen as a left-wing dream team from history, conveniently available for appropriation in 2026.

But the review lets slip a detail that answers the titular question: "At a Bundist gathering, the pastries might be fried in pig fat, just to prove a point."

The reviewer calls this "proudly secular." No, it isn't. That's active hostility to Judaism performed as identity. There's a meaningful difference between not keeping kosher and deliberately serving treif to make a point: it is the difference between being irreligious and being anti-religious.

This is what Judaism looks like without Zionism. It is indistinguishable from garden variety Communism - anti-religious and antisemitic in the sense of being opposed to everything that makes Jews Jewish. The Bund broke with the Bolsheviks over organizational questions, not over the basic project of replacing Jewish religious life with revolutionary politics.

During Passover 100 years ago, in 1926, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency wrote:

The Charkoff Yiddish communist paper "Der Stern" complained that while the government appeals to the population for economy, the Jews were spending many millions for matzos, rendered fat and wine.

This is not "proudly secular." Proud secularists don't feel the need to impose their secularity on those who do not share it. That is what most religions do, not secularists.

The Jewish Communists weren't "proudly secular" but but actively antisemitic.

While the book review says that the Bund "fought antisemites head-on," they did not defend religious Jews at all. On the contrary, they considered yeshiva students to be "parasites."

The idea of hijacking the Passover Seder came not from JVP or IfNotNow but from the Bund, whose version of "Echad Mi Yodeya" in a 1919 "Haggadah" included:

Who knows two? I know two: Humanity is split in two parts: poor and rich.
Who knows eight? I know eight: Already from the eighth day, a young boy suffers from religion.
Who knows ten? I know ten: Ten commandments became 613.
Who knows eleven? I know eleven: Only rabbis and lazybones can liken eleven brother-sellers to eleven stars.

The review quotes Bundist leader Henryk Erlich calling Zionism "a Siamese twin of antisemitism." Yet Judaism survives today largely because of Israel. It is within the "progressive" wing that there is hostility towards Judaism itself.

The Bund lost, as the review acknowledges — to the Nazis, to Stalin, and ultimately to history. What's worth noting is that the Jews who survived, and who built something afterward, mostly did so through the nationalism the Bund despised. The "hereness" the Bund preached turned out to matter most in a land Jews could actually defend.

Crabapple's book may be excellent history. But the Times framing it as a usable past for Jews who want an alternative to Zionism requires ignoring what the Bund actually thought about the Judaism it claimed to represent.

Judaism without Zionism is not Judaism, but worship of bagels and lox and dusty socialist Yiddish newspapers.

On Saturday night, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appeared on Israel's "Meet the Press" where he said that Israel is committing murder and ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in the West Bank and warned that unless Israel stops it then officials will be paraded in front of the Hague.

This "warning" is very funny because a few days earlier, Olmert himself threatened to go to the ICC himself to prosecute his own people for supposed war crimes in the West Bank.

The interview was roundly ignored by Israeli media. Olmert is a disgraced politician, the only prime minister to serve time in prison, for his corruption conviction. Nearly all of the few comments on the Facebook page showing an excerpt of the interview were aimed at Channel 12 for giving him a platform to begin with.

But in the media of antisemites, this is major news.

It was featured in Al Jazeera, Turkey's Anadolu Agency, Egypt's Al Ahram, the Palestinian Amad News as well as the official Palestinian Authority Wafa news agency.

Olmert cannot be rehabilitated in Israel, so he instead is trying to become popular among those who hate Israel.

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