04/27 Links Pt1: Israel and US won in Iran, and the critics refuse to admit it; The calumny of the ‘settler-colonialism’ charge; The self-anointed ‘good’ Israelis

From Ian:

Israel and US won in Iran, and the critics refuse to admit it

The moment the first Israeli and American jets hit their targets in Iran, two different realities emerged: one unfolding on the battlefield, and another constructed in news studios and political circles.

Understanding the gap between these two realities is essential to understanding what has actually been achieved by the United States and Israel.

Let’s start with the objective facts, because the critics won’t.

A country of 92 million people spent decades preparing for this confrontation – to no avail. Iran couldn’t mount a real response. Israel and the US moved through Iranian airspace like they owned it. They hit what they wanted, when they wanted. The enemy talked big for years, but when the moment of truth came, they were totally vulnerable. Minimal damage for Israel

For Israel, the casualty figures also tell the real story. Every pundit who predicted a massacre looks foolish now. Israeli losses were less than a tiny fraction of the lowest estimates. Not one Israeli plane went down.

The damage on Israel’s home front was minimal, and far below the doomsday numbers the experts kept repeating. Every single dark prediction was wrong.

By any honest measure, this is the most successful military campaign Israel has ever conducted. In fact, it may be the most successful campaign of its kind in modern history. But if you listen to the noise, you would think it was a disaster.

The criticism directed at the Israeli government and against the Trump administration – both in Israel and in the United States – contains not an ounce of objectivity. It is politics, top to bottom.

These critics aren’t trying to help the war effort; they’re trying to sink the people in charge. They can’t admit it’s a win because that would mean their rivals, US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, succeeded.

It’s a cold trade. A win for the nation is a loss for their party, so they refuse to see or acknowledge it.

Seth Mandel: Iran’s Imperial Jenga Tower Is Collapsing

The real friends of the Arab states, that is, are the U.S. and Israel.

Iran is far less insulated than it thought it was. The Islamic Republic built a “ring of fire” to surround Israel, but it finds itself on the way to being surrounded at home.

Meanwhile, how’s that ring of fire doing?

Amit Segal reports that top Hamas man Khalil al-Hayya “left his five-star exile in Qatar for what was intended to be a quick diplomatic trip to Cairo. After summarily rejecting a U.S.-backed disarmament proposal that offered a staged Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, he received a text message notifying him that he had been evicted from his luxury lodgings and was officially barred from re-entering the country. It is every vacationer’s worst nightmare.”

Hopefully he has an Airbnb account or a friend with a couch. As Segal notes, Qatar didn’t take such a massive step toward cutting ties with Hamas after October 7. It’s doing so now because the U.S.-led alliance against Iran is expanding and forcing the region’s players to choose sides. America has a base in Qatar, and its relationship with Washington is its gateway to legitimacy on the world stage—legitimacy it arguably never earned and doesn’t deserve, and therefore such legitimacy would be difficult to regain should it be lost.

Qatar is a key source of funding and diplomatic and logistical support for Hamas, which is an Iranian proxy. Cutting ties with Hamas would mean choosing sides against Iran while at the same time greatly weakening Hamas’s ability to rebuild and recruit in the wake of the pummeling it received at Israel’s hands.

Then there’s Hezbollah, once Iran’s strongest and most dangerous proxy, which the IDF has put on the backfoot in Lebanon. It was hard to ignore this quote that Fouad Makhzoumi, a Lebanese member of parliament, gave to the Washington Institute’s David Makovsky, who asked Makhzoumi what should happen to Lebanese Armed Forces Commander Rodolphe Haykal if he fails to disarm Hezbollah: “At the end of the day, we are asking them to deliver. If he doesn’t, yes, he has to be removed.”

Disarm Iran’s key proxy or step aside: an ultimatum that won’t magically achieve Hezbollah’s disarmament but represents another on-the-record testimony of Lebanon’s clear alignment with the U.S. alliance.

As the clock ticks, Iran is becoming more isolated by the day. And that isolation will persist and shape the Middle East that emerges on the other side of this conflict.

NYPost Editorial: Iran’s peace offer tries to play President Trump for a fool

Iran’s latest “peace” offer — which President Donald Trump would be nuts to consider — continues the Islamic Republic’s history of playing from a posture of strength when the regime is actually in a state of near-collapse.

Now the mullahs say they will agree to open the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for an end to the hostilities.

Yet the nuclear question will remain off the table for now … future talks TBD.

What chutzpah! The whole war was started to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons, so why would the United States — which paused its hell-storm to give the Iranians a chance to get their minds right — give up a key demand, as though we were the ones on our heels?

Iran’s foreign-policy strategy seems to be “fake it ’til you make it.” Its leaders — whoever they are at the moment — think that if they pretend to be a major world power, and demand to be treated as such, eventually Washington will partake in the fantasy.

But Iran has no leverage in this game of chicken. While they threaten to harass commercial shipping through the Persian Gulf, the US has blocked all Iranian shipping.

Not only does that prevent Iran from selling its oil, it means that the Iranians have to store millions of barrels of oil that are being pumped every day.

But their storage capacity is quickly running out.

Pumping oil isn’t a matter of turning a spigot on and off. Shutting down productive wells means risking their usability forever, because the oil flow will effectively destroy the wellhead.

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The Arab World: Where Peace Is a Crime

When Donald Trump said recently that he had never heard of Lebanon's law banning contact with Israelis — and called it "crazy" — he was, for once, understating the problem. Khaled Abu Toameh's survey of Arab anti-normalization laws reveals something more systemic than a single quirky statute: a regional architecture of coercion designed to make ordinary human contact between Arabs and Jews literally criminal.

Lebanon's law, rooted in its 1955 Boycott Law and reinforced by the penal code, prohibits all economic, professional, cultural, and social relations between Lebanese nationals and Israeli citizens. Violators face prison terms of three to ten years with hard labor, plus fines and professional bans. The Lebanese president cannot attend a White House meeting with the Israeli prime minister without technically violating his own country's law.

Well, that is not quite true. It is possible for Israeli Maronite Christians to visit Lebanon through a circuitous route even though they are Israeli citizens. Lebanon's laws are aimed at Israeli Jews, not Israelis altogether. And Lebanon is the moderate case. 

Iraq's parliament passed a law in 2022 — the "Criminalizing Normalization and Establishment of Relations with the Zionist Entity" — carrying life imprisonment or the death penalty for violations, including "supporting Zionist ideas via social media." One man was sentenced to life imprisonment for posting content supportive of Israel on Facebook, with Hebrew-language books and newspapers found in his home treated as additional evidence against him. Kuwait has comparable legislation backed by religious rulings that treat normalization as treason; a television personality recently received three years in prison for publicly calling for normal relations with Israel. Even Egypt, which has maintained a formal peace treaty with Israel for over forty years, retains a 1975 law authorizing the revocation of citizenship from anyone "qualified as Zionist" — a provision used to strip citizenship from Egyptians who marry Israelis.

The pattern across all these laws is identical: the offense is contact. What is being criminalized is the experience of encountering Jewish Israelis as human beings in ordinary life — as business partners, neighbors, fellow shoppers, or spouses. The laws do not target contact with Israeli Arab citizens, who live under the same government and carry the same passports. The operative category is Jewish Israelis and the method is dehumanization.  The entire apparatus exists to prevent the moment when an Arab looks at a Jewish Israeli and sees a person.

Nowhere is this more visible than among the Palestinians, and nowhere has it been documented for longer.

The Palestinian case requires understanding what Oslo actually was. When Yasser Arafat signed the Oslo Accords in 1993 and formally recognized Israel's right to exist, the Western world exhaled. What it missed was that Arafat had already told his own audience what he was doing. In a speech broadcast on Jordanian television shortly before the signing, he invoked the PLO's 1974 Ten Point Program — the "phased plan" — by name, describing the agreement as a step toward establishing a national authority on whatever land could be obtained as a stage toward the ultimate liberation of all Palestinian territory. The phased plan, which has never been rescinded, describes each territorial acquisition as advancing the balance of power toward Israel's elimination. Oslo, in other words, was announced by its own architect as a tactic in a longer campaign, on the day he signed it.

This framing persisted in Palestinian leadership discourse through the Oslo years and beyond. A senior member of the Fatah Central Committee, speaking on official Syrian television in 2013 — two decades after Oslo — explained the logic with refreshing clarity: "The inspiring idea cannot be achieved all at once. In stages." Mahmoud Abbas, the man the international community designated as the moderate alternative to Hamas, has on his own presidential website a book he wrote titled "Zionism: Beginning and End," reprinted as recently as 2011, whose final paragraph declares that "both the Jews and us are its victims" and promises that "we and the Jews will guarantee its destruction." This is the two-state solution's chief Palestinian advocate.

The structural proof, however, lies not in speeches but in what the Palestinian Authority built during the Oslo period — and kept building, and continued building right up to October 7. A genuine peace process requires, at minimum, preparing a population to accept the legitimacy of the other side's existence. Israel did this. Israeli textbooks taught the Oslo framework. Israeli political leaders made the public case for Palestinian statehood. Throughout the 1990s, Israeli society debated, agonized, and in significant measure accepted the premise that a Palestinian state was both necessary and legitimate.

The Palestinian Authority built the opposite. Palestinian Media Watch has documented, for decades, a sustained PA campaign presenting Jews through a lens drawn from classical antisemitic tradition: treacherous by nature, corrupting in their influence, enemies of God and humanity. Children's television showed Jews as subhuman. Textbooks erased Jewish history from the land and named schools after terrorists who murdered civilians. The PA's "pay-for-slay" program — salary payments to imprisoned terrorists and to the families of those killed carrying out attacks — formalized the honor structure: killing Jews was a career path with a pension. Official PA media celebrated terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. Maps in PA-produced educational materials showed no Israel at all.

The anti-normalization enforcement ran in perfect parallel. In 2010, when Israeli entrepreneur Rami Levy opened supermarkets in mixed areas where Palestinians and Israelis could shop side by side at prices significantly lower than Palestinian markets, Fatah organized a boycott, took photographs of Palestinian customers, and recorded their license plates as a deterrent. When Levy opened a new mixed mall in Atarot in January 2019 — a $54 million project in which 35 percent of the stores were Palestinian-owned, built specifically to serve the 230,000 Arab residents of northern Jerusalem who had no comparable shopping facility nearby — Fatah declared that any Palestinian who shopped there was committing "a betrayal of the homeland." The mall opened with 100 percent occupancy, applied immediately for a permit to add a third floor to meet excess tenant demand, and Palestinians shopped there anyway, in large numbers, because their families needed affordable groceries more than they needed ideological compliance. The enforcement failed on the ground. What it succeeded in was signaling, at the leadership level, that ordinary human commerce between Jews and Arabs — commerce actively desired by the Arab population it was meant to deter — was to be treated as treason.

Arab leaders are fearful that if their people see Israeli Jews as normal people, they may lose control of the dehumanization narrative that they use to keep the people in check. If they truly thought Zionism was a corrupt political philosophy, they would combat it ideologically; it is only fear that makes them want to criminalize any contact with Israeli Jews. 

Abu Toameh ends his piece with a line worth taking at face value: where peace is illegal, peace is impossible. The Palestinian Authority proved the corollary. Where a people is systematically conditioned, from childhood, to regard Jews as subhuman enemies whose elimination is both politically necessary and religiously meritorious, no diplomatic agreement signed by their leaders will produce peace — because the agreement was never the point. The phased plan said so explicitly. The textbooks said so daily. The parking lot surveillance at the Rami Levy supermarket said so in the only language that leaves no ambiguity: they were so afraid of Palestinians seeing Jews as human beings that they photographed license plates to stop it.

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

 

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100 years ago: Jews and Arabs together were building and benefitting from a modern Palestine

In 1926 there were a number of articles about how well things were progressing in Palestine. The Arabs had not ben killing Jews for a few years and they were benefitting from the better economy brought about by Jewish farming and industry. The Arab antisemites were dismissed as hotheads who had no following.

Here is one such article from The Age (Melbourne, Australia), Sat, Apr 24, 1926 ·Page 24:

PALESTINE REBORN

No country on earth can boast such romance and tragedy as Palestine. Besides being the birthplace of three of the world’s religions—Judaism, Christianity and Mohommedanism—it has suffered the drums and tramplings of innumerable armies, and might well be called the cockpit of Asia. Its very name is a modification of the ancient Philistia, the strip of country lying chiefly on and adjacent to the southern seaboard, reminiscent of ancient history, and later the scene of incessant conflicts with the invading Hebrews. Romans, Persians and Turks successively ruled the country, but the great war ushered in a new era bright with promise, and glorified with an idealism which recalls the propaganda and methods of all other conquerors, Joshua not excepted. The mandate under which Britain rules Palestine has already been a boon and a blessing.

The old corrupt and corrupting Turkish rule has given place to an honest and able administration, in which all the chief races are taking part. Democracy governs. Among Moslems as well as among Christians and Jews there is not only a remarkable increase of education, but a demand for it. Imagine Eastern girls working in Government offices without any detriment to domestic happiness! Sir Richard Burton when British consul at Damascus says about the natives of Syria:— "There is literally no limit that can be laid down to the native wit, the condition, the intellectual capabilities of Syria’s sons. They are the most gifted race I have as yet ever seen, and when the curse shall have left the country—not the curse of superstition, but the bane and plague spot of bad rule—it will again rise to a position not unworthy of the days when it gave to the world a poetry and a religion still unforgotten by our highest civilisation." Many years have passed since those words were written, and so far as Palestine proper is concerned the bad rule has gone.

Jews and Arabs are in many districts working cordially and successfully together, and after the ratification of the mandate the Zionist organisation issued a conciliatory appeal to their Arab fellow-citizens, declaring that the Zionist Jews had never contemplated "ever-ruling the other inhabitants of the country or turning them out of their homes." Their aim was to live peaceably with all the other inhabitants of the country, and convert the joint home into a progressive commonwealth. They urged the Arabs to share a common ambition—to rebuild the wasted portions of our holy land for the welfare of themselves and that of all mankind.

After his visit to open the Hebrew university in June of last year, Lord Balfour spoke of the previous five years as the most extraordinary and satisfactory ever known. He pointed to the improved roads, the growth of education, and the creation of great public works, all without cost to the British taxpayer. Palestine is actually paying its way, and can even boast a modest surplus. As for Jews as cultivators of the soil, they are showing the highest skill. Sir Herbert Samuel, ex-Governor, describes the members of the Jewish agricultural colonies, and there are about a hundred such colonies, as intellectually above the ordinary peasant; they read, they think, they discuss; in the evenings they have music classes, lectures; there is among them a real activity of mind. They know that they are an integral part of the movement for the redemption of Palestine; that their work is in line with ancient prophecies and the prayers of millions now, and so their work is ennobled by the patriotic ideal which it serves.

Before the war it was estimated that the Jewish population amounted to 100,000. This was reduced to 70,000 or 80,000, of whom 4000 were orphans. Women, typhus, cholera and starvation were the main factors in the reduction of population, but it must be remembered that women and children had been removed from the fighting zone, and young Jews of fighting age were drafted into the British army. What was to be done with the 4000 orphans of Jewish race? Orphanages were opened in Jerusalem, Safed and Damascus, and the principle underlying their instruction was to make them self-reliant and self-supporting as soon as possible.

Dame Millicent Fawcett, who made two visits to the Holy Land, has published, through T. Fisher Unwin Ltd., her impressions, entitled "Easter in Palestine," and as she had access to all officials her statements are as well authenticated as her descriptions are breezy and informing. Here is Palestine, she says, with 700,000 of a population, of whom about 83,000 are Jews and 73,000 Christians. In the British High School for Girls at Jerusalem there are no fewer than eleven different races represented among its 200 pupils. It is an extraordinary mix up of races. Jews and Moslem Syrians have changed nothing since the days of Abraham, but on the other hand there are groups as far advanced as their brethren in European countries. The conservative carrier has on his shoulders at night the little wooden plough he has been using all day, but his neighbor uses the very latest American implement.

...

It is noteworthy that General Allenby’s first gift to the people of Jerusalem was a free supply of fresh water. Previously the supply had been stored in cisterns or pools, with the inevitable result of contamination, but the stand pipes of Allenby are seen everywhere. The people’s great difficulty was in understanding that the water was a free gift. "The Turks were here 400 years," they said, "but they never gave us even one drop of water." At the same time the unchanging people object to being cleaned up, just as frowzy and unwashed patients when taken to our hospitals vigorously object to being given a bath. The cleaner is not popular with the unclean. Nevertheless, stagnant pools and marshes have been drained, rubbish is now destroyed, and there has been a marked improvement in the health of the population. The streets are named, viz., David-street, Christian-street, Jaffa-street, but the names are not yet up. Everyone is supposed to know them. With the mixture of races in the city it would be necessary to put up the names in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Leaving the Holy City, Mrs. Fawcett journeyed with not too much interest into Galilee. Near Tiberias the party came across a troop of Russian refugees busily engaged in the very desirable work of road making. These were stalwart, vigorous young men and women, full of physical health and high spirits. The first group looked more or less disrated university professors put to an uncongenial job.

....

It is interesting to learn that the colony of Petach Tikvah (door of hope), founded by Laurence Oliphant in 1878, and aided by Lords Salisbury, Beaconsfield and Shaftesbury, is now, after severe setbacks, in a promising condition. Eucalyptus trees were planted by thousands. In the riots of 1921 it became the object of a savage attack by the Arabs, but was saved by a troop of Indian cavalry, and the sheikh who led the Arabs was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude. Since then the people of Petach Tikvah petitioned the Governor for the remission of his sentence, and Jews and Arabs in that part are now reconciled. The colony has fine orange and grape industries, up-to-date packing and grading sheds, gardens gay with flowers, and great water tanks for irrigation.

As indicating the stupendous changes which have taken place in the last few years, Mrs. Fawcett points out that whereas in 1866 the High Commissioner was protected on his entrance into Jerusalem by a considerable body of soldiers, nothing of this kind marked his departure in 1925. He was universally recognised as a man who cared especially for the welfare of the whole country. In fact also been admitted that the best guarantee for the future progress of Palestine is the bringing together of Christian, Jew and Moslem, and the emphasizing of the common object and cautiously increasing common aims and traditions. It is by death such measures as shall ensure the evolution of a national sentiment.

Palestine has been reborn; the old is the past war and the British mandate to secure for that historic country the conditions which make for its prosperity.

Here is a photo accompanying a similarly sunny article in the Evening Star, Washington DC, Sun, Apr 11, 1926 ·Page 21:

I found several others from just that month.

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

 

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04/26 Links: Israel is no longer a European villa in the desert; Trump's "Anaconda Plan" to Strangle Iran into Signing a Deal; Israel sent Iron Dome and IDF soldiers to UAE during Iran war

From Ian:

Jake Wallis Simons: Israel is no longer a European villa in the desert

Picture the scene. At a happy press conference in Luxembourg, Israel’s foreign minister and European officials announce they will “upgrade the relations between Israel and the EU” and “usher in a new era in Israeli-European relations”.

Ties, they add, will be strengthened in the economy, scientific research, trade, environmental technology, culture, academia and higher education, as well as youth exchange schemes.

Is that a pie floating past that window? This week, Spain – whose leader recently regretted not having nuclear weapons to “stop” Israel – led demands for Europe to cast Israel out completely. Even Italy has ended its defence and scientific cooperation, and Germany is growing increasingly critical.

But that happy press conference did indeed take place, in June 2008, when the world was saner. What went wrong? Demographics form part of the explanation with the growth of more Israelophobic domestic populations carrying mounting political strength.

Universities and schools have been radicalised, social media has provided a powerful forum for disinformation, and October 7 unleashed forces of propaganda that would have made Stalin or Goebbels doff their hats.

In Israel, too, things have changed. In September 2008, prime minister Ehud Olmert tabled a peace offer that satisfied all Ramallah’s main demands, including 94 per cent of the West Bank (plus 6 per cent of Israeli land), the return of some Palestinian refugees, an international Old City and a shared Jerusalem.

Mahmoud Abbas turned it down. That December saw Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in Gaza, from where Israel had withdrawn three years before. In 2009, Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office. As Hamas gained strength, further wars erupted in 2012 and 2014, and a disillusioned Israeli public moved decisively to the Right.

Europe couldn’t cope. Then came October 7, and today we see a depraved race to eject Jews from polite society. Tensions over next month’s Eurovision are symbolic; Israel has gone from being an outpost of Western culture in the Middle East – a “villa in the jungle”, as former prime minister Ehud Barak provocatively put it – to a despised Caliban.

Germans face five years in jail for denying Israel’s right to exist

A German state wants to criminalise denying Israel’s “right to exist”, with pro-Palestinian slogans or even maps with Israel removed punishable by up to five years in prison.

The state of Hesse has announced an initiative to change the law on May 8, the anniversary of the Nazi surrender on VE Day, citing a rise in anti-Semitism since Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct 7, 2023.

The draft law would criminalise slogans such as “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, and its Arabic equivalent, as well as “there is only one state, Palestine ’48”. Any representations of Israel being a Palestinian state or even crossing out an Israel flag or putting it in a bin would be illegal.

Boris Rhein, the state leader, said: “The protection of Jewish life is more than just a declaration; it is Germany’s Staatsräson,” referring to the idea that Germany is responsible for Israel’s security because of its Nazi history, during which six million Jews were killed.

The Staatsräson, or “reason of state”, was popularised by Angela Merkel, the former chancellor, in the first speech to the Israeli parliament by a German leader in 2008. Though not mentioned in Germany’s constitution, it is seen by many politicians as a guiding political principle and a way to atone for the past.

Mr Rhein invoked this history, seemingly linking the pro-Palestine movement to the Nazis, saying: “It is unbearable that slogans are being shouted that we never thought would ever be uttered on German streets again.”

IDF soldier killed, six wounded in Hezbollah drone strike in Southern Lebanon

An Israel Defense Forces soldier was killed and six others were wounded in a Hezbollah explosive drone strike in Southern Lebanon on Sunday, the military said.

The fallen soldier was identified as Sgt. Idan Fooks, 19, of the 7th Armored Brigade’s 77th Battalion, from Petach Tikvah.

In the same incident, an officer and three soldiers were seriously wounded, one soldier sustained moderate injuries and another was lightly hurt, the IDF said, adding that the wounded were evacuated to the hospital for treatment, and their families had been informed.

Fooks is the third Israeli soldier to be killed in Southern Lebanon since a ceasefire came into effect on April 17, and the first to be killed in a direct Hezbollah attack during the truce, according to the IDF.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement Sunday evening mourning the fallen soldier.

“Our hearts grieve over fallen soldier, Sergeant Idan Fooks, of blessed memory, in battle in Southern Lebanon,” Netanyahu said. “My wife and I, along with all citizens of Israel, send our deepest heartfelt condolences to Idan’s family and share in their heavy loss. We wish a speedy and full recovery to our soldiers who were wounded in this difficult incident.

“Idan fought with bravery and courage alongside his comrades to restore security to the residents of the North, and this is what we shall continue to do. May his memory be blessed and cherished forever.”

Netanyahu accused Hezbollah of repeatedly violating the fragile truce, while the Iran-backed terrorist organization denied responsibility and blamed Israel for ceasefire breaches.

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Free Speech, Assassination Attempts and the Future of America

Last night, a man named Cole Allen walked up to a security checkpoint outside the White House Correspondents' Dinner armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives. He told investigators he wanted to shoot Trump administration officials. A Secret Service agent was struck by a round; his vest saved his life. President Trump was rushed off the stage. It was the third attempt on a sitting or former president in two years.

Within minutes of the news breaking, Hasan Piker — whose initial reaction to the shooting was to joke about a conspiracy, implying press secretary Karoline Leavitt had foreknowledge because she had earlier said Trump would "bring the heat" and "shots will be fired" at the dinner — was doing what he does: performing for the crowd that has made him one of the most influential political voices in America.

Piker himself last year had endorsed the meme of "someone needs to do it" as a widely understood dog whistle to assassinate Trump.

Reminder that Hasan Piker publicly advocated for President Trump’s assassination

Perhaps one of his lunatic followers decided to give it a shot pic.twitter.com/CL6d18H2ZX

— Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) April 26, 2026

Keep in mind that Piker is now considered mainstream.  He campaigns at rallies for Democratic candidates including Zohran Mamdani, Bernie Sanders, Summer Lee, and Abdul El-Sayed. The Harris campaign invited him to livestream from the 2024 Democratic National Convention. The New York Times has given him a flattering profile, a podcast appearance, and an op-ed. Ezra Klein's column originally ran under the headline "Hasan Piker Is Not the Enemy," changed after ridicule made the title untenable, though the defense of Piker within it was not changed.

So what exactly has the Times been platforming? Piker called for Sen. Rick Scott to be killed during a live stream: "If you cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott." He is famous for arguing that America "deserved 9/11." When the New York Times podcast asked him about the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, he never once suggested it was wrong to assassinate people or acknowledged the immorality of extrajudicial murder — instead immediately invoking Friedrich Engels's concept of "social murder" to justify the killing. He has told followers to "kill" and "murder" people "in the streets" and "let the streets soak in their red-capitalist blood." Piker  insists Hamas is "a thousand times better" than Israel and has described Hezbollah's banner as his favorite flag. On October 7, he said: "It doesn't matter if rape happened on October 7th. It doesn't change the dynamic for me."

This is the person the New York Times treats as a legitimate political voice worth treating with respect.

The Times's editorial complicity runs deeper than a softball interview. When it published its podcast conversation with Piker, it chose to headline it "The Rich Don't Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?" — a question the Times apparently could not bring itself to answer. The answer is: because the alternative is anarchy. The logic that lawbreaking by some licenses lawbreaking by all is not a critique of inequality; it is the dissolution of the social contract itself. By identical reasoning: criminals don't play by the rules, so why should I? Terrorists don't play by the rules, so why should I? The Times would recoil from those formulations and it should recoil from its own headline. Yet a significant part of the podcast justified theft - from avocados to cars. A media outlet that condones vigilante logic is not a neutral observer of American civic decay. It is a participant in it.

Now: is publishing or promoting any of this illegal? Perhaps some of it — the First Amendment does not protect true threats or direct incitement to imminent lawless action, and there is a reasonable legal argument that some of Piker's statements approach that line. The Supreme Court's Brandenburg test requires that speech be directed to inciting imminent lawless action and likely to produce it. "You would kill Rick Scott" is closer to that line than most of Piker's defenders admit, and "let the streets soak in their red-capitalist blood" is closer still. But the legal question is genuinely uncertain, and legal scholars will argue about it.

The moral question is not uncertain at all.

There is a category error so common in contemporary American life that it has become invisible: the conflation of legality with morality. If something is legal, the argument goes, then objecting to it on moral grounds is at best squeamishness and at worst an assault on free speech. But legality and morality operate at entirely different levels. The law is a floor — the minimum standard of behavior a society can compel with the threat of force. Morality is the ceiling, or rather the open sky above it: the vast domain of behavior that the law was never designed to reach and cannot reach without becoming something far worse than what it is trying to prevent.

The First Amendment is a legal floor. It means the government cannot imprison Hasan Piker for his statements. It says nothing whatsoever about whether those statements are acceptable, whether platforms should carry them without consequence, whether media institutions should legitimize them with the imprimatur of prestigious bylines, whether sponsors should finance the audiences they cultivate, or whether political candidates should campaign alongside someone who has openly cheered political violence and the rape of Israeli women. The First Amendment protects Piker's right to speak. The rest of us retain our right — and bear our obligation — to respond.

The mechanism for that response is what the critics of political violence have always had available: social pressure, institutional accountability, and the withdrawal of legitimacy. Boycott sponsors. Refuse to appear alongside him on panels and stages. Decline to grant him the credibility that comes from being treated as a normal participant in civic debate. 

When The New York Times platforms him, it is engaged in immorality. When Democratic candidates campaign with him, they are making a conscious choice to promote immorality. When companies advertise on his show they are directly condoning his immorality.  To push back on all of these actions, both socially and financially,  would not be acts of censorship but of moral seriousness.

The book I am completing on America at 250 makes this point at length in a different context. America gives us rights but it also gives us obligations to be good citizens. We owe things to our families, our communities, and our nation. It is patriotic to oppose restrictions on free speech but it is also patriotic to oppose speech that erodes the quality of American life. And that is exactly what calls for violence, whether it is a coded message to assassinate the President or cheering the murder of a health care executive or threatening to use "any means possible" including violence to silence the speech of others. 

This is part of the covenant between the people of the United States. A nation where political violence is normalized cannot stand. This cannot be done by law; it can only be done by citizens, institutions, and cultural gatekeepers who understand that the legal floor is the beginning of the moral conversation, not the end of it.

The America that produced the First Amendment also produced the expectation that it would be used responsibly — that the freedom to speak carried with it the social obligation to speak in ways that did not incite neighbors against each other. That expectation was enforced not by courts but by culture: by editors who declined to publish certain things, by audiences who withdrew patronage from those who cheered violence, by communities that applied social consequences to people whose speech fell beneath a moral threshold that the law did not reach. 

That culture has not disappeared, but it has been systematically weakened by a generation that learned to treat the legal floor as the only relevant standard — and by platforms that outsourced the judgment entirely to algorithms optimized for engagement rather than decency. An algorithm does not ask whether content normalizes political violence; it asks whether content drives clicks. When we allow algorithmic reach to substitute for editorial judgment, we have not protected free speech — we have abdicated the human responsibility to distinguish between speech worth amplifying and speech worth marginalizing.

What happened last night at the Washington Hilton did not occur in a vacuum. Cole Allen did not emerge from nowhere. He emerged from an information environment in which a man with millions of followers can spend years normalizing violence against political targets, calling for senators to be killed, excusing the murder of executives, laughing at the rape of Israeli women, and then be invited to the Democratic National Convention, given a podcast slot by the New York Times, and welcomed as a surrogate by candidates running for the United States Senate. Maybe people like Piker manage to stay just barely on the side of legality, but how the rest of us respond to someone like that is the real test of what it means to be an American.

The First Amendment will survive Hasan Piker just fine. The question is whether American civic culture will — and the answer depends not on judges but on whether the rest of us remember that the floor is where behavior is compelled and the ceiling is where character, including the character of America itself, is revealed.

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

 

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"Anti-Zionist" attacks on synagogues have become routine.

In 2021, I made a cartoon lampooning how anti-Zionist claim not to be antisemitic by showing a grasffiti artist painting "Free Palestine" on a synagogue and claiming he is not antisemitic.

This wasn't satire. It was prophecy.

Since I made that cartoon, and especially since October 7, we have seen many cases of "anti-Israel" vandalism and protests specifically at synagogues. 

It happened at least twice over the past couple of days.

The most recent happened on Friday at Austin's Congregation Beth Israel, "Death to Israel!" with a swastika:

And in Hot Springs, AK, also April 23, "No peace as long as Israel exists":

But these have been happening with alarming frequency since October 7. Here is only a sample:

Synagogue in Madrid, October 8, 2023:

Lyon, France, October 2023, a synagogue was vandalized with Arabic graffiti that reads “Victory to our brothers in Gaza and “Glorious Gaza”.

October 2023, Concepcion, Chile: "Free Palestine. Overthrow Zionism and imperialism"

Kandoorie synagogue in Porto, Portugal, October 2023:

Mercer Island (Seattle area), Washington – Herzl-Ner Tamid Congregation (November 22, 2023), "Shame on Israel":

July 2024, Sydney's Great Synagogue:

July 2024, Chabad of Squirrel Hill (Pittsburgh):

January 2025, Sydney, Australia, "Allah hu Akbar" and "Free Palestine":

April, 2025, Tucson:

June 2025, Melbourne:

Pro-Hamas graffiti, Minneapolis, October 7, 2025:

November 2025, Sofia, Bulgaria synagogue:

December 2025, Rome synagogue:

February 2026, Olney, Maryland, "AZAB"= "All Zionists Are Bastards"

This is not even close to all of them. Not to mention the anti-Israel protests that have been targeting synagogues as well. 

Yet even when they attack synagogues, they claim they aren't antisemitic. And the media still takes those claims seriously.

Antizionism is just a type of antisemitism. And these prove it. 

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

 

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04/25 Links: Trump evacuated from WHCD after shots fired; suspect apprehended; Trump's Iran Doctrine: A Strategy for the History Books; The BBC asks why Jews are afraid – it should look in the mirror

From Ian:

Trump evacuated from White House Correspondents’ Dinner amid security threat

US President Donald Trump and other top leaders of the United States have been evacuated from an annual dinner of White House correspondents on Saturday night after an unspecified threat. There do not immediately appear to be any injuries.

The Secret Service and other authorities swarmed the banquet hall as guests ducked under tables by the hundreds. “Out of the way, sir!” someone yelled. Others yelled to duck.

Reports say shots were fired in the vicinity of the dinner.

Gunman at White House Correspondents’ Dinner identified as California teacher

The gunman who opened fire at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night has been identified as Cole Allen of Torrance, Calif. — with President Trump calling him a likely “lone wolf whack job” who “looked pretty evil.”

The 31-year-old, whom a federal law enforcement source confirmed is a teacher, was arrested after allegedly entering the Washington Hilton hotel and charging toward the ballroom where Trump and roughly 2,500 guests had assembled.

The gunfire broke out near the event’s indoor security screening area just after 8:30 p.m. — as salad was being served. The Secret Service rushed Trump out of the room as members of his cabinet ducked under tables before they too were evacuated.

Allen’s neighbor, who gave the name Jeff Smith, told The Post that “maybe he could be on the spectrum.”

Follow The Post’s live updates on the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Dramatic video posted on social media by Trump shows Allen opening fire and rushing toward the ballroom. A law enforcement officer was shot, with the bullet hitting his bulletproof vest.

“He was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and multiple knives as he ran into that checkpoint,” DC police chief Jeffrey Carroll said.

“At this point it does appear he is a lone actor, a lone gunman,” Carroll said. “There does not appear to be any sort of danger to the public.”

Trump hosted a press conference at the White House shortly after the incident, joined by first lady Melania Trump, who appeared on the verge of tears when her husband mentioned prior assassination attempts.

“There was a tremendous amount of love and coming together I watched,” the president said. “I was very, very impressed by that.”

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04/24 Links Pt2: A Spoonful of Reform in Higher Ed; How Labour is helping antisemitism flourish in Britain; Mamdani nixes school ‘buffer zone’ bill, veto-proof houses of worship bill is law

From Ian:

March of the Living: our generation will soon be the last to hear these stories directly from Holocaust survivors

That same tension appeared in Krakow. We stood by part of what used to be the ghetto wall. Right next to it was a playground. Children were running around, playing, completely unaware of what that wall had once meant. It was such a normal scene, and that is what made it feel strange. Unlike Treblinka, this was not a place that had been erased. The wall was still there, but it had become part of everyday life. People walked past it, children played beside it, and unless you knew what it was, you could easily miss it. Standing there, it felt like two completely different realities existing in the same place. One grounded in history that feels almost impossible to comprehend, the other in normal life carrying on. Of course life continues, but there was something about that contrast that stuck with me. It made me think about how easily something so significant can fade into the background.

That idea followed through into the march itself. On Tuesday, we walked between Auschwitz and Birkenau as part of March of the Living. Thousands of people from all over the world, walking together along a route that once meant something completely different. It is described as a march of remembrance, which it is, but it also feels like something else. You are not seeing what happened there. You are walking in a place where something happened, knowing that most of it is no longer visible. What you see instead is what remains. Survivors walking with us. People singing. A sense of life in a place that was meant to be defined by death. At one point, we were walking with Martin, one of the survivors, and had to speed up to keep up with him. It was a small moment, but it stayed with me because of what it represented.

I was fortunate enough to be on the same trip as my mum, although we were on different buses, which meant we experienced it quite differently. On my bus, there was a real mix of perspectives. Some people had been before, some had never been. Some came with strong personal connections, others with what they had learned in school. Some people cried, some did not, and no one reacted in exactly the same way. What mattered was that we were able to talk about it. To sit with those differences and try to understand them. There was no right way to respond, and I think that is important.

What stayed with me most is more than what I saw. It’s what I have now heard and carry with me. Our generation will soon be the last to hear these stories directly from survivors. That means for future generations it is our responsibility; meaning now we have to listen. It sits in the conversations we had, the testimonies we listened to, and the way we choose to remember them. At some point, these stories will no longer be told first-hand. When that happens, it will be up to us to make sure they are still understood, still told properly, and still felt in the way they deserve to be. That is what this experience left me with.

March of the Living is more than a memorial of the past. It is about seeing survivors walk alongside us, still telling their stories, still living their lives and understanding what that means for my future.

Seth Mandel: Can U.S. Universities Hold Commencements Free of Anti-Semitism?

Gothamist reports on the heartbroken students in New York who are being denied their Gaza-given right to speak at graduation.

“Commencement ceremonies at several local universities have undergone a post-Oct. 7 overhaul,” we’re told, “and some students say their free speech rights are being suppressed.”

For example, there will be no live student speech at the “school-specific ceremonies” (the ones that aren’t university-wide) at the New York University and City University of New York commencements. The law schools appear especially broken up about the new rule.

I’m also not speaking at any New York-area sub-commencement ceremonies, and so perhaps I should join the “First Amendment” lawsuit that anti-Zionists are filing against CUNY.

You see, CUNY in particular has a problem. It has a fervently anti-Semitic campus culture that the administration has failed to constructively address, so the university has difficulty producing public events that don’t deteriorate into Soviet anti-Zionist rallies.

Columbia University will forgo live student speeches at its main university-wide commencement. NYU plans to have pre-recorded student remarks at school-specific ceremonies.

The reasons behind these decisions vary by university—but only slightly.

At NYU, last year’s student commencement speaker added unapproved remarks to his speech, in violation of school policy, just so he could spread modern blood libels.

Columbia canceled its 2024 commencement entirely because its campus had devolved into a psychotic circus in which students were taking members of staff hostage, assaulting them, spray-painting Nazi graffiti and taunting the building workers as Jew-lovers. Last year, it brought back the commencement just so that students could drown it in boos.

Jonathan Tobin: Unraveling the lies we were told about hate in America

For most Jews and many other people, the “Unite the Right” neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017 was among the most shocking and disturbing moments in recent American history. As much as anything, it was the imagery of the torch-lit procession of hate-mongers at night that brought to mind the Nazi Nuremberg rallies of the 1930s that scared the Jewish community far and wide.

The events both on and near the campus of the University of Virginia itself were fairly small-scale and involved only a few hundred persons. Still, those haunting memories, coupled with the fact that one of the counter-protesters was killed by the mob of racists, convinced so many Americans that the country was in the middle of a crisis brought on by the election of Donald Trump.

But what if it turned out that among the funders of those involved was a group that not only hyped the threat from the far right, but also profited from it with a huge surge of fundraising? If that were true, then perhaps so much of what had shaped American public opinion about not only the alleged threat from such extremists and Trump, now in his second term as U.S. president, would have to be rethought.

A false narrative
As it turns out, that’s the truth about Charlottesville.

The indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center on charges of fraud ought to put in perspective much of the hysteria and alarmism about Trump supposedly empowering racists and engendering an epidemic of racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and Islamophobia.

The SPLC is charged with pouring millions of dollars raised from gullible liberal donors to far-right operatives. In its defense, the group claims that it was operating a vast undercover operation, obtaining intelligence about extremists that it could then use to better inform the nation about the threats it faced from dangerous organizations. But its funders didn’t know that’s where their money was going.

More to the point, a deep dive into the indictment makes it clear that what it was doing wasn’t so much investigating extremism as helping to produce it.

In point of fact, the SPLC funded one of the organizers of the Charlottesville rally, paying him $270,000 to post racist comments online and transport fellow extremists to central Virginia.

The principal myth about Charlottesville was that Trump had called the neo-Nazis and white supremacists that SPLC had helped gather were “very fine people.” That lie was debunked long ago—the president was referring to those upset by the removal of various statues in the South, not the neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members—but many Democrats and others on the left persist in spreading the accusation to bolster their narrative that Trump has encouraged and enabled racism, as well as antisemitism.

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04/24 Links Pt1: Don’t mistake Beirut for a partner; Netanyahu reveals prostate cancer treated successfully; 11-year-old girl dies of wounds from Iranian strike on Passover eve

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Don’t mistake Beirut for a partner

Judging by the behavior of Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, the answer is no. In the first place, he totally rejected reports by officials, including Trump himself, of an imminent phone call between him and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Yes, the poor guy was incensed at the very notion of a conversation with Netanyahu, as it would hand Israel what he deemed a “moral victory.” So much for shared interests.

Nevertheless, the rebuffing of Netanyahu was excused by peace fantasists and other apologists as Aoun’s fear of assassination at the hands of Hezbollah. And though he’s certainly right to worry about that, it hasn’t really softened his stance toward the Jewish state along his border.

He made this obvious while delivering a speech to the nation on April 17. Calling the ceasefire that had gone into effect the previous day the “fruit of those who stood firm in their homes and villages, on the front lines, affirming to the world that we are here to stay, whatever happens,” he lauded everyone except for Israel.

“I express my gratitude to all those who contributed to stopping the hostilities,” he stated, “from the American president, our friend Donald Trump, to all our Arab brothers, foremost among them the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

The rest of his rant about the suffering and steadfastness of the Lebanese people made it sound as though Hezbollah had nothing to do with their plight. In fact, he didn’t mention the terrorist group at all, yet asserted for its consumption that “these negotiations are neither a weakness, nor a retreat, nor a concession.” As though Hezbollah would buy it for a second.

Never mind. What he subsequently declared was directly out of Hezbollah’s playbook.

“There will never be any agreement that infringes on our national rights, diminishes the dignity of our resisting people or abandons a single piece of the land of our nation,” he said. “Our objective is clear and declared: to stop Israeli aggression against our land and our people, to obtain Israeli withdrawal, to extend state authority over all its land by its own forces, to ensure the return of prisoners and to enable our families to return to their homes and villages, in safety, freedom and dignity.”

There you have it in a nutshell. Aoun isn’t a potential partner as long as Hezbollah is setting his agenda, which means the officials convening in D.C. are wasting their breath and a lot of frequent-flyer miles.

House Republicans again aim to leverage U.S. funding to seek accountability for Oct. 7 attacks

Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee, in their draft 2027 funding bill for the State Department, are again aiming to leverage U.S. funding to the United Nations and other foreign programs to seek accountability for involvement by U.N. employees and others in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.

They made similar efforts during the 2026 government funding process, but the provisions were ultimately excluded from the final 2026 funding bill.

The bill introduces a new version of the provision put forward by House Republicans last year that would withhold funding for the United Nations secretariat — the U.N. management headed by the secretary-general — until the U.N. agrees to waive privileges and immunities for United Nations Relief and Works Agency employees or employees of other U.N. entities in cases involving gross violations of human rights, acts of terrorism, support for terrorism or other serious criminal conduct.

The move is an effort to respond to findings that UNRWA employees took part in the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and subsequently were involved in holding hostages and engaging in other terrorist activity in Gaza.

The provision also withholds any funding for any entities that fail to comply within 90 days with U.S. inspector general requests related to projects and programs in Gaza, the Oct. 7 attacks or support for terrorism.

“The bill also includes a provision to help provide justice for victims murdered in the October 7 terrorist attacks, including 50 American citizens, by requiring full accountability for the UNRWA staff involved in this vicious attack,” Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL), who chairs the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the bill, said at a Thursday meeting. “In addition, the bill includes a new provision cutting off funds to any international organization that refuses to cooperate with inspector general investigations into whether October 7 terrorists are on its staff.”

Under the 2026 funding bill, 10% of U.S. funding to the U.N. and its agencies is conditioned on the State Department’s certification that the recipients of that funding are taking credible steps to counter anti-Israel bias, informing donors when aid has been diverted or destroyed and implementing policies to vet staff for terrorist affiliations, among a range of unrelated reforms.

In the new bill, House Republicans proposed increasing that to 15% of the funding in question.

More broadly, the bill would leverage U.S. foreign aid by tying aid levels to cooperation with various U.S. priorities, including recipients’ U.N. votes and their efforts to oppose U.S. adversaries, maintaining a provision first implemented in 2026.

It cuts funding for the U.N. by $1.8 billion, including slashing all funding for the U.N.’s regular budget, as well as cutting nearly $1 billion from humanitarian assistance programs generally.

11-year-old girl from Bnei Brak dies of wounds from Iranian strike on Passover eve

An 11-year-old girl critically wounded in a Passover eve Iranian cluster bomb attack on Bnei Brak succumbed to her wounds on Friday.

She was named as Nesya Karadi. She died at Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv, some three weeks after the April 1 attack.

Bnei Brak Mayor Hanoch Zeibert said the city was “bemoaning the passing of a pure girl whose entire future was ahead of her.”

“We pray that God sends comfort and healing to the parents and family,” Zeibert said in a statement. “The municipality will support the family and accompany it in any way that is needed in this time of pain and grief.”

The young girl was critically wounded when her family’s home in the Tel Aviv-area city was hit by a submunition from an Iranian missile carrying a cluster bomb warhead.

The April 1 strike took place hours before the Passover holiday and wounded 13 other people, including the girl’s father, who sustained moderate injuries.

A first responder told Hebrew media at the time that the father, a volunteer with the Magen David Adom ambulance service, applied first aid to his daughter before losing consciousness when medics arrived.

Nesya Karadi is the 21st person killed by Iran’s missile strikes in Israel since February 28. All were civilians of Israeli or foreign nationality. Four Palestinians were also killed in the West Bank during the war with Iran.

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