Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 06, 2025

Can Neturei Karta "wear" protest signs on Shabbat?

I saw this video where Nate Friedman visits an anti-Israel and communist protest in New York City.

He tried to interview the usual Neturei Karta crowd, who refused to speak to him because they didn't want to speak into a microphone on Shabbat. (Their leader told him this...on the microphone.)

I was more interested in their signs.

Carrying anything outside an "eruv" (enclosure) on Shabbat is strictly prohibited, but wearing clothing is permitted (obviously.) They "wear" the signs as if they are ponchos, with a hole in the middle for their heads.

But can protest signs be halachically considered clothing, even if "worn"?

Almost certainly not. No one would consider signs to be real clothing, even if "worn," and clothing is only permitted when it is used for the normal purposes of clothing: protection/warmth, decoration or modesty. "Decoration" is for jewelry and the like. These signs cannot be considered decoration, as no normal person wears anything looking like them.

So I cannot see a possible leniency that would allow these "religious Jews" to publicly profane the Sabbath. They are doing the equivalent of carrying something by putting it on a string, typing it around one's neck and calling it a "necklace" just to be able to carry it.

A more interesting question is the one Friedman asked them - how they came to Manhattan. They almost certainly didn't walk from Williamsburg, and in fact they probably couldn't cross the bridge on Shabbat. This means that they are staying in hotels or rent an apartment in Manhattan, both of which are quite expensive. So who is bankrolling them?

Given their meetings with the leaders of the Palestinian Authority, Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, it seems likely that at least some of their funding comes from antisemites.

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

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L'Orient Today has an interview with an international legal expert who states unequivocally that Israel's naval blockade of Gaza is illegal.

1. Are these ship interceptions legal under international law?
First, we must highlight the fact that the blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip is totally illicit. It is indeed a unilateral, indiscriminate, punitive action targeting the civil population. This kind of action is a serious violation of International Law.

Regarding the competence of a State over the sea, there is a basic principle stipulating that a State is only allowed to take action within the limits of its territorial sea of 12 nautical miles from the coastline [baseline].

On the one hand, the flotilla was heading towards Gaza and not Israel. But most importantly, on the other hand, the flotilla’s boats were intercepted at 43 nautical miles from the Gaza shore, which is in International Waters. Israel has, hence, violated International Law norms.

According to the Montego Bay Convention on the Law of the Sea, no state has the right to scuttle any other ship, even military ships, non-aggressive, of course, in the High Seas. The Israelis have the right to board foreign ships only in their own territorial waters. This is an application of the sacred principle of the Freedom of Navigation, the seas belonging to all.

Israel has violated all the norms of the International Law of the Sea. It scuttled foreign boats in the High Seas, especially since these boats were on peaceful humanitarian missions, and even in territorial waters, they would have had the “right of innocent passage.”

It turns out that even the UN stated, unequivocally, that Israel's 'naval blockade of Gaza was legal - in 2011.

This was in the Palmer Report, discussing the Mavi Marmara incident, which occurred far further from the Gaza shore than the "Sumud Flotilla" - 75 nautical mile away.

The Palmer Report said:

The first issue we consider is the legality of the naval blockade imposed by Israel.

The Panel notes in this regard that the uncertain legal status of Gaza under international law cannot mean that Israel has no right to self-defence against armed attacks directed toward its territory. The Israeli report to the Panel makes it clear that the naval blockade as a measure of the use of force was adopted for the purpose of defending its territory and population, and the Panel accepts that was the case. It was designed as one way to prevent weapons reaching Gaza by sea and to prevent such attacks to be launched from the sea. Indeed there have been various incidents in which ships carrying weapons were intercepted by the Israeli authorities on their way to Gaza.

Israel was entitled to take reasonable steps to prevent the influx of weapons into Gaza. With that objective, Israel established a series of restrictions on vessels entering the waters of Gaza. These measures culminated in the declaration of the naval blockade on 3 January 2009.

As a final point, the Panel emphasizes that if necessary, the civilian population in Gaza must be allowed to receive food and other objects essential to its survival. However, it does not follow from this obligation that the naval blockade is per se unlawful or that Israel as the blockading power is required to simply let vessels carrying aid through the blockade. On the contrary, humanitarian missions must respect the security arrangements put in place by Israel. They must seek prior approval from Israel and make the necessary arrangements with it. This includes meeting certain conditions such as permitting Israel to search the humanitarian vessels in question. The Panel notes provision was made for any essential humanitarian supplies on board the vessels to enter Gaza via the adjacent Israeli port of Ashdod, and such an offer was expressly made in relation to the goods carried on the flotilla.

The Panel therefore concludes that Israel’s naval blockade was legal.

The Panel is satisfied that extensive and genuine efforts were made by Israel to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian supplies from the flotilla to Gaza thus obviating the need to challenge the blockade and thereby avoiding the prospect of violence.

For Israel to maintain the blockade it had to be effective, so it must be enforced. That is a clear legal requirement for a blockade. Such enforcement may take place on the high seas and may be conducted by force if a vessel resists. To this point in the analysis no difficulty arises.

This is unequivocal. The naval blockade is legal and Israel has maintained it, as it is required to do for it to remain in effect. It has the right to impose the blockade to stop weapons transfers to Hamas. It has the right to intercept any Gaza-bound boats on the high seas. Anyone who wants to bring aid to Gaza must coordinate with Israel.

The legal logic has not changed in 14 years.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

10/05 Links: Trump: Hamas faces ‘complete obliteration’ if it clings to power; Howard Jacobson: The left are 'responsible' for antisemitism rise in the UK; Eli the Survivor

From Ian:

Dr. Mordechai Kedar: The Central Obstacle to Peace between Israel and the Palestinians Isn't Politics

While Palestinians declare they want statehood in the West Bank and Gaza, they make abundantly clear that their real aspiration isn't independence but the destruction of Israel, regardless of its borders.

Hamas - an Islamist, jihadist, and fundamentalist movement - took over the Palestinian parliament in January 2006 democratically and Gaza in June 2007 violently. Hamas's religious ideology complements the national ideology of the PLO, injecting a religious element into the conflict. The result is that what might otherwise be a solvable problem of borders and demographics takes on almost cosmic meaning as a struggle between Islam and Judaism that began in the 7th century between Mohammad and the Jews of the Arabian city of Medina.

Given the strength of the religious element, and the weakness of the national element, it is almost impossible for Palestinians to accept a two-state solution. National independence has limited appeal, and anything short of a complete victory over the Jewish state fails to satisfy the need for a victory of Islam over Judaism.

Westerners tend to ignore the religious element when dealing with the Muslim world, viewing it as secondary or purely rhetorical. In truth, even groups like Fatah - which often employs secular nationalist rhetoric - are deeply informed by Islamic beliefs and ways of thinking. For Palestinians, national and religious aspirations are inseparable, and, for many, Hamas's affinity with Islam grants it greater legitimacy as a political movement.

Hamas and other groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood have a fixed set of ideas about Jews and Judaism that make any compromise or mutual recognition with a Jewish state anathema. The advent of Islam in the 7th century CE rendered Judaism void. The adherents of this superseded faith do not constitute a nation or people. Therefore, there is no logic or legitimacy to the existence of a Jewish state.

Moreover, once land comes under Muslim rule, it ought to remain Muslim in perpetuity. Islamists believe this to be true of Sicily, the Iberian Peninsula, and Greece, but especially true of the territory of Mandatory Palestine and its holy sites. The Balfour Declaration and subsequent decisions by the League of Nations and the UN granting sovereignty to Jews in this land are thus an offense to Islam.

The spectacle of a return of Judaism - in which the Jews regain their land, pray where the Temple once stood, and act as a sovereign people rather than a scattered religious minority - strikes many Muslims as an intolerable offense. As long as Israel continues to exist in any form, the affront remains, and it must be combated through jihad.

This religious perception also underlies the hostility towards Israel among the rest of the Arab peoples and Muslims more generally. Thus, Palestinians feel that recognizing Israel as the state of the Jewish people would be a betrayal of Islam that would earn them the contempt of their coreligionists.

Benny Morris: Nothing from Israeli-Palestinian History Suggests Trump's Peace Plan Will Work

President Trump's peace plan to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza implicitly proposes Israeli-Palestinian peace on the basis of a two-state compromise. Yet since 1937, the Palestinian leadership has successively rejected numerous international and Israeli peace plans, believing that all of Palestine belongs to the Arabs, and that the Jews have no right to sovereignty in any part of it.

Trump's plan is a non-starter because the raison d'etre of Hamas is the destruction of the Jewish state and the Islamization of Palestine (as expounded in the group's foundational Charter of 1988). More importantly, Hamas - like Lebanon's Hizbullah - has from the first said it will never give up its arms.

Trump's plan nowhere explains how Hamas will be disarmed or who will do it. Few observers believe that any Arab force will engage in battle against Hamas to disarm it. Any who try to do so will immediately be branded by their own people as "collaborators" with Israel. It is also a matter of "honor," a very important concept in the Arab world; you do not give up your Kalashnikov in the face of a mortal enemy.

Two years later, October 7 remains an ongoing trauma for Israel and world Jewry

Only Jews are told to suffer in silence because others oceans away suffer more. For their friends, sympathy; for their enemies, suffering is always relative. It is only one side that offers a bridge of empathy, acknowledging the pain of Palestinians living in a battlefield. Still, it has never crossed the other way to accept the suffering of Jews and Israelis.

Others lie, saying that the suffering was self-inflicted, creating alternate realities that drive all to madness. They gleefully try to rewrite the events that left the wound on Jewry's body, and though it aches and bleeds, we're told that it was never there.

Jews bear the wound, desperate to have their experience acknowledged so as to affirm their sanity in a world gone mad, but acknowledging Jewish suffering is treated as ground ceded in a battle. When it suits such people, then October 7 was a necessary means toward a just end, to right a grocery list of grievances whose debt the entire world couldn't pay.

Those murdered, mutilated, or beaten were settlers, soldiers, or Israeli. No matter what, there is always another justification for the abuse of Jews. When the abuse is denied, and the victim devotes all their effort to maintain the truth, it is impossible to fully grasp what one has endured. The issue is the same when the pain is belittled because it is inconvenient to the war effort. While there are some righteous among the nations, by and large, the suffering of Jews is a Jewish concern.

It is impossible to make those who deny, justify, or diminish the ongoing trauma of October 7 understand why the wounds go so deep. They don't care that in Israel, everyone knows someone who was killed, or maimed, or has one degree of separation from those taken hostage.

Israel is a small country, and it is impossible not to have been impacted by the pogrom even in some small way.

Every day, the impact seeps deeper as October 7 continues to unfold. The Diaspora is not disconnected. Israel is smaller than the Jewish nation at large, but not by much. The ties that bind have become ties of loss for a great number of Diaspora Jews. Family, friends, colleagues; everyone has an October 7 story that no one hears.

I don't know when the Sukkahs were removed in Kissufim, but it had to have happened eventually, when the site was relatively secure and the residents returned home. They were temporary after all, but their end date had become uncertain.

In war, nothing is certain except for uncertainty, according to the common refrain bandied about in my reserve company. The Jewish people are still at war, and so the right time to address the trauma is unclear. When reminders are constant, when there is no time to mourn properly, when the merit of sacrifice is in question, when you are hounded and then gaslit about the persecution, then the point at which one can move on becomes obscured.

It is uncertain when October 7 will end, but that day is not today. It is still October 7.

82% of American Jews do not feel entirely safe. The @WashingtonPost didn't think it was worth mentioning.

The Washington Post published a poll of American Jews, but the most important finding was left out of the article—and what they did highlight was deeply misrepresented.

They led with this headline grabber:

“Many American Jews sharply disapprove of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, with 61 percent saying Israel has committed war crimes and about 4 in 10 saying the country is guilty of genocide…”

But what the Post doesn't say is that 24% of respondents do not identify as religiously Jewish, and of the remainder, 29% say they have no religious denomination. That means 46% of respondents are either not religious or religiously unaffiliated - a group whose connection to Jewish identity is often cultural or nominal.

Only 32% of the full sample said being Jewish is “very important” in their lives.
That raises an obvious question: If a large portion of respondents don't feel particularly Jewish, why are their opinions treated as authoritative “Jewish” perspectives on Israel?

We’ve seen this framing tactic before: use low-attachment Jews to imply that “the Jewish community” is turning against Israel. But the real trend is this: many American Jews are turning away from Judaism, and their views on Israel are more reflective of that disaffiliation than of Jewish identity itself. These Jews get their news from the mainstream media that has been emphasizing false stories of Israeli war crimes and "genocide" - of course their opinions will reflect the biased coverage they read from outlets like the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, the most sobering number in the entire poll was completely ignored in the Post's article.

To the question: “How safe do you feel as a Jew in the United States today?”

Only 18% said “very safe”
51% said “somewhat safe”
26% said “not too safe”
6% said “not at all safe”

The poll results aggregate “very” and “somewhat” into a deceptive “net safe” category - but since when is “somewhat safe” good enough for any American citizen?

This isn’t abstract geopolitical opinion - it’s first-person emotional reality, and it tells a clear story: By more than 4 to 1, American Jews do not feel completely safe in their own country.

That’s a headline.
That’s the real story.
And the Washington Post buried it.

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

At @Harpers, Houthis are heroic

Harper’s Magazine has turned contempt for America and Israel into an editorial reflex, where ideology routinely trumps evidence.

The magazine asked Seth Harp to cover the 250th anniversary of the US Army celebration in Washington DC in June. Harp's first paragraph tells us how brilliant he is.

After the midair collision in January over the Potomac River between an Army helicopter and a regional jet packed with young figure skaters and their parents flying out of Wichita, Kansas, and considering the ongoing travails of the Boeing Company, which saw at least five of its airplanes crash last year, I was so concerned about the state of U.S. aviation that, when called on by this magazine to attend President Donald Trump’s military parade in Washington, on June 14, 2025, I decided to drive all the way from my home in Austin, Texas, even though it cost me two days behind the wheel and a gas bill as expensive as a plane ticket.

No matter how you slice it, the chances of dying in an air crash is between 100 and 1000 times lower, depending on how you calculate it, than dying in a car crash for a 1,500 mile trip. Thus Harp immediately establishes himself as someone who has no idea how to interpret events.

The same disdain for evidence that led him to generalize anecdotes about air travel into making manifestly stupid decisions also shapes his view of the Middle East.

Which explains his later gratuitous mention of Israel:

The day before, Israel had bombed Iran, opening yet another front in the apartheid state’s war against its Muslim neighbors.

Iran shot rockets at Israel in April 2024, more than a year before the parade, in retaliation for Israel striking military targets near the Iranian consulate in Damascus. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Iranian-aligned Syrians and Iraqis, and the PA-controlled West Bank all attacked Israel before Israel struck them. But to oh-so-intellectual writers like Harp - for whom pesky things like facts must never interfere with the story - it was simply an Israeli war against Muslims.

One would think editors would do basic fact checks. But, this is Harper's, where they are so intellectual that mere facts re not relevant to their much higher standards of the truth as they prefer to pretend it is.

But even that doesn't hold a candle to Harp's almost orgasmic description of the Houthis:

Just one month before Trump’s parade, in May, our armed forces suffered a humiliating loss against a tiny but fearless adversary in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world.

The Houthi rebels, also known as Ansar Allah, have been defying the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel ever since they first emerged as a military force in 2004 protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and the quisling Yemeni regime’s collaboration with the Bush Administration. After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, the Houthis, who had endured nearly a decade of starvation under a U.S.-backed Saudi blockade of their ports, tried to force Israel and its allies to lift the siege of Gaza by using their scrappy speedboat navy and homemade arsenal of cheaply manufactured missiles, drones, and unmanned underwater vehicles to choke off maritime traffic in the Red Sea. In response, the Biden Administration, invoking the threat posed by the Houthis to freedom of navigation, launched a wave of air strikes on Yemen and dispatched a naval fleet to reopen the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The campaign did not go well. .... The tough, ingenious (and dirt-poor) Houthis, protected by Yemen’s mountainous interior, fought back with the tenacity of drug-resistant microbes. They downed hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Reaper drones; nearly managed to shoot several F-16s and an F-35 out of the sky; and evaded air defenses to strike Israel with long-range drones, all the while continuing to harass commercial shipping in the Red Sea, which plummeted by 60 percent.

How scrappy and resourceful the Houthis are! Maybe he can't yet say out loud how much he also admires Hamas for 10/7 and Al Qaeda for 9/11, but how can he not? They are just as successful at fighting the evil Israeli and American capitalist machines! Screw human rights - they are fighting on the right side of history!

If the Houthis weren't anti-American and anti-Israel, Harp wouldn't say a positive word about them. But their "death to America, death to Israel, damn the Jews" slogan is irresistible to the privileged (NYU Law School, Columbia Journalism School, lawyer at Kirkland and Ellis), and very white, Harp.

This is the state of today's progressive intelligentsia, and I use the word advisedly. Harp, and Harper's, are smug and condescending while they don't have a clue about how the world actually works and cherry pick the facts that fit their preconceived and hateful ideas. In that sense, they are absolutely no different from the far-Right conspiracy theorists they profess to despise.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

10/04 Links: Eli Sharabi: ‘Break my ribs again, just give me food’; After Manchester, there can be no doubt – anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism; BBC doc ‘ignored Hamas killed Gazans in aid queues’

From Ian:

‘Break my ribs again, just give me food’: Hamas hostage on his desperate plea to captors

I am going to meet the saddest man in the world, or so I think. On October 7 2023, Eli Sharabi lost his wife and two daughters as Hamas terrorists rampaged through their kibbutz near Israel’s southern border, burning, beheading, gleefully slaughtering. The sorrow is unimaginable. But it gets worse. Eli was taken hostage before his family were murdered. For the next 491 days, most of the time spent in a tunnel beneath Gaza, he was sustained by the thought that, if only he could survive, he would be reunited with Lianne, who was born and brought up in Bristol, and their beloved girls, 16-year-old Noiya, and Yahel, just turned 13. “I’ll come back!” he shouted as the brutes dragged him away.

And he was as good as his word. There is a heart-stopping moment in Eli’s book, Hostage, where he returns from the underworld, literally almost half the man he was, and, suddenly, he knows. The social worker who welcomes him at the hostage handover point says his mother and sister are waiting for him. Eli says he wants his wife and daughters, and the social worker says his mother and sister will explain.

“It’s all clear in that moment, right there, standing in front of her. I understand everything. I understand it in my bones. I understand it from head to toe. I understand it, and I feel the pain pulsating through my broken body, a pain without a name and without form, and nobody needs to say another word.”

He made it, and they did not. Eli’s book, one of the most compelling and unflinching you will ever read, is dedicated to the memory of Eli’s girls and to Yossi, his brother, who was also taken hostage and was killed. Yossi’s body is in Gaza, one of the 48 remaining hostages, 20 of whom Israel believes are still alive.

I was apprehensive about meeting Eli (pronounced “Ellie”, the Hebrew pronunciation) because this will be a tough interview, maybe the toughest I’ve ever done. But I needn’t have worried. The short, compact figure who walks briskly into the hotel suite, which has a glorious view over a beach a few miles outside Tel Aviv, exudes determination and quiet confidence. In neatly pressed clothes and wearing a yellow hostage ribbon in a pendant around his neck, Eli looks together, not broken. The face is solemn in repose, dark eyes a little haunted maybe, but he breaks into a wide grin when I hand over the crumpets.

BBC documentary ‘ignored evidence Hamas killed Gazans in aid queues’

A BBC documentary on the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians queueing for food aid in Gaza has been accused of ignoring a report claiming that some had been killed by Hamas.

The Panorama documentary, called Gaza: Dying for Food, reported that more than 1,300 Palestinians had been killed while queueing outside aid centres.

It told viewers that most of those who died outside the centres between May and Sept 12 were killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), according to a report it used to inform its own despatch.

But it has now been claimed that the documentary, broadcast on Sept 22, ignored evidence in the report that Hamas fighters were responsible for some of the deaths.

The report, by the US-based research group Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), was written in the wake of the deaths outside and near the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid distribution centres.

Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s international editor, told viewers: “Since the GHF began its operations, at least 1,300 Palestinians have been killed at or around its sites. Mostly, according to ACLED data, by IDF fire.”

The research group’s own report, released on Sept 17, had made a similar claim. However, it also listed three other categories of “armed actor involved” besides the IDF, describing them as “unidentified Palestinian gunmen”, “Hamas” and “contested actor”.

In contrast to what Bowen said, the report described the presence of Hamas gunmen outside the GHF aid distribution centres, stating: “Eyewitnesses on the ground report that individual Hamas members may also have been among those collecting aid for their families.”

The research group quoted Anas Baba, a Gaza-based producer for the American National Public Radio (NPR) news website, who said: “At the GHF site, I saw people I am certain were Hamas members, based on their dress, taking food for their families.”

Brendan O'Neill: After Manchester, there can be no doubt – anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism

Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. It’s the main form Jew hatred takes in the Western world in the 21st century. It is the uncanny likeness this ancient hatred wears in these supposedly post-racist times. You expect me to believe it is purely by chance that the activist class now says about the Jewish State all the things that fascist scum once said about the Jewish people? Israel, they say, is uniquely murderous. It’s a bloodletting entity. It derives pleasure from the murder of children. It wields staggering levels of global power. It has even mighty states eating from the palm of its blood-stained hand. Zero out of 10 for originality – every one of these libels was feverishly issued against the Jewish people before you co-opted them for your campaign of demonisation against the Jewish State.

Consider the sheer fixation with Israel. I have opposed wars fought by America, Britain, France, Turkey, Russia and Rwanda, but not once did any of those states occupy my every waking thought. Not once did I call for their violent obliteration from the family of nations. Never did I obsessively visit campuses, write articles, make videos and stand on street corners to say not only that ‘Turkey is wrong to bomb the Kurds’ but also that ‘Turkey is the most demonic, bloodthirsty entity in existence and the whole of humanity is fucking doomed until this vile so-called “country” has been wiped from the face of the Earth’. You know why I didn’t say that? Because I am not racist.

Here is the key commonality between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitsm – both ideologies hold some Jewish thing, whether the Jewish nation or the Jewish people, to be the true source of evil in the world. That is always what distinguished anti-Semitism from other forms of racism – the fact its fuel was not merely prejudice and bigotry but also a conspiratorial derangement that sees the Jews as the corrupters of the Earth, the spoilers of men’s souls. And it is what now distinguishes anti-Zionism from politics, from the realm of reasoned discourse that the followers of this ideology falsely claim to inhabit – it, too, finds a Jewish phenomenon, the Jewish State, guilty of manifesting evil, of sullying our species, of letting the blood of innocents and warping the minds of Westerners. It, too, sees ‘the Jew thing’ as the poison in the well of humanity.

To my mind, anti-Zionism is like a laundering scam. It is the passably political belief system that allows certain sections of society to launder their fear of Jews and present it as ‘criticism of Israel’. From England’s upper classes, who’ve long been iffy about Jews, to radical Islamists, who openly hate Jews, anti-Zionism has become the cloak under which they might spirit their Jew suspicion into everyday life. From far-right filth to leftists drunk on the old Socialism of Fools, anti-Zionism is a mask for the lingering, latent belief that there is something noxious, something unholy, about Jews.

To sow so much rancour for the Jewish nation and then reach for the smelling salts when Jews are demonised – no. We aren’t having it anymore. The reason ‘Zios’ – Jews – are getting it in the neck is because you have polluted public life with the fanatical, chauvinistic belief that Zionism is evil and everyone who supports it is evil. That Israel is uniquely cruel and everyone who backs it is cruel. That the Jewish State is the most despicable state, so much so that it deserves to be destroyed, ‘from the river to the sea’. Only Jihad Al-Shamie is responsible for the barbarism at Heaton Park. But here’s what you are responsible for: rebirthing in pseudo-political language the medieval derangement about evil Jews. After Manchester, I, for one, am devoted to the complete defeat of anti-Zionism.

10/03 Links Pt2: Qatar, Not Israel is Taking Control of D.C.; Ben Shapiro: Trump’s peace deal, Charlie Kirk’s legacy; Uni of Maryland Student Govt. Passes BDS Res. on Yom Kippur

From Ian:

Mossad reveals role in arrest of Hamas-linked cell in Germany said plotting to kill Jews

The Mossad was involved in Wednesday’s arrest of a Hamas-linked cell in Germany that planned to carry out attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets, the agency announced Friday.

The Israeli foreign intelligence service said the arrest was possible because of close coordination between the Mossad and Germany’s security and intelligence services.

German prosecutors said on Wednesday that they arrested three suspected foreign operatives of Hamas they believe were preparing a serious act of violence in Germany.

The three men are suspected by prosecutors of being involved in procuring firearms and ammunition for Hamas since at least the summer of this year, to be used for assassinations targeting Israeli or Jewish institutions in Germany.

“In the course of today’s arrests, various weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle and several pistols, as well as a considerable amount of ammunition, were found,” said the federal prosecutors in a statement at the time.

The three, identified in line with German privacy laws only as German citizen Abed Al G., Wael F. M., born in Lebanon, and German citizen Ahmad I., were arrested in Berlin on Wednesday.

Anti-terrorism investigators had been surveilling the suspects for some time before operational forces nabbed them at a weapons handover in the German capital.

Police intervened in the exchange and discovered arms, including an AK-47 assault rifle, a Glock pistol and large amounts of ammunition, the prosecutor’s office said.

The Mossad said that the effort to stop the cell spanned several countries, and was “part of an extensive Mossad effort throughout Europe during which weapons caches were located and further arrests were made of operatives suspected of terrorist offenses.”

MSNBC Host Ayman Mohyeldin Attends Festival Featuring Former PLO Spokeswoman

A longtime MSNBC host last month attended an anti-Israel gathering alongside a long list of Hamas cheerleaders, social media posts reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.

Ayman Mohyeldin, an Egyptian-born MSNBC personality, appeared in an Instagram post at the London "Together for Palestine" music festival with British actor Khalid Abdalla. Also at the festival were a former spokeswoman for a designated terrorist organization, a United Nations official currently under U.S. sanctions, and disgraced former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan.

Between musical numbers, the audience heard from people like Diana Buttu, a former Palestinian Liberation Organization spokeswoman, who has spent more than a decade defending Hamas. She described the Oct. 7, 2023, attack as the "natural consequence, unfortunately, of 56 years of military occupation and the denial of freedom."

On the day of the massacre, Buttu said, "When you punch your abuser in the face, it feels good. The first reaction was elation—we saw that both in Gaza and in the West Bank."

She has also praised Hamas as a "movement for freedom, for liberation," and lauded its former leader, Yahya Sinwar, who was killed in an IDF operation in October 2024.

"The Israelis will never understand what it means to die a hero," she said.

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, who has been under U.S. sanctions since July, also spoke at the festival.

"For nearly a century, the Palestinian people have lived under the weight of a brutal settler colonial project, a perpetual occupation justified as security—security of whom?—and enforced through apartheid," Albanese said.

The Trump administration sanctioned Albanese over the series of letters "riddled with inflammatory rhetoric and false accusations" she sent to a long list of companies in an effort to pressure them against doing business in Israel. The State Department also noted that Albanese claims to be an "international lawyer" despite never having been licensed to practice law.

Former MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan delivered a fiery sermon on behalf of Palestinian "journalists," many of whom have collaborated with Hamas.

MSNBC canceled Hasan’s show in November 2023 after the former host spent the weeks after Oct. 7 defending terrorism. He notably pushed the discredited idea that Israel bombed al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, an explosion that turned out to have been caused by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket. Hasan has compared non-Muslims to "cattle" and blamed Hamas’s attack on Israel as well, and has previously been accused of plagiarizing a column he wrote in defense of spanking children.

Henry Hamra, a Syrian Jew living in US, running in elections for new Syrian parliament

Henry Hamra, who fled Syria to the US in 1992, is running for a seat on Sunday in Syria’s first legislature since the December ousting of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad.

If elected, Hamra, who is running for a seat representing the Damascus district, would be the first Jewish representative to enter parliament since 1947, according to Syrian historian Sami Moubayed.

In the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Damascus on Friday, an AFP photographer saw posters on walls bearing Hamra’s image alongside the Syrian flag and reading: “Candidate for Damascus for the Syrian People’s Assembly.”

A flyer published on Hamra’s campaign account on X reads: “Towards a flourishing, tolerant and just Syria,” while his program sets out pledges including bringing together Syrian Jews, protecting Syria’s heritage and cultural identity, and working with US Syrians to abolish the US “Caesar Act,” which imposes economic sanctions on Syria without conditions.

Electoral commission spokesperson Nawar Najmeh told AFP that Hamra is an “official candidate for the elections and announced his election program like any other candidate.”

Two-thirds of Syria’s 210-seat legislature will be selected by local committees, while the rest will be nominated by Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in a selection process that has been criticized as undemocratic.

Hamra fled the Syrian capital to the US with his father, Rabbi Yusuf Hamra, at the age of 15 in 1992, the year Assad’s father and predecessor, Hafez, removed restrictions on Jews’ travel abroad.

The elder Hamra is a leader of Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish community and is the brother of the late Rabbi Avraham Hamra, the last Syrian chief rabbi, who fled to Israel in 1994 and settled in Holon.

In February, Henry Hamra and his father visited Damascus from the United States, participating in a group prayer for the first time in more than three decades in the Old City’s Faranj synagogue.

At its peak, Syria’s millennia-old Jewish community numbered some 100,000 people, but today, only a handful remain.

10/03 Links Pt1: Israel’s War, Europe’s Surrender; Synagogue terrorists father praised Oct.7, worked for ICRC; Hamas agreement to release all hostages is just a ‘smart way’ to reject Trump deal

From Ian:

Israel’s War, Europe’s Surrender By Abe Greenwald

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The UK is a leading example, but it’s hardly an outlier. As we approach the second anniversary of the October 7 attack on Israel, it’s clear that Hamas set off a chain of events that not only ensured its own demise but also sped up the slower demise of the West. European leaders such as the UK’s Keir Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron are busy recognizing a Palestinian state that doesn’t exist while ignoring the ones taking shape in the countries they govern.

But—here we go—it’s actually worse than that. Ignoring what Seth Mandel calls “The Palestining of the West” would be bad enough. But liberal Western leaders are actively encouraging it by endorsing false claims of Israeli genocide, turning a blind eye to their own Islamist enclaves, threatening to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu, and rewarding terrorists with an imaginary state.

European leaders have worked out an accommodation with their jihad enthusiasts. While the mobs multiply and murder, the governments will continue to pretend that it’s all about Israel. The problem is that there’s no endgame, and the arrangement is sure to outlast Israel’s war.

But for the vigilance of the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on anti-Semitism and its support for Israel, the U.S. would doubtless be playing a similar game by now. Both Kamala Harris and Joe Biden declared that the chanting mobs had a point, and the last administration’s turn against Israel was well underway by the time Biden left office. And that was before the Mamdanization of the Democratic Party.

What comes after Mamdani’s probable election as New York City mayor and after Donald Trump’s presidency, I couldn’t tell you. But most of the modern West is obsessed with spotting the early-warning signs of historical crises ever on the horizon—dictatorship, fascism, world war—while ignoring, excusing, or fomenting the concrete horrors of the present day. For forward-looking Israel, at least, there will be peace.

Telegraph Editorial: It is time we all stood up to anti-Semitism

This cannot go on. It seems clear that what we are witnessing is the tragic consequence of this normalisation of hate. The vicious anti-Semitism that has infected Britain’s body politic has run unchecked, and produced the inevitable result.

As the investigation into the attack unfolds we will learn more about the man responsible and his motivations. Now, it is worth reflecting that hatred always demands its toll; it is at the heart of how a great deal of modern terror works. The temperature is raised, and raised again, until someone, somewhere, acts upon the impulse; they, in turn, provide the model for copycat attacks.

Today’s violence followed the same wretched playbook as so many others across the West in recent years: normal implements of daily life, cars and knives, repurposed into weapons of terror in a manner the authorities will always struggle to halt completely. It was, however, foreseeable.

The spate of anti-Semitic violence gripping France had provided ample illustration of where the continual ratcheting of rhetoric in Britain might lead. Having allowed this ancient hatred to take root again, we must now eradicate it.

Keir Starmer: Respect the grief of British Jews this weekend

A horrific attack like this reminds us of the dangers Jews face simply because of who they are. Our thoughts remain with the victims and their families, as well as the wider community. Our gratitude goes to the first responders and emergency services, as well as those brave people who prevented this from being an even greater tragedy.

Across the country, people are reaching out in sorrow and solidarity. We stand firm in saying this is not who we are, and this is not what we stand for. Our Jewish neighbours are part of our communities and our country – the attack yesterday was an attack on us all.

For the government, that means taking action to guarantee your security. The police will provide a more visible presence around places of worship, transport hubs and schools. We will continue to work with the Jewish community, listening to their concerns and making sure that protection is as strong as it can be.

I know that planned protests over the weekend, just a few days before the anniversary of the October 7th attacks, as well as in the shadow of the Manchester attack, will cause distress.

Peaceful protest is a cornerstone of our democracy – and there is justified concern about the suffering in Gaza – but a minority have used these protests as a pretext for stoking antisemitic tropes.

I urge anyone thinking about protesting this weekend to recognise and respect the grief of British Jews this week. This is a moment of mourning. It is not a time to stoke tension and cause further pain.

This is still the country that was proud to be a refuge during World War Two.

This is still a country that prides itself on its values of tolerance, diversity and respect.

A country that welcomes all people, no matter their faith, to stand under the same flag together, as neighbours and friends. It is our flag that flew over Bergen Belsen concentration camp as it was liberated, a symbol of safety and freedom That is who we will always be – and hatred and violence will never win.

The final word must remain with those who lost their lives and those who mourn them. Adrian Daulby and Melvin Cravitz. May their memories be a blessing.

Jake Wallis Simons: Spare us your crocodile tears, Starmer and Corbyn

Which brings me to his successor. Last week, Sir Keir Starmer was basking in the adulation of Hamas after he recognised a Palestinian state without any preconditions. While this week’s Trump peace plan boxed the jihadis in, Starmer’s policy did the same to Israel.

Trump was clear: he wants Israel to win. He demanded the release of the hostages and the surrender of Hamas as a precondition for any ceasefire. As for Starmer, well, he may have not wanted Hamas to win, but he certainly wanted Israel to lose.

This was part of an overall stance that condemned Israel as the guilty party, rather than the jihadis of Hamas – the group, that is, who started the war and is refusing to release the hostages and stop the ‘genocide’ to which it is supposedly being subjected.

Does this make Starmer a ‘friend’ of Hamas terrorists? From their celebratory response to his decision to recognise a Palestinian state, it would certainly seem like they see it that way. So spare us your condolences, prime minister. Stay away from our synagogues. You, I’m afraid, are part of the problem.

Too strong? Perhaps. But then came a further trapdoor, in the form of violent pro-Palestinian protests that defaced London, Edinburgh and Manchester – Manchester! – in the hours after the attack last night.

One photograph has been haunting me since. It was taken in the aftermath of 7 October 2023 and shows a mob of Gaza activists marching through the city behind a banner that says: ‘Manchester says one solution: Intifada revolution.’ You didn’t think they meant it, did you?

Not so fast. With the investigation ongoing, we have no idea whether Jihad al-Shamie was influenced by such things, though it is likely perhaps. What we do know, however, is that for two years, the climate of Jew-hate in Britain has been intolerable, and the protests have been at the heart of it.

It was in the week of the 7 October attack that the Jewish Chronicle, which I edited at the time, revealed that many of the key organisers of the marches had significant past links to Hamas, with some even pictured with jihadi leaders in Gaza. Difference, as they say, it made none.

Which brings us to where we are today. Trapdoor after trapdoor, all the way down. It is sickening to see all those leftist politicians who have smeared Israel with their every breath for two years suddenly using the Manchester attack to try to sanitise their reputations. It is sickening to see the baying mobs on the streets, without so much as a whisper of ‘not in my name’.

It is sickening to see so many people not even bothering with the mask anymore, or being satisfied with the thinnest of disguises. Why not? In Starmer’s Britain, that is all that is required.

Shame on them. Shame on all of them. The Jews have always stood up for Britain, including serving with distinction in the Second World War, as my grandfather did. Shame on Britain for not standing up for the Jews.

Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier has emerged as one of the rare university leaders willing to say obvious things out loud. In an era when most college presidents perform elaborate rhetorical gymnastics to avoid offending anyone, Diermeier's message in an interview in City Journal is refreshingly straightforward: Universities aren't political parties. They shouldn't take stances on issues unrelated to their core mission. Civil discourse requires both freedom and structure. When students violate codes of conduct, they face consequences.

This is all correct. And in the current climate, where campus leaders routinely capitulate to activist mobs or parrot fashionable pieties, Diermeier's principled restraint deserves recognition.

But Diemeier does not go far enough.

Diermeier champions three pillars: open forums, institutional neutrality, and civil discourse. These are necessary conditions for a functioning university. But they're not sufficient. Because there's a fourth pillar he doesn't name explicitly, yet which his entire framework depends upon:

Truth.

Harvard University's motto since 1643 is "Veritas" - Latin for "truth." Yale's motto is similar: "Lux et Veritas" - "Light and Truth." In 1940, the American Association of University Professors stated defended academic freedom but it put it in context: "Academic freedom is essential... and applies to both teaching and research. Freedom in research is fundamental to the advancement of truth. "

The goal of the university is not diversity of ideas or unlimited free speech. They are all tools in the true purpose of academia - the pursuit of the truth.

Not "your truth" or "my truth" or "lived experience." Actual truth - the kind that corresponds to reality, can be tested against evidence, and withstands rational scrutiny.

Without that shared commitment to truth, open forums become pointless noise, institutional neutrality becomes moral abdication, and civil discourse is a waste of time when all ideas are considered equally valid.

A registered student organization has every right to invite a flat-earther to campus. A university committed to free inquiry should protect that right.

But does that mean the flat-earth theory deserves equal time in a geology course? Should it be treated as a legitimate alternative hypothesis in the "marketplace of ideas"?

Obviously not. If a flat-earther speaks on campus, the ideas would be properly mocked.

Because the Earth isn't flat. That's not a matter of opinion or perspective. It's not culturally relative or socially constructed.

Some ideas are simply false. That doesn't mean we censor them. But it does mean we treat them accordingly: as discredited theories, failed hypotheses, or historical curiosities — not as worthy contributions deserving respect merely for existing.

Now consider something more sophisticated than flat-earthism but no less problematic: Marxism.

Marxism presents itself as rigorous analysis of history, economics, and justice. It divides society into two fundamental classes - the proletariat (workers) and the bourgeoisie (owners) - locked in inevitable conflict. It demands that the workers revolt, violently, against the owners. Its entire moral framework rests on the claim that upward mobility is either impossible or represents betrayal of one's class.

Yet like flat-earthers, this framework is built on assumptions we know to be empirically false.

First, most people are neither purely proletariat nor bourgeoisie. The modern economy includes a vast middle class of people who are simultaneously workers and owners, employees and investors. Marxism has no meaningful category for them - so it either ignores them or tortures the definitions until they fit.

Second, people can and do move between economic classes. Jews provide a particularly clear example: despite facing systematic barriers throughout history, Jewish communities achieved remarkable upward mobility through education, entrepreneurship, and mutual support. This historical reality doesn't fit Marxist theory, so Marxism either dismisses it as anomalous or reframes success as complicity. (And, I posit, this is a reason for Marx's own antisemitism. )

Third, Marxism treats agency as betrayal. If a poor person becomes successful through their own efforts, the framework doesn't celebrate that achievement - it accuses them of abandoning class solidarity. That's not analysis. That's ideology demanding conformity.

The result is a theory that denies complexity, erases individual human experience, and justifies violence in the name of liberation.

Marxism shouldn't be banned from campus - it absolutely should be studied and engaged with. But it shouldn't be treated as morally or intellectually equivalent to frameworks that actually correspond to observable reality.

This is where many universities go wrong. In their panic to avoid appearing ideological, they have abdicated the pursuit of truth. The result is a kind of neutral-but-empty institutional culture that protects speech without caring whether that speech bears any relationship to reality. And, like Marxism, some of these ideologies are dangerous, justifying violence in the name of philosophies that fall apart under even cursory examination of their core assumptions.

Diermeier is right that universities shouldn't be political parties. But neutrality about partisanship is not the same as neutrality about truth.

Every university policy, department, or initiative should answer: Does it help the institution discover and transmit truth? Or does it prioritize other goals - comfort, inclusion, political messaging, social justice, career advancement - over truth? If the answer is anything other than "yes, it serves truth," then the policy fails the university's core mission, regardless of how noble its stated intentions.

This doesn't mean universities should be cold or callous. Truth-seeking requires treating people with dignity, creating environments where intellectual risk-taking is possible, and supporting those who challenge orthodoxies. But these are instrumental values in service of truth - not in competition with it.

Daniel Diermeier deserves credit for defending open inquiry and institutional restraint at a time when many university leaders lack the courage to do so. His framework provides essential structural protections against ideological capture. But he seems to have forgotten the entire purpose of the academy. And without truth, all the other goals are meaningless.

Diermeier has articulated the tools to protect intellectual freedom in the academy. Now the academy needs to remember what that freedom is for.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

By Daled Amos

Why did Kamala Harris lose the presidential election?

A Free Press article by Kat Rosenfield following Harris's loss notes how Democrats and pundits immediately blamed sexism. According to this view, voters across the country just couldn't bring themselves to vote for a woman who, according to former MSNBC Joy Reid, had conducted "a historic, flawlessly run campaign" (sic). Rosenfield notes the attraction of blaming biased voters:

It’s not hard to see the appeal of this narrative. It displaces blame for Harris’s failure onto everyone but the candidate herself and allows her supporters to claim the moral high ground, in the face of abject defeat...Harris was perfect; it’s America that is wrong. And so she lost, yes, but only because the country itself is so full of losers.

This kind of framing is nothing new.

In July 2024, New York Attorney General Letitia James blamed racism and sexism as the real reasons why Harris lost:

[Republicans are] running very scared. That's what I think. They're running very scared, they have nothing else other than racism and sexism...The reality is that Kamala Harris, Vice President Harris, is qualified, and, you know, oftentimes she's underestimated but she’s an overachiever.

Blaming the critics is not limited to the political arena. When New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones was criticised for her 1619 Project, where she claimed that “one of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery,” her allies framed factual criticisms as racist attacks. One person on X responded that "[Washington Post pundit George] Will should’ve just written Hannah-Jones was 'uppity'”. Later, Hannah-Jones belittled criticism of her thesis when she condescendingly wrote

to clarify that this sentence had never been meant to imply that every single colonist shared this motivation, we changed the sentence to read “some of the colonists.”

When a weapon like this is so widespread, you can be sure it will be used against Jews.

So, another area where critics are rebuffed with charges of racism instead of dealing with the merits of their arguments is progressive representatives of American Muslims. In 2018, when the Women's March was criticized over one of its leaders, Tamika Mallory, having a close connection to antisemite Louis Farrakhan, Linda Sarsour apologized to the Jewish women of the group for not addressing the issue fast enough--but not before lashing out the day before:

It’s very clear to me what the underlying issue is — I am a bold, outspoken BDS supporting Palestinian Muslim American woman and the opposition’s worst nightmare...by proxy they began attacking my sister Tamika Mallory — knowing all too well that in this country the most discardable woman is a Black woman.

Here, Sarsour solidified what has become the paradigm of attacking critics instead of dealing with their points.

Indeed, her self-portrayal as a defender of women was something of a stunt, considering that her defense of women was selective:

Further, in a 2017 Nation interview, Sarsour declared that a woman could not be both a Zionist and a feminist.

In September 2016, Michael D. Cohen, Eastern Director for the Wiesenthal Center, attended a New York City Council Public Hearing on that body’s resolution to officially condemn the BDS movement. Sarsour was there too, as those in favor of the resolution were shouted down as “Jewish pigs” and “Zionist filth.”

It was Sarsour who nodded approvingly and congratulated individuals who were kicked out of the hearing room for being out of order, for walking in front of individuals providing testimony in support of the resolution, and for shouting down our supporters with anti-Semitic slurs — all in the name of protecting free speech.

Sarsour will insist that her critics are proof that her claims hit home and reveal the truth of what she says. And if she can toss in that those critics are also racist and misogynistic, so much the better.

Ilhan Omar learned from Sarsour how to accuse critics of Islamophobia. Rashida Tlaib was criticized when she claimed that

There’s always kind of a calming feeling I tell folks when I think of the Holocaust… and the fact that it was my ancestors – Palestinians – who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood... all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-Holocaust… and I love the fact that my ancestors provided that in many ways.

In response to backlash from critics, Omar did not address the critics or their concerns in Tlaib's remarks. Instead, she fell back to the accusation that criticisms were "designed to silence, sideline, and sort of almost eliminate [the] public voice of Muslims from the public discourse." Left unanswered were the facts that were whitewashed by Tlaib's comment--historical facts such as:

o  Arab protests against Jewish immigration left many stranded in Nazi Germany,
o  Pe-1948 the Arabs were guilty of massacres of Jews,
o  Palestinian Arab leader Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini collaborated with Hitler
o  Jews created economic opportunities that benefitted the Arabs and their livelihood

We saw another example of this at the beginning of this year, Amnesty International found it expedient to accuse its Israeli chapter of "anti-Palestinian racism." The Israeli chapter is the same one that worked with Palestinians to condemn Israel, and argued that the IDF committed “crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing". But when they criticized Amnesty International's genocide accusation for not proving that Israel had specifically intended to kill Palestinians--as required by the definition of genocide under international law--Amnesty International silenced the group the only way it knew how, regardless of how ridiculous their claim was.

Any attempt by Jews to defend themselves is attacked. We see this in criticisms of the widely respected IHRA definition of antisemitism. According to the IHRA website:

As of February 1, 2025, 1,266 entities worldwide have adopted the definition. Among those, 45 countries have done so—including the United States, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France. In the U.S., 37 state governments have done so, along with 98 city and county governments.

That has not stopped opponents from claiming the definition is being weaponized to stifle criticism of Israel, but those accusations are more common than actual examples. Ali Abunimah has made this claim. On the Electronic Intifada, he accuses the Jewish community of "baselessly" manipulating the term antisemitism.

We oppose the cynical and baseless use of the term anti-Semitism as a tool for stifling criticism of Israel or opposition to Zionism, as this assumes simply because someone is Jewish, they support Zionism or the colonial and apartheid policies of the state of Israel - a false generalization.

It will not come as a surprise that there is a lengthy article on Wikipedia on the topic: The Weaponization of Antisemitism, but nothing similar on the weaponization of Islamophobia. There is just a very short article on Wikipedia called LetUsTalk, which is

a campaign against silencing criticism of the Islamic law and especially hijab in the West through accusations of Islamophobia. This campaign has started when a letter written by Dr Sherif Emil—a Canadian Children’s surgeon—and published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, in which he criticizes promotion of hijab as a symbol of diversity, was retracted due to the accusations of Islamophobia.

And now going a step further, we have Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, telling Mehdi Hasan, "There are far better representations of the concerns of Jewish New Yorkers than the ADL and Jonathan Greenblatt”-- this from the same guy who has no problem with aggressive protesters going around chanting "Globalize the Intifada" as they intimidate Jews.

Jews are so blessed to have politicians like Mamdani, who not only can decide what qualifies as antisemitism, but also are ready to tell us which leaders truly represent Jewish interests. Other minorities must be so jealous.

Whether it’s sexism, racism, or antisemitism, the goal is the same—silence dissent, deflect accountability, and emphasize one's own moral righteousness. The result is a double standard: valid criticism is dismissed as prejudice, while others weaponize those very accusations to shield themselves from scrutiny. Until this pattern ends, we will continue to see excuses masquerading as principles, and the moral language of justice—against real sexism, racism, and antisemitism—will be hollowed out.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Antisemites love to attack on Yom Kippur: Dozens of incidents during the fast day

On Yom Kippur, a British citizen born in Syria decide to murder Jews gathered outside a synagogue in Manchester.

There is little doubt that he chose this day specifically for that purpose.

But other antisemites were busy on Yom Kippur as well.

The "Sumud Flotilla" scheduled its arrival in Israeli waters to occur on Yom Kippur.

It was also not a coincidence. One ostensibly Jewish member of the flotilla, David Adler, said this explicitly: "I believe that the timing of our flotilla is not coincidental. On the contrary, I believe it is a blessing that we are approaching interception at the onset of Yom Kippur — our annual day of atonement — which calls on us to reflect on our sins, and what can be done to repair them in the spirit of tikkun olam."

In Manchester, the site of the terror attack, there was a mass demonstration in support of the flotilla. they held a "moment of silence" not for the synagogue victims but for the members of the flotilla who were "kidnapped." But the demonstration was planned ahead of time - meaning that Yom Kippur was always planned to be the day the flotilla arrived along with protests.

There were also planned Yom Kippur demonstrations in Edinburgh and London, as well as pro-flotilla protests in Paris, Berlin, The Hague, Tunis, Brasilia, Buenos Aires, Krakow, New York, Barcelona (windows smashed), and Athens.

In Italy alone:

In Rome, a procession promoted by student collectives marched from the Sapienza University to the Colosseum. In Milan the State University was occupied, in Lecce that of Salento, in the universities of Bologna and Pisa the Rectorates were blocked. In Padua and Venice classes were interrupted. Also in the capital, tension at the Caravillani art school, which has a shared entrance with a Jewish temple. Three students with megaphones chanted slogans for Palestine and some people who were in the temple walked out. A heated argument ensued, culminating in shoving. Dozens were identified, from both groups.

But those were not the only events that antisemites planned for Yom Kippur.

The University of Maryland Student Government Association passed a sweeping BDS resolution on Wednesday night, at the onset of Yom Kippur. They had previously tried to pass the resolution on Rosh Hashanah.

Don't forget Hamas. While Hamas has not been firing too many rockets lately, they chose Yom Kippur to launch five rockets from Gaza toward the Israeli city of Ashdod.

The Jew-haters remember the surprise attack on the Yom Kippur War, and that emboldens them every year to use the Jewish holiday as the best day for them to attack Jews and Israel.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)