Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, November 25, 2025

To the UN, Israel is the Only Country Without The Right to Defend Itself

In October 2025, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese issued a report containing a statement so sweeping, and so apparently absurd, that it merits careful examination. In Paragraph 41, she writes:

Given that the occupation of Palestinian territory is an ongoing unlawful use of force in violation of the UN Charter, nothing Israel does there can be understood as 'defensive' in nature.

This formulation, presented as a straightforward application of international law, in fact creates a logical and legal framework that applies to no other nation on Earth. By following its implications to their logical conclusions, we can see that Albanese has constructed an argument that effectively strips Israel - and Israel alone - of the inherent right to self-defense recognized under the UN Charter.

Albanese's position rests on two interconnected claims. First, she maintains that Gaza remains "occupied" despite Israel's complete withdrawal of military forces and civilian settlers in 2005. In her view, and that of the International Court of Justice's 2024 advisory opinion, Israel exercises "effective control" over Gaza through its blockade of land, sea, and air access. I believe that this is absurd for reasons I have discussed many times before.

Second, she argues that Article 51 of the UN Charter, which preserves every state's "inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs", does not apply to threats emanating from territory a state occupies. When you occupy territory, she contends, threats from within that territory are internal security matters to be handled through law enforcement mechanisms, not military self-defense.

Applied to October 7, 2023, this reasoning produces a remarkable conclusion: Hamas's attack, which killed approximately 1,200 people and resulted in 250 hostages, did not trigger Israel's right to self-defense under international law. In Albanese's framework, this was not an armed attack by a foreign actor but rather an internal security breach within occupied territory. Israel's response - even airstrikes launched from Israeli soil before any ground forces entered Gaza - therefore cannot be characterized as defensive, according to Albanese.

The first problem with Albanese's framework is that it contradicts itself. The entire legal edifice of occupation law presumes that an occupier exercises actual authority over the occupied territory. The 1907 Hague Regulations, the foundational text of occupation law, state that territory is occupied when it is "actually placed under the authority of the hostile army." The Fourth Geneva Convention imposes extensive duties on occupying powers precisely because they exercise effective control: they must maintain public order, ensure the welfare of the civilian population, and administer the territory responsibly.

If Gaza is occupied, then Israel has both the right and the duty to maintain security within it. An occupying power that cannot lawfully respond to armed attacks emanating from territory it supposedly controls is not an occupying power in any real sense. . Albanese's framework asks us to accept that Israel bears all the legal obligations of occupation while being denied the most basic prerogative any occupier must possess: the ability to maintain order.

More fundamentally, her insistence on Gaza's occupied status inadvertently undermines the occupation claim itself. Prior to October 7, Israel had no military or civilian presence inside Gaza. Hamas governed the territory, collected taxes, ran schools and hospitals, maintained its own security forces, and - crucially - built and deployed military capabilities without any Israeli interference. If Israel could not exercise routine administrative authority inside Gaza, in what meaningful sense did it "occupy" the territory?

I propose a simple, common-sense test for whether territory is truly occupied: Can the alleged occupier fire a public sanitation worker in that territory?

This test cuts through abstract legal theorizing to ask a practical question about who actually exercises governmental authority.

In Gaza before October 7, the answer was emphatically no. Israel could not fire a Gaza municipality sanitation worker without launching a military operation that would be treated - by Hamas, by the population, and by most of the world - as an invasion of foreign territory. Israel could not collect taxes, regulate businesses, appoint officials, or enforce its criminal law against Gaza's population. To do any of these things, it would have to fight its way in.

This practical test reveals what the abstract legal category of "effective control through blockade" obscures: Gaza was not occupied in any meaningful sense. Hamas exercised sovereign authority within the territory, and Israel's control of some borders, maritime access and all airspace did not substitute Israeli administration for Hamas governance.

Notably, this test also reveals the complexity of the West Bank itself. In Area A, where the Palestinian Authority exercises full civil and security control, Israel similarly cannot fire a sanitation worker without mounting an incursion. This suggests that even critics of Israeli policy should acknowledge that the West Bank is not a single legal unit, and that Area A functions more like an autonomous enclave than occupied territory.

The deeper problem with Albanese's framework is that it creates a standard applied to no other country. Consider how international law has treated analogous situations:

When the United States invaded Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, the action was widely accepted as lawful self-defense against al-Qaeda, even though U.S. forces were now operating on Afghan soil.

When coalition forces entered Syria to fight ISIS without Syrian government consent - an arguably illegal intervention - they retained the right to defend themselves against attacks. The legality of their presence did not extinguish their inherent right to self-preservation.

Article 51 of the UN Charter contains no clause stating "unless your forces are already on someone else's land." The right to self-defense is territorial-agnostic. A soldier under fire can return fire regardless of whether his presence in a given location is lawful. This is not merely a principle of international law; it is a recognition of basic human reality.

Albanese's framework would change this, but only for Israel. Taken literally, her position means that Israeli troops in the West Bank cannot return fire if attacked, and that Israel cannot intercept rockets launched from Gaza until they are physically over Israeli territory. No other country faces such a constraint. No other country is told that because it disputes territory with a neighbor, or because it maintains a military presence in contested areas, it has forfeited the right to defend its citizens.

Albanese attempts to soften her position by acknowledging that Israel has a "right to protect" its territory and citizens. But this narrow concession, limited to targeted, law-enforcement-style operations, is worlds away from the robust self-defense rights that Article 51 provides. When 3,000 armed fighters breach your border, massacre civilians, and take hundreds of hostages, the response is not a police action. It is war. Every other nation on Earth would be permitted to treat it as such.

The ICJ's own 2004 advisory opinion on Israel's security barrier, which Albanese frequently cites, did not go as far as she does. The Court held that Israel cannot invoke Article 51 against threats from within occupied territory, but its reasoning was specific: because Israel is the occupying power, it must use occupation law frameworks rather than the law of inter-state armed conflict. The Court never said that Israel loses all defensive rights because its presence is illegal. Albanese's rhetorical escalation to "nothing Israel does there can be understood as defensive" is advocacy language, not a mainstream statement of international law.

At the same time that Albanese denies Israel the basic right of self defense, she gives Hamas and other terror groups carte blanche to attack Israel as "legitimate resistance." The only thing she opposes is attacking Jewish civilians directly, for now.

Francesca Albanese's framework relies on a definition of "occupation" so elastic that it can encompass territory Israel does not control, while simultaneously denying Israel any means of asserting control. It creates obligations without corresponding rights. It demands that Israel behave as an occupier selectively while maintaining that some even mandatory actions of occupiers are illegal in Israel's case.

The sanitation worker test reveals what this abstraction conceals: occupation is about who actually governs a territory, who can hire and fire its workers, who collects its taxes and runs its schools. By that practical measure, Gaza was not occupied before October 7, which means October 7 was an armed attack from external territory triggering full Article 51 self-defense rights.

International law should be applied consistently to all nations. Frameworks that single out one country for a unique disability - stripping it of rights afforded to everyone else -a re not law at all. They are politics dressed in legal language.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The Washington Post wrote an extended piece on Iran's water crisis, Taps are running dry in Iran. Decades of bad decisions are to blame. It listed things like over-extraction of groundwater, building too many dams that disrupt water flows, and subsidizing farmers who then plant water-thirsty crops.

Even in this article, Iranian officials can't stop themselves from somehow mentioning Israel:

Peyman Falsafi, vice-chairman of the parliament’s agriculture, water, and natural resources commission... pointed to the Israeli bombing of Iran during the 12-day war earlier this year and Palestinian starvation caused by Israel’s siege of Gaza as evidence for why Iran must provide its own food. “Today, farming and food are used as weapons,” he said.

Yet somehow unmentioned is the basic fact that Iran has poured billions of dollars into building its "axis of resistance" against Israel, funding weapons and terrorist groups in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen as well as the previous Syrian government. As Falsafi's statement shows, Iran's obsession with destroying Israel outweighs its concerns for its own citizens. Those billions could have funded desalination and pipeline projects. Iran relies on desalination for only a tiny percentage of its water usage as opposed to other nations in the (Persian!) Gulf.

The best estimate I could come up with is that Iran has been spending about $2 billion annually on the "axis of resistance" - more during the Syrian civil war. This is more than it has spent on water management for its own people.

Similar articles about Tehran's water crisis in CNN, The Guardian and the New York Times also fail to mention Iran's historic budget priorities of countering Israel over caring for its citizens when discussing the looming catastrophe.

The only outlet I saw that mentions this obvious fact was The Arab News, which said a solution "will not be possible without a complete change in Tehran’s foreign policy, starting with bringing an end to any support for nonstate armed groups, such as in Lebanon or Iraq. It should think of its people and the future generations in the entire Middle East."

The problem is man-made. Iran's rabid antisemitism causes its own citizens to suffer.

(h/t Brad)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

On November 23, Israel killed prominent Hezbollah leader Haytham Ali Tabatabai in a Beirut suburb. Israel targeted Tabatabai due to his role in planning and orchestrating terror attacks against Israel, as well as rebuilding Hezbollah's military capabilities in violation of the ceasefire and UN Security Council Resolution 1701 (which requires Hezbollah's disarmament south of the Litani River).

But Iranian reports of his death - across the board, including sites associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards - add a detail in Farsi that is missing from both Western and Israeli reports.

As one Iranian linked outlet translated it to English, "This resistance commander was martyred on November 23, 2025, while carrying out a field mission, in an Israeli airstrike on the Haret Harik area in the southern suburbs of Beirut, along with a number of his comrades."

That means he was not just merely a leader of Hezbollah that Israel was targeting. He was a ticking bomb, planning a specific terror attack - maybe in Israel, maybe in Europe or another country, where hezbolah has orchestrated attacks on Jews before.

It is possible that Iranian media added this detail just to make him look better to their audience. But Hezbollah is essentially a branch of the IRGC, so Iran would know if he was planning a terror attack. Hezbollah wouldn't necessarily brag about his preparing a new terror attack in their obituary for Tabatabai, because there would be backlash in Lebanon - but Iran might..

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Miss Palestine is a scam

Nadeen Ayoub, the Miss Palestine contestant who was previously married to the son of a convicted terrorist, is in Thailand for the Miss Universe pageant.

She made a truly mt-see video whining that she lost the Most Beautiful Contestant award, voted by the public, to Miss Tanzania.

She was in first place until the last hour, she says. It is impossible that Miss Tanzania could have gotten so many votes in so short a time!

I've never seen a pageant contestant act so childishly and with such a sense of entitlement.

Now, compare the Ayoub with Miss Tazania. Ayoub is literally cross-eyed. Can anyone believe that she is legitimately the most beautiful contestant?

The only reason she was in the top fifty was an online campaign on her behalf. Which is how anyone wins these people's awards anyway. Her whining is about losing an award that she was only in the running for because her people got lots of Israel-haters to vote for her.

If an Israeli or American contestant would make a similar video denouncing the Black winner of the competition, immediately they would be accused of racism. But the very white-skinned Miss Palestine cannot possibly be a racist, can she?

The bigger question is, how did Nadeen Ayoub win the Miss Palestine competition anyway? She is not objectively very beautiful compared to other contestants. Palestinian TV would never broadcast any such competition, and none could be held in the territories without is being firebombed by Islamists. . Someone appointed her - but who?

She was appointed by the "Miss Palestine Organization." And guess who founded it?

Nadeen Ayoub herself!

As The New Arab reported in September:

Speaking about her shift towards beauty competitions, Nadeen explains that while working in Palestine, she saw an opportunity to establish the Miss Palestine organisation.

“I felt like this was what I was meant to do — it felt like an alignment. I was meant to use this international platform and beauty competitions to create a positive impact, to do something meaningful for my people and the world," Nadeen tells The New Arab.

But founding the Miss Palestine organisation was not without its challenges. “It took me time, honestly, to build the Miss Palestine organisation with a small team, and that’s why, despite Palestine not always having the resources, we were finally able to get the support we needed to build the organisation and start going to international competitions,” she says.

She never won Miss Palestine - she created it for herself and scammed the world into believing that she is a legitimate pageant contestant!

All the other contestants worked hard to win regional and national competitions. Ayoub simply declared herself the winner.

It's all a scam.

When you think about it, this makes her the perfect representative of Palestine, an Arab political entity that was created only in recent decades but that pretends to be a legitimate, ancient country.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

11/24 Links Pt2: Oct. 7 victim families sue Binance over $1B in secret funding for Hamas; How the police used ‘fake claims’ to justify the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv

From Ian:

Professors Need to Diversify What They Teach

Teaching of Israel and Palestine fits the same pattern. Staunchly anti-Zionist texts—those that question the moral legitimacy of the Israeli state—are commonly assigned. Rashid Khalidi, the just-retired Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia, is the most popular author on this topic in the database. A Palestinian-American and member of the Palestine Liberation Organization delegation in the 1990s, Khalidi places the blame on Israel for failing to resolve the conflict and sees the country’s existence as a consequence of settler-colonialism.

The problem is not the teaching of Khalidi itself, as some on the American right might insist. To the contrary, it is important for students to encounter voices like Khalidi’s. The problem is who he is usually taught with. Generally, Khalidi is taught with other critics of Israel, such as Charles D. Smith, Ilan Pappe, and James Gelvin.

Not only is Khalidi’s work rarely assigned alongside prominent critics; those critics seem to hardly get taught at all. They include Israel: A Concise History by Daniel Gordis, a professor at Shalem College in Israel. Despite winning the National Jewish Book Award, Gordis’s book appears only 22 times in the syllabus database. Another example is the work of Efraim Karsh, a prominent historian. His widely-cited classic, Fabricating Israeli History, appears just 24 times.

For most students, though, any exposure to the conflict begins and ends with Edward Said’s Orientalism, first published in 1978. Said is the intellectual godfather of so many of today’s scholars of the Middle East, thanks in no small part to this classic book. In Orientalism, Said claimed to be the first scholar to “culturally and politically” identify “wholeheartedly with the Arabs,” and he faulted the West for not recognizing the “Zionist invasion and colonization of Palestine.”

Orientalism is among the most popular books assigned in the United States, showing up in nearly four thousand courses in the syllabus database. But although it was a major source of controversy, both then and now, it is rarely assigned with any of the critics he sparred with, like Bernard Lewis, Ian Buruma, or Samuel Huntington. Instead, it’s most often taught with books by fellow luminaries of the postmodern left, such as Frantz Fanon, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault.

Oct. 7 victim families sue Binance over $1B in secret funding for Hamas, Palestinian terror groups

Families of victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel sued Binance Monday, claiming that the world’s largest cryptocurrency trading platform — and its recently pardoned founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao — helped smooth the transfer of more than $1 billion to the accounts of terror groups responsible for the atrocity.

The lawsuit was filed on 306 plaintiffs and their family members who were murdered, maimed, or taken hostage on Oct. 7 in Israel or in various terrorist acts afterwards. They brought their claims against Binance, Zhao and senior executive Gunagying “Heina” Chen in Fargo, ND federal court.

The crypto platform had already been subject to criminal enforcement actions by the Department of Justice in 2023, resulting in Binance admitting to charges of money laundering and paying more than $4 billion in fines — as well as a four-month prison sentence for Zhao.

But the nearly 300-page complaint stated that Binance’s conduct was “far more serious and pervasive than what the US government disclosed” during those proceedings — and that the company “knowingly sent and received the equivalent of more than $1 billion to and from accounts and wallets controlled by the [foreign terror organizations] responsible for the October 7 Attacks.”

Those include Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to the suit brought by attorneys at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, Osen LLC, Stein Mitchell Beato & Missner LLP, and Motley Rice LLC.

“To this day, there is no indication that Binance has meaningfully altered its core business model,” the attorneys said in the suit, alleging the crypto platform was “intentionally designed as a criminal enterprise to facilitate money laundering on a global scale.”

Ali Mohammad Alawieh, the son of Hezbollah commander Muhammad Abd al-Rasul Alawieh, is the holder of one of the Binance accounts identified in the lawsuit.

Former Israeli hostage credits faith for survival in Gaza

A former Israeli Hamas hostage last week said it was his faith that allowed him to survive more than two years in captivity in Gaza.

The remarks by Segev Kalfon mirrored other hostages’ experiences. Whether from secular, traditional or religious backgrounds, many have said they clung to Judaism during their captivity.

“I had one percent chance of surviving—and I did,” Kalfon, 27, said in an interview with @LouderCreators posted on X by the Israeli Embassy in the United States.

“A person in this situation has nothing around them,” he added. “All that’s left is to believe. That’s it. Faith. When you believe in something you have something to lean on.”

Kalfon, who was released from Gaza last month as part of a ceasefire deal, said that he witnessed many miracles during his time in captivity. He said he was repeatedly beaten and tortured by his Hamas captors, who tried to convert him to Islam.

“In my darkest moments I knew I was facing a great test,” he said. “And if I survived every single day—and every day there was hell—there was a reason.”

Other former hostages have recounted how they prayed silently in captivity, recited the Sabbath benediction over water on Friday nights, tried to keep the Passover holiday and read from a book of Psalms that was found lying around.

Kalfon was among a group of former Israeli hostages who met with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday.

“In the most difficult moments, when hope faded away, the thought of big America and of your leadership helped me believe that one day, I will be able to leave Hamas captivity,” he wrote to Trump in a personal letter, Israel’s Channel 12 News reported on Saturday. “You, Mr. President, were the light for me in the darkest moments in the dark tunnels.”

11/24 Links Pt1: Should Jews Be Alarmed Yet? - with Ben Shapiro, Bari Weiss, and Dan Senor; Douglas Murray: Saving the West from Its Death Wish

From Ian:

David Harsanyi: Israel should phase out US aid for its own good

These days, Israel has no territorial ambitions. It’s been trying to get rid of Gaza for 30 years, at least. Moreover, American presidents have often pressured Israel to act in ways that undermine its security. Before Donald Trump became president, every successive administration constrained Israel in its battle with the Islamists in Iran, hoping to strike a deal with the mullahs. This isn’t new. Henry Kissinger bailed out the defeated Egyptians in 1973. Back in 1981, Ronald Reagan rebuked and penalized Israel for bombing Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear facility, which was being built with the help of the French government. The Biden administration helped to prolong the Gaza war by continually undermining Israel due to domestic political pressures.

Worse, before Trump, every president in memory has exerted pressure on Israel to accept deals that would have created a terrorist state on two of its borders, even though a Palestinian state doesn’t further American interests in any conceivable way. Each effort only sparked more terrorism, suffering, and radicalization.

Ironically, pro-Palestinian activists advocating that the U.S. drop aid to Israel don’t seem to comprehend that their efforts only make a Palestinian state far less likely. No sane Western nation would create an Islamic state brimming with a radicalized population next door. The end of American aid would likely mean the end of any two-state solution. Which is good news. There is already a 23-state solution in place.

Anyway, with the rise of the pro-intifada progressive faction in the U.S., Israel shouldn’t expect Democrats to be allies for very long. And with the prospects of paleo-isolationists such as Vice President JD Vance being nominated by the GOP, American aid might be on its last legs anyway. Even if I’m wrong about the parties, Israel would do best to be autonomous, relying on the mutual military benefits and merits of its cause to continue its relationship with the U.S.

Finally, I know it might be difficult to believe that with all its space lasers and Rothschild cash, Israel could only extract a lousy $3.8 billion for its troubles. So, rest assured, cutting aid won’t stop paranoiacs from obsessing about Jews. But one of the most popular accusations of the Israel-hater is that tax-funded aid makes the U.S. complicit in the imagined genocides perpetrated by the Israeli military. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a modest and milquetoast bipartisan American lobbying concern, has become the rallying cry for most conspiracists who claim Israel has a grip on American politicians. They have it backward, of course. AIPAC only exists because millions of Americans support Israel and want American foreign policy to reflect their views. Paranoiacs focus on the strawman of AIPAC rather than American Jews or Christian Zionists for the same reasons leftists focus on the National Rifle Association rather than gun owners: They’re too cowardly to say what they mean.

In the end, Israel is a small nation of 10 million people, the size of New Jersey, so it will always need allies. For instance, it lacked the heavy bombers to hit Iranian nuclear sites buried deep in the earth. Only China, Russia, and the U.S. have them. But Israel is also a nuclear power with a high-tech economy and world-class armed forces. “Anti-Zionists” are just spinning their wheels. Israel would be fine standing completely on its own ingenuity and toughness.

Douglas Murray: Saving the West from Its Death Wish

The facts are raw, documented – and unbearable. On the morning of October 7, 2023, while some were just waking up, others were recording – and live-streaming – the glee they took in the massacre. One world watched. Another rejoiced. In New York, Douglas Murray absorbed the words and images, then immediately set off for Israel. From that journey – and the abyss it laid bare – the British journalist and intellectual drew a furious yet lucid essay, On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel, Hamas and the Future of the West. But the book is not merely a cry of anger; it is also a meditation on what it means to defend the West when it no longer knows what it stands for – or whether it still deserves to be defended, let alone saved.

Le Point - From your neoconservative beginnings to your current reflections on civilisation's decline, your thinking has shifted gradually from a strategic defence of the West to a cultural and symbolic one. Does 7 October 2023 represent a new phase in this intellectual evolution ?
Douglas Murray – Yes, I think so. I felt on October 7th the same way as Evelyn Waugh, in Unconditional Surrender, depicts one of his characters feeling at the moment of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact: "The enemy at last was plain in view; huge and hateful, all disguise cast off.” The moment I saw what Hamas was doing on the morning of the 7th, thousands of terrorists raping and slaughtering and kidnapping their way through the south of Israel, live-streaming it all for the world, glorying in death, expressing such ecstasy for death that is something of how I felt.

In your new book, the role of the image is central, and the iconography of horror is considered not as a consequence of violence, but as a driver of it. In your opinion, is this the hallmark of our era: aesthetic terrorism ?
No - that is (in the worst way) such a French way to look at something. The horror of Hamas is not principally about aesthetics or interpretation. It is about evil. Evil in its purest form – from a cult that literally worships death. The challenge for us is not just whether we can recognize and call out evil where we see it, but to dwell on what its opposite might be. What the good is. I met a couple in Canada the other week whose son was at the Nova party on the morning of October 7th. He protected a group of party-goers who were hiding from the terrorists in a shelter. He threw back grenade after grenade before being murdered himself. But as I told his parents, their son exemplified perhaps one of the greatest goods any human being can perform – he gave his life protecting life.

But you refer to images disseminated by terrorists themselves in a paradoxical gesture of exhibitionism. How does this 'perverse modernity' — 'barbarism 2.0' — make democracies even more vulnerable ?
As after Charlie Hebdo, the Bataclan, Samuel Paty and many other attacks, we have to decide whether we will indeed be terrorized by the terrorists: people who use the power of modern technology to broadcast their pre-medieval barbarism. I understand why many people feel fear, but I believe we should raise ourselves to the moment and not show fear but heroism.

Trump signs order to advance labeling Muslim Brotherhood as terrorists

US President Donald Trump on Monday began the process of designating certain Muslim Brotherhood chapters as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists, a move that would bring sanctions against one of the Arab world's oldest and most influential Islamist movements.

Trump signed an executive order directing Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to submit a report on whether to designate any Muslim Brotherhood chapters, such as those in Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan, according to a White House fact sheet.

It orders the secretaries to move forward with any designations within 45 days of the report.

The Trump administration has accused Muslim Brotherhood factions in those countries of supporting or encouraging violent attacks against Israel and US partners, or of providing material support to Palestinian militant group Hamas.

"President Trump is confronting the Muslim Brotherhood’s transnational network, which fuels terrorism and destabilization campaigns against US interests and allies in the Middle East," according to the fact sheet.

The National Review reports:

Last month, over a thousand educators gathered together for the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice conference, which was sponsored by the Portland Association of Teachers, the Seattle Education Association, and Rethinking Schools (an educational magazine and a frequent partner with the NEA to promote activist classroom materials).

What do teachers learn at such a conference?

The available sessions betray the most extreme obsessions of activists:

A movement to oust the Anti-Defamation League from schools for being too Jewish
Four other presentations in support of Palestine
Sessions on how to queer history and math
An exploration of the “Power Rainbow”
Discussions of how to deal with parents who contest objectionable materials
A workshop to advance climate justice and decolonize science education
Example lessons for how to teach second graders about the evils of capitalism
Variations of “Palestine” and “Palestinian” appear 22 times across the agenda. Phonics appears not once.

This is, of course, distressing. But there is a danger that any criticism of ideological indoctrination will be viewed as just a demand to indoctrinate children in a different political agenda.

There is merit to that.

We need to take politics out of the classroom while still teaching children how to be good citizens of their country and of the planet.

There is one simple rule that can be applied to any subject at school that cuts through all ideologies:

Students must be taught how to think, not what to think.

Any topic that might be considered controversial or that parents might object to is fine as long as it is based on facts, everyone discussed is respected and students can disagree without penalty.

Already, this simple rule has been trampled at the university level, and the same people who succeeded at that are trying to do the same at K-12 schools. Instead of teaching, schools are being turned into propaganda factories for the next generation.

Students can and should be taught to appreciate their nation - they have obligations as citizens and the nation in turn has obligations towards them. Beyond that everything can be discussed and debated. But instead of concentrating on what is wrong with the nation, the emphasis should be on how it can be improved.

Because on both the Left and the Right, a subtext is being taught to tear it all down. And that is not acceptable.

Private schools can teach ideology as long as the parents all agree. But public schools have a special obligation to keep partisan politics out of the classroom and to respectfully discuss the issues.

The top priority must be teaching respect for all people, that humans have inherent dignity, that we are responsible to make the world a better place. All opinions, even immoral ones, are based on a value system and those values and their priorities must be debated. ("Why did the South believe that slavery was not immoral?")

Every topic can fit within those rules, and anyone who disagrees has no business creating curricula.

Don't make education into a partisan issue, because then everyone loses.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

New Zealand antisemitic incidents went up nearly sevenfold after October 7 2023

New Zealand's Stuff reports that the number of antisemitic incidents in that country went up nearly sevenfold in the 12 months after October 7 2023.

In the two years before then, there were 20 incidents each year. From September 2023-2024, that went up to 133, and for the 12 months following it was 97.

There are only 10,000 Jews in New Zealand.

Stuff adds:

Anti-Semitic offences that “harm or endanger persons” rose from four in the two years before the Hamas attacks to 43 and 45 in the two years since.

And property damage has spiked too. The numbers rose from four in the year to September 2022, to 11 in the year to September 2023, to 57 to September 2024 and 30 to September 2025.

Of course, Stuff must interview an anti-Zionist Jew - born in Haifa - to blame Israel for the rise in antisemitism, saying “No-one should be attacked for their views, but if you stand with Israel and you’re OK with Israel using you as an excuse for what it’s doing, that will put you in danger.” She has a Middle Eastern restaurant. If she thinks that her anti-Zionism will shield her from antisemitic attacks, she is delusional.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

11/23 Links: 700 Million Zionists and the Battle for the Free World; How Israel's Victory Strengthens America's Hand; Trump to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization

From Ian:

700 Million Zionists and the Battle for the Free World

The phenomenon of non-Jewish leaders and influencers, predominantly Christian evangelicals, openly declaring themselves Zionists is expanding. Against the backdrop of eroding values, intergenerational division, and a culture war on the West, there is a need to establish a global Zionist alliance to protect the foundations of Western civilization's bedrock principles of collective freedom and security and personal liberty.

For Christians who define themselves as Zionists, this is a declaration of resistance to Islamist, anti-Western domination and an identification of Zionism as a force leading the global struggle against the collapse of the Free World. Islamists have understood that the path to conquering the Free World would not be achieved through force, but through a systematic, long-term, and heavily-funded perception war for strategic influence. In this war of perception and influence, Zionism is marked as the West's original sin.

In this war, the West has one clear pathway to victory: to use precisely the same tools being deployed against it - building public consciousness, asserting constant aggressive presence on social media and campuses, building new grassroots organizations, and investing in education.

Some 600 to 700 million Evangelical Christians across the globe support the state and people of Israel. They are joined by other groups who identify with Zionist values. They are not merely "pro-Israel" in opinion; they are active partners in the understanding that strengthening Israel means empowering the West.

How Israel's Victory Strengthens America's Hand

The calculations of Middle Eastern regimes are based on concrete questions: who commands intelligence superiority, who can blunt Iranian power, and who remains anchored in the American security system. By those measures, Israel has become indispensable. Its performance on the battlefield and its record in covert operations have only reinforced its value to governments that prioritize their own survival and long-term modernization.

Israel's military successes against Hamas, Hizbullah, and Iran have made it a more valuable strategic partner. States that face Iranian pressure or seek technological and security upgrades are not distancing themselves from Israel, but moving closer.

CENTCOM, which coordinates U.S. military activity in the Middle East, is deepening operational coordination between the IDF and Arab armies - including those of countries that don't have formal relations with Israel. Regional leaders saw the disruption of Iranian assets in five countries, and concluded that Israeli hard power mattered much more than the opinions of Islamist preachers or Western university students.

Israel has shown itself to be the one power both capable of rolling back Iran and willing to do so. Even the American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities were made possible by Israeli intelligence and by attacks that neutralized Iran's air defenses and decapitated its military. Israel's actions matter for America, too, which needs Israel more than ever to help it keep Iran in check and to anchor its efforts to counter China in the region.

Seth Frantzman: How Israel’s 12-day war on Iran achieved remarkable military success

Another important point was how Israel’s friends helped the state during the war. Fox noted that “a consortium of like-minded nations came together and defended Israel a couple of times; once, the earlier piece: France, UK, Jordan.”

“There’s an indication that there was cooperation with some other nations in the region, and, of course, the United States. That would have been, I think, impossible without the touches within the region of Israel’s Defense Force staffers working with the US Central Command, but also becoming more integrated in the region,” he said.

“It’s just impossible, I think, to describe how remarkable that is. For those of us who spent time in the region, that might not have come out the way that it did,” Fox continued.

This means Israel’s integration into the US Central Command and joint training has been vital. Israeli F-35s, F-15s, and F-16s fighter jets, along with other platforms, were also key to the war.

One issue for Israel is that its refueler fleet is aging. “It’s been a long-standing recommendation of JINSA that the KC-46, the new tanker, be expedited to Israel. They’re on the books to get those tankers. They need them now. The ones they were using, the 707 (the RAM), are old and in need of repair and just not up to the mission,” Wald said.

Ashley agreed, “One of the challenges they did have is really an older fleet of air refuel capability. So that is a challenge that we hit in recommendations. In the way ahead, that’s something that they’re going to need to bolster as they’re going forward.”

He noted, however, that a large portion of Iran’s ballistic missiles were destroyed. “Probably more than half of the launchers were eliminated.”

The report illustrated key aspects and successes of Operation Rising Lion. Iran is weakened, but it could continue to pursue a nuclear program or try to revive its ballistic missiles.

Moving forward, many questions remain. The success of the war demonstrates what Israel can accomplish when it plans for a decisive campaign.

This is in contrast to the challenges in Gaza, where Israel has not had a clear plan and Hamas continues to run half of Gaza. And, as for Lebanon, Hezbollah has not been disarmed yet. The Houthis also remain a threat. Israel has had some tactical success, but overall strategic wins still elude Jerusalem.

Today's blood libel: Egyptian paper claims female IDF soldier had sexual pleasure shooting elderly Palestinian civilian

A story in Egyptian newspaper Sout al Umma details a supposed story of Israeli cruelty:

The Cairo-based Egyptian newspaper, Akhbar Al-Adab, will publish a story about the battle [Jenin], which is a translation of the testimonies of female and male soldiers of the occupying army .

In her testimony, the fighter said, in summary:

I fought for two weeks, and I was burning with longing for my apartment and my boyfriend. Finally, I returned to my apartment, took a good shower, and prepared a delicious dinner. My boyfriend came to spend the night with me. We made love deeply and passionately. My boyfriend left in the morning, leaving me to enjoy a good night's sleep. I woke up, showered, and had breakfast. I sat under the bright eastern sun. The weather was clear, and I was refreshed by my return and the night of love my boyfriend had given me. I looked at the street and saw an old Palestinian man walking slowly, carrying bags of fruit, vegetables, and meat. I felt a strange pleasure. I left my balcony and then returned to it carrying my rifle. I adjusted the scope and aimed at the Palestinian man's right heel. He jumped in the air from the pain. Then I aimed at his left heel, then at his bags, which exploded, their contents spilling out mixed with blood and dirt. Then I aimed at the bony spine directly above his buttocks, and he howled in pain. I didn't intend to kill him; I wanted to see him dancing in pain, and he danced until a strange ecstasy invaded me, yes, a sensual ecstasy like the one I felt last night in my boyfriend's arms!

Needless to say, even Breaking the Silence doesn't have any such testimonies. Yet these kinds of stories are repeated over and over in Arab media as if they are true, and for some reason the international journalists federations have nothing negative to say about their own members literally making up and then embellishing further antisemitic blood libels.

The author, Hamdi Abdel Rahim, compares this to a scene in Schindler's List of a Nazi murdering a Jews for fun.

He laments that Palestinians "have no Schindler." Which adds to the irony because the Palestinians are actively stopping their own people from escaping Gaza while the Jews sought any means they could to leave Nazi occupied lands.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Poll Discovers That If You Redefine 'Zionism' As 'Strangling Puppies,' 98% Of Jews Oppose It (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Berkeley, November 22 - A groundbreaking new study of public opinion among American Jews found this week that if one takes a term that denotes the movement to develop, maintain, and defend Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland, then one replaces that meaning with something negative, such as "racism," "genocide," or "jock itch," the overwhelming majority of American Jews will pit themselves against it.

The Sociology Department at the University of California at Berkeley conducted nine separate surveys among a nationwide cohort of Jews, in which the pollsters asked some version of the question, "If 'Zionism' is defined as [something appalling or unpleasant], do you support or oppose Zionism?" Only one in fifty of the 988 respondents gave a "support" answer, with all others opposing.

"This could transform everything the American public knows or assumes about Zionism," asserted lead researcher Hugh Jass. "Supporters of Israel like to tout statistics purporting that somewhere around ninety or ninety-five percent of Jews are Zionist. Well, we can prove that's not true - in fact that Zionism is toxic among Jews - by simply redefining 'Zionism' as something everyone opposes, such as strangling puppies, or microwaving fish in the shared office."

Left-wing and pro-Palestinian activists have been trying to accomplish just such a redefinition for many years. "The Soviet Union got the UN to equate Zionism with racism," recalled Yuri Nalisis, a former diplomat. "Within its own borders, the Soviet Union went to great lengths to equate Zionism with fascism, the bogeyman from the Great Patriotic War. There still remains the key hurdle of getting Jews to accept the redefinition, but one day, maybe we will get there. But these surveys do demonstrate that if such a redefinition takes hold, Jews abandon Zionism."

Analysts believe this approach shows promise far beyond the confines of attitudes toward Israel in the US. "If it holds, this had broad implications for politics in general," explained political podcaster Sacha Wannabe. "Not that controlling the vocabulary and narrative aren't already important - they are the first thing everyone tries to do, because it locks the opponent into terms friendly to your side and assumptions. This just takes things a step or two beyond that. Imagine defining 'abortion' as 'motherhood' - if you could do that, you could get even the reddest Republican to support it."

Numerous activists have declined to wait however long it would take for Jews to come around on the redefinition of Zionism, and have marshalled physical and rhetorical resources to act against Zionists on behalf of the 98% of Jews who oppose Zionism, if redefined.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Palestinian textbooks are getting even more antisemitic and more pro-terror

The latest IMPACT-SE report on official Palestinian Authority textbooks shows that \ they continue to be antisemitic and pro-terror. Anti-Israel lessons are included in virtually every subject, including math and physics.

This is despite the fact that the EU has poured hundreds of millions of euros into the Palestinian educational sector and demanded an end to incitement and antisemitism in PA textbooks. The PA has at times claimed that they adhere to the required standards but at the same time rejected any conditions on aid, claiming that these were lessons to increase nationalist feeling.

The 396-page report includes examples calling Jews cowards, praising the 1972 Munich Olympics terror attack, and many pages praising the Coastal Road Massacre and terrorist Dalal Mughrabi.

A math lesson asks to calculate the chances that Palestinians would be shot by Jewish settlers shooting at them on the roads - something that Palestinians routinely do towards Jews.

Rather than describe any desire for peace with Israel, the textbooks emphasize that the Zionists are fated to disappear.

Lessons say matter of factly that "Zionists" control the US, money and the media.

Second graders are taught to "give their lives to the Revolution."

An 11th grade textbook says the nature of the Children of Israel is to spread corruption on Earth.

Another says that the idea that Jews are a people is a "false claim," as is the claim that Jews have suffered antisemitism in their relations with non-Jews.

Textbooks list out Islamic and Christian religious sites in "Palestine" but do not admit a single Jewish example.

Jews are blamed to trying to falsify the Quran and, failing that, for creating false hadiths (Islamic oral traditions.).

Antisemitic conspiracy theories are sprinkled throughout. Israelis are said to deliberately release wild pigs to destroy Palestinian crops, to be digging tunnels under Al Aqsa Mosque to make it collapse, to steal Palestinian archaeological relics to erase their history. The Western Wall is presented as a fabrication meant to erase Jerusalem's Islamic heritage. One very ironic example is a conspiracy by Israel to sabotage Palestinian education to keep them ignorant.

Teachers' guides are often even more antisemitic than the textbooks themselves, perhaps because of minimal EU pressure on the textbooks alone. Teachers are instructed to tie "Zionist massacres" to "Jewish religious thought." They are told to teach about "Jews' greedy ambitions" and that the "Jews" have "incessantly perpetrated war crimes."

These are the official textbooks used by UNRWA.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

11/22 Links: The return of the blood libel; Inside the fracturing pro-Palestine movement: Purges, paranoia and a far-left revolt; A Death-Defying Orchestra;

From Ian:

The return of the blood libel

The problem is not only the anti-Semitism that Jewish staff and students face. It is also the failure of many universities to acknowledge, let alone take action, against the perpetrators. It is left to Jewish staff and students to raise concerns time and again, while often being ignored altogether. Jews are the only minority group that is expected to fend for themselves against discrimination, harassment and violence.

The UCL blood-libel lecture was only exposed because a Jewish student attended and recorded the lecture, passed the recording to Stand With Us, an organisation that supports Jewish students on campus. It took concerted efforts from Jewish academics, the Union of Jewish Students and the Union of Jewish Chaplains to bring this matter to the attention of UCL.

We mustn’t allow Maqusi’s alleged remarks to be dismissed as a one-off, an aberration. Over the past two years, in universities across the UK, there have been many similar instances of Jew hatred. Just this week, it emerged that the rector at the University of Glasgow, Ghassan Abu-Sittah, accused Israel of harvesting the organs of dead Palestinians. Last month, Michael Ben-Gad, an Israeli professor of economics, was subjected to a campaign of grotesque anti-Semitic abuse by students at City St George’s, University of London.

British universities usually take proactive steps to protect minorities on campuses. This is not altruistic – indeed, it is their legal duty to do so. But when it comes to Jews they are failing. Failing to provide information, understanding and training on anti-Semitism. Failing to identify and address anti-Semitic speakers or events. Failing to take disciplinary action against anti-Semitic staff and students. And failing to take seriously, or even listen to, concerns and complaints raised about anti-Semitism.

It should not be left to Jewish staff and students alone to combat anti-Semitism in their places of work and study, but in many instances that is what is happening. Without concerted action across the sector, these protesters and agitators may well get their wish for Zionist-free campuses.

Ted Cruz’s Finest Hour

The antisemitic right has been successful at taking people’s words and twisting them on social media to advance the view that anybody who supports Israel is somehow corrupt or disloyal to the United States. Carlson’s confrontational interview with Cruz is a case in point. Carlson has been pushing the lie that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is made up of American citizens who advocate a strong relationship between the U.S. and Israel, is actually a foreign lobby. When Carlson challenged Cruz on support he has received from AIPAC, Cruz lamented that from a pro-Israel perspective, AIPAC hasn’t been particularly effective, and further noted, “I came into Congress 13 years ago with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the United States Senate.” His obvious point was that he was committed to Israel from the get-go, not as a result of pressure by a lobbying group. Yet this quote still surfaces on social media to smear Cruz as being more interested in serving a foreign country than his own constituents.

“I believe I have been the leading defender of Israel in the Senate,” Cruz says when I ask him about the exchange. “What I did not say, which Tucker and his minions claim I said, is that my No. 1 priority in the Senate is defending Israel. Those are very different statements.” He points out that he’s taken the lead on many issues: “I’ve spent 13 years as the leading defender of securing the border and stopping the invasion of illegal immigrants into this country.” Cruz says that his support for Israel flows from his faith as well as his belief that the U.S.-Israel alliance is in the national security interest of the U.S., which is consistent with his commitments to keep Texans safe. “Israel is by far our strongest ally in a very troubled region of the world,” he says. “Israel is a democracy that respects human rights and that shares our values — and those who hate Israel hate America.”

Cruz believes that as hatred of Jews spreads, it induces people to embrace anti-Americanism and other left-wing ideologies: “The slippery slope that starts with antisemitism and attacking Israel frequently leads straight down that line.” As examples, he notes Carlson’s recent defense of Venezuelan communist dictator Nicolás Maduro, his praise for a guest on his show who said that Winston Churchill was the “chief villain” of World War II and that maybe the U.S. should have sided with Hitler, and Carlson’s own statement that he believes that America should have offered condolences to Osama bin Laden’s family.

Carlson also recently claimed that it was “weird” that Ted Cruz “all of a sudden, out of nowhere” started talking about the persecution of Christians in Nigeria, where as many as 100,000 Christians have been killed since 2009. In a wildly false claim, Carlson said that Cruz had “no track record of being interested in Christians at all.” Cruz took to the Senate floor in 2014 to speak up for Meriam Ibrahim, who was imprisoned in Sudan for being a Christian. That same year, he raised concerns about hundreds of mostly Christian girls who had been kidnapped by the Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram. In 2018, in another speech focusing on the persecution of Christians in Nigeria, he argued that the U.S. military “must be well equipped to target Boko Haram terrorists.” But these facts are inconvenient for Carlson, who wants to portray the senator as a Christian obsessed with Israel and only “suddenly” feigning concern for Nigerian Christians as some sort of cynical cover play.

Cruz agrees with the sentiment that “the best cure for bad speech is more speech.” Given how lies can spread on social media, he says it is imperative that more voices speak out to counter with the truth.

“We need to see conservatives show the leadership to take this on and refute these lies in a way that the Democrats for the past decade have never been willing to do,” he says. “We need to show more willingness to confront this evil in our own party.”

Two Israels that don’t exist: James Lindsay on how the American Right, and Left, get it wrong

Guiding the far Left and Right beyond the narratives they had established about Israel would be difficult, according to Lindsay. For the Left, there is a deeper belief structure that casts Israel as existing to “oppress the poor Palestinians or Muslims in the region.” The radical Right has also made the issue a shibboleth.

Demonstrating in a concrete manner that foreign actors are proliferating the perceptions of the fake Israels, such as sponsoring influencers, would undermine those voices and the narratives they have been building. Americans generally perceive foreign attempts to covertly influence them as hostile, Lindsay explained. At the same time, creating videos with succinct refutations of the talking points that define the false narratives would also be helpful.

“A lot of Americans literally believe that what the United States is doing is writing Israel a check for $4 billion a year, and Israel just can do whatever it wants with it, most of which is start wars with people that it doesn’t need to. So it’d be very, very easy to just kind of put together a short refutation of claims, explaining [that] the vast majority of the foreign aid is actually through military contracts. And so what’s happening is the United States is giving Israel money to buy weapons from America. That’s over 80% of the aid, which turns out to be $4b. a year. That turns into almost $20b. in profit for American companies employing 15,000 Americans to operate in that business environment,” said Lindsay. “And that’s happening specifically to fight terrorists who chant things like ‘Death to America.’ So it’s in our interest in a multitude of ways, but this is not what the average American right-winger believes. They believe we’re cutting a check to Israel for Israel to just go do whatever they want with, and that if American kids were getting that money instead, they’d be able to buy a house.”

Lindsay also advised that others have to see the real Israel that he had seen – conversations with Israelis, their everyday life. Seeing the daily life of young, Gen Z, English-speaking Israel would show the true Israel. Such materials couldn’t be created or sponsored by the government, Lindsay warned, as otherwise it would be propaganda. Such outreach has to be organic.

Israel has the opportunity to position itself as an example of how to create a culture of strong fathers and loving families with religious children, according to Lindsay. Offering to help Americans figure out how to integrate such cultural features into American life would have appeal to young conservatives. There are many American leaders attempting to figure out how to save their younger generations, and anything Israelis could offer in terms of advice, mentorship, or opportunities would be beneficial to that mission.

“I think there’s a huge opportunity, in fact, to showcase how family oriented and yet like masculine and courageous you have in the men of the IDF,” said Lindsay. “I think the connection between family and religion, especially in the more observant and Orthodox sectors of the society, would also be very charming for people to see how it looks in reality. The focus on children and being a good parent, though, I think would really shine through and resonate.”

The author was struck with how Israeli culture is focused on family and life, even in little ways that are often invisible to the fish swimming in the Israeli current. One example shared by Lindsay was how, when introductions were made at every meeting, Israelis would introduce themselves not by their title and achievement, but primarily with details about their family, such as how many children they had. It is a culture of life which Israelis are ready to defend on the borders of Gaza and Lebanon, and come home to have a Shabbat family meal. This “culture of life” was a chief focus during Lindsay’s November 3 New Discourses podcast, titled “Am Yisrael Chai.”

There are still a lot of Americans who support Israel and Jews, said Lindsay. When the goal is to drive a wedge between two countries or peoples, it takes both sides to give up on the relationship. It would require Americans to become skeptical and angry at Jews, explained Lindsay, but would also require Israelis to turn around and surrender America as an ally because of those sentiments. It would be a “terrible mistake if both sides decide to step into that enmity, when the fact is that the majority of conservative Christians in this country [the US] are still strong allies to Israel, still love Israel, still recognize the difference between civilization and terrorism, and to know which side to stand on.”