Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 26, 2026

01/26 Links Pt1: IDF recovers remains of final hostage Ran Gvili; What the final Israeli hostage’s return really means; Kanye West apologises to Jews

From Ian:

NYPost Editorial: What the final Israeli hostage’s return really means

Israel soon responded in a campaign to rescue the captives and ensure Hamas could never do this again, ideally by wiping out the barbarians, root and branch.

Every sane nation should’ve cheered that mission — yet many instead compounded the pain, turning on Israel as antisemitism surged around the globe.

Yet ending Hamas’ existence should still be the guiding principle as Trump and his Board of Peace work to secure a true, long-term end to hostilities in Gaza, and maybe beyond.

At the least, the terrorists must lose their arms and any political or administrative power.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump agreed to give Hamas until March to lay down its weapons, with the prez threatening “hell to pay” if it didn’t.

Yet several of its leaders have vowed never to disarm, and the group has been jockeying for some continued political role in Gaza.

What do you think? Post a comment.

Gvili’s return ends a chapter, but clearly the full story of the Oct. 7 massacre won’t truly be over until, as Bibi has put it, Gaza can never again threaten Israel.

Pray that day comes soon.

David Horovitz: With Ran Gvili’s return, Israel’s leadership fulfills sacred obligation to the nation it failed on Oct. 7

Formally, the recovery of Gvili’s body completes the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s broader peace plan for Gaza, and ushers in the next phases, under which Hamas is supposed to relinquish its weapons, the Strip is to be demilitarized, the IDF is to gradually withdraw, and a new, non-threatening Gaza is to be eventually constructed.

Most imminently, Ali Shaath, the former Palestinian Authority deputy minister appointed to head the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, announced on Thursday that the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt would open within days in both directions. And Netanyahu, who is deeply wary that any such concession will be abused by the still potent Hamas, reluctantly went along, to the fury of his far-right coalition partners. His office on Sunday night conditioned reopening the crossing on the completion of the search for Gvili’s body — a condition now successfully met.

Hamas, it should not require stressing, has not wavered from its goal of eliminating Israel. Rather, it evidently concluded that releasing, first, all 20 remaining living hostages and now, finally, the last of the 28 deceased hostages, has paved the best path to avoiding ongoing, potentially intensified US-backed Israeli military pressure. Still controlling almost half of Gaza, it believes it is creating conditions under which it will be able to fudge the issue of what exactly becomes of its arms, rebuild its personnel and resources, continue to benefit from the support of a world full of Israel-haters and fools, await more conducive US leadership, and resume its “resistance” to the Jewish state.

Israel had two clear goals for a war it had no choice but to fight against Gaza’s terrorist government in the terrible aftermath of October 7: destroy Hamas, and get all the hostages back.

The first goal is not completed; the war in its current form is over, but Hamas is not destroyed.

But the second, mercifully, has now been accomplished. Israel’s political and military leadership has cleared a critical hurdle in rebuilding its relationship with the citizenry it so catastrophically failed to protect 843 days ago. The hostages have been returned. To the very last one.

In the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of Silver Blaze," a key piece of evidence comes from the watchdog failing to make a sound. "The dog that didn't bark" became a well-known meme.

Often the real story is what doesn't happen. And yesterday, when a neo-Nazi ranted about Jews during an Australia Day rally, there was a notable noise not heard in the video.

The fact that the hate speech laws were pushed by the Jewish lobby groups in Australia. They, they are behind it all! They're behind it all. The Jews are our greatest enemy to this nation. They always have been an enemy of western civilisation. And for thousands of years Christians and Anglos, the white man, has known that the Jew is our greatest enemy. Free Joel Davis. Hail White Australia. And hail Thomas Sewell."

The police arrested the man.

The crowd can be heard cheering when he makes his antisemitic statements.

And not one boo is heard.

The organizers distanced themselves from the neo-Nazi comments, but they didn't remove the (multiple) speakers who uttered them. The crowd might not all have cheered but none seemed too disturbed.

Everyone in the mainstream right sand left claims to be against blatant antisemitism, but when it is staring them in the face from their own "side," they don't seem to get too worked up about it.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The European Journal of International Relations just published a paper on the geopolitical imagination surrounding hydroponic farming in the mid-20th century.

On its face, this should be an innocuous historical inquiry into agricultural technology and state planning. Instead, it offers a case study in how contemporary ideological frameworks are retrofitted onto the past - and how citations are misused to make arguments that the sources themselves do not support.

The paper examines three cases: hydroponics as imagined by the U.S. Army, by Zionist agronomists, and by British Commonwealth development planners. In theory, this comparative structure should encourage nuance. In practice, only one case is treated as morally self-evident.

The authors write:

“For Zionist agronomists, hydroponics was mobilized to bolster settler-colonial designs on Palestinian arid lands....[T]he Zionist agronomist Selig Soskin promoted hydroponics as a new means to bolster settler colonialism in Palestine, arguing this technology would allow Israel to support a larger population, become an agricultural exporter and spearhead a revolution in intensive farming techniques across semi-arid regions....For Soskin, hydroponics promised to expand possibilities to settle Palestine, by increasing crop yields, feeding into settler homesteading, and enabling occupation of further lands.

These quotes embed a false political theory - “settler colonialism” - as a premise rather than a conclusion, and then relies on the modern moral valence of words like settlement, occupation, Palestinian and colonial to carry the reader to an implied judgment.

No displacement is demonstrated. No Arab communities are shown to have been removed to make way for hydroponic installations. The labels do the work the evidence does not.

What the sources actually describe is something far more prosaic: an attempt to make marginal, arid, and usually state-owned land under British and Ottoman laws agriculturally productive through intensification. But the authors call it "Palestinian" land to imply it was owned by Arabs.

Selig Soskin is the Zionist agronomist at the center of the paper’s argument. The authors repeatedly invoke his use of the term Lebensraum, clearly aware of its Nazi resonance today. But when you read Soskin’s own text, the move becomes transparent.

In a 1940 Palestine Post article (that the authors give the wrong date for), Soskin explicitly defines Lebensraum as “vital space” — the amount of land required for human existence. He uses the term generically, in line with interwar demographic and agricultural discourse, and specifically to argue that hydroponics could reduce pressure on land by intensifying production. In other words, his argument runs in the opposite direction of territorial conquest. The paper does not make this distinction clear. It allows the modern association of the word to do the rhetorical work.

That slippage is already problematic. But the most serious issue comes later, when the authors cite a 1962 B’nai B’rith Messenger column by Phineas J. Biron.

They write:

“Ironically, however, in later years, as Israel hosted the 1960 Rehovot conference … an editorial noted that despite hydroponics’ advances, Israel’s territory still did not ‘present much Lebensraum’ (Biron, 1962).”

That is not what the Biron article says.

The Biron column, titled “Strictly Confidential”, is a general meditation on global population growth, Malthusian anxieties, and long-term human survival. It discusses science writers like Ritchie Calder, demographic projections, and the pressures facing many countries. Israel appears briefly, in a single sentence, as one example among many.

The reference to Lebensraum has nothing to do with hydroponics. It has nothing to do with the Rehovot conference. It is a generic observation about territorial carrying capacity in the face of future population growth.

By re-anchoring that sentence to hydroponics and to Zionist agricultural policy, the paper makes the Biron article say something it does not say. This is not a matter of interpretation or theoretical disagreement. It is a contextual misrepresentation. And it is exactly the sort of thing peer review is supposed to catch.

When a paper relies on loaded language, semantic drift, and repurposed citations to sustain its argument, we ahve a problem with academic scholarship.

Hydroponic farming is environmentally efficient. It allows food production in deserts and other marginal environments. It has been promoted by militaries, by colonial powers, by post-colonial development planners, and by modern climate activists. Treating its use by Zionist agronomists as uniquely sinister, while similar uses elsewhere are described in neutral or even benevolent terms, tells us more about the framework being applied than about the history being examined.

The real story here is the widening gap between academic language and intellectual honesty - and how easily an anti-Zionist political narrative can be sustained when few readers bother to check the footnotes.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/25 Links: How the Shoah’s moral power is weaponised against Jews – and why Western leaders must fight it; US obtained 'smoking gun' evidence against Iran with Israeli help

From Ian:

Simon Sebag Montefiore: How the Shoah’s moral power is weaponised against Jews – and why Western leaders must fight it

This is the text of a speech delivered at the Holocaust Education Trust, warning that the distortion and inversion of the Holocaust is enabling a resurgence of antisemitism, with grave consequences for democratic societies

Much of the damage has already been done by Holocaust inversion to the vocabulary and architecture of international human rights and law – often by the very supranational organisations and "humanitarian” NGOs themselves. How now will we describe the murder of Herero people, the Armenians in the First World War, the Holocaust itself, the Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur genocides? But of course this is not truly about them; it is about the sins of the West itself and the damage to the West is part of the aim of this ideology.

The events of this week in Iran reveal that damage so clearly: only on Thursday did the UN Security Council hold a session at which the dissident Masih Alinejad – whom the Iranian dictator thrice tried to assassinate – reprimanded the disgraceful Secretary-General Guteres: “The United Nations has failed to respond. The Secretary-General himself has not spoken publicly against the massacre unfolding in Iran. Silence at this moment sends a signal. Sends a message to the killers of young protesters. I strongly believe that the regime in Iran heard the clear message from the Secretary-General. I think the members of this body have forgotten the privilege and responsibility of sitting in this room. Secretary-General, why are you afraid of the Islamic Republic? Millions of innocent and unarmed protesters have been silenced with bullets, mass arrest, prison and a total communications blackout!” Later she demanded to know: “Where is the left now? Where are the “pro-Palestinian” and “anti-war” activists when the Islamic Republic is killing innocent Iranians?” The respected Iranian Yale lecturer Arash Azizi – himself a proud Marxist – reflects “you would have thought leftists would understand the killing of Iranians on the streets fighting against a brutal capitalist regime. But unfortunately they don’t. The Western leftist movements hate the West. They hate their own societies.”

The Iranians have exposed the real nature of this movement and its real cynicism and wicked humbug.

Eighty years after the Holocaust, all of this makes the mission of Holocaust education personified by our host Holocaust Education Trust and its admirable chief Karen Pollock urgent, and the requirement to get the teaching right, essential. As our trajectory since 1945 lengthens to today, it is clear now the Holocaust was not the apocalyptic end of anti-Jewishness that we thought but just a colossal spasm in the middle of a continuum which spans the Crusades, the blood libels, Khmelnitsky massacre, the pogroms, the Russian Civil War (we often forget 200,000 Jews were murdered during these two years), the Shoah itself and then today October 7, the Yom Kippur murders in Manchester, the Bondi Beach massacre in Australia – and whatever horrors come next.

The necessity for politicians to speak more clearly is especially important. The use of anti-racist jargon is obligatory and it remains essential but instead of becoming a shield against anti-Jewish racism and hate, it has become a protection, a Get Out of Jail Card for racists and ideologues themselves. It is admirable that our leaders here in Britain stand against antisemitism and racism and seek to protect Jewish community life that is already overshadowed by threat and security measures. It is admirable our security services daily defeat diabolic murderous plots.

But the key is not to allow the adoption of this jargon by malignant actors mask poisonous ideology and excuse intolerant bullying and dangerous hate, not to allow it to work against its underlying values and intentions. Since the words have become with time and overuse and universal declamation, devalued, leaders need to say what antisemitism, what racism they are standing against and part of that is the rejection of egregious and harmful Holocaust inversion.

Be braver in promoting what the words really mean and what their spirit is against. Be braver in retaking the institutions that have been captured by ideologues who are enforcing malign ideas and intolerant conformity. Get back to teaching what the Holocaust was – and what it wasn’t. As the hatred shapeshifts our leaders must shapeshift with it.

Lastly one vital thing: an important part of education is to celebrate Judaism. Jewish history must not only be a chronicle of massacres and struggles. Jewish history is also joyful and remarkable and fascinating in all its richness that embraces Judea, Babylon, Egypt in ancient times to the vibrant communities of Andalusia, Constantinople, Morocco, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Alexandria and the amazing world of European Jewishness, the worlds of Ladino and Yiddish and now those of America and Israel and Europe. There is much to celebrate: Jewish art, culture, humour, films, poetry.

The Holocaust started with words that made it possible to dehumanise people thanks to their religion, race or identity then it moved to witch hunts, laws, boycotts, deportations and finally killing.

The words, the history, the education of the Holocaust are more than ever the mark of a civilised society.

Josh Hammer: Case against Israel cheapens the word 'genocide'

In reality, South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel is riddled with flaws. It is also pushing to redefine a term that been held sacrosanct since the end of World War II.

The term "genocide" was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Holocaust survivor who in 1944 strived for its incorporation into modern international law. That occurred in 1948 via the UN Genocide Convention.

The prohibition on genocide is considered a jus cogens norm — that is, a non-derogable rule accepted by all of the first-world community with no exceptions. The definition of "genocide" requires no law degree to understand, and it should never, ever be politicized.

For a genocide to take place under Geneva, there must be acts committed "with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group." The phrase "intent" here is of paramount importance.

South Africa’s pending case before the ICJ alleges Israeli intent to destroy the Palestinian-Arab population of Gaza. Israel, by contrast, (correctly) maintains that its recent actions in Gaza have been a just and proper military response to the war of annihilationist jihad and unspeakable atrocities launched against it by the Hamas terrorist organization on Oct. 7, 2023.

Israel’s "intent" is to free Gaza from Hamas, to return hostages abducted and held by Hamas, and to ensure Hamas has no future role in Gaza and cannot undertake another October 7-style massacre. It repeatedly offered to end the war if Hamas laid down its arms and released all hostages.

Hamas, on the other hand, has shown a complete disregard for human life and has openly stated that its sacrifice of Gazan civilians is a cynical strategic necessity to turn public opinion against Israel. It has for years embedded military infrastructure within Gazan civilian infrastructure — schools, hospitals, UN facilities, mosques, and children’s bedrooms. Israel has waged a defensive campaign in one of the most complex operational environments of any modern war.

Will the Mossad have to operate in the West again?

So, the question is no longer theoretical: If Western states cannot – or will not – protect their Jewish citizens, who will?

The Mossad was born not simply to operate where security collapses or states abdicate their duties but also to carry the sovereign obligation of safeguarding the minority it has sworn to protect – a minority that history has taught cannot outsource its survival.

The West can still confront antisemitism as the civilizational disease it has always been, or continue sacrificing Jews on the altar of moral cowardice. But history is unforgiving to those who mistake appeasement for virtue.

If Western states cannot, or will not, protect their Jewish citizens, who will?

With forces and groups in the West that do not hide their intentions – and states that even share their belligerence against Jews – if the Mossad ever has to operate again in the West, it will be because Europe has abandoned the Jews – once again.

Amnesty's insane obsession with Israel continues

Amnesty's obsession with Israel continues, and it is even worse than you think.

Here is my estimate of the number of tweets Amnesty released (not counting specific Amnesty branches like UK and USA) on specific countries in 2025 - I counted about 110 posts against Israel compared to 6 on Sudan, 6 on Hamas, 10 on Myanmar and 18 on Russia/Ukraine.

But even that doesn't tell the whole story, because the anti-Israel tweets had far more graphic elements, often with blatant lies.

Amnesty's obsession can be seen in every dimension. In 2025, Amnesty wrote 137 press releases in the "war crimes" category - and about 40% of them were about Israel, triple the number on Russia/Ukraine.

Amnesty's hate for the Jewish state can possibly be seen from last week better than anything else.

On the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Amnesty International issued a press release saying:

[Amnesty International’s Secretary General] Agnès Callamard will be attending the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos throughout its duration from 19 to 23 January. She will be available for media interviews on a range of human rights issues, including:

Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza
The USA’s military action in Venezuela, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, and the conflicts in Sudan, DRC and Myanmar
The importance of revindicating and revitalizing multilateralism
The need for global tax and debt reform and universal social protection
The urgent need for a full, fast, fair and funded fossil fuel phase-out
The need to massively scale up climate finance, including to address loss and damage
Big Tech, corporate accountability and the risks of deregulation
How to limit the harmful impact of artificial intelligence on human rights, including the right to a healthy environment

This is a list of Amnesty's priorities: Saying Israel is committing genocide months after the ceasefire is by far the top issue, while five wars and armed actions that are ongoing or more recent are lumped together as #2, and various political issues round out the rest.

Note what isn't there: Iran's crackdown on protesters, killing thousands.

Amnesty had issued press releases on that topic before Davos, calling it a massacre. Yet it does not rate as a topic for Amnesty to even mention at Davos.

Amnesty's top priority is to slander Israel - even at an economic forum!

There is no way to justify this one-sided, crazed hate as "human rights." The only explanation that makes any sense is deep rooted antisemitism where Jews are considered the worst people in the world, with the Jewish state as their avatar.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Arab media has been discussing a series of articles in the Hebrew religious magazine "B'Kehilla" where a reporter went to Lebanon using a Spanish passport and visited Jewish shrines as well as the Hezbollah "jihad museum."

The reporter, Yitzchak Horowitz, was driven around central and southern Lebanon by "Ali," a Lebanese man. At one point, deep in Hezbollah territory in the south, Horowitz expressed concern that Israel might accidentally target Ali's car. Ali answered back with this story:

"My uncle Abbas is the head of our village. He grows bananas and has no connection to Hezbollah. He was driving on the main road that leads to the village with another car in front of him. Suddenly he receives a phone call. And on the line is a voice speaking Arabic with a foreign accent. "I am from Israeli intelligence," the voice says. "You are asked to get off the road at the next turn if you don't want your head to bleed." So he panics and gets off the road, and after a few seconds he sees a missile land on the vehicle he was driving behind. The vehicle caught fire and whoever was there was a senior Hezbollah official. They murdered him. So you see, not only do they know who to bomb, they also know how to call the neighbors on the road and tell them to get out."

The Arab media is upset, saying that this is an attempt to beautify the IDF which of course is known to target women and children, so no one should believe this story.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/24 Links: The West’s silence on Iran is the latest warning of Islamists’ growing power; America has thrown the Kurds to the Syrian wolves; Israel’s tech sector soars to $111 billion in 2025 deals

From Ian:

Qanta Ahmed: The West’s silence on Iran is the latest warning of Islamists’ growing power

The fact that the Iranian regime calls itself Islamic is awkward for Western progressives, especially if they are unable (or unwilling) to distinguish between Islam and Islamism. Never mind that the main victims of Tehran’s terror are vulnerable Muslims. The fear of Islamophobia instils a silence that only serves to protect the Ayatollah and his dictatorship.

Western progressives are similarly compromised by critical race theory – indoctrination integral to woke ideology. Palestinian victimhood is lionised above all other struggles, partly because their so-called “oppressors” (Israelis) are erroneously deemed to be white. Thus, Islamist anti-Semitism merges seamlessly with virulent far-Left anti-Semitism under the banner of “anti-Zionist anti-racism”. When Islamists murder Muslims in Iran, Iranians are not accorded such “prestige” victimhood.

There is also the small matter of money. There is a growing body of evidence that many pro-Palestinian protests were not spontaneous outpourings of support for the cause, but systematically organised and richly financed.

Research from data analysts at the Network Contagion Research Institute, affiliated to Rutgers University, found evidence of Chinese links to certain groups, and concluded: “While nominally focused on Israel, the current protests [organised by these groups] can be better understood as a well-funded initiative driving a revolutionary, anti-government, and anti-capitalist agenda, with the leading organisations serving as versatile tools for foreign entities hostile to the US”.

With Iran, the money in the West appears to be on the regime’s side. Extraordinary investigative research by journalist Asra Nomani for the Pearl Project has identified a network of allegedly pro-Iranian groups, encompassing “socialist revolutionaries, Islamist activists, foreign-influenced nonprofits and even political operatives from Democratic groups”, what she has dubbed the “woke army”.

Nomani also describes this as the Red-Green alliance – a merging of socialism, even communism, with Islamism, seeking to pull apart the fabric of American society. She testified to the US Senate judiciary committee on March 5 2025, urging these organisations to be registered as foreign agents because many of them promote the propaganda of foreign regimes. I can’t be alone in thinking that any protest in the US in support of the Ayatollah should automatically be considered suspect.

As the US president continues to weigh the most significant foreign policy decision in a decade, Iranians are forced to endure a double tragedy. The first is that their country, once a shining example of civilisation in the Islamic world, continues to struggle under the yoke of Islamist tyrants bent on exporting their twisted ideology everywhere. The second is that the very people in the West who claim to care most about the oppressed of the world have nothing to say about the brave people of Iran.

We should all hope that the Iranian regime can be brought to its knees. But even then, we will still be left with the hypocrisy and corruption of our own societies.

Alan Baker: Human-rights inversion: Are Israelis not entitled to the same protections?

International human rights discourse has become deeply distorted by disproportionately targeting Israel while ignoring or minimizing severe human rights abuses occurring elsewhere in the world.

Political bias, media narratives, international institutions and activist movements selectively apply charged terms such as genocide, apartheid, starvation and disproportionate force exclusively to Israel.

This approach denies Israelis the same human rights protections afforded to others and transforms universal humanitarian principles into politicized tools.

Accusations leveled against Israel are legally flawed, historically misapplied and dismissive of Israel’s security concerns, democratic character and efforts under international humanitarian law, while overlooking terrorism, hostage-taking and the use of civilians as human shields by armed groups.

The Western ideological and indoctrination machinery appears to be working overtime. Daily, we are witnessing a mass-phenomenon of deliberately one-sided accusations being leveled solely against Israel, alleging human rights violations against Palestinians.

Openly slanted social media platforms, once-reputable international media outlets, politically biased United Nations bodies and human rights committees, politically pressured and influenced national and international leaders and parliamentarians, fomented university students and academic staff, and clearly ignorant show-biz celebrities, all unthinkingly accuse Israel of such crimes as genocide, apartheid, discrimination, cruelty and disproportionate military actions.

Curiously, all these “paragons of international virtue” appear to be selectively blind as to the human rights of everyone in the world except Palestinians. They ignore:
The plight of millions of Iranian citizens being arbitrarily subjected, in real time, to daily brutal subjugation and the wholesale murder of thousands of them.
The systematic butchering of tens of thousands of civilians from non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur and El Fasher in Sudan in 2025.
The extremely high 2025 civilian death toll and injuries in the Ukraine-Russia war.
Systematic violence and state repression in Myanmar against the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities.
Mass atrocities in Nigeria in attacks by the Boko Haram and other extremist groups.
Massacres of Christians in churches and hospitals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The intentional civilian targeting and extra-judicial killings in Tanzania by security forces during election-related unrest.

This hypocrisy and double standards by those claiming to protect universal human rights is glaring. They audaciously and undisguisedly ignore, and even deny, Israel’s human rights and protections and those of its citizens, those same rights that they so insistently and emotionally claim for Palestinians.

Andrew Fox: America has thrown the Kurds to the Syrian wolves

The Kurds are familiar with this pattern. They have been betrayed by the West many times before. First, by allowing Turkey to breach the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, which created Kurdistan, then by looking the other way when Saddam Hussein carried out the ethnic cleansing of Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s. Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah once warned them not to ‘bet on the Americans’ because Washington would ‘sell you out’ when it suited. He was right.

Turkey, meanwhile, is the obvious winner. Sharaa has emerged as a close ally of Ankara, whose overriding goal has always been to crush Kurdish autonomy on its border.

America’s indifference to the fate of Syria’s Kurds is not just a betrayal – it is also a profound strategic mistake. The threat of ISIS has not vanished. If anything, with jihadists firmly in control in Damascus, it has increased.

As Kurdish control and ability to guard the ISIS prisoner camps collapses, the US military has begun transferring ISIS detainees from Syria to Iraq, starting with 150 men and with warnings that up to 7,000 could be moved. There are already problems. Sources report that approximately 1,500 Islamic State detainees escaped from Shaddadi prison – abandoned by Kurdish forces in the teeth of the Syrian army. US officials have provided much lower estimates of around 200, with many reportedly recaptured. The precise number is less important than the fact that no one can guarantee this will not happen again on a larger scale.

Then there is al-Hol, which Syrian government forces also took control of this week. It holds around 40,000 people of various nationalities, mostly relatives and suspected affiliates of ISIS fighters, in conditions long described as a breeding ground for extremism.

All of this is unfolding under a Syrian president whose past should worry the West. Sharaa is a former jihadist commander who once led al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the al-Nusra Front.

Damascus refers to decrees about Kurdish rights and recognition, including steps towards citizenship and cultural protections, but paper promises are worthless if Kurdish self-rule is crushed. Pro-government voices are already spreading the claim that the Kurds are merely recent ‘arrivals’ with no distinct claims to nationhood.

This is the strategic cost of Trump’s approach. By prioritising short-term gains over long-term moral principles, Washington continues to reinforce the same lesson: you can be useful, brave and pro-Western, yet still be discarded as soon as you become inconvenient. This does not bring stability to the region. Instead, it fuels radicalisation. From the Kurds to the Ukrainians to European members of NATO, the message is the same: the US is not a reliable ally. This has tremendous security implications for us all.

If the West wants to stop the next ISIS wave, it needs to stop treating the Kurds as expendable. That means enforceable guarantees for Kurdish-majority areas, and a recognition of the right to statehood they deserve.

Abandoning the people who fought jihadism on the ground is not ‘stability’. What we are seeing from the US in its relations with Syrian jihadists is a down payment on the next catastrophe.

01/23 Links Pt2: Don’t Legitimize ‘Anti-Zionism.’ Defeat It; The infantile Israelophobia of Ms Rachel; Shul Runnings: Israeli bobsleigh team makes Olympic history

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Don’t Legitimize ‘Anti-Zionism.’ Defeat It

I admit I winced when I read that last line. I had just been reading the Guardian’s coverage of Australia’s efforts to crack down on incitement. Initially the bill, set forth by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party, was reportedly far too restrictive of plain speech to the point of being unsalvageable. But Liberal Party MPs were able to “gut” the overreach and pare down the bill.

Still, the Guardian made sure to quote the Jewish Council of Australia, a progressive group called upon to As-a-Jew the issue into oblivion. The legislation, they said, represented “an attempt to slander and intimidate hundreds of 1000s of Australians who have been protesting against Israel’s genocide and egregious human rights abuses.”

Of course, a publication like the Guardian would quote an organization like this, despite anti-Israel lunacy being a distinct minority opinion among Jews. It’s useful to them. But besides the political tokenization angle, it’s also a reminder that the Jewish community contains within it organizations whose entire purpose appears to be to enable state suppression of Jewish rights and Jewish security.

The Jewish Council of Australia, it turns out, was founded in the spring of 2024—meaning it was launched after the October 7 attacks in order to join the global anti-Israel pile-on.

The Jewish community has an obligation to battle, not coddle, the anti-Zionism within its ranks. It has the same obligation to mount a full-scale fight against anti-Zionism in mainstream discourse. The movement of anti-Jewish assault shutting down Jewish shops and restaurants calls its worldview anti-Zionism. So the proper response is clear: That which calls itself anti-Zionism must be defeated.

How the Internet Fell for a Supposed Condemnation of Christian Zionism

Despite the unanswered questions, or perhaps because of them, a fight soon erupted. Evangelical Christian Zionists defended their theology. “It’s hard for me to understand why every one who takes on the moniker ‘Christian’ would not also be a Zionist,” wrote US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.

Meanwhile, Catholic critics of Israel promoted the statement on X, declaring that the top Catholic figure in the Holy Land, Latin patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, had definitively rejected Christian Zionism.

Unfortunately for them, he did nothing of the sort.

Pizzaballa is a fluent Hebrew speaker who is well regarded by Jewish leaders. Though he is not afraid to speak out about pressures on Christians in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, he is not looking to make headlines attacking the Jewish state or Zionism.

What’s more, breaking with its usual practice, the Latin Patriarchate did not publish the Christian Zionism statement or share it on social media. Pizzaballa’s name does not appear on the statement. Neither does his signature.

Custodia Terrae Sancte, a Catholic body that oversees Christian sites in the Holy Land, removed the statement from its website as well.

Even more tellingly, when asked if the Patriarchate supports the statement, an official from the Patriarchate said only, “No comment.”

So how and why did a statement go out that ostensibly speaks in the Latin Patriarch’s name?

Many assume that since Pizzaballa is part of the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches group, he must have personally signed off on the statement. But the group doesn’t work in such an orderly fashion. The group’s secretariat sends out a draft, and says that if there are no objections by a certain time—last week it was 5 p.m.—then it will assume that all the church leaders agree with the statement.

Needless to say, if a patriarch is traveling that day, the first time he sees a message may be when it is published.

The main impetus for the statement, according to sources from two churches, is a fight led by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate against a group of Israeli Christians calling themselves the Israeli Christian Voice and the Eagles of Christ Movement.

The movement leader, Ihab Shilyan, was a career officer in the IDF and actively encourages young Christians to enlist as well. He was recently welcomed at Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s annual reception for Christian leaders, and has met multiple times with Huckabee.

It is no coincidence that last Saturday’s statement was posted on the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate website and shared with local journalists by a figure closely affiliated with the Greek Orthodox Church. The leader of Israeli Christian Voice boasted in response to the statement: “It appears that my meetings with senior and influential figures … have placed significant pressure on vested interests.”

What some touted as a clear rejection of Christian Zionism by the top Catholic official in the Holy Land was instead an episode in which one church rather disingenuously used a joint forum to drag other institutions into its fight. Far from expressing a unified Christian voice, the statement undermined the shaky trust between the historical churches in Jerusalem.

Why are the celebrities I used to love suddenly so anti, well… me?

So why have these stars all jumped on the bandwagon? “Different actor/ activists have different motivations,” says Jeremy. “Some are animated by prejudice against Jews (hi, Roger!), but fortunately I don’t think that’s many of them. And while it’s possible some performers are paid, others are terribly vulnerable to the anti-Zionism hate movement because, as an actor, you have to need to be “seen” and the publicity can help your career. Add to that the charge you get when the major news organisation asks you your opinions about world affairs, and anti-Zionism is positively addictive.”

For me, it’s the hypocrisy that grates. That old double standard of holding Israel (hence, Jews, and hence me) to a far higher standard than any other country or ethnicity. It’s been said many times before, but where are these performers on China, Sudan, North Korea, Iran?

The Iran case is particularly topical. Iranian stand-up comic Omid Djalili is – quite rightly – being feted by the mainstream press as a voice of the uprising in that country. Where were the corresponding Israeli voices in autumn 2023?

Of course, there are some pro-Israeli (hence, pro-Jewish, and pro-me) voices: Gal Gadot, Jerry Seinfeld, Pink, Jamie Lee Curtis – all of these have stood up in support. But all these actors are Jewish – or have Jewish heritage – and so it’s somehow less meaningful. There’s an irony in how Jews historically have always stood up for civil rights causes, but when the table are turned, no-one seems to stand up for us.

With hope in my heart, I started to Google. Tom Cruise? Nope, he supported his agent when she was sacked for anti-Israel commentary. Paul Mescal participated in the Cinema for Gaza auction, donating items to raise funds for Palestinian humanitarian aid. Brad Pitt is a producer on pro-Gaza film, The Voice of Hind Rajab.

There is, perhaps, a silver lining in the post. Jeremy feels there may be a backlash down the line. “Despite what Sam Goldwyn once said, there is such a thing as bad publicity,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if some actors have done long-term damage to their careers and legacy as they cross the line between responsible empathy into antisemitism.”

That aside, there are signs of hope. Quentin Tarantino recently gave an interview where he declared he would "die a Zionist". And just today, I came across an X post of actress Sydney Sweeney posing with released hostages, Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or.

As a final word, we probably should remember those who have said nothing at all. There is, after all, no constitutional duty to proclaim ones political alignments. It’s a small field, but let’s keep our fingers crossed for Leonardo di Caprio, Zendaya, and Taylor Swift. As long as Taylor is (implicitly) on our team, we should be ok.

01/23 Links Pt1: Douglas Murray: Trump’s new Board of Peace is necessary because the UN has failed again and again; Adam Louis-Klein: Why anti-Zionism is the newest hate movement

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Trump’s new Board of Peace is necessary because the UN has failed again and again

Over the years that the UN’s “peacekeeping force” was in southern Lebanon, the Iranian proxy terror group stockpiled tens of thousands of long- and short-range missiles. And promptly started another war.

When I was there, I saw the Hezbollah bases and tunnel entrances that had literally been created under the UN troops’ own eyes. The peacekeeping force’s bases and watchtowers had Hezbollah infrastructure mere yards from them. The UN’s “peacekeepers” had clearly said and done nothing.

The UN troops stationed in Lebanon when I was there were from Ireland and Sri Lanka. And as I said at the time to Post readers, find me an Irishman or Sri Lankan who is willing to lay down their lives in a confrontation with Hezbollah and I will try to find a bridge to sell you.

Of course they wouldn’t risk their lives. The average Irish or Sri Lankan soldier has zero interest in a confrontation with Hezbollah. So which troops would?

To date, the answer in the region each and every single time has been the same: Israel and America.

But why should young Israeli and American soldiers have to be solely responsible for stopping anti-Western terrorist groups in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and any number of other places? Why shouldn’t the other countries whose security is at stake from these ayatollah-funded terror groups also put their young people’s lives on the line?

Why shouldn’t Egypt — which used to control Gaza — have responsibility for security and be held to account for it? Why shouldn’t Qatar — which hosted and funded Hamas — now pay for the destruction it helped create?

The nervousness of some people about the “Board of Peace” centers on the fact that there are some distinctly shady actors who have been invited onto it. But if Trump can get these countries to actually pony up, it would be a very different matter.

Of course that will require a commitment of troops and funding that are not connected to terror. The Turkish and Qatari governments are too entwined with the region’s terror axis to be trusted with stationing troops. But they should be made to pay for it. And they and other countries can and should be made to help keep the peace in Gaza and help to rebuild it in other ways.

Through his recent interventions on the world stage, Trump has shown he is capable of knitting together — not tearing apart — this country’s coalitions. By the admission of Mark Rutte — the NATO secretary-general — at Davos, if it had not been for Trump, there is no way that European countries would have fulfilled their military spending commitments.

If it had not been for Trump, this country’s NATO allies would have continued to piggyback off American taxpayers and expected America to keep funding their security. By making some (often undiplomatic) threats to those allies, Trump has made them take their own security seriously again.

Could the same thing now happen in the Middle East?

By appointing himself chairman of the Peace Board, Trump has shown that he is committed to the peace plan that is in place. By inviting regional actors to join him, he has shown that for once, it will not be just Israel and America that are expected to police the Middle East.

But the main threats to Middle Eastern security remain the same. The terrorists still run the Islamic revolutionary government in Iran. The state of Qatar is still funding anti-Western propaganda and terrorist groups across the region. Even here at home in America.

But if anyone is in a position to tell them to cut it out and accept the new reality, Trump is in the position to do so.

If he succeeds, you can expect those howls of alarm to turn to cheers.

Jonathan Tobin: Trump’s end run around the old world order

Despite Trump’s promises, the Board of Peace and the team of supposedly apolitical technocrats working for it won’t ensure that the coastal enclave can be turned into something other than a Hamas stronghold and a platform for continuing the Palestinian war on Israel’s existence. That’s not just because the board will count among its members the leaders of Turkey and Qatar (and others who support Hamas), although that in itself is a deal-breaker when it comes to any kind of realistic settlement of the dispute.

Simply put, Hamas won’t disarm or give up control of the 47% of Gaza it still holds. And the International Stabilization Force that is supposed to police the Strip and ensure that the terrorists abide by the terms of the ceasefire agreement will be composed of soldiers from nations that have no intention of fighting Hamas terror operatives. The only way to do that is to give a green light to the Israel Defense Forces to finish the job. The gap between the reality of politics in Middle East and fantasies about rebuilding a peaceful Gaza that was also unveiled at Davos by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, remains vast.

Which means that the Board of Peace is likely to fail unless or until the war against Hamas resumes—something Trump hopes to avoid since it will puncture his claim to be a uniquely successful negotiator, even in a region marked by turmoil.

Smashing an obsolete and harmful establishment
Even if it doesn’t succeed, the board’s creation will provide the president with yet another tool to push aside the United Nations and marginalize the international foreign-policy establishment.

The chattering classes are deeply unhappy about what has transpired, as one can read in the various accounts of Davos published in The New York Times. They believe that Trump is undermining all they hold sacred. Yet it’s necessary to look beyond the issue of whether the president is playing nicely or by the rules of diplomacy, and offending the sensibilities of the self-important celebrities of Davos and the international bureaucrats associated with the United Nations.

Trump might not succeed on every issue, and he may not behave in a manner that engenders the affection or respect of the educated classes that look up to these institutions. But he is right about one thing, above all. The basic truth at the heart of all of his efforts to smash the postwar order is that the United Nations, as well as the Davos set, must be trashed and bypassed if the West is to be saved from the Marxist and Islamist foes that threaten it in the 21st century. America’s geostrategic enemies in China and Russia also depend heavily on preserving the existing international establishment.

In taking up this struggle, Trump is taking aim at institutions that are causing real harm and seeking to address the most important threats to America, Israel and the West. Rather than deride him as a buffoon or a vandal, he should be applauded for defying the suits in Davos and all they stand for.

Florida House adopts bill to ban use of West Bank term in official documents

The Florida House of Representatives has advanced a bill that seeks to recognize Judea and Samaria and prohibit the use of the term “West Bank” in official government materials.

Two almost identical bills, both of which are called the ‘Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act,’ have been introduced.

One, CS/HB 31, was introduced to the Florida House and sponsored by Debra Tendrich and Chase Tramont, and a second, SB 1106, is the Senate companion bill introduced by a senator (Ralph Massullo) to the Florida Senate.

In state legislatures (like Florida’s), it is common for the same policy idea to be filed in both chambers – one as a House bill and one as a Senate bill – as it gives the proposal more chances to pass and essentially expedites the process.

As such, the House and Senate versions were drafted to match so that if both pass their chambers, one text can be agreed on in conference committees or through amendments.

Both bills intend to amend legislation to refer to the region by the name Judea and Samaria and not “West Bank” in official materials. Such materials would include guidance, rules, documents, press releases, and the like.

The bill, if passed, will also prohibit money being spent to create official government materials with the term West Bank. It would come into effect on July 1, 2026.

What military options are there in Iran?

RealityCheck writes that there may be war as early as this weekend:

The carrier strike group U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln is expected to arrive “in theater” today or tomorrow.

U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to return from the Davos conference today (Friday), placing him in Washington in time for the weekend.

The biggest clue: two days ago, the United States significantly increased its deployment of aerial refueling aircraft in the region. Due to their high maintenance costs and vulnerability while on the ground, such aircraft are usually deployed only in the final days before a strike, making this an especially meaningful signal. Aerial refuters are not typically used for mere misdirection due to the aforementioned cost and vulnerability.

My question is, what can the US practically do to help the protesters? Trump is not going to engage in a long war. What can be done with surgical airstrikes?

This becomes complicated by timing. The protests have mostly ended because of the brutality of the crackdown. It is unclear if anything the US can do will re-energize the protesters.

I don't believe the people who say that an attack would put the Iranian people on the regime's side. They are not that shortsighted. But, again, what can be done?

There would be some gain by attacking the IRGC buildings, which would make it harder for them to crack down on protesters. But I see a lot of the possibilities as being indirect or psychological - try to get the IRGC members to defect or refuse to enforce directions, which may be why Iran imported outside enforcers.

I think that whatever is done should be done together with a major cyber attack to disrupt communications and coordination.

And of course the question is what happens if Israel gets dragged into this - or whether that is part ofthe plan so Israel can do dirty work that the US cannot, like assassinations.

Things are heating up.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

On January 17, 2026, the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem issued a statement condemning Christian Zionism as a “damaging ideology” that misleads the faithful, harms Christian unity, and threatens the Christian presence in the Holy Land. They asserted that they alone represent Christians in matters of religious and communal life, and criticized Israeli and international officials for engaging with alternative Christian voices.

It is a fascinating statement. It does not give any theological arguments against Zionism. It is entirely about protecting turf and silencing any opinions of Israel besides their own.

And they hate Israel.

The churches behind this declaration – primarily Eastern and Oriental Orthodox bodies – have a long, unresolved history of antisemitism and theological hostility toward Jewish sovereignty. Unlike the Catholic Church after Vatican II, these institutions have never formally repudiated supersessionism, never acknowledged their role in fostering anti-Jewish theology, and never meaningfully reckoned with the consequences of that theology in the modern Middle East.

This is not ancient history. In 2009, Palestinian church leaders issued the Kairos Palestine document, a text that framed Israel’s existence as a sin, rebranded classical Christian anti-Judaism in the language of “liberation theology,” and provided theological cover for the global Christian campaign to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state. The document was not a marginal curiosity – it became a touchstone for church-based anti-Israel activism worldwide.

In 2006, the spokesman for the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem accused Israeli women of diabolically spreading AIDS among virtuous Palestinian men.

That is the moral and theological lineage from which this new statement emerges.

The January declaration repeatedly invokes “unity,” but unity here does not mean dialogue or mutual respect across Christian traditions. It means submission to their opinion.

The claim that the Jerusalem church leaders “alone represent the Churches and their flock” is not about doctrine; it is about control. Visiting Christians – many of them Evangelicals or post–Vatican II Catholics – are implicitly told that supporting Israel, or even engaging Israeli officials independently, constitutes interference and moral harm.

No one believes this standard would be accepted in reverse. If foreign church leaders visited Rome or the United States and were told to not spread their anti-Israel propaganda, they would not only refuse, but they would publicly flout the demand and complain that they were being censored.

So much for unity!

Christian Zionism is condemned in this statement not because it is heretical – no doctrinal argument is made – but because it rejects the Jerusalem churches’ political theology: a theology that treats Jewish sovereignty as illegitimate, Israel as a moral stain, and Christian witness as necessarily aligned against the Jewish state.

For many Christians, support for Israel is not political fashion but moral repentance – a conscious rejection of centuries of Christian antisemitism. That is precisely why it is threatening to institutions that have never abandoned replacement theology or their hostility to Jewish national self-determination.

Churches with a documented record of antisemitism and anti-Israel activism are now warning others about “damaging ideologies” and claiming exclusive moral authority in the land of Israel – without a word of self-reflection, repentance, or historical accountability.

This is not a call for unity. It is an attempt to enforce conformity with a hateful ideology while insulating past sins from scrutiny.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/22 Links Pt2: Australia marks day of mourning for Bondi terror attack victims; Anti-Semitism on the Couch; Syria was never one country, and Israel knows it

From Ian:

‘She’ll Be Right’ Is Not a Strategy: How Australia Sleepwalked into a Crisis of Antisemitism

Slogans matter in this context, not because words are inherently violence, but because words can be permission structures. They can normalize contempt. They can be recruitment tools. They can teach people which targets are legitimate. After October 7, Australians watched a pattern take hold: open hostility toward Jews, moral inversion, and rhetoric that did not aim for peace but for escalation. Chants such as “Globalize the intifada” were tolerated in protests and on campuses, even though they function as a call to export violence into Western streets. In the wake of subsequent events, commentators and security analysts have repeatedly warned that hate speech does not stay in the realm of slogans: it translates into intimidation, harassment, and sometimes violence, with the deliberate purpose of making communities afraid. Australia was warned in real time. Too many people chose to treat those warnings as exaggeration, or as an inconvenience to the national self-image.

Then it happened here.

On Sunday, 14 December 2025, Jews celebrating Chanukah at Bondi Beach were attacked. It is difficult to overstate what that meant. Bondi is iconic Australia, the postcard version of our national story. The target was not an abstraction. It was Jews gathered openly, publicly, celebrating their identity. The Commonwealth later recognised the national impact with formal reflection and commemoration. A royal commission was announced to examine the circumstances and failures around the massacre.

But here is the part that should make every decent Australian pause. A commission, however necessary, is not a substitute for cultural and civic accountability. And the most chilling detail is not only that this attack occurred, but that our public debate still struggled to speak plainly about the conditions that made it possible.

Because even after Bondi, the line kept moving. The instinct to rationalize, to relativize, to insist that “it’s complicated,” to reach for euphemisms rather than speak plainly, remained. If a society cannot draw a clear boundary after a mass casualty attack targeting Jews at a religious celebration, then the problem is not confusion. It is moral failure, and it is institutional cowardice.

This is where the “she’ll be right” mentality becomes dangerous. It tells decent people the adults will handle it, the institutions will self-correct, the extremists will burn out, the country will naturally return to balance. But extremists do not burn out when they are rewarded with attention, tolerance, and platform. They escalate when they learn there is no meaningful cost.

The media conversation, too often, has been trapped in a false binary: free speech versus censorship. That frame is convenient for those who want to avoid doing the difficult work of distinguishing legitimate political expression from incitement and harassment. It also obscures the cumulative reality. One sermon becomes a “controversy.” One rally becomes “passionate activism.” One antisemitic incident becomes “unfortunate.” One campus campaign becomes “student politics.” And then people act shocked when Jewish Australians say they no longer feel safe, when security becomes normalized around synagogues and schools, when families reassess what it means to live openly as Jews in a country that once felt uncomplicated.

Australia did not “suddenly” change. We were watching it change. We just did what we often do best.

We shrugged.

So where to from here? Australia has a choice. We can keep treating antisemitism as episodic, or we can confront it as systemic. That requires more than statements. It requires enforceable standards and the willingness to apply them consistently. It means drawing bright lines around incitement and vilification, and acting when those lines are crossed. It means refusing to launder hate through the language of “debate,” and being honest that dehumanization, intimidation, and calls to violence are not contributions to a pluralist society. It means treating Jewish safety as a national issue, not a niche concern, because Bondi was not only a Jewish tragedy. It was an Australian one.

And it means demanding institutional courage from universities, cultural institutions, and community leaders, rather than watching them outsource moral judgement to PR teams and crisis committees. A liberal democracy cannot function if it has no confidence in its own moral boundaries. Multiculturalism cannot survive if it becomes a cover for tolerating extremism. Social cohesion is not maintained by pretending the problem is smaller than it is. It is maintained by confronting what threatens it, early, clearly, and consistently.

Australians are proud of being laid-back. But there is a difference between being laid-back and being asleep.

“She’ll be right” might be fine when you are talking about a dented car door, a late train, or a rainy weekend. It is not fine when hatred is organizing, recruiting, preaching, marching, and escalating.

We got here because too many good people assumed someone else would stop it.

If Australia wants to be the country it says it is, then the next cultural reflex cannot be a shrug.

It must be resolve.

Anti-Semitism on the Couch

Congress has taken notice. Last December, the House Committee on Education and Workforce sent a letter to Debra Kawahara, the president of the APA. “The Committee is gravely concerned about antisemitism at the APA, which represents more than 172,000 researchers, clinical professionals, professors, and students across the country in the field of psychology,” wrote Chairman Tim Walberg (R-Mich). Walberg cited as evidence the letter from Psychologists Against Antisemitism and a new report from the Anti-Defamation League on professional organizations that identified the APA as an entity about which it had “major concerns” requiring “substantial action.”

Walberg’s committee requested all APA documents, communications, publications, programming materials, complaints, and actions related to anti-Semitism since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Upon review, it will then consider “whether potential legislative changes are needed.” The association’s millions in federal funding for training programs and contracts could be at risk.

This moment is fraught with paradox. It was Jews who pioneered psychotherapy and psychoanalysis (once called “the Jewish science” by Nazi critics but later resurrected by some admirers and practitioners, including Freud’s daughter, Anna). All but one of the early members of Freud’s inner circle of 13 were Jewish. The anti-Semitism waged against Austrian physicians had constrained their professional opportunities but left open the unexplored territory of the mind, regarded as a marginal area at the time. The original psychotherapy patients were mostly Jewish, too, reflecting the value placed by Jews on introspection, intellectual life, and the ethic of repair.

Surely, there remain therapists who are emotionally mature—they may even represent the majority of seasoned professionals. Trust has nonetheless been resoundingly damaged on several fronts: among colleagues in the field, among colleagues and their professional organizations, and between patients and therapists. Today, Jewish and Zionist individuals who seek psychological care must search carefully for an experienced therapist who, no matter his or her politics, will regard the patient, foremost, as a fellow human who is suffering.

New documentary depicts the lawsuit that humbled Henry Ford – and revved up US Jewry

After years of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories in his Dearborn Independent newspaper, Henry Ford was finally called to account for it. In 1927, the billionaire American auto magnate, famed for the assembly line and the Model T, was sued for libel by Aaron Sapiro, a Jewish American lawyer and a cooperative farm organizer in the United States and Canada. The ensuing trial in a Detroit federal courthouse — and subsequent apology by Ford — had repercussions for the American Jewish community and its relations with wider society.

This drama is retold in a new documentary film, “Sapiro v. Ford: The Jew Who Sued Henry Ford.” Directed by New York-based Gaylen Ross and produced by Detroit native Carol King, the film made its world premiere at the Miami Jewish Film Festival on January 18, and is available locally to stream through the festival’s website. It was also screened on January 21 at the New York Jewish Film Festival, which will show it again on January 28. Additional upcoming screenings include the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival and the Boca International Jewish Film Festival.

“I think it’s an unknown story,” King said in a joint Zoom interview between the filmmakers and The Times of Israel. “People are curious. So many people have not heard of it. They know about Henry Ford, but they did not realize the extent of what happened — with the libel suit against him by Sapiro and the resultant apology.”

“Our goal,” she added, “was to really introduce people to this hero [Sapiro], a man who risked so much, because he believed so passionately in the cause.”

Beyond amplifying Sapiro, the film looks at the ever-present debate between balancing First Amendment protections for free speech with defending minority rights in America.

“We definitely support freedom of speech,” Ross said, while noting “the concern we have for when hate speech often turns to hate crime. That’s the difficulty of protecting rights and freedom of speech at the same time… and also protecting the vulnerable.”

The Miami festival is billed as the largest showcase of Jewish and Israeli films; this year’s lineup features over 100 selections. After Miami, “Sapiro v. Ford” makes its way to the New York Jewish Film Festival, then it’s back to Florida for the Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival. Its first three in-person screenings — one in Miami, and two in New York — have all sold out.

Within the film’s length of an hour and 10 minutes, the filmmakers have found creative ways to tell the story. Contemporaneous cartoons about the trial come to life through Garry Waller’s animation. Descendants of Canadian farmers whom Sapiro organized give perspectives on how he transformed their families’ lives for the better. And the post-trial euphoria among American Jews was humorously captured in a catchy 1927 Yiddish dialect song, “Since Henry Ford Apologized to Me,” which gets played twice. The filmmakers also used the well-known documentary approach of interviews with experts, including Brandeis University American Jewish history professor Jonathan Sarna and Indiana University adjunct law professor Victoria Saker Woeste, who is the author of “Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech.”

01/22 Links Pt1: The Genocide Slur Is Not Just for Jews; Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Islamism, Iran and the West’s descent into barbarism; Fanon and the Ayatollahs; The ICC is the theater of the absurd

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: A Caesar in the White House

Opinion today is divided between those asserting that Trump is saving the world and those asserting that Trump is destroying the world.

The reality is that he’s not a fascist, racist or madman; he is rather a self-styled emperor. He demands fealty, is driven by transactionalism, narcissism and revenge, and gets his way through the exercise of raw power.

This is hardly desirable. Still, Trump is motivated by love of America, Western civilization and the Jewish people. His political opponents, on the other hand, are motivated by hatred of America, Western civilization and the Jewish people—or are chillingly indifferent to those who do.

There’s surely no contest.

Trump’s new world order has emerged because the old one has so catastrophically failed. International law and transnational institutions were created to destroy the power of imperial overreach in the interests of peace, freedom and justice. But that international order has betrayed and abandoned peace, freedom and justice. The outcome is a Caesar in the White House.

Trump is the best friend Israel has ever had in the Oval Office. That doesn’t make him perfect. He can be the Jews’ best shot and can do some brilliant things, and yet at the same time be a flawed individual. Those flaws may sometimes prevent him from doing the right thing and lead him instead into making terrible errors.

We must all just hold our breath.

John Spencer: The Genocide Slur Is Not Just for Jews

The Korean War underscores the same point even more starkly. Roughly 2 million North and South Korean civilians were killed over 37 months of war. If the same statistical logic now applied to Gaza were imposed retroactively, stripped of context about who died, how they died, and who killed them, that figure would translate into more than 54,000 civilian deaths every single month. Yet the Korean War is understood, correctly, as a lawful collective defense against invasion, not as a genocide.

This is what happens when the laws of armed conflict are replaced by statistical absolutism. Law becomes a tool of political warfare. Legal terms become slogans. The side that fights lawfully becomes uniquely vulnerable, judged not by intent or conduct, but by the inevitable suffering that accompanies urban combat.

When civilian suffering becomes the decisive weapon, advantage flows to those who want civilians to suffer. If accusation and optics define legality, the optimal strategy is to embed among civilians, prevent evacuation, fight from protected sites, and manipulate information so that every death becomes ammunition. That is not the protection of civilians. It is the exploitation of them.

If this logic becomes the standard, the result will not be fewer civilian deaths. It will be more. The new standard by which Israel “committed genocide” in Gaza will validate hostage taking, the use of human shields, the engineering of humanitarian crises, and the manipulation of casualty figures as weapons. It will tell future adversaries that the fastest way to defeat a democratic military is not to fight it, but to endanger civilians until the defender is condemned for trying to stop the violence. In that world, urban areas become more lethal, not less. Civilians become more vulnerable, not more protected.

The implications for the United States military are direct and dire. Every serious contingency in the Pentagon’s war-planning scenarios involves dense urban terrain. Defending Seoul, Taipei, or NATO’s eastern flank means fighting in cities where civilians cannot be separated from the battlefield and where adversaries are trained to exploit information and lawfare as much as maneuvers and firepower. If civilian harm alone becomes proof of criminality, democratic militaries face an impossible choice: Fight and be condemned, or refrain and concede defeat.

Accusations of genocide being leveled against Israel do not merely constitute baseless defamation of an ally, as I have personally seen with my own eyes during six research trips to Gaza over the course of the war. It is a weapon aimed at lawful self-defense. The tragedy of civilian suffering in war is real. It should never be denied. But turning tragedy into a legal verdict without proof of intent is not moral progress. It is paralysis.

If baseless slander becomes law, lawful self-defense becomes impossible. And if lawful self-defense becomes impossible, democracies will have lost the next wars before they begin.

Seth Mandel: You Can’t Have It Both Ways on ‘Genocide’

Similarly, today Jewish Insider reports that Scott Wiener is stepping away from his post as co-chair of the California legislature’s Jewish Caucus. As I wrote last week, Wiener declined to say Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza constituted genocide at a candidates debate against two of his congressional primary opponents. He, like Mallory McMorrow, thought they had moved on. He was wrong, and he got slammed by progressives for equivocating, and so he filmed a soul-crushingly pathetic video changing his answer to “yes.”

It certainly would be inappropriate for him to continue on as Jewish Caucus co-chair, and he recognized as much. But I was struck by his plea for open-mindedness: “As we move through this moment, it is even more important for Jews here and globally to foster open dialogue and acceptance of disagreement, even on the hardest of issues.”

Does he feel that way about other genocides? Again, how much “acceptance of disagreement” does he feel there should be in the Jewish community toward Holocaust denial?

Wiener and McMorrow—and who knows how many others, but the number is high—don’t think Israel committed genocide. They don’t actually believe that there are much more important things to talk about and that genocide is a distraction. They lowered themselves to gain the approval of terrible people, and they feel dirty about it, and they would like to not have to do it again. Their problem is simple: It’s degrading to accuse Israel of genocide and then have to look at yourself in the mirror.

Seth Mandel: A Trumpian Version of ‘Leading From Behind’

The post-WWI map of the Middle East briefly looked very different from the one that was to gain a patina of semi-permanence. The Ottoman state, having lost the war, was divided up by Western powers in 1920. Among the minority nations who were given a taste of autonomy under Western rule were the Kurds. Turkish nationalists rebelled and this time were successful in their more limited ambitions; a new treaty in 1923 inaugurated a Turkish state—at the Kurds’ expense.

The phrase “at the Kurds’ expense” would become a familiar one. This week, Western powers would continue their century-plus tradition of seeking stability at the Kurds’ expense.

In essence, recent events are the result of simple power politics and the Trump administration’s prosecution of its foreign policy along those lines.

President Trump tends to favor the stronger party in any conflict, or at least tends to give the stronger party more latitude in finishing the fight. This sometimes works against America’s traditional allies—Ukraine, for example, and this week the Kurds. It’s a form of leading from behind as applied to Trump’s unsentimentalist approach to conflict resolution.

The Kurds have held semi-autonomous regions in Iraq and Syria and their militias were instrumental in the American war on ISIS. Thousands of Kurds died in the war and many more continued to put their lives on the line guarding ISIS prisons.

Full Kurdish independence has never seemed just around the corner, but the working assumption was that the U.S. would never diminish Kurdish sovereignty, even if we couldn’t bring ourselves to expand it. That policy survived the Syrian civil war and the fall of the House of Assad, but it died this week in favor of aiding Ahmed al-Sharaa’s consolidation of power in the new Syria.

Sharaa is an exemplar of win-and-you’re-in geopolitics. Had his militia, which had its roots in an al-Qaeda offshoot, failed, Sharaa would have been immediately forgotten by history. Instead, he led the coalition of rebels to victory over Damascus and, now, has received U.S. backing and the lifting of sanctions. Sharaa has traded fatigues for tailored suits, like many an erstwhile rebel before him.