Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 02, 2026

The Worst Purim Joke in History

The February blizzard had been generous with the neighborhood and merciless with the shul roof. Three feet of snow, then ice, then — on Friday afternoon, two hours before Shabbos — a structural engineer named Phil Rosen stood in the parking lot of Congregation Limudei Avot, looked up at the social hall roof, and delivered his verdict with the grim efficiency of a doctor who has bad news and a waiting room full of patients.

"It's not safe," he said. "Not for an event. Not this week."

Rabbi David Horowitz stared at him. "The Purim party is Monday night."

Phil shrugged with the particular sympathy of a man who has delivered this kind of news before and knows there is nothing useful to add.

"How many people?" he asked.

"Two hundred and thirty. Plus walk-ins."

Phil looked at the roof again. "Yeah," he said. "No."

The theme had been set months ago: Mexico, in honor of President Claudia Sheinbaum, the first Jewish head of state Mexico had ever produced. The invitations were out. The sombreros had been ordered — forty-seven sombreros, non-refundable. A full klezmer-cumbia fusion band had been booked. The caterer had been instructed to go all in on Mexican food, including, at someone's specific insistence, salsa ordered by the gallon. The Sisterhood had been working on the decorations since January.

And now: no hall.

Rabbi Horowitz stood in the parking lot for a long moment after Phil left. Then he went inside, picked up the phone, and called his wife.

Rebbetzin Devorah Horowitz was the chair of the Limudei Avot Youth Team — terrible slogan "Don't be late - join LAYT today!" created in the 1990s but never losing its original "youthful" members. Devorah was the person you called when the caterer cancelled the night before the annual dinner, when the Torah was found to have a letter cracked on Thursday and needed emergency repair before Shabbos, when two b'nei mitzvah families had been double-booked for the same Saturday and nobody had noticed until that week.

She answered on the first ring.

Rabbi Horowitz explained. There was a silence on the other end that he recognized: not panic, but the particular stillness of a woman mentally sorting through a problem before she begins speaking.

"Shabbos starts in two hours," she said finally.

"I know."

"There's nothing we can do until Saturday night."

"I know."

Another pause. "Dovid," she said, "those sombreros were non-refundable."

"I know that too."

"All right," said Devorah. "Saturday night. Tell the Team to be at our house at nine."

Shabbos that week had an unusual quality. Those who knew about the roof — and by Friday night candle-lighting, that was most of the shul — moved through the day with the particular restlessness of people who have a problem they cannot yet address. The davening was fine. The cholent was fine. The Shabbos afternoon naps were, if anything, longer than usual, because sleeping was the one productive thing available.

Devorah made lists in her head of what needed to be done after Havdalah. By the time Shabbos ended she had assembled, in her mind, a complete action plan. What she did not yet have was a venue.

The Youth Team convened at the Horowitz kitchen table at nine o'clock Saturday night: Devorah with her legal pad, Morty Feldstein the gabbai with his ancient address book, and Barry Sternberg, the shul's resident real-estate maven, who arrived still in his Shabbos suit and immediately began working his phone.

"Two hundred and thirty people," said Devorah. "Mexican theme. Monday night. The sombreros are already in Rena Bloom's minivan."

"What about the JCC?" said Morty.

"I called. They have a Sweet Sixteen."

"The Marriott ballroom?"

"Bar mitzvah."

"The firehouse on—"

"They need two weeks' notice minimum for liability reasons."

Barry looked up from his phone. He had the expression of a man who has just remembered something. "There's a new nightclub downtown," he said. "By the waterfront. Called Aura. Just got its certificate of occupancy last week. LED lighting system, the whole thing — apparently the place glows. Owner's holding his grand opening in two weeks but technically the space is ready."

Devorah's pen was already moving. "Capacity?"

"Four hundred."

"Sound system?"

"State of the art, from what I hear."

"It's perfect," said Devorah. "What's the catch?"

Barry set his phone down on the table. "The owner is Kevin O'Donnell."

Kevin O'Donnell was not an antisemite in any classical sense. He had simply once remarked, at a family gathering after one whiskey too many, that he found Jews exhausting — too much talking, too much negotiating. (He wasn't entirely wrong.) He had said it once. It had been repeated, as things get repeated in close communities — imperfectly, with elaboration — until it reached the Jewish community as: Kevin O'Donnell hates Jews and said so at his mother's funeral.

This was inaccurate. But it was what LAYT was working with.

"We can't just call him," said Devorah.

"No," agreed Barry and Morty simultaneously.

They sat for a moment.

"What about Reverend Callahan?" said Morty.

Reverend Kenneth Callahan — Vicar of St. Brendan's Church on Maple Avenue, three blocks from the shul — had grown up with Kevin O'Donnell, been an altar boy with Kevin O'Donnell, attended the same schools, played on the same streets. He had once, in 1974, taken the blame for a broken rectory window that Kevin O'Donnell had definitely broken. Kevin would do almost anything Ken asked, partly out of affection and partly out of a debt he had never quite acknowledged but never entirely forgotten.

Devorah looked at her watch. Nine-thirty on a Saturday night.

"Call him," she said.

Morty called. The Reverend answered on the third ring, sounding not at all put out.

"Of course I know the shul," said Reverend Callahan warmly, when Morty explained. "Rabbi Horowitz is a good man. What can I do?"

Morty explained the situation. There was a thoughtful pause.

"Kevin can be stubborn," said Reverend Callahan. "But I'll try. I can't promise anything."

"We understand completely," said Morty.

"And," said Reverend Callahan, with what Morty would later describe as a gentle but utterly unmistakable firmness, "if I'm going to all this trouble, I would like to attend. I have always wanted to see a Purim celebration."

Morty covered the phone and looked at Devorah. She spread her hands: obviously.

"Reverend Callahan," said Morty, "you are not only invited, you are our guest of honor."

Kevin O'Donnell called back forty minutes later. He had spoken to Callahan. He was willing — reluctantly, with conditions, in the voice of a man doing a favor he had not entirely agreed to do.

Condition one: the venue had to be left exactly as found.

Condition two: the shul was responsible for any damage.

Condition three — and here his voice took on the careful tone of a businessman protecting an investment — before any outside event could use the space, he needed a formal audit of the premises. His insurance carrier required it. His accountant was unavailable until Monday morning.

"Monday morning?" said Devorah.

"Ten o'clock," said O'Donnell. "Not a minute before. That's the earliest my carrier will accept."

Devorah looked at the ceiling. The party was Monday night. The audit would clear — if it cleared — with perhaps ten hours to spare.

"Fine," she said. "We'll have our own accountant there."

She hung up and looked at Morty.

"Who do we have?" she said.

Morty opened his address book.

"Marvin Gross," he said.

Marvin Gross was a precise, quietly anxious man who had been doing taxes for half the shul for twenty-three years and who approached every financial document with the focused intensity of someone defusing something. He was reached at home mid-Saturday-night, in the middle of what he described as "a very important Sudoku."

"I need you to audit a nightclub on Monday morning at ten o'clock," said Devorah.

A pause. "What kind of nightclub?"

"The kind with a certificate of occupancy and an insurance carrier."

"Is this for the—"

"Purim party. Yes."

Another pause. "I'll need to prepare."

"You have all day Sunday."

"I'll need the preliminary financials by—"

"Barry Sternberg will get them to you tonight."

A very long pause. "All right," said Marvin. "You know, Devorah, what I call a last second audit? An oy-dit!"

Devorah groaned.

There is something very ironic with the far-right claiming that isolationism is "America First." It isn't. Whether we like it or not, we live in an intertwined world, and we need to act that way to maximize American power and security.

A free, pro-Western Iran wouldn't just benefit Iranians. It would be one of the most consequential geopolitical wins in a generation — and it maps almost perfectly onto what "America First" actually demands: less entanglement, stronger allies, cheaper energy, and adversaries put on the back foot. The collapse of this regime would solve or reduce multiple problems at once.

It Deals a Structural Blow to China

China buys 80–90% of Iran's oil exports - at steep sanctions discounts that effectively subsidize its industrial machine. That cheap fuel, combined with Iran's role as a BRI corridor and BRICS partner, makes Tehran one of Beijing's more useful strategic relationships. It is not irreplaceable, but genuinely valuable.

A democratic Iran changes the math entirely. Iranian oil returns to the open market, sold at market prices to whoever pays most. China loses its discount supplier, its BRICS partner, and a key node in its anti-Western coalition simultaneously. It would also have to reckon with a pro-Western government sitting astride regional trade routes it had counted on controlling.

This a structural setback for Beijing, the kind that forces a strategic recalculation.

It Kneecaps Russia

Since the Ukraine war began, Iran has been one of Russia's most consequential military suppliers. Shahed drones, produced cheaply and in volume, have reshaped the battlefield in ways NATO planners are still adjusting to. That supply chain runs through the Islamic Republic.

Regime change ends it. Russia fights on but with one fewer arsenal to draw from and one fewer sanctions-hardened partner willing to absorb Western economic pressure alongside it. Every Shahed that doesn't get built is a Ukrainian city that doesn't get hit.

It Stabilizes the Gulf — and Reverses the Saudi Drift

Saudi Arabia has been hedging toward China, and the reasons aren't hard to understand. Riyadh looks at American foreign policy and sees an unreliable partner, one that oscillates between maximum pressure and nuclear appeasement, that withdrew from Afghanistan in chaos, that has never quite resolved what it wants the Middle East to look like. Meanwhile, Iranian aggression through proxies - the Houthis threatening Red Sea shipping, Hezbollah destabilizing Lebanon, Hamas making normalization politically toxic - makes any bold Saudi diplomacy look reckless.

A pro-Western Iran changes both calculations simultaneously. The Sunni-Shia cold war that has organized Gulf politics for four decades loses its engine. The existential Iranian threat that has kept Gulf states in permanent defensive crouch fades. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other moderate Arab states suddenly have far more room to maneuver - toward the United States, toward Israel, toward a regional order that doesn't require Chinese patronage as insurance against Iranian aggression.

American strength creates the conditions for Gulf stability. Gulf stability ends the drift toward Beijing. The logic is straightforward.

The Abraham Accords Get Their Momentum Back

The Abraham Accords were genuinely historic, and they stalled not because Arab states secretly oppose normalization with Israel, but because Iran made the cost of visible friendship with Israel much higher. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis function as instruments of Iranian policy as much as anything else. Their purpose is to ensure that any Arab leader who moves toward Israel faces a domestic and regional firestorm funded and armed from Tehran.

Remove Iranian sponsorship of the rejectionist axis and the landscape shifts dramatically. Moderate Arab governments that have wanted normalization for years - and have been quietly pursuing it in back channels - suddenly have political space to move openly. Saudi-Israeli normalization, which seemed tantalizingly close before October 7, becomes achievable again. The rejectionist veto over Arab politics, held in place by Iranian money and Iranian weapons, dissolves.

Energy Prices Come Down

Iran holds some of the world's largest proven oil and gas reserves, currently constrained by sanctions, mismanagement, and deliberate underinvestment. A democratic Iran rejoining the global energy market as a legitimate producer means a meaningful increase in supply — which means lower prices.

This is good for American consumers. It's good for European allies still painfully weaning themselves off Russian energy. And it's bad for every petrostate whose fiscal models depend on prices staying elevated. Lower energy prices are themselves a form of strategic pressure on America's adversaries, achieved not through policy but through market reality.

Ninety Million Iranians Get Their Country Back

The Islamic Republic is not Iran. It is a revolutionary theocracy that has held one of the world's oldest and most sophisticated civilizations hostage for forty-five years. The Iranian people - educated, cosmopolitan, with deep historical ties to the West and a cultural inheritance stretching back millennia - have been trying to communicate this for decades.

A free Iran is not a client state or a nation-building project. It is a natural ally - one with a population already oriented toward democratic values, enormous human capital, and energy wealth that would benefit the entire world. For once, the idealists and the realists want exactly the same thing.

The foreign policy class has long treated "stability" in the Middle East as meaning the preservation of existing arrangements, however dysfunctional. But the Islamic Republic isn't stable — it is a source of instability, exported deliberately and systematically across the region for forty-five years. Its fall wouldn't destabilize the Middle East. It would remove the single greatest source of destabilization the region has.

Yes, it is good for Israel. But it is even better for America.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

When the going gets tough, political actors use antisemitism to help. Latest example: Iran.

Antisemitism functions as a reusable political instrument. It pre-exists any particular regime and can be activated when convenient. There is always a reliable population that is either already antisemitic or willing to be swayed which can be mobilized by political actors to help shore up their bases.

The Arab world used antisemitism for decades whenever regimes were in trouble or threatened by populist uprisings to try to redirect anger outside. The Nazis didn't create a new strain of antisemitism - they took advantage of the existing antisemitic feeling in Germany that was already there. The new Right antisemitism of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens is tapping into and extending the neo-Nazi fringe that never left the American Right. Progressive "anti-Zionists" can reliably position Jews as the rich/white/powerful uber-oppressors.

In each case the pre-cancerous cells of antisemitism are there beforehand, waiting to be metastasized by whomever needs it for their own political purposes.

Which brings us to Iran.

At this time, Iran doesn't need to mobilize antisemites from within Iran but from outside. Normally we see their Arabic language media playing on Arab antisemitism to shame Arab nations who dare have peace deals with Israel.

In English, though, their targets are American antisemites. This article in Abna24 shows how it works today:

Trump sacrifices American soldiers for power-hungry Israel: Iran's security chief
Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran Ali Larijani has once again denounced the US president for destabilizing the West Asia region, emphasizing that Donald Trump, with his ill-founded aspirations, has been sacrificing American troops for the power-seeking Israeli regime.

Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran Ali Larijani has once again denounced the US president for destabilizing the West Asia region, emphasizing that Donald Trump, with his ill-founded aspirations, has been sacrificing American troops for the power-seeking Israeli regime.

In a statement on Monday, Larijani reprimanded Trump, saying his delusional behavior, has turned the self-made slogan 'America First' into 'Israel First,' ignoring the consequences for the United States.

We see Larijani is hoping to get more support from the American antisemitic far-Right as a promising avenue to pressure the Trump administration to stop the war. He positions America as a slave to Israel's interests. Which is a neat inversion from the "Big Satan/Little Satan" rhetoric that Iran has usually been using since 1979.

And of course, for the purposes of this argument, Larijani is positioning himself not as a lifelong opponent of everything the US stands for but as a principled supporter of America First ideology - a friend, if you will.

Antisemitism is endlessly elastic, which is why it is employed by actors who cannot agree on anything else. Iran is saying that it has a lot in common with the antisemites on America's Right, whom they normally despise, and therefore they should partner up against their common enemy.

Once Iran reframes itself as the true defender of American interests against “Israel First” politicians, it is no longer merely attacking US policy. It is attempting to recruit Americans into a narrative where their own government is the captive of Jews.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Harvard’s Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights Policy is hosting an event this week titled From Apartheid to Democracy: A Blueprint for Peace in Israel-Palestine. The book it features proposes to “end apartheid and occupation rule” and establish a transitional framework leading to democratic decision-making about the territory’s future governance.

Universities should host controversial ideas. Human rights centers, especially, should not be timid. But intellectual seriousness requires clarity about what is being proposed — and what assumptions are being adopted.

The book's premise is that Israel is an apartheid state and that the area from the river to the sea is essentially a one state reality today. The problem isn't the book making these false claims; it is that the Carr Center is treating them as uncontested fact.

The Carr Center’s event description does not say “what the authors describe as apartheid.” It states, flatly, that the goal is to end apartheid and occupation rule. That framing is not neutral. Whether Israel constitutes an apartheid regime is one of the most fiercely debated legal and political claims in international discourse. I have demonstrated many times that the groups making those arguments twist international law for their own political purposes. Treating it as settled fact is itself a substantive position.

More importantly, the proposal being discussed is completely different than how human rights are discussed in the context of any other state.

Normally, human rights groups either claim that a state is violating international law and demand it complies, or they seek to use existing legal frameworks to change the state's policies from the inside. Human rights advocacy typically demands compliance with international law within existing sovereign frameworks. It rarely proposes immediate regime replacement as the primary remedy.

Yet this is what is being suggested here. Only for Israel, a state that (whether the authors believe it or not) takes human rights and international law very seriously.

According to the event description, the authors seek to design a transition government, reform laws and institutions, and lay the groundwork for democratic decision-making about the future governance of Israel-Palestine. In practice, that necessarily entails redefining sovereignty, citizenship, and political authority across the entire territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Extending equal political rights across the entire territory prior to any final status decision would, as a matter of demographics and constitutional design, transform Israel’s identity as a Jewish-majority nation-state. That is not a marginal reform; it is a foundational restructuring of sovereignty. It would fundamentally alter Israel’s current national identity as a Jewish-majority nation-state. It is not honest to describe it as merely a technical peace plan. It is a proposal to replace the existing political order with a new one, without the approval of the current citizens of Israel, who would have no say on replacing their own government.

That is not democracy.

A human rights center has a special obligation here. Human rights law protects individual equality — but it also recognizes the right of peoples to self-determination. The tension between universal civic equality and national self-determination is one of the most difficult problems in modern political theory. Presenting a blueprint that effectively collapses one side of that tension without acknowledging it is not neutral scholarship.

The event description also frames the problem as Israel “waiting for a perfect partner for peace,” implying unilateral obstruction. It does not acknowledge Palestinian political fragmentation, the history of rejected proposals, Hamas’s continued control of Gaza, or the security collapse that followed Israel’s 2005 disengagement. One may dispute the weight of those factors, but omitting them entirely creates a moral asymmetry that undermines credibility.

The fact that the Palestinians have rejected their own state, numerous times, since 1947, is ignored, and all those rejections are framed as Israel's fault alone. Yet Palestinian rejectionism was because they never wanted to build their own state where they can have rights, but to destroy another state. This plan fits in very well with that strategy,. It does not allow Jews to have rights, no matter what hand waving the authors claim. It is a warmed over version of Moammar Gaddafi's "Isratine" proposal.

There is another question the event framing does not confront: what prevents a transitional authority from descending into civil conflict? Regime replacement in deeply divided societies is historically volatile. South Africa is often invoked as a comparative case, but the Israeli-Palestinian conflict differs in demography, regional environment, armed non-state actors, and mutual existential fears. A glance at newspapers between 1945 and 1948 shows that Arabs were routinely attacking Jews and some Jewish groups responded in kind. People were murdered daily. That is the real "one state reality" that proponents of plans like this ignore.

If the event were structured as a debate, with explicit acknowledgment of competing interpretations of occupation, apartheid, and the asymmetry of demanding the overhauls of the only Jewish state where Jews can practice self determination while not demanding the same for any other nation may exemplify academic rigor.

As currently described, it reads like the Carr Center is accepting the false premises and the only debate is exactly how the Jewish state must be weakened or dismantled.

Beyond that, the book that is being discussed was written by and promoted by members of "Democracy for the Arab World Now." DAWN has treated Hamas primarily as a political actor rather than foregrounding its terrorism. A human rights organization that cannot bring itself to criticize Hamas is a peculiar one to be promoted by Harvard University. Beyonf that , DAWN has troubling ties to Islamist groups and its anti-Israel advocacy has no resemblance to fairness or accuracy. One example is its "doxxing" of members of AIPAC by putting their pictures on playing cards, reminiscent of armies who use playing cards so soldiers know who to target. DAWN knows the symbolism and chose to treat American Zionists as if they are war criminals deserving of being targeted for death. Why would the Carr Center even consider promoting a group that does such a thing?

A blueprint for peace is welcome. But clarity about what is being dismantled, what is being built, and whose rights are being recalibrated is not optional. It is the minimum standard for serious human rights scholarship.

As it stands, by accepting the premises of this book in its description, the Carr Center is abandoning the very human rights and democratic frameworks that they claim to uphold.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

03/01 Links: The hypocrisy of the West’s weepers for the Islamic Republic; 9 killed as Iranian missile destroys synagogue in Beit Shemesh; 3 American soldiers killed

From Ian:

John Podhoretz: First Thoughts on the New Iran War

He did not say the war was for regime change. He said that ,after we had achieved our military aims, the Iranian people should take the golden opportunity to free themselves from the tyranny that has had its boot on their faces for 47 years.

There is a distinction.

A regime-change war would effectively require us to go in on the ground in Tehran, take out the mullahs, and announce that a regency of some sort that would then lead to a new republic. Instead, this war is designed to take out the command, control, communications, and military abilities of the regime and leave Khamenei and his demonic underlings denuded, undefended, alone, and astoundingly weak—to leave their regime a carcass to be picked over rather than continue to exist as a punch-drunk boxer who can rise from the canvas and try to keep swinging. Once we’re done, it would be quick work for Iranians themselves to kick the mullahs to the curb.

But, regime change war or not, I think my questions now have pretty clear answers. The six weeks of diplomatic dithering following the Iranian slaughter were, in fact, simply temporizing. We got our ducks in a row—and, presumably, gave Israel time to help us locate the necessary targets inside Iran to strike the bad guys while leaving the general population largely unmolested.

Today, February 28, 2026, may be the most important day of the 21st Century so far. May God bless our fighting forces as they place themselves in harm’s way to protect, defend, and save the West—and may we triumph over this remorseless, conscienceless, and evil enemy that has been at war with the “Great Satan” for nearly half a century.

Brendan O'Neill: The hypocrisy of the West’s weepers for the Islamic Republic

How do we explain a moral universe where there can be more fury over strikes against a government than there was over that government’s mass murder of its own citizens? This, sadly, is what has become of ‘anti-imperialism’. That old noble cause was once about defending the independence of nation states that found themselves in the crosshairs of the Great Powers. In recent years, however, it has curdled into a cynical, blind loathing for America. It’s just anti-Westernism now. It is fuelled less by a love of sovereign rights than by a kind of cultish self-flagellation, where the fashionable suspicion of all things Western gets falsely dolled up as ‘anti-war activism’.

This idea that the West is always wicked, and thus its enemies deserve empathy, is less the heir to the great peace movements of old than an outgrowth of the anti-civilisational trends that run riot in the academy and across the cultural establishment. We end up in the sick-making situation where the moral guardians of the new left are silent when a people’s revolt is savagely put down but agitated when the men responsible for it get a missile through their bedroom window. Because according to the juvenile commandments of anti-Westernism, America is the source of every earthly problem. Thus when America causes a death in Iran, it’s World War III, it’s a crime against humanity. Yet when the regime causes infinitely more deaths in Iran, meh.

There’s a curious reverse racism to this insistence on blaming the West for everything bad. It infantilises the regimes of the world, treating their crimes almost as instances of diminished responsibility rather than true offences against the human spirit. To see imperialism in action, look no further than the Islamic Republic. It deploys cruel proxies to enforce its theocratic writ everywhere from Lebanon to Gaza to Yemen. It green-lit the Islamofascist invasion of Israel on 7 October 2023, as a warning to both the Jewish State and the Saudis who were repairing their relationship with it. It calls home its brutish proxies every now and then to deploy them against the Iranian people themselves – classic coloniser behaviour. If you’re an anti-imperialist, the Islamic Republic should offend your every moral fibre.

I know, it has long been a tactic of the interventionist lobby to call the critics of their wars ‘pro-regime’. Those of us who opposed the lie-fuelled invasion of Iraq and the reckless US-UK intervention in Libya were slandered as Saddam sycophants and Gaddafi apologists. But in this instance, isn’t it justified? ‘Anti-war’ leftists made apologies for Hamas. They shed more tears over the exploding bollocks of Hezbollah militants than they did over the Druze kids killed by those militants. They chanted for the anti-Semitic brutes of Iran’s personal army in Yemen – the Houthis. There is a serious discussion to be had about the wisdom of what is happening right now. Many of us remain wary of external intervention, believing it is more likely to deepen regional and global tensions rather than liberate the oppressed populace. But we are well within our rights to wonder if those saying ‘Hands off Iran’ really mean ‘Hands off this regime that slaughters innocent men and women because at least it is anti-American like us’.

I fled Iran’s terror — Trump’s courage is an answer to my prayers

Every US president since Jimmy Carter has sat across the table from Iran and bought what they were selling.

Trump is the first one who didn’t.

When Barack Obama blinked on Syria in 2013, after Assad crossed Obama’s red line on chemical weapons, the world learned American threats were negotiable.

When Obama handed Iran the nuclear deal formally known as JCPOA, with its sanctions relief, billions in unfrozen assets and a sunset clause, the regime learned America would reward it for promises it never planned to keep.

Saturday, the regime learned that era is over.

Trump sees the Iranian regime for what it is, a destabilizing force that has plotted assassinations of American officials, including Trump himself — and he acted.

That takes courage. It takes historic vision.

For the first time, an American president has come to the rescue of the Iranian people, rather than focusing only on the nuclear file.

When the strikes began early Saturday, I heard from friends and relatives, some of them in Iran.

They were celebrating — particularly the reports that the Supreme Leader himself had been killed — and cautiously hopeful.

But every one of them said the same thing: Their deepest fear is that these strikes will stop short.

That they will wound the regime just enough to bring it back to the table, but leave it intact, still capable of crushing dissent, still able to imprison, torture, and execute the young Iranians who dare to dream of something better.

The Iranian people do not want a weakened theocracy.

They want a free Iran, one whose government answers to the nation’s interests, not to a revolutionary ideology exported on the backs of suffering civilians across the region.

If these strikes are designed to achieve that end, history will remember them as a turning point.

If they are designed merely to extract concessions, if the regime survives and regroups, the Iranian people will pay the price.

The courage it took to begin this must be matched by the vision to see it through.

By Daled Amos

The anticipated attack on Iran has begun. The general consensus was not so much focused on whether Trump was going to authorize the US attack as when. That question is no longer on the table. But even for those who considered the war a certainty, there are some surprises.

For one thing, there has been a surprising level of support for the attack among the international community. On the one hand, last month, a Quinnipiac poll found that 70% of American voters didn't want the US to take military action against Iran in response to the murder of Iranian protesters by the regime. The same amount insisted that Trump needed Congressional support first. If Americans opposed the idea in the abstract, imagine the response of other countries, especially considering the low opinion Europeans apparently have of Trump.

Yet Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said in an interview (19:40) that there has been surprising support for Trump's decision. He noted relatively strong statements from EU officials and from the Canadian and Australian prime ministers. He also pointed to the Saudi statement condemning Iranian strikes on the UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait.

But how long will that goodwill last?

The world's reaction to the terrorist massacre on October 7, siding with Israel, was extremely short-lived. It quickly locked onto Israel's response, using Hamas numbers and the often questionable reporting and pictures coming out of Gaza. How patient will the West be if casualties mount among the Arab states Iran is now targeting?

Andrew Fox, a former British Army officer, current research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, and lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, pointed out Iran's continued ability to fire missiles at surrounding Arab states hosting the US military:

A broader, uncomfortable lesson emerges for everyone observing the air defence situation. It is concerning that Iran has scored successful strikes around the Gulf on targets that have had weeks to prepare their defences. Even well-equipped defence networks have vulnerabilities when faced with high volume, complexity, geography, and limited reaction time.

Iran is not picky about its targets and is likely aiming to convince Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, and others to withdraw their support for the US and Israel. And if Iran can inflict enough civilian casualties, it may replicate the world condemnation that Hamas generated. That condemnation could revolve around international law, but also could focus locally on claims of Trump's abuse of power. Fox notes:

Under international law, the justification for using force will be debated endlessly: self-defence, immediacy, proportionality, and sovereignty. Most of the world will not share Washington’s or Jerusalem’s assumptions. Domestically in the United States, the issue of authorisation is also significant: major hostilities launched without explicit congressional approval are always politically and constitutionally damaging, especially if the conflict drags on.

In his State of the Union Address, Trump pointed out Iran's nuclear threat as well as the danger of its ballistic missiles. Legal Expert Eugene Kontorovich has weighed in on the issue, noting legal precedent and justification based on Iran's long history of animosity against the US, including assassination attempts and support for terrorism in the region:

A lot may depend on the actual length of the war. Last year, Trump declared both the start and the end of the war. Can he do that again?

The Atlantic has a piece reporting that Trump has told them that Iran is already reaching out to resume negotiations:

One day after launching strikes on Iran that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and embroiled the region in war, President Trump told me this morning that the country’s new leadership wants to talk with him and that he plans to do so.

“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them. They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long,” Trump told me in a phone call from his Mar-a-Lago resort shortly before 9:30 a.m.

We don't know how serious Iran is about talking at this point, nor can we tell how that will affect the goal of replacing the current Islamist, terrorism-supporting regime. But the situation is a tinderbox. So far, 3 US servicemen have been killed and 5 have been seriously wounded. This is more than the number of US casualties in the 12-day war last year. That has to be a consideration, too.

The same Western governments giving support may change their mind if civilian casualties increase or if the opposition against the US and Israel gains control of the narrative. Iran could win through the erosion of support. It just needs the conflict to drag out long enough for fatigue to set in. The real question is whether the US can maintain long enough to achieve its objectives.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Presenting: the GREATER Greater Israel Project

One of the more humorous parts of the Houthi leader's speech about Iran today was this:

The brutal American–Israeli aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran forms part of Zionist efforts to enable the Zionist Israeli enemy to dominate the region under the banner of 'Reshaping the Middle East', in pursuit of their well-known aggressive objective of 'Greater Israel'.

Hold on - I thought "Greater Israel was between the Nile and the Euphrates. Iran goes way beyond the Euphrates. Has the project expanded?

Apparently, the old map of "Greater Israel" has been replaced.

Here's the map we normally see on antisemitic sites:

Apparently the Jews' greed goes way beyond these measly borders.

Over the past year we learned that Somaliland was part of Greater Israel, meaning that the Nile portion must go all the way south the Lake Victoria.

We already knew from Turkish media that southeastern Turkey was in the sights of those Jews hungry for Muslim lands.

And others helpfully tell us that this is all in the shape of a snake with Masonic symbols on its back, from an Iranian edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Add it all up, and here is the first rough map of the Greater Greater Israel Project, created by none other than the Elder of Ziyon, so you know it's absolutely 100% accurate (not counting Jewish control of the US and Europe, of course.)

This is roughly the size of the lower 48 United States.

Those Jewish settlers better get down to making a lot more babies.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The official Houthi response to the joint Israeli-American airstrikes on Iran is very revealing. From Abdul Malik Badruddin Al-Houthi:

The American–Israeli assault on Iran is an unjustified attack on a Muslim country—an unjust, blatant, criminal, and brutal act—targeting the Iranian Muslim people, its official institutions, and its Islamic system. ....

The Islamic world as a whole should stand in solidarity with the Iranian Muslim people and the Islamic Republic, and adopt a sincere, serious position, offering all forms of cooperation and solidarity with it and utilising political pressure and all means of influence to halt this aggression.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, with its brave revolutionary guards and valiant army, is fulfilling its sacred jihad duty of legitimate defence and confronting the enemies with full strength... It possesses formidable military capabilities and the means to inflict severe harm on the enemies, as well as the free will and courage to take the decisions and measures necessary to confront this aggression.

Our position in Yemen, both the state and the people, is one of full solidarity with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Iranian Muslim people. We are ready for any necessary developments. As for this aggression against Iran, there is no reason for concern: Iran is strong, its stance is firm, and its response is decisive. In reality, it is fighting the battle of the entire Muslim Ummah against American–Israeli Zionist tyranny.

...We will act through various avenues, including public activities and mass demonstrations. This mobilisation is part of our Islamic duty to stand with a Muslim people, a Muslim country, and an Islamic system that is fighting the Muslim Ummah’s battle against its enemies—those who target the Ummah as a whole.

There you go - the Houthis are planning a big demonstration today!

They say that Iran is strong enough to win on its own. No need to help them at all! But for all of the mullah's awesome strength, instead of encouraging Iran to finally destroy Israel, they are asking for the Zionist "aggression" to stop.

They also say that they will fight hard themselves - on social media and satellite channels.

You just know Iran is begging the remnants of its Axis of Resistance - the Houthis, Hezbollah, armed Shiite groups in Iraq - to join in and take some pressure off Iran. And their erstwhile allies are saying, um, "We are 100% behind you... way behind you. But you got this!"

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

When International Law Can't Keep Up With Existential Threats

Many pundits are arguing that the joint Israeli-US airstrikes against Iran were illegal under international law — that no imminent threat existed to justify the use of force. They have a point, as far as the existing legal framework goes. But that framework is precisely the problem.

The UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and customary international law were built around a specific model of aggression: armies massing at borders, attacks that are sudden and identifiable, threats that cross a clear threshold of imminence. Under this model, a state may act in self-defense only when an attack is underway or unmistakably about to begin.

That model made sense for the world it was designed for.

Iran's threat to Israel — and to regional stability more broadly — does not fit that model. It has been built slowly, over decades, through proxy terror networks, ballistic missile development, nuclear weapons research, and relentless incitement calling for the destruction of a UN member state. Each individual step, examined in isolation, stays just below the threshold that would legally justify a military response. The aggression is incremental.

International law has no adequate answer for a state that sponsors proxy forces attacking its neighbors, lies systematically to international inspectors, arms terrorist organizations targeting civilians worldwide, and builds toward a weapons capability — all while the clock runs. The default legal answer is to wait. Wait for formal imminence. Wait for undeniable proof. Wait until the threat is so advanced it can no longer be stopped.

For most countries, waiting is a viable strategy. For a small state that its adversary has pledged to eliminate, it is a gamble with national survival.

There is a second dimension that international law fails to capture: deterrence logic. Israel now has a demonstrated record of making clear that anyone who plans or funds a major attack will eventually face consequences. That credibility is itself a form of war prevention. It changes the calculation for future terror sponsors. After the Munich Olympics massacre, and after October 7, Israel has made clear that every party involved will pay the price eventually. Iran is Hamas' main financial and military sponsor. The only disincentive fo rthat is assassination-level response, to deter attacks in the future.

International law offers no framework for evaluating whether such deterrence reduces the overall probability of mass-casualty conflict. It only evaluates the legality of the discrete action. But a nation like Israel cannot afford to experiment. Deterrence is a major weapon it has and it seems logical that, for example, after eliminating Hezbollah's previous leaders, the current leader will be a lot more cautious before deciding to attack.

The argument that survival justifies action beyond codified legal thresholds is not new, and it has been abused. Preventive war is one of the most dangerous doctrines in international relations. Any state invoking existential exception must meet a high evidentiary burden: the threat must be sustained, documented, and severe; alternatives must have been exhausted; and proportionality must be maintained and accounted for. This doctrine cannot become a blank check for any country to act aggressively claim long-term self defense. But we are talking about legitimate existential fears, not excuses for starting wars. International law cannot distinguish between the two, but that doesn't mean a nation under real threat must wait until its enemies gain enough strength to destroy it.

In Iran's case, the evidentiary record is extensive and public. Iran's proxies have deliberately targeted civilians across multiple continents. Iran's own missile strikes in the past 24 hours — aimed at hotels in Dubai and a residential building in Bahrain, far from any military installation — confirm that civilian targeting is intentional. The pattern is unambiguous. The burden, in this instance, is met.

Iran claims it only strikes military targets. The events of this weekend have made that claim untenable.

There is an irony in all of this. Israel is regularly accused of violating international law regardless of how carefully it adheres to it. That persistent bad faith has a perverse consequence: it reduces the reputational cost of acting outside the legal framework in genuine cases of necessity. When the rules are applied asymmetrically they lose their moral authority. Israel did not create that asymmetry. It has simply learned to operate within it.

I'm not saying that international law should be discarded. It is that the current framework has a structural gap. It wasn't designed to address slow-motion existential aggression, the deliberate, patient accumulation of threat below the imminence threshold, sustained over decades. Forcing threatened states to absorb that accumulation until it crosses a formal legal line doesn't prevent war: it increases the probability of a far more catastrophic one.

If the international system cannot address this class of threat, it must evolve. The imminence doctrine needs a framework for sustained, documented, existential aggression, one that sets high standards for evidence and proportionality, but does not demand that a small state wait for the blow it may not survive.

International law must evolve to take its own stated purpose seriously.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/28 Links: US and Israel launch major joint assault on Iran; Trump indicates goal is to topple regime; Trump says ‘evil’ Khamenei is dead

From Ian:

US and Israel launch major joint assault on Iran; Trump indicates goal is to topple regime

After long weeks of escalating regional tensions and burgeoning threats of conflict, Israel and the US launched a major joint strike on Iran on Saturday morning, with waves of attacks on sites across the Islamic Republic continuing throughout the day.

Strikes targeted Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian, an Israeli official said. Other top regime and military commanders were also targeted, according to the official. The results of the strikes were not yet clear.

Targets in the campaign, which began shortly after 8 a.m. Israel time, also included Iran’s military, symbols of government and intelligence targets, according to an official briefed on the operation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic information on the attack.

Several senior Revolutionary Guards commanders and political officials were killed, an Iranian source close to the establishment told Reuters. Among them were the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Gen. Mohammad Pakpour, and Iranian defense minister Aziz Nasirzadeh, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

US President Donald Trump announced that the US had begun “major combat operations in Iran,” calling the campaign “a massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.”

“We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally… obliterated. We are going to annihilate their navy,” he said in a video statement posted on his Truth Social account.

“We are going to ensure that the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces.”

Trump indicated that the goal was to topple the regime, and he called on the Iranian people to seize the opportunity and take over their government.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his own video message to the public that the operation was launched “to remove the existential threat” posed by the Islamic Republic, and “create the conditions” for Iranians to change their destiny.

“The time has come for all parts of the Iranian people… to cast off the yoke of tyranny and bring about a free and peace-seeking Iran,” the premier said.

Stephen Pollard: Donald Trump has just demonstrated the decisive leadership the West needs

Today that same Donald Trump – braggart, authoritarian and many other equally awful labels – stands before the world after an act of global leadership that makes all other leaders look like pygmies beside him. The decision to take on Iran and provide a platform for the destruction of the Tehran regime is one of the most vital and necessary acts of recent decades.

Trump’s statement this morning repays close reading. It is the most clear-sighted, compelling and important speeches by and Western leader since 9/11. For decades the Western nations have allowed Iran to grown in strength and deepen its threat. It has been allowed to become the global leader in state-sponsored terror. And the JCPOA – the Iran nuclear deal – was perhaps the most misguided international treaty in living memory. Who ripped it up? Donald Trump in his first term.

Now he is seeking to finish the job he started by using the might of the US military to cripple the Iranian regime and offer the brave, young people of Iran the chance of freedom. There is no greater prize in the Middle East. Iranians are natural allies of the West – and of Israel – and today is a day of hope and wonder, with the possibility now opening up that they might have the chance to witness the overthrowing of the hated regime. Naturally Trump’s war on the Iranian regime has attracted the ire of the usual suspects. Good. These are the same people who have either directly or indirectly aided the regime for decades. It is all to the good that they and their arguments are being treated with the contempt they deserve. This is no time for talk, but for action: and only Trump has the strength and bravery required to provide it.

Jake Wallis Simons: The world’s most evil regime is on the brink – and Britain has nothing to do with it

Where was Britain? As missiles reportedly killed the Ayatollah in Tehran, his office in London remained open. His ambassador has not been expelled. His Revolutionary Guards have not been banned in this country, even as they are under attack in their own.

Iran, together with its allies in Beijing and Moscow, is the clearest global evil since the Nazi regime. Its tentacles stretch into Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq, and into the campuses, mosques and protest movements of Britain. Yet our response has been more Neville Chamberlain than Winston Churchill.

What will it take for us to call an enemy an enemy? Domestically, the regime has murdered more than 40,000 citizens for the crime of calling for freedom. It has removed the uteruses of female protesters, injected prisoners with toxic substances, executed wounded activists in their hospital beds and demanded huge sums to return corpses of loved ones. The scenes of mothers weeping over the bodies of their children, or dancing in defiance at their funerals, have been unbearable.

Abroad, the regime is the foremost sponsor of terror, giving birth to Hezbollah, sponsoring Hamas and mounting scores of assassination and kidnap plots on British soil. Through its proxies, it runs a narcotics network stretching from Latin America to the Middle East, with supplies of Captagon alone fostering widespread addiction, violence and criminality.

Behind it all is a fanatical theology that lusts after an apocalyptic war to trigger the coming of the Mahdi, a 10th-century cleric who will supposedly return from invisibility to conquer the globe in the endtime. This is not an empty faith. For 47 years, the Ayatollah – who has reportedly been killed by a US or Israeli missile – has been plotting to fulfil this prophecy with a triune strategy of proxy militia, ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

That is where Iran’s resources and ingenuity have gone. While its citizens have languished in poverty atop the second-largest gas reserves on Earth, more than half-a-trillion dollars was spent on a failed nuclear programme and about $2 billion a year on proxy militia, for the sake of little more than bigotry and superstition.

Iran could have been a G20 country. Instead, in the fume-filled Palestine Square in central Tehran, a public clock counts down the hours to the supposed destruction of the Jewish state. Well, yesterday, while Britain blocked American warplanes from RAF bases because of “international law”, Israel and the United States called time on that countdown by rising to strangle the octopus.

The move was bold and fraught with risk. Without boots on the ground, there is no guarantee that the regime, which holds a monopoly on weapons in the country, will fall. If it does, there is no guarantee that a free, stable and democratic nation will emerge from the chaos.

But sometimes evil demands courage. What odds faced our soldiers on D-Day, or our pilots during the Battle of Britain? Which returns us to Downing Street. Hours after the war began, neither our Prime Minister nor his Foreign Secretary, fresh from humiliation at the hands of a political Islamist insurgency in Gorton and Danton, had even issued a public statement.

02/27 Links Pt2: The US and Israeli left’s parallel ‘own goal’; The gross bigotry behind the Greens’ hippy facade; Israel's Forgotten Christians

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: The US and Israeli left’s parallel ‘own goal’

Now for a similar “own goal” scored that day by the Israeli opposition. That occurred when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in the Jewish state and addressed the Knesset.

Ahead of his momentous visit—to sign a whopping 16 cooperation agreements, spanning agriculture, drone technology, satellite data, irrigation and fertilization management, pest control, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, education, digital finance, labor mobility, energy planning, defense coordination, trade facilitation, cultural exchange, innovation hubs and joint development initiatives—the anti-government lawmakers were apoplectic. Not about Modi, but rather due to Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana’s decision not to invite Supreme Court president Yitzhak Amit to the event.

This wasn’t the first time Ohana had gone against traditional protocol to nix Amit’s attendance at a historic parliamentary gathering. He did so, as well, when Trump spoke to the Knesset on Oct. 13, 2025.

The reason for this has to do with the government’s view that Amit doesn’t deserve his title as chief justice of the Supreme Court since he and his cronies appointed him through an illegitimate process. And reforming the judicial system—part of the very “deep state” of unelected officials overriding the laws forged by elected ones—has been a key goal of the current ruling coalition.

So, the opposition couldn’t have been surprised by Ohana’s move, making their outrage mainly performative.

Their initial reaction was to announce that they would boycott the proceedings. Fearing that the plenum would be partially empty for Modi’s appearance, Ohana came up with a plan: to fill the seats with former Knesset members.

But opposition leader Yair Lapid, who suffers from two afflictions—FOMO (fear of missing out) and near annihilation in the polls—didn’t want to squander his chance to take to the podium. The upshot was that the legislators who were furious about Amit’s absence walked out when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke, then returned for Modi’s oratory.

Brendan O'Neill: The gross bigotry behind the Greens’ hippy facade

Witness how they sought to marshall Muslim fury over the war in Gaza. ‘Punish Labour for Gaza’, Greens hollered at Muslim voters. Or consider how they gave a sinister nod and wink to anti-Hindu animus by distributing a video showing Keir Starmer shaking hands with Indian PM Narendra Modi. The video was in Urdu, too. It was a blatant attempt to appeal to Hinduphobia among certain Muslim constituencies by linking Starmer with the Hindu leader Islamists love to hate. But, Greens moan, Labour also did it in the Batley and Spen by-election in 2021 when it handed out a leaflet showing Boris Johnson with Modi alongside the words ‘Don’t risk a Tory MP who is not on your side’. Yes, and that was lowlife bigotry-mongering too.

Greens also gave interviews to 5Pillars, the hardline Islamic outlet that is sympathetic to the Taliban and regularly features cosy chats with the neo-fascist, Nick Griffin. If Goodwin had gone on a pod infamous for its far-right guests, we’d never have heard the end of it. Then there’s the Greens’ neo-misogyny. This is a party that bows to the post-truth sexist mantra that ‘trans women are women’. It would let men into women’s changing rooms, women’s sports, women’s rape shelters. Not content with demolishing the Jewish right of nationhood, Greens also want to do away with the female right of privacy and dignity.

How is it possible that a party that rubs shoulders with sectarian bigots, and which would sacrifice women’s rights at the altar of men’s feelings, and which demonises Jewish nationhood, can get away with calling itself ‘progressive’? Call me a stickler for linguistic accuracy, but such a searingly dismissive attitude to the rights of women and Jews sounds more ‘far right’ to me than anything Matt Goodwin has ever said.

The loony Greens are a firm reminder that women and Jews are the two great losers under the Islamo-left ideology. On one side we have the keffiyeh-adorned genderfluid left that thinks a man’s right to piss where he likes counts for more than a woman’s right to privacy and which views Zionism as a demonic force deserving of destruction. And on the other we have regressive Islamists who think women should be cloaked when out in public and that Jews are a pox on humankind. In flirting with both of these nauseating creeds, the Greens have made themselves into the prime engine of bigotry in mainstream British politics. Pricking their hippyish facade, and exposing the truth about woke, is a pressing task of our time.

Australia’s Child Safety Icon and the ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Contradiction

Australia’s most prominent child safety advocate has become the public face of a slogan authorities link to mass civilian violence. A close examination of her own philosophy, her Foundation’s charter, and Australia’s evolving legal landscape reveals a serious question of consistency.

On a balmy February afternoon in Sydney, Grace Tame stood before a crowd and led them in a chant: “Globalize the intifada.”

The 2021 Australian of the Year, known for her uncompromising campaign against child sexual abuse and her insistence that language shapes the conditions in which violence becomes possible, invoked a term most commonly associated with the Second Intifada, during which more than 1,000 Israelis were killed, including 741 civilians and 124 children.

The episode has ignited a contentious debate in Australian public life. But stripped of partisan noise, the core issue is narrower and more serious: whether the principles Tame has articulated for institutions and public figures apply equally to her own words.

Her Framework: Language Creates Environments
The Grace Tame Foundation’s mission is explicit: to “ensure the right of children to be safe no matter where they are.” Its work is grounded in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, including Article 19, which protects children from “all forms of physical or mental violence.”

The Foundation’s strategy emphasises shaping “social behaviours and attitudes” and creating environments in which children can thrive. Tame herself has repeatedly argued that harm begins with language; that grooming is linguistic before it is physical, and that normalizing certain speech patterns creates the conditions in which abuse becomes possible.

In her 2022 National Press Club address, Tame distilled this philosophy clearly: words are not neutral. They shape environments, and environments shape outcomes. As she put it, “Words are pervasively subliminally weaponized.”

It is precisely this framework that is now being applied to her use of “Globalize the Intifada.”