07/23 Links Pt1: Americans Keep Buying the Same Used Car from Iran; Trump: US-Saudi nuclear deal contingent on Abraham Accords acceptance

From Ian:

Due to blogger's wobbly, yesterday's (22nd) links are in the comments here.

Iran Must Never Have a Nuclear Weapon

For months, the Commander-in-Chief has repeated a clear endstate: Iran will never possess a nuclear weapon. That objective is the only outcome consistent with American security, Israeli survival, and the prevention of nuclear-armed theocratic blackmail of the global energy system.

Iran's nuclear program is not a technical problem that can be solved by bombing centrifuges or stockpiles. It is a political-military program driven by a regime whose founding ideology and operational doctrine treat the acquisition of nuclear weapons as a means to destroy Israel and, ultimately, confront the U.S. As long as that leadership remains, the program can be reconstituted.

The June 2025 U.S.-Israeli strikes and the far larger February 2026 campaign severely damaged Natanz, Fordow, and related sites. Yet, the regime's scientific cadre, its archival blueprints, and its procurement networks survived. With residual scientists, data, and institutional knowledge intact, Iran can drastically shrink the timeline to a nuclear weapon in the near future despite recent setbacks.

"Managing" or "monitoring" the regime over time is a strategic illusion. It places the burden of eternal vigilance on future administrations that may lack the will, the congressional majorities, or the public support to act when Iran next sprints for the bomb. We have already watched this movie with North Korea. The difference is that a nuclear North Korea can be contained; a nuclear Iran cannot.

The permanent elimination of the regime's nuclear weapons ambition is achievable only by removing the regime that harbors it. Unconditional surrender of the Axis powers in 1945 is the relevant historical precedent. Germany and Japan were not "managed." Their regimes were destroyed, their ideologies discredited, and their war-making capacity permanently dismantled.

Leaving the Iranian regime in power after we have already killed its Supreme Leader and degraded its military is not prudence; it is strategic incoherence. Continuing to pursue diplomatic settlements with a proven non-compliant actor simply defers the day of reckoning.

Americans Keep Buying the Same Used Car from Iran

In Washington, negotiations are viewed as a pathway to an agreement. In Tehran, negotiations are viewed as another means of waging conflict. For Americans, an agreement represents the finish line. For the Iranian regime, it is, at most, an interim waypoint. Americans seek a resolution; Iranians seek an advantage.

For more than four decades, every time the U.S. has sought progress, the same Iranian "hardliners" have suddenly emerged as obstacles that must be appeased. Another small concession. Another limited sanctions waiver. Another symbolic gesture. Only then, perhaps, can the talks continue. From the Iranian perspective, this is the negotiating strategy.

There is little sense of defeat in Tehran. The regime's internal narrative is one of resilience. From the regime's perspective, the mere fact that the world's leading superpower continues to seek its consent constitutes a psychological and strategic victory in its own right. The U.S. increasingly appears to be responding to a tempo set by Tehran. Instead of rewriting the rules of the game, it seeks to negotiate more favorable terms within the existing framework.

In nearly every negotiating cycle, Americans convince themselves that an agreement is just around the corner, while Iranian leaders conclude that a little more patience will improve their bargaining position even further. Perhaps the question in Washington should no longer be, "What new proposal should we put forward?" Instead, policymakers should ask, "Why do we continue to assume that the other side views negotiations as serving the same purpose that we do?"

An operational alternative does exist. The U.S. possesses ample military capabilities to place overwhelming pressure on the Iranian regime. Rather than pursuing a costly ground invasion, Washington could impose a sustained maritime blockade.

Such an approach, however, would require strategic patience, political endurance, and a willingness to absorb retaliatory costs - qualities that successive American administrations have lacked. Consequently, the U.S. will most likely pursue yet another negotiated agreement.

Netanyahu’s insistence offers a clear hint of what lies ahead

“Call us when you’re serious,” U.S. Secretary of State James Baker told the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in the early 1990s.

Under the current Republican administration, with the current Likud prime minister, Washington is still answering the phone. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump are speaking, although no longer every day.

Something has been amiss in relations between the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office since the war with Iran became more complicated. The president’s inner circle is smaller and more closed than in previous administrations, and gaining access to it has become increasingly difficult. The Americans are making it clear to the Israelis that they are running the war and that everything is fine, thank you very much. But it is evident to everyone that Israel is moving into the back seat.

As a seasoned politician, Netanyahu presumably knows how to recognize deliberate distancing. One example came when Vice President JD Vance said, “Israel’s standing in America is not good, and I don’t think anyone can dispute that.” Last week, Vance had already made clear that he occupied the “sensible center,” between those who see Israel as a problem and those who see it as an asset. That is interesting, but the president’s silence is even more so.

And then there is Saudi Arabia. This week, Trump granted the kingdom the civilian nuclear program it had long sought, contrary to Israel’s position and without the broader package deal Israel had wanted. Former President Joe Biden held up a similar move in an effort to link that incentive to the Abraham Accords. His successor went ahead without tying the two together. Lindsey Graham must surely be turning in his grave.

This is already the second time that has happened. After all, lifting the sanctions on Syria also eliminated the possibility of securing a peace agreement with Israel. And all this is unfolding while the departure of Wing of Zion, Israel’s official aircraft for the prime minister and president, is delayed again and again.

The situation also has implications for the election.

I once heard a campaign strategist say that as far as Israelis are concerned, everything happening in the Middle East is foreign news until missiles begin landing here.

Mossad says it foiled Iranian plot to infiltrate Israel, attack senior officials

Working with foreign intelligence services, Israel foiled an Iranian plot to send operatives into Israel to harm senior Israeli officials, the Mossad intelligence agency said in a statement on Thursday.

The effort, led by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry, involved turning to criminal organizations, who would in turn recruit people inside Israel or who could enter Israel for gathering intelligence on a target, then carrying out an attack.

Two criminals living in Iran under the protection of the Intelligence Ministry — Baba Mahuzadeh Haji Jafan, also known as “Babak”; and Mehmet Nadim Ya’it, also known as “Nadim” — recruited Turut Ozkor, a criminal living in France who went by the nickname “Philip.”

The handlers of Babak and Nadim in the Iranian Intelligence Ministry are named by the Mossad as Asadollah Behzad Oskhari, Vahid Matzoumi, Mohammad-Hossein Zoghi and Hamid Qasemi.

Oskhari was killed in Israel’s 12-day bombing campaign against Iran in 2025 and was a key figure in plots to attack Jewish and Israeli targets worldwide, said the Mossad.

Philip was tasked with recruiting a cell of foreign nationals who would enter Israel, it added.

He traveled to Iran on several occasions to meet handlers and be paid, according to the statement.

Philip was expelled by France, while Babak and Nadim remain in Iran.

“Despite the attempt to avoid an Iranian fingerprint, the proxy method repeatedly demonstrates the carelessness of the operatives on the ground, leading to the exposure of their handlers in Iran,” said the Mossad.

The Mossad worked with Shin Bet and foreign intelligence agencies to uncover the network, the statement added.

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This is the kind of "barbarity" we need more of - Thousands of Jews visit the Temple Mount

From Jordan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Affairs has condemned the extremist Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, and a number of members of the Knesset and extremist settlers who stormed the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Quds Al-Sharif, under the protection of the Israeli occupation police, and the attacks on worshippers, and the provocative actions of extremists and the police, and raising Israeli flags, and inciting groups; a blatant violation of the historical and legal status of the holy Al-Haram Al-Sharif, and desecration of the sanctity of the mosque, and a blatant escalation, and a barbaric behavior, and unacceptable provocation.

Here's the Arab News edit of this blatant desecration and barbarism:

Jews walking around and singing. 

To large swaths of Muslims, Jews breathing is "barbaric behavior."  After all, the videos they show to prove that Jews are insulting them, "storming," acting "barbarically," never show anything more than Jews respectfully praying and touring the Temple Mount. 

Arabs have mounted attacks on Israelis from their "holy Al-Aqsa Mosque." They play soccer and volleyball and parkour. The only reason the police restricted Muslim entry today is because they wanted to ensure that the Jews wouldn't be attacked. 

Christians visit the Temple Mount. Jews visit the Temple Mount. They are not the ones who act barbarically.

But if this is barbarism, we need to see much more of it. 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Urologist Concerned About Congregant’s Premature ‘Amen’ (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook  and  Substack pages.

Jerusalem, July 23 - A local physician who regularly attends the same morning service has started worrying about another attendee who cannot seem to wit until the end of someone else's benediction before blurting out the response, the doctor disclosed today.

Dr. Efraim Shohat, 60, voiced his concern today that another everyday participant in the 7:00 AM Shaharit minyan at the Shtiblach synagogue in the Katamon neighborhood almost always blurts out "Amen!" prematurely, before anyone reciting a blessing or other passage has finished - and the urologist fears that such prematurity plagues the man in other parts of his life.

"I'm trained to diagnose and treat a very specific set of dysfunctions," Dr Shohat explained. "Most of my patients are men with one or more of a narrow group of... performance problems. The tendency here is clear, and I hope that man has gone to see a competent diagnostician about his specific issue."

Standard Jewish practice calls for one who hears a benediction to wait for its completion before affirming it with an "Amen." Ancient scholars cautioned against saying the word before ascertaining the acceptability of whatever is recited, an important safeguard in a world that still featured rampant idolatry and the invocation of those false gods in liturgy, as well as concern that the unscrupulous might insert offensive material into statements ostensibly geared toward divine praise.

Through the generations, spiritual leaders have further refined the sensibilities surrounding Amen, even associating a premature Amen with the premature death of one's loved ones. Dr. Shohat preferred to focus on the more immediate, clinical implications of the phenomenon.

"It's been at least four months since I first noticed," he recalled. "In that time, you'd think this man would realize he needs to seek treatment, or at least get himself checked out. And maybe a competent treatment plan would have kicked in by now. But I see no progress, and it's raising my hackles. I wonder whether I should say something."

The doctor has made observations of this nature before, but not with the same level of recurring concern. During the communal readings of the book of Esther that take place on Purim, a custom has developed of "erasing the name of Amalek" by making noise at each mention of the Amalekite villain Haman. However, the core observance involves hearing every word of the text, and many attendees fail to wait until the reader has finished saying "Haman" before making the customary racket, often involving yelling epithets. Shohat has remarked on those premature ejaculations along similar lines.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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The New York Times' One-Scholar Consensus on Genocide

Argumentum ad verecundiam is also known as "appeal to authority," that an argument should be believed because the person making it is an expert.

An appeal to authority becomes fallacious when expertise is presented as a substitute for evidence, or when the authority's conclusion is treated as dispositive without engaging competing evidence or expert disagreement. Beyond that, it is a tacit admission that the argument itself is weak enough that the arguer must shore it up with his or her credentials.

The New York Times has used Omer Bartov for argumentum ad verecundiam four times in headlines on his op-eds in the New York Times.

I searched the New York Times Opinion archives for comparable first-person headlines built around professional authority ("I'm a...," "As a...," etc.). While doctors, economists, and other experts occasionally reference their professions, I could not find another topic in which the newspaper repeatedly made the author's credentials themselves the central persuasive device in the headline.

Genocide scholarship is not unanimous. Numerous genocide scholars, international lawyers, military law experts, and historians dispute Bartov's conclusions. Yet the Times repeatedly presents Bartov's expertise as if it settles the matter. The New York Times doesn't give those who disagree op-ed space as guest columnists, let alone a headline announcing their expertise. (Columnists like Bret Stephens have argued against the genocide accusation.) 

The New York Times repeatedly promotes one side of a highly contested scholarly and legal question by emphasizing one author's credentials rather than foregrounding the evidence or acknowledging substantial expert disagreement.

Any newspaper may occasionally highlight an author's expertise. But four separate headlines over less than three years using essentially the same rhetorical device for the same author on the same controversial issue suggest something more than coincidence. They reflect an editorial decision to encourage readers to weigh Bartov's credentials as evidence for his conclusions rather than simply presenting his arguments for evaluation.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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07/21 Links Pt2: The Church of England has betrayed British Jews – again; Australia has ‘disturbing parallels’ with Nazi Germany; The lies behind Mamdani’s Netanyahu stunt are the real threat

From Ian:

The Dangers of Dog Whistles

Political scientists describe the range of ideas treated as acceptable in mainstream discourse as the Overton window, and coded language is one of the most efficient tools for shifting the window over time. A claim too radioactive to state directly gets introduced in euphemism, absorbed as normal, and then, because it no longer shocks, becomes available for a more overt statement by the next speaker. Researchers tracking this pattern have pointed to figures like Tucker Carlson, who took replacement theory language from its fringe, explicitly anti-Jewish origins and delivered a version of it, describing an effort to “replace the current electorate… with new people… from the Third World,” to a mainstream cable audience. Carlson stripped most overt of the anti-Jewish framing but left its basic structure intact. Once that version is broadcast and normalized, the fuller, more explicit version becomes an easier next step for anyone already primed toward it.

The platforms that carry this language today reward exactly the dynamic that makes it dangerous. Long form, low pushback interview formats, hours of unchallenged conversation, are especially efficient vehicles, because ambiguous claims can be floated, sit unexamined by the host, and reach enormous audiences before anyone fact-checks them. Researchers who study platform radicalization describe a pipeline effect: audiences move from ambiguous, “just asking questions” content toward progressively more explicit material, because engagement driven recommendation systems reward escalation over caution. The mechanism doesn’t require any deliberate strategy on the part of a host or platform. It emerges naturally from incentives that favor the more provocative claim over the more careful one.

This is the sharpest edge of the danger, and it has a name. Stochastic terrorism describes how hostile rhetoric, repeated and amplified across media, statistically raises the likelihood that some unknown individual, somewhere, commits ideologically motivated violence, without any direct coordination or explicit instruction from the person whose rhetoric inspired it. The concept traces to a 2002 risk modeling paper by analyst Gordon Woo and was popularized in its current form around 2011. Researchers who study it describe a three part chain. An originator deploys hostile, coded rhetoric while maintaining plausible deniability. Amplifiers (media outlets, platforms, algorithms) repeat and spread the rhetoric. Receivers, individuals already primed by exposure to the underlying conspiracy, act on the rhetoric without ever having been in direct contact with the originator.

This isn’t an abstract model. Robert Bowers, who killed eleven people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, spent the weeks before the attack posting on the platform Gab that the refugee resettlement group HIAS “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people.” Bowers blended replacement theory anti-immigrant rhetoric with older conspiracy theories about George Soros and Jewish organizations secretly directing immigration policy with coded language he had absorbed, restated, and ultimately acted on. Months later, John Earnest opened fire at a synagogue in Poway, California, citing the same replacement theory framework and explicitly blaming Jews for orchestrating demographic change. Brenton Tarrant‘s 2019 Christchurch mosque attack manifesto was titled, without irony, “The Great Replacement.” Patrick Crusius, who killed twenty-three people in El Paso that same year, referenced a “Hispanic invasion” of Texas in language that drew on the same replacement framework, minus the explicitly anti-Jewish layer but built on the identical structure. None of these men were following direct orders from anyone. All of them were downstream of language that had been circulating in increasingly mainstream form for years before they picked up a weapon.

The scale of what that produces is measurable. The ADL’s 2024 audit recorded 9,354 anti-Jewish incidents in the United States, the highest total in the organization’s 46 year tracking history. This was a 5 percent rise over 2023, an increase of 344 percent over five years, and 893 percent increase over the past decade. Assaults rose 21 percent year over year, vandalism rose 20 percent, and incidents on college campuses rose 84 percent, now accounting for the highest share of total incidents on record. None of that traces to a single podcast episode or a single politician’s word choice. It traces to a decades long accumulation of coded and semi-coded language that made the underlying ideas feel, to enough people, like something other than what they actually are.

None of this means every use of a loaded word is evidence of bigotry, and it’s worth saying plainly that overcorrecting carries its own cost. “Globalist” is sometimes just a policy label. Skepticism about a specific intelligence agency’s conduct is not automatically an anti-Jewish accusation. Treating every instance of contested vocabulary as proof of hidden intent empties the term “dog whistle” of its actual meaning and makes it easier for bad faith critics to dismiss real instances as overreach. The useful distinction isn’t between words that are always innocent and words that are always coded. It’s between an isolated, ambiguous phrase and a documented pattern, repeated across time, drawing recognizably on a specific and traceable lineage, delivered to an audience where at least some listeners will receive the second meaning whether or not the speaker intended to send it.

That distinction is the actual danger of a dog whistle: not the phrase itself, but what repeated, deniable exposure to the phrase does over time. It reaches the people who already believe the conspiracy underneath it and gives them confirmation. It slowly acclimates a much larger audience that never consciously signs on to anything. And in the worst and rarest cases, it reaches the handful of listeners who decide the coded version was never coded enough and act on the plain meaning they hear underneath. Recognizing the vocabulary, knowing that “globalist” has a lineage running through Bannon back to Stalin’s purges, that “secret banker” runs through the Rothschild pamphlets to the Protocols, that “replacement” runs through Camus to Charlottesville to a string of synagogue and mosque shootings, isn’t about assuming bad faith in every speaker who reaches for a loaded word. It’s about being able to tell, over time and in aggregate, when a pattern with a documented, century-long track record is being repeated in front of an audience of millions, regardless of who happens to be holding the microphone that day.

The Church of England has betrayed British Jews – again

Endorsing Kairos II without this history of anti-Semitism would have been bad enough. But given the Christian church’s record of Jew hatred, voting in favour of this document makes it significantly worse. It has lent authority to the modern blood libel that Israel is deliberately murdering Palestinians as part of a genocidal campaign. Kairos II also leans on a theology in which Jesus is refashioned as a Palestinian martyr – a modern update of the medieval ‘Christ killer’ myth. It even offers moral cover for the 7 October massacres by framing them inside a narrative of righteous resistance.

The church’s endorsement of Kairos II has left Britain’s Jewish community shattered. UK chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said: ‘It is truly shocking that a document which purports to speak in the name of truth contains so much falsehood.’ He also warned that it risks undermining relations between Christians and Jews. Indeed, it already has.

Here is the double betrayal. The first victims are British Jews, watching an ancient institution rehabilitate a modernised version of the oldest lies in Christian anti-Semitism. The second victim is less discussed but no less wronged: Middle Eastern Christians. Kairos II places the blame for Christian suffering on Israel, while staying entirely silent on the reasons Christian populations have collapsed across the Palestinian territories. It is a silent exodus driven only partially by the conflict, but also by land-grabbing from Muslim clans, as well as extortion and Sharia-based discrimination under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. It says nothing about the Christians harassed out of Bethlehem and Gaza by their own neighbours. Instead, it pins the blame exclusively on the Jews.

With a few honourable exceptions, Synod chose to ignore the fact that one of the few places in the Middle East where Arab Christians hold full rights, worship freely and are growing rather than vanishing is Israel. That isn’t the case in the Palestinian territories, and legitimising this text does nothing to improve the lives or safety of Christians in the region.

History shows us that poisonous documents like Kairos II seldom remain theoretical. They outlive those who draw them up and can even end in bloodshed. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion – which gave rise to the belief that influential Jews rule the world – remains popular, particularly in Muslim countries in the Middle East. Let’s be under no illusion: by promoting Kairos II, at a time of unprecedented anti-Semitism and rising threats to British Jews, the church has chosen to fan the flames of prejudice.

The church didn’t have to choose. It could have stood with persecuted Christians in the Middle East by naming their actual, Islamist persecutors and taken a position more conducive to genuine peace in the Middle East. Instead, the church has reached for that trusty old hatchet: it’s all the fault of the Jews.

Where does new UK premier Andy Burnham stand on Israel and antisemitism?

Recent comments on Gaza
Burnham has been critical of Israel’s military campaign in the aftermath of October 7. He doubled down in a leadership campaign video released last week and took his own party to task.

He condemned Hamas and once again rejected antisemitism, but he argued Britain should “do more to put pressure on the Israeli government,” including considering further restrictions on arms exports and action against illegal West Bank settlements.

“I know many people feel that at the start of Israel’s military action in Gaza, my party didn’t get it right, and I am sorry about that,” he said. The party was “too slow to call for a ceasefire.”

He called images from Gaza “a scar on our collective conscience.”

His comments reflect a parliamentary push across the board that Britain should do more to take action against Israel, including supporting a ban on all Israeli goods coming from the West Bank — something that Ireland and other European countries have been pushing for.

In his video, Burnham stopped short of describing Israel’s actions as genocide, saying that such a determination should be made by international courts.

Mixed reaction in Jewish community
The video drew a swift response from the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council. Burnham had seen “first hand the links between hatred of Israel, antisemitic extremism and deadly violence against British Jews,” the groups said.

They urged Burnham and other political leaders to “show the utmost care in their rhetoric” at a time when antisemitism in Britain had become “more normalized, more extreme and more violent.”

British Jews will watch closely how Burnham balances his longstanding engagement with the Jewish community and his increasingly critical stance toward the Israeli government. Members of the Jewish community watch as forensic officers search the area after two people were stabbed in north London’s Golders Green neighborhood, on April 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

The Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Chief Executive Gideon Falter read aloud an open letter to Burnham on Monday calling on him to take a stand against the rise in antisemitism in the country.

“Your legacy will not be remembered solely in terms of tax rates and hospital waiting times,” Falter said. “It will be whether Jews were murdered or thrived in Andy Burnham’s Britain.”

Board of Deputies President Phil Rosenberg congratulated Burnham on X, and welcomed the new prime minister’s “early commitment to tackling antisemitism,” and that the Board “will work with his administration towards the UK playing its strongest role in global peace and security.”

Ephraim Mirvis, the country’s chief rabbi, posted a photo on X of himself and Burnham and offered a blessing.

“He assumes the immense responsibility of leadership at a time of great challenge, both at home and abroad,” Mirvis said. “May he be blessed with the wisdom, strength and good judgment to keep our country safe and may his service bring prosperity and harmony for all.”

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07/21 Links Pt1: What the U.S. and Iran Are Fighting Over; Foreign Threats Breed Self-Sufficiency; The inconvenient truth about Gaza’s ability to govern; The UN Has Run Out of Alibis

From Ian:

Is an Abraham Security Alliance Possible in the Middle East?

Is a greater Middle East security alliance, encompassing Israel, Lebanon, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and beyond, a realistic prospect? Or will Hamas- and PLO-supporting Turkey replace Israel as the U.S. administration's preferred regional partner?

In his address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress in July 2024, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu floated an "Abraham Security Alliance," a NATO-style framework open to states that "have made peace with Israel and those that will."

In February 2026, Netanyahu unveiled what strategists call the "Hexagon Alliance": Israel's technological and security core, linked to India's manufacturing weight, Greek and Cypriot Mediterranean corridors, Emirati economic channels, and Somaliland's Red Sea oversight. Lebanon has since agreed to direct negotiations with Israel. Syria's al-Sharaa government has held direct dialogue with Jerusalem.

Nonetheless, there appears to be a strategic shift inside the U.S. administration: beyond personal rapport between Trump and Erdogan, there is a growing view that Turkey can assume roles Israel has traditionally played, engaging Arab states wary of Iran. Ankara is exploiting this opening, positioning itself as the Islamic world's next leader, replacing the Iranian regime's role as regional hegemon and becoming Israel's principal long-term strategic competitor.

Despite Turkey's upgraded military presence in the Middle East and East Africa, Erdogan has not operationalized his threats on Israel. He has avoided military confrontation thus far, and has refrained from disrupting Israeli operations in Syria, despite housing and training Hamas on Turkish soil. Notwithstanding Turkey's malign regional behavior, the U.S. administration still is considering Turkey as a politically "lower-cost" regional security manager.

If the Abraham Security Alliance is to mean anything beyond aspirational rhetoric, the U.S. must expand the Abraham Accord alliances. Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Somaliland, Greece, Cyprus, and others are realistic candidates. However, the expanded security alliance will depend on a strong U.S., Israel, and Gulf Arab foundation that would be shaken by Turkey's neo-Ottoman imperial ambitions and destabilizing influence.

Foreign Threats Breed Self-Sufficiency

There are people who imagine that cutting American aid would irreparably damage the Jewish state. Yet Israel defeated the Arabs in June 1967, again, as it did in 1948, without any U.S.-supplied weapons.

Precisely because of Israel's long history of denials and embargoes by the British and U.S. governments, its nine million people are enough to support disproportionately large and diverse military industries.

This state of nine million is one that can research, develop and manufacture the world's heaviest battle tank, a full range of tactical and strategic missiles, and the interceptors that inaugurated humanity's first instance of space warfare two years ago.

Israelis reacted to the start of U.S. military aid after the Six-Day War with deep, genuine gratitude, eagerly pursuing any opportunity to reciprocate.

Israel's Mossad was inside the Soviet Union, which the CIA could only watch from afar, and offered up all it uncovered.

After its October 1973 tank-warfare victories, Israel supplied the U.S. Army's tacticians with every bit of data for their, and NATO's, revolutionary "fight outnumbered and win" manuals, explicitly based on the desperate Golan Heights fight in which 200 Israeli tanks destroyed four times as many Soviet-built Syrian tanks.

In my many encounters in Israel over the years, I have heard a great eagerness to contribute Israel's research and development talents, whose fruits are now built into some of the most capable U.S. weapons, most conspicuously in the F-35 fighter jet, whose innovative helmet-mounted piloting system was entirely developed in Israel.

Israel's pilots sat in their cockpits for hours to reach and bomb Iran's distant missile launchers, which were attacking U.S. bases and U.S. allies, as well as Israel itself.

Israel would never refuse any military help it could provide, as countless U.S. officers have known for decades.

Michael Doran: What the U.S. and Iran Are Fighting Over

Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), is a die-hard jihadi. For him, the officials negotiating with Washington serve as infidel handlers: officials who translate the demands of the IRGC into language acceptable to Western diplomats.

The IRGC struck ships that transited the Strait of Hormuz without coordinating with it to enforce Vahidi's interpretation of the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed in mid-June. Vahidi never accepted the U.S. view that Iran would reopen the strait and treat it as an international waterway rather than a sovereign asset.

Trump has opted for a campaign of calibrated escalation designed to force Vahidi to accept the American definition of the MoU, seeking to impose enough pain to make the status quo untenable without igniting a wider regional war. But this theory expects Vahidi to place the welfare of Iranian society above the institutional interests of the IRGC.

Trump's ongoing campaign is unlikely to eliminate the drone threat. Intermittent drone attacks on commercial shipping are enough to drive insurers from the market and achieve severe disruption. Vahidi recently struck a desalination plant in Kuwait with ballistic missiles that are also hard to eradicate.

This reveals how profoundly warfare has changed. The era in which U.S. airpower could rapidly neutralize a regional adversary at acceptable cost is ending. It is being replaced by a more contested, attritional environment in which weaker states can buy time and impose significant costs.

These battlefield realities are already reshaping American strategy. Washington will increasingly prize allies that possess battle-tested militaries, functioning defense industries, advanced intelligence, and practical experience defeating missiles, drones, and hardened targets. It will prize, above all, allies that help the U.S. understand and counter the emerging Sino-Russian-Iranian military system. Israel meets those criteria. Very few others do.

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Some everyday antisemitism in Egypt's venerable Al Ahram newspaper

Ashraf Abdel Moneim writes in Al Ahram that Israel is trying to characterize the seven front war it is in as a religious war.

He quotes Netanyahu from October 7, 2023 saying that Israel is in a war. Specifically, he said, "Citizens of Israel, we are at war. Not in an operation, not in rounds of fighting—we are at war."

Somehow, Moneim then goes on a lengthy description of the halachic differences between a religiously obligational war and a discretionary war, claiming that Israel is falsely positioning the wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran and elsewhere as obligatory. But Netanyahu never used that terminology - this idea is simply made up. 

It is the last paragraph that shows that this is not meant to be a sober analysis of how Jewish Israelis view war. 

Numerous arguments and sophistries force us into a contemporary reality with a people who never tire of invoking the tricks of their forefathers—the Sabbath-breakers. These were the people whom God forbade fishing on the Sabbath, yet they resorted to a superficial trick: they set their nets on Friday to trap the fish, then proceeded to catch them on Sunday—thinking they had deceived God and circumvented His purpose. But this trait seems deeply ingrained in them; the text forbids them from waging an expansionist war except under strict conditions and in purely defensive circumstances. So they manipulate the situation by fabricating an existential threat, then play with terminology, oscillating between a "religious war" and an "expansionist war," thus fulfilling the condition formally and legally... to benefit from its advantages!

The Sabbath-breaker story is in the Quran and elaborated in hadiths. It is about a community of Jews who lived by the sea but Allah tested them by having the fish only appear on the Sabbath when fishing is not allowed. Some of the Jewish fishermen defied Allah and set traps on Friday to catch the fish on the Sabbath, ignoring warnings from others in the community. Eventually, Allah lost patience and turned them (and those who did not object)  into monkeys. 

Moneim is comparing Netanyahu's fictional use of the words "obligatory war" for a war of expansion as a modern way that Jews try to violate God's commandments.

The irony is that Moneim is wrong about the Sabbath and wrong about the war. 

There is nothing that stops a Jew from setting a trap before the Sabbath to catch animals and collect them afterwards. This is explicit in the Mishnah; the only disagreement is whether the traps should be set early enough to theoretically catch animals before the Sabbath (Beit Shammai) or can be placed immediately beforehand (Beit Hillel and normative halacha.)  The authors of the Quran seem to have been familiar with Talmudic sources, so they should have known this — they may have made up the halacha to illustrate the made-up story, which exists nowhere but the Quran. 

And attacking an enemy that not only attacked you first, but has stated its intent to continue to do so, is without a doubt an obligatory defensive war under halacha, even though Netanyahu did not use that language.

The lesson? Don't trust antisemitic Muslim scholars to define Jewish law (or history) for you. 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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07/20 Links Pt2: Ireland’s hypocritical anti-Israel law is a win for Hamas — and a challenge to Trump; Rare burnt First Temple-era beams unearthed in Jerusalem after 2,600 years

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Ireland’s hypocritical anti-Israel law is a win for Hamas — and a challenge to Trump

In 1977, Congress prohibited US companies from participating in boycotts of countries with which the United States maintains friendly relations.

Decades later the Trade Promotion Authority law, passed during the Obama administration, specifically condemned “state-sponsored unsanctioned foreign boycotts of Israel.”

That’s exactly what Ireland’s law is.

US laws ban American companies from complying in any way with an impermissibly discriminatory boycott like Ireland’s.

That puts American companies operating there in a legal bind.

Moreover, the law requires the Treasury Department to maintain a “current list of countries which require or may require participation in or cooperation with an international boycott.”

American companies doing business in countries listed as boycotters face tax and other penalties if they abide by their requirements.

Until now, Treasury’s list was made up solely of Arab states like Syria and Iraq — and it’s gotten steadily shorter, as more Arab countries have made peace with Israel and started normal trading relationships.

Now Treasury must promptly add Ireland to its official list of boycotting countries: If Dublin wants to act like Damascus, it must be treated as such.

Irish legislators seek to pressure Israel to completely withdraw from Judea and Samaria, and to dismantle all Jewish communities there.

But Israel did exactly that with Gaza in the 2005 Disengagement — and Hamas turned it into a terror base.

Ireland claims its move upholds international law, but its hypocrisy is glaring.

It has imposed no similar rules on goods from other disputed territories — or on China, despite Beijing’s massive and ongoing human rights abuses.

Ireland isn’t about to shutter its movie theaters showing “The Odyssey,” even though parts of it were filmed in Western Sahara, which the United Nations regards as occupied territory.

Its ban applies only to Jewish towns.

President Donald Trump’s first administration clearly stated its opposition to Ireland’s law — heck, even the Biden administration warned Dublin of “consequences” if it moved forward.

But animosity to Israel runs so deep in Ireland — the only criticism the law got from opponents was that it doesn’t go far enough — that its legislators decided passing a symbolic Israel-bashing bill is more important than good relations with Washington.

Perhaps they think America is bluffing?

Regardless, imposing trade restrictions on a US ally as it fights alongside us in a hot war is deeply disrespectful.

But Britain’s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham is reportedly considering a similar measure — so Trump must nip this trend in the bud.

The United States must make it crystal clear that no matter which countries choose to impose sanctions on an ally, they will face the consequences of US law.

Ireland's Antizionism

In the sports world, opposition to Israel has grown significantly in the past few weeks and months. Nowhere has this been truer than in the ongoing campaign to cancel the upcoming Ireland-Israel football match scheduled for October. Left-wing politicians and the establishment media took the lead in advocating for a complete cancellation of the game, even if it would hurt Irish football in the long run. The media ran with the story every day, all with the same ideological bent.

When the game was moved from Dublin to a yet to be determined neutral venue, the very same people who complained about Israeli football players and fans visiting Ireland’s largest city argued that moving the game deprived them of the right to protest the Israeli team in person. The country’s largest trade union has even called on the national broadcaster not to air the game. This demonstrates that these activist groups were not interested so much in the outcome as in the process, for it allowed them to keep the issue alive in public discourse, with the establishment media eagerly amplifying the most extreme antizionist voices.

This gets to the heart of antizionism, for it doesn’t purport to offer constructive solutions to deeply entrenched problems, so much as to provide an ongoing justification for a constant campaign of vilification directed against Israel and the majority of the world’s Jews who support its right to exist in peace and security. Quite a few of those who agitated against the game being played in Dublin, who have been silent on the Islamic Republic’s massacre of their own people, couched their opposition as being borne of out of a commitment to being “anti-genocide.”

This implies that Israel’s war against Hamas was a deliberate act of genocide rather than the result of having to fight a war in a densely populated area, in which the enemy deliberately used civilian infrastructure to wage battle. This is a key component of antizionist discourse, which has employed “genocide” as a rhetorical weapon and as a libel. Nothing exemplifies the degree to which antizionism has taken over the Irish public sphere quite like the degree to which sundry politicians and journalists have used this term as a factual representation of what has occurred in Gaza over the last three years, with little regard to international jurisprudence. Those Irish antizionists who employ the term “genocide” do so not to highlight civilian suffering in Gaza — which is indeed very real — but to whip up hatred against Israel’s very existence and to downplay the Holocaust’s place in western collective memory. This is especially alarming, considering the lack of historical knowledge about the Holocaust among many in Ireland, particularly young people.

Antizionism, once institutionalized, limits the spaces in which Jews, if they identify with Israel in any manner, can freely operate. One recent incident which showcases the depth to which antizionist thinking has taken root in Ireland is the cancellation of a Dublin fundraiser for Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross. The Dublin National Concert Hall, which was meant to host the event, which was to include the performance of a play about October 7, decided to cancel the event following an antizionist campaign by local activists who accused MDA of being “complicit in genocide.” Significantly, no other venue has stepped up to offer to host the event.

While it is certainly true that antizionism has infiltrated the public sphere in numerous western democracies, there simply is no equivalent to the degree to which it has taken root in Ireland and in the Irish media, which focuses disproportionately on Israel in its news coverage. This is not meant to be a slight on everyday Irish people, many of whom have expressed alarm at the speed at which antizionism has become normalized in myriad aspects of Irish society. Rather, it should be seen as a warning sign for all those interested in promoting pluralism and tolerance and the viability of a peaceful, long-term settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Most of all, it is a reminder that antizionism remains a distinct manifestation of Jew hatred, one that continues to threaten both the viability of Diaspora Jewish communities and the classical liberal underpinnings of western democracy.

David Collier: How an Antisemitic Conspiracy Theory Became a Community Note on X

The risk of long-term reputational damage needed to be addressed. I went back to the site where the graffiti had been drawn. Several days had passed, and I had no idea what I would find. The graffiti itself had gone, but two freshly painted patches on the pavement were immediately visible. Someone had covered it over. It was a relief. I may have been fighting a nonsensical conspiracy claim, but the approved Community Note had given the allegation the appearance of official endorsement.

I posted footage of the covered-up graffiti on X and requested a review of the Community Note. Thankfully, that was enough for the note to lose its approved status. It wasn’t, however, enough to stop the abuse or silence the conspiracy theorists.

There was one more thing I could do to close this case completely.

The FOI Request That Closes the Case
If park staff had painted over the graffiti, there should be a record of it. Because Trent Park is managed by Enfield Council, that record would be obtainable under the Freedom of Information Act.

On Saturday 27 June, attaching the photographs in my possession, I submitted the request.

I have now received the response.

As the brilliant fictional detective Adrian Monk would say at this point in the investigation: “Here’s what happened.”

On 24 June at 19:08, just over two hours before members of my family walked through the park, a concerned citizen sent an email to Councillor Alessandro Georgiou, the Conservative councillor of Cockfosters ward and leader of Enfield Council. The email is explicit in its detail, mentioning both the swastika and the Star of David.

To his credit, at 22:42 that night, Cllr Georgiou sent a response, thanking the sender, and copying in an official council account, asking for the graffiti to be cleared “ASAP.”

At 10:35 on 25 June, Lisa Smart, Head of Urban Green Spaces at Enfield Council, responded that the council aims to remove offensive graffiti within 24 hours and that she would instruct officers to deal with it.

I was also provided with timestamped images, showing that the council workers had arrived to deal with the graffiti within that 24-hour window, at just after 8:00 on the morning of 26 June.

The timestamps show the graffiti thirty-five hours after my photograph had been taken. Both the swastika and the crossed-out Star of David remain clearly visible, along with the stain in the centre of the pavement. So much for the claim that the markings had simply been drawn in water. According to the council’s account, the combination of the heat and the way the graffiti had embedded itself into the surface meant officers eventually had to paint over it, as the photographs show:

By 11:44 on 26 June, the graffiti had been covered over.

The following day, I returned to the site and filmed the footage I posted on X.

Case closed.

The Bigger Lesson
The disturbing aspect of this story is that a system intended to combat misinformation elevated a conspiracy theory into an apparently authoritative statement with real-world consequences.

The burden was then reversed. Those making the accusation produced no evidence. The Jewish target had to spend weeks obtaining official records simply to restore the presumption of innocence.

This time, documentary evidence happened to exist. Had the graffiti been removed some other way, the Community Note would likely still be there today, giving permanent credibility to a baseless accusation.

Systems that determine “truth” are vulnerable to organised falsehoods, popular prejudice and institutional bias. When the subject is Jews or Israel – where hostile narratives already circulate widely – that vulnerability becomes especially dangerous.

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07/20 Links Pt1: Benny Morris: Omer Bartov - What Went Wrong?; Deborah Lipstadt: UN ‘failing Jewish people greatly’; Iran FM says he has never met new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei

From Ian:

Benny Morris: Omer Bartov: What Went Wrong?

A review of Israel: What Went Wrong? by Omer Bartov; 243 pages; Farrar, Straus and Giroux (April 2026)
Late in the book Bartov describes a post-7 October visit to Israel and a meeting with Israeli students. He says he came away shocked. “They had not only internalised a particular view that had become commonplace in Israel—namely that the razing of Gaza … was a legitimate response … but had also developed a way of thinking that I observed many years ago when studying the conduct, worldview, and self-perception of German army soldiers in WWII [again, the comparison to the Nazis!] … Hamas as human animals—and of the wider [Gaza] population as less than human … Thousands of children were killed? It’s the enemy’s fault … If Hamas carries out a massacre in a kibbutz, they are Nazis. If we drop two-thousand-pound bombs on refugee shelters and kill hundreds of civilians, it’s Hamas’s fault for hiding under or close to these shelters … The way people’s eyes glazed over whenever I mentioned the suffering of Palestinian civilians … was deeply unsettling.” (I wonder whether Bartov’s eyes “glazed over” when he was told of the suffering of Hamas’s victims, many of them tortured and raped. But, of course, he has a point about the progressive Israeli dehumanisation of the Palestinians—but he ignores the coin’s other face, the parallel dehumanisation of the Israelis by the Palestinians).

Bartov’s descriptions of various episodes in the conflict are speckled with distortions and marred by tendentiousness; this is not a book scholars will excavate for facts. For instance, Bartov repeatedly states that the Zionist forces “expelled” the Palestinian population from the territory that became the State of Israel—when, in fact, most simply fled from the actual or potential battlefields (and some were ordered or advised to leave—as in Haifa on 22 April 1948—by their own leaders). The most that can be said is that the Israeli government refused to allow the refugees to return to their homes and lands after the war, not exactly the same thing.

The decades of British rule were characterised, Bartov tells us, by the “familiar processes of a settler colonial takeover of land and resources from the indigenous Palestinian population.” The American, South African, and Australian “settler-colonial” paradigms, to which he is alluding, featured brutal armed conquest and confiscation of indigenous lands. In Ottoman and British Mandate Palestine, the Jews acquired lands from very willing Arab sellers—nothing before 1948 was conquered. And the country had, and has, no “resources” to speak of.

But the sad truth is that Israeli internal demographic and political trends and the constant Islamist violence and genocidal threats have derailed the Zionist project, transforming it from a positive, moral enterprise to something teetering on the edge of an abyss. I wouldn’t go so far as to say, as in Bartov’s peroration, that Israel today is “bloody-minded … [and] paranoid” and is now “heading down the path of theocracy and apocalypse.” I would advise waiting a bit before making a definitive judgment. Let’s see what sort of government the Israeli general elections, scheduled for 27 October, wash up and whether they will alter the current downward spiral.

But one thing is already clear: Bartov’s book, and his journalistic “Israelis are genocidaires” campaign that preceded it, have, objectively speaking, assisted the Islamist terrorists in their effort to destroy the Jewish state. This is something he will have to live with.

Friedman: A Palestinian state will destroy Abraham Accords

Former U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman said in Congressional testimony released on Monday that efforts to create a Palestinian state would fatally undermine U.S.-led negotiations to achieve normalization agreements between Israel and Arab countries.

In a written statement submitted to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, Friedman said that attempts to link the two issues were “destined for failure” after Oct. 7.

“Israel already has done the two-state experiment and that folly almost destroyed the Jewish state,” Friedman wrote. “Talk of a Palestinian state in the halls of Congress or the palaces of Europe is just wildly out of touch with the realities on the ground.”

The former envoy to Jerusalem argued that countries like Saudi Arabia that might seek to join the 2020 Abraham Accords agreement that normalized relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco “understand those realities well.”

“A Palestinian state will not advance the Abraham Accords; it will destroy them,” he said. “It will consume the region with even more conflict and violence.”

“The fact that the Abraham Accords did not resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a feature, not a bug, of the deal,” he wrote. “The accords sent a clear message to the Palestinians that the days in which they held the Middle East hostage had ended.”

Khaled Abu Toameh: Iran's War on the Arabs: Time for the Gulf to Stand with Israel

Over the past week, the Iranian regime has demonstrated once again that its ambitions extend far beyond destroying Israel.

It is a war against the entire Middle East and, ultimately, against the United States and the West.

Tehran then launched missiles and drones not only against US assets but also against infrastructure in Arab countries across the Gulf, in addition to Jordan, presumably so they would pressure US President Donald J. Trump to call off US firepower and return instead to waste-of-time negotiations for a waste-of-time "deal" that Iran would not honor in the first place.

In reality, the negotiations have been worse than a waste of time... The negotiations actually caused harm. They gave the regime time to retrieve missiles it had hidden and to resume firing, with targeting assistance from China and Russia, on US forces and allies in the Gulf.

Iranian regime ideology rejects peaceful coexistence and normalization between Arabs and Israelis -- as does the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, currently embodied by Qatar and Turkey.

Taken together, these terrorist organizations form what Tehran proudly calls the "Axis of Resistance." It is, in reality, an axis of terrorism. Its purpose is not just to destroy Israel. Its objective is to spread Iran's revolutionary Shiite Islamist ideology, undermine moderate Arab governments, expel American influence from the Middle East, and ultimately wage jihad (holy war) against the West.

The Arab states therefore have every reason to openly align themselves with the United States and Israel in confronting the Iranian threat.

This is not about choosing sides in someone else's conflict. It is about defending their own sovereignty, their own interests, their own citizens, and their own future.

The lesson of the past week: So long as the regime in Tehran remains committed to exporting its "Islamic Revolution" and maintaining its network of terrorist proxies, there can be no genuine security or stability in the Middle East.

Until the Iranian regime abandons its expansionist ambitions or loses the capacity to pursue them, the Middle East will remain trapped in recurring cycles of violence. Until then, the Arab states would be wise to recognize that this is their fight as much as Israel's.

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The Australian Islamophobia Report That Never Defines Islamophobia

When Australia's Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal recommended adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism in July 2025, the backlash arrived within days. The Jewish Council of Australia argued that Segal's plan entrenches a selective approach to racism that serves political agendas. UN Special Rapporteur Ben Saul and Greens Senator David Shoebridge said the definition's broad framing conflates legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy with antisemitism itself. Amnesty International warned that the plan risks weaponizing criticism of Israel to silence protest. We've discussed how meritless these arguments are - the IHRA definition explicitly allows criticism of Israel that is similar to criticism of any other country - but that doesn't stop the IHRA foes from making up their arguments. 

Even if the IHRA definition is vague in parts - and it is - it is at least a definition that can be argued about. It provides a basis for discussion. 

But how can one discuss Islamophobia without defining it?

 Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia Aftab Malik wrote an entire  report on Islamophobia while explicitly rejecting any definition of what the report is about. It states in its opening pages that it "does not seek to define Islamophobia, but to convey its pervasiveness and impacts." Malik announces the absence in his introduction, as though declining to define the prejudice he was appointed to fight were a mark of rigor rather than a way of dodging the fight Segal had just walked into.

How can a government combat Islamophobia without first saying what it is? The report has no answer, only sixty pages describing effects and never the boundary that produces them. Does Islamophobia cover criticism of Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organization that governs Gaza in Islam's name? Does it cover calling Muhammad a pedophile, on the ground that Aisha was nine when the marriage was consummated? Does it cover criticism of Islamist ideology as a political movement, the way criticism of Christian nationalism or Hindu nationalism is treated as ordinary political argument rather than bigotry against Christians or Hindus? Nobody can answer any of these questions from Malik's report, because the report commits to no fixed test any of them could be run against. Every real or imagined objection raised against the IHRA definition — that it is political, that it is elastic, that it lets the aggrieved party decide unilaterally what counts as hatred of them — applies a hundredfold to a report that has no definition to be elastic about. A bad definition can be amended on the floor of Parliament. A missing one has nothing to amend, because there is nothing written down to point to.

The report does gesture towards answering some of these questions. For example, it says that its recommendations are not aimed at censoring "the dislike or critique of Muslims or Islam." But stating intent is not something that has legal teeth, and ultimately the report is meant to be implemented in law and policy. The surrounding text is next to worthless.

And the very next section demonstrated this clearly. It says that critique of Islam should be "grounded in respectful and lawful debate." what, exactly, does "respectful" mean? It is itself never defined. The cartoon of Mohammed wearing a bomb in his turban is not respectful. Does this document say that it is prohibited? The free speech implications are far deeper and wider than anything in the IHRA definition of antisemitism. 

Another ambiguous part of the report is the heckler's veto. It wants to prohibit prejudice and hate that "incite discrimination, hostility or violence." The sentence never says whose hostility, or against whom. The natural reading is hostility directed at Muslims. Nothing in the text rules out the opposite reading, in which a cartoon that provokes an angry or violent response has thereby incited the violence, and the cartoonist rather than the rioter becomes the source of the harm. Malik does not endorse that reading anywhere in the report but neither does he disagree with it.  If the Muslim  community is offended, there is little in the report to say that it is not presumed to be Islamophobic. There is nothing comparable in the IHRA definition. 

The clearest evidence that Malik's ambitions ran well past "Islamophobia" as any dictionary would use the word sits in two of his recommendations the Albanese government rejected. Malik asked for a Muslim advisory panel with standing input into how counter-terrorism law gets applied, a direct line into the operational judgment of Australia's security agencies. He also asked for a separate commission of inquiry into anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism, distinct from Islamophobia and expressly framed around the Gaza war. Bigotry against Palestinians and Arabs is not bigotry against Muslims; Malik's own report concedes the two intersect without being identical. A commission built around Gaza-war grievance, empowered by a report that already treats offended feeling as evidence of harm, could functionally have provided a state-sanctioned mechanism for relabeling criticism of Hamas, of Palestinian nationalism, or of Islamic Jihad rockets as a form of racism — chilling exactly the political speech, disproportionately Jewish and Israel-sympathetic, that such a commission would exist to examine. That they were proposed at all tells you Malik was reaching for something considerably larger than anti-Muslim bigotry, and that the Islamophobia part of the report is meant to be interpreted liberally and not narrowly. 

A definition is not an optional preface to a report on fighting a named prejudice. It is the precondition for the report meaning anything at all. Segal wrote hers and has spent a year defending it clause by clause. Malik skipped his and has spent the same period being praised for restraint he never showed, producing a document more sweeping than Segal's, more elastic than Segal's, and far more open to being weaponized than Segal's — because there was never a written purpose to be held to in the first place. That the government adopted two-thirds of it anyway, in the same month it is still absorbing the previous report's IHRA controversy, is the part that should be mystifying. 

A missing definition is not a safer definition. It is the one with no limit at all.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026) "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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