08/17 Links Pt1: The West is still committed to its fatal delusion about Hamas; US tells Hamas it wants ‘real efforts and not just words’ on disarmament; Ben Gvir: “Every night, we must eliminate 30 to 50 terrorists.”

From Ian:

Jake Wallis Simons: The West is still committed to its fatal delusion about Hamas

When it comes to the Middle East, Tony Blair is not known for his wisdom. His invasion of Iraq left the region in chaos, leading to mass jihadist mobilisation and the strengthening of Iran, while as the Quartet’s Middle East representative, he singularly failed to ease the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

What better man, therefore, to meet Hamas in Cairo, alongside Jared Kushner, to press the jihadis to fulfil their commitment to disarm on Sunday? Blair’s problem has always been the same, and it has been shared by the entire Western political establishment since the end of the Cold War. Namely: gullibility.

The thread running through decades of Western failure to encourage peace and prosperity in the Middle East is our damnable assumption that deep down, the Islamists are just like us. Lord Renwick famously labelled this the “Wykehamist fallacy”, the tendency to assume that even the most bloodthirsty despot had an inner civilised chap of the sort one might find at Winchester College.

If it were true that the Islamists’ core concerns were freedom, prosperity and a better future for their children, then all you would have to do would be to remove the despots and nurture a framework of democracy. Societal happiness would then bloom of its own accord.

Iraq put paid to that idea. So did the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005; under the direction of the late Ariel Sharon, all 21 settlements in the Strip were forcibly dismantled and the IDF withdrew to the last man.

Even Israeli farms and businesses were left intact for the Palestinians to use. What happened? These were all razed by the mob out of spite. Hamas took over and, over the following two decades, the enclave became a civilian-jihadi terror complex, involving subterranean infrastructure, total militarisation and ubiquitous brainwashing. Then came October 7.

So forgive me if I view these direct talks with Hamas – itself an unprecedented diplomatic move – as just more of the same painful naïveté, only this time under the mad leadership of Donald Trump. Can a jihadi group ever be serious about disarming? Could Rosemary West be plausibly retrained as headmistress of a girls’ boarding school?

Think, for a moment, of the level of fanaticism required to build up to 450 miles of catacombs in Gaza, in conditions of mortal danger, then to invite the apocalypse upon your own heads with an orgy of butchery, rape, mutilation, necrophilia and kidnap, before deploying your own families as human shields above ground.

Yes, between the suicide bomber and the Western diplomat lies a pretty big cultural gulf. Truly, these people love death as we love life. As Israeli leader Golda Meir famously remarked: “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”

Desert Reconnaissance Battalion: The Arab IDF unit the world needs to know about

For years, the world has been told a very simple story about Arabs and Israel. Arabs on one side. Israelis on the other. It is always pinned as conflict, division, or suspicion. But recently, I stood in a space that told a very different story.

I was attending the anniversary of IDF Unit 585, the Desert Reconnaissance Battalion, a unit made up predominantly of Bedouin soldiers, alongside other Arab and minority service members. The battalion was established in the late 1980s and has long operated in Israel’s south, particularly around the Gaza border. For many of its Arab soldiers, service is voluntary rather than mandatory.

This unit is made up largely of Arab soldiers, including but not limited to members of Israel’s Bedouin and Druze communities. And as I looked around the event, I realized how few people outside of Israel even know this unit exists, because I myself didn't know it existed.

That matters. Because when the world talks about Israel, it often speaks in absolutes. Israelis and Arabs are presented as two groups who could never share a uniform, a mission, or a sense of responsibility for the same country. Then you meet the soldiers of Unit 585.

At the anniversary, I spoke with veterans who had served in the unit decades ago. Their names cannot be published, but their pride was impossible to miss.

“We are soldiers from Unit 585,” one group of veterans told me. “We enlisted in 1979, and today we came to honor and celebrate 40 years.”

There was something striking about hearing that sentence while standing beside Arab soldiers serving in the battalion today. Different generations. The same unit. Men who had enlisted decades earlier had returned to stand alongside young Arab soldiers currently serving in Israel’s military, including soldiers who have operated in the Gaza border region and across southern Israel.

One current soldier described the moment simply: “Today we are marking 40 years since the battalion was established. Some of our veterans, together with the soldiers serving today, are here with us.” It was a place full of people whose lives complicate the version of Israel most of the world has been taught.

Western hypocrisy ignores Turkey’s occupation of northern Cyprus and Syria while condemning Israel

While the world obsesses over Israel, Recep Tayyip Erdogan is quietly appropriating land for Turkey, rewriting borders, and making a mockery of international law. The man who never misses a chance to denounce "occupation" and castigate Israel presides over two illegal occupations himself. And he is no longer simply occupying territory. He is positioning Turkey as the dominant Islamist power in the Middle East and the heir to Iran's self-appointed leadership of the anti-Israel “Axis of Resistance".

And if senior figures in his government are to be believed, his ambitions do not end in Cyprus or Syria. Erdogan’s sights are firmly fixed on Jerusalem.

Northern Cyprus has been under Turkish control for more than half a century, and northern Syria is rapidly going the same way. Yet the sanctimonious West, ever eager to moralise elsewhere, ignores these flagrant breaches of international law and treats Erdogan as a legitimate, valued partner.

Turkey’s occupation of northern Cyprus began in 1974, when its army invaded the island under the pretext of protecting Turkish Cypriots. They dropped napalm and burned villages. They stayed, and drove 170,000 Greek Cypriots from their homes. UN resolutions demand withdrawal. Ankara ignores them to this day. In reality, Turkey has seized 37 per cent of the island and split the capital, Nicosia, in two, making it the last divided capital in Europe.

The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly ruled that Turkey exercises “effective control” over the north, making Ankara legally responsible for every violation of property and human rights there. None of that matters. In 2021, Erdogan personally toured the sealed-off resort town of Varosha, a virtual ghost town and symbol of occupation. He vowed to reopen it, in direct defiance of the UN Security Council. He brazenly declared, “There are two states in Cyprus, and the world will eventually recognise this reality.”

The reality is an illegal military occupation propped up by nearly 40,000 Turkish troops, fortified bases, and a growing Turkish “settler” population now outnumbering local Turkish Cypriots. Ankara has installed drone bases, new mosques, and schools teaching Turkish curricula. Erdogan hasn’t just preserved the occupation. He has institutionalised it.

Since 2016, Turkey has launched four invasions into northern Syria, Operations Euphrates Shield, Olive Branch, Peace Spring and Claw-Sword, claiming to fight terrorism and create “safe zones”. In reality, it is occupation by instalments, a creeping annexation.

Cyprus ramping up pressure on Tel Aviv while eyeing Israel’s Merkava tanks for its military

Cyprus is ramping up pressure on Israel to allow them to purchase Merkava tanks (Mk3 or Mk4), pan-Cypriot daily newspaper Phileleftheros reported on Monday.

The Merkava is the primary tank used by the IDF’s Armored Corps. While development for the tank began in 1970, it only entered service in 1979 and was extensively used during the First Lebanon War.

The Merkava Mark 4 Barak is the version of the tank that is currently in use.

According to Phileleftheros, opinions within the Israeli government are divided on the matter, with some in support of providing Cyprus with Merkava tanks and some against such a move, wanting the tanks to remain available to the IDF.

Phileleftheros noted that the Merkava’s suitability for Cyprus’s National Guard stems from two main reasons.

Israel-Cyprus talks reportedly stall because of Oct. 7
The first, being the similarity between Israel and Cyprus’s terrain; and the second being the proximity of the two countries, which would ease logistical support for the tanks.

Talks between Cyprus and Israel for the purchase of second-hand Merkava tanks had stalled with the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War on October 7, 2023, reported Cypriot media, with Israeli reassurances that discussions would resume once the security situation had eased.

Several other contenders for Cyprus’s National Guard have been put forth, according to Cypriot media, including Greece’s Leopard 1A5 and France’s EBRC Jaguar.

The Leopard, however, has reportedly been rejected by Cyprus for not meeting the country’s national guard’s operational requirements.

Several contracts for smaller equipment, such as drones and other equipment that have shorter production times, have already progressed, according to Phileleftheros.

It added that contracts for larger equipment, such as armoured vehicles, are slated to begin in 2028.

Israel, Greece, Cyprus sign trilateral work plan
Currently, Cyprus’s National Guard is using Russian-built T-80 tanks, but Russia’s deteriorating relations with Western counties and sanctions placed upon it have made it difficult to reliably secure spare parts and ammunition.

In December 2025, Israel, Greece, and Cyprus signed a trilateral work plan for military cooperation for 2026.

Among other things, the plans include joint exercises and training, working groups in various fields, and strategic military dialogue on issues of joint interest.

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Swedish minister from a Muslim family gets attention by wearing a Star of David at a debate

Simona Mohamsson is the leader of the Liberal Party (Liberalerna) in Sweden and serves as Minister for Education and Integration in the Kristersson government. 

She participated in a debate ahead of elections on Monday evening - and she chose to wear a Star of David necklace.

Her original surname was Mohammed. Her father is described as a Sunni Palestinian and her mother a Lebanese Shia Muslim. Simona herself is an atheist.

At the debate, she talked about letters that the Left party members had written to Hamas terrorists in Israeli prisons. " I think the Left Party needs to be held accountable for sending love letters to Hamas and spreading fear on our streets. Is this really the Sweden we can expect after (the elections)?

When asked who her main point for the evening is, she replied, "It's basically about what kind of Sweden we want in the future. Is Sweden is still a sanctuary for Jews?"" and she added that she put on a necklace with the Star of David to mark the fight against antisemitism.

One columnist found the debate quite boring, except for Mohamsson. "The only one who acts a little new, different and unexpected – and who actually works well in this debate – is the Liberals' Simona Mohamsson. She has put on a Star of David to show that even people with her own Middle Eastern background, as she says, should show solidarity with the country's Jews and with the many Jewish children who go to school with a lump instead of butterflies in their stomachs. "

This is remarkable. 

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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 detail of the Mein Kampf London story that no one is noticing

The Telegraph reported:

An Arabic bookshop in London has been accused of anti-Semitism after it was found selling copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and displaying them “front and centre” of the store.

The newly opened shop, Aafaq Bookstore on Edgware Road, had multiple copies of the extremist text on a display table this week, just a five-minute walk away from the West London Synagogue.

The title was removed from the bookstore after the backlash:

A spokesman for Aafaq Bookstore told the Jewish Chronicle that they had removed the book from sale "out of respect for our visitors and the local community", adding: "The presence of a controversial historical text in a bookshop should not be interpreted as an endorsement of its contents or ideology. Aafaq unequivocally rejects Nazi ideology, anti-Semitism, racism and all forms of hatred.

Spread hatred? Aafaq? Of course not! Just because they put it on a display table doesn't mean anything. They could have done that for any 1924 book that no one in its demographic would be interested in.

One small detail: the publisher of this Arabic Mein Kampf edition was - Aafaq Books. The bookstore is a branch of a Kuwaiti publishing house. The logo in the bottom left of the book is the Aafaq  logo.

They aren't just a bookshop selling titles. They are the publisher. They chose Mein Kampf as one of the books they wanted to publish, even though there are plenty of other Arabic translations around. 

Because....it sells.

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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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Al Aqsa is in Danger - Again! And again! and again!

From DW last week, translated into Arabic this weekend just to maximize the incitement effect:

Reports from Jerusalem suggest that Israeli authorities are taking over one of Islam's holiest sites, the Al-Aqsa Mosque. If they do, experts say anything could happen, from war to terrorism to ending diplomatic ties.

The statement issued after this week's meeting in Jordan was blunt about what might happen next.

Israeli infringements on one of Islam's holiest sites, the Al-Aqsa Mosque in east Jerusalem, could lead to "a religious conflict with repercussions that will extend beyond the region and threaten regional and international peace and security," the foreign ministers of 10 countries belonging to the Arab League said after Wednesday's emergency meeting in Amman, Jordan. The statement was also signed by ministers from Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, and Malaysia.

Jordan's foreign minister called the meeting because of mounting evidence that the Israeli government is surreptitiously changing a decades-old agreement meant to ensure intercommunal peace at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, an area of great religious significance to Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

"We warn that tampering with the status quo … could trigger a religious conflict that will reverberate beyond Palestine and Jordan into the whole Muslim world," Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told the UK newspaper the Guardian before the meeting.

How many times have Muslim and Arab leaders threatened violence if Jews do something innocuous on the Temple Mount, like pray?

Too many times to count.

The "Al Aqsa is in Danger! meme is over a century old, warning that Israel plans to demolish the Al Aqsa Mosque or is changing the "status quo" that no one can quite define, and if they do whatever or keep doing whatever it will start a huge conflagration.

In 1990, rumors that the Temple Mount Faithful planned to lay a foundation stone on the Mount resulted in massive clashes. Middle Eastern media and regional governments warned that any attempt by Jewish groups to pray or alter the site's status would trigger regional war.  

In 1996 ,when Israel opened an exit to the Western Wall Tunnel near the northern end of the Temple Mount compound, Arab leaders and international media published warnings that Israel was undermining the foundation of Al-Aqsa Mosque, causing riots.

In 2000 Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount accompanied by security personnel. Palestinian leadership and Arab press framed the visit as a deliberate attempt to violate the status quo and "desecrate" the site, utilizing the visit as a rallying cry to launch the Second Intifada.

In 2017 Israel installed metal detectors on the entrances, causing more riots and threats.

Hamas started a mini-war in 2021 supposedly to "defend Al Aqsa," shooting rockets into Israel.

But Arab media constantly covers visits by "extremist Jewish settlers" as dire threats. Jordan regularly issued warnings and threats. This is daily. This summit was nothing special. 

Interestingly, in 2015, journalist Shlomo Eldar decided to take a visit to the Mount with Jews to see what the fuss was all about. He expected to see lots of repression of Arabs based on the media reports. He found something quite different:

I did not visit the Temple Mount for religious, political or ideological reasons. Rather, I came as a journalist wishing to know what the commotion is all about. I wanted to find out firsthand whether the Palestinian allegations that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is in danger are founded. ...The Waqf security guards are densely deployed at the Temple Mount compound, going to great lengths to make sure that only small groups of Jews get to visit the site compared to the thousands of tourists that are allowed to visit almost uninterruptedly. While keeping order and security at the Temple Mount and at Al-Aqsa Mosque is shared jointly by Israel and the Waqf, the tension awards the Palestinian almost total control of who is allowed into the Temple Mount and who isn’t. This, of course, stands in total contrast to the Palestinian allegations that Israel has changed the status quo and that Al-Aqsa is in danger.

A journalist checking Arab apocalyptic articles? Wow, what a concept!

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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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08/16 Links: Why Is There No Palestinian State?; Antisemitism at London-based ‘Guardian’ is worse than you think; Israeli journalists attacked in N. Ireland while filming documentary on antisemitism

From Ian:

Why Is There No Palestinian State?

There has never been a Palestinian state in all of history. There was never an independent Palestinian Arab country with its own government, army, currency, or capital. The word "Palestine" does not appear in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian New Testament, or the Koran.

In the modern era, Palestinian Arab statehood was repeatedly put within reach and repeatedly rejected beginning in 1937. In 1947, the UN proposed dividing British Mandatory Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The Jewish leadership said yes, and the Arab leadership said no. From 1948 to 1967, Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria, while Egypt controlled Gaza. Yet no Palestinian state was created during those years.

In 1993, Israel decided to test a different path. Israel recognized the PLO, withdrew from Palestinian population centers, and helped establish the Palestinian Authority, expecting negotiations to lead to a permanent settlement. In July 2000, at Camp David under U.S. President Bill Clinton's auspices, Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat far-reaching territorial concessions, including in Jerusalem. Arafat rejected the deal. What followed was the Second Intifada. Israeli buses, restaurants, and cafes were attacked by Palestinian terrorists.

In 2005, Israel withdrew its soldiers and uprooted every Jewish community from Gaza - in a test of what Israeli withdrawal could produce. Hamas seized control and turned Gaza into a terrorist fortress. Rockets were fired at Israeli towns. Terror tunnels were dug under the border. On Oct. 7, 2023, 18 years after Israel had left Gaza, it became the launching pad for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

If Israel were really the main reason there is no Palestinian state, then the periods when Israel was absent should have produced one - from 1948 to 1967 in Judea and Samaria and Gaza, and in the years following Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. They did not. Territory surrendered by Israel was used to prepare and launch the Oct. 7 massacre.

A Palestinian state under present conditions would be a gamble with millions of Israeli lives. After Oct. 7, why should Israel be expected to ignore every lesson of the past and take the same risk again?

Peace Index: 24% of Israeli Jews Support the Two-State Solution

According to Tel Aviv University's Peace Index survey of Israeli public opinion conducted on July 26-30, 2026, only 12% of Jewish respondents believe that negotiations will lead to peace in the coming years.

24% of the Jewish public support the two-state solution, but only 13% believe it has a chance of being achieved in the foreseeable future.

66% of the Jewish public support the expansion of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria based on security needs, while 25% oppose this.

Adam Levick: Antisemitism at London-based ‘Guardian’ is worse than you think

“What struck me most,” wrote Andrew Fox, a British army veteran specializing in defense, the Middle East and disinformation, about presentations he has given to anti-Zionist audiences, is “not just the hostility” but “the epistemic closure.” These people, he explained, “operate within a sealed universe of alternative facts,” where they have “absorbed over two-and-a-half years of propaganda via social media, activist networks, campus politics and the Hamas narrative laundered through supposedly respectable institutions.”

One of the supposedly “respectable institutions” that has taken this pro-Hamas propaganda laundering to the most extreme level is The Guardian—an outlet, CAMERA has demonstrated, that has spread libel after libel about the Jewish state and, by extension, Jews qua Jews, thus contributing to the antisemitism epidemic in the United Kingdom.

For instance, the mainstream media outlet began promoting variations of genocide libel on Oct. 14, 2023, just one week after the worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust, and 12 days before the Israel Defense Forces entered Gaza. They would publish op-eds hurling this libel another 12 times over the next 11 days.

The outlet was also the most enthusiastic promoter of the now-debunked Gaza famine libel, going further than most outlets by charging that Israeli leaders were intentionally starving Palestinians, including children, as a weapon of war while characterizing Israelis as monstrous and lacking basic humanity.

Even more troubling is the fact that their coverage at times crossed the line to explicit antisemitism by drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, defined as antisemitic by the most widely accepted antisemitism definition.

On Oct. 24, 2023, a little more than three weeks after the Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 people and the kidnapping of 251 others, the outlet published an op-ed by Swedish academic Raz Segal. It “contextualized” the Hamas-led terrorist attacks by citing “the historical context of Israeli settler colonialism since the 1948 Nakba” (what Palestinian Arabs call the “catastrophe” of the establishment of modern-day Israel) before suggesting that the views of Israeli leaders concerning Gaza are informed by Nazi logic.

On June 25, 2024, an op-ed in The Guardian by the New York City-based writer John Oakes actually likened the situation in Gaza to the Nazis’ starvation of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Meanwhile, on Aug. 13 that year, the outlet published a piece by Brown University professor Omer Bartov, who alleged that Israel’s descent into Nazi-like behavior arguably predates the Oct. 7 war and could be seen in the anti-terror policies of then Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin during the First Intifada.

On May 7, 2025, Guardian contributor Ahmed Moor published a piece likening the actions of Israeli leaders he libeled as ordering the starvation of Palestinian civilians to those of Rudolf Höss, the Nazi Kommandant who led the Auschwitz prison camp in Poland during World War II and oversaw the extermination of millions of Jews from 1940 to 1943. The story of Höss and his family was recently made into a 2023 film called “The Zone of Interest.”

Norwegian Center for Conflict Resolution engaged directly with Hamas, NGO Monitor claims

The Oslo-based Norwegian Center for Conflict Resolution (NOREF) engaged in direct, systematic coordination with high-ranking Hamas officials, according to internal Hamas documents recovered from Gaza, declassified by the IDF and translated by NGO Monitor.

NOREF describes itself as an “independent foundation” that works to prevent, mitigate, and resolve international conflicts. It was, however, established on the initiative of the Norwegian government and remains primarily funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA).

According to NGO Monitor, the newly uncovered documents indicate that Hamas explicitly viewed NOREF as a strategic channel for influencing European Union policy and mitigating Hamas’ international isolation.

The evidence also reportedly shows that NOREF’s activities extended beyond occasional mediation and included at least one unpublicized joint project with EU-designated terrorist organizations.

Specifically, a July 2021 document details how Hamas explicitly sought to utilize NOREF’s access to Western political circles to manipulate European foreign policy.

Hamas officials met with NOREF staff in push to sway European position
The document said a meeting took place on May 15, 2021, between high-ranking Hamas officials – including Basem Naim (Head of Hamas’ Foreign Relations Office in Gaza) and Abdallah Walid (from the same office) – and a senior NOREF delegation consisting of Deputy Head Dr. Marte Heian-Engdal, Middle East Department Head Dr. Frida Nome, and Advisor Dr. Ziad Abu Mustafa.

The meeting’s stated agenda included “Mediating the relationship between Hamas and the European Union.”

During the meeting, Hamas detailed its strategy to capitalize on the “negative reality in the Palestinian territories to push toward changing the European position.”

The NOREF delegation allegedly solicited Hamas’ input on how to interface with European leaders to maximize benefit for Hamas, and asked, “What are the channels of communication that are currently working on dialogue between the movement [Hamas] and the European Union? How are we able to contribute to this dialogue without obstructing these efforts?”

A NOREF representative also praised Hamas’ cooperation on a joint initiative, stating, “We have the youth project, and we value your effort with us in facilitating some of the meetings and communications on this matter.”

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Gaza's Celebrity Doctor Abu Safiya Really Is Hamas. Amnesty Doesn't Care.

For more than a year and a half, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya has been turned into an international symbol: the heroic Gaza pediatrician and hospital director dragged away by Israel for the crime of treating patients.

Amnesty International currently has an entire campaign demanding his “immediate and unconditional release.” Its description leaves essentially no room for another possibility. Abu Safiya, Amnesty says, was detained while “caring for his patients and carrying out his medical duties,” and his detention reflects Israel's “systematic targeting of Palestinian health workers.”

Last month Amnesty went further, calling Israel's designation of Abu Safiya as an unlawful combatant “baseless” and declaring that he was being held “without any justification.”

There is one small problem.

Israel's Supreme Court has now said that it has seen the classified intelligence, and that the intelligence “strongly supports” the contention that Abu Safiya is a Hamas operative who actively assisted the organization during the war. The court also found that the material shows he poses a danger to state security.

That does not prove the allegation: the evidence remains classified. But it changes the story rather dramatically.

The international campaign has largely behaved as though the only possibilities are that Abu Safiya is an innocent doctor or Israel is lying. Amnesty doesn't say the evidence against him is insufficient. It calls the designation “baseless.” It demands his unconditional release.

Yet Israel presented intelligence to Supreme Court justices who are perfectly capable of ordering the government to release detainees. After reviewing that intelligence, the court reached exactly the opposite conclusion.

Is Israel's court system corrupt? Amnesty is implying it. 

There was already plenty of reason to treat the idea of a Hamas-affiliated medical professional as something other than an absurd Israeli smear.

Salo Aizenberg has been compiling Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad's own martyr notices identifying people publicly described as Gaza healthcare workers who simultaneously held military positions. His running total has now reached 77 healthcare workers, while an earlier detailed thread documents nurses, doctors, technicians and hospital administrators described by Hamas or PIJ themselves as fighters and commanders.

Among them are personnel associated with Kamal Adwan Hospital itself. Aizenberg has separately pointed to evidence that Abu Safiya was a military officer.

This should sound familiar.

I wrote last month about the extraordinary propaganda campaign surrounding Abu Safiya, in which dramatic allegations about his supposedly imminent death were repeated internationally with remarkably little skepticism. The narrative had already been established: doctor = innocent; Israeli detention = persecution. Evidence that might complicate that narrative barely registered.

Now we have the Supreme Court saying that classified intelligence strongly supports Israel's case.

Perhaps Israel's intelligence is wrong. Perhaps the court evaluated it badly. Those are possibilities.

But there is another possibility that Amnesty International, much of the media and the entire international campaign seem unwilling even to contemplate:

Hussam Abu Safiya might actually be a doctor and a Hamas operative.

Those categories are not mutually exclusive.

In Gaza, we now have overwhelming evidence that they sometimes overlap.

And if Abu Safiya really was helping Hamas during the war and really does pose an ongoing security danger, Amnesty is not campaigning for the release of a persecuted pediatrician.

It is campaigning for Israel to immediately and unconditionally release a Hamas operative because he wears a white coat.

Amnesty is almost certainly aware of the evidence that Abu Safiya is a Hamas operative - we have a photo of him in a Hamas uniform, after all.  But if they want to claim that Israel's Supreme Court is part of the conspiracy, that would be more evidence that its hate of Israel trumps any actual evidence. 

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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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08/15 Links: Moderates vs. Hard-Liners; Jon Ossoff broke faith with Israel - and lost his Jewish supporters in Georgia; Man arrested for assault after disrupting NYC synagogue service

From Ian:

Moderates vs. Hard-Liners

Right from the beginning of Operation Epic Fury, after it had killed Khamenei, the Trump administration was already laying out scenarios for how to deal with the regime, including a so-called Venezuela option, which meant dealing with an IRGC regime minus those who have been eliminated. Early on, IRGC veteran and Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf was floated as the Iranian version of Venezuela’s Delcy Rodriguez: the regime insider who would cut a deal with the Americans in exchange for regime continuity. Soon the administration began negotiating with the Iranians, led by Ghalibaf, and it immediately settled into its version of the “moderates vs. hard-liners” classification as it pursued talks over the next four months.

Echoing Obama’s aforementioned use of the Rouhani election as cover, Trump labeled the Iranians with whom he was talking as “new” and “reasonable,” contrasting them with a previous tier that was eliminated in strikes. Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed this assessment in late March but refrained from disclosing the identities of the Iranian negotiators “because it probably would get them in trouble with some other groups of people inside of Iran,” suggesting an internal struggle with a more radical “hard-liner” faction. Although, Rubio added, it wasn’t clear which of the two factions was the one running the show. “At the end of the day, we have to see if these people”—that is, the “reasonable” moderates—“end up being the ones in charge, seeing if they’re the ones that have the power to deliver.”

Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, struck a more optimistic tone, including about the so-called hard-liners, claiming a breakthrough that had supposedly eluded every previous American administration for 47 years. In June, he told CNN that “the coolest thing about the progress we’ve made of the last few weeks is that you see people within the Iranian system—senior leadership, even IRGC officials—say, ‘You know what, we may have some animosity, we may have some mistrust, but we recognize the way that we’ve done business with the United States for 47 years is a mistake; let’s try something else.’ We’re gonna verify that, of course, but we’re certainly willing to try something else if they comply.”

Of course, none of that was real. The regime’s behavior did not change, and talks broke down. So, in July, Vance pivoted from his assessment of the new and cool IRGC and reverted to a variant of the “hard-liners” as spoilers. Only in Vance’s telling, the hard-liners were going through growing pains in their evergreen struggle with the “pragmatists.” In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Vance offered his theory for why the deal he negotiated had unraveled: Iranian hard-liners, alarmed at how much leverage they had surrendered once the Strait of Hormuz reopened and oil began flowing again, panicked and started shooting at ships. “There was this kind of freak-out in their system. So they shot at a couple of ships,” Vance offered. “The hard-liners have really, really reacted strongly to all the oil that’s coming out of the Strait of Hormuz. … Now the pragmatists in their system are saying this was a mistake. Let’s keep on talking.”

Trump and Vance had now introduced a variant of Obama’s innovation with the “moderates vs. hard-liners,” projecting that dichotomy onto the IRGC/hard-liners themselves. In a June 12 briefing, for example, a senior administration official—likely Vance himself—offered the following assessment: “The Iranian hard-liners, some of them want to kill the deal, but I think most of them actually want the deal.”

But since nothing in Iran’s behavior had changed, with the regime continuously attacking U.S. bases, regional allies, and targeting international shipping while ignoring Trump’s threats and occasional retaliatory strikes, the U.S. president has oscillated between contradictory characterizations of the Iranians. The people he had earlier described as reasonable became lunatics and sick scum. But, now fully invested in his deal with them, Trump also leaned on one of the established functions of the “moderates vs. hard-liners” device, attributing bad behavior to the “hard-liners” and thereby justifying continued talks with the imaginary “moderates.” After a thwarted missile strike against U.S. positions in Jordan in late July, Trump attributed the action not to the reasonable, moderate pragmatists, but rather to those pesky radical hard-liners. “It was a different group than we’re dealing with,” he insisted. “They’ve already apologized.”

Similarly, and using essentially the same language as the Obama administration more than a decade ago, Vance told Fox News in early August that the Iranians “have a fractured system. So there are people within their system who want the war to be over. There are also people in their system who are crazy radicals who want the war to continue.”

In other words, as things stand, Trump has adopted entirely the framework, categories, and rhetorical devices of his predecessors, whom he had described as losers who didn’t know how to deal with the mendacious Iranian regime. And he has done so for the same reason: to justify continued talks with, and concessions to, the hard men of the IRGC.

What’s more, the administration—specifically Vance—has adopted Obama’s other malignant innovation: blaming Israel and accusing domestic critics of being warmongering agents of influence on its behalf. As the vice president told Rogan last month, he knew “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that the Israeli government was trying to keep the war with Iran going indefinitely and that it was Israeli interference that sabotaged the cease-fire he and special envoy Steve Witkoff had negotiated. Moreover, Vance added, “certain elements within the Israeli government” had funded a campaign “to try to derail the negotiation and try to derail the deal.”

Further echoing Obama’s language, in a June 15 briefing, a senior U.S. official—again, likely Vance himself—employed, verbatim, Obama’s characterization of domestic critics as a mirror of Iran’s hard-liners. “What you’re seeing now is hard-liners on both sides. In the Iranian system, they’re protesting [against the deal]. And we have certain people in the American system who say there’s no deal you could ever do with Iran ever, who are obviously making a lot of noise.”

After five decades of dealing with the regime, to observe that the theory of an Iranian moderate faction opposed to the hard-line security establishment misreads the nature of the regime is to state the obvious. The fact is, going back at the very least to Obama—that is, two of those five decades—the U.S. government has perfectly understood what the Islamic Republic is.

Israeli officials have argued publicly and consistently, since well before the JCPOA was signed, that a deal with the regime is futile not because they are uniquely hostile to diplomacy, but because they, too, have spent decades watching the IRGC’s behavior up close. But the Israelis, and American critics, are also missing the point. The function of the “moderate vs. hard-liners” instrument is not epistemological, a faulty understanding of the nature of the regime. The Americans know well what that regime is. Donald Trump certainly has known it since the 1980s. Rather, “moderates vs. hard-liners” has long ceased to be a genuine misreading of a nascent regime and is now firmly established as a rhetorical device the function of which is to justify an accommodation with the IRGC and paint domestic critics as treasonous warmongers working on behalf of the Jewish state.

Jake Wallis Simons: Israel isn’t an enemy of Christianity. It’s a sinister distortion to suggest otherwise

Don’t take my word for it; consider a remark by Abdul Azim Wadi, the mayor of Qusra, a Palestinian village between Ramallah and Nablus, where Jewish “terrorists”, as American ambassador Mike Huckabee has called them, have been laying siege to an Arab family for days.

Speaking to the Telegraph last week as troops struggled to tame the fanatics, Mayor Wadi said: “There are good soldiers sometimes, and there are bad ones.”

There you have it. To you or me, this might seem obvious; to those in the West who have appropriated Palestine as a personal totem, however, there can be no such thing as a “good” Israeli soldier on the grounds of ideology.

“Death, death to the IDF.” Remember that? Try suggesting to Western progressives that some Israeli troops are “good”. The Nazi-grade radicalism, which broke into the mainstream when the deplorable rapper Bob Vylan led the chant at Glastonbury last summer, goes way beyond the venom even of many Palestinians who live cheek-by-jowl with Israelis.

According to one poll, 50 per cent of Britons (and 67 per cent of Labour voters) now believe the lie that Israel committed “genocide” in Gaza. And what about British Christians? Perhaps the most substantial polling of that group comes from December 2024. It found that 47 per cent of believers had already swallowed the “genocide” libel.

Dig into the study and it gets worse. A quarter of believers said it was “probably true” that Jews “don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind”; a third thought Jews talk “too much about” the Holocaust; and one-in-six claimed that Jews were “responsible for most of the world’s wars”. This is anti-Semitism and it creates fertile soil for propaganda.

I mention the Church because, judging by the responses to a story last week about the Israeli military “surrounding” a Christian town on the West Bank, many readers were imagining a Jewish version of the Siege of Constantinople, with artillery fire and waves of troops mounting an assault against the valiant soldiers of Christ.

But listen to Father Bashar Fawadleh, the priest at Christ the Redeemer Church in Taybeh, northeast of Ramallah: “A closed military zone for non-resident Israelis may be a positive step.” Turns out the army was trying to protect the Palestinians, not rout them.

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08/14 Links Pt2: At the site of a Nazi massacre, the Jews are forgotten; The Clueless Hate Preachers in Liverpool; French ministers condemn ‘Hitler’ death threat against Jewish tourists

From Ian:

At the site of a Nazi massacre, the Jews are forgotten

Former Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s speech at Sant’Anna di Stazzema shows how the Palestinian cause is becoming a political and moral rallying point for parts of the European left.

Conte is an especially interesting case in the antisemitic tsunami now engulfing much of the world. The former prime minister and current leader of the left-wing populist Five Star Movement is a key ally of Democratic Party leader Elly Schlein and a potential candidate to lead Italy again. Italian media are already portraying his political moves with an eye toward a future contest for leadership of the left-wing coalition.

Increasingly, Conte appears to be using the Palestinian cause as a moral glue for the electorate he hopes to assemble, much as New York politician Zohran Mamdani has done in the United States.

That is what made his appearance this week at Sant’Anna di Stazzema so significant.

Sant’Anna is not simply another Italian village with a tragic wartime history. It is one of the most powerful symbols of Nazi-Fascist barbarism in Italy.

On Aug. 12, 1944, soldiers of the 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division “Reichsführer-SS,” aided by Italian Fascist collaborators, descended on the Tuscan village and surrounding hamlets and massacred hundreds of civilians. The official commemoration on Wednesday marked the 82nd anniversary of the slaughter, in which 560 people were killed, including more than 100 children.

Women, old people and children were slaughtered. The youngest victim, Anna Pardini, was just 20 days old. What was ostensibly an operation against partisans became a bloodbath of defenseless civilians.

Italian writer Adriano Sofri has compared the massacre to Srebrenica. The comparison is understandable.

But there is another massacre, far closer to us in time, that should have been impossible to ignore at Sant’Anna: Oct. 7, 2023.

On that day, Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel and carried out a mass slaughter of Jews in kibbutzim, towns and at a music festival, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 to the Gaza Strip.

Why should Oct. 7 have been remembered at Sant’Anna?

Because the defining ideological crime of Nazism was the persecution and extermination of the Jewish people. The SS did not merely terrorize Europe. It was a central instrument in the machinery that murdered 6 million Jews.

On Oct. 7, an ancient ideological hatred appeared once again in its most bloodthirsty form: the mass murder of innocent Jews, accompanied by an explicit determination to destroy their state.

Yet Conte, who delivered the official commemorative address at Sant’Anna on Wednesday, did not make that connection.

David Collier: The Clueless Hate Preachers in Liverpool

Foreigners, and Israel in the Strait of Hormuz
And incredibly, it got even worse.

My attention turned to the people living there. I was told Israelis are just “foreigners” who arrived, sent by imperial powers that wanted influence in the region.

There is something particularly absurd about this inversion of history. The modern Middle East was shaped by successive imperial conquests. Arab-Muslim armies conquered the region in the seventh century. The Ottoman Empire that ruled it for centuries was itself an Islamic empire. British rule followed as part of the largest empire the world has ever seen.

Yet somehow, when a tiny and historically persecuted minority rebuilt its national home in its ancestral homeland, that became the great act of imperialism.

Turning the Jewish story of return and national liberation into a twisted narrative of foreign global power requires both an extraordinary rewriting of history and the recycling of some very old antisemitic tropes.

I pressed the issue.

“It is nothing to do with religion,” she said.

By this point I was toying with her. Islamic identity, supremacy and religious rhetoric have run through major strands of the Palestinian national movement from its earliest decades and remain central to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad today. She is certainly not alone in mistakenly reducing the entire conflict to an argument over land, but she was proving more clueless than most.

I pushed back lightly on the subject of a Jewish homeland.

And then came the killer blow.

As she reaffirmed that this was all about Western power rather than religion, she explained to me why Israel had been created where it was.

Israel, she told me, was built in the Strait of Hormuz because the West wanted control of it.

I had to check that I had heard her properly.

So I questioned it.

She doubled down.

This woman really believed that Israel was in the Strait of Hormuz:

At this point it became clear that she was mixing up the various fragments of TikTok geopolitics that had apparently built her education, so I played along for a while, asking her to explain more about Israel’s geopolitical position in the Strait of Hormuz.

Eventually she gave up.

Instead, she began pushing me towards the literature on the table.

That, she assured me, “would help answer my questions.”

Justifying October 7
I was presented with the latest copy of the Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! newspaper. Pointing to the headline, she began telling me about how the activist Sarah Cotte had been arrested simply for saying that “Palestinians had rights.”

These were just more lies. Cotte has been charged with terrorism offences over alleged support for Hamas. The “unconditional” solidarity was expressed at a public rally in London on October 9, just two days after the October 7 atrocities.

I wanted to push this further. She did not budge. According to her, simply supporting Palestine could “put you in jail”.

All that was left for me to do was ask about October 7.

“They have a right to resist,” she responded.

She then spent the next few minutes conflating Gaza with both real and imagined events in Judea and Samaria, droning on about occupation and the daily killing of children, all supposedly leaving these poor Gazans with no alternative.

“What option do they have?” she asked.

The reality crossed my mind. When Israel left Gaza in 2005, dismantling every settlement and dragging its own civilians out, Palestinians were presented with an opportunity to begin building towards statehood. Gazans had lots of options. Instead of peace and investment in the future, Hamas and other armed groups spent the following years building tunnels, accumulating rockets and preparing for war.

October 7 was not the only option at all. It was the one Hamas chose.

And then the absurdity of the conversation struck me.

Just two minutes earlier she had tried to convince me that simply supporting Palestinians was an arrestable crime. Yet here she was, standing perfectly freely in the middle of a major Liverpool shopping district, offering her own thinly veiled justification for the terrorist atrocities of October 7.

It was time to leave.

The problem here is a simple one. A false narrative is being spread openly on our streets – one that generates hatred, radicalises weak-minded and vulnerable people, and ultimately places British Jews at risk. And those spreading these lies have not even taken the time to learn the basics about the subject they speak about with such certainty.

They stand on British streets campaigning for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state while repeating a historical narrative they have never seriously examined. When confronted with the murder, rape and kidnapping of Israeli civilians, even that can be absorbed into the same ideological framework: they had no choice; they had a right to resist.

These are not harmless mistakes about distant history. This is political extremism being sold to passing members of the British public.

When will we stop pretending that someone standing on our streets spreading hatred, historical falsehoods and justifications for terrorist violence is merely an “activist”?

Why not call it what it is – hate preaching?

For 2028’s Jewish hopefuls, Israel is the test that decides who’s the ‘right’ kind of Jew

A quarter century ago, when the late Sen. Joe Lieberman was tapped by Al Gore, the Democratic nominee for president, to be his running mate on the 2000 ticket, the question around many a Shabbat table was, “Is he too Jewish to be in the White House?”

There’s a different question being asked, largely in Democratic circles, of today’s Jewish presidential candidates: “Is he the ‘right’ kind of Jewish candidate to be president?” — a question that is almost entirely centered around a candidate’s position on Israel and how openly he identifies with his religious faith.

A long list of Jewish candidates are considering a presidential campaign or are being touted as credible contenders, ranging from moderates like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to progressives like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and those who straddle the ideological divide, like Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA).

In both 2026 and 2028, the debate over Israel is on the ballot: Congressional primaries are pitting pro-Israel candidates against those who don’t acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and already a clear divide is emerging in the prospective 2028 presidential field over the issues of the U.S.-Israel relationship and dealing with rising antisemitism.

Even in races where Israel policy is not front-and-center, invoking AIPAC has become something of a catch-all slur for progressives attacking the role of outside money in Democratic primaries. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a likely 2028 hopeful, proudly proclaimed in February that he’d never taken AIPAC money — which of course he hasn’t, given that AIPAC and its affiliated super PAC historically focus on federal, not state, races.

Since soft-launching his presidential campaign last month (in Tel Aviv, no less), former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has made the Jewish state — and its relationship with the U.S. — one of his top issues in speeches and interviews. Even when his views are well within the mainstream, his signaling that he’s talking tough against Israel is a sign he recognizes his long-standing pro-Israel record is a vulnerability in a Democratic presidential primary.

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08/14 Links Pt1: Shame on the "genocide scholars"; Stop living in la-la land: Only the IDF can curb Israel’s enemies; UN Leaders Lit an Eternal Flame for a Hamas Commander

From Ian:

Andrew Fox: Shame on the "genocide scholars"

None of these academics sits on the ICJ, although it must be noted that some of their fellow Israel-haters do. Their public biographies reveal no qualification to adjudicate international criminal law or the law of armed conflict, no understanding of targeting, and no expertise in Hamas and its tactics. They may, of course, offer historical parallels or sociological theories within the very narrow bounds of their expertise. However, they have instead issued verdicts, wrapped those verdicts in academic prestige and watched journalists cite the prestige as proof. Shaw’s latest book is called The New Age of Genocide: Intellectual and Political Challenges after Gaza. The accusation produces headlines and speaking invitations. It also sells books. The blood libel has acquired peer review and a publicity department.

That description is earned. The modern version of the mediaeval libel says that the Jewish state deliberately kills Palestinians as a people, with dead children serving as its most potent imagery. Once repeated as settled fact by decorated academics, the charge escapes Gaza and attaches itself to Jews everywhere. The consequences have names. Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were murdered outside Washington’s Capital Jewish Museum. The accused gunman allegedly said, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza”. Weeks earlier, an attacker shouting “Free Palestine” threw Molotov cocktails at a Jewish hostage walk in Boulder. Karen Diamond died from her injuries. Bondi, Manchester, the list of Jews murdered over the Gaza blood libel goes on.

These academics did not commit those attacks. They have positioned themselves, however, as part of the international anti-Israel machine. Along with activists posing as journalists, maniacal Israel-haters posing as UN officials, and a whole industry of fellow travellers, they helped dignify the mythology in which Jews anywhere can be treated as accessories to an imaginary extermination campaign. Professors who lend their authority to that mythology cannot retreat into innocent scholarship when its slogans arrive outside Jewish museums with guns, or at Jewish gatherings with petrol bombs. Bartov, Mordechai, Shaw, Mehdi Hassan, Owen Jones, DropSite, Max Blumenthal, and all the rest: they all have blood on their hands as much as any of the IDF soldiers they accuse so viciously.

The evidential problem remains untouched. Under Croatia v Serbia, group destruction must be the only reasonable inference when intent is deduced from conduct. My earlier pieces have covered Gaza’s wartime births and Israel’s facilitation of mass polio vaccination, facts the genocide campaign simply wishes away. A brutal war against Hamas remains an obvious alternative explanation.

The genocide allegation survives only by declaring every piece of exculpatory evidence meaningless. Births supposedly tell us nothing. Vaccinations tell us nothing. Food deliveries tell us nothing. Humanitarian pauses tell us nothing. Failed famine predictions tell us nothing. The absence of measured famine mortality tells us nothing.

These academics have strayed wildly beyond their lanes and converted moral vanity into counterfeit legal authority. They profit in attention and publication from a blood libel whose human cost is paid by Jews they will never meet. Shame on them. They are shameless.

UN study debunks Gaza malnutrition claim, but Labour presses on

British Jews are scared; they’re right to be. Since October 7 they have seen murderous violence against their persons, vandalism against their synagogues, and arson against their property. Jewish-owned ambulances have been fire-bombed. Ambulances. It’s not enough that Jews be stabbed and bloodied and cowed into hiding their religious symbols; they must be deprived of the means to save themselves.

Most British Jews are Zionists, albeit the intensity of the attachment to Israel differs from person to person, as do the feelings stirred up. Some are happy warriors for Zionism; others are concerned by the impact of Jewish sovereignty on Jewish ethics; others still are the dissenting critics who imagine themselves to be the voice of Jewish conscience.

Zionism, like Judaism, encompasses the complexities of the Jewish experience: “Bless the sting and bless the honey/Bless the bitter and the sweet.”

Instead of acting to calm tensions, this government prefers to inflame them. If the political chatter is true, we can expect yet more inflaming in the coming months as Andy Burnham attempts to reset his party’s relationship with Muslim voters. Ministers will slug away at the Israel punching bag in the vain hope that it will sate the electors who have abandoned them.

New foreign secretary Ed Miliband used his “frank and constructive” first conversation with Israeli counterpart Gideon Sa’ar to lash out at Israel on settlements, Palestinian statehood, and, inevitably, the transfer of aid to Gaza. The anti-Israel lobby is itching to get its NGOs back into Gaza where they can return to business-as-usual, turning a blind eye to Hamas’s crimes, and denouncing Israel at every opportunity.

There is no silver lining in this for Jews. Labour increasingly sees British politics in terms of interest blocs, whether those interests be economic, political, or ethnic, and the harsh truth is that Jews are a much smaller bloc. It is worth noting, in passing, how insulting it is to treat all British Muslims as an unintegrated, ethno-religious bloc. Make no mistake, those Muslims exist, and in far greater numbers than we should be comfortable with, but plenty of British Muslims want to be addressed as the individuals they are.

Regardless, the voters who ditched Labour over Gaza are, by and large, not coming back. They want representatives who share and are willing to give voice to their extremist, antizionist prejudices. The 2024 election has shown them that Labour can be beaten in its heartlands by populist Muslim, Palestine-centric, sectarian campaigns.

While Labour MPs have grown accustomed to pandering to this electorate over the years, they could never go far enough. Now these voters don’t need Labour, and where they have the numbers they will put one of their own in Parliament.

Labour isn’t prepared to accept this yet, so expect the anti-Israel politicking to be stepped up again and again. Even though it won’t redraw the electoral map in Labour’s favour, it will contribute to the noxious fug of antisemitism that lingers in Britain’s major cities, university towns, and in progressive spaces like education, trade unionism, the public sector, and the arts.

It would be better all round if Labour just admitted what it was up to, that it doesn’t care whether the data it bases policy decisions on are reliable, that certain Muslim votes matter more than the Jewish community. Lessons should be learnt, but won’t, about the credence given to UN statistics on Israel. When you want to be misled enough, and to mislead others, you will believe anything.

Was Oct. 7 ‘inevitable’?

Asked what the DSA wants for Israelis and Palestinians, Romer described a “free Palestine” with a capital in Jerusalem, volunteering that this could safely be read as a one-state solution. She said nothing about what becomes of the roughly 10 million people currently living in Israel. Not a word. In this framework, the question does not arise.

Asked whether the DSA would have supported the terms discussed at Camp David in 2000, the closest the parties have ever come to a two-state agreement, she said it was a good question and that she would have to look at the specifics.

She didn’t know then and doesn’t now. She holds a maximalist position on the outcome and hasn’t read the history that produced it. That is not a policy. That is a slogan wearing a policy’s clothes.

The pattern held everywhere. She said the DSA believes in taxing the hell out of millionaires. Remnick asked what that means in practice. She had no answer, and when he observed that a co-chair might be expected to have one, she offered that it is a democracy and that we have to look at what we need to spend. On open borders, she described reforming the current system while rethinking it, building a new one and eventually “flipping a switch.”

And when the backlash came, Romer didn’t revisit any of it. She went on X the next day and called Remnick a “debate bro” trying to make her look and feel stupid.

He asked her questions. That was his job. The questions were never the problem. It was the lack of answers.

Democrats should understand exactly what is at stake because life is not a podcast. DSA members have won congressional primaries in New York, Colorado and Michigan, unseating sitting House incumbents in the above first two states. By January, there will almost certainly be seven of them in Congress.

This is no longer a caucus writing manifestos in a rented room. It is an organization with a functioning electoral machine, a farm system and a demonstrated ability to end 30-year careers.

To be exact, because exactness is the point: Romer’s words are hers. Mamdani did not say them, and no one should pretend that he did.

But Romer is not a member having a bad afternoon. She is the co-chair—the person whose formal job is to articulate what the organization believes. When the person elected to speak for a movement calls Oct. 7 inevitable, cannot answer a question about Camp David or explain her own tax position, then that is a description of the movement’s intellectual center of gravity.

It’s not a gaffe. It is a readout.

So put one question to every candidate seeking your vote, your check or your endorsement. Not whether they criticize Israeli policy. Not whether they grieve Palestinian suffering (because decent people do).

Was Oct. 7 inevitable? Yes or no.

The ones who can answer in a single syllable belong in public life. The ones who need a paragraph have already told you what they think.

Nothing about this was inevitable. Not then. Not now.

Pay-for-slay: Could the Palestinian Authority be held legally liable for October 7?

Can the Palestinian Authority (PA) be held civilly responsible for the October 7 massacre even if the plaintiffs cannot produce records showing that it directly paid the Hamas terrorists who planned and carried it out?

That question sits at the center of litigation brought by more than 8,000 plaintiffs now moving through the Jerusalem District Court, where they are seeking to hold the PA responsible for deaths, injuries, and other harm caused by the massacre and the war that followed.

Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, a former director of the IDF Military Prosecution in the West Bank whose recent study examines the PA and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) prisoner-payment system and its possible connection to October 7, does not expect the litigation to uncover a neat paper trail linking individual Hamas leaders to PA payments.

“I don’t think we’re going to see individual links to the PA,” Hirsch told The Jerusalem Post in a Monday interview. “I think it’s going to be very, very difficult to find that type of evidence.”

That evidentiary gap is central to the cases. Hirsch argued that the question is broader than whether a particular October 7 terrorist received a particular payment. The question is whether the PA’s long-standing system of paying, supporting, and employing prisoners and released prisoners can itself provide a sufficient connection to people who later returned to terrorism.

“What will most likely happen is that most of the discussion will be about the prima facie [initial] responsibility of the PA, if that can even be shown,” Hirsch said. “It will very much depend on whether the judge accepts this argument that the PA is responsible because of the payment of the salaries.”

The court has not decided that question.

In a July 1 decision, Jerusalem District Court Judge Eran Shilo set a common procedure for the thousands of lawsuits, separating the shared question of the PA’s potential responsibility from the individual circumstances and damages claimed by each plaintiff. The plaintiffs’ law firms were initially ordered to submit short written arguments, while the PA is due to file a single response by October 18.

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Amnesty's "genocide" accusation keeps falling apart - thanks to Hamas and Islamic Jihad publishing their "martyrs"

One of the pillars of Amnesty International's accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is that Israel sometimes bombs civilians for no military reason at all. 

This is critical to Amnesty's argument. A war in which civilians die while Israel is attacking Hamas is a war, however horrible the civilian toll may be. Amnesty needs something more to transform it into genocide. It needs evidence that killing Palestinians is itself the objective.

So Amnesty devoted an entire section of its "genocide" report to fifteen Israeli airstrikes that it says had no military justification.

"On the basis of its investigations, Amnesty International concluded that, in all 15 cases, the locations struck were civilian objects and that Israel had launched the air strikes."

Amnesty says it investigated whether the targets contained fighters or military objectives and found none. It says it interviewed survivors and witnesses, examined satellite imagery, reviewed videos and photographs and consulted weapons experts. The conclusion is categorical: Amnesty "did not find any evidence of a military objective at the locations struck."

That is about as strong a claim as an organization can make. And it is falling apart.

Salo Aizenberg has been going through Amnesty's fifteen showcase cases and comparing them with information that has since became available about the people killed in those strikes. Again and again, the supposedly inexplicable attacks on purely civilian locations turn out to have killed Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad or other armed-group personnel.

In one case, Amnesty described an Israeli strike near Jabalia's refugee-camp market that killed sixteen civilians and said it had found no military objective. Aizenberg found that five of the dead were subsequently identified by Palestinian sources as militants, including a child soldier.

There was a human rights violation here: five militants deliberately gathered in a civilian area to use Gazans as human shields. But the human rights of Gazans don't matter to Amnesty when it is Islamic Jihad who are responsible for their deaths.

In another, Amnesty investigated the destruction of the al-Dos family home and again said it could find no military objective. A PIJ unit later identified one of its commanders among the dead.

Amnesty described a strike on the al-Najjar family home the same way. Palestinian Islamic Jihad subsequently identified one of the men killed there as a battalion commander.

Another strike Amnesty treated as an apparently purposeless attack on civilians killed Mohammed Shahada, whom Aizenberg identifies through Palestinian sources as a PIJ officer.

Another of Amnesty's examples involved the al-Ayadi family home. The Mujahideen Brigades itself reportedly acknowledged that Rami Allal, one of its commanders, was killed in the strike.

A December strike on the Harb family home yielded the same pattern: Amnesty said it found no military objective, while a PIJ commander was later confirmed among the dead.

Aizenberg has since found yet another militant in another one of Amnesty's cases.

These were not fifteen incidents selected at random from tens of thousands of Israeli strikes. These were Amnesty's curated cases.

Amnesty spent weeks investigating them. It interviewed witnesses. It gathered photographs. It analyzed fragments. It examined satellite images. It went looking specifically for attacks that could demonstrate that Israel bombed civilians without a military objective. 

In other words, Amnesty had every incentive to choose the cleanest examples it could find. We do not know how many airstrikes Amnesty decided to pass on because they wouldn't fit their predetermined "genocide' narrative. It wouldn't publish cases that are ambiguous or obviously targeting Hamas. 

And it still got them wrong.

The supposed existence of civilian-only attacks is one of the mechanisms Amnesty uses to bridge the enormous gap between "Israel conducted a war in which many civilians were killed" and "Israel intended to destroy Palestinians as a group."

Amnesty knows that civilian deaths by themselves do not establish genocide. Every urban war produces civilian deaths. The genocide accusation therefore requires evidence that the civilians were killed because they were Palestinians, rather than because Israel was trying to kill Hamas and other fighters who embedded themselves among civilians.

These fifteen attacks were supposed to provide exactly that evidence.

Instead, they reveal something very different: Amnesty simply did not know what Israel was targeting.

That should have been obvious from the beginning. Amnesty does not have access to Israeli targeting intelligence. It does not know what Israeli surveillance showed before an attack. It does not hear the communications being intercepted. It does not know which commanders Israeli intelligence believed were inside a building at a given moment. 

Amnesty interviewed people on the ground after the bombs fell. It did not even consider that most Gazans would never identify known terrorists to Amnesty out of fear of their own lives.  Yet Amnesty treated its inability to identify a military target as evidence that no military target existed. Israel, as always, is guilty until proven innocent beyond any possible doubt. 

There is an even larger problem with Amnesty's theory. Israel has spent an enormous amount of intelligence, manpower, aircraft time and expensive precision weaponry trying to locate and kill individual Hamas and PIJ commanders hiding among civilians. Amnesty itself has spent years complaining about how Israel weighs the military value of those targets against the expected civilian casualties.

If Israel's objective is to kill Palestinians as Palestinians, why bother identifying the Hamas commander in the building?

Why spend intelligence resources locating him? Why calculate the expected civilian casualties around him? Why decide whether his military value justifies a strike? Why use expensive precision weapons to hit the building where he is located?

You can simply bomb the civilians.

Amnesty could argue that Israel's proportionality calculations are too permissive. Indeed, critics have made exactly that argument, and I have explained why the claim that Israel simply abandoned the laws of proportionality does not withstand scrutiny.

But the proportionality argument disproves the genocide argument - because it concedes that there was a legitimate target. 

Amnesty's methodological failure is now impossible to ignore. Amnesty's investigators spent weeks examining individual strikes and confidently announced that there had been no military objective. Outside researchers, using information Amnesty either missed or never bothered to look for, are now finding the military targets one after another, freely admitted by the militant groups themselves.

A serious human-rights organization would be reopening those cases immediately. it would be horrified that it reported on these cases wrong. It would contact the sources. It would investigate the militant identifications. It would publish corrections where necessary. It would reconsider every conclusion downstream that depended upon those cases.

When an organization publishes an accusation as grave as genocide, the minimum requirement should be a willingness to correct the evidence they base the accusation on when it points the other way.

Amnesty will never do any of those things. They never correct their wrong conclusions about Israel and civilians. I know because I've identified militants in previous wars that amnesty called civilian, Amnesty was aware of my research, and it said, explicitly, that it did not consider me credible even though I was quoting militant sources themselves and even when my findings were mirrored by Israeli thinktanks and others. 

A real human rights organization would correct its mistakes. An antisemitic advocacy organization never will. And we have more proof of which one Amnesty is. 

---

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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08/13 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Gaslighting on steroids; James Murdoch Throws DEI Spin at Israel Controversy; Marco Rubio Is Right—the ICC Is Dangerously Flawed

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Gaslighting on steroids

Since Zionism is framed as racist, destructive and positively demonic, all Jews are now held to be positively demonic. The result is Jews across Europe and elsewhere in the West being abused, insulted, screamed at, spat at, threatened with murder and physically attacked.

This gaslighting on steroids has produced an alarming response among some American Jews. Instead of fighting back, they are deliberately avoiding any reference to Zionism.

A poll taken last February by the Jewish Federations of North America found that only 37% of American Jews describe themselves as Zionists, even though 88% said Israel had the right to exist as a Jewish, democratic state. The study said respondents were either unclear about what Zionism was or else they thought it implied blanket support for Israeli government policies and actions with which they disagreed.

Some badly gaslighted American Jews are now even saying that the words “Zionism” and “Zionists” should no longer be used. The existence of Israel, they say, means these terms are outdated; and since they’re now associated with racism and killing, they should be junked.

This is a catastrophically wrong conclusion. Words matter. They shape the way people see the world. When the United Nations passed its infamous 1995 resolution declaring “Zionism is racism,” it lit the fires of Jew-hatred across the world. Language has been hijacked to turn words into weapons to destroy Israel and the Jews.

Zionism has been cast as an evil doctrine to detach Israel from Judaism. But the land of Israel is an essential part of Judaism. That’s why anti-Zionism is an existential attack on Judaism itself.

“Genocide” is another word that’s been hijacked as a weapon for Israel’s destruction. To deal with the patent absurdity of describing as a “genocide” Israel’s totally justified war of self-defense, in which it has gone to unprecedented lengths to avoid killing civilians as far as possible, Israel’s foes have changed the meaning of the word.

According to them, genocide now means merely killing any Palestinian Arabs, or—even more imbecilically—just destroying Gaza’s buildings.

Jews should absolutely not be aiding the intended dismemberment of Judaism by helping remove “Zionism” from the lexicon and from the world.

Jews should be asserting that the land of Israel is inseparable from Judaism, that the Palestinian Arabs are ethnic cleansers and that Zionism was the greatest anti-colonialist liberation movement of the 20th century.

The proper response to a malevolent narrative of lies is not to shuffle away for cover. It is to get up off your knees and fight back with pride.

James Murdoch Throws DEI Spin at Israel Controversy

Days after an eruption of condemnations over an issue of New York magazine that repeatedly and falsely accused Israel of genocide and that describes the Jewish state as "the land mass currently called Israel," the magazine’s leadership has finally offered up a wan response.

It’s not exactly an apology, and it’s not exactly "we stand by our story," either.

Instead, the statement from New York magazine's editorial leadership—no names, please—to the Washington Free Beacon dodges the journalistic accuracy and integrity issues involved, along with the antisemitism. Instead, it serves up a salad of lefty buzzwords.

"Our latest cover story is an exploration of a New York subculture that is making its presence felt, both culturally and politically, in new ways over the last few years. As with other communities forged by common experiences of conflict, there is an irreducible political dimension to any coverage of this subject," the statement says. "We have endeavored to capture the tensions and live debates that exist within these communities, including how they relate to Israel. We are aware of the wide range of responses to the piece, including critiques from some in the Jewish community. We take these comments seriously, and, as always, we welcome and acknowledge good faith discussion and criticism about our journalism."

The reference to the "cover story" and "the piece" obscures the fact that it was not just a single article that is fueling outrage, but two articles. One is by Zaina Arafat, an adjunct assistant professor at Barnard College and a featured faculty member at the unaccredited, for-profit "School" of the New York Times. A second article, focused on food, is by Madeline Leung Coleman, whose social media indicates support for the unlawful Gaza encampment at Columbia, which culminated in the storming and occupation of a campus building, and its demand for divestment from Israel. That article matter-of-factly accuses Israel of genocide.

James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems company took control of New York on July 8, and New York’s "Habibi City" cover is being interpreted as a signal of his plans for what the press release announcing the transaction described as "the beginning of a new chapter." Murdoch is not pushing back on that idea.

Vox, which was also part of the James Murdoch deal, on August 10 published an article calling for a U.S. embargo on arms to Israel. "The Democratic Party’s burgeoning support for restricting aid and arms transfers to Israel is well-founded," the article said. "Supplying Israel with money and weapons is contrary to both America’s moral obligations and security interests. It is wrong to subsidize or provision any foreign military’s assaults on human rights. And doing so undermines global respect for both the United States and the concept of international law." The article didn’t explain how it would be in the U.S. "moral" or "security" interest to allow its ally to be overrun by Islamist terrorists, rapists, and murderers, or to turn to alternative arms suppliers such as China or Russia instead of the U.S.

The New York magazine statement that it welcomes "good faith discussion and criticism" also is a not-so-subtle attempt to shift the question from the accuracy and integrity of the magazine’s journalism—which the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, called "a blatant, disgusting double standard"—to the intentions of the magazine’s critics.

For the assignment to cover Middle Eastern food in New York City, James Murdoch hired a reporter, Coleman, who signed an October 26, 2023 "Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" that claimed "Israel’s war against Gaza is an attempt to conduct genocide against the Palestinian people." The statement said, "We come together as writers, journalists, academics, artists, and other culture workers to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine. We stand with their anticolonial struggle for freedom and for self-determination, and with their right to resist occupation." Never mind the "good faith" of the critics, where is the good faith of an editor or an owner who makes such an assignment or publishes the false accusations of genocide it produces?

Simon & Schuster Doubles Down on Notorious Writer Who Calls Jews 'Ghouls,' Will Publish Her New Novel: Writer Taunts Angry 'Zionists' Who Oppose Her Deal

Simon & Schuster's partnership with a notorious antisemite who regularly calls Jews "roaches," "demons," and "ghouls" is deeper than previously reported.

Susan Abulhawa—who has projected the medieval bile for years on her X account—announced in a defiant video that the publishing giant would put out her new forthcoming novel. Simon & Schuster has already faced significant controversy and been condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for its decision to reprint two of Abulhawa's past novels through its Atria imprint.

"The Zionists have missed or don't know, but Simon & Schuster will also be publishing my new novel," Abulhawa said.

"My upcoming novel, The Sun Still Kisses Me, is not yet listed, because its release isn't until next year, but I'll post more about it soon," the author promised.

In a brief video announcing the project, Abulhawa also took aim at Jewish writers and editors who have spoken out against the collaboration—including Washington Free Beacon editor in chief Eliana Johnson and Commentary editor and Free Beacon contributor John Podhoretz—laying digitally altered video of them over foreboding music.

"Zionists are really mad," Abulhawa deadpanned.

Abulhawa promised in the video to donate all funds from the preorders of her books to the Palestinian Youth Movement. The movement "organizes events with the U.S. designated terrorist entity Samidoun" and, according to the Israeli government, has "close ties" with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, also a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, Sen. Tom Cotton's (R., Ark.) office reported.

Abulhawa's track record of attacking Jews ("Jews" specifically, not just "Zionists") stretches back years and is in plain sight.

"We live in the time of jewish supremacist demons," Abulhawa said in a September 2025 post on X, adding that Jews were a "cultureless, rootless human aberration."

That same month, she blasted another critic as a "lying Jewish supremacist cockroach" and attacked "dual loyalty zionists," citing former Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis as an example.

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