08/18 Links Pt1: Israel confirms striking Syrian air base, saying Turkey was planning to deploy forces; The hostages held by Hamas at Al-Shifa Hospital; Palestinians would rather be permanent victims than have their own state

From Ian:

Gerald Posner: Genocide for Dummies

There is a question the statistics above cannot answer on their own, and almost nobody thinks to ask it: who, exactly, is Israel at war with?

Genocide requires intent to destroy a protected group as such — national, ethnic, racial, religious. Not a government or army or a political movement. That is why the Khmer Rouge, who killed a quarter of Cambodia, were convicted of genocide only as to the Cham and the Vietnamese. So, the threshold question in Gaza is whether the belligerent Israel is fighting is Hamas or the Palestinian people. Most of Israel’s own conduct supports the former inference.

Start with the most obvious fact, which is so obvious that it disappears. Israel negotiates with Hamas—repeatedly, publicly, through Qatari and Egyptian mediators—over ceasefires and hostage exchanges and the return of bodies. There is a ceasefire in force as I write this. Nobody negotiates a truce with a people it intends to erase, because the point of erasure is that there will be no one left to negotiate with. The Wehrmacht did not broker prisoner exchanges with the Jews of Warsaw. The Interahamwe did not sign agreements with the Tutsi. In every case on the recognized list, the perpetrator’s relationship with the victim group was total and one-directional. Here it is bilateral, mediated, and ongoing.

Second, South Africa, which brought the genocide case against Israel before the ICJ in December 2023, identifies “Palestinians” in Gaza as a substantial part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnic group that extends far beyond Gaza. Roughly two million Arab citizens live inside Israel, vote in its elections, sit in its parliament, and have served on its Supreme Court. Some three million Palestinians live in the West Bank. If the intent were to destroy Palestinians as such, one might expect the campaign to reach the group wherever it is found. That is what happened in the actual genocides: the Nazis pursued Jews across a continent, into countries they did not govern; the Hutu Power militias hunted Tutsi from one prefecture to the next.

The Genocide Convention says, “in whole or in part,” and tribunals have held that a geographically limited portion of a group can qualify — Srebrenica was one town. The absence of any campaign against Palestinians in Haifa or Nazareth therefore does not by itself defeat the charge. It does, however, make the claim considerably harder. Why would a state supposedly bent on destroying a people be content to concentrate its military actions only where Hamas governed and attacked from? Under the ICJ’s test, that alternative cannot simply be wished away.

Third, some Palestinians in Gaza publicly make the distinction themselves. In March 2025, hundreds took to the streets of Beit Lahia and Deir al-Balah in the largest anti-Hamas demonstrations since the war began. One protester told CNN that he was oppressed by both the occupation army and Hamas, and that Hamas launched October 7 while Gazans paid the price. Reporting through 2024 and 2025 documented widening anger at a movement that fought from tunnels while civilians absorbed the response.

Those protests do not tell us what all Gazans think, and the victims’ perceptions do not determine the perpetrator’s intent. They establish something narrower: some Gazans distinguish Hamas from Israel’s war against Hamas even while condemning Israel’s occupation and attacks. That distinction is consistent with the alternative inference that Israel’s object was to defeat Hamas, not to destroy Palestinians as such.

The ICC warrants against Netanyahu and his then–defense minister Yoav Gallant allege that Israel’s conduct during the offensive constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity, including starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts. But assuming for the sake of argument that what is alleged in the ICC warrants was correct, look at what they do not say. The prosecutor assessed the same evidence everyone else has examined, before the same court that would have to sustain the charge, and he did not charge genocide. He is far from anyone’s idea of an Israeli apologist, and yet he had the option.

This is the distinction the chant of genocide obliterates. There is an enormous legal and moral difference between a state that fights a war brutally, and one that sets out to eliminate a people. The first describes a great many wars, including wars fought by countries whose citizens are now doing the chanting. The second describes a small handful of adjudicated cases in the modern era, aand Gaza does not fit their pattern.

The Battle of Mosul in 2016 and 2017 produced devastation — a city largely destroyed, thousands of civilians killed, an enemy entrenched in residential blocks — and no serious legal analysis called it genocide. The difference was not the destruction. It was the enemy.

Fighting Hamas in Gaza kills Palestinians. That is a fact, and I am not going to soften it with a euphemism. But killing Palestinians while fighting Hamas and killing Palestinians in order to destroy Palestinians are different acts with different names, and the entire architecture of international criminal law rests on keeping them apart.

British Historian: "Hamas Must Be Dismantled"

The historian Simon Sebag Montefiore says, "The October 7 Hamas attacks against Israel...changed everything. It was years in the planning that did what it was meant to do, which was to put the Palestinian issue at the center of the world, unleash the ideology of anti-Zionism in Western universities, and nix the Saudis normalizing agreements with Israel. The only thing it hasn't succeeded in is helping the Palestinian people."

The speed and intensity of anti-Israel sentiment that has spread like wildfire through Britain took Montefiore "by surprise." "There's nowhere better to live now than Britain or America or France than at any other point in the last 10,000 years. Yet that unprecedented comfort, liberalism and freedom have permitted the hothouse of exciting but intolerant radicalisms such as 'de-colonialization,' anti-Americanism,' 'anti-Westernism,' 'Third-World-ism'...particularly in many cultural, academic and media institutions in this country."

"People absolutely have the freedom to preach the destruction of the liberal democracies that protect them. I'm not in favor of banning or cancelling anybody unless they're encouraging killing. But a lot of the people on the pro-Palestinian marches in this country, for example, were doing just that....They were also filled with extreme ideologues, who were backing Iran, and who were backing Hamas."

While Montefiore has long been a champion of a Palestinian state, he says Britain's "recognition of a Palestinian state, for instance, was a [virtue-signaling] absurdity that achieved nothing. Instead, it revealed Britain's impotence in the Middle East and it rewarded a genocidal organization that is much more nihilistic than humanitarian....Hamas must be dismantled."

The hostages held by Hamas at Al-Shifa Hospital

In the final months of 2023, the eyes of the global public were firmly fixed on Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. As international media heavyweights—including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal—reported extensively on the military operations, the medical crisis, and the conflicting claims of the warring parties, a profound systemic flaw characterized the coverage.

The mainstream international reporting largely followed the official narratives of the information war. While The Wall Street Journal detailed how Israel released footage attempting to prove the site was used by militants, The New York Times focused on official video releases showing tunnel infrastructure under the besieged hospital, and The Washington Post published deep open-source analyses on the military claims, these major outlets remained confined within a narrow framework: they focused primarily on macro-level military infrastructure, tunnel claims, and institutional statements.

What was missing from virtually all major Western reports during those critical weeks was the forensic reality of the micro-level visual material generated by the actors themselves. While major newsrooms analyzed satellite coordinates and official releases, they overlooked or omitted the immediate, local choreography happening at the gates and in the courtyards of the hospital—including the unhindered movement of local participants documenting the aftermath of the October 7 events.

This investigation closes that gap. It does not offer a general overview of wartime politics; rather, it provides a forensic, image-by-image reconstruction of the path taken by the hostages and their captors. By combining geolocation, frame-by-frame video analysis, and contemporaneous field communications, this dossier challenges the uncritical or restricted framing accepted by major global news outlets in late 2023—providing the definitive record that was missing when the story broke.

Remains of Yehuda Katz, IDF soldier who went missing in 1982 battle, returned to Israel

The remains of Israeli soldier Sgt. First Class Yehuda Katz, who went missing in the First Lebanon War’s battle of Sultan Yacoub in 1982, were returned to Israel on Tuesday, the military announced, with Israeli leaders hailing the country’s commitment to bring back every missing or fallen soldier.

The battle, 44 years ago, was a skirmish between the Israel Defense Forces and the Syrian army in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley. It claimed the lives of 21 Israeli servicemen and injured more than 30.

Katz, a tank soldier, went missing during the battle, along with Sgt. First Class Zachary Baumel and Sgt. First Class Zvi Feldman.

Baumel’s remains were recovered with Russian assistance and returned to Israel in 2019, and Feldman’s remains were recovered by Mossad agents in May 2025.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said that in a special operation led by the Military Intelligence Directorate, in coordination with the Mossad spy agency, Katz’s bones were located and brought to Israel for burial. No details were given on where they were found.

The operation was based on intelligence obtained in recent months, according to the military. The IDF added that the finding was made possible due to a “series of intelligence and operational activities that continued for more than four decades, since he fell in battle.”

Earlier on Tuesday, the IDF said that personal findings belonging to Katz were brought back to Israel during the operation and given to his family for inspection. Meanwhile, Katz’s bones were taken for identification and confirmed on Tuesday evening to belong to the slain soldier.

The military said Katz’s family was updated over the years regarding the ongoing efforts to locate his remains and return them to Israel. “Upon completion of the mission, the family was informed of the return of their loved one. Unfortunately, Yehuda’s parents, Sarah and Yosef Katz, did not live to receive the news,” the army said.

In a statement, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said, “The return of Yehuda Katz, the last fallen soldier from the Battle of Sultan Yacoub, is a significant moment for the IDF and for the State of Israel.”

“Decades have passed, but our duty toward our fallen has not changed. We will leave none of our people behind,” Zamir added.

The military chief later spoke with Katz’s family, which he told, “After 44 years, the Battle of Sultan Yacoub has come to an end.”

“All those missing from the battle have been returned to Israel. This is a special day for me, both as chief of the general staff and as a soldier of the Armored Corps,” Zamir was quoted as saying. “From the day I enlisted in the Armored Corps, I was raised on the legacy of that battle and on the moral commitment to bring all of our missing home. An entire nation stands united with you and shares in your emotion today.”

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The Muslim Question (guest post)

This essay was submitted anonymously. While I agree with most of it, there are parts that I have some problems with; I plan to write a rejoinder. But it is an important topic and too many people are afraid to bring it up for fear of being labeled Islamophobic. 

______________________________

The Muslim Question

 

When I am weak I demand freedom from you, because that is according to your principles. When I am strong, I will take it from you, because that is according to my principles.                               

----Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

 Is it time for Americans to start raising the “Muslim Question”?

 Even writing that phrase makes me ill. The phrase that inspires it, “the Jewish Question,” exudes bigotry, hatred, violence. That phrase was omnipresent in 19^th century Europe, and that “question” was answered by the Holocaust. Today the Jewish Question has been replaced (as James Lindsay has argued) by the “Israel Question,” which (he notes) is simply the Jewish Question by proxy. That large swaths of the world wish to answer the Israel Question the same way large swaths of the world answered the Jewish Question seems to me clear, particularly post October 7. The basic premise in both questions, by those asking them, is that they wish to eliminate their targets (Jews, and/or Israel). That’s where the bigotry, the hatred, come in.

 The “Muslim Question” feels the same.

 The “Islam Question” also makes me uncomfortable, but less so: it’s acceptable, or should be, to examine and critique and possibly reject problematic ideas, political theories, and worldviews, including religions. That is of course the “principle” by which antizionists defend their relentless “critiques” (and calls for the elimination) of the Jewish state. The Oxford Union recently debated the matter framed just that way: “Is the West Right to be Suspicious of Islam?” (The vote was 57-41 in favor of “no.” In light of what follows below I find it a little difficult to agree.)

 The “Muslim Question” seems to address not the ideas but the people who hold them, and perhaps wish to spread them.

 It feels like bigotry.

 But then I look at the world around me—or at least my newsfeed thereof, assuming that that feed is generally reliable. (If it is not, I solicit, thirst for, correction, not least because I am uneasy with the conclusion toward which I am heading.)

 Start with this November 2025 report from the Institute for the Global Study of Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) on the Muslim Brotherhood’s 100-year plan for Islam to conquer North America. Yes you read that right. We’re actually approaching the 50-year mark already (2028) and in fact everything seems to be going according to that plan. This is the framework in which to place all that follows.

 The Muslim Brotherhood is not the only Islamic group with global aspirations; we find state sponsorship of similar movements in Iran, Turkey, and elsewhere. But given that we have an explicit copy of the Muslim Brothers’ actual plan, we shall focus on them.

This recent Wall Street Journal op-ed shares ISGAP’s concerns. This article gives some of the broader background.

 To see what they’re all worried about, consider this guy exhorting a large crowd in Times Square that Islam won’t stop until it’s in every home.

 This Islamic scholar in California agrees, proclaiming that America is “our” country because every country is “Allah’s” country.

 There’s this Minnesota scholar or imam who encourages his listeners to become mayors, congresspeople, and if possible the President, so that Islam may spread in America. He also announces that Muslims are here to replace “the privilege of old” (does he mean Jews?).

 This Muslim scholar, trained in Saudi Arabia but now with a Ph.D. from Yale University and living in Texas, boasting about rapidly growing Muslim population and political power all across the West. As if to illustrate, there’s this Texas rally, where many Muslim men take over the streets and beat their chests.

 Is it really true that Hamtramck, MI, is now a city fully captured by Islam, a “parallel Sharia society”?

 Then there’s this guy, “quiet and polite” at the Oxford Union debate, arguing that a global Caliphate ruled by Sharia would be a good idea, not least because democracy, liberalism, and secularism don’t work. He also endorses polygamy, cutting off the hands of thieves, and capital punishment for adultery, because Sharia endorses those things.

 And for those who thought that the October 7 massacre was merely part of a national liberation movement and if you just fed them Israel they’d be satisfied, here’s Hamas leader Mahmoud al Zahar laying claim to "the entire 510 million square kilometers of Planet Earth,” where they will remove not just Zionism but “treacherous Christianity.”

 Speaking of Planet Earth, here is an enormous throng of Muslim men commandeering a public park in Sweden for their prayers.

 Social media shows me a dozen such clips every day.

 Shouldn’t you be worried by these clips, if you are Christian? If you are secular, or atheist? If you are gay? Even if you are a socialist?

 If you are a “moderate Muslim,” who does not demand the destruction of Jews and Christians?

 If you just don’t want your neighborhood, much less the whole world, to fall under Islam?

 But it isn’t just anecdotes. There is troubling data about the high percentage of Muslims one may label “extremist.” Recent data suggest that nearly half of American Muslims have a positive view of Hamas, which would mean that “some 2 million Muslims in America support a Muslim Brotherhood Islamic terrorist organization that is financed and backed by Iran,” most of whom also support specifically the October 7 massacre. Lest you think that is merely a problem for the Jews, note the belief endemic across the Muslim world that the Jews (and Israel) are just the “Little Satan” to America’s “Big Satan.” There is overwhelming overlap between those who support Hamas and the October 7 massacre and those in favor of totalitarian governments (such as Iran) that see themselves as the civilizational enemies of the West.

 And the Muslim Brotherhood themselves adopt the view that the world may be divided into two realms: the House of Islam and the House of War.

 You either submit to Islam, or there is a war coming your way.

 This isn’t just a Jewish problem.

 On the European front, there’s this troubling report in Tablet on the Muslim Brotherhood’s “assiduous campaign to acquire influence within the ordinary institutions of French life”: 

The actor France has identified is the Muslim Brotherhood and the political-Islamist ecosystem surrounding it. The method is entryism: the gradual penetration of schools, associations, religious institutions, charities, municipalities, political parties, and administrative structures. The objective described by French officials is the cultivation of communities in which Islamist norms gain authority while republican principles progressively retreat.

 

That this is well underway in America also seems clear:

 

The evidence begins with the public documents of Muslim political organizations themselves. Council on American Islamic Relations’ Muslims Vote operation lists a coordinated election program: Increase Muslim registration and turnout, document Muslim candidates, distribute national voter guides and congressional scorecards, survey Muslim political attitudes, cooperate with other Muslim organizations, and promote a unified “Muslim Policy Platform.” CAIR described its 2024 plan as a means of ensuring that Muslim voices would shape the national election.

 

Similar work is being done by many other Islamic organizations, including EmgageUSA and The U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations - Civic Action Network.

 

Muslim Mayor Mamdani of New York City is just the tip of this iceberg. Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed, fresh off his primary victory, will be Mamdani on steroids—and on the national stage.

 

But this also gets to the difficult issue at the heart of the matter.

 

Mamdani was elected, and El-Sayed was victorious, in free and fair elections. Political organization is an entirely legitimate activity that every interest group should be free to pursue. I accept (insist upon!) the basic tenets of American liberalism, including democracy, pluralism, toleration, religious freedom, and the rest. Absolutely every person should be free to pursue the religion of their choice, and that includes building social networks, organizations, and political lobbying.

 

Lord knows the amount of antisemitic suspicion cast upon Jews when they pursue their own social and political organizing and lobbying (AIPAC, anyone?), and I do not wish to support the analogous bigotry when it comes to Islam and Muslims.

 

“There is no place for hate in America,” as every elected leader finds themselves proclaiming so regularly that one suspects the phrase isn’t entirely accurate.

 

And to be sure—I think we are sure, despite the numbers mentioned above—“most American Muslims aren’t extreme.” “Moderate Muslims,” as the article in the preceding link describes them, those willing to allow the same rights and freedoms to others, deserve absolutely the same rights and freedoms as all Americans.

 

I accept and insist upon it.

 

The same Tablet article quoted above noted this concern. It observes that the recent French legislation dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood infiltration remains contested:

 

Critics warn that vague definitions could cast suspicion upon ordinary Muslim citizens engaged in civic life. That concern deserves consideration. Washington himself cautioned that vigilance against foreign influence must remain impartial lest suspicion become another instrument of manipulation.

 

That is as it should be.

 

And yet France also managed to make a key distinction:

 

France nevertheless crossed an intellectual threshold that most Western governments have avoided. It distinguished private religious observance from a political movement that may employ democratic freedoms tactically while pursuing a comprehensive vision of law, society, education, and government. That distinction carries enormous consequences.

 

Kind of like what these guys are talking about, who are talking about infiltrating the West. Kind of in the way that the father of the new Muslim Democratic candidate for Michigan Senator has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Nothing to see here, folks.

 Is this new construction near a major public university an expression of the civil rights of Muslims or a massive mosque fortress to advance Islam across the West?

 And there is the heart of the matter. The “freedom to practice one’s religion” is not the “freedom to impose one’s religion on others.” The hard (impossible?) question is to determine precisely where one ends and the other begins.

 That is “the Muslim Question”—a matter of distinguishing between our genuine Muslim neighbors and our potential Muslim conquerors.

 It might be instructive here to compare the Jewish Question with the nascent Muslim Question.

 For much of the 20^th century the Jewish Question was deeply informed by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This infamous forgery, appearing in 1903 then spreading rapidly around the world, sketches the alleged plot of the Jews to conquer the world and subjugate or eliminate all the non-Jews. It envisages a “messianic era” in which the entire globe lives “under the House of David.” There is a straight line from this book, through Hitler and the Nazis, to the Holocaust. In a massive act of projection, they believed that the Jews were genocidal world-conquerors and so they had to “defend themselves” from the Jewish menace by annihilating the threat.

 But of course that was all a lie.

 There are no Elders, there is no such plot, and all the Jews ever wanted at most was a thin sliver of land to call their own in which to fight amongst themselves.

 Even before the Protocols, the Jewish Question was informed by similar thinking. The European antisemites obsessed with the Jewish Question were concerned that the Jews were becoming too influential, gaining too much power, maneuvering into a position of control over non-Jews in order to advance their own ends.

 All of that was a lie, too. Europe’s emancipation of the Jews did lead to Jews becoming a greater part of European society, even prospering, even becoming “influential” (despite always being a miniscule minority). But many of the Jews who prospered wanted nothing more than to assimilate into the majority culture. At most they wanted the freedom to practice their own religion and culture, free from persecution and pogrom. Even in areas where they became “influential,” they never had plans to make those areas, much less those countries, Jewish.

 What made the Jewish Question antisemitic, bigotry, is that it was ultimately based on the defamatory premise that the Jews were “up to something,” including taking power over non-Jews and turning them into Jews or enslaving them.

 It was all a lie.

 In contrast, there are something like Muslim “Elders,” or at least a major international organization wishing to play that role, the Muslim Brotherhood (not to mention state sponsors of similar groups).

 And they do have such a plan, their protocols, as documented by ISGAP above, to conquer the world and make other countries Islamic. My brief description of the fictional Protocols above serves as a short summary of the Muslim Brothers’ actual plan.

 Unlike the Jews ever did, Muslims already dominate a significant portion of the globe, some 2 billion of them with some 50+ Islamic-majority countries and many others with strong Islamic minorities. The Jews were never more than some 17 million, before the Holocaust, and only ever had that one little sliver of a country.

 And they, the Muslim Brotherhood, seem actively to be undertaking and advancing that plan to conquer the rest of the globe, including Europe and the West.

 Is it possible to look at the various “anecdotes” above, which occur by the dozen each day, and not see them in the context of that framework?

 As far as I can tell, I’m not making any of this up.

 Other than in the fake Protocols has there ever been one instance of a Jew publicly proclaiming a plan to take over the globe? Or even one single country, by infiltrating and making use of its democratic processes to advance their political power then take it over? (If you want to argue they did something like that in Israel, fine—but at least note that Jewish ambitions have never been for anything beyond their little sliver of an ancestral homeland.)

 The Muslim Question, then, seems to me to have a legitimate foundation that the Jewish Question never had.

 “Islamophobia” suggests an irrational fear (hence bigotry) of Islam. But what if the fear of Islam is perfectly rational, because there really is such a plan and it is well underway, and it threatens our preferred way of life, including our specifically liberal way of life? What if the accusation of Islamophobia is actually a weapon, forbidding us from expressing perfectly legitimate concerns about the actual supremacist theocratic plans of some very influential Muslims?

 Senate Democrats refused to attend a hearing on the Muslim Brotherhood plan, charging Republicans with “engaging in anti-Muslim politics.” Are the Republicans being “Islamophobic,” or are the Democrats wrongly failing to fear Islam?

 And if it is legitimate (i.e. non-bigotry) to fear Islam, is it not legitimate to fear, or at least worry about, those Muslims who are the actual agents who would carry out that plan?

 As an American liberal who wants every person to have the freedom to pursue their religion as fully as possible, am I right to be concerned not just about the religion, the set of ideas and values, but about those individuals of that religion who do not share that liberalism and wish for their religion literally to defeat and subjugate all other religions?

 It is anathema to an American liberal to ask people to give up any aspects of their religion—but perhaps not if those aspects are directly inconsistent with the principles of liberalism. Karl Popper’s famous “Paradox of Tolerance”—that a tolerant society that tolerated those who reject tolerance would eventually lose to the intolerant—is actually easy to resolve, at least in principle: a liberal society, one formed by a social contract of mutual obligation to allow the “other” the same freedoms one wishes to exercise oneself, may set the limits of its toleration to those who share the commitment to toleration.

 We need not tolerate those who reject our foundational principles of toleration.

 Sam Harris has said that, “The problem is extreme Islam. The solution is moderate Islam.” That sounds about right to me. Perhaps “moderate Muslims” are those who, while committed to their own faith, are equally committed to the freedom of all others to leave that faith, to practice other faiths, or to have no faith at all. So defined, a “moderate Muslim” would have no truck with the Muslim Brotherhood project, and perhaps also actively oppose it.

 It threatens them, too.

 Further, again, it is plausible that “most” American Muslims are moderate. I believe that. I know more than a few. But there are dangerous forces that incentivize their remaining quiet. You will not find many willing to go public with their reservations, and this unfortunately strengthens the extremists. The pattern is tough to combat, and the result is effectively the same as a conspiracy. Everyone knows what they are allowed to say and demand. A decentralized conspiracy, in a way. 

 Their silence, understandable as it is, provides a shield for the not so moderate Muslims.

 For fear of critiquing or infringing upon the “moderates” we allow the not-so-moderates full sway. I cannot determine precise numbers, but unfortunately we also do know that some American Muslims are not so moderate, perhaps many are not, and there are clear signs that these are gaining steam, per the clips above, and dozens others.

 In this context, every otherwise innocent incident of Muslim accommodation—every new mosque, every restaurant or food truck obtaining halal certification, every proposed footwashing station in an airport, every commission to advance Muslim political representation, every Muslim serving on a city council or other position (especially where Muslims occupy every such position), every multicultural event teaching about Islam and having girls try on hijabs—even when done by moderate Muslims with entirely innocent intentions—becomes one more advance of the plan.

 As upsetting and anti-liberal as this is, must we now start to feel suspicious of our Muslim neighbors—because they either are actively part of the Muslim Brotherhood plan, or if not, are advancing it simply by pursuing their otherwise liberal-sanctioned freedoms?

 What are we supposed to do in this situation?

 That is the Muslim Question, or the beginning thereof, and the beginning of what necessarily must be a long and complicated and difficult and perhaps dangerous discussion.

 It is perhaps time to begin that conversation.

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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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08/17 Links Pt2: Ireland is green with envy against Israel; Elise Stefanik: The Hearing That Changed Everything; The Media’s Silence on Anti-Jewish Hate

From Ian:

Ireland is green with envy against Israel

So let me understand this: Britain was the enemy from whom the Irish were seeking liberation. The Irish struggled to found a republic – which they did. There were founding heroes of the state. Is this starting to ring a bell?

The British Army was the enemy of Israel during the mandate. Surely Ireland could not fail to become the natural ally of Israel?

Wasn’t Chaim Herzog raised in Dublin, serving in the Hagana and the British Army during World War II, making a close link when he became president of Israel? Has not the new president been able to forge the connection?

The answer is no.

Their relations have gone from bad to worse, and in the years since October 7, the Irish have launched a tirade of invective against the State of Israel and its leaders.

Examples: the previous president of Ireland, Michael Higgins, has slandered Israel’s actions in Gaza on every occasion. He had, of course, sprinkled terms like “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” around like confetti.

Higgins is not a very tall man – he’s only 160 centimeters tall – but each and every centimeter is carefully honed with spite and hate for the only Jewish state.

The new taoiseach (Irish prime minister), Micheal Martin, has changed the views he had when foreign minister to the usual – “genocide” and “collective punishment” – urging the European Union to take ever stronger steps against Israel.

But whilst taoiseachs, presidents, press, and TV all seem united in their prejudice, they are followed sheep-like by the public, a majority of whom support trade restrictions and full BDS.

On The Late Late Show, discussing Iran, Alan Shatter, a former justice minister, mentioned tunnels and rapes to an audience of 500. He was met with laughter and derision.

Why? In Ireland’s case, pure envy is a likely candidate. Ever since it became a member of the EU in 1973, it has had a reputation of “take, take.”

By 2010, Ireland faced financial collapse due to housing and banking bubbles. In total, they received a €67.5 billion external bailout package from the EU, including loans from other nations, like Sweden – coincidentally, another Israel-hating friend.

By contrast, it sees Israel as strong and standing on its own two feet. Ireland has seen incoming hi-tech giants from America, from whom it takes taxes. Israel leads on its own.

My in-laws are part of the dwindling Jewish community who do not know from which direction the next abuse will come, as Ireland has succeeded France as the most antisemitic country in the world. A shame, as Ireland richly deserves its romantic label.

The expression “green with envy” happens to coincide with Ireland’s national color. It is also the butt of jokes, which claim the folk from the countryside are stupid.

Both envy and stupidity recently combined when the government purchased a jet for its “high-flying” greedy representatives. So driven by envy and hatred, they removed the plane’s landing assistance for the fog because it was manufactured in Israel.

A combination of envy and stupidity motivated their actions. Mind you, even without fog, Ireland clearly has lost its way.

JPost Editorial: Mamdani fans flames of antisemitism by pairing false allyship with anti-Israel rhetoric

The cycle is repeating itself almost daily. Anti-Israel rhetoric is uttered by progressive US officials like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. An antisemitic attack takes place, and those same officials rush to condemn the attack, defend the Jewish population, and express outrage.

What duplicitous trickery, transparently cynical manipulation, and utter refusal to see the blatant cause-and-effect of the cycle is taking place on the American landscape.

The latest incident occurred Friday night when Larry Montes, 46, of the Bronx, disrupted services at the famed Central Synagogue in Manhattan (which are streamed live to congregants around the world), allegedly hitting a woman, head-butting a security guard, and yelling antisemitic tropes before being escorted out of the sanctuary and arrested by the NYPD. He was later charged with six hate crimes.

Mamdani quickly responded to the attack, predictably stating that he was “horrified.”

“I can only imagine the pain and fear an attack like this, during Shabbat services, causes for the congregation and for Jewish New Yorkers across our city,” the mayor said. “Every New Yorker must be able to observe their religion without fear of violence. This despicable act has no place in our city, and our administration will do everything in our power to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe.”

Mamdani ignores connection between anti-Israel rhetoric, antisemitism
However, Mamdani is ignoring the clear connection between his frequent statements calling Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide” and launching a campaign to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal, which are fanning the flames that he’s trying to extinguish with his crocodile tears.

Less than a month ago, the synagogue’s senior rabbi, Angela Buchdahl, had warned Mamdani about the consequences of his anti-Israel rhetoric. In a July 23 statement addressed to the mayor, Buchdahl urged him to refrain from making statements that “demonizes Jews and the Jewish state” and “helps create the climate in which threats and violence flourish.”

Just last week, 10 New York rabbis also met Mamdani at City Hall to raise concerns about his statements about Israel and their effect on Jewish New Yorkers. The rabbis told the mayor that presenting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a simple story with Jews cast as the villain could prove dangerous.

“I told the mayor directly, the way you continue to talk about Israel endangers the Jewish community at large,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs. “If, instead of vilifying Israel, you spoke constructively, in measured tones, that would move the needle more than anything else, and I’m hopeful you’ll use that power.”

I study antisemitism for a living: El-Sayed’s rhetoric is a case study

In an effort to facilitate his success in the upcoming November election against his Republican rival, El-Sayed sought to reassure the public and the Jewish community, whom he and many of his supporters have placed in their crosshairs for over a year, of his goodwill. The reassurance was compelled by conduct, not just his campaign rhetoric, within El-Sayed’s own political orbit.

Consider, for instance, the indictment of one of El-Sayed’s staff, who, along with seven others, stands accused by a federal jury of alleged threats and vandalism against the University of Michigan, pro-Israel organizations and their family members. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the accused “also discussed methods by which to harm the targets and their families, including poison, bombs and psychological torture.”

As FBI special agent Jennifer Runyan explained: “In the dead of night, masked and hooded defendants allegedly threw noxious chemicals through the windows of families’ homes and taped demand letters to their front doors. At every step, they attempted to cover their tracks and delete evidence of their crimes.”

When concealing Jew-hatred is no longer possible or politically preferable, there is greater candor and/or the suggestion that it does not matter. Seven months after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, El-Sayed’s most notorious supporter, Hasan Piker stated, “It doesn’t matter if rapes happened on October 7th” … “It doesn’t change the dynamic for me.” That’s because Piker admires the terrorist organization Hezbollah and its “dope flag.”

“It’s got an AK [rifle] on it and a f**king hand holding it up,” he exclaimed, podcasting beside an LGBTQ flag and wearing a T-shirt that read “show me your d**k.” It strains credulity that the provocative podcaster is oblivious to the fact that leaders of both Hezbollah and Hamas claim that homosexuals should be executed in accordance with Quranic principles. Despite posing with peace signs beside the candidate, Piker’s support for terror could not be clearer.

For those voters who continue to insist hatred of any kind is simply unacceptable comes the promise of protection against it. And, as any abused woman knows, one of the most effective ways an abuser conceals his behavior is through offering his victims protection from it.

This came to mind when I heard El-Sayed’s paternalistic statement to Jewish Americans. He declares: “My commitment to Jewish safety is the same commitment I have to the safety of my own daughters.” As is common in such instances of insincerity, he never noted the role that his own rhetoric has played in fostering the fear he claims to safeguard against.

Most concerning was that, on the morning his victory was declared, El-Sayed appeared on national television and invoked the ancient blood libel against Jews by characterizing the world’s only Jewish state as having been “bloodthirsty” for decades. This libel was not a criticism of the particular policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or any Israeli government, but instead a condemnation of Israel’s very existence, and thus her people and supporters.

Like those before him, the aspiring politician grasps the appeal of the blood-curdling myth. It is worth recalling that, in 1943, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, instructed Berlin’s Chief of Police to investigate ritual murders long attributed to Jews, with the intention of disseminating the ostensible findings to the press. This strategy was aimed at promoting the narrative that would support the “evacuation” of Jews from Europe. Himmler understood that virulent Jew-hatred could be leveraged to the advantage of his movement.

That today’s aspiring politicians seem eager to do the same reveals our country is under serious threat and that unless such forces are soundly defeated, the future of substantive democracy will be bleak.

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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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