race

 In June, Stanford University Press released a book edited by Lana Tatour and Ronit Lentin titled "Race and the Question of Palestine." 

The very title of the book all but announces its conclusion that Israel is racist. The Introduction confirms this impression, not by carefully arguing its case, but by building the conclusion into its premises and then presenting the result as discovery rather than assumption.

From the opening pages, the editors insist that race is not merely one analytic lens among many that might be used to understand the conflict, but the essential framework for interpreting Zionism, Israel, and Palestinian experience. Other explanatory models – citizenship law, nationalism, security doctrine, regional war, even ethnicity itself – are treated not as competing hypotheses to be weighed, but as evasions that obscure the truth.

Once this framing is in place, the logic becomes self-sealing. If Zionism is defined as settler colonialism, and settler colonialism is defined as inherently racial, then Israel must be a racial state. The conclusion is embedded in the premise.

This is where the circularity becomes impossible to ignore. The Introduction does not begin by asking whether race best explains Israeli policies, institutions, and conflicts. It begins by asserting that race does explain them, and then rereads every legal distinction, border regime, and security practice as confirmation of that claim. Evidence no longer tests the theory; the theory filters the evidence. That is coherence masquerading as correspondence – an internally consistent story that never seriously risks being wrong.

The most revealing moment comes when the editors turn their attention to human rights organizations that do not foreground race. B’Tselem, for example, is criticized not because its factual claims are false, but because it frames Israeli domination primarily in terms of ethnicity and citizenship rather than race.

See the circularity here:

Speaking of race in the context of Palestine, readers may ask why use “race” instead of “ethnicity,” “people,” or “nation,” and what analytical and explanatory work “race” does that “ethnicity” or “nationality” does not. ...[T]heir use alone without race analysis, I suggest, not only fails to capture the work of race, racialization, and racism as constitutive of colonial projects, but also conceals it. The apartheid reports, mentioned above, provide an example—one of many—of such concealment through their failure to recognize settler colonialism and race as the defining features of Israeli apartheid or to account for Zionism as the racial ideology that drives Israeli-Zionist colonization.

The circularity is explicit. If race is defined as the only valid explanatory category, then any analysis that does not center race is, by definition, accused of concealment. If you do not begin with race, you cannot arrive at race as the conclusion. The framework does not merely privilege a lens; it morally disqualifies alternatives.

This same structure governs the Introduction’s core claims:

The colonization of Palestine—like other imperial, colonial, and settler-colonial projects—cannot be understood outside the grammar of race. Concepts such as ethnicity and nationality do not capture the history or the political work of race as a project of colonial distinction that rationalizes dispossession and domination....

But if Zionism is understood as a movement of an indigenous people returning to its ancestral homeland – which it is – the argument collapses. That possibility is never seriously entertained, because the framing makes it impermissible from the outset. Alternative explanations are not rebutted; they are ruled out in advance.

A strong theory clarifies what it can and cannot explain. It specifies the conditions under which it might fail. It does not declare rival models ethically suspect simply for existing.

We have discussed many times that Israeli law maps far more cleanly onto distinctions between citizenship and non-citizenship than onto any racial hierarchy between Jews and Arabs. Arab citizens of Israel live on both sides of the Green Line and possess the same civil rights as Jewish citizens there. Arab Israelis and Druze serve at the highest levels of government, the judiciary, medicine, industry and the military. They aren't tokens. Their existence should be fatal to the claim that Israel operates as a racial regime in the sense implied by the book. Instead, they are ignored, leaving the reader unaware that such counterevidence even exists. The framework does not invite comparison; it forecloses it.

None of this is happening on the margins of activism or social media. This is a flagship academic press lending its imprimatur to an argument that relies on premise smuggling rather than demonstration. Stanford University Press is not Jadaliyya, a political blog, or an NGO position paper. It occupies a role that signals to readers, students, and journalists that what follows has passed serious scholarly scrutiny. When a press of this stature publishes a text that substitutes moral intensity and theoretical coherence for falsifiability and causal testing, it sends a signal far beyond this one book.

Once you see the circularity of the argument, you cannot unsee it. The fact that this passed through one of America’s most prestigious academic presses should trouble us far more than the argument itself.

What is at stake here is larger than a single book or a single conflict. When prestigious academic institutions normalize circular reasoning, moralized framing, and premise smuggling, they teach students and readers that conclusions matter more than truth-seeking, and that theory is a substitute for evidence rather than a tool for understanding reality. Once that lesson is absorbed, the damage is not confined to Middle East studies. It spreads outward, hollowing out the intellectual norms that make serious disagreement, genuine pluralism, and honest scholarship possible at all.

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monde

 Le Monde published an op-ed by sociologist Eva Illouz arguing that modern anti-Zionism is antisemitic. She gives four reasons:

First, anti-Zionism calls into question the very legitimacy of nationalism and the Jewish national home. There is no other instance where a people is denied the right to continue living in their state with such obsessive insistence by a political ideology ...

The second reason is that anti-Zionism adopts all the prejudices, tropes, and fantasies of anti-Semitism. Thus, instead of killing children to use their blood to make matzah, another persistent rumor claims that Israel harvests the organs of dead Palestinians. The conspiratorial logic at work in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion  [an anti-Semitic text published in 1901, quickly exposed as a forgery that fantasized a Jewish plot to control the world] is also found in the work of the Swedish environmentalist Andreas Malm. According to him, Zionism was the superstructure enabling the infrastructure of Western oil extraction and is responsible for climate change, and therefore for the destruction of the planet. Contemporary anti-Zionism is not an opinion, but hatred, since it attributes an evil essence to Israel. 

The third reason is that anti-Zionism contains an agenda of denying antisemitism, its denunciation being viewed with suspicion as a form of manipulation. This, in turn, makes killing Jews less scandalous and more legitimate. Slogans like "Globalize the Intifada" are in reality calls for the indiscriminate murder of Jewish civilians worldwide, since the Second Intifada  [2000-2005] was a series of terrorist attacks against more than 1,000 Israeli civilians over five years.  Such a slogan thus equates Israelis with Jews and, by establishing this equivalence, exports the conflict to a global scale.

While the Dreyfus Affair was French, Marr's anti-Semitic leagues German, and the Kishinev pogroms of 1903 Russian, anti-Semitism is now a global phenomenon, operating on several distinct levels. It is now coordinated worldwide. This is what the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement has achieved with great success. This movement emerged following the counter-summit to the UNESCO conference in Durban  , South Africa , in 2001. Some 2,000 NGOs declared Israel guilty of being an "apartheid state ," of "racism , " "genocide," and "ethnic cleansing ." On the sidelines of this infamous conference,  The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were being sold . Heir to this infamous event, BDS is active in approximately 120 countries and thus has a global reach. Good luck organizing a scientific conference today with Israelis and, increasingly, by association, with Zionist Jews.

 Some prominent Jewish French anti-Zionists published a rebuttal in the same newspaper. The crux of their argument is this:

The necessary critique of Zionism... rests on a threefold rejection: the rejection of the idea that the destiny of the world's Jews is to emigrate to Israel, the rejection of their assimilation into that state, and the rejection of its ethno-religious character. For us, Jews, combating antisemitism does not involve endorsing Zionism but, on the contrary, recognizing the inalienable and equal rights of all human beings, engaging in universal struggles for the rights of all, and consequently, for the rights of the Palestinians.

1. Zionism does not say that the destiny of all Jews is to emigrate to Israel. This is a straw man argument. Zionism makes no such demand - it is a refuge for Jews who need or want one, ready to accept any Jews who are unwanted where they live.

2. I think this means that since Israel calls itself a Jewish state, then it is responsible for antisemitism against Jews who live outside it done in the name of "anti-Zionism." That is absurd: antisemitism is the fault of the antisemites, and believing their ever-morphing excuses for their hate is playing into their hands. 

3. Many other states have an ethno-religious character. As long as there is no discrimination against the minority in everyday life, this is not a moral flaw. On the contrary, I would argue that this is superior to the model of the same universal system for every country in the world, which is not practical in any other context. Only Jews are expected to live under the benevolent rule of people who hate them, but not the Kurds, Tutsis, or Uyghurs.  And if you deny Arab antisemitism, you are denying reality - every poll shows that Arab populations are overwhelmingly antisemitic. 

The other arguments in the letter are also tired, like conflating legitimate criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Zionism, which is by definition eliminationist.  These same anti-Zionists were against Israel's existence as a Jewish state even before the 2018 Nation-State Law that they are so worked up about.  

Or their claim that Israel is illegitimate because it is "colonialist." Even if you accept that false argument, do they call for the dismantling of Australia, the US and Canada as well?  

The implication of the response is that Jews are not really a nation, which we have discussed is antisemitic at the outset. If the Jewish people are a nation - which was universally understood over the two-thousand years of exile, by both Jews and non-Jews - then they have national rights. If they have national rights, then any alleged crimes do not take away those rights; if you argue otherwise then every Arab Muslim nation is illegitimate, and a Palestinian state would be invalid at the outset. 

The rules are always different for the Jewish state. And that is what makes anti-Zionism antisemitism. Pointing out these double standards isn't whataboutism - it is evidence of the antisemitism at the core of the arguments themselves. 

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carlson

I recently came across an excerpt of an interview that podcaster Theo Von did with Tucker Carlson. Oddly enough, the theme of the interview is revealed at the very end of the clip:

Theo Von: Oh, I think it's brave to be able to speak up; sometimes if you're right or wrong, it's brave to try.

Tucker Carlson: It's our obligation to try. I was quiet for 30 years. I shouldn't have been I didn't want to fight but I shouldn't have been

Theo Von: People say like you get information wrong, but if information is given out that's wrong, then how do you expect someone to know accurate information?

You would be hard-pressed to find a more heartfelt defense of spreading misinformation. The implicit argument is that error is excusable so long as it is delivered with confidence and moral self-regard. That is precisely the license Carlson gives himself as he proceeds to traffic in fake history, scientific illiteracy, and anti-Israel propaganda, all wrapped in a tone of faux humility.

Carlson advances his own peculiar version of supersessionism. Rather than claiming Christianity replaces Judaism, he suggests something even more radical: that Judaism itself no longer exists, and that modern Jews have no meaningful connection to the Jews of antiquity or to the land of Israel. In a neat rhetorical trick, Carlson simply denies Jewish continuity altogether:

Theo Von: But because this Israel is not the Israel from the Bible, right? This is…

Tucker Carlson: I've tried to have this conversation. If it is, tell me how? What are you even talking about? And I'm not a theologian. I'm a freaking Episcopalian like I admit I know nothing but I do read the Bible every day, so I just don't see what you're talking about.

So you tell me what you're talking about. This is the Israel we read about. This is the inheritance of Abraham.

Theo Von: No way!

Tucker Carlson: How is it genetically the same? Are the people who live there now related to the people we read about in the Old Testament? If they are, we have DNA test. Tell me how that works? Oh, those are banned.

Okay. So then you tell me it's the same religion. How is it the same religion? There's no temple like, what are you even talking about? By the way, maybe there's a good answer that I just don't understand.

On at least one point, Carlson is refreshingly honest: he does not understand. Unfortunately, ignorance does not stop him from lecturing millions of listeners as though he does. His insistence that he “reads the Bible every day” is beside the point. This is not a theological question; it is a matter of history, archaeology, and population genetics—fields in which Carlson appears to have invested no effort at all.

Carlson reaches for a conspiracy theory. He claims that DNA testing is “banned” in Israel to hide the supposed lack of Jewish continuity. This is simply false. Snopes debunked the claim last year, noting that it is part of a broader attempt to accuse Israel of concealing evidence that undermines Jewish ancestral ties. More recently, an article in the Israel Institute of New Zealand was published, No, DNA Tests Are Not “Illegal in Israel': Debunking a Libel While Acknowledging the Real Policy Debate:

Few modern anti-Israel talking points are as bizarre — or as revealing — as the persistent claim that “DNA tests are illegal in Israel.” As with many libels, the accusation begins with a thin thread of truth, wraps it in distortion, and emerges as another conspiracy theory designed to delegitimise Jewish identity and the State of Israel.

The truth is that such tests are not banned--they are regulated, nor is Israel the only country that does this. The fact that such tests exist—and are widely studied—fatally undermines Carlson’s argument. He also betrays a basic ignorance of Jewish diversity. Sweeping claims about “the Jews” ignore well-documented distinctions among Ashkenazic, Sephardic, and Mizrahi populations, all of which have been extensively studied.

According to a 2001 report on the website of the National Library of Medicine

although Ashkenazi Jews were found to differ slightly from Sephardic and Kurdish Jews, it is noteworthy that there is, overall, a high degree of genetic affinity among the three Jewish communities. Moreover, neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic Jews cluster adjacent to their former host populations, a finding that argues against substantial admixture of males

The LA Times reported in 2010 on a study of Ashkenazic Jewish ancestry:

The study shows that there is "clearly a shared genetic common ancestry among geographically diverse populations consistent with oral tradition and culture …and that traces back to the Middle East," said geneticist Sarah A. Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the study. "Jews have assimilated to some extent, but they clearly retain their common ancestry."

Carlson’s final move—arguing that the destruction of the Temple somehow severed Judaism from its own past—is just as foolish. Judaism did not end in 70 CE. It adapted, as living civilizations do. Jewish law, liturgy, language, and communal identity evolved organically from Second Temple Judaism, preserving continuity across catastrophe and exile. To suggest otherwise is not scholarship; it is historical vandalism.

But Carlson is not trying to educate. As with his claim that Benjamin Netanyahu called him a Nazi or that American taxpayers somehow “pay Netanyahu’s salary,” the goal is provocation, not accuracy. He gives his audience what it wants: grievance dressed up as insight, ignorance masquerading as courage.

Tucker Carlson’s performance is not merely uninformed—it is reckless. By presenting his lack of knowledge as a form of bravery, he invites his audience to confuse curiosity with certainty and skepticism with denial. Jews, Judaism, and Israel are not abstractions to be waved away with rhetorical questions and conspiratorial shrugs. They are among the most thoroughly documented continuities in human history. Carlson’s failure to grasp that is not a moral stand. It is a choice—and one that trades truth for applause.

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amalek

 The respected academic journal Analyse & Kritik just published a paper by Abed Azzam called "‘Blot Out the Memory of Amalek from Under Heaven’: The Gaza Genocide and the Political Theological Legacy of the Biblical Amalek." Here is its abstract:

The biblical command ‘Blot out the memory of Amalek’ surfaced heavily in Israel after October 7, 2023. UN institutions, international and Israeli human rights NGOs and scholars of genocide studies classified the wide use of the Amalek rhetoric across Israeli politics and the military as a clear incitement to genocide. It is acknowledged that such scientific and legal subordination of the present Israeli Amalek rhetoric to the concept of genocide is indispensably important for the Palestinian just cause. However, this paper further singles out this rhetoric to examine it through the analytical lens of political theology. Thus, it first highlights the political-theological carriage of the biblical narrations of Amalek. Second, it situates Amalek as an archetype of Carl Schmitt’s concept of the enemy. Third, the paper traces a genealogy of the Zionist construction of the Palestinian as an Amalekite enemy. Finally, it concludes by showing how this political-theological genealogy culminates in the erasure of the Palestinian from the memory of Western ‘civilization.’

Because I am familiar with the topic, I was quickly able to see that the article was based on false assumptions. I identified two: 

One that Israeli leaders invoked Amalek in the sense of destroying every Palestinian man, woman and child when they were in fact invoking the other Amalek commandment of "remembering Amalek" - that is the verse Netanyahu quoted and consistently used the language of "remember."

The other was that Israeli leaders were referring to Palestinians as Amalek or saying all Palestinians are legitimate targets, and they clearly said the opposite - that Hamas was the target. In fact this paper barely mentions Hamas and while it mentions the date of October 7, 2023 several times, not once does it say what happened that day. 

If any load-bearing assumption behind the paper is false, then the paper is itself wrong. And these aren't the only false assumptions:  the paper assumes "genocide" as a fact, that the "Amalek rhetoric" was widespread in Israel, that there is a traceable "genealogy" from the Torah to early Zionists to the Gaza war of "Amalek" rhetoric, that modern Israeli leaders using "Amalek" rhetoric reflect a coherent theological‑political ideology rather than as a rhetorical device. 

Again, if any of these are provably wrong, the entire paper is wrong. Which it is.

But this post is not meant to be merely a debunking of the paper. It is a story of how anti-Israel rhetoric has become so mainstreamed that even intelligent people can no longer tell the difference between truth and the lies I just listed.

Analyse & Kritik is a peer reviewed journal. A Jewish day school student would know the difference between the two Amalek commandments. Anyone can look up the text of the speeches of Israeli leaders to see what they actually said. Why couldn't the peer reviewers?

The answer, I believe, is that today's academia no longer has a reasonable definition of "truth." There are a number of theories of what truth means, and the one that they use (at least for Israel) appears to be the "coherence theory," which holds that a belief is true if it is consistent with a larger system of beliefs. This paper, and many others I have examined, are coherent - yet they are riddled with falsehoods that aren't just mistakes but that invalidate the entire paper. The reviewers are looking at whether the argument is consistent, but they are assuming that the facts are accurate. 

The anti-Israel narrative has become so widespread that it is now considered the only coherent explanation for anything Israel does. This is why the academics and NGOs are so resistant to correction when their facts are proven wrong - they cannot wrap their heads around any coherent alternative to "Israel is evil."  That is the only fact they are willing to accept, and any actual facts that contradict it are considered aberrant, not disproof. 

The frightening part is that AIs, unless carefully trained, tend to do the same thing. I tried to train a GPT to surface hidden, load-bearing assumptions and tested it with this article. It found some surface-level assumptions but did not detect the deeper ones. It assumed that Azzam's Biblical quotes were all referring to the same commandment. It said that it was wrong to generalize individual politicians to the entire Israeli leadership, but gave examples of genocidal sounding quotes that were themselves taken out of context - because it was trained on the ICJ case and UN documents that did not mention how they misquoted the speeches. Only when I told them the facts did they go to source materials and find out I was right. 

Academics don't know how to search for truth anymore, and AIs are being trained to think the same way. 

We should all be very, very scared.

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icsa

 

Andrew Pessin has launched the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism, and in his introductory manifesto he writes:

“We now need entire teams of researchers — serious, methodical, interdisciplinary — to mine the full archive of genocide studies, settler-colonial theory, Middle Eastern studies, and the whole academic nexus where antizionism has taken root… a vast, largely unexamined body of antizionist hate literature, treated as scholarship but functioning as ideology.”

I am not an academic, but I can certainly critique academics on their own playing field. I've quoted and mocked the most egregious examples of anti-Zionist academics and academic literature a number of times. But what is required here is a more rigorous examination showing that the entire field is rotten at the core.. From what I could tell, anti-Zionist academic literature does not simply contain bias. It behaves like a sealed intellectual ecosystem, with its own canonical texts, circular logic, and selective evidentiary filters. The appearance of scholarly rigor is there -  citations, peer review, footnotes  - but the underlying method is adversarial rather than truth-seeking. The conclusions are rarely tested; they are assumed.

This is where AI becomes indispensable.

Taylor and Francis hosts hundreds of academic journals. While most papers there are not available in full text, they show their abstracts - and their footnotes. I realized that with a minimal effort I could have AI examine the papers and their references to see if they are following the patterns of normal academic research or if their evidence is all circular and ignoring any counter-examples.

I found that when searching for papers accusing Israel of “settler-colonialism,” “apartheid,” and “genocide,” nearly all of them fail basic academic standards required in the social sciences.

The rot is very deep. Here is what I found in only a half hour of research with Grok:

The Settler-Colonialism Frame: Theory as Template

Searching Taylor & Francis for “settler colonial* + Israel” yields about 110 papers since 2015. In this cluster:

• Patrick Wolfe (2006) is cited ~52%

• Ilan Pappé (2006) ~48%

• Lorenzo Veracini (2010) ~35%

• Gershon Shafir (1996) ~28%

These four sources account for roughly 80% of the network’s intellectual gravity. Virtually every subsequent paper refers back to them.

But here is the problem: these works are rarely challenged, only repeated. Assertions like “Zionism is a settler-colonial project by definition.”are taken not as hypotheses to be investigated, but as axioms to be applied.

Primary sources,  such as Ottoman-era Jewish land ownership, pre-Mandate Jewish presence, or Mizrahi Jewish indigeneity,  almost never receive examination. The fact that Jews have always considered Israel their homeland and have prayed to return for two millennia? Not to be found, because that one fact by itself shows that Jews never considered themselves to be settling someone else's land but returning to their own. 

Even within the larger field of settler colonial studies, there are debates on whether Israel fits the definition the way the US or Australia do. Those dissenting opinions not only might but must be mentioned in serious academic papers - yet they are virtually absent in the context of Israel.

The Apartheid Frame: NGOs as Canon

The apartheid literature is even larger, about 230 papers. But here, the intellectual source code changes.

The top citations are no longer academics but NGOs: 

• B’Tselem (2021) ~75%

• Human Rights Watch (2021) ~68%

• Amnesty International (2022) ~62%

These are not academic papers, but advocacy documents. They are not peer-reviewed; they were created with predetermined conclusions and PR strategies behind them. 

Yet in academic writing, they are treated as if they were definitive legal assessments. The logic often goes something like, “As established by HRW and B’Tselem, Israel is an apartheid regime.”

But the reports themselves have been directly challenged,  in detail, by Eugene Kontorovich,  Avi  Bell, Gerald Steinberg, CAMERA, and myself. Those critiques exist. They are public and specific. 

And yet,  in the 230 T&F apartheid papers,  they are cited in less than 2% of cases. And when they are cited, it is often dismissively, as “denialist rhetoric,” not as arguments requiring rebuttal.

This is ideological cherry-picking that excludes any contradictory evidence.. It does not reach anything close to accepted academic standards.

The “Genocide” Acceleration

Finally, the most recent wave: the “genocide” framing post-October 7. There have been so far about 150 papers since late 2023 accusing Israel of "genocide," which is astonishing for two years. 

And in these, the primary sources are:

• Francesca Albanese’s UN Special Rapporteur reports (70%)

• ICJ provisional ruling language (65%)

• Amnesty’s December 2024 genocide report (already ~55%)

Again, the pattern holds. These sources are treated as if they constitute established legal conclusions rather than political and rhetorical framing.

Arguments rooted in genocide scholarship, like the specific standard of dolus specialis,  are barely discussed. The ICJ’s own high evidentiary standards (as applied in Croatia v. Serbia) are almost never mentioned.

There are virtually no counter-interpretations, no accurate readings of the Genocide Convention, no documentation of Israeli efforts to warn civilians, no discussion of Hamas embedding military assets among civilians.

Once again, NGO reports are treated not as evidence but as authority.

In other scholarly fields, like  political science, history, and sociology,  academic standards require:

• representing opposing views fairly

• citing dissenting scholarship

• acknowledging uncertainties

• engaging with primary sources

• and above all: practicing falsifiability

What we see instead is the construction of a self-affirming discourse where counter-arguments are not refuted. They are simply not acknowledged.

This produces an illusion of consensus where none exists. It creates the appearance of “settled scholarship” when what actually exists is selective citation and methodological exclusion.

I managed to prove, in less than an hour, what I and probably the members of ICSA have long suspected: that the field of anti-Zionism is not just dismissive but contemptuous of academic standards. It is not a field at all, but an anti-Israel propaganda initiative disguised as scholarship. It does not stand up to the slightest bit of critical scrutiny.

ICSA must adhere to rigorous academic standards to make this case airtight. But I just proved it beyond any reasonable doubt. 

Ideas start in journals, get simplified into lectures, then transmitted to student activists, turned into slogans and then accepted as moral certainties which then become dogma, and dogma that cannot be questioned becomes a weapon. Entire university departments are complicit in this truly horrible hijacking of academia. Any honest researcher should be horrified and want to excise this cancer from the social sciences.

Let's hope ICSA will be the spark to burn this entire false field of study down.

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holo ed

 There has been an uproar over comments by Sarah Hurwitz at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America this month. As JTA reports:

“Holocaust education is absolutely essential,” she said. “But I think it may be confusing some of our young people about antisemitism, because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews, and they think, ‘Oh, antisemitism is like anti-black racism, right? Powerful white people against powerless black people.’ So when on Tiktok, all day long, they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it’s not surprising that they think, ‘Oh, I know the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel. You fight the big, powerful people hurting the weak people.’”  

Immediately the "progressive" Left attacked her, saying that she was justifying Gaza "genocide" and other nonsense.

Hurwitz is correct. Holocaust education falls into a number of buckets, all of which are problematic for one reason or another. Some make it into a vapid lesson on generalized tolerance. Others use it as a tool to compare the Holocaust with other genocides, without noting the particular horrors that make it unique. Some concentrate on Jewish victimhood, making Jews passive characters in the only narrative they are confutable teaching, "oppressor vs. oppressed." And yet others concentrate on democracy and anti-authoritarianism, implying that something like this could never happen here.

Everyone is ignoring the real lesson of the Holocaust - how we cannot be complacent, because we can also fall into the same mindset that the Germans did.  Some of the most cultured, educated and technologically advanced people in the world  descended into supporting the horrors of genocide in less than a decade. How could this happen, and how can we ensure it never happens again?

This is a lesson in ethics, a topic that public education seems allergic to for fear of offending someone. But without a strong ethical backbone, any Holocaust curriculum is not going to accomplish what it is supposed to. And there are basic ethical imperatives that everyone should be able to agree upon.

This is exactly where the philosophy I have been developing, Derechology, shows its value. Together with my Derechology AI GPT, I came up with a sample curriculum that makes the Holocaust relevant to today. It doesn't shy away from hard questions - it is meant to make students uncomfortable in an age-appropriate way.

In the derechological curriculum, students don't just learn about the Holocaust: they are trained to think ethically:

• They learn to identify moral collapse through values like Tzelem Elokim (the sacred image in every person), Pikuach Nefesh (life trumps ideology), and Anavah (moral humility).
• They study how professions failed—medicine, law, academia—and how moral distance allowed people to commit atrocities while feeling innocent.
• They engage in Moral Audit Projects—applying Holocaust ethics to modern issues: medical ethics, refugee policy, social media algorithms, and more.
• They reflect on moral resilience—what Jewish tradition preserved under annihilation, and how spiritual courage outlasted empire.

The sample curriculum spans eight modules. Here’s a taste:

Ground Zero of Moral Collapse — This module begins with the question of how a civilized society—full of artists, scientists, and thinkers—could become a machine of genocide. Students are introduced to key ethical values and the idea of structural moral failure. The focus is not on Jews or Nazis yet, but on the disappearance of override values like human dignity and mutual responsibility under the guise of "science "and "progress." Racial theories were accepted as scientific fact by everyone in the early 20th century. Are there any current social theories being taught today that might be disproven tomorrow?

How Antisemitism Functions — Antisemitism is not just another form of hate; it’s a diagnostic tool for system failure. Students learn how antisemitism morphs across ideologies and Jews are blamed for contradictory crimes. They will examine how antisemitic ideas infiltrated German law, theology, education, and popular culture, becoming the emotional and ideological engine of genocide. Students also examine how tropes from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion—accusations of secret Jewish power, global manipulation, and dual loyalty—have not disappeared but adapted to modern political language. Conspiracy theories portraying Jews as both omnipotent and subversive remain widespread across ideological spectrums. The module challenges students to understand how these narratives persist even when explicitly disavowed, and how they distort ethical reasoning. This module challenges students to recognize similar rhetorical and structural patterns in contemporary discourse. 

Collapse of the Professions — Doctors, lawyers, engineers, and professors were not exceptions to Nazism: they were instruments of it. This module shows how professional codes eroded when they aligned with racial ideology and state power. Medical ethics books justified extermination of "subhumans."   Students learn how moral collapse isn’t chaotic - it can be planned, bureaucratic, credentialed, and efficient. 

Moral Arrogance — What happens when humility is removed from the ethical system? This module introduces Anavah—moral humility—as a structural necessity. Nazis didn't think of themselves as monsters - they were in the forefront of animal ethics while justifying the murder of millions of humans. Students explore how Nazi ideology elevated certainty, hierarchy, and dehumanization over ethical restraint, creating a worldview where genocide felt like progress. 

The Machinery of Death — The Holocaust was a technological, administrative, and logistical operation as much as it was ideological. Students learn about the train systems, data tracking, and bureaucratic layers that allowed millions to die while most participants believed they were “just doing their jobs.” The concept of “moral distance” helps explain how ordinary people justified extraordinary evil. Some resisted but the vast majority did not, thinking that their parts in the genocide were too inconsequential to matter. 

Mass Consent: The Storytelling of Genocide — This module explores how the Nazis used propaganda to normalize the abnormal. Students analyze films, speeches, posters, and school materials that reframed genocide as moral duty and racial hygiene. They study classic persuasion techniques—repetition, euphemism, scapegoating, visual symbolism—and compare them to how modern media and social platforms and advertising shape narratives today. The goal is to train students to detect ethical hijacking before it becomes cultural collapse.

Jewish Ethical and Physical Resistance — Against totalitarian power, Jews didn’t just survive—they preserved structure. Students learn about the Jews who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto and in partisan forces. But beyond that, they embraced spiritual resistance: holiday observance, Torah study, mutual aid, even ethical debates in camps. This is framed not as passive suffering but as the fierce refusal to let moral structure die even when they had no control over any other aspect of their lives.

Teshuva Epochs — After the Shoah, some systems tried to reckon with their collapse. Students examine examples of postwar repentance: Christian theological shifts, German reparations, the Geneva Conventions, and the moral rebirth of Israel. The challenge here is to distinguish real teshuva (ethical return) from performative gestures ("we're sorry you were offended.") it is not about guilt, but about a true change in one's derech (moral path.)

Moral Audit Project — In the capstone module, students apply Holocaust ethics to contemporary moral dilemmas. They identify a system where human dignity is at risk, run a derechological analysis, and design an override mechanism. This turns memory into action—and trains moral architects, not just historians.

Students come away not just with knowledge, but with conscience - and tools that would help them navigate real life.

They learn that remembering isn’t enough. “Never Again” means never again on your watch. The Holocaust is not a Jewish story with universal lessons—it is a universal story revealed through the unique Jewish experience.

This is only one version of the curriculum I've developed. There are many other subtopics and ethical entry points into the Holocaust that could be explored. I believe specific vignettes are especially effective—moments students can visualize and emotionally process. For example, while Nazi death camp commandants could spend their evenings listening to music and enjoying a hearty meal with their families after a day of mass murder, Jewish prisoners would sometimes share a single potato peel found in the dirt as if it were treasure. One dinner table preserved privilege; the other preserved dignity.

This curriculum doesn’t teach certainty. It teaches the humility to recognize that you might be wrong and the courage to act before it’s too late.

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dsa

 One of the most useful tools in the Derechology framework I am creating is the falsifiability test. 

In short, it asks a simple but powerful question: Are the load-bearing assumptions of your moral or political system provably false? If the system leans on an assumption that collapses under empirical reality, then the entire moral architecture built on top of it becomes unstable - no matter how noble the intent. 

Let’s apply this to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

The DSA is essentially Marxist at its core, and it dresses it up to make it more palatable for voters. But it is not hard to  find that much of DSA’s rhetoric, inherited from Marxist frameworks, rests on a foundational binary as seen in a 2016 strategy document:

The fundamental social relationship in capitalism is between the worker and the capitalist (employee and employer), and the exploitation of workers by capitalists is the primary source of profitability within the capitalist system.

Similarly, in a 2024 statement: 

Elites—the capitalist class,... live through exploiting working-class labor and extracting rent from us... The solution is for working-class people to take political power for ourselves.

These statements as well as many others position the working class as virtuous victims and the capitalist class as exploitative oppressors. That’s not just a structural description. It’s a moral determinacy claim: the system treats structural position as the defining moral feature of a person or group.

But a little thought shows that the working world isn't binary. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics counts tens of millions of people who are managers - but not at the top tier of executives. Meaning that they are both managers and workers at the same time.

Socialists have come up with with bizarre and contradictory ways to deal with this reality. Sometimes they treat them as workers, sometimes as the capitalist elites, some create a new category called "professional management classes" and others claim that no such class exists. 

But they also ignore, or try to explain away, that there are plenty of companies where workers are treated fairly and are happy. There are managers who genuinely advocate for their teams. There are people who began their careers on the factory floor and ended up as C-suite executives  -  not because they betrayed their class, but because they grew, led, and adapted.

It’s not that there aren’t real structural barriers; of course there are. But refusing to acknowledge the permeability of class boundaries renders the binary assumption empirically false and morally dangerous. The attempts to patch the problem by coming up with new theories and sub-theories to account for reality - when in fact, it is reality that discredits the theories. 

A false assumption discredits a philosophy that depends on it.

But there is another implicit assumption that todays' socialists rely on - how they define the oppressed class. Perhaps this is because they realize that the current economy is not based on factory workers and the 19th century facts of worker oppression and horrible conditions simply does not translate to office workers or even Walmart warehouses. So now they try to include minorities or immigrants to shore up their support - along with a healthy dose of propaganda. 

But by doing this, the socialists are again ignoring reality. There are as many obstacles to success as there are people. Disability, geography, language ability, personality traits, and many others are all challenges people have. By choosing some people as the officially oppressed, they are marginalizing others, enforcing the very inequality that they claim to be against.

Socialism intends to replace political leaders with workers who presumably understand their struggles. Now, let's look at New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. His entire experience as a "worker" was a few years working as a foreclosure prevention and housing counselor in Queens, helping low-income homeowners. I don't know if he was working for a non-profit or a government agency, but either way, he does not have any experience at all working for an oppressive capitalist who exploits workers for profit. 

So what qualifications does he have, as a socialist, to lead a city when he knows nothing about the exploitation of workers? The entire point of socialism is to have workers become the leaders, not self-declared socialists. Electing non-workers as political leaders betrays the entire point of socialism.

Even worse, let's look at his campaign. He had hundreds of campaign workers under him being paid. Which means, by socialist definition, Mamdani was one of the capitalist elite exploiting his workers to gain his own selfish goals! Arguably, he has more experience as a leader of an organization than as a worker in any real sense.

Marxism demands revolution. The DSA has to publicly modify the philosophy to fit in a democracy. But it has not come up with a consistent alternative, so it is all about electing not workers, but socialists who are LARPing as oppressed workers. 

The result is an inconsistent, immoral mess that cannot articulate a real positive vision.

The requirement for justice is real. But reducing moral agency to class cosplay collapses under reality. A system that refuses to see people as complex agents will always betray them - even those whom it claims to represent.

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mccl

 Something deeply unnerving is happening beneath the surface of recent antisemitic incidents. 

It is not merely the rise in raw expressions of Jew-hatred, nor the shamelessness with which people now voice medieval libels and slurs. What is emerging is a new mechanism of backlash that turns the exposure of antisemitism itself into an accelerant of antisemitism. It is a kind of psychological judo: an ugly act is caught on camera, public anger erupts, and the perpetrator is recast as the supposed victim of Jewish overreaction. The more blatant the antisemitism, the easier it becomes to claim persecution, and the faster the narrative turns on its head.

The model case arrived this week in Mississippi. A former university student, Patrick McClintock, approached Dave Portnoy during a pizza review and hurled antisemitic slurs while tossing coins at him, playing off the "cheap Jew" trope.  It was not borderline hate nor was it a coded message.  It was classic, unmistakable Jew-hatred.

Yet within twenty-four hours, McClintock had become a minor folk hero in certain corners of the Internet. A crowdfunding campaign quickly raised tens of thousands of dollars in his name, promoted through a narrative so inverted that it reads like satire: Jews, we are told, had “overreacted,” had “summoned the authorities,” had tried to “destroy his life for free speech.” None of this was true. Portnoy explicitly declined to press charges and publicly said he did not want the student punished. But the truth was irrelevant once a story could be built around Jewish oversensitivity and supposed “tyranny.” 

The lie served a psychological purpose. It recast the aggressor as a victim and the victim as an oppressor. It provided donors with a cause – not the defense of free speech, but the pleasure of striking back at Jews who were depicted as policing public life. 

This pattern is not accidental. Over the past few years, research on media and prejudice has shown that neutral or lightly framed news coverage of antisemitic incidents often has a counter-intuitive effect. Instead of generating sympathy for Jews or revulsion toward bigotry, it can produce a backlash among readers who perceive the outrage as excessive. When a story includes the incident and then notes “angry reactions,” or hints at controversy, people inclined to view Jews as powerful or hypersensitive interpret the anger as proof of the stereotype. Their defensiveness sharpens, not softens. Their prejudices deepen, not weaken. The original act matters less than the narrative that forms around the reaction.

In this case, the police reacted quickly and arrested McClintock for disturbing the peace. The fundraisers claim that he was being persecuted for freedom of speech by the entitled, rich Jews. 

What the Portnoy–McClintock affair demonstrates is that bad actors no longer have to wait for journalists to provide that framing. They can create it themselves. A viral clip, a fabricated claim that Jews demanded punishment, a call for donations framed as a stand against censorship, and within hours the incident has been rewritten. The backlash becomes more potent than the original hatred, because it is wrapped in a story about principle and resistance rather than open bigotry.

This is not limited to one side of the political spectrum. On the progressive Left, blatant antisemitism like an open blood libel is still difficult to defend in public. When a guest lecturer at University College London, Dr. Samar Maqusi, revived the nineteenth century Damascus blood libel and presented it to students as plausible history, the response from the institution was swift. UCL ended her affiliation and referred the case to the authorities. Most progressives are not prepared to go on record defending medieval fantasies about Jews murdering Christians for ritual purposes.

But if we look back to October 7, 2023 and its aftermath, we can see that the underlying playbook on parts of the Left is remarkably similar to what we are now watching around McClintock. After the Hamas massacres, a significant segment of progressive activists and commentators insisted that the most documented atrocities did not really happen. They claimed there were no rapes, no deliberate murders of civilians, that the attack was a legitimate act of “resistance,” and that Israel’s subsequent response was an outrageous overreaction. When Jews described this as antisemitic – not because criticism of Israel is forbidden, but because denying or justifying the murder and abuse of Jews has a very old pedigree – many of the same voices responded by saying that antisemitism was being “weaponized” to silence debate.

The argument around the IHRA working definition of antisemitism is another version of this dynamic. The text explicitly states that it is a non-legally binding educational tool, not a law and not intended to criminalize or shut down legitimate political speech. Yet for years, critics have claimed that IHRA is designed to outlaw all criticism of Israel and to censor pro-Palestinian activism. The actual words of the definition, which draw a clear line between normal criticism and antisemitic double standards, are quietly pushed aside. What matters is the narrative that Jews are redefining antisemitism in order to avoid scrutiny and to suppress dissenting views.

Once that frame is in place, the structure is identical for both the Left and the Right. First, minimize or relativize the underlying act: insist that the crime was exaggerated, that the facts are unclear, that what happened on October 7 was just another episode in an ongoing conflict, that a blood libel is just a “controversial interpretation of history,” that shouting slurs at a Jew in public is “one dumb mistake” unworthy of consequences. Second, accuse Jews of overreacting and of trying to relabel a political dispute as bigotry. Third, describe institutional or social pushback as censorship and persecution. At that point, the target audience is no longer thinking about what was done to Jews; they are thinking about what Jews supposedly do to others.

The result is a backlash that is especially powerful for a certain minority of people. These are not the committed neo-Nazis or the most extreme ideologues. They are the ones who already half-believe that Jews are influential and oversensitive, but who also think of themselves as fair-minded. When they are bombarded with stories that combine an antisemitic incident, visible Jewish anger, and a narrative of “weaponized antisemitism,” it confirms their suspicions. They come away less inclined to take future antisemitism seriously, more likely to resent Jews for “crying wolf,” and more open to the very stereotypes that these stories were supposedly exposing.

This is a vector for antisemitism that our society has no real defense against. Traditional methods – public shaming, strong institutional statements, educational campaigns – all feed the mechanism rather than weaken it. Silence is harmful; speaking out is twisted into evidence of Jewish overreach. Institutions that respond appropriately are accused of capitulating to “Jewish pressure.” The more antisemitism rises, the stronger the backlash narrative becomes, because every genuine case becomes raw material for the story that Jews are exaggerating.

That's why we see October 7 denial, why people claim Israeli prisoners of Hamas were treated well and even thanked them, why shouting out in public "Fuck the Jews!" is recategorized as a freedom of speech issue. When the crime is minimized, the reactions can be spun as excessive. 

If this logic continues to spread, it will become one of the most effective amplifiers of antisemitism in the digital age: a system in which every act of hatred carries within it the blueprint for its own justification, and in which condemnation becomes the gasoline rather than the extinguisher.

Unless we acknowledge this mechanism and find ways to disrupt it, we will continue to lose ground not because antisemitism is growing more sophisticated, but because it is learning to use our own moral intuitions against us.

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deal

There are too many moving parts, too many secrets and too little solid information around the current hostage release and US-brokered/pressured ceasefire to know whether it is a victory or not.^[30][31] But we can look at the past two years and see a change in Israel's defense posture and military strategy that definitely helped revolutionize the entire region for the better.^[0][1]

Before 2023, Israel's military strategy was always against those who directly attacked it - whether Hamas, West Bank militant groups or Hezbollah.^[5] It was no secret that these groups were supported by Iran, Qatar and Turkey but Israel was most reluctant to go after their sponsors because of fears of escalation and international pressure.^[5][7]

After October 7, Israel's posture changed to the realization that the octopus' tentacles will always grow back no matter how many times they are severed.^[3] And, crucially, its fear of condemnation by the world went to zero.^[3]

It may even be that the slanderous and utterly false charges of "genocide" hurled at Israel in the immediate months after October 7 helped crystallize this strategy, since once the world already accuses you of the worst possible crime, what downside is there to escalate to attack the financial, political and military source of the threat?^[3]

Israel's blows against Hezbollah and Iran, both the spectacular attacks on highly visible targets as well as the non-stop lower-level attacks on Iran's supply chain to Hezbollah across Syria, can be seen a year later as being key to the severe degradation of Hezbollah's military and political fortunes.^{[40][41][42][44]} The very acts that prompted the most extreme anti-Israel rhetoric were the ones that contributed most towards a more peaceful Middle East by largely sidelining and silencing Iran.^[48] Lebanon is no longer living in fear of Hezbollah, Syria's leader has fallen and (for all the many caveats on its new leadership) Syria has turned into a potential partner for peace.^{[20][22][23][26]}

But while Iran supports Hamas, its real oxygen comes through Doha and Istanbul.^[4][10] And Israel's seemingly failed attempt to assassinate Hamas leaders in Qatar changed the entire calculus of the region.^[11][12][15]

Even though it seemed at the time to be a major failure and indeed embarrassment, Israel's strike at a Hamas meeting in Doha sent a signal to Hamas' sponsors that if they continue to support the terror group, there is nothing - not even Donald Trump - that restrains Israel's desire to stop them.^[10][15][18]

This message didn't only reverberate in Qatar but in Turkey as well.^[4][10] Instantly, Hamas went from an asset that can be used to leverage popular support into a major liability.^[10]

Trump recognized this and saw an opportunity to use this new chess board to his advantage.^[18] But in the end, Israel's goals for the war - saving the hostages, ending Hamas' rule in Gaza - never wavered.^[8] While it is too soon to know for sure, it appears that everyone in the region is finally agreeing with those goals and willing to pressure Hamas to end its rule over Gaza.^[32][38]

The deal is far from perfect, and the devil is in the details of what Hamas' future will be and whether it will be energized by the release of its worst terrorists.^[32][34][35] Remember that Yahya Sinwar was released from Israeli prisons in the Shalit deal.^[34]

But it was Israeli strength, tactical brilliance, unparalleled intelligence, unwavering goals and willingness to go after those who gave Hamas oxygen that led to this day.^[1][2] Israel's regional neighbors received this message loud and clear.^[0] Israel's political fortunes can only go up from here, and it has regained the respect and fear of the entire Middle East, which is a prerequisite for any sort of lasting peace.^[1][2]

References

1. Brookings: Israel's Post-October 7 Strategy and Regional Implications
2. CSIS: Israel's Tactical Shift Against the Axis of Resistance
3. FDD: Regaining Deterrence for Middle East Peace
4. Haaretz: From Restraint to Reach: Israel's Bold New Doctrine
5. Al Jazeera: Turkey, Qatar View Hamas as Liability Post-Doha Strike
6. Israel Hayom: Pre-October 7: Limits of Israeli Strategy
7. Jerusalem Post: Fears of Escalation Kept Israel in Check
8. Times of Israel: Netanyahu Outlines Unwavering Gaza War Goals
9. Reuters: Qatar Strike Shifts Hamas Dynamics in Sponsors
10. BBC: Israel's Doha Strike: Failure or Turning Point?
11. NYT: How Israel's Qatar Strike Reshaped Regional Calculus
12. Washington Post: The Message from Doha's Strike to Hamas Backers
13. Politico: Trump Leverages Israel Strike for Ceasefire Win
14. Le Monde: Lebanon Freed from Hezbollah's Shadow
15. Guardian: Syria After Assad: Pathways to Peace
16. Economist: Syria's New Dawn Amid Caveats
17. Foreign Affairs: Post-Assad Syria as Peace Partner
18. CNN: Gaza Ceasefire: Too Many Secrets to Call Victory
19. AP: Uncertainties in US-Brokered Gaza Deal
20. Haaretz: Regional Consensus to End Hamas Rule
21. JPost: Risks of Prisoner Releases Like Sinwar in Shalit Deal
22. Times of Israel: Gaza Deal: Devil in Hamas Future Details
23. Al-Monitor: Arab Pressure for Hamas Gaza Exit
24. ISW: Hezbollah's Degradation from Israeli Strikes
25. RAND: Impact of Israeli Strikes on Hezbollah Supply Chain
26. CNAS: Syria Strikes and Iran Proxy Degradation
27. Atlantic Council: Hezbollah's Post-Strike Fortunes
28. Foreign Policy: Sidelining Iran for Mideast Peace

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antisem studies

 We see a familiar pattern with most public instances of bigotry.  A racist incident hits the news, and the public response – at least in open, mainstream circles – is usually horror and shame. People distance themselves from the racism, organizations reaffirm their opposition to it, there is outrage in the media and social media, perhaps prompting some protests, and prejudice is pushed a little further back underground.

Antisemitism, though, behaves differently. When antisemitic incidents occur – whether disguised as “anti-Zionism” or brazenly explicit – they often don’t generate horror. Instead, they seem to embolden others. What should be a cautionary tale becomes a rallying cry. 

Antisemitism strengthens on its own exposure.

It is a kind of stigmatization rebound effect.

There are studies that explain parts of this phenomenon:

• Prejudice rebound in psychology. Social psychologists have long documented that when people try to suppress their biases, the thoughts can come back stronger. Monteith and others called this the stereotype rebound effect: the act of pushing prejudice out of sight primes it to resurface later with greater intensity.

• Reactance against stigma. Stigma campaigns can backfire when people perceive them as policing thought or speech. Studies of stigma reduction show that those told “you must not think this way” sometimes double down out of reactance【turn0search10†source】.

• Secondary antisemitism. German social psychologists Daniel Imhoff and Rainer Banse ran experiments showing that reminders of Jewish victimhood actually increased antisemitism in some respondents, once social-desirability filters were removed. They called this secondary antisemitism – hostility that grows stronger the more one is confronted with the suffering of Jews.

• Permission structures. Surveys and testimonies show that many Jews perceive the rise of antisemitism not as the creation of new hatreds but as the release of old ones. A 2020 Pew study found Jews saying, in essence: “It’s not that people became antisemitic; it’s that they now feel freer to say it”. Dara Horn recently described this as a “permission structure” for antisemitism in The Atlantic.

Put together, these lines of research help explain why antisemitic incidents don’t reduce antisemitism. They activate latent prejudice, provoke reactance against stigma, and signal permission to express what was already there. This is unique compared to other prejudices:

Antisemitism is widespread but under-measured, since most surveys rely on self-reporting. People know the “correct” answers so it is difficult to measure how many people have latent antisemitic feelings. I've mentioned one study that found it indirectly; and the German study above managed to get people to admit antisemitic opinions when they were told that they were hooked up to a reliable lie detector. The people with latent antisemitic attitudes are the ones who are more likely to look at antisemitic incidents not as something horrific but as evidence that they are not alone. The antisemites may even be admired as "speaking truth to power."

One other reason that antisemitic incidents don't provoke the same reaction as violent incidents against minorities, women or the disabled is because Jews are not hated for their weakness but for their perceived power. The idea of the powerful getting knocked down a peg is a mainstream meme in entertainment and media.

The result is a self-reinforcing loop. Antisemitism doesn’t wither under the light of day; it metastasizes.

The scholarship gives us pieces – prejudice rebound, reactance, secondary antisemitism, permission structures. But none quite capture the full picture.

That’s why stigmatization rebound is a useful frame. It names the paradox: incidents that should stigmatize hatred instead rebound, drawing out and intensifying the very prejudice they should suppress.

Recognizing this dynamic matters because it exposes why antisemitism cannot be fought with the same tools used against racism or other prejudices. Public shaming, exposure, and education alone don’t work the same way. With antisemitism, exposure often legitimizes and emboldens. Holocaust education, often seen as the only tool in the fight, can backfire. 

This is why it is so maddening when people claim that existing anti-discrimination education is adequate to deal with antisemitism. It is not only inadequate - it is entirely wrong, and its themes of aa binary oppressor/oppressed dynamic often exacerbate rather than ameliorate antisemitism.

That doesn’t mean we stop fighting. It means we need new strategies that acknowledge how antisemitism feeds on its own visibility, and how easily anti-Zionism provides moral cover for what is, at its core, an ancient hatred looking for new clothes.

I think that the key tool to fight antisemitism is to attack the malign philosophies that encourage it - ideas like decolonial studies, Marxism and social justice. They claim that they are anti-discrimination but they are, in fact, one root of the problem. 

There may be other methods and tools that can fight the scourge. But at the moment, I have not seen too many good ideas from the many strategy papers I have read..

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yougov

 British Leftists are now far more likely to admit to classic antisemitic attitudes than those on the Right, according to a new YouGov poll.

There used to be an interesting anomaly in polling about antisemitism. Since Leftists regard themselves as being against all forms of bigotry, it was much harder to get them to answer questions that were clearly meant to measure blatant antisemitic attitudes because they wouldn't want to admit bigotry. One poll from 2021 managed to figure out how to measure double standards against Jews and found that antisemitism was correlated with higher education levels - the exact opposite of the conventional wisdom.

This new poll shows that the reluctance of the Left to express classic antisemitic attitudes is disappearing. They are now more willing to openly endorse classic antisemitic stereotypes.

Researchers used these six questions as indicators of classic antisemitic attitudes, three framed positively and three negatively:

Can Jews be trusted just as much as other British people in business?

Are Jews just as loyal to Britain as other British people?

Are you just as open to having Jewish friends as you are to having friends from other sections of British society?

Compared to other groups, do Jews have too much power in the media?

Do Jews talk about the Holocaust just to further their political agenda?

Do Jews chase money more than other people do?

There are also six questions about Israel, but for determining antisemitism, these questions were the guide.

21% of people in Britain answered the antisemitic way on at least four of these questions, double the number in 2021.

But the political leanings of the antisemites is really the story here:

The only two political groups that exceeded the 21% general adult antisemitic numbers were voters for  the Green Party (44%) and Labour (25%.)

When you factor in that many leftist antisemites still would not want to be considered antisemitic, chances are the real numbers are even worse!

Yes, right-wing antisemitism is a real problem - no one denies it. Bu tright-wing antisemitism in Britain tends to be fringe and extremist, while Left-wing antisemitism is seeping into the mainstream, reshaping political culture itself.

Other findings:

Among Green Party voters, 15 per cent believe that the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct 7 2023 was justified, higher than any other major party’s voters. 

29 per cent of Labour voters believe that Israel can get away with anything because its supporters control the media.

This is proof positive that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are two sides of the same coin. For years, the Left has been insisting that they aren't antisemitic at all - but this poll proves otherwise.  

The threat to Jews in England comes from the Left more than from the Right.

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smoking

 

In July 2023, the journal Frontiers in Public Health published a paper by Bram Wispelwey, Osama Tanous, Yara Asi, Weeam Hammoudeh and David Mills titled "Because its power remains naturalized: introducing the settler colonial determinants of health."

They claim that in Israel and elsewhere, the "colonized" have poorer health because of the supposed "settler colonialism" they suffer under.

This is not the only study that blames poorer Arab health compared to Jews in the region on nebulous factors like racism or colonialism. A series of recent papers (many of whom share some of the same authors) have been pushing this narrative: 

Smith J, Kwong EJL, Hanbali L, Hafez S, Neilson A, Khoury R. Violence in Palestine demands immediate resolution of its settler colonial root causes. BMJ Glob Health 2023;8:e014269. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2023-014269.

Tanous O. On settler colonialism, environment, and health. Jerusalem Quarterly 2023;95:112–15.

Asi YM, Hammoudeh W, Mills D, Tanous O, Wispelwey B. Reassembling the pieces: settler colonialism and the reconception of Palestinian health. Health Hum Rights 2022;24:229–35. PMID: PMC9790940.

Asi YM, Sharif MZ, Wispelwey B, Abuelezam NN, Ahmed AK, Samari G. Racism as a threat to Palestinian health equity. Health Equity 2024;8:371–5. https://doi.org/10.1089/heq.2024.0027.

It does not take long to not only debunk this theory, but to advance an alternative theory that is much stronger to explain why Arab Israelis and Palestinian Arabs have a lower life expectancy than Israeli Jews. 

Let's ignore the fact that Israel is not a settler-colonialist state, since Jews are indigenous to the region. 

If settler colonial determinants of health (SCDH) were real, then one would expect that Arabs under Israeli rule or "occupation" have worse health than their neighbors in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Syria, who do not live under such circumstances. 

Yet the life expectancy of Palestinian and Israeli Arabs is 76, while their neighbors average about 74.5.

That is a negative correlation.

Yet Israeli Arabs do have lower life expectancy than Israeli Jews, which is 83 years. That is certainly a significant difference. If "settler colonialism" is not the major reason, what is?

Modern medicine loves to look at social factors as underlying health determinants - things like poverty or marginalization. Of course, "poverty" does not cause health problems any more than "settler colonialism" does - the use of the word "determinants" in SCDH is knowingly deceptive. There may be correlations, but nothing about poverty causes poor health - it is at best a second-order factor, because perhaps poverty indicates less access to health facilities, or more stress. But social factors, by themselves, are never determinants. 

Let's look at poverty. There is no doubt that Arab Israelis have lower incomes and higher poverty rates than Israeli Jews do, so a superficial glance at only those two factors would seem to indicate some correlation.

However, there is another well-defined group in Israeli society that has high poverty rates: religious Haredi Jews. And if you look at their life expectancy you can see that it is higher than that of non-Haredi Jews in Israel!  The Haredi population has a life expectancy of 84.5 years, a full year and a half over other Israeli Jews. 

So what accounts for these seemingly contradictory results? If it isn't settler colonialism, and it isn't poverty, then what is it that is the major factor for determining life expectancy?

If you had to choose one dominant health factor, the answer is simple: smoking.

If you compare life expectancy with smoking rates, among Haredi, non-Haredi Jewish Israeli , Israeli Arab and Palestinian men and women, the negative correlation between smoking and life expectancy is a very high -0.934.

This is a much stronger correlation than other first-order health factors like obesity or diabetes. 

When academic health papers are biased like these,  and ignore easily obtained statistics and methodologies that undermine their theories, that is no longer just bias or antisemitism. It is a threat to the entire health industry. Public health must be guided by evidence, not activism. When empirically measurable factors like smoking rates show a near-perfect inverse correlation with life expectancy, ignoring them in favor of untestable theories is not only unscientific - it's unethical.

This is not the only problem with the SCDH theory. But it is enough to show that within some health circles, activism is trumping science. That should concern everyone, no matter what your position is on Israel. 

One shudders to think that these health professionals are spending more effort to slander Israel in the name of Arab health than to promote anti-smoking initiatives among Palestinians and Arab Israelis - an idea that Israeli health officials would gladly embrace.

(h/t Andrew P)

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un ghf

 The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sent a letter to the UN offering to provide security for the delivery of aid that is rotting away inside Gaza.

UN agencies continue to assert that a lack of permissions and security is impeding aid delivery. However, the reality on the ground tells a different story. More than 400 aid distribution points run by the UN and its partners remain closed. Kitchens have shuttered, trucks sit idle, drivers are striking, and convoys are routinely looted. This is not an access issue. It is a capacity and operational issue, and the world deserves honesty about that distinction. 

We are aware that the UN and other aid organizations have essential aid stuck sitting in warehouses, including rice that has been sitting for more than 90 days, flour about to expire, and critical medical supplies already expired. We’ve seen the footage and heard the accounts of trucks being destroyed and food stolen. We’ve even been asked if we can provide security for convoys of other aid organizations. The answer is yes: we stand ready and willing to provide security for UN aid workers and assist in delivering aid.

We invite the United Nations and its partners to join us in adapting to the realities of this complex environment. The people of Gaza simply cannot afford for the world’s largest humanitarian organization to walk away. Our door remains open. We are prepared to support the safe and accountable delivery of UN aid to final distribution points across Gaza. But time is short. The population cannot wait for interagency political games while food sits in warehouses and people go hungry. 

Here is the UN's response:

There is enough work for many humanitarian organizations for us to work with.  We welcome working with any other partners.  All we ask is that those partners work based on the most basic humanitarian principles, one of them being that don’t set up an operation that will increase the risk of people to be shot at or trampled while trying to get food.  Also, we have a system that works.  All we’re asked is to be allowed to do that system.  I don’t think we need to add another layer of for-profit organizations.  We need humanitarian partners, and we welcome working with any and every humanitarian partners that works along those basis.

The UN's hypocrisy is clear.

Even if they disagree with GHF's methods of distributing food, that doesn't mean they cannot use them for security. They can insist that the GHF adhere to their principles for securing the delivery. Their blanket "no" to GHF shows that their supposed concern about humanitarian principles is not principled at all.

But this goes deeper than that. The UN has cooperated with Hamas for years, before and during the war, for aid delivery. Hamas is not exactly a humanitarian organization. But in that case, the UN says that its principles are overridden by practical considerations of how to get the aid to those who need it. 

Hamas hanging with UN members 

Their willingness to partner with Hamas and not with GHF tells you that the UN doesn't care about principles, but politics. It wants control over the aid to Gazans and it has no problem with Hamas skimming the aid and selling it to bankroll its terrorism. 

Think about this: The UN has never said a negative word about Hamas stealing aid, or attacking aid workers and Gaza civilians, or using civilians as human shields, or putting weapons under hospitals. It has criticized an organization that has distributed tens of millions of meals more in the past two months than it has criticized Hamas in 20 years. 

Given all these incontrovertible facts, the UN cannot pretend to care about Gazans today. It wants to take down GHF more than it wants to feed Gazans. And it prefers Hamas to an aid agency that bypasses it to give food directly to the people.

Did the UN ask Gazans if they would accept GHF to secure the trucks and bring in food to their distribution points?  Obviously not, because we know what Gazans would prefer. Which means that the arrogant UN is saying that it knows what's best for Gazans better than Gazans themselves.

Speaking of arrogance, compare the tone of the two messages. GHF recognizes that its model cannot provide food for all and it is begging to partner with the UN. The UN, which has said for months that the reason it cannot distribute the food in Gaza is because of security, changes its tune when its perceived competition offers to solve that problem. 

By any metric, the UN is a thoroughly immoral organization - even in Gaza itself. 

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