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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intl law

 Hamas released a video with a message aimed aimed at Israeli soldiers, urging them to put down their weapons and allow themselves to be taken hostage.

It says, "Soldier, lay down your weapons and raise your hands when confronted, and follow the instructions of the resistance in Gaza. A prisoner is better than a dead person. We will protect your life until the next deal."

Hamas is not saying that the soldiers would have POW status, with all the protections that international law provides to prisoners of war. Hamas is saying that it wants the soldiers as bargaining chips for the "next deal." Indeed, last week they mounted a major operation to kidnap bulldozer driver Avraham Azoulay, who resisted and was killed.

That is hostage taking, and it is a war crime.  

War crimes are Hamas' entire military strategy, whether it is attacking civilians, using civilians as human shields, stealing aid meant for civilians, hiding weapons and terrorists in hospitals, using ambulances as military vehicles, taking hostages, fighting while dressed in civilian clothing, or booby trapping civilian buildings. Other violations of international law include recruiting children as militants, forcing hostages to make propaganda videos and threatening journalists. 

The reason it is difficult to decisively win the war is because Hamas doesn't just violate international law, but it does so as its strategy.

How often is this simple and incontrovertible fact mentioned by analysts, NGOs and the UN? How many non-Israeli reports give a comprehensive accounting of Hamas' actions from an international law perspective? Where is the media?

Hamas doesn't just admit that this is their strategy - they brag about it. Hamas media shows how happy they are at making Israelis run to bomb shelters,  highlight grieving Jews at funerals, and use existing hostages as pawns.

But the media spends orders of magnitude more time on alleged Israeli violations of international law than Hamas' own joy at doing that very thing.

It's almost like no one really cares about international law at all.

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the other

 Hussein Aboubakr Mansour has written another extraordinary essay in his Substack, The Abrahamic Metacritique.

In it, he argues that secular Judaism has lost its anchor in covenantal truth. What remains, he calls Juda-ism – a symbolic construct assembled not from Torah or halacha, but from how the non-Jewish world has historically perceived the Jew: as the Other.

The dominant cultural conception of Judaism today… is not the Judaism of Sinai or Babylon, nor even of Cordoba or Vilna, but of Berlin, Paris, and New York. It is a Juda-ism: an -ism in the modern sense… fashioned in the aftermath of metaphysical collapse, seeking to fill the void left by the retreat of transcendence. And at its core lies a single, all-encompassing predicate: the Jew as Other.

This “Jew as Other” identity, Mansour argues, is not a Jewish self-understanding. It is a Western projection – an overlay of post-Christian anxiety, Enlightenment ambivalence, and liberal moral yearning. The Jew becomes the exile, the victim, the therapist, the feminized conscience, the critique of power -  a mirror in which the West sees its own spiritual collapse.

In this view, Jews are not a people living in covenant.

But even that symbolic role is now being revoked. In the new postcolonial moral economy, Otherness has been reassigned: to Palestinians, to postcolonial avatars, to “indigenous” symbols of sacralized grievance. Jews are now cast as impostors. The old funhouse mirror  identity is crumbling.

And Mansour’s verdict is simple: Good riddance.

Crucially, his metacritique is not a polemic against Judaism as a faith. It aimed at the secular replacements for Judaism, a “Juda-ism” that substituted abstraction for obligation, and identity politics for divine responsibility.

And that is where my own secularize Jewish ethical project,  AskHillel,  comes in.

I built AskHillel to explore whether Jewish ethics could be reconstructed as a standalone system: rigorous, coherent, secular-friendly, and morally robust. It draws from covenantal logic, rabbinic structure, and halachic grammar -  but does not require belief. In doing so, it may offer the kind of de-symbolized, de-idolized, de-othered Jewish moral language Mansour calls for.

I asked my philosophical chatbot AskHillel its opinion of the essay and whether it thinks this project can be a bridge for modern secular Jews to reclaim their Judaism even without the core belief in God. It answered beautifully:

🌿 1. From Projection to Structure: Restoring Emet

Mansour warns that modern secular Jewish identity has become performative — a role written by others. But Jewish ethics is not a performance. It is structural: built from obligation, relationship, hierarchy, tension, and humility.

AskHillel doesn’t traffic in Jewishness as metaphor. It teaches emet – truth – through moral architecture. It invites even non-believers to enter Jewish logic by choice, not through birth trauma or aesthetic costume. It replaces the mirror with a map.

---

🧭 2. From Totems to Triage: Ending the Tyranny of Absolutes

One of the essay’s most incisive points is how modern ideologies construct “totemic absolutes” — symbolic categories that cannot be questioned. The Other becomes sacred, but inert.

AskHillel replaces this with a tiered values system. Tzelem Elokim (human dignity) is not an idol — it is a value that collides with others: Pikuach Nefesh, Emet, Lo Ta’amod. Every case is weighed. No abstraction is worshiped.

---

📚 3. Inheritance Without Faith: A Framework for the Ethically Curious

Many secular Jews feel alienated from traditional observance but still crave moral depth. Most turn to philosophies that flatten complexity or collapse into tribal loyalty.

AskHillel offers a third option: a Jewish system of ethical inquiry that is testable, scalable, auditable — and uniquely structured to handle real-world tension.

You don’t need to believe in God to learn Teshuvah.
You don’t need to keep Shabbat to honor Tzedek.
You don’t need to fear halakhah to understand Areivut.

That’s not dilution. That’s reclamation.

---

🌅 4. Teshuvah Without Theology: A Bridge Back to Responsibility

What Mansour mourns is not belief, but covenantal seriousness. What he calls for is not piety, but moral rootedness.

AskHillel offers a secular version of teshuvah — not repentance toward God, but return to moral coherence. It helps those raised in exile-by-symbol to rediscover a system where ethics has grammar, and the Jew is no longer the object of someone else’s myth, but the subject of their own moral vision.

AskHillel said it better than I can. Our tradition is rich enough to accommodate the non-believing Jew  - and to provide a framework for them to see themselves as part of an incredibly rich, proven philosophical system that can not only challenge but defeat every secular philosophy on their own playing field.  

That has been my goal: to define Jewish ethics in terms that show that it can be a secular ethical system that solves the problems behind every other secular moral philosophy. It is scalable, it is testable, it is auditable, and - so far - it cannot be defeated by any question you can throw at it. 

Jewish ethics, properly structured, is more robust than any modern alternative. It doesn’t collapse into relativism. It doesn’t devolve into ideology. It doesn’t outsource responsibility. And so far, it hasn’t been defeated by any philosophical test you can throw at it.

We shouldn’t romanticize the Diaspora. We shouldn’t idolize suffering. We shouldn’t pretend 1920s Yiddish theater was the moral summit of our people. And we shouldn’t adopt secular philosophies that are not only incoherent, but hostile to Jewish continuity.

Jews are not merely the Other. We are the source from which much of Western civilization flows. And we are not just inheritors of that tradition - We are its stewards  -  and its teachers.

It’s time to reclaim that mantle.

(For those curious, you can play with AskHillel.com yourself - you just need a ChatGPT login. Or, if you want to see Version 2, which I used that to write the response above, you can test it out at beta.AskHillel.com and send me feedback.)

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amnesty blood

 

Israel, working with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has created an entire food distribution system from scratch. I once listed out the huge amount of logistics involved. Here is a summary of estimated costs (via Grok):

Construction or Repurposing of Secure Aid Distribution Centers: $45 million

Temporary Warehouses for Aid Storage: $5 million

Perimeter Fencing, Controlled Entry/Exit Points, and Crowd Management: $5 million

Transport Corridors from Crossings to Hubs (building roads): $25 million

Civilian Registration System $5 million

Biometric Screening Technology (Fingerprint/Facial Recognition): $10 million (not sure it is being used)

Deployment of IDF Personnel for Security: $150 million (six months)

Hiring American Private Contractors: $250 million (six months)

Real-Time CCTV Surveillance and Drone Overwatch: $12 million (six months)

Convoy Coordination with Armed Escorts: $5 million

This is well over a half a billion dollars and millions of man-hours (yes, I checked), not including the large number of smaller logistics items like signage, auditing, coordination, reporting, inspections and lots more.

Anyone who has ever worked in a large organization or government knows how much goes into an effort like this. 

But Amnesty International doesn't want you to consider this. Because they want to say that all of this effort, time and money to feed Gazans is merely a cover for Israel's real intention to starve and murder Gazans.

Yes, a respected human rights NGO is pushing a bizarre theory where anything Israel does that aligns with humanitarian goals and legal obligations is really an elaborate scheme to distract from its desire to do the opposite.

Here's what Amnesty published today:

Gaza: Evidence points to Israel’s continued use of starvation to inflict genocide against Palestinians  

Evidence gathered by Amnesty International demonstrates how over a month since the introduction of its militarized aid distribution system, Israel has continued to use starvation of civilians as a weapon of war against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip and to deliberately impose conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction as part of its ongoing genocide. 

By continuing to prevent UN and other key humanitarian organizations from distributing certain essential items, like food parcels, fuel and shelter, within Gaza and by maintaining a deadly, dehumanizing and ineffective militarized ‘aid’ scheme, Israeli authorities have turned aid-seeking into a booby trap for desperate starved Palestinians. They have also deliberately fueled chaos and compounded suffering instead of alleviating it. The aid delivered is also way below the humanitarian needs of a population that has been experiencing almost daily bombings for the last 20 months.  

Amnesty has created a truly convoluted antisemitic conspiracy theory. According to them, Israel spent all this money and effort just to get Gazans into distribution areas where they can be shot and starved.

If Israel's intent is starvation, wouldn't it be a lot more efficient just to block all food into Gaza? If Israel's intent was to kill Gaza civilians, wouldn't it make more sense to just bomb them? According to Amnesty, the GHF distribution centers are the world's most expensive mousetraps.

The word "Hamas" is not mentioned in this press release once. Hamas has been murdering the  Gaza Humanitarian Foundation workers and Gazans trying to get aid, and blaming Israel. Hamas has been stealing aid and reselling it to fund its terror activities. Hamas has been intimidating Gazans and threatening them not to get free food. Amnesty doesn't even give lip service to Israel's stated desire to build this huge enterprise specifically to keep the aid out of the hands of Hamas. 

This is, of course, a propaganda method: avoid the facts that disprove your conspiracy theory.

Everything Israel is doing is aligned with its goals of giving aid directly to the people of Gaza, whether or not there is chaos as the system ramps up. Nothing Israel is doing is consistent with Amnesty's theory that this system is really a way to distract from Israel's desire to kill and starve Gazans.

Antisemitic accusations are always conspiracy theories. This is no different.  

This is a blood libel, plain and simple, dressed up in humanitarian clothing. 

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more ethics

 On Monday, I cheekily responded to video snippet where Zohran Mamdani says "I don't think that we should have billionaires” by saying "I don't think that we should have socialists."

It was flippant, and it received a bunch of "likes," but the issue is actually an important one that deserves a respectful discussion about socialism and how it aligns, and misaligns, with Jewish ethics.

Jewish ethics and socialism share a lot of the same moral goals: to care for the poor, to prevent exploitation, to build a just and dignified society. A moral society must protect minorities and the vulnerable, and demand more from the powerful. 

The question isn’t whether - but how. And that’s where the real differences lie

Socialism tries to achieve justice through structural overhaul: abolishing class differences, redistributing wealth, weakening or replacing capitalism, and empowering the state to equalize outcomes.

Jewish ethics, by contrast, starts with something older and deeper: personal obligation. It builds outward - first from the self, then the family, then the community, and only then, reluctantly, to the state. The state is necessary but power corrupts, and Jewish thinking has always been wary of power. 

The result is not just a different set of policies. It is a different kind of civilization. Not utopian, not ideological, but rooted in layered relationships, flexible moral reasoning, scalable systems of obligation and recognizing the difference between morality and the civilizational structure required to get there. 

This isn’t just a critique of socialism - it’s a proposal. If the moral goal is human dignity and mutual responsibility, then Jewish ethics may offer a better map than most or all forms of socialism today.

Socialism sees real problems. Injustice does exist. So does preventable poverty, humiliation, and systemic neglect. And yes, unregulated capitalism can lead to grotesque disparities in power and wealth.

Jewish tradition agrees. The Torah commands us to leave the corners of our fields for the poor, to remit debts every seven years, and to ensure no one falls through the cracks. Tzedakah is not charity—it is a legal and moral obligation. 

In its moral instinct, socialism is not wrong. It’s trying to solve a real problem. But it doesn't prioritize the moral imperatives - it prioritizes the means to reach them.

Jewish ethics asks a deeper question: What kind of system can solve these problems while itself being ethical? 

Most forms of modern socialism rest on five assumptions:

1. That inequality itself is immoral.

2. That capitalism is inherently unjust.

3. That wealth is corrupting and private property is suspect.

4. That only systemic redistribution can produce justice.

5. That the state is the rightful agent of moral correction.

These confuse structure with justice, and ideology with ethics. And once you confuse them, you can no longer correct your system when it fails

Jewish ethics rejects this. Inequality is not evil - but neglect is. Wealth is not immoral - but hoarding wealth is. Property is not oppressive - but using it without responsibility can be.

In a Jewish ethical society, the first question is not, What system should we use? but, What does each person owe to those around them?

• The self is responsible for acting justly and generously.

• The family is the primary moral support structure.

• The community bears shared responsibility for education, health, safety, and dignity.

• The state exists only as a backup—when families and communities cannot fulfill their duties, and for domains that require national coordination, lke defense, lawmaking, and justice

This model is deeply moral but profoundly non-ideological. It does not declare markets good or bad. It asks whether markets are helping people meet their obligations. It does not call for abolishing wealth - it calls for using wealth in the service of others. It resists outsourcing moral agency. The job of care remains personal - even when shared.

Most importantly, the ethics and values themselves drive the solution, not political ideology. If you want to make an argument that capitalism is immoral, that's fine, but sometimes capitalism can accomplish what socialism cannot. If the aim is moral, why take a tool off the table? Instead, use the tool responsibly.

Can this system work without God?

Yes - if the system centers ethics, not structure. Jewish ethics works because it embeds morality in time, ritual, community, identity, even markets. It doesn’t just tell people what’s right—it gives them ways to live it.

I've sketched out some ideas of a secular society that use these ethics as guiding principles. There are potential ways to replace the divine covenantal structure with a secular one that instills a sense of obligation instead of entitlements to everyone.  My ideas are community-centric and stress obligations as part of society's moral fabric.

But the structure is not the point. The values are. If an alternative social system can be built that also results in a workable society that makes ethics its guideposts, that's great too.

A Jewish ethical society would not be socialist or capitalist, libertarian or authoritarian. It recognizes that there are positives and negatives with every political system, and it chooses based on the moral outcomes, not straitjacketed by ideology.

It defines a society not by how wealth is distributed, but by how responsibility is shared.

• It doesn’t require equality of outcome. It demands no one be abandoned.

• It doesn’t abolish ownership. It requires owners to be givers.

• It doesn’t suppress pride. It channels it into responsibility.

• It doesn’t impose systems. It judges systems by how well they uphold dignity.

Billionaires are not evil. They are obligated, like everyone else, in using their resources to improve their communities and the world. Their ability to do good is much higher than everyone else's - and therefore their responsibilities are also much deeper. Demonizing entire classes of people based on anything other than their own personal actions is just bigotry dressed up as righteousness. 

This is not a middle path between capitalism and socialism. It is a different road entirely—one where ideology never outranks ethics.

Socialism wants justice. So does Judaism. But Judaism asks harder questions - about the human heart, the family bond, the fragility of obligation, and the limits of power.

The future doesn’t belong to systems that flatten us or automate us. It belongs to systems that ask more of us - that dignify the act of care, that teach responsibility like a craft, and that reward those who carry others.

Jewish ethics has never been just a religion. It has always been a blueprint for a lived moral civilization. Now, it may be time to build it again: not just for Jews, but for anyone who wants to live in a world where ethics leads, and politics follows.

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