Dear (Zio) Aunt Sally is stopping by to wish everyone well in this nail-biting moment of Israel’s history. Agony Aunt Sally is my alter ego, here to help with your most pressing concerns and worries.

Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but have now introduced a new column exclusively for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY! The JPF isn’t here for polite debates or academic footnotes — we’re dismantling antisemitism one idiot, one coward, one apologist at a time.

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Israel Goes to the Polls and Nobody Gets to Take the Booty Home

A ‘Dear Aunt Sally’ Election Special

Dear Aunt Sally,

We’re a country of mostly Jews with a fifth being Arab. But mostly Jews. Being Jewish, we disagree about pretty much everything — even whether or not we have the right to live. With that in mind, if no one can even win an election here, how the heck are we supposed to decide who will form our next government?

Yours truly

Am Yisrael

Dear Am Yisrael,

I hear you. My most repeated phrase is “let’s agree to disagree.” I guess Jews must have invented that one.

But onto your question, don’t lose hope. See the positives. Israel has been voting, counting, recounting and doing what Israel does best: turning a national election into a political thriller with enough plot twists to keep an entire writers’ room employed.

You Israeli voters are far from the monolithic population marching obediently behind one political leader that some commentators abroad like to imagine. You argue, protest, change your minds and vote accordingly. Sometimes you even manage to agree on something, although Aunt Sally wouldn’t want to get carried away.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud bloc may be on a path to having the most mandates, at 53, but Jews like to make things difficult by placing the goal posts awkwardly over the majority line, and 53 ain’t no majority. Plus, his party, as well as others in the bloc, have lost votes — numbers that make a difference. Despite still just leading, the writing on the wall is impossible to miss — more people agree they want change than not. And that much agreement among Jews is worth celebrating!

However, Bibi may be down, but he is most certainly not out. Eisenkot, meanwhile, may have presumed not to have much to agree on with the Arab parties but on one major point — they all want rid of Netanyahu. Can a bit of parliamentary arithmetic change everything? Take this away, add a bit of that, multiply by a few dissenting voices, and still reach a 100% pass on consensus?

Israeli politics is not unlike assembling flat-pack furniture. Everyone insists they have the right instructions, half the pieces refuse to cooperate, and eventually someone threatens to start all over again. It has never been a straightforward contest between two tidy camps. There are secular Israelis and religious Israelis, left-wing voters and right-wing voters, Jewish parties and Arab-led parties, and plenty of people who don’t fit neatly into any of those categories. Add disagreements over security, the war, the economy, judicial reform and the future of Israel’s leadership, and you begin to understand why forming a government can be considerably harder than winning an election.

The final results are still being settled, and coalition negotiations lie ahead. A new government is far from guaranteed, and another election cannot be ruled out if the politicians fail to reach an agreement. But what it proves is that democracy is alive and kicking in Israel. Disagreements rule the nation and that will of course be reflected in the country’s voting. Voters have delivered a complicated verdict, and the country’s politicians are already turning to inspiration from other great leaders. Ones who make claims of voter fraud, for instance.

Remind you of anyone?

Aunt Sally’s advice to all concerned? Put the egos aside, drink a coffee/beer/glass of wine, and remember that while governing a country is a vitally important decision, there will still be something else to for the nation to disagree about tomorrow.

And to those watching from abroad, perhaps a little patience before announcing that Israel has either been saved or doomed would be advisable. The ballots may tell us who won the votes, but the negotiations will tell us who can actually govern.

Popcorn, anyone?

Best,

Aunt Sally

Here’s to keeping our fingers crossed, our chins up, and remembering that many of us here are solidly on the same team.

Am Yisrael Chai!

Aunt Sally needs you!

If you happen across any online Jewish fuckery that needs the Aunt Sally treatment, feel free to email me at auntsally777@gmail.com. You can also email me with your own questions.

In the meantime, do subscribe and support my work. Aunt Sally and the JPF are here to keep pushing for honesty, truth, and an end to antizionist gaslighting. A free subscription helps to put my work on Jewish concerns further into the Substack realm, while a paid subscription enables me to spend more time researching and bringing sobering truths to the forefront.

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Today’s article is by and was first published in his brilliant publication where he writes analysis and reflections from the perspective of an ex-IDF officer watching the madness unfold from inside Israel.

Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but will be introducing a new column for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. Watch this space! For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY! The JPF isn’t here for polite debates or academic footnotes — we’re dismantling antisemitism one idiot, one coward, one apologist at a time.

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The First and The Third Intifada

Memories From 1990s and Thoughts About Future Israeli-Arab War

A month ago, I wrote an article about my experiences during the Second Intifada of the 2000s. That was a time of exploding buses, sometimes several a week. Cafes and hotels were targeted, and there were daily shootings all across Israel. Over a thousand Israelis were killed during that period, which started after Yasser Arafat rejected another peace initiative and launched a new war.

Getting Drunk Saved My Life That Time — Intifada Story

Read full story

People screaming ‘Globalize Intifada’ don’t know what it’s like to live through a near miss of yet another terror attack, but for me it was the second time I went through Intifada. It was not completely similar to the first one, but close enough.

Jerusalem Day celebration, June 1995

Jerusalem Day is an Israeli national holiday that commemorates the reunification of East Jerusalem (including the Old City) with West Jerusalem following the Six-Day War of 1967.

As an 8th-grade student, I went to the Jerusalem Day parade with kids from my school and a teacher. I was very nervous because it was my first Jerusalem Day parade and probably only the second time I was in Jerusalem. Thousands of children like me and many grown-ups marched through the streets of Jerusalem that day. We ended up at a huge rally at Teddy Kollek Soccer Stadium. Tens of thousands of us, of all ages, from all across Israel. There was music, and many speakers made speeches at the rally. As teenagers, we had better things to do than listen to speakers. We were busy checking out girls and testing boundaries with the accompanying teacher.

The stadium went quiet at one time, and the host announced he was proud to welcome Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Mrs Lea Rabin, and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. The three came out to the soccer field, and then it happened: They were booed and scorned. I had never seen this level of contempt and hatred like that, from thousands of people at the stadium. The three were being cursed and shouted at by the entire stadium. I was shocked and looked at my friends; they were just as shocked at this sight of hatred, but it seemed that the entire stadium wished the three dead and was ready to lynch them.

At that moment, the three of them seemed small and powerless. They walked quietly, but with honor, across the field to their seats. It wasn’t their first time being verbally attacked like that.

How was this possible? How could these giants of Israeli military and political leadership, the ones who built the State of Israel and served it for dozens of years, be hated like this? How is it possible that the person who commanded the liberation and unification of Jerusalem could be this hated on Jerusalem Day, of all days? Who are these schoolchildren, who hadn’t done anything for their country and yet allowed themselves to curse and hate the Prime Minister of Israel and one of its greatest leaders of all time?

This event happened half a year before Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.

Oslo Accords were dead

By this time, the Oslo peace plan was already failing. Suicide bombings in buses and cafes had become a nearly daily occurrence. Hundreds of Israelis had been killed in various terrorist attacks, and many more were wounded. Shootings on the streets and knife attacks were occurring frequently.

My father had me switch schools so I didn’t have to ride the bus to get to one. It was simply too dangerous to ride a bus.

In this atmosphere, Rabin had been quickly losing support. The brief hope for peace in the beginning of the 90s was fading. People argued whether Arafat was even capable of stopping the terror attacks or whether he was behind them, outsourcing the attacks to Hamas and the Islamic Jihad to keep his hands ‘clean’ while Israel bled. Peace process skeptics were multiplying and ‘told you so’ was already hard to ignore, as the buses kept exploding.

There were huge demonstrations against the continuation of the peace process, as many Israelis couldn’t imagine peace given the daily reality of suicide bombings.

A fake image of Itzhak Rabin in SS uniforms was being circulated in the anti-government demonstrations to demonize Rabin. A joke that Peres’s mom was Arab transformed from dumb Israeli humor into a conspiracy theory, implying that he was a traitor.

“Hamas Has Never Operated On The West Bank“ - Pres. Macron in UN

The history session is over; we move to the currently evolving situation that is hard to overlook. The reality today is that, very much like in the 1990s, the Palestinian Authority is leading the diplomatic war against Israel, in the halls of the UN and in European capitals. It outsources the active war effort against the Jewish State to Hamas. It is all part of the same war effort that has been going on since 1979, when Egypt forfeited its leading role in destroying the Jewish homeland and signed a separate peace accord. This was the moment the local Arabs realized that no one was coming to “finish off” Israel as they had been promised for decades, and they would have to do it themselves. Within a few years, the war on Israel evolved from a war of Arab states against Israel into a war of Arab peoples on Israel. The nature of war never really changes, though.

Europe Betrays The Jews Again

Hanan Kevich

·

23 September 2025

Read full story

It is only a matter of time before the USA would also recognize a Palestinian state; if not the current administration, then the next, or the one after. The US-Israeli relations are expected to take a turn for the worse in the foreseeable future.

• An internal struggle for Mahmud Abbas’s inheritance in the PA could transform into a new war

• Hamas coup attempt in Judea and Samaria against the PA could launch a new war

• PA could launch an attack on Israel on its own, with Hamas and others joining

• Any turmoil in Jordan could easily spill into Judea and Samaria as a full war

This is the context in which Israel would have to fight the next war on its own, with a possible arms embargo, diplomatic isolation, and unclear war objectives as to what we actually want to achieve. Is it dismantling the PA? Is it better terms for any post-war negotiations? Is it only to “kick the can” on the Palestinian question to the next generations?

Here’s my point of view: If the Palestinian Authority commits to another full-fledged war against Israel (intifada), it would be destroyed, regardless of what the world says.

Israel would have to fight it alone, like we’ve always done so before. Unlike the Palestinians, we never had any hope that someone else would hand us a state on a silver platter.

Thanks for reading!

And thank you to Hanan for sharing his work so generously. If you don’t already, please go and subscribe to you’ll find some great analysis of many of the issues facing Israel and Israelis.

Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but have now introduced a new column exclusively for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY! The JPF isn’t here for polite debates or academic footnotes — we’re dismantling antisemitism one idiot, one coward, one apologist at a time.

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Europe Burns. But It’s Still More Important to Hate Zionists

The building of a narrative

For the past three years, Israel and its companion and founding belief, Zionism, have dominated social media feeds around the world.

Prior to that, it made up a significant section of the feed, but was largely ignored by the average person. However, since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7th October 2023, no one has escaped the media onslaught. Virtuous left-wing organisations and individuals have hammered in the message that if you are a decent person you should condemn Israel and Zionism, and call for the end of both. The snowball effect has meant the isolation and shunning of anyone who veers from this unwavering doctrine.

It has now been over a year since the ceasefire began between Israel and Hamas. But since that time, that online rhetoric has only worsened. Recently the Green Party of Britain voted to pass as policy that “Zionsim is racism” and to thus incriminate anyone within the Green Party who identifies as Zionist or attends a synogogue that considers itself Zionist.

(And just for anyone who is confused as to why a Green Party member would even identify as something the party condemns so virulently, it’s because the Green Party was never a radical anti-Israel entity until recently, and Zionism at its core means nothing other than believing in the rights of Jews to a sovereign state in their indigenous homeland.)

And so the rhetoric surrounding Zionism and Zionists has worsened. The online narrative continues to spread ideas that the world is controlled by Israel and Zionism (and, by extension, Jews). The extent of the propaganda implies that the world’s supposed greatest enemy is Zionism, and that Palestine simply wants justice and the chance to have a state and live in peace.

But does what we see happening in the world right now actually reflect that?

Over the last weeks, France, followed by other parts of Europe, has seen massive waves of violent protests. Beginning with a peaceful demonstration by a single school, soon spreading to other schools, the demonstrations became hijacked by enormous gangs of masked individuals, almost entirely men, violently attacking police, setting fire to cars and bins, and burning and looting establishments from high street shops to the famous town hall of Limoges.

As the protests ramped up in numbers and damage, what also became apparent was the number of Palestine flags appearing on the streets at the centre of the demonstrations. Simultaneously, a report conducted by Fox News found enough evidence to implicate 50 organisations in the funding and rallying of the protests in Europe, only 15 of which were student organisations. They later expanded that to include 54 communist and socialist groups, and then once again expanded it to 107 groups in total. Meaning that the initial student demonstrations were seized upon by multiple organisations including socialist, far left and Islamist, in order to further a political and ideological agenda.

The effect was:

• Manipulation of a valid and necessary social protest

• Utter devastation across many cities in Europe

• Destruction of businesses, livelihoods, and historical buildings

• Turning legitimate grievances into scenes of violence, destruction and public disorder

The evidence of organised mobilisation raises important questions about how established political networks exploit local grievances and amplify unrest

Look at that list above and then consider who has been most likened to such devious powers. If you said “Zionists” then you read my mind.

And yet, it isn’t the Zionists setting Europe alight or reducing the cities to devastation. It isn’t the Zionists disrupting civilised societies and turning them into scenes of war.

The images that dominate the coverage show masked rioters, anti-Zionist slogans and Palestinian flags — not evidence of Zionist groups directing the violence. Only the familiar echoes of “Fuck the Zionists” being chanted by the masked demonstrators.

And almost the only flag to be seen waving — the flag of the ‘peaceful’ Palestinians.

Q: How does a protest go from education budgets to Palestine?

A: Palestinianism

Einat Wilf uses the term Palestinianism to describe an ideology in which opposition to Jewish sovereignty becomes the organising principle, rather than the construction of a viable Palestinian national future. In this interpretation, the Palestinian cause can become a point of convergence for political movements that otherwise have little in common, united by their opposition to Israel and, in its more extreme forms, to the legitimacy of a Jewish state.

The important question is not whether every supporter of Palestinian rights subscribes to this ideology. Clearly, they do not. It is whether particular political networks have learned to use the cause as a vehicle for a wider ideological struggle — and whether their rhetoric and actions reveal a consistent hostility towards Jewish self-determination that would be challenged far more readily if it targeted any other people.

We have watched Palestinianism enter institutions across the West, dominate the media, and redesign the left’s measure of morality to be anything that incriminates Israel. Such as going on vacation to the West Bank to harvest olives and get “beaten up by violent settlers” or “detained by the IDF” (on a luxury bus).

We know from the rhetoric we hear at pro-Palestine marches and across social media that this isn’t merely about destroying Israel but about destroying the West as we know it. The hatred of Israel is the all-encompassing equaliser between hatred of capitalism, white apologists, and the guilt of western imperialism, of which Palestine has become the symbol for all. A cause that commands considerable public sympathy can provide a shared vocabulary, a ready-made moral narrative and an emotionally compelling means of recruiting supporters. Once Israel becomes the symbol of everything these movements oppose, almost any grievance can be connected to it.

Palestinian flags being a major focal point in these riots in Europe is no coincidence.

The world being directed to remain laser-focused on Zionism as the problem while Palestinianism covertly destroys our civilisation is no mistake.

Yesterday I had a call with a local Jewish group to discuss an upcoming meeting with a local left-wing anti-racist group rep. The level of internal conflict I witnessed in these left-wing Jews, who were at least willing to speak up when shunned and hurt by the antisemitism that exists in those kinds of circles, was eye-opening. It deserves an article of its own, but in short, when I mentioned the dreaded word — Zionism — the whole room squirmed. Later, when a note summarising the meeting was sent out, it was referred to as “the Z word”.

There’s a lot to unpack, and I will do so in due course. But this fear of the word because of what it may insinuate about someone in these circles seems incredible to me. To be clear, every single Jew was there because they feel connected to their roots, and it is those roots that are being attacked. Their Jewish roots — from Judea. From Zion.

The dishonesty that has dominated the use of the word to the point at which people are terrified to admit to themselves they are Zionist in their hearts — because they believe in Israel’s existence as a homeland for Jews — is astounding.

But more astounding is watching this play out, the continued distancing from Zionism and the continued domination of conspiracies surrounding Zionists while Europe burns under the flag of the very movement that has turned Zionism into the dirty word of the moment. Everyone can easily find how to link Israel’s war in Gaza with decisions by Western governments but no one can seem to find the link between Hamas’s brutality towards both Jews and Palestinian dissenters and the burning of Paris, Milan, Limoges and Pisa, among other cities.

Western agitators attend the olive harvest in the West Bank to effectively frame the “Zionists” as evil oppressors so that harmless Jews in rural Devon have to fear condemnation for not wanting the destruction of Israel. And all the while Europe burns with not a Zionist in sight.

No, I’m not deflecting from the very real injustices by far right members of the Knesset or the genuine agitators among the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria. But I am willing to be honest about what I see happening right in front of me.

My question is: why can so few see it?

Thanks for reading and for being here! Don’t forget to subscribe and if this resonated with you, feel free to restack/share/give it some love. Please also consider joining with a paid subscription or a one-time donation to enable me to keep bringing this content to the platform.

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Dear (Zio) Aunt Sally is back to deconstruct the the damaging work of nincompoops! Agony Aunt Sally is my alter ego, here to help with your most pressing concerns and worries. Please read and enjoy.

Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but have now introduced a new column exclusively for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY! The JPF isn’t here for polite debates or academic footnotes — we’re dismantling antisemitism one idiot, one coward, one apologist at a time.

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Dear Aunt Sally, Why Won’t the Palestinians Obey My Superior Rule?

Aunt Sally solves yet another conundrum of Western saviourism

Dear Aunt Sally,

I’m the Oxford-educated, white, male political thought leader that the Palestinians never knew they needed. So why won’t their leaders listen to me when I tell them to hold an election and do a two state solution?

Yours,

Mr D. Head

Dear Mr D. Head,

“Why won’t Palestinian leaders listen?” — I’m so glad you asked!

Here’s a clue: they do listen. They listen very carefully. They know what will get them what they want without having to make good on their promises. The PA knew that if they got France to rewrite their constitution but using their own wording, European nations would resume their UNRWA funding. So they scrubbed their original wording that instituted “Pay for slay” compensation to the families of imprisoned and deceased murderers of Israelis, and found another way to ensure all Palestinians that they will still be paid handsomely for killing Jews.

When it comes to elections, it’s easy to promise that they will hold elections, and then blame Israel for being forced to postpone them. They know that European leaders are so desperate for their own reputations to not sink any lower that they will believe any old shit they are fed. Simple!

Here’s a list of other ways the Palestinian leaders have duped the western public and diplomats:

• September 1993 —Arafat formally recognised Israel and committed the PLO to a peaceful resolution of the conflict and the prevention of terrorism. Never happened.

• The Oslo II agreement of 1995 committed both parties to act against terrorism, violence and incitement. It also called for their education systems to contribute to peace and reconciliation. In 2023–5, books discovered in UNRWA schools in Gaza were found to be teaching hatred of, and glorifying the killing of Jews.

• April 2002 — Palestinian officials alleged that Israeli forces had massacred hundreds of Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp. Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat publicly cited a death toll of approximately 500. Human Rights Watch’s investigation identified 52 Palestinians killed during the operation, of whom 22 were civilians.

• October 2023 — Al-Ahli hospital was hit by a rocket with immediate claims from the Hamas-run Gazan health ministry that 500 people had died. It turned out to be a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket and, according to US intelligence, deaths amounted to “probably at the low end of the 100 to 300 spectrum”.

• May 2026 — The NYT published an opinion piece claiming that the IDF used dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners. Having established the Israel = evil narrative, it was easy to run these unsubstantiated claims unchecked.

• Pre-1948 — Apparently, Jews stole houses of kindly Palestinians who opened their homes to them. The public believes it, because why would anyone make up inflammatory lies about Jews?

• 1947–9 war — The Palestinian story goes that Jewish militia drove 700,000 Palestinians out of their houses and off their land. This is in small part true, but largely not. In fact, in numerous cities Jews begged the Arabs to stay while they left either because their leaders had told them to or because their leaders had fled and they felt unprotected and vulnerable.

I wonder, do you see a pattern here? Could it be you’re being taken for a fool?

Or, perhaps more to the point, are you actually a fool?

Could it be that your approach is missing something? I wonder if telling people to run a country in the way you think it should be run is perhaps a little naive, self-important and bigoted? Have you asked the PA if they want to run their prospective state based on the model of the western democracy or are you simply failing to notice that running a state is supposed to equate some kind of autonomy?

Perhaps it’s worth asking the PA what they really want, and really listening for the answer. Don’t listen TO the answer. You’ve clearly made that mistake already! Listen beneath the words for what they are really saying. It’s usually quite obvious.

And here’s a hint: if they say they want all the Jews to be driven into the sea and for Palestine to replace Israel, they probably wouldn’t be a good partner for peace — to Israel, or to anyone.

Hope that helps,

Aunt Sally

Dear Aunt Sally,

I’m an Israeli who has recently decided to retrain as a plumber. Unfortunately, all the training courses are oversubscribed, and I can’t get a place for at least three years.

Why is everyone suddenly so keen to become a plumber? And can you recommend an alternative career that might prove equally fruitful?

Amir

Dear Amir,

Having researched the issue at hand, I found the following advert placed online:

I suspect the problem is that every Israeli has suddenly realised that plumbing offers three distinct advantages: steady employment, the gratitude of anyone with a leaking loo, a booked out dating calendar, and the possibility of being invited to meet the Prime Minister.

Not many professions offer that sort of career progression.

As for alternatives, I’d suggest dentistry. It also promises some great added perks.

Alternatively, you could become an electrician. You never know when someone might need you to keep the lights on during a national emergency.

Finally, there’s also the possibility of becoming a pilot. Two words of caution, however: Watching Air Crash Investigation on its own isn’t enough to teach you to land a plane, and do keep an eye on what your co-pilot is up to.

Love,

Aunt Sally

Aunt Sally’s translation services

“Do your research” — I have watched six TikToks.

“Educate yourself “— Please read the sources provided (links to six TikToks).

“Wake up” — Prepare to receive a 47-message WhatsApp explaining why you’re wrong.

“This is not about Jews” — Please don’t look too closely at how many Jews are involved.

That’s all for now!

Until next time, keep your sense of humour and your expectations of humanity suitably realistic.

Love, Aunt Sally

Aunt Sally needs you!

If you happen across any online Jewish fuckery that needs the Aunt Sally treatment, feel free to email me at auntsally777@gmail.com. You can also email me with your own questions.

In the meantime, do subscribe and support my work. Aunt Sally and the JPF are here to keep pushing for honesty, truth, and an end to antizionist gaslighting. A free subscription helps to put my work on Jewish concerns further into the Substack realm, while a paid subscription enables me to spend more time researching and bringing sobering truths to the forefront.

Or make a one-off donation to help Zio Aunt Sally keep spreading her words of wisdom!

Subscribe now

Make a one-time donation

Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but have now introduced a new column exclusively for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY! The JPF isn’t here for polite debates or academic footnotes — we’re dismantling antisemitism one idiot, one coward, one apologist at a time.

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What Actually is Antizionism?

A brief history of Jew-hatred to explain what antizionism really is

The term, Antisemitismus, was first used by a German journalist and political agitator called Wilhelm Marr in 1879. He popularised it through his pamphlet Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum (“The Victory of Judaism over Germandom”), published that same year.

Marr insisted that he had no problem with the Jewish faith, unlike the way in which Jew-hatred (Judenhass) had previously manifested. Instead, he depicted Jews as Semitic people — a term that formally referred to a set of languages but which he used to define Jews as a race distinct from the Aryan race.

The distinction he made between Judaism as a faith and Jews as a race also meant that, unlike previous movements to cleanse the world of Jews, which allowed Jews to convert to Christianity (in the case of Europe) or Islam (in the Middle East), Marr stated that a Jew cannot be anything other than a Jew because it is their racial origin that makes them who they are.

He saw this as a political breakthrough: placing Jews as alien invaders of German society who were a threat to the economic and social order gave legitimacy to create political mobilisation against them. Thus, antisemitism was seen as a virtuous belief and movement, and many joined the growing movement to demonise the Jew as a collective, and rid society indiscriminately of the individuals who made up the collective — men, women and children.

The Jew-hatred that had bubbled over centuries prior now had a new name and a reinvented reason to exist and grow. And it did, giving fuel to the persecution of Jews across Russia, and Eastern and Central Europe, until it reached the point of the total catastrophe of the holocaust.

During those years, societies continued to legitimise the persecution and hatred of the Jew, scapegoating them for all the failings and suffering they saw. While many individuals did question this mode of thinking, society at large continued to encourage it, bolstering its virtuous image and persuading good people that to murder Jews is a worthy thing as a means to a better end for all.

It eventually took until 1946 for the word “antisemitism” to become morally and politically discredited as a hateful ideology.

Just think about that for a moment.

From 1879 until 1946, antisemitism was accepted as a righteous belief to varying degrees. Of course, such a view would have been waning over a number of years, but in total it took 67 years to get there.

And then, within the following decade, in the cesspit of communist Soviet Union, a new term was invented to replace it as a righteous belief — antizionism. And so the cycle began again.

The three principle phases of Jew-hatred

The introduction of antizionism follows the pattern that began nearly 2,000 years earlier — the naming and justification of hatred towards Jews. These weren’t just sentiments that people happened to feel towards Jews but distinct movements that mutated over time.

Anti-Judaism is hostility toward Jews because of their religion or religious beliefs. This has principally been justified by Jews’ refusal to believe in either Jesus Christ as an embodiment of God, or Muhammed as the prophet, for the simple reason that Jewish perception of God takes a different form and understanding, and they were quite happy with their own established form of worship, thank you very much. But such obstinacy stood in the way of spreading those individual evangelical beliefs, and both Christians and Muslims saw this as a threat to the return of the Messiah. Anti-Judaism predominantly expressed itself through blood libels, accusing them of sinister practices including the killing and draining of the blood of children.

Antisemitism is the ideology of hostility toward Jews as a nation, characterised by a belief that Jews are racially different, leading to conspiratorial and political forms that developed in 19th-century Europe. Antisemitism was predominantly expressed through conspiracy theories.

Antizionism is the newest mutation, masquerading as opposition to Zionism or to Jewish national self-determination while refusing to apply the same moral standards to any other nation. It is still deep in its phase of presenting itself as a virtuous position and a righteous belief, but those who understand how these mutations work can see what is really happening. On the surface it appears different from both Anti-Judaism and antisemitism. It purports to take no issue with Judaism as a faith, nor with Jewish people as individuals. It’s the collective association with Israel as a sovereign state that it targets.

And yet, I am going to break down exactly how it uses both the blood libels, rehashed from medieval times, and conspiratorial thinking to demonise Jews as a collective through Israel as the target.

Demonisation and dehumanisation as the common tools

If you strip away the language and look at the accusations themselves, there is a striking parallel.

The medieval Jew was accused of being responsible for things he had not done. He was accused of poisoning wells, causing plagues, murdering Christian children and draining their blood, and conspiring against the society in which he lived. The accusation did not need evidence. The approval the accusation received was enough. That is the exact definition of a libel — something that has a name but no verifiable story to back it. And once the Jew had been designated as uniquely wicked, any misfortune could be fitted around the existing story.

Modern antisemitism did much the same thing, but replaced superstition with pseudoscience. Now the Jew was not defined by the book he read and the beliefs he held dear but by his DNA. He became the international financier, the revolutionary, the capitalist, the communist, the press baron, the conspirator. The particular accusation could change according to political fashion, but the basic structure remained remarkably stable: Jews were not merely individuals who happened to behave badly. Jews, collectively, were said to possess some uniquely sinister quality that made them a threat to everyone else.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is perhaps the most obvious example. It was a fabricated document purporting to reveal a Jewish conspiracy to control governments, economies and the course of world events. It was a lie, but the important part is the fact that people were prepared to believe it despite no evidence to verify these claims. You see, propaganda does not have to invent a prejudice from nothing. It works best when it takes something already lodged in the public imagination and gives it a new vocabulary.

And then we come to antizionism and the Soviet Union.

After the Holocaust, openly declaring that Jews were an inferior race was no longer acceptable and the language of racial antisemitism had become morally toxic. So the easy solution was to change the language.

Zionism became the issue. The threat was no longer Jews living as a minority in countries across Europe and the Middle East. It was now Jews as a unified nation with its own state and its own army.

Meanwhile, the Arab League and the Arab Higher Committee, Haj Amin al-Husseini’s ruling party of Arab Palestine, who had subscribed entirely to Nazi doctrine, were angered and humiliated by their failure to destroy Israel and push the Jews into the sea, as they had promised. The Soviet Union saw a useful ally in the Arabs in its war against the West, and began to offer weapons of all kinds, namely firearms and propaganda.

This propaganda now replaced the collective Jew with Zionism. The Jews’ bid for self-determination and a safe place to exist became a “Zionist conspiracy”. Jewish nationalism was reframed as colonialism and Western imperialism. Jews’ security concerns following two years of war, first with Arab Palestine and then when five Arab nations invaded its tiny, newly-sovereign state, were reframed as racism.

But the target was always named Israel, Israeli policy, and Zionism, and never the Jew.

In November 1975, UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 was passed under Soviet pressure that “Zionism is racism”, and the liberal west reacted. And yet, to express their distaste at Zionism, campuses across the UK and Europe weaponised the text, leading to systematic attempts to ban and censor Jewish student organizations. Not “Zionists”, but Jews.

Poland, whose population was still trying to undo its absolutist Jew-hatred, lapped up this resolution and made life so terrible for the Jews who still remained that they finally left and made for Israel. Soviet Jews, after years of repression and being thrown in the Gulag, also eventually left.

What is most striking about all of this is that in every phase of Jew-hatred, the rhetoric always lands in one specific place — the dehumanisation of Jews. And the characteristic all three phases share is that they create validation for blaming society’s problems on one singular entity – Jews.

The UN revoked resolution 3379 some years later, in 1991, but the language had already become embedded in the ever-mutating, never-dying Jew hatred. It would take until the breakdown of the Oslo Accords and the outbreak of the Second Intifada for it to raise its ugly head again. Now it added blood libels to its cauldron of Jewish conspiracies, and the new antizionism was ready to become rife.

Over the next years, apartheid, settler-colonialism, illegal occupation, brutality, child-murder, rape, genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass starvation and organ harvesting are just some of the accusations made towards Israel. All libels, with those making the accusation unwilling or unable to show the evidence. Worse, to make their case and to overpower any pushback, these libels get stacked for maximum effect, painting a truly demonic picture. Anyone trying to introduce nuance or explain the complexity of the Israel-Palestine conflict is immediately given the individual labels ranging from baby-killers to genocide-supporters, ultimately marking them as “Zionists” and therefore a legitimate target. Even to mention the atrocities of October 7th or the plight of the hostages is enough to get you a death threat supported by the libellous nature of antizionism.

It gets away with it because, like antisemitism before it, it masquerades as a virtuous, righteous belief. It inverts logical thought processes and empathic human response by framing it as evil, making accusations of dehumanisation of Palestinians while, in fact, the rhetoric dehumanises the Jew. Accusing Jews of “genocidal mania” when, since the very beginning of the Israel-Palestine conflict, Jewish response was to defend against exactly that — acts of genocidal intent.

The long road ahead

I know that for some of you, none of this is new. For others, however, it may be.

Whichever camp you are in, I’ve realised that we can’t repeat these lessons enough.

I talk to people everyday for whom the rhetoric of antizionism has taken hold in one way or another, whether it is Jews trying to adopt some of the language of antizionism to stay on the right side of perceived morality or non-Jews who literally are unable to see Jews as humans while believing they are standing up for human rights. You know something is deeply wrong when people can’t grasp the fact that “Free Palestine” is not an innocent plea for humanity when it is shouted while murdering Jews, thousands of miles from the conflict, who have nothing to do with the actions of the Israeli government.

I can’t speak to how the virtuosity of identifying oneself as antisemitic during the late 19th and early 20th centuries played out, but today’s antizionist rhetoric has placed every single person on probation to conform. We’ve just witnessed the mob turn on Ed Sheeran for the debacle that ensued when his main support act made his entire performance about one thing – demonising Israel — and then cave to the pressure to make a statement confirming his condemnation of Israel. Despite his deliberate avoidance of certain words, he said enough to confirm that he accepts the narrative.

This is the kind of thing that followed him choosing to abstain from the political argument:

That’s not commentary on Israeli policy. That’s targeting Jewishness, pure and simple.

There was the attack on and complete cancellation of Boy George. And more recently the mob descended on Gillian Anderson for daring to speak out about a humanitarian crisis other than Gaza, one in which 400,000 have died and they did NOTHING to provoke… unlike what happened in Gaza.

We hear characters like Owen Jones completely disregard the distinction of legal definitions and debunked reputations, such as that of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and Amnesty International, and continue to repeat the libel of genocide as unquestionable truth. There’s the media repeating everything coming from Gaza while slowly but surely the truth of Gaza’s journalists are coming to light.

It is the zero-sum game that has been cast in every phase of Jew-hatred, where there is a specific perceived victim of the Jew, and the only way to save that victim is to disarm and disempower the Jew — whether with firearms and rockets or with words, the effect is the same.

In the case of antisemitism, it took decades for the lessons to land and society at large to think differently about Jews and their own relationships to us. Antizionism is no different. People genuinely believe they are on the right side of history as they call Zionism the evil of our current world. It will likely take just as long for people to understand how evil antizionism really is.

It will eventually, and people who considered themselves antizionist will be mortified that they bought into such a hateful belief system. But the danger that we must face catastrophe in order to get there is very real, just as antisemitism paved the way to catastrophe only three generations ago. And we must do all we can to avoid it.

So while denialism continues, the genocide libel keeps being repeated despite those bodies calling it such being unqualified to do so. The crimes Israel has been accused of keep being thrown around, even after many of these assertions have been revoked and corrected in the media. So we have to keep talking and never, ever stop.

It’s a long road ahead, but we’re strong together.

Thanks for reading and for being here! Don’t forget to subscribe and if this resonated with you, feel free to restack/share/give it some love. Please also consider joining with a paid subscription or a one-time donation to enable me to keep bringing this content to the platform.

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Dear (Zio) Aunt Sally is back to deconstruct the the damaging work of nincompoops! Agony Aunt Sally is my alter ego, here to help with your most pressing concerns and worries. Please read and enjoy.

Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but have now introduced a new column exclusively for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

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Dear Aunt Sally, I’m a Political Party Leader and I Look Like a Dick

Your favourite Zio agony aunt helps to soothe the worries of a political figure and answers a question about Jews who remain elusive

Dear Aunt Sally,

I’m the leader of a major political party in the UK, which I am calling the “Woke Party” in order to retain my anonymity. Everything was going so well for a while. We increased our membership dramatically, multiplying it by three times in the last year, and got many of our party members voted into local councils. Our wokeness speaks for itself by our representation in councils nationwide, from people with penises wearing flowery skirts to a wide range of faiths. Well, mostly Muslim but with a few Pagans thrown in for good measure. And a few token Jews, including myself.

And then, our best move yet was to pass a motion to remind all British Jews that they, and only they, have specific rules to obey… except now the media is reporting that we are racist and that the party’s open invitation to membership was exploited by people who, despite our primary mission being to push woke issues, it turns out are not woke at all. I mean, they were wearing the right colour; our branding is green and they were sporting green headbands, so I assumed they held the same views on core issues. And they were desperate to join too, offering us entire suitcases full of cash, still with the Qatar Airways labels on, in return for letting tens of thousands join the party.

The thing is, I had just got my reputation back on course after an embarrassing article in a tabloid rag that I sold myself out for, declaring I could hypnotise women’s boobs bigger. Now even the most left wing and anti-Zionist papers are making mincemeat of me, and everyone thinks I’m an even bigger loser.

How can I get myself out of this?

Yours,

Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

I get it. I really do. That green headband thing could throw anyone.

Sometime back, I spotted a large group of people demonstrating in the street. They were all wearing logos that I assumed were meant to symbolise cute little four-legged spiders. Being strongly against the unnecessary killing of spiders, I decided to join their rally. I was so happy to have finally found a group of such likeminded people.

However, when they asked me about myself, I told them I was a Jewish Agony Aunt who loves spiders and they turned on me with such frightening intimidation I realised quickly that I had made a huge mistake. After all, no one who cares about spiders would wear four-legged spider symbols! It could only mean one thing — that they advocated for pulling off the legs of spiders. Well, half the legs. I mean half of the total number of legs. And they looked like they wanted to pull my legs off too.

And then it turned out the four-legged spiders weren’t spiders at all but were swastikas.

Okay, that story’s not actually true — I’m not really that dumb. But let’s just imagine for a moment that it was.

The difference is that I was the one who approached that group. Once I realised my mistake I could leave. However, it appears that you were sought out by this enormous infiltration of non-woke “Woke” party members. They spotted you a mile off. Not only does that mean that they have trapped you and turned your party into something that it was not, but that they figured out you were a complete pushover from the beginning. A loser who could be easily bought with a few sweet words and several suitcases full of illicit dollars. And now you’re a loser who has also lost total control of the party that you were supposed to be leading. What a shame!

Worse, it sounds like they’re working on subjugating the Jews in the party with a plan to extend it to all other Jews in Britain should they gain power of the country.

You want my advice? Run! As fast as you can.

Of course, you’re probably quite recognisable within Britain so you could always leave and go to the one homeland for Jews — Israel.

Unless of course, you’ve already been barred from entering…

In which case, I can’t really help.

Best,

Aunt Sally

PS. I’m including links to the unfortunate story of another party leader, Zack Polanski, who incidentally sounds remarkably like you… but obviously isn’t, because that would be an incredible coincidence!

Dear Aunt Sally,

I recently spent a few days in Portugal and took the opportunity to attend a “Jewish history tour” in the city of Porto. On this tour we saw many signs of Jewish life back in the 1600s and earlier, along with various mentions of specific Jewish streets, buildings that were once synagogues, and even the use of Jewish money to build Catholic places of worship. It seemed to be a place that was proud enough of its Jewish history to pay homage to what once constituted an integral part of Porto’s life, and yet I didn’t find a single Jew — other than the American boomers who were on the tour with me (I’m British and not a boomer). Even the tour guide, Ricardo, was not Jewish but a punk goth wearing massive crosses around his neck. Please help me to understand.

With gratitude,

Tami

Dear Tami,

What a coincidence! I have also done that tour with that same tour guide, Ricardo! What are the chances?

So here’s what I would like to say about that:

There’s a reason why it’s called a Jewish “history” tour. It’s because Jews in Portugal are largely history. At the end of the 15th century, they made up a tenth of the population, and then their friendly host country decided to kick them out or force them to convert. In fact, as Ricardo told us, there remain now only around 4,000 Jews in Porto, and many of those have moved there recently from elsewhere. Not only that but they have a massive wall with barbed wire surrounding the museum of Jewish history that they created and have security guards positioned outside the synagogue. So I don’t suppose the small number of Jews in Porto are especially easy to spot.

The entire tour really did explain what arseholes the Portuguese authorities were to the Jews. And then it explained that everything the Jews had built and invested their own money into was swallowed up unapologetically by the state and the church. It took until only thirty years ago for there to be any public acknowledgement of the contributions and existence of the Jewish community in Porto prior to the Inquisition. And even they have to be placed somewhere physically high up where they aren’t easily noticed, because otherwise they will be vandalised by antisemites.

So when you say “it seemed to be a place that was proud enough of its Jewish history to pay homage to what once constituted an integral part of Porto’s life”, of course the history of the Jews is important to the place, and the land acknowledgements are the least that can be done in light of how horribly the Jews were treated. But it doesn’t really mean that antisemitism no longer exists there. In fact, it’s as rife as it is in most of Europe.

Today you can visit all sorts of places throughout Europe where you’ll find cute acknowledgments of a Jewish community that once existed but few actual, real-life Jews. Acknowledgments can be hard to find too. Very often, Jews’ contributions are seen as whitewashing or are quietly adopted by their host country. For example, did you know that British fish and chips was originally introduced by the Portuguese Jews bringing fried cod into the country back during the Inquisition years? No, neither do most Brits. Nor do many realise the Google search functionality was developed by Jews, or the Polio vaccine, or their grandma’s pacemaker. It’s mighty inconvenient that Jews keep doing valuable work when painting them as evil and chasing them out of the public’s view is far more popular.

We’re far beyond pretending that the scant number of recognisably Jewish people in Europe is coincidental, or that today’s aggression shown towards Jews globally is merely a reaction to Israel’s war in Gaza. Antisemitism may have been dormant for a couple of decades, and it may still only be something seen on the fringes of society, but it never really left many places, including Portugal. The Jews, on the other hand, did. And most, understandably, haven’t bothered returning.

If you’re looking for meaningful Jewish history where you’ll also easily spot Jews roaming free in the wild, may I kindly suggest you try a place called Israel?

Best,

Aunt Sally

Aunt Sally’s “Woke Party” vocabulary lesson

One State Solution: Where self-declared anti-colonialists decide they’re perfectly entitled to dictate how a country thousands of miles away should be run, and not have to bear any of the consequences when it all goes south. Also a synonym for “The Final Solution”.

Globalise the Intifada: synonym for “The Final Solution”.

Free Palestine: Palestinians will be free to live exactly as they wish… within the constraints of a brutal authoritarian regime. Also, synonym for “The Final Solution”.

That’s all for this week!

Until next time, keep asking questions. It's how we Jews have managed to annoy everyone for several thousand years.

Aunt Sally needs you!

If you happen across any online Jewish fuckery that needs the Aunt Sally treatment, feel free to email me at auntsally777@gmail.com. You can also email me with your own questions.

In the meantime, do subscribe and support my work. Aunt Sally and the JPF are here to keep pushing for honesty, truth, and an end to antizionist gaslighting. A free subscription helps to put my work on Jewish concerns further into the Substack realm, while a paid subscription enables me to spend more time researching and bringing sobering truths to the forefront.

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To all our readers,

It felt right to write this as a letter rather than an article. This isn’t about revelatory facts or clever wordplay. It’s simply about acknowledging the pain we all still sit with, and the gratitude I have for the community that has grown here.

Today, not surprisingly, there are many articles being published, reflecting where we are three years after the worst massacre of Jews in a single day since the holocaust. We’re all still grieving. We’re all reeling from the ever-escalating Jew-hatred that exploded following that awful day. There’s so much still to unpack, and we keep finding more.

So I am not here to bring anything new and I’m keeping this short and sweet.

The aftermath continues to be felt in great waves inside Israel. To all of you living there, my thoughts and prayers are with you, and my utmost respect to all those who gave their lives in some way during this unprecedented time.

In the diaspora, we face new challenges daily. The rhetoric that holds us responsible for every crime committed against us greets us around nearly every corner. Staying strong on a daily basis isn’t easy, and I salute all who have found themselves facing this challenge.

I’m grateful to the community that has stuck with us here. As many keep reminding me, the JPF is a service to the community, but without the community we have no glue and no purpose. You, as the community, are that glue and that purpose.

Thank you all for still being here.

So I will now sign off, but not before acknowledging the beautiful memories of the hundreds who lost their lives as a result, directly or indirectly, of October 7th 2023. They all remain lodged in our hearts and will be carried with us as long as we are standing.

With love,

Sally and the JPF

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Today’s article is by the amazing Jill and was first published in her Substack publication, The Liberal Jew.

Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but will be introducing a new column for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. Watch this space! For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY! The JPF isn’t here for polite debates or academic footnotes — we’re dismantling antisemitism one idiot, one coward, one apologist at a time.

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‘This Time it Was Different’: Review of ‘American Intellectual Antisemitism’ by Shai Davidai

There are certain things that we understand intellectually, yet still do not comprehend fully until we experience them firsthand. I always knew that antisemitism existed at elite colleges in the U.S., however I never fully grasped how severe it had become at places like my alma mater until after October 7th, 2023. In the pro-Hamas hysteria that overtook many different campuses and institutions during the months that followed, Columbia University could very well be considered patient zero.

Through a combination of anger, inertia, and impulse, Shai Davidai found himself at the heart of these events. I came to know him the way that most of my readers here did: through social media. He became what he terms “an accidental activist” after the following speech at a vigil at Columbia on October 18th, 2023 that went viral:

For me, the first week after October 7th just felt like a fog. As I read Davidai’s book, all of those emotions came flooding back. In some ways, it felt like a reenactment of all of the stages of grief that I personally experienced during that time. I figured that, like with all of Israel’s other wars, the antisemitic gatherings at Columbia and other universities were just a storm that would pass, and it took me awhile to move beyond that level of denial. Shai’s trajectory showed how severe things revealed themselves to be.

Since Shai and I are basically contemporaries, it’s worth noting the differences in our backgrounds. The relative safety that I experienced growing up in a U.S. suburb was something that Shai and his friends fantasized about during their upbringing straddling the First and Second Intifadas, romanticized in the American TV shows that they watched:

Growing up in Israel during the 1980s and 1990s, one could not escape the relentless cycle of bloodshed that defines the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Even as a teenager in a sleepy Tel Aviv suburb, I was painfully aware of what we called “the situation.” That was the term everyone used for the daily realities of Israel’s control over the disputed territories it had miraculously seized from Egypt and Jordan during the Six-Day War, its military occupation of the Palestinian people, and the unending tide of brutal, indiscriminate, and unpredictable Palestinian terrorism. Calling it “the situation” made it sound distant—an abstract label that made it all seem more manageable. But it never was.

After serving in the IDF and completing a PhD, Shai found himself in a professional situation that many dream about: a tenure-track professorship at Columbia Business School. He was not tenured when all of the events documented in this book occurred.

Here is Davidai’s framework in a summary:

“At its core, American Intellectual Antisemitism is a morally performative ideology. Deliberately reducing a complex national, historical, and religious conflict to an oppressor-oppressed narrative, it systematically twists language to recast the Jewish homeland as guilty of the worst crimes in human history, mobilize rage over reason, stifle dissent, and brand critics as complicit or morally blind.”

Throughout the crisis following October 7th, we saw it play out in the form of accusing Israel of the worst crimes humanity could commit, up to and including genocide. American Intellectual Antisemitism in not new, and the Ivy League has a history of it dating back to its origins. We just all had assumed that circumstances had changed for good. When I attended Columbia, Jews were everywhere. Jewish students like me could reliably count on finding the strength in numbers that we believed shieled us from the discrimination that our grandparents told us about. But the overrepresentation of Jews at elite colleges and universities also meant that these same institutions took those students’ presence for granted.

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As a college administrator myself, I found Davidai’s description of his experiences with the politics of this field impossible to ignore. Take, for example, his interaction with Columbia Business School’s Vice Dean of DEI:

“One senior colleague with considerable sway at the university— and, not without irony, one of the 2022 recipients of Columbia’s Mentoring Award—had previously told me that he agreed with my position but could not say so publicly because of ‘the optics of a White professor calling out a university president who is a woman of color.’ This time, hearing my concerns, he urged me to stay silent, keep a low profile, and avoid drawing further attention to myself. Then, ten minutes into our meeting, his tone shifted. Speaking in his official capacity as vice dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at the business school, he informed me that the university had opened an investigation against me. Unwilling or unable to provide further details—and ignoring multiple follow-up emails seeking clarification—he conveyed an unmistakable message: Columbia’s DEI leadership would not support me in confronting Jew-hatred on campus.”

I wish I could say that I was surprised at this interaction or that it represents a unique situation to this particular school. Based on my own observations in the field, however, I unfortunately can confirm it’s not. Another recurring theme—again, hardly unique to Columbia—throughout this drama is how high-level executives kept their titles and salaries without ever acknowledging their own role in the dysfunction:

“The heads of the Public Safety Department, despite repeatedly failing to keep the public safe, remained comfortably in their positions. Vice President Gerald Rosberg, who derisively dismissed my prescient warnings, went into early retirement without answering for his role in the unrest. Josef Sorett, who was caught downplaying Jew-hatred and mocking Jewish students’ concerns in a texting scandal, retained his position as dean of Columbia College. Interim President Katrina Armstrong quietly stepped down and returned to her six-figure role at Columbia’s medical center, avoiding accountability for a tenure that began with an apology to pro-Hamas protestors for her predecessor’s reliance on the New York Police Department, continued with permitting the desecration of the one-year anniversary of the massacre. General Counselor Felice Rosan, Chief Operating Officer Cas Holloway, and others all remained untouched. With one president quietly stepping aside while retaining influence, the next had little incentive to act differently.”

I might argue that Columbia’s lack of leadership in this case is more of a commentary on the overall state of most large American institutions. Refuse responsibility, point fingers, get rid of the lower-hanging fruit, and keep your plum position. The education of students who are either indebting themselves or whose families are parting with a large portion of their life’s earnings to attend an elite school is secondary to all of that.

After an exhaustive accounting of all of the events that ultimately led to his departure from Columbia, Davidai pivots to what I consider to be the book’s most useful chapter, “Be a Radical Moderate.” For anyone who wishes to fight against the forces driving American Intellectual Antisemitism, this part provides a handy guide for what to do. No one has to risk their careers or livelihoods (like he did) to engage in this fight. For those of us who feel that our efforts are often futile, Davidai’s advice is to keep going:

Remember: Every action, no matter how small, contributes to a larger cultural shift. More often than not, it may feel like your efforts are futile, but you never know where your impact will land. Sometimes, a single act can set off a cascading effect, changing minds and inspiring others to do the same.

We never know the true effect that our actions have on others. All we can do is act in accordance with our values, with the hope that doing so facilitates positive change within the institutions we once loved.

Thanks for reading!

And thank you to Jill for sharing her work so generously. If you don’t already, please go and subscribe to The Liberal Jew where you’ll find some great analysis of many of the issues facing Jews predominantly in the diaspora.

Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but have now introduced a new column exclusively for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY! The JPF isn’t here for polite debates or academic footnotes — we’re dismantling antisemitism one idiot, one coward, one apologist at a time.

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Britain’s Israel Policies Are Setting a Dangerous Precedent for the West

Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband are being played to make Britain an impossible place for Jews to live

Back in the 1970s the Soviet Union was trying its damnedest to make Israel a pariah state among the international community.

Its genius strategy was to call Zionism out as a dangerous, imperialist, supremacist ideology. In 1975, it managed to get a UN General Assembly resolution passed that stated that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. However, although that worked to a degree, creating a huge wave of isolation for Jews throughout Europe and especially within the Soviet Union, it never quite stuck, and the resolution was revoked in 1991.

Years on, and numerous European countries are finding ways to institutionalise the condemnation of the Jewish state by raising the old Soviet libels from their grave.

The latest to join this trend is the UK. The Green Party has been attempting to adopt “Zionism is racism” as a policy. It’s setting a precedent for other left-wing parties to try to compete with.

As British politics has taken a fast and frightening turn towards extremism over the last years, the rhetoric that is becoming everyday speak in parliament has deep echoes of Soviet Russia and its then-ties to communist dictatorships across Eastern Europe and into the Middle East. What we have seen happening, first in the Green Party and more recently in the Labour government since Andy Burnham took over as Prime Minister, is a frenzy to win votes.

And it is a frenzy. The Green Party with its Islamist influence says one thing to implicate Israel, Labour tries to match it so the Green Party takes another step to the left, and Labour goes again, desperate to not be left behind. But it won’t be able to compete, because whatever Labour does, the Greens will always go another step further.

It’s like watching grown men play cat and mouse. And it would be funny if it wasn’t so frightening.

The background

In June, Andy Burnham replaced Kier Starmer as leader of the Labour Party, and thus as Prime Minister. Immediately, Burnham began making nudges to antizionist sharks that he was in their gang. His first formal interview was with Gary Lineker, of all people, who was effectively fired from the BBC after a social media post that contained the use of antisemitic imagery — just another thing in a long run of Lineker’s hateful anti-Israel rhetoric.

Burnham followed that interview with a social media video in which he apologised to the British people for not taking strong enough measures with regard to the situation in Gaza. And more recently, the government announced its policy changes.

Ed Miliband’s September policy announcement represented a substantial change in Britain’s approach to Israel and the West Bank. The government announced restrictions on trade with Israeli settlements, sanctions on individuals and companies involved in settlement activity, and a formal change in the British government’s position on the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory — ignoring the legality surrounding Israel’s capture of the territory during its defensive war of 1967.

At Labour’s conference, Miliband went further. Addressing those who had protested Britain’s previous policy, he said:

“We hear you. You were right.”

He described the government’s approach as a “reset” and announced that Labour would ban imports from illegal settlements and disrupt British finance, construction and services connected with them.

But Miliband was clear that this would not constitute a ban on all trade with Israel. He explicitly said in Parliament that he opposed BDS and wanted to maintain trade with Israel within the Green Line.

But politics is not conducted in a vacuum.

The Guardian’s analysis of the September sanctions noted that Labour believed the policy could help recover progressive and Muslim voters who had moved away from the party, while the Greens had made significant gains among voters angry about Labour’s previous position on Gaza. The Green Party’s Zack Polanski subsequently described Miliband’s measures as merely a first step and called for a full ban on goods, services and investment.

The one section of British society being entirely sidelined by this discussion is, of course, the British Jews. The Chief Rabbi wrote a statement warning Miliband that this placed British Jews in danger — as if they haven’t been in enough of it recently — which Miliband outright rejected.

Meanwhile, the incoming director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Aimee Shalan, told the Guardian this week that Palestine had become a domestic electoral issue in Britain for the first time.

That statement should make every political party sit up and take notice.

Shalan described Palestine as an issue increasingly expressed through elections, workplaces, trade unions and consumer campaigns. The PSC’s political influence is therefore no longer confined to demonstrations. It is becoming part of the competition between political parties for voters.

This creates an uncomfortable possibility: what happens when a political party begins adopting increasingly stringent positions on Israel partly because another party is demanding still more? Where does the process stop?

And what happens when the political language shifts from opposing particular policies of an Israeli government to questioning the legitimacy of Zionism itself?

And, of course, the question that is left hanging — why has Palestine become so central to British politics, as Shalan says?

No one can dispute the fact that what has happened in Gaza is a catastrophe. But when you look at conflicts worldwide, Gaza’s situation doesn’t stand out. It is far from the only place where civilians are enduring horrific violence.

Sudan’s civil war, now in its fourth year, has reportedly killed more than 150,000 people, according to a UN summary, although estimates vary enormously because much of the country is inaccessible and deaths go unrecorded; the British government’s latest assessment notes estimates ranging from 20,000 to 150,000, while ACLED had recorded more than 52,900 civilian and combatant fatalities by June 2026.

Myanmar’s civil war, which followed the 2021 military coup, has killed at least 100,000 people according to recent reporting, while the UN has documented thousands of civilian deaths and continuing atrocities including airstrikes, arbitrary detention, torture and sexual violence. In Ukraine, the UN verified 2,222 civilian deaths in the first eight months of 2026 alone, alongside more than 13,000 injuries, with the true toll likely higher. And in the Democratic Republic of Congo, decades of conflict continue to claim civilian lives, with dozens killed in individual attacks this year and armed groups continuing to perpetrate atrocities against civilians.

In Iran in January 40,000 protestors were slaughtered by the Islamic Regime in a matter of days. Female prisoners were gang raped, as were two nurses as punishment for helping those wounded in the protests.

These figures are a reminder that the world is experiencing multiple devastating conflicts simultaneously, many receiving only a fraction of the political attention devoted to Gaza.

But back to Gaza, when you look at the details of the current situation there, it doesn’t take long to see that the ongoing hunger experienced there is not as a result of Israel witholding aid supplies but inflicted by Hamas, with aid being hijacked and sold on the black market. Food that should be given for free is being sold at prices many civilians simply can’t afford to pay. The military actions continue because Hamas refuses to disarm or give up power — conditions of the ceasefire deal that they have refused to comply with.

So why is placing Palestine in the spotlight and enforcing sanctions on Israel at the centre of the pressure on British government policies? Why are other brutal conflicts not able to gain anywhere as much leverage over the people of Britain?

It’s clearly not because Palestine is the most deserving cause of our time.

The only answer is money, power and guilt. Meaning that all of those things that are continually blamed on Jews — using money and its power to influence decisions of all kinds — are exactly what the Palestinian cause is actually doing. Add to that the guilt of the plight of the Palestinians and Britain’s role in that, which in the simplest “Palestinian” terms is the Balfour Declaration, and white progressive Britons are ready to repent everything they own in shame.

Of course, Britain did play a huge role in making a complete clusterfuck of the Middle East, and like the true sly, unfeeling cowards the British Empire was, they made promises to all sorts of characters in order to get them to fight on their behalf against the Ottomans. Which is why, when living as rulers of the Mandate for Palestine, both Arabs and Jews saw them for the insincere fuckwits they are as they tried to sweeten those who frightened them the most and ended up shitting on both the Jews and the ordinary Arab citizens of Palestine, while giving vast amounts of land and power to the Hashemite dynasty and the sociopathic, greedy, Nazi collaborator Haj Amin al-Husseini.

We Jews haven’t forgotten the millions sent to their death in concentration camps as a result of Britain’s cowardice and bowing to the pressure of al-Husseini’s political power. But these are far from the reparations that Britain is being forced to face today. The minute anyone brings attention to the plight of the Jews — whether on October 7th, during the thousands and thousands of terror attacks in just the last few years, or the horrors that Britain itself bears responsibility for during the Mandate years — the “Palestine” cause shouts it down, distracting and discrediting, and claiming Jews are merely playing the victim card while they hold all the puppet strings.

In other words, Palestine has become central to British politics, not because it is a central issue but because it has pushed itself into the place of the most influence. It is the attention-capturing issue of our time and the self-appointed measuring stick of perceived morality that the left-wing parties have become completely hypnotised by, all while Britain’s internal problems are left by the wayside.

The warning in plain sight

What we are seeing in today’s politics in Britain looks and acts exactly like a repetition of the Mandate years, when Britain’s own weaknesses made it putty in the hands of those who held the biggest knife to its throat.

Then it was the Arab leaders who sought either the domination of the entire Middle East as a Pan-Arab state where Jews could continue to live as dhimmis or the annihilation of all Jews from the Middle East.

Now that influence has made it into Britain itself. And Jews, meanwhile, repeatedly bear the consequences of any failure within the government to comply. Attacks on Jews are justified by Western governments’ failure to be harsh enough on Israel. Jews are held accountable once again for the injustices that have artificially captured the attention of the British public through a coordinated propaganda campaign by the Palestinian movement and associated media.

It looks frighteningly like a repeat of Soviet times when Jews were imprisoned for not denouncing Israel. And like a repeat of the years leading up to the complete dehumanisation of Jews in 1930s Germany.

Britain, its historical cowardice, and its modern-day cowardice, needs to be highlighted as a warning to the rest of the world. It’s not just about how British Jews are being made to feel today but about how it will be acceptable to treat Jews in the diaspora worldwide.

We already see the attitudes and policies shifting on the left throughout the USA and Europe. Once it becomes central to government policy, we’re all in trouble. Let’s not let it get there.

Sources

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/sep/28/palestine-gaza-electoral-issue-uk-israel-aimee-shalan

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/sep/17/greens-push-zack-polanski-to-take-stance-on-proposed-policy-declaring-zionism-is-racism

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/sep/09/sanctions-israeli-settlements-trade-andy-burnham-analysis

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/sep/09/ed-miliband-rejects-chief-rabbi-claim-west-bank-sanctions-british-jews-less-safe

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-181963/

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-180327/

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/foreign-secretary-oral-statement-on-israel-palestine

https://unric.org/en/the-un-and-the-crisis-in-sudan-jan-jun-2026/

https://iimm.un.org/en/node/459

https://ukraine.un.org/en/323454-protection-civilians-armed-conflict-%E2%80%94-august-2026

https://childrenandarmedconflict.un.org/en/democratic-republic-congo

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Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally Prag. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but will be introducing a new column for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. Watch this space! For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

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NAZA: What The Film Forgot To Tell You

What NAZA Claims

The film is based on interviews with 24 anonymous Israeli soldiers and intelligence personnel. It claims that:

• an AI-based targeting system helped identify suspected Hamas members;

• the expected number of civilian casualties was calculated in advance for strikes;

• strikes were authorized even when dozens of civilian casualties were expected;

• civilian casualties allegedly became not merely a side effect, but an integrated part of the system;

• some sources in the film claim that a figure of around 15–20 expected civilians per operation was used, while other reports mention authorization for significantly higher numbers;

• the film attempts to use this to establish a systemic policy of deliberate killing of civilians.

What did they forget to tell us?

These actions are entirely consistent with the basic logic of international humanitarian law, provided that the requirements of proportionality and precautions are met.

In other words:

• calculating expected civilian casualties is normal and necessary;

• allowing for certain incidental casualties is not automatically prohibited;

• striking a military target even when it is located among civilians can be lawful;

• using AI to identify targets is not prohibited in itself;

• the key criterion is whether the expected harm is excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, and whether feasible precautions are taken to reduce civilian harm.

Therefore, the mere existence of the system described in the film does not prove a violation of the Geneva Conventions or a war crime.

The Israeli military rejected these testimonies, pointing out that the identities of the anonymous witnesses cannot be verified, and that some of the claims concern strategic-level decisions that junior military personnel could not have known about.

And now let’s take apart the film’s main arguments from the perspective of international law, because that is precisely the legal framework at issue.

The problem is that the film predictably gasps and expresses outrage instead of analyzing these claims through the framework of the Geneva Conventions – the rules under which wars are conducted.

And please don’t tell me that nobody has seen the film when YouTube already contains plenty of clips and excerpts from the interviews and dialogue that can be addressed directly.

1. The Mere Fact That Expected Civilian Casualties Were Calculated Is Not a Revelation

This is probably the film’s biggest problem.

In the conduct of modern warfare, a commander is expected to assess anticipated incidental civilian harm.

International humanitarian law does not say:

“An attack cannot be carried out if civilians might be killed.”

It says something different: an attack is prohibited when the expected incidental harm to civilians would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. In addition, feasible precautions must be taken to reduce that harm.

In other words, the procedure itself is not a crime. It is part of the normal decision-making process.

Therefore, the argument

“They knew in advance that 10, 15, or 20 civilians might die in the strike, therefore they deliberately killed civilians”

does not logically follow from the first premise.

This is precisely where the film attempts to turn the calculation of collateral damage into evidence of an intention to kill civilians.

These are two completely different things.

2. “They Knew Civilians Would Die” ≠ “They Wanted to Kill Civilians”

This is an even more fundamental distortion of reality.

Consider a hypothetical scenario:

• a Hamas commander is inside a building;

• his family is with him;

• intelligence assesses that the family may be present;

• eliminating the commander provides a concrete military advantage;

• the expected number of civilian casualties is assessed;

• the decision is made that the strike complies with the applicable proportionality rules.

One can dispute the specific decision.

One can say:

“The commander incorrectly assessed the anticipated military advantage.”

Or:

“Under these circumstances, the strike was disproportionate.”

But the mere fact that civilian deaths were anticipated does not automatically lead to the conclusion:

“Civilians were the target.”

That distinction is embedded directly in the ICRC principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions. Incidental civilian harm may be unlawful if it is excessive, but the mere existence of anticipated civilian harm does not make a strike unlawful.

3. And Now The Most Important Point: The Film Has To Establish The Scale

If the film wants to prove:

“Israel systematically killed enormous numbers of civilians”

then showing several cases in which commanders accepted a certain level of anticipated civilian casualties is not enough.

It would be necessary to establish:

• how many people were killed in total;

• how many of them were combatants;

• how many died from causes other than Israeli actions;

• how many died from natural causes;

• how many died as a result of internal conflict;

• how many of the reported figures are erroneous;

• how many strikes were carried out against an actual military target;

• what decisions were made in each individual strike;

• what military advantage was anticipated;

• whether the expected civilian casualties were excessive in relation to that advantage.

And there is already a huge methodological problem with the very first point.

The Washington Institute, in its latest detailed assessment, points to opaque revisions of Hamas casualty figures, problems with verifying family reports, and unknown or missing victims. Moreover, the ministry itself does not systematically distinguish between civilians and combatants.

In other words, it functions as a propaganda ministry.

This is important.

Let’s move on.

4. You Cannot Simultaneously Use 70,000 As “Civilians” And Ignore The Composition Of Those 70,000

Now we get to the numbers.

This is where the film’s argument becomes particularly vulnerable.

HJS and Andrew Fox have pointed out that Gaza MoH figures:

• do not distinguish civilians from combatants;

• include natural deaths;

• include deaths resulting from internal fighting, particularly the approximately 20% of rockets launched from Gaza that fall inside Gaza.

And the most recent reconstruction by Salo Aizenberg presents the following picture: out of roughly 70,000 registered deaths, he subtracts natural deaths, internal deaths, and errors.

The resulting figures are approximately:

• 70,000+ total registered deaths;

• ~11,000 natural deaths;

• ~4,000 internal killings;

• ~1,000 errors;

• leaving approximately 54,000 war-related deaths;

• of those, approximately 25,000 were combatants;

• leaving:

54,000 − 25,000 = 29,000 non-combatants.

And therefore:

29,000 / 25,000 = 1.16 : 1

That is approximately 1.16 civilians for every combatant.

And now the house of cards begins to collapse if we ask ourselves one simple question:

Has anyone in the history of warfare ever conducted a war under comparable conditions with a lower civilian-to-combatant casualty ratio than Israel?

Let’s conduct our own experiment: can AI disprove us if we honestly subtract the necessary figures from the statistics — something the major media outlets have so far refused to do, as demonstrated by the Fifty Global research.

Here is a prompt. Put it into Grok, Gemini, or GPT:

“With a total death toll in Gaza of approximately 70,000, of whom 25,000 are Hamas members, 11,000 are natural deaths, 4,000 are internal killings, and 1,000 are errors, calculate the ratio yourself and determine whether there has been a better casualty ratio in a comparable dense urban environment where terrorists used civilians as cover, did not wear military uniforms, and military infrastructure was located exclusively within civilian structures. Apply the strict conditions I have specified. Answer clearly: based on these HJS and Washington Institute figures, is Israel’s ratio among the best in the world?”

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Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but have now introduced a new column exclusively for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

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The Slow, Painful Death of Critical Thinking

Ed Sheeran, “Free Palestine”, “genocide” and everything in-between

Ed Sheeran’s name must be one of the highest ranking internet subjects of late. Probably alongside Macklemore’s. The controversy surrounding his current US tour has reached every corner of the world-wide web, with every possible argument, every possible spin, revealing every possible unconscious bias, and every possible conscious evil.

So you may be a little tired of hearing about him.

Well, rest assured, this isn’t about him, per se, but about how the controversy, and Ed Sheeran’s own position, words, and sentiments expressed, has exposed the Free Palestine movement in even greater ways than before.

Let me introduce you to a man called Cody Dahler. You may know him from Instagram, with his 2 million followers and his cleverly made reels that teach the back stories of current affairs in three minutes. He initially drew me in, not because I necessarily agreed with everything he said or how he said it, but because he is amusing, intelligent, and a handy insight to firm leftist views. He’s British but his world views are largely shared by leftists the world over.

In recent months, when I have seen his reels I have noticed an increase in rhetoric surrounding billionaires. Now, I’m no fan of the wealth gap that defines our world today, and I am fully onboard the view that billionaires sitting on masses of wealth and being in a position to exploit an economy and political mandscape that those of us at the bottom can’t, and in fact are subject to the whims of, is not a good thing. But I can’t help but roll my eyes these days when I hear that constant reference to billionaires, as if killing them off will solve all of our problems.

But there’s also another aspect to this billionaire rhetoric on the left, and Cody, possibly unintentionally, outed just how messed up it is when he gave his take on the Ed Sheeran controversy.

This was the reel that made me click “unfollow”. I think I’ve seen enough. But I’m glad I was around to witness this.

Here’s what I have a problem with:

1. Cody has, like many before him, decided to explain the situation as if he knows Ed Sheeran’s motives. Because of course he does — as every anti-Israel, “genocide”-wailing leftist seems to know exactly why someone who they disagree with does anything. Because of Israel, of course. Spoiler: he doesn’t know what Ed Sheeran was thinking because he didn’t bother to ask, or if he did, he didn’t bother to wait for a reply. That’s not to say that one shouldn’t wonder at why Ed Sheeran thought he could stay politically neutral on this topic while inviting someone known for his outspokenness against Israel to be his support act. He evidently set himself up for potential catastrophe, and it came in a way he clearly didn’t foresee. But Cody’s arrogance of assuming you know his logic (or lack of) is a symptom of the hard left’s refusal to engage with humility, curiosity and dialogue.

2. Having decided what Ed Sheeran was thinking, he called him a few unpleasant names. Mild enough to pass on social media and nothing on what we have seen coming from the very non-covert Jew-haters. But the very principle that tells the antizionist movement that it’s okay to decide what someone is thinking and then call them insulting names as a result is part of the wider antizionist gaslighting that we are seeing taking over people’s brains. And Cody Dahler, despite being an evidently intelligent person, has still subscribed to this cult-like behaviour.

3. Having declared that Ed Sheeran was weak and pathetic to let a billionaire control which musicians are allowed to support him on his tour because of their politics, he then told us that he doesn’t think that Ed supports “Israel’s genocide in Gaza”. Now we come to the most hotly-debated part of this — for Cody and his followers, there is no space to question the use of the word “genocide”. And yet, Ed has never used the word itself, because — weird as it may be — not everyone is willing to bestow a legal definition that has not, as yet, been legally attributed to the situation. And until such a time, it is nothing but a libel to use it. I can’t tell you why exactly Ed has chosen not to bow to the pressure to use that libel, but where Cody clearly yells about the importance of free speech and the kinds of insidious powers that crush it, Ed’s choice not to use the genocide or other libels, despite the pressure from the mob, is actually exercising his right to free speech. Because we know very well that not a single artist who has been called out for accusing Israel of blood libels has suffered as a consequence. They may have had a tour cancelled, but they’ve gained more popularity and sold more records than they could have bargained for. Ed, on the other hand, while naively thinking you can tour in 2026 without having to be put on trial over the Israel-Palestine question and being criticised from both pro- and anti-Israel sides, has seen first hand the cruelty and hypocrisy of the mob.

4. And now we come to the billionaire question. “The billionaires against us all” is how Cody frames it. Yet as much as Cody may have a problem with billionaires, media control and the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza, he has never once mentioned the massive power being asserted upon each one of those points by a particular group of billionaires — the Hamas leaders in Gaza. The ones who stole huge quantities of aid money meant for the Palestinian people, who oversaw the construction of a network of terror tunnels that the Palestinian civilian population were barred from sheltering in, and who sit in ivory towers while refusing ceasefire deal after ceasefire deal, that would have saved tens of thousands of Palestinian lives. And who help to control the narrative through their protector’s state media, Al Jazeera. These billionaires are always conveniently omitted from any conversation about billionaires. While Netanyahu and Ben Gvir (neither of whom sit on any kind of comparable wealth) have been subject to many memes comparing them to Satan and painting them as all-powerful evil Jews, no one ever mentions the fat, overfed, Jew-hating, ideological pieces of murderous turd sitting in 5-star hotels in Doha. Cody is right that Robert Kraft’s assertion of his wealth-derived power was the trigger that set off this whole controversy. But the power itself, not only is not unique to Jewish or Western billionaires, but pales in comparison to that group of billionaires who are supported by a country with multi-layered interests in keeping Iran sweet, and its fingers deep in controlling global media narrative.

5. “Free Palestine” and a song about a six-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces are not the “important topics of our time” as Cody frames them, they are a clear statement that opposes honesty on the topic of Israel-Palestine, and ultimately aids in pointing the finger at Jews as a collective. The slogan itself has become a cheap virtue signal for many while having undeniable genocidal meaning for others. It has been yelled by each of the perpetrators of the unprovoked attacks on and murders of Jews thousands of miles from the conflict. The song — well, just imagine if Macklemore’s song was about both Palestinian and Jewish children killed in horrific ways, including two little red-headed boys younger than Hind Rajab who were abducted and then murdered brutally with bare hands by Hamas terrorists. We need to be honest here — Macklemore would have received just as much hate for showing genuine humanity for all children who lost their lives in cruel ways, as Ed Sheeran did for attempting to “stay neutral” by saying nothing, and then failing anyway.

Cody Dahler is not stupid. He’s very, very intelligent. So one does have to ask the obvious question: why on earth does he not see how poisonous, damaging, and utterly blind-sided his narrative is.

Is it because he has been so deeply indoctrinated by the narrative that has quietly moved Hamas out of the picture, rewritten history to make Zionism all-evil and Palestinian leaders all saints, and believes all of the libels pointing at Israel? Or is it more insidious than that? Because, like Macklemore, he knows that calling Israel’s war with Hamas a genocide and yelling “Free Palestine” will win him support and more followers?

And who, with his fast growing following, wouldn’t want that?

And, could it be that such levels of support enable him to earn more money from this conflict by taking the stance that will secure a consistent flow of income? Not billionaire level income, I’m sure, but healthy quantities nonetheless?

With his level of intelligence, I have to be honest, it does look to me as if that is the case, that he’s knowingly using the narrative war to profit from a conflict that has killed, maimed and traumatised hundreds of thousands. And that is disgusting. But he wouldn’t be alone in this. Rallying cries of Israel-hate has become a widespread and proven way of gaining popularity in today’s world. It’s easy money, and you can even evade scrutiny by using the prewritten script that confuses everyone into believing such behaviour isn’t playing a part in the mass demonisation of Jews.

But, just as Cody has no idea what Ed Sheeran’s motives were despite making a video claiming to, I admit that I have no idea what his motives are.

I just know that something is deeply amiss in his rhetoric, and that it plays to a tune that is helping to legitimise Jew-hatred and the murder of innocent Jews everywhere. And I will call it out whenever I see it.

Thanks for reading and for being here! Don’t forget to subscribe and if this resonated with you, feel free to restack/share/give it some love. Please also consider joining with a paid subscription or a one-time donation to enable me to keep bringing this content to the platform.

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Today’s essay is by , first published in her excellent publication, . Please go and subscribe to receive her work.

Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally Prag. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but will be introducing a new column for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. Watch this space! For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

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What Makes you Think Palestinians Want a Two-State Solution?

On a recent trip to the Greek islands, I found myself on one of those boats that ferry passengers from one of the islands (Santorini or Mykonos, I don’t remember which) to the port where our cruise ship was waiting to take us to our next destination. Standing next to me was a group of young women who looked to be in their twenties. I noticed that one of them was wearing a necklace with a pendant in the shape of Israel similar to a necklace that I own. Excited to see someone wearing the same necklace on my Greece trip, I told her that I had the same necklace. She looked at me with an odd (unsmiling) expression and said something along the lines of “Oh, really”? Then she turned away.

That is when I realized this woman was not wearing a pendant to show her allegiance to the State of Israel. As far as she was concerned, the pendant represented Palestine. The pendant included all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea leaving nothing for the Jewish State. My necklace is almost identical. That raises the question - what hope can there possibly be for a peaceful solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict when both sides claim the right to the same territory?

In fact, however, the positions of the two sides are not identical.

Since the beginning of the Oslo process Israel has made three separate proposals for a final settlement of the conflict with the Palestinians: These are: (1) the parameters proposed by US President Bill Clinton in 2000; (2) the talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas from 2006 to 2008, held alongside the Annapolis Conference; and (3) US Secretary of State John Kerry’s initiative from 2013 to 2014 during the Obama administration.^[1]

The proposed frameworks were very similar and include Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank^[2] and Gaza Strip, except for a small percentage, for which the Palestinians would be compensated with substantially equivalent land swaps within Israel’s pre-1967 borders; a Palestinian extraterritorial passage between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, and special arrangements for the Temple Mount with de facto Palestinian control. The proposals require one concession from the Palestinians (unless you count recognizing Israel’s right to exist as a concession): that is the waiver of the so-called “right of return” into Israel for Palestinians who left in 1948 (most fled, a small percentage were expelled in the context of a war they initiated), except for a symbolic number; and international assistance for their resettlement in the Palestinian state or absorption by the Arab countries where they have been residing since 1948.

All three proposals were either rejected or ignored entirely by Palestinian leadership.

The Palestinians themselves have yet to proffer a formal peace plan. The Arab League (which does not necessarily represent all of the Palestinians) made a proposal in 2002 whereby Israel would withdraw from all the territories it captured in 1967 and accept “a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194” from December 1948. In return, the Arab world would recognize Israel and make peace with it. This may sound encouraging but it ignores the wording of Resolution 194 which states: “Refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”.

Thus, the impasse seemingly hinges on the Palestinian demand that the millions of descendants of Palestinians who were displaced in 1948 be permitted to settle in Israel presumably as full citizens. Regardless of the terminology employed, there is no doubt that is what the Palestinians expect because they have repeatedly said as much.

I decided to look more closely at what Palestinians themselves have to say about the “two-state solution” and more specifically a peace agreement with Israel whereby the Palestinians would create a state in roughly the area occupied by Jordan after the Israeli War of Independence, while Israel would remain a Jewish state in roughly the “pre-1967 borders.”

The results were telling.

Some History

Initially I reviewed a comprehensive report published in July 2024 conducted by the Palestinian Academic Society of the Study of International Affairs in Jerusalem which examined Palestinian public opinion on issues relevant to the two-state solution.^[4]

The authors begin their historical discussion by placing substantial blame on the policies of Herbert Samuel, the Jewish British High Commissioner for Palestine until 1925 which, they contend “set the foundation for a Jewish takeover of Palestine” by denying Palestinians a cohesive political authority while allowing Jews to build institutions, granting them the right to levy taxes, and establishing a system of land administration that, they argue, set a precedent for the expropriation of land which they claim Israel continues to employ today.

No evidence for this contention is presented.

In fact, Samuel made a conscious effort to give Palestinian Arabs institutional recognition and communal autonomy.^[5] Among other things, Samuel created the Supreme Muslim Council in 1921–22 giving Palestinian Muslims control over waqf, Sharia courts, religious appointments, schools and charitable institutions^[6]. He also appointed Hajj Amin al-Husseini Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921, and in January 1922 Husseini became president of the newly established Supreme Muslim Council. Samuel made it possible for both Arabs and Jews to apply for senior positions in the government and ordered an equal number of Arabs and Jews to be employed in the police force.^[7]

Historian Benny Morris in his widely acclaimed work “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited” offers a very different explanation for the failure of Palestinian Arabs to develop institutions necessary to form a state.

According to Morris “Arab society was highly sectorial and parochial. It was backward, disunited and often apathetic, a community only just entering the modern age politically and administratively.… [The] absence of political consciousness and commitment (as well as the lack of educated personnel) provides a partial explanation for the failure to establish self-governing institutions.”^[8] Quoting from declassified military documents, Morris describes a situation where “chaos reigned” in most of the departments with blurred lines of responsibility and officials interfering in one another’s affairs^[9]

Undoubtedly, absent the Partition Plan and Israel’s independence, Mandate Palestine would have been absorbed into Jordan or Syria both of which had expansionist aims. The Palestinian Arabs, were not at that time, in a position to function as an independent state.

The PASSIA report acknowledges that in 1939, the British government, in the White Paper, disclaimed any intention to create a Jewish state, placed severe restrictions on Jewish immigration and land purchase, and envisaging an independent state in Palestine with a two-thirds Arab majority within 10 years. It then contends that “in response, the Zionists launched a bloody anti-British and anti-Palestinian campaign…..”^[10]

That characterization is patently false.

During World War II, the Jews supported the British war effort. Jewish volunteers from Palestine served in the British forces and fought against the Axis powers. That’s because the Jewish community in Mandate Palestine understood that the immediate existential threat was Nazi Germany and were very concerned about the Germans extending the Holocaust to the Middle East.

The Jews did resist the White Paper, particularly by organizing Jewish immigration to Palestine. But armed resistance against the British didn’t begin until after 1945 when the full extent of the catastrophe that had befallen the Jews of Europe became known. By then hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors were in displaced-persons camps while Britain continued to enforce the White Paper’s restrictions on Jewish immigration.

The UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 (the Partition Plan) on November 29, 1947 which is widely considered the “original” two-state solution: it divided Palestine into Jewish and Arab states with Jerusalem and Bethlehem under a special international regime. While acknowledging that Jews accepted the Resolution, the report makes the sweeping claim that the Jews always intended to expand the borders of the Jewish state. To support this claim, the report quotes, Ben-Gurion who, according to Ilan Pappe and other antizionist thinkers, pronounced that the borders “will be determined by force and not by the partition resolution”.

There is no direct source for this quote. Even assuming its accuracy, which is far from clear, the report mischaracterizes the context. The statement was drawn from correspondence from 1948, after the war was already underway, rather than from the period immediately following the Partition Resolution.^[11]

Ben Gurion knew that the nascent Jewish state would soon face an existential war and therefore that the actual borders would ultimately depend upon the ability of the Jewish community to defend and hold territory in the coming conflict.

Ben-Gurion was not wrong.

As expected, the Arabs rejected partition outright and started a war to destroy the Jewish State. By the conclusion of the war, the Jews controlled more territory than was allocated to them in the Partition Plan.

The report goes onto to blame Israel and Israel alone for the Six-Day War, citing a series of alleged Israeli actions. There is no discussion of Egypt’s closing of the Straits of Tiran, its buildup of forces in Sinai, or its demand that UN peacekeeping forces leave the area. Nor does the report address the military coalition formed by Egypt, Jordan, and Syria and the stated intention of Arab leaders to destroy Israel. In winning the war, the report accuses Israel of “occupying the remaining 22% of Palestine” and then expelling 300,000 Palestinians.

After the Six-Day War, the U.N. passed Resolution 242 which calls for “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” together with “[t]ermination of all claims or states of belligerency” and respect for every state’s right to live in peace within “secure and recognized boundaries.” Note, the resolution did not call for withdrawal from “the territories” or “all the territories” occupied in the war. During the drafting process, proposals to require withdrawal from all occupied territories were considered but were not adopted. Lord Caradon, the British representative who drafted the resolution, later explained that the omission of the word “the” was intentional because requiring Israel to withdraw from “the” territories could have implied a return to the pre-1967 lines as permanent borders which is not required by the resolution^[12].

The report notes only the first part of the resolution regarding Israeli withdrawal from territories while effectively ignoring the accompanying requirement for the termination of belligerency and the recognition of Israel’s right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries.

Also omitted is the Khartoum Arab summit in August–September 1967, where the Arab states famously adopted the position of “no peace, no recognition, and no negotiations” with Israel. The Arabs insisted that Israel withdraw from all territory captured in the Six-Day War but made clear they had no intention of complying with the rest of the resolution that would have required that they stop attacking Israel.

The report instead characterizes Resolution 242 as requiring negotiations based on the pre-1967 borders. In other words, Israel is expected to relinquish its leverage first, and only then begin negotiations.”

That sounds suspiciously familiar – Hamas (until it was militarily defeated) cynically insisted that IDF troops withdraw fully from Gaza before they would negotiate for the release of the hostages.

Just as Hamas’ demand was just an attempt to gain a concession without any corresponding commitment, no serious reading of Resolution 242 can reasonably require Israel’s unilateral withdrawal without reciprocal commitments for peace and security

I don’t think the Palestinians are stupid and I don’t think they believe Israelis are stupid. But they are cynical. Palestinian leaders have repeatedly demonstrated that they can obtain substantial international support without making reciprocal concession.

These are some examples of the fraudulent claims that formed the historical basis for the PASSAIA report in which Palestinians are not accorded any responsibility for their current situation. Interested readers can consult the report for its exact terms.

Palestinian Attitudes Today.

It is against this historical perspective that Palestinian views about a “two-state solution” must be understood. This is much more than a dispute over territory. It is a continuation of the struggle to defeat Zionism. Since armed conflict failed, they have turned to diplomacy as a means of achieving their objective which is a single Palestinian state. In that regard, nothing has changed since before 1948.

In particular, substantial numbers of Palestinians continue to reject important elements of a genuine two-state agreement, including recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, respecting Israel’s security concerns, and a realistic attitude about so-called refugees. None of the people involved actually experienced the displacement complained of.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) conducted a poll in August, 2026^[13].

When respondents were asked whether they support or oppose “the two-state solution,” without additional details 44% said they supported it and 50% said they opposed it.

When “two states” was specifically defined as a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines (which would entail dismantling all Jewish communities in the territory which is wholly impractical and which Israel will never agree to), support rose to 56%.^[14]

Even under that formulation, almost half the population would not accept a “two-state” solution on any terms.

The results become even more revealing when the question incorporates the reciprocal recognition that an actual peace agreement would require. When respondents were asked about mutual recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people and Palestine as the state of the Palestinian people after the two sides reached a hypothetical agreement on other permanent-status issues, including Jerusalem and refugees (but without indicating how the issues would be resolved), 56% supported the proposition and 43% opposed it.

Importantly, only 28% supported the establishment of a Palestinian state without an army.

It is one thing to support a Palestinian state and a Jewish state. It is quite another to support a solution that takes into account Israeli security concerns, especially post October 7, 2023.

If Israel withdraws from the territories that would become a Palestinian state that is not de militarized, it should be obvious that this would invite another October 7. Even in the context of a peace agreement, Hamas and their supporters will not abandon their stated objective of eliminating Israel. Through elections or military take over, a Palestinian state could easily become an unacceptable security threat to Israel unless its institutions and security arrangements provided meaningful safeguards.

The poll also showed that 28% of the Palestinians consider the return of the descendants of Palestinians to Israeli villages the highest national priority. That demand goes to the heart of the conflict. It reflects the continuing refusal to accept the consequences of the 1948 war or the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state.

We see this rejectionism reflected in Palestinian discourse concerning Israel’s legitimacy, in the Palestinian Authority’s financial support for the families of terrorists, and in the insistence on a “right of return” that would permit millions of hostile Palestinians to Israel to move into Israel.

Both Israeli research and Palestinian surveys show a substantial number of Palestinians would be happy to have a Palestinian state but would not view it as the final resolution of the conflict. Rather it is a means of gradually undermining Israel’s Jewish character and, ultimately, eliminating the Jewish state.

Implementing a policy that would permit large numbers of Palestinians to settle in Israel would go a long way toward undermining one of the core purposes of the State of Israel- to provide sovereignty and security to the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland.

If the objective were simply to create a Palestinian state, allowing refugees and their descendants to establish their homes there would be the obvious solution. There is no historical precedent for permitting the descendants of a hostile population to return to the country from which they were displaced. The continued insistence on allowing Palestinians to immigrate en masse to Israel evinces the intention to reverse the outcome of 1948 and change the demographic character of Israel, thus defeating Zionism from “within.” Armed struggle against Israel has become less popular with Palestinians as it has been a catastrophic failure. Than could change if large numbers of Palestinians hostile to Israel could organize from within the State of Israel itself.

Given this reality, Israel has attempted to respect the Palestinians’ perspective by allowing partial symbolic measures or alternative arrangements instead of a wholesale “right of return.” But for many, the goal is to turn back the clock to 1947. Hope remains that, over time, Israel might disappear and be replaced by a Palestinian state encompassing the entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Accepting a limited, symbolic right of return, or alternative arrangements for refugees, would require accepting something that many Palestinians regard as unacceptable: that the Arab side lost the 1948 war and that the State of Israel is here to stay.

The real question, therefore, is not whether Palestinians say they support a two-state solution.

The more important question is: What do they mean by it?

If “two states” means a Palestinian state alongside a secure Jewish state, with mutual recognition, meaningful security guarantees, Palestinian demilitarization, and a negotiated resolution of the refugee issue that does not require Israel to commit suicide, the polling suggests that support is considerably weaker than the headline numbers imply.

And until Palestinians are prepared to accept those fundamental premises, it is fair to ask whether the two-state solution is actually a solution—or simply another stage in a much longer conflict.

^[1] INSS Insight No. 1938, February 16, 2025; https://www.inss.org.il/publication/the-palestinian-problem

^[2] I uaing the term “West Bank” to dnote the geographic boundaries of Judea and Samaria. I use the standard term strictly for convenience, not because I accept it as the historically accurate or legitimate name.

^[3] I am using the term “West Bank” to denote the territory known as Judea and Samaria.

^[4] https://palestine.fes.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Publication_1/PASSIA/PASSIA_2024/Two-State_solution_FINAL_print.pdf

^[5] https://thehistorianjournal.wordpress.com/2017/01/29/sir-herbert-samuel-a-change-of-heart/

^[6] https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/supreme-muslim-council

^[7] https://thehistorianjournal.wordpress.com/2017/01/29/sir-herbert-samuel-a-change-of-heart

^[8] Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 26-27.

^[9] Morris, Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, 28

^[10] https://palestine.fes.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Publication_1/PASSIA/PASSIA_2024/Two-State_solution_FINAL_print.pdf

https://thehistorianjournal.wordpress.com/2017/01/29/sir-herbert-samuel-a-change-of-heart/

^[11] Martin Kramer The May 1948 Vote that Made the State of Israel, Mosaic, (April 2018) https://ideas.tikvah.org/mosaic/essays/the-may-1948-vote-that-made-the-state-of-israel

^[12] https://www.sixdaywar.org/resolution-242/clarifications; https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v19/d541

^[13] This includes Palestinians living in the “West Bank” and Gaza. I could not locate surveys that only focused on attitudes in the West Ban

^[14] As an aside, many Palestinians reported a lack of faith that the two state solution would be implemented because of “settlement expansion.” But they could have halted settlement activity in the areas designated for a Palestinian state by accepting one of the many peace proposals that they rejected.

Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally Prag. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but have now introduced a new column exclusively for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

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Days of Awe

A moment of reflection during the high holidays

In Hebrew the term used for the period between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur  is yamim noraim… Literally translated it means “days of awe.” But it also translates conceptually as “days of dread” — this I will come back to.

Awe, in terms of this ten-day period between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, is something that humbles us as humans. They are the days during which we have the opportunity to truly understand what it means to stand in awe, to give rather than take, and to serve rather than wait to be served. But putting aside spiritual instruction, awe itself has a powerful psychological impact on humans. Numerous scientific studies have shown that awe has powerful positive effects on the human brain and the emotional processes of the mind.

The term awe became deeply meaningful to me years ago when I began to experience its effects directly. Following some years of hard emotional and physical struggle, coming out of a dark place gave way to a sense of awe that seemed to punctuate my life in unexpected ways. Nature in particular blew my mind and sent me on waves of awe-driven joy. Colours, patterns, the sky, the river, the sea, the shapes of the land and the clouds, and yes, even raindrops on roses made me stop in absolute awe.

It began with a gratitude practice that involved taking a photograph every single day of something that made me feel grateful. To begin with, the idea was utterly overwhelming. How the heck was I going to find something unique to photograph each day that I would feel genuine gratitude for? And yet I surprised myself, for soon enough my eyes were not merely trying to search out things that would pass but I was being pelted constantly with tiny glimpses of astounding beauty. And the overwhelming feeling was an incredible sense of awe.

I would tell you that this experience was short-lived, that I came out of my darker moments, the feeling of awe decreased in intensity, and life just became fairly same-same and mundane. If it was true. But that wasn’t the case. Awe has never stopped bowling me over since then.

I mean, it would if I didn’t take myself out into nature and do the things that give me immense awe-filled joy. But awe is like a drug — thankfully an entirely safe one — that hooks you in and you can never stop going after those highs.

Whether it is the world blossoming in spring, the magical light that changes with the day and the seasons, the moon, the stars, or throwing my whole body into the cold Atlantic Ocean and swimming until my body tires, I find awe waiting for me to leap at it. I keep my eyes peeled for it: the appearance of a seal when I walk beside the water, or a rainbow as I’m driving across local moorland, or the sun casting its rays through moist air and onto the glowing yellow-brown ferns.

But yamim noraim are not simply here for us to bask in the exquisite joy that awe can release in us. Awe in its truest sense does not simply give us the sweetness but encompasses both the dark and light sides of life. Everything we have to celebrate but also everything that gives us cause to dread.

The thing about being human is that there is a lot to be awestruck about. And the thing about being Jewish is that it gets scaled up exponentially: Seeing humans destroy one another, and seeing entire societies turn on communities of Jews against a backdrop of centuries of surviving; the fact that all of us here today are… well, here today.

The fact that our grandparents were the ones who survived Europe’s and the Middle East’s pogroms and the holocaust. The fact that their grandparents survived boycotts and societal and financial strangulation, and their grandparents before them.

The odds of you and me being here now are miniscule, and yet, here we are.

And while these were facts I certainly had tucked away in the folds of my awe-filled thoughts over the course of my life and education, it never really struck me in any major way until October 7th happened and the massive, massive wave of Jew-hatred that has surfaced and exploded ever since. We thought we were through all of that. We thought we were genuinely in an age of enlightenment, different from every phase of delusion before this. It turns out we were wrong — there’s no blanket rule that humans evolve and learn from history. But that’s probably because most don’t take the time to learn history — real history, I mean, not the rewritten, selectively constructed type that is predominant in the media and social media.

In a world where political affiliation rather than education dictates what we think about something, history has no place. While Jews are still portrayed as self-serving, money-focused and with an overriding air of superiority, speak to any Jew living today and each will tell a story of a parent, grandparent, great grandparent, or even themselves having survived the unimaginable. Horrors no one claiming to be “informed” on the current situation facing Jews could even fathom.

What happened in the 1940s also happened in the 1810s and the 100s and the 500s BC, and 1490s, and, yes, in the 2020s too. Hostages in Gaza’s tunnels being starved, raped, tortured, and brutally murdered. Random attacks on Jews going about their day that get justified by the society’s mood, hijacked by a calculated narrative that ensures Israel — and Jews as a consequence — is blamed for everything bad that happens to anyone and everyone.

Today, as we see The Guardian, once a trustworthy source of objective news and now walking itself into the extremes of cult-like mindcontrol, celebrate the success of its film, NAZA, we are reminded how time and time again, “The Jew” became depicted as uniquely evil, uniquely dangerous for humanity as a whole. Of course, I haven’t seen the film since it’s not yet available to the public to view, but from what I understand the interviews with 24 IDF soldiers on a rooftop in Tel Aviv were conducted and thus framed specifically to show, as The Guardian itself states, “in detail the systems behind Israel’s calculated mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”

The officers interviewed apparently shared details about how the Collateral Damage Rate (CDR) was approved prior to each strike. Erasing all nuance, all possible interpretation that looks beneath the surface, this is designed to make Israel — today’s handy collective representative of “The Jew” — look as if the calculated CDR was not in any way to try to minimise civilian deaths in a warzone made impossible by Hamas’s own intrinsically calculated conduct, but ONLY as evidence of accumulating more civilian deaths.

There is no mention of how Hamas calculated the civilian death rate when it fired rockets and invaded Israel on October 7th. If one wasn’t following The Guardian and its counterparts in the hard left and Islamist media, one might even consider that Hamas intentionally targeted unarmed civilians, specifically the most vulnerable — women, children and the elderly.

NAZA is only the latest contribution to this extended episode of the framing of “The Jew.” And this wave of Jew-hatred is just the latest wave of many, many that we have seen before.

And yet, we are still here.

But from now until next year, when the days of awe roll around once more, will we still be? History has proven one thing — that nothing is guaranteed.

So as we pass our time through these days of awe, we must remember all who didn’t make it through from one Rosh Hashanah to the next. We must remember the millions who died so that we could keep living, and we give thanks to all who are doing everything within their grasp to ensure that Jewish peoplehood lives on, no matter what.

We reflect on our own evolution, marking how far we have come, how much we have grown, in mind, heart and consciousness. We acknowledge what we did well and what we must strive to do better. We look to our own potential and manifest it in mitzvot. And in doing so, we learn a little bit more about ourselves and, indeed, the world around us.

Ten days to stand in awe of the enormity of life itself is not long, and yet for some it encompasses an entire lifetime.

One thing I am sure about — if we are here today, reflecting during these days, we have a lot to be grateful for, and a lot to believe in. So as we reach Yom Kippur of 5787, I’d like to set an intention of greater belief, trust, and unity for the Jewish people; of belonging, of sharing across human-defined lines, of being truthful about our hopes and fears, and trusting in ourselves while remaining connected and empathic to others.

My wish for the year ahead is that we find greater strength, greater calm, greater focus, and greater collective belief. That we can collectively help Israel towards better days, and, if I dare say it, begin once again to forge a real path to real peace.

Thanks for reading and for being here! Don’t forget to subscribe and if this resonated with you, feel free to restack/share/give it some love. Please also consider joining with a paid subscription or a one-time donation to enable me to keep bringing this content to the platform.

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A version of this was originally published in Ruach on Medium.

Dear (Zio) Aunt Sally is back to deconstruct the the damaging work of nincompoops! Agony Aunt Sally is my alter ego, here to help with your most pressing concerns and worries. Please read and enjoy.

Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally Prag. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but will be introducing a new column for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. Watch this space! For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY! The JPF isn’t here for polite debates or academic footnotes — we’re dismantling antisemitism one idiot, one coward, one apologist at a time.

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Dear Zio Aunt Sally, Why Does Ed Miliband Look Like He Has Something Painful Up His Ass?

Jihadi dynamite, woke language, and more pressing questions answered by your favourite Zio agony aunt

Dear Aunt Sally,

I’ve been keenly following the news coming out of ̷N̷a̷z̷i̷ ̷G̷e̷r̷m̷a̷n̷y̷ the UK and, while I have tried to listen to Ed Miliband’s sincere words about the terrible crimes inflicted by Israel upon Gaza and how we must boycott Jews who he’s decided should be ethnically cleansed from the West Bank, I keep getting distracted by the fact that his facial expressions make him look like he’s experiencing agonising anal pain. Can you please explain what might be going on for him? Does he have something painful shoved up is backside or is it just how he looks normally?

A concerned reader.

Dear Concerned reader,

In my humble opinion, your hunch was correct. From where I am standing, he may or may not have a literal sword (or something similar) up his ass, but he definitely has a figurative one. Let me break this down into terms even a toddler could understand (though the British public seems to be too far gone into brainwashed territory to get it):

The Labour party lost so much credibility under that geezer with the atrociously poor ability to read off his teleprompter that they have to do anything they can to claw back votes. Labour’s speciality is saying whatever the fuck will make their image look better — that’s literally all they focus their election campaigns on. And while they may be able to implement whatever bullshit foreign policy they’ve decided will win them back votes, they usually can’t actually follow through on anything at all that would help their own country to fare any better.

When it comes to this foreign policy, given the stakes, Ed’s script is already signed and sealed. The choice is between (a) having some semblance of integrity and (b) doing what will get him the votes. Therefore, dynamite — or a Jihadi sword — up his ass will ensure he makes the correct choice to play to the side that will ensure him a long career in politics. Without it, he may show honesty, even humanity, which would probably cost him dearly in the political arena.

Remember that being in politics and being a decent human don’t always mix well. And when it comes to Britain, whose own disastrous failings — dishonesty, cowardliness and selfish motivations —  are a very, very large part of the reason Israel-Palestine is in such a mess today, the gap between decency and political posturing is very, very wide.

That Jihadi sword up his ass helps to uphold the illusion for dearest Eddie that Britain isn’t a failed state. Remove it and he’ll likely wake up to the truth that he just fucked over his “proud Jew” persona. So perhaps he prefers to walk around with an agonising anus after all.

Of course, there may also be a literal reason for him looking like his ass hurts, and God only knows what he and his smarmy mate Andy get up to in private at Number 10, but that’s their business and I don’t want to know.

Best,

Aunt Sally

Dear Aunt Sally,

I am an Israeli who lives in Rishon LeZion. I am friends with many diaspora Jews who live in the USA and Europe and we keep in touch via WhatsApp and FaceTime. Recently, I’ve noticed them using language that I don’t fully understand, like asking me to identify my personal pronouns and telling me to “check my privilege.”

I think my English is very good so I don’t believe it’s a translation issue. How do I communicate with them if I don’t understand what they’re asking of me?

Tal

Dear Tal,

As an Israeli with a non gender-specific Hebrew name, you have already managed to tick a number of boxes when it comes to things that wind up neo-progressive Europeans and Americans. Let’s forget being an Israeli Jew for the minute, since I assume they know that already and have seemingly not already assigned your pronouns as “baby-killer” or “genocide-supporter”, hence asking you to specify.

Concerns such as stating what your preferred pronoun is something that largely occupies woke brain activity. Although, don’t mention the words “occupy” or “occupation” to these friends, because that won’t be received well.

Let me explain this phenomenon in a little more depth: while you guys in Israel have real-life shit to deal with — you know, bombs, missiles, daily terror attacks, neighbours who want to annihilate you, that sort of thing — people in the west need to make up shit to get angry about and make themselves feel worthy. They become Social Justice Warriors to “do some good in the world,” which usually involves getting into keyboard wars on social media and insulting anyone who disagrees with them.

There are a few rules to this. For example, if you are white and male, you are expected to apologise for every bad thing humans have ever done to each other. Also, the definition of “white” has gradually broadened to include many who would never have passed 80 years ago. Be warned: dark hair, eyes, or pigmentation that enables you to tan beautifully while your fair-skinned British friends just go beetroot-red will be aggressively denied. It was, after all, just pure chance that their skin burned in exactly the same sun as yours simply turned a Middle Eastern brown.

The good news: being identified as male is currently a personal choice and not something the woke neo-progressive will decide for you, unlike whiteness, so you still have some autonomy there — though only really useful in this scenario if you’re a woman. However, Tal, if you are in fact a man and the criteria you use to determine your maleness is being born with a penis, be careful how you word that. You could find yourself being removed from all WhatsApp groups with these friends and told that anything you try to say to remonstrate is shut down as “hate speech”.

Respecting rules such as these is simply part of woke culture and there are several ways to signal your obedience to these rules. One is by letting anyone and everyone know what your preferred pronouns are before they have even spoken to you. You can be anything you like but you must let them know. Feel free to choose from the following list: He/him/his, she/her/hers, they/them/theirs, ze/hir/hirs, or make up your own.

Or don’t… if you happen to have something more pressing to do at this particular moment, like run to a bomb shelter or enjoy Rosh Hashana with your family, or perhaps go to the beach and experience the joys of life. Because that’s another big problem with Israelis — when they’re not losing years of sleep trying to get their loved ones back from Gaza’s tunnels or carrying their sleeping children to bomb shelters, they fucking well live life and make the most of every peaceful moment while their western neo-progressive counterparts are too guilty to enjoy even a second of their lives, forced to carry the burden of worrying about oppressed peoples, trans rights and what pronoun to call someone on FaceTime.

So selfish!

One thing to remember though: If someone is telling you to check your privilege, that usually means they have forgotten to check theirs. And that’s probably because it’s pretty high.

So in answer to your question, how do you communicate with them, I suggest explaining that Israelis measure life by plates of hummus and the number of successfully dodged ballistic missiles, not by pronouns and perceived transgressions. And if you finish that off by telling them to “educate yourselves”, then congratulations — you have entered the world of woke-speak!

Sincerely,

Aunt Sally (she/him/her/it/they)

Aunt Sally’s Words of the Week

In honour of our friend Tal, we are introducing some words from the Dictionary of Woke for this week’s vocabulary section.

Safe space
A place where everyone is welcome, provided they agree with everyone already inside.

Microaggression
A tiny offence which must be identified, discussed, documented and possibly followed by a three-hour meeting.

Silence is violence
Unless, apparently, the person being asked to remain silent is Jewish.

That’s all for this week!

Until next week, keep control over that weather and don’t forget to renew any lapsed Space Laser licenses.

Aunt Sally needs you!

If you happen across any online Jewish fuckery that needs the Aunt Sally treatment, feel free to email me at auntsally777@gmail.com. You can also email me with your own questions.

In the meantime, do subscribe and support my work. Aunt Sally and the JPF are here to keep pushing for honesty, truth, and an end to antizionist gaslighting. A free subscription helps to put my work on Jewish concerns further into the Substack realm, while a paid subscription enables me to spend more time researching and bringing sobering truths to the forefront.

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More of Zio Aunt Sally’s answers to life and the universe:

Welcome to my new monthly feature, Book Talk, in which I will review books of all kinds by Jewish authors. I will look at fiction and non-fiction, including historical accounts, memoirs, and stories that bring important themes to light. Today’s review is of a wonderful novel that was deep, complex, beautiful, and very thought provoking; The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish.

Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally Prag. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free. Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature — is for paid subscribers only. If you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

SUBSCRIBE TODAY! The JPF isn’t here for polite debates or academic footnotes — we’re dismantling antisemitism one idiot, one coward, one apologist at a time.

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Book Review: ‘The Weight of Ink’ by Rachel Kadish

Weaving stories through place, time, and the complexities of being human

This story, whatever it proves to be, belongs to all of us. — from The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

In her award-winning novel, The Weight of Ink, Rachel Kadish explores the importance of history and the role it inevitably plays in the world, and our experiences of that world, today. As a work of historical fiction, it plays with how we lean on history, how we use history to build walls around us, how we approach the present relative to that history, and who that history really belongs to.

Kadish creates a rich tapestry of the stories of numerous characters and their many, deeply human flaws through a series of different time periods and places. The book takes us on a journey, flitting between Portugal and Amsterdam during the Inquisition years, London some years later, through to modern day England with flashbacks to Israel in its earliest years.

We see Helen, the hard-shelled, worn-out and sick English spinster and expert in Jewish History and Hebrew Studies, though not a Jew herself. We see Aaron Levy, the arrogant American PhD student, rebelling against his rabbi father’s religious aspirations for him. We see in the historical sections of the novel Ester Valasquez, the orphaned Portuguese Jewish girl, soon to become the only remaining member of her family, and the kind but blind rabbi who took her in. We learn, through Ester’s memories, of her devoted and pious father, and her angry, passionate and untameable mother. We learn about another orphan and only remaining member of his family following the holocaust, Dror, the beautiful Israeli soldier whose cursed love is the reason for Helen’s hard shell, and the grief that he shouldered.

And through all of this, we learn of secrets held captive by society and the punishments given for such crimes as a woman becoming learned and following her passions.

This historical fiction explores the treatment of and attitudes towards Jews in seventeenth century London as they begin to come out from hiding their Jewish identity after 400 years of banishment, of women, and more specifically, of Jewish women. All against a backdrop of new philosophical thought that veered away from cosmic perceptions surrounding God and religion.

The book opens with the discovery of documents and books dating back to the seventeenth century in a large, beautiful house in Richmond, on the outskirts of London. The house was built and lived in by a Benjamin HaLevy, who was the main provider of support to the Rabbi HaCoen Mendes, the much loved teacher brought from Amsterdam to teach London’s young Jewish boys, in order to continue his work. Though blinded by the Inquisitors in his birth country of Portugal after he was forced to watch them murder his mother and father, he never strayed from his mission to pass on the word, and the love, of God, and his own teachings surrounding Jewish lore. He was also known for taking in orphans and, following a devastating house fire in Amsterdam, took in Ester and her brother Isaac, both of whom accompanied him on to London.

Ester is our heroine. When Isaac, whose job it was to scribe for the rabbi as he regaled his much revered reflections and philosophy, fled the home of the blind rabbi, later to be murdered in London’s docks, the rabbi allowed her to scribe for him in his place. Ester, having lost everything, clings to this role and the grace bestowed upon her. It gives her access to the books normally reserved for the boys studying under the rabbi’s tutelage. Having already learned to read, write, and study some of the Jewish texts at the insistence of her father, she had long understood that her one greatest desire in life was for knowledge and philosophical understanding. Now here she was with vast texts at her disposal, and breaks every rule of seventeenth century Jewish London to satisfy her hunger to learn.

Read more

Today’s piece is from the excellent publication where you can find many excellent articles, insights and exposés.

Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally Prag. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but will be introducing a new column for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. Watch this space! For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

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Study: Academic Bias Shaped International Law’s Israel Consensus

Avraham Russell Shalev argues that legal journals, conferences and professional networks helped create a self-reinforcing framework while marginalizing Jewish and Zionist perspectives.

On September 2, Israeli legal scholar Avraham Russell Shalev released a forthcoming paper arguing that the international legal consensus shaping many judgments about Israel has developed within an academic environment that Shalev argues systematically marginalizes Jewish and Zionist perspectives.

In his forthcoming paper From Blogs to Boycotts: Anti-Zionist Biases in Legal Academia, Shalev examines how international-law journals, conferences, professional networks and academic platforms help create the “expert consensus” later invoked by international institutions.

His central argument is not simply that individual scholars hold anti-Israel views. Rather, he argues that the infrastructure producing international-law expertise has developed institutional mechanisms that marginalize Jewish and Zionist perspectives, allowing a narrow ideological framework on Israel to become embedded as a dominant interpretation within parts of international legal discourse.

The paper examines controversies involving Opinio Juris, the Columbia Law Review, the Leiden Journal of International Law and what Shalev describes as informal “grey boycotts” against Israeli scholars.

The Battle Before the Courtroom

International legal campaigns involving Israel often rely on claims of expert consensus. Arguments about occupation, proportionality, self-defense, genocide and state responsibility frequently cite academic commentary and legal scholarship as evidence that a particular interpretation represents mainstream international law.

That influence is recognized within the international legal system itself. Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice identifies “the teachings of the most highly qualified publicists of the various nations” as a subsidiary means for determining legal rules.

Shalev argues that this creates an overlooked power center: the academic institutions that determine which scholars, arguments and interpretations receive legitimacy.

When certain perspectives are excluded from journals, conferences and professional networks, he argues, the resulting consensus can become self-reinforcing and influence the legal positions adopted by international bodies.

From October 7 to the Legal Narrative

A central focus of the paper is the reaction of parts of the international-law community following Hamas’ October 7 massacre.

Shalev examines international-law blogs such as Opinio Juris, arguing that some platforms have provided space for scholars whose responses to October 7 framed Hamas’ attack through anti-colonial theory while leaving Zionist perspectives underrepresented.

One example discussed by Shalev is an October 2023 Opinio Juris post by legal scholar Mohsen al-Attar responding to an interview with Professor Noura Erakat. The discussion situated October 7 within a broader anti-colonial framework and referenced Frantz Fanon’s argument that “decolonisation is always a violent phenomenon.”

The post also included an addendum published after October 7 that continued discussing the conflict through the lens of anti-colonial struggle. Critics argued that the framing risked treating Hamas’ attack primarily as an anti-colonial event rather than confronting Hamas’ deliberate targeting of civilians and the scale of the atrocities committed during the attack.

University of Haifa legal scholar Yahli Shereshevsky later criticized elements of the response within international-law circles, arguing that some reactions reflected a failure to fully acknowledge the nature of the October 7 attacks.

For Shalev, the episode represents a broader pattern: legal discourse surrounding Israel often begins from frameworks of colonialism, oppression and state violence while placing less emphasis on Israeli security concerns, Hamas terrorism and the legal obligations of non-state armed groups.

The Institutions Defining Acceptable Debate

Shalev also examines the controversy surrounding the publication of Rabea Eghbariah’s article Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept in the Columbia Law Review.

The article became controversial after the journal acknowledged that it had been commissioned and did not undergo the journal’s standard review process.

Shalev argues that the episode reflected a broader asymmetry: arguments challenging Israel’s legitimacy often gain access to prestigious academic platforms, while scholars defending Israel or contesting dominant narratives face greater professional barriers.

The paper also discusses cases involving Israeli scholars whose submissions were rejected or altered during publication processes, including Anne Herzberg and Tal Mimran.

Shalev also examines the controversy surrounding the Leiden Journal of International Law. He argues that the journal’s decision to add a disclaimer to an article by Israeli authors after criticism on social media reflected broader concerns about the treatment of Israeli scholars publishing on Israel-related issues.

The “Grey Boycott” of Israeli Scholars

Beyond formal publication decisions, Shalev focuses on what he calls “grey boycotts”: informal professional practices that isolate scholars without requiring an official boycott policy.

The paper highlights the 2018 controversy involving legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich at a conference hosted by the Asser Institute in The Hague.

Critics of Kontorovich’s scholarship on Israel and disputed territories, including Dr. Valentina Azarova and Professor Ralph Wilde, called on organizers to reconsider his invitation. When organizers refused to withdraw the invitation, Shalev argues that critics pursued informal forms of professional distancing from him.

The paper also discusses the case of Israeli scholar Daphné Richemond-Barak, an expert on underground warfare, whom Shalev cites as an example of the barriers Israeli scholars can face in international academic and policy settings.

Shalev further argues that Jewish and Israeli scholars have faced both explicit and informal exclusion from conferences, professional networks and academic spaces.

A 2024 survey by the Israel Young Academy and AFIK surveyed 1,015 Israeli senior faculty members and found that 32% reported significant damage to international collaborations and 26% reported difficulties presenting at international conferences.

The Question of Who Produces “Expert Consensus”

The battle over Israel at international institutions does not begin when judges issue rulings or diplomats draft resolutions. It begins earlier, in the academic journals, conferences and professional networks that determine which legal theories gain authority and which scholars shape the boundaries of accepted debate.

Shalev’s central argument is that the struggle over Israel in international law is fought upstream, before court filings and diplomatic resolutions, through the institutions that determine which scholars, concepts and arguments acquire academic legitimacy.

His paper argues that before legal arguments reach courts, governments or international institutions, they are first filtered through the academic ecosystem that determines which scholars, concepts and interpretations receive authority.

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You Can’t Teach Old Dogma New Tricks

How the ‘Palestinian cause’ has become the dogma of our time

I have a strange and complicated friendship. Though probably not unlike many Jewish people have experienced, I am sure.

Someone who has been caught up in all the dogma surrounding Israel and Palestine, who can’t understand that what he may read online isn’t necessarily the truth, or at least the full picture.

It has been one of the most confronting experiences I’ve had throughout the last years, to figure out how to remain centred and focused on what matters and not alienate people just because they don’t see they are being lied to, even indoctrinated. And definitely not to throw it in their faces. It’s too easy to feel betrayed and lash out. It’s difficult to hold back when we are emotionally wounded by our own friends’ gullibility.

But it’s more than merely being gullible. It’s a sophisticated means of manipulating behaviour and beliefs, and we can’t simply sit by and say nothing.

There’s a fine line between when a political conviction stops being a conviction and becomes something closer to a faith.

Not necessarily in the traditional sense but as a learned belief system that closely resembles a religion: a set of beliefs so morally certain that questioning any part of them is treated not as an intellectual exercise but as a betrayal.

The pro-Palestine movement that exploded following the October 7th massacre by Hamas is exactly that.

It’s more than merely a set of beliefs. It’s a system designed to divide, to separate the pure from the impure, the devoted minds from the corrupted ones.

Genocide, colonialism, apartheid, Zionism, ethnic cleansing — these words form the core vocabulary integral to furthering this belief system, each one holding specific weight and playing its part in a specific moral test.

Just as the introduction of atheism in the seventeenth century — the questioning of G-d’s existence — was viewed as a betrayal of G-d and of all those who had dedicated their lives to the study of G-d’s word, the questioning of whether or not a genocide is really happening, or that Israel is a colonial apartheid state, permits a public vilification of anyone who veers from the accepted beliefs.

Any inclusion in the conversation about Hamas, its ideology, its treatment of Palestinians, its rejection of Israel’s existence, its deliberate targeting of civilians is forbidden. But the protocol is already in place: accuse the offender of supporting genocide, killing babies, and being a Zio. Even if they have not defended the killing of civilians or argued that Palestinian suffering is unimportant.

Suggesting that a conflict involving two peoples, several wars, multiple neighbouring states, competing national movements, terrorism, occupation, failed peace negotiations and generations of trauma might not be adequately explained by dividing the world into saints and monsters has no place.

Complexity is not welcome in a movement built upon moral certainty.

Again, the protocol is prewritten: the person questioning is the problem, needs to ‘educate themselves’ and ‘check their bias’.

And there it is.

The great trick of dogmatism is that it allows you to avoid answering a question by putting the person who asked it on trial.

I have watched this happen repeatedly in discussions surrounding Israel and Palestine.

We know there is a perfectly legitimate moral case to be made against particular Israeli governments, military actions, settlement policies and political decisions. Israelis themselves make those arguments every day, often more fiercely than anyone outside the country. Real people with real criticism of the system that is supposed to protect them — normal in a democracy but unacceptable in an environment of authoritarian rule.

That’s why simply entering into a real, genuine debate never really works for the dogma. Because the argument we Zios bring to the table is not narrow and lacking nuance. We bring truths that undermine the arguments of the modern ideological movement that has grown around the conflict.

It’s not about recognising genuine suffering but about identifying a single villain that they can feel justified in watching be hung, drawn and quartered.

And in order to carry that through, the story must be protected at all costs. Protected by the filtering of information that gets through to many uneducated onlookers. Selective reporting of facts that fit comfortably into the preferred narrative, omitting the facts that do not.

After all, we are searching for a story in which we already know who the heroes are.

But once we become more devoted to protecting the story than discovering the truth, we have ceased to think. A genuinely curious person examines both facts and narratives. A dogmatic movement learns to recognise only one category.

Images of Palestinian suffering are shared endlessly, often stripped of military context or historical background. Israeli actions are interpreted through the most sinister possible lens. Every Israeli military failure becomes evidence of deliberate evil.

Meanwhile, facts that complicate the picture are ignored, minimised or treated as propaganda.

The nature of Hamas becomes an inconvenient subject. Palestinian political divisions are inconvenient. The history of Arab rejection of partition is inconvenient. The expulsion and flight of Jewish communities from Arab countries is inconvenient. The repeated failure of peace initiatives is inconvenient. The fact that Israeli society itself contains profound political disagreement is inconvenient.

Even the simplest acknowledgement that Israelis have fears, history and trauma is treated with suspicion.

This is not because these facts are necessarily unimportant. It is because they are dangerous. They threaten to turn a black-and-white morality play back into what the Israel-Palestine conflict has always been: a tragic, complicated and deeply human conflict, in which bad players have always controlled the outcomes for the ordinary civilians who just want to live in peace.

Slogans become the go-to script. Choosing rhyming couplets over decades of complicated documented history is much easier. The repetition helps to embed the notion of the villain in the minds of all who hear them.

It quickly becomes easier to assume claims that reinforce this notion are correct, and they are repeated without checking facts or sources.

Meanwhile, any information coming from the villain is immediately discredited, twisted, or turned back upon them.

You do not have to defeat an argument if you can discredit the person making it.

Call them a racist, colonialist, Islamophobe, Zionist, or accuse them of supporting genocide. The accusation itself becomes the argument.

It does not matter whether it is true. Its purpose is not necessarily to persuade. Its purpose is to warn.

Other people are watching. They see what happens when someone steps outside the approved narrative. They see the pile-on, the public denunciations, friendships withdrawn, reputations questioned and employers pressured.

And then comes the silence, which is, perhaps, the most successful technique of all. You do not have to silence everyone, just to silence enough people publicly that everyone else understands the consequences of speaking against the dogma.

And ironically — disturbingly so — the people learning these techniques genuinely believe they are fighting oppression. They speak constantly about marginalised voices while deciding which marginalised voices are permitted to speak. They demand that people “listen to Palestinians” while sometimes dismissing Palestinians who disagree with them. They celebrate diversity while demonstrating remarkably little tolerance for intellectual diversity — or Jews.

They speak of liberation while policing language. And they condemn dehumanisation while displaying a breathtaking inability to recognise the humanity of Israelis.

The greatest tragedy? None of this helps Palestinians.

A movement that cannot tolerate inconvenient facts cannot learn from failure. A movement that refuses nuance cannot understand why peace has proved so elusive. A movement that treats anyone asking difficult questions as an enemy eventually becomes more interested in protecting its own moral purity than in solving the problem it claims to care about.

Do I believe my friend cares? Yes I do. I genuinely believe he cares about children’s lives. But I believe the media he looks at has never shown him the suffering of Jewish children. It has chosen which people he should be sympathising with while omitting those inconvenient to the onward narrative.

But he doesn’t see it.

He believes that the Jews who speak up against Zionism and the existence of the state of Israel must be the good ones. He believes in the utopian vision that certain leftists like Owen Jones have invented — the one-state solution in which two peoples who have been at war for decades will suddenly live in peace.

He cannot see how the story he is being fed has already decided on its ‘ending’. He cannot see that he is being primed to choose a cult-adjacent doctrine over a genuine friendship through selective reporting, omission of facts, and the rewriting of history. How his mind, like so many others’, is being poisoned to hate and divide by a prewritten propaganda campaign with one intention — to rid the world of Jews.

This isn’t about a friendship. I have not yet lost a friendship I didn’t walk away from with my head held very high, for I am not the one on the side of hate. And by having maintained the friendship thus far, I know I have shown him that compassion doesn’t just stop when an Israeli walks into a room.

It’s the little things that show someone deeply entrenched into dogmatic doctrine that there is more to life than the cult is telling you. If he listens, that’s one small win for truth.

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Dear (Zio) Aunt Sally is back to solve another agonising Jewish concern! Agony Aunt Sally is my alter ego, here to help with your most pressing concerns and worries. Please read and enjoy.

Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally Prag. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but will be introducing a new column for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. Watch this space! For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

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Dear Zio Aunt Sally, What’s Ruffled Mark Ruffalo?

Some cryptic word play and a little maths lesson

Dear Aunt Sally,

I’m confused about the Mark Ruffalo controversy.

He says he isn’t antisemitic because he was criticising the Ellison family’s business interests, Oracle’s relationship with Israel and the proposed Paramount–Warner Bros. merger — not Jews.

But Jewish organisations say that his comments about the Ellisons, Israel, technology, media power and “genocide” repeated antisemitic tropes.

Surely you can either criticise a Jewish person or company without being antisemitic, or you can’t.

Which is it?

Jonathan

Dear Jonathan,

Ah, you’ve stumbled upon one of the great difficulties of modern life: A sentence can be literally about one thing and still carry the baggage of another.

Mark Ruffalo is perfectly entitled to oppose the Paramount–Warner Bros. merger. He’s entitled to criticise Oracle. He’s entitled to criticise the Israeli government. He’s entitled to have his own beliefs about what constitutes a genocide.

He may be utterly wrong in those beliefs, but that doesn’t, by itself, make him antisemitic, and none of those positions is, by itself, antisemitic.

He is quite right about one thing: criticising a government, a corporation or an individual Jew isn’t automatically criticism of Jews as a collective.

But that’s not really the whole question.

The question is how you construct the argument.

Ruffalo’s criticism didn’t simply say, “I oppose this merger because I believe it will concentrate too much media power in one family.” He brought Israel into the argument, described the Ellisons’ connection to Israel and Oracle’s technology in the context of Gaza, and warned that this supposedly sinister technology could eventually be “used on you.” He described the situation as involving “wealth,” “power” and “concentrated dominance.” With his warning, he insinuated that the merger was part of a conspiracy to control every individual in the world.

Paramount then accused him of invoking antisemitic tropes, while several Jewish organisations argued that the combination echoed longstanding ideas about Jews possessing disproportionate wealth, media influence and hidden power. (latimes.com)

And this is where things get uncomfortable.

Because antisemitism in the modern age doesn’t always announce its arrival.

Sometimes it borrows perfectly respectable political vocabulary and rearranges it into something rather older.

Let’s look at this in mathematical terms.

Exhibit A is a series of sums:

“I don’t want one billionaire family controlling too much of the media.” + 0 = Ok, understood.

“I object to Oracle’s contracts with the Israeli government.” + 0 = Gotcha.

“I think Israel’s government is behaving appallingly.” + 0 = Yeah, you may have a point.

Exhibit B, however, is one big, long equation:

“Bla bla one JEWISH billionaire family controlling the media.” + “Bla bla JEWS in Hollywood” + “Bla bla Oracle bla bla ISRAEL” + “Bla bla GENOCIDE” = This is now starting to sound remarkably like something out of 1930s Germany.

But when Jewish identity, Israel, immense wealth, technological power, media ownership and alleged sinister influence are repeatedly woven together into a single narrative, it is reasonable to ask whether we’re still discussing a corporate merger — or whether we’ve wandered into a very old story wearing a 2025 Chinese-made keffiyeh.

Ruffalo says the accusation of antisemitism is “appalling and fundamentally dishonest” and points out that he has Jewish friends, colleagues and loved ones. (thewrap.com)

I’m sure he does.

Not surprisingly it’s the oldest get-out clause in the book and is a little bit tired at this point. Even being Jewish doesn’t get you off the bigoted, racist asshole hook.

Someone can sincerely believe they are criticising a political ideology while inadvertently repeating a stereotype about the people associated with it.

The questions we need to ask are: would this argument make sense if the people involved weren’t Jewish? Would we describe another billionaire’s business interests in exactly the same way, and if so, would it require an assertion of a connection to Israel? Why has Israel been introduced into an argument about an American corporate merger?

Of course, we’ve been here before and we know the arguments: Israel is everywhere and has its fingers in everything, and is therefore controlling governments in the West. Ireland ordered its new €53 million Dassault Aviation Falcon 6X government jet without the essential low-visibility landing system because… it was designed by and is owned by Israel (“Ireland’s government in now placed in potential mortal danger because of the Jews”). While UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham is trying to prove his worth by banning UK trade with some Israeli companies, he could find himself forfeiting British security intelligence, much of which is provided by Israel. Of course, it’s all framed as an evil plot by Israel and has nothing to do with genuine threats to life such as unfavourable weather conditions (“controlled by Jews”) or Islamist terrorism (“wouldn’t exist if not for the Jews”).

Are we starting to see a mathematical pattern emerge?

Are we criticising specific actions, or constructing a story about an entire group possessing extraordinary wealth, influence and secret power simply because the coordinates are already there to map such a story?

The fact is that we can argue about whether something is antisemitic or not until the camels come home. It won’t change a thing.

And perhaps that is the larger lesson.

You don’t establish that you’re not prejudiced merely by announcing that you’re not prejudiced.

You establish it by being willing to examine your own language when someone tells you that it has wandered somewhere uncomfortable. Which is exactly what Mark Ruffalo refused to do. As does every antizionist, antisemitic bigot.

The maths are finally really starting to add up, hey?

Besides which, if Jews really controlled the media, I can only assume we’re doing a dreadful job. I haven’t managed to get a single newspaper to agree with my mother yet.

Yours,

Aunt Sally

Aunt Sally needs you!

If you happen across any online Jewish fuckery that needs the Aunt Sally treatment, feel free to email me at auntsally777@gmail.com. You can also email me with your own questions.

In the meantime, do subscribe and support my work. Aunt Sally and the JPF are here to keep pushing for honesty, truth, and an end to antizionist gaslighting. A free subscription helps to put my work on Jewish concerns further into the Substack realm, while a paid subscription enables me to spend more time researching and bringing sobering truths to the forefront.

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Wednesday stories (8 pm UK time) are by Sally Prag. Sunday stories (at the same time) feature the work of a range of writers. With the gradual evolution of the JPF, I am keeping all regular posts free but will be introducing a new column for paying subscribers called Book Talk — all about books relevant to Jewish life and literature. Watch this space! For now, if you would like to support me with a one-time donation, click here.

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Are British Taxpayers Unknowingly Funding Anti-Israel Hate Campaigns?

There’s mounting evidence that Britain’s generous financial system is being abused for political purposes

It was early afternoon on October 7th 2023, while 6,000 Hamas operatives were still on the ground in Israel, burning homes, kidnapping many from babies to grandparents, raping, and brutally murdering Jews, when the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) here in the UK was already applying for the required permissions to hold an anti-Israel march the following day. And it was on these marches that took place on October 8th that the genocide libel directed at Israel’s defensive military campaign had already begun taking root.

While people were marching, calling for Israel’s destruction, blaming Israel for the brutal murders and abductions of their men, women and children, Israel was shaken to its core; parents still frantically searching for their children, bodies still being found and counted. But already an organised campaign to vilify every Israeli for simply existing, and to turn the world at large against Israel had begun.

It quickly became apparent that the organisational body behind these marches and the spread of information online was large and very sophisticated, with multiple organisations acting in unison. For many of us looking on it’s evident that a complex web of activity, information, and the movement of money was already in place, almost as if it was prepared and warned about what was to come. But proving it is another matter.

NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute that analyses and reports on discrepancies among the activities of NGOs with specific interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict, has spent the last nearly three years investigating this web, and last month published their report on the matter. What it shows isn’t surprising but is very revealing.

There are two areas specifically concerning to the public. First is where gaps in transparency showed, implying likely intended influence by foreign players over British politics. Second is the charity system and its generosity that puts taxpayer money back into the pockets of charities for their selfless work… or perhaps not so selfless, as the case may be.

Britain has one of the most generous charitable systems in the world. Through Gift Aid — through which the charity can reclaim an additional 25 pence from HMRC for every pound donated — as well as tax reliefs and other concessions, the state gives charities financial advantages that are not available to ordinary organisations. The principle is straightforward: charities serve the public, and encouraging charitable giving is therefore considered to be in the public interest.

What a charity is not is a political organisation with a different tax status. The Charity Commission is explicit that a charity’s mission cannot be political and funds must be used for public benefit.

The question is whether the boundaries between charitable campaigning and political campaigning are sufficiently clear and sufficiently well enforced, particularly where organisations receiving the benefits of charitable status are also involved in highly political campaigns and public demonstrations.

The activities surrounding Britain’s post-October 7 pro-Palestinian protest movement raised enough red flags for potential abuse of this system to be investigated. Since the initial protests began on October 8th 2023, the day following the most deadly massacre of Jews in one single day since the Holocaust, NGO Monitor has been investigating the organisations involved in the protests along with their funding sources, foreign backing and wider campaign activities. Last month they published their findings in a report entitled Imported Influence: Foreign Funding, Regulatory Black Holes and Extremist Connections of the Post-October 7 UK Protest Infrastructure.

The report attempts to map the organisational and financial infrastructure behind post-October 7 protest activity in Britain. It identifies 40 organisations involved in protest and mobilisation activity and examines their legal structures, funding and relationships.

The report’s findings are striking. Of the 40 organisations it examines, NGO Monitor identifies:

• 10 as registered charities;

• 8 as companies;

• 9 as hybrid entities;

• 13 operating without a formal UK regulatory structure.

It further reports that 19 of the organisations receive UK government support either through FCDO funding or Gift Aid. The report also argues that substantial sums are entering the wider protest network through donations, memberships and other funding mechanisms, while the full amount spent on demonstrations is difficult to establish because of limitations in public disclosure.

A few notable examples from the report:

MAB Charitable Trust and Muslim Association of Britain

The MAB Charitable Trust, charity no. 1147031, is a Gift Aid-eligible registered charity operating under the name “Muslim Association of Britain Charitable Trust”. Separately, the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) is one of the organisations involved in the national Palestine Coalition. The available evidence does not establish that charitable funds have been used to finance demonstrations, but the relationship between the two entities — and any overlap in personnel, resources or finances — warrants scrutiny.

War on Want

War on Want, charity no. 208724, is a Gift Aid-eligible charity with £4.05 million income and £2.73 million expenditure in 2024–25. Its own annual report describes extensive political campaigning on Palestine and Gaza. This does not demonstrate misuse of charitable funds, since charities may campaign in pursuit of their charitable purposes, but it illustrates the difficulty of maintaining a clear distinction between charitable activity and political campaigning.

Islamic Human Rights Commission Trust

The Islamic Human Rights Commission Trust, charity no. 1106120, provides the clearest financial example. In 2025 it received £499,630 in donations plus £106,458 in Gift Aid, while transferring £481,431 to associated organisation Islamic Human Rights Commission Ltd for projects including research, advocacy/casework, Gaza, and Genocide Memorial Day. This does not establish that Gift Aid funded political activity, but it demonstrates how substantial tax-supported charitable income can flow through an associated organisation undertaking advocacy and campaigning-related work — precisely the type of relationship that merits careful scrutiny.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign

A separate issue arises in relation to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), one of the principal organisations coordinating the national demonstrations, through which the above charities and others investigated in the report established involvement in the political activity.

NGO Monitor’s 2026 investigation did not identify a specific foreign government or prohibited organisation as a source of PSC funding. Its finding was more fundamental: it was unable to establish PSC’s sources of funding from publicly available information.

PSC is not a registered charity but a company, and unlike a charity it is not subject to the same level of public financial disclosure. PSC states that it does not accept money from governments, political parties or large businesses and describes itself as being funded by members and supporters. Yet its reported income rose to approximately £3.8 million in 2025, while the public has no detailed breakdown of those donors. This does not demonstrate that PSC is receiving improper or foreign funding. It does, however, create a significant transparency gap when an organisation with millions of pounds of annual income is playing a central role in organising sustained political demonstrations and influencing public debate. The issue is therefore not that PSC has been shown to receive suspicious money, but that the public has limited means of independently verifying the provenance of the money it does receive.

The report essentially provides a research map: a list of organisations, relationships and financial questions that can be checked against primary sources such as Charity Commission filings, Companies House records, government grant databases and the organisations’ own published accounts. But it also uncovers how loopholes are being abused in ways that enable a political ideology to disrupt the lives of Londoners simply trying to exist in an already challenging society and economy, and to hijack the attention of the press and the public at large with rhetoric that ultimately dehumanises an entire nation that also comprises a section of British society.

How “charitable status” plays into the all-too-familiar mind-bending antics

Remember all those “journalists” who turned out to be members of Palestinian terror groups dressed in press vests? The broadsheet legacy media headlines lifted straight from their trusty “objective journalistic” partner, Al Jazeera? In other words, conventions that instil trust in the wider public, specifically targeting the more educated and financially comfortable classes.

Well, tapping into the charitable status sector of British society not only abuses the financial loopholes in British government policy but it gives the impression that these organisations are acting out of need, rather than hate. Out of compassion rather than malevolence. After all, that’s what charities do, don’t they? When a charity acts, it clearly defines the boundaries of innocent and harmful.

It uses a model that has already gained compassionate trust to veil a well-funded and highly organised political network, that campaigns for a particular policy outcome, and promotes a narrative that dehumanises Israelis, denies the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state, or presents its destruction as a legitimate political objective. There is an important distinction between criticising the Israeli government, advocating Palestinian statehood or campaigning for Palestinian rights — all legitimate subjects of political debate — and promoting an ideology in which an entire national or ethnic group is portrayed collectively as illegitimate or inherently culpable.

When organisations operating within such a network also benefit from charitable status, Gift Aid or other forms of public support, the issue ceases to be simply one of political expression. It becomes a question of whether public resources are inadvertently helping to amplify a political narrative that can marginalise Jewish citizens, legitimise hostility towards Israelis and normalise the proposition that the Jewish state itself should cease to exist. This does not mean that every organisation receiving charitable funding shares such an objective, nor that criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. It means that where evidence exists of organisations promoting or facilitating such narratives, their use of charitable structures and access to taxpayer-supported benefits warrants particularly careful scrutiny.

Ultimately, it further marginalises Israel. It furthers the narrative that Israel’s very presence in “Occupied Palestinian Territories” is purely for evil purposes and has no valid claims to safety or protection of lives — even when it is protecting the rights of the Palestinians themselves.

And for Jews like myself in the diaspora, living surrounded by impressionable minds with little grasp on wider history and merely a desire to see good triumph over evil, it leaves us all the more powerless against the increasingly powerful narrative that demonises Israel and fetishises the Palestinians.

This, of course, was the intention all along. This is why sophisticated coordination between the groups was so vital and why the legal status of different groups was so well-planned. But none of it came cheap. It required millions of dollars, only some of which is traceable, and the abuse of any system it could to create the coordinated campaign that has got this far.

Increasingly, I wonder what the heck the future holds for any of us.

But it’s why organisations such as NGO Monitor, UN Watch, and the many individuals working to expose the lies and deception as it abuses the very systems that are meant to (but fail miserably) to protect us.

We must never stop documenting every bit of this story and, one day, we hope, we will be able to tell our story to listening ears once more.

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Be My Habibi

Post-War Japan, the Post-9/11 West, and the Turn Toward the Aggressor

When Julian Casablancas, frontman of the Strokes, appeared on Kareem Rahma’s Subway Takes earlier this year and singled out “American Zionists” as the organizing villains of his worldview, he was doing something specific. By collapsing Jews, American Jews, and Zionists into a single legible villain, and elevating the Gaza war and the Palestinian cause as the moral center of a breezy conversation about things he doesn’t like, Casablancas was trafficking in symbols.

TEL : Exploring Jewish Histories in Cityscapes

Scapes and Signals

The Spanish sociologist and urban planner Manuel Castells argued that the defining feature of modern life is the “space of flows” that defines the “informational, networked city.” Identities, formerly organized around place, are increasingly organized around the currents we move through, or as he termed them…

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6 months ago · 35 likes · 5 comments · Dov Schulman

Symbols are signals, and one of the most powerful signals of cultural currency is cool. Casablancas, the Übermensch of early aughts New York hip, is himself — as a sort of embodiment of a white, wealthy elite performing its own dispossession — a symbol of aspirational cool. New York, as epicenter of aspirational cool, is sending more signals.

New York Magazine’s recent “Habibi City” issue, a celebration of SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) culture in the city of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is the latest and most visible expression of how that signal is being minted and spent. SWANA is a category capacious enough to unite Palestinians, Yemenis, and Iranians on a single cover: peoples vastly different in language, religion, ethnicity, and historical experience, whose governments are often actively working against each other’s interests, united here by the shared utility of the symbol.

In her 1995 essay “Cuties in Japan,” the scholar Sharon Kinsella described a culture that arose in post-war Japan among young people who refused to become adults. These are people who dressed themselves as innocent babes, who rejected authority by becoming small and embracing an aesthetic of kawaii, read as “sweet, adorable, innocent, pure, simple, genuine, gentle, vulnerable, weak and inexperienced.”

A country bombed into submission processed its trauma by becoming adorable, childlike, and by reorienting itself culturally, aesthetically, and emotionally toward the aggressor. Hello, kitty.

Is something similar happening to the United States, to the West since 9/11?

September 11th was the first in a cascading series of attacks on the West by a confederated effort of politically and theologically driven Islamists. If 9/11 was the most visible and perhaps most shocking-and-awing, what has followed has nary missed a beat: the Madrid train bombings of 2004, the London Underground attacks of 2005, the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the Eagles of Death Metal at Paris’ Bataclan on a Friday night in November 2015, the truck on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice on Bastille Day 2016. Coupled with compounding crises of slow economic erosion, COVID, and a politics of schlock, is it surprising that the West has barely had time to register, let alone process, the trauma of these attacks?

In Trauma and Recovery, the psychologist Judith Herman argues that psychological trauma cannot be understood outside its social and political context. Herman notes that unprocessed trauma produces seemingly paradoxical needs to both speak about what happened and the need to deny or distance from it. When applied at the collective level, Herman calls this “intermittent amnesia,” a cultural cycle of rediscovery and repression that prevents any genuine reckoning from taking hold. We know not what we see.

Could it be that the West, in its own unprocessed grief, is finding its kawaii moment now, reorienting, culturally, aesthetically, emotionally, toward the aggressor, drawing itself closer to the source of the threat as a way of managing what it cannot face directly?

To be clear, the aggressor is not Arab culture. It is not SWANA. It is not the millions of people whose food, music, language, and history are being celebrated in the pages of a magazine. The aggressor is a specific political and theological project that uses terror and violence as an act of spectacle and oppression. This distinction matters because it is precisely the nuance that gets lost when a magazine cover collapses diverse civilizations into a single aesthetic symbol of cool.

Contrary to what was said at the time, irony didn’t die on 9/11. The fact of collapsing Palestinians, Yemenis, and Iranians into a block on the cover of a magazine proves that.

The Arab world, the SWANA world, is vast, internally divided, ancient, and multifaceted in ways that a single magazine cover cannot begin to contain. It is a condescending use of soft power — the cultural tastemakers doing to SWANA peoples exactly what Casablancas did to Jews: flattening them into symbolic currency. The people become the symbol. The symbol serves the needs of the people doing the collapsing.

Jews are anciently familiar with this device.

The symbolic energy of the victimized Jew has been spent. The Holocaust survivor, the refugee, the eternal minority no longer serves the story the West needs to tell about itself. Given the relative post-war successes of the diasporic and Israeli world, the larger culture is now making new meaning to form the symbol now required: the Jew as oppressor, obstacle to justice, the Zionist as white-settler-colonialist. (The backlash to “Habibi City” of course being the disappearance of the vast and large Mizrahi community, neither white nor settler, but, yes, Jewish.) Into that vacancy pours the excess, erotic energy of a culture that has not processed its grief and needs somewhere to put it.

This is insulting to everyone.

In a recent article, Florida International University professor of religious studies, Iqbal Akhtar, writes:

“The Jewish-Muslim relationship has become one of the central testing grounds for whether deep religious and cultural difference can be held without violence, and its collapse feeds a wider crisis of pluralism now visible across the democratic world. When this relationship breaks, it does not break in isolation. It confirms a story many people already want to believe: that difference is dangerous, that the only stable society is a homogeneous one, that the neighbor who is raised differently is a threat to be managed rather than a person to be known.”

Neither the SWANA world nor the Jewish world should accept the role being assigned to them. Both are being used as symbols in a proxy war for making meaning. Both deserve to be known as what they actually are: ancient, complex, internally divided peoples with legitimate claims on dignity, autonomy, and particularity.

Two symbols, dancing to someone else’s choreography, ought to refuse the invitation. And maybe, in refusing it together, find a shared song.

Habibi, be mine.

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