Category: Israel

Mamdani booed for his October 7 statement—by supporters of Palestine

October 8, 2026 • 9:30 am

UPDATE:  In what can only be a gesture of anti-Israel defiance, Mamdani ate dinner on October 7 at an ideologically-themed Palestinian restaurant (h/t Wayne):

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani dined at a Palestinian restaurant chain blasted for being “openly genocidal” against Jews on the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel.

Hizzoner ate dinner at Ayat Hinds Hall on the Upper West Side — part of a chain whose sister restaurant in Brooklyn was blasted for featuring a menu section entitled “From the River to the Sea,” in the wake of the 2023 attacks.

The restaurant is named after Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian child who was killed by IDF forces in Gaza in Jan. 2024, and also pays homage to the anti-Israel protesters at Columbia University, who renamed Hamilton Hall “Hind’s Hall” when they took over the building.

A tweet:

**********************************

Yesterday, New York City’s Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, issued a statement commemorating the October 7, 2023 attack of Hamas on Israel. The problem for me and many others was the the commemoration was more about the depravity of Israel than of Hamas, and more sympathetic to the Palestinians to the Israelis.  Here’s the statement as given by the Mayor’s Office:

This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.

The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them—all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.

Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.

To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.

There you have it: 49 words devoted to Hamas’s attack, and 163 words on the crimes of Israel, including an erroneous statement about the death toll as well as inclusion of the Three Big Lies about Israeli apartheid, occupation, and genocide.

And it’s not that different from the statement he made on October 7 of last year:

Yesterday’s small-beer “commemoration” was decried by Jews and Jewish organizations, but what is surprising is that Mamdani was booed for it—by supporters of Palestine! When I first saw the headline below in the NYT, I thought, “Well, of course the Jews harbor anger and bitterness”about the statement, but then I learned that, no, it was supporters of Palestine who were angry and bitter. Click to read, or see an archived version of the article here:

An excerpt, and I have to say it brought me a frisson of pleasure:

It seemed inevitable that the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks would touch off tensions for Zohran Mamdani, a longtime critic of Israel and the first Muslim mayor of a city that is 12 percent Jewish.

But Wednesday erupted with such anger and emotion that it seemed to overwhelm any efforts to solemnly mark the deadliest day in Israeli history.

Mr. Mamdani began the day shortly before 9 a.m. by issuing a statement that was meant to acknowledge the Oct. 7 anniversary but almost immediately caused an uproar among some Jewish leaders, who said it minimized Israeli suffering in the Hamas-led attacks.

It took a turn roughly 12 hours later at a vigil organized by Israeli peace activists in Union Square in Manhattan, where pro-Palestinian demonstrators disrupted the event to jeer the mayor. He appeared ashen and upset as he left, without addressing the crowd, flanked by his security detail as he walked to a waiting S.U.V. at 8:50 p.m.

The events raised questions about whether Mr. Mamdani, who energized his campaign with his embrace of the Palestinian cause and ardent criticism of Israel, can now, as mayor, unite New Yorkers whose emotions remain inflamed over the issue.

“This is a moment when people are looking to see if we have the kind of leadership that brings people together, lowers the temperature and makes everyone feel respected,” said Mark Treyger, the chief executive of the Jewish Community Relations Council. “And today was just not it.”

The mayor, who is known for his broad, effervescent smile, seemed especially stung by the opposition to him expressed by the pro-Palestinian crowd in Union Square, given his consistent support of their cause.

During the vigil, he stared stone-faced, and at times looked crestfallen, as the activists chanted in support of Hamas, called for the deaths of Israeli soldiers and denounced him as a “traitor,” many citing his meetings with President Trump or his efforts to build ties with Jewish leaders.

“Zohran, you coward!” someone yelled from the crowd, which numbered in the hundreds. Others yelled, “Zohran is a sellout!”

The chickens have come home to roost: now Mamdani, who’s tried to walk a fine line between the Jews and Muslims, is being booed by his own ilk—and it bothers him.

I have no doubt that Mamdani is not only anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, but also suspect he’s an Islamist and may even be anti-Semitic.

There are more Jews than Muslims in NYC: Grok estimates about 960,000 Jews and between 250,000 and 700,000 Muslims.)Yet about a third of Jews who voted for Mayor in 2025 voted for Mamdani.  Granted, they may have been “progressives” taken in by Mamdani’s promises of free daycare, free public transportation, and subsidized grocery stores, but in the end they’re like chickens voting for KFC. You just know that when Mamadani goes home at night to his antisemitic wife Rama Duwaji, they don’t sit around and praise Israel!

Here’s a news clip showing some of the booing at the candlelight vigil.

 

The man who predicted the October 7 attack

October 5, 2026 • 8:15 am

You heard it here first, and only now, nearly three years later, the Free Press has reported on this.

When I was in Israel in September of 2023, I met Yigal Carmon, the head of MEMRI. He’s described this way by Wikipedia:

. . . . the president and co-founder of MEMRI, an organization which monitors and translates Arabic and Persian publications, radio and TV broadcasts, and religious sermons into many languages and circulates them over the Internet.

Carmon was a colonel at Aman, the Israeli military intelligence service, and later counter-terrorism advisor to Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Yitzhak Shamir.

Malgorzata, who translated over 5,000 articles from English into Polish for MEMRI, gave me an introduction to Carmon, and I spent a lovely day with him in and around Jerusalem. After our “security tour,” (see below) we had a fateful lunch.

On January 17, 2024, with Yigal’s permission, I posted an exchange I had with him during my September visit. Here’s from my post:

Yigal is an email friend of Malgorzata, and she put me in touch with him before I went to Israel last September. The second day I was in Jerusalem, I visited MEMRI, and Yigal took me to lunch, along with a reporter named Benjamin Weinthal (name given with permission). During that lunch, Yigal said offhandedly, “You know, I think there will be a war between Hamas and Israel in September or October.” I was stunned, but the reporter wasn’t taken aback and in fact was the first journalist to report Yigal’s prediction.  I said “How do you know this?”  Apparently the buzz that MEMRI got from the Arab world had given him a hint.  Yigal added that there might be a terrorist attack, and if, say five or fewer IDF soldiers were killed, there probably wouldn’t be a war. But if it were ten or more, he added, Israel would probably go to war.

Of course at that time Yigal had no idea that the attack would be on Israeli civilians, not IDF soldiers, and far more than ten would die.

Later, Yigal gave us a “security tour” of the Jerusalem area, pointing out spots of interest in the Arab/Israeli conflict. When I returned to America, I sent his wife (who also gave me several great tours of Jerusalem) a copy of my two trade books as a token of gratitude. They were sent to the MEMRI offices. [JAC: They were returned six months later. No packages got into Israel at that time.]

On October 6, I informed Yigal that I mailed the books, and wrote this email (I’ve bolded the interesting bits):

From: Jerry Coyne Sent: Friday, October 6, 2023 1:32 PMTo: Yigal Carmon

Hi Yigal,
I am sending two of my books, as per your wife’s request, to MEMRI, so if the package below comes, please sign for it. They are autographed.
Hope all is well in Israel. Where is that war you predicted?
best,Jerry
And Yigal answered the same day. Here is what he said:
From: Yigal Carmon
To: ​Jerry Coyne​
Fri 10/6/2023 12:43 PM
Thank you , Jerry. We will read at least significant parts of them.
Give me some 3 weeks more – as I predicted. I said Sept. or October….😂😂🤣🤣

As you can see, that exchange was on October 6. The very next morning when I woke up, I learned that all hell had broken loose. Hamas had attacked Israel, killing 1200 people, almost all civilians. Yigal was right, but the toll wasn’t 10 or 100, but 1200, and more then ten IDF soldiers. A war, according to Yigal’s prognostication, was then inevitable. Yigal’s prediction had been previously published in MEMRI, but apparently the Israeli government paid no attention.

Of course that day changed everything. It was the beginning of the war and its concomitant rise in Israel and Jew hatred in the world—something that I never could have predicted—as well as the beginning of my own awareness of antisemitism and the onset of my sympathies for Israel (“the more they hate us, the Jewisher we get”).

Now the Free Press is late to the party (see the article by Weinthal), but still accurate, with this article published today). If you’re a subscriber, click to read it:

A few excerpts:

In August 31, 2023, Yigal Carmon, a counterterrorism adviser to Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin more than a generation ago, published a warning on the website of his think tank, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). “Signs of Possible War in September–October,” said the headline of the article, written from Jerusalem in Carmon’s succinct, often brusque style.

Carmon, MEMRI’s 80-year-old founder, didn’t predict specifically that Hamas would instigate the war, or that it would begin on Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip. But he stressed that there were increased rumblings and threats of a major operation coming from the militant chiefs in the Middle East that he and MEMRI constantly monitor through Arabic- and Persian-language media channels. “The leaders of the terror organizations have recently increased their threats of a comprehensive regional war, in response to Israeli threats to assassinate terror operatives and those who dispatch them,” wrote Carmon.

Carmon’s warning proclaimed that Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and other Iranian-backed proxy groups were acquiring and deploying increasingly sophisticated weapons and tactics that would compel a major Israeli reprisal. Those weapons “can cause a large number of Israeli fatalities,” Carmon wrote.

But that didn’t cause alarm in Jerusalem or Washington—or cause much reaction at all. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the week before Hamas’s attack that “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

And those in Israel’s national security establishment who did respond to Carmon’s prediction of doom resolutely dismissed it. “At this time, I believe that neither Hezbollah nor Hamas have an appetite for a full-blown confrontation with Israel, because they understand how devastating it would be for them,” retired Israeli general Amir Avivi told Iran International on September 5, 2023.

. . .Three years later, Carmon’s credibility has been bolstered by a string of recent reporting by the American and Israeli media claiming that he was not the only one sounding the alarm, and that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu received advance warnings about a possible attack, including from the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. According to The Atlantic, Egypt’s intelligence chief flew to Tel Aviv less than two weeks before Hamas’s attack to report that the group seemed to be preparing for a major assault. Netanyahu’s office has denied that claim.

When I spoke to Carmon, he told me that Israel’s government didn’t need secret intelligence from Egypt or anywhere else to see that a catastrophic war could be coming. “It was all open-source. We’re not dealing with secrets,” he said about himself and MEMRI, the NGO that he started in 1998 and still leads, and that’s headquartered in Washington but has offices in Jerusalem and a number of European and Asian capitals. “We believed them. We didn’t dismiss it as bullshit,” he said of the threats issued by Israel’s enemies.

This week, Carmon is expanding on his warnings with the publication of a new report titled Chronicles of a Disaster Foretold and shared exclusively with The Free Press. In it, he lays out in much more detail the Arabic-language media and social media posts that pointed to Hamas’s preparations for an attack in 2023. The report also outlines evidence that the Palestinian militant group was channeling outside aid into weapons development.

I won’t describe the rest of the piece, which you can read for yourself (a subscription is worth it), but here are two more bits:

Particularly alarming in retrospect was a large Hamas military drill staged in Gaza in September 2023. MEMRI reported on the military drill at the time, and Carmon now believes it was essentially a “final walkthrough” for what occurred a month later.

. . . So how did Israel fail to better anticipate an attack? Carmon now believes that Netanyahu and his government were lulled into a false sense of security by their views that Hamas’s leadership was focused on this economic growth and that Qatari-supplied cash flowing into Gaza was essentially buying peace. That money was easily diverted into Hamas’s military growth, such as “building Hamas military power and its labyrinth of underground tunnels,” according to the new report by MEMRI.

I remember asking Yigal, after hearing him and the reporter, why the Israeli secret services (there are three) didn’t pay attention to MEMRI.  I don’t recall his answer, but it was something along the lines of “the security services are jealous of their own information and don’t pay attention to stuff coming from other sources.” Pity, that. Imagine if Israel had beefed up security at the border with Gaza before October!

h/t: Anna

Pushback on the the movie “NAZA”

September 25, 2026 • 9:30 am

About ten days ago I reported on the first public showing of the anti-Israel film “NAZA,” made by two Israelis. Its premise was the IDF had, during the Gaza war, engaged in the deliberate targeting of civilians using AI, not caring about how many civilians they killed and, in fact, killing as many as possible (the “genocide” trope). The movie apparently used information from 24 anonymous IDF sources, and showing of the movie has been highly restricted. In fact, I wasn’t sure whether it had been shown beyond the Venice Film Festival, where it got  not only a prize but a standing ovation that was 24½ minutes long: the longest in the history of the festival. Grok now tells me that it’s been shown at a festival in Bologna as well, and there are plans for a wider release. But most people haven’t seen it, including the IDF.  Some of its approbation comes from the fact that it was directed by two Israelis, who, of course, couldn’t possibly be showing stuff that was wrong or distorted.

Nevertheless, you can tell a lot about the movie’s premise from this short , 83-second trailer, which has English subtitles. And some of the film’s contents have leaked.

The premise is that there was an IDF program to deliberately kill civilians, whether directly or as “collateral damage” (the meaning of the word “Naza”), and in some strikes up to 500 Gazan civilians were killed.  The video by Natasha Hausdorff and the two articles in the Times of Israel below vigorously dispute this allegation, though you can dismiss them, if you wish, because those sources are either Israeli or sympathetic to Israel.  But before you join the Stalinesque-wave of applause for NAZA (remember from The Gulag Archipelago that the first person who stopped applauding for the Russian leader was arrested), hear them out.

The 26-minute take by Hausdorff, who hasn’t seen the movie, is based on what has been made public about the movie and its trailer. She clearly explains the rule of proportionality as obeyed by the IDF and the ways the IDF warned civilians of imminent attacks.  NAZA apparently ignores Hausdorff’s point: estimating “collateral damage” before a strike is a legal obligation, not a nefarious exercise. As she says:

“And what the filmmakers do is present the modeling of incidental harm to a lay audience as though it were some cold Israeli invention devised for the purpose of justifying slaughter. Well, it isn’t an Israeli invention—it’s the law. And it’s precisely intended  to minimize excessive harm to civilians. Pre-strike collateral damage estimation is the standard practice in every law-abiding Western military—that includes Americans and NATO forces. It’s the procedural tool that compels a commander to confront the presence of non-combatants before a weapon is ever released.”

She goes on to explain what kind of civilian assessment and damage do and do not constitute war crimes. As for the “death of 500 civilians” accusation in NAZA, it’s been strongly denied by the IDF; indeed, no attack was approved to eliminate a Hamas commander, however powerful he be, that would kill more than 100 civilians.  Hausdorff also denies that decisions about where and who are attacked by the IDF are made by machines rather than humans; here the IDF has already published its protocol, which involves three different groups of people.

As for the anonymous IDF souces, Hausdorff avers that, “From an evidential standpoint, these accounts are unverified in every respect that actually matters. We don’t know who these individuals are. We don’t know what roles they had. And we don’t know they are who the filmmakers say they are.” This means that neither Israel nor anybody else can establish whether the accounts are true.

Second, this Times of Israel by Sarit Zehavi (click to read) also casts strong doubt on the film’s premise, for Zehavi, who was willing to be interviewed but wasn’t asked, helped construct the very system of estimating civilian casualties. (She is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli IDF reserve.) Click the headline to read.

An excerpt:

The creators of the recent documentary, “NAZA,” about “Naza” (a Hebrew military acronym for Nezek Agavi – collateral damage) did not have to work too hard to discover the truth.

They could have simply interviewed me. I would have stood in front of the camera, without hiding my identity, on the roof of my house nine kilometers (5.6 miles) from Lebanon, where we endured endless barrages of rockets, and explained the reality on the ground.

A little less than 20 years ago, I was one of the founders of the unit within the IDF that deals with warning populations on the other side of enemy lines and preserving civilian lives.

We built the processes that define how to issue evacuation warnings, and how to track evacuations. I was personally involved in formulating target approval processes and operational discussions.

If they had spoken with me, I would have explained that the chart shown at the beginning of the film’s promotional material is not a “killing chart,” but rather a planning chart for a target identified as being used by Hamas.

Its purpose is to determine whether to strike at all, who in the command echelon is authorized to approve the strike, with what munitions, and under what conditions. In stark contrast to the way it is presented in the promotional material, when the words “Naza 500 – collateral damage estimated at 500” appear in the approval process, it means that action must be taken to reduce the collateral damage.

There are a variety of ways to do this, such as issuing an evacuation warning, using precision munitions, or canceling the strike entirely. Noting the collateral damage on the target sheet does not signify an intention to kill civilians or commit “genocide”; it is intended, first and foremost, to prevent civilian deaths.

Our enemies, both Hamas and Hezbollah, deliberately place their rockets and headquarters in the heart of civilian areas, in tunnels under Beirut or in high-rise residential buildings in southern Lebanon. Hamas in Gaza does the same, operating in civilian areas and using children as human shields. They do this on the working assumption that if Israel strikes without warning, hundreds of civilians will be killed. That is exactly their goal. But Israel chooses differently: there are hundreds of soldiers and officers in the IDF whose sole role is protecting civilians in enemy territory. That is what they think about from the moment they wake up in the morning.

I would have expected a serious examination of this subject to include the perspective of former IDF personnel, like me, as well as serving soldiers and officers who are familiar with these procedures and could explain the professional meaning of collateral-damage assessments. Based on the promotional materials I have seen, that perspective is absent.

The promo for the film claims that the IDF “never checks the number of civilians killed.”

The truth is that checking the exact number of casualties in enemy territory in real time is a complex and nearly impossible task. This is exactly why the collateral damage assessment process takes into account factors such as the size of the structure and the estimated number of civilians routinely in its vicinity.

. . .According to IDF officials quoted in the Israeli media, the filmmakers did not seek the military’s response before the film was released, and the IDF learned of its claims through the media. The IDF spokesperson later publicly asked to view the full documentary in order to respond to its allegations. If the filmmakers, both of them investigative journalists, have declined to disclose their film or findings to the IDF, that would be contrary to basic journalistic ethics.

Without knowing more about the film’s anonymous sources, it is impossible to know what roles the interviewees held within the system, and whether their accounts, assuming they are authentic, are even relevant to understanding the chain of approvals and actions taken prior to striking a target.

The promotional materials released so far present the story from a very narrow angle: they rely on anonymous sources whose level of involvement, rank, and understanding of the process are unclear, while completely omitting the experts who built these systems with one goal: preserving human life. There are such experts. I was one of them.

The article below by Omer Shem Tov is based on an op-ed he wrote in the Wall Street Journal. It’s not all that germane to the film but I’m throwing in the links here for information.

Shem Tov was a hostage kidnapped on October 7, and recounts the lengths Israel went to not to kill him by accident:

Shem Tov, who was kidnapped on October 7, 2023, from the Nova music festival near the Gaza border, recounted an instance when the mother of one of his captors received a phone call from the IDF warning her of an imminent airstrike.

“Hamas knew where I was and left me to die. Israel didn’t know my location, but it knew where my captor’s mother was and called to make sure she wasn’t killed accidentally,” he wrote. “There I was — kidnapped, starved and tortured by her son — while my army was trying to keep his mother alive.”

He said his captors in Gaza celebrated death and destruction on both sides: “For Hamas, destruction itself could be victory. As long as there was death on either side, Hamas could win.”

Shem Tov said that “Israel desperately wanted me home. But not at any price. There were Palestinian civilians between Israel and me. So Israel dropped leaflets, sent messages, made phone calls and ordered evacuations. It tried to minimize NAZA, or collateral damage.”

. . The freed hostage suggested that Israel “paid a price” for its efforts to reduce civilian casualties: “They gave Hamas time. They exposed Israeli soldiers to greater danger. And they left hostages like me waiting longer.”

“If Israel had cared less about NAZA, perhaps I would have come home sooner,” he added. “Fewer Israeli soldiers might have died. Fewer hostages might have died. But more Palestinians would have.”

Shem Tov wrote that he is troubled by reports about the documentary film, which he notes that he also hasn’t seen in full.

“In Venice, the film received a standing ovation that lasted more than 24 minutes,” he said. “As a former hostage, those minutes felt like a shower of knives. Not because the film shows Palestinian suffering, which is real and deserves to be seen. What hurts is that the film, as it has been reported, doesn’t seem to see me.”

The former captive said that to the filmmakers, “perhaps I am NAZA too. Collateral damage. A Jewish hostage who could have been left to rot in a Hamas tunnel, or murdered alongside my friends at Nova, because fighting to free me, and to protect Israelis from the people who did this, is itself treated as morally suspect.”

The lengths that Israel went to to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties—the dropping of leaflets, the phone calls to civilians in buildings scheduled for bombing, the “knock on the door”—an innocuous bomb dropped whose noise would alert people to evacuate—and the announcement of “safe areas” for evacuation—all this has been announced publicly and not contested, even by the New York Times. And it gives the lie to the idea that the IDF wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible. If they really wanted to perpetrate a genocide, why the delivery of food and polio vaccine to Gaza? Why these warnings? Why no bombing of the West Bank? What army engaged in a war has ever taken these precautions? And now this film, which apparently stimulates huge approbation by Israel- and Jew-haters everywhere.

I never even thought much about anti-semitism before October 7 three years ago, but now that it’s apparently stimulated a huge outpouring of belief in Big Lies, like the Genocide Myth, I have no choice but to conclude that antisemitism is ubiquitous, and simply was repressed until the Hamas attack gave it an excuse to emerge.

No, it’s not all about Netanyahu (Israel will be hated no matter who becomes Prime Minister), and no, it’s not all about Zionism (“Zionist” has become a euphemism for “Jew”). It’s about hatred of Jews, pure and simple. As I’m a nonbelieving Jew and never banged on about antisemitism before October 7, I am confident in these conclusions. You will never find a purveyor of the Genocide Lie who will admit that they’re wrong, but the evidence shows they are wrong. And the makers of NAZA, and those who so fervently applaud that film, also perpetuate the Big Lie.  As does the British Government with its chowderheaded boycott of Jewish products in false hopes that it will bring about the impossible: a “two-state solution.” I agree with Bill Maher that those who spread the Genocide Lie are at the same time spreading antisemitism.

There are but 16 million Jews in the world, with about half of them in Israel, yet that tiny country, the only democracy in the Middle East, and a the only place where women, gays, and ethnic minorities have equal rights, seems to be the focus of the world’s damnation.  The explanation is clear.

The two-state delusion

September 24, 2026 • 9:30 am

As I reported recently, UK foreign secretary Ed Miliband (under Labour) announced that a new government’s policy would (if passed) include imposing sanctions on companies in the West Bank, but only Jewish ones.  I also quoted Miliband at length to show that he deemed this policy essential to effect the one thing he and Labour thought would end the enmity between Israel and Palestine: the vaunted TWO-STATE SOLUTION. A couple of quotes from the Secretary himself.

So Madame Deputy Speaker, there is a deeply painful contrast between our professed commitment to a two state solution, and the reality on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank.

. . . We should always be proud that it was a Labour government that took the historic step of recognising the State of Palestine.

What we seek today is to salvage the only course for peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians – the two state solution.

. . .Ethnic cleansing is defined by the UN as ‘a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.’

The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank – perpetrated by settler terrorists.

To advance the two state solution, we also need viable and effective Palestinian governance.

So I urge the Palestinian Authority to accelerate reform and I urge Israel to lift its withholding of revenues that is financially crippling the provision of essential services in the West Bank.

The set of measures I have announced represents a clear message to the government of Israel, to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and to the world that we will not acquiesce in the destruction of the two state solution.

Now anybody who says something like this is a complete chowderhead on several fronts. First, as we see later in this post, neither Israel nor Palestine wants a two-state solution. Palestine has rejected one repeatedly: at least a half-dozen times, and often on favorable terms for Palestine That’s because the powers that be in Palestine want a one state solution: a state that would ostensibly harbor Jews and Palestinians, which is like wanting a state that would harbor both dynamite and matches. Such a state would eventually lead to the expulsion or mass death of Jews, which is what most Palestinians want.

Nor do Jews want such a state. They used to, when several times they offered one to Palestine, but after October 7 they realized that having a state run by promoters of terrorism right next to Israel, whether those terrorists be Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or the Palestinian Authority, would simply guarantee more attacks on Israel.  In fact Gaza was, in effect, a Palestinian state, and how well did that work out?

Finally, the “viable and effective Palestinian governance” that Miliband calls for simply does not exist. People have bruited about the Palestinian Authority, but anybody who knows anything about the PA knows that that organization is also a hotbed of terrorism that pays off Palestinians for killing Jews, and is also rejected by Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza in favor of the even more terroristic Hamas.

And so a new Pew Poll, as reported in the Times of Israel, shows that neither side thinks that a two-state solution is the solution to coexistence of Palestinians and Israelis. Ed Miliband, and other European countries who will sanction Israel in hopes of effecting that solution, are speaking from their nether orifices.

Click below to read the ToI article:

Quotes:

A large majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and a majority of Israelis say they do not believe Israel and an independent Palestinian state can coexist peacefully, according to a new Pew survey.

Just 17% of Israelis said they believed a path to peaceful coexistence could be found, compared with 56% who said it could not. Among Palestinians surveyed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, 21% said coexistence was possible, while 68% said it was not.

The Israeli result is a low point in more than a decade of Pew polling on the issue. The share saying coexistence was possible had already fallen to its lowest level in 2025 and remained roughly unchanged in 2026.

The year 2026 was the first time that more than half of Israeli respondents explicitly said it was impossible.

Among Jewish Israelis, 16% said a two-state solution was possible, while 64% said it was not. Among Arab Israelis, 46% either said they did not know or declined to answer, while 23% said peaceful coexistence was possible and 26% said it was not.

Pew surveyed 1,001 people in Israel and 1,038 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israeli interviews were conducted from April 5 to May 6, while Palestinian interviews took place from March 30 to April 28, in Hebrew and Arabic.

The fieldwork coincided with the Iran war, beginning while fighting was still underway and continuing after an initial ceasefire was declared on April 7. Gaza was not included because Pew said it was unable to conduct fieldwork there.

Click below to go to the Pew poll and article:

First, the data. Note that Israeli Arabs don’t really want to answer, perhaps because they fear being demonized if they think peaceful coexistence is possible. Overall, Palestinian adults in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are as pessimistic as are Israeli adults:

Now some wishful thinking:

Why do some Israelis and Palestinians think Israel and an independent Palestinian state can coexist peacefully?

Small shares of the populations in both Israel (17%) and the West Bank and East Jerusalem (21%) say a way can be found for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully.

When asked why they think so, some Israelis and Palestinians offer similar reasons: Both see peace between two states as the inevitable conclusion to their conflict and acknowledge that a diplomatic peace process would bring about clearly-defined borders and independence from each other.

But there are also some differences in their open-ended responses. Palestinians tend to emphasize the benefits of peace, such as economic prosperity for both peoples, while Israelis explain that peace is possible under certain conditions, like increased trust or political will.

Among those who say peaceful coexistence is possible, an interest in peace is a common sentiment. Some say that they personally want peace or – in the words of one respondent – that “both sides want to live in peace.” And others see peace as an imperative, saying, “we must make an effort.”

In addition, some point to interpersonal relationships between the two sides as evidence that they can coexist. “Just as Arabs and Jews live in harmony in Jaffa, so it is possible between countries,” said one Jewish Israeli woman. And a Palestinian woman expressed similar reasoning, saying, “There are friendships between Arabs and Jews, and peace can be achieved.”

“We need to find the path to peace for the sake of our children and their children.”
Jewish man, 29, Israel

“We tried coexistence before and it was successful.”
Man, 27, West Bank/East Jerusalem

I wonder when that was.

“We complement each other in work, trade and security, so that we may live together.”
Woman, 18, West Bank/East Jerusalem

In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, some recalled periods of trust and cooperation in the past. “We used to coexist and could accept each other,” said one Palestinian man. “Previously, coexistence and peace existed, and peaceful coexistence is possible now, just as it was before,” said another.

Many Palestinians stress the economic benefits peace would bring. Peace is “the way to improve the economic situation of the Palestinians,” one Palestinian woman said. Others mention the economic interdependence between the two peoples: “We work for them, they need Palestinian labor,” said one Palestinian man, adding, “We share the same economy and the same currency that Israel uses.”

Palestinians are more likely than Israelis to explain, in their own words, that peace between two states can be achieved because they see it as a desirable outcome. This is the most common theme in the open-ended responses from people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem who say a two-state solution is possible.

This strikes me as a sentiment along the lines of “If wishes were horses, even beggars could ride.” Just because peace is desirable for some people doesn’t mean that it will come, simply because (in my view, of course), peace was never desirable for most Palestinians, and while it was desirable for many Israelis as well as for me, that desire vaporized on October 7.  So long as Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are in control of the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank, there will never be peace, as both of those organizations are dedicated to extirpating Israel.  And there is as of yet no viable alternative. UNRWA, for example, has helped teach a generation of Palestinian children to hate Jews and love martyrdom. It is not until those children grow up and their own children are brought up under a different system—not something that seems likely—will there be hope for peace.

The figure below shows the waning confidence in a two-state solution over the past thirteen years. It’s fallen by about two-thirds among Israelis of all stripes!:

Finally, there’s a lot about why Israelis and Palestinians think they cannot coexist. Here are some of many reasons:

Why do most Israelis and Palestinians think peaceful coexistence is not possible?

Most Israelis and Palestinians say a two-state solution is not a viable option. Over half of the people surveyed in Israel (56%) and roughly seven-in-ten in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (68%) cannot see a way for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully.

When asked to explain their answer, Israelis and Palestinians say coexistence is not possible because their differences are too great to overcome. People on both sides agree that they are enemies with competing belief systems who are fighting over the same land, and some also mention the violence between them, which has culminated in the most recent war. Small shares in both places accuse the other side of rejecting peace.

But there are points of disagreement about why they cannot coexist, in their own words. While Israelis explain that an independent Palestinian state would pose a threat to Israel, many Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem say coexistence is not an option while they live under Israeli control.

One of the top reasons that Israelis and Palestinians alike say peaceful coexistence is not possible is disagreement over the land.

Some think there is not enough land to split. For example, one Palestinian woman said that “Palestine cannot be divided into two states.” Another said that “there cannot be two peoples when there is no room for two peoples.” Israelis express similar sentiments – saying, for example, that “Israel does not have enough territory to divide into two states” or that “there is no land to establish a Palestinian state.”

In both places, there are people who believe they are the only rightful owners of the land. One Jewish Israeli woman said, “This is our land alone,” and another stated that “the Holy Land belongs only to the Jewish people and was given to them by God.” Similarly, some Palestinians say Israel “stole our land” and that “the homeland belongs to the Palestinians.”

They didn’t survey Gazans for obvious reasons, and the “under Israeli control” reason wouldn’t have as much force before October 7, 2023.  I have every reason to think that had Hamas (much less the PA) not controlled Gaza (they were voted in by its residents), the territory would now be a seaside tourist destination. Yes, Israel did maintain control over air, land, and sea crossings into and out of Gaza, but so did Egypt, and nobody blames that country for an “occupation” (Egypt also refused to let Palestinian refugees settle in their land after the October 7 war began). Those restrictions were, of course, largely due to terrorism, and yet Gazans were largely free to work in Israel as well as to use its transportation facilities to leave the area. And with few exceptions they could get treatment in Israeli hospitals.  It’s undeniable that Palestinian terrorism is the main reason that Israel has put restrictions on Gaza and the West Bank, and why Israeli enthusiasm for the West Bank has cooled.

Natasha Hausdorff on Israel’s “illegal” settlements and “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians

September 17, 2026 • 9:30 am

UK barrister, international law advocate, and legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel Natasha Hausdorff has argued several times on video why Israeli’s occupation of Area C of the West Bank is neither illegal nor constitutes “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians.  Remember,  according to the 1995 Oslo II accords, Areas A and B are largely under Palestinian control, with area A under full Palestinian civil and security control, while area B is under full Palestinian civil control and joint Israeli/Palestinian security control—and Jews aren’t allowed to live in either area. Area C is under full Israeli security and civil control, and both Palestinians (about 300,000) and Israelis (about 500,000) are allowed to live in that area. The Palestinians in that area are largely descendants of people who were there pre-Oslo, and Palestinians are rarely allowed to build new houses or settlements there. Israelis are allowed to move there of their own accord.

Note that these borders are temporary, and the whole division was supposed to be settled at some time after Oslo II. But that settlement never happened. I believe the idea was that all of area C was supposed to be transferred to Palestine, but not until there was a full settlement, including apportionment of land, between Palestine and Israel. And if you think Israel won’t move its own residents out of an area to bring peace, then you’re forgetting Israel’s own “ethnic cleansing” of Jews from Gaza in 2005. Did that bring peace? You know the answer.

You can see several videos of Hausdorff’s arguments (e.g., here, here and here) which are pretty clear (the first is marred by the interviewer shouting). But in a recent article in the Spectator (click on archived link below) Hausdorff is a bit confusing, to the extent that her argument is obscured by fine points of international law and claims of those who oppose them. It’s not her fault; the situation is complicated. You can read her argument by clicking on the archived link below, but I’ve asked Grok to put her argument in simpler language.

The whole question appears to hinge on two issues:

  1. Whether the West Bank lies within Israel’s sovereign boundaries. Hausdorff argues “yes”.
  2. Whether Israel forcibly transported or deported its citizens into the West Bank or whether Israelis settled in Israeli-administered territory of their own volition. Hausdorff maintains the latter, arguing (correctly, I think) that the border of area C is an “armistice” line rather than the border of a sovereign territory.

To quote her Spectator article:

A legal rule selectively (and incorrectly) cited whenever Jews build houses across an armistice line, which is not and never was a border, is not the application of law but political posturing. Additionally, the Oslo Accords, which gave Palestinians self-government in Areas A and B of the West Bank, left Area C under Israeli administration, and deliberately reserved settlements, borders and Jerusalem for final-status negotiations.

. . . The consequences extend far beyond legal disputes. The phrase ‘illegal settlements’ is increasingly being used to mean something much more disturbing: that Jews should not live in certain places because they are Jews. Consider what is being demanded. A future Palestinian state is routinely imagined as requiring the removal of hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes. The Jewish residence in Hebron, the cradle of Jewish civilisation, is inexplicably presented as an international crime. As is the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem or the Jewish communities re-established after their inhabitants were expelled.

No comparable demand would be tolerated elsewhere. We would immediately recognise the ugliness of saying that peace between two peoples requires territory to be cleansed of one ethnicity. Yet once the proposition is dressed in the language of ‘settlements’ and ‘international law’, politicians repeat it.

. . . Crimea illustrates the point: Russia’s occupation does not extinguish Ukrainian title. If Ukrainian forces recover Crimea tomorrow, Ukraine will not suddenly become the occupying power just because Russia controlled the peninsula for a decade. The sovereign title comes first.

. . . International law was designed to provide rules by which disputes could be resolved. It was not created to furnish political campaigns with intimidating vocabulary. The starting point should therefore be the law itself, applied consistently: the Mandate, uti possidetis juris, the actual status of the 1949 armistice lines, the wording of the Geneva Convention, subsequent agreements, including the Oslo Accords, and state practice elsewhere.

I’m absolutely sure that about 95% of people who throw around the phrase “illegal settlers” (or “settler colonists”) and “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians” do not know the international law that applies here. They’re merely following the progressive party line.

But read for yourself (click the headline):

 

To help out with the argument, I’ll post two maps. First is the Green Line (from here). The “international boundary” indicated below—dash, two dots, dash— is the “green line” boundary that, says Hausdorff, constitute the sovereign boundaries of the state of Israel, including the West Bank.

And here are areas A, B, and C of the West Bank (map from here):

I quote the bot Grok in answer to my question: What is Natasha Hausdorff’s argument for why Israelis are not settling illegally in the West Bank, and why they are not committing “ethnic cleansing”? 

Grok’s full answer is indented, and I’ve put crucial bits of the argument in italics. I’ve left out Grok’s references supporting its answer, but I see no errors there.

Natasha Hausdorff, a British barrister and legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel, argues that claims of “illegal settlements” and Israeli “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank rest on a misapplication of international law and invert historical facts. Her case, set out in writings such as her September 2026 Spectator article [article above] and in interviews and parliamentary evidence, has two main parts.

Why settlements are not illegal

Hausdorff starts with the status of the territory itself. She says the legal story does not begin in 1967. Under the customary rule of uti possidetis juris, a new state inherits the administrative boundaries of the preceding entity unless those boundaries are changed by agreement. When Israel declared independence in 1948 it was the only state that emerged from the remaining Mandate for Palestine west of the Jordan (Transjordan having already been separated). The Mandate’s lines therefore became Israel’s default international borders and included Judea and Samaria (later called the West Bank) and East Jerusalem. The 1947 UN partition resolution was a non-binding General Assembly recommendation that the Arab side rejected; it never displaced the customary rule.

Jordan seized the area in the 1948–49 war and held it until 1967, but occupation does not confer sovereignty. Only two states recognized Jordan’s annexation, and the 1949 armistice lines were explicitly military ceasefire lines, not borders. In 1967 Israel therefore recovered territory over which it already held title; a state cannot occupy its own sovereign land. Hausdorff uses the analogy of Ukraine recovering Crimea: no one would then call Ukraine the occupying power. The ICJ’s 2024 advisory opinion, she notes, is non-binding and simply assumed occupation without addressing uti possidetis.

Even if one treats the West Bank as occupied for the sake of argument, she says Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention does not make civilian Jewish communities illegal. The article forbids an occupying power from deporting or transferring parts of its own civilian population into occupied territory. It was drafted after World War II to stop forced, state-organized population transfers of the Nazi type. Israeli Jews who live in the West Bank move voluntarily; some re-established communities (such as Gush Etzion) that Jordan had expelled. The provision does not create ethnically exclusive zones or criminalize private residence. Hausdorff also points to inconsistent international practice: large-scale civilian settlement in other prolonged occupations has not drawn the same legal condemnation.

She adds that the Oslo Accords left Area C under Israeli administration and reserved settlements, borders and Jerusalem for final-status talks. Much of the unauthorized construction she identifies as illegal is Palestinian building in Area C, not Israeli communities built with planning permission.

Why Israel is not committing “ethnic cleansing”

Hausdorff treats the ethnic-cleansing charge as projection. Jordan ethnically cleansed Jews from the West Bank and East Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967. Areas A and B, under Palestinian Authority control, are already free of Jews. Demands that Israel evacuate Jewish communities from Area C, she argues, amount to a call for the remaining parts of Judea and Samaria to be made Judenrein [JAC: “free from Jews”].  She has described the ICJ’s language as effectively endorsing that outcome.

On the facts, she says the Palestinian population in Israeli-administered Area C has grown, not shrunk. There is no evidence of a systematic Israeli policy of removing Palestinians from the territory; the opposite demographic trend is visible. Accusing Israel of the crime that was actually committed against Jews in the same area, she contends, inverts both history and law.

Hausdorff’s overall position is that the phrases “illegal settlements” and “ethnic cleansing” function as political slogans that apply a double standard to the only Jewish state and that they are used to justify excluding Jews from places of historic Jewish presence. She maintains that genuine international law, applied equally, does not require that result.

That is the argument which, according to Hausdorff, complies with international law. She recognizes that Israeli violence against Palestinians in area C is illegal and should be dealt with harshly, and also that this division of land is temporary, though it doesn’t look as if a two-state solution is anywhere in the offing. Until there is a final settlement, Hausdorff considers the “illegal settler/ethnic cleansing” argument to be a canard—indeed, a blood libel.

h/t: Christopher

Miliband vs. Hausdorff on England’s sanctioning of Israeli “settlers”

September 13, 2026 • 9:50 am

You may have heard that the British government has announced sanctions against Israeli individuals and settlements in Israel’s West Bank—punishing individuals and companies doing business from what is apparently Area C of the West Bank as stipulated by the Oslo II accords. While areas A and B are under Palestinian authority and jurisdiction, and Jews cannot live there, Area C is under Israeli military control. Both Jews and Palestinians live there in roughly equal numbers, but the Jews, many of whom moved in after the area was won by Israel in the 1967 war, are all referred to as “settlers”.  As for their status, Wikipedia says this:

In 2023, Area C was home to 491,548 Israeli settlers and 354,000 Palestinians. The Jewish population in Area C is administered by the Israeli Judea and Samaria Area administration, into which Israeli law is “pipelined”, whereas the Palestinian population is directly administered by the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) and is under military law. The Palestinian Authority is responsible for medical and educational services to Palestinians in Area C; however, infrastructure construction and supervision is done by Israel.

The status of the Jewish population in area C (the Jews of the West Bank) is disputed.  While the status of this area was supposed to be resolved by negotiations between Palestine and Israel after Oslo II, those negotiations never took place. Much of the world regards the Jews in area C of being illegal settler-colonialists under the fourth Geneva Convention, but international lawyer Natasha Hausdorff argues in the videos below that Jewish residence in Area C does not violate international law, nor does it constitute, as the UK has just maintained, “ethnic cleansing.”

That said, there’s no doubt that some Israelis in the area are violating civil law by attacking and harassing Palestinians. As I’ve said before, that kind of behavior is reprehensible and should be punished. But I am unwilling to call for the wholesale removal of Jews from area C, nor for sanctioning them as the British government (and other countries) called for this week.  Their fate depends on what negotiations will take place in the future to effect a peaceful settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

But the British government under Labour (yes, the party renowned for antisemitism) has just declared not only that they’ll impose sanctions on West Bank Jewish companies, but that this is necessary to effect the ONLY and most urgent way to stop the enmity between Israel and Palestine: the “two-state solution.” First, from the NYT:

Britain, Canada and France on Tuesday announced sanctions on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, a symbolic step by three once-staunch allies illustrating Israel’s deepening isolation after the devastating war in Gaza and settler violence in the West Bank. [JAC: I now believe that eight more countries have signed on to these sanctions.)

. . .Britain’s package of measures was announced on Tuesday in Parliament by Ed Miliband, who became foreign secretary in July. It represents the clearest shift in British foreign policy since Andy Burnham became prime minister that month.

“Today marks the beginning of a new approach,” Mr. Miliband told lawmakers. He said that the British government “agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank — perpetrated by settler terrorists.” All too often, he added, “the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and worse.”

In a speech with an often deeply personal tone, Mr. Miliband said that he had made his announcement as a “proud British Jew” who was “unwavering” in his support for the state of Israel. He added, however, that Britain had concluded that the occupation was unlawful in line with a ruling by the International Court of Justice.

“So I can announce today that we will introduce an import ban on goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories,” he said, adding that the measures would also cover those who provide services to settlements, including “construction, infrastructure, financing or real estate for settlement expansion.”

You can read the full statement by Foreign Secretary Miliband to the House of Commons here. I’ll give a few extracts; note that the British government has recognized Palestine as a state, though no such state exists:

So Madame Deputy Speaker, there is a deeply painful contrast between our professed commitment to a two state solution, and the reality on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank.

. . . We should always be proud that it was a Labour government that took the historic step of recognising the State of Palestine.

What we seek today is to salvage the only course for peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians – the two state solution.

. . .Ethnic cleansing is defined by the UN as ‘a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.’

The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank – perpetrated by settler terrorists.

To advance the two state solution, we also need viable and effective Palestinian governance.

So I urge the Palestinian Authority to accelerate reform and I urge Israel to lift its withholding of revenues that is financially crippling the provision of essential services in the West Bank.

The set of measures I have announced represents a clear message to the government of Israel, to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and to the world that we will not acquiesce in the destruction of the two state solution.

I have news for Secretary Miliband: the two-state solution is already gone, extinct, singing in the Choir Invisible. The Palestinians do not want two states, nor did they ever, as they’ve rejected a two-state solution many, many times, often with stipulations favorable to Palestinians. What Palestinians want is a one-state solution, a state that will be set up to contain Jews and Palestinians, but of course would soon be Judenrein due to Jews fleeing or being exterminated.

Nor does Israel want a two-state solution. October 7 killed that desire. Israelis now realize that there was a two-state solution before 2023: Gaza—right next to Israel. That didn’t work out so well, and Israel’s security concerns about terrorism have gone sky-high.  Hamas is still in control of much of Gaza, has not yet laid down its weapons, nor have Hamas or the Palestinian Authority renounced terrorism Both groups glorify martyrs, and the PA has its infamous “pay for slay” program, euphemistically named the “Martyr’s Fund”, in which Palestinians jailed or killed for attacking Jews get a monetary reward (it can go to their families). And there are no moderate, non-Jew-hating Palestinians waiting in the wings to assume peaceful governance of a Palestinian state. Certainly the Palestinian Authority is not a candidate!

Only a fool would think that Palestinian terrorism against Israel would cease if two states were created, but Miliband & Co., ignorant of history, say stuff like this:

And this is in our fundamental national interest because if there is one lesson of recent decades, it is that we will never have stability in the Middle East without a two state solution.

Is the man serious? Does he think that a version of BDS, banning goods made in area C (often by Palestinian workers who will lose their jobs), will bring on the two state solution?

If you read the whole Miliband statement, you’ll see he blames all the woes of Gaza, including its “humanitarian catastrophe” and deaths of civilians, not on Hamas but on Israel. He and the British government have swallowed whole the line of Hamas apologists like the UN.

Now the argument that these sanctions won’t achieve the UK’s aims stands by itself, but it’s interesting to see that both Hamas and Iran have praised Miliband’s statement and the upcoming UK law it portends.

This is from the Torygraph; click on the headline below, find it archived here, or see it in full on yahoo! news

A quote:

Hamas has praised Ed Miliband’s sanctions on Israel.

The terrorist group said the Foreign Secretary’s use of the term “ethnic cleansing” to describe the actions of settlers in the West Bank was a “step in the right direction”.

It called for the prosecution of Israel’s leadership for war crimes.

On Tuesday, Mr Miliband said the occupation of Palestinian territory was “unlawful” – a first for a British government minister – and accused Israel of trying to make the two-state solution unviable.

He told the Commons: “The British Government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists. And all too often, the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this.”

Britain will sanction companies and individuals supporting the settlements with finance, infrastructure, property or construction services.

The UK will also refuse all export licences for weapons that “materially contribute to the occupation”, said Mr Miliband.

Hamas, proscribed as a terrorist group by Britain, carried out the October 7 2023 attacks on Israel, in which 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals died.

Basem Naim, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, said: “The imposition of sanctions by Britain and other European countries and Canada on goods imported from the settlements of the occupied West Bank, and the London foreign minister’s use of the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ to describe the crimes of the settlers, are important steps in the right direction – but they are not enough.

“What is needed to achieve stability and peace in Palestine and beyond is the immediate implementation of the relevant international resolutions and the prosecution of war criminals in Israel in a manner similar to the Nazi trials at Nuremberg in Germany.”

Typical Hamas palaver, with not a word about the prosecution of Hamas for its real war crimes, including kidnapping hostages and indubitable targeting of civilians!

Iran has also joined the pro-Milibandwagon. From The Jewish Chronicle (click to read):


A quote (I’ve bolded one sentence):

Britain’s sanction targeting settlements in the West Bank have been greeted in Iranian state media as a step towards “the end of Israel”.

The announcement yesterday by foreign secretary Ed Miliband of a raft of measures has been broadcast repeatedly by Islamic Republic propaganda outlets.

Iranian broadcasters claimed years of activity by regime-backed “resistance groups” have succeeded in persuading the “naïve UK government” to take action against Israel.

The reports quote Miliband as branding the settlers as “terrorists” supported by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and accusing them of “committing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank”.

Iran Radio accused the foreign secretary of “plagiarism”, saying credit for branding “Israeli occupiers” as terrorists should go to the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Now you might be saying, “Well, just because Hamas and Iran have approved the UK’s new policy doesn’t mean it’s wrong.” True, but the UK’s policy is not going to bring on a two-state solution, no matter how many times Miliband says it, and Iran just said the quiet part out loud: these anti-Israel sanctions are indeed a step towards the end of Israel.

But it won’t bring on the end of Israel, as that country is determined to continue existing. As the Hebrew phrase goes: עַם יִשְׂרָאֵל חַי (Am Yisrael Chai): “The people of Israel live.”

*********************

On the other side we have is eloquent Natasha Hausdorff, international lawyer and legal director of UK Lawyers for Israel.  At 4:45 in the video below, Hausdorff explains why she doesn’t see Jewish settlements in the West Bank as illegal under international law, and why the Israelis are not committing “ethnic cleansing.” Indeed, she says, the illegal settlement in the Israeli-administered territory of Area C is being done by Palestinian Arabs, which she calls “an inversion of authority” and “projection.” The error people are making hinges on mistaking voluntary settlement of this area by Israelis with “state transfer” of Israeli populations.

I’ve rarely seen Hausdorff so exercised, but she’s clearly gobsmacked and peeved by what she sees as an anti-Jewish agenda by her own government, and an agenda based on lies. (You can see a longer explication of her views in this other video and there’s a new video with Hausdorff discussing what will happen to the firms, both Israeli and British, who will be subject to the UK boycott.)

Here’s a sign to the entrance of part of area A near Jerusalem; I took the photo a couple of years ago:

h/t: Steve, Christopher

Bill Maher schools the young and the anti-Israel Democrats

September 13, 2026 • 8:15 am

At the end of September I posted about the BBC’s refusal to use the word “terrorist” when referring to Hamas. They could use it when quoting other people, but you can’t call a terrorist a terrorist when it applies to Palestinians who kill civilians for political, ideological, or religious aims. This also applies to other media outlets, as you can see in Bill Maher’s latest “Real Time” segment below. 

A reader sent me a link to the 9-minute comedy-and-news bit, which this week was more news than comedy. And the reader noted that this was one of “his best ever” and that it “should be required viewing for every incoming college freshman in America.” It is indeed, as Maher calls out the young generation for coddling terrorism, valorizing Luigi Mangione, and touting America as the worst country ever. 

The moral confusion afflicting the young and the “progressives” is most pervasive when discussing Israel’s response to terrorism emanating from Gaza, which, Maher emphasizes, is NOT a genocide but a “counterattack in a war. . . that’s been waged by Israel since 1948”.  And he quotes a poll saying that 20% of Gen Z members have a “positive view of Osama bin Laden.” Seriously?

The genocide canard is the most infuriating lie told by progressives, even though it’s easily dispelled by citing the many things Israel did to protect Palestinian civilians from harm during its counterattack. But that doesn’t matter; the chuckleheads waving the “genocide” banner ignore both vocabulary and history, so eager are they to smear Israel. (You never hear them accusing Hamas of genocide.) As Maher says, that Big Lie is not only wrong, but also promotes antisemitism:

“Gaza equals genocide is a lie—an easily provable lie.  And the fact that so many prominent Democrats get along with it is to me, the party’s worst moment since they ended Reconstruction after the Civil War.”

“This is where antisemitism is coming from.  . . because if you really think someone is committing genocide, of course you have full permission to hate them.  And history shows, for whatever reason, when it comes to hating the Jews, people don’t need a lot of permission.”

The guest whose faces and applause appear in this segment are Max Brooks, an author, actor, and historian, and Sarah Longwell:. a conservative publisher and political strategist. 

I should add that I tweeted this segment yesterday, and the antisemites came out in droves. It’s scary, but also evidence that Jew hatred is more pervasive than we—or at least I—know. Have a look at the comments on this tweet (click on it):

Sometimes I feel that these people wouldn’t be happy unless either Israel never fought back against terrorism, or in fact disappeared from the face of the Earth.