Supremacism, Social Darwinism

Infiltration: A Cardinal Function of the Zionist Movement

By David Miller | MintPress News | September 16, 2025

What is the function of the Zionist movement? Let’s start with four statements that together define what the Zionist movement does by adding its functions cumulatively.

The Zionist movement creates and sustains the “Israel lobby” to extend its ideological and political reach, shaping both foreign and domestic policy in the countries where it operates. It provides material support for ethnic cleansing and genocide, funneling millions each year through charities that aid in land theft and war crimes. It grooms children and youth into ideological loyalists through a vast network of schools, synagogues, youth groups and settler recruitment programs, including Birthright tours, the Masa journey and the Lone Soldier Program. Beyond all this, the movement systematically dispatches its adherents into broader society as lifelong agents of Zionist ideology. This is not a metaphor. It is infiltration.

This concept of infiltration extends beyond the traditional intelligence model of recruiting agents for covert missions—though that, too, remains part of it. It also involves utilizing individuals who are, in a sense, sleeper agents, ready to be activated.

But it is more than that in the sense that, in many cases, the sleepers don’t need an actual tap on the shoulder to partake in a particular mission. They are already primed to act when the interests of the so-called Jewish state are threatened, or even merely imagined to be.

They are primed by their often decades-long experience of radicalization and grooming to become believing ideological Zionists. In other words, this is a multifaceted and profound level of infiltration cultivated from childhood and reinforced throughout every stage of life.

To understand how such a system came into being, we must examine the origins and evolution of the Zionist movement itself.

The Zionist movement

Even the most hardline Zionists and the most revolutionary socialists agree on one point: before 1948, the Zionist movement functioned as a coordinated political force. It organized and executed the Nakba—the ethnic cleansing and mass displacement of Palestinians—in order to establish what it called the state of Israel. Zionists, of course, reject this terminology, but the historical record is clear.

With its primary objective achieved in 1948, the movement briefly considered dissolving. However, at the World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem in 1951, delegates chose to continue and redefine new goals for the future.

This led to the creation of the “Jerusalem Program,” which formally codified the movement’s new objectives. Alongside it, the Israeli parliament enacted the World Zionist Organization–Jewish Agency (Status) Law to govern the relationship between the “state of Israel” and the Zionist movement. That law remains in effect today, shaping the global Zionist movement’s operations and responsibilities.

1951 Congress

At the World Zionist Congress held in Jerusalem on Sept. 24, 1951, the movement faced a crossroads. With the founding of the state of Israel three years earlier, delegates debated whether the Zionist movement had fulfilled its purpose and should dissolve or reconstitute itself with new goals. In practice, by a vote of 286 to 0, with the remaining 438 delegates abstaining, the Congress resolved to continue its proceedings.

David Ben Gurion speaks at the 1951 World Zionist Congress, 13 August 1951. Source | Wikimedia Commons

It adopted a new set of objectives to reorient the movement. These were defined as: the strengthening of the state of Israel, the ingathering of the exiles in Eretz Yisrael, and the fostering of the unity of the Jewish people.

This moment marked the transformation of Zionism from a settler-colonial movement into a global ideological infrastructure. It was no longer just about building a state; it was about embedding that state into the hearts, minds, and institutions of Jews worldwide.

The status of the Zionist movement

The law passed by the Knesset to formalize the relationship between the Zionist movement and the state of Israel spelled out the obligations of both parties. It designated the World Zionist Organization as the authorized body responsible for developing and settling the land, absorbing immigrants from the diaspora, and coordinating the work of Jewish institutions operating within Israel.

Crucially, the law affirmed that the state of Israel “expects the cooperation of all Jews, as individuals and groups, in building up the State.” It further stipulated that the World Zionist Organization “requires full cooperation and coordination on its part with the state of Israel and its Government, in accordance with the laws of the State.” To that end, the law mandated the creation of a formal committee to coordinate activities between the Israeli government and the Zionist movement’s executive leadership.

In other words, the state of Israel and the World Zionist Organization, as a matter of law, are required to work together, and, also as expressed in law, both bodies expect the cooperation of “all Jews.” The extent to which this expectation is met remains an empirical question.

First established at the 1951 Zionist Congress and enacted in 1953, the Jerusalem Program laid out the operational aims of the World Zionist Organization. This foundational document was later revised in 1968 and again in 2004 to reflect the movement’s evolving priorities. These revisions formalized a series of ideological commitments still in effect today, collectively referred to as the “foundations of Zionism.”

Among these are the preservation of Jewish unity and its enduring bond to Eretz Yisrael, as well as the centrality of the state of Israel, specifically Jerusalem, in Jewish national life. The program affirms support for mass aliyah from all countries and the absorption of Jewish immigrants into Israeli society. It calls for strengthening Israel as a Jewish, Zionist, and democratic state; promoting Jewish, Hebrew, and Zionist education to preserve the distinctiveness of the Jewish people; and defending the rights of Jews globally while combating antisemitism. Most revealingly, it asserts that “settling the country” remains a core expression of practical Zionism.

These principles are intended to guide Zionist activity both within Israel and throughout the world. To make the role of individual Zionists abroad absolutely clear, the movement later published a separate guide detailing their personal responsibilities outside of occupied Palestine.

Duties of the individual Zionist

The duties of the individual Zionist were first codified in a 1972 policy document “approved at the 28th Zionist Congress.” They were later adopted as an integral part of the resolutions of the 29th Congress in 1978. The resolution outlined personal obligations derived from the Jerusalem Program and from formal membership in a Zionist organization.

Among these duties was the call to make aliyah—that is, to become a settler colonist in occupied Palestine. Others included joining local Zionist federations or affiliated groups, actively promoting the movement’s ideological program, and ensuring children received Zionist, Hebrew and Jewish education designed to reinforce loyalty to Israel. Zionists were also expected to donate financially through established channels such as Keren Hayesod, the Jewish National Fund or their local branches, in order to consolidate Israel’s economy and fund its expansionist aims.

With the exception of physically becoming a settler colonist, all of these duties amount to an explicit call for infiltration of host societies. Perhaps the most direct duty, however, is “to strengthen Zionist influence within the community.” This likely refers to the “Jewish community” rather than broader society. Even so, it is still a call to expand the influence of Zionism on society as a whole.

One might reasonably ask how much attention ordinary Zionists pay to such calls. Are these dry, dead words, left to gather dust in the Central Zionist Archives in Al Quds? Or do they still animate the central activities of the movement today? Let us take a look.

Here is a 1961 report from the Jewish Chronicle about a Zionist meeting in Glasgow, which came to hand as I was writing this. I present it as an example of the movement’s thinking and practical activities. The meeting was specifically designed as an educational Zionist event and expounded a particular set of ideas.

A Zionist Federation meeting in Glasgow, reported in the Jewish Chronicle, Oct. 20, 1961, p. 14

The measures which would have to be taken if children in the Diaspora were to remain Jews were discussed by Professor Ernst Simon, of the Hebrew University, when he gave an address at a meeting held in the Central Hotel last week in connection with the Zionist Federation’s Education Fortnight. Mr. Edward Woolfson, President of the Glasgow Zionist Federation, was in the chair. Outlining a practical programme for bringing up children as Jews, Dr. Simon declared that this would have to start with the education of expectant Jewish mothers and fathers at child guidance clinics. As a result, children from their earliest years would be reared in an atmosphere where they would see all the symbols and customs of Jewish life observed. This would then be followed by the children being sent to a Jewish or Hebrew Kindergarten, and then to a Jewish day school. Another important part in the programme, Dr. Simon went on, would be the creation of a Jewish resurgence…

In this view, Zionist education required that children remain Jewish, making “Jewish education” crucial for the movement. A 1961 report reflected this, the year before the British Zionist Federation founded Scotland’s first and only Jewish school, Calderwood Lodge. Is that commitment to inculcating Zionism still present today?

A lifelong commitment to the genocidal ideology

It certainly is. Although Calderwood Lodge was taken over by the local authority in 1982, it remains a Zionist school today. It collaborates with the United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA), Maccabi, Mitzvah Day, the Scottish Jewish Youth Alliance (SJYA) and other Zionist groups. (The SJYA is itself a collaboration between Glasgow Maccabi and UJIA Scotland, both Zionist organizations.) The school also marks Israeli Independence Day (Yom Ha’atzmaut) and the “liberation” of Jerusalem (Yom Yerushalayim)—their term for the illegal occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967.

Celebrating the creation of the Zionist entity in Calderwood Primary School, 2025, with Shayna Conn (right) of the Scottish Jewish Youth Alliance. Source | Facebook | Jewish Telegraph

The UJIA is the U.K. outpost of one of Israel’s four “national institutions,” established to create and sustain the state of Israel. It serves as the U.K. affiliate of Keren Hayesod, which raises funds to finance settlement in Palestine. In its 2018–19 annual report, UJIA described its mission as developing a “lifelong connection” between Israel and the “diaspora” community, beginning with children as young as four. Of 12 school programs run by UJIA, nine are in primary schools, reaching thousands of pupils.

From A Lifetime of Connection: UJIA Annual Report 2018-19. Source | United Jewish Israel Appeal

“Strong British Jewry with a lifelong commitment to Israel.” Source | United Jewish Israel Appeal

Does it work?

Varying statistics suggest that between 60% and 90% of British Jews—or perhaps more—identify as some form of Zionist.

Research by Pew in the United States in 2021 found that “eight in ten U.S. Jews say caring about Israel is an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them. Nearly six in ten say they personally feel an emotional attachment to Israel.” In the United Kingdom, a 2024 study by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research reported that “73% say they feel very or somewhat attached to the country. However, the proportion identifying as ‘Zionists’ has fallen from 72% to 63% over the past decade.”

Ultra-Zionists often claim that even more Jews identify as Zionist. For example, the so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism conducted a survey in late 2023 that produced even higher figures. It reportedly “revealed that 97% of British Jews feel ‘personally connected’ to events happening in Israel … 80% of respondents considered themselves to be a Zionist.”

It appears that the activities of the UJIA and the wider Zionist movement are proving effective. Yet after two years of livestreamed genocide, there is also growing unrest and dissent within the Jewish community, particularly among the young. A recent poll cited in the Jewish Chronicle found that “only” 57% of Jews in their twenties “identified with Zionism.”

Nevertheless, the extent of Zionist adherence is still far too large. This means there are Zionists throughout the social structure of most advanced nations, even when the Jewish population is very small, as in the United Kingdom, where it has fallen to 0.4%. In the United States, Jews make up about 2.4% of the population.

The uncomfortable truth is that the Zionist movement urges its adherents to infiltrate the societies where they live and to display their commitment to its racist ideology at every possible turn. As the UJIA examples above show, they encourage a lifelong commitment to Israel. But is that the so-called dual loyalty “trope”—the allegedly racist claim that Jews are more loyal to the state of Israel than to the countries in which they reside?

Only if we say it, if they say it, it’s fine—nothing to see here. As Pat Buchanan once remarked in a debate with Ralph Nader, “dual loyalty would be an improvement.”

The fact remains that the Zionist movement promotes commitment to both the ideology and the practice of Zionism, even when this runs counter to the interests of the host nation. In the case of the state, this is true in most instances. In the case of the citizenry, it is true in all.

Meet the Zionist Infiltrators

Some within the movement consider the term “infiltration” outdated, arguing that it implies a deliberate Zionist strategy. Yet this article has shown that such a strategy does exist. The question, however, is how conscious or deliberate it is. The evidence suggests there are different types of infiltration and different kinds of infiltrators.

We can begin with those directly or indirectly engaged in specific forms of infiltration on behalf of agencies of the Zionist entity. Their activities align more closely with the traditional sense of the term. From there, we turn to those with looser ties to the movement as a whole. In what follows, I outline six types of infiltration.

Direct Service to the Zionist Entity

The most obvious form of infiltration is direct service to the Zionist entity through collaboration with its intelligence agencies. One example is the Ofer family, which breached U.S. sanctions to deliver Mossad agents and weapons for subversion and assassination operations in Iran. Another involves activities linked to Jeffrey Epstein, who gathered sexual kompromat for Israeli intelligence.

Mossad also relies on Sayanim, its informal helpers abroad, most famously Robert Maxwell. Beyond this, thousands of Zionists work with the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and its predecessor, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs. Their operations range from propaganda and lobbying to trolling, doxxing and lawfare.

One such network is the Combat Antisemitism Movement, which has nearly 1,000 members and operates in a “joint venture” with Voices of Israel, a company run by the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. In total, many thousands of Zionist groups are engaged in this form of activity.

Tech Start-ups as a Zionist Strategy

Service is also given directly to the Zionist entity through the creation of tech start-ups founded by former intelligence personnel. This has long been a strategy of Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency. Today, there are hundreds of such firms in the tech industry. Some have become widely and controversially known, including Cellebrite, NICE, Toka, and the NSO Group, maker of the Pegasus surveillance product. One online listing of 28 such firms records a combined value of $208 billion.

The covert use of this vast surveillance apparatus by the Zionist regime has been widely noted. Investigative reports also show that significant numbers of Zionist infiltrators—including former occupation forces members, intelligence operatives and others—have secured senior positions across mainstream media and Big Tech. These include Google, Apple, Facebook/Meta, Microsoft, TikTok and more.

Emissaries of the Zionist Project

There is also a civilian equivalent of the Sayanim, known as Shlichim, or emissaries. The Jewish Agency—one of the four pillars of the formal Zionist movement—sends Shlichim from occupied Palestine to build what it calls “living bridges to Israel.” These emissaries are placed in schools, synagogues, JCCs, camps, universities, youth movements and Federations across the globe.

In 2021, the Union of Jewish Students, the Zionist student group in the U.K., reported hosting two Shlichim from the Jewish Agency. The recently revealed diary of Israel’s ambassador to the U.K. even records a “goodbye breakfast” she hosted in July 2024 for Shlichim returning to the Zionist entity after completing their tours of duty.

Other Zionist groups also send emissaries. The World Mizrachi Movement, for example, sent about 300 last year. The Haredi sect Chabad—described by critics as a genocidal cult—uses the same term for its global network of emissaries. According to Chabad itself, “Today, 4,900 Chabad-Lubavitch emissary families, or shluchim, operate 3,500 institutions in 100 countries and territories, with activities in many more.

Zionist Family Networks

Another form of service to the genocide comes through Zionist family networks in the West, particularly via philanthropic giving. Family foundations funnel money to Zionist organizations, all of which effectively encourage genocide.

One example is the many millions donated by Sheldon and Miriam Adelson to pro-Zionist political candidates. “I’m a one-issue person. That issue is Israel,” Adelson said in 2017. In the U.K., millions are given by the Lewis family, which owns River Island, and the Wolfson family, which owns Next, to support the genocide. Their contributions directly fund the occupation forces as well as settlement construction and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

Millions more are spent by Zionist family foundations to spread Islamophobia—through the Policy Exchange and the Henry Jackson Society in the U.K., and through the so-called Islamophobia network in the U.S. Additional funds go toward indoctrinating Jewish children through nurseries, schools, youth groups, student groups and “Birthright” tours, which promote the racist belief that Jews have a birthright to steal Palestinian land and kill Palestinian children.

Zionist billionaire families dominate this giving, but many thousands of others also contribute through large and small Zionist charities and causes. In the U.K., there are an estimated 3,000 such organizations, and in the U.S., there are likely more than 10,000. A preliminary compilation of data on U.S. Zionist groups is available here.

Defending Zionism Over the Life Course

The final form of infiltration is tied directly to the Zionist strategy of ensuring that all Jews make an enduring, lifelong commitment to Israel. As this article has shown, this has been central to the Zionist movement since at least 1951 and remains so today. Zionists expect all Jews to act on behalf of Israel whenever called upon—or whenever they perceive Zionist interests to be under threat.

Practically, this means service to Zionism through daily professional, political and social activities, wherever Zionists find themselves: in the media, political parties, business, finance, schools, universities and civil society, including left-wing and so-called “anti-racist” organizations.

In other words, Zionists throughout the social structure are engaged in subversion and infiltration. One example is the Jewish network within the U.K. civil service. Although set up by the civil service itself, it is in practice run by and for Zionists rather than Jews. Similar patterns exist in universities, the media, the legal profession, finance, industry and other institutions across society.

When the time comes for the proverbial tap on the shoulder, how many who have passed through Zionist indoctrination will fail to respond “appropriately”? To ask the question is almost to invite disbelief. In many cases, no tap on the shoulder is even required. Across the BBC, the media, the entertainment world, the civil service, politics, finance and other commanding heights of society, there are Zionists who are ideologically committed. For them, it makes perfect sense to “do the right thing” when the moment arrives.

The fact remains that the Zionist movement encourages loyalty to its ideology and its program of action even when these run counter to the interests of the host state—or, in all cases, to the interests of its citizenry.

Can we trust Zionists?

In the end, no Zionist can be trusted. Do we imagine that they are not also infiltrating the left? The Palestine solidarity movement? The anti-war movement?

Zionism is, at its core, a racist ideology. No matter how hard “liberal,” “socialist,” or “leftist” Zionists try to disguise it, that racism always reveals itself—whether in adopting Zionist positions in their professional lives or in subverting and sabotaging pro-Palestine activism in political life.

This has historically meant that the anti-racist movement and the Palestine solidarity movement have been weak on the question of Zionism. It was a major mistake for the “left” in the U.K. and elsewhere not to confront Zionism head-on earlier. Today, we face a significant struggle to cleanse the left and the anti-imperialist movement of both Zionists and Zionist assumptions—ideas that have seeped out of the movement and into the consciousness of many non-Zionist, or even anti-Zionist, socialist activists.

This process has been underway for many decades. However, this is not the place for a detailed analysis of the Jewish left or of Zionist penetration of the non-Jewish left. A fuller exposition will be needed in another article. For now, it is enough to point to the need for a material and maximalist anti-Zionism.

Infiltration today

The traditional forms of infiltration used by intelligence services continue—covert spies, informers and, in the case of the Zionists, the widespread penetration of the tech industry by alumni of Unit 8200. In addition, the Zionist movement makes extensive use of emissaries, both through the mainstream movement and through more marginal elements such as the Chabad-Lubavitch cult, as we have seen.

But in addition to this—as this article has argued—there is an effort to recruit all Jews into a “lifelong connection” to “Israel.” In practical terms, the movement treats all Jews as potential resources. This is why so much effort is devoted to grooming and radicalization through nurseries, schools, synagogues, youth and student groups, and the wide array of Zionist lobby groups and charities.

They attempt to radicalize Jews such that they will put Israel first wherever they end up in the social structure. And given that Jews are systematically advantaged in the social structure across the West, this has the potential to be a very powerful set of relations. I submit that infiltration is a cardinal principle of the Zionist movement, and it helps to explain how Zionist individuals and ideas are so heavily embedded in political, civil, economic and cultural life in Western nations.

Knowing your enemy is the first step toward defeating them—and toward dislodging Zionism from its entrenched status and role in society.

Professor David Miller is a non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University and a former Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Bristol. He is a broadcaster, writer and investigative researcher; the producer of the weekly show Palestine Declassified on PressTV; and the co-director of Public Interest Investigations, of which spinwatch.org and powerbase.info are projects. He tweets @Tracking_Power.

September 19, 2025 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Israel, Palestine, UK, Zionism | Leave a comment

Exposing Jewish Exceptionalism In Canadian Media

The misguided belief in eternal Jewish victimhood is being weaponized to help allow Israel’s genocide to continue

By Davide Mastracci ∙ The Maple ∙ September 3, 2025

Over the past decade, I’ve written extensively on the pro-Israel bias in Canadian media. This article will focus on something different, but which helps shape the bias: Jewish exceptionalism.

You can find articles about how various -isms and -phobias impact Canadian media: homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, classism, racism, sexism, etc. And yet, there’s little out there on Jewish exceptionalism, which is increasingly being analyzed by commentators outside of the country.

Jewish exceptionalism is the belief that Jewish people as a demographic are eternally and ontologically oppressed, no matter the circumstances, and as such should be treated differently. Jewish exceptionalists refer to antisemitism as the “oldest hatred,” and treat it as though it’s the only one powerful enough to make its targets a permanently marginalized group.

This incorrect analysis fails to take into account the status of Jewish people in Canada and elsewhere over at least the past few decades. While Jews remain the targets of alleged hate crimes (though reports on the issue vastly overstate the reality), they face no systemic discrimination and generally fare exceptionally well in Canada and elsewhere on all other markers used to measure oppression. As a point of comparison, few that anyone would take seriously argue that dozens of churches being burned down in acts of arson since 2021 make Christians an oppressed group in Canada.

This article will illustrate how Jewish exceptionalist sentiment underlies much of the discussion in Canadian media involving Jewish Zionists by outlining five tropes, providing examples of them in mainstream publications and explaining how they smuggle in the idea that Jewish people are exceptional and should be treated as such. The tropes are: ‘Jewish-owned business’; ‘blood libel’; ‘Jewish state’; ‘Jewish neighbourhood’; ‘list of Jews.’

While this article could have been written at any point in recent years, I’ve done so now because Israel, the state claiming to represent Jews and which enjoys widespread support from them according to polling, is committing a genocide in the name of Jewish supremacy, the most explicit form of Jewish exceptionalism. Those who defend Israel and seek to undermine the pro-Palestine movement also utilize arguments that rely on Jewish exceptionalism to do so.

As such, these tropes deserve to be identified and refuted because they strengthen narratives defending the worst atrocity of our time: Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

‘Jewish-Owned Business’

The term “Jewish-owned business” appeared in Canadian newspapers 70 times between Oct. 7, 2023, and Aug. 31, 2025, according to the Canadian Newsstream database. This represents about 78 per cent of the times it had ever been used in Canadian newspapers up to that point.

Since October 7, the term has typically been used in reference to businesses that happen to be owned by Jewish people being targeted by pro-Palestine protesters. Those using the term typically employ the following logic in their articles: 1) the owner of a business is Jewish; 2) their business is being protested or boycotted in some form; 3) the action is happening because the owner is Jewish; 4) therefore, the protests are morally wrong and potentially illegal, and should be condemned.

As an example, a March 2024 editorial in The Globe and Mail erroneously stated as a fact that, “An Indigo bookstore in Toronto was vandalized, because the chain’s founder is Jewish,” and then added, “A democratic country cannot let this stand. And yet it is happening right before our eyes.”

There are genuine historical examples of Jewish businesses being protested or boycotted because of their owners’ religious backgrounds, such as in Nazi Germany, and they have justifiably received widespread condemnation. And yet, despite the explicit comparisons to these examples that commentators will make to generate an emotional response and demonize pro-Palestine protesters, the most high-profile instances of this sort of rhetoric being used in Canadian media have been cases where the owner’s religious identity had nothing to do with the protests and/or boycotts of their business.

In the case of Indigo, as I wrote in October 2024, “the store was targeted because Indigo CEO Heather Reisman is behind the HESEG Foundation, which offers a range of perks to so-called ‘lone soldiers’ who travel to Israel from abroad to join the army.” And as I wrote in October 2023, Café Landwer, an Israeli chain of restaurants, has been boycotted because its co-founder and CEO served in the Israeli military and it opened a location in Jerusalem atop the remains of a Muslim cemetery, among other reasons.

If you revisit the logic I outlined above, and remove the claim the business is being targeted because its owner is Jewish (which is clearly not the case with Indigo and Café Landwer), it breaks down to: the owner is Jewish and therefore their business should not be targeted. The implication here is that it’s OK to target businesses owned by other demographic groups, but not ones owned by Jewish people.

There are cases in Canadian media where this point is made explicitly.

In a March 2024 Toronto Star article, columnist Andrew Phillips writes, “It should have been obvious that an event featuring two such controversial leaders would be targeted by protesters, especially since pro-Palestinian demonstrators have been taking every opportunity to go into the streets and make their views known. And in this case it was a legitimate time and place to protest. They weren’t demonstrating outside a Jewish-owned business, a Jewish community centre, Mount Sinai Hospital or a synagogue in Thornhill, as happened on Sunday. All those should be out of bounds for protests about Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and the thousands of civilian deaths it’s caused.”

This is an astonishing claim. Others have made the point a bit more subtly.

Former Liberal MP and now Toronto Star columnist and Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center CEO Michael Levitt wrote in an October 2023 article: “What Jews are now seeing in Canada is reason for serious concern, including for the safety of their children at schools and universities. It’s the source of tremendous anguish and pain. Anguish and pain from seeing demonstrators converge on Café Landwer in downtown Toronto, calling for a boycott of a Jewish-owned business.”

And in a November 2023 National Post article, Liberal MP Anthony Housefather wrote, “The worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust somehow unleashed a wave of hate in Canada and around the world. Demonstrations have taken place outside an antisemitism conference in Ottawa, as well as a Jewish community centre in Toronto. Some demonstrators have called for the boycott of a Jewish-owned business.”

In both cases, the authors don’t make an attempt to prove the businesses in question are being boycotted because of their owners’ religious backgrounds, or even make that claim. Instead, the simple fact that a Jewish-owned business is being targeted is portrayed as a problem, with the implication being that doing so is out of bounds because the owner is Jewish.

The fact that antisemitic boycotts of Jewish businesses existed in the past when Jews were an oppressed group is used to imply or state that any boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses now must be hateful as well, despite the fact that the boycotts have nothing to do with the owners’ religious identities. This is Jewish exceptionalism.

‘Blood Libel’

The Holocaust Encyclopedia defines “blood libel” as “the false allegation that Jews used the blood of non-Jewish, usually Christian children, for ritual purposes.”

“Blood libel” appeared in Canadian newspapers 123 times between Oct. 7, 2023, and Aug. 31, 2025, according to the Canadian Newsstream database. I came across just two examples among the 123 of a writer arguing a pro-Palestine commentator invoked what could be interpreted as a version of a blood libel in their writing/speech. (One of them happened to be Norman Finkelstein in 2019.) In the vast majority of cases, the term was used to refer to individuals and/or organizations alleging Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza — allegations that don’t include claims of Israel killing Palestinian children to use their blood for ritual purposes.

Blood libel has a historical definition of which these authors are or should be aware. The discourse pointed to by these authors almost never meets this definition, and they do not make any attempt to prove that it does. And yet, they still wield this accusation.

The writers who use the term “blood libel” will argue I’m being disingenuous here, and that the term now means something else: accusing Jews of anything they’re not guilty of, which leads to Jewish people as a whole facing potential retribution. They are partially correct, as this is how they generally use the term now, though writers don’t note this change in their work when doing so. And yet, the fact that this is the case is actually an example of Jewish exceptionalist thought at work.

“Blood libel” was coined to refer to Jewish people in the Middle Ages — a genuinely oppressed group — being blamed for something of which they weren’t guilty. The term is now used freely by pro-Israel commentators as if nothing has changed since then.

In fact, much has: Jewish people are no longer an oppressed group, and are the beneficiaries of Jewish supremacy in Israel; the allegations made against the Jewish people who make up the vast majority of the Israeli army and political system are credible; the people making these allegations don’t argue the aggressors commit their alleged crimes because they’re Jewish. Despite all of this, “blood libel” is constantly used in Canadian media in an attempt to counter serious allegations against Israel.

National Post comment editor Carson Jerema, for example, wrote in a December 2023 article, “Hamas is using its population as a human shield to blame Israel for civilian deaths and to perpetuate the blood libel that the Jewish state is committing genocide, and the nonsense left is eating it up without question.”

Former Conservative MP and Cabinet member Joe Oliver wrote in a May 2024 National Post article: “Many people buy into the hideous blood libel of genocide of which Israel has been accused since October 7.”

And in a May 2024 article in The Globe and Mail, Noah Richler, the son of Mordechai Richler, wrote, “The blood libel of the Middle Ages makes Israelis in Gaza the deliberate, premeditated mass murderers not just of children and babies but, in the wake of the bombing of a fertility clinic, Jews wilfully slaughtering their enemies even before they are born.”

In calling these charges blood libels (a historic, antisemitic trope), the writers seem to believe it’s antisemitic for people to accuse Israel of genocide — not simply wrong on a factual basis, but inherently antisemitic. They do so because they seem to buy into Jewish exceptionalist thought, where Jewish people are always an oppressed victim group, unable to be oppressors in the way others can be.

I’ve never come across this type of claim in mainstream Canadian publications about another group.

A June 2021 article from The Conversation states, “In addition to the February [2021] motion against China’s treatment of its Uyghur population, Canada recognizes seven other genocides: the Holocaust during the Second World War, the Armenian genocide, the Ukrainian famine genocide (Holodomor), the Rwandan genocide, the Srebrenica massacres, the mass killing of the Yazidi people and the mass murder of the Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar.”

There are groups of people for each of these events who allege they don’t meet the criteria for genocide. But I’ve yet to find mainstream discussion that posits the allegations of genocide are in-and-of themselves hateful against the ethnic/religious group whose members are accused of perpetrating the genocide. For example, I haven’t found articles in any mainstream Canadian outlets alleging that it’s hateful against Russians, Hutus or Turkish people to accuse the states and/or forces purporting to represent them of committing genocide, nor any willingness to treat such claims from the fringes seriously.

As such, Israel is clearly treated as an exceptional state: writers see its Jewishness as making it incapable of genocide, and therefore imply it’s inherently antisemitic to make such an accusation regardless of the clear evidence for it and abundant examples of it being made against forces representing other religious and ethnic groups.

‘Jewish State’

The term “Jewish state” appeared in Canadian newspapers 1,514 times between Oct. 7, 2023, and Aug. 31, 2025, according to the Canadian Newsstream database. A review of these usages in the “commentary” category of articles revealed that the phrase was often used by supporters of Israel defending it against heinous crimes.

This type of usage may be disorienting for some readers, who don’t comprehend why those who support Israel and purport to want to defend Jews everywhere continuously bring up the state’s Jewishness in discussions of its atrocities where it’s not relevant. This would intuitively make sense if done by an antisemite, for example, but why would someone — Jewish or otherwise — who claims to want the best for Jewish people do it?

In some cases, the term is used to imply or outright state that Israel is only being accused of crimes because it’s a “Jewish state.” But as the evidence of Israel’s crimes has mounted, and the term continues to be used, it has become clear that it’s often employed to imply that Israel can’t be guilty of its alleged crimes because it is a “Jewish state,” or that its status as a “Jewish state” makes such allegations ridiculous.

For explicit Jewish supremacists, this implication comes from the belief that Jewish people are superior to others or that Israel’s victims aren’t fully human. For Jewish exceptionalists, it stems from the belief that Jews are eternal victims, and therefore Israel can’t be guilty of the crimes of which it is accused because it is a “Jewish state.”

There are hundreds of examples of “Jewish state” being used in Canadian media.

A November 2023 article from National Post deputy comment editor Jesse Kline uses the term four times, each in a sentence where he responds to Israel being accused of a crime:

“In reality, Al-Ahli was just a test run, a prelude to a concerted Hamas campaign to falsely accuse the Jewish state of committing war crimes against vulnerable civilians while covering up its own violations of international law”;
“And the same Hamas run health ministry that perpetrated the Al-Ahli fraud to incite violence against Israelis is now using Israel’s attempts to dismantle those terrorist assets to perpetuate the lie that the Jewish state is committing some sort of ‘genocide’ in Gaza”;
“It then quoted the director of Shifa Hospital, who claimed Israel was ‘launching a war on Gaza City hospitals,’ and accused the Jewish state of targeting a school (even though Gazan schools have been closed for some time)”;
“It also accuses Israel of committing war crimes – without, of course, providing any evidence – and calls on the media to use false and inflammatory terms such as ‘apartheid,’ ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’ when describing the Jewish state.”

There’s no apparent reason to use the term at all in the article, much less on four separate occasions. So the fact that it’s used, and the specific manner in which it is, is revealing: it’s employed to cast doubt on the idea that Israel committed the crimes of which it’s accused. And, as my search revealed, it’s not merely some tic Kline has in his writing: there are many other examples.

In a January 2024 Toronto Star article, former Israeli diplomat Daniel Taub wrote, “Far from being motivated by any humanitarian concern for the Palestinians, the South African initiative is a brazen attempt to weaponize a term coined to describe the worst crime committed against the Jewish people themselves and use it against the Jewish state in order to deprive it of the ability to defend itself.”

Avi Benlolo, the founder and CEO of the Abraham Global Peace Initiative, claimed in a January 2025 National Post article, “Trudeau’s criticism of Israel’s military response to Hamas, his government’s ban on arms exports to Israel and his tacit support for legal actions against the Jewish state have emboldened antisemitic rhetoric and actions within Canada.”

And Jay Solomon, the chief advancement officer for Hillel Ontario, claimed in a May 2025 National Post article about the BDS movement: “Let’s be clear: targeting the world’s only Jewish state for economic punishment – especially while ignoring or excusing the abuses of countless other nations – is not a principled stand for justice.”

It’s also worth noting that none of the organizations accusing Israel of genocide or other crimes have alleged its Jewishness makes it more likely of such behaviour. Instead, they’ve analyzed the evidence and come to the conclusion that Israel is guilty of the crime, without any irrelevant reference to the state’s Jewishness.

In essence, the organizations accusing Israel of genocide argue that it’s capable (and guilty) of committing crimes any other sort of state could and/or has. Israel’s defenders are the ones that bring up its Jewishness, and they do so to imply that it makes Israel a victim regardless of the circumstances. This is Jewish exceptionalism.

‘Jewish Neighbourhood’

The term “Jewish neighbourhood” appeared in Canadian newspapers 135 times between Oct. 7, 2023, and Aug. 31, 2025, according to the Canadian Newsstream database.

The phrase ‘x neighbourhood’ is not uncommon in Canadian media. However, the way it’s generally used differs in some important ways from how it’s used when referring to areas with what commentators regard as significant Jewish populations.

Generally, when something is referred to as an “x neighbourhood” it is merely descriptive, referring to the demographic makeup of an area. For example, a February 2025 National Post article refers to the Glen Park area in Toronto as once being a “sleepy Italian neighbourhood,” likely because its ethnic makeup in the 2001 Census was nearly 40 per cent Italian. I’m still not a fan of using this sort of language to describe neighbourhoods or countries, but it’s at least a descriptive statement based on a factual finding.

In contrast, “Jewish neighbourhood” is often used in a manner that goes beyond descriptive usages into prescriptive territory, stating or implying that non-Jewish people (including those who live in the neighbourhood) should behave in a certain way when in the area.

Here are several examples of the term being used in this manner.

In a January 2024 National Post article, Joel Kotkin wrote, “The Liberals also seem to worry as much about Islamophobia as the far more widespread problem of antisemitism, as demonstrated by the recent lawsuit filed by Jewish students at McMaster University alleging that they have been subjected to rising levels of hate. Perhaps sharing in this good cheer, Toronto police even brought coffee to pro-Hamas demonstrators blocking an overpass in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood.”

In a November 2024 Toronto Sun article, columnist Brian Lilley wrote, “Are Jews being treated differently in Canada? Absolutely, and not in a good way. From local police to the federal government, Jews are clearly not the chosen people of Canadian government officials. […] Last Sunday, as a group of pro-Hamas types gathered at Bathurst St. and Sheppard Ave. W. – a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood – it was a Jew who was arrested.”

And in a December 2024 Toronto Sun article, reporter Joe Warmington wrote, “There was more recognition by police of the concern some Jewish residents, including Councillor James Pasternak, had expressed about pro-Hamas demonstrators aggressively coming into a Jewish neighbourhood disrupting a weekly, peaceful vigil for 100 hostages still held in Gaza.”

In all of these examples, “pro-Hamas” is used to demonize the pro-Palestine protesters in question and portray them as a threat. In doing so, and by highlighting what they perceive as the “Jewish” character of the neighbourhoods in question, the writers imply that it’s a problem for pro-Palestine people to exercise their Charter right to protest in certain areas, simply because more Jewish people may live there than in the average Canadian neighbourhood. And in other examples, it’s sometimes stated or implied that them doing so is the equivalent of Kristallnacht, an absurd comparison that can only be made due to Jewish exceptionalism.

This argument is problematic enough on its own, including when you consider that the areas in question are nowhere near majority Jewish anyways (not that this would make it alright). For example, York Centre, the Toronto ward where Pasternak serves as councillor, was 7.5 per cent Jewish as of 2021 (with larger populations of Filipinos at 13.4 per cent and Italians at 9.1 per cent).

It becomes more disturbing when you consider the demographic makeup of pro-Palestine protests, which, anecdotally, often have a disproportionate share of Arabs relative to Canada’s population. With this in mind, it’s difficult to avoid drawing comparisons to how so-called “Jewish neighbourhoods” in occupied Jerusalem are discussed, with the implication being that force should be used to keep undesirable outsiders away from Jews.

In Jerusalem that looks like attacks from the military and settlers, while in Canada it comes in the form of baseless arrests from police (and sometimes violence from others as well). In Jerusalem, the motivation for this violence is that Jews are entitled to the area and as such it should be cleansed for them, while in Canada the implication is that Jewish people’s supposed eternal status as exceptional victims means extraordinary measures need to be taken to prevent what they see as demographic threats from interacting with them.

To expand on this point, and help demonstrate that it’s not merely some abstract situation, consider the implementation of “bubble zones” in Toronto (which received explicit editorial support from The Globe and Mail on at least two occasions).

In May, Toronto city council passed a by-law allowing for protesters to be barred from being within 50 metres of institutions that successfully apply for the status. While the by-law was framed as being something that could protect people belonging to all communities, in reality it was sought after by the Israel lobby to make protests near some venues that have been linked to Israel illegal.

The first bubble zones were announced in July, and unsurprisingly, 19 of the 21 were centred on Jewish institutions. It’s possible the list may expand to include more institutions from other communities in the future, but as it stands, Toronto’s city council passed a motion that the Canadian Civil Liberties Association referred to as an example of “punitive laws that give municipalities and the police the discretion to broadly restrict peaceful expression,” in effect giving privileged status to Jewish institutions. This happened in part due to the prevalent belief in Jewish exceptionalism.

‘List Of Jews’

In February, I released Find IDF Soldiers, a database based entirely on public information that now contains profiles of 163 Canadians who joined the Israeli military at any point in their lives.

In order for someone to be included in the database, three criteria needed to be met: 1) being Canadian; 2) having served in the Israeli military; 3) having this service already be public.

Every single person on the list thus far is at least partially Jewish, and I haven’t refrained from pointing this out where relevant, including an analysis article presenting my findings on what the typical Canadian Israeli military member looks like.

The fact that the list is entirely Jewish should not be a surprise to anyone. As I wrote on the site: “Jews are the only ones able to immigrate to Israel as citizens due solely to their ethnoreligious background. That accounts for all of the soldiers who were born in Canada and immigrated to Israel later on — they could only do so in the way they did because they’re Jewish. As per the few soldiers in the project who were born and raised in Israel and moved to Canada later, all of them happened to be Jewish. This isn’t a surprise given the demographic makeup of Israel, and the fact that only Jews (74 per cent of the population as of 2023), Druze (just under 2 per cent of the population) and Circassians (0.05 per cent of the population as of 2024) are required to serve in its military.”

As I noted in the analysis article accompanying the database, the average Israeli military member from Canada is a white, Jewish man, born and raised in Canada, who grew up in the Greater Toronto Area in a wealthy neighbourhood, attended private Jewish schools for elementary and/or high school (costing as much as $24,000 per year), had white-collar professionals as parents, and chose to become a lone soldier. This is generally an incredibly privileged group of people willingly deciding to join the Israeli military.

And yet, despite all of this, much of the criticism the project received in mainstream media and elsewhere revolved around the false claim that I was somehow reviving Nazi-era tactics against Jews.

For example, a February National Post article contained a quote from one of the military members saying, “I think there’s a pretty dark historical precedent for making lists of Jews. That’s what it immediately reminded me of, a database of Jews.”

A March article from The Canadian Jewish News (CJN), meanwhile, contained multiple quotes to this effect. Another one of the Israeli military members, speaking on the project, said, “It was literally a list of Jews. That’s all it was. Good for you, you put a list of Jews together. That’s what you did. Like the SS.” Later, CJN stated the member said there was “never a good reason to make a list of Jews,” and then quoted them saying, “There’s a very dark history with that. People think it’s only the Holocaust—it’s not only the Holocaust…It was during the Spanish Inquisition, it was any time there was a need to round up Jews, lists were made. So Jews and lists—not a good thing.”

The article also quoted a professor of journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University and a former senior CBC News producer who said the project is “ethical, if abhorrent,” adding, “It’s ethical because it’s deemed to be in the public interest in some quarters. But it’s abhorrent because we’ve seen where lists of Jews have led in the past.”

There are many more examples of this sort of framing being used when discussing the project in international media, which I have compiled. They include headlines such as, “There’s a New ‘Jew List’ in Canada,” “Repackaging of Nazi-era tactics in a modern context” and “‘We Know What Jew Lists Mean’: Canadian Database of IDF Soldiers Sparks Alarm in Jewish Community.”

This whole saga is an incredibly straightforward example of Jewish exceptionalism. People cynically or genuinely alleged that a journalist creating a database of mostly privileged people on the basis of their participation in the Israeli military for journalistic purposes was in any way comparable to the Nazis compiling information on a systemically oppressed group based solely on their ethnoreligious identity with the intent to harm them.

The fact that this allegation has been taken seriously instead of being mocked is only possible thanks to the widespread belief in Jewish exceptionalism among Canada’s media class.

There are various reasons why writers may believe in Jewish exceptionalism and cling on to it in their writing.

A group of former Jewish-school students I spoke with earlier this year recounted being “brainwashed” with the idea of Jewish exceptionalism throughout their time in the institutions.

For some, Israel’s actions may have finally become too abhorrent to attempt to defend with any sort of logic or facts, and so a reliance on a non-material analysis that doesn’t need any correspondence with the real world can be useful.

Some non-Jewish commentators claim to be wracked with a sense of guilt for a time when systemic antisemitism did actually exist, and operate accordingly.

Others may be concerned about the personal consequences of stepping outside the Jewish exceptionalist framework, which applies to a much broader section of the political spectrum than many would like to admit.

Regardless of the reason, the effect of Jewish exceptionalism is to strengthen Zionist arguments and weaken the pro-Palestine movement by getting it to treat Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and alleged antisemitism as if they’re equally dangerous and urgent problems.

They aren’t. The paranoid spectre of antisemitism is being cynically weaponized to help allow the genocide to continue unabated, and it’s doing the people of Gaza a disservice to pretend otherwise.

September 4, 2025 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Canada, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Tom Barrack’s imperial tantrum in Beirut: When entitlement speaks

By Tala Alayli | Al Mayadeen | August 26, 2025

Thomas Barrack, Washington’s special envoy, breezed into Beirut today oozing of the usual arrogance, condescension, and the smug self-righteousness that American officials have long mistaken for diplomacy. In what he must have thought was a moment of wit, Barrack dismissed the Lebanese press as “uncivilized,” even likening journalists’ actions to those of animals.

It is telling, of course, that the representative of a country responsible for the post-1991 siege that killed half a million Iraqi children, which former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described as “worth it”, turning Afghanistan into an endless graveyard, and underwriting the daily massacres in Gaza, would accuse others of lacking civility.

American officials seem to have mastered this peculiar art: bombing entire nations by morning, then lecturing those nations on decorum by afternoon.

Barrack’s performance is not a slip of the tongue, but a look into the imperial psyche. To him, like most of Western society, Lebanon is not a sovereign country with a free press and a tradition of political debate; it is a space to be managed, where we are expected to smile politely while being lectured on democracy and modernity. Arabs are not clever, competent, and equal human beings, but mindless herd societies that must be subjugated.

And what is civility either way? Surely not the baby-killing machine in Gaza, which has been endlessly praised by the United States, the same administration calling us animalistic. Perhaps the definition must be de-Americanized to make sense.

Besides, it is almost comical that Thomas Barrack, a man who once found himself charged with embezzlement and caged in his house on arrest in the United States with a monitor chained to his ankle, now parades around Lebanon as a moral authority. This is the same envoy whose career has been shadowed by allegations of corruption and shady financial dealings.

If anything, Barrack’s legal entanglements reveal a pattern: entitlement is not just a political habit for American officials, it is a personal one. He walks into Lebanon not as a humbled man marked by scandal, but as an imperial messenger who believes that his past sins are irrelevant, that he is owed respect simply because he carries Washington’s seal.

The irony is maddening: an envoy representing an empire that thrives on plunder, brutality, and deceit, scolding journalists for their supposed lack of manners.

Then leave!

Perhaps the most infuriating was Barrack’s sense of self-importance. “Do you think this is fun for us? Do you think it is economically beneficial for Morgan and I to be here, putting up with this insanity? If that’s not how you’d like to operate, we’re gone.”

Does Barrack think it is fun for us to sit and witness his condescension? Or watch “Israel” obliterate our homes with US-made weapons? Or listen to American-Israeli discourse about how to make the region more agreeable to those who want to overtake our resources, our lands, our lives?

Also, if billions in military aid to the mega-maniacal occupiers is economically beneficial, then surely a trip to Beirut at the US’s own discretion is not a bank-shatterer.

If journalists doing their jobs was slightly too overwhelming for a diplomat who is certainly used to press conferences as such, then said diplomat must rethink his competence.

And if decorum and mutual respect are an overload of work, then leave!

What is it about humiliation?

Yet what is most shameful is not only Barrack’s insult. Such condescension is expected from American envoys. His companion, Morgan Ortagus, once strutted into the Baabda Palace and cheerfully applauded the terrorist pager operation that left thousands of citizens, including children, wounded and blind. “Israel”-born Amos Hochstein once got his afternoon coffee from a Starbucks at a moment of peak boycott and gladly allowed a desperate Lebanese bourgeois citizen to pay.

Equally shameful is the silence that followed. A room full of journalists, veterans of a region where press freedom is under constant attack, sat in silence. Not one voice rose to challenge him.

The Lebanese press corps prides itself on resilience. In a country where journalists have been assassinated, bombed, and silenced, surviving in the profession is no small feat. Yet resilience without dignity is hollow.

What good is endurance if it does not sharpen your spine? What meaning does the word “journalist” carry if you cannot call power to account, especially when that power spits in your face?

Thomas Barrack was a temporary guest; he’s on our land, in our home. When the Trump administration leaves office, he will go back to being an irrelevant nobody. He should not have been allowed to shame the people of this country into silence.

By letting his words pass unchecked, today’s journalists failed not only themselves but the very people they claim to represent. Journalism is not stenography. It is not about politely recording the musings of foreign officials, no matter how insulting. It is about holding those officials accountable, about asking uncomfortable questions, about reminding every diplomat and politician that they are guests in this country, not its overlords.

Dignity, unfortunately, cannot be faked. It is not something anyone can claim retroactively, in editorials or late-night debates. It must be demonstrated in the moment. And this is a disease Lebanon has been plagued with. Only a few understand the true meaning of dignity, while others embarrassingly fail to embody it.

Let us be brutally honest: the American envoy insulted Lebanese journalists to their faces and walked away unscathed. Tomorrow, he will fly back to Washington or to whichever embassy compound he calls home, and he will report that Lebanon is pliable, that it can be insulted with impunity, that this country is still a stage for American entitlement.

Potato Potato, Dignity… Delusion

Lebanon is no stranger to foreign interference. From colonial mandates to military occupations to today’s endless meddling, the country has had to endure a parade of foreign “experts” and “envoys” who arrive with prescriptions and leave with nothing but disdain for the very people they claim to advise.

But through it all, Lebanon’s press has often stood as a thorn in the side of power. That tradition is not something to be taken lightly.

Thomas Barrack’s words today were contemptuous, yes, but they were also a test of whether Lebanese journalists still have the fire to defend their dignity, to insist that Lebanon is not an American playground, that its press is not an expendable backdrop for imperial theatrics. That test was failed.

We cannot afford such failures in today’s political climate. With Gaza burning under Israeli bombs, with Western governments spewing propaganda to justify genocide, with Arab sovereignty under constant threat, the role of the press has never been more urgent.

The journalist’s duty is not to play pleasant host to foreign arrogance but to confront it. To expose it. To ridicule it when it deserves ridicule, and to eviscerate it when it crosses the line of civility.

Right now, the people who sat in that room, deluded by a false sense of dignity, instead of protesting the plain enslavement, have become a laughingstock to those who understand true pride. They have become sitting ducks in front of those who play God.

How disappointing.

August 27, 2025 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

The Israeli flag just became the only national flag illegal to burn in the United States

When Criticizing Israel Becomes a Hate Crime: How One Ruling Betrayed the First Amendment

By Shaun King | The North Star | August 16, 2025

The Flag America Protects

This week in Washington, D.C., a federal judge made a ruling so shocking, so unprecedented, that it flips the First Amendment on its head. Judge Trevor N. McFadden declared that the Israeli flag — with the Star of David at its center — is not a political symbol at all, but a racial one.

He ruled that tearing it, grabbing it, desecrating it, even in the heat of protest, is not free expression but racial discrimination.

Think about that. In the United States, you can burn the American flag — the Supreme Court has said so for decades. But now, according to this ruling, burning or tearing the Israeli flag could make you guilty of racial hatred. The one national flag protected in American law today isn’t our own. It’s Israel’s.

You can burn the flags of all 50 states. You can torch the American flag all you want. You can burn the flags of the UK or France or Brazil or China.

But not Israel.

The Supreme Court’s Bedrock Principle

The highest court in the land has spoken clearly: you cannot criminalize burning the American flag. In Texas v. Johnson(1989), Justice William Brennan wrote:

“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable.”

The following year, in United States v. Eichman (1990), the Court struck down another attempt to ban flag burning, reminding the country that:

“Punishing desecration of the flag dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered, and worth revering.”

In America, even the Stars and Stripes — the nation’s own sacred symbol — cannot be placed above criticism or protest. That is what freedom means. And yet in 2025, a federal judge just carved out an exception — for a foreign flag.

How the Israeli Flag Was Elevated

The case came from dueling protests in D.C. last fall. Kimmara Sumrall, a pro-Israel activist, draped the Israeli flag around her shoulders as a cape. A pro-Palestinian demonstrator yanked it. A police officer saw it and arrested the woman.

The criminal court acquitted her. But Sumrall filed a civil rights lawsuit, backed by the National Jewish Advocacy Center, arguing that this wasn’t just an assault — it was racial discrimination.

Judge McFadden agreed. In his ruling, he wrote:

“Purposefully yanking on an Israeli flag tied around a Jewish person’s neck… is direct evidence of racial discrimination. The Star of David — emblazoned upon the Israeli flag — symbolizes the Jewish race.”

With that, he collapsed the line between a political symbol and a people’s identity. He went so far as to compare attacking the Israeli flag to using the N-word against a Black person.

No other flag in the world has been granted this kind of protection in an American courtroom. Not Britain’s. Not Canada’s. Not Mexico’s. Not even our own. Only Israel’s.

Civil Rights Law Twisted

To reach this conclusion, McFadden invoked the Civil Rights Act of 1866, written to protect newly freed Black Americans. Later, in 1987, the Supreme Court held that Jews and Arabs were covered as “races” under this law.

But McFadden went further than any court before him. He declared that the flag of Israel itself is a racial symbol — and therefore protected. And in doing so, he turned what was supposed to be a shield for the oppressed into a shield for an oppressive foreign government.

The Global Contrast

Everywhere else in the democratic world, flag burning is understood as a political expression. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled again and again: desecrating a flag, however offensive, is free speech.

It is only authoritarian regimes that conflate their flags with their people, criminalizing dissent in the name of “unity.” Now, America has imported that same authoritarian logic — not to protect our own flag, but to protect Israel’s. It’s wild to see.

The Stakes for Protest

The implications are chilling. If this ruling stands, tearing down or burning an Israeli flag at a protest could be treated as a federal hate crime. Shouting against Zionism near someone draped in the flag could be called racial harassment.

This isn’t about protecting Jewish people from violence. It’s about shielding Israel from protest while it bombs and starves children in Gaza.

One Flag Above All

Let’s be brutally clear. The Israeli flag is now the only national flag that American courts have declared effectively immune from desecration. The Stars and Stripes itself can be burned in the name of protest. Israel’s flag cannot.

That is not constitutional law. That is political favoritism dressed up as civil rights. And it represents a betrayal of the First Amendment.

Shaun King is an American writer & activist.

August 19, 2025 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Human rights, Israel, United States | 4 Comments

Netanyahu associate, arrested in Las Vegas child sex sting, escapes without charges

Press TV – August 16, 2025

An Israeli cyber official, who works directly under Benjamin Netanyahu, escaped to the occupied territories after his arrest in a US child sex operation in Nevada, US.

Las Vegas police, working with the FBI, Homeland Security, and Nevada’s Internet Crimes against Children Task Force, announced on Wednesday the arrest of 8 men, including Tom Artiom Alexandrovich.

Alexandrovich, 38, serves as Acting Head of Data & AI at Israel’s so-called National Cyber Directorate.

He is the founder of Israel’s multi-million-dollar “Cyber Dome” initiative. The program is reportedly equipped with AI to detect, neutralize, and repel cyber threats before they reach critical systems.

He has deep access to Israel’s cyber secrets and classified partnerships with foreign powers.

According to Las Vegas authorities, Alexandrovich and others were charged with luring a child with a computer for a sexual act. In Nevada, this felony carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

He was in Las Vegas for a professional conference, not as a registered diplomat. He has no diplomatic immunity. Yet US authorities allowed him to board a plane and return to Israeli-occupied territories within days, without trial, bail conditions, or public explanation.

Israeli outlet Ynet reported only that Alexandrovich was “briefly detained for questioning… before his release and return to Israel,” without mentioning the felony charges or the multi-agency child predator sting led by US authorities.

On January 11, Ivor Caplin, another top Israeli official and the head of the Jewish Labor Movement (JLM), was arrested by the Sussex Police for engaging in sexual communication with a child.

He was subsequently released on bail, extended several times, with the most recent extension requiring Caplin to return to answer bail on October 8.

August 16, 2025 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Israel, United States | Leave a comment

Is Europe pushing for Palestinian statehood or Palestinian surrender?

By Malek al-Khoury | The Cradle | July 28, 2025

Since its inception in 1948, Israel has never operated within fixed borders. Expansion has always been its doctrine – not constrained by law, but propelled by force and endorsed by unwavering western support. Israel has refused to define its boundaries for almost eight decades because its very identity is rooted in a colonial ambition that has never truly ended.

From the Nakba (Catastrophe) to the Naksa (Setback), from territorial invasions to the annexation of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank, the occupation state has continued to redraw its borders according to power, not legitimacy.

This expansionist project has only grown stronger with the rise of the messianic-nationalist current inside Israel, which sees full control over “Greater Israel” as a historical right that cannot be compromised.

Today, 77 years since the Nakba, Israel has advanced to full-throttle expansion mode – dispossessing Palestinians, destroying entire towns and villages, entrenching illegal Jewish settlements, and enforcing apartheid. Yet paradoxically, European states like France and the UK are preparing to recognize a “Palestinian state” precisely when Palestinian political geography is at its most fragmented, and when the Zionist project is at its most aggressive.

So what does this recognition actually mean? Is it a strategic achievement for Palestinians, or a diplomatic ruse that rebrands surrender as success?

A state without borders, a project without restraint

The 1917 Balfour Declaration marked the formal launch of a settler-colonial project in Palestine. What followed was not immigration but calculated dispossession – from British-facilitated land seizures and massacres, to the mass expulsions of the 1948 Nakba, which ethnically cleansed over 750,000 Palestinians.

This was not mere colonialism. It was ethnic replacement: Land was seized under imperial protection, then militarily conquered. This campaign never ended. It continued with the occupation of Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank, and escalated after 1967. Israel’s goal has never been coexistence. It has always been Jewish supremacy.

The 1947 UN Partition Plan (Resolution 181) granted over 55 percent of historic Palestine to the Zionist movement, despite Jews owning just six percent of the land. The Zionist movement accepted this on paper to gain international legitimacy, then immediately violated its terms, occupying 78 percent of the territory by force.

To this day, the occupation state has not adopted a formal constitution, and the reason is that basing itself on the Partition Plan would have constrained its expansionist ambitions. The Zionist doctrine never recognized final borders, instead establishing a state with no official frontiers – because its ambitions stretch beyond Palestinian geography to include parts of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt.

The internal debate in Israel over declaring a “Jewish state” is not merely a legal argument, but an attempt to solidify an exclusionary and replacement-based identity – one that legally enshrines racial discrimination and denies Palestinians their status as an indigenous people.

Resistance realignment: 7 October and the Two-State shift

The earthquake triggered by Operation Al-Aqsa Flood shook not only Israel but also the political discourse of the Palestinian movement. Strikingly, Palestinian factions – including Hamas – have begun explicitly voicing support for the “Two-State Solution” after years of insisting on liberating historic Palestine in its entirety.

In an unprecedented statement, senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya said in May 2024:

“We are ready to engage positively with any serious initiative for a two-state solution, provided it entails a real Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital and without settlements.”

This tactical adaptation signals a significant shift. Key Palestinian actors are now openly considering a truncated state. Is this a reflection of changing power dynamics? Or an imposed realignment under regional and international duress?

Recognition as Leverage: France, Saudi Arabia, and normalization

Last week, in a post on X, French President Emmanuel Macron said:

“Consistent with its historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognize the State of Palestine. I will make this solemn announcement before the United Nations General Assembly this coming September … We need an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and massive humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza. We must also ensure the demilitarization of Hamas, secure and rebuild Gaza. And finally, we must build the State of Palestine, guarantee its viability, and ensure that by accepting its demilitarization and fully recognizing Israel, it contributes to the security of all in the region. There is no alternative.”

France’s anticipated recognition of a Palestinian state in September is not driven by principle, but is a hard, cold geopolitical maneuver. It would appear that Paris is seeking closer ties with Riyadh, which has tethered normalization with Tel Aviv to progress on the Palestinian file. French recognition is thus a calculated signal to Saudi Arabia – not a gesture of solidarity with Palestinians.

In this equation, Palestine becomes currency. Its statehood is not affirmed as a right, but dangled as a precondition in normalization deals between Arab monarchies and the occupation state.

Strategic alignments: The Ankara–London Axis

With a third of MPs calling on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to recognize Palestine, pressure is also piling on London.

In a statement, Starmer said:

“Alongside our closest allies, I am working on a pathway to peace in the region, focused on the practical solutions that will make a real difference to the lives of those that are suffering in this war. That pathway will set out the concrete steps needed to turn the ceasefire so desperately needed, into a lasting peace. Recognition of a Palestinian state has to be one of those steps. I am unequivocal about that.”

Britain, too, is not moving toward recognition out of moral clarity, but to reinforce its post-Brexit strategic axis with Turkiye. Ankara, a key trading partner of Israel and political backer of Hamas, views the recognition of Palestine as a tool to elevate its regional stature and energy leverage. For London, deepening ties with Turkiye promises economic and geopolitical dividends. The result is a converging Paris–Riyadh and Ankara–London recognition track.

Thus, two informal axes are forming: Paris–Riyadh and Ankara–London, both converging on the recognition of a Palestinian state. Yet neither axis approaches it from a principled belief in Palestinian rights, but rather through the lens of power, influence, and realpolitik.

The Palestinian state: Recognition without sovereignty

Even if every European country were to recognize Palestine, it would amount to little more than symbolism without enforcement. There would be no defined borders for the state, no control over its own territory, and no halt to the settlement expansion or annexation policies pursued by the occupation state.

Tel Aviv rejects the premise entirely. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that any future Palestinian state would be “a platform to destroy Israel,” and that sovereign security control must remain with Israel. He has repeatedly ruled out a return to the conditions that existed prior to 7 October.

The reality is that 68 percent of the West Bank, classified as Area C, remains under full Israeli control. More than 750,000 settlers are embedded across that territory, under the full protection of the occupation army. How can a state exist on occupied, fragmented land, under constant siege, and without sovereignty?

“I’ve just returned from a lecture tour around the world, and I can confidently say Israel’s global image and position are at their lowest point in history,” writes Israeli journalist Ben-Dror Yemini.

Yet despite this, Netanyahu’s far-right government is doubling down – pushing for full annexation of the occupied West Bank, eyeing new territorial footholds in Sinai, southern Syria, even Jordan, while maintaining military positions in south Lebanon.

Israel’s global brand may be eroding, but its strategic project is advancing.

If Israel is expanding and entrenching, while the Palestinian movement scales back demands and regional states normalize ties, what exactly has been achieved?

Resistance factions that once rejected Tel Aviv’s existence now propose statehood on its terms. European recognition comes with no teeth. Settlements grow. Displacement continues. This is not liberation. It is the burial of the dream under the guise of diplomacy.

The interim solution will become the final arrangement. The Palestinian “state” becomes a diplomatic euphemism – an empty structure praised in speeches, but denied on the ground.

July 28, 2025 Posted by aletho | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | France, Hamas, Israel, Palestine, UK, Zionism | Leave a comment

The False Hope of Jewish Anti-Zionism

By David Miller | July 27, 2025

Some well-meaning people (as below) are keen to point to ‘anti-Zionism’ in Haredi communities in occupied Palestine. The hope is that they might help to dismantle the Jewish state from within. But we should beware the false hope that this brings.

The anti-Zionism which was almost universally shared by Hasidic groups in 1947 has been subject to considerable dilution and indeed reversals. Some groups like the Bobov maintain a refusal to serve in the IDF and appear to have been more militant in this than the other large Hasidic sects.

On the other hand, the three largest Hasidic courts: Ger, Belz, and Viznitz, have, in July 2024 “instructed their members to continue” to “report at the enlistment centers after receiving pre-draft evaluation orders.” All four of these sects have adherents who live in illegal settlements. There is even a Bobov cluster in the illegal settlement of Beitar Illit, and the Bobov Rebbe has recently made a “triumphant visit to Israel”.

In addition Ger, Belz and Viznitz are closely associated with two ultra-orthodox parties the Agudat Yisrael, which is half of a coalition known as United Torah Judaism, which is, in turn, part of the current Netanyahu regime. We can safely conclude that all of these notionally anti-Zionist sects are Jewish supremacists.

Meanwhile one of the largest groups known as Chabad, has shifted from an anti-Zionist position in the 1920s to become an ultra-Zionist sect which has enthusiastically taken part in the genocide in Gaza. This sect, has over 5,000 branches worldwide, and more than 150 outposts in the UK.

But surely there are ‘genuine’ Anti-Zionist Hasidim?

Well, the main candidate for that accolade is the Satmar.

Satmar is the largest Hasidic sect that still professes to be anti-Zionist. However, after the launch of Al Aqsa Flood one of the leaders (there are two rival factions) of Satmar condemned the participation of the anti-Zionist group Neturei Karta in demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinians. Neturei Karta appears to take some inspiration from the previous Satmar Rebbe, but there are apparently some contradictions within the Satmar camp. Among the rebukes from Rabbi Yekusiel Yehuda Teitelbaum, one of the two Satmar Rebbes, based in Williamsburg, New York, was: “Unfortunately, we see how far they have strayed from the path… They are walking around the world together with the Arabs, with those who shout without any shame and support the murders, they walk with them in broad daylight with the Shtreimel and the gown and shout together with the haters of Israel and murderers of souls. This is a terrible desecration of the name of heaven, to strengthen murderers in the name of the Holy Torah and in the name of heaven.” Obviously, the anti-Zionism of this strand of Satmar, at least, does not extend to supporting the liberation of Palestine or support for Palestinian resistance.

July 28, 2025 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Absurdity on Steroids

By Nahida Exiled Palestinian | June 5, 2025

Over the past 77 years, we Palestinians have faced an absurd type of multilayered injustice, unspeakable barbarity, chronic brutality, and compounded oppression with a twist.

* We are the only oppressed group who are vilified, condemned and labelled as terrorists, for merely existing.

We are the wronged, named as oppressors, the scorned named as haters, the slaughtered named as criminals, the dispossessed named as villains, we are the murdered named as the killers.

* We are the only oppressed group who are not allowed to identify or name their oppressor.

We cannot call the spade a spade and say “Jews occupy our land” despite the fact that the only criteria that enables any human to come from any corner around the globe to settle in our land is their Jewishness.

We cannot say “Jews are killing us” despite the fact that every single one of the occupiers is Jewish, every fallen bomb is dropped by a Jewish pilot, every bullet is shot by the hand of a Jewish soldier who pulled the trigger, every genocidal policy is drawn by a Jewish commander who gave the orders.

Yet the only word we are allowed to identify as our oppressor is “Zionism”, a conceptual shadowy word with no connection to real people who commit real Crimes Against Humanity around the clock.

Zionism did not drop 100,000 tons of explosives over Gaza killing and injuring hundreds of thousands of innocent souls. People who identify as Jewish did.

* We are the only oppressed group who are manipulated to grief for and bemoan the alleged suffering of their oppressor before their own, otherwise we are shunned and blacklisted as “holocaust deniers”

Our persistent suffering is secondary, diminished by the “eternal victimhood“ of our occupiers. Our pain is peripheral, dwarfed in comparison to theirs and validated only by the magnitude of our reverence to the “unique suffering“ of our oppressors

* We are the only oppressed group who are demanded to:

– Gratefully consent to the theft of their historic homeland,
– Gracefully lay down their only means of survival, their resistance

– Respectfully grant legitimacy to those whose aim is to exterminate them,
– Obediently protect the security of those from whom they saw nothing but savagery and barbarity
– Humbly guarantee a permanent presence and a prosperous future for those whose very ideology views the other with utter contempt as mere “animals, created only to serve them” and calls for their annihilation.

* We are the only oppressed group who are forbidden to discuss or ask questions about the ideology of their oppressors who claim to be the “chosen” above all others and that “God gave them the land”.

* We are the only oppressed group who are barred from investigating the extended tentacles of their oppressors, namely the extent of power and role of the global Jewish lobby in supporting and maintaining the regime that caused and maintained our Nakba for eight decades, under the pretext that there are some Jews who are against it.

As if all that is not enough, even as we get slaughtered, maimed, starved and eradicated, with our babies shredded to pieces we are still expected to watch our words and not to ever offend or hurt the feelings of our oppressors otherwise we are defamed as “hateful antisemites”.

Is it any wonder that our Nakba is still raging, eight decades and counting!

July 20, 2025 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Behind Closed Doors: Bilderberg’s Secret Summits Are a Threat to Democracy

By Paul Anthony Taylor | Dr. Rath Health Foundation | July 11, 2025

Accompanied by only the bare minimum of publicity, a group of powerful politicians, corporate titans, tech billionaires, and military chiefs recently retreated behind a tight wall of secrecy for the 71st Bilderberg Meeting. Held in Stockholm’s luxurious Grand Hotel, some of the most influential decision-makers on Earth had four days of discussions in a forum that prides itself on being unaccountable to the billions of citizens whose lives are shaped by its decisions. As the Dr. Rath Health Foundation has long warned, when unelected elites meet in the shadows to set the world’s direction, it is democracy and the rights of ordinary people that are sacrificed first.

A glance at this year’s Bilderberg participant list is enough to quickly expose the lie that this was just a harmless “networking event.” NATO’s new Secretary General Mark Rutte sat down with the heads of the US Indo-Pacific Command and Europe’s top military brass, while defense contractors like Saab, Palantir and Thales stood by ready to profit from conflict. CEOs from Big Tech and the pharma industry – Microsoft, Spotify and Pfizer – were there too, rubbing shoulders with former Google chief and Bilderberg board member Eric Schmidt, a man who has openly warned that whoever wins the race for super-intelligent AI will hold “the keys to control the entire world.”

How can such a gathering, convened with no oversight and no minutes published, claim to serve the common good? The organizers hide behind the excuse that secrecy allows “free discussion,” but it is the freedom of the global public that is undermined when vital decisions about war, energy, technology, and economic policy are hashed out in private by an unelected few.

Consider some of this year’s discussion topics: the Ukraine conflict, nuclear proliferation, AI weapons, the “authoritarian axis” of China and Russia, the geopolitics of energy and critical minerals, and even depopulation and migration. These are not idle cocktail gossip subjects; they are major issues that touch the lives and livelihoods of billions of people across the entire world. Yet there is supposedly no record of what is said behind Bilderberg’s closed doors – only the vague reassurance that there is “no desired outcome.”

Profiting from the crises they help perpetuate

AI and military conflict were closely related themes at this year’s meeting. While some at Bilderberg paint AI as the next industrial revolution, others describe it as the “cavalry” that will save civilization from itself. But save whom, exactly? Powerful insiders like Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt have invested heavily in AI-driven drone warfare and mass data collection – technologies that promise ever-greater profits for the few and unprecedented surveillance and control for the rest of us.

Meanwhile, those pushing this agenda are the same people who stand to profit most from the very conflicts they claim to manage. As the Dr. Rath Health Foundation has repeatedly exposed over the years, the interlocking interests of multinational corporations and their senior executives frequently feed off the very crises they help perpetuate.

And what about health? While the public is told to trust in official narratives, those who sit around the Bilderberg table include the heads of pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and major financial houses like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup – institutions that have thrived under a global economic model that prioritizes profits and costly chronic disease management over preventive and science-based natural health approaches. With AI now poised to become the next trillion-dollar bonanza, these same interests gather to protect their future dominance – while the public remains uninformed and voiceless.

The point here is that for decades, the Bilderbergers have presented themselves as guardians of the so-called “rules-based order.” But the truth is that secrecy and accountability cannot coexist. Real democracy demands informed consent, not enforced compliance. When power is concentrated in hidden networks that answer to no one, trust evaporates and corruption thrives. Worse, secrecy fuels public disillusionment and suspicion – precisely because the participants make transparency impossible. If the Bilderbergers have nothing to hide, why do they hide at all?

The world needs transparency not secrecy

There is no place for this outdated cloak-and-dagger elitism in the 21st century. Humanity faces profound challenges: war and peace, food and energy security, the survival of natural health freedom, and the need to put people before corporate profits. These are not decisions to be made by billionaires and generals behind police barricades. They belong to us all. And the only way to ensure they serve humanity is to drag them out of the shadows and into the daylight.

The Dr. Rath Health Foundation has always supported the right of people to shape their own destinies through knowledge and empowerment. We strongly reject the notion that the future of our health, our economies, and our freedoms should be decided by unaccountable elites. Whether it is the Pharma Cartel’s stranglehold on healthcare or the global race to develop super-intelligent AI, our message remains the same: people must come before profit, and transparency must triumph over secrecy.

Bilderberg is not a harmless talking shop. It is a symbol of how far the unelected few will go to keep us shut out of decisions that affect every aspect of our lives. This secrecy is not a harmless tradition; it is a threat to democracy itself. The world does not need more secret summits – it needs open, democratic debate, rooted in human rights and the health and well-being of all.

If the Bilderberg participants truly believe they are acting in our best interest, they should have nothing to fear from transparency. Until they throw open their doors, allow cameras into their meetings, publish transcripts, and let the people they claim to serve see exactly what they are planning, the rest of us have every right – indeed, every duty – to question what they are doing.

In the fight for a healthier, freer, and fairer world, secrecy is our enemy. The time has therefore come to shine a bright light on the hidden corridors of power and insist that our future is not something to be traded behind closed doors, but built in the open, by and for the people.

Executive Director of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and one of the coauthors of our explosive book, “The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’”, Paul Anthony Taylor is also our expert on the Codex Alimentarius Commission and has had eye-witness experience, as an official observer delegate, at its meetings. You can find Paul on Twitter at @paulanthtaylor

July 12, 2025 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Deception, Militarism, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Leave a comment

How Israeli propaganda mills recycled fabricated claims of intercepting Iranian missiles

By Ivan Kesic | Press TV – July 5, 2025

For the third time, the Israeli regime has declared an implausible success rate in intercepting Iranian ballistic missiles, this time touting a fanciful figure of 86 percent, a claim parroted with little scrutiny by much of the Western mainstream media.

This week, Israeli media outlets relayed statements from the regime’s war ministry claiming that 86 percent of Iranian missiles and 99 percent of drones were intercepted during the June 2025 Israeli war against Iran.

The figures, they said, were drawn from 12 days of the war, during which Iran launched 532 ballistic missiles in approximately 42 barrages targeting the occupied Palestinian territories. According to the same sources, about 300 missiles landed in “open areas,” while 200 were allegedly intercepted by Israeli and American air defense systems.

The interception systems credited include Israel’s David’s Sling, Arrow 2 and 3, along with the US-supplied THAAD and Aegis systems, altogether costing around 5 billion shekels, or nearly $1.5 billion.

In a triumphant assessment, the Israeli war ministry claimed their interception prevented over $15 billion in potential property damage and “saved countless lives.”

Some Zionist officials went even further, asserting that only 25 to 31 Iranian ballistic missiles actually struck targets within the occupied territories.

Despite the glaring inconsistencies in these numbers, and their defiance of both available evidence and basic mathematics, Western media repeated the claims almost reverently, offering little in the way of critical examination.

A pattern of fabricated success

This is not a one-off occurrence. It marks the third time the Israeli regime has released clearly falsified data on interception success rates, only to see these narratives absorbed uncritically into Western discourse.

After Iran’s Operation True Promise 1 and 2 in April and October last year, Israeli regime officials boasted a now-familiar “99 percent” interception rate. In the second operation alone, they claimed 200 Iranian ballistic missiles were launched, implying that only two managed to bypass Israeli defenses.

Yet satellite imagery tells a vastly different story. At Nevatim Airbase, one of the three key Iranian targets (alongside Tel Nof Airbase and Mossad headquarters), 33 Iranian missiles made direct contact, 26 of which caused severe structural damage, including to five hangars.

These figures alone debunk Israel’s exaggerated claims, as does independent footage from civilian sources, which recorded dozens of strikes, far more than the “three” the regime was willing to admit.

Tel Nof Airbase saw direct hits that triggered secondary explosions among stored munitions. At least two missiles impacted areas near Mossad’s headquarters. In total, over 40 Iranian missiles successfully penetrated much-hyped Israeli defenses during Operation True Promise 2, twenty times more than Israeli officials conceded.

Their missile launch count was also exaggerated. Visual evidence confirms that 53 missiles were launched in three waves: 25 from Kermanshah, 18 from Tabriz, and 10 from Shiraz. This suggests that over 75 percent of Iranian missiles struck their intended targets, an accuracy rate far closer to Iranian estimates of 90 percent than the Israeli claim of 1 percent success.

The same distortions appeared after Operation True Promise 1, with Israel again insisting it intercepted “99 percent of 300 missiles and drones”—a figure clearly contradicted by publicly available footage capturing numerous impacts.

Latest round of deception

As with the previous two retaliatory operations, the latest Israeli claims, of an 86 percent interception rate, 300 harmless impacts in open areas, and only 30 successful Iranian strikes, lack any verifiable evidence.

Most Iranian retaliatory strikes and Israeli interception attempts occurred at night and were recorded in numerous public videos. These show luminous streaks of incoming missiles, and often, impact explosions, across the occupied territories.

All Israeli systems engaged, David’s Sling, Arrow 2/3, and THAAD use hit-to-kill technology, designed to intercept missiles at long ranges and high altitudes. When successful, these intercepts generate massive hypersonic collisions that produce blinding explosions visible across the region.

If Israel had indeed intercepted 200 ballistic missiles, as claimed, there would be a flood of corroborating footage from personal and security cameras, all time- and date-stamped.

But such evidence is conspicuously absent. Even the Israeli military, known for showcasing its “successes,” has failed to release convincing proof.

Nor is there any physical evidence of widespread missile debris in Iraq or Jordan, which should exist if large numbers of missiles had been intercepted in those areas.

Conversely, hundreds of videos document Iranian missiles piercing Israeli defenses and detonating across the occupied territories. If most Iranian missiles were truly falling into uninhabited open zones, as claimed, the regime would be eager to release images proving it. Instead, photo and video censorship has been rigorously enforced.

In fact, the scale of destruction suggests widespread strikes on Israeli military infrastructure, not craters in farmland. Israeli media themselves have pegged total damage at $12 billion, with projections reaching $20 billion when indirect costs are counted.

These staggering figures are inconsistent with the claim that only 25–31 missiles hit, unless one believes each missile inflicted $500, 800 million in damage, an implausible notion.

The official 86 percent success rate also contradicts a statement by a senior Israeli intelligence officer to American media, who admitted that by the seventh day of fighting, only 65 percent of Iranian missiles were being intercepted.

He attributed this drop in effectiveness to Iran’s deployment of faster, more maneuverable, and more sophisticated missiles.

Initially, Iran had used older liquid-fueled ballistic missiles, such as Shahab-3, known for their slow speed and predictable trajectories, making them easier to intercept. However, these outdated models were paired with decoys, confusing air defense systems and draining interceptor stockpiles.

Despite the extensive documentation of missile attacks, no comprehensive analysis has yet detailed how many Iranian missiles and Israeli interceptors were deployed, or what the true interception rate was.

Open-source analysts have attempted estimates using nighttime footage from Jordanian photographer Zaid M. al-Abbadi, but his recordings cover only a fraction of the conflict, nighttime only, with limited geographical and vertical scope.

Nonetheless, they point to a clear trend: Iranian missiles breached Israeli air defenses far more often than official figures admit, and did so with a frequency higher than the number of interceptors deployed.

Diversions and disinformation

In addition to exaggerating interception figures, the Israeli regime employs a range of propaganda tactics to conceal its failures and downplay Iranian achievements.

During Operation True Promise 1, iconic images of glowing Iranian missiles above Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in occupied Jerusalem al-Quds stunned the world, symbolizing Iran’s reach and resolve.

In response, Israeli regime officials, most notably UN ambassador Gilad Erdan, offered the bizarre narrative that Israel was “protecting Al-Aqsa from Iranian missiles,” attempting to sow discord between Iran and the wider Muslim world.

In truth, those missiles were aimed at Nevatim Airbase, located 65 kilometers south of occupied Jerusalem al-Quds.

Similarly, during Operation True Promise 3, Israeli propagandists claimed Iran had deliberately struck the Al-Jarina Mosque in Haifa. In reality, a missile hit the Sail Tower regime building complex 50 meters southeast, with the mosque sustaining only minor facade damage from shockwaves.

Israel also falsely alleged Iranian attacks on schools and homes. But released images show damage consistent not with Iranian warheads, but with malfunctioning Israeli interceptors.

Perhaps the most egregious example was the claim that Iran targeted Soroka Hospital. In fact, the damage was from a strike on a nearby C4I military intelligence HQ. The regime routinely positions military infrastructure adjacent to civilian areas, then manipulates resulting collateral damage as evidence of Iranian wrongdoing.

Facilities like the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv and the military-linked Weizmann Institute are presented as “civilian” in official narratives. Moreover, videos of Iranian missile strikes on these sites are heavily censored, and sharing such footage risks severe legal punishment.

Finally, Israeli propaganda claims that missile victims are mostly “non-Israelis”—while failing to mention that non-Jewish residents are often banned from entering bomb shelters.

During the recent war, Palestinians, Chinese workers, and Turkish journalists all testified to being denied shelter access, highlighting both systemic discrimination and the hypocrisy of Israeli victimhood narratives.

July 5, 2025 Posted by aletho | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Moscow, beware: Germany just discovered the joys of illegal war

By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | June 24, 2025

Forget the fog of war. Even in war, and sometimes especially in war, some things are exceedingly clear. Regarding the so-called ‘Hamas-Israel War’, for instance, it is obvious that in reality it is not a war at all but a genocide, namely the Gaza Genocide, carried out by Israel against the Palestinians whose unbroken resistance will be the stuff of legends, and of history too.

Likewise, in the case of Israel’s current assault on Iran – really, of course, a combined US-Israeli attack from the get-go – there is no room for doubt that it is criminal and a “blatant act of aggression,” as multiple experts in international law agree. That’s because in essence, Israel is not acting with a UN mandate – which it would not have received – or in self-defense.

The legal basis for this compelling assessment is not complex and there is no room for good-faith debate: Israel’s attack violates Article 2 (4) of the foundational UN Charter, which is recognized universally as jus cogens, that is, a binding norm: no pick and choose.

The few generally accepted, narrowly defined potential exceptions to this article’s comprehensive prohibition on the use of force, such as an erroneous incursion, certain operations at sea, or a rescue of nationals, clearly do not apply. The Israeli onslaught also does not have the blessing of the UN Security Council, and it cannot possibly count as lawful self-defense under Article 51.

So far, so simple. If anyone tries to make this look complicated by flagrantly misapplying and abusing the notion of a ‘preemptive strike’, you are dealing with Israeli or Israel-Lobby disinformation and propaganda. That too is anything but surprising.

Yet what is more puzzling than the above is the response of the governments, and often the mainstream media of the West, to this clearly criminal Israeli attack. After years of invoking international law to go after Russia, it turns out that the same leaders and talking heads will tie themselves into 5-D pretzels to let Israel get away with whatever Israel feels like doing on any given day.

This is not really news either, of course: Western ‘elites’, with Washington always in the lead, have behaved no better when serving as accomplices in Israel’s Gaza Genocide. But there is something peculiar and noteworthy about how exactly some important Western politicians and their media and ‘think tank’ experts spin the attack on Iran.

Take, for instance, Germany. Its chancellor Friedrich Merz has gone out of his way to loudly endorse the assault on Iran. He has even exposed himself to ridicule and some – if far too little – criticism by employing revoltingly indecent language. Calling Israel’s actions “dirty work” (it sounds even worse in the original German: “Drecksarbeit”) that must be done and for which we all should be grateful, Merz has revealed his double racism: As a German and a historian, I can only say that a German leader praising Jews for doing “our” dirty work is, to put it very mildly, extremely boorish. Defining the criminal killing of Iranians as that “dirty work” adds a very nasty “colonial” flavor reminiscent of say, Kaiser Wilhelm II gloating over massacring Chinese during the so-called Boxer Rebellion.

While Merz has been clumsy enough to couch his obnoxious ideas in equally obnoxious language, he has by no means been alone. All too many prestigious German publications, such as the staid Frankfurter Zeitung or the also important Merkur newspaper, have hurried to either simply agree with Merz or at least to excuse and relativize his vile statement. In addition, rather overworked all-purpose ‘experts’, such as the reliably conformist and rarara-russophobic Christian Mölling, have used their perma-perk in Germany’s streamlined talk shows to cynically diminish international law and help dress up Israel’s newest crime as so necessary that it trumps all law anyhow.

Mölling was self-unaware enough to openly argue that some countries (read: Israel) can’t afford the “luxury” of accepting “normative limits” and that international law, anyhow, might be “protecting the wrong ones” (read: Iran). It’s breathtakingly brazen and intellectually primitive, and also historically speaking, very German in the worst sense: If we or our friends (read: Israel) feel constrained by international law, then that’s a problem not for us or our friends but for international law.

And now, let’s take a step back and think for a moment like a German who was not a conformist intellectual mediocrity: Enlightenment giant Immanuel Kant. For those with ears to hear and brains to process, Kant has taught us that reason and ethics demand that the justifications for our actions ought to be generalizable in good conscience. In short, when we act, we should be able to show that we are acting according to a fair and reasonable rule.

Let’s generalize into such a rule, then, what German leader Friedrich Merz has just said and what all too many German mainstream representatives agree with: A country (here: Israel) that feels sufficiently afraid (as judged by that country) of another country (here: Iran) has a right (that trumps international law) to attack that other country without provocation and even during ongoing negotiations.

Interesting. Consider that German elites have been fanning war hysteria relentlessly. Not a day seems to go by without some German general, spy, or politician warning their fellow Germans that Russia is at least likely, really almost certain, to attack within the next five years or so. Evidence: zero.

Indeed? So, if we are all supposed to be so afraid of Russia in Germany, does that now mean that according to Merzian logic we may as well one day launch a preemptive strike on Moscow? After all, we could then say we felt threatened and our military and the intelligence services were telling us that the Russians were coming. And moreover, we’d probably claim that we, the Germans, were proudly doing the ‘Drecksarbeit’ for all of NATO (minus, most likely, the US). And isn’t doing the ‘Drecksarbeit’ now officially a good thing in Germany, again?

Absurd, you say? Yes, absolutely. Exactly as absurd as Israel’s pretexts for attacking Iran. And yet those have been officially endorsed by a German chancellor, including self-revealing dirty language. Let’s hope that Moscow does not take seriously what Merz says. Because if Moscow did take it seriously, then by Merzian logic, it should feel very threatened indeed by Berlin – and again by Merzian logic, who knows where that might lead.

Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.

June 24, 2025 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Germany, Israel, Zionism | Leave a comment

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ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

David Ben Gurion speaks at the 1951 World Zionist Congress, 13 August 1951. Source | Wikimedia Commons

A Zionist Federation meeting in Glasgow, reported in the Jewish Chronicle, Oct. 20, 1961, p. 14

Celebrating the creation of the Zionist entity in Calderwood Primary School, 2025, with Shayna Conn (right) of the Scottish Jewish Youth Alliance. Source | Facebook | Jewish Telegraph

From A Lifetime of Connection: UJIA Annual Report 2018-19. Source | United Jewish Israel Appeal

“Strong British Jewry with a lifelong commitment to Israel.” Source | United Jewish Israel Appeal

By Nahida Exiled Palestinian | June 5, 2025

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The Dissident | December 28, 2025

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