This made me want to throw up. I've never heard of Ed Sheeran until this vile Macklemore gave his hateful speech, but it looks like Sheeran himself is just as bad. Please just shut up and sing.
Just his use of the word "disproportionate" shows that he's been drinking the antisemite's Kool-Aid. And "unjustified"? Israel was perfectly justified in fighting back! Antisemites prefer that Israel just give up and surrender, but that's never going to happen.
They've all been indoctrinated into hating and criticizing the victims instead of the villains. We were forced to hear it on the 25th anniversary of the Islamic terrorist attacks on America when "Islamophobia" was highlighted. Now that the High Holy Days are here and the third anniversary of the Hamas pogram against Jews in Israel is at hand, the hatred and misplaced sympathy will be worse than ever.
When you use a stadium or concert hall to incite people and spread anti-Israel, anti-Jewish, and anti-American propaganda, you are no longer an entertainer.
Crooner Ed Sheeran called Israel’s actions in Gaza “unjustifiable” as he wept and broke his silence during his first concert since booting rapper Macklemore from his tour for tirades against the Jewish state.
“I’ve never wanted to be an activist musician, but this put me in the middle of an important and passionate argument about freedom of speech and the most complex political issue on the planet,” Sheeran told the Philly crowd of concertgoers Saturday night.
Sheeran spoke multiple times about the controversy during Saturday night’s show at Lincoln Financial Field, growing progressively more upset as the night wore on and eventually telling fans it had been one of the “worst weeks of his life” and that “I really didn’t know whether I’d be even get on stage again, whether I wanted to be an artist at all.”
At the start of the show, before playing any music, he zeroed on his feelings about the Gaza War, criticizing both Israel and Hamas.
“I have tried in my career not to be a political commentator of any kind, because I want my music and shows to be about unity, not division, about humanity, not politics,” Sheeran said, apparently reading from a teleprompter.
“But this is a humanitarian issue. I cannot hide how I feel about it anymore. What happened in Israel, and at the music festival on October 7th was horrific and compounded centuries of Jewish pain,” he said as he broke down in tears.
“What is happening in Gaza is catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate.”
“My heart has been broken by the scale of devastation and loss of civilian life and loss of children’s lives. And the systemic injustice we’re seeing unfolding the West Bank cannot be overlooked,” the singer-songwriter said.
He also said that he was used to his music being criticized but said “this week the criticism was about something much more important, and I’ve had to take and make difficult decisions, and I am making mistakes, and I’m so, so sorry.”
He later shared that his first concert back “is not the usual ‘Loop’ show” as he was fearful of how the crowd would react after Macklemore’s departure.
“I usually go out to a B stage and I’m going to be totally honest with you, I didn’t know what this audience would be like tonight,” Sheeran said, adding, “I didn’t know if I would have things thrown at me.”
“Honoring my commitment to my fans is also completely central to who I am. And that is why I’m here tonight, on my own,” he said, receiving a roaring applause.
“I am deeply worried about the idea that venues should pre-approved content of performance,” the singer said, adding “this happens in so many places that I perform around the world, but it should never happen in the free world.”
by Gladstone Institutes, edited by Gaby Clark, reviewed by Robert Egan, The GIST
"In the sickest COVID-19 patients, SARS-CoV-2 doesn't just cause severe damage by directly infecting airway cells. The virus can also trigger hyperinflammation—a cycle in which immune cells themselves become infected, stop fighting the virus and instead trigger high levels of inflammation throughout the lungs.
"Now, researchers at Gladstone Institutes and UC San Francisco (UCSF) have discovered how a SARS-CoV-2 protein called ORF8 is responsible for hijacking the immune system's macrophages and causing this dangerous cycle. The work, published in Science Advances, also shows that blocking ORF8 reduces lung inflammation and damage in mice infected with SARS-CoV-2.
"Our results reveal that ORF8 is really a key ringleader behind how SARS-CoV-2 spreads and causes severe lung inflammation," says Melanie Ott, MD, Ph.D., the Nick and Sue Hellmann Distinguished Professor and director of the Gladstone Infectious Disease Institute. "By showing how this protein tricks our immune cells, we've uncovered a promising new path for developing treatments to protect the lungs."
Setting off a cellular chain reaction
"At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Gladstone and UCSF researchers teamed up to map the interactions between SARS-CoV-2 proteins and human proteins. Their goal was to find vulnerabilities in the virus that could be exploited with drugs.
"Among many other findings, the study flagged the small protein ORF8—made by SARS-CoV-2—as binding to a human immune receptor called IL-17RA. Subsequent research found contradictory evidence about the role of the protein in disease: In isolated lung cells, ORF8 seemed to put a brake on viral replication, but variants of SARS-CoV-2 that didn't have the ORF8 protein tended to cause milder disease.
"The new research focused on the effect of ORF8 on macrophages, immune cells known to play an active role in how the body responds to COVID-19. Ott's team found that when macrophages are exposed to ORF8, they begin producing more copies of ACE2, the receptor that SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter cells. With more ACE2 on their surfaces, these macrophages become easier for the virus to infect. ORF8, it turns out, acts as a key to infect macrophages—not lung cells.
"Further experiments showed that macrophages exposed to ORF8 and infected with SARS-CoV-2 were more likely to lose their ability to fight the virus and eventually die, releasing an inflammatory signaling molecule as they did so. This signaling molecule, in turn, caused widespread inflammation and made lung cells more susceptible to infection.
"We were surprised to see how effectively ORF8 turns our own immune defenses against us," says Yusuke Matsui, MD, Ph.D., staff research scientist in Ott's lab and first author of the new study. "ORF8 is hijacking macrophages to enhance infection of the surrounding tissue."
"Indeed, when the researchers added macrophages to lung cells, they saw the virus carrying ORF8 replicate far more efficiently than the virus without it. And mice infected with the ORF8 virus showed more lung damage and scarring than those infected with the virus that lacked the protein.
A new target for severe infections
"For clinicians, one of the most challenging aspects of treating severe COVID-19 is the balancing act between calming the immune system—to prevent hyperinflammation—and preserving the immune system's ability to fight off the virus. They often turn to steroids, which can reduce inflammation but prevent the body from eliminating SARS-CoV-2.
"The new findings point toward a more targeted way to treat hyperinflammation. Blocking the interaction between ORF8 and IL-17RA stops the cycle of macrophage infection, death and inflammation at the root of this problem.
"To this end, Ott and her colleagues tested brodalumab, an antibody that blocks IL-17RA and is already FDA-approved to treat the skin condition psoriasis. In mice infected with the virus carrying ORF8, a similar anti-IL-17RA antibody decreased inflammation, virus levels and lung scarring. More work is needed to see whether this could be beneficial in humans with severe COVID-19.
"This study answers a fundamental question about how SARS-CoV-2 triggers such overwhelming lung inflammation," Ott says. "By showing that this single viral protein is the main bridge between viral growth and tissue damage, we've found a clear target for new treatments. Blocking this pathway could give us a powerful way to calm lung inflammation and protect patients against future viral strains."
--------------------
Publication details
Yusuke Matsui et al, Secreted ORF8 reprograms macrophages to enhance SARS-CoV-2 infection of lung epithelial cells, Science Advances (2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aee5421. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aee5421
Well, nobody polled me! This pro-Israel, Jewish, Republican voter has never connected antisemitism with Netanyahu. What fueled antisemitism is that Israel had the gall to retaliate after the October 7, 2023 Hamas pogrom in which they raped, tortured, murdered, and held hostage over 1,200 innocent people.
Was Netanyahu on college campuses when they exploded into pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel, anti-Jewish antisemitism, intimidation, and violence that lasted for months?
Was Netanyahu in Iran for the endless rallies for "Death to America" and "Death to Israel"?
Was Netanyahu on stage with celebrities and "influencers" as they chanted "Free Palestine"?
Has Netanyahu been running for Senate and Congress along with rabid antisemites who have been blatant about their hatred of Israel, and who have warned of violence against American Jews?
The American Jews who have responded to that poll by blaming Netanyahu must be getting indoctrinated online or in public, and I feel sorry for them. How they can still vote Democrat when the worst Jew-haters are Democrats is beyond me.
Survey shows that despite criticism of premier, 86% identify as pro-Israel, though majorities back aid cuts and remain divided over AIPAC’s role in primaries; most US Jews plan to vote Democrat
"A majority of American Jewish voters say they are deeply concerned that Israel’s actions under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have contributed to rising antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the United States, even as an overwhelming majority continue to identify as pro-Israel, according to a new poll released this week.
"The survey, conducted by the Mellman Group for the Jewish Electorate Institute and published Thursday, found that 56 percent of respondents had a “great deal” of concern that “Israel’s actions under Netanyahu have increased antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the US”
"The view varied sharply by political affiliation, with 65% of Jewish Democrats expressing a high level of concern, compared with 46% of independents and 34% of Republicans.
"At the same time, 86% of those surveyed described themselves as pro-Israel. Nearly two-thirds, 65%, said they were pro-Israel while critical of some or many Israeli government policies. Seventy-one percent viewed Israel favorably, compared with 25% who viewed it unfavorably.
"Netanyahu himself was significantly less popular among respondents: 61% viewed the premier unfavorably and 34% favorably. Sixty percent said they wanted to see him replaced in Israel’s upcoming election, while only 16% wanted him reelected."
Sorry, but my feeling has always been that these radical protesters don't care at all about "Palestinians". These are antisemites who care only about destroying Israel and Jews. If it weren't "Palestinians", it would be some other group, as long as they can be used as an excuse by the protesters and radicals to blame and attack Israel. They know that the charge of "genocide" is a lie, but they use it anyway because both the charge and the protesters get into the news that way, and the media protects them.
The pogrom against Israel by Hamas on October 7 , 2023, gave them that excuse, and since then, every celebrity and attention-seeker has jumped on the bandwagon..
"The problem was not Robert Kraft’s decision. The problem is how we explain it.
"We removed the messenger from the stage without confronting the lie he was spreading. We focused on Macklemore–his rhetoric, his history, the hurt his words cause–when the far greater threat is the message itself. And in doing so, we inadvertently helped create precisely the narrative Macklemore and his defenders wanted.
"Now the story practically writes itself: Macklemore dared to “speak truth to power.” He said what others supposedly do not want Americans to hear, and for his courage, a Jewish billionaire and other venue owners took away his microphone. Macklemore becomes the martyr. His cancellation becomes evidence of his righteousness. And Jews assume precisely the role his rhetoric already assigns us: morally compromised and willing to use our influence to suppress anyone brave enough to expose an uncomfortable truth.
"We should stop defending ourselves against the accusation and start challenging the accusation itself.
"Macklemore did not belong on that stage because he was using it to spread hateful lies about the Jewish state. He was telling an audience that the world’s only Jewish state is committing “genocide” and practicing “apartheid,” presenting those accusations not as arguments to defend, but as settled truths.
"That is not the same as supporting Palestinians or criticizing Israel. Macklemore remains free to say what he believes. But freedom of speech does not entitle anyone to someone else’s microphone, particularly an entertainment stage before thousands who bought tickets for a concert rather than to hear a political polemic.
"There is also a bitter irony in the outrage over Macklemore being “canceled.” Where was this defense of artistic freedom when American Jewish musician Matisyahu had concerts canceled after activists targeted venues over his support for Israel, creating security and staffing concerns? Macklemore did not lose his place because of his identity. He lost that stage because of what he chose to do with it.
The accusations coming from more than Macklemore
"And this is much bigger than Macklemore. He did not invent these accusations. He is simply their latest celebrity messenger.
“Genocide.” “Apartheid.” “Ethnic cleansing.” “War criminal.” We hear these charges on college campuses, across social media, in newsrooms, entertainment, politics, and our institutions. Repeated often enough, they enter our discourse not as extraordinary accusations requiring proof, but as established facts requiring allegiance.
"That is where the Jewish community has missed something fundamental. We have become very good at identifying antisemitism and condemning those who traffic in it. We have been far less willing to confront the lies that make the antisemitism possible.
"Dara Horn has articulated something essential about antisemitism: it does not operate simply as hatred or intolerance toward Jews. It operates through a recurring lie–that Jews are responsible for destroying whatever a society holds most dear.
"That distinction changes the prescription. If we treat antisemitism primarily as intolerance, we answer it with tolerance: more education, dialogue, and opportunities to understand Jews. Those things have value. But you cannot cure a lie by teaching people to become more tolerant of the people being lied about. You have to challenge the lie.
"And we must confront the genocide lie more boldly. Israel is not committing genocide. The accusation is false and outrageous.
"Genocide is not a synonym for a terrible war, a high civilian death toll, or even violations of the laws of war. It is a specific crime requiring intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such. Intent is not incidental to the definition. It is essential.
"Israel’s conduct matters too. John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at West Point’s Modern War Institute, has argued after studying the Gaza campaign that Israel has implemented more measures to prevent civilian harm than any military he has studied. That does not mean every Israeli decision was correct or every strike justified. But warnings, evacuations, and extensive civilian-harm precautions are evidence that must be confronted before accusing a country of intending to destroy a people.
The genocide accusation is a modern blood libel.
"The original blood libel accused Jews of deliberately murdering Christian children. Its power came from transforming hatred into righteousness. Those who believed it did not imagine themselves persecuting innocent Jews. They imagined themselves protecting innocent children from evil.
"The moral vocabulary changes. The mechanism remains hauntingly familiar. Today, someone can accuse the Jewish state of deliberately destroying a people and still sincerely insist–as Macklemore has–that he has nothing against Jews. He may genuinely believe he is standing against evil. That is precisely what makes the libel so dangerous.
"Concern for Palestinian human rights, advocacy for Palestinians and criticism of Israel are not antisemitic. Palestinian suffering is real. Innocent civilians have died, and where individuals commit crimes, they should be held accountable.
"But none of that establishes genocide. And compassion does not demand self-flagellation or self-erasure.
"Jews should not have to accept the lie that Israel is committing genocide to prove that we care about Palestinian lives. We should not have to sever our connection to Israel to establish our moral credibility or repeat a blood libel against the Jewish state to demonstrate our decency.
"Yet that is increasingly the moral test imposed upon us
"Accept that the world’s only Jewish state is committing one of humanity’s gravest crimes, and you can remain among the righteous. Challenge that premise, defend Israel against the charge, or refuse to distance yourself from the Jewish state, and suddenly your disagreement becomes complicity–and your connection to Israel becomes evidence against you.
"That is not incidental to the antisemitism. It is how the antisemitism works.
"Some argue that Netanyahu’s government or particular Israeli policies have made defending Israel more difficult. But difficulty does not turn an accusation into a fact. We do not have to support Netanyahu or defend every Israeli action. And distancing ourselves from Israel will not make American Jews safer; it only reinforces the dangerous fiction that Jewish safety depends on Jewish behavior.
"We can defend Palestinian humanity without surrendering our own. We should not disavow Israel to demonstrate our decency or accept collective guilt for a crime Israel did not commit.
"The answer to a blood libel is not to prove that Jews are good people. It is to expose the blood libel as a lie.
"Robert Kraft is a hero for standing up. Now it is our job to stand with him–and fight the lies."
I remember when we had this test on our cell phones a few years ago. It was nice to know that such alert system works so well, but hopefully we will never need to actually use it.
FEMA, in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), will conduct a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) at approximately 2:20 p.m. Eastern Time, Tuesday, November 17, 2026.
ABOUT THE TEST
FEMA is required by law to conduct a nationwide test of the public alert and warning system at least once every three years. The Emergency Alert System is a national public warning system made up of thousands of radio, television, cable, satellite, and wireline broadband providers. These tests allow FEMA to identify technical or operational issues before the system is needed during an actual emergency.
WHAT TO EXPECT
On November 17, 2026, radio and television broadcasters nationwide will interrupt normal programming to relay a test message.
The test message will state, “This is a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System, issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This is only a test. No action is required by the public.”
The test message will include standard EAS alert tones to support accessibility for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Broadcasters may broadcast the message in English, Spanish, or both, depending on station practices and audience needs.
The test will last approximately one minute. When the test has concluded, normal programming will resume.
Here's another important column by Melanie Phillips about the world's obsessive and dangerous hatred towards Israel and towards Jews. It's very frightening to hear daily reports of individuals conducting unprovoked attacks against Jews, even in countries you never think about. The Jew-haters think this is completely normal and acceptable -- and unfortunately, it sure seems like it.
When the Israel-haters are themselves supposedly Jewish, that makes it even worse.
"Sometimes, a curtain draped across a mirror is torn aside, and a horrified public suddenly glimpses what it has become.
"Two things happened this week which briefly interrupted the smooth acceleration of pathological Jew-hate in the West.
"A film called “NAZA” won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. It was directed by journalist-filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, radical anti-Israel activists with a long history of delegitimizing Israel through defamatory falsehoods, in conjunction with Britain’s Guardian newspaper, a byword for malevolent misreporting of the Jewish state.
“NAZA” is a Hebrew acronym for collateral damage or unintended civilian casualties. In war, such casualties are sadly inevitable. In the Gaza war, Israel reportedly achieved the lowest ratio of civilians to combatant deaths anywhere in the world because of the unprecedented measures it took to save civilian life wherever possible.
"Yet the film claims that the Israel Defense Forces willfully caused widespread civilian deaths. Under the laws of war, armies must assess likely civilian casualties before striking military targets. The film misrepresents the IDF’s fulfilment of that duty as evidence that it intentionally subjected civilians to indiscriminate bombing.
"Its shock value lay in its reliance upon voices it said belonged to members of the IDF’s crack intelligence division, Unit 8200. But these were anonymous voices, with no corroboration of who they were or even evidence of what they were claiming.
"The second event was a horrifying report compiled by Britain’s Campaign Against Antisemitism revealing the systemic intimidation, threat and menace now confronting Jews who seek treatment from the National Health Service.
"A Jewish cancer patient said that while removing a growth from his forehead, his surgeon told him that Jews shoot children “in the head or the legs” for “their own amusement.” A nurse said that a colleague made a Nazi salute shortly after finding out she was Jewish. A senior Jewish medical professor had received antisemitic death threats. A Jewish emergency worker was physically attacked by a colleague.
"The CAA said that Jewish patients were terrified of their surgeons, and Jewish nurses and doctors were being pushed out of the hospitals to which they had devoted their lives.
"These two things crossed a line.
"In Israel, there’s been a seismic reaction against the film, with Abraham and Szor coming under pressure even from their comrades on the left.
"That’s unprecedented. Israel has been profoundly changed by the enduring trauma of the Hamas-led atrocities on Oct. 7, 2023 and the war that followed. Israelis are painfully aware of the heroism of the IDF troops, so many of whom have lost their lives, limbs or mental stability in the desperate fight against a fanatical genocidal enemy—and who have now been trashed in this film, allegedly by their own brothers in arms.
"Even in anti-Israel Britain, there’s been widespread shock over the discovery that British Jews are too frightened to go to the doctor or hospital because they fear they may be attacked or even killed under the surgeon’s knife or general anesthetic.
"Both developments show that the West is in the grip of a pathology created by the alliance between left-wingers and Islamists. And some Israelis are themselves contaminated by this deadly sickness.
"More than that, such Israeli anti-Zionists are central to creating and maintaining that pathology. The importance of people like Abraham and Szor to the derangement of the West can’t be overestimated.
"That’s surely the real reason for the astonishing 25-minute standing ovation the film received in Venice.
"This wasn’t a normal response. It was a cathartic expression of intense relief that here was an apparently copper-bottomed reason for treating Israel as the acme of evil, a cosmic menace, a plague on humanity—that the evidence had been provided by Israeli Jews, and stellar military ones to boot.
"Anti-Zionist Israelis who give such reputational cover to liberal and Islamist genocidists are essential to the global effort to defame, delegitimize and destroy the Jewish state.
"Despite the strong pushback to both the film and the British health service revelations, nothing is likely to change. The curtain has been ripped aside, but a veil will soon descend once again.
"Supporting Palestine has become the issue that powers progressive politics. To oppose it is socially unacceptable; it’s not Palestinian propagandists but their Zionist targets who are regarded as pariahs.
"But Palestinianism is not a worthy cause at all. It stands instead for the destruction of Israel, the murder of Jews and the theft of their historic identity in their ancient homeland.
"The reason British Jews are so frightened if they’re treated by a nurse wearing a “Palestine” pin is that the Palestine cause itself is understood to pose a direct threat to Jewish well-being. The “Palestine” flag has become the modern-day swastika.
"The overwhelming majority of Israelis have no time for the left. But the left-wing minority that’s disproportionately represented in Israel’s universities, the media, the arts and the legal profession packs a cultural punch that has done Israel untold damage abroad.
"Yet just as with the devastating global campaign to turn Western minds against the Jewish state, the Israeli government has never treated this with any degree of seriousness.
"On the contrary, it thinks that its society’s rampant leftism is a sign of cultural health. It’s repeatedly used it to claim that Israel is a Western society like any other, and that its manifold internal disagreements are proof positive of its open, democratic and liberal nature. It fails to see, however, that the left-wing mindset is now a direct threat to Israel just as it is to the Western nation-state and its historic identity in Britain and America.
"This evil is not confined to left-wing extremists and Islamists. It is sustained by a spectrum of progressive thinking that ignores, sanitizes or implicitly validates it.
"Many woolly-minded centrists, including too many diaspora Jews, think, for example, that the “settlers” are violent and the “occupation” is illegal; that the Palestinians are a deserving cause; and that antisemitism is being caused by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the extremists in his coalition.
"This is all false. The overwhelming majority of the 500,000 Jewish “settlers” are upstanding individuals legally entitled to live in the historic homeland of the Jewish people.
"Netanyahu may be everything his enemies think about him, but the unhinged obsession with Israel long predates his leadership and is rooted in historic Western Jew-hatred.
"As for the Palestinian Arabs, who have waged war on the Jewish homeland for a century and who still overwhelmingly want Israel destroyed and the Jews murdered, they deserve nothing. Their behavior has made any claim they may have had totally forfeit.
"Evil gains traction, however, because good people stand by and do nothing. Those who promulgate these lies should be treated like pariahs. Those who nod along with them—or worse, parrot and validate them—should be called out for their cowardice, ignorance and moral bankruptcy.
"That means Jews should call out other Jews. American Jewish leaders are as silent about the demonization of Israel in the Democratic Party as they are quick to call out Jew-hatred on the right.
"In Britain, Jewish representative organizations harbor among their members viciously anti-Israel Jewish groups, while some Jewish community leaders are even afraid to voice in public their support for Zionism.
"In Israel, there’s a strain of poisonous leftism in the universities, the media and the upper echelons of the IDF and security establishment that should be called out as treasonous in a time of existential war.
"Western and Israeli leftists who hate their historic culture, hate America, hate Israel and for whom the most terrible thing they think can ever happen to them is to become “right-wing” have caused the West to smash its moral compass on the altar of Palestinianism.
"Today’s leftism is a sign of a malignancy in the body politic. That is why it’s joined with that other malignancy, radical Islam, which intends to murder Jews, destroy Israel and bring down America.
"It’s time to call out the pariah left and its weapon against civilization, the Palestinian cause, for the evil being done in their name."
It never occurred to me that this sudden anti-AI hysteria might somehow be connected with Jew-hatred, but I sure got that impression after reading Jonathan Tobin's latest column. In it, he wrote,
"The one thing I know for sure about the fears being generated about AI is that sooner or later, they will be harnessed by those who always seek to blame the Jews for everything they think is wrong with the world."
That's definitely true. I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene and her panic over so-called "Jewish space lasers", so why not AI? I never thought even antisemites could be that stupid. I was wrong.
Besides, if you don't want Israel attacking Gaza, then don't attack Israel first in a brutal pogram that leaves 1,200 innocent civilians dead. You attack, we retaliate. Get it?
Even though the disgraceful New York Times actually wrote that "Israelis still largely view themselves as the victims of October 7." That's because they actually were the victims of October 11, and Hamas and the "Palestinians" were the perpetrators! Remember the murders of entire families, the raping of women from the Nova music festival, the throwing of babies into the ovens like the Nazis did, the torture and hostage-taking and the tormenting of the hostage families by phone?
Anyone thinking the people in Gaza are the real victims are too busy hating the Jews to acknowledge the truth. These are the same people who claim the Holocaust either never happened at all or has been greatly exaggerated. You can't reason with them, and I no longer try. And we shouldn't have to.
A film that makes dubious claims about the IDF slaughtering Palestinian civilians may help bolster an antisemitic trope blaming the Jews for a new global threat.
(Sept. 16, 2026 / JNS)
"In case you took the last week off from reading the news, watching TV or combing through social media, you’re aware that a lot of people have suddenly come to the conclusion that artificial intelligence will soon destroy humanity if it isn’t stopped.
"While I’m sure that most Israelis are also interested in the possibility that our computer/robot overlords will soon render us extinct, headlines in the Jewish state have largely focused on another controversy in which AI plays a subsidiary role.
Bolstering the ‘genocide’ lie
"The 25-minute standing ovation given to a documentary film called “NAZA”—a reference to a Hebrew military acronym for nezek agavi,which means “collateral damage”—at the Venice Film Festival shined a spotlight on the new movie. It’s the work of journalists Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two vocal Israeli members of the far-left activist class who not only oppose the security policies backed by the majority of voters, but have a history of publicizing dishonest and fabricated atrocity stories besmirching the Jewish state in film and print.
"The movie was also co-produced by Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, a publication that is among Israel’s most ardent opponents.
"A historical footnote to this controversy is that The Guardian was an early and crucial supporter of the Zionist cause at the time of the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Since then, as it drifted farther and farther to the left, it has switched sides. It now considers that stand to be among the worst mistakes it made in its more than 200 years of publication. In fact, it ranked its cheerleading for the Confederacy during the American Civil War as the only blunder considered more egregious than its backing for self-determination for Jews in their ancient homeland.
"To buttress the blood libel that the Jewish state has committed “genocide” in Gaza, “NAZA” claims that the Israel Defense Forces used an AI technology called “Lavender” to expedite and approve airstrikes with what it claims were high expectations of civilian casualties. The film uses anonymous sources that it alleges are all Israelis involved in the program and know what they are talking about.
"The accusation is apparently rooted in something true. As is well known, the Israeli military goes through a highly involved process to determine whether military actions are legal and worth the risk to both IDF personnel and Palestinian civilians before they are approved. In doing so, Israel is not committing war crimes. To the contrary, it is following both international standards and its own laws that forbid the wanton slaughter of civilians and require the military value of the operation to justify “collateral damage.”
"One may debate whether such standards are stringent enough or foolishly hamper legitimate and necessary IDF operations. Most of the criticism of the IDF’s actions ignores the context in which such strikes are ordered in the first place. Israel was fighting a war in Gaza started on Oct. 7, 2023 by a brutal enemy bent on the genocide of its citizens and the destruction of its country.
What the film doesn’t say
"Indeed, as even an article in the far-left newspaper Haaretz by an author who had seen the film—something no one in Israel or the United States has yet had the opportunity to do—pointed out, much is missing in this attempt to make the genocide libel stick to the Jewish state.
"As one might expect from an outlet where anti-Zionism is normative, Haaretz’s news and opinion sections have been acting as cheerleaders for “NAZA.” But as much as Raviv Drucker, who works at Israel TV’s Channel 13, wanted to like “NAZA” and vouched for the honesty of its creators, he couldn’t help noting that it was completely lacking in context. Hamas’s role in maximizing the number of Palestinians killed in its war—numbers that have already been proven to be highly inaccurate—isn’t taken into account.
"As Drucker noted, “At one point, Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields comes up, only to be sharply dismissed. Instead, we’re told that we [Israelis] deliberately killed suspected Hamas operatives at home with their families, at night, because it was convenient.”
"Even left-wing Israelis like him, who oppose the government led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, understand that the organization that governed Gaza from 2007 to 2023 as an Islamist terror state deliberately located its military structure and command centers in schools and hospitals. It used international aid intended to help civilians to construct a tunnel network underneath Gaza as extensive as the New York City subway system; a feat of engineering that could be considered the world’s largest bomb shelter. But no civilians were ever allowed to enter it since it was reserved for Hamas’s soldiers, commanders, and their supplies and ordnance—not to mention being where they often hid the Israelis they kidnapped on Oct. 7.
"As Drucker also admitted, many of the names of the people that Hamas and its sympathizers previously claimed were innocent journalists, teachers, athletes and aid workers slain by Israel later turned up on lists of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives who were killed in the war.
"More to the point, he described the film as presenting the Israelis as committing terrible crimes and then casually going out to dinner in Tel Aviv, comparing themselves to Nazis and treating the killing of children as “fun.”
"In other words, the point of the documentary film seems to be to depict Israelis as callous monsters.
"For those who cheered “NAZA,” Oct. 7 is just a date on the calendar. For Israelis who lived through the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab assault on communities in southern Israel—when 1,200 men, women and children, Jews and non-Jews, were slaughtered and 251 others dragged into captivity in Gaza—it was the reason why the war was fought. The orgy of mass murder, torture, rape, kidnapping and wanton destruction carried out that day was the trailer for what Palestinians want to do to all of Israel. The only reason why it hasn’t happened is because of the efforts of the Israeli military and its various branches, which have been on active alert since that day.
"The soldiers of the IDF sent to operate in Gaza—many of them young men not long out of high school or 40-year-old reservists with families at home—were not only risking their lives by conducting operations on foot in areas and buildings to avoid indiscriminate killing of civilians; they often wound up getting ambushed, with hundreds killed and many more wounded. They were there not for the “fun” of waging war on Palestinian Arabs. Rather, they were defending their homes and families, and attempting to ensure that Hamas and its allies couldn’t repeat the atrocities of Oct. 7 again and again, as they still pledge to do.
A graffiti mural created by Israeli graffiti artist Dudi Shoval in Ashdod, Israel, depicting filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, creators of the documentary film “NAZA,” with the Hebrew word “Traitors” painted across their portraits, Sept. 15, 2026. Photo by Liron Moldovan/Flash90.
The point is demonization
"Drucker also disputes the account in the film of deliberate IDF attacks on civilians, which he believes just didn’t happen.
"He says the film doesn’t bother comparing the record of the IDF in urban warfare with other modern armies. If it had been honest about it, then “NAZA” would have shown that Israel’s conduct has been exemplary when placed alongside other examples of such fighting, killing disproportionately fewer civilians than in other wars, including those fought by the U.S.-led Western alliance against ISIS in Mosul, Iraq and elsewhere. And recalling how many non-combatants were killed in the Allied bombings of Germany and Japan in World War II, such efforts to avoid civilian casualties are even more proof of the Jewish state’s devotion to legality and humane behavior under the most difficult of circumstances.
"But, of course, the purpose of such a film isn’t, as Drucker notes that he would have preferred, an effort to give an honest journalistic account of a complex situation. The point of the exercise is to demonize Israelis and their army, and to delegitimize efforts to defend themselves against a genocidal Islamist foe that was widely supported by the civilians under their control who celebrated the Oct. 7 atrocities.
"No matter how thoroughly the the charges in the film are debunked, not even the most exhaustive investigation of the issues raised by “NAZA” will have much of an impact on a global audience that is hungry for inflammatory lies about Israeli misbehavior. To those who are already convinced that the Israelis are settler-colonialists who have no right to be in their own land and “white” oppressors of Palestinian “people of color,” the truth doesn’t matter.
"As seen with previous efforts that unpacked the falsehoods about exaggerated Gaza casualty figures, the bogus number of women and children killed, and the non-existent famines, few among those giving a standing ovation for films like “NAZA” will listen. The same individuals were ready to believe in The New York Times’ preposterous claims that Israelis trained dogs to rape male Palestinian prisoners don’t care if the charge is ultimately disproven. The belief in such slander is impervious to even the most rigorously documented journalism that vindicates Israel’s behavior.
"Whether or not Abraham and Szor think of themselves as serving humanity by trashing their own country, as with their past attacks on Israel, they aren’t likely to convince many of their compatriots whose lived experiences of the war contradict their claims. The only impact it will have will be to further encourage other efforts to bash and isolate Israel. It will also embolden the global surge of antisemitism rooted in blood libels about Jews.
Worries about AI
"That is why one detail of the filmmakers’ indictment of Israel is crucial to understanding just how dangerous such calumnies can be. While these allegations about indiscriminate killings of Palestinians will likely blend into many other false charges, the focus on AI in the midst of a worldwide panic about artificial intelligence is likely to make it stand out. Like radioactive material, it will give such smears an extended life long after the film is forgotten.
"The explosion of concerns over a potential apocalypse started when Jacob Coxon, who had worked at the two largest AI companies—OpenAI and Anthropic—publicly resigned from the latter with a broadside alleging that unless the technology was reined in by public regulation, it would soon turn on its creators and wipe out the human race.
"That was followed by announcements from Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, the CEOs of these companies, as well as billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, chiming in that they agreed about the need for government intervention.
"Like almost everyone else who has followed this controversy, I have no idea whether they are right about the threat from AI.
"I deplore the use of AI in writing. It is a practice that dumbs down author and reader. It is both a symptom and an accelerant to the trend by which humans are becoming less literate and less intelligent.
"Nevertheless, I realize that AI can be very useful in doing some things, such as research or creating accurate translations from one language to another. It also helps industries of all sorts accelerate their ability to create new solutions to old problems, as well as break new ground for innovation, as Israel’s “startup nation” high-tech sector has proven.
"It’s equally true that skepticism about apocalyptic predictions of doom is often more than justified. Even when the concerns are legitimate or at least arguable, advocates for causes often succumb to the temptation to exaggerate the consequences of various problems simply to motivate people to take them more seriously. The effort to instill an almost religious belief in the alleged peril to humanity from anthropogenic global warming is only one such example.
"I understand why these companies might welcome regulation. It will give them cover if things go wrong (and they almost always do, to some extent) and gives them enormous leverage over Washington, which will likely mean their market advantages will be grandfathered into any effort to slow down the pace of innovation. This sort of collaboration between government and big business invariably results in corruption, not sensible policies.
"But even if worries about AI are justified—and this might be an example of when doomsday predictions could be accurate—the notion that the government is going to solve the problem by creating bureaucratic regulatory structures beggars belief. It’s far more likely that it would be either ineffective or make the problem worse.
"It’s also true that any halt to AI research and development that doesn’t include China would not only fail to achieve the desired results. It would make a very different doomsday scenario more likely, involving that communist tyranny gaining a decisive advantage over the free world.
Doomsday scenarios and antisemitism
"But all of this is speculation. The one thing I know for sure about the fears being generated about AI is that sooner or later, they will be harnessed by those who always seek to blame the Jews for everything they think is wrong with the world.
"And that’s where Abraham, Szor and their sugar daddies at The Guardian come in.
"It doesn’t take much to inflame the imagination of conspiracy theorists. Still, the effort to falsely label Israel’s use of technology to help it conduct military operations as a genocidal tool is catnip for those willing to blame Israel for every problem under the sun. Podcasters like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson already believe that the Jews are responsible for every possible crime, like using sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein to blackmail politicians and even creating pornography to enfeeble American males.
"It isn’t much of a leap from there to think that the Israelis are creating AI to dominate the world or wipe out humanity. It may not make sense, but antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories don’t have to be logical. Their purpose is to convince people that the Jews are responsible for whatever it is that they fear most as part of an effort to gain financial and political power. That’s why leftists and Islamists like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, in addition to their counterparts on the far right like Carlson, seek to weaponize lies about “genocide.”
"In the long run, those responsible for “NAZA” won’t help the Palestinians they supposedly care about since the net effect of their propaganda is to strengthen Hamas—the terrorist outfit that is oppressing them. Nor will it break Israel, even if it also bolsters the cause of those seeking to isolate and sanction the Jewish state.
"But what they will likely accomplish is to create a new variant on an old antisemitic trope about Jews poisoning the wells. Whether or not the worries about AI are justified, the film will alarm the paranoid and the fearful, who are already vulnerable to conspiratorial thinking. The difficult question of how to harness a new technology will morph into what to think about a mythical plot by the Jews.
"Israelis have good reason to accuse the filmmakers of concocting treasonous defamation against their own nation. The two deserve even more opprobrium for their shameless efforts to fuel the worst kind of Jew-hatred with a high-tech twist."
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS. Follow him: @jonathans_tobin
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily” program, available on all major audio platforms and on YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won 60-plus awards for his columns, commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.
Here's some good news I read last night. With the rising hatred toward Israel and Jews, we need to help Israel protect and defend itself before it's too late. If the Democrats win the White House in 2028, you know there will be no further arms sales to Israel.
Finally, people stealing billions of dollars from our COVID-relief programs are being punished. I was amazed at the staggering number of thieves who have been stealing for years: 870,000!
They should also be removed from any benefits they've been getting -- and if they are illegals aliens, they should be removed from our country!
Kansas City, Missouri — Vice President JD Vance announced Monday the Trump administration will suspend roughly 870,000 people suspected of defrauding pandemic-era small business programs from receiving future federal loans.
The vice president contended that borrowers who stole taxpayer money should no longer be eligible to receive loans from government-backed programs.
"If you screwed the American taxpayer, the federal government is now going to say you're cut off, no more," Vance told reporters. "You shouldn't be applying anymore, and if you do apply, you're no longer able to get those benefits."
His remarks came as the Justice Department announced a slew of cases in a nationwide crackdown on fraud involving the COVID-19-eraPaycheck Protection Program.
The department's enforcement push, which ran from June 12 through Sept. 1 and was dubbed "Heartland fraud surge," resulted in actions involving more than 160 defendants and approximately $245 million in intended losses to taxpayers. The operation was put into action more than five years after the government pushed emergency loans to businesses nationwide that were struggling as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
The initiative involved prosecutors from 44 U.S. Attorney's Offices, along with more than 20 federal and state investigative partners.
SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said the suspensions announced by the vice president are tied to an estimated $39 billion in suspected fraud from across 45 states and territories. Combined with earlier enforcement actions, Loeffler said the SBA has now suspended borrowers connected to roughly $49 billion in alleged fraud across all 50 states.
SBA has previously stated that all suspended borrowers are barred from future small-business and disaster loans and from programs including its 8(a) federal contracting program.
"Exposing these criminals is only the first step," Loeffler said. "This summer, we referred $22 billion to the United States Treasury for collections."
The SBA had previously announced that it had referred more than 560,000 suspected fraudulent borrowers, tied to roughly $22.2 billion in delinquent PPP and COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan program loans, to the Treasury Department for collection.
While not criminal prosecutions, treasury collections are aimed at recovering outstanding debt owed to the federal government.
Attorney General Todd Blanche told CBS News in an interview Monday, "We have 500 prosecutors now in D.C. and around the country focused on this. We have prosecutors in all 93 U.S. attorneys' offices now directly focused on this."
Throughout the surge, federal prosecutors and investigators pressed felony charges against nearly 80 defendants in cases involving roughly $100 million in intended losses connected to Small Business Administration COVID-era programs, including the PPP and EIDL programs.
Another approximately 43 defendants pleaded guilty in SBA-related COVID fraud cases involving roughly $44 million in intended losses, while about 40 defendants were sentenced in cases involving nearly $100 million in intended losses.
In total, the summer enforcement activity targeted more than 160 criminal defendants and roughly $245 million in intended losses total, according to the Justice Department.
The cases involve a broad range of alleged schemes, including fabricated businesses, false payroll and revenue information, plus identity theft.
Vice President JD Vance, Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel appeared alongside federal and state law enforcement officials in Kansas City to announce the results of the operation.
The federal investigation targeted fraud in a program that stopped issuing new loans in 2021. Congress established the PPP or the Paycheck Protection Program in March 2020 to prevent businesses from collapsing as sweeping shutdowns and pandemic restrictions upset the economy. Backed by the Small Business Administration, banks and other lenders ultimately made roughly 11.8 million loans totaling about $800 billion. While loans could be forgiven, borrowers had to meet strict requirements, including using the money for payroll and other eligible expenses.
I’ll be honest: everything feels small next to the massive conversation that has unfolded in the past week about AI potentially wiping out humanity. It’s terrifying on so many levels. (I’ll be back soon with a deep dive into where public health and AI intersect.)
But I wrote this post anyway. And I did it not because these topics are the most urgent to all of humanity, but because they’re actionable and predictable in a moment that feels increasingly unpredictable. I hope it helps you feel a little more in control, at least of your health and the health of those around you. There are things we can do, even if they feel small.
Let’s dig in.
Disease “weather” report
Respiratory viruses are increasing right on schedule
If you or your child is feeling crappy, you aren’t alone. Bugs are starting to take hold because of weather changes and social factors. (Hello, schools!)
One way to track respiratory illnesses is by monitoring “influenza-like illness” (ILI). Each week, clinicians report the number of patients they have seen with symptoms such as fever, cough, or sore throat. The resulting data gives communities a snapshot of how much illness is spreading. I’ll be keeping a close eye on this throughout the next few months.
Right now, ILI is ticking up, but it’s still well below the epidemic threshold that marks the start of “respiratory season,” which typically hits in October.
If we look at what tests clinicians are ordering and what’s turning up positive, there are two main classes of viruses driving sickness right now:
The common cold is surging
It’s rising at a much higher rate than anything else. (See graph below.) That’s typical for this time of year as kids head back to school and our little petri dishes start mixing again.
Percent of positive tests by illness type. Source: CDC.
Covid-19 may now be peaking
You will also notice in the graph above that Covid-19 is the second-highest respiratory virus. We are clearly in a wave, but there are early signs it’s starting to peak. For example, wastewater levels in three regions (the South, Midwest, and Northeast) all appear to be now turning downward.
What’s really interesting is that the West is not peaking, yet it was the first to start increasing. This highlights an interesting regional pattern we have seen emerge over the past few years:
The West, like California and Hawaii, has bigger waves in summer than in winter. This also happens in other coastal countries, like Australia and New Zealand.
Northeast states have by far bigger waves in winter than in summer.
It’s not clear why. Typically, respiratory viruses peak in winter due to humidity, weather, and human behavior. Clearly, something else is happening with Covid-19. It's still a new virus, so it may still be finding its footing.
What this means for you: Updated Covid-19 vaccines are now licensed by the FDA and should be available—if not now, then very soon.
Here is the YLE guide to fall vaccines and, most importantly, the ideal timing for each.
Measles keeps spreading, leading to another death
Measles usually peaks in winter and early spring, so it’s odd to be having a surge in summer, but here we are. Nationally, the U.S. is now at ~3,300 confirmed cases in 2026, already well above the total for all of 2025.
Pennsylvania is racking up cases fast, with 676 total as of about mid-September and over 100 new cases in a single week. The third measles-associated death also occurred in this state this year: a 40-year-old unvaccinated woman in Jefferson County. This followed two deaths associated with measles in Lancaster County in late August. CDC has yet to update its website on deaths, which is just atrocious. (ICYMI: see my recent post on measles deaths.)
Wisconsin has grown from 61 cases on August 25 to over 160.
What this means for you: If you’re fully vaccinated, you’re very well protected. Infants in and around outbreak areas can receive the vaccine as young as 6 months. Talk to your doctor.
Spotlight: 9/11 is a reminder that health extends beyond the initial disaster
Marya packed up her violin, took the subway, and set up in the shadow of a crane at Ground Zero to play music. She was part of Music Givers, a group of volunteer musicians who performed for exhausted first responders months after September 11, 2001. What she didn’t know was that breathing in that air, day in and day out, was slowly penetrating her lungs. She was eventually diagnosed with lung cancer. She died in October 2019.
If you’re like me, you’ve been completely engaged with 9/11 documentaries, stories, and conversations this past week. The horrific event shaped our lives, culture, and international relations—and for more than 400,000 people, it affected health.
How do we know it impacted health?
Unfortunately, we didn’t learn it from the officials on the ground at the time. That’s clear from the over 170,000 pages of internal 9/11 air-quality records, which show that officials knew the air was dangerous.
Thankfully, a little-known public health program was put together: the federal World Trade Center Health Program.
What does the program do?
The WTC Health Program provides health monitoring and treatment for people impacted by 9/11, and had enrolled 104,223 members by 2020. This breaks down to 76,543 responders (people involved in rescue, response, recovery, cleanup, and related support activities after the attacks) and 27,680 survivors (people present in the dust or dust cloud on 9/11 or who worked, lived, or attended school, child care centers, or adult day care centers in the NYC disaster areas).
When a member receives certification from the WTC Health Program, it means the program has officially determined that the member’s condition is likely connected to 9/11 exposure. Once a condition is certified, the member can then get program health benefits. It doesn’t mean 9/11 exposure was the only cause of that person’s illness, just that it was likely a significant factor. Over time, this program has also funded more than 300 peer-reviewed publications on post-9/11 health effects.
What have we learned?
In the last batch of data from the program (2012-2020), CDC found:
About 1 in 2 people had a health condition certified by the WTC program, and the rate increased over time.
On average, certified members held about 2.7 condition certifications each.
1 in 8 had a cancer certification. The most common cancers were skin, male genital, breast, and digestive system cancers.
1 in 5 had a noncancer certification, like reflux disorder, obstructive airway disease, and PTSD.
What this means for you: When there is a disaster, it’s important to take long-term effects as seriously as the initial event.
For 9/11, specifically, many, many people don’t know they’re eligible for the WTC Health Program. Eligibility includes:
360,000 building occupants and others in the area
91,000 rescue/recovery workers and volunteers
57,00 residents south of Canal Street
15,000 children and staff in schools south of Canal Street
New York City response area used to determine enrollment eligibility for responders to the 9/11 attacks. Source: World Trade Center Health Program.
Good news
Medical societies close the vaccine guidance gap left by federal dysfunction. With ACIP sidelined in legal limbo, the Vaccine Integrity Project and the AMA ran an independent evidence review of 69 flu, 155 Covid, and 75 RSV studies, publishing the findings in JAMA and finding no new safety concerns. Four major societies (AAFP, AAP, ACOG, IDSA) then released aligned fall guidance on a coordinated schedule, all posted together on a new AMA site, SpreadTheFacts.org. Getting that many medical organizations to move in lockstep is incredibly hard, so the coordination itself is noteworthy. It’s one clear message instead of fractured signals, right when federal guidance has been anything but clear.
A pig kidney bought a man nine months of life without dialysis. He then received a human donor kidney, which took hold immediately and has functioned well since, with no sign that the pig kidney made the second transplant any harder. It’s the clearest proof that pig organs could serve as a “bridge” for patients stuck waiting years for a human kidney, at a time when demand for organs badly outstrips supply.
Bottom line
A lot of things feel out of control lately, but there are things we can do as individuals to improve our health and help things feel less heavy. I hope this helps. Will be back with more soon!
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