"Moral Obscenities" Against Israel and The Jews

This an excellent article by Bret Stephens, which I obtained via Elder of Ziyon's 10/10 Links section. I had to paste this without formatting and links in order to make it come out legibly.

Mamdani wasn't the only one  committing a moral obscenity. Everyone celebrating and supporting Hamas, and everyone marching against Israel being forced to defend herself, is committing a moral obscenity.  The only genocide is the one against the Jews.

This piece should be required reading. 

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Zohran Mamdani’s Moral Obscenity

Bret Stephens, NYT Opinion
Oct. 9, 2026

"Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s mayor, set off a firestorm of criticism Wednesday morning with a social media post ostensibly intended to commemorate the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis. It devoted a brief paragraph to condemning Hamas and commiserating with its victims. The rest was a much longer denunciation of Israel’s “ongoing genocide in Gaza,” a “world in which occupation and apartheid continue” and a situation in which “our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.”

"In response, Ammiel Hirsch, the president of the New York Board of Rabbis, said the statement was “so offensive to so many Jews that it is hard to describe how offensive it is.” In fact, it’s a moral obscenity. Let me count the ways.

"It is obscene in the same way it would have been obscene if the mayor had commemorated the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11 last month with a perfunctory nod to the victims of the day, followed by a much longer denunciation of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. What happened on both Sept. 11 and Oct. 7 was undiluted evil, each an unprovoked visit of deliberate and maximalist violence on people who had done nothing to invite that violence other than being at the wrong place at the wrong time. 

"It is obscene because many of the Jews murdered on Oct. 7, living in kibbutzim with conspicuously left-leaning politics, had been at the forefront of the peace movement, volunteering, for example, to drive sick Palestinians for treatment at nearby Israeli hospitals. Hamas wasn’t just killing and terrorizing the innocent; it was eliminating the good.

"It is obscene because Hamas didn’t just kill its victims in pursuit of a strategic objective. It tormented and slaughtered them like an army of serial killers who delight in the suffering of their victims. Corpses of Israeli women were described by one coroner as “shot in the crotch, intimate parts, vagina, or were shot in the breast.” Others appeared to have been raped so violently that their pelvises were broken. Parents were killed in front of their children; children were murdered in their beds. A fieldworker was beheaded with a garden hoe. I know this because Hamas filmed itself doing this and I forced myself to watch the film. I know because that same month, I visited the bedrooms where the kids had been murdered, their mattresses still soaked in blood. 

"It is obscene because, whatever else you may think of the war in Gaza, on the eve of Oct. 7 the border of Israel and Gaza was governed by a cease-fire. It was Hamas that chose to kick off the violence, just as the Japanese did in 1941 with the attack on Pearl Harbor. Whether in fistfights between people or wars between states, whoever throws the first punch forfeits the right to throw the last.

"It is obscene because Mamdani is being misleading when he speaks as if his prime objection to Israel is what it did after Oct. 7. In fact, the mayor has been an anti-Israel zealot at least since his college days, when, as a leader of Students for Justice in Palestine, he broke off collaboration with the left-leaning Jewish group J Street, which advocates a Palestinian state, because it also recognizes the rights of a Jewish state. He’s written a rap professing “love” for five men convicted in a U.S. court of funneling money to Hamas. The day after Oct. 7, he issued a brief statement that said nothing about Hamas but immediately denounced Israel. Put simply, this is a mayor who first condemned Israel as guilty and then went about collecting evidence. 

"It is obscene because, however much the genocide allegation against Israel is mindlessly repeated by people too lazy or prejudiced to understand the difference between war and genocide, that allegation is as false as it is sinister. False, because genocide is about killing whole classes of people for who they are rather than for what they did — and if Israel wanted to kill Palestinians as Palestinians it never would have bothered mobilizing hundreds of thousands of its own soldiers for the war, and losing hundreds in high-intensity urban warfare. Sinister, because the political purpose of the genocide allegation is to trivialize, if not erase, the attacks of Oct. 7 by making them seem minor in comparison to the Palestinian casualties that tragically, but all-but inevitably, followed.

"It is obscene because Hamas’s intentions toward Israel really are genocidal. Its leaders have often and publicly vowed to perpetrate future Oct. 7s. Had the group not been stopped by force that day, there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t have kept up its orgy of slaughter on its way to Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities. Yet one searches in vain for anything from the mayor except perfunctory, pro forma condemnations of Hamas.

"It is obscene because there’s an even more wretched purpose to the genocide charge against Israel, which long predates the recent war in Gaza. It is a specimen of Holocaust erasure: not the dumb kind, which seeks to deny Nazi Germany’s murder of six million Jews, but a more sophisticated version that accuses living Jews of genocide as a way of ending the historical Jewish claim to a long and ongoing history of persecution and near-annihilation that accounts for its need for a sovereign state capable of defending its people.

"Finally, it is obscene because Mamdani is the mayor for about one million Jewish New Yorkers, many with close relatives in Israel, who deserve better on a day of grief than to be offered the equivalent of an “All Lives Matter” homily. This is yet another of the double standards through which modern-day Jew hatred manifests itself: Whenever antisemitism is mentioned in progressive circles, it is inevitably accompanied by nods about Islamophobia or other bigotries.

"It would be better to have a mayor who, if only on Oct. 7, can say: Jewish Lives Matter. Israeli Lives Matter. Full stop. The lectures about Gaza can come some other day."

"Barbaric"?

Sorry, I don't see what's "barbaric" about livestreaming the execution of mass-murdering terrorist Nidal Hasan, as some U.S. lawmakers are saying.  What's truly barbaric is that this extremist murdered 13 and injured at least 30 at Fort Hood Army base. That's 17 years ago, and he has been given 17 extra years of life that he didn't afford his victims.

You don't want to see the execution? Then don't watch.

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Fort Hood survivor wants to face Nidal Hasan at execution, opposes public livestream

By

Meagan Harris

Updated on: October 9, 2026 / 5:40 PM CDT / CBS Texas

"Former Army Maj. Nidal Hasan will die by firing squad in December, barring any legal action. The Pentagon plans to livestream his execution, something that's never been done in the United States.

"Hasan's execution is scheduled for 1 p.m. Dec. 3 at Fort Hood, the same Army post where he killed 13 people on Nov. 5, 2009. The execution is set for the same time of day as the shooting, nearly 17 years later. 

"For survivors and family members of victims, it's deeply personal.

"I want to be in the room where I can see him, and he can see me," said former Army Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, who survived Hasan's attack. 

"Lunsford was shot seven times that day, including in the eye. He was among 32 injured in November 2009.

"For Lunsford and those affected by the shooting, the idea of a livestreamed execution is too much.

"People have to be held accountable for their sins, but I don't want this to be some pay-per-view event, like some John Wick movie," Lunsford said. 

"Lunsford said he worries about children's ability to watch. "As a country, we're better than that."

"Hasan was paralyzed from the chest down before being arrested. During his court-martial, he needed a wheelchair.

"The military hasn't executed anyone since 1961. That execution was by hanging. The last execution by firing squad happened in 1945. Private Eddie Slovik was tied to a post and shot for desertion. Military officials have not provided details on how Hasan's execution will be handled, beyond the method of firing squad.

"I don't know that that's actually going to happen," Vice President JD Vance said on Friday, adding that if it were, he wouldn't watch it.

"Organizers with the Texas Defender Service called the livestream execution announcement "unconscionable," noting the U.S. hasn't carried out a public execution since the 1930s.

"This is behavior that is reminiscent of terrorists, and not what you want to see in a functioning justice system," said Burke Butler, co-executive director of the Texas Defender Service.

"Butler said Hasan could still delay the execution by filing a habeas corpus petition.

"His lawyers are likely looking at all possible avenues to raise in the habeas corpus petition to argue why his upcoming execution would be unconstitutional," Burke said. "And I imagine one of the issues they will look at is whether it's cruel and unusual to conduct a public execution of a human being in this modern era."

"The Death Penalty Information Center said, "Public executions are typically held in authoritarian countries to instill fear in the population, and to show the power and control of the government."

"Meanwhile, for many survivors and victims, an execution isn't necessarily closure. Many of the wounds from that day never heal. In an interview on Friday, Lunsford said, "This will not be closure for me," adding that his closure comes from helping others.

"Lunsford carries the bullet that was pulled from his body with him every day. A reminder of what he survived. 

"I still have the slug of one of the bullets. Everywhere I go it goes," Lunsford said. "Whenever I'm having a bad day, I rub on the bullet. This is what keeps me balanced."

"He went on to say that he "loves living". 

"Since the shooting, he's become a basketball coach and mentor. 

"Closure, he says, comes on the court when he forgets all his pain and can focus on building up those he coaches."

Political Correctness Continues Unabated

Daniel Greenfield reports on more insanity by the Daughters of the American Revolution.  Why do crazy people always have the last word?

Besides, they didn't have such a thing as "transgender surgery" during the American Revolution. But that doesn't stop the seriously woke from attempting to destroy history and  destroy tradition.

Let the "transgender" people start THEIR own chapter (Pretend-Daughters of  the American Revolution), and leave the real Daughters alone!

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Daughters of the American Revolution Disbands Chapter for Trying to Keep Trannies Out.

Now it's Transgenders of the American Revolution.

October 11, 2026 by Daniel Greenfield

"Woke 1 was so crazy? No, Woke 1 is still so crazy. It’s so crazy that not only did the Daughters of the American Revolution accept transgender men as members (that is men who falsely claim to be women), but that the organization leadership threatened and has now moved to disband the Martha Laird Chapter which was fighting to keep men out. 

A DAR chapter in Texas recently sent a letter to its national leadership pushing back against their decision to allow biological men who identify as transgender to participate in the DAR. On Saturday, however, the DAR National Board of Management (NBOM) rejected the proposal. In an email sent to the Texas chapter, they were informed that NBOM “found the proposed amendment” to bar trans-identifying men from the DAR “not to be suitable for inclusion in the bylaws and not to be in the best interest of the Society.

"A DAR chapter in Texas recently sent a letter to its national leadership pushing back against their decision to allow biological men who identify as transgender to participate in the DAR. On Saturday, however, the DAR National Board of Management (NBOM) rejected the proposal. In an email sent to the Texas chapter, they were informed that NBOM “found the proposed amendment” to bar trans-identifying men from the DAR “not to be suitable for inclusion in the bylaws and not to be in the best interest of the Society.”

"The Martha Laird Chapter has now reportedly been disbanded by the national organization which chose to crush it rather than actually restrict membership to women. The online page to the Martha Laird Chapter now produces a 404 error.

"The DAR has become such an establishment that simply fighting for the organization’s basic name, daughters, is now something to be suppressed."

Rewarding Antisemitism

The Nobel Prize Committee needs its head examined.  Maybe I'm dense, but can anyone explain to me how accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza is considered worthy of a PEACE prize?!?

There really is genocide -- but it's been committed against Israel!

So maybe there ought to be a new award, The Anti-Israel Prize, for those hateful antisemites who insist on obsessively blaming Israel for everything. 

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A ‘peace prize’ for the vilification of Israel

Honoring Navi Pillay highlights the moral rot of the United Nations and Nobel Committee.

By Ruthie Blum

(Oct. 9, 2026 / JNS) "T

here are bad decisions and disgraceful ones. And then there’s the awarding of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay.

"The choice is hardly out of character for an award whose history has repeatedly shown that its name guarantees nothing about its recipients’ merit. Indeed, this isn’t an aberration for the Norwegian committee. But it’s an especially egregious example of a familiar pattern: an international establishment congratulating itself for advancing peace while rewarding people whose records make a mockery of the concept.

"Pillay, who chaired the United Nations Commission of Inquiry that accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, has become a symbol of the double standards permeating the global system. The woman now being feted in the name of peace presided over a more aptly dubbed “inquisition” whose whole purpose was to brand the Jewish state with a bloody—blood libelous—stain. Like an irremovable tattoo.

"The term “genocide” has a specific legal definition, including the requirement to establish intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected national, ethnic, racial or religious group. It’s laughable to suggest that Israel’s behavior even remotely fits that description, as it took great pains to avoid civilian casualties and flooded Gaza with humanitarian aid.

"That Hamas kept stealing the food and medicine, and prevented anyone other than its goons from entering the hundreds of miles of tunnels, was never of interest to Pillay and her ilk. Nor did they ever note that the population in Gaza has grown in the past three years. Some genocide.

"Though her commission’s report wasn’t a judicial verdict, the force of its accusation was unmistakable, and Pillay was gleefully instrumental in promoting the lie for pernicious purposes. Which we now see has paid off, big-time.

"This was hardly the first time her commission helped fuel the campaign to portray Israel as uniquely depraved. Pillay, a former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (2008-2014), was appointed to her latest post in 2021. That was when the “Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory” was established by the U.N. Human Rights Council to concoct a report to vilify Israel.

"And, boy, did she ever come through for her anti-Israel colleagues, producing a mendacious paper on Israeli “crimes” in Gaza. Its allegations reinforced a false narrative depicting Israel not as a country at war with sadistic barbarians—thousands of whom breached the border on Oct. 7, 2023 to rape, maim and slaughter 1,200 innocent Israelis, and abduct 251 others—but as a sexually abusive state.

"Nothing new about the turpitude of the U.N.’s endless attempts to demonize Israel. So, Pillay’s having been selected to head the commission wasn’t surprising.

"Ditto for her winning an award transformed long ago into a vehicle for leftist virtue-signaling. In his 1895 will, Swedish scientist/businessman Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, bequeathed most of his immense fortune to establishing prizes in science, literature and peace.

"The latter was intended to recognize efforts toward fraternity among nations. Its subsequent history, however, has repeatedly exposed the gulf between those ideals and the eponymous committee’s selections. Rather than consistently rewarding meaningful contributions to peace, the prize has served as a platform for globalist ideology involving the inversion of right and wrong.

"Pillay epitomizes this moral rot. Her new laureate status is less an honor than a mark of Cain.

"To add to this blot, her prize was announced on Oct. 9, two days after Israel marked the third anniversary of the worst atrocities committed against Jews since the Holocaust. The timing highlights the perversity of the prize and its recipient."

"The American Strain"

I can still remember reading years ago that whatever form of COVID is currently in England will eventually come here. We've already had the Stratus variant here, which they have dubbed "the American Strain".

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COVID Is Spiking In The UK And Growing in 19 US States As The XFG or Stratus Variant Spreads – Here's What To Know

Hospitalization and deaths have increased in the United Kingdom in the last few weeks, while the situation states-side is more varied.

Dr. Alfredo Carpineti, Space & Physics Editor, IFLScience

The number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the United Kingdom due to COVID-19 has significantly increased from August, and is rising every week.  

In the United States, the situation is more complex due to the variety of climates, habits, and vaccine availabilities. Nineteen states have reported infections as growing or likely growing, while they are declining in 8 states.

When it comes to the UK, it is too early to say when this COVID-19 wave will peak. Last year, the peak was around October 12 with more than 2,500 hospitalizations in the daily count. On September 30 this year the number was about half of this, at 1,104.

The number of weekly deaths is, thankfully, also much reduced, but it's important to note that this has also increased over the last few weeks.  

XFG, Stratus, or the “American” Strain

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is monitoring this data, but it has not found the leading variant - called XFG, Stratus, or, in some of the media, the “American” Strain - more virulent or dangerous than other variants in circulation.

“As increases in hospitalisations are rising in line with overall increases in COVID-19 circulation - rather than rising sharply on their own - this suggests a general increase in COVID-19 activity rather than a variant causing more severe disease,” the UKHSA said in a statement.

The reason for the current rise is likely due to multiple factors. The summer has been particularly hot in the UK, which might have kept more people outdoors until recently. It is also a year since the last significant wave, so immunity from the vaccine and previous infection might be waning.

The current tracking from the Center for Disease Control in the United States is not as thorough, but you can check their wastewater monitoring state by state. There is also WastewaterSCAN, based at Stanford University, that is also tracking infectious diseases via wastewater.

Symptoms of the COVID-19 Stratus subvariant

Stratus is one of the over 1,000 subvariants of the Omicron lineage. Because there are now so many, they mostly get given a code such as XFG. Only those strains that become more well known are given a nickname, and for Stratus and its predecessor Nimbus, the theme was clouds.

“So far, these sublineages of Omicron have much in common: they are all highly transmissible, replicate in the upper respiratory tract and tend to cause less severe disease compared to previous variants of concern, and they all have mutations that make them escape built-up immunity more easily,” explains the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

“This means that they are similar in their impact on public health, and the response that is needed to deal with them.”

Being part of the Omicron family means a series of standard symptoms: cough, congestion, fatigue, headache, and sometimes a fever. 

Some people have also experienced gastrointestinal symptoms. The Stratus variant appears to be accompanied by a hoarseness in the throat, including a scratchy or raspy voice that can persist for days.

Joshua Namm Column Re: October 7

Another excellent column from Joshua Namm. If September 11 wasn't wake-up call enough, October 7 wasn't either, especially because the extremist antisemites have hijacked (no pun intended) the narrative, and too many hateful American have bought into it. They hate us, they think we're responsible for everything that goes wrong (even our own hijack attempt!), and they want to destroy Israel. That's the bottom line.

The "Palestinians" don't deserve their own state, unless it's situated as far away from Israel as possible! Otherwise, they deserve nothing, least of all our patient explanations and our generosity.

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October 7 Should Have Caused A Massive Return To Reality: It Didn’t

10/7 Ought To Have Been A Wake Up Call To Each Of Us. It Wasn’t.

Joshua Namm, 10-9-26

Like everyone else, the anniversary of October 7 always brings up memories and the feelings which they cause. The latter always include deep sorrow and rage.

Each year, the memorials, social media posts, and everything else – brings me right back to what I felt, thought, and experienced that day.

I also know that I am not the same person I was before the worst day for the Jewish people since the Shoah. Each 10/7 anniversary I am reminded why, and in ways that are starker than during the other 364 days of the year.

I know that many of us feel the same way. One of the ways in which the differences manifest is that there are things in my life that now seem trivial, or at the very least – far less important, than they did before.

It didn’t “wake me up,” as much as it made it impossible for the real world not to be front and center every single day. By the “real world” I mean one that is no longer a product of the “golden age” of American Jewry where Holocaust level antisemitism seemed a thing of the past. One in which I increasingly understand what it must have felt like for Jews of the 1930s. A day doesn’t go by in which I don’t see a Palestinian flag (which, like it or not, is today’s Nazi flag), anti-Israel protests, or even just the explosion of Arab Muslim “culture” were I live (Hollywood, California).

Yes, some of it is on social media, and some of it is in person. Does that even matter? If anything, while social media can magnify the views of a few, it is also a much wider lens in which to view world events than humans have ever had.

The view is not good.

Thinking about that yesterday inspired me to write a quick article about my personal “take aways” from the three years following the barbaric, subhuman attack on our people.

1. It is an absolute abomination and travesty that Hamas still exists. I don’t care about the “progress” Israel has made, and I don’t care about the same excuses we’ve heard since it became clear that Israel was “mowing the lawn” once again, albeit in a much more intense fashion.

It is bizarre to me to deem a three-year war against a bunch of murderous, low IQ, rapist barbarians as “progress.” Israel has the most powerful military in the Middle East (a fact which has become crystal clear, even to the Arabs, since 10/7). The weakness we project feeding our enemy, giving them electricity, and wringing our hands over their safety is phenomenal.

Every single person who so much as smiled at the evil of 10/7 in Israel and Gaza should be dead today, and the name “Hamas” a decaying memory.

And no, it doesn’t “take time,” and no they haven’t been “permanently disabled,” and no some massive action to finally demolish them is not “just around the corner.”

And for much of that time the ONLY legitimate argument against attacking Gaza with every bit of Israeli force available was that the hostages would potentially be harmed. I saw both sides of that argument, risking Jewish lives to protect hostages which may, or may not, have even still be alive was a tough choice. One that I was never fully comfortable having a definitive opinion about.

But on the other hand – it was also a favorite excuse of people who couldn’t accept any serious attack on Gaza.

I can’t count how many times I was told “after the hostages are released, Israel will go in and completely destroy Hamas. You’ll see.”

Yeah. Right.

Like so many of the lazy excuses people make for people/causes they want to believe in, it was usually invoked reflexively. In retrospect, and even at the time, it seems clear that it was just something to say - either out of comfort or naivete.

But given Israel’s history of choosing the politically easy way out, right up to 10/7, a mindset that allowed 10/7 to happen – I was never convinced that it was anything but a truly hollow excuse.

I was right.

2. There is no genocide. Israel has been accused of genocide, literally since its inception. So, the continued, foolish, policy to risk Israeli soldiers to save Arab civilians (meaning: Hamas voters/supporters) is despicable, as is the refusal to bring the full force of every aspect of Israel’s military to utterly destroy the enemy (and not just Hamas).

No matter what: Israel was always going to be accused of genocide. So, if the goal was good PR, then it clearly didn’t work. Risking Jewish lives to avoid a label that was always going to be falsely applied anyway was an abomination.

Instead we have record antisemitism globally, a mayor of New York City who, along with his repugnant wife, supports what happened. As do a legion of American politicians, mayors, congresspeople, city council members, etc. And soon a Senator from Michigan.

The United Kingdom and France are worse.

All of academia, completely unsurprisingly, is ok with 10/7, as is almost all of the entertainment world.

You get the idea. I write about it every single month.

3. Antisemitism across the globe has exploded. “Zionist” is now used interchangeably for “Jew,” in the way that word was used in the 1930s.

The usual fools who believe that the massive protests which broke out on 10/8/23 were mere political protests, and not mass expressions of Nazi-like Jew hatred.

What was the point of trying to be the “nice guy” (again) for the last six decades? As it turned out, there was no good will in the bank for Israel or the Jewish people. At least not enough to matter, and in reality, there was far less than even general decency required.

Proving once again, that Israel is always best served by ignoring public opinion. I despise the weak position that “we need the world on our side,” when “the world” has chosen to let us burn time after time.

How can even a single person still be that foolish?

In large part, Israel was founded to protect Jewish lives at all costs. Therefore, Israel should have taken as many lives as necessary to win this war decisively, with finality, and most importantly: conduct war in a way that would strike absolute fear in our enemies.

They need to KNOW that if they touch a hair on one of our heads, death will knock on their doors either so quickly that they won’t even have time to notice, or if that’s not possible: that there is no escape from Jewish justice and you will be tracked down, and eventually eliminated.

That’s how the Middle East works.

After 77 years of having our own state (again) - we are still too dependent.

Allies are great. Dependence is dangerous.

Nothing should deter us from doing whatever is necessary to protect what we are: the remnant of the 16.5 million of us who existed before the Shoah (we are FAR more than “just” that, but you get my point).

4. As I alluded to before, another lesson is that we were wrong to believe that antisemitism was significantly eradicated. We learned that it was just not socially polite to be a Jew hater for the last 87 years. The second that permission was granted again on 10/8/23: millions got the message that it’s “ok” again, And now it’s back in vogue.

5. It is amazing to me how after the past three years, so many people still haven’t learned the lessons of 10/7, and behave like it never happened.

I get the trauma of that day. Obviously, I feel it too.

But trauma of that magnitude ought to have woken all of us up. Instead for many, it caused recession into a mental fetal position of self-delusion. Pretending that there can still be a “two state solution” (almost exclusively a Diaspora position, or a convenient talking point for our enemies at this point), or even peace with any nation, group, or individual that takes Islam seriously is a joke.

The more I learn about Islam, the more that I understand that it is not a religion, but instead a cultish political ideology that demands total obedience – with hatred of Jews as its central motivating factor. “Allah” is just the excuse for the pre-civilizational behavior. It is clear that there is no such thing as an Islam able to co-exist with Western values and culture.

None of that is easy to say for an educated guy who grew up bathed in the classically liberal American obsession with pluralism.

I know that it’s scary. It is also true. So wake up.

6. It may have been a mistake to rely on the horrors of that day to “convince” people that they should side with us. I have come to realize that most people just don’t care.

I had lunch with a non-Jew I went to high school with about a year and a half after 10/7. The subject came up and I was stunned as I listened to him ask “Oh yeah, didn’t something bad happen to the Jews that day?”

This is also an educated person, who grew up in Los Angeles, and went to a high school that while secular, was majority Jewish. As far as I know he has no history of antisemitism. And no, he wasn’t joking - he was absolutely serious. That day just isn’t something that made any impression on him at all. Any more than an earthquake in South America, a flood in Japan, or riots in France, etc. truly have an impact on most of our lives.

Particularly, more than a year later.

Even decent people have an amazing capacity to mentally distance themselves from things that they just don’t care about.

But at the same time, our enemies are perversely excited by the carnage of 10/7.

So in retrospect, it probably would have been more valuable to turn Gaza into a parking lot/beach front property and make a film about that.

I don’t know about you, but I would definitely prefer being feared than being seen as a victim. More than anything else, seeing our suffering and Jews as victims has always been what gets our non-Jewish enemies going.

The failure of Holocaust education has proven that Western liberals only really like dead Jews (G-d forbid), and Jewish suffering is merely a convenient talking point for our enemies who exploit it for their own gain.

Islamist-in-chief Zohran Mamdani’s despicably evil 10/7 speech is a prime example.

We need strength. We need to be feared. (See #3)

Part of that is that we absolutely need to stop being “ghetto Jews” expressing (or even feeling) gratitude just for being treated like equal human beings. I’ve seen WAY too much obsequious groveling at every expression of basic decency, especially when they come from celebrities.

And stop thanking famous people in social media posts that will never see the “thank you.” It’s pathetic.

7. Our secular Jewish organizations are pointless. They excel at raising money. Other than that, they are pretty good at issuing statements, pretending that they and their statements are relevant, and planning utterly useless “Jewish” events, to raise more money – often with no actual Jewish content.

The same goes for all of our secular leaders. They have failed us. We need serious leadership because we now live in a serious time.

You know it’s true.

I detailed that failure many times, but most recently: here.

8. I’m not sure that we have a future in the West. My father served in WW II and I’m all for fighting for our deserved places in the West. But was it ever really our home?

I’m not so sure anymore.

Our home is Eretz Yisrael. Its importance, and the necessity of our own country, in our land, has never been clearer. As proud as I am of being an American, and I have been VERY proud, it has become crystal clear to me that we only have two things that will keep us safe:

1. Hashem

2. Living in our own land.

We can’t depend on anyone else. They may be our neighbors, or our countrymen, etc. But we’ve seen this show before, and the Germans, Poles, French, Russians, and even Arab Muslims were also those things. It means nothing.

It’s great that Israel has done so much to defang Hezbollah, it’s great that it severely weakened Iran, the same with the damage it has done to Hamas. Israeli soldiers are absolutely heroes. But, all of it should have been done decades ago. We cannot keep deluding ourselves into believing that Israel, the nation and the people, can exist in peace without being the strong, warrior nation of our forefathers and mothers.

Not that we need to be depressed, but instead redouble your commitment to Jewish life, to Torah, mitzvot, supporting and protecting our people. We will come through this, and I believe better than ever before.

Chazak ve’ematz.

Never give in. Never give up.

Am Yisrael Chai.

Your Local Epidemiologist, 10-7-26

Here's the latest about the Russian plague, of which we know hardly anything yet. Your Local Epidemiologist sounds very reassuring for those Americans who might  be panicking. Since Russia has a long history of not telling the truth, I'd be skeptical.

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Top 8 questions about the “plague” situation
Katelyn Jetelina, Marisa Donnelly, PhD, and Elisabeth Marnik, PhD
Oct 07, 2026

Well, “the plague” is trending on almost all social media channels now.

With a topic like this, I really struggle with how deeply to cover it. When the hazard is low (i.e., the risk of the plague reaching the U.S. from Russia is essentially nil) but the outrage is high (lots of chatter and concern), what is the right call? Almost no official information is coming out of Russia, creating enormous information voids and rumors/falsehoods.

So we decided to answer the top questions we are seeing circulate online (and, let’s be honest, the ones family and friends keep texting us). This may help as you wade through the online storm.

Dr. Marisa Donnelly, epidemiologist, and Dr. Liz Marnik, immunologist, will take it away with the top eight questions.

A quick note: If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go to yesterday’s post about the situation in Russia. And then pick up from here.

Also, keep in mind the plague hasn’t been confirmed. What we know is that a scientist who worked in an anti-plague lab died of pneumonia of unknown cause.

1. How worried should I be?

 

Epidemiologists and biosecurity experts are worried mainly because of the lack of transparency. It is their job to worry. This worry shouldn’t transfer to the general public right now, mainly because there is nothing for you to do and your risk is so low.

On a scale from 0 (not worried) to 10 (super worried), our worry that this will turn into something big is a 1. This will change if there are more cases or we find out if the pathogen was altered in the lab.

2. If this is the plague, what is it?

 

The word plague probably brings up memories of your high school history class where you learned that ⅓ of Europe (about 25 million people) died. You may picture the eerie beaked masks of plague doctors, though those actually came along centuries later, in the 1600s. Scientists are still piecing together parts of the story, but back then plague spread in two ways: 1) through flea bites (fleas that fed on infected rats) and lice and 2) person to person through the air.

The world is very different now. We don’t have lice, fleas, and rodents everywhere in our living quarters anymore. And our medical systems are better. But plague is still around. It’s endemic in some places, like Madagascar, and sporadic in others, including the U.S. An estimated 1,000 to 2,000 people are infected worldwide each year.

There are three forms of plague, but all are caused by the same bacterium: Yersinia pestis. The type of plague someone gets depends on how they become exposed (see figure below). Symptoms also vary depending on the type.

Made by Marisa and Liz. Source.

If this lab worker died from the plague, it’s suspected she had pneumonic plague.

3. Is pneumonic plague contagious? Could it spread widely?

 

Yes, pneumonic plague is contagious, but not the most contagious thing on earth. It requires close or direct contact, like caring for someone who is sick. It doesn’t spread through casual contact, like from just being in the same room as someone. On average, one person with pneumonic plague may infect one to three additional people.

The public health response after a pneumonic plague case is detected is pretty straightforward:

• Treat and isolate the patient

• Identify all contacts that were potentially exposed

• Begin monitoring

Depending on the extent of exposure and the suspected type of plague, public health may choose to give all exposed contacts post-exposure prophylaxis antibiotics, just in case.

This approach works really well in stopping plague outbreaks in its tracks.

4. Can we treat plague?

Yes! All three forms of plague are treatable with antibiotics, and recovery rates are high, but treatment must start quickly after exposure because the infection progresses rapidly. Untreated plague can be very dangerous, and pneumonic plague in particular can progress very quickly. As soon as a clinician suspects a possible plague infection, they will usually prescribe antibiotics rather than wait for laboratory tests to come back.

5. Is there a plague vaccine?

Not in the U.S. There used to be a vaccine available for military personnel and people at high risk (like those who work with animals or in labs with plague), but production was discontinued in 1999 because of serious side effects and because it was not effective at preventing infection.

6. Could plague be used as a bioweapon? Didn’t a book just come out about this?

Yes. In the book, a Russian lab released a genetically modified form of plague that progresses to a pandemic.

The book is marketed as “nonfiction” because it’s based on scientifically relevant work and the history of biosecurity, but the outbreak is fictional. It’s never happened before.

CDC and defense agencies have considered the bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, a potential bioweapon. The CDC has written guides for how to respond to a potential plague bioterror event.

Scientists have also considered the possibility that a bad actor may engineer plague to be antibiotic-resistant and use that as a weapon. But CDC’s guidance accounts for this potential and recommends two different classes of antibiotics to treat plague if there is reason to suspect engineered resistance.

Importantly, there is no evidence so far that the death in Russia is due to a bioweapon or genetically modified form of plague.

7. Are there enough antibiotics in the U.S. for a biological weapon?

For many reasons, plague outbreaks these days stay very small (see the previous YLE post on this). We do have antibiotics in the national stockpile, although it is considered underfunded (like many public health systems) and could always use more support. Also, keep in mind there are multiple antibiotic options for treatment, not just one.

Both of these would help avoid a supply chain bottleneck.

8. What should I do?

Demanding transparency (and accountability) from Russia is important right now.

Also, when you see friends and family talking about the plague right now, you can remind them why investing in science and public health matters. It helps keep us safe every day; we just often don’t see it. This includes investing in infection-monitoring systems and in research on new prevention and treatments.

Bottom line

If this woman died from the plague, the risk of a pandemic is very, very small. We will be back with more if that should change. But let this be a reminder, once again, that we need strong public health systems in the U.S. and across the world.

Love, YLE

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Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is a team of experts, from physicians to immunologists to epidemiologists to nutritionists, working together with one goal: to “translate” ever-evolving public health science so people are well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. The YLE suite of newsletters reaches over 475,000 people across more than 132 countries. This newsletter is free to everyone, thanks to the generous support of fellow YLE community members.

They Couldn't Let Us Mourn For One Day

I have finally realized that the enemies of Jews and of Israel are so pathologically opposed to our receiving the least bit of sympathy and decency at all, that in a coordinated effort, they deliberately mislead, gaslight, and downplay any atrocities against us, while simultaneously marching for and cheering for Hamas and other murderous Muslim extremist groups.

What we see over and over, particularly the days leading up to, and including, September 11 and October 7, are attempts to minimize the horror and interfere with the grieving process, while celebrating Islam.

We have to keep fighting back, and below is an example of the kind of evil messenger we need to keep attacking continually.  "Mayor" Mandami is a disgrace, a quisling, and it's not going to get any better for New York City Jews.  And it won't get any better for American Jews if the Democrat Socialists get elected.

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United With Israel, 10-8-26  

‘Jihad Mamdani’ Blasted for Sending ‘Love and Kisses’ to Hamas on Oct. 7

“I wish Mayor ‘Jihad Mandami’ sent a message like @realDonaldTrump for Oct 7. But Mayor Mayhem sends loves & kisses to Hamas,” Huckabee wrote.

By United with Israel Staff

"New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani faced a wave of condemnation from Israeli and American officials after using the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre to accuse Israel of “genocide,” “apartheid” and “war crimes.”

"Among the strongest responses came from Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, who issued his rebuke from the bedside of his son, Neria, who remains on life support after being struck by a Palestinian terrorist.

“I have to take a moment from my son’s bedside, on life support after being struck by a Palestinian terrorist, to respond to the dangerous lies being spewed by @NYCMayor,” Leiter wrote.

“It’s actually hard to find a sentence in Mamdani’s post that isn’t a lie,” he continued. “Paying lip service to the victims of October 7 just to spread blood libels about Israel might play nicely to the red-green/communist-Islamist alliance that he promotes in the U.S., but those of us who know better see his perverted language for what it is.”

"Leiter accused Mamdani of defending Palestinian terrorism, promoting antisemitism and using the anniversary of the massacre to spread “absurd accusations and outright propaganda” against Israel.

“Let’s be clear: the only attempted genocide in this conflict was perpetrated by the barbarians he supports, Hamas, who butchered, raped, and murdered in the most horrific ways imaginable,” Leiter wrote.

"He also rejected Mamdani’s allegations about Israel’s conduct in Gaza, pointing to Hamas’s practice of embedding itself among civilians.

“Hamas embeds itself among, behind, and beneath the people of Gaza, knowing that the IDF will not, ever, intentionally target civilians,” Leiter said.

"US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee issued an equally blistering response, calling Mamdani’s statement an “outrageous & disgusting rant” released on a day that should be devoted to remembering those murdered by Hamas.

"Huckabee compared Mamdani’s message to using the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks to condemn the United States for its response to al-Qaeda.

“There is NO genocide in Gaza,” Huckabee wrote. “The death toll there is due to Hamas having continued to hold hostages (including Americans) and starving, raping, torturing and killing them.”

"Huckabee later contrasted Mamdani’s statement with President Donald Trump’s Oct. 7 memorial message.

"Trump called Oct. 7 “one of the darkest and most evil days in the history of Israel” and remembered the men, women and children “murdered, kidnapped, and subjected to unimaginable horrors at the hands of Hamas TERRORISTS.”

“We will NEVER forget October 7th. We will NEVER forget the victims. And we will always stand against the forces of Terror and Evil,” Trump wrote.

"Responding to Trump’s message, Huckabee wrote, “I wish Mayor ‘Jihad Mandami’ sent a message like @realDonaldTrump for Oct 7. But Mayor Mayhem sends loves & kisses to Hamas.”

"Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon also invoked the Sept. 11 attacks in condemning the anti-Israel rhetoric surrounding the anniversary.

“Imagine protesters taking to the streets of New York on the anniversary of 9/11, demonstrating against America and praising al-Qaeda terrorists,” Danon wrote. “That is the absurdity that we are witnessing on the anniversary of October 7.”

"Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) similarly questioned why critics of Israel could not set aside their attacks on the Jewish state for the anniversary of the massacre.

“The world demonizes Israel 365 days a year,” Torres wrote. “Perhaps, for just one day—October 7th—the critics of Israel could take a vacation from their hysterical hatred of the world’s only Jewish State and find it within themselves to express condolences for the thousands of Israelis murdered, maimed, mutilated, raped, and abducted at the hands of Hamas.”

"The condemnations came after Mamdani briefly acknowledged the Hamas atrocities in his Oct. 7 message before quickly pivoting to accuse Israel of an “ongoing genocide in Gaza,” “occupation,” “apartheid” and war crimes.

"Even on the anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Mamdani could not bring himself to simply honor the victims.

"Instead, he hijacked their day of remembrance to demonize the Jewish state, falsely accusing Israel of genocide, deliberately bombing ambulances, residential buildings and journalists, and blocking food aid from entering Gaza.

"Even on Oct. 7, Mamdani could not stop attacking Israel."

Pro-Hamas Propagandist: Mamdani's Vile 10/7 Remarks

I read this article earlier and, like the over 1,000 people who commented to show their outrage, I was revolted, infuriated -- but not surprised.

Mamdani is no Mayor.  He's nothing more than a Hamas propagandist who daily displays his hatred for Israel and for Jews.

When castigating Joe McCarthy at the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954, lawyer Joseph M. Welch famously said, after McCarthy smeared one of Welch's young lawyers, ""Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.. Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?"

Mamdani continues showing his cruelty and recklessness and keeps proving that he has no sense of decency when it comes to Israel, the Jews, and October 7.

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NY Post

Mamdani's tone-deaf Oct. 7 post attacks Israel for 'ongoing genocide,' sparks outrage 

"Mayor Zohran Mamdani was accused of “weaponizing” the third anniversary of Hamas’ devastating Oct. 7 attack on Israel Wednesday, by attacking the Jewish state of committing “war crimes” in an “ongoing genocide.”

"Hizzoner dedicated less than a quarter of his statement to the “unthinkable loss” suffered when “Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others” on Oct. 7, 2023 — with the vast majority devoted to his ongoing attacks on Israel.

“The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza,” he said, decrying the Palestinians killed in response to the Hamas attack being marked Wednesday.

“That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing.

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

"The slanted statement by the mayor — already widely criticized for making Jewish New Yorkers feel unsafe with his ongoing attacks on Israel — was quickly met with horror as many accused him of undermining the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

“What he is trying to do is hijack the only day we have for the victims and survivors. He’s trying to hijack the day to talk about attacking Israel,” Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon told The Post, adding “It’s like on 9/11 you talked about victims and al-Qaeda terrorists.”

“It’s basically taking the only day we have for victims and trying to attack Israel with propaganda,” Danon said, before pointing out that Mamdani was set to attend both a vigil marking the attack Wednesday evening, and then host a sit-down with Palestinian New Yorkers.

“He’s dangerous and sophisticated,” the ambassador said of the mayor. “He will go to both ceremonies and try to say he feels for both losses of life.” 

"Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, also accused Mamdani of weaponizing the memory of those killed in the Oct. 7 terrorist attack to push his own agenda and undermine the Jewish community. 

“Not once do you say “Jews,” Greenblatt wrote on X. “On Oct. 7, Hamas-led attackers murdered civilians, committed sexual violence, mutilated bodies and took hostages. 

“You are weaponizing a day meant for mourning the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust to recycle your usual anti-zionist talking points,” he said.

"Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate for governor, accused Mamdani of making a false moral equivalence between Hamas terrorists and Israel. 

“I thought it was unconscionable to draw a moral equivalency between the land dispute between two nations and a terrorist group going in, and murdering innocent, unarmed people, raping women, burning babies, beheading babies,” Blakeman said in a statement. “I don’t see the moral equivalency.”   

Blood is seen splattered in a child’s room following a massive Hamas militant attack in Kibbutz Nir Oz, Israel. AP

"Moshe Spern, President of the United Jewish Teachers group, said that Mamdani’s rhetoric fell in line with his disregard for the Jewish community, as evident by the continued rise in anti-semitic hate crimes in New York City.  

“Libeling Jews and the Jewish state puts Jewish New Yorkers at risk. The mayor’s own hate crimes statistics support this,” he said. 

"Anti-Jewish offenses have jumped by 8% in the last year, with overall hate crimes souring by nearly 16%, according to the NYPD

"Mamdani, in his statement, cited that 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children, have been killed in the conflict, with another 1,400 dead since last year’s cease-fire.

"The death toll figures have been provided by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, which does not differentiate between terrorists and civilians.  

"The ministry only counts deaths recorded in hospitals or official registries, with the UN and humanitarian groups estimating the total death toll is much larger. 

"The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that at least 300 children have been killed in the past year as clashes continue nearly every day between Israeli troops and Hamas. 

"Israeli officials have repeatedly accused Gaza’s ministry of health of inflating the numbers and maintained that its military avoids heavily populated targets. 

"The IDF previously estimated that its operation in the Gaza Strip killed more than 22,000 Hamas fighters. 

"Menashe Shapiro, an ex-advisor to former Mayor Eric Adams, also slammed Mamdani for using numbers provided by Hamas’ government to reiterate claims of genocide against Israel. 

“It’s incitement and electronic violence against New York’s Jews,” Shapiro said. “Mamdani said the same thing before Israel retaliated; he doesn’t get to hide behind Hamas’ made-up stats to justify his open Jew-hatred.”  

Melanie Phillips on The Third Anniversary of 10/7

Here's Melanie Phillips. I went right to her after reading about Mamdani's vile comments today.  

You have to be a paid Substack subscriber to read the entire column, but this excerpt expresses my own thoughts today and I'm sure the thoughts of most other Jews and Israelis on the third anniversary of the unforgiveably evil Hamas pogrom on Israel that left at least 1,200 souls dead.

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A chilling anniversary

The West’s depraved reaction to the October 7 atrocities and the resulting war spells disaster not for Israel but for itself

Melanie Phillips, Substack, 10-7-26

This is the heartbreaking anniversary of a day of infamy. Three years ago today, the western world stared at the worst depravity of which human beings are capable and decided not to defend civilisation against barbarism.

It wasn’t merely that, on October 7 2023, terrible atrocities were perpetrated upon more than 1450 innocent souls in the State of Israel. On that day, a very great evil was unleashed throughout the west, an evil that three years later threatens to consume it altogether.

The obscenity of the demonstrations and other events taking place today in London and elsewhere to gloat at the slaughter of Jews and demand that the Islamists’ attempt to exterminate Israel must now be completed reflects the obscenity of the reaction to that onslaught throughout the west over the past three years.

On that dreadful day in 2023, some 1200 Israeli Jews, as well as some Israeli Muslim civilians and others who were in southern Israel at that time, were slaughtered by hundreds of Arabs from Gaza led by the storm-troopers of Hamas, all intent upon the destruction of Israel and the extermination of the Jews.

The victims were subjected to ritualistic, fanatical slaughter. They were raped, beheaded, mutilated, tortured and burned alive. Children were murdered in front of their parents. The bodies of Israeli women were raped after they had been killed.

And more than 250 Israelis, including babies and children, were abducted into Gaza, abused by local Gazans and incarcerated for months in the Hamas tunnels where they were tortured, starved and murdered.

According to hostages who survived, not one Gazan civilian they encountered treated them kindly. Not one Gazan civilian informed against their Hamas abductors or helped them escape.

Instead of rising to the support of the Israeli Jews targeted for such genocidal attack, the West turned against them. The atrocities were denied, even though the Hamas terrorists had filmed themselves on their Go-Pro cameras as they went about their infernal business.

On Western streets, posters depicting the babies and children, women and men kidnapped into Gaza were ripped down by western individuals whose faces were contorted with a hideous rage at the very idea that Israeli Jews could ever be victims.

Professing grotesquely to be standing for conscience and compassion, western liberals and their governments declared that Israel, engaged in a desperate war of self-defence against the genocidal war being perpetrated by Hamas and its sponsor Iran, was itself committing genocide and that the Israelis were guilty of war crimes.

Every single part of that libellous and preposterous inversion has been shown to be untrue. While Gazan civilians were killed during the war, along with the Hamas terrorists who were being targeted, the civilian population has continued to increase through babies continuing to be born.

It was Hamas and Iran that perpetrated war crimes by deliberately targeting Israel civilians for mass murder. In stark contrast, Israel went to lengths attempted by no other army in the world to save civilian lives by issuing systematic warnings to evacuate targeted buildings and regularly moving the civilian population out of harm’s way.

Despite the charges so disgracefully levelled by the UN and governments in Britain, Europe, Australia and Canada, there was no famine or starvation in Gaza. Even UN agencies have finally reported lower levels of malnutrition there than in other countries, and lower than they were in Gaza before the war.

Reporters and medical workers said to have been targeted by callous and reckless Israeli troops have steadily been shown to have been members of Hamas or other Islamic terrorist groups. No media outfit has owned up to the wicked thing they have done: systematically misrepresenting the war in Gaza and poisoning the western mind against Israel and the Jews by using “reporters” every one of whom was doing the bidding of Hamas.

Instead of dismissing the genocide libel as a preposterous inversion of reality, the West has actually absorbed it as a cultural meme mindlessly repeated by millions and that drives political discourse.

What has become ever more clear is that October 7 didn’t just spark an astounding repudiation of conscience and reason. It’s not just that so many millions in the West seem to have lost their minds.

More horrifying still is that, over these past three years, we have also witnessed a delirium, an ecstatic excitement throughout the West that Israel and the Jews are finally getting what they deserve.

On October 7 itself, even as Israelis continued to be slaughtered in those Hamas-led attacks and long before the Israelis launched their war in Gaza, the first Muslim-led demonstrations were staged on the streets of western cities.

Those marches and demonstrations that followed over the past three years were not principally protests against Israel, nor were they principally demonstrating support for the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza.

They were fundamentally inspired by an Islamic world delirious at what it thought was solid evidence that Israel was on the way to being destroyed — and that beyond that essential first stage now lay the prospect of destroying the West.

These were triumphalist demonstrations that Islam now ruled the streets of London and other Western cities. Buoyed by the support of Western “progressives” marching alongside them as they called for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews, the Islamists understood that the West was now their principal weapon against the Jewish people. And thus the West was also being suborned into signing its own civilisational death warrant.

With Western Jews under sustained and accelerating physical and verbal attack, with Zionism now being framed as an instrument of reputational death and with Jews and Israel singled out for demonisation, those “progressives” can barely contain their own excitement that at last the Jews are getting what was coming to them.

With Zionism, the self-determination of the Jewish people in their own ancestral homeland, being framed as demonic, antisemitism has been reframed as the attempt by Jews to use the claim of bigotry as a shield for their own misdeeds. What misdeeds, exactly? Well, controlling the world in their own interests and at the expense of everyone else, of course!

So Jews too, along with the Jewish state, have been framed as demonic. And exactly as Jews have experienced down through the generations, the deranged demonisation of Jews has once again been renamed as morality itself.

What we’ve been witnessing from such liberals singling out Israel for treatment they afford to no other nation or people on earth isn’t just racism or bigotry. By wiping the suffering of Israeli Jews out of the picture altogether, liberals who preach tolerance and respect for “the other” are actually in the business of dehumanising those they defame and despise.

The suffering and victimisation of Israeli Jews is literally being torn down from lamp-posts and walls in a frenzy of murderous rage. As they do to those pieces of paper that they claw down and shred, so these liberals would like to be done to the Jews themselves.

We have all been here before, many, many times.

Like ideological fanatics from the French revolution through both communism and Nazism, these frenzied Israel-haters are in effect members of a cult. Their brains have been so badly fried by indoctrination into the belief that their evil cause embodies virtue itself that they are only able to respond to appeals to truth, rationality and conscience by denying truth, rationality and conscience altogether and stamping venomously upon anyone who makes such an appeal.

Israel has emerged from October 7 deeply changed. The trauma it has endured will never be erased. But it has emerged stronger and more resilient than ever. The last illusions about the Palestinian Arabs were stripped away in the Go-Pro images of depraved slaughter and in the hellholes of the Gaza tunnels. It has also understood that to defend itself it can no longer rely on faithless allies.

Israel has rediscovered the deep love it has for itself as a Jewish nation, for the Jewish people and for their magnificent history. A new iron has entered into the already steely Israeli soul. Israel will survive and thrive because, faced with a cult of death, it embraces life.

The same cannot be said of the West. Its own depraved reaction to the October 7 atrocities and the most just of wars that has followed spells disaster not for Israel but for itself.

I explained this reaction in the book I published last year, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians built the West — and Why Only They Can Save It. In that book, I wrote that you can’t understand the West’s wild and unhinged response to October 7 and the war that has followed unless you understand what the West has been doing to itself for decades.

What follows here is an edited extract from the book’s first chapter. 

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The remainder is for paid subscribers.  But I'm sure you've gotten the general idea by now.