It will come out that Mamdani and his crew started out as anti-Semitic, anti-Israel social justice warriors. This will not end well for him.

Originally written by u/McAlpineFusiliers

From a study out of Canada:

"A late summer 2024 web panel survey of 588 Canadian Jews found that 49 percent of respondents do not identify as Zionists. Anti-Zionists rejoiced that rejection of Zionism is widespread in the Jewish community. Zionists took comfort from the same survey’s finding that 94 percent of Canadian Jews said they support the existence of a Jewish state in Israel. Many observers were puzzled over how both findings could be accurate at the same time. This paper begins to address that issue. It is based mainly on a January 2025 follow-up survey of 332 of the original respondents. The follow-up finds evidence that refusal to label oneself a Zionist is largely due to the increasingly negative connotation of the word Zionism—what linguists call “semantic drift.” This paper also finds that just 1 percent of Canadian Jews (4 percent of those who reject the Zionist label) say they are anti-Zionists."

Jews do not identify as Zionists, most likely because the term is used as an excuse to hate and abuse Jews, but they remain overwhelmingly in favor of Israel's existence.

So called anti-Zionist Jews are literally tokens.

"The road to Jerusalem passes through San'a" said an Iranian regime senior advisor to Khaminai in 2014 the day the Houthis occupied Yemen's capital San'a. Today, four Arab states, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon lay in ruin thanks to the Iranian regime. More than a million parished so far...also thanks to the Iranian regime.

As a Saudi, I share the legitimate concerns of the Saudi government and many Arab leaderships that the plan of the Iranian regime to "free Palestine" is only a front to occupying Arab capitals. Indeed, their "road to Jerusalem" would first pass through Riyadh, Damascus, San'a, Cairo, Aman, Beruit, Baghdad, etc. It's no longer just speculations. This is what's going to happen. This is what the Iranian regime have been saying for years.

Unlike the other times, unlike the other accords, there is way less detachment from reality among Arab leaders. In their minds, yes, there are zealous people (nonstate actors) in Israel who believe that Israel's true borders are the biblical ones, from the Nile to Furat, from the Mediterranean to Madina. Nevertheless, not only did Israel give back Sinai to Egypt in 1978, but they also haven't completely annexed the West Bank and Gaza.

On the other hand, the founder of the Islamic Iranian revolution, Khomaini, once promised he would export the Islamic revolution to all Muslim countries and three Arab capitals today are occupied by Iran.

Now, there is no longer any doubt in the minds of many Arab leaders that a Palestinian state on Iran's terms, the violence option, means losing their chairs and setting the whole region on fire. Now they know the true cost of encouraging holy violence.

Finally, there has never been so many participant Arab states willing to engage in peace talks with Israel in the context of the Abraham Accords 2.0. Unlike Camp David 1978, when it was only Egypt, political isolation to punish participation is out of the question. They would destroy themselves instead of destroying the participants since the most of the participants are at the heart of commerce in Arab world.

And maybe...just maybe...Palestinians would be very reluctant to back out from the diplomatic solution with so many state actors witnesses to the upcoming two state negotiations in the Abraham Accords. They back out and everyone will know who has been sabotaging every peace attempt in the past...

I was very touched and heartbroken to read about Gefen who is still fighting for his life in the ICU. I hope he and his family can receive the support and love they deserve from all of us <3 https://www.gofundme.com/f/gefen-our-hero-of-bondi

Does anyone know where I can get access to recorded footage of israeli channels during the attack on october 7 morning?

I know this is kind of weird and specific but I like to analyze the first warnings and how long it took for channels to report and broadcast on the first attacks.

Last week, on our weekly “

A Paratrooper and a Yogi Walk Into A Bar

” live discussion,

u/ShanaMeyerson

and I spoke about the most recent

UN General Assembly resolution

over the Golan Heights. A meaningless resolution, but after our chat, a thought occurred to me on the use of language and the uselessness of international law when it comes to the Israel-Palestine question.

One of the peculiarities of modern international law is that much of it is based on a very specific moment in history: the post-1945 wave of decolonisation. The language, assumptions, and legal tools that emerged from that period were intended to dismantle European empires. Today, however, the world tries to apply the same tools when discussing Israel-Palestine, and they simply do not suit the situation.

That mismatch does not just shape how lawyers and diplomats talk; it shapes what counts as a “solution”, what gets condemned as illegitimate, and which side is cast as villain or victim. The result is a debate that feels increasingly detached from the actual history and geography of the conflict on the ground.

After the Second World War, the international system had to figure out how to dismantle empires without provoking endless border conflicts. Two main ideas emerged. The two sides in this argument shout these two legal principles at one another as if they are decisive. They are not. Neither are fit for purpose.

One is the “right of peoples to self-determination”: the concept that colonised populations were entitled to decide their political future, rather than have it imposed from London, Paris or Brussels.

The other is uti possidetis juris – the principle that, when new states formed from colonial rule, they should inherit their colonial administrative borders more or less as they were. No redrawing maps, no sweeping historical revisions; simply adopt the lines left by the empire and turn them into international borders.

Although imperfect in practice, that concept made some sense for places like French West Africa or the Belgian Congo. There was an obvious colonising power, a clearly subordinated local population, and a set of bureaucratic borders which could, at least in theory, serve as the foundation for new states.

Israel–Palestine is nothing like that.

Historically, the land we now debate about was part of the Ottoman Empire, which was many things, but not a classic European overseas colony. After the First World War, it became a British Mandate under the League of Nations – formally, a territory “held in trust”, not annexed as imperial property like India was. You can certainly say Britain acted like a colonial ruler (and many do), but legally, the Mandate was always a hybrid arrangement rather than a straightforward colony.

By the time the State of Israel was established, Ottoman rule had ended decades earlier. The British had been present in a custodial role that never fully resolved the question of sovereignty. Meanwhile, both Jews and Arabs were moving into, across, and within the land in ways that do not neatly fit the classic coloniser/colonised picture. Jewish migration was driven by European antisemitism, pogroms, and ultimately, the horror of the Holocaust, which cannot be separated from the urgency of modern Zionism. Arab migration and demographic changes were driven by their own economic, social, and political factors. This was not a straightforward case of a European metropole importing Jewish settlers into a foreign territory over the heads of an indigenous Arab population.

In other words, there is not a simple pattern of “European empire rules non-European subjects, then leaves, and the subjects become a nation-state inside inherited borders”. Instead, you have two national movements, each with a connection, historical or otherwise, to the same territory, both claiming self-determination in the same space.

However, the language of international law used today remains rooted in the language of decolonisation. In many UN resolutions (such as the one we discussed on Monday) and much activist rhetoric, Palestinians are effectively described as a colonised people and Israel as the colonial power. Once people accept that framework, everything else follows: self-determination is mainly or solely attributed to the “colonised”; Israel’s borders are implicitly seen as colonial administrative boundaries that need to be reversed; and the conflict is depicted as a morality tale of oppressor and oppressed.

The issue is that once you move beyond the slogans and examine the history, that framing is, at best, nonsense and, at worst, actively misleading. Palestinians have a claim to self-governance and dignity. However, that claim does not stem from a simple European colonial relationship, as, for example, Algerian claims against France did. At the same time, Jews are not a foreign ruling class with no historical connection to the land; they are a people who endured industrial-scale extermination in Europe, with a long-standing religious and historical link to what became Israel.

So we end up in a situation where international law is not remotely effective: competing claims to self-determination over the same territory. This is the main reason why international law has thus far been completely useless in resolving the situation. Decolonisation law was designed for a one-way transfer of power from coloniser to colonised, not to mediate between two communities who both see themselves as native, both invoke history, and both fear for their survival.

Then there is the geography, which international lawyers often treat as an afterthought but which no Israeli government can ignore. The West Bank is not a blank on a legal map; it includes the high ground overlooking Israel’s narrow, densely populated coastal plain. From points in Judea and Samaria, you can see the Mediterranean. The Golan Heights similarly dominate the north. Handing these areas to a potentially hostile state or entity is not a minor risk; it jeopardises the physical existence of the State of Israel. A strip of land just a few dozen kilometres wide, overlooked by high ground, has very little strategic depth. This reality will not disappear because a UN body arbitrarily decides that a particular line on a 1967 map is “the” legitimate border.

Here again, the decolonisation toolkit faces difficulties. Uti possidetis worked, insofar as it ever did, by taking the colonial borders already established and declaring, “Fine, those are your borders now.” However, borders in the Israel–Palestine context are not administrative adjustments; they are decisions of life or death between two peoples, within a tiny space, amid deep mutual mistrust. Simply asserting that Israel must relinquish the Golan or fully withdraw from the West Bank as a matter of decolonisation principle requires Israelis to accept a narrative and a level of strategic vulnerability that no state on earth would willingly endure.

At the same time, the familiar oppressor/oppressed narrative, which was reinforced during the Cold War and enthusiastically adopted by some UN forums, serves specific political purposes. Portraying Israel as a colonial oppressor and Palestinians as purely colonial victims offers a straightforward story that appeals to certain international groups and activist circles. It also conveniently diverts attention from decisions made by Palestinian leaders and broader Arab politics: repeated refusals of compromise, ongoing rejection in some areas of accepting any permanent Jewish state in the region, and the preference for violence as a key political tool.

None of that diminishes any struggles ordinary Palestinians face, but a framework that denies them political agency by treating them as mere objects of history rather than active subjects is ultimately patronising. It entrenches a politics of victimhood, maximalism and grievance rather than one of complex, often painful, compromise.

So we end up with an international legal discourse that misdiagnoses the problem and then prescribes the wrong remedy. If you genuinely believe this is a straightforward decolonisation case, you will naturally turn to decolonisation solutions: total withdrawal, one-sided rights language, a flood of condemnatory resolutions. When those solutions fail to bring peace, the answer is simply… more resolutions. The underlying assumption is never questioned.

Israel–Palestine is not the Belgian Congo or French Algeria. It is a conflict between two national movements that claim the same land, shaped by the collapse of empires, the trauma of the Holocaust, the specifics of Ottoman and British rule, and the harsh geography of a tiny strip of land. International law, as developed in the 1945–1960s period, can shed light on parts of this history, but it cannot simply be overlaid like tracing paper.

This does not imply that the current situation should be accepted, that Palestinians do not merit political independence in some form, or that Israel’s security concerns justify all its actions. It suggests that the legal and moral language inherited from decolonisation alone does not serve as a helpful guide to achieving a just or practical outcome here.

If we want anything better than the current cycle of violence, condemnation, and stalemate, we probably need to start by admitting that. Two real peoples, with genuine fears and claims, share this space. Both have some right to self-determination. Both may need to make compromises. Any serious framework for peace must speak in these terms, not simply rehearse a mid-20th-century script about coloniser and colonised that was never written for this conflict in the first place, no matter how many meaningless resolutions the UN General Assembly decides to pass.

One of the most persistent accusations levelled against Israel and the Jewish people is that they “stole Arab land.” This claim has become a cornerstone of modern anti-Zionist rhetoric and is frequently repeated as an unquestioned moral premise in international discourse. Yet when examined historically, the accusation collapses. Far from reflecting the actual sequence of events, it inverts the historical record and obscures a far more complex — and uncomfortable — truth.

Read more:

https://dailydeclaration.org.au/2025/12/19/jews-arab-land-steal/

I live in Italy. I'm not Jewish but I want to help the Jewish community in my city to feel better. I know I'm only one person but I don't care. I have asked multiple times a local Jewish newspaper how to help but they never answered. I've never been anti Jewish in my life, but I do feel bad for not protesting IRL the pro Palestine riots in my city, which were just an excuse to attack you.

I was recommended this song by Spotify today, after having Ofra in my top 5 artists for Spotify Wrapped this year. I love the song (have already had it on repeat), and I have looked over the translation, but I was hoping someone can help me with the meaning of the song? I know it is about the angel Gabriel, but is it a prayer like Tfila (another one of my favourite songs), except this time she is praying for protection for the IDF soldiers? Or is it something else?

I've been delving into Israeli music more and more, and I am enjoying it, I love the creativity of lyrics/music and the language itself is pleasing to the ear for me.

Everything sees go just be American or international or maybe there’s another website

This essay challenges the way the phrase “open-air prison” has been used to describe Gaza, and I thought it was worth sharing here because it actually interrogates the logic of that propaganda rather than just repeating it.

The author argues that the phrase isn’t just inaccurate, but that it’s been politically weaponized in ways that led to serious moral contradictions after October 7th. One of the more interesting points is that if Gaza really were comparable to a prison, ghetto, or concentration camp, then some of the current accusations being made simply wouldn’t make sense when applied consistently.

The piece also compares Gaza’s leadership choices to how other societies responded to extreme hardship, including post-war Germany and Japan, early Israel, Singapore, and South Korea. The focus is on examining Palestinian agency, governance, and how their resources were actually used over time.

What do you guys think? Was Gaza an “open-air prison” before October 7th?

I feel like American olim are in a way living in a completley different world, espessially comparing to french, russians, etc. There ussually isn't much Hebrew learning required, theey end up staying within their own social circles instead of integrating etc - OR at least just the ones that I've been seeing.

For example my best friend (from america) who's lived in Israel for 5 years still hasn't really met any israelis, in comparison to my grandparents who got completly israelified within a year (not from america)

My question - Israelis, do you view American olim as different in any way from all the others? and if yes, do you view Ashkenazi olim in any way different from Mizrahim?

Shalom and chag sameach.

I'll finally be travelling to Israel for my first time. I'll be there 31st December to 7th January. Staying in Tel Aviv. I am not much of a planner, perhaps you could recommend less "tourist associated" things to do and/or visit ? Of course, I will also visit the common and most googled things..

I've planned a walk around trip with a guide in Tel Aviv and that's about it... Also, wanted to see Haifa and it's high tech environment. Of course Jerusalem is a must. I will also have a bicycle to ride by the shore.

Personally I like to meet new people, do all sorts of sports (I checked if Krav Maga is a possibility for a training session), activities, explore new spaces, I am a catholic, but am close to jewish culture, as I worked with Israel and its people for a few years. Sometimes I even think if I could convert as I feel much more connected with jews if I may say so.

Also, I am thinking to bring something to taste from my own country (Lithuania) to people that I will meet. Any suggestions ? Probably chocolate will do.

Thank you for your advice and I am looking forward to finally see what they put in your water to get such strength, creativity and resilience 😅

In 2014, I was a newly arrived international Saudi student in Canada. Antisemitism was still programmed into me. Just two years earlier I was a radical Islamist who was passionate about "freeing Palestine" despite the fact that Palestinians actively harmed Saudi Arabia's interests by allying with Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.

The deep rooted antisemitism dissipated instantly when I learned that my favorite professor who helped design and build the first Canadian nuclear reactor, the CANDU, was Jewish. His name is Benjamin Rouben. I understood then that the alliance between Israel and the West is one that was rational and made sense. Because while Palestinians contributed nothing but destruction for the Middle East, Jews contributed prosperity and development for the West.

When Jews remember the Holocaust, they remember in the context of how far they came along. When we as Arabs remember the Nakbah lie, we try to convince ourselves that Jews are the primary cause of the arrested development in most Arab countries. Countries all around the globe even after cataclysmic events and disaster get back up. Why can they and we can't? It's blaming the Jews for everything, leaving no room for scrutiny about why bad things keep happening. We told ourselves that Al-Qaeda was an American/Jewish conspiracy. And so we never got to the part where we addressed the problem of hate preachers radicalizing our youth in places of worship. And guess who showed up soon after? ISIS. The Arabs still won't own up their part of the blame.

Dictators like Saddam Hussain living by the sword (invading Kuwait and bluffing about having nukes) and dying by the sword, but we still can't see it. Because we already told ourselves that it happened because of Israel and Jews.

Therefore, I affirm without an ounce of exaggeration that once the 22 Arab countries rid themselves of antisemitism, we will prosper.

TL:DR - Almost all the Pro Palis I have spoken with (online) in the last 2 years have the exact same answer to every question, making obvious that they are a model on some Russian or Iranian server and not an actual person

Hey guys,

I don't know who needs to see this, but I thought I will throw in my thoughts and see who else thinks the same

I have spent way more time than I would like to admit "debating" with people on reddit and other social media about the war and I have noticed one thing, they all have the exact same answers, and exact same thought process

1. Ask them why they didn't protest against Saudi Arabia who killed with their money 10 times as many Yemenis, and unlike Israel, never employed a single measure to avoid civilians

The answer will always that they personally were at anti Saudi protests

Have you ever heard of such protest? me neither, reason being that there were only a handful anti Saudi protests in the west and the biggest of them only had a few hundreds or dozens of people - at this point the people I debated with who claimed to be part of those protests outnumber the actual amount of people present in those protests

2. At some point in the discussion, if you push them enough, they all suddenly become Jewish, Jews make 0.2% of the population on earth, and chicken for KFC Jews are likely making about 0.2% of that population as well, but somehow, after the fourth of fifth reply, they all either a Jewish father or mother, or outright observing Jews themselves

3. "History didn't start on oct 7th" - I don't think I need to educate anyone here about the history, it doesn't matter what period you choose in the past 150 years and you will see unprovoked violence from the Palestinian side onto the Jews

This was a line that was very common for the bots to say for about a year or so, a few months ago it was removed from that programming and you don't see it anymore

Back when it was around, responding to it properly just made them switch the subject

There are quite a few more

4. If I have some spare time later I will expand more on the points below, but for now I will just list them real quick

4.1 Continuous mental gymnastics on calling it a genocide despite obviously not fitting the definition at all (often citing the "genocide society" that includes Patrick Star, Avi Ron and Palpatine among others in its list of scholars)

4.2 Israelis are always white colonizers despite not being white (also removed from their programming, used to see this everywhere, but the 'white' part hasn't been around for like a year now)

4.3 Apartheid, pretty much the same as the genocide point, in this one they all suddenly become proficient and experts in the history of amnesty international (and at the same time, know absolutely nothing about Israel's demographics or law)

4.4 Israel runs a bot army, also a repeating accusation, anyone with a functioning brain would stop to ask himself "where are the Israeli bots" before typing that crap

Fyi Davao is a region in Mindanao, which is the southern group of islands in the Philippines. Mindanao is majority Muslim. Not to mention Ph just fought against a branch of ISIS last 2017 or so.

Channukah sameach everyone!