Trump celebrated the Gaza ceasefire in Davos while Israeli attacks killed 11 Palestinians, among them children and three journalists. (Photo: QNN, AJA. Design: Palestine Chronicle)

By Robert Inlakesh

Since the Gaza ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025, repeated announcements about an imminent ‘Phase Two’ have created the impression of diplomatic progress. In reality, the agreement has not advanced beyond its initial stage, while shifting proposals and ongoing violations suggest the process was never designed to reach a definitive end to the war.

Key Takeaways

• The ceasefire remains trapped in Phase 1 because Phase 2 has never been clearly defined or operationalized.
• Monitoring mechanisms, particularly the CMCC, have failed to enforce the agreement despite thousands of violations.
• Successive reconstruction proposals replace political resolution with speculative planning detached from realities on the ground.
• Israel’s refusal to withdraw and demand for disarmament make any transition to Phase 2 structurally impossible.
• The ceasefire functions as a controlled pause in large-scale war rather than a genuine path to ending it.

A Ceasefire without a Second Phase

Since the initiation of the Gaza Ceasefire agreement on October 10, 2025, month after month, the media has speculated about the beginning of the second phase of the deal. However, despite small amendments to the situation on the ground, nothing substantive has emerged. This is all by design.

The original text of US President Donald Trump’s “Comprehensive End of Gaza War” proposal, as well as his corresponding “20-Point-Plan,” assert that the Gaza ceasefire’s first phase will begin immediately and that within a 72-hour-window all of the elements included within it are to be concluded.

Soon after the ceasefire was announced, there then emerged a different plan, one that stated there would be a five-day window in which a limited number of aid trucks could enter the Gaza Strip. Israel did not adhere to this agreement. From there, it took weeks for the minimum required aid to reach the civilian population.

There was also the formation of the Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), which attracted over 20 countries and dozens of humanitarian aid organizations. The CMCC’s purpose was supposed to be the coordination of aid transfers, alongside monitoring efforts to stop ceasefire violations and maintain the stability of the agreement.

Instead, the CMCC became a command and control center led by the United States military, with the Israelis being the second in charge, before a range of Arab and international armed forces. The CMCC has watched on and done nothing to stop Israel’s daily ceasefire violations, which are around 3,000 in total at this point, including the murder of around 560 Palestinians.

Contrary to its stated mission, the CMCC made every nation involved fully complicit in Israeli war crimes, including round-the-clock home demolitions, the deliberate slaughter of children, and the propping up of five ISIS-linked militias in the territory.

Plans for Gaza without Ending the War

Ever since the ceasefire began, there has been a nearly weekly pivot in terms of what the future plans for Gaza are to be; all of these “plans”, “visions,” and “proposals” contradict the last.

For example, a proposal for “post-war Gaza”, exposed by the Washington Post in September, before the ceasefire was even implemented, was still reportedly being floated following the agreement that came into effect a month later. This was called the “Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust”, or GREAT Trust, fully drawn up by an Israeli. A 38-page document was even produced as a means of laying the groundwork for a model of AI-powered smart cities.

However, the GREAT Trust plan contradicted Donald Trump’s “20-point-plan” as it proposed paying Gaza’s civilian population 5,000 USD each to leave the territory. Under the Trump plan, the population was said to be allowed to stay in Gaza.

Enter Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and suddenly there’s a “new plan” for post-war construction, presented on a slideshow called “Project Sunrise”, which was revealed in December of last year by the Wall Street Journal. This PowerPoint presentation, which is vague and consists of AI-generated images similar to the US President’s infamous “Trump Gaza” AI video, was published at the start of 2025.

The month prior to this, Kushner, along with US envoy Steve Witkoff, was floating countless vague proposals, appearing to only be offering reconstruction in the Israeli-controlled portion of Gaza, which was supposed to be 53% of the territory, but due to Israeli violations and seizure of more land is closer to 60%.

What also happened in mid-November was the passing of the United Nations’ de facto death certificate – UN Security Council resolution 2803 – which granted the US its legitimacy in creating the “Board of Peace” and “International Stabilization Force”.

UNSC resolution 2803 was supposed to help usher in the alleged Phase 2 of the ceasefire deal, something that still hadn’t been clearly defined. Then, in December, there were reports, citing US officials, that Phase 2 would start in January. Instead, all that happened was Jared Kushner delivered a speech and showed a PowerPoint presentation, depicted in the media as “the master plan”.

Yet, the slideshow was the same as the old one that had been floating around since December, except this time, Kushner was arguing his AI-powered super city model would cost 90 billion less than it was supposed to late last year.

The Managed Stalemate

Now the Israelis have allowed a partial opening of Rafah, which they decide to close whenever they choose and impose extreme restrictions on who leaves and enters. Contrary to the agreement, the Israelis are not withdrawing from Gaza at all and have publicly expressed their opposition to such a move.

Instead, Israel demands that the Palestinian resistance disarm, which they will not do. Therefore, the only option for the Israelis is to ramp up their genocide again and collapse the ceasefire if they want to achieve disarmament, something it hasn’t yet chosen to do.

In other words, there is no Phase 2. We don’t even have a definition of what Phase 2 actually is. There are no real plans for anything, just AI slop and unrealistic “visions”. Although it may seem as if there are attempts to bring about a change on the ground, which to some is the “start of Phase 2”, this is simply wishful thinking.

What is happening is precisely what I have predicted since October 8, 2025, when both sides signaled they had agreed to the ceasefire: the situation is stuck in limbo between “Phase 1” and “Phase 2”. Israel doesn’t stop killing civilians, and there is no real effort to develop meaningful plans that would actually result in the ceasefire’s ultimate success.

The genocide is not over; there is simply a glorified pause in place, one that allows the Israelis to focus on other fronts while the media pretends “the war is over”.

[…]

Via https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-gaza-ceasefire-has-no-phase-two-only-a-permanent-limbo-analysis/

By Alan MacLeod

Key findings of this investigation:

• Right up until his arrest for child sex trafficking, Chomsky was advising Epstein on crisis management, sympathizing with the “horrible way you are being treated in the press and public.”
• On multiple occasions, Chomsky expressed his desire to visit Little St. James Island, site of Epstein’s infamous sex crimes. 
• Chomsky flew on Epstein’s “Lolita Express” jet, stayed at his mansions in Manhattan and Paris, and regularly met him for dinner and other social occasions. 
• Chomsky quietly met with a host of other highly questionable characters, including Steve Bannon, Woody Allen, and Ehud Barak. 
• Chomsky considered Epstein his “best friend,” and his closest advisor, and regularly exchanged gifts with the disgraced pedophile. 
• Chomsky’s relationship with his children broke apart, due in part to their protests over his attempts to name Epstein’s accountant and right-hand man to the board of the family’s trust fund. 

Newly released documents have shed light on the unlikely relationship between renowned leftist professor Noam Chomsky and disgraced pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Analyzing over 3800 emails and texts involving the academic, MintPress News has uncovered a deep, years-long friendship between the two, one where they became “best friends” and each other’s closest confidants. Chomsky flew on Epstein’s notorious “Lolita Express” jet, stayed at his apartments in Manhattan and Paris, and expressed his desire, on multiple occasions, to visit Little St. James Island, the location of many of Epstein’s worst sex crimes.

Years of exchanging gifts and dining together – events that frequently included other highly controversial characters, such as disgraced filmmaker Woody Allen, far-right political strategist Steve Bannon, and former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, turned the pair into the closest of friends. Chomsky became a key figure in Epstein’s attempts at crisis management, sharing his thoughts about strategies to quash and counter what he called “the onslaught of venomous attacks” against him. Meanwhile, Epstein became the star political philosopher’s trusted legal and financial advisor, a fact that would lead to a near collapse in the relationship between Noam and his children.

This is the story of the previously unknown relationship between the man who The New York Times called “the most important intellectual alive” and the world’s most infamous sexual predator.

Noam Chomsky: Jeffrey Epstein’s Crisis Manager

After 36 survivors – some as young as 14 – came forward, billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein was convicted in 2008 on charges related to child sex crimes. He was, however, given only an 18-month sentence, and served only 13 months in a minimum security prison that he was allowed to leave six days per week. The U.S. attorney who struck this lenient deal reportedly stated that he did so under duress, and was told to “back off,” as Epstein “belonged to intelligence.”

Key to Epstein’s crimes becoming known was the testimony of his victim, Virginia Giuffre. Giuffre alleged that Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell operated a worldwide sex trafficking operation, where women and girls were kidnapped and forced to have sex with the world’s rich and powerful. This allegedly included royals like Prince Andrew, politicians such as Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, and academics, like Alan Dershowitz. Epstein reportedly made his fortune by keeping copious evidence of their sex crimes and extorting his clients. Previous Epstein Files releases have strongly indicated that Epstein, like Maxwell’s father and family, worked for Israeli intelligence.

The testimony from Giuffre and others sparked worldwide uproar, eventually forcing the U.S. government to act. In 2019, the FBI arrested Epstein, holding him in a high security Manhattan prison. Just weeks later, he was found dead in his cell, under highly suspicious circumstances.

Epstein was aware that the walls were closing in. Months before his arrest, he sent Chomsky a number of panicked emails, desperately asking for guidance on how to squash the widespread demands for his arrest.

[…]

Chomsky’s suggestion was generally to remain silent, hoping the situation would blow over. “Ive watched the horrible way you are being treated in the press and public. It’s painful to say, but I think the best way to proceed is to ignore it. I’ve had plenty of experience, though of course not on this scale,” he replied, adding that some of his close friends have also gone through the same thing.

[…]

In his emails to Epstein, Chomsky denounced what he described as the “culture of gossip-mongers” destroying his stellar character. “These things have a half-life. The best reaction, I think, is to just stay above the furor, wait it out, go on with what matters.”

[…]

Chomsky suggested that, unfortunately, Epstein would simply have to “develop a thick skin” to “fend off whatever ugliness breaks through now and then.” “The great work that you have been doing speaks for itself,” he concluded, without explaining what exactly he was referring to.

[…]

His first wife, Carol, with whom he had three children, died in 2008. In 2014, he subsequently married Valeria Wasserman, a Brazilian translator 35 years his junior. He suffered a debilitating stroke in 2023, leaving him unable to speak or meaningfully converse. Until his final public appearances, however, he continued to defend Epstein, even after the latter was found dead in his cell.

In 2020, when asked about Epstein’s sex crime convictions, Chomsky was adamant: “There is a principle of Western law, that once a person has served a sentence, he is are the same as everybody else. It seems to be forgotten. Why this obsession but not with more significant characters?” he said, also attempting to deflect, noting that far worse people than Epstein regularly donate to his university, M.I.T.

One of his last interviews was with The Wall Street Journal, who questioned him directly about his connections to the disgraced billionaire. Chomsky was unusually blunt. “That is none of your business. Or anyone’s,” he stated, adding, “I knew him and we met occasionally.”

[…]

Flying on the Lolita Express, Dreaming of Epstein’s Rape Island

For years, Jeffrey Epstein allowed Chomsky to periodically live a life of extreme luxury, plying him and his wife with gifts, and providing them access to his property, vehicles, and staff.

Emails show that, in May 2016, while he was in New York City for a lecture, Noam met up with Epstein and stayed at his residence. The location in question is very likely to be Epstein’s palatial, seven-floor 51,000 square feet (4,700m²) mansion. A former hospital turned into a single apartment, the property is filled with paintings of naked women and other highly sexualized art, and was where Epstein would traffic and rape his slaves, as well as hold wild sex parties for his powerful guests. Chomsky described it as “that lovely apartment where you once put us up,” indicating he stayed there on more than one occasion.

When federal agents raided the property in July 2019, they found a framed photo of Epstein with the Chomskys on a bedside table.

This was not the first time that Chomsky had tasted some of New York’s most luxurious residences, courtesy of Epstein. In 2015, the billionaire booked him into the $1400-per-night Manhattan Suite at the Mark Hotel on the Upper East Side.

And in order to travel in style, he flew aboard Epstein’s private jet, nicknamed the “Lolita Express” – a reference to the child sex crimes widely alleged to have regularly taken place aboard.

[…]

Chomsky, however, had his eyes set on an entirely different property of Epstein’s: the one on Little St. James Island. On multiple occasions, he signalled his eagerness to visit what would come to be known as one of the most notorious houses on the planet.

Epstein’s 70-acre private island became world renowned after U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise George alleged that dozens of girls, some as young as 12-years-old, were imprisoned and raped at the property. The compound, full of occult symbolism, was put up for sale in 2022 in order to pay for a host of lawsuits.

[…]

Despite all this, there is no indication in the files that any of the Chomskys saw or partook in any sex crimes or illegal activities with Epstein.

Dining With “Dear Friends” and War Criminals

[…]

Jeffrey Epstein, needless to say, was a highly politically-connected man. From princes to presidents, the billionaire trafficker was a central figure among the global elite. One of his closest associates was Donald Trump. Previously disclosed files show Epstein describing himself as “Trump’s closest friend,” and claiming that it was he who introduced the president to his wife, Melania.

At the same time as the Barak meeting, Chomsky planned a trip to Israel, a move that would likely have angered many in the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement. In October of that year, however, he cancelled the visit. Not because of Israel’s crimes against Palestine, but because Valeria tore a muscle and had to concentrate on recovering.

[…]

Flying on the Lolita Express to Attend a “Pedophile Convention”

Chomsky, however, had long been mingling with controversial figures, thanks to his Epstein friendship.

In October 2015, the emails show, he flew from Boston to New York City with Epstein on his private jet in order to attend a soirée at Epstein’s notorious Manhattan town house with the disgraced film director Woody Allen and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn.

Allen’s proclivities, if anything, were even more well-known than Epstein’s. His long-term, high-profile relationship with actress ended spectacularly in 1992 after their adopted seven-year-old daughter, Dylan, alleged that he had, for some time, been molesting her.

At the same time as this, Allen had been having an affair with another of Farrow’s adopted children, 22-year-old Soon-Yi Previn. Just five years later, Allen married Previn.

Allen was a frequent guest at these Manhattan dinners, noting that Epstein was like “Dracula with young female vampires to serve him.” Epstein left even less to the imagination when discussing his time with Allen, describing their meetings as a “pedophile convention.”

[…]

“Deep, Sincere, And Everlasting Friendship”

The overwhelming image that emerges from nearly 4000 newly released documents concerning the pair is a deep, years-long friendship between Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Epstein. The two would exchange jokes, and talk money, politics, medical problems, and legal troubles. Epstein became Chomsky’s closest friend above all others.

“Dear Jeffrey, We count you as our best friend. I mean ‘the’ one. It is always great to see you,” Valeria Chomsky wrote in 2017.

The world-renowned linguist said as much, signing off one note to Epstein with the words: “Like real friendship, deep and sincere and everlasting from both of us, Noam and Valeria.”

The billionaire showered the Chomskys with gifts, such as a food hamper from Carnegie Deli, an iconic New York City Jewish eatery, and a cashmere sweater for Noam’s 87th birthday. On one occasion, Epstein organized a private car to take the couple to the airport.

[…]

Epstein and the Chomskys met frequently, and, judging by their interactions, greatly enjoyed their time together. As Valeria wrote, “I am very enthusiastic about these meetings.” Another time, she made Epstein promise to “include her in the next photos,” according to an email from Epstein’s executive assistant, Lesley Groff. Prosecutors are currently weighing up charging Groff for her alleged role in Epstein’s sex crimes, which include scheduling massage appointments from women and girls. Groff has denied all wrongdoing.

[…]

Publicly a Leftist Intellectual, Privately an Anti-Feminist Sexual Predator Defender

Chomsky would often talk politics with Epstein, and, while outwardly consistently espousing far-left political positions, some of his private conversations sounded more like the words of conservative figures, such as Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro.

He was vociferously critical of #MeToo and the modern feminist movement, describing it as a “hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder.”

He vehemently defended his friend Lawrence Krauss, a celebrity scientist with a host of sexual assault and other sexual misconduct charges against him, going back over a decade.

And despite complaining about being called a “neo-Nazi” by “cranks,” he compared feminists asking questions about Krauss to Hitler’s brownshirts and religious zealots.

[…]

Via https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-chomsky-epstein-files/290658/

Episode 6 – Muhammad, the Hadith and Iman al Bukhari

Islamic Golden Age (2017)

By Eamon Gearon

Film Review

The Hadith are a collection of Muhammad’s sayings and play a vital role, alongside the Koran, in defining the Muslim religion. Iman al-Bukhari’s main role in Baghdad’s House of Wisdom was to authenticate the source of approximately 600,000 oral directives attributed to the Prophet. In the end, the former verified 7,500 hadith, which he compiled in The Six Books. Each hadith includes at least two sources (people who heard the words directly from Muhammad or someone in his inner circle). By the early 9th century there were already thousands of sayings falsely attributed to Muhammad.

Al-Bukhari was born in in 809 or 810 BC in Bukhara Uzbekistan and began studying hadith at age 10. After his first Haj at age 15, he remained in Mecca to study Hadith. He then spent 16 years traveling throughout the Arabian peninsula interviewing 1,080 Muslim scholars.

The hadith contain significant practical guidance for many aspects of Muslim life, eg how and when to pray, how to have a successful marriage, rules for holy war and “greater jihad” (the internal struggle against desires and impulses), the protocol for freeing slaves and recovering lost property, good manners and controlling one’s temper.

Sunni and Shia Muslims follow different haddith owing to disagreement over the reliability of specific narratives.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/5756987/5757001

Ari Paul

Younger Americans are turning against Israel. “On both the left and the right, young Americans are growing more skeptical of offering unconditional US support to Israel,” Politico (9/29/25) reported. Brookings (8/6/25) ran the headline “Support for Israel Continues to Deteriorate, Especially Among Democrats and Young People.” According to the Forward (11/21/25), “Younger Jews are more than twice as likely to identify as anti-Zionist than the overall population.”

Pro-Israel media are looking for blame. It’s often easy to paint youth opinion that is out of sync with official state policy as emotionally driven social justice warriorism, the result of hearts not yet hardened by life’s cold realities. The Zionist media narrative is looking for the culprits who have apparently miseducated our youth, turning them not just into Israel critics, but Jew haters.

‘Panicked’ by young people

“Younger Americans…are likely to trust and get their news from lightly moderated social-media platforms,” writes Yair Rosenberg (Atlantic, 12/15/25), “which often advantage the extreme opinions, conspiracy theories, and conflict-stoking content that drive engagement.”

At the Atlantic (12/15/25), Yair Rosenberg wrote a piece headlined “The More I’m Around Young People, the More Panicked I Am,’” with the subhead, “Anti-Jewish prejudice isn’t a partisan divide—it’s a generational one.” To his credit, Rosenberg starts off reporting on very real instances of antisemitism, but then watch carefully what he does in the middle:

Young people also tend to be more critical of Israel than their elders, leading a minority to excuse or even perpetuate anti-Jewish acts in America in the name of Palestine. These critics are likely to consume anti-Israel content on their social-media apps of choice. The platforms then funnel some of those users toward antisemitic material—a sort of algorithmic escalator that ends up radicalizing a percentage of them.

In the first sentence, the only evidence Rosenberg cites is a link to his own article (Atlantic, 5/22/25) about how “Elias Rodriguez allegedly shot and killed two people as they were exiting an event at the Capital Jewish Museum,” with the headline “A Dangerous Disguise for Antisemitism.” Rosenberg said the “assailant used the Palestinian struggle as a pretext to harm Jews.”

But as I have previously written (FAIR.org, 5/29/25), much of the media framed this attack as antisemitic without any factual basis. While there was plenty of evidence that the act was political, with Rodiguez’s manifesto denouncing Israel as a “genocidal apartheid state,” there wasn’t any evidence that the attacker held antisemitic views, or targeted the event because of the faith of the victims. If someone obsessed with Saudi Arabia’s aggression in Yemen killed two Muslim workers at the Saudi embassy, that would certainly be anti-Saudi political violence, but not necessarily anti-Muslim terror.

‘Sewer of filth and lies’

The root of the antisemitism problem at X is not criticism of Israeli war crimes (FAIR.org, 1/23/25).

Rosenberg doesn’t quite say that today’s young critics of Israel are necessarily antisemites, but argues that by putting anti-Israel content on social media, they’re helping to drive traffic to actual antisemitism. This is a framing that lets Elon Musk—who famously gave a Nazi salute at Donald Trump’s second inauguration—off the hook for overseeing the rise of this antisemitic content on X (CNN, 9/29/25).

Nor does he recognize that Meta is aggressively policing against criticism of Israel, even as it ends efforts to proactively screen out hate speech like antisemitism (Washington Post, 2/25/25). Last year, Meta announced “that it will expand its policies to classify the misuse of the term ‘Zionist’ as a proxy for ‘Jews’ as antisemitic and Tier 1 hate speech” (World Jewish Congress, 6/9/24). Al Jazeera (10/24/24) also reported on “testimonies of routine deletion of Palestine-related posts and a deep-seated pro-Israel bias” at Meta.

Rosenberg is rightly concerned that there are too many far-right extremists promoting white nationalism and antisemitism on social media networks (Wired, 5/2/24; PBS, 8/13/24), and these corporate regimes are too tolerant of such activity on their sites. But Rosenberg manages to twist this into an argument that young people need to shut up about Gaza.

Of course, many people are upset about anti-Israel content on social media not because it leads to antisemitism, but because it’s anti-Israel: The reason for the shift in youth opinion isn’t Israel’s behavior, the argument goes, but social media’s influence. Hillary Clinton blames youth criticism of Israel on TikTok (Hollywood Reporter, 12/2/25). The Australian (12/12/25) wrote: “Young people live now on social media. And social media is an unregulated sewer of lies and filth.” The Israeli government has reportedly recruited social media personalities and public relations firms to tell its version of the story (Jerusalem Post, 10/3/25; Al Jazeera, 10/30/25).

‘Brainwashed’ into opposing sex pests

“Younger Jews have shifted away from Israel,” Free Press (12/17/25) reported. “That has put some of them on a collision course with their more traditional parents, many of whom view Mamdani as a totem of the anti-Zionist movement and a threat to the safety of Jews in New York City.”

The issue of this generational divide is the center of a piece at Free Press (12/17/25) by Olivia Reingold, called “The Jewish Parents Who Raised Mamdani Voters.” For the unacquainted, Free Press was bought by Paramount (10/6/25), now controlled by oligarch David Ellison, thus turning the once-marginal publication into the closest thing the right has to the New Yorker. (The acquisition also elevated Free Press co-founder Bari Weiss, noted right-wing pundit, to CBS News editor-in-chief.)

Free Press quoted one parent in particular, Sagra Maceira de Rosen, whose bio describes her as “chair of SIO Global, an investment and advisory firm working with private equity and investment.” She said she was “horrified” that Mamdani won the election. What’s worse for her was that her grown child campaigned for him. “I fear that kids I care for—my children—are brainwashed.”

Parents looked for answers. Reingold reported:

They wondered if they should have parented differently. Did their children get enough Jewish education? Were they brainwashed by their elite private schools? Where did they go wrong?

“Maybe I failed in the sense that the kids didn’t go to Israel enough,” a 63-year-old physician in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, told me. He said his daughter, a civil rights attorney, holds anti-Zionist views and refused to vote for former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo due to his alleged sexual harassment. “It would’ve been better if they went more, just to see the lies they’re being told.”

It’s not clear if the doctor or Reingold knows what they’re saying here. Jewish kids need to 1) go to Israel to get indoctrinated and 2) stop being appalled by sexual harassment. These issues are more connected than one might think, as a Jewish Currents (4/18/18) investigation by Lilith executive editor Sarah Seltzer found widespread problems of sexual violence within Birthright, the program offering young Jews free guided trips to Israel.

Lacking ‘a capacity for critical thinking’

It’s hard to accuse B’Tselem (1/12/21) of not going to Israel often enough.

Another parent, Lisa Fields Lewis, lamented that her grown children liked Mamdani:

Lewis was raised by an Israeli mother; her father survived Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She said the rise of Mamdani awakened a “generational trauma” in her. Now, she can’t shake the feeling that history is repeating itself. And kids don’t seem to realize just how dangerous Mamdani’s views are, Lewis said.

With Mamdani set to be sworn in just after midnight on January 1, Lewis doesn’t know if their relationship can return to normal any time soon. “I feel sad,” Lewis said. “I feel envious of my friends whose kids are proud Zionists, or at least have the capacity for critical thinking.”

It’s not FAIR’s job to comment on others’ parenting skills, but Lewis just told the world she thinks her children don’t have a “capacity for critical thinking”; the tension in this household might have to do with a lack of respect, rather than just differing politics. What’s really dangerous here is that the author doesn’t challenge the absurd suggestion that “Mamdani’s promise of providing free buses and righting the city’s widening income gap” is the first step in sending the Jews to the camps.

By what measure does the Free Press think Mamdani is dangerous for Jews? It pointed out that he “has consistently denied Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state,” saying instead that “Israel should exist ‘with equal rights for all’—a bar the nation already meets.”

Reingold can’t decide what she wants here: a Jewish state or a state that doesn’t discriminate.  Maintaining the former requires preventing the latter, as Palestinians that have been under Israeli control for nearly 60 years need to be denied the right to vote in Israeli elections. Jews from anywhere in the world have a “right to return” to Israel, but non-Jewish refugees from pre-1948 Palestine do not. A number of human rights groups, including an Israeli one, have found that the legal separation of peoples in Israel proper and the Occupied Territories amounts to apartheid (B’Tselem, 1/12/21; Human Rights Watch, 4/27/21).

Reingold went on, “More recently, the mayor-elect has caught flack for his controversial appointments to his transition committees, which include fringe anti-Zionist rabbis.” Again, there’s nothing here that represents antisemitism–instead, there’s inclusion of Jews. The problem is that Mamdani is close to clergy whose politics don’t align with the Weiss editorial regime. To put things into perspective, Mamdani won a third of the city’s Jewish vote (Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 11/5/25)—not a majority, but not exactly a “fringe” either.

‘A problem of disobedient children’

Though the Oslo Accords produced great optimism in the West, Maha Nassar (Conversation, 9/12/23) noted, “life for Palestinians became worse during the post-Oslo years, not better,” as “Palestinians lost further control over their lands, homes and resources.”

These pieces spend a lot of ink displaying anxiety for this generational divide, but never really ask why it exists. If they did that, they might find out that while many in the older generation could indulge the fantasy that a pre-Netanyahu Israel was engaged in a peace process, when mainstream Israeli leaders paid lip service to the idea of a two-state solution, younger Jews only know a place of extreme bellicosity.

Any voter in their 20s doesn’t remember the Oslo Accords or Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with Yasser Arafat (Conversation, 9/12/23). Instead, what they know is a country that has mostly been under the control of the right-wing Likud party and its extremist allies, an anti-democratic slide into authoritarianism (Haaretz, 10/30/25; Committee to Protect Journalists, 12/11/25), government corruption (New York Times, 11/30/25), settlement expansion (UN News, 9/29/25), alliances with the European far right (CNN, 3/26/25; Foreign Policy, 5/9/25) and several lopsided wars against Gaza.

But neither the Atlantic nor the Free Press can say this. The answer can’t be that Israel’s actions against Palestinians and its decaying political system are turning people off. No, the problem is that young people are led astray by social media and distance from real education.

“While Israel’s actions have always been structured by apartheid and ethnic cleansing, the scale and the visibility of its structural violence has been placed at the center of American political discourse,” said Benjamin Balthaser, author of Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left. “Americans, not just Jews, are compelled to respond.”

He added, “That the Free Press sees this as a problem of disobedient children or a lack of Torah school is not unlike Hillary Clinton blaming outrage at Israel on TikTok videos and social media.”

[…]

Via https://fair.org/home/looking-to-blame-anyone-but-israel-for-youths-anti-israel-turn/

A protester holds a sign related to the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., November 12, 2025. SAUL LOEB AFP via Getty Images

Brian Shilhavy

Former President Clinton has apparently flipped the table by agreeing to testify on the Epstein Files, because it would expose President Trump

From the Miami Herald (https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article314609810.html): The FBI’s Own Unclassified List of “Prominent Names” in the Epstein Files Who Were Investigated Released

After the Justice Department shut the door on releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files in July 2025, FBI agents worked on drafts of a 21-page presentation of all the evidence the FBI had gathered in the case, including a summary of allegations against 11 men [Trump, Weinstein, Prince Andrew, Jes Staley, Leon Black, Les Wexner, Alan Dershowitz, Bill Clinton, Howard Lutnick, William Barr]

One woman, who said she was abused by Epstein, told the FBI a 13-year-old friend of hers was forced by Trump to perform oral sex in the 1980s.

[…]

Via https://t.me/healthimpact/3027

https://t.me/healthimpact/3026