MOVING ON

Tribute to  Israeli mobility artist Yaacov Agam globally celebrated as the father of the Kinetic Art movement.

By David E. Kaplan

Hearing of the sad passing of one of Israel’s most influential artists on the global stage brought back memories of my interview with him in 2018 at the then new Yaacov Agam Museum of Art (YAMA) in the city of his birth in Rishon LeZion. At the time, I was interviewing him as editor of Hilton Israel Magazine.

Before meeting with the artist, I ‘met’ his wife Clila – his late wife –  without even realizing it, for from the moment you step onto the grounds of YAMA, one is engulfed into the rainbow world of the artist – surrounded by a sculpture garden of twenty multicolored pillars all dedicated to Clila.  She remained so much part of his life, his world and his art.

Poignant Pillars. Typically sporting his inimitable hat and attired in multi-colored clothing, Agam engages with visitors to his museum in Rishon LeZion explaining to Rossie and Dr. Daniel Klug from Ra’anana, the symbolism of the striking pillars – dedicated to his late wife – at the entrance to his museum in Rishon LeZion. (Photo: David E. Kaplan)

Looking every inch an artist with long gray hair under a well-worn hat and a full beard, we sat down for over two hours of animated conversation. Abounding in energy despite being then 90-years-old – “I’m off to Paris in a few days’ time” – I came quickly to understand how this diminutive man was a giant in the art world, transforming city landscapes and people’s perspectives.

It was apparent from the answer to my first question that the interview would be as changeling as understanding the man’s art.

Constantly on the move – like his art – I began the interview with: “Where do you mostly live these days?”

“I live on my shoulders. As you can see, I am here now in Israel. Next week I will be in France. I live wherever I am AT THE MOMENT.”

Geometrically Jolly. At the entrance to the Yaacov Agam Museum of Art (YAMA) in Rishon LeZion is a sculpture garden of twenty multicolored pillars all dedicated to the artist’s late wife, Clila.

The answer of “at the moment”  incapsulated the character of the man, his art and the museum, which had welcomed me with the  multicolored pillars that all changed as you walked by. The artist explained:

“Usually, when you see a painting in a museum, you stand in front, you look at it, and then you move on. With my work, you will never see everything at one movement. You have to keep moving. I want people who come to the museum to be able to see the paintings from every angle, so it’s also changing the way you look at it.”

The foremost pioneer of optical-Kinetic art, Agam encouraged spectator participation. When I revealed that I received a stiff rebuke when I stood too close to a painting in the Frick Gallery in New York, he replied:

 “That will never happen here – I want people to physically connect with my art.”

It is little wonder why children love Agam’s art and why the artist honors children by appealing directly to them.

SPOT ON

The “Agam Method” for which the artist was awarded in 1996 the Jan Amos Comenius Medal for the non-verbal visual education of young children by UNESCO, teaches children to identify, analyze, and create with the visual building blocks that make up our world. Together, these building blocks – such as shapes, patterns, directions, and symmetry – form a universal “visual language”. The Agam Method has a long history of classroom implementation, research, and refinement dating back to the 1980s. Researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science led experimental studies to determine its impact on young children’s learning. Data from 1990 through to 2007 indicate that children who engaged with the method, improved significantly in early geometry and visual-spatial skills, including shape identification and deconstruction, visual acuity, and mental rotation of objects. Children also demonstrated significantly higher problem-solving and school readiness skills, particularly in the areas of writing and math.

“Do you have any grandchildren?” Agam asked.

“Two,” I replied at the time in 2018.

On happily hearing that both were aged in months rather than in years, he asked:

“If I gave them a pencil, what do think they will do with it.”

All my answers wrong, Agam demonstrates grabbing a pencil and thrusting up and down making points on the table.

“Points is the most primary act of creation and is born out in the first drawings found in prehistoric caves.”

“What about the line?” I asked.

“Now you are talking evolution – that came much later; could be 1000 years later or even 10,000 years. We do not know. The line is the most significant advancement in the history of evolution.”

Following my rudimentary lesson in the history of art, we jumped many millennia forward to Agam’s ‘Fire and Water Fountain” in Tel Aviv’s recently rejuvenated Dizengoff Square. After decades of public outcry, the iconic site frequently referred to as the “Times Square of Tel Aviv” – finally returned in 2018 to its original glory. Originally constructed in 1986, the kinetic fountain celebrates life as well as unity-in-diversity, an important feature of Tel Aviv’s ethos, considered one of the most free and tolerant cities in the world.

Connecting Kinetically. Agam’s kinetic sculpture ‘Fire and Water’ also referred to as the ‘Dizengoff Square Fountain’, is a landmark in the center of Dizengoff Square, Tel Aviv and is one of the artist’s most famous creations.

CAROUSEL OF COLOR  

So, what was Agam’s response to the major transformation of Dizengoff Square which in the 1930s was the fashionable hub of the city but as the years passed, became seedy? Many blamed it on the square’s elevation above the street below and so what gave the Hebrew slang verb “l’hizdangef” (“to Dizengoff”), coined to describe strolling down the Tel Aviv’s iconic north-south artery, by the 1980s exposed not only a disconnect from vehicular traffic, but a disconnect from people.

Reinstalled back to street level, with traffic proceeding around rather than beneath, Tel Aviv center was restored to living up to its image of change.

Yaacov Agam at the Dizengoff Fountain – Tel Aviv, Israel

“What did you aim to express with your fountain at the very epicenter of Tel Aviv?” I asked.

“Firstly, the buildings surrounding the square are German – designed by architects fleeing the Nazis in the 1930s – and I wanted to brand the square distinctly Israeli with vibrant colors expressing life to contrast with the stark utilitarianism of the Bauhaus architecture. This I achieve with over 1000 colors visible through the water!

No other artist in the world has combined water and fire together.  It was once said in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) during a tough debate:

 “If Agam can make fire and water, what’s the problem?”

Insights on Images. The artist explaining the kinetic nature of his art.

Agam explains how the fountain comprises several big jagged wheels – colored geometric shapes, which are perceived as different images from different angles. A technological mechanism automatically activates at different times of the day and night that turns the wheels on their hinges, shooting fire and water upwards accompanied to music.

The artist’s vision is for people across the globe to be able to activate the fountain through an app. “I don’t want it simply like before; we have to move forward with technology – combining science and art making it globally accessible.”

As to why global interest was so important, Agan replied:

“Because the fountain’s message is universal. I believe it provides Dizengoff with gravitas; the miracle of fire and water with over 1000 colors, ‘reflects’ diversity. The fountain sends a message to the people of the world that although we are different, we are one.”

Mesmerized by Movement. visitors at the Yaacov Agam Museum of Art in Rishon LeZion on August 21, 2018. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)

ON RELIGION AND REVELATION

To my question what influence his father, a rabbi, had on his art and life, Agan responded:

“My father was an orthodox rabbi and a Kabbalist; I am a visual rabbi and every work of mine is a visual prayer.” 

Thinking this might explain why symbols like the rainbow are integral in the artist’s work, Agan continued:

“After the flood, God promised Noah never to destroy the earth again, and placed the rainbow in the sky as a symbol of that covenant. It is a visual prayer of peace, reminding that everyone is a party to the covenant to protect our environment.”

Showing me a painting of a rainbow, Agam continued:

“The rainbow is one of the loveliest sights in God’s creation as the colors stand out individually and yet merge with the color next to it, reflecting unity in diversity.”

“Does the visual trump words in our understanding of reality?” I asked, to which Agam replied:

“If the message of the rainbow was only in words, only those who understood the language would understand – some would understand, others would not. Words divide us, sight unites us. Children are born into a world of seeing before speaking. When they start to talk, that introduces separation and disunity. Seeing is so important that when God wanted us to understand him, he provided visions and so when the Torah was given on Mount Sinai, it is written that the People of Israel “SEE” not only hear the word of God.”

Prize for a Pioneer. Pioneering kinetic artist Yaacov Agam receiving the Israel Prize on April 20, 2026 at the Yaacov Agam Museum of Art, with museum director Ruthi Maccabbee. (Photo: Jessica Steinberg/Times of Israel)

Is it the same with the vision of the rainbow – the need to SEE rather than read of God’s communication with man?

“Yes; following the flood, it is written in Genesis that whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, “I will SEE it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” The problem today is that people do not know how to see; they rely too much on language to understand – and the soul of reality alludes them.”

THROUGH THE PRISM OF PRISON

While Agam trained at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem before moving to Zurich, Switzerland in 1949 where he continued his education at the Kunstgewerbe Schule, he revealed how “the unexpected” and “unplanned” was no less instructive in his education as an artist.

Who would have thought that such education included prison?

In 1946, Agam was imprisoned by the British in the Latrun detention camp after being arrested on suspicion of being a member of the Jewish underground. His detention occurred during Operation Agatha (often referred to as “Black Sabbath”), when British authorities conducted mass roundups to suppress Jewish insurgent movements in Mandatory Palestine.  And who should he meet there other than Moshe Sharett who would later become Israel’s second Prime Minister. “He taught me Hebrew and grammar and he told me over and over that while there is a past and a future, there is no present in Jewish thinking. The present is fleeting; gone forever in a flash. Through our discussions, I formulated a perspective of time that is at the core of my art that is mobile; in a state of constant change – nothing is static. I met all the great artists at the time such as Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Jean Arp but they were all stuck in the past, and the past does not exist. I prefer to be in the state of becoming, like the true meaning of Shabbat (Sabbath) – resting to prepare for the coming week.”

I interrupted and suggested that Marcel Duchamp’s famous Nude Descending a Staircase (no 2) painted in 1912, is not static, that it captures the movement of a figure in descent.

“So why, one hundred years later, is she still descending the stairs?”

I had no answer!

Leaders not Followers. Both unique pioneers, Yaacov Agam (left) and Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali. (Photo courtesy of “Agam: Beyond the Visible” by Sayako Aragaki)

MOVING WITH THE TIMES

“Like Abraham leaving his father to create a nation,” Agam too felt he was creating “something new; a new way of thinking different to the other artists,” a far cry from the early 1950s then with his young wife in Paris “we literally starved and had to go to the Salvation Army for food.” In 1953, he had his first one-man show and sold his first panting to the famous surrealist artist Max Ernst.

When Robert Lebel (1901–1986), the famous French art critic and writer, “saw my work, he said, “We have a new prophet.” 

He was not wrong.

Victor Vasarely, the Hungarian-French artist, widely accepted as a “grandfather” and leader of the op art movement, “told me you have no right make static work. Young artists, particularly from South America were attracted to my style and started to imitate me.”

In time, Agam’s art would attract the attention of President Pompidou of France. “When he was the Prime Minister, he went to see my show. I later received a call from the Secretary General of Artistic Creation who asked me, “What did you do to our PM. He stepped backwards and forwards in front of your painting; he could not understand it but was fascinated.”

Alure of Agam. In 1972,  French president, George Pompidou commissioned a room in the palace to be decorated by Israeli artist, Yaacov Agam.

Later, when he became President, “he wanted a sculpture in his office and asked for a presentation of modern sculptures without the names of the artists. “I will decide,” he said. He chose mine because he could move it.” This led to a commission by the President of a moving salon environment at the Élysée Palace in 1972, where the environment shifted according to the viewer’s position. Enjoying tea with President Pompidou, “He revealed to me that he guided Queen Elizabeth through the salon and that she said she loved it.”

Kaleidoscope of Color. Detail of the Salon Agam at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France. (Photo courtesy of Groume via Flickr.)

Asked to make a work commemorating the peacemaking efforts of the president of Egypt, Anwar el-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Agam created in 1978 a mesmerising Star of Peace. A kinetic sculpture, it appears from one direction to be the five-pointed star of Islam, from another, the six-pointed Star of David, and from a third – a new star formed from their fusion.

Other public projects include a 1987 memorial at the Western Wall for the victims of the Holocaust, and the world’s largest menorah: a 32-foot, 4000-pound structure at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street in Manhattan and based on the original menorah in Jerusalem’s Holly Temple, “not the fake version you see on the Arch of Titus in Rome.”

Concluding the interview, I ask:

Is there any one of your works you prize most?

“It’s impossible. My art is about movement and you can’t have all movement in one work of art. It’s like prayers in Judaism; there is no one prayer but many.”

Fair enough but is there at least one artist that influenced you the most?

“Yes, the Almighty!”



*Feature Picture: Yaacov Agam surrounded by his art at the Yaacov Museum of Art (YAMAT) in Rishio LeZion.






While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

THE ODYSSEY OF THE OCHBERG ORPHANS

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ISAAC OCHBERG

An upcoming exhibition in South Africa will reveal through personal testimonies, an extraordinary life whose legacy is enshrined for eternity in the young lives he saved in Eastern Europe in 1921.
It’s an example for Jews today everywhere.

In December, 2026, the SA Jewish Museum in Cape Town, South Africa will host an exhibition on one of the finest and heroic chapters of the South African Jewish community  – the life and times of Capetonian, Isaac Ochberg (1879-1938).

Entrepreneur, philanthropist, community leader and Zionist,  Isaac Ochberg in 1921 mobilized communal Jewish support, obtained government permission through his friendship with Prime Minister Jan Smuts and then single-handedly, went into the most dangerous region in the world for Jews beset by war, pogroms, rampant antisemitism and a typhoid epidemic  – to rescue Jewish orphans from certain death.

Even death did not stop Isaac Ochberg saving Jews.

Leaving the largest bequest in History to the JNF-KKL following his death in 1938, the proceeds were used to  support higher education at universities in preparation for the future Jewish state (notably the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Weizmann Institute) and acquire the land that became kibbutz Dalia and kibbutz Galed, that would, following WWII, absorb the survivors of the Shoah. It is no wonder that  there stands today in the Megiddo region, the Isaac Ochberg Park that has a ‘Hill of Names’ enshrining the names of all the orphan children he saved.

Today, thousands of their descendants are today spread around the globe and in preparation for the exhibition, the SA Jewish Museum is seeking to trace as many of them to document the never-ending enriching saga of Isaac Ochberg. For further information see details at the end of the article below on the Ochberg saga by French historian, Michel Levine.

David E. Kaplan
Chairman of the Isaac Ochberg Heritage Committee (Israel)
Editor of Lay of the Land



THE ODYSSEY OF THE OCHBERG ORPHANS

How one South African businessman in 1921 set out by himself, risking life and limb to save Jewish orphans in worn-torn Eastern Europe

By Michel Levine

What drove Isaac Ochberg, a respectable and prosperous South African businessman, in 1920 to undertake an adventurous expedition thousands of kilometers to the north, into a Europe plunged into the bloody turmoil of civil wars?

For him, things were undoubtedly simple: born Jewish in Ukraine, he had been fortunate enough to flee the hell that awaited him to live under different skies. This chance, he wanted to offer in turn to the most vulnerable children: the orphans.

Isaac Ochberg was born in 1878 in Russia, into a Jewish family of German origin with six children, in the small town of Uman (now Ukrainian) located in what was then known as the “Pale of Settlement”. Created by Empress Catherine II in 1791, this was a vast area stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, including Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Belarus, Crimea, and part of Poland. When Isaac Ochberg was born, the situation of the five million Jews living there was hardly enviable. Excluded from public service and higher education, they had gathered in certain city neighborhoods or in small towns called shtetls. Forbidden to own land, they survived by practicing small trades, commerce, crafts, tavern management, but also pawnbroking, this last activity arousing resentment among the Orthodox common people who had only emerged from serfdom in 1861.

Man with a Mission. Isaac Ochberg (1878-1937) Ukrainian-born South African businessman, Jewish community leader, savior of Jewish orphans in Eastern Europe and passionate supporter of a Jewish State in Palestine.

Young Isaac was three years old when the assassination of Tsar Alexander III triggered a series of pogroms that led to a massive exodus. About two million Jews emigrated between 1881 and 1914, mainly to the United States. But it was to South Africa, this land said to also offer a new El Dorado, that his father Aaron decided to emigrate.

He arrived in 1893 in a peaceful country, although sporadically shaken by wars between the Boers, descendants of Dutch settlers, and the British. South Africa was then open to significant immigration following the discovery of gold and diamonds in the Transvaal and welcoming to Jews, a small community of whom had been settled in Cape Town since 1841, living mainly from commerce and crafts while maintaining their distinctiveness. More interested in studying the Talmud than in financial success, Aaron nevertheless managed, after two years, to gather sufficient funds to bring Isaac, his eldest son aged sixteen, who risked being conscripted into the army at any moment for a duration of six long years during which he would be exposed to the worst harassment as a Jew. Upon his arrival in his new homeland, young Isaac demonstrated his talent. Inventive and resourceful, he soon abandoned the watchmaking apprenticeship his father had intended for him to launch into business – all sorts of businesses according to his capricious inspiration, ranging from scrap metal recovery to ship salvaging, passing through coffee sales, gold prospecting in the Transvaal, or creating Cape Town’s first cinema. During this period, he made a trip to Russia to visit his ailing mother and took the opportunity to be exempted from military service due to defective vision. He also met Pauline, a friend of his sisters, whom he married before returning to Cape Town with the entire family.

At forty, with an established fortune, father of five children, and an honorable British citizen (the country had been a dominion since 1910), Isaac Ochberg led the life of a notable. An executive member of the Council of Jewish Deputies, representing his country at the 16th World Zionist Conference in Zurich, he participated in managing organizations to help children and orphans in particular – in this capacity, he had participated in founding the Cape Jewish orphanage, of which he became President. It was undoubtedly this last function that led him to become acutely aware of the dramatic situation of Jewish orphans living in Eastern Europe.

Key Coordinator. 26-year-old Alexander Bobrow (above) was a key player in assembling the orphans making it easier for Ochberg logistically, accompanied – at the children’s crying insistence – the orphans and Ochberg on the ship to Cape Town planning on returning to Eastern Europe. He never did, and his daughter Liebe would later marry Aaron Klug who would receive the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1982.

At the end of the First World War, from 1917 onwards, Russia had been the theater of a civil war between the Bolshevik “Red” armies and the Tsarist “Whites,” the latter supported by contingents of French and British soldiers. The situation worsened in 1919 when the Second Polish Republic undertook a war of territorial reconquest against Soviet Russia. At the same time, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus were the scene of independence uprisings. While these ideological and nationalist forces, mixed with bands of looters, fought each other, they attacked a common prey: the zhid (the kike). For the “Reds”, although the new regime had abolished Tsarist antisemitic laws and promoted Yiddish as the Jewish national language (while nevertheless proscribing Hebrew, deemed bourgeois and Zionist), this representative of capitalism, “stateless” and “reactionary”, remained a class enemy. For the Tsarist “Whites”, driven by ancestral hatred, he had become the “Judeo-Bolshevik” embodied in the person of the Jew Trotsky and held responsible for all the misfortunes of Holy Russia. As their supreme weapon, the “Whites” brandished the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, this forgery manufactured by the political police, the Cheka, which they would then spread in Western Europe during their flight. For the bands of starving peasants, encouraged to revolt by Tsarist forces, the greedy Jew was designated as the absolute culprit, the one who had “killed Christ” and engaged in ritual murders of Christian children, as an ancestral rumor maintained. This justified massacring him and his family and seizing his property. Of the five million Jews residing in the Pale of Settlement (officially abolished in 1917 by the Bolshevik government), more than one hundred thousand had perished, two hundred thousand survived wounded or disabled, and there were more than 150,000 orphans. A 1919 report by the great American Jewish charitable organization the Joint (American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) testified:

“In Poland, suffering is intense. There are institutions for children deprived of a morsel of bread, hospitals unusable due to lack of doctors, nurses, and medicines, despite an enormous number of diseases. A large percentage of people have been kept alive thanks to soup consisting of water, potatoes, and a little salt.”

Many voices rose up around the world to denounce these crimes. In London and New York, in particular, meetings and demonstrations were organized in which Jewish veterans of the Great War participated prominently. Under pressure from the Committee of Jewish Delegations, the 1919 Paris Peace Conference ordered a vast inquiry whose reports led to launching an “Appeal to Humanity” signed by great names such as Anatole France, Henri Barbusse, Elie Faure, and Albert Thomas.

President Wilson expressed his distress:

“One of the things that troubles peace in the world is the persecution of the Jews.”

He ordered the creation of a commission led by Henry Morgenthau, future minister under President Roosevelt, to investigate the pogroms in Poland (this work could only be carried out in that country, as the new Soviet government had forbidden entry to its territory). This commission traveled through battlefields and mass graves and published upon its return an alarming report on the fate of Jewish minorities. A commission led by Sir Stuart M. Samuel, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, succeeded it, at the initiative of the representative council of Jews in the United Kingdom. This one in turn denounced the scandalous situation. But these accumulating reports were not followed by action because, lacking a state to represent them, Jews were considered a minority among others, deprived as such of any real political power.

In South Africa, during an extraordinary meeting of the South African Relief Fund, a Jewish organization to aid war victims, Isaac Ochberg proposed that the Cape Jewish Orphanage he had been directing for several years organize a mission to “rescue” endangered Jewish orphans who would then be brought to the country. Certainly, he was aware that this mission close to his heart could only save a very limited number of children, but these would be lives preserved. “Whoever saves one life saves the world,” Isaac argued, citing the Talmud to support his proposal. His project was accepted – it remained to obtain the endorsement of the authorities. Prime Minister Jan Smuts, his friend, submitted his project to the government. Good news: Although immigration was strictly limited at that time, the response was positive, with some reservations. Entry visas would be issued to the orphans, but according to very precise criteria: there would be no more than two hundred, not exceeding 16 years of age, they must be in good physical and moral health, have lost both parents, and finally brothers and sisters could not be separated to avoid emotional problems. All, finally, must express their will to participate in this journey. Heavy-hearted at the idea that he would have to select among these children and abandon some to their fate, Isaac accepted these conditions – we will see that he would interpret them in his own way… What saddened him most was this cut-off figure of 200. He discussed, negotiated, and obtained that after this trip, if things went well, the State would consider repeating the operation. As for financing, it was decided that the Jewish community would bear half the cost. This was a significant commitment, as it would have to assume the costs of the journey, the maintenance and care of the 200 children, and then, once they arrived in Africa, the costs of their accommodation in orphanages, some until they came of age if they were not fortunate enough to be adopted by families.

Saga of Salvation. South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts (top left) who granted Isaac Ochberg (top right) permission to bring into South Africa 200 rescued Jewish orphans from Eastern Europe. (centre) Isaac Ochberg disembarking with his rescued orphans who throughout their lives would refer to him as “Daddy Ochberg”. (Botton left and right) Passport photos of some of the 187 rescued orphans brought to South Africa.

Assisted by the South African Aid Fund for Jewish War Victims, Isaac then launched a campaign across the country, personally traveling through cities and villages to organize public meetings followed by fundraising collections. During this fundraising, critical voices were heard in the Jewish community:

– Would this expedition, conducted in countries at war, not endanger the children concerned?

– Would their arrival in the country not risk being experienced as a provocation by certain conservative Christian circles, the National Party in particular, when South Africa was experiencing an economic crisis?

Some suggested it would be wiser to send these foreign children to the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine). Isaac remained deaf to what he considered submission to intolerance and continued his project.

Soon good news reached him: the fundraising campaign had raised sums far exceeding the expected figures. Dr. Jochelman, president of the federation of Ukrainian Jews in London, had let it be known that his organization was willing to house the orphans and handle their embarkation for South Africa.

On March 18, 1921, in Cape Town, Isaac Ochberg embraced his family, greeted the children of the orphanage, and amid a large gathering that came to encourage him and wish him a good journey, boarded the steamship that would take him to London.

Expected duration of the expedition: seven months.

TUMULTUOUS TRANSITION

Upon his arrival in the British capital, Isaac learned that the political situation in Eastern Europe had profoundly changed while he was sailing across the ocean. Russia and Poland had just signed a treaty in Riga that granted the latter numerous territories, the Kresy Wschodnie (“Eastern borderlands”) which included parts of Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine. This meant that all the cities constituting the stages of the planned journey were now under Polish administration and that the hard-won Soviet safe-conduct was now worthless.

Fortunately, the great explorer Fridtjof Nansen was passing through London. President of the League of Nations High Commission for Refugees, he had just created the first international identity document, the “Nansen passport”, a document which from 1922 would protect hundreds of thousands of wandering “displaced persons“, driven by conflicts and incessant border redrawings. During his meeting with the great man, Isaac explained his project to him. Nansen was enthusiastic. He managed to obtain from the new masters of Poland, whom he knew were concerned about international recognition, a safe-conduct authorizing Isaac to travel through the country with the benevolent assistance of local authorities. But as for the orphans, now Polish, how to obtain authorization to take them out of the country? Nansen obtained a commitment from Polish authorities that they would issue them special identity papers: “collective Nansen passports”.

On May 18, 1921, Isaac began his journey. Paris first, where Dr. Boris Borgen, head of the Joint, provided him with authorizations for the heads of orphanages under his organization so that they would entrust Isaac with the residents he had chosen. Next stop, Warsaw. In the capital of the Second Polish Republic that the Treaty of Versailles had brought back from its ashes in 1919, Isaac hoped to obtain help and assistance without too much illusion however – after all, he was just a Zhid  (Slavic pejorative term for a Jew) who had appeared from nowhere…

In Warsaw, the ‘Jewish metropolis’ (Di Yidishe metropolye), the Joint officials, who managed most of the country’s orphanages, described to him the difficult relations they maintained with victorious Poland. Certainly, its government had ratified in 1920 the treaty annexed to that of Versailles concerning minorities, but nationalist parties accused Jews of having sided with the Bolsheviks during hostilities while the Catholic hierarchy continued to pursue them with its ancestral hatred. This hostility manifested itself through restrictions on credits to orphanages and rationing of their medical protection. Many of these establishments survived only thanks to the help of the Joint or local charitable organizations like Tzedakah Gedolah – which led some non-Jewish orphans to say:

“Those bastard zhids, they’re lucky to have other zhids to come to their aid.”

Isaac organized his journey. The large and small cities he would have to visit drew a vast triangle with 400-kilometer sides. First in the north, Brest-Litovsk, then Pinsk, then descent towards Sarny, Kowel, and Rovno to Lvov, finally return to Warsaw where all the chosen children would be gathered, whose state of health would have allowed them to contemplate the journey. Hence the necessity of adding a certain number of round trips to the route. Given the poor state of communications due to the war, he had planned to use trains that were still running, otherwise buses or trucks. He did not yet know that he would also have to use horse-drawn carts.

Flourishing Future. The last surviving Ochberg orphan Cissy Harris, who died at the age of 102 in Modi’in, Israel, is seen here planting a tree at the opening of the Isaac Ocberg Park in 2011 marking the 90 anniversary of the heroic rescue. She is supported by Maish Isaacson (left), chairman of Telfed and Bennie Penzik, whose both parents were orphans rescued by Ochberg.

CHILDREN OF MISFORTUNE

On August 24, the orphans had barely settled into the premises of the Shelter for Jewish Poor located in the East End when representatives of the British and international press appeared. Extracting children from a turbulent and dangerous Europe, often saving their lives, was a bold move that surprised them and that they were very eager to make known. Gathered in a room, the orphans were presented to journalists. They stood properly, under the flashes. Isaac, surrounded by officials, answered questions. He made it a duty to insist on the role played by charitable organizations and the support of the South African government. He also pleaded for other countries to take over and welcome other children.

Preparation for the journey to Cape Town was organized. It was a long trip and the children had to be in good physical shape and not be carriers of diseases that might contaminate other passengers. Medical examinations followed one another. Numerous cases of anemia were detected, which would not prevent embarkation, but also more serious conditions, which required hospitalizing some children. The latter would remain in London, which was a great heartbreak for them, but they could keep hope that soon a new voyage to Cape Town would come get them, or that other countries would decide to welcome them. Doctors and nurses were hired for the journey.

On September 2, children and companions took the train to Southampton where the steamship Edinburgh Castle awaited them.

Destination – Cape Town. 

Past Preserved. Erin Kumin from Ra’anana, Israel, points to the plaque of her great-grandmother, Janie Odes, one of the orphans saved by Isaac Ochberg in 1921 at centenary event at the Ochberg Park on the 12 March 2021. (Photo D.E. Kaplan)

THE CROSSING

The children were at first afraid of this dark and vibrating mass, then got used to it. The large steamship offered them an enclosed space, a playground, where they loved to run, but under supervision, because their vitality led them to often bump into chimneys, ropes, and in narrow passages. At night, they laughed and cried too, fought with pillows. The sailors, of various nationalities, were very friendly – some told them stories about their country, incredible stories. As for the cooks, they were reluctant to prepare this complicated kosher food but complied with the instructions.

Nurses and doctors had their work cut out for them monitoring big and small ailments and seasickness. They drew their medicines from a large carefully arranged pharmacy. One of the children had mumps, which required special care during a stopover.

The companions organized games. On deck, the wind rushed into their clothes and made the little caps they had been given at departure fly, some flew away and came to float on the waves. The passengers, sometimes jostled, were mostly touched and moved by the story the children had lived through, and they applauded the ‘God Save the King’ that they sometimes sang, with a very particular accent.

Field of Dreams. Ochberg dreamt of a green fertile Israel such as this field with youngsters cycling at the Ochberg Park, Megiddo.(Courtesy Megiddo Regional Council)

THE PROMISED LAND

After a 17- day crossing, early in the morning, the children grouped on deck saw lights blinking on the horizon on a gray land planted with misty and dark mountains. The sailors pointed out the curiously flat summit, called Table Mountain. The boat approached and soon the children distinguished more precisely people who had come to welcome them carrying flowers and brandishing welcome banners in Yiddish. These people had white skin, others black, it really was Africa…

As the ship docked, the children broke into a song than was joined by people on the quay. Everyone knew the words, so moving in these circumstances:

“Hinei ma tov u’ma nayim Shevet achim gam Yachad” (“Behold, how good and how pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity! “). Greeted by the cheers of a crowd in tears, the children disembarked. “Until my last day,” Fanny Frier would write, a little girl who would later become president of the Cape orphanage, “I will never forget the first time we saw the lights of Cape Town, then the wonderful welcome we received when we disembarked, when half the city apparently awaited us on the quay.”

‘Hill of Names’. Visitors to the Isaac Ochberg Park in Megiddo, Israel look closely at the plaques of all the known names of the orphans Isaac Ochberg rescued and brought safely to South Africa.

NEW LAND, NEW LIFE

What would become of these little beings thus projected into this new world? Taken in and raised in the two orphanages Oranjia in Cape Town and Arcadia in Johannesburg and some, not many, would be adopted by families where they would live their childhood surrounded by attention and love. Then they would set out to conquer the vast world to experience the most diverse destinies. Almost all would have children, often numerous.

Alive Because of One Man. Descendants of Ochberg orphans from all over the world attend the inauguration of the Ochberg Park, Megiddo in 2011 are seen here at nearby Kibbutz Gal’ed, founded in 1945 by members of Habonim from Germany. The kibbutz was built on land purchased by the JNF-KKL from the Isaac Ochberg bequest.  (Photo: D.E. Kaplan)

For years, their descendants, who now number several thousand, have ritually gathered to celebrate with emotion the anniversary of their arrival and the memory of Daddy Ochberg, the “man from Africa” who came to get them before the Shoah exterminated most of the other Jewish children who remained in Europe.



 



About the writer:

Michel Levine is a historian of Human Rights and the author of a work dedicated to the major cases of the League of Human Rights (Unclassified Cases. Unpublished Archives of the League of Human Rights, Paris, Fayard, 1973).
Further publications include a historical investigation on the repression of Algerian demonstrations in Paris in October 1961 (The October Ratonnades. A Collective Murder in Paris in 1961, Paris, Ramsay, 1985; reissue Jean- Claude Gawsewitch Publisher, 2001.)






*Feature Picture: Savior of Children. Isaac Ochberg (centre) with Jewish children at an orphanage in Eastern Europe.

















While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Lay of the Land Weekly Newsletter – 28 June 2026

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THE ISRAEL BRIEF –22-25 June 2026
(Click on the blue title)



Lay of the Land’s Image Pick of the Week

A ‘GULF’ APART

The shores on either side appear closer to each other than the two negotiating parties

“Paid to pause”, “bidding time”, the MoU is being described as a ‘Memorandum of Misunderstanding’ or as we in Lay of the Land see it:  a ‘Memorandum of Manipulations’




ARTICLES

Please note there is a facility to comment beneath each article should you wish to express an opinion on the subject addressed.

(1)

TRUMP, NETANYAHU, IRAN AND THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

Giving in to Iranian demands rather than achieve peace in the Middle East will instead facilitate perpetual war.
By Neville Berman

‘Face’ the Facts. The world is cheering. Gas prices are down, and Iran has promised not to build or buy atomic weapons. “Hallelujah”, at long last, peace in the Middle East seems to be possible. What can go wrong? Predictably, just about everything warns the writer!

TRUMP, NETANYAHU, IRAN AND THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
(Click on the blue title)



(2)

LEGAL ACTION AGAINST ‘PALESTINE ACTION’

UK Court of Appeals confirms Palestine Action proscription decision
By Lawrence Nowosenetz

British Barbarians. Elbit’s £35-million R &D hub that was violently attacked by the proscribed terrorist group ‘Palestine Action’ employs 680 people, working on multiple programs for the UK military. During the raid, a ‘Palestine Action’ activist fractured a police sergeant’s spine with a sledgehammer.

LEGAL ACTION AGAINST ‘PALESTINE ACTION’
(Click on the blue title)



(3)

HAIR-RAISING SITUATION

Surprise discovery of Iranian women’s hair raises serious concerns but reminds – you can imprison a person but not an idea.
By Marziyeh Amirizadeh

Makes your Hair stand on End. The question of how and why Iranian women’s hair came to the attention of Armenian customs officials has now attracted global attention with speculation spotlighting the evil nature of the Islamic regime of Iran, particularly its barbaric treatment of women.

HAIR-RAISING SITUATION
(Click on the blue title)



(4)

SOUTH AFRICA CLAIMS ISRAEL IS BEHIND ITS ‘AFROPHOBIA’ VIOLENCE

Beset by internal social strife, South Africa indulges in cheap scapegoating blaming Israel  – Is anyone surprised?
By Marika Sboros

Singing for Salvation. While an anxious man plays his guitar as thousands of terrified Malawians take refuge on June 20, 2026 in Sherwood Park outside Durban, some in South Africa’s leadership strum a different tune, pointing a finger at Israel. Who, and why is this sadly unsurprising?

SOUTH AFRICA CLAIMS ISRAEL IS BEHIND ITS ‘AFROPHOBIA’ VIOLENCE
(Click on the blue title)



(5)

PAINFUL PARADOXES

Perhaps one of the emotional challenges of Jewish life in difficult times is not only learning how to survive what is happening around us but learning how to live with what we cannot control within it.
By Bev Moss-Reilly

Under Control. Living with war, antisemitism, instability, and communal insecurity, the Jewish world feels fragile. So are the small human components making up that world such as spouses, parents, teachers and community leaders seeking the strength to hold it altogether.

PAINFUL PARADOXES
(Click on the blue title)



LOTL Cofounders David E. Kaplan (Editor), Rolene Marks and Yair Chelouche

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While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).


THE ISRAEL BRIEF – 22-25 June 2026

22 June 2026 – All eyes on Switzerland and Roro has some very strong words for Vance on The Israel Brief.



23 June 2026 – Is Iran contradicting everything the US says? What is going on? Your top stories on The Israel Brief.



24 June 2026 – Brave former hostage takes on the UN Special Rapporteur for Violence against Women and Children for denial of SGBV on 7/10 and more on The Israel Brief.



25 June 2026 – Israel prepares aid delegations to Venezuela and your top stories on The Israel Brief.






While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

PAINFUL PARADOXES

Perhaps one of the emotional challenges of Jewish life in difficult times is not only learning how to survive what is happening around us but learning how to live with what we cannot control within it.

By Bev Moss-Reilly

When Control Slips Away

It would be unfair and far too simplistic to say that all Jews are the same. No people are. And yet, within Jewish life, there is often a recognisable thread: a deep need to be prepared, to think ahead, to solve, to organise, to lead, to hold things together, and to find a way forward even in difficult times. This is not about arrogance or dominance. It is often about responsibility. It is about survival. It is about history. It is about generations of people who learned that if they did not stay alert, adaptable, resourceful, and mentally engaged, the consequences could be devastating.

Always Alert. Always needing to be alert for danger, Israelis take cover on the side of a road as a siren warns of incoming ballistic missiles fired from Iran into Israel, near Rosh HaAyin, February 28, 2026. (Photo: Yossi Aloni/Flash90)

Jews have had to stand up repeatedly throughout history. They have had to rebuild, reimagine, and remain resilient in the face of displacement, persecution, exclusion, and uncertainty. Out of that has come an extraordinary tradition of leadership, innovation, scholarship, creativity, commerce, medicine, science, technology, law, and the arts. Not because life was easy, but often because difficulty demanded courage, discipline, and determination. There is a long-standing instinct in Jewish life not merely to endure, but to contribute, to guide, to repair, and to give meaning.

That is why losing control can feel so profoundly unsettling.

When a person is used to being capable, informed, proactive, and emotionally braced, uncertainty can feel like the rug has been pulled out from under them. It can leave them anxious, vulnerable, exposed, and even ashamed of how fragile they suddenly feel. The very people who are often looked to for strength may find themselves inwardly rattled when they cannot fix, plan, protect, or anticipate what comes next.

Calm in Class. Israel’s teachers report anxiety, depression as war takes mental toll.

There is a close relationship between anxiety and control. They are, in a sense, “Mishpocha” (Family). When life feels unsafe or unpredictable, the urge to control becomes stronger. One tries to organise more, think more, prepare more, check more, manage more. Sometimes this is helpful. It can create structure, purpose, and a sense of agency. But when circumstances become bigger than what any one person can manage, control starts to slip, and that is where mental health can take a knock. Sleep suffers. Thoughts race. The body stays tense. Patience thins. Small decisions feel overwhelming. A person may become irritable, tearful, withdrawn, hypervigilant, or emotionally exhausted.

This is especially true in Jewish communities living with threat, antisemitism, war, instability, or communal fear. When uncertainty grows, it does not only disturb practical life. It disturbs the inner life. A parent may feel distressed because they cannot guarantee a child’s safety. A teacher may feel shaken because she cannot promise normality. A spouse may feel deeply unsettled because no amount of planning can remove the danger facing a loved one. A community leader may look calm on the outside while inwardly carrying enormous strain because so much feels beyond their control.

For many Jews, this loss of control is not experienced in a vacuum. It can stir something older. Historical memory, inherited vigilance, and intergenerational trauma can all intensify the feeling that uncertainty is dangerous. When life becomes unpredictable, it may touch not only present anxiety, but also a much deeper communal memory of what happens when security becomes fragile. That does not mean every Jewish person experiences uncertainty in the same way. But it does help to explain why loss of control can feel especially loaded.

The Norm in an Abnormal Situation. Anxiously on their phones checking the news or being in touch with loved ones, Israelis take cover in a public bomb shelter in Tel Aviv as siren warn of incoming missiles fired from Iran, June 20, 2025. (Photo: Yehoshua Yosef/Flash90)

There is also a painful paradox here. The stronger and more competent a person usually is, the harder it can be to admit when they are struggling. People who are used to leading, coping, and carrying others often feel deeply uncomfortable being the one who is frightened, needy, or emotionally unhinged. They may judge themselves harshly. They may keep functioning while quietly falling apart inside. They may tell themselves they should be stronger, calmer, more grateful, more composed. Mental strain does not disappear because a person is intelligent, accomplished, resilient, or capable. Sometimes those very qualities make it harder to recognise when support is needed.

This is where compassion becomes essential. Not pity. Not pathologising. Compassion. The kind that says it makes sense that you are struggling when so much feels uncertain. It makes sense that loss of control unsettles you. It makes sense that a people shaped by responsibility, resilience, and leadership would find helplessness especially painful.

The answer is not to shame the need for control. The answer is to understand what sits underneath it. Very often, underneath the need for control is a longing for safety. A longing for dignity. A longing to protect those that one loves. A longing not to be caught unprepared by pain. Seen in that light, the need for control is not something to mock. It is something to approach gently.

Community Coalesces. The anxiety of Jews in the UK is captured in this photo at an antisemitism rally in Whitehall, central London, following a series of arson attacks and two people being stabbed in Golders Green, north-west London on April 29. (Photo: Lucy North/PA Images via Getty Images)

Mental health support can help people learn the difference between healthy agency and impossible responsibility. It can help them recognise what is theirs to hold and what is too heavy to carry alone. It can help them calm a nervous system that has become overburdened by vigilance. It can help families and communities talk more honestly about fear, uncertainty, and emotional overload without seeing these as signs of weakness.

Jewish life has always honoured strength, but true strength is not only found in taking charge. Sometimes it is found in acknowledging vulnerability. Sometimes it is found in saying this is hard for me. Sometimes it is found in allowing support, in loosening the grip just enough to breathe, and in accepting that even the most resilient people cannot control everything.

Despair Down Under. Once considered one of the safest havens for Jews throughout the world, no more as attested by this graffiti in a Jewish area in Melbourne, Australia applauding Hitler.  ( Photo: Executive Council of Australian Jewry )

Perhaps that is one of the quiet emotional challenges of Jewish life in difficult times. Not only learning how to survive what is happening around us but learning how to live with what we cannot control within it. That loss of control has consequences, yes. It can leave people anxious, frayed, and emotionally depleted. But with insight, support, and compassionate understanding, it does not have to define them.

It can instead become an invitation to soften, to share the burden, and to remember that being strong has never meant being untouched.



About the writer:

Bev Moss-Reilly is a Jewish freelance content writer living in South Africa with a deep and heartfelt focus on mental health, emotional wellbeing, trauma, grief, and the unseen struggles people carry every day. Through her writing and her Mental Health Packs, she aims to bring comfort, awareness, compassion, and practical support to individuals, families, workplaces, and communities. Her work is rooted in empathy, dignity, and the belief that nobody should feel alone in their pain, especially in times of crisis.







While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

SOUTH AFRICA CLAIMS ISRAEL IS BEHIND ITS ‘AFROPHOBIA’ VIOLENCE

Beset by internal social strife, South Africa indulges in cheap scapegoating blaming Israel  – Is anyone surprised?

By Marika Sboros

So, Israel, the world’s most overworked, overused and abused scapegoat, is the “hidden hand” behind South Africa’s latest xenophobia crisis.

Of course, it is. If you believe the latest conspiracy theory to emerge recently from the fever swamps of South African social media.

But has Israel really been orchestrating South Africa’s xenophobic violence – or “afrophobia”, as activists and academics in the refugee and migration space now call it?

Protecting Africans from South Africans. The South African police during a protest against illegal immigrants organised by March and March in Goodwood, a Cape Town suburb, on May 30, 2026. (Photo: Roger Bosch/AFP)

And if so, why and how would tiny Israel find time and inclination in its hectic military schedule despite fighting ongoing wars back home, including against the Iranian behemoth?

In retaliation, apparently, for South Africa taking Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2023, on a genocide in Gaza charge. Or so the theory holds.

Israel could be understandably miffed at South Africa lodging its ICJ case “urgently” within weeks of a genuine genocidal attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023. That urgency speedily dissipated, and South Africa’s case has proved ill-judged.

Its own lawyers recently requested and were granted an extraordinary 18-month extension. This means that its written submissions won’t be completed until 2029.

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was unsparing on X:

“This case was never about the facts. It has always been a propaganda campaign by South Africa in the service of Hamas, masquerading as a legal process.”

One local Facebook “influencer” said the xenophobic violence would disappear “like the night when the sun rises” if South Africa dropped its ICJ case.

A pan-Africanist Facebook group claimed that Israelis were poised to swoop into South Africa, destabilise it from within by pushing Black Africans “to the margins” and to rebuild it “in their own image.” With a little help from friends in “Western powers” (aka the US).

That led critics to suggest that the conspiracy theory is aimed as much at US as Israeli “hidden hands”.

“HOME-GROWN’ HIDDEN HANDS

Yet accusing Israel of trying to destabilise South Africa from within describes precisely what years of ANC governance have actually done after more than 30 years since “liberation”. From within. By its own hand.

The hidden hand has always been home-grown.

If Soviet-Jewish writer and war correspondent Vasily Grossman were around, he’d say:

“Tell me what you accuse Jews of and I’ll tell you what you’re guilty of.”

It’s the closing line of a longer passage in his novel, Life and Fate, where he argues that antisemitism is never an end in itself. Rather, it is a mirror for the failings of individuals, social structures and state systems.

With those words and a novelist’s precision, Grossman captured what psychologists call “projection”. It is the mechanism by which people and institutions attribute to others the very impulses, failures and crimes they cannot face in themselves.

Their accusations are not random, say psychologists. They are often confessions.

Accuse Jews of controlling the world through money and fear, and you may be the one controlling through precisely those means. Or you may be helpfully deflecting attention from the real controllers.

A South African example of that projection is in a speech by Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, founder and CEO of Gift of the Givers, a local charity acknowledged globally for its humanitarian disaster-relief work.

On October 5, 2023, Sooliman addressed an anti-Israel rally in Cape Town beneath a banner declaring “We Are All Hamas”. He said, in his own words, that:

 “…They (Zionists) run the world with fear. They control the world with money.”

He attempted to pre-empt accountability by saying antisemitism charges are just tools to silence criticism of Israel. However, while there is plenty to criticise in Israel’s government and its policies, genocide and apartheid are not part of that legitimate critique. As legal scholars across the world (not all of them Jews) say.

And antisemitic tropes are tropes, whatever political cover is thrown over them.

PROTOCOLS REVISITED

Sooliman’s language feeds into the core premise of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. That’s an enduring publication, which the Russian Tsarist secret police fabricated between 1898 and 1903. It purported to be the minutes of a secret meeting of Jewish leaders plotting world domination through control of global financial systems, governments and media.

The Times of London exposed it as a clumsy, plagiarised forgery in 1921. That did not dent its popularity. If anything, it became even more popular. Hitler cited it. Henry Ford distributed 500,000 copies of it across the US. It is still in print.

Sooliman’s declaration is one of the oldest tropes in the Jew-hater’s lexicon. It feeds off the original “blood libel” – the term for the claim that Jews kill Christian children to drink their blood in religious ritual. It dates back to the 12th century.

It is testimony to Jew hatred’s enduring power that both claims have retained their power into the 21st century. It is, after all, the world’s oldest hatred. (Call it “antisemitism”, if you prefer that 19th-century, pseudo-scientific euphemism coined by Jew-haters themselves to make their loathing sound respectable.)

Jew hatred has helped to make “Zionist” the anti-Israel lobby’s preferred code word for Jew. Lobbyists deploy Zionist as a swear word for Jew and a deliberate strategy to avoid detection of hate speech online. Social media platforms are slow to close the loophole because the distinction between legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy and antisemitic conspiracy theory dressed up as political commentary is notoriously difficult to police at scale.

Perhaps the most common and ironic example of projection in modern times is the ubiquitous accusation that Jews, aka “Zionists”, have committed genocide in Gaza. There can be no worse accusation to make against victims of actual genocide than to accuse them wrongly of being perpetrators of it.

That is projection in its most naked form.

DARK GLOBAL TRADITION

Hamas’s charter is explicitly genocidal towards Jews. Hamas political bureau member Ghazi Hamad declared on Lebanese TV on October 24, 2023, that October 7 was “just the first time and there will be a second, a third, a fourth” until Israel’s existence “finished”.

And while this is a South African story, it sits in a very long, very dark global tradition. It includes the latest mutation of Jew hatred with documentation over 900 years old.

Jew hatred has caused pogroms, mass expulsions of entire communities from countries Jews had lived in for generations, and the systematic murder of six million Jews.

The accusations change. The consequences for targets stay the same.

Post-October 7, Jews are being savagely attacked worldwide and killed just for being Jews. As the title of US author Dara Horn’s book bleakly notes, People Love Dead Jews.

October 7 is where nine centuries of Jew hatred, unchecked and unashamed, have ultimately led.

Yet October 7 denialism is rife. Some critics deny that Hamas committed atrocities on October 7.

  • They call it “resistance”;
  • They say that Israel “had it coming”;
  • that it was a “false flag” or “psyop” (psychological operation), in which Israel staged the massacre of its own civilians to gain sympathy and justify genocide on Palestinians in Gaza.

That is Holocaust denial in real time.

It raises the question of where this conspiracy theory linking Israel to xenophobic violence began.

Mzoxolo Mpolase, managing editor of Political Analysis South Africa, did some forensic work in an article on his website on May 27. He traces the conspiracy theory to a single January 2026 post in the Times of Israel’s open blog section, a platform for third-party contributors with no implied editorial endorsement.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN 

The author is a former South African, Grant Gochin, now based in California, USA, where he is a writer, financial advisor and serves as the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Togo in West Africa.

Gochin argued that African states are trapped by colonial borders and that South Africa should fragment into smaller sovereign entities. That was his opinion, nothing more, as Mpolase notes.

That’s where the chain of evidence ends, as Mpolase notes.

Gochin posits no funding channel, instruction or organisational relationship between Israel, its government’s policy and South Africa’s xenophobic or afrophobic protests.

Seth Mandel, writing in Commentary Magazine on June 11, 2026, identifies an “emerging, seemingly iron rule” about accusations against Israel that may help to explain the real dynamic behind the conspiracy theory.

“Pay attention to the when, and you’ll figure out the why.” He could have been channelling Grossman.

Mandel gives four notable items, including a column in The New York Times on May 11, with “wild accusations that Israel is training dogs to rape Palestinian inmates, along with uncorroborated allegations of state-sanctioned abuse.”

On May 12, a major commission released a two-year catalogue of evidence showing that Hamas used mass rape and sexual torture as a key weapon of its military strategy on October 7 and after.

That made the timing of the Times piece, in pre-empting the results of an actual investigation into Hamas, “suddenly clear”, as Mandel notes.

Grossman saw the mechanism in 1960. Mandel documented it in real time.

It is all the more disturbing, then, that South African government ministers at the highest levels and respected NGOs (non-governmental organisations) have enthusiastically helped to spread the hidden-hands conspiracy theory.

Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola gave the keynote address at a symposium co-hosted by DIRCO (Department of International Relations and Cooperation) and the South African Institute of International Affairs in Cape Town on May 25, 2026. He condemned the xenophobic violence strongly and took care not to mention Israel by name.

He undid that good work by saying that “with the current geo-political environment, and South Africa’s role in the international space, including our case at the ICJ, you cannot exclude state and non-state actors trying to erode the human-rights standing of South Africa.”

That was a dog whistle with a foghorn attached.

Master Manipulator. Giving the keynote address at a symposium co-hosted by DIRCO in Cape Town on May 25, 2026, South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola condemned the xenophobic violence taking place in his country and although not mentioning Israel by name, implied such by stating that with “our case at the ICJ,” against Israel, “you cannot exclude state and non-state actors trying to erode the human-rights standing of South Africa.”

PROPAGANDA TV CHANNEL

Prominent refugee and migration academics and activists in South Africa have amplified it. Chief among them is Julie Eccles, a public face of Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia (KAAX).

KAAX is a broad, grassroots civil-society coalition that claims to advocate for pan-African solidarity and constitutional rights for everyone, regardless of nationality or legal status.

Seeking Safety. Far removed from Israel,  a man sits with a blanket to keep warm as thousands of Malawians take refuge on June 20, 2026 in Sherwood Park outside Durban, South Africa. Around 12,000 people have passed through the camp in recent weeks, seeking safety amid intimidation campaigns by anti-migrant South African groups. (Photo: Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images)

Everyone except “Zionists”, apparently, in Eccles’s book.

She appeared on a Salaam Media panel on June 3, with Sharon Ekambaram, KAAX co-founder and head of Refugee and Migrant Rights at Lawyers for Human Rights, Prof Loren Landau, professor of migration and development at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, and Oxford University in the UK, and Mthunzi Mdwaba, a controversial South African businessman and legal academic.

The panel’s topic was Xenophobia in South Africa: Is There a Hidden Hand Stirring the Chaos?

On live TV, Eccles named a “hidden hand”, Martin Moshal, who she described as “an Israeli billionaire” and “dyed-in-the-wool Zionist.” She said that he had donated “at least R40-million to Action SA”, a party that “doesn’t even have a seat in parliament,” and “talks openly” about turning South Africa into “whatever his vision is.”

She got most of that wrong. Whether by default or design, neither reflects well on her or KAAX.

Action SA has six seats in Parliament. Moshal is South African, born and raised in Durban, currently living in Sydney, Australia. He is a venture capitalist, a philanthropist, and the largest known donor to opposition parties in South Africa, including the DA (Democratic Alliance), Action SA, the IFP (Inkatha Freedom Party) and BOSA (Build One South Africa).

Singing for Salvation. While a man plays his guitar as thousands of Malawians take refuge on June 20, 2026 in Sherwood Park outside Durban, South Africa, certain leaders in South Africa try play a different tune pointing a finger of blame at Israel. (Photo: Anders Pettersson/Getty Images)

Eccles said none of that. Instead, she played by the anti-Israel lobby’s rule book of injecting Jewish figures as shadowy puppet masters into local disputes and manufacturing foreign conspiracies where no logical connection exists.

MORE DOG WHISTLES

Mdwaba declared himself “happy” that Eccles had “mentioned Israeli elements.” That was his loud dog whistle to scapegoat Israel as a hostile actor behind the xenophobic violence.

Landau, whose reputation at Wits and Oxford universities rests on rigorous, evidence-based analysis, could have challenged and corrected Eccles’ claims in seconds. He said nothing about her misrepresentations. Neither did Ekambaram.

Salaam Media, a Johannesburg-based media agency and radio station that claims to be committed to “humanitarian journalism”, could have included at least one dissenting voice on the panel. There were none. The question in the panel’s title was rhetorical, and the answer decided before the cameras rolled.

That is not journalism. It is propaganda.

The ANC’s support for the Palestinian cause is the main backdrop to the conspiracy theory. It remains rooted in its history of solidarity with anti-colonial liberation movements, regardless of how violently extreme.

The apartheid smear against Israel drives much of its rhetoric. Some South Africans who actually lived under apartheid recognise and reject it as a propaganda weapon. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Its Arab citizens vote, sit in the Knesset and serve on the Supreme Court.

That is not apartheid.

And South Africa is no stranger to strains of afrophobic violence. Since “liberation” in 1994, there have been at least six major waves of such violence against Black African migrants. The worst came in May 2008, when 62 people died, some were left burning alive in the streets, and over 100,000 were displaced.

Since October 7, the response from some ministers, including President Cyril Ramaphosa, has been sartorial. They don a Palestinian scarf in public and ignore deepening potholes in the country’s literal and figurative roads.

The formula for scapegoating Jews has not changed globally in 900 years.

The accusation is always a confession. The charge is always a mirror. And the target is always the same.

US Representative Ritchie Torres put it bluntly on X in 2024, after Iran’s Supreme Leader praised American campus protesters against Israel:

“When … the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and antisemitism … praises you, you have become useful idiots on the wrong side of history.”

Show South Africa’s scapegoating, hidden-hand conspiracy theorists anything remotely close to a peace sign, and they will still see a clenched fist.

They may think they are on the right side of history by demonising Israel and Jews who support it. If they keep going – and they most likely will – their place is secure as useful idiots on history’s wrong side.



*Feature photo: Recuring violence against foreigners from across Africa is now the norm in South Africa. Seen here foreign nationals holding a placard during an anti-xenophobia march outside the City Hall of Durban on April 8, 2015 where the protestors marched against anti-immigrant violence, a week after hundreds were viciously attacked. (Photo credit should read RAJESH JANTILAL/AFP via Getty Images).



About the writer:

Marika Sboros is a South African freelance investigative journalist with decades of experience writing fulltime for the country’s top media titles on a wide range of topics. She started her career as a hard-news reporter in the newsroom of the now defunct Rand Daily Mail, a campaigning anti-government newspaper during the worst excesses of the apartheid era. She commutes between South Africa and the UK.

Follow Marika Sboros on X:  @MarikaSboros
Subscribe on Substack: Marika Sboros 







While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

HAIR-RAISING SITUATION

Surprise discovery of Iranian women’s hair raises serious concerns but reminds – you can imprison a person but not an idea.

By Marziyeh Amirizadeh

For nearly half a century, the Islamic Republic of Iran has attempted to convince the world that it represents justice, morality, and the will of the Iranian people. But behind the propaganda lies a brutal reality that millions of Iranians know all too well. The regime’s systematic oppression of women remains one of the clearest examples of its cruelty and fear. For as little as showing a strand of hair, Iranian women are met with intimidation, imprisonment, torture, or worse.

Today, the world is once again witnessing the Islamic Republic’s relentless assault on the dignity and freedom of women.

Recently, reports emerged from Armenia that customs officials intercepted 143 bundles of natural hair weighing approximately 26 kilograms at the Agarak border crossing with Iran. The “best” case is that the hair belonged to impoverished Iranian women selling their hair simply to survive in an economy devastated by corruption, sanctions, and government mismanagement. The “good news” is that women may be seeking ways other than the religiously sanctioned prostitution racket of “temporary marriages” to earn money.

The worst case is that the hair came from women who have been gunned down or executed by the Islamic Republic, in one of the most inhuman forms of human trafficking possible: profiting from women’s bodies after they have been murdered.

Either way, the discovery is deeply symbolic. The Islamic Republic has spent decades subjugating women by forcing them to cover their hair, arresting and torturing them for showing a single misplaced strand. Now, as economic desperation deepens, the very symbol of control over Iranian women has become a commodity.

Whether Iranian women are driven to such severe poverty that they must sell parts of themselves to feed their families, or the regime chops off the emblem of freedom for Iranian women from the corpses of their victims, the bottom line is that a woman showing her hair has never been about morality.

It’s always been about control.

Another shocking example of this oppression has captured international attention. Iranian singer Parastoo Ahmadi was sentenced to 74 lashes after performing without a hijab during a livestreamed concert. In addition to the flogging sentence, she and members of her production team reportedly received travel bans and restrictions on their artistic activities.

Iran Lashes Out. The Iranian singer Parastoo Ahmadi reportedly sentenced to 74 lashes for singing without hijab. (Photo: Hosseinronaghi)

Think about what this means.

In the twenty-first century, a woman can be sentenced to brutal whipping simply because she sang a song with her hair showing. I witnessed such torture of my husband who was forced to confess to the “crime” of drinking wine, which he never did. Neither the physical nor psychological scars of his 80 lashes ever healed and led to his death at the hands of the Islamic Republic.

The Islamic Republic fears music because music inspires hope.

It fears artists because artists tell the truth.

It fears women because women have become the strongest voice of resistance against tyranny.

Parastoo Ahmadi’s case is not an isolated incident. It is part of a broader campaign against women who refuse to submit. Women have been arrested for removing their hijabs, imprisoned for posting photographs online, and physically assaulted for challenging discriminatory laws. The regime’s “morality police” and Basij militia have become instruments of terror directed primarily at women and girls.

I witnessed this firsthand during my nine-month imprisonment and death sentence for the “crime” of becoming a Christian. Numerous cellmates shared harrowing stories of all kinds of physical and sexual abuse, judges and prosecutors demanding sex in order to receive a favorable verdict, and misogyny so deep seeded in Iranian society that it’s passed off as normal.

No story illustrates this reality more painfully than the death of Mahsa Amini.

“WOMEN,LIFE, FREEDOM”

In September 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, was arrested by Iran’s “morality police” for allegedly violating the country’s mandatory hijab regulations. She was brutally tortured and within days, she was dead. Her death ignited nationwide protests under the powerful slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom.”

Millions of Iranians recognized what had happened. Mahsa Amini was not simply one victim among many. She became a symbol of every woman humiliated, threatened, beaten, or silenced by the regime.

The protests that followed, demonstrated the courage of the Iranian people, especially Iranian women. Young women publicly removed their hijabs. Students challenged government officials. Mothers demanded justice. Despite brutal crackdowns, arrests, executions, and intimidation, the spirit of resistance did not disappear.

An Iranian ‘Cover Up’. An Iranian woman walks on a street amid the implementation of the then new hijab surveillance in Tehran in, April 15, 2023. (Photo: Majid Asgaripour/Wana/Reuters)   

While I was saved from physical torture, I still bear many scars of my experiences and what I witnessed. My closest friend, Shirin Alamhooli, suffered such severe torture, for days on end she could not walk and every day suffered debilitating headaches because her torturers brutally beat her on the head. Knowing that she was savagely raped (according to Islamic doctrine of not permitting a virgin woman to be executed), is a pain and indignity that Iranian women deal with – causing widespread pain and suffering to survivors like me, as well as the victims.

The Islamic Republic may imprison individuals, but it cannot imprison an idea whose time has come: freedom and the end of the regime.

As someone who personally experienced persecution under the Islamic Republic, I understand the regime’s tactics. Fear is its primary weapon. It sets men in the position of controlling women, and seeks to convince citizens that resistance is futile and that freedom is impossible. Yet history repeatedly proves otherwise.

The courage of Iranian women continues to expose the weakness of the regime. Every woman who walks without a mandatory hijab, every artist who continues to sing, every activist who speaks out, and every family that demands justice for victims like Mahsa Amini represents a challenge to a government built upon coercion.

The discovery of smuggled women’s hair at the Armenian border and the sentencing of Parastoo Ahmadi to 74 lashes may appear to be unconnected. In reality, they are inseparable. Both reveal a regime that exploits, controls, and punishes women while claiming to defend their dignity.

The international community must not look away.

Governments, human rights organizations, churches, and freedom-loving people everywhere should continue to amplify the voices of Iranian women. Silence only emboldens oppressors.

The women of Iran constantly show extraordinary courage. They risk everything for freedom, dignity, and equality. Their struggle is not merely an Iranian issue. It is a human rights issue.

One day, the women of Iran will no longer fear arrest for showing their hair, imprisonment for speaking their minds, or lashes for singing their songs. One day, the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” will no longer be a protest cry but a lived reality.

Until that day arrives, the world must stand with them.



*Feature photo: Armenian customs officers seize 143 bundles of undeclared hair from Iran.



About the writer:

Marziyeh (Marzi) Amirizadeh, the founder and president of www.newpersia.org, an author, public speaker, and activist. She has written two books “Captive in Iran,” and “A Love Journey with God” which are available on www.marzisjourney.com. She is an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death by hanging in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity. She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation in Evin prison- one of the most brutal prisons in the world.









While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

LEGAL ACTION AGAINST ‘PALESTINE ACTION’

UK Court of Appeals confirms Palestine Action proscription decision

By Lawrence Nowosenetz

The British group called Palestine Action (PA) was founded in 2020 and has been active in acts of violence and destruction of property at various sites in the UK. It has made well publicised threats and incitement.  It’s stated goal being directed against what it regards as Israel’s “genocidal” and “apartheid regime“. This secretive and criminally minded group has now been confirmed to be unlawful in the UK.

Under the Terrorism Act of 2000, the UK Home Secretary has the power to proscribe (ban) any organisation believed to be engaged in terrorism.  In June 2025, the Home Office designated Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation and this was announced to Parliament on 23 June 2025. After approval by positive resolutions of both Houses of Parliament, on 5 July 2025, the order implementing the proscription of Palestine Action came into effect.

British Barbarians. Elbit’s 35-million-pound ($43 million) research and development hub that was violently attacked by ‘Palestine Action’ (a now proscribed terrorist group) employs 680 people across 16 sites, working on multiple programs for the British military. During the raid, a ‘Palestine Action’ activist fractured a police sergeant’s spine with a sledgehammer.

The banning was challenged by Ms Ammori, a leader of PA, and the Divisional Court upheld this challenge setting aside the proscription ruling.  This was based on two grounds: Firstly, that the Home Secretary did not correctly apply the proscription policy and secondly that the proscription disproportionately interfered with individual rights under the European Convention of Human Rights.  

The Home Secretary appealed against this decision on both grounds and sought to restore her proscription ruling. The Court of Appeals fully upheld the Home Minister and restored her proscription decision in a judgment dated 15 June 2026.

The appeal has highlighted the disturbing nature of PA and its underlying ideology. 

The court considered the shadowy structure and operations of PA. According to the official judiciary press summary: 

“It held that the content of Palestine Action’s “Underground Manual” was revealing; evidence from or on behalf of Ms Ammori provided surprisingly little information about Palestine Action; the extent and nature of Palestine Action’s membership and organisation were largely unexplained; the lack of information was intentional and consistent with the image cultivated by Palestine Action in its “Underground Manual” of being a covert organisation; Palestine Action operated through cells of trusted people who were encouraged to avoid identification or detection and were advised on “smashing stuff” with a sledgehammer, and encouraged to be “creative” and to disrupt targets “without restraint.”

The Court rejected the notion of PA as a peaceful protest movement operating in the open but rather a covert organisation avoiding detection and prosecution with unidentifiable cells. It said in considered and restrained terms:  

“Palestine Action could not properly be portrayed as a non-violent organisation; it was not accurate to describe it as an ordinary protest group engaged in activities falling within the well-established tradition of peaceful protest. It was engaged in causing serious damage to property. It presented a very real risk of injury not only to property but also to members of the public. Its campaign was intended to close down the operations of a company pursuing a lawful business by intimidation, not persuasion.”

Click to access Press-Summary-Ammori-v-SSHD.pdf

The court noted that:

“…many individuals have been arrested and/or charged for offences under the 2000 Act in respect of Palestine Action; there are currently over 700 cases pending in the criminal courts of England and Wales, and many more at the pre-charge stage.”    (Judgment paragraph 6)

Click to access Final-open-judgment-Ammori-v-SSHD.pdf

The activities of PA have included dramatic acts of violence and destruction targeting companies both British and Israeli manufacturing defence equipment for the IDF:

Elbit Systems have been a primary target. In 2021 members of the group clad in red boiler suits  unlawfully clambered onto the roof of an Elbit  owned UAV (drone) factory and staged  an  occupation lasting 6  days. Charges were laid against 10 members for conspiracy to commit criminal damage and aggravated trespass.

In 2022, protesters chained themselves to a gate of an Elbit UAV subsidiary. On 6 August 2024, at Elbit’s Aztec West compound, six  activists driving a van, breached the security fences and entered the facility causing substantial damage to property and equipment.  This episode resulted in confrontations with security personnel and police, in which a police officer sustained a fracture to her lumbar spine. 

‘The Wild Bunch’. Portraying themselves as a mere “protest group” for Palestine,  ‘Palestine Action’ used a decommissioned prison van to smash through security shutters on their way to wreak havoc, cause extensive damage and inflict bodily harm.

These actions contributed to multi-day shutdowns and potentially contributed to the loss of a £2.1bn contract between Elbit UK and the Ministry of Defence. 

On 16 March 2025, Elbit’s Aztec West site was targeted by four Palestine Action activists with a crane mounted vehicle and a hammer attached to a rope to smash second floor windows and daub red paint on the building.  They were arrested on the site with all being charged with conspiracy to damage property and three being charged with one count of assault by beating.  

Return to the Dark Ages. Bodycam footage shows an officer aiming a taser gun at an intruder at Elbit UK’s site in Bristol, England, after the intruder struck a police officer with a sledgehammer. (Screen capture: Channel 4)

In June 2025, members of PA gained access to a RAF facility  and sprayed red paint into the engines of two RAF Airbus A330 refuelling planes. This caused serious damage and can be regarded as sabotage.

Cambridge University has also been targeted. In 2024, PA activists defaced a historic portrait of politician Arthur Balfour  with spray paint at Trinity College, Cambridge in protest apparently of the 1917 Balfour Declaration.   The historic Senate House  and Old Schools building were also spraying red paint by PA in subsequent incidents. 

Rage and Rampage. Footage of the break-in was uploaded to social media by ‘Palestine Action’, whose campaign resulted in millions of pounds in property damage across the UK, multi-day site shutdowns, and severe injuries to security and police personnel. Seen here are its attack on Elbit Systems Raid (Bristol) causing an estimated £1.2 million in damages by using crowbars and hammers to smash windows and destroy computers, drones, and equipment.

BLUEN BABBLE

South African Jo Bluen of SA Jews for a Free Palestine, is an ardent supporter of PA. In her post on X dated 10 August 2025, she responded to the arrest by British police of a blind protester holding a sign supporting PA. In her inimitable Bluen babble:

“May these ziofascist and zioliberal met police in the imperial metropole know no peace as the colonial carceral guard of the western apparatus of genocidal complicity in the settler colonial ethnic cleansing, barbarism, holocausts, the ongoing Nakba in Palestine. Across the colonised world.

British, ‘brutish, nasty and in shorts’. British, brutish, from Balfour to Bibi.”

Bluen Blew It.  At times incoherent pro-Palestine South African activist, Joe Bluen, may now have difficulty getting a visa to study in the UK following her public support for the now proscribed violent terrorist group, ‘Palestine Action’.

The British authorities are aware of Ms. Bluen’s activities and ideological alignment.  She may face visa difficulties with the UK following a complaint to the Home Office.

The proscription of PA is a clear and unequivocal message to the world, that no amount of propaganda, lies and hatred towards Israel can mask the lawless, brutal, ugly, violent face of those who hide behind this mask to commit acts of incitement to hatred, destruction of property and injury to persons.  



*Feature photo: Palestine Action activists take part in a protest after the government announced its plans to proscribe the group. (Photo: Neil Hall/EPA-EFE)



About the writer:

Born in Pretoria Lawrence Nowosenetz obtained his BA at University of the Witwatersrand and LLB at the University of South Africa. He has been admitted as an Attorney in South Africa and as an advocate in South Africa. He practiced at the Pretoria and Johannesburg Bar and worked as a human rights and labour lawyer at the Legal Resources Centre a public interest law firm. Lawrence was Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and completed professional internship in the USA. He was a a labour arbitrator and mediator, part time Senior Commissioner at the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) as well as a panelist at Tokiso Dispute Settlement. He was a member of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and Pretoria Chairman. He has also served as an Acting Judge of the High Court, South Africa. He now lives in Tel Aviv.








While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

TRUMP, NETANYAHU, IRAN AND THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

Giving in to Iranian demands rather than achieve peace in the Middle East will instead facilitate perpetual war.

By Neville Berman

After publicly assuring the Iranian people, “Help is on the way”, Trump decided that America needed to do a deal with the world’s greatest exporter of terror and perennial liar about its nuclear program. Consequently, the Iranian regime has been given a lifeline.

Following the slaughter of tens of thousands of its own protesting citizens and Trump’s assurances,  the US president has turned his back on the Iranian people who want democracy, freedom of expression, the rule of law, and human rights.

Misleading Message. “Help is on its way,” Trump tells Iranians as he urges them to keep protesting in January, 2026.

Initially, America held all the cards. The situation has now changed. The whole world is complaining about the increase in the price of petrol and gas. America does not want to be at war while it is co-hosting the soccer world cup. Once the tournament ends, campaigning for the midterm elections will take center stage. Americans are tired of fighting wars of choice in foreign lands thousands of miles away. Trump wants to end the war and be recognized as a peacemaker. In addition, Congress has not agreed to give Trump the green light to continue with the war.

The Iranian regime knows that it can rely on help from China and Russia. Russia is using thousands of drones supplied by Iran in its war against Ukraine, and Russia will veto any UN Security Council resolution calling for sanctions on Iran. They also know that China will buy billions of dollars of Iranian oil at a discount. The regime also knows that it has the backing of Qatar, and that it can rely on the Europeans to seek appeasement no matter the cost.

Twenty percent of the world’s oil exports flow through the Strait of Hormuz on Iran’s southern coastline. The Strait is an international waterway that should remain open and never be subject to tariffs. Nobody has to pay to use the English Channel and nobody should ever have to pay to use the Strait of Hormuz. Closing the Strait of Hormuz is against international law, but the Iranian regime knows that no Iranian has ever been charged by the International Criminal Court for committing any crime. The bottom line is that Iran is already planning a massive victory parade.

The Iranian regime is going for the jugular and when Pakistan was accepted as the venue for negotiations, it was a dead cert that America would bow to Iranian demands.

The world’s greatest superpower would no longer be calling the shots!   

The Iranians are demanding :

  • the immediate lifting of American sanctions,
  • over $100 billion of frozen Iranian money in foreign banks to be released.
  • The right to impose fees on oil tankers passing through the “international waterway” of the Strait of Hormuz – amounting to an act of extortion.
  • $300 billion as compensation for war damage ignoring the war was caused by their own actions
  • removal of all US armed forces from the Middle East.
Lost Leverage. With Pakistan the venue for negotiations, the US lost its edge and was no longer calling the shots.

To make matters worse, America is not insisting on restrictions on the Iranian missile program, nor is it insisting that Iran end its support for their proxy terrorist forces in the Middle East. In regard to the Iranian nuclear program, Iran is once again committing to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)to inspect its nuclear program and its stockpile of enriched uranium. Iran had agreed to this in the past, and then lied and lied, and prevented the IAEA from carrying out what was agreed to. No matter what is agreed to in a new deal, Iran will continue to lie about its nuclear program in the future. The deal gives the Iranians everything upfront, and in return the US gets a commitment from Iran to end its nuclear program at some stage in the future. The Iranian regime is laughing all the way to the bank. They also have no intention of ever abandoning their nuclear program. Trump has completely lost the plot of what should be happening.

For over a decade Netanyahu warned the world about the danger of a nuclear armed Iran. Finally, when it came down to attempting to destroy the underground nuclear facilities in Iran, the US and Israel operated with an unprecedented level of partnership, co-operation and intelligence sharing. Together they significantly reduced the threat of Iran’s nuclear program and its capacity to wage war.

The Iranians have spent decades and billions of dollars financing, training and supplying Hezbollah with an estimated 150,000 rockets aimed at Israel. Using incredible intelligence capabilities, and innovative tactics, Israel eliminated the leadership of Hezbollah, and greatly reduced its capacity to attack Israel. Hezbollah still has a stockpile of anti-tank missiles and drones that they continue to shoot into Israel. Israel has replied by attacking Hezbollah facilities in Lebanon. The IDF have discovered massive amounts of armaments stored in civilian houses and underground tunnels in Lebanon.

The Iranians are trying to save Hezbollah. They are demanding that any deal between Iran and America must include a ceasefire in Lebanon. What this signifies is that Iran does not consider Lebanon to be a sovereign independent country. What Trump should be demanding is that Hezbollah disarm, so that Lebanon and Israel can then conclude a peace treaty and live in peace with each other. The problem in Lebanon is Hezbollah, and not the actions of Israel. Surprisingly, Trump has taken the side of the Iranians and has demanded that Israel implement a ceasefire in Lebanon. Israel has refused. Trump has now turned against Netanyahu with a vengeance. Israel has been totally locked out of the negotiations with the Iranians and Trump has turned Netanyahu into a pariah in the White House.

Money Talks. The talks are becoming a battle to unlock the funds.

What is actually happening is that America has agreed to a framework deal to be signed immediately, and that negotiations will then be held for a maximum of 60 days, in order to conclude a Memorandum of Understanding that will result in a permanent peace between the United States and Iran.

The world is cheering. Gas prices are going down, and Iran has promised not to build or buy atomic weapons. At long last, peace in the Middle East seems to be possible. What can go wrong?

In his second term, Trump believes – having repeatedly expressed so – he is deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize even though he has  declared that:

– the US needs to own Greenland and would either take it the easy way or the hard way

– the US needs to take control of Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Panama, Venezuela, and the Gaza Strip

– signaled a cut back of American support to NATO.

While none of the above are likely to help Trump in his quest for the Nobel Peace Prize, if he does manage to bring ‘peace’  – that is, some modicum of a cessation of hostilities to the region, he just might receive it. However, what Trump is negotiating with Iran will not bring genuine peace for it will empower the leadership to renew all its nefarious terrorist activities and revitalize the fanatical religious obsession set on eliminating the State of Israel. Over 80% of Shiite Muslims in the world are known as Twelvers. They believe that the 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who disappeared in the 10th century, will one day reappear and bring Islamic rule and justice to the world. The Imams in charge of Iran believe that Israel needs to be eliminated in order to hasten his return. The general view of the Iranian people is that Israel has nothing to do with the return of the 12th Imam and that Iran and Israel should resume normal relations that existed before the revolution in 1979.

Trump’s Holy Grail. Speaking to reporters back in January 2026 at the White House, Donald Trump said he couldn’t “think of anybody in history that should get the Nobel Prize more than me.”

The deal that America is negotiating with Iran will ensure that perpetual war in the Middle East continues. Successive American administrations have never understood the Middle East, and the current administration is no exception.

There is another small minority viewpoint that holds that Trump is actually the most brilliant politician around, and that all his capricious behaviour is part of his master plan to ensure that America becomes great again. The theory is that Trump will get the Iranians to agree to a deal, and after that the Republican Party will win a majority in both the Senate and the House in the midterm elections. Iran will inevitably not keep to its commitments, and Trump will then get Congress to approve military action against the Iranian regime. He will once again partner with Israel, and together they will cause the Iranian regime to collapse and be overthrown. Netanyahu will be completely vindicated, and will be invited back to the White House to celebrate the fall of the Iranian regime. Hallelujah.

No matter what happens in Iran, and despite all the problems that Israel is facing, Israel will remain a democracy, and will continue to innovate and prosper. It will continue to ensure the rights of Christians, Muslims and members of various other religions to freely access and pray at their respective holy sites in Israel. It will continue to act as a light unto the nations of the world, and will play a positive role in improving the lives of tens of millions of people around the world. Millions of Jews have a yearning to live in the land promised by G-d to the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The population of Israel will continue to grow. Empires have come and gone, but Israel is here to stay. I would not want to live anywhere else. One last thought, Trump will never receive a Nobel Peace Prize.  



About the writer:

Accountant Neville Berman had an illustrious sporting career in South Africa, being twice awarded the South African State Presidents Award for Sport and was a three times winner of the South African Maccabi Sportsman of the Year Award.  In 1978 he immigrated to the USA  to coach the United States men’s field hockey team, whereafter, in 1981 he immigrated to Israel where he practiced as an accountant and then for 20 years was the Admin Manager at the American International School in Even Yehuda, Israel.  He is married with two children and one granddaughter.









While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).

Lay of the Land Weekly Newsletter – 21 June 2026

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THE ISRAEL BRIEF –15-18 June 2026
(Click on the blue title)



Lay of the Land’s Photo Pick of the Week

ISRAEL’S WAR WITHIN

Blocking more than roads, ultra-Orthodox (Hareidi) block way forward to societal cohesion

Police intervene as ultra-Orthodox Jews block roads in Jerusalem on June 10, 2026, where crowds gathered to protest against compulsory military service. This photo captures pictorially the HEATED debate over the question: “What constitutes a Jewish state”?
(Photo: Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images)




ARTICLES

Please note there is a facility to comment beneath each article should you wish to express an opinion on the subject addressed.

(1)

FROM AN AILING KING SAUL TO A FAILING “KING BIBI” – TIME FOR CHANGE

Promises, platitudes and politics is all that is left on offer from Israel’s prime minister.
By David E. Kaplan

Beyond the Bluster. In a De Gaulle mode of Je suis la France (“I am France”), Bibi believes he is indispensable to Israel – that he embodies the Jewish State. He doesn’t; the people do. His greatest act now will be to make way for new generational leadership.

FROM AN AILING KING SAUL TO A FAILING “KING BIBI” – TIME FOR CHANGE
(Click on the blue title)



(2)

‘ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE’

A South African take on “As You Like It” is playing at the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
By Craig Snoyman

South Africa Upstaged. Truth and fantasy flitted like prancing players in a mythical forest, with South Africa the ‘Court’ jester at the International Court of Justice. It now stands exposed as the real clown!

‘ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE’
(Click on the blue title)



(3)

FROM URGENCY TO DELAY: WHAT HAPPENED TO SOUTH AFRICA’S ICJ CASE?

South Africa exposes through ineptitude its true motivations behind its fabricated case against Israel.
By Kenneth Moeng Kgwadi

What a Drag! The image of empty seats at the ICJ stands as a metaphor of South Africa’s empty “genocide” case against Israel which is set to drag on for years due South Africa’s request for time to find the evidence!

FROM URGENCY TO DELAY: WHAT HAPPENED TO SOUTH AFRICA’S ICJ CASE?
(Click on the blue title)



(4)

THE DEADLY FLAWS OF THE DEAL

When it comes to self-preservation, they will lie at every turn and manipulate even the Dealmaker-in-Chief.
By Marziyeh Amirizadeh

‘Strait’ Talking’. Now that Americans can again cheaply fill up their cars this summer, Israelis will have to spend much more investing in its future defense. Such are the war-fought results of the ‘Opening of the Strait’ deal.

THE DEADLY FLAWS OF THE DEAL
(Click on the blue title)




LOTL Cofounders David E. Kaplan (Editor), Rolene Marks and Yair Chelouche

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While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves.  LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).