Category: Antisemitism

BIG MOVE IN SMALL TOWN – RECOGNITION, RECONCILIATION AND RESTITUTION

Jewish family supports historic move for Cape Town to rename Strand town square honouring family founder to recognition of local Muslim community.

By Ben Friedman

Ra’anana in central Israel is my home today. It wasn’t always.

I hail from the Strand, a beautiful False Bay town which is part of the area described as the “Fairest Cape”, bracketed by the majestic Hottentots Holland mountains, Somerset West and the turquoise blue of the Atlantic Ocean. Today, this town is making news in South Africa and it involves my family. Of this I am proud – proud of the past and proud of how we are forging a favourable future.

My family surname – Friedman –  is so embedded in that town’s history. However, it is not only the past but the message we are sending for the future that is making news.

In a historic gesture of recognition and reconciliation, our family have approved the renaming of Ben Friedman Plain honouring my grandfather and family founder in South Africa to Strand Muslim Square. The exciting and enriching drama unfolding could not  – and maybe not unsurprisingly –  escape controversy.

Video clip of the Strand Beach Coastline (Click on the caption or the picture).

It is no secret that today we live in a polarised, post-truth world where narratives are shaped by people’s prejudices and affiliations that  cloud  facts and the truth. Israelis and Jews know this more than most, given the sustained campaign of lies against Israel in the mainstream media, by influencers, social media, and sinister state-backed NGOs.

So, when local Muslim leader, Ebrahim Rhoda approached my brother, Barry Friedman with the request to approach the city council to rename the square to finally redress the wrongs of the past and to honour the Muslim contribution to the town, Barry expressed enthusiasm, but said that he would need to discuss it with the family. He knew that their only concern would be that the family’s history not be erased. With full understanding and sensitivity, Ebrahim, after some thought and investigation, suggested that if the renaming was approved, the traffic circle in front of our family store could be renamed Ben Friedman Circle. This, our family considered fair and agreed to the renaming of the town square subject to council approval.

Prime Movers. Taking a stand in the Strand are (l-r) Ebrahim Rhoda, Barry Friedman and Feisal Daniels at a recent Council meeting. (Photo: Carl Punt.)

The process took a few years and now the renaming will proceed but not without an ugly backlash resulting from the usual ‘culprit’  – misinformation.

There were those trying to frame it as a roughshod attempt to erase the “White” history of the Strand, or to view it in terms of a Muslim/Judeo-Christian conflict issue. It is neither. It is simply  the long overdue acknowledgement of the Muslim’s community’s enduring history and contribution to the town that had for too long been neglected. I am sure that my late friend, Oesman Wentzel, who owned a classic diesel-powered fishing boat that I spent many happy hours on in my youth catching mackerel and snoek, would be very happy with this historic restitution — reflecting the harmony and unique community relations that characterised our lives in the Strand, in spite of the policy of Apartheid that tried to disrupt it.

Roadworthy. Ben Friedman Plein named after Benjamin Friedman who immigrated from Lithuania to South Africa in 1910 is to be renamed Strand Muslim Square honouring the over 200-year history of the Muslim presence in the town . (Photo: Jamey Gordon).

ENTWINED HISTORY

My grandfather, Benjamin Friedman, who arrived in Cape Town around 1903 as a penniless immigrant from Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania, is the man that the Ben Friedman Plein (square) controversy is all about.

Speaking Yiddish  without any knowledge of English or Afrikaans, he started work as a labourer  at a salary of 2/- (20 cents) per day at the Cape Town docks.

Friedman & Cohen Department Store — “Since 1903”

Once he had acquired some knowledge of English and had enough funds to buy a bicycle, he cycled to Somerset West where a dynamite factory was opening to supply explosives to the mines. He bought a general dealer’s license, and with no funds and amazing divine providence was able to open a line of credit with JW Jagger, a major wholesaler in Cape Town.

Muslim Festivity. Friedman & Cohen “Wishing our Muslim Customers and Staff a blessed Eid Mubarak!”

He married Anna Cohen and they had five sons, including my father, and two daughters. The business thrived and eventually became a large department store in the Strand that still stands today. Benjamin played a big role in the development of the Strand and was a leader of the Jewish community, and was instrumental in the founding of the Strand Synagogue in 1930.

Strand Shul. The Strand Synagogue which Benjamin (Ben) Friedman laid  the foundation stone in 1930
Strand Synagogue Stone. This stone was laid by Benjamin Friedman, April 21st 1930.

PARRALEL PIONEERING

Pioneering and building ingrained in the Friedman family was not only confined to South Africa’s developing coastal town of Strand  but also in the future Jewish state of Israel. While Benjamin and most of his family were centered at the Strand, his one son, Solly Friedman, my uncle, was a visionary and a Zionist and emigrated to the then British Mandate of Palestine in the 1930s. He settled in Haifa, opening a law office in 1939 and went on to develop one of the biggest law practices in Israel specializing in marine law with ZIM shipping company being one of his major clients. Founded in 1945 by the Jewish Agency, the Israel Maritime League and the Histadrut, ZIM’s main task during its first years was transporting hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the emerging state. Some of the other ships that had been used for clandestine immigration before the establishment of Israel as a state were confiscated by the British Mandate authorities, and later joined the company’s fleet. My uncle would travel abroad negotiating the purchase of ships that formed the basis of Israel’s merchant marine fleet. In the days of the Mandate, he was constantly active in the courts, defending Haganah men brought up on charges by the British and trying to negotiate the release of impounded refugee ships. Emerging as Israel’s expert in maritime law, it would stand him in good stead as the lawyer for ZIM Shipping Company in the ensuing decades as it developed into one of the world’s top 20 cargo carriers. He relates that when the British left Palestine, most of the ships they had impounded were in Haifa harbour and the new Israeli government simply reclaimed them. How poignant that the biblical word ZIM means “a fleet of ships”. (Number 24:24).

Friedman & Friends. The writer’s uncle (2nd left), pioneer marine lawyer in Haifa, Solly Friedman with friends in British Army uniform during WWII in Tel Aviv.

In parallel at the Strand, the Cape Malays are an ethnic group descended from enslaved and freed Muslims brought to the Cape from Indonesia and Malaysia in the mid-17th century. They were skilled labourers and political exiles, such as Sheik Yusuf, whose Kramat (a sacred shrine or tomb honoring a holy person in Islam) at nearby Macassar Beach is still a place of pilgrimage. This is undertakable as Sheik Yusuf is credited as the founding father of Islam in South Africa, having established the first enduring Muslim community in the region in 1694, during the governorship of Simon Van der Stel.

Friedman Family. Benjamin, his wife Anna and their five sons and two daughters.

Over time, the Cape Malays formed a unique cultural and religious identity with a distinct cuisine and a dialect of the Afrikaans language. They were among the first settlers in the Strand, which was originally called Mostert’s Bay. They were mainly engaged in fishing in False Bay and settled in the area of the current CBD of the Strand, where they had a thriving community of craftsmen, carpenters, builders, small traders, tailors and fishermen.

However, in the 1950s, when Apartheid was being heavily enforced, they were forcibly relocated to an area called Rusthof, located between Strand and Gordons Bay — a low-lying area subject to severe flooding in winter.

Story of a Store in the Strand. The staff today of Friedman & Cohen on the beach (top) and the early days of the store in the Strand.

However, the original mosques that were located around the CBD were maintained and remained, so that their physical link to the area endured.

Benjamin, whose small trading store on the Lourens River where the dynamite factory had opened manufacturing explosives for the gold mines, grew and flourished. He invested in properties and land, many of which were in the centre of the Strand, and where the original store was moved to. Over time, it developed into the modern Friedman and Cohen Department Store, which is now 110 years old.

Family Founder. What began with a bicycle ride, Benjamin Friedman from Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania, founder of the family in South Africa.  

The Strand had 25 Jewish families at its peak, but neighbouring Somerset West had 40 Jewish families. Relations between the Jewish and Muslim community was excellent – and many from the Muslim community were, and still are, employees of Friedman and Cohen.  Many ‘old-timer’ customers would  relate stories of how they used to buy on credit at our store, but when the frequent gale-force south easterly winds used to blow, they were unable to pay their accounts because the fishing boats couldn’t put to sea. Benjamin Friedman would tell them to pay when they could, and never placed any pressure on them.

As the town grew, so did the Jewish community, and Benjamin Friedman was instrumental in founding the Strand Shul (synagogue), where he laid the foundation stone in April 1930. It is interesting to note that the furniture for the new Somerset West shul was made by Muslim carpenters again reinforcing the enriching connection of the two communities.

The writer’s father, Abe Friedman who joined 10,000 South African Jews in the fight against Hitler and Nazism is seen here with his army unit (5th from left back row) on Temple Mount Jerusalem.

ROAD TO RENAMING

A prime mover in the renaming process is local Muslim community leader Ebrahim Rhoda — a school teacher and historian — who when he approached my brother Barry, explained that in spite of their community’s history and contribution to the Strand, there “was not one street name reflecting their heritage.” Most cities and towns name their streets after local residents who have left an enriching legacy and so, “it was time to truly acknowledge the Muslim contribution to the story of the Strand,” said Ebrahim.

Cape Muslim families such as the Rhodas, Gabiers, Wentzels, and Salies were prominent community members, and it is time that their stories and legacies of the Muslim community are honoured.

The proposal to rename Ben Friedman Plein to Strand Muslim Square is rooted in reconciliation and restorative justice — acknowledging a community forcibly removed  during the Apartheid era from the Strand CBD under the Group Areas Act in the 1950s, whose 200-year heritage includes three mosques that still anchor the square today: Nurul Anwar, Market Street and Nurul Islam. The first place of worship in Strand, the Market Street Mosque, was built on the square itself.

Historic Gem. Constructed between 1850 and 1870 by freed slaves and free blacks, the Javia Mosque stands as the oldest surviving place of worship in Strand and is today a Provincial Heritage Site. The structure is recognized not only as an architectural gem but a cornerstone of the Muslim community’s heritage in the Western Cape.

Eddie Andrews, the City of Cape Town’s acting mayor and Mayoral Committee Member for Spatial Planning and Environment, expressed during this year’s Freedom Day on the 27 April in his address at City Hall, that the proposed renaming of Ben Friedman Plein to Strand Muslim Square adds weight to both history and reconciliation.  Said Andrews:

“Ben Friedman Square stands in an area shaped by the long-standing presence of the Strand Muslim community, whose heritage stretches back over two centuries. Importantly, this process has been characterised by cooperation — supported by the Muslim community, endorsed by civic and faith-based organisations, and undertaken with the support of the Friedman family themselves.”

The renaming reflects what Andrews called Cape Town’s unique tradition of interfaith coexistence. “Cape Town is a city where Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and other faith and cultural communities do not simply coexist — but have, over generations, built relationships of respect, partnership, and shared belonging. This renaming reflects that reality.”

Sheikh’s Shrine. When Sheikh Yusuf, regarded as the father of Islam in South Africa, passed away in 1699, he was buried not far from the Strand on the hill overlooking Macassar. His Kramat or shrine is a place visited by pilgrims.

The proposal has been endorsed by the Strand Muslim Council, Nurul Islam and Aneeqah Congregation, Rusthof Methodist Church, and the Muslim Judicial Council. Business owners bordering the square raised no objections.

The controversy will pass as it should.

However, what must not pass is the good relations between the communities of the Strand. The Muslim and Jewish contributions to the town go back in time and stand to ensure an enriching future.

I look forward in the future when revisiting from Israel my hometown to see the renamed Strand Muslim Square  and Ben Friedman Circle.

Benjamin who began this journey on a bicycle well over a century ago would be pleased and proud.



About the writer

A resident of Ra’anana, Israel, Ben Friedman was born and grew up in the Strand Western cape, South Africa and matriculated at Hottentots Holland High school Somerset West. He completed a BCom degree at UCT which was interrupted  in 1967 by the Six Day War where he  served as a volunteer on Kibbutz Amir.
Prior to immigrating to Israel with his family in 2010, he served  on the Western Province Zionist Council for two  years and was vice Chairman of The Phylis Jowell Jewish Day school Cape Town .
Retired after a successful career in fashion retailing, Ben is a lifelong passionate angler and a keen reader especially on Israeli /Jewish and Zionist history.







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 SILENCE THAT CONDEMNS US ALL

People would far rather believe that pigs can fly and Israel trains dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners than that Hamas-led terrorists randomly mass raped and slaughtered women, children and some men on October 7. Here’s why:

By Marika Sboros

(Courtesy of Daily Friend in SA where first published)

There are moments when language fails, when violence outstrips the vocabulary available to describe it. 

October 7, 2023, in southern Israel was one of those moments.

The unprecedented violence, mass rape and sexual savagery that the Hamas-led attack unleashed on that day was so deliberately, systematically calculated to destroy bodies and families that no existing legal framework had a word for it.

Until now.

A new, independent report released on May 12, 2026 is the most comprehensive documentation and analysis to date of that violence. It is the work of the Israel-based, internationally focused NGO, CCO7 (Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children).

Buried in it is a word the Commission’s investigators coined soon after October 7, for what they found in their early research: kinocide – from kin (family) and cide (the systematic nature of destruction).

World media have yet to embrace the word.

The Commission’s leader, Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy, an Israel Prize laureate and international law expert, developed the concept of the word with principal contributor, former Canadian justice minister Prof Irwin Cotler.

Founder and chair of the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes against Women and Children, Dr. Cochav Elkayam Levy is an expert in international law and human rights, recipient of the 2024 Israel Prize (Israel’s highest civilian honor) and teaches at Reichman University. After October 7, she represented the Israeli women’s rights protest movement at the UN.

They did so after watching video after video of Hamas terrorists forcing parents and grandparents to watch their children and grandchildren be tortured, raped and murdered, and children to watch their parents and grandparents suffer the same fate.

Elkayam-Levy describes kinocide as:

 “The deliberate, systematic torture of families and the weaponisation of familial bonds in order to maximise suffering.”

While looking and analysing the videos, they started seeing the pattern – moments that made them “understand that we were seeing something that needs to be defined,” Elkayam-Levy says in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

These moments made her move after October 7 to secure evidence before denial could take hold.

“We saw silence and denial  .. very quick denial,” she told the Times of Israel. This made her “understand that we have to collect evidence as quickly as possible and establish an archive under stringent international standards.”

The Commission’s two-year investigation has done so. It has drawn on legal scholars, international jurists, researchers, archivists and trauma experts, conducted in collaboration with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.

Prof David Crane, founding chief prosecutor of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone has endorsed the report. So have Hillary Rodham Clinton, former Israeli Supreme Court president Aharon Barak and Anila Ali, president of the American Muslim and Multi-Faith Women’s Empowerment Council.

Their endorsement alone should silence those who would dismiss this as a partisan document.

Investigators documented 13 recurring forms of sexual violence across the Nova music festival, kibbutzim, roadside shelters, military bases, abduction routes and hostage captivity in Gaza. These were rape, gang rape, sexual torture, forced nudity, genital mutilation, executions linked to assault, post-mortem abuse and assaults in front of family members.

Photos of young men and women butchered to death in cold blood at the Nova Music Festival, Kibbutz Re’im. (Photo: Zeev Stein

Some examples: a male survivor of the Nova musical festival slaughter, identified only as D, reportedly passed a polygraph after describing his gang rape:

“They laughed, they were really pleased, as if I was their sex doll … They did whatever they wanted to me.”

A 17-year-old hostage called her mother from Gaza:

“Mum, they’re going to rape me.”

Two related minor children held hostage in Gaza were coerced into sexual acts against one another. Their captors stripped them, touched their genitalia and whipped them.

These are not isolated accounts. They are part of what the Commission documents over two years and 300 pages, in a report titled “Silenced No More: Sexual Terror Unveiled”: a “systematic, widespread and integral” use of sexual violence, designed, planned and organised to terrorise Israeli society as a whole.

The Commission’s legal conclusion is unequivocal – these are war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal acts under international law.

After reading the Commission’s report, Lord Zac Goldsmith, British peer and former Cabinet minister, took to X to ask questions that journalists globally haven’t asked

I include them in full, as a handy reference for journalists who might yet cover it:

  • What kind of a depraved monster slices off a woman’s breast while she is being gang-raped, and throws it into the dust to be used as a plaything?
  • What kind of a twisted pervert turns rape into necrophilia by shooting a woman in the head while he is still defiling her?
  • What kind of ‘freedom fighters’ go into battle with a set of handy Arabic-to-Hebrew phrases, including ‘take off your pants’, ‘lie down’ and ‘spread your legs’?
  • What self-respecting human being presses nails, scalpels, a hammer, an axe, screwdrivers and other household tools into a woman’s genitals?
  • How hard do you have to rape someone, and with what, to shatter their pelvis?
  • Who shoots a young girl in the face and then films her mutilated corpse on her brother’s mobile phone?
“What kind of a depraved monster slices off a woman’s breast while she is being gang-raped, and throws it into the dust to be used as a plaything?” posted British peer and former Cabinet minister Lord Zac Goldsmith (above) after reading the Commission’s report.

The answer is staring us all in the face: Hamas terrorists.

I call them terrorists while many in the media call them “militants”. Unlike “militant”, “terrorist” has a specific meaning – someone who deliberately targets civilians to create fear for political ends. It carries legal weight and moral condemnation.

The October 7 attack meets every legal and common-sense definition of terrorism. Hamas is formally designated a terrorist organisation by the US, the EU, the UK and Australia, among others.

When the Civil Commission’s report landed in newsrooms, many mainstream editors may well have reached for a familiar refrain not to publish: the report is “not new”.  

Technically, they are correct. The Civil Commission’s first detailed report was in November 2023.  And accounts of mass rape and sexual violence began circulating online in the wake of October 7.

Yet there is not wide acknowledgement of why the full extent of that violence has never found its way into public consciousness – and the media’s role in that.

It’s not because the story is not new. It is because a sustained, organised, sophisticated global propaganda campaign has, over more than two years, successfully seeded doubt, denial and deliberate distraction into the information ecosystem.

This may arguably persuade those in positions of power and influence to give credence to claims that accusations of mass rape and massacre of innocents have been “exaggerated” and that Israel “doctored” all the evidence to make October 7 look worse than it was.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese lends ongoing institutional cover to this line of thinking. She regularly underplays the extent of the violence of October 7 – when she acknowledges it at all. She has opined that reports of Hamas’s sexual violence “may have been exaggerated.”

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese (left)  seen here with Greta Thunberg (center) at an anti-Israel march in Italy,  has opined that reports of Hamas’s sexual violence “may have been exaggerated.”

What is new about the “Silenced No More” report is the scope, rigour and forensic depth of its documentation – two years of painstaking evidence-gathering producing the most comprehensive war crimes archive ever assembled on these events.

It is designed to be undeniable.

Yet the denialism goes on, as does the global propaganda campaign.

A column in The New York Times on 11 May by the newspaper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Nicholas Kristof is relevant in that regard. The irony of its headline, “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians”, is probably lost on Kristof 

It mirrors the moral language condemning the silence around October 7 in the Civil Commission’s own report headline: Silenced No More”. It makes Kristof’s column look like a deliberate attempt to pre-empt precisely the rhetorical space the Civil Commission’s report deserves to occupy.

Kristof’s column is riddled with terminal weaknesses, not the least is its most sensational claim: that Israel trains dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners in its jails.

Kristof is careful not to make the claim himself. He leaves it to his sources.

The claim quickly went viral. It is not only unverified. It is old.

Nicholas Kristhof’s outrageous New York Times article accusing Israel of training dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners relied on sources such as the Euro-Med Monitor, whose Founder and Chairman (seen above) has publicly declared that Israel has “an insatiable appetite for drinking the blood of Palestinian children.”

As Honest Reporting has noted, Euro-Med Monitor, Kristof’s chief source for his column, and a self-described “human rights” NGO, was pushing it in June 2024.

The claim is physiologically and biologically impossible. As veterinary experts could have told Kristof, if he’d bothered to ask

They could have told him that the canine sexual response is governed by species-specific pheromones that humans do not produce; that canine mounting behaviour is non-sexual; and that canine anatomy is incompatible with human anatomy for penetrative acts.

Veterinary scientists call the dog-rapist claim biologically implausible. It is also a fabrication of a fevered mind designed to overwhelm critical faculties before implausibility registers. In the context of the Middle East conflict, it helpfully contributes to demonising Israel and Jews.

It’s tempting to see that Kristof’s column as preparation for undermining the Civil Commission’s report that launched the next day.

The New York Times did run an extensive news report of the Civil Commission’s the next day, by its Jerusalem correspondent, Isabel Kershner.

Some analysts see that as giving due credence to the Commission’s report. Others have a more jaundiced view. Whether it constitutes balance, accountability or damage control remains to be seen.    

Euro-Med’s record alone should have disqualified it entirely as Kristof’s source.

The NGO spread the debunked claim that Israel harvested organs from Palestinian prisoners. Israel has designated its founder, Ramy Abdu, as a Hamas operative in Europe. Abdu publicly declared on X (formerly Twitter) that Israel has “an insatiable appetite for drinking the blood of Palestinian children.”

(The tweet has since been deleted or made inaccessible, but not before Honest Reporting took a screen shot of it.)

Abdu was just spreading a modern “blood libel”, the word given to the first one that was weaponised in 12th-century England to trigger massacres and expulsions of Jewish communities across medieval Europe for centuries. In its original “glory”, the blood libel claimed Jews kill Christian children and drink their blood for religious ritual.

That The New York Times allowed Kristof to present Euro-Med as a credible watchdog over Israeli prisons without flagging any of this context is a notable editorial failure.

Times of Israel senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur gives his views of Kristof’s column in a YouTube video on May 12. He says that Kristof was not tasked with revealing sexual crimes but “covering for them. And it worked.”

Middle East analyst Eitan Fischberger was more blunt on X:

“Utter depravity from (Kristof) for parroting such cartoonishly evil Hamas propaganda that would make Goebbels blush.”

The paper has stolidly defended the column.

In South Africa, the largest news platform, News24 and EWN were practically alone in covering the Commission’s report.

Contrast that with the considerable space and attention South African media gave to every procedural twist in the ongoing, ill-judged genocide case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel that South Africa launched following October 7.

Some even treated it as a matter of national pride. They also later falsely reported (many journalists still do) that the ICJ found “a plausible case of genocide” against Israel in its ruling in January 2024.

The ICJ did nothing of the sort.

Former ICJ president Judge Joan Donoghue explicitly corrected this publicly in a BBC interview in April 2024: the court “did not decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.” The court did decide that the Palestinians had a “plausible right to be protected from genocide.”

Many Jewish legal and historical scholars consider the genocide claim to rival the original blood libel about Jews killing kids to drink their blood as the worst modern-day libel against Israel and Jews.

Many journalists still make the false claim about the ICJ’s ruling. Many South African media have yet to correct their record.

That’s not incidental. It is an editorial choice that amplifies allegations against Israel and suppresses documented evidence of atrocities against Israelis. It has a cost – paid by the women, children and men whose suffering is erased from public consciousness when false claims are not debunked.

Silence and denialism from journalists on the full extent of the Hamas-led mass rape and other sexual violence of October 7 is one thing; the ongoing silence from feminists globally is another.

Women’s rights organisations built on the principle of believing survivors have still not found their voices. The slogan “Believe Women” turned out to have a gross political limit:

“Believe Women, Except Jewish Women.”

UN Women took weeks to issue even a hedged statement. The UN’s own special rapporteur on sexual violence in conflict reportedly labelled survivor accounts “disinformation”.

When former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg took to the UN podium in December 2023, two months after October 7, to demand that the world acknowledge Hamas’s sexual violence, she was not addressing a hostile audience. She was addressing a silent one.

“The silence on these war crimes is deafening,” Sandberg told the assembly. “Silence is complicity.”

She later added: “I never thought that politics could make any group or feminist leader turn a blind eye to just such clear documentation of sexual violence.”

Her contribution to breaking that silence was to produce a film, titled Screams Before Silence, to give voice to the silenced.

The Civil Commission’s report, which Elkayam-Levy, herself a feminist scholar of international law, built in direct response to that silence, is in part a rebuke to her own field.

The deafening silence still ongoing from feminists over the sexual violence of October 7 is troubling enough. Compounding it with an ironic veneer of respectability is Jewish voices among the loudest dismissing or minimising it.

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the American antizionist organisation, blamed Israel for the attack on the day it happened. It has e cast doubt on the sexual violence documentation.

The Antidefamation League (ADL) has noted that JVP “uses its Jewish identity to shield some in the anti-Israel movement from allegations of antisemitism and provide a veneer of legitimacy.” That veneer gives the denialism of October 7 sexual violence a halo it would not otherwise have.

In South Africa, the halo hangs over the quaintly named South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) and the non-profit Jewish Democratic Initiative (JDI) when it comes to Israel’s war against Hamas.

The implicit message is insidious: if Jews themselves say something didn’t happen or was exaggerated, how could doubting it be antisemitic or antizionist?

When people with professional credentials in women’s advocacy, or the perceived moral righteousness and authority of being Jewish, line up to cast doubt, the propaganda campaign need not argue its case. It simply points at them.

This is the ecosystem in which the Civil Commission’s report lands in 2026.

Of course, none of the above justifies ignoring credible accounts of abuse in Israeli detention facilities. Confirmed abuse allegations demand accountability, no matter the perpetrators or victims.

Rettig Gur is among Jews prepared to acknowledge the existence of documented cases of Palestinian prisoner abuse. These are “real”, he says, but “far smaller” than alleged and mostly not sexual. He identifies Israeli government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich as responsible for treating prisoner welfare as a political liability rather than a legal obligation.

He also stresses that “the vast majority of (IDF) soldiers are honourable men (and women) who walked into fire so our families may live.”

Israel’s government has served notice that it will sue The New York Times for Kristof’s article. An announcement that it was addressing and investigating concerns about abuse of Palestinian prisoners would have been more helpful.

Rettig Gur posits the way forward: the failures of a minority must be fixed from within and must never be weaponised to erase what Hamas did.

The denialism goes on. As the Civil Commission’s CEO, Merav Israeli-Amarant, told Kershner in The New York Times, sexual crimes are “the easiest crimes to deny.” This is especially true of the October 7 attack “because most of the victims were murdered and are unable to testify.”

History has its own power.

It will not remember the perpetrators of kinocide kindly. It will be equally unkind to those who had all the evidence and chose to stay silent. 



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).

APPRECIATING ARTISTRY – THE DILEMMA

Can one separate the art from the artist when troubling actions conflict with your values?

By Motti Verses

For years, the music of Oliver Shanti was mainly part of my mornings. His 1996 album Well Balanced, perhaps his most iconic work, blended atmospheric melodies, Tibetan influences, and meditative world music into something that felt almost spiritual. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, his music became deeply associated across Europe with yoga, tai chi, meditation, and relaxation.

Shanti’s soft rhythms and calming soundscapes created a sense of peace that stayed with me long on my way to work. There was something almost healing in the atmosphere he built. Music that seemed disconnected from noise, aggression, and darkness. For years, I woke up to it at 7 o’clock each morning.

But sometimes art and the artist collide in a way that changes everything.

Oliver Shanti, whose real name was Ulrich Schulz, was convicted in Germany two decades ago for serious child sexual abuse crimes involving minors. When I discovered the full story behind the man whose music had accompanied so many quiet moments in my life, I felt a profound internal conflict. It was shocking.

How could music that sounded so spiritual come from someone capable of causing such harm?

For a while, I tried separating the music from the man. Many of my friends argued that art should stand on its own. And honestly, part of me wanted to keep holding onto those melodies because they were connected to memories, emotions, and years of my life.

Eventually I realized I could no longer disconnect the beauty of the sound from the reality behind it. Every song began carrying a shadow I could not ignore. What once felt peaceful no longer felt innocent.

So, I made a personal decision to stop listening to his music.

Fast forward to 2026.

A confession: I have loved FC Barcelona for almost 40 years. Long before football became a global industry driven by endless money and marketing, Barça already felt different to me. It was never only about trophies. It was about style, emotion, identity, and the feeling that football could still be beautiful.

I grew up watching generations of players who played with imagination and soul. In stadiums in Spain as well as other cities across Europe, but mostly on TV. From the influence of Johan Cruyff to Ronaldinho’s joy, Messi’s genius, and now the rise of young talents like Lamine Yamal. Through glorious victories and painful defeats, Barcelona remained part of my life because supporting this club always felt like something bigger than football. It felt like belonging to a story, a culture, and a dream that lasted across generations.

Then came another emotional conflict.

During Barcelona’s recent championship celebrations a few days ago, images circulated showing Lamine Yamal posing with a Palestinian flag among supporters and celebrations. For some fans, it was viewed as a gesture of solidarity with Palestinians – but for me – emotionally affected by the trauma of October 7, and the atrocities committed by Hamas – the image felt painful, political, and deeply uncomfortable.

That is where another dilemma begins.

I have supported FC Barcelona for decades. The club is connected to memories, identity, emotions, friendships, and entire chapters of my life. Then suddenly, a young player, the current  symbol of the club who may likely endure for a long time, became associated, at least emotionally in my eyes, with a political symbol that hurts me deeply.

It created an inner conflict between love for the club and discomfort with what I saw.

Of course, becoming a Barça fan and remaining one does not mean agreeing with every political gesture made by every player. Football clubs are enormous global institutions filled with people from different countries, backgrounds, religions, and political beliefs. But this one felt different.

So perhaps the real question is not: “Should I stop being a Barcelona fan?”

Maybe the deeper question is:

“Can I emotionally separate my lifelong connection to the club from one political moment involving the current mega star?”

Unlike the Oliver Shanti story, this situation is fundamentally different. One involved horrific criminal acts against children. The other involves political expression, symbolism, identity, and the emotions these subjects awaken in so many people, wherever they are.

Logically, I understand the difference.

Emotionally, it is far more complicated.

Spain Again. A return to its bleak past, three elderly Israeli women, including a Holocaust survivor, were kicked out of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid on February 14. The response from the museum staff was not to remove the people who were harassing them but to remove the people who were targeted with antisemitic abuse.

What will I feel the next time I watch Lamine Yamal playing for Spain during the upcoming summer FIFA World Cup? A national team representing a country where public attitudes toward Israel have often felt increasingly hostile and uncomfortable to many Israelis and Jews.

After a few days came the team reaction: FC Barcelona officially tried to distance itself from the incident, without attacking Lamine Yamal personally. The club’s message was essentially:

Yamal acted on his own, not on behalf of Barça.

Spain has the highest rate of antisemitic attitudes in Europe today.

The gesture was spontaneous and not coordinated by the club. Barcelona would not feature the flag moment in official highlight broadcasts or club media. The club acknowledged that many Israeli fans were upset and its response emphasized values of respect and inclusion.

Grave Concerns. Following the desecration of 20 Jewish headstones at Les Corts Cemetery in Barcelona in January, 2026, local Jewish leaders linked it to the sustained normalization of antisemitic hostility in Spain since the October 7th massacre in Israel. They accused authorities of failing to confront a trend of antisemitic violence.

I am relieved, but is the dilemma history?

I have a feeling it is not.

Time will tell.



*Feature picture:  Ulrich Schulz and Lamine Yamal – The Shanti Soundtrack of Yamal dilemma (photo generated by AI).



About the writer:

The author is a seasoned hotel expert, traveler, writer, and videographer, and formerly served as Head of Public Relations for Hilton Hotels & Resorts in Israel. Today, as a travel writer and hospitality trends analyst, his insights and experiences are regularly featured in leading Israeli media outlets.













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).

THEY ARE SILENCED NO MORE

There are words here that will direct you to look away – DON’T! You need to read, process and bear witness.

By Rolene Marks

[Warning: Sensitive Content]

In 2024 I was invited with a small group of journalists and diplomats to view some of the evidence that was found on the terrorists on 7 October and what was subsequently discovered in the Gaza strip. Under close supervision and military intelligence headquarters, we viewed weapons, maps, books and material – and orders in specific detail to commit acts of appalling sexual violence, including instructions for the victims to remove their clothing.

This article will be extremely uncomfortable and difficult for many to read. I appeal to you to please persist – we must bear witness and be the voices of victims and survivors. 

Ushered into another room, phones prohibited, we were shown a 20-minute collation of footage from Hamas body-cam, first responders and desperate family members searching for their loved ones. This we were told, would be evidence submitted to the ICJ where South Africa had filed a case accusing Israel of genocide. The images are seared into my conscience – including that of a partially burnt woman, her legs splayed, dress pushed up and naked, intimate parts for the world to see. There was a slice across her one thigh. I recall another image that I see as clear as day. The body of a woman, on top of a pile of corpses, bleeding from her crotch where she had been shot with the deliberate intent to defile her femininity.

A picture taken during a media tour organized by the Israeli military shows food on a table inside a burned house in the kibbutz Nir Oz on October 19, 2023, following the October 7 attack by Hamas. (Photo: Menahem Kahana / AFP)

The evidence of what I saw is undeniable.

These are two specific examples of the horrific crimes of Sexual and Gender based Violence (SGBV) and crimes against humanity committed against Israeli men, women and children on 7 October 2023 and to hostages in captivity.

Despite irrefutable proof noted in reports by UN Women, the Dinah Project and one from the Association of Rape Crisis Centres, denial, downplaying and even justification of the atrocities still continue – including from feminist organisations. It would appear that the voices of victims matter – unless they are Israeli. What message does this send future victims of SGBV?

This week, the Civil Commission – an independent Israeli non-profit organisation led by human rights expert and 2024 Israel Prize laureate Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy – released their report. “Silenced no more” was meticulously documented and referenced for over two years and is a devastating collation of the crimes against humanity and SGBV committed on that day and to hostages in captivity.

Children were no less a target for Hamas savagery as seen here at a blood-stained kindergarten in Kibbutz Beeri following their bloody barbarous rampage. (Photo: Reuters/ Amir Cohen)

The report is close to 300 pages long and contains documentation of at least 10,000 items including videos, photographs, forensic findings and the testimonies of 430 victims and survivors. Hamas proudly filmed and distributed evidence of their crimes. The hope is that not only will this be documented to fight back against denial – but could lead to further legal action against the perpetrators. Israel’s Knesset has approved the convening of a special tribunal to try the perpetrators of 7 October.

The individual testimonies are absolutely devastating.

In the weeks and months following the atrocities, eye witnesses and forensic experts testified about what they witnessed. Forensic experts spoke about the condition of the bodies that were brought in for identification, saying how they were shot in their eyes, their faces and their breasts, and even targeted in their most intimate parts. Women were stripped, bound, stabbed, shot and burned. Heads were decapitated and pelvic bones shattered. Even after death, sexual assault continued.  A Nova survivor testified to a victim being shot in the head while her rapist continued his assault. The intention was clear – to destroy their beauty and femininity. Forensic pathologists spoke of an “obsession with sex organs”. First responders echoed the same sentiment and have addressed numerous NGO’s and global institutions sharing their testimonies to the defilement and horror they saw on the kibbutzim, road 232 and at the Nova festival grounds.

Raz Cohen, a survivor of the Nova Music Festival on October 7 and a key witness to the horrific acts committed by Hamas terrorists provided detailed testimony which included witnessing the rape of a young woman. (Photo: Tomer Shunem Halevi, Hagai Dekel)

“I saw them raping her,” says Raz Cohen, who escaped the Nova Music Festival, “Then they murdered her. And then they raped her again.”

New report details ‘systematic’ rape and sexual violence during Hamas’ Oct 7 attack on Israel. Seen here is an Israeli soldier patrolling the Nova Music Festival sites following the massacre. (Photo: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images)

Eden Wessely, who came to Nova to rescue a friend, found and filmed a naked, burned body. “Her dress was pulled up, and she wasn’t wearing underwear, not because it burned, because there was no trace. . . . Her legs were spread. Her genitals were exposed.” Was it the same image I saw?

“There were horrific scenes, difficult to take in,” said Eden Wessely who saw  “hundreds of corpses, and a girl who had been raped and [her body] burned. Things that human eyes have difficulty looking at.”

Former hostages have spoken about the abuse they suffered in captivity. Guy Gilboa-Dalal spoke about how he was touched on his private parts and how his captor “wanted to make a porn movie with him.” Arbel Yehud testified to daily abuse.

Keith Siegel, a 66-year-old grandfather who was taken from Kibbutz Kfar Aza along with his wife Aviva, 65, testified that he was made to undress in front of a terrorist who then shaved his pubic hair and made comments about his penis.

Former hostage Aviva Siegel seen here speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer reveals in the Civil Commission Report how she was nearly executed after she comforted a young girl who was sexually assaulted in captivity.

Aviva Siegel spoke about how she was nearly executed after she comforted a young girl who was sexually assaulted in captivity. Siegel recalled telling young girls to take feminine products with them to the bathroom so that if their captors thought they were on their period, they would not abuse them.

A male says he was gang-raped at the Nova site, providing medical records and a detailed account:

“They laughed, they were really pleased, as if I was their sex doll.”

The Commission also identified thirteen recurring patterns of sexual and gender-based violence repeated across multiple sites. They include a damning list of crimes:

*    Rape, gang rape, and other forms of sexual assault.

*    Sexual torture, including intentional burning and mutilation.

*    Deliberate shooting in the head, face and genital area.

*  Killings and executions following or committed during abuse.

* Postmortem sexual abuse, humiliation, and the desecration   of bodies, including cutting off body parts.

*   Forced nudity and exposure including to family members.

*   Handcuffing, binding, and restraint of victims.

*   Public displaying and parading of women and children. One such example is the parading of the body of Shani Louk, whose partially undressed and twisted limbs were paraded on a truck in Gaza while men spat at her.

*    Abduction of mothers and children.

*     Sexual violence in the presence or near vicinity of family members including Kinocide – the deliberate targeting and destruction of families as a weapon of war or terror, recognized as a distinct form of violence against humanity.

The graphic image by freelance AP photojournalist Ali Mahmoud depicts 22-year-old Shani Louk’s half-naked body being taken by Hamas terrorists on October 7. The Jewish Chronicle has blurred her image. (Photo: Ali Mahmoud)

*   Filming and digital dissemination by the perpetrators including the use of social media to document, glorify, and amplify the atrocities.

*    Threats of forced marriage.

*   Rape and other forms of sexual violence against boys and men.

President Herzog released a statement on social media platform X on behalf of his wife, Michal, who said:

 “We must continue to amplify around the world the voices of the victims of sexual violence committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7th and thereafter.”

 Mrs. Herzog commended the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes against Women and Children “for their dedicated research and tireless work, resulting in the publication of an important new report that once again gives voice to the victims.”

The victims and survivors of these most evil of crimes will no longer be silenced by those who deny, downplay and justify the atrocities committed by Hamas. Please do not look away. As unbearable as the testimonies are to read and hear, we must bear witness. We have a moral duty to be their voices. Silence is a second violation.





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).

STAGGERING STATS

How do young Brits who display poor understanding of their own history, emerge so ‘knowledgeable’ about Jews – enough to hate them?

By David E. Kaplan

I was stunned!  Why?

VE (Victory in Europe) Day falls Friday, 8 May 2026. It commemorates the end of WWII in Europe in 1945, and is marked by community commemorations and events that traditionally include a parade starting at Parliament Square around 12:00 PM and a fly-past over Buckingham Palace at 1:45 PM.

So, on the Tuesday preceding this proud national celebration of the downfall of Nazism in Europe, while watching the British news channels, I sat in disbelief as one young adult after another   – the so-called Gen Z – was randomly asked in a national poll in cities across the UK the question:

“What does VE Day represent?”

Most were clueless!

While all polled were well-spoken and seemingly well “educated”, it was nevertheless a question that had most of them stumped.

Many guessed and most wrongly. One confused Gen Z Londoner claimed it was “basically the red poppy day.”

The Day Young Brits Forgot. GB News interviewing Gen-Z Britons on whether they knew what VE Day is.

Even more telling was the way they treated the question as having little to no meaningful relevance in their lives. The sacrifice made by their grandparent’s generation hardly resonated.

Back in the studio, the two news co-anchors at GB News as well as those they had on as panelists – albeit of an older generation than those polled – sat distressed and asked themselves:

“How has our education system failed us?”

Britain’s “Greatest Generation” seemed forgotten by today’s generation.

All this follows a 2026 poll conducted by the Royal British Veterans Enterprise (RBVE) and Opinium, revealing a significant portion of younger generations unaware of what ‘VE Day’ represents. The survey foundthat:

“…two-thirds (66%) of Gen Z adults in the UK do not know that VE Day marks the end of the Second World War in Europe.”

Sad Situation. A survey by the Royal British Veterans Enterprise (RBVE) found that while 63% of UK adults know VE Day marks the end of the Second World War, only 34% of Gen Z do. The poll also showed that although 80% consider VE Day important to British identity, fewer than a quarter believe younger generations truly grasp veterans’ experiences. (Photo: The Independent) 

I though as I sat and processed this ignorance, never mind 26-year-old Brits but 6-year-old Israelis know of Yom HaZicharon (Day of Remembrance) commemorating all those killed in defense of the State of Israel or were killed in acts of terror as well as Yom HaShoah, (Holocaust Remembrance Day) commemorating the murder of 6 million Jews during the Nazi Holocaust.  Israelis of all ages know their history. They cannot afford the luxury of not knowing.

Cultural Amnesia. After this Gen Z interviewee was corrected thinking VE Day is “an anniversary of the First World War?” she then argued: “I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily the most important lost knowledge, but in terms of being aware of past conflicts in order to prevent future ones is probably a good thing. But how is it celebrated; I don’t know…”

All this begs the question:

With a shallow understanding of their OWN history as revealed in the recent poll, how is it that Britain’s Gen Z seem to feel sufficiently informed on the history of the Middle East to take to the street with such collective aggression against the Jewish state?

Is it feasible to believe that those who are ignorant of what  VE Day stands for truly understand the meaning and implications of the banners they hold up, such as “Globalize the Intifada”, “Zionism is Racism”, “Death to the IDF” and “From the River to the sea”.  

Other statistics are no less disturbing. This  past May, a poll conducted by ‘More in Common’ for the Jewish News found that 40% of British voters surveyed agreed that Britain would be “neither better nor worse off” if Jews left the country.

Clueless. “I don’t know what it is and I’m Gen Z. What is it?” replied this young woman to the question ‘What is VE Day?’

Released in the wake of a string of violent antisemitic attacks, the polling found that only 32% of those surveyed believed Britain would be “much worse off” if Jews left. This concerning metric on the state of antisemitism in the UK should come as no surprise following a March poll conducted by the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) that revealed that one in five (20%) university students in the UK would be reluctant to, or would never, share a house with a Jewish student. The survey, published on March 16, 2026, and conducted by JL Partners, surveyed 1,000 students across 170 institutions between late January and early February 2026 and painted a picture of “normalized” antisemitism on UK campuses.

Revolting Reversal. While their grandparents and great-grandparents might have fought against those that mass murdered Jews, these youngsters today support those who massacre Jews. Protesters outside King’s College London in London on October 7, 2025, the second anniversary of the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel. (Photo: Justin Tallis/ AFP)

The survey further revealed that nearly one in four respondents (23%) have seen behavior that targets Jewish students for their religion or ethnicity, while almost four in 10 (39%) who “witness regular Israel-Palestine protests” have seen frequent harassment of Jewish students.

In addition, close to half polled heard chants or slogans “glorifying Hamas, Hezbollah or other proscribed groups on campus” (49%) or seen justification of the October 7, 2023, massive massacre of Jews orchestrated by Hamas (47%).

With attack on Jews and their property in the UK reaching “unprecedented” levels, Prime Minister Starmer said in a televised address to the nation:

“People are scared, scared to show who they are in their community, scared to go to synagogue and practice their religion, scared to go to university as a Jew, to send their children to school as a Jew, to tell their colleagues that they are Jewish, even to use our NHS. Nobody should live like that in Britain, but Jews do.”

Is it any wonder  in a survey conducted by Campaign Against Antisemitism in late 2025 found that a majority of British Jews (61%) had considered leaving the UK over the previous two years due to rising antisemitism.

Jews in the UK – An Endangered Species. People attend a rally organized by Campaign Against Antisemitism opposite Downing Street in central London on April 30, 2026. (Photo: Carlos Jasso—Getty Images)

As I write, news comes through of a “Stamford hill Antisemitic Incident” where a male suspect onboard a London bus threatened Jewish passengers, shouting “Shame Hitler didn’t kill you” and “You should all go in the gas chambers”, while making threats to kill Jewish children and claiming to have a knife.

As this May 8 on VE Day when millions of Britons will commemorate those who identified and stood against the forces of evil, one wonders what the people of that generation would think of today’s generation when  Jews today are still not safe  – not from Nazis but from residents of Britain!








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 OLDEST HATRED IS BACK, AND I AM ABSOLUTELY DONE WITH THIS SHIT, GET ANGRY AND THEN GET ANGRIER

If the West cannot stand with its Jews when they are threatened, blamed and smeared with recycled blood libels, then we are dead as societies.

By Andrew Fox

I am done pulling punches. This will not be an easy read. Do not look away.

Fuck this. I am furious at the antisemitism pouring through the West, confident and shameless, and at those who know it is wrong, yet sit by and let it happen and say or do absolutely nothing.

View at burnt Ambulances in a car park at Golders Green in London, Monday, March 23, 2026, after an apparent arson attack on four vehicles belonging to a Jewish ambulance service, Hatzola Northwest, in London. (Photo: Alberto Pezzali/AP)

In Britain, we have already had Jews and their security guards stabbed to death. Jewish ambulances were set on fire. Now we have had multiple synagogue fire bombings in London. I woke this morning to a WhatsApp message from a Jewish friend I treasure, telling me about the latest atrocity against British Jews. I am sick of this. I am sickened by it, and I do not understand how anyone with any decency is not sickened too. Why are we not angrier?

Jewish people are being forced to answer, again, for every accusation, every fantasy, every blood libel hurled at the State of Israel. A Jewish student in London, Paris, New York or Melbourne is treated as if they sat in the Israeli war cabinet. A synagogue is treated as if it were a military installation. A kosher restaurant becomes a proxy battlefield. A Jewish child in a school uniform is expected to carry the moral weight of a war they did not start, a government they did not elect, and a region most of their accusers could not find on a map without help. It is grotesque. It is ancient hatred with new slogans. I am angry, and you should be too. If you are reading this, why the fuck are you not angrier?

A 45-year-old Muslim man goes on a rampage in Golders Green looking for Jews to stab. Antisemitism is being ‘normalised’ and not taken seriously enough, chief rabbi tells BBC. (Photo: Screen shot from BBC)

Holocaust survivors have told me in person that the atmosphere in Britain today is like 1930s Germany. Why will our leaders, our government, our legal system not listen to them? The Holocaust did not arrive fully formed. It started with demonisation, isolation and undeserved blame.

Wake. The. Fuck. Up.

The blood libels are back. They have just been laundered through the language of activism, human rights and moral urgency. Jews are again cast as uniquely cruel, uniquely conspiratorial, uniquely bloodthirsty. Israel is accused not merely of error, not merely of brutality, not merely of war, but of metaphysical evil. Every casualty is flattened into proof of Jewish depravity. Every complexity is erased. Every Hamas or Hezbollah or Iranian atrocity is contextualised into mist. Jewish grief is interrogated. Jewish fear is mocked. Jewish self-defence is treated as criminal.

The most sickening expression of this is the obscene inversion of the Holocaust in Gaza. Gaza is not the Holocaust. Gaza is not Auschwitz. Gaza is not Treblinka. Gaza is not the industrialised, continent-wide mechanical attempt to exterminate an entire people. Gaza is not the murder of six million people because they were Jews. Gaza is not children selected for gas chambers, families shot into pits, communities erased from Europe, nor names turned to ash. To compare the war in Gaza to the attempted extermination of the Jewish race is an obscene desecration. There is no parallel. None whatsoever.

April 14, 1945 – Pile of ashes and bones found by U.S. soldiers at Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany (Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library)

Civilian suffering in Gaza or Lebanon is simply a feature of war. It can be real without turning Jews into Nazis. War can be horrific without becoming the Shoah. Palestinians can be mourned without stealing the language of Jewish annihilation and weaponising it against Jews. The Holocaust is not a metaphor for anyone’s rhetorical convenience. It was a specific crime, committed against a specific people, at a specific scale, with a specific ideological purpose: the eradication of Jews from the earth. To invert it against Jews now is morally obscene.

Everyone in the West should stand with their Jewish neighbours. They should stand with Jews because Jews are being threatened, harassed, isolated and collectively blamed for the actions of a state. They should stand with Jews because history has already shown us where this road leads when decent people find a thousand elegant reasons to look away.

April 12, 1945 – Bodies of prisoners of Ohrdruf concentration camp stacked like cordwood (Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library)

Silence is permission. When Jewish schools need guards, when students hide Stars of David, when families wonder whether it is safe to walk to synagogue, and when mobs chant slogans that make Jews feel hunted in the cities they call home, when Jewish ambulances and places of worship are being firebombed, the moral test is not complicated. Stand with Jews, or admit that your principles are worth piss in the wind.

The absence of solidarity is a stain. The refusal to name antisemitism because it wears a fashionable political mask is a stain. The cowardice of institutions, politicians, universities and cultural figures who can identify every hatred except this one is a stain.

What the shuddering fuck are we doing, Britain? Why are we not angrier? Why are we not forming human shields around our Jewish community? Our grandparents fought a global war so that this could never happen again. It is literally happening again, and we are standing by and doing absolutely fucking nothing.

I am angry because Jews should not have to beg for support. Jews should not feel they have to thank someone merely for showing solidarity with them. I am raging because “Never Again” has become a slogan people applaud, yet it fails when courage is demanded. I am angry because standing by Jews is the only right option, and too many otherwise good, decent people are choosing silence, disregard or antipathy.

Look: I cannot say this anymore simply. Once they are done with the Jews, they are coming for you, too. Get fucking angry before it is too late, if not for the Jews, then for yourselves and your children.



About the writer:

A veteran of three grueling tours of Afghanistan, Major Andrew Fox holds a Batchelor’s degree in Law & Politics, a Master’s in Military History & War Studies, Msc in Psychology and is currently studying for a PhD in History.






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).

KNOW YOUR FRIENDS – AND YOUR ENEMIES

How oil money has corrupted the world

By Neville Berman

The tiny mountain pine beetle has the ability to dig into a tree and then mate and quickly multiply. Once this takes place, a slow steady process of hollowing out the tree from within begins. This hollowing out prevents the nutrients derived from the roots of the tree from reaching the branches and leaves of the tree. In time the tree withers and finally dies. These tiny beetles, measuring the size of a grain of rice, are able to infect entire forests. Thousands of acres of healthy forests have been destroyed by these tiny beetles. The above is a metaphor for what is currently taking place in the liberal Western world.

The Killer Within. Its small and does not look like a killer but an invasion of pine beetles can over time devastate forests from within. (Photo: IStock/Getty Images)

The world runs on oil and gas. A staggering amount of over 102 million barrels of oil are consumed daily. Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) is natural gas cooled to minus 162 Celsius. This reduces the volume to a fraction of its original volume. Both oil and LNG can be transported in pipelines and specially constructed ships and tanker trucks across the world. LNG can be used to produce electricity with a lower carbon footprint than using coal. Currently LNG consumption exceeds 4.2 billion cubic meters per year. French President Charles de Gaulle stated that countries do not have friends, countries have interests. The world clearly has important interests in maintaining its relationship with the major oil and gas exporting countries in the Middle East. Common values of democracy, and all the rights and freedoms that are the basis of the liberal Western world are mutually exclusive to interests.

Whether these oil or gas exporting countries are democracies, dictatorships, or autocracies is irrelevant. Whether they practice the rule of law, have human rights, freedom of religion, a free press, women’s rights, gay rights or any other rights that seem so important to the liberal Western world, is immaterial if they export oil and gas. Western liberal principles are simply ignored when vital interests are at stake. The bottom line is that money makes the world go round, and oil and gas are mega money earners.

What is happening is that the major oil exporting countries and the oil traders are colluding to limit the supply of oil in order to raise the price and increase their profits. No other commodity has the huge profit margins of oil and gas. The vast bulk of oil consumed in America is produced in America. The cost of producing oil in America has not risen as a result of the war in Iran. What has risen is the selling price of oil at the pump. America and the world have been hoodwinked by the greed of the oil industry. At the same time that the majority of countries in the world are going into massive debt, the oil and gas exporting countries are rolling in money. According to a report by the World Bank, total government debt in 2025, reached a record $324 trillion. The situation is unsustainable. The question that now arises is what are the incredibly wealthy oil exporting countries in the Middle East doing with their wealth? 

Saudi Arabia has been run for over a century by one family. The present King is Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. He is the last surviving son of Abdulaziz who founded the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. King Salman is over 80 years old and is not well. He has appointed one of his sons, Muhammed bin Salman known as MBS as the de-facto ruler of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has a Public Investment Fund with nearly a trillion dollars under its management and control. For decades Saudi Arabia has been fully funding the construction and running costs of mega Mosques across the western world. The Imans in these Mosques are hand picked to promote the conservative, fundamentalist form of Sunni Islam that is practiced in Saudi Arabia. Subjugation to sharia law and gender separation has been promoted in the West. The Saudi appointed Imans in these mega Mosques have radicalized tens of thousands of their followers living in the West to oppose western values and culture. They should not be viewed as friends of the West.

Deliberately Designed. A mosque in the Diyanet Center of America outside Washington, D.C. For several decades, Saudi Arabia has extensively funded the construction and operational costs of mosques, Islamic centers, and schools throughout the Western world. Totaling billions of dollars in oil revenue, these investments have been part of a deliberate, long-term policy to promote a conservative form of Islam known as Wahhabism or Salafism globally. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Qatar is a peninsula in the Arabian Gulf with a border in the south with Saudi Arabia. Approximately 320,000 of its 3 million population are Qatari citizens. Since its inception in the 19th century, Qatar has been ruled by one family known as the House of Thani. The current Emir is Sheik Tamin bin Hamad Al Thani who has ruled Qatar since June 25, 2013.  Qatar is an absolute monarchy where the Emir is the head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces. Qatar is a major exporter of LNG and is enormously wealthy.  

Qatar is playing a double game in pretending to be a friend of the West, while it is actively promoting chaos and the destruction of the West. Qatar is a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood that aims to subjugate the entire world to Islamic rule and Sharia law. The billionaire leaders of Hamas, who embezzled all their wealth from the people in Gaza, and helped plan the atrocities committed by Hamas, are living a luxury life with their families in Qatar. Hamas is a designated terrorist entity and anyone hosting and protecting their leaders is obviously not promoting peace in the world.

Qatar is fully funding the TV station known as Al-Jazeera. It has over 3,000 employees and reporters. It reports 24/7 to over 430 million viewers around the world in both Arabic and English. Al Jazeera reaches millions of people in the world who are illiterate and soak up the anti-Israel and anti-western rhetorical nature of the reporters. No other TV channel has the resources that Al Jazeera has. It has radicalized millions of its listeners to become active protestors against America and Israel. There is no doubt that Al Jazeera has promoted and spread militant Islam across the world.

Penetration and Propaganda. Al Jazeera, founded in 1996 in Doha, Qatar, has functioned as a powerful but controversial tool designed to project Qatari influence and provide an alternative Arab-centric perspective on global events. Its influence amplifies Muslim political identity and regional resistance movements to a global audience.
 

Qatar has spent billions of dollars financing Departments of Middle Eastern Studies at almost all the major universities in America. Only people with a proven anti-Israel and anti-Western philosophical world outlook are hired to become professors and lecturers in these departments. The intention of Qatar is to promote an anti-Western mindset in the students who will most likely become future leaders of America. Qatar is buying properties, sports clubs, businesses and making investments that aim at gaining influence amongst the decision makers of the West. With its vast wealth, Qatar has corrupted many of the institutions that are vital to running the world. All of Qatar’s actions are intended to promote the rise of Islamic values in the West and are in direct opposition to liberal Western values.

America maintains approximately 10,000 military personnel at the Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar.  The base serves as the forward headquarters of the United States Central Command known as CENTCOM. In effect Qatar operates under American protection while at the same time it is spending billions of dollars trying to undermine America. One family that controls a country with 320,000 citizens has been able to use its money to undermine and corrupt the entire liberal West. Despite its tiny size, Qatar is a major threat to the Western world. 

How Qatar Bought American Higher Education

In the 7th century, the Prophet Mohammad entered into a 10-year ceasefire with the Quraish tribe who controlled Mecca. It was known as a hudna. Two years later. A re-armed Mohammad attacked and took control of Mecca.

The current war with Iran started in 1979 when Iran became an Islamic Republic. “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” became their official policy. The Iranian regime has squandered billions of dollars on trying to eliminate Israel. The Iranian policy is clear. First conquer the Saturday people, then subjugate the Sunday people.    

Iran has used its vast wealth to export terrorism across the world. They have used proxies to bring death and destruction wherever they can. They have armed and financed proxy terrorist entities in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and have tried to incite the Palestinians to attack Israel.  In the last two months, they have attacked the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. They have attacked ships using the international waterway known as the Straits of Hormuz. They and their proxies have fired thousands of missiles at civilian targets. They have killed tens of thousands of their own citizens protesting against their policies. The regime and its proxies have broken international law left, right and center. Other than America and Israel, the world simply ignores their genocidal behavior.

Poison Ivy. The Qatari government sends billions of dollars to Ivy League American colleges yearly, forcing institutions to adapt and allow violent pro-Palestinian protests to thrive across the country. Seen here are U.S. Police at Cornell University following antisemitic incident. Qatar has become the largest foreign donor to U.S. universities, with over $6 billion in funding recorded since the 1980s and billions more in donations between 2001 and 2021. Photo: Getty Images)

For decades Iran has been saying that their nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes. If you believe that, then you are living in Lala land. If Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful, then they do not need to enrich uranium to levels that have no peaceful purposes. Iran is without doubt a serial liar.   

Tuition of Terror. Qatari money flows into U.S. universities fueling hate and violence against Jews. Straight out of the Nazi text book was this poster seen at Columbia University depicting all Israelis as skunks reminiscent of the reference to Jews as vermin.

Ever since the end of the Second World War, the concept of “unconditional surrender” has been removed from the lexicon of international affairs. What has happened is that rules of warfare now demand proportional responses. This policy does not end wars. What it does is perpetuate endless conflicts. Professor Alan Dershowitz jokes that America is building special F35 aircrafts for Israel with 3 seats for a pilot, a navigator and a lawyer.

In the last two months, America and Israel have massively reduced the capacity of Iran and its proxy terrorist organizations to wage war. Neither Iran, nor any of its proxies have surrendered or been defeated. Their leadership has been decimated, but they have not changed their intentions.  The world is now calling for a ceasefire with Iran. This is the hudna trap.

Exporter of Terror. Iran has long been designated as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, using its vast wealth — primarily from oil and petrochemical exports — to finance, arm, and train a network of proxy militant groups across the Middle East and beyond.

If sanctions on Iran are lifted, and the regime remains in power, then the regime will do exactly what Muhammad did. They will rearm and attack when they are ready.

The attack on America on September 11, 2001, was a pivotal moment in world affairs. The world was instantly divided into those that were horrified by what occurred, and those who celebrated the devastation. In the name of multiculturalism, diversity and equal opportunity the very people that cheered the attackers, have since been invited into the West and have become citizens. They have been financed and radicalized by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, and other oil rich Arab countries to promote chaos and to destabilize the Western world. They are using free speech and democracy to gain power and to destabilize the countries that they have immigrated to.

Militant Islam is now the greatest threat to the liberal Western way of life. Russia and China do not have tens of millions of supporters living in the West. On the other hand, there are already tens of millions of Islamists living in the west who see themselves as part of the army of Islam. They are well financed and organized and because of their numbers, they are playing a crucial role in democratic elections in the West. Aircraft carriers, nuclear powered submarines, missiles and drones cannot be used against them. In America they are totally protected by the American Constitution. There are elected members of congress who are Muslims who refuse to condemn the policy of “Death to America“. They and their followers are opposed to everything that made America into a superpower. Like the mountain pine beetle, they intend to hollow out America until it withers and dies. It is time for the West to recognize who its enemies are to stop treating them as allies. 



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).

SOUTH AFRICA’S ESTEEMED ONLINE ‘DAILY FRIEND’ IS NO FRIEND WHEN IT COMES TO DEFENDING DEMOCRACY

A discourse with the editor reveals failures and fears to take on Islamic fundamentalism.

By Lawrence Nowosenetz

The Daily Friend (DFr) is a publication of the South African Institute of Race Relations, a proud an distinguished organisation established almost 100 years ago which has always stood for promoting democracy, freedom and rule of law. In short, classical liberalism. 

In a recent text conversation with Michael Morris (MM) the editor of DFr I drew his attention to the statement of Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, head of Gift of the Givers who was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Cape Town.  This subject was the basis of an article by the writer:  University of Cape Town’s ultimate degradation – honouring Dr Sooliman (Lay of the Land 31 March 2026).

Dr Sooliman who is widely lauded as a great humanitarian expressed some extreme views which are quite irreconcilable with democracy and freedom. In a public interview on 7 October 2024, being the first anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, he said:

“I don’t follow international law or human law. I follow Koranic law. I am a Muslim. I don’t need any permission from anybody in the world to tell me what to do. I break the laws all the time. Breaking the law is laws of the West and people and governments. It’s not Islamic law. I follow Islamic law, and Islamic law overrides any other law. … I don’t have to follow any law. My law is very clear to me. Allah himself has instructed me. I don’t need men to tell me what to do. I don’t follow them.”

Islamic law is quite different to Western law in that whereas democracy separates the state and its legal authority from religion, Koranic law is theocratic and makes no such distinction. The supreme authority is a religious leader whose authority cannot be questioned or challenged by legal restraints.  Sharia, the legal framework of Koranic law does not protect individual rights as understood in liberal democracy. It is repressive and authoritarian. Women and homosexuals are oppressed and discriminated against. Apostacy is punishable by death.  Historically non-Muslims were given the status of Dhimmi in Muslim countries where they were treated as inferiors, had to pay a special tax and had to dress in a certain way to identify themselves as non-Muslims. This is where the Star of David attached to the clothing of Jews originated. These practices are no longer followed but indicate the fundamentalism of Sharia law. Today Iran and Afghanistan are examples of Islamist repressive authoritarian theocratic rule. 

Mr Morris was invited by the writer to express whether this statement of Dr Sooliman was in accordance with democracy and the rule of law in South Africa. He was not in agreement. He was not prepared to say that the statement of Dr Sooliman was a clear expression of rejection of South African law. His opposition to censuring Dr Sooliman for his adherence to a theocratic ideology and rejection of man-made law are worth examining in order to expose the serious flaws. At the outset Mr Morris endorses a dispassionate approach and in a spirit of enquiry, whether he lives up to that desirable standard is in doubt:   

MM: “The statement was short and cannot be taken on face value.  The true test of what he meant would be to interview Dr Sooliman to obtain clarity or provide further context.”

Michael Morris, editor at the Daily Friend.

There is a profound moral principal involved being that people are accountable for their deeds. Speech is included. More so when the statement is made publicly by a public figure such as Dr Sooliman. It is perfectly proper and widely practised to comment on face value of what prominent people say.  Importantly, although he made this statement in 2024, despite countless interviews he has given since then, he has never modified or repudiated a single word.   Strangely he has never been asked what he meant. No one seems to have misunderstood his message. His statement was sufficiently comprehensive to confirm that he rejects laws of man. His language is plain and unambiguous.   Shorter statements than his such as political slogans have traction and are usually well understood without any embellishment.      

MM: “It is unfair to single out the “fervent religiosity” used by Dr Sooliman as it is much like the views by Jewish and Christian fundamentalists who declare they owe fealty only to God and no other. There have been comments to this effect made by readers of the DFr.  Are they also subversive of the very values UCT should be safeguarding?”

There is a fundamental difference between the fundamentalist readers of DFr and Dr Sooliman. He is a public figure who received a high honour for his humanitarianism. This is unique and unprecedented. No leader, whether fundamentalist or otherwise has publicly rejected the law of South Africa in the democratic era. The last time that happened was during   Apartheid.

Islamism is radically different to any Jewish or Christian “fervent religiosity”. The ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, political Islam, which Dr Sooliman supports goes much further. It promotes using violence in the form of Jihad to establish domination and power in non-Muslim countries. Dr Sooliman, through Gift of the Givers made donations to Al Aqsa Foundation, an organisation forming part of the Union of Good, a coalition of Islamic charities supporting Hamas’ infrastructure, an organisation on the US State Department list of foreign terrorist organizations.  The chairman of Union of Good was Sheik Yusef Al-Qaradawi a high-ranking member of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2011, Dr Sooliman received an award from Sheik Yusef Al- Qaradawi for his service to Palestine.   Al-Qaradawi is known as the key figure in shaping the concept of violent jihad and the one who allowed carrying out terror attacks, including suicide bombing attacks, against Israeli citizens, the US forces in Iraq, and some of the Arab regimes. He was banned from entering some Western and Arab countries. A true humanitarian would have distanced himself from Al-Qaradawi as many Muslim leaders have done. 

Proud Lawbreaker Honored. Dr Imtiaz Sooliman who was honored at the University of Cape Town (UCT) by conferring on him an honorary doctorate for his humanitarianism, says , “I don’t follow international law or human law. I follow Koranic law. I am a Muslim. I don’t need any permission from anybody in the world to tell me what to do. I break the laws all the time.”

Certainly, no religious Jewish or Christian leader in South Africa has publicly defied democratic South African law in the name of religion. If indeed people of any faith have made similar public religious claims to Dr Sooliman, they ought to be wholly and immediately censured. Such statements violate the raison d’etre of democracy: The social contract which has underpinned liberal democracy for centuries. This is worthy of guarding by custodians of freedom such as The Daily Friend .    

MM: “Not only the Koran, but the Torah and Bible are not repositories of human rights either” 

At best a half truth. Indeed, there are parts of the Jewish and Christian Bible such as acceptance of slavery that are today abhorrent.  However, modern political notions of justice and individual liberty owe much to Jewish and Christian teachings, rather than the Koran. The US Constitution is a prime example of the influence of Christianity.  Koranic law places submission to Allah as a foundational value whereas the same cannot be said of Judaism and Christianity with regard to the relationship with God.  Judaism teaches a holy covenant and Christianity teaches love of God through Jesus Christ.  Islamic theocracy is inconsistent with the rule of the law of man.

MM: “Preserving liberty cannot be advanced by curbing liberty. Freedom of speech must be tolerated in order to counter intolerant ideas.”  

In principle, yes, subject to Popper below. There is no suggestion of curbing the freedom of speech of Dr Sooliman. His speech is however subject to censure. The  DFr  should be in the forefront of declaring Dr Sooliman’s statement inappropriate and in clear conflict with Western democracy and liberty.  Karl Popper, the renown Austrian-born British philosopher to whom I referred in our conversation, proposed the paradox of tolerance:

“We should therefore claim in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”  (My emphasis)

The Open Society and its Enemies Vol 1: K.R Popper (Routlege 1966) p 211 

Dr Sooliman’s statement has not reached the criminal level but his Islamist theocratic views are clearly on the trajectory of intolerance.  To repeat: He should be censured, not prevented from expressing himself freely.  The South African Constitution itself recognises limitations to basic rights. Section 36 provides that the Bill of Rights “for limitation to the extent that it is reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society based on human dignity equality and freedom …”  There is no room for repressive Sharia authority in South African law. 

MM: “Confronting him with semi-facts, innuendo, guilt by association and so on, only risks making him seem strong and you seem weak.” 

A somewhat vague, personal and unsubstantiated remark unworthy of dispassionate discourse. The confrontation is based on the ipse dixit (exact words) of Dr Sooliman. There is nothing semi factual or innuendo (suggestion).  His Islamist Muslim Brotherhood affiliations are on public record and indeed his own biography makes that plain. It is the duty of responsible people to call out dangers to democracy – no contest of strength is involved. Just accurate and reasonable analysis to enlighten and inform. 

MM: “The meaning given to Dr Sooliman’s statement by the writer was convenient to his preconceptions.” 

This is an ad hominem, personal and unsupported attack on the objectivity and the careful, fact-based assessment by the writer.  The ideological background of Dr Sooliman is well documented and this includes beyond any question his adherence to the Muslim Brotherhood teachings as well as his support of Hamas. These are not preconceptions or subjective opinions of the writer but well documented background history on the worldview and political stance of Dr Sooliman. No reasonable person can conclude otherwise. 

IN CONCLUSION

On 27 October 2025 Dr Sooliman declared to certain UCT interested parties:

“… to threaten your students and your university because you’re acting on the base of Israel. I think you should be stripped of your citizenship and thrown out of the country.”

An illiberal proposal which raises serious problems not merely because of its injustice and unconstitutionality, but also because it would require man-made law and enforcement to put into effect. The same legal structure Dr Sooliman says he does not need. It also is problematic because it is intrinsically anti- humanitarian and in violation of basic human rights.  It does not behove a person who is bestowed with a prestigious honour for his services to society to make such dishonourable remarks. 

Fortunately, South Africa has principled leaders prepared to speak out in upholding democracy. Recently convicted and sentenced EFF political leader Julius Malema made threatening and disparaging remarks about the prosecution and judiciary. This too cannot be tolerated.

“At a time when South Africa continues to confront significant challenges within its criminal justice system, it is important that leaders act responsibly and uphold the institutions designed to protect citizens. Accountability must be accepted with dignity, and disagreements must be addressed within the framework of the law. The rule of law is not negotiable. It is the foundation upon which our democracy stands. Undermining it, through reckless and unfounded attacks on the Judiciary, places that foundation at risk, and with it, the rights and freedoms of all South Africans.

Statement issued by Adv. Glynnis Breytenbach MP, DA Spokesperson on Justice and Constitutional Development, 17 April 2026.    

It is troubling that an editor should go such lengths to find contrived and disingenuous arguments to evade the pressing and unavoidable reality that Dr Sooliman holds very hostile views on Western democracy and the rule of law which stand uncontradicted. The Daily Friend should protect freedom of expression by publishing the comments made by the writer about the views of Dr Sooliman as they are central to protection of democracy. At the very least, freedom of speech demands a frank and open publication of the concerns raised, no matter how unreasonable or disagreeable these are to Mr Morris.  The loser in stifling this crucial examination of Dr Sooliman’s language is the hard fought South African liberal democracy itself.



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 Hight 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).

BATTLE FOR THE LEGACY AND SOUL OF FAMED SOUTH AFRICAN JEWISH FAMILY FUND

Concerned directors, who are family members, have  taken three fellow directors of the Mauerberger Foundation Fund (MFF) to court for alleged serious breach of fiduciary duty, deliberate deception and mismanagement.

By Marika Sboros

(Courtesy of BizNews where article first appeared)

In the quiet, wood-panelled world of South African philanthropy, the Mauerberger Foundation Fund (MFF) has long stood as a bastion of generational legacy and social justice.

That is set to change with an explosive, urgent filing in the Western Cape High Court on April 13, 2026, against three of the MFF’s five directors, including MFF Board Chair and Managing Director Dianna Yach, granddaughter of the Fund’s industrialist-philanthropist founder Morris Mauerberger.


Devious Directors? Legendary  Jewish philanthropist, Morris Mauerberger, established the Mauerberger Foundation Fund in 1936 to support a multitude of causes in Israel, mostly in education. His granddaughter, Dianna Yach, is one of three directors who may be undermining the family legacy, according to court papers.
 

The applicants are two of the MFF’s directors: Yach’s cousin, Steven Levy, a businessman and the Board’s longest-serving director, and her brother, Dr Derek Yach, a US-based medical doctor, public health specialist and World Health Organisation (WHO) veteran.

The interim relief the applicants seek, pending the final determination of the court proceedings, is Dianna Yach’s immediate suspension from the MFF Board, along with fellow directors Igshaan Higgins and Prof Brian Figaji. 

Higgins is an attorney and a director of De Klerk en Van Gend Incorporated. He is also founder-curator-director of the Cape Heritage Museum (also called the Cape Muslim and Slave Heritage Museum) that receives generous MFF funding.

Figaji is an engineer and Chancellor of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), has served on the UNESCO Executive Board and chaired the South African National Commission for UNESCO. He is Chair of the fishing company, I&J, a trustee of the WWF Nedbank Green Trust and Chair of the Abe Bailey Trust. 

As CPUT Chancellor, Figaji serves an institution that receives MFF funding for the “Brian Figaji Scholarship for Women in Engineering”.

Crucially, among the final relief sought is for the court to declare Yach, Higgins and Figaji “delinquent directors“. 

Under South African law, the declaration can be a professional death sentence. A delinquent director is disqualified from holding a directorship in any company, from being the trustee of a Trust or bearing office in a non-profit organisation (NPO) for at least seven years. 

In some cases, the declaration is for life. That legal “nuclear option” is reserved for those found guilty of gross abuse of position, wilful misconduct or a total breach of fiduciary trust. It brands them as a permanent threat to the public interest.

A leading precedent is the Pretoria High Court case of Dudu Myeni, former Chair of the South African Airways Board. She was declared a delinquent director for life in 2020 after a relentless legal challenge by OUTA (Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse), a civil-action NPO dedicated to challenging the abuse of authority and misappropriation of public funds. The order led to Myeni’s personal financial ruin. OUTA successfully pursued punitive legal costs against her personally, moving for sequestration when she failed to pay. 

In the present case, Kumesh Moodley, attorney for the applicants, says that an application to have directors declared delinquent under section 162 of the Companies Act is “a step of the most serious consequence.” His clients have not taken this action lightly or prematurely.

“They have taken it now because their evidence before the Court, and the gravity of what is at stake for the MFF and its beneficiaries, dictate that it is not a step open to them to avoid,” Moodley says.

“It is a step they are obliged to take in discharging their fiduciary duties as directors.”

For Figaji, these court proceedings are not the first relating to how he carries out his fiduciary duties. In the 2020 High Court case involving Marib Holdings (the Chapman’s Peak tollgate operator), valid legal grounds were proven for shareholders to sue Figaji and two fellow directors for a potential breach of fiduciary duties.  The court record established that the directors bypassed the Companies Act by paying themselves just over R2-million in fees in the 2017 financial year, without the required shareholder approval, leading the judge to rule that their actions must face legal scrutiny. Their attempt to use the Court to block a shareholder’s quest for accountability was unsuccessful. 

At the core of their application, Levy and Derek Yach’s extensive court filing of over 1100 pages is a battle for the legacy and soul of the institution that Mauerberger created in the late 1930s.


Seeking Suspension. Global health expert and WHO veteran, Dr. Derek Yach (above), a grandson of Morris Mauerberger, is one of two applicants who have applied to the Western Cape High Court for the immediate suspension from the MFF board of his sister, Dianna Yach, and fellow directors Igshaan Higgins and Prof Brian Figaji. 
 

The MFF has funded community-based and academic institutions in South Africa, Israel and the West Bank in education, health and alleviation of poverty for more than 80 years.

The applicants claim that Dianna Yach has effectively seized control of and laid “siege” to the MFF, turning it into a personal “fiefdom”. They say it is one where compliance, procedure and corporate governance have been rendered relics of the past. 

No fewer than nine formal complaints have been made against her, Higgins and Figaji for breaches of the Companies Act and conduct inconsistent with the overriding duty to act in the MFF’s best interests. 

Levy and Derek Yach allege a deliberate, systematic “governance collapse” and “methodology of financial misrepresentation” behind more than 11 years of constitutional non-compliance with the MFF MOI (Memorandum of Incorporation).

The MOI records Mauerberger’s express wishes. It imposes a mandatory distribution regime requiring 50% of annual, distributable income to be allocated to Israeli entities, 25% to South African Jewish entities and 25% to South African non-Jewish entities. 

Despite this prerequisite, from 2014 the Israeli allocations were skewed, declining as low as 4% in 2017; 6% in 2021; 7% in 2022 and 5% in 2023. In 2024, Israeli beneficiaries made up 10% of total donations, which were just under R15- million. 

The applicants argue that the MFF lost its primary “moderating influence” in a matter of days when two experienced directors walked away in early 2025.

The papers reveal that brother Jonathan Yach resigned as a director with immediate effect on December 25, 2024, after 23 years of service. He stated that “recent events” had fundamentally challenged his perspective on how to best serve the MFF.


Resignation challenges. Court papers reveal that  Jonathan Yach, brother of Dianna Yach, resigned as an MFF director in 2024, after 23 years of service citing challenging “recent events”.  Jonathan is seen above as at an award ceremony at the Technion in Haifa in June 2019, as a trustee of the MFF Research Award for Transformative Technologies for Africa. The MFF  prize aims to strengthen academic ties and the exchange of ideas between researchers in Israel and Africa to “harness new technologies for the benefit of humanity.” (Photo: Technion Spokesperson)

On January 3, 2025, independent director Adv Joe van Dorsten, a renowned author and tax law and Companies Act expert, resigned in direct response to Dianna Yach’s “personal criticism” and declaration that she had “lost trust” in him after he raised reasoned governance concerns about boardroom transparency.

The applicants allege that the resignations were not just administrative exits. They were the first documented casualties of a clear pattern where independent directors who dare to challenge the Chair are not heard but are instead driven out.

With these two directors out, Higgins, who sits on the UCT Law Clinic Advisory Board with Yach, was appointed to the Board.

In this way, court papers say that Yach formed a majority “voting bloc” with Higgins and Figaji that marginalised dissenting voices and insulated her conduct from any form of meaningful oversight. 

The MFF’s departure far from the MOI’s legacy path and non-compliance deepened, the applicants claim. 

They note that Figaji conceded in August 2025 that funding allocations were non-compliant with the MOI. He proposed returning the MFF to compliant status by 2028.  Yach and Higgins promptly supported and accepted the proposal. 

The applicants refer to this roadmap of “deliberate deviation” as a “programme of continued non-compliance, dressed in the language of gradualism.”  In contrast, Levy had proposed “a path to immediate restoration of the Founder’s wishes”.

They claim further that Yach has routinely ignored MOI’s mandates through “creative accounting” designed to provide a false appearance of constitutional compliance.

One example is the “intentional” miscategorisation of a controversial R1-million MFF donation in September 2025 to Gift of the Givers charity as an allocation to an Israeli beneficiary.  

Perhaps the single most explosive evidence in the filings is what the applicants call the “Ghost Email” fabrication. It marked the transition from a messy boardroom brawl to an alleged scandal of documented instances of fabrication, fraud and fundamental dishonesty. 

It was set off, according to court papers, by a relatively large R600,000 MFF grant allocated in the 2025/2026 budget to Higgins’s Cape Heritage Museum. 

The applicants see this funding as a suspicious 500% increase in just five years, starting from R100,000 in 2021. Similarly, they see Higgins voting on his own 2025/2026 grants for his museum without disclosing his personal interest as breaching the Companies Act.

When Levy tried to act as a proper fiduciary by requesting a “Verification Register” to assess whether the grant was properly considered and to assess compliance and risk indicators, he says Yach responded dismissively. She apparently contended that non-executive directors are not entitled to that information and went so far as to invite Levy to resign and Higgins backed her up.

The message to directors appeared clear, say the applicants:

Stop asking questions or resign; either way, you are not getting the information you seek. 

Court papers present a digital forensics analysis showing that Higgins drafted a Board letter to block Levy’s attempted oversight of his own museum and sent it to Yach only, allowing her to pass it off on March 6, 2026, as her independent decision.

This effectively exposed the “Ghost Email” ruse, the applicants say, when she dispatched the complex document after a physically “improbable” 16-minute window. 

Perhaps most damning was Yach’s apparently simple oversight: in the rush, she failed to delete remnants of Higgins’s professional law-firm signature before firing the email off to the full Board.

It became a digital “smoking gun”.

By adopting the grantee’s objection as her executive decision, the applicants say Yach transformed “from the guardian of the grantor’s interests into the protector of the grantee’s interests.”

They see this as a pattern of “betrayal of office of the most extreme and gravest form.” 

They raised a separate event on March 31, 2026, supported by metadata establishing that Figaji used his personal computer to draft a resolution to appoint himself as MFF Vice-Chairperson. Yach then circulated it as her own proposal and later dismisses this misrepresentation as “procedural minutiae”.

Metadata show that this document was created just 55 seconds apart from a retaliatory disciplinary resolution against Levy. The applicants say this aimed to obstruct Levy’s attempts to access grantee funding information.

They say that Figaji officially recorded his vote in favour of his own appointment on April 1, 2026, without disclosing his authorship to the Board. On April 8, Yach announced Figaji’s “election” as Vice Chair of the MFF Board.

The applicants contend that this appointment is invalid and carries no authority as the resolution behind it was “clandestinely” engineered by the very person who stood to benefit from it. 

They see this as a “self-serving” breach of fiduciary duty designed to ensure that a “sympathetic successor” remained in power should the High Court suspend Yach as Chair. 

Levy and Derek Yach say these events involve different directors and dates but are linked by a single “modus operandi of concealment”. They say Figaji’s actions reinforced the bloc’s “retaliatory and self-serving character,” mimicking the “covert collaboration” that the “Ghost Email” exposed. 

Under the grandfather’s glare. With Morris Mauerberger’s bust looking on, his granddaughter, MFF chairperson Dianna Yach, presents a R1-million donation to Gift of the Givers CEO Dr Imtiaz Sooliman, who allegedly aligns with extremist Islamist jihadist forces that seek Israel’s destruction. 

Evidence of multiple attempts by both applicants to gain access to information on funding decisions over the years supports their contention of an incriminating “wall of silence”, which the respondents constructed.

They argue that “where three directors of a charitable foundation collectively refuse to engage with questions about the application of that foundation’s funds, the inference is that engagement would expose what silence is designed to conceal.”

Court papers note Dianna Yach’s unilateral suspension of the MFF’s decades-long commitment to funding Telfed, South African Zionist Federation (Israel) in March 2021. 

Telfed has long served as “a bridge between the Southern African Jewish diaspora and Israel, supporting immigrants (olim) and fostering the educational, cultural, and communal ties that bind (Jewish) communities across continents,” CEO Dorron Kline writes in a letter to MFF directors in March 2026.

When Kline engaged her at a donor gathering in Cape Town in March 2025 and raised the possibility of resuming Telfed’s relationship with the MFF, he recalls her conveying the following sentiment: 

“Israel’s reaction to the Hamas 7th October (2023) atrocity is outrageously disproportionate. Israel is clearly committing genocide. Therefore, Israel has lost its right to call itself a nation amongst other nations. There is no reason for Telfed to approach the Mauerberger Foundation for funding until the Israeli government ceases to kill innocents and agrees to the establishment of a Palestinian State.” 

The applicants see this as Yach’s pattern of holding the MFF hostage to her personal political beliefs with impunity. 

Initial court filings create an overwhelming impression of the respondents transforming the MFF Board into a virtuoso performance of “musical hats“. It is brimming with conflicts of interest, allowing them to rotate seamlessly at will into donors, recipients and “independent” auditors of their own self-advancement. 

Yach’s dual role as both MFF Chair and MD makes her the Foundation’s only paid employee. This allows her to control oversight of her own executive conduct, the applicants note. 

This structural conflict is mirrored in her senior governance roles at the University of Cape Town (UCT), where she sits on its Council as one of two representatives elected by donors, and chairs the HR and other committees. 

Court papers show that UCT has become a primary beneficiary of “over-allocations” while Israeli funding has been systematically slashed. In 2023, for example, UCT received R3.8-million from the MFF, while the mandatory Israeli allocation was a mere R600,000. 

Critically, Yach voted in favour of academic boycotts against Israeli institutions at UCT as part of the “Gaza resolutions”. She then deposed to a sworn affidavit in the ongoing Mendelsohn lawsuit against the university, explicitly using her title as “Chair of the Mauerberger Foundation Fund” to support this political stance without Board authorisation or notification, the applicants allege.

In this intricate web of entanglements, the applicants say that Yach has advocated for boycotting the very beneficiaries MFF is constitutionally mandated to fund, while her colleagues moonlight as clandestine ghostwriters of their own grants and vice-chair appointments. 

As the matter heads to the High Court on May 4, 2026, the question remains:

Can a foundation survive when its “proper channels” are “actively barricaded by the very individuals who would later insist, with indignation, that those channels should have been used”?

The applicants are family but their filing is clearly not the fruits of a family squabble. They see it as their duty as fiduciaries to ensure that their grandfather’s legacy is preserved and that its beneficiaries’ work in South Africa and Israel continues to thrive with MFF support.

If the court finds that Dianna Yach, Higgins and Figaji have used “ghost” channels to govern and wilfully breach their fiduciary duties, the MFF may finally be forced to course-correct. 

*Dianna Yach, Brian Figaji and Igshaan Higgins were emailed for comment.

Yach replied by return email:

“I will not respond to any of the averments that you make at this time. I will request my lawyers to respond to you in due course, and only once the matter that you have referred to has been called in open court on 4 May 2026.”

Figaji and Higgins did not reply. 

All have since filed a notice of intention to oppose the application. They have until April 30, 2026 to submit answering affidavits. 



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.






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 HOUSE THAT ZIONISM BUILT

The Nation that roars like lions is powered by Zionism

By Rolene Marks

“And who is like your people Israel, the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem and be a people for himself, and to make a name for himself, and doing for them great and awesome things for your land, before your people whom you redeemed to yourself from Egypt, from the nations and their gods?” Samuel 7:23

Maligned, demonized, misunderstood, bastardised and used as a pejorative, the word Zionism has become another “ism”. Simply put, Zionism is the Jewish right to self-determination in our ancient homeland, Israel and the right of the modern state to exist. You don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist and as antizionism, the latest iteration of the ancient hatred of antisemitism soars, I want to take a moment to celebrate the country that we have built. A nation is built by people and Israel’s people are nothing less than extraordinary. These past two years have been a lesson in heroism.

This is the house that Zionism built. The ordinary people who have become the heroes of story.

Holding-Off Hamas. South African born Cpt. Daniel Perez, 22, (left) a platoon commander in the 7th Armored Brigade’s 77th Battalion and his tank crew fought for hours against the Hamas invasion of the Nahal Oz IDF outpost until Daniel was killed alongside Sgt. Tomer Leibovitz and Staff Sgt. Itay Chen. Daniel’s weapon (right) was found in a booby-trapped compound in the northern Gaza Strip. (Photo: IDF Spokesman’s Unit)

I watched former hostage, Matan Angrest, pale faced and frail, stand before the grieving family of his late commander, Cpt. Daniel Perez (z”l), and deliver a eulogy, stating his intention to walk beside them for the rest of his life. Angrest spoke of his willingness to go back into Gaza and retrieve the remains of Itay Chen (z”l), his fellow soldier from “Team Perez”. Chen’s remains were returned for burial in November 2025.  I watched this slight young man, barely 48 hours out of captivity, having difficulty standing but a superhuman strength to honour his captain. I was captivated by the integrity and sheer inner strength of this young man.  

I have watched the coverage of the funerals of soldiers and hostages laid to rest and the hundreds and sometimes thousands who line the routes and filled the cemeteries for someone they did not know personally, but knew and loved with their soul. I have also been to these funerals – and the pain of burying our finest sons and daughters cut down in their prime while defending our safety is a sorrow that cuts to the very core. Soldiers in Israel are the sum of us and when we refer to them as our sons and daughters, we mean it in the purest form.

I think of the almost superhero strength of hostage families who moved heaven and earth in every corner of the globe, to make sure that the world heard about and never forgot that their loved one in captivity was more than a picture on a poster – they were a universe. Some families got their loved ones back alive and can accompany them on their road to healing and recovery – but many, far too many, received their beloved to lay to rest. They are bound in the holy place reserved for the martyrs of our history.

Heroic Homecoming. First morning of freedom after returning from two years in Hamas captivity (seen here stepping out from the helicopter holding the Israeli flag), Matan Angrest said, “‘If it were up to me, I’d return to IDF service.”’ (Photo: IDF)

The women of this country are remarkable. They are every kind of wonder woman you could image. They are the ones who serve on the frontline and the ones who hold down the home front, who volunteer in every imaginable way. They are the wives, girlfriends, partners of soldiers, offering strength and support while our warriors defend and protect. The weight of responsibility that they carry on their shoulders is enormous and yet they are the unbreakable spine of our country. I think of women like Tali Hadad, a kindergarten teacher from Ofakim who rescued her wounded son and other victims amidst intense gunfire on 7 October or Rachel Goldberg-Polin, who in her fight to free her son, Hersh, from captivity inspired the world with her strength and humanity. Hersh was murdered along with 5 other hostages and the world, in turn, hold Rachel in her grief with love. These are just two examples of the many, many heroines.

A Mother’s Might. Anderson Cooper and Rachel Goldberg-Polin (CNN’s 60 Minutes) in her murdered son Hersh’s room, which she has kept as he left it. To Anderson’s statement that “you did more than anybody could possibly do,”  Rachel replied “… And sometimes, 100% is not enough.” 

Our women defending us in the skies flew missions to Iran as pilots and navigators to strike at the heart of the despotic regime that has persecuted their own women and girls. There is something magnificently poetic about that.

It takes herculean strength and courage for victims of sexual violence to speak about it – let alone publicly. On 7 October, Hamas committed the crime against humanity of sexual violence against women, girls and men. Most of the victims were murdered, their testimonies silenced forever. Summoning their extraordinary strength following captivity, at least 11 hostages, male and female have spoken publicly about the horrific sexual abuse they routinely endured in captivity. They are a living testament to the horrors that happened and an answer to deniers.

Prior to 7 October, many feared that should war break out, our young generation would be too engrossed in their devices to respond. Boy, did we get it wrong! They have more than risen to the challenge – I would go as far to say they are our finest generation. On 7 October, they did not wait for the call – as Hamas committed a trail of atrocity in their wake, our young warriors came home to defend our country. Those that were here did not wait – they grabbed what weapons they had, many paying the ultimate price.

Many of them rest in eternal peace in graveyards across the country, testament to lives gone far, far too soon.

The former hostages that held on to their faith in the depths of hell. The stories of what they endured are devastating – but they all held on to their faith, taking pride in their identity as Jews, all the while knowing that is why they were targeted. Their faith was their rebellion against torture and constant attempts to convert them to Islam. In the pits of the terror tunnels like their ancestors who held on to faith in the death camps during the Holocaust – and those that found secret ways to continue observance in Inquisition Spain or Soviet Russia. They welcomed in Shabbat, tried to observe the laws of Kashrut, said the Shema and all they could to sustain their faith. Their steadfast faith has inspired the same in so many around the world as antisemitism spreads in a deadly blaze of hate.  

The house that Zionism built was created by pioneers, stoic in the face of extreme challenges. Pioneers on many fronts like former hostage Gadi Moses. The octogenarian has vowed to rebuild his beloved kibbutz Nir Oz that was decimated on 7 October or Brig. Gen. Daniel Gold, the brains behind the Iron Dome or the countless others in the fields of science, medicine, agriculture, AI, culture and entertainment and many, many other fields.

Resilience and Renewal. “I sung Hatikvah as a hostage in Gaza to keep my hopes of being free alive,” said Gadi Moses (age 80) a farmer and peace activist kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023 and returned after 482 days in Gaza captivity, vowing to rebuild his community. (Photo: Ori Ben Hakoon)

The house that Zionism built has tikkun olam (repairing the world) as a pillar of its foundation. Herzl’s vision for the Jewish state was one that helped communities in Africa and around the world. Today, wherever disaster strikes or where help is needed, Israel answers the call – even in those places where we have no diplomatic relations or official recognition.

We are a nation of dreamers – for peace, to blaze a trail in the unknown – but we are also a nation of warriors. A nation that almost stands as a global anomaly because we know the price of not having our home and are proud of who we are and the values that we defend. Yes, there are divisions and internal disputes that threaten to rock the stability of our home – and we cannot allow hubris and disunity to find a permanent place. Our robust, democratic nature must be protected at all costs.

The House of Zionism is built on a solid foundation of strength, heroism, sacrifice, courage, love and an unshakeable millennia old love and connection. The house of Zionism has weathered storm after storm and despite the constant attacks and lies, will remain strong.

We are Aner Shapira and Hannah Szenesh, Eli Sharabi and Ahsan Daxa, we are Rachel Goldberg Polin and Ibrahim Kharuba. We are Yuval Raphael and Golda Meir. Shimon Peres and Artem Dolgopyat. We are King David and Devorah. We are Ben Gurion and Judah Maccabee. We are the sum of all of us throughout our noble history and have built this home, brick by brick.

For over two years, Israelis have lived with compounded trauma – but walking hand in hand with that, is this fierce resolve to live and to win. We are stubborn like that. On 7 October, we were hit as hard as we could be – and kicked repeatedly. Since then, we have fought back. We have fought on multiple fronts as Iran sought to surround us in a ring of fire. The pressure has been immense – but so has our stoic fortitude. Our ability to feel joy and treasure life has learnt to walk hand in hand with our grief. Both are ever present.

Israeli Grit. Israel Air Force Commander Major General Tomer Bar speaking on April 21, 2026 at the memorial ceremony for the force’s fallen soldiers at Pilots’ Hill, said “We took off on October 7 and won’t land until we complete the mission.”

Every slur, every accusation even though they hurt has also woken something up in us. It has galvanized us a fierce resolve to protect and defend our home. We do not need to be loved or pitied – but we do need to live.

We are the house that Zionism built. We are the bricks and mortar, the very foundation. There are times when the house comes under attack – but the foundations remain strong, rooted and defiant. We have been through a baptism of fire and are surviving the inferno. We bear the bruises – but also the triumphs. We are writing our own story, determining our own future, with resolute determination.

We are the house that Zionism built.



*Feature photo: Nation Roars. Statue of a roaring lion – “The Roar of the Lion”.





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).