Category: Antisemitism

TIME FOR IRAN’S NUREMBERG TRIALS

Nazi Germany existed for less than a generation. Islamic republic for nearly half a century. The list of crimes and people to be tried will be endless. That alone makes this urgent.

By Marziyeh Amirizadeh

The elimination of the Islamic Republic cannot come too soon. After 47 years since the Demonic Revolution that brought the ayatollahs to power, and Iranians to their knees, subjugated by the mullah’s extremist Islam, Iranians need to be free.  Iranians will celebrate the fall of the terrorist regime with glee, but to be complete there also needs to be justice for the perpetrators.  What’s needed is an Iranian version of the Nuremberg Trials.

While the ayatollahs seat of power physically is in Tehran, the spiritual seat of power is in their “holy city,” Qom. The Qom Trials will turn the city from which the Islamic Republic derived its theological “authority” abusing Iranians for decades into a capital of justice.

Members of the Iranian parliament chant slogans in support of Hamas on Oct. 7. (IRNA)

Following WWII and the Holocaust (with the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz commemorated this week), the allied powers needed to come up with a framework to bring justice to the perpetrators of the genocide of the Jewish people and other crimes against humanity. Facing the challenge of how to deal with Nazi war criminals, rather than summary executions or purely national trials, they instituted an international legal process to establish individual accountability and deter future such crimes.

The charges against the Nazis included: conspiracy to commit crimes, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. A total of 199 defendants were tried, 161 convicted, 37 of whom were sentenced to death. While this was groundbreaking and critical, it’s worth remembering that the Nazi’s crimes spanned less than 15 years. After 47 years of the Islamic regime in control, it seems that these numbers will only scratch the surface in Iran.

What’s needed now is to establish a new framework to try and bring to justice leaders and agents of the Islamic Republic. There is a body of international law and precedent for the world to hold foreign terrorists to trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Nazi Germany existed for less than a generation. Islamic republic for nearly half a century. The list of crimes and people to be tried will be endless. That alone makes this urgent.

While I was subject to the misogyny and cruelty of the Islamic Republic since I was a young girl, many of these experiences I recounted in my books, it’s hard to imagine anyone in Iran who doesn’t have a list of people who are responsible for unspeakable crimes. I have mine.

Ali Akbar HeydariFar who played an important role in repressing, torturing, and killing protesters in 2009, is one of the judges who sentenced the writer to death
  • Abolqasem Salavati is an infamous execution judge who ordered the execution of my best friend Shirin;
  • Ali Akbar HeydariFar is one of the judges who sentenced me to death;
  • Judge Heydari was my second judge;
  • Saeed Mortazavi was the judge who told me he will make sure I will be executed;
  • Yahya Pirabbasi, another of my judges;
  • Mohammad Moghiseh is the judge who ordered the execution of many of my friends in prison;
  • Sadegh Larijani, the head of all judges;
  • Abbas Jafari Dolat Abadi, the Tehran prosecutor who visited me in prison before my release, enraged by Pope Benedict’s letter advocating for me and my friend Mariyam, and threatening not to talk to anyone about what happened to us in prison and our trial.
Infamously known in Iran as the “Hanging Judge” along with Mohammad Moghiseh and Yahya Pirabbasi, Abolqasem Salavati, presided over the case of Mohsen Amiraslani, executed for heresy for describing Jonah and the Whale as an allegory and who ordered the execution of the writer’s best friend Shirin.

Many of the most terrible people have no online presence and go by fake names. In order never to forget them, and pray that they will be used to be brought to justice – something that seemed unimaginable in 2009 – my friend Maryam and I came up with sketches of two of the criminals. One of our interrogators went by “Rasti”. He was the one who lied and got me to the police station where the interrogations began. Another, “Haghighat” threatened to beat us until we vomited blood.

In order not to forget the faces of their tormentors in prison so that they could be brough one day to justice, the writer and her friend Maryam sketched “Rasti” and “Haghighat”.

Two more people who must be brought to justice are:

  • Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’I, the Chief Justice of Iran who has blood of countless Iranians on his hands;
  • Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. While no Iranian presidents should escape justice, when I was in prison I witnessed how many people were arrested, tortured, and  killed because of his direct order and fraudulent election that sparked the Green Movement which he repressed with unspeakable brutality.

It is important that the leaders of the regime are not able to flee, and that there is an immediate means to arrest them all, and hold them until charges can be brought.  It’s also urgent that agents of the regime abroad are arrested and extradited to free Iran, and brought to justice. That’s necessary for Iranians who know who they are, but also for the Western and other countries where they live and in which they infiltrate with their evil extremist Islamic values at the behest of the ayatollahs. Left alone, they will be a national security threat to the countries that harbor them.  Any country that takes and shelters leaders and agents of the regime to be protected in their borders should face unrelenting sanctions. 

Saeed Mortazavi was the judge who told the writer he  “will make sure I will be executed”, has been linked to the closure of 120 publications, the murder of Iranian Canadian journalist in July 2003 Zahra Kazemi and the murder of protesters in the Kahrizak detention center in 2009.

Part of the justice that’s needed in order for Iranians to feel as if they are truly liberated is that the trials must be held, and justice served, in Iran. Doing so will create an example to the world and to the Iranian people.  International trials will not do the same.

The crimes of the Islamic regime and its leaders has not been limited to the horrific scenes we have seen coming out or Iran these past weeks, but the wholesale brutalization of millions of Iranians for nearly half a century. Hundreds of thousands have been killed. Maybe millions. The Islamic Republic and its leaders are guilty or widespread crimes directly, and through its terrorist tentacle proxies, around the globe, where millions more have suffered. There needs to be justice for them, and there needs to be a trial of the ayatollahs, mullahs, judges, IRGC, basij, jailers, interrogators, police and others who are guilty of these crimes.

Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolat Abadi – responsible for the arrest and torture of many journalists, young bloggers, human rights advocates, political activists and reformist leaders – visited the writer before her release and threatened her not to talk to anyone about her experiences in prison.

Following President Trump’s post to encourage Iranians in early January:

“KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers.  They will pay a big price. I have canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY! MIGA!!!,” Iranians took to the streets and have continued to protest. Tens of thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands injured.

Like those found guilty in Nuremberg, the bodies of those who are sentenced to death should be cremated, their ashes dumped into the Persian Gulf in order to prevent ever setting up a shrine to them. The tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini should be burned to the ground, and its remains and his also dumped into the Gulf.

Doing this will serve as an additional form of justice for the hundreds of thousands or more victims of the Islamic Republic, many of whom were simply disappeared and have no resting place, and no closure for their loved ones. While their crimes cannot be erased, every physical presence of their lives can be.

In a dream once, I asked God why He allowed the suffering to take place in Iran.  He said that He was giving the leaders the opportunity to repent and, if not, He would bring His justice. I am praying that President Trump will follow his words with swift action, that the senseless and criminal murder of tens of thousands of Iranians will stop, and that everyone involved from the “Supreme Leader” down to the lowest policeman will be arrested and see justice.



About the writer:

Marziyeh Amirizadeh is an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity.   She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation. She is author of two books (the latest, A Love Journey with God), public speaker, and columnist. She has shared her inspiring story throughout the United States and around the world, to bring awareness about the ongoing human rights violations and persecution of women and religious minorities in Iran, www.MarzisJourney.com.






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).

WHY WE ARE “PROTESTANT” ZIONISTS

Israel’s last major allies are several hundred million Protestant Zionists but the Islamist world – with compliant local church support – is desperate to break this alliance.

By John Enarson

On January 17, the Roman Catholic Church and its allied denominations in Jerusalem released a statement condemning Christian support for Israel as a “damaging ideology” that misleads the public and harms church unity. This might look like a unified Christian front turning against the Jewish State – but for hundreds of millions of Evangelical supporters of Israel, this statement clarifies exactly why we are not just Zionists—we are “Protestant” Zionists.

Sad Statement of Affairs. The Catholic Church and its allied denominations in Jerusalem “declared war on Christian Zionism” in a statement released January 17 (see above) , where the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in the Holy Land — led by the Roman Catholic hierarchy along with Eastern Catholic, Orthodox, and other traditional church leaders — condemned Christian support for Israel as a “damaging ideology” that misleads the public and harms Christian unity.

The Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem claim to be bothered by some “Christian” ideology, but the real issue is that these Christians are helping the Jewish people retain national sovereignty in their ancestral homeland. Under traditional Catholic or Eastern Orthodox theology, Jews might be tolerated as stateless minorities in Christian lands. However, the idea that the Jewish nation has a biblical right to sovereignty violates centuries of supersessionist theology—the belief that the Church has replaced Israel.

As Evangelical supporters of Israel, we are “Protestant” for a reason. We “protest” against the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox traditions that preceded it. While modern apologists suggest the Protestant Reformation is over, the protest remains vital, whether against the worship of Mary, or images, or unbiblical soteriology. Chief among our objections is the betrayal of the Bible in favor of church tradition. The foremost meaning of “Evangelical” is to believe in the primacy of Scripture (the euangelion in old parlance).

The Jerusalem churches’ statement does not even attempt a Scriptural argument. They rely on the old accusation that defying their theology is the “sin of disunity.” They ignore that we have compelling biblical grounds for our stance. As offensive as it may sound to the secular West or the old ecclesiastical hierarchies, we maintain that God’s Word is firmly on the side of Jewish restoration. As Romans 3:4 reminds us, God will be found true, though every man a liar.

Exposing Intent. The writer strolling outside the Old City in Jerusalem asserts that the Vatican has been one of the strongest anti-Zionist actors in the West, ever since Jewish independence.

This leads to the second fundamental reason for our divergence: the definition of a Christian.

For Evangelicals, one is not a Christian by being born into a church as if it were an ethnicity. The Protestant Reformation revived the biblical truth that Christianity springs from personal faith, being “born again” (John 3:3–7) to follow Jesus and submit to Scripture. As Evangelical singer Keith Green famously quipped:

 “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to McDonald’s makes you a hamburger.”

This stands in stark contrast to the Middle East, where for centuries — surrounded by dominant Islam — to be “Christian” is effectively an ethnic minority status. Under Islamic dominance, these communities survived by behaving as subservient dhimmis. In this context, the faith often becomes a cultural collective rather than a personal conviction.

Evangelicals understand that there are many individual true believers in the nominal churches, irrespective of cultural tradition. Moreover, we recognize that there is real persecution of nominal Christians in the Middle East. Jihadists who burn churches and behead Christians do not care if they have been born again or not. To them, even secular, hedonistic Europe is “Christian”. The jihadists exemplify sheer hatred against the cross and the Bible, and care not for any nuance. This garners Evangelical sympathy around the world. We mourn and protest this persecution.

However, the Catholic and Orthodox hierarchies in the Holy Land attempt to weaponize this sympathy to marshal the church, including Evangelicals, against the Jewish State. They tell the world, “Israel is oppressing us.” But the reality is far more complex. The “Christians of the Holy Land” are a complex collective primarily under Jihadist — not a Jewish — threat.

Consider the anecdotal observations of Eastern Orthodox Christian Ridvan Aydemir, an online phenomenon and expressly not a Christian Zionist. He recently came to the Holy Land to investigate the conflict for social commentary and found problems on all sides, including among traditional Christians. Ridvan was then attacked for betraying the Christians of the Holy Land. He responded bluntly:

“What Christians are you talking about? You mean those who are embroiled in gang violence over there? Who are actually active in gang violence? Who are running shady businesses in the Holy Land? Or those who are submissive to the Muslims, accepting their role as dhimmis and doing whatever the Muslims tell them because their lives are too precious to them and they just want to live in peace? … Or do you mean those who actively work for the Islamic Iranian regime and with Hamas and other terrorist organizations? Which Christians are you talking about? Or do you mean those who, for the sake of keeping the peace, do whatever Hamas tells them to do, or say whatever Hamas tells them to say, while behind the scenes telling Israel, ‘Hey, we know you’re right, we’re on your side, but we can’t just publicly [say so]?’ Do you mean those cowards? Or do you mean the good ones who actually stand up for themselves over there? Which Christians are you talking about? You have to be more specific” (ApostateProphet, YouTube, Nov 6, 2025).

This is the blunt mechanism of the conflict:

Jihadists fight the “blasphemy” of Jewish independence in the Middle East. The international community pressure Israel to give these Jihadists self-governing control in places like Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Gaza. Here, the Jihadists mercilessly begin to persecute Christians and any moderate Muslims under their control. Meanwhile, Christian communities that remain under Israeli control go on to flourish. Using cities like Bethlehem as their base, the Jihadists continue their attacks on Jews (the Second Intifada). Israel responds by installing security measures, which cut down the suicide bombings dramatically. However, it means everyone (including Christians) from Bethlehem must go through long security checkpoints. Muslims then use Christian dhimmis under their oppression as pawns. These churches largely do not believe what the Bible says about the Jews and Israel anyway. Thus, the historic churches of the Holy Land tell the world:

Israel is oppressing us. How can Christian Zionists support the Israeli aggression against fellow Christians in the Holy Land? And if Israel does not surrender to the Jihadists, it will enrage Muslims against other Christian dhimmis throughout the Middle East. Stop the Zionists!

History is ironic. The Church once claimed to replace the Jews, reenforcing their stateless misery. Then, Islam arose with its own supersessionist claim, forcing Middle Eastern Christians into second-class dhimmi status, denying them any sovereignty over Muslims. Now, after 2,000 years, God has kept His biblical promise and restored Jewish sovereignty, putting the lie to both theologies.

The last major allies Israel has, are the several hundred million Protestant Zionists. The Islamist world, with the help of compliant local churches, is desperate to break this alliance. Thus, Muslim and Christian statements issue forth, labeling “Zionism” a “damaging ideology”, blaming it for everything from racism and colonialism to world wars and the common cold. But actual Zionism is simply “the belief that, like other nations, the Jewish people have the legitimate right to national self-determination in their ancestral homeland.” Christian Zionism ties this belief to solid, Biblical support. Some are dispensationalist, while others are not. Thus, Christian Zionists (like many Jews), not only hold this view to be the just, legal, and historically correct position, but also a modern miracle of biblical significance.

We can only speculate, but the nervous tone of the ecclesiastical statement, which protests that the “Patriarchs and Heads of Churches” themselves are the only legitimate authority on these matters, suggests that there could be a movement of traditional Christians — even ecclesiastical leaders meeting with officials — who are tired of playing the dhimmi to Islamist oppression in the Holy Land. These voices may see an alliance with Israel, even a deeper theological reevaluation of their relationship with Israel, as the way of the future, and rightly so.

Interestingly, by expressly blaming Christian Zionism as a “damaging ideology”. the statement is also attacking Jews and Judaism which holds the same biblical conviction. Even non-Zionist Orthodox Jews recognize that the Bible clearly gives the Land to the Jewish people eternally. To call this biblical view theologically unsound is not only to mock biblical logic, but to de-facto attack pious Jews as well — a position the Catholic Church has attempted to be more careful about after its failures in the Holocaust. After Vatican II, the Roman Catholic Church officially recognizes the biblical significance of Jews and Judaism. But it stopped short of acknowledging their right to the Land. This promise — which is the most oft-repeated promise in the entire Bible — is thus far denied to the Jews in Catholic theology.

Only on the rarest occasions have Catholic leaders been willing to express any openness to the biblical position on the Land. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn came close in a 2005 address at the Hebrew University where he emphasized that Christians should recognize the Jewish connection to the Holy Land and rejoice in the return of Jews to it as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. He also referenced Pope John Paul II‘s view that the biblical commandment for Jews to live in Israel represents an everlasting covenant that remains valid today. A local Christian priest immediately protested, but to his credit, Cardinal Schönborn did not yield (Catholics for Israel, Mar 31, 2005; citing Jerusalem Post and Washington Post). However, this has never been acknowledged as any official position of the Roman Catholic Church.

A Cardinal Clash. When visiting Cardinal Christoph Schönborn (above) expressed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2005 that Jews living in Israel represented an “everlasting covenant”, a local Christian priest immediately protested signifying the opposition of Catholic orthodoxy to recognising and biblical Jewish connection to the Holy Land.

By and large, while often expressing solidarity with the Jewish diaspora, the Vatican has been one of the strongest anti-Zionist actors in the West, ever since Jewish independence. This is evident in everything from papal audiences helping rebrand arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat as a statesman, to Pope Francis holding Mass in Bethlehem in front of a massive mural of Jesus and Joseph sporting keffiyehs, helping launder the lie the “Jesus was a Palestinian”. It remains a lie. Jesus is a Jew.

Laundering Lies. In December 2024, Pope Francis inaugurated a nativity scene in the Vatican showing baby Jesus on keffiyeh to promote and help popularize a relatively new and false narrative that  “Jesus was a Palestinian”.

In sum, we are Protestants. We are Biblical Zionists. And we stand for justice in the Holy Land. We protest the unbiblical interpretations of the Roman Catholic Church and its allies. We hold their biblical theology of Israel and the Jews to be thoroughly lacking. We also protest the suffering of historic Christian communities under Islamist oppression. But we see through ecclesiastical statements trying to blame such hardships on the Jewish State and mislead the Evangelical world.




About the writer:

John Enarson is an author and Christian theology student from Sweden. He has lived in the Middle East for over 25 years and currently serves as the Christian Relations Director at Cry For Zion (cryforzion.com). He is happy to receive input or questions about his articles.
j.enarson @gmail.com






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).

BATTLEGROUNDS FOR RECONCILIATION

The Pivotal Role of HBCUs in combating antisemitism in America’s Black Community.

By Jonathan Feldstein

In a candid, insightful, and wide-ranging conversation on “Inspiration from Zion,” Dana White, founder of the Randolph L. White Foundation, communications specialist, and a former Pentagon spokesperson, delved into the roots of antisemitism within the Black community in the United States. Drawing from her personal experiences and her 2024 article, “Why HBCUs Are Key to Fighting Antisemitism,” White highlighted how historical shifts, cultural influences, and educational institutions have fueled division. Yet, she argued, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) hold immense potential as battlegrounds for reconciliation, echoing the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

White in Washington. As the Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Dana W. White served as the Pentagon Chief Spokesperson for both the Department of Defense and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

White’s insights stem from her family’s multigenerational story, which underscores the once-strong Black-Jewish alliances. Her grandfather, born in 1896, rose from a janitor at the University of Virginia Hospital to a managerial role (the first ever such role there for a Black man) thanks to a Jewish doctor, Dr. Goodwin. This act of recognition embodied the Jewish ethos of tikkun olam —repairing the world — remains central to her and her family’s identity, as it propelled her family’s trajectory. Her parents, graduates of Howard University in the 1960s, cherished fond memories of their Jewish neighbors and faculty, including those who fled Nazi Germany and found refuge at HBCUs. At a time where quotas existed for Jews in many areas across America, these institutions, White noted, saved about 50 German Jews with visas during the Holocaust, fostering a shared history of common destiny and resilience.

Soldier for Justice. Dana White’s grandfather, Sgt. Randolph L White, US Army, proudly served in the 9th Calvary, also known as the famed Buffalo Soldiers and would go on to be an influential African American newspaper publisher, hospital administrator, and civil-rights activist.

White highlighted the post-civil rights era where Blacks and Jews were close allies. The reality of the Jewish role in the civil rights movement is largely not remembered by anyone under 80 she said.  Yet the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. echoed this reality on March 26, 1968, days before he was assassinated:

 “Probably more than any other ethnic group, the Jewish community has been sympathetic and has stood as an ally to the Negro in his struggle for justice.”

Yet following King’s assassination and the civil rights movement was a turning point for the unraveling of these positive relations, and seeded rising antisemitism in the Black community. Desegregation in the 1970s led to a “melting away” of familiar ties. Middle-class Blacks and Jews moved out of urban areas, leaving vulnerable populations amid economic decline, drug epidemics, and mass incarceration. This vacuum bred anger and a victim mindset, amplified by the Nation of Islam’s hateful rhetoric. White described how figures like Louis Farrakhan propagated misinformation, such as exaggerated claims of Jewish involvement in the slave trade, which gained traction organically; in barbershops, salons, and family gatherings without counter-narratives because once close personal relationships as her family experienced had eroded.

HBCUs, once havens of Black excellence, became influential conduits for this shift. White contrasted her parents’ positive experiences at Howard — where a significant Jewish presence promoted mutual respect — with her brother’s experience in the early 1990s. By then, HBCUs had transformed into “breeding grounds for revenge history,” a term White uses for distorted narratives seeking retribution against perceived oppressors. Nation of Islam newspapers circulated on campuses, blending empowerment messages with vitriol against Jews as “the other” or “super white people.” Cultural elements like hip-hop, reinforced these tropes. Intersectionality and cultural relativism, emerging in these academic spaces, further alienated Jews by framing them within oppressive structures.

Despite producing only 10% of Black bachelor’s degree holders, HBCUs wield outsized influence, graduating 80% of Black judges, 50% of Black lawyers, and 40% of Black engineers and doctors. This leadership pipeline means ideas incubated there permeate Black culture and mainstream America. White lamented the drift: many HBCU students today have never met a Jew, leading to or at least not having any counteractive balance of the demonization of Jews. She shared stories of sponsoring Black students to visit Israel, where they discovered shared family dynamics during Shabbat dinners, dispelling these myths.

Birthed out of Exclusion. Founded in the 19th and early 20th centuries during a time of widespread racial segregation, Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were created to provide educational opportunities for African Americans who were systematically excluded from mainstream colleges and universities. Fostering academic excellence, these institutions produced generations of African American professionals, leaders, and scholars.

To reverse this, White advocates leveraging HBCUs as anti-antisemitism hubs through deliberate re-engagement. Jewish communities should invest in campuses — via funding like Michael Bloomberg’s recent commitments — and foster personal connections. “It’s not one-offs,” she emphasized. Through sustained dialogues, shared meals, and educational programs can rebuild familiarity, positive changes can be made. Breaking bread humanizes the “other,” making it harder to hate. White envisions local partnerships, like those at Bowie State University in Maryland, where Jewish and Black groups convene for honest conversations followed by communal events.

Monumental Message. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on March 26, 1968 expressed that the Jewish community “Probably more than any other ethnic group…. has stood as an ally to the Negro in his struggle for justice.”

Central to White’s vision is reviving the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose legacy she believes has been diluted. King, a staunch Zionist, collaborated closely with Jewish leaders like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and benefited from Jewish support in the civil rights movement. His final speech evoked the “Promised Land,” drawing from Exodus — a narrative that fueled Black spirituals and faith during slavery. White speculated King would be disappointed today with:

– the frayed Black-Jewish bonds post-desegregation

– the pervasive victimhood language among those far removed from Jim Crow

– the declining Black literacy rates, and

– the indifference to antisemitism.

Special Bond. Friends and prophets, Abraham Joshua Heschel (left) brought Martin Luther King  (right) and his message to a wide Jewish audience, and King made Heschel a central figure in the struggle for civil rights. Often lecturing together, they both spoke about racism, Zionism and about the struggles of Jews in the Soviet Union.

He rose with Jewish backing for organizations like the NAACP, yet modern divisions ignore this shared fight for justice. King would decry how politics overshadowed faith in Black churches, urging a return to Old Testament teachings of hope and self-reliance.

Following her recent visit to Israel where she witnessed the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre and ensuing war, White’s call is particularly urgent amid surges in antisemitism. She noted that these began the very next day, on October 8, with masses around the world blaming the victim, and she even sees antisemitism as more insidious and permissive than racism. Wearing a Star of David in solidarity, she urges non-Jews to speak out, emphasizing Israel’s unparalleled efforts to protect civilians. By harnessing HBCUs’ cultural clout for education and alliance-building, the Black community can honor King’s vision, repairing divides through dialogue and mutual recognition. As White reflected, small acts — like Dr. Goodwin’s promotion of her grandfather — create ripples. In an era of ignorance, HBCUs offer a pathway to empathy, ensuring antisemitism’s roots are uprooted for generations to come.



About the writer:

Jonathan Feldstein ­­­­- President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Journal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.






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).

GOODBYE KHAMENEI, HELLO CYRUS ACCORDS

How regime change in Iran can lead to a more peaceful and prosperous Middle East.

By Neville Berman

Iran is a Persian country with a history, culture and civilization that goes back nearly 3,000 years. The Muslim conquest of the 7th century spread Islam to Persia. Currently the world’s Muslim population is approximately 2 billion people, of whom approximately 85% are Sunni Muslims. In Iran the majority of the population of 89 million are Shia Muslims. They constitute the majority of the 15% of Shia Muslims in the world.

In 1935, Reza Shah Pahlavi, the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty, renamed Persia and called it Iran. Iran has the third largest oil reserves in the world. It is one of the five founding member countries of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries known as OPEC. Iran is 80 times larger than Israel. It is strategically situated bordering 7 countries, and has maritime access to both the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf. Considering the world’s dependence on oil, Iran should be one of the most prosperous countries in the world from exporting vast quantities of oil. Instead of prosperity, Iran is now on the brink of economic collapse and its currency is almost worthless. 

Favorable Future. Should Reza Pahlaviplay a future role in a post-Islamic Iran, the exiled Iranian prince vows to recognize Israel, expand the Abraham Accords into the “Cyrus Accords” linking a free Iran with Israel and Arab states and said  “…a free Iran will be a force for peace, for prosperity, and for partnership.”

How did this happen?

To understand the present situation, one has to look at the history of the country over the past 75 years. In 1951, the Iranian government under Mosaddegh, nationalized the Ango-Iranian Oil Company. This became the catalyst that led to a CIA backed coup that overthrew Mosaddegh in 1953. He was replaced by Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran who was pro America. Following the coup, major US oil companies broke the previous British monopoly on Iranian oil production, and gained access to the Iranian oil market. The Shah’s attempt to liberalize the country by adopting Western norms and behavior were initially welcomed, but gradually turned millions of religious conservative Iranians against his policies that clashed with Islamic values. The hugely uneven distribution of wealth resulted in unrest that sparked widespread repressive measures by the Shah. The end result was the Iranian Revolution and in January 1979 the Shah was forced to flee. During the revolution the American Embassy in Tehran was attacked and overrun. Fifty-two American diplomats were seized as hostages. They were held captive for 444 days. Iran became an enemy of America. 

A month after the Shah was forced to flee, Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile in Paris, and became the Supreme Leader of Iran with the title of Ayatollah. He immediately turned Iran into a Shiite theocracy. All normal relations between America and Iran and between Israel and Iran ended. In March 1979, Habib Elghanian, the wealthiest Jew in Tehran was arrested and executed after a sham trial. All his properties and possessions were seized by the State. Dozens of other wealthy Jews were arrested and forced to pay enormous sums of money to be released. The Jews in Iran became powerless.The widely used slogans “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” symbolized the regimes rejection of American and Israeli interference and influence in Iran’s internal affairs. All the assets of the American oil companies in Iran were nationalized. In April 1979, Iran was renamed the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Murdering Mullahs. Following the execution of Iran’s most affluent Jewish businessman and philanthropist Habib Elghanian on false spying charges on 9 May, 1979, thousands of Jews fled Iran.

In September 1980, Iraq under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, invaded Iran. The war was seen by both America and Russia as an opportunity to make huge profits. America sold billions of dollars of arms to Iraq, and Russia sold billions of dollars of arms to Iran. Neither America nor Russia saw any benefit in ending the war. Approximately 300,000 Iranians and an equal number of Iraqis were killed in the war and hundreds of thousands were injured. Eight years after the war started, it finally ended in a stalemate. In June 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini died. He was replaced by Ali Khamenei who became the Supreme Leader of the Islamist Republic of Iran and continues to rule to this day.  

In a sort of a reverse Midas touch situation, Khamenei, adopted policies that metaphorically speaking turned gold into lead. The State religion of Iran is the Twelver form of Shiite Islam. They believe that 12 divinely appointed Imans are the successors to the Prophet Muhammad and that the 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who disappeared in the 9th century, is miraculously still alive, and will reappear at the end of time. Global justice and peace under Sharia law will then be established. Khamenei has a fanatical belief that what he calls the Zionist entity needs to be destroyed before the 12th Iman will return.

Khamenei authorized spending billions of dollars on building a nuclear program that is clearly aimed at producing nuclear weapons. In 2006, the United Nations imposed economic sanctions on Iran for failing to suspend its uranium enrichment program, and for non-cooperation with the inspections carried out by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

In 2015, President Obama entered into an agreement with Iran known as the JCPOA deal. The agreement immediately released billions of frozen dollars belonging to Iran, and ended the UN sanctions against Iran. In return, Iran agreed to limits on its uranium enrichment program, and allowed inspections by the IAEA. In February 2025, President Trump, fed up with continual Iranian lies about its nuclear program, and refusal to allow inspections in certain sites, announced a policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran. He imposed American sanctions on Iran. In the meantime, Khamenei spent vast amounts of money financing, training and arming proxy terrorist organizations in countries across the Middle East. The idea was to create a crescent of a “ring of fire” of proxy armies that would at some point in time, eliminate Israel.

Dead End. ‘Dead’ set on the demise of the “Big Satin” and “Little Satin”, paramilitary troops under the IRGC’s command carry coffins symbolizing the end of the U.S. and Israel during a military rally in Tehran, Nov. 24, 2023.(Photo: Morteza Nikoubazl/Zuma Press).   

In addition to all the financial problems, Iran is also presently experiencing a severe water shortage. The irony of the situation is that nearly 3,000 years ago, the Persians solved their water problems. They developed a water system known as the qanat – pronounced Kah-Naht. It was based on providing water by constructing gradually sloping underground tunnels to allow water from aquifers on hills and mountains to flow down and across areas that could then be inhabited, and on which agricultural production could thrive. The underground tunnels reduced evaporation to a minimum. The qanat system relied on gravity and the flow of water could be controlled by opening and closing tunnels. The qanat system sustained a thriving Persian society for thousands of years. The network was vast and covering between 250,000 – 350,000 km. It was truly a groundbreaking success of immense proportions. Parts of the qanat system are still operational, and between 8-15% of Iran’s current water supply comes from a system that was constructed thousands of years ago. Israel can help Iran to solve its water crises. Israel has experience and expertise in building and operating desalination plants, and is a world leader in recycling sewage water for agricultural use. It has also developed drip irrigation and modern water management systems based on up to the minute computerized data.

Israel has no border dispute with Iran, and there is an ancient history of help going all the way back to Cyrus the Great, who conquered the Babylonians, and then helped Jews to return to Jerusalem to build the Second Temple. Before the fall of the Shah, there were normal relations between Israel and Iran. It is time to restore these relations, and restart flights from Tel Aviv to Tehran that actually land in Tehran instead of dropping bombs on Tehran. Joining the Cyrus Accords is very much in Iran’s interest.  It will change the Middle East for the benefit of hundreds of millions of people. The exiled Crown Prince Pahlavi has said he would expand the Abraham Accords to be the Cyrus Accords – hearkening back to the historical ties between the Jewish and Persian people

Obsessive Hate. Nearly six months before the October 7, 2023 massacre, Iranian demonstrators on April 14, 2023 burn in Tehran an Israeli flag in a rally marking Jerusalem Day. (Photo: Vahid Salemi/AP)

In June 2025, Israel responded to all the nefarious actions by Iran and their proxy terrorist groups, and attacked Iran directly. In a pinpoint aerial attack, Israel destroyed the Iranian air defenses, and assassinated several leading nuclear scientists and prominent military leaders. With full Israeli control of Iranian airspace, Israel began attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities and launch sites of intercontinental missiles. The United States took advantage of the lack of air defenses and dropped 14 bunker-buster bombs that destroyed the underground uranium enrichment sites in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. In 12 days, tens of billions of dollars invested in Iran’s nuclear program was destroyed.

Instead of building desalination plants and improving the lives of the Iranian people, the Mullahs were obsessed with trying to destroy Israel. It was and is a disastrous losing strategy with devastating consequences for the Iranian people and the entire region. Instead of peace and prosperity, death, destruction and poverty resulted. The people of Iran are fed up with the policies of their government. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians, perhaps millions, are openly protesting against the Iranian government. The government has resorted to shooting thousands of protestors in a desperate attempt to cling to power.

Regime change in Iran will open the possibility of ending Iran’s nuclear program and the lifting of sanctions. This will result in peace and prosperity returning to Iran. In order to stabilize the economic situation, a new currency will need to be introduced in Iran. All the terrorist entities that Iran has supported and sustained under the leadership of Khamenei will not survive. It could be the beginning of a new Middle East.

Without regime change in Iran, tens of thousands of demonstrators are likely to be killed, and the Middle East will remain a ticking time bomb of terrorism and instability. The window of opportunity to bring about regime change in Iran has opened, but will not remain open for long. Let us hope that the foreign leaders who have the power to support the protestors and accelerate  regime change in Iran, have the wisdom and courage to make the right decisions. The end of the rule of Khamenei, coupled with Iran joining the Cyrus Accords is the surest way to ensure a more peaceful and prosperous Middle East.



*Feature picture: High Stakes Face off. US President Donald Trump (l) and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (r)



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).

IS HALTING EXECUTIONS IN IRAN GOOD ENOUGH?

Pulling back from military intervention following bellicose threats, is Trump failing – like Carter, Obama and Biden preceding him – the long-suffering people of Iran?

By Jonathan Feldstein

On January 16, 1979, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was forced to flee Iran along with his family due to the US and European countries withdrawing their support. This ushered in what’s called the Islamic Revolution, the return of exiled Ayatollah Khomeini, and the hijacking of a country that had been prosperous and a source of peace and stability in the Middle East. In the 47 years since then, chaos, death, terror have reigned.

Since then, Iran has devolved into a failed state with the Islamist leaders not even able to provide water and electricity, and its currency devalued to record lows, more than one million rials per dollar.

Since then, the Islamic Republic of Iran has become the world’s biggest funder of terrorism, with terrorist proxies literally all over the world. Tens of thousands or more have been killed at the hands of the Islamic regime and its proxies. Millions have been impacted, threatened, and havesuffered.

As we mark this anniversary of the West failing to support a stable ally, ushering in the evil terrorist regime, reports indicate that President Trump may have balked and failed the Iranian people as Carter did in 1979, as Obama did in 2009, and as Biden did in 2022. But if Trump has truly backed down from his harsh rhetoric to take action, and now may be seeking a “diplomatic solution,” the outcome of his actions will be worse than Obama and Biden. His harsh rhetoric emboldened the Iranian people who took to the streets in more than 100 cities in record numbers to protest the regime. They believed that Trump had their back, and were prepared to risk their lives to take back their country after almost half a century. And they were slaughtered by the Islamic regime and its agents in record numbers, at least thousands, if not tens of thousands.

On the verge of striking Iran, the US held off following reports of halting executions. What happens next is up to Trump who is seen here being interviewed in the Oval Office on Wednesday. (Photo: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

Here’s the thing however. Trump’s threats were based on a false premise. He calculated whether the US would take action based on the number of Iranians being killed. As horrific as tens of thousands being killed by forces of their own government is, the massacre of people in their own country is not sufficient pretext for the United States to take military action.

Therefore, if it’s correct that Trump walked back his battle plans based solely on reports that the Iranians “halted executions” of some 800 people who were arrested amid the ongoing recent protests, this would make little sense. “Halting” is a temporary action. No doubt these 800, along with thousands more who have been arrested, still remain in Iranian prison and can be executed at any moment. If not all at once, the regime could execute a few a week and stay below Trump’s radar of “too many” people being killed.

Let’s also recognize the fact that the protests have taken place for less than three weeks. It is a remarkable injustice that anyone can be arrested and sentenced to death in such a short period.

So much for due process!

Left in the Lurch? Nationwide protests across Iran from 289 Dec 2025 to 11 Jan 2026.

But all this – as horrible, evil and unjust as it is – is not a pretext for military action. The reasons for military action are the threats that the Islamic Republic has made and continues to make, as the single greatest source of instability and terror in the world. The Iranian President recently openly declared that Iran is at war with the United States, with Israel, and with Europe. These are threats, not to be taken lightly. They include military threats, but they also include terror, and infiltration of the West to carry out its nefarious goals of spreading radical Islam globally.

From Calling to Prayer to Calling for Executions. Tehran’s Friday prayer leader, hardline cleric Ahmad Khatami called for the execution of detained protesters and the arrest of anyone who supported the protests. He accused the protesters of acting on behalf of foreign powers, calling them “servants” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “soldiers of Trump.”

While Trump was correct to offer support for the Iranian citizens who are protesting for their own freedom, the basis for that support should never have been the number of people killed. It’s a perverse inversion of the Biblical story of Abraham negotiating with God to save Sodom and Gomorrah. How many people are too many?  10? 100? 500? 1000? 10,000? And in any event, if that was the measure, reports of at least 12,000 to more than 20,000 civilians being slaughtered in the streets is, and should have been, enough for the US to take action. “Halting” 800 extra-judicial executions on top of the many thousands who were slaughtered in the streets is also not grounds for not taking action.

Flowers for the Fallen. Impressing upon the US President, flowers are placed next to a display with photos of Iranian protestors killed by Iranian Americans outside the White House in Washington, January 16, 2026. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP)

I fear that Trump has not only failed the Iranian people, but the West, and the world. His rhetoric put a wind in the sails of Iranian citizens who took to the streets, risking their lives only to see them shot down in cold blood. This has been the single greatest opportunity since 1979 to eliminate the Islamic Republic once and for all. THAT should have been the stated goal of any US action, and it should not have been qualified based on the number of Iranians that their government massacred.

Bodies Piling Up. Distressing new videos have emerged from a mortuary in Tehran showing rows of bodies, blood-soaked floors and crowds of people searching for loved ones following a deadly government crackdown on protesters in Iran.

An additional failure is that China, Russia, and numerous Arab and Islamic nations are watching and measuring what they can get away with. They saw Trump sweep in to arrest Maduro in Venezuela next door, but are seeing the US now inept at doing anything about the ayatollahs on the other side of the world. That gives American adversaries around the world license to invade other countries, support terror, engage in direct and indirect threats to the United States and the world, and even slaughter their own citizens and others with impunity.

I’m not saying that making an example of the Islamic regime is a suitable goal of military action, but threatening military action and not pulling the trigger risks losing on a global scale in ways that will not only keep the ayatollah in power for another generation, but also embolden terrorists around the world.

It’s horrific if hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands have been executed in the streets of Iran with impunity. To the extent that they protested and lost their lives because of a threat that Trump made and was never prepared to carry out, their blood is on his hands. If that’s the case, he has let down the Iranian people even more radically than his predecessors by setting them up and not following through.

Fired-Up. Iranians gather while blocking a street during a protest in Tehran, Iran on January 9, 2026. (Photo: MAHSA / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images)

Let’s be clear, if we ever want to see peace in the Middle East, the only way is the elimination of the Islamic Republic and the reasoning to reach this decision does not require counting how many more people have been slaughtered. On this 47th anniversary of the US withdrawing support for the Shah causing him and his family to flee, it seems that Iran and its people may have been let down once again. They and the world will continue to suffer.

If I am wrong, and I hope I am, I will publicly apologize – but if I’m right, then President Trump should apologize to the Iranian people, to Americans, and to the world. Even Obama recognized in retrospect his inaction in 2009 was a miscalculation. The negative consequences of Trump’s action – or rather inaction – will be felt for years to come.



About the writer:

Jonathan Feldstein ­­­­- President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Journal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.






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 INCOMPATIBILITY OF JUDAISM AND ANTIZIONISM

A Jew opposing Jewish statehood displays today historical illiteracy or suicidal self-destructiveness.

By Grant Gochin

Zionism is the Jewish people’s absolute movement for self-determination, security, and sovereignty in their sole ancestral homeland. Born from millennia of exile, genocide, and centuries of lethal powerlessness, its sole objective remains the permanent cessation of exterminating Jews. Far from the “colonial” slur European elites regurgitate, Zionism is an indigenous reclamation and a survival imperative. At its most basic core, Zionism means to stop murdering Jews, while antizionism means to continue to murder Jews.

INDIGENOUS ROOTS: THE BIBLICAL MANDATE

The Jewish tie to the Land of Israel is ancient, indigenous, and enduring. “Zion” appears 152 times in the Hebrew Bible as the geographic designation for Jerusalem and the land. Psalms 137:1 records the trauma of exile: “By the rivers of Babylon… we wept when we remembered Zion.” The Passover command “Next year in Jerusalem” is a political directive of return, not poetry.

Because the Land of Israel is the central stage of the biblical narrative, antizionism is a direct repudiation of the entire Bible. You cannot separate the people from the land without tearing the scriptures apart. Consequently, since the Bible forms the moral and historical bedrock of Western civilization, antizionism is a repudiation of the West itself. To oppose Israel’s existence is to dismantle the Judeo-Christian foundation upon which Western values rest.

It is impossible to be a Jew and an antizionist. To be a Jew is to carry the memory of Zion and the imperative of survival. A Jew who opposes the Jewish state is either historically illiterate or suicidally self-destructive, severing themselves from their own peoplehood and history.

THE ”ANTIZIONIST JEW” DOES NOT EXIST

It is impossible to be a Jew and an antizionist. Judaism is not merely a religion of rituals; it is a collective destiny and a nationhood. As Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy argue, those who attempt to disentangle Judaism from Jewish nationalism are “Un-Jews” — they are undoing the very essence of Jewish peoplehood.

By repudiating Zionism, these individuals repudiate their own Jewishness. Maimonides, in the Mishneh Torah, is explicit: one who separates himself from the community, even if he commits no other transgression, “has no share in the World to Come.” When “Jews” stand with Hamas murderers and call Israelis “Nazis”, or champion the destruction of the Jewish state, they sever their connection to the Jewish people. They are not merely critics; they are deserters who have removed themselves from the congregation of Israel and are deserving of herem (excommunication). There is no such thing as an antizionist Jew; there are only former Jews who have sided with their people’s executioners.

THE HOLOCAUST IMPERITIVE AND THE LESSON OF 1915

The 20th century proved that Jewish powerlessness is a death sentence. But the warning signs were ignored decades before the Holocaust. In 1915, during WWI, the Russian government under Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevitch inaugurated a campaign of extermination against its own Jewish subjects.

Deadly Duke. Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolayevitch , as Supreme Commander of the Russian army during the early stages of World War I, was responsible for the forced deportations and massacres of Jewish and German populations in Russian border territories, which some sources describe as part of a campaign of extermination against perceived “enemy” nations. 

● The “Kuzhi Myth”: Using the war as a pretext, the military fabricated a lie that Jews were hiding Germans in cellars to brand the entire Jewish people as spies and traitors.

● Mass Expulsion: On 24 to 48 hours’ notice, hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from Lithuania, Courland, and Poland.

● Brutality: 600,000 Jews were turned into homeless paupers, packed into cattle cars or forced to walk until they dropped from starvation or insanity.

● Hostages: The military explicitly ordered the taking of Jewish hostages to be executed in case of alleged “treason”.

As I detailed in 107 Years Late for Dinner, this destruction was the precursor to the Holocaust — a clear lesson that without a state, Jewish life is cheap. Zionism in 1948 ended that vulnerability. Israel exists to prevent the next Holocaust, not commit one.

 

BINDING INTERNATIONAL LAW

The foundation of the Jewish state rests on binding international mandates that have never been revoked:

● Napoleon’s 1799 Acre Proclamation calling for the restoration of Jerusalem to the Jews.

● The Balfour Declaration (1917) recognizing Jewish national rights.

● The San Remo Resolution (1920), an international treaty incorporating the Balfour Declaration into international law.

● The League of Nations Mandate (1922) codifying the right of Jewish settlement.

● The UN Partition Plan (1947), an explicit recognition of Jewish statehood as reparative justice.

Diplomatic Recognition. The San Remo Conference (1920) legally established the British Mandate for Palestine formally incorporating the Balfour Declaration’s promise to create a Jewish national home, giving international legitimacy to Jewish self-determination in the historic Land of Israel, a foundational step for the future State of Israel.

THE LIE OF DECOLONIZATION

Europe holds Israel to a false standard while securing its own borders with force and retaining colonial vestiges. The hypocrisy is staggering:

● France: Paris administers 13 overseas territories, spanning the Caribbean (Guadeloupe, Martinique), South America (French Guiana), and the Pacific (New Caledonia, French Polynesia). In New Caledonia, the 2021 independence referendum failed, yet France clings on, suppressing Kanak self-determination under the same UN Charter it weaponizes against Israel. Paris extracts resources while locals protest inequality.

● Spain: Madrid grips four North African enclaves: Ceuta and Melilla, plus the Plazas de soberanía—territories Morocco brands as colonial relics. Spain deploys razor wire and troops to repel migrants, mirroring the exact security measures it condemns in Israel. These footholds, seized in the 15th century, mirror the “settlements” Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez decries — yet he never suggests “nuking” Madrid for them.

 

THE DOUBLE STANDARD OF DESTRUCTION: Sánchez’s Self-Negation

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has branded Israel’s defense against Hamas “genocidal” and lamented that Spain lacks the nuclear weapons to stop it.

Apply Sánchez’s logic without exception, and Spain collapses:

1. Reconquista: The Arab-Berber conquest ruled Iberia for 781 years (711–1492). The Reconquista that reclaimed Spain for its prior inhabitants is, by Sánchez’s standard, “colonization.” If Israel’s return after 2,000 years is illegitimate, Spain’s entire national existence is illegitimate.

2. Migrant Claims: Over 70,000 sub-Saharan Africans reaching Spanish soil since 2024 possess superior claims under Sánchez’s rationale that interim occupation creates permanent rights.

Resolution ratifying Rebirth. On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted in favor of resolution 181 that adopted the plan for partitioning Eretz Israel into a Jewish state and an Arab state. This resolution led, in effect, to the declaration of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948.

ANTIZIONISM: THE IDEOLOGY OF THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

Antizionism is not a political opinion; it is a weapon of war. For someone to be an antizionist today, they must either be a combatant for the Muslim Brotherhood (knowingly or unknowingly) or completely self-destructive.

The ideology driving the hatred of Israel — from Hamas to European campuses — is the rejection of Western values, individual liberty, and historical truth. Europe funds this subversion via “lawfare” NGOs like Al-Haq and Al-Mezan, pumping millions into groups linked to terror organizations like the PFLP to harass the Jewish state.

CONCLUSION: THE WEST’S FRONTLINE

Israel stands as the West’s frontline against a jihadist ideology that seeks to erase not just Jews, but Western civilization itself. If Israel falls, Europe is next. Israel endures as the antidote: a sovereign refuge where Jews dictate their fate, not Europe’s.



About the writer:

Grant Arthur Gochin currently serves as the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Togo. He is the Emeritus Special Envoy for Diaspora Affairs for the African Union, which represents the fifty-five African nations, and Emeritus Vice Dean of the Los Angeles Consular Corps, the second largest Consular Corps in the world. Gochin is actively involved in Jewish affairs, focusing on historical justice. He has spent the past twenty five years documenting and restoring signs of Jewish life in Lithuania. He has served as the Chair of the Maceva Project in Lithuania, which mapped / inventoried / documented / restored over fifty abandoned and neglected Jewish cemeteries. Gochin is the author of “Malice, Murder and Manipulation”, published in 2013. His book documents his family history of oppression in Lithuania. He is presently working on a project to expose the current Holocaust revisionism within the Lithuanian government. Professionally, Gochin is a Certified Financial Planner and practices as a Wealth Advisor in California, where he lives with his family. Personal site: https://www.grantgochin.com/




Sources:
1. US House of Representatives. (1916). Hearings in front of the USA Committee on Immigration and Naturalization: Russian Atrocities Against the Jews (H.R. 558).
2. Stand Tall Israel. (2025, December 12). He’s Spent 30 YEARS Studying HAMAS — What He REVEALS Is TERRIFYING [Video]. YouTube.
3. Gochin, G. A. (2022, June 22). 107 years late for dinner. The Blogs, The Times of Israel. https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/107-years-late-for-dinner/
4. The Jerusalem Post. (2023, November 3). Editor’s Notes: No longer part of us. https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-771479
5. NGO Monitor. (2025, December 18). EU Funding to Terror-Linked Palestinian NGOs Since 2011.





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).

TO THOSE WHO HAVE TAKEN TO STAGE, SCREEN AND PETITION – FACTS MATTER

An Open Letter to the Entertainment Industry

By Rolene Marks

Throughout the decades, many of you from stage, screen and the recording arts have been voices for what you believe in. You have united against Apartheid South Africa, marched for the #MeToo movement, advocated for gender parity and told the world that Black Lives Matter.

There is one area where you have been conspicuous – not just by your silence – but by your inversion of human rights. We are speaking about the human rights of Israelis and the Jewish people. While it is important to advocate for the rights of Palestinian civilians who are as trapped by Hamas as we in Israel are, there is a propensity for many of you to take the carefully crafted propaganda from Hamas, sponsored by the Muslim Brotherhood as absolute fact.

Facts have become the first casualty of this war that Hamas forced upon both Israelis and Palestinians. Facts are important. Lives are at stake. Antisemitism has risen to levels not seen since before the Holocaust and while many of you have taken to stage, screen and petition, no doubt with honorable intentions, it is important that you understand the facts.

  • Thousands of entertainment industry professionals signed a letter stating they would boycott members of the Israeli film industry “they believe are connected to genocide.” It has been proven (see links and definition below) that there has been no genocide committed in the Gaza strip during this war rather this slur is designed to demonize the Jewish state. To exclude fellow artists from your industry because of their ethnicity is racist. The Israeli film industry represents a myriad of views and opinions and provides employment, including to Palestinians. Boycotting Israeli filmmakers not only silences Palestinians; but also robs them of employment opportunities.
  • Two hundred industry celebrities signed a petition to release Palestinian prisoner, Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti is serving five consecutive life sentences for the murders of Israelis. He is also serving time for 20 charges of attempted murder. He is not the Palestinian equivalent of Nelson Mandela. Any attempts to draw comparisons is an appalling insult to his victims, including Father (Priest) Tsibouktzakis. The second intifada, which saw the murders of over 1000 Israelis, was not a romantic uprising of “freedom fighters”. It was deliberate, targeted murder. Signing a petition calling for his release endorses the murder of Israelis.
  • Removal of music from Israeli sources – while many disagree with how Israel has prosecuted this war (without offering their expert military opinions about how to fight a war with an unprecedented battlefield scenario), removing access to music for Israelis, many who have experienced unbearable loss is not in the interest of peace or the Palestinians, it is discriminatory and racist. Have any of the artists who have done this removed their music from British, French, and American etc. streamers because civilians have been tragically killed in war?
  • Exclusion of Jews who support Israel, i.e. Zionists from artistic spaces. Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people and the belief in the right of Israel to exist as the only nation state of the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland. Zionism, despite the many attempts by Israel’s detractors to use it as a slur, is not about dispossessing anyone. There has never been a state of Palestine and Jews have maintained a continuous presence in the land that carries the story of the Jewish people, amply proven through antiquity. Excluding Jewish artists for a fundamental religious belief or saying that every nation has the right to determine its own future except for the Jewish people is racist.
  • The demonization of Israelis on stage and screen. Israel is the Jewish state – when you demonize Israelis, you effectively enable hate speech against Jews.

The slurs that are employed against Israel and the Jewish people are not just catchy phrases. They have specific and legal definitions. On 14 December, 15 people, nearly all Jewish, were murdered at a candle-lighting event to celebrate the first night of Chanukah. Nobody in the shattered Jewish community of Sydney where the terror attack took place was surprised. Routine demonization of the Jewish state, including by many in the entertainment industry who have parroted Hamas propaganda, including the blood libel that 14 000 Palestinian children would die in a matter of hours from starvation to your millions of followers has helped foster a climate of hate which led to the inevitable.  Not only did 14 000 children not die, many did not remove it from their social media – or apologise. While some of you expressed your sorrow at the murder of Jewish men, women and children in Bondi – many also neglected to mention that they were of the Jewish faith. Words have weight and it important we understand what they mean. Lives are at stake. 

Apartheid – from the Afrikaans, to “separateness”, lit. ’aparthood’) was a system of institutionalized racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s.[note 1] It was characterized by an authoritarian political culture which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation’s minority white population. The rights of all citizens in Israel are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. All citizens of Israel are fully enfranchised. To call Israel an Apartheid state, makes a mockery of the true victims of the racist system and is inherently factually incorrect. Palestinians fall under the remit of Hamas (presently) in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the territories they control in Judea and Samaria (West Bank).

Genocide –  The word “Genocide”, first coined by Polish-Jewish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, has a specific legal definition and refers to certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. It does not pertain to civilian deaths in times of war and Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza. This is evidenced by the lack of intent, low civilian vs combatant ratio as demonstrated in the links below, forming of humanitarian corridors, humanitarian aid entry, vaccinations against disease like polio, evacuation of medically vulnerable to other countries for treatment, early warning of impending strikes and more. Hamas and other terror organizations committed genocide and acts of mass sexual violence during their invasion into Israel on 7 October 2023.

Colonization – the establishing of a colony subjugation of a people or area especially as an extension of state power. Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and has sued for peace on many occasions – and each offer refused. Zionism is the opposite of colonization; it is the returning of the Jewish people to their ancient home, a modern-day miracle.

Sadly, when your voices were needed the most, many of you were silent. Many of you wore pins on your clothes to awards ceremonies. You claimed they were in support of a ceasefire – but the reality is that they were the symbol of the lynching of two IDF soldiers. How many of you were aware of that? None of you wore yellow ribbons to call for the immediate release of the over 250 hostages that were taken on 7 October including babies, Holocaust survivors and whole families.

You marched for gender parity and for the #MeToo movement – but were silent or derisive when our women and girls were raped on 7 October and silent when our hostages, including the males were sexually violated by their terrorist captor.

You were silent when Hamas paraded our emaciated released hostages or our babies in coffins in grotesque ceremonies that were carnivals of the grotesque.

You were silent as millions of Israelis were attacked from seven fronts, including the hundreds of ballistic missiles that rained down on our cities from Iran, destroying city blocks.

You were silent when nearly 400 young festivalgoers who danced for peace were hunted down and slaughtered.

You are unusually silent about the ceasefire in place. A ceasefire that has exposed Hamas’s inhumane treatment of Palestinians as they attempt to rebuild. Is it because you know that countries who “commit genocide” do not offer peace plans? You marched for civil rights for BLM but remain silent about the astronomic rise of antisemitism. Why?

Facts matter. For many, Israel-Palestine is the cause du jour. For the people of Israel and Gaza – this is our lives. Please review the following links compiled by historians and researchers for important facts:

 The Henry Jackson Society presents research on civilian casualty figures in Gaza: https://henryjacksonsociety.org/publications/questionable-counting/

War scholar and Chair of Urban Warfare studies at WestPoint Academy, Maj (ret) John Spencer examines claims of genocide:
https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/im-a-war-scholar-there-is-no-genocide-in-gaza-john-spencer-on-x/

COGAT the IDF Unit for the coordination of humanitarian aid dashboard:
https://gaza-aid-data.gov.il/mainhome/

The UK All Parties Parliamentary Commission in depth report into the atrocities of 7 October:
https://www.7octparliamentarycommission.co.uk

Dinah Project Report into crimes of sexual violence committed on 7 October: https://thedinahproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/The-Dinah-Project-full-report-A4-pages_web-2.pdf

We ask you to consider the facts. We invite you to visit Israel to see and hear the reality for yourself. We implore you to be bridge builders and not create division. We ask you to speak of peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.





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).

LIFE AFTER LOSS

Rabbi Leo Dee’s experience and counsel on how to honour personal tragedy without being imprisoned by it.

By Jonathan Feldstein

In April 2023, Rabbi Leo Dee’s life shattered in an instant. While driving with his family for vacation on the second day of Passover, his wife Lucy and two daughters, Maia and Rina, were murdered in a Hamas terrorist ambush. Leo, driving ahead in another car, survived along with three other children who were with him. What followed was not only profound personal grief, but the challenge of being a traumatized husband and father, suddenly raising his grieving children alone. Yet, in almost three years since, Leo Dee has emerged as a remarkable voice of resilience, faith, and purposeful healing, most notably through his book “The Seven Facets of Healing.”

In a recent conversation on “Inspiration from Zion,” Leo shared his journey and personal story of transformation. Originally a successful private equity professional in London, driven by a sense of calling in his London community, he left the world of finance and he and Lucy made aliyah to Israel in 2004. The tragedy of 2023 could have broken him, but instead it revealed strengths forged over a lifetime, especially throughout his 25-year marriage, that taught him empathy and perseverance.

Central to Leo’s message is the idea that tragedy marks a clear breakpoint. Thirty days after the attack, as the formal Jewish mourning period ended, he gathered his surviving children and declared: “We are entering a new world.” This was not denial but deliberate reframing. Drawing on the Jewish morning prayer that God “renews creation every day,” he taught his family—and now teaches others—that every moment offers the possibility of a new beginning. Rather than live in the shadow of loss, one must consciously step forward into a future that honors the past without being imprisoned by it.

Traversing Tragedy. Speaking at an international press conference following the murder of his wife and two daughters by terrorists in 2023, Rabbi Leo Dee said,  “After the tragedy, I said to my children, we are now entering a new world. World number one was with two parents and five children and world number two is with one parent with three children. We are going to continue, to be happy and have fun and live this life as best as we can.”

This mindset echoes the innovative framework Lucy herself created early in their marriage. Frustrated with date nights derailed by complaints, she devised “The Seven Facets for Living” to ground even challenging times: Friends, Family, Fitness, Fun, Finances, Firm (work/function), and Faith. By requiring discussion of all seven, Leo and Lucy gained perspective that difficulties in one area were offset by blessings in others. After the tragedy, Leo realized these same categories became the primary pillars for heal. Friends evoked memories of social gatherings with Lucy; family highlighted absent voices; even leisure activities stirred pain. Thus, Lucy’s “Seven Facets for Living” became the foundation for Leo’s “Seven Facets of Healing.”

His book, structured around these categories, offers practical wisdom born of hard experience. Leo discovered that post-trauma instincts are often exactly wrong. Hollywood portrays bereavement as endless tears and withdrawal; in reality, those behaviors prolong suffering. He shares how, in the first year, he instinctively avoided smiling in photos with visitors, believing it would dishonor his lost loved ones. Only later did he recall positive-psychology research: smiling actually generates happiness through serotonin release. He also understood that despite his loss, Lucy would not want him to be unhappy, nor would he wish that for her should he have been in the wrong car that horrible day. It was not smiling, not being happy, was what would dishonor Lucy’s memory. Forcing smiles again, allowing himself to be happy, was counter to his instinct at the time, but helped lift his mood and create a model of resilience for his children.

Perhaps the deepest insight and foundation of healing concerns faith. Leo publicly affirmed God’s greatness daily through leading prayers and reciting Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, despite every reason to feel anger. He realized this public declaration served three purposes:

  • elevating the souls of the deceased
  • strengthening the mourner
  • and, most powerfully, demonstrating to the community that faith can endure unimaginable tragedy.

When well-meaning people asked “What if?” questions (“What if you had left later?” “What if you never moved to Israel?”), Leo eventually forbade such speculation as futile. While these were all questions he asked himself, Leo instead poses one permitted “What if?”: What if this was always God’s plan? Accepting that reality shifts focus from regret to response: given these cards, how will I play them?

Leo extends these lessons beyond personal grief to national trauma. Six months after the murder of Lucy, Maia and Rina, the October 7 Hamas attack and massacre brought collective Israeli suffering. He sees parallels: just as individuals must reframe life after tragedy, a nation must find new purpose. He credits Israel’s resilience to an underlying faith — even among the secular — that manifest as trust in the people, the land, and the biblical promise. On October 8, when government and army structures faltered, ordinary citizens instinctively asked, “Where do they need me?” and filled every gap—supplying soldiers, housing evacuees, feeding frontline troops.

Leo and Lucy (z’l) Dee. The family was on their way back from a hiking trip in 2023 when they were ambushed by terrorists. Daughters Maia and Rina were killed at the scene, and Lucy died three days later from her wounds.

This question — “Where do they need me?” — had been Leo’s guiding mantra. It once drove him from a lucrative career in finance into the rabbinate.  Now it fuels his speaking worldwide. He urges Jews to build Israel and Christians to transform the rest of the world with biblical values. Having recently addressed evangelical churches in Canada, he expresses profound gratitude for Christian Zionists who, he believes, remain the West’s last strong defenders of Judeo-Christian morality.

For those currently in pain, Leo offers two immediate consolations. First: your loved ones in heaven want only your happiness; prolonged misery dishonors their memory and harms surviving family. Second: the present is illusory — only past and future exist. We can choose to warehouse pain in the past (visiting it on memorial days) while living fully in an open future.

Leo Dee’s story is not one of superhuman invulnerability but of deliberate, faith-guided choices. He grieves deeply yet refuses to let grief define the remainder of his life — or that of his children. Through ‘The Seven Facets of Healing’, he extends Lucy’s legacy, turning private wisdom into public light. In an age of widespread trauma — personal and collective — his voice reminds us that healing is possible, purpose is renewable, and every new day truly is a beginning God offers afresh.


*You can follow the full inspirational conversation with Leo Dee on “Inspiration from Zion” on YouTube and anywhere you listen to podcasts.



About the writer:

Jonathan Feldstein ­­­­- President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Jornal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.





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 SOMALILAND LITMUS TEST

Refusal to recognize Somaliland  exposes global hypocrisy and rewards terror.

By Grant Gochin

The global disparity in statehood recognition between Palestine and Somaliland exposes a truth: international decisions are not rooted in law, facts, or genuine support for viable entities. Instead, the enthusiasm of 157 UN member states for recognizing Palestine—despite its failures—serves primarily as a diplomatic cudgel against Israel and Jews. This is not pro-Palestinian advocacy; it is animus, a collective expression of bigotry that ignores objective criteria to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state. Somaliland, by contrast, exemplifies success under every legal standard, yet is shunned precisely because its recognition would bolster Israel’s alliances. The 157 nations endorsing Palestine do not care about law or reality; they are weaponizing statehood as a tool of prejudice.

Happenings at the Horn. Israel became the first nation in the world to recognize Somaliland as a country prompting a global outcry and an emergency meeting of the United Nations.

Somaliland’s Historical Narrative: Survivor of Genocide

Somaliland is not a mere “breakaway region”; it is a survivor of internal African colonialism and genocide. Briefly independent in 1960 and recognized by 35 nations, including Israel, it entered an unratified union with southern Somalia. Under Siad Barre’s regime, this turned genocidal. From 1987–1989, government forces systematically targeted the Isaaq clan with aerial bombardments, well poisonings, and mass executions, killing 50,000 – 200,000 civilians. Somaliland’s 1991 independence reclaimed its pre-union sovereignty—a humanitarian and anti-colonial necessity.1 Nations posturing as “anti-colonial” such as Ireland, betray this by enforcing Mogadishu’s claims and ignoring Somaliland’s genocide survival.

The Montevideo Criteria: Ignored in Favor of Bigotry

International law’s cornerstone for statehood, the 1933 Montevideo Convention, demands a permanent population, defined territory, effective government, and capacity for international relations.2 These objective benchmarks are routinely discarded when anti-Israel bias takes precedence. The result is that Palestine, a dysfunctional entity, is elevated, while Somaliland’s qualifications are dismissed to punish Israel.

● Permanent Population: Both meet this threshold. The 157 states overlook Palestine’s divisions to strike at Israel.

● Defined Territory: Somaliland claims clear, undisputed borders from its 1960 independence.3 Palestine’s are contested and non-contiguous. Recognizing the latter delegitimizes Israel’s security claims.

● Effective Government: Somaliland boasts a centralized democracy.4 Palestine is fractured between the corrupt PA in the West Bank and Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

Rousing Recognition. When the Israeli flag is sighted on the streets of the Muslim world, it is often being set alight or trampled underfoot. Yet in recent days the Star of David has been plastered on buildings and brandished by jubilant crowds in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland. 

● Capacity for Relations: Somaliland forges sovereign deals, proving autonomy.5 Palestine relies on aid, its “diplomacy” a facade for anti-Israel lobbying.

The case of Somaliland provides the ultimate legal refutation of the ‘occupation’ libel used against the Jewish state. Under the principle of uti possidetis juris, Somaliland is the rightful successor to the borders of its 1960 independence—a fact the world ignores to protect a defunct Somali union.6 Israel, by recognizing these borders, reaffirms the sanctity of original administrative boundaries as the only objective standard for statehood. This same legal logic confirms that Israel is the sole legal successor to the British Mandate, rendering the ‘occupation’ of Judea and Samaria a legal fiction. By championing Somaliland, Israel is not just supporting a fellow democracy; it is enforcing a global legal standard that exposes the Palestinian project as a violation of the very international laws its proponents claim to uphold.

The refusal of the international community to apply uti possidetis juris to Israel—while rigidly enforcing it to keep Somaliland shackled to the failed state of Somalia—is a targeted legal assault. If the administrative borders of the 1960 British protectorate define the legitimate sovereignty of Somaliland, then by that same objective standard, the administrative borders of the 1948 British Mandate define the sovereign territory of Israel. To argue otherwise is to admit that ‘international law’ is merely a political fiction used to protect anti-Western regimes in Mogadishu and Ramallah while attempting to strip the Jewish state of its foundational legal rights.

By recognizing the functional reality of Somaliland over the ‘constitutive’ political fantasy of a Palestinian state, Israel is championing the Declaratory Theory of Statehood. This position asserts that a state exists when it functions as one, not simply when a collection of biased nations engages in a diplomatic séance to conjure it into existence through mere votes. Recognizing Somaliland is therefore a strategic defense of the rule of law: it enforces the principle that functional, stable governance and original administrative boundaries are the only legitimate measures of sovereignty. Any other standard is a reward for terrorism and a threat to global security.

Palestine’s Dysfunction: A Weapon Against Israel

Palestine’s realities scream failure, yet are encouraged because it harms Israel:

● Aid Dependency: A vast consumer of $40+ billion since Oslo, Palestine’s economy is propped up by donors, fostering corruption. This is a subsidy for instability that pressures Israel.7

● Corruption and Autocracy: The PA ranks abysmally on corruption indices. Mahmoud Abbas is now in the 20th year of a four-year term, a full-blown dictatorship. Bigots overlook this to amplify accusations against Jewish “oppression”.

● Pay-for-Slay Terrorism: Allocating ~7% of its budget to reward attacks on Israelis, the PA incentivizes violence despite the U.S. Taylor Force Act.8 Sponsored by Iran, this makes Palestine a terror proxy encouraged by recognizers whose true aim is weakening Israel. Abbas’s February 2025 decree to “end” the Martyrs’ Fund has been exposed by Israeli authorities as a shell game, with payments simply channeled through the Palestinian postal system to circumvent the Act.9

Enlightening Recognition. Public buildings were lit up with Israeli flags as mass celebrations took place in Hargeisa and across cities of the Republic of Somaliland, as citizens gathered to commemorate the historic decision by Israel to formally recognize Somaliland.

Somaliland’s Excellence: Punished to Avoid Benefiting Israel

Somaliland’s indicators of success are ignored to prevent any win for Jews. While Somaliland remains a bulwark, Somalia’s failure is absolute. In 2025, an al-Shabaab offensive saw Mogadishu lose strategic towns like Sabiid and Anole, and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud narrowly survived a March 2025 assassination attempt in Mogadishu, escaping via armored convoy amid the attack on his convoy.10

Somalia’s claim to Somaliland is based on a failed union and subsequent genocidal aggression, whereas Somaliland’s claim is a defensive re-assertion of its 1960 sovereignty. This mirrors Israel’s defensive reconstitution of rights over Judea and Samaria following the 1967 war of annihilation launched against it—territory with no prior legitimate sovereign after 1948.

National Security and the Irish Model of Hypocrisy

The refusal to recognize Somaliland is a direct threat to Western national security. By rewarding Iranian proxies in the Middle East while destabilizing the Red Sea by ignoring Somaliland, the international community empowers anti-Western forces. As the Hudson Institute’s 2025 conference on “Antisemitism as a National Security Threat” outlined, this selective bigotry enables threats like Iranian destabilization. Israel’s recognition of Somaliland marks the start of “leapfrog diplomacy”—building a Red Sea Security Arc based on technology, water security, and counter-terrorism, bypassing traditional bottlenecks. Somaliland has officially signaled its desire to join the Abraham Accords, positioning itself as a Sunni Muslim partner that chooses cooperation with Israel over the rejectionist bloc led by Iran and Turkey.11

The swiftness with which the Palestinian Authority and the OIC fabricated a blood libel—claiming this recognition is a scheme for ‘forced displacement’—exposes their desperation to preserve a status quo that rewards terror at the expense of African self-determination. While the UN holds emergency meetings to protect the ‘territorial integrity’ of a failed state in Mogadishu, Israel is providing Hargeisa with the surveillance technology necessary to secure its own airspace and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. This is the birth of a Red Sea Security Arc that replaces ideological theater with functional sovereignty.

Dublin exemplifies this betrayal: in May 2024, Ireland recognized Palestine despite its failures, yet it rejects Somaliland. This selective empathy rewards terror-linked dysfunction and punishes African self-determination.

The Overriding Truth: Animus Against Jews and Israel

This is not about law or facts; 157 countries spew animus toward Jews, weaponizing Palestine’s recognition to delegitimize Israel. Somaliland’s excellence is collateral damage in this hate-fueled game.

True Colors. Changing attitudes on the streets of Somaliland.

Conclusion

Does Somaliland have to slaughter innocents like October 7 to earn recognition? Launch rockets? Commit atrocities? Is terrorism the real price of sovereignty? The hypocrisy is bigotry.





Feature photo: Residents wave Somaliland flags as they gather to celebrate Israel’s announcement recognizing Somaliland’s statehood in downtown Hargeisa. (Photo: Farhan Aleli/AFP via Getty Images)




Disclaimer: The author of this article and annex is not a licensed attorney and is not engaged in the practice of law. The analysis provided herein regarding international legal principles, including uti possidetis juris and the Montevideo Convention, is presented solely as a personal interpretation and an expression of opinion for informational and argumentative purposes. This content does not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as a substitute for professional counsel from a qualified legal practitioner.

Legal Annex: The Doctrine of Sovereign Succession and Functional Statehood

I. Precedents for Uti Possidetis Juris and Mandatory Succession The principle of uti possidetis juris (UPJ) is recognized by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as a “general principle, logically connected with the phenomenon of the obtaining of independence, wherever it occurs” (Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali), 1986).

● Application to Somaliland: As established in 1960 and reaffirmed in 2025, Somaliland is the successor to the borders of the British Somaliland Protectorate.12 The 1964 OAU Cairo Resolution and Article 4(b) of the AU Constitutive Act mandate respect for borders existing at independence. The attempt to keep Somaliland tethered to Mogadishu is a violation of the very “intangibility of frontiers” the AU claims to uphold.

● Application to Israel: Legal scholars (including Professor Eugene Kontorovich and the Levy Report) argue that uti possidetis juris dictates that a state’s borders are defined by the preceding administrative boundaries. As the only sovereign successor to the 1948 British Mandate of Palestine, Israel’s legal claim extends to the entirety of that administrative area. International attempts to impose “1967 lines” (which were merely temporary armistice lines) constitute an illegal derogation of the UPJ principle.

II. The Declaratory Theory of Statehood vs. Political Recognition  The Montevideo Convention (1933) codifies the Declaratory Theory, which asserts that statehood is a question of fact, not a gift of diplomatic recognition.

● Somaliland’s Declaratory Compliance: As of late 2025, Somaliland satisfies all four Montevideo criteria. Its internal stability—contrasted with the failure in the south—proves that it is a state de jure and de facto.

● The Palestinian Fraud: The 157 nations recognizing Palestine are employing the Constitutive Theory, attempting to “create” a state through diplomatic votes. However, without a unified government or territorial control, this “state” is a legal fiction that lacks the objective requirements of international law.

III. Security Data and the Doctrine of Defensive Control (2025 Update) International law distinguishes between illegal annexation and defensive control of territory where there is no prior legitimate sovereign.

● Somalia’s Sovereign Collapse: Security reports from March and August 2025 confirm that the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) has lost effective control over major southern sectors. The capture of Sabiid and Anole by al-Shabaab and the failed assassination of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in Mogadishu (March 2025) demonstrate that Somalia lacks the “effective government” required to claim sovereignty over Somaliland.

● The Martyrs’ Fund Shell Game: Israeli intelligence reports from late 2025 confirm that the Palestinian Authority’s “Abolition of the Prisoners’ Fund” was a shell game. Funds are now funneled through the Palestinian Postal System to ensure “Pay-for-Slay” payments continue, rendering the PA a persistent sponsor of terrorism in violation of the Taylor Force Act and UN counter-terrorism resolutions.13

IV. Strategic Conclusion: National Security as a Legal Imperative As outlined in the Hudson Institute’s 2025 Conference, antisemitism and the delegitimization of the Jewish state are national security threats to the West. The refusal to recognize Somaliland while empowering a Palestinian terror-proxy is a strategic failure that emboldens Iranian and Houthi aggression. Recognizing Somaliland is therefore a legal necessity to preserve the security of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the integrity of the Abraham Accords framework.

Bibliography

● Reuters. “Israel recognizes Somaliland as independent state.” December 26, 2025.

● The Times of Israel. “Israel becomes first country to recognize breakaway Somaliland.” December 26, 2025.

● Al Jazeera. “Somalia demands Israel withdraw Somaliland recognition.” December 27, 2025.

● TurkishMinute. “Turkish ports sent 456 ships to Israel… despite trade ban.” October 7, 2025.

● Heritage Foundation. Ilhan Omar speech translations (2024).

● Various sources: Isaaq genocide estimates (50,000–200,000); Palestinian aid/corruption data; Iranian funding to Hamas; PA Martyrs’ Fund.

● Hudson Institute. “Antisemitism as a National Security Threat” conference (2025).

● Reuters. “Palestinian president scraps prisoner payment system” (February 2025); Times of Israel. “PA document shows ‘pay-to-slay’ has been scrapped, new system in place” (September 2025).14

● TRT Afrika. “Somali forces kill mastermind of failed assassination attempt” (September 2025).

Somali President Mohamud Survives Al-Shabaab’s Assassination Attempt
This video reports on the March 18, 2025, assassination attempt on President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, highlighting the profound insecurity and lack of effective governance in Mogadishu compared to the stability of Somaliland.



About the writer:

Grant Arthur Gochin currently serves as the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Togo. He is the Emeritus Special Envoy for Diaspora Affairs for the African Union, which represents the fifty-five African nations, and Emeritus Vice Dean of the Los Angeles Consular Corps, the second largest Consular Corps in the world. Gochin is actively involved in Jewish affairs, focusing on historical justice. He has spent the past twenty five years documenting and restoring signs of Jewish life in Lithuania. He has served as the Chair of the Maceva Project in Lithuania, which mapped / inventoried / documented / restored over fifty abandoned and neglected Jewish cemeteries. Gochin is the author of “Malice, Murder and Manipulation”, published in 2013. His book documents his family history of oppression in Lithuania. He is presently working on a project to expose the current Holocaust revisionism within the Lithuanian government. Professionally, Gochin is a Certified Financial Planner and practices as a Wealth Advisor in California, where he lives with his family. Personal site: https://www.grantgochin.com/





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).

BONDI BEACH LESSON: ANTI-ZIONISM IS A MODERN MUTATION OF ANTISEMETISM

A beach massacre displays bloodedly the linkage between antizionism and the new antisemitism

By Marika Sboros

(Courtesy of Daily Friend in S.A where article was first published)

There is good reason that anti-Zionism feels so righteous to those who preach it and so viscerally familiar to Jews forced to face it.

Anti-Zionism (the denial of Israel’s right to exist) is the spawn of a lethal truth exposed by the Bondi Beach terror attack against Jews in Australia on December 14, 2025.

The terrorists, reportedly inspired by ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), killed 15 Jews, including a 10-year-old girl, two rabbis (one born in South Africa) and a Holocaust survivor, celebrating Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. They wounded more than 40, including two policemen, not all of them Jews.

Facing the Facts. Woman sits, stares and questions what happened, why did it happen and where it will all lead.

The same lethal truth lies behind the unprecedented, gratuitous savagery of the October 7, 2023 terror attack against mostly civilian targets in southern Israel. That left more 1200 people dead, more than 5000 injured, and more than 250 kidnapped to Gaza as hostages. Not all victims were Jews.

That truth, say legal and historical scholars, is that anti-Zionism really is a modern mutation of the ancient virus of hatred known as antisemitism.

It has evolved, they say, by latching itself onto modern social constructs. In this case, the construct is the language around international law and human rights that has been “weaponised” in an “unconventional war” to delegitimise, demonise and destroy the state of Israel.

An allied strand to this truth is that anti-Zionism threatens not just Jews, who may or may not be Zionists, but anyone in the way of genocidal fanatics hellbent on wiping Israel from the face of the earth and all Jews with it.

Hamas proved that on October 7 by torturing, mass raping, murdering, burning alive and beheading not just Jews, not just adults, but also babies, children, the elderly, Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouins, Buddhists, dogs and any living beings unlucky enough to stumble across their murderous paths.

Hamas also proved that Zionist really is the anti-Israel lobby’s code word for Jews, despite protestations from lobbyists that they are only showing “Palestinian solidarity”.

October 7 led American-Jewish atheist, neuroscientist, philosopher Sam Harris, an avowed non-Zionist, to declare presciently:

“We all live in Israel now. Some of us just haven’t realised it yet.”

Australians are realising that after the Bondi attack by a father-and-son terrorist duo.

Police shot dead Sajid Akram (50), an immigrant from India, at the scene. His Australian-born son, Naveed Akram (24), was critically injured but recovered in hospital. He has been charged with more than 50 terror counts.

If that was a father-son bonding session, it was the most perversely depraved one imaginable.

The elder Akram set off on the day heavily armed, on a family outing with all the hallmarks of a suicide pact. With ISIS flags in his car, he inducted his son into mass murder as if into a shared rite.

Both showed commitment to Islamist radicalisation not in isolation but in intimacy with terror against Jews as a shared project and strangers as collateral.

Against that obscene collapse of good parenting stood its brave, moral opposite in extraordinarily courageous, unarmed civilians. 

A dash-cam video shows Boris and Sofia Gurman, a Russian-Jewish couple in their 60s, confronting the terrorists as they emerged from their car. Boris managed to grab a gun from one of the terrorists but both he and Sofia were fatally shot.

They were found dying in the street in each other’s arms.

As courageous and but luckier was Muslim bystander Ahmed Al Ahmed. A video shows him moving towards the gunfire, risking his life to save others, and wresting a large rifle from Akram. Al Ahmed was shot in the interchange but has recovered well in hospital.

And then, although too soon to say if he was also lucky, was Israeli Gefen Biton, identified as the “man in the red shirt”, who chose to run straight into the line of fire alongside Al Ahmed. Biton too was shot – multiple times – and is in critical condition, currently lying in a coma in an ICU having undergone several surgeries. 

On December 15, Sarah Ettedgui, a Canadian “proud Sephardi Jew” and corporate lawyer with a psychology background, took to X (formerly Twitter) to call out the Bondi attack as: “ideologically motivated violence rooted in contemporary anti-Zionism.”

Shouting to Shooting. Two years preceding the Sydney Opera House being illuminated honoring the victims of the Bondi Beach terrorist attack(above), a mass of protestors gathered two days after the October 7 massacre chanting “Gas the Jews” and “Death to the Jews”. (Photo: Izhar Khan/Getty Images)

Ettedgui called anti-Zionism “antisemitism expressed in a political vocabulary” and a “transnational mass hate movement that has reshaped university culture, activist networks and even mainstream political spaces”.

Look no further in South Africa for prime examples of anti-Zionism “reshaping” university culture than the University of Cape Town (UCT).

Anti-Zionism is looking like the main driver of the moral inversion happening at the highest levels of leadership at UCT and on other campuses.

A recent example is UCT’s Convocation elections. Anti-Israel lobbyists hailed the newly elected executive committee as a sign of success of their stated campaign to ensure a campus that is no longer a “home for Zionists”.

Ettedgui has pointed out that the Bondi Beach attack did not emerge in a vacuum. It was birthed in an environment that “defends calls to globalise the intifada as protected speech, dismisses Jewish fear as exaggeration and treats enforcement of existing laws as optional.”

She joins others who say that anti-Zionism is not just critique of Israeli state policy. It is mostly a framework that assigns “collective guilt to Jews, treats Jewish presence as provocation and allows Jew hatred to adapt.”

Crucially, when that hatred is “laundered through political language and left unchallenged, it does not remain symbolic for long,” Ettedgui said.

It speedily spirals into violence against Jews.

That political language-laundering showed up in stark relief in South Africa on December 16, in The Ahmed Kathrada Foundation’s statement on the Bondi Beach attack.

Kathrada was an anti-apartheid activist and senior leader in the liberation struggle, a member of the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party. He spent 26 years in prison, mostly on Robben Island, with his close friend and comrade, Nelson Mandela.

Blaming the Jews for being Murdered.  Even after the Australian PM labeled the Bondi Beach massacre an “evil antisemitic terrorist attack,” South Africa’s supposedly respected human rights organization, the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, came out with a statement stating that “… the motive for the attack is yet unknown,” and took place, “within the context of the Gaza genocide and Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine for the last seven decades“.

After apartheid collapsed, Kathrada remained a moral voice in public life, known for his principled commitment to non-racialism, constitutionalism and ethical leadership.

Hope springs eternal, and I’m hoping his eponymous foundation’s statement on the Bondi Beach terror attack would have horrified him. 

The Foundation denounced the Bondi terror onslaught against Jews simply as an “attack on a Jewish religious festival” by “two gunmen”. It quoted Foundation executive director Neeshan Balton sending condolences to “the Australian people”.

Somewhat disingenuously, it claimed that the motive for the attack was currently “unknown”.

In fact, it was known to the world watching on December 14 as a targeted terrorist assault on Jews. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used precisely such language that same evening, calling it “an act of evil, antisemitism terrorism.”

New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon declared it a terrorist incident on December 14.

The Foundation statement segued seamlessly into anti-Zionist rhetoric, including the libelous, “genocide in Gaza” claim against Israel.

It quoted Balton saying that anti-Zionism differed “fundamentally” from antisemitism; and “conflation of the two – often by proponents of Israel themselves – should be guarded against.”

He said it “paves the way for the legitimate challenging of a political concept to be dangerously blurred with clearcut religious hate.”

Balton ended by dismissing the Bondi attack as the “recent killing of 15 more people in a different part of the world altogether…” and “possibly indicative of the global repercussions of the genocide.”

He would have done better to take a leaf from the book of the eponymous family foundation of the late Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and wife Leah.

On December 15, the Desmond and Leah Tutu Foundation condemned the Bondi Beach attack “in the strongest possible terms” as “a violent antisemitic attack” and an “attack of hatred” against “the Jewish community and the dignity and safety of all people.”

Imam Tawhidi, Australian representative of the Global Imams Council (GIC), was similarly forceful.

On December 15, Tawhidi issued a statement unapologetically punctuated with J-words (Jews, Jewish), where the Kathrada Foundation used one (Jewish), once only.

In it, Tawhidi condemns the Bondi Beach attack as “barbaric,” a “calculated antisemitic act of terror,” driven by “hatred, cowardice and moral depravity,” and a crime that “stains the conscience of humanity.”

It is what “globalising of the intifada looks like,” he says. “Any individual or ideology that targets Jews or justifies violence against them … is not representing Islam but desecrating it.”

‘Weak Democracies Leading To Islamic Extremism In West’ Claims Muslim Imam

The GIC “stands in unbreakable, unapologetic solidarity with the Jewish community of Australia” and “Jewish communities worldwide,” Tawhidi says.

Ettedgui says that we are (or should be) all far past the point that can justify “soft language, indirect framing or strategic silence.” And it is not radical to call anti-Zionism what it clearly is to most proponents – a hate movement,

It is “necessary and accurate,” she says.

That accuracy is:

 “…the starting point for any strategy that intends to protect Jewish communities and their allies today.”

Tawhidi would endorse that sentiment.

He calls on Muslims everywhere to confront extremist ideologies in their own communities and actively build “bonds of respect and protection for their Jewish brothers and sisters.”

Deadly Defamation. Reminiscent of 1930s Nazi antisemitic cartoons, there is no shortage of 21st century heirs like this drawing by French cartoonist Zeon that so easily paves the way to mass murder of Jews from Washington to Manchester and Sydney. The obvious question is “Where next?”

He calls on authorities globally to crush terror against Jews decisively, and to expose and hold accountable without exception, all those who incite, fund, promote or excuse it.

Tawhidi channels Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel, in declaring that “silence is complicity” and “neutrality in the face of terror is a moral failing.”

Until that silence and neutrality lift, the global hunting of Jews under the cloak of anti-Zionism will go on.



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.






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