Category: BDS

HANGAR OF HORROR TO GATES TO HEAVEN

I did not want to talk about it; so now I’m writing about it – my visit to Camp Shura in central Israel.

By David E. Kaplan

This article contains information of a sensitive nature.

I was descending an escalator at  Kfar Saba shopping mall in central Israel. Above were giant industrial fans with huge propeller blades. With the blazing hot summer weather, it should have brought relief. It didn’t!  It reminded me of horror when only days before I went on a tour of Machaneh Shura (Camp Shura) near Ramle and the first visual image that greeted our Shurat HaDin tour at a hangar was the same type of huge propeller blades. Three years earlier, in October 2023, these very blades rotated furiously above the ‘living few’ processing the ‘many dead’, as endless bodies  – or remains  – were being brought in refrigerated trucks for identification and preparation for burial following the massacres of October 7 across southern Israel.

I had visited earlier some of the sites where these people were brutally butchered – Nir Oz, Nahal Oz, Kfar Aza, Be’eri the Nova Music Festival memorial site and the totally destroyed Sderot police station. Now I was bearing witness of what gruesomely played out at this military and rabbinical wayward station where remains had arrived on their final journey and then left with their loved ones to burial sites across the State of Israel.

One could understand the condition of the bodies seeing the level of destruction caused by Hamas terrorists such as this bedroom (above) at Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023. (Photo: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

I soon understood the caution we received before alighting the bus at this IDF central military base that handles casualty identification, death determinations, and prepares fallen soldiers and massacre victims for burial with military and religious honors.

A young soldier who had boarded our bus at the camp’s entry gate warned:

“What you are about to see and hear may distress you immensely. You may not be prepared for what you will experience. If you have any problems or feel nausea along the way, please advise us.”

One of the ‘living few’ who attended to the ‘many dead’ three years earlier was our  ‘tour’ guide, Rabbi and Stf.-Sgt. Bentzi Mann, born to US parents who as a reservist had reported here for duty on October 8.

Rabbi Bentzi Mann carried out the ‘holy work’ of identifying the bodies of murdered Israeli citizens and soldiers as part of the IDF rabbinate. (Photo: KRifkind Photography)

“This is the IDF Rabbinate morgue. I was in Rehovot when I received the call-up and arrived here totally unprepared for what came next. I had never in my life seen a dead body before and within minutes I was holding a blood-covered body,” he says.

We look around the hangar, imagining what unfolded here three years earlier.

“So just try envision what occurred here – this is one of the hardest parts of my job,” he began as he relives in the telling of the horror. “Israel had never before faced this many dead at any one time. There was no ability to separate the civilian dead from those of the IDF, police, and other security forces. There were so many bodies, including those of terrorists and Gazans who were intermixed with Israelis. Many, burnt beyond recognition were meshed together.” 

A number of bodies had been beheaded and in one case Rabbi Mann worked on, “the head was discovered two weeks after the body had been buried.” For this reason, in cases where body parts remained missing, “a grave was not fully sealed so that if possible, the missing parts could be added later.”

While a grisly undertaking, Rabbi Mann refers to his work with the dead as “dealing with angels.” This is the only way he could deal with the mass of death that came to Shura which President Herzog had called “the gate to hell,” but which Bentzi prefers to characterize – as reframed by Rabbi Ephrahaim Mirvis – as  “Gate of Heaven” because “those who died, did so sanctifying God’s name.”

Rabbi Bentzi Mann emotionally unpacks to our Shurat HaDin tour group the horror of what unfolded in this hangar where bodies were “unloaded” from endless refrigerated trucks. (Photo: D.E. Kaplan)

Believing this, he says, “is what kept me going.”

I thought to myself listening to this young and traumatized rabbi, “How many times has he given this tour?” and three years later, he still cannot hold back the tears.

Such WAS – and IS – the horror of October 7.

This experience will never leave Stf.-Sgt. Bentzi Mann. I sensed he feels he owes it to the fallen who passed through Shura to never forget and explains his need – as part of his miluim (military reserve duty) – to serve as a guide. A “guide” has a totally elevated meaning in the context of the service Stf.-Sgt. Bentzi Mann performs. As he explains:

 “It’s not Chessed what I’m doing, its gratitude for people who gave their lives so others, like myself and my family, and many of you and your families, may live. They are angels.”

We are standing at the entrance of the hangar and Rabbi Mann relates that when huge sums of money had been donated to build this important facility, “It was asked ‘Why do we need such a big hangar? There will never a need to process so many dead bodies all at once.’ ‘It’s overreach’.”

Overreach?

No one predicted October 7!

Rabbi Mann tells how the trucks lined up and bodies brought in “one after another, after another.” We stood in silence absorbing his words, processing the images. I looked down at my feet and wondered what had occurred here where my shoes now stood. “There were not even enough refrigerated trucks. They had to commission civilian commercial vehicles. An ice-cream truck arrived piled up –  not with ice-scream – but bodies. To this day, every time I and my colleagues on duty that day see these trucks on the road, we think …of dead Jews.”

He describes the refrigerated trucks parking, and bodies being lined up on the ground in the hangar, which proved too small; “there was not sufficient space so bodies were  laid outside,” exactly where I was standing.

 “One had walk carefully to avoid stepping on bodies. You then take them to the refrigerators.” I shook my head in disbelief reflecting on this hangar that the planners originally thought was too big for the purpose it was built ending up on October 7 to be inadequate!

Rabbi Mann addresses the difficulties:

“One way to identify a corpse is to have two witnesses come before a beit din (rabbinical court)  but the process of identification after Oct. 7 was made harder because of the state on the deceased, such as those who were burned. Also, it was harder to find witnesses because there were so many dead.”

And then the sensitivities of welcoming and preparing the bereaved families when they come for the remains of their loved ones.

“You want to prepare the bereaving families for the moment when they will reunite with their loved one in the Cheder Preda (the “Goodbye Room” set aside for the families),” says Rabbi Mann.

“Families deserve to know what they will be seeing. It is their decision to make. Very difficult.”  Bentzi tells of a Hayal Boded (A lone soldier – a member of the IDF who serves without immediate family support in Israel) who took a direct hit by an RPG to the head and there was no face to show “….and so we said to the mother “Why don’t you hold his hand.” She cried and said “Thank you. It’s all I needed; I felt it was him, I know it’s him.” That was all she needed.”

Rabbi Mann relates that for the first few days “I was working 18 hours straight. The IDC chief rabbi of the IDF, who had to sign off on every identification, was basically awake 24/7. In the beginning we had 80 funerals in one day.” Many of the bodies, “arriving by the truckload were in terrible condition,” and together with  his colleagues “we began to learn  a body was broken up or not, by the weight of the body bags we were unloading.”

Rabbi Mann takes us over to the finger print scanner that helps identify but explained that many bodies were brought in without hands so that they would have to move to the next stages of identification through teeth and then DNA matching.

He explained that “every soldier is given a wrist band with a bar code and a number,” and recalled when showing a group that included visitors from the USA, “this older guy  burst into tears. I asked what happened and he tells us of his late father that had been a Holocaust survivor with a number tattooed on his arm and that imagining all these burned bodies of dead Israelis with numbers on their arms, reminded him of his father and the Shoah. That it was happening all over again – to the Jews now of Israel.” Bentzi takes a deep breath, his voice choking with emotion, and continued:

 “I told him, ‘No, it is not the same. With the Nazis they turned beautiful names into numbers. Here, we are turning numbers back into beautiful names. We are restoring identity and they will be arriving in heaven with their names known.”

Someone asks:

“Are soldiers always buried in coffins in Israel?”

It was a question Bentzi may have been reluctant to answer as he only addressed the issue because asked.

It was quickly evident why.

“Yes, unlike civilians who are wrapped in traditional shrouds, IDF soldiers are always buried in coffins,” and cites as an explanation the case of a soldier brought in “but there was no body but over 100 body parts – all associated with the same person. We took every piece of small flesh up to our laboratory where specialists analyzed every single part, from muscle to tissue to cells. We go to extreme lengths to isolate and examine every human body part as it is all holy. But in the end, there is no body and no one else knowns outside the family what is in the coffin.”

While people are stoically processing the story and explanation, Rabbi Mann continues, “Every time we finish the identification process and the body comes out and we place the name on top of the flag and tallit, I know we have succeeded both on a personal level  and on a national level. Over and over again they try and destroy us but we survive.”

While watching and listening, my mind drifted of my visits down south and the destroyed homes I had visited where families had been brutally murdered, many burnt alive. I thought of vehicles ambushed and burned with people inside when terrorists fired heavy weaponry, RPGs, and set fire to hundreds of civilian cars along southern Israeli highways and access roads — notably around the Nova music festival near Re’im and surrounding kibbutzim.  Many victims attempting to flee in vehicles were shot, trapped, or burned alive inside their cars as the vehicles were deliberately torched by attackers.

Israeli soldiers carry the body of a victim of the massacre at Kibbutz Kfar Aza in southern Israel. (Photo: Reuters/Ronen Zvulun)

All this I thought of as I imagined all those beautiful lives cut short and ‘passing through’ where I was standing, here at Camp Shura.

This emotional rollercoaster culminated at the Cheder Preda (the “Goodbye Room”), a quiet space where grieving families can view and say a final farewell to their loved ones in a controlled, dignified setting following the identification and ritual preparation process. We sat, emotionally drained, looking at the bench in the center of the room coffin after coffin had been  placed, over 1000 in the early days following October 7, 2023.

“It was particularly hard,” said Rabbi Mann, “when bodies were brought in of soldiers I personally knew,” and cited Captain Yaron Chitiz from Ra’anana, who he knew, and his family, well.

So, did I and the South Africans in our group.

Our thoughts went out to his parents Clive and Debbie who would have stood where we were sitting now.

Rabbi Mann addressing our group in the “Goodbye Room’.

Yaron was killed one week before his 24th birthday in Gaza where he bravely fended off terrorists on a stairway in a building about to spring a surprise ambush on his unit. He was killed together with two other soldiers in the ensuing battle.

His mother Debbie would mention Shura when she later expressed how grateful she was that his body was retrieved whole following the battle:

“We were able to see him, touch him and say goodbye to him. At Shura, which is where the bodies are prepared for burial, we sang or should I say tried to sing המלאך הגואל אותי. This is the song that is sung at night to children before they go to sleep. The ironic coincidence is that this song appeared in the parshat hashavua – Parashat Vayechi – the week that Yaroni was killed.

We are also extremely grateful that his phone survived the four-hour battle.”

Yaron had left a letter for the family which he had written on his phone.

Included in his last words to his family:

“I feel proud to fight Hamas under the banner of the Chitiz family and the people of Israel.

Thank you for everything!

You are a family for the glory of the State of Israel!

שרים ומספידים לזכרו

Everyone that knows me knows that you are amongst the most important things in my life.

You are the air that I breathe, the laughter, this genuine friendship.”

And to his girlfriend:

“Dara, I love you, you are my life.

You give me the strength to continue….”

It was these messages on the phone that helped his surviving loved ones also “continue”….

And so too we all have to “continue” and we ended the tour of Shura with few words, many thoughts and a silent prayer that what happened here:

 “Will never happen again.”

Yaron Chitiz (z’l) who died heroically fighting Hamas terrorists in Gaza left a phone beside him that contained heart-wrenching messages to his family and girlfriend.






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).

WORN DOWN BY WAR

A Jewish perspective of ‘anticipatory grief’, loss and mental health during war.

By Bev Moss-Reilly

(*To assist readers, a glossary appears at the end of the article)

War wounds people long before the final phone call, the funeral, the shattered building, or the unbearable silence. One of its deepest cruelties is anticipatory grief, that aching state of living in fear of loss before the loss is even confirmed. It is the dread that sits in the chest when a loved one is at the front, when a child is missing, when a siren sounds, when a family waits for news, when a mother keeps checking her phone, or when an elderly father looks at the door and wonders who will walk through it next.

It is grief in advance, and it is exhausting.

Anticipatory grief affects mental health profoundly. It keeps the nervous system on constant alert. People struggle to sleep, eat, think clearly, or regulate their emotions. The body remains tense, braced for impact. Anxiety and helplessness grow. So does guilt. People feel guilty for being safe when others are not, guilty for carrying on, guilty for moments of laughter, guilty for not having done more. In war, the mind rarely gets to rest. Even when tragedy has not yet struck, the soul is already trembling.

Then, when loss does come, it often arrives in layers. War does not only take one thing. It can strip a person of home, family, routine, livelihood, identity, faith in the world, bodily safety, and the simple expectation that tomorrow will look like today. This is why grief in wartime is not only about death, although death is devastating enough. It is also about every other form of loss that leaves a person disoriented, raw, and altered.

PHYSICAL LOSS

 A person may lose a limb, mobility, eyesight, hearing, strength, or independence. A child may lose the sense of safety that once came from being held by a parent in a familiar room. A family may lose a house filled with photographs, books, toys, mezuzot, candlesticks, wedding gifts, kiddush cups, and all the ordinary holy clutter of Jewish life. Possessions are not merely objects. They hold memory, tradition, continuity, and meaning. When they are gone, part of a person’s story can feel erased.

EMOTIONAL LOSS

People lose trust. They lose innocence. They lose the emotional energy required to keep showing up in the same way. They lose the version of themselves that existed before trauma. Some lose the ability to cry. Others cannot stop crying. Some become numb. Some become irritable, angry, frightened, withdrawn, or hypervigilant. Mental health in these moments is not a neat or tidy thing. It is often about survival. It is getting through the next hour, the next night, the next funeral, the next alert, the next memory.

SPIRITUAL LOSS

This can be especially painful because it is often invisible. War can shake a person’s relationship with Hashem, with prayer, with community, and even with meaning itself. Someone may ask, “Where was God?” Another may feel unable to daven. Someone else may go through the motions while feeling empty inside. Others may feel their emunah deepen, not because they understand suffering, but because faith becomes the only place left to stand. Spiritual grief is real grief. It is the mourning of certainty, of order, of the feeling that the world makes sense.

In Jewish life, however, grief is never meant to be carried alone. This is one of the great strengths of our tradition. Judaism does not deny pain, rush mourning, or ask people to be strong in a performative way. It creates structure around sorrow. It gives the mourner something solid when everything else feels unsteady.

When someone dies, Jewish mourning practices provide an emotional and spiritual container. Sitting shiva is one of the most compassionate responses to grief imaginable. The mourner does not have to host, perform, or explain. The community comes. People bring food. They sit low. They share silence. They tell stories. They cry. They pray. They remember. There is no pressure to be polished. Grief is allowed to be visible. It is witnessed. There is no timeline and it’s not linear, neither is it expected to be. That matters enormously for mental health.

Shiva says to the mourner, “You are not abandoned in this pain.” It acknowledges that loss is not something to “move on” from quickly. It slows life down and lets the heart catch up with reality. Shloshim continues that process, recognising that mourning does not end after one week. The rhythms of aveilut honour the fact that the soul needs time. In a world that often demands productivity and emotional suppression, Judaism insists on presence, tenderness, and community.

This is not incidental. It is the essence of emotional support. In many ways, it is the essence of mental health. To be held by others, to be seen, to have meals arrive without asking, to hear Tehillim being said, to be surrounded by people who understand the sacredness of memory, this is not small comfort. It can be life preserving.

SHAPING SURVIVAL

Jewish tradition also understands that grief belongs not only to the individual, but to the collective. We are a people shaped by memory, by exile, by destruction, by rebuilding, by mourning, and by survival. We know what it means to carry names, stories, and absences across generations. That collective memory can be heavy, but it can also be deeply connecting. Jews inherently know how to show up because we have inherited the language of showing up. Nichum aveilim, comforting mourners, is not an abstract value. It is lived chesed. It is practical love.

During war, that support becomes even more vital. Not everyone is mourning a death. Some are mourning a son who returned from battle alive but changed. Some are grieving a daughter who lost her home. Some are living with the anguish of a hostage situation, not knowing whether to hope or prepare their hearts to break. Some are mourning the loss of livelihood, community, safety, or country. Some are grieving while still in danger, which means there is no neat beginning, middle, or end to the process.

That is why compassion matters so much. People living through wartime grief may not look “grief stricken” in the expected way. They may be functioning, making meals, going to work, caring for children, even laughing at times. But beneath that, they may be carrying terror, heartbreak, and spiritual fatigue. We need to be gentle with one another. We need to understand that trauma and grief can coexist with faith, resilience, and even moments of gratitude.

The Jewish way does not promise that grief will disappear. It offers something truer. It teaches that sorrow can be honoured, shared, ritualised, and held with dignity. It teaches that broken hearts still belong in community. It teaches that when a person cannot stand alone, Am Yisrael stands with them.

In wartime, anticipatory grief, loss, and bereavement can shake mental health to its core. Jewish tradition reminds us that comfort is not found only in answers. Often it is found in presence, prayer, remembrance, community, and love. In the candle lit for a soul. In the hand on a shoulder. In the meal left at the door. In the whispered words, “HaMakom yenachem etchem.” In the quiet, enduring truth that even in unbearable loss, no Jew should ever have to mourn alone.

For when one Jew feels pain, every Jew feels pain, and in that shared sorrow lies the quiet, enduring strength of our people.



Glossary of Hebrew Words and Expressions:

Hashem
Literally “The Name.” A reverent way of referring to G-d.

Shiva
The first seven days of mourning after the burial of a close family member. During this time, mourners remain at home and are supported by family, friends, and community.
Note: “sitting sheva” is commonly intended to mean “sitting shiva.”

Shloshim
The thirty-day mourning period following burial. It includes the first seven days of shiva and continues as a gentler, extended phase of mourning.

Aveilut
Jewish mourning practices and the broader laws and customs of bereavement.

Daven
To pray.

Emunah
Faith, trust, or deep spiritual belief, especially in G-d.

Tehillim
Psalms. These are often recited in times of sorrow, danger, illness, or communal need.

Nichum Aveilim
Comforting mourners. This is considered a deeply important mitzvah, or sacred obligation, in Jewish life.

Chesed
Loving kindness, compassion, and acts of generosity or care toward others.

Am Yisrael
The people of Israel, or the Jewish people as a collective.

HaMakom Yenachem Etchem
A traditional phrase said to mourners, meaning:
“May the Omnipresent comfort you.”
It is part of the fuller condolence expression used during mourning.

Mezuzot
Plural of mezuzah. Small parchment scrolls containing sacred verses, placed in a case and attached to the doorposts of Jewish homes.

Kiddush Cup
A ceremonial cup used when reciting Kiddush, the blessing over wine, usually for Shabbat and festivals.




About the writer:

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









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

THE MORAL DECAY OF THE WEST

Are we seeing the decline of Western values?

By Rolene Marks

Sometimes I think that I have stepped into some kind of time machine that has whisked me back to a time in our history, where rhetoric demonizing the Jewish people was the precursor to the darkest chapter in our history. I feel like I have been transported back to Germany in the 1930’s, when Jews were routinely demonized and excluded from society before the Nuremberg laws and eventually the Holocaust would result in the wholesale slaughter of over six million European Jews. Our numbers have never recovered to pre-World War II statistics.

I know that for many people, I may sound alarmist and others may feel I am overreacting but it does feel like there is an ominous cloud that sits like a sword of Damocles over the Jewish people. The number one target for vitriol is the symbol of our nationhood – Israel.  Jews in diaspora communities are seen as fair game because they are seen as de facto representative of the Jewish state.

You can tell a society is in moral decay by the way it treats its Jews. Jews are the proverbial canaries in the coal mine – and what starts with us, never ends with us. Since time immemorial, this has been the cycle. Rinse and repeat.

Since the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th, before the bodies were cold, crowds gathered in cities around the world to celebrate the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. From the streets of the London to Times Square in New York and the Sydney Opera House and places in between, the gleeful cheering of the mass slaughter, rape and kidnapping was celebrated. Defiant chants of “gas the Jews” were heard on the steps of Australia’s great cultural landmark and similar rhetoric travelled around the world – including chants of “from the river to the sea” which calls for the eradication of the Jewish state.

Cheering Slaughter in Sydney. Hatred towards Jews among the protesters (seen here burning the Israeli flag) in the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House on October 9, 2023, was terrifying. Footage shows protestors chanting: “F… the Jews,” “F… the Zionists”, “Where’s the Jews?”, “Allahu Akbar” and “Gas the Jews”. (Photo: NCA NewsWire/Jeremy Piper)

The IDF were still clearing the communities of the south of terrorist infiltrators, and ZAKA had only started to collect the remains of our dead. The most bizarre phenomenon surfaced that Black Sabbath – the ability of many to both deny the atrocities – and celebrate them at the same time.

The years since the gruesome attacks of 7 October 2023 have seen an exponential rise in Jew hatred in its most current iteration – antizionism.

Distressing Data. Recent data shows a roughly 20% to 21% rise in total recorded antisemitic incidents across the UK for the first six months of 2026, with antisemitism in schools spiking significantly by 59%.

Zionism in its most simple definition is the belief in the right of the Jewish people to their nation state in their historical, ancestral homeland, Israel. It is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, a belief in our inalienable civil rights and the right of the modern State of Israel to exist. Determining that out of all the nations in the world, ONLY the Jewish people have no right to this basic civil right, is both racists and a denial of history, both biblical and antiquity.

Everything old is new again – albeit wearing more updated clothing and messaging. There really is nothing new under the sun. The genie out the bottle.

Sometimes it feels that wherever we turn, this ancient and irrational hatred is ubiquitous. Nobody is saying that Israel cannot be criticized. Criticism of government policies is the national sport of the Jewish state – and Israelis have a variety of robust views; but holding every citizen as well as diaspora Jews responsible for political decisions that you don’t like, is a sign of something a lot more nefarious.

Expecting Jews to take an ideological litmus or purity test by denouncing the Jewish state in order to be considered socially acceptable, has crossed the line between legitimate criticism and demonization. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the accusations of genocide, apartheid, mass starvation and colonization persist. As someone once said, antisemites or Jew haters know the Jew is not guilty – but they enjoy the process of watching him turn his pockets inside out to prove his innocence. History rhymes. We are not your collective Alfred Dreyfus, your cause celebre to be falsely accused and humiliated in the process.

Eruption in Europe. Across Europe, Jews are AGAIN living in constant danger being threatened and attacked for simply being Jews.

We don’t need world leaders posing with Holocaust survivors or making their annual pilgrimage to Auschwitz or remembrance ceremonies looking suitably solemn for the obligatory photo op, while piously declaring Never Again. Never Again is now. We don’t need you making vows to dead Jews. We need you taking action against the threats posed to living Jews. The Jews who are rapidly ostracized from society. The Jews terrified to seek medical help because of growing antisemitism in healthcare. The stories that have already been told are terrifying. The Jewish businesses, more often than not restaurants and bakeries facing threats and intimidation until they are forced to close. The Jews, many of them Israeli, routinely humiliated and threatened at vacation spots. The rabid pandering to sectarian politics which necessitates the routine demonization of the Jewish state for political expediency. The unwillingness of the media to report events that are related to Israel with balance – and the blatant refusal to correct misinformation and malinformation. The hate marches on the streets of capitals calling for the extermination of the Jewish state. The fear of Jewish students to go to university or school because of the growing climate of hate. Jewish employees reporting hate in the work place. The stars of stage, screen and new media like podcasters with their vile conspiracy theories, Holocaust revisions and demonization of Jews and the Jewish state. The political backbenchers and leaders currying votes because pandering to ideological whims pays more than maintaining a strong, moral centre. The abandonment of organisations whose Jews marched proudly with in their fights for civil rights, who have turned their backs on us in our hour of need.

Hell at Harvard. Jewish and Israeli students at Harvard University reported experiencing severe distress, intimidation, and fear for their safety following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and subsequent anti-Israel protests. (Photo: Joseph Prezioso/AFP)

We don’t need your platitudes. We don’t need your words of condemnation. We don’t need your photo opportunities. We need action!

Suicidal empathy is costing us our lives. Trust in institutions has eroded. Jews have lost trust and faith in many  institutions including law enforcement, judicial systems, local and state government and many civic organisations for their failure to enforce the law or to prosecute the truth and for their growing inability to not bow to the mob baying for our blood.

Are the halcyon days for Jews in many western countries over? This is not the first time in our history that we have endured this type of gross discrimination. It is not the first time in our history where we are steadily eroded from publishing, the arts, sports and other industries. It is the first time in our history we have a nation state of our own. Israel. It is also very important to remember that we are NOT powerless. Jews have been part of the fabric of society that have built their countries. We need to remember we still have the law on our side and use it as an instrument to fight back against hate. We must expose the haters, let them know that there are consequences for their actions. Educate the next generation and set an example for them about what it looks like to be proud, knowledgeable and strong. This is a fight where we are all called up to be foot soldiers, we cannot abdicate responsibility. Think about how you can use your own unique skills to organize, educate and fight back against the hatred When future generations ask how did you fight back, how did you show up in the post 7 October Jewish world, what will your answer be? There are so many ways to express our pride in our identity while sending a resounding

We can defend ourselves in a myriad of ways, the big question is whether or not the West is prepared to fight for its values amid constant assaults by those who would see them destroyed. We are the mirror of the western value system. When our values and identities are attacked, you have to ask yourself, who is next?

The question is, are you up for the fight to defend them?





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).

ROTH’S WRATH AT JUSTICE DENIED

Arnold Roth’s 25-Year fight for justice for his daughter’s murder and accountability for a Hamas terrorist.

By Jonathan Feldstein

This week is the 25th anniversary of one of the most horrific terror attacks in Israel during what is referred to as the Second Intifada. During the period from late 2000 through the first half of 2005, more than 1000 Israelis were killed and several thousand wounded as a result of countless Palestinian Arab suicide bombings, shootings, stabbings, and more. While hardly a week went by without some such terror attack, the August 9, 2001 bombing of the Sbarro pizza restaurant in central Jerusalem remains one of the most vivid and vulgar, still today. 

The image of Malki found in an undeveloped camera years after her murder. © Arnold Roth

Among the dozens killed and injured, 15-year-old Malki Roth was one of the victims for whom justice has yet to be served. Since then, her father, Arnold Roth, has worked tirelessly to bring the mastermind of his daughter’s murder to justice. Roth discussed this in a powerful and emotionally charged conversation on “Inspiration from Zion,” marking the anniversary of his daughter’s murder, and his continued efforts to bring the terrorist mastermind to justice. The conversation reveals not only the enduring pain of a grieving father but also a scathing critique of:

– international inaction

– Jordanian defiance, and

–  American reluctance to enforce its own laws.

On August 9, 2001, Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, then a 21-year-old Jordanian journalism student, deliberately targeted the Sbarro pizzeria because it was filled with Jewish children. Tamimi was not the bomber, but the one who selected the site and guided the Hamas suicide bomber there carrying a guitar case filled with explosives and shrapnel to maximize the carnage. Fifteen people were killed immediately, including Malki, an American-Israeli citizen. 130 were wounded. Roth described the period leading up to the attack as tense but not yet at the peak of the Second Intifada violence. “Had we known that Malki and her best friend… were going … into the center of town to take a quick lunch,” he said, his wife Frimet “would have said, don’t go.”

Killer on the Loose. The FBI ‘MOST WANTED TERRORIST’ poster for a terrorist responsible for the death of a US citizen currently residing freely in Jordan.

Tamimi was arrested, and tried in an Israeli military court, where she proudly confessed to the crime. Roth noted chillingly:

 “She admitted joyously, with a smile on her face that chilled the three judges.”

Yet in 2011, as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange, Israel released 1,027 terrorists including Tamimi. The Roths were only informed of her impending release by a phone call from an Israeli official the morning after the deal was announced.

Since her release, Tamimi has lived openly in Jordan as a celebrity, hosting a television program that glorified terrorism and incited violence against Jews. Roth described her transformation:

“She became a phenomenal performer for the promotion of the redemptive value of killing Jews… This is a compelling story.”

Other than the unthinkable loss of his daughter, the core of Roth’s frustration lies in the failure of the United States to secure Tamimi’s extradition and bring her to justice. Malki was an American citizen, and the U.S. has both an extradition treaty with Jordan and domestic law allowing prosecution of terrorists who murder Americans abroad. Charges were filed against Tamimi in 2013 and unsealed in 2017. Despite this, Jordan has refused to comply, citing a technicality in the treaty that Roth and legal experts dismiss as a self-invented loophole. The U.S. has failed to insist of Jordan’s compliance.

Roth expressed deep disillusionment with the U.S. response. In a recent letter from a senior U.S. official, he was told the administration was doing more than any other to bring Tamimi to justice. His reaction was blunt: “I’m flabbergasted… They’re telling me things that I know that I tell them.” He added, “No Attorney General, no senior figure… has ever responded to us… The United States has betrayed its own values.”

The Merry Monster. Only disappointed she did not succeed in killing more Jews!

Roth emphasized that the issue transcends personal grief. “If we fail to act in the face of grotesquely open and provocative actions by individuals and countries who twist terrorism… then we’re all lost.” He rejected pity as a motivator, instead calling for a defense of core principles: “Hug your children… remember what we can do… We’re different, and if we’re different, we’ve got to guard that difference.”

The conversation also addressed media complicity. Roth criticized BBC Arabic for platforming Tamimi and promoting narratives that glorify her actions. He has worked with media watchdog CAMERA to expose these issues and highlight the broadcaster’s willful failures if not compliance.

At the 25th anniversary of Malki’s murder, the Roths have launched a petition urging the U.S. Secretary of State to enforce the extradition treaty and bring Tamimi to justice in America. Roth stressed: “This is really an effort by my wife and me… We need as many [signatures] as we can get.”

Roth’s message is both personal and universal. The failure to extradite Tamimi represents more than bureaucratic inertia. It signals a troubling willingness to subordinate justice to political convenience. For Roth, this is not merely about one terrorist or one family. It is about whether the United States and the international community will uphold the values of accountability, truth, and the protection of innocent life.

The 25th anniversary of the Sbarro bombing and Malki Roth’s murder come a month before the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terror attack on U.S. soil killing 3000. The attacks took place thousands of miles apart, but the same Islamic terrorist ideology is the perpetrator. For justice and in memory of the victims, we cannot sit by and allow those who carried out these acts to walk free, especially where there is law in place to bring them to justice.

Mind of a Monster. She selected a fast-food restaurant in downtown central Jerusalem popular with children.

As Israel and the Jewish world prepare to commemorate the anniversary of the Sbarro attack on August 9, there have been hopeful developments, but Roth knows better than to get his hopes up too much after all these years of justice denied. But it’s not just about Israel and the Jewish world. Bringing terrorists who murder Americans to justice is a global issue.

Roth’s words serve as a sobering reminder:

true justice remains elusive, but the fight for it must continue. He refuses to let his daughter’s memory be erased or her murderer celebrated. Their call is clear: sign the petition, demand action, and reject the normalization of terror. (Follow the full conversation with Arnold Roth on Inspiration from Zion by video or by audio.)



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).

COLLAPSE OF THE BLOOD LIBELS

Every pillar of the genocide accusation against Israel has crumbled. The institutions that built it have suddenly lost their voices.

By Andrew Fox

Sometimes I think I am not angry enough, but the scale of the problem is almost too huge to be angry at, collectively. Towering rage must be split into smaller rages at each of the component parts of the blood libel machine.

  • The fantastical Lancet “studies” salivating over hundreds of thousands of imaginary dead Gazans.
  • AirWars’ pearl-clutching reports, drawing conclusions of civilian targeting in Gaza without a tenth of the evidence needed to draw said conclusions.
  • Amnesty, B’tselem and all the other NGOs, releasing fraudulent genocide conclusions achieved only by changing the definition and parameters of genocide.
  • The paid media squad of hacks, twisting and distorting and murdering the truth just to get one over on the Jewish state.
  • South Africa, ripping apart the genocide convention at Iran’s behest, making it harder to punish real genocides in future.

The whole sorry mess sickens me, and now the great indictment of Israel is coming apart, one revelation at a time. This fact is not being reported by a single damned one of the media outlets that have spent years screeching over the war in Gaza to the exclusion of almost all else. Famine, deliberate attacks on hospitals, the slaughter of journalists and children, and systematic obstruction of aid: each allegation was broadcast as settled fact and then used to prove genocidal intent. The same newsrooms and universities that thundered these charges have shown remarkably little interest in the evidence that now destroys each of these allegations.

Trading Places. Clockwise from top left: Jaber Mohammadin in civilian attire and in Palestinian Islamic Jihad uniform; Ahmad Adel Abu al-Hilal in hospital scrubs and in Palestinian Islamic Jihad uniform; Abd al-Latif Abu Tuaima in civilian attire and in Palestinian Islamic Jihad uniform; and Salem Jumaa Shirab in civilian attire and in Palestinian Islamic Jihad uniform. (Photos: Palestinian Islamic Jihad social media, Facebook, social media)

It is incredible. There is no aspect of the genocide allegation that has not collapsed.

Start with the famine claim.

In August 2025, the IPC used two ways of measuring malnutrition in children: weight compared with height, and the size of a child’s upper arm. Gaza had no local data showing how those two measures matched up, so the IPC used an estimate from elsewhere in the region. It assumed the weight-and-height measure would find about twice as many malnourished children as the arm measurement.

The first large Gaza survey to use both measures found the reverse. Of 1,335 children surveyed in 2026, 0.5% were identified as acutely malnourished by weight and height, while 1.3% were identified by upper-arm measurement. That survey cannot tell us exactly what conditions were like in 2025. The later survey cannot recreate conditions in 2025, but it exposes the rotten foundation beneath a verdict presented to the world as scientific certainty: a key assumption behind the famine declaration had never been tested in Gaza itself.

The food figures are equally awkward. Official COGAT-based data show that about 1.01 million tonnes of food entered Gaza between 7 October 2023 and 17 January 2025, against an estimated requirement of 825,000 tonnes. From the October 2025 ceasefire to 7 June 2026, 1.78 million tonnes entered, against a calculated need of roughly 643,000 tonnes.

Of course, food crossing a border does not guarantee it reaches every family. Roads were destroyed, distribution failed, aid was looted, and Israel’s two-and-a-half-month block on aid in spring 2025 was a grave error. However, those qualifications cannot rescue the claim of a continuous Israeli policy to starve Gaza. The quantities of food that entered Gaza are simply too large.

The hospital narrative has also disintegrated. American intelligence independently confirmed that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad used al-Shifa for command operations, weapons storage, and to hold hostages. Hamas accounts now describe armed men, including senior officers, sheltering inside the hospital during an Israeli siege. Hospitals remained protected, and Israel still had to obey the laws of war, but the moral fairy tale of innocent hospitals attacked by the brutal IDF is dead. There is now endless evidence in the public domain of Hamas using hospitals for military purposes.

Medics who Murder. Ahmad Adel Abu al-Hilal in hospital scrubs (left) in a photo circulated after his death and  (right) in Palestinian Islamic Jihad uniform, after the group identified him as one of its members. (Photos: PIJ screenshots)

The casualty statistics have fared no better. The claim that 70% of the dead were women and children became a fixture of global coverage. OCHA’s July 2026 snapshot, based on Gaza Health Ministry figures for 71,444 identified fatalities, placed those categories at 45.2 %. Adult men make up over 50% of the fatalities, from a pre-war adult male percentage of approximately 25% of the population. Not all adult men can be counted as combatants, but a figure repeatedly cited as proof of indiscriminate slaughter is now shown to be false when applied to the overall toll. The “hundreds of thousands” of dead under the rubble have likewise not materialised. That number is completely implausible, given Gaza’s mechanism for reporting the missing and the financial compensation incentives to use it.

Killers in Scrubs. Ibrahim Abd al-Raouf al-Farra in hospital scrubs (left), in a photo circulated after his death and (right) in Hamas uniform, after the group identified him as one of its members. (Photo: Hamas screenshot)

The supposed massacre of journalists is now unravelling in the same way. A Meir Amit Centre study of 266 people listed as journalists or media workers found that 157, around 60 %, were members of or clearly affiliated with terrorist organisations. The Committee to Protect Journalists has already removed eight names after establishing that they were Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad combatants, removed another twelve for other reasons, and, after this exposure came to light, opened a full review. Other OSINT (open-source intelligence) suggests this figure of combatants is even higher.

This proves that “journalist” was often a dangerously incomplete label and that lurid claims of Israel slaughtering journalists were nothing more than propaganda. An artillery commander does not become a civilian by picking up a camera. Major outlets repeated the raw total for years, yet now they are barely reporting its collapse.

‘Hypocrisy and Manipulation’, 6 August, 2025, Israeli president Isaac Herzog exposes Hamas-led propaganda, citing investigative reports from leading German newspapers that revealed staged images from Gaza. Herzog contrasted these fabricated scenes with the very real suffering of Israeli hostages, exposing what he called Hamas’ “hypocrisy and manipulation.”

The same contamination appears across lists of healthcare workers and children. Militant obituaries have identified numerous medical workers as commanders and operatives, while faction records have revealed teenagers listed only as children despite their documented recruitment into armed groups. Recruited minors remain victims of the adults who used them, but age alone cannot establish civilian status or Israeli intent.

Hamas’s role in the aid disaster has finally forced its way into the UN’s own language. In July 2026, a senior UN official accused armed personnel affiliated with Gaza’s “de facto authorities” (i.e. Hamas) of breaking into a food distribution point and a World Food Programme warehouse, assaulting drivers and participating in a wider pattern of intimidation, obstruction and smuggling attempts. Years of sneering at Hamas’s aid diversion as Israeli propaganda ended with the UN admitting it.

From Stethoscope to Automatic Firearm.  Mohammed Akram al-Kafarna, head of the Palestinian Nurses and Midwives Syndicate in Gaza and whose death was mourned by the International Council of Nurses, was also a member of Hamas. ( Photo: Hamas screenshot)

Academia performed no better. The International Association of Genocide Scholars declared Israel guilty, falsely claiming that the International Court of Justice had found genocide “plausible”. The court’s former president had already explained that it made no such finding. Only 28 % of the association’s members voted. Membership was open to literally anyone, yet headlines announced the judgment of the world’s genocide scholars. The same applies to the fraudulent squad of historians newly reinventing themselves as “genocide scholars”, assuming authority their qualifications do not grant, and grandly declaring Gaza a genocide. No mea culpa from these frauds. There are books to be sold.

The repercussions are no longer theoretical. Britain recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in 2025, the second-highest annual total in its history; the United States recorded 6,274, with physical assaults at a record. Two Israeli embassy employees were murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. Fifteen people were slaughtered at a Chanukah celebration in Sydney. And on, and on, and on.

No newspaper article pulled those triggers, and the hatred long predates Gaza, but the relentless depiction of the Jewish state as a child-killing, famine-making engine of genocide gave old hatred a new moral vocabulary. Jews everywhere were forced to answer for accusations that the evidence can no longer sustain. The genie of antisemitism is out of the bottle, and any corrections now will not put it back. The academics, NGOs, politicians and journalists who spread the genocide blood libel without waiting for evidence (or fabricating their own) now have blood on their hands.

“Gazawood”. While increasingly exposed are the  ‘journalists’ who have staged depictions of daily life in Gaza and of fabricating images and videos, the damage to blacken Israel’s reputation has been done.

Israel should already have been exonerated of the blanket charge that it sought to exterminate Gaza’s civilians. Individual strikes and alleged crimes still require investigation, but genocide cannot remain the default verdict after every single factual pillar supporting it has cracked.

The record now requires urgent correction, followed by inquiries within the universities and professional bodies that lent the libel their prestige. Some of those responsible should resign.

They will not.

The people who spread these blood libels remain in post, reviewing one another’s work and hoping nobody notices the ruins of their reputations.



About the writer:

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










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

EXPLOSIVE EXPOSÉ

What is the connection between the bombing of the King David Hotel 80 years ago and Moshav Gan Ner in Northern Israel?

By David E. Kaplan

One of the most iconic blots in Israel’s fight against the British for independence was the bombing of the King David Hotel on July 22, 1946, eighty years ago last week.  Ninety-one people, died when explosives planted by an Irgun commando detonated in the basement of the building, which housed, among others, the British headquarters for Palestine.

An act of terrorism which killed mostly civilians,  but:

 Was it true as it was once asserted that no warning was issued? 

Hotel Headquarters. The aftermath of the bombing in July 22, 1946 carried out by the Irgun Jewish underground at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which housed the British headquarters for Palestine.( Wikimedia Commons)

BUILD-UP TO A BOMBING

To understand the circumstances leading to the bombing of one of the most historically iconic architectural gems in Jerusalem, one must understand the acute desperation of the parties  to the conflict at the time.

On June 29, 1946, Britain launched Operation Agatha  — a random name choice unrelated to the ‘who done-it’ novelist  -in which 25,000 British troops participated, raiding the Jewish Agency headquarters and imposing curfews, seizing arms, and confiscating documents detailing Hagana operations and the activities of the joint resistance movement that included:

– the Hagana, the most organized group, which was aligned with the Jewish Agency;

– the Irgun, the Revisionist movement led by Menachem Begin that had initiated many military actions; and

– Lehi, which was the acronym for “Lohamei Herut Yisrael,” the smallest and most extreme of the three.

All three groups had put aside their differences and rebelled against British rule to pressure the revocation of the White Paper under Neville Chamberlain’s government which sought to appease the Arab population in Mandatory Palestine on the eve of World War II by:

– severely limiting Jewish immigration

– restricting land purchases, and

– abandoning the goal of a Jewish state.

The British arrested 2,700 individuals, including Moshe Sharett, head of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department and future prime minister; David Remez, chairman of the Jewish National Council; Yitzhak Gruenbaum, director of the Jewish Agency’s Labor Department; and Dov Yosef, a prominent Jewish Agency member and future minister. A people traumatized, the day went down in modern Jewish history as “Black Saturday” until it was superseded by the events of Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023.

The documents seized by the British were taken to the British Mandate Secretariat, located in the King David’s southern wing. As the center of British mandate rule in Palestine, the hotel was treated as a target even before Operation Agatha  and with the transfer of these compromising documents to the secretariat it hastened a strategic decision to bomb the hotel.

Cities on Edge. British paratroopers enforce curfew in Tel Aviv post-bombing, July 1946. (Photo: public domain)

So, what is the connection of the bombing to the community settlement of Gan Ner, founded in northern Israel, south of Afula in 1987?

At the turn of the millennium, Lord Grenville Janner was visiting Israel from the UK and he addressed a meeting in Ra’anana where I had the opportunity to interview him.

Lordship in Ra’anana. Interviewing Lord Grenville Janner, the son of Sir. Barnett Janner in Ra’anana in 2007. (Photo: D.E. Kaplan)

He revealed an illuminating conversation he had with his mother following the passing of his father Sir Barnett Janner, who had preceded him as the Labour M.P. for Leicester West in the House of Commons and had also been president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews:

She said:

 “Your Dad worked all his life for Israel and there is nothing named after him. You should rectify this and go see Mr. Begin.”

“The Israeli Prime Minister! What do I tell him?” asked the son.

“I’ll tell you. Not so long ago, a colonel wrote to your father revealing that he was in the King David hotel when Begin’s organization blew it up. However he knew that Begin had warned the military authorities prior to the operation, which our British government has always denied.  He confirmed that he had been present when the warning call from the Irgun came through to the hotel switchboard confirming an effort was made to protect lives. Your father, despite being ideologically poles apart from Begin, had the courage to stand up in the House of Commons and proclaim that truth. It could no longer be publicly denied.”

JANNER DOESN’T GEL

So, Greville dutifully went off to see the Menachem Begin. The Israeli Prime Minister’s response was:

 “Sure, we are truly thankful to your father for revealing an unpopular truth in your Parliament. However, we can’t name a place in Israel ‘Janner’ – it’s not a Hebrew sounding name.”

Labored for his People. Labour MP, Sir Barnett Janner who was created a life peer in 1970 held many positions in the Jewish community, including President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews 1955–64 and a member of the  executive of the British Zionist Federation.

Pondering for a few seconds, Begin then continued:

“How about Gan Ner? Sounds Israeli and more-or-less like Janner and translates into Hebrew as ‘Candel Garden’. After all, your father shone a candle of light illuminating a truth. Nu, how about it?”

It was agreed.

Running for Office. A 1920 Cardiff City Council election poster when a young Barnett Janner stood unsuccessfully for election to Cardiff City Council as a candidate of the Comrades of the Great War.

However, when Begin suggested that Gan Ner should be located “in Judea or Samaria,” Lord Janner said he resorted to some very unLORDly Yiddish expletives to describe what his late liberal father would have thought about that and “So today, there is a delightful settlement of some 700 souls nestled in the heart of Israel in the Jezreel Valley at the foothills of Mt. Gilboa.”

That was over two decades ago and as at 2024, Gan Ner has expanded to over 2,657 souls with its Gan Ner Sports Hall serving as the home venue for the Hapoel Gilboa Galil professional basketball team.

Embedded into Landscape. An aerial view of Gan Ner at the foot of Mt. Gilboa in the Yizreel Valey named after Jewish British politician, Sir. Barnett Janner.

EPILOGUE

Unlike the warning given in 1946, there was no  warning when a mass of marauding killers crossed over from Gaza into southern Israel on October 7, 2023 massacring Jews wherever they found them.  “Black Saturday” of 1946 had an all-new meaning, and among the many murdered on October 7, was  a young resident from Gan Ner, 22-year-old “partygoer” Stav Barazani.

She attended the Nova Music Festival with her boyfriend, Asaf Edberg. The two fled together and took refuge in a police station, where they were subsequently found and murdered.

For Stav, Gan Ner or ‘Garden Candel’, burns  eternally – a flame of remembrance.


Stav Barazani, 22, from Gan Ner, was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival on October 7.









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).

OBSTRUCTION AND OBFUSCATION

Where is the global outrage at new UN finding of Hamas’ obstruction of humanitarian aid?

By Kenneth Moeng Kgwadi

There has been near-total silence from many of Israel’s critics following the recent United Nations (UN) finding that Hamas obstructed the delivery of much-needed humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza. Hamas had long portrayed the humanitarian crisis as solely the result of others denying Gazans access to necessities such as food, medicine, water, clothing, and other essential supplies. However, the UN’s finding indicates that Hamas itself also played a role in preventing civilians from accessing this aid.

Trucks and the Truth. While for much of the war in Gaza, Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of stealing humanitarian aid, intimidating aid workers and exploiting relief operations for its own benefit (seen above), the UN has finaly now issued a statement condemning what it describes as armed personnel affiliated with Gaza’s de facto authorities for interfering with humanitarian operations, entering aid distribution sites, assaulting aid workers and disrupting the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

Such actions serve Hamas’ political objectives by reinforcing its narrative of victimhood on the global stage. By obstructing humanitarian assistance while simultaneously presenting itself as the defender of Gaza’s population, Hamas has contributed to shaping international perceptions of the conflict in ways that advance its own strategic interests.

This is the same group of people who refused to allow people to leave endangered locations for the humanitarian zones after the Israel Defense Force (IDF) issued warnings of impending strikes. In their minds, they were being strategic in order for Israel to kill civilians and have blood on its hands, so that the world would believe that the IDF is the monster and isolate Israel in order to achieve their political and religious ends. It has previously been stated that Hamas is using innocent civilians as human shields, but to date the UN has neither seen, investigated, nor acknowledged some of these indictments.

In a strongly worded statement dated 12 July 2026, the UN Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Dr. Ramiz Alakbarov, said:

“I strongly condemn the recent obstruction of humanitarian operations in Gaza by the de facto authorities, which endangered humanitarian personnel, intimidated workers delivering lifesaving food assistance and disrupted lifesaving humanitarian assistance.”

What happened on Saturday, when armed Hamas men ambushed two truck drivers at a World Food Program warehouse, was not the first time they had stolen, hijacked, or intimidated humanitarian personnel. At the height of the war between Israel and Hamas, they stole food aid in order to feed their insurgents in the tunnels, while the remaining food aid was sold at exorbitant prices to the poor people of Gaza. Since its formation in 1987, Hamas has become accustomed to not taking any form of accountability for its actions. They always falsely blame Israel as a political strategy and people who accept this false narrative are complacent in the destitution that the people of Gaza are confronting. 

Truth be Told. Following the IDF saying months ago that Hamas was hijacking aid trucks and stealing aid and were denounced as liars, the UN’s Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, and Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, admits that Hamas stole aid and disrupted distribution.

Hamas won political power in 2006 but has held elections in 20 years. It recently announced the dissolution of its governing “Emergency Committee” stepping aside to transfer administrative authority to the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) as part of the U.S.-brokered peace and ceasefire plan.

As a government ruling more than two million people, they have only brought terror to the lives of those people by inviting unnecessary wars, while they could have created a conducive environment for their people to thrive. It is highly unlikely that Hamas would be attacked by Israel without any provocation because Israel has invested its time and resources in establishing ties with its neighbours. In all the wars that have taken place between Israel and Hamas, it has always been Hamas that started the war, with Israel counter-attacking as a form of defense of its territory.

Since 2006, Hamas has been majorly responsible for the poor material conditions of the people of Gaza through its political divisions, incompetence, corruption, and war-mongering policies. Throughout the past 20 years, they have never gone to elections to allow the citizens to vote for their preferred government and use elections as an accountability mechanism, which means they have continuously imposed themselves on the people of Gaza to their detriment.


Hamas Takeover. Seen here in 2007, Hamas security force officers attack a Fatah supporter as he lays on the ground in Gaza City, following Hamas’ violent takeover of the Strip in June. (Photo: Adel Hana / AP)




About the writer:

Kenneth Moeng Kgwadi is a political scientist, journalist, and research fellow at the Middle East Africa Research Institute (MEARI).







*Feature picture: Hamas Hijack. A Hamas coordinated intercepting food aid from trucks.







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).

HERZLIYA CONFERENCE MESSAGE – TIME TO TRANSITION

Failures leading to October 7 followed by poor policies since, necessitate a switch in direction and a ditch of leadership.

By David E. Kaplan

Addressing the 2026 Herzliya Conference at Reichman University, an exuberant and entertaining US Ambassador, Mike Huckabee said that when President Trump

 “….. was looking who to appoint as the new ambassador for Israel, he said “Find me a ‘Maccabee”. Maybe, his folks didn’t hear him right so here I am instead –  a Huckabee.”

All familiar with the biblical history, everyone laughed; it was witty but it was the proverbial ‘last laugh’ of the two-day intense conference such are the distressing existential issues confronting Israel today.

Two-Way Street. Following US VP JD Vance saying much of Israel’s defense was American-made and taxpayer-funded, US Ambassador Mike Huckabee says Israel provides technology, agriculture and intelligence that ‘saves, protects and takes care of Americans all over the world’.

PRESERVING DEMOCRACY

The tone of the Conference was set  in a riveting interview of  retired Supreme Court President Aharon Barak by Maj. Gen. (Res.) Prof. Amos Gilead. The warm applause that greeted this retired jurist and judge was telling of a man who survived the Kovno Ghetto by being smuggled out in a sack before his family immigrated to Mandatory Palestine and who would serve as President of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1995 to 2006.

Saving the State. Maj. Gen. (Res.) Prof. Amos Gilead (right) interviews retired Supreme Court President Aharon Barak at the 22nd Herzliya Conference, who delivers a stark warning about the state of Israeli democracy, cautioning that the country lacks critical checks and balances and is “moving away from being democratic.” The Hon. Prof. Aharon Barak | Herzliya Conference 2026

Known for his monumental impact on Israeli law, he warned Israeli democracy was unraveling. Undoing much of the safeguards he had contributed in securing, Barak warned that Israel was losing  – under the current government – the necessary checks and balances, “placing the ultimate responsibility to protect the country’s democracy on the public.”  

And why was he then still optimistic, Barak answered:

 “There is an upcoming election; the people can change direction.”

The esteemed former Supreme Court justice was saying Israel’s salvation lay not with those today in office but with those tomorrow who will vote!

That “tomorrow” is October 27, 2026.

A DEFINING DIFFERENCE

There was something very different about 2026’s Herzliya Conference. Firstly, it was scheduled for weeks earlier but because there was the fear that the war with Iran would again flare up – which it now has – it was postponed,  finally  settling June 30 to July 1. Such uncertainty is the norm these days in Israel. As I write, the Maccabi Games or “Jewish Olympics” is being held, having being postponed from the previous year for the same reason – fear of war!  

In these turbulent times, missiles raining down on Israel’s civilian population is less a surprise and more a question of:

 “Are they from Iran, Hezbollah  or the Houthis?” That covers north, east and south, and would also be from the west if Gaza had not been considerably neutralized.

One of the first questions the residents in my apartment complex collectively ask whenever we hurriedly assemble in the bomb shelter following a siren:

“Who is firing at us? Is the missile coming from  Iran, Lebanon or Yemen?”

This bizarre scenario is a metaphor for life today in Israel. Our attackers could be coming at us from multiple directions and it could be separate or in concert. How frequently in our bomb shelter I would be on WhatsApp with my brother living in the north of Israel who was under attack from Hezbollah while we, in the center of the country, were under ballistic missile attack from Iran. Israel is surrounded by enemies who actively campaign for its demise hence the theme of this year’s Herzliya Conference was:

 “Between National Security and National Resilience”.  

A high-level strategic forum for evaluating Israel’s geopolitical standing and domestic resilience, the Herzliya Conference brings informed individuals from the Israel’s political, military, security, intelligence, academic and business communities together to exchange ideas, share knowledge, and build professional relationships. 

All this in defense of Israel, but this conference in 2026 there was a difference because  speaker after speaker conveyed the fear – Where lies the danger, in Tehran or Jerusalem? Between the crazy Ayatollahs and Bibi’s cobbled – and no less crazy – coalition, one had to try make sense of it all and plot a viable path forward.

As many of the speakers expressed that while Israel relies on “military power”, “economic stability” and “technical innovation”, it relies as much on “social cohesion” and “public trust”, both of which  are currently being eroded. The lack of public trust in Netanyahu’s government  was expressed in full throttle at the panel discussion surrounding Israel’s avoidance of a State Commission of Inquiry into the October 7 disaster.

Participating in the panel were two fathers who had lost children  in the present war. One was Eyal Eshel, father of Roni Eshel,  an IDF observation soldier, murdered at the Nahal Oz base on October 7, 2023. Eyal has become a vocal advocate for accountability, demanding a state commission of inquiry and frequently challenging government officials over the security failures that led to the tragedy. What most exposed the Prime Ministers “disconnect” was when Yoram Yehudai, the father of Ron Yehudai, who was murdered at the Nova music festival related his revulsion to the Channel 14 interview when Netanyahu was asked how he had personally changed since October 7 and jokingly replied that he had “lost a little weight“.”

Really?

“I lost a son and he jokes that he lost weight,” and added “I haven’t laughed at jokes in a thousand days.”

Discussions surrounding Israel’s avoidance of a State Commission of Inquiry into the October 7 disaster were a focal point at the 2026 Herzliya Conference with experts, including military and legal analysts, weighing in on the implications of sidestepping this statutory investigative mechanism.

Avoiding a formal State Commission of Inquiry – which is the most authoritative, independent investigative body under Israeli law, possessing the power to subpoena witnesses and issue binding, personal recommendations – shifts the inquiry to internal government reviews or politically appointed committees.

Panelists at the Conference argued that bypassing this independent probe, threatens long-term military accountability and public trust exposing the prime minister and his governing coalition to the not unfair accusation “as being more concerned over political survival” and “preserving wartime coalition stability,” rather than the national interest.

WEIGHTY ISSUES

Also not sharing Netanyahu’s joke about having “lost weight” since October 7, was  the former Chief of Staff and an aspiring future prime minister.

Interviewed at the Herzliya Conference by Channel 2’s prime time anchor,  Dana Weiss,  Gadi Eisenkot – now Leader of the Yashar Party – brought credibility to his criticism of the prime minister, having lost not “weight” but a son and two nephews in the current war. He stated that his primary goal is to defeat Netanyahu’s coalition, asserting that leaders in command on October 7 “are unfit for the future.”  He makes the case that “Twice, there was a sovereign Jewish kingdom here in the land of Israel,” referring to the Hasmonean Kingdom and the House of David, and “twice, it collapsed and fell apart in the eighth decade of its existence. Once again, we stand at a fateful point.”

To avoid a repeat dissolution, Eisenkot argued for Israelis to unify and come election, to remove the prime minister who he asserts “is out of touch,” and  “unfit” to remain in office.

Eisenkot characterizes the  cabinet as lacking independent thought, stating, “We have a weak Cabinet of submissive people,” allowing Netanyahu to lead the country in the wrong direction without challenge.

UNFIT FOR OFFICE

Being “out of touch” and “unfit” was the shared view of many of the speakers of a government that was undermining (during a war) the unity, solidarity and sustainability of Israeli society by its support of the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) exemption from military and civil service. Conference participants could have opened the front pages of any of the daily papers and seen Haredi protests across the country, blocking traffic in support of their community’s “draft doggers.” This was no ‘Ivory Tower’ academic conference – the issues discussed were playing out on Israeli streets and Israel’s borders.

Experts warned that “demographic shifts and draft exemptions are fracturing national resilience and placing an unsustainable burden on the shrinking portion of the public that serves in the military and productive economy.”

The main concerns expressed regarding the Haredi threat  was what was called the collapse of the “People’s Army” – so foundational and fundamental to Israel’s DNA. Experts highlighted that only about a third (35%) of each Israeli cohort completes significant military service. They warned that it is mathematically unsustainable for this minority to bear the security burden for the remaining 65% of the population indefinitely.

Reinforcing this concern, President Isaac Herzog used his address to warn of the “danger of social disintegration.” He stressed “the urgent need to renew the shared civic contract,” pointing to “the growing alienation between draft-exempt sectors and the broader Israeli public” that is actively bearing the costs of ongoing conflicts.

Despite the government pushing support for Hareidi draft dodgers, there is no dodging reality. Surveys presented at the Conference showed that a vast majority of the Israeli public demands equal burden-sharing, with 72% supporting the conscription of the ultra-Orthodox. The failure to integrate the Haredim into national and security service was cited as a “primary driver” of the extremely “low levels of social cohesion and trust in the government.”

President’s Warning. “Instead of being a diverse and thriving society of brothers and sisters, who quarrel and yet reconcile, we risk becoming a landmass that has broken apart into a handful of islands. Islands of exhausted, worn-out people…armed with a sense of absolute righteousness,” warned President Herzog addressing the 2026 Herzliya Conference. (Photo: GPO/Ma’ayan Toaf)

ECONOMIC STRAIN

Also flagged as existential long-term concerns were the failure of the Haredi educational system to incorporate core secular subjects (like math and science) and the community’s general lack of economic productivity.

Economists at the conference warned that as the productive tax base shrinks relative to the rapidly growing Haredi population, the burden on the working sector risks pushing skilled professionals out of the country.

All these discussions occurred against a backdrop of intense societal division, with the Haredi leadership threatening to dissolve the ruling coalition if the government did not advance laws that would permanently freeze draft enforcement and elevate Torah study to a foundational constitutional value.

EPILOGUE

Now post the conference,  if ever there is an example why this government has failed to  learn its lesson since October 7 and why is needs to be replaced is in the unfolding drama following Israel’s Chief of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir’s recent letter to PM Netanyahu and others warning against legislation that would freeze arrests of Haredi draft dodgers.

Following months of warning that the IDC is facing a critical manpower shortage and needs an influx of 12,000 soldiers, he wrote that such legislation would create “a disincentive to report for miliary service” since it grants immunity from prosecution  and would thus “rather than encourage enlistment” – which is desperately needed –  it would do the opposite.

“Such a move would, “ wrote Zamir, “cause a rapture with those who have borne the burden of fighting for the past two and a half years, and would increase the sense of inequality.”

How can one argue against this logic.

Nevertheless, this is precisely what this government is doing by attacking the country’s top military officer accusing him of indulging in politics instead of focusing on “winning the war,” as expressed by  Likud backbencher, Amit Levy in an Army Radio interview.

As all at the Conference were reminded, was it not Netanyahu who had deflected any criticism for October 7  arguing that the IDF and intelligence services failed to warm him of Hamas’ planned invasion.

 “I was not warned” has been his defense since October 8……

However, we now know this was NOT true. The head of Israeli military intelligence’s Research Division at the time had sent the prime minister a number of letters warning exactly this and the then-IDF Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi, repeatedly sought to meet with him in the days leading up to October 7 to warn him about the severe security risks posed by Israel’s internal divisions, but was frequently rebuffed. So too then Shin Bet chief, Ronen Bar, who too gave multiple warnings to Netanyahu about Hamas and the rising risk of war in the months and days leading up to October 7.

Now we can understand how Netanyahu and those around him ignored the warnings because they are doing it again – in the open  – by publicly ignoring the warning of the head of the IDF that the “military lacks sufficient manpower” thus impairing its ability to fight.  Not only are they ignoring the message but are attacking the messenger. They are doing so  to preserve power at the expense of the people.

Is there any doubt that under a Netanyahu government the people of Israel are facing a ‘Clear and present danger’.

This was reinforced by Likud stalwart and former Speaker of the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein  who gave a sharp address at the Conference  titled “A Half-People’s Army” where he criticized the unequal burden of military service. He advocated for “equality in service,” demanding that all Israeli citizens be subject to the same security service laws at age 18, and warned that the current system places an unsustainable burden on the nation’s reservists. As possibly a sign of a changing political landscape, Edelstein announced last month that he was leaving the party and would not run in the upcoming Likud primary.

All must Serve.  Speaker of the Knesset, MK Yuli Edelstein stated that Israel’s current conscription model is unsustainable arguing that civic duty and security service must be mandatory for all citizens. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXcy3tVPmsY&t=6s)

The message of the conference:

There is an election coming up or as Gadi Eisencott expressed it in historical terms that we again “stand at a fateful point” and: “We are warned!”

Wrong Direction. Interviewed at the Herzliya  Conference by Channel 12 anchor, Dana Weiss, Gadi Eisenkot characterized Israel’s governing cabinet as “weak” with “submissive people,” allowing Netanyahu to lead the country in the wrong direction without challenge.
(https://www.runi.ac.il/en/research-institutes/government/ips/herzliya-conference/hc2026/vod)








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 ANTISEMITIC GOSPEL ACCORDING TO REDI TLHABI

Relocated to the US, a popular South African journalist switches media platform to further outreach her antisemitism.

By Lawrence Nowosenetz

Relocated to Washington DC, South African journalist Redi Tlhabi broadcasts to a third of a billion people for the Qatari based network Al Jazeera.

For four months she has recited the oldest conspiracy theory in Europe, named it as antisemitism, and then told her audience it is true. Measured against the two screens the United States itself uses, the IHRA working definition and Natan Sharansky’s 3D test, an identifiable and fully documented body of her output stops being simply criticism of Israel.

Before leaving for overseas, Redi Tlhabi worked for many years as a broadcaster on Johannesburg based station Radio 702. She hosted her own programme called the Redi Tlhabi Show for about 10 years. Radio 702 is part of Primedia a broadcast media group founded by Issie Kirsch and his son William in 1994. Besides having Jewish management in its formative years, Radio 702 also featured well known and popular Jewish radio personalities John Berks and Stan Katz. This era also saw the new democratic South Africa formed and Radio 702 led the way as a talk radio station where openness and freedom of expression on radio flourished.

Redi was Ready. Back in 2018, Redi Tlhabi was all fired up to be anchoring a new current affairs show, named Unfiltered on SABC.

Funded in large part by the government of Qatar and chartered as an arm of the Qatari state, Tlhabi presents its popular current affairs programme UpFront. This is despite that the US Department of Justice ordered in 2020 for Al Jazeera to register as a foreign agent after concluding that it operated at the direction of the Qatari government. Viewed as the mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Jazeera is banned across most of the Middle East, including Egypt, Israel, Bahrain, the Palestinian Authority controlled areas and other countries. It refused, arguing that it reaches out to more than 430 million consumers over 150 countries. To that outreach, Tlhabi adds roughly 700,000 followers on X.

There is a gospel Redi Tlhabi has preached with regularity this year that it now functions as an obvious self-evident truth. She takes the oldest conspiracy theory in European history – the belief that Jews secretly control the money, the media and the machinery of government – and calls it before anyone can object, exactly what it is – an antisemitic trope. Then, despite revealing exactly what it is by her own admission and acknowledgement, she falsely imparts to her viewers it to be true.

She comes to this conclusion following scrutiny.

Really?

Regrettably, Tlhabi neglects to also inform her audience that her present Qatari employer is far from being Jewish and that when she worked for a South African Jewish media company earlier in her career, she enjoyed success without any reproach against her apparent Jewish ‘controllers’.

Bigotry is seldom logical or fair, but always harmful and dangerous. Tlhabi has overstepped the antisemitism red line and now presents an affront to human dignity and freedom not only of Jews but to democratic society of all races and creeds where respect, truth and justice still matter.

‘Upfront’ in her Prejudice. Working for her new boss Al Jazeera, Redi Tlhabi is more than happy to propagate an antisemitic narrative evidenced by her postings like “…the Israeli lobby uses money and power to  control the US and its lawmakers.”

Like happiness, antisemitism means different thing to different people. Yet antisemitism mutates. It has shifted from being hatred of Jews to hatred of the Jewish state. This reality is strongly contested by anti-Israel and anti-Zionist voices but nevertheless the standard definition has found traction. Let’s begin with the standard, even if Tlhabi will say the standard is rigged. The United States government itself uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition. The State Department has applied it since 2010; Executive Order 13899 made it a reference point for federal civil-rights enforcement in 2019; the 2023 National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism adopted it; and more than half of the states in the USA have endorsed it. The definition carries its own brake, written into its text: criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. (My emphasis)

The IHRA definition offers, as its textbook illustration, the making of “mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective, such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.”

That is the classic canard, named by the authors of the definition.

On 4 June, Tlhabi proudly proclaimed:

  • “Control the whole world… I thought this was an antisemitic trope.”  She clearly identifies with this old timeworn lie.
  • On 11 May 2026 she asked her followers whether it is an “antisemitic trope still” to say Israel “wants to control social media.”   
  • On 21 March 2026, she dropped any vestige of a bland façade:

        “So can we say the Israeli lobby uses money and power to  control the US and its lawmakers? … I think we must.”

  • On 5 June 2026, she instructed her audience to stop caring what they are called, because words like “control, influence, money” simply describe the truth.

This is the defining moment and the turning point when the certainty of prejudice allows no questioning or doubt.   We have seen it before and we thought it was dead and buried after the Nazi era: Sheer and unadulterated anti-Jewish hatred and vilification.

Natan Sharansky’s older 3D test draws the same line and names the three markers of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel animus: demonization, double standards, and delegitimisation. A writer may despise the Israeli government, reject Zionism as a political ideology, call the conduct of the war in Gaza criminal, and still sit on the safe side of every line. The bar is set high by design. Criticism is not silenced. Obsessive discrimination is not lightly inferred. Tlhabi comfortably clears these hurdles and effortlessly enters the terrain of vicious hate filled antisemitism.

The machinery does not vary. She recites the conspiracy theory, names it as a conspiracy theory so that nobody can accuse her of ignorance, and then asserts that it is accurate.  Tlhabi has done it across dozens of posts, openly and brazenly from a desk in Washington DC. She speaks with the voice of undisputed authority.  “Those who know, know” she posted on X on 30 June 2026. No fact checking, no proof just sheer certainty. It is hard to reconcile such crude irrational dogmatism with a highly educated journalist and influential public model.

On 13 March, she ran the charge as sarcasm, reciting “it is antisemitic to say Israel controls US politicians” in the voice of someone tired of pretending it is false.  The conduct matches the IHRA definition’s own example of the world-conspiracy myth, and it matches Sharansky’s demonization criterion.  Absurd too and equally insulting of the sovereignty and power of the USA to suggest that its politicians are unduly influenced by a foreign government or individuals.   

Tlhabi’s response to a blog in the Times of Israel (ToI) by a private identified contributor is illustrative of her conspiracy theorising.  The article titled “Africa Must Fragment, South Africa First” argued that South Africa should be broken into ethnic successor states. A Tlhabi social media user posted this blog on Tlhabi’s comment section adding that (undefined) “they”, were “behind this nyaka nyaka (a colloquial African term for chaos) and “will stop at NOTHING.” Tlhabi quote-tweeted that post with a resounding affirmation:

 “Nnete,” she wrote in Sesotho, her mother tongue (meaning true) and: “Mossad is GOOD. I hope our investigative journalists are working. I’m happy to give them leads”.   

A Tlhabi social media user’s comment had become, in Tlhabi’s hands, proof of an Israeli intelligence operation to fragment a continent, and she was volunteering her services to help reporters investigate and expose this evil plan. The IHRA definition speaks of the myth of a world Jewish conspiracy. Here is that myth, transposed to Africa, named as Mossad and offered to journalists as a tip.

Tlhabi’s second category of demonization shifts from the Jewish State, Israel to individual Jews in South Africa. Her most sustained personal campaign of the year is against a respected rabbi. She has called South Africa’s Chief Rabbi, Warren Goldstein, “a divisive, hateful man.” She has charged that he “whips up fear and uses hyperbole to create the impression that Jews are in danger, from the rest of us.” She fails to acknowledge the real and existential dangers Jewish communities have faced worldwide since the 7 October 2023 atrocities and the incitement – including actual physical attacks – on Jewish civilians in Western cities.  Instead, she attributes to the head of Orthodox Jewry in South Africa his concern for his congregation as paranoia and a fraudulent accusation against ordinary society.

Redi and the Rabbi. Redi Tlhabi posts about South Africa’s Chief Rabbi, Warren Goldstein, “You want Jews to feel hated and afraid. That’s your currency.”

This malicious instinct extends to private Jewish South African citizens. Mark Saltzman, a member of the prominent family behind the South African pharmacy chain Dis-Chem criticised her over Israel. She recast his family’s philanthropy as proof of a hidden design, writing that he:

 “…inadvertently confirms that money is donated as a [form] of control.”

The old trope about Jewish money, applied this time to a Jewish businessman rather than to a lobby in the abstract, surfaced the moment the quarrel spotlighted her personal animus against Israel.  

In the USA, when a New York turbulent primary between two Jewish Democrats, Brad Lander and sitting Rep. Dan Goldman, produced a result that some Jewish New Yorkers found alarming, Tlhabi reposted a message that mocked that anxiety:

“Praying for your safety tonight, after one Jewish man was defeated by another Jewish man.”

Mocking Message. Responding to Rep. Dan Goldman, who shortly following been banned from a Brooklyn coffee shop over posture on Israel and was then unseated by a Mamdani-backed Brad Lander, Redi Tlhabi posted a message mocking “… one Jewish man was defeated by another Jewish man.” (Photo: Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

She reposted an item declaring that “Jews are many things, but stupid is not one of them.” She is perfectly right in that observation evidenced in achievements across academic, scientific and economic spheres, but her framing of their undoubted accomplishments was meant in a disparaging and dehumanising sense by referring to cryptic and unnamed “many things” that Jews are good at. Were any other religious, ethnic or national group to be characterized in this manner, it would rightly be regarded as racist. 

In her coverage of a shooting at an Islamic centre in San Diego and the Jewish community’s caring response proving “the urgent, universal need for security protections at all faith-based sites,” Tlhabi inferred that Jewish fear of violence was a ruse. In her view, the World Jewish Congress recasts Jewish anxiety about antisemitism as a cynical tactic “at best conspiratorial.” For Tlhabi, Jewish conspiracy is a constant recurring theme in her reportage

The third category of her antisemitism is the easiest to evidence and the least contested supported by Sharansky’s unfailing 3D test.  Tlhabi has posted the bare utterance “Israel is a terrorist state” on at least seven separate occasions in four months, the way a congregation recites a creed.

She has luridly described Israeli soldiers as:

– “savages”

– “murderers”

– in “the grip of some psychosis”,

– a “genocidal state led by psychopaths” and

– “filth”.

Such is the gospel of Tlhabi.

A reader may believe that the Israeli military has committed grave crimes in Gaza and still recognise that “savages”, “psychopaths” and “filth” is the vocabulary of degradation and dehumanisation – the precise character assassination the antisemitism definitions exist to flag.

Her reply is on the record, and it deserves to be put plainly. She holds that opposition to Zionism concerns a political ideology and a state, with no bearing on Jews as a people, and that the charge of antisemitism is a cudgel used to silence her. Writing in News24, she observed that when she criticises Israel, she is called an antisemite, and added that she can “live with this title.”

The frameworks marshalled against her are, moreover, contested. The American Civil Liberties Union and others have warned that the IHRA examples can be stretched to chill legitimate speech, and many reasonable people read the Israel-related clauses in good faith and reject them.  This tired response overlooks:

– the crucial delineation between criticism and defamation

– between informed comment and character assassination

– between established facts and baseless dogmatic falsehoods.  Anyone who resists rational debate and factual challenge is not part of the enterprise called civilizational enquiry and progress.

The safe harbour Tlhabi relies on to protect criticism of Israel is “similar to that levelled against any other country.” No – it is completely different:  A double standard and hypocrisy as wide as the Grand Canyon. At present there is a genocide case against Myanmar pending in the ICJ. One does not see the leaders and supporters of Myanmar being described by Tlhabi or the media as psychopaths or the like. Similarly, those responsible for the huge human suffering, sexual abuse, starvation and death in Sudan are not singled out for dehumanisation or demonization. The deposed President of Syria, responsible for suffering, death and displacement of millions of Syrians also has not been subjected to close scrutiny or denunciation by Tlhabi – certainly not with such extreme language.

Measured against the definition the United States government itself applies and against the test a former Soviet prisoner devised to separate criticism from hatred, an identifiable body of what Redi Tlhabi broadcasts meets the egregious markers of antisemitism: world conspiracy theories, demonization delegitimation and double standards.

She flagrantly rejects the official antisemitism policy of the USA, her gracious host. 

Tlhabi enjoys the freedoms in the USA including freedom of speech which she does not accord others who challenges her views. She benefits from a platform which is a Qatari state backed broadcaster with a reach of more than 430 million people and a personal following of three quarters of a million.  She is a foreign national in Washington DC who has satisfied herself that the world conspiracy is real and that her task is to help the rest of us see it. She spotted the trope, identified and named it, and then told a third of a billion people that it was true. She is unwilling to allow her bigoted views to stand scrutiny. She should be held accountable for her contribution to the incitement and violence which has manifested in the US and across major Western countries against individuals, although unfortunately she is not alone. 

Redi Tlhabi is abusing her freedoms to deprive Jews of their right to safety and dignity.



About the writer:

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





*Feature picture: Redi Tlhabi (Illustrative image: Daily Maverick | Gemini)







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 MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, MILITANT ISLAM AND QATAR

The power of money to influence, corrupt and ultimately erode the liberal western way of life.

By Neville Berman

(Warning from the writer:  There may be incidents referred to below that you may find disturbing)

This article is not about nuclear war, global warming or a strain of some unknown virus that could result in the destruction of mankind. Instead, it is aimed at highlighting the actual greatest current threat facing the liberal Western way of life. Forget about Russia, China or communism as the major threats facing the West. The cold war is over. Russia is clearly no longer the power that Vladimir Putin thought it was when he ordered the Russian army to invade Ukraine. China might be an economic competitor to American financial dominance, but China relies on the markets in the West to ensure that its export-based economy can bring prosperity to China. It would be a strategic mistake for China to believe that its exports will not suffer if it wages war against the West.  

The First World War was billed as “the war to end all wars”. It ended with a German surrender, and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire that had ruled large parts of the Middle East for nearly 400 years. The terms of the surrender agreement did not bring peace to Europe, and the Muslim community in the Middle East was plunged into turmoil.  

In 1928, Hassan al-Banna started a Sunni Muslim organization in Egypt called the Muslim Brotherhood. He stated the following:

 “The nature of Islam is to dominate and not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.”  

The Enforcer. Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the largest and most influential global Islamist movements, Hassan al-Banna encouraged Egyptians to abandon Western customs and argued that the state should enforce Islamic public morality.

He rejected nationalism, and regarded all Muslims as members of a single Islamic movement that needed to establish Islamic rule across the world. Its core message was to subjugate the world to Sharia law by means of Jihad. He maintained that Jihad is an obligation from Allah on every Muslim, and that a guaranteed way to heaven was to die fighting for the cause of Islam. Partly due to the social activities in helping the poor, and partly due to the support from the Imams in the Mosques, membership in the Brotherhood grew rapidly across the Arab world. The Egyptian government recognized the threat that the Brotherhood posed to its rule, and in 1949, Hassan al-Banna was assassinated by agents of the Egyptian secret police. Despite his death, the message of the Muslim Brotherhood still resonates with millions of Muslims.

There are two significant changes that have now elevated the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood. The first involves the change in the financial position of the major oil and gas exporting countries in the Middle East, and the second involves the huge increase of the number of Muslims now living in the West.

The world runs on oil and gas and Saudi Arabia is the world’s number 1 exporter of oil, and Qatar is the second largest exporter of Liquefied Natural Gas. (LNG) The profits from the sale of these commodities have transformed these previously poverty-stricken countries into modern financial powerhouses. They are now using their financial power to undermine the West, and promote the growth of Islam across the world. 

The second important factor is that the liberal West decided to promote a policy of human rights for mankind. The idea of prosperity through diversity, multiculturalism, and equal opportunity, led to the West opening its borders to immigration. Millions of immigrants from poor countries with little or no prospects, moved to the liberal Western world in the hope of finding a better life for themselves and their families. The vast majority of them lack marketable skills, and are impecunious. They do not share the same culture, religion, language or values of the countries that they have immigrated to. The result is that Europe and America now have sizable immigrant and Muslim populations. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have financed Mosques and Islamic cultural centers all across the world to serve the Muslim immigrant communities. The Imams in these institutions have radicalized tens of thousands of their followers to oppose the values of the West, and to see themselves as part of the army of Islam that aims to control the world.  

The greatest threat facing the Western world at present is militant Islam coupled with the support that it is receiving from Qatar and other Middle Eastern countries. (The role of Iran and Saudi Arabia as a threat to the West will  be presented in a follow up article.)

Qatar is a sovereign country surrounded by the Persian Gulf. It has a small land border that can be used to cross into Saudi Arabia. It has been ruled by the Al Thani family since the mid-19th century. There are approximately 3 million people living in Qatar, of which about 320,000 are Qatari citizens. All the rest are expatriates and guest workers with almost no rights in the country. Qatar has donated billions of dollars to Hamas, which is an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood.

All in the Family. Qatar, a small Gulf country with enormous global influence, has been ruled by the Al Thani family since the mid-19th century.

Qatar has the same aims as Al-Qaeda, but is much smarter in its strategy. Instead of blowing up buildings in the West and causing a military retaliation, Qatar is buying the buildings and using its financial resources to gain influence. The Al-Jazeera TV channel is financed by the rulers of Qatar. It broadcasts 24/7 in Arabic and English to 430 million households worldwide. It has radicalized millions of its viewers to hate and despise the West and is laying the seeds of an Islamic takeover of the West.   

Qatar has spent billions on financing the building of Middle Eastern departments on all the major American university campuses. Only professors with a track record of being anti-Israel are hired. Their aim is to train the future leaders of America to oppose the values and foundational pillars of Western civilization, and especially to oppose Israel. The end result can be seen in well financed and organized protests against Israel on American campuses and across the Western world.

Gift or Graft? Seeming oblivious to the image of Qatar buying influence at the highest level of the US administration, President Donald Trump celebrates the new Qatari-gifted ‘Air Force One’ before its initial voyage to North Dakota, saying the U.S. “should be very proud” of the new luxury jet.(AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Qatar has used its enormous wealth to corrupt the world. They bought the right to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. They are also buying influence within the American administration. Steve Witcoff owned a hotel in New York that was sold to Qatar for $400 million. He claims it was at fair market value. According to a Netflix program called Dirty Money, Jared Kushner was bailed out of insolvency by a $400 million loan from Qatar. Witkoff and Kushner are presently the negotiators representing America in negotiating a deal with Iran. Qatar has just presented Trump with the world’s most luxurious Boeing 747 aircraft costing over $400 million. The Attorney General has determined that the gift is legally permissible, as it is gifted to the US government and not to Trump personally. Trump is now using the plane. Whichever way you look at it, there is no doubt that Qatar has bought influence within the highest levels of the US administration. President Trump sees Qatar as a friend and ally of America. Qatar is playing a double game of pretending to be a friend of America, while actively promoting the aims of the Muslim Brotherhood and the downfall of the West.

More than a decade ago, Dutch politician Gert Wilders produced a short movie of the growth of Islam in Holland. The final scene was filmed inside a mosque of an Imam waving a sword during a sermon, declaring, “Come and cut off his head! By Allah, we shall cut it off!”

To Crown it All. This Bel Air home in LA, listed on the market as the US’s most expensive residential property is owned by a Qatari billionaire and former prime minister. Qatar’s ruling Al Thani family and state funds have amassed massive real estate portfolios across Western capitals with their holdings often exceeding those of local monarchs. (Photo: Simon Berlyn/The Beverly Hills Estates)

Gert Wilders was charged with inciting hatred for making and showing the movie. No charges were ever laid against the Imam. There is no doubt that the message of that particular Imam is part of Islam.

In the early hours of October 7, 2023, Hamas invaded Israel. They rejoiced at filming themselves committing the most violent crimes of murder, rape, beheading, and hostage taking. Many people in the West believe that the Muslim concept of Jihad applies only to Jews. They are mistaken. Jihad is aimed at every single person who does not believe in Islam. This is a wakeup call to all those Westerners who are totally ignorant of what Islam and Jihad are all about. One day, when the Islamists decide that it is time to overthrow the West, tens of thousands of militant Islamists that are your fellow citizens, and could be living next door to you, will act in the same way that Hamas acted against Israel. They will take out their guns and invade your residences. They will shoot your dogs, murder your babies and children in front of you. They will gang rape the female members of your family, and then mutilate and decapitate you and your parents. Some of you will have metal rods shoved into your vaginas and others will have your breasts cut off. All of this will be filmed by the people rejoicing at what they have done. Some of you will be kidnaped and kept in cellars. You will either be killed, used as sex slaves, and finally used as bargaining chips to secure the release of other Jihadists that have been incarcerated. If you find the above shocking, then it is time to wake up to the reality of what Hamas actually planned and carried out in Israel. This is what Jihad is all about. As they say in Hollywood, Coming shortly to your neighborhood.  Groups such as “Gays for Gaza” are the epitome of the ignorance that exists about the dangers of militant Islam.  

Tuitions of Terror. The preferred host of Hamas terrorist leaders, Qatar is the largest foreign donor to American higher education, funneling billions of dollars into U.S. and Western universities. Seen here is Cornell University that received over $2.3 billion. (Credit: Cornell University stock photo)

I will end with what must be the strangest case of genocide ever recorded. Thousands of Palestinians living in the West Bank are finding illegal ways to cross into Israel to find employment. Tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza would gladly come to work in Israel, if Israel would allow them to do so. It defies all logic that all these Palestinians would be trying desperately to come to Israel, if Israel was committing genocide against them. It is time for all those gullible Westerners who are protesting that Israel is committing genocide to understand that you are supporting a blood libel and false narrative. It is time to reflect on your support for those that aim to kill you. It is time to understand the disproportionate role that tiny Israel is playing in preventing militant Islam from taking over the western world.

It is time to say “Thank you Israel.”



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).