The Church should be a protected sanctuary rather than a site for political standoffs- sanctity of life over frictions of the past.
By David Nekrutman and Jonathan Feldstein
The images from last month’s Iranian missile barrage remain seared into our collective memory, specifically the sight of ballistic streaks over Jerusalem’s Old City. Amidst this high-stakes war, a localized controversy erupted that touched the very heart of the faith communities with whom we spend our time building bridges. During Holy Week, Israeli police barred Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for a private, livestreamed Palm Sunday service.
Cardinal Issue. Need to provide a bomb shelter following the issue with Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem who is seen here holding a prayer service to mark Palm Sunday in Jerusalem, March 29, 2026. (Photo: Ammar Awad/Pool Photo via AP)
Predictably, the incident became a Rorschach test for the region’s geopolitics. Critics of Israel seized upon it as evidence of anti-Christian bias, while defenders pointed to the genuine threat of falling shrapnel, noting that religious gatherings for Jews and Muslims were also restricted. The fallout was significant enough that Israeli government leaders, including the Prime Minister himself, condemned the police decision and intervened to ensure a solution was found for future services.
Targeting Jerusalem. Israel intercepts an Iranian missile above Jerusalem’s Old City on March 1, 2026. (Photo: AP/Mahmoud Illean)
While high-level political fixes can salvage a holiday, they do not address the underlying infrastructure failure. As leaders of The Isaiah Projects and the Genesis 123 Foundation, we believe the time has come to ask a glaring, practical question:
Why does one of the most significant religious sites on Earth, in a place that has been targeted by terrorist missiles, lack a bomb shelter?
STREAMLINING SECURITY FOR THE CLERGY
The absence of a shelter doesn’t just impact pilgrims; it hamstrings the ability of Israel’s Home Front Command to make nuanced security calls. When the sirens wail and the threat level is raised, as we experienced during last month’s state of war, the military’s default position must be the total shutdown of unprotected spaces.
Under Fire. Smoke in the Old City shows where fragments from an Iranian missile fell near the holy sites of all the three major religions. (Photo: IDF)
If the Church of the Holy Sepulchre had an on-site shelter, the logistical calculus would change overnight. It would provide the Home Front Command with the safety “cushion” needed to allow the Cardinal and his clergy into the building even during high-alert periods. While a shelter might not allow for full congregational attendance, it would alleviate some of the safety concerns that currently lead to total bans on public holy sites. A shelter turns a high-risk security gamble into a manageable situation, ensuring the liturgy does not have to go dark while protecting lives — a value central to both Judaism and Christianity.
A COALTION OF WILLING NEIGHBORS
Recognizing this gap between spiritual necessity and physical safety, our organizations have publicly offered to donate and install a bomb shelter within or adjacent to the church premises. We would be working in tandem with Operation Lifeshield, an Israeli organization with decades of specialized experience installing shelters for both Jewish and non-Jewish communities across Israel.
To date, however, the Church has yet to accept our offer. We understand the complexity of the “Status Quo” — the centuries-old web of agreements between different denominations that govern the Holy Sites. Historically, even moving a laddercan trigger an internal Christian crisis. Yet, as the region prepares for a potential “Phase 3” escalation with Iran and the lack of a long-term solution becomes glaring, the absence of modern safety infrastructure is a liability that prayer alone may not solve.
BEYOND THE STATUS QUO
The threats last month in Jerusalem and across Israel were real. While any physical change requires a delicate consensus among the various Christian denominations at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, “bureaucracy as usual” is a luxury we can no longer afford when the stakes are human lives.
Nowhere is Safe. Following an Iranian missile exploding over Jerusalem’s Old City, its fragments fell on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Armenian Patriarchate, the Jewish Quarter and on the Temple Mount near the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Iranian regime is firing missiles toward Jerusalem’s holy sites, endangering Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike. Israel, meanwhile, acts to protect worshippers of all faiths in its capital city.
Moving beyond these administrative hurdles would signal a profound shift in interfaith relations, especially as an initiative of two Jewish-led organizations supported by both Jews and Christians. We are currently sixty years post-Nostra Aetate, the landmark declaration that reshaped the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people. We speak often of “rapprochement”, but it is often confined to high-level summits and theological papers.
We believe a bomb shelter for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, facilitated by Jewish neighbors with a proven track record of protecting all citizens, would be the ultimate modern manifestation of that vision. It would be a tangible, “concrete” sign of a brotherhood that prioritizes the sanctity of life over the friction of the past.
Holy Sepulchre in the ‘Cross’hairs. Missile debris from an Iranian attack landed just feet from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem – one of the most sacred sites in Christianity, believed to be the place of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.
LOOKING AHEAD TO PHASE III
As tensions with Iran threaten to escalate into a “Phase III” conflict, the issue of shutdowns in public and even sacred spaces will only intensify. Israel has recently appointed a new Christian envoy; while he is still getting his feet wet in this complex space, he cannot carry the burden of the Church’s safety alone.
The Church leadership must step up. It is easy to blame security forces for restrictions, but it is much harder to justify the lack of basic safety infrastructure in a high-profile target area frequently caught in the crosshairs of regional conflict.
Our offer stands. We are ready to work with the Church to navigate the technical and diplomatic hurdles. Accepting this shelter would ensure that when the next barrage of missiles from Iran, Hezbollah, or the Houthis comes, the Church remains a protected sanctuary rather than a site for political standoffs. Let us work together to ensure that the prayers at the Holy Sepulchre never have to be silenced by the sound of sirens.
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).
If the West cannot stand with its Jews when they are threatened, blamed and smeared with recycled blood libels, then we are dead as societies.
By Andrew Fox
I am done pulling punches. This will not be an easy read. Do not look away.
Fuck this. I am furious at the antisemitism pouring through the West, confident and shameless, and at those who know it is wrong, yet sit by and let it happen and say or do absolutely nothing.
View at burnt Ambulances in a car park at Golders Green in London, Monday, March 23, 2026, after an apparent arson attack on four vehicles belonging to a Jewish ambulance service, Hatzola Northwest, in London. (Photo: Alberto Pezzali/AP)
In Britain, we have already had Jews and their security guards stabbed to death. Jewish ambulances were set on fire. Now we have had multiple synagogue fire bombings in London. I woke this morning to a WhatsApp message from a Jewish friend I treasure, telling me about the latest atrocity against British Jews. I am sick of this. I am sickened by it, and I do not understand how anyone with any decency is not sickened too. Why are we not angrier?
Jewish people are being forced to answer, again, for every accusation, every fantasy, every blood libel hurled at the State of Israel. A Jewish student in London, Paris, New York or Melbourne is treated as if they sat in the Israeli war cabinet. A synagogue is treated as if it were a military installation. A kosher restaurant becomes a proxy battlefield. A Jewish child in a school uniform is expected to carry the moral weight of a war they did not start, a government they did not elect, and a region most of their accusers could not find on a map without help. It is grotesque. It is ancient hatred with new slogans. I am angry, and you should be too. If you are reading this, why the fuck are you not angrier?
A 45-year-old Muslim man goes on a rampage in Golders Green looking for Jews to stab. Antisemitism is being ‘normalised’ and not taken seriously enough, chief rabbi tells BBC. (Photo: Screen shot from BBC)
Holocaust survivors have told me in person that the atmosphere in Britain today is like 1930s Germany. Why will our leaders, our government, our legal system not listen to them? The Holocaust did not arrive fully formed. It started with demonisation, isolation and undeserved blame.
Wake. The. Fuck. Up.
The blood libels are back. They have just been laundered through the language of activism, human rights and moral urgency. Jews are again cast as uniquely cruel, uniquely conspiratorial, uniquely bloodthirsty. Israel is accused not merely of error, not merely of brutality, not merely of war, but of metaphysical evil. Every casualty is flattened into proof of Jewish depravity. Every complexity is erased. Every Hamas or Hezbollah or Iranian atrocity is contextualised into mist. Jewish grief is interrogated. Jewish fear is mocked. Jewish self-defence is treated as criminal.
The most sickening expression of this is the obscene inversion of the Holocaust in Gaza. Gaza is not the Holocaust. Gaza is not Auschwitz. Gaza is not Treblinka. Gaza is not the industrialised, continent-wide mechanical attempt to exterminate an entire people. Gaza is not the murder of six million people because they were Jews. Gaza is not children selected for gas chambers, families shot into pits, communities erased from Europe, nor names turned to ash. To compare the war in Gaza to the attempted extermination of the Jewish race is an obscene desecration. There is no parallel. None whatsoever.
April 14, 1945 – Pile of ashes and bones found by U.S. soldiers at Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany (Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library)
Civilian suffering in Gaza or Lebanon is simply a feature of war. It can be real without turning Jews into Nazis. War can be horrific without becoming the Shoah. Palestinians can be mourned without stealing the language of Jewish annihilation and weaponising it against Jews. The Holocaust is not a metaphor for anyone’s rhetorical convenience. It was a specific crime, committed against a specific people, at a specific scale, with a specific ideological purpose: the eradication of Jews from the earth. To invert it against Jews now is morally obscene.
Everyone in the West should stand with their Jewish neighbours. They should stand with Jews because Jews are being threatened, harassed, isolated and collectively blamed for the actions of a state. They should stand with Jews because history has already shown us where this road leads when decent people find a thousand elegant reasons to look away.
April 12, 1945 – Bodies of prisoners of Ohrdruf concentration camp stacked like cordwood (Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library)
Silence is permission. When Jewish schools need guards, when students hide Stars of David, when families wonder whether it is safe to walk to synagogue, and when mobs chant slogans that make Jews feel hunted in the cities they call home, when Jewish ambulances and places of worship are being firebombed, the moral test is not complicated. Stand with Jews, or admit that your principles are worth piss in the wind.
The absence of solidarity is a stain. The refusal to name antisemitism because it wears a fashionable political mask is a stain. The cowardice of institutions, politicians, universities and cultural figures who can identify every hatred except this one is a stain.
What the shuddering fuck are we doing, Britain? Why are we not angrier? Why are we not forming human shields around our Jewish community? Our grandparents fought a global war so that this could never happen again. It is literally happening again, and we are standing by and doing absolutely fucking nothing.
I am angry because Jews should not have to beg for support. Jews should not feel they have to thank someone merely for showing solidarity with them. I am raging because “Never Again” has become a slogan people applaud, yet it fails when courage is demanded. I am angry because standing by Jews is the only right option, and too many otherwise good, decent people are choosing silence, disregard or antipathy.
Look: I cannot say this anymore simply. Once they are done with the Jews, they are coming for you, too. Get fucking angry before it is too late, if not for the Jews, then for yourselves and your children.
About the writer:
A veteran of three grueling tours of Afghanistan, Major Andrew Fox holds a Batchelor’s degree in Law & Politics, a Master’s in Military History & War Studies, Msc in Psychology and is currently studying for a PhD in History.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Israel cultural icon Zubin Mehta, who turns 90 this week cancels all his 2026 performances in Israel over politics. Should the hotel that embraced him for decades memorialize his legacy? A personal view.
By Motti Verses
Many believe there would never be a slowdown for the legendary conductor marking his 90th birthday this week on April 29. His presence on stage, baton in hand, felt almost immune to time. Born in Mumbai, Zubin Mehta became one of the most enduring figures in classical music, and his relationship with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, spanning more than five decades, remains one of the longest in the field.
Contribution to Culture. Zubin Mehta receives the Presidential Award from Israeli president Shimon Peres for his contribution to Israeli culture. (Photo: Haaretz)
Mehta’s connection to Israel extended beyond the concert hall. For decades, that ‘connection’ was also embedded in a place, the Hilton Tel Aviv, where I was part of the management. Zubin was not just a guest – but a constant presence.
Decades of Delight. Prior to a farewell Gala event after a lifetime of delighting Israeli concert goers, Zubin Metha is seen here (center) being interviewed in 2019 at the Charles Bronfman Auditorium in Tel Aviv with the writer (left) and Hilton Israel Magazine editor David Kaplan. (Photo: Motti Verses)
In the late 1960s, when Tel Aviv offered few international-standard hotels, the Hilton stood at the forefront. Mehta, still early in his international career, was quickly embraced by the Philharmonic’s circle. The hotel, in turn, embraced him. Over time, that relationship deepened into something unusual: a leading global artist becoming inseparable from the identity of a hotel.
Music not Missiles. Zubin Mehta conducts a concert in 1977 at the opening ceremony of the ‘Good Fence’ on the Israeli-Lebanese border. (Photo: David Rubinger)
At one point, even a rooftop suite at the Hilton bore his name for more than 20 years. It was not a marketing gesture; it reflected a real, lived connection. Mehta himself took part in placing the plaque. A small but telling act. For years, guests passing through the adjacent lounge would see that name, quietly linking the hotel to one of the world’s great conductors.
TradingPlaces. Switching from a conductor’s baton to an engineer’s hat, Maestro Mehta 30 years ago places a new plaque by the door of the rooftop suite named after him, following a renovation. (Photo: Motti Verses)
He was a familiar figure there. Not only at formal events such as fundraising galas, state-attended evenings, performances but also in ordinary moments – at the Concierge desk; in the lobby. Present, accessible, part of the daily Hilton’s rhythmic routine.
During the 1991 Gulf War, as Iraqi missiles rained down on Tel Aviv, Mehta remained at the hotel. At a time when most foreign visitors had left, his presence was not symbolic but consistent with who he had been in Israel for decades. As he said at the time, “I couldn’t imagine not being here.”
Sights and Sounds. Zubin Mehta with gas mask visits the site of the first Iraqi Scud missile strike of the Gulf War in Tel Aviv, Israel, January 1991. (Photo: Colin Davey/Getty Images)
What is more, he performed under fire getting special permission since emergency government measures prohibited mass gatherings. Baton in hand, he led concerts for several mornings in a row, as there was a strict night curfew during the war. The most visually catching addition to people’s dress at these ‘concerts’ were the bringing of their gas masks into the performances.
In later years, the hotel changed. Renovations altered its layout, and the original suite bearing his name disappeared. A posh generic suite was assigned to him, but without the same recognition. By then, Mehta himself had slowed. His appearances became less frequent. The connection, while still there, was no longer as visible.
Celebratory Concert. Celebrating in 2005, the Hilton’s 40th anniversary in Israel, Mehta conducts an unforgettable open-air concert staged over the hotel’s temporarily covered pool. (Photo: Hilton Israel Mmagazine)
A few weeks before the Covid plague, the Hilton hosted a farewell gala marking his retirement from the Israel Philharmonic. It was an evening of respect and closure. The Grand Ballroom was filled with those who had known his contribution firsthand.
Inspiring words to Enriching Sounds. Mehta passionately addresses in 2015 the audience during an Israeli Philharmonic fundraising event in the Hilton, Tel Aviv’s Grand Ballroom. (Photo: Motti Verses)
During that moment, I thought the story should not end there. That the hotel should consider restoring what had been lost and once again name a suite after him. It seemed appropriate – even obvious. I thought then that this nice gesture should be at his 90th birthday.
Now, although I’m no longer with the Hilton, I changed my mind and for different reasons.
At the beginning of 2026, Mehta announced that he would cancel all his scheduled performances in Israel, explaining that he could not separate music from politics. It was a clear, public decision, regardless of the difficult years Israel is facing since the October 7 2023 massacre. It was a position that stood in contrast to the posture he had maintained for decades – one of solidarity and support for the State of Israel.
Portrait of an Artist. The Maestro assists in hanging a portrait of himself in the Zubin Metha Suite at the Hilton, Tel Aviv, following the 1991 Gulf War. (Photo: Motti Verses)
For much of his career, Mehta was seen here as someone above political divisions. His music, and his presence, operated in a different space. One that connected rather than separated. That was the basis of his standing in Israel.
The decision to withdraw reframed that legacy. Not gradually, but abruptly – leaving a jarring discordant note; and ‘unfinished symphony’.
A hotel suite commemorating his contribution is not just a physical space. It carries meaning. It reflects an ongoing relationship, not only past achievement, but continued identification. Naming a suite after someone is a statement that the connection still holds.
In this case, it does not.
Mehta’s contribution to Israel’s cultural life remains significant. That history cannot be erased. But recognition is not only about the past. It also depends on how that past is concluded.
Legacies are shaped over time, but they are also defined at their end. Zubin Metha leaves on his 90th year disappointed Israeli concert goers with memories, but also sadly with ‘The Sound of Silence’. And this, after October 7, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust!
End of an Era. Is this the final note, with Zubin Mehta appearing this January on India TV explaining why he cancelled all his scheduled performances in Israel? (Photo: YouTube)
You have been in life a “classic” and wish you continue your journey to entertain and inspire – only a pity not one last time in the Jewish State, whose culture you have enriched over a memorable melodious lifetime.
Sic transit gloria Israel, Maestro.
*Feature picture: Conductor Zubin Mehta attends the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Duet Gala at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on November 10, 2015 in Beverly Hills, California.(Photo: Joe Scarnici/Getty)
About the writer:
The author is a seasoned hotel expert, traveler, writer, and videographer, and formerly served as Head of Public Relations for Hilton Hotels & Resorts in Israel. Today, as a travel writer and hospitality trends analyst, his insights and experiences are regularly featured in leading Israeli media outlets.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Daily life in Israel when missiles are striking across Israel.
By Peter Bailey
Israel’s many wars, the first of which started before the rebirth of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, has resulted in an extremely efficient and effective system of everything possible being done to ensure the safety of the civilian population at all times. There is a well-worn comment that while Israel’s enemies have spent fortunes on developing armies and weapons with which to attack Israel, Israel has spent the bulk of its defense spend on defensive capabilities and citizen safety. The evolution of how wars are waged has seen the use of offensive weapons such as rockets, missiles and drones becoming the weapons of choice with which to attack Israel. The country has thus been developing increasingly sophisticated anti rocket and missile defenses, while also concentrating on the erection and maintenance of communal and private residential safe areas of various types.
I regularly found myself searching for shelter during the course of my daily travels as a result of the nature of my work for Beth Protea, a South African founded retirement home for seniors situated in Herzliya. I work with the Protea Home Care (PHC) division, which provides services to the elderly who reside independently in their own homes, but require assistance in managing various aspects of their lives. One of the services offered by PHC is the daily (Sunday to Thursday) delivery of well-prepared nutritious meals to clients, who, for various reasons are unable to prepare their own meals. These clients reside in an area which includes the cities of Herzliya, Raanana, Hod Hasharon, Kfar Saba, Tel Aviv, Ramat HaSharon and as far afield as Holon. The reality is that despite the emergency situation and missile attacks, meals have to be delivered and I am on the road four mornings a week. Recalling my experiences, might provide readers outside of Israel an idea of life governed by alerts announced on one’s cell phone, followed by the siren anywhere from one and a half to ten minutes later. Of course, if you are living in the north of the country, there may be no pre-siren alert and you may have less than 15 seconds to find safety before a missile strikes. Seeking safety quickly becomes the name of the game.
There are communal or public bomb shelters available in well-advertised and sign posted areas of almost all civilian population areas, office blocks and many of the older apartment buildings. Referred to in Hebrew as a miklat (plural miklatim), which is a communal or public bomb shelter or safe area, with many underground parking areas beneath malls, other public buildings, railway and bus stations also being used for public safety purposes. The disadvantage of the miklatim is that many of them are situated in basements, with many accidents resulting from people having to rush down stairs to the safe area. Since 1951, Israel has been passing increasingly more effective laws regarding the construction and availability of safe areas. The word miklat comes from the biblically ordained cities of refuge (ערי מקלט), so the word miklat translates as a place of refuge.
Making the most of a dire situation, Israelis do yoga at an underground garage, used as a public shelter, in Tel Aviv during the Israel-US war with Iran. March 17. 2026. (Photo: Miriam Alster/Flash90)
We then have the mamad, acronym for merchav mugan dirati, which means home safe area, with mamadim found in many apartments and free-standing homes. Legislation was passed in 1993, making it mandatory by law for all new homes, free standing or in apartment blocks, to have a mamad (safe room). This legislation was prompted by the 1991 Iraqi Scud missile attacks during the 1st Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm. The threat of chemicals or gas being released into the atmosphere by the exploding missiles resulted in the 1993 legislation, which also made provision for the proper sealing of all safe rooms.
The third category of safe room is the mamak, acronym for merchav mugan komati, which means the safe area on each floor of an apartment or office complex. The building in which I reside has a mamak, which means that it’s a short, safe and convenient walk down the passage to safety. Many older and disabled people residing in older buildings with a basement miklat, rather than a mamak or mamad, often resort to sitting in the lobby area outside their apartments as they are unable to get to the safe area in time and in safety. This is not ideal, but offers a small degree of safety, as long as there are no windows, which can shatter and cause injuries in the event of a nearby blast or explosion.
A chair for an elderly or disabled person in the lift lobby is a common sight . (Photo: Peter Bailey)
Finally, there is the migunit, which is a portable free standing safe area which can be placed in areas where there is no miklat. One of the reasons for this innovation is that business premises such as shops and restaurants are not allowed to be open for business during an emergency period, unless there is a nearby safe area for customers in the event of a missile alert. Necessity being the mother of invention, an answer to the problem was found.
A migunit or portable bomb shelter outside a supermarket. (Photo: Peter Bailey)
The most satisfying feature of my experiences seeking safety during my travels has been the friendly and helpful attitude of people wherever and whenever I have been in need of a safe area. My first experience of this camaraderie and unconditional helpfulness was following a warning alert that the siren would be sounding in the next few minutes was in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bavli. Immediately after receiving the alert, I looked for a safe place to stop my car, and as I did so, a young lady knocked on the window and asked if I was in need of shelter, and if so to follow her, which I did. A few metres down the road was the entrance to a school, and I soon discovered that many schools in Tel Aviv, closed because of the emergency situation, had opened their miklatim to the public. I followed the crowd down into the basement where despite my protestations, somebody insisted I take their chair, which I did with gratitude. Total strangers were chatting with each and with my Hebrew not too wonderful, a few people spoke to me in English and I was really part of a wonderful socialising event. When the all clear sounded, off we all went, going our own way.
Another learning experience was just after leaving a residential building in Herzliya where I had delivered a meal when the alert sounded on my cell phone. I retraced my steps into the building and followed the signs to the basement miklat, where I joined a small group of adults and about 20 young children. I knew that the building had recently been renovated, which meant that each apartment had its own mamad, so I was somewhat taken aback at seeing so many kids and so few adults. I soon had the answer. The war situation meant that children were not at nursery schools or kindergartens as these were all closed, which meant that parents had to take time off work to care for their children. The very practical solution in this building was for two sets of parents to be with the youngsters while other parents were free to go to work, with the ‘duty parents’ changing every two hours.
Duty parents with children in a miklat in an apartment building in Herzliya. (Photo: Peter Bailey)
Later that same day, I found myself in the Ramat Aviv suburb of Tel Aviv, when the alert sounded. It was already the fourth time that day. I saw a curbside parking bay available and parked the delivery van, and as I stood on the pavement looking around, a man standing at the entrance to a school beckoned to me. I went over to him and he invited me to join them in the school miklat, where I saw that there were mattresses along two walls of the safe area, but this time several adults were resting on the mattresses. My curiosity once again got the better of me and I asked the man who had originally beckoned me for more detail. It turned out he was the school principal, but with no pupils, he had opened the miklat to the public. The school was adjacent to a very old quarter of Ramat Aviv, with many of the nearby buildings lacking any form of safety for the residents, so they had been invited to sleep in the school miklat in case there were siren alerts during the night. I was offered coffee and a chair, while I marvelled at the resourcefulness of the school principal and unsolicited care and kindness shown to one and all while the sirens wailed.
SIREN IN THE SUPERMARKET
While shopping with my wife during Pesach (Passover) at the local hypermarket, we had just finished paying for our trolley, when the alert sounded on our cell phones. I pushed the full trolley to the area designated as the safe area, and while somewhat concerned, was instructed to leave the trolley outside, together with many other trolleys. We were shepherded through a door only to discover that this led to a stairwell, which was full of people as the miklat was already overcrowded. So, there we stood for the next 20 minutes, waiting for the ‘all clear’. Probably one of my less enjoyable miklat stays, although I was delighted to find my trolley intact with all our paid for shopping just as we’d left it. So good to experience honesty of the highest degree in adversity.
Not the saftest place nor recommended with an incoming ballistic missile from Iran, nevertheless a packed stairwell of a building following a siren.
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
While on a delivery call in an area known as the Old North of Tel Aviv, not far from Hamedina Square (Kikar Hamedina), where there are many older buildings with no protection, the siren sounded. Where would I find safety here? While most residential building entrance doors in this area are usually locked with a code, I found that many doors were wide open with signs in Hebrew advising that a miklat was available. This was once again a wonderful example of the caring and sharing attitude of most Israelis. Although I’ve had many experiences seeking safety during this war, one particular miklat stay stands out. I was travelling on the highway near Hod HaSharon, having heard the alert warning that missiles from Iran were on their way and that the siren would be sounding in the next few minutes. I took the first off ramp and found myself outside the Sokolov Train Station, illegally parked in the no stopping zone right outside the station and jumped out the car as the siren went off. I was cutting it fine. The normally officious barrier guards who usually take no nonsense from anybody, were now holding the barriers open and ushering all and sundry into the station building. I was shepherded into a crowded small miklat behind the ticket office, which looked more like a staff coffee area than a miklat, but it had a proper bomb proof security door. I was touched at the total personality change of the security personnel, but it was nothing more than typical Israeli caring during times of adversity.
People find refuge in the miklat in Sokolov Railway Station. (Photo: Peter Bailey)
The last miklat I want to talk about is really a case of saving the best for last. While doing a delivery in Ra’anana the siren went off and I immediately sought refuge in the miklat of the building I was in. I’d walked into the gold standard of miklatim. What a pleasant surprise to find a carpeted floor, very comfortable chairs including a few armchairs, and to top it all, a ping pong table. That one must take the prize for the best appointed miklat I’ve been in. While living through a war with missiles dropping extremely dangerous cluster munitions on civilian areas, injuring some 8,000 people and killing 20, the residents of this building decided that if they had to spend many hours in the miklat, home comforts were important.
A more ‘up-market’ miklat with carpeted floor, television set, artwork, armchairs and ping pong table in Ra’anana. (Photo: Peter Bailey)
To bring home the danger and how daily life in Israel under fire reminds me of Russian roulette, a friend of mine was on her way to pay a shiva call (condolence visit) in Ramat Gan, an area she was unfamiliar with, when she received an alert on her phone. With the clock ticking until the siren went, she ran into a nearby apartment complex and followed others down into the building’s miklat. She was lucky – some were not. The building she had randomly selected took a direct hit from one from one of the thirty or forty cluster bombs released by an Iranian ballistic missile, and Yaron and Ilana Moshe, a disabled couple in their seventies, were unable to reach safety in time and were killed.
The damage to the building was immense.
A neighbor later recounted how after hearing the powerful blast, he exited his safe room to find his own apartment severely damaged. Rushing to check on his neighbor’s apartment, he discovered their front door destroyed and a large hole in the ceiling with another resident, they tried to clear debris at the entrance, fearing the couple were trapped inside. He later expressed to the media some relief that the victims’ grandchildren were not present at the time.
Such is daily life in Israel during this war with Iran.
Images of apartment hit by Iranian attack in which two Israelis were killed in Ramat Gan and which the writer’s friend took refuge in the building’s underground bomb shelter (miklat).
Feature photo: Packed tight, people take cover as siren warns of incoming missiles fired from Iran, at a public bomb shelter in Jerusalem, June 15, 2025. (Photo: Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)
About the writer:
Peter Bailey made Aliyah from South Africa with his wife Jeanne in 2013 in order to join their three sons and families who were already in Israel. He spent 35 years in the glass industry in South Africa while also being active in military veterans affairs, being National Chairman of The South African Jewish Ex Service League prior to making Aliyah. He completed his compulsory military training in South Africa in 1964 and was commissioned as an officer in 1965, retiring with the rank of major, after 19 years service in the SADF Citizen Force. While on active service on the Namibian Angolan border in 1976 he commanded 101 Task Force’s Counter Insurgency Operations Training Centre. He has enjoyed a lifelong interest in military history and has conducted intensive research into the Jewish contribution to South Africa’s military history, writing many papers on the subject and giving relevant lectures across South Africa. He is the author of two published books, Street Names in Israel and Men of Valor, Israel’s Latter Day Heroes.
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).
Britain cannot claim to confront the Iranian regime while simultaneously serving as a repository for its money.
By Emily Schrader
The United Kingdom likes to pretend it is still a defender of democracy and a leader in confronting authoritarian regimes. Yet when it comes to the Islamic Republic of Iran, Britain’s policies reveal a far more uncomfortable reality.
Despite years of warnings from security officials and lawmakers, the UK government has still failed to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, even after the European Union has done so. There are a litany of excuses offered as to why, but one possible factor is increasingly difficult to ignore: Islamic regime-linked wealth has become deeply embedded inside the British financial and property system.
Recent reporting illustrates just how extensive these connections may be. Investigations into the financial network surrounding the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, have linked him to a series of luxury properties in London. Property records indicate that two high-end apartments in Kensington were purchased in 2014 and 2016 for roughly £50 million. The apartments are located just meters from the Israeli Embassy. The properties were reportedly registered through companies tied to Iranian businessman Ali Ansari, a longtime associate of regime elites who has since been sanctioned by the British government for his alleged role in helping finance activities linked to the IRGC.
Too Close for Comfort. Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei (left) reportedly owns two London apartments on same street as the Israeli embassy (right). Only 50 yards away, it enables easy surveillance, constituting a ‘serious security breach’.
Further reporting suggests these apartments may represent only a fraction of the assets connected to that network. Investigations have identified a broader web of London properties linked through intermediaries and shell companies, including homes on Hampstead’s Bishops Avenue, often called Billionaires’ Row. The combined value of these properties has been estimated in the hundreds of millions.
At the center of this network is Ali Ansari, an Iranian banker and businessman who built a vast property empire across some of London’s most expensive neighborhoods. Yet by the time sanctions were imposed, many of the assets connected to his business network had already been absorbed into the British property market through offshore companies and complex ownership structures – something which works to the benefit of nefarious actors like the Supreme Leader.
The financial power surrounding the Supreme Leader’s office is enormous. A 2013 Reuters investigation estimated that Setad, the conglomerate controlled by the Supreme Leader and formally known as the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order, oversees assets worth roughly $95 billion across industries including telecommunications, banking, pharmaceuticals, real estate, and energy holdings. Setad was originally created after the 1979 revolution to manage properties confiscated from Iranians who fled the country, including businesses and land seized from political opponents and religious minorities. Over time it evolved into a vast corporate empire operating largely outside public oversight and answering directly to the Supreme Leader’s office.
Tentacles of Terror. Iran’s new Supreme Leader’s London properties were reportedly registered through companies tied to Iranian businessman Ali Ansari (above) who has been sanctioned by the British government for his alleged role in helping finance activities linked to the IRGC.
Setad is only one component of the broader economic structure controlled by Iran’s ruling elite. Religious foundations known as bonyads, which also report directly to the Supreme Leader, control an estimated 10 to 20 percent of Iran’s economy. These organizations operate with minimal transparency and enjoy sweeping tax exemptions while managing massive portfolios of real estate, industrial assets, and financial investments.
Analysts have long viewed Mojtaba Khamenei as a key figure inside this financial and political network. For years he has been widely described by Iran experts as a power broker within the Supreme Leader’s office who maintains close ties with senior commanders of the IRGC. Together, the economic empires of Setad, the Bonyads, and IRGC-linked business networks control significant portions of Iran’s economy, creating a system where political authority and economic wealth are tightly intertwined.
The IRGC itself operates one of the largest economic empires in the Middle East. Analysts estimate that companies connected to the IRGC control between 20 and 40 percent of Iran’s economy, with holdings in construction, telecommunications, banking, energy, transportation, and shipping. The Guard’s massive engineering conglomerate, Khatam al Anbiya, has secured billions of dollars in infrastructure and energy contracts across the country. Because many of these businesses operate through private companies, front organizations, and intermediaries, the financial networks tied to the regime frequently extend far beyond Iran’s borders.
This financial ecosystem intersects with another vulnerability inside the British system. London’s real estate market has become one of the world’s most attractive destinations for opaque foreign capital. Transparency advocates have warned for years that Britain’s property sector functions as a global laundromat for politically exposed wealth. According to Transparency International, more than £5.6 billion in suspicious funds has been invested in UK property linked to corruption or politically exposed individuals.
A major reason for this vulnerability is the widespread use of offshore ownership structures. Prior to recent transparency reforms, roughly 90 percent of foreign-owned property in London was held through offshore shell companies registered in secrecy jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands or Panama. Even today, more than 90,000 properties across the United Kingdom remain owned through offshore entities, often making it extremely difficult to identify the ultimate beneficial owner. These structures have allowed politically connected elites from around the world, including figures linked to sanctioned regimes, to quietly park wealth in Britain’s property market.
Members of the Islamic Republic’s ruling families have also established personal and professional footholds in the United Kingdom. Hadi Larijani, the son of senior Iranian regime official Mohammad Javad Larijani, works as a professor at Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland. Another Larijani family member, Zeinab Ardeshir Larijani, is listed in UK corporate filings as a director of British companies. The Larijani family is one of the most powerful political dynasties in the Islamic Republic. Several brothers have held top positions in the regime including speaker of parliament, head of the judiciary, and senior adviser roles to the Supreme Leader.
The contradiction is striking. While the Iranian regime arrests protesters, suppresses women’s rights, and funds militant proxies across the Middle East, relatives of senior officials appear able to live, work, and conduct business in Western countries including Britain.
This reality raises an uncomfortable question. If the UK government were to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization and aggressively dismantle the financial networks tied to the regime, what else, and who else, might be exposed inside Britain’s own economy?
For years, London has benefited from its role as a global financial hub. But that openness has also created vulnerabilities. The same system that attracts legitimate international investment has also provided opportunities for authoritarian elites to shield their wealth abroad.
Britain cannot claim to confront the Iranian regime while simultaneously serving as a repository for its money. If the UK is serious about countering Tehran’s destabilizing activities, it must begin by addressing the regime-linked financial networks operating within its own borders.
Until that happens, the message from London will remain painfully clear:
The Islamic Republic may be condemned in speeches and sanctions lists… but its money is still welcome.
About the writer:
Emily Schrader is an American-Israeli journalist, human rights activist, and the founder of the Iran Israel Alliance. She is an an anchor at ILTV News, and the host of Axis of Truth on JNS. Emily also is a cofounder of the Cyrus Strategic Fund, and she sits on the executive board of the Institute for Voices of Liberty, a think tank focused on European and American Iran policy, and has advised lawmakers across North America and Europe on Iran policy. In 2025, she released her first book, 10 Things Every Jew Should Know Before They Go To College and has lectured all over the world on the topic of rising antisemitism. Emily is the winner of the 2023 Nefesh b’Nefesh Bonei Zion award for outstanding immigrants to Israel, and in 2025, she was given the Women of Iron award by Chochmat Nashim for her dedication to women’s rights.
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).
Nazi Germany existed for less than a generation. Islamic republic for nearly half a century. The list of crimes and people to be tried will be endless. That alone makes this urgent.
By Marziyeh Amirizadeh
The elimination of the Islamic Republic cannot come too soon. After 47 years since the Demonic Revolution that brought the ayatollahs to power, and Iranians to their knees, subjugated by the mullah’s extremist Islam, Iranians need to be free. Iranians will celebrate the fall of the terrorist regime with glee, but to be complete there also needs to be justice for the perpetrators. What’s needed is an Iranian version of the Nuremberg Trials.
While the ayatollahs seat of power physically is in Tehran, the spiritual seat of power is in their “holy city,” Qom. The Qom Trials will turn the city from which the Islamic Republic derived its theological “authority” abusing Iranians for decades into a capital of justice.
Members of the Iranian parliament chant slogans in support of Hamas on Oct. 7. (IRNA)
Following WWII and the Holocaust (with the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz commemorated this week), the allied powers needed to come up with a framework to bring justice to the perpetrators of the genocide of the Jewish people and other crimes against humanity. Facing the challenge of how to deal with Nazi war criminals, rather than summary executions or purely national trials, they instituted an international legal process to establish individual accountability and deter future such crimes.
The charges against the Nazis included: conspiracy to commit crimes, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. A total of 199 defendants were tried, 161 convicted, 37 of whom were sentenced to death. While this was groundbreaking and critical, it’s worth remembering that the Nazi’s crimes spanned less than 15 years. After 47 years of the Islamic regime in control, it seems that these numbers will only scratch the surface in Iran.
What’s needed now is to establish a new framework to try and bring to justice leaders and agents of the Islamic Republic. There is a body of international law and precedent for the world to hold foreign terrorists to trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Nazi Germany existed for less than a generation. Islamic republic for nearly half a century. The list of crimes and people to be tried will be endless. That alone makes this urgent.
While I was subject to the misogyny and cruelty of the Islamic Republic since I was a young girl, many of these experiences I recounted in my books, it’s hard to imagine anyone in Iran who doesn’t have a list of people who are responsible for unspeakable crimes. I have mine.
Ali Akbar HeydariFar who played an important role in repressing, torturing, and killing protesters in 2009, is one of the judges who sentenced the writer to death
Abolqasem Salavati is an infamous execution judge who ordered the execution of my best friend Shirin;
Ali Akbar HeydariFar is one of the judges who sentenced me to death;
Judge Heydari was my second judge;
Saeed Mortazavi was the judge who told me he will make sure I will be executed;
Yahya Pirabbasi, another of my judges;
MohammadMoghiseh is the judge who ordered the execution of many of my friends in prison;
Sadegh Larijani, the head of all judges;
Abbas Jafari Dolat Abadi, the Tehran prosecutor who visited me in prison before my release, enraged by Pope Benedict’s letter advocating for me and my friend Mariyam, and threatening not to talk to anyone about what happened to us in prison and our trial.
Infamously known in Iran as the “Hanging Judge”along with Mohammad Moghiseh and Yahya Pirabbasi, Abolqasem Salavati, presided over the case of Mohsen Amiraslani, executed for heresy for describing Jonah and the Whale as an allegory and who ordered the execution of the writer’s best friend Shirin.
Many of the most terrible people have no online presence and go by fake names. In order never to forget them, and pray that they will be used to be brought to justice – something that seemed unimaginable in 2009 – my friend Maryam and I came up with sketches of two of the criminals. One of our interrogators went by “Rasti”. He was the one who lied and got me to the police station where the interrogations began. Another, “Haghighat” threatened to beat us until we vomited blood.
In order not to forget the faces of their tormentors in prison so that they could be brough one day to justice, the writer and her friend Maryam sketched “Rasti” and “Haghighat”.
Two more people who must be brought to justice are:
Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’I, the Chief Justice of Iran who has blood of countless Iranians on his hands;
Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. While no Iranian presidents should escape justice, when I was in prison I witnessed how many people were arrested, tortured, and killed because of his direct order and fraudulent election that sparked the Green Movement which he repressed with unspeakable brutality.
It is important that the leaders of the regime are not able to flee, and that there is an immediate means to arrest them all, and hold them until charges can be brought. It’s also urgent that agents of the regime abroad are arrested and extradited to free Iran, and brought to justice. That’s necessary for Iranians who know who they are, but also for the Western and other countries where they live and in which they infiltrate with their evil extremist Islamic values at the behest of the ayatollahs. Left alone, they will be a national security threat to the countries that harbor them. Any country that takes and shelters leaders and agents of the regime to be protected in their borders should face unrelenting sanctions.
Saeed Mortazavi was the judge who told the writer he “will make sure I will be executed”, has been linked to the closure of 120 publications, the murder of Iranian Canadian journalist in July 2003 Zahra Kazemi and the murder of protesters in the Kahrizak detention center in 2009.
Part of the justice that’s needed in order for Iranians to feel as if they are truly liberated is that the trials must be held, and justice served, in Iran. Doing so will create an example to the world and to the Iranian people. International trials will not do the same.
The crimes of the Islamic regime and its leaders has not been limited to the horrific scenes we have seen coming out or Iran these past weeks, but the wholesale brutalization of millions of Iranians for nearly half a century. Hundreds of thousands have been killed. Maybe millions. The Islamic Republic and its leaders are guilty or widespread crimes directly, and through its terrorist tentacle proxies, around the globe, where millions more have suffered. There needs to be justice for them, and there needs to be a trial of the ayatollahs, mullahs, judges, IRGC, basij, jailers, interrogators, police and others who are guilty of these crimes.
Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolat Abadi – responsible for the arrest and torture of many journalists, young bloggers, human rights advocates, political activists and reformist leaders – visited the writer before her release and threatened her not to talk to anyone about her experiences in prison.
Following President Trump’s post to encourage Iranians in early January:
“KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY! MIGA!!!,” Iranians took to the streets and have continued to protest. Tens of thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands injured.
Like those found guilty in Nuremberg, the bodies of those who are sentenced to death should be cremated, their ashes dumped into the Persian Gulf in order to prevent ever setting up a shrine to them. The tomb of Ayatollah Khomeini should be burned to the ground, and its remains and his also dumped into the Gulf.
Doing this will serve as an additional form of justice for the hundreds of thousands or more victims of the Islamic Republic, many of whom were simply disappeared and have no resting place, and no closure for their loved ones. While their crimes cannot be erased, every physical presence of their lives can be.
In a dream once, I asked God why He allowed the suffering to take place in Iran. He said that He was giving the leaders the opportunity to repent and, if not, He would bring His justice. I am praying that President Trump will follow his words with swift action, that the senseless and criminal murder of tens of thousands of Iranians will stop, and that everyone involved from the “Supreme Leader” down to the lowest policeman will be arrested and see justice.
About the writer:
Marziyeh Amirizadeh is an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity. She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation. She is author of two books (the latest, A Love Journey with God), public speaker, and columnist. She has shared her inspiring story throughout the United States and around the world, to bring awareness about the ongoing human rights violations and persecution of women and religious minorities in Iran, www.MarzisJourney.com.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Refusal to recognize Somaliland exposes global hypocrisy and rewards terror.
By Grant Gochin
The global disparity in statehood recognition between Palestine and Somaliland exposes a truth: international decisions are not rooted in law, facts, or genuine support for viable entities. Instead, the enthusiasm of 157 UN member states for recognizing Palestine—despite its failures—serves primarily as a diplomatic cudgel against Israel and Jews. This is not pro-Palestinian advocacy; it is animus, a collective expression of bigotry that ignores objective criteria to isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state. Somaliland, by contrast, exemplifies success under every legal standard, yet is shunned precisely because its recognition would bolster Israel’s alliances. The 157 nations endorsing Palestine do not care about law or reality; they are weaponizing statehood as a tool of prejudice.
Happenings at the Horn. Israel became the first nation in the world to recognize Somaliland as a country prompting a global outcry and an emergency meeting of the United Nations.
Somaliland’s Historical Narrative: Survivor of Genocide
Somaliland is not a mere “breakaway region”; it is a survivor of internal African colonialism and genocide. Briefly independent in 1960 and recognized by 35 nations, including Israel, it entered an unratified union with southern Somalia. Under Siad Barre’s regime, this turned genocidal. From 1987–1989, government forces systematically targeted the Isaaq clan with aerial bombardments, well poisonings, and mass executions, killing 50,000 – 200,000 civilians. Somaliland’s 1991 independence reclaimed its pre-union sovereignty—a humanitarian and anti-colonial necessity.1 Nations posturing as “anti-colonial” such as Ireland, betray this by enforcing Mogadishu’s claims and ignoring Somaliland’s genocide survival.
The Montevideo Criteria: Ignored in Favor of Bigotry
International law’s cornerstone for statehood, the 1933 Montevideo Convention, demands a permanent population, defined territory, effective government, and capacity for international relations.2 These objective benchmarks are routinely discarded when anti-Israel bias takes precedence. The result is that Palestine, a dysfunctional entity, is elevated, while Somaliland’s qualifications are dismissed to punish Israel.
● Permanent Population: Both meet this threshold. The 157 states overlook Palestine’s divisions to strike at Israel.
● Defined Territory: Somaliland claims clear, undisputed borders from its 1960 independence.3 Palestine’s are contested and non-contiguous. Recognizing the latter delegitimizes Israel’s security claims.
● Effective Government: Somaliland boasts a centralized democracy.4 Palestine is fractured between the corrupt PA in the West Bank and Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
Rousing Recognition. When the Israeli flag is sighted on the streets of the Muslim world, it is often being set alight or trampled underfoot. Yet in recent days the Star of David has been plastered on buildings and brandished by jubilant crowds in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland.
● Capacity for Relations: Somaliland forges sovereign deals, proving autonomy.5 Palestine relies on aid, its “diplomacy” a facade for anti-Israel lobbying.
The case of Somaliland provides the ultimate legal refutation of the ‘occupation’ libel used against the Jewish state. Under the principle of uti possidetis juris, Somaliland is the rightful successor to the borders of its 1960 independence—a fact the world ignores to protect a defunct Somali union.6 Israel, by recognizing these borders, reaffirms the sanctity of original administrative boundaries as the only objective standard for statehood. This same legal logic confirms that Israel is the sole legal successor to the British Mandate, rendering the ‘occupation’ of Judea and Samaria a legal fiction. By championing Somaliland, Israel is not just supporting a fellow democracy; it is enforcing a global legal standard that exposes the Palestinian project as a violation of the very international laws its proponents claim to uphold.
The refusal of the international community to apply uti possidetis juris to Israel—while rigidly enforcing it to keep Somaliland shackled to the failed state of Somalia—is a targeted legal assault. If the administrative borders of the 1960 British protectorate define the legitimate sovereignty of Somaliland, then by that same objective standard, the administrative borders of the 1948 British Mandate define the sovereign territory of Israel. To argue otherwise is to admit that ‘international law’ is merely a political fiction used to protect anti-Western regimes in Mogadishu and Ramallah while attempting to strip the Jewish state of its foundational legal rights.
By recognizing the functional reality of Somaliland over the ‘constitutive’ political fantasy of a Palestinian state, Israel is championing the Declaratory Theory of Statehood. This position asserts that a state exists when it functions as one, not simply when a collection of biased nations engages in a diplomatic séance to conjure it into existence through mere votes. Recognizing Somaliland is therefore a strategic defense of the rule of law: it enforces the principle that functional, stable governance and original administrative boundaries are the only legitimate measures of sovereignty. Any other standard is a reward for terrorism and a threat to global security.
Palestine’s Dysfunction: A Weapon Against Israel
Palestine’s realities scream failure, yet are encouraged because it harms Israel:
● Aid Dependency: A vast consumer of $40+ billion since Oslo, Palestine’s economy is propped up by donors, fostering corruption. This is a subsidy for instability that pressures Israel.7
● Corruption and Autocracy: The PA ranks abysmally on corruption indices. Mahmoud Abbas is now in the 20th year of a four-year term, a full-blown dictatorship. Bigots overlook this to amplify accusations against Jewish “oppression”.
● Pay-for-Slay Terrorism: Allocating ~7% of its budget to reward attacks on Israelis, the PA incentivizes violence despite the U.S. Taylor Force Act.8 Sponsored by Iran, this makes Palestine a terror proxy encouraged by recognizers whose true aim is weakening Israel. Abbas’s February 2025 decree to “end” the Martyrs’ Fund has been exposed by Israeli authorities as a shell game, with payments simply channeled through the Palestinian postal system to circumvent the Act.9
Enlightening Recognition. Public buildings were lit up with Israeli flags as mass celebrations took place in Hargeisa and across cities of the Republic of Somaliland, as citizens gathered to commemorate the historic decision by Israel to formally recognize Somaliland.
Somaliland’s Excellence: Punished to Avoid Benefiting Israel
Somaliland’s indicators of success are ignored to prevent any win for Jews. While Somaliland remains a bulwark, Somalia’s failure is absolute. In 2025, an al-Shabaab offensive saw Mogadishu lose strategic towns like Sabiid and Anole, and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud narrowly survived a March 2025 assassination attempt in Mogadishu, escaping via armored convoy amid the attack on his convoy.10
Somalia’s claim to Somaliland is based on a failed union and subsequent genocidal aggression, whereas Somaliland’s claim is a defensive re-assertion of its 1960 sovereignty. This mirrors Israel’s defensive reconstitution of rights over Judea and Samaria following the 1967 war of annihilation launched against it—territory with no prior legitimate sovereign after 1948.
National Security and the Irish Model of Hypocrisy
The swiftness with which the Palestinian Authority and the OIC fabricated a blood libel—claiming this recognition is a scheme for ‘forced displacement’—exposes their desperation to preserve a status quo that rewards terror at the expense of African self-determination. While the UN holds emergency meetings to protect the ‘territorial integrity’ of a failed state in Mogadishu, Israel is providing Hargeisa with the surveillance technology necessary to secure its own airspace and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. This is the birth of a Red Sea Security Arc that replaces ideological theater with functional sovereignty.
Dublin exemplifies this betrayal: in May 2024, Ireland recognized Palestine despite its failures, yet it rejects Somaliland. This selective empathy rewards terror-linked dysfunction and punishes African self-determination.
The Overriding Truth: Animus Against Jews and Israel
This is not about law or facts; 157 countries spew animus toward Jews, weaponizing Palestine’s recognition to delegitimize Israel. Somaliland’s excellence is collateral damage in this hate-fueled game.
True Colors. Changing attitudes on the streets of Somaliland.
Conclusion
Does Somaliland have to slaughter innocents like October 7 to earn recognition? Launch rockets? Commit atrocities? Is terrorism the real price of sovereignty? The hypocrisy is bigotry.
Feature photo: Residents wave Somaliland flags as they gather to celebrate Israel’s announcement recognizing Somaliland’s statehood in downtown Hargeisa. (Photo: Farhan Aleli/AFP via Getty Images)
Disclaimer: The author of this article and annex is not a licensed attorney and is not engaged in the practice of law. The analysis provided herein regarding international legal principles, including uti possidetis juris and the Montevideo Convention, is presented solely as a personal interpretation and an expression of opinion for informational and argumentative purposes. This content does not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as a substitute for professional counsel from a qualified legal practitioner.
Legal Annex: The Doctrine of Sovereign Succession and Functional Statehood
I. Precedents for Uti Possidetis Juris and Mandatory Succession The principle of uti possidetis juris (UPJ) is recognized by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as a “general principle, logically connected with the phenomenon of the obtaining of independence, wherever it occurs” (Frontier Dispute (Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali), 1986).
● Application to Somaliland: As established in 1960 and reaffirmed in 2025, Somaliland is the successor to the borders of the British Somaliland Protectorate.12 The 1964 OAU Cairo Resolution and Article 4(b) of the AU Constitutive Act mandate respect for borders existing at independence. The attempt to keep Somaliland tethered to Mogadishu is a violation of the very “intangibility of frontiers” the AU claims to uphold.
● Application to Israel: Legal scholars (including Professor Eugene Kontorovich and the Levy Report) argue that uti possidetis juris dictates that a state’s borders are defined by the preceding administrative boundaries. As the only sovereign successor to the 1948 British Mandate of Palestine, Israel’s legal claim extends to the entirety of that administrative area. International attempts to impose “1967 lines” (which were merely temporary armistice lines) constitute an illegal derogation of the UPJ principle.
II. The Declaratory Theory of Statehood vs. Political Recognition TheMontevideo Convention (1933) codifies the Declaratory Theory, which asserts that statehood is a question of fact, not a gift of diplomatic recognition.
● Somaliland’s Declaratory Compliance: As of late 2025, Somaliland satisfies all four Montevideo criteria. Its internal stability—contrasted with the failure in the south—proves that it is a state de jure and de facto.
● The Palestinian Fraud: The 157 nations recognizing Palestine are employing the Constitutive Theory, attempting to “create” a state through diplomatic votes. However, without a unified government or territorial control, this “state” is a legal fiction that lacks the objective requirements of international law.
III. Security Data and the Doctrine of Defensive Control (2025 Update) International law distinguishes between illegal annexation and defensive control of territory where there is no prior legitimate sovereign.
● Somalia’s Sovereign Collapse: Security reports from March and August 2025 confirm that the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) has lost effective control over major southern sectors. The capture of Sabiid and Anole by al-Shabaab and the failed assassination of President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in Mogadishu (March 2025) demonstrate that Somalia lacks the “effective government” required to claim sovereignty over Somaliland.
● The Martyrs’ Fund Shell Game: Israeli intelligence reports from late 2025 confirm that the Palestinian Authority’s “Abolition of the Prisoners’ Fund” was a shell game. Funds are now funneled through the Palestinian Postal System to ensure “Pay-for-Slay” payments continue, rendering the PA a persistent sponsor of terrorism in violation of the Taylor Force Act and UN counter-terrorism resolutions.13
IV. Strategic Conclusion: National Security as a Legal Imperative As outlined in the Hudson Institute’s 2025 Conference, antisemitism and the delegitimization of the Jewish state are national security threats to the West. The refusal to recognize Somaliland while empowering a Palestinian terror-proxy is a strategic failure that emboldens Iranian and Houthi aggression. Recognizing Somaliland is therefore a legal necessity to preserve the security of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the integrity of the Abraham Accords framework.
Bibliography
● Reuters. “Israel recognizes Somaliland as independent state.” December 26, 2025.
● The Times of Israel. “Israel becomes first country to recognize breakaway Somaliland.” December 26, 2025.
● Al Jazeera. “Somalia demands Israel withdraw Somaliland recognition.” December 27, 2025.
● TurkishMinute. “Turkish ports sent 456 ships to Israel… despite trade ban.” October 7, 2025.
● Various sources: Isaaq genocide estimates (50,000–200,000); Palestinian aid/corruption data; Iranian funding to Hamas; PA Martyrs’ Fund.
● Hudson Institute. “Antisemitism as a National Security Threat” conference (2025).
● Reuters. “Palestinian president scraps prisoner payment system” (February 2025); Times of Israel. “PA document shows ‘pay-to-slay’ has been scrapped, new system in place” (September 2025).14
● TRT Afrika. “Somali forces kill mastermind of failed assassination attempt” (September 2025).
Somali President Mohamud Survives Al-Shabaab’s Assassination Attempt This video reports on the March 18, 2025, assassination attempt on President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, highlighting the profound insecurity and lack of effective governance in Mogadishu compared to the stability of Somaliland.
About the writer:
Grant Arthur Gochin currently serves as the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Togo. He is the Emeritus Special Envoy for Diaspora Affairs for the African Union, which represents the fifty-five African nations, and Emeritus Vice Dean of the Los Angeles Consular Corps, the second largest Consular Corps in the world. Gochin is actively involved in Jewish affairs, focusing on historical justice. He has spent the past twenty five years documenting and restoring signs of Jewish life in Lithuania. He has served as the Chair of the Maceva Project in Lithuania, which mapped / inventoried / documented / restored over fifty abandoned and neglected Jewish cemeteries. Gochin is the author of “Malice, Murder and Manipulation”, published in 2013. His book documents his family history of oppression in Lithuania. He is presently working on a project to expose the current Holocaust revisionism within the Lithuanian government. Professionally, Gochin is a Certified Financial Planner and practices as a Wealth Advisor in California, where he lives with his family. Personal site: https://www.grantgochin.com/
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Unprecedented protests are taking place across Iran, both in terms of the number of people participating, and number of cities in which the protests are taking place. Countless videos have documented Iranians protesting. And it’s growing. The reason is the compounded suffering to which Iranians have been subject under the Islamic republic, and which hopefully are at the breaking point.
Irate Iranians. Protestors march over a bridge in Teheran 29 December 2025 (Photo: Fars News Agency via ATP/file)
The Iranian rial is at lowest point in history. Today, one million rials are worth less than $1. The economic impact is widespread, punishing, and impacting every single Iranian.
This is the impact of the ayatollahs stealing billions from Iranians to fund its jihadi goals including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others, around the world. Yet the policy of funding the world’s largest terror network has come home to roost.
For months, Iranians have also suffered an unprecedented water and energy crisis, leading to power outages across the country, and reservoirs so low that there has been talk of evacuating millions from Tehran due to the inability to provide water.
Even if they were not living under a brutal, evil Islamic regime for nearly five decades, Iranians collectively are suffering the most they have since then, the cumulative impact of the evil regime focusing on spreading extremist Islam, fighting the West, and mismanagement and corruption of every basic need.
Iranians are not just living under widespread mismanagement, they are living under the cumulative national disaster of millions having been arrested, beaten, tortured, murdered, and disappeared. My knowledge is firsthand growing up and spending most of my life there, but also being arrested and sentenced to death, held in the notorious Evin prison for nine months, all because of my Christian faith.
The drought has not only exposed incompetence and mass mismanagement of basic needs. As reservoirs have dried up, 74 bodies have been found just in one location, bound, at the bottom of the once life-giving bodies of water that are all but gone, and which became their victims graves. Being bound shows an extra level of evil that they were thrown in alive rather than executed elsewhere and thrown into the water to hide the Islamic regimes crimes.
There have been protests in the past over the murder of Mahsa Amini in 2022, and more recently truckers going on strike in 160 cities due to massive increased in prices. For a variety of reasons these protests did not cause the regime change for which most Iranians are praying.
Iranians are having it no more. The current protests are because all Iranians are hurting economically, and without the basic needs to live. The current crisis has exposed new depths of the evil of the Islamic regime. More than ever, and more publicly than ever, Iranians are chanting for the restoration of the Pahlavi dynasty, and in favor of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi and death of the ayatollahs.
CurrencyCollapse. Protesters march in downtown Tehran, Iran, Dec. 29, 2025 following the collapse of the rial with prices up on meat, rice and other staples of the Iranian dinner table. The nation has been struggling with an annual inflation rate of some 40%. (Photo: Fars News Agency via AP, File)
It’s a formula that will hopefully bring the pressure needed for the regime to fall and Iran to be free.
Pressure is also needed from the world because the threats are directed at the world. We even heard it from the “moderate” Iranian president this week, that Iran is at full scale war with the US, Israel, and Europe.
At the same time Iranians are risking their lives just to protest, it was encouraging to hear President Trump speak out in favor of renewed military action against the regime and particularly the brutal IRGC. In the wake of the 12-day war between Israel and the Islamic Republic in June, standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Trump stated that he supports renewed military action against Iran if they try to rebuild their ballistic missile or nuclear program.
Rather than pretending that the Islamic regime will ever negotiate for anything in good faith to make a deal, other than to keep itself alive and in control of Iran for another day, Iranians know that what’s needed from outside is unrelenting destruction of the regime, its leaders, military, and if necessary, its ability to fund itself through oil exports and more. Iranians are prepared to suffer more if it means their eventual freedom.
The United States needs to lead the charge, along with Israel and the EU, and even the Saudis, Emiratis, and other Arab states, to bring down the regime. Iranians pray for that. Iranians were frustrated, even feeling abandoned, that the 12-day war in June did not go on and end with the destruction of the regime, or at least giving Iranians cover to do what’s needed on the ground to do so themselves.
The Islamic Republic has created unprecedented suffering for all Iranians, and for millions of people all around the world. Not just by targeting Israel and the Jewish people, but by infiltrating the West, in developing nations, and across the Arab and Islamic world. In fact, it’s hard to think of a place in the world that has not suffered as a result of the Islamic revolution in 1979.
Regime Rickety. Displaying a leadership’s anxiety as much as an anti-US and anti-Israel message on this billboard that reads ‘watch out for your soldiers’ in Tehran on January 4, 2026 (Photo: Atta Kenare/ AFP)
Accordingly, it’s necessary that people and nations across the world unite with a singular purpose, to end the Islamic regime and to bring Crown Prince Pahlavi to power and restore the once thriving nation that Iranians yearn for. No one singular act -certainly since the end of World War II – has the potential to eliminate suffering of millions and bring peace.
President Trump likes to speak of making deals. The truth is the best deals to be made are after the Islamic regime falls, and Iran begins necessary reconstruction. The US can play a huge role in that, bringing prosperity to Iran, and peace to the world. Israel can also play an important role by rescuing Iran with its world-leading water reclamation and desalination abilities, filling up the reservoirs and bringing Iranians hope, and life.
About the writer:
Marziyeh Amirizadeh is an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity. She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation. She is author of two books (the latest, A Love Journey with God), public speaker, and columnist. She has shared her inspiring story throughout the United States and around the world, to bring awareness about the ongoing human rights violations and persecution of women and religious minorities in Iran, www.MarzisJourney.com.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Those who see ‘safety through solidarity’ as the ‘lesson’ of the terror attack have internalized what classical Zionist thinkers called an ‘exile mindset’ — a near-religious sanctification of Jewish powerlessness.
By Zev Dever
(Courtesy of Davar where article was first published)
In the aftermath of the terrorist massacre in Sydney, much of the Jewish discourse has highlighted praise for the individual bravery of the hero Ahmed el-Ahmed, the unarmed Syrian immigrant who intervened in the attack. It frankly seems as though many progressive Jews are relieved to have this Muslim man as a counterexample to the terrorists who carried out the massacre.
While el-Ahmed is certainly a hero, and the praise is well deserved, statements and posts from anti-Zionist Jewish groups, seem to take this praise a bit far, elevating the emphasis on el-Ahmed’s heroism to near parity with the massacre itself. This emphasis is taken to draw an interesting conclusion: again and again it is echoed that the lesson of this entire event, exemplified in el-Ahmed’s actions, is that “our safety lies in solidarity with others.”
Skepticism in Solidarity. While “safety through solidarity” might offer moral reassurance to vunerable Jewish communities around the world, but does it offer operational guidance?
It is truly striking how uniform this message is. It’s strange enough to highlight the identity of the hero and not the murderers, subtly transforming a Jewish tragedy into a morality tale about Muslims not being evil. To be fair, Jewish communities may understandably feel relief in highlighting the fact that many Muslims are good people. But to insist that this is the central and operative lesson is to deliberately obscure the essence of the story — namely a mass murder of Jews in the diaspora, following two years of rising antisemitism and public tolerance for Jew hatred.
What, practically, does it mean to insist that “Jewish safety lies in solidarity with others“?
– That Jews require non-Jewish saviors?
– That Jewish safety depends on staying on the good side of surrounding communities?
– That the correct response to mass violence is not protection or deterrence, but reaffirmation of ideological commitments?
When pressed, “safety through solidarity” might offer moral reassurance, but it offers no operational guidance.
Most plausibly, the practical lesson of this axiom may be that we should invest in encouraging moderate discourse and education against extremism. That idea I might buy into, but I find it hard to believe that the very groups pushing the message of “safety through solidarity” will.
Are we to believe that anti-Zionist Jewish groups will now focus on amplifying moderate Muslim and Palestinian voices? Will they stop parroting extremists, or even condemn those espousing extremism?
Of course not. There will be no self-reckoning.
I acknowledge that Jews do indeed need partners outside the faith, and the aim of this piece is not to denigrate solidarity as such, an important enterprise regardless of whether it benefits one’s safety. El-Ahmed’s bravery indeed made clear the value and importance of solidarity. But I am interested in the psychological phenomenon that leads some Jews to read the Bondi Beach massacre as a lesson in the importance of solidarity. Why do some Jews see the massacre as a sign that Jews ought to demonstrate more solidarity towards other groups?
Seeking Safety. The writer is intrigued in the psychological phenomenon that leads some Jews to read the Bondi Beach massacre as a lesson in the importance of solidarity.
THE SHTETL ROOTS OF “SAFTY THROUGH SOLIDARITY”
Even if such a logic is sincere, even if it is instrumental as a strategy to seek security, it is a mentality that delegates safety to external goodwill rather than Jewish agency. This psychological phenomenon is actually much older than any current popularized version of the theory of the intersectionality of oppressions. The Jewish roots of this thinking are actually something that the Zionist movement more than a century ago knew to classify and condemn. Zionist thinkers would characterize this way of thinking as a form of exile mindset, known in Hebrew as galutiyut.
In classical Zionist critique, exile mindset was not merely the fact of Jewish vulnerability or Jewish dispersion across the globe. It was a psychological and moral orientation, a deeply held and practiced belief that the Jews are not and cannot be masters of their own fate — that Jewish existence must be predicated on the goodwill of others, or failing that, on divine providence. Zionist thinkers condemned the world of the shtetl as a place where Jewish powerlessness was not only accepted but sanctified.
To compare today’s progressive, secular anti-Zionist Jews to God-fearing shtetl peasants may sound anachronistic. But the resemblance is structural, not stylistic. What has changed is the theology, not the logic. It is absolutely classic exile mindset recycled for the (post-)modern age.
In the classic theological expression, Jews are meant to accept as fact their impotence. They are meant to devote themselves to piety rather than anger the ruling powers by resisting or rising up as a nation. It was explicitly forbidden for Jews to seek self-redemption in this framework. Instead, Jews were guided to seek closeness to divinity: an all-pervasive truth that is inherently and profoundly good, and which underpins all existence and events, even those that are bad. At the same time the Jewish believer is guided by a rather vague vision of a perfect world after death or after the coming of the messiah.
The majority of radical leftists today are not classically religious, but they are in a very real messianic sense — driven, often obsessively, by a vision of a perfect and unrealized world to come which they are convinced must influence all current actions. To act against this idea is even framed as secularized sin or as it is often put being “on the wrong side of history“. Their God is, much like the old one, an all-pervasive truth which is universal and good and which underpins all things and events, even the bad ones (like the Bondi massacre).
To their credit, this all-pervasive truth many leftists believe in is genuinely good: it is a universal humanism, a belief in the sanctity and value of human life. Their heaven, utopia, is a liberated, just, post-oppressive world to come. Sometimes it is pure anarchism or an end to money, property, and exploitation. In other words, leftist eschatology promises, yet again, a vague vision of a perfect world to come after the advent of universal truth. The coming of the next world follows the death of this world, which is in the meantime almost irredeemably marred by ignorance and sin.
Sanctifying the Shtetl. When Jewish existence was predicated on the goodwill of others, early Zionist thinkers condemned the world of the shtetl as a place where Jewish powerlessness was not only accepted but sanctified.
ROMANTICIZING POWERLESSNESS
Within this drama, the Jews are assigned a unique role, the same one as in the old shtetl construction: the righteous victim. Morally pure, historically oppressed, exemplary in their suffering. Devoted to their truth, with moral purity replacing religious piety. This is a modernization of the classic exile mindset, the same old sanctification of powerlessness as a self-justifying moral identity.
Like many other Jews, anti-Zionists take pride in the inheritance of an oppressed people, invoking Jewish participation in past struggles for justice. Anti-Zionist Jews go further than most. They express deep discomfort, even open resentment at the fact that Jews now possess real power. Perhaps even a remorse over the fact that Jews have largely achieved assimilation in America, forcing them to play a slightly different role than the ideal victim. Now, their role seems to be that of privileged — or worse, oppressive — whites.
This resentment is often framed as anger at oppression done “in our name” by Zionism, but functionally, it is rage at the loss of moral position. Zionism is intolerable to these Jewish anti-Zionists not only because it wields power badly, but because it wields power at all. The fact that it wields that power against enemies shatters the sacred identity of the Jew as powerless, innocent, and dependent.
Thus, exile becomes not merely a condition but a vocation. This acceptance of — and even consecration of — the status of exile provides meaning, coherence, and urgency to the universal humanist mission and the role the Jew can play in it. That is, as long as Jews renounce collective self-assertion and vocally reject Jewish power, especially military power, regardless of context. This psychological stance characterizes pathological anti-Zionism as something distinct from even the harshest critique of Israeli actions, which can itself be a deeply Zionist act.
In the end, the core of exile mindset remains the same: the exile-bound anti-Zionist Jew would rather sacrifice their collective and sometimes even their individual existence in this life for the sake of purity. This mindset may rationalize its position in theological or ideological terms, but in essence it is indeed, as anti-Zionists admit, a plea for safety. Now as then, that plea for safety is premised upon trying as much as possible not to anger the non-Jewish and even antisemitic society that surrounds.
This helps explain the reaction to Sydney. Faced with the massacre of Jews by Islamic extremists, these groups instinctively center the Muslim rescuer. They downplay the killers. They warn about the potential of backlash against Muslims. Even while many non-Jewish anti-Zionists are busy blaming Zionists for the massacre, Jewish anti-Zionists repeat “safety through solidarity” as a kind of incantation.
This is not accidental. It is faith in the face of events that challenge it.
Like the old theology of exile, this ideology does not require empirical testing. It does not ask whether solidarity has, in fact, kept Jews safe amid rising antisemitism. It does not ask what actually prevents violence tonight, tomorrow, for the rest of the 8 nights and for years to come.
This is why these groups can look at a massacre of Jews and conclude that the lesson is less Jewish self-defense and more Jewish dependence. Less agency, more faith. Less mastery over fate, more trust in the moral arc of history to bend only towards justice.
To Israelis, living in a society whose ethos was founded on the negation of exile and exile mentality, this logic is incomprehensible. Ironically, even many heirs of traditional exile mindset in the diaspora have also abandoned it. Chabad, often on the front lines of antisemitic violence, as in this tragic case, embraces collective Jewish self-assertion and practical security.
Only anti-Zionist Jews still sanctify weakness. Only they insist that Jewish survival must be conditional, provisional, and morally earned. Only they repeat, in modern language, the old demand that Jews place their lives in the hands of others for the sake of purity. Exile mindset is the retreat of people determined that their role is to be helpless victims, and who are actually more comfortable in that role.
That is what “safety through solidarity” means in practice.
A bloodied talit from the Sydney massacre. (Photo: social media, used in accordance with Section 27A).
*Feature picture:Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is an American Jewish anti-Zionist and far left-wing advocacy organization. It is critical of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, and supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. The group was formed in 1996, and as of 2024 had grown to over 32,000 active dues-paying members. Its chapters at Columbia and George Washington universities were suspended in 2024. (Wikipedia)
About the writer: Zev Dever is a Jewish educator originally from the US who has worked with Australian Jewish groups in Israel for several years.
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).
How do traumatized kibbutzniks build a new life amongst the rubble and remnants of personal horror?
By Gadi Ezra
(Courtesy of YNET news where this article first appeared)
Communities find themselves unwillingly at the center of a struggle between remembrance and renewal, underscoring the need for the state to better preserve national heritage.
Would you demolish Auschwitz? Of course not. The memory of the victims, the documentation of the crimes, the proof of the horrors — all must be preserved despite the pain, for the sake of future generations. But what if you had to keep living there? To face the destruction every morning? To rush to class or grab a coffee by passing through a murder scene frozen in time? In that case, the answer might be different. The need to move forward, rebuild and reestablish routine would all enter the equation.
This is precisely the heartbreaking dilemma the members of Kibbutz Be’eri recently confronted. Still trying to rise from the disaster, they voted by a narrow margin that life inside a memorial site is not life. The decision means clearing and demolishing the homes destroyed in the October 7 massacre. One house will remain, a testimony to what happened and to what must never happen again.
Killing Kids. A ‘Welcome to Our Home’ sign to a kindergarten on kibbutz Be’eri has not welcomed any kids since Hamas terrorists tore through it on October 7, 2023. (Photo: Baz Ratner/AP)
This is not a decision anyone can fairly criticize. No one can claim to know better than those who endured devastation and must now live again at the center of trauma. Whatever they say deserves a quiet amen. Yet what matters is understanding that Be’eri’s decision will not be the last on this issue. It opens a window into the present and future dilemmas of Nir Oz, Kfar Aza, Nirim, Nahal Oz, Re’im and other communities along Israel’s border. These are places that, against their will, have become focal points in a struggle between remembrance and renewal. That reality highlights not only the depth of the tragedy. It underscores the need for more effective state action in preserving the national heritage.
Silent Swing. Once an area of family fun, a Be’eri home’s patio and play area in the aftermath of the massacre.
The Tekuma Authority has allocated tens of millions to establish a national memorial for October 7, but its creation depends on legislation that remains unfinished. More than two years have passed since the massacre, yet the necessary administrative work is still incomplete. A state commission of inquiry is also deliberately avoided. As a result, the content that would fill any memorial institution is, by definition, partial and lacking. Such commissions are not only meant to assign responsibility. They are designed to form a narrative explaining how the country reached this point. Just as the Holocaust did not begin with the establishment of the death camps, October 7 did not begin on October 7.
Death and Destruction. One of the many houses which was burned and destroyed during the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre.
The problem with this dynamic, in which the state moves at its own pace, is that life is not a made-to-order program. It does not wait for government directives, bureaucracy or paperwork. It pushes past every document on its way to the next stage and forces survivors to confront decisions they must make. A community’s ability to tell its own story must always be preserved. But had the authorities and political leadership operated with greater transparency and efficiency, the members of Be’eri could have considered how future national commemoration would be shaped. That would have allowed them to highlight aspects the state does not emphasize or raise issues that matter to them in a different way. Their decision would have been made in context, not in a fog.
Gazan ‘Stormtroopers’. Hamas terrorists taking civilians hostages from kibbutz Be’eri.
Disclosure: At the end of October 2023, I was there as a reservist. The walls of the dental clinic that still stood practically screamed. The path leading to it ran through the same buildings now slated for demolition. ZAKA teams were still searching them for remains. Crushed cars lined the road. Other homes appeared intact but were anything but. Bloodstains on balconies revealed what had happened inside. Still others remained as they were the day they were abandoned — to Gaza, to the next world or to evacuation hotels. In truth that scene has not ended. War does not finish when the last soldier crosses back over the border. Even after Ran Gvili returns, it will end only when the residents return home. It is the state’s duty to ease that journey. Shaping memory in a way that helps them make decisions is an inseparable part of that responsibility.
Tough Decisions. Once a family home, now a horrifying ‘memorial’ to lives snuffed out. Can people return to this site to once again live?
About the writer:
Gadi Ezra is the Former director of Israel’s national public diplomacy unit.
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).
