For decades, writing about the political activities of the entrenched elites in Israel has been a no-go zone. Drawing attention to the agenda of this group has been out of bounds. But gradually and unavoidably, it has become an accepted subject of public discourse as a well-organized vocal minority has been systematically targeting the unity of Israeli society to destabilize and overthrow the legally elected government.

This political and social assault has effectively become the eighth front in Israel’s existential war. We can no longer ignore the danger posed by this group. We must understand the strategy of the other side and defeat it. 

The approach of strategic defeatism dates back to World War I when the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, accepted the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which took the Russian Empire out of the war in March of 1918. The terms were draconian, with Russia losing several major territories, including Ukraine and Finland, but accepting defeat made it possible to save the Russian Revolution.

According to British historian John W. Wheeler-Bennett, “The battleground was that of social struggle, and therein frontiers mattered little in comparison with the fight of the proletarian versus the capitalist … . ‘He is no Socialist,’ wrote Lenin in an open letter to American workers, ‘who does not understand that the victory over the bourgeoisie may require losses of territory and defeats. He is no Socialist who will not sacrifice his fatherland for the triumph of the social revolution.’ ”  

Beyond the immediate strategy of defeatism, Lenin also advocated the tactic of exploiting existing sources of discontent. He wrote: “Our task is to utilize every manifestation of discontent, and to gather and turn to the best account every protest, however small.” 

While the redemption of our hostages still in Gaza has great merit and is one of the main goals of our war, the adversaries of Israel’s legally elected government have used the genuine grief of the hostage families and Israeli society at large as a political weapon.

On April 10, nearly 1,000 reserve pilots and air-force staff published a petition, “A call for the return of all the kidnapped hostages, even at the price of ending the hostilities!”

It said in part, “We, the team of fighters of the air force, in the reserves and retired, demand the return of the kidnapped [hostages] without delay ... . End the fighting and return all the kidnapped [persons]—now! Every day that goes by endangers their lives. Every extra moment of hesitation is a disgrace.”

Implementation of this plan by the government would mean accepting national defeat. It was reported that 60 of the signatories were in active reserves, but most of the 1,000 were veterans and no longer in service, while a small number of signatories were unidentified.

Before the publication of this petition, on April 8, The Jerusalem Post quoted the KAN News as saying that the Israel Defense Forces’ Air Force commander, Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar was troubled by one paragraph of the petition in particular, which said, “At this time, the war serves mainly political interests and not security interests. Continuing the war does not contribute to any of Israel’s stated war goals and will lead to the deaths of the hostages, IDF soldiers and innocent civilians.”

Bar objected to this defeatist message, which accused the government of duplicity and bad faith. 

The Times of Israel gave the background to the petition and the official response as follows: “After its publication, Commander Tomer Bar, along with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, moved to dismiss the active reservists who signed the letter, with the IDF saying that it has no issue with reservists protesting any matter in their civilian lives, as [long as] they do it without using the name of the military or their role.”

Specifically, they objected to the use of the “air force” brand for political protest. 

We must ask who really orchestrated this political initiative, as well as others. Who drafted this letter? And who paid for it? Despite the fact that the signatories of this letter claim to be retired Israel Air Force staff and reservists, its real purpose was to promote defeatism by undermining public trust in the government in time of war.

Furthermore, the petition was not an isolated event. On April 14, The Jerusalem Post reported that 1,790 graduates of the elite Talpiot intelligence program published a letter in support of the IAF reservists’ petition, and, separately, 250 doctors in the reserves joined them.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s initial public reaction was to declare that the letter came from a noisy fringe group whose only aim is to topple the government. Israel Aumann, a Nobel Laureate professor, stated that this act will increase the price that Israel will have to pay for the hostages, and Mordechai Kedar, a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, said that this declaration of weakness is a gift to Israel’s enemies in the Arab world.

In short, the strategy of defeatism undermines the national consensus within Israel and degrades the prestige of the Israeli brand abroad, and will help to bring the hostages back home.

For more than a year, the Israeli media have reported that in the next elections, a new party led by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, together with the center-left bloc, will handily defeat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ruling coalition.

On Thursday, Direct Polls published an electoral poll that included Bennett’s party for the first time.

The results countered the media’s narrative: In a head-to-head contest, Netanyahu leads Bennett 53% to 35%.

Bennett’s party polled 13 seats in the Knesset race to Likud’s 32 seats.

Overall, with Bennett’s party included in the Knesset electoral poll, the center-left bloc wins 48 seats to Netanyahu’s right-religious bloc’s 62 seats. The Arab parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood Ra’am Party, which joined Bennett’s governing coalition, win another 10 seats.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced on Thursday that the Trump administration canceled Harvard University’s visa program over the school’s failure to provide her department with information about Jew-hatred on campus.

“It is a privilege to enroll foreign students, and it is also a privilege to employ aliens on campus,” Noem wrote to Harvard’s director of immigration services, Maureen Martin. 

“As a result of your refusal to comply with multiple requests to provide the Department of Homeland Security pertinent information while perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas sympathies and employs racist ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ policies, you have lost this privilege,” she wrote.

Following the revocation, Harvard is prohibited from issuing new student visas, and its current students must transfer to another university to maintain their legal status in the United States.

Harvard has 6,793 international students, making up more than 27% of the student body, per the school’s website.

The secretary gave Harvard a 72-hour ultimatum to have its visa privileges restored if it complies with the department’s demands, including requests for records about student visa-holders committing illegal activity, threatening other students or engaging in protest.

“This action should not surprise you and is the unfortunate result of Harvard’s failure to

comply with simple reporting requirements,” Noem wrote.

The Trump administration has cancelled or frozen billions of dollars in funding over allegations that the school violates Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act over its treatment of Jewish students and its rejection of the administration’s demands for change.

Harvard is suing the Trump administration to restore the funding, and a spokesman for the Ivy League school told JNS that the school believes that Noem’s revocation of its visa privileges is unlawful.

“This retaliatory action threatens serious harm to the Harvard community and our country and undermines Harvard’s academic and research mission,” Jason Newton, director of media relations and communications at Harvard, told JNS.

“We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the university, and this nation, immeasurably,” Newton said.

There were some serious concerns raised about the way Israel seemed to have been sidelined during President Donald Trump’s recent trip to the Middle East.

JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin says those worries need to be balanced, recognizing that Trump has earned the trust of the pro-Israel community. He also believes that the substance of his policy address during the visit, in which the president said that the United States would reject both nation-building and appeasement, and instead take a realist approach to dealing with the region, would be better for the Jewish state in the long run.

He’s joined in this week’s episode of "Think Twice" by Shoshana Bryen, senior director of the Jewish Policy Center and editor of inFOCUS Quarterly. Bryen says those worried about Trump and Israel shouldn’t panic. More than that, she noted that the way so many countries in the Middle East were showing eagerness to be friends of the United States since the start of Trump’s second administration was encouraging. 

“The good news is that the United States is perceived now as a strong horse in the region,” said Bryen. And, she added, that's bound to be good for Israel, too.

She acknowledged that the fact that the war with Hamas can’t be ended quickly or easily will inevitably create some tensions with the United States since Trump dislikes “forever wars” and doesn’t want to be tied up in them. Still, Bryen said Washington has continued to send arms to the Jewish state to prosecute the war with Hamas in Gaza, and is doing so without the conditions and criticisms that the Biden administration employed to try to hamstring Jerusalem’s efforts.

Bryen agreed that the optics of Trump accepting a plane from Qatar, a “frenemy” of the United States, as a gift were bad. But she said that it was not something from which the president would personally benefit. The Qataris are untrustworthy, and connected to Iran and Hamas, and host the Muslim Brotherhood. But she also pointed out that their recent conduct indicated that they knew that Israel’s successful actions in Lebanon and Syria had significantly weakened Tehran.

Moreover, the United States needs to be engaged in the region because the alternative is China, America’s chief geostrategic rival, and moderate Arab nations don’t wish to be dominated by Beijing.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated on Thursday evening that he intends to appoint Maj. Gen. David Zini as director of the Israeli Security Agency, also known as the Shin Bet.

Zini has served as a fighter in the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit, commander of the Israel Defense Forces Golani Brigade Battalion 51, commander of the Egoz Unit, commander of the Alexandroni Brigade, founder of the Commando Brigade and commander of the Training Command and the General Staff Corps, per the prime minister's office.

Zini prepared a report in March 2023 for the head of the Gaza division "on evaluating the deployment of the division in a complex surprise event, with emphasis on surprise raids and marking weak points," Netanyahu's office stated.

"In the report's conclusions, Maj. Gen. Zini wrote that in almost the entire sector, it would be possible to carry out surprise raids against our forces," it added.

Zini's father is a rabbi of a community in Ashdod and the new Shin Bet head, who reportedly has 11 children, comes from a family of rabbis of Algerian descent.

The Israel Defense Forces carried out a series of airstrikes targeting Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon, the military said in a statement on Thursday night.

Israeli Air Force fighter jets struck a military site in the Beqaa region of Southern Lebanon that housed rocket launchers and other weapons. The site was being used by Hezbollah terror operatives, the IDF said.

In separate strikes, the IAF targeted additional terror infrastructure, including rocket and missile launchers, across Southern Lebanon.

One of the Lebanese villages where the IDF struck Hezbollah was Toul. Ahead of the airstrikes, Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee, head of the Arab Media Branch in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, issued an evacuation warning.

"You are located near facilities belonging to the Hezbollah terror group," the army spokesman wrote. "For your safety and the safety of your family members, you must evacuate these buildings immediately and move at least 500 meters [1,640 feet] away, as seen on the map."

"The presence of arms in the area and the activity of Hezbollah terrorists at the site constitute blatant violations of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon," the IDF stated, referring to the Nov. 26 truce deal.

"The IDF will continue to act to remove any threat to the State of Israel and will prevent any attempt by the Hezbollah terrorist organization to entrench itself near the border," the IDF statement added.

Earlier in the day, an Israeli aircraft eliminated a member of Hezbollah's elite Radwan Force in the Rab al-Talatin area of Southern Lebanon, which is right across Israel's northern border, the IDF announced.

The Radwan Force is Hezbollah's elite unit, aimed at infiltrating Israeli territory and capturing areas near the northern border. The village of Rab al-Talatin is located less than a mile from Israel's security fence.

On Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces eliminated a senior Hezbollah weapons engineer in an airstrike in the Tyre area of Southern Lebanon. Hussein Nazih Barji served as a senior figure in Hezbollah's weapons-production unit, operating within the Iranian-backed terror group's Research, Development and Production Directorate, it stated.

On Tuesday, the IDF confirmed the elimination of another senior Hezbollah leader in the village of Mansouri, also in the Tyre area.

The operative had been responsible for planning attacks, reestablishing the Mansouri complex and facilitating weapons transfers. Video footage published by the military showed the strike targeting a moving vehicle.

The day before, a member of the Radwan force was eliminated in Houla, and over the weekend, another commander was killed near Mazraat Jemjim.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has repeatedly warned that the Nov. 26 deal with Beirut would be void if Hezbollah refuses to withdraw from Southern Lebanon in accordance with the terms of the agreement.

The situation in Lebanon's south remains volatile following the end of the ceasefire with Beirut on Feb. 18. The agreement ended more than a year of war, after Hezbollah began attacks on the Jewish state one day after the Hamas-led terror attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Although Jerusalem has withdrawn most of its ground forces since the war ended, it still controls five strategic positions in Southern Lebanon. Israeli officials have stated that the IDF will retain control of these areas until the Lebanese army demonstrates it can maintain security there.

If you listen to the March 5 episode of the top-rated podcast on Spotify in the United States, the “Joe Rogan Experience,” you will hear, within the first 30 minutes, that:

• Former President Richard Nixon was framed.
• Time travel is possible.
• California cult leader Charles Manson was a CIA asset.
• The 1960s anti-war movement was a CIA op.
• Sirhan Sirhan (the convicted assassin of Sen. Robert Kennedy) had been subjected to mind control.

Then, just a few minutes after that, you would hear the guest, Ian Carroll, tell the host, Joe Rogan, “I sound crazy to someone that doesn’t do their own research.”

You don’t say.

If you were brave or gullible enough to keep listening after Carroll’s assertion that he “sounds crazy” only to “someone that doesn’t do their own research,” (or if you were forced to keep listening as it was your job), you would hear him wonder if the Egyptian pyramids were built by telepathic aliens, and hear him, along with Rogan, claim that we don’t really know what happened at 7 World Trade Center in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.

The destruction of 7 World Trade Center was litigated in multiple cases, with multiple parties fighting over hundreds of millions of dollars. One litigation lasted more than 10 years, and an army of lawyers was involved. I briefly worked on one of the cases myself. And I can promise you, we know what happened at 7 World Trade Center.

I suppose I can’t prove that the pyramids weren’t built by telepathic aliens. But should anyone have to?

This is the sort of exasperation that prompted journalist Douglas Murray, on the April 10 episode of Rogan’s show, to exclaim in frustration, “You don’t need to consume endless versions of a revisionist history!”

It takes about five minutes to look up and then spout off a conspiracy theory, but exponentially longer to debunk one. The sheer number of bizarre claims made on this program, thrown out rapidly one after another for over two-and-a-half hours, could send an actual, serious researcher on a months-long or longer, full-time quest to conclusively debunk each one.

No normal person has that kind of time, and that’s part of the conceit here. Carroll, a former Uber Eats driver turned “independent researcher,” wants his audience to feel that if they believe such claims, they are the ones who are in the know, in possession of a secret knowledge that powerful people are trying to keep hidden.

And, unfortunately, someone who believes or is even willing to entertain Carroll’s ridiculous claims might also believe him when he claims that Jeffrey Epstein was working for the Mossad to gather intelligence on American officials or that a group of Jewish philanthropists investing in Jewish causes was conducting espionage. (“It is unclear if we have proof that they were conducting espionage,” Carroll says. Do your own research.) Or that “Israel has so much control over our government right now. And I’m not saying that all Jews are in on something. Clearly, Internet. Thank you.”

Such a person might also have believed comic Dave Smith, on April 3, when he claimed during a solo appearance on Rogan’s show, before his “debate” with Murray, that the United States is bombing Yemen “on behalf of Israel,” or when he said of Palestinians in the West Bank, “under Israeli control they have zero rights, zero rights whatsoever,” or when he said that Israel has “gotten us into like seven wars.” Or they might have believed podcaster Darryl Cooper’s Holocaust revisionism on March 13. But these are just the same old tired conspiracy theories—at root, most antisemitism is conspiracy theory—now recycled into a new media environment that has no guardrails.

It’s good to know, of course, that Carroll doesn’t believe in conspiracy theorist David Icke’s theories about reptiles (calling them a “grift”) or that the earth is flat (purposeful misinformation meant to “obfuscate the narrative,” he says), but is that our new baseline? One would hope not.

Rogan ended the episode, after play-acting for the supposed censors, “I can’t believe what you said ... . I am so upset that I even platformed you, you’re outrageous!” by more seriously telling Carroll that he was “very, very reasonable” and performing a “valuable service.”

Nor was Carroll the first obvious kook that Rogan had on his show. He has previously hosted actor Terrence Howard, former Pink Floyd member and anti-Israel activist Roger Waters, and Abby Martin, who made a film called “Gaza fights for freedom.”

And just last week, Rogan was once again suggesting that aliens may have built the pyramids in Egypt. Rogan pushed back much harder on the former Egyptian minister of antiquities, Zahi Hawass, who opposes such bonkers theories, than he ever pushed back on Carroll. But it took Carroll just a couple of minutes to promote the claim that the pyramids could have been built by telepathic aliens, and it took an actual archeologist with decades of experience two hours to rebut it.

No one knows better than my colleagues at CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle Reporting and Analysis, and I do, that the credentialed experts don’t always get things right. But that’s not an excuse to promote baseless conspiracy theories pedaled by someone with no credibility whatsoever.

Rogan is entertaining, and many people enjoy the super-long format that has at other times allowed him to get much more in-depth into issues than television news, even magazine formats like “20/20” or “60 Minutes,” can allow. But if a listener can learn one thing from the Carroll, Cooper and Smith interviews on this podcast, it’s that Rogan—who boasts, “I was arguing with people about the moon landing on the radio before [expletive] there was any podcasts”—doesn’t vet his guests for any type of intellectual rigor whatsoever, and often lacks the knowledge to push back on some of his guests’ crazier claims. And, he’s happy to use his show to promote wild conspiracy theories, including, but certainly not limited to, those about Jews and Israel.

The gunman who killed two employees of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum on Wednesday night, was inspired by the legitimization of antisemitic violence, according to Ofir Akunis, consul general of Israel in New York.

“Rhetoric that legitimizes violence against Jews and Israelis sadly leads to terror attacks—like the one we saw last night in Washington,” he said. “This is a direct result of dangerous incitement and unprecedented riots led by terror-affiliated groups on U.S. campuses.”

“Sadly, someone here listened to the chants of ‘intifada, intifada,’” the consul general stated. “Qatar is responsible for funding the protests that led to this tragedy and must be held to account.”

“No terror group or lone attacker will stop us from representing the State of Israel,” the diplomat added, “neither in the U.S. nor anywhere else in the world.”

The city of Chicago is increasing patrols and putting “extra attention” on the Jewish community after an antisemitic attack that killed two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night, stated Chicago alderman Debra Silverstein, a member of the 50th ward of the Chicago City Council.

Silverstein, who is Jewish, said she was “deeply concerned” that the alleged shooter came from Chicago, adding that police commanders say “there is no known threat” to the local Jewish community. However, there will be increased security “out of an abundance of caution.”

“I ask for law enforcement to investigate any ties to local extremist groups and to act swiftly to make sure the Jewish community in Chicago is kept safe,” she stated. “It is time for us to stop allowing antisemitism to masquerade as violent, anti-Israel action. It is time for our elected leaders to keep our local communities safe.”

“Horrified” by the attack, she said her “thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, and the entire Jewish and Israeli communities as they deal with the aftermath of this horrific attack.”

Silverstein recently criticized Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for appointing Ishan Daya, who was fired from his job after being caught tearing down hostage posters, to a new budget working group. Daya stepped down just hours after his appointment.