Is Anti-Zionism to be Considered Anti-Semitism?

Anti-semitism is the hate of Jews for being Jews.

Being Jewish includes the belief that the Land of Israel is the covenanted homeland of the Jewish nation.

It is the land where the nation, as a federation of the Twelve Tribes, settled in under the leadership of Joshua after Moshe brought the Israelites out of Egypt back into the land of the Forefathers.

It is the land in which the Monarchy ruled.

It is the land which first withstood and then was defeated when the Assyrian Empire invaded.

It is the land which revolted against the Greek-Selecuid occupiers.

The land that stood up to the Roman occupiers.

The land in which the entire ancient religious and cultural heritage of the Jewish People, in its unique Hebrew language, was formulated and fashioned.

The land to which Jews constantly and continually returned over the 18 centuries of foreign rule including the Byzantines, the Persians, the Muslim Arabs, the Crusaders, the Mamlukes, Ottomans, British and Jordanians and the loss of political indendence.

It is the land where the Two Temples stood and served as sacred sites of worship.

It is the land in which special commandments can be exclusively fulfilled and no where else.

It is the land that, ever since Talmudic times of the second Babylonian exile, Jews  felt obligated to support those living in it, especially the scholars, sending charity funds from across 70 countries of the Diaspora.

It is the land towards which Jews pray, no matter wher they may be - north, south, east, west.

It is the land mentioned in our daily prayers, our Shabbat and Festival prayers, in the Passover Haggada, Tisha B'Av elegies and more.

Anyone who seeks to sever the connection between Jews and the Land of Israel, anyone who claims there is no Torah-based directive to return to it and reside in it and make it bloom, who declares him or herself an anti-Zionist, is being anti-Jewish.

They may love Jews but to dislike and disregard the Land of Israel, ideologically, economcially, politically or security-wise, to reject the right of the Jews to establish a state in their historic homeland, is being anti-semitic.

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A Story of the Status Quo and the Prince (with apologies to Rebbe Nachman)

A story of the Status Quo and the Prince*

Once upon a time, the king's son fell into madness of being in an exiled state, which he called the Status Quo, which is similar to suffering an identity crisis, and decided that the king's palace had to be abandoned as if it had become a desolate place for his enemies, and the king's son would sit outside as if in exile.

All the doctors and prophets despaired of helping him and curing him of this, and the king was in even greater sorrow than that. Until a wise man came and said, "I will take it upon myself to cure him," and he left the palace and sat outside with the king's son. And he asked the king's son, "Who are you and what are you doing here?" And he answered him, "I am in exile, for that is what the status quo is. What are you doing here?" And the wise man replied, "I am also in exile."

And they both sat together like that for a while until they became accustomed to each other. And the Wise Man said to the king's son, "Do you think that those who are in exile cannot live in the Land of Israel under Jewish sovereignty? They can establish a state, and yet it will be a status quo." 

And he continued, "They established a state. After some time, they received a hint, and they went to war and won and conquered the mountain and the valley and Jerusalem." And he also said to him as above, "Do you think that with Jerusalem there cannot be a status quo, etc., until they have settled in Jerusalem and with the rest of the Land?"

And then they received another hint and they began to ascend the Temple Mount and pray there and bow down and he said to him, "Meynstu az aoyb men davent aoyfn har habayis ven es iz nishta keyn status kvo, ken men davenen aun aoykh habn dem status kvo, aun zikh anshtrengen aoyfn har habayis?" (Do you think that if one prays on the Temple Mount while there is no status quo, one can pray and also have the status quo, and prostrate on the Temple Mount?"

And then again the Wise Man spoke and said to the king's son, "Do you think that the status quo must be precisely without sacrifices or that there can be a status quo and there can be sacrifices as well?" And thus he behaved with him until he completely healed him and they returned and built the king's palace and expelled all the king's enemies. And the parable is understandable to those who understand.

*

This tale, whose author I am still searching for, is based on an actual Nachman of Bratslav tale:

Hebrew source.

An English translation.

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Introducing Miriam Engel (whoever "she" is)

"Miriam Engel" is to be found at Instagram.

Whoever she really is I do not know but "she" is an AI creation but with a twist.

The creator obviously is from within the Satmar (or closely related) court of Hassidim, uses largely Yiddish and deals with very Haredi/Jewish subjects and themes.

And does so in sometimes an outrageous but good-hearted and humorous manner.

"She" stretches limits but within limits.

Here is one of here more 'shocking' series, with her on a motorcycle and the results of the wind:

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The Litani River as a northern Border (Updated)

This has recently appeared:

which recalls the 1919 efforts to set the northern border of the future state of Israel.

From the Zionist Organization Statement on Palestine at the Paris Peace Conference on February 3, 1919:

"The boundaries of Palestine shall follow the general lines set out below:

Starting on the North at a point on the Mediterranean Sea in the vicinity south of Sidon and following the watersheds of the foothills of the Lebanon as far as Jisr El-Karaon thence to El-Bire, following the dividing line between the two basins of the Wadi El-Korn and the Wadi Et-Teim, thence in a southerly direction following the dividing line between the Eastern and Western slopes of the Hermon, to the vicinity west of Beit Jenn, then eastward following the northern watersheds of the Nahr Mughaniye close to and west of the Hedjaz Railway.

 

In the east a line close to and west of the Hedjaz Railway terminating in the Gulf of Akaba."

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UPDATE:

Arabe sources claim there's a suggestion to move the border northwards to the Awali River:

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More on the 1391 Martyred Monks by Muslims

Back in January 2012, I posted details on the four martyred Franciscan monks in Jerusalem, after failing to persuade Muslim officials of the truth of the Gospel.

Note the cowering Muslim figure:

There is a memorial day for them:

They were canonized, being the only Franciscans martyred in the Holy Land to be canonized. 

Extract from an academic article:

And no Jew was involved.

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Amit Segal Responds to Ilana Dayan

After a monolgue by Channel 12's Ilana Dayan, Amit Segal responded in his Israel Hayom weekly column:

Oiy Ilana Dayan

"Ilana Dayan was not the first to cause a stir in the middle of a war when she called for "not to normalize the death around us and insist on sanctifying life." She was preceded, albeit in a novel and not in an investigative program, by the writer S.Y. Agnon:

'A lot of things are happening and going on, every day Jews are killed, secretly and publicly, and every day the newspapers are decorated with black decorations. At first, when we would see a black stripe in the newspaper and read that an Israeli had been killed, we put down our dinner.

'Now that troubles are here, a man sits at his table and eats his fat with butter and honey, reading and saying – Another Jew was killed. Another Jewish woman was killed, another baby from Israel was killed.' 

My friend Ilana's words are worthy of discussion and not insults: 'I want to dedicate the last two minutes of our broadcast to human life. While our screens are being flooded with airstrikes and assassinations, while the Prime Minister is telling how he is once again removing an existential threat that he has already declared has been removed and is once again changing the face of the Middle East, in an apartment in the heart of Ramat Gan an Israeli couple was sitting the other day.

"When the alarm went off, he was probably trying to get to the walker, maybe it was waiting for him and they didn't have time to get to the shelter. The missile hit and both were killed, the mayor and the Home Front Command representative scolded the dead for not following the instructions... The responsibility should be left with those in the government who approved attack plans but forgot to check protection plans for those who have no chance of getting to the shelter in time or who have no shelter at all.' 

I will return to the rest of the monologue, but it is important to note one fundamental difference between Ilana and Agnon. He attributed the normalization of death to weakness in the face of the enemy: "And we sit with our hands clasped and surrender ourselves to killing and say, 'Restraint, restraint.' They kill and murder and burn, and we sit and restrain ourselves."

While Dayan hinted that the source of the indifference is precisely in the excessive enthusiasm of Eli Kareb: "The responsibility should be left with those who take us out to a war within a war within a war. They shoot videos full of excitement and announce that a superpower has arisen here that hits hard and always wins." And this is precisely where the disagreement lies, not only with Agnon but also with little me, with the claim. Because the opposite of the current war is not peace; the opposite is an even more bitter war in the future. After all, this was exactly the justified argument against Netanyahu after October 7: Why did you let the monster grow stronger on our borders instead of acting against it? Obviously, no one is under the illusion that in such a preventive war there would be no victims, perhaps two adults from Ramat Gan who did not have time to reach the protected area, perhaps twenty. Would that have turned such a war into something that the officers "took us out to," a hint at a war of permission to come, a war of luxury to come, perhaps a war of deception?

And in general, this is not a "war within a war within a war." Elhanan Kalmanzon, an Israeli hero who fell in Be'eri on the morning of October 8 while rescuing kibbutzniks, certainly not a sign of neglect and indifference towards human life, wrote to his wife years before: 'If I die as a martyr in the war for the land, I ask that they remember that this is not another war or intifada, this is the same long war for our country and the identity of our people that has been going on for almost a hundred and fifty years.'

'Yaron and Ilana from Ramat Gan will no longer win, and neither will we," Dayan added, "if on the way to crushing the axis of evil, we forget what we came together for. If we become indifferent to the weak and to human life... If we become equal to the lives of the children Yaakov, Sarah, and Abigail from Beit Shemesh and Amit from Petach Tikva. Human life, every human. Also the lives of Ali Wa'ad from the village of Tamon and their young children, Muhammad and Othman. They did not die from an Iranian missile, but from Israeli fire. They were on their way home earlier this week after shopping for the holiday and an undercover force sprayed their vehicle, killing all four of them. You can hear the fighters say they felt threatened, but then you have to see the look in the eyes of the child who saw his parents and siblings being shot before his eyes. Stay with him for a moment and not normalize the death around us and insist on sanctifying life. There is no more complete victory than that.'

I too would have liked to dwell more broadly on the deaths of Yaron and Ilana, or Mary Ann, or the murdered Beit Shemesh children. It seems to me that there is a discussion here about aesthetics and journalism, disguised as a discussion about morality. There is not a lack of caring in the country, but a lack of attention. Already in Tractate Berakhot it is written that "last troubles make one forget the first," and as we know, there has been no shortage of troubles lately.

As for the Palestinian family killed by undercover fire due to mistaken identification, it seems that the veiled claim is not merely a condemnation of the neglect but rather hints at the responsibility of Israeli society, a kind of causing death out of collective indifference due to too-light orders to open fire.

Clearly, the claim is not about forgetting the unfortunate children but about the shooting party, Israel. After all, last week, three Palestinian women were murdered by an Iranian missile in a bridal salon near Hebron, and to this day we don't even know their names. Gideon Levy and Amira Hess didn't bother to visit the village of Amal, Mays, and Sahira until the issue closed, and haven't written a heartbreaking article about them until now. Palestinians are only interesting in their deaths if there is an Israeli to blame for them. If we're going to mention forgotten names, shouldn't we remember them too?"

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The Mystery of the Roman Sword in the Mikveh

In the latest edition of Israel Museum Studies in Archaeology Volume 12 2025, there's an article describing the results of new efforts to investigate "A Roman Spatha Sword and Scabbard From Excavations on Mount Zion in Jerusalem" found over 50 years ago.

The authors are Shimon Gibson University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Rafael Y. Lewis Bar-Ilan University; Yarden Pagelson Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; Dudi Mevorah Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Hadas Seri Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

The spatha was found south of the Zion Gate:

Here it is in situ:

And its appearance in 1971:

By all means, read it even it it can be very technical. It is dated to late Second Temple Period and its following century.

What excited my imagination, however, is its exact location when found. It "was uncovered on 3 October 1971 in earthen sediments and fills within a plastered stepped ritual bath (miqweh) inside one of the rooms of a very large Early Roman mansion exposed in Area I (Square 6, Locus 12, Basket (B) 1254). This was the first area to be excavated on the eastern side of the Armenian courtyard of the St. Saviour property, due south of the Zion Gate (Fig. 1)."

A mikveh?

We have a novel waiting to be written.

What was a Roman sword doing in a mikveh?

Was it stolen from a soldier or his corpse and stored there?

Did a Roman soldier attempt an assault there?

Did a Jewish woman belong to a Jewish fighting force and had hidden it there?

If you have any other suggestions, comment below.

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"𝙋𝙖𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙖𝙣 𝙘𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙯𝙚𝙣𝙨"

I found this term in The Guardian, in a March 23, 2026 story:

"Parties that represent 𝙋𝙖𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙞𝙖𝙣 𝙘𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙯𝙚𝙣𝙨 of Israel are likely to offer the only path for the opposition parties to form a government."

There is no "Palestine" and such a political entity never existed so one cannot have been or currently be a citizen of such.

One can be an Israeli Arab.

One can be a resident of the Palestinian National Authority.

Are all Israelis who were born during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine and who held Palestine nationality still be, if they are alive, a "Palestinian citizen of Israel"?

What is the Guardian newspaper doing in its magic bag of journalistic rhetoric skills?

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Going to Jerusalem in 1615

From a new book, Ottoman-era Documents from the Cairo Genizah.

A Rabbi Shmuel set off for Jerusalem from Egypt in 1615 for a 20-day trek and required a document that he coulkd present to various government officials along the way which would provide him security from the dangers of raiding Bedouin as well as food and lodging. It also afforded him escorts for his protection although once he reached Jerusalem's gates, he would be required to make a payment to enter the city.

A Jew in Egypt, not European, a country ruled by the Ottoman Empire and going to Jerusalem, in the occupied territory of the former Judea in the early 17th century to spend the Pilgrimage Festival of Passover.

Think about it.

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