Mar
25
2026

Why Does "Never Again" Keep Happening?

Zoe Strimpel tells of The Terrorizing of British Jews at the Free Press:

On Monday morning, London woke to the news that four ambulances belonging to a Jewish organization had been firebombed. In an attack that police are treating as a hate crime, a group of men can be seen on security cameras, breaking into the vehicles and setting them ablaze. An Islamist group claimed credit. The incident was quickly condemned, but British Jews were once again reminded of the world in which they now live.

Hatzolah is a Jewish charity operating in cities around the globe—they fundraise for ambulances and medical equipment to serve the communities in which they’re based, helping Jews and non-Jews alike. They are remarkably popular. And now, in London, they find themselves on the front lines of a war against Britain’s Jews.

Though firebombing and ambulance-attacking are a somewhat novel addition to the voluminous playbook of antisemitic crime in Britain, nobody here is really that surprised. We weren’t after two people were killed in a synagogue in Manchester last Yom Kippur either. Devastated, yes, heartbroken too—but not surprised.

Why? Because Britain’s climate of complacency, appeasement, and ignorance has long legitimized a rising tide of hatred toward Jews, hiding under the banner “criticism of Israel.” Two days before the arson attack, I saw and felt that reality firsthand.

And just a reminder from Matthew Hennessey at the WSJ's "Free Expression" newsletter: They Are Trying to Kill Jews.

Are you paying attention? Because trouble is brewing. Jews are being attacked. Jewish institutions are being attacked. It’s happening with regularity. You should be alarmed.

I’m not talking about Gaza protests or antiwar campus sit-ins. I’m not talking about tweets. I’m talking about the brutal, destructive and deadly targeting of Jews in real life. Violence. Terror. Attacks on Jews because they are Jews.

Let’s do a partial review of the bidding. In December, two Islamic radicals shot up a Hanukkah gathering of Jews on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, killing 15 and injuring 39. More would have died had it not been for the selfless actions of a courageous bystander. In January, a 19-year-old man lit the largest synagogue in Jackson, Miss. on fire, telling cops he did it specifically because he wanted to hurt Jews. In February, vandals spray-painted a synagogue in Olney, Md., with a swastika, the word “genocide” and the letters AZAB, short for “all Zionists are bastards.”

Matthew's bottom line:

Mark my words: Something terrible is going to happen. Bondi Beach will happen here. Someone will attack a school or a synagogue and won’t miss. And then we will be forced to listen to disingenuous nitwit after disingenuous nitwit issue empty condemnations of the scourge of antisemitism.

I hope he's wrong. I fear he isn't.

Also of note:

  • I got this pathetic smear in the mail yesterday. And NHJournal's Michael Graham has some information about it: Down Big, Brown Allies Go Epstein on Sununu.

    The super PAC supporting Scott Brown’s U.S. Senate campaign hit his GOP primary opponent, John E. Sununu, with a mailer attempting to link him to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

    The $130,000 mail campaign targeting potential GOP primary voters hit mailboxes the day after a new St. Anselm College Survey Center poll found Brown losing to Sununu in the GOP primary by 21 points, 49-28 percent.

    The mailer was paid for by the “Strong As Granite” PAC, created to support Brown’s Senate campaign, and is listed as an independent expenditure.

    A representative of the PAC did not respond to requests for comment from NHJournal.

    Approximately 3.5 million pages of the so-called “Epstein files” have been released so far. The mailer includes a screen capture of one email from 2010 between Epstein and Boris Nikolic, a physician and former adviser to Bill Gates, that contains the phrase, “John Sununu has good stories.”

    I thought John E. Sununu was OK as my CongressCritter (1997-2003) and his single term as a US Senator (2003-2009). At least as OK as any politician. I was leaning toward voting for him in the September primary anyway, and this sort of trash makes my lean a little heavier that way.

  • "Aw, man, I'm all outta cash!" I got reminded of this old (stupid but I laughed) SNL skit:

    It came to mind when reading this Cato article from Chris Edwards: Postal Service Out of Cash.

    The head of the US Postal Service (USPS) warned Congress last week that the government-run company was running out of cash. Postmaster General David Steiner said the USPS was facing a “severe financial crisis” and could not solve the problem on its own because of restrictions imposed by Congress.

    The USPS has lost money every year since 2007 as mail volumes have plunged and the company’s productivity has declined. Its future is bleak unless Congress enacts major restructuring.

    If you're interested, my USPS recommendation (privatize it) was back in September of last year, a fisking of an op-ed column by a local pundit.

  • He's moved on to actual war. Kevin D. Williamson regrets to tell us: Trump’s Trade War Is Not Over. (archive.today link)

    Liars think everyone is a liar, cheaters think everyone is a cheat, etc.: You know that story. Donald Trump is, from time to time, shocked that the world is not populated by grifters and con artists as thoroughly corrupt as he, and he sometimes confesses his consternation in a way that would be amusing if he were in the high-dollar Palm Beach retirement home where he belongs rather than waging illegal wars willy-nilly in Iran, Venezuela, Ecuador, possibly Cuba, as well as on random boats in the Caribbean, inconveniently located girls’ schools, Democratic cities, and the U.S. economy. He is, by his own telling, distressed that the justices he has appointed to the Supreme Court attempt to follow the Constitution rather than simply do his bidding. Earlier in March, he thundered on his boutique social-media site:

    The decision that mattered most to me was TARIFFS! The Court knew where I stood, how badly I wanted this Victory for our Country, and instead decided to, potentially, give away Trillions of Dollars to Countries and Companies who have been taking advantage of the United States for decades.

    …

    The Democrats on the Court always “stick together,” no matter how strong a case is put before them — There is rarely even a minor “waver.” But Republicans do not do this. They openly disrespect the Presidents who nominate them to the highest position in the Land, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and go out of their way, with bad and wrongful rulings and intentions, to prove how “honest,” “independent,” and “legitimate” they are.

    I do love the sneer quotes around “honest” and “legitimate.” Small wonder he lost his shirt in Atlantic City: Trump has no poker face—he always tells you exactly what he is thinking.

    As always, KDW is not a fan of President Bone Spurs.

  • I miss P.J. O'Rourke. One of his classic essays, "Ship of Fools" described his 1982 journey on the "Volga Peace Cruise", sponsored by The Nation magazine. His "fellow travelers" (heh) were kind of a hoot.

    That came to mind reading Jeffrey Blehar's newsletter about the Code Pink visit to Cuba: Lefty Influencers Embrace Poverty Tourism on Cuba Junket.

    Ladies and gentlemen, joy is back again. While the rest of America was nervously eyeing shipping reports from the Strait of Hormuz, some of the worst people you know decided the time was right to draw the media world’s attention to the one target on Marco Rubio’s (s)hit list the United States hasn’t used military force against yet: Cuba. And what fantastic timing they have chosen.

    No doubt concluding that it’s too late for Venezuela or Iran, the infamous communist “anti-war” group Code Pink has decided it is time to raise awareness about the looming imperialist threat posed by the United States to its humble authoritarian neighbor. (The United States has choked off Cuba’s oil supply in recent months via tariff threats.) To that end, it gathered together the West’s most annoying young leftists — among the American subset Hasan Piker, Isra Hirsi (daughter of Ilhan Omar), and the sartorially obnoxious editor of Current Affairs, Nathan J. Robinson — for a big junket to Havana. They were going there to raise the consciousness of the online masses, to see just how oppressed this beautiful nation is by Uncle Sam, and presumably to also engage in some light third-worldist cosplay.

    The “Nuestra America Convoy” was also theoretically supposed to bring humanitarian supplies and food along with it — a page ripped from the Gaza Flotilla playbook, in other words. But its real purpose — as far as the participants were concerned, at least — was to give hundreds of well-connected and compensated influencers access to the creature comforts the Cuban regime historically doles out to its privileged guests: being carted around to restaurants, concerts, and VIP meetups, put up in Havana’s Gran Hotel (the city’s lone five-star lodging), and given carefully guided tours. Why, the brave convoy members were even given a special performance by “anti-colonialist” Northern Irish rap-rock act Kneecap! (I had to double-check here to make sure this wasn’t a case of the communist regime momentarily reverting to its natural preference for torture.)

    I only wish Jeffrey could have gone along with them to get the full pinko experience.