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Thomas Friedman explains how devastating Israel’s attacks on Iran have been
By BERNIE BELLAN I’m not sure how many readers follow Thomas Friedman’s writing in the New York Times; after all, he’s been highly critical of Netanyahu for years, which probably makes him persona non grata for a lot of you.
But, on Tuesday, November 26, Friedman wrote a piece that was so particularly incisive – and came across as so laudatory of what Israel has been able to achieve in the past 13 months, that even diehard Friedman critics should be able to take some very meaningful lessons away from that column.
Toward the beginning of what he wrote, Friedman makes what, for most readers of his columns, would probably be perceived as a fairly shocking statement when he writes: “In just the last two months, the Israeli military has inflicted a defeat on Iran that approaches its 1967 Six-Day War defeat of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Full stop.”
He goes on to describe what Israel has been able to do to Hezbollah in the past few months as so destructive of that terrorist organization’s abilities that “Hezbollah and, by extension, Iran have decided to delink themselves from Hamas in Gaza and stop the firing from Lebanon for the first time since Oct. 8, 2023, the day after Hamas invaded Israel.”
Friedman then provides some very interesting information about how effective two attacks Israel launched against Iran – one in April and then one in October, were, both in inflicting tremendous damage to Iran’s capability to defend itself against a full scale Israeli attack – should one be launched, and in undermining Iran’s confidence that it can continue to arm Hezbollah without severe repercussions.
Here is what Friedman wrote:
“There is a reason for this (Hezbollah’s agreeing to a cease fire). Hezbollah’s mother ship has suffered a real blow. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s April strike on Iran eliminated one of four Russian-supplied S-300 surface-to-air missile defense batteries around Tehran, and Israel destroyed the remaining three batteries on Oct. 26. Israel also damaged Iran’s ballistic missile production capabilities and its ability to produce the solid fuel used in long-range ballistic missiles. In addition, according to Axios, Israel’s Oct. 26 strike on Iran, which was a response to an earlier Iranian attack on Israel, also destroyed equipment used to create the explosives that surround uranium in a nuclear device, setting back Iran’s efforts in nuclear weapons research.
“A senior Israeli defense official told me that the Oct. 26 attack on Iran ‘was lethal, precise and a surprise.’ And up to now, the Iranians ‘don’t know technologically how we hit them. So they are at the most vulnerable point they have been in this generation: Hamas is not there for them, Hezbollah is not there for them, their air defenses are not there anymore, their ability to retaliate is sharply diminished, and they are worried about Trump.’ “
Friedman’s column goes on to offer advice to President-elect Trump how to deal with other changing realities in the world, including the rapid pace of artificial intelligence development in which, Friedman points out, Israelis are playing a leading role. But one has to wonder whether anyone in Trump’s circle bothers to read anything written by Friedman. After all, he was very close to President Biden – which would certainly put him into Trump’s enemies’ camp, on top of which he writes for that most hated of all media: The New York Times.
Still, if someone who is as critical of Israel’s government as Friedman has been is capable of pointing out the vastly changed dynamic now permeating the entire Middle East as a result of the huge blows Israel has inflicted both on Iran’s number one proxy in the region – Hezbollah, and on Iran itself, once can more readily understand how Israel’s strategy of taking on different enemies all at the same time has paid off.
I, for one, will admit that I was quite surprised to read Friedman’s analysis – and it leads me to question my own thoughts as to what would happen when Israel opened up a new front in Lebanon at the same time as it was still engaged in Gaza. I had thought that it might lead to a repeat of the 2006 debacle, in which a ground invasion by Israel into Lebanon led to heavy Israeli losses and what was, in effect, a victory for Hezbollah – not by being able to defeat Israel, but simply by surviving that invasion.
This time around though – and we’ll have to wait for military analysts to tell us just how effective the heavy Israeli bombardment of Lebanese areas has been in terms of degrading Hezbollah’s military capabilities, Israel has managed to keep its own casualties relatively low by relying upon bombing of Hezbollah infrastructure. As has been the case in Gaza, however, it’s so difficult to tell what those devastating bombings have actually accomplished in specific terms beyond realizing that they have thoroughly degraded both Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s military capacities. It seems though that the aphorism that “the sum is greater than its parts” is particularly apt in describing what the Israel Air Force has been able to achieve.
While we have been witnessing the wholesale destruction of civilian areas – in both Gaza and Lebanon, it now seems evident that Israeli intelligence has been able to locate terrorist locations with tremendous accuracy. The fact that both Hamas and Hezbollah have been so thoroughly embedded within civilian population areas made it inevitable that, once the IAF embarked upon a relentless campaign to destroy terrorist infrastructure and locations where terrorists were embedded within the civilian population, there would be huge civilian casualties – but ultimately Israel would be able to degrade both Hamas and Hezbollah’s fighting abilities to the point where they have both been neutralized in large part.
The question, of course, is what will now happen as a result of Friedman himself describing Israel’s having forced Hezbollah and Iran to “delink” themselves from Hamas. Hamas is, in effect, nothing more than a mafia type organization, now terrorizing the Palestinian population in Gaza, with its own survival now being its purpose. The Israel Defence Forces seem content to let Hamas carry on its campaign of looting aid trucks and terrorizing the population for its own benefit.
But Hamas fighters, however many may remain, don’t have the same option as Hezbollah’s fighters – which is to retreat behind a defined line north of the Litani River in Lebanon. How many are in the tunnels? How many are embedded within the rest of the Gaza population? If the IDF has an idea what the answers to those questions are, I haven’t seen them.
So, the war in Gaza will likely carry on for some time. It appears that the bombing campaign has thoroughly reduced Hamas’s ability to carry on any effective strikes on Israeli targets, but it is not clear at what point the Israeli government might be willing to accept any sort of a ceasefire. The government’s position has been that a ceasefire can only be entered into when at least the majority of the hostages are released, but frankly, Israel is now operating from such a position of strength vis-a-vis Hamas, that the idea of accepting a ceasefire that would allow Hamas fighters to remain in place seems unconscionable to the vast majority of Israelis. It may seem perverse to think that the government has been willing to sacrifice hostages’ lives for the sake of dealing a final, crushing blow to Hamas, but that’s the sad reality.
Still, who would have thought that Israel would be able to wage successful wars on so many fronts? As Thomas Friedman has noted, Israel has upended the situation in the Middle East, albeit at a very heavy price. And even though I’ve been questioning from the outset the Israeli government’s strategy of seeking total victory over Hamas, given how thoroughly Israel has been able to undermine Hezbollah’s and Iran’s positions, perhaps I was wrong to question Netanyahu’s goal of thoroughly crushing Hamas. Credit has to be given though to the IDF and how much they learned from previous wars with Hamas and Hezbollah.
Amidst all this though, one has to feel great sympathy for the people of Gaza. They are being held to ransom by a gang of thugs and there does not appear to be any way out for them. For their sake, let’s hope that Israel can “finish the job” quickly, although how that can be done remains difficult to know. Perhaps Thomas Friedman, who is always so thoughtful and insightful, can shed some answers to that question as well.
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AfD is predicted to win 40% in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. Should Jews be worried?
(JTA) — BERLIN – Why are so many Germans wringing their hands over Sunday’s election in Saxony-Anhalt?
After all, what impact could 1.7 million registered voters in this former East German state have on a nation with 16 Laender (federal states) and some 60 million voters?
Here’s why Sunday’s election matters:
As it turns out, German voters in Saxony-Anhalt could give the right-wing extremist political party — the Alternative for Germany, or AfD — its most significant achievement since its founding in 2013.
Although the AfD is predicted to win only 40 percent of the vote, that would be enough to affect upcoming general local elections in Lower Saxony on Sept. 13, and elections in the state of Mecklenburg-Pomerania and the city-state of Berlin on Sept. 20.
There is also an outside chance it could open the door to an AfD-led government in Saxony-Anhalt, a first for the far right since the end of World War II. Although that is considered unlikely, the party’s state website proclaims: “Everything is possible.”
Voters in this economically depressed state are, pundits say, drawn to the AfD’s anti-immigrant and anti-European Union rhetoric; its promise to expel non-citizens; its focus on German national pride rather than on the dark side of its past; and its ambition to repair relations with Putin’s Russia. Their drumbeat resonates particularly in former east German states, which have suffered since unification with the closing of factories and flight of younger workers to western states.
The AfD has also done well in elections in other former east German states, and increasingly in western ones. Last March, for example, it earned 19% of the popular vote in elections in Baden-Wuerttemburg, nearly doubling its previous tally there. In the 2025 federal election, it leapt to second place next to the conservative Christian Democratic Union led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2005-2021. Opinion polls show the AfD is the leading party, if there were to be federal elections today.
While some observers note that the party’s agenda on national issues could not be implemented, they are troubled by the party’s goals on the state level.
Stephan Kramer, president of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency in the state of Thuringia, and former general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told the JTA that the main concern is with the power the party could wield “over the interior ministry, police, the state intelligence service, education, appointments and the handling of sensitive information.”
“For the first time, the party could use the machinery of a state government and thereby gain substantially greater political and institutional influence at the federal level,” he said.
Banning the AfD would be a painstaking process, thanks to post-war protections of free speech. Former West Germany banned only two political parties: a neo-Nazi one in 1952, and a far-left Communist party in 1956. Later attempts to ban neo-Nazi parties stumbled on legal hurdles, and many politicians fear to try again, lest the AfD make hay of a failure.
Support for the AfD fits right in with trends on the European and UK level: According to the latest survey of European far-left, far-right and populist parties published by the PopuList research group, nearly a quarter of European and UK voters back far-right parties today, up from 5% in 1995. According to the Guardian newspaper, the biggest surge in support came in national elections in France and the UK in 2024, and Germany in 2025.
Here’s why AfD votes might not matter, yet:
A key difference from U.S. state elections is that “voters do not directly elect the equivalent of a governor,” Paulina Fröhlich, senior expert for democracy at the Gütersloh-based Bertelsmann Foundation, told the JTA. “Instead, the state parliament elects a state premier after the parties have built a coalition or secured enough support. So, the party that wins the most votes does not necessarily lead the government.”
In 1980, the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), won 44.5% of the vote, but the Social Democratic Party (SPD) with 42.9% and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) with 10.6% support built a coalition government.
Two years ago in the state of Thuringia, the AfD became the first far-right party to get the most votes in a state election since World War II, but was blocked from forming a coalition.
Similarly, the likely outcome of Sunday’s Saxony-Anhalt election will be a coalition of minority parties that together exceed 50% of the vote; the AfD, despite a significant electoral achievement, will not be able to pull together the needed majority to take power.
It can take days, weeks, even months before a state or federal government is formed, including appointment of the minister-president or chancellor, and ministers dealing with education, policing and culture (and foreign policy, on the federal level). After the CDU and CSU won Germany’s federal election in February 2025 with only 28.5 percent of the vote, it took until early April for them to form a government with the SPD, as they argued over policy differences. But neither party would work with the AfD, which actually came in second
Most Germans still reject the AfD’s message. Several states have classified the party as right-wing extremist, a designation that its leaders have opposed in court. And there are calls to ban the party, including by prominent Jews such as Charlotte Knobloch, 93-year-old former chairwoman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and head of the Jewish community of Munich and Upper Bavaria.
There has been much media buzz over an interview that Knobloch, who survived the Holocaust in hiding with a German Christian family, gave to Stern magazine. “Even the Nazi Party started small and tried out what was possible,” and now AfD politicians “are testing the limits of what is acceptable,” said Knobloch, arguing for a ban: “Everything that could help should be tried.”
Unlike in the United States, German elections include many political parties – from the large, mainstream ones to those on the fringes, which usually fail to meet the 5% vote threshold required to have seats in the parliament.
Even if the AfD receives a plurality this time, it is highly unlikely that it will rule the state. That’s because virtually no one else will work with them. Mainstream democratic parties have set up a “firewall” to that end. So the probable outcome will be a government built through a coalition of the remaining parties.
But this year, even some of the previous top parties are teetering on the edge of the 5% threshold, polls say.
Should the past winners – the CDU, and possibly the center-left Social Democratic Party, the center-right Free Democratic Party, and the progressive Green Party – make it past the threshold, they are expected to build that minority coalition, even holding their noses to do so: The CDU is even expected to seek informal support from the communist Left Party.
Thus the procedure in Saxony-Anhalt is likely to echo what happened in the neighboring state of Thuringia two years ago. While the AfD got the biggest piece of the electoral pie, it did not gain a majority of seats in the parliament. So the mainstream democratic parties were able to form a coalition government.
What do the AfD stand for? Why are they so popular?
Its appeal “comes from a mixture of protest, distrust of established parties, concerns about migration and social change, and a sense among some voters that [AfD] articulates grievances others avoid,” said Kramer of Thuringia’s domestic intelligence agency.
“The AfD officially presents itself as supportive of Jewish life and Israel,” he added. But the platform “explicitly demands a complete ban on ritual slaughter without exception, which would directly affect Jewish religious practice. AfD leaders also use world conspiracy arguments and antisemitic language, we should not forget.”
It’s illegal in Germany to celebrate the crimes of National Socialism, to repeat Nazi slogans and other propaganda. But AfD leaders “do not always stay on the safe side of the law,” Kramer added. For example, Björn Höcke, who heads the party’s parliamentary faction in the neighboring state of Thuringia, “was convicted for repeating the banned Nazi stormtrooper slogan ‘Alles für Deutschland’ [everything for Germany], and the Federal Court of Justice rejected his appeal in August 2025, making that conviction final.”
Höcke “is a certified history teacher, so he knows what he is doing,” Kramer added. “I would not describe the AfD simply as a party that carefully stays legal. Rather, parts of it repeatedly test those boundaries, and in some cases demonstrably cross them, [moving the] boundaries of what is acceptable to say in public and what is not.”
In Saxony-Anhalt, the party is “classified as definitely right-wing extremist” and is under observation by the domestic intelligence service, Maik Reichel, director of Saxony-Anhalt’s State Agency for Civic Education, told JTA. “And I think we also have the most extreme AfD state branch.”
The party wants to “restrict state-sponsored [school] trips to memorial sites, which they say turn young people into ‘memorial zombies,’ ” Reichel added.
“Our mission is to provide pluralistic civic education” and the AfD is against diversity, Reichel said. The AfD also takes a nationalist perspective, “which means we leave out important dictatorial, anti-democratic periods that were truly terrible in Germany,” he explained.
The main architect of the AfD’s platform in Saxony-Anhalt, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, is known for wanting “more Bismarck, less Hitler.” Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), who served as Germany’s first chancellor from 1871-1890, is seen as a hero by some German nationalists.
Despite such concerns, the AfD gained in the polls. At the EU parliament level, the AfD has 15 members, the largest contingent in the far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations group.
Should the AfD win an absolute majority on Sunday, they would most certainly appoint their state party leader Ulrich Siegmund, age 35, as minister president. He is described as personable, even affable.
But his messages are not so friendly, critics say. Siegmund says his “100-day immediate action plan” includes a promise to “deport from minute one” many foreign nationals, including professional specialists; to cut funding to pro-democracy NGOs; to crack down on diversity programs in the state; and to cut taxes that support such programs.
Whatever the final tally, the lead-up to tomorrow’s election has made it clear: A ballot cast for the AfD is no longer dismissible as a “protest vote.” Other mainstream parties are taking a plunge, while the AfD’s star continues to rise.
Ultimately, the other parties have to regain the people’s trust, said Reichel. In Saxony-Anhalt that means “solving the problems that concern people in a way that they actually notice a difference.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Hollywood’s Jews take sides in Mark Ruffalo-Paramount antisemitism row
(JTA) — Some 170 notable Jewish personalities have released an open letter defending actor and producer Mark Ruffalo, who has been accused of antisemitism for his comments on Paramount Skydance’s pending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Entertainers, rabbis and a physician who is featured in a new documentary about doctors treating Palestinians in Gaza signed the letter released Wednesday, which called the attacks against Ruffalo a “false and dangerous weaponization of charges of antisemitism.” George Clooney also defended Ruffalo on Thursday.
Signatories of the pro-Ruffalo petition include “Broad City” creators Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer; celebrated filmmakers Joel Coen, Jonathan Glazer and Todd Haynes; Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner; and actors including Hannah Einbinder, Joaquin Phoenix and Debra Winger.
In late August, Ruffalo, the award-winning actor and progressive activist, went on social media to link Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, the chief driver of the looming Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, to tech giant Oracle, which Ruffalo claimed is responsible for “an apartheid system of oppression” in Gaza.
Oracle is owned by Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest men; both Ellisons are Jewish and prominent Israel supporters. Oracle also owns a stake in the social media network TikTok’s U.S. operations, and has long been a target of progressives who point to the company’s links to, and public support for, Israel.
“Larry Ellison will own most of ‘Para Bros,’” Ruffalo wrote in the post, which is no longer available, according to a screenshot reproduced by the Hollywood Reporter. The “Spotlight” and Marvel star also called Larry Ellison a “classic oligarch” who is “crushing workers and consolidating the wealth of the world for their own power and concentrated dominance.”
The $110 billion merger is under adjudication in federal court in California following an antitrust lawsuit filed by 12 state attorneys general and the Writers Guild of America. As backlash to the merger has steadily grown across Hollywood and in political and media spaces, Paramount at least since June has been pushing the idea that opposition to the merger has had an antisemitic element.
The company seized on Ruffalo’s comments, immediately releasing a lengthy statement to media after his controversial social media post that accused the actor of invoking “antisemitic tropes,” adding, “This simply exposes the true motivation of some who have advocated opposition to this transaction.”
Several leading Jewish groups have also said his post stepped beyond legitimate criticism of the merger and into classic antisemitic rhetoric about Jewish wealth and power.
In an August statement, the head of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles said the actor’s comments “combined Jewish wealth, media control, secret technology and sinister global power,” drawing on “recognizable antisemitic tropes with a long and dangerous history.” Other LA-based Jewish activist groups, including Creative Community For Peace and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, have also condemned his comments.
Speaking amid the unfolding controversy about Ruffalo and his use of the word genocide to describe Israel’s campaign in Gaza, “Fauda” co-creator Avi Isaacharoff called him “a rare combination” of “ignorant” and “stupid.”
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has reached out to Shani Rosenzweig, Ruffalo’s agent and a prominent Jewish entertainment figure in her own right, for comment and a Ruffalo interview request. Rosenzweig did not respond to either request.
Ruffalo has found support from several progressive Jewish figures beyond the entertainment industry, including IfNotNow co-founder Simone Zimmerman, Israeli Holocaust historian Raz Segal and Jewish Currents editor Peter Beinart.
In their open letter defending Ruffalo, the progressive Jewish cohort argued the actor was right to draw links between Israel’s behavior and the merger.
“Pointing out the crucial connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Hollywood is the exact opposite of antisemitism,” the letter reads. “It is, for us, the very essence of Jewish ethical duty.” The letter points to specific statements from Larry Ellison, and Oracle executives, describing their surveillance and artificial-intelligence technological ventures and their positive relationship with Israel.
Other entertainment figures have tried to thread a more careful needle. Oscar-winning filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan, who has directed Ruffalo in two movies and was at one point developing an American remake of the hit Israeli TV series “Shtisel,” defended the actor from antisemitism charges this week while also noting, “I disagree profoundly with many of his positions on the Middle East, Israel, Gaza, and Iran’s constellation of fanatical Islamist fundamentalist proxies.”
“But Mark and I have been friends for over 30 years,” Lonergan continued in his letter to the Hollywood Reporter. “The notion that he is antisemitic is overtly preposterous, and the accusation itself a cynical and disgusting lie.”
Ruffalo is soon scheduled to attend the Toronto International Film Festival for the Sept. 10 premiere of the biopic “Being Heumann,” about Jewish-American disability rights activist Judy Heumann, in which he co-stars.
Opposition to David Ellison’s bid to combine two historic media giants, each having recently weathered smaller mergers of their own, has grown considerably in recent months. Those objections have come both from Hollywood rank-and-file concerned about further industry consolidation, as well as from political and media figures voicing objections to Ellison’s close ties to President Donald Trump and his intentions with Warner’s flagship news property, CNN.
The merger was initially thought to be on track to be finalized this fall with Trump’s blessing. The president has publicly championed the merger, and his Justice Department approved the deal in June. But talks have ground to a halt following the antitrust lawsuit. The fate of the merger is now in question, with Paramount having agreed to a trial in March 2027 and on the hook for a $7-million-per-day “ticking fee” it had previously agreed to pay out to shareholders if the deal failed to close by this October.
Prior to Ruffalo’s post, Ellison himself published a New York Times op-ed defending his merger plans.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Spanish far-right activists use Nazi-style salutes in anti-migrant protests
(JTA) — MADRID — Dozens of far-right activists raised their arms in Nazi-style salutes and sang a Spanish fascist anthem in the heart of Madrid on Wednesday, amid protests against the government’s handling of migration.
Between 60 and 70 members of Núcleo Nacional, an ultra-nationalist anti-immigrant group, participated in mass demonstrations of tens of thousands of people across Spain, a spokesperson for the group told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The protests were in response to an influx of migrants from Morocco into Ceuta, a Spanish territory in North Africa.
The broader demonstrations in Madrid were called by Spain’s conservative People’s Party and far-right Vox party, drawing about 50,000 people to the streets, according to government estimates. The protests were planned for Ceuta Day, a holiday marking the Portuguese conquest of Ceuta from the Marinid Sultanate of Morocco in the 15th century, beginning centuries of Portuguese and later Spanish rule.
Núcleo Nacional activists were shown on video making the outstretched-arm gesture associated with neo-Nazi movements and chanting, “Ceuta is not for sale, Ceuta will defend itself.” They also sang the song “Cara al Sol,” a fascist anthem from 1935 that became central to the regime of former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who ruled from 1939 to 1975. Núcleo Nacional denied a link between their gesture and Nazi history.
The demonstration ended in clashes between protesters and police, with four people arrested and four police officers injured, according to local authorities. Protesters were also shown on camera grabbing, pushing and cursing at multiple journalists who were covering the rally.
Francisco Martín Aguirre, the delegate of the Spanish government in Madrid, condemned “the violent acts that occurred at the end of the gatherings in Madrid.”
“All respect to those who legitimately and peacefully protest for the cause they deem fit,” he said on X. “Violence is never the way and those who daily incite it are also responsible.”
A spokesperson for Núcleo Nacional told JTA that the group was not performing a Nazi salute, but an “Iberian or Roman salute.”
“It represents our ancestors,” the spokesperson said. They added that the group was protesting to “support the people of Ceuta.”
The outstretched arm salute in Nazi Germany was inspired by a gesture popularized in the 1920s in Italy’s fascist movement, which later allied with the Nazis. The Italians called it a Roman salute, though researchers say there is no evidence linking it to ancient Rome. Franco also instituted the gesture in 1937, then instructed Spaniards to abandon it in 1945 after the Axis powers lost World War II.
More than 72,000 Moroccan migrants crossed into Ceuta between July 30 and July 31, with at least 100 people dying in the attempt. Most have returned to Morocco, but some 5,000 remain in makeshift shelters or on the streets and beaches, inflaming tensions between migrants and local residents and heaping pressure on the left-wing government of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
Núcleo Nacional has about 2,000 members, many from neo-Nazi and Francoist groups that lost their capacity to mobilize, according to the Global Network on Extremism and Technology. The group has grown rapidly and opened four regional branches since its founding in 2024. Earlier this year, it registered a political party as Noviembre Nacional.
The group pledges to defend the white race, Christianity, the Spanish nation and Europe against foreign and domestic enemies, including migrants, internal independence movements and “multicultural globalism.” Spain’s Civil Guard last year opened an investigation into Núcleo Nacional after it posted a video calling for groups to “actively defend” the streets and “jointly fight against the invasion” of immigration.
Núcleo Nacional leaders have also denied the Holocaust and suggested that Israel orchestrates migration to Europe, according to the Observatory of Antisemitism, a Spanish watchdog organization. Núcleo Nacional said in a 2024 statement, “Any Spanish patriot should not forget that it is Israel that is financing the Maghrebi invasion to which all of Europe is being subjected.”
On Núcleo Nacional’s social media channels, it has claimed that it is targeted by “the Jewish-Zionist lobby in Spain” and accused the “international Jewish-American financial elite” of “buying up Spain at bargain prices while ruining us.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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