Dare I ask why you care what some 20-year-old musician with foot-long green fingernails and whatever the hair color of the day is—purple, blue, pink, pick the color—why would you think that that person has something important to teach you about geopolitics? Particularly Middle Eastern geopolitics?

I’m Shana Meyerson and I am unapologetically Jewish.

Now, before you jump down my throat and say, “Why should I care what some yoga instructor from Los Angeles has to say about Middle Eastern geopolitics?”, I’ve actually been in this fight in times of war, in times of peace. And by the way, if you don’t know that there had been a constant, incessant war on Israel and the Jews even before the state of Israel was created, then you have no dog in this fight.

But I have actually been highly involved in Israeli-US relations and politics for more than 20 years. That includes extraordinarily high-level briefings from the toppest…the toppest. That’s why you should listen to me. Because I say words like “toppest”.

But then again so does the President.

…high-level briefings from the highest echelons of both the diplomatic and the political, not to mention the military, leadership of both Israel and America to understand this conflict as well as, of course, deep historical knowledge.

So, that is why even though by profession I used to be a yoga instructor, I’m really not anymore because the world of love and light cut me out of that world because, you know, genocidal baby killer.

I really want to know why you care. Why some rando actor who wears tights in a superhero movie is the guy that you go to to understand what is going on in Israel.

And here’s the thing: they are completely unserious about what they advocate for, what they have thrown the full weight of their lives behind. This conflict of Jews against terrorists that consumes their entire being.

Nothing is more important to them than a tiny strip of land that is controlled by bloodthirsty Islamic terrorists. There’s no other word for it.

This also happens to be a civilization that happened to celebrate on October 7th. Hamas and thousands of the innocent FAKESTINIANS that followed them into southern Israel that day, dragged more than 250 Israeli hostages, dead and alive, into into…whatever…Gaza. I was going to say Hamas captivity but honestly it was just Gaza.

They were normal residents of Gaza, doctors, school teachers, lawyers that were holding these hostages in their closets.

Nonetheless, for some reason, you seem to think that some actor or some singer with the knowledge of a poster—I mean, that’s as far as they go—is the person that you should trust for your geopolitical answers.

Hollywood’s Publicity Loop and Anti-Israel Trends

Now, you could say, “Oh, you know, these people really know what they’re talking about.”

Let me just mention a few things.

One is, if you happen to be one of these useful idiots who has staked their entire claim on talking about the genocide in Gaza, well, why don’t you watch these celebrities’ social media and see how very, very popular it’s made them?

You do know that Hollywood is one big popularity contest, right?

Why should you believe me?

Well, I also spent ten years in the film industry. So, I know The Industry and I know the people.

And I’ll tell you that when I was in The Industry, which was like in the ‘90s—yes, I’m that old—there was no anti-Israel sentiment. In fact, back then it was cool to be a Jew.

I remember we had a client, one particular client, who was this very sort of heavy African-American man and he would walk in spouting Yiddish. And it was just so classic Hollywood.

Anyway, he was an amicable sort.

But if you have somebody—and I don’t even like to say their names, you know why? Because they don’t deserve it. They don’t deserve the fame that they are getting for being useful idiots—but all they have to do is post anything anything antisemitic, anything anti-Israel, anything antizionist, and they know that the whole internet is going to go crazy.

50% of the people will love it. 50% of the people who will hate it.

And anybody who’s ever been in the world of Hollywood or PR knows there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

So, as long as the whole world is up in arms either for you or against you, you just won.

So, in this infinite popularity feedback loop, doesn’t it make sense that they’re going to just keep posting and posting to rile people up and get their name on every single person’s mouth?

Some of the most popular anti-Israel people out there are people that nobody even knew their names before all of this happened. And I will argue none of them even knew about anything having to do with the Israeli-FAKESTINIAN conflict before October 7th.

And by the way, I want to hope that they don’t even know what happened on October 7th because the choice that they’re making is to choose barbarism over civilization. They don’t know the difference between terror and a war on terror. And if these are the people that you’re looking to for your geopolitical analysis and advice, what does that say about you?

Institutional Bias and Institutional Allegations: UN Resolutions and Changing Definitions

Now, you could say, “Oh, well, it’s not just them. It’s also all of, like, say, the United Nations.”

Well, if you don’t know that there’s a United Nations conspiracy against Israel, again, it’s time to crack open a book. Not just Wikipedia, which by the way has been completely hijacked by anti-Israel elements. That’s well known and a whole bunch of the editors were actually kicked off the platform because of it.

But if you look at the UN, well over 50% (I don’t know the figure because I’m driving right now), 60, 70, whatever, well over 50% of all UN Security Resolutions are against the Jewish State.

Now let’s think about that.

That means if you take all of those security resolutions against such bad actors as, whatever, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Nigeria, go down the list, Cuba. You take all of these and every single country in the entire world literally and put them together. There are more security resolutions against Israel than all of them combined.

Now, if you cannot think critically enough to understand that there is no country on earth that is worse than every other country combined, if you’re literally sitting here nodding your head, smiling, well, then you’ve got some sort of brain disease that is completely corrupted and brainwashed.

And there’s no other possible explanation for the numbers, because it is impossible for one country which happens to be a democratic nation whose citizens have equal rights under the law and who have taken more stringent measures to diminish civilian casualties and suffering in Gaza than any other war in the history of the world.

If you don’t understand that the ICJ and the ICC have been actively changing the definitions, literally changing the definitions of what genocide and starvation or food insecurity, not to mention how they look at apartheid…they literally—and say it out loud—change the definitions to make it fit what’s going on in Gaza because it doesn’t apply to Gaza. There is no way that you can say that this is not a conspiracy of dunces.

Media Coverage and Suppressed Stories

Not to mention the entire media apparatus. I did a whole show with Josh Levs about this—who spent 10 years at CNN and 10 years at NPR talking about the institutional bias against Israel.

For example, CNN just did this great interview with Evyatar David, who was the Israeli hostage that you saw digging his own grave, looking like ten times worse than a Holocaust survivor. Well, CNN instantly buried that story.

You can’t find it anywhere.

And in fact, the only place that I found it posted was on the reporter’s personal X page. Next day, gone. I think she archived it.

I shouldn’t say gone because I looked on her page and I tried everything and I couldn’t find it. But then after about 10 minutes of searching because I know I had seen it the day before, I finally found it. So, she put it into some sort of archive off her front facing feed.

Why?

Because CNN does not want you to know that Hamas are not just bad guys. They are actually satanic demons. They are not human. They are absolute animals. And I mean that in the worst possible way. Not like cute dogs and cats that you have in your home or baby goats who are really cute and precious.

Comparing Pro-Palestine and Pro-Israel Advocacy: Analyzing Motivations on Both Sides

And so you might also say, “Well then, Shana, why do you think that if these movie stars that are in this popularity BS contest to see who can cry the most tears for the people of Gaza while totally throwing all Jews, not just Israelis, but all Jews under the bus, why would you say that they’re in it for popularity, but the pro-Israel people are not in it for the same thing?

Okay, I’ll give you that one. I actually do think that there there are people, famous people in the pro-Israel camp, who are certainly capitalizing on this. It’s a much smaller share of the market, so you get a lot more, a lot bigger percentage of the pie.

But there are two major differences.

The first one is they’re not on the popular team. So already they’re swimming upstream and making a very, very specific decision.

Whatever attention it gets them, great. But they’re going upstream. They didn’t choose the path of least resistance.

Second of all, you have one side, the pro-FAKESTINIAN, pro- Hamas side, that is literally relying on lies in order to go to great lengths to defend Islamic terrorists, the people who beheaded people and raped women after they massacred them and tied families together and burned them alive, not to mention making male family members commit sexual violence on their own relatives at gunpoint.

If you don’t understand the difference between that and Israel’s war against that, I mean, you have no concept of warfare or of terror.

So, you have these pro-Hamas useful idiots who are nothing more than modern-day antisemites. You could say you hate that word or the word doesn’t mean anything. Yes, it does. If it didn’t mean anything, you wouldn’t get so up in arms about my using it. Everybody knows exactly what it means. It’s Jew Hatred.

Call it what you want, but they are fighting against Jews and the one and only Jewish State, and they seek to destroy it. Hard stop.

Defending National Rights vs. Supporting Terror

What’s the difference from the pro-Israel community?

They’re not out there calling for death to anyone.

They’re not calling for the massacre of anyone.

They’re not standing there and defending literal atrocities.

What they’re doing is defending the Jewish people’s right to the same civil liberties and protections as every other human being.

Because if you don’t understand, Jews are human beings.

That’s how it works.

And they are fighting for Israel’s right to defend themselves in the manner that any nation on earth would do exactly the same. They would do exactly the same.

They would do worse. They would do much worse.

There’s no country on earth that would put up with the atrocities that occurred on 10/7 plus the leaders of Hamas who have said over and over again that they will commit as many 10/7s as they can until they destroy the Jewish State. People have a problem that Netanyahu made some biblical reference to Amalech and yet they have no problem with Hamas members who are literally vowing, and only exist, to destroy the entire Jewish State.

Do you not understand the difference?

Call for Independent Research and Final Thoughts

And back to the movie stars, I just have to finish off on this.

If you really want to understand this conflict, if you want to be a part of this game, if you want to be anything other than a sheeple baa’ing to the masses, then you need to get serious.

You need to do some independent research and try to learn some facts.

You want to scream about genocide, read what genocide is and then find out what Israel has actually done.

If you want to find out about starvation or deliberate starvation, look at what UNICEF just printed about the starvation and genocide in Gaza.

Spoiler alert: there’s less food insecurity in Gaza among children—and I’m sure among adults, but they only measure children—than there is in many First World Nations.

Does that matter to you?

How much do these facts matter to you?

Or are you so enthralled with the intoxication of the anti-Israel famous people who are capitalizing on your support, on your blind support of their unfounded and evil accusations.

I don’t care how well-meaning they are. I don’t care what their intentions are. I don’t care if they honestly and truly believe that all they are doing is supporting the people of Gaza.

If they think that it proves that they have not done their homework. That should be reason enough to ignore what they say.

But if that’s not enough to ignore what they say and you truly believe that movie stars know more than experts about the war in Gaza, well, then your opinion is not worth the finger that you tweet with.

__________________________________________________________

Am Yisrael isn’t just the people of Israel. It’s the Nation of Israel, within Eretz Yisrael and throughout the Diaspora. If you are part of Am Yisrael—or a precious ally—please join the Unapologetically Jewish community.

✡️ THE UNAPOLOGETICALLY JEWISH PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ShanaMeyerson

🪂 🤸 THE “A PARATROOPER AND A YOGI WALK INTO A BAR...” PODCAST WHICH I CO-HOST WITH THE ICONIC : https://www.youtube.com/@ParatrooperAndYogi

🎥 THE YOGA OF WAR PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEk7dn2pk4QXmLMnBCB80yQXIIcBDYsi0

🔊 All three podcasts can be found on Substack, YouTube or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

On this episode of the Unapologetically Jewish podcast, Andrew Fox and Shana Meyerson examine the societal costs to a world that is gripped by social media and programmed by AI to hate Israel and, quite possibly, the Jews.

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📝 ANDREW FOX “THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DISINFORMATION: STRATEGIES OF INFLUENCE AND COGNITIVE IMPACTS”: https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/HJS-The-Psychology-of-Disinformation-Report.pdf

Andrew Fox is a frontline conflict researcher and former British Army Major who served 16 years in the Parachute Regiment, including three tours in Afghanistan—one with US Army Special Forces—as well as deployments to Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and the Middle East.

He holds degrees in Law & Politics, War Studies & Military History, and Psychology, and is currently pursuing a PhD in War Studies examining lessons from the October 7 and Ukraine wars. From 2021–24, he was a senior lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, teaching War Studies, Behavioural Science, military theory, and leadership.

Specialising in defence, the Middle East, and the psychology of disinformation, Andrew is a senior associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and Euro-Med Middle East Council. He also sits on the international advisory boards of NGO Monitor and the International Legal Forum.

Andrew visited Gaza twice in 2024 and captured Hezbollah tunnels in Lebanon. In 2025, he became the first neutral researcher invited to observe Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution sites and conducted frontline research in Ukraine.

He is a regular international media contributor, appearing on Fox News, Sky News, BBC Newsnight, Channel 12, i24, GB News, and others, with writing published in The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph, New York Post, and Tablet. He has spoken at the British Houses of Parliament, French Senate, and United Nations and writes a bestselling Substack.

His honors include Sandhurst’s Dewan Misri Chand Award, recognition from the World Zionist Organization, inclusion on The Algemeiner’s J100 list of People Positively Influencing Jewish Life, and a commendation from Ukraine’s 110th Brigade.

Andrew co-hosts The Brink podcast with Jake Wallis Simons, and A Paratrooper And A Yogi Walk Into A Bar podcast with Shana Meyerson.

He can be found at:

✍️ SUBSTACK: mrandrewfox.substack.com
❌ X: https://x.com/mr_andrew_fox
📸 INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/andrewfox.online
🎥 YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@mrandrewfox⁩
👤 FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61586943465890
✔️ TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfox.online

🇮🇱 ANDREW x SHANA ON THE YOGA OF WAR PODCAST: https://youtube.com/live/ACRfg2UtIpw
https://youtube.com/live/lmC1JnlYDQw

Find Shana at:

✡️ UNAPOLOGETICALLY JEWISH PODCAST: youtube.com/@shanameyerson
🪂🤸A PARATROOPER AND A YOGI WALK INTO A BAR PODCAST WITH ANDREW FOX: youtube.com/@ParatrooperAndYogi
🇮🇱 YOGA OF WAR PODCAST: tinyurl.com/4225f949
✍️ SUBSTACK: shanameyerson.substack.com
❌ X: x.com/ShanaMeyerson
👤 FACEBOOK: facebook.com/YOGAthletica
📸 INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/shanaisunapologeticallyjewish

Please consider supporting the show 🙏
GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/9d5262f8
Venmo: @miniyogis
Zelle: shana@yogathletica.com
And thank you! 🙏

🇮🇱 👕 Get your Unapologetically Jewish “Am Yisrael Chai Five” Shirts: https://unapologetically-jewish-shop.fourthwall.com👚 🇮🇱

__________________________________________________________

Am Yisrael isn’t just the people of Israel. It’s the Nation of Israel, within Eretz Yisrael and throughout the Diaspora. If you are part of Am Yisrael—or a precious ally—please join the Unapologetically Jewish community.

✡️ THE UNAPOLOGETICALLY JEWISH PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ShanaMeyerson

🪂 🤸 THE “A PARATROOPER AND A YOGI WALK INTO A BAR...” PODCAST WHICH I CO-HOST WITH THE ICONIC : https://www.youtube.com/@ParatrooperAndYogi

🎥 THE YOGA OF WAR PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEk7dn2pk4QXmLMnBCB80yQXIIcBDYsi0

🔊 All three podcasts can be found on Substack, YouTube or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

I realize that sounds very bad.

I just felt like lolling in bed, then getting a car wash and a free Starbucks was a better way to spend my special morning.

I realize that sounds very bad.

But I’m not wasting this day.

First, I made this video:

Yes, modern Zionism and I were born on the same day and that’s something.

I was born a Zionist.

Second, I am writing this article. A quick discourse on prayer in the Holy Land and, I guess, beyond, as here in LA, I’m pretty far from the action.

So, first things first, as I go into the second thing…

It’s said in Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, that on your birthday, you have special powers to bless others in a tangible and meaningful way. Okay, so this is my Gregorian birthday, not my Jewish one, but I am a Gregorian kind of Angeleno, so here goes.

My blessing is that Am Yisrael should know the peace that we have prayed for for millennia. That Jewish pride in all that we are and all that we have done and all that we have yet to do and be only continues to grow by the day. By the minute. And that we come together in solidarity and love for our people and our land. It is only then that we become invincible and truly deserving of the blessings God promised to his Chosen People.

And that you should win the lottery and send me (at least) half for having blessed you. 24, 32, 9, 13, 44, 11.

You’re welcome.

Now, about the prayer thing. My birthday, Shabbat, almost High Holidays. I need to stack on this Unapologetically Jewish Daily, as it addresses an Israeli status quo that gets far too little attention. And (I know this will shock you), the attention it does get is profoundly biased against the Jews.

Quick primer:

There’s the Al Aqsa Mosque (as in: Al Aqsa Flood) that was built in a display of dominance and conquest by Muslim imperialists directly on top of the ruins of the First and Second Great Temples: the Temple Mount. The holiest site in Judaism.

Tell me again about the Jewish colonizers.

The atrocities of October 7th were Hamas’s way of defending the sanctity of their beloved Al Aqsa Mosque. Completely fabricated rumors that Israel was planning on building a Third Temple on the Temple Mount were clearly incitement to totally justified barbaric, satanic, sadistic, rabid, genocidal terror inflicted on every Jew they could get their bloody hands on. Because what would possibly be a more appropriate punishment for one people destroying another one’s holy site and then building its own house of worship on top of its rubble?

Anywho…up on the Mount, Jordan (which happens to be about 70% Palestinian, aka Fakestinian) acts as custodian of the waqf, while Israeli police keep the peace.

Sort of weird, right?

Why would you need police to keep the peace at a Mosque?

Oh, don’t be confused. This is in no way parallel to the millions of dollars that synagogues the world over have been spending annually on their own security.

Synagogues have armed guards and police and dogs and all the things in order to keep the terrorist Islamist antizionist antisemitic anti-Israel intersectional genocidal psychopaths from mowing down Jews with semi-automatics as we pray.

Al Aqsa, on the other hand, has the big bad apartheid Israeli police for two reasons. One, to stop Muslim violence and rioting. Yes, at their holy mosque. It’s what they do. Two, to prevent Jews from praying. If you are not familiar with this concept read it again. There are Israeli police on the Temple Mount to ensure that Jews do not pray there.

Sound crazy? Well, it’s because it is.

Sound normal? Well, it may be because you are crazy.

On what planet is praying considered to be an act of aggression? Answer: Planet Islam.

Buuuuuuuuuut…

Only when it’s done by Jews.

As remarkable as it may sound, Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount is actually considered an act of settler violence.

Yeah, really.

And here’s where the double standard comes in. Because it wouldn’t be standard issue Fakestinian BS if there weren’t a double standard involved. And let this be your daily reminder that double standards are antisemitic.

If Jews are committing an act of aggression (or “violence”) by engaging in individual, silent prayer at their holiest site on earth, why isn’t it an act of aggression for Muslims to pray by the hundreds in public parks and squares and streets across the West? For that matter, why is it just innocent people praying when a group of Muslim men deliberately assemble to pray directly outside the windows of a Jewish girls’ school in New York?

Surely, this was an entirely random and innocuous gathering of well-intentioned adherents of the “Religion of Peace.” Of course it was! Which is why CAIR (a Muslim Brotherhood organization with a carefully crafted Acronym of Peace) was quick to accuse City Council Speaker Julie Menin (Jewish) of—what?—you guessed it, Islamophobia for calling these Islamist aggressors out on their own poppycock (mom doesn’t want me cussing anymore, so you can fill in your own cuss words for “poppycock”…the stronger, the better).

Leave a comment

The weaponization of the word Islamophobia is nothing new, the weaponization of inverted accusations against Jews is as old as time, but there is a special depravity involved in the actual weaponization of prayer.

Allah may be smiling right now or laughing in his grave or among his multitude of virgins, but as far as I’m concerned, they can all go to hell.

Sorry, mom.

__________________________________________________________

Am Yisrael isn’t just the people of Israel. It’s the Nation of Israel, within Eretz Yisrael and throughout the Diaspora. If you are part of Am Yisrael—or a precious ally—please join the Unapologetically Jewish community.

✡️ THE UNAPOLOGETICALLY JEWISH PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ShanaMeyerson

🪂 🤸 THE “A PARATROOPER AND A YOGI WALK INTO A BAR...” PODCAST WHICH I CO-HOST WITH THE ICONIC : https://www.youtube.com/@ParatrooperAndYogi

🎥 THE YOGA OF WAR PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEk7dn2pk4QXmLMnBCB80yQXIIcBDYsi0

🔊 All three podcasts can be found on Substack, YouTube or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

On this episode of the Unapologetically Jewish podcast, Andrew Fox and Shana Meyerson discuss not only the nature of disinformation but how it is used to manipulate your emotions and hijack your mind in the process.

Share

📝 ANDREW FOX “THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DISINFORMATION: STRATEGIES OF INFLUENCE AND COGNITIVE IMPACTS”: https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/HJS-The-Psychology-of-Disinformation-Report.pdf

Andrew Fox is a frontline conflict researcher and former British Army Major who served 16 years in the Parachute Regiment, including three tours in Afghanistan—one with US Army Special Forces—as well as deployments to Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and the Middle East.

He holds degrees in Law & Politics, War Studies & Military History, and Psychology, and is currently pursuing a PhD in War Studies examining lessons from the October 7 and Ukraine wars. From 2021–24, he was a senior lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, teaching War Studies, Behavioural Science, military theory, and leadership.

Specialising in defence, the Middle East, and the psychology of disinformation, Andrew is a senior associate fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and Euro-Med Middle East Council. He also sits on the international advisory boards of NGO Monitor and the International Legal Forum.

Andrew visited Gaza twice in 2024 and captured Hezbollah tunnels in Lebanon. In 2025, he became the first neutral researcher invited to observe Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution sites and conducted frontline research in Ukraine.

He is a regular international media contributor, appearing on Fox News, Sky News, BBC Newsnight, Channel 12, i24, GB News, and others, with writing published in The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph, New York Post, and Tablet. He has spoken at the British Houses of Parliament, French Senate, and United Nations and writes a bestselling Substack.

His honors include Sandhurst’s Dewan Misri Chand Award, recognition from the World Zionist Organization, inclusion on The Algemeiner’s J100 list of People Positively Influencing Jewish Life, and a commendation from Ukraine’s 110th Brigade.

Andrew co-hosts The Brink podcast with Jake Wallis Simons, and A Paratrooper And A Yogi Walk Into A Bar podcast with Shana Meyerson.

He can be found at:

✍️ SUBSTACK: https://mrandrewfox.substack.com
❌ X: https://x.com/mr_andrew_fox
📸 INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/andrewfox.online
🎥 YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@mrandrewfox⁩
👤 FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61586943465890
✔️ TIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfox.online

🇮🇱 ANDREW x SHANA ON THE YOGA OF WAR PODCAST: https://youtube.com/live/ACRfg2UtIpw
https://youtube.com/live/lmC1JnlYDQw

Find Shana at:

✡️ UNAPOLOGETICALLY JEWISH PODCAST: youtube.com/@shanameyerson
🪂🤸A PARATROOPER AND A YOGI WALK INTO A BAR PODCAST WITH ANDREW FOX: youtube.com/@ParatrooperAndYogi
🇮🇱 YOGA OF WAR PODCAST: tinyurl.com/4225f949
✍️ SUBSTACK: shanameyerson.substack.com
❌ X: x.com/ShanaMeyerson
👤 FACEBOOK: facebook.com/YOGAthletica
📸 INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/shanaisunapologeticallyjewish

Please consider supporting the show 🙏
GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/9d5262f8
Venmo: @miniyogis
Zelle: shana@yogathletica.com
And thank you! 🙏

🇮🇱 👕 Get your Unapologetically Jewish “Am Yisrael Chai Five” Shirts: https://unapologetically-jewish-shop.fourthwall.com 👚 🇮🇱

__________________________________________________________

Am Yisrael isn’t just the people of Israel. It’s the Nation of Israel, within Eretz Yisrael and throughout the Diaspora. If you are part of Am Yisrael—or a precious ally—please join the Unapologetically Jewish community.

✡️ THE UNAPOLOGETICALLY JEWISH PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ShanaMeyerson

🪂 🤸 THE “A PARATROOPER AND A YOGI WALK INTO A BAR...” PODCAST WHICH I CO-HOST WITH THE ICONIC : https://www.youtube.com/@ParatrooperAndYogi

🎥 THE YOGA OF WAR PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEk7dn2pk4QXmLMnBCB80yQXIIcBDYsi0

🔊 All three podcasts can be found on Substack, YouTube or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

Fill-In-The-Blank Derangement Syndrome is tearing down Western democracies one by one, where governance is no longer about serving the people but destroying your political opponent.

Take Israel, for example.

Why not? Everyone holds Israel up as the example of everything wrong in the world anyway, so why stop now?

You can call it political naïveté, but I prefer naive to suicidal any day of the week. Today happens to be one of those days, so allow me to expound.

Perhaps you’ve heard: Israel has elections coming up. Or perhaps you live in a cave on a mountain in a jungle on an uninhabited island right in the middle of an ocean.

On October 27, 2026, eight days before another random and inconsequential country has their midterms, Israel will elect a new Parliament (Knesset) and Prime Minister.

Well, to be more accurate, a new Knesset and a new or old Prime Minister. No term limits means Benjamin Netanyahu may very well be PM again but for one thing: Bennett and Lapid and Eisenkot and Gantz and Liberman and Golan and Tropper. That’s Middle East math. Seven are one in Israel sort of like Mahmoud Abbas’s 21 years in office are really just four.

HERE’S THE THING ABOUT ISRAELI GOVERNMENT

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This is a simple transcript of July 31st’s Unapologetically Jewish Dailies, which you can find on my Unapologetically Jewish YouTube channel. This is my unapologetic response to our enemies who want so desperately for me to tremble. Won’t happen. If you like my content, please consider subscribing here and on YouTube. Deeply appreciated. And now for the daily…

Sorry. No, I will not apologize.

I will not apologize for myself.

I will not apologize for my nations.

I don’t apologize for the United States of America. And I certainly don’t apologize for the Jewish State of Israel.

I’m Shana Meyerson and I am unapologetically Jewish.

If you are with me in this war of words, you know that there is a relentless campaign to make us say the thing out loud. All the things that we’re supposed to say about how Israel is so bad, how America is so bad, how we are the evil ones in this fight.

Let me be very, very clear. This is a fight of good vs. evil.

We are on the side of good.

The Double Standard of Apologizing

Now, I’m so tired of people having to add the caveat of “we’re not perfect, but…” or “I know that this this and this we could do better…” but let me ask you a question, because in case you don’t know, double standards are antisemitic.

What other country starts every single statement with, “We’re not perfect, but…” or “we make our share of mistakes, but…”?

How about just saying, “we’re great, we rock, we do the best we can, and that is more than enough.”

And it’s certainly more than we could say for any of our enemies. And the list of enemies is vast.

When’s the last time that you saw a Hamas spokesperson apologize for anything? Literally anything.

When’s the last time you saw Hezbollah saying, “Well, we have these certain weaknesses, but overall, we’re pretty good guys.”?

When’s the last time you heard Iran say those words or Russia or go down the list?

When it comes to an Axis of Evil, they know they are evil. They are evil through and through. And if you cut them in half and count the rings, all the rings are evil. And yet they feel zero need to apologize for anything.

The Absence of Regret from Enemies

And yet they feel 100% need to write all over our walls. “But don’t you want apologize for A, B, C, and D?”

I’m not even going to list A, B, C, and D because no, I will not apologize for them.

There is zero acknowledgment from our enemies that there’s anything wrong with the terror and the atrocities that they commit and continue to commit every day. Same with their defenders in the West, the social justice warriors who only want what’s good in the world, who only want peace and justice for everyone…but Jews.

They never say, “Oh, by the way, our darlings in Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, Iran--name the terrorist organization--have made some mistakes, but overall, this is why I like them.” No, they don’t say that.

Instead, they do one of two things.

First, act as if their side is perfect. Not perfectly evil--which they actually are--but perfect.

Number two, try to force the Jews and the Israelis to apologize for whatever imperfections we may have.

Show me the nation that has no imperfections. Show me the person that has no imperfections.

I don’t walk around in the world all day saying whatever it is that I think is important to me, always qualifying it with, “Yeah, well, you know, I was sort of mean to my mom yesterday and I cheated on a test once when I was three and you know, I punched my brother when I was eight.”

So, nobody goes down this list.

Leave a comment

The Aftermath of 10/7 and the Duty to Defend

Addressing the Atrocities of October 7^th

This is not a normal thing to do that when we are trying to explain the atrocities that are beyond the imagination that occurred on 10/7 that would start a war if any nation on earth were placed in the shoes of Israel.

Israel has not behaved in a way that is abnormal for a country that has sustained the most horrifying and gruesome, barbaric and sadistic terrorist attack that is in the imagination.

And yet people are always saying, “Yeah, well whatever. So, Kfir and Ariel Bibas happened to be strangled with someone’s bare hands after being forcefully ripped from their home, after their grandparents and their dog was killed in front of them, after they and their mom and their father were all sent to Gaza, after all four of them were tortured, their father ripped away, after Shiri, the mom, and the two babies were killed with Hamas’s bare hands. But what about the kids in Gaza?”

There’s no acknowledgement from them about what Hamas has done to wreak the havoc that it has on their own people. What they deliberately did to bring on this war. And yet they expect us to apologize for our response for defending ourselves.

And we should not apologize ever.

Period.

Again, not because we think we are somehow perfect, but because imperfection is a feature, not a glitch of being human.

There is no reason we need to say it out loud or reiterate it. It goes without saying and they are only trying to get us to say in order to get us to bend our knee. We cannot bend the knee to the terrorists or the terrorist sympathizers.

The Pressure to Tone Down the Message

And what I hear so much from the pro-Israel community is “tone it down.” You got to be softer in your voice. You got to be more gentle in your message. Pick your battles. Pull your punches.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the other side has declared absolute unbridled open season on us.

Have you seen the things that they post on the internet? Have you seen the comments that they post on every pro-Israel voice? Do you see them punching pulling a single punch?

Why should we? Why do we always have to be the ones that have to be more careful about the way that we present our message? Why is it that we have to, in polite company, decide, “well, if everybody at the table hates Israel, it’s not my job to speak up.”

Well, you’re sitting at a table with a bunch of terrorist sympathizers. And yes, it’s not just your job, not just your responsibility as a human being, but more than anything, it is your right standing on the right side of history to speak up, stand tall, and speak loudly.

They do not have the right to be evil. They do not have the right to tell lies. We are well within our rights to defend ourselves unapologetically.

Combatting Propaganda and Fictions

Also notice what they do on the internet. How they stole the word “hasbara.” What is hasbara? Hasbara is explaining.

Oh, this is something that sucks in the postfactual world because hasbara means let’s give facts to counter the fictions.

Now, you could criticize the fact that maybe we need to go more on the offensive. I’m not going to argue with that. But we also can’t just sit down when the whole world is accusing us of these blatant lies.

They are absolute lies that I’m not going to list here because again, they don’t deserve my breath. At least not when I’m making this point.

They ridicule the fact that we have hasbara, ridicule the fact that we are willing to defend ourselves. They call our hasbara “propaganda” while at the same time they have launched the single most extensive antisemitic, antizionist, anti-Jewish, anti-Israel propaganda campaign since the Holocaust.

So, we’re supposed to get rid of our hasbara. We’re supposed to get rid of our facts and lie down to their genocidal fictions.

To that I say, hell no.

I, Shana Meyerson, am not a Jew with trembling knees. And I am also not a Jew who will ever bend my knee to terror.

__________________________________________________________

Am Yisrael isn’t just the people of Israel. It’s the Nation of Israel, within Eretz Yisrael and throughout the Diaspora. If you are part of Am Yisrael—or a precious ally—please join the Unapologetically Jewish community.

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I am sorry if a paywall comes as a shock this morning. It’s something I have been struggling with for a long time, balancing 80-hour unpaid work weeks as a content creator and just wanting my content to be seen by, and help inform, as many people as possible. This is the first article I am charging for, in hopes that you do consider my writing important and enjoyable and informative. My podcasts and video transcriptions, and notes and subscriber chat will still be free and if you really want my articles but truly can’t afford it, please reach out. Getting my content seen is still my top priority. Am Yisrael Chai!

One bomb.

Count it.

It’s the whole selling point of the Iranian nuclear program. Yeah, that “civilian infrastructure” built hundreds of yards under mountains of solid rock. All they need is the erect one huge bomb and their wet dream of wiping Israel off the map will be ready to ejaculate.

That was gross.

This whole thing is gross.

And you don’t think your kid donning a kefiyah at Columbia University is really part of the problem. Think again.

HERE’S HOW THE PLAN UNFOLDS

Perhaps you understand by now, but too many people don’t for me to not spell it out.

U-S-E-F-U-L I-D-I-O-T-S.

This war against Israel…it’s not just against Israel. It’s against the entire Jewish people. That’s the first thing you need to understand.

And the actual war against Israel—the kinetic war being fought by the barbaric, bloodthirsty Islamists—that’s just child’s play.

And the real war is the war of words and propaganda that is being fought with social media and AI as the landscape and bot farms and Ivy League zombies as the munition factories.

I’d like to say that the Islamists have taken a page out of the Nazi playbook, but the fact is, they took the whole damn book.

Take Mein Kampf and roll it into The Elders of Zion, wrap it into the Hadith, and implant it into the brains of every potential sheeple and you have this moment.

The plan is this:

Read more

Andrew Fox is a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and cohost of The Brink Podcast. He served for 16 years in the British Army, leaving the Parachute Regiment with the rank of Major. He completed 3 tours in Afghanistan including one attached to US Army Special Forces, as well as further tours of Bosnia, Northern Ireland and the Middle East. He was a senior lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, teaching in the War Studies and Behavioural Science departments. In the last year he has visited Gaza twice as well as Hezbollah tunnels in Lebanon. Andrew is a regular Middle East commentator on GB News, TalkTV and LBC radio, and has been published in The Spectator, The Sun, The Daily Telegraph, New York Post and The Tablet, amongst others.

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I know you’re not supposed to, but I do.

And these days especially, I scan them for signs: Member of the Tribe? Not Member of the Tribe? Zionist? Antizionist? Want to see me, as a Jew, dead? Okay with me continuing to walk this earth?

The signals are sometimes fuzzy. Sometimes crossed.

I used to have a yoga student whose last name was Israel. For years I talked to him as a fellow Jew. Turns out he wasn’t.

I used to have a best friend who was Catholic and Zionist. Turns out Zionism is not an immutable characteristic.

You see the problem?

So…with the High Holy Days right around the corner, I always go through these Days of Favor armed with Break Fast invitations for any Jew who needs a place to go.

When I was a kid, my mom used to ask the local college and Marine Base if there were any Jews looking for a home for the Holy Days. There were always a few strays at our table, some stayed for a night, some stayed in our lives for years to come. But the lesson my mom always taught us was to extend an invitation to any Jew who might be alone.

Such has been the tradition.

Our Jewish holidays are always celebrated with stacks of family, friends, and a few randos pulled off the street.

This time of year, it’s always just a reflex. Know a Jew? Meet a Jew? Invite the Jew. And in all of my adult life, I have never stopped to think. This year it struck me.

I met a woman who is new to LA, does not know many people, and has a discernibly Jewish first name. Not like Chaya Mushka or Devorah Rivka, but Jewish enough. Still, remember Mr. Israel? I needed more to go on.

She actually wound up emailing me and her last name was more Jewish than “Israel,” (I guess it’s possible) so I knew.

My instinct kicked in: invite her to Break Fast.

And then, for the first time ever, I stopped myself. For two reasons.

1. I don’t know if she is a “safe” Jew or an “unsafe” Jew.

2. She doesn’t know if I am.

I was reluctant to invite her.

She could very well be a Jew for Jihad, a Gay for Gaza, a Tree Hugger for Terror, or any or all of the above.

She would not do well at our table.

She could be disaffected, unattached, converted out, or any of the above.

As I rolled these possibilities around in mind, I had to stop and think again. This is twice now, when my default is never.

She doesn’t know who I am. Where my heart lies. If I’m a “safe” Jew.

I mean, a simple Google search would tell her that…and then I had to stop and think again. That’s three times for anyone keeping count.

If she went online and found out that I am the Unapologetically Jewish, Forever Zionist, loud, proud, and never ever cowed Jew, would she still want to join us?

Is this what Am Yisrael has come to? It made me stop again. And think.

I should not be having this internal conflict.

I should not pause before inviting a fellow Jew to our holiday table.

I should not have to worry about whether my own people are with or against me.

But I do.

And I hit the default button and invited her anyway.

She didn’t reply.

__________________________________________________________

Am Yisrael isn’t just the people of Israel. It’s the Nation of Israel, within Eretz Yisrael and throughout the Diaspora. If you are part of Am Yisrael—or a precious ally—please join the Unapologetically Jewish community.

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“My friend, I had hoped to die peacefully in a bed,

on a mattress with steel springs and between linen sheets.

You see this wound that has torn my chest open to the throat.”

— “Federico García Lorca”

There are wounds that never close.

They do not bleed forever, but they remain beneath the skin, beneath memory, beneath every attempt to begin again. Sometimes they become words. Sometimes music. Sometimes silence. And sometimes, when there is nowhere else to go, they become a scream.

I have lived with such a wound for most of my adult life.

My name is Homayoon Zare’an. I am an Iranian musician, writer, and cultural worker. I was born in Isfahan, a city where history does not live only in books. It lives in its streets, courtyards, music, ancient houses, mosques, and in the memories of communities that have inhabited the city for generations.

I grew up carrying memories of a world that would later become almost impossible to explain to those who had never lived it.

Before I understood politics, I understood music. Before I understood exile, I understood home. Before I understood persecution, I understood the simple dignity of being treated as a human being.

And then, slowly, the meaning of home began to change.

Iran became smaller.

Not geographically. Not on a map.

Inside me.

A country that once meant childhood, family, music, memory, and belonging gradually became a place from which I had to escape. Years of political persecution, imprisonment, violence, fear, and the destruction of the life I had known eventually pushed me beyond its borders.

I crossed into Afghanistan believing that exile might at least mean safety.

I was wrong.

What followed was another chapter of imprisonment, uncertainty, violence, bureaucracy, waiting, and survival. The country where I had sought refuge became another landscape of fear, while the country I had fled remained permanently present inside me.

That is why I call myself Little Iran.

Not because I believe I represent an entire nation, but because I have carried a fragment of Iran with me through every border, every prison, every refugee document, every tent, every night of uncertainty, and every unanswered letter.

I became a country without a country.

A home without a home.

A citizen without a safe place to belong.

I am Little Iran — another name for exile.

And this is the story of how I arrived here.

Part One — Before I Understood Exile, I Understood Home

I was born in Isfahan, a city where history is not something confined to museums or books. It lives in the sound of its streets, in old courtyards and ancient houses, in music, prayer, memory, and in the traces left behind by generations who once shared the same neighborhoods.

My childhood began in Juybareh, the historic Jewish quarter of Isfahan, where Jewish life had long been woven into the fabric of the city. Among the places that remained deeply engraved in my memory was the Molla Yaqub Synagogue.

As a child, I did not understand politics. I did not understand ideological conflict, religious divisions, or the weight of history.

I understood atmosphere.

I understood the feeling of entering a place and sensing whether it was peaceful or threatening, open or closed, human or hostile.

The synagogue became one of those places in my childhood where I encountered a quiet sense of dignity. I remember an atmosphere in which kindness did not have to announce itself. It simply existed.

I also experienced other sacred spaces in Isfahan, including mosques. As a child, I did not turn these experiences into political or religious judgments. I simply noticed differences—in sound, silence, architecture, formality, and in the way people expressed their presence.

Those memories stayed with me.

Years later, when I began to understand history and politics, I realized that the human beings I had encountered as a child could not be reduced to the labels imposed upon them by ideology.

For me, Jewish people were never an abstract political category. They became people I knew, people whose humanity I recognized, and eventually a kind of chosen family—not through blood, but through affection, recognition, and shared humanity.

That early experience became one of the quiet foundations of my life.

It also became something that would later place me in conflict with the world around me.

Before I understood persecution, I understood belonging.

Before I understood exile, I knew what it meant to have a home.

And before I understood how fragile freedom could be, I had already learned something that would remain with me for the rest of my life:

Human dignity does not belong to one religion, one nation, or one ideology. It belongs to the human being.

The Language I Learned Before Politics

Before politics entered my life, music had already become my first language.

I grew up in Isfahan surrounded by sound: the call of prayer drifting through old streets, the voices of people in courtyards, the rhythms of daily life, and the music that seemed to carry memories older than any one generation.

I was drawn to music not simply as an art form, but as a way of listening to the world.

Perhaps that is why memory has always been so important to me.

A musician learns to listen for what exists between the notes—the silence, the hesitation, the breath before a sound begins. I learned something similar about people.

I learned that what is most important is not always what is spoken.

Sometimes it is the atmosphere of a place.

Sometimes it is the kindness of a stranger.

Sometimes it is the memory of a community whose presence has survived generations of change.

My early memories of Juybareh remained part of that inner landscape. The Jewish presence I encountered there did not become, in my childhood, a political idea. It was simply part of the human world I knew.

That distinction became important later.

As I grew older, I began to understand that history often teaches people to see one another through categories: Muslim, Jew, Iranian, foreigner, believer, unbeliever, insider, outsider.

But my earliest experiences had taught me something different.

A person could be different from me and still feel familiar.

A place could belong to another tradition and still feel like part of my own memory.

And a community could carry a history different from mine while still becoming part of the story of my own life.

This understanding quietly shaped the artist I became.

I studied Iranian music and devoted myself to the instruments and traditions of my homeland. I taught music to students and worked in private music institutes, including institutions such as Payvar and Nava-ye Mehr.

Teaching became more than a profession.

It became a way of passing something forward.

Every student who learned a melody, every young person who discovered an instrument, and every moment in which music created a small space of freedom felt like a refusal to allow beauty to disappear.

Over time, my work expanded beyond music. I became involved in cultural and artistic activities, including writing, theatre, and educational work with children.

I began to understand art as a form of human responsibility.

An artist does not merely preserve sounds, images, or stories.

An artist preserves memory.

And memory can become a quiet form of resistance.

Looking back now, I can see that the different threads of my life were already being woven together: Isfahan, Juybareh, music, Jewish memory, Iranian culture, and the instinct to defend human dignity.

I did not know where those threads would eventually lead me.

I did not know that one day I would lose my home.

I did not know that I would become a refugee.

I did not know that music, the very thing that had first taught me how to listen, would later become one of the reasons I could not remain silent.

But perhaps the story of exile begins long before a person crosses a border.

Sometimes it begins the moment a person realizes that the values they carry inside themselves are no longer safe in the place they call home.

The Government That Devoured My Life

For a long time, I believed that music could give a person a small territory of freedom, a place where politics could not reach. I had learned to understand the world through rhythm, silence, and the spaces between notes. I imagined that as long as I could play, teach, and create, some part of me would remain beyond the reach of those who wanted to control what a person could think or believe. I was wrong. Politics eventually entered not only my public life, but the most private parts of my existence.

Perhaps I had been prepared for this long before I understood it. My father had served as an officer during the Pahlavi era, and after the 1979 Revolution he was executed because of his service under the Shah. As a child, I did not understand the political meaning of an execution. I understood only absence: a father who would not return, a voice that had disappeared from the ordinary rhythm of our home, and a silence that remained long after the adults had stopped explaining what had happened. Only much later did I begin to understand that his death was part of a much larger rupture in Iranian society, one that transformed political identity into a matter of survival and taught families to measure their words, their memories, and sometimes even their relationships against the danger surrounding them.

My own confrontation with that reality developed gradually. I had chosen music as my profession and devoted myself to Iranian musical traditions, teaching students and working in music institutes. I believed that art could preserve something essential in a society under pressure: the ability to imagine another way of living. But as my political awareness grew, remaining silent became increasingly difficult. I participated in political activities and protests, questioned the ideology that dominated public life, and defended what seemed to me a simple human principle: that a person should be free to think, believe, create, and speak without fearing that those freedoms could become crimes.

My first serious political arrest took place in Isfahan, in connection with political activity and participation in a workers’ protest. That experience changed the meaning of politics for me. It was no longer something I could observe from a distance or discuss as an idea. It had entered my own body and my own memory. After the disputed presidential election of 2009, the confrontation became more severe. I was arrested again in Tehran, and from that point onward, prisons became part of the geography of my life: Isfahan, Kahrizak, Evin. Each name carries a different memory, but together they form a single landscape of interrogation, confinement, uncertainty, and fear.

I spent time in security sections of Evin, including Ward 209, and experienced periods of solitary confinement and interrogation. Kahrizak became another chapter of that experience. In such places, imprisonment is not limited to locking a door. It is also the removal of ordinary time, ordinary information, and ordinary human contact. You do not know what your family knows. You do not know what has been said about you. You do not know whether anyone outside the walls knows where you are. The uncertainty itself becomes part of the punishment.

Yet something survived. Perhaps it was the part of me that music had formed long before politics found me. The more the authorities attempted to reduce me to a file, a number, a suspect, or a prisoner, the more fiercely I held on to the belief that a human being is more than the accusation written against his name. I began to understand freedom differently. Freedom was not simply the ability to walk outside a prison gate. It was the right to keep one’s conscience when obedience was demanded; the right to remember who one had been before fear tried to redefine them; and the right to believe in human dignity even when that dignity was being denied.

Over time, the accusations against me became increasingly serious. I was accused of propaganda against the state, opposition to the Islamic order, apostasy, moharebeh, and efsad-e-fel-arz—charges that could carry the death penalty. My political opposition, my criticism of religious authority, and my increasingly open sympathy toward Jewish people and rejection of antisemitism also became part of the wider context through which the authorities interpreted me. I was no longer simply an artist who disagreed with a government. The authorities had begun to treat my convictions themselves as evidence against me.

Looking back, I now understand that this was the beginning of my exile, even though I had not yet crossed a border. Exile does not always begin at an airport, a frontier, or a checkpoint. Sometimes it begins much earlier, in the quiet moment when a person realizes that the place where he was born can no longer safely contain the person he has become. By then, I had already lost the certainty that home would protect me. I simply had not yet understood how far I would eventually have to travel to find somewhere I could remain alive.

The Season of the Stateless

By the winter of 2014, I had reached the point where remaining in Iran was no longer possible. I had spent years moving between art and fear, between the life I wanted to build and a political reality that had gradually narrowed the space in which I could exist. Prison had taught me what a state could do to a human being. Leaving would teach me something else: what it means to abandon the country of your birth without knowing whether the other side of the border will offer you safety, or merely another form of uncertainty.

I did not leave Iran with a suitcase prepared for a new life. I left as a man trying to survive. A friend helped me escape from Isfahan, and for part of the journey I travelled in a vehicle used to carry recyclable materials. There was nothing romantic about that journey. I had no certainty, no protection, and no guarantee that I would reach the border alive. I was simply moving away from a place where remaining had become too dangerous.

Before I left, I took a handful of soil from Iran with me. It was almost nothing—just a small amount of earth that could fit in my hand. But when I crossed the border, that handful of soil became something much larger. It became my homeland.

I had left behind a country, but I could not leave behind the ground on which I had been born. I carried the streets of Isfahan, the memory of my father, the sound of Iranian music, the faces of my students, and the places that had shaped my understanding of beauty and human dignity. But among all those memories, there was something tangible in my possession: that handful of Iranian soil.

For someone who has never been forced into exile, it may seem like an insignificant gesture. For someone who has lost the right to remain where he was born, it becomes an act of memory. When you can no longer possess a homeland, sometimes you carry a fragment of its earth instead.

I eventually made my way to Afghanistan and arrived in Herat. I had hoped that Afghanistan would be a road toward safety, perhaps only a temporary place from which I could eventually reach somewhere secure. Instead, Herat became the beginning of another long chapter of exile.

Even there, I tried to rebuild my life through art. During the years of the previous Afghan government, I continued my work in music and cultural activities and volunteered in educational programs for children, including children without parental care. I taught music and theatre because I still believed that art could create a small space of dignity for another human being, even when I could no longer find a secure place for myself.

At the same time, I entered the international protection system as a registered asylum seeker. I received documents connected to my case, and for a brief moment, that piece of paper seemed to mean something profound: that somewhere, somehow, my existence had been recorded; that my story had entered a system that was supposed to recognize people fleeing persecution.

But exile has its own kind of prison, and its walls are often invisible.

You wait for the case officer. You wait for the interview. You wait for the letter. You wait for a decision that may determine whether you can remain alive where you are or whether you will ever be allowed to begin again somewhere safer. Months become years, and your life remains suspended between places that are not quite home and a future that never quite arrives.

I had escaped Iran, but I had not reached safety.

Still, I continued to make music. I continued to teach. I continued to write. I continued to believe that the life taken from me did not have to be the end of my story.

And somewhere among the documents, the interviews, the waiting, and the uncertainty, I still had that handful of soil.

It had become my quiet proof that I had once belonged somewhere.

I did not know then that Afghanistan would eventually become another place of danger. I did not know that the country that had first appeared to me as a road away from captivity would itself become another chapter of captivity. I did not know that years later I would once again find myself behind a locked door, this time under the Taliban.

But I was already beginning to understand the deepest lesson of exile:

A border does not always separate danger from safety. Sometimes it separates one kind of exile from another.

And sometimes, when everything else has been taken away, all that remains of home is a handful of earth held quietly in the palm of your hand.

The Body Remembers

What happened inside that prison cannot be reduced to the word detention.

I saw what should never be seen by human eyes. I saw evidence of mass graves. I witnessed human beings being stripped of their dignity through systematic torture and degradation. I saw a world in which the human body was treated as something that could be broken, violated, and discarded.

Worst Fears Of Iranian Dissidents In Afghanistan Realized After Arrests, Killing

And I was not only a witness.

I was one of the victims.

I was subjected to psychological torture and sexual violence. The violence did not end when I was released. It entered my body and remained there. As a consequence of what was done to me, I lost sensation in my genital organs. Three vertebrae in my spine were broken. One of my kidneys was severely damaged and nearly stopped functioning. Sixteen of my teeth were broken.

These are not metaphors.

They are the geography of what happened to me, written into my body.

There are wounds that bleed and then close. There are other wounds that never become visible again, yet continue to alter the life of the person who carries them.

For years, I have carried both kinds.

Iranian Refugee Artist ‘Trapped’ in Taliban’s Afghanistan

I have carried the silence of the interrogation room, the memory of screams, the terror of sexual violence, the pain of a broken spine, the damage to my kidney, the shattered teeth, and the knowledge that somewhere behind those prison walls were human beings whose lives could be erased without leaving a name behind.

I walked out of that prison alive. But I did not walk out unchanged.

A prison has walls. Torture does not.

It follows you into sleep. Into silence. Into your relationships. Into your body. Into the moments when you are alone and suddenly remember that there was a time when another human being had complete power over your body and your survival.

This is why I no longer describe my years of exile simply as displacement.

I carry a prison inside my memory.

And yet, I am still here.

Still writing.

Still making music.

Still remembering.

Because the first victory of those who torture is not breaking the body.

It is making the survivor believe that his voice has no longer any value.

I refuse to give them that victory.

The Years of Waiting

By 2019, the years I had spent in Afghanistan had become a strange mixture of survival, work, art, and waiting. I had continued to teach and create whenever circumstances allowed, because I refused to let exile turn me into a person who existed only inside a refugee file. During the years of the Afghan Republic, I also volunteered my time to teach music and theatre to children, including children without parental care. They had their own stories of loss, but when we worked together through music and theatre, for a few hours the language of displacement seemed to disappear. I was no longer simply an asylum seeker waiting for a decision; I was a teacher, an artist, and a human being capable of giving something back.

Yet outside the classroom, my own life remained suspended. My legal future was uncertain, my financial circumstances were increasingly fragile, and the possibility of returning to Iran remained impossible. I continued to communicate with officials and organizations responsible for human rights and refugee protection, hoping that the evidence of my persecution would eventually lead to a durable solution. Instead, time itself became another burden I had to carry. Years passed, while my health, security, professional life, and hope for a stable future were all placed on hold.

This was the reality behind my hunger strike in Kabul in 2019. It was not an isolated protest and it was not a search for attention. It came after years of trying to be heard through ordinary channels. When letters, applications, interviews, and repeated requests produced no meaningful change, I chose the only instrument that remained entirely under my control: my own body. I stopped eating because I wanted the silence surrounding my situation to become impossible to ignore. I was asking for neither privilege nor charity. I was asking for protection, dignity, and the possibility of rebuilding a life.

I knew that hunger could not solve everything. But I also knew that remaining silent had its own cost. For someone living in exile, time is not neutral. Every year without a durable status means another year without certainty, another year in which professional opportunities disappear, relationships become more difficult, health concerns become harder to address, and the simple idea of planning for tomorrow becomes almost impossible. A person can remain physically alive while feeling that his entire future has been placed in suspension.

Still, I continued to teach, write, make music, and work with children. Art became my quiet form of resistance. It allowed me to preserve a part of myself that persecution, imprisonment, and exile had repeatedly attempted to destroy. Music gave me a language that did not require a passport. Theatre gave me a way to speak about human beings without reducing them to political labels. Teaching gave me a reason to believe that something could still grow, even in a life surrounded by uncertainty.

Then Afghanistan itself began to change.

In 2021, the political order that had existed during the years in which I had tried to rebuild my life collapsed. The return of the Taliban did not simply change the government around me; it transformed the meaning of safety. The limited space in which I had been able to teach, create, and survive became increasingly narrow. The future I had been waiting for was suddenly overshadowed by a new and immediate question.

Would I survive what was coming?

I had already learned that exile does not necessarily lead from danger to safety. Sometimes it leads from one uncertainty into another. But I could not have known that the next chapter would take me back into captivity, under a system whose arrival would make the years of waiting seem like the last fragile period of freedom I had known.

The world around me had changed.

And soon, so would my life.

After the Prison

Freedom did not begin when the prison door opened.

It began with the difficult question of what remained possible for a person who had survived it.

After my release, I was left with injuries that required more than time to heal. I had to live with the consequences of what had happened to my body and mind while, at the same time, trying to continue the administrative process that had governed my life for years. My case was no longer simply about waiting for a decision. It had become a question of whether there was anywhere in the world where I could safely begin again.

Eventually, my case was accepted for transfer to a third country. This should have been the moment when the long years of uncertainty finally began to end. Instead, another form of waiting began. My case was presented to several countries, but no country had yet accepted me for relocation.

I had been recognized as someone who needed protection, yet I still had nowhere safe to go.

That contradiction has become one of the defining realities of my life.

I remain in Afghanistan without the security of a permanent home, while the possibility of returning to Iran remains closed to me. At the same time, the conditions under which I survive have become increasingly difficult. The financial assistance on which I had depended was drastically reduced. What had once been approximately $200 per month was reduced to approximately $50 every two months, leaving me struggling to cover even basic living expenses.

There is something particularly painful about this kind of poverty when it follows years of persecution.

You are not simply poor. You are unable to rebuild.

You cannot safely return to the place from which you escaped. You cannot freely establish a professional life where you are currently living. You cannot confidently plan for the next year, the next home, the next medical need, or even the next month. Every ordinary decision becomes dependent on a future that remains outside your control.

And yet, I have continued to work with what remains.

What persecution could not take from me, poverty has not been allowed to erase.

I remain an artist. I remain a musician. I remain a teacher and a writer. The instruments, the words, the memories, and the work I have created over the years are not luxuries to me. They are evidence that the person who existed before exile has survived within the person exile created.

I do not want to spend the rest of my life being defined by the prisons I survived.

I want to be defined by what I can still create.

That is why the possibility of protection in a safe country matters so profoundly to me. I am not seeking merely a change of geography. I am seeking the chance to recover the ordinary foundations of human life: safety, legal status, work, health, dignity, and the freedom to create.

For an artist, safety is not simply the absence of physical violence. It is the freedom to think without fear, to teach without suspicion, to create without censorship, and to speak without wondering whether a sentence will become an accusation.

I have spent years losing pieces of my life to systems that treated survival as something that had to be repeatedly justified.

I am asking for the chance to stop living that way.

I do not need the world to erase my past. I need a place where my past no longer determines whether I am allowed to have a future.

What Remains

There is a point in a long exile when the question is no longer how much a person has lost, but what has survived the loss.

For me, the answer is memory.

I remember the places where I was once able to learn, teach, create, and imagine a future. I remember the people who treated me with dignity when I had little left to offer them. I remember the children I taught, the instruments I played, the stages on which I worked, and the moments when art made a small space for freedom.

These memories matter because exile has a way of reducing a human being to documents: a case number, an identity paper, an application, a medical report, a record of detention, a date of arrival. But behind every document there is a life, and behind every case file there is a human being who has spent years waiting for someone to see the person rather than the paperwork.

I have spent years trying to prove that I am in danger.

What I want now is the opportunity to prove that I can still live.

I do not expect another country to repair everything that has happened to me. No government can return the years that disappeared, erase the memories of prison, restore what was taken from my body, or return the people and places I lost along the way.

But a safe country can offer something equally important: a future that is not controlled by fear.

With protection, I can work again. I can teach again. I can create music without wondering whether the act of creation itself will put me at risk. I can write, contribute, and participate in a society rather than spending another year waiting behind the invisible walls of displacement.

I am not asking to become someone else.

I am asking for the possibility of becoming fully myself again.

The musician.

The teacher.

The writer.

The artist.

The person who still believes that a human life should not be measured by the number of borders it has crossed or the number of prisons it has survived.

Perhaps this is what remains after everything else has been taken away: the stubborn belief that human dignity is still possible.

I have carried that belief from Iran to Afghanistan. I have carried it through imprisonment, exile, hunger, uncertainty, and loss. I have carried it when I had almost nothing except a memory, a few words, and the will to continue.

And I carry it still.

My name is Homayoon Zarean.

I am still here.

Not because exile was kind to me, and not because the systems around me made survival easy, but because somewhere beneath all the fear and loss, a small part of me continued to believe in a life beyond captivity.

I call that part freedom.

Where the Story Refuses to End

There are stories that end when the last sentence is written.

And there are stories that refuse to end.

They remain with the reader, not as an argument, but as a question. Not as a demand, but as a responsibility.

I have spent years trying to understand what a human being becomes when almost everything that once gave meaning to life has been taken away. I have learned that suffering does not make us noble by itself. Memory does not automatically make us wise. Survival does not erase what happened.

What matters is what we choose to do with what remains.

I chose to remember.

I chose to create.

I chose to speak.

Not because speaking makes the past disappear, but because silence can sometimes become the final victory of those who wanted the past to disappear with us.

I have carried many things across borders: memories, music, fragments of a country, the faces of people I loved, and the quiet recognition of a community whose history became part of my own long before I understood what that recognition would mean.

Perhaps this is why I still believe that human beings can meet one another beyond the walls built by governments, ideologies, and fear.

A life can be broken without being emptied of meaning.

A homeland can be lost without being erased from memory.

And a person can be forced into exile without surrendering the right to belong somewhere again.

I do not know what waits beyond the next door.

For once, I will not pretend that I know.

I only know that I have reached this moment alive, carrying a story that I could no longer keep silent.

So I leave these pages not with an accusation, but with a question:

When a human being has survived everything that was meant to silence him, what does the world owe him—not as charity, but as justice?

I do not know the answer.

Perhaps it belongs to all of us.

Perhaps it belongs to whoever is willing to listen.

And perhaps a story truly ends only when someone has heard it and decided that it must not happen again.

The story is in your hands now.

I Am Little Iran; Another Name for Exile

By(Homayoon,Zarean)

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Peter Himmelman is a Grammy- and Emmy-nominated musician, visual artist, award-winning author, entrepreneur, and public speaker. Following the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, much of his writing and public speaking has become increasingly focused on Israel, Jewish identity, antisemitism, and the moral and cultural challenges facing the Jewish people. In contrast to much of the entertainment world’s ambivalence or hostility toward Israel, Himmelman has emerged as an outspoken advocate for the Jewish state and for Jewish continuity, dignity, and historical truth. His essays, interviews, and public talks have helped strengthen Jewish morale and challenge misinformation about Israel.

Himmelman is also the founder and CEO of Big Muse, a creativity and innovation company that works with leading corporations, universities, and institutions, including The United States Army War College, the University of Pennsylvania, 3M, Boeing, Adobe, Coca-Cola, Gap Inc., and many others. Through keynote presentations, workshops, and executive consulting, he helps organizations cultivate creativity, adaptability, and original thinking.

Himmelman’s essays and commentary have appeared in, and he has been profiled by, publications and platforms including The Wall Street Journal, Time, NPR, Tablet Magazine, The Jerusalem Post, Chabad.org, and Aish.com. He is a regular contributor to The Times of Israel and The Forward, where he writes about Jewish identity, Israel advocacy, antisemitism, and the cultural battle over historical memory. He also publishes long-form essays on Substack and through his social media channels.

Himmelman has spoken to Jewish communities, synagogues, university audiences, organizational leaders, and corporate groups across the United States about Israel advocacy, Jewish resilience, creativity, faith, and the role of art in shaping moral imagination.

Today, his work is dedicated not only to creating songs and essays about the creative process, but also to helping Jews better understand who they are, where they come from, and why the story of Israel remains inseparable from the story of the Jewish people.

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Here I find myself once again unable to utter the sentence, “how did we get here” without actually asking ,”how the F*CK did we get here?”

I’m Shana Meyerson and I am unapologetically Jewish.

As I watch the world burn down around us, kowtow to the Islamists, and literally, in a moment it seems, hand over the entire world to the Muslim Brotherhood…I know it sounds like, of course, I’m being alarmist. Well, half of America--the Democrats--have decided that it is Islamophobic to fight against the Muslim Brotherhood or even bring them to a hearing or even challenge the notion that perhaps they’re not the good guys in the world today.

How is it that the Islamists have become the victims in the world?

How is it that two billion Muslims are now the victims, the minorities, of civilization?

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Well, it was very clever, wasn’t it, how they sneak in there with that red green alliance where everything comes down to oppressor or oppressed?

How the F*CK did they become the “oppressed”?

How did the Islamists--who perpetrated 9/11 and 10/7 to name just two of many many many, not just in the Western World but truly across the entire globe, massacres of undeniable and unfathomable proportions--how did they become the victims?

How did they become the oppressed?

They are the conquerors.

They are the colonizers.

They are all the words that the world wants to put conveniently upon whom? The Jews.

Why?

Because it’s so easy to make the Jews into the scapegoat for literally everything.

When I say “literally”, do I mean “figuratively”?

No.

I mean literally.

Look at everything horrible that is going on in the world today. Everything terrible, ignominious, nefarious, and absolutely horrific. And notice how it always comes back to the Jews.

Why does Hamas kill its own citizens? Oh, that’s the Jews.

Why does Boko Haram abduct hundreds of girls from a school? Must be the Jews.

Why do tens of thousands of Moroccan migrants storm into Spain? Ah, we know the answer. Of course, it’s the Jews.

No matter what the question, the answer is the Jews.

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Now, this is convenient because if the Jews,--15 million people, okay, we’re talking about .02% of the world’s population, 1/5 of 1% of the population--is the ultimate enemy of civilization, the ultimate evil, the ultimate oppressor…15 million people, many of whom, millions of whom, are actually completely disaffected and Jewish only by name, but this tiny cabal is the oppressor of not just the world, but I’m sure if you ask the the people, the universe….

Is there a UFO in Area 51? I bet it’s the Jews that brought them here, especially if the goal is to destroy the world so nobody else exists except the Jews and maybe some aliens and we can create a master race.

Listen, it’s no more ridiculous than the litany of conspiracy theories that are filling our feeds every single day about every single issue that is facing every single human where even there isn’t a Jew in existence, where people have never met a Jew, encountered a Jew, or even have a “legitimate beef” with a Jew. But no, the Jews are to blame for everything.

So what does that mean about the Islamists? The Islamists whose ultimate goal, ultimate meaning the absolute ultimate goal is to destroy Western civilization? They say the thing out loud.

How do they get it?

Well, their penultimate goal, right? The thing before the goal, is to first destroy the Jews. And here’s the thing. For right now, as long as they focus just on the Jews, they get to turn everybody else, which they’re doing very, very effectively, onto the Jews.

There’s no reason for them to deal with the rest of civilization.

As far as they’re concerned, they have forever to destroy us.

They’re not working on these timelines that we’re working on, like two years before Trump is out of office or maybe two months before Benjamin Netanyahu is out of office. Or or how long can we have these higher gas prices or name the thing that we’re working on.

These tiny little timelines…that there can’t be any forever wars and God forbid because we went to war for 40 days. That was way too long in the face of a world where wars ussd to last years, not hours, days, or minutes.

So, against all of this, the first thing that the Islamists are going to do is they are going to destroy the Jews.

How do you do that?

Well, the easiest way is start by destroying the Jewish State, which they position in the world as the ultimate evil. So, if this point-zero-two percent of the world are the oppressors of the world, and their enemy, their noble enemy, of course, are the Islamists, then who are the oppressed?

That’s right. 15 million with an M--I hope you can do this math--are the oppressors of two billion.

This was very, very clever because the Reds--the communists, the socialists, the DSA, call them what you will--love a good oppressed victim.

And so, they make the strange bedfellows with these two billion victims. And how powerful do you become when your movement suddenly has two billion out of approximately eight and a half billion people behind you?

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Now, last week we had this hearing--this Senate hearing--about the Muslim Brotherhood that all of the Democrats walked out on or refused to attend. Why? Because it’s Islamophobia to put the Muslim Brotherhood on trial.

If we are so afraid to call out the terrorists--they are terrorists--that seek to not just hurt us, but destroy us, what hope do we have in this war or in this world?

I look at no further than Ted Cruz’s own state of Texas. Right? So, a year or two ago, they designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. And what has been done about it? Well, nothing. Nothing.

So, it’s on the books. Meanwhile, we see the Islamists entrenching in Texas, creating communities that are exclusive to just their own Muslim grouping, that they’re instituting Sharia law, that they’re having sleeper cells. All in Texas, all under the nose of Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott, who I do believe have the best of intentions and really, really, really understand the situation, but ultimately seem completely powerless against this force of evil that is looking to take over the globe. They say the thing out loud.

Let me just say, there has never, as in ever, in the history of the world been an empire that has not fallen. Nor, may I add, has there ever been an empire as benevolent as the United States of America.

What scares me is not just watching what I have seen since Obama One as the inevitable fall of the United States Empire, but also to watch how basically, it looks like we are just going to lie down and hand it over with the complicity of NATO and the rest of the world.

I’ll tell you what. I voted for President Trump because I saw that if Kamala Harris came into office, there would be a Palestinian State the next day. This presents an existential threat to Israel. Imagine having an actual terrorist state legitimized directly on your border. Imagine anybody thinking when they saw ISIS beheading people by the dozens, “yes, let’s give them a state.”

Who wants to live next to a state and what is your future once that state is created? This was existential.

Now what I’m watching is Trump potentially handing not just the Palestinians a state, but literally on the potential verge of handing the Muslim Brotherhood the world. How the F*CK did we get here?

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I am writing this as a sort of open letter because it’s too much to condense into an email. And by “too much,” I simply mean “too big.”

If I were to put this into the simplest terms, this week has shaken me out of the somnambulant nightmare I have been reliving like Groundhog Day since October 7th. It has framed these everyday moments with a spirituality that is proving not so subtle or gentle as it drops me back in the world of the living.

Among other things, I am coming to terms with the hate.

The hate that I most tangibly defined as resentment or jealousy all these years. Of a world that wishes it were us, if only to have all the Nobel Prizes.

But I’m realizing it’s not that.

In the back of my mind, I hear Rabbi Wolpe—whom I heard very clearly but perhaps didn’t comprehend before—that the Jews are simultaneously subhuman and superhuman. I took superhuman to be super-accomplished. But now I understand. He actually means superhuman.

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Let’s put aside the fact that Peter Himmelman is spiritually superhuman in and of himself. There’s something in his words that keeps striking me harder and harder as I read and reread and meditate on his content: the divinity is in the details.

Small things. Tying your shoe or stirring your coffee.

It’s been said before but there is something uniquely Jewish—and perhaps threatening—to the fact that Jews have the ability to extract and distill the divine from the mundane. And then again to fuse them back together. A sort of alchemical power that makes little sense in a world that can easily tie its shoes without thinking.

They say it’s not the notes but the space between the notes that makes music magical. Perhaps it’s the music planted deep in the helixes of Peter’s DNA that awakens that silence, but now I’m thinking it’s a uniquely Jewish sixth sense to dive into those spaces and somehow hear their message.

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And what we wind up with is deeply reminiscent of a Salem Witch Trial where our enemies try over and over again to drown us. In different seas, different rivers, different oceans. And they fail every time.

Which leaves them where we find ourselves now: in a world that sees no choice but to try harder and more violently to burn us to ashes in a never-ending holocaust that forces us to rise higher and higher with each fire.

And so the cycle continues.

As I was trying to explain to Peter on our upcoming podcast, I’m making a soft hard landing back onto earth. And, to be honest, it sort of hurts.

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Am Yisrael isn’t just the people of Israel. It’s the Nation of Israel, within Eretz Yisrael and throughout the Diaspora. If you are part of Am Yisrael—or a precious ally—please join the Unapologetically Jewish community.

✡️ THE UNAPOLOGETICALLY JEWISH PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ShanaMeyerson

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🔊 All three podcasts can be found on Substack, YouTube or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

On this episode of the Unapologetically Jewish podcast, Melanie Phillips and Shana Meyerson discuss the mind virus of antizionism and how to fight the hate.

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📖 MELANIE PHILLIPS “FIGHTING THE HATE”: https://tinyurl.com/y5j4u2rs

Melanie Phillips is a British journalist, broadcaster, and bestselling author. A longtime columnist for The Times of London, she also writes for the Jewish News Syndicate and appears regularly on television, radio, and international speaking platforms. For more than 35 years, she has written on politics, antisemitism, Western civilization, Israel, and the moral challenges facing democratic societies.

Her most recent book, Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege (2026), offers practical strategies for confronting the surge of antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. Her previous book, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West—And Why Only They Can Save It (2025), examines the civilizational crisis exposed by October 7 and argues that Judeo-Christian values are essential to preserving the West.

Phillips is also the author of numerous influential books, including the bestselling Londonistan, The World Turned Upside Down, Guardian Angel, and the novel The Legacy. Her work has made her one of Britain’s most prominent commentators on Israel, antisemitism, Islamism, free speech, and Western culture.

She can be found at:

✍️ SUBSTACK: https://melaniephillips.substack.com

✡️ JNS: https://www.jns.org/writers/melanie-phillips/

🇬🇧 TIMES OF LONDON: https://www.thetimes.com/profile/melanie-phillips

❌ X: https://x.com/MelanieLatest

📸 INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/therealmelaniephillips

🎥 YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@melaniephillips5876

🇮🇱 MELANIE x SHANA ON THE YOGA OF WAR: https://youtube.com/live/FKy4oEeqzy4

Find Shana at:

✡️ UNAPOLOGETICALLY JEWISH PODCAST: https://www.youtube.com/@shanameyerson

🪂🤸A PARATROOPER AND A YOGI WALK INTO A BAR PODCAST CO-HOSTED WITH ANDREW FOX: https://www.youtube.com/@ParatrooperAndYogi

🇮🇱 YOGA OF WAR PODCAST: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEk7dn2pk4QXmLMnBCB80yQXIIcBDYsi0

✍️ SUBSTACK: https://shanameyerson.substack.com

❌ X: https://x.com/ShanaMeyerson

👤 FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/YOGAthletica

📸 INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/shanaisunapologeticallyjewish

Please consider supporting the show 🙏
FundRazr (tax-deductible over $180!): https://fundrazr.com/a2kVkd
GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/9d5262f8
Venmo: @miniyogis
Zelle: shana@yogathletica.com
And thank you! 🙏

🇮🇱 👕 Get your Unapologetically Jewish “Am Yisrael Chai Five” Shirts: https://unapologetically-jewish-shop.fourthwall.com 👚 🇮🇱

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Am Yisrael isn’t just the people of Israel. It’s the Nation of Israel, within Eretz Yisrael and throughout the Diaspora. If you are part of Am Yisrael—or a precious ally—please join the Unapologetically Jewish community.

✡️ THE UNAPOLOGETICALLY JEWISH PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ShanaMeyerson

🪂 🤸 THE “A PARATROOPER AND A YOGI WALK INTO A BAR...” PODCAST WHICH I CO-HOST WITH THE ICONIC : https://www.youtube.com/@ParatrooperAndYogi

🎥 THE YOGA OF WAR PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEk7dn2pk4QXmLMnBCB80yQXIIcBDYsi0

🔊 All three podcasts can be found on Substack, YouTube or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

I am a genocidal baby killer. I hear it every single day.

I’m Shana Meyerson and I am unapologetically Jewish.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the concept of guilt by association. It’s at play today like never before. Accusing somebody like me, a proud Zionist in Los Angeles, California, of actually being a genocidal baby killer by those who believe that the war in Gaza is somehow exceptional in the world of wars wherein, to be honest, the only way that this war is exceptional is the exceptional lengths that Israel has taken in order to prevent civilian casualties.

But let’s put that aside.

There are those, for many reasons, who have been convinced by the Powers That Be and the Powers That Happen To Be Very, Very Antisemitic, antizionist, and anti-Israel, that somehow Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza.

Patently false, but let’s go with this for a moment.

So, those who believe that think it is completely okay to say that because they believe the IDF is somehow committing a genocide in Gaza. Then I, who support the IDF in Los Angeles, therefore am a genocidal baby killer.

They have no problem taking this leap of reason into patently false fiction because to them there is no difference between a Zionist and a “genocidal baby killer.”

Okay. Let me ask you this. If I, according to guilt by association, am a genocidal baby killer, what does it make the people who are actually marching with jihadis who are calling for the genocide not just of Israel, but of all Jews?

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So, I hear it all the time. “Oh, we don’t believe in that stuff. We just believe in justice for Palestine.”

Well, you’re keeping some strange bedfellows there.

And if you are so intent on guilt by association on pardoning and making excuses for people who throw firebombs at Holocaust survivors who are marching for the release of hostages, for example, or at two young diplomats walking out of an Israeli meeting to find peaceful solutions to the problem in the Middle East, or just randomly stabbing, attacking Jews who you have no idea what their ideological bent is in the first place on the streets because “Gaza.”

So, you have no problem taking those sort of broad leaps, and yet you think that you can somehow disassociate from the people you are actually marching with and in many instances holding elbows with. The people who are calling for Intifada Revolution and “from the river to the sea.”

These are both genocidal calls to not only destroy the Jewish State. Yes, these are not people calling for a Two-State Solution or a peaceful solution. These are people who want to not only destroy the Jewish State--they say the thing out loud--but to kill Jews wherever they could find them.

This is the jihadi ethos.

So, guilt by association, if you are marching with them, you must be a jihadi.

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Now, let’s talk about one step further than that. The people who are marching against Israel are the people who actually say that it was okay to conduct the massacre and atrocities of October 7th because they were somehow justified. It was justified to kill great-grandparents in their beds. It was justified to gang-rape women and then continue after murdering them, continue raping their dead bodies. It was justified to take and torture more than 250 hostages, including children, two of whom were murdered literally at the hands of the Gazans. I don’t mean figuratively. I mean literally. These children were choked and strangled to death by someone’s hands.

Apparently, if you believe that this is justice, the resistance by any means, and the means are utterly barbaric, well, guilt by association, that makes you a terrorist.

Why a terrorist and not just a terrorist sympathizer?

Well, nobody seems to have any problem calling me a genocidal baby killer because you disagree with the IDF. So, therefore, by virtue of logical extension, you must be an Islamic terrorist.

Now, I know that when I say that, some people’s radars will go up. “Islamic terrorist”…that’s racist.

No, it’s not.

Every single proscribed terrorist organization by the United Nations--which actually is in bed with most of the Islamic countries--happen to be Islamists.

That’s no coincidence.

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I’m not going to sit here and go down the litany and explanation and proof of Islamic terror. Anybody who understands history--and particularly the history of the last, say, 25 years--knows very well what Islamist terror looks like.

It looks like blowing up two buildings in the middle of New York City.

It looks like beheading a Wall Street Journal journalist simply for being a Jew.

It looks like running through Christmas markets and slaughtering people at dance parties and you literally have to either live under a rock or be just willfully blind to not understand that it is not racist but factual to call out Islamic terror.

Islamists say the things out loud. That is their mission in life. It’s to take over the West by conquering it both through terror and the easy way through demographics. They work hand in hand.

So, if you think that marching side by side with people carrying signs with upside-down red triangles--which literally means kill the Jews--belies your personal intentions, you are only there because you care about social justice,. but you don’t have the discrimination to hold that to a standard that is not a double standard, and say social justice for Gazans is the same as social justice for all, including for Israelis.

But you choose to march with the people who want to globalize the Intifada and destroy the Jewish people and the Jewish State.

Well, then why would it be any different than, say, if I were to march with white nationalist Nazis whose primarily goal right now is to destroy the Muslims?

Now, I have a zero desire, zero desire to destroy the Muslims. I have a problem with Islamists. There’s a difference and if you don’t know the difference, it’s worth it to educate yourself.

But I could say, “Hey, I happen to be marching with these anti-Muslim Nazis just because my morals lead me to fight against terror. And that’s really all I care about.”

So, I’m going to hook arms with this Nazi in order to prove that point.

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Well, I mean, that might sound completely ridiculous and it is. I would never march arm-in-arm with a Nazi for any reason, no matter what shared intention we may have…for example, to get rid of Islamist terror. But, is it not equally offensive, equally ludicrous, equally ridiculous for gays to march for Gaza, where they would actually be thrown off of buildings for being gay?

Oh, by the way, in in Israel, there happens to be the most accepting and thriving gay community in the entire Middle East, one of the most in the whole world if you’ve ever been to Tel Aviv.

Is it any more ridiculous for tree huggers who are so concerned with climate change to call for Intifada? Do you know the extent that Israel goes to for climate change? That they’re one of the most forward nations on earth for water innovation, for example, for desalination, for saving water, and how much they do for the environment and for climate change?

I’d love you to see what the Palestinian record is on that, besides things like burning tires, which is phenomenal for the environment.

Is it any less ridiculous for a feminist to march with the Islamists who treat all women as second-class citizens or third-class or whatever class? They have to cover themselves from head to toe where all that can be seen is their eyes and they’re not allowed out of the house without a male escort they have no power, they have no rights, and yet the feminists believe that this is the cause that they want to stand for, not Israel.

No, not Israel where women and men have completely equal rights and representation.

No, no, no.

There’s no guilt by association in a feminist saying “me too unless you’re a Jew.”

“Believe all women,” but if a woman who is actually the victim of Islamist terror and gang rape and sexual violence who happens to be Israeli and/or Jewish, second guess that. That is probably a lie because all women means all women except for Jewish women.

Of course, why would we believe Jewish women?

The hypocrisy never ends.

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Next time you want to call someone like me a genocidal baby killer just remember that beyond that extraordinary lie would be the equivalent statement that you happen to be a terrorist who massacred 1,200 people on October 7^th, gang raped women, cut off men’s and women’s genitalia, kidnapped brutally hundreds of people, tortured them, who also maimed thousands of people, innocent people, and went on to not only commit these most vile atrocities, but to commit to doing it over and over again, as many times as they can, into the future.

So, is that who you are?

__________________________________________________________

Am Yisrael isn’t just the people of Israel. It’s the Nation of Israel, within Eretz Yisrael and throughout the Diaspora. If you are part of Am Yisrael—or a precious ally—please join the Unapologetically Jewish community.

✡️ THE UNAPOLOGETICALLY JEWISH PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ShanaMeyerson

🪂 🤸 THE “A PARATROOPER AND A YOGI WALK INTO A BAR...” PODCAST WHICH I CO-HOST WITH THE ICONIC : https://www.youtube.com/@ParatrooperAndYogi

🎥 THE YOGA OF WAR PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEk7dn2pk4QXmLMnBCB80yQXIIcBDYsi0

🔊 All three podcasts can be found on Substack, YouTube or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

Andrew Fox is a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and cohost of The Brink Podcast. He served for 16 years in the British Army, leaving the Parachute Regiment with the rank of Major. He completed 3 tours in Afghanistan including one attached to US Army Special Forces, as well as further tours of Bosnia, Northern Ireland and the Middle East. He was a senior lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, teaching in the War Studies and Behavioural Science departments. In the last year he has visited Gaza twice as well as Hezbollah tunnels in Lebanon. Andrew is a regular Middle East commentator on GB News, TalkTV and LBC radio, and has been published in The Spectator, The Sun, The Daily Telegraph, New York Post and The Tablet, amongst others.

YOU CAN FIND ANDREW FOX AT:

SUBSTACK: https://mrandrewfox.substack.com

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@UCLyYcICOUgGsCo_StP7W0LA

X: https://x.com/Mr_Andrew_Fox

WEBSITE: https://www.andrewfox.online

THE BRINK PODCAST: https://www.youtube.com/@TheBrink_Podcast

Shana Meyerson is a Los Angeles-based yoga influencer and the world-renowned creator of YOGAthletica and mini yogis yoga for kids. She has been teaching yoga since 2002, but has been an advocate for Israel and the Jewish people even longer than that. A member of the elite World Jewish Congress Jewish Diplomatic Corps, the Israel Bonds National Women’s Board, and AIPAC, Israel and Judaism are the cornerstones of her life. After the atrocities of October 7, Shana put her professional career on hold in order to advocate full-time for the Jewish People and the Jewish State. She is the host of the Unapologetically Jewish Podcast and The Yoga Of War.

YOU CAN FIND SHANA MEYERSON AT:

UNAPOLOGETICALLY JEWISH PODCAST: https://www.youtube.com/@shanameyerson

YOGA OF WAR PODCAST: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEk7dn2pk4QXmLMnBCB80yQXIIcBDYsi0

SUBSTACK: https://shanameyerson.substack.com

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/shanameyerson

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/YOGAthletica

X: https://x.com/ShanaMeyerson

Get more from Shana Meyerson in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

🎥 “ZIONisM” BY EINAT WILF & :

📖 EINAT WILF ‘WE SHOULD ALL BE ZIONISTS”: https://amzn.to/4yiYQUG
📚 MORE BY EINAT WILF: https://tinyurl.com/ksvy4nya

Dr. Einat Wilf is a leading thinker on Israel, Zionism, foreign policy and education. She was a member of the Israeli Parliament from 2010 to 2013, where she served as Chair of the Education Committee and Member of the influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Born and raised in Israel, Dr. Wilf served as an Intelligence Officer in the Israel Defense Forces, Foreign Policy Advisor to Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres and a strategic consultant with McKinsey & Company.
Dr. Wilf has a BA from Harvard, an MBA from INSEAD in France, and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Cambridge. She was the Goldman Visiting Professor at Georgetown University.

Dr. Wilf is the author of seven books that explore key issues in Israeli society. “We Should All Be Zionists“, published in 2022, brings together her essays from the past four years on Israel, Zionism and the path to peace; the co-authored “The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace”, was published in 2020.

She can be found at:

💻 WEBSITE: https://www.ozparty.co.il/en
👤 FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61582632297737
❌ X: https://x.com/EinatWilf
🎥 YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ozparty
📸 INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/ozparty2026
✍️ SUBSTACK: https://substack.com/@einatwilf

Find Shana at:

✡️ UNAPOLOGETICALLY JEWISH PODCAST: https://www.youtube.com/@shanameyerson

🪂🤸A PARATROOPER AND A YOGI WALK INTO A BAR..." PODCAST CO-HOSTED WITH ANDREW FOX: https://www.youtube.com/@ParatrooperAndYogi

🇮🇱 YOGA OF WAR PODCAST: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEk7dn2pk4QXmLMnBCB80yQXIIcBDYsi0

✍️ SUBSTACK: https://shanameyerson.substack.com
❌ X: https://x.com/ShanaMeyerson
👤 FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/YOGAthletica
📸 INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/shanaisunapologeticallyjewish

Please consider supporting the show 🙏
FundRazr (tax-deductible over $180!): https://fundrazr.com/a2kVkd
GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/9d5262f8
Venmo: @miniyogis
Zelle: shana@yogathletica.com
And thank you! 🙏

🇮🇱 👕 Get your Unapologetically Jewish “Am Yisrael Chai Five” Shirts: https://unapologetically-jewish-shop.fourthwall.com 👚 🇮🇱

__________________________________________________________

Am Yisrael isn’t just the people of Israel. It’s the Nation of Israel, within Eretz Yisrael and throughout the Diaspora. If you are part of Am Yisrael—or a precious ally—please join the Unapologetically Jewish community.

✡️ THE UNAPOLOGETICALLY JEWISH PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ShanaMeyerson

🪂 🤸 THE “A PARATROOPER AND A YOGI WALK INTO A BAR...” PODCAST WHICH I CO-HOST WITH THE ICONIC @MrAndrewFox: https://www.youtube.com/@ParatrooperAndYogi

🎥 THE YOGA OF WAR PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEk7dn2pk4QXmLMnBCB80yQXIIcBDYsi0

🔊 All three podcasts can be found on Substack, YouTube or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

And let me be clear: I am absolutely, unequivocally, and unapologetically unapologetically Jewish.

I started using the term,“Unapologetically Jewish,” way back in the early 1990s (yes, I’m that old) to describe the men I dated when I was in the film industry and before Hollywood decided Judaism was a bad thing.

And then, I started using it again—decades later—here on Substack. And then again to launch my rebranded podcast on YouTube. (Yoga of War wasn’t cutting it as a title anymore).

The weird thing is that I did my due diligence (apparently not diligently enough!), searching Google, Apple, and even the USPTO, to see if there was another Unapologetically Jewish Podcast. Nothing came up.

Buuuuuuuuut…..

Turns out there was.

is (I’m going to cut and paste here, so as to not misrepresent): Unapologetically Jewish by Matthew Taub confronts antisemitism, extremism, and the erosion of civic values. Facts matter. Silence isn’t neutral. Unapologetic commentary on Jewish identity and the forces shaping the modern world.

(Subscribe 👆)

My bad. My really bad.

So, why am I writing this today? Because people are telling me they subscribe to ME on YouTube but can’t find any of my content.

Subscribe To Me On YouTube

Aaaaaaaaaand…

It turns out, they didn’t subscribe to me. They subscribed to the other fantastic and incredible, brilliant and articulate podcast called Unapologetically Jewish.

Subscribe to THEM On YouTube

So, just to be clear, my YouTube Channel is called “Unapologetically Jewish 🇮🇱 Shana Meyerson” and here is a handy guide to tell the difference between us, both here on Substack and also on YouTube.

How to find us on Substack…

On YouTube, we look significantly different…

Our YouTube banners are easily distinguished…

And if you can’t tell these two apart, I can’t help you…

So…what should you do if you subscribed to the “wrong” Jew? Subscribe to us BOTH and then find three other pro-Israel Substackers to support.

None of us should be in this to fight for subscribers. We need to be in it to fight the good fight. To defend the Jewish State and defend the Jewish People.

Until we realize we are all in this together, the world will insist on driving us apart.

Am Yisrael Chai!

__________________________________________________________

Am Yisrael isn’t just the people of Israel. It’s the Nation of Israel, within Eretz Yisrael and throughout the Diaspora. If you are part of Am Yisrael—or a precious ally—please join the Unapologetically Jewish community.

✡️ THE UNAPOLOGETICALLY JEWISH PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ShanaMeyerson

🪂 🤸 THE “A PARATROOPER AND A YOGI WALK INTO A BAR...” PODCAST WHICH I CO-HOST WITH THE ICONIC : https://www.youtube.com/@ParatrooperAndYogi

🎥 THE YOGA OF WAR PODCAST ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEk7dn2pk4QXmLMnBCB80yQXIIcBDYsi0

🔊 All three podcasts can be found on Substack, YouTube or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.