Turkey, Iran End Ramadan With Calls For Israel’s Destruction

Plus, Prince Alwaleed and Musk’s X; Harvard’s $9 billion Jew-hate warning

The U.S. has transferred to Israel the “mother of all bombs,” or MOAB, for possible use against Iran. US Air Force courtesy photo.

The president of Turkey, Tayyip Erdoğan, marked the end of Ramadan by visiting an Istanbul mosque and calling for the destruction of Israel.

One account has Erdoğan saying “May Allah, for the sake of his name ‘Al-Qahhar,’ destroy and devastate Zionist Israel.” Another account has him saying, “May Allah damn Zionist Israel."

The supreme leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, also used the Muslim Eid holiday to channel hate toward Israel. “The Zionist criminal gang must be totally eliminated from Palestine,” Khamenei said on X. “It’s everyone’s religious, moral, human duty to strive to eliminate the vicious Zionist criminal gang from the region.” The social media posts align with Khamenei’s public remarks at Eid prayers.

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, replied to Turkey by saying in Turkish, “Dictator Erdoğan has revealed his anti-Semitic face. As is clearly seen these days, Erdoğan is dangerous both for the region and for his own people. We hope that the countries in the NATO alliance will understand this – and hopefully sooner rather than later.”

Turkey’s foreign minister replied, “We categorically reject the outrageous statement made by the Foreign Minister of the Netanyahu government. These disrespectful and baseless allegations are part of an effort to cover up the crimes committed by Netanyahu and his associates.”

Both Erdoğan and Khamenei are facing challenges. The Turkish economy has been struggling, and Turkey has seen mass protests against Erdoğan’s March 19 jailing of his main political rival, the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu. Iran is facing tightened economic pressure from the Trump administration and a potential joint U.S.-Israel military strike against its nuclear sites.

Dictators frequently try to deal with popular dissatisfaction by channeling it toward external enemies as a way of avoiding blame.

The founder and chairman of Israel's Defense and Security Forum, Brigadier General (Reserve) Amir Avivi, gave a briefing this morning in which he addressed both the Turkish and Iranian situations.

He said Turkey had opened air force and training bases within Syria. “It’s a problem, it’s a challenge, and Israel will have to be strong,” Avivi said. He said Israel would enforce a demilitarized zone south of Damascus within Syria and also work diplomatically with the U.S. on trying to “restrain” Turkey. “They want to build, again, the Ottoman empire,” Avivi said. “This is something we cannot accept.”

As for Iran, Avivi noted that the U.S. had recently delivered to Israel the MOAB, or Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, nicknamed the “mother of all bombs.” The U.S is also moving a second aircraft carrier strike group—the USS Carl Vinson—into the region where the Harry S Truman carrier strike group is also deployed. The U.S. has also been moving B-2 strategic bombers into the area; those planes can carry the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or “MOP.”

Avivi said the Carl Vinson will “help dealing with the preparations to attack Iran.”

“It’s crucial that an attack on Iran will be a mutual attack, America-Israeli,” Avivi said. “This is the kind of discussions that Israel is having with the U.S.”

On Saturday night Trump told NBC News that if Iran does not make a deal, “there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before.”

Alwaleed X valuation: Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal gave an interview to Tucker Carlson released February 5, 2025, in which he talked about the value of his personal and Kingdom Holdings’ investment in X: “On our books…as for X, we never devalued it….We’ve seen the market revalue upwards dramatically X at least to its par value at $44 billion he paid for it. …I believe the actual value is more than double.” Musk on March 28 announced that X had been acquired by xAI “in an all-stock transaction” that values “X at $33 billion ($45B less $12B debt).” The Carlson interview doesn’t mention the $12 billion debt. Depending on how or whether Alwaleed was counting the debt, he was either pretty much right on the nose or off by $11 billion.

Harvard’s $9 billion: In the past few days, Harvard has been announcing steps—pausing a partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank, replacing the director and associate director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies—that it should have taken years ago, suggesting a suddenly heightened sensitivity to anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias. Anyone wondering about the timing now has a plausible explanation: an announcement from the Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and the U.S. General Services Administration of “a comprehensive review of federal contracts and grants at Harvard University and its affiliates” as “part of the ongoing efforts of the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism.”

According to the federal government press release, the review will encompass “more than $255.6 million in contracts between Harvard University, its affiliates and the Federal Government” and also “more than $8.7 billion in multi-year grant commitments to Harvard University and its affiliates.”

The secretary of education, Linda McMahon, who has been off to an excellent start, has the lead quote in the press release: “Harvard has served as a symbol of the American Dream for generations – the pinnacle aspiration for students all over the world to work hard and earn admission to the storied institution,” she said. “Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination - all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry - has put its reputation in serious jeopardy. Harvard can right these wrongs and restore itself to a campus dedicated to academic excellence and truth-seeking, where all students feel safe on its campus.”

“While Harvard’s recent actions to curb institutionalized anti-Semitism - though long overdue - are welcome, there is much more that the university must do to retain the privilege of receiving federal taxpayer’s hard earned dollars,” the release quoted another federal official, Josh Gruenbaum, as saying.

How much more progress Harvard has yet to make was clear from the campus reaction to the news. On Sidechat, a social media application restricted to current Harvard students, one poster said, “we are literally a puppet of Netanyahu.” In court filings and in communications with the government and with the Jewish community, Harvard has touted its handling of Sidechat as a success, pointing to a meeting it had with the operator of the service and its tightening of eligibility for access to the Harvard Sidechat platform. The service’s continued use for the spreading of baseless allegations about Israeli control of the American government raises the question of why Harvard hasn’t disabled the application from use in its on campus networks, or better educated its community members about classic antisemitic myths.

The $9 billion figure is so large that it may well include Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals such as Mass General Brigham, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.There’s been some speculation and discussion of those institutions moving their affiliation to MIT or other non-Harvard universities that are better managed.

Harvard just this month raised $434 million in the bond market with offering documents that described only 11 percent of its $6.5 billion in annual revenues—or $715 million—as federal sponsored research. The offering documents made no disclosure to potential bond purchasers that anything on the order of $9 billion could be at risk. The documents show the medical school, school of public health, and school of engineering and applied sciences as most heavily reliant on sponsored research. “Total expenditures funded by US government sponsors or by institutions that subcontract federally sponsored projects to the University were $686.5 million and $676.1 million in fiscal year 2024 and 2023, respectively,” the financial report included in the bond offering documents says. “The University’s principal source of federally sponsored funds is the Department of Health and Human Services.”

Anyway, I warned publicly in December 2022, when I was still employed by Harvard, “Having been around the university now on and off for more than 30 years, the level of antisemitism on campus over the past year is shocking, embarrassing, disgraceful—like nothing I’ve seen before. All of us who care about the University really need to work urgently to improve the situation or else face a real risk of Harvard losing Jewish talent and excellence to other, less hostile institutions.”

Two and a third years have passed since then. Harvard has made modest progress on the issue, but it has been slow, contested, and erratic. Another disruptive anti-Israel protest on the campus—the second in less than a week—is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. It is regrettable that it is taking $9 billion threats from the Trump administration to compel Harvard to take steps that it should have taken on its own to self-correct years ago. Without the threats, the university would have stayed on the course it was on, one of discriminatory hostility toward Jews and Israel. It may stay on that basic course even with the threats, though it does appear to be making some belated efforts to improve.