Winter is Coming

“Winter Is Coming” is the title of the first episode of Game of Thrones and the motto of House Stark. It is more than a prediction about the weather. It is a warning—a call for vigilance when political ambition begins to erode moral boundaries and civilisation’s defences.

Today, Game of Thrones is being played out in American politics. The struggle is no longer for the Iron Throne, but for votes, headlines and control of an increasingly radicalised political base.

After reading the letter issued by Senator Elizabeth Warren on 10 August 2026 and co-signed by Senator Richard Blumenthal, I could not simply conclude that winter is coming.

Winter has arrived.

Warren’s letter was addressed to Isidore Mörsel, president of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, and David Gotlib, the Antwerp jeweller who designed a ceremonial ring marking the 250th anniversary of American independence.

The ring, containing 321 natural diamonds and 75 coloured gemstones, was presented to US Ambassador to Belgium Bill White during an official celebration in Brussels. It was intended as a tribute to the historic commercial relationship between Antwerp and the United States.

Warren publicly described it as what “appears to be a cartoonish bribe.” She suggested that foreign commercial interests may have purchased favourable treatment from President Donald Trump and raised the possibility of criminal prosecution.

Only after publishing those explosive insinuations did she ask who financed the ring, what it was worth, whether President Trump personally received it, what discussions had taken place and whether any commitment had ever been made.

The conclusion therefore appeared before the evidence.

This is not the language of a neutral inquiry. It is the language of political prosecution by press release. The unanswered questions are treated not as genuine uncertainties but as theatrical props surrounding a verdict that has already been communicated to the public.

With the November 2026 midterm elections approaching, the timing and language cannot be separated from American electoral politics. Warren’s attack is designed for an American audience in which opposing Trump and condemning “foreign interests,” wealth and corporate influence produce an easy morality play.

But the decision to centre that attack on Antwerp’s diamond sector introduces something far darker.

For generations, Antwerp’s diamond industry was closely associated with its Jewish community. That historical image remains powerful abroad, even though it no longer reflects the composition of the contemporary industry.

Jewish traders have not dominated Antwerp’s diamond sector for many years. Indian-origin entrepreneurs and companies now occupy a central position in the trade. The Antwerp World Diamond Centre has multicultural governance and represents approximately 1,470 Belgian diamond companies. Its chief executive, Karen Rentmeesters, is a Flemish woman.

AWDC is not a Jewish organisation. It is not a synagogue, an Israeli institution or a private ethnic network. It represents an international Belgian industry encompassing numerous cultures, nationalities and commercial interests.

Yet the old stereotype remains politically available: Jews, diamonds, gold, money and secret influence over a powerful ruler.

That is what makes Warren’s attack so disturbing. A complex European trade matter is reduced to an image of two Antwerp figures—readily associated in the public imagination with the city’s historic Jewish diamond trade—allegedly buying the favour of an American president with gold and diamonds.

Whether deliberately or recklessly, this activates one of the oldest anti-Jewish narratives in political history: the Jew using wealth and luxury to exercise hidden control over government.

Warren does not have to use the word “Jew” for the imagery to carry political force. Modern antisemitism rarely announces itself openly. It operates through insinuation, cultural association and selective outrage. It permits the audience to reach the desired conclusion while giving the politician plausible deniability.

Senator Richard Blumenthal’s co-signature adds another politically convenient layer. His Jewish identity can be invoked—whether or not he personally intended this role—as an anticipatory defence: how could Warren’s attack carry anti-Jewish undertones if a Jewish senator signed it?

But Jewish participation does not automatically disinfect a political tactic. One Jewish politician cannot speak on behalf of every Jewish community, nor can identity transform insinuation into evidence. A Jewish co-signature must never become a licence to activate stereotypes that would be condemned immediately if expressed more explicitly.

The political context extends far beyond this single letter.

Zohran Mamdani’s success in New York delivered a dangerous lesson to political opportunists. It would be inaccurate to claim that New Yorkers elected Mamdani because of antisemitism. People supported him for many reasons, particularly economic concerns and the cost of living. A significant minority of Jewish voters also backed him.

The more consequential political message was different: positions that profoundly alarm large parts of the Jewish community are no longer necessarily electorally disqualifying—even in the city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel.

Mamdani’s support for BDS, his refusal to recognise Israel specifically as a Jewish state and his record of uncompromising anti-Israel activism did not prevent his political rise. His success demonstrated that Jewish fears can be dismissed, relativised or portrayed as obstacles to a supposedly progressive political project without necessarily producing an electoral penalty.

Some politicians will inevitably draw the most cynical conclusion: hostility towards Israel—and indifference towards the fears of Jews—can mobilise parts of the electorate more effectively than defending Jewish security.

That does not mean every criticism of Israel is antisemitic. Israeli governments, like all governments, must remain open to criticism. Palestinians are entitled to dignity, security and political rights.

But criticism becomes something else when it denies only the Jewish people the right to self-determination, holds Jews collectively responsible for Israeli policy or presents violence against Israeli civilians as legitimate “resistance.”

This is how anti-Jewish sentiment is politically instrumentalised. Politicians do not need to attack Jews directly. They can target “Zionists,” Jewish institutions, Jewish-associated industries or the legitimacy of Jewish statehood. They can portray Jewish influence as inherently suspicious and Jewish self-defence as uniquely criminal. When challenged, they retreat behind the claim that they were speaking only about Israel, capitalism, lobbying or foreign policy.

It is antisemitism engineered with plausible deniability.

The slogan “from the river to the sea” illustrates the danger. In its maximalist political meaning, it does not propose two peoples living peacefully and securely beside one another. It demands the elimination of Jewish sovereignty throughout the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

When that slogan is accompanied by praise for Hamas, justification of 7 October or romanticisation of attacks against civilians, its practical meaning becomes impossible to conceal: Israel without Jewish self-determination and Jews without the ability to protect themselves.

Politicians who repeat, tolerate or sanitise such language are not promoting peace. They are normalising an eliminationist political vision.

The United States—the country that endured 9/11—should understand better than most where the glorification of terrorism leads. Yet parts of American political culture increasingly treat terrorism as morally negotiable when its victims are Israeli or Jewish.

Murder is repackaged as resistance. Kidnapping becomes liberation. Rape, torture and the deliberate killing of civilians are explained away through political context. Responsibility is transferred from the terrorist to the victim.

Once a society begins deciding whether terrorism deserves condemnation according to the identity of its victims, it has already lost part of its moral foundation.

That is why Warren’s attack matters far beyond the Antwerp diamond industry. It is another indication of a political environment in which Jewish associations can be activated for electoral purposes, reputations can be sacrificed to produce headlines and ancient suspicions can be repackaged in the modern language of ethics, anti-capitalism and anti-Trump resistance.

The issue is not merely that Warren criticised a Belgian industry. The issue is the political architecture of her attack: gold, diamonds, alleged secret influence, two Antwerp personalities and the immediate suggestion of criminal corruption—all presented before she received answers to her own questions.

This is politics built not on proof, but on symbolism.

Antisemitism has always been the cheapest form of political mobilisation. It provides a hidden enemy, a financial conspiracy and a morally convenient target. It permits politicians to avoid complex explanations because the ancient story has already been written for them: somewhere behind power, wealth and international influence, the Jew must be responsible.

Today, that story is rarely told openly. It is communicated through suggestion and association. Its vocabulary has changed, but its political function remains the same.

Winter has therefore arrived not only for Jews in the diaspora or for Israelis threatened by movements seeking the disappearance of their country. It has arrived for democratic society as a whole.

Antisemitism is never only a Jewish problem. It is an early warning that truth is being replaced by mythology, evidence by accusation and democratic politics by the mobilisation of resentment. Institutions that permit collective suspicion of Jews today will eventually employ the same methods against other minorities, political opponents and inconvenient citizens tomorrow.

The Starks understood that winter punishes those who mistake temporary comfort for permanent security. Washington should understand the warning.

When political leaders discover that Jewish fears can be ignored, that anti-Israel absolutism can be electorally rewarded and that stereotypes about Jewish wealth and influence can be activated without consequence, vigilance is no longer optional.

For the Jewish people, the cold is already unmistakable.

For the rest of humanity, the storm has only begun.

Winter has arrived.