Friday, March 22, 2024

03/22 Links Pt2: The triumph of the blood libel; Do Arab-Israelis Stand with Israel?; Who Is in Charge at The New York Times?; Candace Owens Fired from Daily Wire

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The triumph of the blood libel
Israelis and Jews around the world were stunned by the swiftness and ferocity of the propaganda campaign Hamas’s supporters in the West launched in the immediate wake of Hamas’s orgy of murder and sadism in southern Israel. Less than 24 hours after the news broke, Hamas supporters at Harvard University kicked off the hate campaign by getting 31 student groups to sign a statement blaming Israel for Hamas’s atrocities.

As details of the crimes began to flow, Hamas’s supporters in the West responded with violent denials of all of them. No rape. No immolation of children. No torture. No nothing. It was all Israel’s fault, they said. Israel killed and raped its own people. And now the Jews are raping Palestinian women. How do we know? Because they are Jews.

On the face of things, the rapidity and shamelessness of the projection of blame and culpability onto Israel was shocking. Normal people could be forgiven for assuming that in the face of crimes of this enormity, Hamas’s supporters would lay low. But that assumption misses the point.

Oct. 7 was one battle in a larger jihad to annihilate Israel. Propaganda in the form of blood libels is a central component of the war. The libels against Jews and the Jewish state today play the same role as they played in the Middle Ages, just on a national scale. If Jews deserved to be killed because Jews are evil, then the Jewish state deserves to be annihilated because it is the evil Jewish state. Everything that happens to Israel is proof of its evil. Every crime committed against Israel is a crime Israel committed. And if Israel doesn’t commit crimes attributed to it, then that’s because good people like Power and Borrell stood in its way.

The depressing thing, of course, is that Hamas’s strategy is working. The latent Jew-hatred in the West was widespread enough to support their crimes. The propagation of the blood libels by the United Nations, the European Union and the State Department is a disturbing indicator of just how bad things really are.

The question is what can Israel—and Jews more broadly—do in the midst of this avalanche of blood libel? The answer is twofold.

First, Israel must stop trying to prove a negative. No one cares if we are really blood-thirsty vampires. Persuasion doesn’t work with people moved by emotion, particularly hatred. Instead, Israel and Jews worldwide need to concentrate on rallying the people who viscerally understand what is going on and aren’t taken in by anti-Semitic cartoons and Hamas propaganda, even if it is spoken by Samantha Power.

As for the haters, countering them means going on the offensive. On the battlefield in Gaza, it means destroying Hamas completely so that everyone understands that attacking the Jews is a bad idea. And on the battlefields of the United Nations, the European Union, the State Department, Harvard, Berkeley, New York City and London, the answer is to expose the haters with as much vigor and ferocity as they demonize the Jews.
Bret Stephens: Directing a Movie Doesn’t Make You a Mideast Authority
In 1978 the English actress Vanessa Redgrave won an Oscar for her role in the film “Julia” and used the occasion to denounce “a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews everywhere.”

Later in the ceremony, the screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky used his own turn onstage to offer a memorable rebuttal: “I would like to suggest to Miss Redgrave,” he said to applause, “that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation, and a simple ‘thank you’ would have sufficed.”

Forty-six years on, history repeated itself.

Last week, Jonathan Glazer, director of the Holocaust-themed film “The Zone of Interest,” accepted the Academy Award for best international feature film and delivered a diatribe to “refute” having his “Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.”

It took a few days, but the spirit of Chayefsky came roaring back. In a “Statement From Jewish Hollywood Professionals,” hundreds of signatories, including the actress Julianna Margulies and the producer Lawrence Bender, denounced Glazer for “drawing a moral equivalence between a Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of people, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its own extermination,” arguing that it could fuel antisemitism.

Politically speaking, I’m with the signatories. People can have varying views of the war in Gaza, but comparing it with the Holocaust, as Glazer did, is profoundly wrong. Among other differences, Jews did not provoke the Holocaust by murdering, raping and kidnapping German civilians in a deliberate effort to start a war.

But I’m also allergic to what Eli Lake, in a brilliant recent essay in Commentary magazine, called the “As a Jew” phenomenon: the habit of prefacing political opinions with a declaration of identity, as if an opinion about Israeli politics (usually, an anti-Israel opinion) somehow becomes more credible and significant because the speaker happens to be Jewish.
At the Anti-Israel Carnival
More disturbing than costumes are the carnivalesque inversions of ideals central to a university education. Thus, when JFAS has sought co-presenters for lectures by entirely mainstream scholars, we have struggled to find a single academic department willing to put its name on a poster. On the other hand, those same departments and university-sponsored research centers present seemingly endless, one-sided propaganda that vilifies Israel. Even the concept of “diversity” is blatantly inverted. In February, a university-sponsored research center hosted a lecture by Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch, who is notorious for demonizing Israel. During the Q&A period, a professor began by saying: “I am speaking as an Israeli, I am speaking as a Jew, and I am speaking as a Zionist. . . . We are here. We want to talk, and we look forward to talking about this issue and all issues with all of you.” The Jewish professor was interrupted and heckled. Later, Students for Justice in Palestine posted a video of the incident, asserting, “This is extremely unprofessional, insensitive, & makes his students and many students across the Rutgers Newark campus feel unsafe.” Dozens of comments on the post predictably agreed that a request for dialogue was really an act of violence, with some stating openly that the diversity of the student population was reason to silence Zionists.

A main feature of the carnivalesque is its celebration of the carnal or profane. True to form, campus protestors have consistently celebrated actual bodily violence. Everyone is, by now, familiar with the rationalization and even cheering of Hamas’s atrocities on October 7. Even more shocking was the promotion of violence that took place at a protest here at Rutgers in January. Shouting into a megaphone, a leader of the protest glorified precisely such violence when she proclaimed, “dying as a Martyr, dying as a hero is one of the greatest sacrifices you can do as a Palestinian and as a Muslim.” She then led a series of chants in Arabic: “Even if you aren’t Muslim, if you say these chants, you are resisting on behalf of the Palestinians.”

Like many cultures, Judaism has its own spring carnival in the holiday of Purim, with all its mandated excesses, masks, and inversions in celebration of the defeat of Haman and his allies. Over the centuries, the rabbinic tradition has been largely successful in curbing and sublimating the darker aspects of the carnivalesque in the service of its higher ideals. Yet Jews are not immune to the violent excesses of the carnivalesque; witness Baruch Goldstein’s massacre on Purim in 1994. Especially now, as Israel’s justified, defensive war against Hamas is being sullied by unsanctioned violence by extremist Jews in the West Bank, we all bear responsibility for ensuring that the levity of Purim is channeled toward “light and joy,” to borrow a phrase from the Book of Esther.

Mikhail Bakhtin thought that the chaotic spirit of the carnival would “free human consciousness, thought and imagination for new potentialities.” Perhaps. But the university is an institution carefully constructed over centuries to advance consciousness, thought, and imagination through the free and open pursuit of truth. It will have to find a way to reject masked intimidation, brazen inversions, and the celebration of violence if it is to remain one.

At Rutgers and on countless other campuses nationwide, the carnivalesque has given license to an ugly hatred that has now been unmasked. Undoing the inversions, lies, and base behavior that this hatred has engendered will require a renewed commitment to the central mission of American colleges. My university would be a good place to start.


Terrorists who perpetrate attacks are not who ‘experts’ say they are
The notion that children, married men, and clergymen are unlikely to become terrorists – the idea that poverty is the main cause of terrorism – has been disproven not only by recent incidents such as these, but by study after study of the motives of Arab and Muslim terrorists.

From 1996 to 1999, relief worker Nasra Hassan conducted interviews with some 250 Palestinians who either attempted to carry out suicide bombings, trained others for such attacks, or were related to deceased bombers.

Writing in The New Yorker, she reported that “none of [the bombers] were uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded, or depressed. Many were middle class and, unless they were fugitives, held paying jobs… Two were the sons of millionaires.”

After the attacks on September 11, 2001, The New York Times reported that the personal details concerning the hijackers had “confounded the experts.” It turned out that the attackers “were adults with education and skill, not hopeless young zealots,” the Times revealed. “At least one left behind a wife and young children…They were not reckless young men facing dire economic conditions and dim prospects, but men as old as 41 enjoying middle-class lives.”

A study in 2002 by Prof. Alan Krueger of Princeton and Prof. Jitka Maleckova of Prague’s Charles University focused on 129 Lebanese Hezbollah terrorists who were killed in attacks on Israel. They found that compared to other Lebanese, the Hezbollah members “were less likely to come from poor families and were significantly more likely to have completed secondary education.”

In 2004, Prof. Alberto Abadie of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government examined terrorists’ motives. When he began his research, he thought that “it was a reasonable assumption that terrorism has its roots in poverty.”

By the time he was done, he had concluded that there is “no significant relationship” between the economic conditions in a given country and the rise of terrorists there.

Given all of the above, why do so many “experts,” politicians, and pundits still stubbornly cling to the utterly unscientific idea that poverty causes terrorism?

Because in their hearts, they want to believe that the key to ending terrorism is in our hands – that if we just give the Palestinian Arabs enough financial aid (the US has sent over $10 billion to the Palestinian Authority since 1993), they’ll stop all their stoning and bombing and burning and beheading. So the politicians close their eyes to reality, and keep signing the checks. What a tragedy!
Do Arab-Israelis Stand with Israel? | Ami on the Loose
What do Arabs living in Israel think about the horrific attacks of October 7? The left is up in arms as Israel defends itself against Hamas. But where do Arab-Israelis stand? Do they support the slaughter and brutality of Hamas, or do they stand with Israel? Ami Horowitz gets the unreported truth from Arabs who call Israel home.


Who wants a two-state solution? Not Israelis or Palestinians
The main problem, according to Gilboa, is the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Afraid of losing their voting base, the Democrats and the Biden administration are taking a tougher stance against Israel.

The Israeli public is aware that the U.S. government and the international community did not react similarly when, for example, Syria massacred 600,000 of its own citizens, said Gilboa. This heavy pressure on Israel is viewed by Israelis as a cheap way for the Biden administration to gain political points on the American street.

“This causes damage to the two goals the sides share, defeating Hamas and releasing the hostages,” said Gilboa.

In Gilboa’s view, given rising American hostility, the Jewish state should reduce its reliance on the United States. At the same time, he suggested that Israel invest heavily in influencing public opinion in America to help reduce the anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment there.

The U.S. obsession with a two-state solution clearly goes against the will of the Israeli public, and certainly does not mesh with what the Palestinians want.

According to Bowman, the key obstacle to a true two-state solution is Hamas.

“There is no viable path to a two-state solution as long as groups such as Hamas exist and retain the means to do what they did on Oct. 7,” he said.

“Hamas and other terror groups like it that refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist are the primary reason there is not a Palestinian state today,” he said.

“I am not optimistic regarding Israeli-Palestinian peace until more Palestinians come to see Hamas and terror groups like it as the primary obstacle to peace and a better life.”
Spain, Ireland, Malta, Slovenia agree to work towards Palestinian state recognition
Spain has agreed with the leaders of Ireland, Malta, and Slovenia to take the first steps towards recognizing a Palestinian state, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Friday following a meeting of the European Council in Brussels.

Speaking for Spain, Sanchez expected the recognition to happen during the current four-year legislature that began last year.

He told reporters the agreement was reached after meeting with his Irish, Maltese and Slovenian counterparts on the sidelines of the Council gathering on Friday morning.

Lasting peace and stability
"We are agreed that the only way to achieve lasting peace and stability in the region is through implementation of a two-state solution, with Israeli and Palestinian States living side-by-side, in peace and security," read a joint statement issued by Ireland after the meeting.

Arab states and the European Union agreed at a meeting in Spain in November that a two-state solution was the answer to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Since 1988, 139 out of 193 United Nations member states have recognized Palestinian statehood.
Eli Lake: Who Is in Charge at The New York Times?
Former Times journalists have also been a conduit for grievances on social media. Soraya Shockley, a former producer for The Daily, took to Twitter on February 10 and claimed many in the newsroom were “ringing the alarm bells for the last four months” about “Screams Without Words.” Another former Times journalist who resigned in November after signing a letter protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, Jazmine Hughes, has been another channel for discontent in the newsroom. In February she first posted to X a screenshot of the message Slack users receive when attacking colleagues.

One Times reporter confirmed that during the editing process of “Screams Without Words,” reporters and editors in the newsroom voiced objections to the article. “This piece was closely edited and bulletproofed,” this reporter said. “It was subjected to a high degree of internal hostility, and everyone knew they couldn’t afford to get it wrong.”

It’s unclear if the newspaper will eventually cave as it did in 2020. One factor that is different, though, is that the Times has at least officially warned its 5,800 employees that defaming colleagues on Slack will no longer be tolerated.

The problem for the Times is that many of its own staffers do not want to investigate the sexual violence that occurred on October 7. They see it as a vulnerability to their own side in the information war about Gaza.

“There are a huge number of people at the Times who are activists, and it is their job to tell a particular story,” one Times reporter told The Free Press. “The precedent was set that this works. If it doesn’t work through one means, they will find another.”
David Collier: Ismail Al Ghoul – a case study in the failure of western media
On Monday 18 March, Israel arrested Al Jazeera ‘journalist’ Ismail Al Ghoul. As usual all was not as it seemed.

The collapse of media honesty
Since October 7 we have witnessed a complete breakdown in the quality and honesty of western media coverage on Israel. The media lens has never treated Israeli fairly, but since the Hamas attack many of the world’s most famous media brands have reached a whole new level of toxicity .

In fact, mainstream media outlets have been caught lying so many times they have started to defend themselves by blaming Israel – suggesting it is because Israel won’t let them in. This is a nonsensical claim considering in late November the BBC flew its own man on the ground OUT of Gaza because of his ‘safety’.

And anyway, if I can do research in London and find out that people pretending to be journalists in Gaza work for Hamas or the IRGC – then so can the BBC, CNN, NYT, and Sky News.

The awful quality in reporting isn’t about a lack of access. It stems from a complete indifference to the lies of the Palestinians that goes back decades. Palestinians learnt long ago that they can say whatever they like, and their words will run as headlines throughout the world without anybody ever asking them for proof.

Hamas members only need to put on a press jacket to be given opportunities to present Hamas propaganda live on the BBC or Sky News. This culture of deceit defines not only the Palestinian experience with western press and politicians, but the manner in which Palestinian society has evolved. The mess you see today is the result of a society that has never been forced to face its own failings. Too many in the west are more than happy to help the Palestinians spread libels and blame Israel for absolutely everything.

As a result, nothing that we see on our screen from Gaza is trustable. We were provided with another excellent example this week with the arrest of the Al Jazeera journalist Ismail Al Ghoul.
Al Jazeera should report, not inflame, the Gaza war
Retired Jordanian army general Fayez Al-Duwairi then spends hours daily standing in front of a big screen pointing at Gaza’s map, explaining Hamas footage and always concluding that the Gazan militants have been giving Israel a beating.

Duwairi’s failed predictions, including of Hamas repelling a ground Israeli invasion, have been piling up, but have not stopped him from becoming an Arab celebrity, so much so that when one Hamas fighter was video recording an attack on Israeli troops, the fighter was heard shouting “analyze this, O Duwairi!” The expression trended on Arab social media for days.

Like Qatar and Al Jazeera, Duwairi became the news. Al Jazeera asked him about his feelings when he heard Hamas call his name. “That call was a medal on my chest,” the former general said. “If I didn’t feel pride then, it’d have meant that I had given up on my pan-Arab nationalism.”

Debuting in 1996 as an Arabic satellite channel, Al Jazeera quickly won praise for its evenhanded coverage and professionalism – habits that it abandoned shortly after. Seeing in its channel a potent soft power tool, Doha has increased multifold Al Jazeera’s budget, now estimated at over US$1 billion a year, and added an English channel and a social media stream AJ+.

Long before the ongoing war in Gaza, Al Jazeera had been offering misinformation consistently.

For example, last Ramadan, when religious fervor was running high, Al Jazeera claimed that Israel prohibited Palestinians from praying at Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem, even when Palestinians reported that the number of those who prayed there reached a quarter of a million, at a shrine whose maximum capacity is supposed to be 180,000.

The channel took pride, for another example, in being the first to claim that Israel had bombed al-Ahli hospital, killing hundreds of Palestinians who were taking refuge in the facility’s yard.

As Western intelligence and media started showing that the hit was the result of errant Palestinian fire, and that the number of deaths was a fraction of what was reported, Al Jazeera moved on, without ever acknowledging or regretting its error – but rather doubling down on its narrative that it was Israel that was deluding the world about the attack.

That Al Jazeera deludes its audience with its misinformation and sensational broadcasts is its business. The US government is concerned, however, when Al Jazeera skirts American laws that force foreign entities to file under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).

Washington has already forced the operation and staff of Moscow’s Russia Today to file under FARA. Al Jazeera stood defiant, arguing that it was like the BBC – an independent organization that receives a governmental grant.

But the BBC’s budget – including the salaries of all of its staff — is posted publicly online. The firewall between the British government and the BBC is also clear.

Al Jazeera, meanwhile, conceals its enormous budget and the extent to which Doha influences its editorial policy. For one thing, we know that Al Jazeera, whose harsh criticism does not spare governments, has never criticized Qatar. On the contrary, Al Jazeera amplifies any gratitude, no matter how small, shown by anyone toward Qatar.

Al Jazeera is not interested in news. It is focused on shaping the narrative in ways that befit Doha’s agenda. And even though Qatar is a US ally, Al Jazeera’s editorial policy suggests otherwise. This would mean that Doha either reins in its channel’s inflammatory and instigative rhetoric or starts shopping for other allies.
‘The Intercept’ and Oct. 7 rape denialism
The purpose of the deception is obvious: Grim and crew believe that if they can cast doubt on the fact that Hamas terrorists raped Abdush, they can cast doubt on claims that Hamas raped anyone.

Grim and crew know that explicitly denying these claims would make them sound unhinged. So they hedge by saying, “The question has never been whether individual acts of sexual assault may have occurred on October 7. Rape is not uncommon in war.”

There is a tremendous amount to unpack in this statement.

First, what happened on Oct. 7 was not “war.” It was premeditated mass slaughter. Of course, mass rape isn’t uncommon in cases of mass slaughter, especially when the slaughter is committed by Islamic extremists hopped up on Captagon. The disingenuous term “war” thus better serves The Intercept’s attempt to whitewash Hamas’s program of sexual violence.

The statement is nonetheless remarkable because the Hamas terrorists filmed their atrocities as part of a plan to cause maximum psychological shock. Few atrocities have been more fully documented by the perpetrators themselves.

Moreover, Hamas terrorists have openly admitted that they used rape as a weapon. One captured terrorist spoke in a videotaped interrogation of raping children “to dirty them.” That mindset would explain—to the extent it can be explained—the documented incidents of necrophilia, which a U.N. report has corroborated. Grim and crew naturally shy away from the necrophilia allegations.

The Intercept’s claim that “the question has never been” about individual sexual assaults is also nonsense. Grim was a host on The Hill’s “Rising” talk show until September 2022. Briahna Joy Gray is still a “Rising” host. Before the Intercept article, Gray repeatedly and falsely insisted that all rape allegations against Hamas were a “lie” and merely “uncorroborated eyewitness accounts of men.” Her denialism began mere weeks after Hamas released its Oct. 7 videos.

By then, the world had seen the image of 19-year-old Naama Levy with a large blood stain on the seat of her pants. It had seen the video of 22-year-old Shani Louk, unconscious, face down and nearly naked in the bed of a pickup truck as Hamas gunmen sat on her battered body and chanted “Allahu Akbar!”

Had Grim and crew discussed these images, they would have been hard-pressed to deny what any normal person could see. And they could not have dodged what any thinking person could instantly understand: Hamas chose to release these images to show and celebrate the rapes it had committed.

If the Intercept team accepted that these women had been raped, the next question would be inevitable: How many more were raped? Large numbers of bodies of women and girls, from the elderly to the very young, were found missing their lower clothing, many with broken pelvises, some tied to their beds. This is compelling evidence that the sexual violence, like the slaughter, had been systematic.

Grim and crew, however, could not concede that any particular victim had been raped. Nor did they want to pin themselves to Gray’s crass denialism. The result is a bizarre formulation about what nobody has ever denied may have occurred.

Grim and crew understood that systematic rape is a bad look for their side. So they chose to ignore known facts and spin the allegation as an Israeli government conspiracy without disclosing that they were soliciting donations with their Israel coverage. They should think about how all of that makes The Intercept look.
Candace Owens leaves Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire after promoting antisemitic conspiracies
Far-right media figure Candace Owens has left The Daily Wire, a news site co-founded by conservative political commentator and Orthodox Jew Ben Shapiro, after months of publicly endorsing antisemitic ideas.

Jeremy Boreing, co-founder of The Daily Wire, posted the news to social media on Friday, writing that Owens and the company had “ended their relationship.”

Owens, who became a leading pundit for The Daily Wire shortly after joining in 2020, confirmed the news in a post on X: “The rumors are true – I am finally free.”

The circumstances of Owens’ departure from the platform are unclear and The Daily Wire has not responded to requests for further comment, but the news arrived on the heels of several months of animosity between Owens and Shapiro, over Owens’ espousal of antisemitic ideas across her social media platform.

The beginning of Owens’ foray into antisemitism appears to have been when she defended Kanye West after he famously tweeted that he was “going Deathcon 3 on Jewish people” in 2022, the first of a number of antisemitic remarks made by the rapper.

But Owens had previously made questionable statements; in 2019, Owens said Adolf Hitler would have been “fine” if he had kept his nationalism local rather than trying to project it globally and in 2021, she compared mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for children to Nazi and Soviet youth programmes.

Owens began to clash with Shapiro in the wake of October 7, after which Owens became increasingly critical of Israel’s military response in Gaza. Shapiro, who is a staunch supporter of Israel, was filmed calling Owens’ behaviour “absolutely disgraceful” during a private event in November 2023.

Earlier this month, Owens suggested in Daily Wire video that “secret Jewish gangs” perpetrate “horrific acts” against people in Hollywood and proposed the idea that a “ring of Jews in Hollywood” is involved in “something quite sinister.” She also recently favourited a tweet repeating a false claim about Jews drinking Christians’ blood.
Mark Ruffalo Appearance Canceled By Legal Event Over Palestine Support
Mark Ruffalo's calendar just opened up a bit ... 'cause a conference he was supposed to speak at just canceled his appearance, and his support for Palestine seems to be the key.

The actor was all set to speak at MTMP -- a conference for lawyers and their paralegals to discuss the ins and outs of class action lawsuits, etc. The conference is taking place in early April, but now ... it appears Ruffalo won't be there, 'cause they're nixing him from the lineup.

The event's organizers sent out a statement to the attendees this week saying Mark had been invited to speak at the conference after playing an environmental activist/attorney in the movie "Dark Waters" back in 2019 -- which touched on a lot of the things they already do in the real world ... so they wanted to have him show up and speak to the same issues.

Ruffalo -- an environmental activist himself -- was set to be a big-time guest for the conference, but the event said this was before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 ... and more importantly, before Ruffalo's very public support of Palestine, especially at the Oscars.

ICYMI ... Mark spoke with reporters at the Oscars and showed visible excitement while heading in over a Palestinian protest that delayed him. He also donned a pin representing Artists Call for Ceasefire Now ... so yeah, he was leaning into his pro-Palestine position.

It seems Ruffalo's stance is too controversial for the MTMP conference ... because organizers say they didn't want the event to be overshadowed by the war in the Middle East, and by Mark as well. Instead, they say they're canceling Ruffalo's appearance -- despite possibly losing their speaking fee in the process -- and asked the attendees not to boycott the event.


ADL report names anti-Israel agitators in Chicago
The ADL Midwest released a new report during a press conference on March 18 documenting the extent of anti-Jewish incidents and anti-Israel protests in the city of Chicago.

Four activist groups named by the organization as the most responsible for the activity are the United States Palestinian Community Network, Students for Justice in Palestine, American Muslims for Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.

David Goldenberg, the Evelyn R. Greene regional director of ADL Midwest, said the groups “use Israel’s war with Hamas as an excuse to spread hate and antisemitism. They are well-funded and highly organized.”

Goldenberg said the activists’ efforts have “created an environment where Jews in Chicago feel and are less safe than we were just a few months ago.”

The report features ample illustrations, showing protesters marching with a banner that reads “Palestinian Resistance is Justified When Our People Are Occupied.” One collection of photos shows demonstrators wearing Hamas symbols and carrying the Islamist terror group’s green sword-crossed flag.

“These activists don’t care if you’re a peace-loving Jew, just that you’re a Jew. That doesn’t make them pro-Palestinian; it makes them anti-Jewish,” said Dan Goldwin, executive director of public affairs for the Jewish United Fund. “We refuse to allow antisemites disguising themselves as peace activists to be embraced rather than being treated as the hate groups that they are.”
What should Israel do if opponents boycott its participation at the Olympic games?
Israelis celebrated on Wednesday when the country’s opponents in this summer’s Olympics soccer competition at the Paris Games were confirmed.

Israel will face Paraguay, Mali and an Asian qualifier that is yet to be confirmed. Arab nations Morocco and Egypt, with which Israel has diplomatic ties, but with whom sporting ties have been strained over the decades, are also participating. There is a chance that Israel could face them in the later rounds of the competition. Sub-Saharan Mali, which is 95% Muslim, severed ties with Israel after the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

As the countdown for Paris 2024 gains momentum and the Gaza war drags on, could Israel’s soccer matches be boycotted?

In other sports, Israeli athletes have become used to nations such as Iran regularly refusing to turn up due to Israeli participation.

Israeli soccer has been down this road before. Israel was a member of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) between 1954 and 1974 but because of the Arab boycott, several Arab and Muslim states refused to compete against them. The geopolitical tensions culminated in Israel “progressing” in the qualifying stages of the 1958 World Cup without playing a single match. This forced FIFA to schedule a playoff between Israel and Wales to ensure that the Israeli team faced at least one opponent. Wales won that playoff.

Israel was expelled from the AFC in 1974 and was forced to play in FIFA’s Oceania Confederation, whose opponents were on the other side of the world. It finally became a member of European soccer under UEFA in 1992.
Canadian Jewish federation ‘dismayed’ by Jewish film festival postponement
A Canadian movie theater said it was postponing a Jewish film festival, over the objections of the local Jewish federation, owing to “security and safety concerns at this particularly sensitive time.”

The Playhouse Cinema in Hamilton, Ontario said in a Tuesday statement that it decided over the weekend to postpone the Hamilton Jewish Film Festival, which it had been slated to host in April. The theater said it did so “after receiving numerous security and safety related emails, phone calls, and social media messages.”

The theater’s statement, posted to social media, did not provide details on the nature of the safety concerns, and the theater did not respond to requests for comment as of press time.

But the statement came as the arts world has been roiled by protest over the Israel-Hamas war. One of the films to be screened, “The Boy,” is a short film about life on the Israel-Gaza border and was directed by Yahav Winner, who was murdered in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that launched the war.

'Deeply dismayed' over the cancellation
A spokesperson for the Hamilton Jewish Federation, which had been partnering with the theater on the festival, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency it was “deeply dismayed” by the decision, which it said the theater made on its own.

“This decision, made in response to a few complaints and threatening emails objecting to our festival’s lineup, including films from Israel, is profoundly disappointing,” the federation said in its statement. “We believe this action represents a missed opportunity to engage the Greater Hamilton community in a meaningful cultural event, particularly in the wake of the alarming rise of antisemitism in recent times.”

The federation added that the move to postpone the festival “was not mutual and was made solely by the Playhouse Cinema.” It also said that “there were no specific threats or incidents that warranted the cancellation of the festival.”
Italy’s University of Turin to exit Israel research pact amid Gaza protests
The University of Turin is suspending a collaboration agreement with Israeli universities and research institutes after a wave of student protests over the Israel-Hamas war.

The school’s academic senate voted on Wednesday to ban participation in an initiative financing joint research projects between Italy and Israel, while rejecting calls for a broader cessation of ties with Israeli universities.

The decision has raised concerns among Italian Jewish leaders even after the university’s rector emphasized that collaboration currently in place would continue.

Student groups had appealed to repeal nine collaboration agreements the University of Turin currently has with Israeli universities, citing a fear they could finance dual-use technology — or projects that serve both civil and military purposes — amid Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. The student collectives “Cambiare Rotta” and “Progetto Palestina” interrupted an academic senate session with protest banners on Tuesday.

But the senate only agreed to vote on a motion prohibiting participation in the “Italy-Israel industrial, scientific and technological cooperation agreement,” a 2024 initiative of Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation focused on soil technology, water technology and precision optics. The motion was approved by a majority of members, with two abstentions and one vote against by Susanna Terracini, director of the mathematics department.

“I would have had no problem approving a request for a ceasefire, because I am deeply disturbed by the massacre that is taking place in the Gaza Strip,” Terracini told the local newspaper Corriere Torino. “But I am strongly against academic boycotts, because since possible war projects are excluded, collaborations are an element that brings understanding and peace.”
The way to address antisemitism on college campuses is to defund and deport
Cheering on Hamas—a group long ago designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department and which, on October 7, murdered and kidnapped not only Israelis but also scores of American citizens—surely qualifies.

Which, hallelujah, makes things quite simple for anyone interested making our universities safe, not only for Jews but also for the free and unfettered exchange of ideas. We already have a great and sensible law on the books which says that while we welcome anyone who wishes to come here, attend university, and get an education, we do not permit people who openly support and advocate for terrorism. Wave Hamas’s green flag, call for an intifadah—or violent uprising, or chant ditties that advocate the annihilation of the world’s sole Jewish state, and you’re out of here.

That’s the “deport” part. But the “defund” part is just as important.

As Sally Kornbluth’s letter clearly shows, American universities are playing a dangerous game when it comes to foreign students. The number of international students is rising rapidly, as are the massive donations from nations like Qatar, which has given more than $5 billion to American universities in the last twenty odd years. That means that turning a blind eye when a foreign student punches a Jew on the quad is simply good business sense for universities these days. It also means that we won’t be able to change this equation unless we applied equal or greater financial pressure.

That to, thankfully, is within reach. As the economist Richard Vedder explained in Forbes, there really isn’t such a thing as a truly private university. “Federal student loans allow [private universities] to raise fees much higher than they otherwise would be able to charge, as do tuition tax credits and Pell Grants,” Vedder wrote.

“The tax-deductible treatment of private donations helps fund new buildings. Universities rarely appropriately provide for the depreciation or construction of facilities in their accounting of revenues and expenses, implicitly assuming they are gifts from God. State and local government exemption of facilities from property and sometimes sales taxes provide further assistance. The federal government hands out research grants, with generous (probably overly generous) provision for overhead expenses. Endowments are also advantaged enormously by tax privileges, even for the few dozen schools that will now have to pay an endowment tax. Public school guidance counselors and teachers tell students that to be successful in life they need to go to college and that the extremely successful go to elite private schools.”

What is the solution?
Herein lies the answer: Lawmakers can—and must—decree that any institution that allows foreign students to support terrorism with impunity would no longer be eligible to a single cent of taxpayer money.

Take away these deductions, grants, and benefits, and we’ll see how long the Sally Kornbluths of this world would sotto voce warn their paying customers not to be too violently anti-Semitic so as not to attract needless attention.

We’re on the cusp of another electoral cycle. For all of our sakes, let’s hope that these next few months give rise to candidates, on both sides of the aisle, who aren’t afraid to use simple and sensible tools to solve the dire problem of Jew hating in America’s finest universities.
Harvard Professors on Israel Visit Describe ‘Existential Crisis’ for Jews Back Home–And Loss of Faith in DEI
A group of Harvard University professors visited Israel this week in a show of wartime solidarity with the Jewish state. But the visitors seemed to be just as much in need of support as their hosts.

In a series of sessions at Tel Aviv University on Tuesday, members of the more-than-50-person delegation—which also included faculty from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, Dartmouth, and Yale Universities, and elsewhere—described feeling abandoned and afraid on their campuses back home. Gabriel Kreiman, a professor at Harvard Medical School who organized the solidarity mission, said the faculty are liberals who broadly believe in "diversity, equity, and inclusion." Since Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel, though, many have had their eyes opened to the anti-Semitic implications of the academy's regnant ideology.

"I don't think a lot of people here think DEI is going very well. They're very upset," Kreiman told the Washington Free Beacon. "I don't think they are ideologically opposed to the system. It's just the current version of DEI is full of double standards and is in many cases almost openly anti-Semitic."

"It seems that if a woman is raped, it’s terrible—unless she’s Jewish," Kreiman added, alluding to the muted international response to the atrocities of Oct. 7, which sparked the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. "Jewish people have been extremely active over the last many years in efforts to fight for other minorities, and now it's our turn, and some of these other minorities are even attacking Jewish people."

Miri Bar-Halpern Hobin, an Israeli-American clinical psychologist who works with Harvard faculty, said she has felt "completely isolated and alone" in the aftermath of Oct. 7 and was in Israel "to go back to my roots, to feel the community."

"Part of it was, I guess, completely selfish," she told the Free Beacon. "I'm a big believer in post-traumatic growth. I think there's something about being helped and helping others. When you give, you get, I really do believe in that."

Bar-Halpern Hobin said she was "caught by surprise" by "the level of anti-Semitism that is now legit" in the Boston area.

"I think particularly because there are so many universities there, everybody is woke right now," she said. "It's OK to hate us. It's actually kind of cool."
Professor ends ‘sleep-in’ protest of Jew-hatred after Berkeley agrees to requests
Ron Hassner, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has attracted national coverage by sleeping in his office to protest antisemitism on campus, announced on Thursday that the university had agreed to his three requests, thus ending his nearly two-week “sleep-in.”

In a message to Jewish campus leaders about the end of his protest, Hassner, the chancellor’s chair in political science and chair in Israel studies, described the community that coalesced around his protest.

“Some 80 to 100 guests came to my office every day to eat, drink, chat, meet friends, and discuss antisemitism and free speech,” he wrote. “Students, parents, alumni, community members, rabbis, administrators and colleagues dropped by with food and encouragement. Jewish and non-Jewish students, pro-Israel and even some anti-Israel students spent hours around my coffee table, late into the night, to talk about their identity and their politics.”

“Many hundreds sent messages of encouragement and gifts for students from around the U.S. and the world,” he added.

Hassner wrote that Berkeley administrators agreed on Thursday to three requests he made of the university’s chancellor and provost on March 7.

He wanted all students, even those wearing Stars of David, to freely pass through Sather Gate—a prominent part of the campus—unobstructed.

“The right of protesters to express their views must be defended. It does not extend to blocking or threatening fellow students,” he wrote, adding that Berkely will be dispatching observers “to actively document bullying, abuse, blocking or intrusion on personal space.”

Hassner also asked that the university bring back any speaker whose talk was canceled or interrupted. He wrote on Thursday that Berkeley made good on that request too. Ran Bar-Yoshafat, an Israeli lawyer “who was attacked by a violent mob three weeks ago spoke to an even larger crowd this Monday,” Hassner wrote.
A Columbia task force set to combat antisemitism won’t define antisemitism
A Columbia University task force created to combat antisemitism on campus is having trouble defining antisemitism.

Members of the group have refused to define what antisemitism is, with two competing groups pushing different definitions. The task force was created to address “the harmful impact of rising antisemitism on Columbia’s Jewish community and to ensure that protection, respect, and belonging extends to everyone” in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

The first definition being discussed is what the State Department prefers and what supporters of Israel refer to, which says targeting Israel could be seen as antisemitic. The second definition is more narrowly defined, creating a difference between anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish sentiments.

“If you don’t diagnose the problem, you don’t have to deal with it,” said Shai Davidai, a Columbia professor who prefers the first definition. “Saying we don’t want to define it so we don’t have a problem, that’s copping out.”

Left-wing Jews often support the second definition, or the Jerusalem Declaration, which is more tolerant of criticism of Israel. Similar task forces at Harvard and Stanford have faced criticism for not supporting a more broad definition.

The task force chose three Jewish professors for their expertise among the 15-member force. However, some members said it’s not their job to define antisemitism.

“Our job is not to define antisemitism,” said Nicholas Lemann, former dean of the journalism school. “Our job is to listen to [students], make them feel that somebody at Columbia cares about them, and to try to figure out what is causing this great discomfort and distress, and whether anything can be done to ameliorate it that’s consistent with the values of the university.”


University investigating pro-Palestinian student group Penn Against the Occupation
The University has opened an investigation into Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine, prohibiting the group from organizing events in Penn-affiliated spaces until the probe has concluded.

Penn’s Center for Community Standards and Accountability is leading the investigation into PAO, a pro-Palestinian student organization, according to a source familiar with the matter. The organization has been temporarily removed from Penn Clubs, an online directory of registered student organizations.

The DP could not confirm what sparked the investigation or when it was launched. PAO was listed on Penn Clubs as recently as Feb. 18, according to website archives.

A University spokesperson told the DP that “the privilege of being listed on the Penn Club website is a benefit of being an active registrant with the Office of Student Affairs.”

“A club would not be listed in the event of a lapse or suspension of registration, among other reasons,” the spokesperson added.

Multiple PAO members declined to comment. PAO is the first political advocacy group known to be the subject of a University investigation since a Penn spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal in December that probes into three registered student groups were ongoing.

The investigation into PAO follows a recently amended lawsuit filed by Penn students regarding antisemitism on campus. The lawsuit mentions multiple Penn student organizations, including PAO — which is cited in allegedly antisemitic instances almost 30 times.

According to the amended lawsuit, PAO is a student group that recently formed “as if to one-up the antisemitism.” The plaintiffs allege that PAO “demonize[s] Penn Hillel’s Birthright Israel program,” and that in its 2022 Penn Disorientation Guide, PAO falsely stated that “Israel is a settler colonial state that uses apartheid to further its ethnic cleansing agenda.”


Shaun King is disinvited from Ramadan event and accused of using Islam as a grift after launching $1,000-a-ticket speaking tour a day after converting 'in solidarity with people of Gaza'
Far-left activist and one-time Christian pastor Shaun King has been disinvited from a Ramadan event after launching a speaking tour a day after converting to Islam in 'solidarity' with the people of Gaza.

King had been booked to speak at a Minneapolis fundraising dinner this coming Sunday for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The 44-year-old has been outspoken in his stance against Israel and claimed he was banned from Instagram over his pro-Palestine posts.

After the Minnesota CAIR branch announced that King would be speaking at the event on Thursday, they suffered an immediate blowback from social media users.

Eight hours later, the branch announced that they had made the decision to not have King as the keynote speaker after they 'heard concerns expressed'.

In a statement, the branch said: 'We have heard concerns expressed by our community regarding Shaun King being the keynote at your annual iftar fundraiser.

'We have made the decision to not have Shaun King as the keynote speaker for our upcoming annual fundraising dinner.

'This has become a distraction from the sole purpose of our event, to support the work of protecting and advancing the civil liberties of Muslims in Minnesota.'

One user hit out at King and the organization, saying: 'Do not let CAIR be tainted by association with this grifter.'

Another posted: 'People familiar with his history know he's a prolific scam artist. I wouldn't associate with him, especially for any fundraiser.'


American Editors-in-Chief, your silence is fueling antisemitism
By failing to cover such clear acts of racism, US mainstream media, in its silence and indifference, is normalizing the targeting of Jews simply because they are Jewish.

In light of this and of these disturbing trends, we must confront the unsettling normalization of antisemitism within the American landscape. The alarming escalation in hate crimes against Jews cannot be relegated to the back pages of our national consciousness or dismissed as isolated incidents. Mainstream media outlets in the US, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and Fox News, hold a critical responsibility in shaping public awareness and discourse.

This column is a call to these esteemed institutions to recalibrate their coverage and place a renewed emphasis on the growing threat of antisemitism. By ensuring that these incidents receive the national attention they deserve, the media can play a central role in mobilizing society against hate and fostering an environment of tolerance and understanding.

To the editors-in-chief of American news outlets: As leaders in journalism, you are uniquely positioned to influence the national narrative. The current approach to covering antisemitism, characterized by sporadic attention and underreporting, must be revisited. Please reflect on your platforms’ potential to effect change and consider the impact of your editorial choices. Let us not wait for tragedy to unite us in action. By amplifying the voices of those affected by antisemitism and prioritizing these stories, we can challenge the complacency that has allowed such hatred to flourish. Together, through vigilant and comprehensive reporting, we can reaffirm our collective commitment to justice, equality, and the sanctity of every human life.
Sadly, WaPost Admits No Error in Story Filled with Them
Regrettably, as this note shows, Post editors appear to have decided to prioritize “defending our journalism” over wrestling with any of the violations of the newspaper’s own professional journalistic standards that I identified in my critique. I will here cite three:

- that Post reporters based their wholly uncorroborated story of a male nurse forced to choose which of five infants to save during the hasty wartime evacuation of a neonatal ICU in a Gaza hospital on the testimony of a single anonymous source without taking account of two other widely circulated versions of the same episode that contradicted the Post’s unnamed source. This includes one testimony by a male nurse, identified by name as Fadi Abu Riyala, who claimed to be in the NICU and said on video that no infants were rescued.

- that Post reporters knowingly disregarded inconsistencies, discrepancies and contradictions in accounts of what happened in the hospital’s NICU that fateful day, such as whether the infants were alive when the evacuation occurred; whether the oxygen flow was still working; and even how many infants were later found dead. Tellingly, in contrast to the Post, other reputable media, such as CNN, looked at the same evidence and concluded that each assertion the Post presented as fact was “unclear.”

- that the Post brushed aside its own “policies and standards”—in which the newspaper “pledged to avoid conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflict of interest wherever and whenever possible”—by failing to inform readers that one of its reporters and a key source cited in the story had both personal and familial ties, a fact that Post editors admitted they were not even aware of when the reporter and the source—Hazem and Mohammed Balousha, respectively—worked together on this story.

Since Post editors did not respond substantively to any of these criticisms and offered no corroboration for any of the sole- or anonymously-sourced claims made in the original article, there is no compelling reason to rule out the most damaging accusation I made—namely, that key parts of the Post story could have been fabricated.

The Post’s refusal to grapple with any of these critiques, I should point out, is in marked contrast to how the newspaper handled a similar episode late last year, when I pointed out a series of errors in a November 2023 front-page article alleging a purposeful Israeli policy of separating Palestinian mothers from Gaza and their newborn infants born in Israeli hospitals. The Post handled that situation by responsibly and professionally re-reporting the story and publishing the updated version six weeks later with an editor’s note admitting that the original “fell short of the Post’s standards for fairness.”

In this instance, I stand by my criticisms of the “decomposing babies” story and remain ready, at any time, to engage publicly or privately with Post editors on the substance of my critique. Readers can judge for themselves how to interpret the refusal of Post editors to address in serious fashion any of the issues that I raised. My own view is that grappling with the many errors of fact and procedure in this case would have exposed so many problems that wishing them away under the guise of “defending our journalism” was the path of least resistance. That’s a shame.


‘Deeply Concerning’: Democratic Senator Opposes Biden Judicial Nominee Over Anti-Police Ties
The White House is not yet giving up on Mangi. White House spokesman Andrew Bates urged other Democrats to support the nominee and accused Republicans of "a malicious and debunked smear campaign" to derail the nomination.

Bates also accused Republicans of "Islamophobia" for criticizing Mangi over his ties to the Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights, a think tank that has criticized Israel as a genocidal regime. The center blamed the Jewish state for the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and has hosted anti-Semite and convicted terrorist Sami al-Arian. Mangi came under further scrutiny after the Washington Examiner reported that he failed to disclose that he moderated a panel on "Islamophobia" in 2022 at a conference co-sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group with longstanding affinity for Hamas.

Mangi has not addressed concerns about his affiliation with the Alliance of Families for Justice or any interactions with Boudin. He has not returned repeated requests for comment from the Free Beacon.


The International Atomic Energy Agency and International Avoidance of Aggressive Actions Against Iran's Nuclear Program
The Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded its quarterly meeting held on March 4-8, and once again no resolution was adopted against Iran. This is despite the IAEA report leaving no doubt that Iran is vigorously advancing its nuclear program and preventing the agency from exercising its oversight responsibilities.

The U.S. and European countries reacted strongly to the report and threatened that they would demand such action if Iran did not cooperate by the next meeting. The American administration, in an election year and faced with numerous international challenges, seems inclined to postpone a decision to a later date. Tehran also appears to recognize that as long as it does not enrich uranium to 90% purity, it can continue to advance its plan without risking a fierce confrontation with the U.S.
Germany summons Iranian envoy over 2022 synagogue attack plot
Germany says it has summoned the Iranian ambassador over an attempted arson attack on a synagogue in 2022 that Berlin believes was planned with the help of Tehran.

A German-Iranian national was in December sentenced to two years and nine months in prison over the plot to attack a synagogue in the western German city of Bochum.

The 36-year-old, identified only as Babak J., had planned to target the synagogue but ended up throwing an incendiary device at an adjacent school building. No one was injured.

In handing down the verdict, the Duesseldorf court said the attack had been planned with the help of “Iranian state agencies.”

The foreign ministry says in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that it has summoned the Iranian envoy after receiving a written justification of the judgement.

“We will now immediately share the judgement with our European partners and the EU institutions and examine further steps,” the ministry says.


Investigators consider antisemitism related to East London house fire
Eight fire engines and 60 firefighters rushed to the scene of a home on Newick Road in the East London district of Hackney at around 1 p.m. on Wednesday to battle a blaze investigators consider may have been arson.

Four people were hurt as a result, none of whom face critical injuries. Police arrested an unnamed man in his 60s who they reported made threatening and antisemitic comments.

“Undoubtedly, this will be extremely concerning news for our Jewish communities in Hackney and beyond,” said Detective Chief Superintendent James Conway. “I and my officers will be engaging with partners, including the Community Safety Trust and the Shomrim, to answer their questions and listen to their views.”

Conway was not convinced that hate was the motivation for the attack.

While he said “the investigation will continue to explore the motivation for this offense,” he revealed that police “believe at this stage that this was centered on a localized housing-related issue.”


"I'm A Free Speech Absolutist" | Piers Morgan vs Professor Gad Saad on Elon Musk And Israel-Hamas
Gad Saad tells Piers Morgan he thinks it's "perfectly fair" to criticise Israeli policy, "that's what makes it a vibrant democracy", but adds that it doesn't mean he rejects his Jewish identity. He argues that comparing what is happening in Gaza to the Holocaust "is an offensive comparison".

Following American television journalist Don Lemon's recent disastrous interview with Elon Musk, Gad Saad defends the SpaceX owner by saying Musk has "a huge bullseye on him, he gets attacked more times than a human mind could fathom".

He implied Lemon had a sense of entitlement, "an obnoxious oozing chutzpah", and Saad's own interview with Elon Musk went much better because Musk "knew that there was not going to be a gotcha moment".

And when Gad Saad was forced to choose between Dylan Mulvaney and Sydney Sweeney, he tells Piers Morgan that he regrets describing Sweeney as 'breath-taking' after discovering that "picking a woman with a vagina rather than a penis made me transphobic."

00:00 - Introduction
01:34 - Criticism of Jonathan Glazer's Oscars speech
05:15 - What’s your view on where we are in the Gaza war?
06:53 - “As long as you have that ideological reality, you’ll never have peace”
09:57 - Gad Saad on Don Lemon’s interview with Elon Musk
13:38 - “There is a smugness, an entitlement, an obnoxiousness”
15:18 - Gad Saad on ‘X’ and free speech
17:59 - 'A society that incorrectly navigates this reality is deep in the abyss of infinite lunacy'
22:46 - Artificial Intelligence, the ‘Woke Mind Virus’ and Armageddon
23:34 - Gad Saad on Sydney Sweeney, Dylan Mulvaney and the ‘Western Man’
25:27 - “You don’t get to remove from my passport that I’m a biological male”


Israel's biggest misconceptions: Eliran Ben Yair | Israel-Hamas War
Eliran is a Jewish history researcher and social media influencer. He specialises in the fields of history, Zionism, Jewish identity and culture.


Former Israeli Minister of Tourism: Asaf Zamir | Israel-Hamas War
Asaf served as Deputy Mayor of Tel Aviv from 2008 until 2013. He was elected to the Knesset in 2019, serving in two spells until 2021. He has also served as Israel's Minister of Tourism.


African Hebrew Israelites from Chicago to Israel: Ashriel Moore | Israel-Hamas War
Our Guest Today: Ashriel Moore.
Ashriel is an Ambassador and Spokesperson of the Black Hebrew community in Dimona.

The community numbers around 3000 and started arriving in Israel in the 1960s. Most of them were from Chicago and spent 2 years in Liberia before moving on to Israel.

Initially, there were some tensions with the Israeli government, but the relationship has improved since the 1990s as the community better integrated. Today, most of them have been born and raised in Israel. Many speak fluent Hebrew and some serve in the IDF.

The group maintains a vegan diet, practices abstinence from alcohol and tobacco. Members wear only clothing made from natural fibers, which are sewn by members of the community, and all must bear blue thread and fringes as mandated in the Bible (Deut.22:11-12, Num.15:37–40).




1,000 Portuguese students visit Porto's Jewish Museum for Inquisition Memorial Day
Approximately 1,000 Portuguese students from all over the country visited the Jewish Museum of Porto, on Wednesday to commemorate the National Memorial Day for the Victims of the Inquisition, the Porto Jewish community announced.

Their visit included a recently inaugurated memorial bearing the names of hundreds of victims of the Inquisition, an event infamous for its persecution of Jews and Muslims in Spain, Portugal, and later, in Latin America.

The students attended the event at the Jewish Museum of Porto, marking National Memorial Day. This year, it was moved to March 20 from its usual March 31 date because it coincides with Catholic Easter Sunday.

Although the museum covers Jewish history around the world, particularly in Portugal, the museum especially highlights the period of the Inquisition.

In the portion of the museum dedicated to this period, there is a replica of a prison coach and the famous 17th-century book “Sentinela Contra os Judeus,” a book that says that Jews have tails. There is also a memorial that records the names of 842 victims born in Porto, measuring four meters wide by two meters high.

Cecília Cardoso, accused of Judaising heresies, was the oldest citizen in Porto to be persecuted by the Inquisition when she was 110. One of the younger victims included a 10-year-old child as well as several members of the Espinosa family, who confronted Porto's religious tribunal and its methods of torture in the years 1544, 1620 and 1624.

The famous Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam shortly after this period. He was the son of parents who had abandoned Portugal in search of a safe haven. Many Portuguese Jews who fled the Inquisition settled in Amsterdam.
Grandchild of 'Portuguese Dreyfus' reclaims his legacy
Isabel Barros Lopes, Vice President of Porto Jewish Community speaks to i24NEWS' Emily Frances about her grandfather and his legacy.


travelingisrael.com: Armageddon – The Battle between Good & Evil (How the New Testament and Bruce Willis got it wrong)



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