Friday, August 30, 2024

08/30 Links Pt2: The Nazification of anti-Zionism; As a lifelong Jewish Democrat, it pains me to say this; Israeli swimmer wins third Paralympic medal

From Ian:

The Nazification of anti-Zionism
Of course, there are significant differences between then and now, the most obvious being that during the Nazi era, antisemitism was a state-driven policy, whereas today it’s a civil society phenomenon in Western countries. Still, there are two overlaps that are worth pointing out.

Firstly, while Western governments aren’t actively discriminating against their Jewish populations, many of them are feeding antisemitic sentiments. This is certainly true of those countries in the European Union, such as Spain and the Republic of Ireland, which have pushed for unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state and advocated for sanctions against members of the current Israeli government. These politicians have essentially blessed the notion that Israel is a rogue state committing war crimes and therefore deserving of anger—anger that all too often gets directed at Jewish communities. As Arfi pointed out, “We all live with the idea that some people consider Jews to be legitimate targets for a battle happening 4,000 kilometers away.”

Secondly, many of the tactics and methods supported by the Hamas acolytes mirror the anti-Jewish measures introduced by the Nazi regime. A particularly shocking example emerged last week when the ultra-left New Communist Party in Italy published a blacklist of institutions and individuals who “support or promote the Zionist state in Italy.” In essence, this was an electronic version of the Nazi boycott campaign of Jewish-owned stores and businesses in Germany during the 1930s that helped give rise to the Holocaust a few years later.

In tandem with that is the rewriting of Jewish history and the caricaturing of Jewish theology. Social-media platforms like X (Twitter) and Instagram have been flooded with content that mocks the link between the land of Israel and the Jewish people, casting Israelis as Ashkenazi colonists who have willfully stolen Arab territories. The feed of Richard Medhurst—an Anglo-Syrian propagandist whose unhinged ravings are published by Iran’s Press TV and Russia’s RT—is replete with disparaging references to Ashkenazi Jews, to give one example. Medhurst’s co-thinkers, like Scott Ritter, an American former U.N. weapons inspector and convicted pedophile, and Mary Kostakidis, an Australian reporter who has enthusiastically embraced Medhurst’s own hatred of Zionism, form a reliable echo chamber for this theme and others, such as the slander that Jewish “chosenness”—a purely religious notion about the Jewish relationship with God—is actually an ideology of racial and national superiority. All these outpourings are designed to make their audiences despise all Jews, everywhere; in Israel, where they occupy and persecute the “indigenous” Palestinian Arabs, and outside, where the vast majority of Jews who support Israel, and have family and friends there, are framed as inherently suspect.

As I’ve argued before—and here is the link between the antisemitism of the last century and that in this one—anti-Zionism has morphed into “antizionism.” Freed from its hyphen, what remains is an ornate, multi-layered conspiracy theory with pretensions to be a revelatory, liberating and compelling explanation for why the world is in a rotten state.

For that reason, I think we can now reasonably speak of the “Nazification” of anti-Zionism. As the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, citing the German historian Heinrich von Treitschke, declared from its masthead: “The Jews are our misfortune.” For their inheritors, it’s the “Zionists” who play the same nefarious role, but for all intents and purposes, there is no practical distinction between these two categories. If we are to educate non-Jews about the evils of antisemitism, we are obliged to demonstrate its consistencies across different historical periods. The core message is, after all, evolving in the same way as the trajectory of antisemitism through the ages: You have no right to live among us as Zionists; you have no right to live among us; you have no right to live.
Ruthie Blum: The high cost to the hostages of ‘enlightened’ hypocrisy
The argument over whether there’s such a thing as too high a price to pay for the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza continues to rage in Israel unabated. And “rage” is the right word to describe what is rarely a serious discussion on the part of the “Bring Them All Home Now” advocates.

Those whose family members are still languishing in the Strip can be forgiven for seeing the issue from a prism of personal pain. Still, not all the captives’ loved ones agree with their more vociferous counterparts that the government should cave in to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s demands in order to seal a deal that would put an end to the 11-month nightmare.

The latter group grasps that it’s not so simple. In the first place, Sinwar hasn’t consented to free all the hostages, including if Israel withdraws all troops from Gaza and leaves him in power to repeat the atrocities of Oct. 7 “again and again and again,” as his henchmen have vowed to do.

Second, the hundreds of bereaved families of soldiers who fell in this war to defeat Hamas and rescue the hostages are desperate not to have all that loss be in vain. Ditto for the men and women in uniform risking their lives every day in the same pursuit.

The people who deserve no sympathy are the ones who’ve been exploiting everyone’s devastation to fan the flames of the pre-Oct. 7 protests aimed at ousting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition. Indeed, their cynical abuse of the hostage crisis to further a political agenda that got upstaged by the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust is nothing short of despicable.

Since the bulk of the Hebrew media has been complicit in this effort, it’s often difficult for members of the public to make a distinction between rational debate and “anybody but Bibi” hysteria. Occasionally, though, the disingenuousness gets exposed—and it’s a doozy.
As a lifelong Jewish Democrat, it pains me to say this
I have requested anonymity for this essay because there is intense social pressure on American Jews to be anti-Israel, especially on campuses. I am a professor at a liberal arts college where there is intense hostility toward Israel; my Zionism has already caused me to become a pariah on my campus.

If I was to publicly take the next logical step — conclude that drastic political changes are required to stem the public tide of Jew-hatred, even as drastic as supporting the presidential candidate “they” all uniformly despise — I sincerely believe my personal safety would be in question. That is why this essay both needs to be published and to be anonymous. The situation is that dire.

That somber moment when the flight attendant says, “Though we do not anticipate a change in cabin pressure,” so heavy with portent (at least for those of us with darker dispositions), and then the sage advice: “If you’re traveling with someone who may need assistance, put your own oxygen mask on first.”

Sage, if perhaps unnecessary, given the normal human instinct for self-preservation. I am reminded of the “Seinfeld” episode in which a fire breaks out at a children’s birthday party and George knocks children and elderly out of the way in order to escape. A moment of levity back then, the final calm, perhaps, before the storm, back when being Jewish was still somewhat cool.

This may just be my darker disposition speaking, but I believe the cabin pressure has changed.

If you do not already know this, or perhaps have been out of the United States — or off the planet — for the past year, a brief survey should catch you up. Franklin Foer summed it up back in March with his article in The Atlantic titled, “The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending.” That title, though perhaps optimistic in using the present continuous rather than past perfect, nails it.

Combine it with Jacob Savage’s 2023 article, “The Vanishing: The Erasure of Jews From American Life,” documenting the disappearance — a euphemism for “exclusion” — of Jews from academia, from all sorts of leadership positions, cultural institutions, activist organizations, legal positions such as judgeships, prestigious fellowships like Guggenheims and MacArthurs, and so on.

An article from just last week by Joshua Hoffman is entitled, “American Jews are increasingly excluded from leadership positions — because they are Jewish.” Being Jewish is also increasingly uncomfortable (another euphemism) in medical schools, law schools, and (anecdotally, though not yet well-documented) business schools.

The vanishing is complete in the public university system of New York City, once extraordinarily friendly to Jews in the American city with the largest Jewish population, now the largest urban university system in the country with some 25 campuses and approximately 230,000 people — where “of the top 80 senior leadership positions including campus presidents, as of April 2023, there were zero Jews remaining.”1

Five years ago the ever-prescient Liel Leibovitz urged Jews to “get out” of the elite American university system, where they were so clearly unwelcome; well that call has been heeded, if not by the Jews themselves then by the administrators and admissions officers who have kept them out, as the percentages of Jews in the Ivy League has plummeted over the last decade or two.

As Armin Rosen’s article last year put it, we have witnessed an “Ivy League exodus.” Professor of politics Eric Kaufmann found that just four percent of elite American academics under 30 are Jewish (compared to 21 percent of boomers).2 The steep decline of Jewish editors at the “Harvard Law Review” (down roughly 50 percent in less than 10 years) could be the subject of its own law review article.

Put it all together and we have seen what can only be called a purge: a purge of Jews from public life, from leadership, from elite institutions, and, most forebodingly of all, from the pipeline itself. If Jews are being hounded out of medical, law, and business schools, the next generation of physicians, lawyers, and businesspeople will be sparse with Jews.


‘Canceling a Zionist is antisemitic, plain and simple’
If Israel did not exist, if it were replaced by an Arab entity “from the river to the sea,” I can imagine some university or museum director crafting a land acknowledgement for Jerusalem. So many of them compose these acknowledgements for the land expropriated from indigenous native Americans in our own country. Other than their virtue-signaling, I wish more of them would devote some of their vast resources to help them.

The land acknowledgement would state:
“Here lies land taken from the Israelites who under King David established his capital in Jerusalem in 1000 BCE, and whose successors inhabited this land for more than 1,000 years. This is the capitol in which Jesus and his disciples consecrated the Last Supper.

“Despite the Romans’ destruction of the Temple 500 years before Muhammad was born in Mecca, the Jews have lived in Jerusalem continuously for the succeeding two thousand years.

“In their quaint emphasis on their nostalgic past, most of their descendants, the Jews, living thousands of miles away, recite yearly at their Passover seders their quixotic aspiration: Next year in Jerusalem.”

This acknowledgement is only fitting, as so many of the elite in the media and elsewhere love commemorating dead Jews.

No, with the establishment of the State of Israel, a thriving democracy despite incessant attacks by its enemies, an oasis of innovation in a desert of desolation and despair, no land acknowledgement is warranted.

Instead, we should recognize that despite its mistakes, Israel is in the vanguard, fighting against the rabid spread of radical and authoritarian Islam. It’s the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the West.

In short, Zionism should be celebrated as the modern miracle of the resurrection of Jewish sovereignty after 2,000 years, and the state of Israel’s birth coming just three years after the worst devastation foisted on our people in history.

Those who deny this right, who develop Rube Goldberg-like contortions to deny Zionism while claiming innocence of antisemitism, should be condemned for the hateful antisemites they purport to condemn.

And we should not be shy in calling them out.


Jonathan Tobin: Year two of the siege on Jewish students begins
Jews are not alone
Another mistake is overestimating the strength of contemporary antisemites.

Though they largely control the educational establishment and have a powerful grip on popular culture and other sectors of society, they remain a minority among Americans, most of whom continue to support Israel, the sole democracy in the Middle East. Whatever one may think of the sincerity of those on the left, including Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who maintains that they are supportive of Israel while also being reflexively hostile, their fear of being labeled “anti-Israel” is an acknowledgment of political reality. Jews are not alone in this country. Even as support for Jerusalem has lessened among Democrats and liberals, who have fallen prey to woke ideas that bolster the myth of the “settler/colonial” Jewish state, most independents and Republicans remain solidly pro-Israel. The same can be said about a sizable minority of Democrats. These basic facts show why a timid approach to confronting the pro-Hamas mobs is a terrible mistake.

Lastly, we must never lose sight of the foundation for contemporary antisemitism: woke ideology. The surge in left-wing antisemitism would be unimaginable without the way American institutions of higher learning have been steeped in critical race theory and intersectionality. They have indoctrinated a generation of educators, academics and students in a belief in an endless and unwinnable race war in which all oppressors and all victims are somehow linked. That is why so many otherwise ignorant students now reflexively believe that Israelis are all “white”—though a majority are, by the definitions of the left, people of color because they trace their origins to the Middle East or North Africa—and that the conflict with the Palestinians is one about race, rather than Islamist intolerance of the Jewish presence in their ancestral homeland.

Any solution to the current problem of American antisemitism must therefore include a rolling back of the woke tide and DEI infrastructure in education, the arts and government.

Above all, Jews who worry about another year of a siege of Jews in American education must remember not to play by the rules of the antisemites. We must push back and stand up, rather than seek shelter and concede the public square to the Jew-haters. Anything else is a recipe for the further erosion of Jewish safety.
Stefanik calls on American universities to ‘root out rot’ of DEI offices
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) spoke out about what American colleges and universities need to do to protect Jewish students this semester.

“Number one, they need to comply with all Title VI requirements to protect Jewish students and Jewish faculty members,” Stefanik said on Thursday during an appearance on “The Howie Carr Show” radio program. “Number two, they cannot allow pro-Hamas terrorists to take over public spaces. They need to enforce their own rules.”

Stefanik also identified the role of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs as an influence on the hostile environments against Jewish students and faculty on campus.

“They need to root out the rot of these offices of DEI, which are inherently antisemitic on their own,” Stefanik told Carr. “In the case of Harvard, you had hundreds of Jewish students reach out to the office of DEI, and the office of DEI did not even respond. That itself is antisemitic.”

She pointed to deeper, systemic issues in academia as a further factor, saying that “you need to broadly look at the fact that there is something very wrong in higher education when 95% of the faculty are radical, far left, and there are fewer and fewer conservatives.”
Jewish leaders assess impact, aftermath of Democratic
Despite a Democratic convention in Chicago last week that appeared largely polished and error-free, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, who formally accepted the party’s nomination for president, doesn’t seem to be benefiting from the traditional post-convention polling bump.

Days after Harris and her supporters captured the national spotlight in the Windy City, most major polls show little to no statistically significant changes in her numbers from the beginning of last week until the end of this week. But Jewish leaders on the left told JNS that the convention was important in showing a united Democratic front on Israel, which wasn’t previously clear.

Ted Deutch, CEO of the nonpartisan American Jewish Committee and a former Democratic congressman for the state of Florida, told JNS that it’s impossible to overstate the impact of the speech delivered by Jonathan Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, parents of Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23.

“People watched them in silence for their entire presentation, and they succeeded in what they wanted to do—reminding people that this is a humanitarian issue,” Deutch said.

“Bringing home the hostages is something that should matter to everyone in the world, regardless of who they are, regardless of their political affiliation or where they come from,” he told JNS.

The 40,000 or so anti-Israel protesters who showed up outside the convention were far fewer in number than predicted, although some were violent and were arrested. Jewish organizations that held events on the convention’s sidelines largely kept the locations secret for security reasons, and the Democratic party did not grant a formal speaking slot to any member of the pro-Palestinian protest movement.

Some anti-Israel critics expressed frustration with the party over their lack of a platform to criticize the Jewish state, though Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, which identifies as “pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy,” told JNS that the Democratic Party isn’t offering an either-or choice.

“I hope that the message out of this convention is that the Democratic Party is staunchly united in support of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and has a very strong presence from the American Jewish community,” Ben-Ami said.

“We also have a great deal of support within the party for people who care about Palestinian rights, but the two can live together,” he told JNS. “The protesters have been at the fringe, and there was really no uproar debate within the convention itself.”
Iowa Attorney General Bird accuses Wall Street giant of antisemitism, subpoenas records
Attorney General Brenna Bird is escalating her ongoing dispute with the financial services industry by demanding documents from a top Wall Street company that she accuses of antisemitism.

Since taking office in 2023, Bird has repeatedly criticized what she describes as "woke investment strategies," often joining other states in writing letters to major companies and regulators.

In a May 2024 letter to investors in ExxonMobil, Bird claimed that adopting so-called Environmental, Social and Governance, or ESG, investment strategies runs the risk of lower returns for Iowans' retirement investments.

On Wednesday, Bird took that cause a step further, announcing an investment and subpoena against MSCI Inc., which provides data and analytics for other companies' investment funds. According to MSCI, funds tracking the company's indexes currently manage more than $15.5 trillion. MSCI is headquartered in New York and does not have any Iowa offices.

In a press release, Bird accuses MSCI of antisemitism for allegedly "participating in the antisemitic movement to boycott, divest and sanction companies for doing business with Israel," including a company that manufactured security barriers for Israel.

"After the barbaric terror attacks on Oct. 7, it is more critical than ever that we support our allies in Israel and root out antisemitic hate," Bird said. "MSCI’s silence when asked whether it is targeting companies for doing business in or with Israel is deafening."

MCSI, in a statement, denied penalizing any investment opportunity because of connections to Israel.
Antisemitism Comes to the Animal Rights Movement
The Jewish animal rights activists who are sounding the alarm about the antisemitism are being targeted on our own social media pages, with some Free Palestine activists conflating our concerns about antisemitism with support of, and complicity in, “genocide” and a lack of compassion for the victims of war. If accusing us of being inhuman isn’t cruel enough, they are also charging us with misusing and weaponizing “antisemitism” in response to their hateful rhetoric, telling Jews what is and is not antisemitism—which is akin to telling people of color what constitutes racism.

In addition to individual activists, three global animal rights groups which had never, to the best of my knowledge, taken a stand on geopolitical issues made posts on Instagram accusing Israel of committing genocide. In the posts, Direct Action Everywhere, the Save Movement and Generation V made no mention of the actual ethnic cleansing of Jews on 10/7 and of the textbook genocides taking place in other countries: only Israel. These posts reached thousands of impressionable animal rights activists, many of whom assuredly accepted the narrative without researching it for themselves.

As predicted, the antisemitic rhetoric embraced by animal rights activists — and many others — has led to hateful acts and physical violence. Jewish people, homes, businesses, schools, temples and cemeteries are being attacked and vandalized every day. Posters reminding people of the hostages held captive by Hamas are being torn down or defaced. In a particularly malicious act, Amsterdam’s sacred statue of Anne Frank, the Dutch teenager who chronicled her life in hiding before being killed in a Nazi concentration camp, was twice desecrated with graffiti.

Attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions have increased so dramatically and with so few consequences that some Jewish community leaders are encouraging their visibly Jewish constituents to disguise our identities by removing the mezuzahs from our doors, the Stars of David from our necks and the yarmulkes from our heads. They are, in essence, suggesting that we go into hiding.

Given the similarities between 1930s Germany and their own countries today, some Jews in North America, Europe and Australia have begun to ask their Jewish friends and neighbors the dreaded question, “Have you started to make a plan?” By “plan,” they are referring to moving to Israel, the only country that explicitly protects Jews from antisemitic persecution. Since 10/7, several thousand Jewish people in Europe and the United States have moved to Israel, despite the risks associated with the ongoing war.

Jews are not the only victims of antisemitism in the animal rights movement. As Jewish activists spend our time responding to “anti-Zionist” attacks online or altogether withdraw from a community where we no longer feel welcome, the animals for whom we should be advocating continue to suffer. In fact, everyone loses when people or groups fomenting hate co-opt and compromise a social justice movement.

To be sure, antisemitism is not unique to the animal rights movement. The scourge has spread within the LGBTQ+, reproductive rights, feminist and BLM movements too, leaving many progressive Jews feeling ostracized and excommunicated.
Regulator rejects complaint against barrister who tweeted ‘victory to the intifada’ on 7 October
The Bar Standards Board’s Independent Decision-Making Body (IDB) has dismissed a complaint against the Garden Court Chambers barrister Franck Magennis, who uses a picture of Hamas terrorists breaking into Israel on 7 October as his Twitter/X banner.

The complaint was made in a private capacity by solicitor Simon Braun, who told Jewish News that he was “livid, but not surprised,” at the decision by the IDB.

Franck Magennis, who represents numerous Palestinian clients, posted a comment on Twitter/X on 7 October last year in which he wrote: “For almost two decades ‘Israel’ has trapped more than two million people in an open air prison for the ‘crime’ of being insufficiently Jewish. We owe Palestinians our solidarity in their struggle against this naked racial domination. Victory to the intifada.”

Mr Braun said: “Under the Terrorism Act, it is a criminal offence to support or glorify a terrorist organisation. Not only did the police not prosecute, which is beyond perverse, but we were refused [the opportunity] to allow a private prosecution [against the barrister] to be brought before a judge”.

A Franck Magennis tweet from December 2020
The IDB ruling says that “all the available information was considered” and that “the decision was made to dismiss the matter… as the IDB decided that there was insufficient evidence of a breach of the BSB handbook as alleged”.

Mr Braun was told that ”the IDB determined that there was insufficient evidence to show that the Twitter/X reposts, and the use of the photograph, indicated support for Hamas. The IDB also determined that there was insufficient evidence to show that a reasonable person could perceive that Mr Magennis’s actions on Twitter/X indicated support of Hamas”. Franck Magennis

There is no mechanism for an appeal against the ruling, the Bar Standards Board says, unless new evidence comes to light leading it to reconsider its decision.

The Bar Standards Board’s ruling comes after a UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) application to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), to bring a private prosecution against Mr Magennis, under the Terrorism Act, was rejected earlier this year. For certain offences, DPP consent is required before an application can be made.

At the time, UKLFI were told that “criminal liability for this offence requires sufficient evidence to establish that the suspect was responsible for publishing the statement. Having considered the evidence submitted it was assessed that there was insufficient evidence of attribution to enable a prosecutor to assert that the Twitter account belonged to the suspect.
‘Muslim Brotherhood vs. United States of America’? FBI sued over alleged ‘terror lists’
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its Greater Los Angeles Area office announced that they would be filing a lawsuit against US officials, including officials at the FBI, Secret Service, Attorney General Office, Department of Justice, Secretary of Homeland Security, and more. This complaint is filed in the name of two US citizens of Palestinian origin, who were allegedly placed on a No Fly List, or had their electronic devices taken from them while holding them for prolonged interrogation.

One of the plaintiffs is Osama Abuirshaid, also known as “Dr. O,” who has shown extensive connections with and sympathy for Hamas, as will be shown later. Abuirshaid complained in the lawsuit, “upon information and belief,” that he was placed on a federal watch list between 2010-2017, during which period, his flight tickets were stamped with “SSSS” (Secondary Security Screening Selection), “indicating that Dr. Abu Irshaid was designated as a “known or suspected terrorist.” He also complained that agents would seize his electronic devices and was subject to prolonged detentions, which made him feel “degraded and humiliated”.

Now Abuirshaid claims that his name has been reintroduced to a federal watch list as of 2024, also based on “information and belief”. The complaint features the accounts of Abuirshaid’s May 2024 journey to and from Jordan and Hamas leader-host Qatar, denouncing the prolonged screening and interrogations process.

One peculiar aspect of the lawsuit is the incriminating evidence Abuirshaid provides about himself. In one part, Abuirshaid denies to airport agents that he has met with members of designated terrorist organizations and deems them “baseless internet rumors”, despite widely available footage showing that he spoke in a panel with PFLP terrorist Leila Khaled in the same room, acknowledging and commending her. Abuirshaid also admits in the complaint that he refused to answer simple questions posed by airport agents about his whereabouts in Jordan, and openly said that he purposely sends his family on different flights so that they and their belongings won’t have to go through the same screening that he does.

Who is Osama Abuirshaid?
Osama Abuirshaid is a leading figure at the 501(c)3 American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and the 501(c)4 lobbying organization, Americans for Justice in Palestine Action (AJP Action), both of which are leading organizations in the anti-Israel scene in the US.

Abuirshaid was a member and worker of the Hamas-affiliated Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP),a now defunct organization found guilty of providing aid and financing Hamas. Due to their ties to Hamas, IAP were indicted in 2004 and ordered to pay $156 million in damages to the Boim family whose son David Boim was murdered in 1996 by Hamas terrorists. However, the group disbanded before having paid the said amount, claiming that they were out of business.

In 2017, the Boim family turned to the US courts again in hopes to redeem what had been lawfully sanctioned to them. They filed a lawsuit against Abuirshaid’s current organization, American Muslims for Palestine, pay the damages, highlighting a “startling” similarity in leadership, mission, and operation to IAP, and claiming that AMP was just IAP operating under a different name.

Despite attempting to hide them, Abuirshaid boasts strong ties to Hamas and its leaders. In 2021 he spoke at a conference in Jordan which also hosted Hamas officials Mohammad Nazzal and Sami Khater. In the same event, Abuirshaid was present in the same room with PFLP terrorist Leila Khaled and commended her for her actions. Also in 2021, Abuirshaid posted on his Facebook page an obituary to Hamas leader in Jordan Ibrahim Ghoshe, without mentioning his name. He wrote “Sometimes, stringent circumstances prevent us from mourning symbols who contributed to the revival of a nation and the defense of its rights” - and proceeded to delete the post later on.


Anti-Israel BDS calls on UK campuses thwarted by lawfare as antisemitism spikes
For decades, the prestigious London School of Economics has been seen as a hotbed of student radicalism and left-wing politics.

Unsurprisingly, in recent years, that cocktail has made the central London university a distinctly heated environment for pro-Israel students and visitors. In November 2021, for example, Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Tzipi Hotovely, was rushed to her car from a speaking event there after a large group of protesters engaged in what one UK minister later condemned as “aggressive and threatening behavior” toward her.

But this summer the school has struck twin blows against anti-Israel student protesters — taking legal action in June to end a monthlong occupation of a university building and last month robustly rejecting the demands of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The stance by the London School of Economics (LSE) reflects the failure of BDS campaigners to advance their goals on Britain’s campuses despite a wave of pro-Palestinian protests and a surge in antisemitic incidents in the UK following the October 7 Hamas-led terror onslaught and the subsequent war in Gaza.

According to the latest analysis by the Community Security Trust (CST), which monitors antisemitism and provides protection for Jewish venues, there has been “a significant rise in anti-Jewish hate incidents in higher education settings.” January to June 2024 saw a record half-year figure and a sharp increase of 465% over the same period in 2023. Nearly three-quarters of incidents — in which the victims or offenders were students or academics, or which involved student unions, societies or other representative bodies — contained discourse relating to Israel, Palestine and the Middle East, compared to 52% of all incidents nationally.

The CST says no single factor can explain the higher prevalence of antisemitic incidents apparently linked to the Jewish state on campuses. However, it believes “a longstanding tradition of student anti-Israel activism can contribute to an environment in which some individuals respond to the current war in the Middle East in an antisemitic way.”

The Union of Jewish Students agrees. “Following a year where Jewish students have experienced the worst campus antisemitism crisis — that continues to unfold — a renewed campaign of BDS that targets Jewish life on campus is misguided, disruptive, and unacceptable,” a union spokesperson said in a statement. “BDS is a divisive movement prioritizing a single narrative instead of nuanced and respectful discussion. It divides peers, alienates Jewish students and creates an atmosphere that can and has fueled antisemitism on campuses across the UK.”
Stanford Professors Call for Reform of DEI, Argue Such Programs Foster Antisemitism
Two Stanford University professors have publicly called for reforming “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs in higher education, arguing that they foster racial tension and contribute to antisemitism on college campuses.

“Rather than correcting stereotypes, diversity training too often reinforces them and breeds resentment, impeding students’ social development,” Paul Brest — professor emeritus at Stanford Law School — and Emily Levine — who teaches history and education at the university — wrote in an op-ed published by The New York Times. “Overall, these programs may undermine the very groups they seek to aid by instilling a victim mind-set and by pitting students against one another.”

Throughout the piece, Brest and Levine, both of whom served on Stanford’s Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israel bias, described the way in which DEI’s promotion of identitarianism — a concept which reduces individual identity to racial origin — has in their view promoted flagrantly wrong theories of race whose logical conclusion is conspiracies of Jewish power and control, as well as antisemitic discrimination. As an example, they cited a Stanford DEI training program which prompted a federal civil rights complaint in 2021, a story The Algemeiner covered extensively.

Those programs, argued the Louis D. Brandeis Center, which filed the complaint, “endorsed the narrative that Jews are connected to white supremacy” and promoted “antisemitic tropes concerning Jewish power, conspiracy, and control.” It also excluded Jewish history and antisemitism from conversations about bigotry and racism.

What most outraged the Jewish community, however, was the program’s forcing Jewish mental health clinicians to join “segregated ‘whiteness accountability’ affinity [groups], created for ‘staff who hold privilege via white identity’ and ‘are white identified … or are perceived as white presenting or passing,'” a notion which, in addition to unfairly characterizing whites and institutionalizing racial segregation, does not describe the majority of the world’s Jewish population, many of whom are of color.

“I was placed in the white affinity group based on the idea that I can hide behind my white identity … and I was very disturbed by this because my parents survived World War II in the UK, which ended 11 years before I was born, and people like us were murdered because we were seen as contaminants to the white race. Not only did that feel like a betrayal to my heritage but to my parents,” Stanford employee Sheila Levin told The Algemeiner in 2021.
‘Blood Money’: Anti-Zionist-Controlled University of Michigan Student Government Abandons Spending Freeze Protest
The anti-Zionist Shut It Down (SID) party, which captured control of the University of Michigan’s Central Student Government (CSG) in May, has conceded defeat and voted to approve the fall budget it threatened to veto to force the administration into boycotting Israel, The Michigan Daily reported on Wednesday.

As The Algemeiner previously reported, dozens of SID candidates won election to Central Student Government in the spring by running on a platform which promised to sever the University of Michigan’s academic and financial ties to Israel. After assuming power, CSG president Alifa Chowdury (SID) defunded the school’s 1,700 student clubs by vetoing the summer term budget, which had been “unanimously” supported by the CSG Assembly, and vowed to block any spending bill that would fund them in the fall term. The measure was, in SID’s view, strategic. It argued during the campaign that crippling university operations would inexorably lead to a boycott of Israel.

“CSG merely serves as an extension of an institution that has perpetuated systems of oppression by maintaining the current status quo of neocolonial capitalism,” the party said in a manifesto issued in March. “Every dollar coming out of this university is blood money. Student government cannot operate as usual as we witness the systematic murder of Palestinians. Student life cannot continue as normal when our tuition and labor are being used to fund a genocide.”

However, the university earlier this month resolved to fund the student clubs over Chowduryand SID’s objections, effectively stripping the new government of the power of the purse. Explaining the intervention to The Algemeiner on Tuesday, university spokesperson Colleen Mastony said it was prompted by Chowdury’s “senior” colleagues in the CSG Assembly.

Now, Chowdury has retreated from her original position, the Daily has reported. When CSG met on Tuesday to vote on the budget for fall term, she withheld her veto, formalizing a policy the university had already enacted without her. Conducted by secret ballot, the measure passed 25-15. Addressing the assembly ahead of the vote, Chowdury, claiming to have acted in the interests of the student body, defended vetoing the summer budget as a strategy for advancing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
Government advisor warns of rising antisemitism at Dutch universities
Jewish employees at various universities in the Netherlands are increasingly worried about the safety of Jewish students and teachers in higher education. The National Coordinator for Combating Antisemitism (NCAB) reported this on Thursday after meetings with researchers and teachers in preparation for the new academic year.

Employees said during the talks that Jewish students and teachers find the pro-Palestinian demonstrations at universities intimidating. "We see that anti-Semitic expressions at our universities unfortunately accompany the escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said NCAB Eddo Verdoner.

He added that it is "unacceptable" that Jewish students and teachers don't feel safe. "You are allowed to demonstrate, but we cannot close our eyes to antisemitism that is disguised as criticism of Israel."

Verdoner emphasized that the conflict in Gaza is not over yet and that it is, therefore, essential to be "well prepared before the start of a new academic year to ensure a safe climate" for Jewish students and lecturers.


University of Maryland Will Let Anti-Israel Group Hold Oct. 7 Rally
The University of Maryland will allow the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine to take over a massive chunk of its campus on October 7, the anniversary of Hamas’ slaughter of 1,200 Israelis.

Rabbi Ari Israel, director of the university’s Hillel chapter, told The Daily Wire he expressed concerns about the event to university leadership. SJP held a similar event on Tuesday, the university’s second day of classes, setting up 15,000 flags in the center of campus to “honor the 150,000+ martyrs who have lost their lives within the past year,” and holding speeches against “the zionist entity,” according to an SJP flier.

The October 7 event is likely to be similar, and set to take place on the same section of campus.

Not even Hamas claims 150,000 people have been killed since Oct. 7 — the terrorist group alleges that 40,000 Palestinians have been killed— but SJP says it uses a higher “estimate” because “the health ministry has been unable to keep count of the dead.”

“We are approaching 11 months of genocide against the Palestinians,” the Maryland chapter of SJP said on Instagram “It has been almost a full year of genocide and terror as death tolls continue to rise.” In its declaration of views, the university’s SJP chapter “unequivocally states that the Zionist state of Israel has no right to exist.”

“The zionist entity has committed some of the most egregious criminal acts of our century” the group added.

Israel told parents of Jewish university students that “we did voice our concerns with senior UMD leadership” and “apprised them of the emotional load SJP’s callous behavior will bear on our Jewish community if they protest on the greatest Jewish day of mourning and tragedy since the Holocaust.”

The University of Maryland SJP chapter did not return a request for comment from The Daily Wire. Spokespeople for University of Maryland President Darryll Pines did not provide SJP’s application materials for reserving the space, or explain Pines’ justification in allowing it to proceed.


‘Serious and pervasive’ Jew-hatred at Columbia, per report from
Hundreds of Jewish and Israeli students at Columbia think that the Ivy League school “has not treated them with the standards of civility, respect and fairness it promises to all its students,” according to a report from Columbia’s task force on antisemitism released on Friday.

The 91-page report, which draws on interviews with almost 500 students, found that Jew-hatred on campus is “serious and pervasive.”

“These student stories are heartbreaking, and make clear that the university has an obligation to act,” the task force’s report states. (It wasn’t clear from the report how many of the 500 students were Jewish or Israeli.)

“Unfortunately, some members of the Columbia community have been unwilling to acknowledge the antisemitism many students have experienced—the way repeated violations of university policy and norms have affected them and the compliance issues this climate has created with respect to federal, state and local anti-discrimination law,” the report states.

“Many of the events reported in the testimonials took place well before the establishment of the encampments and the takeover of Hamilton Hall,” it adds. “The experiences reported during that period were even more extreme.”

Students, who often didn’t know how to report Jew-hatred to Columbia, found that “some faculty and staff responded with compassion and determination,” but “others minimized the concerns of these students, reacting sluggishly and ineffectively even to the most clear-cut violations,” the report states. “Even students who had successfully reported an incident spoke of a recurring lack of enforcement of existing university rules and policies.”

The task force suggested its own working definition of Jew-hatred for Columbia to use, and recommended “in-person workshops about antisemitism and Islamophobia, as well as a range of optional training and workshops for others in our community, including on implicit bias and stereotypes, bystander interventions and having difficult conversations.”

“Many Jewish students said they now avoid walking alone on campus,” the report states. It quotes a student who said that walking on campus with a visible Star of David or wearing a kippah “could start World War III.”


Hollywood Honors A Terror Supporter—Again
The nomination of an antisemitic terrorism supporter for an Emmy award is provoking anguish and outrage. It should also stir a sense of déjà vu—because Hollywood has done this kind of thing before.

The latest object of Tinsel Town’s misplaced adoration is Bisan Atef Owda, a filmmaker who has circulated antisemitic tweets and has publicly embraced the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

The PFLP has boasted about its participation in the October 7 pogrom. It also pioneered airplane hijackings in the 1970s, and has carried out numerous massacres of Americans and Israelis over the years, including the slaughter of five rabbis—four of them Americans—and an Israeli policeman in a Jerusalem synagogue in 2014.

Ms. Owda was a featured speaker at a rally celebrating the PFLP’s 48th anniversary, and in her remarks called for the destruction of Israel. She even wore a PFLP uniform for the occasion. She was involved in additional PFLP activities as recently as 2018.

Nevertheless, the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has nominated Owda’s recent documentary about Gaza for an Emmy, along with the film’s publisher, AJ+, which is a division of the antisemitic media network Al Jazeera.

The fact that October 7, in which the PFLP participated, was the worst single massacre of Jews since the Holocaust adds irony to the fact that Hollywood previously honored a filmmaker who assisted those who perpetrated the Holocaust itself.

In 2004, the organizers of the Academy Awards included Nazi propaganda filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl in their memorial tribute to recently-deceased movie industry figures.

Riefenstahl was personally chosen by Adolf Hitler to direct films glorifying the Nazis, such as Triumph of the Will (1934), which Who’s Who in Nazi Germanycharacterizes as “perhaps the most effective visual propaganda for Nazism ever made.”
BBC News website prioritises speed over accuracy and impartiality
Greenall did not bother to clarify to readers that the “house” was adjacent to an explosives store or that one of the “children” was Adnan Jaber who was involved in manufacturing IEDs. Adnan Jaber and Mohammed Elayyan (also Alian) were later claimed by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as was Mohammed Yusif (Yusuf).

Making no mention of Palestinian terrorists groups’ recruitment of child soldiers, Greenall continues:
“Jibril Jibril was a member of Hamas who had been released from an Israeli prison in November as part of an exchange for Israeli hostages held in Gaza, according to the Palestinian reports.”

However, Greenall does not tell BBC audiences that Jibril was the third terrorist released in November to have been killed in recent weeks due to terrorist activity.

Greenall’s amended portrayal of the second incident reads as follows:
“Later on Monday, the [Palestinian Authority] health ministry said a 40-year-old man named Khalil Salem Khalawi was shot dead during an attack by Israeli settlers in the Palestinian village of Wadi Rahhal, south of Bethlehem. Three other people were wounded, it added.

Wafa cited the head of the village council, Hamdi Ziada, as saying that shots were fired as settlers attacked homes near the local boys’ school.

He also claimed that Israeli forces had entered the village to provide protection for the settlers and fired tear-gas at residents.

Israel’s Ynet news website reported that Mr Khalawi was an Israeli Arab and that he was shot dead by IDF soldiers who arrived in Wadi Rahhal following a claim by settlers that stones had been thrown at an Israeli vehicle. Settlers also clashed with residents of the village, it said.”

As noted above – and as Greenall obviously knows – the investigation into that incident is still ongoing, including the possibility that Khalawi was killed by IDF fire. Nevertheless, Greenall’s amended headline tells BBC audiences of “Six killed in West Bank strike and settler attack”, the by-line tells visitors to the BBC News website in no uncertain terms that one person was “shot dead by settlers” and he devotes three paragraphs to the promotion of unverified Palestinian claims.

It is entirely obvious that the initial version of this report – that the BBC News website published despite not yet having adequate information – failed to provide BBC audiences with an accurate and impartial account of the events that are its subject matter. That version remained online for six hours before being amended to include additional information but nevertheless fails to fully inform.

Members of the public who read the initial version of this report would be unlikely to return to it hours later. The question arising is why the BBC News website rushes to publish inadequate and even misleading content rather than waiting for the full range of information to become available, so that accurate and impartial coverage can be provided to the corporation’s funding public.
Three Israeli-Arabs, two Egyptians wounded after fight in Egypt's Taba, sources say
Three Israeli Arab tourists and two Egyptian hotel workers were injured after a fight broke out in the Egyptian town of Taba on the border with Israel on Friday, Egyptian security sources said.

The sources said a physical altercation erupted when an Israeli tourist verbally insulted an Egyptian hotel employee, sparking a melee that involved other tourists and employees.

Egypt's state-affiliated Al-Qahera News television channel said one of the Egyptian workers had sustained serious injuries.

The fight broke out after the Israeli Arab tourists refused to pay a bill for hotel services, according to Ynet, citing Egyptian media.

Emergency response to the situation
The parties involved have now been taken for medical attention, according to the Egyptian report.

Numerous troops are converging on the location, including Egyptian police.

Israeli media is currently reporting six victims with head and stab wounds.

Magen David Adom and ambulance teams are currently waiting at the border.


Houthi video shows rebels planted, detonated bombs on seized oil tanker
Yemen’s Houthi rebels released footage on Thursday showing that their fighters had boarded and placed explosives on a Greek-flagged tanker, setting off blasts that put the Red Sea at risk of a major oil spill, though the European Union said no oil spill had yet been detected from the Sounion as salvaging operations had begun.

The vessel was abandoned earlier, after the Iran-backed rebels repeatedly attacked it last week.

In the video, the Iran-backed Houthis chant their motto as the bombs detonated aboard the oil tanker: “God is the greatest; death to America; death to Israel; curse the Jews; victory to Islam.”

The blasts capped the most serious attack in weeks by the Houthis in their campaign disrupting the $1 trillion in goods that pass through the Red Sea each year over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, as well as halting some aid shipments to conflict-ravaged Sudan and Yemen.

The Sounion carried some 1 million barrels of oil when the Houthis initially attacked it on August 21 with small arms fire, projectiles and a drone boat. A French destroyer operating as part of the European Union’s Operation Aspides rescued the Sounion’s crew of 25 Filipinos and Russians, as well as four private security personnel, after they abandoned the vessel and took them to nearby Djibouti.

The highly-produced footage released Thursday, set to dramatic music, shows masked Houthi fighters carrying Kalashnikov-style rifles boarding the Sounion after it was abandoned. The bridge and control room appeared ransacked. Fighters then rigged explosives over hatches on its deck leading to the oil tankers below. At least six simultaneous blasts could be seen in the footage.


FDD: Deterring Iran’s Dash to the Bomb
Executive Summary
The Islamic Republic of Iran appears to be in the process of significantly advancing its nuclear weapons program in the coming weeks while Americans are preoccupied with politics at home and Israel is busy battling Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran may seek to establish a nuclear fait accompli before the next administration takes office in January 2025, especially if Iran perceives the new administration to be more hawkish, unpredictable, or otherwise less constrained.1 This monograph is designed to recommend military and non-military steps the Biden-Harris administration should quickly take to deter Iran from making significant progress toward a nuclear weapon before the U.S. election on November 5 and the presidential inauguration on January 20.

The monograph begins with an analysis of the current status of Iran’s nuclear program. It then lists specific nuclear weapons program advances that Iran might, unless deterred, undertake and complete in the coming weeks. Within the overall scope of its nuclear weapons program, Iran is evidently attempting to advance in two major categories. The first is enrichment activities other than enriching uranium to 90 percent U-235 (weapons-grade level). The second is nuclear weaponization activities (advancing toward construction of an explosive device capable of unleashing the destructive power of the weapons-grade uranium (WGU) inserted therein). The next section derives key principles for deterring Iran based on previous successful U.S. efforts to deter Iran. The monograph then recommends specific military and non-military steps that the administration should take.

The concern that Iran may be in the process of significantly advancing its nuclear program appears consistent with a classified report on Iran’s nuclear weapons program issued by the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI) in late July. On July 28, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) described the classified ODNI report about Iran’s nuclear program as “stunning.”2

Graham said the report made him “very worried” that Iran “could use these three or four months before our election to sprint to a nuclear weapon” and warned, “we have to put them on notice that cannot happen.”3 Graham added, in a July 31 press conference, that “after having viewed the DNI report, I believe it is a certainty that if we do not change course, Iran will in the coming weeks or months possess a nuclear weapon.”4

The unclassified version of the ODNI report on Iran’s nuclear program, dated July 23,5 contains a deeply troubling change from both an analogous 2023 report6 and the Iran section of the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community (published in February 2024).7 The July report is missing the following sentence contained in the February 2024 report (and nearly identically in the 2023 report): “Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.”
Obama suppressed Iran nuclear intel to get deal, U.S. counterspy says
The CIA suppressed secrets from inside Iran during the Obama administration showing efforts by Tehran to build a nuclear weapon were more advanced than suspected, according to a former National Security Agency counterintelligence official.

The intelligence, however, was blocked to avoid upsetting efforts by the administration and a group of world powers to reach the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka the nuclear deal with Iran, said John Schindler, the former NSA counterspy.

Mr. Schindler revealed in a report published this week that a pro-U.S. intelligence service more than a decade ago recruited a defector in place with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who had obtained startling secrets regarding the nuclear program.

At a conference of security and intelligence experts in central Europe 12 years ago, Mr. Schindler said he was passed a packet of documents from the IRGC mole.

The documents turned out to be a dossier of top-secret IRGC material that contained technical data on Iran’s centrifuge program, the key element of the nuclear program, he stated in the post in his newsletter, “Top Secret Umbra.” The nation that ran the mole was not identified other than specifying that it was not Israel, he said.

Israel reportedly relied on help from recruited agents within the IRGC for the recent assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

“The agent inside the IRGC was a true golden source, a senior officer who had access to nuclear secrets,” Mr. Schindler said. “He knew a great deal about the true status of Iran’s program to develop ‘the bomb.’”

The documents showed that Iran’s progress on building nuclear arms was further along than U.S. intelligence community assessments and more advanced than the Obama administration publicly asserted at the time, Mr. Schindler said.

The intelligence was unwelcome news for the administration, which was promoting the nuclear deal in Congress, with the public and among other nations.


Youngkin signs legislation criminalizing ethnic discrimination, including Jew-hatred, into law
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, signed identical state House and Senate bills on Wednesday that extend the state’s protections against hate crimes to discrimination based on ethnicity, including antisemitism.

“Today, we come together as Virginians to sign legislation that builds the framework to take action because hatred, intolerance and antisemitism have no place in the commonwealth,” he stated. “We remain steadfast in our commitment to prioritize the safety and security of all Virginians as our commonwealth continues to be a beacon of freedom and opportunity.”

Jason Miyares, the state’s attorney general, stated that the “unanimous passage of these bills reflects the shared commitment across party lines of upholding the principles of equality and justice in Virginia.”

State House Delegate Dan Helmer said “as the grandson of Holocaust survivors and a Jewish parent whose kids have confronted antisemitism, I know how important it is that all Virginians are safe regardless of their ethnicity.”

Bryce Reeves, a state senator, said Youngkin signed the “much-needed protections” into law “as Israel stands on the verge of a two-front war.”
Rafael Defense Systems has record Q2, all-time order backlog
Haifa-based Rafael Advanced Defense Systems has reported a significant surge in sales and orders for the second quarter of 2023.

The Israeli defense giant saw sales climb to 3.9 billion shekels ($1.07 billion), representing a 25% increase from the same period last year.

The company’s orders received experienced an even more dramatic rise, jumping 65% to 6.4 billion shekels ($1.76 billion) in Q2, compared to 3.9 billion shekels ($1.07 billion) in the corresponding quarter of the previous year. This robust performance has led to an all-time high in Rafael’s order backlog, which now stands at an impressive 59 billion shekels (16.2 billion).

Yoav Har-Even, CEO of Rafael, shared insights into the company’s growth strategy: “Since the beginning of the year, we’ve hired more than 1,100 employees. A third of our activity is involved in development, we invest enormous amounts of energy in determining the future.”

One of the key developments highlighted by Har-Even is the Magen Or laser-based air-defense system.

“Magen Or is expected to enter operational service next year,” he said. “Magen Or is just one of the developments that is progressing at a nice pace, and it has global technological breakthroughs.”

While the proportion of the firm’s sales to Israel slightly decreased from 59% to 54% between Q1 and Q2, there was a notable increase in sales to countries in the Western Hemisphere. The Americas market share jumped from 3% in Q1 to 8% in Q2, bolstered by Argentina’s reported interest in purchasing Spike LR2 anti-tank missiles.

“We are active in 41 countries with Spike,” Har-Even explained. “There is a club of system users, where knowledge and experience are passed from one to another.”

The Spike series of fire-and-forget anti-tank guided missiles range from the shoulder-launched TACT (a Hebrew acronym for Short Range Personal Missile) model to the long-range NLOS (Non-Line Of Sight) Tamuz, capable of being deployed from land, air or sea platforms.
Israel shifts gears: 20,000 homegrown drones on the horizon
MAFAT, Israel’s Defense Research and Development Directorate, plans to issue a tender for the purchase of about 20,000 Israeli-made drones, worth hundreds of millions of shekels.

The winning companies will supply various types of drones, including attack and surveillance models, over five years.

Israeli companies such as Dronix Engineering, Xtend, Robotican—Autonomous Robotics, Heven Drones and CopterPIX Pro may apply when the tender is published.

This marks a shift from the IDF Ground Forces’ recent preference for Chinese drones. The IDF ordered thousands of drones from SZ DJI Technology and Autel Robotics, two Chinese companies blacklisted by the U.S. Department of Defense, due to urgent needs in the current Gaza conflict. However, this dependence on Chinese drones poses security risks and could be problematic if China, an ally of Iran, Russia, Qatar and Hamas, decides to restrict component sales.

Chinese drones also face operational challenges on Israel’s northern front, where Hezbollah uses the DJI AeroScope detection platform to identify and locate them. Recognizing these issues, the IDF aims to support the Israeli drone industry for long-term strategic advantage.

The Israeli drone industry currently lacks the capacity for large-scale production. To meet the new demand, Israeli companies must establish production lines and recruit skilled workers. Consequently, drone supply from the tender is expected to arrive in the medium to long term.
Philanthropist Cherna Moskowitz, ‘extraordinary Zionist,’ dies at 93
Cherna Moskowitz, a leading supporter of Jewish charities and community improvement projects worldwide who with her late husband, Dr. Irving I. Moskowitz, helped expand Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, died in Florida on April 29 at the age of 93.

Cherna Moskowitz was born in 1931 in Wisconsin to parents who immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. She met her husband there and they married, after which the couple moved to California. In 1968, they launched the Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation, which provides aid and assistance in the wake of international natural disasters, along with numerous other charitable initiatives.

Irving Moskowitz, a physician, businessman and activist born to Jewish immigrants from Poland who lost more than 100 family members in the Holocaust, died at age 88 on June 16, 2016, in Miami, where he and his wife were living.

The couple served as board members for the Zionist Organization of America. Cherna Moskowitz was also heavily involved with education, active with Ariel University, Bar-Ilan University and Hesder Yeshiva of Sderot. Other organizations she supported include Nefesh B’Nefesh and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.

“Cherna Moskowitz was an extraordinary Zionist,” Mort Klein, national president of ZOA, said in a statement on Friday. “Her love of the holy land of all of Eretz Yisroel, given to the Jewish people by God almighty, was surpassed only by her love of her fabulous family.”

Klein said along with her husband, Cherna Moskowitz “committed her life to legally securing all of the Jewish people’s eternal city Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria for the Jewish people, and helping the Jewish people in every way she could.”
1,000 American Jews to volunteer in Israel
In a powerful display of solidarity, the Jewish Federations of North America is orchestrating a massive volunteer effort, aiming to send 1,000 North American Jews to Israel.

The “Serve Israel” program is designed to bolster rehabilitation efforts in the country, which continues to grapple with ongoing conflicts in its northern and southern regions. Volunteers will contribute across various sectors, from revitalizing agricultural work to providing support for displaced families and active-duty soldiers.

Under this program, the volunteers will embark on missions to Israel, committing to seven- to 10-day stints or four-week periods running through January 2025. The initiative casts a wide net, welcoming participants ranging from 16-year-olds to university students, young professionals at the outset of their careers and adults up to age 65.

The volunteers will be strategically deployed to farms grappling with severe workforce shortages across Israel. This effort serves a dual purpose: bolstering the country’s economy and shoring up its food security.

Beyond agricultural assistance, volunteers will lend their hands at logistics centers, engage in food packaging operations, provide support to displaced families and soldiers, mentor students, and contribute to a range of other vital activities.

In the wake of the Oct. 7 attack, thousands of North American Jews have already answered the call, traveling to Israel to volunteer. Many have focused their efforts on farms, which have seen their workforce dimish dramatically following the terrorist invasion and the outbreak of war with Hamas.
Floyd Mayweather, NBA Players Hang With Teens Whose Families Were Murdered on Oct. 7
Former world champion boxer Floyd Mayweather and some NBA players attended an event in Los Angeles on Monday night for children who had an immediate family member murdered by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists during their deadly rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7.

A group of 62 bereaved siblings and children from Israel attended the “LA With Love” event that was organized by Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) and hosted at the home of billionaire Israeli-American businessman Haim Saban, TMZ reported. The children were able to mingle and take pictures with Mayweather as well as Denver Nuggets small forward Michael Porter Jr., Los Angeles Lakers forward Jarred Vanderbilt, and Miami Heat point guard Tyler Herro. Mayweather and the professional basketball players also signed autographs and some other items for the teens. The group of children were accompanied by family members of several soldiers and commanders in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who were killed in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, according to TMZ.

One Israeli teen whose father was killed on Oct. 7 said, “When we saw all the celebrities, it felt really good because we see a lot of famous people are against Israel. But it’s so good to see that there are still famous people, good people, who support Israel and support us. I lost my dad on Oct. 7, and this makes my heart warm.”
Ami Dadaon wins gold: Israeli swimmer wins third Paralympic medal
Israeli swimmer Ami Dadaon won a gold medal Friday in the men’s 100-meter freestyle S4, his third career Paralympic gold medal and Israel’s second in as many days in Paris.

Dadaon, 23, finished the race with a time of 1:20.25, finishing nearly a second and a half ahead of the Japanese silver medalist. Dadaon had qualified for the final after setting a new Paralympic record in the heats with his time of 1:19.33. He also owns the world record in the event for his disability classification, with his time of 1:18.94 that he recorded at the 2023 World Para Swimming Championships.

The Haifa native was born with cerebral palsy and started swimming at 6 years old. He said Friday’s win was especially meaningful.

“I was able to represent the people of Israel, I have no words to describe [the feeling],” Dadaon said after winning, according to Haaretz. “When I’m in the water, I don’t think about anything, only the race. But now I know that I will sing Hatikvah during this time, that’s all I wanted — to represent the people of Israel in this period and to give them hope.”
Iranian taekwondo athlete a no-show in fight against Israeli, handing opponent victory by default
An Iranian athlete refuses to compete against Israeli taekwondo fighter Adnan Milad in a repechage round at the 2024 Paris Paralympics, handing Israel a win by default.

Saeid Sadeghianpour does not show up to face Milad in the men’s under-63kg weight class, and therefore the Arab-Israeli athlete automatically advances to the bronze medal match later tonight.

Iran forbids its athletes from competing against Israelis in international competitions.

Earlier, a Tunisian boccia player pulled out of contention to avoid facing Israel’s Nadav Levi.


‘September 5’ Film About Live Broadcast of 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre Premieres at Venice Film Festival
“September 5,” a film about the Palestinian terrorist attack targeting the Israeli delegation at the 1972 Munich Olympics, made its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday.

Tim Fehlbaum’s “September 5” centers on Sept. 5, 1972, the day the Black September terrorist group infiltrated the Summer Olympics in Munich and murdered 11 Israeli athletes and coaches after taking them hostage. However, viewers follow the tragic events from the perspective of the American broadcasting team for ABC Sports that covered the hostage situation on the ground in Munich and shifted gears to present live coverage of the terrorist attack for television viewers in the US as it unfolded around them.

The Munich massacre was the first time a terrorist attack had been broadcast live to a global audience, according to NPR. It became an iconic moment in broadcasting history when ABC anchor Jim McKay, who had led coverage throughout the day, announced to world audiences at 3:24 am, “They’re all gone,” after the 11 Israelis were murdered.

“September 5” includes archival documentary footage from the terrorist attack and the ABC Sports broadcast at the time, including scenes that feature McKay.

The Black September terrorist attack has been the subject of other films in the past, most notably Steven Spielberg’s “Munich,” but “September 5” is the first time that the massacre is being depicted on screen from the unique perspective of the real-time, live broadcast that was seen globally by an estimated one billion people at the time, according to a synopsis of the 94-minute film provided by the Venice Film Festival.

“At the heart of the story is Geoff, a young and ambitious producer [played by John Magaro] striving to prove himself to his boss, the legendary TV executive Roone Arledge,” who is played by Peter Sarsgaard, the synopsis further stated. “Together with Marianne, a German interpreter [played by Leonie Benesch], Geoff unexpectedly takes the helm of the live coverage. As narratives shift, time ticks away, and conflicting rumors spread, with the hostages’ lives hanging in the balance, Geoff grapples with tough decisions while confronting his own moral compass. How do you cover a situation like this if what the perpetrators want is the spotlight you give?”

Fehlbaum explained that as part of the research for “September 5,” his team partnered with Geoffrey Mason, who was a “key eyewitness” of the Olympic attack and “an integral member of the control room team that pivoted from reporting on sports to geopolitics during this 22-hour marathon of live broadcasting.”




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