Friday, February 28, 2025

02/28 Links Pt2: The West is colonizing the Palestinian cause; Dara Horn returns to history — and literature — after Oct. 7; BBC is in crisis and only systemic change can fix it

From Ian:

The West is colonizing the Palestinian cause
This term “Palestine” was first introduced by the Romans. Expelling the Jews from their land, they renamed Judea as Palestine. Over the centuries, this term was accepted by Jews themselves. The Land of Israel and Palestine became synonymous.

But in the 1920s, the West migrated the term. Arabs in Palestine at the time expressed their collective sentiment through the nascent Hashemite Arab Kingdom of Syria. They identified as Syrians. When France took over Syria and ended the Arab Kingdom, Western colonialist offices imposed a new identity on Arabs in Palestine: “Palestinians.” British diplomat Mark Sykes (of the Sykes-Pictot agreement) even came up with a flag.

While this colonialist identity-engineering exercise was initially rejected by Arabs living in Palestine, European powers cultivated the notion of Palestinian nationalism in order to promote their own Western interests: The British as counterforce to the Jews, Germans as counterforce to the British, and since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the EU and European governments as a counterforce to the State of Israel and by extension to America.

This worked and, by the turn of the 21st century, it was clear that the term Palestine, as well as the Sykes flag represented the national movement of Palestinian Arabs.

But in recent years, and especially since October 7, the term has been migrating, yet again, from describing a group of individuals in the Middle East, toward describing an abstract concept in the West.

This, for example, was reflected in the September 2023 University of Pennsylvania Palestine Writes festival. American students were not expected to write of the longing for a land they never been to – nor knew much of – but about such concepts as: occupation, suppression, injustice. Similarly, President Donald Trump referring to Senator Chuck Schumer as a “Palestinian” is not a reference to his ethnic background, but to his ideology.

Some can argue, cynically, that the re-appropriation of the term is legitimate. After all, it was Europe who “owns the copyright” on the term Palestine: The Romans created it, and the British, French, and Germans promoted it.

But what about the human rights of Palestinians themselves?

Voluntary de-Palestinization
Repeatedly, Palestinians are denied their basic rights to personal self-determination by their European oppressors. When Palestinians chose to be employed and mentored by Jewish-owned businesses, European governments launched aggressive campaigns to have those businesses shut down, such as SodaStream. Similarly, when Palestinians in Gaza chose to flee a war zone, the West failed to provide escape routes, and now that President Trump has introduced such a plan, Westerns are opposing it, effectively denying Palestinians the basic human right to leave.

There is an inevitable clash: Europe and Europhilic circles in the United States care exclusively about Palestinian national rights, even at the price of Palestinian human rights. This, while Palestinians naturally care about their personal safety, prosperity, and indeed rights as human beings.

To put it bluntly, Europeans and Western pro-Palestinians dehumanize Palestinians.

We are in an era of seismic changes. The Middle East of September 2023 is not coming back, and therefore, Western foreign offices and seasoned peacemakers should get rid of legacy frameworks and assumptions that, perhaps, were relevant back then, but are only standing in the way of peace today.

In this realm, there is a golden opportunity to shift away from frameworks based on a zero-sum game, such as “land for peace” and the two-state solution, toward frameworks that are based on a win-win, such as the Abraham Accords and President Trump’s Gaza relocation plan.
Dara Horn returns to history — and literature — after Oct. 7
The last few years have been strange ones for writer Dara Horn. Used to creating imaginative Jewish worlds as a fiction writer, she published her first nonfiction book in 2021, expecting it to be a “detour.” Instead, the publication of People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present, about the very real and often very depressing world that Jews inhabit, changed the course of her career.

“I became this receptacle for all of these horror stories from Jewish readers,” Horn said. “I was immersed in this dumpster fire that now all of us are living in.”

The book was a series of essays examining the ways in which different societies engage with Jewish history and culture — usually, she found, by venerating Jewish suffering in traumatic historical events such as the Holocaust or the Spanish Inquisition, without teaching people to reckon with Jews as they currently are. The argument was explosive even before the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks. Since then, the book’s title has become a ghoulishly ironic tagline for many Jews.

“The premise of the book is really that Jews are only acceptable in a non-Jewish society when they have no power, whether that means politically impotent or dead,” Horn told Jewish Insider in an interview this week. “That is just roaring back at us now. That is the only way that it’s acceptable to be Jewish, if you have no agency.”

Now, Horn has published her first new book in more than three years, a departure from both the award-winning literary fiction she is known for and the nonfiction essays about antisemitism she has written for major publications including The Atlantic and The New York Times since Oct. 7.

One Little Goat: A Passover Catastrophe is a graphic novel, geared toward middle school readers, about a family that gets stuck at their Seder for six months because their house is so messy that the children are unable to find the afikomen. In order to retrieve it, the protagonist must go on a time-travel journey through thousands of years of Jewish history, visiting Seders throughout time — guided by a talking goat from the song “Chad Gadya” — until he retrieves the afikomen, finally saving his family from the longest Seder ever.

“If you’ve ever been to a Passover Seder, you know that they feel like they last forever,” the book begins. In the pane below, the text reads: “It’s a holiday celebrating freedom, but you are stuck at that table for a very long time.” Horn read this passage with a laugh, and a word of praise for the illustration skills of her collaborator Theo Ellsworth, a cartoonist in Montana who she cold-emailed after she found her kids reading one of his books.

“The way he illustrated this is he has this kid sitting in the chair in the top frame, and then the bottom frame is a bearded skeleton covered in cobwebs, seated in the same chair, which is how I feel like a lot of kids feel, and even some adults,” Horn said.
BBC is in crisis and only systemic change can fix it
In a quite remarkable first, after 16 months of anti-Israel bias and gaslighting of the Jewish community, the BBC has admitted fault in relation to its documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone.

Yes, they passed the buck and failed to take any immediate action, but after the Asserson Report, the 100-plus corrections in “misreporting” they’ve been forced to make, the appalling anti-Israel social media posts senior BBC journalists have indulged in and of course BBC Arabic continuing to employ staff who openly celebrated the Oct 7th massacre, any admittance of guilt feels significant.

Perhaps worst of all was the acknowledgement by the BBC that money was in fact sent to the wife of a senior member of Hamas. This is now a question for the authorities and certainly for Dame Dinenage Commons select committee to investigate.

The complete and utter failure of journalistic standards, lack of due diligence and breakdown in trust between the public and our national broadcaster with regards to this documentary, is the culmination of the arrogance of BBC leadership since the Hamas massacre.

This depth of failure does not happen in a vacuum though. It happens because the BBC’s values & code of conduct, it’s very mission to tell the truth, be impartial and transparent have been eroded over time.

The license fee payer’s money in this country should not be going to terrorists, the content coming out of our national broadcaster should not be terrorist propaganda and BBC talent and staff shouldn’t be signing politically motivated statements, which place their own twisted world views above the importance of their employer’s impartiality.

The BBC is in crisis and when one faces a systemic problem, the only solution is systemic change. For anyone who cares about the integrity and indeed the future of our national broadcaster, let’s hope that Samir Shah and the board have the courage to do just that.


John Anderson: Fighting Anti-Semitism and Cultural Decay | Melanie Phillips
Join John and British journalist Melanie Phillips as they explore the escalating misuse of "genocide" in the Israel-Gaza conflict, exposing how propaganda and liberal denial have inverted reality. She argues that it is Israel who faces a genocidal threat from Islamists like Hamas, while anti-Semitism surges across a West blind to its own history. From torn hostage posters to distorted narratives, Phillips reveals a cultural crisis where truth is sacrificed for ideology, making this a critical wake-up call for understanding today’s Middle East tensions.

In her new book The Builders Stone, Phillips traces the West’s democratic foundations to Judeo-Christian values, warning that their rejection fuels societal decay. She calls for Jews and Christians to unite against this erosion, critiquing multiculturalism and relativism as threats to civilisation. With insights on Trump’s Middle East moves—balancing hope and skepticism—this episode underscores the urgent need to reclaim Western identity, offering a renewed vision on how history and faith could yet save us.

Melanie Phillips is a British public commentator with a distinguished career in journalism. She began her professional journey writing for The Guardian and New Statesman and currently contributes to The Times, The Jerusalem Post, and The Jewish Chronicle, focusing on political and social issues. Phillips has also appeared as a panelist on BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze and BBC One’s Question Time. In recognition of her journalistic contributions, she was awarded the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 1996 while writing for The Observer. Her other published works include the memoir Guardian Angel: My Story, My Britain.

00:00 Introducing Melanie Philips
01:45 Melanie Phillips: The West’s Fall and Middle East Mess
12:00 Trump’s Gaza Dream vs. Hostage Nightmare
19:25 Genocide Twisted: Israel’s Truth Under Fire
29:45 Liberal Denial Meets Islamist Lies
39:01 The West’s Truth Collapse: A Totalitarian Turn
54:00 Religion’s Loss: A Meaningless West
1:00:05 Judeo-Christian Roots of Freedom
1:12:07 Anti-Semitism vs. Islamophobia: A False Equivalence
1:24:25 The Builder Stone: A Judeo-Christian Lifeline




Israel Advocacy Movement: Charlie Kirk Catches Pro-Palestinian Student LYING About Gaza

UK government calls urgent meeting with BBC over Gaza documentary scandal
The British government called an urgent meeting with the BBC on Friday over the making of a documentary about children’s lives in Gaza that was narrated by the 13-year-old son of a deputy minister in the Palestinian enclave’s Hamas government.

The BBC said on Thursday there had been “serious flaws” in “Gaza: How To Survive A War Zone,” made by an independent production company, and removed it from its online platform, days after it was first broadcast on television.

Hamas is deemed a terrorist organization by Britain, the United States and the European Union.

The BBC’s decision followed criticism by online commentators who said the narrator was the son of Ayman al-Yazouri, deputy minister of agriculture in Gaza.

Britain’s publicly funded BBC has faced criticism over its coverage of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza by external commentators and some staff members. Some critics accuse it of bias toward the Palestinians, others of bias toward Israel.

BBC Director General Tim Davie, when quizzed by lawmakers, said last year the BBC was overall “doing a good job in terms of delivering impartial coverage amidst enormous pressure.” This screenshot from the trailer ” Gaza: How to Survive A War Zone” shows narrator Abdullah Al-Yazouri, whose father is a Hamas minister. (YouTube screenshot; used in accordance with article 27a of the Copyright Law)

The BBC said in a statement that an internal review had found that the corporation had asked Hoyo Films — the production company it commissioned — several times in writing whether the family in the documentary had any connection to Hamas.

The BBC said Hoyo Films acknowledged the connection only after the documentary was broadcast.

The production company also revealed that they paid the boy’s mother “a limited sum of money” for the narration. The BBC is seeking additional assurance that no money was paid directly or indirectly to Hamas.

Announcing Friday’s meeting with BBC Chair Samir Shah, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said: “I want assurances that no stone will be left unturned.” She was referring to a BBC pledge to undertake a full fact-finding review and refer the issue to its editorial complaints unit.
BBC faces possible terror probe over payments to family of Hamas terrorist
The BBC is facing scrutiny under anti-terror laws after admitting that the family of a senior Hamas terrorist was paid for their involvement in the disgraced documentary Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone.

The corporation has issued an apology for what it describes as “serious flaws” in the making of the programme, confirming that it will not be broadcast again or reinstated on BBC iPlayer.

The scandal erupted after it was revealed that the documentary’s child narrator, Abdullah Al-Yazouri, is the son of Ayman Alyazouri, who has served as Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture. The BBC has admitted that an independent production company, Hoyo Films, paid the boy’s mother “a limited sum of money for the narration” via his sister’s bank account.

The revelations have sparked concerns that British licence fee payers’ money may have indirectly supported a terrorist organisation. Shadow Culture Secretary Stuart Andrew has called for urgent clarity on the matter.

The Daily Mail quotes a spokesperson for the Metropolitan police as saying: “We’re aware of a BBC documentary about Gaza and we have received a number of reports raising concerns. Officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command are currently assessing whether any police action is required in relation to this matter.”

After the BBC became aware of Abdullah’s connection to Hamas, the documentary was pulled from the broadcaster’s online catch-up service, and a formal internal review was launched. People take part in an antisemitism protest outside the BBC’s Broadcasting House in central London organised by the Campaign Against Antisemitism

A BBC spokesperson admitted the review had “identified serious flaws in the making of this programme.” They acknowledged that failures were made both by the BBC and Hoyo Films, stating: “All of them are unacceptable. BBC News takes full responsibility for these and the impact that these have had on the corporation’s reputation. We apologise for this.”

The statement emphasised that trust in BBC journalism had been damaged and that while the documentary’s purpose was to shed light on global conflict zones, the editorial process had fallen short of expectations.


Dear Mr Lineker. Humiliating yourself does not help the Palestinian cause
There are, as you might imagine, many elements of the “Artists for Palestine” letter which will raise eyebrows, but one in particular merits focus, because it shows a fundamental widespread misunderstanding of the true nature of Hamas.

The relevant paragraph reads as follows:
“A campaign has sought to discredit the documentary using the father of 14-year-old Abdullah Al-Yazouri, one of the film’s child protagonists. Dr Ayman Al-Yazouri served as Gaza’s Deputy Minister of Agriculture, a civil service role concerned with food production. Conflating such governance roles in Gaza with terrorism is both factually incorrect and dehumanising. This broad-brush rhetoric assumes that Palestinians holding administrative roles are inherently complicit in violence—a racist trope that denies individuals their humanity and right to share their lived experiences.”

This is pretty telling, because Hamas is not merely a terrorist organisation; it is a dictatorial regime. After winning power in an election held in 2006, it subsequently murdered a significant number of its political opponents and seized power over every aspect of life within Gaza. Those who have expressed condemnation of its regime – or who are deemed to have broken the fundamentalist laws by which Hamas rules Gaza – have been routinely tortured or murdered.

I would like to think that absolutely none of the people who signed this letter would have been credulous enough to agree with a similar argument made about Assad’s Syria, for example, or Kim’s North Korea.

Can you imagine? “The boy’s father served as Deputy Minister of Agriculture to the Assad regime. He had nothing whatsoever to do with the mass murder of civilians or the torture being conducted in dungeons, and anyone who suggests that he should be treated as anything other than a harmless agronomics professor is guilty of hideous racism”.

This, by the way, is a key reason why in 2021 the ludicrous distinction between Hamas’s military and political wings was ended in this country and the group was proscribed as a terrorist group in its entirety. But it appears that reality has yet to catch up to this letter’s signatories. It is also worth pointing out that during his extensive and damning exposé of this documentary, Mr Collier also found that Dr Al-Yazouri used social media to praise Hamas terrorists who murdered Israeli civilians.

These are points which I imagine Mr Lineker – and many other signatories – would struggle to answer. But even as I was writing this ccolumn, the BBC published a further statement. Again, it might be helpful to quote the most relevant passage:
“One of the core questions is around the family connections of the young boy who is the narrator of the film. During the production process, the independent production company was asked in writing a number of times by the BBC, about any potential connections he and his family might have with Hamas. Since transmission, they have acknowledged that they knew that the boy’s father was a Deputy Agriculture Minister in the Hamas Government; they have also acknowledged that they never told the BBC this fact. It was then the BBC’s own failing that we did not uncover that fact and the documentary was aired.”

Among other things, this shows that the BBC has fundamentally rejected the Artists for Palestine letter and has fully accepted what is obvious to most other people – that a national broadcaster has a responsibility not to air documentaries about a place in which the audience are not told that a key character has close familial ties to the proscribed terrorist organisation which rules it.

Perhaps this episode might encourage Mr Lineker – and the hundreds of other worryingly credulous signatories – to wonder whether embarrassing oneself publicly is in fact an effective way to advocate for the Palestinian people.


Pennsylvania leaders, Jewish community resist second Pittsburgh BDS bid
The city of Pittsburgh is again facing down an effort by far-left activists to bring an Israel boycott and divestment referendum to the city’s voters, less than a year after the activists’ first attempt to put the issue on the ballot.

A group of activists affiliated with the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and similar groups filed a petition for a similar ballot measure in August, which the group ultimately withdrew after local Jewish groups — led by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh — challenged whether the activists had collected sufficient signatures to be included on the ballot. City Controller Rachael Heisler also filed a separate challenge.

A similar group is trying again to put a modified measure on the May 20 primary ballot, with the Jewish groups and Heisler again filing challenges. The federation is contesting many of the signatures collected and the legality of the ballot measure, while Heisler’s petition argues that the petition violates state law, would burden and interrupt city operations and does not provide voters with sufficient information.

The latest measure would ban the city from doing business with “governments engaged in genocide and apartheid — such as the state of Israel — and corporations doing business with them.”

The previous measure was opposed strongly by senior Pennsylvania leaders, and several are speaking out once more.

“I strongly reject any attempt to boycott, divest or sanction Israel, through a referendum or otherwise,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) told Jewish Insider, of the new effort. “It’s the electoral manifestation of antisemitism that’s escalated after 10/7. For the region of the Tree of Life [synagogue] massacre, it’s truly reprehensible to target the Jewish community and Israel.”

Manuel Bonder, a spokesperson for Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, told JI, “Governor Shapiro has long opposed plans to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel, and he remains opposed to these efforts. This referendum, if passed, would limit the Commonwealth’s ability to do business with the City of Pittsburgh under existing state law — an outcome the Governor does not support,” a reference to Pennsylvania’s anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions law.

Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, who is facing reelection this year, has spoken out against the BDS referendum, but again declined to instruct the city to formally challenge it, prompting renewed frustration within the Jewish community, sources familiar with the situation said.
Columbia University professor Joseph Massad has no clothes
Joseph Massad, professor of Modern Arab Politics at Columbia University, celebrated the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, as “awesome,” “the stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance.” When Columbia students learned that Massad was scheduled to teach a course on “the development of Zionism,” pro-Israel students drew up a petition, calling on the university to “immediately remove him” from the faculty, while other students, faculty and alums condemned what they called the current “attacks” on Massad and praised his “rigorous scholarship.” University administrators defended the class, stressing that it’s “limited to 60 students” and Columbia seeks to provide “classrooms that promote intellectual inquiry.”

The “development of Zionism” is a subject Massad has recently elaborated on in numerous articles and podcasts, providing a view of his allegedly “rigorous scholarship” and “intellectual inquiry.”

Counterposed to the numerous scholars who recognize anti–Zionism as the modern form of antisemitism, Massad’s refrain is that there is an inextricable bond between Zionism—“a genocidal cult”—and antisemitism, claiming that antisemites originated “the concept of Zionism” and for centuries only they enacted “the Zionist project.” To Massad, “the Jewish Zionist movement,” organized by Theodor Herzl, only replicated the antisemites’ project.

Certain that Zionism has no Jewish roots, it is critically important to Massad that “Jewish Zionism” “started out as a secular project” and that, in 1897, Orthodox and Reform rabbis vehemently opposed the first Zionist congress, calling Zionism “anti-Jewish, both religiously and socially.” In short, Massad claims he can’t be antisemitic if he only shares the rabbis’ views.

Massad finds it insidious that the “Zionist movement chose to name its state ‘Israel’ … [which] means ‘the Jewish people’” because, he claims, it is “implicating all Jews … in the establishment of its settler colony on the land of the Palestinians.” To Massad, any definition of antisemitism must include expressions such as “Israel is the Jewish state.”

Massad contends that it was the Crusaders—Christian Zionists determined to “ethnically cleanse” Palestine of its Muslims and Eastern Christians—who provided the original model on which “Jewish Zionism” was based. Following in their footsteps, Massad falsely asserts that “the Zionist movement has always set out to ethnically cleanse Palestine of the country’s indigenous Palestinian population.”
Jew-hatred in Toronto public school system at center of looming board trustee election
From 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on March 3, Torontonians in Ward 11 of the Toronto District School Board can cast their votes for a board trustee seat, which opened up after Rachel Chernos Lin was elected in November to the Toronto City Council.

The city’s Jewish community will pay close attention to that race, which will come two weeks after the public district’s board voted 13-5, 11.5 hours into 13 hours of meetings held on Feb. 12 and 13, to accept a report on “affirming Jewish identities and addressing antisemitism and the combating hate and racism strategy.”

During the marathon meetings, “every single libel was put out on display,” Tamara Gottlieb, co-founder of the Jewish Educators and Families Association, told JNS. “The libel of colonialism, of ethnic cleansing, of apartheid and genocide, all given a forum.”

“It’s an absolute outrage that the TDSB would hold a meeting to discuss antisemitism, only to subject the victims to more libels and hate,” Gottlieb added.

Jew-hatred has risen in the Toronto public school system since Oct. 7, although it is a matter of dispute how much.

Per the district, Jew-hatred was up five percentage points—from 10% to 15%—as a part of all hate recorded in the system from September to December 2023. JEFA data indicates that there were 211 instances of Jew-hatred in the Toronto school district in the 2022-23 school year and that in the half year after Oct. 7, 2023, the number tripled, per Gottlieb.

Among the Jew-hatred that a boy has experienced as a public school student, he told Toronto school board trustees earlier this month, are a Hitler salute, being told “you should have been gassed with your ancestors, Jew” and school staffers displaying pro-Hamas messages, the Toronto Sun reported.
Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism visiting 10 college campuses
The Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announced Friday it would be visiting 10 university campuses that experienced antisemitic incidents since October 2023.

The Department of Justice said the task force will meet with university leadership, impacted students and staff, local law enforcement and community members and decide “whether remedial action is warranted” due to the incidents.

Leo Terrell, a leading task force member and senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, informed the 10 schools of the upcoming visits.

The schools include Columbia University, George Washington University, Harvard University. Johns Hopkins University, New York University, Northwestern University, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Minnesota and the University of Southern California.

“The President, Attorney General Pamela Bondi, and the entire Administration are committed to ensuring that no one should feel unsafe or unwelcome on campus because of their religion,” Terrell said.

“The Task Force’s mandate is to bring the full force of the federal government to bear in our effort to eradicate Anti-Semitism, particularly in schools,” he continued. “These visits are just one of many steps this Administration is taking to deliver on that commitment.”

The task force, which was created to comply with President Trump’s executive order to combat antisemitism, said its first priority is to “eradicate antisemitic harassment in schools and on college campuses.”

After Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza, incidents of antisemitism have skyrocketed in the U.S., primarily on college campuses. Republican lawmakers launched a year-long investigation into the matter and have hosted multiple hearings which led to the resignations of at least two university presidents.

Recently, the Department of Education announced it was launching investigations into five universities for antisemitic activity.
NYPost Editorial: Hapless Kathy Hochul refuses to hold college Jew-haters accountable
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s still proving hopeless when it comes to facing down still-raging campus antisemitism.

The latest proof: Anti-Israel goons at Barnard College just sent a school worker to the hospital.

Dozens of masked and keffiyeh-clad Jew-haters stormed the school’s Millman Hall on Wednesday, echoing last year’s ugly takeover of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall.

They beat a drum, disrupted classes and assaulted the employee.

The next day, the gov chickened out of a City College event for fear of antisemites disrupting it.

That’ll show ’em . . . weakness.

Why do Jew-haters foment such chaos? Because Hochul lets them.

Sure, she offers tough words. But she never seriously holds anyone to account.

Take the report she assigned left-leaning, milksop ex-judge Jonathan Lippman to whitewash, er, address longstanding Jew-hatred at City College and the rest of the CUNY system.

Lippman came through last year as ordered, recommending weak-kneed tweaks, like improving the school’s complaint portal and better training of diversity officers.

No wonder anti-Jewish hate continues to thrive at CUNY — and not just from the kids: CUNY actually planned to offer a blatantly antisemitic course to falsely teach that Israel is an apartheid state that commits genocide.

Fine: The gov ordered the school to suspend its efforts to hire a prof to teach that curriculum — but she hasn’t taken the heads of the higher-ups who authorized it in the first place, such as CUNY Chancellor Matos Rodrguez and Board Chairman William Thompson.

And no, it doesn’t matter if they were just asleep at the switch: No one who lets that hate pass belongs in power in any university system, let along a New York public one.

Indeed, Hochul should’ve fired Rodriguez long ago for all the antisemitism he allowed even before Oct. 7.


Jewish advocacy group calls on DOJ to defund Columbia, Barnard for failing to protect students as violent anti-Israel protests rage: ‘Hostile and dangerous’
President Trump’s administration should yank federal funding from Columbia University and Barnard College, advocates urged Thursday – arguing the elite Manhattan schools have not done enough to protect Jewish students, including during disruptive and at times violent campus protests.

In addition to pulling funding, advocacy group StopAntisemitism called for the Justice Department to take action to curtail future campus disruptions, including by launching an investigation into the Students for Justice in Palestine organization.

“The university administration has completely failed to protect Jewish and Israeli students, faculty, and staff, allowing a hostile and dangerous environment to fester unchecked,” StopAntisemitism’s executive director, Liora Rez, wrote in a letter to Leo Terrell, who is helming the Trump admin’s new task force to combat antisemitism.

Columbia received some $1.3 billion in federal grants in 2024 alone, accounting for around 20% of its operating budget, according to the Columbia Daily Spectator, the Ivy League university’s student newspaper.

The letter also calls on the DOJ to revoke visas and deport foreign students engaged in violent protests on campus, and hold school administrators accountable for allowing the “lawlessness” to continue.

The plea followed an SJP-organized protest at Barnard’s Milbank Hall Wednesday, in which a school security guard was assaulted, officials said.

An unruly mob of anti-Israel protesters took over the college building hall to protest the expulsion of a pair of masked students who stormed a Columbia class on modern Israel in January and tossed around antisemitic leaflets.


Barnard’s spoiled protesters expose the spineless leadership of colleges and New York’s pols — again
Tentifada season is back on campus.

On Wednesday night, dozens of anti-Israeli invaders pushed their way into Barnard College’s Milbank Hall, banging drums and chanting “resistance is justified when people are occupied” and other genocidal slogans from the “The Idiot’s Guide to Intifada.”

On the walls, the masked up thugs organized by Columbia University Apartheid Divest, reportedly scribbled “f—k Barnard” and “free Palestine.”

Since Hamas’ barbaric terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, rabid pro-Palestinian protesters have terrorized elite college campuses, taking over buildings, swathes of campuses and harassing Jewish students. Few colleges had the backbone to dish out any meaningful discipline.

But this latest march of the resistance LARPers, in which they “physically assaulted” one employee who was sent to the hospital, was sparked after the school expelled two students, very deserving of such treatment.

Last month, the masked cowards barged into “History of Modern Israel” class at Columbia University and started handing out antisemitic flyers depicting Nazi imagery, including a boot stomping on a Star of David.

The stated mission of these marauders? To reinstate their crybaby comrades and the “abolition of the corrupt Barnard disciplinary process and complete transparency for current, past, and future disciplinary proceedings.”

But make no mistake, this was really just a pack of privileged rich kids getting their kicks by creating mayhem — covered by the delusion that it was social justice.


Rep. Ritchie Torres raps Gov. Hochul for foot-dragging on approving mask ban after latest anti-Israel protest on NYC campus
Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres accused Gov. Kathy Hochul Thursday of dragging her feet on a law to ban public mask-wearing as a way to thwart hate-spewing bigots — a day after a mob of keffiyeh-clad anti-Israel protesters took over a Barnard College building.

Torres said such legislation is long overdue, and urged the governor to champion restrictions on the wearing of face masks during public demonstrations as part of the new state budget, expected to be adopted by April 1.

“Your lip service to a mask ban means nothing without legislation and executive orders that match the words with deeds,” the Democratic congressman said in a sharply worded letter to the governor obtained by The Post.

“The People of New York need decisive action from a governor who has been absent in the fight to unmask hate.”

Torres also accused New York officials, including Hochul, of violating federal anti-discrimination law by failing to prevent the harassment of Jewish students on college campuses.

“The State of New York’s acceptance of masked harassment and intimidation against Jewish students on college campuses violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in education on the basis of race, color, or national origin,” he said.

“As governor, the buck stops with you.”

New York long had a ban of mask wearing, which was repealed during the COVID-19 pandemic, as face-covering mandates were imposed to contain the spread of the deadly virus.


Groups rebuke ‘NYT’ for stating Bibas family ‘died in captivity’
A few days after the Associated Press drew widespread criticism for saying three members of the Bibas family—mother Shiri, 32, and her two young sons, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 9 months—“died in captivity,” The New York Times faced similar backlash.

While reporting on their funerals the Times stated in updates and an Instagram story that the hostages “died in captivity” and “died in Gaza.”

“Why won’t The New York Times say it: Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas were MURDERED,” wrote the American Jewish Committee. “Terrorists killed the two little boys with their bare hands. Stop covering for Hamas.

The pro-Israeli media watchdog group HonestReporting wrote: “Just appalling, New York Times. Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas didn’t simply ‘die in captivity.’ They were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by Hamas terrorists. Please start showing some respect, both for the victims of Hamas depravity and for professional journalism.”

Confirmed through forensic analysis, the Israeli Defense Forces said the Bibas boys were strangled to death in November 2023, a month after being kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz as part of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Hamas returned their bodies on Feb. 20, in addition to what they said was Shiri’s, though DNA testing found that the remains were not hers but an unknown woman and not a hostage. The terrorist group returned Shiri’s body on Feb. 21.
‘CBS’ silence almost two weeks after anchor said free speech to blame for Holocaust
Nearly two weeks after the moderator of the CBS News program Face the Nation suggested in an interview in Jerusalem with Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state, that free speech was to blame for the Holocaust, the news organization has yet to issue a correction or clarification.

During the Feb. 16 interview, Margaret Brennan told Rubio that in Germany, “free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide.”

“Well, I have to disagree with you. No, no, I have to disagree with you,” the secretary of state said. “Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal, because they hated Jews and they hated minorities and they hated those that they—they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews.”

“There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none,” Rubio added. “There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany.”

The Nazis, he said, were “the only party that governed that country. So that’s not an accurate reflection of history.”

Six days after the interview, Eliana Johnson, editor-in-chief of The Washington Free Beacon, and Chris Stirewalt, politics editor for The Hill and NewsNation, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, discussed the CBS moderator’s quote on their Ink Stained Wretches podcast.

Johnson said Brennan characterized the Holocaust as “an outgrowth of the Third Reich’s unrestricted speech.”
BBC claims not to have information published four days prior
On the evening of February 26th the BBC News website published a live page relating to the return of the bodies of four hostages to Israel in phase nine of the ceasefire agreement.

Several entries on that live page concerned the Palestinian prisoners released after the bodies were received, with some telling BBC audiences that the corporation could not report who they were.

A written report by George Wright – published in the early hours of February 27th and currently titled “Israel confirms Hamas handed over hostages’ bodies as Palestinian prisoners released” – includes an unnarrated video and is similarly uninformative, with earlier versions telling readers that:
“Following the handover of the bodies, buses carrying Palestinian prisoners left Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank and then arriving at the Ramallah Cultural Palace, where a large crowd gathered to celebrate their release.

Later, dozens of Palestinian prisoners were seen getting off buses outside a hospital in the city of Khan Younis, southern Gaza. They were among more than 400 Gazans detained by Israeli forces without charge during the war.

Dozens of prisoners convicted of carrying out deadly attacks on Israelis are also being sent abroad.”

Given that the release of those prisoners had been delayed by several days, one might have assumed that the BBC would have been able to find out “what crimes these individuals were accused or committed of [sic]”.
The Guardian gives antisemitic arch-terrorist a moral pass
Those reading a Guardian article about Hasan Nasrallah’s funeral on Sunday (“Massive crowds attend funeral of late Hezbollah leader Nasrallah“, Feb. 23) aren’t informed that Hezbollah is a proscribed terror group in the UK and much of the West, that, over several decades, they’ve killed not only scores of Israelis, but Jews in the diaspora, Americans and other Westerners, or that Nasrallah has personally called for the mass murder of Jews.

“If they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide”. (Hasan Nasrallah, Daily Star, Oct. 23, 2002)

Instead, the author of the piece, Beirut-based William Christou, informs readers that Nasrallah “was born into a working-class family” that he was “famed for his charisma and skills as an orator” and that “he became a celebrated figure in Lebanon for Hezbollah’s role in ending Israel’s 18-year occupation of south Lebanon in 2000”.

Though Christou briefly concedes that Nasrallah’s “image was tarnished after the group’s intervention in Syria’s civil war in support of the long-time dictator Bashar al-Assad”, he clearly seemed intent on whitewashing the malign regional influence of the arch-terrorist and his Iranian masters.

Christou not only fails to call Hezbollah out as a terror group, describing it benignly as a “Lebanese militia and political party”, but writes that it is merely “Iran-backed”. However, as Jeffrey Heltman, a former US diplomat and Middle East expert, has written, “Hezbollah is no longer merely a subsidiary or proxy of Iran but rather an almost equal partner, serving as Iran’s vanguard in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, while training local militias and terrorist groups”.

The Guardian writer evidently didn’t talk to any Lebanese opponents of Hezbollah. Instead, readers are told that thousands of mourners “wept” during the ceremony, and are treated to quotes like this, from a Lebanese man named Mohammed Khalifeh:

“I can’t even express how I feel, it feels like my father or grandfather I died. Most of us still don’t believe he’s actually dead,”

More on Iranian control of the organisation:
Hezbollah is part of Iran’s ‘Axis or Resistance’ and exerts a suffocating and malign influence on Lebanon, which has been characterised as akin to an occupation by the Islamic Republic. Tehran also funds the group to the tune of $200 million to $1 billion a year—not including military aid.


Hamas stoking flames in Jerusalem, as Ramadan begins
With Ramadan set to begin at sundown on Friday, Hamas is aiming to spark a wave of terrorist attacks in Jerusalem, including on the Temple Mount.

On Thursday, Harun Nasser al-Din, the head of Hamas’s Jerusalem Office, who is currently abroad, declared that there must be “full confrontation against the occupation’s incursions, an uprising against its projects, and no surrender to attempts at Judaization and expulsion.”

Another senior Hamas official urged an escalation of “resistance in all its forms in Jerusalem,” a clear incitement to terrorist attacks.

Al-Din also referenced the demolition of illegally built structures in Jerusalem, accusing Israel of implementing “malicious plans for expulsion and Judaization projects.” He further emphasized that “all plans and schemes will be shattered by the escalation of the resistance in all its forms.”

Throughout the week, Hamas seized on Israeli police recommendations to limit the number of Muslim worshippers allowed on the Temple Mount during Ramadan, proposing a cap of 10,000 people at a time.

In response, the terrorist organization declared that restricting the number of worshippers constitutes “a dangerous escalation and precedent aimed at undermining freedom of worship at Al-Aqsa mosque.”

Hamas further warned Israel about “the consequences of implementing these recommendations,” stating that it would bear full responsibility for any resulting escalation.

At the same time, Hamas is not ruling out an extension of the first phase of the hostage deal and ceasefire in Gaza. If additional phases proceed, they will coincide with the volatile period of Ramadan, which has seen terrorist attacks in the past.


South African activists armed with wanted posters demand local Jews be arrested or deported
A group of anti-Israel activists held wanted posters with the names and photos of members of South Africa’s Jewish community at a pro-Palestinian protest in Cape Town's Sea Point Promenade on Saturday - demanding the individuals be arrested or deported from the country, the South African Jewish Report published on Thursday.

Many of the individuals, who were contacted by the Report, deny having committed any crime and some claimed they had never lived nor worked in Israel. Antisemitism is at a record high. We're keeping our eyes on it >>

A Johannesburg remedial educator told the Report she was shocked to discover her face on a protester. “The most important thing is that when I saw it, I felt proud to be Jewish, and I will always fight for Israel’s right to exist. Doing this won’t change who I am,” she said.

Another Jewish individual stressed he hadn’t committed any crime.

“These posters make it clear that I’m ‘guilty’ because I’m a Jew,” he told the Report. “It’s disturbing to see South Africans holding up posters of fellow South Africans demanding that they be punished because they are Jewish.”

Rising antisemitism in South Africa
South Africa has seen a dramatic rise in antisemitism since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel, Cape South African Jewish Board of Deputies (Cape SAJBD) Executive Director Daniel Bloch noted. Like much of the world, protests have been held in solidarity with Palestinians, and in some cases, Hamas, weekly.

“We have seen an alarming escalation in aggression, including the use of swastikas and rhetoric inciting violence against anyone who supports Israel”, Bloch said. “This past Saturday, a group of 15 protesters physically assaulted a pedestrian, beating the individual with flag poles whilst verbally abusing him. There’s video evidence of this assault. We will be investigating this further and ensure action is taken against this clearly violent group.”

Many of the posters at the protests, according to the Report, included violent slogans like “Peace isn’t the answer, liberation is the answer;” “Next 7 October, Palestine will be free;” “We trust the resistance;” “You can’t hide, we are coming for you;” and “Resistance until Palestine’s liberation.”
Man charged over deadly 2024 knife attack in Germany that sought to ‘avenge Palestine’
Germany’s top prosecutor has charged a suspected Islamic extremist with murder, attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization abroad in connection with a deadly knife attack last year at a festival in the western German city of Solingen.

The August 24 violence left three dead and 10 wounded at a festival marking the city’s 650th anniversary. Prosecutors previously said the alleged perpetrator shared the radical ideology of the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group, and was acting on those beliefs when he stabbed his victims repeatedly from behind in the head and upper body.

ISIS later claimed responsibility for the attack, without providing evidence. It previously said on its news site that the attacker targeted Christians, and that the perpetrator carried out the assaults “to avenge Muslims in Palestine and everywhere.”

The suspect was only identified as Issa Al H. in accordance with German privacy rules. He turned himself in after the attack.

The federal prosecutor filed the charges Monday and announced them Thursday in a news release.

Issa Al H. allegedly took an oath of allegiance to ISIS and announced his plan in a video sent to his ISIS contact, then traveled to the festival minutes later, the federal prosecutor said in a statement.

He allegedly viewed the festival-goers as infidels and representatives of Western society upon whom he would seek revenge for military acts by Western states, the federal prosecutor said. His ISIS contact promised that the terror group would claim responsibility for the act and use it in their propaganda.
Jewish headstones daubed with swastikas in Slovakia
Slovak police are investigating after headstones were vandalised at a Jewish cemetery in a town which was devastated in the Holocaust.

Swastikas were found sprayed on two headstones at the cemetery in Humenne in the far east. The cemetery is looked after voluntarily by one of Humenne’s eight remaining Jews, Juraj Levicky.

Mr Levicky said he was “horrified” by the vandalism, which he reported to the police.

British journalist Raffi Berg discovered the desecrated graves. March 2025.

It is unclear how the culprit got into the grounds, which are locked and surrounded by a 6.5ft concrete wall. The graffiti was discovered by a British journalist, Raffi Berg, who was visiting Humenne as part of research for a book.

“I was climbing up the cemetery hill when I spotted the swastikas – one on the front of a headstone, the other on the back of another. I was shocked and angry. “The cemetery is remote and whoever did this actually made the effort to get there. The graffiti was not weathered, suggesting it was done quite recently.

“Slovakian Jews suffered horrifically in the Holocaust, and almost all Humenne’s Jews were murdered. This is not just vandalism, it is a desecration of the dead and I hope the perpetrator is brought to justice.”

Mr Levicky – whose grandparents were murdered in the Holocaust but whose parents survived the camps – said ordinary people have expressed disgust at the daubings.

Before the war, there were just over 2,000 Jews in Humenne, accounting for about a third of the town’s population. In March 1942, young Jewish women and girls from Humenne were rounded up and sent on the first deportation to Auschwitz.


JLens launches pro-Israel fund on New York Stock Exchange
With the launch on Thursday of a new stock fund from JLens, individual investors will, for the first time, be able to invest in companies on the New York Stock Exchange that support Israel and combat antisemitism, Jewish Insider has learned.

Under the ticker symbol “TOV” — the Hebrew word for “good” — investors will have access to the JLens 500 Jewish Advocacy U.S. Index, which comprises the 500 largest U.S. public companies and screens out companies whose activities do not align with Jewish values, including supporting the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement, according to the investor advocacy organization. JLens was acquired by the Anti-Defamation League in 2022.

Several U.S. Jewish organizations — including the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, Atlanta Jewish Foundation and Jewish Community Partners (Memphis) — have committed to invest over $100 million in seed capital to launch the new fund.

The initiative is groundbreaking in that individuals, not just federations or other communal organizations, can invest, Ari Hoffnung, JLens managing director and ADL’s senior advisor on corporate advocacy, told JI. “Until now there’s been institutional investment vehicles,” Hofnung said. “These have minimums of $1 million and above, which is fine for a federation which has an endowment of $100 million, but most regular investors don’t have a million dollars or more to put into this.”

Hoffnung said that TOV has “eliminated the economic barriers to Jewish values investing.” Individuals can purchase a share for just $25 on the NYSE through any online platform.

“People of other faiths have investment vehicles that they can invest in that are affordable,” Hoffnung said. “This really represents the first time that there’s going to be a Jewish values-based product that everyone can participate in.”

“The launch of TOV reflects the need for a strong, deliberate and innovative response to the unprecedented spike in antisemitism following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “In the aftermath of this event, we have seen a wave of actions against corporations by the BDS movement, as well as more Jewish employees finding themselves in hostile workplaces, which demands a robust response.”
The sky is no limit: Reserve soldier with cerebral palsy summits Mt. Kilimanjaro
Maayan Gabai, 24, had just about reached the 5,895 meters (19,341 feet) summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro when he felt like he couldn’t go any farther. He saw another climber, and they smiled at each other.

“I asked him in English where he was from,” Gabai told The Times of Israel. “The climber said, ‘Iran,’ and then he asked where I was from.”

This was 10 days after the January 19 hostage-ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. The war began on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists assaulted southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 as hostages.

But Gabai didn’t hesitate to reply, ‘Israel.’

Gabai, who served three years in the IDF’s spokesperson’s unit for Arab affairs, speaks fluent Arabic. He also knows a little Farsi, so he added, ‘I love you.’

The climber ran toward Gabai… and hugged him.

“He told me the people of Iran love Israel, and the Iranian government doesn’t represent the people,” Gabai said.

The unexpected encounter gave Gabai the final boost of energy to reach the summit. He completed the eight-day trek up Africa’s tallest mountain with 29 other people who raised more than NIS 1,000,000 ($281,000) for the nonprofit organization Shalva, the Israel Association for the Care and Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities.

The arduous trek challenged all the climbers. But only Gabai, who has cerebral palsy, walked with crutches through the ice and snow.

“That wasn’t even the most difficult challenge,” Gabai said. “It was walking for 18 hours straight with freezing feet.”
A Rare French Hebrew Manuscript Finds Its Way to Israel
Located between the Ashkenazi heartland of western Germany and northeastern France on the one hand, and the Sephardi world south of the Pyrenees on the other, was the Jewish community of Provence. From roughly the 12th through the 14th centuries, it was a center of intense intellectual creativity. One of its most impressive sons was the grammarian and exegete Rabbi David Kimhi. Itamar Eichner reports on a work by Kimhi’s father, a famed scholar in his own right:

Recent contributions from the William Davidson Foundation, the Zucker and Kraus families, and Sid Lapidus allowed a rare medieval French Jewish manuscript titled M’zukak Shiv’atayim (“Refined Seventyfold”) to be acquired and transferred to the National Library of Israel.

The book, likely the only surviving copy of its kind, . . . contains a commentary on seven of the fourteen volumes of Maimonides’ [great code of talmudic law], Mishneh Torah, and was copied in Provence, likely soon after the death of its author, Rabbi Joseph Kimhi, in 1170. In it, Kimhi provides sources for Maimonides’ legal and philosophical rulings, some of which no longer exist elsewhere.




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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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