Wednesday, March 05, 2025

03/05 Links Pt2: No Other Land isn’t what it seems; Oscar-winning filmmakers caught on video provoking IDF troops; Yale Law School investigates employee with PFLP ties

From Ian:

Gil Troy: Fearless Zionism: American Jews need to reshape their view of Israel
As American Jews mourn the younger generation’s supposed alienation from Israel, many blame Bibi rather than their decisions to raise their kids on tikkun olam/social justice diets that Poisoned Ivy League Progressives distorted and turned against Israel.

“What do you expect?” many ask. “Jews born after 2000 have only known an Israel defined by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and right-wing, religious fanatics.”

This formulation foolishly defines Israel, our forever-homeland, by its often-unstable governments. Living in a polarized nation that’s zig-zagged from Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s America to Donald Trump’s America, they don’t always judge their country by its leaders.

Defining Israel in partisan terms ignores what over 900,000 young Jews have discovered on Birthright and other Israel experiences: that the Jewish connection to Israel is eternal and existential.

Even many who haven’t visited Israel – yet! – have been shaped by their Birthright buddies’ identity revelations. Seeing Israel, feeling it, tasting it – and meeting Israelis – reframes the conversation. I understand why Palestinians try to make every conversation about “the conflict” into their agenda. But why do so many Jews fall into that same trap?

Framing Jews’ relationship with Israel in identity terms as existential transcends Left and Right. It’s not a pro-Netanyahu or pro-Trump move: It’s simply the Zionist way.

Zionism is broad-based enough to welcome a kaleidoscope of opinions. Zionism goes far beyond today’s headlines, emphasizing that Jews are a people as well as a religion; that we are tied to one particular homeland; and that we have the right to establish and now develop a state on that homeland.

In less partisan times, with less angry leaders and a less hostile world, many would recognize Zionism’s spacious, welcoming tent for all kinds of Diaspora Jews. Similarly, Israel includes a stunning array of Jews, from ultra-Orthodox to hyper-modern, from conservative capitalists to Peace Now socialists.
Gerald M. Steinberg: Review: Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments by Kenneth Roth
Roth’s cursory discussion of antisemitism, in which his defensiveness is very pronounced, highlights the fact that this issue is largely ignored by HRW and most institutions claiming to promote human rights. “The charge of antisemitism is often bandied about to silence critics of Israeli repression, including me—I was also accused of being a ‘Jew hater’” (p. 200). As in previous statements and social media posts, he blames the victim, proclaiming that Israel’s actions are the cause of any resurgence of hostility to Jews, particularly following the October 7 slaughter. “In the minds of some partisans, the idea that a state designed as a haven for Jews could stimulate harm against Jews is inadmissible” (p. 205). Roth’s response to journalist Jeffrey Goldberg’s denunciation of this position replaces the evidence with a blanket rejection of the conclusion that HRW’s relentless criticism, including accusations of “apartheid,” feed the violent Jew-hatred sweeping across university campuses. Roth also attacks the consensus definition of antisemitism adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, composed after the infamous hate-filled NGO Forum of the UN’s 2001 Durban World Conference Against Racism, in which HRW played a central part and which constitutes another example in Roth’s distorted history.

Notably, but consistent with the rest of the book, Roth makes no mention of the “eyewitness testimony” of Danielle Haas, a senior editor at HRW from 2010 until October 2023, who became a whistleblower. Not easily dismissed as a “troll,” Haas exposed the “years of politicization  …  shattered professionalism, abandoned principles of accuracy and fairness,” and the ways in which HRW “surrendered its duty to stand for the human rights of all.” Countering claims of careful fact-checking, she wrote about the violation of “basic editorial standards related to rigor, balance, and collegiality,” and summarized “the constellation of my experiences over years … as feeling a lot like antisemitism … ”Footnote7 Anonymous HRW staff members, both Jewish and non-Jewish, told her that “for years, they had raised concerns with managers and in wider discussion forums about antisemitism and methodological problems related to Israel work, only to face hostility at worst, inaction and indifference at best.”Footnote8 Haas also condemned HRW’s response to the Hamas massacre, which invoked “the ‘context’ of ‘apartheid’ and ‘occupation’ before blood was even dry on bedroom walls,” and, based on Roth’s practice, “could easily be construed as blaming the victim.” Regarding the 2021 “apartheid” campaign, Haas observes that HRW staff (i.e., Roth and others) knew the 217-page pseudo-research report filled with legal-sounding jargon and propaganda “would rarely be read in full,” and was designed to give ammunition to anti-Israel campaigners “including Hamas supporters … who now bandy about the term with appalling ease.” This is as much of an indictment of the journalists and other consumers who turned HRW’s press release into major headlines as it is of the organization’s manipulative practices.

In summary, a more accurate title for Roth’s magnum opus would be “Wronging Rights,” and while he may have hoped to have the last word in establishing his legacy and silencing the “trolls” and “extreme partisans,” the criticism will continue. Beyond the specific treatment of Israel, Roth demonstrates that the human rights advocacy based on morality and political neutrality that he claims to have championed for thirty years is a myth.
Kassy Akiva: DA Backs Away From Deal To Keep Scott Hayes From Going To Trial For Shooting Anti-Israel Attacker
Scott Hayes, 48, says he will likely have to go to trial for shooting an anti-Israel man who tackled him after a district attorney backed away from finalizing a disposition to resolve the case outside the courtroom.

Hayes was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and released on a $5,000 bail on September 13 after he shot Caleb Gannon, who charged through traffic and tackled Hayes in Newton, Massachusetts. Hayes pleaded not guilty and said shooting Gannon in the stomach was an act of self-defense.

“I am demanding a trial because the district attorney’s office continues to miss deadlines, go back on agreements, and play with my life,” Hayes said. “If they think they have a strong case — which they don’t — I’ll see you in court.”

Hayes, who lost his job over the incident, spent the last few months working out terms with the office of Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan. According to Hayes, Ryan’s office and Hayes’ legal team worked out terms for a “pretrial probation” (PTB) with no admission of liability, which would suspend Hayes’ license to carry during the period and require him to complete a de-escalation course and stay away from Gannon.

The point of contention is whether Hayes should stay out of Newton, the town where Gannon resides. Hayes believes that the condition is unnecessary, and that he should not have to stay out of the major Boston suburb, where he has many friends. The two sides were supposed to argue to a judge on Tuesday, until Hayes’ lawyer was informed that the DA’s office cancelled the hearing.

Ryan’s office ignored requests about the reason for the cancellation of the meeting on Tuesday and instead said the case hearing is scheduled for March 20.

Immediately after his release on bail, Hayes was required to wear a GPS ankle monitor, which flagged him several times for violating the stay-out-of-Newton order each time he traveled on the Mass Pike (I-90) for doctor appointments, as the highway runs through Newton. In October, a judge removed the ankle monitor requirement and his restrictions from being in Newton.

“It’s absurd that they want to now restrict me from Newton while I have been free to travel there for five months without any incidents,” Hayes told The Daily Wire.


Seth Mandel: Young American Jews and the Threat of Social Isolation
The post-Oct. 7 anti-Semitism crisis has hit institutionally assimilated American Jews especially hard. By “institutionally assimilated,” I mean that the physical spaces where they spend their time are more likely to be secular in nature: public schools, nondenominational youth groups, etc. And that has left these young Jews isolated.

On this score, the situation in K-12 public schools is especially alarming. Over a period of about two months after the Hamas slaughter, for example, dozens of Jewish families in Oakland applied for permission to transfer their kids to a different public school. The Oakland teachers union had spent those two months justifying the attacks against Israel and rallying the schools to the cause of Palestinian “liberation.” Some Oakland schools held unauthorized anti-Israel teach-ins.

When a reporter from J. Weekly asked the district for comment, a spokesman responded with a statement of delusional denial that has been typical of school officials’ dismissiveness toward the problem nationwide: “OUSD is a sanctuary district, inside Oakland, a sanctuary city, inside California, a sanctuary state, which means we support all students, families and staff, regardless of religion, heritage, ethnicity, where they came from, or how they got here.”

It can’t be true because we’re good liberals, in other words. Similar situations developed in Ann Arbor and other progressive cities, enabled by this narcissistic sense of enlightenment.

The problem quickly metastasized. The Free Press’s Frannie Block had enough examples to fill an essay a mere two months after the attacks. There was the California high-school curriculum calling Israel an “extremist illegal Jewish settler population” and another teaching about “Palestinian dispossession of lands/identity/culture through Zionist settler colonialism.” Similar lessons permeated secondary curricula in all 50 states, with the help of activist educators and Qatari cash.

Big-city public-school teachers helped organize mass anti-Zionist walkouts within weeks of the Hamas attacks. The result: Jewish teachers fearing for their safety and Jewish students around the country relentlessly hounded by their peers for the crime of being Jewish. Two-dozen Jewish parents of public-school kids told Block they feared for their children’s safety at school immediately after the attacks.

It has been more than a year since then, and the tide shows no sign of subsiding. To the contrary—the anti-Semitic lesson plans have only gotten worse, as evidenced by the repeated scandals of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which has approved the use of terrorist propaganda in the classroom and backed the use of workbooks that require grade-school kids to pledge allegiance to Palestinian “liberation.” Popular culture, led by singers and movie stars these kids might look up to, normalizes the erasure of Jews as well as violence against them, whether it’s anti-Zionist anthems by Macklemore, social-media rants by Kanye West or Intifada-celebrating pins worn by Billie Eilish.
Oct. 7 is not a ‘watershed’ event for UK antisemitism, but did bring it to a boil, says expert
Grim statistics about a record-breaking wave of antisemitic incidents since the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught have regularly hit the UK headlines.

But for one of Britain’s leading experts on antisemitism, they may be shocking but they are hardly surprising.

Instead, Prof. David Hirsh detects a pattern stretching back at least two decades to the United Nations’ notorious antisemitic 2001 Durban conference and the subsequent onset of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign in the UK.

“I think there’s an assumption that October 7 is a watershed event, and I’m a little bit skeptical about that,” Hirsh, the chief executive of the London Center for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, tells The Times of Israel in an interview.

The level of antisemitic incidents experienced by Jews may have risen substantially, but the threat has been “boiling up since the beginning of the century,” Hirsh says.

Nonetheless, Hirsh recognizes that many British Jews have experienced what he terms a “cultural shift” in the wake of October 7 — a feeling that “social spaces” in which they’d previously felt at home are no longer welcoming. It is a feeling, he adds, that was already familiar to those who had previously experienced the sharper edges of anti-Israel activism firsthand. He cites Jewish academics in the university lecturers’ union, the UCU, when the academic boycott campaign began in earnest in the late 2000s, and Jewish members of the Labour Party after the election of its hard-left former leader, Jeremy Corbyn, in 2015.

The lasting impact of Corbyn’s spell at the helm of the Labour Party has been detected by some campaigners against antisemitism in the fierce hostility to Israel in many quarters since the October 7 attacks.

“I always thought the key danger of Corbyn’s politics was that it normalized antisemitism,” shattering the postwar consensus in British politics that “any kind of antisemitism was recognized as being outside of the boundaries of democratic discourse,” says Hirsh.

After October 7, that fear turned out to be true.

“Antisemitic ideas [have] become normalized,” Hirsh says, by people on the far-left who strenuously claim to be fierce opponents of antisemitism. The result, he posits, is that “what you have today, above all else, is the claim that Israel — one of the very key projects of the post-Holocaust Jewish world — is deliberately murdering thousands of women and children and is committing genocide like the Nazis did.”

That claim evokes the centuries-old blood libel that Jews murder children and then conspire to cover up their crimes, he says.


You Will Regret This
Have some self-respect, people. They’re giving you crumbs. Hollywood is broken and boring, but if you’re a Jew who still cares about the Oscars and sees them as a meaningful cultural arbiter, you should be even more invested in making sure that your community receives the same consideration the industry is so eager to give everyone else. Enough applauding for bottom-of-the-barrel, end-of-the-list acknowledgements, or for selectively Jewish actors who cite their identities as justification for cowardly silence—especially when they’re also profiting off telling stories of Jewish trauma, and winning awards for these portrayals that secure them prosperous careers in one of the most profitable industries in the world.

Instead, we should be expecting—no, demanding—more from the people who represent our community on this massive global stage. For Jews, this has been the defining moment of our generation and several more to come, and we are still living through this complicated, heartbreaking moment in history. It’s just not acceptable that the most high-profile Jewish people in the world have nothing to say.

"Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh"—“all Jews are responsible for one another.” Perhaps many of these celebrities feel so detached from any sense of their Jewish identity that they cannot see themselves, or their relationship to others, in this Talmudic statement. I’m not so sure, though, because some of them are making Holocaust movies and spending months of their lives exploring the greatest trauma of their people. The more believable answer seems to be that they are simply narcissistic, so concerned with advancing their own careers in an industry that demands perfect woke politics that they’ve left their own people behind.

I vehemently disagree with the hand-wringing Jews online telling us that we should sit back and be happy with Adrien Brody’s speech or Kieran Culkin’s Oscar for A Real Pain. It’s fine to be angry and demand better from the likes of Brody, Madison, Eisenberg, Culkin, and Chalamet. In fact, holding ourselves and each other to a high moral standard, even when it’s hard, and even when our enemies do not, is a crucial part of Jewish identity. Our tribe does have barriers to entry and requirements for belonging. It’s time that we remember this when evaluating the people who claim to represent our community—especially because public opinion matters in Hollywood, and Hamas is wasting no time recruiting red-pin-wearing celebrities.

In the meantime, instead of meekly holding out our hands for lame moral scraps, I recommend we continue cheering on the celebrities who have stuck out their necks and meaningfully spoken out. People like Jerry Seinfeld, who visited Be’eri two months after the attack, or Debra Messing, who made it to Gaza to support IDF soldiers, or Michael Rapaport, who started wrapping tefillin every day since Oct. 7, or Jason Isaacs, who managed to sneak a hostage pin into a Vogue TikTok and proudly wore it to the BRITs, should be the heroes that our community cheers for. Everyone else is a passable afterthought until they prove themselves worthy of Jewish communal respect.
Lahav Harkov: The Lies of ‘No Other Land’
“No Other Land” won Best Documentary Feature Film at the Academy Awards on Monday. The film follows one of its directors, Basel Adra, as his village Masafer Yatta, near Hebron, is set to be demolished by the IDF.

The film is partly made up of videos that Masafer Yatta residents collected over the course of 20 years, and is in part about the growing friendship between Adra and another director of the film, an Israeli journalist named Yuval Avraham. The film depicts most Israelis and the IDF as unnecessarily cruel and violent, while presenting Palestinian violence against Israelis as justified resistance.

Adra and Avraham claimed in their acceptance speeches that Israel is an apartheid state that is ethnically cleansing Palestinians and starving the residents of Gaza. It is unsurprising that they would blatantly lie on the Oscars stage, because their film is based on a long list of falsehoods.

The residents of Masafer Yatta have claimed that it is a village with deep, longstanding roots. But the truth is that it is an invention of the past quarter-century, built illegally on land that was designated as remaining under Israeli control in the Oslo Accords, an agreement signed by the Palestinian leadership.

Before 1980, caves in the Masafer Yatta area were used by Arab shepherds residing in nearby towns as a seasonal refuge during rainy winters, but not as a full-fledged village. The Ottoman Empire, British Mandate and Jordanian occupation declared the land uninhabited, and aerial photo evidence backs up the claim.
Oscar-winning filmmakers caught on video pestering IDF troops
The Mount Hebron Regional Council, which administers Jewish towns in southern Judea, published never-before-seen footage on Wednesday showing 2025 Best Documentary Oscar winners Yuval Abraham and Basel Adra harassing a group of Israel Defense Forces soldiers in the area.

“This scene is described in the film as ‘settler violence and IDF cruelty in Massafer Yatta.’ In reality, it was just a planned, staged provocation and harassment of IDF soldiers in IDF Firing Zone 918,” the regional council said in a joint statement with the Regavim Movement lobbying group.

The activists featured in Abraham and Basel’s award-winning film “No Other Land” are “nothing but paid actors,” the statement concluded.

In the IDF body cam footage, Abraham and Adra can be seen joining a group of far-left activists with cameras who attempt to back several Israeli soldiers providing security in the area into a corner.

“Back off! Get out of here! Back off!” Abraham screams at the soldiers, accusing one of them of sexually harassing him and other activists.

“Who do you think you are, talking to soldiers like that? Shame on you,” troops tell him, adding: “Who did I touch? My hands are in my pockets.”

Israeli Minister of Culture and Sports Miki Zohar shared the footage on X, tweeting: “Oscar winners should be ashamed that their title was achieved by abusing IDF soldiers who fight to defend the country.”


Jonathan Sacerdoti: No Other Land isn’t what it seems
And now, they take an Israeli song – Ein Li Eretz Acheret (‘I Have No Other Land’) – a poetic anthem of Jewish survival, and twist it into No Other Land, a weapon against the very people who wrote it. This act of cultural appropriation is no accident. It is part of a broader strategy: to erase Jewish historical claims while fabricating Palestinian ones.

“But why,” they demand, “is there such outrage every time a film about Palestinian suffering wins an award? Is this not proof of Israel’s refusal to confront inconvenient truths?” Hardly. The issue is not that the film depicts Palestinian suffering. The issue is that it distorts reality, reducing a complex, historically grounded conflict into a one-sided morality play. It is not documentation; it is political theatre.

Israel is not just fighting a war on the battlefield. It is waging an equally critical war against a well-oiled propaganda machine: one that operates through newsrooms, PR firms, NGOs, academia, and, yes, even Hollywood. No Other Land is merely the latest weapon in an ongoing campaign to erode Israel’s moral standing, leveraging emotion over evidence, outrage over understanding.

Filmmakers have the right to tell whatever story they please, however misleading. The true tragedy is that major Western institutions – be it the Oscars, the UN, the BBC, or even academia – not only fall for it but eagerly participate in it.

With every such film, every slanted news report, every dishonest headline, they chip away at Israel’s right to defend itself. They turn aggressors into victims and victims into villains. They manipulate Israel’s language, history, and morality against it. And they count on the world believing their fiction.


Andrew Pessin: Alethocide: The Assault on Truth, and the Destruction of Education, on the Liberal Arts Campus
More immediately, there was that delicious moment when Gordon inadvertently exposed the absurdity of his entire argument. In response to a question about whether Israel may lawfully target “civilian” structures built atop military tunnels, Gordon acknowledged that indeed it was lawful to do so, but added that IHL also requires steps to minimize civilian casualties, issue warnings, evacuate, etc. Of course it goes without saying that Israel has been doing that throughout the war, but Gordon of course let that go without saying himself. Instead he cast Israel’s undertaking of such activities, of moving the civilian population out of the way, as a matter of “ethnic cleansing.” Note the neat trick: if Israel bombs the militarized target it’s committing genocide, but if it removes the civilian population it’s committing “ethnic cleansing,” so basically either way Israel is committing war crimes and it is ultimately permitted to do nothing in this war other than surrender. But even this absurdity wasn’t enough: Gordon then went on to describe this “ethnic cleansing” as a form of “humanitarian camouflage for genocide,” which is what Israel is doing by destroying so many buildings in Gaza.

Got that? “Ethnic cleansing provides humanitarian camouflage for genocide”: Israel, by saving civilians’ lives, is covering up its genocide. Or put differently: Israel, by not committing genocide, is covering up its commitment of genocide.

It’s as ludicrous as that. When one is trapped in the delusion of Israel-hate, whatever Israel does must be conceived as a radical evil—even the things they do which directly undermine the allegations of radical evil.

Gordon’s main conclusion: IHL, which was developed precisely to prevent genocide, has now become a tool to perpetrate it. Israel exploits IHL to treat (nearly) every structure in Gaza as military and thus, by destroying them, commits genocide under the protection of the law.

But all of that is precisely upside-down. Hamas, openly comfortable with sacrificing its civilian population, has militarized the entire strip and nearly entirely erased the civilian:militant distinction, blatantly violating IHL itself and hoping to exploit it by hampering Israel, which largely follows IHL, from maintaining its military campaign against it.

A civilized person now has a pretty important decision to make. To condemn Israel for its operations in this war is to give sanction to Hamas’s; it is to entirely give up on IHL by allowing it to be weaponized by terrorist groups who violate it and exploit it. The alternative is to condemn Hamas and recognize the extraordinary lengths, in nearly impossible circumstances, to which Israel has gone to preserve IHL, and thus to uphold it.

It seems to me the choice there is pretty clear.

I close with two final bits of absurdity from Gordon’s talk.

First, he attempted to “racialize” everything, casting Israel’s operations as driven by and manifesting Israeli racism. In the American Civil War, he explained, Black slaves were no deterrence for Northern attacks, only white citizens, because Northerners did not see Blacks as fully human. The implication: Israel is not deterred from bombing Gazans because of its racism toward them, because it doesn’t even see them as fully human. I won’t refute this outrageous, laughable claim except to note that it’s what happens when one’s mind is thoroughly corrupted by the reigning ideologies of the day.

Second, more importantly: There was a question at the end about this “educational” series as a whole, questioning its lack of balance and wondering if it were planning to bring in any speakers other than the thirteen so far all in the “Israel is evil, evil, evil” camp. That question should more properly be directed at the organizers of the series, but Gordon ventured a response worth briefly examining here. Academia, he said, isn’t about balance but a search for truth: for example, he wouldn’t entertain someone who was a creationist, or a Holocaust denier, meaning, I take it, that we wouldn’t and shouldn’t seek to balance an academic discussion by including the crackpots and the crazies, i.e. the dissenters from the otherwise nearly universal consensus such as those. Moreover, he alleged, most governments in the West (and perhaps most media?) are very pro-Israel, so in fact a lecture series such as this one is in fact providing the necessary balance.

Much could be said here, including challenging that last allegation. But let’s just focus on this: he just gave the general pro-Israel position the same status as a creationist and a Holocaust denier. In particular—given the actual content of this series—those who might take issue with the allegation that Israel is perpetrating genocide are akin to creationists and Holocaust deniers. This isn’t merely offensive, biased, hateful, and a whole bunch of other negative words, but a direct assault on the very mission of the university. They claim they are in the business of “truth,” but for them there is only one version of the truth, the one they are possessed of, and anyone with an alternative point of view is merely a crackpot or a crazy not deserving of consideration. They are not interested in critical questions, in challenging the biases of their sources, or platforming any alternative point of view, not even in the course of thirteen lectures. That statement is the affirmation of an ideology that shall brook no dissent. It is sheer propagandizing, a direct rejection of a search for truth, and thus a direct assault on the entire institution of higher education—all done under the guise of “education.”

I could not have provided a clearer condemnation of this entire “educational” series myself.

For the record, the series organizer nodded along vigorously while Gordon gave this answer, enthusiastically mm-hmming, even as Gordon ultimately, fully openly, and oh so painfully destroyed the entire legitimacy and credibility of their endeavor.

An “own goal” never was so satisfying.

Still, the biggest losers are the entire college community and the generation of students who are coming of age being groomed into this destructive ideology.
Sharansky urges Trump to act against campus antisemitism
Natan Sharansky, who now serves as chairman of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), has urged the U.S. administration under President Donald Trump to take strong action against what he termed “the antisemitic protests” on American university campuses.

“In the end, the critical thing is whether the new administration would be ready to punish universities for doing nothing,” Sharansky said in an exclusive interview with JNS at the end of February. “We still are waiting for the new administration of President Trump to make very strong statements about it. It’s the time to move from statements to action. And here, of course, we have to expect the administration to act. We need action, not just words.”

On March 4, Trump threatened to cut federal funding to any college, school or university that allow “illegal protests” on their campuses. In a strong statement posted on Truth Social, Trump declared that “agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came” while American students participating in such protests would face arrest or permanent expulsion. “No masks!” he declared.

Sharansky criticized the previous U.S. administration for failing to enforce antisemitism policies, saying he found President Joe Biden a disappointment in this fight because Biden had failed to recognize the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism adopted in 2016.

“Biden’s administration built the whole system of fighting against antisemitism. But, they undermined all the efforts simply by not saying that they recognize that this international definition of antisemitism, connecting antisemitism and anti-Zionism, is not the only one,” Sharansky said. “They recognized multiple definitions of antisemitism, allowing universities to claim anti-Zionism is not antisemitic.”

Sharansky called rising antisemitism at U.S. universities “a big, big American problem” and said his mission is to turn the “silent majority” of Jews and their supporters into an “open majority.” However, he argued, addressing campus antisemitism requires action from Jewish organizations, university administrators, and above all, the administration. “As long as the American administration will not start working, punishing universities, nothing will change,” he warned.
Top schools failed Jewish students ‘utterly,’ Stefanik says
The so-called “most elite” U.S. universities have failed their Jewish students “utterly” after “the bloodiest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), told attendees of the Anti-Defamation League’s Never Is Now Summit in New York City on Monday.

“We will not and must not rest until every single hostage is returned home and Hamas terrorists are eradicated from the face of the earth,” the nominated U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said at the event. “The world saw, in what is now the most viewed congressional testimony in history with over 1 billion views, the moral rot of America’s higher education.”

During a four-hour hearing on Dec. 5, 2023, Stefanik questioned then-Harvard University president Claudine Gay about Jew-hatred on campus. When Stefanik asked if calling for the genocide of all Jews violated Harvard’s policies, Gay said it depended on context. (Gay later resigned as Harvard leader.)

Stefanik said at the ADL event that the House Committee on Education and the Workforce held the hearing to demand accountability but instead was “met with weak and morally bankrupt university leaders, who evaded our questions and refused to answer direct questions with direct answers.”

Stefanik criticized ongoing Jew-hatred on campuses, citing Barnard College, where anti-Israel protesters took over an administrative building last week, demanding amnesty for two students expelled for disrupting a modern Israeli history class at Columbia University.

“On the same day that the world was mourning the murders of the Bibas babies by Hamas terrorists, pro-Hamas terrorist sympathizers took over a Barnard College campus building, spewing antisemitic and anti-Israel hate, assaulting a staff member and sending him to the hospital,” she said.

“Meanwhile, Barnard’s leadership held off on calling in the law enforcement stationed outside instead offering up a meeting with the college president to negotiate,” she said at the ADL event. “This is not leadership.”
US feds open civil rights probe into antisemitism at University of California public system
The US Department of Justice opens a civil rights investigation into antisemitism at the University of California, one of the leading public university systems in the US.

The federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism says the probe will investigate whether the university system has violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination.

“This Department of Justice will always defend Jewish Americans, protect civil rights, and leverage our resources to eradicate institutional Antisemitism in our nation’s universities,” says US Attorney General Pamela Bondi.

Most federal probes into campus antisemitism are filed under Title VI, which prohibits discrimination in institutions that receive federal funding.

Jewish legal groups are also seeking to expand the use of Title II, a law that prohibits discrimination in public spaces.


Yale Law School investigates employee with PFLP ties
Yale Law School has placed an employee on “immediate administrative leave” and launched an investigation into her membership in the designated terrorist network Samidoun, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s fundraising arm in North America.

Helyeh Doutaghi, an associate research scholar and deputy director of the law and political economy project at Yale since 2023, is described as a “doctoral student of international law and a member of the international Samidoun Network,” according to Samidoun’s website.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury, together with Canada, designated the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, or “Samidoun,” a terrorist group in October, calling it a “sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the PFLP terrorist organization,” which operates in Gaza and the West Bank.

“We take these allegations extremely seriously and immediately opened an investigation into the matter to ascertain the facts,” a university spokesperson told Jewish Insider. “Helyeh Doutaghi’s short-term position as an associate research scholar with the LPE Project expires next month. Until then, she has been placed on an immediate administrative leave pending the outcome of this investigation.”

Doutaghi’s connection to Samidoun was first reported by the Buckley Beacon on Monday. Yale Law took down Doutaghi’s bio from its website on Tuesday.


Anti-Israel protesters ‘at odds’ with Barnard’s mission, its president says
Laura Rosenbury, the Barnard College president, condemned anti-Israel protesters, who took over an administrative building on campus last week and defended the college’s decision to expel two anti-Israel demonstrators in a March 3 Chronicle of Higher Education op-ed.

“Over the last year and a half, an unauthorized group of anonymous individuals calling themselves Columbia University Apartheid Divest have exploited the conflict in the Middle East to try to tear our campus community—our Barnard home—apart,” she wrote.

Rosenbury denounced the four “masked individuals,” who disrupted a modern Israeli history class at Columbia University on the first day of the spring semester in January, noting that Barnard students participated in the protest. (Barnard has a historic connection to Columbia.)

“This disruption was not designed to expand thinking or advance civil discourse,” she wrote. “Instead, it was a calculated act of intimidation, with the disruptors taunting and loudly speaking over the professor, distributing antisemitic fliers and refusing to join the discussion even when the professor graciously invited them to sit in on the class.”

“This wasn’t an isolated incident but an escalation of an ongoing threat to our community,” she added.

The student group’s members “operate in the shadows, hiding behind masks and Instagram posts with Molotov cocktails aimed at Barnard buildings, antisemitic tropes about wealth, influence, and ‘Zionist billionaires,’” and it “calls for violence and disruption at any cost,” Rosenbury wrote.

“They claim Columbia University’s name, but the truth is, because their members wear masks, no one really knows whose interests they serve,” she added.

The anti-Israel student group responded to news of the expulsion of the two Barnard students by protesting at the school’s Milbank Hall on Feb. 26. Protesters forced their way through a rear exit, knocking down a community safety employee in the process. (The New York City Police Department confirmed to JNS that someone, who was injured, went to the hospital.)


Gaza mob hunts down terrified Jewish student who organised campus peace event
A Jewish student at a London university locked himself in the chaplaincy room for fear of his physical safety as pro-Palestine student protesters tried force the door open after a conflict-resolution event, the JC understands.

The King’s College student, who preferred not to be named, said that he felt “extremely unsafe” and thought the intention of the activists was to “beat the sh*t out of me”.

As president of the King’s Geopolitics Forum, the student had organised a speaker event at the university last Thursday entitled “From Conflict to Connection: Israelis and Iranians in Dialogue”, featuring Iranian researcher Faezeh Alavi.

But around 25 minutes into the event – which the Jewish student had been chairing – a female pro-Palestine protester with a megaphone interrupted Alavi, shouting: “There has been a genocide happening for 15 months. How are you not going to talk about that?”


Anti-Israel vandalism group defaces Cambridge, Oxford
The United Kingdom’s oldest universities were vandalized by an anti-Israel vandalism organization, as the University of Cambridge was targeted on Tuesday and Oxford University was defaced on Friday.

A Cambridge Old Schools administrative building facade was covered in red paint and the word “divest,” according to anti-Israel vandalism activist group Palestine Action. The group said on Tuesday that it targeted the Cambridge University’s Endowment Fund offices as part of a demand for the institution’s divestment from companies with financial ties to Israel.

The group also referred to a Thursday a High Court injunction banning anti-Israel activists from disrupting a Saturday graduation ceremony.

“They can try to stop the student intifada, but they will never succeed,” Palestine Action said. “Resistance until victory!”

A Cambridgeshire Constabulary spokesman said on Wednesday that they had received a report of criminal damage at the Old School, and that anyone with information should report it to law enforcement.

A university spokesperson said that the institution contacted the police, adding that they “strongly condemn this vandalism of University property.”

A university spokesperson said the institution contacted the police, adding that they “strongly condemn this vandalism of University property.”

Cambridge had been the site of periodic anti-Israel encampment protests, which included the November Senate House lawn and Greenwich House occupations, according to Cambridge for Palestine.

The vandalizing of the historic academic institution came just four days after Palestine Action smashed and graffitied the windows of Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government.


Michael Gove: Auntie, you’ve got a real problem with Jews and saying sorry isn’t enough
Last month the BBC broadcast a “documentary” on life in Gaza. To say it was a problematic piece of journalism would be like suggesting arsenic was not a perfect mixer for cocktails. The narrator of the film, the hero of the show, was the son of a Hamas official. A fact withheld not just from the viewer but, it would appear, one not even properly acknowledged by the BBC execs who commissioned the programme. The boy’s mother was paid for his participation. That’s BBC cash – licence fee payers’ money – going to fund a family at the heart of a terrorist enterprise. If anyone’s got a better description of Hamas do let me know. And no, militant won’t cut it.

But, hard though it may be to relate, that wasn’t the worst thing about the Gaza doc. It is possible, just possible, if I put the most charitable gloss on events, that the BBC execs involved were merely careless, slipshod and amateurish in the exercise of journalistic oversight, didn’t realise that the star of their show had already appeared on Channel Four news, weren’t aware that had been identified subsequently by them and others as the son of a Hamas leader and didn’t bother to ask if anyone with any terrorist links had been paid out of the licence fee. We can all make mistakes.


Why Are There No Christians in Bethlehem?
Systematic oppression of Christians has been carried out for decades by the Palestinian authorities in Judea and Samaria and in Gaza.

"Terrorist attacks against Christians, assaults on churches, cemeteries, and Christian properties in the Palestinian Authority...have become daily occurrences, and their severity clearly intensifies during Christian holidays," the Greek Orthodox Church recently declared.

Reports from Gaza describe attacks on Christians and Christian holy sites carried out by Hamas police.

The Palestinian authorities persecute the Christian population through systematic land confiscations via the Palestinian courts, extortion and seizure of Christian-owned businesses, and systematic discrimination against Christians in employment.

Christians are excluded from leadership positions in the Palestinian Authority and face difficulties buying and selling land and property.

In 1950 Christians made up 86% of Bethlehem's population. A 2017 census revealed that only 10% of Bethlehem's residents were Christians.

Hamas members occupy most of the seats on the city council.


Seth Frantzman: Sharaa's arrival in Cairo for Arab summit signals regional shift
The interim President of the Syrian Arab Republic, Ahmed al-Sharaa, arrived in Cairo to attend the Extraordinary Arab Summit on the developments of the Palestinian cause, Syrian state media reported on Tuesday. This is an important trip for the new Syrian leader following his trips to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan.

Syria’s new leader faces pressure at home, as Israel continues to carry out airstrikes and operations in Syria amid calls by Jerusalem that southern Syria be demilitarized.

Syria’s new government needs support from the Arab states, and participating in regional meetings is a way for the Syrian leader to show that he is ready for the world stage.

Syria historically has supported the Palestinians, as under the Bashar al-Assad regime, it positioned itself as part of the “resistance axis” and was linked to Iran.

However, after the fall of Assad, Syria is closer to Turkey and Saudi Arabia. In this new reality, Ankara and Israel could be on a collision course over competing interests in Damascus.

It is of the utmost importance for the Syrian leader to find a way to stabilize his government and get more support regionally. Currently, he has support, but investment in his war-torn country is more important than words.

Warming ties with Egypt?
Egypt was one of the counties that did outreach to the Assad regime, helping bring it back in from the cold during the Syrian civil war.

After Assad was ousted from power, Egypt was perceived as one of the countries that were more reticent to reach out to the Sharaa government. The very act of Sharaa's arrival in Cairo is therefore a major development for Damascus.


Jews are rich and should pay for the Holocaust memorial themselves, says Tory peer
The Conservative Party is facing calls to take action against a peer who said the Jewish community "has an awful lot of money" and "property everywhere" and should pay for a Holocaust memorial rather than the British taxpayer.

Lord Hamilton was accused of invoking "antisemitic caricatures" over the remarks, which came during a debate on the Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre in Westminster on Tuesday.

Hamilton also suggested during the debate that the memorial should not be in a "dominant" location.

His comments on Jewish money and property were condemned by his own party as “completely unacceptable [and] flagrantly antisemitic”. A Tory spokesman said: “We condemn them utterly.”
Madrid kosher restaurant target of attempted arson
Spanish police are investigating an attempted arson attack on a kosher restaurant in central Madrid, Jewish organizations said on Wednesday.

According to a Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain press release, the assailant entered the Rimmon eatery at 10:39 p.m. on Tuesday and “sprayed the entrance of the establishment with a liquid with a strong gasoline smell, intending to set fire and burn down the premises.”

A swift response by the staff of the crowded restaurant prevented the fire from being lit, the federation noted. The attacker fled before police arrived, the organization said.

Authorities were working to track down the perpetrator and establish a motive for his actions, according to the press release on Wednesday.

In a joint statement with the local Jewish community, the country’s Jewish federation condemned the foiled attack as “an antisemitic act with the goal of causing casualties, attacking public facilities frequented by the Jewish community and terrorizing members of our community.

“This is an act motivated by hatred, vile and savage, which attacks coexistence, freedom and tolerance—values that have always characterized the citizens of Madrid,” added the statement.

On Jan. 1, Spanish activists from the far-left Canarias Insumisa group set an Israeli flag alight outside a sports arena in the country’s Canary Islands, ahead of a basketball game featuring Hapoel Tel Aviv.

Local media described the incident as a “protest against the occupation and genocide that the Palestinian people are undergoing,” repeating the false accusation that Israel “murdered 47,000 women, children and the elderly in one year” during its war against terrorists in Gaza.
Sa’ar: Ecuador to open office with diplomatic status in Jerusalem
Ecuador is set to open an innovation office in Jerusalem that will have diplomatic status, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced on Tuesday night after a call with his counterpart in the South American country.

In the call with Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld, Sa’ar “praised Ecuador’s intention to open an innovation office with diplomatic status in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people,” he wrote on X.

In October 2024, Knesset lawmakers passed a law stipulating that only embassy-level diplomatic missions be opened in Jerusalem, a move meant to reaffirm the city’s status as the Jewish state’s capital.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry did not respond by time of publication to a JNS query about whether the law affects the opening of offices with diplomatic status.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to move the American embassy to Israel’s capital in 2018 set the stage for other countries to follow suit. Six countries currently have their embassies in Jerusalem—the United States, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Paraguay and Papua New Guinea.

Last month, the South Pacific island nation of Fiji announced it had approved plans to inaugurate an embassy in Jerusalem later this year.

“I commend the Republic of Fiji’s government for its historic decision to open an embassy in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people. Thank you, Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, friend of Israel. Thank you Fiji!” Sa’ar tweeted in response to Suva’s announcement on Feb. 18.
The Long Postbiblical History of “Judea and Samaria”
Indeed, the fact that the opposition Judah/Israel, or Judea/Samaria, is part of Judeo-Christian and not just Jewish tradition had a result that, in our own increasingly post-Christian age, few people on either side of the dispute seem to be aware of. This is that, far from being uniquely Jewish, “Judea” and “Samaria” were, until the mid-20th-century, the standard Christian and European way of referring to what today would be called the southern and northern West Bank.

I will cite only a few examples of this, but I assure you that they are entirely representative of the usage of their age and of all other ages from the start of the Christian era.

From the 1st-century CE, the Jewish historian Joseph Flavius, writing in Greek for a non-Jewish audience:
Now, as to the country of Samaria, it lies between Judea and Galilee . . . and is entirely of the same nature with Judea; for both countries are made up of hills and valleys, and are moist enough for agriculture, and are very fruitful.

From the 12th-century German pilgrim Theodericus’ Libellus de Locus Sanctus (“Little Book of Holy Places”):
On the west Judea extends to the Great [Mediterranean] Sea, on the south it is delimited by the mountains of Arabia and Egypt, to the east its boundary is the River Jordan, and to the north it is bordered by Samaria.

From the 14th-century The Travels of Sir John Mandeville:
Jerusalem is in the land of Judea, and it is clept Judea, for that Judas Maccabeus was king of that country [sic!]; and it marcheth eastward to the kingdom of Arabia; on the south side to the land of Egypt; on the west side to the Great Sea.

From the French author FranÇois-Réné Chateaubriand’s Itinéraire de Paris á Jérusalem (1811):
The plain of Sharon is bordered on the east by the mountains of Judea and Samaria.
From Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad (1869):
We camped at Jenin before night, and got up and started again at one o’clock in the morning, [and] came to the singularly terraced and unlovely hills that betrayed that we were out of Galilee and into Samaria at last.
So, rested and refreshed, we fell into line and filed away over the barren mountains of Judea.

One might also observe that old maps of Palestine commonly divided its central mountain range into “Judea” and “Samaria,” and that a “district of Samaria” was one of the six administrative districts of British Mandate Palestine. (There was not a district of Judea, whose territory was divided between a district of Jerusalem and a district of Hebron.)

Finally, there is this from U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181:
The boundary of the hill country of Samaria and Judea starts on the Jordan River at the Wadi Malih southeast of Beisan and then runs due west to meet the Beisan-Jericho road and then follows the western side of that road in a northwesterly direction to the junction of the boundaries of the sub-districts of Beisan, Nablus, and Jenin.

In case you’re rubbing your eyes, yes, you’re reading part of the momentous United Nations resolution of November 29, 1947 that called for the partition of Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state.

Whether it would be politically wise for Congress to adopt the Cotton-Tenney “Recognizing Judea and Samaria Act” is another matter. If it does, though, it will not have been party to a campaign to revive archaic biblical language. It will rather be restoring part of the accepted geographic terminology for Palestine that English and many other languages used as a matter of course up to the 1948–49 Arab-Israeli war. The proponents of “Judea” and “Samaria” have more on their side than they realize.


John Cleese to perform in Israel in June
Legendary British comedian and actor John Cleese, 85, is set to return to Israel for three performances this June in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Famous as a member of Monty Python and for his roles in “Fawlty Towers” and “A Fish Called Wanda,” Cleese’s new show, “An Evening with John Cleese,” will reflect on key moments from his life and career, while also addressing current events, including local topics, Ynet reported on Wednesday.

Ticket prices range from 289 to 549 shekels (about $80-$150).

Cleese previously performed in Israel in 2019 with his show “Last Chance to See Me Before I Die.”
Debra Messing, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Mayim Bialik to Headline New Digital Series ‘And They’re Jewish,’ Hosted by Influencer Hen Mazzig
With antisemitism surging, Israeli influencer and author Hen Mazzig is launching a new online series “And They’re Jewish,” headlined by celebrities including Emmanuelle Chriqui, Debra Messing and Mayim Bialik.

The series, which will air weekly on Mazzig’s YouTube channel beginning April 2, was created in an effort to humanize Jewish people via the personal stories of high-profile participants who explore how they engage with their religion and heritage.

According to data released by the Anti-Defamation League, the number of antisemitic incidents in the U.S. from October 2003 to September 2024 tripled over the same period a year prior. Mazzig, who co-founded the social media-focused Tel Aviv Institute and has become a go-to thought leader among Hollywood’s Jewish community, will debut the first-look teaser of the series at the ADL’s Never is Now Summit’s closing session, where Gal Gadot and trailblazing tennis champ Billie Jean King will be honored.

Mazzig says each 20-minute episode will showcase “the artists, chefs, actors and creators whose work you love, but whose Jewish identity you may not have known.” He adds, “This series isn’t just about visibility; it’s about celebrating the depth, diversity and undeniable impact of Jewish voices in every space.”

“Entourage” star Chriqui says “And They’re Jewish” marks “a crucial cultural project at a time when Jewish voices need to be heard more than ever.” She adds: “Hen has created something truly special — an honest, heartfelt series that showcases the depth, diversity and humanity of Jewish identity. In a time of rising antisemitism, it’s vital to share real stories that challenge stereotypes and remind the world of the richness of Jewish culture and experience.”


David Schwimmer Urges Jewish Celebrities to End Their Silence on Antisemitism: “Stand Up”
David Schwimmer on Tuesday called on his fellow Jewish members of Hollywood to stand up against antisemitism.

“Plenty of people I respect, even some of my heroes in entertainment, music and sports, have chosen to keep a low profile and sit this one out,” the Friends alum told the audience at the Anti-Defamation League’s annual Never Is Now antisemitism conference in New York. “So many have chosen not to say anything publicly at all. And if I can say something directly to them: I really wish you would.”

Schwimmer’s call to action was met with cheers from the crowd, and he continued over the noise: “I wish you would stand up. I wish you would speak out, because your voice would be so meaningful to your fans who love you, to your community members who need you, to folks who can use just a little solidarity right now.” (You can watch the full address below.)

The remarks come as many Hollywood celebrities have chosen to stay silent in the face of rising antisemitism. Schwimmer, though, has been vocal on the subject, previously asking Elon Musk to ban Kanye West from X (formerly Twitter) over his antisemitic tirades and actions.

“My career has given me an incredible platform, a chance to talk about the issues that matter to me, and on a good day, a chance to be heard over the noise that drowns too many people out,” Schwimmer said. “I believe with that privilege comes a responsibility to use my voice in moments like this, at a time of danger, bigotry and violence.”

Schwimmer went on to acknowledge that “speaking out often comes at a cost” and that “like so many others, I’ve been attacked and threatened by people I’ve never met. I’ve been abandoned by people I thought were friends and by organizations I thought were allies, but I’ve also found amazing moments of meaning and solidarity.”
David Schwimmer Presents the ADL Heroes Against Hate | Never Is Now 2025

'My name is Gal, and I'm Jewish': Gal Gadot speaks on Jewish pride, fighting antisemitism
“My name is Gal, and I’m Jewish,” Israeli actress Gal Gadot told audiences at the Never Is Now 2025 summit, where she was presented with the Anti-Defamation League’s International Leadership Award.

“Isn’t it crazy that just saying that [I’m Jewish], just expressing such a simple fact about who I am, feels like a controversial statement?” she said.

“As we all know, hatred, intolerance, and bigotry are on the rise. Most of us will never have experienced a worst time for antisemitism in our lifetimes, but we should feel safer knowing that the ADL has our backs.”

Her speech discussed the need for Jewish pride, and she called for the release of the hostages and encouraged Jews to speak up for themselves when the rest of the world does not.

“I’m Israeli, of course, and I knew that antisemitism and anti-Israel hate existed,” Gadot said. “And like all of us, sometimes I’d caught a whiff of it. But I never thought of myself as being where I came from. It was an aspect of who I am, but it didn’t define me.

Gadot said she never could have imagined a day of such death and destruction of Jews, but also the response that came with it.

“Never did I imagine that on the streets of the United States and different cities around the world, we would see people not condemning Hamas, but celebrating, justifying, and cheering on a massacre of Jews.”

This changed her perspective on speaking up. Gadot said that, before this point, she was reluctant to talk about politics, saying that “no one wants to hear celebrities talking about political issues.” Nevertheless, she said she also regarded herself as a “citizen of the world, an equal among equals.”
Gal Gadot Receives ADL's International Leadership Award | Never Is Now 2025



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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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