Thursday, March 20, 2025

03/20 Links Pt2: The Chilling Truth of 7 October; Eli Sharabi: Hamas eats like kings while hostages starve’; Columbia Did This To Itself

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The agonizing dilemma
This is the terrible dilemma Israel has faced from the start of this war. How does a nation balance the imperative to save some of its citizens from captivity, torture and death with the imperative not to sentence even more of its citizens to the same fate and, instead, ensure their security?

Taking Israeli hostages was a diabolically brilliant tactic through which Hamas is, even now, controlling the agenda, not least by whipping up overwhelming and uncontrollable emotion among Israel’s deeply traumatized population.

From the start of the war, however, Netanyahu has made a bad mistake in not being honest with the public. He has consistently declared that he will deliver the twin goals of destroying Hamas and returning the hostages.

He should have said that while no effort would be spared to return the hostages, it might not be possible to achieve both those goals; and that if a terrible choice had to be made, it would have to be to win the war and protect Israel’s population of 10 million people.

He didn’t say that. He still maintains that both goals can be achieved through military means.

What really sticks in the craw, however, is that one crucial card has not been played by either the United States or Israel. Qatar is the creator, funder and protector of Hamas; in effect, Qatar is Hamas.

If America had put significant pressure on Qatar’s rulers to release the hostages and surrender the Hamas leaders it was sheltering, the war would have ended. Instead, both the United States and Israel have used Qatar as dispassionate honest brokers in the grotesque Hamas negotiation circus.

The reason for America’s attitude is undoubtedly the vast investments Qatar has shrewdly made in the United States that have made the Gulf state an invaluable contributor to American prosperity. Indeed, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, reportedly has a significant financial relationship with Qatar.

There are also allegations that Qatar secretly funded Israeli officials and influencers, including some connected to the prime minister’s office. This may be propaganda. But Israel’s indulgence of the Islamists of Qatar is baffling.

Maybe, precisely because Hamas knows that if it kills the remaining hostages it will lose its only leverage, it won’t murder those who remain under its vicious thumb. Maybe the IDF will get to them before Hamas can do so. Maybe the increased military pressure will force them to release their captives. With no realistic alternative to the war, we can only hope and pray.
Jonathan Sacerdoti: The Chilling Truth of 7 October
The 7 October Parliamentary Commission Report, chaired by Lord Andrew Roberts, has now been published. It provides a meticulously researched, forensic account of the atrocities committed against Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023. Compiled by the UK-Israel All Party Parliamentary Group, this report is an essential document, recording in stark detail the murder, torture, and sexual violence inflicted upon innocent civilians.

The idea that a massacre of nearly 1,200 people, the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, might require Britain's parliament to painstakingly document it to secure belief is obscene. Yet, this is the world in which we find ourselves. A world where Jewish suffering is questioned, where atrocities against Israelis are met not with immediate, unqualified horror but with hedging, justification, or outright denial. That is why the work of Lord Roberts and his parliamentary colleagues is so crucial. It is about ensuring that history cannot be rewritten by those with a vested interest in its erasure.

Andrew Roberts is among Britain's most distinguished historians, known for his scholarship on Churchill, Napoleon, and the Second World War. Roberts understands that historical memory is not merely about what happened - it is about what societies are willing to accept as fact. His commitment to ensuring the 7 October Report is published and widely disseminated is an act of immense moral importance.

The report establishes, with irrefutable detail, the full scale of the attack. It confirms that Hamas's invasion of Israel was not an impulsive act but the result of years of meticulous planning. On 7 October, over 7,000 attackers breached Israel's defenses at 119 different points along the border. Armed terrorists used drones to disable Israel's surveillance systems, paragliders to bypass security barriers, and specialist explosive charges designed to breach the doors of Israeli safe rooms where civilians hid in terror.

The report details the full horror of the massacre of 375 people at the Nova music festival, where attackers hunted down fleeing civilians, throwing grenades into bomb shelters and shooting those who attempted to escape in their cars. The deliberate targeting of families in their homes, the use of rape as a weapon of war, the desecration of bodies. The report confirms that Hamas terrorists gang-raped women before executing them, that bodies of female victims were found stripped, bound, and mutilated.

The fact that such a document is necessary here in the UK - that Jewish suffering must be recorded in exhaustive, forensic detail to be accepted - reveals something deeply unsettling about the moral landscape of our time. This report is a testament to the integrity of those in Britain who still believe in objective truth. And that matters. Because history is not owned by those who shout the loudest. It belongs to those who tell the truth.
Britain is showing two faces to the world. One makes me terrified for our future
A moral cancer is gnawing away at our body politic, warping its sense of right and wrong and exposing its deepest, darkest prejudices. There is no better case study in hypocrisy and double-standards than the radically inconsistent way in which Ukraine and Israel are treated by the British government and the Left-wing media.

Ukraine, rightly, is portrayed as a heroic victim fighting back against a brutal invader. Israel, wrongly, is depicted as the real aggressor and subjected to relentless delegitimisation. Volodymyr Zelenskyy is lionised; Benjamin Netanyahu is demonised; Ukraine can do no wrong; Israel can do no right.

Reader, I’m pro-Israel and I’m pro-Ukraine, an unusual combination in today’s Britain or America. Jerusalem and Kyiv are both victims of fascistic military assaults and a global disinformation campaign; both are displaying extraordinary heroism to contain, respectively, Putin’s expansionism and the forces of Islamism. Israel and Ukraine are on the front lines of Samuel Huntingdon’s clash of civilisations.

Yet the same people who cheer Keir Starmer’s announcement that he will continue to supply weapons to Ukraine (a move I support) are exuberant when he announces a partial, yet despicable, arms embargo on Israel. Those who fact-check the fake history and anti-Ukrainian slanders pumped out by Russian influencers gullibly swallow the Soviet-era Israelophobic propaganda that defames the Jewish state as “colonialist”.

Commentators who have read up on Ukraine typically still know nothing about the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Middle East, or about dhimmitude during the Ottoman days, or about the times Israel offered land for peace only to be turned down by Palestinian irredentists who will settle for nothing other than a Judenfrei single state.

Those who question Donald Trump’s Ukraine-Russia ceasefire proposal are usually the first to support every armistice proposal, on any terms, between Israel and Hamas, even if hostages aren’t released. The Foreign Office seems as determined to undermine Israel as it is to support Ukraine: our ambassador in Tel Aviv posted a patronising message this week claiming he had grown up in Northern Ireland and thus knew about these sorts of conflicts. Among other platitudes, he claimed IDF operations would neither defeat Hamas nor liberate the hostages, and that “at some point the fighting must stop and the diplomacy begin”.

Yet the Middle East is drastically different to Northern Ireland, diplomacy has failed for decades and Britain would never speak in such terms to Ukraine. We are a true ally of Kyiv; but we have betrayed Israel in its hour of need.


Brendan O'Neill: A savage rupturing of our civilisation
A new report leaves no doubt: 7 October was a hyper-violent onslaught against Jews and humanity.

The report is full of accounts like this, of the most bestial violence, visited with extreme prejudice on men, women, children. 7 October feels like a thing from the last century, the century of war and extermination. It was as if atavistic hatreds had leapt from the history books and imprinted themselves on our complacent era. Perhaps the report’s most valuable contribution is to make it crystal clear that this was no impulsive assault. This was not the Wretched of the Earth ‘breaking out’ of their ‘prison camp’ to wreak desperate revenge on their oppressors, as Hamas-adjacent leftists would have us believe. No, this pogrom was years in the making. It was a conscious and thoroughly organised massacre of Jews.

Seven-thousand militants took part. That included 3,800 of Hamas’s elite Nukhba forces and its Al-Qassam Brigades and 2,200 individuals from other terror armies, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A further 1,000 pogromists remained in Gaza to fire missiles at Israel and provide tactical back-up to the killers on the ground. Hamas had been planning the onslaught since 2018, when it set up a ‘Joint Room for Palestinian Resistance Factions’ to pool terror resources and plot the invasion. On the day itself, the pogromists attacked by land, sea and air. Far from an act of spontaneous violence, fuelled by despair, this was a highly disciplined act of fascist terror with the express purpose of killing as many Jews as possible.

Reading this report is a distressing task, but it’s one everyone would benefit from. It is our human duty to know and tell the truth about 7 October. The words of German novelist Herta Müller rang in my ears as I read. She described 7 October as a ‘total derailment from civilisation’. ‘There is an archaic horror in this bloodlust that I no longer thought possible in this day and age’, she wrote. The report brings crashing down the snivelling and unforgivable moral equivalence many Western observers make between Hamas’s violence and Israel’s response. The war in Gaza is awful but it is war. What happened on 7 October was something else entirely. It was the intimate, barbarous torture of Jews, carried out with pride and glee. It was fascism.

This, then, is what the activist class has been making excuses for. This is what they referred to as ‘resistance’. This is what they called ‘a day of celebration’. The burning to death of Jews. The rape of Jewish women. The murder of Jewish children. The assassination of a Jew who had survived the greatest crime in history. We now have all the data, all the timelines and all the information about 7 October. But we still await that moment of moral clarity when our intellectual elites finally acknowledge the gravity of this crime against Jews and humanity, and devote themselves to defending the civilisation it so gravely offends.
Israel’s war against barbarism
Writer and broadcaster Jonathan Sacerdoti is the latest guest on The Brendan O’Neill Show. Jonathan joined Brendan to discuss why the Gaza ceasefire was bound to fail, the horror of 7 October denial, and how anti-Semitism is on the rise across the political spectrum.
Eli Sharabi: ‘Where was the UN, the Red Cross… where was the world when we needed them?’
Freed Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi has bravely shared his harrowing account of 491 days of captivity in Gaza during a speech to a UN Security Council meeting.

Speaking with remarkable clarify, following his release only last month, Sharabi at one stage asked the meeting in New York:””Where was the Red Cross when we needed them? Where was The United Nations? Where was the world.”

He added: “491 days of torment. 491 days of starvation, of being chained underground, and no one came.

“No one in Gaza helped me. The civilians saw us suffering and they cheered our kidnappers. They were definitely involved. I’m here today because I survived. But survival is not enough, not when 59 hostages are still there.”

Sharabi, whose speech was later praised by US, UK, French and Panama representatives at the UN, also told the meeting: “I know you discuss the humanitarian situation in Gaza very often, but let me tell you, as an eyewitness – I saw what happened to this aid. Hamas stole it.

“I saw Hamas terrorists carrying boxes with the UN and UNRWA emblems on them into the tunnel.

“Dozens and dozens of boxes, paid by your government, feeding terrorists who tortured me and murdered my family. They would eat many meals a day from the UN aid in front of us, and we never received any of it.”


‘Hamas eats like kings while hostages starve,’ Eli Sharabi tells UN
Eli Sharabi, 53, a former hostage held by Hamas in Gaza, told the United Nations Security Council on Thursday that the terror group exploits aid from the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees for its own enrichment.

“I saw Hamas terrorists carrying boxes with the U.N. and UNRWA emblems on them into the tunnel,” Sharabi told the global body. “Dozens and dozens of boxes, paid by your government, feeding terrorists who tortured me and murdered my family.”

“They would eat many meals a day from the U.N. aid in front of us, and we never received any of it,” he testified. “When you speak of humanitarian aid, remember this. Hamas eats like kings while hostages starve.”

Hamas terrorists brutalized hostages in captivity, according to Sharabi.

“I have come back from hell,” he said. “I have returned to tell my story. For 491 days, I was kept underground in Hamas terror tunnels, chained, starved, beaten and humiliated.”

“The chains they kept me in tore into my skin from the moment I entered until the moment I was released,” he told the Security Council. “I was treated worse than an animal. I had to beg for food, beg to use the bathroom.”

“Begging became my existence,” he said.

Sharabi lost more than 66 pounds in captivity in Gaza and weighed just 97 pounds upon his release on Feb. 8. His wife, Lianne, and their daughters, Yahel and Noiya, were murdered in Kibbutz Be’eri during the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, criticized the international organization for enabling the Gazan terror group’s abuse of international aid.

“The cruelty here is not just from Hamas,” he told the Security Council. “It is also from the silence of the world. Since Oct. 7, you have passed 77 resolutions in this room. Yet you have not passed a single resolution condemning Hamas.”

“For 530 days, you have erased the hostages and you have spoken about Gaza without mentioning the crimes of Hamas,” he said. “You have debated humanitarian assistance without acknowledging the humanitarian catastrophe Hamas is deliberately inflicting on the hostages.”


Full text: Freed hostage Eli Sharabi asks UN Security Council, ‘Where was the world?’

Echoes of October Teaser
"Echoes of October" is a powerful and poignant graphic novel crafted in the evocative style of the legendary Will Eisner. This narrative intertwines the lives of four children, each grappling with the loss of a parent in the harrowing October 7 Israeli massacre by Hamas. The four children each come from very different worlds: Gaza City, Toronto, Tel Aviv and Dalyat Ha Carmel.

With a heartfelt and intimate approach, the novel captures their stories, leading up to the fateful day that changed their lives forever.

The graphic novel unfolds in a series of parallel stories, meticulously interwoven to highlight the shared humanity and unique experiences of each child. The storytelling is rich with emotional depth, capturing the moments of joy, fear, love, and loss that define their lives. As the narrative progresses towards the fateful day of October 7, the tension builds, leading to a powerful and tragic climax that forever alters the course of their lives.

"Echoes of October" is a moving tribute to one of the most complex and historical conflicts in modern times. Through the eyes of these four children, readers are invited to explore the complexities of identity, conflict, and the enduring hope for a better future. This graphic novel is not just a story of tragedy, but a call for empathy and understanding in a world divided by violence. With its compelling narrative and stunning artwork, "Echoes of October" promises to leave a lasting impact on readers and spark important conversations about peace and reconciliation.


Seth Mandel: Columbia Did This To Itself
According to the complaint, soon after the Hamas attacks in 2023, students started drawing swastikas on the walls of buildings that Lester Wilson and Mario Torres worked in. They were ordered to simply scrub the swastikas and otherwise do nothing. “No matter how many times Mr. Wilson removed the swastikas, individuals kept replacing them with more,” the complaint alleges.

One of the janitors started removing chalk from the rooms after-hours so the swastikas would stop appearing, but was reprimanded by the school for doing so. When protesters ran through the building drawing anti-Semitic symbols, the janitors were told that “the trespassers and vandals were exercising their First Amendment rights.”

When the tentifada encampments began springing up around campus, the janitors were offered overtime to clean up around the camps. When another janitor did so, he was taunted as a “Jew-lover” by the students he was cleaning up after.

It turns out, then, that Columbia had something of a Nazi problem on campus. They were privileged kids in masks, but functionally Nazis nonetheless, obsessed with Nazi symbolism and Nazi language. Their violence toward the building workers only increased over time, as did their anti-Semitic harassment of Jews on campus.

This is what makes Columbia so unsympathetic. If Trump were merely trying to make an example of them, it could be easily demonstrated by showing that Columbia’s disorder was representative of the situation at universities across the country. But is it really the case that the Nazified atmosphere at Columbia is par for the course in American higher education? I don’t think academics at other schools really want to make this argument.

And thus we have the real reason for the administration’s treatment of Columbia: The “elite” institution deserved it.

Meanwhile, the case has raised another problem, this one much more widespread than the Nazi stuff. Columbia doesn’t want to comply with the government’s conditions, but according to the Journal there’s an emerging consensus that “the school has limited options because it relies on federal money.”

No one is forcing these schools to gorge themselves on public money. But with that reliance comes certain obligations.

The current crisis, then, provides an opportunity for schools to reconsider this model of higher education. They really can gain the kind of independence they crave, but that comes at a steep cost. Either way, it is not the Jewish students or the building workers like Wilson and Torres who put them in this position, and university administrators should stop making excuses and looking for scapegoats.
NYPost Editorial: This is the only way to get rid of Jew-hate at Columbia and other elite schools
If Columbia “caves” by reluctantly enforcing its own rules, expect a domino effect: Remember, dozens of other schools are under scrutiny for their failure to protect Jewish students.

Note that the Biden team could have used these same measures — but instead gave tacit approval to these on-campus obscenities.

Rooting out institutional antisemitism requires powerful shocks and even more powerful new incentives to bring major, top-down change.

Alumni can and should play a role by cutting off giving; prospective students, by boycotting schools that foster hate.

But the vast public payments to academia give Uncle Sam the biggest stick of all.

For all their woke posturing, America’s elite schools are big business.

President Trump gets that — and he knows only threatening that will wake them up.
Trump Admin Grants Columbia One-Day Extension To Implement Reforms
The Trump administration gave Columbia University a one-day extension to respond to its series of demands, which include a ban on masked protests and the enforcement of disciplinary policies, the Department of Education confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon.

The move came after Columbia requested a two-day extension, the department said, suggesting the school is scrambling to make at least some concessions—though doing so would only unlock "long-term" negotiations rather than guarantee the return of federal funds.

"Agency leads have been engaged in the exchange of information with Columbia University," the Department of Education said in a statement shared with the Free Beacon. "This extension has been granted until close of business on Friday."

The administration's March 13 letter to Columbia, which spells out the "immediate next steps that we regard as a precondition for formal negotiations regarding Columbia University's continued financial relationship with the United States government," set a March 20 deadline to comply. With that deadline roughly 24 hours away, the Wall Street Journal reported that Columbia was "getting close to yielding President Trump's demands to restore $400 million in federal funding." The administration extended the deadline from there.

The letter came shortly after the administration canceled $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia. It slashed another $30 million in grants late last week, the Free Beacon reported. If Columbia agreed to the demands, it would still not guarantee the restoration of the funds. Instead, it would lead to what the administration calls "a conversation about immediate and long-term structural reforms that will return Columbia to its original mission of innovative research and academic excellence."
Kassy Akiva: New Report Shows U.S. Charities Helping Fund Groups Linked To Hamas and PFLP
A number of tax-deductible charities and financial service providers are helping fund groups linked to U.S.-designated terrorist organizations including Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a new report alleges.

Published by the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, the report accuses terrorist-linked groups of raising funds in the United States through tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations and through donor-advised financial service providers.

“The sharp rise in violent anti-Semitism in the wake of the October 7th massacre highlights the urgent need for greater vigilance in preventing the diversion of aid and NGO funding to terror and hate,” Professor Gerald M. Steinberg, Founder and President of NGO Monitor told The Daily Wire. “This includes systematically investigating and documenting the support that IRS-registered charities receive from and provide to individuals and organizations linked to designated terror groups or active in spreading hate propaganda.”

The report cites several NGOs tied to the PFLP and designated as terror groups by Israel, including the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), Al-Haq, Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), and Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR). NGO Monitor accuses Al Mezan of having members with ties to both Hamas and the PFLP.

The Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP), a 501(c)(3) based in Washington, D.C., claims on its website that in 2025 it provided funds to Al Haq, Al Mezan, DCI-P, and PCHR. Its website does not state how much it has given, but according to 2023 IRS filings, FMEP granted $10,000 to Al Mezan, and $58,000 to Al-Haq.

Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, provided $800,000 between 2020-2023 to Al Haq, $250,000 between 2023-2025 to Al Haq Europe, $170,000 to Al Mezan in 2023, and $450,000 to Al Mezan between 2021-2024.

Grassroots International has been soliciting donations for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, which the group has called a “long-term partner,” according to NGO Monitor.

Other tax-deductible American charities that provided funds include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) which granted $100,000 to DCI-P for 2020-2022 and Cultures of Resistance Network which has funded Al-Haq, DCI-P, the UAWC, and Al Mezan, according to NGO monitor.


NYTimes Platforms ‘Progressive’ Palestinian Activist Who Called Oct 7 ‘Provoked’ and Compared Hamas to Holocaust Survivors
This, ultimately, is the core message of their essay: No Other Land presents a model of collaboration in which Israeli activists align with Palestinian efforts to challenge Israel’s existence—what Batrice and Lenkinski euphemistically call “co-resistance.”

It’s a charming spin. After all, “resistance” is precisely the term Hamas uses for every suicide bombing and stabbing attack it orchestrates against Israeli civilians.

Batrice and Lenkinski now attempt to repackage the term, stripping it of its violent connotations. See? Israelis are “resisting” too. It’s non-violent. It’s peaceful. It’s art.

“If there is any hope for the future, it lies precisely in these partnerships, in collaboration, and in what the filmmakers aptly call ‘co-resistance,’” they write.

There’s just one problem. One of the essay’s authors had a rather different interpretation of “resistance” on October 7, when Hamas terrorists, aided by Gazan civilians, invaded Israel, massacred over 1,200 people, and dragged 251 more back to Gaza as hostages.

On that day—the morning Israelis woke to hundreds of rockets and videos flooding social media of men, women, and children being hunted down, shot, stabbed, and bludgeoned—Rania Batrice was busy amplifying Hamas propaganda. She shared footage of terrorists paragliding into Israel and opening fire, complete with a text overlay likening them to Jews smuggling weapons into Nazi ghettos during the Holocaust.



And 24 hours later—on October 8, when even the most committed apologists could no longer claim ignorance about the scale of the atrocities—Batrice doubled down, declaring that anyone who described the attack as “unprovoked” was “part of the problem.”

Rania Batrice Instagram post

The essay calls No Other Land a “challenge”—and in a way, that’s true. It is certainly a challenge to take seriously a film that distorts decades of legal rulings and historical facts so thoroughly that its inclusion in the Academy’s documentary category was an insult in itself.

But the essay itself presents an even greater challenge: How does one reconcile its co-author’s supposed belief in the unity of Israelis and Palestinians when on the day of the bloodiest massacre in Israeli history, she was celebrating?
Exposing the (many!) lies behind “No Other Land” documentary | Judeacation
In this episode, Josh Hasten, JNS Middle East Correspondent, sits down with Naomi Linder Kahn, Director of the International Division at The Regavim Movement, to discuss all the lies behind the Oscar-winning documentary, “No Other Land.” They will also cover Israel’s land sovereignty, legal battles, and the threats posed by illegal Palestinian construction in Area C.

Topics Covered:
✅ How Regavim protects Israel’s land resources
✅ The growing security threat of illegal Palestinian structures
✅ The fight against pay-to-slay terrorist funding
✅ The international media’s bias against Israel
✅ The battle over archaeological sites in Judea & Samaria
With tensions rising and Israel back at war, this episode dives deep into the legal and geopolitical challenges facing the Jewish state.

JNS will host its inaugural International Policy Summit on Monday, April 28, 2025. This daylong event will convene government officials, policymakers, diplomats, security experts, leaders of pro-Israel organizations, and influencers for vital discussions aimed at addressing Israel's critical challenges and opportunities in a post-Oct. 7 world.


Police must publish advice that led them to drop imam case
Last week’s decision not to prosecute an east London imam who urged Allah to destroy Jewish homes would be easier to understand if the UK had a strong free speech tradition.

But in a country where police knock on newspaper columnists’ doors for “Non-Crime Hate Incidents” and dispatch entire squads to arrest pensioners over social media posts, this case suggests a dangerous inconsistency in how the law is applied.

The same British authorities that so zealously enforce some of the most restrictive speech laws in the Western world tend to transform to First Amendment purists when it concerns Islamist hate preachers or Hamas apologists indoctrinating students at our finest universities (See our March 11 leader on the LSE book launch event).

It is often argued that scripture and context may justify more leniency in religious cases. But as Tom Wilson from the Counter Extremism Group explains, the critical context is this: the mosque sermon calling for Allah to destroy Jewish homes came merely two weeks after Islamist terrorists actually destroyed hundreds of Jewish homes – murdering, torturing, raping and abducting thousands of Jews in the process. And Hamas, like all Islamist terrorists, likes to quote a lot of scripture to justify its barbarous acts.

Another relevant context is that this country too has suffered numerous Islamist-linked terror attacks that have resulted in hundreds of victims. MI5 itself states that “Islamist terrorism is the most significant terrorist threat to the UK by volume”.

But the danger does not have to rise to the level of terror to demand our authorities’ proper application of the law. Passages such as the one cited by the east London imam incite hatred that often leads to intolerable abuse and violence against the Jewish community in everyday life.

If the Metropolitan Police and the Crown Prosecution Service were looking for proper context, they should have considered the 3,528 antisemitic incidents recorded in the UK last year. That’s the second-highest total ever reported to the Community Security Trust, topped only by the 2023 figures. Of these incidents, 156 contained discourse relating to Islam, Muslims and Islamist groups, while 65 evidenced radical Islamist ideology. If the authorities had dug deeper into the CST statistics, they would have discovered that there were 201 incidents in the assault category, the second-highest total ever, topped only by the annus horribilis of 2023.

Or the authorities could have checked their own Home Office and police figures from October 2024. These data showed that Jews – about 0.5 per cent of the British population – were the victims of 33 per cent of all religious hate crimes.
4 culprits from Amsterdam pogrom get brief jail sentences
A Dutch court on Wednesday convicted four additional perpetrators of attacks against Israelis in Amsterdam, issuing sentences that ranged from 11 days to 12 weeks.

The sentences follow the ones handed in December to five other perpetrators of November’s coordinated mass assaults by dozens of Arabs and Muslims on fans of Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team who were in Amsterdam for a match.

Similarly to the earlier round of sentences, the new ones were widely criticized by Dutch Jews and their allies as too lenient and a sign that authorities were not properly addressing the emergence of organized violence against Jews in the metropolis.

“Sad how the Netherlands is handling this,” wrote Femke H. Vita Israël Sirag, a former candidate for the JA21 party, on X about the sentences. The judges “gave joke punishments for serious, subversive antisemitic violence.”

Naomi Mestrum, director of the Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI), told the Nieuw Israelietisch Weekblad (NIW) Dutch-Jewish weekly, “The sentences are short, but unfortunately, that is part of our legal system.”

She added: “We hope and expect that aggravating circumstances will be taken into account in future cases,” in accordance with pending legislation seeking tougher sentences against hate crime perpetrators.

NIW described the sentences as “mild” on X.

The assaults featured blatant antisemitic rhetoric by perpetrators. They were the largest-scale of their kind perpetrated in Western Europe since the Holocaust and they shocked many Dutch Jews and beyond. The attacks, which leaders of Dutch Jewry have called a “pogrom,” exposed a new security reality, in which hundreds of Muslim men can coordinate in real-time to carry out large-scale antisemitic attacks with little police interference.

A man identified in Dutch media as Cenk D. received the heaviest sentence on Wednesday, 12 weeks in jail—a month longer than the prosecution had sought. He was convicted of directing other perpetrators to victims in the WhatsApp group that the Muslims used to launch and coordinate the assaults. He wrote “A good Jew is a dead Jew” on the WhatsApp group and shared a photo of Anne Frank that the judges said trivialized the Holocaust.

The prosecution sought eight months in jail and another four months suspended sentence for another defendant, Diemenaar Kamal I., but the judges sentenced him to one month in jail. He had many videos of attacks on Israelis from the assaults on his cell phone but the judges said there was no proof he was present during the attacks.
Georgetown professor detained by ICE claims he has been 'doxxed and smeared'... before jaw-dropping Hamas link emerges
A university student and part time professor is facing deportation over his alleged links to Hamas amid President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and postdoctoral student at Georgetown University, was taken into custody by masked ICE agents outside of his home in Rosslyn, Virginia on Monday night.

Suri's attorney Hassan Ahmad has filed a petition in federal court in Virginia on Tuesday calling for his release, likening the case to that of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, Politico reports.

He claimed his client is only being targeted because his wife is a Palestinian, noting they have 'long been doxxed and smeared' for their support of Palestinian rights.

The Department of Homeland Security, however, alleges Suri been involved in 'actively spreading Hamas propaganda' and 'promoting antisemitism'.

His wife, Mapheze Ahmad Yousef Saleh, is the daughter of Ahmed Yousef who was an advisor to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza, according to Campus Watch.

'Suri was a foreign exchange student at Georgetown University actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media,' a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told Fox News.

'Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas.

'The Secretary of State issued a determination on March 15, 2025 that Suri’s activities and presence in the United States rendered him deportable under INA section 237(a)(4)(C)(i).'

Suri endorsed Hamas online even though his Georgetown bio says he focuses his studies on the 'peace process in the Middle East.'

In one now-deleted post, he reportedly denied reports of the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

'Three lies by Israeli occupation, no proof whatsoever of babies beheaded, rapes or mass killing at carnival,' the postdoctoral student, who also teaches a class on majority and minority rights in South Asia, wrote at the time, according to Campus Watch.

In another post from years ago, Suri reportedly expressed support for Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yasin.


Feb 24th: It’s all in the family
Mapheze Ahmad Yousef Saleh, daughter of a senior Hamas official, was a graduate student at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, according to recent reports. The story doesn’t stop there.

The Middle East Forum think tank has uncovered that Saleh, the daughter of longtime Hamas leader Ahmed Yousef, is married to Georgetown post-doctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri. Even more troubling, Suri—who holds a position at Georgetown’s Alwaleed Center for Christian and Muslim Understanding, funded by Saudi tycoon Alwaleed bin Talal—has repeatedly endorsed Hamas terror and actively spreads its propaganda while claiming to specialize in “peace processes in the Middle East.”

Ahmed Yousef was a senior Hamas figure in Gaza and an adviser to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. He also founded the United Association for Studies and Research, which had ties to officials at Georgetown and its Alwaleed Center where his son-in-law, Suri, now works. The United Association for Studies and Research was a Hamas-affiliated think tank that operated in the United States from 1989 to 2004. According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, it was established by Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook and served as a front for Hamas activities in the United States, including propaganda and fundraising.

Suri isn’t just connected to Hamas by family. He actively spreads the terror group’s propaganda and promotes virulent antisemitism on social media. In a blatant act of revisionism, he denied well-documented reports of the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, posting on Facebook: “Three lies by Israeli occupation, no proof whatsoever of babies beheaded, rapes or mass killings at carnival.”


HELP Committee holding hearing on campus antisemitism next week
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold a hearing on the surge of campus antisemitism since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on March 27, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the committee’s chairman, announced.

The hearing, scheduled for 10 a.m. ET, is titled, “Antisemitic Disruptions on Campus: Ensuring Safe Learning Environments for All Students,” according to an announcement from Cassidy. Witnesses’ names have not been made public yet.

Cassidy has been pushing for a hearing on the issue of antisemitism on college campuses since November 2023. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the committee’s chairman in the last Congress, declined those requests. The Louisiana senator, who is up for reelection this cycle, organized a bipartisan roundtable on the issue that month as a result of Sanders’ refusal to allow for a full committee hearing.

“Since the October 7 terror attacks, U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D., chair of the HELP Committee, has led Senate Republicans in combating antisemitism on college campuses. Specifically, he is leading the Protecting Students on Campus Act, legislation that empowers students to file civil rights complaints if they experience violence or harassment on college campuses due to their heritage,” the announcement stated.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) told JI in May that Sanders had conveyed to him that he planned to hold a hearing on antisemitism and Islamophobia, but such a hearing never materialized. Lankford and Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), the chairs of the Senate Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, had also been calling for a HELP hearing on the issue of antisemitism.

Asked by JI at the time about what he had told Lankford, Sanders replied, “The issue of bigotry on campus is something that we are concerned about,” before abruptly entering a senators-only elevator. His team declined future requests for comment.
Academics pen letter condemning American Psychological Association antisemitism
Thousands of academics penned a letter condemning the "serious and systematic antisemitism/anti-Jewish hate within the American Psychological Association (APA)" in February.

The signers accused APA officials of failing "to take meaningful action or respond in any significant way" to the repeated attempts to highlight the issue. Antisemitism is at a record high. We're keeping our eyes on it >>

The collective signors claimed that documented "extensive evidence" of the antisemitic discourse and behaviors within the APA - which includes statements from APA council members, division leaders, and members.

The alleged antisemitism
The statements allegedly demonstrate the association's "insensitivity toward Jews, a lack of concern regarding antisemitism, minimization of aggression towards the Jewish people and outright hostility and prejudice toward Jews and Jewish heritage."

Written communications shared by the APA members and officials allegedly included statements like "Kudos top Hamas," "Intifada, intifada," and calls to boycott Israel.

The signatories also claimed that Jewish APA has been "harassed, marginalized, and silenced on APA community forums even for attempting to challenge antisemitic rhetoric or correct misinformation."

APA has also allegedly provided a platform to speakers who have openly made antisemitic comments in the past, comments which are said to range from Holocaust distortion to the justification of violence against Jews and Israelis.

One speaker named by the signatories is Dr. Lara Sheehi, who reportedly described Zionists as "genocidal f***s" and called the ideology a "psychosis."

Finally, the signatories accused APA of enacting a double standard, offering swift responses to other issues while remaining in "relative silence on antisemitism."
Antisemitic (Former) Georgetown Staffer Sues University for Wrongful Termination in Wildest Court Filing Ever
Remember Aneesa Johnson—the Georgetown staffer who was fired after it was discovered that she has a “deep seeded hate for Zio bitches”?

Well, she’s resurfaced… and she’s suing Georgetown. The lawsuit dropped last month, and honestly? It’s pure comedy gold. Grab your popcorn.

The filing (which you can download in full below) kicks off in the “Factual Allegations” section with Johnson casting herself as the real victim here. According to her, it’s just so hard being a Muslim woman in America. She then doubles down, lamenting the plight of being a Black and Palestinian woman in the U.S.

At one point, the complaint dramatically states: “Aneesa Johnson’s story reflects the systematic dispossession and institutionalized discrimination that Palestinians have endured under the Europe’s Zionist apartheid regime in occupied Palestine.”

If you think that’s over the top—buckle up. For reasons known only to her lawyers, the complaint starts putting scare quotes around the word “Jews.” What follows is four pages—yes, four—ranting about Jews. You’d almost forget this is supposed to be a wrongful termination case.

From there, the lawsuit takes a bizarre detour, rambling about the IDF demolishing (illegally built) Palestinian villages—though what that has to do with her tweet saying “You know why I call them Zio b**ches, because they’re dogs” remains unclear. Or the retweet of a scowling Orthodox Jewish boy with braces and glasses, captioned: “When the world hates you bc you a thief and grew up looking like a shaytan [the devil] #GrowingUpIsraeli.”

But wait, it gets better. Johnson accuses Israel of “ZIONIST WEAPONIZATION OF ‘JEWISH’ IDENTITY WHEN TERRORIZING PALESTINIANS” and—brace yourself—claims she’s experiencing “genocide” “secondarily as a displaced refugee living in exile.” Yes, you read that right. She’s a secondhand genocide survivor now.

Finally—finally—by page 10, she gets around to mentioning her firing. Naturally, she still plays the victim:
“Her expressions at the time reflected that of a teenager [she was 18-years-old; an adult], who is continuously affected by secondary trauma—as a Muslim woman in post-9/11 America, a descendant of violently dispossessed and displaced Palestinian refugees, and an African American navigating systemic White Supremacy.”

Her entire defense boils down to this: her three tweets—two originals and one retweet—weren’t hateful, they were just the result of her “lived experience” as a perpetually oppressed Palestinian teenager suffering through displacement, dispossession, and intergenerational trauma. Or something.
Foreign Cornell Activist: Threats of Deportation Deprive My Friends of Their 'Rights To Listen' to My Pro-Hamas Rhetoric
A foreign graduate student and protest leader at Cornell University is suing the Trump administration over its executive order calling to expel pro-Hamas visa holders, arguing that the order has forced him to withdraw from "public engagement" and thus "deprived" his friends "of their rights to listen" to his "ideas and suggestions." Such suggestions include a call for campus protesters to take their "cue from the armed resistance in Palestine."

The student, British and Gambian dual national Momodou Taal, is studying at Cornell on an F-1 student visa, his lawsuit states. The administration's pledge to deport such students who engage in pro-Hamas protests, according to the suit, has left him "in constant fear that he may be arrested by immigration officials or police." As a result, he has "began withdrawing from broader forms of public engagement" including "academic conferences, public political meetings, off-campus protests, and even less formal political discussions in public places like cafés, sidewalks, restaurants, and other locations."

Taal would meet frequently with two other plaintiffs on the suit, Cornell professor Mukoma Wa Ngugi and graduate student Sriram Parasurama, at such locations. In the wake of the Trump administration's executive order, however, the plaintiffs "have ceased interacting with one another in public locations, fearing that their associations may draw scrutiny." The suit, then, calls on a federal judge to nullify the order for effectively prohibiting Ngugi and Parasurama, both U.S. citizens, "from speaking, hearing, or engaging with viewpoints critical of the U.S. government."

"Prof. Wa Ngugi and Mr. Parasurama have been deprived of their rights to listen to Mr. Taal's ideas and suggestions about planning peaceful protests and organizing educational meetings about the rights of the Palestinian people," the suit states, "as well as his political insights into the historical, political, and sociological roots of what they understand to be a genocide against the people of Palestine."

"The loss of Mr. Taal's voice in these spaces has diminished the richness and diversity of political dialogue within the community and has deprived the citizen-Plaintiffs of an important source of intellectual and organizing leadership."

The suit attempts to use a unique legal argument to halt the administration's student visa revocation efforts—one that focuses less on the administration's ability to revoke student visas and more on the purported "chilling effect" the threats to do so have on U.S. citizens. It also downplays Taal's rhetoric, characterizing the graduate student as a peaceful activist "in support of the Palestinian people," rather than an advocate for Hamas.

Taal, however, has openly called for the destruction of the United States and Israel, boasting that "anyone the US calls my enemy is my friend." He celebrated Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks with an X post that read, "Glory to the resistance!"


University of Pittsburgh suspends Students for Justice in Palestine chapter
The University of Pittsburgh, a more than 235-year-old public school in Pennsylvania, placed the campus Students for Justice in Palestine chapter on “interim suspension of registration” on Tuesday, the Pitt News, a student publication, reported.

“Individuals acting on behalf of SJP” engaged “improperly” in “communications to members of the conduct hearing board,” Jamey Mentzer, associate director of student conduct at the highly-ranked university, reportedly wrote to the student group’s leaders.

“This suspension has no specified end date and prevents SJP from organizing events and receiving university resources such as event spaces and requesting funds,” per the Pitt News.

SJP was the subject of a Feb. 4 hearing, and it has yet to hear back from the university about a ruling on a protest it held in December.

StopAntisemitism posted what it said is a copy of the letter to the SJP leaders. The letter suggested that the student group, which is still listed on the Pitt site as one of 928 student groups, has 10 days to appeal.

JNS asked the university if the letter is authentic and if the public school can guarantee the safety of Jews on campus.

“The university’s approach to student conduct necessitates respecting the privacy and integrity of ongoing investigations,” a Pitt spokesperson said. “Conduct proceedings are an unbiased, educational process designed to uphold community standards and the code of conduct.”


Dubai-based Augustus Media pushes Shopify boycott over president’s tweet supporting fair reporting about Israel
A widely followed social media service in the United Arab Emirates is pushing a boycott campaign against Shopify, the Canadian e-commerce platform, after its president endorsed a recent social media comment critical of biased media coverage against Israel.

In a series of dramatically worded Instagram posts on Wednesday, Smashi, a digital information service owned by the Dubai-based media group Augustus Media, took aim at Harley Finkelstein, Shopify’s president, over a brief social media remark voicing agreement with a fellow tech entrepreneur who had denounced a news article for uncritically citing casualty figures provided by Hamas.

“Thx for saying this,” Finkelstein wrote on Tuesday, responding to a viral post from Martin Varsavsky, an outspoken board member of Axel Springer, the German publishing giant whose subsidiary, Politico, had run the Associated Press story Varsavsky dismissed as “one-sided Hamas support.”

Smashi, in its framing of Finkelstein’s comment, said he had backed a “pro-Israel tweet defending Israel’s airstrikes” against Hamas, “adding fuel to the debate over the legitimacy of Israel’s military actions, which equate to a genocide, in Gaza.”

Noting that Shopify has nearly 25,000 customers in the Middle East, “with a substantial concentration” in the United Arab Emirates, Smashi urged its followers to use alternate e-commerce platforms in the region, sharing a list of six competitors to Shopify.

Finkelstein’s online remark has drawn separate calls from anti-Israel activists to boycott Shopify — which has previously been a target of such campaigns. But Smashi’s involvement stands out given its wide reach in the United Arab Emirates, which has continued to maintain its normalization agreement with Israel even amid the ongoing conflict with Hamas in Gaza.


Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: 'We Are Dying Because of Hamas'
Hamas leaders have also repeatedly made it clear that their terror group has no intention of laying down its weapons.

Hamas leaders -- based in luxury hotels and villas in Qatar, Lebanon and Egypt -- appear in no rush to end the war. Many of them had fled the Gaza Strip together with their families during the past few years in search of a better life in Arab and Islamic countries. From their safe homes and offices, the Hamas leaders continue to issue fiery statements about their group's refusal to make concessions to end the conflict.

"They are not the ones searching for food in the rubble. They are not the ones watching their children die. They sit in safety while others pay the price.... the suffering of Gaza has never been their concern, only their weapon." — Hamza Howidy, Palestinian human rights and peace activist, X, March 18, 2025.

"Enough martyrs and death. Damn those who voted for you [in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election]." — Ranem El Ali, Palestinian journalist and author, X, March 18, 2025.

If the Palestinians living there want to end the war, they must revolt against Hamas and provide Israel with information about the whereabouts of the hostages. Sadly, most Palestinians seem unwilling to do so, either out of fear of Hamas or because they simply identify with the terror group and its goal of destroying Israel.
Asked about taking in Gazans, African official says ‘open to talk’
Replying to a question about taking in Gazans, a top official from the disputed African territory of Somaliland this week said its government is “open to discussing anything,” but only with governments that recognize its legitimacy.

The statement underlined how international horse-trading could facilitate U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to have Gazans relocate away from the Strip.

Abdirahman Dahir Adam Bakal, the minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation of the Republic of Somaliland, made the statement to Israel’s Kan broadcaster in response to a question regarding a report about talks on relocating Gazans to Somaliland, a breakaway self-declared country with more than 6.2 million inhabitants that no U.N. member state or international organization officially recognizes.

Kan quoted Bakal as saying: “We are open to discussion on any matter, but we do not want to speculate on matters that have not yet been discussed. All countries that are interested in discussing certain issues with us must first establish working relations with us and open diplomatic missions in Somaliland.”

The public broadcaster published the quote in Hebrew. It did not indicate the original language in which it was made.

The query concerned a report by the Associated Press that Somaliland was among three African entities, along with Sudan and Somalia, that Israeli and U.S. officials have contacted in recent weeks about the possibility of taking in Gazans. According to AP, Sudanese officials declined to cooperate. In Somalia and Somaliland, officials told the news agency they were unaware of any negotiations concerning Gaza.
70 Gazans leave for Europe
Seventy Gazans departed the Strip on Wednesday through Ramon Airport in southern Israel, heading to various European countries.

These individuals or their family members hold foreign citizenship that will facilitate their resettlement abroad. Israel provided assistance for their exit as part of its policy promoting emigration from Gaza. A Romanian Air Force aircraft landed at Ramon Airport near Eilat at approximately 4:30 p.m. to transport the evacuees.

This evacuation takes place against the backdrop of renewed Israeli military operations in Gaza.


The alliance that alarms the ayatollahs
“When a wise man hears of the Tao, he immediately embraces it. When an average man hears of the Tao, he ignores it. When a foolish man hears of the Tao, he mocks it. If he did not mock it, it wouldn’t be the Tao.”

— Tao Te Ching (Ancient Chinese philosophical text), Verse 41

The landslide victory of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential elections in November set the proverbial cat out among the pigeons. Suddenly, what previously appeared impossible—or, at best, highly improbable—looks increasingly feasible.

This seems particularly true concerning the Iranian nuclear program and the chances of defusing the danger it presents.

In this regard, this month, Iran Daily, which functions as the official mouthpiece of the Iranian regime, published a front-page article titled “Israel’s Growing Footprint in Azerbaijan Raises Red Alert,” urging Iranian security and government institutions to closely follow developments in the Caucasus region.

In conveying its concern over the winds of change blowing from the White House, the article refers to a January 2023 policy paper by the Israeli think tank Besa (the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies) featured in a recent article of mine, discussing the potential value of a Washington-Jerusalem-Baku axis. I ended that article with a proposal that such an axis “is something the new U.S. administration should factor into its foreign policy in its endeavor to engender enhanced stability across the globe.”

Judging from the Iran Daily’s reaction, it seems that Tehran not only recognizes the likely potential of such an axis but is greatly alarmed by such a prospect.


France commemorates 13th anniversary of Toulouse Jewish school massacre
Toulouse on Wednesday commemorated the 13th anniversary of the 2012 Jewish school massacre and shootings that claimed the lives of three children, a teacher, and three French soldiers. The ceremony was attended by Jewish community and French political leaders, including Occitanie region president Carole Delga, Toulouse Mayor Jean-Luc Moudenc, and Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) President Yonathan Arfi, according to a CRIF statement.

Arfi and CRIF Toulouse-Occitanie President Franck Touboul visited the Ozar Hatorah Jewish School and met with the school principal Yaacov Monsonégo, whose daughter was murdered in the attack. Seven-year-old Myriam Monsonégo, brothers Arié and Gabriel Sandler, 6 and 3, and their father Jonathan Sandler, were brutally murdered at close range by an Islamic terrorist of Algerian descent.

“They were killed for being Jewish,” counter-antisemitism group Collectif Nous Vivrons said on X/Twitter on Wednesday. “We will never forget.”


Site of Hyper Cacher massacre set on fire in suspected arson
The supermarket that was the site of the 2015 Hyper Cacher massacre was set on fire in an arson on Wednesday night, according to French political leaders.

Paris 20th arrondissement Mayor Éric Pliez said on Instagram that the arsonist's motives were not yet known, but the attack on the Massacre site occurred under the context of a sharp increase of antisemitism.

"I stand alongside the Hypercacher team in this ordeal," Pliez said Thursday. "The fight against antisemitism is the subject of our utmost vigilance, and we cannot tolerate it at all."

Equality Minister Aurore Berge said on social media that an investigation was being carried out.

Ile-De-France president Valerie Pecresse said Thursday on X that she was outraged over the targeting of the Porte de Vincennes kosher supermarket that had been the site of an Islamist attack that had claimed the lives of four French Jews.

"I extend my support to the entire staff of the establishment and express my hope that the perpetrator of this antisemitic infamy be swiftly brought to justice," said Percesse.


Jonathan Tobin: Don’t reject allies who oppose the red-green antisemitic alliance
A leftist-Islamist alliance
Antisemitism has always existed in the United States, though it was not a major political issue or official state policy. In Europe, attitudes toward Jews were a defining issue throughout the continent. Most right-wing parties can trace their origins to factions that were part of their nations’ dark past with respect to the treatment of Jews or the Holocaust.

People and political parties, however, do change.

The reasons for this may not be because they have all suddenly fallen in love with the Jews. The primary factor that caused people to change their minds is that in the 21st century, they understand that the threat to their nations isn’t coming from the Jews. It’s from the red-green alliance of Marxists and Islamists.

In the past, they may have seen Jews as outsiders who didn’t fit into a blood and soil version of national identity. But today, they rightly understand that the mass migration of Muslims from the Middle East and North Africa is fundamentally altering the character of many European nations for the worse. That is combined with neo-Marist efforts to discard the traditions of Western civilization as irredeemably racist, much like the left’s war on America via critical race theory and The New York Times’ “1619 Project.” This unlikely alliance of leftists and Islamists is producing a changing political landscape that could doom their national traditions and culture in places like Britain, France, Sweden and other countries. It’s also making them unsafe for Jews.

Recognizing this fact makes them realists as opposed to racists or xenophobes. And part of that realism is knowing that Jews and the State of Israel are their natural allies in an existential struggle for the future of Europe and the West.

The evolution of these parties is a long process. And some, particularly like those in Germany and Austria, haven’t completed that journey. Despite its electoral success, the German AfD Party remains tainted by the antisemitic attitude of some of its candidates for parliament and their nostalgia for the Nazi era. That’s also true of Austria’s Freedom Party.

That’s why they weren’t invited to the Jerusalem conference.

If Chikli had chosen to invite them, then the boycotters would have had a leg to stand on. Still, an argument can be made that encouraging people like AfD leader Alice Weidel, who has personally opposed antisemitism and supports Israel, would do more to combat antisemitism in Germany than shunning her.

Chikli wisely chose not to do so, but that didn’t matter to Diaspora liberals.

Other right-wing European parties have conclusively rejected their antisemitic past, as France’s RN has done, even though that obligated its leader, Marie Le Pen, to eject her late father from the party. Her putative successor, Jordan Bardella, who may be its candidate to lead the country at the next presidential election, has no such associations. Outspoken in opposing Jew-hatred and supporting Israel, he will be at the antisemitism conference. But he is just as unacceptable to many liberal Jews as open antisemites.

The same is true for their attitudes toward Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is an ardent friend of Israel and his country’s Jewish community. Yet left-wingers not only routinely falsely accuse him of authoritarianism but also of being associated with antisemitism, even though Jews in Budapest are far safer than they are in London, Paris, Amsterdam or Stockholm—something that even his domestic political opponents will concede.

Those Jews who won’t associate with them or members of their parties often identify with the parties of the European left or center. Some, like Levy, a principled supporter of Israel but a man of the left, still cling to the idea that the right is not kosher.

He fails to see that it is the political left, such as the La France Insoumise Party (LFI), led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, that is the current home of French antisemitism—and the clear and present danger to their country and its Jewish population. LFI combined with the supporters of French President Emanuel Macron to defeat RN in parliamentary elections earlier this year, despite the right-wingers getting the most votes.

A luxury Jews can no longer afford
Some argue that the new European right are not reliable allies or are squeamish about opposition to mass immigration, even when it transforms some countries into hostile environments for Jews.

This makes no sense. That’s especially true for liberal Jews who can now see that their former allies have abandoned them in the wake of Oct. 7, and now, as many Democrats do, share or tolerate the views of the antisemitic intersectional left.

American Jewish liberals may see their domestic concerns, such as support for legal abortion, as more important than Trump’s backing of Israel and opposition to woke antisemitism. Their European counterparts, who face an even more virulent and popular strain of Jew-hatred, are even more misguided.

But in the wake of the atrocities done by Hamas and Palestinians in Gaza—and the way that the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust encouraged and empowered antisemites everywhere—such attitudes are a luxury that Jews on either continent can no longer afford.

Former Soviet prisoner of Zion and Israeli political leader Natan Sharansky had it right when he posted on Facebook that he would attend the conference:

“For many years I’ve been stubborn and continue to insist even today that it’s important that the fight against anti-Semitism will include all political camps—from left to right.”

By standing aloof from Chikli and the antisemitism conference, people like Greenblatt are gratifying their fellow political liberals, as well as those who are opposed to the Israeli government, for reasons that have nothing to do with this issue. The same is true of European Jews who prefer to hold onto the political alliances of the past that no longer serve their community’s interests. But they have a responsibility to unite with all people—no matter where they stand on the political spectrum or their nation’s past—who are willing to support the Jews in a moment of unique peril. By shirking that duty in order, they are showing us what they consider to be most important, and it isn’t the safety of the Jewish people.
Dealing with antisemitism: Amichai Chikli will succeed where the ADL has failed
For decades, the Jewish community has poured billions of dollars into Holocaust museums, educational programs, and legacy organizations, such as the NGO Anti-Defamation League (ADL), believing that these efforts would make the world a safer place for Jews.

Unfortunately, they were wrong.

If there was ever a moment that proved the utter failure of these institutions, and of all those donations, it was October 7, 2023.

When Hamas terrorists butchered, raped, and burned innocent Jewish men, women, and children – the response should have been global shock and sympathy for the Jewish people. Instead, what did we see? Open celebrations of the massacre on the streets of Western cities and on university campuses – and this was weeks before Israel began a military offensive in Gaza.

Overnight, Jew-hating antisemitism exploded around the world in a way that should terrify every Jew worldwide. Mobs chanting for the annihilation of Israel, students physically attacking Jewish classmates, corporate CEOs defending Hamas – all happening just hours after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. How did we get here?

For decades, the legacy Jewish organizations focused on the wrong threats, refused to recognize the real dangers, and even aligned themselves with the very people fueling modern antisemitism.

They relentlessly attacked “far Right” politicians as the primary threat to Jews, while embracing DEI activists, Black Lives Matter, and the intersectional movement – all of whom are openly antisemitic.

They obsessed over educating the world about the Holocaust, assuming that if people just “learned” about Jewish suffering, antisemitism would disappear.

They refused to acknowledge the central role of Islamic teachings in modern antisemitism, despite decades of terror attacks, incitement – and now, outright public support for the slaughter of Jews.


The ‘golden’ girl performing in London with new single Shalom
Goldy’s new single, Shalom, will be released the day of the concert, performed live with an exclusive premiere of the music video.

“A lot of people suggested that the music industry will not support me – they are all supporting Palestine. I was asked, ‘are you sure you want your first song as a solo independent artist in UK to be a track called Shalom?’” But Joshua told her: “This is song is about peace. This song is about unity. You dedicated this song to all your nation, to all your people. You have to be confident in your message.”

Golda visited Israel six months after October 7. “I saw the different atmosphere and energy, and it really touched me. I came back to London with the heavy feeling that both of ‘my’ countries are in a nightmare. I really want to send something very bright and light to people who are tired, suffering so much pain.”

Why the name change from Golda to Goldy? “A lot of people started to compare me with Golda Meir, which is an honour, but while Golda is a very strong and powerful name it is a bit political. Goldy is ‘easier’ and more girly. “

The show will open with some Yiddish songs “including Yiddish Mama, because it’s going to be Mother’s Day”, plus new material, which she’s never performed before. “And at the end of the concert, I’m going to release officially the song Shalom. So this is going to be a remarkable night for me.”

A remarkable night for a remarkable young lady with drive, determination and a heart of gold. Changing her name changes none of that.
‘An extraordinary rarity’: Exhibit of oldest Hebrew book opens at JTS library
A Hebrew manuscript, which experts have dated to the eighth century making it the earliest known such object, is on view in New York City after being the centerpiece of an exhibition in Washington, D.C., at the Museum of the Bible.

The Afghan Liturgical Quire, which is part of the Washington museum’s collection but which has uncertainty in its provenance history, is part of the show “Sacred Words: Revealing the Earliest Hebrew Book,” which opened on March 19 at the Jewish Theological Seminary Library in Manhattan.

Herschel Hepler, associate curator of Hebrew manuscripts at the Museum of the Bible, told JNS that the New York exhibition has some opportunities that were unavailable during the Washington installation. (Hepler was deeply involved in tracing the manuscript’s provenance and in a forthcoming scholarly volume about the object’s significance.)

“JTS was a natural partner for several reasons,” he told JNS. “It’s a historic library and institution deeply connected to Jewish cultural reconstruction post-World War II.”

“It has the largest collection of Jewish books and manuscripts in the United States, second only to the National Library of Israel,” he added. “It’s one of the most significant Hebrew manuscript collections in the world.”

The New York show will also give broader access to the Afghan Jewish community, many of whose members are based in the city and couldn’t make the trip to Washington, according to Hepler.
Israel ranks as 8th-happiest nation in global survey, down from 5th last year; US is 24th
Israel is the world’s eighth happiest country, according to the World Happiness Report 2025 published Thursday.

In the annual survey — conducted during the second year of Israel’s war against Hamas and other Iranian proxies, alongside domestic political turmoil — Finland came in first for the eighth year in a row, while the US dropped to its lowest-ever position, at 24.

Israel, which always ranks highly in the report, fell several places from 2024, when it ranked fifth — though that survey had been based on data collected prior to the unprecedented Hamas invasion and slaughter of October 7, 2023, which triggered the ongoing war.

The 2024 report had also marked a slight dip from fourth place in 2023, which was a jump from ninth in 2022.

Israeli young adults spoke most positively out of anyone in this year’s survey about the quality of their social connections — with Mexico and Argentina following closely behind — and seventh on their quantity.




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