Monday, March 24, 2025

03/24 Links Pt2: Columbia University Has the Free Speech Problem, Not the Trump Administration; The grand deception on American campuse; Khalil Omitted Work for Terror-Tied UNRWA From Green Card Application

From Ian:

Columbia University Has the Free Speech Problem, Not the Trump Administration
On Friday, Columbia University agreed to fulfill the Trump administration’s demands in exchange for the release of millions of dollars in suspended funds. Charles Fain Lehman explains that the government, by withholding the money, has in fact succeeded in protecting free speech on campus:
The ideal of academic freedom requires order and safety—not safety from “dangerous ideas,” but from actual violence. Free speech on campus is only possible if students do not have to fear that their dissenting views will be met with threats. And it is only possible if they can participate in classes or enter buildings without intimidation or disruption—otherwise, discourse is not possible.

Several of the conditions are tailored to check disruptive “speech” that forestalls actual discussion. The demand that Columbia implement “rules to prevent disruption of teaching, research, and campus life” means that student protest doesn’t get to shut down academic life. And the insistence that Columbia impose a ban on masking is . . . consistent with the First Amendment and with the dozens of state laws that recognize public, non-health-related masking as intimidating and deceitful.

But perhaps part of the problem is that Columbia’s administrators themselves do not understand the meaning of freedom of expression:
Two Columbia janitors recently filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in which they allege that they were not only routinely forced to scrub swastikas from campus walls, but were assaulted during the occupation of Hamilton Hall [by anti-Israel radicals]. When they raised concerns about the graffiti, the two claim, they were told that “the trespassers and vandals were exercising their First Amendment rights.”

There is, of course, no interpretation of the First Amendment that protects the freedom to trespass or to destroy property. All that being said, there are serious concerns that can be raised about the effects of current federal policy on freedom of speech, and Keith Whittington provides a rare good-faith formulation of these concerns here.
Seth Mandel: Speechless in London
Britain’s contribution to the debate over free speech is to constantly remind Americans what it looks like when someone is actually punished for mere speech.

In the U.S., we’re currently locked in a debate over whether activists who trespassed and occupied a building after-hours and then assaulted a janitor and took two people hostage are being disciplined by Columbia University for their speech. Perhaps it is the legacy of the progressive Covid policy that disallowed all close gatherings except if the gathering in question was a protest for a righteous cause. Whatever the reason, Americans seem to genuinely believe that if you call your behavior a “protest” then you have a First Amendment right to smash the windows of a Jewish-owned shop.

Explaining to activists why this is wrong gets you nowhere, so perhaps it’s easier to understand if we use examples. Luckily for us (and unluckily for Brits), the UK routinely has such examples at hand.

In the Telegraph today, Brendan O’Neill writes of the latest trend in which the speech police (sometimes in the form of actual police) seek to cast out from the public square anyone who calls Hamas a terrorist organization.

O’Neill mentions two instructive cases. The first is that of Damon Joshua, who lost his job at a sewage company for calling Hamas “disgusting terrorists” in a group chat. Other employees complained and the post was taken down. But that wasn’t the end of it: Joshua was fired. “You would think that the least controversial thing you could say is that Hamas are bad people,” O’Neill writes. “It’s the law of the land, after all: Hamas is designated a terrorist organization in the UK.”

Indeed, it’s illegal in the UK to support Hamas. But to even things out, it is apparently strongly frowned upon to not support Hamas. Just maybe don’t say anything at all.
The grand deception on American campuses
Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, wrote a book, Resurrecting Empire, in which he describes what Israel offered at that Camp David summit as “so miniscule, it isn’t even worth referring to.”

That book, with its grand deception about the summit, is used as a textbook in college classes throughout the United States. Total lies and distortions of the truth are footnoted, indexed and passed along as well-accepted dogma.

Columbia University has had a huge antisemitism problem for decades. And it is not limited to simply one professor.

On Oct. 8, 2023, Joseph Massad, Columbia professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history, wrote in the “Electronic Intifada” of his “jubilation and awe,” that the “sight of resistance fighters storming Israeli checkpoints separating Gaza from Israel was astounding, not only to Israelis but especially to the Palestinian and Arab peoples who came out across the region to march is support of the Palestinians against their cruel colonizers . . .. No less awesome were the scenes witnessed by millions of jubilant Arabs who spent the days watching the news of Palestinian fighters from Gaza breaking through Israel’s prison fence or gliding over it.”

This one-sided agitprop has gravitated away from the Middle Eastern study programs and infiltrated the humanities, social sciences and even schools of education.

This is not limited to Columbia. Cornell University’s Russell Rickford, an associate professor of history, called the Oct. 7 attacks “exhilarating” and “energizing.” Reminder: Oct. 7 was when thousands of Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and tortured, murdered and raped more than 1,200 people, taking 251 others hostage and parading them through the streets of Gaza for people to jeer at.

Osman Umarji, an adjunct professor at the University of California, Irvine’s school of education, stated on Nov. 10, 2023, “The Zionists have been exposed for the criminals and blood-thirsty animals that they are. This is a gift from Allah to the world.”

Zareena Grewal, associate professor of American studies, ethnicity, race and migration, and religious studies at Yale University, wrote on Oct. 7, “Settlers are not civilians. This is not hard.” In another tweet that day, she wrote, “Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle, solidarity.”

Assistant professor of law at Albany Law in New York, Nina Farnia, wrote on the morning of Oct. 7, “Palestinians are tearing down the walls of colonialism and apartheid” and “Palestinians are a beacon for us all.”

What sort of hatred motivates these comments? Is there no empathy for the other side?

We know that the minds of students are like sponges, and that is why, in 2008, I, together with scholars and writers Martin Kramer and Stanley Kurtz, worked successfully with Congress to amend Title VI of the Higher Education Act to have regional and area studies demonstrate “a diversity of viewpoints” and “wide range of perspectives.”

The amendments to this law have been overlooked and ignored by the universities. The trickle-down effect has exploded, and our nation’s youth are being brainwashed by professors who sympathize more with brutal, barbaric terrorists than with the courageous survival of the people of Israel.

It is our younger generation of Americans that are losing out. If these are the educators they respect, what does that tell us about their academic inquiry, their integrity, their sense of justice, of truth, and of their basic values?


David Collier: This is what terrorist propaganda looks like
Just a few weeks after the BBC were forced to take down a documentary because of Hamas family ties to the narrator – the BBC anti-Israel factory has churned out another classic.

In this latest example, the BBC disgracefully whitewash two terrorist families in order to portray Israel as bloodthirsty child killers. It is a classic antisemitic smear. The core message of the article

The BBC article in question covered Israel’s renewed attack on Gaza a few days ago. The Hamas propaganda arm works quickly, and following the attacks the news channels became full of claims of hundreds of dead – with an emphasis as always on children:

The BBC cannot help itself – and taking its cues from news channels that support the ‘resistance’, it jumped swiftly into action. The end product was a piece written by Jon Donnison that relied on two grieving fathers – both with children who were killed in the Israeli strikes.

Jon Donnison, has a long history of ‘missteps‘ when it comes to reporting on Israel. And this piece is a classic of its type:
It is driven by the ignorance and anti-Israel bias of the journalist
The article makes important factual errors (which always lean towards demonising Israel)
Focuses on grieving parents and dead children (to break everyone’s heart)
And then lays the blame for all of the death and destruction on Israel (so people can be sure where to point their anger)

Because of the gravity of the BBC errors, I am going to ignore everything else and just focus on the key witnesses- the two grieving fathers.

The BBC portray them and their children as innocent victims of an Israeli strike.

But what if Donnison has it all wrong? What if the children were only caught up in the strike because the families are involved in terrorism? This would mean that it was the parents and their families who are responsible for what unfolded.

What if the Palestinians that the BBC is telling you to support are the terrorists? What then?

It all comes down to the question of the identity of the two fathers. So let me introduce them to you.

Meet father one: ‘Alaa Abu Hihal’
Hilal was the face of the BBC article. Alaa Abu Hilal’s name was spelt wrongly by the BBC (I always wonder if this is incompetence or something more sinister) – but I found his Facebook timeline anyway. And our ‘innocent victim’ had posted this on FB on October 9 2023:

It is a mourning post about his uncle who was targeted by Israel in the days following October 7. His uncle Rafat Abu Hilal was the commander of the Palestine Revolutionary Committees ‘Salah al Din Brigades’ – the PRC’s military group. The PRC is a Jihadist terrorist outfit working alongside Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Although the BBC article does not mention her by name, I tracked down Abu Hilal’s wife. Her name was Afnan Al-Ghannam, and her timeline is even more enlightening. On May 23rd 2023 she posted this:

This is Jihad Shaker al-Ghannam. It is her uncle. He had just been killed by an Israeli airstrike. He was secretary general of the military council of the al-Quds Brigades – Islamic Jihad‘s military wing. The al-Ghannam clan is Islamic Jihad royalty. These are just some of her cousins:

This is an image from the funeral. The man in the bottom right in the blue shirt, leading the funeral precession, is Afnan Al-Ghannam’s father.

Which means the marriage between the two was a ‘royal’ marriage between two important terrorist clans. Just look at this incredible image:

That is the nephew of the military commander of the Palestine Resistance committee closing the deal to marry the niece of the secretary general of the military council of Islamic Jihad‘s military wing. And this is the man the BBC chose to use as its headline image?

This is a jaw-dropping error by the British state broadcaster. Outrageous stuff.
Stephen Pollard: Israel’s PR problem is much bigger than biased BBC coverage
We are all familiar with the many egregious examples from the BBC’s reporting of the ongoing Gaza war. But there are recent examples of its attitude to Jews. The BBC’s coverage of an attack in 2021 by a gang of Muslim youths on a bus of Jewish children in Oxford Street in London was, for instance, so hideously flawed at every stage that I find it impossible to believe it was not based on a particular view of Jews.

The BBC reported that one of the Jewish children had said “dirty Muslims”, when they were in fact calling for help in Hebrew. Mistakes happen, yes. But at every stage of its handling of complaints around its reporting the BBC acted as if it regarded those who were angry with its reporting – Jews, that is – with contempt.

The BBC’s attitude is sometime revealed by what it does not report, such as in its coverage of the Beth Israel synagogue siege in Texas in 2022. Not once on the 10pm news report was antisemitism mentioned, despite the hostages – a rabbi and three other Jews – being seized in a shul. The reporter began by asking, “What made Malik Faisal Akram leave Blackburn, the place he called home, to travel to Texas, arm himself with a gun, and hold people hostage inside a synagogue?” Gosh, whatever could the reason have been? At no point did the reporter suggest that antisemitism might have been involved. New editorial processes are all very well, but they would not change the mindset of reporters, producers and editors who send a journalist to cover a siege in a synagogue in which a rabbi and three Jews are taken hostage but who do not at any point think the antisemitism of the gunman needs to be mentioned, let alone explained.

Which leads to the second point: this isn’t just a BBC issue. There is an understandable and entirely correct focus on the BBC as we are all forced by law to pay for it, but the real issue is far wider. The vast majority of the journalistic pool from which the BBC, Sky, ITV, and other news media draw their teams are left-liberal in outlook – and the default left-liberal attitude to Israel now is that it is a rogue state which kills Palestinians with impunity, with mainstream Israelis complicit. The BBC could introduce industry-leading, gold standard editorial procedures but they would have no impact on this nor, obviously, on other news organisations.

It is this wider point – that Israel has, to put it crudely, lost the PR war – that is the real issue, an issue that stretches far beyond the BBC.
Library’s OK to show anti-Israel film creates its own controversy
Sometimes you just have to marvel at how politics can lead to absurd outcomes. A perfect example involves library officials in Northbrook, Ill. To avoid controversy, they violated the First Amendment rights of one group and created a more problematic situation.

The facts are pretty simple. Controversial, some might say fringe, groups Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow and the Chicago Jewish Labor Bund arranged to screen the documentary “Israelism” at Northbrook Public Library near Chicago. The film charges that the Jewish “establishment,” including many Jewish educational institutions, are indoctrinating Jewish youth to be uncritically supportive of Israel and to silence Palestinians. It has been praised by Qatar’s Al-Jazeera, a propaganda outlet run by a hereditary monarch, still its supporters have been successful in getting it screened on many college campuses.

The film has been harshly criticized by many Jewish organizations who claim it is untrue, lacking in context and nuance, and essentially just propaganda. Many people have objected to the screenings of the film and pushed back, which is what the Chicago Jewish Alliance did in advance of a planned showing at Northbrook library.

CJA, however, never pushed for a “ban” on the film. It can be viewed online and is even offered for free in places. Nor did CJA call for the event to be canceled. Instead, in an email to library officials, CJA decried the library’s lack of due diligence, as it seems library officials were unaware of the content of the film or its backing by Jewish Voice for Peace, which the Anti-Defamation League says is “radical” and “does not represent the mainstream Jewish community.”

CJA pointed out that the application for the event did not disclose fundamental facts about the nature and content of the film, violating library policies. The group also pointed out that showing the film would directly violate the library’s code of conduct because it features “behavior or language that is threatening or insulting” to a person’s ethnicity or religion.

Despite all this, the only remedy CJA requested was to voice their concerns directly to library officials and a review of the procedures by which films are granted public screenings. When the library planned to go ahead with the screening without the requested consultation, CJA said they would be attending and would ask pointed questions during the question-and-answer session.

This is where things became problematic.

According to The Chicago Sun-Times, the library requested a $3,000 dollar security and insurance deposit from the organizers of the film screening to have the event go forward. A quick Google search would have told library officials that this idea was problematic. In Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement, the U.S. Supreme Court held that “[s]peech cannot be financially burdened, any more than it can be punished or banned, simply because it might offend a hostile mob,” and that any fees must be consistently applied to all groups, not solely levied when speech becomes unpopular.

Nonetheless, that’s just what the library did, raising the ire of the American Civil Liberties Union. According to the ACLU of Illinois, “Due to angry reaction to the film’s ideas, the library imposed a fee that ultimately prevented the film from being shown.”

The ACLU was correct, and that’s the problem. If JVP and their partners had broken neutrally applied library policies, the library could have taken legal action. If no policies were broken, the library could have gone ahead with the screening and allowed representatives from CJA to ask their questions. What the library ultimately chose to do was worse than either of those options.
Mahmoud Khalil Omitted Work for Terror-Tied UNRWA From Green Card Application, Prosecutors Say
Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University protest leader in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, hid his work for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) when he applied for a green card, according to federal prosecutors. Khalil worked for the terror-tied agency at the time of Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, and concealing the job while applying for permanent residency last March justifies his deportation, the prosecutors say.

A Department of Homeland Security document filed in court on Thursday states Khalil—a Columbia graduate student and spokesman for the notorious anti-Semitic student group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest—"failed to disclose" his position as an UNRWA political affairs officer, which he held from June 2023 to November 2023. Khalil also omitted a second position with the Syria office at the British embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, according to the filing.

The filing comes as Khalil, a Syrian native and Algerian national who is married to an American citizen, challenges his impending deportation, arguing that his detention is a violation of his First Amendment right to free speech. Green card applicants who "conceal group memberships" that would threaten their residency status are considered guilty of fraud. Federal prosecutors will need to prove that Khalil willfully omitted his work for UNRWA and the Syria office.

"Khalil’s First Amendment arguments falter on their own terms," Department of Justice prosecutors wrote in a Sunday court filing. "Khalil withheld membership in certain organizations and failed to disclose continuing employment by the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut when he submitted his adjustment of status application."

"It is black-letter law that misrepresentations in this context are not protected speech," the document went on. "Thus, Khalil’s First Amendment allegations are a red herring, and there is an independent basis to justify removal sufficient to foreclose Khalil’s constitutional claim here."

An independent U.N. investigation determined last year that UNRWA employees participated in the Oct. 7 attacks, leading the agency to fire nine officials in August. A month later, a watchdog group revealed that a prominent UNRWA official who worked as a principal at a U.N. school moonlighted as Hamas's top commander in Lebanon. And last month, an UNRWA media adviser attended a Hamas-affiliated webinar and argued that UNRWA was also a casualty of the Oct. 7 terror rampage.

The humanitarian agency has been banned from operating in Israeli territory, a move that Washington backed. The Biden administration also pulled funding from UNRWA in January 2024 in light of allegations that its members were involved in Hamas's Oct. 7 massacre.
How American college campuses became the Islamo-leftists' playground
What do a Yale scholar, a Columbia student, a Georgetown researcher, 60 colleges and universities under investigation for relentless antisemitic eruptions, and Hamas - have in common?

In traditional times, the answer should be absolutely nothing. Institutions like Yale, Harvard, UPenn, Georgetown, and Columbia were once guardians of liberal democratic values, committed to fighting hatred and violence. Yet, today, this is far from the case.

A dangerous alliance has formed between the progressive movement in the United States and radical Muslim groups, using the guise of victimhood to create an anti-American coalition. Though antisemitic and anti-Israel at its core, the ultimate goal of this Red-Green coalition is far broader: the systematic destruction of America from within.

To accomplish its goal, the movement has exploited American institutions, using democracy itself as a tool to undermine the very values that have made the United States the world's most successful democracy.

The Long Game: Indoctrination and Radicalization
For years, the Islamo-Leftist alliance has been laying the groundwork to infiltrate academia, starting with faculty and staff before trickling down to students. With foreign funding funneled into higher education institutions, this campaign of radicalization has steadily gained ground. The results became undeniable after the Hamas - October 7 barbaric attack on Israel, when the alliance mobilized in force, targeting America and its closest ally, Israel.

Over the past several years, the Red-Green network of terror sympathizers has systematically radicalized young minds, fostering a generation that views America as an illegitimate entity. They push for open borders, the abolition of law and order, and the delegitimization of democratic governance - all under the banner of "justice" and "liberation." But their goals are clear: to dismantle the very foundations of American society.

The consequences are visible. Radicalized student mobs have stormed administrative offices, taken over campus buildings, and issued violent threats against those who dared to dissent. Freedom of speech has been suffocated unless it aligns with the Islamo-Leftist narrative.
Northwestern professor who compared Israel to Nazis denied tenure
A Northwestern University professor who participated in the pro-Palestinian student encampments last year says he has been denied tenure and will not have his position renewed in April 2026 by the private research university in Evanston, Ill.

Steven Thrasher, an associate professor of journalism and the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting, released a statement on Thursday claiming that the dean of Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism informed him of the school’s decision earlier this month. Thrasher said he intends to appeal the decision, which he believes is political in nature and a violation of his free speech rights.

In April 2024, Thrasher helped form a line between police and anti-Israel protestors at the student encampment on Northwestern’s campus in an attempt to prevent officers from breaking up the protests. Thrasher was charged with misdemeanor obstruction, which was later dropped.

In May 2024, Michael Schill, Northwestern’s president, was called to testify before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce over his response to the encampment.

During that hearing, U.S. Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) identified Thrasher as a faculty member who “blocked the police officers on your campus from doing their job.” Banks queried Schill on whether Thrasher would be allowed to continue to teach after the “embarrassing incident.”

Schill declined to comment then, citing personnel and due process matters, and a university spokesperson had a similar response following Thrasher’s statement last week but noted that Northwestern had “full confidence in the decision-making process of the Medill faculty and dean.”

The school canceled his fall classes and launched its initial investigation in September. In January, the school found no grounds to suspend Thrasher and a new investigation was launched. He will return to the classroom for the spring quarter.

Thrasher’s social media accounts revealed several anti-Israel statements comparing Israel to Nazis and appearing to express support for the actions of Hamas during its terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Additionally, in a November 2023 blog post, Thrasher compared Gaza to a Nazi concentration camp, arguing that if Jews were able to break free from concentration camps in Nazi Germany, they would have killed “anyone they found partying”—a seeming reference to the Nova Music Festival, where hundreds of people were killed and dozens of others taken hostage on Oct. 7.
How are Massachusetts schools failing Jewish students through bias?
As Massachusetts students remain stubbornly behind their pre-pandemic levels in math and reading scores according to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the Massachusetts Teachers Association’s recent focus of attention is instructive.

The teachers’ union, also known as the MTA, pushed successfully for a ballot initiative in November that torpedoed a longtime graduation requirement that students pass the state’s MCAS exam. And in December, it released an extensive list of resources it compiled for its members on “Israel and Occupied Palestine.”

Among the so-called pedagogical aids? A poster showing dollar bills folded into a Jewish star and another featuring a keffiyeh-clad, rifle-toting fighter that proclaims, “What was taken by force can only be returned by force.”

The almost 100 resources are an overwhelmingly demonic portrayal of Israel, Zionism, and Jews, even with two links containing those posters ultimately deleted. It speaks to a broken system of oversight, emblematic of similar education issues in other parts of the US.

Jewish and non-Jewish members of the grassroots group Massachusetts Educators Against Antisemitism had tried repeatedly to have the union remove the material but were rebuffed by MTA board members’ accusations of “censorship.” For many teachers, the entire undertaking is a pernicious diversion from their core classroom struggles.

“I have 15 kids reading six years below grade level, so I don’t know why we’re talking about a country that’s 0.1% of the world population and a 10-hour plane ride away,” one told me.

It took nothing less than a Massachusetts State House hearing held by a recently formed commission on combating antisemitism for the MTA to budge after union president Max Page was grilled about the posters and other materials and after commission co-chair State Sen. John C. Velis referred to them as “a recommendation for educational malpractice.”

That a teachers’ union has the capacity to ply uninformed educators with material bereft of factual accuracy and balance is troublesome, given its powerful platform.

But it is part of a much larger problem acknowledged during that hearing and a subsequent one held last week: Curricular vetting and accountability are virtually nonexistent at the state level. It leaves schoolchildren vulnerable to ideologies subversively inserted locally, and it is not unique to Massachusetts.


The Trump administration should bring Al Jazeera in line with US law
There’s one challenge in the Middle East that President Donald Trump can easily tackle. During his first term, his administration ordered AJ+, a U.S.-based project of the Al Jazeera Media Network, to register as a foreign agent acting on behalf of Qatar. Al Jazeera remains noncompliant. As the Qatari network faces heat for aiding and abetting Hamas terrorism—including a lawsuit in U.S. Federal Court—the Trump administration should enforce its original order.

AJ+ is headquartered in the United States but the Justice Department found it operates “at the direction and control” of the Qatari government. It’s a textbook target for the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which exists to “promote transparency with respect to foreign influence.” Accordingly, the Justice Department instructed AJ+ to register under FARA in 2020.

In that order, the Justice Department noted that Al Jazeera’s style guide “reveals AJ+’s intention to influence audience attitudes” about the Middle East for example, by prohibiting the words “terrorist” or “terrorism” in its reporting. For a network focused on the region that’s home to Hamas, Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda, censoring the word “terrorism” is a clear sign that Al Jazeera’s mission is not objective reporting, but shaping opinion.

Al Jazeera’s manipulation of language is a misdemeanor, however, compared to the network’s direct involvement with terrorists. In October, the Israel Defense Forces released documents it found in Gaza “indicating close cooperation” between Al Jazeera and Hamas. One document included instructions for Al Jazeera on how to cover a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket that killed Palestinian civilians. Hamas directed Al Jazeera to refrain from using the word “massacre.” The Qatari network apparently complied.

Israeli troops have also uncovered evidence implicating Al Jazeera journalists in Palestinian terrorism. Al Jazeera correspondent Ismail Abu Omar was injured in an Israeli drone strike last year, but Israel did not target him because he worked for the media outlet. According to the IDF, he was a deputy Hamas commander who participated in the terror group’s Oct. 7 assault. Abu Omar even filmed himself from inside Kibbutz Nir Oz on the morning of the attacks. And he isn’t Al Jazeera’s only rotten apple. The IDF has exposed at least a half-dozen other Al Jazeera journalists who moonlit as Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives.

As the Gaza war approaches the 18-month mark, and with the future of the ceasefire uncertain, Qatar needs to feel the heat. The emirate has been parading as a neutral arbiter while aiding Hamas’s efforts to shape global opinion. And it’s done so after shoring up the terrorist group with political and financial support for decades.

Forcing AJ+ to register as a foreign agent is a minimally disruptive way for the Trump administration to uphold transparency and show Qatar it is not above the law.
Honest Reporting: The Journalism Org That’s Out to Wreck HonestReporting
Who Are Forbidden Stories?

According to its mission statement:
All over the world, journalists are imprisoned, abducted and murdered, depriving millions of people of information of public interest. This is what Forbidden Stories strives to prevent.

Our nonprofit organization, unique in the world, protects the work of threatened journalists and pursues the investigations of reporters who have been silenced.

It also adds:
We want to send out a clear message: killing a reporter will always be counter-productive. Why kill a journalist when dozens of others are ready to pursue their work? What some want to hide will be amplified.

Ultimately, the Gaza story has not been silenced even if journalists have died as a result of the war. Given its mission statement and the email we received, it becomes obvious that this is not investigative journalism. It’s agenda-driven and that agenda seeks to find responsibility for the deaths of Gazan journalists.

We refuse to cooperate with an investigation clearly designed to misrepresent and vilify us. Based on what we’ve seen, any comment we make risks being taken out of context.

We don’t yet know what Forbidden Stories will publish. But we’re certain it won’t serve the cause of real journalism.

Liked this article? Follow HonestReporting on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok to see even more posts and videos debunking news bias and smears, as well as other content explaining what’s really going on in Israel and the region. Get updates direct to your phone. Join our WhatsApp and Telegram channels!


Syria: Terrorists in Suits and Ties
[Ahmed] Al-Sharaa, on taking power in Syria in December, originally professed to be a "moderate." The Biden administration even lifted a $10 million bounty for his arrest, for previous terrorist activity linked to Al Qaeda, presumably in the hope of moderation actually being delivered. Since that time, however, al-Sharaa and his followers have appeared more as terrorists in suits and ties.

The country's new constitution, published on March 14, stipulates that Islamic Sharia jurisprudence is the sole source of judicial decision-making. This constitution also asserts that Syria's president must be a Muslim and that the executive branch has almost dictatorial powers. Moreover, the constitution includes no provision for protecting Syrian ethnic or religious minorities, which include Christians, Alawites, Kurds and Druze.

Sunni jihadist government forces are reportedly reveling in the massacre of the Alawites, and Turkey has already set up secret cells throughout Syria "to use as proxies abroad." Christians throughout Syria are afraid that after the Alawites, they will be next. It is also possible that al-Sharaa's HTS will be successful in uniting most of Syria under its control, then initiate a genocidal purge against Christians and the rest of the "infidels."

Some of Syria's minorities have been seeking help from nearby Israel. Some Druze community leaders even asked Israel officially to annex their villages. Israel has established a strategic "buffer zone" in areas of Syria adjacent to the countries' shared border, to deter potential jihadist and Turkish attacks, and may yet again turn out to be threatened minorities' greatest protector.


16-Year-Old Arrested in Connection With Antisemitic Attack on Rabbi in France
Authorities in France have arrested a 16-year-old teenager in connection with the antisemitic attack on the Rabbi of Orléans, local media reported, as the country continues to face a rise in antisemitic incidents since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.

Arie Engelberg, the rabbi of Orléans, was attacked on Saturday afternoon while walking home with his nine-year-old son from the synagogue in the city, located south of Paris.

According to Engelberg, the attacker asked if he was Jewish, and when the rabbi replied yes, the assailant began hurling antisemitic insults, including “all Jews are sons of —,” and attempted to film him.

“I decided to act, and I pushed his telephone away,” the rabbi told BFM television. The attacker then allegedly started punching Engelberg and bit him until several people stepped in to help.

“I’m OK, thank God, my son, I’m getting better and better,” the victim said. “We’ve had an enormous amount of support.”
Kassy Akiva: Chicago PD Still Hasn’t Disciplined Cop Who Pled Guilty To Vandalizing Rabbi’s Car
A Chicago police officer has yet to face any disciplinary action from his police force after pleading guilty to vandalizing an elderly man’s car, according to the victim’s family, who believe the car was targeted because it belongs to a Jew.

Mohammed Khan, 35, was arrested last March after he broke the side mirrors off of the vehicle of 77-year-old Rabbi Abraham Wineberg who was visiting his granddaughter and great grandchildren in Chicago’s West Rogers Park Neighborhood.

Khan was seen in surveillance footage from around 2:30 a.m. on March 3, 2024, where he first issued a parking ticket to Wineberg, who was illegally parked in Khan’s private handicapped spot, issued to accommodate Khan’s handicapped family member. Khan was off duty at the time and driving his personal vehicle.

Footage shows Khan peering through the rear window at Jewish and Hebrew prayer books and paraphernalia. He then returned on foot, and was seen in the footage kicking off one of the vehicle’s mirrors, which was left dangling by its wire. A few minutes later, he is seen from another angle returning again to break the other mirror, which Wineberg’s family says was completely cut off with a tool. The vehicle was then later towed.

Evidence of vandalism on Rabbi Wineberg’s vehicle.

The next morning, Khan is seen on footage talking to a second police officer, who issued another ticket around 10 a.m. Khan — whom the family had never spoken to before — told Wineberg’s granddaughter’s husband, Yisroel Wolf, that morning that he was unsure who damaged the vehicle.

“When we confronted him the next day, he tried to use his status as a police officer to get out of the crime, telling me ‘I’m a police officer, I would never do such a thing, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’” Wineberg told The Daily Wire. “That’s how we realized he was the one who wrote the ticket.”

The ticket issued, which was viewed by The Daily Wire, has an illegible signature in the “issued by” section.

“He didn’t legibly sign his name or put his badge number on the ticket, so he knew he was doing something wrong,” Wolf said.
Hooded thug rips mezuzot off London synagogue and kosher restaurant
A brazen vandal tore a mezuzah from the doorway of a synagogue and a kosher restaurant in north-west London on Saturday morning.

CCTV footage shows the suspect, dressed in a hooded jacket and clutching a drink, tearing the fixture from a kosher restaurant in north London just before 7am on Saturday.

Moments later, without hesitation and in broad daylight, he approached the entrance of a synagogue, forcefully wrenching the mezuzah from the doorpost and pocketing it while walking away.

The two shocking acts were caught on the shul’s security cameras and a camera inside the restaurant itself.

Staff at the kosher restaurant discovered the damage the following morning and immediately informed the owner, who did not want to be named.

The restaurateur has lived in the UK for 12 years and was left shaken by the incident. “It makes me want to go to Israel,” he told the JC. “How can I feel safe here?”

His concerns go beyond the stolen mezuzah. “If I had been inside, who knows what could have happened? He could have had a knife and come into my restaurant. You never know.”

Fearing further attacks, he added: “This is a serious crime. It was the mezuzah today – tomorrow, it could be a rock through the window. I’m very worried.”

The restaurant opened just two months ago, and the owner said he has never experienced an attack like this in London before. He has vowed to stay at the restaurant around the clock to protect it and said that he would be affixing a new mezuzah very soon.

The restaurateur added that he believes the act was a clear-cut hate crime. “When someone does this, they’re saying they hate Jews. He didn’t target anything to do with Hamas, Israel, or the IDF – he took the one thing that means the most to Jewish people: the mezuzah.




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