Thursday, April 17, 2025

04/17 Links Pt2: What to Do with a Bad Guest; The real lesson of the attack on Josh Shapiro; The spoiled brats of Youth Demand; How do the lawyers defending Hamas sleep at night?

From Ian:

Meir Soloveichik: What to Do with a Bad Guest
First: To deport a radical pro-Hamas activist is to do so in the knowledge that those representing such positions on college quads not only dislike Israel. They also hate America. Indeed, the very organization Khalil represented, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, has openly stated that it seeks “the total eradication of Western civilization.” The sympathy with Hamas is the symptom; hatred of the West is the disease.

As the pro-Israel activist Ben Badejo has noted, Khalil—like all others fighting deportation relating to these statutes—has issued many public declamations through his lawyers, but he has never, as part and parcel of their public defense, put forward two simple statements: that he hates Hamas and that he loves America. The refusal to state the former, of course, is linked to his inability to express the latter. This is not, first and foremost, a matter of one’s views regarding the Middle East. For the secretary of state to cite statutes allowing deportation of those who espouse support for terror, and who pose a threat to America’s foreign policy, is to emphasize the fact that individuals like Khalil seek the end of America itself.

The second mistake—that deportation is a criminalization of speech—follows from the first. Khalil is being detained only because he has been told to leave these shores and he has refused. As the Supreme Court has clarified, ordering a noncitizen to leave your country is not a criminal punishment. This was made clear by Justice Robert Jackson in 1952, in Harisiades v. Shaughnessy, a case about an individual deported on the grounds of being “a member of an organization which advocates overthrow of the government by force.” Jackson insisted that it had been “considered closed for many years” that “deportation, however severe its consequences, has been consistently classified as a civil, rather a criminal procedure.” He then went on to cite an earlier Supreme Court decision that explained the matter quite simply:
It is thoroughly established that Congress has power to order the deportation of aliens whose presence in the country it deems hurtful. The determination by facts that might constitute a crime under local law is not a conviction of crime, nor is the deportation a punishment; it is simply a refusal by the government to harbor persons whom it does not want.

And when we ponder the point, it is actually obvious: How is it a punishment to order a guest in your country—or a green-card holder like Khalil, who is here because of the graciousness of the United States—to leave a land he hates? Indeed, how is such an order anything other than a country reflecting basic self-respect and self-preservation for its own future?

Cases like Khalil’s will wend their way through the courts, and this litigation will hopefully provide us with the opportunity to ponder a clarifying question: Why would a country that rightly welcomed a fervently patriotic immigrant like the Jewish woman in Blair’s story—and Secretary Rubio descends from such immigrants—willingly ladle out visas to those who hate it? This is, in other words, another opportunity, as we approach the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, to ponder the meaning of America and of what binds us as Americans. In an address delivered on July 4, 1858, Abraham Lincoln contemplated the fact that many living in America did not descend from those who fought in the Revolution. Yet, he said, their love of America, and of the ideas embraced at the Founding—is what bound the newcomers to Americans like himself.
Melanie Phillips: The real lesson of the attack on Josh Shapiro
In all these hypothetical instances, the attack would have been seen as politically motivated. But when an attack is mounted in the name of the Palestinians, liberals are suddenly struck dumb.

This is because they cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that such a terrible act has been committed in support of a cause upon which they hang their claim to be moral, compassionate and decent people. To condemn it would be to condemn themselves.

It awakens their deepest fear—that to denounce the motivation for such an act would destroy their moral and political personality. They are terrified that it would turn them into the thing they dread more than anything else—to become “right-wing.” In their minds, this is synonymous with evil.

But the Palestinian cause that they so devoutly support is not moral or decent. It’s motivated by genocidal aspirations and Jew-hatred, and violence is its calling card.

Its supporters in the West—having swallowed the egregious lies on which this cause is based—peddle a grotesque inversion of reality in which Israel is blamed for defending itself against a barbaric and genocidal onslaught in a seven-front war of annihilation. It is these Palestinian supporters who are spreading evil.

Balmer told the police that he believed Shapiro’s stance on the war in Gaza was leading to the deaths of Palestinians. It’s not just mentally ill individuals who believe such a thing about Israel and Diaspora Jews.

Since Oct. 7, liberal media and politicians have been promoting the lie that Israel is purposefully killing Gazan civilians, of whom the majority are women and children. The fact that this is totally untrue hasn’t stopped it from becoming so deeply believed and causing such anger among the public that Jews in the Diaspora are being regularly ostracized and abused for supporting the “killing of Palestinian babies.”

Jews find themselves targeted for collective punishment over the malicious fantasy of the crimes of Israel. Individual Jews in the West are singled out grotesquely as accomplices to these alleged crimes simply by dint of their supporting Israel’s attempt to defend itself against annihilation. They also find themselves accused of bad faith if they call out the rampant Jew-hatred that’s exploded across America and Western nations.

Diaspora Jews are being gaslighted, abused, ostracized, intimidated, threatened and attacked just for standing up as Jews for their people and for truth and justice—and now an attempt has been made to burn one of them alive.

What Balmer’s attack tells the West is that, in supporting the Palestinian cause, it is endorsing an innately murderous, hate-mongering and malevolently mendacious creed.

The Israel-haters can hardly try to excuse Balmer’s attack on Shapiro as the action of a madman, given that the blood libels they themselves perpetrate have now caused countless thousands of people in the West to lose their own minds over Israel and the Jews.
The spoiled brats of Youth Demand
‘YOUNG PEOPLE ARE RESISTING’, the website of Youth Demand informs us, breathlessly, announcing the arrival of yet another environmentalist road-blocking protest group – except this one protests about Palestine, too. What follows is the usual combination of Israelophobic nonsense and economic illiteracy:

‘The [UK] government is engaging in absolute evil. They are enabling genocide in Palestine by sending money and arms to Israel. They are contributing to the murder of billions to keep the fossil-fuel profits flowing.’

Youth Demand, an apparent spin-off of Just Stop Oil, is currently having an April jamboree, involving a month of direct action to ‘shut down’ London. Here are its demands:

‘Young people are stepping up to resist this nightmare. We are demanding that the government must:

1) Stop all trade with Israel: impose a total trade embargo on Israel.
2) Make the rich pay: raise [£1 trillion] by 2030 from the super rich and fossil-fuel elite to pay damages to communities and countries harmed by fossil-fuel burning.’

It’s all so agonisingly pathetic. For one thing, we have the supreme naffness of the name. ‘We’re the young generation and we’ve got something to say’ was excruciating when the Monkees sang it nearly 60 years ago. People who claim to be the voice of an entire age demographic are always a cause of full-body cringe. This kind of eternal live-action roleplaying of the 1960s is gut-clenching.

What makes Youth Demand particularly nauseating – and hilarious – is its activists’ dizzying levels of entitlement whenever they get their collars felt. These little darlings are clearly shocked to the core that the authorities have the temerity to notice them. They view with open-mouthed amazement even the pathetically light touch of British law enforcement in the 2020s. These are Veruca Salt brats who have clearly never been told ‘No’ by their mummies and daddies. ‘I want a trillion pounds and I want it NOW, daddy!’


Former hostage Keith Siegel recounts captivity, calls for release of those still in Gaza
Former hostage Keith Siegel is using his freedom to draw attention to the hostages still being held in Gaza, he told The New York Times on Wednesday.

“This occupies me, my mind, every day from morning to night and throughout the night when I wake up many times,” he told The NYT.

In the interview, Siegel recounted moments of physical and psychological torment during his time in captivity, including that Hamas terrorists wanted him to assist in the torture of a fellow female hostage.

He explained how he was brought into a room where the woman was tied up and being beaten.

“I was told to go into the room and to tell the person that the torturing will continue until they admit what they were being accused of,” he said.

Siegel explained that nothing he said could stop the abuse. “I was feeling that I’m in a situation where I want to help this woman and to get her out of this horrible, horrendous situation that she’s in, that we’re in, and just felt helpless,” he said.

Siegel said that shortly after that incident, he was forced to make a video message that would be shared by Hamas.

“That was very, very hard for me to think that my family would see that,” Siegel said.
Freed hostage Ilana Gritzewsky: ‘No one will break me until my Matan is home’
Ilana Gritzewsky, one of the Israeli hostages freed in the first deal with Hamas, gave an emotional address at Hostages’ Square in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, pledging never to stop fighting for the return of her partner and the 59 captives still held in Gaza.

Speaking to a large crowd in the square, which has become the symbolic heart of the hostage crisis, Gritzewsky shared her resolve to be the voice of those left behind. “I will not give up on the promise I made to my friends in the tunnel – that I will be their voice until they are brought home,” she said.

Her partner, Matan Zangauker, remains in captivity. The couple were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz on 7 October, but only Gritzewsky was released during the November 2023 exchange.

“If Matan hears me, I know he is strong,” she told the crowd. “If he’s watching me, then he also sees all the people here… He has a lioness of a mother who won’t stop until he’s back home.”

Gritzewsky, who was held for 55 days in Gaza, has become a prominent speaker at public rallies, often using her platform to push for international pressure and continued attention. “We are not giving up. They cannot take away our hope, our spirit or our faith,” she said. “That’s what gives us strength to continue.”
Putin hosts ex-hostages at Kremlin, hails Hamas for ‘humanitarian act’ of freeing them
Russian President Vladimir Putin met Wednesday evening with freed hostage Sasha Troufanov at the Kremlin in Moscow, along with his mother, Elena Trufanova, and partner, Sapir Cohen, both of whom are also former captives.

“The fact that you managed to go free is the result of the fact that Russia has stable, long-term relations with the Palestinian people, with its representatives, and with a wide variety of organizations,” Putin told the ex-hostages in a video clip from the meeting published by the state-funded RT television network.

He also hailed Hamas for its “humanitarian act” of releasing them: “We need to express words of gratitude to the leadership of the political wing of Hamas for cooperating with us and carrying out this humanitarian act.”

“We will do everything to ensure that such acts happen as often as possible and that all the people who are still in the same conditions that you had been in… are also released,” Putin added, sighing deeply in response to Troupanov telling him that he was held in Gaza for 498 days.

Troufanov and Cohen were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, along with Sasha’s mother and grandmother Irena Tati, while his father and Elana’s husband Vitaly Troufanov was murdered during the Hamas-led atrocities.

The three women were freed during a November 2023 ceasefire, with Trufanova and Tati released in a gesture to Putin, while Sasha Troufanov was returned from Gaza in February amid the multi-phase truce agreement mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt that collapsed in March.

The meeting at the Kremlin was also attended by the Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar and President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia Alexander Boroda, according to Putin’s office, which published a video of the meeting alongside a readout with little substantial information.

Russia has ties to all key players in the Middle East, including Israel, Iran, and Lebanon, as well as the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.


Football superstar Erling Haaland holds video call with freed hostage
Football superstar Erling Haaland has held a video call with a freed hostage, offering him some much needed support in his recovery.

Sport-mad Omer Shem Tov, who endured 505 days of Hamas captivity after being abducted from the Nova music festival, posted a clip of the virtual meeting with his hero on Wednesday.

During the call Haaland asked the 22-year-old how he was doing and praised his resilience. Giddy with excitement, Shem Tov replied: “I really appreciate what you’re doing and I really like you, you’re amazing, I’m so excited to be speaking to you.”

He has also received messages of support from football legends Christiano Ronaldo and Rivaldo.

Haaland, one of the most popular players in the modern game with over 40 million social media followers, has been reticent to issue public statements with regard to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

He has struck a stark contrast with many of his teammates in the Norwegian national team, whose government have been fiercely critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Ahead of a match with the Israeli team last month, several Norwegian players indicated that they felt the Jewish State should be barred from competing.


How do the lawyers defending Hamas sleep at night?
I didn’t know what to expect when I decided to read the now-infamous application to ‘de-proscribe’ Hamas. This is the application lodged by a British law firm last week to remove Hamas from the UK government’s list of banned organisations under the Terrorism Act. The lawyers have asked home secretary Yvette Cooper to make it legal to openly support Hamas in the UK, given that the act makes expressing support for any proscribed organisation a criminal offence.

I was driven to read the application in full after seeing a bizarre interview on Talk earlier this week with one of the lawyers involved, barrister Franck Magennis. He seemed affronted when the presenter asked him how he sleeps at night. A perfectly reasonable question, given that Magennis acknowledged it was his decision to represent Hamas, an organisation responsible for the largest pogrom of Jews since the Holocaust. Hamas is not a client he was professionally obliged to take on.

In response, Magennis accused the presenter of putting ‘a target on [his] back’ by falsely conflating him and his client. He even suggested that the presenter ‘may receive a call from the police’. (It is worth noting that, on 7 October 2023, Magennis changed his profile picture on X to a bulldozer crashing through a border fence and tweeted ‘Victory to the intifada’, although this has since been deleted.)

As a criminal lawyer who defends just about anybody, I know a bit of what this barrister is talking about. I am not a murderer because I defend murderers. Everyone should be entitled to legal representation. If the Nazi leadership could rely on Britain’s top legal brains during the Nuremberg trials, then there is no reason, in principle, why Hamas should not avail themselves of the best and brightest, either. So I decided to take the application seriously, and read it in good faith.

It turns out the ‘application’ spouts Hamas propaganda from the very first line. It reads: ‘For more than a century, the British state has been responsible for colonisation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Palestine.’ This is hardly the impartial, objective language of the courtroom. It takes Hamas’s warped view of history and repeats it unquestioningly. It refers to Israel, quoting a former British governor of Palestine, as a ‘little loyal Jewish Ulster’. It casts Israel as illegitimate, claiming that requiring Hamas to accept Israel’s right to exist would be an ‘unreasonable demand’. In other words, Hamas should be entitled to continue to fight for the eradication of the only democracy in the Middle East and the world’s only Jewish State. It refers to Israel in quotation marks, to ‘signal that it is a colonial term, reflective of a racist attempt to impose an ethno-exclusionary state on a pluralistic and ethnically diverse population’. These are the kinds of things you’d expect to hear from a batshit student in a sixth-form common room, rather than a lawyer in a courtroom.

It gets worse. The application claims that Hamas presents no ‘threat to Britain or British citizens’. Really? I guess the lawyers involved simply don’t know the names Jake Marlowe, or Lianne, Yahel and Noiya Sharabi, nor any of the other 18 British nationals murdered on 7 October 2023.

The application then goes on to provide an account of 7 October which is straight from the Hamas playbook. It says that it ‘marked a moment, albeit brief, where Palestinians reclaimed territories that had been seized from them during the Nakba of 1948’. It then goes on to regurgitate Hamas’s blatantly false claim that it ‘targeted the Israeli military sites and sought to arrest the enemy’s soldiers to pressure the Israeli authorities to release the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails’.


Unhelpful for outsiders to weigh in on arson motive, Shapiro says after Schumer calls for hate-crime probe
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called on Pam Bondi, the U.S. attorney general, on Thursday to investigate the Passover arson attack against Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) as a possible hate crime.

Schumer, who often refers to himself as the highest-ranking elected U.S. Jewish official in history, stated in the letter to Bondi that the U.S. Justice Department, in coordination with the FBI, should do “everything in its power to pursue justice and uphold the fundamental values of religious freedom and public safety.”

“Passover is meant to be a time of family, reflection and happiness as Jewish families across the globe celebrate our freedom,” Schumer said.

“Instead, it was a brutal reminder of the hatred, brutality and viciousness that still lives among us—both for the Shapiro family and for the millions of Americans who observed this appalling attack with heartbreak,” he stated.

JNS sought comment from the U.S. Justice Department.

“I am deeply relieved that Gov. Shapiro and his family are safe, thankful for the first responders who arrived on the scene and applaud the police work that resulted in an arrest just hours ago,” Bondi stated following the attack.

Shapiro said he had “total and complete confidence” in Francis Chardo, the district attorney of Dauphin County, “to charge this case as he sees fit.”

“I’m not going to weigh in on what those charges should be,” Shapiro said on Thursday at a Harrisburg fire station, after he and his family helped serve lunch to the firefighters who responded to the arson attack.

“I’m not going to question his judgment,” Shapiro said. “Should the Department of Justice choose to bring charges, I will also respect their decision to do just that.”

Shapiro did question Schumer’s comment.

“I don’t think it’s helpful for people on the outside—who haven’t seen the evidence, who don’t know what occurred, who are applying their own viewpoints to the situation—to weigh in on that matter,” the governor said.

“My trust is with the prosecutor,” Shapiro added. “He’ll make the right decision, and we’ll be fully supportive of whatever decision he makes.”
Daniel Greenfield: Gov. Shapiro Refuses to Discuss Pro-Palestinian Motive for Attack
There’s nothing wrong with denouncing violence in general, but Shapiro is being deliberately evasive here. He’s not condemning violence in general, he’s trying not to deal with the stated motives of the man who tried to kill him because those motives have a good deal of popularity within his own political party. So instead he’s reduced to ‘bothsidesing’ his own attempted murder to avoid calling attention to the motive.

The closest Gov. Shapiro came to addressing what the motive was saying that no one would intimidate him from practicing his faith. But much of this came down to Shapiro issuing general condemnations not grounded in anything.

“This kind of violence is becoming far too common in our society, and I don’t give a damn if it’s coming from one particular side or the other, directed at one particular party or another, or one particular person or another. It is not OK, and it has to stop. We have to be better than this.”

Weirdly, it fell to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who has his own iffy history with antisemitism, to actually issue a specific condemnation. “Political violence of any kind is never acceptable, and it is especially unconscionable to attack a Jewish family during the first night of Passover.”

Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, who has recently been advocating for campus Hamas supporters, bizarrely attacked Trump over the assault.

“Nearly four days after Gov. Shapiro was targeted in an act of political violence — reportedly due to his position on Israel — Trump hasn’t clearly condemned it,” Soifer complained.

The thing is that Gov. Shapiro still hasn’t condemned it.


YouTube star Ms. Rachel breaks silence on posts about Gaza kids after antisemitism group reported her to AG Bondi
Beloved children’s YouTube star Ms. Rachel broke her silence Thursday to defend her posts about the kids suffering in Gaza after an antisemitism group accused her of spreading Hamas propaganda and reported it to the Justice Department.

Ms. Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, shared a poem on Instagram referencing the allegations levied against her by StopAntisemitism, which penned a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi earlier this month to investigate the YouTuber.

“Children have human rights. These rights are not just for some children, they are for all children. Standing up for children, especially those who are most vulnerable, is the right thing to do,” Accurso, 42, wrote.

“All children have the right to food, water, medical care and education. All children should be protected from violence,” she added in a caption.

The post was the first time Accurso spoke publicly about the allegations, with StopAntisemitism claiming her messages over the suffering in Gaza are anti-Israel and are meant to inspire pro-Hamas sympathies among young kids.

The group ultimately claimed Accurso served as a mouthpiece for Hamas’ interests, citing several posts on her social media accounts condemning the war in Gaza’s effects on Palestinian children.

StopAntisemitism, however, provided no public evidence to support claims that Accurso was working for Hamas to spread propaganda, with all of their allegations against the YouTuber refuted by various reports from media outlets and the United Nations.

Among the objectionable content, according to the group, are viral images of a child with protruding limbs depicting starvation in the enclave. StopAntisemitism claimed those images were debunked, with the child not suffering starvation, but instead suffering from cystic fibrosis.

Fadi al-Zant, the child in question, however, was suffering from both cystic fibrosis and starvation, his mother told the Washington Post. He became a widely shared symbol for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza before he was evacuated and treated.

StopAntisemitism also objected to Ms. Rachel sharing the death toll provided by the Hamas-run Ministry of Health, which does not differentiate between terrorists and civilians.
Man charged with hate crime in violent attack on Jewish students at DePaul
A suburban man has been charged in the attack on two Jewish students on DePaul University’s campus late last year.

Adam Erkan, 20, was charged Thursday with two counts of hate crime and two counts of aggravated battery causing great bodily harm, all felonies. He is not a DePaul University student.

Erkan, of Hoffman Estates, has a detention hearing scheduled for Thursday. Police are still looking for the second suspect involved in the attack.

The backstory:
The attack occurred Nov. 6, when Max Long and Michael Kaminsky were assaulted while peacefully advocating for Israel on DePaul’s campus, according to a previous FOX 32 report.

Police said Erkan approached Long while wearing a black face covering and made antisemitic remarks before striking Long and attacking Kaminsky who was trying to help.

Long, an Israeli Defense Forces reservist, lost consciousness and suffered a brain injury, while Kaminsky sustained a fractured wrist requiring surgery. Video footage captured part of the altercation.

According to the police report, Erkan was seen on surveillance footage fleeing the area in a 2011 Silver Toyota RAV-4.

His father identified him in the surveillance video to police, according to prosecutors.


DHS Official Who Openly Cheered Hamas Fired After 16 Months Of Paid Leave
Nejwa Ali, a former spokeswoman for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) who the Department of Homeland Security hired and put in charge of vetting asylum seekers, was fired by the Trump administration in February after the Biden administration declined to do so for 14 months after she pledged her support for Hamas.

Former President Joe Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, removed Ali from duty on October 19, 2023, days after The Daily Wire documented her celebration of the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel. But instead of firing her, Mayorkas continued to pay her, placing her on paid leave for an “investigation” even as she repeatedly and proudly affirmed her hatred of Jews and allegiance to the Palestinian cause, and used the paid leave to protest Israel during work hours.


Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told The Daily Wire this week that Ali was removed from federal service on February 10, meaning she received 16 months of salary without having to work.

Ali worked in 2016 and 2017 as a public affairs officer for the “PLO office in D.C,” according to her LinkedIn. That office was expelled from the country because it is a designated terror organization. But Ali landed on her feet, securing a job at DHS as an “Asylum Officer,” where she was tasked with “applying immigration laws and regulations to asylum applications.”

Ali posted incessantly about her affinity for the Palestinian cause on social media, with increasingly over-the-top rhetoric after the October 7 terror attack. The Daily Wire’s initial report on Ali highlighted how she repeatedly posted pictures of Hamas terrorists parachuting in with guns and writing, “F*** Israel and any Jew who supports Israel.”

Ali threatened to call the police on The Daily Wire for writing about her. Then, after the story ran, she said by phone: “I abso-f***ing-lutely celebrate [Palestinian terrorist hang-gliders], a**hole, f*** you!” The Daily Wire provided audio of that call to Mayorkas’s DHS.

In January 2023, Ali became an Adjudication Officer for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. People with that job, according to the agency, “analyze new or amended legislation and policy, prepare written reports of findings, and review and make determinations on cases for immigration benefits.”
Nobody Knows How to Fight Anti-Semitism. But We Do Know How to Raise Committed Jews
Since the Hamas invasion of Israel, American Jews have become far more aware of anti-Semitism, and new efforts have sprung up to counter it. Barry Finestone wonders if these campaigns in fact merit the tens of millions of dollars that have gone into them:

Do the expensive and high-profile ad campaigns, brainstorming sessions, tweets, and gatherings make a difference? Are they reaching people who really need to be reached?

Communal resources are precious, and certainly limited. I urge us to pour more and more resources into camps, day schools, trips to Israel, youth groups, and the many other experiences that all have significant data proving strong outcomes. We know that they work. These programs help their participants understand what it means to be a Jew and why it matters.

The Jewish community of the future should be built first and foremost on what Judaism offers, not on what we have to fight against as Jews. If we raise a generation of Jews primarily on fear and survival, we will miss out on the opportunity to give young Jews the tools they need to thrive and contribute to our community and our world.
Stefanik, Comer launch Harvard bias probe
Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and James Comer (R-Ky.) announced on Thursday that they would launch a House oversight investigation of Harvard University the Ivy League school rejected the Trump administration’s conditions to restore federal funding.

Comer, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Stefanik, chairwoman of House Republican Leadership, wrote to Harvard president Alan Garber demanding records of Harvard communications about antisemitism on campus, the admittance of foreign students who support terrorism or hate Jews and the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

“Harvard is apparently so unable or unwilling to prevent unlawful discrimination that the institution, at your direction, is refusing to enter into a reasonable settlement agreement proposed by federal officials intended to put Harvard back in compliance with the law,” the duo wrote. “No matter how entitled your behavior, no institution is entitled to violate the law.”

Comer and Stefanik allege that Harvard’s policies violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars federal funding to any program that discriminates on the basis of race, color or national origin, and that the university is therefore ineligible to receive federal dollars.

“If Harvard, or any institution for that matter, does not wish to comply with this basic legal obligation, the proper avenue for achieving this is simple: do not take federal financial assistance,” they wrote.
Harvard surrenders! University professor ALAN DERSHOWITZ reveals the secret deal being struck with Trump... and it'll make his woke colleagues furious
Dozens of students have communicated with me in recent years about how they feel silenced. These include not only Jewish and Zionist students but also Christian and conservative students. The same is true for some faculty members.

Harvard's culture is infected by a deeply rooted cultural bias that even President Trump cannot quickly cure.

This is largely attributable to Harvard's tenured faculty, whose rehabilitation is nearly impossible and utterly impractical, because these professors–whose jobs are contractually protected–are essentially accountable to no one. That academic freedom, while justified in many ways, has been abused for decades.

The oppressive campus culture is also due to 'programs' and departments that are inherently ideological. These include Women Studies, Gay Studies, Black Studies, and yes, Jewish Studies departments. These divisions and similar ones tend to be more ideological than academic. In addition, there are the racial, ethnic and gender offices, such as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). These entrenched bureaucracies have undue influence.

Harvard has already settled two lawsuits brought by several Jewish students and organizations alleging antisemitism on campus, and - without admitting any wrongdoing - the university has pledged to do more to confront the biases that result in de facto discrimination against certain students and faculty.

A negotiated settlement between Harvard and the Trump administration may be another step toward reform, but it cannot be the last.

Finally, for those who claim that their defense of university autonomy and academic freedom is ideologically neutral, it is important to remember the 1950s, when I was a college student. In those bad old days, many recalcitrant southern universities had been forced by the federal government to integrate their student bodies, yet the schools were still tolerating the harassment of African American students and teaching racist curricula.

Had the federal government threatened to withhold funding from such racist universities unless there were changes, many liberals, civil libertarians and advocates of academic freedom would have applauded.

Now that the shoe is on the other foot, many progressive academics are taking exactly the opposite position they would've taken back in the 1950s.

For them, it's about politics, not principles.

For me it's about principles, consistency and neutrality.


Daniel Greenfield: New York Times Claims Busted Columbia Activist Who Empathized With Hamas “Sought Middle Ground”
After their PR campaign for Mahmoud Khalil and Momoudo Taal fell through, the media is rallying for more foreign nationals who were terrorizing college campuses.

Next up is Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia U anti-Israel activist in his mid-30s, from Israel who is being billed as a “Buddhist” and a “pacifist”.

A Columbia Activist Sought Middle Ground on Gaza. The U.S. Detained Him. – New York Times

About two-thirds of the way through his sympathetic profile, the Times has to reckon with Mahdawi’s views.

The Canary Mission, a hard-line pro-Israel group, compiled an exhaustive online dossier cataloging his activism, with screenshots of his social media pages and selective quotes from his speeches on campus and media interviews. They cite one in which he says, “We were accused by the administration that we are calling for genocide, while the administration itself is ignoring the current genocide that is taking place in Gaza. Shame on you, Columbia!” In another example taken from a newspaper interview, they quote him saying, “Hamas is a product of the Israeli occupation.”

The group claims that he wrote a poem in 2013 praising a Palestinian terrorist, Dalal Mughrabi, who committed a 1978 attack in Israel. They also cite a mournful social media post in 2024 he wrote about one of his cousins, whom they called a Hamas fighter killed by Israel.

The New York Times doesn’t mention Mahdawi telling 60 Minutes that he empathizes with the Hamas attack on Israel. It doesn’t mention the contents of the poem or what terrorist attack it celebrated.

On February 3, 2013, a Facebook user shared a poem Mahdawi wrote that paid tribute to terrorist Dalal Mughrabi. Mahdawi left comments thanking the poster for sharing the text.

The poem said: “I will breathe home… / And fill my shame / And clean my gun / And collect my packages, my bombs / And embrace my gun…”

Dalal Mughrabi, a member of the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), participated in the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in Israel. She and other terrorists hijacked a bus in an attack that left 38 Israeli civilians dead, including 13 children.


Immigration judge denies bond for Turkish US grad student, held for anti-Israel activism
An immigration judge denied bond for a Tufts University student from Turkey who has been detained by authorities in Louisiana for three weeks over what her lawyers say is apparent retaliation for an anti-Israel op-ed piece she co-wrote in the student newspaper.

Meanwhile, Rumeysa Ozturk’s lawyers filed a new request with a federal judge in Vermont considering whether to take jurisdiction of her detention case. The lawyers asked the judge to order her to be brought to the state by Friday and hold a hearing next week. They said that would allow better communication with her legal team and a doctor to evaluate her. They say Ozturk has suffered five asthma attacks in detention.

Lawyers for Ozturk, 30, had asked an immigration judge that she be released on bond as her immigration case proceeds. That judge denied her request Wednesday, the same day Ozturk had a hearing, they said in a statement released Thursday morning.

The Department of Homeland Security presented one document to support their opposition to Ozturk’s bond request: a one-paragraph State Department memo revoking her student visa, her lawyers said in the new court filing.

The memo says that Ozturk’s visa was revoked on March 21 following an assessment that she had been involved in associations “that may undermine US foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization’ including co-authoring an op-ed that found common cause with an organization that was later temporarily banned from campus.”

Ozturk’s lawyers said the immigration judge denied bond based on the “untenable conclusion that Ms. Ozturk was both a flight risk and a danger to the community.”


IRS ‘making plans’ to remove Harvard’s tax-exempt status
The Internal Revenue Service is “making plans” to end Harvard’s tax-exempt status, sources familiar with the matter stated, according to a CNN report on Wednesday.

The move comes after U.S. President Donald Trump and the federal Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism froze $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million worth of contracts to the Ivy League school unless they met certain demands, which Harvard forcefully rejected.

“In recent weeks, the federal government has threatened its partnerships with several universities, including Harvard, over accusations of antisemitism on our campuses,” stated Alan Garber, the Harvard president, who is Jewish. “These partnerships are among the most productive and beneficial in American history.”

Garber said the government’s demands aim to curb Jew-hatred, but that the majority of requests “represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard” and called the demands “unprecedented.”

A final decision on the university’s tax-exempt status is expected soon; CNN did not include an exact timeline.

In January, Harvard adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism as part of two Title VI settlements for alleged antisemitic discrimination on campus. The university also recently suspended its partnership with Birzeit University, a Palestinian university near Ramallah in Samaria, also commonly referred to as the West Bank.

JNS has reported that Birzeit has ties to Palestinian terror.


Trump Admin to Harvard: Turn Over Anti-Semitism Records or Face Ban on Exchange Students
The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday threatened to revoke Harvard University's eligibility to enroll international students unless the Ivy League school turns over records on anti-Semitic "illegal and violent activities" committed by international students.

In what the department called a "scathing letter," DHS secretary Kristi Noem demanded that Harvard provide "detailed records on [its] foreign student visa holders' illegal and violent activities by April 30, 2025, or face immediate loss of Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) certification," according to a department press release.

The warning comes as the Trump administration has frozen more than $2 billion in federal grants and contracts to Harvard, after the Ivy League school snubbed White House demands for tougher action against campus anti-Semitism. The administration accused Harvard of failing to meet the "intellectual and civil rights conditions" that justify federal funding.

President Donald Trump has also proposed revoking Harvard's tax-exempt status. "Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting 'Sickness?'" Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social.


The Nazi Skeletons in Wesleyan U.’s Closet
The president of Wesleyan University claimed, in a recent New York Times op-ed, that the Trump administration and the Republican Party are teeming with secret or aspiring Nazis. But how did the Wesleyan administration relate to the actual Nazis and Nazi supporters on its Connecticut campus in the 1930s?

In February 1934, Wesleyan invited Dr. Friedrich Auhagen, a representative of Nazi Germany’s consulate in New York City, to address the student body. That was more a year after Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany. A year of the Nazi regime boycotting Jewish-owned businesses, of nationwide book-burnings, of Nazi takeovers of German universities, of mass firings of Jews from most professions, and of sporadic anti-Jewish violence. Yet none of that deterred the Wesleyan administration from inviting a Nazi official to campus.

In his remarks to the Wesleyan students, Auhagen railed against “excessive Jewish control” in Germany, claimed that reports of antisemitism were “widely exaggerated,” and declared that Jews who did not like living under Nazism should “go settle in certain regions of Russia.”

Hitler had some fans on the Wesleyan campus. The most enthusiastic was Paul H. Curts, a longtime professor of German. He was so sympathetic to the Nazis that he was cheering for them even before they rose to power. In a May 1932 speech, eight months before Hitler became chancellor of Germany, Prof. Curts declared that supporters of the Nazi Party generally were “staid, sober Germans.”

After Hitler and the Nazis became Germany’s rulers, Prof. Curts served as their lead apologist at Wesleyan. He made multiple trips to Germany in the 1930s, each time returning brimming with enthusiasm. After one such trip in 1934, Prof. Curts addressed the entire student body and told them Hitler was “the only man who could offer to Germany what it needed at present.”

Curts had been visiting Hamburg during the infamous “Night of the Long of Knives,” in which Hitler ordered the murder of hundreds of Nazis whom he suspected of disloyalty. The Wesleyan professor justified the killings on the grounds that “there had been a radical conspiracy on foot against Hitler” and “Germany must show a united front, and Hitler is the only man behind whom the people can be unified.”

In another address a few weeks later, Prof. Curtis accused the American news media of publishing “exaggerated” reports of “incidents” in Germany. He praised Hitler for maintaining “quiet, order and discipline,” and insisted the Nazis were not “trying to extend their doctrine throughout the world.” They merely wanted “Germany for the Germans,” the Wesleyan professor asserted.


Overseas Press Club slammed for anti-Israel bias in Washington Post’s Gaza reporting award
The Overseas Press Club is facing scrutiny over its decision to bestow a prestigious award to The Washington Post that recognizes its reporting on the Israel-Hamas war, even as the paper has drawn criticism for major factual errors and accusations of institutional bias related to its handling of the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

The newspaper is set to be honored at the Overseas Press Club’s annual awards dinner in New York City on Thursday, when it will receive the organization’s Shireen Abu Akleh Award, named for the Palestinian journalist mistakenly killed by Israel while on assignment in the West Bank in 2022.

The inaugural award, which highlights the “best reporting on a continuing international conflict or crisis in any medium,” cites seven Post stories that, the judges wrote, “tore at official narratives through accountability journalism that centered the human costs of Israel’s war in Gaza.”

But one respected Middle East analyst is challenging the decision to reward the Post for its Middle East coverage in light of its errors while reporting on the war in Gaza.

In a social media post on Tuesday, Rob Satloff, the executive director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy who is among the most outspoken critics of the Post’s Middle East coverage, questioned how the Overseas Press Club had chosen to bestow “one of its most coveted awards” to a newspaper he said has consistently published “error-filled, lopsided reporting” on the Israel-Hamas war, “critiqued by me and others in excruciating detail on multiple occasions.”

Most notably, the paper has faced backlash for its long delay in appending a lengthy editor’s note to a factually challenged front-page story, published in 2023, about the struggles of premature Palestinian infants born in the West Bank and Israel who were separated from their parents amid the war in Gaza.

The editor’s note, which was quietly added to the story, listed multiple inaccuracies undermining its core claim that Palestinian mothers were required by the Israeli government to return to Gaza when their travel permits had expired. The editor’s note also acknowledged that the triple-bylined story had not initially sought comment from Israeli officials, “an omission that fell short of the Post’s standards for fairness.”
How foreign media uses allegations against Israeli officials to justify Hamas atrocities
A case involving a public official and her daughter, who has accused both her parents of sexual abuse, has led several international news outlets to criticize the Israeli government, which has so far remained silent on the matter.

“Israel claimed that Hamas committed sexual assaults against women – but now an Israeli public official is accused of the same,” wrote Iran’s state-run media outlet PressTV.

These kinds of headlines and statements have appeared in recent days across foreign media, particularly in the Arab press, following the revelation that the girl filed a police complaint against her parents, stating: “I was severely sexually assaulted.”

TRT, Turkey’s largest news outlet, added: “There is complete silence from the Israeli government, which has not addressed the ethical aspect of the case.”

In contrast to the tone in some foreign outlets that portray the allegations as already proven, Israel Police have clarified that, so far, no evidence has been found to support the girl’s claims. After taking her statement, a police source told The Jerusalem Post that “this is a complaint that involves sensitivity and complexity.”

The complaint
Israeli media, constrained by a sweeping gag order, have largely refrained from publishing details about the case. This decision follows police briefings that no supporting evidence has been found thus far.

The complainant herself released a video in which she details her allegations.
Guardian admits using photo of ancient synagogue to illustrate ‘Israeli suppression’ of Palestinian history
The Guardian has admitted it made an error in using a photo of an ancient synagogue to illustrate its review of a book discussing the “Israeli suppression” of Palestinian history.

In an article published on April 13, Alex Preston reviewed Raja Shehadeh’s Forgotten: Searching for Palestine’s Hidden Places and Lost Memorials. Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and co-founder of human right organisation Al-Haq, which has previously argued that Israel is committing “war crimes and crimes against humanity” in the West Bank.

Co-authored with Penny Johnson, the book is a “search for hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine - now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories” to “explore lost connections in a fragmented land”.

Its blurb adds that the authors “grapple not only with questions of Israeli resistance to acknowledging the Nakba - the 1948 catastrophe for Palestinians - but also with the complicated history of Palestinian commemoration today”.

And, in his review, Preston wrote: “ Forgotten is a book of resistance – not just political, but existential.

"Shehadeh and Johnson... offer a vision of Palestinian heritage that refuses to be erased, tracing a lineage that stretches back millennia and persists today despite the relentless attempts to efface it.

“History, like the land itself, cannot be so easily obliterated. Even after bulldozers and bombs, flowers bloom, trees reclaim razed earth, red anemones push through rock.”

He went on to describe Shehadeh’s books as “beacons held up against the darkness of Israeli oppression”.


Report: Hundreds of Hezbollah commanders ordered to flee Lebanon
Approximately 400 Hezbollah field commanders have been ordered to leave Lebanon for various South American countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador, according to a report on Wednesday.

A Latin American diplomatic source told Saudi outlet Al Hadath that 200 commanders have already reached South America, with the rest expected to depart Lebanon in due course.

Hezbollah had issued the order due to fears that the commanders could be targeted if and when the organization’s military infrastructure is dismantled by the Lebanese government and military, the source said.

It is worth noting that Hezbollah already has an established terrorist network in South America, and in Lebanon maintains a force of several tens of thousands of terrorists.

On Tuesday, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun stated that 2025 would mark a shift to a state monopoly on weapons. He asserted that Hezbollah’s disarmament would be achieved “through dialogue” and emphasized his efforts to prevent a civil war. According to Aoun, communication with the organization is “good and direct,” and “the results are evident on the ground.”

He also noted that the Lebanese army is sealing tunnels and confiscating and destroying Hezbollah weapons depots. Aoun further stated that in his view, integrating Hezbollah into the Lebanese army should follow the model used with militias in the 1990s, whereby individuals were absorbed separately.
Seth Frantzman: Lebanon’s president spurs controversy by saying he doesn’t want Iraqi-style militias
Lebanon’s president is apparently in hot water in Iraq after he said he didn’t want Lebanon to have an Iraqi model for integrating Iranian-backed militias into the state. Baghdad summoned Lebanon’s ambassador on April 16 after reading comments that Lebanese President Joseph Aoun made to the New Arab publication.

The complaint in Baghdad is a bit complicated, so it’s worth trying to understand what Aoun said that so angered the Iraqis. On April 15, The New Arab ran an interview with Aoun. In the interview,he had said he didn’t see Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces as a model for Lebanon.

The PMF is a group of Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. There are dozens of brigades within the PMF, which may have up to 100,000 men. The brigades include some militias that are closely linked to Iran’s IRGC, such as Kataib Hezbollah. Lebanon also has Hezbollah, and it is backed by Iran as well.

The PMF emerged after 2014 and relied on some existing Iranian-backed armed groups in Iraq. It expanded in the war on ISIS.

Between 2017 and 2019, it was integrated as an official paramilitary force in Iraq, receiving state salaries and backing from Iraq’s Interior Ministry. The Interior Ministry in Iraq has been dominated by men linked to Badr, a pro-Iranian militia within the PMF. As such, Iran was basically trying to create a kind of IRGC for Iraq. The IRGC is the ideological armed forces within Iran, which are separate from the army.

Aoun has said the PMF model is not what Lebanon wants. Hezbollah may be weakened, but it won’t become part of the Lebanese Armed Forces.

“Responding to speculation about future arrangements, Aoun ruled out the possibility of replicating Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) model,” The New Arab noted.


Supermarket worker caught trying to smuggle £1m cash in suitcases out of Heathrow Airport
A supermarket worker is facing jail after being stopped at Heathrow with £1 million in his luggage.

Mazen Al Shaar, 48, was about to fly from Terminal 3 to Beirut, Lebanon when he was intercepted by Border Force officers.

Al Shaar, of Marsworth Close, Middlesex, claimed said he only had £500 on him and that he was leaving the UK to visit family.

But the huge cash haul was discovered in two of his three suitcases on Saturday, March 15 this year.

At Isleworth Crown Court, Al Shaar - who worked at Damas Gate, a wholesaler in Shepherd’s Bush - admitted one count of money laundering and will be sentenced at a later date.
Seth Frantzman: New documents appear to reveal Syria’s president Shara’a was held by US in Iraq
Documents circulating on social media over the last day appear to provide new details about the background of Syria’s new President Ahmed al-Sharaa. They claim to provide details about his role when he was suspected of being linked to terrorist and insurgent groups.

However, the documents require verification, and their overall summary doesn’t appear to show Sharaa was guilty of any crimes.

However, the new documents appear to show that Sharaa was held by US forces and the Iraqi government at detention camps such as Camp Bucca and Camp Taji. However, the fact that he may have been held at Bucca is interesting because the camp has been described as “Iraq’s militant university.”

Hassan Hassan, the founder of New Lines Magazine, posted about the new documents on April 17. “On the day Ahmad al-Sharaa received an invitation to attend the Arab Summit in Iraq a month from now, a pro-Iran Telegram channel leaked documents about his prison years & case in Iraq.”

The fact that the documents were released by a pro-Iran-linked source means they are intended to harm the image of Sharaa. Sharaa has increasing popularity in the region. He recently travelled to Turkey, the UAE, and Qatar. He has also been named to Time Magazine’s list of 100 influential people this year. His star is rising.

The fact that Sharaa was involved in extremist activities in Iraq is not a secret. The group he ran in Syria’s Idlib before coming to power was called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and it was linked to the Nusra Front, which was previously linked to al-Qaeda.

When he rolled into Damascus on December 8 as the Assad regime collapsed, many articles pointed out his background in Iraq. “Throughout his rise through extremist ranks, al-Sharaa was only known by the jihadi nickname he adopted, Abu Mohammed al-[Julani]. His ties to al-Qaeda stretch back to 2003, when he joined insurgents battling US troops in Iraq. The Syrian native was detained by the US military but remained in Iraq. During that time, al-Qaeda usurped like-minded groups and formed the extremist Islamic State of Iraq, led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” the Associated Press noted. He returned to Syria after the Syrian uprising began in 2011.


Former FAA Contractor, Naturalized US Citizen, Pleads Guilty to Spying for Iran
A former Federal Aviation Administration contractor pleaded guilty on Wednesday to acting as a secret agent for Iran, supplying Tehran with sensitive U.S. aviation and energy data over a seven-year span.

Abouzar Rahmati, a 42-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, admitted in federal court to conspiring to act and acting as an agent of the Iranian government while working as an FAA contractor in the United States. The Department of Justice said Rahmati passed non-public data about the U.S. aviation sector and solar energy industry to Iranian intelligence officials from at least December 2017 through June 2024.

The case comes as President Donald Trump has ramped up his "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran to dismantle its nuclear program. Trump threatened the Islamic Republic with military action after Tehran last month rejected direct negotiations with Washington. "If they don't make a deal, there will be bombing," Trump said. "It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before."

Rahmati, scheduled to be sentenced on August 26, is facing up to 10 years in prison for acting as a foreign agent and up to 5 years for conspiracy.

He once served as a first lieutenant in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, according to the New York Post.

Prosecutors said Rahmati, while working as an FAA contractor, downloaded at least 172 GB of files, including restricted documents on the U.S. National Aerospace System, Airport Surveillance Radar systems, and radio frequency data. Rahmati stored the files on "removable media" that he gave to Iranian officials in April 2022, according to the DOJ.
Khomeini's ideological war: Iran uses Palestinian cause as tool in war against West
The year 1979 holds a grim resonance for anyone who understands the interplay between ideology and global power structures. In that fateful year, the shah of Iran was toppled by a revolution led by none other than the shrewd Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. While the world witnessed the fall of a monarch, it failed to see the far more insidious play being orchestrated by Khomeini.

Behind his promises of justice, equality, and democracy lay a far darker ambition – the creation of a theocratic regime determined to wage ideological war against the West.

The youth of the day, particularly students, intellectuals, and left-wing activists, were swept up in the fervor of Khomeini’s revolution. They rallied behind the dream of an egalitarian society, oblivious to the totalitarian nightmare that would follow.

Khomeini’s genius lay in his ability to sell a facade of freedom, while underneath, he built the foundations for a war against the very values that the West holds dear.

Khomeini’s true revolution was not merely political but also ideological. His rise to power marked the beginning of an unrelenting war against liberalism, democracy, and secularism. His co-opting of the left-leaning factions, who believed they were fighting for a just cause, was an act of unparalleled manipulation.

Those well-intentioned revolutionaries, too blinded by their ideals, failed to see that they were not contributing to the building of a just society but instead they were laying the groundwork for the suppression of freedoms they held dear.

Fast forward to today, and Khomeini’s ideological war is very much alive, albeit in a new form. The tools may have changed, but the objective remains the same: to destabilize the West by undermining its core values.
Tucker Carlson Show Reveals: Iran Harbored Osama bin Laden After 9/11
Al Qaeda boss and 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden spent months living and receiving treatment in Iran, according to a bombshell interview on the Tucker Carlson Show this week.

Carlson sat down with former Pennsylvania congressman Curt Weldon (R.), who made the revelations, and also said that nosing around about the issue played a role in his being run out of Congress.

Weldon was defeated by Democrat Joe Sestak in the 2006 midterm elections. The race was overshadowed by an FBI raid of Weldon's daughter's home as part of a probe into whether the congressman improperly helped steer lobbying and public relations contracts her way. No charges were ever filed against him, and Weldon has long said the raid was politically motivated.

"I find out ... within months after 9/11 that bin Laden has been sighted in a town called Ladiz," the former congressman told Carlson. "It's not in Afghanistan, it's not in Pakistan. It's in Iran, in an area called Balochistan."

"Three months go by, I'm still supporting [President George W. Bush], my intel team comes back to me and says, 'Curt, he's being treated at a military hospital outside of Tehran,'" Weldon continued, referring to bin Laden. He added that he later met with an undercover agent for the CIA who told him bin Laden was in Iran.

Weldon, who noted his membership in the U.S. migratory bird commission, also cited a conversation he had with a Sikh falconry expert, who said bin Laden's fowl trail ran through Persia. According to Weldon, the falconry pro told him: "My falconers are seeing bin Laden's birds flying in Iran. You help me go to Iran. They'll accept me there because they know me. I'll tag his birds, and I'll take the U.S. to exactly where he is."

Carlson sat mostly silent as Weldon spoke, occasionally interjecting to signal his agreement.

"The point was to manipulate, to get our troops committed to go over to fight the battles in Afghanistan, Iraq, and that whole region of the world," Weldon said. "And they had to have the justification to do that."

"Yes," Tucker replied. "I believe it."


Conservative conference draws 1,000, addresses Jew-hatred in Canada
Some 1,000 people gathered in Ottawa from April 9 to 12 for a conference of the Canada Strong and Free Network, which is celebrating its 20th year and is devoted to “limited government, free enterprise, individual responsibility and a more robust civil society.”

The event, whose theme was “from ideas to action,” featured nine keynote addresses, including from former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison; Alberta premier Danielle Smith; The Free Press founder and editor Bari Weiss; Hungarian deputy state secretary Márton Ugrósdy; and Chad Wolf, executive vice president of the America First Policy Institute and a former acting U.S. secretary of homeland security.

Amir Epstein, co-founder and director of the Toronto Jewish civil rights organization Tafsik, attended the event. He told JNS that he opted to set up a booth for Tafsik this year after hearing Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative Party leader, speak at last year’s event about threats against Jews.

He hoped the booth would “educate people and explain to people what’s going on” in terms of Jew-hatred, he told JNS. He noticed that passersby “stood with us very openly, and they support us,” he said.

After a panel on “Canada’s energy advantage and independence,” roughly 15 people approached Epstein to discuss how they could support Israel, he told JNS.

Those who lean or align with conservatives are likeliest in the current political environment to “understand how we’re suffering,” he told JNS. “They’re not giving lip service.”

“It’s not a presentation. It’s authentic,” he said. “When the cameras aren’t on, they’re all coming up to me, telling me how awful they feel and asking what they can do to help.”
Birmingham bin-strike union’s conference littered with anti-Israel motions
The annual conference of Britain’s second largest trade union, currently crippling Birmingham through a bin collection strike, is set to be dominated by anti-Israel motions, it has been revealed.

At the Unite union’s policy conference, set to take place in Brighton in July this year, 16 of the 176 motions propose concern the Israel-Palestine conflict, representing nearly one in ten of the total motions submitted to the conference.

The anti-Israel motions dominate the “Global Solidarity, International & Europe” section where they amount to 57 per cent of the total motions submitted. These include motions on “solidarity with Palestine”, “building solidarity with Palestine”, “solidarity with the Palestinian people” and four separate motions on “solidarity with Palestinian trade unions”.

By contrast, when it comes to other country-specific motions, there are three on Ukraine, two on Kurdistan and one on the Congo and Colombia respectively.

Some of the language in the motions, submitted by individual union branches for discussion by delegates at the conference, has also been criticised as divisive.

None of the 16 motions call for a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians; many express support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and call Israel an apartheid state.

One motion, entitled “People’s Arms embargo”, calls on the union to “heed the call from Palestinian trade unions by encouraging and supporting members to refuse to build, handle or transport weapons destined for Israel, as well as making a public statement in support of such embargo”.

The motion, which does not mention Hamas’s atrocities on October 7, 2023, also asserts that Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza amounts to a “genocide”.

It claims that Israel has “killed at least 46,000 Palestinians”, making no apparent distinction between Palestinians terrorists killed in combat with Israel’s military and civilians.

The text also laments that “The West” is “deeply complicit in this genocide and continues to give military and diplomatic support to Israel” and appears to describe the country as a “settler-colonial project”.
Football executive fired after THREE DAYS for social media posts supporting Hamas
A newly-appointed executive at Dagenham & Redbridge FC has been sacked just three days into the role after vile social media posts emerged in which she openly supports Hamas.

Salma Mashour, a football presenter and digital content creator, had been unveiled with fanfare on Monday as the new director of development and engagement. But her time with the National League club ended just 72 hours later in disgrace after it emerged she posted messages supporting terrorism and claiming Israel’s existence is illegal.

In a now-deleted 30 October 2023 post, just weeks after the Hamas massacre that saw 1,200 Israelis slaughtered, Mashour declared: “I do not condemn Hamas… self-defence is not terrorism… Palestine will be free.”

Jewish News can also reveal that Mashour uploaded a seven-minute video rant on Instagram on 24 October 2023, where she branded Israel an “illegal apartheid state” and peddled conspiracy theories about the 7 October attacks being “convenient” for Netanyahu’s government.

Dagenham & Redbridge FC, which has deep ties to the Jewish communities of Redbridge and Ilford, acted swiftly, confirming her dismissal “effective immediately” in a statement issued by managing director Steve Thompson.

“As soon as we were made aware of the video, we acted quickly. The video was completely unacceptable,” Thompson said. “We are a multifaith, multicultural club and we do not tolerate racism, discrimination, or support for terrorism of any kind.”
Football club in chaos after co-owner urges fans to boycott own team
Dagenham and Redbridge Football Club is in chaos this evening after one of its owners called on Arab fans to stay away from its next home game in protest against the sacking of a member of staff who supported Hamas on social media.

Newly-appointed Egyptian part-owner Marwan Serry took to social media on Thursday to record an astonishing video alongside Salma Mashour, who was fired by the National League team after just three days in the job after posts expressing her support for terrorism came to light.

In the video, Mashour urges Arab fans not to attend Good Friday’s match against Ebbsfleet United.

Serry is seen beside a tearful looking Mashour, describing the sacking as “unacceptable… something I did not know, something I won’t shut up about”.

He then adds: “I ask of you now please, no one will go to the match tomorrow” – adding he would personally refund any tickets and calling the club’s actions something “we completely reject” and something he won’t talk further about because “the topic is very big, strong, strong”.
Fitness influencer to run London Marathon as Batman in memory of Bibas family
Fitness influencer Yoel Levy will take part in this year’s London Marathon dressed as Batman, just weeks after running the Jerusalem Marathon in the same costume.

Levy, 26, known to his 165,000 Instagram followers as thejewishfitnesscoach, is dedicating the run to Ariel and Kfir Bibas, who were held hostage and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists.

Levy, who is from Manchester, who ran in Israel to raise money for disability charity Shalva, said: “The Bibas boys were big lovers of Batman, so it was a way to dedicate the run to them, but also to inspire those around us.”

Levy first ran the London Marathon in 2017, aged 18. This year will mark his return under very different circumstances.

“It’s my redemption marathon for the London Marathon,” he said. “I did it seven years ago, but I had no clue what marathon training was.”

Preparing for the race has been especially challenging this year as it falls shortly after Pesach, he said. “It’s very hard to prepare for the marathon right now. I’ve been eating a lot of potatoes because that’s my only option, as well as matzah.
UKLFI: Natasha Hausdorff receives US award for moral courage
UKLFI Charitable Trust is very proud to report that its Legal Director, Natasha Hausdorff, has received the 2025 Moral Courage Award of the American Jewish Committee (AJC).

The award honours individuals who stand up for what is right, even in the face of strong and vocal opposition. Previous recipients have included historian, Professor Deborah Lipstadt, former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, and Iranian women’s rights activist, Masih Alinejad.

Presenting the award, Allison Ross said:
“Steadfast and fearless, Natasha Hausdorff is on the front lines of the war against Israel – the 8th front – and she is valiantly leading the fight against the weaponization of international law and institutions which target Israel in an effort to demonize, delegitimize and restrain Israel from protecting herself.

A British barrister and an International Law expert, much of Natasha’s fight has been carried out in her role as the Legal Director of UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust.

She wields her expertise to shine a bright light on attempts to rewrite the rulebook on International Law, through which rights and laws have been taken over, and through which modern day blood libels are being advanced. ….

Natasha’s powerful and articulate voice, her indomitable spirit and relentless focus, her unwavering dedication and bold approach – making Israel’s case and dismantling the arguments against the Jewish state on the international stage, are more important than ever.

For these reasons, and many more, on behalf of AJC and the Women’s Leadership Board, I am honoured to present the 2025 Moral Courage Award to Natasha Hausdorff.”

The AJC is a leading American Jewish organisation founded in 1906, and has a distinguished history of supporting civil rights, human rights and social equality, and fighting discrimination against Jews and other minorities.

Natasha Hausdorff said: “Standing up for the truth about international law and Israel is an honour in itself, but I am extremely touched by this award and these kind words. I would like to thank everyone who has helped me in these efforts to counter the false information and distortion of international law, especially the wonderful lawyers at UKLFI”.
A light that lives on: UK family of hostage fundraise to build foundation in his memory
The family of Almog Sarusi, the 27-year-old Israeli abducted from the Nova music festival and later murdered while in Hamas captivity, has launched a foundation in his name to carry forward his vision for a better, more compassionate society.

Almog was kidnapped on October 7 after remaining behind to help his injured girlfriend, Shahar Gindi. Shahar was later found dead, while Almog, though gravely wounded, was taken alive into Gaza.

For 11 months, he endured inhumane conditions before he was brutally murdered in a Hamas tunnel along with five other hostages – Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Alex Lobanov, Ori Danino, and Carmel Gat in September 2024. Their bodies were recovered during an operation in Rafah.

Now, six months after receiving the devastating confirmation of Almog’s death, his family is channelling their grief into action. In his memory, they have established a charitable association called “There’s Nothing Better Than Being Good”, a phrase that speaks to the core of who Almog was and the values he lived by, they said.

Speaking from London, Almog’s second cousin, Merav Kaye, described him as “a remarkable young man – full of light, kindness, and a rare sense of justice.”

Though she has lived in the UK for the past 17 years, Merav remains deeply connected to her extended family in Israel and is leading efforts to raise awareness and support for the foundation internationally.

“Almog had a kind of natural leadership, even as a teenager,” she said. “He believed in helping people who were unseen – young people without opportunities, without safety. Even at 17, he told us he wanted to create a home for at-risk youth. That was just the kind of person he was.”




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2019 Nobel Peace Prize nominee

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



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

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