Friday, May 16, 2025

05/16 Links Pt2: The Sanity of John Fetterman; California’s Ethnic-Studies Disaster; CPJ: Gaza journalists speak out about Hamas intimidation, threats, assaults

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: The Sanity of John Fetterman
Having suffered a stroke, and then subsequent psychiatric ailments that led to his brief hospitalization, John Fetterman’s time in the Senate has not been especially smooth. Yet now that he seems generally recovered, there has been a spate of dubious pieces in left-of-center publications suggesting that the Pennsylvania Democrat is mentally unstable and possibly unfit for office. Fetterman, incidentally, has been one of the most persistent defenders of Israel on Capitol Hill.

The story put Meir Soloveichik in mind of another Pennsylvanian, Warder Cresson, whose wife had him declared non compos mentis after he returned from serving as the first American consul to Jerusalem in 1846:
The application of lunacy to Cresson seemed solely based on his conversion to Judaism; in contrast to his many other previous conversions, it was only a love for the Jewish people that was considered crazy.

Meanwhile, as I type, a new hit piece on Fetterman has just dropped—a report issued by Axios noting that Fetterman has missed votes on the floor. The article runs under the hysterical headline “Fetterman Doubts Explode into Capitol Hill Firestorm.” To paraphrase Cresson’s attorney, the only charge left with which to accuse the senator is that he cares about murdered Jews.

Yet there are millions of people who are utterly unperturbed by Fetterman’s embrace of Israel and his present political persona. This multitude happens to be . . . the Pennsylvanians who elected him in the first place. The senator continues to enjoy high poll numbers among his own constituents; apparently, if Fetterman is crazy, then they don’t want their senators to be sane.

Warder Cresson and John Fetterman represent uniquely American stories, both highlighting the special history of the relationship between this country and the Jews. . . . It is just this that Fetterman’s critics cannot stand about America. That is why, ironically, Fetterman’s choice to stand with the Jewish people is driving them crazy.
Seth Mandel: California’s Ethnic-Studies Disaster
When Jews objected to making it a graduation requirement to show proficiency in Being An Anti-Semite, the state tried to remove the worst of it from its model curriculum. Which led, naturally, to the rise of a competing model curriculum that called itself “liberated ethnic studies.” To many in the industry, you see, the anti-Semitism was the point.

When asked if the Zionist narrative (also known as “history”) should be taught alongside the critical-studies and postcolonial versions, one teacher responded that that was like asking if creationism should be taught alongside biology.

As ethnic studies is actually taught in the classroom, meanwhile, there is almost no relation to the plain facts of history. An example from the Times article:

“In November, several weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, an ethnic studies teacher at Menlo-Atherton High School, in Silicon Valley, presented a lesson that inaccurately claimed the United Nations considered the creation of Israel illegal. (A U.N. resolution partitioned the territory into Jewish and Arab states, and the U.N. admitted Israel as a member in 1949.)

“In addition, a slide depicted a hand manipulating a puppet, recalling antisemitic tropes about secret Jewish control of government, the media and finance.”

It’s just a mix of blood libels and provably false historical assertions.

Because none of what the kids were going to be taught was true, there was growing pushback against California’s ethnic-studies requirement. There is something very mid-20th-century Europe about obligating students in government schools to internalize and then express the idea that Jews are intrinsically evil.

The requirement was set to go into effect next fall. But by law, it cannot be a degree requirement unless the California legislature funds it. This week, Newsom’s revisions to the state budget pointedly excluded the funds for ethnic studies.

Democrats have enough problems with anti-Semitism without the party’s most important blue state making Soviet Jew-baiting a degree requirement. For four years, the fight over ethnic studies has divided the state, and it might end up being all for nothing. That, of course, is better than the alternative. Perhaps all we need to get anti-Semitism under control nationally is to have every Democratic governor run for national office.
Yuval Raphael pays homage to Theodor Herzl’s iconic Basel photo
Israel's Eurovision representative, Yuval Raphael, posed for a photo paying tribute to the iconic picture of Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, looking out over the Rhine in Basel.

The photo was posted after her triumphant performance of “New Day Will Rise” in the second semifinal of Eurovision 2025 on Thursday night, which landed Israel a spot in the final.

The photo of Raphael on Friday was snapped in the same location where Herzl posed in 1901 when he was attending the fifth Zionist Congress.

Israel’s public broadcaster KAN, which sponsors Israel’s participation in Eurovision, released it with Herzl’s most famous quote, "If you will it, it is no dream.” Raphael's journey to Eurovision

It’s easy to see why this quote has special resonance for Raphael, who overcame her trauma after surviving the Hamas terror attack on the Supernova Music Festival on October 7, 2023, to win The Next Star for Eurovision, Israel’s contest that chooses the Eurovision representative. And now she has not only made it to the competition, but won a place in the finals.

On Wednesday, the day before the semifinal, a huge poster/video of Raphael went up in Times Square in New York, urging people to vote for her in Eurovision.

The final will be held on Saturday night, and people all around the world can vote for her. The final, with all its glitz and glamour, will air in Israel on KAN 11 and will be shown on networks around the world to hundreds of millions.


Netanyahu: 20 hostages confirmed alive in Gaza
Twenty Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza are known to be alive, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.

In a video message posted to his X account, Netanyahu said, “We will not break. We will fight,” while reaffirming that intelligence assessments verify the status of 20 captives as alive.

The announcement comes amid efforts to negotiate a hostage release deal through mediators in Egypt and Qatar, with another round of talks beginning in Doha on Wednesday.

Fifty-eight hostages, living and dead, are believed to remain in Gaza.

Netanyahu said this past Wednesday night that Israel was not giving up “on a single one” of its war aims. He said that he had spoken earlier in the day with U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, and would discuss the hostage crisis with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee later that night.

“We’re making all efforts, including today, to bring about the release of all our hostages and to achieve our war aims. We’re not giving up on a single one,” Netanyahu said in a video post on X, contradicting claims of critics, such as the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
Terrorists dressed as women to transfer Edan Alexander across Gaza, released hostage recounts
Edan Alexander, an American-Israeli released from Hamas captivity on Monday, revealed details of his time as a hostage on Friday when he was released from the hospital, N12 reported.

Alexander told his family that he was moved around Gaza from hiding place to hiding place, at one point travelling through a busy market in a donkey cart alongside a terrorist disguised as a woman.

For over a year, he was held in underground tunnels, Hamas safe houses, mosques, schools, and tents used to house displaced Palestinians. His father previously confirmed that he was injured when a tunnel collapsed on him.

For a period, he was kept with Matan Zangauker. Zangauker's mother, Einav, confirmed that she received a sign of life from her son.

He lost approximately 20kg in weight as he was forced to drink seawater and given only dirty bread to eat. He described his captivity as “a year of hell.”


Hapoel Jerusalem soccer club memorializes Hersh Goldberg-Polin in 100th year logo
The Hapoel Jerusalem soccer club will mark the 100th year of its establishment with a new logo featuring a likeness of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the Hamas hostage murdered in captivity.

Goldberg-Polin was a devoted fan of the team, and the image is based on a well-known photo of him brandishing the flag of the Hapoel sports association, whose name means “the worker” in Hebrew.

The sports association was founded in 1926 through Israel’s Histadrut labor organization as a rival of the Maccabi movement. Its original crest displays a variation of the communist symbol, showing a hammer and sickle with a boxer.

On Thursday, the team publicized its new centennial logo, along with video clips of its devoted fan base through the years that included the image of Goldberg-Polin holding the Hapoel flag at a game.

Goldberg-Polin was a devoted member of the team’s fan brigade through his teenage years.

When he was taken captive on October 7, 2023, members of the fan brigade were part of the intensive struggle to get him released, flying the Hapoel flags at rallies and protests, creating giant banners of his visage in the red -and-black Hapoel colors to hold at games and events.


Freed Hamas hostages to march in NY’s Israel Day Parade this weekend: ‘We won’t stop until everyone is home’
Hamas hostage survivors will march down Fifth Avenue on Sunday as part of New York’s annual Israel Day Parade — to continue the push to free the remaining 58 captives.

Keith and Aviva Siegel, Doron Steinbracher, Ilana Gritzewsky and Eliya Cohen are expected to join as many as 40,000 other demonstrators for the parade, showing solidarity for Israel as well as advocating for the plight of the hostages.

“We will march together, standing with the families and released hostages, and making our message unmistakably clear: Nothing is more important than bringing them home — all of them. We won’t stop until everyone is home,” the Jewish Community Relations Council said in a statement.

This year’s theme is, fittingly, “Hatikvah,” meaning “the hope” in Hebrew. It is also the title of Israel’s national anthem.

The parade logo for 2025 is a multi-colored tree with a yellow ribbon in its center, which has been used to signify support for the 251 people who were abducted by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack.

The Siegels and Gritzeweky were freed from captivity in November 2023 during the first cease-fire deal with Hamas, while Steinbracher and Cohen endured nearly 500 days of torture.

“It’s just impossible to grasp, and there are no words to describe the lack of understanding in our country about what is taking place 50 meters underground,” Cohen said after his release.


‘We Occasionally Misjudge’: Pulitzer Board Told Me I Was out of Line When I Asked Why the Organization Gave an Award to Palestinian ‘Poet’ Who Made Hateful Comments About Israeli Hostages
We don’t get a lot of emails from the Pulitzer Prize committee here at the Washington Free Beacon, so when I received one in November of last year asking me to serve as a member of a Pulitzer Prize nominating jury, I was sure it wasn’t real—possibly a sophisticated phishing attempt, or more likely a joke at our expense.

As it turns out, the invitation wasn’t the joke—the Pulitzers were. The committee asked me to serve on the nominating jury for the National Reporting category. That meant reviewing the applications to that category and deliberating over them with four other jurors at Columbia University in February, narrowing the pool down to three finalists. Before doing so, I signed an agreement to keep my membership on the jury and our selection of finalists confidential "pending the formal announcement of the winners."

After the five- or seven-member juries select the three finalists, they are kicked up to the Pulitzer board to select a winner. The 19-member board, composed of establishment journalists and a few academics, is overwhelmingly liberal—many members are nakedly partisan Democrats—and the prizes, which reflect their worldview, long ago became an object of derision among conservatives, and as irrelevant to the average American as the standings in Major League Soccer.

But even by that standard, this year’s award for Commentary managed to generate some attention.

The prize went to the Palestinian "poet" Mosab Abu Toha for his essays in the New Yorker. The board praised Toha for documenting the "physical and emotional carnage in Gaza" in a way that combined "deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel." Abu Toha is currently a "visiting scholar" at Syracuse and was previously a "visiting poet" and "librarian in residence" at Harvard.

It took about a half second for Abu Toha’s public remarks objecting to the media’s "humanization" of Israelis abducted by Hamas to emerge. "How on earth is this girl called a hostage? (And this is the case of most 'hostages')," Abu Toha wrote on Facebook in early February, just weeks before the Pulitzer deliberations began. "This is Emily Damari, a 28 [year-old] UK-Israeli soldier that Hamas detailed [sic] on 10/7… So this girl is called a ‘hostage?’ This soldier who was close to the border with a city that she and her country have been occupying is called a ‘hostage.’"

Emily Damari was abducted from her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on Oct. 7 and spent 471 days in Hamas captivity. Imagine for a moment a Pulitzer going to an extremist Israeli settler poet who had minimized and mocked the suffering of civilians in Gaza; who put "Palestinian" or "innocent civilian" in quotation marks the way Abu Toha does "hostages." You can’t, because it would never happen.

Last week, Damari denounced the Pulitzer Board for giving Abu Toha the prize, calling out the Pulitzers for elevating "a voice that denies truth, erases victims, and desecrates the memory of the murdered." A spokeswoman for Damari told the Free Beacon that neither the Pulitzer organization nor Columbia University have reached out to her since.

At the Free Beacon, we had questions.
Ruthie Blum: Mark Levin gives Tucker Carlson a well-deserved dressing-down
Levin reacted with apt disdain.

“LOL; the envoy talks like the fifth-column isolationists,” he tweeted. “Nobody believes war is the only way. We wait with great interest to see the deal you’re negotiating with the warmonger Iranian terrorist regime. In the meantime, rather than sloganeering against patriotic Americans who love our country, use your name-calling for the terrorist regime that has murdered Americans, tried to assassinate our president, chants death to America, and has lied its way toward a nuclear bomb.”

In a subsequent post on X, he stated, “By the way, neocon is a pejorative for Jew. Unbelievable.”

And then—to paraphrase Trump in a different context—all hell broke loose. During his eponymous radio show on Tuesday, Tucker sneered, “So, you have Mark Levin calling Steve Witkoff an antisemite. We’ve reached peak crazy.”

Turning to his guest, comedian Dave Smith, he added, “I mean, I think Witkoff is Jewish, right? If Mark Levin is calling the Trump administration antisemitic, Steve Witkoff, we’re at the end of something and the beginning of something new. If you’re calling Steve Witkoff an antisemite on Twitter, like, you know you’re losing, right?”

Levin promptly fired back.

“So, schmuck picks a fight with me, doesn’t call me,” he said on his own eponymous radio program. “You see, all the neocons are gone. So why do they keep using the word ‘neoconservative’? Notice they don’t use ‘hawk’ [or] ‘interventionist.’ Neocon! Why do they keep saying ‘neocon’? Because many of the neoconservatives were old-time, left-wing, Democrat Jews!”

Clarifying further, Levin maintained that “many of the people who use that phrase don’t know what they’re talking about, but in the magazines and on the internet, they know it. So, they’re not going to say, ‘The Jews are dragging us into a war.’ They’ll say, ‘Israel is, Netanyahu is.’ They’re not going to say, ‘The Jews this and the Jews that,’ so they use ‘neocon.’”

He proceeded to point out that wanting to stop the “Islamo-Nazi regime in Iran” means being a “peacemaker,” not a “warmonger.” But, he bellowed, “I don’t have to pretend I’m Helen Keller! That I don’t see and I don’t hear, and neither do you! And neither do you. And there’s a whole pattern over there.”

Referring to Tucker, Levin argued, “Now, he’s free to do what he wants. I believe in free speech. Go ahead, buy a subscription. Do whatever you want; it’s perfectly fine by me. But don’t screw with me, you little bastard, by twisting my words. And you should have picked up the phone, because I would have cleared things up for you.”

Not that this would have persuaded Tucker to change his tune, which has grown increasingly off-key.

Renowned Middle East policy expert and former senior adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney David Wurmser—a Jewish conservative often falsely labeled as a “neocon”—described it to JNS in February as a deviation on Tucker’s part “to a dark place.”

Wurmser explained: “Though we say he’s inside the conservative tent, his policies are far more similar to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s than to Trump’s. I mean, Tucker believes that we [Americans] are the reason that Iran hates us; that we were wrong to kill [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force Maj. Gen. Qassem] Soleimani; that we triggered the hatred of America around the world.

“In other words, he’s essentially apologizing for America—a reversion to the ‘blame America first’ reflex of the left of the late 1970s that Reagan rejected and replaced with a robust sense of unapologetic national pride and American goodness. What is stunning about Tucker is that he had such a position during the Black Lives Matter riots, but adopts the opposite course in foreign policy.”

As Wurmser correctly concluded, “You can’t make America great again by making it retreat again.”

It’s this crucial MAGA message that Levin has been shouting—figurately from the rooftops and literally from his mega-media platforms. May it reverberate more loudly in the administration than the ramblings of Tucker and the rest of the “woke right.”
Why Islamism’s Ideology of Resentment Focuses Its Anger on the Jews
In the best-case scenario, Syria could be seeing a lifelong jihadist putting away his AK-47 and presiding over an orderly state that tolerates religious minorities and has good relations with Israel and the West. Of course, one could hardly expect Syria to become a Western-style liberal democracy, but one can reasonably hope for something better than the secular totalitarianism of Bashar al-Assad or the Islamist totalitarianism of Islamic State. Meanwhile, President Trump praised the Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman for his transformative effect on his country—a transformation that includes turning it from a major incubator, exporter, and funder of the most extreme forms of jihadism to a force acting against them.

Could it be that the era of Islamism is coming to a close? Like Syrian liberal democracy, that might be overly optimistic. But these developments make Hussein Aboubakr Mansour’s reflection on the roots of Islamism especially germane. Those roots are not, Mansour contends, especially Islamic; rather he argues—citing the work of the great Bernard Lewis—that it is an ideology driven by resentment:
The radical is not simply angry; he is humiliated. And that humiliation is not processed as tragedy, but as betrayal—by history, by the West, by internal decadence, and above all, by the silent God who no longer seems to answer.

In classical Islam, dignity (karāma) was grounded in submission to divine law. But that law has been politically neutralized and culturally forgotten. In its absence, dignity must now be asserted through power. Not the power of intellectual excellence or moral exemplarity—but the brute power of retaliation. The jihadist does not want to purify society; he wants to punish it. His religion is not a source of transcendent humility, but of absolute self-righteousness. His God does not judge him; his God affirms him.

This inversion is critical: the classical Muslim feared God; the radical invokes Him to sanctify his fury. . . . There is no room [in the radical’s worldview] for confusion, ambiguity, or introspection—only the raw certitude of the aggrieved.

And central to this aggrievement is the Jew.

The Jew, especially the sovereign Israeli Jew, embodies everything the radical cannot reconcile: historical continuity, technological competence, democratic survival, theological confidence. The Jew is not hated as a person, but as a mirror. A mirror that reflects the Arab world’s fall, and thus must be shattered.


NYT's: Trump Administration Escalates Harvard Feud With New Justice Dept. Investigation
The Trump administration is investigating whether Harvard’s admissions policies comply with a Supreme Court ruling that ended affirmative action, opening a new front in its widening effort to bring the institution to heel.

In a letter on Monday, the Justice Department notified Harvard about an investigation into whether its admissions process had been used to defraud the government. The inquiry was opened under the False Claims Act, a law designed to punish those who swindle the government, according to the letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times.

The investigation adds to the mounting pressure on the nation’s oldest, wealthiest university to overhaul its admissions, curriculum and hiring practices to align with President Trump’s political agenda. The Education Department also informed Harvard earlier this month that its admissions policies were the subject of a new compliance review to determine whether the university was racially discriminating against undergraduate applicants, according to a letter from the agency that was also seen by The Times.

The compliance review and the Justice Department investigation have not been previously reported. Targeting a university under the False Claims Act is highly unusual, reflecting the administration’s increasingly aggressive tactics.

False Claims Act investigations typically focus on contractors accused of bilking the government. If it is found liable, Harvard will have to return money to the government and could be fined hundreds of millions of dollars.


Harvard settles with Jewish student who sued school for ignoring campus antisemitism
Harvard University has settled a high-profile lawsuit by an Orthodox Jewish student who accused the Ivy League school of ignoring antisemitism on campus.

Alexander Kestenbaum, who is known as Shabbos, and Harvard jointly agreed to end the case, according to a dismissal notice filed on Thursday in Boston federal court.

“Harvard and Mr. Kestenbaum acknowledge each other’s steadfast and important efforts to combat antisemitism at Harvard and elsewhere,” the university says in a statement. “Harvard and Mr. Kestenbaum are pleased to have resolved the litigation.”

Settlement terms are not disclosed. Lawyers for Kestenbaum do not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The settlement came four months after Harvard promised additional protection for Jewish students, as it resolved two lawsuits claiming it was a hotbed of rampant antisemitism.

Both lawsuits were among many accusing universities of encouraging antisemitism after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, terror onslaught in southern Israel, which sparked the ongoing Gaza war and led to pro-Palestinian protests on many American campuses.

Jewish students say Harvard tolerated their being maligned as “murderers” and subjected to viral attacks, and accused the university of hiring professors who promoted anti-Jewish violence and spread antisemitic propaganda.

The lawsuits were brought by Students Against Antisemitism, and by Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.

Kestenbaum was a plaintiff in the Students Against Antisemitism lawsuit, but did not settle at the time.


Stephen Pollard: The Israel-Trans Protest Nexis
One of the key features of both these ideologies is their cult-like quality, which leads not only to an inability to engage in rational debate or calm protest but to activists who cannot comprehend that you do not win converts, let alone an argument, through ever-louder screaming and asserting moral superiority while labeling your opponents as inhuman. This notion that only those who support your cause are righteous is so blinding that it leads to contradictions that would be amusing were they not, paradoxically, so obviously driven by hate.

So, for example, Jo Grady, the general secretary of the University and College Union (the trade union for British academics, which is one of the leading promoters of the trans agenda), posted pictures of trans activists at the Parliament Square demo with the caption, “Hate will never win.” One of the photographs showed a placard reading “The only good TERF” (which stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”)—here, there was a picture of a stick figure on a gallows, followed by the word “TERF.” Another slogan seen on placards at the demo was “Suck my d—k”, a progressive slogan so long as it comes from someone who says he identifies as a woman. Another appeared to show bullet holes with the message “I will make you listen.”

The protesters also vandalized many of the monuments in Parliament Square, including the iconic statue of the early-20th-century suffragette Millicent Fawcett holding a banner reading “Courage calls to courage everywhere.” It is the only statue of a woman anywhere outside Parliament and has become a rallying point for women’s rights campaigners. This made it a compelling target, and trans activists painted the words “fag rights” on the banner, neatly demonstrating their contempt for actual women.

At a demonstration in Dundee in Scotland on the same day, a trans woman called Sophie Molly gave a speech in which he described J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter author who has been one of the most consistently outspoken defenders of biological science and women’s rights, as a “bitch” and declared, “We should all take a shite on you.” The crowd cheered. Last year Molly—who describes himself on his X profile as “pro-gressive”—posted that Rowling was a “torn faced cow.” This idea that trans and pro-Palestine activists are the real progressives gives them license to go after their opponents in the most garish manner, since by definition their opponents are bigots who deserve no respect. In December 2024, Rowling wrote about the “thousands of threats of murder, rape and violence” she has received. “A trans woman posted my family’s home address with a bomb-making guide.…My eldest child was targeted by a prominent trans activist who attempted to doxx her and ended up doxxing the wrong young woman.…I could write a twenty-thousand-word essay on what the consequences have been to me and my family.”

Molly was selected to stand for the Green Party in the 2024 parliamentary election, although he was later de-selected. The Green Party was long ago captured by trans and Palestine activists. At a demo in Aberdeen, Scottish parliamentarian Maggie Chapman, one of the country’s leading trans-supporting activists and the deputy convener of the Scottish Parliament’s equalities committee, attacked “the bigotry, prejudice and hatred that we see coming from the Supreme Court and from so many other institutions in our society.” Accusations of bigotry are the leitmotif of Chapman’s attacks on those with whom she disagrees. At an anti-Israel rally last year, she demanded that Israel be excluded from international sport: “Sport is meant to be for everyone, but Israel is a racist apartheid state.” Chapman posted on X after the October 7 attack that it was “decolonization,” not “terrorism,” and was “a consequence of apartheid, of illegal occupation and of imperial aggression by the Israel state.”

But it is not only Greens, of course. This twin-track ideology is repeatedly a feature of the rhetoric of Labour Party politicians in Britain. The current foreign secretary, David Lammy, once described opponents of self-ID (by which men could choose to be legally recognized as women, until the Supreme Court ruling invalidated the practice) as “dinosaurs”—and his first acts in office were to restore UK funding to UNRWA, to impose a symbolic arms-sales embargo on Israel, and to support the International Court of Justice’s arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.


NYU withholds diploma from student who ‘lied’ about graduation speech, protested Israel
New York University decried a student’s decision to attack Israel during a commencement speech and is withholding the student’s diploma, the school announced on Wednesday.

“NYU strongly denounces the choice by a student at the Gallatin School’s graduation” to “misuse his role as student speaker to express his personal and one-sided political views,” John Beckman, an NYU spokesman, stated.

“He lied about the speech he was going to deliver and violated the commitment he made to comply with our rules. The university is withholding his diploma while we pursue disciplinary actions,” Beckman stated. “NYU is deeply sorry that the audience was subjected to these remarks and that this moment was stolen by someone who abused a privilege that was conferred upon him.”

In an almost three-minute speech at the commencement ceremonies for NYU’s school of individualized study, Logan Rozos accused the Jewish state repeatedly of committing “genocide.”

“My moral and political commitments guide me to say that the only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine,” Rozos said.


UKLFI: Manchester Students’ Union BDS motion withdrawn following legal advice
A proposed BDS policy at the University of Manchester Students’ Union (UMSU) has been withdrawn following legal advice.

The policy proposal contained a litany of anti-Israel allegations and supported BDS against Israel. The Friends of Israel Society at Manchester University, assisted by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), wrote to UMSU, setting out why the proposal and UMSU’s procedure for considering it were unlawful. The following points were made:
1 UMSU’s procedure did not allow opponents of the policy a fair opportunity to counter its many false and one-sided allegations by a communication circulated to students before they would vote on it. 2 The proposed policy promoted a BDS campaign by calling on the University to cut all ties with Israel, including exchange programmes with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and joint research programmes with Tel Aviv University. It also endorsed earlier, unlawful BDS motions, implying that they were lawful, even though UMSU had accepted that it would be unlawful to put the earlier motions into effect. Boycott campaigns are outside a student union’s charitable objects and academic boycotts contravene the Equality Act. 3 The proposed policy provided for UMSU to fund amplifying the voices of Palestinians. This would constitute unlawful discrimination against students with ethnicities other than Palestinian in breach of the Equality Act 2010. It would also result in unfair allocations of funding to different societies in breach of section 22 of the Education Act 1994.

The vote on the BDS policy had already been postponed on 26 March 2025, pending legal advice, as previously reported.

On 2 May 2025 the legal advice was discussed by the Union Assembly Committee. According to the statement of UMSU’s Executive Officer Team, the legal advice contained 6 recommendations. The Committee voted to approve 4 of theme and an additional proposal from a committee member to mitigate the 2 that were not approved.

After this information and the amended policy were shared with the policy’s proposers, they decided to withdraw the proposal.
UKLFI: Psychotherapists cancel Islamophobia training session after speakers cross antisemitism threshold
The British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (“BABCP”) has cancelled a training session on Islamophobia and Mental Health after finding that proposed facilitators for the session had posted antisemitic social media.

Following a complaint from UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), BABCP commissioned an independent investigator to assist with its findings.

BABCP said: “Based on the independent review and our own further investigations we concluded that, on the balance of probabilities, a number of posts did meet the threshold of being antisemitic. As a result, and in line with our governance and organisational commitments, we have made the decision not to proceed with appointment of the proposed Facilitators to deliver training to BABCP Members.”

The BABCP has also told UKLFI that
- It will no longer allow the unqualified use of contested terms – such as ‘genocide’ in relation to the events in Gaza – to appear in its publications
- It plans to bring forward antisemitism training for CBT therapists
- It will publish an article by Dr Sandi Mann about impact of antisemitism on mental health in the next edition of its magazine

UKLFI had written to BABCP in mid-March 2025, with a dossier of information about proposed facilitators for the session on Islamophobia..

Facilitator 1 had shared social media posts which suggested that the “Zionist movement” placed “assets” from the State of Israel into the House of Lords and made references to “Zionist paymasters”. This facilitator’s posts described Zionism as a “racist and genocidal ideology” and said that Jewish schools which teach Zionism are “radicalising” pupils.

On 1 October 2024, this facilitator reposted a tweet expressing “pure joy” at the Iranian missile attack against Israel – a blatant violation of the laws of war, which absolutely prohibit the use of indiscriminate weapons which have the potential to land anywhere, such as missiles.

The same facilitator also reposted a tweet which saids “I hope Hezbollah wins against Israel”, and further acknowledged that “you can’t say this in Britain because you’ll get arrested”.

Facilitator 2 has proclaimed on social media that “any theory/practice to combat Islamophobia that is not-anti-Zionist is effectively meaningless”. In other words, this facilitator contended that in order to combat racism against Muslims, one must be racist against the vast majority of the Jewish population.
Student Arrested for Violent Storming of Columbia Library Was Featured Once at Anti-Hate Summit Hosted by NYC Mayor Adams
A student arrested last week for storming a Columbia University library—during which radicals distributed pro-Hamas propaganda and injured two security officials—was once hosted by New York City mayor Eric Adams, who lauded her commitment to peace and dialogue.

Dima Aboukasm, an anthropology student at Barnard College who studies "the intersection of healthcare and social justice," went to Gracie Mansion—Adams's official residence—as an honored guest at his "Abate Hate Summit." She attended the July 2024 event with Columbia student Eliana Goldin, who Adams said had managed to find friendship despite their different views about Israel's war in Gaza.

"Eliana Goldin and Dima Aboukasm are two @Columbia students who have found productive, peaceful ways to discuss political issues they disagree on and maintain a friendship. We can all learn something from their example," Adams said in an X posting. "Our nation is threatened by rising levels of dangerous political rhetoric that's turning into violence. We hosted the 'Abate Hate and Hate Violence Summit' to find productive ways to talk about hard issues, especially religious bigotry."

The conference brought together dozens of city officials, advocates, and students. The unlikely friendship between Goldin and Aboukasm was "one of the highlights" of the one-day summit, PIX11 reported. The event was organized by Norman Siegel, a longtime civil rights attorney in New York City.

Goldin declined to comment. Adams's spokeswoman, Kayla Mamelak Altus, told the Washington Free Beacon that the mayor stands by his remarks.

"The mayor’s comments remain accurate—this is a painful conflict, and while healing takes time, we should always try to speak to one another, not past each other," she said. "What we can also learn from this example is if you break the law, you will be arrested."

Adams has made fighting anti-Semitism a key priority during his time in office. Just this week, he unveiled the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, the first such dedicated initiative in a major American city.

Yet less than a year after the conference, Aboukasm was among the 81 radicals arrested after storming Columbia's Butler Library during finals week. The mob vandalized and damaged the library, and renamed it after Basel al-Araj, a Palestinian terrorist killed in a 2017 shootout with the Israel Defense Forces.
'Corpse of the Phallus,' Black Latex, and Circus Performers: Meet The Avant-Garde Artists Arrested For Violently Storming Columbia Library
Before Isaiah Decastro Nash was arrested for storming a Columbia University library, the philosophy undergraduate dabbled in poetry.

"The primordial trauma of existence is the death and rot of God. The corpse of God; the corpse of Death; the corpse of Time; the corpse of the Phallus," he wrote in "Sociotraumatics," a 2024 poem published in Gadfly, Columbia's undergraduate philosophy magazine. "The corpse of God is the corpse of the decaying phallus."

Much of the screed focused on religion, something Nash evidenced a curious relationship with.

"The Sabbath is the destruction of civilization. It is the non-time—the non-place—in which we actively construct Godhead; in which automatic event wages war on the sacred. It is the subconscious repetition of the retrospective end-of-time that maximizes the sacrificial," he wrote.

Nash was just one of a bevy of avant-garde writers, artists, and eccentrics arrested for storming Butler Library last week, a Washington Free Beacon review of online records found. Roughly 80 radicals stormed the Columbia building, renamed it after a terrorist, injured two security officials, damaged bookshelves, and distributed pamphlets praising Hamas before they were arrested.

One arrested student, Ridwana Rahman, wants you on your knees.

Rahman, a Muslim Bangladeshi and first-generation American born in Portland, Oregon, is in the second year of her Master of Fine Arts at Columbia, according to her website. One of her pieces the Ivy League university showcased in 2024, "Points of Contact (or, Who are you on your hands for?)," left little to the imagination, featuring "a low-hanging self-portrait photograph of her body clad in black latex juxtaposed with a series of glazed black tiles made of porcelain," according to a Columbia press release.

"I’m interested in being able to control the audience," Rahman said. "To see people get on their hands and knees—to kneel down with their body just to see my image—it reminds me of the power that I hold. I want a level of ambiguity, but I also want a very direct correlation between sex and religion and the photo establishes that."


Students turn backs on Jewish peers at meeting to reject antisemitism definition
In a display that Jewish community leaders have branded “openly antisemitic,” scores of University of Sydney students literally turned their backs on Jewish students speaking against motions at a Student Representative Council (SRC) General Meeting held on May 14.

The meeting was primarily convened to reject the university’s newly adopted antisemitism definition—endorsed by almost all Australian universities—and formally call for the elimination of Israel.

The controversial meeting, which initially struggled to reach quorum, passed five motions that Jewish representatives say represent “fringe extremist views” rather than the majority student opinion.

Most dramatically, when Jewish postgraduate student Kovi Rose condemned Hamas—a proscribed terrorist organisation—a large majority of the approximately 200 students present stood up and physically turned their backs.

“We need your help… you’re meant to stand for solidarity for minority groups on campus,” Australasian Union of Jewish Students (AUJS) public affairs coordinator Jack Mars pleaded with fellow students. “Quite frankly, we feel abandoned. You turn your back on us… You say it’s all some sort of conspiracy to silence criticism of Israel. That’s ridiculous.”

Controversial Motions Passed
Central to the meeting was the passage of motions, brought by the group “Students Against War”, rejecting the new definition of antisemitism adopted by all Australian universities in February and reaffirming calls for “a single, secular, democratic state across all of historic Palestine.” Additional motions demanded the university revoke its anti-protest Campus Access Policy, end exchange programs with Israeli universities, and commit SRC resources to campaigns against the university’s ties with Israel.

Anti-Israel activists speaking at the meeting claimed Israel had “no right to exist” and declared there was “no such thing as Jewish self-determination in Israel.”


Gary Lineker isn’t even the BBC’s biggest problem
At the BBC the rules do not appear to apply when it comes to Mr Lineker. And nor do the rules apply when hate is directed towards Jews. At our public broadcaster, there is zero tolerance of racism, except when it comes to anti-Semitism.

The BBC does not have a “Lineker problem”. It has an anti-Semitism problem of which Lineker’s social media post is merely a symptom. We should not be surprised that many Jewish employees of the BBC now find it a hostile environment to work in, one staff member actually calling it “frightening”.

For the problem extends way beyond this latest incident, with poison against Jews and extraordinary breaches of impartiality consistently undermining the BBC’s reputation. As just one example from a few months ago, the BBC Two documentary Gaza: How To Survive a Warzone scandalously gave a prime time platform to the son of a Hamas minister, without viewers being told of the connection to the virulently anti-Semitic terror group.

Then there is BBC Arabic, where the same failures of leadership have led to a toxic stream of Jew-hate, extremism and support for terror, all paid for by the UK licence-fee payer. In recent months a succession of “journalists” have been exposed in stories in The Telegraph for their extremist, anti-Semitic views, each seemingly worse than the one before. Most recently, a Mr Ahmed Alagha was revealed to have written that Jews are “devils”. Then it was revealed his apparent replacement, Samer Elzaenen, pledged to “burn” Jews “as Hitler did”.

In every instance the official BBC response has been so dismissive and misleading as to amount to gaslighting Britain’s Jewish community. Elzaenen, we were told, was simply one of a number of “eyewitnesses” reporting from Gaza. Yet basic research showed that he was presented to audiences as a journalist, someone credible rather than a man who seeks the genocidal murder of Jews.

How can Mr Davie and his senior team not see the distress their failure and complacency is causing the Jewish community at a time when Britain’s Jews are facing a surge in racist abuse and prejudice? How can Mr Davie not see the damage these failings on racism are doing to the standards and values of the corporation, and indeed to its very chances of survival, ahead of the coming debate on Charter renewal?

To see a British public institution fail so profoundly on issues of racism is truly unacceptable. The BBC’s blindness on anti-Semitism must end now.
“Bye bye, Gary!”: Sharon Osbourne gives Gary Lineker the red card, following CAA petition signed by thousands
Sharon Osbourne has given Gary Lineker the red card, saying “Bye bye” to the former footballer under Campaign Against Antisemitism’s social media post advertising its petition, calling for the BBC to cut ties with its highest-paid star.

The number of signatories on the petition is currently 6,000 and counting.

The petition, which was launched after Mr Lineker shared an anti-Israel video, can be found at antisemitism.org/firelineker.

The video misrepresented Zionism and featured a rat emoji.

On Wednesday, Mr Lineker issued an apology, saying: “It was an error on my part for which I apologise unreservedly.”

He also said: “I would never knowingly share anything antisemitic. It goes against everything I believe in.”

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “The game is up. Gary Lineker has been playing the public for fools by pretending to be one. He can’t get away with posing as a knowledgeable campaigner and simultaneously claiming to be an ignoramus who had no idea that portraying people as rats is dehumanising. He’s had too many chances to apologise and now everyone can see through him. The BBC would do well to follow the lead of Sharon Osbourne and thousands of others who have signed our petition demanding that Mr Not So Nice Guy is given the red card.”
FDD: Hamas ‘Arrow Unit’ Unveils Its Machinery of Repression in Gaza
Executions and Beatings
Recent examples demonstrate Hamas’s willingness to use violence against the civilian population it purports to defend as demonstrations against its refusal to compromise, and thereby allow the restoration of humanitarian aid, have multiplied across Gaza.

On May 10, the Hamas-affiliated news agency GazaNow reported that a firing squad from the Arrow Unit had executed two accused “collaborators” with Israel.

The previous day, footage uploaded to social media showed street-level assaults committed by masked members of the unit armed with iron rods, batons, and firearms.

Background of the Arrow Unit
On November 16, 2024, the Quds Press reported that the Interior Ministry created the Arrow Unit within Gaza’s police force to secure the “home front from any suspicious attempts to destabilize social stability.” The unit comprises Hamas police, operatives from its security forces, and volunteers.

Although the Arrow Unit is nominally tasked with law enforcement, its operational conduct reveals a primary focus on preserving Hamas’s authority through coercion and fear. Rather than upholding the rule of law, the Arrow Unit serves as an instrument of authoritarian control designed to reinforce the Islamist group’s grip over a population that has repeatedly made clear its discontent with Gaza’s ruling authorities.

Israel has targeted the leadership of the unit, recognizing its central role in repressing internal dissent among Palestinians. On January 2, an Israeli airstrike in Khan Yunis eliminated Major General Mahmoud Salah, who assumed command of Gaza’s police force in 2019 and who established the unit. On May 10, Israel killed the unit’s commander, Saqer Talib, in an airstrike in Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood.

Hamas Is Showing Strain, and Israel Must Take Notice
The documented rise in Hamas-directed violence against Palestinian civilians signals mounting internal pressure against the organization — a direct consequence of sustained Israeli military and strategic pressure. As Hamas’s grip on Gaza erodes, Israel’s military campaign needs to address the information war as well, highlighting the flagrant violation of basic legal norms by the Arrow Unit.

Without a peace plan for Gaza that requires Hamas to disarm, the postwar situation will be similarly bleak for the strip’s embattled residents, whose ability to obtain food, water and other vital supplies will be determined not by their needs but by the degree of loyalty shown to their Hamas rulers.
Committee to Protect Journalists: Gaza journalists speak out about Hamas intimidation, threats, assaults
The April 27 women’s anti-war demonstration in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia was small but significant — one of several recent protests criticizing Hamas, which has controlled Gaza with an iron fist since ousting its political rival Fatah in 2007. Designated a terrorist organization by many Western governments, Hamas is known for violently targeting and killing its critics.

“They even told me that I would be responsible if my wife participated in the demonstration,” said Abu Jarad, a 44-year-old correspondent for Ramallah-based privately owned Sawt al-Hurriya radio station. “I have not covered any recent demonstrations,” he concluded, recalling how he was beaten and interrogated for hours by Hamas-affiliated masked assailants in the southern city of Rafah in November 2023, accusing him of “covering events in the Gaza Strip calling for a coup.”

He only secured his freedom with a promise to stop reporting.

Another journalist told The Washington Post they feared covering highly unusual demonstrations in March 2025 would lead Hamas to accuse them of spying for Israel. A third said Hamas’ internal security agents sometimes followed journalists as they reported. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Their fears of reporting on opposition to Hamas seem well-founded. A statement by Palestinian Resistance Factions and Tribes in Gaza, which includes Hamas, condemned the protesters as “collaborators with Israel,” a charge historically used to justify executions. Israeli outlets said that Hamas had killed Palestinians who participated in the March anti-war protests.

In an interview with Reuters news agency, a Palestinian official from a Hamas-allied militant group condemned “suspicious figures” who tried “to exploit legitimate protests to demand an end to the resistance” against Israel’s occupation of Gaza. Armed, masked Hamas militants forcibly dispersed some protesters and assaulted them, according to the BBC. A Palestinian man carries a banner that reads in Arabic "Hamas does not represent us" during an anti-Hamas protest, calling ofr an end to the war with Israel, in Beit Lahia in northern Gaza on March 26, 2025.

Spies and journalists are ‘one and the same’
Abu Jarad reported Hamas’ threat against himself and his wife to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS), the official union for Palestinian journalists, and PJS publicly condemned Hamas for violating press freedom.

Prior to this, PJS had only published one other incident involving Hamas during the war — the brutal assault of Ibrahim Muhareb, who was beaten unconscious by armed men in plainclothes who said they were from the police investigations department. He sustained deep head wounds.


Interactive Holocaust testimony project shortlisted for Charity Awards
A groundbreaking digital project from the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) has been shortlisted for this year’s Charity Awards, the longest-running and most prestigious awards scheme in the sector.

HET’s Testimony 360, which aims to keep the memory and legacy of the Holocaust alive for generations to come, was created in conjunction with USC Shoah Foundation and is the first of its kind in British schools.

It was designed to support the national curriculum and help Year 9-13 pupils aged 13 to 18 understand the Holocaust.

Costing more than £1million to develop, it rolled out nationally in June 2024 and features survivors Manfred Goldberg, Susan Pollack, Hannah Lewis and John Dobai – each spent five days being filmed.

Students use AI technology to have a digital, interactive conversation with a Holocaust survivor, hearing their authentic answers and use VR headsets to explore the key sites associated with that testimony.

Karen Pollock, chief executive of HET, said the resource is “revolutionising how students learn about history in the classroom.”

Pollock adds: “Nothing will replace a Holocaust survivor standing in front of a captivated class of school children whilst they share their story, but 80 years after the liberation of the concentration and death camps and end of the second world war, we are at a crucial juncture where living history will soon be just history. This programme will help to ensure that the legacy of these precious eyewitnesses lives on beyond their lifetimes.”
Man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie in 2022 sentenced to 25 years in prison
A man who attacked Salman Rushdie with a knife in front of a stunned audience in 2022, leaving the prizewinning author blind in one eye, was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison.

Hadi Matar, 27, stood quietly as the judge pronounced the sentence. He did not deny attacking Rushdie, and when he was invited to address the court before being sentenced, Matar got in a few last insults at the writer. He said he believed in freedom of speech but called Rushdie “a hypocrite.”

“Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people,” said Matar, clad in white-striped jail clothing and wearing handcuffs. “He wants to be a bully, he wants to bully other people. I don’t agree with that.”

Rushdie, 77, did not return to western New York for the sentencing but submitted a victim impact statement in which he said he has nightmares about what happened, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said. The statement was not made public.

During the trial, the author described how he believed he was dying when the masked attacker plunged a knife into his head and body more than a dozen times as he was being introduced at the Chautauqua Institution to speak about writer safety.
Man who made antisemitic threats against Sen. Jacky Rosen sentenced to almost 4 years in prison
A Las Vegas man who sent antisemitic death threats to Senator Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Jewish Democrat, was sentenced to almost four years in prison Tuesday.

John Anthony Miller, 44, pleaded guilty to one count of threatening a federal official as well as two more charges related to the threats in December, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada.

The charges relate to a series of threatening messages left by Miller in October 2023, shortly after Hamas’s October 7 Massacre, on the office phone of Rosen, who has been a staunch Israel advocate.

In one of the October 17 voicemails, Miller allegedly said, “You done picked your side, bitch, and you done chose evil. I don’t give a f*** if you were born into it or not, b**ch, you are f***ing evil, bitch, and we are going to exterminate you.”

Miller was sentenced to 46 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release by a Nevada US District court. He had also made threats against the family of another US senator who was not named, according to the US attorney’s office.
Ex-Arsenal kitman to sue club after being sacked for anti-Israel comments
The former kit manager at Arsenal, who was sacked for posting anti-Israel comments on social media, is suing the club for unfair dismissal.

Mark Bonnick, 61, who worked at the club for over two decades, alleged his dismissal was “discriminatory” because it was based on his “philosophical anti-Zionist belief”.

After Arsenal was alerted to a catalogue of Bonnick’s social media activity about the Israel-Gaza war in December 2024, the club launched an investigation before sacking him.

In his legal submission, Bonnick cites five posts on X from November and December last year, including one from November 24 which said: “Yes it is all about Jewish supremacy & not wanting to share the land. Ethnic cleansing.”

Another from December 7 said: “Why should they be protected anymore than any other community? Some see this as the problem Jewish communities thinking they should be put before others.”

“Hamas offered to release all hostages in October. Zionist Israel refused. Persecution complex,” a third tweet, from December 4, read.

“You abandoned them … Refused to bring them home … Your silence was deafening … Now you want others to scream … Morals integrity honesty none … Mark of Cain,” read another post, from December 1.
French TV producer slammed for saying ‘Gaza is Auschwitz’
French television producer and host Thierry Ardisson has apologized for his comments on the situation in the Gaza Strip. On France 2 public television last Saturday evening, during the weekly “Quelle époque!” talk show, he declared that the Gaza Strip “is Auschwitz, that’s it, that’s all there is to it.”

His statement drew angry reactions within the Jewish community.

Yonathan Arfi, president of CRIF, the umbrella organization of Jewish institutions of France, declared: “No, Thierry Ardisson, Gaza is not Auschwitz. The memory of the Shoah is never so much called into public debate as by those who want to turn it against the Jews.

“Since October 7 2023, I have deplored the distress of all civilian populations, Israeli and Palestinian. But for what other conflict do we use these comparisons with the Shoah? No criticism of Israel justifies Nazifying it,” Arfi said.

The International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) said it “condemns once again the trivialization of outrageous comparisons and the prevailing confusion.”

“Nazism and the Shoah are not the alpha and omega of all national and international crisis. Gaza is not Auschwitz,” it wrote on X.
Solicitor loses High Court appeal after being struck off in case where CAA provided expert opinion
Farrukh Najeeb Husain, a solicitor who was struck off by the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) last year, has lost his appeal at the High Court.

In the appeal, Mr Husain was represented by Franck Magennis, who was instructed by niche UK-Qatari law firm Five Pillars Law.

Campaign Against Antisemitism recently reported Mr Magennis to the Bar Standards Board for knowingly or recklessly presenting to the Home Secretary, on behalf of Hamas, a false and misleading description of the 7th October 2023 massacre.

The case was originally brought by the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (SRA) against Mr Husain. Following the hearing, the SDT found a number of his social media posts to be antisemitic and offensive.

The SRA investigated Mr Husain, an immigration and employment solicitor, following complaints regarding his conduct on X, which was reported to the regulator by Bevan Brittan, a law firm that employed him at the time.

The SRA claimed that Mr Husain’s conduct online was “offensive” and, in some cases, antisemitic. Stephen Silverman, Director of Investigations and Enforcement at Campaign Against Antisemitism, gave expert witness testimony to assist the SRA in its case.

Mr Husain represented himself over the course of the hearings, which began in September 2023.

The posts in question were directed at Simon Myerson KC, a barrister, and Hugo Rifkind, a journalist. Among the posts were characterisations of Mr Rifkind as a “Zionist pig”, references to Mr Rifkind’s “eastern European kin” and the claim that Mr Myerson “wreaks of white privilege”.


The Shameful Double Standard Facing Israel’s Survivor-Contestant at Eurovision
Imagine telling a survivor of a mass shooting they can’t speak about their experience. That’s exactly what happened to Israel’s Eurovision contestant, Yuval Raphael.

Yuval survived the Nova Music Festival massacre on October 7. She hid with 50 others in a bunker. Only 11 made it out alive. Despite her harrowing story, Eurovision organizers told Yuval she cannot mention the attack, claiming that condemning terrorism would be considered too political.

Her song, an uplifting ballad about hope and resilience, was accepted by the competition. But critics online still claimed the lyrics were too political. Meanwhile, previous Eurovision performers, such as Ukraine in 2023, openly sang about the war with Russia without facing protests.

The hypocrisy is clear. Israel has followed every rule through its broadcaster, Kan. Yet broadcasters like Ireland’s RTE have called for “discussions” about Israel’s participation, applying rules to Israel that are ignored for others.

Yuval now faces harassment and even death threats simply for representing her country. Eurovision claims to be a celebration of music and unity, but when it comes to Israel, it becomes yet another example of the double standard Israelis face on the global stage.






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

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