Tuesday, July 15, 2025

07/15 Links Pt2: How DEI unleashed the monster of anti-Semitism; Elise Stefanik Takes CUNY Chancellor to Task; The Democrats’ Big Tentifada

From Ian:

Brendan O'Neill: How DEI unleashed the monster of anti-Semitism
It seems to me that the latent anti-Semitism of England’s middle classes has found a fresh outlet in Israelophobia. Under the faux-political cover of hating the Jewish nation, some are giving vent to that old, regressive loathing of Jews. And this is where the report falls down – with its solutions. It calls for the boosting of DEI – Diversity, Equality and Inclusion. Educational institutions and public bodies must ensure, it says, that DEI includes ‘education on anti-Semitism’. This strikes me as a staggering moral contradiction – because it is precisely DEI that helped to birth the new Jew hate.

It is not a coincidence that it is in the very institutions that are rife with DEI that anti-Semitism is now ‘pervasive’. And not just in the UK – on campuses across the US, where DEI is a neo-religion, Jew hatred has surged. We’ve seen students at Columbia call the Jewish nation ‘the pigs of the Earth’ and openly dream of death for their Jewish colleagues. At Penn University, Jewish students have been told to go back to ‘fucking Berlin where you came from’. There’s even been the daubing of ‘swastikas and hateful graffiti’ on campus. In America as well as Britain, the creep of the fascist imagination seems most pronounced in those zones where wokeness rules and diversity is sacralised.

DEI is Dr Frankenstein to the monster of the new Jew hatred. It is the very racial conspiracism of this bourgeois cult that has made life hard for Jews. For this hyper-racialist ideology ruthlessly sorts all ethnic groups into boxes marked ‘oppressed’ (meaning good) or ‘privileged’ (meaning bad). And it views Jews as the most privileged, the people with the most to atone for. It hangs a target sign round their necks, marking them out for the righteous opprobrium of self-styled defenders of ‘the oppressed’. An ideology that damns Jews as unjustly advantaged, and the Jewish State as uniquely barbarous, is an ideology that sooner or later will let the world’s oldest racism off its weak leash. And that has happened.

Anti-Semitism is not only a light sleeper – it’s a shape-shifter, too. There’s been religious anti-Semitism, racial anti-Semitism, and now woke anti-Semitism: a swirling bigotry fuelled by the blind righteousness of a half-mad activist class that genuinely thinks history is on the side of its hatreds. We don’t need more DEI. We need Jews and their allies to prep for the fight ahead. Because while history doesn’t ‘take sides’, it does contain lessons, and none as important as this one: Jew hatred must always be strangled at birth.
Yisrael Medad: Anti-Zionism is not all theoretical - they are violent by nature
Anti-Zionism's advantage is that it is shift changing in its character. It adapts itself to whatever trend of political thought becomes the topic of the day – Left, Right, and/or Center - and it assumes the rhetoric language of various ideologies and trends.

Bob Vylan can shout “Death to the IDF” at the Glastonbury Festival in England and American conservative isolationist Steve Bannon can demand “There needs to be a thorough FARA investigation into Fox’s relationship with a foreign power” and call its Jewish show host Mark Levin, “Tel Aviv Levin.”

On the other hand, the concept of an Arab country of Palestine, with a distinct people, never truly existed, neither in the minds of outside observers nor the Muslims themselves. It was a conquered land occupied by Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Mamluks, and Ottoman Turks.

The region of Palestine was never a defined geopolitical entity, but was fought over by two tribal confederations. Throughout the 16th century, there were frequent clashes between families across Palestine based on Qays–Yaman divisions and there was civil strife involving peasant fellahin, Bedouins, and townspeople well into the 18th century. An “Arab Palestine people” never truly existed, even in the mid-20th century.

The anti-Zionists are violent by nature, seeking to “globalize the intifada.” In Berlin this past week, pro-Gaza demonstrators demanded the return of the Islamist Caliphate.

Commenting on that campaign, pro-Israel British-Palestinian John Aziz said that whereas “Socialism was once the battle cry of factory workers and coal miners… today, it’s increasingly the pet ideology of upper-middle-class urbanites sipping fair trade soy lattes and chanting of their wish to globalize an intifada that they know little or nothing about.”

Anti-Zionism, moreover, is a wave that potentially will submerge more than just the Jews.
How the NYT Tokenizes Jews — and Mandy Patinkin Helped Them Do It
It’s the final scene of The Princess Bride and Inigo Montoya, master fencer and revenge-seeker, is at the window of the castle with Westley and turns to him. “You know, it’s very strange. I have been in the revenge business so long. Now that it’s over, I do not know what to do with the rest of my life,” he says.

At face value, it’s shocking, and your jaw drops. You aren’t hearing these lines within the context of the movie itself, but from the Jewish actor who played Montoya in 1987. Mandy Patinkin is using that line to describe Israel’s war in Gaza during an exclusive feature interview with The New York Times Magazine.

The interview covered a wide variety of topics relating to the Patinkin-Grody family’s lives and careers, including their most recent resurgence to popularity through their TikTok videos. Nevertheless, the NYT decided to clip the portion about their opinions of Israel and antisemitism for social media, making it all about Gaza and fueling a gross representation of a token Jew.

The NYT magazine knew this portion about Gaza and antisemitism would go viral. With approximately 111,000 likes and counting and about 40,500 shares, the tokenization of Jews is a guaranteed win. That’s why clips of any other part of the interview are absent.

Would the magazine have featured it if it had featured pro-Israel sentiments?


WATCH: Elise Stefanik Takes CUNY Chancellor to Task for Hiring Chief Diversity Official From CAIR: ‘Unacceptable to New York Taxpayers’
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) grilled City University of New York (CUNY) chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez over the school’s decision to hire Saly Abd Alla, a former employee of the pro-Hamas Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), as its chief diversity officer.

"In 2021, you hired Abd Alla as CUNY's chief diversity officer, and this role includes overseeing anti-Semitism complaints and initiatives. Were you aware at that time that this senior administrator you hired was previously employed by CAIR?" Stefanik asked during a Tuesday House Committee on Education and Workforce hearing on campus anti-Semitism.

Matos Rodriguez replied that Abd Alla served in "the central office with no responsibility over cases that have to deal with students or faculty." He maintained that the public university system has "expectations of total professionalism and compliance with all the rules and policies of CUNY."

Abd Alla served as the director of civil rights for CAIR’s Minnesota chapter before she joined CUNY. CAIR has long taken on anti-Israel causes and even cheered on Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack, with executive director Nihad Awad saying he "was happy to see" residents of Gaza "break the siege."

CAIR, Stefanik noted, was also once a "co-conspirator in a terrorist financing case," a reference to the 2007 federal trial for the Holy Land Foundation case, a Texas-based Islamic charity charged with funneling money to Hamas. A founder of CAIR's Texas chapter was sentenced to 65 years in prison in the case, and CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator. The New York Times nonetheless called Stefanik's statement inaccurate.

Stefanik called Abd Alla’s employment with CUNY "unacceptable."

"It obviously doesn't break CUNY's rules to have a senior employee who was previously employed by a terrorist-affiliated organization," Stefanik said. "That is unacceptable to New York taxpayers. It is unacceptable to American taxpayers."

Matos Rodriguez also admitted Abd Alla was still employed with CUNY.

"There you go," Stefanik said. "So no action, just words here today."


Georgetown President Says He's 'Very Proud' of School's Relationship With Hamas-Friendly Qatar
When Rep. Glenn Thompson (R., Pa.), meanwhile, asked Groves whether Georgetown employs any anti-Semitic faculty members or fellows, the interim president responded, "We have faculty that have the range of opinions on every issue facing humankind."

Thompson singled out one Georgetown employee, Emad Shahin, a senior fellow at the Qatari-funded ACMCU. Shahin described Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack as the "vision" for the change "we [Arabs] long for," adding that Hamas’s "vision represents us."

"That is not the Georgetown policy," Groves replied. "What we do in cases like that is to assure that the student welfare—the welfare of the GU community—is protected through events like that." He declined to say whether the university had taken any disciplinary action against Shahin.

Thompson then raised another ACMCU-affiliated scholar, Mobashra Tazamal, who serves as associate director of Georgetown’s Bridge Initiative research project on Islamophobia. Tazamal, Thompson said, reposted a statement on social media reading, "Israel has been recreating Auschwitz in Gaza for two years." He asked whether Groves thought it appropriate for a Georgetown employee to compare the Jewish state to Nazi Germany.

"I reject those kinds of statements," Groves said. "That’s not the policy of Georgetown, and I want everyone to know that, to the extent that that hurt Jewish students, Jewish faculty, Jewish staff at Georgetown, I apologize for that, but that’s behavior covered under the First Amendment on social media that we don’t intervene on."

Groves said shortly thereafter that Georgetown does not screen potential hires for anti-Semitic beliefs during its interviewing and vetting processes.

While U.S. law requires universities to disclose their foreign funding to the federal government, elected officials have accused them of skirting the rules and concealing the true sources of many donations.

Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R., Wash.) raised the issue with Groves, asking whether Georgetown has been fully transparent with the federal government in its reports of foreign funding.

Groves replied that the university "certainly attempt[s] to report all of [its] receipts from non-U.S. sources" and said he "would be happy to commit" to ensuring transparency in disclosing those contributions.

A June report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy found that Georgetown has underreported Qatari financial contributions by about $146 million and left an additional $102 million in grants to Qatari students at the Doha campus off its official disclosures. It also noted that Qatar funding has "significantly influenced Georgetown’s academic environment, research priorities, and faculty recruitment," including at the ACMCU, where 25 percent of graduates enter worldwide government service.


At House ed hearing, Georgetown confirms removal of professor who called for Iranian strike on US base
Robert Groves, the interim president of Georgetown University, told members of Congress on Tuesday that the school removed a professor who called for Iran to attack U.S. military bases in the Middle East.

Speaking at the House Committee on Education and Workforce’s latest hearing on campus antisemitism, Groves said that Jonathan Brown was no longer the chair of Georgetown’s department of Arabic and Islamic studies.

“Within minutes of our learning of that tweet, the dean contacted Professor Brown. The tweet was removed,” Groves told lawmakers. “We issued a statement condemning the tweet. Professor Brown is no longer chair of his department. He’s on leave, and we’re beginning a process of reviewing the case.”

A spokesman for Georgetown told JNS that Brown retains his faculty appointment as Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization at the university’s School of Foreign Service.

Shortly after the U.S. concluded airstrikes against Iran in June, Brown wrote on social media, in a since-deleted post, that he wanted Iran to retaliate.

“I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base, then everyone stops,” Brown wrote.

A specialist in traditional Islamic sources, Brown has attracted controversy for years over his academic views and anti-Israel advocacy. In 2017, he issued an apology for a lecture about the morality of slavery and rape.

“I don’t think it’s morally evil to own somebody, because we own lots of people all around us and were owned by people, and this obsession about thinking of slavery as property,” he said in the lecture.

During questions from the audience, the professor cited the example of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. “He had slaves, there is no denying that,” he said. “Are you more morally mature than the prophet of God? No, you’re not.”

A convert to Islam, Brown is also the son-in-law of Sami al-Arian, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to a terrorism conspiracy charge over his support for Palestinian Islamic Jihad and was deported from the country in 2015.


Will the ECHR open Britain up to every Gazan?
This evasion of democracy has a cost. Indeed, however sympathetic we may be to any individual case, it is striking how little weight the immigration courts give to the potential impact of their decisions on wider British society. Neither judgment pays any consideration to what it might cost to resettle potentially thousands of Gazans, should a precedent be established. The judges didn’t need to think about where we might resettle them, how we might integrate them, or whether they will be expected to return when the war is over.

Any sane asylum policy surely has to balance a desire to be generous to those in danger with the potential security risks to the UK. Several Hamas-linked terror attacks targeting Europe have been thwarted since 7 October 2023. And Hamas is notorious for hiding among Gaza’s civilian population. Yet nowhere does this factor in the judges’ remarks in either case. Proof, if it were needed, that decisions taken above the heads of the people, without democratic debate, can end up being very ill-considered.

Indeed, a flurry of other recent tribunal decisions has shown just how out of touch, if not deranged, an unshackled, unaccountable judiciary can be. Asylum has been granted on the most tenuous grounds imaginable, from having a speech impediment to having a son who likes foreign chicken nuggets. Even hardened criminals have been able to claim the right to stay in Britain indefinitely.

What all these cases illustrate is the rise of what former Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption calls ‘non-consensual legislation’. Judges and courts have been empowered, or have assumed the right, to bypass politics and democracy. They can impose their views on the public without any fear of pushback or reprisals. They can wield texts like the ECHR for blatantly political ends, such as opposing any and all controls on immigration or expressing support for Palestine.

This is not the rule of law, it is the rule of activist judges. And it is undermining both our borders and our democracy.
Jake Wallis Simons: The BBC has lost all sense of right and wrong
Obviously, this is a deleterious state of affairs. How on Earth can they trust such sources? The comeback is always the same: How on Earth can you trust the BBC? That is what they have done to us.

This is a disservice done not just by the broadcaster to itself, or even to the licence-fee payer. Given the corrosive effect of fake news, it is a disservice done to the very integrity of our culture.

What lies at the bottom of all this? Over the years, it seems the corporation has come to see its purpose as offering an interpretation of reality that will lead viewers to an enlightened worldview, rather than a transparent account of the facts.

Editors will often move the camera away from things that might lead the great unwashed to form illiberal conclusions. Or if such things are unavoidable, they will be given a sanitising spin.

Think of the al-Ahli hospital incident, in which damage from a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket was blamed on Israel. “It’s hard to see what else this could be really, given the size of the explosion, other than an Israeli airstrike or several airstrikes,” its correspondent Jon Donnison informed viewers.

This was the same reporter who had previously been forced to apologise after passing off a picture of an injured Syrian girl as a “heartbreaking” image of a Palestinian child hurt by the dastardly Israelis. What was he doing on the story?

Later, Jeremy Bowen, the international editor, admitted that his own coverage of the hospital strike had been “wrong” but insisted that he “doesn’t regret one thing” about his reporting. Consequences came there none. Given red flags like these, did the Gaza documentary scandal really come as a surprise?

Of course, the BBC has guardrails to protect its impartiality. But such checks and balances will never be adequate when the overwhelming cultural bias tilts in a particular direction. Like a drug addict trying to control his own impulses, there’s only so long a broadcaster can protect itself from itself.

You’ve got to feel for them. In the light of what seesm like an unspoken mission statement to educate the audience into its own worldview rather than transmitting the facts, you can see the BBC’s predicament.

The corporation seems simply desperate to produce a documentary about Gaza that is filled with residents opposed to Hamas who are suffering horribly at the hands of the Jewish state.

What the BBC keeps finding, however, is a society dominated by jihadi brainwashing, that militates its own children in the service of lies about Israel, and cares nothing for either life or truth. Indeed, that celebrates gruesome suffering in the most inhuman and macabre fashion. Hard, isn’t it? What’s a second-hand propagandist to do?
Bob Vylan dropped from European tour after Glastonbury controversy
Bob Vylan has been dropped from a European tour after the controversy caused by their performance at the Glastonbury festival.

The British punk-rap duo were accused of anti-Semitism after leading chants of “death, death to the IDF”, referring to the Israel Defense Forces, and “free, free Palestine” at this year’s festival.

Now, the group has been “removed” from supporting Gogol Bordello, a Ukrainian-American band, on their 37-date European tour across 13 venues.

“In the aftermath, we needed to evaluate the situation, and we decided to remove BV from the tour until we could fully comprehend the situation,” said Gogol Bordello.

Bob Vylan had already been taken off the bill for all of Gogol Bordello’s shows in Germany last week after Cologne’s Live Music Hall refused to let them perform.

A headline festival appearance in Manchester and another festival performance in France have also been cancelled.
Mohammed Hijab clashes with barrister in libel case against Douglas Murray
Social media personality Mohammed Hijab appeared in the witness box at the Royal Courts of Justice on Monday in a libel case he has brought against the Spectator magazine and its associate editor, Douglas Murray.

Hijab, who has 1.28 million YouTube subscribers and lives in St John’s Wood –where he told the court he had many “Jewish friends and neighbours” – is suing the magazine and Murray over an article published in September 2022. The article, it is alleged, suggested Hijab had aggravated racial tension between Muslims and Hindus in Leicester, which led to violent riots in the city that summer.

Hijab claims the article caused him reputational damage and lost him financial deals as a result. He also claims it caused him “to suffer damage to his reputation, distress, humiliation, embarrassment, hurt and injury to his feelings”.

The Spectator and Murray, however, say that as a public figure who has regularly engaged in controversial actions, Hijab’s behaviour is already subject to scrutiny. Any “adverse consequences” to the YouTuber stem from his own behaviour, not the article, lawyers for the magazine and Murray state.

Although Murray’s article focused on what happened in Leicester in the summer of 2022, his barrister, William Bennett KC, instructed by Mark Lewis of Patron Law, chose to direct his questioning of Hijab in relation to his appearances at two events over the weekend of May 22 and 23 2021 — first in Golders Green on Saturday and the next day outside the Israeli embassy.

Mr Bennett, closely questioning Hijab about his reasons for going to Golders Green on the Jewish Sabbath, was told: “I wasn’t paying any attention to it being the Sabbath. It wasn’t at the forefront of my mind.”
Doctor who asked ‘are Jewish News readers normal human beings?’ reinstated by medical tribunal
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service has lifted the interim suspension of a doctor with a history of spreading conspiracy theories about Jews and talking about “Jewish extremism”, apparently accepting her claim during her hearing that she was speaking “about Israel and Israelis”, despite considerable evidence to the contrary.

Dr Rehiana Ali was suspended last December, when the MPTS’ Interim Orders Tribunal determined to impose an interim order of suspension for a period of 18 months. However, this was overturned yesterday, with the tribunal citing article 10 of the Human Rights Act (freedom of expression). The three-person tribunal also said that it was “satisfied that there is no information before it to suggest that Dr Ali poses a real risk to public safety and, therefore, an interim order is not necessary or proportionate to protect public safety.”

Ali, who previously asked whether Jewish News readers were “normal human beings”, celebrated her suspension being lifted last night by tweeting: “Never compromise because our resistance is righteous.”

Interim Orders Tribunal hearings are generally heard in private, but Ali requested that this hearing be made public one. According to the document setting out the tribunal’s determination, which was sent to Jewish News, “Dr Ali submitted that she was being accused of anti-Jewish hatred and there was not a single tweet that demonstrates hatred of Jews by virtue of them being Jews.”

The tribunal document also said: “Dr Ali submitted that her Tweets criticising Israel did not occur in a vacuum, there is a live holocaust, and she has every right to criticise such an abomination. Dr Ali said that she did not talk about the Jewish [sic], she spoke about Israel and Israelis.”

The document also makes clear that the General Medical Council (GMC), which had originally referred the case of Ali to the GMC, supported the interim order of suspension on Ali being maintained – an attitude which the tribunal did not ultimately share.

The GMC does not have the ability itself to suspend or expel doctors – it can refer such cases to the MPTS. While separate from the GMC, the MPTS is accountable both to the GMC’s General Council, as well as to Parliament.
Health Secretary slams GMC for ‘failing publicly and abysmally’ on antisemitism
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said he will be “hauling in the GMC’s chief executive and chair” to explain why the public body is “failing publicly and abysmally in their responsibility to protect Jewish patients”.

In a fiery speech at a joint summit on antisemitism in the health sector, hosted by the APPG on antisemitism and The Office of HM Government’s Independent advisor on antisemitism, Lord Mann, Streeting cited “cases of medics who’ve said things that would make me feel uncomfortable [to be] treated by those medics and even unsafe being treated by the[m] and I am not Jewish.

“There are cases that our country’s medical regulator should be taking seriously, and they should be taking all steps necessary to keep patients safe and I do not see the evidence that this is the case.”

In address, Streeting cited the Jewish community’s long history of service within the NHS, as well as the Board of Deputies’ newly published Commission on Antisemitism, which was co-chaired by Lord Mann and Penny Mordaunt, the former Defence Secretary. The health secretary described the report as “pretty sobering reading.

“It concludes that antisemitism has crept into our country’s civil society in a way that hasn’t happened before, including our National Health Service.

“When the Board of Deputies identifies a specific, unaddressed issue of antisemitism in the NHS, I take that finding with the utmost seriousness.”

The Health Secretary’s comments also came as Jewish News published two separate stories providing examples of NHS doctors engaging in repeated comments about “Jewish supremacy”, explicitly rejecting the idea of making a distinction between Zionism and Judaism – to little long-term effect.
Zohran Mamdani intern declared activism is ‘all jihad’ in latest sign of radicalism in his movement
A former Zohran Mamdani intern proudly declared activism is “all jihad” and encouraged protesters to get suspended or arrested in defiance of the West’s “settler colonialism.”

“The true believer knows that none of this is in vain, that this is all Jihad,” said Hadeeqa Malik in the recently resurfaced video, using the controversial Muslim term for holy war.

“So, the conversation of doxing, the conversation of getting arrested and suspended, I think it’s time for Muslims to start to say alright, alright so what?”

According to Malik’s LinkedIn, she served as a Communications, Outreach, Policy, and Constituent Services Intern at the State Assembly Office of Zohran Mamdani for the summer of 2024. A photo shows the pair smiling for a selfie.

Malik, who is a student at City College of New York (CCNY), made her statement on a CUNY4Palestine webinar entitled “Islamic Political Activism,” which she shared to her LinkedIn account ten months ago.

It’s frightening proof that a radical faction of pro-Palestine youth activists appear to be motivated less by humanitarian concern for civilians in Gaza than by extremist fervor.

In the video, Malik refers to “genocide and colonization and settler colonialism,” and calls out other Muslims who haven’t taken an activist stand.

“If you’re not seeing this as your issue to deal with, then something is wrong, there is an illness, there is a disease, something messing up the system inside that’s telling you this isn’t your business,” she said.


The Democrats’ Big Tentifada By Abe Greenwald
Via commentary Newsletter sign up here. The full answer is useful because it reveals both the fear and desperation of the Democratic Party. Forget that Martin is too scared to condemn Mamdani for not refuting intifada enthusiasts. Martin is too scared to even say that that’s one of the “things” he disagrees with Mamdani about.

No one who’s been monitoring the direction in which the Democrats have been heading should be surprised by Martin’s lack of interest in anti-Semitic incitement. All the energy is with the Squad types, who’ve been overtly and slimily anti-Israel for years.

To “celebrate” such incitement as a welcome voice in the conversation, however, is a bit striking. The truth is that Democrats are desperate for numbers. Martin says, you win through “addition” because polls show that the Dems have recently become masters at subtraction. They are intersectional losers, hemorrhaging voters among virtually every demographic group in the nation.

Whether they can make up for lost ground by inviting terrorist-sympathizers to join them is a bigger question for the country than for the Democrats. If one of the U.S.’s two major political parties makes a comeback with a platform that explicitly includes anti-Semitic anti-Zionism, that’s the end of the American experiment as far as I’m concerned.

And who else is concerned? I ask this because I’m also troubled by the question that Martin was responding to. Here’s what Amna Nawaz asked him: “What about concerns, from some of your Jewish colleagues in particular, about him not outright condemning the phrase ‘globalize the intifada’ in a recent interview? Some of your Jewish colleagues have said that that could be very disturbing, potentially dangerous. Do you agree with that?”

This is a popular formulation, and it assumes two things. First that “globalize the intifada” is disturbing to Jews but few others. Second, it implies that Jews are merely hearing something dangerous in the call for anti-Semitic violence that may not necessarily be there.
Jeffries calls on Mamdani to reassure Jewish New Yorkers of their safety
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has called upon New York Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani “to reassure Jewish New Yorkers that he plans to prioritize their safety,” according to The Hill.

Jeffries, who has yet to endorse Mamdani, plans to meet with him this week.

Mamdani has come under fire from Jewish communities for his anti-Israel and anti-Jewish stances, as well as his refusal to condemn the phrase, “Globalize the intifada.” In a recent interview with Punchbowl News, Jeffries said that would be “part of our discussion.”

Mamdani won the Democratic primary for mayor in New York City in an upset against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on June 24.


One in six antisemitic incidents in Toronto schools are approved or started by teacher
Nearly one in six antisemitic incidents in Toronto schools are initiated or approved by a teacher or occur in a school-sanctioned activity, a shocking new Canadian government report revealed on Monday.

The office of the Special Envoy for Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism commissioned the report, which details the endemic antisemitism in Ontario's K-12 Schools.

Part of the reason for the report is that many of the reports of antisemitism in K-12 education have been based on anecdotal reports or are undocumented, and thus, the federal government wished to collate all reports into the survey to obtain a clearer picture of the situation.

The report is based on a survey of 599 Jewish parents and their reports of 781 antisemitic incidents in Ontario K-12 schools. Antisemitic incidents are defined as those that parents and their children consider antisemitic. At least 10% of Ontario’s approximately 30,000 Jewish school-age children experienced the antisemitic incidents detailed in the report.

It found that there is a significant disjuncture between the desire of Ontario schools to ensure that all students feel respected, included, and valued, and the treatment of their Jewish students.

The findings of the report
The report found that 40% of antisemitic incidents involved Nazi salutes, assertions that Hitler should have finished the job, and other Nazi and/or Hitler-related content. Surprisingly, fewer than 60% of antisemitic incidents refer to Israel or the Israel-Hamas war.

The report noted that this was striking, as more were expected to be related to the Israel-Hamas war, while in reality, more than 40% of responses involve Holocaust denial, assertions of excessive Jewish wealth or power, or blanket condemnation of Jews.

However, among the anti-Israel responses, more than 14% held Jewish school children personally responsible for aspects of the Israel-Hamas war. The report gives an example of a 9th-grade boy who, in September 2024, was accused by a classmate of being a “terrorist, rapist, and baby killer.

About 30% of incidents involved physical antisemitism, either assault (6.2%), vandalism (14.9%), or aggressive hand gestures such as throat slitting motions (10%). Spoken harassment, such as insults, expressions of hatred, and incitement to violence, was the second most common.
Faculties of Hate: How Professors Turned U.S. Campuses into Hubs of Radicalization
From classrooms to coordinated edits on Wikipedia, a network of academics is spreading hate, shielding terrorism, and rewriting the narrative one student mind at a time.

Last year, antisemitism surged across American campuses like never before. What started as protest became open hate, fueled not just by students, but by the institutions meant to uphold academic integrity.

At the University of Pennsylvania, students marched through campus chanting, “There is only one solution: Intifada, revolution!” Swastikas defaced Hillel buildings. Jewish students were stalked, doxed, and forced to hide their identities. A Chabad building was vandalized. Faculty, including literature professor Huda Fakhreddine, joined a “die-in” protest, and spread antisemitic and extremist rhetoric.

As professors and students are getting ready to return, the crisis is far from over. But how did elite students end up glorifying terrorism? Could this ideology really come only from student activism? Or is the main source still inside the classrooms, among the professors entrusted to shape minds? Let’s look at just a few examples. Huda Fakhreddine: The Polite Face of Radicalization at UPenn

On the surface, Huda Fakhreddine is a soft-spoken academic, an associate professor of Arabic literature at the University of Pennsylvania who teaches poetry under the guise of culture and art. In reality, behind this scholarly façade is a radical agenda. Fakhreddine uses literature to push extremist narratives, framing Palestinian poetry not as reflection, but as a weapon. In her classroom, Palestine equals resistance, and resistance means destruction.

Since October 7, Fakhreddine has repeatedly used her platform to defend Hamas, romanticize the October 7 massacre, and accuse Israel of genocide. Just hours after Hamas murdered over 1,200 Israelis, she posted: “While we were asleep, Palestine invented a new way of life”—a statement that praises the attack.

In October 2023, she spoke at a pro-Hamas rally organized by Penn Against the Occupation, where protesters chanted, “From the river to the sea,” and Huda was quoted as saying, “Israel is the epitome of antisemitism… it desecrates the memory of the Holocaust victims. It humiliates every Jewish person.” That fall, Huda co-organized the Palestine Writes Festival at UPenn, which hosted speakers such as Refaat Alareer, who mocked the killing of Jewish children.


Leeds MP criticised for signing letter urging immediate recognition of Palestinian state
The decision of the Leeds MP Alex Sobel to sign a letter calling for Britian’s immediate recognition of a Palestinian state and to press for the “unhindered resumption of humanitarian aid” has been criticised by the Leeds Jewish Representative Council.

The letter was created by the co-chairs of the Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East, MPs Sarah Owen and Andrew Pakes. Alex Sobel was one of two Jewish signatories – the other being Charlotte Nichols – in a group of MPs who include Naz Shah, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Rosena Allin-Khan and Dawn Butler.

Addressed to Foreign Secretary David Lammy, the letter was apparently triggered by the Israeli Defence Minister’s announcement of his plans for those Palestinians remaining in Gaza. The writers describe the plans as “ethnic cleansing” and say there should be “recognition of the state of Palestine” and “continuing support for UNRWA”, which they say is “uniquely placed to provide support and services to Palestinians across the Middle East”.

The letter does say that “securing the release of hostages” is important. It says that it is “unfathomable that Hamas continues to cruelly detain hostage taken in October 2023. They have been subject to cruelty, appalling conditions and unimaginable torment.They must be released immediately and unconditionally.”

Simon Myerson KC of the Leeds Jewish Representative Council told Jewish News: “I have no problem with a call for resumption of aid, but Israel and the Jewish community have a profound distrust of UNRWA for well-founded reasons to do with obvious co-operation with Hamas, which it refuses to accept or explain.

“The call for the immediate recognition of Palestine without calling for the surrender of Hamas may be well-meaning and well-motivated –but it is naive in the extreme. We do not believe a parliamentarian in a proud democracy should ever suggest anything that rewards terrorism. No doubt this was not the aim – but it is the effect.”

The barrister added: “We are also disappointed that Mr Sobel aligns himself with parliamentarians whom the Jewish community has every reason to distrust. It is a matter for him, but we would prefer him not to have done so”.


J.P. Morgan joins Island’s $250 m. Series E, valuing Israeli cyber firm at $5 b.
JP Morgan Growth Equity Partners has taken a strategic stake in Island, the Israeli-US company behind the “enterprise browser,” becoming the latest blue-chip backer in the start-up’s $250 million Series E financing at a valuation of roughly $5 billion, Island said on Monday.

The investment, made through JP Morgan’s one billion dollar growth fund, follows the March round, led by Coatue Management, and brings Island’s total capital raised to about $730m.

Other investors include Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, and Cyberstarts.

“Cybersecurity is at the top of the priority list for the world’s largest organizations, and Island is exactly the type of company we aim to support,” Paris Heymann, co-managing partner at JP Morgan Growth Equity Partners, said in the release. The arrival of the Wall Street bank “is testimony to the value we bring,” added Island co-founder and CTO Dan Amiga, noting that “many of the world’s largest banks have already chosen Island.”

Banking on the browser
Launched from stealth only in February 2022, Island says its secure browser now runs at more than 450 enterprises, including eight of the 10 largest US banks.

The software lets corporate IT teams bake security controls, data-loss prevention, and productivity tools directly into the browser layer, making remote work and bring-your-own-device policies easier to police.

The company employs roughly 500 people – about 200 of whom are based at its R&D hub in Tel Aviv – and is co-headquartered in Dallas. The company was founded in 2020 by Amiga, a former Unit 8200 officer and serial entrepreneur, and CEO Mike Fey, the onetime president of Symantec and CTO of McAfee.
The Markets Are Signaling Israel as a Clear Winner
Since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, the best-performing major stock market in the world is...Israel. After taking an initial hit, the market recovered fully in four weeks, and since then is up 80%. This ascent continued through the recent 12-day war with Iran.

The stock market kept signaling that the conflict would end soon, with Israel prevailing both militarily and economically. Despite all the international criticism of Israel for its multiple military offensives, a surge in foreign buying has fueled the rally in its stock market.

Founded amid poverty after the Second World War, Israel is one of the few countries to have risen from the developing into the developed ranks. Its $550 billion economy is among the largest 30 in the world. Israel spends more than 6% of GDP on research and development - more than any other nation and over double the global average. About half of R&D funding comes from foreign multinationals, many involved in defense-related industries.

With more start-ups per head than any other country, Israel's business culture is closer to that of California. Half of its exports are tech products. GDP per head has nearly tripled since 2000 to more than $55,000, rising from 50 to 70% of the level in the U.S.


Ilana Gritzwesky, former Gaza hostage, recounts abuse in captivity
Ilana Gritzwesky, a former hostage taken by Hamas during the October 7 terror attack, testified on the sexual abuse she endured while in captivity to the Foreign Policy and Publicity Subcommittee on Monday, following the publication of the Dinah Project report last week.

During a special Knesset discussion on public diplomacy that followed the release of the report on Hamas’s sexual crimes, Gritzwesky recounted her abduction, describing how she was transported to Gaza on a motorcycle between two Hamas terrorists.

While riding, the terrorist behind her sexually assaulted her. She lost consciousness before they even crossed into Gaza.

Upon arriving in Gaza, Ilana said she woke up on the ground, her shirt raised above her chest and her pants down. Seven terrorists were surrounding her. She told them that she was menstruating, which, according to her testimony, spared her from further assault.

Ilana shared the deep trauma she experienced: “I remember the gun pressed against my head, I remember them laughing as they dragged me by my hair, I remember dirty hands stealing everything I was.”

She added: “I became property, a captive they could come and touch, leaving me in nothing but underwear and a bra whenever they wanted.”

Ilana also called for the return of all hostages still held by Hamas, including her partner, Matan Zangauker. “My country is silent,” she said, addressing Prime Minister Netanyahu. “Why does your political fear outweigh the lives of real people? You won’t be remembered for your speeches, but for your actions.”
'Humbled by the experience': David Draiman on emotional meeting with Yarden Bibas
He takes care to mention again the large Star of David he wears on stage. "There certainly is no shortage of crosses at a Black Sabbath show. There might as well be one Magen David that's fine," he smiled.

But then something in him changes. His voice becomes softer, his heart opens wide. He speaks about Yarden Bibas. This isn't just another story; it's a piece of deep pain that connects people who never knew each other before.

Their connection began in the most difficult moments. Someone reached out to him and told him that Yarden wanted to use one of his songs at his family's funeral. Draiman didn't hesitate for a moment. "I was absolutely blown away that it would even be considered for something like that. You know, 'Hold On To Memories', that's precisely the type of thing that was written for. It couldn't possibly gain greater poignancy than through what is probably the greatest tragedy to befall the Jewish people since the Holocaust."

He shared how he followed the story. "I think everyone fell in love with the father he is. I never felt so close to another family's children as if they were my own. I think we were all so glued to our televisions, just watching every moment for a sign of hope that they were still alive. And I felt so connected."

The face-to-face meeting was a moment he'll never forget. "He's just the sweetest, most demure, most genuine human. But you can feel his pain, you can see the darkness in his eyes still. He's just the kind of guy you feel like you want to just give him a big hug. To weather that storm, to have your children, your most precious things in all of existence, murdered at the hands of savages, and to somehow find a way to keep moving forward, it's a crazy thing to even be a part of any part of this story. I'm humbled by the experience."

He stops for a moment and then adds something quiet, almost in a whisper. "You only dream that the therapeutic and cathartic nature of what you've created can do the same for someone else. That's what gives it life beyond your creation."




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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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