Pages

▼

Thursday, July 17, 2025

07/17 Links Pt2: ‘The New York Times’ gas-lighting crusade against Israel; The Silencing of Jewish Students; The Global Intifada Comes to American Museums

From Ian:

In Islamic Culture There Is No Such Concept as Defeat. It's Better to Die than Lose Face
Mosab Hassan Yousef, 47, the son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, defected to Israel in 1997 and moved to the U.S. in 2007, with his story revealed in his 2010 memoir, Son of Hamas. During a visit to Israel in June, he said:
"Hamas has spent 37 years building momentum, and people seem to forget they [the Palestinians] voted for them. They forget they funded Hamas from their own pockets - not just Iran....It's part of their religious obligation. Businessmen too - all under the table. How do I know? Because I was in Hamas leadership. I saw where the finances came from. Average people would walk into the mosque with tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars or dinars and slip it into my father's pocket or the back seat of his car."

"Of course, there are people who suffered under Hamas's iron grip in Gaza. I'm not saying there aren't. But are they any better? They all still see Israel as the common enemy. They may not agree with what Hamas did on October 7...[but] they're saying, 'It wasn't worth it.'"

"In Islamic culture...there is no such concept as defeat...It's victory or death. When they lose a war, they don't see it the way the West does. We were conditioned from an early age...all of it built on a refusal to accept what really happened - that our forefathers initiated the war against Israel's independence, and they lost. But in this culture, defeat is too shameful to admit. Everything is based on honor and shame, not on right and wrong, as in Western culture....Better to die than lose face."

"Palestine is a colonial construct. It's not even part of our traditional vocabulary - it's not in the Arab dictionary. 'Palestine' was a name for a region at best, not a country. As for so-called Palestinians, we don't actually have anything concrete to support our existence as a nation or an ethnicity - nothing except for this ugly flag and the keffiyeh, a scarf actually coming from Iraq....Am I really supposed to die for this falsehood? For the madness of people who thrive on corruption and violence and expect everyone else to join them?"
‘The New York Times’ gas-lighting crusade against Israel
The New York Times should consider adopting the Jerusalem cross as its new logo to represent its crusade against Israel and the Jewish people. With a steady stream of slanted reporting and a roster of columnists united by their hostility to Israel (with the lone exception of columnist Bret Stephens), the Times has transformed itself from a paper of record into a platform for moral inversion.

Here’s the journalistic trick for looking credible while advancing a political agenda: Choose sources that support your point of view. It is particularly effective when those sources are anonymous, making it impossible to know their agenda. Times reporters do this routinely, typically quoting U.S. State Department Arabists who they know share their anti-Israel views. Sometimes, they quote sympathetic “experts” to give their bias a veneer of authority.

The op-ed page is worse. It runs on the adage that “man bites dog” is news, which in this case translates into prioritizing Jewish critics of Israel. These “As a Jew” pieces—by academics or activists who use their identity to launder moral attacks—are a staple. A recent example: Brown University professor Omer Bartov, who accused Israel of “genocide” while virtually ignoring the massacre that triggered the war.

Bartov is supposed to be taken seriously because he teaches Holocaust and genocide studies. Because it has not been the site of encampments and public confrontations like Columbia, Brown’s tolerance of anti-Israel and antisemitic students and faculty has gone largely unnoticed. Bartov has been railing against the Israeli government for years and signed the antisemitic Elephant in the Room screed, making him an obvious choice for the op-ed page.

As with most media coverage of the Gaza war, logic is missing from his article. He did not mention the word terrorism even once. His only references to Oct. 7—the day Hamas butchered more than 1,200 Israelis, took 251 hostages, and hid behind civilians in mosques, schools and hospitals—were cursory. Remarkably, he declared within a month of the terrorist attacks that Israel had committed war crimes, as though Hamas’s atrocities demanded no meaningful accounting.

His core claim of genocide hinges on intent. But the quotes he offers from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do not call for the destruction of a people; they call for the destruction of a terrorist army. Netanyahu said that Hamas would pay a “huge price,” that the Israel Defense Forces would turn Hamas-infested areas “into rubble” and urged “residents of Gaza” to evacuate. If anything, those are statements of intent to protect civilians, not to eliminate them.

Bartov fails to mention that it is the Hamas charter that calls for the genocide of the Jews. Had Hamas not committed a massacre on Oct. 7, not a single Palestinian civilian would have lost their life in Gaza.

Like other detractors, Bartov has inverted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was a reaction to the Nazi crimes against the Jews, to blame the victims. The convention defines genocide as an “intention to destroy, wholly or partially, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, per se.”
Rightwing Anti-Semites Seek to Undermine America’s Moral Authority on the World Stage
Last week, at a major gathering of young American conservatives, the Internet talk-show host Tucker Carlson complained of undue Israeli influence over U.S. foreign policy, made insinuations about Jewish disloyalty, and averred that the deceased investor-cum-procurer Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent. Such rhetoric is typical of Carlson, who is also a sharp critic of American support for its Middle Eastern allies against Iran, for Ukraine in its war with Russia, and for Great Britain in its war with the Axis. And he represents a growing segment of opinion on the American right that is no longer confined to the fever swamps.

Rebeccah Heinrichs examines the worldview behind Carlson’s anti-Americanism, which she dubs the “1939 Project” in an analogy to the series of New York Times articles arguing that America’s original sin occurred in 1619:
Carlson’s views might seem outlandish, but he isn’t dumb. He is among the savviest operators out there. And he is well aware that anti-Israel invective and conspiracy thinking attracts attention in a culture that has lost trust in expertise and institutions—and is hunting for a scapegoat for America’s very real challenges.

But if the 1939 Project people are right, and Winston Churchill was in fact the warmonger, and if Hitler really wanted peace and perhaps had a point about the outsize and nefarious impact of Jewish people, and if the United States was wrong to drop the atomic bombs, then NATO was a mistake, the ties to the nation of Israel is a mistake, and none of the post-World War II international order is worth maintaining today, let alone restoring or defending.

[The goal is] to loosen the affection and support Americans feel for and have for our allies in Europe and Israel. This is necessary to weaken the American people’s support for U.S. statecraft in the world, whether in the form of sanctions, military deployments, or military action in defense of its allies and stated and official interests. Their increasingly casual anti-Semitism is not simply evil—it is strategic. It has become the glue that binds the various strains of the insurgent ideology.


The anti-Semitism row tearing rock apart
Draiman is unusual in the music industry for his outspoken support of Israel before and during the current war in Gaza, which was sparked by the Hamas attacks of October 7 2023. He was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York and moved to Chicago as a child. Growing up, he sang traditional Jewish songs during religious festivals, which “led to choir and cantorial training”, and when he was in his early teens, Draiman was leading the singing at services as well as discovering his love of rock through the likes of the Sex Pistols and The Cure.

So devoted was Draiman to his faith that he has said that he was “about two years away from being ordained as a rabbi” before suffering a “crisis of conscience”. Instead, after graduating from university he started work as a healthcare administrator, but gave up his six-figure salary to try and make it as a full-time rock star. It was a gamble that his parents thought “was nuts”, but paid off handsomely.

Draiman has repeatedly publicly sparred with Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, who criticised Disturbed for playing a gig in Tel Aviv (at which they played the Israeli national anthem) six years ago. Waters, who caused controversy himself in 2023 when he appeared in Berlin wearing what many said looked like a Nazi-style uniform (though he argued that depicting an ‘unhinged fascist demagogue’ has always been a key feature of Pink Floyd shows as a challenge to authoritarianism), is a long-time supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which lobbies for the cutting of ties with Israel.

“Regardless of whether it’s Israel or anywhere else, boycotting an entire society and an entire people based on the actions of its government is absolutely ridiculous. And it doesn’t accomplish anything,” Draiman said of Waters’s criticism of his band in 2019.

“The very notion that Waters and the rest of his comrades decide that this is the way to go ahead and foster change is absolute lunacy and idiocy – absolute. It makes no sense whatsoever. It’s only based on hatred of a culture and of a people and of a society that have been demonised unjustifiably since the beginning of time. You wanna be able to bring people together? You wanna effect social change on a real level? Bring them together for a concert.”

For all the talk about bringing people together, Draiman appeared to have the self-awareness to know that not everybody liked what he was saying; Disturbed’s 2022 album was called Divisive. It only reached 13th and 17th in the American and British album charts, respectively.

“I think that we’re the kind of band that people either really, really love or really, really hate. There’s not a whole lot of in-between, right,” he told Revolver magazine that year. “I think that anything that’s worth feeling passionate about brings extremes of polarity to it. The art that should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, right? I’ve definitely figured out how to come to peace with it. I like the fact that people are passionate one way or the other about what we do.”

While Morello has not responded to Draiman’s recent criticism of him, the members of Kneecap have supported their new champion. “We don’t care what religion anyone is…or if they’ve one at all. We love all sound c--ts,” they wrote on X on Sunday. “Smiling and signing bombs to murder kids and other people’s families just makes you a straight up c--t. Simple as. Free Palestine.”

Inevitably, as has been the case throughout this conflict, Draiman replied in kind later that day. “That shell was meant for Hamas. You know, the organization who has sworn to murder all Jews, not just Israelis, time and time again, including my family. You shoot at Jews? Expect Jews to shoot back,” he wrote to Kneecap.

“All innocent lives lost in this conflict are due to Hamas using their own people as cannon fodder so that they can gain the sympathy of those who are only too eager to jump on the Jew hating train. If the hostages were released and Hamas surrendered, the bloodshed would end. But neither you, nor Hamas really want that. Because without dead martyred Palestinians to fuel your zeitgeist, both you and them lose power,” Draiman added.

“Enjoy your five minutes gentlemen. It could have been done with your art, but instead you chose to do it with hatred. Bye now.”

Draiman may have said goodbye, but that is unlikely to be the last word in this increasingly fraught heavy metal conflict.
French town yanks music fest funding over booking of anti-Israel band Kneecap
The Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud, which hosts the annual Rock-en-Seine music festival, has decided to withdraw a 40,000 euro ($46,000) subsidy for the event due to its booking of Irish band Kneecap.

The Belfast-based rap group, which performs in Irish and English, has drawn criticism and police scrutiny because it has denounced Israel and praised terrorists onstage. Videos have emerged allegedly showing the band shouting “Up Hamas, up Hezbollah” and calling on people to kill lawmakers.

It is scheduled to play on the final day of Rock-en-Seine, which takes place from August 21 to 24.

In a statement late Wednesday, the Saint-Cloud city hall said it had agreed to provide the funding before the festival’s final lineup was announced, and that it had decided to withdraw the funding on July 3.

The city said it respects the festival’s programming freedom, and had not sought “to enter into any negotiations with a view to influencing the programming.”

“On the other hand it does not finance political action, nor demands, and even less calls to violence, such as calls to kill lawmakers, whatever their nationality,” the statement said.

Rock-en-Seine could not be immediately reached for comment.

Kneecap drew attention and criticism in April when it displayed the message “Fuck Israel, Free Palestine” at the Coachella music festival in California, where it accused Israel of genocide. Subsequently, the band had a performance in Scotland pulled over safety concerns while various shows in Germany were axed. The band has a US tour scheduled for the fall.

Kneecap member Liam O’Hanna, 27, known by his stage name Mo Chara, was charged in May in the United Kingdom with a terror offense after being accused of displaying a Hezbollah flag during a London concert last November. He denies the offense, and the band says its members do not support Hamas or Hezbollah.
Amsterdam concert hall offers a show to anti-Israel duo Bob Vylan
Paradiso, a feted concert hall in Amsterdam, announced on Wednesday it had offered a solo show to Bob Vylan, a British duo that recently highlighted the chant “Death to the IDF.”

The duo was originally scheduled to perform at the Paradiso with another band as part of a joint European tour that also included Germany, but the German venues cancelled the show because of the “Death to the IDF!” chants led by Bob Vylan at the Glastonbury festival last month, Paradiso wrote in a statement.

Two other Dutch venues—in Tilburg and Nijmegen—also invited Bob Vylan to perform there to allow them to hold a European tour, the De Telegraaf daily reported on Wednesday.

“Paradiso has now scheduled Bob Vylan for a standalone headline show in the Main Hall on Saturday, 13 September 2025,” said the management of the venue, which has hosted The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Nirvana, Lou Reed and U2.

“We are aware that a debate arose following their performance at Glastonbury, in which they strongly criticized the actions of the Israeli army in Gaza. Those words are not ours, but we recognize the right to be outraged by war and mass human suffering,” Paradiso added.

Earlier this week, Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema accused critics of Bob Vylan of “intimidation” against Paradiso and equated them with people who seek to boycott Israelis, because people opposed to the concert had placed a banner vowing to “fight” against the duo’s appearance there.
Hague Group announces anti-Israel measures, including arms bans on Jerusalem
A coalition of countries announced a series of measures, including preventing weapons transfers to Israel, that it said will bring about an end to Jerusalem’s war against Hamas.

The Wednesday announcement came after a two-day “emergency summit” of the eight-nation Hague Group in Bogotรก, Colombia. The Colombian and South African governments co-hosted the gathering.

The Hague Group was formed in January to bring the so-called global south together “to take ‘coordinated legal and diplomatic measures’ against Israel’s violations of international law.”

The group stated that all 30 states at the summit “unanimously agreed that the era of impunity must end, and that international law must be enforced without fear or favor through immediate domestic policies and legislation, along with a unified call for an immediate ceasefire.”

Twelve of the 30 pledged to implement half a dozen measures, including preventing the “provision or transfer” of weapons, military equipment and fuel and dual-use items to Israel.

Vessels thought to be carrying such products to Israel would be barred from transiting or docking at any participating country’s ports, and such vessels won’t be allowed to bear the flag of the 12 states.

Each participating state will also launch “an urgent review” of its public contracts to ensure they don’t support Israel’s “occupation” of Palestinian territory.

States must also “comply with obligations to ensure accountability for the most serious crimes under international law” through independent investigations and support “universal jurisdiction mandates,” which would put Israelis in the crosshairs of any state’s legal pursuits.

The 12 states are Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Malaysia, Namibia, Nicaragua, Oman, South Africa, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

Algeria, Botswana, Brazil, Chile, China, Djibouti, Honduras, Ireland, Lebanon, Mexico, Norway, Pakistan, Portugal, Qatar, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, Uruguay and Venezuela also joined the summit, as did the Palestinian Authority.


The Global Intifada Comes to American Museums
Last year, a small museum in Queens, dedicated to the work of the Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi, found itself thrown into disarray by its employees’ anti-Israel zeal. Edward Rothstein, assessing the incident and those like it at other museums, observes:
[One] rhetorical gesture used by the Noguchi protesters and by those reporting on it was to invoke the sculptor himself, who they confidently say “would condemn the current Gaza genocide.” What his stance would be on the matter, “there is little doubt.” Too true, there is no need to speculate where Noguchi stood on the “cultural and intellectual boycott” of Israel: he designed the stunning Billy Rose Sculpture Garden at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Rothstein argues that such outbursts reflect a deeper rot in the world of museums:
The activist artist will aim to undo the West’s purported evils, which are assumed to be, by definition, greater than those of any other culture, past or present. And so we get a culture that is restless, contentious, ironic, humorless, recklessly iconoclastic, and possessing great self-love for its supposed risk-taking and idealism. Being an activist has become the artist’s and intellectual’s self-celebratory vocation.
Public libraries peddle Palestine as a country, complete with anti-Israel propaganda
While much attention has focused recently on the indoctrination of our youth against Jews and Israel at universities and kindergarten through 12 schools, public libraries should not escape public scrutiny. Not only are there plenty of antisemitic and anti-Israel propaganda materials available to adults, but similar materials also target kids. Children across the country can go to their local libraries to find books and events that espouse fake history about Israel, along with the demonization of Jews.

A library in North Carolina, for instance, planned a “Family Cultural Festival” to “explore global cultures with food and crafts from Costa Rica, Syria, Palestine, Egypt and more.” After some pushback from the North Carolina Coalition for Israel community, the word “Palestine” was removed. In the meantime, the North Carolina Arab Caucus started a project asking people to donate “pro-Palestine” books to local libraries in Durham, Raleigh, Charlotte and other cities in North Carolina.



These events prompted us to review materials at the public library in Chapel Hill, N.C. We decided to focus on books for kids since they are a prime target for anti-Israel propaganda.

One of the most egregious items we found was a picture book called Baba, What Does My Name Mean? A Journey to Palestine by Rifk Ebeid. The words “Jews” and “Israel” cannot be found in it, and the Hebrew names of places are replaced with Arabic ones; for instance, Jerusalem is only referred to as Al-Quds. A page with a map of Israel says only “Palestine’s unique terrain.” On the last page of the book, a girl is given a “superhero” kefiyyeh while saying, “I know one day we will be free.”
Mamdani Takes the Off-Ramp By Abe Greenwald
Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here.
When David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan’s former grand wizard, went about trying to revitalize the Klan in the 1970s, he directed the hate group’s leaders to stop using the N-word in public. Was this because he had a change of heart about black people? Did anyone even think as much? No. He understood that softening your language is how you pretend to have softened your views. The easiest way to smuggle extremism into the mainstream is by couching it in superficially acceptable terms.

At least Duke had to come to that policy on his own. Mamdani has been coaxed by supporters for weeks asking whether he’d care to take a moment and hide his hate from the public. It’s cowardly Democrats who wanted this the most. Now that they’ve gotten it, they can proceed with their full-throated endorsements of the man they know to be a dedicated enemy of Israel and a devoted fan of Jew-haters.

The goal of those few Democrats who had criticized Mamdani on this score was not to expose his extremism but to protect it—and the Democratic Party. The same can be said whenever a Democratic anti-Semite is asked to apologize for her anti-Semitism: Just speak these words, so you can get back to hating Jews, and we can get back to ignoring it.

In 2019, Ilhan Omar apologized “unequivocally” after posting a tweet asserting that Republican support for Israel was purchased by AIPAC. The apology is all it took to satisfy her party. House Democrats soon scrapped a proposed resolution condemning anti-Semitism among their members. Yet here we are, years later, and Omar is still at it. Last year, during a visit to Columbia University, she charmingly referred to some Jewish students as “pro-genocide.”

The problem with focusing on one offensive statement is that it becomes a deceptive acid test of a politician’s true feelings. Once he passes it by lying, it’s taken as the genuine measure of the person. He’s then freed up to be exactly who he is. Mamdani has unchained himself.
What the Hell Is Going On: Will New York Elect a Communist Mayor? Seth Mandel Explains. Explicit
Last month, New York City took to the polls for their mayoral primary and the Democratic party has decided that a socialist, communist, terrorist supporting, antisemite, is the best candidate for mayor of New York City. Zohran Mamdani is a radical left “intersectionality salad”. Between his unironic quotation of Marx to raps about the Holy Land Five, we’re left wondering what New Yorkers are thinking and how Mamdani came to these “beliefs”. Is this really the path out of the wilderness for the Democratic party?

Seth Mandel is the Senior editor of Commentary Magazine who frequently writes on Israel, antisemitism, and national politics. Previously, he has worked as executive editor of the Washington Examiner print edition between 2018 and 2023, and worked previously as an op-ed editor at the New York Post.


Israel ‘deeply impressed’ by Queens College response to Jew-hatred
Ofir Akunis, consul general of Israel in New York, said on Thursday that he is “deeply impressed” by the support and commitment that Queens College has shown to Israeli students on campus.

The public college is part of the City University of New York system, in which many reported instances of Jew-hatred have been documented since Oct. 7. Queens College was one of the few schools that the Anti-Defamation League gave an “A” grade in its 2025 campus report card.

Akunis met on Wednesday with the president of Queens College, Frank Wu.

“I thanked President Wu, on behalf of the State of Israel, for not remaining silent and for standing up for truth and facts,” Akunis stated.

He also visited the Hillel on campus and met with community leaders, staff, students and faculty.

During his time on campus, Akunis made it a point to say that Qatar stands behind anti-Israel protesters on campus. “Just as it financed the construction of Hamas tunnels, it is now financing these campus protests. The truth must be exposed, and Qatar must be pressured to stop playing its double game,” he stated.

“Young crowds are chanting, ‘Globalize the intifada,’ without even understanding the practical implications of that phrase, destruction and the collapse of Western culture, all while exploiting American democracy to dismantle it from within,” he said.

“They shout ‘Death to America!’ alongside ‘Death to Israel!’ These calls demand clear and unequivocal condemnation—not understanding and certainly not silence,” he added.
The Silencing of Jewish Students
One result of the left’s pivot to Israel-Palestine has been to alienate many Jewish students from the far left, and, to a lesser degree, from the left in general. Prior to 2024, FIRE data shows that Jews leaned left of the average American student, including on elite campuses. But, according to the 2024 data, most Jewish students, even liberals, support Israel while non-Jewish students, apart from conservatives, do not. For instance, American students in 2024 were somewhat more likely to say that Israel rather than Hamas caused the “2023 outbreak of violence in the Middle East.” Among liberal Jewish students, 53% said Hamas started the violence and 20% that Israel did, placing them far closer to conservative Jews, 83% of whom said Hamas started it, than liberal non-Jews, just 14% of whom blamed Hamas.

When the encampments went up on elite campuses, Jewish students abandoned the far left in droves. The share of Jewish Ivy League students who identify as “very liberal” on a 7-point ideology scale declined from 40% before the encampments to 13% after they appeared. The proportion of “strong Democrats” tanked from 37% to 14% while the Republican share rose from 12% to 18%. Ivy League Jews went from being well to the left of the median Ivy League student to leaning right of the average.

But non-Jewish conservative students have not rallied to Israel, and clearly do not feel chilled by the left’s protests against Israel. While conservative students are twice as likely to blame Hamas as Israel for starting hostilities in October 2023, most see both as culpable or have no opinion. Just 38% blame Hamas. This means that liberal Jewish students are considerably more pro-Israel (53% blame Hamas) than conservative non-Jews.

Young conservatives prioritize “America First” and free speech over supporting Israel and combating antisemitism. Recent polling finds that conservatives under 50 have shifted from nearly two-thirds support for Israel to a balanced position. A University of Maryland poll finds that more Republicans under 35 attribute campus protests to Israel’s actions in Gaza than to antisemitism.

So conservative students on elite campuses have a weak sense of linked fate with Jewish students who are feeling hard-pressed by their liberal non-Jewish classmates. The result is an increasingly isolated and politically alienated group of elite Jewish students, who are likely to have an outsize influence on the future of Jewish American political loyalty.

Jewish students are at a crossroads.

Much depends on how the Trump administration’s targeting of elite universities unfolds. If it solidifies the connection between Israel and conservatism on campus, Jewish students could move into the Republican column in larger numbers. If conservative students follow suit by embracing the cause of Israel, this could smooth the path for Jews to move right. Liberal students could then react by policing the right-wing minority more aggressively, reversing conservatives’ recent gains in freedom of expression.

But another scenario is possible, in which the Tucker Carlson isolationist wing of the MAGA movement detaches young Republicans from Israel. Trump could make a deal with Harvard, Columbia, and other universities, weakening the focus on antisemitism. If so, Jewish students—and perhaps American Jews more broadly—could find themselves caught between the antipathy of the left and the apathy of the right in a no-man’s-land of political alienation.
Jewish student can take Berlin university to trial over failure to combat antisemitism, judge rules
Berlin judges have approved a Jewish student’s request to go to trial against the Free University of Berlin (FU) over its alleged failure to combat antisemitism.

Lahav Shapira was attacked and wounded by another student in February 2024, and subsequently accused the university of not preventing antisemitic discrimination, thus violating the Berlin Higher Education Act. Section 5b (2) of the act says that universities are obliged to prevent discrimination on the grounds of gender, ethnic origin, racist or antisemitic attribution, and to eliminate existing discrimination.

Presiding judge Edgar Fischer of the Administrative Court of Berlin ruled on Tuesday that a trial will be needed to determine whether the university has taken sufficient measures to protect Jewish students. The trial is expected to take place in October.

According to Tagesspiegel, Shapira’s lawyer Kristin Pietrzyk hailed the judges’ decision as a “great success.”

“The court has made it clear that the university must explain itself,” she said. “It will be instructive to hear what measures the university has taken.” This comes despite FU claiming it was not inactive, with its lawyers requesting that Shapira’s lawsuit be dismissed. The judge, however, disagreed, heeding Shapira’s claim that the hostile environment created hindered his educational experience. He told the court that pro-Palestinian groups had held anti-Israel and antisemitic events – including a student meeting on the day of the trial, named “How we globalize the Intifada.”

“To take seminars, you have to accept that you will be insulted,” he said, adding that in some cases, rooms were blocked.
EXCLUSIVE: Columbia To Meet With Trump Administration To Finalize Deal as Left-Leaning Committee Searches for New University President
Columbia University leaders are set to meet with a senior Trump administration official on Thursday to finalize the terms of a deal that would restore the vast majority of the school’s federal funding and resolve the civil rights complaints against the school.

The draft deal, which sources stressed is subject to change until President Donald Trump signs off on it, will see Columbia pay a $200 million fine and commit to releasing admissions and hiring data that federal officials say will ensure the university is complying with the Supreme Court’s prohibition on affirmative action. And as of Wednesday evening, the situation remained fluid, with people on both sides lobbying for changes in the final agreement.

At the same time, the current deal is a far cry from a set of more burdensome demands the administration itself made in early April, when it sent Columbia administrators a letter outlining a dozen demands it said the school needed to meet in order for the federal government to restore the $400 million in grants and contracts that had been slashed the previous month.

The demands, reported here for the first time, included major changes to the governance of the university: the appointment of three new trustees to a five-member executive committee to oversee reforms to the school; changes to the University Senate, which has rejected proposals critics say are essential to forcing change on campus, including a ban on masked protests; and the formation of a presidential search committee capable of selecting a reform-minded president.

The university almost signed off on that agreement, sources said. Then, on April 11, the Trump administration sent a similar letter to Harvard University, though some administration officials would later tell the New York Times they did so mistakenly. Days later, Harvard’s lawyers said it would not comply with Trump’s demands and went on to file a lawsuit against the administration.

Harvard’s pugilistic response created the impression among Columbia’s leaders that they could not strike a deal with the Trump administration as another Ivy League school was manning the ramparts, sources say.

Columbia’s interim president, Claire Shipman, went on to issue a statement the same day that Harvard indicated it was poised to fight the administration insisting that she would "reject heavy-handed orchestration from the government that could potentially damage our institution and undermine useful reforms that serve the best interests of our students and community."
On the Fourth of July, These Radicals Made Plans to Topple America
While the rest of the United States celebrated American independence on July 4, a rogues’ gallery met in Chicago to discuss how to dismantle our constitutional republic. The event, Socialism 2025, was billed as “a four-day conference bringing together thousands of socialists and radical activists from around the country” to discuss “social movements, abolition, Marxism, decolonization, working-class history, and the debates and strategies for organizing today.” Held every Fourth of July weekend, this conference, which meets in person and livestreams to YouTube, is “a place where activists share lessons from their struggles—from Palestine solidarity campaigns to the fight for gender liberation, from striking workers to the struggle to stop the destruction of the planet, the fight against racism, migrant justice, and more.”

As video from the event reveals, this wasn’t just a fringe gathering. The speakers’ roster included dozens of influential figures—Ivy League professors, faculty from top public universities, current and former leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union, Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers, and UAW president Shawn Fain. Attendees praised mass rioting, called for dismantling higher education, advocated abolishing the family, and openly called for ending America as we know it.

Multiple professors endorsed using the university as a power base to destabilize the status quo and carry out their political designs. University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi noted that, while the university is “evil” and a “colonial landlord,” she teaches at one because it’s “one of the biggest employers in the city of Chicago . . . a place where I have access to thousands of people that I could potentially organize. . . . This is where I need to build power.” Similarly, Princeton University’s Lorgia Garcรญa-Peรฑa said scholars should “get the university’s money to do the work you want to do to dismantle the university within”—quickly adding, “hopefully, I won’t end up in court for saying this on the mic.”

David McNally, the Cullen Distinguished Professor of History and Business at the University of Houston, described how an insurgent mass movement might operate—for example, by making the university a sanctuary campus, abolishing campus police, eliminating tuition and grades, or even renaming the school George Floyd University.

Mohamed Abdou, the controversial professor whom former Columbia University president Minouche Shafik allegedly lied about firing, co-led a workshop called “A War Where All Fits,” which reframed the war in Gaza as an international revolutionary struggle. Abdou is a committed anarchist, who, four days after October 7, declared on Facebook, “Yes, I’m with the muqawamah (the resistance) be it Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad but up to a point.” He has also suggested that activists could learn from the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, the far-left militant group that controls much of the Mexican state of Chiapas.


Abbott suspended by Labour AGAIN after no regret over Jewish racism remarks
Diane Abbott has been administratively suspended from the Labour Party after she doubled-down on comments about racism for Jewish and Black people.

A Labour Party spokesperson confirmed on Thursday: “Diane Abbott has been administratively suspended from the Labour Party, pending an investigation. We cannot comment further while this investigation is ongoing.”

In an interview broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on Thursday, the veteran MP said she did not regret arguing people of colour experienced racism “all their lives”, unlike the “prejudice” experienced by Jewish people, Irish people and Travellers, in a letter published by The Observer in 2023.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner had said it was “not good” Abbott backtracked over the earlier apology when asked about the veteran MPs latest comments.

Confirming she was “disappointed” by Abbott’s actions, Rayner added: “There’s no place for antisemitism in the Labour party, and obviously the Labour party has processes for that.

“Diane had reflected on how she’d put that article together, and said that ‘was not supposed to be the version’, and now to double down and say: ‘Well, actually I didn’t mean that. I actually meant what I originally said,’ I think it is a real challenge.”


Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians' Latest Scam: Hamas Can Become a 'Political Party'
Abbas cannot have forgotten the atrocities Hamas committed against his men during the 2007 coup. Some of his loyalists were dragged to the streets and lynched, while others were thrown from the high floors of tall buildings.

In addition to the 2007 coup, Hamas, a few years later, was caught planning a second coup to try to take over the West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip.

The calls for Hamas to "join political action" actually aim to legitimize the terror group and present its leaders as a bunch of politicians seeking seats in parliament and jobs in government, when the reality is anything but that.

The international community, including the Trump administration, must not fall for this scam. Hamas was not established to serve as a "political party." Rather, the terror group was established with the main objective of murdering Jews through Jihad (holy war) and replacing Israel with an Islamist terror state.

Instead of inviting Hamas to engage in political action, Abbas and other Palestinian leaders... should have outlawed Hamas a long time ago. That would send a message to all Palestinians that there is no room for genocidal Jihadist groups in Palestinian society. Apparently, Abbas and Rajoub's desire to destroy Israel is even stronger than their decades-long hatred of Hamas.

Destroying Hamas's military capabilities is not enough. The group must also cease to exist as a "political" entity. The only politics Hamas is interested in is Jihad, destruction and death.


Member of antisemitic hate group arrested for alleged assault of Jewish man in Tennessee
Louis Edward Dunn, 43, a member of the Goyim Defense League, is expected to be returned to Tennessee to face a grand jury indictment charging him with civil rights intimidation and assault, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department announced on Thursday.

Dunn, who was visiting Nashville when the alleged altercation took place on July 13, 2024, is currently being held as a fugitive in the Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix, Ariz., following his arrest on Sunday at the request of the MNPD’s Specialized Investigations Division.

Dunn, with accomplice Ryan Scott McCann, 30, are charged with assaulting and intimidating a 20-year-old Jewish man, according to the division’s investigation. Police stated that members of the GDL antagonized and taunted the man when McCann attempted to strike.

As the victim attempted to flee, Dunn allegedly grabbed and pinned him against a truck with McCann in pursuit. The victim said “he was struck in the neck and legs during the altercation,” according to the investigation.
Pittsburgh-area man indicted for telling official ‘go back to Israel or better yet, exterminate yourself’
A federal grand jury indicted Edward Arthur Owens Jr., 29, of Elizabeth, Pa., in the Pittsburgh area, for making an antisemitic threat to harm a public official and making false statements to federal agents, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania said on Thursday.

Owens, who was arrested on May 30, allegedly told a “local public official,” whom the U.S. Justice Department didn’t name, that “we’re coming for you” and “be afraid,” adding a German flag image.

“Go back to Israel or better yet, exterminate yourself and save us the trouble,” he allegedly wrote to the official, using an antisemitic phrase that suggests Jews have been expelled from 109 countries.

The Justice Department also alleges that Owens lied and told FBI agents that “his firearms—which included a .22 LR caliber rifle, an AR-15 style rifle and a 9mm caliber Smith & Wesson pistol—were all in the custody of his mother, that he did not know where the firearms were and that he did not have access to any of them.”
Nigerian textbooks include antisemitic tropes and distortions of Jewish history, report finds
Nigeria’s school curriculum promotes messages of peace and diversity – but also includes antisemitic stereotypes, historical inaccuracies about Israel, and a failure to meaningfully recognise the Holocaust’s impact on Jews, a new report has warned.

Published by Israeli education watchdog IMPACT-se, the 70-page analysis examines more than 40-state-approved textbooks used in Nigerian schools from primary to secondary level. The findings show a “mixed portrayal”, according to the researchers, with progressive content on democracy, tolerance and human rights undermined by derogatory portrayals of Jews, contradictions in religious texts, and widespread stigmatisation of LGBTQ+ people and women.

IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff said: ‘Africa is the world’s fastest-growing continent and Nigeria is its most populous country. The education that Nigerian children receive today will shape not only the country’s future, but by extension, the continent’s. What is being taught in Nigerian classrooms is the foundation of the country’s future global positioning, including its relationship with Israel and the Jewish people.”

He added: “As Israel forges new partnerships across the globe, it is essential that we have a clear understanding of how Nigeria and other African countries are educating the next generation about Jewish history, identity, and Israel. This report is an important step towards achieving this goal.”

This study, based on UNESCO-derived standards for peace and cultural tolerance, praises efforts to promote pluralism and highlights references to Nigeria’s Igbo and Jewish community. Yet it identifies harmful content in both Christian and Islamic religious studies materials.

Some Islamic Studies textbooks refer to Jews positively as “People of the Book” and trace shared ancestry through the prophets Isaac and Ishmael. However, others group Jews with “hypocrites and idol-worshippers”, with no explanation or historical context.


‘Passover Coke’ could become obsolete as Trump says Coca-Cola will use ‘REAL’ sugar in US soda
A uniquely American Passover tradition could become a thing of the past after President Donald Trump announced that he had successfully pressed Coca-Cola to change the formulation of its signature drink in the United States.

“I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform, on Wednesday. “I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!”

Such a change would obviate Coca-Cola’s special runs for Passover — and the fervent searches that some kosher-keeping Jews undertake to secure the scarce “yellow-cap” bottles of Coke that result.

For the last four decades, Coke in the United States has been made with corn syrup, a sweetener that is reviled by many health advocates, including those who are part of the pro-Trump “MAHA” movement. But corn is not considered kosher for Passover according to Ashkenazi tradition, that practiced by the vast majority of kosher-keeping American Jews.

So every year, the company has produced a kosher-for-Passover run of Coke made with cane sugar lest kosher-keeping Jews have to forgo the soda for the eight-day holiday.


Jerusalem Film Festival opens, honors Gal Gadot and producer Lawrence Bender
The Jerusalem Film Festival held its 42nd opening ceremony at Sultan’s Pool on Thursday night, honoring Hollywood star Gal Gadot and American producer Lawrence Bender, who received special awards of recognition.

Gadot received two awards of recognition onstage, one from the Jerusalem Film Festival for her contribution to international cinema and her success over two decades of work, and the other from the Hadassah Women’s Organization for her unwavering and courageous support of Israel and for using her global platform to promote truth and justice on behalf of Israel.

“I love my country, and I’m proud to be a part of it and to raise our voice for it,” said Gadot. “With so many film lovers here tonight, I want to use this opportunity to say: ‘I can’t wait to make an Israeli film — send me scripts!'”

Gadot also expressed her hopes for an end to the war and the return of the hostages. “I pray this war will end and that there will be peace and security for everyone,” she said. “I want to breathe again — and that will only happen when the hostages come home.”

Festival director Roni Mahadev-Levin thanked Gadot for her presence.

“We are proud to honor Gal Gadot tonight — an actress who turned the Israeli dream into a global reality,” he said. “A true movie star who turns films into blockbusters. A leading figure in world cinema who opened doors for Israeli creators around the globe and raised international awareness of Israeli culture.”


Former hostage Or Levy opens up about learning of wife’s murder, time with Hersh Goldberg-Polin
Former hostage Or Levy, who was held by Hamas for 491 days, opened up about his experience in captivity, learning of his wife’s murder and his time with murdered American-Israeli former hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, in a CNN interview published on Thursday.

“It’s hard to understand how difficult it is to live on one pita a day for 491 days … no human should live like that,” Levy said. “And for the people that are still there, I know those days were even worse than what I’ve been through – and it’s scary.”

Returning to Almog and learning of Einav's murder
Upon his release, Levy was able to return to his son Almog who was only 2 years old when he last saw his father. However, Levy learned that his wife Einav had been one of over 1200 victims murdered by Hamas on October 7, 2023. The young mother was killed as terrorists flung grenades into a bomb shelter.

When he was greeted by an IDF representative on the day of his release, he immediately asked about Einav.

“I asked her about my wife. I told her that I think I know, but I’m not 100% certain, and that I want to know,” Levy said. “And then she told me.”

Throughout his captivity, Levy said he was too afraid to ask his terrorist captor’s about the status of Einav despite his suspicions.

Time with Hersh Goldberg-Polin
He focused his energies on returning to his son, a strategy he said Goldberg-Polin had taught him.

“I remember Hersh telling me this sentence … ‘He who has a ‘why’ can bear any ‘how’,’” Levy recalled.

When life in the tunnels became too difficult, he recounted how Goldberg-Polin would encourage him to think of returning to Almog.

Now four, Levy feared that young Almog would not remember him - a fear that was put to rest when the two were finally reunited. Though, he explained now that he was tasked with the difficulty of explaining to Almog that his mother would not be returning.

“The story that we told – that he knows – is that a big bomb happened and that unfortunately, mom is dead and I was taken to a far place, and people were trying to get me home,” Levy said. “So he asks – he asks about his mom, about what happened to her, about who caused it? And he asked me about my wounds. He asked me again, why didn’t I take him with me to this far place?”




Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

    
 

 

at