Tuesday, August 19, 2025
Soviet twins: Anti-Israelism and anti-Judaism
Modern anti-Judaism and anti-Israelism are twins. The womb from which they awakened to life was Soviet, which soon denied Jewish and Israeli individuals and groups even the smallest merit and strength of their reasons. Even today, Soviet-inspired political societies do not value an Israeli winner or a traditional Jew with a synagogue, culture, science, business and so forth. They are silenced; when they cannot be, lies are fabricated about everything they do. The focus falls on an alleged standard of living. The flag of privilege and injustice toward others is held aloft. Which others? Everyone.How popular culture erases the Jews from the Holocaust
Unquestionably, each nation-state can choose its elites and philosophies through its internal struggles, as a rule made up of betrayals and not of love for the people. But with such a reddish light, Israel makes no sense and nor do the Jews. There is no other example in history of a people returning home after two millennia, much less when this had long been predicted by their prophets. In that sand, where a few decades ago poor people rode on camels, there is now a scientific power that drinks from the sea, thrives in agriculture and exports food, medicine, security and technology.
Surrounded by enemies since its foundation, trampled by noisy majorities on the stages of supranational political organizations, the permanent target of delegitimization, dehumanization and application of double standards, condemned by celebrities and boycotted in all forms, this small nation without natural resources continues on its way without fearing anything or anyone. Many empires have disappeared before their eyes; Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans and all those that history has recorded up to the Nazis and the Soviets.
This is something that does not make sense, according to materialistic philosophies. Perhaps there is a people with an existence that makes sense. Influence, settlements and bellicism cannot explain everything. Israel and the individual and collective Jew should have disappeared if only matter counted. But no. The Jew exists, lives, suffers, dies and rises, sustained in tradition and bringing their dead back to life—in memory, in identity, in strength, in prosperity and courage.
The same is true of Israeli Jews. If the current logic prevailed, the nation would not be as strong as it is—nor would it be able to blow up enemy missiles in midair, monitor in real time the security of the Jewish Diaspora, create the most unbelievable devices or seek out Nazis thousands of miles away to bring them to justice. It does all this, and is still evaluating producing legislation with extraterritorial application to combat global antisemitism, which is practiced freely, and often in the most blatant way by the elites themselves.
The main cause of the Jewish and Israeli question was always spiritual. The very symbolism of the State of Israel reveals the shield of David’s kingship and the candelabra that once stood in the Holy Temple of Jerusalem. The materialist may think well and write better, but his bases are all wrong. He dreams of the boulders in space and attributes no logic or meaning to them. The materialist denies the rationality that surrounds the universe, its meaning and its destiny. Everything is reduced to weak assumptions about energy, history, ego, power and justice. This is the creeping intelligentsia in which we live. This is the moral compass that tries to define reality in its own way. This is the amorphous mass that meditates on national interest in multiple countries. At no time does divinity cease to be a myth, and Jewish success escapes indifference.
The Kabbalistic sap of the Hebrew alphabet leaves bold marks in all civilizations. Emet, the Hebrew word for “truth,” stands upright, since it is written with two-legged Hebrew letters, and it is enough to exist. Sheker, the Hebrew word for “lie,” loses its balance because it is composed of letters with only one leg and requires constant balance and maintenance, obsessive insistence, theatricality, unfolding in the emotion of hatred; and matará, the word “intention,” reveals how and to whom the last fruit will be served.
Other societies come and go, but the Jews remain with Israel as their homeland.
Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas combines Keneally’s and Styron’s elisions – non-Jewish rescuer, non-Jewish victim – to invent a non-Jewish rescuer and victim in the form of one child: Bruno, the son of the commandant of Auschwitz. It is a novel of stunning omission.Subliminal Blood Libels: The Hamas Campaign to Destroy Christian Zionism
Boyne writes about two nine-year-old boys, German Bruno and Jewish Shmuel. At Auschwitz, Bruno meets Shmuel, the most un-Jewish Jewish child in fiction, and a prisoner. They realise they have the same birthday: “We’re like twins,” says Bruno. Shmuel agrees: “A little bit.” Boyne’s conceit is this: their fates might have been reversed. The German child could have been the victim; perhaps the Jew could have been the perpetrator. (When I am cynical, I wonder if this is a cautionary tale about being friends with a Jew. When I am yet more cynical, I wonder if Shmuel planned the whole thing.) In any case, they are the same boy. Bruno climbs under the fence to help Shmuel find his (presumably dead) father, puts on a pair of striped pyjamas, and is gassed to death with Shmuel.
The reader accepts Shmuel’s fate: he is already dead. (Another Jewish inmate mirrors this: when Bruno asks how long he has lived in Auschwitz, he says, “I think I’ve always been here.” He is one of Spielberg’s fated dead.) But we cannot accept Bruno’s death, because Boyne has used his skill to make us love him. You feel grief for him, because his fate is awry: he is not meant to be dead.
Shmuel is alive to nothing. He feels no anger, just placidity, and the reader feels no sadness, or guilt. Speech itself has been removed from Shmuel: his description of living in Auschwitz is: “It’s not very nice.” When Bruno causes him to be beaten, he says, “It’s alright, I don’t feel it anymore, I don’t feel anything anymore.” Bruno thinks the name Shmuel “sounds like the wind blowing”. I gagged at this: dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.
The novel – and the story of popular Shoah culture - can be told in one scene. “I came home one day,” Shmuel says, “and Mama said we couldn’t live in our house anymore.” “That happened to me too!” shouts Bruno.
The more contemporary novels treat Auschwitz as a painted curtain, or Oz. Little Dorothy could always go home, she just didn’t know it. They are mindless.
John Donoghue’s The Death’s Head Chess Club (2015) has a Jewish chess player in Auschwitz play for his life. At the end, he says Kaddish for the SS because – well, they suffered too. Sophie’s Choice, the film The Zone of Interest (2023), and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas all discuss the anguish of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss. It wasn’t easy being in Auschwitz in 1942 – for anyone! Heather Morris’s The Tattooist of Auschwitz (2018) should have been a musical comedy. “I’m just a number,” the tattooist’s lover tells him. “You should know that. You gave it to me.” It is also, entirely accidentally, funny. At one point someone says: “Where is everybody?” Well, quite. Morris wonders why a Sonderkommando elects to live: “He too has chosen to stay alive for as long as he can, by performing an act of defilement on people of his own faith.” As in – one less life?
Ellie Midwood’s The Girl in the Striped Dress (2021) is “mostly based on a true story”: how the Slovakian Jew Helena Citrónová was beloved by the Waffen-SS soldier, Franz Wunsch, who protected her. In the novel the leading villain is a Jewish Sonderkommando, and Midwood has Helena marry Franz. In reality, Helena refused to speak to him after the war, moved to Israel, and married an IDF soldier.
This is only a small part of it, of course: it is an overwhelming glut, and it mirrors Primo Levi’s dream in Auschwitz, “varied in its detail but uniform in its substance: they [survivors] had returned home and with passion and relief were describing their past sufferings, addressing themselves to a loved person, and were not believed, indeed were not even listened to”.
The dreams were true. The glut exists because it is easy: in the end I think people are just too afraid to hear the truth. But you cannot love Jews if you refuse to understand what happened to them, and why; if you write myths around them and call it art. Still, it is what happened. We are everywhere and nowhere; we are fictional and real.
This is an extract from Shameless: Exploiting the Holocaust, Tanya Gold’s essay for the Jewish Quarterly, out August 22.
Since Israel’s latest war began, Hamas and the global forces of anti-Semitism have engaged in a three-pronged propaganda campaign to cripple the Jews and Israel: (1) fool gullible leftists into supporting the victims of “genocide”; (2) rally Muslims throughout the West to terrorize Jews while pressuring supine governments; and (3) encourage Christians to withdraw their support for Zionism.
While many secularists have long ago discarded any sympathy for Jews or Israel—partly thanks to disinformation from the KGB in the last century and from the legacy media today—Hamas’s propagandists and their allies at The New York Times are well aware that the last major bastion of Western philo-Semitism is Christian Zionism. Therefore, they have embarked on a campaign to convince Christians that the Jews are the aggressors—even the persecutors of Christians themselves—in the cause of breaking the Christian-Jewish alliance.
In order to accomplish this rupture, Hamas propagandists and their mainstream media messengers have weaponized historical Christian prejudices, iconographic motifs, and sensitivities, some nearly 2,000-years-old. With many Western Christians on high alert against leftist assaults on their faith, especially since 2020, there has never been a more opportune time for Hamas-affiliated anti-Semites to plant seeds of doubt about Christian sympathy for Jews. And the enemies of Jews and Israel have had decades of practice, and success, on which to bank.
Pallywood
Nearly 25 years ago, arguably the most famous child on the planet was Muhammad al-Durah, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy reportedly shot to death by a hail of Israeli bullets in a cross-street gun battle on September 30, 2000. The riveting video, narrated by Charles Enderlin of France2, depicted a firefight near Netzarim Junction in Gaza, culminating in the child’s death, huddled behind his father Jamal. “Here Jamal and his son Muhammad are targets of gunfire from the Israeli position,” narrated Enderlin. “Muhammad is dead, and his father grievously wounded.”
The result was a rabid, international wildfire of anti-Semitism, producing some of the first riots in which “Death to the Jews!” could be heard shouted in the streets of post-war Europe—all with Muhammad al-Durah as their sacrilegious saint. Only 12 days after the incident, two Israeli reservists who had accidentally wandered into Ramallah were brutally lynched and ripped into pieces to chants of “Revenge for the blood of Muhammad al-Durah!” Usamah bin Laden even produced a recruiting video calling Muslims worldwide to jihad on behalf of the boy who “died at the hands of the Jews.” The infamous (staged) image of Muhammad al-Durah. (Talal Abu Rahma / France2 via Al Jazeera)
Only later was it revealed that the video of Muhammad and his father, indeed much of the footage shot that day, was fake. Meticulous analysis of the raw tapes showed instance after instance of men spontaneously falling down “wounded” and then being hurled into waiting ambulances; likely uninjured youths dripping in fake blood; nonchalant bystanders watching the action—even a “dead” man lying in the gutter talking on his cellphone—just yards from where Muhammad was “killed.”
Historian Richard Landes, then a professor of medieval history at Boston University, coined the term “Pallywood” as a result of his groundbreaking investigations. His 2005 short film Muhammad al-Durah: Birth of an Icon makes clear what was again confirmed years later in a French court: that the tape not included in the France2 broadcast was indeed staged and showed a living child pretending to be dead. Landes later called the contrived image “the first blood(less) libel of the 21st century.”
“Israel is losing me”
The al-Durah hoax was probably the most successful single piece of international war-time disinformation in history; but, outside the Muslim world and its immigrant enclaves abroad, especially in Europe, it mostly evoked anti-Jewish hatred from Western socialists keen on erasing generational shame over the Holocaust by replacing the Nazis with the Jews. It did not engender comparable Christian fury, and American Christian Zionism largely held steady throughout the first decade of the new century.
This war, however—the longest in Israel’s history, and with Arab Christian communities constantly in danger from Hamas using them as human shields during Israeli incursions—has proven different. On multiple occasions, Hamas operating in areas of Gaza containing churches has resulted in structural damage and the accidental deaths of Christian bystanders, beckoning medieval blood libel archetypes back into the open.
JCPA: ‘The Green Prince’ and the truth about Hamas
In a quiet room at Israel’s soon-to-be inaugurated October 7 Museum, Mosab Hassan Yousef—the son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef who is known as “The Green Prince”—looked at the evidence of Hamas’s atrocities and spoke the truth that too many still refuse to hear: “Hamas is not just at war with Israel. It is at war with Jews, Christians and the very foundations of civilization itself.”‘Son of Hamas’ Mosab Hassan Yousef: "October 7th Cannot Be Justified — Ever"
Yousef knows this from the inside. Raised in a home steeped in Hamas ideology, he was taught from childhood that Jews must be killed, Christians eliminated, and “infidels” subjugated. He was beaten at school, indoctrinated on the streets, and expected to take his place in a cult of death. Instead, he broke free, worked with Israeli intelligence to prevent countless terror attacks, and later embraced Christianity. His father disowned him and sentenced him to death.
His visit to the new museum, which is in Glilot in central Israel, was organized by Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.
When Yousef looks at Hamas’s hand-written instructions for Oct. 7, 2023—orders to rape women, burn babies alive and kidnap hundreds—he doesn’t see aberrations. He sees the logical outcome of Hamas’s creed. “This is not politics,” he told us. “This is a religious war. Its purpose is to replace Judaism and Christianity with radical Islam. If the world does not understand this, everyone will pay the price.”
He is right. The “Al-Aqsa Flood,” as Hamas named its Oct. 7 attacks, was not about borders or blockades. It was framed explicitly as a religious conquest, part of a centuries-old war of replacement. In Hamas’s view, Judaism and Christianity are illegitimate faiths that must yield to Islam.
That is why Hamas teaches Palestinian children to glorify death, publishes math textbooks where subtraction problems involve dead Jews, and hands out Hitler’s Mein Kampf alongside the Quran in Gaza schools.
This is why Yousef calls Hamas a “death cult.” It does not seek compromise. It seeks annihilation.
In this powerful episode of East to West, hosted by Sarah Martinez Amir, we sit down with Mosab Hassan Yousef, also known as The Green Prince — the son of a Hamas co-founder who made the extraordinary choice to break away and expose the truth about the movement from within.
Mosab reflects on the aftermath of October 7, the suffering in Gaza, and the propaganda war that has reshaped global opinion. He explains why the chaos in Gaza isn't a famine, but a deliberate disorder, why hostages remain the true victims of this war, and why slogans of “ceasefire now” can ring hollow without accountability.
With rare candor, Mosab warns against the illusions of quick fixes and challenges the world to face the ideology that fuels endless cycles of violence. His words — “October 7th cannot be justified — ever” — capture the moral clarity he believes is essential to moving forward.
SaharTV: Niece of Intifada Founder Just FINISHED The Palestinian Argument FOREVER...
Sandra Solomon was born a Muslim in Ramallah under a different name and raised in Saudi Arabia before eventually moving to Canada, where she made the bold decision to leave Islam and convert to Christianity. In this powerful interview, she shares her personal journey of faith, her escape from religious oppression, and her outspoken fight against radical Islam. As the niece of Sakher Habash, a founding leader of the Palestinian Fatah movement and one of the architects of the Intifada, Sandra’s story is not only courageous but deeply intertwined with Middle Eastern history and politics.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:51 What We'll Discuss
02:01 "I was Indoctrinated In Palestine"
08:53 Difference Between IDF & Hamas
12:55 Islamic Teachings Against Jews
16:30 Exposing Islam
28:21 The Root Cause of the Israel - Palestine Issue
37:49 "Islam Doesn't Believe in Borders!"
42:29 Understanding Islam Isn't Rocket Science
44:50 The Difference Between a Jewish & Muslim Mother
47:44 A Call to Bibi & Jews Worldwide
49:55 The Gaza Tunnels Should Turn Into Hamas's Grave
50:38 Does Hamas Deploy Child Soldiers?
52:08 "I'd NEVER Live Under Palestinian Rule"
54:48 The Twisting of History in Islam
55:48 "Becoming a Martyr Is Their Dream"
57:57 The Western Media Is Lying to You
01:01:50 Sandra's Message to Israel's Victims
01:03:08 "My Daughter Was Murdered for Leaving Islam"
01:05:38 "My Uncle Was the Founder of the Intifada"
01:08:37 "The More You Attack Israel, the Stronger It Gets"
01:09:50 Wrapping Up & What the Future Holds
Israel Advocacy Movement: INSANE: Destiny Claims Zionists Invented Jewish Identity… Jew SHREDS His Argument
Full Debate: Destiny Debates Hardcore Zionist
Egyptian Scholar “People Have NO IDEA What’s Really Happening In The Islamic World…”
News Update: Emily Schrader Exposes the BBC and interviews Egyptian Writer Dalia Ziada
Bethany Mandel: A stranger told me I was sending my kids to ‘Nazi camp’ — this shows how mainstream anti-Jew hate has become
My children go to a Zionist Jewish summer camp. It’s the kind of place that instills pride in Jewish identity and love for Israel while giving kids the normal joys of camp: canoeing, hiking, and endless games of soccer.Shabbos Kestenbaum: I sued Harvard University. Here’s why
But on the last Friday before the session ended, the kids and staff experienced a scare that revealed just how fragile Jewish life in America has become.
During a live-streamed ceremony, paragliders appeared over the campus. They swooped low, and panic rippled through the crowd. For most American campers, it was confusing. For the Israeli staff and campers, many of them children directly impacted by the October 7th terror attacks near Gaza, the sight was terrifying.
Paragliders were how Hamas terrorists descended that morning to murder, rape, and kidnap. The sound of their motors and the image of their canopies burned into memory.
The camp had fundraised to bring dozens of these traumatized Israeli children to safety for the summer. For them, seeing paragliders overhead was not a quirky airshow, it was the beginning of another attack.
Staff acted instantly. State police were called. The children were evacuated to a secure location on campus. The livestream was cut off after we watched the evacuation begin. Parents, myself included, went into panic mode, wondering if we were watching another massacre unfold in real time.
Thankfully, the paragliders were not terrorists. It was a misguided stunt, not an attack. But the trauma was real. Jewish children, American and Israeli alike, relived October 7th that afternoon in the middle of a peaceful American summer camp.
When I shared what happened online, my post went viral, with over 5 million views. Instead of compassion, what flooded in were thousands of hateful comments. Strangers mocked the idea that Jewish children could have PTSD. They sneered at traumatized kids as if they were actors in some propaganda campaign.
And then I opened a direct message that made my stomach turn. A woman, using her real name, wrote:
“F— you and f— your kid who goes to Nazi summer camp! Free Palestine from you sick f—s!” After I called her out, she went on, “You are literally indoctrinating your children with the idea that raping and murdering people for their land is not only okay but promised to you by god. Zionism is a disease that you are spreading to your children and one day you will be recognized as the supporter of Genocide that you are.”
That message didn’t come from a troll in a dark basement. Thirty seconds of searching showed me that Danielle Gordon of Denver is a white, middle-class, college-educated employee of Fidelity, one of the largest financial institutions in the country.
Her LinkedIn profile describes her as “dedicated to working in inclusive, respectful, and ethical places.”
And yet here she was, spewing genocidal hate at Jewish children.
I decided to expose her name for three reasons.
To truly reform the university, Trump must stand firm and demand that years of lawlessness by this institution be brought to an end.
As such, I am pushing for:
A permanent and complete mask ban on all Harvard property, with exceptions made for clearly stated medical reasons.
A permanent and complete elimination of all diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs. DEI officials cannot be reassigned to renamed programs that serve the same purpose.
A permanent and complete elimination of Harvard’s relationship with Birzeit University, which forbids Jews from attending and collaborates with, and supports, Hamas.
The permanent and complete removal of Harvard board chair Penny Pritzker from the Harvard Corporation as a fellow and chairperson.
The permanent and complete ban on accepting gifts, monetary or otherwise, from the Chinese Communist Party. A total ban on any student, be it undergraduate or other, faculty and professor, be it tenured or other, who has worked for and/or with the Chinese Communist Party from enrolling at Harvard University. Exceptions can be made for publicly documented Chinese dissidents.
A one-year ban on any faculty member who has received five or more misconduct complaints in an academic year from teaching required first-year courses.
A 15% to 20% cap on all undergraduate foreign students, and a commitment that no less than 80% of all undergraduate students be American citizens. A 25% to 30% cap on all graduate foreign students, and a commitment that no less than 70% of all graduate students be American citizens.
The creation of the Hoover Institution/Center for Conservative Scholarship with academic credit for degree programs available to undergraduate and graduate students.
Reformation of the structure of the ad board, thereby making the president and provost of ultimate arbiters on all appeals.
Full security funding for Harvard Chabad.
The full resolution of all internal complaints filed since Oct. 7, 2023, alleging anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, anti-Zionist and/or anti-Palestinian before any funds are unfrozen.
The disclosure of all relevant admission data to the federal government since June 30, 2023, to ensure compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action before any federal funds are unfrozen.
A monetary payment paid directly to the federal government, in an amount agreed to by both parties, before any federal funds are unfrozen.
An independent, third-party monitor for a minimum of five years, agreed to by both the federal government and Harvard University, that will ensure compliance and conduct annual reports on the aforementioned changes. Failure to adhere to the aforementioned changes would result in the permanent freezing of federal funds.
The Jews are the indigenous people of the land of Israel. They're the only people for whom it was ever their national kingdom, centuries before the Romans, Christians, Muslims or Ottomans invaded. Zionism is the ultimate decolonisation movement. Looking forward to Arabs… https://t.co/nxIiQmFBW7
— Melanie Phillips (@MelanieLatest) August 19, 2025
What are your thoughts on Ben-Gvir?
— Kosher🎗 (@koshercockney) August 19, 2025
He has called for the demolition of Izzedine
al-Qassam’s grave, the Syrian Muslim extremist that massacred Brits and Jews when he moved to British Mandatory Palestine, he was the Islamist terrorist that Hamas named their military division… pic.twitter.com/vN1EbAbGUt
American Association of Geographers members call for boycott of Israel
The American Association of Geographers is facing a member campaign to boycott Israel, Jewish Insider reported on Tuesday.Jonathan Tobin: On Israel, Mamdani is no longer a Democratic outlier
A member petition organized by a group called Geographers for Justice in Palestine is urging the organization “to endorse the campaign for an academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions” and to disclose and divest the nonprofit’s funds from “corporations or state institutions profiting from the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people.”
The petition reached the 10% member signature threshold, triggering a special member meeting, which is scheduled for Oct. 3, according to JI.
“If adopted, the AAG’s resolution will only intensify a climate of fear and discrimination that already threatens the integrity of higher education,” Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, co-founder and director of the AMCHA Initiative, told JNS.
“Academic boycotts of Israel don’t just target Israeli institutions,” she said. “They directly harm American Jewish students and faculty by severing research ties, canceling programs and restricting academic freedom.”
Liora Sahar, an Israeli-American AAG member, told Jewish Insider that she encountered anti-Israel rhetoric at the organization’s annual meeting in Detroit in March.
Geographers for Justice in Palestine organized sessions “centered not on scholarly exploration, but on academic boycott and divestment campaigns,” the geospatial expert said.
“These are political actions, not scientific ones, and they directly undermine the values of academic freedom and open discourse,” Sahar added.
In the wake of New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary in June, there was some doubt as to whether a party that still aspired to represent mainstream voters would rally behind a man who was not only a Socialist but an anti-Zionist. Eight weeks later, not only is it clear that there will be no movement on the part of national or even statewide Democrats to disassociate themselves from his candidacy, but that his position on Israel may well be closer to the mainstream of Democratic officeholders, and perhaps, many voters than his critics think.Democratic senators call for Magnitsky sanctions over ‘settler violence’
The confirmation that Mamdani was not going to be isolated within his party was delivered last week in a column by New York Times political columnist Mara Gay when she broke the news that former President Barack Obama had called the 33-year-old mayoral candidate to offer him encouragement and advice. She reported that other key members of Obamaworld, like political guru David Axelrod, speechwriter Jon Favreau, and political advisor and podcaster Dan Pfeiffer, have also been communicating with top Mamdani advisers. She quoted Axelrod as comparing the Mamdani campaign to the “familiar spirit” of “determined, upbeat optimism” that was needed to inspire the country and relate to working people in Obama’s campaigns.
Leave aside the fact that the Mamdani campaign has little appeal to working-class Americans, who, as last year’s election results showed, increasingly look to President Donald Trump and the Republicans to represent their interests rather than progressives, who reject their values, and favor globalist economics and illegal immigration. As writer Armin Rosen recently noted in Tablet, the enthusiasm for the Democratic Socialist comes largely from white upper-middle-class or wealthy elites who, insulated from the real world, have bought into the economic and woke social fantasies of the left.
Obama redux
It is a reflection of the fact that the Democratic base does, as Axelrod sensed, see Mamdani’s foolish platform of failed Marxist economic fairytales and opposition to a Jewish state as emblematic of a revival of Obama’s “hope and change” movement that propelled him to the White House in 2008. The failure of leading Democrats, who remain clueless as to why they lost in 2024, to mount any concerted opposition to Mamdani is itself significant. Still, the legitimacy that the approval of Obama—who remains an iconic figure for Democrats even as the country embraces Trump—gives Mamdani signifies where the party is headed.
It should be remembered that Obama had to at least pretend to be a friend of Israel in 2008 and again in 2012 when his re-election campaign marked a year-long pause in his ongoing hostility to the Jewish state and its government before it resumed in full force with his appeasement of Iran. Things are very different in 2025. Mamdani’s record of opposition to Israel’s existence, membership in antisemitic organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, and refusal to disavow leftist chants in favor of Israel’s destruction and Jewish genocide (“From the river to the sea”) and in favor of international terrorism against Jews (“Globalize the intifada”) would have been disqualifying, even in deep-blue New York not that long ago. Now, the cheers from Obama and his administration’s alumni are not the only or even the primary indication of the shift among Democrats.
A group of seven Democratic senators called on the U.S. state and treasury departments on Monday to impose sanctions on Israelis engaged in “settler violence.”Terrorist released in hostage deal to speak at major Detroit Palestinian conference
The letter accuses Israelis of blocking aid into Gaza and calls on the Trump administration to apply sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.
“We write to express our grave concern over reports that Israeli settlers are obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza and engaging in violent attacks against Palestinian civilians, including U.S. citizens, in the West Bank,” the senators wrote. “These actions directly undermine the United States’ foreign-policy interests, contribute to regional instability and potentially constitute gross violations of human rights.”
The senators went on to accuse settlers of responsibility for the deaths of Sayfollah Musallet, a Palestinian American living north of Ramallah who was killed in July, and Khamis Ayyad, a Palestinian American resident of Chicago who died of smoke inhalation after an alleged arson attack in a village near the one where Musallet was killed.
“Given the increasingly dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza and ongoing violence in the West
Bank, the U.S. must do more to ensure the safe distribution of aid and promote security and stability in these areas to prevent further conflict,” the senators wrote.
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) led the letter. He was joined by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.).
Most of the signatories are frequent critics of Israel in the Senate.
Two Palestinian terrorists are set to speak at the Detroit People’s Conference for Palestine at the end of August, including a Tanzim operative who was released in February in return for hostages held by Hamas and a former Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) official.
The conference announced on Instagram late on Monday night that those who attended the August 29-31 event would be able to “hear directly about the prisoners’ struggle in Zionist prisons from [the] freed prisoner, Hussam Shaheen.”
Shaheen was released on February 1 along with hundreds of other terrorists as part of a deal in exchange for live and deceased hostages captured by Gazan forces during the October 7 massacre, according to Israeli Justice Ministry and Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) announcements.
Prior terror activity of the Detriot speakers
Once a leader and international coordinator for Fatah’s youth movement, Shaheen later became involved in the factions’ military wings. In the book The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem: Palestinian Politics and the City since 1967, it was detailed how Shaheen established an al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade cell in Jebl Mukaber and procured firearms for an aborted 2001 attack.
The Prime Minister’s Office announced in 2002 that four members of the Jebl Mukaber Martyrs’ Brigade cell admitted that Shaheen had recruited them into the terrorist organization and supplied them weapons for two failed Jerusalem terrorist attacks. Shaheen was arrested in 2004 in Ramallah and was sentenced to 27 years in prison, according to the PPS and Justice Ministry, for attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
While in prison, the now-53-year-old became an author, writing two books about his experience in prison.
Another speaker at the Detroit conference is Omar Assaf, who, according to Haaretz and Al Araby, was an official in the DFLP terrorist organization. An Omar Assaf is listed by the PLO website as one of the founders of the Marxist faction. Assaf is now the coordinator of the executive committees of the Palestinian Popular Conference, which seeks to reform the PLO into, among other things, a more radical militant organization.
A day after the October 7 massacre, Assaf’s Popular Conference praised the Gazan attackers and promised to build upon the achievements of the terrorist attack. In the October 8 Facebook post, the Popular Conference called on Palestinians to “intensify engagement” with the “Zionist Israeli enemy,” to end Palestinian Authority security coordination with Israel, to ensure the internationalization of the conflict, and to utilize all Palestinian forces to confront and eventually destroy Israel.
WILD 🔴
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) August 19, 2025
Hossam Shaheen, a Palestinian terrorist freed in February’s hostage deal, will be featured at the Detroit “People’s Conference Palestine.”
A former Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terror member, he served nearly 20 years for attempted murder and terror recruitment in East… pic.twitter.com/xhCBE3VYAV
Update: antisemite Lucas Gomez is no longer employed with Brooklyn Defenders Services. https://t.co/hS0PXJYIZD pic.twitter.com/C8fYneKLTN
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) August 19, 2025
More from @deenayellin here: https://t.co/z5WQNDTugS
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) August 19, 2025
E-commerce platforms like @Shopify need stronger safeguards to protect customers from antisemitic products like this shirt.
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) August 19, 2025
Selling items like this gives life to hateful propaganda that even Goebbels would admire. https://t.co/eXzwsq15Mk pic.twitter.com/8OPWmQ0k2Q
Nearly all of citizens of Israel are required to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Calling for their death or violence against them is calling for mass violence.
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) August 19, 2025
Sara Kholandi's LinkedIn here: https://t.co/PgH43TkX41 pic.twitter.com/NQpcHnJqaX
Media Matters: The ABC’s blind spot
Towns and villages flattened as far as the eye can see.
Exhausted civilians desperately seeking an end to their misery but led by a pitiless leadership that refuses to surrender.
Not Gaza in 2025 – but Japan in the final months of World War II.
On August 5, the ABC published an online feature marking the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. The article reported on survivors condemning Japan’s military rulers for refusing to surrender even when defeat was inevitable: “Many survivors… believe Japan should have surrendered sooner. If it had, much pain and anguish would have been spared.”
Survivor Kohsei Kyan remains haunted by the cruelty he witnessed: “You did not help them, you killed them!” Even after the atomic bombings, Japan’s war council was split on surrender, with the article noting, “The suffering of its own troops or civilian population was not part of the calculation.”
The ABC recognised where moral and actual responsibility for civilians suffering belonged – on a regime that turned its people into expendable assets in a losing war.
It is therefore frustrating that the ABC’s editorial line since Hamas’ massacre on October 7, 2023 has consistently framed Israel as the primary cause of Palestinian suffering, while treating Hamas almost as a passive force—rarely held to account for embedding fighters in civilian areas, refusing ceasefires, or vowing to repeat October 7 “again and again”.
If the ABC can acknowledge that Japan’s refusal to surrender prolonged civilian agony, why won’t it apply the same moral logic to Hamas?
Here is the scene where the chorus of Muslim soldiers, dressed in pink and wielding plastic sex toys, praise Taddeo as the 'protector oft he Muslims', having crowned him with a large dildo crown.
— Jonathan Sacerdoti (@jonsac) August 19, 2025
The production wonderfully skewered both the absurd LGBTQ high camp culture and the… pic.twitter.com/toibrSPINl
This is what I find most ironic about vocally Jewish anti-Zionists, here or elsewhere. You think that ultimately being the "good Jew" will keep you safe from the mob? Keep licking the boots of those who hate you, lying to yourself that those same boots won't kick you in the face.
— Daniel Sugarman (@Daniel_Sugarman) August 19, 2025
The truth is Britain’s relationship with its Jewish citizens has always been just one step away from hostility and antisemitism. While it’s easy to suggest that the National Socialist Movement and the vile hateful Dr Aladwan are just fringe performers, the reality is the great… https://t.co/9aFgHJ0Owg
— Fiona Sharpe 🧚🏻♀️🦄 (@SharpeFiona) August 19, 2025
This is “strange”. David Irving was famously debunked as a Holocaust denier long ago.
— Alex Hearn (@hearnimator) August 19, 2025
Surely only an extremist sympathiser would share his toxic views, while framing it as an innocent question? pic.twitter.com/QGx3TPOROU
This is the same Mohamed who threatened to sue Dave Portnoy for calling him an antisemite. pic.twitter.com/IUMKuYrG3M
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) August 19, 2025
In an X Space hosted by Nader, they openly discussed plans for committing genocide against the entire Jewish people.
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) August 19, 2025
“Can we fit all the Jews in an ashtray when we’re done? Six million, maybe? Or do you think it’ll take two ashtrays.”
Don’t let this Islamist gaslight you. https://t.co/iFWGd5U22x pic.twitter.com/YdoO8UlMEV
Senior Fatah Official Jibril Rajoub: Trump Is Acting Like a Neighborhood Bully, but the Tides Are Turning in the U.S.; President Abbas Did Not Ask Hamas to Surrender Its Weapons But When a Palestinian State Is Established, It Will Have Only One Armed Body pic.twitter.com/OCTm6ihYgr
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) August 19, 2025
Spain 🇪🇸, the champions of Free Palestine, reportedly sent Gazans rotten food and pork in their latest air drop.
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) August 19, 2025
If the videos filmed by Gazans are true, this is a disgrace.
It just goes to show: criticizing Israel the loudest does NOT mean you actually care about Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/VWgmZQzv3K
Hotdog Restaurant, Gaza City, Fisherman's Port Roundabout (timestamp 5 hours ago) show the kitchen, explaining that pizzas are made with a mixture of quality cheeses including Israeli Emek* and Mozzarella. Also in use, he says, quality Israeli canned luncheon meat and Extra… pic.twitter.com/Yfl9074Vhu
— Imshin (@imshin) August 19, 2025
Preparations for the reopening of O2 Restaurant in Gaza City today + group photo of the staff.
— Imshin (@imshin) August 19, 2025
The restaurant was forced to close down by Hamas enforcers in June '25.
Instagram timestamps: 4 hours ago + 2 hours ago#TheGazaYouDontSee
Links in 1st comment https://t.co/lz8UWqq0LS pic.twitter.com/15r1Tn5jpF
Snounu Restaurant, Gaza City (Instagram stories today) invites you to enjoy their pizzas and Nutella desserts (milkshakes, bites and waffles) at Kazem Building, 2nd floor, and they also deliver.#TheGazaYouDontSee
— Imshin (@imshin) August 19, 2025
Link in 1st comment https://t.co/58Nuvdq0G0 pic.twitter.com/OHOnbood7r
A new café is opening in Gaza☕️
— GAZAWOOD - the PALLYWOOD saga (@GAZAWOOD1) August 19, 2025
The Nutella overload makes it a necessity. pic.twitter.com/L4sqZvKlf6
Syria-Based American Journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem: Foreign Jihadi Fighters Are Demanding Citizenship; Some of Us Trust Al-Jolani, But He Might Be Killed Tomorrow and We Do Not Know Who Will Replace Him pic.twitter.com/L1EpnX5dGb
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) August 19, 2025
Where are the headlines? This mother in Iran is about to be hanged and I really feel helpless seeing silence from the big names, the anti-war activists in the West, the feminist leaders, the so-called free world leaders.
— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) August 17, 2025
Her only “crime”? Fighting for freedom and dignity for her… https://t.co/H4EuF9OMFl pic.twitter.com/W0Xl9NdDx6
Former Iranian Diplomat Amir Mousavi: Iran Can Build a Nuclear Bomb within Hours; We Have Enough Enriched Uranium to Build 18-24 Bombs pic.twitter.com/b7rd24XzG8
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) August 19, 2025
The "Doomsday Clock" in Tehran, which counts down to the destruction of Israel, has been reset by a power outage.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) August 19, 2025
This follows a previous outage back in June, due to an Israeli airstrike. pic.twitter.com/NyyrGoNIme
In Poland for a wedding, educator visits Auschwitz and gets hassled over Israeli flag
An American-Israeli educator was verbally accosted on Sunday on the grounds of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland over an Israeli flag she was carrying during a visit.Jewish family assaulted and called ‘child killers’ by Vienna Uber driver
Los Angeles native Charlotte Korchak had joined a group of high school students from Florida on a tour of Auschwitz this past weekend while in Poland for a wedding. She was taking photos of the train tracks leading to the crematorium at the camp complex when a young woman, also a visitor, approached her.
“I saw her walking towards me with fight in her face, and I could tell something was about to happen, even though I hoped it wasn’t so,” Korchak, founder and senior educator of the U.S.-based Jerusalem Education Institute, recounted to JNS on Monday.
“Aren’t you ashamed?” the young woman started.
“You are not doing this in front of a bunch of Jews outside Auschwitz,” countered Korchak, who was standing on the railway tracks, seeking to stop the altercation in its tracks as high school students from Miami’s Jewish Leadership Academy began filming the incident with their cellphones. “Walk away,” Korchak told her.
“You are killing children,” continued the woman, who spoke English with a Spanish accent, referencing Palestinian children killed during the fighting against Hamas in Gaza.
As the argument grew louder, one of the students shouted at the woman: “Hamas kills children. Do you know what happened on Oct. 7?”
“How many people have died since Oct. 7?” the young woman countered, shouting back.
“How about instead of attacking me, you understand that hate doesn’t help us,” Korchak suggested. “You asked me if I am ashamed, and the answer is no. I will never be ashamed to wear this flag, and I will never be ashamed to be a Jew.
“It’s not complicated because this is what happens to us,” she said, pointing to the Nazi crematoriums.
The woman asserted that she “loves Jews,” but then stated that “the worst are the Zionists.”On the railway tracks leading to Auschwitz - the very heart of Jewish suffering - Jews were attacked by an antisemite accusing them of murdering children in Gaza.
— The Voice Of Truth 🙌 (@thevoicetruth1) August 18, 2025
This is not just hatred, it is Europe’s old disease resurfacing: antisemitism.
From pogroms to the Holocaust, and… pic.twitter.com/sTz0pcv2OY
A Jewish family, some of them from Israel, said an Uber driver in Vienna assaulted a member of their group and called them “murderers” and “child killers” before forcing them out the vehicle last week.Leeds woman ‘attacked Jewish man with flagpole’ and accused him of killing babies in Gaza
A Monday post on Facebook by the antisemitism reporting center of the Jewish Religious Community (IKG), the body that formally represents Austria’s Jews, described the incident, the latest in a number of attacks on Israelis in Europe over the summer vacation.
The organization said the family, a Jewish couple with two children aged 10 and 13, and a 75-year-old woman, ordered an Uber to take them to a restaurant to celebrate a birthday.
When the driver realized that some of the passengers were Israeli, he called them “murderers” and said that he did not want to have “child killers” in his vehicle, according to the post.
The organization said the driver pulled over and forced the family out, and continued insulting them as well as physically assaulting the father.
The organization said that the family had filed a police report.
According to the Ynet news site, Uber said it had immediately suspended the driver and launched an internal investigation.
Oskar Deutsch, president of the Jewish Community of Vienna, said the attack was part of a rising trend of antisemitism in Vienna.
Police are investigating an alleged assault on a Jewish man in Leeds who reported a woman struck him with a metal pole and declared: "This is because you're killing babies in Gaza."
The incident is said to have occurred on Saturday afternoon as a pro-Palestine protest shut down part of the city centre.
The alleged victim, told the JC that the woman, whom he did not know, tore a flag off its pole and struck him with the hard baton-like object.
He claims she told him, “This is because you're killing babies in Gaza”, before grabbing a hot cup of coffee out of his hand and throwing the contents over him.
Commenting on the alleged attack, he said: "I didn't see it coming... she hit me for no reason at all.”
This isn’t their first rodeo in case you think this is just an angry outburst. This same couple put up the below signs in their yard last year.
— AG (@AGHamilton29) August 19, 2025
Including one where they repeatedly wrote “k*kes” pic.twitter.com/NO0MBn0mVd
Eurovision deleted a video celebrating Israel’s finalists after an antisemitic backlash.
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) August 19, 2025
The video, featuring Eden Golan, Noa Kirel, and Yuval Raphael, was removed just hours after it was posted due to a surge of hateful and antisemitic comments.
It’s unclear whether the… pic.twitter.com/dtLzrT0SAY
Israel’s New Friend in Europe
On December 15, 2024, Israel announced it would temporarily close its embassy in Dublin, owing to “the extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government,” and open an embassy in Chișinău, Moldova. What is most noteworthy in this Israeli move, suspending relations with one small country on the margins of Europe and investing in another, is the remarkable emergence of relations with Moldova.Israel to open embassy in Zambia
Current Ties
Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar has visited Moldova twice in 2025. On the second visit, in July, Sa’ar and his Moldovan counterpart announced the launch of a Moldovan-Israeli Intergovernmental Commission, both to encourage trade and investment and to serve as an umbrella for Israeli aid in cyber defense and internal security.
Moldava is usually ranked as the poorest country in Europe. Its main export to Israel is labor, in the form of about 15,000 Moldovan citizens who are legally employed mostly in the fields of construction and home care.
But Moldova is important in other ways. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moldova has resettled more than 128,000 Ukrainian refugees according to UN figures, including thousands of Jews who have bolstered the small Moldovan Jewish community. Moldovans hosted Ukrainian refugees, including entire families, in their homes, given the lack of official support provided by local authorities or international organizations.
Diplomatic signals from Moldova also preceded the Israeli foreign minister’s 2025 visits. In 2019, Prime Minister Pavel Filip announced that the country would move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (joining the US and a handful of others, including Kosovo). The decision was later retracted following pressure from several Arab states. Even so, Moldova and the three Baltic countries are the only former Soviet states that have not recognized a Palestinian state.
Moldova’s pro-Israel approach is also visible at the UN. Moldova generally abstains or votes against the numerous anti-Israel anti-Jewish resolutions, again despite pressure, often from its European partners.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar was set to travel to Africa on Tuesday to inaugurate Israel’s new embassy in Zambia.
During his visit, Sa’ar is scheduled to meet with Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema, Foreign Minister Mulambo Haimbe and Parliament Speaker Nelly Mutti.
Israel and Zambia are also expected to unveil a series of initiatives aimed at strengthening bilateral relations during the visit.
The embassy inauguration is scheduled for Wednesday in Lusaka, the Zambian capital.
Israel maintained an embassy in Zambia in the 1960s and 1970s, which was closed as part of a wider reduction of Israel’s diplomatic missions in Africa.
“The reopening of the embassy after decades marks an important step in deepening bilateral ties with Zambia and forms part of a broader initiative to expand and strengthen relations with African nations,” said Sa’ar’s office.
Zambia has maintained an embassy in Israel since 2015.
On his way to Lusaka, Sa’ar will stop in Addis Ababa for talks with Ethiopian Foreign Minister Dr. Gedion Timotheos, marking their fourth meeting since Sa’ar took office.
Last week, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel visited Nigeria for talks on strengthening bilateral relations. The three-day trip marked the latest effort in a growing tug-of-war between supporters and opponents of the Jewish state in Africa.
🚨 Israeli lab has just started the process of testing a cure for spinal paralysis.pic.twitter.com/EVOqTVK9AZ
— Kosher🎗 (@koshercockney) August 19, 2025
This lab, involving Israeli scientists from Tel Aviv university, has managed to grow human spinal cord stem cells, aiming to help paralysed patients walk again.
Israelis…
🇺🇸 🇮🇱 Floyd Mayweather, one of the greatest boxers of all time, stands proudly with Israel:
— Vivid.🇮🇱 (@VividProwess) August 18, 2025
“When I stood behind Israel, I felt what I did was right, and when you choose your side, you stay on that side. Jewish warriors from Israel, I am behind you guys 100%.” pic.twitter.com/tIpjn77f8n
Egyptian Jews probably enjoyed the comforts that the empire provided, and were would have been really annoyed at the oiks who did the uprising
— Alex Hearn (@hearnimator) August 19, 2025
New US Postal Service stamp honours Holocaust survivor and humanitarian Elie Wiesel
The United States Postal Service released a new series of stamps in honour of Elie Wiesel. (USPS)
The United States Postal Service announced a new series of stamps honoring Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.
Wiesel, who died in 2016 at the age of 87, is the 18th person to be honoured in the USPS’ Distinguished Americans stamp series.
“The 18th stamp in the Distinguished Americans series honours humanitarian Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), a survivor of Nazi concentration camps whose dozens of works bore witness to the Holocaust and whose resilience and compassion continue to be a source of inspiration,” a description for the stamp on the USPS website reads.
As a teenager, Wiesel was sent with his father, Shlomo, to the Buna Werke labor camp in the Auschwitz complex. He went on to become an international human rights advocate, publishing several books, essays and educational projects, including “Night,” a 1960 memoir about his experience during the Holocaust.
Wiesel was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, the National Humanities Medal and the Medal of Liberty in the United States.
Wiesel joins several other notable Jews featured in the Distinguished Americans series, including Jonas Salk, who developed the first influenza and polio vaccines, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright Edna Ferber and Albert Sabin, who developed the oral polio vaccine. Jewish author and illustrator Shel Silverstein and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have also been featured on stamps, and the postal service has issued several stamps marking Hanukkah.
“After the war, in the Displaced Persons camps, the first thing people did was get married and have children. Didn’t they know that the world was dangerous for Jews? But we have learned from our history that even in darkness, there is song and there is prayer and even when… pic.twitter.com/QZj4NaXTck
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) August 19, 2025
22 years ago, on August 19, 2003, a Palestinian terrorist detonated a suicide bomb on a bus in Jerusalem, brutally murdering 23 innocent people and injuring more than 130 others. Hamas claimed responsibility for this heinous attack, underscoring the ongoing threat posed by its… pic.twitter.com/GTaQWBQgT7
— StandWithUs (@StandWithUs) August 19, 2025
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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