Thursday, August 21, 2025

08/21 Links Pt2: Israel Isn’t a Danger to Jews — Jew Haters Are; Second person charged over Melbourne Synagogue arson; State Dept. to Block Visas for 'Terrorist Sympathizers' Attending Detroit Conference

From Ian:

The Holiest Hatred
We should think deeply about the aesthetics of anti-Zionist ritual—about how much it owes to the liturgical imagination of Christian Europe, where the sacred victim is elevated for adoration and the scapegoat is driven back into exile. Christ is paraded before the crowd in agony, while the Jew is cast out as the enemy of love.

In the anti-Zionist moral cosmology, the “suffering Palestinian” has become the consecrated victim whose pain redeems the sins of empire, while the Jew, displaced from that role, is rendered the contaminant to be expelled. This figure functions as the key symbol through which anti-Zionism unifies all the world’s evils into its constructed image of “Israel,” the source of all wrong. The claim that Jesus was Palestinian is not only a silly anachronism. It’s also a symbolic anchor.

Like the coming together of two rivers, the Islamist figure of the shahid— the martyr, suicide bomber, and human shield—now flows seamlessly into the icon of the Palestinian Christ, until West and East resonate together in one shared cult of death.

These symbols, tropes, and rhetorics form the backbone of anti-Zionist ideology: its sacrament of accusation, its passion play rewritten for the age of NGOs, academic conferences, and algorithmic amplification. Anti-Zionism has gone institutional, now woven into the worldview of Western elites, which frames the expulsion of the Jewish state from the community of nations not as a tragic necessity, but as a redemptive consummation—proof that the world still knows how to purify itself through pogroms and revolution.

And yet, despite this emerging megastructure of institutional anti-Zionism, its adherents have immunized themselves against recognizing their majoritarian power over Jews, through a familiar conspiratorial reversal: the Jew no longer as a vulnerable minority, but as the symbol of global domination. The more Jews are imagined as “powerful,” the more powerful the accuser feels in attacking them. It is a transference of strength. The blandest bigotry, the erosion of all decent standards, and that raw commitment to believing the libels—these are enough to turn resentment into sanctimony, envy into enlightenment.

During the campus riots of 2023 to 2024, activists marshaled the aesthetics of protest as “dissent,” acting out the conspiracy that “Zionists” control universities and governments in the very performance of protesting against the Jews. The result is freedom of speech for the Gentiles, but not for Jews, who are met instead with social ostracism, exclusion, and the demand to renounce their collective identity. School rules, and liberal principles, break like dams in the face of anti-Zionism’s energetic floods of accusation.

Antisemitism-as-justice is raw power with a humanitarian face. It is the stirrings of totalitarianism and the flouting of the law, coded in the language of law, now jammed into academic settler-colonial theory’s jargon of libel. Legal and moral evaluations are cast aside, irrelevant before the fixed drama that casts the Jew as the genocidal settler and the Palestinian as the natural force of Indigenous resistance. Once the roles are set, every outcome is already decided. The show trial of the Jew is set.

So yes, the “humanitarians” may be seething with bitterness and corrosive envy—but they believe themselves righteous. In this respect, nothing has changed. The medieval priest defending Christ from the enemies of love itself, the Enlightenment reformer purging the stubborn particularist from the universal order, the Romantic moralist rescuing culture from aesthetic corruption—all saw themselves as defenders of justice. Anti-Zionism inherits the same role, transposed into the register of human rights and international law while destroying their foundations in the process.

When hatred wears the robes of justice, it is immune to moral appeal. It will always claim the higher ground because the hate itself is the proof of one’s virtue. It will call itself a critique, and you will be the defendant on trial.

That is what makes this antisemitism of righteousness so persistent and so dangerous: It not only distorts the truth about Jews but also corrodes the very space in which truth and justice could be spoken at all.
Israel Isn’t a Danger to Jews — Jew Haters Are
Now, to be clear, I believe that Israel’s actions to defeat Hamas, which massacred over 1,200 people, raped women, and took 251 hostages, are righteous. But let’s just tease out the argument made by Friedman and Patinkin, and echoed by others, and assume that Israel’s actions in Gaza are making a lot of people very angry. In any other case, the left would strenuously oppose anybody who lashed out at all members of a group for actions taken by some members of the group. Yet when it comes to Jews, this somehow no longer applies.

As an example, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, there was a huge emphasis on the idea that people should not take out their anger on Arabs and Muslims. This wasn’t even a sentiment confined to Democrats. With the rubble still smoldering at Ground Zero and search and rescue efforts still underway, Rudy Giuliani warned against engaging in group blame against Arab communities in New York City; George W. Bush talked about Islam as a “religion of peace.”

Similarly, after October 7, progressives weren’t screaming that Hamas’s actions put a target on the back of Muslims everywhere. They were, instead, blaming Israel for creating the conditions that led to the Hamas attacks, or trying to restrain Israel from responding. Had American Jews started harassing Muslims leaving mosques in the wake of the attacks, the left-wing outrage would have been against the Jews, not against Hamas.

Yet when it comes to Israel, and to violent criminals venting their anger by carrying out attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions all over the world, the left is directing its ire at Israel rather than on the actual perpetrators.

The reality is that a lot of people in the world want to do harm to Jews, and while the excuses may change, this has been the case for thousands of years. Does the left really need a refresher on how secure world Jewry was in the years prior to the founding of Israel in 1948? Are we to believe that its first 75 years of existence did not inflame antisemitism everywhere, and that this started to become a danger only after its response to October 7?
Musical with Anne Frank as pansexual Latinx has audiences wondering, ‘Is this for real?’
What exactly is “Slam Frank,” the purported hip-hop musical that reimagines the Holocaust’s most famous victim as a pansexual Latinx girl today?

Is it a real show with real actors and real songs constructing a real story for real audiences? Or is it an elaborate social media prank designed to pillory the left and rage-bait the right? Or could it be both?

The show’s Instagram account, its primary engine of promotion, has stoked the confusion.

Co-creator Andrew Fox posts snippets of songs, rapping in character as Anne Frank — or Anita Franco, as she’s named in the play — about being “straight from the barrio” and calling people “gringos.”

“Storytellers like me are trying to make the Holocaust diverse,” Fox said in one Instagram post. “Because you watch movie after movie after movie and everybody looks like this — white, white, white,” he remarked, pointing to a still from “Schindler’s List.”

The posts range from sneak peeks of the show to broader, seemingly tongue-in-cheek commentary. Fox, who is Jewish, frequently posts on the account about being a Latinx artist (through his father’s Ecuadorian third wife) and his efforts to “decolonize Broadway.” Another post satirizing inclusivity issues decries the fatphobia of both Broadway theaters and Nazi concentration camps. (“Neither of these environments were built to accommodate people of size.”)

Fox and the “Slam Frank” team have built a social media campaign that is, like the premise of the show itself, inclusive to a fault. Many don’t know what to make of it, or whether this build-up is leading toward a real production.

“You guys are joking right?” one Instagram user commented. “I genuinely can’t tell in this political landscape.”

“You can’t actually think that making this is a good idea,” another user pleaded in a DM.

Among the at least dozens, and often hundreds of comments on each “Slam Frank” post, you can be sure to find commenters asking something along the lines of, Is this real??

But lately, as the show has opened workshops to critics and sold out the first eight nights of its upcoming Off-Broadway run, its devoted but somewhat befuddled fan base has started to trust that there might really be a full performance ahead — one that bears out its billing as “The Diary of Anne Frank” meets “Hamilton” meets “South Park.” According to Fox, the show will start a developmental run, meaning the script might still be tweaked for later performances, at Asylum NYC on September 17.


‘Lost the plot’: Douglas Murray slams Harvard University for co-sponsoring radical event
Author Douglas Murray says Harvard University has “lost the plot” after co-sponsoring an event that features Sami Al-Arian.

“Why any student in America should need to get suicide bombing instruction or terrorism encouragement from such a figure – I just don’t know,” Mr Murray told Sky News host Rita Panahi.

“It’s just madness for Harvard to host something this provocative.

“What does Harvard University actually think it’s for? … places like Harvard have completely lost the plot.”


Police charge 20-year-old man over Adass Israel Synagogue attack in Melbourne’s southeast
Counter-terrorism police have charged a second man over the alleged Adass Israel Synagogue firebombing attack in Melbourne’s southeast last December.

Australian Federal Police have arrested a 20-year-old Meadow Heights man after carrying out a search warrant last week.

He was charged with arson, conduct endangering life and motor vehicle theft on Thursday.

Police seized a number of items, including electronic devices, which are undergoing forensic examination.

The synagogue in Ripponlea was gutted in a suspicious blaze on Friday, December 6.

The AFP allege the Meadow Heights man is one of three individuals who broke into the synagogue and deliberately set the place on fire.

Counter-terrorism police have now charged two of the three people they believe set alight the synagogue.

A Werribee man, 21, was on July 30 charged for his alleged role as one of the three individuals who broke into the synagogue and ignited the fire.

On July 16, a Melton South man, 20, was charged for allegedly stealing a communal crime car, which is alleged to have been used to drive to the synagogue.

AFP Acting Assistant Commissioner Counter Terrorism and Special Investigations Nick Read said the Joint Counter Terrorism Team are committed to pursuing those involved in this attack.

“The AFP, together with Victoria Police under the JCTT, warned we would not allow these alleged crimes to go unpunished, and today’s latest arrest highlights that we remain laser focused on identifying those responsible and holding them to account for this attack,” Acting Assistant Commissioner Read said.

“This investigation has been one of the highest priorities for the JCTT. I want to reassure the community – especially the Jewish community – that the AFP, together with Victoria Police and ASIO, are working relentlessly to bring this investigation to its conclusion.


Preacher Wisam Haddad and Islamic State terrorist Youssef Uweinat are targeting the pro-Palestinian movement for recruits
As more than 100,000 people marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge against the Gaza war, a protester climbed above the crowd, his face wrapped, waving a black flag made infamous by Al Qaeda and Islamic State (IS).

The image was posted online by Wisam Haddad, a radical Sydney cleric who thrives on baiting the media.

"The only flag that counts!" said the post by Mr Haddad, recently identified by the ABC's Four Corners as a spiritual leader of Australia's pro-IS network.

Israeli politicians and pro-Israel voices seized on the small presence of the flags at the peaceful August 3 protest, portraying the Palestinian statehood campaign as a Trojan horse for extremism.

Mr Haddad's agenda is starker still. The preacher — who also goes by Abu Ousayd, William Haddad and Wissam Haddad — has no interest in a Palestinian state.

An ABC investigation reveals how he is working with convicted terrorists to exploit and fracture the pro-Palestinian movement, radicalise young Australians horrified by the war, and feed the global revival of IS.

The ABC has identified the man in the photograph as Youssef Uweinat, 27, a convicted IS youth recruiter who once promised suicide attacks and walked free from jail less than two years ago.

Uweinat is one of at least two former youth leaders for Mr Haddad's Sydney prayer centre convicted of terrorism offences and now free in the community.

Also known as Abu Musa al-Maqdisi, he was released without restriction in 2023 after a court rejected a legal bid to keep him under strict supervision.

He had served nearly four years in prison for grooming and encouraging Australian minors to launch attacks while drawing teenagers to Mr Haddad's Al Madina Dawah Centre in Bankstown.

Uweinat belonged to an IS cell that was infiltrated by a spy for Australia's intelligence agency ASIO, who recently told Four Corners how members plotted attacks and liaised with jihadist leaders abroad.

Uweinat's messages to teenagers, buried in court files, now lay bare Mr Haddad's close ties to the terrorist cell.


Trump Admin Poised to Block Visas for 'Terrorist Sympathizers' Appearing at Palestinian Conference in Detroit, State Department Confirms
The Trump administration is preparing to block visas for Palestinian terrorists slated to appear later this month at the People's Conference for Palestine in Detroit, Michigan, which will feature a number of radical Palestinian activists, a senior State Department official told the Washington Free Beacon.

"Given the public invite lists seem to include a number of terrorist sympathizers, we are going through and ensuring all international speakers slated to attend the conference are being placed on a 'look out' status for visa applications, so we are alerted if a request is submitted and can ensure they are appropriately processed," the senior official told the Free Beacon.

While the official would not identify which of the nearly 40 speakers would be assigned special "look out" status, some are Palestinians who have spent years behind bars in Israel for conspiring to kill Jews.

Hussam Shaheen spent 27 years in prison for attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He was released from prison just months ago, on Feb. 1, in a deal that exchanged Israeli hostages for Palestinian terrorists. Omar Assaf, a former member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, is also slated to appear, along with Lama Ghosheh, a Palestinian journalist from East Jerusalem. Assaf spent eight years in jail for his role in the DFLP terror group—a member group of the Palestine Liberation Organization—and Ghosheh received a three-year sentence from an Israeli court in 2023 for inciting violence and praising terrorism in the West Bank and Gaza.

Also slated to speak at the conference is Gaza-based poet Mosab Abu Toha, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his writings on the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. Soon after, his extremist anti-Israel social media posts came to light.

"How on earth is this girl called a hostage? (And this is the case of most 'hostages')," Abu Toha wrote on Facebook. "This is Emily Damari, a 28 [year-old] UK-Israeli soldier that Hamas detailed [sic] on 10/7… So this girl is called a 'hostage?' This soldier who was close to the border with a city that she and her country have been occupying is called a 'hostage.'"

Free Beacon editor in chief Eliana Johnson, who served on the jury for a different Pulitzer Prize, raised Abu Toha's rhetoric with the awarding organization—which includes acting Columbia University president Claire Shipman as a board member—and the Pulitzer board falsely accused her of violating a confidentiality agreement instead of explaining whether it knew of Abu Toha's social media activity.


Uncovering the HEAL Palestine charity’s overlap with Hamas-linked networks, extremist orgs
THE FOUNDER and head of HEAL Palestine is Ohio-born Steve Sosebee. He previously founded and ran the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), a charity that aims to provide medical treatment for children in the Middle East.

Sosebee, a former journalist, was married to Huda al-Masri, a Palestinian social worker, until her death from cancer.

He has a problematic social media history. He recently wrote on X that his “service to Palestine began as a journalist during the First Intifada,” going on to refer to it as “a legitimate national liberation movement in Palestine.” The First Intifada (December 1987-September 1993) resulted in the murder of 160 Israelis, the majority civilians, via stabbings, lynchings, and shootings.

On July 20, Sosebee tweeted, “We’ve entered the Schindler’s List phase of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”

On August 12, Sosebee reposted a post by Ghassan Abu Sitta (a British-Palestinian plastic and reconstructive surgeon who has previously been criticized for lauding PFLP terrorists) saying, “We are the indigenous population of that land called Palestine. We are being wiped out by European settlers. Like they wiped out many indigenous populations before us. Their genocidal tools are slaughter, diseases, and famine. How little have they evolved.”

As mentioned, Sosebee previously founded and ran the PCRF, which has established ties with the Holy Land Foundation, a former Islamic charity that was designated a terrorist organization in 2001 by the US government. The five heads of the HLF were also convicted of aiding Hamas.

Sosebee previously raised money for the HLF in a joint fundraising effort.

In an interview with the Dallas Observer in July 1996, viewed by the Post, the HLF contacted Sosebee after seeing an article about a child with burns to whom the PCRF had provided medical aid. The foundation told Sosebee that if he brought the child and other war-wounded children to Dallas, Texas, the HLF would handle all scheduling and prospective donors. The two then agreed to split the takings, with HLF getting 60% and PCRF taking 40%.

Even at the time, the Dallas Observer article raised the reported Hamas ties of the HLF, noting that one of the organization’s main donors was Mousa Abu Marzouk, Hamas’s first chairman.

According to Joe Kauffman in Front Page in 2003, PCRF’s ties to HLF dated back to 1991. He wrote that the PCRF considered two entities its “assisting organizations”: the HLF and the Global Relief Foundation. Both were raided and closed down by the US for funding terror groups in 2001. Another of the PCRF’s assisting organizations, the International Islamic Relief Organization, was raided by the FBI for funneling money to al-Qaeda and Hamas.

In 2003, the United States Department of Justice published a bulletin claiming that “the unofficial Hamas website… contained a hyperlink to the official Hamas site, as well as to several United States-based charities, including… the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.”

In 2004, the HLF asked the US Treasury Department for permission to transfer $50,000 to the PCRF.

According to NGO Monitor, the Hamas-run Social Development Ministry cooperated with the PCRF to distribute 700 aid packages in Beit Hanun in May 2021. The PCRF also partnered with the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry in 2019 to open a pediatric cancer department.

As social media users have pointed out, much of HEAL appears to be the PCRF with a new face. On its board are Naseem Tuffaha (chairman), Tania Nasir (co-founder and vice chair), Mohanned Awad (treasurer), Dr. Zeena Salman (co-founder), Dr. Gregory Stocks, and Ali Alireza – all of whom previously held leading positions at the PCRF. Salman is also the wife of Sosebee.


David Collier: Why are Al Jazeera Jihadists Being Sanctified as Heroic Journalists
Terrorists are dressing up as journalists and being celebrated as heroes. That should terrify us. When people in the West can no longer tell the difference between a terrorist and a reporter, we are in dangerous territory. And when global media outlets themselves are the ones amplifying these terrorists as ‘truth-tellers’, the spiral we are entering threatens the very core of our society.

On 10 August 2025, Israel eliminated Hamas commander Anas Al-Sharif. According to the IDF, he was a paid terrorist operative, and the evidence presented included personnel rosters, training lists, phone directories, and salary documents. The IDF claimed Al-Sharif headed a Hamas terrorist cell involved in firing rockets at Israeli civilians. Yet Al-Sharif also wore the badge of ‘journalist’ at Al Jazeera, using his press jacket as a shield and his platform as a weapon to broadcast Hamas propaganda to the world.

After the strike, images surfaced showing Anas Al-Sharif happily socialising with Hamas leaders:

Al Jazeera terrorists
Instead of anger at this charade – the exploitation of journalism to cloak terror – we saw anger at Israel. Worse still, we saw the canonisation of men like Al-Sharif, lauded as martyrs of the press.

Of the six ‘journalists’ killed with Al-Sharif, every accessible profile (4/4) openly glorified the murder of Jews in religious terms.

This is the real issue: not who was killed, but how jihadists are being sanctified as journalists. In the same strike that targeted Al-Sharif, five other journalists were also killed. I searched for their social media profiles. What I found was not the voice of reporters, but the creed of jihadists – men who viewed the slaughter of Jews as a religious cause to glorify, not a crime to condemn.

I am about to present solid evidence that these men not only wanted to see Jews killed, but also saw the murder through religious eyes – as part of a holy war. If they were glorifying the murder of innocents using the Christian Bible as justification – no legacy media outlet in the world would describe them other than as dangerous religious fundamentalists. So why is it when a Muslim uses the Quran to justify and celebrate the death of innocent Jews, outlets such as The Guardian publish comment pieces gushing about how these jihadists are actually brave heroes?


US Archbishop urges aid collections for Gaza, no mention of hostages
Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, did not mention Israel or hostages when he called upon other bishops in the country to start taking voluntary special collections for humanitarian relief and pastoral support in the Middle East, due to Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“The situation in Gaza and across the Middle East cries out for the assistance of the Catholic community of the United States,” Broglio wrote in a letter to other U.S. bishops.

He encouraged them to support the efforts of Catholic Relief Services and the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, according to the USCCB office of public affairs.

Both organizations have “well-established partnerships with the Catholic Church in the region,” according to the USCCB.

“Our Church mourns the terrible suffering of Christians and other innocent victims of violence in Gaza and surrounding areas who are struggling to survive, protect their children, and live with dignity in dire conditions,” continued Broglio. “The Holy Father continues to call for a ceasefire and for aid to enter the territory, noting with great sorrow that ‘Gaza is starving.’”
Outrage in Italy after medical staff seen discarding Israeli-made Teva medications
A doctor and a nurse in Italy are facing backlash after filming themselves throwing away Teva Pharmaceuticals products in protest against Israel. The video, posted on social media, sparked outrage as anti-Israel sentiment grows in Italian public discourse. Dr. Rita Segantini and nurse Giulia Checcacci later issued a clarification: “We apologize to anyone offended by the video. It was a symbolic gesture for peace. We did not actually throw away any medicine.”

The two work at a community hospital in Pratovecchio Stia, near Arezzo in Tuscany. It is unclear whether the footage involved empty boxes or real medication, or whether the products were personally owned or belonged to the regional health authority. Their employment at a public facility intensified criticism online, with some users accusing them of destroying life-saving drugs.

Segantini works as a family doctor under contract with the regional health authority, while Checcacci is employed through a private contractor. “They’re laughing, filming themselves on the job, in uniform, tossing things in the trash,” one commenter wrote. Another said: “We pay taxes for these drugs, and they treat them like garbage for social media likes.”

On the X platform, one user called it “a national disgrace,” writing: “This is not free expression—it’s fanaticism. Anyone who throws away life-saving drugs should not wear a medical uniform.” Another added: “I hope you never need one of Israel’s life-saving medical inventions.”

Deborah Bergamini, a lawmaker from the Forza Italia party and deputy vice president of the party, condemned the act as “ideological activism” and urged health officials to investigate and take disciplinary measures. Italy has seen a rising wave of anti-Israel incidents both online and in public spaces in recent months.
House Ed Committee Opens Investigation Into Anti-Semitism at Nation's Largest Teachers' Union
The House Committee on Education and Workforce has opened an investigation into whether the National Education Association is "contributing to antisemitism among its members and in classrooms across the United States," according to a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Committee chairman Tim Walberg (R., Mich.) wrote he is "gravely concerned about antisemitic content in the NEA's 2025 handbook and the NEA Representative Assembly's vote in July 2025 to ban materials by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)," in a Thursday letter sent to NEA president Rebecca Pringle.

The investigation comes after a wave of allegations of anti-Semitism against the nation's largest teachers' union.

In July, the NEA’s Representative Assembly passed a resolution to boycott the ADL's Holocaust education materials after union delegates complained the ADL’s definition of anti-Semitism was too strong.

NEA leadership overturned the vote after public outcry, but lawmakers have cited the NEA's 2025 handbook as further evidence the nation’s largest teachers’ union has embraced an extremist agenda.

The handbook, which outlines the NEA's annual priorities and strategic goals, included plans to promote a version of Holocaust remembrance that does not specifically mention Jews. The handbook did, though, give a lengthy description of the NEA's plans to "educate members and the general public about the history of the Palestinian Nakba," described as the "forced, violent displacement and dispossession of at least 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland in 1948 during the establishment of Israel."

The NEA said it would also "educate members about the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism" and promote "free speech in defense of Palestine at K-12 schools, colleges, and universities."

Walberg asked the union to turn over all communications, documents, or meeting minutes from NEA officials that included the words "antisemitism," "Israel," "Israeli," "Palestine," or "Palestinian," dating back to Oct. 7, 2023, the day of Hamas’s mass terrorist attacks in Israel. He also requested documents related to any changes to NEA’s 2025 handbook and the union’s vote to ban ADL materials.

"Unfortunately, the July 8 measure [against the ADL] and the plans set forth in NEA's handbook raise serious concerns that antisemitism has infected the nation's largest teachers' union," Walberg wrote.
American professors association head decries ‘weaponization of antisemitism’
Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, told InsideHigherEd that the Trump administration has weaponized antisemitism while discussing the organization’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Antisemitism has been used as a weapon, in many ways, by the Trump administration to bring universities to heel,” Wolfson said in the interview published on Tuesday. “Many times stripping out, or threatening to strip out, hundreds of millions of research dollars that often affect Jewish faculty members.”

Wolfson, who is on leave from his position as an associate professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University until 2027, also stated that the association, of which he was elected president in June 2024, believes “strongly that no weapons should be sent to Israel, at all. Not defensive or offensive, nothing.”

“We need to stand up for academic freedom, for freedom of speech, for freedom of assembly for our students so they can protest the war—the genocide, excuse me—that’s taking place in Gaza,” he said.

The AAUP president referred to the Jerusalem Declaration of Antisemitism, which states that boycotts against Israel are not inherently antisemitic, as “a much more apt way of defining antisemitism.”

The Jerusalem Declaration and its supporters argue that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism “blurs the difference between antisemitic speech and legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism,” according to the JDA’s website.

Wolfson told InsideHigherEd that if “Israel is purposefully destroying the educational infrastructure of Palestine and of Gaza,” then AAUP “will take a stand and call for an end to the scholasticide.”

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, co-founder and director of the AMCHA Initiative, told JNS that, since Wolfson became AAUP president, the association “has abandoned its role in protecting academic freedom and instead embraced the anti-Israel agenda” of boycotting the Jewish state.

“By reversing its own principled stance against academic boycotts last year, the AAUP has normalized extremist ideologies and left Jewish students and faculty more vulnerable to antisemitism on college campuses,” she said.
Kansas State University 'Civil Rights' Administrator Is Part of Secret Marxist Group That Says It Has 'No Sympathy' for Dead Jews
An investigator in Kansas State University's civil rights office, which claims to foster an "environment free from discrimination, harassment, and retaliation," is part of a secretive Marxist book club that calls for the "total destruction" of Israel, hails the terrorist group Hamas, and defends the murders of Israeli civilians.

Derron Borders, who joined the university's civil rights and Title IX office in May 2024, is a member of the Kansas Socialist Book Club, an anti-colonial Marxist group based in Manhattan, Kansas, the Washington Free Beacon has found.

The organization, formed in 2022, has embraced extremist views on Israel over the Jewish state's response to the Oct. 7 attacks from Hamas. In a manifesto last year, the Kansas Socialist Book Club called for the "complete and total destruction" of Israel and expressed "unwavering support" for Hamas.

"We remain steadfast in our support of Palestinian liberation, whatever that ends up looking like," the organization's manifesto says. The group also defends the slaughter of Israeli civilians, referred to in the manifesto as the "Zionist middle class."

"We have no sympathy for their casualties or losses," proclaimed the club, which also signed an open letter with other radical groups that defended Elias Rodriguez, the left-wing activist who assassinated Israeli embassy employees Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., on May 21.

While the Kansas Socialist Book Club does not disclose its members, several clues point to Borders's involvement in the book club. Borders is one of the book club's five followers on GitHub, a web development platform the group uses for its website. He is also co-secretary of the Flint Hills Democratic Socialists of America, a Kansas-based affiliate of DSA that has hosted events with the Kansas Socialist Book Club.

Borders wrote an academic paper titled, "Raising class consciousness: Adult learning in a socialist book club," for the American Association For Adult and Continuing Education, according to his online résumé, which also identifies him as the founder of the Coalition for Fat Identities.


NYT Laments Fewer Iranians on College Campuses as Trump Pulls Visas From Criminals and Terrorist Sympathizers
The New York Times began a Wednesday report on President Donald Trump's student visa crackdown aimed at criminals and terror sympathizers with a lament that fewer Iranian nationals will be attending U.S. colleges this year.

"Many Iranians are not going to American universities this fall," the report begins, adding, "Students from Afghanistan are having trouble getting to campus." The Times goes on to note that new international student enrollment in American universities "seems certain to drop—by a lot."

The Trump administration has revoked more than 6,000 student visas for overstays and criminal activity—including 200 to 300 who have expressed "support for terrorism"—a State Department official said on Monday, according to Reuters. The crackdown comes amid heightened concerns over illegal immigration and a surge in anti-Semitic incidents, some involving student visa holders, since Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.

Foreign students have led many of the anti-Israel protests. Columbia University's Mahmoud Khalil, an Afghan national who worked for the Hamas-tied U.N. agency UNRWA during the October 7 attack, has refused to condemn the terrorist group. The Trump administration detained Khalil in March after revoking his visa and green card, though a federal judge ordered his release in June. Momodou Taal, a British and Gambian dual national who studied at Cornell and led anti-Israel protests on his campus, said he takes his "cue from the armed resistance in Palestine."

The Iranian government, meanwhile, actively supports the anti-Israel protests. Last July, then-director of national intelligence Avril Haines assessed that the Islamic Republic was organizing and paying anti-Israel protesters in the United States to sow division ahead of the 2024 election. Months earlier, Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei openly praised the anti-Israel student protesters as "a branch of the Resistance Front."


George Washington U suspends Jewish Voice for Peace chapter
George Washington University suspended its Jewish Voice for Peace chapter before the start of the 2025-26 academic year.

The Washington, D.C.-based university told JNS that the student organization conduct history web page was updated in July with new resolutions that include two cases this spring involving the chapter.

One infraction was an event hosted on April 20 (Hitler’s birthday, of all days) without advisor approval, per the web page. The other involved “a social-media post that created a hostile environment based on a Jewish identity, a protected characteristic.” The specific post was not shared.

The university enrolls some 3,000 Jewish undergraduate students and 1,500 Jewish graduate students, according to Hillel.

JVP’s suspension is mandated to continue through the spring semester of 2026, after which it will be on disciplinary probation through the spring semester of 2027, per the conduct history web page. The chapter will need to show that it has removed the post in question and has developed better guidelines for using social media.

The university had suspended JVP last year through December after it found the chapter “responsible for hosting an unapproved multi-day encampment” in the spring of 2024. It was on disciplinary probation through May of this year, according to the same web page.

The U.S. Department of Justice had announced on Aug. 12 that the university had violated federal civil-rights law in its “deliberate indifference” to antisemitic incidents on campus that were “objectively offensive, severe and pervasive.”


The Future of Journalism? The Columbia Journalism Review’s Skewed View of Israel & Gaza
Clearly, rather than engaging with the serious questions about the journalistic integrity of some Gazan reporters and media workers, Khan prefers to blindly absolve them of any wrongdoing and vilify those bringing these terror ties to light. This is not the work of an influential academic committed to truth and accuracy but of a propagandist obfuscating reality to serve a prepared narrative.

Khan’s ire then turned toward governments and news outlets, accusing them of turning a blind eye to Israel’s actions in Gaza and endangering the lives of Palestinian journalists.

It is here that Khan turned to a litany of “thinkers from across the fields of journalism, human rights, literature, academia, and advocacy,” asking for new strategies and ideas on how to promote “press freedom” in Gaza. With such a biased introduction, it is no surprise that the respondents all shared Khan’s animus towards Israel and placed all blame at the feet of the Jewish state, completely ignoring the terror organization that still exerts control inside the Gaza Strip.

Here are some of the most radical proposals and claims that were put forward in this piece:
Sharif Abdel Kouddous, the Middle East and North Africa editor for Drop Site News (an alternative news organization that has no problem parroting Hamas talking points and sympathizing with the terror group), suggested journalists strike until media organizations include a disclaimer that Israel is responsible for the most journalist deaths around the world. He said the veracity of any Israeli statement “is dubious.”
Arwa Damon, a former CNN correspondent who was quick to contextualize Hamas’ October 7 attacks, recommended “banning Israeli government and military voices from air and print until they let the press into Gaza.”
Activist and journalist Mohammed El-Kurd, no stranger to misinformation and bending the truth, suggested a flotilla or march of foreign journalists to Gaza.
Lila Hassan, an independent journalist, accused the media of favoring the Israeli narrative and not questioning it, thus violating media ethics.
Assal Rad, a media critic, urged journalists and media organizations to platform Palestinian voices from inside Gaza and to stop treating Israeli government statements as “a reliable source of information.”
Similarly, Diana Buttu, a former spokesperson for the PLO, called on journalists to stop “interviewing or giving space” to Israeli spokespeople.
Abubaker Abed, a Palestinian journalist who glorifies Hamas and incites violence, suggested that media organizations should hire more Gazan journalists and pay them double the current rate while also providing cover for them in the international arena.

The publication of such a one-sided piece in an elite university’s journalism review calls into question the ethics and standards that are being taught to budding journalists. What hope is there for journalistic standards to be maintained in future reporting on Israel and the Palestinians if this is the approach taken by those who are tasked with influencing the next generation of journalists?


Fatah surrenders some weapons to Lebanon; US said to ask Israel to limit Hezbollah strikes
Lebanon said that some Palestinian factions began handing over weapons held in a refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut to the Lebanese army Thursday, an initial step in implementing a plan officials announced three months earlier for removing arms from the camps.

It was a modest first step. One pickup left the Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in Beirut’s southern suburbs loaded with light weapons packed in bags. The butts of machine guns could be seen protruding from some of the sacks.

An AFP photographer saw a truck filled with weapons and ammunition transported from the camp to a nearby parking lot, where Lebanese army vehicles and personnel were deployed to inspect the cargo.

The step of removing weapons from the camps was seen as a precursor to the much more difficult step of disarming Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah, which last year fought a bruising war with Israel that ended in a ceasefire in November. Hezbollah has been under domestic and international pressure since then to give up its remaining arsenal, which it has so far refused to do.

The decision to remove weapons from the Palestinian camps was announced in May during a visit by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to Lebanon, during which he and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun announced that arms would be consolidated under the authority of the Lebanese government.

It was unclear if factions other than Abbas’s Fatah movement would abide by the decision.


Where Did Iran's Arab Supporters Go?
What has befallen Iran is no small matter; its military losses and nuclear facilities are immense, facilities that cost billions of dollars and much blood and sweat to build. To its ballistic and nuclear losses, we can add the loss of the popular current it had cultivated across the region, from Iraq to Morocco.

The collapse of Iranian influence is clear within Arab regions. When the Lebanese government took its bold decision to confiscate Hizbullah's weapons, the response in the street was limited. In the wake of Iran's defeat, a sense of shock and betrayal spread across the region, which had been waiting for the liberation of Palestine.

Iran once enjoyed dominance and popular support in the region. It managed to raise generations of Arabs on its ideas. Tehran opened its doors and arms to extremist Sunnis, including leaders of al-Qaeda, and supported most Sunni opposition groups against their governments. It built a deeply coordinated relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood. It climbed onto many Arab media outlets to promote Khamenei's line.

Tehran was managing elite and grassroots movements in dozens of Arab cities. But in the recent wars, following the Oct. 2023 attacks, the kind of mobilization we were used to in every confrontation faded. One reason is that people do not admire the defeated. The second is that the apparatuses that used to orchestrate these movements have lost their connections and their resources. The Arab street venerates the victorious hero until he falls, then replaces him with another hero.

The remaining challenge for Iran is to hold on to its supporters within its Shiite popular base. With time, the Shias of Lebanon will come to realize the truth: that they are victims of Hizbullah and Iran, that it is a burden on them rather than a support. For four decades they have borne the confrontation with Israel and the consequences of ties with Iran: economic and personal sanctions, and the destruction of their neighborhoods.


Neighbours hurl anti-Semitic slurs at father of Georgia woman killed working for Israel’s border patrol
A grieving father of an American woman killed while serving on Israel’s border patrol was verbally abused by neighbors who shouted antisemitic slurs and mocked him for his daughter’s death, according to the hurting dad and video.

Sgt. Elisheva Rose Ida Lubin, 20, was stabbed to death by a teenage “terrorist” while patrolling Jerusalem’s Old City in November 2023.

Rose was a “lone soldier” living in Israel without her family after immigrating there in August 2021 and starting her mandated army duty in March 2022 — more than a year before the Israel-Hamas War officially began.

Her father, David Lubin, hasn’t known peace since his daughter’s untimely death.

Back home in Atlanta, where Rose lived with her family before moving to Israel, David said he’s been frequently harassed by his vindictive neighbors who labeled the mourning father as a “corrupt Israeli.”

The simmering tensions between the two households came to a head when David posted signage honoring Rose across from his neighbors, who had other signs claiming support for Palestinians alongside bits covered with derogatory Jewish slurs, he said.

David told Atlanta News First that he never took issue with his neighbors’ signs, as they had a right to display whatever they wanted.

He tried to shake off their comments, at first — until he said he heard the irate woman call him a “k–e” and shout that “your daughter deserved to die,” he told the outlet.

David marched across the street and confronted his neighbors while they each filmed one another on their phones.

“You are calling yourself a k–e, you know what you are. You know what you are better than me. You are a corrupt politician with a daughter in the IDF that went there to kill, and has killed maybe in friendly fire because the Israeli soldiers kill each other all the time, and you know very well,” one of his neighbors, Anna Bouyzk, insisted as they argued over the meaning of the Jewish slur.

Bouyzk and her husband Mark, the co-founder of the bought-out genetics company AKESOgen, went on to insist Rose’s death was okay because “she was fighting.”

“Do you realize when you say that how disgusting you are? You are disgusting. You are disgusting. You are the most disgusting person I’ve ever met. ‘Because you’re a Jew, you don’t understand’? You are so confused,” David spat.


Israeli nationals recorded by pro-Palestinian activists attacked and hospitalized
Two Israelis were attacked at the Center Parcs De Kempervennen in the Netherlands, according to a report by Jonet, which seems to be corroborated by a statement made by the Israeli foreign ministry on Twitter/ X on Thursday.

The Israeli nationals are understood to be receiving treatment from a hospital in Eindhoven for wounds sustained from an attack carried out by multiple local residents.

Before the attack, Jonet reported that the Israelis had been secretly recorded by pro-Palestinian activists and their image was shared online. The footage of the Israeli families reportedly appeared on the social media page of the Amsterdam branch of Students for Justice in Palestine, according to Omroep Flevoland.

The Center for Information and Documentation Israel filed a legal complaint after the recordings became known.


Doctor who praised Hitler and said she would 'support him if he was around today' during 'venomous' anti-Semitic rant is allowed back to work
A doctor who said she would 'support Hitler if he was around today' during an anti-Semitic rant has been allowed back to work.

Dr Mili Shah, 47, was suspended for four months after allegedly praising Adolf Hitler and making racist comments directed at a colleague.

The comment was made in 2021 in private to another staff member about a doctor who was not present at the time, known as Dr E.

The staff member recalled in her evidence at the tribunal that Dr Shah had said: 'All this antisemitism…if Hitler was around today I would support him as he got rid of horrible f*****s like him.'

She is then reported to have pointed 'aggressively' towards Dr E's office as she said it.

The witness added: 'I cannot forget that interaction, it is seared into my memory and when I think of it now, I am back in that room and able to recall it all.

'Dr Shah paused before she spoke and her tone changed. I would describe her tone as nasty and venomous.

'She pointed aggressively as she referred to 'him' and she was pointing in the direction of Mr E's office which was down the hallway, so Dr Shah was kind-of pointing through the wall in that direction.

'I was concerned about being implicated in Dr Shah's views and that's partly what drove me to report it.'

It was said Dr Shah's 'abhorrent' outburst amounted to racial harassment when she addressed the colleague at Broadgreen Hospital in Liverpool.

Having now served her ban, the consultant dermatologist is fit to return to work, following a review by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in July.

However she is is no longer employed by NHS University Hospitals of Liverpool Group.


What Really Happened Inside the Warsaw Ghetto? | Unpacked
In the Warsaw Ghetto, 700 young Jews—hungry, outgunned, and facing certain de@th—rose against the N@zis with stolen pistols and homemade b0mbs.

In what became the largest Jewish uprising of the H0l0caust, for nearly a month, they held their ground, shattering N@zi confidence and inspiring resistance across Europe. Their defiance sparked uprisings across Europe and left a legacy of courage in the face of certain de@th.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:59 The Jewish ghettos of Europe
01:33 Life in the Warsaw Ghetto
03:02 Resistance of the Ghetto's youth groups
04:32 The two main resistance groups
05:38 Diversity & unity in the Ghetto
06:13 The assassination of Jakub Lejkin & other collaborators
07:35 The January Revolt
09:54 The Uprising
12:29 The legacy of the Uprising


“I WANTED TO DIE” Surviving Hamas Hostage BREAKS SILENCE: Shlomi Ziv’s Untold Story Erin Molan
Special Edition of The Erin Molan Show | For the first time, Shlomi Ziv — who was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7th and later freed in a daring rescue by the IDF — tells his full story.

In this revealing and emotional interview, Shlomi shares:
His harrowing experience during captivity
The details of his dramatic rescue
The reality for the hostages still held in Gaza
How lies about Gaza are spreading in Western media
What true peace could look like — and the obstacles standing in the way
This is Shlomi’s story, in his own words. A must-watch.




Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

    
 

 



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Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



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

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