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Tuesday, September 16, 2025

09/16 Links Pt2: Louis Armstrong’s Star of David; Nearly 80 Percent Of Jewish College Students Hid Their Religious Identity; Poll: The MAGA Youth Are Still Pro-Israel

From Ian:

Louis Armstrong’s Star of David
He was one of the world’s greatest jazz musicians, and to this day is considered the most iconic trumpeter in history. Although he wasn’t Jewish, he wore a Star of David necklace around his neck for most of his life. The necklace was a tribute to the Jewish family who helped raise him, and even helped him purchase his very first instrument. This is the story of the legendary musician whose soul became entwined with that of the Karnofsky family, and the scandal that broke out when he visited Israel.

“If it wasn’t for the nice Jewish people, we would have starved many a time. I will love the Jewish people, all of my life.”
(Louis Armstrong, Louis Armstrong: In His Own Words: Selected Writings, p. 9)

The year is 1907. In the sweltering summer heat of New Orleans, a seven-year-old boy is pushing a cart loaded with coal and scrap down a dusty street. The work is grueling – cleaning bottles, hauling coal – and demands that the child raise his young voice, shouting to attract customers as he pushes the heavy cart forward. In the evening, instead of heading home, he sits down to eat dinner with the family who have employed him and even taken him in, unofficially – the Karnofskys, poor Lithuanian Jewish immigrants. After the meal, the mother, Tillie, picks up baby David in her arms and sings Russian Lullaby, with the boy joining in.

Like many Jews at the turn of the 20th century, the Karnofsky family had fled the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire (now Lithuania) and arrived in the United States penniless. They settled in one of New Orleans’ poorest neighborhoods, home mostly to African Americans. They opened a small business collecting and selling scrap throughout the city, and at night sold their haul from coal carts in the red-light district. To run the business, they bought two horses and wagons, and hired local children from poor families to work for them. (It wasn’t until 1936 that U.S. law prohibited the employment of children under 16.)

That young boy, who had no idea he would one day become one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, was Louis Armstrong, or “Satchmo,” as he was fondly nicknamed. Years later, when he was already an international superstar, Armstrong received a gold Star of David pendant from his friends Abe and Francis Donen, who owned a jewelry shop in Los Angeles. To Armstrong, the pendant was a reminder of the time he spent with “my Jewish family,” as he called the Karnofskys, and of the poor boy he once was in New Orleans. He never took it off. That little boy, so in need of support and encouragement, found it in a poor Jewish immigrant family from Lithuania.

Louis Armstrong was born in August 1901 in New Orleans. His mother was a single parent who worked from morning to night to support him and his sister. At the age of seven, he began working for the Karnofsky family. That job altered the course of his life, making him a fixture in their home, and sparking a deep sense of kinship and love toward the Jewish People as a whole.

The work with the Karnofskys was not easy, as Armstrong would later recall. “The Karnofskys would start getting ready for work at five o’clock in the morning. And me, I was right there along with them,” he wrote. “I began to feel like I had a future and ‘It’s a Wonderful World‘ after all.

That sense of possibility wasn’t just thanks to the job and the wages. The Karnofskys became a kind of adoptive family. They nurtured his love of music, and perhaps more importantly, gave him the belief that he could become a musician.

They also helped him acquire his first instrument. One day, while riding through the French Quarter with Morris Karnofsky, the father, Louis spotted an old, rusty cornet in a shop window. It cost five dollars, a huge sum for a poor kid in New Orleans at the time. For Louis, it seemed like an impossible dream. But Morris saw the spark in his eyes and encouraged him to buy it. He gave Louis a two-dollar advance on his wages to help him get started. Over the following weeks, Louis saved fifty cents each week until he had enough to make the purchase. . “The little cornet was real dirty and had turned real black. Morris cleaned my little cornet with some brass polish and poured some insurance oil all through it, which sterilized the inside. He requested me to play a tune on it. Although I could not play a good tune Morris applauded me just the same, which made me feel very good.” Armstrong later recalled.
HBO Max adds ‘One Day in October’ to its roster for Nova Festival massacre anniversary
A dramatised portrayal of the October 7 attacks previously broadcast in Israel and the UK will be brought to US audiences next month after a major streaming service acquired the rights to the series.

HBO Max has exclusively acquired the rights to One Day In October, a four-part series that details the horrors of the Nova Festival massacre, and is scheduled to add the it to its roster on the second anniversary of the October 7 attacks.

The drama was released in Israel last year and and it aired in the UK on Channel 4 on the first anniversary of the attacks.

The series is based on real-life accounts from survivors of the atrocities and was filmed on location in Israel.

It chronicles seven interwoven narratives, with each episode revealing the “human cost and resilience born out of chaos”, according to the producers.

The cast includes Israeli actors Swell Ariel Or and Noa Kedar.

"The series portrays the victims’ and survivors’ experiences of that day and is brought to life by a distinguished cast and acclaimed creative team,” they added.
Noga Erez to perform in Coachella Festival amid boycott calls and pro-Palestinian performers
Popular Israeli electronic singer and producer Noga Erez is slated to perform at the high-profile Coachella Festival next April in California. Erez appears on the poster for the festival, released on Tuesday, performing on the second day of the festival, alongside headliners Justin Bieber and other artists, including The Strokes and Alex G.

This year’s Coachella features a number of performers who stated anti-Israel views, most prominently Irish group Kneecaps, which projected messages on a screen including “F*** Israel,” “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” and “The U.S. government arms and funds Israel despite their war crimes.”

Erez is well-known outside of Israel and has performed with American star Pink during a tour of the southern US. Her third album, The Vandalist, was released in September 2024, postponed almost a year because of the events of October 7.

Late last year, Erez said in an Instagram post that she was being boycotted internationally because she’s Israeli. In the video post, she said that scheduled festival and concert dates abroad have been abruptly canceled.

“I really wish it was just one case, but the list kind of keeps growing,” Erez said. “It’s not for anything that I said, it’s simply because I was born where I was born. I believe that boycotting artists will not bring a solution. I believe that banning songs, movies, plays, books, etc., is not going to fix the world’s problems.”


The MAGA Youth Are Still Pro-Israel, Free Beacon-Echelon Insights Poll Shows
Young conservatives and Trump voters have a largely positive view of Israel and strongly approve of the way President Donald Trump is handling the U.S.-Israel relationship, a Washington Free Beacon poll found. That’s true even for those who tune in to or get their news from anti-Israel podcasters like Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens.

The poll, conducted in late August, surveyed over 1,000 young conservatives between the ages of 18 and 34. These young people support Trump’s handling of America’s relationship with the Jewish state by a whopping 43-point margin and a majority believe that the United States should support Israel as an ally. The president has been overwhelmingly supportive of Israel in its war against Hamas and continued to demand the release of Israeli hostages held by the terrorist group.

The polling comes at a time when anti-Israel influencers on the far right like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes are drawing eyeballs and the notion that young conservatives are increasingly hostile to the Jewish state is gaining traction. A New York Times profile of Fuentes, for example, noted that "his anti-Israel, anti-immigrant, anti-transgender and anti-civil-rights views seem to have gained new currency during the second Trump administration."

While young people may be tuning in to these edgy right-wing influencers, they aren’t necessarily being persuaded. Among media personalities like Carlson and Owens, who routinely lambaste Israel and its supporters in the United States, a majority of their audience nonetheless has a favorable view of the Jewish state—58 percent of Owens’s listeners and 54 percent of Carlson’s. Even those who tune into Fuentes, who has described Israel as "the anti-Christ" and accused the Jewish state of staging the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, support Israel by a one-point margin, 38 to 37 percent.

Of the 20 percent of young people who said they had heard the theory that Israel was responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, for example, 49 percent dismissed it as definitely or probably untrue, while just 20 percent said it was definitely or probably true. That’s a theory that Owens has advanced on her podcast and Carlson has intimated, interviewing several guests who have suggested this is what transpired.

Similarly, of the 29 percent who said they were familiar with the claim that Israel persecutes Christians, 40 percent dismissed the notion while just 27 percent were receptive to it. Carlson spent 90 minutes last month interviewing the mustachioed sister of George Stephanopoulos, Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos, to discuss the matter. "The whole issue is that Israel has continued to grow and think that they can dominate the Christian areas, the areas of Palestine, so they make it very difficult for anyone else to be able to live there," she told Carlson.


Former FBI official: Hamas remains entrenched in US
According to Lara Burns, a former FBI agent who spent years tracking Hamas in the United States, the terror organization has for decades had a detailed strategy for both fundraising and winning the propaganda war, especially on American campuses.

One of the targets of the recent Israeli strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar, which apparently failed, was Musa Abu Marzouk, who served as the first chairman of the Hamas political bureau from 1992 to 1996 and then as deputy chairman from 1996 until 2013, when he was succeeded by Ismail Haniyeh.

Abu Marzouk first arrived in the United States in 1982 on a student visa, which he renewed several times, until he was given a green card in 1990. The U.S. designated Hamas a terrorist organization in 1997, making it illegal for Hamas to raise funds or operate openly.

Burns told a group of select journalists in Tel Aviv during a visit to Israel in early September that Abu Marzouk had created three organizations in the U.S. to get around this terrorist designation: the Islamic Association for Palestine, which became Hamas’s propaganda arm; the Occupied Land Fund, later renamed the Holy Land Foundation, which became Hamas’s financial arm; and the United Association for Studies and Research, which served as the political/academic arm.

She said then, as now, Hamas has a long-term strategy that seems to have succeeded. A recent poll found that 60 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 support Hamas over Israel in the current conflict.

Burns, who interviewed hundreds of Hamas officials during her time in the FBI, said Hamas had made no secret of the fact that it was playing the long game.

“American society and the U.S. government, in my opinion, failed to understand the strategy of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and that they plan hundreds of years in advance. And nothing deters them from pursuing that ultimate goal,” Burns said. “I think because they weren’t conducting overt military operations on U.S. soil, they were deemed to be less of a threat [than other organizations such as Islamic State or countries like Iran].”

“They took a back seat,” she said. “But to me, when organizations like Hamas are quiet, that’s when they’re the most lethal.”
Endorsing BDS, Mamdani says he’ll stop using IHRA definition of antisemitism, if elected
New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist who is the frontrunner for mayor of New York City, said that if elected, he would stop using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism.

The remarks came in an interview published last week in Bloomberg News. In it, he also said he supports the BDS movement against Israel.

The move would effectively undo an executive order signed in June by Eric Adams, the current mayor of New York City, recognizing the IHRA definition on behalf of the five boroughs.

“A Mamdani administration will approach antisemitism in line with the Biden administration’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism—a strategy that emphasizes education, community engagement and accountability to reverse the normalization of antisemitism and promote open dialogue,” said Dora Pekec, a Mamdani spokesperson, according to the New York Post.

Biden’s official strategy noted that the IHRA definition of antisemitism is the “most prominent” definition that “the United States has embraced,” though he did not explicitly endorse it.
Boots promotes beauty influencer who shared anti-Semitic posts online
In July, beauty influencer Huda Kattan, founder of Huda Beauty, posted a TikTok to her 2m followers. Dressed cosily in heart-patterned pyjamas, she chatted to the camera, her head sweetly cocked to one side, leaning into her perfectly French-manicured hand.

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” she said in an intimate, husky tone. What she had been seeing, the Iraqi-American then explained, was “all of the conspiracy theories coming out and a lot of evidence behind them that Israel has been behind the First World War, the Second World War, September 11 and October 7.”

At the time, the American Jewish Committee condemned the “spread of vile anti-Semitic conspiracy theories”, and the post was taken down.

That was in July. Fast forward to September, and Boots in the UK has Kattan’s face plastered in supersize format across the windows of their Covent Garden store.

“It feels like Boots are condoning anti-Semitism,” says Deborah Lyons, designer and co-founder of Fashion and Beauty Against Anti-Semitism (FABAA), which was formed in the wake of October 7. “It’s shocking – especially considering the accountability we expect nowadays for issues like racism and sexual harassment.”

Kattan, whose brand Huda Beauty has an Instagram following of 57.3m – the size of the English population – has a track record on social media. Content she has reposted on her personal accounts includes sentiments such as “Zionists are the new Nazis” and “If the Jews had it their way, they’d kill anybody that opposes them”, as well as other conspiracy theories, including claims that Israel was involved in the genocide in the Congo.

Mark Gardner, chief executive of the Community Security Trust (CST), an organisation that works closely with the UK government and police to combat anti-Semitism, says, “Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but something this ugly is very simple. Huda Kattan has promoted vile extremism against Jews. If this were about any other minority group, Boots wouldn’t hesitate for one moment.”
Simon Sebag Montefiore launches children’s edition of best seller Jerusalem
Bestselling historian Simon Sebag Montefiore has launched an illustrated adaptation of his acclaimed Jerusalem: A Biography, opening up the city’s epic history to a new generation of readers.

Jerusalem: The City That Changed the World, published this week by Hachette Children’s Group, condenses 3,000 years of conflict, faith, and culture, into 30 key episodes aimed at readers aged 11 and up. The volume, is richly illustrated by Rui Ricardo and Catherine Rowe.

Speaking exclusively to Jewish News, Montefiore said the project was about giving younger readers access to stories that might otherwise feel overwhelming. His original 800-page book, published in 2011, charted the city’s entire history. “Because it’s so complicated, I think it couldn’t really be read by children,” he said. “First of all, it’s 800 pages long, and secondly, it’s a very complicated series of different stories. What I wanted to do was use the best stories from the history of the Holy City and turn them into a book that could be read by people of all ages.”

At the heart of the project, he said, is a message of tolerance. “The theme of the book is really to recognise the narrative, the stories of other people. That’s the heart of tolerance. You have to recognise the history of the other in order to ever make peace with them or even share with them.”

The process has taken four years, with much of the time spent on illustration and the challenges of colour printing. “It takes ages because the illustrations take so long,” he said. “And the printing is complicated… but it’s been a lot of fun to do, and I’m really proud of it.”


Jewish Labour MP on delegation denied entry into Israel
Dr Peter Prinsley – a Jewish Labour MP and Board of Deputies representative – has been denied entry into Israel alongside another parliamentarian.

Prinsley and the Labour MP Simon Opher were travelling as part of a Council for Arab-British Understanding delegation that was due to meet British diplomats in Jerusalem this week, in addition to Palestinian and Israeli human rights organisations.

In a joint statement, the two MPs said it was ” deeply regrettable that Israeli authorities prevented them from seeing first-hand the grave challenges facing medical facilities in the region and from hearing the British government’s assessment of the situation on the ground.”

The statement said that the purpose of the visit, organised by was to “enable members of parliament to witness the vital medical and humanitarian work of a range of organisations including Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) in the occupied West Bank.”


Nearly 80 Percent Of Jewish College Students Hid Their Religious Identity in the Past Year, New Survey Finds
Nearly 80 percent of Jewish students have hidden their religious identity on university campuses worldwide, according to an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) survey published Tuesday.

Seventy-eight percent of the Jewish students surveyed said they felt "the need to hide [their] Jewish identity from others at [their] university" at least once in the last year. Another 81 percent said they kept their Zionist identity secret on at least one occasion.

ADL senior vice president of international affairs Marina Rosenberg called the situation "nothing short of dire."

"This survey exposes a devastating reality: Jewish students across the globe are being forced to hide fundamental aspects of their identity just to feel safe on campus," Rosenberg said. "When over three-quarters of Jewish students feel they must conceal their religious and Zionist identity for their own safety, the situation is nothing short of dire."

Such grim results may suggest that a notable portion of the students surveyed attended universities in countries that limit freedom of religion or have notorious records of anti-Semitism in recent years. But in reality, more than two-thirds went to schools in democratic nations, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and even the United States. Germany, where the swastika is banned, boasted the largest representation.

That may make another finding even more jarring: Thirty-four percent of respondents knew Jewish peers who were physically threatened on campus, while another 19 percent reported knowing peers who were physically assaulted. Nearly 30 percent of Jewish students said they experienced discrimination from classmates, compared to 9 percent who reported discrimination from professors or university staff.

The poll, conducted in collaboration with the World Union of Jewish Students during the 2024-25 academic year, surveyed 1,727 Jewish students across 60 countries and 6 continents. Its release comes as several world leaders, including French president Emmanuel Macron and British prime minister Keir Starmer, recognize a Palestinian state.

Jewish students in America have also hidden their identities, albeit to a lesser extent than their peers abroad. An ADL survey published in January found that 41 percent of students felt the need to hide their Jewish identity, while only 27 percent said they felt comfortable with others on campus knowing their views on Israel.
Many US professors targeted as Jews, Israel supporters, survey suggests
On March 13, 2024, Jane Close Conoley, president of California State University, Long Beach, stated that it was “deeply upsetting” that flyers were created and posted around campus that week bearing the image of a professor and “characterizations purporting to represent his views related to the Hamas-Israel conflict.”

“I know these characterizations are false, and I experience them as antisemitic threats,” she stated at the time. “We have reached out to our faculty member to offer support, and I have also asked that the Office of Equity and Compliance review this matter.” She added that the school “must also reject Islamophobia and antisemitism.”

Jeffrey Blutinger, a history professor and director of Jewish studies at the public school, told JNS that he learned of the posters depicting him from a student. The posters called him a “genocide denier” and “violent Zionist,” basically suggesting, “Is this the kind of faculty you want on campus?” according to photos that he shared with JNS.

But despite the statement from the school president, Blutinger told JNS that after reporting the posters to campus police, he was told that the latter lacks the “forensic capability” to check for fingerprints to determine who posted the materials.

“I don’t feel safe on campus,” he told JNS.

Blutinger was one of 209 Jewish professors at U.S. schools whom the Anti-Defamation League and Academic Engagement Network surveyed anonymously about experiencing Jew-hatred on campus, he told JNS.

More than 73% of respondents in the survey said that professors and staff at their schools engaged in Jew-hatred. More than half (50.2%) of those surveyed said there were “soft” or “shadow” boycotts on their campus. The survey describes such actions as “subtle but systematic forms of exclusion that often operate beneath the surface of official university policies.”
Reuters Reporter Leading Gulf Coverage, a Former Northwestern Qatar Professor, Called Freedom of Expression 'Contextual'
A former Northwestern Qatar professor who helped craft the school's journalism curriculum and now leads Reuters's Gulf coverage once described freedom of expression as "contextual," a resurfaced video shows.

As the Daily Q interviewed students and faculty in 2018 about their opinions on freedom of speech and freedom of expression, most stressed the importance of those rights. Andrew Mills, the assistant journalism professor in residence, provided a more pessimistic take.

"I think freedom of expression is contextual, and I think it shouldn't be thought of as a sort of absolute state of being," Mills said. "Freedom of expression, it depends on the context that you're in."

Mills's comments are particularly striking given the leadership role he took on at Northwestern Qatar—and the one he took on after leaving the school.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Mills led "development of NU-Q's new journalism curriculum (launched August 2016)," helped develop "NU-Q's first executive education and graduate programs," and served on "committees that shaped curricula and university policies." He was also awarded "a $50,000 Provost's Digital Learning Fellowship to develop interactive multimedia case studies on ethics and media leadership," according to the profile.

Mills left Northwestern in 2019 after working for the university for nearly nine years. He joined Reuters in 2021 and recently became the outlet's deputy bureau chief for the Gulf, a role in which he writes and helps manage Reuters's coverage of the Middle East from his home in Doha. In March, Mills covered Tucker Carlson's interview with Qatari prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who warned that an attack on Iran's nuclear program would leave the Gulf with "no water, no fish, nothing" and trigger a "war that will spread all over the region." Neither prediction came true, though Mills covered them uncritically.

Mills also published an interview with Hamas's "leader-in-exile Khaled Meshaal," a target of Israel's recent strike targeting Hamas leaders in Doha who helped orchestrate the terror group's Oct. 7 massacre. Meshaal told the outlet Hamas "would rise 'like a phoenix' from the ashes despite heavy losses during a year of war with Israel."


Bias Personified: The Return of The New York Times’ Former Jerusalem Bureau Chief
As Hamas terrorists rampaged across southern Israel, slaughtering 1,200 people, kidnapping civilians, raping women, and burning families alive — David Halbfinger, now newly appointed as the New York Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief for a second spell, shared a deeply disturbing post on X (formerly Twitter). Rather than condemning the atrocity unfolding in real-time, Halbfinger chose to amplify a message framing the massacre as an expected result of Israel’s policy of “pogroms” against Palestinians.

This agenda-driven post, which speaks volumes about Halbfinger’s lack of journalistic objectivity, is not a surprising misstep. HonestReporting has spent years documenting his coverage, exposing a larger pattern of bias that should disqualify him from returning to the sensitive role of top editor for Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

A Track Record of Slanted Coverage
On October 7, 2023, as Hamas terrorists butchered their way through southern Israel, Halbfinger shared an X thread by Avner Gvaryahu, the director of “Breaking The Silence,” a highly politicized NGO whose critics have repeatedly alleged frequently relies on “either fabricated or exaggerated” testimonies from former soldiers — some of whom received a salary from Breaking the Silence — who are “motivated by financial and political concerns to further a pro-Palestinian agenda.”

Halbfinger wrote it was a “thread worth translating.”

So we did. The thread led with what can only be seen as an excuse for the massacre: “While the fools leading us decided that escorting a weekly pogrom in Huwara is more important than anything, and that running a military operation in Gaza every two months constitutes deterrence, the very foundation of the ‘conflict management’ concept collapsed.”

Halbfinger had previously spent over three years reporting from Israel. He knows the people and the places. Yet, on October 7, this is who and what he chose to repost.

Sadly, this is not an outlier.

His last tenure as the paper’s bureau chief in Jerusalem often displayed a persistent and troubling slant. His articles and posts frequently marginalized Israeli perspectives, elevated fringe or extreme criticisms, and omitted essential context.

It’s not only Breaking the Silence that Halbfinger turns to when he wants the opinions of an NGO. In 2018, Birthright, despite being as mainstream and apolitical as could be, came under fire from some who demanded that it tackle Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians in greater detail, leading to the hijacking of some of its trips by left-wing activists bent on publicity. The following year, Halbfinger gave the left-wing J-Street organization all the free publicity it could ask for when he covered their own Israel tour in a feature that read more like a J-Street press release, replete with a mindless acceptance of the organization’s talking points.

Another notable example of Halbfinger’s agenda, from 2020, is his sharing of “an open letter to the Israeli government” against the annexation of the West Bank. The letter lacked any credibility or transparency, but Halbfinger felt entitled to tout it on his X platform, effectively disqualifying himself as a neutral observer expected to cover the region objectively.
EXPOSED: AP Freelancer in Gaza Praised Palestinian Terrorist Who Killed 37 Jews
If the Associated Press, one of the world’s largest news agencies, had done its due diligence before hiring Palestinian photojournalist Ismael Abu Dayyah, it would have seen him praising terrorists and posting anti-Israel content online. Instead, Abu Dayyah was employed to document the war in Gaza for AP in 2024, and the agency still sells his images. His social media activity casts a shadow over his objectivity and AP’s hiring practices, which comes at a time when global media are promoting an ongoing campaign on behalf of Gazan journalists.

Abu Dayyah used the social media platform X to glorify Palestinian terrorist Dalal al Mughrabi, who was responsible for the deadliest attack against Jews before the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre. He also praised the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — a proscribed terror group responsible for dozens of attacks against Israelis over the decades, including suicide bombings, rocket attacks, shootings, and in 2014, the barbaric murder of five Jewish worshippers in a synagogue in Jerusalem — and celebrated its member Laila Khaled, who hijacked an airplane en route to Tel Aviv in 1969.

Abu Dayyah also posted content showing his profile picture on a map of Israel with a caption calling for the liberation of Jerusalem. Other posts by him called Hamas hostages “prisoners” and labeled the establishment of the Jewish state “Zionist Colonialism.”

Praise for Terrorists
In a post from March 2021, Abu Dayyah wrote:
And “Dalal Mughrabi” remains the bride of Palestine who chose resistance as her path and the homeland as her beloved, the legend who surpassed all military ranks. – Anniversary of martyrdom 11_March_1978.

Dalal Al Mughrabi was a Fatah terrorist responsible for the horrific 1978 massacre of 37 Jews, among them 12 children, in what was the deadliest terror attack in Israel’s history — until Hamas’ October 7 massacre.

Al Mughrabi led the “Coastal Road Massacre,” as it became known, when she and a group of terrorists infiltrated Israel from Lebanon, hijacked a passenger bus, and detonated it near Tel Aviv.

But for AP’s Abu Dayyah, she is an icon. And he has been consistent in celebrating the anniversary of her “heroic” death not only in 2021, but also in previous years.

In 2022, Abu Dayya also posted praise for Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled and the PFLP.


Mahsa Zhina Amini will ‘never be forgotten,’ State Dept says three years after her death
On the third anniversary of the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini, murdered after being arrested by the Iranian regime’s “morality police” in 2022 for allegedly not wearing her hijab “correctly,” the U.S. State Department called to honor her memory.

“Mahsa’s name will never be forgotten,” said Tommy Pigott, principal deputy spokesperson for the State Department. “Her murder, along with so many others, is a damning indictment of the Islamic Republic’s crimes against humanity.”

America will “continue to work with allies and partners around the world to ensure that the regime’s atrocities are met with accountability, justice and resolve,” the statement read.

Amini’s death sparked massive protests across Iran and brought global attention to the “women, life, freedom” movement against the Iranian regime’s systematic oppression of women.

“For 46 years, the Islamic Republic has ruled through torture and execution, silencing dissent with public executions and beatings,” Pigott said. “While the Islamic Republic pours money into exporting terror, it neglects its own people, leaving them to suffer shortages of water and electricity, poverty and crumbling infrastructure.”

“The United States stands with the people of Iran in their calls for dignity and a better life,” he stated.


Squirrel Hill synagogue vandal fined, sentenced to five years probation
After vandalizing a Pittsburgh synagogue and a Jewish community site, a Pennsylvania woman was sentenced to five years’ probation on Wednesday, according to the Western District of Pennsylvania’s US Attorney’s Office.

Talya Lubit was fined restitution fees of $10,534 following her conviction of conspiracy to commit an offense and for defacing a religious building.

The 29-year-old and co-defendant Mohamad Hamad vandalized the Chabad of Squirrel Hill’s and the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s entrance signs on the same morning in July 2024. The duo spray-painted the words “Jews 4 Palestine” on the Chabad house, with an inverted red triangle, a symbol used in Hamas propaganda to denote the target of an attack.

Acting US attorney Troy Rivetti said in a statement that spray painting the mark of a foreign terrorist organization on a Jewish community building instilled fear.

“Protected speech obviously does not include damaging or defacing religious property, and our office will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to protect the civil rights of all members of our community to practice their faiths and to live without fear,” said Rivetti. The Jewish Federation praised law enforcement and welcomed the sentencing for the act that it argued was not just vandalism, but an action targeting the community.

“This crime was not simply graffiti on a building,” the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh COO, Jessica Brown Smith, said in her victim impact statement.

“It was a deliberate act of antisemitism intended to intimidate and retraumatize an entire community. Because of the federation’s central role in Pittsburgh’s Jewish communal life, the attack was not only against a building but against the heart of a community,” Smith said.
Bankstown nurse who allegedly threatened to kill Israeli patients has charge withdrawn
Prosecutors have dropped one of three charges against Sarah Abu Lebdeh, the Bankstown nurse who went viral after being filmed allegedly threatening to kill Israeli patients earlier this year.

The 26-year-old nurse was charged alongside her colleague, 27-year-old Ahmad Rashad Nadir, who allegedly made similar remarks online about refusing to treat Israeli patients and threatening to kill them.

The short video was originally uploaded by Israeli influencer Max Veifer, who has more than 100,000 followers.

According to the ABC, Magistrate Margaret Quinn was told on Tuesday that the charge against Ms Lebdeh of using a carriage service to threaten to kill would be withdrawn.

Ms Lebdeh is currently facing two remaining charges, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend.

Mr Ahmed Rashid Nadir, the second nurse allegedly featured in the video, faces one charge of using a carriage service to menace, harass or offend, along with a separate charge of possessing a prohibited drug.

His lawyer, Zemarai Khatiz, entered a plea of not guilty to the drug charge, which relates to alleged morphine possession. Ahmed Rashid Nadir, Bankstown nurse who allegedly threatened Israeli patients. Picture: Richard Dobson


250 US legislators plant state trees in Negev, while seeing sites of Oct. 7
A delegation of 250 U.S. lawmakers on a tour of areas in southern Israel that were attacked by Hamas and Palestinian terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, planted 50 trees on Tuesday in the Negev Desert city of Ofakim—one for each state in America.

The visit by the largest-ever delegation of U.S. elected officials, made up primarily of state senators and House representatives, came nearly two years after the surprise cross-border attack. It also fell on the same day as the Israeli Defense Forces initiated its land operation in Gaza City against the last Hamas stronghold in the coastal enclave.

“You represent the breadth and depth of America’s commitment to Israel not just in the exceptional administration of President Trump, but in every state, every city, every community across your great republic,” Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel told the American lawmakers who gathered in a covered tent under the late-summer scorching sun. “Two years after Oct. 7, we are still mourning, still rebuilding, and we are still fighting. But we are also planting for a future where Israel is safer, stronger and more vibrant than ever before.”

Ifat Ovadia-Luski, chairwoman of Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund, the Israeli nonprofit that hosted the event and oversees the country’s forests, said that “this moving ceremony reflects the depth of the bond between Israel and the United States, not only between governments but also between nations. There is no better PR for Israel than to plant a tree and to show people how we are rebuilding the land and our connection to it.”

The bipartisan delegation, dubbed “50 States One Israel,” reaffirmed America’s unflinching commitment and friendship with Israel despite the international opprobrium over the fallout from the ongoing war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“It is meaningful to be here to see firsthand the atrocities committed on Oct. 7 and to reaffirm the commitment of the U.S. to support our friend and ally Israel, which is a shining light of democracy and creative power of better life and humanity in the Middle East,” Tom Willies, a Republican state senator from West Virginia, told JNS.

“As a former soldier, I wanted to pick up arms and protect Israel as I viewed the innocent loss of life and barbarism of Hamas,” stated Bryce Reeves, a Republican member of the Virginia Senate and a former U.S. Ranger. “America has woken up and Israel has woken up, too.”


Rubio, Netanyahu reopen ancient Pilgrimage Road in Jerusalem
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday reopened the Pilgrimage Road in Jerusalem, a first-century route linking the City of David to the Temple Mount.

The Pilgrimage Road, a broad stone route used during the Second Temple period, connected the Pool of Siloam, where pilgrims purified themselves in ritual baths, to Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount.

Jerusalem “is forever our city,” Netanyahu declared at the ceremony in the City of David, according to a recording published by his office. “It will never be divided again, and there will be no Palestinian state.”

“Any unilateral action can be met with unilateral action,” Netanyahu added, referencing recent calls by European nations to “plant a Palestinian state committed to our destruction right here.”

Also speaking at Monday’s ceremony, Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said that the stones of the ancient site “100% validate that the Jewish people not only belong here now, but they have belonged here for 4,000 years, since the time God said to Abraham: this is yours.”

“Tonight, the rest of the world comes to say: welcome home, and may no one ever, ever attempt to take your home from you,” he added.

The unveiling of the ancient road, “an event of historical and cultural importance to the Jewish people,” marked the conclusion of a “highly successful visit to Israel by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio,” according to a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.




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