Friday, October 24, 2025

10/24 Links Pt1: Trump Learns the Power of Power: Rubio: UNRWA is ‘subsidiary of Hamas,’; Hotel Hamas: 150 terrorists staying at luxury Cairo resort alongside unsuspecting Western tourists

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Trump Learns the Power of Power
Trump isn’t exactly known for his humility, but here is admitting that an Israeli strike he opposed is the main reason he got his deal.

One reason Trump may have been so open to persuasion is because, despite his realist-leaning statements on the limits of American force, his instincts naturally lean toward taking action or dishing out credible threats.

It helps that most of Trump’s threats at least seem credible. A former adviser to Israeli leader Shimon Peres told Time that Trump’s suggestion to turn Gaza in the Riviera of the region “scared the hell out of” Arab negotiators and focused their attention on getting a deal.

Trump’s willingness to use military force against Iran a few months later would solidify in regional leaders’ minds the idea that the president really wasn’t messing around. Thus, when he warned that Hamas faced “complete obliteration” if it didn’t return all the hostages—and not in stages, but at the outset of a deal—Qatar and Turkey believed him and pressed Hamas to agree.

One other detail from the interview is worth noting. Arab leaders were convinced that Trump meant what he said. But it’s also clear that Trump gained respect for the Israelis when he realized that they meant what they said, too.

The example given by Time relates to the hostages. It’s no secret that Israel’s commitment to redeeming its captives comes at a strategic cost. To someone like Trump, a rare Western leader who exults in military victory (and says the word victory), therefore, it can be unconvincing. When the choice comes down to totally obliterating the enemy or bringing home the hostages, would Israel really choose the hostages? Trump found out the answer was yes.

“Israel was so intent on the hostages, I was actually surprised,” Trump told Time. “You would have thought they would have sacrificed the hostages in order to keep going, right? The people of Israel wanted the hostages more than they wanted anything else.”

Therefore, Trump went to Hamas armed with a record of making good on his threats and said, in the president’s words, “You’re giving us the f–king hostages, all of them.” It’s amazing what a few well-timed displays of strength can do.
The Taliban Are Excused, While Israel Is Accused By Abe Greenwald
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In fact, while liberal Western governments attack Israel and threaten its prime minister with arrest, they’ve increasingly come to accept the legitimacy of Taliban rule. There are more than a dozen non-European embassies in Afghanistan, but European countries now let Taliban officials operate diplomatic missions on European soil and dictate who gets fired and hired at consulates—despite the International Criminal Court’s having issued arrest warrants for Taliban leaders this summer. Funny, when the ICC does the same regarding Israeli leaders, Western liberals seem to take it a lot more seriously.

But most of the Western outreach is informal because the West is ashamed of itself. Europe is reaching out to the Taliban quietly to repatriate its unwanted Afghan asylum-seekers. And both Europe and America have to occasionally try persuading the Taliban to push back on mutual terrorist enemies. The U.S. has even sent officials to Kabul because Americans are still being held hostage there. The Taliban can be secure in its future relations with the West because it’s a monstrous, morally blackmailing regime that was legitimized by American surrender.

Oh, and because Western liberals aren’t heartbroken over the suffering of Muslims. Not in Afghanistan or China or Nigeria or even in Gaza. They’re heartbroken about the survival of Israel because it shames them all by slaying the monsters to which they bow.
The Red Cross abandoned its mission in Gaza
This is not the first time that the Red Cross has failed its own mission. During World War II, it allowed itself to be manipulated by Nazi propaganda at Theresienstadt, failing to report on the horrors it saw. In Srebrenica in 1995, its inaction left it documenting a massacre rather than preventing one.

The Red Cross likes to say it “cannot enforce” but only “advocate.” In the Gaza Strip, it didn’t even advocate with the urgency the situation required.

Hamas committed clear war crimes: kidnapping civilians, denying them food and medical care, and refusing access to international observers. The Red Cross’s silence and passivity effectively normalized that behavior.

Yes, quiet diplomacy has its place, but only when it produces results. In Gaza, it produced nothing—no visits, no medical checks, no confirmation of life. The world learned about the hostages through Hamas propaganda videos, not humanitarian reports.

This wasn’t a failure of logistics but a failure of will.

Real neutrality does not mean standing by while terrorists brutalize innocent civilians. It means upholding humanitarian principles consistently. In Gaza, real neutrality would have meant pressing Hamas loudly and publicly, day after day, to allow visits to the hostages. It would have meant reminding the world that these men, women and children have rights under international law.

Instead, the Red Cross hid behind procedural language and diplomatic whispers. It became a spectator to human suffering, not a defender of human dignity.

If the Red Cross wants to be taken seriously, then it owes the hostages and their families answers:
Why didn’t it demand access to the hostages as it has elsewhere?
Why was it content to act as a courier rather than an advocate?
Why didn’t it publicly call Hamas’s actions war crimes?

Silence in the face of barbarism isn’t neutrality; it’s complicity. And this time, the silence of the Red Cross came at the expense of Israeli lives.

Until the ICRC holds itself accountable to its own charter, its reputation as a guardian of humanitarian values will remain permanently stained by its failure in Gaza.
International aid groups operating in Gaza must be held accountable
With plans for Gaza’s future dominating headlines, those mired in the details of the ongoing war are aware of claims that Hamas made extensive use of hospitals as terror bases. For them, there should be no surprise in learning that recently released Hamas documents, captured by the Israel Defense Forces, directly confirmed this systematic abuse.

But the details delineating the complicity of leading humanitarian groups, such as Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Red Cross, in these war crimes were largely unexpected and require urgent action.

The revelations indict many of the biggest human rights organizations and pose major challenges to Western countries, including Canada. For years, governments have been providing hundreds of millions of dollars annually to an aid industry that has grown cozy with terrorist regimes.

The declassified Hamas records, dated from early 2020 and recently published by NGO Monitor, the independent research institute that I head, clearly depict the terror group’s strategy of using medical facilities and health-care workers as shields. Hospitals, Hamas officials wrote, serve as places of “gathering for many commanders … in times of escalation.”

The documents warn Hamas commanders (i.e., terrorists) of the dangers posed by the presence of foreign medical professionals in hospital wings used as operational and communications centers for the organization. Fighters were told that foreigners, including doctors and other personnel, were to be removed “when there is a case of resistance leaders [present on the premises].” To prevent unauthorized contact, “medical members [of Hamas] from Gaza” would also be assigned to observe and “join incoming delegations.”

Hamas, the records reveal, also required considerable pre-approval procedures for arriving delegations sent by friendly NGOs. They were required to “submit a request … attached with CVs of the doctors, listing the need [of arrival].” And they could work only “in specific places, such as the outpatient department, the specialized departments and operations rooms,” but would be prohibited “from going inside the [main] hospital where [Hamas] is located.”

The list of organizations that look the other way begins with the most “highly respected” and influential groups. The International Red Cross, Hamas noted, “has chosen [to operate] in a wing inside Al-Shifa Hospital that is adjacent to the [Hamas] movement’s offices.” Similarly, according to the terror group’s documents, MSF was located in “the only room in Abu Yousef El-Najar Hospital that has a (safe) communication landline” belonging to Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades.


Ceasefire not enough: Israel must thoroughly defeat Hamas once and for all
What does this tell us?
First, that Israel is no longer setting the timetable; the initiative is shifting away. When the negotiating table becomes the reward for terrorism, when the enemy dictates the rhythm of war instead of being crushed, a profound reversal has occurred.

Second, Israel is running the risk that Hamas will continue to pose an intolerable threat. In the ceasefire framework, the two main requirements for Israel’s security were a full hostage release and the disarmament of Hamas. The military thrust on the ground, it was hoped, would degrade Hamas to the point where the organization could not simply rebuild and strike again. Instead, Israel accepted a deal whose second stage contains no hard timelines for Hamas disarmament, leaving the matter vague and open-ended.

Third, the ceasefire allows Hamas breathing space. Even if active combat has dropped off significantly for now, terrorist infrastructure remains, such as the tunnels, battalions, and rocket arsenals. In a sense, Israel’s strategic objective of “destroying Hamas” has been postponed. It has not, one hopes, been dropped altogether, but it has most certainly been deferred.

When a country makes a truce without having completely defeated the enemy, the message is no longer one of dominance but of exhaustion.

Let me be clear: Ceasefires are not inherently bad. They can spare lives, and the current one brought the last living 20 Israeli hostages home to their families.

But in this instance, the second stage of the ceasefire is precisely the wrong mechanism at the wrong time. It signals to our enemies that through violence and endurance, they can negotiate favorable terms. It signals to our allies that we may be willing to accept less than victory. And it signals to our people – the families of the fallen, as well as the soldiers still in harm’s way – that the risk we took to fight may not produce the outcome we were promised.

What should Israel do instead? Seek not to pause the war but rather to win it. That means not merely reducing Hamas’s capabilities but removing them as a threat altogether. Nothing less than full disarmament, the dismantling of all terror tunnel networks, and the complete disbanding of Hamas’s organizational structure. It means sending a message that terrorism will not be rewarded with bargaining power.

Hamas has, not surprisingly, violated the terms of the ceasefire. Now it must be made to pay the price.

The families of our fallen heroes in the IDF, as well as the nation as a whole, deserve more than just a truce. They deserve assurance that the enemy who slaughtered so many will not remain intact.

Every hour that Gaza remains under ceasefire without Hamas’s total and irreversible defeat is an hour that Israel’s future security remains at risk.
Jonathan Tobin: Hamas, not Israel, is bound to blow up Trump’s plan
Faith in Trump
Those in both countries who value the alliance are going to have to place their faith in two factors.

One is Netanyahu’s good judgement in knowing how and when to say “no” to the Americans when it is necessary—an exercise in which he has been forced repeatedly to engage with friendly and unfriendly American governments over the last three decades.

The other is Trump’s good faith.

There is every reason to believe that he means what he says about eliminating Hamas and being willing to support the use of force to do it. Though his political opponents have continually predicted that he would betray the Jewish state, he’s done the opposite over and over again during the course of his times in office, building a record as the most pro-Israel president ever to sit in the White House.

Yet too many of those who work for the president seem invested in fantasies about Hamas, the Palestinians, Qatar and Turkey, rooted in naive beliefs about genocidal Islamists having the same hopes and dreams as Americans, Israelis and the people of the West. They don’t. And, sooner or later, that dismal fact is going to blow up the peace plan that Trump is so proud of. When this happens, we need to hope that he and his foreign-policy team are able to divest themselves of the same sort of foolish arrogance that characterized the beliefs of their predecessors in the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations about the Palestinians wanting peace and being willing to give up their century-old war on the Jews.

As much as the hostage release should be celebrated, history didn’t end when they were liberated. And even an indomitable force like Donald Trump can’t wish away the Palestinian desire to destroy Israel.


Seth Frantzman: Gaza Needs an International Peacekeeping Force Now
Gaza is currently divided into two zones. The IDF controls around 50 percent of the Strip, and Hamas appears to control the rest. There are also some Israeli-backed militias contending for control. Hamas seeks to demonstrate that it still holds power over the 2 million civilians in Gaza. However, it appears to be stepping back from the brutal executions it carried out in the days following the ceasefire.

The IDF-controlled area of Gaza may provide a beachhead to prepare an international force for the task of pacifying the Hamas-controlled zone. In addition, it might provide opportunities for investment and infrastructure development. This will be necessary for the international force to build capacity, rapport, and trust with civilians.

Some countries, such as Egypt and Qatar, have long experience in Gaza. Others, such as Indonesia, have supported humanitarian aid. It remains to be seen what role Turkey might play. Ankara has hosted Hamas and provided it with rhetorical support in the past. Jerusalem is skeptical that Ankara can play a positive role on the ground. However, Ankara’s experience with providing humanitarian aid in Syria and development in the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Northern Iraq might be helpful in non-military roles.

The big question will come when the peacekeeping force enters Hamas-controlled neighborhoods. Can a multinational force remove Hamas and establish a new technocratic government? This will be necessary to create a peaceful future for Gaza.

There are examples of how this could work. In Mosul, the US-led international coalition backed the Iraqi army to rid the city of ISIS in 2017. Today, Mosul is a thriving city. Gaza could follow the Mosul model. However, this will take time and require the United States to keep the partner countries together and focused on the mission.
Welcome to Hotel Hamas: 150 dangerous terrorists released by Israel under Gaza peace deal are staying at five-star luxury resort alongside unsuspecting Western tourists
Hamas terrorists released under the Gaza peace deal are staying in a five-star hotel alongside unsuspecting Western tourists.

Experts warned of a radical new threat to global security after the Daily Mail tracked down more than 150 of the highly dangerous extremists to a luxury hotel in Cairo.

Israel was forced to empty its prisons of nearly all its most feared jihadists held on life sentences as part of Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan.

Some 154 of the 250 fanatics who were freed are currently staying in the Marriott’s five-star Renaissance Cairo Mirage City Hotel in the Egyptian capital, a Daily Mail investigation has found.

Families can still book in to stay at the hotel without being aware of the dangers.

Undercover journalists booked into the resort and stayed amongst the murderous jihadists, who include a member of Isis and a senior Hamas special forces commander.

Today we publish shocking images showing these hardened killers and extremists living in the lap of luxury beside sunbathing Western tourists.

The Daily Mail understands that some may soon be moved on to live in nearby tourist destinations such as Qatar, Turkey and Tunisia which are hugely popular with British holidaymakers.
Israeli officials said to tell Vance that Hamas can reach 10 of 13 remaining dead hostages
Israeli defense officials reportedly told US Vice President JD Vance during a meeting on Thursday that Hamas can return the bodies of at least 10 of the 13 deceased hostages still held in Gaza.

According to the Kan public broadcaster, Defense Minister Israel Katz, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, and other military officials at the Kirya base in Tel Aviv presented Vance with the IDF’s intelligence assessment of Gaza and “stated unequivocally” that Hamas is capable of returning at least 10 of the 13 remaining hostages, even before international teams enter the Strip to assist with recovering the bodies.

It has been previously reported that Hamas might not be able to find all the dead hostages, something that Israel is aware of.

According to an Israeli official cited by CNN earlier this month, seven to nine bodies might not be retrieved, while another put that figure at between 10 and 15.

Before the ceasefire, Hamas was holding the bodies of 28 dead hostages. It has since returned 15 of them, along with releasing 20 surviving captives, having last handed over the remains of two slain captives on Tuesday night.
Rubio at Gaza coordination HQ: Israel has met its ceasefire commitments, Hamas must disarm
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the latest top US official to visit Israel, said Friday that “there is no plan B” for Gaza, only US President Donald Trump’s broad peace plan, and that annexation of the West Bank by Israel would be “a threat to the peace process.”

Rubio said Israel has met its commitments under the first phase of 20-point Trump plan, which began with the ceasefire on October 10, and that Israel would have to be “comfortable” with the makeup of the international force that will enter Gaza in the second phase, which is still being hashed out.

Hamas will have to release the remains of deceased hostages and disarm, he said, adding that UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, will not be permitted to help deliver aid to Gaza because it is a “subsidiary” of the terror group.

Hamas “cannot be involved in governing Gaza in the future,” Rubio stressed, adding that this has been agreed by all the countries that have signed up to Trump’s plan and are to provide money, personnel or both in order to advance it.

Broader regional normalization with Israel could be a “byproduct” of the Gaza process, added Rubio, who arrived in Israel on Thursday.

Speaking to journalists at the US-Israel Civil-Military Coordination Center in Kiryat Gat, which has been set up to oversee the ceasefire and the continued implementation of the Trump plan, Rubio said, “This is a historic mission.”

Among countries alongside the US and Israel already with a presence at the CMCC, which was formally opened by US Vice President JD Vance on Tuesday, are the UK, Germany, Denmark, Canada and Jordan. Dozens of regional and world leaders attended a summit with Trump in Sharm el-Sheikh on October 13 where the president and the leaders of Egypt, Qatar and Turkey signed a further document setting out a general framework regarding Gaza’s future.

Implementing the September 29 Trump plan is “not going to be a linear journey. There’s going to be ups and downs and twists and turns,” Rubio said. “But I think we have a lot of reason for healthy optimism about the progress that’s being made.”


Rubio: UNRWA is ‘subsidiary of Hamas,’ won’t ‘play any role’ in delivering Gaza aid
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says that UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinians, “is not going to play any role” in delivering aid in Gaza under the US-backed ceasefire plan, calling the agency “a subsidiary of Hamas.”

Asked if the group, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, will assist in providing humanitarian aid to the Strip under the plan, Rubio responds: “UNWRA is not going to play any role in it.”

“The UN is here,” he says, speaking at a press conference from the headquarters of the US Civil-Military Coordination Center overseeing the ceasefire. “We’re seeing the work they’re doing, the World Food Programme. There’s also nonprofit NGOs, humanitarian assistance organizations that are involved in this, Samaritan’s Purse. It’s a conglomeration of about 8-12 groups that are here,” he says.

“We’re willing to work with them if they can make it work. But not UNRWA. UNRWA became a subsidiary of Hamas,” he says.


See what ‘reality looks like’ in Gaza with Hamas, Danon urges UN Security Council
Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, told the U.N. Security Council that it doesn’t understand the reality on the ground in the Gaza Strip.

“Many of you are already picturing Gaza’s future: hotels rising on the coast, schools filled with children, hospitals rebuilt and thriving,” Danon told council members on Thursday at the global body’s monthly scheduled meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian file.

“I could hand each of you a pair of virtual reality goggles and you could watch that dream unfold,” he said. “But before we get lost in that illusion, let’s remove the goggles and look at what is really happening today.”

“Hamas still exists, is armed and actively continues to murder, including its own people,” Danon said, showing the council a photo of recent Hamas public executions of Gazans in the Strip.

“This is what reality looks like,” he said. “As Hamas is not disarmed, there is no future for Gaza and no peace.”

Danon accused the council of implicitly approving of Hamas due to the global body’s “dangerous” silence on the public executions.

“No accountability. No emergency session,” Danon said. “It strengthens Hamas.”

Most diplomats attending Thursday’s meeting expressed support for the ceasefire, while urging the delivery of more aid and advancing the American-Israeli Arab peace plan.

Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the global body, said that Hamas hasn’t fulfilled its obligations under the deal. He called for the terror group to return the bodies of hostages it was obligated to release under the deal.


John Spencer: Urban Warfare Project Podcast: The Tunnels of Gaza
In this episode of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast, John Spencer examines the subterranean war in Gaza. Fresh from Gaza City and drawing on seven trips to Israel since October 7, he explains why Hamas’s tunnel network mattered more than the surface fight and how it reshaped every military task—from movement to command and control.

Spencer surveys the background and evolution of tunnels in Gaza, highlighting what makes them unique among past and contemporary conflicts—layered networks beneath dense urban areas used for human shielding, leadership protection, movement, weapons production, and holding hostages. He details the Israel Defense Forces’ learning curve and adaptations, from pushing special operations forces’ expertise to general purpose units to developing a typology of tunnels, locating and mapping methods, and coordinating maneuver above and below ground.

He also separates what works from what does not, covering the limits of bunker-busting, the failures of flooding attempts, and the use of robotics, dogs, wet cement, and demolition to neutralize tunnels. The episode concludes with insights on what the Gaza experience means for stabilization, reconstruction, and any future force that expects to fight in cities.


IDF targets Hezbollah sites in series of airstrikes across Lebanon; 4 said killed
The Israeli Air Force on Thursday carried out a series of airstrikes against Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, the military said, with Lebanese authorities reporting four dead.

The first wave of strikes in the afternoon, carried out by five IAF fighter jets, hit 16 Hezbollah sites in the eastern Beqaa Valley and in northern Lebanon, including a training camp and precision missile manufacturing site, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

In the evening, the IDF said it struck a Hezbollah weapons depot in the Nabatieh area.

Lebanon’s health ministry said that strikes in eastern areas resulted in an initial death toll of two people, with two others killed in the separate Nabatieh strike.

The weapons depot, in the southern town of Arabsalim near Nabatieh, was used by Hezbollah to advance attacks on Israel, the IDF said.


Israeli Scholar Warns the Trump Gaza Deal Could Ignite the Region…
Straight up episode with Mordechai Kedar.


Gad Saad: Danny Burmawi - Ex-Muslim and Author of "Islam, Israel and the West" (THE SAAD TRUTH_1922)
We discuss his conversion from Islam to Christianity, Jew-hatred, Islam, the Middle East, and immigration to the West among many other topics.


‘We are deeply compromised’: Security Experts Expose Britain’s Intelligence Crisis
In this episode of The Brink, we sit down with Lord Walney (John Woodcock) and MP Tom Tugendhat, former Security Minister, for a deep dive into Britain’s growing national security crisis. From Russian assassination plots and Chinese espionage to Iranian influence and homegrown extremism, this conversation exposes the threats the UK can no longer afford to ignore.

We discuss how Britain’s institutions have become “deeply compromised,” why successive governments have failed to act on intelligence warnings, and the urgent need to ban organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood and IRGC. This conversation explains how economic interests, political cowardice, and cultural fear have left Britain open to infiltration from hostile powers and how this weakness is being exploited on the streets through protests, intimidation, and radicalisation.

We also examine the failures of policing, the role of the media, and the question of whether Britain still takes national security seriously.

This is a sobering and essential conversation about the threats facing modern Britain and what it will take to defend the country before it’s too late.




Unpacked: Why Israelis & Palestinians Keep Reliving the Same W@r | Explained
2 peoples. 1 land. 2 irreconcilable stories. For Israelis, it’s the return of an exiled nation reclaiming its home. For Palestinians, it’s the loss of theirs.

From exile to occupation, from the H0l0caust to Hamas, this conflict is a collision of memory and survival — where every side sees justice, and neither finds peace.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:42 1st Aliyah
01:23 Zionist movement
01:48 Palestinian nationalism
02:59 1929 Hebron M@ssacre
03:23 1936 Arab Revolt
03:45 Ill3gal Jewish immigration
04:07 Fight against the British
05:08 1947 UN Partition Plan
06:26 Israel's independence
06:45 1948 W@r/Nakba
08:50 6-Day W@r
09:55 Khartoum Conference
10:20 Settlement movement
11:44 Yom Kippur W@r
12:23 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty
12:54 1st Int!fada
14:01 Oslo Accords
14:41 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty
15:06 Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin
16:40 Camp David Accords
17:29 2nd Int!fada
18:38 Gaza Disengagement
19:44 Hamas control of Gaza
20:33 PA's Pay for Slay policy
21:17 Settler v!olence
21:37 Abraham Accords
21:50 October 7
23:15 2023-2025 Gaza W@r




‘Preposterous and wrong’: ABC continues misguided Gaza analysis
Sky News Australia's Media Watch Dog Columnist Gerard Henderson has criticised ABC Global Affairs Editor Laura Tingle’s misguided analysis of the situation in Gaza.


House Dems leader Jeffries endorses Mamdani, after criticism of anti-Israel rhetoric
New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader in the US House, on Friday endorsed New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, months after criticizing Mamdani’s anti-Israel rhetoric.

“Assemblyman Mamdani has promised to focus on keeping every New Yorker safe, including the Jewish community that has confronted a startling rise in antisemitic incidents,” Jeffries said in a statement to The New York Times.

Jeffries had held off on endorsing Mamdani and his backing came at the last minute. Early voting starts on Saturday and the general election is on November 4.

Despite the late endorsement, the move is likely to boost Mamdani and hurt his leading rival, the pro-Israel, centrist former governor Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani is far ahead of Cuomo and the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, in polls.

Jeffries had previously urged Mamdani to “reassure Jewish New Yorkers that he plans to prioritize their safety” and criticized Mamdani’s defense of the phrase, “Globalize the Intifada.”

“With respect to the Jewish communities that I represent, I think our nominee is going to have to convince folks that he is prepared to aggressively address the rise in antisemitism,” Jeffries said of Mamdani in July.

“Globalizing the Intifada, by way of example, is not an acceptable phrase and he’s going to have to clarify his position on that as he moves forward,” Jeffries said. Mamdani has since said he would “discourage” use of the slogan.

Jewish leaders have issued a series of warnings about Mamdani this week, saying that his vilification of Israel could spur hatred against Jews. Advertisement

Jews in New York City are targeted in hate crimes far more than any other group.

Most of New York’s Democratic establishment has lined up behind Mamdani, including Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James.

The state’s Democratic Party chairman, Jay Jacobs, said last month that he would not endorse Mamdani due to Mamdani’s far-left politics and positions on Israel, in a rare break from Hochul.


Renowned restaurant chain closes after being targeted by anti-Israel protests
Shouk, a plant-based kosher street-food chain in Washington, D.C., permanently shut down its final locations this month in part due to protests and boycotts from anti-Israel activists.

Once featured by the Food Network and The Washington Post for its “Shouk Burger,” the chain had five stores in the region. The closures come after two years of protests and boycotts over the war in Gaza crippled the business.

Local activist group DC for Palestine led a boycott campaign that claimed the restaurant’s falafel and other menu items “appropriated” Palestinian cuisine and that the owners were “complicit in Israeli apartheid.”

Co-owner Dennis Friedman, a Jewish American who opened the first Shouk location over a decade ago with Israeli co-owner Ran Nussbacher, rejected those accusations. He said the mission of Shouk was to bring people together.

“I don’t agree with that because the intention of Shouk was pure, and good,” Friedman told Fox News Digital. “When my business partner came to me, it wasn’t ‘let’s make Israeli food.’ He wanted to make plant-based food that reminded him of his childhood and home. That was the core of where we started to build the recipes. For the most part, Shouk has been promoted as Mediterranean, plant-based, and Middle Eastern. Very rarely have we claimed anything else. That’s why Shouk is written in both Arabic and Hebrew in all the stores — because we are a place to bring everyone together.”




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