Tuesday, October 28, 2025

10/28 Links Pt2: Islamo-socialist alliances don’t last, just ask the Iranians; The ADL’s Medicine Is Causing the Disease; The Jewish academics living in fear of anti-Semitic hate mobs

From Ian:

Islamo-socialist alliances don’t last, just ask the Iranians
Instead of the Ukip demonstration, large masked groups of young men took to the streets chanting “Allahu Akbar” as they vowed to “defend our community”.

Among the protestors were pockets of Left-wing activists, one of whom, witnessing the tension, attempted to appeal to some sense of shared solidarity.

“There’s no need for that, bruv,” he was filmed pleading with his megaphone. “We’re on the same side”. The reply from a balaclava-wearing demonstrator was swift and unambiguous: “No, we’re not.”

That short exchange captured the heart of the problem. The Left in Britain believes it has found allies in political Islam – fellow “oppressed” fighting a common enemy in the so-called “far-Right”. But many Muslims, including those increasingly taking an active role in politics, do not see it that way. Their vision for society is diametrically opposed to the progressive ideals the Left claims to champion: free speech, gender equality, secularism, and LGBT rights.

What we are witnessing is the same fatal miscalculation that took place in Iran.

And another reverberation from 1979 is the weakness and incompetence of the political establishment. In the final year of the Shah’s rule, the regime tried desperately to appease its enemies. It jailed its own supporters and released violent radical prisoners in a futile attempt to calm the streets. In its fear of seeming repressive and its eagerness to appease the radical Islamists, it caused its own downfall.

Does that all sound familiar? Today in Britain, our own leaders are doing something similar.

The police, terrified of being accused of “Islamophobia”, have become hesitant to enforce the law evenly. Peaceful demonstrators carrying “Hamas are terrorists” signs are arrested, a Star of David is treated as a provocation, while those who issue threats and incite violence are indulged and appeased. The Government, concerned about losing votes from its Muslim constituents, neglects the threat of extremist networks openly recruiting in mosques, prisons, schools and online. It does this while lecturing ordinary law-abiding Britons about “extremism” and labelling them “far-Right”.

Just like Tehran in 1979, Left-wing elites are too weak to confront the forces that seek to overthrow their own values, and too naïve to recognise that those forces are not partners in progress but architects of regression.

The Left in Iran learned the hard way that when you go to bed with Islam, you do not wake up in a democracy. You wake up in a theocracy. Britain’s Left should take heed.
The Soviet role in turning anti-Zionism into a popular cause
According to Ion Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet bloc officer ever to defect to the West, this campaign was deliberate and crafted by the KGB. Its chief, Andropov, realized that Islamic societies were particularly receptive to anti-Western rhetoric. He channeled this natural hostility against Jews and Israel, deliberately reframing the conflict not as a religious jihad but as a nationalist struggle for human rights and self-determination. This new language appealed to Western intellectuals, activists and politicians as well.

The campaign deployed thousands of Soviet bloc agents across the Middle East to spread propaganda in Arabic, including editions of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated and vile document, while providing funding and ideological guidance to local Arab movements.

At the center of the project was the Palestine Liberation Organization. Founded in 1964 under Soviet patronage, the PLO became the perfect vehicle for constructing a new national identity. Pacepa later revealed that the 1964 Palestinian National Charter, the PLO’s ideological foundation, was written in Moscow.

Strikingly, the charter did not call for sovereignty over the West Bank or Gaza, which it explicitly recognized as Jordanian and Egyptian, respectively. Instead, it focused entirely on the destruction of Israel. It was in this Soviet-written document that the modern political term “Palestinian nation” first appeared.

Yasser Arafat, an Egyptian engineer mentored by Soviet intelligence, became the face of the newly created identity. He admitted that Palestinian nationality was being formed “through the conflict with Israel.” His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, later revealed as a KGB agent, defended a dissertation in Moscow downplaying the Holocaust and portraying Zionism as a collaborator of Nazism, directly adopting Soviet propaganda themes. Both men presented themselves in the West as pragmatic politicians, while at home they supported terror and rejected genuine peace with Israel. Zuhair Muhsin, a PLO executive committee member, candidly admitted the artificiality of the Palestinian identity in 1977: “There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. The existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new weapon in the ongoing battle against Israel.”

Through its propaganda, Moscow created one of the greatest political myths of the 20th century. The Palestinian movement is historically unprecedented: The only “national” project whose aim is not to build its own state, but to destroy another.

The Soviet anti-Zionist campaign spread through leftist networks, NGOs and Islamist movements. It used Communist-front organizations that organized conferences linking the Palestinian cause with other “anti-imperialist” struggles, from Vietnam to South Africa to Cuba. Delegates from Third World countries and the Non-Aligned Movement, as well as Western radicals, adopted these narratives and brought them back home, pushing them in political, academic and activist circles.

Soviet-Palestinian propaganda ranks among the most successful in modern history, having fused ideology, history, and moral symbolism into enduring narratives. It presented anti-Zionism as morally noble, connected it to anti-imperialism, and cloaked it in the language of “global peace.” Propagandists skillfully exploited Western guilt over colonialism. The continuity is visible today: Russian disinformation campaigns on Ukraine employ the same tactics of denial, inversion of reality and moral manipulation. The KGB may be gone, but its most successful operations live on.

Soviet propaganda not only undermined Israel’s legitimacy on an international basis but also corrupted the very language of human rights. It turned the Jewish national movement into a supposed symbol of oppression, a stark reminder of propaganda’s destructive power when left unchallenged. The persistence of these narratives lies in the fact that the networks and structures that spread them never disappeared. Today’s leftist anti-Zionism is less a response to events in Gaza than a continuation of recycled Soviet ideological nonsense, passed from one generation of intellectuals and activists to the next. The liberal West, victorious in the Cold War, largely failed to confront this legacy.

Moscow turned Zionism into a slur, and from this lie emerged the modern face of antisemitism. Zionism is exactly what the Soviet narratives denied: a national liberation movement of the Jewish people, grounded in the universal right to self-determination, a right that is unquestioningly granted to every other nation.
The Anti-Semite in Plain Sight By Abe Greenwald
Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here. It's the definition of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory: All of life’s discontents can be traced back to their Jewish source, no matter how imaginary. The IDF’s connection to alleged NYPD brutality is as real as Mamdani’s traumatized aunt. And the only thing original about his iteration of the charge is the faux-poetic imagery of Israeli bootlace—if he didn’t pick that up from someone else.

But there are some NYC voters who don’t watch such trends as closely as others and, perhaps, haven’t yet realized that Mamdani thrives at the cross section of the radical left and radical Islam. And maybe some of them haven’t voted yet. But we’re not talking about a critical mass.

It also came out today that Mamdani’s father, Mahmood, sits on the advisory council of an organization called the Gaza Tribunal alongside key Hamas operative Ramy Abdu and other assorted Jew-haters tied to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and various terrorist groups. Mahmood Mamdani’s position with the Gaza Tribunal isn’t news; that was reported back in July. But no one bothered to look more thoroughly into the group’s makeup.

Why?

The answer gets to the deeper frustration of all this. What’s more maddening than these late-breaking stories is that I’m not so sure they would have made much of an impact had they dropped months ago. It’s not as if there wasn’t already a virtual anthology of Mamdani’s collected works of Jew-hatred and anti-Zionism readily available to anyone with the slightest interest. Is his blaming alleged NYPD tyranny on Israel worse than when he confessed his “love” for the Holy Land Five, who were convicted of funneling millions of dollars to terrorists? Is his father’s association with a Hamas figure worse than Mamdani’s own chumming around with the confidantes of the 9/11 planners? These things, and much else, have been known for the entirety of the mayoral race. None of it mattered.

If you’ve known who Zohran Mamdani was all along, this moment actually feels more punishing than validating. Being proved right when it’s too late to do anything about it is a special kind of torment. And it’s sickening to think that the truth might never have made a difference anyway.


Andrew Fox: Wild West Bank, Wild East
From a lookout above Nablus, the city opens like a relief map: minarets, markets, alleys stacked into the hills. The red‑and‑white signs are impossible to miss: warnings that Israeli citizens must not enter Area A. People often reach for the word apartheid here; what struck me instead was the blunt logic of security. These boundaries of fences, checkpoints, and zones trace not a theory but the hard calculus of violence and fear that has shaped daily life for decades. Under the Oslo framework, certain areas were set aside for Palestinian administration and made off-limits to Israelis. The barrier, too, was built in response to attacks. None of that makes the architecture of control noble or painless. It does, however, foreground an uncomfortable truth: what can look like ideology from afar often functions as triage up close.

The view carries another paradox. On a ridge sits an Italianate palace built by a Palestinian billionaire looking down toward Balata, the crowded refugee camp in the centre of Nablus below. From my vantage, the compound occupied more space than the camp it overlooks. The juxtaposition is jarring: a national story told through poverty and dispossession beside a statement piece of private wealth. Perhaps there is philanthropy behind those walls; perhaps the owner funds scholarships or clinics, but what is visible from the ridge is a symbol, and symbols matter. Inequality is not only a line between peoples; it also threads through Palestinian society itself, complicating slogans and exposing hierarchies that rarely make the headlines.

From Nablus I drove to Ariel, an Israeli town established in 1978. The road snaps you back from abstraction to texture: bus stops plastered with stickers commemorating the fallen, ordinary people thumbing phones, olive groves giving way to concrete. Places like Ariel are framed as frontiers: the Wild West Bank, or the Wild East, depending on where you stand. Up close, the town looks stubbornly ordinary: schools, supermarkets, new builds, and that ordinariness is itself a statement. Normal is a claim in this landscape.

The most consequential meeting I had there was with a man who previously ran the Israeli-Palestinian Economic Forum. Overlooking the town, he described factories that actively recruit Palestinian workers and try, in a hundred small ways, to integrate them into the rhythms of daily work. Wages matter, of course, but so does predictability. The humdrum dignity of showing up, clocking in, and going home with a plan. This is not a peace plan; it is the habit of cooperation, and habits can be sturdier than speeches.

It is also under-reported. Grand narratives gulp up oxygen while modest experiments get pushed to the margins, yet these are the encounters that slowly change expectations. A foreman who begins to think in terms of throughput eventually thinks in terms of stability, and stability has a politics of its own. Still, the security dimension of terror attacks, raids, rockets, and funerals casts a long shadow over any effort to stitch together normal life. A single incident can cancel permits, idle a factory, harden suspicions, and reset relationships to zero.
The Silencing of Eve Barlow: When Honesty Becomes a Crime | Stories Of Us | PragerU
Eve Barlow rose to prominence as a celebrated music journalist, writing for some of the world’s most prestigious magazines and championing progressive causes. But when she dared to criticize the vandalism during the George Floyd protests and call out the progressive left’s growing tolerance for antisemitism, the industry turned on her. Blacklisted and silenced, Eve refused to back down. Today, she’s speaking louder than ever—taking on cancel culture and defending the values the media has abandoned.


The ADL’s Medicine Is Causing the Disease
For more than a decade, schools and corporations have adopted what they call the anti-oppressive framework, the belief that morality lives in the struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed. The goal of this approach was ostensibly to eliminate bias. The result has been rising suspicion and hostility and the fracturing of the once-robust American middle into warring sectarian tribes.

In the anti-oppressive frame, moral emotion is directed toward identity rather than principle, and the language of justice becomes a search for the righteous and the condemned.

Our research tested how the framework of oppressed and oppressors works in practice to reduce bias. Partnering with Rutgers Social Perception Lab, in a study titled “Instructing Animosity,” we exposed thousands of participants to training materials drawn from anti-racist, anti-Islamophobia, and anti-casteist curricula. Across all three domains, the pattern was the same. People who read those texts became more likely to believe that racism or prejudice had occurred when there was no evidence of it. Perceptions of microaggressions in neutral situations rose by roughly 30%, and willingness to punish others for imagined offenses increased sharply. The interventions reproduced the same psychological profile found in people who score high on measures of authoritarianism: suspicion, intolerance, and punitive impulse. The effect was not tied to any group or cause; it was tied to the frame itself.

When we applied the same method to the ADL’s antisemitism curriculum, the results were even clearer. Participants who read ADL materials reported much higher irritation and stronger feelings of being attacked than those who read neutral or values-based text. Their written responses contained 15 times more antisemitic statements than those in the control conditions.

Both studies revealed the same underlying process: Exposure to anti-oppressive rhetoric increased defensiveness and moral reactivity. However, the direction and expression of hostility differed greatly between the anti-racism and the antisemitism studies. While exposure to anti-racist materials led subjects to reproduce the moral and political orientation of the materials themselves—condemning racism, even when it wasn’t there—exposure to the ADL’s materials produced the exact opposite effect, rendering subjects 15 times more hostile to Jews than they had been before.

Why do materials structured in the same way produce such radically opposite effects when the “oppressed” group is Jewish? One plausible interpretation of their differences draws on Jonathan Haidt’s moral-foundations theory. Anti-oppressive interventions may cue a coalitional mode of moral reasoning, shifting the question from What is good? to Who are the good people?. In this frame, moral emotion is directed toward identity rather than principle, and the language of justice becomes a search for the righteous and the condemned.

In anti-racism contexts, where the narrative clearly identifies an oppressor and where public sanction reinforces that boundary, hostility finds a sanctioned outlet. Condemnation of the “bad group” is socially rewarded and even expected, while reproducing “racism” results in social sanction and even the possibility of being targeted with violence.

However, in the case of antisemitism, that same moral circuitry operates in a very different social and political context. Jewish life, historically organized around education and civic participation rather than mob politics, lacks a stable coalition capable of enforcing moral standing through collective power. No one is actually afraid of being punished by Jews—or being physically confronted by them. The mob logic never coheres into protection but instead amplifies vulnerability. Each round of moral accusation deepens the perception of instability and, paradoxically, blames Jews for the precarity itself. These hypotheses remain tentative but suggest that where moral sanction is unstable, anti-oppressive frames do not resolve into coherent moral conflict; they multiply it, producing a self-reinforcing cycle of reactivity and blame.

The same moral logic that governs DEI programs has filtered into national institutions and street movements. It teaches people to read conflict as oppression, disagreement as violence, and identity as destiny. Once that logic takes hold, it spreads suspicion through every social bond, whether on the left or on the right.

The ADL did not create this framework, but it amplified it. While hostility toward Jews and other groups escalated, its own programs continued to describe “whiteness” as privilege and to problematize mainstream organizations like Turning Point USA with accusations of extremism. This year, the FBI ended its partnership with the ADL, stating that it would not work with political fronts posing as watchdogs. That decision confirmed what the data already suggest. The old paradigm has exhausted itself. The public no longer trusts it, and the evidence shows why. The data show the medicine is worse than the disease.


7 Policy Recommendations for Combating Antisemitism in the United States
Principles for confronting antisemitism
The recent surge in antisemitism and its increasing politicization by some to achieve other political goals suggest the importance of sharpening the principles that can drive recommendations for concrete steps to combat it.

Unsurprisingly, the surge in antisemitism has left Jewish communities fearful for their own safety. It is now common to see police vehicles outside of synagogues at times of worship and at other meeting places for community events. Although this additional security is warranted and has been supported by the federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program,* it also is a constant reminder of threat. The Jewish community must define its own narrative around the pernicious hate it is experiencing. And without exception, Americans must forge a culture in which Jews—and all other groups—feel safe coming together as a community to worship or socialize.

As the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism made clear, a crucial way to combat antisemitism is to confront it head on and deeply educate people—particularly young people—who have less grounding in the long history of antisemitism the world over. It is also vital to address antisemitism as a form of hate, much like other forms of hate that dehumanize individuals for their membership in a group. The oft-repeated narrative that Jews as a group are powerful does not limit hatred toward the group, but can exacerbate it. Conspiracies about Jews’ wealth and power are representative of the central role conspiracy theories have played in antisemitism for centuries. Dating back to ancient times, Jews were falsely said to have killed Jesus, murdered Christian children (an accusation historically referred to as “blood libel”), started the Black Death, caused Germany’s defeat in World War I, spread Communism, or caused financial crises such as the Great Depression. Any strategy to combat antisemitism through education must defang these false conspiracy theories, with such efforts made more difficult by the wild proliferation of disinformation online.

The fact is that antisemitism thrives when other forms of hate are allowed to flourish. A fundamental characteristic of many forms of hate—including antisemitism—is that they seek to divide society and scapegoat one or more groups. Efforts to combat hate in all its forms ultimately help combat antisemitism, just as combating antisemitism can help fight other forms of hate. Studies have shown that education about the Holocaust, for example, can create durable “tolerance and sympathy toward minorities.”

Additionally, democracy and its guardrails, including rights around speech and protest and due process, also provide crucial protections for the Jewish community. Strong democracies provide legal and societal protections to minorities. And Jewish people have been a minority in every country in which they have resided save one. Thus, efforts to erode these democratic protections, which often accompany scapegoating of one or more out-groups, must be rejected.

One final related consideration is that policymakers must be careful to ensure that actions taken to combat antisemitism do not come at the expense of other minority groups. Examples of responses that raise this concern range from deporting Muslim students for exercising their First Amendment rights to new prohibitions that ban groups receiving federal security grants from engaging in “illegal DEIA” activities, helping undocumented immigrants, and related efforts to allegedly disqualify Muslim groups from receiving these grants. Under the banner of combating antisemitism, efforts to trample on the freedoms and rights of others will only stoke additional forms of hate and divide society—a key goal of the perpetrators of hate. Moreover, doing so would risk a direct blowback on Jews as they are scapegoated for the degraded rights of others.
Zohran Mamdani's Father Sits on Advisory Council with Designated Hamas Operative
An investigation by Jewish Onliner uncovered that NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s father, Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani, serves on the advisory council of the Gaza Tribunal alongside Ramy Abdu, whom Israel designated in 2013 as one of Hamas’ main operatives in Europe.

The investigation further uncovered that the Gaza Tribunal’s recent Istanbul conference, held October 23-26, 2025, featured multiple speakers and attendees with documented ties to U.S.-designated terror groups, while former UN officials hold leadership positions within the organization.

Sami Al-Arian
Sami Al-Arian, who was convicted in 2006 for conspiracy to provide services to Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, and subsequently deported from the United States, served as a “juror” at the Gaza Tribunal. Al-Arian signed his name on a final statement published by the tribunal at the conclusion of the Istanbul conference.

Sahar Francis
Sahar Francis serves as general director of Addameer, a Palestinian NGO that was designated by the U.S. Treasury in June 2025 as a supporter and affiliate of another designated terror group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Israel previously designated Addameer as a terrorist organization in October 2021.

Ramy Abdu
Ramy Abdu, who sits alongside Mahmood Mamdani on the Gaza Tribunal’s advisory council, serves as chairman of EuroMed, a Geneva-based NGO. In 2013, Israel designated Abdu as one of Hamas’ main operatives in Europe

Abdu has admitted to having close family ties to Hamas operatives. In March 2025, Abdu inadvertently disclosed that he is the brother-in-law of the deceased senior Hamas official Muhammad Daoud Ismail al-Jamassi. Moreover, Abdu publicly divulged that he is childhood friends with Assad Abu Sharia, the founder and leader of the Mujahideen Brigades—a Hamas-affiliated terrorist group that played a key role in the kidnapping of the Bibas children during the October 7th massacre.

In May 2025, Abdu claimed his cousin, Nour Al-Din Matar Abdu, was a journalist who was killed in an Israeli airstrike. However, a Jewish Onliner investigation revealed social media posts showing what appears to be Nour as a child holding an AK-47 and wearing Hamas paraphernalia. Nour was also pictured alongside former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.


Trans Rabbi Booted From Biden White House Event Headlines 'Jews for Zohran' Ad Campaign
A transgender rabbi who was once booted from a Biden White House pride party is headlining a new ad campaign on behalf of Zohran Mamdani.

Rabbi Abby Stein, a biological man, took part in a "Jews for Zohran" video campaign sponsored by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), a far-left group considered outside mainstream Judaism. Stein also had a sit-down with Iran's president less than a week before Tehran launched a barrage of missiles at Israel.

"We know Zohran will fight to make our city affordable and safe for our families," Stein said in the video. "As Jews, as rabbis, as New Yorkers, we believe that all people deserve to thrive. Zohran agrees."

Stein, raised in a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, attended the 2024 White House pride celebration, where she began chanting for an end to U.S. support for Israel.

"We addressed Dr. Biden and our fellow attendees respectfully, introduced ourselves as queer Jews, and chanted our support for a permanent ceasefire, an end to arming Israel, and asserted that there can be no pride in genocide," Stein wrote in an essay for a lesbian blog called Autostraddle.

Stein’s radical politics extend far beyond Israel and into the broader Middle East. She sat down for an interfaith dialogue with Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian during the United Nations General Assembly in October 2024, just days before the Islamic Republic launched nearly 200 missiles at the Jewish state.

The video featured three other rabbis, all of whom are biological women and equally as left-wing as Stein. Among them was Rabbi Emily Cohen of Manhattan’s West End Synagogue. Her official biography describes her as a scholar of Reconstructionist Judaism, a radical progressive branch of the religion. She lists her professional experience as "baking challah" and "developing curricula for adult education classes on Judaism and social justice."


The Jewish academics living in fear of anti-Semitic hate mobs
The atmosphere on the cold autumn night was febrile.

The noise could be heard from around the corner. Around 100 students – most wearing keffiyehs and masks – were angrily chanting “Zionists off our campus!”. The hatred crackled in the air outside one of the UK’s most prestigious universities.

The London School of Economics (LSE) event on October 16 – a discussion about sexual violence committed during the October 7 attacks (and other wars), led by Israeli academic Ruth Halperin-Kaddari – was the source of the fury. Within minutes of the venue being announced – for safety reasons, just a few hours before the talk began – an online call for an “emergency rally” spread rapidly across the university. Even the Feminist Society joined in the push.

The peace plan between Israel and Hamas had been signed a week earlier, yet the protests continued – as they have at universities across the capital and the country – targeting both Jewish students and academics, many of whom say they no longer feel able to take part in university life.

At City St George’s, part of the University of London, Michael Ben-Gad, an Israeli economics professor, has been targeted for having once served in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), a conscript army. The activist group City Action for Palestine described him as a terrorist and declared that it “will not allow evil to roam free on our campus”. Last week, activists stormed his lecture theatre, with one protester allegedly threatening to behead him.

Also in London, Samuel Williams, a final-year politics, philosophy and economics student at Oxford, was arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred after chanting “Put the Zios in the ground”. His words have since been adopted by other activists. Pro-Palestine organisations at Leeds, Cardiff and Queen Mary universities shared digital posters using the same slogan, several of which included images of guns, on Instagram.

Representatives of Jewish students and academics say that the tolerance of anti-Israel protests since the October 7 attacks has emboldened activists, some of whom have marked the recent two-year anniversary with celebrations.

“No matter what people think of Guantanamo Bay or the ‘war on terror’, you would not have seen 9/11 celebrations on campuses around the country two years after the event,” says Rosa Freedman, professor of law at the University of Reading and director of the Jewish academic staff network, the Intra-Communal Professorial Group (ICPG).

Hannah Holtschneider, a professor of contemporary Jewish cultural history at the University of Edinburgh, claims the university “is making no effort whatsoever to create a safe space for Jews. There are always reasons not to act, reasons that demonstrate that there is, in fact, no understanding of the violence of the experience of being Jewish at this time. Calls to violence such as ‘Join the student intifada’ are consistently downplayed as not meaning what they clearly and literally mean.”
Elise Stefanik Announces Book Exposing 'Moral Rot' At Elite Universities
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) was instrumental in holding university presidents accountable as anti-Semitism ran rampant across their campuses following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack. Now, the House Republican Leadership chair is releasing a book offering a behind-the-scenes look at how "moral rot" took hold in the nation's top universities.

In Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities, slated for an April 7, 2026, release, Stefanik "reveals how America’s elite universities, once proud symbols of academic excellence, have become centers of far-left indoctrination, division, and moral rot in this riveting, behind-the-scenes inside account," according to Simon & Schuster, the book’s publisher.

Stefanik, a staunch Israel ally and Harvard University alumna, relentlessly interrogated university leaders who failed to rein in unchecked campus anti-Semitism in the wake of Hamas’s massacre that killed over 1,200 Israeli citizens.

In a now-infamous Dec. 5, 2023, congressional hearing, Stefanik demanded that the Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University of Pennsylvania presidents answer whether "calling for the genocide of Jews" violates their schools’ code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment. All three said it was "a context-dependent decision," which ultimately led to the resignations of Harvard president Claudine Gay and Penn’s Liz Magill.

Columbia University president Minouche Shafik also resigned several months after facing a grilling from Stefanik. Shafik told the House Education Committee that "anti-Jewish protests" had not taken place at Columbia, then relented and reversed course after Stefanik pressed her.


'So Cringe It Hurt': CNN Mocked for Sycophantic Show Praising Qatar After Hamas-Loving Sheikhs Paid For Its Flashy New Offices
CNN raised eyebrows in February when it announced an expansion to Qatar, the Hamas-friendly Gulf monarchy that bans criticism of the government and spreading "rumors" or "fake news" with ill intent.

While CNN's vice president for communications Jonathan Hawkins told the Washington Free Beacon at the time that Qatar would be footing the bill for "facilities and technical support," the network said the beating heart of the operation would be an editorially independent "innovative weekly show" from a "team of CNN content creators" aired on CNN International.

Meet CNN Creators, the completely, totally, absolutely not sponsored in any way new show from a "team of digital-native storytellers as they navigate the stories that matter most." The first episode features four little-known CNN reporters and producers gallivanting through Doha's Souq Waqif market, where they marvel at stray cats and try on "traditional Qatari perfume."

"There's a lot of smells right now," Antoinette Radford, a former breaking news writer on secondment from CNN's London bureau, announces. The hosts take turns introducing themselves and offering superlatives. Ivana Scatola, a digital video producer (also from the London bureau), is "bossy." Radford is "Gen-Z" and "diva."

Back in studio, co-host Bijan Hosseini indicates he wants the show to cover "zeitgeist things, which is a fun word, but it's trendy, what's popular, what you talk about over dinner," for people who talk about how exciting Qatar is at dinner. Radford is focused on "doing stories for the girlies, we know that the girlies are not consuming news." Such insights come in the wake of a "two-week bootcamp" CNN put on for the "creators" in London, where they met with Christiane Amanpour, the veteran broadcaster who was last seen humiliating the network by arguing that the Israeli hostages tortured and starved in Hamas tunnels for two years were "treated better than the average Gazan."

While CNN has not released ratings for the inaugural Creators episode, commenters are weighing in. "This is so cringe it hurt…" the top comment on a YouTube cut of the show reads. "My algorithm has failed me," another user wrote. "Cringe. Infantilising," said a third. "I'm sure this show will have hundreds of viewers," a fourth predicted.


German broadcaster cuts ties with Gaza-based production company over Hamas links
A major public broadcaster in Germany announced on Monday that it had suspended its ties with a Gaza-based production company after one of its employees was exposed as a Hamas terrorist who was killed by Israel earlier this month.

“The 37-year-old, who was responsible for the transmission technology as an engineer, was reportedly a member of the terrorist organization Hamas,” according to a statement by the ZDF broadcaster, adding that “corresponding documents” had been presented to it by the Israeli military as evidence of this.

The Bild newspaper reported that the man killed on Oct. 19 in a strike in Deir al Balah was Ahmed Abu Mutair, a platoon commander in the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing. He had also worked for Palestine Media Production, the outfit with which ZDF cut ties.

Initially, ZDF condemned Israel for Abu Mutair’s slaying.

“Our thoughts are with the victims and their families, to whom we express our deepest sympathy,” ZDF editor-in-chief Bettina Schausten said on Oct. 19. “It is unacceptable that media professionals are attacked while doing their work.”


Jewish Labour councillor accuses Hackney Greens of promoting ‘hate’ with anti-Israel motion
A “divisive” motion tabled by Hackney’s Green and Independent opposition groups urging the council to “cut all ties with Israel’s genocide” was defeated during an often stormy emergency council meeting.

Angrily condemning the motion veteran Jewish Labour councillor Michael Desmond accused the Greens and Independents of promoting the politics of “hate, not hope.”

He added:”Our primary duty as a local authority is promoting community harmony and social cohesion.”

Recalling his own visits to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Desmond said he had met with Palestinians and Israelis who held “similar views” in regards to all wanting eventual peace for the region.

Cllr Desmond also used his speech to condemn Green Party leader Zack Polanski, revealing he had signed a letter alongside Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis asking him to “rein in his local party.”

Desmond said Polanski had”failed the first test of leadership – he didn’t even reply.”

In one outburst, Green councillor Alastair Binnie-Lubbock swore at the Labour benches, shouting, “It is not f***ing okay!”

Cllr Binnie-Lubbock later apologised to the chamber following his outburst, but the Speaker called his contrition “very childish” and added his language had been “totally unacceptable.”

He argued that Labour’s amendments amounted to tacit approval for Israel’s “murdering innocent people.”

Seconding the motion for the Greens Cllr Zoe Garbet – which also called for the end of Hackney’s twinning scheme with the city of Haifa – accused Israel of “apaartheid, a genocide, a system of domination over the Palestinan people.”

But Labour’s amended motion was carried overwhelmingly.


FDD: A Palestinian apology could pave the way for reconciliation by confronting the historical injustices inflicted on Lebanon.
In 1968, Arafat capitalized on a failed Israeli military raid against his troops in Jordan and introduced a novel concept, Palestinian nationalism. Palestine was reimagined from a British-created Mandate territory for Arabs and Jews into an eternal Arab and Muslim nation, erasing its binational history. Arafat ousted Shuqairi, took the reins of the PLO, and began building militias in countries neighboring Israel. In Lebanon, Arafat’s forces—operating out of Palestinian refugee camps—waged war against the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). Under pressure from Nasser, Lebanon in November 1969 signed the Cairo Accord, handing over control of refugee camps to the PLO while permitting Palestinian militants to stage operations against Israel.

With Lebanon ceding its sovereignty, Arafat began transforming the country into a launchpad for attacks on Israel, provoking devastating Israeli reprisals. The situation worsened for Lebanon after Jordan expelled Arafat and the PLO in 1970, following their attempts to destabilize the kingdom. The PLO leader and his militiamen moved their bases to Lebanon, which they effectively came to rule. In 1975, Lebanese resistance to this domination sparked a civil war, reducing the “Switzerland of the Middle East” to ruins. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, expelling Arafat to Tunisia. Remnant Palestinian militias remained, including those responsible for the October 26 murder of Elio Abu Hanna.

For 77 years, Palestinians have demanded unwavering loyalty to their cause, often at the expense of other Arabs, including the Lebanese, who have been hosting them since 1948. Today approximately 195,000 “Palestinians from Lebanon,” as they are called by UNRWA, remain in Lebanon. UNRWA, originally established to resettle Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Arab-Israeli war—as evidenced by its founding documents and early correspondence—shifted its mission. Instead of resettlement, it became a de facto government for Palestinians, managing their affairs while awaiting their “return” to the lands in Israel that their ancestors left 77 years ago. Lebanon has borne more than its share in hosting Palestinians and their “cause.” It is high time that the UN take responsibility for resettling them elsewhere.

Decades later, Palestinians have neither apologized nor sought forgiveness from the Lebanese for the chaos they wrought. Even prominent Palestinian intellectuals, such as Edward Said, expressed regret not for the harm caused but for losing control over Lebanon, revealing little remorse for their occupation of the country. A formal apology is overdue. If the Palestinians express genuine regret, the Lebanese might consider forgiveness, potentially foregoing the hundreds of billions of dollars owed in reparations for devastation. An apology could pave the way for reconciliation by recognizing shared suffering while confronting the historical injustices inflicted on Lebanon.


Hamas terrorists transferred to new luxury lodgings after hotel eviction
Upwards of 150 Hamas members were asked to leave a 5-star Cairo Marriott hotel and were subsequently relocated to another hotel on Saturday, The Daily Mail reported on Monday.

The Marriott Renaissance Cairo Mirage City, which is Egyptian-owned, is located about an hour away from both the airport and the city center, according to the report.

It has significantly increased security, and members of Hamas are not allowed to leave the hotel grounds.

Despite these restrictions, the luxurious amenities of their new location remain available. The expansive five-star resort features a large outdoor swimming pool, two football pitches, a wellness center with jacuzzis, saunas, steam rooms, a fitness center, and tennis courts.

According to the report, room rates at the second hotel start at £200 and can reach £1,400 for the premium suite.

Freed Palestinian prisoners released by Israel as part of a hostages-prisoners swap and a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, are welcomed in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, October 13, 2025. (credit: Ramadan Abed/Reuters)


Occupation, Ethnic Cleansing, Apartheid, Genocide — The Words That Belong to Ankara and Erdogan
The United Kingdom just signed a multi-billion-dollar sale of advanced fighter jets to Turkey — even as it maintained an arms embargo on Israel. The message could not be clearer: the world will arm those who commit real atrocities while punishing the one democracy that defends itself against them.

For decades, the global system of human rights has operated on a principle of moral inversion. Israel, a state under permanent attack, is accused of crimes that its accusers themselves have committed in plain sight. Few examples expose that hypocrisy as starkly as Turkey, a NATO member that occupies foreign lands, suppresses minorities, and wages military campaigns across borders — all while being rewarded with trade deals and defense contracts. Occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, genocide, collective punishment, famine — every one of these crimes applies to Erdogan.

The contrast between accusation and reality could not be sharper.

Occupation
Turkey’s military occupation of Northern Cyprus began in 1974 and continues to this day. Turkish forces seized 37 percent of the island, ethnically cleansing more than 200,000 Greek Cypriots and importing tens of thousands of Turkish settlers — a direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Turkey also occupies territory in northern Syria and northern Iraq, maintaining bases and carrying out drone strikes far beyond its borders. In both countries, Erdogan claims to be fighting “terrorism” but has instead entrenched a long-term occupation.

Ethnic Cleansing
The modern Turkish state was built on a century of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Between 1915 and 1923, the Ottoman Empire and its successor regime exterminated or expelled Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, destroying millennia of indigenous presence. Entire communities were eradicated; survivors were forbidden to return.

In Cyprus, Turkish forces forcibly expelled Greek Cypriots from the north and settled the area with Turkish nationals — a demographic engineering project still underway. The painful wound of the Cyprus tragedy that was kept in the dark: Rape as a tactic of war - ΑΚΕΛ | Ανορθωτικό Κόμμα Εργαζομένου Λαού

Genocide
Turkey’s genocide is not rhetorical. It is historical fact. Between 1915 and 1917, over 1.5 million Armenians were systematically killed — the first genocide of the 20th century. The Turkish state continues to deny it, criminalizing even discussion of the event.

That denialism extends to present-day operations in Syria, where Turkish-backed militias have targeted Kurdish civilians for extermination. Entire Kurdish towns have been bombed, agricultural infrastructure destroyed, and families displaced under the pretext of counter-terrorism.


Iran demands Israel’s richest man pay $170m fine after it seized cargo ship linked to him
Iran has demanded a $170 million fine from what it says is the Israeli owner of a cargo ship that it seized in Gulf waters last year and accused of having ties to Israel, a judicial official in Tehran said Tuesday.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the military force that supports terror groups in the Middle East and answers directly to Iran’s supreme leader, intercepted the MSC Aries in April 2024 and detained its 25 international crew members.

At the time, the official IRNA news agency asserted that the Portuguese-flagged vessel was “managed by Zodiac, which belongs to the Zionist capitalist Eyal Ofer.” Geneva-based MSC manages and operates the Aries, which it leases on a long-term basis from title-holder Gortal Shipping, an affiliate of Zodiac Maritime, Zodiac said in a statement. Zodiac is partly owned by Israeli businessman Eyal Ofer.

Ofer, 75, was ranked by Forbes earlier this year as the wealthiest Israeli, with a fortune of $28.2 billion. According to the publication, he is active in a variety of industries, including shipping.

On Tuesday, Iranian judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said charges had been filed and the case was before the courts, though no date had been set for a trial.

“A fine of $170 million has been demanded against its owner, of Israeli origin, accused of financing terrorism,” Jahangir said.

The MSC Aries had been last located off Dubai heading toward the Strait of Hormuz when it was seized. The ship had turned off its tracking data, a common practice for Israeli-affiliated ships moving through the region.


‘It’s like 1939,’ says wife of Israeli, whose nose was broken in attack NYPD probing as hate crime
The New York City Police Department is probing an assault that took place at 12:48 p.m. on Monday in front of the kosher eatery Mr. Broadway in midtown Manhattan as a potential hate crime, the department told JNS.

Responding to a 911 call, NYPD officers saw a man with “injuries to the right side of his face.” The victim was subsequently taken to Mount Sinai Beth Israel in stable condition, the department said. “There is no arrest, and the investigation remains ongoing by the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force.”

Rivi Ben Noon Glickstein told JNS that the attacker noticed her husband, Rami Glickstein’s kippah and shouted at him, “What is your religion? What is your religion?” When he ignored the assailant and kept walking, the man threw his kippah to the ground and spat on it, she told JNS.

After her husband, 58, picked his kippah up from the ground, the other man began punching him “a lot, very, very strongly” Rivi Glickstein said. “My husband couldn’t fight against him.”

Bystanders came over to help, and the police were called. Her husband was hospitalized, and doctors found “blood in the brain” and a broken nose, she told JNS.

Rivi Glickstein said her husband was released and though he “wasn’t feeling so well” on Tuesday, they decided to go to a restaurant in New York City, which the Israeli couple has been visiting as part of a nine-day trip. The couple plans to return to Israel in two days.

Having been to New York City several times, it felt “so strange” that such an antisemitic act could occur in the city and in the country, Rivi Glickstein told JNS. “For me, it’s like 1939.”
NY antisemitic attacker sentenced to 17 months, with hundreds on hand to support him
A federal court in New York City on Tuesday sentenced an anti-Israel activist, Tarek Bazrouk, to 17 months in prison for attacking Jews, in a case that galvanized the pro-Palestinian activist movement in the US.

Bazrouk, 20, attacked Jews at anti-Israel protests in three incidents and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit hate crimes in June.

The victims of the attacks, which took place surrounding anti-Israel protests in 2024 and early 2025, were all wearing Jewish or Israeli symbols or were otherwise identifiable as such.

Bazrouk, who is Palestinian, became a cause célèbre for anti-Israel activists across the US after his arrest. Leading groups, such as National Students for Justice in Palestine, urged their followers to sign a letter to the judge in his case, arguing for leniency in the sentencing.

Around 200 Bazrouk supporters filed into the federal Southern District court in Manhattan on Tuesday morning for the sentencing. Several dozen, including his family, sat in the courtroom, while the rest were diverted to an overflow room to watch the proceedings via livestream. The attack victims and a smaller number of their supporters from the Jewish community sat across the aisle.

As Bazrouk entered the courtroom, dressed in a beige prison jumpsuit, his leg shackles clinking, he made a heart gesture to his supporters.

The judge in the case, Richard Berman, cited aggravating circumstances at the hearing, including text messages from Bazrouk uncovered by investigators that exposed his animosity toward Jews, his extensive criminal history, his support for terrorist groups, and an “arsenal” of weapons and more than $750,000 in cash found at his apartment.


Celebrating violence Hateful ‘art’ installation featuring ‘F–k Israel’ sign appears on taxpayer-funded Governors Island
A hateful “art’’ installation featuring a mock street sign reading, “F–k Israel Ln” and a “Hamas Lover” poster was exhibited on taxpayer-funded Governors Island during a weekend family Halloween event.

The crude “unauthorized” display excoriated the Jewish state, including with another poster that read it’s “beyond the pale” for Israel to exist and lauded US-designated terror groups, according to images obtained by The Post.

The outside of the cabin housing the installation ironically had a sign on it that said, “Revive Humanity Now.”

“Not subtle. Not metaphorical. Just hate, displayed at eye level in a family event space where children were trick-or-treating,” Kobi Lahav, 48, who inadvertently stopped by the studio Sunday with his family, told The Post of the exhibit.

Lahav said the deeply disturbing display was “designed to celebrate violence.

“To normalize calls for the destruction of a nation-state,” said Lahav, who is Jewish with Israeli roots and lives in Manhattan.

“To romanticize terrorism. And it was set up in a family-friendly event space on a sunny Sunday afternoon where the next house over was handing out Snickers bars.”


Neo-Nazis raise bail for Georgia man in Nazi uniform who allegedly assaulted student
A Georgia man wearing a Nazi uniform was arrested last week after allegedly assaulting a University of Georgia student outside a bar, in an incident that has gone viral on social media.

A noted white supremacist is taking credit for helping the alleged assailant, Kenneth Leland Morgan, make bail after several days.

The altercation, which took place outside Cutter’s Pub in downtown Athens, Georgia, began after the assailant was allegedly denied entry to the bar and asked to leave, according to UGA student newspaper Red and Black.

Morgan, who was born in 1992, was then confronted by two women outside of the bar, one of whom was Jewish, and the group got into a “yelling match” over his Nazi uniform, the victim, Grace Lang, told the Red and Black.

Lang, a 23-year old UGA student, attempted to intervene in the confrontation and reached to rip off Morgan’s red swastika armband, after which he hit her in the face with a glass pitcher, according to video of the assault circulating on social media.

“His blatant attempt to instill fear and create outrage in the community was what sparked the issue,” Lang told the Red and Black. “I grabbed the armband, not him, to remove a hate symbol. The bar we were at doesn’t even have glass pitchers, and I have no clue where he brought it from. I didn’t see it in his hand, but he was clearly ready to use it against anyone.”


Rabbi invites ‘Nobody Wants This’ writers to join ‘Judaism basics course’ after Netflix rom-com mixes up Jewish holidays
Most people could be forgiven for not knowing their Tu BiShvat from their Tisha B’Av –but a Netflix series that centres around an interfaith romance between a rabbi and a podcaster could be expected to have a firmer grip on the Jewish faith than its rom-com rivals.

The second series of the show Nobody Wants This – in which Adam Brody portrays a “hot rabbi” who gets into a relationship with Kristen Bell’s agnostic sex podcaster – only hit screens on Thursday, but it’s already managed to get some viewers worked up for all the wrong reasons – by mistaking one holiday for another.

The scene in question involves two Jewish actors, Brody and Seth Rogen, with the latter making a cameo as a Reform rabbi.

In the scene, Rogen’s character can be seen saying: “I saw the sermon you gave at Tu BiShvat at Temple Chai a few years back. It changed the way I mourn … I was mourning all wrong.”

Although the two holidays have confusingly similar names, they could not be more different. While the uplifting Tu BiShvat marks the "birthday of the trees" and is celebrated on the 15th of the Hebrew month of Shevat, which usually falls in January or February, Tisha B’Av is a fast day, and the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, where we mourn multiple tragedies including the destruction of both the first and second Temples and our expulsion from Spain, England and France. It takes place on the ninth day of the month of Av, which typically falls in July or August in the Gregorian calendar.

Upon learning of the holiday mix-up, Rabbi Mendy Korer of Islington Chabad offered to help the Nobody Wants This writing team with season three of the show, telling the JC: “It would be my pleasure to invite the screenwriters to join my Judaism basics course.”


Remains of ancient synagogue uncovered in Israel’s Golan region
An ancient synagogue whose location had remained a mystery for years has finally been uncovered during an excavation by the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa.

The dig took place at the Yehudiyya Nature Reserve in the Golan Heights, a nature reserve managed by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority.

During the excavation, dozens of architectural elements were discovered – decorated lintels, (horizontal beams placed over an opening in a wall), column drums, and carefully crafted basalt stones. Each tells a story of a thriving Jewish community that flourished here approximately 1,500 years ago.

The uncovered structure is 13 metres wide and at least 17 metres long, with two rows of columns and benches along the walls – an architectural design typical of synagogues in Israel during the Byzantine period.

Additional items – including bench fragments and parts of a Torah ark – were scattered throughout, some in stone collapses and others taken for reuse in later periods. Among the most special finds are menorah decorations, attesting to the site’s importance in community life.

Commenting on the extraordinary find, Dr Mechael Osband from the Zinman Institute of Archeology said: “During long-term research we conducted together with Prof. Haim Ben-David and Dr. Benny Arubas, we documented over 150 architectural items throughout the reserve. Most were found incorporated in secondary use in the abandoned village, but the original structure they came from remained a puzzle. The breakthrough came when researchers identified an unusual concentration of items and column drums at one specific point. This is where we decided to dig.”




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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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