Thursday, October 30, 2025

10/30 Links Pt2: Tokenism and Anti-Zionism After October 7; Why I’m going to stop using the term ‘antisemitism’; New York holds its breath

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Tokenism and Anti-Zionism After October 7
She certainly might be right about what lies ahead. But she is stacking the odds against it. How does one celebrate Jewish holidays without mentioning the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel? Where do you tell your kids the Israelites were going when they escaped Pharaoh’s clutches, Portland? Where were the temple sacrifices made, Katz’s Deli? Jewish history happened where it happened, and there isn’t much you can do about that.

As her mother says to her in that interview: “But how do you square that with the ancient history that I’ve been taught—that Jews were from Israel, that all those years we wandered in the desert and then finally came back to Israel. Is all of that false?”

To which her daughter responds: “That was many, many years ago!”

Yeah, that’s kind of the point. Full commitment to Diasporist anti-Zionism requires the jettisoning of everything that happened before this moment.

But the larger obstacle to the future envisioned here is that this young lady will no doubt be spending her time with peer groups hostile to Jewish tradition and practice and history. Forget the Muslim Student Union; the Times story discusses her conversations with canvassers from Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a progressive political group designed to reinforce her priors.

This is the problem that Rabbi Blumofe appears to put his finger on. It’s not that liberal Jews can’t or don’t exist. It’s that the structure of American politics is such that if one aligns with anti-Zionism, one is unlikely to encounter anything else. Indeed, the progressive gate-keeping has become so intense that anti-Zionism is now a litmus test for activists on any issue. It’s why climate prophetess of doom Greta Thunberg spends her time on boats challenging the Israeli navy.

The Diasporism advocated in these groups is a closed circle. As Vladimir Jabotinsky said when confronted with the argument that Jews ought to be a light unto the nations from within those nations but without a nation of their own: “England… has enriched the world with a valuable social idea: self-rule of free citizens, that is, the parliamentary government. However, how did the English nation teach other peoples to understand and run such a government? Certainly not by being scattered among the nations and convincing them; just the opposite.”

The same goes for being in groups whose entire reason for being is to critique the Jews. Embracing tokenism is a form of extreme self-exile and self-negation. The proliferation of political spaces that use anti-Zionism as their litmus test is one of the great challenges facing American Jewry. And the first step to overcoming that challenge is to acknowledge it.
David Harsanyi: Why I’m going to stop using the term ‘antisemitism’
There was no longer a need to invent blood libels tied to the Jewish faith, though doing so would never really go completely out of style. Indeed, Marr and other socialists like Eugen Dühring would blame Jews for the rise of unfettered capitalism, and national socialists and other xenophobic factions blamed them for spreading worldwide communism. But no matter how secularized or German or patriotic or apolitical a Jew might become, they still could never escape their “race.”

Later, some of the Nazis, devotees of the racialist outlook, objected to the use of “antisemitism” because they sought “Semitic” allies like the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who would join them in egging on the murder of Jews in Bosnia and elsewhere. Not all “Semites” were the same.

And the “Semitic” designation is ridiculous. Coined by German historians in the late 1700s, it bunches together wildly divergent groups of ancient people by similarities in language. An “anti-Semite,” then, technically speaking, is a person who is hostile to Hebrew or Aramaic or Phoenician. Over the years, Jewish organizations have prodded people to remove the hyphen to create a more generic term for a prejudice against Jews. Now, I’m sure “Semitic” is useful for linguists or historians trying to make sense of the movements and relationships in the ancient world, but in contemporary usage, it’s about as valuable as calling Hungarian or Finn haters “anti-Uralics.”

“Antisemitism” is reminiscent of another vaguely scientific-sounding word meant to mislead, “Islamophobia.” Defining Jews as “Semites” strips them of religious, cultural, or intellectual traditions and reimagines them as a race. “Islamophobia” treats criticism of the cultural and intellectual traditions of Islam as if it were tantamount to irrational racism. Islam isn’t a race; it’s a theology with numerous strands. Jews aren’t a race, either. They are, because of their ancient origins, an ethnicity and a faith.

Orwell warned that language decays when our thoughts become foolish — and that corrupted language, in turn, makes foolish thinking easier. Words have meaning, and using them precisely matters. A person who despises others for unchangeable traits such as skin color is a racist. One who rejects Catholic beliefs with hostility is anti-Catholic. Someone who instinctively dislikes all Dutch people is a bigot. Hatred of women is sexism. An irrational fear or hatred of men is androphobia. When we distort or dilute such words, we don’t make the world kinder — we simply make our thinking less clear.

If you believe Jews control space lasers for Israel and are behind every nefarious plot you’ve conjured up in your fetid imagination, “anti-Semite” doesn’t really do you justice. You’re probably just a “Jew-hater.” There’s really no reason for anyone to soften the blow by adopting Wilhelm Marr’s preposterous verbiage.
Melanie Phillips: New York holds its breath
The fear that the wider community might turn against Jews has meant that—even now that it has indeed done so at an unprecedented level—these cowed Jews don’t blame the haters, but instead blame Israel for allegedly turning the community against them. As Levin states, even some Jews genuinely concerned with Israel’s well-being are thus sickeningly blaming Jewish victimization on other Jews.

For similar reasons, there’s a fixed belief among Jewish leaders that the principal threat to diaspora Jews comes from the extreme right, despite the fact that most of this threat emanates from the progressive radicals of race, gender and climate politics.

This helps explain why there has been no concerted opposition to Mamdani from America’s Jewish community leadership. Many of these leaders believe not that people like Mamdani have incited the current explosion of antisemitism but that Israel has tarred their own standing in society, particularly among the intelligentsia, media and other cultural icons with whom they identify.

Levin calls out a range of U.S. communal bodies and leaders, including the Anti-Defamation League, the New Israel Fund, J Street and Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the leader of Reform Judaism, for effectively siding with the mortal enemies of Israel and the Jewish people or failing to do enough to counter them.

Rather than call out the demagogic black community leader Al Sharpton, who has spewed anti-Jewish invective and has been involved in anti-Jewish violence that goes back to the Crown Heights riots in 1991 in Brooklyn, N.Y., Levin notes that Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, effectively embraced him as an ally against the right.

Along with the campus-based Hillel organization, says Levin, the ADL has also failed to take adequate action to counter the threats to Jewish students on campus, and no other legacy Jewish organization has stepped up to fill this void.

And none of them has called out the rampant antisemitism that is standard fare throughout the Muslim world. Instead, these organizations parrot the leftist denunciation of anyone critical of Muslims as a bigot.

There’s another reason that Jewish community leaders don’t call out these enemies within. The Jewish world tells itself that the greatest threat it faces is disunity, which has brought disaster upon the Jewish people in the past because it has fatally weakened its defense against its enemies.

While it is undeniable that disunity is disastrous, an even greater catastrophe is surely threatened by Jews turning against their own. This provides both lethal weaponry and a protective shield for the mortal enemies of the Jewish people.

These anti-Jewish Jews have, in effect, joined forces with those who are intent upon the extermination of the Jewish state. They sanitize and incentivize these enemies while gaslighting Jews who support Israel and whom they demonize as nationalist bigots.

The damage that’s been done by Jews who have a pathological impulse to damage their own people, and who hurl against Israel and Zionism the same malevolent lies deployed by those who want Israel and the Jews removed from the world, is unconscionable.

The willful refusal by the Jewish community leadership to address this amounts to a betrayal of a Jewish community that’s under siege. If Mamdani is elected, they will have much more to answer for.


National Review Editorial: A Time for Choosing on Antisemitism
It would be easy to dismiss Carlson, and his now-extensive history of promoting antisemitism, as the handiwork of another personality desperate for attention in the online economy. But Carlson is one of the nation’s most prominent and influential commentators. After the death of Charlie Kirk, Carlson has become a leading speaker for the organization that Kirk founded, Turning Point USA. When Vice President JD Vance subbed in as a host on Kirk’s podcast after the assassination, Carlson was his guest.

Carlson’s sway, though, is currently limited by the fact that President Trump — who happens to like Jews and who has been the strongest supporter of Israel of any U.S. president in history — is in charge of the Republican Party and ultimately defines MAGA.

In June, Trump ignored Carlson and joined Israel’s effort to take out Iran’s nuclear program, which was successful in neutralizing a threat that had been looming over the Middle East for decades without any U.S. casualties. Carlson had predicted that it would trigger World War III and that it could kill thousands of Americans within a week. Trump dismissed him as “kooky Tucker Carlson.”

Trump won’t be around forever, though. Which is one reason that Carlson, Fuentes, Candace Owens, and other online influencers are pushing so hard to try and remake the Republican Party and the conservative movement into one that is hostile toward Israel and the Jewish people.

The idea that it should be seen as the America First position to oppose Israel and American Jewry is not only a moral abomination; it makes no sense. Israel is a technologically innovative, staunchly pro-American nation in the heart of a strategically important region. Over the past several years, with U.S. support, Israeli actions have weakened the anti-American terrorist group the Houthis; neutered Hezbollah (the terrorist group that slaughtered 241 U.S. servicemembers in the 1983 Marine Barracks bombing); and crippled the nuclear program of a nation that has for decades vowed “Death to America.” It isn’t pro-Israel protesters in the U.S. who are burning American flags and calling for the “total eradication of Western civilization” — it is the so-called pro-Palestine movement. It wasn’t Israelis who handed out candy to celebrate the September 11 attacks — that was Palestinians.

George Washington, in a famous letter to a Jewish congregation in Newport, R.I., in 1790, wrote, “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants.” American Jews have enjoyed more security and freedom here than at any place in world history and rewarded that welcome by making positive contributions to the nation in just about every field imaginable. A version of America that is no longer safe for Jews to live in securely, and that is overtaken by anti-Israel zealots, is not an America that any conservative should want to live in.


Josh Hammer: Tucker Carlson just hit a new low with this heinous betrayal of my friend Charlie Kirk... who is surely now rolling in his grave
Carlson, Fuentes, Candace Owens, and their entire disreputable ilk are incapable of acknowledging that an American might simply support the Jewish people because he sees in the Jews the origins of monotheism — and thus, all Western morality.

They refuse to concede that an American might support close-knit US-Israel relations not due to moral or financial blackmail, but due to an earnest assessment that the alliance furthers American interests.

They can't bring themselves to admit such basic points because to do so would undermine the assertion that has become most foundational to their fetid worldview: The Jews are responsible for all of America's ills, and America must therefore abandon them. And in order for this to happen, it is not that the statistically insignificant Jews must necessarily come to loathe themselves, but that those statistically very significant Christians must come to loathe the Jews.

If this looks like a war on MAGA and the modern American Right, that's because that is exactly what it is. Carlson and his clan have declared their jihad not on the woke forces of civilizational arson on the addle-brained Left, but on the forces of civilizational sanity on the MAGA Right.

They hope to burn down MAGA and build a neo-pagan, anti-Western, anti-biblical movement in its stead.

The fox is now comfortably ensconced in the hen house. And unless the fox is neutralized, the victim could be the entire extant GOP coalition itself.
Ep. 16: The War for the Future of MAGA – with Josh Hammer
In this powerful episode of Mideast Horizons, Lahav Harkov and Asher Fredman speak with Josh Hammer, senior editor-at-large at Newsweek, syndicated columnist, and author of Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West. Hammer dissects the growing ideological rift inside the MAGA movement—between conservatives who see America and Israel as joint pillars of Judeo-Christian civilization, and a “woke Right” drifting toward isolationism, conspiracy theories, and even antisemitism.

He discusses how voices such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens have turned their platforms into vehicles for anti-Israel narratives, and why their attacks on Christian Zionists reveal a deeper cultural struggle over faith, truth, and the moral foundations of the West. Hammer argues that defending the U.S.–Israel alliance today means defending the very biblical inheritance that underpins Western civilization, and suggests a new path forward for Jewish-Christian solidarity and combatting antisemitism.

In a moving reflection, Hammer speaks about his late friend Charlie Kirk, describing his courage, loyalty, and deep biblical faith, and the importance of carrying forward his legacy of building bridges between Jews and Christians. He also discusses Candace Owens’ libelous claim that he had foreknowledge of Kirk’s assassination.

In the first segment, Lahav and Asher discuss the ceasefire breakdown in Gaza, Jordanian King Abdullah’s remarks about the limits of a proposed Muslim-led stabilization force, and the realities of Hamas’s continuing control over much of the population. They analyze the Qatari regime’s deep ideological support for terrorism as evidenced by the recently surfaced posts of Qatari spokesman Majed al-Ansari, and explore the risks that Gaza could become a new front in a wider Middle East conflict. Finally, they turn to Israeli politics, assessing the Netanyahu government’s fragile coalition, the looming Haredi draft crisis, and the early maneuvering ahead of possible elections.


Rabbi Michael Barclay: Tucker Carlson's Progression From Anti-Semite to Anti-American to Qatari Puppet
Carlson has gone so far off the rails that President Trump said in June that he is a “kook," not because of his anti-Semitism, but because of the anti-American agenda that he is pushing.

Carlson has extended his anti-Semitism into promoting policies that are really detrimental and dangerous to the United States. One of the greatest dangers to the United States and the world is a nuclear Iran. Given the theology of the Quran, and its commitment to the destruction of all infidels, there is no doubt that the clerics of the Iranian regime would use nuclear weapons against the West if they had the opportunity. The regime has even admitted that they are developing long-range missiles with the goal of being able to attack the United States. But Carlson, either as an extension of his anti-Israel hatred or possibly because of his shifted loyalty to Qatar, condemned the United States for eliminating Iranian nuclear development facilities. While it seems obvious to almost every American that Iran is a danger, Tucker Carlson wanted us to let Iran develop nuclear weapons that would at first likely be used in an attack on Israel, and then subsequently the United States. As Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

It isn't just on the issue of Israel and Iran that Carlson has gone off the deep end and become truly anti-American. While free speech is a cardinal value of the United states, it has always been limited in order to restrict truly dangerous speech, specifically to prevent inciting violence. While the First Amendment protects the advocacy of ideas, even controversial ones, incitement crosses the line when it moves beyond abstract discussion and involves speech or conduct that urges others to engage in violent, forceful, or destructive acts. Carlson, through his guests of the last eight months, has been both directly and indirectly encouraging his audience to adopt the philosophies and behavior of his fringe guests like Fuentes. These are philosophies that accept forceful and destructive acts against other Americans.

Carlson has taken to inspiring hatred against other Americans who are not like him or who disagree with him; he has pushed “The Great Replacement” conspiracy theory over 400 times in order to turn American citizens against each other. He has tried to split observant Christians from other Americans by misquoting and misunderstanding biblical text. Not only does he misrepresent what the Bible says, but he doesn't even know or understand the original Hebrew text and is unable to comment on the actual verses themselves. But his personal ignorance doesn't stop him from trying to divide Americans against each other.

In recent months, specifically since his visit to Qatar, Carlson has been attacking President Trump on these and other issues. In the last eight months, he has been attacking Trump's economy, claiming that the “GDP is irrelevant.” He has attacked Trump's foreign policy, especially with regard to Israel, Iran, and Russia/Ukraine. From being a staunch supporter of Trump prior to his election, Carlson has devolved in the last eight months into a loud voice attacking the president, attacking classic American values, and trying to divide Americans.

Why the sudden changes? Why has Tucker Carlson shifted from anti-Semitism to anti-Trump and anti-American values? Maybe Mr. Carlson received a lot more than just verbal gratitude from the Qataris? Did he leave Qatar with more financial assets then he had when he arrived, and is his anti-American rhetoric a result of that? There seems to be a pattern in Carlson's behavior and how his Jew-hatred increased and his attitudes towards Trump and America degraded upon returning from Qatar. Maybe he is now more committed to Qatar and their Muslim allies than he is to the United States? And maybe Tucker Carlson is and has always been committed only to his own financial gain, and he is simply the largest and most successful of the social media grifters?

These all seem like reasonable assumptions given his words and behavior since returning from Qatar eight months ago.

So why can’t we ask these questions?
Heritage Foundation President: 'Don't Cancel Nick Fuentes,' as Stalin Fan Fuentes Tells Jews to ‘Get The F— Out of America’
Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts said conservatives should not be "canceling" Nick Fuentes, the 27-year-old Hitler and Stalin supporter who said Wednesday that Jews who can’t get behind his world view should "get the fuck out of America and go to Israel."

Roberts made the remarks in a videotaped statement intended as a defense of Tucker Carlson, whom he described as a "close friend." Carlson came under criticism this week for hosting Fuentes for a friendly, two-hour interview on his podcast.

"I disagree with and even abhor things that Nick Fuentes says, but canceling him is not the answer either," Roberts said. "When we disagree with a person's thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas in debate."

Fuentes delivered an anti-Semitic tirade in the wake of that interview, describing Jewish commentators from Josh Hammer to Mark Levin and Laura Loomer as "despicable pieces of shit" who will "never be American" and should "get the fuck out of America and go back to Israel."

"Do us all a favor," Fuentes continued. "We are done with the Jewish oligarchy. We are done with the slavish surrender to Israel, the wars, the foreign aid, the policing of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust religion and propaganda."

Roberts did not address those remarks or any of Fuentes’s other head-turning statements, including "I love Hitler," "Hitler had aura," and "I think the Holocaust is exaggerated." Rather, he condemned Carlson's critics.

"We will always defend our friends against the slanders of bad actors who serve someone else's agenda," Roberts said, though he did not identify whose agenda Carlson’s critics are allegedly serving.

Carlson, he said, "remains—and, as I have said before, always will be—a close friend of the Heritage Foundation. The venomous coalition attacking him or sowing division, their attempt to cancel him will fail."

On Carlson’s podcast, Fuentes decried the influence of "organized Jewry" and described himself as a "fan" of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who reportedly canceled a person or two. Carlson pledged to "circle back to that" but never did.


Jonathan Tobin: There’s no room for neutrality when it comes to antisemitism
Those two letters opposing the call to mobilize against Mamdani make it obvious that some Jews who will vote for him are either ignorant about what he and others in the “pro-Palestinian” camp believe or actually share his hateful opposition to Jewish rights and survival.

That was certainly the case with a much-publicized effort to promote a “Jews for Zohran” campaign led by a group of four hard-left female rabbis. One of them, Abby Stein, is a trans person and a vitriolic advocate for a ceasefire in Gaza in order to let Hamas survive the conflict. She also provided Jewish cover to an event sponsored by the Islamist regime in Iran. But she is best known for getting herself thrown out of the White House’s “Pride Month” celebration lsat year for disrupting former first lady Jill Biden’s speech because she thought that the administration was too supportive of Israel.

Some of this is the result of the shift in American culture in which toxic leftist ideologies have branded Israel and Jews as “white” oppressors of “people of color” as part of a distorted vision of the conflict in the Middle East as a rerun of the struggle for civil rights during America’s past. In this way, some Jewish liberals have come to accept the false characterization of Zionism—the Jewish national liberation movement—as somehow being racist while seeing nothing wrong with Palestinian nationalism, even though it is inextricably tied to intolerance for the presence of Jews in the country where they are indigenous.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, when Jewish celebrities like actor Mandy Patinkin, who also supports “Palestinian liberation,” have spread blood libels about Israel committing “genocide” and opposed the post-Oct. 7 war against Hamas would endorse Mamdani.

It’s equally true that some young Jews have been seduced by Mamdani’s socialism—something that also reflects their ignorance about the way Marxism has failed every time it has been tried and the way it empowers tyrannical minorities. As author Batya Ungar-Sargon put it: “Zohran Mamdani, the Pied Piper of Bushwick, offers trust-fund socialism to over-credentialed, downwardly mobile 20-30-somethings who can’t become adults due to the job/housing markets. A nepo baby, he legitimizes living off your parents in a rent-stabilized apartment into your 30s.”

All of these pro-Mamdani Jews are under the mistaken impression that a city run by someone hostile to Jewish life in Israel wouldn’t impact their existence. They’re wrong about that. New York has experienced a steady decline over the past decade due to the blunders of leftist former Mayor Bill de Blasio, and the incompetence and corruption of incumbent Mayor Eric Adams (who dropped out of the race and endorsed Cuomo when it was clear his independent run would fail). But putting City Hall in the hands of a Democratic Socialist would marginalize Jewish security, especially when you consider Mamdani’s support for the pro-Hamas mobs that targeted Jews on the city’s college campuses.

As discouraging as the blindness or malevolence of those who will vote for Mamdani may be, what is truly alarming is the apathy of leaders who prefer to be silent about this threat at a moment of genuine crisis for the Jewish community. While some may deplore the arguments between rabbis opposed to and in favor of Mamdani, the real puzzle concerns the large numbers of Jewish leaders, both rabbis and communal leaders, who are simply standing on the sidelines and doing nothing to avert an impending disaster.

In strong contrast to the leadership exhibited by Hirsch and Cosgrove, both of whom have been critical of Israel’s government but rightly understand what the mainstreaming of Mamdani’s antisemitism will mean, are those like Reform’s Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Manhattan’s Central Synagogue, who told her congregation that she would honor the political “pluralism” of her congregation by not taking a public stand on the election.

Some might defend this stance in keeping with the tradition of religious leaders avoiding partisanship. But with the Trump administration gutting the Johnson Amendment, which threatened to strip religious institutions of their nonprofit status, that excuse is gone. Moreover, we all know that many religious leaders and congregations, especially those in the African-American community, have long been active participants in electoral politics.

It’s true that virtually all synagogues, even in deep-blue New York City, have congregants that sit on both sides of the political aisle, and that avoiding endorsements or condemnations of candidates can be safer than taking a stand on them.

But this is no ordinary election for New York Jews.
Eli Lake: Zohran Mamdani’s woke intifada | The Brendan O’Neill Show
Eli Lake – columnist at the Free Press and host of the Breaking History podcast – on hipster socialism, Islamo-leftism and the crumbling of the Democratic elites.




Iranian-American activist Masih Alinejad blasts Zohran Mamdani for not being ‘tough’ on Hamas
Iranian-American activist Masih Alinejad took mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani to task Wednesday for not coming out forcefully enough against Hamas – declaring “We have to protect NY from terrorists.”

Alinejad, who is exiled from Iran, challenged Mamdani to meet with targets of the Iranian-backed terror group as she spoke outside a Manhattan courthouse after two gangsters tied to her planned assassination and backed by Tehran were sentenced to at least 25 years in prison.

“Zohran Mamdani actually said something that he doesn’t want to comment about Hamas,” Alinejad said emphatically with the general election next Tuesday and early voting already underway.

“So I have comment, and I welcome him to make a meeting with me, women of the Middle East, people of Palestine being the target of Hamas.

“So if we want to protect New Yorkers, we should be tough when it comes to Hamas and their sponsors, which is the Islamic Republic.”


Head of Hamas Media Office Defends Alleged Front Group Following Jewish Onliner Exposé
Following a Jewish Onliner investigation revealing that Ramy Abdu—whom Israel designated as a Hamas operative—serves alongside Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani on the Gaza Tribunal’s advisory council, both Abdu and a senior Hamas official have responded to the allegations.

Abdu dismissed the reporting in several posts on X as a “coordinated campaign” aimed at “tarnishing my reputation and credibility.” Abdu’s responses notably avoided denying any of the specific factual allegations, including his 2013 Israeli designation, his admitted family ties to senior Hamas official Muhammad Daoud Ismail al-Jamassi, or his childhood friendship with Mujahideen Brigades founder Assad Abu Sharia. Instead, Abdu attacked the sourcing as “Zionist and right-wing American media.”

Following Abdu’s outburst, he was defended by Dr. Ismail Al-Thawabta, Director General of the Hamas Media Office, who quote-tweeted Abdu’s response. Al-Thawabta wrote: “These smear campaigns expose the falsehood of Israeli claims and their allied media, showing that targeting Palestinians goes beyond the occupied territories to include reputational attacks abroad.”

The Hamas official’s defense of Abdu presents a significant credibility problem for those denying the alleged connections. As several observers have noted, designated terror organizations rarely publicly defend individuals unless there is a relationship worth protecting.


Nicole Lampert: Unmasked: The Haters No Longer Pretending They Care About Palestinians
It has been several weeks since our Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, stammered that he believed the refrain ‘From the River to the Sea’ is antisemitic, but still, every week, people are marching down our streets singing it. The people who once would have talked boastingly about the left’s role in fighting antisemitism at the famous Battle of Cable Street have gone quiet. This time in East London, there was no battle: they not only allowed the antisemites to march, but they joined in.

This extremist, conspiracist, racist, antizionism infects everything. Sometimes, when I’m doom scrolling on Facebook instead of working, the algorithm drags me to a weird page I don’t even remember joining called Radio 4 – It’s Not Just For The Middle Aged. It has nearly 20,000 members, so I see what ordinary people – normally white, middle-aged, middle-class – think. And it is chilling.

I ended up getting stuck in a row yesterday morning. One person on there, who used to work at the DSS, was absolutely convinced that October 7 was an inside job to keep Netanyahu out of jail. Another woman, a painter and decorator, ranted that the war was all about ‘gas’.

One man asked me incredulously: ‘So Zionism is ok in your book?’ He was shocked when I said yes.

Zionism has become a hate word that represents all that is bad in the world. Just as the Jew was once blamed for the world’s ills, now it is the Zionists. Just as the Nazis thought that the key to a good life was murdering all the Jews, now you have celebrities such as the Irish actress Denise Gough equating Israel to the Death Star from Star Wars, explaining, ‘all of it Sudan, Congo, all of it, Nigeria, if we can free Palestine it explodes everything’. Antizionism is insane.

We need someone to stop this madness from taking hold because otherwise, one day, they will get their way. I was on a panel this week with Dave Rich for UnHerd, talking about the future of British Jewry: he said he’d heard more people talk about moving to Israel in the last two weeks than he’s heard in the previous two years.

We British Jews see how the war in the Middle East has ended, but the war against us continues.

If these demonstrations against Zionists aren’t stopped, perhaps one day they will get their way. The Zionists will be gone. But if you think they will stop there, you will be wrong.
University Leaders Say "Organized Networks," including Iran, Drove Anti-Israel Campus Unrest
Several leaders of prominent universities on Monday said they believe the anti-Israel and antisemitic demonstrations on U.S. campuses during Israel's war against Hamas were not organic.

Instead, they believe "organized networks," and even foreign governments, may have driven the unrest.

Syracuse University chancellor Kent Syverud said, "I really believe [the demonstrations] were encouraged from Iran. It did not have the involvement of very many - if any - of our own students."

Former director of national intelligence Avril Haines announced in July 2024 that the Iranian government encouraged the demonstrations and provided financial support to protesters.
They’ve Called for Terrorism Against Jews. Now They’re Teaching NYC Public School Students ‘How To Organize.’
Pro-Hamas activists Abdullah Akl and Mohammad Badawy have called to "strike Tel Aviv" and destroy "the illegitimate Zionist occupiers and all of their supporters." Now they're launching an initiative to form student chapters in dozens of New York City public high schools.

Akl, an advocacy director with the Muslim American Society (MAS) Youth Center in Brooklyn, recently announced the group’s "MAS in Schools" initiative, which aims to create prayer spaces and host Islamic events at 50 New York City high schools. The group will partner "for the first time ever" with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the radical organization that earlier this month called for "death to all collaborators" of Israel, to do so.

Akl is well known as a pro-Hamas activist in New York City, having led a chant at a local rally last year calling on Hamas to "strike Tel Aviv." At a rally this month, he said "we will show up stronger than we did the first October 7th." Akl is an organizer at Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a group so radical that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) denounced it for "atrocious anti-Semitism" over its protest last year at a remembrance exhibit for the victims of Oct. 7.

Mohammad Badawy, the MAS Youth Center’s resident scholar, is no less extreme. At an event in April, he prayed for the "destruction of the illegitimate Zionist occupiers and all of their supporters" and encouraged "all those resisting against them by any means necessary." Quds News Network cofounder Raja Abdulhaq, meanwhile, is a frequent speaker at MAS Youth Center events, including a "Resisting Capitalism" seminar last month. He has called the actions of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups an "authentic indigenous response to a violent, colonial project."

Anti-Semitism is already a problem at New York City’s public schools. Two teachers at Origins High School in Brooklyn, for example, sued the city’s education department last year for failing to discipline students who chanted "f— the Jews" and gave Nazi salutes during a march across campus, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Local Jewish leaders are now concerned the "MAS in Schools" initiative will exacerbate the issue given the group's radical rhetoric.
Catholic University student government votes down IHRA resolution
The student government at Catholic University of America, a private school in Washington, founded by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, voted down a resolution that would have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred.

The senate of the school’s student government voted 14-7 against the resolution, with one abstention, via secret ballot, according to the Students Supporting Israel chapter on campus.

Felipe Avila, president of the chapter and a student senator, stated that “we witnessed senators on the floor of our own student government denying the Jewish people’s long history of discrimination and struggle.” (JNS sought comment from the student government.)

“To have our peers legitimize these tropes and then, in the same breath, refuse to even adopt the IHRA definition is a chilling and profound moral failure,” said Avila, who sponsored the resolution.
Hypocrites and Extremists: The Boycott Campaigners Making Anti-Israel Demands on The New York Times
Who Are the Extremists Who Have Joined This Boycott Call?
The New York Times’ Opinion section is one of the most influential news sections in the United States, helping to shape the views of the public and policymakers. To be featured in the Opinion section is to have the ear of influential people in the United States and around the world.

This is why it is so absurd for so many of the extremists who have joined this boycott campaign to ever believe that their radical, violent, and fundamentalist voices would ever appear in this section to begin with.

Equally absurd is the fact that close to 150 former contributors to the Opinion section have lent their names and prestige to this outlandish boycott call, making absurd demands while also justifying extremist personalities and rhetoric.

To fully understand the absurdity of this boycott call, the following are just a few of the most fanatical names to have signed on to it, including those who have somehow ludicrously been featured in the “paper of record”:

Plestia Alaqad – Alaqad uses her position as an “aspiring journalist” to spread Hamas propaganda in the Western media, including the false claims that Israel killed 1,000 people in an attack on Al-Ahli Hospital in October 2023 and that 186,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Mohammed El-Kurd – The darling of certain Western literary circles, El-Kurd has openly admitted that he lies about Israel being an “apartheid” state, has shared Nazi-style imagery of Jewish people on social media, and has both celebrated and whitewashed Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians.
Mosab Abu Toha – Earlier this year, HonestReporting campaigned for Abu Toha’s Pulitzer Prize award to be withdrawn after it came to light that he justified the abduction of Israelis on October 7, compared Israel to the Nazis, and called for journalists to cover the Israel-Hamas war solely from the Palestinian perspective.
Susan Abulhawa – A Palestinian-American scientist and writer, Abulhawa’s social media features calls to destroy Israel, celebration of Iranian attacks on Israeli cities, and baseless claims that Israel is heavily involved in global child and sex trafficking. She has also celebrated Hamas’ “unyielding resistance” and “mind-blowing persistence.”
Abubaker Abed – A “journalist” from Gaza, Abed works for Press TV, a propaganda organ of the Iranian state. On social media, he has celebrated October 7, absurdly claimed that only Israeli soldiers were killed during the attack, glorified Hamas and its former leader Yahya Sinwar, and called for a curse to fall upon the Jews.
Aaron Maté – A journalist for the alternative news site, The Grayzone, Maté has denied the sexual violence that took place on October 7, downplayed the treatment of Muslims by China, whitewashed the gassing of Syrian civilians by Bashar Assad, and sanitized Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. His father, Gabor Maté, also no stranger to wild anti-Israel statements, also joined the boycott of The New York Times.
Steven Salaita – Salaita is an academic who was the source of controversy in 2014, when the University of Illinois withdrew a job offer after a slew of tweets were discovered, including celebrating the abduction of three Israeli teens and claiming that Zionists have turned antisemitism into “something honorable.” Since then, he has continued to post on social media, accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” and even referring to October 7 as a “remarkable offensive.”
Nerdeen Kiswani – Kiswani is the founder of Within Our Lifetime, a radical anti-Israel organization that celebrated October 7 and has targeted Jewish institutions. Kiswani, herself, has justified celebrating anti-Israel terror attacks, called for Israel’s destruction, and advocated for a boycott of the Jewish state.


People Magazine Glosses Over the Truth on Israel Coverage
Nobody expects People Magazine to provide in-depth geopolitical coverage. And its audience isn’t necessarily au fait with the intricacies of the events surrounding the Israel-Hamas war. But that’s precisely why basic context and factual information are essential when readers are unfamiliar with the subject matter.

Unsurprisingly, the author, KC Baker, does not include Middle East history, Israel, or terrorism as her areas of expertise, which are listed on the website: Crime, the Climate Crisis, Human Interest, and Celebrities.

No matter their expertise, professional journalists nonetheless have a responsibility to provide readers with the essential context that such a story requires. Instead, we are treated to a subtle bias that is no less damaging than the overtly anti-Israel bias present in mainstream news media.

People Magazine has previous form in the immediate aftermath of October 7th. In one article, the magazine required readers to read 24 paragraphs before being exposed to the atrocities of the massacre.

People Magazine is not alone in the distortion of narratives and facts about Israel. The issue extends beyond pop culture and lifestyle, into food, travel, and other non-news publications. Condé Nast, the media conglomerate that owns Vogue and The New Yorker, has redrawn maps, calling Nazareth a Palestinian town – despite it very clearly being within Israel’s sovereign borders. Meanwhile, Bon Appétit has referred to 1960 Tulkarm as being in “Palestine,” despite it being under Jordanian control at the time.

These shifts in narrative subtly influence an unknowing and unassuming reader who takes what they read at face value, leaving misconceptions about history and geography unchallenged. When millions of readers encounter these narratives in trusted, glossy outlets, the cumulative effect shapes public perception, blurring the line between human-interest storytelling and factual reporting. Such omissions and distortions are not minor errors; they are carefully selected narratives that shape the understanding and perception of Israel in American society.
CBS reporter fired in wake of firestorm over Gaza interview with Mike Huckabee now looking to sue
Ousted CBS News journalist Debora Patta — whose interview with Mike Huckabee on Gaza landed her in a controversy months before she got laid off this week — is looking to sue the network, The Post has learned

The South Africa-based foreign correspondent is “speaking to lawyers” after CBS News slashed her job just months after she came under fire from Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, who claimed an Aug. 7 interview he gave her was heavily edited and misrepresented his views on the situation in Gaza.

Patta’s exit was part of a round of roughly 100 cuts orchestrated by CBS News president Tom Cibrowski. Sources speculated that the network’s new editor in chief Bari Weiss, who’s known for her staunchly pro-Israel views, played a role in the decision to ax the 61-year-old reporter.


Families of some Gaza students granted permission to join them in UK
Partners and children of some Gazan students coming to study in the UK will now be able to join them, the government has confirmed.

A government spokesperson said that applications for dependents to move to the UK would now be considered on a “case-by-case basis.”

This marks a reversal of the original policy, which only supported the evacuation of the students themselves.

The change follows complaints from several PhD and master’s students who said they might have to abandon their studies in the UK because they needed to care for their children.

Under the new policy, dependents must prove they can cover their living costs. Visas will only be available to the families of students enrolled in government-funded courses, such as Chevening scholarships, or those studying for PhDs and other research-based higher degrees.


Masih Alinejad: How the Country I Was Taught to Hate Saved My Life
Growing up in Iran, I learned to chant "death to America" at the age of 7, along with all the other schoolchildren. In the ideology of the Islamic Republic, America is the monster, the Great Satan. As a teenager, I was beaten by the regime's morality police for freeing a few strands of hair and for daring to wear my headscarf a little too loosely. I was jailed for the "crimes" of writing political slogans and handing out pamphlets that questioned the Islamic regime.

I became a journalist covering parliament. When I wrote about corruption among the elected members in 2009, the regime's intelligence officers called me in, threatened me, and forced me to sign a pledge promising not to report on the election. When I ignored the warnings, my car was vandalized. The perpetrators left a single handcuff hanging from the driver's side door handle.

I had to choose: Stay in Iran and risk prison or death, or leave and keep my voice alive. I left. Leaving my birth country felt like tearing out a part of my soul. But exile gave me freedom. In America, I could finally breathe. I could speak out without fearing the midnight knock at my door.

In 2021, the FBI informed me that I was the target of a kidnapping plot. Iranian intelligence operatives had hired private investigators to surveil me in Brooklyn. They camped outside my home, followed my movements, and made plans to kidnap me and take me to Venezuela. The FBI foiled the plot just in time.

In 2022, a hitman named Khalid Mehdiyev lurked outside my Brooklyn home, watching me as I watered my garden. By the time he had retrieved his gun from his car, I was back inside, unaware of the danger. When he returned the following day, the FBI arrested him.

It's ironic that a child who once chanted "death to America" has, as an adult, been given a second life in the same country she was taught to hate.
Iran, Russia and the New Zealand insurer that kept their sanctioned oil flowing
Last Christmas, the tanker Yug cruised out of the Chinese port of Qingdao after offloading 2 million barrels of sanctioned Iranian oil. Near the Arctic, a vessel carrying Russian crude churned through icy seas, bound for India. Six thousand miles away, a third ship unloaded its cargo of Iranian oil off the coast of Malaysia.

The three tankers had different owners, different operators and different clients. But they shared one thing: a small insurer headquartered in New Zealand, backstopped by some of the world’s biggest reinsurance firms.

The company, Maritime Mutual, is run by 75-year-old Briton Paul Rankin and family members. For more than two decades, it has insured everything from tugboats to ferries and cargo ships.

Maritime Mutual has also helped in the trade of tens of billions of dollars of Iranian and Russian oil by providing vessels skirting Western sanctions with the insurance they need to enter ports, according to a Reuters review of thousands of shipping and insurance records, hundreds of oil trades and sanctions designations, and interviews with more than two dozen people with knowledge of the company.

Many of those vessels belong to what’s known in shipping as the shadow fleet – the tankers that transport sanctioned cargoes from countries such as Iran, Russia and Venezuela, concealing their trade with fake locations, documents and names.

Maritime Mutual’s insurance coverage has played a crucial role in helping this dark fleet – as it’s also known – to operate despite sanctions designed to prevent Iran from raising money for anti-Western militias in the Middle East and to drain Russia’s war chest for the conflict in Ukraine.


Synagogue security guard honored in New Jersey for life-saving action
The Township of Scotch Plains, N.J., honored security guard Steve Monetti on Oct. 24 after he saved a man at Congregation Beth Israel this summer from choking during a bat mitzvah celebration.

According to witnesses, a guest in the synagogue’s hallway began choking on June 14 after a pill became lodged in his throat. Monetti, who had been serving on the synagogue’s security team since April, performed the Heimlich maneuver, clearing the obstruction.

The incident occurred outside the sanctuary and did not interrupt the Shabbat and life-cycle service.

Joshua Losardo, the mayor of Scotch Plains, N.J., and the Township Council, presented Monetti with an official proclamation last week, commending his “bravery, calm under pressure and life-saving efforts.” The ceremony was attended by Howard Tilman, the synagogue’s rabbi, and Aviva Tilles, its executive director.

“We are so grateful for Steve’s quick response,” said Tilman. “Our security personnel have become crucial partners in keeping our community safe.”
Jewish family sues NYC’s Met Museum over ‘secretly trafficked’ Nazi-looted van Gogh
The descendants of a Jewish couple are suing the world-famous Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art in New York over a van Gogh painting the couple said they had to leave behind when they fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

The oil painting, called Olive Picking, was painted by the Dutch Post-Impressionist in 1889 a year before his death, and was bought by Hedwig and Frederick Stern in 1935.

When the Sterns fled the country for the US with their six children the following year, the painting remained in their Munich home.

It was sold in Germany in 1938 on the family’s behalf, but the proceeds were forfeited to the Nazis, according to the a lawsuit filed on Monday in a Manhattan federal court.

The work ended up in the US after the war, was sold to the Met through a gallery and was then sold on to a Greek shipping magnate, Basil Goulandris and his wife, Elise, according to the suit.

It is currently on display on display at an Athens museum operated by a foundation the Greek couple created.

Lawyers for the Stern heirs said: “In the decades since the end of the Second World War, this Nazi-looted painting has been repeatedly and secretly trafficked, purchased and sold in and through New York.”
Three Bulgarians go on trial for painting red hands at Paris Holocaust Memorial
Three Bulgarian men are on trial in Paris this week for their alleged involvement in spray-painting blood-red hands on the city’s Holocaust Memorial, an act of vandalism that French intelligence services link to a campaign by Russia to destabilize France and other Western societies.

Some 500 red hands were painted last year on a wall honoring those who helped rescue Jews during World War II and around nearby Paris neighborhoods. The graffiti was initially viewed in the context of the war in Gaza, which has led to a rise in antisemitic incidents and tensions around Europe.

But French intelligence services say the red hands were part of a long-term strategy by Russia to use paid proxies to divide public opinion, stoke social tensions and spread false information, according to court documents. Governments across Europe have accused Russia in recent years of a campaign of sabotage that has included paying people to commit acts of vandalism, arson and bombing attempts.

Four Bulgarians are charged in the Holocaust Memorial case, but only three are in custody and were present for Wednesday’s trial. The alleged ringleader, Mircho Angelov, is at large.

The first to testify, Georgi Filipov, said he painted the red hands in exchange for 1,000 euros to help pay child support for his 9-year-old son. He said he was paid by Angelov and did not address accusations of Russian involvement.

“I acknowledge having participated in these acts. I formally apologize to the victims, and I apologize for the damage. I also apologize to the French authorities,” he told the court through translators.
ADL enlists major law firms to launch pro bono network for US antisemitism cases
The Anti-Defamation League is launching a nationwide legal service to connect victims of antisemitism with lawyers who are able to take their cases on a pro-bono basis.

The initiative comes as the ADL has increasingly turned to litigation as a tactic — the group says it has filed more lawsuits and legal complaints in the last years than in its previous 110 years combined.

Announced on Wednesday, the ADL Legal Action Network comes out of a partnership with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, one of the largest law firms in the country. In total, more than 40 firms have agreed to participate, collectively tapping a pool of 39,000 attorneys.

The network will accept online submissions involving discrimination, intimidation, harassment, vandalism or violence, and use artificial intelligence to evaluate them. Tips that make it through the system will be referred to partner firms or the ADL’s in-house litigators.

“For decades, victims of antisemitism have come to ADL to receive frontline services,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. ​”We are now dramatically expanding our capabilities to support more Jewish Americans by helping to provide direct access to legal support anywhere in the country.”

Gibson Dunn partner Orin Snyder called the network an “unprecedented legal firewall against antisemitism, extremism, and hate.”

The initiative comes as the ADL, which is flush with donations, retreats from some of its traditional advocacy and educational work while facing an onslaught from the right, which has intensified following the murder of Charlie Kirk as Elon Musk and Republican lawmakers have bashed it for listing Kirk’s group, Turning Point USA, as an extremist organization on its Glossary of Extremism and Hate.
Alabama man arrested for allegedly plotting major attacks on synagogues
An Alabama man was arrested this week for allegedly planning attacks on synagogues in Alabama and surrounding states as well as public figures.

Jeremy Wayne Shoemaker, 33, of Needham, Alabama, was arrested on Monday after the FBI and local agencies were alerted of “credible threats of violence” he made to local synagogues, the Clarke County Sheriff’s Office announced in a post on Facebook.

During his arrest, law enforcement also seized “weapons, more than a suitcase full of ammo, body armor and other items related to the plans of violence” in Shoemaker’s possession, the office said.

Following an investigation, the Clark County Sheriff’s office said they believed Shoemaker had “intentions of not being taken alive” and potentially planned to attack “public figures” as well.

While the sheriff’s office said that federal charges were “likely,” Shoemaker was locally charged during his arrest with resisting arrest and certain persons forbidden to possess a firearm. It was not clear if prosecutors were seeking hate crime charges.

The Birmingham Jewish Federation appeared to call attention to Shoemaker’s arrest in a post on Facebook, writing that there was “no credible threat to our community at this time.”
TfL investigating alleged antisemitic incident from driver on London bus
Transport for London have confirmed they are investigating a case where a Jewish man was trapped on a London bus by the driver, who allegedly made antisemitic comments and refused to give him back his bank card.

In a video shared widely on social media, the Jewish man, identified as David Abraham, pleads with the bus driver to return his card, which had dropped behind the driver’s partition when he had used to pay.

“My own card, I’m begging the driver to give me my bank card – he don’t want to give me. I don’t know what is going on”, David says in the video.

“The guy says he hates Jewish people – I didn’t do anything to him. I just touched my bank card, my bank card dropped there, he says he doesn’t want to give me my card, he doesn’t like Jewish people. What kind of driver is this?

“I begged him for 40 minutes, this driver is not going to give me my card.”

Elsewhere in the video, David, who is originally from Africa, says “it’s very sad. I’m very surprised to see a black man is hating another black man because I’m Jewish.” A screenshot of one of the videos of David Abraham aboard the bus

The video was captioned: “British transport bus driver lock[s] me in the bus for more than one hour, he said to me he doesn’t like Jewish people and he says I look like a Mossad agent.”

The position of the card meant that while it was inaccessible to passengers, it should have been easy for the driver to retrieve, without opening his safety door to do so.

Multiple videos show the driver sitting stony-faced, refusing to engage, either with David and then subsequently with other members of the public who ask him to give David back his card. The driver refuses to respond to another individual who asks him if everyone else gets off the bus – including David – whether the driver will hand him the card instead.


Patricia Heaton assails ‘violent rhetoric’ against Jews
We are seeing far too much tolerance for violent rhetoric” in the United States and around the globe, American actress Patricia Heaton told JNS on Sunday during a visit to Israel as part of a trip organized by the Israel Tech Mission (ITM).

Heaton, an award-winning actress, producer and author who has received two Primetime Emmy Awards, is the founder of the October 7th Coalition (O7C), a movement dedicated to supporting and protecting the Jewish community from antisemitism.

She told JNS she was encouraged to see Israel’s recovery. “I was here a year ago, last November, and it was very quiet because of the war. It’s wonderful to see Israel vibrant again—people out eating, shopping and tourists returning,” she said.

Heaton spoke about the strong bond between Christians and Jews, emphasizing their shared roots through the Judeo-Christian heritage.

“Christianity comes out of Judaism. Everything we have as Christians is founded in the Old Testament. Jesus was Jewish—his mother was Jewish, his father was Jewish, and he lived in Israel. It’s astonishing that we even have to clarify that, but people still get it wrong,” she said.

“We need to remind people of what the Bible actually says—and the Bible is a historical document,” she added.

Heaton underscored Israel’s significance as the region’s only democracy, surrounded by non-democratic states.

“We are allies in every sense of the word. I want to see Israel thrive because we gain so much from Israel, and Israel gains from us. Strong partnerships in technology, industry, and security are vital,” she said.
Israel’s Pager Attack Against Hezbollah Inspires New Spy Thriller With ‘Fauda’ Actors
Israel’s operation last year that involved the explosion of pagers carried by Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon has inspired a new film by Bleiberg Entertainment, which will launch sales for the project at the American Film Market (AFM) next month, Deadline reported.

The spy thriller “Frequency of Fear” will star “Fauda” cast members Doron Ben-David, Itzik Cohen and Marina Maximilian, as well as Israeli singer and actress Daniella Pick Tarantino (“The Perfect Gamble”), who is married to filmmaker Quentin Tarantino. The film is currently in post-production.

Israeli-American actor, director, and producer Danny Abeckaser is directing and producing with a script by Kosta Kondilopoulos. The two worked together previously on films including “Inside Man” and “The Engineer.”

The “Frequency of Fear” cast includes Ariel Yagen (“Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints”), actress and social media activist Emily Austin, Angel Bonanni (“Seven Days in Entebbe”), Herzel Tobey (“Damascus Cover”), Moran Attias (“Tyrant”), Aki Avni from Netflix’s “Beauty Queen of Jerusalem,” and Yarden Toussia Cohen from the Apple TV+ series “Tehran,” according to Deadline.

The AFM, held this year from Nov. 11-16 at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles, is an annual event where members of the international film and television industry can meet and collaborate.

The covert Israeli operation took place in September 2024 and targeted members of the Iranian-backed Islamist terror group Hezbollah, which is based in Lebanon. The blasts took place over the course of two days, wounding thousands and killing more than 40 people. Iranian Ambassador to Lebanon Mojtaba Amani was among those injured and reportedly lost an eye. The explosions took place across Hezbollah’s main stronghold in Beirut and in southern Lebanon. It was carried out following months of almost daily Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel and almost a year after the Hamas-led deadly terrorist attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023
‘Thank God for this moment,’ says Native American advocate converting to Judaism
When Manilan Houle, who is undergoing an Orthodox Jewish conversion, thinks about the rabbinic commandment to separate and burn challah, a small portion of the dough that one is making into bread, he thinks of a traditional Native American story of his ancestors falling ill from eating raw ingredients, like flour and lard, before learning how to cook them into frybread.

“Our obligation is to restore the challah,” he said. “You put a little aside and say, ‘Thank You for this knowledge that will sustain my people.’ That which once was making us sick is changed to strengthen us.”

Houle, 31, an enrolled member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, had a difficult upbringing. “When I was 11 or 12, I was in foster care,” he told JNS. “My family was struggling with drugs and alcohol, and we were broken.”

He graduated from high school in 2012 and studied theater at the University of Minnesota, Morris. “I was a very active thespian at the time, and had even toured with a regional opera tour my senior year of high school,” he said.

He left classes after “mere weeks” and volunteered for a grassroots campaign that fought a proposed amendment banning same-sex marriage in the state. Standing in a “sea of thousands” as the governor signed a bill recognizing such unions “made me realize that through deep relational organizing, we can change the world and make it a little more just,” he said.

Houle moved to New York City three years ago and found himself surrounded by a vibrant Jewish community that changed his life. “It was a journey of exploring, of learning, of community,” he told JNS.

Working with AIPAC, Israel Policy Forum and Anti-Defamation League, he connected Jewish and Indigenous experiences.

“I saw people attacking something that I was striving for as a Native person who didn’t quite know the strength and power of our people yet,” he said. “I saw people who for thousands of years have had to stand up to attacks and pogroms and vilification and be able to stand strong.”




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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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