Friday, November 07, 2025

11/07 Links Pt2: Norway's anti-racism center turns Kristallnacht memorial into Gaza protest; Nancy Spielberg: ”Can’t let them silence our stories”; ‘Nuremberg’ and the failure of international law

From Ian:

David Reaboi: Naming the Jew
By hosting Fuentes, Carlson offered his audience two flavors of antisemitism: explicit and denied. Fuentes names the Jew; Carlson insists he has nothing against Jews at all. But the coordinates are identical, and preferring one or the other is simply a matter of taste. They coexist comfortably because both point to the same destination. Antisemitism is not dangerous because it’s mean or offensive to the feelings or sensibilities of Jews; it is dangerous because it creates and circulates lethal fictions. It produces a weaponized alternate reality, one that leads inexorably to Jews being harmed or killed.

Carlson—not to mention Fuentes and countless others—argues nightly that this country is being controlled by nefarious Israelis. If that “hummus-eating” enemy is willing to commit a genocide in Gaza; deliberately manipulate American leaders into wars; assassinate critics; destroy churches; and oppress and slaughter Christians with impunity, then the problem is no longer political but civilizational. It becomes, in their telling, a battle against a uniquely devious and implacable foe—one that cannot be resolved by elections or arguments, but only by confrontation. The logic points beyond persuasion to elimination.

Fuentes is open about this. In declaring his admiration for Hitler, he merely follows his critique of “organized Jewry” to its natural conclusion. Carlson is far more careful and coy, but the trajectory is the same. His foray last year into World War II revisionism—an extended conversation with podcaster and revisionist historian of National Socialism Darryl Cooper—was not an eccentric detour but an attempt to rehabilitate Nazi Germany and its leader, largely by discrediting Churchill and the Allied cause. Even if these gestures are performative, the tens of millions who watch and listen are not in on the act.

What unites these audiences isn’t ideology so much as a way of seeing. In this world, nothing happens by accident; every war, election, or scandal confirms the existence of an unseen hand. The more elaborate the theory, the more convincing it feels. Carlson and Fuentes didn’t invent this pattern; they inherited and updated it into a modern vernacular of globalist plots, unipolar elites, and “foreign lobbies.” The content changes, but the structure never does.

What Carlson and Fuentes broadcast isn’t “hate”; it’s a cognitive map built entirely on lies. Yet most people, including many Jews, still describe antisemitism as “anti-Jewish racism.” That mistake is fatal. Racism begins with emotion; antisemitism begins with explanation. Its logic is counterfeit, but it poses as reason all the same.

This confusion has deep roots. After the civil-rights era, “hate” became the moral grammar through which all prejudice was understood. Jewish institutions, eager to speak that language, adopted it wholesale. Once antisemitism was redefined as an emotional or linguistic offense, its conspiracy core was buried under “tropes.” In that bucket, the falsehoods that launched pogroms and genocides—blood libel, world-Jewish control—were lumped together with trivial stereotypes.

The result was a flattening of meaning. Even the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s official definition, adopted by governments and many Jewish groups, reflects this collapse. Its warning against “mendacious, dehumanizing, or demonizing allegations about Jews” treats antisemitism as a moral failure rather than an epistemic one.

The problem isn’t cruelty; it’s falsity, and the fact that for two millennia, people have acted on those lies.
Spare Us the Friendship Defense By Abe Greenwald Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here.
“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend,” said Thomas Jefferson. A good maxim, if you ask me. Most politically involved Americans these days don’t live by it, which is a shame.

But there’s a perverse version of Jefferson’s credo echoing on the right at the moment, and it should be called out. The claim of friendship is being offered up as a defense of indifference to depravity. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts has talked about his or Heritage’s friendship with Tucker Carlson in every statement he’s made about the latter’s sugary interview of Nick Fuentes. He called him a “close friend” of Heritage in his initial defense of Carlson and has not stopped referencing his personal friendship with him even as he tries to clean up the mess. Megyn Kelly, too, likes to go on about her friendship with Carlson and the importance of standing by friends. There’s a whole circle of pundits and influencers who excuse or dismiss hateful people with the friendship defense.

People can disagree with me all they like, but here goes: If you remain close friends with someone who promotes racist or anti-Semitic ideas to pursue evil ends, you’re a bad person. This isn’t about politics because bigotry isn’t fundamentally about politics. It’s about what’s in someone’s heart, which should be the deciding factor in choosing friends.

And it’s not guilt by association. Those who use the friendship defense love to note that their friendship doesn’t require them to agree with everything that their friend believes. The problem isn’t that the friendship automatically means you also have malevolent intentions (although you might). It’s that you even could stay friends with someone who spreads evil. That says everything one needs to know about you.
Starving for Headlines
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF): Unfairly Maligned Alternative
The Reuters USAID article above was published at a time when Israel and the US were defending their decision to terminate cooperation with UNRWA in favor of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an American nonprofit created to deliver aid directly to the people of Gaza. The Foundation bypassed Hamas interference by using secure distribution sites, and made large-scale theft harder by packaging and distributing individual meals rather than bulk items like flour and sugar. GHF spokesperson Chapin Fay recently told Quillette that his organisation delivered over 170 million meals directly into the hands of needy civilians in less than four months with “zero diversion” of aid.

Because the GHF coordinated their operations with Israel, they came under intense scrutiny. The UN categorically rejected cooperation with them—even after over 200 faith-based and Israel advocacy organisations published an open letter urging them to do so in August 2025. Rather than reporting on the UN’s obstinate refusal to work alongside this efficient means of aid delivery, media outlets overwhelmingly blamed Israel for the resulting shortfall in aid. UNRWA’s refusal to deliver aid to areas of Gaza outside the GHF’s reach forced Gaza residents to travel long, dangerous routes to obtain food. The UN claims that hundreds of Gazans were killed “in the vicinity of GHF sites”—attributing the deaths to the Israeli military. Israel strongly denies the accusations and has released testimonials from Gazan aid-seekers explaining how Hamas tries to disrupt the aid system through violence and manipulation. “This is how Hamas operates—they deliberately fire at people and want it to appear as though the army is the one shooting,” reported one Gaza resident. GHF workers are also at risk. Chapin Fay reports of a particularly shocking incident in mid-June 2025, when Hamas hijacked a bus transporting GHF workers and murdered nine of them. The wounded survivors of the attack were taken to Nasser Hospital (where Doctors Without Borders were operating) but were “refused treatment and left to die in the parking lot.” Uncovering the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s Controversial Tactics

While the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) was operating, Hamas ran into severe financial difficulties, which the Washington Post reported without linking that fact to the GHF. As Chapin Fay told Quillette, “The Washington Post didn't connect the dots, but I will. It’s not a coincidence that you can't steal GHF aid, and the UN wasn’t delivering theirs, and Hamas was having trouble with its finances.” Hamas demanded that “clear-cut language” be added to the terms of the ceasefire stating that GHF would be terminated. The GHF ceased operations on 10 October 2025 as a requirement of the ceasefire.

We All Deserve Better
The patterns documented here reflect a deterioration in journalistic standards, whereby ideological preferences override impartiality. But Gaza coverage makes these failures consequential in uniquely destructive ways. Every news story emphasising Israeli responsibility while erasing Hamas culpability perpetuates the cycle of Palestinian suffering. Our trusted news outlets have enabled this by abdicating their responsibility to ask hard questions, verify facts, and seek the truth—the core principles of journalism.
Arab Zionist to Arutz Sheva: October 7 exposed deep antisemitism in Arab world
Rawan Osman, a Syrian-born German political activist and a self-described Arab Zionist, spoke with Arutz Sheva-Israel National News at the European Jewish Association (EJA) conference in Poland about antisemitism in the Arab world.

Osman says that “antisemitism has always been rampant in the Arab world. However, even I, who lived in four different Arab countries, had never imagined how bad the situation was until October 7th. In fact, October 7 unmasked a much bigger problem not only in the Arab world but globally. We do have data for antisemitism around the world except in Arab countries because they do not acknowledge, recognize, or admit that antisemitism is an issue. And when Arabs deny that antisemitism is a problem, we ask them, 'Where are your Jews today?'”

She continued: “More than 800,000 Jews have left the Arab world since Israel became a country. What needs to be done first and foremost is to invite them to recognize, admit that it is an issue for them to understand that antisemitism has caused, above all, problems in the Arab world. And if they want to address their issues and problems, they need to reconcile with the existence of a Jewish state in the so-called Middle East.”

Osman stated that “October 7th helped us recognize how bad antisemitism in the Arab world is, but it definitely also contributed to a sharp rise in Jew hatred and anti-Zionist sentiments across the Arab world. Even those who considered accepting Israel in the region passionately rejected it after seeing the horrific video footage emerging from Gaza. What needs to be done is for political leaders to explain that Israel did not start the war. We need to get rid of Hamas. We need to expose them as liars, and we need to speak about the elephant in the room.”

“The Palestinian culture glorifies violence and martyrdom. And we will not get rid of recurring wars in our region unless we stop infantilizing the Palestinians and we hold them accountable for their actions, especially for incitement against the Jews, the Zionists, and the Israelis.”


Jake Wallis Simons: British Islamism is flexing its muscles more and more openly as it rises to power
If there has been a more shameful day in recent British history, I’m struggling to recall it tonight.

As unrest flared around the Aston Villa stadium, with pro-Israel protesters herded into a caged basketball court by police for their own safety, we witnessed nothing less than the forces of Islamism exerting a stranglehold on our police, our government and our country.

How must Sir Keir Starmer have felt after vowing to do all he could to reverse the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, only to have been humiliated at the hands of the mob? Last month, the Prime Minister declared that the chant “from the river to the sea” was unequivocally antisemitic. What would he say about “death, death to the IDF” as it rang off the pavements of Birmingham?

How must the 700 police officers have felt as they struggled to contain the brazen antisemitism which originated in Pakistan and other foreign climes and was imported into Britain during decades of reckless immigration? Talk about diversity; in Birmingham, the mob appeared almost exclusively Muslim and hostile. How have we done this to ourselves – or had it done to us?

The crowd with the blood of Jews in its nostrils flew many flags tonight: that of Palestine, that of Lebanon, that of Kashmir. One that was notable by its absence was the flag of Great Britain.

As the Israeli prime minister pointed out in an interview recently, try asking these masked activists for their views on our country and indeed the West as a whole. What you will soon discover is that their hatred for the Jewish state is simply the tip of a spear that is headed for the heart of our culture. Look at their past attitude towards the statue of Winston Churchill, the cenotaph and our Union flag. Allahu Akhbar, they screamed through megaphones. Allahu Akhbar!

Such chilling scenes in Aston did not come out of nowhere. The well-organised antisemitic rallies that disgraced London on October 7, 2023 – while the blood of Jews was still being spilt in southern Israel – emerged with such rapidness because of the strength of existing Islamist networks in this country. Similarly, the mass unrest in Birmingham is testament to the grip exerted by the Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist organisations upon great swathes of our immigrant communities.
British Jews forced into human zoo to be screamed at by anti-Semites at Aston Villa
When British Jews need metal fences at a football ground, something has gone profoundly wrong. Last night in Birmingham, that dystopian reality came to pass. Some brave British Jews attended the Aston Villa vs Maccabi Tel Aviv match to show that our streets are still safe for Jews. They were proved catastrophically wrong. In deeply disturbing scenes, this small group was herded into a pen surrounded by high metal fences to protect them from a racist mob.

Protesters screamed “baby killers” through the metal wire as police looked on without taking action. A human zoo had been created for the entertainment of antisemites. Before we're told this was about legitimate protest or football hooliganism, let's establish what actually happened in Amsterdam — the supposed justification for Birmingham's security theatre.

The UK government's adviser on antisemitism, Lord John Mann, spent three days investigating with Dutch police. His conclusion: there were no violent clashes between fans. What happened was a Jew hunt, organised days in advance. People have been prosecuted — none of them Maccabi fans. Lord Mann advised Birmingham police and council accordingly. They ignored him.

So what was last night really about? A hooded man ranted “f*** every Jew here.” The crowd chanted “victory to the intifada” — the reality of intifada being the murder of Jews. Activist Shakeel Afsar led chants calling for “death, death to the IDF.”

Outside the ground, Sheikh Asrar Rashid said “go back to Poland” and that they should “show no mercy” to Maccabi fans. This is the same man who previously called Jews “monkeys and pigs” and said “Hitler did a favour for the Jews.”

In his speech, “Vote Gaza” MP Ayoub Khan claimed they are “a welcoming community.” Yet agitators held signs reading “Zionists not welcome.”
Maccabi Tel Aviv may have lost to Villa but they turned up, and showed that the people of Israel live
Thursday evening’s Aston Villa-Maccabi Tel Aviv game was a tame affair on the pitch, ending in a 2-0 win for the home side. But the febrile atmosphere outside Villa Park stadium – the culmination of weeks of tension and hostility – ensured it was one of the most memorable matches I’ve ever attended.

I don’t typically receive messages family, friends and colleagues ahead of going to a match urging me to “be careful” and not to do “anything stupid”, so I arrived in Birmingham with some trepidation, though tried to dismiss the outpouring of concern for my welfare as over the top.

I’d be lying, though, if I say I didn’t experience a small degree of anxiety as I approached the stadium.

Making my way past the hundreds of police officers stationed outside the stadium – some 700 officers were deployed by West Midlands Police to keep the city “safe” (from whom they did not specify) – my worries began to grow.

There were more officers here than for many north London derbies. Dressed in riot gear, they stood poised to intervene should violence break out, either among the crowds of anti-Israel demonstrators who turned out, or the counter-protesters there to stand up for Maccabi fans, and Israel.

The pro-Israeli protests were small but mighty. Demonstrators marched from the railway station to outside the stadium peacefully, from what I saw. However, upon arrival at Villa Park, they were directed into a caged basketball court with press and onlookers peering in.

A Villa fan passing who I spoke with seemed scandalised that we were essentially being locked in a cage.

The police were vastly outnumbered by a mob of anti-Israel protesters that descended on Villa Park clad in keffiyehs and holding placards scrawled with messages such as ‘intifada revolution’ and ‘Zionists not welcome here’.

In addition to chants to “free Palestine”, I observed some demonstrators repeating the notorious call for “Death to the IDF”, and overheard an anti-Israel protester insist to those present that this was “not antisemitic”.

Entering the stadium, the atmosphere was unsettling, as the whole corner of the Doug Ellis stand was empty. Where there should have been Maccabi fans dressed in yellow and blue cheering on their side, there was just a sea of claret and blue seats.

Strangely, the home support appeared to be lacking too, though not to the same extent of course. Just 27,000 people attended the game, in a stadium with a capacity of 42,670. The atmosphere was, unsurprisingly, affected as a result.
FIFA fines Italy, Norway soccer federations for incidents involving anti-Israel fan
The Norwegian and Italian soccer federations have been fined by FIFA for incidents involving a fan at World Cup qualifying games against Israel last month.

FIFA said the Italian federation was fined 12,500 Swiss francs ($15,500) and that Norway must pay 10,000 Swiss francs ($12,400).

Both federations faced charges relating to disturbance of national anthems, spectators invading the field of play and “order and security” at games, FIFA said. It published a document of World Cup disciplinary cases late Thursday.

The man on the field during Norway’s 5–0 win over Israel has often interrupted international soccer matches over the last 20 years, including at the men’s World Cup finals tournament.

The FIFA charges did not involve Palestinian flags, including some with slogans, displayed at the games played in Oslo and Udine, Italy.

Both games saw large-scale security deployment as local fans vowed to protest the war in Gaza. Police in Oslo sprayed protesters with tear gas and made several arrests. Anti-Israel fans booed Israel’s national anthem, Hatikva, at both matches.
spiked: ‘Birmingham must not be a no-go zone for Jews’ | Standing up to anti-Semitism at Villa Park
When fans of Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv were banned from attending their Europa League game against Aston Villa, due to ‘safety concerns’, it sparked alarm among British Jews. As did the ‘pro-Palestine’ protest that was organised on the day of the match, opposing the team’s presence and demanding a boycott of all Israeli sportspeople. Israelis were being singled out for punishment and the authorities were sending a message that Maccabi’s largely Jewish fanbase was not safe in Birmingham. But a group of British Jews and their allies decided to do something, mounting a counter-demonstration outside the ground. spiked went along to talk to them.




BBC’s 10 most shocking anti-Israel scandals exposed in damning dossier
This week, The Telegraph reported that Michael Prescott, who until four months ago was an independent advisor to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board, had written a document which he had sent to the BBC’s board, which contains some of its most senior executives. This dossier set out in detail the severe problems with bias present in the UK’s national news broadcaster, an organisation which is publicly dedicated to objectivity.

On Thursday, The Telegraph published the dossier, in full. It does not focus exclusively on the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – other sections include the BBC’s skewed US election coverage, serious misreporting relating to racial diversity and a high level bias on issues relating to biological sex and gender.

However, a significant section of the dossier looks into a series of examples of highly concerning anti-Israel bias by the broadcaster–primarily on the BBC Arabic channel, but with examples also present on the Corporation’s English-language news offerings, including BBC News and Newsnight.

In Mr Prescott’s view, which may well strike a chord with many in the UK’s Jewish community, “the [BBC’s] executive repeatedly failed to implement measures to resolve highlighted problems, and in many cases simply refused to acknowledge there was an issue at all… On no other occasion in my professional life have I witnessed what I did at the BBC with regard to how management dealt with (or failed to deal with) serious recurrent problems.”


Norway's anti-racism center turns Kristallnacht memorial into Gaza protest
Norway's Center Against Racism announced plans to hold a Kristallnacht memorial event on Sunday under the banner of "fighting racism," with one central topic being the Middle East situation, specifically focusing on the Palestinian situation in Gaza. The taxpayer-funded organization claims Zionism equals racism and that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and according to reports, Norway's prime minister confirmed his attendance at the event rather than the Jewish community ceremony at Oslo's community institutions.

Center director Omar Ashraf labeled one of the community's senior members, Erwin Kohn, as an "extremist voice" after Kohn accused Amnesty International of antisemitism following the organization's one-sided stance against Israel. Event organizers invited Jonathan Shapira, a peace activist in an international anti-Israel organization known for his accusatory statements against Israel before and after October 7, to speak.

"While the Jewish community holds a memorial event for the horrific event that occurred on Kristallnacht, a non-Jewish organization that opposes Zionism and the State of Israel, which recently released a report examining racism against Palestinians in Norway with almost complete disregard for Jewish suffering in the country, will hold a 'memorial event' where it takes the disaster that befell the Jewish people and exploits it for the false narrative it builds against the State of the Jews – as if Israelis and Jews who support Israel are the new Nazis. It's simply unbelievable," a source in Norway's Jewish community said.

The Jewish community expressed shock at the distortion and feigned innocence of the Center Against Racism, which systematically attacks Israel. "Recently, representatives of human rights organizations here claimed that Jews try to cover up the 'genocide' by complaining about their sense of insecurity and antisemitism. There are organizations here trying to rewrite history, and in the end, the Norwegian prime minister announces he's attending this event and legitimizes it. It's no coincidence they invite leftists – they want to bring Jews who will say what they themselves believe and won't accuse them of antisemitism, and thus they rewrite history and turn the victim into the aggressor, thereby making the victim again," the source explained.

According to reports in Norwegian media, Jewish community leaders sent a letter to the prime minister and Oslo's mayor protesting the Center Against Racism's "memorial ceremony" and the Norwegian prime minister's planned attendance while the Jewish community holds a parallel ceremony. The anti-racism center event invited numerous additional anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian organizations. "In recent years, we've been forced to hold our memorial ceremonies inside synagogues due to the difficult atmosphere surrounding these events, while the Center Against Racism chose to hold a separate ceremony. This is a difficult and painful event for us, and the way it's being commemorated today only makes it harder for us. The prime minister is warmly invited to participate in our memorial ceremony at the Jewish community synagogue in Oslo," the letter stated.


Amid US pressure, Norway halts sovereign wealth fund’s boycott of Israel
The Norwegian parliament halted its sovereign wealth fund’s “ethical divestment” from Caterpillar over the construction firm’s ties to the Israel Defense Forces. The fund, the largest of its kind, holds $2.1 trillion in assets.

“The world has changed since the ethical guidelines were first adopted” in 2004, Jens Stoltenberg, Oslo’s finance minister, told parliament, as legislators voted 85 to 17 to pause the boycott on Tuesday.

“Divestment recommendations will be placed on a temporary hold for a year while the fund’s guidelines are reviewed,” Stoltenberg said.

The decision drew fierce responses from anti-Israel critics, as Stoltenberg said the move was necessary to “protect” the fund, which includes the seven most valuable global companies that account for 16% of the fund’s stock holdings.

Norway has come under pressure from the U.S. government, as Washington is eager to protect American companies and thwart the sovereign wealth fund’s further boycott of Israeli entities.

The U.S. State Department said in August that it was “very troubled” by the fund’s decision to divest from Caterpillar and five Israeli banks, adding that it was “based on illegitimate claims.”

The fund accused Israel of using Caterpillar bulldozers “to commit extensive and systematic violations of international humanitarian law.”

The fund had already divested last year from Bezeq, Israel’s largest telecommunication company, saying that the company violated its ethical standards by servicing Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.

Two months prior, the fund’s ethics council put new rules into effect targeting companies doing business in Judea and Samaria and those providing weapons to Israel.

At the end of 2024, the fund had invested $2.18 billion in 65 Israeli companies, representing a small fraction of its holdings.


Protesters fire flares, cause chaos at Israel Philharmonic concert in Paris; 4 arrested
Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters caused chaos at a concert given by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Paris on Thursday night when they repeatedly interrupted the show with flares and clashed with audience members, leading to four arrests.

The concert, which faced heavy scrutiny in the weeks leading up to it, was paused briefly, and the musicians were evacuated from the stage after one protester lit a chair on fire, prompting a fight in the stalls.

Footage from the scene showed audience members rushing toward the protester after the seat was set ablaze, wrestling the flare from his hands to scattered applause. Several men could be seen herding him out of the stalls, throwing punches as they went.

Others worked to extinguish the flames before they could spread further.

The incident was condemned by the Paris Philharmonic, which hosted the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in the Cité de la Musique conservatory.

“On three occasions, ticket holders attempted to disrupt the concert in various ways, twice using flares,” it said in a press release on Friday morning. “Other spectators intervened and clashes ensued. The troublemakers were removed and the concert, which had been interrupted, resumed and concluded peacefully.”

“Nothing can justify such actions,” it continued. “Regardless of individual opinions, it is completely unacceptable to threaten the safety of the public, staff, and artists.”


Star toddler educator Ms. Rachel wears Gaza-themed dress to award ceremony
Ms. Rachel, the educator who has built an empire of media programs for toddlers, continued her outspoken advocacy for children in Gaza on Tuesday by wearing a dress embroidered with drawings made by kids from the war-torn territory at an award ceremony where she was honored.

Many of the drawings featured the colors of the Palestinian flag — red, black, white, and green, or the flag itself. Others featured watermelons, a symbol of pro-Palestinian activism, or olive branches.

“I’m carrying their stories in my heart,” she said in an interview at the event. “They all know about the dress, and they’re so excited.”

her Gaza advocacy, which has earned plaudits from some while sparking controversy and allegations of antisemitism from others.

Accurso has spoken out frequently since last year on behalf of children in Gaza, raised money on their behalf, and brought a Gaza toddler who is an amputee on her show.


Ed Dept to investigate complaint against NY fashion school over Jew-hatred, says Brandeis Center
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law said on Thursday that the U.S. Department of Education will be opening an investigation into the Fashion Institute of Technology over a complaint it, along with the Anti-Defamation League, filed against the school in September 2024.

The center said “Jewish students were subjected to severe and pervasive antisemitic harassment, discrimination and disparate treatment,” per the complaint. It also said the school violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Rebecca Harris, a litigation staff attorney at the Brandeis Center, told JNS. (JNS sought comment from the Education Department.)

Denise Katz-Prober, director of legal initiatives at the Brandeis Center, told JNS that “one of the central allegations in our complaint is that there have been numerous Jewish students who reported to us that baseless complaints intended fully to harass them were being filed against Jewish students, essentially weaponizing the internal grievance against the Jewish students to further harass them.”

The Jewish students reported facing doxxing, threats and harassment simply for being in the vicinity of anti-Israel protests, she reported, adding that “the school told them that they could not proceed with their complaint.” And yet, the school moved forward with investigations of the “baseless, frivolous, false” complaints filed by anti-Israel protesters against the Jewish students, per Katz-Prober.

“They’re selectively enforcing their disciplinary procedures,” she said.

“This is problematic on a campus that has a hostile environment and where Jewish students are all experiencing severe harassment and discrimination on the basis of their Jewish identity,” Katz-Prober said. “It undermines their confidence in the very mechanisms that are intended to redress harassment and discrimination.”

Other allegations in the complaint included “graffiti justifying Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre” and Jewish students facing online harassment, “deriding them as ‘Zionist pigs’” and being told that “we don’t do enough to bully the Zionists,” according to Katz-Prober.
Gottheimer calls out NJ Ed Association for ‘Teaching Palestine’ workshop
On the docket at the New Jersey Education Association’s annual convention, which tends to draw as many as 20,000 teachers and school administrators, is a workshop titled “Teaching Palestine,” scheduled for Nov. 7.

Held in Atlantic City, N.J., the convention began on Thursday.

The workshop’s lead presenter, Adam Sanchez, is affiliated with the Racial Justice and Organizing Committee (RJOC), whose members, Gottheimer noted, have described the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, when 1,200 men, women and children were slaughtered and 251 others kidnapped, “resistance.”

In a letter to Steve Beatty, a social studies teacher and president of the NJEA, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) accused the organization of inviting instructors with “a clear bias against our key democratic ally, Israel and the Jewish people.”

The congressman said the program’s source material, a book called Teaching Palestine, “reads less like an educational resource and more like an extremist political agenda.” The book urges educators to promote the BDS campaign against Israel, and accuses the Jewish state of “settler-colonialism.”

He noted that Keziah Ridgeway, co-author of the book, “was suspended by the School District of Philadelphia following social-media posts that alluded to violence against Jewish parents, including asking in one post where she could find a gun shop.”
Cornell settles for $60 million with Trump admin after Jew-hatred probe
Cornell University announced on Friday that it had reached a settlement with the Trump administration following a Jew-hatred probe, and an investigation about its admissions policies.

Under the settlement, under which Cornell “expressly denies liability with respect to the subject matter of the investigations,” the private Ithaca, N.Y., school will pay a $30 million fine to the federal government and commits to invest another $30 million in “research programs that will directly benefit U.S. farmers.”

Grants, which the federal government withheld from the school, are restored “effective as of the date of termination of each restored grant,” per the agreement.

“The Trump administration has secured another transformative commitment from an Ivy League institution to end divisive diversity, equity and inclusion policies,” stated Linda McMahon, the U.S. secretary of education. “Thanks to this deal with Cornell and the ongoing work of the Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services and the team at the Education Department, U.S. universities are refocusing their attention on merit, rigor and truth-seeking—not ideology.”

“These reforms are a huge win in the fight to restore excellence to American higher education and make our schools the greatest in the world,” McMahon said.

Under the agreement, the university will “continue to conduct annual surveys to evaluate the campus climate for Cornell students, including the climate for students with shared Jewish ancestry.”


Toronto police arrest five over forced entry at Jewish event
The Toronto Police Service arrested five people on Nov. 5 for forcible entry at a Jewish event at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Videos that circulated on social media showed attendees at a Students Supporting Israel event, which featured Israeli soldiers, barricading a door with furniture, as anti-Israel protesters banged on the glass.

The school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, which was behind the protests, stated in a flier for an “emergency rally” that “Zionist war criminals have once again been welcomed into this city.”

According to Toronto police, the protesters “caused those in attendance to fear for their safety,” and “one individual sustained injuries from broken glass during the forced entry.”

“During the arrest process, some of the accused obstructed officers, and one individual assaulted an officer while attempting to prevent an arrest,” police stated.

Police identified those arrested as Nicole Baiton, 25; Kiana Alexis, 22; Fatimah Mugni, 23; Chelsea Wu, 29; and Manal Kamran, 21. All are scheduled to appear in court in early January.

“The student intifada will continue,” the SJP chapter wrote after the arrests.

Kevin Vuong, a former Canadian parliamentarian who is of Chinese descent, stated that he was “embarrassed” to learn that one of the five arrested shared his heritage.

“She likely doesn’t know solidarity between Canada’s Jewish and Chinese communities goes back to the ‘40s,” he stated. “Back when it was easy to hate people like us, it was a Jew who helped repeal the Chinese exclusion act.”

B’nai Brith Canada called the incident “a targeted act of hate against Jewish students and their guests” and said the school should “suspend and review any student groups implicated in the violence.”


Iran arrests Iranian-American Jew for visiting Israel
Iran sentenced Jewish Iranian-American Kamran Hekmati on charges of traveling to Israel 13 years ago to celebrate his son's bar mitzvah, The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing members of the Hekmati family.

Hekmati, a 70-year-old resident of Long Island, New York, has been held in Evin Prison since July, after traveling to Iran in May, his family have said in interviews.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Court sentenced Hekmati to four years imprisonment in late August, according to the report, adding that this was reduced to two years in September.

Hekmati was born in Iran and emigrated to the US when he was 13 years old. He still holds an Iranian passport, which he used to enter the Islamic Republic in May, NYT reported.

Hekmati is the first known case in recent years which has seen Iran target a Jewish dual-US citizen for traveling to Israel for personal reasons.

Hekmati had previously made several trips to Iran, both alone and with family members, NYT reported, noting that he never experienced any issues in the past. However, his recent May arrival came amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran ahead of June's Operation Rising Lion when the Israel Air Force conducted airstrikes on Iranian military and nuclear targets.

Security forces stopped Hekmati at the airport in Tehran as he tried to leave the country, confiscating his passport, and demanding access to his social media and mobile phone, family members said.


‘We’re indigenous. We love Israel. We stand with you’
“For many indigenous people, support for Israel is faith-based,” Sheree Trotter, the director of the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem, told JNS on Tuesday at the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem Academic Symposium 2025, held at the city’s Bible Lands Museum.

Trotter, who is a Maori (Te Arawa) from New Zealand, said the purpose of the symposium was to push back against academia, which promotes a false narrative about Jews being foreign colonizers in their ancestral land.

“This is our second annual symposium, designed to put a stake in the ground, to push back on the false narratives, to point to the truth and to build a body of material that can be used by others to address these issues,” she said.

Trotter said that as devout Christians, she and her husband, Perry, have been involved with the Jewish community for about 30 years. This includes the establishment of a Holocaust Foundation in New Zealand, sharing interviews and photographs of more than 70 Shoah survivors. Embassy Director Sheree Trotter speaks at the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem Symposium, held at the Bible Lands Museum in the Israeli capital, Nov. 4, 2025. Photo by Josh Hasten.

Part of the stated mission of the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem is “to stand against antisemitism and provide a tangible expression of indigenous peoples’ support for Israel and affirmation of the Jewish people’s indigenous status.”

“Because of our Christian faith, we began to see and understand the uniqueness of Israel and the Jewish people and have developed a real respect for the heritage coming from this land. So, we owe a debt in a sense to the Jewish people for what we enjoy in our faith,” Trotter said.
Ohio state House passes bill to partner on trade, innovation with Israel
The Ohio state House voted 73-10 on Wednesday to pass a bill that would create the Ohio-Israel Trade and Innovation Partnership. A nearly identical companion state Senate bill, which calls for a $5 million “general revenue fund” for the partnership, is currently in committee.

The partnership would include a 14-member team, including members of the state House and Senate and those appointed by the governor, who would elect a chair, per the House bill.

Eric Synenberg, a Jewish Democratic state representative who is one of the bill’s primary sponsors, told JNS that the partnership will “promote business, trade, economic development” and “collaborations between universities in Ohio and Israel.”

“The goal would be that some company ends up relocating to Ohio either completely, or a company opens up their main U.S. office in Ohio, or some Israeli innovative technology, whether it’s in defense or aerospace or agriculture or medicine or technology, ends up helping Ohio companies or businesses,” he said.

In February, Robert Sprague, the Ohio treasurer, announced that the state bought a $35 million, two-year, fixed-rate Israel Bond. “We are continuing the long-standing practice of investing in Israel Bonds as a way to bolster the state’s investment portfolio,” he stated. “Israel Bonds have long served as a sound investment for the Ohio treasurer’s office, with a record of competitive rates and reliable repayments.”

The Ohio treasury currently holds $262.5 million in Israel Bonds, making the state “one of the largest government investors in these bonds in the United States,” the state said in February.


‘Nuremberg’ and the failure of international law
It’s true that the cry of “never again” has rung hollow many times since 1946, as genocides in places like Cambodia and Rwanda, Sudan or even today in China, as the Communist regime persecutes the Uyghurs. Atrocities in these countries have happened without the civilized nations of the world lifting a finger. Efforts to prosecute war crimes committed during the ethnic conflicts in Bosnia, however, have achieved some justice.

Still, the international push to redefine the term genocide—a word first coined in the aftermath of the Holocaust by Polish Jewish lawyer Rafael Lemkin, who was both an ardent Zionist and an adviser to Jackson at Nuremberg, though he is not shown in the film—in an effort to fit Israel’s war of self-defense against the genocidal terrorists of Hamas rather than an attempt to wipe out an entire people as the Nazis attempted to do to the Jews, is relevant. It demonstrates that the application of international law is only as just or good as the people trusted with carrying it out.

While the Nuremberg trials served an important purpose by putting the truth about the Nazis’ crimes on the record in a way that the world would never forget, it did not, contrary to the film’s epigraph, giving credit for it to Jackson, create a system that has succeeded in preventing the concept’s misapplication. And by failing to tell viewers something about the ideology and politics at the heart of the Nazis’ antisemitism or what it meant to Germans and their collaborators, including Göering’s sympathetically portrayed family, the new movie is nothing more than an overstuffed court procedural with defendants sporting bad accents.

The aftermath of the post-Oct. 7 war might have been an apt moment for the sort of film that would remind the world of the virtues and inherent shortcomings of a system applied by multilateral organizations or nations that aren’t always interested in impartial justice. Instead, all Vanderbilt has given us is an unpersuasive morality play that might well do more to encourage antisemites to pretend that contemporary Jews who seek to defend themselves against the spiritual descendants of the Nazis deserve to be put on trial, as opposed to inspiring faith in an impartial application of international law.
Nancy Spielberg: ”Can’t let them silence our stories”
“When you have celebrities like Javier Bardem using words like ‘genocide,’ quoting figures from the [Hamas] terrorist organisation, or just spreading plain old lies — and those lies become ‘truth’ on social media because people don’t bother to look beyond the headlines — that’s a real problem.”

Nancy Spielberg is talking about Hollywood – a place she knows well, and where her surname carries immense weight. But the youngest sister of Steven Spielberg has built her own formidable reputation as a producer of hard-hitting documentaries, and she is deeply concerned by what she sees unfolding in America.

“From what I know and what I read,” she says, “Hollywood is having a battle within itself over this. There are lots of people who are closet supporters of Israel — and what happens is, they do get banned or cancelled. Soon after October 7, one of the biggest fights was what kind of statement the Directors Guild or the studios should come out with. They said, we’ve got to be fair. You had to denounce terror, support Israel, and also say you felt horrible for innocent Palestinian lives that were lost. You couldn’t just say one thing.”

“In America, when it was Black Lives Matter or the MeToo movement, God forbid you should say all lives matter. But Jews don’t get that. We don’t get to stand in the spotlight and say, right now it’s about us. Because as soon as we defended ourselves, we were not the victims any more.”

Spielberg is speaking ahead of the UK Jewish Film Festival screening of her latest project, A Letter to David — an extraordinary film directed by Israeli filmmaker Tom Shoval. The documentary began as a response to the Hamas attacks of October 2023, when Shoval revisited his own 2012 feature Youth to tell the true story of the Cunio brothers, who were caught in the maelstrom of that horrific day.


Scarlett Johansson: ‘People make antisemitic comments and just assume you feel the same way’
Scarlett Johansson has spoken up about the “dilemma” she faces as a Jew between speaking up to “defend” her family and herself when she encounters antisemitism or keeping quiet for fear of being subject to physical violence as a result.

The Hollywood star – who this year was named the highest-grossing actor of all time by Forbes magazine following the box-office success of science-fiction film Jurassic World: Rebirth – spoke of the “very scary times” Jewish people are experiencing, in an apparent reference to the explosion of anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment that has erupted in some quarters since the Hamas-led terror attacks on October 7, and Israel’s military response in Gaza.

The actor, known for films including Lost in Translation, Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Girl with a Pearl Earring, as well as starring as the Black Widow in the Avengers franchise, made the remarks as she discussed her Holocaust-centred directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, which tells the story of a 94-year-old Shoah survivor, ahead of its release in Israel this weekend.

“I don’t know if I would have felt comfortable telling this story, if I could have known the story or the characters well, if I weren’t Jewish,” the Tony awardwinner told Israel’s Channel 12 News.

The film, starring veteran actor June Squibb and written by newcomer Tory Kamen, tracks Jewish memory and grief through its ageing protagonist and her unexpected friendship with a young student at New York University.

Johansson said she felt an instant connection to the story thanks to her Jewish background, adding: “This is the part of the story that I definitely know and am comfortable telling.”

The director, who discovered her own family’s Holocaust history during a 2017 episode of the US genealogy programme Finding Your Roots, said creating a film about the impact of the Shoah had led to painful reflections on the “very scary times” Jews are currently living through.

Addressing the current rising tide of antisemitism in the US, Johansson said: “People make antisemitic comments and just assume you feel the same way they do, and I think in those moments I always feel like it’s such a tightrope walk.

“Whenever people are spewing any kind of hate, I’m always concerned that they're going to be physically violent as well,” she added.

It’s a scary dilemma to find yourself in those moments; should I speak up and defend my family and myself, or am I actually inviting someone to be physically violent towards me?”




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Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



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

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