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Friday, November 21, 2025

11/21 Links Pt2: The Democrats’ ominous anti-Zionist turn; The ‘noble lies’ of the BBC; Anonymous site offers $100,000 for execution of Israeli academics

From Ian:

The Democrats’ ominous anti-Zionist turn
AIPAC is clearly a lightning rod in left-wing New England. Jewish Insider reported that Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, previously deemed moderate, “would reject any further donations from AIPAC and would return more than $30,000 from the group” the day after launching his Senate campaign. Jordan Wood, a House candidate in nearby Maine, recently said “he would reject contributions from AIPAC” pointing to Democrats’ distrust over how that money affects “foreign aid to Israel”, Jewish Insider reported. Progressive Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner has made anti-AIPAC messaging central to his campaign.

Even “Midwestern nice” has made room for anti-Zionism. Anti-Israel Zeteo asked Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed about “Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state”. He “sidestepped” the question, Jewish Insider reported. El-Sayed also claimed AIPAC’s bipartisan donors are “MAGA billionaires... try[ing] to dictate the outcome for a Democratic primary”.

Down south, Georgia’s gubernatorial primary includes State Rep. Ruwa Romman, whom the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported backed the anti-Israel “‘Leave it Blank’ protest vote [campaign] against then-President Joe Biden” last year. Jewish Insider further reported that Romman “called on Democrats to ‘ban AIPAC funding’ in Democratic primaries”, supported a one-state solution, dubbed the Abraham Accords “disastrous” and opposed “a resolution denouncing Hamas and its [American] supporters”, offering solidarity to American Jews, and affirming Israel’s right to self-defence.

New examples keep appearing. Locations vary, but the details follow familiar patterns. Candidates define themselves in opposition to AIPAC and its American membership or elected Democrats they portray as overly pro-Israel. That is, Democratic candidates are increasingly defining themselves in opposition to Jews, the Jewish state, and Israel’s non-Jewish friends.

Jewish Democratic Georgia State Rep. Esther Panitch told me: “This represents a troubling shift where a vocal minority within the Democratic coalition has made anti-Zionism a litmus test for progressive credentials.” Not coincidentally, that litmus test puts many lifelong Jewish Democratic Zionists in a tight spot. Goldstein, for example, spent decades as an active Democrat, including serving as a delegate to three Democratic presidential conventions. He “couldn’t stand” being “attacked and otherized” by anti-Zionist activists and felt pushed to choose “between my party and my Judaism,” which is “inextricably intertwined with Zionism”. Goldstein left the Party in July.

For Panitch, “The question is whether the Democratic Party will allow this extremist fringe to define its position on Israel, or whether the silent majority will finally speak out. People of good conscience need to make clear there’s a bright line between legitimate policy criticism and the antisemitism of denying Jewish self-determination.”

That’s a distinction with a difference. It’s also a distinction voters should understand but won’t be learning from anti-Zionist elected officials. Zionists will have to urgently fill the gap.
The ‘noble lies’ of the BBC
Our overlords have been similarly deceitful over Gaza because they deem Palestinians to be deserving victims who automatically warrant sympathy against Israel, the oppressor. They have propagated falsehoods on the trans issue because this group is also presumed a persecuted minority, and because they feel they have a right to educate the masses in accordance with their ‘compassionate’ vision. In this new counter-factual reality, a man can get pregnant and a woman can rape someone with ‘her penis’. It matters little if this, or any other esoteric truth they take a fancy to, sounds absurd to normal people. Indeed, the more exclusive the ‘luxury belief’, the better.

The elites revel in determining what constitutes knowledge, and making sure everyone knows the righteousness of the truths they dispense. This is why they get so exercised by ‘misinformation’, or have been eager to dictate what ordinary folk say in private through ‘hate speech’ laws, ‘non-crime hate incidents’ or the Online Safety Act. This is why they double down on ‘offensive’ and ‘inappropriate’ language. They don’t like it when words are used without inhibitions and restrictions and when knowledge is diffused without supervision.

This is why they dissemble, mislead and prevaricate over truths that are inconvenient or unpleasant. Hence the cowardice and dishonesty about the rape gangs in the north of England, or their indignation when a newsreader – someone whose job it is to impart facts – rolled her eyes when prompted to read aloud that fraudulent construction: ‘pregnant people’.

The elites say what they like because they like what they say.
Gaza polemic denouncing indifference to Palestinian suffering wins US National Book Award
A provocative essay collection about the West’s response to the Gaza war and a children’s book about young Iranians helping a Jewish refugee in World War II were two of the big winners at the National Book Awards Wednesday evening.

“One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” by Egyptian-Canadian journalist and author Omar El Akkad, won the evening’s nonfiction prize. Based on a viral tweet El Akkad sent soon after the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza, the book maligns Western liberalism for, in El Akkad’s telling, turning its back on Palestinian suffering.

“It’s very difficult to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide,” El Akkad said in his acceptance speech. “It’s difficult to think in celebratory terms when I know my tax money is doing this, and many of my elected representatives happily support it.”

He later continued, “And it is difficult to think in celebratory terms when I have been watching people snatched off the streets by masked agents of the state for daring to suggest that Palestinians might be human beings” — a likely reference to cases like student activist Rumeysa Ozturk. El Akkad thanked what he said were “writers who have spoken out,” as thousands of authors have pressured literary organizations like PEN America to take a harder line against Israel.

El Akkad’s book is one of several conversation-starters that have been published as Israel-critical reflections on the war, a crop that also includes Peter Beinart’s “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza.” The nonfiction judging panel included Jewish journalist Eli Saslow, who has written extensively about the rise of antisemitism and white nationalism. Jewish public radio host Ira Glass, who introduced the category in a prerecorded voiceover, noted that it is among titles that “indict the Western world in the ongoing destruction of Gaza.”


Jonathan Tobin: The siege of Park East Synagogue and cooperating with Mamdani
When Park East Synagogue, a Modern Orthodox congregation whose building is a historic landmark, hosted an event for the Nefesh B’Nefesh organization that promotes aliyah, it was besieged by a mob of more than 200 demonstrators shouting antisemitic slogans and harassing those entering the venue. As the New York Post reported, the swarm of angry Jew-haters chanted the usual litany of slogans that have become familiar since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Their purpose was not merely to state their hostility to Israel or Jews. As one of their leaders told the mob, “It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events.” As the Post reported, the agitator “repeated emphatically” that “we need to make them scared. We need to make them scared. We need to make them scared.”

And by stating that he agreed with the basic premise of their cause, the mayor-elect was telling Jews throughout the city that they had every reason to be afraid for their safety in a New York governed by the incoming mayor. And so, Mamdani needs to be sent an unequivocal message by decent New Yorkers, whether or not they are Jewish, that this kind of messaging is both unacceptable and dangerous.

It’s not just that he was lying about aliyah being a violation of international law rather than a basic right of the Jewish people. He also has no business spouting opinions about what sort of events should be held in synagogues. That’s especially true when those houses of worship are liable to be besieged by bloody-minded protesters who seek to intimidate Jews into silence, when the mayor is making no secret that he is in agreement with the thugs screaming at the Jews.

Despite the pious language about ensuring the safety of those entering synagogues, his talk about Jews holding illegal events is a bright green light to antisemites to repeat this outrage. Under the circumstances, Jews have every right to wonder what’s in store for them in Mamdani’s New York, regardless of Tisch’s continued tenure at the New York City Police Department. Indeed, it may well be a foreshadowing of even worse to come.

That’s why the “business as usual” talk from Jewish leaders has to cease.

It’s true that Jewish organizations need to ensure that there is some cooperation with the city administration when necessary. But they can’t ignore the fact that Mamdani isn’t being shy about telling Jews that they can only consider themselves safe if they disavow an essential element of their identity and faith. Support for Israel and Zionism is integral to being Jewish, and that is something that the overwhelming majority of Jews believe, whether or not they are observant or where their sympathies lie in terms of Israel or American politics.

In essence, Mamdani isn’t hesitating to send a message that he is at war not just with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he continues to threaten with arrest if the Israeli leader visits the city on his watch. Notwithstanding his pledges to be a mayor for all New Yorkers, he’s also at war with Jewish peoplehood. And that is something that no Jewish leader or entity should tolerate or let pass without vigorous protest.
Shaken Holocaust-survivor rabbi of NYC synagogue worries anti-Israel protest would have been even worse without cops
The shaken Holocaust-survivor rabbi of the historic city synagogue targeted by a menacing anti-Israel protest this week says he’s worried what could have happened to the Jews there without the police.

“I’m a Holocaust survivor. I saw my synagogue burn on Kristallnacht with the police standing by and not intervening,” Rabbi Arthur Schneier of the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan told The Post, referencing the Nazis burning more than 1,000 synagogues and businesses during an antisemitic riot in 1938.

“Thank God in the United States, the police are protecting us against the hate-mongers,” Schneier said.

Schneier decried the hate-fueled Wednesday night protest in which about 200 demonstrators chanted, “Globalize the intifada!” and “Death to the IDF!” at attendees of an event by an organization that helps Jews immigrate to Israel.

Authorities needed to set up barricades to keep the anti-Israel agitators and counter-protesters away from each other.

Schneier stressed that the violent scene should serve as a “warning not to be silent.

“No house of worship should be subjected to this type of demonstration,” the religious leader said.

Pal-Awda NY/NJ, the anti-Israel activist group leading the protest, said it was demonstrating against an effort to “recruit American settlers to illegally occupy stolen Palestinian land.”

The Jewish organization that held the event at the synagogue, Nefesh B’nefesh, promotes immigration from North America to the Jewish state but doesn’t have official links to settlements in the West Bank, Haaretz reported.

Lawmakers across the metro region condemned the protest, including US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Columbia Student Groups Promoted Protest That Saw Anti-Semitic Mob Throw Bottles at Holocaust Survivors Outside Synagogue
Columbia University student groups promoted a protest at which an anti-Semitic mob threw bottles and sticks at a Jewish group, which included at least two Holocaust survivors, outside a historic Manhattan synagogue.

Roughly 200 keffiyeh-clad agitators gathered outside the Park East Synagogue on Wednesday to protest an event hosted by Nefesh B’Nefesh, a nonprofit group that facilitates Jewish immigration to Israel, the synagogue’s cantor, Benny Rogosnitzky, told the Washington Free Beacon. The sticks and bottles they threw at a group of Jewish counter-protesters of about the same size injured at least one member of the synagogue, he said.

The agitators called the counter-protesters "rapists," "racists," and "pedophiles," the Times of Israel reported. One yelled, "Fucking Jewish pricks," while another said, "You’re part of a death cult." They also chanted "resistance is glorious," "intifada revolution," "death to the IDF," and "we don’t want no Zionists here" while banging on drums and blowing whistles.



The protest was organized by PAL-Awda NY/NJ, which has honored Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar as a "hero" and a "legend." Columbia University Apartheid Divest and the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society promoted the event on social media, sharing a flyer that read "NO SETTLERS ON STOLEN LAND." It also accused Nefesh B’Nefesh of holding a "settler recruiting fair" and listed the address of Park East Synagogue, which is led by Rabbi Arthur Schneier, a 95-year-old Holocaust survivor. The protest was promoted by Columbia University Apartheid Divest and the Columbia chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (@columbiafsi / X)

A Columbia spokesman told the Free Beacon that those groups have no ties to the school and don’t receive university funding. "Any organization that promotes violence or encourages disruption of our academic mission is not welcome on our campuses," he said.
Mamdani accuses US of funding Israeli ‘genocide’ during warm meeting with Trump
US President Donald Trump gave a warm greeting to incoming New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani at the White House on Friday, praising Mamdani’s electoral victory in the first in-person meeting for the political opposites, who have clashed over everything from immigration to economic policy.

The 79-year-old president, a former New York resident, had previously labeled Mamdani, 34, a “radical left lunatic,” a communist and a “Jew hater.”

Answering a reporter’s question, the mayor-elect reiterated his allegation that Israel has been “committing genocide” in Gaza — a charge Israel bitterly denies, and that Trump has rejected — and his assertion that US taxpayers’ dollars are helping fund it.

Trump said that he and Mamdani did not discuss the latter’s pledge to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he came to the Big Apple.

A democratic socialist and little-known state lawmaker who won New York’s mayoral race earlier this month, Mamdani requested the sit-down with Trump to discuss cost-of-living issues and public safety.
Mamdani's support for UNRWA signals trouble for NYC
Just three weeks before he pulled off one of the greatest upsets in recent American political history, becoming the next mayor of New York City at age 34, Zohran Mamdani went for a jog in Prospect Park. He was participating in a 5K for Gaza, with all proceeds going to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) an organization charged with aiding Palestinian refugees.

The event received little attention in New York or elsewhere. It should have. In recent decades, UNRWA has become a de facto front for Hamas, used as a front to syphon humanitarian resources into Hamas’s genocidal agenda.

The numbers speak for themselves: Of the 12,521 UNRWA employees in the Gaza Strip, at least 1,462, or 12%, are bona fide members of either Hamas or other groups designated as terrorist organizations by the US Department of State.

UNRWA employees took active part of October 7
Many of these employees, such as Faisal Ali Mussalem Al-Naami, participated in the October 7, 2023, massacre. A social worker on UNRWA’s full-time payroll, Naami is also a member of Hamas’s Nuseirat battalion. Security camera footage shows him clearly entering Israel’s Kibbutz Be’eri, slaughtering innocent civilians, and kidnapping others.

Mohammad Abu Itiwi, an UNRWA employee since 2022, who is seen chasing down survivors of the Supernova music festival, attacked a group of young adults, killing 16 and kidnapping four.

The list goes on, and it goes all the way to the top. While there is no record that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was employed by UNRWA, the passport of UNRWA teacher Hani Zourob, who was in Egypt at the time of Sinwar’s death, was found near the Hamas leader’s body. There was no better get out of jail free card for a terrorist, as Sinwar so clearly understood, than to hide under the all-too-welcoming wing of UNRWA.
Commentary Podcast: Mamdani's Evil
Today's podcast takes up Zohran Mamdani's spokesman's appalling declaration that a meeting inside a synagogue about how to move to Israel was a violation of international law—in effect justifying an anti-Semitic demonstration outside it.
‘Not surprised,’ Baruch College Hillel head says of snub from imam
Ilya Bratman, executive director of Hillel at Baruch College, wasn’t shocked when Abdullah Mady, a self-proclaimed imam, led a walkout against him at an interfaith event at City College of New York on Nov. 13.

“That’s really what’s terrible about all of this,” Bratman told JNS. “We’re not surprised.”

The Hillel leader was part of a panel that included the imam and a school chaplain. Upstairs, a separate event featured a Holocaust survivor speaking about the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

“Almost all of the Jewish students were upstairs with the Kristallnacht event while the event for the rest of the college was downstairs,” Bratman said.

Some two Jewish students, 15 Christian ones and about 100 Muslim students were at the interfaith event, with about 50 clad in keffiyehs, by Bratman’s count. Some 90 people registered for the event in the last 10 minutes, he said.

“At the beginning of the event, the imam said to the chaplain that he wasn’t going to speak, because there’s a Zionist criminal here in his midst, and he knows me,” Bratman told JNS. “He knows that I’m a terrible criminal, and he doesn’t want to speak in front of me.” The chaplain told Mady, “What are you talking about? You agreed to be here,” Bratman said. “It’s not right.”

JNS listened to an audio recording in which the imam, whom the New York Post identified as Mady, told attendees that under sharia law, rapists and murderers don’t “deserve to live” and thus, crime would “significantly decrease” under sharia.

After telling the audience that a thief’s hand is cut off under sharia and that Islamic law opposes pornography, the alcohol industry, gambling and lending with interest, Mady said, “I came here, to this event, not knowing that I would be sitting next to a Zionist, and this is something that I’m not going to accept.”

“My people are being killed right now in Gaza,” he added, directing every Muslim with “dignity” to “exit this room immediately.”
Eurovision changes voting rules after other countries question Israel’s success
The Eurovision song contest has announced it will introduce rule changes to voting, after a number of country’s broadcasters expressed concern with how well Israel had done in last year’s competition.

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) which organises the contest, has now said that the number of votes individual members of the public can cast will be decreased from 20 to 10, and that broadcasters and contestants will be banned from taking part in promotional campaigns by third parties, including governments. Juries, which recently have only been used for the grand final, will now be brought back for the semi-final stage of the competition.

National broadcasters in countries such as Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium and Spain had all questioned the result of last year’s public vote, with Spain and Ireland in particular asking for a full review. Both countries have called for Israel to be boycotted from Eurovision altogether – a step which the song contest has not taken. A vote on the subject scheduled for November was postponed after news of a ceasefire last month; it is not yet clear whether a rescheduled meeting on the subject in December will take place.

Last year, Israel’s contestant in the competition, Yuval Raphael, came second overall after scoring highest in the combined public vote, with countries including the UK, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands awarding Israel the highest number of points from public voting – twelve. Ireland’s voting public gave the country 10 votes. Up until the final minutes of the 2025 contest, Israel looked set to win, until it was beaten into second place by Austria, which won due to a large number of votes from individual country’s juries.

In a statement, Eurovision director Martin Green said that “a lot of feedback from members and our fans” had urged the competition’s organisers to “have a good look at our rules”.

He went on to say that “there was a little fear that we’re seeing some undue promotion particularly by third parties, perhaps governments, that are out of proportion of the rest of the natural promotion that you should see in the show.”
Australia Funds Imams While Ignoring Jihad Calls
The Albanese government has handed $27 million to the Australian National Imams Council (ANIC) via a closed, non-competitive grant, with a further $1.1 million added in January 2024 to “support communities affected by the Israel-Palestine conflict.” On paper, this is about security for mosques, schools, and Islamic centers. In reality, it is funding an organization whose top cleric, Ibrahim Abu Mohamad, endorsed a fatwa calling for jihad against Israel, urging financial and military support for fighters and instructing Muslims to defy governments blocking aid to Gaza.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke defended the grants, citing safety for Jewish and Muslim communities. Yet he has said nothing about the fatwa itself. This is not neutrality. It is siding, by omission, with extremists, prioritizing political optics over the safety of Australians. ANIC and Mohamad have remained silent.

Let us be clear: threats against Israel are threats against Jews. The chant “globalize the intifada” has been heard at multiple protests, synagogues have been firebombed, and yet those responsible are often released on bail. Meanwhile, Jewish communities live under constant threat while extremist rhetoric goes unchecked.

The danger is immediate. On October 9, 2023, just 48 hours after Hamas’ attacks, the deadliest attacks on Jews since the Holocaust, pro-Palestinian protesters shouted “gas the Jews” and “F*** the Jews” on the Sydney Opera House steps. A day earlier, Sheikh Dadoun, the Bankstown imam, celebrated the attacks as “a day of courage, a day of pride, a day of victory,” calling mass murder an “act of resistance.” Let us be unequivocal: raping, murdering, dismembering civilians is not resistance. Taking hostages is not resistance. Shooting parents in front of their children is not resistance.

Calls for jihad are not theoretical. They threaten all Australians. In 2017, Islamist extremists attempted to blow up an Etihad flight from Sydney. Only intelligence from Israel’s Mossad prevented catastrophe at the check-in desk, literally seconds from disaster.


UKLFI Calls on Liverpool World Museum to Correct Historically Inaccurate References to “Palestine”
The Liverpool World Museum has been accused of using historically inaccurate and anachronistic references to Palestine in its Ancient Egypt Gallery.

UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has written to the Director of National Museums Liverpool and the Head of the Liverpool World Museum calling for the correction of several historically inaccurate labels in the museum’s Ancient Egypt collection. The letter highlights three instances where the museum uses the term “Palestine” to describe regions in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC—centuries or even millennia before the term first appeared in historical records.

The letter, sent to Laura Pye (Director of National Museums Liverpool) and Ashley Cooke (Head of World Museum), explains that the descriptions relating to King Scorpion (c. 3250 BC), the Hyksos period (c. 1650 BC), and a limestone carving of Thutmose I (c. 1473–1458 BC) incorrectly apply the term “Palestine” to eras when no such geographical or political entity existed.

UKLFI’s letter outlines that:
King Scorpion’s burial goods are described as including “Palestinian wine”, despite the fact that the term “Palestine” did not exist in 3250 BC. The correct regional terms for the period would have been “Canaan” or “the Levant”.
The Hyksos, who entered Egypt around 1650 BC, are said to have come “from ancient Palestine”. Egyptians at the time referred to the region as Retjenu or Canaan, making the museum’s description both inaccurate and anachronistic.
A limestone carving of Thutmose I is described as depicting his campaigns in “Nubia and Syria-Palestine”. Yet the term Syria Palaestina was only introduced by the Romans in 135 AD, nearly 1,600 years after Thutmose I’s reign.

UKLFI notes that these inaccuracies may give visitors the false impression that “Palestine” existed as a continuous geographic or political entity throughout ancient history, and that such representations risk misinforming the public and erasing the historical identities of Canaanite, Israelite, and Jewish communities.

The letter emphasises that retroactively applying a modern political term to ancient artefacts is not only misleading but can also be distressing for Jewish and Israeli visitors. By implying that “Palestine” existed thousands of years before its first historical usage, the museum inadvertently presents a political narrative as historical fact.
UK Charity accused of helping Hamas with logistical support
A UK Charity, We Care Foundation, has been funding an organisation which apparently provides logistical support for Hamas.

Documents from Hamas have been released by the IDF that show funds from the Palestinian charity Qawafil Al Khair have been used for providing food parcels to members of the Hamas military wing in Gaza.

An X post dated 20 November 2025 shows an internal Hamas report from 2023 which indicated Hamas uses funds from Qawafil to distribute food parcels to the military wing. Another document details Hamas’s request to Qawafil for economic support for one of its operatives.

UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) raised concerns to the English Charity Commission in February 2025 about the We Care Foundation, which was openly raising funds for Qawafil Al Khair. UKLFI has now provided the new information to the Commission.

Qawafil was founded by two former terrorists, who praised murders by “resistance fighters” and posted on X images of Israeli hostages being beaten and paraded through the streets of Gaza.
Anonymous site offers $100,000 for execution of Israeli academics
An anonymous anti-Israel website posts a list threatening senior Israeli academics, offering $100,000 for the execution of the “special targets.”

The site, The Punishment For Justice Movement, labels Israeli figures “criminals and collaborators with the occupation army” and “distributors of weapons of mass destruction to the Israeli army,” who are “involved in the murder of Palestinian children.”

Some of those listed on the site include Shikma Bressler, an anti-government protest leader who is a physicist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and Ben Gurion University President Danny Chamovitz.

In addition to rewards for their execution, the site offers a reward of $2,000 for placing signs in front of targets’ homes, and burning their vehicles for $20,000.


Greens deputy leader says party giving ‘full backing’ to councillor facing Hamas video probe
Mothin Ali offers support to councillor facing Charity Commission probe

The deputy leader of the Greens has stated that a councillor under Charity Commission investigation for sharing a Hamas press conference on social media has the “full backing” of the party.

Cllr Abdul Malik has been suspended as chair of Bristol’s largest mosque, Easton Jamia Masjid, while the Charity Commission conducts its investigation.

Earlier this week, he shared an Instagram post asserting he is “being targeted by the Zionist lobby,” including the Charity Commission, and describing himself as a victim of “disproportionate persecution.”

Malik, who also serves as a magistrate, received a formal warning for serious misconduct from the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office (JCIO) after sharing an 18-minute video of a Hamas press conference shortly after the October 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel.

Malik had initially denied sharing a video showing Hamas defending the 7 October massacres and calling Israel “a cancer that should be eradicated” ahead of last year’s local elections.

The then Green Party leader Carla Denyer said she was “satisfied” Malik’s case had been dealt with last year as she accepted his claims he had not shared the video, but had merely been tagged into the post.

But after an investigation into the sharing of the video by the proscribed terror group progressed, Malik was forced to admit he had shared the press conference himself.


The targeting of Israeli Professor Michael Ben-Gad: Britain’s academic freedom crisis
The hate campaign against Michael Ben-Gad, Professor of Economics at City St George’s, University of London, and Sir Anthony Finkelstein, President of the institution, seemed to have subsided – but at the time of writing, a major new protest was underway outside the university. Earlier, Iranian and Turkish state television had rapidly posted professional-quality footage of the disruption of one of Michael’s lectures, including interviews with masked protestors from the group responsible, which calls itself “City Action for Palestine”.

It was ostensibly about Michael’s service in the IDF in the early 1980s – a near universal duty for Jewish Israelis. Michael, most of whose family was murdered in the Holocaust, was keen to enlist and remains proud of his service. The pretext for the campaign against him also extended to his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, his lecturing at the University of Haifa, and his work as an economist for the Bank of Israel.

For this, he was branded a terrorist and a war criminal and Finkelstein and the university were accused of complicity in occupation and genocide. Protestors demanded Michael’s immediate dismissal and an apology to Arab and Muslim students. Though offered paid leave, Michael refused to be intimidated and said he would continue to come to campus to deliver his lectures and perform his other duties. The campaign overlapped with attempts – backed astonishingly by the Feminist Society – to cancel a debate at the London School of Economics on Hamas’s sexual violence against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.

Michael is a close colleague and friend; we are co-convenors of the City St George’s branch of Academics for Academic Freedom (AFAF). The first Instagram posts of the campaign against him were drawn to my attention by AFAF director Dennis Hayes on Monday, October 13. Both Dennis and I immediately alerted Anthony, who at once offered full support to Michael from himself and the senior leadership team. He also contacted other Israeli academics at the university. This swift and resolute response, maintained throughout the crisis, is a model of how a university should act.

But discussions with fellow academic-freedom campaigners Alice Sullivan, Abhishek Saha and Michelle Shipworth underlined our concern that this could escalate – just as happened in the campaign that drove Kathleen Stock out of the University of Sussex for her gender-critical views. Still darker precedents include the Batley Grammar School teacher forced into hiding after showing a Muhammad caricature in class, and the murder of French teacher Samuel Paty after he too had discussed such cartoons at school.

I drafted a statement of support for Michael, and we gained 1,610 signatories, mostly academics (including 97 from City St George’s) along with many politicians. The story received wide international media attention (though ignored by the BBC and The Guardian), prompted questions in Westminster, and politicians from both Labour and the Conservatives, and many of Michael’s students, reached out to him.


Michigan student government votes to divest from Israel
The University of Michigan’s student government voted 16-13 earlier this week to pass a resolution accusing Israel of genocide and calling on the regents to probe whether the school is invested in companies connected to the Israeli government that are “antithetical to the core missions of the University of Michigan.”

Rabbi Davey Rosen, CEO of Michigan Hillel, told JNS that he is “deeply disappointed” in the student body’s vote. (JNS sought comment from the university.)

“The students who spoke against the resolution were courageous and inspiring,” Rosen said. “We want every Jewish student to know that Michigan Hillel is here for them.”

Meyer Cusnir, a junior at Michigan and part of the student government, told JNS that he and other pro-Israel students made the case that efforts to divest from Israel tend to lead to spikes in Jew-hatred on campus.

He said that the issue is personal to him and fellow students, who came to Michigan as freshmen just before Oct. 7. “We’ve seen how nothing has changed since Oct. 7, even through a ceasefire where everything’s supposedly getting calmer in the region,” he said. “It’s not getting calmer on college campuses.”

Cusnir told JNS that it was a double standard that members of the student government voted via anonymous ballot for their protection, given that the issue at hand caused Jewish students to fear for their safety.


Unpacked: The Real Reason H!tler Couldn’t Stop Obsessing Over Jews | Explained
For H!tler, antisemitism wasn’t a prejudice — it was a worldview. After WW1, he fused old European antisemitism with racial myth and social Darwinism, claiming that Jewish ethics like equality, compassion, and human dignity threatened the “natural order.”

Every setback — in Vienna, in the army, in a collapsing Germany — fed his obsession. M3in K@mpf turned that obsession into a blueprint for g3nocide.

He sought to erase a people. Their survival remains the final, unambiguous defeat of his vision.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:41 Enlightenment & assimilation
01:20 H!tler's early indoctrination
02:12 Vienna & Volkish ideology
04:01 Karl Lueger & Jewish scapegoating
05:23 WW1 & Germany's defeat
07:21 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
08:30 "Rational antisemitism"
10:30 Ethical Monotheism vs Social Darwinism
14:11 H!tler's ideas about Christianity
15:17 The German Workers' Party
16:47 Time in prison & Mein Kampf
17:19 Resistance to hatred


Israeli actor Shira Haas cast in Netflix adaptation of Ira Levin’s The Boys from Brazil
Israeli actress Shira Haas has been announced as part of an all-star cast for an upcoming Netflix adaptation of Ira Levin’s 1976 novel The Boys from Brazil.

Haas is set to play Anna Koehler, a gender-swapped version of Barry Kohler from the 1978 film adaptation, who locates infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, known for his horrific human experimentation in European concentration camps, in South America.

She joins an ensemble featuring Jeremy Strong, who has Jewish ancestry, starring as jaded Holocaust survivor turned Nazi hunter Yakov Liebermann, as well as Daniel Brühl and Gillian Anderson appearing in villainous turns as members of the fugitive group Kamaraden.

Jewish-American actress Lizzy Caplan also features as Hannah Liebermann, Yakov’s sister.

The limited five-part series will be adapted for the small screen by Peter Morgan, the award-winning showrunner for Netflix hit The Crown and screenwriter of celebrated films including The Last King of Scotland and The Other Boleyn Girl.

Filming is set to begin next month, with locations including the UK, Spain, Germany and Bulgaria. Each episode will be an hour long.

Announcing the project, Netflix said: “Are you ready for a moral reckoning?

“Creator of The Crown, Peter Morgan, is bringing Ira Levin’s 1976 classic novel, The Boys from Brazil, to the screen. The limited series tells a tale of obsession, vengeance, and the terrifying persistence of hatred.

"It asks: When the world chooses to forget its darkest history, who will fight to keep the memory –and the justice – alive?

"Set across three decades, from the immediate aftermath of the Second World War through the political turbulence of the 1970s, The Boys from Brazil follows Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Yakov Liebermann in his lifelong crusade to bring Nazi fugitives to justice – a crusade that has cost him nearly everything.

“When one of his young protégées working undercover in Brazil learns of a shocking Nazi plan, Liebermann is in a race against time to expose an unimaginable truth: Doctor Johann-Friedrich Meinhardt, a sadistic Nazi scientist believed to be long-dead, is alive and orchestrating a diabolical project to spark the rise of a Fourth Reich.”
100-year-old great-grandmother immigrates to Israel
A 100-year-old great-grandmother of 15 became the oldest person to immigrate to Israel this year, the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency for Israel said on Thursday.

Sara Unterberg moved to Israel from Uruguay last week to be closer to her extended family.

“I realized I may not have much time left, and I want to spend it with my many grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Israel,” the Lithuanian-born centenarian said. “I believe all Jews should live in Israel. The world is becoming less safe for us.”

Unterberg, whose six grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren mostly live in Israel, said that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack and the burst of antisemitism that it triggered around the globe had spurred her to make the move.

“The truth is that Uruguay gave me everything since I was a child,” she said. “But what happened on Oct. 7 and afterward only confirmed to us that our place is in Israel – and now Israel is welcoming me with open arms.”

After years of visiting family in Israel, she decided that now was her time and made the move to the coastal town of Hadera with the assistance of the Jewish Agency and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

“Sara Unterberg’s aliyah at age 100 is a living reminder that there is no age limit to the Zionist dream,” said Maj. Gen. (res.) Doron Almog, chairman of the Jewish Agency. “In every new immigrant who arrives in Israel, we see the triumph of spirit, belonging and unconditional love.”

“Sara’s aliyah to Israel specifically during these challenging times is an immense inspiration to us all,” said Yael Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. “It reminds us of the depth of the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel which is unbroken even during times of difficulty and war.”




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