Friday, December 12, 2025

12/12 Links Pt2: The humanitarian front against Israel; The Fake “Johns Hopkins Genetic Study” Meme; Call me Back Podcast: Israel's President, Isaac Herzog

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The humanitarian front against Israel
So why has Amnesty, which has done so much to poison the West against Israel with a sustained and malevolent campaign of lies designed to destroy it, suddenly lurched toward at least some acknowledgment of the truth?

Perhaps it feels the hot breath on its neck of the Trump administration, which is now threatening to take condign action against those who have assisted the Palestinian Arab terrorist armies in their war of extermination against Israel.

Officials in the administration have reportedly held advanced discussions on hitting the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine “Refugees” (UNWRA) with terrorism-related sanctions. Both Israel and the Trump administration have accused UNWRA of links with Hamas, allegations the agency has vigorously disputed.

Washington halted funding in January 2024 after Israel accused about a dozen UNRWA staff of taking part in the Oct. 7 attack. Israel has also accused UNRWA of taking and guarding hostages, as well as consistently glorifying terrorism in its schools, and teaching its children to hate and murder Jews.

However, the use of humanitarian institutions to launder the war of extermination against Israel goes much further. An NGO Monitor report that was recently released has revealed—from scores of internal Hamas documents—the astonishing extent of the terrorist group’s infiltration and exploitation of international NGOs’ operations in Gaza.

The organizations involved include Catholic Relief Services, funded by Ireland, the United States and the United Nations; the International Medical Corps funded by the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States and the United Nations; and Medical Aid for Palestinians, whose funders include UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

According to the report, the evidence confirms that these NGOs in Gaza do not operate independently or neutrally. They are instead embedded in an institutionalized framework of coercion, intimidation and surveillance that serves Hamas’s terror objectives.

All NGOs operating in Gaza, it says, are required to adhere to strict Hamas security protocols, which include regular engagement with the terror group’s Ministry of Interior and National Security and other ministries.

Local Gazan “guarantors,” approved by Hamas, serve as the point of contact between Hamas and the NGOs. At least 10 such “guarantors” were Hamas members or supporters, or employed by Hamas-affiliated authorities.
‘Expelled From the Community of Which We Were a Part Only Yesterday’ Jean Améry on the Dilemma for Left-Wing Jewish Intellectuals, Sartre’s Freedom of Choice and the Commitment to Israel
What happened on 7 October 2023, and what has been happening since then, have surpassed the Jew-hatred of the 1960s and 70s. Hamas and their supporters invaded Israeli territory, raped, mutilated and slaughtered Israelis and proudly filmed themselves doing so. 1,200 people were murdered in a bestial manner, almost 5,000 were injured in one day alone, and 251 people, mostly Israelis but also foreign nationals whose only ‘crime’ was to be in the Jewish state, were taken hostage into Gaza.

Immediately afterwards, leftist groups throughout the Western world gathered in solidarity not with the victims but with the murderers.[38] Feminist activists either ignored the rapes or treated them as ‘resistance.’[39] The tendency among prominent Holocaust, genocide, and memory scholars to delegitimise Israel by drawing unfounded parallels between the extermination of European Jewry and Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians – already apparent well before 7 October – has intensified over the past two years.[40]

The accusation that Israel is committing genocide is an old classic in the repertoire of anti-Israel protesters. Since 2023, however, this blood libel has made its way into mainstream arts, academia, and politics across the West. It has nothing to do with the facts on the ground, but rather with the own psychological needs of anti-Zionists – we might recall Sartre, Adorno, and Horkheimer. In Germany, the popular chant ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ was supplemented by the rallying call, ‘Palestine will set us free.’ The redemptive dimension of today’s anti-Israel activism could not be sounded more clearly. ‘Palestine’ has become the new saviour or – in leftist terms – the new revolutionary subject after the proletariat and the Third World failed to deliver on the hopes invested in them.

A truly humane future, once the aspiration of the left – certainly the left Améry considered himself a part of – appears to have been abandoned long ago. The future that today’s leftist activists on the barricades are striving for as ‘liberation’ will not bring about actual redemption of mankind, but a whole different kind of suffering compared to today – suffering reminiscent of the worst horrors humanity had descended into in the 20th century.

When the Germans and their auxiliaries sought to purify the world from misery, the logic of self-preservation, the basis of all rational thought, turned into the logic of extermination: murder for the sake of murder. As a result of its enactment, the Holocaust remains unprecedented to this day. And yet, another descent into barbarism is not banished in the future as long as the conditions that enabled it prevail.

The only practical objection to the world after Auschwitz and the possible repetition of antisemitic extermination today is the Jewish state. Not international law, not human rights declarations, and not – as in present-day Germany’s case – a questionable raison d’état. The fact that antisemitism is intertwined with society at large, or in Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s words ‘anti-semitism and totality have always been profoundly connected,’[41] removes everyone, Jews and non-Jews, from freedom of choice when it comes to the necessity of Israel.

However, Jews feel the ‘crushing pressure’[42] already today. When some side with antisemites and rationalise antisemitic attacks, this phenomenon is often described as ‘Jewish self-hate.’ But such a perception falls short. Because it is based on a displacement: It suggests that the reason for this behaviour lies within the Jew, when in fact it originates outside, in the pressure of antisemitic society.[43] Jews who turn against Jewish self-determination embody, paradoxically, both resistance against and identification with their persecutor. Resistance, because they try to avert the hate against them, identification because they take on their enemies’ gaze. In the attempt to gain self-empowerment, they overlook that antisemitism is not related to what its objects actually do or not do. The security promised by this identification is in fact no security at all. Non-Jews do not experience this pressure. They make their decision – and this crucial difference is all too easily missed – without duress.

Améry’s disconcerting insight is that ultimately no one who cares about a future in which freedom of choice is possible has any true choice today. This is the uncomfortable imposition which cannot be dispelled by omitting Améry’s essay from posthumously published books.
The Fake “Johns Hopkins Genetic Study” Meme
The meme is a fabrication, loosely based on a 2012 study by Dr. Eran Elhaik. In this study, he suggests that a significant number of Ashkenazi Jews are descended from the Khazars—a diverse group of Turkic peoples from the Caucasus region who allegedly converted to Judaism.

This theory is known as the Khazarian Hypothesis and has been discredited as junk science by the academic community.

Elhaik’s study was methodologically flawed from the beginning. There is no Khazar DNA to compare with Ashkenazi Jews, as the Khazars have no living descendants. Elhaik’s use of modern Georgian and Armenian populations as proxies for ancient Khazars has been rejected by leading scientists, who have published indisputable evidence in numerous journals, including the prestigious journal Science.

In addition to the lack of genetic links to the Khazars, the theory is further weakened by the absence of linguistic connections. If Ashkenazi Jews were truly descendants of the Khazars, they would have spoken a Turkic language, not Yiddish, which is a Judeo-Germanic language.

The meme takes the erroneous results of Elhaik’s study even further. The paper was published in the Genome Biology and Evolution journal, not at Johns Hopkins, and it only focused on the DNA of European Jews, not Israelis, as confirmed by the author. Additionally, the figure of 97% does not appear anywhere in Elhaik’s research. Numerous studies on Ashkenazi DNA have been conducted, and while none have proven a link to the Khazars, the overwhelming majority of genetic studies have confirmed that Ashkenazi Jews are genetically linked to the Levant.


Call me Back Podcast: Israel's President, Isaac Herzog
On today’s episode, Dan was joined by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who has served in office since 2021, and has overseen various national crises. They discussed the meaning of the Israeli presidency and how Herzog has navigated his leadership through the October 7th massacre and Israel’s following multi-front war. They also spoke about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s request of President Herzog for a pardon in his years-long corruption trial, touching on precedents in Israeli history of presidential pardons.


Pastor John Hagee: A time for choosing
Nearly a decade ago, warning of the rising tide of antisemitism on American college campuses in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Sandra Hagee Parker—my daughter and partner in leading the Christian Zionist movement—noted: “The lessons learned in classrooms today become the policies in the public square tomorrow.”

Since then, the normalization of Jew-hatred in academia that she described has become an all-out war in the public square today. Is it OK to platform bigots unchallenged? Does one apply a realpolitik or a strictly utilitarian approach to the dramatic and vital world of politics?

Not if you call yourself a Christian. It’s just that simple.

We have long said in the United States that we stand with God and country, but unfortunately, there are many loud voices right now ignoring the former and betraying the latter.

In America, Bible-believing Christians must not allow themselves to be deceived into thinking that being a conservative or a Republican or a supporter of the MAGA movement is on the same plane as their faith.

It is not. Nothing in this world, or the next, trumps the word of God.

While some in the public sphere may have only recently come to read the Bible, I’ve studied God’s indescribably benevolent engagement with humankind for seven decades. And the fact is, God’s engagement is predominately and, most importantly, with members of the Jewish faith.

The patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are Jewish. The first family of Christianity—Jesus, Mary and Joseph—are Jews. To deny the Jewish people their place as God’s firstborn—his chosen people—is to deny the reality of the word of God.


‘Eternal optimist’ Pakistani-Canadian Muslim woman is one of Israel’s fiercest advocates
Prominently perched on the coffee table in the Toronto condominium of Raheel Raza is “Israel 60,” a 336-page volume chronicling the country’s first six decades of history, culture, politics and aspirations for peace. For some of Raza’s fellow Pakistani Muslim family and friends who visit, seeing the book is shocking — and she makes sure to seize the moment.

“They’re always curious: ‘Why are you supporting Israel?’” says Raza, a Sunni Muslim who is a seasoned activist for peace, human rights and gender equality. “It provides an opportunity to discuss the rampant conspiracy theories distorting what Israel is — a conversation that is desperately needed.”

Sparking productive, fact-based dialogue about Israel and the extremist forces within Islam that demonize the country and Jews is central to Raza’s work with the Council of Muslims Against Antisemitism (CMAA), a nonprofit she founded in April of 2021 with her husband, Sohail Raza, and other progressive Muslims. Embracing a vision that “humanity is but one community,” Raza is determined to reclaim her religion from fanatics and combat Islamist antisemitism by building understanding and connection between members of both faiths.

“This is not a Jewish-Muslim conflict. Jews are our brothers and sisters in faith. We have more in common than we have differences. Our roots come from the same tree,” Raza says. “The monster is radical jihadist ideology, and we have to defang this monster, because it is a threat to the whole world.”

To expose the threat of Islamism and spark collective action, Raza writes widely for mainstream media publications and has authored four books on the subject, including “Their Jihad… Not My Jihad! A Muslim Canadian Woman Speaks Out,” and “The ABC’s of Islamism: Everything You Wanted to Know About Radical Islam, But Were Afraid to Ask.”

She also speaks about the hazards of extremism to diverse community groups and university students, and has presented to the United Nations and the governments of Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Sweden.
The Real Persons of the Year By Abe Greenwald
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My own Person of the Year selection process is different. Yes, the individual must have had a profound effect on the world, but that effect must also have been exceptionally good. With those criteria in mind, my choice for 2025 is easy, but it’s a twofer: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the late Charlie Kirk.

No man has taken more persistent hostility from more quarters—while trying to ensure the survival of his people and destroy the enemies of the West—than Netanyahu. The fact that he was able to wake up every day of the year and do his job is almost as remarkable as the fact that he did it spectacularly well. He faced down political attacks from the Israeli left and right; condemnation from the international human-rights racket, global media, and virtually all of Europe; the threat of arrest by the rinky-dink International Criminal Court; and the weapons, fighters, troops, and leaders of Israel’s terrorist enemies. This is to say nothing of Netanyahu’s handling of his relationship with Donald Trump, which was a masterclass in firm but flexible statesmanship. He made his way through the impossible gauntlet and delivered a multifront victory for Israel.

Charlie Kirk was barely on my radar before he was assassinated. That’s not a slight against him but against me. As I’ve said before, I had absolutely no idea how much good he was doing for young Americans, the right, and the country as a whole. The scope of his noble work became all too clear only after he was killed. The vacuum he left behind was immediately filled with the very flimflam artists of anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and defeatism that he sought to cordon off from young Christian men trying to find their way. He was murdered, and the latest generation of the right began immediately to turn septic. “The assassination of Charlie Kirk looks increasingly like an epochal event,” Peggy Noonan wrote yesterday in the Wall Street Journal. “Did he understand how much he was holding together the Trumpian right? Without the force of his mediating presence they are cracking up.” And if they break altogether, the lunatic left will be there to take back the reins of power and undo all the valuable conservative gains that have been made since Trump’s victory. As I’ve said before, Kirk was the man who held back the flood.

We’re talking, frankly, about great men here—a distinction in itself that’s considered outdated by media tastemakers. But without great men, bad men triumph. No one in recent years has proved that more conclusively than Bibi and Kirk, two men against the madness.


The Cannibalism of Conspiracy Politics By Abe Greenwald
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My heart goes out to Erika Kirk, who’s had to endure the ugliest mourning period I’ve ever witnessed. While she grieves and cares for her children, her late husband’s friends and associates set about immediately trying to demolish his legacy.

As for Carlson, Fuentes, Roberts, Owens, and whoever else has joined the fray—have at each other. This is precisely what happens when you build a worldview on scapegoating, conspiracy theories, and hatred. For all the refusals to denounce one’s anti-Semitic friends, it turns out that there’s no honor among Jew-haters.

It seems that’s a lesson that has yet to be learned by JD Vance, who absorbs Fuentes’s racist attacks on his family while simultaneously embracing Fuentes’s fans and enablers. If he sees a viable political future in courting that crowd, the Republican Party is bound for the wilderness. Deservedly.

Meanwhile, Charlie Kirk’s new, posthumous book has just been published. Its title, Stop, in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life, speaks for itself. The book is an instant, out-of-stock bestseller. And what it has to impart will resonate long after the podcast piranhas have chewed one another to bits.
Jonathan Tobin: Tucker Carlson and the Qatar First Republicans are sabotaging Trump
Nevertheless, Carlson’s ability to remain within Trump’s inner circle is shocking but unsurprising given his close ties with both Vance and Donald Jr. But coupled with the willingness of other conservative influencers like Megyn Kelly and Matt Walsh to either express neutrality or endorse aspects of the antisemitic ravings of the former cable-news host, and even more extreme figures like Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes, it is a troubling sign about the future of the Republicans.

While these figures claim that they are supporters of Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, they must now be understood as speaking for a Qatar First faction on the right. Those who now fall under this category are united only by their willingness to undermine the West, if it also somehow hurts Israel and the Jews.

It is one thing for Trump to embrace a transactional relationship with Qatar if he believes they are doing America’s bidding by helping him achieve a ceasefire in Gaza or otherwise deter Iran and other American foes. But by allowing his administration to be compromised by Qatar’s information operation, he’s calling into question whether he is letting the emirate undermine his goals of opposing Iran, eradicating Hamas and expanding the Abraham Accords, and thus ridding the region of a threat to the United States as well as Israel.

While Carlson and his ilk are fond of raising dual-loyalty canards about supporters of Israel, it is they who are the ones who are being bought by foreign influencers and helping to sabotage U.S. foreign policy to advance the agenda of a hostile nation and an international Islamist movement. Those who want to defend America need to recognize that the best way to ensure U.S. security is to kick the Qatar First wing of the GOP out of any position of influence in Washington. If not, the administration will not only be abandoning its obligation to fight against antisemitism, it will be surrendering the national interest to anti-Western forces who will torpedo Trump’s second-term agenda.
One of Florida’s Largest Mosques Calls Trump “Garbage”
Materials submitted to a House Ways and Means hearing noted that Kablawi’s mosque enjoys tax-exempt status although the State of Florida has indicated that it will look into tuition money going to its associated school.

In February 2022, he called on his followers to embrace full Shariah law, including hudud punishments (amputations, stonings and crucifixions). He urged them to “fly to Gaza,” “kill this and that,” and apply Islamic death penalties.

Kablawi appears to own dental clinics and some, including Rep. Randy Fine, had called for suspending his dental license, but Canary Mission also appears to have turned up a Medicaid fraud case either involving him or a Florida dentist with the same name.

Dr. Fadi Yousef Qablawi, 39, targeted elderly patients with Medicaid by telling them their procedure would have to be paid out-of-pocket, despite knowing that Medicaid would actually cover the work, according to the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit under the Office of Attorney General in Florida.

Dentures, for example, require only a 5 percent co-pay from the insured individual aged 21 and older, per the Florida Medicaid Dental Services Coverage and Limitations Handbook.

Investigators said Qablawi would instead charge the patient the full cost for the procedure, roughly between $300 and $600, and then bill Medicaid for a reimbursement, as well.

Qablawi was enrolled as a Medicaid provider in 2006 and operated out of two dental offices, “Mecca Dental” located at 27501 S. Dixie Hwy, Ste 300 in Homestead, and “Madina Dental” at 888 N.E. 126th Street, Ste 203 in North Miami.


Karol Markowicz: Campus antisemitism keeps raging — but not at these heroic colleges
As antisemitism on college campuses remains rampant, too many administrators refuse to stamp it out — and parents of prospective students are increasingly alarmed.

This week the civil-rights group StopAntisemitism released its 2025 “report card” on 90 major American colleges and universities, and the results were frightening.

Two years after on-campus Jew hatred exploded in the wake of Oct. 7, the review found that leadership at many American colleges still tolerate vandalism, bullying and outright violence.

An appalling 16% of rated schools, including Harvard, Yale and Columbia, got F grades.

For Jewish families, the concern centers on the physical safety of their children.

Fully 39% of Jewish college students say they’ve had to hide their faith on campus, StopAntisemitism found.

But parents of all faiths, and of no faith, must take these findings into account.

They’ve watched as schools across the country ignored their own codes of conduct to allow outrageous misbehavior on their campuses.

If a college allows a tent city to occupy its quad, they wonder, what else will it permit?

If a university takes no action when Jewish students are blocked from going to class, who else will they fail to protect?

These parents watched in horror as campus protests devolved from “anti-Israel” to anti-America, and agitators started pulling down US flags — while administrators stood mute.

Antisemitism is just one sign of a larger sickness at our colleges: a pervasive anti-Western hatred that’s rotting our society from within.

But not all schools are flailing — and those that are fighting this tide deserve applause.


Bereaved parents call on Ben-Gurion University to dismiss prof. who called IDF soldiers 'murderers'
The “Choosing Life” and Gvura Families of the Fallen Forums called for the immediate dismissal of Dr. Sebastian Ben-Daniel in a sharply worded letter sent to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev President Prof. Daniel Chamovitz and Rector Chaim Hames.

The letter, sent on behalf of bereaved families and terror victims and signed by several bereaved parents and reservists, said that “his [Ben-Daniel] continued employment is a spit in the face."

"The voices of the blood of our sons and daughters cry out from the ground," the letter went on. "And that lecturer calls our sons and daughters murderers, baby killers, and claims that this is how they were raised."

"Look us in the eye, and dismiss him immediately.”

The letter also criticized university leadership for condemning protests against Ben-Daniel without explicitly addressing his comments, saying the move “proves the depth of the moral abyss into which you [the university] have fallen.”
Education Committee Launches Probe Into 'Rampant Anti-Semitism' Across American Psychological Association
The Education and Workforce Committee launched an investigation into "rampant antisemitism" within the American Psychological Association (APA), the committee announced in a Friday letter.

The committee outlines a wide range of anti-Semitic incidents at the APA, which has received over $11 million in federal grants since 2020.

"Jewish APA members have reported being harassed and ostracized by their colleagues within the APA and at APA events because of their Jewish identity, their efforts to speak out against antisemitism, and their Zionist beliefs," Education and Workforce Committee chairman Tim Walberg (R., Mich.) wrote in his letter to APA president Dr. Debra Kawahara. "Members have also stated that their complaints to the association have gone unanswered, raising significant concerns about the APA's commitment to addressing harassment."

The committee cites Washington Free Beacon reports on a former APA division president, Lara Sheehi, who taught that Zionism is a mental illness. She called to "destroy Zionism," referred to Israelis as "genocidal fucks," and wrote "how dare you slander the names of our martyrs as terrorists." The APA "allegedly failed to take meaningful action" against her, according to the committee.

The APA, the nation's leading accreditor for psychological training, has faced mounting concerns over anti-Semitism in recent months. In November, the Anti-Defamation League said anti-Semitic incidents at the organization—and its response to them—raised "major concerns," requiring "substantial action."

The Education and Workforce Committee flagged an open letter sent to APA leadership and signed by over 3,500 mental health professionals. It highlighted statements on APA listservs such as "Hamas fighters in Gaza … are just protecting civilians," "Kudos to Hamas' and calls for 'Intifada, Intifada.'"

"Of additional concern, the letter states that the APA has offered educational credits for members to attend conferences where speakers endorsed 'violence against Jews and Israelis; antisemitic tropes; Holocaust distortion; minimization of Jewish victimization, fear, and grief; and pathologizing of Jewish people's connection to their indigenous homeland,'" the committee wrote.
House Ed committee requests information about continued hostility towards Jews at MIT
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), chair of the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee, is requesting additional information about recent incidents of antisemitism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In a Dec. 12 letter sent to Sally Kornbluth, president of MIT, Walberg noted that while the committee had documented “a series of deeply troubling antisemitic incidents” at the private university in Cambridge, in March 2024, “this hostility appears to have continued throughout 2025.”

“In 2025, students have allegedly continued to distribute ‘terror maps’ demarcating campus buildings linked to Jews and Israelis,” the chairman wrote. “In May, MIT students vandalized campus property and threatened Israelis and Jews, and in July, yet another MIT building was vandalized—this time by an aggressive and radical group that also threatened an MIT researcher.”

Walberg stated that the committee also remains “deeply concerned about incidents that occurred in 2023 and 2024, including the harassment of a Jewish Ph.D. student by an MIT professor—a case that MIT’s anti-discrimination office allegedly refused to investigate.”

The committee is specifically requesting documents, communications and records since Oct. 7, 2023, related to antisemitism and complaints of potential antisemitic incidents, no later than Dec. 22.
Columbia Architecture School Partnered With Terror-Tied Lab in Beirut on Ford Foundation-Funded Project
Columbia University’s architecture school partnered with a Lebanese research lab cofounded by a Hezbollah collaborator on a project aimed at studying housing access for refugees in Beirut. The Ivy League university received a $350,000 Ford Foundation grant to carry out the project, but claims it’s never held any "formal agreements" with the Lebanese lab.

Since its 2018 launch, Columbia’s Post Conflict Cities Lab—a project of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation that develops post-war reconstruction plans that avoid "exclusion of vulnerable populations and hardened religious, racial, and ethnic segregation"—has partnered with the Beirut Urban Lab at the American University of Beirut. The Beirut lab was cofounded by Ahmad Gharbieh, who leads its Critical Mapping team.

But before moving to academia, Gharbieh made "solidarity maps" for Samidoun (no relation to the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network), a group that provided Hezbollah with "unconditional but critical support for the armed resistance" in its fight against Israel during the Second Lebanon War, according to one of its organizers.

The revelations come at a time when Columbia is already on thin ice with the Trump administration over campus anti-Semitism. It only emerged from under President Donald Trump’s thumb after agreeing to pay $221 million and issuing a host of changes aimed at addressing the issue. Columbia's fourth and final anti-Semitism report, published Tuesday, showed that instructors smeared Jews and Israelis in their classes as occupiers and "murderers," and used unrelated lectures on topics like astronomy to rail against "genocide" in Gaza.
BLM co-founder who said Taylor Swift fans are ‘slightly racist’ caught on tape coaching students to fight antisemitism law
A leader within the Black Lives Matter movement who once accused Taylor Swift fans of being “slightly racist” has found herself embroiled in controversy once again — slamming a new California bill meant to prevent antisemitism in schools in front of her Cal State classroom.

Prof. Melina Abdullah — who was teaching a class on Race, Activism, and Emotions — posted the video to YouTube in September where she called the bill “terrible” and told her students “these fools don’t even like Jewish people.”

AB 715, signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom in October, will take effect in January 2026 and creates an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator within the Office of Civil Rights to combat antisemitism in K-12 public schools.

In the video, Abdullah claims the bill has another purpose, to silence pro-Palestinian activism and criminalize teaching that criticizes Israel.

“The kinds of people who are doing this, they are the antisemites. They could give a damn about antisemitism,” she said. “Donald Trump doesn’t care about antisemitism. He is an antisemite.”

“They’re using this as an opening so that teaching truth in the classroom becomes something that’s criminalized,” Abdullah said in the video.

Abdullah describes this as the latest effort by the Trump administration to crack down on student protests. The bill in question is a California state law, not a federal law.


Guardian newspaper criticised for failure to remove columns by Hamas leader
The Guardian newspaper has been criticised for continuing to display columns by a leading member of Hamas on its website.

Khalid Mish’al – who served as the head of Hamas’s political bureau from 1996 to 2017 and last year returned as acting head, becoming a de facto leader of the group – wrote four columns for the Guardian between 2006 and 2009, at a time when the organisation wasn’t fully proscribed as a terrorist organisation under UK law.

In one of them, shortly after Hamas’s election victory in 2006, Mish’al, whose name takes various spellings in English, wrote: “We shall never recognise the legitimacy of a Zionist state created on our soil in order to atone for somebody else's sins or solve somebody else's problem”, but claimed that the organisation was willing to negotiate a “long-term truce”.

At present, none of the columns feature any disclaimer to reflect Hamas’s full proscription as a terrorist group.

The group’s military wing was proscribed as a terror organisation in 2001 by the UK government, and in 2021 the then-Conservative government assessed that the previous difference between Hamas’s military and political wings was an artificial one, with the entire group then proscribed.

The decision to keep Mish’al’s columns online was criticised by the Government’s former independent adviser on political violence and disruption.

Lord Walney told the JC: “It is obviously completely unacceptable for the Guardian to be publishing opinion pieces on its website from a senior member of the Islamist terror organisation who carried out the brutal murder, rape, beheadings on October 7 2023 then held onto hostages for two years.

“If this was an oversight rather than deliberate, their editors must make that clear by removing the pieces from Khalid Mashaal immediately.”

In 2002, the Guardian’s then-sister paper, The Observer, re-published on the Guardian’s website Osama bin Laden’s infamous “Letter to America” in which the al-Qaeda founder linked the 9/11 attacks to American support for Israel.

It said: “The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily.”
Netflix condemned for Gary Lineker deal after he quit BBC over sharing post about Zionism with rat image
Netflix stands accused of “rewarding hateful rhetoric” by signing Gary Lineker in a lucrative deal after he quit the BBC over a post he shared about Zionism with an image of a rat.

The presenter was accused of antisemitism in May when he shared a social media post about Zionism featuring an image of a rat. Lineker strenuously denied the allegation, insisting he had been ignorant of the symbol, but he subsequently stepped down from his £1.35-million-a-year job fronting football highlights show Match of the Day.

Despite the outcry in the UK, US streaming giant Netflix has struck a deal with the former England footballer to broadcast a series of podcasts during next year’s World Cup, which is taking place across the North American continent.

Lineker’s lucrative new deal will reportedly net him more than what he was being paid by the BBC. He is one of the most recognised faces on television in the UK, but the new link-up with Netflix will undoubtedly raise his profile around the world.

Several campaign groups have angrily criticised the project including the US-based lobby group the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera).

Camera CEO Kurt Schwartz said: “Mr Lineker has not just been guilty of the odd awkward remark, but has routinely used his platform to spread lies and vitriol about Israel.

Referring to the death of a Palestinian footballer, who it emerged was a Hamas terrorist and whose demise Lineker lamented on social media, Schwartz said: “He has failed to apologise for mourning a Hamas terrorist, defended the BBC's surreptitious use of a Hamas-affiliated narrator in programming about Gaza, and shared a video about Zionism that included antisemitic rat imagery.”

“That Netflix would offer Lineker a megaphone despite his sordid track record, even as the BBC rightly distances itself from him, is a slap in the face to its customers, Jewish and otherwise. Hateful rhetoric should be marginalised. Netflix is doing the opposite."


NJ police official expected to leave force after bigoted remark
Lt. Col. Sean Kilcomons, deputy superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, is expected to leave the force around the time governor-elect Mikie Sherrill takes office amid an ongoing investigation into an alleged antisemitic remark about the state’s Jewish attorney general and his son.

The New York Post reported that the attorney general’s office opened an internal investigation into a complaint amid allegations that Kilcomons said, “I don’t want that Jew’s kid in the state police helicopter” during a “Bring Your Child to Work Day” event on April 25, 2024, referring to attorney general Matt Platkin.

According to the Post, Sherrill, a Democrat, “isn’t interested in keeping him on.”

After the remark went public, Kilcomons attended the March of the Living in Poland, in a delegation organized by the Miller Center for Policing and Community Resilience at Rutgers University and the Global Consortium of Law Enforcement Training Executives.

Kilcomons has been dubbed a “racist” by Bishop Jethro James, a state police chaplain, who stated that “at least he will no longer have any say in the day-to-day operations of New Jersey state troopers, and for that, I am grateful.”
Teenagers appear in court accused of targeting mosque and Jewish cemetery
Two teenagers have appeared in court accused of targeting a mosque and a Jewish cemetery in Cardiff.

Rhys Edwards and Talan Gethin Vincent, both 18, appeared by videolink during a preliminary hearing at the Old Bailey on Friday.

They are charged with the preparation of acts of terrorism between 1 October and 16 November.

They “researched and visited attack locations and made arrangements to obtain firearms”, the charge says.

The court was given an indication that they intend to plead not guilty.

A three-week trial at Bristol Crown Court is set to take place from 1 February 2027.

They are next to appear in custody for a pre-trial hearing at the Old Bailey on 27 March.

Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb told them “counsel has indicated that both of you deny any acts of terrorism” and said they should “co-operate with your lawyers to prepare your case for trial to make sure that your interests are fully looked after”.
'Go to the gas chamber': Rabbi and children targeted in antisemitic verbal attack on Melbourne tram
A Rabbi and his children were reportedly verbally attacked by a passenger on a Melbourne tram who told the family to "go to a gas chamber," the Australian Jewish Association claimed on Friday.

The woman, who carried a bag with a Palestinian flag on it, denied the claims in the video.

"I was riding the tram home in St Kilda East, with my 8-year-old and 14-year-old daughter and this woman, with her Free Palestine kaffiyeh bag, tells us 'You should all go to the gas chambers!'"

In the recording, she hid her face and claimed the rabbi and his children were "picking on her" and asked the man recording to "stop being a bully."

'Teach my kids to be proud Jews'
The rabbi reported that his 8-year-old was in tears and is afraid to go on the trams again.

“I am not aggressive by nature, but I wanted to teach my kids to be proud Jews. So I confronted her and then announced to the full tram what she had said,” he explained.

“This is how we need to respond. Like the Maccabees, who stood up and fought back with Jewish pride and strength. No more will we be afraid or cower. We will stand up to you and call you out. Let them be ashamed!”


Unpacked: The Last Thriving Jewish Community in the Muslim World
For centuries, Jewish life vanished across the Muslim world — but Turkey was the exception. Shaped by Romaniote roots, Sephardic arrivals, and centuries under Ottoman rule, Turkish Jews survived upheaval, nationalism, and pressure to assimilate. At the crossroads of empires, the community was held together by Ladino culture and a quiet code of survival.

Today, their numbers are small and the future is uncertain. Still, Ladino melodies echo, old recipes live on, and their centuries-old community continues to endure.

0:00 Introduction
0:39 Ottoman Empire
3:06 Shabbetai Tzvi
4:51 WW1 and the Turkish Republic
6:50 Ladino and Nationalization laws
8:27 WW2
10:44 Law on the Wealth Tax
13:22 The Istanbul Program
14:24 Neve Shalom Synagogue m@ss@cre
15:17 1992: The Quincentennial Deal
17:29 Turkish Jews nowadays




Hugh Hewitt: Why did Jews write a lot of America’s favorite Christmas music?
Eli Lake of The Free Press and the “Breaking History” podcast breaks it down for Hugh and it’s a grand story.




Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

    
 

 



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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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