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Monday, January 19, 2026

01/19 Links Pt2: MLK was clear: Anti-Zionism is antisemitism; Sydney massacre was a warning for the world; Emily Damari on one year of freedom and those who did not return

From Ian:

Simon Sebag Montefiore warns of ‘devalued’ anti-racist language and threats to Holocaust memory
The celebrated historian Simon Sebag Montefiore has issued a striking warning about the devaluation of anti-racist language in contemporary discourse, arguing that terms such as “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” are now frequently manipulated to serve agendas running counter to their original intent.

Delivering the keynote speech at the Holocaust Education Trust’s event in Parliament, Montefiore observed:“Words are important—as we learned last week, the people behind the banning of a Jewish MP from his school because of his Jewishness were a cabal of teaching unions and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) coordinators who constantly repeat the language of anti-racism.

“We exist in a struggle where words have often come to mean their very opposite. In that case, and others, diversity came to mean discrimination, equity, injustice, inclusive, exclusion.

“And as it turns out, every bigot is a proud anti-racist to their bones. Every antisemite is against antisemitism, and naturally, everybody is against the Holocaust and genocide.”

At Monday evening’s event—held to mark this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations—the author warned that Holocaust memory is “in peril” and under attack from new forms of antisemitic distortion and ideological abuse.

Also among the speakers were Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Holocaust survivor Annick Lever, and several of the charity’s young ambassadors. HET’s chief executive, Karen Pollock, pointedly addressed recent concerns about the state of Holocaust education, stating: “Despite challenges, our experience at the Holocaust Educational Trust is that we’re working with hundreds more schools since October 7th,” following earlier newspaper reports suggesting Shoah education was being snubbed by many schools since the Hamas attacks.

In his main address, Montefiore recounted witnessing repeat protests outside the part Israeli-owned Miznon restaurant in Notting Hill, near his home.

“I hate to say it reminded me of Kristallnacht in Notting Hill Gate,” he said. “I came across a restaurant almost besieged by about 60 screaming activists who were referring specifically to the Holocaust, to the genocide, and applying this to an innocent restaurant, British owned, though with an Israeli connection, that they were specifically trying to drive out of Britain and trying to drive out of the neighborhood, trying to destroy a small business by terrorizing passers by, people going to the restaurant, and the owners of the restaurant.”
Oren Kessler: The Bad History of ‘Palestine 36’ An Oscar short-listed film, funded by Qatar, Turkey, and the BBC, rewrites the past to serve a modern political fantasy
And yet the film’s gravest failing may be depriving the Jews of a voice. I don’t mean metaphorically; I mean there are precisely two words spoken by a Jew, in any language, in the entire film.

In fact, Jews appear on-screen only twice. Early in the film, a Jewish figure is briefly ushered to a microphone at the inauguration of the Palestine Broadcasting Corporation. Later, Jewish immigrants are seen in the distance, silently toiling behind a kibbutz wall.

And that’s it. For a film centered on an Arab revolt against Jews, it’s a glaring, flagrant omission.

It would have been easy for the screenwriters to have included two stock Jewish characters: The “bad” Jew who is arrogant, land-greedy, and patronizing toward Arabs, and the “good” one who respects their culture, learns their language, and is willing to limit Jewish immigration. I suspect that behind this choice lies the deep-rooted Palestinian and wider Arab taboo against “normalization” of Israelis—in this case, even before they were Israelis.

Nonetheless, wishing something away doesn’t make it so. Like it or not, the Jews were there, and their continued arrival was the key driver of the revolt. Portraying the rebellion as directed primarily against British imperialism (with the Jews as the silent beneficiary thereof) is historical malpractice.

The film’s last quarter is a crescendo of British brutality that bears only a patchy resemblance to the historical record. Soldiers detonate a home despite knowing an elderly couple is in their bed, embracing as they await the end. Wingate shoots a civilian in the head after gathering the townspeople to watch. In the climax, troops force civilians onto a bus and force it to drive over a landmine. Among the dead is a Christian priest whose young son then kills a British soldier in revenge. It’s essentially the film’s only moment in which blood is spilled by Arab hands.

The British have much to answer for in Palestine—a handful of well-documented atrocities, like that at al-Bassa, are amply described in my book. They indeed demolished homes during the revolt, just not with people inside. Wingate did inflict collective punishment on uncooperative villages. But there is no evidence of him ever ordering an execution, much less conducting one himself, nor of the British murdering a priest (or imam), nor of any Christian Arabs (let alone children) taking up arms against them.

Only in the final credits, and only in minuscule type, does Palestine 36 concede that the movie is a work of fiction, merely “inspired by actual events and characters.” Such a disclaimer should have appeared prominently at the outset, not buried where few viewers would notice, although that would erroneously suggest that the spirit if not the details of the Arab uprising of 1936–1939 had been captured. It has not.

As publicly funded British institutions, the BFI and BBC Film should have insisted on transparency. Their failure to do so places them uncomfortably close to the film’s other state-backed co-producers, in Turkey and Qatar, which reliably promote their governments’ harmful, extremist agendas in the region. The omission raises an obvious question: whether the lack of candor reflects more than oversight, and instead a shared comfort with reshaping the historical record to suit a contemporary agenda.

All the world’s a stage, a British dramatist once wrote, and nowhere more so than the Holy Land. But it is an affront to history that a portrait of a revolt against Jews should treat the latter as silent props or erase them altogether. However the filmmakers feel about Jewish immigration, land purchase, and nation-building in mid-’30s Palestine, these too are part of the history. These too are “actual events” performed by “actual characters” in the century-long drama still playing out between the river and the sea.
From Archetype to Libel: The Misinterpretation of Amalek in Genocide Accusations
Conclusion: From Archetype to Libel
The controversy surrounding the modern invocation of Amalek in Israeli discourse, especially after the October 7 massacre, highlights a fundamental conflict between internal Jewish cultural memory and external political misinterpretation. In Jewish legal and historical tradition, the term has long been regarded as a symbolic command rather than a literal one. Amalek is thus viewed as a metaphysical archetype of unprovoked, existential evil and baseless hatred, which appears throughout history in figures like Haman and the Nazis. When Prime Minister Netanyahu used the term, he engaged in a profound act of typological memory (Zakhor), placing the unprecedented trauma of October 7 within the ongoing struggle between cosmic good and evil. By imposing this literalist, hostile interpretation, detractors are engaging in defamation of the Jewish state.

Post-Script: The Anti-Zionist Echo Chamber
The rejection of the present article by Analyse & Kritik, which published the original article by Azzam, serves as a sobering case study in the circular nature of modern anti-Zionist scholarship. Rather than engaging with the provided evidence, the peer-review process revealed a systemic refusal to permit any narrative that challenges the “genocide” label, treating the accusation not as a hypothesis to be tested but as an absolute truth. Central to this failure was the reviewers’ total omission of the vast body of internal Jewish interpretive traditions—sources that explicitly reject or spiritualize the Amalek archetype. By failing to engage with these central points, the reviewers maintained a closed system that dismissed dissenting data as “denial,” thereby precluding genuine academic exchange.

The review process appeared driven by a palpable ideological bias that favored political positioning over substantive analysis. For instance, one reviewer asserted, without providing a shred of evidence, that for “any Israeli ear,” the mention of Amalek carries an immediate association with complete annihilation. This claim was made while simultaneously ignoring the centuries of rabbinic legal tradition cited in the article—such as the rulings of the Sages and Maimonides—that explicitly state that the literal commandment against Amalek is inapplicable today. Furthermore, the use of charged, ad hominem language—specifically labeling the arguments as those of “Netanyahu apologists”—reveals a hostile environment where scholarship is judged by its political utility rather than its factual merit.

Ultimately, this experience highlights the intellectual “incest” inherent in much of the anti-Zionist academic ecosystem. The editor’s response, which took it for granted that Israel has committed “horrible” crimes and demanded that any publication must include “commenting on the destruction of Gaza,” functions as a form of gatekeeping. By dismissing the concept of “self-defense” as a “conventional cliché” and refusing to engage with the primary and secondary sources presented, the reviewers merely confirmed that their objective is not the pursuit of truth. Instead, they serve to protect an echo chamber in which the same scholars quote each other ad nauseam, effectively weaponizing the peer-review process to perpetuate the very libel this article seeks to expose.


Emily Damari on one year of freedom and those who did not return
Emily Damari has marked one year since her release from Hamas captivity by reflecting on survival, recovery and the enduring absence of those who did not return home alive.

Damari, a dual British-Israeli citizen, was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza during the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023. She was shot during the abduction, losing two fingers, and held in Gaza for 471 days before being released on 19 January 2025, as part of a negotiated deal.

In a statement issued to mark the anniversary, Damari described the moment of her release as a return from prolonged darkness. “One year ago, after 471 days in the dark – 471 days of pain, of tunnels, of holding on with everything I had – I came back to life,” she said.

She recalled reuniting with her mother and experiencing ordinary moments once again. “I hugged my mum, I breathed real air, I saw the sun without fear. That moment, that first real breath of freedom, still hits me every single day.”

Damari spoke openly about the injuries she sustained during her kidnapping, saying they have come to symbolise resilience rather than victimhood. “My scars tell the story,” she said. “The hand missing two fingers, the marks on my leg – they aren’t just wounds. To me, they represent freedom, hope, and unbreakable strength.”

Since her return, she has become a prominent voice advocating for hostages taken on 7 October. She said the release of Gali and Ziv was central to her own sense of freedom, while acknowledging that one person she was waiting for will never return alive.

That person is Master Sgt. Ran Gvil, who was killed and whose body remains held in Gaza.
Ex-hostage Eitan Horn says captors used relationship with brother for mental abuse
Freed hostage Eitan Horn, in an interview that aired Sunday, described what he endured during his 738 days in Hamas captivity, including the traumatic moment when his brother was released while he remained in Gaza.

Eitan and his brother Iair were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas-led invasion and massacre on October 7, 2023, leaving behind a third brother, Amos. All three had immigrated to Israel from Argentina. Iair was freed in February as part of a previous ceasefire, while Eitan was freed under an October ceasefire deal.

Eitan told Channel 12 that for the first two weeks of captivity, the brothers were held separately; Eitan was in a group of hostages including women and children, while Iair was with men and soldiers. They knew nothing about each other’s fate until suddenly they ran into one another.

“I saw him from afar. We looked at each other and very quickly understood that we weren’t allowed to say we were brothers,” Eitan said, fearing their relation could be used against them by their captors.

“We didn’t open our mouths. We just continued. He saw me, he calmed down, and that gave us strength to keep going,” he said.

After about 50 days, when many of the women and children were released in an initial ceasefire, the brothers were reunited, becoming the only pair of brothers in captivity to be held together.


Sydney massacre was a warning for the world
For decades, Israel has justified its existence to the world primarily through tragedy rather than justice. We spoke about the Holocaust, instead of about our inherent right to our land. We spoke the language of pain, rather than the language of purpose. Instead of standing upright as a nation with moral clarity, we presented ourselves as perpetual victims.

Even after Oct. 7, when moral clarity should have been unavoidable, Israel continued to apologize for its existence instead of stating a simple truth: This is the Jewish state by right, not by international permission and not by sympathy.

Antisemitism is not a reaction to a particular Israeli military operation. It is a reaction to moral weakness. It thrives on confusion. It responds to a message projected outward—that we ourselves are not certain of the justice of our cause.

When Israel speaks in the language of victimhood, the world hears an admission of guilt. When Israel hesitates to say plainly that this is our land and that the Jewish state requires no external validation, hatred and antisemitism re-emerge—and Jews become targets, even on the far side of the globe.

The attacks in Australia, America and Germany are therefore not a “Diaspora problem.” They are an indictment of an apologetic Israeli discourse.

Only a nation that is able to say, clearly and without hesitation, that we are here by right—rooted in history, faith and moral conviction, not in mercy—can protect not only its own citizens but Jewish communities everywhere.

Those who fail to understand that the battle over Jewish identity in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv directly affects the safety of Jews in Sydney, Australia; Jackson, Miss.; Giessen, Germany—and increasingly, London, New York and Los Angeles—do not understand what a Jewish state is.

It is time to stop apologizing. It is time to stop pleading with the world for understanding. It is time to return to the language of justice.

Because when Israel stands upright, Jews everywhere do. And for Americans, the lesson is unavoidable: a weak and apologetic Israel does not stabilize the democratic world. Rather, it accelerates the same forces of extremism and moral confusion that threaten U.S. cities, campuses and Jewish communal institutions.
Bondi survivor Ya'akov Tetleroyd lost his father and nearly his arm in Bondi Beach terrorism event. He forgives the gunmen
Ya'akov Tetleroyd suffered a gunshot wound to the arm while his father, Boris, was killed in the Bondi terror attack.

Yet nearly six weeks on, the 38-year-old has let go of his anger towards the gunmen.

"I was initially very angry and very unforgiving," Mr Tetleroyd told 7.30 in an exclusive interview.

"Just saying, may God, just wanting to devour them, wanting for them to descend to the grave alive, that's what I wished for these people initially. But I came to a point where I thought to myself, if I can forgive my own person, my own people, I can forgive these people as well."

He said the reason for his personal forgiveness was so he no longer had to dwell on the terrorism event.

"It's not something that I want to carry with me every day.

"It's very easy to get caught in a cycle of hatred."
Bondi terror survivor labels shooters 'evil and sick' but forgives them | 7.30

Australia’s Parliament honors Bondi Beach shooting victims with moment of silence, speeches
Australia's parliament returned early on Monday morning with speeches and a moment of silence for those killed in the Bondi Beach mass shooting, as victims' families watched from the public gallery.

Two gunmen who police allege were inspired by the Islamic State (ISIS) opened fire at a Jewish Hanukkah event on the city's iconic Bondi Beach last month, killing 15 people in the country's worst such incident in decades.

The attack shocked the nation and led to calls for tougher action on antisemitism and gun control, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledging tougher action on both.

"As we offer our love, sympathy and solidarity to everyone bearing the weight of trauma and loss, we make it clear to every Jewish Australian, you are not alone," Albanese told parliament on Monday, following a moment of silence for those killed in the attack, as first responders and victims' families watched on.

Lawmakers had been due to return from their Southern Hemisphere summer break next month, but Albanese recalled parliament two weeks early to commemorate victims and begin debate on gun control and hate speech reforms.


‘We owe it to the victims’: Jacinta Price reflects on parliament’s return after Bondi massacre
Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price discusses parliament’s early return following the Bondi massacre, saying politicians “owe it to the victims” to ensure history “is never repeated”.


Julie Szego: The faux martyrs of Oz
Maybe I’m naive in still believing the answer to the radicalisation of Australian cultural life isn’t institutional purges of virulent anti-Zionists; for one thing, there’s too many of them. Instead, we should focus on letting contrary voices in. Because when Abdel-Fattah seeks to deny Zionists “cultural safety”, she’s insisting on that right for herself. She shouldn’t have it. Neither should she be censored. She and her fellow travellers should be forced to open their ideas to vigorous attack.

No more foreclosing of contestation on Israel-Palestine through the linguistic stitch-ups of “apartheid”, “settler-colonialism”, of “genocide”, a most convenient allegation that retrospectively cancels the “Never again” moral case for Jewish sovereignty in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

Bring on the countercultural revolution. It is to the nation’s enduring shame that it has taken the murder of innocents for such a thing to even seem plausible.

But maybe it’s not too late for redemption.

Flood the festival programs and “progressive” opinion pages with Zionists, Jewish and non-Jewish. Most of all, move heaven and earth to platform Palestinians and Arabs bitterly opposed to the “pro-Palestine” movement in the West because it’s essentially pro-Hamas, the organisation that ritually sacrificed thousands of Palestinian children in a futile crusade to eliminate the state of Israel.

Platform, as this paper has done, diaspora Palestinians Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib and John Aziz; Palestinian nationalists who, while critical of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, advocate – genuinely – for a two-state solution and stand firmly against Jew-hating jihadism. Let them have it out with the likes of Abdel-Fattah.

Our cultural gatekeepers love to hear from the small number of Jewish anti-Zionists. Let them also hear from Palestinian dissenters from the “pro-Palestine” left.

Abdel-Fattah has accused the Adelaide Festival of “anti-Palestinian racism”. There’s plenty of that about but not in the way she thinks.

Is anything more racist than gatekeeping the boundaries of acceptable Palestinian opinion to exclude all but the most hardline?

Enough with flattering the world views of pampered radicals, spewing hate while believing themselves the embodiment of virtue, even as bodies pile up on the beach.


Hate group members should ‘lose their citizenship’
Former Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo believes there should be amendments to take away citizenship from anyone convicted of a hate crime.

“I would go further, I’d amend section 36C of the Citizenship Act,” Mr Pezzullo told Sky News Australia.

“If you're convicted to be a member of one of the prohibited hate groups, you go on that list of offences that carry citizenship revocation, lose your citizenship.”




Nicole Lampert: British schools have failed to properly teach children about the dangers of anti-Semitism
In truth, the Holocaust has become increasingly politicised for many years. HMD became watered down. First – and probably rightly – it included all the victims of the Nazis, including gay men, the Roma and Sinti gypsy groups, people with disabilities, and political enemies.

While this was encouraged – including by Jewish groups who wondered if the only way to get people to feel sorry for Holocaust victims was to universalise them – it also meant that the political ideology behind the Holocaust, the intentional and industrial attempt to eradicate an entire people, was neutered.

I even had to explain to my son’s own history teacher that the Holocaust is the word just for the murder of the Jews – and that it was a core plank of Nazi ideology separate from all its other evil behaviour.

But even that was not universal enough for some. Increasingly, HMD has become an “all genocides of the 20th century” day. Children should know about these genocides – Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur – but once again it meant the specific racist industrialised machine of the Holocaust became just another event in history.

Or, as Whoopi Goldberg (who appropriated a Jewish second name because she thought it would help her in Hollywood) once said: “White on white violence.”

Friends who worked in Holocaust education warned me quite soon after the October 7 massacre of the new problems they were facing, as schools they had worked with for years cancelled their Holocaust Memorial Day events. Too complicated.

At one point, I sat on a panel in front of a group of children about anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. There had been a day of events, and a law expert had explained why what was happening in Gaza did not fall into the definition of genocide.

Yet, still, we were asked at least three times about why we weren’t talking about “the genocide” in Gaza.

This is hardly surprising when we look at what is going on in our schools and universities. The NEU, Britain’s biggest teaching union with half a million members, has become so openly and obsessively hostile to Israel that most Jewish teachers have left.

We were given an example of why, just a few days ago, when it emerged that teachers and members of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (and frequently they are both) had helped stop Jewish Bristol MP Damian Egan from hosting a talk about democracy.

Teachers told this newspaper how one colleague told her Israel didn’t exist and how anti-Israel propaganda was being pushed in schools by teachers. Children are being educated in the new way of how to hate Jews instead of what anti-Semitism leads to.

As Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis writes: “The Shoah was not inevitable. It began not in concentration camps but in classrooms, newspapers and public squares where people learnt to look away.”

Here it is again in our classrooms, newspapers and public squares. Schools need to stop looking away but confront what their behaviour could lead to. I am not surprised this is too difficult for them.
David Collier: Open Letter to Manchester City Council: Don’t Undermine Antisemitism Safeguards
Dear Councillors of Manchester City Council,

I am writing regarding Manchester City Council’s decision to adopt a motion referencing what activists are calling “anti-Palestinian racism” (APR), and the council’s intention to explore definitions and related commitments.

This is a serious and dangerous error.

As part of my own investigation into how the concept of APR was developed and is being promoted in activist circles, I watched the council discussion that took place on 16 July. I do recognise that while it did adopt a motion, Manchester City Council did not adopt the formal definition of APR on the night. I also note that Labour produced an amended version that stripped away some of the more overtly dangerous activist framing.

However, this is precisely the problem.

Even a watered-down motion still leaves the council trapped inside the activist premise that “APR” is a legitimate category requiring institutional recognition, policy development, and follow-on action. The council has effectively been manoeuvred into a corner – having accepted the framing, it is then left feeling obliged to “do something,” because backing away will be portrayed as indifference or hostility.

That is how this works. It is not neutral anti-racism. It is political pressure, and Manchester City Council should not allow itself to be manipulated into granting a dangerous concept such as APR any legitimacy at all.

Let me be clear at the outset – racism is real. Prejudice against anyone on the basis of race or ethnicity must be confronted.

But APR is not a neutral anti-racism concept. It is an activist framework designed to do something very specific. It reframes mainstream safeguards against antisemitism as illegitimate and pressures public bodies into treating anti-Israel political narratives as protected truth.

That is not “anti-racism”. It is political capture. Manchester does not need a new racism category. If a person is discriminated against because of their Arab, Middle Eastern, or Palestinian heritage, we already have the legal and institutional tools to address it.
France faces court over embassy built on confiscated Jewish family home
The French government is appearing before a Paris court this week over its continued use of a former Jewish-owned mansion in Baghdad as its embassy, in a case brought by the descendants of Iraqi Jews who say the French state stopped paying rent after their property was confiscated under antisemitic laws.

The lawsuit, now formally being heard by a French administrative court, concerns a large riverside home built in the 1930s by brothers Ezra and Khedouri Lawee, members of Iraq’s once-thriving Jewish community. France has operated the buildings as its embassy since the mid-1960s and continues to do so today.

The Lawee family says it originally leased the property directly to France, believing that a foreign government tenant would protect it at a time when Iraqi Jews were increasingly targeted. But after Iraq nationalised Jewish-owned property in the late 1960s and 1970s, France allegedly stopped paying rent to the family and instead began paying the Iraqi state.

The descendants are now seeking around €22 million (approximately £19 million) in unpaid rent and damages, arguing that France benefited from discriminatory laws that stripped Jews of citizenship and assets, without ever compensating the original owners.

“To save the house, my father leased it to the French,” said Mayer Lawee, 86, the son of Ezra Lawee. “My father was upset. It’s his home. He built it from scratch, and it was taken away.”

Iraq was home to around 150,000 Jews in the 1940s, part of one of the oldest continuous Jewish communities in the world. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jews in Iraq faced escalating persecution, including arrests, denaturalisation and the seizure of property. By the early 1950s, the vast majority had fled or been expelled.

Much of the Lawee family settled in Canada, but their Baghdad home remained standing and under family ownership until it was leased to France. The family says it was never compensated when Iraq later claimed ownership.
Jonathan Tobin: Can Josh Shapiro rescue the Democratic Party from left-wing antisemitism?
A party that is too woke
The Democratic base has, in large part, gone woke in recent years. Belief in the toxic myths of critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism has made it seem as if openly anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish politicians, such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, are more representative of the opinions of Democratic voters than a conventional liberal like Shapiro. Indeed, the Pennsylvania governor may not like Netanyahu. And he has backpedaled on his youthful enthusiasm for Israel’s security imperatives. But he is too connected to the Jewish community, as well as nominally pro-Israel, to fly with a party base that has fully embraced the left-wing congressional “Squad” and those with views akin to Mamdani.

It’s possible to argue that Shapiro is simply running in the wrong party at the wrong time, when the partisan split over Israel remains too great. Still, if Republicans nominate Vice President JD Vance in 2028 and continue to treat a platformer of Jew-hatred like former Fox News host and current podcaster Tucker Carlson as if he is a party luminary, then it creates an opening for Democrats. The sad truth is that both parties now have a serious antisemitism problem, even if it is more widespread among Democrats than in the GOP.

If nothing else, Shapiro’s memoir is a reminder to Democrats that they shouldn’t be so beguiled by identity politics and support for the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) that they once again choose a disastrous candidate like Harris. It also raises the possibility that he will spend the prelude to the 2028 race running as an opponent of his party’s intersectional Jew-haters and anti-Zionists rather than just another hapless politician trying to appease them.

If so, then his candidacy will—win or lose—be a positive contribution to American political culture, rather than just an exercise in egotism on the part of a long-shot candidate with little chance of becoming the nation’s first Jewish president.
Kamala Harris's VP Vetting Team, Led by Covington & Burling Duo Eric Holder and Dana Remus, Asked Josh Shapiro If He Was a 'Double Agent for Israel'
Kamala Harris's vice-presidential vetting team, led by a pair of Covington & Burling partners, Eric Holder and Dana Remus, asked Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro whether he had ever been an Israeli agent or communicated with "an undercover agent of Israel," according to Shapiro's forthcoming memoir.

"Had I been a double agent for Israel?" wrote Shapiro, who is Jewish, in reference to a question from Remus. "Was she kidding? I told her how offensive the question was."

"Well, we have to ask," Remus replied. "Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?" Shapiro responded: "If they were undercover … how the hell would I know?"

Holder served as attorney general for former president Barack Obama. Remus served as Biden White House counsel and then as counsel to Columbia University as the Ivy League school became the epicenter of anti-Israel campus protests and saw two presidents resign amid the unrest.

The exchange provides a window into a contentious vetting process that culminated in accusations of anti-Semitism when Harris passed on Shapiro in favor of Minnesota governor Tim Walz. It also reveals the extent to which Holder and Remus—both of whom played a role in defending Ivy League leaders over criticism of their response to anti-Israel campus protests—shaped Harris's campaign.

Harris's consideration of Shapiro sparked backlash from left-wing activists, who launched a "No Genocide Josh" campaign that maligned the governor's support for Israel and criticism of illegal protests on college campuses in the wake of Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack. When Harris picked Walz as her running mate, Shapiro said anti-Semitism played "no role" in the decision or in his "dialogue with the vice president."

Shapiro's memoir tells a different story. Remus's questioning, the governor wrote, "said a lot about some of the people around the VP." Shapiro also revealed, according to the Atlantic, that Harris asked him "if he would apologize for some of his comments about protesters at the University of Pennsylvania who had built encampments." Shapiro "flatly" declined.


Stanford SJP Calls for "Student Intifada," Plans Walkout Against Company That Helped Find Bin Laden
Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine is organizing a campus walkout on January 20 at noon, calling on the university to sever ties with Palantir Technologies, a data analytics company the group describes as part of a “genocide tech axis.” The protest at White Plaza is being co-organized by Tech For Palestine, Vigil for Gaza, Jewish Voice for Peace Stanford, the Stanford Asian American Action Committee, and involves the ACLU, according to promotional materials shared on social media.

The same SJP chapter recruited members last September by asking Stanford students to “join the student intifada,” using terminology historically associated with violent Palestinian uprisings. That Instagram post, dated September 18, 2025, featured an image of a person in a keffiyeh with the text “STANFORD SJP NEEDS YOU - JOIN THE STUDENT INTIFADA TODAY,” and promised to build solidarity while organizing against what they called Stanford’s “complicity in genocide.”

The Target: Palantir
The January protest centers on Palantir, a Silicon Valley firm founded in 2003 by Alex Karp, Peter Thiel, and others in the wake of September 11. The company was created specifically to help U.S. intelligence agencies “connect the dots” after the 9/11 attacks exposed fatal gaps in America’s ability to analyze disparate intelligence data.

Palantir’s software has played a role in some of America’s most significant counterterrorism operations. The company provided intelligence software that contributed to locating Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan in 2011. According to CEO Alex Karp, “Terror suspects leave patterns they don’t really realize they’re leaving,” and “at least one U.S. agency reported that hundreds of terror attacks around the world have been stopped with our product.”

The company’s work extends beyond counterterrorism. Palantir’s Maven platform is used by the entire U.S. military and international allies including the UK and Ukraine. Mike Gallagher, Palantir’s head of defense and former Republican congressman from Wisconsin, described Maven’s function simply: it “helps fewer good guys kill more bad guys.” According to Karp, Palantir is “responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine” in its war against Russia.

What Stanford SJP Claims
In their promotional materials for the walkout, Stanford SJP accuses Palantir of profiting from “ICE raids, police violence, and mass surveillance at home,” while helping to “power a digital dragnet that enables apartheid and mass killing in Palestine.” The group claims Stanford provides Palantir with “research, legitimacy, and talent,” framing the January 20 action as part of a “national day of action” against what they describe as escalating ICE terror under the Trump administration.

The protest organizers describe their goal as cutting off the “Stanford pipeline to Palantir and the genocide tech axis.” Stanford SJP previously attracted international attention for hosting a vigil in “honor of our martyrs”, in apparent reference to the terrorists who infiltrated Israel on October 7.
University of Washington lifts suspensions of anti-Israel protesters
The University of Washington has completed conduct hearings for the “UW33,” a group of students accused of occupying and damaging the university’s Interdisciplinary Engineering Building in May, finding them guilty of violations and lifting their suspensions.

The anti-Israel protest on May 5, organized by Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return, demanded the university sever ties with Boeing over the company’s dealings with Israel. University officials said demonstrators caused approximately $1 million in damage to the building on the public school’s Seattle campus.

The university suspended the involved students pending the results of a conduct hearing that has been completed, Victor Balta, a university spokesperson, told JNS.

“The students have been found responsible for violations of the student conduct code and held accountable,” Balta said. “The students were out of class and banned from campus for three quarters.”

Balta added that “SUPER is not a recognized student organization and does not enjoy the benefits” of such status.

SUPER UW celebrated the lifting of the suspensions.
Judge orders Ohio State to revoke student’s expulsion over anti-Israel videos
A district judge issued a preliminary injunction last week, ordering Ohio State University to revoke its expulsion of a student who made anti-Israel videos.

Edmund Sargus Jr., a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, stated the student, Guy Christensen, was expelled from the university on the grounds that his videos were incitement and risked disrupting the campus.

According to Sargus, Christensen had said in a May video that he retracted his earlier condemnation of the shooting deaths of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., stating, “I take it back. I do not condemn the elimination of those two Zionist officials, who worked at the Israeli embassy last night.”

He also said in that video, “Israel has murdered thousands of Palestinian civilians in cold blood without any shame, with pride, rejoicing in the streets of Israel over this, and they get no attention in this country, while this attack is being used to weaponize violence against the movement.”

Christensen added that “we will meet it with our own greater resistance and escalation.”

In a separate May video responding to a comment by Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) that Israel is not committing genocide in Gaza, Christensen stated that “screenshots are forever, and what you’ve said and done will haunt your family for eternity as you will eventually, if you’re still alive, end up in a Nuremberg trials for all the elected officials in America who facilitated and protected this genocide.”

Sargus said Christensen’s videos did not constitute incitement because in past ones, he advocated for nonviolence and in subsequent ones, he stated that he is nonviolent. In the judge’s view, Christensen’s use of the words “resistance” and “escalation” was meant in a nonviolent manner, and that his videos had “no specific call to action” and “were unlikely to result in the imminent use of violence or lawless action.”

As for the university’s claims that Christensen’s presence could disrupt campus activities, Sargus stated this would be unlikely given that Christensen was on summer break at the time of the videos and did not identify himself as an OSU student, nor did any students express concern to the university about it.

Sargus said Christensen’s lawsuit is “likely to succeed on the merits” and ordered the school to remove his expulsion from his academic record.


MLK was clear: Anti-Zionism is antisemitism
King's support for Israel
In March 1968, just weeks before his assassination, King addressed the Rabbinical Assembly in New York. His words were unequivocal: “Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity.” He went on to describe Israel as “one of the great outposts of democracy in the world,” language preserved in contemporaneous accounts and archival collections.

King’s support for Israel was not political posturing. It flowed directly from his understanding of oppression and liberation. He recognized what it meant for a people to be denied sovereignty, safety, and dignity. He saw in the Jewish people’s return to Israel a moral parallel to the Black struggle and the pursuit of equality.

The civil rights leader also warned against moral double standards. He understood how political language can be used to deny the legitimacy of a people while claiming the mantle of justice. Just as he confronted coded racism directed at Black Americans, he recognized the danger of rhetoric that singled out Jews by denying their collective right to self-determination.

King believed deeply in peace for both Israelis and Palestinians. He supported a political solution that would allow both peoples to live with dignity and security. But he never suggested that peace required the dismantling of the Jewish state. Peace, in his vision, was built on mutual recognition, not erasure.

A moral contradiction
Calls to deny Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish democracy are often framed as progressive. King would have recognized this for what it is: a moral contradiction.

Judaism is not merely a body of faith: It is a peoplehood rooted for thousands of years in its ancestral Land of Israel. To bifurcate Israel from the Jewish religion is to deny Jewish identity itself.

King believed justice is indivisible. You cannot fight racism while tolerating antisemitism. And you cannot champion liberation while denying Jews the same right.

The question is not what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say today – he already told us. The question is whether we are prepared to listen.
What would MLK do? Demand that Arabs free their black slaves
The activist group “NYC Educators for Palestine” is apparently staging a “teach-in” for New York public school children of all ages, using Martin Luther King Jr. Day to equate the non-violent movement for black American civil rights with anti-Jewish jihad.

What these propagandists will never tell children as young as 6 is that their actions are covering up for history’s greatest anti-black catastrophes while blaming innocent Jews.

For a start, many of King’s own African ancestors were trafficked to the Americas in the first place, partially as the result of the enslavement of black people by Palestinians’ fellow Muslims. Arabs and Islamized Africans bear substantial responsibility for the trans-Atlantic slave trade, with the Europeans buying many slaves from Muslim rulers who eagerly profited from selling off their non-Muslim war captives.

By contrast, Jews were among the most passionate opponents of racial discrimination in America, making up nearly a quarter of all white freedom riders, with some murdered alongside blacks for their anti-racist activism.

Professed Arab “concern” for black civil rights during the 1960s was no more than a cynical disinformation campaign concocted by Communist China and the KGB to pull politically active black Americans closer toward Third Worldist Marxism and away from patriotic integrationism.

But these “educators” are hiding something far worse: Arabs and Muslims, kin to the Palestinians, still own black slaves. The following could serve as the basis for any serious curriculum on black-Arab relations:

In Algeria and Libya, tens of thousands of Africans attempting to make their way to Europe are enslaved by local Arabs, some terrorist militiamen. The Global Slavery Index says that they number 84,000 and 47,000, respectively. Those who escape have detailed torture, blackmail and use as grunt labor, with CNN disseminating chilling video in 2017 of a nighttime auction in which two Nigerien men were sold for the equivalent of $400 apiece.

The U.S. State Department’s 2024 human-rights report on Libya documents that “criminal and nonstate armed groups controlling extralegal facilities routinely tortured and abused detainees [including refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants], subjecting them to arbitrary killings, rape and sexual violence, beatings, electric shocks, burns, forced labor, and deprivation of food and water, according to dozens of testimonies shared with international aid agencies and human rights groups. In many instances, the purpose of this abuse was reportedly to extort payments from detainees’ families.” Those black migrants within Algeria who are not enslaved also face deeply seated (systemic) racism.
Outrage as rabbi disinvited from MLK Day event over ties to Israel
A California rabbi claimed his invitation to lead the closing prayer at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration was pulled because of his ties to Israel.

Rabbi Hanan Leberman, of Tifereth Israel Synagogue in in San Diego, posted a revealing letter on Instagram to organizers of the All Peoples Celebration in Balboa Park, claiming they disinvited him from the event.

He said his message “is deeply aligned with the Reverend Dr. King’s teachings, regardless of how I may be perceived by others.”

“When I agreed to participate in this event, I did so fully aware that I would be sharing a stage with individuals whose politics and ideas I do not always share.” the rabbi wrote. “That, to me, is precisely the work Dr. King called us to do: sharing space with those with whom we disagree, seeking common ground, and recommitting ourselves to the dream that all people are treated equally.”

It’s unclear who was responsible for dropping Leberman from the event or when the decision was made. Calls to event organizer Alliance San Diego by The Post weren’t immediately returned.




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