Tuesday, January 27, 2026

01/27 Links Pt2: Herzog: Denying Jewish self-determination is antisemitism; Bondi Chabad rabbi: Antisemitism must not become what defines us; Meet the Proud Nazi Spawn Raising Money for Democrats

From Ian:

Ceremonies held worldwide to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Candles flickered at dawn Tuesday at the vast Holocaust memorial in Berlin as people across Europe and beyond paused to commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, reflecting on Nazi Germany’s murder of millions of people and its attempt to completely wipe out Jewish life on the continent.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed across the world on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation by Soviet forces of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the Nazi German death camps. The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2005 establishing the day as an annual commemoration.

At the memorial site of Auschwitz, in an area that was under German occupation during World War II, former prisoners laid flowers and wreaths at the Execution Wall, where German forces murdered thousands of people, most of them Poles. Later in the day Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki will join survivors for a remembrance ceremony at Birkenau, the vast site nearby where Jews were transported from across Europe to be exterminated in gas chambers.

Nazi German forces murdered some 1.1 million people at Auschwitz, most of them Jews, but also Poles, Roma and others.

Commemorations on the anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation by the Red Army on January 27, 1945, were also taking place across Europe on Tuesday, as well as at the United Nations.

Germany, the nation that inflicted war and genocide on its neighbors, is holding a commemoration in the Bundestag, the parliament, on Wednesday.

Candles burned and white roses were placed at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a field of 2,700 gray concrete slabs near the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of Berlin, which honors the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. The vast site in the heart of the capital underlines Germany’s remorse.
Herzog: Denying Jewish self-determination is antisemitism
Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Tuesday marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day by warning that antisemitism is once again spreading worldwide, and equated the denial of Jewish self-determination with hatred of Jews.

Speaking at the Second International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem, Herzog said, “To deny the Jewish people—and only the Jewish people—the right to self-determination in their national home is antisemitism, even if you are the mayor of the city with the most Jews outside of Israel,” the latter being a reference to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Herzog linked his remarks to the return on Monday of the body of Israel Border Police Master Sgt. Ran Gvili from Gaza, calling it “a significant turning point.” He said, “For the first time since 2014, not a single Israeli citizen, living or dead, is being held as a human bargaining chip in Gaza.”

Reflecting on the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Herzog said the world is “failing to meet our vow” of “Never Again” as Jewish communities face rising hostility in cities around the world, from London to Sydney.

The conference was hosted by the Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Ministry, led by Minister Amichai Chikli, and attended by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and other international figures.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu highlighted the first day of the event on Monday, warning that antisemitism has reemerged as a global threat, and urging governments to confront it as an assault on “our common civilization.”
US envoy warns Jew-hatred ‘rages anew’ during UN Holocaust remembrance
Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, warned that the global body, created in the aftermath of the Holocaust, “must do far more now to confront this ancient poison” of antisemitism “to fulfill its founding promise and to protect every people, including the Jewish people.”

Waltz spoke at the U.N.’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day observance on Tuesday, recalling the atrocities American soldiers discovered and documented while liberating Nazi concentration camps in World War II.

The vow of “Never Again” must be put into action, the U.S. envoy said.

Waltz added that antisemitism “rages anew,” citing sharply rising levels of Jew-hatred in the United States and around the world.

“This wave of hate has left synagogues under siege. Jewish students, once again, hiding their identity. Whole communities living in fear,” he said. “I mean, what, are we back in 1933? This is absurd, and we have to call it out.”

While commending the United Nations for holding the ceremony, Waltz decried the growing reality of “Holocaust denial, its distortion, its rehabilitation in these historic narratives of Nazi collaborators, its the manipulation of history right here at the U.N. and elsewhere.” He linked that phenomenon to recent acts of violence, including the Bondi Beach Chanukah massacre in Sydney on Dec. 14 and the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“Elie Wiesel once hoped that antisemitism perished in Auschwitz, and sadly, he lived to see its horrific resurrection,” Waltz said. “We cannot wait for another liberation.”

Waltz emphasized the importance of education and commemoration as critical tools in combating antisemitism, calling for greater efforts to elevate the voices of Holocaust survivors.

“You did not become a lifelong victim. You move forward and educate the next generation so that this can never happen again,” he said, addressing survivors in attendance.


Jake Wallis Simons: Britain is ignoring the Holocaust and that's not a Jewish problem
Does the Holocaust matter? An increasing number of people in Britain are drawing the conclusion that it doesn’t. Not unless it can be used to damage Israel, anyway.

Today, on Holocaust Memorial Day, it’s business as usual at most British secondary schools, which have decided that two-and-a-half years after the worst modern massacre of Jews, it’s time to let bygones be bygones.

Before the October 7 atrocities, 2,000 schools marked the commemorations. This year, that number has fallen to just 854. Thus arrives yet another signal that when faced with a stand-off between the only democracy in the Middle East and the forces of jihad, the great British public plumps for the latter.

Let’s not be coy: if it hadn’t been for October 7, schools would still be marking the Holocaust. As Golda Meir famously remarked, “the world hates a Jew who hits back. The world loves us only when we are to be pitied.” That’s always been our dirty little secret and, with their strategy of human sacrifice, the jihadis have taken full advantage of it. Hamas may have been defeated by the IDF in Gaza, but when it comes to Britain, it has won.

In some ways, there is not one Jew but two. The first is the one who embodies the spirit of the Zionist, by which I mean not the “settler colonialism” that our enemies have so cynically projected upon the word, but the instinct to throw off the shackles of victimhood and fight.

Those people, whether they live in Israel or the diaspora, understand that in the final analysis, for schools to disregard the significance of the Holocaust is a mark of corrosion of British society.

Your loss. We do not need your pity. We do not need your tears. We will defend ourselves with our own strength, both physical and emotional, and forge our own future, which is more than can be said for you right now.

The second group of Jews is scared. Not that they are not moved by the spirit of defiance; not that their bolder brothers are not equally afraid. But this second group, which includes the elderly, families, and people who are less able to stand up for themselves, see the world brushing aside the pledge of “never again” which was made in 1945 and fears that the pages of history are turning backwards.

In both cases, however, the truth of the matter is that Britain is not debasing the Jews so much as it is debasing itself. As I argue in my new book, Never Again? How the West Betrayed the Jews and Itself, after three millennia, it is not the future of the Jews that hangs in the balance.


Jonathan Sacerdoti: Why Jew-hate doesn’t add up
Consider how much more the Jews might have given to humanity had six million not been murdered, and how much more might be given still if millions of people today were not occupied with imagining how to kill millions more of us. Everywhere on this planet where Jews thrive, humanity thrives. Everywhere Jewish life is extinguished ends in decline or tyranny.

We pose no threat to your faith. Ours is a non-coercive, non-missionary system. We do not want you to convert; Judaism actively discourages it. Yet we are not ethnically exclusive. Like Ruth the Moabite in the Bible, Judaism has always recognised and welcomed sincere converts who fully enter the covenant and the Jewish people.

We do not seek to impose laws governing how non-Jews must live, only laws that regulate our own daily conduct, ethics and responsibilities. We have seven suggested universal ethical principles, the Noahide laws, and we do not force them on anyone.

Jews have no grand plan of territorial expansion or colonialism. Israel, the Jewish state, represents 0.015 per cent of the world’s land mass. Since its re-establishment in 1948 and its subsequent defensive wars, Israel has officially relinquished approximately 90.5 per cent of the territory it once controlled at its maximum extent. It did so in pursuit of peace.

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. The number of secondary schools in the UK marking it has fallen from over 2,000 in 2023 to 854 in 2025, a reduction of approximately 57.3 per cent. This followed the genocidal invasion of Israel in 2023 by a group whose own codified charter calls for Jewish annihilation, when 1,200 people were murdered.

Numerically, we are little more than a rounding error. Most people alive today have never met a Jew. Many love us. Many hate us. Many remain indifferent to our existence.

Do not remember the Holocaust only for us. Remember it for yourself.

Let us live our ordinary lives: to act ethically, to contribute, to create, to elevate the societies we inhabit. We ask only for protection from hatred, persecution, slaughter and attack.

And so the question remains. A people less than two-tenths of one per cent of humanity. A population still unrecovered from its last attempted eradication. A community that produces disproportionate benefit, seeks no converts, claims almost no land, threatens no faith and barely registers in global demographics. And yet again, targeted, obsessively, violently.

What are the chances? You do the maths.
Jonathan Sacerdoti: When hate becomes selective
Don’t remember the Holocaust for us. Remember it for yourself.




PM Netanyahu's Remarks at the Second International Conference on Combating Antisemitism
Remarks by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Second International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem


Morrison’s taboo-breaking proposal in Israel
Former Australian PM Scott Morrison has called for sweeping reforms to how Islam is practised in Australia, as he tells a major antisemitism conference that Middle Eastern countries were doing a better job than the West in curtailing radical Islam.


Bondi Chabad rabbi: Antisemitism must not become what defines us
An unabashedly strong and robust Judaism that is intrinsically connected to the heritage of the nation is the answer to the antisemitism around the globe, director of Chabad of Bondi in Sydney, Australia said on Tuesday at an event in Israel.

“For us, antisemitism is not a theory. It is not a policy debate. It is not a headline,” Rabbi Yehoram Ulman said in an address to the International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem. “It is an empty seat at the Shabbat table. It is a voice that will never be heard again.”

Ulman’s son-in-law, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, was among the 15 people killed in the Chanukah Bondi Beach attack, the most lethal assault on Jews since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre.

“When we speak of antisemitism, it is not academic; it is painfully and unavoidably real,” he added.

The Leningrad-born Chabad Rabbi said that “more Judaism, not less” was the answer to terrorism and hatred, despite the tendency, when hunted, is to “hide, blend in and become less visible” out of fear.

At the same time, he said, Jewish identity must focus on the positive, noting that antisemitism cannot be defeated with diplomacy alone.

“If Jewish identity is built only on shared trauma, then we hand our children a burden, not a gift,” he said. “Antisemitism must never be what defines us, [but rather] a positive Jewish identity.”


On Holocaust Memorial Day, we must find light when all seems bleak. But the Government has to recognise anti-Semitism is a problem for ALL of society - by the Heaton Park Rabbi
To describe 2025 as a bleak year for the Jewish community would be a profound understatement. Last year, too many innocent people — seeking only to observe the traditions and prayers of our ancient faith — were murdered in cold blood.

And yet today, as we mark Holocaust Memorial Day on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945, it’s clear that we should — must — respond to evil with goodness; find light when all seems bleak; and maintain faith and hope in the face of what can sometimes feel like fathomless darkness.

Only last month, two men were found guilty of plotting a gun attack intended to cause ‘untold harm’ to the Jewish community in Manchester — the city where I was born and where, just four months ago, a grievous terrorist attack took place in my own synagogue at Heaton Park in north Manchester. A place of worship and community where I have served as rabbi for the past seventeen years. During that harrowing assault, two beloved members of our congregation lost their lives: 66-year-old Melvin Cravitz and 53-year-old Adrian Daulby, both close friends of mine.

And as we know, on the first night of the festival of Chanukah last year, a horrific massacre took place at Bondi Beach, in which terrorists murdered 15 people during a communal celebration of the festival. Among them was 41-year-old Rabbi Eli Schlanger, the great-nephew of my predecessor at Heaton Park, Reverend Leslie Olsberg. Such is the interconnected nature of the global Jewish community.

Yet equally, there is something which creates an even greater connection between every human being - regardless of religion, creed, colour, ethnicity, beliefs (or lack of them). And that is a determination to find light and cleave to goodness, even in times of desolation and despair.

Naturally, it’s easy to say these words. But how to fulfil the meaning when your heart has been shattered? What I`ve learned, not least since the jihadi atrocity at my synagogue, is that it is possible to hold two opposing thoughts in your head at the same time. From there you can start to heal.

On the one hand, I go into my synagogue on the Jewish sabbath – shabbat - and flinch in sorrow at the empty seats in the rows of wooden pews where Adrian and Melvin, two men of quiet strength and profound kindness, used to sit during prayer services. On the other, I look around the building with its bright stained-glass windows, and airy main sanctuary and am reminded that the Heaton Park community still blazes with warmth, resilience, joy and holiness

After all, and this is true of all humankind, if we are united by the values of family, community and kindness, as well as a determination to protect the innocent and the vulnerable, we drown out those who seek to divide us through intimidation, bigotry, and hate.


On Holocaust Memorial Day, Hamas’ Guide to Speaking “Clean” Exposes the Lie at the Heart of Its PR
As the world pauses this International Holocaust Memorial Day to remember what happens when hatred is spoken plainly, acted on openly, and ignored too long. It is a day meant to sharpen moral clarity. That is precisely why a newly revealed Hamas document matters now.

Because it shows Hamas understands the Holocaust very well. Not as a crime. But as a messaging problem.

A 2022 Hamas internal document, seized by the IDF in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war and recently made public, lays out a sophisticated strategy for manipulating Western audiences by scrubbing antisemitism from its external language while preserving it internally. The goal is not moderation. It is concealment.

The booklet, titled “Guide for the Palestinian Speaker in the World,” reads less like ideology and more like a public relations manual. Its purpose, Hamas explains, is to help spokespeople “achieve positive media attention” and win sympathy in Western media environments.

The method is deliberate double speech.

On page 7, the guide explicitly instructs Hamas representatives to avoid references that trigger Western sensitivities, including Nazism and the Holocaust. “One must be aware of the great sensitivity and heavy baggage associated with certain concepts in the Western world,” the document states, warning against mentioning “Nazi practices” or “the Holocaust” when addressing non-Muslim audiences.

Antisemitism Vs. Optics
The problem, Hamas explains, is not antisemitism. The problem is optics.

The guide goes further. It warns speakers not to say “the Jews” or “the Jewish lobby,” not because such claims are false, but because they “harm the Palestinian discourse” by making it appear racist and extreme.

It explicitly cautions against invoking classic antisemitic conspiracy theories such as “Jewish control of the media” or citing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, not because they are lies, but because they damage Hamas’ image and help Israel’s “propaganda.”

In other words: don’t stop thinking it. Just don’t say it out loud.

One of the document’s most revealing passages openly identifies Jewish historical suffering as an obstacle to Hamas’ global campaign. The guide complains about “the influence of the historical suffering of Jews in Europe,” particularly in Germany, where references to a “historical obligation toward Jews” today are said to justify “unfair bias toward the Zionist entity.”

This is not a rejection of antisemitism. It is an admission that antisemitism is inconvenient.


Hampshire mayor randomly inflates Holocaust death toll to 12 million and erases Jews from memorial
The mayor of a Hampshire town been criticised after promoting a Holocaust remembrance event by describing “the 12 million people who lost their lives during the Holocaust” without mentioning Jews – with the Holocaust Educational Trust describing it as “an insult to victims and survivors”.

Havant Borough council’s press release, which described a “short, non-denominational service” to take place on Tuesday, contained no mention of Jews at all, with the mayor, Labour councillor Munazza Faiz, adding that “We must continue to stand up against prejudice, hatred and discrimination of any kind”.

Online statement from Havant Borough Council
Honorary Alderman Leah Turner was quoted as saying: “By marking Holocaust Memorial Day, we reaffirm our commitment to remembering the past and working towards ensuring such atrocities are never repeated.”

No specific reasoning was given for the random 12 million figure mentioned by Faiz.

Responding to the omission, Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, told Jewish News: “The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jewish men, women and children. Ignoring that the victims were Jews, widening the figure to include all victims of the Second World War, or attempting to draw in contemporary conflicts is an abuse of the memory of the Holocaust and an insult to victims and survivors.

“Any attempt to dilute the Holocaust, strip it of its Jewish specificity, or compare it to contemporary events is unacceptable on any day. On Holocaust Memorial Day, it is especially hurtful, disrespectful and wrong.”

Havant Borough Council’s guest speaker at the service was second-generation Holocaust survivor Bryan Huberman from the 45 Aid Society, a charity formed after the Shoah by The Windermere Children.

His late father, Alfred Huberman, was one of 300 Jewish children liberated from Hitler’s concentration camps and flown to England at the end of the Second World War.


Voters deliver poor verdict on Albanese’s leadership after Bondi Beach terror attack
Most Australians believe Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has shown poor leadership in response to the Bondi Beach terror attack, according to the Sky News Pulse poll.

According to the poll of 1,500 voters, conducted by YouGov between January 20 and 27, 49 per cent of people believed Mr Albanese had responded “not well” or “very badly”.

Just five per cent of voters said he had responded “very well”, while 38 per cent said he had handled the situation “as well as can be expected”.

The results reflected widespread dissatisfaction with the Albanese government’s handling of the aftermath of the attack, which killed 15 people at Bondi Beach.

The poll showed a sharp partisan divide, with Labor voters far more forgiving of Mr Albanese than supporters of other parties.

Among those who voted Labor at the 2025 federal election, 68 per cent believed Mr Albanese responded well, compared with 25 per cent who said he was poor.

Seventy-three per cent of Liberal Party voters and 79 per cent of One Nation voters believed the response was poor.

In New South Wales — the state directly affected by the attack — voters were also more likely to be critical than supportive.

The poll found about half of NSW voters believed Mr Albanese had responded inadequately, with nearly one in three saying “very badly”.

The polling comes amid intense scrutiny of the Albanese government’s broader response to antisemitism before and after the attack.

Sky News Pulse polling from December 2025 found about 60 per cent of people believed the government had badly handled Islamic extremism and antisemitism.
Australia's Grand Mufti Signed Fatwa Calling for Jihad Against "Zionists" and their "Collaborators"
In a March 2025 religious edict, Australia’s Grand Mufti, Dr. Ibrahim Abu Mohammed, personally signed a ruling that says it is “obligatory for all Muslims and Muslim nations to engage in jihad against the Zionist entity and all those collaborating with it,” according to an Arabic-language document reviewed by Jewish Onliner.

The document, dated March 28, 2025, lists “His Eminence Sheikh Ibrahim Abu Mohammed” as member number three among the “Members Participating in the Fatwa” issued by the Fiqh and Fatwa Committee of the Qatar-based, Muslim Brotherhood-linked International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS).

This revelation comes as Australia grapples with an unprecedented wave of antisemitic attacks, culminating in the December 14, 2025 Bondi Beach massacre that killed 15 Jews celebrating Hanukkah, and the subsequent announcement of a Royal Commission into antisemitism by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The discovery that Australia’s most senior Islamic authority personally signed a religious edict issued by a Qatar-based, Muslim Brotherhood-linked international body calling for jihad against “Zionists” and “those collaborating” with them raises urgent questions about religious leadership accountability as Australia confronts its worst antisemitic crisis in modern history.
Meet the Proud Nazi Spawn Raising Money for Democrats
Kelly Neumann, a Michigan trial attorney and prolific Democratic fundraiser, is under fire for a 2024 Veterans Day post celebrating her grandfather's service in Adolf Hitler's Wehrmacht during the Holocaust.

The Facebook post from Nov. 11, 2024, which hasn't been deleted, must be seen to be believed. After wishing a happy Veterans Day to her friends and family members who served in the U.S. military, Neumann relayed the "interesting story" of her grandfather, Albert Neumann, who also served in combat "on the German side in WWI & WWII." The post included several photos of Neumann's beloved "Opa" posing in what appears to be a Nazi officer's uniform.

After concluding his service to the Third Reich, Neumann's grandfather "escaped to Brazil" before eventually making his way to Detroit. Neumann explained that the former Nazi soldier was one of her "best friends" and "one of the first people in my life that accepted me as gay when I was nervous and scared." His story, Neumann wrote, was a "true testament that people can change and love indeed can win."

It was a rather unusual sentiment to express on Veterans Day, given that the Nazi regime—in addition to slaughtering six million Jews in the Holocaust—was responsible for the deaths of nearly 150,000 American soldiers. Jewish Insider requested an explanation, but Neumann declined to comment—and so did the Democratic candidates she is advising this cycle.

Neumann is heavily involved in fundraising efforts on behalf of U.S. Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow and gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson. She co-chairs the finance committee on both campaigns and has hosted multiple fundraisers for the candidates. Neumann has raised money for (and personally donated to) the campaigns of Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D., Mich.), Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.), and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D., Mich.). She routinely posts photos of herself cavorting with prominent Democrats from Michigan and beyond.

In March 2025, Neumann hosted a fundraiser for Rep. Haley Stevens (D., Mich.), who is running against McMorrow in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. A spokesperson for Stevens's campaign told Jewish Insider that the candidate "rejects anti-Semitism in all forms" and would not have participated in the fundraiser had she been aware of Neumann's post "celebrating" her grandfather's service to the Nazi regime.


Harvard Professor Known for Anti-Israel Activism Joins Columbia’s Pulitzer Board
A Harvard professor who is one of the campus's most hard-line anti-Israel activists is joining the board that doles out Pulitzer Prizes.

The professor, Vijay Iyer, was described in a Jan. 26 press release from the Pulitzer Board as "an influential composer, pianist and scholar in jazz and contemporary art music."

Not included in the press release was Iyer's track record as a member of Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, whose social media account posted a cartoon of a hand with a Jewish star and a noose that Harvard president Alan Garber described as "The Antisemitic Cartoon."

One of Iyer's social media posts, dated Nov. 29, 2023, was the subject of a Harvard student complaint. The post referred to "the most powerful people on the planet doubling down on their evil, deranged state-sponsored terror." The complaint noted, "Israel is far from the most powerful country on Earth; the insinuation is not the current Israeli government, but the Jewish people."

A March 2025 song by Iyer is titled "Kite (for Refaat Alareer)." The Gazans used "terror kites" as incendiary weapons against Israel. Alareer was a Gazan poet whose social media posts included messages such as "Are most Jews evil? Of course they are," and "Zios are the dirtiest little snitches."

The Columbia Spectator reported that Iyer performed the "Kite" song on the piano at a May 2024 "People's Graduation" event. At the same event, a speaker, Randa Jarrar, said, "We defeated Napoleon. We are defeating Israel. We defeated Columbia. We defeated the NYPD. We will defeat any PD… We will defeat cop city. We will defeat cop universities. We are dismantling this empire." Jarrar reportedly thanked the crowd for "taking seriously the work of globalizing the intifada," and was met with a standing ovation. Iyer lives in New York City. The university-wide Columbia graduation was canceled in 2024 because the administration couldn't commit to securing it amid violent anti-Israel protests.

In May 2024, Iyer praised Harvard's student encampment anti-Israel protesters. "This youth-led movement is speaking to one of the most burning issues facing the world today, which is: how do we respond to plausible genocide, and what can be done about it from wherever we stand," he told WGBH. The Harvard Crimson pictured Iyer in a keffiyeh with a bullhorn and quoted him speaking at the encampment as "a member of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine."
Columbia Vowed To Expel Khymani James, Who Fantasized About 'Murdering Zionists.' He Could Return This Fall.
Columbia University encampment organizer Khymani James, who has fantasized about "murdering Zionists," could return to campus this fall, even though the Ivy League university promised he would be expelled.

Columbia revealed in a Dec. 17 court filing that it sent James a letter in August denying his request to lift his April 2024 suspension following a stretch of anti-Semitic activities and remarks, such as participating in illegal encampments and saying Zionists "don't deserve to live." While the letter rejected his bid to reenroll in the fall 2025 semester, it also said he "will be eligible to reapply to return for the Fall 2026 semester."

That flatly contradicts what Columbia told Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) when she chaired the House Committee on Education and Workforce. In September, she said the university "made a direct statement to me that Khymani James would be expelled for his antisemitic rhetoric - my committee staff at the time were present as well when the statement was made."

Columbia did not return a request for comment.

Keeping the door open for James appears to stand at odds with Columbia's pledge to rein in campus anti-Semitism. The decision on whether to welcome him back in the fall could serve as an early test for the university's incoming president, Jennifer Mnookin, who will step into the role around when the school will make a determination. As Columbia's fourth president in two years, Mnookin's appointment comes at a tumultuous time as the university continues to recover from a protracted battle with the Trump administration over campus anti-Semitism.

Columbia submitted the August letter as part of a discrimination lawsuit James filed against the university in September 2024, claiming his suspension was a response to his anti-Israel views. Leading up to his suspension, James served as a protest leader and was filmed saying, "university officials should be grateful that I'm not just going out there and murdering Zionists."

Columbia, in its August 2025 letter, wrote that James had "not demonstrate[d] a clear understanding of the impact [his] conduct had on members of the University community" or shown that he had a clear plan to "avoid future violations."

"[Y]our use of language tending to reaffirm those statements during your suspension raises serious concerns about your readiness to return to Columbia and engage with others appropriately," the letter added. It pointed to his October 2024 post denying that he ever apologized for his anti-Semitic remarks, writing on social media, "anything I said, I meant it."


‘Put the Zios in the ground’ student denies stirring up racial hatred
An Oxford University student accused of chanting for Gaza to “put the Zios in the ground” at a pro-Palestinian march has denied stirring up racial hatred.

Samuel Williams, 20, from Oxford, is alleged to have used threatening, abusive or insulting words during a demonstration in central London on 11 October last year.

The charge follows the circulation of a video filmed in Whitehall during a Palestine Coalition protest, in which a man addresses the crowd before leading a chant that includes the words: “Gaza, Gaza make us proud, put the Zios in the ground.”

Williams appeared in court this week and was granted conditional bail ahead of a hearing at Southwark Crown Court on 24 February.

As part of his bail conditions, Deputy Chief Magistrate Tan Ikram ruled that Williams must not take part in any Palestine-related protests within the M25 or in Oxford.


The IDF Brought Ran Gvili Home and the Media Handed Hamas the Credit
For 843 days, Ran Gvili’s body was unlawfully held hostage in Gaza. Gvili’s heroism shone through as one of the first people to respond to the horrific terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023, doing all he could to defend the people and the land he cared so much to protect. He was killed while fighting Hamas terrorists that day and more than two years later, on January 26, 2026, he became the final hostage to return home.

Gvili’s body, like the bodies of all other hostages cruelly held by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, was originally meant to be returned to Israel for a proper and dignified Jewish burial within 72 hours of signing the October 2025 ceasefire agreement. But, as terrorist groups rarely actually abide by the contract they signed, his body was withheld, with Hamas and Islamic Jihad claiming that the terrorist organizations did not know where his body was located.

This is extremely difficult to believe, considering Gvili’s body was found in a Palestinian cemetery in Gaza, meaning that the terrorists who buried him knew exactly which plot of land he was in. Unsurprisingly, but incredibly upsetting nonetheless, is the virtual lack of coverage that acknowledged not only how his body was held hostage, but also that it was further desecrated by not being given the opportunity for a proper burial in accordance with Jewish law. It was yet another cruel tactic in Hamas’ rulebook.

When his recovery by the IDF was announced and shared in the media, it wasn’t the IDF’s efforts that were acknowledged. Instead, it was Hamas that was given the credit.

The New York Times, for example, originally ran with a headline that claimed “Hamas Hands Over Body of Ran Gvili,” which could not have been further from the truth. Although the headline was quickly and quietly updated, Hamas’ refusal to hand over the body was an explicit violation of the ceasefire and thus does not deserve to receive any praise in Gvili’s return.

Trey Yingst of Fox News similarly remarked that Gvili’s body was returned “in accordance with the Gaza ceasefire agreement.” But if that truly were the case, Gvili would have returned within the first 72 hours of signing the agreement, not after several months.

The media’s insistence on portraying Hamas as abiding by the ceasefire entirely misrepresents the strategy of the terrorist group as well as the lengths to which the IDF went to retrieve Gvili’s body. Once intelligence was received by the IDF and Shin Bet, Gvili’s body was retrieved within a matter of days. It thus begs the question why the media are still reprinting Hamas’ fabrication that it was unknown to the terrorist organizations where his body was.

The media so frequently question Israel and its intentions, despite the state’s consistent and clear goal throughout the war of securing the return of every hostage. Yet when it comes to Hamas, there is no hesitation in platforming its spokesman, without challenging the narratives he creates. In doing so, the media elevate the voice of a terrorist organization to the same level of authority as that of a democratic nation.


Azerbaijan arrests 3 men for planning attack on Israeli embassy at behest of ISIS
Three individuals were arrested in Azerbaijan on Tuesday on suspicion of planning an attack on the Israeli embassy in the capital Baku at the instructions of Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), the Afghan offshoot of the Islamic State terror group, the Times of Israel learned.

Authorities in Azerbaijan confirmed the arrests, but did not specify which foreign embassy the would-be-attackers were planning to target.

In a statement, the State Security Service said the three men, whom it named, had conspired with members of ISIS-K, obtained weapons and planned to attack a foreign embassy before they were apprehended by security forces.

They planned to carry out the attack several months ago.

One of the men was born in 2000, and the two others in 2005.

ISIS-K claimed responsibility for the 2024 Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow, which left at least 145 people dead.

There have been a number of Islamic State-linked plots foiled in the majority-Muslim regions of Russia, where the group is listed as a banned terrorist organization, and in Central Asia.

Azerbaijan, a South Caucasus country of some 10 million people bordering Russia and Iran, is a secular country with a predominantly Muslim population, the majority of whom are Shiites.

In its statement, Azerbaijani authorities said the suspects had been arrested on charges of “preparation for terrorism” on the basis of religious hostility. They said the investigation was ongoing.

In a separate case, an Azerbaijani court sentenced a man affiliated with ISIS-K to 13 years in prison on terrorism charges last October after finding him guilty of plotting an attack on a synagogue in Baku with a Molotov cocktail in December 2024.


Smashed by ISIS, a 2,700-year-old carving may have been the earliest-known depiction of Jerusalem
For millennia, hundreds of vivid bas-reliefs adorned the walls of the Nineveh palace of the legendary eighth-century BCE Assyrian king Sennacherib, depicting daring conquests richly described in Assyrian sources and the Hebrew Bible.

In 2016, Islamic State terrorists entered the palace, in modern-day Mosul, Iraq, and systematically smashed the artifacts. The long-surviving sculptures had enabled modern scholars to compare biblical information on Sennacherib with historical sources and archaeological findings since the 19th century. Had they not been destroyed, they would have likely had more to offer.

Among the treasures broken in the terror group’s campaign of destruction was a slab of stone that had adorned Sennacherib’s opulent throne room, which scholars long ago concluded depicts the Assyrian siege of the Philistine city of Eltekeh.

But new research analyzing photographs and drawings of the largely overlooked bas-relief before its destruction suggests that it actually shows Jerusalem, making it the oldest-known depiction of the city.

Current scholarship holds that the Madaba map, a mosaic found in a sixth-century CE Byzantine church in modern-day Jordan, is the oldest rendering of Jerusalem to survive to modern times. But the study, published in October in the prestigious Journal of Near Eastern Studies by University of South Africa researcher Stephen Compton, suggests that the southwest palace in Nineveh was home to a depiction 1,200 years older than the one in Madaba.

“This is a unique image of the Assyrian army leaving a foreign city and leaving it intact, and it fits with both Sennacherib’s account of what happened in Jerusalem and the Bible,” Compton told The Times of Israel via telephone.

The throne room contained at least 33 carved panels showing the exploits of Sennacherib, whose reign lasted from 705 to 681 BCE.

“Sennacherib’s throne room was the largest room of the palace, 167 feet long,” Compton said.

British archaeologists carried out systematic excavations of the site as early as the mid-19th century, documenting their finds in detailed drawings. The most well-preserved slabs were moved to London and remain on display at the British Museum.

They include bas-reliefs from another room in the palace that depict Sennacherib’s destruction of the Judean city of Lachish, likely during the same campaign in 701 BCE in which he would lay siege to Jerusalem.

Sennacherib’s Annals record that military campaign — the Assyrian king’s third — in which his army swept through Phoenicia and down the Levantine coast, eventually attacking the inland kingdom of Judah, which was backed by Egypt, a major Assyrian rival.


Bini Landau - Ye Aksof (in honor of Tiferet Lapidot, the 14th)
Lyrics and music: Rabbi Aharon HaGadol of Karlin Arrangement and musical production: David Lipshitz. Bini Landau For listening on streaming services




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