Monday, February 02, 2026

02/02 Links Pt2: Bondi A minute-by-minute account of Australia’s worst terrorist attack; Anti-Jewish hate crimes up 182% in New York City in January; Avdija named NBA All-Star, a first for an Israeli

From Ian:

David Collier: The BBC Sides With the BDS Agenda
The Extremists Within the “Minor” NGO
Both the BBC’s legitimisation of the UNHRC, and the whitewashing of the SPSC were inexcusable. This leaves the article’s remaining credibility resting almost entirely on Uplift, the minor NGO which commissioned the legal report.

Uplift is not a neutral or detached actor either. A brief review of some of its personnel highlights serious concerns. Its Digital Content Manager, Oliver Goulden, also serves as a trustee of Take One Action, an organisation with a documented history of supporting BDS initiatives, including campaigning alongside Mick Napier’s group, the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Other figures associated with Uplift reinforce the same pattern. Lauren Macdonald, the group’s Lead Stop Rosebank Campaigner, maintains public timelines containing demonstrably inaccurate and demonising claims about Israel that are entirely unrelated to the Rosebank project. Meanwhile, Uplift’s Head of Strategic Communications, Tamasin Cave, previously led Spinwatch, a research group with a longstanding fixation on Zionism and lobbying, alongside the conspiracy theorist David Miller. Cave was a director of “Public Interest Investigations” the legal entity behind both Spinwatch and Powerbase, and her footprint is still visible in numerous documents focused on pro-Israeli lobby groups.

Eddy Quekett, Uplift’s Social Media Officer, has posted imagery containing the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free“. The image incorporated a “Friends of Al Aqsa” (FoA) Palestinian flag. Friends of al Aqsa is a hard-line Islamist organisation led by Ismail Patel, and opposed to many of the fundamental freedoms taken for granted in the West. FoA seeks Islamist control over Jerusalem. This post has nothing to do with climate issues. It was a straightforward call for the destruction of Israel.

At this point the final pillar collapses. This is not a collection of disinterested experts raising a narrow legal concern. It is a network of highly politicised climate activists with a clear and established record of engagement in anti-Zionist campaigning. Treating their claims as though they carry inherent national news value, without disclosing that background, materially misleads the audience.

The undeniable pattern at BBC News
British Jews have seen it all from the BBC:
Repeated attempts to rewrite Holocaust history.
The shifting of blame onto British Jews for the violence directed at them.
The sanitisation of Hamas operatives by presenting them as medical staff.
The production of a documentary that concealed the Hamas ties of its central figure.
The creation of misleading reports about Israeli military actions in Gaza.
The reframing of an errant Islamic Jihad rocket into an Israeli strike on a hospital.
The use of Iranian IRGC-backed figures as impartial media sources.
The presentation of children with underlying illnesses as starving victims of famine.
The creation of a flagship “BBC Verify” populated by hacks spreading false claims about Israel.

The situation is so hostile that the Jews left working in the BBC village have become targets of internal campaigns to smear them and force them out.

There is an undeniable pattern here. This is a one-way traffic pattern which demonises the Jewish state, acts as a mouthpiece for terrorist factions, invents stories, revises Holocaust history, and invariably places Jewish people as hostile actors who incite whatever violence befalls them.

Yet in some respects, this latest article is even more revealing than those earlier institutional failures.

Creating a BDS narrative
First, a non-story is elevated into national news. Then, institutional authority is imported through an unqualified reference to the UN. Finally, activist groups are presented without disclosing information that would materially affect how readers assess their claims.

The result is a familiar pattern: activist lawfare against Israel, repackaged through climate discourse and laundered through respectable-sounding institutions.

But this is taking place on the BBC website, not in some fringe student-led magazine.

The BBC will respond by claiming it has placed dissenting voices inside the article, but this is a false position. The BBC does not need to explicitly endorse boycotts or anti-Israel campaigns. It achieves the same effect by deciding which claims deserve oxygen, and by stripping away the context that would allow audiences to judge those claims critically.

What the BBC has done here is elevate the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign into a conversation for the day.

This is not journalism exposing power. It is journalism amplifying it – selectively, predictably, and at Israel’s expense.
Jewish groups warn of ‘agenda-driven’ anti-Israel programming at US universities
There is a “disturbing” pattern on U.S. college campuses of academic programming that prioritizes political, “agenda-driven” activism over scholarship, according to the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis and the American Jewish Medical Association.

In a joint statement issued on Monday, the organizations cited a January speaker series at Harvard Medical School focused on Gaza and an upcoming “Conference on the Jewish Left” at Boston University.

“When Boston University lends its name and resources to a slate of speakers who minimize the scope of antisemitism and spin the Oct. 7 massacre as a moral indictment of Israel and its supporters in the Jewish community, it suggests university support for rhetoric that targets the identity and safety of Jewish students,” the organizations stated.

Jewish student leaders at BU told CAMERA that they fear for their safety, concerns echoed by the campus Hillel chapter. A university working group formed after Oct. 7 found Jewish and Israeli students had been targeted by aggression and cited insufficient protections.

Last year, Douglas Hauer-Gilad, an adjunct professor, said he resigned from Boston University’s law school after facing hostility for being Israeli and opposing anti-Jewish rhetoric.

A member of BU Students for Israel stated that the conference reflects a broader trend on campus.

“After everything that has happened on campus this year, it’s hard not to see this conference as part of a pattern,” he said. “Jewish students are repeatedly told these events are ‘academic,’ even when the rhetoric involved mirrors the hostility we experience day to day.”
Bar-Ilan University to award Jonathan Sacks Prize to historian Deborah Lipstadt
Professor and Jewish historian Deborah Lipstadt, former U.S. envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism from 2022 to 2025, is set to receive Bar-Ilan University’s 2026 Jonathan Sacks Institute Prize for Outstanding Achievement as a Public Intellectual.

The award, established by the Gewurz family of Montreal in memory of Samuel Gewurz, honors figures whose work advances the ideas and moral vision of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, who died in 2020.

It comes with $32,500, which will be presented to Lipstadt at a Bar-Ilan ceremony in May, where the 78-year-old is slated to deliver a public lecture titled “Antisemitism: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.”

“Professor Lipstadt exemplifies the rare combination of intellectual rigor, moral courage, and public engagement that Rabbi Sacks so deeply admired,” said Jonathan Rynhold, professor and academic director of the Jonathan Sacks Institute. “Her work has shaped global discourse on antisemitism, truth and democratic resilience at a moment when these issues are more urgent than ever.”

Professor Arie Zaban, president of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, said that “Lipstadt’s work reminds us that standing up for truth requires courage, clarity and persistence.”

Lipstadt, a longtime Emory University professor, is known for her successful legal defense against British Holocaust-denier David Irving. In the announcement from the university, Bar-Ilan highlighted her books Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory and Antisemitism: Here and Now.

“I have been blessed to receive many honors in my life,” Lipstadt said. “But this one, to paraphrase the last chapter of the book of Proverbs, surpasses them all because of its connection with Bar-Ilan.”


A minute-by-minute account of Australia’s worst terrorist attack | Four Corners Documentary
Four Corners returns in 2026 with the first of a powerful two-part special on the Bondi massacre.

In this episode, reporter Mark Willacy brings the definitive account of what happened on that December day, as told by the people who were there.

Survivors of the attack speak in detail about the moments that changed their lives forever.

Families of those killed share their grief, their anger, and pay tribute to their loved ones.

Together, their testimony builds the most complete picture yet of how the attack unfolded.

The program also examines how Australia is living with the scars of the massacre, and how this tragedy has shattered the nation’s sense of security.

Light Over Darkness is built on firsthand accounts and verified documentary evidence.

It examines Australia’s deadliest terror attack and asks what must now be done to prevent it happening again.


Antisemitism was allowed to 'germinate and grow' under Labor: Scott Morrison
Former prime minister Scott Morrison discusses the Labor government’s failed response to the rise in antisemitism across Australia.

“A contributing factor, clearly, was how the antisemitism that was on display post October 7 was allowed to germinate, grow, metastasise and take a form that ended in the worst possible of scenarios,” Mr Morrison told Sky News host Chris Kenny.

“That’s what happened.

“So many other people were saying, ‘we need to call a halt to this, we need to call this out.’”


Giovanni Laulu: Alleged Adass Israel Synagogue arsonist says he’ll fight charges
The young man police allege was involved in firebombing the Adass Israel Synagogue has revealed he plans to fight the charges.

Giovanni Laulu, 21, returned before the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Monday morning for a bail review after he was released to live with his mother in November last year.

Outside court, Mr Laulu was asked if he intended to fight the charges he faced in court.

“Of course I will,” he responded.

In court, magistrate Leon Fluxman was told Mr Laulu had been meeting his bail obligations, including by attending counselling, and had found a job last week.

“I’m pleased to see things are going well on your bail. I’m glad you’ve managed to secure employment,” Mr Fluxman said, before adjourning the case until mid-April.

Mr Laulu was charged with three offences of arson, reckless conduct endangering life and vehicle theft in July last year, seven months after the Ripponlea synagogue, valued at $20m, was destroyed by fire.

A second man, Younes Ali Younes, 20, has been charged with the same offences, while a third man has been accused of vehicle theft in connection with the blaze.

Police allege Mr Laulu and Mr Ali Younes were among three masked men who smashed their way into the Adass Israel Synagogue in the early hours of December 6, 2024.

The building was allegedly set alight with about 100 litres of petrol, with two worshippers inside able to escape.

In August, ASIO director-general Mike Burgess alleged the fire was orchestrated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps through intermediaries in the “criminal world”.
How anti-Semitic vandal Mohommed Farhat's password brought him undone
The similarity between an anti-Semitic vandal’s phone password and the hateful slurs he spray-painted on cars and buildings casts doubt on whether he has reformed, a court has been told.

Mohommed Farhat, 21, spearheaded a 41-minute campaign of destruction through Woollahra, a heartland for Australia’s Jewish community, in the dead of the night on November 20, 2024.

Farhat and his accomplice Thomas Stojanovski, also 21, covered 10 cars in graffiti, burned two and vandalised four buildings in the eastern Sydney suburb.

“F*** Israel” and “PKK coming” - a reference to the terror-designated Kurdistan Workers’ Party - were among the slurs emblazoned across the cars and buildings.

Farhat was jailed in November for a maximum of one year and eight months after pleading guilty to 15 charges, including multiple counts of property damage.

During his appeal against the severity of his sentence on Friday, the NSW District Court was told the 21-year-old’s Apple password is “f***israel313”.

The crown prosecutor questioned whether it could be a coincidence that the passcode contained the same words spray-painted on property during the crime spree that caused more than $100,000 in damage.

“This casts serious doubt on the account that he’s reformed and strongly suggests he chose the words,” Judge Mark Williams summarised the crown position.

The numerals in the password are a nod to Farhat’s tattoo “313”, in which the one is a bullet.

He also bears a tattoo of a Hezbollah symbol, which the court has been told he got because he liked the design and didn’t know what it meant.

The 21-year-old claimed he didn’t know he was vilifying Jewish people and said he had been motivated by drugs and money to participate in the vandalism spree instead of prejudice.

He has since expressed a desire to remove the tattoos, changed his behaviour and demonstrated his remorse, his barrister Peter Lange SC said.

Farhat has low intellectual functioning and is easily influenced, he argued, so a jail term in the community would reduce his risk of reoffending by providing supervision and treatment.
Bankstown Nurses plead 'not guilty' after threatening to kill Israeli patients in viral 2025 video
Two Sydney nurses who threatened Israeli patients in a viral video last year pleaded not guilty in their arraignment on Monday.

Last February, Bankstown Hospital nurses Sarah Abu Lebdeh, 27, and Ahmad Rashad Nadir, 28, went viral online after they were recorded telling Israeli English teacher and social-media influencer Max Veifer they would harm Israeli patients.

“You have no idea how many Israeli s**t dogs have come to this hospital, and I sent them to hell,” Nadir told Veifer.

Abu Lebdeh told him: “I won’t treat them, I’ll kill them.”

The New South Wales Police Force’s antisemitism task force launched an investigation, and the two nurses left their jobs at NSW Health. They have been suspended for two years.

Nadir and Abu Lebdeh pleaded not guilty at Downing Center District Court on Monday when asked to respond to charges of using a carriage service to menace, harass, or offend and threaten violence to a group.

The trial is set for August 31.


BBC crisis goes beyond bias – it’s corporation cowardice
Holocaust education is quietly diluted, reframed as a generic lesson about “hate” rather than a specific warning about where antisemitism leads. October 7th is contextualised before it is acknowledged. Jewish pupils are told, implicitly or explicitly, that their grief is political, their fear exaggerated and their identity conditional.

This is not education, it is moral outsourcing and it mirrors exactly what we are seeing at the BBC. The same avoidance of specificity, the same fear of naming antisemitism plainly. The same instinct to placate the loudest activists rather than protect the most vulnerable minorities.

This is how cultural capture works. Not through coups, but through compliance. Not by force, but by exhaustion. Institutions slowly absorb the language and priorities of the most ideologically confident actors in the room, until dissent becomes career-limiting and silence becomes policy. Once that culture is embedded, training modules and diversity statements are irrelevant. You cannot PowerPoint or compulsory online teach your way out of cowardice.

The danger here is truly generational.

If broadcasters cannot say who the Holocaust was for and schools cannot teach why it matters, then memory itself becomes negotiable. History turns into a tool, not a teacher and young people grow up fluent in grievance but illiterate in responsibility.

This is why the crisis facing the BBC is not really about one song, one presenter, or one week of failures. It is about whether our institutions still understand their role as guardians, not amplifiers, as educators, not appeasers.

Reform, then, is not optional, it is long overdue and it must be led by people willing to accept discomfort as the price of leadership, in broadcasting, in education and in public life more broadly.

The alternative is already visible and while the threat may not be perceived as widespread, after all, as long as it’s “just the Jews complaining”, why disturb the status quo, the problem facing society more broadly is already clear.

We are watching the slow normalisation of a culture in which truth is trimmed to avoid backlash, minorities are protected only when convenient and institutions meant to steady us in moments of fracture instead mirror the chaos outside their walls.

That is not a healthy society, nor is it resilient and it is not a sustainable one.

Institutions do not collapse because they are challenged, they collapse because they refuse to lead. If those in authority lack the courage to confront uncomfortable truths, then drift becomes policy and decay becomes inevitable. All of which means that the responsibility lands on us.

History does not judge societies by how carefully they avoided offence, but by whether they had the courage to tell the truth when it mattered. The cost of failing to do so will be borne by our children, the generation that will inherit our silence.
BBC Arabic fails to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day for first time in five years
For the first time in at least five years, BBC Arabic did not mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

The BBC’s Arabic-language service has recognised HMD annually since at least 2021.

But last Tuesday, when the world marked 81 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, BBC Arabic failed to acknowledge the day, marking a significant break from the channel’s practice.

Previous Arabic-language reports on HMD have carried titles such as “The Holocaust or Jewish Holocaust: What do we know about it” and have featured interviews with Nazi hunters as well as Holocaust survivors.

But the JC has found dozens of comments underneath BBC Arabic’s posts that include Holocaust denial and antisemitism.

The corporation is expected to monitor comments on its social media channels, but several comments claiming the Shoah was a “lie”, another stating the Holocaust had been used to “blackmail the globe... to glorify the Zionist entity,” and a third from a user who said “I wish the war had continued” remain underneath posts about HMD from previous years.

Following the JC’s enquiries to the BBC, some of these comments were removed.

The corporation also confirmed that the Arabic-language channel had plans to report a story on the Holocaust Educational Trust – but this comes a week after HMD.

Media monitoring group the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera) criticised this year's omission.

A spokesperson said: “BBC Arabic's editorial decisions make clear that, whatever structural overhaul and sensitivity training the service is currently undertaking, its systemic failure in covering Jewish affairs is still a long way from being addressed.”

The BBC Arabic failure to report on HMD comes as the BBC faces wider criticism over its coverage of the Holocaust on its main English-language channels. Several broadcasts on HMD failed to state the fact that Jews were the primary target of the Holocaust.
Jews omitted from BBC London report on historic Battle of Cable Street
A BBC London News segment on the historic anti-fascist Battle of Cable Street failed to make any mention of the major role played by east London’s Jewish community.

It comes after the national broadcaster was forced to apologise for omitting the word ‘Jews’ in its Holocaust Memorial Day coverage and after a December 2025 episode of The Repair Shop failed to mention that the Kindertransport rescued Jewish children from Nazi persecution.

On 4 October 1936, the British Union of Fascists, led by Sir Oswald Mosley, attempted to march through the East End of London, in what was widely seen as a an attempt to intimidate or provoke the inhabitants of the area, which had a significant Jewish population at the time.

Subsequently, there were a series of clashes between the Metropolitan police, there to protect the BUF march, and thousands of communists, trade unionists, Irish dockers and Jewish demonstrators who took to the streets in a successful attempt to stop the march from proceeding through the area.

The confrontation has been memorialised in anti-Fascist history and has been at the centre of books, TV shows and plays – with a musical about Cable Street now opening for a third run at the Marylebone Theatre. However, in a two-minute report last week from the BBC about the musical, the corporation’s journalist described it only as being “about community under siege during some turbulent and violent days in London’s recent past” with no specific mention of Jews.

The words “Jews” and “Jewish” were also left out when the BBC reporter, Thomas Magill, interviewed the show’s Jewish director Adam Lenson, featuring him describing it only as “a new musical about a true event that happened in London’s East End in 1936” with a vague reference to the “communities” who “put aside their differences, came together and said ‘Not in our town’.”

Failing to mention the Jewish presence in blocking the march, the BBC reporter said: “Those communities that joined forces included the Irish, Dockers from the nearby Thames and others”.
Jonathan Sacerdoti: BBC omits the word 'Jews' from Holocaust Memorial day news scripts, and Cable Street report.
The BBC has once again faced criticism after failing to mention Jews in a segment about the Battle of Cable Street – one of the key moments in Anglo-Jewish history.

The two-minute report – which was aired on BBC London’s lunchtime news bulletin on Monday – highlighted the presence “the Irish and dockers”, but gave no mention to the central role that Jews played in events.

Throughout the broadcast, vague references were made to various “communities” which joined forces on the day.

They did the same for Holocaust Memorial Day.


Convicted terrorist council candidate said Muslims should not have Jewish friends
A convicted terrorist running to become a councillor in Birmingham told an interviewer last year that Muslims should not have Christians or Jews as friends – with Sharon Osbourne considering standing as a candidate against him.

Shahid Butt, was jailed in Yemen in 1999 for his part in a terror plot to attack targets including the local British consulate. He returned to Britain in 2003.

As reported by the Mail on Sunday, Butt was featured in a Youtube video in 2025 in which he said: “Allah says in the Koran do not take the Jews or Christians as your friends and protectors.” When questioned about this he said he was quoting the Koran, that he worked with local churches and that he was “not antisemitic as I believe Jews are my cousins”.

Butt vehemently opposed the Maccabi Tel Aviv match against Aston Villa which took place last year in Birmingham, urging “every local Muslim” to attend protests against the match but not to bring knives, guns or machetes, also saying that “you don’t need to hide your face – unless you’ve got a bit of a sensitive job or whatever and you’re worried about the repercussions or whatever.”

The 60-year old, who has previously worked as part of the Home Office Prevent scheme and sat on the West Midlands Anti-Terrorism Steering Committee, was announced as a candidate last week by Ahmed Yakoob, founder of the “Independent Candidate Alliance”. In 2024 Yakoob ran for election in Birmingham Ladywood, the constituency held by Shabana Mahmood, receiving 12,137 votes to her 15,558. Since then Mahmood has become the Home Secretary, while Yakoob is due to stand trial in 2027 over allegations of money laundering.
Met detective sergeant sacked over social media posts about Gaza
A Metropolitan Police detective sergeant has been sacked after sharing “overtly political” social media posts about the war in Gaza, including one comment deemed antisemitic.

In one post, Rebecca Collens, who was based in the Road and Transport Policing command, reshared an image of what appear to be victims labelled “Palestine 2024” alongside an image of victims from what appear to be a concentration camp labelled “Germany 1945″, under the caption “The world said never again and here we are again 79 years later”, Scotland Yard said.

Alongside the post she commented “a classic case of the abused becomes the abuser… no?”, a police misconduct panel heard.

The panel said that Ms Collens had accepted that the use of the word “abused” would refer to Jewish people rather than the State of Israel, which did not exist in 1945, and therefore the post fell within the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

The posts were collectively deemed “overtly political”, and the panel found they “demonstrated a lack of impartiality and presented a one-sided view of the Gaza conflict during a time of heightened public controversy” after the events of October 7 2023 which led to the war in Gaza.

The panel heard that Ms Collens shared the posts on a private Instagram account with more than 100 followers, until she was reported anonymously to the force’s Right Line whistleblowing service in May 2024.

On one occasion, she shared a post which stated: “Stop calling this a war. There is no parity of power. Israel is one of the most powerful, nuclear-armed militaries on earth, funded, equipped and backed unconditionally by the single most powerful, nuclear-armed military in the history of the world. This is genocide”, the Met said.
NFL Stars Fundraise for Islamic Charity Tied to Minnesota's Feeding Our Future Fraud Scandal
Human Development Fund, an upstart Islamic charity touted by the National Football League and various Muslim influencers, professes to provide "hot meals" to orphans in Gaza. But a Washington Free Beacon investigation found the group’s founders have an array of links to the Feeding Our Future fraud, in which more than 80 people conspired to steal $250 million from a federal program designed to give free meals to poor Minnesota children.

HDF founder and CEO Abdirahman Kariye is an imam at Dar Al-Farooq, a predominantly Somali mosque near Minneapolis that served as a food distribution site for Feeding Our Future. HDF director of fundraising events Khalid Omar is a director of Dar Al-Farooq.

In June 2021, at the height of the fraud, Omar and Kariye celebrated Aimee Bock, the Feeding Our Future founder and mastermind of the fraud scheme, at an award ceremony for her "Outstanding leadership to the Minnesota communities."

Omar, who emceed the event, touted the Feeding Our Future program and hailed Bock as a "furious fighter" for the initiative, according to video unearthed by Center of the American Experiment. Kariye touted Bock’s remarks at the event and accused Minnesota’s department of education of hindering the food distribution program that was central to the fraud. The celebration ended with a group of Somali women dancing around Bock and serenading her with chants of "Sweet Aimee."

HDF’s previously unreported links to Feeding Our Future fraudsters raise red flags, particularly as HDF emerges as one of the most prolific U.S. charities operating in Gaza. Founded by Kariye in 2023, HDF raised $33 million in its first full year of operations, according to tax filings. It’s now poised to receive a significant financial boost through the NFL’s "My Cause My Cleats" charity program. Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair, an NFL Man of the Year nominee, is raising money for HDF, as are Baltimore Ravens safety Sanoussi Kane and Buffalo Bills wide receiver Josh Palmer. HDF also has high-profile backing from the likes of Sami Hamdi, a popular Muslim influencer who said he felt "euphoria" after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, and Shaun King, who has referred to Hamas as "heroes." Kariye hosted two fundraisers with Hamdi and King in December 2024 at a cost of $15 a ticket.


Who Really Sets the Agenda at Georgetown University?
A new report by the Middle East Forum (MEF) reveals how Qatar has built extensive influence over Georgetown University through nearly two decades of funding, governance access, and cross-campus programming tied to Georgetown University in Qatar (GU‑Q), the university’s Doha campus created in partnership with the Qatar Foundation.

The report’s central claim is that the scale and structure of Qatari funding, paired with Qatar-linked roles inside Georgetown’s governance and academic ecosystem, create vulnerabilities that can shape hiring, research agendas, and teaching, particularly within Middle East–related programs. Georgetown has said it retains contractual control over hiring, curriculum, and admissions at GU‑Q, but MEF argues that financial dependence and institutional integration can still generate indirect pressure.

Nearly $1 Billion Over 20 Years
The report’s most prominent finding is financial. Citing U.S. Department of Education foreign gift and contract disclosures (Section 117), MEF estimates Georgetown received more than $971 million from Qatar across 76 contracts between 2005 and 2025. It calls the funding unusually large given GU‑Q’s reported size, 465 students (2024) and 49 scholars, and suggests some funds may support Georgetown’s Washington operations, not only the Doha campus.

MEF also highlights Georgetown’s description of GU‑Q’s financial model: tuition is retained by the Qatar Foundation, while Georgetown receives funding to cover salaries and operational costs, including services provided by the Washington campus such as IT, HR, and finance. The report asserts that this structure can increase reliance on a foreign funder while limiting tuition-based accountability typical of U.S. universities.

Qatar’s Ruling Family on Georgetown’s Board
Qatar’s role extends beyond money to governance. The report notes that Sheikh Abdulla bin Ali Al Thani, identified as a member of Qatar’s ruling family, is listed as serving on Georgetown’s Board of Directors. MEF contends this creates a risk of foreign visibility into, and potential influence over, strategic decision-making at a university that trains many students who enter diplomacy and government.

Endowed Chairs and Washington-Facing Funding
The report says Qatar-related money also touches the main campus through academic positions, scholarships, and programs. It cites Qatar Foundation–funded endowed chairs in the School of Foreign Service focused on Muslim societies, the history of Islam, and Indian politics, arguing endowed positions can steer long-term departmental priorities.

MEF also references a $2 million “Qatar Endowed Scholarship Fund” (described as a gift by the Qatari royal family) and notes Qatar’s embassy was inducted into Georgetown’s 1789 Society, which recognizes gifts of $1 million or more. According to the report, the embassy donation helped establish a Qatar post-doctoral fellowship at Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), which MEF says requires the fellow to travel to Qatar to deliver a public lecture.
NYU Offers Credit for Workshop Led by Lebanese Organization With Ties to Alleged Terror-Affiliated Groups
New York University’s prestigious Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies is offering graduate-level academic credit for a spring 2026 workshop led by Visualizing Palestine (VP), an organization that Jewish Onliner previously revealed may actually operate as a Lebanese organization aiming to influence American public opinion through disinformation.

From January through May 2026, VP will serve as the Kevorkian Center’s “Practitioner-In-Residence,” offering a course titled “Data Storytelling in Practice” to PhD consortium students across New York City universities. The workshop promises to teach students VP’s “approach to data literacy when researching and visualizing topics such as settler-colonialism, military occupation, and genocide.” Enrollment requires PhD consortium students to take the course for academic credit.

The partnership emerges just one year after Jewish Onliner’s investigative report documented that VP—despite holding American tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status—maintains deep operational and financial ties to Lebanon, Jordan, and broader Middle Eastern actors, raising potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Following the report’s release in February 2025, VP removed its staff directory from its website, an apparent attempt to obscure the organization’s international operational structure.

A “Western-Based” Organization With Middle Eastern Control
According to Jewish Onliner’s comprehensive investigative findings, VP presents itself as a North American nonprofit with offices in Toronto and Santa Barbara, California. However, documentation reveals a substantially different operational reality.

The organization’s parent entity, Visualizing Impact (VI),is registered in Canada as an NGO. In the US, the NGO Empowerment Works serves as VP’s fiscal sponsor, allowing it to receive donations and work within the United States.

VI employs staff in various locations throughout the Middle East, including Beirut, Amman, Ramallah, Cairo, and Dubai. A 2014 job posting under VI’s name listed job requirements including “ease of travel to countries in the Middle East” and “ability to travel to Palestine.” VP’s own strategic planning documents explicitly identify its target audience as “Western publics” while stating its accountability lies with the “Palestinian liberation movement”.

VP co-founders Ramzi Jaber and Joumana Al Jabri possess deep Middle Eastern ties. Jaber, a Palestinian originally from East Jerusalem, has publicly described the organization’s origins in a “famous house in Amman”.

Financial records reveal VP’s parent entity, Visualizing Impact, received over $200,000 from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations between 2015 and 2018—grants that explicitly listed a Beirut address for the organization. Additionally, VP is formally listed as part of the Global Network on the Question of Palestine, a network under the Arab Renaissance for Democracy & Development (ARDD), a Jordanian nonprofit with documented Middle Eastern patronage.


CBC fed Canadians a biased view of the Israel-Hamas war — and the data proves it
Public trust in media institutions does not erode all at once. It weakens gradually, through patterns that go unexamined and assumptions that go unchallenged — particularly when a public broadcaster is expected to serve a unifying role in a polarized society, as the CBC is evidently expected to do in Canada. It is in precisely this context that our recent independent study on the CBC’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war was produced.

At HR Canada Charitable Organization, in partnership with the U.K.-based data science firm Innohives, we conducted the first comprehensive, artificial-intelligence-enabled analysis of CBC’s online news coverage of the war, examining 2,789 articles published between Oct. 7, 2023, and June 7, 2025.

The results, detailed in our 100-page report, raise serious concerns about whether the CBC is fulfilling its statutory mandate of fairness, accuracy and balanced representation. An impartial public broadcaster should not consistently frame a conflict with a one-sided, decontextualized narrative. Yet that is exactly what we found.

What our analysis shows is not a subtle or debatable pattern, but a structural one. CBC headlines expressed sympathy toward Gaza nearly five times more often than toward Israel, while the articles themselves reflected a smaller, though still persistent, two-to-one imbalance — meaning the strongest skew appeared not in its reporting, but in how those reports are presented to readers.

Even more troubling is that after December 2023, Israeli civilians virtually disappeared from the narrative. Only a handful of direct quotations were allotted to telling their stories at all for the remainder of the war. This, at a time when over 100,000 Israelis had been displaced from their homes, the country was under sustained rocket fire and hostages were being held in tunnels while their families waited in anguish for news about their loved ones.

In the midst of these realities, the CBC made an editorial choice to leave these human stories almost completely untold. Meanwhile, in its coverage of domestic events such as protests and campus encampments, CBC consistently privileged the voices of anti-Zionist Jewish organizations that explicitly define themselves as independent of, and in opposition to, the mainstream Jewish community.

Most notably, CBC repeatedly platformed Independent Jewish Voices, an anti-Israel group that does not represent the majority of Canada’s Jewish community. This raises a fundamental question: why would a public broadcaster rely on a non-representative organization to speak for Canadian Jewry? The result is not diversity of perspective, but a systematic distortion of how Jewish public opinion is presented to Canadians.
‘Extreme’ anti-Zionists taking over Wikipedia, former US official says
Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman and CEO of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and a former assistant U.S. secretary of education for civil rights, is cited four times in Wikipedia’s entry on “weaponization of antisemitism” and five times in notes at the bottom of the page.

“While warning in 2010 against denying or minimizing antisemitism, attorney and academic Kenneth L. Marcus also cautioned against overuse of the ‘antisemitism card,’ paralleling concerns raised by Richard Thompson Ford with the broader misuse of ‘the race card,’” states the page on one of the internet’s most visited websites.

Marcus told JNS that Wikipedia reveals its bias by having a page on “weaponizing” Jew-hatred at all, and that the references to his thinking are taken out of context.

“The so-called ‘weaponization’ is really more of a smear against Jewish advocates and should be recognized in that way,” he said.

“They may think that by citing my work, they are providing some degree of balance, but the opposite is the case,” Marcus told JNS. “I have previously cautioned against either minimizing or exaggerating antisemitism, just as I have made the same caution about other forms of bias.”

The Wikipedia entry cites his work “somewhat out of context, as if it were support for the inappropriate charge of weaponization,” Marcus said.

The former education official has tried to refute the notion of weaponized charges of Jew-hatred.

“Advocates for the Jewish community, such as myself, are very aware of the dangers of exaggeration and have been clear about the need for objective assessments,” he said. “This should be seen as an indication that weaponization charges are, at best, exaggerated or distorted and, at worst, fabricated.”

The Wikipedia article states that some have compared charging Israel’s critics with Jew-hatred to “Soviet censorship, McCarthyism and rhetorical strategies against the South African anti-apartheid movement.”

One of the citations appended to that sentence is a 2024 article by the Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Marshall Ganz. The Brandeis Center filed a lawsuit against Harvard in May 2024, alleging that the school found Ganz responsible for a hostile environment against three Israeli students but didn’t address the situation.

“Ganz is hardly an appropriate authority on the subject matter in light of his own positions and in light of the fact that he has been found to have discriminated against Israeli students,” Marcus told JNS. “This is just another example of Wikipedians, who profess to provide an objective assessment, in fact relying to an excessive extent on questionable figures.”


Restricted Video Difficult to watch - but a very important point.
Hamas torturing and executing its own people a few months back. Did you see it on the BBC/Sky/CNN? No.

Did you see the Pro-Palestine mob sharing it? No.

But here’s the thing.

The same people who were SILENT on this are silent on the Islamic Republic doing the same torturing and executing of the Iranian people.

They same people who were SILENT on Jolani’s Islamist thugs doing the same to Druze.

The same people were also SILENT on Christians having the same done to them by Radical Islamic groups in Africa.

Why are they silent?

What’s the common denominator here? Who is doing the real oppressing? Radical Islamists.


Anti-Jewish hate crimes up 182% in New York City in January, NYPD says
The New York City Police Department reported what it said was its safest January for gun violence in recorded history but admitted, at the end of a press release, that antisemitic hate crimes were up 182% in the city in January 2026 compared to January 2025.

Overall, the NYPD hate crimes task force investigated 152% more incidents last month (58) compared to January 2025 (23), including 31 anti-Jewish hate crimes last month compared to 11 in January 2025.

The antisemitic hate crimes “accounted for more than half of all the hate crime incidents in January,” the NYPD stated. About 10% of New Yorkers are estimated to be Jewish.

Scott Richman, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s New York region, called the one-year jump “staggering.”

“From swastikas at a playground in Borough Park to a car ramming at Chabad headquarters in Crown Heights, the Jewish community in New York City is very much on edge,” Richman told JNS.

“In the face of this, we urge Mayor Mamdani to quickly name the next head of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism and to appoint a leader who will both represent this diverse Jewish community and confront all forms of antisemitism,” he said.

According to NYPD statistics, there were seven anti-Muslim incidents in January in the city, compared to zero in January 2025.

The 31 anti-Jewish incidents in January were much more than incidents that targeted or were related to Muslims (7), Asians (5), sexual orientation (5), religion (3), blacks (2), gender (2), age (1), Hispanics (1) and whites (1), per the NYPD.

Zohran Mamdani, who has called for the city to divest from Israel Bonds and has said he would have the Israeli prime minister arrested in the Big Apple, became mayor on Jan. 1.
Israel condemns vandalism at Paris Jewish elementary school
Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Monday slammed the unidentified perpetrators of vandalism at a Jewish school in Paris over the weekend.

“We strongly condemn the antisemitic acts of vandalism perpetrated against the Beth Loubavitch–Beth Hannah Jewish primary school in Paris’s 20th arrondissement,” the ministry said in a statement posted on X.

The incident resulted in minor damage to the building, but it prompted strong-worded condemnations both in Israel and France, where the targeting of Jewish schools recalls the murder of four Jews at the Otzar Hatorah school in Toulouse by an Islamist in 2012.

The Paris Prosecutor’s Office on Sunday told Le Figaro that several unidentified individuals had broken three of the school’s windows, damaged a security camera and removed a sign that identifies the school as a Jewish establishment on Saturday night. The sign was found at a nearby park. The perpetrators did not penetrate the building and are therefore not wanted for a break-in, according to Le Figaro.

Police have not made arrests in the immediate aftermath of the incident, which they were treating as a potential antisemitic hate crime, per the report. The police station of the 20th arrondissement is investigating “damage aggravated by two circumstances [in a group and on religious grounds],” the European Jewish Press reported.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo appeared to view the incident as antisemitic. “These antisemitic acts of hatred, which I condemn with utmost firmness, belong neither in our city nor in our republic,” the Radio J Jewish station on Monday quoted Hidalgo as saying.

In its X statement, the Israeli Foreign Ministry also wrote: “We trust the French authorities to take firm measures and swiftly bring the perpetrators to justice. Hatred must be combated with determination, before it turns into violence against human lives.”


Avdija named NBA All-Star, a first for an Israeli
Deni Avdija, a 25-year-old, Israeli-born forward for the Portland Trail Blazers, was named to the National Basketball Association 2026 All-Star roster as a reserve for the Western Conference on Sunday.

The 6-foot-8-inch Avdija, who wears No. 8, is averaging 25.5 points, 7.2 rebounds and 6.7 assists per game.

Avdija, who played for the Israeli national team in the 2023 International Basketball Federation World Cup Qualifiers and the European Basketball Championship tournament, was named most valuable player at the 2019 FIBA U-20 European Championships—a tournament at which he helped Israel win gold in 2018 and 2019.

His father won bronze as part of the Yugoslavia team in 1982 at the FIBA Basketball World Championship and played professionally in the 1980s and 1990s in Serbia and Israel, and his mother was a championship runner, according to his official NBA biography.

Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, congratulated Avdija, who he said is “the first Israeli ever voted into the NBA All-Star game.” (The game will be held on Feb. 15 in Los Angeles.)

“Leading the Portland Trail Blazers as one of the NBA’s rising stars, Deni continues to make history,” the ambassador stated. “We’re excited to watch your career grow and will be cheering you on every step of the way.”


UJA-Federation of New York plans art installation for hostage tags, pins
UJA-Federation of New York announces a new public art initiative collecting hostage pins and tags for a permanent installation commemorating the New York Jewish community’s advocacy to bring Israeli hostages home.

The project, in partnership with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, follows the return of Ran Gvili, the last remaining hostage held in the Gaza Strip. In response, UJA issued a call to the community to donate the “hostage tags and pins worn by so many since Oct. 7 that will be used to create a public art installation.”

“You’ve worn it close to your heart. Now, let it tell the story,” it stated.

“For more than two years, these tags and pins represented our community’s anguish, hope and unwavering commitment to bringing every hostage home,” said Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation of New York.

He added that “by creating a permanent public artwork, we are preserving a lasting testament to the power of community, the strength of our advocacy and recognizing the resilience of hostages who have returned home.”

Individuals can drop off hostage tags and pins at more than 30 partner collection sites across Manhattan, Long Island and Westchester, a list that includes schools, synagogues and community centers. For mailing tags and pins, a P.O. Box is also listed.
2,000-year-old Pilgrimage Road to Temple Mount opens to public after years of digging
For Michael Ganeles and his wife, visiting the City of David in Jerusalem was a must when they took their three children to Israel for the first time from West Hempstead, New York, to celebrate their middle daughter’s bat mitzvah.

When the family learned that the site known as the “Pilgrims’ Path” or “Pilgrimage Road,” a roughly 2,000-year-old stepped street that led up to the Temple Mount from the southern part of the city, would open to the public during their stay, they wanted to be part of it.

“We were looking into the City of David, and when we saw they were offering a first tour [of the Pilgrimage Road] we told ourselves that we had to do it,” Ganeles told The Times of Israel last month. “My kids kept on asking when we are getting to see the street.”

On January 20, the Ganeles family was among a group of roughly 30 people to take an inaugural walk up the road. Starting from an area where the archaeologists believe the ancient Siloam pool stood at the entrance of the ancient city, in what is today the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, the largely subterranean road runs underneath modern infrastructure for several hundred meters to the Jerusalem Archaeological Garden adjacent to the Western Wall.

Occupying a slope just to the south of the Old City, the predominantly Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan sits on what archaeologists understand to be the most ancient part of the 3,000-year-old city, much of which is today part of the City of David archaeological park. Over the years, excavations across different areas of the site have uncovered extraordinary finds spanning the history of Jerusalem, including the First Temple Period (1000-586 BCE), when a significant portion of the biblical narratives took place, and the Second Temple Period, which lasted until 70 CE.

The Pilgrimage Road, under excavation for some 20 years by archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority, is believed to have been built in the first years of the common era by either King Herod or Governor Pontius Pilate as the leading artery through which visitors ascended to the Temple from the south. The 2,000-year-old Pilgrimage Road leading from the City of David to the Western Wall in Jerusalem opens to the public on January 20, 2026. (Rossella Tercatin/Times of Israel)

“This is one of the most magnificent archaeological discoveries in Jerusalem in the last decades,” Amit Re’em, IAA chief archaeologist for the Jerusalem District, told The Times of Israel via telephone ahead of the tour. “For the first time, you can see this direct link between the Siloam Pool and the Temple Mount, and the street was sealed under the modern city for thousands of years.”
The Pilgrimage Road: Complete Journey from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple





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