Saturday, May 09, 2026

05/08 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The anti-Zionist contagion; The ugly truth about the cult of Palestinianism; The success of the Greens is another kick in the teeth for Britain’s Jews

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The anti-Zionist contagion
British Jews are under increasingly aggressive siege from abuse, intimidation, discrimination, arson attacks on their institutions, street violence and terrorism that left two Jews dead in a synagogue on Yom Kippur.

The Golders Green stabbings last week provoked a huge outpouring of revulsion and concern. There was a fusillade of bromides about “no place for antisemitism in Britain” from the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, and other Labour Party politicians.

The media suddenly started publishing accounts by deeply distressed British Jews about the state of fear in which they were being forced to live. Commentators produced outraged and horrified diatribes against a society that was forcing its Jews to consider emigrating.

Yet some of those voices had previously produced outraged and horrified diatribes against the State of Israel, recycling defamatory falsehoods about the behavior of the Israel Defense Forces in the Gaza Strip.

This discrepancy alone should have sounded a warning that, for all the public breast-beating, the real point was still being lost.

This is because attacks on Jews are still deemed to be in a separate category from attacks on Israel or Zionism. The assumption is that attacks on Jews are very bad indeed because they are against people, but attacks on Israel or Zionism are absolutely fine because they are merely against a country or an ideology.

The distinction is false, and itself helps fuel the hatred of both Israel and Jews.

The point was illustrated this week in Manhattan. At Park East Synagogue on New York City’s Upper East Side, where an event marketing Israeli real estate was taking place, hundreds of masked Islamists and their supporters chanted from behind a police barricade: “We don’t want two states. We want ’48!”

The mob, which flew a Hezbollah flag, was spearheaded by a branch of Al-Awda, which is linked to Samidoun, a U.S.-designated terror organization.

The police thankfully prevented a repeat of what happened last November at Park East, when anti-Israel demonstrators blocked people from entering and exiting the synagogue. That intimidation helped motivate city legislators to tell the police to establish a protest-free “buffer zone” around houses of worship.

The city’s Islamist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is ruthlessly exploiting the false distinction between attacking Israel and attacking Jews.

“There is no tolerance for hatred of Jewish New Yorkers,” he said about the Park East demonstration. Yet at the same time, he registered his opposition to the synagogue event that was promoting the sale of land “in occupied West Bank in settlements that are a violation of international law.”

Condemning Jew-hatred while simultaneously inciting it through incendiary distortions is the mind-twisting stock in trade of the anti-Israel left.

In Britain, Starmer’s government is now talking about banning the “hate marches” that have taken place almost every week since the Hamas-led atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The belated realization is beginning to dawn that the chanting on these marches for the murder of Jews may help cause actual attacks on Jews.

Despite this, Starmer and many others are still failing to join the necessary dots. The rampant Jew-hatred that has so shocked them is the result of something that they won’t acknowledge.
Brendan O'Neill: The ugly truth about the cult of Palestinianism
That’s what this case has really revealed – the lethal narcissism of the keffiyeh classes. This is a class of people so drunk on moral vanity, so convinced of their own saintedness, that they seem to think anything is justified in the name of ‘the cause’. That cause being to advertise to the world their bloated vision of themselves as holy crusaders against the wickedest state in existence. Indeed, one of the activists told the jury, ‘with absolute certainty’, that breaking into the Elbit base ‘is the best thing I have ever done’. You sad bastard. ‘There is a good chance’, they said, that ‘innocent lives were saved’ as a result of ‘our actions that night’. This is a level of self-delusion that borders on the pathological. Lost in a cocoon of sanctimonious fantasy, they really believe that breaking a computer in Bristol will save a life in Gaza.

This is the modus operandi of Palestine Action – it executes dumb stunts not to impact world affairs but to assert the cultural supremacy of the credentialled haters of Israel here at home. It is moral hubris and class arrogance masquerading as ‘anti-war’. Sometimes it crosses the line into something darker, like when Palestine Action smashed up a Jewish-owned business in Stamford Hill in London. This feels ‘very, very scary now’, said local Jews amid the shattered glass of that woke mini-Kristallnacht. Who could have guessed that the bourgeois left’s division of the world into ‘the anointed’ who righteously hate the Jewish State, and ‘the demonic’ who support it, would prove so catastrophic for the liberty and dignity of Britain’s Jews? All of us. That’s who.

It feels like this has been a mask-slipping week for the cult of Palestinianism. More people can surely see the sectarian malice that lurks behind that veil of pacifism. A keffiyeh mob smashing a woman’s back. Rancid anti-Semites who call Jews ‘cockroaches’ stinking up the Green Party of England and Wales. Another gaggle of sanctimonious sea-farers setting off for Gaza, even though there’s no famine there, while in South Sudan nearly eight million face ‘acute hunger’. The stabbing of two Jews in Golders Green glossed over by supposed ‘anti-fascists’, who seem more interested in their own right to chant ‘Globalise the intifada’ than in Jews’ right to live in peace. Just think about that: mere days after violence against Jews, they were demanding the right to agitate for more violence against Jews.

Some of us have known for some time that Palestinianism is bigotry in a keffiyeh, the mask Jew hatred wears in the 21st century. We’ve seen this bourgeois army and its Islamist chums engage in the most vile demonisation of the world’s only Jewish nation, and of all who support it, which includes most of the world’s Jews. Are others now clocking this truth? No, anti-Zionism and the winds of hate it has unleashed are not going away. They are far too entrenched in the cultural establishment. But a reckoning might be brewing. Let us hope so.
Seth Mandel: Anti-Zionists Are Canceling R.F. Kuang for Writing the Word ‘Israel’
Writers are taught the value of clarity, so the novelist R.F. Kuang should already know precisely how to extricate herself and her fans from the awkward situation in which they find themselves.

Kuang, the author of the celebrated novel Yellowface and others, has a new book in the works. A page of it was leaked, and now Kuang faces a serious allegation: that she is giving credence to the idea that Israeli people exist.

Kuang’s novel, set for a September release, includes a page with an Israeli character, reports the Times of Israel: “The musician, a successful pianist whose performance ignites a near-religious fervor for a character in the story, is not named, and the text identifies him as ‘a dour-faced man who did not so much as crack a smile as we applauded.’”

Ah, so maybe he’s a bad Israeli! Kuang’s fans are taking this theory under consideration. Perhaps, it has been suggested online, Kuang is offering a sly critique of colonialists by suggesting that all Israelis are bad people. Obviously not Arab-Israelis. Just the you-know-whos.

But this, too, must be rejected. As the article notes, the negative portrayal of Jewish Israelis is still a woke infraction: “Casey McQuiston, the author of the 2019 romance novel ‘Red, White, and Royal Blue,’ initially included a scene where the U.S. president jokes that an ambassador ‘said something idiotic about Israel, and now I have to call Netanyahu and personally apologize.’ In 2021, McQuiston said they would remove the reference to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in future printings of the book.”

It is at times hard to believe these people are real. But there are enough of them for an author to bowdlerize her own book because it referenced an Israeli person engaged in the crime of existing.

Not everyone thinks Kuang deserves banishment from the cloud kingdom of BookTok. The piece quotes a Threads user who wrote: “The people canceling a preorder over [a] single mention of an Israeli pianist being booked at a concert hall in R.F. Kuang’s new book lack so much f–king nuance. There’s literally no mention of Zionism yet y’all can’t seem to differentiate.”

Now that you mention it, I have noticed a distinct lack of nuance when it comes to differentiating between Zionists and the “good Jews.” As protesters wave Hezbollah flags, yell “we support Hamas,” and call Jews at a synagogue “pedophiles,” I worry about the lack of nuance, too.


VOICE OF THE JEWISH NEWS: Stand together with dignity this Sunday as we face down extremists
This Sunday, thousands of members of our community, alongside allies from wider society, are expected to come together in front of Downing Street. Those present will participate in a demonstration against the rising tide of antisemitism which threatens to swamp this country.

After the horrors of the terror atrocities in Heaton Park and Sydney last year have come a succession of attacks on our community in the past few months. With each appalling incident – from the firebombings of the Hatzola ambulances to last week’s stabbings in Golders Green – there has been both profound shock and, more troubling still, a creeping sense of inevitability.

Alongside the violence has come an extraordinary normalisation of antisemitism in public life. Across the country, political candidates and activists now openly trade in conspiracies, slanders and rhetoric that, not long ago, would have ended careers in disgrace. Instead, too often, they are indulged, excused or simply ignored.

In short, Britain risks drifting into a climate in which hostility towards Jews is no longer treated as an aberration but as background noise: ever-present, tolerated and increasingly unremarkable.

It is understandable that British Jews are angry. For a long time, many of us have felt ignored when we have described how we are under attack. We have been targeted while travelling, or in our workplaces. We have been targeted when seeking medical treatment, or while in school or university.

We have been targeted when seeking to perform at venues, or have been frozen out under the guise of “security concerns”. Even now, in the wake of a concerted campaign of terror against our community, there are high profile people who have sought to equivocate, downplay, and gaslight the general public regarding the threat we specifically face.
Prominent British Muslims call for ‘robust challenging of antisemitism’ in their community
A group of prominent British Muslims have published an open letter calling on Muslim communal and religious leadership “to be more robust in challenging antisemitism whenever and wherever it appears in our communities”.

The letter, spearheaded by Sara Khan, the former government counter-extremism commissioner and published in The Times today, calls for Muslim lay and spiritual leaders “to openly support those Muslims who are working to strengthen Jewish engagement but find themselves intimidated by other Muslims who are hostile to such important work. To demonstrate how Islam’s rich tradition encourages dialogue and bridge-building, as opposed to bridge-burning advocated by those who despise Jews.”

Other signatories include Dr Shiraz Maher, leader the international centre for the study of radicalisation at King’s College London, Fiyaz Mughal, founder of Muslims Against Antisemitism and Tell Mama, Islamic scholar and theologian Sheikh Dr Usama Hasan, and chaplain Imam Asim Hafiz.

“We as British Muslims hear you, the letter begins. “Antisemitism in the UK has worsened dramatically since October 7, 2023. On one side, the drumbeat has been raucous and relentless; on the other, the response has been weak and underwhelming. This cannot go on.”

It goes on to describe how “We have watched with alarm how legitimate protest has been used by some to normalise slogans, symbols and rhetoric that glorify violence. Sometimes it is explicit but more often is messaged through a series of subtle codes: a refusal to condemn; an equivocation or equivalence; triangle hand-signs; gliding parachutes and endless placards with antisemitic imagery and tropes.

“This is unacceptable and inexcusable — as it would be with any other form of racism or bigotry. This includes assigning collective responsibility of Jews for the actions of the Israeli government.”

It goes on to describe some of the attacks the Jewish community has faced, including the Heaton Park terror attack last year, as well as recent firebombings and direct attacks on Jews.

“The scale and intensity of attacks against the British Jewish community is horrifying”, the letter says. “But so is the silence and lack of condemnation. After the shocking murder of George Floyd in the US, widespread protests and solidary demonstrations occurred across our own country. Hundreds of thousands participated in more than 260 towns and cities. Yet when our own fellow citizens, colleagues and friends are attacked, murdered and intimidated, no such solidarity is offered. This only adds to the anxiety and fear of our Jewish neighbours.

“No other community endures the indignity of private security outside almost all of its communal buildings, places of worship or, perhaps most appallingly, schools. It is unconscionable and intolerable. These attacks on Jews also undermine our collective social values and the contract which underwrites our society. Indeed, the Jewish experience provides a great example for our own community of successful integration: loyal, committed, but also distinct.”
Pro-Palestine sectarians are poisoning democracy
On Thursday, England goes to the polls for the local elections. In theory, this is the most prosaic form of democracy we have. A chance to vote on the administration of bin collections, pothole fixing, planning applications and council taxes.

Councils are not meant to function as a stage for sectarian grievance or foreign-policy cosplay. Yet, across a growing number of English councils, that is what local politics is becoming. Over the past month, I have spent many hours analysing candidates whose political pitch revolves not around their ward, but around Gaza and the politics of the wider Muslim world.

Some of these ‘pro-Palestine’ candidates should be nowhere near public office. Amu Gib, who is standing as an independent in Islington, was allegedly part of the ton last year, in which Palestine Action activists are alleged to have caused £7million damage. Shahid Butt, standing as an independent candidate in Birmingham, was convicted in Yemen in 1999 over a plot to bomb the British consulate, an Anglican church and a hotel. An independent in Bradford, Sharat Hussain, has described Jews as ‘dirty paedo foreskin-eating pigs’.

It is hardly unreasonable to ask what this says about the calibre of people now being drawn into politics by their loathing of Israel. Local-election campaigns are becoming a vehicle for imported rage and council chambers are imagined not as a place to govern a borough, but as a place to perform allegiance to a foreign cause.

My recent report for the Henry Jackson Society sought to measure this phenomenon rather than merely gawp at it. It used ‘Muslim sectarian’ not as a label for Muslim candidates, but as an operational category for candidates whose public political appeal is repeatedly structured around Muslim communal grievance, Muslim representation or transnational Muslim causes.

On that definition, 66 out of 1,902 wards in the 2024 English local elections elected at least one Muslim sectarian candidate. The strongest predictors of a ward electing at least one Muslim sectarian candidate are higher voter turnout, a larger proportion of voters under 30, and a larger proportion of Muslims.
In UK local elections, anti-immigrant Reform soars; anti-Israel Greens rise, win 2 mayoralties
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer insisted Friday that he will not resign after bruising elections that saw his governing Labour Party suffer big losses, with major gains for the anti-immigrant Reform UK, and the far-left, anti-Israel Green Party winning its first directly elected mayoralty.

Both Reform and the Greens face accusations of antisemitism and bigotry at a time when Jews in the UK are under increasing threat.

The local and regional elections are widely seen as an unofficial referendum on Starmer, whose popularity has plummeted since he led Labour to power less than two years ago.

Early results underscored the fracturing of Britain’s traditional two-party system, with the once-dominant Labour and Conservative parties losing votes not only to Reform, but to the left-wing Green Party at the other end of the political spectrum, and to nationalists in Scotland and Wales. The centrist Liberal Democrats made some gains.

The main beneficiary was the populist Reform UK party of Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, which gained more than 400 council seats in England, and could form the main opposition in Scotland and Wales to the pro-independence Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru in results later on Friday.

Across the UK, Labour lost votes to Reform UK on its right, and also to the Green Party, whose popularity has risen under self-described “eco populist” leader Zack Polanski.


Jake Wallis Simons: The success of the Greens is another kick in the teeth for Britain’s Jews
Well, thanks for that. One week on from the stabbing attack in Golders Green, thousands and thousands of Britons have cast their votes for one of the most antisemitic parties in the West.

True, the response by Zack Polanski, the deplorable leader of the Greens, dented his polling performance a little. After he shared his outrage that the police had booted the knifeman in the head to force him to drop the blade, an apology did little to insulate him from public disgust.

In the end, however, it made little difference. The results are still coming in, but although it is Reform’s day overall, the Greens are enjoying big wins in places like Reading, Plymouth, Oxford, Chorley, Salford and numerous other places across the country.

What are Jews to make of all this? After the atrocities in Golders Green, there was the usual wave of condemnation from the prime minister downwards. People queued up to express their sympathies, even – or especially – those who had been fanning the flames in the first place.

As usual, however, nothing changed. Not only did the government fail to move swiftly to suppress the hate marches, ban the Muslim Brotherhood, fast-track the proscription of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and clamp down on extremism in mosques, but the relentless hatred of Israel continued unabated, from the mainstream media downwards.

They just love it, don’t they? And in this prevailing culture of Niceism, the nicer you are, the deeper your hatred for the Jews and their national home. What are we to make of the fact that, as YouGov polling has shown, if there were a general election tomorrow in which only women under 50 participated, the Greens would come first with a stonking majority? That’s before you even count Muslim voters.

In 2024, Pouria Zeraati, an Iranian dissident journalist, was stabbed in Wimbledon by goons hired by the regime in Tehran. Where does he live now? Why, Israel, of course, a place where he could actually be safe. Is there a lesson in that for the rest of us?

Increasingly, that seems to be the case. In a poll for Jewish News, a plurality of voters, 40 per cent, said that Britain would be neither better nor worse off if Jews left the country because of antisemitism while another 24 per cent said they didn’t know. The public doesn’t seem to care very much about our community. Despite the best efforts of our small but important band of doughty and valued non-Jewish allies, the majority is too busy watching Netflix, and the ones with particularly strong feelings about Jews tend to, shall we say, vote Green.


Reform UK face questions after ‘Holocaust is a hoax’ candidate elected
A Reform UK candidate who described the Holocaust as a “hoax” and “propaganda” has won a council seat in Merseyside, raising serious questions as to whether the party, which previously said it was “looking into the allegations”, would be expelling him.

Jay Leslie Cooper, who won a seat in the Bootle West ward of Sefton council, was previously revealed by the Liverpool Echo to have said on Facebook last year about Adolf Hitler that “I don’t agree with him murdering innocent people. But the Hallocaust [sic] is a hoax. There wasn’t [sic] even 6 million Jews in Europe at the time. Propaganda.”

Previously Cooper shared video content on social media promoting conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attack, as well as describing the July 2024 Southport terror attack as “three young girls in Southport slaughtered by the hands of Labour.”

Two weeks ago the Echo approached Reform UK for comment, and was told that the party was “looking into the allegations”. At the time, representatives from Labour told the Liverpool paper that “It’s an insult to the people of Sefton that Farage and Reform put people like this forward to stand in the first place and a total dereliction of duty that he hasn’t condemned them nor pulled his support from them.

“These extreme council candidates pose a real risk to communities like Sefton.”
Walk-Ins Welcome with Bridget Phetasy: Why the Word "Antisemitism" No Longer Works | Adam Louis-Klein - Walk-Ins Welcome 389
Bridget Phetasy sits down with Adam Louis-Klein, anthropologist and founder of the Movement Against Antizionism (MAAZ), to examine why the word "antisemitism" has stopped working — and what language we actually need to name and confront the Israel hatred spreading across campuses, media, and institutions. Klein traces antizionism from its roots in Nazi and Soviet propaganda through its capture of Western academia, explains how it functions as a libel machine resistant to any counterevidence, and lays out why defeating it — not just defending Israel — is the only path to peace. Bridget brings her own experience of being labeled a Zionist, the collapse of trust in institutions, and what ordinary people can actually do.


Tikvah Podcast: Kassy Akiva on Conversion after October 7
Every year on Shavuot, many Jews have the custom of reading the book of Ruth. The holiday commemorates the giving of the Torah at Sinai—the moment when the Jewish people gathered at the foot of the mountain and declared, "we will do and we will listen." The rabbis paired Sinai with Ruth for a reason. Sinai is the national conversion story, in which the whole people, swept up in thunder and fire, accept the covenant. Ruth is a more intimate counterpart: a tale of one woman, at the lowest possible moment, with every worldly reason to return to the clan of her birth, who decides instead to join the same covenant. "Your people shall be my people," she says to Naomi, "and your God shall be my God." Ruth was not drawn toward the Jewish people at their moment of triumph but in her and her chosen family's hour of despair.

That tension, between being drawn to Judaism and being pushed toward it, between choosing a people and being chosen, is at the heart of today's conversation with the Daily Wire reporter and video journalist Kassy Akiva, who converted to Judaism in April 2023. In an essay in the October 2024 issue of Commentary—written while she was a Tikvah Krauthammer fellow—Akiva reflected on the long road that brought her to Judaism: the hate mail, the death threats, the stalker who went to federal prison, the years of traveling to Israel before she was Jewish, the beit din, the seminary in Jerusalem, the mikveh. The essay, titled "Anti-Semitism Helped Make Me a Jew," was composed in the immediate aftermath of October 7, not long after a visit to the Gaza border. The intensity of that moment was bound up with her conversion.

We are now a few years further on. The vicious anti-Israel activism that followed in the wake of Hamas's attack on southern Israel has not dissappeared, but it has, for many, settled into something less acute. In that context, Mosaic's editor Jonathan Siliver has invited Akiva to return to that essay and its argument, and to discuss whether anti-Semitism was the engine of her Jewish life or merely the road sign that pointed her toward it, what ordinary Jewish life looks like now that the adrenaline of that first year has either deepened or faded, and what she makes of the convert's particular vantage point—as someone who, only a few months into being a Jew, was asked by people who had been Jewish their whole lives how to handle the anti-Semitism she had already been forced to learn how to carry.


Ask Haviv Anything: 113: Will dumping Israel backfire on the Democrats? A conversation with Hussein Mansour
The Democratic Party is choosing party unity on Israel by ceding ground almost entirely to the anti-Israel wing. Hussein Mansour returns to the podcast to break down how this retreat of the Democratic center mirrors the DEI takeover a decade ago and other historic leftist collapses in history to a more radical wing. His analysis suggests that the shift is irreversible, that centrist Democrats will soon find themselves conceding more, and that this could have very bad consequences for the party going forward. From Fanon to Hasan Piker, inter-elite power struggles to the future of American power projection — this is a must-listen warning about the high cost of feeding the tiger you hope to ride.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Hussein Abubakar Mansour
03:38 The Democratic Party's Shift on Israel
08:19 Historical Analogies: Lessons from the Past
15:56 The Consequences of Concessions
23:17 The Broader Implications for U.S. Foreign Policy
27:23 Taxpayer Money and Foreign Policy
27:43 The Shift in Democratic Ideology
28:43 Inter-Elite Power Struggles
29:52 The Rise of Anti-Zionism
30:47 Competition for Ideological Dominance
32:37 The Role of Academia in Ideological Shifts
34:59 The New Ideological Elite
35:50 The Future of the Democratic Party
36:49 The Irreversibility of Change
38:54 Cultural and Ideological Battles
41:55 The American-Israeli Relationship
44:52 The Future of U.S. Foreign Policy
46:44 Israel's Strategic Importance
49:50 The Global Implications of U.S. Policy


Here I Am With Shai Davidai: The News Is Not Your Friend | Emmy-Nominated Journalist Jacki Karsh
In this episode of Here I Am with Shai Davidai, Shai sits down with Emmy-nominated journalist and Karsh Journalism Fellowship founder Jacki Karsh for a wide-ranging conversation about media, misinformation, and Jewish identity in a post–October 7 world. Karsh shares how moving from New York to Los Angeles reshaped her Jewish life, why she believes social media is built to drive engagement rather than truth, and what it means to be “facts-first” when public discourse is increasingly driven by binaries.

They discuss the difference between misinformation and disinformation, the pressures that lead major outlets to report before verifying, and how narratives about Jews and Israel often get flattened into simplistic “good vs. bad” storytelling. Karsh explains why she launched the Karsh Journalism Fellowship: to equip journalists (Jewish and non-Jewish) with deeper context and better tools to report on Jewish life, antisemitism, and Israel with accuracy, nuance, and fairness.


Aaron Machbitz: The Truth About JD Vance, Theo Von & Tucker Carlson's 'Anti-American' Views
In this episode, Jake and I explore a wide range of topics including fatherhood, political commentary, media personalities, misinformation, internet culture, and the growing influence of social media algorithms on modern society. We analyze figures like JD Vance, Theo Von, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Piers Morgan while discussing how online platforms, clickbait media, and outrage-driven content are shaping public discourse and changing the way people think.

This conversation dives deep into the attention economy, the psychology behind algorithms, modern masculinity, identity politics, authenticity online, and why social media may be having a more dangerous impact on society than most people realize.

We also discuss:
• The joys and struggles of fatherhood
• Political polarization and media manipulation
• The rise of clickbait culture
• The economics of misinformation
• How algorithms reward outrage and division
• Why authenticity matters in content creation
• Young men feeling disconnected from society
• Sports, culture, and identity politics
• The future of media and public trust


Democratic Plastic Surgeon Running for Congress Refuses To Denounce 'Blind Sheikh' Terror Plotter, His Ex-Mentor: Hamawy Calls Sheikh 'Leader of the Community'
A Democrat now making a strong run for a New Jersey congressional seat pointedly refused to condemn his late mentor—the notorious, terror-plotting "Blind Sheikh"—and claimed the sheikh was just a gentle old man when local media confronted the candidate on Thursday.

Adam Hamawy, now a plastic surgeon in Princeton, dismissed questions about Omar Abdel-Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheikh who played a key role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, calling Abdel-Rahman "a blind old man" and a "well-known person in the community" who only talked about "innocuous things."

"He was a leader of the community that talks about how to pray, how to wash, how to practice as a normal Muslim. … He wasn't preaching death and destruction all the time," Hamawy said.

When a reporter pressed about how "charismatic" the sheikh must have been to get Hamawy to follow him, the surgeon added, "Not just me, the entire community. He was an old man that was disabled and … people volunteered. It was the entire community."

The sheikh was 54 in 1993.

When another reporter asked about whether Hamawy would condemn the sheikh—or the concept of "jihad"—Hamawy laughed.

"Any extremism [of] any kind is bad," he said, referring to his service as a military doctor. "I'm against all war and all violence."

He refused to specifically condemn the sheikh or Islamic jihad, instead saying, "I condemn all extremism and all violence of any kind."

At one point a Hamawy handler tried to shut down the terrorism talk—but the surgeon was in a chatty mood.

"As a Muslim they're always going to find something to attack," Hamawy said. "I'm used to this all my life."


Bernie Sanders-aligned Our Revolution backs Bores in race for Nadler seat
A left-wing group aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and fiercely critical of Israel has backed Assemblymember Alex Bores in the race to succeed Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in a heavily Jewish Manhattan district.

Our Revolution, an advocacy group spun off Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, endorsed Bores on Wednesday, news first reported by Politico and subsequently shared on both Bores’ and Our Revolution’s social media pages. Following Sanders, Our Revolution has aligned with student anti-Israel protesters and advocated against military aid to the Jewish state.

The group’s endorsement of Bores emphasized his signature issue: regulating artificial intelligence.

“While billionaire-backed tech interests spend millions trying to block oversight and accountability, Alex is actually taking them on,” Our Revolution wrote on X. “He’s leading the fight for some of the strongest AI regulations in the country and is running on taking on corporate power, political corruption, and concentrated wealth — not empty personality politics.”

AI firms have poured massive sums into opposing Bores, a former employee of Palantir whose wife works in the AI division of Microsoft.

Nadler’s district is heavily Democratic and liberal, but many of its synagogues and social organizations have strong ties to Israel, and particularly to Labor Zionism. Far-left activist Cameron Kasky, who has put criticism of Israel at the center of his online persona, dropped out of the race for the congressional seat after failing to gain traction.

As a result, a left-wing lane in the race has opened up, and observers suggested Bores has sought to shift into it. However, influencer and Kennedy heir Jack Schlossberg — who has led in most polls to date — has taken a harder line on Israel than Bores.


ITV pulls Nadia Sawalha from Loose Women after antisemitism row
Nadia Sawalha and husband Mark Adderley during a livestream broadcast on their YouTube channel.

Loose Women panellist Nadia Sawalha has reportedly been taken off air amid growing controversy over online videos linked to her husband, suspended Green Party activist Mark Adderley.

According to reports first published by the Daily Mail, Sawalha has not appeared on the ITV programme since the end of April and is not expected back next week as the broadcaster and presenter “have some space” following complaints over material shared online.

The row centres on videos uploaded to a YouTube channel run by Adderley, often featuring Sawalha, which reportedly promoted conspiracy theories linked to Israel and Jewish organisations.

Adderley was suspended by the Green Party ahead of the local elections after posts emerged in which he allegedly compared Israel to Nazi Germany and shared conspiracy theories involving Jews and major world events. Despite the suspension, his name still appeared on ballot papers in Croydon local elections.

The Mail reported that videos on the couple’s channel referenced supposed “Israeli false flag” operations connected to incidents including the firebombing of Jewish community ambulances in Golders Green. Other content reportedly included conspiracy theories surrounding the 11 September attacks and the Bondi Beach terror attack in Australia.

In a video posted after her husband’s suspension, Sawalha blamed “dark forces behind everything that you see” for the backlash and defended Adderley as “the most decent kind, super smart man with the hugest of hearts.”

The Campaign Against Antisemitism previously called on ITV to investigate the presenter’s remarks. A spokesperson for the organisation said: “What sort of ‘dark forces’ is Nadia Sawalha referring to?

“You expect spouses to be loyal, but appearing to double down on the sort of conspiratorial tropes that her husband has been promoting and that presumably prompted this suspension from the Green Party is not the way to go about it.”


Norwich City FC Supporter Panel’s inclusivity ambassador resigns after ‘ban Israel’ comments
An “inclusivity ambassador” for Norwich City FC’s official supporters group has resigned from her role after publicly opposing the club’s decision to sign an Israeli player.

Reacting to the news of Israeli forward Liel Abada’s transfer from the US, Jessica Pye posted on X: “It’s a no from me. You wouldn't sign a Russian, so why sign an Israeli? Ban Israel. No Israeli signings."

Pye also targeted Abada, who currently plays for Charlotte FC in Major League Soccer following a stint with Celtic, adding: “While Abada hasn't explicitly made any statement in favour of his country, he also hasn't said anything against it, which does count far more for being in support than not.”

Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA): "It is precisely this sort of drip-drip hatred in our cultural institutions that the prime minister was referring to in his speech this week, calling for action across society.

“Football is no exception.”

But after the backlash, Pye doubled down on her anti-Israel sentiment, posting that the anguish caused was “entirely constructed moral panic, invented by the Zionist lobby and their servile allies in Downing Street and the rapid dogs of the press”.

It comes after Abada, who also plays for the Israeli national team, departed Celtic under a cloud in 2024 following vocal protests against him by pro-Palestine fans.
Top Education Committee Dem Who Bemoaned Antisemitism Investigations Into Left-Wing Campus Groups Calls for Antisemitism Investigation Into Republican Campus Groups
The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. Bobby Scott (Va.), sent a letter to the committee's Republican chairman asking for an investigation into antisemitism within campus Republican groups. The letter, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, marks a shift for Scott, who has repeatedly complained about committee hearings on campus antisemitism since Oct. 7, 2023.

"At the University of Florida, the school with the largest population of Jewish students in America according to Hillel International, the College Republicans group was suspended after photos were leaked of members making a Nazi salute," Scott wrote. "At Florida International University, the school with the 14th highest Jewish student population, multiple students involved in Republican and conservative groups on campus participated in a group chat that frequently included slurs for African-Americans and Jews, and at one point was named in part for a 'mythical white civilization promoted by the Nazi politician Heinrich Himmler.'"

As Scott noted in his letter, the University of Florida removed its campus College Republicans chapter as a registered student organization in March, though Scott did not mention that the university did so after the Florida Federation of College Republicans, a state Republican Party organ, revoked the chapter's charter. The committee's Republican majority also released a statement in response to the ordeal, stating, "Antisemitism is unacceptable—no matter where it occurs."

Scott's request for an investigation represents a sharp break from the positions he has expressed on the committee since Oct. 7 and the ensuing surge of antisemitism on U.S. college campuses. During hearings on the issue, Scott has accused the committee of "stoking culture wars that can be divisive and discriminatory" and focusing too much on antisemitism. He has also argued that the hearings were ineffective and aimed at maligning "genuine political protest."

On Dec. 5, 2023—the hearing that featured the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—Scott blamed campus antisemitism on America's "centuries-long history of racism and white supremacy."

Months later, at a May 23, 2024, hearing, Scott claimed that the committee "has attempted to remove any distinction between hate speech and genuine political protest" and compared anti-Israel campus radicals to Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement.
Cornell publishes footage defending president from claims he hit anti-Israel activists with car
Cornell University published video footage on Sunday that it said exonerated its president from claims that he had hit two students with his car, after activists seeking amnesty for anti-Israel activists followed him to his vehicle after an Israeli-Palestinian conflict debate last Thursday.

President Michael Kotlikoff said that, after he had introduced debate featuring Norman Finkelstein on the justness of Israel’s post-October 7 massacre response, he was followed and harassed by student and non-student activists. Two of them were reportedly previously banned from campus for disruptive protests and verbal abuse of Cornell staff.

Students for a Democratic Cornell, which advocates for changes to the university code of conduct and the reversal of suspensions for student protesters since October 2023, said on Instagram on Saturday that they had confronted him about suspensions and arrests that ostensibly were used to suppress student protests.

Kotlikoff said in his statement on last Friday that he had answered a few of the students’ questions, but when he asked them to stop engaging and attempted to leave, they did not relent. The Cornell president claimed that he was followed to his car, where his vehicle was surrounded by students blocking its path and banging on its windows.


Wikipedia banning two anti-Israel editors a ‘significant step,’ expert says
Wikipedia’s take on a supreme court, its arbitration committee, has opted in recent months to ban two anti-Israel editors indefinitely—a “significant step” for the crowdsourced encyclopedia, which is one of the most visited websites on the internet, according to Shlomit Lir, a University of Haifa researcher, who specializes in Wikipedia.

The two are “veteran and highly influential,” Lir told JNS.

The committee’s decision “should be understood not only as an expression of internal awakening but also as the result of growing external pressure,” over the ways that Wikipedia handles bias, according to the Israeli researcher.

“According to current assessments, the issue involves a much broader network of nearly 100 editors, who have operated, or continue to operate, according to similar patterns, only a small number of whom have actually been blocked,” she told JNS.

The two banned accounts, which went by Iskandar323 and M.Bitton, “knew each other and operated in the same sensitive editing spaces,” Lir said. “According to the available documentation, they also cooperated in certain discussions and content areas.”

“These are not merely two isolated cases but part of a broader phenomenon of veteran editors, who worked over a very long time to shape narratives in areas related to Israel, Judaism, Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” she said.

And banning editors like those two “does not repair the content contamination they left behind,” according to the researcher.

“Most of the biased edits, omissions, changes in wording, cherry-picked references and acts of framing have already been embedded in the articles, and many of them remain in place even after the editors’ removal,” Lir told JNS.

The Wikipedia editor who went by “M.Bitton,” who had made more than 64,000 edits on the site, was banned on April 28

“His conduct is deeply corrosive to the collaborative environment, and I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to undo that damage,” one arbitrator stated.

The committee voted 12-0 to ban M.Bitton, who can appeal the ban in a year.
New York Times Pulitzer-Winning Photographer Calls Hamas and Jihadist Militants 'Martyrs' and 'Resistance,' Criticizes Israel for 'War on Gaza’s Children'
Saher Alghorra, the New York Times photographer who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize this week for his work in Gaza, has referred to uniformed Hamas fighters and other anti-Israel militants as "martyrs" and "resistance" forces, and repeatedly—in photo captions and social media postings—referred to Israel as an "occupation" force responsible for "the war on Gaza's children" and other "suffering." He has also repeatedly accused Israel of targeting civilians and journalists for death, according to a comprehensive Washington Free Beacon review of his social media postings and photo captions he and his California-based agency, Zuma, contributed to services that carried his photos.

As recently as last week, Alghorra promoted a post congratulating him for his Pulitzer for his "documentation of Israel's genocide in Gaza." Alghorra himself wrote on Facebook that he was honored to win the award for covering the "toll of Israel's attacks in Gaza."

Alghorra's rhetoric makes clear he is not a neutral documentarian, but rather aligned with the Hamas forces that have provided him with extensive access to work in areas under their control both before and after Oct. 7, 2023.

In April 2023, just six months before the Hamas terror spree, Alghorra wrote that Palestinians who set fire to tires along the Gaza border had done so "in rejection and denunciation of the violations committed by the Israeli army in Al-Aqsa Mosque." In reality, the Israeli police raided the mosque after Palestinians barricaded themselves inside. In other posts throughout the Gaza conflict—starting on the day of the Oct. 7 massacre—Alghorra repeatedly expressed solidarity with the many Palestinian "martyrs" killed in the war while portraying Israelis as part of an occupation force targeting civilians and causing starvation and suffering.

On Oct. 7, Alghorra posted photos of missiles flying from Gaza into Israel to his personal Instagram account with the caption, "The Palestinian resistance in Gaza fires thousands of missiles towards the occupied territories in response to settlers’ attacks and incursions into Al-Aqsa mosque."

Alghorra also described terrorist fighters as "martyrs." In a photo posted to the stock photo site Alamy from "Gaza, Palestine," Alghorra said it depicts a Palestinian woman holding a "picture of her martyr son, who was martyred in the battle of Wahda al-Sahat in 2022," according to the caption. The "martyr" in question is Ali Ghali, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad member who was killed in 2023 during an Israeli airstrike. Alamy makes clear that its contributing photographers supply the photo captions.

The wire service Alghorra works for, Zuma, provided a similar photo to Alamy in January 2025 that referred to members of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas's military wing, as "Palestinian resistance factions."


Michigan man sentenced to 20 years for attempting to support ISIS, illegally possessing bomb-making materials
Aws Mohammed Naser, 38, of Westland, Mich., was sentenced to 20 years in prison for trying to aid ISIS and illegally possessing bomb-making materials, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday.

Naser was convicted in June 2025 following a five-week trial on charges of attempting to support the Islamic State terror group and being a felon in possession of a destructive device.

Prosecutors said Naser became radicalized in his early 20s, consumed jihadist propaganda and sought to join ISIS fighters in Syria. Evidence presented at trial showed he frequently posted extremist Salafi-jihadist content online and communicated with Russell Dennison, an aspiring jihadist preacher who later joined an ISIS-linked group in Syria.

According to prosecutors, Naser twice attempted to travel overseas to join militants. In November 2012, he arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport carrying tactical gear, including a rifle scope, a cane sword and a tactical knife, but was denied boarding. Months later, he attempted to depart from Chicago O’Hare International Airport on a flight to Beirut, Lebanon, but again was prevented from boarding.

After serving a prison sentence for an armed robbery committed shortly before the second travel attempt, Naser turned his focus to supporting ISIS from within the United States, prosecutors said. Investigators said he joined private online forums used by ISIS supporters, studied explosives, experimented with drones and obtained instructions for building improvised explosive devices.
Police seek three suspects in Jew-hatred vandalism at Maryland elementary school
Montgomery County police released surveillance images of three “persons of interest” sought in connection with antisemitic graffiti recently spray-painted at Greenwood Elementary School in Olney, Md.

According to the Montgomery County Police Department, the vandalism occurred around 3 a.m. on May 2 at the school on Gold Mine Road. Investigators said antisemitic graffiti was spray-painted on a wall and along the side of the school building’s roofline before the three individuals were seen leaving the campus.

Police shared photos and described the individuals as two white males and a third “unknown race male.” Authorities asked anyone with information to contact Crime Solvers of Montgomery County.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore condemned the vandalism, calling it “unacceptable.”

“Such hate has no place in our schools or our state, especially as we begin Jewish American Heritage Month,” he stated. “Ensuring my people feel safe where they live, work, worship and learn remains my greatest priority.

Moore said his administration is “working closely with local authorities to combat this hate and stomp out antisemitism in all its forms.”

Guila Franklin Siegel, COO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, noted a rise in antisemitic incidents at Montgomery County Public Schools in recent months.
Toronto police arrests 18-year-old suspected of two anti-Jewish hate- crime attacks with pellet gun
Police officers arrested an 18-year-old for allegedly carrying out two suspected hate-motivated assaults, firing a pellet gun at Jews in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods, the Toronto Police Service said on Friday.

Ruslan Novruzov, of Vaughan, in Ontario, was charged with four counts of assault with a weapon and two counts of possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, the department said.

The 18-year-old is accused of shooting gel pellets at three “visibly identifiable” Jews, who suffered minor injuries, from a moving vehicle on April 30 in one of the largest Jewish neighbourhoods in Canada.

On May 7, police responded to a similar assault at about 10:45 p.m., when a man fired gel pellets at three identifiable Jews outside Congregation Chasidei Bobov, a Chassidic synagogue near Bathurst Street and Wilson Avenue, one intersection away from the April 30 incident. One victim suffered minor injuries, police said.

The department said that officers found and seized two “two gel-blaster imitation firearms” after executing a search warrant at Novruzov’s home. He was due in court on May 8, the department said.

“This is not a prank. It was an act of intimidation meant to spread fear,” Vince Gasparro, a Liberal parliamentarian, told JNS. “It must be treated with the seriousness it deserves.”

“At a time when antisemitism is rising globally, we cannot allow this hatred to take root in our communities,” added Gasparro, whose riding, or district, includes the Chassidic synagogue.


Chile to return ambassador to Israel after more than two years
Chile’s President José Antonio Kast told President Isaac Herzog during a meeting in Costa Rica that he intends to return his country’s ambassador to Israel in a few weeks, The Times of Israel learned Friday.

Chile recalled its ambassador less than a month after the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of Israel under Kast’s leftist predecessor, Gabriel Boric, accusing the Jewish state of “unacceptable” human rights violations in the war against the terror group.

Hosting Herzog on Thursday, Kast also said that Chile wants to increase cooperation with Israel across all sectors, including agriculture, health, AI, technology and security.

He stressed to Herzog that Chilean media criticized him for the meeting, to which Herzog responded that there are many issues of bilateral interest.

“We discussed the important opportunities to restore Israel-Chile relations to their previous heights to the benefit of both our nations,” Herzog wrote on X.

The move marked a shift in Chilean policy, which has been marked by anti-Israel sentiment since Hamas’s October 7 attacks. Jose Antonio Kast, presidential candidate for the Republican Party, arrives to vote during the presidential runoff election in Santiago, Chile, December 14, 2025. (AP/Matias Delacroix)

Chile, which has the largest Palestinian population outside the Arab world, joined calls in January 2025 for an investigation by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes in the Israel-Hamas war.

In 2024, Chile said it would exclude Israeli firms from the International Air and Space Fair (FIDAE), Latin America’s biggest aerospace fair.

Kast was elected in a landslide victory in December, becoming Chile’s most right-wing president in 35 years of democracy.

His election followed a series of victories for Latin America’s right, after wins in Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras, El Salvador and Ecuador.
American Christian Zionist who founded ‘Daystar TV’ dies at 65
Joni Lamb, the co-founder and president of the Texas-based Christian Daystar Television Network, who was an ardent supporter of the State of Israel, has died, the network announced on Thursday. She was 65 years old.

Lamb passed away after privately battling unspecified “serious health issues,” which were worsened by a recent back injury, according to a statement by the ministry.

Along with her late husband, Marcus Lamb, she established Daystar in 1993, which became one of the largest and most prominent Christian television networks in the world, broadcasting in more than 200 countries and reaching hundreds of millions of viewers.

She used her platform to promote Christian Zionism, providing humanitarian aid through the Daystar House of Hope Israel, funding bomb shelters and supporting soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces.

The evangelical channel, which reaches 100-plus million homes in the United States alone, has donated millions of dollars to Israel since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, to help rebuild Israeli communities near Gaza, as well as provide bulletproof vests and helmets to Israeli soldiers.

She received the Israel Allies Award from the Washington, D.C.-based Israel Allies Foundation at a gala event in Texas in 2024 for her unflinching support of the Jewish state.




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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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