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Thursday, May 14, 2026

05/13 Links Pt2: The New Normal for Antisemitism; Jewish group warned police gunman before Bondi massacre; Abe Foxman and the quest for Jewish security

From Ian:

The New Normal for Antisemitism
Ayear before October 7, 2023, reshaped the political landscape, we founded a nonprofit organization called Antisemitism Watch. The decision followed decades of reporting on the Holocaust and its aftermath, and years of chronicling daily antisemitic incidents. What became unmistakable over time was not simply persistence, but normalization—antisemitism embedding itself across wide swaths of society with diminishing resistance.

In a Newsweek op-ed in which we announced the launch, we wrote that “few contest that antisemitism—history’s oldest hatred of a religious and ethnic group—has had an unmatched post-Holocaust resurgence.”1 The data confirmed record numbers of anti-Jewish attacks across the United States, Canada, and Europe, while social media accelerated newer conspiracies blaming Jews for everything from the slave trade to COVID-19.2, 3

Even then, our concern was not only the scale of antisemitism, but the way it was being confronted. The most prominent institutions tasked with addressing it were doing so selectively, not consistently. The Anti-Defamation League had diluted its core mission by repositioning itself as a more generic anti-hate organization and, in practice, mostly focused on right-wing antisemitism while giving a free pass to anti-Jewish hostility from the political left.

In the months following the October 7 attack, antisemitism shed its inhibitions.

What distinguishes this moment is the collapse of stigma. Expressions that would have ended careers a decade ago now generate applause, clicks, and campaign donations. Language that would trigger immediate condemnation if directed at other minorities is routinely excused, contextualized, or ignored when directed at Jews. Hostility that once hid at the margins has migrated inward—into campuses, political platforms, cultural institutions, and digital ecosystems. The result is an old hatred on steroids—newly unmoored from consequence.

This normalization is not diffuse, but has taken shape through two distinct but mutually reinforcing channels. The progressive left frames Israel as fundamentally illegitimate, a country of inherent injustice. That creates an atmosphere in which hostility toward Israel is cast as an ethical obligation. And for many on the left—and their Muslim activist allies—the distinction between Jews and Israelis frequently collapses.

On parts of the populist right, antisemitism has reemerged through the architecture of conspiracy theory. Jews are cast not as oppressors, but as puppet masters—orchestrators of migration, finance, media narratives, and foreign entanglements. The vocabulary differs from that on the left, but the structural function is identical: Jews are assigned exceptional and malign agency.
Prince Harry issues stark warning over Britain’s antisemitism crisis
Prince Harry has weighed into Britain’s antisemitism crisis for the first time, warning that Jews are being made to feel “unsafe” in their own homes as hatred spreads across the country.

Writing in the New Statesman, the Duke of Sussex said Britain was facing a “deeply troubling rise in antisemitism” and warned that “silence is not neutrality” when extremism is allowed to flourish.

In one of the strongest interventions yet by a senior royal on the issue, Harry wrote: “Jewish communities – families, children, ordinary people – are being made to feel unsafe in the very places they call home.”

He added: “Because hatred directed at people for who they are, or what they believe, is not protest. It is prejudice.”

The prince said recent “lethal violence” in London and Manchester had brought the crisis “into sharp and deeply troubling focus”, as he urged Britons not to confuse legitimate criticism of events in the Middle East with hostility towards Jews.

Kenton United Synagogue in Harrow, north-west London, where an attempted arson attack caused minor smoke damage to an internal room but no injuries or significant structural damage.

Harry warned that anger over Gaza risked spilling into anti-Jewish hatred on British streets, saying: “Nothing, whether criticism of a government or the reality of violence and destruction, can ever justify hostility toward an entire people or faith.”

The Duke also appeared to reference his own past controversies, including wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party in 2005, admitting he was “acutely aware” of his “past mistakes”.

He writes: “I am acutely aware of my own past mistakes – thoughtless actions for which I have apologised, taken responsibility and learned from.”

The prince insisted antisemitism and other racisms all “draw from the same well of division” and must be confronted with “the same resolve”.
Giant to be shown in cinemas this autumn
John Lithgow has said he is “thrilled” that the Olivier Award-winning play Giant, in which he portrays British author Roald Dahl, will screen in cinemas around the world.

The Mark Rosenblatt debut play premiered in London’s West End in 2024 and went on to collect three Olivier Awards – including best new play and best actor for Lithgow’s portrayal of the children’s author as he grapples with whether to make a public apology.

The play will screen in more than 900 cinemas across 18 countries, including the UK, US, Canada and Australia, from November 2026.

Lithgow said: “In my 53-year, 25-show career on Broadway, I’ve rarely experienced the kind of audience response that we feel night after night with Giant.

“Mark Rosenblatt has written a play of extraordinary intelligence and humanity, and with every performance I can sense the audience wrestling with its questions in real time.

“This is the unique power of theatre at its best. I’m thrilled that our production will now reach movie theatres around the world, allowing even more people to experience the urgency, impact and emotional force of this story.”

Filmed live at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London, the cinema release features the original West End cast comprised of Lithgow as Dahl and Elliot Levey as British publisher Tom Maschler – a role which won him the best supporting actor Olivier Award.

Aya Cash also stars as publisher Jessie Stone alongside Rachael Stirling who plays Dahl’s wife, Felicity Dahl, Tessa Bonham Jones as housekeeper Hallie and Richard Hope as handyman Wally.

The play was transferred to New York City’s Broadway for a 16-week run from March through to the end of June.


Hen Mazzig: The Propagandists Who Lost Eurovision’s Popular Vote
Atossa is an Iranian woman writing in Persian. A few hours before Israel took the Eurovision stage in Vienna last night, she told her followers they had to vote tonight at the Eurovision live broadcast site. Don’t forget, she wrote. Her post ended with three Israeli flag emojis.

She was not the only one. Iranians across the platform were posting the same thing to each other, in Persian, all night.

I have looked at a lot of strange and beautiful things online since October 7. This one stopped me cold. Atossa is in the diaspora, or she is hiding her location, or she is brave enough not to. The country whose flag she put in her tweet is the country her government has called the Little Satan for forty-six years. The artist she is asking other Iranians to vote for is a French-Israeli pop singer from Ra’anana, performing in Hebrew, English, and French, about a woman who has broken his heart.

She wasn’t really telling them to vote for Noam Bettan.

She was telling them to use the only ballot they have.

On Monday, the day before the first semifinal, The New York Times published a front-page investigation under a headline that has since been quietly softened. The original online headline said Israel had “co-opted” Eurovision and nearly broke the world’s biggest song contest. By Tuesday morning the headline read: “How Israel Turned Eurovision’s Stage Into a Soft Power Tool.” The Times changed it because, as the paper’s own reporting acknowledged, Israel broke no rules, deployed no bots, and won the popular vote on the strength of, well, popular votes.

The number the Times leads with is $1 million. That is the total Israel spent over multiple years promoting its contestants to Eurovision audiences. Doron Medalie, the former Israeli Eurovision songwriter the Times itself interviewed, defended the spending bluntly. “Everybody is jealous and triggered because Israel is achieving great results,” he said. He has a point. Israel is the only Eurovision country whose security detail this year includes the FBI. That is because Israel is the only Eurovision country whose contestants get throat-slit gestures on the turquoise carpet. A promotion budget on top of that is not scandal. It is housekeeping.

The Times traces the strategy back to 2018, when the government spent about $100,000 on social media around Netta Barzilai. Netta won. The implication is that the $100,000 explains the victory. The actual explanation is that “Toy” was “Toy,” a song that went viral on every continent and won the public televote in a landslide. The Times does not entertain that possibility.

Buried halfway down the piece is a more important concession: other countries also run ad campaigns. The Times simply does not treat their campaigns as scandal. Only Israel’s.


Maurice Black: Kneecap, Palestine, and the Erosion of Irish Conscience
The ultimate test of Ireland’s maturity as a post-conflict society will be its ability to preserve domestic pluralism. The current moment of heightened Palestinian activism, in which an entire generation of young people has been radicalized anew, presents a legitimate danger that the seductive emotional power of anti-colonial solidarity might reawaken dormant nationalisms, and that the antisemitism that has always lain, however quietly, beneath Irish Catholic civic life might once again find respectable public expression in number one chart positions and in five-star reviews and in the cheerful tweet that announces the donation of royalties to causes whose internal contradictions are no longer remarked upon by anyone who matters. How Ireland navigates this challenge will determine the future stability of its own hard-won peace.

At the Story Incubator Writing Lab, our work on polarization centers on understanding the psychology of division, asking how and why people come to hold strong partisan attitudes and what can be done to bridge those divides. We explore the emotional, cognitive, and narrative forces that shape political and social identities, asking what drives people apart and what stories or interventions might bring them back together. By combining insights from psychology, neuroscience, storytelling, and social research, we aim to uncover new ways to reduce polarization and foster greater empathy and understanding across differences.

Conflicts in the Middle East have reshaped local societies but now reverberate globally, assisted by digital platforms that amplify polarized narratives, algorithmically ramping up dynamics of “us versus them” that once seemed regionally specific and leading to heightened political tribalism along ideological lines. Protests and counter-protests on college campuses have led to clashes over free speech, accusations of antisemitism, and high-profile resignations, including by a number of Ivy League presidents. It is no exaggeration to say that the Middle East has become a proxy battleground for moral, ideological, and cultural struggles in the West itself. The struggle, in the form it has currently taken in Ireland, has been lost. I write that sentence with care, and without satisfaction. I would prefer it not to be true.

We must strive for a more mature approach to the Middle East that maintains awareness of the potential domestic impact of simplified, romanticized narratives. We should recognize that innocent Palestinian civilians deserve support not because their struggle mirrors Ireland’s, but because peace in any nation, or between nations, requires a coherent ethical vision in which everyone has dignity, respect, and worth. We should recognize, too, that there can be no peace and security in the Middle East until people stop chanting “from the river to the sea” and recognize the Jewish homeland.

Similarly, there can be no honest moral life in Ireland until we once again become a country in which a young person can state, without prompting and without controversy, how many Jews died in the Holocaust, and in which the chart-topping album is not a record whose explicit ambition is to make that question harder to answer. The Good Friday Agreement’s greatest achievement was not merely ending the violence in Northern Ireland but creating space for multiple identities to coexist in mutual tolerance. That space, fragile and contested, remains our best hope for transcending destructive cycles of conflict, polarization, and partisanship, but it is a space we are currently dismantling with both hands, in the name of a solidarity we have not earned, on behalf of a history we do not understand.


Federal judge temporarily blocks Trump admin sanctions on anti-Israel UN adviser
Richard Leon, a federal judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ordered that Trump administration sanctions on Francesca Albanese, United Nations special rapporteur for the Palestinians, be blocked temporarily, since they likely violated her right to free speech.

The judge said that Albanese, who is not a U.S. citizen or resident, is still entitled to First Amendment protections due to her “extensive connections” to the country, including an American-born daughter and a home that the family owns in Washington.

The U.N. adviser’s husband and daughter filed the lawsuit in district court, alleging that the Trump administration sanctioned her for her speech. The United Nations didn’t allow Albanese to file the lawsuit, due to concerns over immunity.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued the sanctions last July after Albanese sent harassing and threatening letters to American companies and organizations with ties to Israel. She claimed that they were subject to charges of war crimes and other crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court, an independent court in The Hague to which the United States is not a signatory.

Multiple governments have cited Albanese for antisemitic remarks and defense of terror organizations. The United Nations has told JNS repeatedly that it considers her an “independent expert” and that it does not dictate to special rapporteurs what they can and cannot say.

“Albanese has done nothing more than speak,” the judge wrote in a 26-page decision. “It is undisputed that her recommendations have no binding effect on the ICC’s actions. They are nothing more than her opinion.” (JNS sought comment from the U.S. State Department.)

The Trump administration argued that though the sanctions isolated Albanese from the international banking network, it issued licenses allowing transactions necessary to support her daughter and to sell the Washington home that she owns with Massimiliano Cali, a World Bank economist who also has a documented history of anti-Israel rhetoric and actions.

The judge said that the scope of the licenses were too murky, and the parental license interferes with Albanese’s “constitutionally protected” relationship with her daughter.
Coleman Hughes: What Everyone Gets Wrong About Israel-Palestine | Oren Kessler
Oren Kessler is a historian and journalist who spent five years researching the Arab Revolt of 1936–39—one of the most consequential and least understood episodes in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His book Palestine 1936 tells the story of the three-way struggle between Arabs, Jews, and the British that set the template for nearly everything that came after. In this episode, Kessler and Coleman dig in to who actually introduced terrorism to the region, why Palestinian violence worked in the short term and backfired catastrophically in the long term, what the revolt reveals about the murky origins of Palestinian nationalism, and the role of the Grand Mufti in radicalizing Palestinian politics in ways that still echo today.

0:00- Introduction
1:42- Background: Writing Palestine 1936
4:16-Writing History as a Partisan
8:31-The Word "Zionist"
18:07-Did Jews Introduce Terror to the Region?
23:12-Seeing Both Sides of the Conflict
33:28-Did Palestinian Terror Work?
39:38-Nationalism vs. Religious Jihad
42:52-When Did Palestinian Identity Arise?
51:24-Lebanese Christians and the Peel Commission
57:18-Lebanon as a Warning
1:00:48-Optimistic and Pessimistic Outcomes




The Brink: “Which is worse…Piers Morgan or the BBC?” Julia Harley-Brewer on the media collapse
In this episode of The Brink, Andrew and Jake are joined by broadcaster and journalist Julia Hartley-Brewer.

The discussion begins with the mounting pressure on Keir Starmer, with Julia arguing that his leadership has exposed deeper systemic failures across British politics. From Brexit and the civil service to taxation, public services, and political leadership, we explore why trust in both Labour and the Conservatives has collapsed so dramatically.

The conversation then turns to the media and the cultural establishment. Julia reflects on her career in British journalism and explains why she increasingly found herself at odds with elite opinion on issues like Brexit, lockdowns, net zero, and gender ideology. We examine whether legacy media has lost public trust and what has filled the vacuum online.

A major focus of the episode is anti-Semitism and the war in Israel. Julia shares her experience visiting Israel after October 7th, including visits to the Nova festival site and communities attacked by Hamas. She explains why the trip profoundly affected her understanding of the conflict and why she believes much of the Western public has been misled about Israel by media narratives and political activism.

Finally, we discuss the future of British politics, the rise of Reform, and whether the country is entering a period of deeper instability and fragmentation.

Chapters
00:00 Intro
03:35 Keir Starmer and Labour
07:18 What’s wrong with UK politics
17:44 What a “truth-telling” PM would say
23:20 Julia’s media career and outsider role
30:00 Media bias and clickbait culture
38:38 Extremism, antisemitism and protests
41:36 Julia’s Israel trip and what Britain can learn




Jewish Republican Paul Singer tarred with rainbow Star of David in Kentucky primary ad
A prominent Jewish donor to Republican politicians is the target of a new ad about the Kentucky GOP congressional primary.

The one-minute spot criticizes the candidacy of Republican Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy Seal backed by US President Donald Trump, who is running against incumbent Rep. Thomas Massie in Kentucky’s 4th district. Among Gallrein’s donors is Paul Singer, the billionaire hedge fund manager at Elliot Management.

The ad claims that Singer, 81, will bring his “trans madness to Kentucky.” It describes him as a “major pro-gay, pro-trans activist who works with far-left, hardcore Democrats,” and shows a Star of David overlaid with the rainbow Pride flag. It also shows drag queens, multiple Pride flags, and the logo of the LGBTQ advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign.

Singer, who is Jewish, is a major Republican donor. His son is gay, and Singer is a longtime advocate for gay rights.

The stereotype that Jews are responsible for promoting an LGBTQ agenda has proliferated on the far right, according to antisemitism watchdogs.

The Kentucky ad was paid for by Hold the Line PAC, a group “focused on Religious Liberty, 2A, and Restoring Election Integrity,” according to its website. (HoldtheLinePAC.com is distinct from HoldtheLinePAC.org, a Democratic PAC.) It encourages viewers to vote for Massie, who has held the seat since 2012.


Hoyer calls to defeat ‘antisemitism and anti-Zionism in our politics’
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), a pro-Israel stalwart and a former House majority leader, said on Tuesday that Jewish Democrats “ought to be” concerned about the critical way that some of their Democratic colleagues talk about Israel.

“How many of you here tonight have been trying to convince a family member, a friend, a neighbor not to abandon the party that has long been their political home?” Hoyer said in remarks at the Jewish Democratic Council of America’s annual leadership summit, where he was honored with an award marking his upcoming retirement, after 45 years in Congress.

He was introduced by three of his current and former Jewish senior staffers, including Brian Romick, the CEO of Democratic Majority for Israel.

“How many of you have been anxious yourselves about rhetoric heard from some Democratic officials and candidates? We ought to be,” said Hoyer. “I will stand up and say, ‘I do not agree with that.’”

Hoyer, a longtime champion of pro-Israel legislation, used the speech to reiterate his commitment to the Jewish state and explain why he thinks Democrats should support Israel. But even as he acknowledged issues of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the party, he also pitched American Jews to maintain their historic support for Democrats and urged those who are unhappy with the party’s leftward shift on Israel to allow room for nuance, and to work to reverse it.

He said he disagreed with the 40 Senate Democrats who voted in April against certain arms sales to Israel, but added that he still believed those lawmakers would support the Jewish community. He encouraged JDCA activists to keep calling those senators to push them to change their minds.

“Those same 40 senators will stand up for you all the time. I disagree with them, but the fact of the matter is, keep in mind, it is not day to day. It is long-term commitment that counts. They need to keep hearing from you,” said Hoyer. “They need to keep seeing us fight to keep our party strong and pro-Israel, and consistent with its values. And they need to see our passion and our resolve.”
Bores breaks with Our Revolution on approach to Israel
New York State Assemblymember Alex Bores, a leading Democratic primary candidate for an open House seat in Manhattan, said on Tuesday that he disagreed with Our Revolution, the left-wing advocacy group that recently endorsed his campaign, over its opposition to U.S. military funding for Israel.

Speaking at a candidate forum hosted by West Side Institutional Synagogue and moderated by Jewish Insider’s editor-in-chief, Josh Kraushaar, Bores said that even as he welcomed the endorsement because of such shared interests as AI regulation, he was not aligned with Our Revolution’s approach to Israel, a key issue in the heavily Jewish 12th Congressional District.

The endorsement from Our Revolution, which is affiliated with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), drew some boos from the crowd when it was mentioned during the forum. Bores, a former Palantir employee facing attack ads from an AI-linked super PAC, clarified he was “happy to partner with” the organization “in the fight” to regulate the industry he has scrutinized as a state legislator.

“They asked me specifically about my position on Israel, which is well-documented and different from theirs,” Bores explained. “I said the same thing I say in every room.”

The endorsement last week had fueled skepticism among some Jewish leaders, raising doubts over his commitment to upholding support for Israel if he is elected to the House.

But Bores, who is now consolidating support from the progressive left in the crowded race to succeed retiring Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), emphasized that “we need to make it acceptable for there to be people in progressive spaces that still believe in the right of Israel to exist and to defend itself.”
At Jewish Dems event, Minneapolis mayor says anti-Zionism can blur into antisemitism
Jacob Frey, the Jewish mayor of Minneapolis, decried some criticism of Israel during a Jewish Democratic event on Wednesday.

Speaking at the national conference of the Jewish Democratic Council of America in Washington, DC, Frey recounted visiting a local grocery store shortly after Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“The tiny little Jewish section, which had hummus and maybe one other product, was tagged with, ‘Why do you support genocide?’” he said. “And this was just the Jewish section, it wasn’t even the Israeli section.”

Frey continued, “So as much as people say, and have often said, ‘No we’re talking about Zionists, not Jews’ — well many of those same people are tying Zionism to Judaism. You can’t have it both ways at the same time.”

He concluded that “you can both believe in a State of Israel and support it, and simultaneously be opposed to some of the horrific acts that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has conducted.”

Frey’s comments, which came in response to a question from the audience, were some of his most extensive on Israel and his first on the topic since he took the national spotlight earlier this year for his defiant stance against the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement in his city.

The fact that Frey, 44, decided to appear at JDCA’s national leadership summit itself was notable because he is a relatively young rising star in a Democratic Party where the ascendant sentiments, especially among the progressive wing and among younger voters, are critical of Israel. The JDCA promotes a strong US-Israel relationship and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Responding to a question about anti-Israel sentiment in his party, Frey said he thought Democrats should do more to constrain fringe sentiments within the party.
'Sorry For Calling You a Jew': Rand Paul's Son Lashes Out at GOP Lawmaker, Tells Him 'Jews' To Blame if Thomas Massie Loses Primary
Sen. Rand Paul's (R., Ky.) son, William Paul, went on a drunken tirade against Jews while accosting Rep. Mike Lawler (R., N.Y.) at a Capitol Hill restaurant, saying "you Jews" would be to blame should Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) lose his upcoming primary, NOTUS reported Wednesday. Lawler is not Jewish, prompting Paul to apologize to him "for calling you a Jew."

Paul, who was seated "a couple of seats down from Lawler at the restaurant bar," approached Lawler to tell him that if Massie loses to Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein next Tuesday, it will be because of "your people." When Lawler asked Paul what he meant, the Kentucky senator's son replied, "Yeah, you Jews," according to NOTUS, whose reporter, Reese Gorman, was seated with Lawler. After Lawler clarified that he is not Jewish, Paul replied, "Oh wow, I'm so sorry for calling you a Jew" before accusing Jews of being "anti-American."

Paul also said Lawler and his "Jewish supporters" served Israel over America and told Lawler he "needs to watch more Tucker Carlson," according to NOTUS. After arguing that Massie and his father are the "only lawmakers who care about the U.S.," Paul gave Lawler the middle finger, said he was "really drunk," tripped over a barstool, and left the restaurant.

The episode marks the latest last-minute wrinkle in Massie's primary fight against Gallrein, a retired Navy SEAL.

Earlier this week, a former Republican congressional aide, Cynthia West, accused Massie of offering her hush money to drop a "retaliatory discharge" complaint against Rep. Victoria Spartz (R., Ind.), a close friend of Massie's. West said she began dating Massie shortly after the death of his high school sweetheart and wife of more than 30 years, and that Massie got her a job in Spartz's office so they could spend more time together. West said she ended the relationship not long after she began working for Spartz because Massie asked her to "engage in behavior" that she "wasn't comfortable with." Spartz fired her shortly thereafter, prompting her complaint to the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights, which West said named Massie as a witness, prompting Massie to offer her $5,000 to "just walk away." Axios obtained documents indicating that the congressional office also offered West $60,000 to settle the complaint.

The younger Paul has a history of alcohol-related run-ins with the law. In 2015, he pleaded guilty to driving under the influence while a student at the University of Kentucky. Two years prior, he was accused of underage drinking, disorderly conduct, and assaulting a female flight attendant, charges that were ultimately dropped.


Muslim Association director who called Oct 7 a lie refused entry to Canada
A leading figure in the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) who defended Hamas’s hostage-taking in its Oct 7 attack on Israel has been refused entry to Canada.

Dr Anas Altikriti, who is listed as a director of the association, had planned to attend and speak at a Muslim Association of Canada convention in Toronto on May 16-18.

However, he was held and questioned for 11 hours on arrival in Montreal before being escorted back on to a plane to London.

In a statement, the MAB accused the Canadian government of “serious overreach”, which appeared to be driven by “bad-faith pressure from those seeking to suppress voices speaking out against Israel’s crimes and the genocide in Gaza”.

It added: “It raises grave concerns about freedom of speech and the targeting of those advocating for Palestinian rights.”

Dr Altikriti, who was president of the MAB in 2004-2005, has described the mass slaughter and rape of Israeli citizens on Oct 7 2023 as “a lie” and called the taking of hostages “a very important part” of any “act of resistance”.

The MAB was founded by Muhammad Kathem Sawalha, the former Hamas chief, and was one of the groups that organised a pro-Palestine march in London on Armistice Day, a month after the Oct 7 massacre.

In a video recorded with Tom Facchine, a US imam, in November 2023, British-Iraqi Dr Altikriti was asked about Hamas’s taking of hostages.

He said: “The taking of hostages is a very important part of any strategic sort of military action or act of resistance or the such because for every hostage you can then negotiate.”

Controversial statements on X
Dr Altikriti has also made controversial statements on X, including a post on the day of the Oct 7 attack that said: “What did we think was going to happen? That Palestinians would stay silent whilst forever subjugated, victimised, abused, violated, murdered and tortured?!

“This is for every time Western governments stayed silent and whitewashed Israel’s crimes and violations.”


Sarah Lawrence student senate rejects J Street U chapter after fierce backlash
A group of Jewish students at Sarah Lawrence College say they faced fierce resistance after trying to establish a campus chapter of J Street U following the October 7 attacks.

Last fall, Toffler and another Jewish student tried to change the situation. They decided to form a campus chapter of J Street U, the college arm of the liberal pro-Israel group. With the help of a faculty advisor, they tried to make the club a campus reality.

Nearly two dozen such J Street U chapters have formed nationwide since Oct. 7, as students have sought to promote the group’s self-described “pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian and pro-peace” outlook as an alternative to anti-Israel activism surging on campuses — as well as to hawkish campus pro-Israel activism.

But when the students applied to the student government at Sarah Lawrence, an elite progressive liberal arts college in New York’s Westchester County, to make J Street U an official club, they encountered fierce resistance.

After voicing their strong opposition to the group, the Student Senate rejected the J Street U application, the first time a J Street campus chapter has ever been rejected anywhere, according to the group. (The final vote tally was not included in the meeting minutes.) When the students appealed the decision, the senate rejected the appeal as well. And though some faculty and alumni supportive of the students have tried to lobby Sarah Lawrence’s administration to intervene, the college leadership has so far chosen not to.

The Sarah Lawrence J Street rejection offers a window into how campus politics around Israel have evolved since Oct. 7. Two years after anti-Israel protests roiled campuses, even Jewish groups that support Palestinian statehood and sharply oppose Israeli government policies can be treated as beyond the pale.


Board of Peace envoy: Hamas tightening its grip on Gaza, taxing those with nothing left
The Board of Peace’s Gaza envoy said Wednesday that Hamas is consolidating its power in the Strip, while dragging its feet in agreeing to a US-backed framework for handing over its weapons that has led to the stalling of plans to rebuild the war-damaged enclave.

“Hamas is consolidating its grip on the population. It is taxing people in the street who have nothing left to give,” Nickolay Mladenov said during a briefing with foreign reporters in Jerusalem.

Mladenov held the rare media engagement as the Board of Peace struggles to determine how best to proceed after Hamas again bucked its disarmament proposal at the start of May.

Since then, the Board of Peace’s high representative for the Gaza Strip has traveled twice for meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials in Jerusalem, using the opportunities to press Israel to adhere to its own commitments in the October 2025 ceasefire deal, which established the Board of Peace to oversee the postwar management of Gaza.

Dismissing a questions about Israel resuming military operations to disarm Hamas, which it was unable to do through two-plus years of war sparked by the terror group’s attack on October 7, 2023, Mladenov asserted the only options on the table are continuing the status quo or for Hamas to accept the disarmament framework, which he asserted for the first time offers Gazans a future.
Hamas forces said to turn back workers for Trump-backed Gaza project
Hamas blocked Gazan contractors last week from reaching an area in Rafah designated for a new Palestinian city under the Trump administration’s peace plan, Hebrew media reported on Tuesday.

The contractors told Kan News that armed Hamas members prevented them from reaching the area. The contractors, who had come from across the Gaza Strip, were forced to turn back even though they had been sent there in coordination with the Israel Defense Forces and the Civil Military Coordination Center (CMCC), the headquarters set up in the Israeli city of Kiryat Gat to manage stabilization efforts in Gaza, according to the report.

The workers were starting construction on “New Rafah,” a plan for 100,000-plus housing units which was unveiled by Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and special advisor, at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January.

The new city is part of a larger “New Gaza” plan presented by Kushner, who sits on the executive board of the Board of Peace. The United Arab Emirates is underwriting the project with a reported $1.2 billion contribution.

The incident marks the first time Hamas has actively interfered in an activity coordinated by the CMCC and the Board of Peace, the body set up by the Trump administration to oversee the Gaza peace plan, according to the report.
Jewish group warned police about alleged gunman before Bondi massacre
A Jewish community security team passed intelligence to NSW Police about an Islamic fundamentalist network and identified Naveed Akram as a close associate years before his alleged Islamic State-inspired attack in Bondi, a leaked email suggests.

Community Security Group (CSG) named Akram and others in a July 2019 email to two NSW Police inspectors working in intervention and terrorism intelligence, raising concerns about a Bankstown street preaching group.

“Please be aware of Salafi organisation ‘Bankstown Dawah’ which maintains concerning membership and activity in Sydney,” an email from CSG to the NSW Police’s Terrorism Intelligence Unit and the senior officers reads.

“Other closely associated individuals include Naveed AKRAM.”

The CSG email went on to identify other associates of the group, including now-convicted Islamic State supporters Joseph “Youssif” Saadieh, Radwan Dakkak and Youssef Uweinat.

The email was sent to police by CSG one week after counter-terror squads arrested Dakkak alongside Isaac El Matari, a friend who was plotting to blow up landmarks in Sydney. Naveed Akram with Street Dawah in June 2019.Street Dawah Movement

The Dawah group uploaded a photograph of Akram smiling alongside other members, describing him as “our new brother” on the day of the arrests.

Street Dawah Movement, as the group is now known, distanced itself from Akram following the attack. It said he was not a member, but only a “visitor”, who had passed through in 2019 as a teenager.

Dakkak eventually pleaded guilty to associating with a terrorist organisation, while Uweinat was arrested in December 2019 and ultimately convicted of advocating for a terrorist act.
Nearly 70% of Jewish women in Australia accused of 'genocide' because of their faith
About 80% of Jewish women in Australia have personally experienced antisemitism or seen it directed at a close family member over the past 2 and a half years, according to a survey presented to the country’s Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. The commission is in its second week of public hearings, which began following the terrorist attack in Bondi, Sydney, during the most recent Hanukkah holiday. Fifteen people were killed in the attack.

The survey was conducted by the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia between July 2025 and February 2026 and included more than 600 participants. According to the findings, 81% of respondents said they or a close relative had experienced antisemitism since Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

The survey also found that 20% of the women or their relatives had experienced physical violence or verbal abuse, while 69% said they had been accused of “genocide” after identifying as Jewish, Israeli or Zionist.

Some participants described serious incidents they had personally experienced. One said she was verbally abused at a hospital in Queensland. Another testified that her daughter, a high school student, “was spat on, beaten, held down and choked while being shouted at.”

More than half of respondents said they had heard claims that the October 7 attack was “justified” or did not happen at all. One survey participant said: “One of my best friends questioned the sexual assaults and the murder of women on October 7.”

Shirley Leader, vice president of the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, presented the survey findings to the commission. She said the denial of sexual assaults committed against women in Israel during Hamas’ attack was especially hurtful to Jewish women. “Such denial sometimes comes even from so-called feminist and progressive spaces,” Leader said. “Solidarity with Jewish women has been completely eroded.”

In recent weeks, the commission has heard testimony from dozens of citizens and organizations about rising antisemitism across Australia. Some hearings were held behind closed doors because of national security concerns and ongoing criminal proceedings.
Neo-Nazi, known as ‘commander butcher,’ gets 15 years for plot to poison Jewish kids in Brooklyn with candy
A Georgian national known as “Commander Butcher,” who admitted to plotting a mass-casualty attack targeting Jews and minorities in New York City, was sentenced on Wednesday to 15 years in federal prison, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Michail Chkhikvishvili, 22, a leader of the neo-Nazi extremist group Maniac Murder Cult, pleaded guilty in November to soliciting hate crimes and distributing bomb-making and ricin instructions. He was extradited from Moldova.

Federal authorities said that the plot evolved into a plan to poison Jewish children in Brooklyn on New Year’s Eve by distributing candy laced with toxins, and that Chkhikvishvili tried to recruit someone to dress as Santa Claus and pass out the poisoned candy.

Prosecutors said that he encouraged followers through Telegram and other online platforms to carry out attacks against Jews, racial minorities and others, distributing a manifesto called the “Hater’s Handbook.”

According to prosecutors, Chkhikvishvili incited attacks in Nashville in 2025 and in Eskisehir, Turkey, in 2024.
New Jersey man pleads guilty to ramming Chabad headquarters with his car
Dan Sohail pleaded guilty on Wednesday to damaging Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y., facing a maximum sentence of three years in prison and mandatory restitution, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Sohail, 36, of Carteret, N.J., allegedly drove to a side entrance of the building, exited his vehicle, removed barriers, then returned to his car and rammed it into the building’s side entrance, knocking the door off its hinges.

“By pleading guilty today, the defendant admitted that he intentionally damaged the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters, a globally significant Jewish religious institution, by repeatedly crashing his vehicle into the building’s entrance,” said Joseph Nocella Jr., U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, citing increasing violence aimed at Jewish institutions.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said that Sohail’s conduct “was a targeted attack on the religious liberty and peace of worship to which every American is entitled.”

“The Department of Justice will not tolerate acts of hatred and violence against religious institutions,” she said.


Jonathan Tobin: Abe Foxman and the quest for Jewish security
Attacked for being too pro-Israel
In his final decade at ADL, Foxman had become controversial, but not because of his soft spot for donors. Rather, it was because he was seen by many in the liberal journalistic and political establishment as too reflexively pro-Israel.

The New York Times Magazine trashed him in a 2007 profile as having an “anti-anti-semite problem.” It dismissed his concerns about the growing acceptance of narratives about an all-powerful “Israel Lobby” popularized in a treatise by writers John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that sought to legitimize antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and money. It said he “dwelt imaginatively in the Holocaust” at a time when concerns about Jew-hatred were supposedly outdated. The Times’ accusations that Foxman indiscriminately labeled people as antisemites were simply untrue. The magazine even mocked his fears about the already serious threat posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

As I wrote at the time, “the biased delegitimization of Israel and Zionism that masquerades as intellectual debate on college campuses and in left-wing publications is no passing fad.” That proved only too true. The way liberal media began to use the ADL leader as a piñata for not joining the left’s Israel-bashing and because he recognized the peril from anti-Zionism that was indistinguishable from Jew-hatred was a sign of things to come.

Foxman was also right to speak up to criticize plans to build a mosque in the footprint of the World Trade Center complex in 2010. The controversy was part of an attempt to push the myth that the real victims of the 9/11 attacks were Muslim hurt by a mythical wave of Islamophobia that followed the Al-Qaeda assault on America. Here again, Foxman’s instincts—forged in the memory of the Holocaust and the knowledge that it’s a mistake to imagine that enemies of the West and the Jews are giving up—led him to the correct conclusion. Yet for that honorable stand, he was wrongly attacked by fellow liberals as a bigot. Even worse, 10 years later, Greenblatt and the ADL disgracefully apologized for what he had said.

Under Greenblatt, the group endorsed the antisemitic Black Lives Matter movement and embraced woke racialist teachings that grant a permission slip for Jew-hatred. Just as bad, Greenblatt’s decision to turn the ADL into a shill for his left-wing Democratic Party allies was a repudiation of Foxman’s determination to keep the group out of partisan politics, even as he maintained it as a bastion of liberalism. Its willingness to endorse a false narrative that accused President Donald Trump of inciting antisemitism when he was not just a proven friend of Israel, but actually doing more to fight it than his predecessors, was more than a mistake. It was a betrayal of the group’s mission.

Sadly, in his last years, Foxman succumbed to the same temptation, refusing to condemn a Democratic Party video ad that analogized Trump to the Nazis, something that he had always previously opposed.

A life well-spent
Still, when looking back at Foxman’s life, we need to set aside the twists and turns of his career, and understand him as a figure who personified the way Jewish immigrants could fully embrace America while holding onto their Jewish identity and faith. Despite his justified vigilance against hate, Foxman believed in the promise of this nation and its guarantee of liberty. His was a life that had been saved from the furnace of the Holocaust and spent in defense of the Jewish people and the principles of American freedom.

The liberalism that he believed in so deeply would prove unable to defend those principles against progressives and leftists who betrayed their Jewish allies. Though he made his share of mistakes and misjudgments, his was a life that must be judged as having been well spent defending his people and the best things for which his adopted country stood.

May his memory be for a blessing.
At Abraham Foxman’s funeral, an elegy for the last generation with direct ties to the Holocaust
As mourners gathered Tuesday for the funeral of Abraham Foxman, they were saying goodbye not only to one of the most influential Jewish leaders of the last half-century, but to one of the dwindling number whose moral authority was forged in the Holocaust itself.

Foxman, who died Sunday at 86, spent decades as one of the world’s most recognizable Jewish advocates, serving for nearly 30 years as the ADL’s top professional and another two decades before that in its leadership ranks. Presidents sought his counsel. Antisemites sought his absolution. Popes welcomed him. Prime ministers argued with him.

Many of the speakers at Park Avenue Synagogue credited his accomplishments to his outsized personality, his sense of humor and his intuitive leadership skills. And yet his past hung heavy over the funeral, which also served as an elegy for the last generation of survivors and how, like Foxman, they shaped Jewish communal life in the years after World War II and the founding of Israel. Born in Poland, Foxman survived the war in the care of his Catholic nanny.

“His life story of rising from the ashes is our story,” said Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, in a video tribute. “It is the story of our people born in the world at war. The Holocaust shaped Abe’s character and defined his mission to combat antisemitism and hypocrisy, to call up racism and bias, to speak up for the Jewish people and a Jewish democratic state of Israel.”

Others recalled that beyond fighting antisemitism, Foxman’s past inspired him to build a communal juggernaut that championed pluralism, democracy and civil rights.

“He knew exactly what the absence of those things looked like,” said Stacy Burdett, a former ADL colleague, referring to the Holocaust. “Abe lived in our world as a moral witness, not just to what human beings can survive, but to what they’re obligated to defend.”

Packing the sanctuary were Jewish communal leaders, former ADL colleagues and bold-face Jewish activists such as the lawyer Alan Dershowitz and the New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. (Not able to attend was Jonathan Greenblatt, Foxman’s successor at ADL, whose mother died in Florida on Saturday.)

When they weren’t recalling Foxman’s early trauma and subsequent accomplishments, eulogists painted a portrait of a Jewish communal warrior as a consummate hugger.



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