Pages

▼

Saturday, May 16, 2026

05/15 Links Pt2: VDH: The Four Horsemen of the New Antisemitism; Face it, Jewish liberals: You have no friends on the left; Jews targeted worldwide as well-funded leftist, Islamist groups join for ‘Nakba 78’ protests

From Ian:

Victor Davis Hanson: The Four Horsemen of the New Antisemitism
Few predicted that blaming Israel and the Jews who support it would flare up in the early 21st century—and in America of all places, where there are nearly as many Jews as there are in Israel.

After all, Israel is the only consensual society in the Middle East. It holds regular elections and maintains tripartite judicial, executive, and legislative checks and balances.

Free speech is found in the Middle East only in Israel, where religious apostasy, criticism of one’s own country, gender equity, and tolerance of gays are guaranteed in marked contrast to all its neighbors.

It was once common knowledge that Israel had survived the huge numbers of its enemies because its tiny population was better educated, freer, more adept at Western technology, more tolerant of dissent—and because it enjoyed the goodwill and bipartisan support of the United States.

True, the recent affluence of the Gulf States has presented a thin veneer of Westernism that has fooled many in the new anti-Israel media. But just because Qatar did not censor a celebrity newsman’s broadcast from Doha does not mean Qatar is a free society. After all, no Western journalist would dare schedule a broadcast from Qatar with a Qatari who had condemned the regime for its intolerance or announced his religious apostasy from Islam.

So why and how did millions of Americans begin to express hatred for Israel and, albeit more subtly, the Jews who support it?

There are four converging fronts in this perfect storm.
Seth Mandel: Can Jewish Democrats Still Save Their Party?
It’s something. But it might be both too little and too late. The time it has taken Democratic Jewish figures to come around to the need to fight anti-Semitism within their own tent has left them forever playing catchup. Worse, it has enabled the rise of the very candidates Soifer now claims to be concerned about.

Additionally, Republicans have on occasion urged voters to back the Democrat in general-election races if the Republican nominee is truly unacceptable. There is no sign any Democrats of influence would follow the same path. Staying neutral is the most backbone they’ll show at this point.

And the party isn’t at all swayed by JDCA finally showing a bit of hesitation about a Democrat. Platner’s name was raised at the conference by Simon Rosenberg, a Jewish Democratic strategist. His position on Platner: “The Maine party is excited, ready to go, and we’re all going to be along the Platner train in a few weeks.”

According to JTA, the “big tent” argument seems to be the main excuse being deployed to convince Democratic Jews to go along to get along: “Ami Fields-Meyer, a former Biden White House adviser who spoke more critically of Israel than most of the summit’s speakers, did not weigh in on Platner specifically. But he echoed Rosenberg’s call for building coalitions that include ‘people we don’t agree with,’ and advocated for the Democratic Party and Jewish community to embrace a wider range of viewpoints on Israel.”

It should go without saying that if Jewish Democrats aren’t going to resist having extremist anti-Semites representing their party, then virtually no one will. If that’s the case, the battle has already been lost.
Karol Markowicz: Face it, Jewish liberals: You have no friends on the left
Where is the outcry from liberal Jews, saying they’ll never read that slop again?

Or from their absent friends, saying they won’t allow vicious lies like that to be spread?

This is not a both-sides issue.

Only one half of our political divide is standing in silence.

On the right this week, non-Jewish influencers, podcasters and politicians have been pushing back on the lies and the violence targeting Jews.

CNN commentator Scott Jennings called the Times piece “a journalistic atrocity that I actually feel stupid reading out loud” and said everyone involved should be fired.

Radio host Buck Sexton, after reading the Civil Commission’s report: “Given the demonic realities of Oct. 7, Israel acted with considerable restraint in its Gaza campaign, and should be commended for it.”

Harmeet Dhillon of the US Department of Justice tweeted video from the Brooklyn riot and promised to “collect evidence and analyze potential charges.”

And sure, there are antisemites nominally on the political right, Tucker Carlson infamously among them.

But so many non-Jews in the conservative world — President Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), commentator Victor Davis Hanson and a host of others — have lined up against Carlson’s foul suggestions that his influence on that side of the aisle is sinking like a stone.

That’s just a tiny sample of voices on the right speaking up for Jews, regularly and often.

Who on the left is doing the same?

This week’s silence should be humiliating.

It should be clarifying.

It should, at last, wake up those Jews on the left who care at all about self-preservation — or that of their children.

It’s long past time to leave this one-sided alliance behind.


James Kirchick: Most Democrats Don’t Like Israel Any Longer. Period.
The election of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in 2008 signaled a significant shift in Democratic Party thinking. In the Middle East, Obama’s policies were premised on ideas that any Israeli government would have opposed. Reorienting America’s strategic posture away from its traditional allies in a way that emboldened the revolutionary regime in Iran, respecting rather than resisting Tehran’s “equities” in Syria and Lebanon, warming to the Muslim Brotherhood in places like Egypt and Qatar—these moves deeply unsettled not only Israel but the Sunni Muslim states as well.

Broader trends have also played a significant role in deepening the divide between Democrats and Israel. Since the end of the Cold War, American politics have become increasingly polarized ideologically. (See the dwindling existence of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats.) The election of Donald Trump in 2016 exacerbated that polarization, with Israel increasingly coded as a “right-wing” cause. Along with Russia and Hungary under Viktor Orbán, Israel became a red state. Every Israel-friendly initiative Trump undertook encountered knee-jerk opposition from Democrats, from his moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem (a policy supported by every American president since 1995) to the assassination of Iranian terror-master Qassem Soleimani.

Then there’s the unavoidable fact that while Israel has become more conservative over the past quarter century, the Democratic Party has lurched left. In 1992, Labor and Meretz won a combined 44 percent of the Israeli vote. The Oslo Accords followed, a sovereign state was offered to the Palestinians, and they responded with the second intifada. Today, neither Labor nor Meretz exists, and the number of left-wing members of the Knesset can be counted on two hands. Across the Atlantic, the party of Truman, Kennedy, and Clinton now endorses the “Squad,” Zohran Mamdani, and the Totenkopf-branded Graham Platner. Courageous Democrats like Senator John Fetterman and Congressman Ritchie Torres find themselves alienated for defending the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. Despite saying that Netanyahu is “one of the worst leaders of all time,” Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was asked by Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential-campaign vetting team whether he was an agent of the Mossad.

To test the Democratic claim that Netanyahu is to blame for Israel’s unpopularity, one must try to imagine how a leader more palatable to Democrats might have acted over the past 25 years. Israeli conduct during the war in Gaza is correctly cited as the driving factor behind its fall in global support. But an overwhelming majority of the Israeli public backed the war, and a more centrist government would not have conducted it in a manner all that different from the way the current coalition did. None of the leading candidates for prime minister supports the immediate creation of a Palestinian state, a policy embraced by most of the world, which, in the meantime, recognizes an imaginary one. In large numbers, Democrats blame Israel for having duped the U.S. into war with Iran and for committing a “genocide” in Gaza, the affirmation of which is bound to be imposed as a litmus test on the party’s presidential candidates.

With any relationship, there often comes a time when one or both parties decide that it should end. Unfortunately, we seem not far from the point when most Democrats admit that their problem isn’t with Benjamin Netanyahu but Israel itself.
The Extraordinary and the Resented By Abe Greenwald
Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here.
What does one even mean by “a normal country”? My guess is that they mean something vaguely like the late-20th-century idea of a Western European country: free, modern, democratically governed, well-meaning but proud, and culturally distinct.

Well, those countries are not so normal anymore. They’re still relatively free, provided you’re not visibly Jewish. If you are, freedom comes with dangerous new risks—and that’s not freedom at all. In some instances, such as in Birmingham, England, Jews are told to stay away from certain recreational events for their own safety. It’s hard to call these countries modern or democratic when primitive mobs in the minority hold veto power. Elected government, having handed over such power, can no longer be called well-meaning. European leaders didn’t endorse a nonexistent Palestinian state out of benevolence. They sought to appease terrorist supporters out of political desperation. As for their being culturally distinct, these countries are being remade, day by day, in the same dreary image. Whether it’s England or Belgium or the Netherlands, the scene is straight out of a raging Islamist backwater. To the extent that the backsliding nations of Europe remain proud, it’s a pathology.

That’s what becomes of normal countries. They don’t stand for humane ideas, defend essential principles, or take up the mantle of moral leadership. So how are they treated? Like suckers. Their moral cowardice invites ruin.

Then there’s Israel and the United States, both of which continue to do all three. Both are moral nations founded on transcendent ideas. And both, unlike their European counterparts, are thriving. This humiliation ordinary countries cannot forgive. There is a price to being extraordinary.
Open letter to Peter Beinart: When the Left comes for you, where will you go? - opinion
The mainstream Right, by contrast, has overwhelmingly stood with the Jewish community and Israel. Republican-led congressional committees have held multiple high-profile hearings exposing campus antisemitism and holding university leaders accountable, all while those on the Left unfathomably reject.

Just last month, in April 2026, Senate Republicans stood united in defeating resolutions introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders to block arms sales to Israel. Forty out of 47 Senate Democrats voted to prohibit the sale of military equipment to Israel.

This was not a vote on foreign aid. It was a direct effort to prevent the United States from selling any defensive arms to a key ally. Congress has used this mechanism in the past against adversaries such as Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Cuba, or to restrict sales to Saudi Arabia during the Yemen conflict. Treating Israel this way, nearly akin to viewing it as an enemy, reveals how far the position has shifted.

History offers a chilling precedent. In the early 1930s, the Verband nationaldeutscher Juden (Association of German National Jews), led by decorated World War I veteran Max Naumann, rejected Zionism as disloyal and insisted that Jewish identity must be erased in favor of nationalism.

These Jews welcomed Hitler’s rise as a “national awakening,” supported the regime, and argued Nazi measures targeted only “un-German” elements. They believed that by discarding Jewish particularism, including ties to Jewish ethnicity, culture, and the Land of Israel, they could prove their loyalty and be accepted as true Germans.

It didn’t work.

In November 1935, just weeks after the Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of German citizenship, the Gestapo dissolved the group as “hostile to the state.” Max Naumann was arrested and imprisoned in the Columbia concentration camp. The “good,” patriotic, anti-Zionist Jews who had distanced themselves from their people received no protection. They shared the same fate as the wider Jewish community they had scorned.

Peter, like the leaders of the VnJ, you have made rejection of Jewish Zionism and particularism central to your public identity. In doing so, you distance yourself from the overwhelming majority of Jews who see these elements as core to our peoplehood. You position yourself as the “good Jew” acceptable to the progressive Left because you have shed the “problematic” parts of Jewish identity.

The same dynamic is playing out today. The progressive Left’s problem isn’t really Israel – it’s Jews and the belief in a broader “Jewish supremacy.” Like it or not, that includes you. Your support for them won’t shield you when usefulness wanes.

I implore you to reaffirm that Jewish peoplehood and identity are not supremacist sins, but legitimate expressions of a people’s right to exist, live, and thrive like any other. I believe with all my heart that the Jewish community – your community – will welcome you back.

Please wake up before it’s too late, my friend. The new Left is coming.
Douglas Murray: Alaa Abd el-Fattah and our misplaced priorities
In a set of other online posts, El-Fattah said he wanted to kill ‘all police’, and – astoundingly enough – he has stern views about Jews and Zionists. The latter should, according to our latest import, all be killed. It is ‘heroic’, he has said, to kill ‘any colonialists and especially Zionists’, adding of Zionists: ‘We need to kill more of them.’

It is worth dwelling on that. After the Manchester synagogue attack in October, Starmer, David Lammy and all the rest of them stressed how we can’t let ‘hate’ into our country, and need to stop people riling up nastiness. But all the time they were making a priority of bringing a man into the UK who hates the British people, wants police officers to be killed and thinks the only good Zionist is a dead Zionist.

At such moments, of course, Starmer’s political opponents realise that there might be some political capital to be made from highlighting this obscenity. Robert Jenrick and others spent the post-Christmas period rampaging across X trying to highlight El-Fattah’s historic views and point at Starmer’s evident present-day numpty-ness.

But, as I can often be found saying, there is always another level to this hell. On this occasion it comes from the following fact.

It is not merely Starmer who has made El-Fattah into the human rights case de nos jours. It turns out that each of our swiftly rotating previous Conservative governments also thought that his case should be a priority for them. Liz Truss’s government thought so, as did Rishi Sunak’s. The Home Office also made the release of this Egyptian a priority by granting him citizenship. The then foreign secretary James Cleverly boasted: ‘We will continue to work tirelessly for his release.’ Again, you and I may have thought that the Home and Foreign Offices might have tried to bring migration down several notches. Instead they ramped migration up to historic highs. And why not, when they were working so ‘tirelessly’ for El-Fattah’s release.
Jake Wallis Simons: Prince Harry has done a brave thing but the King showed greater courage
Last year, his Archewell Foundation quietly cut ties with a US-based Muslim organisation after its founder used the slogan “from the river to the sea” and described Israel as an “apartheid state”.

“We have zero tolerance for hateful words, actions or propaganda,” Archewell executives wrote in a scathing email to Janan Najeeb, the Palestinian-American head of the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition. “We will be removing MWC from our network.”

To underline this position, Harry has penned an essay for the New Statesman. Incredibly, it barely mentioned the plight of the Palestinians – even after the gruesome October 7 Civil Commission report, it will always be called a plight – and focused instead on the “deeply troubling” rise of anti-Semitism in Britain. For this, our Harry deserves full credit.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves: lift the bonnet and his essay still chimed with the usual calumnies. While Harry emphasised the obvious, often overlooked, point that “hatred directed at people for who they are” is “not protest” but “prejudice”, and decried the “lethal violence in London and Manchester”, he used several of his paragraphs to condemn Israel.

“The scale of human suffering … demands sustained scrutiny and action from the international community,” he wrote, adding that the Jewish state – which he did not mention by name – was acting “without accountability, and in ways that raise serious questions under international humanitarian law”.

Did Harry read the full details of October 7, released this week? The butchery, rape, mutilation, humiliation and necrophilia? The way Palestinian savages sliced off body parts during a rape, played games with them, then sent triumphant videos to their families? Faced with 251 hostages and a strategy of human shields, how was Jerusalem supposed to react? How would we? (OK, don’t answer that one.)

Blind to the truths of our times, that anti-Semitism takes its fullest expression as Israelophobia, wears the cloak of benevolence towards self-hating Jews, takes its strength from disinformation and its outrage from luxury – he appeared to confirm the very demonisation that lies at the root of the problem.

“Nothing, whether criticism of a government or the reality of violence and destruction, can ever justify hostility toward an entire people or faith,” he wrote, contrasting the bad Jews who relish bloodshed with the good Jews who are “openly and publicly critical of certain state actions”.

On top of this, Harry lamented the “devastating loss of life among journalists in Gaza, undermining transparency and accountability at a time when both are essential”. Was he unaware how many “journalists” appeared on lists of martyred terrorists released by Hamas and Islamic Jihad?

But now I’ve fallen into the trap of criticising the Prince. I didn’t mean to. He’s a celebrity, not an intellectual or a working royal, and his wife flogs lifestyle products. It would be too much to expect him to puncture the cataracts of propaganda that cap the eyes of almost everybody.

My point is that in his own feeble and inadequate way, Harry is resisting the herd and doing his best to stand by the Jews. It may be a low bar, but that is largely what qualifies as bravery these days. In the future, once the King’s generation is gone, that may be all we have left.
Seth Mandel: The Future of Moderate Israeli-Arab Politics
A leader can’t get too far in front of his constituents, I suppose. The problem is that Abbas is arguably a once-in-a-generation figure in Arab politics, someone who has legitimacy within the Islamic movement and among working-class Arabs alike and can retain that legitimacy while integrating his party into mainstream Israeli politics. So there isn’t really time for incrementalism. He isn’t just working within a brief window; he is the window.

And he is a victim of his own success. Abbas has become a natural political leader. So when protests erupted throughout Israeli Arab communities over rising crime, politicians had to show a united front—and a united front needs a leader. Abbas was the natural choice.

But Abbas was hoping to avoid running in the upcoming elections on a combined Arab slate with the other parties. Why? Because the other parties don’t support joining a governing coalition. Abbas also wanted to recruit a Jewish candidate to run on his party’s list, but that won’t fly with a united Arab alliance.

So Abbas has an election issue that doesn’t require touching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: local crime. To do something about it, Abbas needs enough votes to be a meaningful addition to a governing coalition. He can likely only get those votes by leading a united front. But that united Arab front may be what stops him from maneuvering into a governing coalition, which is—to Abbas—the entire point. After all, if you’ve got a political problem to solve, you need political power to solve it. Abbas has no objection to making the necessary compromises to do that.

Abbas agreed to lead this political coalition going into elections only if he can break off his own party from the group after the election so he can try to join a governing coalition. But post-October 7, Abbas cannot drop his moderate tone and still expect an invitation to join a Bennett-led government.

So a civil-service plan is the perfect type of policy advocacy for Abbas, because he can say he got elected by patriotic Arabs in order to work with Zionist parties. But then he has to walk it back, because joining the larger Arab coalition requires giving up the independence he needs to gain bipartisan trust.

Abbas wants to be the model for future Arab moderates. His fellow Arab politicians don’t want to let him. This election will reveal who wins that battle.
Israel, Jews targeted worldwide as well-funded leftist, Islamist groups join for ‘Nakba 78’ protests
A global network of anti-Israel activist groups is mobilizing coordinated "Nakba 78" protests across the United States and around the world today, with organizers using the anniversary of Israel’s founding to challenge the Jewish state’s right to exist.

A Fox News Digital investigation found that about 425 organizations — including communist groups, Muslim advocacy organizations and anti-Israel activist coalitions attributed with blatant antisemitism — are working together in a coordinated transnational protest network with a combined funding footprint of about $1 billion in annual revenues.

The groups have organized an estimated 736 events across 39 countries this weekend in locations including New York , Chicago, Los Angeles, London and Sydney, according to an analysis of protests listed at a website organizing actions against Israel. Organizers describe the demonstrations as marking the "Nakba," an Arabic word for "catastrophe" used by Palestinians to describe the founding of Israel on May 14, 1948, the displacement of Palestinians and their historical grievance. Muslim scholar warns global network using anti-Israel protests to undermine US Video

The "Nakba 78" protests reflect a "sinful marriage between the radical left and radical Islamism, the groups that hate Western liberal democracies and desire to destroy them," Dalia Ziada, a Middle East scholar and Washington, D.C.-based coordinator at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, told Fox News Digital.

Critics say that the coordinated organizing of the mass protests reveals a global antisemitic movement that presents itself as humanitarian while mainstreaming rhetoric that denies Jewish self-determination and the right of Israel to exist as a state.

In New York City yesterday, the People’s Forum, a pro-communist activist hub and a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, funded by a Marxist tech mogul, Neville Roy Singham, made signs at an "art build" for a protest today against the "ongoing Nakba." Their Marxist comrades within the Party for Socialism and Liberation are fanning out across the country to rail against Israel’s existence.


Mamdani posts Nakba Day video, claims ‘the catastrophe continues to this day’
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani posts a video and a statement for Nakba Day.

The video shows an interview with a “Nakba survivor,” New York resident Inea Bushnaq. She describes fleeing her home because “the Zionists were coming into Jerusalem.”

“Nakba is Arabic for ‘catastrophe,'” the video says. “It refers to the expulsion and displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 during the creation of the State of Israel and the year that followed.”

“The Haganah, Irgun and Lehi militias, among others, destroyed more than 400 Palestinian villages and cities, killing thousands of Palestinians and carrying out dozens of massacres,” the video says. “May 15 is the annual commemoration of the Nakba. For Palestinians, their displacement and the Nakba continues to this day.”

The video, produced by the mayor’s office and released shortly before Shabbat, presents a one-sided view of Israel’s War of Independence.


UKLFI: Natasha Hausdorff explains legality of Israel’s interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla
This interview examines the legal framework surrounding Israel’s interception of the so-called Global Sumud Flotilla in the Mediterranean Sea on 30 April 2026.

Much of the international media and social media coverage described the operation as “piracy”, “kidnapping” and a clear violation of international law. But does the law of armed conflict at sea actually support those claims?

UKLFI Charitable Trust Legal Director, Natasha Hausdorff, discusses the law governing naval blockades, humanitarian shipping, maritime interception and the legal status of vessels attempting to breach a blockade.

The conversation also examines the relevance of the San Remo Manual, the UN Palmer Report following the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident and the distinction between political rhetoric and established international legal doctrine.

The discussion reflects Natasha Hausdorff’s legal analysis and interpretation of the applicable framework under international law.

Additional research provided by Dr Naama Omri.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
01:05 Is Israel’s Gaza naval blockade lawful?
05:07 Does carrying aid make a flotilla legally protected?
08:43 Can Israel intercept ships in international waters?
11:28 The legal basis for detention and questioning
13:33 Media coverage, “piracy” claims and international law




Jewish Dem congressman receives antisemitic death threats in voicemails reviewed by JNS
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) has received a lot of antisemitic and threatening voicemails, including those decrying U.S. support for Israel, invoking the Holocaust and calling for violence against Jews.

A spokesman for the Jewish congressman, who shared five such recordings with JNS, said that “these voicemails were from the last six months and represent a small sample size of the hateful voicemails the office receives.”

The callers used repeated antisemitic slurs and conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel and directed personal threats and vulgar insults at Moskowitz, according to the recordings that JNS reviewed.

“The U.S. government needs to kill Jews,” one called said. “Israel is an abomination of fake Jews from Europe. Fake Jews.”

The caller added that “Zionism is treason to we the people and our U.S. Constitution” and said, “If they claim to be God’s chosen people, you kill him dead.”

Another called for the deaths of Israeli civilians. “How about 9 million of them,” he said. “Trains are boarding to Germany. Showers available on request.” He also called Moskowitz a “child murderer and pedophile.”

A third man made reference to antisemitic podcaster Tucker Carlson and said, “You filthy maggots calling him a Nazi. You’re a piece of s***.”

“You’re not a f****** American at all,” he said, in the expletive-laden voicemail, which ran nearly two minutes. “You’re the Hitler.”

The Democratic Majority for Israel condemned the voicemails, calling them “hateful and disgusting.”

“All Americans deserve to live in peace without fear of prejudice and violence,” the group stated. “This behavior runs contrary to everything we believe in as a nation.”


Anti-Israel US Senate candidate with covered up Nazi tattoo splits Jewish Democrats summit
Simon Rosenberg was almost done running through his thoughts about upcoming Senate races when the political strategist threw a rhetorical bomb into the crowd of Jewish Democrats.

“And then there’s Maine,” Rosenberg said, eliciting laughter — some of it uneasy. The race and its presumptive Democratic nominee, Graham Platner, had been on people’s minds on Wednesday during the confab, the national summit of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, but no one had yet mentioned him from the stage.

The omission was notable because Platner is seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party. He was initially battling in the primary against Maine Gov. Janet Mills, whom the JDCA had endorsed. But he effectively clinched the nomination when Mills dropped out of the race two weeks ago, and now is expected to challenge Rep. Susan Collins in November.

Among Jewish Democrats, there is a debate over whether to support Platner, who has caused concerns with his past Nazi tattoo and staunch criticism of Israel, but also has a chance to unseat an incumbent Republican and help the party take control of the Senate.

Rosenberg revealed at the summit where he stood in that debate — somewhere the JDCA’s leadership has not been willing to go.

“The Maine party is excited, ready to go, and we’re all going to be along the Platner train in a few weeks,” he said.

The laughs gave way to murmurs and groans. Some attendees shook their heads at one another. One woman mouthed something to her neighbor, motioning “No” with her arms.

“He’s going to be the candidate, and let’s hope the very best of him comes out in the next five, six weeks,” said Rosenberg, who hosts the “Hopium” podcast. “But that is going to be an interesting race.”

Moderator Jill Goldenberg piped in, easing the tension. “We are not leaving on that note!” she said, asking Rosenberg a final question about what gives him hope.

Platner, the left-wing candidate and former oyster farmer, has drawn concerns from some Jewish groups with his Nazi tattoo, which he recently covered up with another design, and his anti-Israel rhetoric and calls to end US military assistance to the country. The JDCA is among them.
UK Jewish groups call on government to prevent Hasan Piker entering the country
UK Jewish groups have called for the government to ban the entry of a notorious far-left US political commentator with troubling positions on Hamas and Hezbollah who has also described Orthodox Jews as “inbred” and has likened Zionism to Nazism.

Hasan Piker, a far-left streamer and political commentator, was due to appear at an event in June for UnHerd magazine, in conversation with far left economist Yanis Varoufakis and a former Associate Editor of the Financial Times, Wolfgang Munchau. The magazine described this as “a special live recording of the Econoclasts podcast” in which Varoufakis and Munchau would “challenge Piker on what the ascendency of the online Left means for America and the world.

Piker, who has millions of followers across different social media platforms, has a long track record of highly incendiary comments. He described the allegations of extreme sexual violence carried out against Israelis on 7 October as “rape fantasies”, subsequently going on to say that “it doesn’t matter if rapes f***ing happened on 7 October, like that doesn’t change the dynamic for me… the Palestinian resistance is not perfect.” He has described how in his opinion “Hamas is a thousand times better than Israel”, describing it as “a militant resistance comprised of orphaned soldiers born into a 77 year occupation” and has said that he is “a lesser evil voter and therefore I would vote for Hamas over Israel every single time.”

The ADL, America’s most prominent organisation combating antisemitism, has described how “Piker’s record of support for designated terrorist organizations and derogatory rhetoric about Jews represents a dangerous pattern that his millions of followers are exposed to regularly. His growing involvement in electoral politics and mainstream media amplifies these messages far beyond fringe spaces.”

Piker has also described how he does “not have a single issue with Hezbollah as a form of militancy trying to incur penalties on the genocidal state of Israel.” He has also described Hezbollah’s flag as his favourite… Look it up. I’m not even kidding. It’s actually a dope flag…It’s got an AK on it and a fucking hand holding it up!” He has described how he believes that “any kind of fuc**** Zionist tendency should be treated in the same way as being a f***ing rabid neo-Nazi” and has described Zionism as “a mental illness”.
Sex therapist running for Congress says Dem primary opponent should be ‘tried for treason’ over Israel support
A Texas sex therapist running for Congress claimed in a recent radio interview that her Democratic primary opponent should be “tried for treason” over his support for Israel — and doubled down on the inflammatory language when contacted by The Post.

Maureen Galindo, a licensed marriage and family therapist with Exulted Sex Therapy in San Antonio, told Texas Public Radio May 13 that Johnny Garcia “and others who support him, or anybody who is supported by Israel should be tried for treason.”

Asked whether she stood by the comments Friday, she told The Post: “YES. In fact, as soon as I’m elected, I’ll start the process of having all American candidates and elected officials who knowingly accepted Israeli-affiliated money tried for treason.

“They knowingly accepted money to support a foreign government for weapons that could be used on Americans,” she added. “I believe this is the most necessary action Congress must take in these times to protect the future public safety of America from an AI surveillance prison state. I’ll be doing this for the freedom of America.”

Galindo, without evidence, claimed during the TPR sitdown that Israel was signing contracts with “all these churches in America to take over their data” and making offices available in the Jewish state to the Department of Homeland Security, contributing to “an Israeli occupation of America.”

“That sounds crazy to say,” she noted, “but that’s not crazy for so many people who are just kind of sick of hearing the mainstream media not cover this kind of stuff.”

“In fact, I was thinking this morning, maybe Johnny Garcia and others who support him, or anybody who is supported by Israel should be tried for treason,” she added.
Claire Valdez sat for interview with Twitch streamer who called Jews ‘demonic ethnicity’
New York state Assemblymember Claire Valdez, a far-left Democrat now campaigning to fill an open House seat covering parts of Brooklyn and Queens, sat for a friendly interview released on Friday with a Twitch streamer who was once suspended from the platform for calling Jews a “demonic ethnicity.”

Valdez, who is backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter, joined a nearly hour-long virtual conversation with Michael Beyer, a fellow DSA member who uses the online moniker “Mike from PA” and has drawn criticism for invoking antisemitic rhetoric about Jews and Israel.

Beyer, who now lives in Los Angeles, was suspended from Twitch last year after offensive comments about Jewish ethnicity he made during a livestream had been resurfaced online. “Jewish is not an ethnicity,” he said in remarks from 2024. “This constructed ethnicity, this demonic ethnicity —, wholly invented.”

The Anti-Defamation League commended Twitch’s decision to implement the suspension, saying that streamers “should use their platforms responsibly and not engage in inflammatory, dehumanizing and antisemitic rhetoric.”

Beyer apologized for the comments, insisting that he had misspoken and had meant to say that “Jewish ethnicity in Israel is a Zionist construction and is intended to flatten the true diversity of Judaism.”

Beyer has frequently used inflammatory rhetoric in his social media posts about Israel. He has said that “supporting Israel is treason,” referred to “Zionist spies in this country that must be rooted out” and criticized “Zionist scum,” among other incendiary comments.


Herzog scraps appearance at JTS after objection from pro-Palestinian students
President Isaac Herzog has canceled an in-person commencement speech at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, the chancellor of the flagship Conservative institution said, after some students and alumni accused Herzog of having incited violence against Palestinians.

In a May 12 letter shared Thursday by JTS, Chancellor Shuly Rubin Schwartz, Herzog said he could not attend the May 19 ceremony because of unspecified “circumstances that prevent my travel to New York at this time,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.

Rubin Schwartz said Herzog, who was set to receive an honorary degree at the ceremony, would address the gathering virtually and would be awarded the degree in person at a later date.

Writing in the Forward, Rubin Schwartz also decried what she described as the “public media spectacle” that ensued after six members of the graduating class privately wrote to top JTS officials to object to Herzog’s selection last month as commencement speaker. The letter received the support of several other JTS students and alumni, including four rabbinical students, she said.

“As too often happens in such circumstances, the letter was shared more widely, without the students’ prior knowledge or consent,” Rubin Schwartz said. “This was dismaying to several of the students, who had intended to hand-deliver it to me to spark conversation.”

“The authors were publicly criticized, misidentified as rabbinical students and labeled ‘anti-Zionist,’ including by some parties who purport to care deeply about JTS,” said Rubin Schwartz. “Calls were made for their expulsion, and unfounded accusations were directed at their characters.”

The six authors, whom Rubin Schwartz identified as students in undergraduate JTS dual-degree programs with Barnard and Columbia, said that “as scholars of ethics, text, history and rabbinics,” they were compelled to express their concern about “the invitation of a speaker at our graduation celebration who condones the suffering of others.”

The authors claimed Herzog had “incited violence” by inscribing a message on an artillery shell that was fired into Gaza, denying that there was a famine in the Strip and declaring “an entire nation” responsible for the Hamas-led onslaught of October 7, 2023, that sparked the war there.


UW removes Middle East Center director after ‘cancerous’ Zionism remarks, ‘Christian/Zionist terrorism’ claim
Aria Fani, an associate professor of Persian and Iranian studies at the University of Washington, was recently removed from his role as director of the Middle East Center following anti-Zionist remarks.

“I can confirm that Aria Fani is no longer the director of the University’s Middle East Center,” David Rey, UW’s associate director of strategic communications, wrote in an email to UW’s newspaper, The Daily. “Daniel Hoffman, the director of the Jackson School of International Studies, will cover the administrative responsibilities of the Middle East Center for this spring and summer.”

The removal of Fani comes two weeks after he sent two emails to the MEC opt-in Listserv on March 9 and 18. In the second email, Fani claims that Zionism is a “cancer.”

“Ultimately, I understand Zionism as cancerous, a potentially fatal outgrowth in our planetary body: multiplying uncontrollably, invading healthy tissues, spreading, disrupting organs, stealing nutrients, and ultimately shutting vital systems down,” Fani wrote.

In the same email, Fani argued that America is on the path to becoming a Christian terrorist country. He wrote, “When it comes to religious fundamentalism, the US, Israel, and Iran differ only in degrees to which religion governs domestic and foreign policy.”

Fani cited examples like evangelicals blessing Trump in the Oval Office and the US army being “riddled with Christian extremists who invoke messianic messaging” as possible proof for a potentially violent religious attitude similar to Islamic fundamentalism.

He added, “Isn’t the violence created by this religious vision ‘Christian/Zionist terrorism’ in nature?”
US civil rights report details antisemitic conduct at Denver’s Auraria campus
A federal civil rights advisory committee report found that anti-Israel demonstrations and a weeks-long encampment at Denver’s Auraria campus featured antisemitic conduct and rhetoric that marginalized Jewish students and disrupted campus operations.

The May 2026 report by the Colorado Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, titled “Examining the Presence and/or Absence of Antisemitism on the Auraria Campus in Denver,” concluded that Jewish students were effectively excluded from parts of campus life as administrators struggled to maintain order.

The 164-page report examined events at the Auraria campus, which includes the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver and the Community College of Denver. According to the committee, protests began shortly after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, with Students for a Democratic Society organizing “Solidarity with Palestine” rallies outside the Golda Meir House Museum and Education Center on Oct. 11, 2023.

“The protests were not peaceful,” Lena Fishman, executive director of the museum, testified, noting that demonstrators used megaphones and drums and “shouted antisemitic slogans.”

A pro-Palestinian encampment was established on the Tivoli Quad on April 25, 2024, and remained until protesters voluntarily dismantled it on May 17, 2024. The report described repeated demonstrations, street blockades, building occupations and campus lockdowns during that period. Campus officials eventually shifted classes online and restricted building access amid escalating disruptions.

According to the report, the encampment and related protests forced the Golda Meir House to halt Shabbat dinners and other Jewish programming, prompted police escorts for visitors and contributed to a temporary campus shutdown in May 2024.

The committee also found that city officials gave protesters “special exemptions from law enforcement,” and prevented police from dismantling the protest despite trespassing violations and repeated campus disruptions.
Second lawsuit alleging Jew-hatred in six months filed against Seattle public school Nathan Hale High
Nathan Hale High School, which had 987 students as of the 2025-26 academic year, is being accused of discriminating against Jews in a second lawsuit within six months.

Alexandra Greenstein, a former student at the school, alleges that she endured “rampant antisemitic harassment and bullying” and that school officials failed to intervene. She is suing the district, Seattle Public Schools, in King County Superior Court.

The suit names Seattle Public Schools as the defendant and alleges violations of the Washington Law Against Discrimination. (JNS sought comment from Seattle Public Schools.)

According to the complaint, Greenstein was subject to “racial slurs and insults, offensive drawings of swastikas and intimidation and bullying in person and online” and Jew-hatred at the school intensified after Oct. 7.

Greenstein, who was born in California but grew up in Israel, alleges that she was called “baby killer” and “Islamophobic” because of her Jewish identity, and that in a senior English class, she was accused in class of “supporting ethnic cleansing and genocide.”

She hid the fact that she grew up in Israel from her fellow classmates to protect herself from bullying, per the lawsuit.

The suit mentions that after another Jewish student at Nathan Hale was assaulted, the district did not take steps to protect Jewish students from “foreseeable harm.” The other student, who isn’t named, filed a lawsuit against the district in November.


Jews targets of 82% of religion hate crimes in Toronto in 2025, Muslims 14%; hate crimes up 40% in 2026, per police data
Some 82% of religiously motivate hate crimes in Toronto in 2025 targeted Jews, compared to 14% that were anti-Muslim, according to annual hate crime statistics that the Toronto Police Service released on Thursday.

The department said that there was a 50% decrease in reported hate crimes in 2025 (231) compared to 2024 (443) but that reported hate crimes are up 40% so far in 2026 compared to this period last year. In 2023, there were 372 reported hate crimes, the department said.

In 2025, there was also a 37% decrease compared to 2024 in the number of criminal charges (217) brought against the 73 people arrested for hate crimes. Those arrested for hate crimes in 2025 were likelier to be charged (32%) than they were in 2024 (25%).

“Despite the overall decrease, hate crimes motivated by religion, race/ethnic or national origin, sexual orientation and gender identity or expression remained the most frequently reported, with the Jewish community the most frequently targeted group of all hate-motivated crimes,” the police department stated.

“The harm caused by hate continues to be very concerning, particularly for communities that continue to be targeted most frequently,” stated Myron Demkiw, chief of the police department. “The data shows that Jewish, black and 2SLGBTQI+ communities remain most impacted, year after year.”

“We are steadfast in our commitment to confronting hate in all its forms and making it easier for people to come forward and report incidents of hate,” the chief said. “In the last two years, we have strengthened our Hate Crime Unit and established the Counter-Terrorism Security Unit, which now encompasses the Hate Crime Unit, because we recognize the importance of addressing violent extremism early, in order to prevent harm.”
Australia bans neo-Nazi organization under new law criminalizing hate groups
Australia identified a neo-Nazi network as the second organization being banned under its new law criminalizing hate groups and support for them.

The group, formerly known as the National Socialist Network and sometimes called White Australia, said it would disband after the government in January passed the law allowing certain organizations to be banned. The law was in response to the antisemitic terror attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach in December, in which 15 people were killed.

The National Socialist Network “changed their name, but didn’t change the fact that they were still an organization and were still engaging in the same sort of behavior that met the thresholds for this legislation,” Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told reporters in Canberra on Friday.

Members of hate groups face 15 years in prison
The ban, which would take effect at the end of Friday, makes it illegal to support, fund, train, recruit, join, or direct the group, including if it reformed under a new name, Burke said. Breaking the law is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

The Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir was in March the first group banned under the hate speech law. That organization and the National Socialist Network were publicly identified by lawmakers and officials as the policy’s primary targets.

The new law allowed for hate groups that didn’t otherwise fit Australia’s definition of a terrorist organization to be banned. It was among a raft of measures enacted to curtail antisemitic hatred after the Bondi massacre targeting Jews roiled the country.


Jonathan Tobin: Shabbat and 250 years of a nation of faith and liberty
There are few things that better illustrate the hyper-partisanship currently prevailing in the American public square than the way many on the left are reacting to the planned celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

The fact that the person who will be presiding over the semiquincentennial festivities is President Donald Trump has cast a pall over everything being done to commemorate the birth of the American republic. Or at least it has for the many Americans who don’t merely oppose Trump, but regard him with such detestation to the point at which they are prepared to oppose just about anything he does or is associated with.

And that goes double for liberal Jews who are particularly annoyed that Trump has gone out of his way to include their community in the national shindig.

Shabbat 250
Rather than merely acknowledge the annual recognition of May as Jewish Heritage Month—along with the countless other such months highlighting a myriad of groups, faiths, ethnicities and special interests—the president added on something else. He called on “Americans to celebrate their faith and freedom throughout this year, during this month, and especially on Shabbat to celebrate our 250th year.”

That announcement gave birth to “Shabbat 250”—to be held on the second Sabbath of May from sundown on the evening of Friday, May 15 until sundown on Saturday, May 16, during which Jews and non-Jews can not only take their weekly break from everyday life, but also contemplate the blessings of American liberty.

But, rather than embracing this unprecedented recognition of the cornerstone of Jewish faith and its incorporation into the fabric of the national celebration, some Jews are, predictably, deeply troubled by it.

The left-wing Jewish Council on Public Affairs, the network of Jewish community relations councils that was once associated with federations but now is an independent partisan outfit, was outraged. Amy Spitalnick, its CEO, sputtered her indignation about the alleged violation of the separation of church and state. The Forward’s coverage of the event focused primarily on the fact that “Shabbat 250” preceded by a day “Rededicate 250,” a May 17 event that will celebrate the country’s history of faith and its importance in the founding. The very notion of acknowledging the Christian faith of the founders and the role it played in establishing the nation and its traditions of liberty is odious to those who are as disturbed by the presence of believers in the public square as they are by Trump.

Indeed, as EJewish Philanthropy reported, while many Jewish groups were scrambling to put together programming for the national Shabbat, particularly in the Orthodox community, others were distinctly nonplussed. Some, including rabbis, expressed concerns that the president’s honoring the Jewish day of rest in this manner would somehow erode religious freedom.

That is counterintuitive, but it makes sense to political liberals who have long held that Jewish security lies in erasing expressions of faith from the American public square. Indeed, many Jews seem to believe that if religion is treated as central to our national culture and identity, the fact that the majority of Americans are Christian inevitably means that Jews will suffer discrimination or be deprived of their rights.
Antisemitic comments flood posts celebrating Jewish American Heritage Month
Emily braced herself when she posted a video of her weiner dog Sprinkles wearing a kippah and posing with a challah earlier this month to celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month.

She wasn’t girding herself for the kind of “cute overload” responses that once littered online posts about adorable animals.

Instead, she was expecting exactly what happened: Her Instagram post quickly drew dozens of antisemitic comments, including one user who wrote “kike” six times and another who commented “HEIL AUSTRIAN PAINTER.”

Emily, the Jewish content creator behind “Sprinkles the Weenie,” an account with 240,000 followers that chronicles her dog’s life, said she had come to expect that kind of response whenever she posts Jewish content of Sprinkles online.

“I’ve been posting Jewish content for years. I’m never surprised,” said Emily, who requested anonymity because she does not publicly post her full name. “Part of being a Jewish content creator, you’re opening yourself up to, you know, there’s a lot of ignorance out there.”

While many Jewish content creators, including Jewish children’s music creator Ms. Sara, drew a similar flood of antisemitic comments this month, the backlash was hardly limited to Jewish accounts.

“F–ck Israel and f–ck Jews,” wrote one user on an Instagram post featuring US President Donald Trump’s statement commemorating Jewish American Heritage month.

“Jews are the most vile & evil creatures that has ever existed,” wrote another user on a post by “Sesame Street” featuring Jewish actress Kat Graham and the puppet Abby Cadabby commemorating the month.

“F–ck all these motherfu***** j**ish artists and f–ck u too,” wrote a user on a post by the Grammys honoring Jewish American “artists, producers, and innovators who helped shape the sound of music as we know it.”

The comments were not isolated examples. According to an analysis of 537 “high-visibility” posts about Jewish American Heritage Month by the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, a nonprofit that monitors and fights antisemitism, 33% of the comments on them were either antisemitic or “hostile.”


BBC corrects ‘error’ after omitting Israel from Eurovision finalists
The BBC has corrected an “error” after omitting Israel from a list of Eurovision acts that qualified for Saturday’s final.

Israel’s entry, Michelle, performed in French, English and Hebrew by 28-year-old songwriter Noam Bettan, secured a place in the final during Tuesday’s first semi-final at Vienna’s Wiener Stadthalle.

Despite some booing during the performance, Bettan progressed alongside acts from Belgium, Croatia, Finland, Greece, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Serbia and Sweden.



After being alerted by Jewish News to what the broadcaster described as an “error”, following Israel being the only qualifying country omitted from a list on its website, the BBC updated its online report.





Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon!

Reclaiming the Covenant on America's 250th (May 2026)

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

    

 

 

at