Friday, May 29, 2026

05/28 Links Pt2: VDH: Haters’ selective outrage exposes the hypocrisy of their Israel lies; Yad Vashem to open first Holocaust education center outside Israel in Munich

From Ian:

Victor Davis Hanson: Haters’ selective outrage exposes the hypocrisy of their Israel lies
Since Oct. 7, 2023, we have been lectured nonstop about the supposedly singular sins of Israel.

The campuses, the left-wing media and Democratic Socialist officials, following the cue of student activists and leftist professors, have painted Israel and its Jewish supporters as Nazis, fascists and among the worst murderers in today’s bloody world.

This is nonsensical.

The medieval-style massacre of 1,200 Jews in their homes on Oct. 7, during a time of peace, should have increased awareness of the existential dangers Israel faced.

Instead, it spawned a storm of antisemitism.

The libels of genocide and ethnic cleansing being cast at the Jewish state apply far more accurately to a host of other nations.

Over the decades, we have sold arms and given billions of dollars in military aid to Turkey — yet between 1915 and 1920, the Turkish government conducted a genocidal policy of ethnic cleansing against their Armenian population, for which it has never apologized and which it continues to deny.

None of the current critics of Israel seems worried that Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and ethnically cleansed Northern Cyprus of its Greek inhabitants.

There are no demonstrations anywhere in America on behalf of the far more recent “Nakba” of the Cypriot Greeks.

Did Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil ever rally his armies of idealists to damn the Islamic-driven ethnic cleansing of the ancient population of Christian Armenians, or to call for the United States to sever its joint arms deals with Turkey?

Before the 1967 war, nearly 1 million Jews were living in the Arab and Muslim Middle East, descendants of those who had been there for centuries.

But during the serial Arab-Israeli wars of the 20th century, they were almost entirely pushed out of those countries.

None appear today before television cameras, shaking the keys of their confiscated homes in Algiers, Amman, Baghdad or Cairo.

Of course, no one dares to say Arabs “ethnically cleansed” almost all their Jewish citizens.

Between 1987 and 1989, the Somali Marxist dictator Mohamed Siad Barre began slaughtering entire rival Somali clans. The eventual death toll may have reached nearly 200,000.

When Barre’s murderous regime finally imploded, thousands of Somali refugees who had either supported Barre or belonged to his clan fled to the once-despised West, especially the United States and Europe.

Among those pro-Barre refugees were apparently members of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s family, including her father, a colonel and regimental commander in Barre’s army.

It’s a bitter irony that Omar is now such a sharp critic of Israel and the United States, given that America granted refuge to her family.

Yet we are not aware that any Somalis today are now being accosted by strangers — as Jews are — and lectured about what their former leader’s regime did to those thousands of innocent civilians.
Ruth S. King: As Antisemitism Rages, Jewish Organizations Have Sidelined Themselves They did so by embracing partisan politics, rather than focusing on their core mission—protecting Jews around the world, including America and Israel.
Conor Cruise O’Brien, the Irish politician, writer, historian, and academic, once said, “Antisemitism is a light sleeper.” The phrase is often invoked to explain sudden, violent resurgences of antisemitic sentiment in modern times. It has now awakened with gale-force winds, and Jewish political clout and influence have disappeared.

Many Jewish organizations, some of which are political powerhouses ostensibly created to protect Jews and provide bipartisan support for Israel, have allied themselves with the “progressive” left. This is odd, as I searched all the Psalms and the “shalt not” commandments, and there is absolutely nothing about abortion rights, global warming, or transgender ideology. Furthermore, “woke” is a verb, not a Jewish mandate.

This is not the first time a single-issue political organization has picked a side in America and lost all its clout. An excellent example from the past is the old “China Lobby,” which went to the extreme right—and embraced antisemitism.

When John F. Kennedy was running for president in 1960, he had to contend with a hegemonic institution: the powerful “China Lobby,” an influential bipartisan coalition of voters who adamantly advocated for U.S. recognition and protection of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government in Taiwan, and fiercely opposed diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic of China.

The lobby successfully influenced foreign policy, securing the U.S. commitment to defend Taiwan through legislation like the Formosa Resolution of 1955.

To say the lobby was a political powerhouse is an understatement. The group forced the cancellation of Ross Y. Koen’s The China Lobby in American Politics. Macmillan had already started printing copies, but the book was withdrawn from publication in response to the political pressure. Only a few copies survived.

What happened to the China Lobby, which originated as a focused bipartisan group?

The group moved sharply to the right, collaborating with far-right isolationist and anti-communist coalitions, including early ties to militant grassroots organizations such as the John Birch Society. Among its protagonists were Senators William Knowland and Joseph McCarthy, alongside publisher Henry Luce and academic organizations like the Committee of One Million, a political pressure group that operated from 1953 to 1971.

The lobby actively allied with militant right-wing politicians to push an aggressive, pro-Nationalist foreign policy, attacking moderate U.S. diplomats and attempting to purge government officials who were deemed “soft on communism.”

Influential conservatives like J.B. Stoner advocated for radical antisemitism and segregation.

This was not the premise of the original lobby, which was concerned only with protecting Taiwan’s international status. Because it became embroiled in other political issues, it effectively came to be seen as a conservative fringe group and lost members, influence, and political clout.

For the past many years, Jewish organizations have made the same mistake. They were once political powerhouses ostensibly created to protect Jews and provide bipartisan support for Israel. Now, though, they’ve allied themselves with the “progressive” left. (Not all have done this, thankfully. Two outstanding organizations that continue to support Jews and Israel are the ZOA (Zionist Organization of America) and AFSI (Americans for a Safe Israel).)
Zionism, After the Fact By Abe Greenwald
Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here. A number of Israel-supporters have noted that the terms “Zionism” and “Zionist” are, from a present-day perspective, confusing or even insulting. As Zionism refers to a belief and a movement that sought to establish a modern Jewish homeland, does it make sense still to speak of Zionists when that homeland has existed for more than 75 years?

Coleman Hughes remarked in a recent episode of his podcast that it makes as much sense to declare oneself a Zionist today as it would to self-describe as an abolitionist. The State of Israel is a long-established fact, and American slavery has long been abolished. In this reading, perhaps the term Zionism is an anachronism that’s intended to cast a shadow of impermanence or erasure over the Jewish state.

I think Hughes makes a powerful point in comparing the relevance of Zionism and abolitionism. But it’s equally illuminating to contrast the two.

There is, after all, a reason that self-proclaimed abolitionists no longer exist while Zionists do: While there is no active anti-abolition movement, there’s a massive, coordinated, and armed anti-Zionist campaign looking to undo history and destroy Israel.

Now, let’s keep the contrast going with a little thought experiment. What if a modern anti-abolitionist movement suddenly arose? How would elite opinion respond to those actively fighting to repeal the 13th Amendment and reinstate slavery?

With fury, of course. Western liberals would be disgusted and outraged by the political organization of retrograde racists.


The abuse of Helen Mirren shows how deranged the anti-Zionists have become by Stephen Pollard
I don’t know if Dame Helen Mirren was at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, but if she was, she might have heard the Hungarian director László Nemes attack the “shameless orgy of anti-Semitism overtaking the West”. But whether or not she was there, she has certainly experienced that orgy of anti-Semitism herself.

A video has emerged on social media of Dame Helen being assailed one night in London by a passer-by. “It’s Helen Mirren, the avowed Zionist,” shouts the man to the video he has clearly decided to film as he sees her. Addressing the viewers of the video he knows he is going to post, he continued: “She said, ‘Israel should last forever because of the Holocaust.’ And she was very happy the Palestinians’ houses were gone… You’re an evil Zionist bitch.” Then the man turns to her husband, Taylor Hackford: “And you and all. F––k you and all.”

Dame Helen remains composed throughout this verbal assault, which would have been frightening for anyone, let alone for someone aged 80. Her husband, meanwhile – also in his 80s – responds with a restrained but clear: “F––k off.”

The obsessive Jew-haters who have adopted the Palestinian cause have long singled out Dame Helen for special opprobrium. Her “crime” is twofold.

First, although she is not Jewish, she has played a number of Jewish characters, not least the former Israeli prime minister Golda Meir. But she has also been clear not only in her rejection of the cultural boycott of the Jewish state which so many of her fellow actors endorse so as not to upset the rabid anti-Semites who demand it, but also in her support for the existence of Israel. That alone damns her.

For all that I wish Dame Helen had not had to experience this verbal assault, a part of me hopes the video is widely circulated. That’s because it shows the mindset – deranged is the word I would use – of those who spend their lives hunting out Jews and those who have no animus against Jews, ostensibly in support of Palestine.

Jew-hate is no longer an abstract phenomenon. It is rising exponentially, and it is a real, physical thing. It is seen en masse in the hate marches. But it is also found in day-to-day life, as with the maniac who assailed Dame Helen.
‘Evil Zionist bitch’: British actress Helen Mirren accosted by anti-Israel protester in London in resurfaced video
A resurfaced video shows British actress Dame Helen Mirren being accosted in London by a man calling her an “evil Zionist bitch.”

The man, who recorded the interaction and reportedly first posted it online back in November, approached the multi-award-winning Mirren and her husband, US film director Taylor Hackford, as they were crossing the street.

“And there’s Helen Mirren,” the man says as he walks up to them, “the avowed Zionist.”

“You said Israel should last forever because of the Holocaust,” the man says, claiming that the 80-year-old actress was “very happy that Palestinians’ houses were gone.”

Throughout the interaction, Hackford repeatedly tells the man to “fuck off,” but is ignored.

As he begins to back away from the couple, the man behind the camera tells Mirren that she is “an evil Zionist bitch,” informs Hackford that the same goes for him, and departs with a “fuck you and all.”

The man was referring to comments Mirren made in a 2023 interview while she was in Israel for the premiere of “Golda,” in which she starred as the eponymous Golda Meir.

In the interview, Mirren, who is not Jewish, said that she believed “in the existence of Israel” and its right to exist “because of the Holocaust,” and spoke out against cultural boycotts of the Jewish state, saying it “didn’t seem right” to abandon Israeli artists.


Revealed: The antisemite who confronted Helen Mirren in the street and called her an 'evil Zionist b****'
This is the anti-Semitic far-Left activist who abused national treasure Dame Helen Mirren in the street, the Daily Mail can reveal.

Corbynista Tom Carroll, from north London, has a history of posting abusive anti-Semitic material online and was engaged in haranguing Dame Helen and her husband Taylor Hackford in the capital, calling her an 'evil Zionist bitch'.

The Oscar-winning actress, 80, has long been outspoken in her support for Israel and has voiced opposition to cultural boycotts against the country.

The ugly incident featured in an online clip, first posted by an Instagram account called Anti-Fascist Action UK, shows Dame Helen being approached as she walked along the street with her husband, Taylor Hackford.

The video was originally posted in November 2025, in a longer form, and only by the @antifascistactionuk account.

On Wednesday the same account reposted the clip, confirming that the operator of the Instagram account had shot the video.

The Daily Mail has established that the Instagram account is linked to a YouTube and PayPal account run by Carroll, who was tagged in an Instagram post linking him with the @antifascistactionuk account.

Yesterday an X account called GnasherJew - a digital investigation team using open source intelligence to expose anti-Semites - named Carroll publicly, posting: 'The individual behind the antifascistactionuk's account on Instagram who reportedly called Helen Mirren 'evil Zionist bitch' has been identified as Tom Carroll.'


Simon Sebag Montefiore: British cultural life – Jewish or otherwise – cannot bow to gangs of ideological activists
A London event on the history of the ancient Jewish kingdoms in Judea and Israel is cancelled because of ‘security concerns’ and it turns out this was a reaction to a campaign to fill and then undermine the event by activist disrupters.

How strange! Why would a posse of aggressive activists be interested in the arcane details of bullae and steles and ostraca and inscriptions and numismatics in some small South Levantine kingdoms in the Iron Age?

Well, it is a little more than that, which is why it is both disturbing and important. And it matters because at its least it is a threat to history in Britain’s – but also the world’s – greatest temple of History, the British Museum – and its scholarly integrity.

The museum and its leadership are decent and well-meaning and have explained that they wished to save an event from disruption by bullying vandals. They have now announced a new event will take place next month, which will go some way towards fighting the impression that the permission of tiny cadres of aggressive bullies are required before it holds events. But the significance is wider than an event about the Moab and Tel Dan steles in a great museum.

British cultural life is the right and exercise of civic and cultural freedom – a privilege of our liberal democracy – that does not require the permission of gangs of ideological activists. It must not be cancelled or postponed at their beck and sufferance, nor permitted with a bend of the knee to their permissions or veto. But that is what this appears to be.

Across the cultural world in the West, though the bewildered middle-aged managers of our institutions that are confronting and often submitting to a wave of self-righteous blackmail and mob threat, there is an increasingly thin – indeed ever more fragile and sometimes nigh invisible – line between ‘security concerns’ – and institutional pusillanimity.

Then there is the history itself.

This event concerns the study of the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel that existed between roughly 1100BC and 586BC in the Levant. It is not a coincidence that this was chosen for disruption. The history of the Judean kingdoms and the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem that stood for most of the time between 1000BC and 70ADetc is important and fascinating history in its own right, supported by complex and growing archaeological finds.
George Osborne under fire over postponed Jewish event
Furious MPs have hit out at George Osborne after the British Museum postponed a lecture on the kingdoms of ancient Israel and Judah. The talk was scheduled to go ahead today as part of Jewish Culture Month, but was pulled amid ‘security concerns’ over possible ‘disruption’.

Last night, the museum said a ‘significant number’ of those registered for the event were plotting to ‘deliberately disrupt’ it. The institution insisted that postponing the lecture was necessary to ‘protect the event – not to diminish it’.

MPs and Jewish community leaders, however, slammed the move as caving to extremists. Their ire was aimed at Osborne, the museum’s chair, who defended the decision on social media. Reform’s Suella Braverman said: ‘Wrong call. You’ve given in to the bullies, to the mob and to the extremists. More weakness from the establishment elites- just like the Met Commissioner, the universities and the BBC.’

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said: ‘Jewish Culture Month is meant to promote awareness of and celebrate Jewish culture in the UK. This decision achieves precisely the opposite.’ Richard Ferrer, Editor of the Jewish News, asked the former chancellor: ‘The solution to intimidation is to reward it?’ The American historian Deborah Lipstadt chimed in:
The protestors won and they did not even have to show up.
British Museum reschedules ancient Israel lecture postponed over security concerns
The British Museum has rescheduled a lecture on ancient Israel, part of Jewish Culture Month, that was postponed over security concerns after officials said that many of the registered attendees planned to disrupt the event.

Paul Collins, keeper of the British Museum’s Department of the Middle East, is now set to deliver the lecture, “Ancient Israel and Judah in the British Museum,” in June.

“We expect a strong demand and will also offer a livestream to make the event accessible to a wider audience,” the museum stated.

“A respectful and secure environment for our visitors, speakers and colleagues remain our highest priority, and we are working closely with all relevant teams to ensure robust arrangements are in place, as would be expected for an event of this nature,” the museum stated. “Exploring and understanding history lies at the heart of the British Museum’s mission.”

The lecture had originally been scheduled for May 28 at the museum’s BP Lecture Theatre. The museum said earlier this week that a “significant proportion” of registered attendees intended to “deliberately disrupt the event.”

The Board of Deputies of British Jews welcomed the decision to reschedule the event.

“We welcome the British Museum’s update on their event related to Jewish Culture Month,” the group wrote.

Jewish Artists for Palestine, a network of anti-Zionist Jewish artists and cultural figures, criticized the museum’s characterization of potential disruptions as a security issue.

“What is the purpose of holding a talk on such a controversial topic if not to invite questioning and debate?” the group wrote. “That the British Museum deems such a debate a security concern points to the event as a pro-Zionist propaganda exercise.”


Exclusive: House panel says it uncovered new funding links between Biden admin and anti-Netanyahu, left-wing groups
The House Judiciary Committee said that it has uncovered new funding links between the Biden administration and left-wing groups that oppose the Israeli government, as well as groups with ties to terrorist organizations

A May 29 committee memorandum, which JNS obtained exclusively and which was addressed to committee members from the Republican-led committee staff, addresses “new information about the Biden-Harris administration helping to fund protests against the Netanyahu government.”

It alleges that U.S.-based organizations, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Tides Network, “provided over $5 million to groups that funded radical anti-Israel protests in the U.S. and Israel, and supported multiple terrorist-linked NGOs.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the committee, told JNS that the funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the State Department and other federal agencies raised questions about the misuse of federal dollars.

“You’re taking taxpayer money, you’re supposed to be doing good work,” the congressman said. “Why in the heck is it going to groups that are pro-Hamas?”

“Our government is sending American tax dollars to NGOs that are undermining our ally—our best ally—the State of Israel,” he told JNS. “That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

The memo provides new details, after the committee released the initial findings of its investigation in 2025.

It describes a web of financial connections, in which the Biden administration “provided grant funds to groups that contributed directly and indirectly to the judicial reform protests that sought to undermine the Israeli government.”


Call me Back: The History of Black-Jewish Relations, and how it unraveled - with Coleman Hughes
Can the Black-Jewish alliance be repaired, or is it irreparable?

Coleman Hughes, host of The Coleman Hughes Show at The Free Press and author of The End of Race Politics, joins Dan to trace the history of one of America’s most important political coalitions, and how it began to unravel. He looks at the forces behind that shift, from old neighborhood tensions and the Nation of Islam to campus politics and a worldview that treats America and the West as uniquely guilty. And - if the old alliance cannot simply be recreated, what would a healthier path forward actually require?

In this episode:
How Black and Jewish Americans became allies
The tensions inside the civil rights alliance
James Baldwin’s theory of Black antisemitism
Why Baldwin’s explanation falls short
Nation of Islam, Farrakhan, and hip-hop
Jewish success and the resentment problem
October 7th and the campus view of Israel
BLM, allyship, and whether repair is possible


Ask Haviv Anything: 118: Is Israel a settler-colonial state? A historian’s honest answer, with Alex Yakobson
Was the Zionist-Arab encounter always destined to end in displacement, war and suffering? That's what the settler-colonial theorists argue, and it's a claim that's moved from the fringes of academia into mainstream discourse on college campuses, op-ed pages and protest movements worldwide. It is a claim that has become almost definitional to left-wing politics in the West.

In this episode, we sit down with Professor Alexander Yakobson of the Hebrew University, a scholar of ancient democracy, national identity, and the modern Middle East, to take these arguments apart, piece by piece, with the one thing the debate usually lacks: actual history.

What really happened when the UN voted for partition in 1947? Why did the Jewish Agency beg both the Americans and the Soviets for an international enforcement force? How close was the IDF to losing the War of Independence, and what does that tell us about Zionist "inevitability?" Is the Nakba historically unique, or does it fit a painful pattern seen from Cyprus to British India to Greece and Turkey?

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Conversation
02:17 Exploring Zionism and Its Historical Context
05:19 The Nature of Displacement and Ethnic Cleansing
08:01 Partition Plans and Their Rejection
10:54 The Role of International Forces in Partition
13:43 Zionism vs. Colonialism: A Complex Debate
17:05 The Nakba: A Unique Historical Event?
19:58 Comparative Displacement in History
37:22 Understanding Displacement in Conflict
40:12 Comparative Analysis: Cyprus and Israel
43:10 The Ethnic Civil War and Its Consequences
46:46 Refugee Dynamics and Historical Context
50:31 Negotiations and the Right of Return
55:20 The Complexity of National Independence
01:04:59 The Future of Israeli-Palestinian Relations


Michigan's El-Sayed, Asked Whether the Democratic Party Has an 'Antisemitism Problem,' Pivots to 'Apartheid and Genocide'
Abdul El-Sayed, the left-wing Democrat running for Michigan's open Senate seat, sidestepped a question about whether the Democratic Party has a problem with antisemitism, instead accusing Israel of committing "apartheid and genocide" and claiming that both antisemitism and Islamophobia are products of "white supremacy."

During a Thursday debate at the Mackinac Policy Conference, El-Sayed and his primary opponents, congresswoman Haley Stevens and state lawmaker Mallory McMorrow, were asked if there's "an antisemitism problem in the Democratic Party." McMorrow said, "there is," while Stevens touted her work fighting the issue "in a bipartisan way." El-Sayed's answer was different.

"So, look, I know what it's like to be discriminated against because of how I pray, and I know that antisemitism and Islamophobia tend to go hand in hand, and the real issue when it comes to either of them is the scourge of white supremacy," El-Sayed said. "And I think it's absolutely critical for us to differentiate between love, respect, and admiration for Judaism and the Jewish people, and a continued policy that has us sending our money to a foreign government. We can walk and chew gum at the same time."

"So for me, when it comes to fighting antisemitism, you are not going to find anybody who is not Jewish who has the same focus on taking that on as somebody who understands that these two things go hand in hand together," he continued. "And, so, we can do that, because we love all people, but it should not mean that we allow our money to subsidize apartheid and genocide against other people because people tell you that that's about hatred for anybody. That's about love for everybody."

El-Sayed has sparked controversy with his statements on Israel, antisemitism, and terrorism over the course of his campaign.

One day after a Dearborn Heights resident carried out a Hezbollah-inspired attack on a synagogue in West Bloomfield, Mich., in March, El-Sayed released a video statement that denounced the attack but also noted that the terrorist "lost family, including two children, in an airstrike in Lebanon last week. They were innocent people." The gunman's brother, however, was a Hezbollah commander. El-Sayed later argued that Israel caused the attack, saying during an event with anti-American streamer Hasan Piker, "I also think it's just critical for us to understand that hurt people do hurt people, and the circumstances happening 6,000 miles away can affect the lives that we live here, and if we stand against violence, we've got to stand against violence, all violence."




Mamdani slammed after revealing why he’s boycotting NYC’s Israel Day Parade: ‘I’ve made my views clear’
Mayor Zohran Mamdani will notably be skipping the Israel Day Parade — saying Thursday its because he disagrees with the Jewish state’s government.

The mayor’s comments drew consternation from Jewish leaders, who slammed Mamdani for turning the annual celebration political, as he held firm to his longtime decision not to attend the parade set for Sunday.

“You know, I said on the campaign trail that I wouldn’t be attending the parade, and I’ve made my views on the Israeli government abundantly clear,” Mamdani said, standing alongside NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch during a security briefing about the event.

“And I also said on that same campaign that I would have a responsibility as the mayor of the city to ensure the safety and security of each and every New Yorker,” he added.

The celebration along Fifth Avenue draws tens of thousands of revelers annually, including local community groups and students. Tisch will serve as an honorary grand marshal this year.

The top cop, who is Jewish, pointed to herself during the briefing when a reporter asked if anyone would be representing the Mamdani administration at the parade.

“It is the mayor’s decision not to march, and it is my decision to march proudly,” she said.

But some members of the Jewish community weren’t convinced by Mamdani’s reason for ditching the event — pointing out it is a celebration of religious identity and comes at a time when antisemitism continues to roil the city.

“It’s not a policy parade. It’s a Jewish people parade,” Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, the executive director of the New York Board of Rabbis, told The Post.

“He can march in the parade and have a different point of view [and] show respect for the Jewish people.”


California Assembly passes bill barring protesters from 100-foot buffers around houses of worship
The California State Assembly voted 61-2 on Tuesday to pass a bill that would create 100-foot, protest-free buffer zones around entrances and exits to houses of worship.

The bill now heads to the state Senate. On Tuesday, 17 Assembly members did not record a vote.

David Bocarsly, CEO of Jewish California, stated that the vote was a “powerful statement that California stands with every person of faith and their constitutional right to worship.”

“Jewish community members already navigate metal detectors and armed guards just to enter a synagogue,” he stated. “That is not normal, and it shouldn’t be.”

“We need de-escalation strategies” like the bill for “all faith communities that are facing rising animosity,” he added.


Israeli rights group urges US to block Irish settlement goods ban
Israeli civil rights group Shurat HaDin has urged U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to intervene against Ireland’s newly approved Israeli Settlements (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill 2026, calling the measure discriminatory and a form of “economic warfare” against Israel.

The bill would criminalize the import of goods produced by West Bank Jewish settlements, including east Jerusalem. Shurat HaDin said Ireland has not imposed similar restrictions on goods from other disputed territories, including Northern Cyprus, Western Sahara, Tibet or Russian-controlled areas.

“If Ireland’s true legal principle were opposition to commerce from occupied or disputed territories, consistency would require universal application. Instead, Ireland has chosen selective enforcement against the world’s only Jewish state,” the group wrote in its letter.

Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee said last week she hoped to pass the law in tandem with Belgium, the Netherlands and possibly Slovenia, which have also committed to ​introducing bans. Spain has already introduced similar curbs, the only European Union member to ​do so so far.


Qatar invested over $65 million to manipulate US education
Qatar invested more than $65 million over the past 17 years in an effort to influence the education system in the US against Israel, according to a new report released on Wednesday by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, which is causing an uproar in Washington and prompting calls for a federal investigation.

According to the ISGAP report, the funds were funneled through Qatar Foundation International, which worked with schools, universities, teacher-training programs, and national education networks across the US.

The report claims that the foundation’s activities went far beyond promoting Arabic-language studies and became a broad influence mechanism over educational content, curricula, and political narratives related to the Middle East and Israel.
California school district settles suit, concedes it must better protect Jewish students
The Sequoia Union High School District, which has about 9,000 students in eight schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, conceded that it must protect Jewish students better, settling a lawsuit alleging that it mishandled antisemitism.

“For years Jewish students have endured not only overt antisemitism, but their complaints about those experiences have been ignored or even maligned,” Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director of the Deborah Project, told JNS.

The settlement “requires policies of transparency, unbiased decision-making and concrete protections from antisemitic indoctrination and bullying” by district students, teachers and administrators, Lowenthal Marcus said. (JNS sought comment from the district.)

The agreement, which lasts until June 30, 2029, calls on the district to pay the six families who sued $325,000 in legal fees and for emotional distress and other damages. JNS saw a copy of the settlement.

The district also agrees to list the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a “controversial issue,” which means teachers will have to present the matter neutrally, without sharing their personal views on the subject.

Teachers in the district will also have to warn students not to draw conclusions on the subject without having all the relevant information.

The Deborah Project, a public-interest law firm, and Ropes and Gray represented the six families who sued the district in November 2024.


Wikipedia bans anti-Israel editor from editing articles on Israeli-Palestinian conflict
An anti-Israel Wikipedia editor was indefinitely banned on Monday from editing articles related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The editor, known as “TarnishedPath,” has made more than 54,000 edits on the site and was sanctioned through Wikipedia’s Arbitration Enforcement process, in which administrators enforce rulings issued by the site’s Arbitration Committee, Wikipedia’s highest dispute-resolution body in contentious topic areas.

TarnishedPath and another editor, “Sean.hoyland,” were accused of repeatedly defending “M.Bitton,” an anti-Israel editor who was recently banned from Wikipedia, and, in so doing, of violating Wikipedia policy against turning the site into “a battleground between factions.”

One administrator initially imposed a 90-day ban on TarnishedPath from editing articles related to the conflict over conduct on the talk page for Wikipedia’s main Zionism entry, separate from the original complaint. After reviewing the editor’s broader conduct, other administrators escalated the sanction to an indefinite topic ban.

Sean.hoyland received an informal warning, a notice from administrators cautioning that further problematic conduct could lead to sanctions.
Can AP’s New Jerusalem News Director Deliver Fair Coverage of Israel?
The Associated Press is relied upon by hundreds of media publications worldwide and reaches over 1 billion people daily. That’s why it matters who is in charge of the news coming out of Israel. Next week, Erin Cunningham will take up the role of AP’s Jerusalem news director. It is placing one of the world’s most contested and scrutinized beats in the hands of an individual whose reporting choices will shape how millions of readers understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So who is Erin Cunningham, and can we expect fair and balanced coverage from AP on her watch? We took a closer look, and the signs are not promising. Overseeing Demonization of Israel at The Washington Post

We may already have seen a snapshot of how she relates to Israel from her time at The Washington Post as its Middle East news editor based in the U.S. capital, where, according to the AP, she “helped spearhead the Post’s coverage of the Oct. 7 attack, the war in Gaza and the subsequent conflicts it has ignited.”

On her watch, The Post published some seriously problematic content that we tracked throughout the war. At the shuttering of its Middle East bureau, we noted how systematic anti-Israel bias shaped The Post’s reporting through loaded framing, euphemistic language that whitewashed terrorism, moral equivalence that diminished Israeli suffering, and persistent skepticism toward Israeli claims while granting credibility to Hamas-linked sources.

It seems that Cunningham was part of a newsroom culture problem, including editors and reporters with openly hostile views toward Israel, that helped turn a legacy outlet into a platform for demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish state.

But Cunningham’s connections to the region go back much further. According to AP Middle East News Director Victoria Eastwood, “Erin’s deep knowledge of Israel and the Palestinian territories is born from her time as a correspondent in the region, based out of Cairo and Istanbul but reporting across the region, including in Gaza.”

In fact, Cunningham’s experience started before she became a correspondent.

An Emotional Attachment to the Palestinians
In a 2014 appearance on the Sources and Methods Podcast, Cunningham acknowledged that she did not enter the field under a mandate of impartial reporting. She explicitly stated: “I was working in the West Bank and I was working for an NGO…” before transitioning into journalism. This background indicates that her early professional frameworks were shaped by an organizational advocacy agenda rather than neutral editorial standards.

When asked about her focus on the Gaza Strip, Cunningham stated:
Absolutely. Gaza was the first place where I started. I felt like I started doing real reporting. I had gone there the last few days of Operation Cast Lead, which took place in 2008 and 2009. So I witnessed some of that operation. And, you know, it really sort of stuck with me, you know, the intensity of that and what the people were going through. And so I decided to move there in 2009. And yeah, it was because I thought it was an extraordinary place. And I really did enjoy my time there and telling the story. And I certainly was, you know, attached to it in that sense. And I think that helped. That definitely helped, you know, with the stories as well, when you know, you want to tell stories because you care about, you know, the populations and the people that you are writing about, and not necessarily because you want to be on the big story of, of, you know, the day or whatever.

For a journalist overseeing one of the world’s most contested beats, these admissions raise fundamental questions about professional impartiality.


Borehamwood synagogue incident arrest sees suspect banned from entering any synagogue in England
A 19-year-old man has been arrested after an alleged antisemitic incident outside a synagogue in Borehamwood, with police imposing bail conditions banning him from entering any synagogue in England.

Hertfordshire Police said the arrest followed reports that a man made an offensive gesture outside the synagogue on Croxdale Road earlier this month.

Neighbourhood officers, working alongside the Community Security Trust (CST), reviewed CCTV footage and identified a suspect.

Police confirmed the 19-year-old, from Watford, was arrested on Friday, 22 May, on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order offence.

He has since been released on bail under what police described as “strict conditions”, including not entering Croxdale Road and not attending any synagogue in England while the investigation continues.

PC Joe Geeson said: “I would like to thank CST for their assistance in progressing our response to this incident.

“We understand the distress and concern incidents like this cause. Hate-related behaviour has no place in our communities, and we will continue working closely with partners to ensure those responsible are identified and dealt with appropriately.”


Yad Vashem to open first Holocaust education center outside Israel in Munich
Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, announced on Thursday that it will establish its first Holocaust Education Center outside Israel in Munich, Germany, as part of its effort to expand Holocaust education and combat rising antisemitism and historical distortion in Europe.

The new center will be located at Karolinenplatz in central Munich and is expected to open within three years, it said in a press release.

Yad Vashem said Munich was selected following an extensive nationwide survey and field research conducted with support from the German government. The World Holocaust Remembrance Center cited the city’s strategic location, educational infrastructure, security capabilities and historical significance as factors in the decision.

“As we move further from the era of living survivor testimony, historically grounded Holocaust education is more important than ever,” Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan said in a statement.

“Through this Education Center, Yad Vashem will bring to Germany its unique educational approach at a critical juncture of growing Holocaust distortion, denial and antisemitism,” he continued. “The choice of Munich, the birthplace of the Nazi Party, carries deep symbolic significance and reflects the importance of confronting this history where it began.”

The idea for a Holocaust education center in Germany was first discussed during a 2023 meeting between Dayan and then-German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The project has since received backing from Chancellor Friedrich Merz and other federal and state officials.
Oscar-winning filmmaker’s Holocaust heroes documentary to premiere in Hollywood
A new Holocaust documentary made in association with Jewish News is set to have its world premiere in Hollywood next month.

The Righteous Road Trip, an original short documentary produced and directed by Oscar and Emmy-winning filmmaker Vanessa Roth, will premiere at the Dances With Films festival on 22 June at TCL Chinese Theatres in Los Angeles.

The 40-minute film follows British-Israeli humanitarian Jonny Daniels and his dog Tyson on a 3,000-kilometre winter journey through Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to visit some of the final surviving “Righteous Among the Nations” – non-Jews recognised for risking their lives to save Jewish families during the Holocaust.

Jewish News co-publisher Justin Cohen is among the film’s producers and creators alongside Daniels and Holocaust educator Stephen D. Smith.

Blending observational footage with animation, the documentary captures Daniels travelling in a van decorated with Christmas lights and festive gifts as he visits rescuers now in their nineties and over 100 years old.
Jewish Toronto teen found after nearly two weeks, police says
A Jewish Toronto girl named Esther, 14, who had been missing since May 15, has been found, the Toronto Police Service said on Thursday afternoon.

“Investigators are extremely grateful for all the information and tips provided by the public which assisted in this investigation,” the department stated.

The girl, who is known as Esti, has autism, her family has said. The search had been escalated to what police called a “priority one” operation.

“Esther has been found safe,” B’nai Brith Canada stated.

B’nai Brith added that it “shares in the collective relief and thanks Toronto Police Service, Shomrim Toronto and all those who volunteered their time to ensure that Esther was found.”

“Oh, thank God. Esther is found safe,” stated Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party. “What a blessed relief for her loved ones.”
Hundreds of Queens Jews buy lunch to support kosher bagel shop targeted by hate
Israeli and American flags waved outside Bagels & Co., a kosher eatery in Queens, N.Y., on Thursday afternoon, as hundreds of community members packed both the sidewalk and dining hall of the bagel shop, which had been attacked days earlier in what the community calls an antisemitic attack.

Many of those who assembled were teens from nearby Orthodox high schools, who descended on Bagels & Co. to buy their lunch there.

A man wearing Muslim garb attacked the kosher bagel shop, in the Fresh Meadows neighborhood of Queens, over the recent Shavuot holiday. The man kicked over planters outside the store and cracked one of the store windows.

Daniel Rosen, who founded the nonprofit Impact after Oct. 7, organized the “foodies united” rally with Young Israel of Jamaica Estates, Young Israel Holliswood, Chazaq, Great Kosher Restaurant Foodies, Yeshiva University High School for Girls and Emet Outreach.

“This Islamist tried to hurt this business, and our response as a community is to help this business,” Rosen told JNS.

“We want to send a message. This shall not stand,” he said. “You cannot come into our neighborhood, do terrible things and then expect us not to have an organized response.”
‘Not a day I’m not happy; not a day I don’t feel the loss’: Eli Sharabi on life after captivity
Former captive Eli Sharabi spoke Thursday evening with honesty and humor about his experiences in captivity and what life has been like since his release from Hamas captivity in February 2025, as he was interviewed by journalist Roni Kuban about his bestselling book “Hostage” during the final event of the International Writers Festival in Jerusalem.

Sharabi was abducted on October 7, 2023, from his home in Kibbutz Be’eri during the devastating Hamas terrorist attack.

He returned home to Israel to find out that his wife, Lianne, and two daughters, Noya and Yahel, were murdered on October 7, and that his brother, Yossi, was taken hostage from his Kibbutz Be’eri home and killed in captivity.

“It’s like a five-kilo hammer on the head,” said Sharabi, referring to the moment when his mother and sister told him about his wife and daughters.

They whispered the news to him when they all first reunited, with Sharabi recalling that he thanked his sister for burying his family in her hometown and not at Be’eri.

While in captivity, Sharabi said he had thought about all the various possibilities of what happened to his family.

“I’m a very practical person; it sat in my head all the time,” said Sharabi, who was told by his captors more than once that his wife and daughters were alive and fighting for his release. “I told the others that it wasn’t necessarily them, because all Sharabis look exactly alike. But I prepared myself while surviving captivity.”

For the first 40 days of captivity, Sharabi assumed his wife and daughters’ British passports would have saved them. However, when he met fellow hostages Hersh Goldberg-Polin and Ori Danino, he heard from them that there had been a massacre at Be’eri, with women and children taken captive as well.





https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-897705

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