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Saturday, July 25, 2026

07/24 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: A tsunami of lies; Global Intifada, Local Mayor; Streeting’s cynical smears against Israel prove he’s not fit for office

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: A tsunami of lies
The threat posed by Mamdani needs to be identified correctly. He’s using far-left populism to advance the destruction of America. But he doesn’t want to replace it with a rainbow-hued nirvana. He wants to replace it with Islam.

Despite his adherence to Shia Islam, Mamdani’s behavior corresponds to the strategy of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, which has set out how it will conquer America by infiltrating democratic institutions and using them to push the Islamist agenda.

Mamdani constantly makes references to Islam. He has cheered the growth of Islam in the city, repeatedly visits mosques and Islamic centers including ones linked to the Iranian regime, and said that America should follow the example of Islam and Mohammed’s teaching on migration and sanctuary.

Not only does the mayor need to be called out as an Islamist plant; action needs to be taken against him as a danger to America.

Pointing out that Mamdani could be denaturalized and deported, the head of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, has said that the U.S. Department of Justice should investigate evidence that before becoming an American citizen in 2018 he “knowingly provided funds or services to Hamas or another terrorist group—and concealed this from immigration authorities.”

The monumental onslaught on truth and facts about Israel has knocked the West off its moral compass. A despairing Ferguson wrote that, as a teacher, his aim was to ensure that people learned the lessons of history, including the vital lesson that antisemitic rhetoric can be translated into genocidal reality if it’s adopted by a modern state. “Yet today,” he laments, “I see this hatred normalized, the Holocaust trivialized.”

Ferguson implies that reason itself has been defeated. Such demoralization, while entirely understandable, risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Truth is being defeated because none of the custodians of the public sphere is standing up for it. People need to start calling out the agents of this contagion and holding their feet to the fire. And that includes Jews calling out Jewish anti-Zionists, too.
Andrew Fox: Streeting’s cynical smears against Israel prove he’s not fit for office
The High Level Military Group, comprising retired senior officers and officials from Nato countries, entered Gaza and questioned IDF personnel. Its submission to the International Criminal Court described Israel’s civilian-harm precautions as unprecedented and rejected the claim that the conduct of operations showed an intent by senior leaders to starve civilians or commit unlawful killings.

That judgment is also mine: Israel’s institutional policy is to operate within the law of armed conflict. No serious military observer expects a force in a long, brutal war to avoid all individual crimes. Gaza has credible cases requiring investigation and, where proved, prosecution.

Amid the social media outcry, no evidence whatsoever has been presented of a systematic policy of targeting or massacring civilians, nor of deliberate or carpet bombing. At the same time, we may certainly identify incidents that may indicate individual war crimes. The distinction between individual criminality and state policy is elementary. Streeting blurs it.

The most revealing absence from his analysis is Hamas. Gaza was not a neutral city over which Israel chose to pour fire. The IDF confronted a battlefield Hamas had spent years engineering. It built an extensive tunnel system, concealed shafts and weapons in civilian structures, booby-trapped buildings and roads, fought from densely populated areas, and denied the IDF clean targets. My own analysis of Gaza’s destruction found that much of the damage stemmed from ground manoeuvres, engineering demolitions, and the neutralisation of IEDs and tunnels, rather than air strikes alone.

Armoured bulldozers, explosive breaches, and tunnel collapses produced the lunar landscape now presented on social media as self-evident proof of criminality. Those images record a battle within a militarised enclave. They are not a legal judgment.

Hamas designed this terrain both tactically and narratively. By embedding military infrastructure throughout the civilian environment, it forced Israel into destructive urban combat and then presented every collapsed building and civilian death as evidence of criminal intent. Its information operation depends on removing Hamas from the frame. Streeting has obliged. He spoke of Israeli standards without addressing the adversary’s tunnels, IEDs, hostages, or the systematic exploitation of civilian sites.

Britain should scrutinise its allies and friendship does not require silence. Criticism from a defence secretary must be grounded in military analysis, not in televised devastation and casualty figures whose legal significance is routinely misunderstood. Streeting’s job now includes understanding how an enemy weaponises law, media and civilian suffering against democracies. A minister susceptible to that approach will impose impossible standards on allies, only to see those same standards used against British troops in the next urban war.

Streeting should ask the Ministry of Defence lawyers and operators for a serious review. If he still believes Israel fell below British standards, he should publish the basis: which incidents, which intelligence, which legal test and which British comparator. If he cannot, he should withdraw the charge. A defence secretary who cannot distinguish the horror of urban warfare from evidence of unlawful warfare is unfit for office.
Editor's Notes: Germany’s ‘good Jews’ thought they were safe, New York should pay attention
On Tuesday night, the mayor of New York posted a two-minute video to explain that he cannot arrest Benjamin Netanyahu.

He had been promising to arrest him since December 2024. At some point, the city’s lawyers told him what any first-year law student could have told him, and so he made a video. That was the news in it. The other hundred seconds were the reason he bothered.

Israel was targeting neonatal care centers. It was starving countless people. It was gunning down hundreds of aid workers and journalists. Americans were paying for the bombs that do the killing. Netanyahu was the architect of a horrific genocide, a war criminal, not welcome in New York City. Washington should arrest him instead.

October 7 did not come up. There is only one “bad” country outside the United States, and it’s Israel. Not China. Not the Islamic Republic of Iran. Not North Korea. Only Israel.

By Wednesday morning, Zohran Mamdani was at City Hall suggesting New Yorkers go protest Netanyahu at the United Nations in September. Protest, he said, is one of the bedrocks of this city. He also said he is committed to representing all New Yorkers, whether they agree with him or not.

The UJA-Federation, which does not usually talk this way, opened its statement with “Shame on you.” The Orthodox Union said the video “endangers Jewish New Yorkers” and that the mayor peddles “lies and misinformation that risk inciting further violence against Jews.” Gadi Eisenkot, who has spent his political career trying to get Netanyahu out of office, called it “pure antisemitism, with no basis in fact.”

Eight months ago, 33% of Jewish voters in the city put him there.

That number is what sent me into the German archives. Jews backing a movement that hates them is not a new story. I wanted to know how close the match was.

More of it matched than I wanted. Some of it does not match at all.

Max Naumann
Max Naumann was not a crank. Berlin attorney. Captain in the Bavarian Army. Iron Cross First and Second Class, 15 months at the front. When he founded the Association of German National Jews in 1921, respectable people signed up, including the chief editor of one of Germany’s biggest daily papers. The Encyclopaedia Judaica notes he had money behind him, from established quarters of German Jewry.

His theory was that antisemitism is a reaction. Germans were not born hating Jews. They were reacting to things Jews did. To the Eastern European Jews showing up with foreign manners. To Zionists saying out loud that their loyalty was somewhere else. To Jewish writers who made fun of German patriotism. Take away the provocation and the hatred goes with it.

Everything else follows from that. If Jews cause it, Jews can stop it. Naumann wrote it out in his first bulletin in September 1921: Every decent antisemite admits decent Jews exist but calls them exceptions, and he will stop being an antisemite once we prove “we are not a handful of deserters but an army.”


NYPost Editorial: Mayor Mamdani’s constant anti-Israel obsessions endanger NYC’s Jews
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is a “no room for hate” hypocrite: His obsessive Israel-bashing — and the ravings of his rabid pro-Palestinian besties — encourages antisemitic violence.

Tuesday night, he released an incendiary video repeating (again) a litany of lies about Israeli’s war of self-defense against the Hamas terrorists and urging mass demonstrations when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next comes to town.

Thursday, an attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar” stabbed two men — a Jew in a yarmulke and an Asian — on the Upper West Side; the mayor responded with noises about hate and mental illness.

But it’s not generic hate that encourages such targeted bloodshed, however unstable the perp might be: It’s very specific incitement that points the violent at a chosen class of victims.

Mamdani needs to admit that his speech has consequences.

This town (and much of the nation) has seen a growing wave of Israel-bashing ever since Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, to kill, rape and seize hostages.

And antisemitic attacks have been soaring ever since.

Mamdani’s “this is a city where we have no tolerance for hatred of any kind” blather is a transparent lie as long as he keeps up his incitement.

If the mayor wants a more peaceful city, he needs to quit spouting hate; if he doesn’t stop, then he wants the violence.

Publicly obsessing over Gaza or anything else in the Middle East has nothing to do with his office — which is more than just a day job, as he well knows.

What do you think? Be the first to comment.

Though even his day-job duties should make him hesitate before again calling for mass demonstrations during the coming UN General Assembly: Dealing with such pointless protests falls on the NYPD rank and file, who are already exhausted from the long hours of OT during the World Cup, the Knicks’ playoff run and massive America 250 celebrations.

Quit fanning the flames, Mr. Mayor.

Just stop.
Global Intifada, Local Mayor By Abe Greenwald
Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here.
A lot of people continue to miss the point of Mamdani’s mayoralty.

The prospect of Mamdani arriving at the scene of an anti-Semitic hate crime put me in mind of a comic event from my youth. There was a very wild and reckless kid in my high school—bad grades, drinking, drugs, the works. One day, he was told that he was so low on community-service credits that he might not be able to attend graduation. So he scrambled to join whatever student club meeting was being held that afternoon and start racking up points. It was a meeting of Students Against Drugs, and when he walked in the door, the entire room froze for a second, stared at him, and then broke out in hysterical laughter.

Mamdani’s appearance at the scene of the crime would be a joke, an opportunistic ploy for community-service credits. But, unlike most politicians, he doesn’t seek such credits.

Mamdani sought the mayoralty in order to raise the temperature. That was the idea, and it’s going according to plan. He wants to make the city—and the world—unbearably hot for Jews. He’s been deliberately raising the temperature since he took office. His office accused a synagogue under attack of encouraging the violation of international law by hosting an event on the practicalities of making Aliyah. He refused to attend the Israel Day parade. He’s called AIPAC “monsters,” set the pitchfork brigade on Netanyahu, and much more.

The movement to globalize the intifada is itself already global. It’s reached every corner of the world. But it requires people to serve in command positions at the local level. In New York, that’s Mamdani.

Yes, he was elected as the head of the city’s government. Accordingly, he lives in Gracie Mansion and works out of City Hall, so people expect him to act in keeping with the responsibilities of the office. But it’s less valuable to think of Mamdani as a mayor than as the regional emissary of the worldwide campaign to globalize the intifada. He’s the local face of a global enterprise. Mamdani has alluded to it himself. When he said on Wednesday that his embrace of a “universal politics” is behind his push to arrest Netanyahu, he was consciously speaking the rhetoric of a borderless ideological movement.

His first allegiance is to that movement, and his mayoralty is devoted to advancing its aims. Judged by that standard, he’s a runaway success.
Shai Davidai: The Seven-Word T-Shirt Test
I don’t know how, but I noticed that something was off before he even opened his mouth.

Surrounded by crowds of people eating lunch, NYU students posing for graduation photos, and tourists soaking up the early summer sun, my mother and I sat in the shade, people-watching and taking in the improbable peacefulness of Elizabeth Street Garden. Then, as if out of nowhere, a tattooed, long-haired man—someone who looked as though, in another life, he might have been part of my social circle—did a double take at my shirt.

“Are you proud of what you’re wearing?” he asked, his irritation unmistakable.

“I am,” I replied. “I actually made it.”

That was all it took.

Keeping his distance not out of respect, but—so I could only assume—out of pure hatred, he began shouting. Before long, he launched into one ideological talking point after another, citing debunked statistics, making false accusations, and recycling slogans he seemed to mistake for arguments. Though I remained calm, responded respectfully, and repeatedly tried to engage him in civil conversation, he only grew more agitated. Eventually, he told my mother and me to go back to where we came from.

He wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t high. He wasn’t mentally unwell. He was just another hate-filled guy eating lunch in downtown Manhattan.

Though my mother wanted to leave, I refused. I would not let a hateful stranger drive us out of a public garden. I would not let his tirade determine where I could or could not be. If I ever “went back to where I came from,” it would not be because a full-grown adult, consumed by hatred and throwing a childlike tantrum, had ordered me to. Keeping my voice calm, my posture steady, and my temper in check, I stood my ground. Only after I returned home did my hands begin to shake.

I was not shaken because one man hated me. I was shaken by how casually that hatred had erupted in one of the most beautiful corners of New York City. I was shaken because hatred had simply become part of the landscape. I was shaken because nobody seemed to even bat an eye.

I hadn’t insulted him. I hadn’t threatened him. I hadn’t mocked him or even looked in his direction before he spoke to me. I hadn’t started a conversation, let alone an argument. My mother and I had simply been sitting in the shade, enjoying a beautiful afternoon in one of New York City’s most peaceful public gardens. All it took was a black cotton T-shirt.
Mamdani walked right through our broken windows
Windows kept on breaking over the next two decades, as SJP chapters brought their yearly demands that universities sever ties with Israeli universities. The chapters pushed their divestment resolutions, boycott votes and campaigns to end study-abroad programs and research partnerships with ruthless persistence.

And what guidance did administrators receive from Jewish leadership? When the ADL began tracking “anti-Israel” activism in 2010, it framed anti-Zionism as something that may “cross the line into antisemitism” when it demonizes, delegitimizes or applies double standards to Israel. But that is precisely what anti-Zionism, by definition, does. There was and is no line to cross.

Yet because major Jewish organizations adopted this language, administrators who looked to them for guidance understood anti-Zionism as something that might become bigoted under certain conditions rather than as something inherently directed at Jewish collective identity.

Indeed, in 2019, even those who crafted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which was, by design, meant to include demonization of Israel, never named the hateful ideology at the heart of this demonization: anti-Zionism.

The fifth window broke inside the faculty lounge. This one mattered more than all the student activism combined, because professors conferred intellectual legitimacy on the movement.

Anti-Zionist events came to be routinely sponsored by academic departments. AMCHA Initiative studies from 2015 and 2016 found that campuses with even one faculty boycotter were at least four times more likely to suffer incidents of anti-Jewish hostility. The escalation culminated in the founding of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2021, an academic body whose very premise is that Zionism and Jewish identity are an object fit for “critical study” the way one studies white supremacy.

The window-breakers no longer needed to break in. They had faculty offices, department budgets, and now, an institute.

Then came the broken door. In 2023, Faculty for Justice in Palestine was created, growing to more than 80 chapters and giving professors an organized national vehicle for the movement, followed by the encampments—the seizure of the physical campus itself. FJP and SJP chapters called for “Zionists” to be removed from campuses, the banning of Hillel and Chabad, and the harassment and vandalization of “Zionist” institutions.

The vandals had kicked in the door and occupied the house.

Even then, staring at the smashed-in door, our institutions could not name what had broken it. Even the ADL’s 2022 statement that “Anti-Zionism is antisemitic, in intent or effect” pivoted almost immediately to a discussion of political criticism, rather than defining anti-Zionism or naming its core libels.

Here lies the confusion behind every unrepaired window: The American Jewish community persistently conflates anti-Zionism with policy disagreement, debates over borders, government decisions or dissatisfaction with an Israeli leader. That is not what anti-Zionism is. Its political vocabulary is not accidental. It is a totalizing hate of the Jewish people embodied in the Jewish state.

It was all left for the taking. And taken it has been—in city halls, schools, medicine, Hollywood and the arts, media rooms.

Mamdani did not break the windows. He walked through the shattered panes because those who were supposed to protect Jews against defamation remained silent about anti-Zionism.


NYC Jewish leaders call on Mamdani to stop ‘fanning flames of hatred’ after UWS stabbings — but he only offers canned response
City Jewish leaders Friday demanded Mayor Zohran Mamdani “stop fanning the flames of hatred and division” after a nut stabbed a religious man in a suspected antisemitic hate crime on the Upper West Side — but Hizzoner offered nothing more than a canned tepid response.

Raul Morales, 51, allegedly yelled “Allahu Akbar!” as he attacked the two victims — Moshe Yezhak Grunhaus, a 50-year-old Jewish man, and Chok Sung, a 57-year-old Asian man — in vicious separate attacks blocks from Central Park and minutes apart Thursday afternoon, police said.

“We’re horrified and heartbroken by yesterday’s attacks. But to be clear, we’re no longer surprised,” said UJA-Federation of New York CEO Eric Goldstein at a press conference Friday.

“When the mayor of New York repeatedly uses his platform to relentlessly single out and demonize Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, and calls those who support it ‘monsters’,’ he contributes to a climate in which Jewish New Yorkers are increasingly targeted and unsafe,” Goldstein claimed.

“Mayor Mamdani, stop fanning the flames of hatred and division. The consequences are not abstract, they are playing out on our streets. But make no mistake, we are not going anywhere.”

While a slew of top city officials swiftly issued statements condemning Thursday’s attacks fewer than two hours after they occurred, Mamdani did not address them until after Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch shared details of the case hours later.

And even then, the mayor nearly copy and pasted the language from the top cop’s post.

Given a chance by The Post on Friday to take a strong stance against such attacks, Mamdani continued to give his formulaic takes on such situations.
Attempted murder hate crimes charges for man accused of stabbing visibly Jewish, Asian men in NYC
Raul Morales, 51, who allegedly yelled “Alahu akbar” while stabbing a Jewish man and an Asian man on Thursday on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, has been charged with attempted murder as a hate crime, the New York City Police Department told JNS.

Morales faces charges of “attempted murder as a hate crime, attempted murder, assault as a hate crime, two counts of assault and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon,” the NYPD said.

Jewish groups have blamed Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, for inciting the attack. Days prior, the mayor released a video calling the Israeli prime minister a “war criminal” and calling on federal authorities to arrest him when he comes to the Big Apple for the United Nations General Assembly in September.

Mamdani stated on Friday of the suspect that he is “thankful that he is being held accountable and hope he will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

“Our administration will always stand against bigotry and do everything in our power to root out antisemitism, racism and hateful acts of all kinds,” Mamdani said.
Suspected UWS stabber’s calm claim to his roommate before rampage revealed – as cops probe possible hate link
The stunned roommate of the nut who allegedly attacked two Upper West Side victims said Friday that the man calmly told him he was just going for a walk in the park before the violence — as cops carted off items from their home including a Koran and book on Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara.

The roomie recounted his seemingly blasé encounter with ex-con Raul Morales, 51 — who has now been charged with an antisemitic hate crime in one of the attacks — to NYPD investigators in Spanish at their apartment on Amsterdam Avenue near West 88th Street in Manhattan.

The roommate said Morales — a former drug parolee and an apparent onetime Brooklyn security guard — did not appear angry or agitated, leaving him shocked at what cops said was to come.

Neighbors at the building, which is near Central Park, also said they had no inkling Morales could allegedly pull off such violence.

“Never displayed anything,’’ said a resident who only identified himself as Tony J, 54.

“That’s why when I seen him yesterday coming out the building in handcuffs, I was like, ‘What the f–k is he locked up for?” he said of Morales.

“It blew my mind.

“He was always nice. he’s like, never no problem,’’ said Tony, adding he’d seen Morales at the building for years. “He was never a head case, and he didn’t display no mental problems or nothing like that.

“Every time I see him, he was always, ‘Hey, how you doing?’ Super, super cordial. … That’s why if he had a mental break, I have not the slightest idea.


Cops fume as Mamdani urges New Yorkers to take to streets to protest Netanyahu after arrest fail: ‘Edge of chaos’
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is telling New Yorkers to take to the streets to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits the Big Apple — and it has NYPD cops fuming.

New York’s Finest just put in superhuman duty to keep the five boroughs safe during the FIFA World Cup, the Knicks NBA title, Independence Day and a massive America 250 celebration that brought millions into the city — and now will have to keep their guards up as the lefty mayor fans the flames.

“The mayor’s activist posturing puts police officers on the street in a terrible position,” NYPD Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry said. “Protests during the UN General Assembly are nothing new, but when the mayor of the city is actively calling for demonstrations, violent agitators will assume they have permission to cause as much havoc as possible.

“Those same agitators know that the NYPD’s protest response is already hamstrung by the dangerous lawsuit settlement the city signed over the PBA’s opposition,” Hendry said. “The mayor’s heated rhetoric could be enough to push demonstrations over the edge into chaos.”

Mamdani has been obsessing over Netanyahu since he was on the campaign trail last year, and vowed to have him arrested if he set foot in the city due to a 2024 warrant from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Gaza.

The mayor was forced to backtrack this week by admitting he didn’t have the juice to do it — but urged New Yorkers to protest Netanyahu, which means more work for the NYPD.

“This is a city where, if anyone feels a level of frustration or opposition, protest is something that we will always respect,” he told reporters at City Hall this week. “That New Yorkers can express themselves, whether they are in support or in opposition, no matter on whatever topic.
CAIR defends Mamdani after NYC stabbing, drawing backlash from Jewish groups
As Jewish organizations linked New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rhetoric about Israel to an antisemitic stabbing in Manhattan, the Council on American-Islamic Relations defended the mayor without mentioning the attack, which one Jewish group described as “gaslighting.”

In a statement issued on July 24, CAIR and its New York chapter “expressed solidarity with Mayor Zohran Mamdani and condemned Israel advocacy groups for their ‘dishonest and dangerous’ conflation of Benjamin Netanyahu and his genocidal government with the American Jewish community.”

“Israel advocacy groups have spent the past week falsely claiming that criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu is somehow the same thing as criticizing the Jewish community,” CAIR stated.

The statement did not reference Thursday’s stabbing or the recent spike in antisemitic violence in New York.

Jewish leaders criticized both CAIR’s defense of Mamdani and its silence on the attack.

Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, told JNS that CAIR’s statement is an example of why the group is “on the terrorist list” in states like Texas and Florida.

“CAIR’s latest defense of terrorist-enabler Mamdani, one day after Mamdani’s reckless Jew-hating lying screed inspired two ‘Allahu Akbar’ terrorist attacks, is despicable and grotesque and dangerous,” Klein said.

“No wonder CAIR was formally labeled an unindicted co-conspirator of the murderous group Hamas,” Klein said.

Federal prosecutors named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing case, a designation the organization has long disputed and which later became the subject of due-process litigation.

Daniel S. Mariaschin, B’nai B’rith International honorary CEO and senior advisor, told JNS that “CAIR’s reckless and irresponsible parroting of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, built on bogus charges, is simply a cover for Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s deeply held hatred and obsession with the state of Israel.”
Commentary Podcast: A Stabbing in New York Today we discuss the creeping danger to Jews and Israelis everywhere after yesterday's stabbing in New York City and reports that the stabber shouted "Allah Akbar," as well as how Zohran Mamdani's minimal response contrasts with sterner comments from other officials. Plus, the Jews who lend legitimacy to those who hate them.

Ben Shapiro: Two Attacks, Two Very Different Reactions
Yesterday, there was an awful attack in New York City and GUESS WHAT the attack shouted before he stabbed people. Yep. It rhymes with Hallahu Hakbar. We examine Zohran Mamdani’s reaction, the media cover-up, and a shooting in Wisconsin that has the BLM crowd rallying again.




Jewish stabbing victim named, ‘especially frustrating’ since Moshe Grunhaus was in process of leaving Manhattan to move to Florida, sources say
Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, identified the 50-year-old man, who was wearing a kippah when he was stabbed on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on Thursday during the fast of Tisha B’Av, as Moshe Yezhak Grunhaus.

According to public profiles, Grunhaus has an M.B.A. and works in financial services. One site states that he lives in New York and another in Surfside, Fla. Multiple sources with knowledge told JNS that Grunhaus was in the process of moving from Manhattan to Florida. One source said that the move may be at least in part due to frustrations about Mamdani.

Another source, who wasn’t sure of the victim’s motivation for moving, told JNS that he was in the city “tying up loose ends” ahead of the move when he was attacked with a screwdriver.

“It’s extra upsetting, because he was on his way out of New York and heading toward Florida,” a friend of the victim’s told JNS. “It’s especially frustrating, because he was tying loose ends up in the city to head to Florida. This is such an upsetting and traumatic way to leave Manhattan.”

Speaking at the press conference, which the JCRC hosted with the UJA-Federation of New York and other partners at the Jewish Center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on Friday morning, Rabbi Yosie Levine, of the Jewish Center, a Modern Orthodox congregation, said that “when a member of our community was stabbed on his way out of the synagogue, the evil we gathered to remember stopped belonging to the past. Suddenly, it was right here in the present.”

“When public officials repeatedly cast the Jewish community as a stand-in for the actions of the Israeli government, they create a climate in which Jews become targets,” he said. “When I was growing up, the only time we saw security outside my synagogue or Jewish day school was when the mayor came to speak. The police were there to protect him.”

“Today, every time the mayor speaks, we need the police to protect us,” he said.

“Jewish life in America is starting to feel like Jewish life in Europe: armed guards, bulletproof glass and the constant fear that yesterday’s rhetoric will turn into today’s assault,” Levine said. “He was just trying to pray at his synagogue, and now we’re the ones praying for his recovery.”

“If a Jew can’t feel safe walking home from shul in broad daylight on a Thursday afternoon on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, then something has gone profoundly wrong—not only for the Jewish community but for our city,” he said.


In interview day after Jew stabbed in NYC, Mamdani tells interviewer his biggest error was being photographed eating burrito on train
The day after a Jewish man wearing a kippah was stabbed in New York City on the fast day of Tisha B’Av, Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, was asked in an interview what his biggest “fumble” has been.

Jewish leaders have called for the mayor to apologize and temper his future rhetoric, after he released a video calling the Israeli prime minister a “war criminal” and saying that he ought to be arrested. The Jewish leaders say that the mayor is inciting violence against Jews.

When Tone Kapone, of the “Shade Room,” asked the mayor what his biggest mistake had been, Mamdani focused elsewhere than where Jewish leaders are hoping he’d introspect.

“Biggest fumble,” he said. “You know, someone was talking to me about this today. It wasn’t even when I was the mayor, but it still lives with me, which is eating a burrito on the train and taking a photo of it. Shouldn’t have done it.”

The mayor also accused Israel of “genocide” twice in the interview.


Left-wing MPs invited Hamas-linked activist to address them in Parliament just weeks after he was sanctioned by the US
Andy Burnham is under pressure to explain the 'jaw-dropping naivety' of his MPs after they invited an alleged Hamas-linked activist to Parliament offices just weeks after being sanctioned by the US.

Saif Hashim Kamel Abukishek was one of four individuals cited for being a 'central figure' in the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA), as well as being on the steering committee of the Global Sumud Flotilla.

The US Treasury said the PCPA was 'established with funding from Hamas's International Relations Bureau and Hamas directs its activity through the placement of Hamas officials throughout the organisation'.

Meanwhile the Global Sumud Flotilla, organised by PCPA, was accused of 'attempting to access Gaza in support of Hamas'. Israeli authorities subsequently stopped the boats and arrested the activists.

Abukishek, a Palestinian-Spanish dual national, is currently listed on the Global Sumud Flotilla's website as a steering committee member. The group's UK arm denied he or the organisation has any links to terrorism in a statement to Daily Mail.

Within just weeks of the sanctions, which were imposed in May, Abukishek was invited to speak within the grounds of Parliament.

The 'Global Sumud Flotilla' event was hosted on June 8 in Room Q of Portcullis House. Abukishek, who was born in Nablus, West Bank and now lives in Spain, spoke alongside other flotilla participants who had been detained by Israel.

Labour MP Neil Duncan-Jordan, who represents Poole, was named as hosting the event which was attended by fellow party MPs Richard Burgon (Leeds East), Lorraine Beavers (Blackpool North and Fleetwood) and Steve Witherden (Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr).
David Collier: An Open Letter to Lewis Goodall of LBC: Why Were You So Afraid of the Truth?
Derailment, Arrogance, and Endless Misinformation
By this stage, the imbalance in legal expertise was becoming increasingly apparent. Faced with someone who understood the subject in great depth, you did not rebut her analysis. Instead, you resorted to interruption, diversion and dismissive rhetoric in an apparent attempt to prevent her from fully explaining her case.

You suddenly brought up internal Israeli political issues, claiming a group of prominent Israelis were threatening legal action against their own government over their support for terrorism in the West Bank and its continued expansion of settlements.

They hadn’t.

You were not merely derailing the interview. Based on every Hebrew report I have been able to locate, you were also misleading your audience. The letter you reference, which has not been made public – does not seem to have referenced settlement expansion at all.

Given this, your particular claim is so misleading it deserves an on-air retraction.

Barely halfway through the interview, you found yourself preventing the discussion from returning to the question you had originally raised. What began as an opportunity to discuss misleading legal positions – ended with you using the second half of the interview talking over your guest and further misleading your audience.

You switched from the misrepresentation of the letter, to distorting the words of Israel Katz as he recently toured Gaza.

It was not simply what you said. As the interview progressed, your impatience became increasingly obvious. The interruptions became more frequent.

Your facial expressions increasingly conveyed exasperation and intellectual mockery.

You appeared irritated that she had the knowledge to counter your position with ease.

Every time Hausdorff began explaining a legal proposition – you changed the subject.

The Guardian became Article 49. Article 49 became a UN resolution. The UN resolution became a misrepresentation of internal Israeli division. That division became the distorted words of Israel Katz. Katz became dispossession. You were not testing her legal argument – you were ensuring it was never fully made.

It was not simply rudeness. It reflected something far more fundamental.


Turkey does not meet legal requirements to receive F-35, State Department says
Turkey still does not meet the legal requirements to rejoin the F-35 fighter jet program, the US State Department said in a letter to Congress obtained by The Jerusalem Post.

The July 22 letter, sent by the State Department’s Bureau of Legislative Affairs on behalf of US President Donald Trump in response to a letter from Rep. Wesley Bell (D-Missouri), reiterated that Washington’s policy toward Turkey’s participation in the F-35 program remains unchanged and is fully consistent with the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) and Section 1245 of the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.

According to the letter, no F-35 aircraft can be transferred to Turkey until Ankara fully complies with US law. That includes resolving the dispute over its acquisition of the Russian-made S-400 air defense system by no longer possessing the system or any related equipment, providing assurances that it will not acquire the system again, and meeting all remaining statutory certification requirements.

“Turkey has not yet met these conditions,” the State Department wrote. The department added that any process aimed at resolving the S-400 issue must be “transparent, lawful, and consistent with our national security interests.”

Referring to President Trump’s recent bilateral meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, the letter said Washington will continue to engage with Ankara to resolve the S-400 issue while also strengthening NATO cooperation.

The letter described the broader US-Turkey relationship as one based on shared security interests and balanced bilateral trade, while stressing that Washington will continue engaging Turkey on areas of mutual interest “while holding Turkey accountable when its actions undermine US interests.”


Malaysia envoy summoned by US over expulsion of American-Israeli dual citizen
Malaysia’s ambassador to the United States was summoned by the US State Department to explain Kuala Lumpur’s position on Israel, state media reported, citing the country’s foreign minister.

Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan said Ambassador Muhammad Shahrul Ikram Yaakob told the State Department that Malaysia’s longstanding policy of not recognizing Israel was not new.

“It has always been Malaysia’s policy. Our immigration policy does not recognize the State of Israel or the Zionist regime. This has long been our position.”

“There was an individual with dual citizenship, the US and Israel, who entered Malaysia using his US passport. However, subsequent checks revealed that he also held Israeli citizenship, and we asked him to leave,” Bernama cited Mohamad as saying late on Thursday.

Reuters has sought comment from the US embassy in Malaysia.

The row was triggered after Network School, the “digital nomad” community founded in Malaysia by US investor Balaji Srinivasan, came under scrutiny after social media users alleged that it included participants from Israel.

Malaysia does not have diplomatic ties with Israel and is known to be a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause.

An immigration probe into the Network School followed, and authorities found that all its participants had valid travel documents. However, it was eventually shut down by authorities on Tuesday.

Eight US congressmen later sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressing outrage over Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s plan to track down and immediately deport any Israeli citizens found in Malaysia.

They urged the State Department to review US security and economic ties with Malaysia.

They also called on the State Department to cut off funding for the International Military Education and Training program, which provides professional US training for Malaysian military personnel, unless the decision is reversed within 15 days.
UKLFI challenges London cinema over “No Zionists” menus
UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has written to a London cinema after discovering that its cocktail menus appeared to declare that Zionists were not welcome at the venue.

A printed menu bearing the branding of The Arzner, a queer-friendly cinema and bar, stated on its front cover: “No Sexists”, “No Racists”, “No Transphobes”, “No Zionists” and “No Fascists”.

The menu was reportedly in use at the premises on 18 July 2026.

UKLFI has written to the Arzner, warning that the wording is discriminatory and likely to breach the Equality Act 2010.

UKLFI said that placing “No Zionists” alongside prohibitions on racists and fascists portrayed Zionists as an inherently objectionable class of people and announced to customers that they were unwelcome.

The letter explained that Zionism, in its core sense, is the belief that the Jewish people are entitled to national self-determination in their historic homeland. It does not necessarily entail support for any particular Israeli government, policy, boundary or military action.

UKLFI distinguished legitimate criticism of Israeli policies from the exclusion of people who support the continued existence of a Jewish state.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism identifies “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination” — including by claiming that Israel’s existence is a racist endeavour — as a possible example of contemporary antisemitism.

UKLFI said The Arzner was a service provider for the purposes of Part 3 of the Equality Act and was therefore prohibited from discriminating against customers because of protected characteristics.

The letter argued that a policy of refusing admission or service to Zionists could amount to direct discrimination because of philosophical belief.
Harvard Touts ‘Counter-Zionist’ Professor, Palestinian Liberation Erotic Poetry Journal as Evidence of Progress Against Jew-Hate
Adding a course taught by a professor who accuses Israel of genocide. Hiring another professor who describes his own work as "counter-Zionist." Launching a student journal of erotic poetry and "support for Palestinian Liberation." Appointing another scholar to a visiting professorship that already existed and has been refilled annually for nearly a decade. Adding a course on antisemitism taught by a professor who backs a definition of antisemitism embraced by boycott-Israel advocates.

Harvard and ten of the nation’s biggest-name appellate lawyers are brazenly trying to pass all these steps off to federal judges as proof that the university is moving to address what even the university itself concedes in its latest court filing has been "disturbing, offensive, and vile treatment of Jewish students."

Harvard’s legal, political, and public relations strategy in its faceoff with the Trump administration over billions in federal research funding became clearer this week with court filings in a case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, President and Fellows of Harvard College v. US Department of Health and Human Services. The federal government also filed a memorandum of law this week in a similar case, United States v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, which is before Judge Richard Stearns in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

What Harvard has not done is survey Jewish students or the campus as a whole to see whether what it found in 2024—that Jewish students get an inferior campus experience—has changed. The government’s federal filing notes Harvard’s own past finding that "substantial numbers of Jewish students indicated experiencing discomfort and alienation at Harvard … 26% felt physically unsafe and 44% felt mentally unsafe. Nearly half (49%) felt their well-being was not supported at Harvard … Almost 60% of Jewish students indicated they had experienced some form of discrimination, stereotyping, or negative bias on campus due to their views on current events." Harvard hasn’t collected or disclosed new or updated data on that, either.

Instead, Harvard’s ten outside lawyers, led by former George W. Bush administration solicitor general Paul Clement and including former Scalia clerk Scott Lehotsky, former Trump Organization lawyer and current Fox Corp. director William Burck, and former U.S. attorney for Massachusetts Joshua Levy, tell the court in its latest filing that "Harvard implemented many changes aimed at ensuring its campus is safe, fair, and welcoming to Jewish and Israeli students." An 11th outside Harvard lawyer, Scott Keller, recently withdrew from the case to take the job of general counsel of Chevron.


Israel begins preparing for 2,000-year anniversary of Jesus’s baptism
Israel has begun its preparations for the 2,000th anniversary of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River, which will be marked in 2030.

The Foreign Ministry has established a working group led by Israeli Ambassador George Deek to coordinate with Christian leaders worldwide and manage the expected influx of millions of pilgrims for “an event of profound spiritual significance for more than two billion Christians worldwide.”

The milestone commemorates two millennia since the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River, roughly 6 miles east of Jericho and just north of the Dead Sea.

Many scholars date Jesus’s baptism to the year 27–29, while others place it around 30, depending on how they interpret the chronology in the Gospels and the reign of Emperor Tiberius.

“For me as a Christian and as Israel’s special envoy to the Christian world, this mission is deeply personal,” Deek told JNS on Wednesday. “It is an opportunity for Israel to honor the Christian heritage of the Holy Land, strengthen its dialogue with Christian communities worldwide, and ensure that pilgrims who come here can experience the places at the heart of their faith with dignity, safety and a true sense of welcome.”

Around 185,000 Israelis are Christian, accounting for just under 2% of the population, according to data published by the Central Bureau of Statistics last year.

Nearly 80% of the Christians in Israel are Arab.
Jesse Jackson’s daughter reveals she has converted to Judaism
Jesse Jackson’s daughter has revealed that she has converted to Judaism, describing how the late civil rights leader supported her decision and even joined her at a synagogue before his death.

Writing in an opinion piece for The Washington Post, Ashley L. Jackson said she completed her conversion on 12 June after what she described as a years-long spiritual journey shaped by study, illness and a growing connection to Jewish life.

Jackson, a writer, producer and founder of the nonprofit Push The Next Generation, said her father attended a Shabbat service at her synagogue two years before he died, where he joined in the celebration despite coming from a Baptist Christian background.

She wrote: “As the Saturday morning service proceeded, my father sat in the front row – holding my hand, dancing to prayers in a language he did not speak, eating the Sunkist candies the congregation had tossed to celebrate a bar mitzvah.”

Reflecting on her decision to become Jewish, Jackson said she had found a faith that matched the values she had been raised with.

“I was raised to believe that faith must lead to action,” she wrote. “In Judaism, I found an enduring expression of this belief.”

She said she had long been struck by Judaism’s emphasis on learning, ritual and the concept of Tikkun olam – repairing the world – adding that the sound of the shofar during her first Rosh Hashanah moved her deeply.

Jackson also reflected on becoming both Black and Jewish, saying the identity carried both challenges and hope.

She wrote that “racism and antisemitism can surface in even the most intimate and familiar spaces”, but also described “the meeting of two diasporas” and the shared histories of Black and Jewish communities.

In the essay, Jackson argued that the long-standing relationship between African Americans and Jewish Americans had become increasingly strained in recent years, despite both communities sharing traditions rooted in the pursuit of justice and human dignity.

“About 1 percent of American Jews identify as Black,” she wrote. “Their experience – my experience – shows that the alienation between these two communities can be overcome.”

Jackson also recalled the emotional reception her father received when Rabbi Sharon Brous invited him forward for a blessing during his synagogue visit.
Waverley, Woollahra Councils unveil October 7 memorial
A permanent public artwork commemorating the continuing impact of the October 7, 2023 attacks on the Jewish community has been unveiled at Christison Park in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, jointly commissioned by Woollahra and Waverley councils.

The sculpture, titled “In Them We See Ourselves”, was unveiled on Friday by Woollahra Mayor Sarah Dixson and Waverley Mayor Will Nemesh, alongside NSW Jewish Board of Deputies CEO Michele Goldman, who acted as master of ceremonies. Fragments of weathered corten steel rise from the ground and lean inward to form a sheltered space at the centre, which visitors are invited to enter and sit within, the ocean beyond.

Dixson said the park had not been chosen at random. Around 12,000 people had filled Christison Park for the United Together vigil marking the first anniversary of the attack, in one of the largest gatherings the municipality had ever seen.

“People came here to mourn the victims, to stand with survivors and their families, and to call for the hostages to be brought home,” she said.

She said the events of October 7 had not been experienced from afar. “They were deeply personal, touching family members and friends, and the grief and fear that followed has been felt in our streets, our schools, workplaces, and places of worship ever since.” She noted that both the Woollahra and Waverley mayors were Jewish, and that Woollahra Council had been led by a mayor or deputy mayor of Jewish heritage since December 2021.

Dixson said the project began with a resolution of Woollahra Council in October 2024, seeking Waverley’s partnership in commissioning an artwork representing both councils’ ongoing support for those affected by the attack. Four shortlisted artists developed concept proposals, which were assessed by a joint committee comprising both councils’ arts panels, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and the mayors.

“In them we see ourselves was selected because it best answered that brief,” she said. “The work speaks of fracture and of protection, of grief and of endurance. It acknowledges what has been broken, and it offers refuge.”





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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)

    

 

 

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