Thursday, July 30, 2026

07/29 Links Pt2: Why Jews Turn Against Their Own; Netanyahu didn’t lose the Democrats for Israel; Ben-Gurion Founded Israel. Then He Chose to Live in a desert Shack...

From Ian:

Ben M. Freeman: Why Jews Turn Against Their Own
Good Jews and Bad Jews
None of this would be so durable if it were not rewarded. The world that offers Jews the distorted mirror sorts us into “good Jews” and “bad Jews”. The good Jew keeps the palatable fragment, the ethics, the memory, the social conscience, and sheds the specificity the world finds indigestible: the nation, the land, the tribe, the refusal to disappear. In return they are applauded, platformed, held up as the enlightened kind of Jew. The bad Jew is the one who insists on the whole of themselves at once, and in the mirror held by others, wholeness itself becomes the offense. That applause is a powerful drug, and it is administered precisely to those Jews willing to police the rest of us.

Here is the part that is hardest, and most important, because it has two halves that have to be held together. Despite the damage they inflict, the Jews I have described are not just the villains of this story. In a real sense they are also its victims. Bartov, the young activists in Michigan, did not invent the hatred they carry. They inherited it from a world that has hated Jews for as long as there have been Jews, and many of them are, in the deepest sense, sincere. That sincerity is not evidence that they are right. It is evidence of how completely the distortion has done its work.

And yet. Understanding where a harm comes from is not the same as excusing it. A casualty can still cause damage, and a wound is not permission. We are all shaped by forces we did not choose, and we are still answerable for what we do with them. This is especially true of those who Deploy. There is a real difference between the Jew who quietly shrinks from their Jewishness and the Jew who stands on a platform and lends their Jewish name to the case against their own people. The first is mostly hurting themselves. The second is doing the work of our enemies, and no account of their pain erases the harm of that choice. To treat every Jew who acts against the community as a helpless product of history is its own quiet insult, because it strips them of the dignity of being moral agents. Compassion for the wound and accountability for the deed are not opposites.

A Broad Synagogue
This is why the Jewish world needs boundaries, and needs them now. We are, and should be, a broad synagogue. We argue, we disagree, we contain every kind of Jew, whether their connection is theological, cultural or national, left and right, and that endless internal argument is one of the oldest and most beautiful things about us. But a broad synagogue is still a synagogue, and a synagogue has walls. There is a difference between disagreement within the family and picking up the tools of the people who hate us and turning them on our own. Criticism of Israel, of our leaders, of our institutions, offered as a Jew who wants their people to flourish, belongs firmly inside those walls. Lending your Jewishness to a movement that denies your people should exist at all does not. Drawing that line is not a purity test. It is what every healthy community does. It decides what it is, and therefore what it is not. A people with no walls is not infinitely welcoming. It is simply undefended.

The way out, then, is not only condemnation nor limitless tolerance. It is clarity, and it begins by remembering whose hands are on the mirror. The reflections that have taught Jews to see ourselves as a mere religion, or as an awkwardly particular people who would be so much more welcome if we would only universalize ourselves out of existence, were not authored by us. They were authored by a non-Jewish world that has never had the right to define us, and never will. Only Jews get to decide what it means to be a Jew, which means we also get to decide, together, what we will carry into our own house and what we will leave at the door.

So when we next see Jews who seem to have turned against their own, we must resist the easy answer. What we are watching is not simple treachery, and it is not innocence either. It is the oldest hatred in the world, doing what it has always done, except this time from the inside, through people who are at once its casualties and, for what they choose to do with it, responsible. The task is not simply to condemn it, nor to excuse it, but to understand it. Only then can we begin to challenge it.
Dark Season: The Oldest Hatred Deepens and Spreads
Posters of Jewish children, women and the elderly kidnapped by Hamas and held, tortured and shackled in Hamas tunnels — posters that simply asked that those held hostage be remembered — were ripped down. Jewish kids on college campuses were threatened, blocked, berated, surrounded and chased. And university presidents called to testify before Congress were unwilling to declare that demands for the genocide of Jews violated their universities' policies.

But wait! This isn't anti-Semitism, some say. It's something else entirely: it's "anti-Zionism" or "anti-Israelism," but in any event, not anti-Semitism. This, says David Harris, the venerated former longtime head of the American Jewish Committee, is worse than nonsense. Harris, once described by Shimon Peres as "the foreign minister of the Jewish people," has published a new book, "Anti-Semitism: What Everyone Needs to Know," which meticulously shows that the attempt to call the miasma of hatred aimed at Jews something other than anti-Semitism is BS. It is, he demonstrates, right out of the tragic, immoral historical playbook.

Harris ticks off just some examples of what is daily fare for Jews: "Death threats against Jews, thwarted attempts to target Jewish schools, centers and synagogues, neo-Nazis marching and chanting 'Jews will not replace us', the numerous attacks on identifiable Jews, menacing statements by pro-Palestinian individuals or groups for Zionists to get off the subway, (or to) identify themselves at a restaurant, or (calls for) Jewish students to go back to Germany or Poland, or chants of "Gas the Jews." Harris' litany could have gone on much, much longer.

Some of the most virulent anti-Semites around believe that if they angrily deny that they're anti-Semites, they aren't ones. Harris reminds us of the formulation articulated by the great Soviet Jewish dissident Natan Sharansky, who remained in a Soviet gulag rather than renounce his faith. "The 3Ds — demonization, delegitimization and double standards," Sharansky wrote, "are the three main tools that anti-Semites employed against Jews throughout history." Presently, one of the principal tools is to label Israel, the victim of a genocidal invasion, guilty of genocide because its attempt to prevent the promised next attacks and to free the innocents taken and kept hostage killed a great many Gazans. These were deaths Hamas did everything it could to guarantee.

Then there's the demonization and the double standards deployed against AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which lobbies for the alliance between the two countries. It doesn't even rank among the top 100 lobbies in Washington. Still, it has become the most fashionable of bogeymen, the latest in a history of Jewish bogeymen supposedly responsible for some Jewish conspiracy or another. Never mind that those contributing to AIPAC are American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. And never mind that Qatar, for example, a Muslim Brotherhood-linked emirate, plows billions of dollars of foreign cash into America to purchase influence. Those singling out AIPAC couldn't care less. AIPAC is "dark money." Qatari cash is perfectly OK money.

Anti-Semitism is often described as "the oldest hatred." It is certainly the most resilient. And these days, it is extraordinarily potent and widespread. Which makes this a very difficult season indeed.
2025 deadliest year for Jews outside Israel since Buenos Aires bombing, report says
Twenty people were murdered in antisemitic attacks in 2025, making it the deadliest year for anti-Jewish violence outside of Israel since the bombing of the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994, according to a new report.

The J7 Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism documented more than 23,000 antisemitic incidents in 2025 across Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, which are home to more than 90% of Jews.

The number of antisemitic incidents across the seven countries was 136% higher than in 2022, according to the task force, which called antisemitism in these countries “our new normal.”

The 20 murders included 15 people killed at a Chanukah celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney, two killed at the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester, two killed at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. and one killed in Boulder, Colo.

Although reported incidents declined by 33% in the United States in 2025, they remained 131% higher than in 2021, per the report.

Australia recorded the largest increase during that period at 270%, followed by Germany at 215% and France at 124%. Germany had nearly 70 incidents for every 1,000 Jewish residents, the highest per-capita rate among the seven countries and nearly 70 times the U.S. rate.

Anti-Zionism was identified as a central motivation in 48% of incidents in the United Kingdom, 45% in the United States and 23% in Germany.

The report found that in Ireland, the Jewish community of about 2,200 people reported 143 antisemitic incidents in six months. Ireland has no national strategy to combat antisemitism or dedicated security funding for its Jewish community, according to the report.


Jonathan Tobin: Netanyahu didn’t lose the Democrats for Israel
Buying into blood libels
Any successor to Netanyahu will have the same problems with a Democratic Party that has been captured by people who have accepted blood libels about Israel committing “genocide.” Even figures once deemed moderates, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, now think they must parrot these falsehoods to be deemed acceptable by their party’s voters.

Again, this is a claim rooted more in the sort of disinformation about the post-Oct. 7 war that dominated press coverage in which Israel was (and still is) being portrayed as seeking to starve and deliberately kill as many Palestinian people as possible. One can critique Israel’s public information policies; however, the harsh truth is that there is nothing that Netanyahu could have said or done to convince the Democrats’ leftist base that they were being fed lies about Israel’s so-called “war crimes” by mainstream media outlets like The New York Times.

Liberal failure
Netanyahu didn’t lose the Democrats for Israel. He merely adapted to a change in American politics that was the product of forces and factors over which he had no control. More to the point, liberals like Foer are using Netanyahu as a whipping boy for their own failures.

For a generation, critics of the left had warned liberal Jews that they were ignoring the fact that a Democratic Party that was once overwhelmingly pro-Israel was changing. Instead of fighting the forces working so hard to drive a wedge between the Democrats and the Jewish community, they refused to see any enemies on the left. Instead, they doubled down on the false notion that antisemitism was solely a problem on the political right, even falsely accusing Trump of being the prime source of its growth.

In the last decade, Jewish liberals, including establishment groups like the Anti-Defamation League, bent their knees to the hard left on issues like the antisemitic Black Lives Matter movement. They embraced false narratives about Islamophobia—which, in practice, merely meant those who noticed Muslim antisemitism—being a problem that was as important as Jew-hatred. They pretended not to notice when hatred for Israel and its supporters by the left-wing “Squad” in the U.S. House of Representatives was gradually being adopted by more and more Democrats.

By the time of the Oct. 7 attacks, pro-Israel liberals found themselves isolated. They claim that Netanyahu is responsible for their plight, though they have no one to blame but themselves. They failed to stop the anti-Israel left when it was weak. Even now, they still rally around institutions like elite American universities that encourage and enable antisemitism rather than join with Trump in trying to force them to reform.

Nothing in politics is forever. It’s theoretically possible that the Democrats will, if they suffer disastrous losses after nominating hard-core leftists who hate Israel in this year’s midterms or the 2028 presidential election, come back to their senses and reject the intersectional left. Whether or not that is possible, focusing on Netanyahu is merely a way for Jewish liberals to ignore their own cowardly surrender of their party.

They have stood by and let a faction that has embraced not just hostility to Israel, but the open Jew-hatred of figures like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the “Squad,” dictate the Democrats’ positions. If they wish to reclaim it, then they need to stop scapegoating Netanyahu and obsessing about Trump, and start fighting the antisemites in their own party.
Bernie Sanders and the Jew-washing of the American left
The same stamp is applied at scale in the Senate. In September 2024, Sanders took the lead on five resolutions to block arms sales to Israel, and none drew more than 19 votes. By July 2025, the figure was 27. On April 15 of this year, 40 of the 47 members of the Democratic caucus voted with him to block a sale of Caterpillar bulldozers to Israel, and 36 voted to block the provision of 12,000-pound bombs.

Announcing the votes, Sanders described the government of the Jewish state as the “racist, extremist Netanyahu government.” A filing he made in March called the war with Iran illegal, premeditated and unconstitutional. Every senator who cast their votes in support went home able to tell a nervous Jewish donor that Bernie Sanders wrote the resolution and that answer worked because it was designed to work.

A week ago, the House cashed in the accumulated credit. A total of 103 Democrats—nearly half the Democratic caucus—voted to eliminate the entire $3.3 billion in annual military assistance to Israel that includes funding for the system that stops missiles from killing Jews in their homes. Nancy Pelosi voted yes. The Democratic whip voted yes. Sanders made it all possible.

None of this is my interpretation of how the mechanism functions. Sanders’s own admirers describe it openly and with a certain pride. A former Burlington mayor, praising him in his hometown paper, explained that because Sanders is Jewish and lost family in the Holocaust, he is “inoculated” and nobody will accuse him of antisemitism. When Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) pressed him with “Bernie, now do antisemitism,” it was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) who answered for Sanders, invoking Sanders’s murdered relatives and tikkun olam. Sanders did not have to speak. The genealogy spoke. Then, everyone could bow their heads in obedience and relief.

This brings us to the man who used to hold the stamp pad. Joel Rubin ran Jewish outreach for the 2020 Sanders presidential campaign. He was J Street’s first political director, a deputy assistant secretary of state under President Barack Obama who worked the Hill for the Iran deal and later the head of the American Jewish Congress. He is, in other words, a professional certifier himself, hired to vouch for Sanders in rooms where vouching was required, and he took the job because he wanted a Jewish president.

Last week at the Aspen Security Forum, Rubin told Jewish Insider that Sanders and the operation around him have pushed into American politics “the most categorically anti-Israel, antisemitic candidates that we’ve seen in a generation,” and that this was not an accident of circumstance but a deliberate design intended to shatter Democratic coherence on Israel.

That is not a policy disagreement. That is the guarantor revoking the guarantee. The man whose job was to certify the certifier has examined what the certification actually purchased, and he has taken his name off it.

So, spare us the ritual objections. Nobody seriously disputes that Bernie Sanders is a Jew and that his father’s family really was murdered for the same reason ours were. That is not the charge and never was. The charge is that he discovered, early and correctly, that a Jewish name attached to an accusation against Jews travels farther, faster and harder than the same accusation from anyone else. Sanders has spent a career monetizing that arbitrage on behalf of people who could not have gotten there without him.

Sanders did not build the antisemitism now consuming the American left. He did something more useful: He made it kosher.
Jpost Editorial: Boy George's stand: Non-Jewish celebrities speaking up for Israel makes a difference
Boy George counters Zohran Mamdani's slander against Israel
Ordinarily, we shouldn’t care what Boy George thinks about geopolitics. But his words resonate not only because they ring true, but because they remind Israelis they are not alone – that there are non-Jews (Boy George was born Irish Catholic) who see us, hear us, and are not taken in by lies repeated ad infinitum, even when amplified by powerful figures such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Boy George could have been singing directly to Mamdani, who accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a video of being a war criminal while leveling malicious, slanderous accusations against Israel without once mentioning Hamas or the October 7 massacre.

“You never mention October 7,” Boy George sang. “Young girls raped against trees / Murdered brutally / For the crime of dancing / You condemn the Jews, with selective memory.”

Boy George’s song appeared the same day another celebrity – NBA player Kyle Kuzma – took Mamdani to task on X, writing over a repost of the mayor’s indictment of Netanyahu:

“This is 2026. People cosplaying as things they don’t have the authority, the talent, or the track record to actually be. Just for content. A mayor playing president… Don’t fall for distractions.”

Both men knew there would be blowback, and there was. The mob goes after those it believes have strayed from the “correct” line. But there was also considerable support.

Read some of the coverage of Boy George’s song, and you might think he was universally excoriated on X, where the song garnered millions of clicks. Yes, there were plenty of hostile comments. But there were also thousands of supportive ones.

One stood out: a photo of a Nazi rally where everyone is giving the Heil Hitler salute except for one man standing with his arms folded. “Thank you so much for being this man,” wrote the user.

More of this is needed. More people need to challenge the genocide libel and call it what it is: a vicious lie.

Why does it take a non-Jew to publicly stand with Israel?
Boy George’s message carries particular force because he is not Jewish. In today’s climate, taking this stand requires courage. Those who do are hounded online and pilloried by many of the cultural elites. When a Jew says these things, critics can dismiss them as tribal loyalty. When a non-Jew says them, they are harder to dismiss.

But Boy George’s intervention also exposes something else: Where are the Jewish celebrities? Why are so many silent? Jewish celebrities criticizing Israel are easy to find. Those publicly standing with Israel can almost be counted on two hands: Debra Messing, Jerry Seinfeld, Mayim Bialik, Michael Rapaport, and a few others.

In 1983, in the wake of the First Lebanon War, Bob Dylan sang “Neighborhood Bully,” blasting the world’s hypocrisy toward Israel. Today, he – like so many other Jewish musicians and artists – has fallen silent while the country that is home to half of his co-religionists is falsely accused of genocide and systematically delegitimized.

That it took Boy George to speak out is a reminder of how few of them have done the same.


Health watchdog rejects anti-Semitism definition fears
Implementing a definition of anti-Semitism endorsed by a special envoy won't affect political discussions in the workplace, the national health accreditation regulator says.

The watchdog responsible for more than a million registered workers adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism in June.

The definition and accompanying examples backed by Australia's Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism Jillian Segal have been criticised by some legal experts for stifling political expression and tying criticism of the State of Israel to Jewish culture.

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency was initially resistant to implement the alliance's definition because of those concerns, chief executive Justin Untersteiner told a royal commission into anti-Semitism.

The adoption of the definition was still being worked through and would not hamper discussion of international conflicts, Mr Untersteiner said on Wednesday.

But he said as soon as conduct fell into discrimination or racism the regulator would step in.

A peak body for Jewish medical practitioners has called for a consistent definition of anti-Semitism across the practitioner regulator and the 15 representative boards it works with.

Members of the Australasian Jewish Medical Federation told the inquiry practitioners found in breach of anti-Semitism standards by the regulator may be brushed off by the National Boards.

The federation labelled it a "revolving door" that failed to deal with instances of anti-Semitism.

But Mr Untersteiner said it would be "very unique" for the individual peak bodies to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition.

"They wouldn't normally adopt a reference tool. That's not how we ... operate," he said.


'Hypocritical!' Mamdani Appoints Lawyer for Black Nationalist Cop-Killers to Judicial Advisory Board After Blocking Jewish Judge for Representing Ghislaine Maxwell
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.) is under fire for snubbing Jews from an influential judicial advisory panel and blocking the nomination of a former judge, who is Jewish, because he once represented Ghislaine Maxwell. But Mamdani tapped a left-wing attorney who has represented multiple convicted cop-killers—including two black nationalists who murdered two New York City police officers—to serve on the committee, the Washington Free Beacon found.

Mamdani selected Soffiyah Elijah, founder of the Alliance of Families for Justice, to serve on the 18-member panel, which recommends judicial candidates to "help ensure that our judicial system reflects the city it serves." Over the course of her legal career, Elijah has represented, befriended, and advocated for a slew of convicted cop-killers, including Sundiata Acoli, Marilyn Buck, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and members of the San Francisco 8, all of whom were convicted of murdering police officers, armed robbery, or terrorism-related offenses.

Elijah has described many of her clients as "political prisoners" and has called for the "repressive racist criminal injustice system" to be "radically changed."

Her appointment comes as Mamdani faces backlash for appointing no Jewish members to the advisory panel, which evaluates judge candidates for the city's criminal courts.

A Jewish lawyers' organization said it was "deeply disappointed" by the absence of Jewish representation on the panel in a city where roughly 10 percent of residents are Jewish. In a letter to Mamdani, the group said the decision follows "a troubling pattern" amid rising concerns about antisemitism. The letter also criticized Mamdani's rejection of former appellate judge John Leventhal, who had been recommended for the panel.

According to a Mamdani spokesman, Leventhal was rebuffed because he represented Maxwell, an accomplice to Jeffrey Epstein, on an appellate issue related to her sex-trafficking case.


Nicole Lampert: Hackney Green council meeting where Jews were told they must condemn the ‘genocide’ to fight antisemitism
As the first full council meeting in Hackney since the Greens took power in May prepared to get underway, outside the town hall a confrontation with a small pro-Israel group set the tone for the proceedings.

"You are not welcome here. You are far right and Zionists," said a woman whose face was encased in a keffiyeh before grabbing eggs from a box in her hand and hurling them at the few supporters of the Jewish state.

She was quickly arrested, but it took four policemen to handcuff and bundle her away.

One of the targets, Sharon, said: “We were called genociders, baby killers, terrorists and told we should go back to where we came from.”

There was a queue to get into the council chamber; there wasn’t room for everyone at this historic first full session since the Greens had leapt from just two councillors to an overwhelming majority of 42 out of a total of 67 in the May elections. Apart from a brief period without overall control from 1998-2002, Hackney has always been a Labour council.

The Green councillors filed in giddy with excitement. More than half were wearing keffiyehs in a variety of colours. Some had been protesting outside, still getting to grips with the idea that they are no longer fighting the establishment.

Sitting across from them were the six Tory councillors who represent Hackney’s Charedi majority wards. One of them, Simche Steinberger, was wearing a Tottenham football shirt and a kippah.

There were introductions: Mayor Zoe Garbett is directly elected and the most powerful of all the council officials. She was given eight minutes and started well: council house roof repairs are being done with drones, the cost of living crisis, and even a mention of the climate.

Then came the key part of her address. “We are urgently addressing this council’s complicity in a humanitarian crisis,” she said.

“Given that crisis and a UN commission concluding that Israel has committed genocide, we have made progress with divesting our pension funds by launching a review.

“And we are reviewing our international links, including a proposal to end our twinning agreement with the military port city of Haifa in Israel.

“This is about who we are as a council, what we condone, who we work with, and what that says about who we are.”

Addressing how the issue had aroused “passionate feelings” she thanked “everyone who’s been protesting outside the town hall”.


Fury as Green party Mayor requests Israeli reply to de-twinning motion ‘by 7 October’
The Mayor of Hackney has written to Haifa’s Mayor requesting a response on the borough’s intention to cancel its twinning with the Israeli city and specifically asking him to respond “by 7 October”, in a move which has been described as “appalling” and “sickening” by leading Jewish communal organisations.

In a letter sent today to Yona Yahav, the Mayor of Haifa, Zoe Garbett, the Green Party Mayor of Hackney, informed him “Hackney and Haifa have shared a civic bond since 1968; however, in my view the relationship no longer reflects the strategic priorities of the council.”

She went on to write that “As the directly elected Mayor, I wish to be transparent about my administration’s direction, as set out in my party’s manifesto: my administration is seeking to conclude this chapter of our civic history.

“Given the ongoing humanitarian crisis, and the gravity of the UN Commission of Inquiry Reports concluding Israel has committed genocide, maintaining a civic connection in Israel is at odds with our anti-racist values. The Council stands up for human rights and wants to ensure our global connections reflect our shared core values. We want active, ethical partnerships that champion peace.”

She told Yahav that she was “writing to formally invite the views of your administration on the proposal to terminate the twinning agreement. I’d be grateful if you could send me any views on this matter by e-mail…by 7 October 2026.”

Responding to the letter, Phil Rosenberg, President of the Board of Deputies, said: “Hackney’s Mayor has given the city of Haifa until October 7 – the anniversary of the Hamas massacre – to respond to their spiteful detwinning consultation.

“Whether this was deliberate or the product of staggering insensitivity, it is an appalling choice of date. That nobody involved in drafting or approving a letter about Israel recognised its significance speaks volumes about Hackney Greens’ attitude towards this issue and their local Jewish community.”

A spokesperson for the JLC said: “This is crass and shockingly insensitive. In choosing this date of all days as a deadline, the Mayor of Hackney has taken her politics of division a step further in a sickening attempt to mock and torment Israelis in their grief, and bringing insult to the memory of those murdered and kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October.”


Gazan man convicted for Nazi salute at pro-Palestinian march
An immigrant from Gaza has been fined £250 after he was videoed performing a Nazi salute in front of Jews, with a court rejecting his claim that the intent of the gesture had been to wave on members of the pro-Palestinian march he was participating in.

Mohammed Alamrein, who left Gaza a year prior to the war initiated by 7 October and subsequently managed to gain refugee status in the UK, took part in a “National March for Palestine” in June 2025, organised by groups including the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War, Friends of Al Aqsa and Palestinian Forum in Britain. Counter-protestors from Stop the Hate had been positioned by the Met Police at one area passed by the march, and Alamrein was filmed performing the hate sign in front of them.

As described by blogger and retired Met police officer Gill Levy, when a police officer was approached by the individual who had taken the footage, the officer did not accept that this was what had happened, despite watching the footage himself. Levy described how “It took the victim’s own footage, passed to Stop the Hate, posted online, and from there circulated among officers who had somehow missed it in person, to turn a shrug into a case file. Only once the clip was public, and the Met’s handling of it was potentially public along with it, did the machinery leading to a Section 5 of the Public Order Act charge start moving.”

Levy described Alamrein as being on universal credit and, despite having been in the UK for four years, “needed an interpreter to understand the charge being read against him.” He also noted that the guideline fine for the offence in question – behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress – usually “starts well north of £800”.

The case was heard at City of London Magistrates court, with Alamrein’s attempt to claim that he had not been aware of what a Nazi salute not given credence by the adjudicating officials.


Federal judge dismisses lawsuit by University of Michigan DEI administrator fired over Jew-hatred remarks
A federal judge in Michigan dismissed a lawsuit filed by a former University of Michigan diversity administrator who was fired in 2024 after an investigation concluded that she made antisemitic remarks, including that the university was “controlled by wealthy Jews.”

Rachel Dawson, the former director of the university’s Office of Academic Multicultural Initiatives, sued the university in July 2025, alleging that it discriminated against her because she is a black woman and retaliated against her after she raised concerns about racial and gender bias.

U.S. District Judge Shalina D. Kumar granted the university’s motion to dismiss on Tuesday, finding that Dawson failed to plausibly allege that her race or sex played a role in her termination.

“Unfortunately for Dawson, speakers—alleged or confirmed—of antisemitic remarks is not a protected class under Title VII,” Kumar wrote.

The lawsuit stemmed from allegations that Dawson told attendees at a March 2024 academic conference, “We don’t work with Jews. They are wealthy and privileged and take care of themselves,” and that the university was “controlled by wealthy Jews.” Dawson denied making the remarks, but an outside law firm hired by the university “concluded that ‘the weight of the available evidence supports the conclusion that Ms. Dawson made the statements attributed to her,’” according to court filings.

The university initially issued Dawson a written warning. Mark Bernstein, a university regent, wrote that he was “disgusted” with the university’s response and that she should be “terminated immediately,” according to the initial complaint.

Kumar found that Dawson’s allegations “could permit an inference that the university unfairly subjected her to discipline and termination based on the antisemitic viewpoint she was believed to have expressed, treating her differently than her university colleagues accused of publicly making other bigoted or offensive remarks.”

“But nothing other than Dawson’s own conclusions support that the university took these actions against her because of her race or gender,” the judge wrote.


Lebanese lawyers file complaint against banker who met Netanyahu in Washington
More than a dozen Lebanese lawyers filed a complaint at the prosecutor’s office in Beirut on Wednesday against a prominent local banker, saying he violated the country’s laws by meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, DC, this week.

Lebanon and Israel have been holding US-backed direct talks for the first time in decades over the past three months, seeking an end to the latest fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group. The talks are aimed at disarming Hezbollah, securing an IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon, and progressing to a peace accord between the countries.

Lebanon’s laws prevent its citizens from having contact with Israelis, as the neighbors have technically been in a state of war since Israel was established in 1948. A 1955 law bans dealing with Israel or having contact with Israelis and punishes offenders with up to 10 years in jail.

Axios reporter Barak Ravid posted a photo on X of the banker, Antoun Sehnaoui, sitting at a restaurant table with Netanyahu and his wife, Sara. Ravid wrote that Sehnaoui and former US envoy Morgan Ortagus hosted a dinner on Monday in memory of the late US senator Lindsey Graham that was attended by Netanyahu and US officials.

A Sehnaoui-linked website, This is Beirut, also reported details of what it called the “special dinner.” Sehnaoui’s lawyer in Beirut did not immediately respond for comment.

The complaint said Sehnaoui committed “the crimes of contacting and dealing with the Israeli enemy, violating the Israel boycott law, the crime of treason and state security crimes.”
Court orders activist to pay over 'poisoned wells' post
A Small Claims Court in Bat Yam has ordered left-wing activist Boaz Drori to pay NIS 5,000 in damages to Shlomo Baruch Yered, a teenage shepherd from the Ma'aleh Tzidhar outpost in Gush Etzion, after ruling that he defamed the minor in a post on X.

According to the ruling, Drori shared a video in October 2025 showing Yered leaning over a water well. The lawsuit, filed with the assistance of the Honenu legal aid organization, stated that the footage documented an attempt to rescue a baby goat that had fallen into the well.

However, Drori's post claimed that "Jewish settlers are polluting Palestinian water wells in the occupied West Bank," and described the incident as part of an "organized wave of attacks."

During the hearing, Drori argued that he shared the post to encourage public discourse about Israel's image abroad and that he did not know the minor's identity. He also claimed that the goat's fall had contaminated the water and therefore his description of the outcome was accurate.

The judge rejected those arguments, ruling that there is a fundamental difference between accidental contamination caused while rescuing an animal and accusing someone of deliberately poisoning wells as part of an "organized wave of attacks." The court also rejected the defenses of "truthful publication" and that Drori acted innocently and in good faith.


Vetting of first 5,000 cadets for Gaza police force complete, says official
The vetting process has been completed for an initial group of some 5,000 Gazans slated to be trained for an emerging Palestinian police force under Washington’s 20-point plan for the Gaza Strip, an official from the US-backed Board of Peace said Tuesday.

“There were over 200,000 applications” to the police force since the Board’s National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) opened up registration earlier this year, the official told The Times of Israel.

He added that the NCAG, with the support of the International Stabilization Force (ISF) that is meant to train and deploy with the police force, completed enough vetting “for a first class of 5,000 cadets.”

Staffing the police force has been a top priority for the Board, which is seeking to install new governing and security bodies in Gaza that can gradually reduce the presence of both Hamas and the IDF in the Strip.

The official stressed, however, that there is no timeline for the police force’s deployment and that its activity in the Strip is “conditions-based.”

Many of the Gazans need to complete training outside of the Strip and then be brought back, the official added, saying that the Board of Peace hopes to begin training the vetted group “in the next weeks.”

Asked about the criteria for joining the force, following Times of Israel reporting that Israel was adamantly opposed to any Hamas-affiliated Gazans being included, the official said the vetting was carried out by the NCAG with support from the ISF. Hamas police officers stand guard as people attend the opening of the Fatah party’s eighth conference at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City on May 14, 2026. (Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

He said the ISF also “took information” from other bodies — indicating that Israeli security forces played a role and likely vetoed any candidates linked to the terror group.

An Arab diplomat told The Times of Israel in March that Palestinians who previously served as Hamas civil servants had been allowed to apply to the new police force, but would have to undergo Shin Bet vetting to be approved.
Ra’am Party chief refuses to condemn Hamas as terror group
United Arab List (Ra’am) Party Chairman Mansour Abbas on Tuesday refused to condemn Hamas as a terror organization that needs to be destroyed, during an interview with Israeli radio station Kan Reshet Bet.

In an uncharacteristically emotional outburst by the party leader, Abbas refused to directly answer the question repeatedly posed to him by interviewer Esti Perez-Ben Ami: “Can you say unequivocally, clearly, that Hamas is a terrorist organization that massacred Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs, on Oct. 7, [2023] and needs to be eliminated?”

Abbas first launched into a tirade about how his party was constantly being required to pass purity tests. “We condemned every act of terrorism. We condemned the crimes of Oct. 7, not only from the secular viewpoint, but also the Islamic religious viewpoint. We came out against it. ... And again they want to bring us back to the tests,” he said.

He then defended his supporters, drawn from traditional, religious Muslims, particularly Bedouin in the Negev region, describing them as “normative, law-abiding citizens.” They want to integrate into Israeli society and “aspire to achieve peace and reconciliation between the Palestinian people and the Jewish people,” he said.

Perez Ben-Ami responded: “You don’t answer me, but I’m asking you a question: Is Hamas a terror organization that needs to be destroyed?”

Abbas again dodged the question, saying that on top of putting him through additional tests, it wasn’t wise to play into the hands of the extreme right, which seeks to delegitimize his party. He said it’s also an attempt to delegitimize The Democrats, a new party formed in 2024 through the merger of the far-left Meretz and Labor parties.

He said it was outrageous to put “any one of us to this loyalty test.”

“MK Mansour Abbas, I hear you, I also hear the emotion in your voice. But I ask you for an answer, which my listeners also want to ask. Is Hamas a terrorist organization that needs to be destroyed? What’s wrong with saying yes or no?” Perez Ben-Ami asked.

After a back-and-forth during which they spoke over each other, Abbas said, “I don’t want to give you an unequivocal answer.” He later added, “I have an unequivocal answer. I don’t want to say it.”


Man who rammed car into NYC’s Chabad headquarters sentenced to time served
The man who repeatedly rammed a car into the Chabad Hasidic movement’s world headquarters in New York City earlier this year was sentenced on Wednesday to time served.

Dan Sohail, 36, pleaded guilty to damaging religious property in May.

Sohail slammed his car into the revered religious site in January, causing widespread alarm.

He was initially charged with a hate crime, but later told investigators that he was seeking to connect with his “Jewish heritage.”

An investigation found that Sohail had made outreach to Jewish groups ahead of the incident and had mental health problems.

The judge overseeing the case at Brooklyn federal court said Sohail needed mental health treatment and did not exhibit any hatred toward Jews.

Sohail was sentenced to time served. He has been incarcerated for six months and will be released next week.

The judge in the case, Eric Vitaliano, ordered Sohail to pay $19,000 in restitution.

Vitaliano criticized the Department of Justice for seeking a harsher sentence, which prosecutors hoped could serve as a wider warning to those who might attack Jewish interests amid a dramatic rise in hate crimes against the Jewish population.

“This is a sad tale,” Vitaliano said.
Man pleads guilty to ‘target local Synagogues and Jewish businesses’ Facebook post
A man who posted on social media about targeting Synagogues and Jewish businesses with overripe fruit and stink bombs has pleaded guilty to sending by public communication network an offensive, indecent, obscene, or menacing message, despite saying in a police interview that his comments were “a joke”.

Michael Brown, 45, appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court on Wednesday, with regards to his Facebook post on February 28, the day Israel and America launched their attack on the Iranian regime. In response to an announcement by the Brighton and Hove branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign calling for an “emergency protest” to “stop Trump’s wars”, Brown responded by saying “It’s about time to target local synagogues and Jewish businesses with overripe fruit and stink bombs.

“Let’s all buy a pack of 6 eggs and pelt the local synagogues. Then we can throw bags of flour. And before you know it we can make Jewish Muffins.

“Jews have a right to defend themselves using the Bible as a navigation tool. Watch out these guys eat Pretzels which is just weird.

“What does everyone like to drink with their Jewish Muffins?

“And does anyone has good recipe for roasted Synagogue.”

Brown was arrested by local police a few days later, with Detective Chief Superintendent Richard McDonagh of Sussex police saying at the time that ““We acknowledge the deep distress and concern that can be caused by threatening, hateful and antisemitic messages to members of the Jewish community, and the wider public,” he said.

“Threats of any kind are completely unacceptable, and anyone who seeks to target individuals within communities of any faith group can expect a robust response.

“A man is in custody, and we urge people not to speculate to allow our full and thorough investigation to take place.”

As reported by The Argus, the prosecutor, Emily Thornton, asked for Brown to be given a tougher sentence for a race hate crime, with the Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring telling the guilty party that “I can’t rule out it will be a custodial sentence, it may well be.”
Flyers stating ‘we are with you Palestine,’ bearing swastika found in Southern California community
Flyers with antisemitic messages and neo-Nazi imagery were found in the unincorporated Orange County community of Coto de Caza, Calif., Katrina Foley, vice chair of the county’s board of supervisors, stated on Tuesday.

Coto de Caza is roughly 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

One flyer read, “We are with you Palestine. A replacement by the Jews is coming for you and me,” according to a photo released by Foley’s office. The bottom of the flyer included the name “the National Social Order” with a swastika beneath it.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department is investigating the matter, according to Foley’s office.

“These hateful acts seek to intimidate, manipulate and spread fear with the goal of pitting our neighbors against one another,” Foley stated. “This weaponized division will never define Orange County.”

Joey Good, senior director of community relations at the Jewish Federation of Orange County, told JNS that “neo-Nazi propaganda and the organizations that spread it should have no place in our Orange County—and that’s exactly what these flyers represent.”

“Jewish Federation of Orange County is calling on local officials to condemn this without hesitation and on law enforcement to investigate and treat it as the hate incident it is,” he said. “Silence is not an option.”
Berlin Jew ‘threatened’, shown Nazi salute en route to prayer
Police in Berlin earlier this week detained a man who allegedly performed Hitler salutes at a Jewish person on the street.

Shlomo Afanasev, a board member and founding member of the Kahal Adat Jisroel, Jewish community in the German capital, posted a video of the incident on X on Tuesday.

The video shows a young man in dark clothing walking alongside another person on a sidewalk, facing the person filming. As pedestrians and cyclists pass by, the man walks several meters down the street before turning back toward the camera. Near the end of the clip, he raises his right arm high in a gesture that appears consistent with a Nazi salute.

Asked for his name, the man who gestured says “Mohammed Ali.” The man who filmed the exchange is heard calling for police to arrest his interlocutor because he’d performed a Hitler salute, which is illegal in Germany.

Afanasev later published a picture of the alleged offender inside a police car. He’d also threatened his Jewish interlocutor with death, according to Afanasev. Both the alleged offender and his companion hurled antisemitic insults at the Jewish person. Afanasev did not name the victim.

Afanasev described the victim as a leading member of Adat Jisroel. The incident happened as the victim was walking to synagogue, Afanasev added.

“The police arrested one of the suspects. Such scenes are deeply shocking. Antisemitism is not a memory of the past—it is a reality of the present. And that Jews, of all places in Germany, must once again fear for their safety on the way to the synagogue is profoundly painful,” Afanasev wrote.

In 2025, the number of antisemitic incidents documented in Germany rose slightly from the previous year to a record 8,725, the Berlin-based Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS) said in its annual report, published in June.
Two Israeli universities rank among top 30 global producers of AI talent, startups
Two Israeli institutions – Haifa’s Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Tel Aviv University – have earned spots among the world’s top 30 universities for churning out talent, research and entrepreneurship in artificial intelligence, according to a new global index.

The Technion was placed 25th and Tel Aviv University 28th in the AI Production Capacity index of 50 academic institutions, compiled by US-based AI communications firm 5W and released last week.

The top three institutions in the global index were Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Carnegie Mellon University, followed by UC Berkeley and China’s Tsinghua University.

Graduates of the top four universities accounted for 54 percent of the technical leadership behind leading AI companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind.

The index’s ranking is based on six equally weighted categories, including research output, AI programs, startup creation, computing infrastructure and links to frontier AI companies.

The report attributed the performance of the Technion and Tel Aviv University to their close collaboration between academia, industry and the country’s technology ecosystem, alongside a talent pipeline coming out of Israel’s military elite technology and intelligence units.

“Both maintain dense ties to Nvidia’s Israeli R&D operations in Yokneam — the semiconductor company’s largest engineering site outside the US — Intel’s Israeli operations in Kiryat Gat and Haifa, and the alumni pipeline from IDF Unit 8200,” the report said. “Compute infrastructure is the only structural constraint.” Illustrative: Founder and CEO of US artificial intelligence company OpenAI Sam Altman speaks at the Tel Aviv University in the eponymous Israeli city, on June 5, 2023. (Jack Guez/AFP)

The Technion is also a major provider of technological talent for Israel-based R&D centers of global tech giants such as Google, Meta, and Microsoft.

Israel has talent and a track record of innovation, but is seen as falling short of much-needed investment in AI infrastructure, including computing power and chips. That could put the country at a disadvantage as other major economies, including its neighbors, are pushing ahead in the global technological arms race.
Thousands of ancient artifacts recovered in Judea and Samaria looting case
Thousands of archaeological items, including coins and artifacts from the Persian (539–332 BCE), Hellenistic (332–140 BCE) and Hasmonean (140–37 BCE) periods in the Land of Israel, were recovered from a suspect accused of looting antiquities in Judea and Samaria, Israeli authorities said on Monday.

According to the Civil Administration’s Archaeology Unit, the Israeli Police and Israel Defense Forces, the items were seized after security forces detained the suspect, who was found carrying metal detectors, excavation tools and archaeological finds. He was handed over to the Archaeology Unit’s Intelligence and Investigations Department for questioning. The Civil Administration is the military body responsible for overseeing many governmental functions in Judea and Samaria.

Investigators determined the suspect had carried out illegal excavations in Area C of Judea and Samaria, where Israel has administrative and security jurisdiction. A raid on the suspect’s home uncovered additional artifacts, including ancient coins.

Under Israeli law, trading in antiquities without a permit, as well as transporting antiquities from Judea and Samaria into Green Line Israel without authorization, are criminal offenses.


travelingisrael.com: Ben-Gurion Founded Israel. Then He Chose to Live in a desert Shack...
As Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion held ultimate power. Then, he decided to leave it all behind and move into a humble desert shack.





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

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