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Thursday, August 13, 2026

08/12 Links Pt2: 9/11: The Lesson We Forgot; An endorsement ends any ‘shomer’ myth; 66% of Jewish New Yorkers oppose Mamdani, 75% against DSA; New York Magazine Erased My Family from the Middle East

From Ian:

A Discussion of Rachmil Bryks, May God Avenge Their Blood: A Holocaust Memoir Triptych
If there were justice in the literary world, this moment would be noticed by many: a new translation of Rachmil Bryks’ works had appeared. Instead of celebrating a major literary event, one confronts a question: “Who is Rachmil Bryks?”

Sadly, one has to educate an English-language readership. I hadn’t heard of him either. He was a famous Yiddish writer who wrote a great deal about the Holocaust in Poland. He grew up in Skarżysko-Kamienna, Poland, among Hasidim, and moved to Łódż, where ultimately he survived the ghetto. In 1946, he went to Sweden and from there to the United States. He lived nearly two decades in New York City until his untimely death in 1978. His many books in Yiddish can be acquired free of charge (download) from the National Yiddish Book Center.

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Admittedly, there are many great writers of the Holocaust, so what makes Bryks a stand-out? For me, it is his range, he has pieces that pay compliments to Shalom Aleichem (“Those Who Didn’t Survive”), and other pieces that share traits from Ahron Appelfeld. However, many of his works, such as the Holocaust Triptych, resemble Tadeusz Borowski. In my opinion, Borowski was the finest of all. His enigmatic, condensed, and sparing style hinted at depths that readers were asked to imagine, to fill in the silence left by the author. Borowski told what he saw in flashes and narrow slices, but with great precision and intricate detail. But by leaving out his analysis, he forced the reader to sort out the horrors and draw his/her own conclusions. Thus readers became contributors to the text. It was an effective system.

Bryks is a bit like that. He is a writer, not a philosopher, theologian, moralist, or historian. His material is always local, visits to family, descriptions of relatives, neighbors, or strangers encountered in the here and now. The material in this book is all autobiographical, in the “Triptych” he describes his journeys during the first days of war, his arrest by the Nazis and experience in a work camp. Later he will describe his deportation to Auschwitz. Because this is real literary craft, it is useless to paraphrase. As Tolstoy said in answer to a question of what War and Peace was about, “To answer, I’d have to write the book again from beginning to end.”

To give a sense of his style, I quote from the third part, “From Agony to Life,” when he is in Auschwitz. The chapter is entitled, “The Wild Beast,” and in it Bryks describes a German overseer of the kitchen, Hermann, who takes a young boy, Pinek, to bed nightly and beats a different prisoner with a metal pipe daily. The anecdotal story reflects bare description without analysis.
9/11: The Lesson We Forgot
This is where the political horseshoe closes. On one side, a conspiratorial far right sees hidden Jewish power behind governments, wars and history. On another, a radical anti-Zionist left can arrive at strikingly similar conclusions through different language.

One calls it Jewish power, another calls it Zionism. One says Mossad knew about 9/11, another says the IDF committed 7 October.

The vocabulary changes, the conspiracy survives.

And now comes the warning, one we should all recognise. Consider the cultural distance travelled from “Never Forget” to Hasan Piker saying “America deserved 9/11”.

Increasingly, the question after an atrocity becomes not simply why someone committed it, but what the victim did to provoke it. Context becomes mitigation, explanation begins to resemble justification, and the ideological agency of the perpetrator disappears beneath an examination of the victim’s supposed culpability.

We saw it after 7 October, and this is one aspect of why Israel and the Jews matter to the 25th anniversary of September 11th.

Jews are sometimes described as the canary in the coal mine. What I mean by that is simple, historically, we have an uncomfortable habit of finding ourselves early in the queue.

Israel is not the only target of Islamist extremism and Jews are not its only victims. Al-Qaeda’s principal enemy was America, ISIS murdered Muslims, Christians, Yazidis and Jews, Islamist terrorists have struck London, Paris, Madrid, Manchester, Brussels, Mumbai, Bali and countless cities across the Muslim world.

The West keeps hearing “Israel” and assuming the argument ends at Israel, history suggests otherwise.

Israel is not the final destination, Jews are not the final target, Palestine is not necessarily the limit of the cause. 9/11 should have taught us that.

In a month’s time, the names will be read again, nearly 3,000 of them. I will think about sitting in my car in Sunderland, listening to those names and finally crying for something I had witnessed twelve months earlier but had somehow been unable to process.

For millions alive today, September 11th is history; for me, it never will be. I remember where I stood, I remember the confusion and the fear, I remember the towers coming down and the sensation that the world was changing around me before any of us understood what the new world would look like.

Perhaps that is why our collective amnesia troubles me so much. I was there the last time the West discovered, in the most horrific way imaginable, that an ideology incubated thousands of miles away did not intend to remain there. I watched the towers fall.

Twenty-five years later, we still remember the planes and the buildings, those who jumped and the firefighters who ran in, above all, we remember the names.

What we appear to have forgotten is the warning.

That is why I am writing this now, a month before September 11th. I don’t want to argue, I want to remember. The dead deserve that much. But remembrance without learning eventually becomes ritual.

“Never Forget” was supposed to be both a promise to those we lost and a warning to those who remained.

Twenty-five years later, we haven’t forgotten 9/11.

We have forgotten what “Never Forget” was supposed to mean.
Amb. George Deek: The Christian Israel you are not being shown
If you genuinely want to know whether Christians are flourishing in a country, there are better measures than the behavior of its worst citizens.

Start with the most basic question:

Are Christians disappearing?

In Israel, they are not.

In 1950, Israel was home to roughly 34,000 Christians. Today there are about 184,000, and the community continues to grow.

Then look at what Christians actually do here.

Consider one image that tells you more about Christian integration than a hundred government brochures.

Justice Salim Joubran was an Arab Christian justice of Israel's Supreme Court. He sat on the panel that sent former Israeli president Moshe Katsav to prison. Think about that sentence. An Arab Christian judge helped send the Jewish president of the Jewish state to prison.

And nobody in Israel regarded his ethnicity or religion as an issue. He was a Supreme Court justice doing his job. That is the point.

Christians are physicians and hospital directors, academics and businesspeople, mayors, police officers, soldiers and diplomats.

I happen to be one of them.

The boy from the Christian Scouts in Jaffa eventually joined Israel's diplomatic service and became the first Christian appointed to represent Israel as an ambassador.

Today, I serve as Israel's special envoy to the Christian World, a position created specifically to deepen Israel's relationship with Christian communities around the world. Quite an elaborate way for a country supposedly hostile to Christianity to behave.

There are other inconvenient facts. In 2014, Israel formally recognized the Aramean nationality, giving members of ancient Aramaic and Syriac Christian traditions official recognition of an identity rooted in Christianity's earliest history.

Israel is also investing in Christianity's past and future here.

A few days ago, I visited the excavations at Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee, where archaeologists identified what is likely to have been the hometown of the Apostles Peter and Andrew.

I watched Israeli and American archaeologists, Jews and Christians, literally digging the world of Jesus back out of the earth.

There is something wonderfully inconvenient about that image: The country supposedly erasing Christianity is uncovering the village of the Apostles.

And Israel is already preparing for 2030, when Christians will mark 2,000 years since the baptism of Jesus, an anniversary expected to bring enormous numbers of pilgrims to the Holy Land. Basilica of the Annunciation

Something interesting is happening beyond Israel's borders as well. Recent polling in Lebanon found strong support among its Christian communities for peace with Israel: 77% among Maronites and 72% among Orthodox Christians.

Perhaps Middle Eastern Christians, after watching what has happened to ancient communities in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, are beginning to ask questions that old political slogans cannot answer.

Perhaps Jews and Christians in this region have more invested in one another's survival than generations of conflict allowed either side to admit.


How Hamas’ Attack on Israel Is Transforming American Politics
The Israel-Palestinian conflict is seen as a unifying issue among a Democrat-aligned but ideologically heterodox Muslim American community estimated at somewhere between 3.5 (by Pew) and 8 million (by CAIR) – 60% of whom are immigrants. Writing in City Journal, Zainab Al-Suwaij, co-founder of the American Muslim League, says that for her co-religionists “the Israel-Palestine conflict has become a defining aspect of their identity, though it directly affects only a tiny portion of the community. No one assumed that all Catholics supported the IRA. By contrast, the Palestinian cause attracts millions of Muslim Americans who have nothing to do with the conflict, but who have been told by clerics, community leaders, and professors to think of it as a religious duty.” The war in Gaza ranked as the second most important issue for American Muslims after the economy, at 35%, according to a 2025 Institute for Social Policy & Understanding poll. Likewise, a survey of Muslim-American voters in the 2024 election produced by CAIR found that of all Muslim-related foreign policy issues during that cycle, the most important one to respondents was “Israeli Genocide.”

Suwaij made her assertion in response to polling of Muslim Americans commissioned by her organization. That survey found that among respondents, some 66% support the Muslim Brotherhood, 35% support Hamas, and 17% harbor unfavorable views towards Jews. The Hamas figures dovetail with a Pew poll indicating 44% support among American Muslims – in line with polling of Palestinian Arabs themselves.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, leader of the Atlantic Council’s Realign for Palestine project, says, “Based on countless interactions, trends, and observations since October 7, this number is almost certainly an undercount.” Like Suwaij, he has written that “Many parents import rigid political narratives from their countries of origin and pass them to their children, leaving first‑ and second‑generation Muslim Americans trapped between inherited dogma and their own attempts to think more broadly. The near-absence of healthy institutional infrastructure then reinforces that foundation. National organizations like CAIR, AMP [American Muslims for Palestine], SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine], and MSA have filled the vacuum with grievance‑based politics, enforced conformity, and a culture where dissent is punished as betrayal.” Sen. Cruz and his witnesses also assessed that, like CAIR and MSA, AMP and SJP are Muslim Brotherhood-linked. Shideler, during the Cruz-led hearing, likewise identified Emgage PAC, the self-described largest Muslim American PAC, as linked to the Brotherhood’s U.S. network, noting it “was created by a former CAIR member who at one time was on a terror watch list, and was also a consultant to convicted terrorist Sami al-Arian.” American Priorities donor Khan, among his other Islamic philanthropic pursuits, sits on the board of Emgage Action, that organization’s lobbying and advocacy arm.

The Pew poll also showed that Muslims have a more favorable view of Palestinian Arabs than any other religious cohort at 78%, and a less favorable view of Israelis than any other religious cohort at 26% support. Following the October 7 attack, nearly 58% of American Muslims surveyed found that Hamas was at least somewhat justified in carrying out the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust “as part of their struggle for a Palestinian state.”

Each year, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) surveys populations around the world using questions to assess animus towards Jews via acceptance of derogatory stereotypes. Globally, in its 2025 survey, the ADL found that 46% of adults harbored antisemitic attitudes. In the predominantly Muslim Middle East and North Africa – comprised of nations rendered virtually judenrein during the 20th century after hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled or fled under antisemitic threat – that figure rises to 76%. There is little polling on American Muslim views of Jews, but ADL figures from 2017 show that 34% of Muslim Americans held antisemitic views – more than two times the rate of non-Muslims. More recently, a Heritage Foundation poll from September 2024 found that American Muslims believe Jewish people have “too much power” by a rate of 57% to the general public’s 17%.

Manhattan Institute President Reihan Salam, the son of Muslim immigrants, has identified what he sees as two problematic “ideological tendencies” among American Muslims that are of increasing relevance as Islam is set to surpass Judaism as America’s second largest religion within the next generation, and as Muslims’ political power grows. The first is “Islamism” and its violent manifestation in jihad. The second that he hypothesizes persists among upwardly mobile, educated, and often relatively secular Muslims is their rejection of “the quiet gratitude that one associates with immigrants and their children of earlier eras.” This, he says, is not so much due to the dictates of their faith as they understand it, but due to “‘anti-West westernization’ or ‘adversarial assimilation’: a process by which incorporation into American institutions produces not attachment to patriotic narratives of American freedom, individualism, and benevolence but hostility toward them.” He says that this cohort is in thrall to “Third Worldism,” which Salam defines as “a fusion of anti-Zionism, anti-Westernism, and anti-capitalism that places the sacralized victimhood of Palestinian Arabs at the center of a larger struggle against American imperialism.”

Of the two tendencies, “in important respects,” he argued recently in Sapir Journal, Third Worldism “presents the more consequential long-term ideological challenge.”

“Where jihadism targets American civilians as part of a larger struggle to overthrow ‘apostate’ regimes in the Muslim world, Third Worldism endeavors to transform the nation’s ideological-intellectual milieu, shaping how Americans – well beyond the Muslim minority – understand their country and its place in the world.”

This “Third Worldism,” as I detailed in a 2020 book on the growing nexus between Islamic supremacism and the left in the U.S., titled “American Ingrate,” can be traced in part to the Soviet Union’s championing of the Palestinian Arab cause, and the terror fomented by PLO leader Yasser Arafat, during the Cold War – which became a cause célèbres of the global left.

From the Uncommitted Movement to the 2028 Presidency
The Muslim community’s influence on U.S. politics this electoral cycle comes on the heels of the so-called Uncommitted National Movement during the 2024 presidential election.

Led by Lebanese-American political strategist Abbas Alawieh and Palestinian-American activist Layla Elabed, the protest group organized some 700,000 voters to oppose then-President Biden and Vice President Harris in the primary over policies perceived to be too pro-Israel with respect to the war in Gaza. That movement started with 10,000 mostly Arab and Muslim Michigan voters, a swing state consisting of nearly 250,000 Muslims, and grew across the country. El-Sayed himself was among them, supporting the cause. Alawieh ran for state senate in Michigan as a Democrat this cycle and won the nomination. Harris, who is expected to once again seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, just endorsed El-Sayed.

President Trump courted such disaffected voters with his own anti-war platform, cutting into Democrats’ generally dominant margins among Arab and Muslim communities in Michigan and helping him win the state in the 2024 election.

A small but loud cohort on the right has sought to put an America First spin on anti-Israel and what some see as antisemitic activism, in advocating against the U.S.-Israel alliance, railing against the so-called “Israel lobby,” and insinuating that Israel and pro-Israel Jews are manipulating U.S. policy to Israel’s benefit. American Priorities-supported Democratic nominee for the U.S. House from Colorado Melat Kiros, who says “there is no greater concern for me than ending the occupation, apartheid, and genocide in Palestine and guaranteeing Palestinians right to self-determination, statehood, the right to return, and reparations for Israel’s crimes,” has bemoaned that when the Democratic Party “refuses to lead morally on this issue, they are “leav[ing] a vacuum for those on the far right” and “letting antisemites on the right co-opt the movement for Palestinian liberation while giving fodder to AIPAC talking points.” But while prominent on the podcast scene and on social media, there are few successful candidates reflecting such views.

By contrast, as Waleed Shahid, former spokesman for the Justice Democrats and Bernie Sanders, now working for Mayor Mamdani, recently tweeted, “The politicians who were supportive of Uncommitted’s primary campaign (Mamdani, [New York congressional nominee Claire] Valdez, Darializa, Lander, Abdul, [Wisconsin Gubernatorial Candidate Francesca] Hong) are ascendant.” Among those candidates running since American Priorities’ establishment, it has supported all of the names referenced by Shahid save for Hong.

In the run-up to the U.S. Senate primary in Michigan, and specifically touting that race, CAIR launched a “Muslims.Vote” platform as a “one-stop hub for civic engagement.” It noted that “With more than 8 million Muslims in America and over 3 million registered voters, our community already has the power to shape elections, especially in key swing states. But millions more eligible Muslim voters must register, show up, and make their voices count.”

Hamawy and Chevalier are slated to serve as the keynote speakers at its forthcoming annual gala.

Meanwhile, American Priorities has made its ambitions clear. In a press release following El-Sayed’s victory, it wrote: “After a string of eight House victories this cycle, the Michigan primary marks [the] first direct statewide challenge to the Democratic establishment with national implications. El-Sayed’s win tonight will force a reckoning within the party over its backward-looking foreign policy and relationship to Israel – just as the contours of the 2028 presidential cycle come into focus.”
The Democratic Party is running out of room for Jews
In a recent article in The Atlantic, Jonathan Chait described exactly how toxic El-Sayed is for the Democratic Party and its future, and how violently El-Sayed opposes the U.S.-Israel alliance.

El-Sayed has gone further than criticizing the alliance, however, publicly asserting that Jews and Judaism are not synonymous with AIPAC or the State of Israel. This was a clear attempt to separate a crucial aspect of Jewish faith from the broader Jewish community. Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people is part of the Bible and Jewish prayers, and has been for thousands of years. We all wish to return home to the land that the Almighty gave us. That is the definition of Zionism.

In his claims to “love Jews and Judaism” while hating Israel and everything it represents, El-Sayed wants to convince Jews to divest their own faith of one of its most essential tenets. It is no wonder that AIPAC rightfully took a strong stand against him and donated significant amounts to his more moderate opponent.

I have come to believe that the Democratic Party has become a socialist party in large parts of the United States. I say this as someone who spent years in local Democratic politics and still wants to believe otherwise. Yet the writing is on the wall. The Jewish people have always been history’s canaries in the coal mine, and the hate that begins with us has never stopped with us.

Whatever the outcome of the upcoming midterms for the Democrats, the response to this new socialism that rides the wave of antisemitism is ours to build.

This means that Jewish political power should answer to no single coalition. Jewish education must teach our children the history and sense of identity required to recognize hate the moment it starts, along with the fortitude to deal with it.

We, as individuals and as a society, must unequivocally reject the notion that people like Dana Nessel, who bravely speak the truth in public and risk their own well-being in doing so, can be silenced or intimidated within their own political party. We must fight alongside her and others battling bigotry and even fear. Jobs in government and politics should not come with a personal safety warning.
An endorsement ends any ‘shomer’ myth
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow victory in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary was a clarifying moment. By endorsing the winner, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) abandoned all pretense of serving as a shomer, or “guardian,” of the beleaguered Jewish community. It is not just that Schumer indicated that he would endorse even an antisemite for political gain; it is that he did.

El-Sayed has not hidden his attitude toward Jews, which wallpapers slogans about Israel and Zionism over classical antisemitism. No one of intelligence could fail to see the similarities between his beliefs and those that overtook Germany less than a century ago.

He regards the Jews as a collective threat, stating without evidence that the Israeli government is “just as evil as Hamas,” the genocidal terrorists responsible for the worst anti-Jewish massacre since the Holocaust. El-Sayed claimed that rescuing hostages from torture and rape, and neutralizing those genocidal terrorists, constitutes “genocide.” Jewish lives, in other words, have no value in his view.

In a modern spin on the old “Chosen People” myth, he accuses Jews of racism, calling the only Middle Eastern country that gives both Jews and Arabs civil rights an “apartheid” state. And like his ideological forebears, he considers a boycott of Jews an appropriate “response.” Perhaps worst of all, El-Sayed used these depraved lies about Israel to justify violence against Jews in his home state. This is no different than the Nazis blaming Jews for the violence of Kristallnacht in 1938.

No one who values Western civilization or basic human decency would consider El-Sayed remotely fit to be a U.S. senator.

This brings us back to Schumer, who is placing political gain ahead of moral principle. During the primary, he backed the more moderate, pro-Israel candidate Rep. Haley Stevens. But once El-Sayed prevailed, Schumer immediately pivoted and was quite forthright about why. He issued a statement with Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) that declared they were “united by a common purpose” with El-Sayed: “taking back the Senate.”

To Schumer, party cohesion and electoral math come first, while the character of the nominee takes a distant second. That is why he and Gillibrand both supported the now disgraced Senate candidate Graham Platner in Maine, despite his Nazi tattoo and a series of scandals, until a sexual assault accusation from a former Platner girlfriend sent them scurrying like rats abandoning a sinking ship.
Israel could be blocked from ever hosting Eurovision again after rule change
The Eurovision Song Contest has updated its rules to state that a winning country can be disqualified from hosting the contest the next year if “the security, safety or stability of their state or immediate region” is affected by a “sensitive political situation”; a change which could effectively bar Israel from ever hosting the competition again.

The rule amendment, announced by the European Broadcasting Union on Wednesday, said that any winning country would automatically be ineligible to host the next contest if such circumstances or “any other situation materially affects the security, safety or stability of their state or immediate region”. It said that if necessary, the EBU would commission an independent security assessment of the winner’s region in order to decide whether the location would be deemed safe enough to host the contest the following year.

Under the EBU’s previous rules, the country winning the song contest would automatically assume hosting responsibilities for the competition the following year. However, even then it was understood that a country involved in an ongoing war might not be deemed safe enough to host; while Ukraine won the 2022 contest, an EBU feasibility study concluded that the risks of holding the contest there while the country was experiencing an ongoing invasion by Russia were too great. The UK ultimately hosted the 2023 competition on Ukraine’s behalf.

The official rule shift, however, has been widely interpreted as being aimed at Israel. Last year multiple broadcasters, including Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands, boycotted the competition due to Israel’s presence. Israel has placed second for the last two years due to a high number of votes from the general public – despite another rule change by the EBU last year to decrease the number of times people could vote for any country. The Spanish broadcaster, RTVE, had previously proposed a rule change which would bar any countries involved in an international conflict from taking part in the competition.
John Podhoretz: 'Pogrom City' New York Magazine’s evil ‘Habibi City’ cover sends a message: Jews aren’t welcome in Mamdani’s NYC
New York Magazine this week dubbed our town “Habibi City” to mark the rising prominence of Middle Easterners and Muslim immigrants united by fun, frolic — and a consuming hatred of Israel and Jews.

It’s a familiar formulation, harking back to 1966, when newly elected Mayor John Lindsay declared New York to be “Fun City.”

Yes, such fun! Lindsay’s two terms drove NYC into civil and budgetary collapse.

A crime tsunami rotted neighborhoods across the five boroughs, and feckless budgetary policies emptied the city’s coffers.

And the population of Lindsay’s “Fun City” declined by half a million people.

Facing a government that didn’t seem to care what happened to them, much of the middle class voted with their feet.

Something similar may happen in Habibi City, but this time the effort to make life unbearable for some New Yorkers is entirely intentional — and aimed at a specific minority.

Lindsay was incompetent, but he certainly didn’t want respectable taxpayers to leave.

Not so the subjects of New York Magazine’s current cover package, and their beloved Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Through their actions and their rhetoric, they’re actively working to bring about depopulation by making life for the Big Apple’s 900,000 Jews intolerable.

And this series of articles is part of a larger campaign whose purpose is to let Jews know they’re no longer welcome in New York.

The lead piece, by Zaina Arafat, describes how she and her fellow Habibis reacted in 2023 to the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

“In the months after Oct. 7,” she writes, New York’s Habibis were “increasingly spilling into view, desperate to be close” to “people who looked like you and spoke like you . . . living under the threat of annihilation. So we protested, we boycotted, we wrote op-eds.”

Um . . . who was living under the threat of annihilation again?

The Habibi actions began on Oct. 8, with campus celebrations of Hamas and denunciations of Israel — and then erupted all over New York, with the ritualistic shredding of posters mourning the 240 hostages taken into Gaza by terrorists.
New York Magazine Erased My Family from the Middle East
The ridiculous gatekeeping of “Arab” cuisine is a structure that exists only to exclude certain people, in this case Jews. Think about the reality of food, for a minute. Let’s look at Shakshuka, a food my grandmother has made for me many times and a food people have said I have “appropriated” many times. The Tunisian food historian Rafram Chaddad traces it to the Amazigh triangle, the stretch of southern Tunisia and its borderlands where the indigenous people of North Africa simmered vegetable stews centuries before the Arab conquest. Before Amazigh people were forced to learn to pronounce the word “Habibi.”

It is also a dish whose most prominent ingredients are eggs and a tomato sauce. Tomatoes are, of course, from South America. So, obviously, it isn’t an ancient Arab dish, is it? And yet millions of Arabs enjoy it every day because, of course they do. It’s food; it exists to be shared and enjoyed, and when we discover ways to make it better, we make it better. Yet with Jews, our enjoyment is seen as nothing more than a diabolical scheme to steal what isn’t ours.

The essay even profiles an Israeli chef and describes her “Persian and Yemeni Jewish roots” without ever pausing to consider why the chef ended up in Israel. The answer is, obviously, that Jews were exiled from numerous Muslim countries simply because they were Jewish. But the essay fails to acknowledge the history of the region it is trying to educate on because it does not fit a narrative they are trying to spread.

‘Palestinian tartare’ is highlighted in the piece, too. A Levantine dish that Syrian Jewish families in New York have been serving for a century. One of the largest Syrian Jewish communities on Earth lives there, in fact. But the essay doesn’t mention them when it goes on about Syrian food. I wonder why.

Once you see the gatekeeping, you can’t unsee it. What seemed at first like a wonderful deep dive into Middle Eastern and North African history is instead a purity test that the author is determined to pass. Where it once mourned the harsh reality of Arab restaurants rebranding to “Mediterranean” to avoid harassment and violence, it subtly makes jabs at Israeli restaurants doing the same.

Diverse cuisine staying alive and being passed down for generations is great, unless a Jew is doing it.

And, of course, the justification is that it has nothing to do with Jews. Oh no, the New York Jews having their restaurants boycotted and vandalized aren’t suffering because of antisemitism; it is because, as the article claims, “Israel is committing genocide.” A statement made as if you were saying the sky is blue: an undeniable truth. For the record, Israel hasn’t been convicted of any such thing. The International Court of Justice has not once ruled that such a thing is true. But if the article left even any room for the question “Is this being done because of antisemitism,” then they would have failed the purity test they are so desperate to pass.

This isn’t the first time New York Magazine has engaged in the erasure of Jewish people. In early 2024, the magazine published an essay asking whether America was implicated in genocide in Gaza. The cover story came next: Israel indicted for the crimes of the century, published the very week that Iranian ballistic missiles were falling on Israeli apartment buildings, meters from my home. Media watchdogs documented its factual errors, and the editors corrected four of them. But the direction stayed the same.

To pretend that a people don’t have food is a way to dehumanize them. No nation lacks cuisine. Deprive Jews and Israelis of a culture, and you deprive us of our humanity.

We all have memories of tables with food, smiles, and family. It’s the most basic human experience there is. That is why it is turned into something else when it comes to Jews. I wasn’t eating a recipe that my grandmother’s grandmother perfected; I was devouring stolen food for the joy of having stolen it. It’d be comical if it wasn’t so hateful.

The only possessions my grandmothers could take with them from Iraq and Tunisia were the clothes on their backs and their recipes. I will die protecting them, as it’s the only inheritance I have, and I will be damned if I allow New York Magazine to steal it.


The Teacher "Fired for Supporting Palestine," and the Real Story the Viral Campaign Left Out
Fatima Kurtic is a Muslim Bosnian-born public school teacher in Luxembourg who was dismissed from her job last October after Luxembourg’s education authorities took issue with her social-media activity. Kurtic says she “was punished for speaking out for Palestinians and against Israel’s war in Gaza.”

But this is not simply a story about a teacher being punished for saying “Free Palestine.” It is a story about a Luxembourg public-school teacher whose record extends far beyond criticism of Israel and into conspiracy theories about “Jewish power,” allegations of “Israeli organ harvesting,” imagery invoking blood libel, political activism involving children, and material calling for armed jihad.

There are two very different versions of Fatima Kurtic. One is the tearful teacher speaking for Palestinian children. The other is the activist who has spent years building an influential platform, cultivating relationships with Islamist and anti-Israel influencers, and sharing increasingly extreme material with a large audience.

Kurtic isn’t just a teacher, she has built a substantial online audience, with an Instagram account of nearly 150,000 followers. She has spent the past several years turning her activism into an international social-media brand, making her one of the more prominent anti-Israel influencers in Luxembourg.

The second version has been almost entirely absent from the coverage of her dismissal.

Al Jazeera reported on demonstrations supporting Kurtic in July, describing her as a teacher fired over pro-Gaza posts. Turkish Anadolu Agency has similarly presented her as a “Bosnian refugee who was fired over posts supporting Palestine.” Iranian state media has repeated the same basic narrative, reporting that she was “dismissed for supporting Palestinians and condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza.” While Pakistani media reported on how she will be challenging her dismissal.

It is an emotionally powerful story: a teacher, herself a refugee from the Bosnian war, speaking out for Palestinian children and supposedly “losing her career for doing so.”

But there is a basic question that has received remarkably little attention:

What exactly was she posting?
Kurtic’s social-media activity contains a recurring theme: claims that Israel, Jews or Jewish organizations secretly control governments and international affairs.

She has shared material claiming that Israel controls American foreign policy, that the United States is effectively an “occupied country,” and that the Rothschild family “owns every central bank in the world” and financed both sides of wars. Kurtic also shared material promoting the conspiracy theory that Israel was somehow responsible for the September 11 attacks. In doing so, she added the words “Remember the Dancing Israelis?” to a post about an Israeli woman filmed in New York on September 11, 2001. And claimed “the Zionists” could openly discuss their “evil plans” because they “control the world,” explicitly presenting Jews not just as evil, but also as a hidden force “manipulating global affairs.”


Ask Haviv Anything: 138: Why antisemitism works, with Prof. Ruth Wisse
Antisemitism is no mere prejudice. It's a potent political technology, perhaps the most effective negative campaign and coalition-builder in modern politics. Prof. Ruth Wisse, professor emerita of Harvard, now a senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund, joins the podcast to help us trace the “politics of the pointing finger” from Wilhelm Marr’s Antisemitenliga to the Arab League, from the Harvard campus’s grievance coalitions after October 7 to the rising figures on the progressive left and the populist right who find Jews the easiest, least costly villain on which to foist their anxieties and fears. Wisse argues that Jews cannot win this fight by trying argue with the charges being leveled at them; that Israel’s creation remains the great modern resurrection of a people; and that Jewish (and American) self-confidence is the only real answer to this challenge.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Professor Weiss's Background
02:07 Anti-Semitism as a Political Strategy
05:07 Historical Roots of Anti-Semitism in Europe and the Middle East
08:01 Jewish Passover and Personal Reflections on Anti-Semitism
10:57 Anti-Semitism as a Political Tool and Coalition Builder
14:48 The Role of Anti-Semitism in Modern Politics and Campaigns
20:08 Anti-Semitism in the Arab World and Its Political Uses
25:11 Deflection and Long-term Self-Destruction of Anti-Semitic Politics
30:14 The Inescapable Predicament of the Jews and Coexistence
35:02 Jewish Identity, Education, and Cultural Confidence
40:04 The Cultural and Political Challenges Facing American Jews
45:00 The Miracle of Israel and Jewish Resilience
50:00 The Impact of Liberalism and Identity Politics on Jewish Confidence
55:03 The Role of Literature and Arts in Jewish Self-Expression
59:53 Anti-Zionism as a More Malevolent Form of Anti-Semitism
01:04:55 The War Against the Principles of Western Civilization
01:10:11 The Future of Jewish Identity and Cultural Confidence
01:14:24 Conclusion and Final Reflections




Simon & Schuster Vows To Publish Author Who Calls Jews 'Roaches': Publisher Still Claims It Opposes Antisemitism
Simon & Schuster is doubling down on publishing a notoriously Jew-hating writer, with a top editor issuing a statement that denounced antisemitism but also said that the publisher's plans to reissue two books by the writer, Susan Abulhawa—who refers to Jews as roaches—would go forward and that Abulhawa's "personal views are her own."

The publisher, one of the "Big Five" who dominate book publishing in the English-speaking world, remains on track to rerelease two of Abulhawa's novels, Mornings in Jenin and The Blue Between Sky and Water, on Sept. 29, 2026, through its Atria imprint. Mornings in Jenin has been strongly criticized for antisemitic content.

The publisher has been less tolerant of conservatives. Simon & Schuster canceled a book by Republican senator Josh Hawley (Mo.) after Jan. 6, 2021, and also scrapped a 2017 book by conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos after coming under enormous pressure from its liberal clients.

In July, Simon & Schuster—whose founders were Jewish—said in a press release that it would republish two books by Abulhawa, who, in addition to calling Jews roaches, has also denounced them as "demons," "vampires," and "ghouls" and threatened vengeance against them.

In a press statement trumpeting the deal, the publisher praised Abulhawa's "signature lyrical voice."

Abulhawa, who was born in Kuwait but lives outside Philadelphia, is a "poet, essayist, scientist, mother, and activist," her Simon & Schuster author page reads.

News of the deal was first published by the Washington Free Beacon. After ignoring multiple inquiries from the Free Beacon, Simon & Schuster ultimately issued a statement to one of their writers, Gerald Posner, who was preparing an essay about the imbroglio for the Free Press.

"Simon & Schuster unequivocally opposes antisemitism, racism, and all forms of bigotry," said former CEO Jonathan Karp, who now heads the company's Simon Six imprint.

But Karp made it clear the book was still coming.


Arab American group sues Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Caterpillar over Israel aid
An Arab American advocacy group filed a proposed federal class-action lawsuit on Tuesday against Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, alleging that the defendants facilitated Israeli military operations in Lebanon that damaged property owned by U.S. citizens.

The 79-page complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan by the Dearborn, Mich.-based Arab American Civil Rights League and several plaintiffs who say they own homes, apartments and other property in Lebanon.

The suit alleges that the companies supplied weapons, aircraft, software, parts and heavy equipment to Israel despite knowing, or having reason to know, that those products could be used “in a manner involving unreasonable risk of harm to the persons and property of the plaintiffs.” The complaint also cites the Leahy laws, which restrict U.S. security assistance to foreign military units accused of human-rights violations.

In one example, U.S. citizen Kareem Hassan Jammal claimed that he owned “multiple houses and apartments in Lebanon” that were destroyed during Israeli airstrikes in 2024 and 2026.

While the complaint includes 18 individual plaintiffs who assert ownership interests in property in Lebanon, it contains only a map labeled “Map of 2026 Israeli Aggression in Lebanon” and does not appear to include deeds, title records or other documentation establishing ownership. (JNS sought comment from the ACRL.)

The plaintiffs are represented by attorney Nabih Ayad, the ACRL’s founder and chairman, who served on the Michigan Civil Rights Commission from 2008 to 2011.
Abdul El-Sayed’s obsession with Israel is coming to California — and why we should be worried
Abdul El-Sayed’s recent victory in Michigan should be a wake-up call for California.

The political movement that helped propel El-Sayed to victory is already flourishing here, and its loudest obsession is a tiny country thousands of miles away.

Israel.

At a time when Californians are struggling with housing costs, homelessness, crime, failing schools and the basic affordability of raising a family, why are local politicians spending precious time turning city halls into debating chambers on the Middle East conflict?

Richmond’s City Council passed a resolution accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” calling for an end to US military aid to Israel, and weighing in on Israeli military policy.

Santa Monica’s City Council debated and passed its own Gaza ceasefire resolution.

Whatever your views on the war, ask yourself a simple question: Is this why we elect city council members?

Can Richmond negotiate a Middle East peace agreement? Can Santa Monica determine American foreign policy?

Of course not.

But they can fix potholes. They can address homelessness. They can improve public safety, support small businesses and make their cities work better for the people who actually live there.

That should be their focus.

Yet anti-Israel activism has increasingly become a defining political cause on the far left.

We saw the intensity of that movement on college campuses, including UCLA. We see it in the Democratic Socialists of America, which supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and ending US military assistance to Israel. And now we see politicians associated with this movement gaining power from LA to New York to Michigan.

LA voters should pay particular attention.
Photos Show Grinning Abdul El-Sayed Buddying Up With Nation of Islam Ministers Who Railed Against 'the Jews,' Defended Farrakhan
Abdul El-Sayed has quietly embraced the nakedly antisemitic Nation of Islam during his Senate campaign, meeting with two lieutenants of the group's leader, Louis Farrakhan, who themselves have railed against "the Jews," the Washington Free Beacon found.

Benton Harbor mayor Marcus Muhammad, a "student minister" in the Nation of Islam, posted a photo arm-in-arm with a much shorter El-Sayed backstage at the Democrat's election night watch party on August 4. And Troy Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam's Detroit chapter, posted a photo from a Detroit NAACP event in June 2025, sporting the group's distinctive bowtie and towering over El-Sayed as they locked into a solidarity handshake.

The pint-sized progressive's interactions with the Farrakhan personnel, which have not been previously reported, surface as he faces growing skepticism from moderate Democrats and Jewish groups over his links to openly extremist groups and individuals. El-Sayed has rejected calls to disassociate from Hasan Piker, a left-wing influencer who said "America deserved 9/11," saying he hopes to make the Democratic Party a "big tent" coalition.

His fundamentalist religious beliefs are also in the spotlight after the Free Beacon revealed his personal vow to live by Sharia law until the day he dies.

It is unlikely that moderate Democrats will welcome Farrakhan's friends into El-Sayed's aspirational "big tent" thanks to Farrakhan's long record of antisemitic statements. Farrakhan has demonized Jews for decades and called Adolf Hitler a "great man." The 93-year-old preacher has compared Jews to "termites" and called Judaism a "gutter religion."

The two Muhammads with whom El-Sayed fraternized are well known across Michigan for their Nation affiliations and are loyal disciples of Farrakhan who echo his antisemitic rhetoric.

In a March 13, 2018, video unearthed by the Free Beacon, Troy Muhammad issued overt threats of violence against Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for denouncing Farrakhan over a speech in which the minister had said that "the powerful Jews are my enemy" and that Jews are "Satanic."
N.J. Dem nominee Rebecca Bennett will not endorse Hamawy, campaign says
Rebecca Bennett, the Democratic nominee in New Jersey’s swing 7th Congressional District, distanced herself from a fellow Democratic nominee, Adam Hamawy, who is running in a neighboring district.

Hamawy has attracted national scrutiny over his past association with Omar Abdel-Rahman, the terrorist known as the Blind Sheikh, and his work for a charity in Bosnia that was subsequently shuttered as al-Qaida front group. Republicans have sought to tie Bennett, a military veteran running on a more moderate platform, to Hamawy, who is also a veteran.

“Rebecca Bennett is not going to campaign with or endorse Adam Hamawy this fall, as she is laser focused on flipping New Jersey’s seventh district, lowering costs, and getting corruption out of Washington,” a Bennett campaign spokesperson told Jewish Insider.

Bennett has carved out a relatively moderate and pro-Israel platform. She’s set to face Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-NJ) in the November midterm election, after a commanding win in the Democratic primary earlier this summer.
Progressive who accuses Israel of ‘genocide’ wins Minnesota Dem Senate primary
Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan won the Democratic primary for Senate in Minnesota on Tuesday over Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) in the latest victory for an anti-Israel progressive over a member of the more moderate, pro-Israel wing of the Democratic Party.

With 82% of votes counted at press time, Flanagan had 58.7% of the vote to 39.8% for Craig. The Associated Press called the race for Flanagan about two hours after polls closed.

Flanagan has accused Israel of “genocide” and said that she would have voted to cut off military aid to the Jewish state.

Craig was in the minority of House Democrats who voted to oppose that measure, and her support for Israel and endorsements from the pro-Israel group AIPAC in past elections became a campaign issue in the Senate primary.

Flanagan made a point of saying that she did not accept “AIPAC money” and accused Craig of benefiting from outside spending. AIPAC did not endorse Craig or directly spend money supporting her in the race.
In upset, anti-Israel democratic socialist loses Wisconsin governor primary
Milwaukee County executive David Crowley won an upset victory over state Assembly member Francesca Hong in the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary after pre-election polling suggested that Hong, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, held a double-digit lead.

Hong, 37, had accused Israel of “genocide” and appeared on podcasts with anti-Israel left-wing influencers, including Hasan Piker.

As a state lawmaker, she introduced legislation to repeal Wisconsin’s law opposing the movement to boycott Israel and opposed the state’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred.

With an estimated 98% of votes counted, Crowley had 313,321 votes (39.8%) to Hong’s 310,110 votes (39.4%), according to the Associated Press, which called the race early in the morning on Wednesday.

In the closing days of the campaign, Hong disavowed some of her previously held far-left positions, including police abolition and calling Thanksgiving a “colonizer holiday,” and did not make her views on Israel a focus of the campaign.

She nonetheless held to a “tax the rich” platform with calls for abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and a one-year ban on data-center construction.


66% of Jewish New Yorkers oppose Mamdani, 75% against Democratic Socialists of America, new poll suggests
Jewish New Yorkers disapprove of Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, 66% to 26%, and 75% of them don’t agree with the Democratic Socialists of America, compared to 17% who approve of it, according to a new Siena University Poll of 811 likely gubernatorial voters in New York.

The poll, which was conducted between Aug. 3 and 6, found that 43% of likely N.Y. gubernatorial voters, including 67% of Democrats, think that the state is on the right track, compared to 47%, including 86% of Republicans, who think it’s going in the wrong direction. More than half (55%) of independents think the state is on the wrong track.

More than half of Jewish voters (51%) said the state is headed in the wrong direction, with 39% saying it is on the right track.

Jews made up 8% of those polled, or 64 or 65 respondents.

While 53% of Jewish New Yorkers said that the country’s best years are ahead of it, and 39% said behind it, they felt differently about New York. Just 42% of Jewish New Yorkers said it’s best years were ahead, and 36% said behind it.

In the race for the governor’s mansion, Jews preferred Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, to Bruce Blakeman, the Republican, by 49% to 42%. Jews preferred state attorney general Letitia James, a Democrat, to Republican Saritha Komatireddy 61% to 28%, per the poll.

But Jewish New Yorkers thought that Blakeman was more likely to keep New Yorkers safe than Hochul would by a margin of 48% to 44%.


‘Hitler didn't finish the job’: Man threatens to shoot Australian Jews in France, AJA tells 'Post'
The video footage began with filming the man inside the store aisles. In the clip, the man smiled and laughed while walking away from the camera, while the person filming repeatedly asked him to repeat his remarks, saying, "Go on, tell us again. You're sorry Hitler didn't finish the job. Please tell us again, Paddy."

As the man turned back to face the camera, his expression hardened. He stopped walking and threatened the tourists, stating, "You get the f*** away from me before I put a f***ing bullet in your head, okay?"

AJA President to 'Post': Jewish tourists must be cautious in Europe
AJA President Robert Gregory told the Post that the couple had since been in contact with a French Jewish security group.

"Australia is facing an unprecedented wave of antisemitism, but this incident is a reminder that Jews can be targeted anywhere," he said. "Jewish travelers in Europe should exercise caution and remain vigilant. This is a wonderful couple and proud Jews who did nothing to deserve this. Our thoughts are with them.

"Every threat of antisemitic violence must be taken seriously," he added. "We expect the authorities to investigate this matter urgently and take decisive action against those responsible."


5 Palestinian students and faculty sue Columbia University, claiming discrimination
Five Palestinian students and faculty on Monday sued Columbia University in New York City for alleged discrimination based on their Palestinian identity.

The lawsuit, filed in a New York State court, claimed the university had failed to protect Palestinians on campus and “actively encouraged” harassment against them.

The plaintiffs said the campus atmosphere had harmed their academic work, life on campus, and physical and mental health.

The claims are part of the ongoing fallout from the anti-Israel protest movement that rocked the campus after the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack and start of the war in Gaza.

Columbia has been hit with a series of lawsuits related to the protests from both pro- and anti-Israel students. The school has also come under sustained criticism from Jewish and pro-Israel leaders for not doing enough to curb pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit claimed that Palestinian students had been “physically accosted,” targeted with ethnic slurs on campus and subject to discriminatory treatment from the university.

The university told The Times of Israel that it cannot comment on pending litigation.

In one of the incidents, the lawsuit says, protesters were attacked with a “foul-smelling chemical substance” causing “severe physical injuries.”

That claim is a repeat of allegations that have been rehashed at length. Protesters at the time had claimed the incident was a “chemical attack” and sought treatment at a hospital, but an investigation later found that the substance was a novelty, non-toxic gag “fart spray” bought on Amazon.

The lawsuit additionally said the plaintiffs had been doxxed, or publicly identified, by off-campus groups, causing them distress, and that Columbia “failed to meaningfully respond.”

The plaintiffs argued that Columbia’s actions to rein in protests were motivated by discrimination against Palestinians.


Guardian suggests 1929 Hebron massacre was the fault of ‘Jewish extremists’
That evening, armed Arabs broke into the Yeshiva and murdered the lone student they found. The following day, an Arab mob wielding knives, axes, and iron bars destroyed the Yeshiva and murdered the rest of the students there. A delegation of Jewish residents on their way to the police station was lynched by an Arab mob. The mob then proceeded to Hebron, where Jews who had lived peacefully with their Arab neighbors for years.

The violence escalated, and mobs went door to door screaming, “Kill the Jews,” breaking into Jewish houses and torturing, castrating, raping and murdering the inhabitants – a deadly orgy of libel-fueled Palestinian violence foreshadowing the antisemitic barbarism we’d see – albeit on a much larger scale – on Oct. 7, 2023.

Much like the Hebron rioters of 1929 praised Allah as they slaughtered men, women, and children, wrote Yardena Schwartz, author of “Ghosts of a Holy War”, so too did Hamas fighters, in footage they uploaded to social media.

In total, sixty-seven Jews in Hebron were killed and 60 were wounded over a two-hour period, while dozens more Jews were murdered in Jerusalem and in other cities. The Jewish community in Hebron – where Jews had lived since biblical times – was destroyed.

The Guardian
An Aug. 4 report at the outlet by Julian Borger (“Jerusalem’s most important Muslim religious site facing ‘imminent’ threat of Israeli takeover, says Jordan”) doesn’t merely legitimise the latest propaganda by Amman about the mosque being in danger. It also uses the incendiary language of extremists in the journalist’s own voice:
The…Jordanian warning – follow an escalating pattern of government-backed incursions by Jewish religious extremists on the compound around al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock, in violation of a status quo treaty overseen by Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy, by which only Muslims can pray at the site.

On 23 July, more than 2,000 Israelis from the religious right – mostly settlers led by the national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir – stormed the area, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

Though the article later acknowledges that the Temple Mount is Judaism’s holiest site, which an editor’s note suggests came as the result of a complaint, it’s remarkable – even by Guardian standards – that they used the term “stormed” and “incursion” to describe peaceful Jewish visits to the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Such terms are typically used by PA-controlled and terrorist-friendly ‘news‘ sites to convey the dangerous lie that Jews are interlopers at the Temple Mount and that the mosque is in danger.

The article then reaches what we can confidently describe as a new low for the outlet in its coverage of Jerusalem:
Infringement by Jewish extremists triggered riots in the British Mandate period between the world wars…

It seems almost certain that the journalist is referring to the 1929 Hebron riots, as, though there were other periods of violence against Jews during the period between the wars, that was the only major incident involving the alleged “infringement” by Jews on the Temple Mount.

While nothing much shocks us anymore about the Guardian’s institutional hostility to Israel and Jews, it’s important to stress that, until now, we’ve never previously encountered an inversion of the 1929 Palestinian pogrom that frames Jewish victims as the culprits at any other British outlet. They effectively endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory that resulted in the slaughter of Jewish civilians in Hebron – a libel that continues to fuel jihadist violence against Jews to this day.

There is literally no moral line within their pathological antizionist campaign that the Guardian won’t cross.
Majority of antisemitic social-media posts reported by Jewish communities remain online, study finds
More than 80% of antisemitic social-media posts reported by Jewish community members across Europe remained online, according to a World Jewish Congress study that found reporting content to platforms had little effect on whether it was removed.

Researchers examined 754 posts reported between February 2025 and April 2026 and found that 613 (81.2%) were still accessible when researchers checked them in May.

The study was conducted by the WJC’s Technology and Human Rights Institute, or TecHRI, which works with Jewish communities to identify and report online antisemitism. The institute launched its Hate Online: Preparedness and Empowerment reporting tool in 2025.

“Jewish individuals and institutions are the target of hate-fueled violence at a higher rate than any other religious or ethnic group. These acts are then glorified and promoted across social media platforms,” said Yfat Barak-Cheney, executive director of TecHRI.

“It is up to companies to enforce their policies and remove content when it violates existing standards designed to protect vulnerable communities,” she added.

The study found that reporting content had little effect on removal rates. Platforms removed 19.5% of formally flagged posts, compared with 18.2% of posts that were not reported, according to the study.

TikTok was the exception, removing 64% of the content reviewed, while every other major platform removed less than 15%, per the report. Facebook had the highest reporting rate, with 76% of posts flagged, but one of the lowest removal rates, at 13.9%.

Additionally, Israel-related antisemitism had the lowest removal rate, at 5.2%. The study also found that none of the 28 posts examined that compared Israeli policies with those of Nazi Germany were removed.

The study also examined 232 posts containing direct calls to harm Jews. Of those, 151 remained online. The WJC said the posts included ISIS publications calling for attacks on synagogues and Jewish neighborhoods in the United States and Europe, as well as unambiguous calls to murder Jewish people.


Algerian arrested in connection with assault on Jew in Rome
Italian police have arrested a 31-year-old Algerian man following two assaults by several men on a 22-year-old French tourist in central Rome over the weekend, according to the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI).

Moked, UCEI’s news portal, on Tuesday reported that the suspect was a homeless person with a criminal record. He allegedly belonged to a group that chanted “Free Palestine” during the attacks on the tourist, who was wearing a kippah.

Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani condemned the incident in a statement. “We cannot accept that antisemitism and hatred against Jews find space in our cities and in our society,” he wrote.

The victim was first assaulted with pepper spray, and was and then kicked and punched by several men, the report said. The incidents occurred between Piazza Cairoli and Largo di Torre Argentina.

UCEI President Livia Ottolenghi expressed “solidarity” with the victim, describing the attack as “extremely serious.”

The incident provides further evidence that antisemitism “is now increasingly widespread” and “is manifesting itself through attacks and violence against individuals,” she said.

Israel’s ambassador to Italy, Jonathan Peled, on X called the incident “yet another demonstration of how anti-Zionism and antisemitism are one and the same.”
South Carolina man charged over violent, antisemitic social media posts
Zayne Daniel Smith, 22, of South Carolina, has been arrested and charged with “breach of peace of a high and aggravated nature” after allegedly posting antisemitic and other inflammatory content on social media, according to authorities.

According to a South Carolina Law Enforcement Division affidavit, Smith was arrested on Aug. 7 after the FBI requested an investigation. The charge alleges that Smith “maliciously disturbed public order by inciting or intending to incite further violence.”

He was booked into the Darlington County Detention Center, according to authorities. The case will be prosecuted by the 4th Circuit Solicitor’s Office.

Prosecutors allege that Smith posted a photograph of a rifle bearing a white cross on May 26 with the message, “Just needs some white text on it and then we’re rollin.”

On July 13, he allegedly posted a photograph of several high-caliber rifle magazines arranged in the shape of Nazi symbolism, asking, “What should I write on them?”

In another post featuring a rifle and a white cross, Smith allegedly wrote, “I have my own plans and things” and “Heroes make change alone.”


Vest that US-Israeli startup helped make can cut astronauts’ exposure in solar storms, study suggests
A new study suggests a protective vest tested on a manikin during NASA’s first Artemis moonshot could drastically cut the radiation exposure of lunar astronauts during severe solar storms.

Scientists reported Wednesday on the radiation-shielding vest worn around the moon by a female test dummy in 2022. No one was aboard that Artemis I debut flight, which paved the way for humanity’s long-awaited return to the moon in April by a flyby crew of four.

Radiation remains one of the biggest threats to astronauts as NASA works toward a moon base. Shielding garments could keep lunar crews safe when solar storms strike and even allow them to venture beyond their shelters if necessary, the US, German and Israeli team reported in the journal Science Advances.

A version of the vest was previously tested on the International Space Station. It didn’t travel with the Artemis II astronauts since it was a short 10-day mission with limited room, but may wind up a carry-on for future moon crews.

Meant to be worn only during high-radiation and potentially cancer-causing solar events, the vest covers the most vulnerable human organs and tissue: lungs, stomach, bone marrow, breasts and ovaries. Women are believed to be especially susceptible to radiation-induced cancer.

Artemis I carried two female manikins that spent nearly a month flying to the moon and back. Dubbed Zohar and Helga, the manikins — each a life-size 3 feet from head to lower torso — were strapped into the passenger seats of NASA’s Orion capsule.
After 78 years, remains of Jewish man killed escaping British camp in Cyprus found
The remains of a Jewish man who was killed while trying to escape a British internment camp in Cyprus in 1948, and who had been considered missing since, have been located at a graveyard in Haifa, the military said Wednesday.

Shlomo Haimson, born in Romania in 1930, tried to immigrate to Israel after World War II with his mother, Ita, and his girlfriend, Perla, aboard the illegal immigration ship SS Pan York (Kibbutz Galuyot).

The ship was intercepted by the UK’s Royal Navy, and its passengers were deported by British authorities to internment camps in Cyprus.

At the detention camp, Haimson joined the “Defenders’ Ranks,” which operated in the camps under the auspices of the Haganah paramilitary, and was then trained to become an IDF fighter after immigrating to Israel.

Upon the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, Haimson’s mother and girlfriend were released and immigrated to Israel as part of a group designated to establish Kibbutz Magen. In September 1948, Haimson learned that his daughter, Miriam, had been born, and decided to escape from the camp and immigrate to Israel.

On the night of September 29–30, 1948, Haimson and eight of his friends broke through the camp fences and attempted to escape, but were spotted by the camp guards, who opened fire at them. Haimson was killed, and his friends were captured and returned to the camp.

The following day, Haimson was buried by British authorities in a Jewish cemetery in the Cypriot town of Marathounta, but the gravestone placed bore no inscription.

In November 1970, the bodies of 163 individuals, 120 of whom were unidentified, were exhumed from the Marathounta cemetery and brought to Israel for burial at a special section at the Kfar Samir Cemetery in Haifa.

The military said Wednesday that an investigation it launched in 2023 had led to the conclusion that Haimson’s remains were brought to Israel in 1970 and were buried in grave number 11, row 2, in the Cyprus Detainees section of the cemetery in Haifa.
Actress Swell Ariel Or takes advocacy for Israeli women further in new film ‘Tankistas’
Israeli actress Swell Ariel Or has long cared about championing Israeli women and Jews, but her new role playing an Israel Defense Forces unit captain during the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attacks has her taking her advocacy to the next level.

Since the Tel Aviv-born star of Netflix’s Israeli television series "The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem" hit Hollywood’s radar in 2021, she’s been on a mission — and it doesn’t involve chasing award nominations or lucrative brand endorsements like many rising young actresses in Tinseltown.

Instead, Or told Fox News Digital, her mission focuses on authentic storytelling and meaningful narratives that accurately represent her people.

"I think that, of course, the Oscars matter and Hollywood, I mean, like, it's like the Olympics for films and TV, right? But I've seen what it does to the industry to be driven by getting an award or getting accepted to an elite circle of intellectuals and art people," she said. "I just feel as a storyteller that it hurts — that's not what we’re telling stories for."

The 27-year-old actress recently went viral for echoing that sentiment on Instagram for ARISE for Israel, an alliance whose mission is to "reinforce Israel’s security and economy," while promoting her new film, "Tankistas." The plural form of "tankista," the title means "tank crew members" or "tankers" in several languages.

"I don’t care about the Oscars. I don’t care about Hollywood. I don’t care about doing the biggest, greatest career… I care about honest representation of who we are," Or said about her upcoming film, which wrapped production earlier this year and is being edited in both English and Hebrew versions and is set for release next year.

The war drama, directed by Ayelet Menahemi ("Seven Blessings") and inspired by true events, follows the IDF’s first all-female tank unit and its 17-hour defense during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. As the unit’s captain, Or’s character leads three armored vehicles and engages Hamas militants in battle.

Or served in the IDF in real life before moving to Hollywood to pursue an acting and modeling career. She, along with fellow cast members, spent a good deal of time with the real-life women of the combat unit on which the film is based.

She also spoke about why the movie stands out among other combat films and female-focused superhero movies.





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