Wednesday, August 19, 2026

08/18 Links Pt2: What Happens When Jews Don’t Fight; Judge attacks IHRA antisemitism definition as ‘detached from reality’; Israeli flag ‘symbolizes Jewish race,’ judge rules in assault case

From Ian:

What Happens When Jews Don’t Fight
On Friday night, a maniac named Larry Montes stormed into Manhattan's Central Synagogue, shouted obscenities, spat, punched a congregant in the face, and smashed a bunch of candles before being escorted out by security. Watch the footage from the synagogue's livestream cameras, and you'll see Montes as he runs up and down the aisle uninterrupted. You'll also see a host of congregants, men and women alike, recoiling in horror, receding deeper into the pews for safety and looking desperately for the guards to intervene and save them.

Jewish pride isn't about being safe. It's about being free. This means refusing to turn our synagogues into nightmarishly fortified bunkers, which teaches our children that Judaism is interchangeable with anxiety and fear and which signals to our neighbors that hunting Jews is simply the norm in America these days.

It means bringing in a few Krav Maga dudes to teach congregants of all ages what to do next time some pogromist rolls in and starts acting up. It means conditioning congregation membership on the willingness to get trained and volunteer to become part of an organic security detail that doesn't rely on outsourcing our safety to others.

The FBI's recently released report on hate crimes in the U.S. shows that Jews, 2.4% of the population, are the target of 64% of all religion-based hate crimes. A Jew is currently 190% more likely than a Muslim to be the victim of a hate-based attack.

Somewhere, the next attacker of Jews is watching the footage, taking great pleasure in seeing the terrified looks on the faces of helpless Jews, and taking comfort in knowing that the worst that can happen to anyone storming a synagogue is being manhandled by some paid guard reluctant to inflict too much harm. The part we can control is what happens when the next attack on a synagogue occurs.
Once Rejecting Israeli Citizenship, the Golan Druze Are Now Getting Ready to Vote
Walid, 35, a resident of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, said, "For 60 years, people here were afraid to speak out against the Syrian regime, fearing harm to their relatives across the border," before mentioning the massacre of Druze in southern Syria's Sweida province by government and Bedouin forces a year ago.

"I feel we're nearing the completion of the Israelization of Druze society in the Golan - toward a new era."

In 1981, when Israel annexed the Golan, most Druze there refused to accept Israeli citizenship, declaring loyalty to Syria.

Three decades later, the Syrian civil war broke out and the number of Druze who requested Israeli citizenship steadily increased from single digits to hundreds annually. Still, by 2023, only a fifth of the Golan Druze were Israeli citizens.

But in 2024, 572 residents from the four Druze towns requested Israeli citizenship, a number that ballooned to 3,750 in 2025. In the first half of 2026, 1,444 Druze from the Golan requested citizenship.

Now 44% are citizens. The main reason was the massacre in Sweida and the Israeli airstrikes in the province and Damascus that followed.

"I think the Druze in the Golan had an epiphany, mainly because Israel was the only one that stood by the Druze in Syria," says Salim Brik, a political scientist at the Open University of Israel. The sharp increase in Golan-Druze citizenship is probably also linked to the disaster of July 2024, when 12 children in Majdal Shams were killed by a Hizbullah rocket, he says.
Cambridge University-linked project erases Israel
An academic project hosted by Cambridge University promotes an “Islamic curriculum” which tells 12-year-olds that Hamas is an “excuse that Israel uses to justify its attacks on the Gaza Strip,” calls the civilian hostages taken by the terror group on October 7 “prisoners of war” and publishes in pupils’ course material a map of the region from which Israel has been erased.

The project also publishes a guide aimed at parents and children, written after the attacks, which asks: “What is the reward of a shaheed [a martyr]? How does this make you feel when you think of all the children of Gaza who are now shuhada [martyrs]?” and states, quoting the Quran: “Never say that those martyred in the cause of Allah are dead – in fact, they are alive but you do not perceive it.”

The project which promotes the claims, the Islamic Educator Learning Community (IELC), is led by Cambridge’s assistant research professor of education, Farah Ahmed, a member of the same faculty which employed Jason Arday and a former activist in the now-banned terror group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

This article marks the third in our continuing series about the deep problems in the subject of Education at Cambridge. It follows our disclosure of Ahmed’s long record of bigoted, extremist and separatist views on Tuesday and our revelation on Saturday that Ahmed’s unit has also promoted support for creationism and attacks on evolution.

Ahmed’s IELC is “hosted by” and “partners with” a university body called the Cambridge Teacher Research Exchange, Camtree. Camtree is a project of Hughes Hall, the Cambridge University college where Ahmed is a governing fellow. Ahmed is also an “affiliate” of Camtree.

IELC’s website promotes something called the “Islamic Curriculum Initiative,” describing it as a response of Muslim educators to the 7 October attacks. As IELC puts it: “We know that silence, neutrality, and business-as-usual in education are no longer options. The events following October 7 made that painfully clear. What we see today is not new: it is the continuation of a colonial legacy, now repackaged in modern forms, and it demands a clear, principled response from educators.”

For its own part, the Islamic Curriculum Initiative (ICI) says that “Palestine is not just a cause – it is a litmus test of our moral clarity, a reflection of our connection to faith, justice, and the Ummah…Our curriculum places Palestine where it belongs: at the heart of how students understand justice, faith, and responsibility…making Palestine not a footnote, but a formative part of identity.”


Judge attacks IHRA antisemitism definition as ‘detached from reality’
An NSW Supreme Court judge has launched a stinging attack on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism adopted by the Australian Government.

He described it as “verbose and imprecise” and accused its promoters of seeking to attach the antisemitism label to protest against Israel.

Justice Desmond Fagan said the IHRA formulation was “detached from the reality of the common usage and understanding of antisemitism in this country”.

“The … core text is so verbose and imprecise that it could not realistically be attributed to the ordinary, reasonably informed member of the Australian public,” he said.

His comments came in a judgement rejecting an NSW Government application for an extended terrorism supervision order against Mohommed Farhat, 22, who is serving a 20-month sentence over a graffiti and arson spree through Sydney’s eastern suburbs in November 2024.

Farhat, who is due for release in October, caused more than $100,000 damage during the 41-minute spree, in which 10 cars and several properties were spray-painted with slogans including “F*** Israel” and “PKK coming”, a reference to the proscribed Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

Prosecutors argued his alleged antisemitic motivation indicated a risk that he would commit a serious terrorism offence after his release.

Justice Fagan rejected that argument and found Farhat had been recruited and paid to carry out the offences rather than acting out of antisemitic or extremist beliefs.

“I accept, unreservedly, the defendant’s case that he was recruited to commit the index offences,” he said.

Farhat’s barrister Peter Lange SC had also argued that his client had low intellectual functioning and was easily influenced.

Justice Fagan criticised both prosecutors and the Local Court’s earlier treatment of the offending, finding political hostility towards Israel had been improperly conflated with hostility towards Jews.

He rejected the argument that “F*** Israel” was self-evidently antisemitic, describing it as a “crude political expression of contempt” towards Israel.

His broader criticism centred on the IHRA working definition, which Segal has strongly supported in her national plan to combat antisemitism.

Segal’s plan says broad adoption of IHRA is important in distinguishing legitimate criticism of Israel from hatred, particularly where antizionism masks antisemitism.

Justice Fagan said the definition’s Israel-related examples went too far.

“It’s tendency … [is] a parasitic rejection of protest against Israel,” he said.

He also rejected an automatic link between antizionism and antisemitism, saying Zionism was a political ideology open to criticism, including over Palestinian rights.

Justice Fagan cited polling conducted in June showing 79 per cent of Australians viewed Israel unfavourably over its conduct in Gaza.

“It would be preposterous to suggest that 79 per cent of Australians are antisemitic because they disapprove of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians,” he said.

The judge stressed that government support for the IHRA definition did not determine the legal meaning of antisemitism where parliament had not expressly adopted that definition in the legislation before the court.

Contrary to the judge’s comments, the IHRA definition itself states that ‘criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic’, while also stating antisemitism can include targeting Israel when it is treated as a Jewish collective.


Israeli flag ‘symbolizes Jewish race,’ judge rules in assault case
A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that an attack on a Jewish woman wearing an Israeli flag may constitute racial discrimination, allowing most of her lawsuit to proceed toward trial.

Kimmara Sumrall accused Janine Ali, 74, of approaching her from behind during a demonstration at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., in November 2024 and pulling the Israeli flag tied around her neck, briefly choking her.

Mark Goldfeder, director of National Jewish Advocacy Center, which is representing Sumrall, told JNS that “today, the court denied the motion to dismiss, which means the case is going forward.”

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden rejected Ali’s argument that the flag did not represent Jewish identity. “Sumrall supports Israel as an expression of her Jewish identity,” he wrote in the ruling.

“The Star of David, emblazoned upon the Israeli flag, symbolizes the Jewish race,” he wrote. “Battery, particularly involving a racial symbol, is strong evidence of racial discrimination.”

McFadden added that “it is quite a stretch to say that yanking on a flag tied around someone’s neck is an objection to state policies; battery is not a legitimate form of protest.”

Goldfeder called the ruling a “massive win.”

“The ‘it’s just anti-Zionism not antisemitism’ excuse has now been raised, briefed and rejected,” Goldfeder said. “On the record. Every defendant who reaches for that excuse will now find this opinion waiting.”

According to the filing, Sumrall had previously witnessed Ali, at other demonstrations, calling Jews “baby killer” and accusing Jews of “committing genocide” and being “disgusting ex-IDF soldiers.”


HonestReporting: Who Pays to Change the Subject? Cliff May on the Money Behind the Oldest Lie
A sixth-grade teacher from an American public school gets flown to Doha. First class, five-star hotel. Nobody asks her for anything, they just send her home with some curriculum, some textbooks, and a few maps.

Cliff May founded the Foundation for Defense of Democracies one week before 9/11 — after Jeane Kirkpatrick and Jack Kemp walked into his office and warned that America was taking a holiday from history.

He'd spent a decade at the New York Times before that, so he knows how the story gets made. In this conversation he traces one lie from Soviet disinformation desks to the claim that Israel pushed America into Iraq, to the claim that Israel is dragging America into Iran, to whatever version of it is in your feed tonight. The facts change every time. The villain never does.

His argument is that this isn't a rumor problem. It's a purchase. An influence operation doesn't need you to say nice things about Qatar — it only needs you talking about somebody else.

And it lands because of a habit older than the money: the West keeps assuming its enemies will eventually come around. Iran in 1979 and China after the WTO already ran that experiment and already returned the result.

In this episode:
• What hundreds of billions of dollars actually buys in Washington, and why "don't talk about us, talk about the Jews" is the cheapest product on the menu
• 1979: the Iranian communists who joined the revolution and were executed by it within months
• Why letting China into the WTO was, in his words, a noble experiment that already returned its result
• Israel is winning the war on the ground but losing the cognitive war on the screen

00:00 Cold Open & Introducing Cliff May
02:44 He Built FDD a Week Before the Towers Fell
08:57 The Slander Isn't New. The Speed Is.
11:18 Iraq, Then Iran — the Same Lie in New Clothes
13:51 Mearsheimer Went Looking for a Lobby and Walked Past the Biggest One
17:39 What Hundreds of Billions Actually Buys
20:43 The Sixth-Grade Teacher Who Flew First Class to Doha
27:13 Carlos the Jackal Wrote the Playbook
28:56 1979: The Communists Joined the Revolution. It Executed Them.
35:21 "It's a Failure of Imagination"
37:07 We Let China Into the WTO and Waited for Moderation
41:56 A Cognitive War That Isn't a Fair Fight
46:40 Know Thine Enemy
54:57 You Can't Reason Someone Out of What They Weren't Reasoned Into




‘Dog Rape’ New York Times Columnist Delivers Another Dud as Harvard Prepares to Honor Him
Nicholas Kristof, the Israeli-dog-rape fantasizing New York Times columnist whose father fought on the Nazi side in World War II and wrote a letter to the Times defending a Vichy war criminal, is back to his old tricks, with a new column that distorts reality about Judea and Samaria while also conceding that even getting rid of Prime Minister Netyanyahu won’t satisfy Kristof or other bitter critics of Israel.

The column comes as the dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, Jeremy Weinstein, is preparing to host Kristof on September 17 for what the Kennedy School calendar indicates is a reception and the Malcolm H. Weiner Lecture in International Political Economy. Kristof’s wife, Sheryl WuDunn, is vice chair of the executive committee of the Harvard Board of Overseers, one of the university’s two governing boards, and a 2018 Harvard Business School case study focused on the couple and "the power of writing to launch and sustain a movement."

A federal judge, Richard Stearns, who was Bill Clinton’s fall 1969 Oxford roommate and anti-war activism pal and whose anti-Israel activity was an issue in the 1972 presidential campaign, recently dismissed a federal antisemitism case against Harvard on the grounds that the outbreak of Jew-hate had been "too isolated and episodic" to violate the federal civil rights law.

The New York Times is not subject to the federal standards for antidiscrimination that universities are, notwithstanding that it runs a "school" at which boycott-Israel activist Zaina Arafat is a featured faculty member. Prime Minister Netanyahu, however, announced in May that he "instructed" his "legal advisers to consider the harshest legal action against The New York Times and Nicholas Kristof." And Israel’s consul general in New York, Ofir Akunis, earlier this month said he "ordered the Israeli Consulate in New York to cancel its subscription to The New York Times, a newspaper that consistently demonizes and delegitimizes the Jewish State and publishes false blood libels against the State of Israel." Akunis told the Washington Free Beacon that the trigger was a Times news article that, like the Kristof column, featured sources dedicated to Israel’s destruction making coordinated accusations of abuse, including one of rape, after being detained by Israel.

Whether Kristof’s column is legally actionable is a question for lawyers. What is certain is that it misleads readers about what the column calls "settler violence" in the West Bank, an area that includes Israeli residents and Arabs. The area was historically part of Israel and has recently been controlled by the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, the Kingdom of Jordan, and, since 1967, the modern state of Israel.

The column cites U.N. statistics that, as a recent report by Pesach Benson and Brett Goodman of The Press Service of Israel pointed out, lump self-defense killings of terrorists by Israelis in with "settler violence." As Benson and Goodman put it, "The database uses a broader definition than the phrase ‘settler violence’ may suggest." For example, "Qalandiya Refugee Camp, May 11: OCHA reported that Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man, held his body, confiscated his car and fired live ammunition and tear gas, injuring three people. It also reported that Israeli forces entered a training center in the refugee camp, photographing and measuring the structure. However, the Israeli Border Police said soldiers saw the man exit a vehicle and fire at them with an M-16 rifle equipped with a telescopic sight; security forces returned fire, killing him."

A June publication by Eugene Kontorovich and Avraham Shalev for the Kohelet Policy Forum found the U.N. group Kristof relied on uses a definition "so broad as to include cases in which Palestinians were injured or killed as a result of an attack they committed against Jews, as well as anti-terror operations by Israeli security forces." The incidents include alleged cases of Israelis "trespassing," "with no casualties or property damage." According to the Kohelet report, "Out of 1,704 incidents recorded in East Jerusalem, 1,361 involve Jews visiting the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, which Palestinians believe they should not be allowed to access. 1,613 incidents in Judea and Samaria involve Israelis hiking or touring land Palestinians claim Jews should be forbidden from." Kristof doesn’t mention that, offering only, lamely, that "the circumstances are often disputed."
Abdul El-Sayed’s mother worked for designated terror group IARA that ‘provided direct financial support’ to Osama bin Laden, Taliban, Hamas
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed last month highlighted how his mother “taught me so much about both how to stand with others, and how to stand alone.”

In a video posted to TikTok, the former Wayne County health official chatted on a porch swing with Jacqueline El-Sayed, a highly accomplished engineer from Gratiot County, about how his stepmother helped shape his views on life as she helped raise the progressive firebrand in Bloomfield Hills, an upscale suburb of Detroit.

Jacqueline El-Sayed married El-Sayed’s father, Mohamed El-Sayed, not long after he immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1980s with Fatten Fathy Elkomy, the U.S. Senate candidate’s birth mother.

“They ended up getting divorced,” El-Sayed said of his birth parents during a 2017 speech before the Islamic Foundation. “And my mother, she remarried a gentleman who was working as a translator in the Middle East and moved back to the Middle East.”

What happened after that is largely unclear, and El-Sayed has made little mention of his birth mother as he campaigns to become the first Muslim senator in U.S. history.

While El-Sayed, whose real name is Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, consistently spotlights his connections to Jacqueline El-Sayed’s family, including ads featuring his white grandparents, he’s produced no videos about what he’s learned from Elkomy, who eventually moved back to the U.S. to work as a nurse practitioner in Columbia, Missouri for decades.

And that’s likely by design.

From 1999 through at least 2004, Elkomy worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency, also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency, which operated over 40 offices throughout the world ostensibly focused on health care, orphans, and disadvantaged people in areas of conflict.

In October 2004, the U.S. Department of Treasury designated the worldwide network, along with five senior officials, as an organization supporting terrorism, including support for Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.
Islamic Group Pulls Pakistani Cleric Known for 'Pedophilic Rhetoric' From Convention Featuring Abdul El-Sayed—But Keeps Imam Who Called Holocaust 'Hoax'
A Pakistani cleric who admitted to forcing his 13-year-old niece into marriage will no longer appear at the Islamic Society of North America's annual convention, where Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is scheduled to speak over Labor Day weekend. But El-Sayed will still share the stage with plenty of controversial speakers, including Islamic scholars who have called the Holocaust a "hoax," accused Israel of bankrolling ISIS, and defended the practice of sex slavery and marital rape.

Tariq Masood was slated to speak on a panel about youth mental health but "is no longer speaking at the convention," ISNA said Monday following a Washington Free Beacon report on the influential cleric, who has defended child marriage and admitted that he forced his young niece to get married, remarks that prompted Canadian activists to urge their government to block Masood's visa to the country in 2024 over his "pedophilic rhetoric." The report stoked outcry against El-Sayed, who has sought to cast Republicans as "pedophile protectors" for allegedly blocking the release of Jeffrey Epstein files.

El-Sayed's campaign distanced the candidate from Masood, saying that "Abdul is not affiliated with and does not endorse any other participant of the conference" and that the candidate is scheduled "to speak on unity and commitment to justice in public service."

"We have no further comment on this matter," ISNA spokeswoman Crystal Habib told the Free Beacon.

While Masood seems to have crossed a rhetorical red line for ISNA and El-Sayed, the convention will still feature a number of speakers with records of extremism. That could further fuel concerns about El-Sayed's connections to Islamic extremists. El-Sayed, who is running against Republican Mike Rogers, has already faced scrutiny over his father-in-law Tayeb Jukaku's position on the founding committee of ISNA, which the federal government identified as a public-facing group for the Muslim Brotherhood and linked to the financing of Hamas, the Free Beacon reported.

Texas-based imam Yasir Qadhi, who will appear on several panels over the weekend, has called the Holocaust a "hoax" and said Adolf Hitler "never intended to mass-destroy the Jews." Abdul Nasir Jangda, another Texas-based cleric who will speak on a panel with Qadhi, has defended the practice of sex slavery and said that husbands have a right under Islamic law to rape their wives, according to reports.

Baqir Berry and Hassan Qazwini, two influential imams in the Dearborn area, will also speak on a panel about closing the "divide" between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Berry, the head of Dearborn's Islamic Institute of Knowledge, prayed in a sermon in June to grant "mighty victory" to the "mujahideen" over the "evil of these Zionists," the Middle East Media Research Institute reported.

Qazwini, the head of the Islamic Institute of America in Dearborn Heights, recently prayed in a sermon to "grant victory to our brothers in Iran" and "inflict defeat upon Your Zionist enemies."


Kassy Akiva: A Radical Columbia Student Threatened The Lives Of Zionists. A Judge Just Tossed His Lawsuit.
A former Columbia University student who went viral in 2024 after saying “Zionists don’t deserve to live” during a livestream of a disciplinary meeting has lost his lawsuit against the university.

Khymani James initially accused Columbia of discriminating against him because of his race and support for Palestinians, violating his rights under New York and New York City human rights laws, and failing to follow its own disciplinary procedures when it suspended him.

James’ suit then argued that Columbia violated his “Tedeschi rights,” which stem from a 1980 New York case requiring private universities to comply with their own disciplinary procedures. He also argued that the university punished him twice for conduct related to his January livestream and allowed outside pressure to influence its disciplinary decisions.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Waterman-Marshall dismissed James’ complaint on July 3, 2026, ruling that he could not pursue his “Tedeschi rights” claim as a standalone lawsuit and that he had failed to adequately plead his discrimination claims.

During the 2024 livestream of a meeting with Columbia’s Center for Student Success and Intervention, which had summoned James to discuss earlier antisemitic comments, he said “there should not be Zionists anywhere” and “the world is better without them,” while comparing killing Zionists to killing Adolf Hitler.

James was initially placed on disciplinary probation after Columbia determined in April 2024 that he violated university policies by livestreaming a January disciplinary meeting without permission and using language that “denigrates or shows hostility or aversion toward group members of a protected class.” The probation period allowed him to continue his academic progress on the condition that further violations could lead to additional disciplinary action.

Columbia then suspended him one day after The Daily Wire reported his comments on April 25 of that year. At the time, James was participating in the university’s ongoing anti-Israel encampment, where he served as a media liaison and “member of the safety team.”

His request to re-enroll for the fall 2025 semester was denied because of what Columbia described as “insufficient” reflection on the conduct that led to his suspension.

In the lawsuit, James claims the university only suspended him to save face amid national backlash.

“The timing and language of the sanction letter makes it clear that Columbia acted in response to external forces and national media attention,” the suit stated. “The university is allowing external forces, applying pressure to it, to dictate outcomes in individual student disciplinary cases.”

When announcing the lawsuit, James accused Columbia of discrimination, as well as “cowering” to “billionaire donors” and “fascist politicians.” In a follow-up tweet, he posted a picture of himself flipping off the camera on a jet ski.

Since leaving Columbia, James has continued making incendiary statements, including posts that appeared to praise the killing of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk in September.

On the day Kirk was assassinated, James tweeted a heart-eye emoji alongside “down with all the fascists” and “More. MORE!!!”


After primary wins, two pro-Israel candidates will battle for Florida's governor's office
Sunshine State voters will need to choose between two pro-Israel candidates for governor in November’s general election to replace Gov. Ron DeSantis, after Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly won their respective primaries on Tuesday night.

The Associated Press called both the Republican and Democratic primary races for governor at 8 p.m., about an hour after polls closed on Tuesday, with around 85% of the votes counted in both races. By that time, Donalds had secured 48.6% of the GOP primary votes and Jolly had amassed 61.5% of Democratic primary votes.

Jolly had been a Republican Representative for Florida in the US House from 2014-2017, representing the South-Central coastal zone, but gradually abandoned the party for the Democrats as he distanced himself from US President Donald Trump. Byron Donalds has served as Florida’s Representative in Washington since 2019.

DeSantis, Florida’s governor since 2019, is term-limited by state law and therefore isn’t able to run for reelection. His replacement will be filling the shoes of a governor known for his unwavering stance on Israel and his intolerance for the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement.

A strong supporter of Israel, DeSantis was the first Florida governor to visit the West Bank, stopping in an Israeli industrial park in the Gush Etzion region there in 2019. Amid pressure from DeSantis that same year, Airbnb reversed a policy that had removed apartment listings in West Bank settlements.
Dem socialist wins Florida Senate primary, but GOP incumbent favorite to keep seat
Democratic socialists netted another primary victory on Tuesday when Florida state representative Angie Nixon defeated former National Security Council aide Alex Vindman to win their party’s nomination for Senate.

Vindman, who played a role in the first impeachment of a U.S. President Donald Trump, outraised Nixon, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, $16.3 million to $975,888 through July 29 and was considered the favorite to walk away with the nomination.

But Nixon, running on a platform of universal health care and a $25 an hour minimum wage, became the latest far-left candidate to win a Democratic primary over a more moderate opponent.

With 99% of votes counted, Nixon had 697,493 (56%) to Vindman’s 548,568 (44%).

Nixon will face Sen. Ashley Moody (R-Fla.), who filled the seat that Marco Rubio vacated when he became U.S. secretary of state. The Cook Political Report calls Moody a strong favorite for re-election.

With 98% of votes counted, Moody had 1,313,379 votes (79.6%).

A month after Oct. 7, Nixon introduced a resolution in the Florida legislature calling for an end to the fighting in Gaza.

Earlier this month, she attended a rally in Florida headlined by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), one of Israel’s sharpest critics on Capitol Hill. And during the campaign, she touted the fact that she did not receive support from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.


Pro-Israel Democrats Wasserman Schultz, Moskowitz win primaries in new Florida districts
Debbie Wasserman Schultz has won the Democratic primary in her new Florida district.

The victory positions Wasserman Schultz to serve a 12th term in Congress. She switched districts after Republicans redrew the state’s congressional map to boost their chances in November.

Wasserman Schultz, a pro-Israel Jew, faced criticism for running in a district that has elected Black Democrats to Congress since 1992.

She defeats several opponents in the primary, including Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who wanted her seat back after resigning earlier this year while facing an ethics investigation.

The Associated Press also declares US Representative Jared Moskowitz, a fellow pro-Israel Jewish Democrat, the winner of his primary race.

Moskowitz, who likewise is running in a new district after Florida’s redistricting this year, fends off challenger Oliver Larkin, who was backed by the far-left Democratic Socialists of America.
Florida Republicans defeat alt-right candidates in gubernatorial, House primaries
Pro-Israel Republicans defeated a pair of alt-right candidates accused of antisemitism in Florida’s primary elections on Tuesday in races for the House and governor.

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) won the Republican gubernatorial primary to succeed Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who is term-limited.

With 87% of votes counted at press time, Donalds had 762,364 (48.3%), trouncing James Fishback, a 31-year-old investor who courted the “groyper” movement associated with the Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, who came in third with 163,261 (10.4%) of the vote. Lt. Gov. Jay Collins came in second with 393,248 votes (24.9%).

The Associated Press called the race for Donalds about an hour after polls closed.

Fishback has said that he does not hold animus against Jews, but ran a campaign defined by his opposition to Israel and frequent race-baiting of Donalds, who is black.

He pledged that as governor he would divest state funds from Israel; called the University of Central Florida’s cafeteria food “goyslop;” signed a “contract with Florida” that he would reject money from the pro-Israel group AIPAC; and frequently referred to Donalds as “By’rone” in an apparent effort to make his name sound more black.

Donalds is staunchly pro-Israel and has previously described the Jewish state as America’s closest ally in the region.

In November, he will face off against David Jolly, a former Republican congressman, who won the Democratic primary.

In Republican House races, Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), who is Jewish, defeated Dan Bilzerian, an influencer with 29 million followers on Instagram, who ran an explicitly antisemitic primary challenge and has previously denied the Holocaust.

With 87% of votes counted at press time, Fine had 42,898 votes (56.8%) to Bilzerian’s 13,816 (18.3%).


UK Green Party members discussed 'killing Zionists' in leaked WhatsApp messages
Leaked internal communications from a private WhatsApp group used by UK Green Party members featured discussions regarding “killing Zionists” and descriptions of British Jews as a “weapon” for Israel, according to a report published by The Times.

The chat group, named Greens Against Imperialism, was established by Sophus Magill, a Green Party parish councilor in Wootton Bridge on the Isle of Wight. During an online exchange in July, Magill wrote that “Zionism has to go, it’s ultimately an apartheidal, ethnosupremacist ideology [sic].”

When another member of the group asked what that meant in practical terms, Magill replied, “That it needs to go. The only solution is one equal state.” Prompted further by a member of the group who asked if that meant wanting Israel “wiped off the map, in essence,” Magill responded, “Yes, I would like that,” and added later in the conversation, “I don’t think it’s violent to want an illegitimate apartheid state gone from all maps, like Rhodesia.”

Magill also stated in the WhatsApp group, “Obviously I believe Israeli citizens who are not war criminals and who agree to peacefully coexist with Palestinians have a right to live in Palestine, as everyone should have the right to live wherever they want in the world so long as they are not a threat to the safety of others.”

The WhatsApp group, which members and activists used to coordinate party campaigning, conference motions, and foreign policy discussions, also contained remarks targeting British Jews.


German state bans anti-Israel ‘Palästina e.V.’ group over antisemitic propaganda, terror support
The Hesse Interior Ministry has banned the anti-Israel organization Palästina e.V. due to its role in spreading Jew-hatred, praising terrorism, and disseminating antisemitic propaganda.

The state announced the ban on Tuesday, after an administrative court found that Palästina e.V.’s purpose and activities go against Germany’s constitutional order.

To implement the ban and find additional evidence, police conducted searches in the early morning, under court orders, at five properties in Hesse and one in Baden-Württemberg.

Thirty-five police officers from the Frankfurt Police Headquarters, the Hesse Police Directorate for Operations, and the Hesse State Criminal Police Office participated in the searches.

“With the ban on the association Palästina e.V., Hesse is sending a clear signal in favor of decisive action by the rule of law and against the rise of antisemitism,” said Interior Minister Roman Poseck.

“Through its antisemitic propaganda, the association crossed the boundaries of permissible political expression. The association’s activities were aimed at spreading antisemitic stereotypes, deepening social tensions, and seriously undermining the principle of international understanding.”
Judge in Harvard Antisemitism Case Was Anti-Israel, Anti-War Activist, McGovern Campaign Aide
The federal judge who has dismissed a series of antisemitism cases—by the Trump administration against Harvard, by Jewish students at MIT, and by a Harvard Business School student, Yoav Segev, who was assaulted by anti-Israel protesters—turns out to have his own history as a student anti-Israel and anti-war activist.

The judge, Richard Gaylore Stearns, also found in a separate case that "Harvard failed its Jewish students." Yet the new information puts these rulings in a fresh light, at least for some who remember the context. "So 54 years later, Richard Stearns finally gets his revenge on the Jews," is the way a longtime New York Post editorial writer, Eric Fettman, put it.

In 1972, "Rick" Stearns was a campaign aide to Senator George McGovern, the Democrat who would go on to lose to Richard Nixon in a 520 to 17 Electoral College landslide. Stearns’s history as an anti-Israel activist erupted into a campaign firestorm. Delegates favoring other candidates at the Democratic convention circulated background information about Stearns. Stearns himself called in the press and attempted to disavow his past positions. Advocates for Nixon used the material in the general election to portray McGovern as anti-Israel.

In June 1967, as vice president of the United States National Student Association, Stearns signed an "Open Letter to President Johnson by Middle East Specialists" that appeared as an ad in newspapers nationwide. It voiced "alarm" about what the ad called the "disaster" of "America’s losing the Arab world." The ad demanded Israel’s "total military withdrawal" from the territories it had won in the Six Day War.

Just as Israel’s enemies do today, the 1967 ad-signers framed the demand as if they really had Israel’s interests at heart. "It is no favor to Israel to allow her in the flush of short-term military victory to deepen the divisions and antagonisms which separate her from those neighbors amidst whom she must dwell," the ad said.

Just as Israel’s enemies do today, the 1967 ad-signers accused pro-Israel advocacy groups of hurting America’s interests. "Pressure groups, wherever they may be and however vocal, cannot be permitted to obscure America’s larger interests and transcending issues of world imperatives," said the ad, from the "Ad Hoc Committee on the Middle East."
‘A disgrace,’ legal expert says of whistleblower claim that Trump admin unserious about Jew-hatred probes
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said on Tuesday that he launched an investigation into whistleblower allegations that Trump administration officials manipulated federal Jew-hatred probes of several universities and withheld federal funding to pressure the schools into costly settlements.

“Antisemitism at American universities and medical schools is real. It needs to be addressed seriously,” the Jewish congressman wrote to Harmeet Dhillon, assistant U.S. attorney general for civil rights.

“But your ‘investigation’ into antisemitism was fake, a pre-baked frame-up operation thoroughly political in nature,” Raskin wrote. “The whole project was designed to harass professors and administrators at major universities, to curtail their freedom of speech and academic freedom and to strip targeted institutions of hundreds of millions of dollars in grants that they had already been awarded on the merits of their applications.”

Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director for the Deborah Project, told JNS that Raskin’s characterization of the probes is a “hoax.”

“It would be accurate to say it’s a hoax for members of Congress to say that it’s a hoax for the Justice Department to make up claims about antisemitism on college campuses,” she said. “That’s the hoax.”

Lowenthal Marcus, who leads a public-interest law firm that defends the civil rights of Jews in educational settings, told JNS that it is a “disgrace” to “weaponize hatred of the administration against addressing antisemitism.”

Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, announced the probe after the House panel published a whistleblower disclosure, which was filed the prior day and which alleges that political appointees overrode career investigators and pursued predetermined outcomes in investigations of Harvard University, Brown University and Columbia University under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The disclosure was submitted on behalf of Haley Van Erem, a former Justice Department civil-rights attorney who was temporarily assigned to the Department of Health and Human Services to work on the investigations.
Bay Area district’s ethnic studies curriculum blames ‘settler colonialism’ for ‘Palestinian dispossession’
The Jefferson Union High School District, whose five public San Francisco Bay Area schools educate about 3,800 students, discusses the “dispossession” of Palestinian lands, identity and culture via “settler colonialism” in its ethnic studies curriculum, according to a report that the nonprofit Defending Education shared exclusively with JNS.

A unit on “social movements and solidarity,” which offers a “space to study social movements that resist oppressive systems from the past and present,” directs students to write an essay comparing and contrasting two social movements. One option is “self-determination of Palestine.”

The United States doesn’t recognize an independent Palestinian state. (JNS sought comment from the public school district.)

According to the Defending Education report, the district’s units referred in 2023 to “Zionist settler colonialism” as the culprit for “Palestinian dispossession” and to the “self-determination of Palestine and anti-Zionism.”

The following year, it removed the references to “Zionist” and “anti-Zionism,” per the nonprofit.

Rhyen Staley, director of research at Defending Education, told JNS that “this curriculum is another reminder that ethnic studies is a far-left political program meant to turn children into activists for left-wing causes.”

“Even more concerning is that highly divisive content is still present in the course, despite serious concerns previously raised by families in the community,” Staley said. “Students and parents deserve better from school district leaders.”

The “systems of oppression” unit also states that “students will be able to compare and contrast at least one indigenous worldview with a colonizing worldview.”

For a resource, the unit lists a lesson plan from the University of California, Berkeley history-social science project that asks students how the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the document in which the British government declared its support for a Jewish homeland, and the Mandate for Palestine created “tension,” per the Defending Education report.

The resource lists as “supporting evidence” that the Jewish National Fund was soliciting donations from Jews to purchase land in what was then known as “Palestine,” which it states “upset Arabs in the region, because they might lose their land.”

“Like much anti-Israel propaganda, the so-called ‘liberated’ ethnic studies curriculum taught at Jefferson Union presents students with a distorted, one-sided account of Israel’s establishment, filtered through the American left’s preferred narratives about race and power,” Jonathan Greenberg, director for combating antisemitism for Defending Education, told JNS.
Cambridge University digs heels in on Israeli investments
Cambridge University will continue its investment portfolio in companies with links to the Israeli defence industry — despite fury from pro-Palestinian campaigners on campus.

Last month, according to the Cambridge Reporter, the university’s journal of business, Mark Lewisohn, chair of the board of trustees which manages Cambridge’s £4 billion endowment fund, said that it would not only continue current investments, but almost certainly would increase them.

Lewisohn, a former senior banker with UBS, is the son of Oscar Lewisohn, whose Jewish family fled to Sweden from Denmark during the Holocaust.

Mark Lewisohn was reported as telling the trustees: “As more investment in defence is mandated by governments around the world, the proportion of global market capitalisation represented by defence is likely to further increase”. Effectively that means that constant conflict around the world only increases the call for superior defence material — and so such investment will continue to be profitable.

The Times, which originally reported the story, made it clear that only about 1.7 per cent of the total fund — £85 million — is invested in defence companies, not all of which are Israel-related. But it is known that Cambridge’s money has gone to Palantir and GE Aerospace, which supply technology equipment, a aircraft engines, to the Israel Defence Forces.

The funds were apparently invested in a tracker fund administered by BlackRock, the asset management giant once chaired by the former Conservative chancellor, George Osborne.

However, angry pro-Palestinian activists on Cambridge’s campus — both faculty and students — have strongly criticised the continuing investments.


Anthropic nears $6 billion deal for Israeli AI startup Decart, creating new billionaires
Dean Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev, the founders of Israeli AI startup Decart are in the final stages of signing a huge deal with Anthropic, the US AI company behind Claude.

The deal is expected to not only bring one of the world's most successful language model developers to Israel but also create at least two new billionaires on a scale not much different from that created by the huge exit of Wiz.

According to industry estimates, Leitersdorf and his team managed to retain control of Decart and a combined shareholding of about 64% of the company's shares, a control that gives them a combined value on paper of about $4 billion.

After Leitersdorf's brother, Orian, joined the company's founding team as its chief scientist last year, each of the three founders is expected to receive an estimated $1 billion to $1.5 billion, slightly less than what Wiz founders Assaf Rapaport, Yinon Kostika, Ami Luttwak and Roy Reznik pocketed, who are believed to have received just under $2 billion each.

However, while Wiz's founders received full compensation for their stake in the company in cash from Google last March, Decart's founders preferred to take a lower offer in terms of overall size, but one that included shares of a company that is on its way to being listed on the NYSE.

The big winners in the deal include founders, tax agency
Leitersdorf and his team received an acquisition offer from Nvidia, which was higher than Anthropic's and was estimated to be $7-8 billion. Anthropic, however, agreed to give an upper limit of $6 billion, but mostly in shares, and according to estimates, the company spent only a few hundred million dollars from its coffers in cash and the rest will be given to Decart shareholders in Anthropic shares.

Decart's shareholders believe they can produce a higher return from shares of a company like Anthropic, which is planning to launch the largest IPO in history, at a company valuation of $2 trillion, with annual revenues expected to reach $100-120 billion by the end of the year, according to Fortune.

As with the Wiz deal, the vast majority of investors in the company are not Israelis, with the exception of the Aleph fund of Michael Eisenberg, an advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which holds a very small stake in the company. The majority of the investor shares are owned by major US funds such as Benchmark, Sequoia, Radical Ventures and Zeev Ventures, a US fund managed by serial investor Oren Zeev. The main investors are expected to share more than $2 billion.





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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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