Thursday, September 24, 2026

09/23 Links Pt2: Anti-Zionist Jews will always ultimately fail the purity tests their allies set them; Martin Kramer: Ivory Towers on Sand at 25; Teacher in Philadelphia admits to fabricating Palestinian identity for years

From Ian:

Anti-Zionist Jews will always ultimately fail the purity tests their allies set them
Security based upon somebody else’s tolerance is not security.

For centuries Jews existed as minorities whose safety depended upon rulers, governments, neighbours and political movements continuing to tolerate them. Sometimes they did, until they inevitably didn’t.

England expelled its Jews, Spain expelled its Jews, across Europe Jews experienced pogroms, restrictions, dispossession and ultimately industrialised extermination. Across the Middle East and North Africa ancient Jewish communities dwindled dramatically in the decades around Israel’s creation amid persecution, violence, expulsions, state pressure, Zionist migration and war.

Jewish history contains an uncomfortable abundance of reminders of what happens when our safety depends entirely upon somebody else’s goodwill. That is a major, undeniable and historically essential reason Zionism exists.

Not because Jews believe ourselves superior to anybody else, but because after millennia of discovering how conditional somebody else’s protection could be, Jews concluded that our survival could not forever depend upon other people granting us permission to remain. And now that conclusion itself is being put on trial.

Ask yourself this crucial question. Why, among the world’s national movements, does Jewish national self-determination generate this particular obsession? Why is the answer to alleged crimes committed by Israel not merely to change its government, borders or policies but, uniquely, to question whether the country should continue to exist at all?

Britain committed atrocities during empire, nobody seriously proposes abolishing Britain. America was built through the dispossession of indigenous peoples and slavery, nobody demands the dissolution of the United States as the prerequisite for opposing racism. States throughout the world have disputed borders, bloody histories and governments that have committed terrible acts. Their citizens are not routinely required to renounce the existence of their countries before being permitted into polite society.

Yet somehow Jewish national self-determination is subjected to a different test.

Any political movement capable of imagining liberation and self-determination for peoples across the world but unable to imagine them for Jews should ask itself why the Jew is once again the exception.

That is why this isn’t really a story about Zack Polanski and it isn’t ultimately a story about the Green Party.

It’s about us.

For three years I have watched Jews desperately negotiate with people who despise Zionism, who are fueled by hate.

I’m Jewish, but…

Three words that have become almost a ritual incantation, three words that so many still think will guarantee them acceptance, save them from the mob. Three words that exemplify “suicidal naivety”.

Because there is always another purity test and eventually you run out of things to surrender. Except one, your Jewishness.

That is the lesson I want my children to understand. They do not need anybody’s permission to be Jewish. They do not need to apologise for Jewish history. They do not need to barter pieces of their identity for acceptance. They do not need to pass somebody else’s test of what constitutes an acceptable Jew and they should never imagine that making themselves smaller will make somebody else’s hatred disappear.

I cannot control the Britain in which my children will grow old, I cannot promise them that antisemitism will disappear, but I can teach them what generations before us learnt at an unbearable cost.

Never build your Jewish future around passing somebody else’s purity test.

The test will change, the line will move and eventually, whatever you say, whatever you condemn and however much of yourself you surrender, there will be one thing you can never wash off.

You are still a Jew.

So be one proudly, be strong, be unapologetic, be loud.

Do not whisper your Jewishness to make other people comfortable. Do not shrink it to fit inside somebody else’s politics. Do not bargain it away in return for an acceptance that history tells us was always conditional.

We are still here, after everything, we are still here and so we shall remain.
How Propaganda Uses Emotion to Teach You What Not to See
There is something profoundly revealing about the way the story of Jadallah Jihad Jadallah has been told.

A Palestinian boy from the al-Far’a refugee camp was shot by Israeli forces on November 16, 2025. Al-Far’a is in the northern West Bank, near Tubas. This was not a story from Gaza or Hamas. The details surrounding Jadallah’s death came instead from the West Bank, from his own community, and from Fatah, the movement led by Mahmoud Abbas.

The death itself is not disputed. He was shot, and forty-five minutes later, he died. What is revealing is everything that followed and has been left out. His case provides a clear example of how narrative framing is created and how effective emotional propaganda works.

Propaganda does not always require fabricating an event. Sometimes the more powerful technique is to take a real event, select the facts that support a particular emotional response, place those facts in a carefully constructed sequence and narrative, and leave other relevant facts out. The audience is then given a story that may contain real images, real people and real events, while being guided toward a particular conclusion that contradict the very evidence right in front of their eyes.

That distinction is particularly important when the subject is the death of a child. The image of a wounded fourteen-year-old boy can produce an immediate and powerful emotional response. Once that emotional frame has been established, everything else becomes irrelevant. Who he was, whether the circumstances surrounding his death are actually as reported, and how ordinary military protocol or acts of self-defense are being reframed as evidence of criminal conduct. Reality and critical thinking disappears when faced with an emotional narrative.

That is why the story of Jadallah deserves to be examined not only for what was reported, what was left out, but for how narrative framing and propaganda is constructed and works.

Across social-media posts surrounding his death, Jadallah was described in the language of martyrdom, heroism and fighting. Posts on associated with the al-Far’a camp also presented him as a “heroic martyr” from the beginning. Other material celebrated him as a child fighter.

Fatah-associated imagery was displayed prominently throughout the camp and surrounding community. There was also an official Fatah vigil following his death, held specifically for people to offer condolences to his family, by invitation only. These were not obscure details buried somewhere beyond the reach of a journalist or an “human rights organization.” They were part of the environment in which Jadallah’s death was being publicly commemorated locally in real time.

But his death wasn’t just glorified by Fatah, the party of Mahmoud Abbas. The public record also includes a TikTok post attributed to Jadallah from before his death that can reasonably be read as anticipating or embracing the possibility of death that day. That is a very important part of the story. Did Jadallah leave his house wanting to become a “martyr” and commit suicide?

But this is where narrative framing becomes visible. Haaretz published a lengthy account under the headline, “Watch: A 14-year-old bled to death for 45 minutes as Israeli soldiers stood nearby.” The BBC followed with, “Israeli soldiers shot a Palestinian boy and stood around as he bled to death, video shows.” Both framed the story around soldiers allegedly failing to provide life-saving treatment.

Both publications also displayed an image of Jadallah that tells another part of the story: a Fatah martyr poster calling him a “Hero Martyr,” presenting a fourteen-year-old boy as a heroic fighter, publicly celebrated by his own father.

Yet the reader encounters the emotional frame first: a wounded child, “bled to death,” “shot,” and soldiers who “stood around.” The poster is visible, but its meaning is not explained. The audience is shown the evidence, but taught how to interpret it.

That is how propaganda can work without fabricating every fact. The information remains in plain sight, yet becomes psychologically irrelevant once the emotional conclusion has already been established.

The question, therefore, is not only what these reports showed their audiences. It is what they taught their audiences not to see.

But the framing does not end with the headline or the photograph. In fact, that is where the more consequential part begins.

First, the security-camera footage shows Jadallah throwing something toward an IDF soldier immediately before he is shot. That is not a minor detail. It provides a clear explanation for why the soldier fired. A rock is not necessarily harmless simply because it is a rock. Being struck by a thrown object can cause serious injury, and even death. The relevant question in a military engagement is not whether the object looks like a conventional weapon, but whether the soldier reasonably perceived an immediate threat.


Martin Kramer: Ivory Towers on Sand at 25
How Middle East Studies Went from Excusing Terror to Embracing It

Ivory Towers in the Sand, 25 years on.

In Ivory Towers in the Sand—written before September 11, 2001, but published shortly thereafter—Martin Kramer exposed the deep corruption of the academic field of Middle Eastern studies, the blind eye it turned to Islamism, and its politicization. Reflecting on the book’s 25th anniversary in conversation with Asaf Romirowsky, Kramer looks at what has changed since. His conclusion: things have only gotten worse, and academics have moved from minimizing or ignoring Islamist violence to endorsing it.


Dov Forman: The genocide slur at my UCL graduation was bad enough – the applause was outright chilling
Midway through my recent University College London (UCL) graduation ceremony, a fellow graduate walked across the stage holding up a sign. It read “UCL funds genocide”. It was met with cheers and sustained applause from what sounded like most of the room. And on the stage, clapping along with everyone else, was the vice-provost.

Of course, it goes without saying that the right to protest is a cornerstone of our democracy. But it has never meant a right to commandeer every room you happen to be standing in. A graduation is not a rally; it is one afternoon, shared between thousands of people, many of whom have saved and sacrificed for years to be there. Many will be the first in their families to have attended and completed university. That afternoon belonged to all of them equally. Yet one student decided it belonged to them and to ruin that event for many students and families such as mine.

We as a society must decide whether a small number of people can simply hijack every shared occasion, every ceremony, lecture after lecture, and get away with it, knowing nobody will stop them. Sadly, at my graduation, the answer was that not only can they get away with it, but they will be applauded, and across my three years at university, I saw that same response far too often.

Then there is the sign itself. What has happened in Gaza is a catastrophe for the civilians caught in it. But it is not a genocide. The historian Sir Simon Schama put it better than I can at the Holocaust Educational Trust dinner: “We, the victims of the greatest genocide the world has ever seen, are being called perpetrators of genocide. This is the new blood libel. This is a profound lie.” He reminded the room what an actual genocide looks like: 18,000 Jews shot in a single morning at Majdanek in November 1943, 32,000 in a day and a half at Babi Yar, one and a half million murdered by shooting between July and November 1942 alone – a rate, he noted drily, of 434,000 Jews a month. The people who wave that word on placards know exactly what they’re doing. They are taking the worst crime ever committed against the Jews and pinning it on the Jews.

The two things I couldn’t stop thinking about were not the protesting student, as I sat in the graduation hall feeling ashamed of my university. They were the vice-provost, who stood on the stage applauding a student holding up a sign accusing Israel of genocide – an accusation that could readily be understood to extend, as such charges often do in activist rhetoric, to the Jewish students sitting in front of him – and the ordinary people in the room from across the country and the world, rising to cheer that twisted accusation.

I kept thinking about my great-grandmother. For most of history, a Jew walking across a graduation stage was not a given. My great-grandmother, Lily Ebert, always wanted to go to university. The antisemitic numerus clausus laws in 1920s Hungary made sure she couldn’t, and then in the 1940s the Nazis arrived and made sure of everything else. In her last years I tried to get her an honorary degree as a birthday present. It, unfortunately, never came off.

So there I was, collecting my history degree from the university founded in 1826 as the first in England to admit Jews, in its bicentenary year, doing without a second thought the thing she was never allowed to do. That should have been the whole story. Instead, that moment on the stage was the sad but perfect ending to sum up my three years at university.

I started at UCL a few weeks before October 7, which gave me a control group of students: I saw who wanted to talk to me before, and who wouldn’t after. Within days, before any Israeli response, students were moving away from me in lectures. Because of my kippah I was a visible Jew. Simultaneously, a UCL student society was celebrating the “resistance” and how “justified” it was. Later, they suggested renaming our student centre after Refaat Alareer, a UCL alumnus who, when reports emerged that Hamas had burned a Jewish baby in an oven, tweeted asking whether it was “with or without baking powder”.

A few weeks after October 7, UCL’s lecturers’ union passed a motion calling for “intifada until victory”. Several professors on the list would go on to mark my essays and exams that year and were the people we as Jewish students were directed to speak to when we felt there was antisemitism from other students in our lectures.

Reports of antisemitism through UCL’s own reporting system rose by more than 800 per cent that year. Sadly, over three years I made only a handful of non-Jewish friends, not for lack of trying: for a great many people on campus, being openly Jewish, let alone openly pro-Israel, was disqualifying.

The old blood libel turned up too. Last November, at an event hosted by UCL’s Students for Justice in Palestine, a researcher who had worked at the university told a room of students that in 1840 the Jews of Damascus murdered a monk and used his blood to make bread. UCL banned her and suspended the society – but only after the video went viral. It should never have been allowed to happen at all. That sat alongside masked protesters blocking the doors of a Jewish history talk, others pelting eggs, and Jewish students who moved out of their halls because they no longer felt safe there.

Every Jewish event I attended had security on the door. At the university that was the first in England to let us in. And then, to put the cherry on the icing on the cake, at the beginning of the summer UCL announced it was scrapping its antisemitism adviser. That adviser, Anthony Orkin, was appointed in 2022 – well before October 7 – as the first dedicated antisemitism programme manager at any British university. He trained more than 2,400 staff and students on antisemitism, and he was the person Jewish students actually went to when something happened. This summer, a fortnight after the Provost had publicly apologised for failing Jewish students, UCL scrapped the role anyway. It calimed though that it was not stepping back from fighting antisemitism but “moving to a more integrated approach that will deliver more support for our staff and students.”


Deport the alleged ISIS propagandist if convicted, says ex-AFP detective
Calls to deport an alleged ISIS propagandist upon conviction have emerged after a 65-year-old Melbourne man was charged with allegedly distributing ISIS propaganda online.

The man allegedly pledged allegiance to ISIS and distributed almost 10,000 files online for the terror group, including instructions on how to plan a terror attack.

Former AFP detective David Craig warned that such material is fuelling Australia's heightened terror threat and called for the man’s deportation back to Somalia if he is convicted and serves a jail term in Australia.

“If convicted, this person represents the absolute rot in our country that we don't need,” Mr Craig told News24 host Peta Credlin.

“This is allegedly a purveyor of hatred, of Islamic hatred being distributed with 10,000 files to people, inspiring hatred, giving police methodologies away on how to avoid detection.

“If this person is convicted, I would hope that they can pack him up and deport him back to Somalia where he can spend the rest of his days once he's finished his jail term here."

The man has been charged with one count of membership of a terrorist organisation and three counts of using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence by transmitting violent extremist material.

He also faces a charge of possessing or controlling violent extremist material.

Mr Craig proceeded to descrie the charges as relating to “peddling hatred”, branding the situation an “imported problem”.

“I mean, if he's a dual citizen, he should be, if he is convicted, if the alleged behaviour is proven in court, he should be stripped of his Australian citizenship and deported at the end of his sentence."


Commentary Podcast: Mergers and Inquisitions
Matt Continetti joins us on this Wednesday to discuss football being back, as well as Rob Bonta's failure to stop the Paramount-WB merger, how it connects to the pro-Palestine movement, and what the future of news media might look like. Plus, the Iranian president speaks at the UNGA despite being at war with the host country, Trump's speech, the Saudi-Houthi war, and Matt recommends Wait Till Next Year by Mike Lupica and William Goldman, and John also recommends William Goldman's The Season.


DSA candidate’s student group fundraises for Pennsylvania ‘Hamas operative’ charged with attacking Jewish property
An activist group tied to Democratic House nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier is planning to fundraise for an alleged Hamas supporter’s defense against federal charges.

Columbia University Students for Justice in Palestine is hosting a local fair in October, with proceeds going to Mohamad Hamad, who is accused of helping attack Jewish sites in Pennsylvania, fraudulently seeking a government security clearance, possessing bombs, and criminal conspiracy. Avila Chevalier, a socialist candidate for New York’s November elections, was involved with the SJP chapter as a Columbia student before and after her 2016 graduation, according to multiple reports. She cofounded an SJP offshoot group called Columbia University Apartheid Divest in 2016 and participated in the unlawful 2024 university encampment protest that involved both groups.

“Visit us on the north end of Morningside Park from 12-4pm to find handmade products, crafts, food, clothes, and much more!” says a Columbia SJP Instagram post about the upcoming event. “All proceeds will be split between the [humanitarian group] Sameer Project and the @freemohamad legal fund supporting Mohamad Hamad! See you all there!”

Avila Chevalier’s campaign did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment. She is one of multiple New York candidates recently backed by Democratic New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America against more moderate Democrats, running in the state’s 13th District. The nominee’s pro-Palestinian activism took off at Columbia after she returned from a 2014 internship in the West Bank that took her to a Hamas-linked school, the Washington Examiner previously reported.

Who Columbia SJP is supporting
In multiple indictments since his 2024 arrest, prosecutors accused Hamad and a codefendant of vandalizing a synagogue and Jewish nonprofit group around Pittsburgh and preparing bombs with a third codefendant. The dual Lebanese-American citizen is also charged with lying to a U.S. military contractor while asking for a top-secret security clearance, with the Department of Justice alleging he called himself loyal to the U.S. despite privately telling comrades he was more loyal to Lebanon and Palestinians.

Hamad called himself a “Hamas operative” and discussed his enjoyment of wearing the terrorist group’s green headband in private messages, the DOJ alleges. Activists such as Avila Chevalier’s old SJP chapter portray Hamad as a political prisoner.

The defendant called the case “unjust” in a statement released on an online fundraiser by a family member. “All of this was done for what? All the warrants for this was signed on the basis of a whole giant scheme that was going on with supposedly real serious charges, which after everything was said and done, was shown not to exist,” he said.


Michigan Jewish leaders urge Kamala Harris to appeal to El-Sayed on antisemitism, Israel
Michigan Jewish leaders on Tuesday urged former Vice President Kamala Harris — who is set to campaign with the party’s Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed, in Michigan this week — to appeal to El-Sayed on issues related to antisemitism and Israel.

Meanwhile, one prominent Jewish Democratic leader and fundraiser in the state said that, without seeing significant changes in rhetoric from El-Sayed, he’s not willing to vote for him, even as the state’s Jewish attorney general, Dana Nessel, said this week that she plans to support El-Sayed.

The group of Jewish leaders, writing to Harris under the banner of the Nonnegotiable Michigan campaign, said that they are longtime supporters of her and the Democratic Party, and called on her to press El-Sayed to accept the five demands on Jewish issues and Israel that the Nonnegotiable campaign has presented.

The leaders highlighted Harris’ own history of fighting antisemitism and standing with the Jewish community, including hosting a Hanukkah celebration at the vice president’s residence and working with her Jewish husband, Doug Emhoff, on the national antisemitism strategy.

“As Vice President, you told us plainly that antisemitism ‘must be condemned unequivocally’ — no caveats, no context, no hesitation,” the letter reads. “When you accepted the Democratic nomination –– with many of us in Chicago cheering you on –– you proudly affirmed your commitment to Israel’s sovereignty and safety; you knew that promise did not contradict Palestinian dignity, security, freedom or self-determination, which you called for in the very same breath.”

The leaders said that Harris’ own stance and her understanding of antisemitism is clear, while El-Sayed “has had every opportunity to meet our request to support our basic needs. So far, he has declined even to respond” while employing antisemitic tropes and rejecting Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

“When you stand beside Dr. El-Sayed on September 22nd, we urge you to call on him to say what he has thus far been unwilling to say: that Jewish safety, including for Zionists, is nonnegotiable,” the leaders said. “That our right to define our own identity is nonnegotiable. That Jewish statehood and self-determination in our ancestral homeland is nonnegotiable. That our full, proud participation in the Democratic Party is nonnegotiable.”
Abdul El-Sayed Called on Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood To 'Purge the Media and Police' Shortly Before Islamic Government Arrested Reporters for 'Insulting Islam'
Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed demanded in 2012 that the repressive Muslim Brotherhood "purge" media and police in Egypt after the radical Islamic group seized control of the country. A brutal religious crackdown on the press was soon to follow.

The demand was made in an Arabic-language statement on Al-Ahram Gate, an Egyptian news portal, and was signed by 46 "leaders of the Egyptian community" in the United States, one of whom was El-Sayed, who was born in Michigan to Egyptian immigrants.

The November 2012 statement came just days after the country's Islamist then-president, Mohamad Morsi, granted himself broad new powers in an effort to quell growing unrest. Morsi had five months earlier become Egypt's first elected president after longtime strongman Hosni Mubarak was toppled in the Arab Spring. But Morsi himself was starting to act like a strongman.

"Statement by Morsi Supporters in America Backs His Decisions and Calls on Him to 'Purge the Media and Police,'" blares the headline published on Nov. 25, 2012.

"We, leaders of the Egyptian community, support the revolutionary decisions taken by the president, and we call on him to purge the media and the police as quickly as possible," the letter reads.

"We affirm, as Egyptian Americans, that we strongly reject those voices that are courting America and Europe to take a position against the Egyptian regime," the letter adds.

"Dr. Abdul Rahman El-Sayed" of New York was the 33rd signature affixed to the letter, the publication of which coincides with the future candidate's time attending medical school at Columbia University.

Sources familiar with Arab-language media confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon that Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic political candidate, is the same "Dr. Abdul Rahman El-Sayed" who signed the letter. El-Sayed's campaign did not respond to requests for comment regarding the letter and the candidate's current position on the Muslim Brotherhood. The original declaration, in Arabic, remains online to this day and has already made the rounds in Arabic-language social media. The existence of the declaration was reported this past April by Laura Loomer.


Netherlands ends Eurovision boycott over Israel, announcing return to 2027 contest
The Netherlands announced on Wednesday that it will take part in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest, reversing its boycott over Israel’s participation after just one year.

Belgium’s Dutch-language VRT also announced Wednesday that it will participate in next year’s competition after previously saying it would consider joining the boycott. The country alternates being represented by its French and Dutch broadcasters, and last year the French RTBF took part in the competition.

The decision by the Netherlands makes it the first country to return to the contest after it took part in a boycott of the 2026 competition along with Spain, Slovenia, Ireland and Iceland in protest of Israel’s inclusion. Ireland announced last week that its boycott would continue next year, but Spain, Slovenia and Iceland all have yet to make a final decision.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Dutch NPO umbrella public broadcaster said it had decided to “carefully” return to the 2027 contest after “extensive discussions” with the European Broadcasting Union, noting that the “sensitivities have not gone away” that led to the initial boycott.

Last month, the AVROTROS Dutch broadcaster — which operates under NPO and traditionally took part in Eurovision — said it would not return next year, but noted that a different broadcaster could instead take its place. NPO said that this year, its NOS broadcaster will be responsible for taking part in Eurovision in place of AVROTROS.

“We understand that taking part in the Eurovision Song Contest gives rise to mixed feelings in the Netherlands,” said Jet de Ranitz, chair of the NPO board in a statement. “We have explicitly asked the EBU to make the unifying character of the contest a central part of the event once again, in recognition of a time of geopolitical unrest, war and polarization.”
What Are the Terror Links Behind the Green Party’s ‘Zionism Is Racism’ Motion?
A campaign to have the Green Party of England and Wales formally declare that “Zionism is Racism” has assembled an endorsement list that includes Hamas’s British legal representatives, a former U.S. professor convicted of conspiring to provide services to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and groups and figures cited by British and American authorities over alleged links to Hamas.

The 47-page campaign booklet lists Sami Al-Arian, Riverway to the Sea, Friends of Al-Aqsa, the Palestinian Forum in Britain, the Global Sumud Flotilla and Palestinian activist Mohammed El-Kurd among its supporters. At the same time, the booklet relies heavily on U.S.-sanctioned Al-Haq, describing it as an “independent Palestinian non-governmental human rights organisation” and repeatedly using its analysis to support the booklet’s characterization of Zionism as “racist” and “settler-colonial.”

The motion came first in the membership’s prioritization ballot and is expected to be debated at the Green Party’s October 2–4 conference in Brighton. Amendments have also been proposed, meaning the version ultimately voted on could differ from the current text.

The motion’s current text, if adopted without amendment, would formally declare the Greens an anti-Zionist party, support a “single Palestinian state” across what it calls “historic Palestine” and call for Palestine Action to be removed from Britain’s list of proscribed organizations.

Booklet Relies on Israeli-Designated, U.S.-Sanctioned Al-Haq
The booklet devotes several pages to Al-Haq’s 2022 report Israeli Apartheid: Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism. It says the report represents the understanding of a “broad coalition” of Palestinian organizations and “cannot be ignored,” then repeatedly invokes Al-Haq’s analysis while advancing its characterization of Zionism as “racial” and “settler-colonial” and of Israel as an “apartheid” state.

Al-Haq has faced actions from both Israel and the United States under different authorities. Israel’s Defense Ministry designated Al-Haq a terrorist organization on October 19, 2021, alleging that it had become an arm of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Al-Haq director Shawan Jabarin also has a documented history involving the PFLP. Palestinian newspaper Al-Quds, citing AFP, reported that Jabarin was sentenced to nine months in prison in 1985 after being convicted of recruiting members for the PFLP. Human Rights Watch separately records that the conviction concerned providing a service to the PFLP by facilitating the travel of two members abroad for training.

Then, in September 2025, the United States separately sanctioned Al-Haq under its International Criminal Court sanctions program. OFAC added Al-Haq to its Specially Designated Nationals list, alongside Al-Mezan and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. The American action was an ICC-related sanctions designation, not a U.S. terrorism designation.

Lead Author Appeared at Event Calling for “Armed Resistance” Against Israel
The motion identifies Lubna Speitan as its lead author and formal proposer. Her previous activism includes appearing at a September 21, 2025 event in Birmingham explicitly titled A United Call for Military Intervention Against Israel.

Protect Palestine’s event announcement called for military intervention against Israel and for dismantling what it termed the entire Zionist “settler-colonial” project across historic Palestine.

Protect Palestine’s subsequent event recap, under a section devoted to Speitan, states: “There can be no liberation without force” and “The Palestinian armed resistance must be supported.”


Jewish teacher in Philadelphia admits to fabricating Palestinian identity for years
A Jewish public school teacher and pro-Palestinian advocate in Philadelphia has admitted to fabricating Palestinian, Tunisian and Black heritage to her colleagues for years, in a case that some online commenters are dubbing “the Palestinian Rachel Dolezal.”

Hannah Gann posted confessions and apologies to social media this week, following confrontations from local pro-Palestinian groups she had worked with. In her apologies, she identified herself as “a white woman with significant privilege and wealth” who has “no Palestinian or Tunisian heritage.”

A Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment to Gann was not immediately returned.

Two local activist groups Gann had been involved with, Philly Educators for Palestine and Racial Justice Organizing Committee, said in their own statement that Gann was also “of Jewish heritage and [part of] an Israeli settler family.” They further accused Gann of falsely claiming to be Black at various points, until they confronted her about her background days ago.

Comparisons to Dolezal, a white woman who posed as Black for years, taught Africana college courses and held a leadership role with a local NAACP branch before being exposed in 2015, spread over the Internet on Wednesday.

“I hid the truth or outright lied about my background to everyone in my life,” Gann, a teacher at West Philadelphia’s The Workshop School, said in her own Instagram video message on Monday. “I hid my family’s background from everyone in Philly and also hid from the people in my own family what I was doing.”

Neither of Gann’s visible social media apologies mentioned Jewish heritage. But the Philadelphia Inquirer, citing internal documents from the activist groups, reported that she had identified herself in college as a “Jewish woman with family in the occupied West Bank.”

Gann had also told colleagues her grandfather was born in Palestine, when he was reportedly born in Baltimore, according to documents cited by the Inquirer. Fellow activists accused her of having darkened her skin using makeup and fake tanner and adopting a Black American accent after returning from a stint in the Peace Corps in Rwanda.

As with Dolezal, commenters accused Gann of posing as a member of a marginalized group of color to gain clout.

“When marginalization becomes a form of social currency some people will always do this,” one account under the name “regretmaxxing” wrote in Gann’s comments.

Gann had made the pro-Palestinian cause central to her identity over the years, including a teach-in at her school in 2024 to protest “scholasticide” in Gaza, the Inquirer reported. That year she also told a local media outlet that the right-wing group Accuracy in Media had displayed her name on a truck calling her “Philadelphia’s Leading Antisemite.”

Accuracy in Media, which has targeted activists in other states using similar methods, confirmed to JTA that they had also done so to Gann.

“Hannah Gann remains one of Philadelphia’s leading antisemites,” the group’s founder, Adam Guillette, said in a statement, linking to a video of his group’s truck displaying the message outside the school where Gann worked.

Delivering testimony to the Philadelphia Board of Education in December 2025, Gann, wearing a keffiyeh, urged them to “treat Islamophobia, anti-Black and anti-Palestinian racism just as seriously as you treat allegations of antisemitism.”

“Why are Jewish staff members’ experiences immediately assumed to indicate systemic failures, while Black, brown and Muslim students’ testimonies are treated as isolated incidents?” she continued, shortly before a board member cut off her mic.

A fellow teacher of Gann’s said on Instagram that Gann had told her, following a trip to Israel in 2023, that she had both Jewish and Palestinian people in her family, later claiming that her grandfather had been an anti-Zionist Jew born in Mandatory Palestine who left over disagreements with the direction of Israel.

“We will no longer work with Hannah, and she will no longer be welcome in any of our organizing spaces,” the pro-Palestinian groups said in their own statement.


350 writers oppose Jewish novelist’s exclusion in Spain
Spain’s main Jewish organization on Wednesday circulated a manifesto signed by more than 350 cultural figures opposing the exclusion of an Argentine-Jewish novelist from a literary festival in Granada following her opposition to boycotts against Israel.

The organizers of the CULTUR ALH de Granada festival, who canceled a scheduled Sept. 26 discussion featuring novelist Ariana Harwicz, need to “transparently explain their decision, acknowledge the harm caused and offer Harwicz appropriate public redress, while also recognizing the damage done to public debate,” the manifesto reads.

The conflict underlines diverging attitudes toward Israel in the Spanish-speaking world. In Latin America, Israel has several outspoken allies, including Argentine President Javier Milei. Spain’s government under Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has promoted anti-Israel policies and rhetoric. Sánchez last year called Israel a “genocidal state” in parliament.

Harwicz, who gained international recognition with her debut novel, “Mátate, amor” (“Die, My Love”), said her exclusion was antisemitic. “They’re canceling me for being Jewish, to turn me into a pariah,” El País quoted Harwicz as saying. Her 2012 novel, which explores motherhood, desire and psychological turmoil, was longlisted for the 2018 International Booker Prize and adapted into a 2025 film starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson.

Patricia Escalona, the festival’s co-director, told El País last week that “Harwicz’s firm opposition to the cultural boycott of Israel was what prompted the rejection.” The newspaper reported that a letter from Granada’s University Network for Palestine prompted the cancellation.

In a 2024 interview with Infobae, Harwicz said about attempts to boycott Israeli cultural institutions: “I see only hostility toward Jews and a totalitarian attempt to censor art.”

Writers should not “be excluded from a cultural event because of their public positions,” the petition circulated by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE) states. The petition’s text warns that “defending freedom of expression only for those who think like us is not defending it: it is replacing the free exchange of ideas with ideological screening.”

Among the petition’s signatories are French former prime minister Manuel Valls, who is also a citizen of Spain; Spanish philosopher Fernando Savater, a Planeta Prize winner; Mexican writer Margo Glantz, a recipient of the FIL Literary Award; Colombian poet Piedad Bonnett, winner of the 2024 Reina Sofía Poetry Prize; and Peruvian novelist Santiago Roncagliolo, whose “Red April” won the Alfaguara Prize and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
California sending ‘troubling message’ by dropping charges on Yom Kippur against anti-Israel Stanford protesters
The California state attorney general’s agreement with five current and former Stanford University students, under which criminal charges would be dropped against the five for occupying and vandalizing the university president’s office in a June 2024 anti-Israel protest, is drawing criticism from Jewish groups.

The Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area and Jewish Silicon Valley said that the agreement “sends the troubling message that politically motivated destruction of property carries minimal legal consequences” and added that they were “troubled” that the court hearing, at which the agreement was announced, was held on Yom Kippur.

“That a hearing so closely connected to debates over rising antisemitism was made inaccessible to many in the Jewish community demonstrates a lack of sensitivity and cultural competency,” the two said.

The state’s agreement with the five will see the latter each undergo 100 hours of community service and collectively pay nearly $52,000 in restitution.

A spokesman for the state attorney general told JNS that the defendants agreed to a prosecutorial diversion program, in which the charges will be dropped if they complete the community service and pay restitution.

“This resolution requires the defendants to make amends to the community for their actions through extensive community service and ensures they fully reimburse Stanford for all repairs,” the spokesman told JNS.

“Although initial reporting suggested a higher damages figure, our office worked closely with Stanford to generate a complete and accurate accounting of the full cost of repairs for all damages caused by the charged defendants, which was ultimately determined to be $51,973.37,” the spokesman said.

Failure to comply with the resolution will result in the case going back to trial, according to the spokesman.
Judge rules Bay Area school district not complying with state mandates to address Jew-hatred
The Alameda County Superior Court ruled on Friday that the Oakland Unified School District, which educates about 34,000 students in 82 schools, has not complied fully with the California Department of Education’s directives to address Jew-hatred on its campuses.

The department sued the district in March after Marleen Sacks, an Oakland education attorney, filed appeals alleging that the district’s corrective actions to address bias against Jewish and Israeli students were inadequate. The department determined that the appeals had merit and told the district to implement a series of corrective measures.

It filed the suit after determining that the district hadn’t complied in full with the directives by each of the deadlines in the appeals.

Jenna Whitman, the judge, ruled that the district has not yet complied with the department’s directives to provide trainings to the district on Jew-hatred and other forms of discrimination. This includes a requirement for an outside trainer, with consultation from a Jewish or Israeli education or advocacy organization, to conduct antisemitism training for all district employees. (JNS sought comment from the district.)

The district also has not complied with the department’s directive to provide training to all high school administrators and social studies teachers about instruction related to the Middle East not having a discriminatory bias, particularly antisemitic bias, according to Whitman.

The district has complied with other department directives, such as schools holding at least one assembly covering the Holocaust and addressing the harm that Nazi swastikas and other antisemitic imagery causes, Whitman stated.

The Oakland Unified School District and the California Department of Education “are encouraged to meet and confer to develop a chart or table that identifies the required corrective actions and the actions that OUSD has taken to comply for each, which the parties can utilize to track OUSD’s progress towards compliance,” she wrote. “The parties can keep each other informed about OUSD’s efforts so that the process can move forward effectively and efficiently.”
Seattle area-public school district bracing for Oct. 7 anti-Israel walkouts
The Bellevue School District in Washington state, which operates 28 schools with more than 19,000 students, told JNS that it is monitoring social media for outside agitators looking to influence students to participate in a walkouts on Oct. 7 in solidarity with Hamas.

Groups like Puget Sound Revolutionary Youth, which described the Oct. 7 terror attacks as “the heroic Palestinian resistance,” called on students to walk out of schools statewide for a third year.

“We are currently working and talking as an administration,” Janine Thorn, chief communications officer for the district, told JNS. “In the past, students have walked out. We are monitoring that closely and putting a plan in place.”

“Our current policy does not stop students from peacefully protesting,” she told JNS. “However, we know there are outside influences that are not sponsored or condoned by the district.”

Thorn said that the district’s team “is monitoring social media and reporting the information that we see being communicated not just to Bellevue students but to all students.”

“We see there’s some active mobilization happening with these outside groups, and we are in the process of developing our action plan,” she said.

In 2025, the group claimed that hundreds of students walked out of 32 schools across the state.


Politico picks Yom Kippur to attack Huckabee’s observant Jewish aide
On Monday morning — as Jews around the world marked Yom Kippur — Politico published a pointed attack targeting David Milstein, an observant Jew who serves as senior advisor to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, labeling his actions as a “national security threat” while failing to provide evidence for the claim.

In a WhatsApp message sent to wedding invitees, Milstein, who lives in Israel, wrote that those who wanted to give a “monetary wedding gift” in either “U.S. dollars or Israeli shekels” to the couple could do so through a provided QR code, Politico’s Adam Wren reported.

Politico’s Monday morning flagship newsletter “Playbook” led with the story, accompanied by the subject line: “Huckabee’s ‘walking counterintel red flag’” — using Milstein’s wedding message as a hook to cite anonymous intelligence sources who labeled him a national security threat.

An individual with knowledge of the situation told Jewish Insider that Wren messaged Milstein just before 7 p.m. ET on Sunday — or 2 a.m. local time on Monday in Israel, where Milstein was observing Yom Kippur — to inform him the story would run the following morning.

Wren did not respond to a request for comment as to the timing of the story’s publication.

Milstein’s defenders were quick to speak up on his behalf. “If there is a ‘scandal!’ blame me and his actual friends for wanting some direction on how to honor him,” Huckabee wrote on X.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), for whom Milstein previously worked, accused Politico of having “repeatedly published antisemitic dual loyalty conspiracy theories about American Jews serving in the Trump administration.”

In its reporting, Politico failed to explain federal ethics rules regarding gifts, including wedding presents, from friends. According to the State Department’s published guidelines on financial disclosures, examples of items an employee may typically accept without prior approval under the gift rules, include “Gifts that are clearly motivated by a family relationship or personal friendship rather than the position of the employee,” while “Friendships formed in the course of performing official Department business will generally not meet this standard.” The guidelines note, “Even where prior approval is not required, employees are encouraged to raise questions about the permissibility of gifts with their supervisors or L/EFD.”
Shareholders sue ‘NY Times’ for records about editorial standards, including about Israel coverage
Shareholders sued the New York Times Company on Wednesday to obtain internal records that could show if its board oversees the paper’s editorial standards, citing alleged failures in Israel coverage and an employee’s complaints about anti-Israel bias.

“The Times tells investors that its business depends on its credibility, then refuses to show a single document proving anyone on its board protects it,” Mark Goldfeder, an attorney for the shareholders and CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, told JNS. “This case will be decided on charters, agendas and reporting lines, not on anyone’s opinion of the coverage.”

“But for Jewish and pro-Israel readers, the stakes run far past a balance sheet,” he said.

The Florida State Board of Administrators, acting for the state’s retirement fund, and the National Center for Public Policy Research allege that a longtime newsroom employee reported concerns about standards on at least 15 occasions beginning in 2019.

When she complained about widespread anti-Israel bias, a human resources representative told her that “if you don’t like our values here, maybe you should go find a place whose values align with yours,” according to the complaint.

The filing also alleges that the Times rehired Gaza freelancer Soliman Hijjy shortly after Oct. 7, despite social media posts praising Adolf Hitler that had previously come to light.

According to the complaint, a manager acknowledged in a recorded conversation that Hijjy’s posts “don’t in any way meet our standards.” The Times said at the time that it had addressed the posts and that the freelancer “has maintained high journalistic standards.”

The shareholders also cited the paper’s July 2025 front-page photograph of a malnourished child in Gaza. Its caption said he “was born healthy but was recently diagnosed with severe malnutrition,” while a Getty Images caption two days earlier reported that doctors had identified preexisting conditions.

The Times later revised its article to include those preexisting conditions. The petition seeks records that could establish when its photo editors learned about the context.

“When the paper of record pins a hospital strike on Israel on Hamas’s word, puts a ‘born healthy’ child on the front page whose diagnosis was sitting on a wire service two days earlier, and then only corrects six days late or never, that shapes how Israel is judged and how Jews are treated,” Goldfeder told JNS.


French Holocaust denier jailed for denying Nazi gas chambers, saying Jews spread disease
A Paris court on Tuesday jailed a prominent French Holocaust denier for eight months for making the false claim that Nazi gas chambers did not exist during World War II, and for referring to Jewish people as “pathogenic.”

Holocaust denial has been a criminal offense in France since 1990.

Vincent Reynouard, already convicted 10 times since 2006, mainly for denying crimes against humanity, was charged over articles that appeared in a far-right magazine in 2024 and 2025.

Writing for Rivarol magazine, Reynouard, 57, described the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps as “Soviet propaganda” and “made-up stories.”

He also argued that “large gas chambers for a thousand people” were a “technical impossibility.”

“By denying the existence of the gas chambers, a symbol of the extermination of the Jews regardless of their size or capacity, the defendant is denying the existence of the Holocaust through the questioning of one of its principal methods,” the court said in its ruling, which was seen by AFP.

Reynouard was also convicted of antisemitic insult for describing Jewish people as “pathogenic.”

“He thus reduces Jewish people to a germ that is a source of infection,” the judges said.

Rivarol’s editor, Jerome Bourbon, whose criminal record contains 22 convictions, was sentenced to six months in prison, to be served under electronic monitoring at home.

The two men were also ordered to jointly pay damages to several groups, including the Jewish Observatory of France and the League Against Racism and Antisemitism.
Massachusetts man sentenced to nearly 10 years for antisemitic threats against Randy Fine, sons
A Massachusetts man was sentenced to nine years and 11 months in federal prison for making antisemitic threats against US Rep. Randy Fine and his two children, the US Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida announced Wednesday.

Edwin Guerrero, 26, was also ordered to pay a $15,000 fine after pleading guilty in March to making interstate threats to injure another person.

Between August 10 and August 15, 2024, Guerrero used social media to make a series of antisemitic posts and threats targeting Fine, who at the time served in the Florida House of Representatives, according to court documents cited by the Justice Department.

The threats targeted both Fine and his two minor sons. In one post, sent from an IP address in Spain, Guerrero suggested he was traveling to Brevard County and attached an image of an individual appearing to hold a firearm.

Other posts contained violent threats against Fine and his sons, including references to the children as Jewish, according to the Justice Department. Some were accompanied by an image of a deceased man with significant head trauma.

Court finds threats were motivated by hate
Investigators determined that Guerrero was in Spain when the threats were made. After returning to the United States, he admitted during an interview with authorities that he had used his social media account to send the messages, according to the Justice Department.

A subsequent search of Guerrero's phone found a search history containing antisemitic and anti-Israel content.

During sentencing, US District Judge Anne-Leigh Gaylord Moe found that Guerrero's threats against Fine and his children were motivated by hate. The judge emphasized the seriousness of threats against Jews and the need to deter threats against elected officials and members of protected classes.

Fine told the court that Guerrero's threats involving his children had "made my blood run cold," according to the Justice Department.

"My boys are now victims of a crime," Fine said during the sentencing hearing. "I was afraid for me, and I was afraid for my boys."
Man arrested for allegedly vandalizing San Diego homes with antisemitic graffiti
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office said on Tuesday that it arrested Kristoffer Von Hassel, 18, for allegedly vandalizing two homes in Imperial Beach, Calif., with antisemitic graffiti earlier in the month.

The incidents occurred on Sept. 13 and 19.

Von Hassel was charged with vandalism and damage to property motivated by civil rights violations, the sheriff’s office said. It added that the hate crime unit is investigating.

“We would like to thank the public, community organizations and the city of Imperial Beach for their assistance throughout the investigation,” the sheriff’s office stated. “The sheriff’s office maintains a zero‑tolerance policy for hate‑motivated crimes and remains committed to dedicating resources to protect public safety.”


The Indian Jewish general who shaped the birth of Bangladesh
As India and Israel foster stronger ties these days, it’s worth examining some of the key history between these two nations.

Lt. Gen. Jack Farj Rafael Jacob, a Bene Israel Jew, stood at the center of India’s 1971 victory and the largest military surrender since World War II. Few events in modern military history reshaped a region as swiftly as the 1971 India-Pakistan War. In just 16 days, India’s Eastern Command broke the Pakistani military’s hold over East Pakistan, clearing the way for the birth of Bangladesh.

At the heart of this campaign was Jacob, whose strategic clarity and moral resolve shaped the outcome of the conflict. On Dec. 16, 1971, in the city then known as Dacca, Pakistan’s forces capitulated in what remains the largest military surrender since World War II.

Jacob’s life began far from the battlefield. Born on May 2, 1923, into a Bene Israel Jewish family in Calcutta, he grew up in a community that had lived in India for centuries without persecution. He attended synagogue, learned Hebrew prayers and absorbed the rhythms of Jewish life. India’s long tradition of tolerance allowed Jews to flourish, and Jacob would later say that he never encountered antisemitism in his homeland. His Jewish identity shaped his moral compass, but his military career defined his public life.

That career emerged from a broader tradition of Jewish service in India. Thousands of Indian Jews served in the British Indian Army during both World Wars, fighting in the Middle East, North Africa and Burma. After independence, Jewish service in the Indian Army continued, and Jacob became its most distinguished Jewish officer.

India’s military connection to the Land of Israel also runs deep. More than 900 Indian soldiers who fought in World War I are buried in cemeteries across Israel, including in Haifa, Jerusalem and Ramle, a reminder of a shared history long before formal diplomatic ties.


State Department to host Oct. 7 memorial for slain Americans
The U.S. State Department intends to host a memorial ceremony dedicated to American victims of the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks, JNS has learned.

The event will be held on Sept. 30, three days before the third anniversary of the attack on the Jewish calendar, and is being handled at the highest levels of the department, including within the office of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, multiple sources said.

The effort was largely driven by Ruby Chen, whose son Itay Chen, an Israeli-American, was killed on Oct. 7.

“The majority of the families are dealing with the rehabilitation aspect,” Ruby Chen told JNS at a recent Republican Jewish Coalition gathering in Las Vegas. “I have created very unique relationships with a number of the people inside of the administration, and we still have an open dialogue.”

Part of that dialogue was driving the idea of the memorial, “something that is well known to the leaders of the administration,” Chen said.

“It’s not a question of if it’s going to happen,” he told JNS. “It’s more a matter of the logistics of when and how it happens that makes the most sense.”

A spokesman for the American Jewish Committee confirmed that the organization is working with the State Department on the event and on other preparations for the families of victims who are coming to Washington, D.C., to mark the occasion.


Rare photos reveal how Israelis celebrated Sukkot more than 60 years ago
A Hasidic man holding a lulav in a Jerusalem sukkah, crowds celebrating the harvest festival at Horshat Tal, children marching in a holiday ceremony, and a bustling market: four previously unseen photographs from the KKL-JNF Archive offer a glimpse into Sukkot celebrations in Israel during the 1950s and 1960s.

The historic images depict the Israel of more than six decades ago and the different ways in which the holiday was celebrated at the time.

In a photograph from 1959, a Chasidic man is seen performing the mitzvah of the Four Species inside a sukkah in Jerusalem. Wrapped in a tallit, he holds a lulav and looks upward toward the s’chach, the natural covering of the sukkah. Around him are handmade decorations – paper chains, ornaments and pictures hung on the sukkah’s walls.

By contrast, a photograph taken at Horshat Tal in 1963 shows Sukkot as a large-scale Israeli celebration attended by crowds of people. Families and children gathered to celebrate the harvest festival, with dancers holding sheaves of grain. Israeli flags fly above, while the trees of the grove and the Galilee landscape can be seen in the background.

The combination of an agricultural festival, folk dancing and time spent in nature tells the story of a young Israel seeking to connect ancient tradition with an emerging local culture.





 




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