Wednesday, October 07, 2026

10/07 Links Pt1: How will we remember October 7?; In Israel, even fear and grief can become courage, resilience and joy; Mamdani chose to play Hamas’ spokesman on Oct. 7 anniversary

From Ian:

How will we remember October 7?
Three years later and at times October 7 still feels like yesterday.

For the victims and their families time has stood still, stuck in the moment of the last hug, smile and time they heard the sound of their voices. For the survivors and for the first responders who answered the call for help that morning, time has not moved forward either. Trauma from the scenes of death and destruction still haunt their minds eye. But the calendar still says three years has past since that infamous day.

Across Israel and the Jewish world, we are still trying to make sense of what happened. Many conversations focus on how such a catastrophe could have befallen the Jewish state, defended by one of the strongest armies in the world. Others focus on how our enemies still seek our annihilation. Then there are the quieter conversations focused on stories of sacrifice, selflessness and survival that are intertwined with the horrors of the day.

Our Jewish tradition commands us to remember. It has been woven into our national consciousness. We remember slavery in Egypt. We mourn the destruction of the Temples. We recall attempted systematic extermination of our ancestors, both recent and ancient. But with each tragedy we cling to the hope that the suffering also paves way for moments of jubilee. The story of slavery is juxtaposed to the birth of the Nation of Israel. The desecration and destruction of both Holy Temples in Jerusalem has served as inspiration for millennia of prayer and hope of rebirth. Even the attempts to annihilate the Jewish people are interconnected to our return to our ancestral Homeland. It's like the age old Jewish joke, they came tried to destroy us, G-d saved us, let's eat.

So how will we remember October 7?
We do not have to look very far for an answer.

Even before Israel’s leadership fully grasped the magnitude of what was happening that morning, hundreds of United Hatzalah volunteers had already made a decision. They were going south.

There was no grand order telling them to go. For many, the decision was intensely personal. They heard the call for help and understood that people were in danger. They put on their orange vests, grabbed their medic bags and drove toward the gunfire.

By the end of that first day, more than 1,500 United Hatzalah volunteers were engaged in treating and evacuating the wounded.

Three years later, United Hatzalah founder and president Eli Beer retraced the steps taken by some of those volunteers. We returned to the Nova festival grounds and to communities along the Gaza border whose names were once familiar only to those who lived there, but are now etched into our national story.

At every stop, another story surfaced.
Gil Troy: In Israel, even fear and grief can become courage, resilience and joy
The image of a plane plummeting toward certain doom, then soaring up thanks to gutsy Israelis and a courageous pilot, captures the whiplash emotions we all experienced this Sukkot. Or, as the comedienne Dana Perry Segal dryly put it, “in Israel, we just call this Wednesday.”

Many of us olim – immigrants to Israel – particularly appreciate Sukkot in our restored old-new homeland. The rabbis called it Z’man Simchateinu – our joyous season. But, in the Diaspora, it often feels like Z’man Schikateinu – our burnout moment. After skipping work or school for the High Holy Days, Sukkot – with four more down days – can be burdensome.

In Israel, with schools out, glorious weather, sukkahs popping up like mushrooms everywhere, it’s a delight. Last Wednesday, many Israelis were sitting in their sukkahs when they heard this breathtaking story about an attempted kamikaze suicide bombing with 174 passengers flying to Israel, including 27 children.

One friend rushed out of her Sukkah to get Psalms to pray for everyone’s safety. By the time she returned, she heard the news that dazzled the world.

Naturally, through tears of joy, prayers of thanksgiving, and happy high-fives, we Israelis wondered – again – “why do so many hate us,” “what kind of people would want to kill so many of us just flying home from vacation,” and “boy, that was too close a call.”

When courage rises in moments of terror
Our pride in the Israeli passengers who responded instantly – as well as the plucky pilot – commingled with despair that so many of our fellow citizens need that instinct to react, the grit to try, and the fighting skills required to subdue a knife-wielding co-pilot in seconds, then stabilize the plane.

And as we entered a searing week of October 7 commemorations, we linked those fighting instincts that saved the plane to the same instincts that kicked in for so many heroes who saved the country three years ago when Hamas barbarians invaded – often at the cost of their lives.

Fortunately, my wife and I had tickets that evening for the perfect event matching those mixed emotions: “Comedy for Koby.” This sold-out Jerusalem Theatre performance marked the 25th anniversary of the Koby Mandell Foundation.

The Foundation was founded by Rabbi Seth and Sherri Mandell in 2001, after Palestinian terrorists brutally murdered their beloved 13-year-old son Koby and his friend Yosef Ishran.

Seeing how emotionally isolated their other kids were, even at summer camps that lovingly embraced them, the Mandells launched this marvelous effort to help families suffering from these kinds of heartbreaking losses.

Since 2001, they have hugged, cried with, processed with, and laughed with 28,742 recovering family members from 9,500 families – with 11,233 siblings, parents, widows and widowers participating in 140 healing retreats, and 13,742 campers being bolstered at Camp Koby & Yosef.

Eliana Mandell Braner, Koby’s sister, now directing the foundation, noted that before October 7, they were helping 750 families; it’s now 2,500 families.

Opening the evening, Sherri Mandell recalled how, after the horror, “the Jewish people became our Sukkah, the place where we could feel safe.”

Afterward, this inspirational powerhouse told me that in 2001, many Israelis were in denial about the trauma caused by Palestinian terrorism. They – and the massive extended family they’ve raised since – were trailblazers in developing what Rabbi Seth Mandell calls “a community of resilience.”

So there we were, 760 of us, mourning Koby and Yosef, empathizing with the saved-but-obviously-rattled passengers and crew, bracing for the grief waves already hitting us as we approached Simchat Torah and the third anniversary of October 7.

Then, in the spirit of Israel, capturing the whiplash many of us experienced when dancing around the Torahs last Friday night hours after visiting gravesites, came five magical, uplifting words: “Are we ready to laugh?”
Phyllis Chesler: Thinking about Oct. 7 from Geula Cohen’s point of view
Israel needs heroes and has always had them in abundance. We still do.

Once, I was “chosen” by one of Israel’s heroes, none other than Geula Cohen, who took me on a tour of Judea and Samaria way back in 1980. I now think that a mutual friend might have told her that I was “one of hers.”

I doubt that I would have had the sheer physical courage and reckless daring to break out of jail—not once, but twice—as membership in the Jewish underground fighting organization Lechi in the 1940s demanded. Geula’s story as a member of Lechi, translated into English, is free and available online. Lechi fought the British, who were, at the time, murdering Jews and supporting Arabs in their murder of Jews in Mandatory Palestine. The British tortured, jailed and hanged members of the underground, even exiling them to Africa.

The Jewish underground exacted “measure for measure.” After they, too, tortured a British soldier to death, that practice among the British stopped, but the jailing and hanging did not.

Geula wrote, “For every murderous British law the Hebrew underground will enact an opposite and equally cruel law of its own. There will be quick justice and no mercy for all British criminals. The foreign regime has decided that prima facie evidence is no longer necessary in order to condemn a man to death. We have decided the same! The foreign regime has decided that membership in an enemy organization is punishable by death. We have decided the same!”

When the British put her on trial, here’s what she said in the courtroom: “The accused does not recognize the authority of the court. I am a Hebrew fighter of the Freedom Fighters of Israel … you are intruders subjugating our homeland. We have our own set of emergency regulations: Any British soldier in this land is our enemy, and there is only one sentence that can be given him—death.”

Yes, I know some might think this sounds just like a Palestinian terrorist, but Geula was opposed to real colonial oppression. The Arabs have fabricated a new narrative, based on the Big Lie, claiming they are fighting the Jews who “colonized” their country—even though the Arabs have never actually had a country called “Palestine.”

Geula was one of the two voices of the Jewish underground radio broadcasts. I learned that Lechi had an anthem: “Hayyelim Almonim” (“The Anonymous Soldiers”). However, Geula named each precious person, and she knew most, if not all, of them.

At the time, Britain was also turning back and shooting down the “illegal” ships that were trying to bring European Jews to Palestine during and after the Holocaust. Britain also refused visas to Jewish survivors. It was always a heartless colonial power.

According to Geula, British official “Lord Moyne in Cairo refused one million Jews. ‘What would I do with them?’ He ordered the sinking of Jewish refugee ships. Two members of Lechi assassinated him—and were hanged.”


Caroline Glick: October 7 – Reflections on Two Sirens
October 7, three years on. The sound of two sirens ring through me. The first siren sounded at 0629. Within an hour we knew that our world had turned upside down. We had gone to sleep secure in our beds, and we awoke to invasion and a slaughter of unprecedented dimensions.

That night, addressing a nation in shock, Prime Minister Netanyahu quoted from Haim Nachman Bialik's most famous poem "On the Slaughter," which the great poet wrote after he participated in a delegation to Kishinev in 1903 immediately after the colossal pogrom.

In raging verse, Bialik demanded that justice be done to the slaughterers. He began his final stanza with the now immortal words, "Revenge for the blood of a small child – the Devil has yet to devise."

We listened to the Prime Minister that evening in a state of searing existential shock, grief, fear and fury that became our new normal. When Netanyahu quoted Bialik though, I felt a flash of relief. For me and for many thousands of Israelis, the words were a telegraphic message.

We would rise from the depths. The siren at 0629 was an alarm clock that didn't simply wake us up. It shifted our lives from normal time to Jewish time; the time across time.

By quoting Bialik, Prime Minister Netanyahu told us that he would lead us in this Jewish time. We were going to survive. From the bedrock drenched in the blood of our people, we would rise, as he would later say, "like lions."

We would redeem that blood, vanquish our enemies, and achieve the victories required to secure our lives and our future here in our land, the Land of Israel.

Getting up is hard. Rising when the world tells you that there’s no point, you’ll only get in trouble if you fight back, is harder still. But Prime Minister Netanyahu stood up to the international chorus of finger-jabbing hypocrites and said over and over that Israel would annihilate Hamas and free the hostages.

We arose to the great task before us. Our soldiers – our sons and our daughters – fulfilled this pledge showing that everyone heard the same siren at 0629. This wasn’t just another war. This was the War of Redemption.

Building by building, street by street. No matter what “the world” said. The army fought and moved forward. Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Judea and Samaria.
Herzog attends memorial at Nova festival site, calls for international cooperation to disarm Hamas
President Isaac Herzog attended and addressed a memorial ceremony on Wednesday, held at the site of the Nova Festival in Reim, where hundreds of festival-goers were murdered and abducted during the October 7 massacre three years ago.

Herzog first made a statement to international media, explaining the importance of the memorial.

“Here at the Nova Musical Festival, thousands of young people came to sing and to dance, to celebrate life. People of 36 nationalities, from all over the world and from Israel. They were horrifically butchered, killed, tortured, raped, and abducted into Gaza," Herzog said.

“We are here to tell their stories, and to remember, and reflect, and reminisce, and say to the world: we will dance again, we will live again. We are a nation in agony, but we are showing immense resilience. This whole region, which was attacked barbarically on October 7th, is now rebuilding."

Herzog says Hamas disarmament way to future
Herzog also reaffirmed Israel's right to defend itself and addressed Israel's desire for a peaceful future.

“We are a nation like all nations. We have the inherent right to defend ourselves and fight terror. But we yearn for peace, and we want our neighbors to live in peace as well," he said.

The only way forward is "by implementing UN Security Council Resolution 2301, which calls for the disarming of Hamas. This should be the international goal, as well as combating the empire of evil from Tehran," Herzog said.

“I want to thank everybody who came here, and all those who have sent messages of condolences and share in our pain. Let the memory of those who were killed be a blessing to all of us,“ he concluded.


Commentary Podcast: Three Years On
Dan Senor joins us from Israel on this third anniversary of the October 7th attacks to revisit the initial reactions to the horrors and discuss the downstream consequences of instant anti-Israel responses, the contrast between the atmosphere in Israel and in American Jewish communities, and what the way forward might look like.




travelingisrael: While Everyone Looked Away: The People Who Recovered October 7’s Victims
An intimate interview with Nurit, a volunteer with ZAKA (Disaster Victim Identification). Following the October 7 attacks, ZAKA volunteers were among the first on the scene, tasked with the unimaginable mission of locating, recovering, and identifying the fallen. Nurit shares her firsthand experience, the emotional weight of their sacred duty, and how volunteers find strength in the darkest moments.


Ben Shapiro: The World's Response to October 7 Should Terrify You
On the third anniversary of October 7, we discuss what that massive terrorist attack actually means for the West – and why the West’s response looks a lot like the end of the West itself.


Victor Davis Hanson: The Truth About October 7, Three Years Later
Three years after the October 7 massacre, Victor Davis Hanson looks back at the attack on Israel, Hamas’ preparations for war, and the response that followed.

He breaks down the scale of the assault, the hostages taken, the thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilians, and the billions of dollars in aid Hamas diverted toward weapons and an enormous tunnel network.

Hanson also asks why so much of the West turned against Israel almost immediately after the attack, and why Israel is now so often portrayed as the aggressor rather than the country that was attacked.




October 7 hostage Mia Schem tells the Mail what she thinks of pro-Palestine 'sheep' who hate Israel, Drake's pro-Gaza song and reveals Hamas brutality left her with one arm shorter than the other
On the three-year anniversary of October 7, former Hamas hostage Mia Schem, 24, has revealed the lasting physical and psychological scars of captivity.

She tells the Daily Mail about how she survived being shot at point-blank range until her arm nearly came off, almost bled to death and was kept in a cage by her captors – as she hits out at the 'pro-Palestine sheep' and reveals why a Gaza song by Drake left her shocked.

Today, she is sitting in the home she renovated herself in central Israel – an extraordinary achievement made all the more remarkable by the fact that she did much of the work with effectively only one fully functioning arm.

The other is permanently damaged and shorter as a result of the gunshot that almost tore it from her body as she was abducted from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023.

Gesturing towards it as we spoke, Ms Schem said: 'Listen, the fact that I am sitting here in front of you is a miracle. Even talking about it now, I find myself getting stuck on the words. It is beyond anything I can explain.

'Look at my hand. This arm is shorter than the other because they shot me at point-blank range.

'My arm was almost completely disconnected. Only a small part of it was still attached to my body. I picked up my own arm from the floor and carried it with me. I screamed. I still cannot get my head around it.

'I lost an enormous amount of blood — something like five litres.

The French-Israeli was held captive for 55 days before being released in November 2023.

'It’s a miracle that I’m alive. And they gave me nothing. Nothing at all.' She was referring to the lack of anaesthetic she says she was given while being operated on in Gaza by a ‘surgeon’.

Just five minutes before she was shot, Ms Schem had been dancing with her best friend Elia Toledano at the Nova festival. His body was later recovered from Gaza.

Then, she says, her world changed in an instant.

'Everything happened so fast. Five minutes earlier I was dancing with my best friend. It was as though I closed my eyes and opened them again, and I was in Gaza.

'It happened so quickly that I couldn’t take it in. There were Hamas terrorists everywhere, so I didn’t see the face of the person who shot me.'

Ms Schem was the first hostage forced to feature in a Hamas propaganda video released on October 16, 2023, footage that was widely condemned as psychological warfare.

The French-Israeli was held captive for 55 days before being released in November 2023.

But three years later, she says she is only now beginning to process what happened to her.


NYPost Editorial:Mamdani chose to play Hamas’ spokesman on Oct. 7 anniversary
Mayor Zohran Mamdani seized the chance of the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 atrocities to again whitewash Hamas, demonize Israel and spew lies about the massacre and its aftermath.

The mayor’s statement offers a few empty platitudes about “unthinkable loss” but avoids details of Hamas’ barbarism and again calls its actions “war crimes.”

But war crimes happen during war, and Israel and Hamas-controlled Gaza were not at war on Oct. 6, 2023: The invasion — the killings, the rapes, the kidnappings of civilians — caused the war.

This also sets up a phony standard for comparison as he soon moves on to what he calls Israel’s war crimes, which he pretends are far worse, indeed a “devastating, ongoing genocide.”

Israel “killed more than 74,000 Palestinians — including more than 21,000 children,” he lectures, using numbers that even Hamas and its puppet Gaza Health Ministry no longer claim.

This is, of course, the first “genocide” ever to target men of military age (the overwhelming majority of fatalities, including armed teens), and in an overall population that has continued to grow as it’s been “devastated.”

Mamdani similarly lingers over the “suffering” caused by “every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances” and the “targeted” murder of “journalists”, when Hamas’ well-documented practices include using ambulances for military purposes and routinely disguising its soldiers as press.

After all, the terrorists’ central defense is hiding behind civilians, building headquarters under hospitals and arms caches under schools; during the war, Hamas gunmen shot down Gazans trying to evacuate.

The mayor has blared out his lies on all these points ad nauseum; why does he feel compelled to play Hamas spokesman on this anniversary?
Liel Leibovitz: Mamdani’s bigoted Oct. 7 post is rooted in antisemitism and hatred — it’s time to stand up against his lies
His statement wasn’t an ill-conceived blunder: It was a deliberate fist bump to his base, reassuring the terror aficionados marching up and down our streets and waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags that he’s still committed to their cause — the cause of Jew and America hatred.

It leaves not only New York’s Jews but all New Yorkers in an unimaginably tough spot.

What to do when the man entrusted with your safety and well-being is gleefully siding with the ghouls committed to slaughtering you no matter the cost?

Protests, sharply worded statements, political pressure and all the other tools of civic engagement don’t seem to work.

The mayor doubles down on his dedication to demonizing the Jews not only in word but also in deed: This week, we learned that his so-called strategy to combat antisemitism includes handing a cool $6 million to a group partnered with none other than Linda Sarsour, who had to resign her leadership of the Women’s March after blatantly discriminating against its Jewish members.

And with his recent screed, Mamdani gave us the clearest indication yet since assuming office that he remains staunchly on the side of America’s sworn enemies, standing with the genocidal jihadis rather than with the West trying to curb their murderous violence.

Message is clear
Mamdani’s made his statement.

It’s now time for the rest of us to make ours.

Let’s make sure the mayor pays a price for his prejudice.

Let’s explore every legal avenue available to hold him accountable for spreading hate and lies.

And, most important, let’s build a coalition that gives him and his fellow radicals the boot in 2029.

Shame on Mamdani, for once again showing himself to be a rank little bigot.

But shame on us, too, if we don’t do what New Yorkers do best — and give this petty hater an unvarnished and impolite piece of our mind.
Mamdani couldn't dedicate one day to mourning murdered Jews without turning to Israel
Mamdani handled October 7 anniversary very differently than September 11
Mamdani knows how to deliver a memorial address. He did it last month. Speaking at St. Nicholas church in Manhattan on September 11, he described firefighters approaching the towers, boats evacuating people and strangers helping one another escape. He stayed with those people and their stories. He managed the entire address without turning to American conduct in Afghanistan or Iraq.

I would like to hear him explain why the families of October 7 deserved a different approach. He had already found the words to condemn Hamas. He could have continued with the survivors and the bereaved.

For Jewish New Yorkers with family and friends in Israel, this is familiar and exhausting. Even on the anniversary of the massacre, their mayor makes room for only a brief acknowledgment before returning to his case against the Jewish state.

They can disagree fiercely with an Israeli government and still want their mayor to show some decency toward the people murdered there. They should hardly have to explain this to him.

Majority of New York hate crimes targeted Jews
At the city’s October 6 crime briefing, officials reported that Jews were the targets of 53% of confirmed hate crimes through September. Major crime overall has fallen. His new antisemitism strategy gives me little confidence that he will confront anti-Jewish hatred honestly. It declines to adopt a single definition, arguing that doing so is neither “necessary” nor “useful.” More than 25 New York organizations have challenged its failure to address anti-Jewish harassment and exclusion carried out in the name of anti-Zionism.

Their objections are harder to dismiss after his October 7 statement. I have little faith in an antisemitism campaign led by a mayor who uses even that anniversary to denounce Israel. He asks Jewish residents to trust his administration while showing scant respect for their attachment to the Jewish state. Until he is prepared to confront the hostility directed at Jews over that attachment, his security grants and cultural programs will leave a central part of the problem untouched.


Akunis again invites Mamdani to screening of Oct. 7 footage after mayor’s statement criticized as ‘insult’ to victims
Ofir Akunis, Israel’s consul general in New York, again invited New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to watch footage of the Hamas-led massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, after the mayor’s statement marking the attack’s third anniversary drew criticism for focusing on Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“The mayor’s statement is a disgrace, shame, and insult to the memory of those who were murdered on Oct. 7,” Akunis stated on Wednesday. “It is still not too late to attend our screening this evening of the Oct. 7 footage and see with your own eyes, for the first time, the monsters you support.”

Akunis first invited Mamdani on Monday to attend a screening of 47 minutes of footage compiled by the Israel Defense Forces documenting the Oct. 7 attacks. The footage includes material captured by Hamas terrorists during the assault.

“Anyone with a heart should be ashamed of the response of the Mayor of New York City to the Oct. 7 massacre,” Akunis said. “On that day, monsters invaded the State of Israel on a Jewish holiday. Thousands were murdered, hundreds were kidnapped, innocent civilians were beheaded, and women were raped.”

“Mamdani, displaying a shocking lack of basic humanity, continues to spread antisemitic blood libels against the Jewish state,” the Israeli consul general added. “New York City should be appalled that its mayor shows such contempt for the memory of those who were murdered.”


UK Prime Minister Burnham's October 7 op-eds highlight a gap between rhetoric and reality
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has penned two op-eds to mark the third anniversary of October 7 and show support for Jews facing antisemitism, but there is a lack of understanding of where that antisemitism comes from and the way in which his own government has contributed to it.

Writing in The Jewish Chronicle and Jewish News on Wednesday, Burnham acknowledged the pain of the Jewish and Israeli communities.

His language is empathetic: Burnham speaks of those “senselessly killed by Hamas terrorists” and speaks of October 7 as the “deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

Both pieces speak of the “disturbing” rise in antisemitic behavior in the UK, and incidents such as the Heaton Park synagogue terrorist attack last year.

Burnham reassures the Jewish community that the government stands with them and that “abuse is not tolerated in our streets.”

He then sets out measures being taken by his government to combat Jew hatred, such as increased protection for synagogues, schools and community buildings.

Burnham also acknowledges the role of hostile states “peddling lies and conspiracy theories about minority communities” and the “poison spreading online and teaching young people to recognize attempts to radicalize and divide them.”

Lack of acknowledgment of links between anti-Zionism, antisemitism
On the surface, the op-eds tick all the boxes, but beneath the rhetoric there is a lack of clarity and specificity. The hate, although acknowledged, is not named.

Neither article meaningfully addresses the relationship between antisemitism and contemporary anti-Israel or anti-Zionist activism, despite Burnham’s observation that overseas conflicts can rapidly become domestic sources of hostility. Nor do they examine the political movements, demonstrations or slogans that have generated some of the biggest debates on antisemitism since the Hamas attack.

This, in turn, allows Burnham to frame the issue primarily through the language of security and cohesion while avoiding the more politically divisive debate over Israel and Gaza.

The distinction is also apparent in his treatment of Britain’s Jewish community. In the JC, Burnham addresses Jewish readers directly, offering reassurance that the government will “protect” them. In Jewish News, the Jewish community becomes part of a much broader argument about the status of British society.


Oct. 7 can’t become annual day that Jewish students must ‘negotiate for ability to mourn,’ Israeli-American Council says
Oct. 7 can’t be a day when Jewish students need to ask permission to be able to memorialize those lost on the bloodiest day for Jews since the Holocaust, according to the Israeli-American Council.

“We are not asking universities to suppress speech. We are asking them to govern their campuses,” Sagit Sade Attia, national senior director of academic initiatives at the council, told JNS. “They already have codes of conduct, civil rights obligations and the ability to enforce reasonable time, place and manner rules.”

“Oct. 7 cannot become an annual occasion when Jewish and Israeli students have to negotiate for the ability to mourn,” she said.

The council sent letters to more than 100 American universities, including the entire Ivy League, urging administrators to prepare for the third anniversary of Oct. 7 and ensure Jewish and Israeli students can commemorate the day safely and without disruption.

“For the Jewish and Israeli community, Oct. 7 is, first and foremost, a day of mourning, remembrance and trauma,” Sade Attia told JNS.

The letters were dispatched as anti-Israel student groups on multiple campuses promoted rallies and demonstrations for Oct. 7.

After the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, the council helped students organize memorial installations on campus, including displays inspired by the Nova festival and its victims.

It also brought hostage families and survivors to campuses, including Ivy League universities, according to Sade Attia.

The council has helped hundreds of students, faculty, staff and families navigate Jew-hatred, discrimination, academic challenges and the emotional effects of campus tensions since Oct. 7, according to Sade Attia. But the council started noticing a troubling disparity in the ways that schools responded to Jewish student-run commemorations and anti-Israel demonstrations.

“By the second anniversary, students were calling us while standing beside posters of hostages and victims, because they were being questioned about words such as ‘kidnapped’ or ‘murdered,’” she told JNS.

“At the same time, demonstrations celebrating or legitimizing terrorism, glorifying violence or targeting Zionists and Israelis were often treated primarily as questions of free expression,” she said. “That disparity is why we acted before Oct. 7 this year.”

The council called on universities to ensure that memorials can take place safely and with dignity, plan ahead for nearby demonstrations, and consistently enforce campus policies on harassment and disruption.

It also asked them to ensure academic programming about Oct. 7 and the Israel-Hamas war includes multiple perspectives and to engage directly with Jewish and Israeli students ahead of the anniversary.
Oct. 7 playwrights call for police probe after someone pulled fire alarm during staging at Northwestern University
The playwrights who penned a play about Oct. 7 are calling for police to investigate after someone pulled a fire alarm during a staging of the production at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., on Tuesday night.

Phelim McAleer, who wrote the play, “Oct. 7,” with his wife, Ann McElhinney, told JNS that “these people are demonic.”

“Disrupting the truth, disrupting stories of tragedy and heroism. They should be ashamed of themselves,” he said. “This just makes us all the more determined to take this play to every campus across America.”

“The police must investigate this,” he told JNS. “The people responsible must be found and prosecuted.”

The Hillel at Northwestern staged the play at the Cahn Auditorium on campus, presented by the Unreported Story Society and directed by Jeff Gurner. According to playwright McElhinney, the play was “disrupted by someone setting off a fire alarm.”

“The whole theater has to be evacuated,” she wrote. “This hits even stronger because it’s already Oct. 7 in Israel.”

According to McElhinney, attendees were allowed back into the theater, but security searched everyone, delaying the production. In video shared with JNS, the audience can be seen giving the play a standing ovation.


Israel supporters square off against pro-Palestine activists holding 'heartless' vigil on anniversary of October 7 attack
Pro-Palestine protesters have descended on the Melbourne and Sydney CBDs on the third anniversary of Hamas' October 7 attacks on Israel.

The co-ordinated bloody surprise attack on a music festival and the surrounding communities in southern Israel was carried out by the group which controls Gaza.

The terrorists killed about 1,200 people, mostly innocent civilians, which in turn triggered a massive, long-running bombing campaign from Israel on Palestine as retaliation.

Splinter pro-Palestine groups in Australia organised the vigils to coincide with the anniversary in Sydney and Melbourne, while some other pro-Palestine groups were opposed to them being held on the date.

In Melbourne, tensions between demonstrators and police quickly flared as a rival Israeli group held a counter-protest. Pictures from the scene show protesters, notably Israeli activist and broadcaster Avi Yemini, screaming at officers.

The event in Sydney was markedly less chaotic, with a crowd of no more than 150 and speakers reading poetry to the crowd. Though it followed weeks of criticism from politicians, including Premier Chris Minns, who labelled the vigils 'heartless'.

The 'Vigil for Gaza' outside Town Hall, organised by Jews Against the Occupation '48 and supported by a number of pro-Palestine groups, was promoted under the slogan 'Don't Let Israel Steal the Date'.

Promotional material for the event stated that 'its genocidal airstrikes began on October 7th 2023' and called for a vigil to mark the date in solidarity with Gaza.

The decision to hold the vigil on the anniversary also drew fierce criticism from NSW Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane who weighed in on the issue on Tuesday.

Sloane urged the NSW Government to oppose the event, describing it as insensitive and deliberately provocative.

'It is inappropriate, it is sickening, it is cruel, and it's provocative to be holding these events on October 7,' she said.

'To do it on any other day would show a little bit of credibility. To do it on this day shows their true motivation, which is to provoke, which is to make people feel uneasy, and that is not on.

'At a time when we all need to be coming together and respectfully sharing opinions, this is the antithesis of that.'

Minns was just as scathing and condemned the Sydney vigil, describing the event as 'heartless', while acknowledging authorities had no legal basis to prevent it from proceeding.

'There are some people suggesting it can be stopped. The Constitution doesn't allow that,' Minns said.

'They can certainly do that. It's not against the law, but, as a citizen, I've got a right to make a judgement on it, too.
Why did Australians walk into Hamas’ racist trap?
From the pulpit to the lecture theatre, antisemitism has found voice in Australia – just as Hamas planned with its October 7 slaughter of innocents. But why now? Was hatred of Jews a remnant of our Anglo-Christian heritage? Is it about extreme Islamism? Why would ‘progressives’ sign up to a racist cause? And what role did Israel play? Greg Sheridan is here to help us puzzle it out.


‘How deranged, how extreme’: Pro-Palestine protesters exposed in chilling October 7 interviews
News24 Digital Presenter Gabriella Power speaks with filmmaker Ami Horowitz about his experience confronting protesters at pro-Palestine demonstrations marking the anniversary of October 7.

“Today marks three years since Hamas terrorists killed 1,200 innocent people and abducted 251 hostages in the largest attack against Jews since the Holocaust on October 7, 2023,” Ms Power said.

“Today, pro -Palestine marches have been planned once again.

“Well done exposing these people.

“You've attended a few of these now, but it's brilliant because you actually get a proper insight into how deranged, how extreme these people really are.”




London’s 7 October celebrations exposed the patheticness of the Gaza cult
Stand up to a bully and, most of the time, you realise what a coward he really is. How true this is of the ‘pro-Palestine’ activists, the biggest cry-bullies going.

On Wednesday, around 100 ‘anti-Zionist’ students from London’s most prestigious universities gathered at King’s College London on the Strand. Surrounded by police, they then began to march through central London, clogging up traffic and belching their usual tedious slogans. They had been asked by police on four separate occasions to hold the protest on a different date. But they insisted on 7 October, the third anniversary of Hamas’s mass murder of 1,200 mostly Jewish people in southern Israel in 2023.

And they were pretty happy with themselves as they called for the destruction of Israel on the third anniversary of the gravest crime against Jews since the Holocaust. Or at least they were until they reached Russell Square. Because here, they were confronted with a group of counter-protesters – most of them British Jews – who had finally had enough of their bigotry.

It was an illuminating spectacle. Just moments before, these activists had been promising to ‘smash the Zionist settler state’. ‘Resistance is glorious’, they bellowed, referring to Hamas’s killing and raping spree on 7 October. But then they met some actual ‘resistance’ in the form of Jews and non-Jews, who were there in solidarity. It then took less than 20 minutes for the anti-Zionists to clear off. They hadn’t even reached University College London – where the march was supposed to end – before giving up.

There wasn’t any physical violence – just some pretty choice words from supporters of Israel. And if there’s one thing pro-Palestine activists hate more than Jewish people – sorry, ‘Zionism’ – it’s opposition. The pro-Pal protesters seemed stunned that the police hadn’t intervened to remove these pesky Jews from the streets, as has sadly become standard practice on days when there are big demos. Aren’t they supposed to be kept in a pen, or hemmed into an urban crevice where no one can see or hear them? Not this time.

Two moments stood out. One counter-protester had spilled beyond the police cordon separating the Zionists from the anti-Zionists. ‘Turns you on, does it? Raping Jewish girls?’, he said to a young man draped in a Palestinian flag. The man immediately retreated to the safety of his activist posse. Of course, he was speechless.

A particularly passionate Israeli provided another highlight. He had brought his own megaphone. ‘Come here and debate an Arab Israeli, you cowards!’, he bellowed. Again, none of the anti-Zionists appeared eager to take up the challenge. How could they? His very existence exposes one of the key lies of the Palestine cult. If Israel really were an ‘apartheid’ state, as ignorant activists claim, then Arab Israelis would not enjoy the full citizenship rights that they currently do.





 




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Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



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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