Pages

▼

Saturday, October 24, 2026

10/24 Links: Realignment and the Realities of the Middle East; Inside Israel, I see how little haters worldwide understand this election; Ireland, You're Not the Hero You Think You Are

From Ian:

Realignment and the Realities of the Middle East
Most diplomats are judged by their ability to stay out of the news, but Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack made headlines this week. Speaking at the Global Security Forum in Doha, he said, "America as the guarantor to the world, for the last 80 years, it is no longer there." Accordingly, the United States is changing its posture in the Middle East. The old arrangement, under which Americans provided security for the region's oil exports, is being restructured. "What's happening in this administration is not an abandonment. It's a message for realignment."

Barrack did not announce a change in policy so much as describe a shift that many Americans have hoped would occur for decades. The U.S. military has enabled its regional allies to break Iran's chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, but if the allies themselves could keep the Middle East relatively tranquil and allow the oil to flow freely, it would relieve a massive headache for Washington. Saudi Arabia's attempt to stop the Houthis from menacing its territory and the Red Sea shipping lanes shows how difficult this will be to accomplish without first defeating Iran.

The Doha remarks did not announce an immediate withdrawal, and the United States is still very active in the region: The military continues to protect ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, a third aircraft-carrier strike group and another Marine expeditionary unit are on their way there as rumors swirl of intense American and Israeli preparations for a post-midterm strike on the Islamic Republic.

American military might is upsetting Iran's strategy of impoverishing the world by bottling up the Gulf's resources. Thanks to the courage and skill of our service members, and the technical wizards who have found ways to bypass the Strait, more oil is leaving the Gulf now than before the war with Iran began. Gas prices remain high, but the extra output should help drive that down.

America's regional allies are still growing increasingly concerned about our steadfastness. It is not easy to draw a straight line between the foreign policies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. And as the danger from Iran has grown, princes and presidents have tried to reduce the risk of abandonment. Trump is far more willing to confront Iran than any of his predecessors, but his successors will likely be more cautious, particularly if the political cost to this administration is high.

For most of the last decade, numerous allies have tried to tie themselves more closely to the American-led regional order. Most have sought firmer security guarantees. Last year, President Trump designated Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally and stated in an executive order that the United States would defend Qatar if it is attacked. Many of the Abraham Accords nations began coordinating more openly with Israel on defense issues.
The Netherlands confronts Israel while hiding from its own Jewish history
On September 22 the Netherlands began enforcing a decree that makes it a crime, punishable by up to six years in prison, to buy or sell Israeli goods produced beyond the 1967 armistice line. Customs officers at Schiphol Airport are reportedly searching luggage from Tel Aviv for wine and dates. The government says it is meeting its obligations under international law.

No Dutch decree threatens prison for a bottle of Turkish wine from occupied Northern Cyprus, Moroccan phosphate from Western Sahara, or a cotton shirt from Xinjiang. China, Turkey, Morocco, and many other governments with disputed territory can sell freely in Amsterdam. Of all the countries in the world, the Netherlands wrote a criminal statute for exactly one, and it is the Jewish state.

From most European countries that would be ordinary bias or hypocrisy. From the Netherlands, it is something else. To explain why, we are compelled to share our own families' experience in the country we grew up in, and about what Anne Frank's diary left out.

Many know the Dutch from cheese, herring and Anne Frank. Two of those are accurate. The diary gave the world an image of ordinary Dutch people risking everything to hide a Jewish family. That story is true, but as a portrait of the nation it is almost exactly backwards. The helpers were real, but they were rare. The diary turned these singular saviors into the whole country, and the Dutch were happy to let that be the narrative.

Here is the rest. The Dutch Nazi party had over 75,000 active members during World War 2, several times the few tens of thousands who ever joined the resistance. After the war, 425,000 Dutch individuals were accused of active collaboration with the Nazis, which is nearly 5% of the wartime population.

The machinery of persecution in the Netherlands was Dutch
The Germans did not even bother with a military administration. Unlike France or Belgium, the Netherlands got a civilian one, and the machinery of persecution was Dutch. The municipal registry handed over every Jewish address. Local police carried out the raids. The Amsterdam tram company drove Jews to the collection points and billed the occupier for the fare. In 1943, Dutch civilians formed a unit to collect a German bounty for every Jew in hiding they turned in. The Frank family was discovered, likely on a Dutch tip, and sent through that machinery to Westerbork and then east.

Of about 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands, roughly 102,000 were murdered, three in four, the highest rate in Western Europe. Dutch authorities often implemented the anti-Jewish orders with zeal. Fortunately for our families, that was not the whole population: thousands of Dutch citizens disobeyed their authorities and risked their lives for their Jewish neighbors. But they were the exception. Survivors, our grandparents among them, came home to find neighbors occupying their houses, and in 1946 the city sent them back tax bills covering the years they had spent in concentration camps. Amsterdam's tram company was still chasing the German government in 1947 for payment on its final deportation run. The Dutch government did not apologize for the treatment of its Jews until 2020.

None of this obliges the Dutch to admire Israel's government or policies towards the Palestinians, and we don't doubt that the images from the war in Gaza produced real revulsion. But something else happened underneath it. The Israeli psychoanalyst Zvi Rex once put it in a sentence: the Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz. If the Jewish state can be cast as the perpetrator of the age, then the descendants of the people it was built for are owed nothing, and the tax bills and the tram fares and the bounties are finally paid off. The Dutch found a way to liberate themselves from feeling guilty.

When NOS, the Dutch public broadcaster, began describing Israel's conduct as "genocidal violence," following a report about Gazan casualties that turned out to be incorrect, leaked emails published online showed the editor-in-chief applauding the decision and justifying it by the lack of complaint emails it received. True, there aren't many Dutch Jews left to write them.


Stephen Pollard: Inside Israel, I see how little haters worldwide understand this election
There is a contradiction at the heart of next week’s election in Israel.

It is, for sure, an election about Benjamin Netanyahu – about his past record and, even more, about where Israel would be be heading were he to remain as prime minister.

But those questions have very different meanings inside and outside Israel.

Outside – for almost the entire rest of the world – the issue of Netanyahu is the issue of the Gaza war, with the prime minister having become a canvas on which Israel-haters draw whatever they wish.

Accusations of genocide and war crimes are directed at Israel generally, but specifically they are thrown at Netanyahu as the exemplification of everything the Israel-haters allege.

In as much as they care about the election, the perception outside Is that it is test to see if Israelis generally are the monsters they allege, or if they have the basic decency to eject him.

I’ve spent the past week in Israel and it’s clear that the Bibi question inside Israel is very different.

For one thing, although there is a debate about the tactics and strategy of the Gaza war, there is no significant debate about the idea of it. Both left and right understand that. Of course they do: Israel itself was traumatised on October 7 – every part of it.

The idea that the Gaza war was an optional fight is not merely a luxury belief held only by those who have never had to fight to exist.

It’s a decadent view by those who want Israel – and Jews – wiped out.

There are of course huge debates about October 7 and its aftermath – not least how it could have happened, and Netanyahu’s refusal to permit a proper state inquiry.

Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, Avigdor Lieberman – anyone with even a faint hope of succeeding Bibi has made setting up such an inquiry their first promise.

But the real Bibi question inside Israel isn’t about Gaza, it’s about Israel.

Until the 7 October massacre, it was not uncommon to hear sane, sensible people talk of civil war, with the protests over the proposed judicial reforms symbolising the raging debate over the future direction of the country.

Israel came together after 7 October, but those divisions have not gone away.
Gil Hoffman: Would ousting Netanyahu cure Israel's chronic public relations failures?
AS I POINTED out in my new book, in a 60 Minutes interview five months ago, Netanyahu blamed antisemitism’s resurgence on “a concerted effort by several states to vilify Israel primarily on social media and the standard media, too, and we have not fought back yet.”

“We have not done well on the propaganda war,” Netanyahu said in the interview. “We have to fight back against these lies, this propaganda, with the only weapon we have, which is the truth.”

“I am trying to do that now, and we will try to do that with much greater effort, because we have left the battlefield to our enemies, and boy do they lie – all the time,” he continued.

If Netanyahu keeps that promise and devotes his next government to the narrative war that he himself admits his governments have not engaged in before, perhaps international perception of Israel will improve with him remaining in power.

But for that to happen, he would need to muzzle MKs in his political bloc, who were quoted in an Associated Press piece that ran in The Washington Post this week, titled: “In their own words: Israeli politicians’ extreme speech surges ahead of elections.”

The article features the number two candidate on the Religious Zionist Party and Zehut list, Moshe Feiglin, saying that Gazans “must be expelled by all possible means, such as cutting off their water, and whoever wants to drink a bottle will leave. Killing them all would be incredible.”

Otzma Yehudit’s Yitzhak Kroizer is quoted as saying, “In Jenin, there are no innocent civilians. In Jenin, there are no innocent children.”

And MK Amit Halevi from Netanyahu’s own Likud is quoted about produce from the West Bank, saying, “The bottom line is that the salad you are eating contains a great deal of Palestinian poison.”

The next Knesset could include MKs who care deeply about improving Israel’s public image. I purposely won’t single out a candidate four days before the election, but the forum on Israel’s relationship with the Diaspora hosted this week by the ANU museum (available on YouTube) gives hope.

Maybe too much of the world will hate us no matter who is in the Knesset.

At my election briefing at Shivtei Yisrael synagogue in Ra’anana this week, Australian Jewish leader Danny Lamm, who recently made aliyah, recalled how hard a time he had getting meetings with left-wing leaders for then-Labor Party leader Merav Michaeli when he brought her down under.

And maybe a relationship with the US president matters more than the rest of America.

Trump’s endorsement of Netanyahu was vigorous, and Gadi Eisenkot and his prospective foreign minister Yair Lapid admitted that they tried and failed to persuade the American administration to prevent the endorsement.

The beauty of democracy is that all voters get to decide this big question for themselves if it’s a factor for them when they cast their ballots.

No matter who wins, let’s hope that the polls about Israel and its leadership are better soon – in America and worldwide.
Fleur Hassan-Nahoum: Israel must stop fighting itself and start winning the information war
One of the main reasons I joined Ofer Winter and the People of Israel party is that Winter is the only general I have met who understands that the information battlefield operates alongside the kinetic battlefield – and that both are matters of national security.

The answer is not simply to spend more money. Resources distributed across disconnected bodies can generate activity without results. Israel needs a unified national framework that turns existing capabilities into a coordinated strategic force.

The People of Israel party proposes establishing a National Command for Strategic Narrative and Public Diplomacy, led by Yoseph Haddad. It would coordinate government bodies, communications professionals, technology experts, independent organizations, and international partners, while respecting institutional responsibilities and operational security.

Its mission would go beyond responding to controversies. It would monitor emerging narratives, anticipate information crises, develop proactive campaigns, mobilize credible international voices, and assess whether communications influence understanding and behavior.

The Foreign Ministry, Government Press Office and IDF Spokesperson’s Unit would remain essential. But they should form part of a broader national capability, rather than carry the burden alone.

The command must be led by experienced professionals chosen for expertise, judgment and results – not political loyalty. Public diplomacy needs its own generals: people who understand international media, audience psychology, digital platforms and narrative warfare.

International opinion affects Israel’s diplomatic relationships and its leaders’ freedom of action. Hostile narratives can spread faster than official corrections. Jewish communities and Israel’s supporters are left answering allegations without timely information or coordinated support. Meanwhile, internal disputes consume energy that should be directed toward those undermining Israel abroad.

The irony is painful. Israel has world-leading capabilities in intelligence, cybersecurity, technology and crisis response. It knows how to identify threats, assemble expertise and act urgently when the stakes demand it. The challenge is to apply that seriousness to the information battlefield – and recognize that no political office can own all the talent required to succeed.

The government must decide what it wants to protect: its monopoly over the national message, or Israel’s ability to defend itself in the world.

Israel cannot afford to turn the defense of its international standing into another arena for domestic political competition. The country’s resources and ingenuity should be directed outwards: countering hostile propaganda, strengthening alliances and making Israel’s case to the world.

The government’s responsibility is not to monopolize Israel’s voice. It is to ensure Israel has the strongest possible voice. Until that distinction is understood, we will keep fighting over who controls the effort while our adversaries exploit the vacuum.

The information war will not wait for our politics to catch up.
Report says Netanyahu ordered change to Israel’s position on Falklands; FM denies shift
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told Israeli diplomats to change Jerusalem’s official position over the Falkland Islands, the UK’s The Telegraph reported Saturday amid Israel’s deteriorating relations with the United Kingdom. The Israeli embassy in London denied the report.

According to The Telegraph, which cited anonymous sources, Netanyahu ordered Israeli diplomats to back Argentina’s call for direct talks with Britain over the territory.

Argentina, under President Javier Milei, one of Israel’s staunchest supporters, maintains its longstanding claim to sovereignty over the islands. The two countries fought a 1982 war over the islands.

The Telegraph reported that the shift stopped short, however, of formally endorsing Argentina’s sovereignty claim. The Falkland Islands are officially a British overseas territory, although Argentina claims that it, not the UK, has sovereignty over the islands, which it refers to as Islas Malvinas.

The paper reported the change came amid Israeli anger over British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband’s decision last month to impose economic sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

However, Alex Gandler, a spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in Britain, denied the report. “I categorically deny this allegation. No such directive exists,” he wrote on X.


Ricochet Podcast: A Great Deal of Ruin Indeed
The great Douglas Murray, bestselling author of The Strange Death of Europe and On Democracies and Death Cults, joins James and Steve to discuss the mass immigration problem he's been sounding the alarm on for over a decade. As ever, Murray is unflinching in defense of civilization against the barbarous rioters and the myopic elites enabling them. Plus, James and Steve raise an eyebrow each at Ilhan Omar's uncertainty over an important detail about one of her marriages. The duo also talk about all kinds of food: fast, foreign, and regrettable.


travelingisrael.com: Ireland, You're Not the Hero You Think You Are
Ireland has become the most anti-Israel country in Europe. How did that happen?




Iranians scheming to assassinate US personnel, memo to Rubio warns
The Iranian regime has increased efforts to target U.S. officials in the Middle East and elsewhere, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton said in an unclassified memo sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday and obtained by Axios.

“The lethal plotting efforts by Iranians against U.S. citizens have reached advanced stages in both the Middle East and certain other countries,” the memo reads.

The underlying intelligence concerning Tehran’s plotting has already been shared with senior U.S. State Department officials, according to the memo.

As the director of national intelligence, Clayton oversees 18 member agencies of the U.S. Intelligence Community and he serves as the primary intelligence adviser to the president.

Separately, CNN reported on Friday that the U.S. has rushed to reduce its staff in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon.

A State Department official told the U.S. network that these countries “will see temporary changes to staffing levels under restricted operations.”

The departures of some diplomats and their family members are described in the report as “chaotic déjà vu” as many of them have only recently returned to their posts in the wake of their previous departures during the war with Iran earlier this year.

“This echoes the chaos families experienced earlier this year. Some had barely settled back in before being told to leave again,” Nikki Gamer, the spokesperson for the American Foreign Service Association, told CNN.

“They are understandably upset, confused, and angry,” she added.

U.S. officials are concerned that the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen could expand their attacks beyond Saudi Arabia to other states in the region, Axios reported.


Turkey opens trial of Netanyahu, 34 other Israelis over Gaza-bound Sumud flotilla interception
An Istanbul court on Friday opened the trial of 35 Israelis, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, and IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, over the Israeli Navy’s interception of the Gaza-bound Sumud flotilla.

Following the first hearing, the court ordered authorities to determine whether the defendants own assets in Turkey, upheld their arrest warrants, and called for consideration of legal proceedings against additional Israelis.

The hearing took place at Istanbul’s 11th Criminal Court, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency.

Flotilla participants who had filed complaints against Israel attended, along with lawyers and representatives of Turkish organizations. None of the Israeli defendants were present.

The court directed authorities to check whether the 35 defendants own real estate or other property in Turkey. There were no reports that assets had been frozen or property seizure orders issued.

The court also upheld decisions related to requests for Interpol Red Notices. However, there is no confirmation that Interpol itself has issued such notices against the defendants.


IDF, Shin Bet forcibly evacuate 2,000 Hebron Palestinians in response to deadly Hamas attack
IDF troops, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), Border Police officers, and the Judea Regional Brigade forcibly evacuated 2,000 Hebron-area Palestinians and destroyed an unspecified number of structures in the vicinity over the weekend in response to Friday morning’s deadly Hamas terrorist attack.

St.-Sgt. Ron Yonatan Roytman, 23, from Ashkelon, and Sgt. Yuval Shai Svilem, 20, from Hod Hasharon, were killed in the attack, while three others were lightly wounded.

Two terrorists were killed during the confrontation, and the IDF said no additional terrorists were involved.

The attack took place at Judea Junction, where the two Hamas terrorists traveling in a car opened fire on four soldiers stationed at the junction. IDF sources estimated that the attackers had originally intended to continue past the junction and carry out a larger attack on the heavily trafficked Route 35 but opened fire after realizing they would be unable to proceed past the IDF control.

The forced evacuations from Hebron appear to be different from other recent incidents.

Although in early 2025, Israel cleared areas of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur al-Shams in the West Bank, evacuating close to 40,000 Palestinians, those areas had experienced well-documented mass terror incidents dating back to early 2022.

The IDF carried out multiple temporary evacuations at that time and even sent in the Palestinian Authority to fight large and organized terror groups before undertaking the mass evacuation and destroying several structures in those areas.

In contrast, this time, the IDF provided little information about the offenses of the 2,000 evacuated Palestinians, other than to say that they were familially connected to the Hamas-linked Gaza clan.


Police find Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ in home of suspect in deadly shooting near Paris
Police found a copy of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” at the home of the man suspected of a gun attack in the Paris suburbs that killed one person and wounded five, a source close to the investigation told AFP on Saturday.

The source also reported the presence of a Bible and a Quran in the apartment of the 39-year-old suspect, partly identified as Kevin T., in the town of Plaisir outside Paris.

He was arrested Friday in possession of a submachine gun and tear-gas grenades in his car, after the victims were shot as a vehicle drove through the working-class town of Trappes and neighboring La Verriere.

One of those wounded was a 12-year-old girl who was hit by bullets eight times. She is in critical condition, authorities said.

French anti-terror investigators said earlier Saturday they had extended his detention.

President Emmanuel Macron branded the shooting a “racist terrorist attack,” as most of the victims were from foreign backgrounds. Illustrative: A German edition of Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ (‘My Struggle’) on display at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, December 11, 2015. (Matthias Balk/dpa via AP, File)

The victim was identified as Pengo Bossio Wangi, a 26-year-old of African origin who was an up-and-coming mixed martial arts fighter.

Hundreds of people rallied Saturday at the spot where he was killed, brandishing placards that called for “justice” and holding a minute of silence in his memory.

“It could have been anyone. He opened fire on blacks, Arabs. He knew the majority of the population here in Trappes is Muslim,” a local shopkeeper of North African origin told AFP.


Ex-Panorama producer accuses BBC of pro-Palestine bias
A former senior producer on Panorama has accused the BBC of bias in its coverage of the conflict in Gaza.

Phil Craig, who spent two decades working for the corporation, claimed a “new, more radical generation” had taken over the broadcaster.

The veteran producer, who was later chief creative officer of Discovery Networks International and head of factual for the Australian broadcaster ABC, warned that output from the BBC was being “insufficiently policed”.

Speaking at the Battle of Ideas festival last Saturday, he said: “I’m afraid as I saw what played out in Gaza, my career-long faith in the BBC, just ebbed away. In its fairness and objectivity.” The ‘outrageous’ hospital moment

Mr Craig, who was recruited by the BBC from Cambridge University, where he read history, added: “Of course, news makes mistakes. We all know news coverage, it can be faulted. There are wars, people spin them, both sides spin, and there’s propaganda.

“But all the mistakes in this particular war seem to be in the same direction. Mistakes of hiring people with incredibly partisan views or maybe even hiring people who were actually part of Hamas. The most outrageous of all, the October hospital moment.”

Mr Craig was referring to the criticism the BBC faced for its coverage of the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, when a correspondent speculated on air that an Israeli air strike was probably to blame. Western intelligence agencies later concluded that a misfired Hamas rocket was to blame.

He said: “It really worried me. I suspect the thing that caused all this is group think. It’s a new generation, perhaps, a new, more radical generation, young people, activists, people insufficiently policed, insufficiently guided, old principles not being enforced in the way they have been on us.”

Recalling his production company’s work on a documentary for the broadcaster in 1998, titled The Fifty Years War: Israel and the Arabs, Mr Craig said they had been held to “super high standards” of balance and fairness.

He later told The Telegraph he had watched the BBC’s coverage of the alleged hospital strike with “mounting alarm and dismay, and noted how it helped fan fires all around the world, including literal fires at synagogues”.

He added: “Anyone who has ever worked for the corporation’s news operation knows its global influence, and in this case it was deployed in entirely the wrong way.”


FBI Raided Home of El-Sayed's Mother, Senate Candidate's Sister Wrote in Unearthed Article
The FBI raided the home of the left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed's mother in the early 2000s, likely in connection with a terror financing case that shut down the Islamic charity she worked for, according to El-Sayed's sister, Eman Abdelhadi.

Abdelhadi, a University of Chicago professor and the daughter of El-Sayed's Egyptian-born mother, Fatten Elkomy, referenced the raid in a June 2016 article detailing her experience at a New York City vigil for the Pulse nightclub shooting. Elkomy took issue with a line from one of the vigil's speakers, then-New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who promised to "do what we did after 9/11" and "build back a monument better than ever before."

"I flashed back to memories of the FBI raiding mosques, homes—including my own—and Muslim charity organizations," Abdelhadi wrote. "If the crowd remembered how the state had imprisoned thousands of Muslims after 9/11, it certainly did not show it or did not care."

Abdelhadi did not elaborate on the raid in the article. She did, however, further detail her experiences with the FBI in an August 2024 piece in Zeteo headlined, "I Tweeted Chicago Protesters Were 'Ready' for Harris. Then, I Got the Call From the FBI."

"As a Muslim, I am no stranger to FBI surveillance," Abdelhadi wrote. "When I was a teenager, my mother worked for an Islamic philanthropic organization that delivered humanitarian aid to orphans and refugees worldwide. It was one of at least nine muslim philanthropic groups closed by the FBI in the early 2000s."

"Between work, school, and mothering was the FBI," she continued. "I remember watching her comb through our house, our books, our CDs, our cassette tapes for anything that might be misinterpreted if our house got raided," Abdelhadi wrote of her mother, who is also El-Sayed’s mother. "She fielded calls from the FBI every once in a while. I can picture her face after those calls, terrified but defiant. We learned to whisper even in our homes, to be careful what we said over the telephone."

Abdelhadi was describing the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA), where her mother, Elkomy, worked from 1999 through at least 2004, when the nonprofit was shut down after the Treasury Department designated its "worldwide network" for funding terrorism, including the precursor organization of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Hamas. The FBI raided the IARA's Columbia, Mo., office, where Elkomy worked, on Oct. 14, 2004, according to a Columbia Daily Tribune article, which notes that "federal agents interviewed Elkomy, 44, for about three hours yesterday. 'All the conversation was trying to find how we do work and how I do work,'" Abdelhadi told the paper.

It's unclear exactly when the FBI raided Elkomy's home, but the raid was likely in connection with the investigation into IARA. The FBI and the Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.


Hungary’s abandoned synagogues are finding new life — and attracting new congregants
While the Hungarian Jewish community was celebrating the reopening of its 100-year-old Rákospalota Synagogue last month, a local woman approached Rabbi Shlomo Köves.

“She saw the crowd around the synagogue and came over to me and said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on here, but can I join?'” recalled Köves, the head of EMIH, a Hungarian Jewish organization affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. “I brought her inside, and then she told me she’s Jewish. It turns out she lives there with her children, and she hadn’t been to synagogue before. Now, she comes every Friday night.”

That story reflects the mission of Köves, whose organization says it has helped reopen eight synagogues in Hungary over the past 15 years.

During Synagogue Week in September, an annual Budapest festival held around the High Holidays, two historic synagogues were rededicated after being stripped of their sacred functions for decades.

The massive Rákospalota Synagogue, designed in neoclassical and Art Deco styles, was reconsecrated after being used as a National Library storage warehouse for 60 years. A second synagogue, dating back to 1870, was reopened as a prayer center exclusively for Jewish teens.

“There are many old synagogues around Hungary, including many that still look like shuls from the outside,” Köves told The Times of Israel on a video call. “We have a historical responsibility to reclaim them. Most of the Jews here don’t have an active affiliation to religion, but this is what connects them to their roots.” Rabbi Shlomó Köves at the reopening of the Rákospalota Synagogue in Budapest, September 17, 2026 (EMIH) A community shattered by the Holocaust

Before World War II, Budapest was home to more than 200,000 Jews, who comprised roughly a quarter of the city’s population. It was a wealthy and culturally active community that financed the building of dozens of grand and ambitious synagogues in neighborhoods across the city, some of the finest in Europe, Köves said.

But about half of the city’s Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and the communist regime that took hold after the war further weakened religious life. From 1948, the state nationalized some synagogue buildings and bought others from Jewish communities for “symbolic” prices, Köves said. Houses of worship were transformed into studios, warehouses and other public facilities, even as many still looked like synagogues from the street.

Under communism, Jewish citizens hid their Jewish identities, often from their own children, and assimilation was widespread. Even today, at a Jewish high school associated with his organization, fewer than 5% of students have two Jewish parents, Köves said. Tales of people discovering a hidden Jewish background through a parent or grandparent are common. Shoes on the Danube, a Holocaust memorial to victims of the Arrow Cross who were shot on the bank of the river Danube in Budapest during the Holocaust. (Flickr/Neil)

Demographers disagree about how many Jews live in Hungary today, with estimates ranging from 45,000 to as high as 120,000, depending in part on differing definitions of Jewish ancestry. The vast majority, as much as 95%, live in Budapest, with a small community in the country’s second-largest city, Debrecen, bolstered by about 400 Israeli students studying at the university there, Köves said.

“What’s unique about the Jewish community here is that it’s one of the few places in Europe with deep roots in the country,” said Köves, who tracks his family’s history in Hungary back 250 years. “That is to say, most of the Jews in France are from North Africa, and most of the Jews in Germany immigrated from Soviet states, but this is a population that has remained here for more than two centuries.”
Less than a day after stabbing attack, Chabad man returns to wrapping tefillin in Manhattan
Less than 24 hours after he was stabbed in midtown Manhattan, Yosef, a Chabad-Lubavitch man from Crown Heights, was back on the same street where he’d been assaulted, popping into Diamond District businesses as usual to help employees wrap tefillin.

Yosef, 26, who did not share his last name to maintain his privacy, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he was back on 47th Street on Thursday afternoon, the day after the stabbing, without missing a beat in his Monday-through-Thursday rounds even as police investigate the incident as a possible hate crime.

A number of the people he visited pieced together that the widely circulated footage of a man being stabbed the previous night was of him.

“They were in shock. They were obviously scared for me,” said Yosef, who has been wrapping tefillin and distributing Shabbat candles to Jewish Diamond District employees for about three years. He started that routine when his father, a Chabad Jew who works in the jewelry business, realized he needed his son’s help to handle the demand for those acts. Yosef told Chabad.org that he was “still shaken” by the attack a day later.

'We can't allow hate to stop us,' Yosef urges
Still, he told JTA, “We can’t allow some hate to stop us.”

Yosef said he felt it was important to communicate that message because “we need more mitzvahs in the world, we need more light in the world.”

Yosef was taken to Bellevue Hospital on Wednesday evening around 6 p.m., where medical staff assessed that he had no internal bleeding and would not need stitches. No arrests have been made, but the assailant has been described as a woman in her 40s.

The attack has renewed concerns about security that have faced Chabad adherents and institutions, which often host public events and maintain a visible street presence. But the threat didn’t diminish their presence in midtown Manhattan on Friday.

Multiple Chabad men stood under a bright yellow tent on the sidewalk wrapping tefillin for a steady stream of workers in the heavily Jewish Diamond District.

“The Rebbe says that the way to defeat darkness is only through the addition of light,” said Shmuel Cohen, who was handing out small photographs of the movement’s late leader, the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

Cohen told JTA that he had not heard about the attack that took place just down the block two days earlier, though his partner under the sidewalk tent had. Cohen said that the best way to respond is through “the observance of Torah and mitzvot without being ashamed of our Judaism but presenting it to everyone.”
‘Nobody Wants This’ creator disagrees with star Adam Brody’s ‘genocide’ comments
As Netflix comedy “Nobody Wants This” returns for a third season, creator Erin Foster has responded to comments from one of the show’s stars, Adam Brody, about the Israel-Hamas conflict, saying she disagrees with his claims that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

In a recent interview with GQ, Brody was asked about the conflict and said, “Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine. It’s awful that it’s taken so much death and misery, but it does feel like it’s reaching a breaking point that it should have a while ago. I’m hopeful that another administration can really do some good and correct some of these policies that are helping that situation be as awful as it is.”

Brody, a Jewish actor, plays a rabbi in the Netflix series.

He did not specify what he meant by “another administration.” Israel’s closely fought election will take place on October 27. US midterm elections will take place a week later, with the Democratic Party expected to make gains in the US Congress. US President Donald Trump’s term ends in early 2029.

According to reports by Variety and Deadline, Foster addressed the issue on an upcoming episode of the “Not Skinny but Not Fat” podcast, saying, “I disagree with him, and that’s OK.”

“You know, it’s complicated,” Foster said of Brody’s comments. “I think our work environment, our set, is very similar to dinner tables around the world where people are having debate and discussion and disagreeing. And, you know, while I love Adam, I also disagree with him, and that’s OK.”

Israel has strongly rejected accusations that it committed genocide in Gaza, saying it is fighting against a terror group deeply entrenched within the enclave and operating from within residential areas, hospitals, schools and mosques. It says it makes significant efforts to minimize harm to civilians.

Foster grew up Christian and converted to Reform Judaism in 2019 before marrying her husband, Simon Tikhman, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants.

The hit Netflix series is loosely inspired by her own life experience with Tikhman, a record label owner.

Foster reportedly said in the podcast that the show is a “love letter to Judaism.”

“It’s because of how beautiful of an experience I’ve had becoming Jewish and being a Jewish person. And sitting here right now, at this time in the world when there is almost zero positive representation of Jewish people, I think it’s so important to have that.”





 


at