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Friday, November 06, 2026

11/06 Links Pt2: What Boy George taught me about being Jewish; By backing El-Sayed in the midterms, Democrats betrayed the liberal values they claim to defend

From Ian:

What Boy George taught me about being Jewish
Four decades later, the rules of conformity have changed, but the pressure to conform hasn’t. Look at almost any gathering of celebrities and you’ll see the same familiar symbols: red-hand pins, kaffiyehs, and carefully rehearsed declarations about Gaza. Artists who spent their careers celebrating individual expression suddenly seem reluctant to express an individual opinion. For many, the easiest option is to follow the crowd or remain silent.

Boy George chose neither. He watched in horror as Hamas massacred young people dancing at the Nova music festival on October 7. He released a song, “We Will Dance Again,” in which he sings, “If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.” He refused calls to boycott Israel, and endured condemnation from former friends and colleagues. And then he got on a plane and came to Tel Aviv.

The man once considered a radical for challenging society’s conventions about gender is now considered a radical for standing with the Jews. But there’s no contradiction. He is doing precisely what he did 40 years ago: refusing to let the dominant culture tell him what to think.

The eyeliner hasn’t changed. Neither has the courage.

As Dara Horn observes, the essence of Jewish survival has never been the ability to fit in. It has been the determination to stand apart when standing apart is the right thing to do. To question the powerful, challenge conventional wisdom, and refuse to trade truth for acceptance.

Boy George isn’t Jewish, but he has spoken about his deep kinship with the Jewish people. Perhaps he recognizes something of himself in our story.

Last night, as he stood before thousands of Israelis — religious and secular, left and right, gay and straight — I thought about what a remarkable lesson this was for my daughter. Not just about standing up for Israel. Not even about standing up against antisemitism. But simply about standing up. About having the courage to be different, the confidence to think for yourself, and the moral clarity to say what you believe even when everyone around you insists that you’re wrong.

We Jews have been doing that for thousands of years. And it has never been particularly fashionable.

Last night, a 65-year-old man in a sequin hat reminded us why it matters. And he made it look fabulous.
How China Weaponizes Jew-Hate
Using both its profitable blockbuster social media app TikTok and the nonprofit networks of Shanghai-based American citizen Neville Roy Singham and his wife Jodie Evans (founder of Code Pink), China has been able to foment Jew-hatred and unrest on the streets not only of the United States but also the United Kingdom.

Notably, the Chinese-funded People's Forum is out to end not only Israel but also America. At the 2024 People's Conference for Palestine, the organization's Forum executive director Manolo De Los Santos, who advocates for Cuba, also called for the complete destruction of the United States: "We have to bring down this empire with one million cuts, and those one million cuts have to come from every sector of struggle in this room."

According to the US House Ways and Means Committee: "Evidence suggests that The People's Forum and Code Pink have been funded and influenced by Mr. [Neville Roy] Singham and the communist Chinese government, both of which are foreign principals."

Historian Dara Horn suggests that tyrants and totalitarian regimes, to maintain or gain further power, promote the "Big Lie" of Hitler's Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels that the Jews are "evil." Evil in what way? Just fill in the blank with whatever you like, like a Rorschach test.

It probably helps to select a target that would rather just be left alone under its fig tree, a target disinclined to retaliate – as China already succeeded in doing by oppressing the peaceful Tibetans and enslaving and torturing the Uyghurs.

Now China has lit upon the Jews, who do not even live there, but who, as author and documentary filmmaker Pierre Rehov pointed out, are politically useful.

"These lies are all part of the foundational Big Lie: that antisemitism itself is righteous. If the Jews are collectively evil and have no right to exist, resistance against them is not only moral, it is good!... The only thing that varies is what you value the most. Say you're a religious Christian, then you are lied to that Jews are destroying Christianity, or that they killed Christ. Say you're a human rights activist, then Israel's the world's worst violator of human rights, and it doesn't matter that you're being told this by the Islamic Republic of Iran." — Dara Horn, interview, Times of Israel, September 3, 2026.
The Maccabi Tel Aviv scandal: when Islamic sectarians took over
The role of West Midlands Police is the hinge on which events swing from the bleak yet familiar tale of Islamic sectarianism into one of almost unimaginable incompetence and deceit. West Midlands Police’s justification was found in a ‘confidential report’ that it claimed had been made with the help of Dutch police, based on a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax Amsterdam the previous November. The report claimed that, after the match, Maccabi supporters had thrown ‘innocent members of the public into the river’ and had ‘intentionally targeted Muslim communities’. It alleged that police in Amsterdam had been forced to muster 5,000 officers to deal with the supposedly rabid threat.

More than a few eyebrows were raised when this report was leaked to the press, in late November last year. The scenes in Amsterdam had indeed made international headlines – but for a very different reason. Maccabi supporters were subjected to what members of Amsterdam’s local Arab population called a ‘Jew hunt’ on WhatsApp. It was Maccabi fans – not Amsterdam residents – who were thrown into the river, and it was Maccabi fans who were violently assaulted, in what Amsterdam’s own mayor referred to as an anti-Semitic attack.

The ‘confidential report’, it transpired, was the product of West Midlands Police’s own imagination. Its contents, unsurprisingly, were refuted by Dutch police as soon as it came to light. In January, it was revealed that the police force had consulted eight Muslim organisations in Birmingham prior to banning Maccabi supporters – three of which were mosques that had a history of promoting anti-Semitism. In the same month, West Midlands Police chief Craig Guildford admitted that the force had used AI in compiling its dossier against Maccabi supporters. This had led to a non-existent fixture against West Ham United being offered as ‘proof’ of the supposed violence of the Israeli fans. Guildford ‘retired’ from the force soon after (however, he is currently the subject of a gross-misconduct investigation by the police watchdog). More recently, in October, Conservative MP and shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy claimed that West Midlands Police suppressed intelligence that local Islamists had planned to arm themselves in preparation for Maccabi supporters.

Timothy himself was the subject of one of the most remarkable events of the whole grim affair. An Aston Villa supporter who grew up in Birmingham, he visited Villa Park on the night of the match. A large crowd of Muslim men had gathered outside the stadium. ‘Officer, take this dog away’, one of the men said to a police officer, gesturing at Timothy. The policewoman duly interrogated Timothy before leading him away. It was a chilling sight.

The ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters was a toxic synthesis of the various forces that many people feel are tearing the country apart: the breakdown of policing, an increasingly hostile and powerful Islamic sectarianism, and the official appeasement of anti-Semitism. Britain has never quite been the same since.


Anti-Israel shift in Democratic Party here to stay, Israeli experts warn
Progressives and social democrats want to “completely change the American political and social system,” a coalition that he expects to “gain power until the majority of Americans see where they are leading the United States,” he told JNS.

Martin Sherman, founder and CEO of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, is concerned yet hopeful.

“Certainly, I’m worried,” he told JNS. “I’m not sure that Israel can continue to rely on the United States as its sole strategic prop.”

“I don’t think we can work on the assumption that this is going to go away by itself,” he said. “I think it’s something that has to be confronted.”

For years, Israel has failed in its public diplomacy and in “presenting its case,” according to Sherman.

“I’ve warned that this is going to have strategic consequences, and it’s going to affect not only Israel but the Jews,” he told JNS. “Israel should invest between $2 billion and $3 billion a year in public diplomacy, which for Israel is very affordable.”

That investment, according to Sherman, would be but a “few percentage points of the state budget.”

“It’s no less strategically important than Israel’s strategic air fleet, air force,” he said. “This is something that has to be confronted very vigorously. Hopefully, it’s not too late to make an assertive assault on public opinion in the United States and in Europe.”

Danny Ayalon, Israeli ambassador to the United States from 2002 to 2006, is also hopeful. “Is everything lost?” he said. “Of course not.”

“It is up to Israel now, with the Jewish community in the United States, with the evangelical communities in the United States, with all our supporters in the United States, whether it is in business, defense,” he told JNS.

“We should, first of all, fight back and try to isolate those anti-Israelis, anti-Zionists, who basically are also anti-Jewish and antisemites,” he said. “It is high time to do that.”

Jews and Israelis are “not racist” against Muslims, he said.

“We are only against Muslims who support terror or call for the destruction of the State of Israel, like this Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan,” he told JNS.

The former Israeli envoy thinks that “we have to fight in a very, very coherent and coordinated way” and “should present a much better face of Israel, the true face of Israel.”

Mark Regev, who was Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2016 to 2020, said that 2027 won’t be the first time that there will be “many open antisemitic voices in the U.S. Congress.”

“If you go back to isolationism and nativism, that were once very common in the United States, yes, not wanting to let in Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and so forth,” he told JNS. “There was a time when that was much more common.” (Regev co-hosts a JNS podcast.)

Since World War II, there “haven’t been too many elected members of the House and the Senate who have been very public in their antipathy toward the Jewish people and the Jewish state,” he said.

“It’s definitely a trend,” he said. “Is that trend a passing trend, or is it something more sustainable? No one can answer that question.”

“We do know this,” he told JNS. “Antisemitism is the oldest hatred in history that has remarkable staying power.”


Abdul El-Sayed and the dawn of American sectarianism
The United States has had its first taste of the blight that has been eating at European democracies for five decades: Muslim immigration without integration or assimilation, leading to the election of sectarian candidates whose values conflict with those of the host nation. This, in essence, is democracy’s fatal flaw. Universal suffrage, plus immigration, minus integration, equals the election of illiberal candidates. Nothing about El-Sayed’s election is undemocratic. Nor was there anything undemocratic about Iqbal Mohamed, England’s independent MP for Dewsbury and Batley, rising in the House of Commons to defend first-cousin marriage because it “helps build family bonds”; or Mothin Ali, who dedicated his Leeds council seat to “the people of Gaza” with a cry of “Allahu Akbar”; or Rima Hassan, the La France Insoumise MEP who called Hamas’s action on October 7 “legitimate.” They are democracy made manifest. But given enough time, they may destroy it.

None of this would have surprised the liberals of old. John Stuart Mill wrote that “free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling… the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist.” Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding prime minister, put it more bluntly: in a multiracial society, people do not vote according to their interests but according to their race and religion.

The ancient Athenians knew it too. The prospect that non-Athenians might take part in elections haunted democracy’s first architects. In 451 BC, alarmed by the swelling number of citizens, the assembly passed Pericles’ law: no one would be a citizen unless both his parents were Athenian. The metics, resident foreigners nearly half as numerous as the citizens themselves, paid a special tax and served in the army, but never voted, could not own land, and risked enslavement if they married an Athenian woman. Aristotle defined the citizen as one who “shares in the administration of justice and in offices,” and held that a city should be composed, as far as possible, of equals and people who are similar.

Israel faces the same problem today. It has long been accused of apartheid, and few have the courage to explain the arithmetic that makes equality impossible. Between the Jordan and the Mediterranean live some seven million Jews and some seven and a half million Arabs. Give them all an equal vote and the Jews become a minority in a state built to protect them. Israel’s own leaders have said as much: Ehud Olmert warned in 2007 that if the two-state solution collapsed, “the State of Israel is finished.” Sensing which way the tide of history runs, the Knesset passed a Basic Law in 2018 declaring the right to national self-determination in Israel “exclusive to the Jewish People.” It is profoundly undemocratic, and perfectly understandable.

Western societies, by embracing multiculturalism or falling helplessly victim to it, may have sown the seeds of their own destruction. It falls to our generation and the next to solve the problem that Karl Popper glimpsed 80 years ago: must we be illiberal to protect liberalism?
Top Christian pro-Israel group goes after Vance for ‘dog whistle’ blaming Jews for midterm defeat
CUFI Action Fund, the political arm of Christians United for Israel, the powerhouse Christian Zionist group, went after Vice President JD Vance on Friday for his assertions that the war in Iran and the U.S.-Israel relationship were two major drivers of the historic GOP midterm losses on Tuesday, accusing him of effectively blaming Jews for the election results.

“After the blue wave crashed across the country on Tuesday, the Vice President seized the opportunity to blame…. Jews. Not once, mind you, but in a list of the top four reasons the Republicans lost, the Jews were effectively blamed twice if you can hear that pitch of dog whistle,” the group asserted.

The statement is notable not only on its own terms but as a signal of where the 10 million-member pro-Israel organization — a force within pro-Israel evangelical circles — leans in the upcoming 2028 Republican presidential primary. The group alluded to plans to hit back at Vance and others.

The CUFI Action Fund memo said Vance is “clearly, demonstrably, and unambiguously wrong,” pointing to polling showing that few voters named foreign policy as their top issue in the election. While it acknowledged the pressures the war has placed on the U.S. economy, it pointed blame toward those like Vance whom the memo accuses of having hampered the war effort.

“A significant portion of the pain was wrought by the Vice President and the other isolationists in halls or with microphones of power who have sought to stop and hamstring the war effort. This war should’ve been over months ago, and if the Vice President wants someone to blame for that, he needs only look in the mirror,” the memo continues. “The Vance-Carlson movement, which we call woke rightism, is as loud as their candidates are weak.”

CUFI Action Fund went on to lambast Democrats as well, saying, “So infected are key elements of the Democratic Party with Jew hatred that today, blaming American Jewish groups is a call to arms even in some local races where Israel and like issues are completely irrelevant.”


Adam Louis-Klein: By backing El-Sayed in the midterms, Democrats betrayed the liberal values they claim to defend
Many Democrats, including Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders, explicitly sought to shut down scrutiny of El-Sayed’s possible Muslim Brotherhood ties, including his half-sister’s exuberant response to the October 7 massacre and her own account of their mother’s involvement with the Brotherhood as a university student in Egypt in the early 1970s. In August, five Democratic senators – including Sheldon Whitehouse and Richard Blumenthal – had already boycotted a congressional hearing on the Brotherhood’s network in America.

Research by numerous scholars, including those affiliated with the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism & Policy (ISGAP), has shown that the Brotherhood operates through a decentralised network of ideologically aligned organisations and actors with only a small core of formal members. Regardless of formal affiliation, El-Sayed appears to embrace many of its aims, placing opposition to Israel at the centre of his politics. Rejecting the Brotherhood and all it represents ought to be an expression of progressive values.

The problem is hardly confined to political Islam, however. Many other movements and actors spread libels and propaganda about Israel and seek to justify the exclusion of Israelis, Jews, and “Zionists.” Historically, antizionism emerged from the convergence and mutual influence of communism, Arab nationalism, and Western postcolonialism. Today, it unites a broad coalition of actors who portray Israel as the beachhead of Western imperialism and a scapegoat for domestic problems.

The realignment underway in both parties will inevitably produce internal tensions. The Republican Party faces a growing divide between a rising anti-Islamist element – one that sees a civilisational war emerging inside the United States, driven by forces seeking to impose an Iranian-style social order – and an anti-Israel element that favours a regressive isolationism. The Democrats, on the other hand, risk continuing to exploit the genuine problem of anti-Muslim bigotry to subvert Jewish concerns about antisemitism and antizionism.

Jewish institutions have been slow to establish a clear boundary on antizionism. Polarisation and the absorption of propaganda have fragmented the Jewish response. While everyone agrees that "antisemitism” is a problem, the term lacks a stable referent, and fails to translate the core issue to the public. A mass educational effort is needed to teach the history of antizionist ideology, the harm it has caused to Jewish communities wherever it has become entrenched, and to condemn it clearly and directly.

The fight must be to win back and reconstruct a pluralist left, one that can expand its understanding of oppression to include antizionism. There are more Haley Stevenses out there – people willing to risk their careers and reputations to speak out against injustice. In the wake of Rogers’s defeat – and the continued institutional consolidation of antizionist hate – the stakes of doing so will only rise. But Stevens's decision poses a challenge to every individual confronted with a moment of historical and moral crisis.

As it is said in the book of Esther, “Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
Jonathan Tobin: Why do American Jews vote for antisemites like El-Sayed?
Politics flow from demography
In order to fully understand why the majority of Jews remain among the most loyal supporters of the Democrats, one needs to comprehend the cultural shift among Americans in general when it comes to politics. It is now axiomatic that in this hyper-partisan era, in which most Americans are thoroughly secular, politics now plays the role in their lives that was once played by religion.

That is even more the case for the overwhelming majority of Jews, who are non-Orthodox and politically liberal.

For this dominant sector of U.S. Jewish demography, liberal political stands—a list of beliefs that can shift with changing political fashions on the left—and devotion to the Democrats is their religion. Indeed, the positions taken by the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the policy arm of the largest U.S. Jewish denomination, are more or less those of most Democrats on a host of issues, many of which are not specifically Jewish in scope.

There has been a lot of talk about some movement toward the Republicans among Jews in recent years. Many Jewish liberals have been deeply shocked by the reaction to Oct. 7 from the American political left, especially as they saw their children targeted by pro-Hamas mobs on campuses. But it is yet to be proved that a significant percentage have drawn conclusions from this and are ready to change how they vote.

There was some reason to believe that in states like Florida, Jews were more likely to vote for candidates from a GOP that had become a lockstep supporter of the Jewish state. Trump’s efforts to combat antisemitism on college campuses also gave them a reason to switch sides. And some prominent Jews, like retired Harvard University legal scholar and longtime liberal advocate Alan Dershowitz, have done so.

But as the 2024 and 2026 elections showed, Jewish loyalty to the Democrats has continued even as they have largely transitioned into being the country’s anti-Israel party, Those who agree with Dershowitz appear to be the exceptions that prove the rule.

Part of the explanation comes not so much from ideology as it does from demography. As surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center have shown, the fastest growing sector of the American Jewish population is characterized by demographers as “Jews of no religion.”

That doesn’t just mean that they don’t practice Judaism. It encompasses a broad shift away from traditional ideas about what it means to be Jewish with devotion to religious faith, Jewish law and tradition and, above all, a sense of Jewish peoplehood being discarded. That has led to significant numbers of those who may identify as Jewish in some way but have no real connection to organized Jewish life, including synagogues, community centers and organizations that represent and serve Jews.

This is a function of the assimilation and intermarriage rates in the vicinity of 70% for non-Orthodox Jews, not critiques of Israeli policies or Netanyahu.


Abdul El-Sayed taps ex-Kamala Harris aide who once accused Zionists of ‘controlling’ US politics to lead transition team
Abdul El-Sayed has tapped a former Kamala Harris campaign aide who once claimed Zionists were “controlling” American politics to help lead his transition following his stunning Michigan Senate victory.

Brenda Abdelall, an Egyptian-American attorney who previously served as Harris’ director of Arab-American outreach during her 2024 presidential campaign, has been named transition director for the newly elected senator.

The appointment puts Abdelall back in the political spotlight over controversial remarks she made at an American Muslim Council convention.

The incendiary comments resurfaced during Harris’ presidential campaign and prompted a public defense from the Democratic nominee’s team.

“The Zionists have a strong voice in American politics,” Abdelall told The New York Sun in a 2002 interview while at the convention. “I would say they’re controlling a lot of it.”

Abdelall made the remarks after being asked about a speaker at the event who claimed Zionists were “destroying America.”

She responded that “destroying” was a harsh word, but went on to suggest supporters of Israel wielded significant control over American politics.

The comments first resurfaced in August 2024, shortly after Harris tapped Abdelall to lead her campaign’s outreach to Arab-American voters.


Jocelyn Benson Taps Openly Antisemitic Nation of Islam Leader and Farrakhan Acolyte To Serve on Transition Team
Michigan governor-elect Jocelyn Benson (D.) tapped a Nation of Islam leader who has pushed antisemitic conspiracy theories, referred to Jews as "the enemy," and promotes Nation of Islam literature that forbids interracial relationships to serve on her gubernatorial transition council.

Benson, who defeated Republican John James on Tuesday, picked Benton Harbor mayor Marcus Muhammad to serve on her 15-person transition team alongside Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Detroit mayor Mary Sheffield, and other Michigan Democratic leaders.

It comes even after Jewish organizations have denounced Muhammad over his antisemitic rhetoric and leadership role in the Nation of Islam, widely considered an anti-Jewish and anti-white hate group. The Combat Antisemitism Movement removed Muhammad from its mayoral advisory panel over the summer in response to a Washington Free Beacon report about his remarks and said it "will collaborate with no one who legitimizes" the Nation of Islam.

Muhammad is a "student minister" in the Nation of Islam. He is also a disciple of its firebrand leader Louis Farrakhan, who has compared Jews to "termites" and called Adolf Hitler "a great man."

Muhammad has repeatedly defended Farrakhan. After Farrakhan referred to Jews as "the Satan" during an infamous July 2020 sermon, Muhammad posted a photograph of Farrakhan with the caption "Yet for fear of the Jews no one spoke openly of him."

In a podcast interview with fellow Nation members this year, Muhammad referred repeatedly to "the enemy"—a term Nation of Islam members use to refer to Jews or white people—while discussing The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a controversial book that alleges Jews malignantly shape American foreign policy.

"They have the muscle, they have the money, they have power, they have influence," said Muhammad, who campaigned with Michigan senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D.) last week.

Muhammad invoked the Holocaust-era Nazi pogrom against Jews, writing about what he called "the ongoing Jewish and Gentile Kristallnacht against Black Muslim businesses." Muhammad attended and promoted a Farrakhan speech in 2023 in which Farrakhan favorably stated that "Hitler went against usury and Hitler attacked pornography that the Jews had put on the Germans."

Muhammad's comments about Jews and embrace of antisemitic conspiracy theories are often untied to criticism of Israel. He promoted another seminar of Farrakhan's in which the minister discussed The Secret Relationship Between Black and Jews, Vol. 2, an infamous Nation of Islam treatise which asserts that Jews were behind the transatlantic slave trade. Muhammad has promoted the Nation's "Muslim Program," which prohibits interracial relationships, as the "ultimate solution" to America's "race problem."
Tikvah Podcast: Ruth Wisse on Grievance, Gratitude, and the Transmission of Jewish Confidence
This has been a momentous week in American politics and, whether you cheer or mourn the results of the 2026 midterm elections, the Jewish people find themselves in a different America than they were in last week. In difficult times, there is no one better to strengthen Jewish spines than Ruth Wisse, longtime professor of Yiddish literature at Harvard, and, for the last many years, a senior distinguished fellow at Tikvah. It was earlier this year, in March, that she delivered the National Endowment for the Humanities' distinguished Jefferson Lecture.

Professor Wisse recently sat down at the Altneu synagogue in New York City with Caroline Bryk, the co-director of Tikvah's Jewish Parents Forum. They discussed grievance and gratitude, the transmission of Jewish confidence, the relationship of Jews and America, and what Professor Wisse would have us read.
Commentary Podcast: Advance Notice
We are joined by our Washington commentary columnist Jamie Kirchick to discuss the rising tide against Jews on both sides of the political spectrum and JD Vance pinning republican problems on the relationship with Israel despite polling data to the contrary, and hanging his hopes on the radical podcast sphere of influence. Plus, can democrats build a case against Trump that could convince senate republicans to convict, or will they focus on flashier moves to satiate their more radical base?
Pennsylvania lawmakers, governor’s wife, attend ‘solidarity lunch’ at targeted Jewish-owned restaurant ahead of ‘boycott ride’
Pennsylvania first lady Lori Shapiro and Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner joined a solidarity lunch at Dizengoff on Friday, two days before a planned anti-Israel bicycle “boycott ride” targeting the restaurant and other local Jewish-owned businesses.

The Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia organized the gathering at the Center City restaurant.

“No business should be made to feel unwelcome in our city because of its owners’ identity, heritage or perceived political beliefs,” the Federation stated.

State senators Sharif Street and Judy Schwank, state representatives Ben Waxman, Amen Brown and Tarik Khan, and Philadelphia Councilmember Anthony Phillips also attended the solidarity lunch. The offices of Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday, Philadelphia City Council President Kenyatta Johnson, state senator Anthony H. Williams and Holy Family University sent representatives.

Pastor Carl Day, of Culture Challenging Christians, and Andrew Goretsky, of the Anti-Defamation League of Philadelphia, joined the lunch.

Sunday’s boycott ride targets Jewish-owned restaurants and falls the day before the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

The Federation has urged supporters who plan to participate in a food crawl at the same time and location as the boycott ride to avoid engaging protesters.
Jewish legal group to deploy attorneys to observe Philadelphia ‘boycott ride’
The National Jewish Advocacy Center has sent a letter demanding that organizers of an anti-Israel boycott bicycle ride targeting Jewish-owned businesses in Philadelphia “preserve evidence” in anticipation of legal action, and warned that attorneys will be on site Sunday to document any criminal activity.

“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes,” said Mark Goldfeder, the center’s CEO.

According to Goldfeder, the center also sent enforcement letters, viewed by JNS, to Philadelphia District Attorney Lawrence Krasner, Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel and Pennsylvania Attorney General David Sunday, “reminding them which statutes apply, which specific crimes trigger it and providing the proof of motive.”

The letter identifies potential offenses including harassment, assault, terroristic threats, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief and defiant trespass. It asks police to activate body-worn cameras at each of the six targeted businesses and requests that an assistant district attorney be available by phone during the event.

Goldfeder said that during the “boycott ride,” slated for Sunday at 11:30 a.m. at Rittenhouse Square, in the heart of Center City, there will be “organized volunteers and lawyers on site so we have a litigation-grade record ready.”

“No he-said/she-said disputes this time,” Goldfeder said.

A separate evidence-preservation letter, viewed by JNS, was sent on Thursday to Philly Bike On Your Left, Boycott CookNSolo, Philly Solidarity Calendar and Philly Writers Against the War on Gaza. It states that NJAC “anticipates litigation arising from the November 8 ride” as well as a second bicycle protest planned for Nov. 15.

“This letter does not ask you to change or refrain from any lawful protest, boycott or speech,” wrote Lisa Brunner, senior litigation counsel at the center, in the letter. “It asks only that you keep what already exists and what is created from now on.”
Revealed: Aide to Shabana Mahmood backed ‘sectarian’ anti-Israel divestment motion
An aide to the home secretary backed a motion calling for a review of Birmingham’s financial ties to Israel.

The motion, which was supported by a number of other Labour councillors, was passed by Birmingham City Council on Tuesday with 54 votes in favour and 19 against.

The council refused to reveal a breakdown of the vote, saying it would only be published on November 23 in an agenda for a different meeting and that this was “normal practice adopted by many local authorities”.

However, the JC can now reveal that all Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors present at the meeting voted in favour of the motion, which labelled Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide” and paves the way for the city to divest from the Jewish state.

One of the Labour councillors who backed the motion, labelled “divisive” by opponents, is an aide to Shabana Mahmood.

Marcus Bernasconi, who represents North Edgbaston ward on the council, is also employed by Mahmood in her constituency office.

His vote, and those of other Labour councillors in favour of the motion, appear to diverge from the Labour government’s approach to Israel.
Macklemore says US venues rejected his Free Palestine tour
American rapper Macklemore, an outspoken critic of the war in Gaza, said on Friday that major US concert venues, including New York's Madison Square Garden, refused to book his Free Palestine tour, which had just concluded three dates in Europe.

The "Thrift Shop" performer launched the effort after he was removed as the opening act on musician Ed Sheeran's concert tour in August. Macklemore said at the time that stadium owners had objected to him saying "Free Palestine" on stage.

Since then, nine US venues have declined to allow him to book available dates through the end of the year, Macklemore said on social media. The venues included Madison Square Garden and the Kia Forum in Los Angeles.

"The shows were not going to be allowed to happen in these venues," he said in a post. "In over 20 years of touring, I've never experienced anything like this."

'Not an arena-level act'
A spokesperson for MSG Entertainment, which operates Madison Square Garden and other venues, said its properties are among "the busiest venues in the world with extremely limited availability" and that Macklemore is "not an arena-level act."


20 years after bombshell Columbia antisemitism documentary, filmmaker turns lens back on campus
In 2004, Jewish students from Columbia University appeared in a short documentary film, alleging bias, intimidation and antisemitism in the Middle East studies department.

In “Columbia Unbecoming,” students alleged that professors had presented misleading information about Israel in class and stifled dissent from Jewish students, and that the administration had been largely unresponsive.

“Students who want an honest discussion of the Middle East on campus are being silenced, and it’s a problem that starts with professors,” an undergraduate student, Daniella Kahane, said in the film, which was produced by the pro-Israel campus group the David Project.

Nearly 20 years later, Kahane, by now a filmmaker, returned to Columbia in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 2023 terror invasion of Israel.

She was shocked by what she saw. Days after the massacre, hundreds of students protested, accusing Israel of “genocide” and holding signs that said, “Resistance by any means necessary.”

Kahane was shaking by the time she left campus.

“I didn’t know what I was going to see or experience that day on campus. It was not what I expected — it was way worse,” Kahane said in an interview. “From my experience as a student on Columbia’s campus, I never felt that volume of hatred.”

She decided to produce a follow-up film about how the situation had deteriorated since she left the campus.

The upcoming documentary, “Inside the Gates,” takes a wider view than the 2004 film by examining foreign funding, social trends and university structures at Columbia and other elite US universities.

She believes that universities are now teaching students “what to think, not how to think,” and her new film is “asking the question, ‘How did we get here?’”

“It’s about helping people see the wider picture here, and reminding people what is so wonderful and valuable and important about a democracy and the US that is worth preserving,” Kahane said.
The Great Satan Comes to Hyde Park
On March 15, 2026, two weeks into the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran’s regime, University of Chicago professor Alireza Doostdar told his followers on X that he was reading Yahya Sinwar’s prison novel The Thorn and the Carnation for his course “Liberatory Violence” and found it “remarkable how good it is as sociological commentary.” In May he confirmed his students had read “Cesaire and Fanon and Zohra Drif and James Yaki Sayles and Leila Khaled and Yahya Sinwar among others.”

An associate professor of Islamic Studies in the Divinity School and winner of the Middle East Studies Association’s 2018 Albert Hourani Book Award, he directed UChicago’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), a Title VI National Resource Center supported by U.S. Department of Education grants, from at least September 2024 through December 2025. His syllabus, scholarship, and commentary follow one pattern: America and Israel cast as the moral evil of the region, Iran’s regime cast as its resistance, and violence against civilians taught as “liberatory.”

Both syllabi he posted open with the premise that liberation struggles “have often incorporated violent tactics, even against noncombatants” and promise attention to “criteria for justifiable and unjustifiable use of force.” His March 2026 flyer casts the Palestinian case as a struggle against “Zionist settler colonialism, apartheid, and genocide.”

The reading list answers that question from one side. Zohra Drif planted the 1956 Milk Bar bomb in Algiers that killed three civilians. Leila Khaled hijacked TWA Flight 840 for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1969. James Sayles was serving consecutive 100-to-200-year sentences for two murders committed during a 1971 armed robbery. Sinwar planned October 7. A course that weighs the ethics of force through people who chose to bomb an ice cream parlor, hijack an airliner, and massacre festivalgoers is not neutral inquiry. He promoted it in reply to a doctoral student who had called the “white settler” charge against Jews “a bigoted libel”: “Anthropologist here. Looking forward to re-teaching this popular class in a couple weeks.”

Doostdar’s next book studies Satan in Iranian theology since 1979. In a December 2025 University of Exeter lecture he argued that reading the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s branding of the United States as the “Great Satan” as “just demonization” loses “the aspect of moral criticism that he was engaged in.” He did note that Khomeini ignored advisers who opposed the 1988 prison massacres.

During the 2026 war, his posts supplied the moral criticism without the theology. The United States became “the f***ing United States of Murder and Genocide” (July 15), “the child-killing empire” (August 1), “the American bandit empire” (June 13), and an “empire of sadists, psychopaths, and predators” (September 1). Iranians killed by U.S. strikes were “annihilated by your criminal, murderous government and military.”

The contempt extends to Americans in uniform. On April 3, an American mother asked for prayers for two downed F-15 pilots, adding that her son is a fighter pilot and she had no word from his unit. Doostdar quoted her: “Teach your sons and daughters not to fight imperial wars.” When oil futures passed $112 a barrel on March 8, he posted the chart with “Beautiful. Fly little birdy. Fly,” and, in Persian, bish bad, “may it rise further.” Defending “USsraeli” strikes on Iranian universities, he wrote on March 29, means “US universities are fair game.”

On Israel, Doostdar uses the regime’s terms: Zionism is “a blight on humanity,” and a commentator who lamented an Iranian cluster-munition strike on Tel Aviv was ignoring cities “the Zionist entity has destroyed,” because “Jewish supremacy requires denying the slightest hint of reciprocity.” In June 2025 he wrote that “the best and only hope for peace is the power and durability of Iranian missiles,” a post reported by Campus Reform and later cited by the ADL that no longer appears in his X archive. In August 2026 he described the Islamic Republic as “both (truly) anti-imperialist and repressive” and framed the task as “how to be in solidarity” with it.
University of Toronto dentistry dean resigns after antisemitic slides used in lecture
Dr. Anil Kishen has resigned as dean of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Dentistry following an investigation into antisemitic images he included in lecture materials, the university announced on Thursday.

“The university has found that the slides contain antisemitic imagery, even though it was not Dr. Kishen’s intent to promote antisemitism,” Trevor Young, the university’s vice president and provost, wrote to the faculty community in a letter shared by Honest Reporting Canada.

“He had limited knowledge about antisemitic imagery and tropes associated with Jewish people when he included the images in his lecture materials,” Young wrote.

One cartoon depicted a figure with an exaggerated, beak-like nose sitting in a bathtub filled with money. It appeared during a lecture on the human immune system. Another showed a figure painted in Palestinian flag colors being strangled with a rope while wrapped in an Israeli flag. That image accompanied an explanation of how inflammation restricts blood flow in dental tissue.

“I selected these images as visual analogies for two concepts,” Kishen said at the time. “I was not trying to make any political statements with these images.”

The university’s review also found “deep divisions” within the faculty over the incident. While some members accepted Kishen’s apology, others were “deeply hurt” by the images, Young wrote.

According to the letter, Kishen has undergone training about antisemitism. “He has shared that he’s learned a great deal and is committed to continuing his cultural education,” Young wrote.

Although Kishen has resigned as dean, he will retain his tenured faculty position at the university. He had been on administrative leave since February and is expected to return to his full duties in the 2027-28 academic year. Acting Dean Laura Tam will remain in the position while the university searches for a successor.


UKLFI: Israeli man threatened with death at Rochdale gym – but leisure centre threatens to ban him too
UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has challenged a Rochdale leisure centre over its treatment of an Israeli gym member who was allegedly subjected to racist abuse and threats of violence, only to be told that he and his fiancée could be banned from the gym alongside the alleged aggressor.

UKLFI has written to the management of Oulder Hill Leisure Complex in Rochdale, warning that its handling of the incident may breach the Equality Act 2010 and appears to contradict its own rules on discriminatory and threatening behaviour.

The incident began on 19 June 2026 when a gym member was asked by another customer where he came from. When he replied that he was from Israel, the man allegedly launched into a tirade of racist abuse. According to the Israeli, the man shouted: “F*** you, you are killing babies. I hate all the people of Israel.”

He then allegedly declared: “F*** you, I wish I had a button I could press right now and I would kill all you people from Israel,” before threatening: “I could f*** you up right now.”

The Israeli, who had recently signed up for a year’s membership, immediately reported the incident to gym staff, explaining that he no longer felt safe around the individual. He also reported the matter to the police on 23 June.

However, the alleged aggressor continued to use the gym.

On 24 August, after noticing the man staring aggressively at him, the Israeli approached him in an attempt to resolve the situation peacefully. He suggested that they put the previous incident behind them and agree that nothing further would happen.

Instead, the man allegedly called him a “baby killer” again and swore at him.

The Israeli’s fiancée witnessed the second incident and reported it to the gym.

On 21 September, his fiancée identified the man to the deputy manager, enabling the leisure centre to establish his identity.

Yet, rather than excluding the individual accused of making the threats, the leisure centre proposed restricting when the couple could use the gym.

In an email dated 22 October, the couple were informed that they would be subject to arrangements requiring them to train at different times from the alleged aggressor. If they did not agree, all three would be banned.
Israeli-American AEYE Health wins Prix Galien Award for new AI technology helping prevent blindness
AEYE Health's AEYE-DS technology, designed to prevent blindness with a fully autonomous AI diagnostic tool, received the 2026 Prix Galien USA Award for Best Digital Health Solution, one of the most prestigious distinctions in healthcare innovation.

Dr. Zack Dvey-Aharon, Co-founder and CEO of AEYE Health, an Israeli-American digital health company, invented the AEYE-DS to make sight-saving diabetic eye exams accessible at virtually any point of care, the company said.

Diabetic retinopathy, a complication of diabetes that affects the eyes, is the leading cause of blindness among working-age adults. Caused by damage to the blood vessels in the retina at the back of the eyes, it may cause no symptoms or only mild visual disturbances at first. However, if left untreated, it can lead to blindness.

Most vision loss caused by diabetic retinopathy can be prevented by early detection and intervention. Traditionally, this has involved screening with an eye specialist, which AEYE Health says creates a substantial barrier to care.

Limited availability, long waiting times, cost, and inconvenience can all lead to delayed detection and, ultimately, to vision loss.

AEYE-DS uses portable and tabletop retinal cameras to perform a diabetic eye examination with an FDA-cleared, fully AI diagnostic program that enables accurate and almost immediate results without the need for physician interpretation.

AEYE expanding across US, developing next-gen platform
After being validated through three prospective, controlled pivotal phase-III clinical trials, AEYE-DS is now rapidly expanding across the United States.

Dvey-Aharon explained that while receiving the Prix Galien Award was one of "the greatest honors of my professional life and an extraordinary recognition of the work of the AEYE Health team... our greatest achievement remains every patient whose sight can be preserved because this technology exists."

"We are only at the beginning of what autonomous AI can accomplish for global healthcare,” Dvey-Aharon said.
Dudu Tassa and Jonny Greenwood let their stirring Arabic music speak louder than politics
Applause for musical collaborators Dudu Tassa and Jonny Greenwood thundered through the auditorium as the 17 members of their band filed onstage Thursday night, with an electric sense of expectation in the crowd.

The ensemble, led by rocker Tassa and Radiohead’s Greenwood, opened the Jerusalem International Oud Festival, performing songs from “Jarak Qaribak,” their 2023 album that renewed classical Arabic love songs with jazzy rock overtones.

Throughout the tight 90-minute set, Tassa and Greenwood, both playing lead and bass guitars, led a band of excellent local Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking musicians and singers that included Greenwood’s Israeli wife, Sharona Katan, on keyboards, and their daughter, Omri Katan, as one of two backup singers.

The oud, the pear-shaped, fretless, stringed instrument, was played, along with a qanun, a traditional Middle Eastern flat-stringed soundboard, and the rebab, a spike lute, alongside cello, saxophone, viola, violins, drums, percussion, flute and trombone. It created a rich, multilayered sound.

Tassa launched into the first song in the 18-strong playlist, crooning Arabic into the microphone for “El Hajar,” and the crowd was mesmerized, clapping along, heads bobbing, shoulders rocking — an audience at one with the remarkable musicians onstage.

The two have performed together since then, and “Jarak Qaribak” has continued to bring together vocalists and musicians from across the Middle East, creating collaborations for the title that, loosely translated, means “your neighbor is your friend,” with its covers of Arabic songs from throughout the region. Greenwood’s collaboration with Tassa has also generated fierce opposition from anti-Israel groups. A European tour was canceled in 2023 amid the war in Gaza, and two UK concerts were called off in 2025 amid what were deemed credible threats to the venues and staff.



 

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