New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani reiterated on Wednesday his criticism of an event held at Park East Synagogue the night prior, even as fellow Democrats condemned the extremist speech and actions of protesters who sought to break the police cordon outside.

Pressed on Tuesday about plans for protests at the Manhattan shul, Mamdani released a statement strictly criticizing the “Great Israel Real Estate Event” held inside — which included, among other offerings, advertisements for settlements in the West Bank — with no mention of the previous disturbance the same pro-Hamas activist group caused outside Park East last November. 

Mamdani’s spokesperson told the far-left Drop Site News ahead of the event that the mayor was “deeply opposed” to its promotion of settlements that are “illegal under international law and deeply tied to the ongoing displacement of Palestinians.” Still, Mamdani’s administration said it has “also been clear that we are committed to ensuring safe entry and exit from any house of worship.” 

Questioned Wednesday morning about the protest, the police response and the influence his own rhetoric might have on antisemitic incidents citywide, Mamdani reaffirmed his earlier stance.

“I think that critique of the policies of a government are very much separate from bigotry toward people of a specific religious faith,” the mayor said at an unrelated press conference. “When we have a real estate expo that is promoting the sale of land that includes the sale of land in occupied West Bank, in settlements that are a violation of international law, that is something I firmly disagree with and that I also believe that many New Yorkers firmly disagree with, because it has been at the heart of an ongoing effort to displace Palestinians from their homes.”

Mamdani also lauded the NYPD’s enforcement of a security perimeter around the synagogue, which demonstrators tried to push through, and added that the right to protest is “sacrosanct.”

But much as the mayor and his allies stressed the West Bank property advertisements, the protesters outside the synagogue did not call for a peaceful two-state solution along the internationally recognized borders established in 1949. To the contrary, they waved the flag of Hezbollah — an Iran-backed terror group that seeks Israel’s destruction — defaced images of the late Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson and shouted “we don’t want no Zionists here,” “death to the IDF” and “we don’t want no two-state, we want ‘48.”

When Jewish Insider reached out to Mamdani’s team about these chants and actions, they signaled disapproval of “some” protester behavior.

“Some of the rhetoric and conduct outside Park East Synagogue — including displays of support for terrorist organizations and antisemitic acts — was unacceptable,” said Deputy Press Secretary Sam Raskin. “As the mayor has said, chants in support of terrorist organizations and promoting violence of any kind have no place in our city,” Raskin added, alluding to Mamdani’s belated criticism of pro-Hamas slogans bandied near a synagogue in Queens in January.

Other leading New York Democrats, meanwhile, uniformly denounced the protesters’ conduct.

“No one should be intimidated when entering their house of worship,” said Jen Goodman, spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul, highlighting the administration’s support for legislation making it a felony to obstruct entryways to houses of worship during demonstrations. “While protesters have a First Amendment right to be heard, hate-fueled antisemitic rhetoric has no place in New York and Governor Hochul will continue to call it out and confront it head on.”

Attorney General Letitia James offered similar remarks, stressing both freedom of speech and the necessity of condemning threats and bigotry.

“Antisemitism has no place in New York,” James said in a statement to JI. “We will protect New Yorkers’ First Amendment rights and condemn hate, harassment, and violence in equal measure.”

Council Speaker Julie Menin offered a thorough critique of both the protesters and of the NYPD’s response, noting complaints that the safety cordon set up at the site also constrained the movements of journalists, local residents and even would-be attendees. She further asserted that her own recently passed bill compelling the department to codify protocols for such buffer zones would resolve these issues.

“I’m deeply disturbed by the hateful rhetoric heard last night outside Park East Synagogue. Calls for the destruction of Israel and the glorification of Hezbollah are horrific, intimidating, and only fuel the flames of antisemitism,” she said. “Whether you are a congregant entering a house of worship, a peaceful protestor, a journalist, or a passerby, the Council’s new law will help bring greater transparency to the considerations that the NYPD uses in situations like these.”

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner began normally enough — a bustle of reporters, administration officials and members of Congress among other A-listers streaming from the packed lobby of the Washington Hilton down into the basement ballroom.

White House Correspondents’ Association President Weija Jiang, a CBS News White House reporter, finished her introductory remarks, and the thousands of guests packed into the ballroom tucked into their salads.

Then, a loud, shattering bang rang out from the other side of the ballroom. Initially, I didn’t think anything of it — I thought someone had dropped a large tray of food (as President Donald Trump said later, he thought the same thing).

Videos and other accounts of the evening indicate that someone from the security staff shouted from the front of the room that guests should get down. I didn’t hear it. My first indication that something was wrong was when I started seeing other guests ducking under the tables and security officers drawing their guns.

I tried to duck under the tablecloth, but no luck — another occupant of the table was already underneath, and there was no room. My heart pounding, I was forced to do my best to stay low — but I was in the backmost row of tables, right by a door, sitting directly in the aisle.

If a shooter came into the ballroom from behind me, I was a sitting duck. I was completely helpless and exposed.

Two thoughts ran through my head. The main one: I’m getting married in six days. I can’t die now. The second: I can’t believe this is happening to me again. (For those readers who are newer to Jewish Insider — I was also on scene for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.)

Just a few yards away from me, a Secret Service agent stood, gun drawn, surveying the room. She kept yelling for us to stay down.

Perhaps foolishly, I poked my head above the table. I saw a group of agents in suits, slowly trying to pick their way across the enormous ballroom toward the Cabinet secretaries and other VIPs in the center of the room. Even before the chaos broke out, it had been nearly impossible to traverse the crowded room. Chairs were literally back-to-back, completely blocking the aisles, to say nothing of the people now crouching and lying all over the floor.

It struck me at the time as a fire hazard. Now, it seemed all the more ominous. The most senior officials in the country could easily have been trapped in the line of fire with no real way to escape.

And then I looked up to the head table. The president and the other guests — including Jiang, First Lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and others — were gone. In their place was a group of Secret Service officers in heavy body armor, assault rifles at the ready, surveying the room.

For a venue chock full of journalists, information was strikingly hard to come by. X, once a reliable source of information in breaking news situations, had nothing. I was left asking my fiancée, who was at home, to send me information, because I could find nothing.

The first indication of the unfolding situation was a White House press pool report email, which said that an apparent shooter was in custody — but the reporter also said he’d seen Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. limping, which only increased our panic.

The pool report said that the shooter was in custody. My family told me that CNN was reporting that he was dead.

I’m sure we were only on the floor for a few minutes. But with no idea of what was happening, beyond the developing clarity that we’d just heard shots ring out, it felt like an eternity. My colleague, on the ground next to me, was in tears, near hyperventilating. I struggled to comfort her, not knowing what was going on, or if we were safe.

There were no announcements, at least that I heard, made to the group. My first indications that the situation might be safe were when the Secret Service officer nearby holstered her weapon, and when we saw a U.S. senator wandering toward an exit.

But we still had no real idea of what was going on.

Then, a door to the ballroom opened, and guests began to file out, first in a trickle then in a stream, pushing aside curtains that had been set up as security barriers, up the stairs and ultimately out the door of the hotel. Security kept telling us to keep moving, pushing us further and further from the scene.

On the way out, I saw C-SPAN CEO Sam Feist huddling with one of the cable network’s cameramen, positioned next to our table, who had kept filming through the entire event.

We ran into Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) at the exit of the hotel and shook his hand in the glow of the red and blue lights from armored SUVs for top officials still idling in the turnaround at the hotel’s entrance — perhaps the most surreal interaction I’ve had with a member of Congress as we shared our relief that we were all safe.

My colleague and I finally reconnected with her partner, who had been in the upstairs bar, watching the events play out on TV. They embraced tearfully, a simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking sight.

We kept walking hurriedly, calling family to let them know we were OK, pushed further and further away from the venue. I was completely lost, teeth starting to chatter and my body shaking from an excess of adrenaline.

Much has been said over the past days about the security at the event — some say it was too lax, some say there was none at all, some describe the event as among the best-secured in the city. There’s a kernel of truth in all of them.

My experience, after having attended three previous dinners, is that security was unchanged from previous years. Entering the event, a block from the hotel, we were asked to flash our tickets, but plenty of people dressed in evening wear are regularly waved through the cordon. Protesters from the group Code Pink hassled guests as they entered the secured zone, having lined up along Connecticut Avenue outside the fenced-off area to chant and wave signs.

At no point during or before the evening were IDs checked. Tickets were assigned and sold by the WHCA to news outlets, rather than to individuals, and it’s up to the outlets to decide how to distribute the tickets. It’s a massive event — thousands of people in attendance. That’s significantly more than could reportedly be accommodated in the planned White House ballroom, which Trump and others have trumpeted as the solution to prevent future incidents like this.

At the top of the hotel’s driveway, we were again asked to present our tickets — either a ticket to the dinner itself, or an emailed invitation to one of the pre-dinner cocktail receptions hosted by various news outlets. With just a ticket or a screenshot of one of those invitations — or as a guest of the hotel, in the case of the shooter — one could gain access to the hotel. The hotel does not shut down for the event and hosts thousands of guests who are unrelated and can come and go as they please.

The ballroom is several floors below the lobby. To get on the escalator downstairs, I again had to flash my ticket to hotel staff. This is, seemingly, the only security checkpoint that did not perform as it was supposed to on Saturday evening. As a guest of the hotel, the shooter would have had access to all other areas of the hotel.

After making my way through a tangle of lines for red carpet photos, I finally came to the metal detectors, staffed by Secret Service and Transportation Security Administration staff.

Bags and pocket items were manually checked by security here — not in an X-ray machine — and I know at least one person who was allowed to proceed through with her bag unopened.

It was near this barrier that the shooter pulled out his weapons, and was ultimately subdued by law enforcement. The gunman did not reach the ballroom and there was seemingly only one injury — a Secret Service agent who was shot in his bulletproof vest and has reportedly since recovered.

The dinner itself is a short flight of stairs below the security checkpoint — the shooter seems to have been tackled at the top of those stairs, based on photos released by the White House, perilously close to the ballroom entrance. But  there is also a large atrium area on the upper level, where hundreds of guests pack in for a cocktail reception before doors open to the ballroom, not to mention the long lines that formed as guests were waiting to clear security. If the shooter had decided to open fire a few hours earlier, he would have had no shortage of targets.

One final note: When I finally made it home, I was, perhaps unwisely, scrolling X and saw a quickly proliferating set of conspiracy theories about the night, from both sides of the aisle — it was staged, the entertainer was in on it, security was purposely loosened, and more. I experienced the same in the midst of the Jan. 6 attack. There are few things more surreal, or more infuriating, than seeing people pretend an event you lived through wasn’t real. And there are few things more poisonous to our collective political discourse.

Now, in the wake of at least the third thwarted assassination attempt on this president, we’re all left to grapple with many questions. How could security let this keep happening? And what does this mean for the state of our country and our civic bonds?

The Jewish community has become sadly familiar with politically motivated violence, having faced deadly attacks and attempted attacks across the country. But increasingly, it seems to be a society-wide problem — and one without a clear path back.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani exercised his veto power for the first time since entering office on Friday to block a bill that would standardize NYPD policy around protests at educational institutions.

Mamdani had just one day left to block the two “buffer zone bills” that the City Council passed last month: the other measure, backed by Council Speaker Julie Menin and passed with a veto-proof majority, compels the police commissioner to develop formal protocol for security perimeters that ensure access and egress from religious buildings during demonstrations. That proposal went untouched and passed into law automatically — but the schools bill, which contains similar language but did not pass with a veto-proof majority, was struck down.

Speaking to reporters after an unrelated event Friday morning, the mayor cited what he described as  “constitutional concerns” and union objections to possible infringement on their right to picket — even though the measure contained a carveout for labor action.

“It carries [these concerns] because unlike in the first piece of legislation, which is balancing the right to protest and the right to prayer — both of which are not just sacrosanct in our city but also constitutionally — the second does not have a counterbalance to the right to protest,” he said, suggesting that this exposed the proposal to legal challenge. “It also defines educational institutions in such a broad manner that it includes museums, libraries, teaching hospitals, things of that nature.”

The city’s leading Jewish groups issued a rare united response, highlighting the protests that have targeted yeshivas and gathering places for Jewish student groups in recent years.

“We are deeply disappointed by Mayor Mamdani’s decision,” said the UJA-Federation of New York, the Anti-Defamation League of New York/New Jersey, Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, American Jewish Committee New York, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the New York Board of Rabbis, Orthodox Union, The Rabbinical Assembly, Union for Reform Judaism, StandWithUs and Teach NYS. “This veto is a profound failure of City Hall to demonstrate to all New Yorkers that our safety is a priority.” 

Bronx Councilman Eric Dinowitz, the lead sponsor of the bill, highlighted that it would merely obligate the NYPD to create a uniform policy for security perimeters, already frequently enforced during protests. He pushed back on claims that it would infringe on First Amendment rights.

“Students deserve safety as they enter and exit their school buildings, and New Yorkers deserve transparency from the NYPD,” Dinowitz said in a statement. “The mayor promised to keep New Yorkers safe and increase police transparency. By vetoing this bill, he is breaking yet another campaign promise.”

Sources indicated to Jewish Insider that they would try to whip votes to secure the necessary support from the City Council to override the mayor’s decision. The city bills are distinct from state-level proposals Gov. Kathy Hochul has endorsed that would establish a felony penalty for protesters who come within 25 feet of the doorways and driveways of religious institutions and abortion clinics.

President Donald Trump declined to say on Monday if he knew whether Joe Kent, who stepped down last week as director of the National Counterterrorism Center in protest of the war in Iran, was leaking classified information amid reports he is under investigation by the FBI for doing so.

Trump made the comments while speaking to reporters from Palm Beach International Airport before boarding Air Force One, after being asked if he knew whether Kent was leaking classified materials. The president repeatedly derided Kent, a former Green Beret, for remarrying “quickly” after his first wife was killed in 2019 while serving in Syria and for his failed congressional campaigns.

“Now, I hear they’re looking at him for leaking. That’s possible,” Trump said, referencing Kent potentially being under FBI investigation. “But just so you understand, just to put it to rest, he lost twice badly. He also lost his wife. He’s remarried since. He lost his wife. I felt badly for him, so I told my people, ‘Reach out to him, give him a job at the White House.’ This is the thanks I get.”

“I take this guy, Joe Kent, who lost twice for Congress, pretty badly and tough, and he was devastated, and I know that he lost his wife,” he continued. “So instead of letting him live out his life, I brilliantly had my people call him and offer him a job in security, essentially, in the White House. And what does he do? He goes out and he says that Iran is not a threat, to get publicity.”

Trump explained that he is “not a fan” of Kent, criticizing him for what the president described as an ideological pivot on Iran policy. “He was all for everything. All of a sudden, he wasn’t,” Trump said. He also said he did not engage much with Kent and did not follow him on social media. 

“I didn’t deal with him for the most part. I saw him a couple of times, but I never dealt with him at all. I had no idea his ideology was left or right, whatever it is,” Trump said. “I can say this: He said very strongly that Iran is not a threat. Iran has been a threat for 47 years and there’s not a country in the world that doesn’t agree with me on that.”

Media reports began circulating last Wednesday that the FBI began investigating Kent weeks ago, prior to his departure from the Trump administration, for allegedly leaking classified information related to Israel and Iran. Following his resignation, administration officials quickly began describing Kent as “a known leaker” who had been kept out of the president’s orbit and excluded from briefings.

The two Pennsylvania men who allegedly hurled improvised explosive devices toward a protest against New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani will face federal charges for “ISIS-inspired terrorism,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch revealed Monday.

Mamdani and Tisch addressed the press near the scene of the crime, the mayoral residence of Gracie Mansion, where far-right provocateur Jake Lang held a protest on Saturday to “Stop the Islamic takeover of New York City.” Tisch said Lang and his supporters were the targets of two homemade bombs that Emir Balat, 18, who had traveled from Pennsylvania with his accused accomplice Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, flung from amid the counter-demonstration. 

Tisch confirmed earlier reporting that the Islamic State appears to have inspired the alleged perpetrators’ actions — but maintained nothing at present pointed to any link between the attempted attack and the ongoing U.S. and Israeli military campaign against Iran.

“I can confirm this morning that this is being investigated as an act of ISIS-inspired terrorism,” the commissioner said, noting that so far one of the devices had tested positive for triacetone triperoxide, an explosive used in terrorist bombings across the world. “At this time we do not have any information that connects this investigation to what’s going on overseas in Iran.”

Neither bomb ultimately detonated. The criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York Monday stated that both men waived their Miranda rights and explicitly identified ISIS as their inspiration.

“This isn’t a religion that just stands when people talk about the blessed name of the Prophet [Muhammad],” Balat told police, according to the charging documents. The complaint continues that Balat requested and received writing materials, and jotted down: “All praise is due to Allah lord of all worlds. I pledge my allegience [sic] to the Islamic State. Die in your rage yu [sic] kuffar!”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation agent deposed for the complaint stated that the written statement reflects common ISIS slogans. Further, the document alleges Balat subsequently told police he had hoped to pull off something “even bigger” than the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, which he noted had caused “only three deaths.” The indictment also states that Balat was carrying a Turkish government identification card as well as a Pennsylvania driver’s license. 

The duo face charges of attempted provision of material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, use of a weapon of mass destruction, transportation of explosive materials — including over state lines — and unlawful possession of destructive devices.

Tisch said Monday her department remains in “a heightened state of alert” due to the ongoing U.S. war against Iran , and had deployed “heavy weapons, teams, K-9 units, aviation and more” to secure sensitive locations.

Mamdani, who revealed he was not home at the time of the incident, joined his commissioner in praising the police department and the officers who helped secure the location. He opened his remarks with an attack upon Lang, known for throwing up Nazi salutes at his events, including outside AIPAC headquarters — but strongly reaffirmed his support for each side’s right to protest.

“While I found this protest appalling, I will not waiver in my belief that it should be allowed to happen,” he said. “Ours is a free society, where the right to peaceful protest is sacred. It does not belong only to those we agree with. It belongs to everyone.”

Still, Mamdani continued, “This was a vile protest rooted in white supremacy. Many of the counterprotesters met this display of bigotry peacefully, with a vision of a city that is welcoming to all. But a few did not.”

Condemning Talat and Kayumi, Mamdani, whose own Shi’ite faith is anathema to the Sunni extremism of ISIS, continued, “They are suspected of coming here to commit an act of terrorism. New York City will never tolerate violence, whether from protests or counterprotests.”

A Manhattan comedy club canceled Israeli comedian Guy Hochman’s show on Tuesday night after pro-Hamas groups protested outside of the venue. 

“The owner of the place was afraid and canceled the show,” Hochman told Jewish Insider, referring to Broadway Comedy Club, located near Times Square. “So, I did an alternative show for my audience outside freezing to death.”

“We are not giving up,” Hochman continued, adding that “another, big show” was planned for Wednesday evening. He did not disclose the location of the rescheduled show.  “We are the Jewish people and we want to live and laugh,” said Hochman. 

The owner of the venue, Carolyn Martin, did not respond to a request for comment from JI. 

City College of New York’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter was among the groups promoting the Tuesday demonstration on social media. It shared a post from the New York City chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement that said “victory” was achieved by the cancellation. CCNY SJP, which remains a registered student group, also participated in this month’s pro-Hamas protest in Queens that caused nearby schools and a synagogue to close early.  

Outside the comedy venue, masked demonstrators banged on drums, chanted and held signs that read “clean up the trash,” “death to the IDF” and “no war criminals in our city.” A heavy NYPD presence was called to monitor the protest. 

Hochman was reportedly detained at the airport for six hours of questioning on Monday when he arrived in Toronto after the anti-Israel group Hind Rijab Foundation filed a complaint about his service in the IDF. He was released after intervention from the Israeli consulate.

Veteran Israeli diplomat Eitan Na’eh, who had a long career in key posts representing Israel in the Arab world, died of a heart attack on Monday. He was 62.

Na’eh’s most recent role was as the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s representative to the U.S.-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) in southern Israel, established in October to coordinate humanitarian relief efforts and the stabilization of Gaza.

Na’eh played a key role in growing and preserving Israel’s relations with Abraham Accords signatories. He was Israel’s first envoy to the United Arab Emirates in 2021, setting up Jerusalem’s diplomatic representation in Abu Dhabi. His last posting abroad was in Bahrain, where he served as Israel’s first ambassador to the country from December 2021 until August 2025. 

In 2022, Na’eh told Jewish Insider: “I sit here in Manama and look outside to a beautiful view of the Gulf, and I am still pinching myself. I feel lucky to work in these countries.” The ambassador said at the time that he was optimistic about expanding the Abraham Accords and the potential in Israel-Bahrain ties. 

A Foreign Ministry official characterized Na’eh to JI as “contributing the first steps in establishing relations in the framework of the Abraham Accords. … He built the content of the Abraham Accords at a critical time in which you don’t want to drop the ball.” 

The official said Na’eh was skilled at bringing concrete results from diplomatic relations and had a talent for making connections. At the CMCC, “everyone knew him after five minutes,” the official recalled.

A Bahraini diplomat remembered Na’eh as someone who “represented his nation with grace and wisdom, but also fostered genuine goodwill and friendship wherever he went.”

Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, co-founder of the UAE-Israel Business Council and former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, called Na’eh “the Abraham Accords ambassador, ushering in a new era of regional diplomacy in the most professional way.” 

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that Na’eh was “a gifted diplomat who stood out in his ability to make connections wherever he served. Above all, in all of his missions and many positions he filled, Eitan was known for his big heart and endless caring.”

Na’eh was also Israel’s ambassador to Turkey from 2016 to 2018, the first after the diplomatic crisis between Jerusalem and Ankara following the 2010 Gaza flotilla incident. However, his term ended abruptly when Turkey expelled him in response to Palestinians killed by the IDF during protests and riots on the Gaza border.

He was previously Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan and the head of the foreign policy department of Israel’s National Security Council, giving him a broad view of Israel’s international relations that the Foreign Ministry official said was very valuable.

Na’eh was also interim ambassador in London in 2013-2015, and Israel’s political consul at the Israeli consulate in Chicago in 1997-1999.

Hassan-Nahoum recalled Na’eh’s warmth and sense of humor, and said that he and his wife, Cheryl, had a marriage “to emulate in every way.” 

Ahdeya Ahmed, former president of the Bahrain Journalists Association, called Na’eh “a friend who was like a brother.” 

“I could talk about his professionalism as a diplomat, but what I really want to share is Eitan the friend — Eitan the warm soul who lit up every room, who always had a laugh, and who dreamed of a kinder world,” Ahmed said. “I’ll always remember his smile, his jokes, the way he made life’s burdens lighter for all of us, and all the celebrations we shared.”

Na’eh is survived by his wife, two children, Maya and Itai, and a granddaughter.

President Donald Trump indicated that his threats to Iran over its use of violence on protesters have had their desired effect, saying on Wednesday afternoon that “the killing in Iran is stopping.”

Speaking to reporters at a bill signing in the Oval Office, Trump said, “We have been notified and pretty strongly — but we’ll find out what that all means — but we were told that the killing in Iran is stopping, it’s stopped, and that there’s no plan for executions. … So I’ve been told that on good authority. We’ll find out about it, I’m sure, if it happens, we’ll all be very upset.”

“They’re not going to have an execution, which a lot of people were talking about for the last couple days. Today was going to be the day of execution,” the president said, referring to at least one protester who was due to be executed by the regime today, his family and human rights groups said. 

Trump later claimed that information was provided to him “by very important sources on the other side, that the killing has stopped and the executions won’t take place. There was supposed to be a lot of executions today and that the executions won’t take place.”

“And we’re going to find out. I mean, I’ll find out after this, you’ll find out, but we’ve been told on good authority. And I hope it’s true. Who knows, right? Who knows,” he said.

Pressed about videos of body bags emerging out of Iran that indicate large-scale killings, Trump downplayed the issue, saying, “People were shooting at them with guns, and they were shooting back. It’s one of those things.”

Asked if this means military action against Iran is now “off the table,” Trump replied, “Well, we’re going to watch and see what the process is. But we were given a very good statement by people who are aware of what’s going on.”

The rhetoric marked a shift for the president, who a day prior had posted on social media a message to “Iranian patriots” who he told to “save the names of the killers and abusers” and that “help is on its way.” Reports indicate Iranian officials had made contact with the Trump administration seeking a diplomatic off-ramp to the escalating tension.

City College of New York’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter remains a registered campus group following its participation in last week’s pro-Hamas protest in Queens that caused nearby schools and a synagogue to close early.  

The demonstration was planned by a group called the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation [PAL]-Awda, protesting an event held by CapitIL, a Jerusalem-based real estate agency, at a Queens synagogue. The group called the meeting an “illegal event” promoting “blatant land theft and dispossession” in a social media post promoting the protest. 

CCNY SJP reposted PAL-Awda’s fliers promoting the demonstration and shared videos on its Instagram story of its members participating in the protest. A spokesperson for CCNY did not respond to multiple inquiries from Jewish Insider following the protest regarding what, if any, disciplinary action would be taken.   

The protest was also promoted by Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of student groups that is no longer recognized by Columbia University. Dozens of keffiyeh-clad demonstrators gathered near the synagogue, Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills, and chanted, “We support Hamas here,” “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the IDF” for more than two hours while banging on drums in the residential area in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. One protester held a ripped Israeli flag that was painted red to resemble blood. 

The pro-Hamas language used by demonstrators was condemned by a range of New York politicians, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former City Comptroller Brad Lander, both of whom have been vocally critical of Israel. 

CCNY was already facing scrutiny following a university-sponsored interfaith event in November during which a Muslim spiritual leader delivered an antisemitic tirade against a CUNY Hillel director. The U.S. Department of Justice opened an ongoing investigation into the interfaith event shortly after it occurred.

A radical anti-Israel activist group responsible for the disruptive November protest outside of a historic synagogue in Manhattan announced it will hold a similar demonstration on Thursday, marking the first major test Mayor Zohran Mamdani will face in protecting the city’s Jewish community since he was inaugurated last week. 

The group, called Palestinian Assembly for Liberation [PAL]-Awda, initially announced two demonstrations against Israeli immigration events in New York City this week. “Nefesh B’Nfesh settler recruitment fair on Wednesday at 7 pm in Manhattan and illegal Stolen Palestinian Land sale on Thursday at 6:30 in Queens,” it wrote Tuesday on social media, adding that it would disclose event locations on Wednesday. 

The group, which never posted the location of the Nefesh B’ Nefesh event, wrote on Instagram on Wednesday evening, less than an hour before the event started, that “our planned action tonight to protest the settler recruitment event is being cancelled.”

“Although NBN is still holding their event, their reach and attendance has been diminished,” it wrote. “PAL-Awda NY/NJ and our allies will build on this win to ensure our community will always stand together in vocal opposition to zionist settler colonialism, to all settler recruitment, and genocide.”  

Thursday’s demonstration, which PAL-Awda said it is still planning to hold, is protesting an event held by CapitIL, a Jerusalem-based real estate agency. 

PAL-Awda led a mob of anti-Israel demonstrators in November in a protest outside of Park East synagogue as it was hosting a Nefesh B’Nefesh event providing information on immigration to Israel. Protesters shouted chants including “death to the IDF” and “globalize the intifada.” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch later called the protest “turmoil,” while Mamdani’s office said the event was promoting “activities in violation of international law.” 

The planned protest comes as Mamdani is facing criticism for repealing antisemitism and Israel-related executive orders issued by former Mayor Eric Adams, including one that saw the city adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, just hours after taking office on Jan 1. Coupled with Mamdani’s reaction to the November protest, Democratic state Assemblyman Sam Berger expressed concerns on Tuesday about how the mayor might handle this week’s protests.

“Without IHRA as a guiding standard, the city lacks a reliable framework to recognize when extremist language is being laundered as political discourse, leaving communities vulnerable in moments exactly like this,” Berger wrote on social media calling the mayor’s decision to repeal the executive order “all the more concerning” in light of the threats to the Jewish community. 

Berger, an Orthodox Jew whose district includes the area where Thursday’s Israeli real estate event is being held, said that PAL-Awda also protested a similar event a year and a half ago. That demonstration “quickly descended into vile displays of antisemitism and open support for terrorist organizations whose stated goal is the complete destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. That context matters and it cannot be ignored,” said Berger. 

“During that previous incident, protestors stood across the street, more than one hundred feet away, yet the distance did nothing to prevent a stream of antisemitic chants, tropes and harassment. Criticism of Israel is not the issue. The concern is when those arguments are used as a cover for blatant antisemitism, which is exactly what happened last time,” said Berger, adding that he’s “been in contact with the commanding officer of [NYPD’s] 107th Precinct and with Queens Shmira, and am assured they are taking this very seriously and that the community will be protected and public safety will remain the priority throughout this scheduled protest.” 

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Tuesday she plans to implement a policy establishing “safety zones” around houses of worship. 

Pocket your kippah. Tuck your Star of David into your shirt. Keep your head down as you walk through the quad, That’s just some of the advice Jewish college students around the country told the Soviet-born writer and activist Izabella Tabarovsky they were given by the leaders of major Jewish organizations as a strategy to weather the anti-Israel and antisemitic storms that have raged on campus since Oct. 7, 2023.

Tabarovsky’s counter-message: Don’t hide. Reclaim your Zionism. And take inspiration from the Soviet refuseniks of the 1980s who stared down Communist Party strongman Leonid Brezhnev, held fast to their Judaism and eventually won their freedom.

Tabarovsky lays out some of these strategies for college students in a new book, Be a Refusenik: A Jewish Student’s Survival Guide, in which she argues that the anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses in recent decades, which has metastasized into antisemitism, mirrors Soviet anti-Jewish propaganda. In the book, Tabarovsky looks back to that era not only to understand the root causes of contemporary antisemitism, but to take inspiration on how to fight it.

The book features a history of Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda with its parallels to the rhetoric on college campuses today, interviews with refuseniks – Soviet Jews who were denied the right to emigrate to Israel, and often imprisoned for trying – and campus activists, and a foreword from the best-known refusenik, Natan Sharansky. Tabarovsky, who was born in the Soviet Union, emigrated to the U.S. in 1990 and now lives in Israel, also offers concrete strategies for students encountering antisemitism to stand proud and strong as Jews.

Tabarovsky told Jewish Insider that she saw a need for her book after many discussions with young Jews: “We’re in a bleak moment, and a lot of books diagnose the bleakness. … I saw a hunger for an inspirational message.”

In the near-decade that she has been writing about the subject, it has become “widely accepted among scholars and people involved in this [activism] that the patterns of anti-Zionist demonization and erasure are some of what Soviet Jews experienced in [former Soviet Union leader Leonid] Brezhnev’s USSR,” she said.

“If American Jews are today encountering the same language, the same explanatory logic and worldview … wouldn’t it make sense to look at how Soviet Jews responded?” Tabarovsky said. “We have this heroic story at the center of the Soviet Jewish story, which is really bleak, but had one really bright light that led to massive change.”

Tabarovsky clarified that, while the U.S. is a democracy and the Soviet Union was an oppressive totalitarian regime, “historic parallels are complex and nothing is ever exactly the same. I would never say that America today is like Brezhnev’s USSR, and the dangers that American Jews face are incomparable to what somebody like Sharansky faced.”

However, she said, “what is similar are the ideological echoes and anti-Zionist erasure. … In every society, there is a scale of punishments that’s different. What’s the worst thing that can happen in America? Your reputation is ruined; you lose your career, you’re ruined financially. All of these things can happen to people who declare themselves Zionists.”

While the refuseniks are remembered for their attempts to emigrate from the Soviet Union, Be a Refusenik focuses on their domestic dissident activity, especially their underground actions to strengthen Jewish identity, spread Jewish education, teach Hebrew and learn about Israel and Zionism. They were “crowdsourcing Jewish knowledge” when the Soviet party line was that “Zionism is racism, is Nazism,” Tabarovsky recounted.

Part of the strategy Tabarovsky suggests for young Jews on campus is modeled after “an inner journey the refuseniks took” in strengthening their Jewish identity.

“Some refuseniks told me this is how they viewed it,” Tabarovsky said, “the system refused to allow them something they wanted, but before that, they refused [to accept] something about the system itself. They refused [to accept] the antisemitism that the system demanded from them, that they erase their Jewish identity, that they give up their sense of peoplehood. … The refuseniks said ‘we don’t buy it; we refuse [to accept] this version of reality. We believe something different.’”

Tabarovsky noted that in her speaking engagement with young American Jews, she realized that many are unfamiliar with the refuseniks, and when she would ask for examples of Jewish heroes, they would usually mention the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising or the Maccabees.

“[Refuseniks] are a real example of Jewish courage and defiance. … They found each other and created a different reality. They wrote their own Jewish story and recreated the Jewish identity that had been taken away from them. … They are the role models we need,” she said.

Tabarovsky said that American Jews need to rebalance the narratives of Jewish victimhood and heroism, because victimhood has become too dominant.

“You read the horrible things refuseniks went through, but none of them talked about themselves as victims,” she said. “They felt like protagonists in their own story. They took responsibility; they took risks consciously. We need to think of ourselves in these terms, as well.” 

Tabarovsky said she heard from many students who were told by large Jewish organizations to keep their heads down and try not to provoke or attract attention, or engage, and applauded those who did not take that advice.

To Jewish students, Tabarovsky suggests: “Reclaim your Zionism.”

“Build a community. Find other people like you. Re-empower yourself and think about your situation strategically,” she said. “The Jewish community has been improvising responses on the fly, while the other side is in the driver’s seat, creating all these propagandistic narratives. … We need to think strategically about how we need to organize ourselves.” 

Once that happens, Tabarovsky said she is confident that Jewish students “will know how to act.” One example she cited was Lishi Baker, a rising senior at Columbia studying Middle East history, who she said saw American flags being defaced during anti-Israel protests at Columbia University and organized a counter-protest with American, not Israeli flags, to show that the protests are not only anti-Israel, but anti-American.

Tabarovsky called on students “to be more creative in the way they protest. The other side is doing all kinds of things to attract the media. The Soviet Jewry movement was so creative and knew how to attract attention.” 

The women’s basketball team at Rochelle Zell Jewish High School in Chicago was practicing earlier this month ahead of its annual Senior Night when an announcement came over the intercom, presenting a special guest. That’s where the video starts — one of those designed-to-go-viral tearjerkers showing a child reuniting with their parent who is in the military.

“He is joining us after leaving the military service in Europe,” the announcer says. Team members start to look around, smiling but confused, when they see that the door to the gym is open.  

“We are grateful for his dedication, especially his daughter Hannah,” the announcer continues. That’s when one athlete, in a long-sleeve practice jersey and a ponytail, begins to cry and run toward the door. “Thank you for your service and sacrifice, and welcome home, U.S. Army Chaplain Rabbi Aaron Melman.” Everyone cheers. Throwing her arms around her father, Hannah sobs.

Melman, a Conservative rabbi who since 2021 has served as a chaplain in the Illinois Army National Guard, had just returned from a U.S. Army base in Western Poland. He submitted his request for leave back in September but didn’t tell his daughter, who was devastated most of all to learn his deployment conflicted with the pinnacle of her high school basketball career. (She was more upset that he would miss that game than her graduation.) When she hugged him, Melman took off his cap and revealed a light brown yarmulke that matched his fatigues.

“We made it happen,” Melman tells his daughter in the video, smiling. Days later, RZJHS won at Senior Night. Hannah scored four points.

For more than two decades after he graduated from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2002, Melman was a congregational rabbi in the northern suburbs of Chicago. He had thought, early in his career, about joining the military — his father served in the U.S. Army Reserves — but decided against enlisting, recognizing that serving in active duty would be challenging as he raised two young children. 

But later, when his kids were older, the itch to serve returned. Melman was commissioned as an officer in the Illinois Army National Guard, a responsibility that typically required two days of service a month and two weeks each year, until he was sent to Poland earlier this year. That assignment made him one of several Jewish chaplains serving on the front lines of Europe, providing religious support and counseling to American soldiers — most of whom are not Jewish — who are stationed in Germany, Poland and other allied nations largely as a bulwark against Russia. 

Many Jewish chaplains serve in the military only part-time. They fit the training into already-busy schedules leading congregations and providing pastoral care to people in their own communities. 

Several military rabbis told JI that they view their mission as more than counseling the soldiers in their care and helping them deal with the hardships of military service. They explained that it’s also about reminding American Jews — many of whom have parents or grandparents who fought in World War II, Korea or Vietnam — about the value of service. During World War II, the military printed pocket-sized Hebrew bibles for Jewish soldiers. Today, some Jews don’t know anyone serving in the military. 

“Most Jews in America are not connected in any way, shape or form to the United States Armed Forces. The common reaction many of us get, when we go into the armed forces here in the States is, ‘Oh, you don’t want to go into the IDF?’ or, ‘Why didn’t you go into the IDF?’ And for the record, I happen to be a very strong Zionist,” Melman told Jewish Insider in an interview last week. “One of the things for me that I’ve really grown to appreciate is trying to connect the younger generation of American Jews into joining or thinking about joining the military and how important it is.”

Rabbi Aaron Gaber spent nine months at Grafenwoehr, a major American base in Germany, starting last summer. As a member of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, his unit’s mission was to train Ukrainian soldiers, and Gaber was tasked with training Ukrainian chaplains. He took them to the Memorium Nuremberg Trials, a museum located inside the German courtroom where Nazi leaders were tried for their crimes after World War II. 

“That created a whole conversation about moral integrity and personal courage. How do you say to your commander, ‘Don’t commit atrocities’? Or how do you keep your soldiers who are angry at what’s happening and want to do things that are unethical or immoral from doing that?” Gaber told JI. “That elicited a whole conversation on a theological level about light versus darkness, good versus evil, but also then on a practical level: How do you advise your commander in a way that gives him or her the option not to do something that shouldn’t be done?”

Most of Gaber’s job, when dealing either with Ukrainian troops or American, involved assisting people who were not Jewish. 

“As a rabbi, I got to make sure every week there was a Protestant worship service happening,” said Gaber, who returned from Germany in June (and specified that he did not lead those services).

Last year, he volunteered to spend the High Holidays in Poland and Lithuania. He drove between several different bases to make sure Jewish soldiers had access to religious services, food and learning opportunities tied to the holidays. 

“I take the idea of ohr l’goyim, or bringing light to the world, I was able to bring light to the world. I was able to help Jewish soldiers celebrate their faith. If I met 10 Jewish soldiers through the entire two weeks, that was a lot. So it was individual work,” Gaber said. “In one case, I had one soldier travel, I think, three hours each way to be able to spend an hour with me. He couldn’t go by himself, so he had a noncommissioned officer, one of his squad leaders, go with him. That was the length that the military can and does go to make sure soldiers can access their faith.” 

Ohr l’goyim is a phrase that comes up often for Jewish military chaplains. For Rabbi Laurence Bazer, a retired U.S. Army colonel who is now a vice president at the JCC Association and the Jewish Welfare Board’s Jewish Chaplains Council, those words — from the Book of Isaiah — commanded him to be a light unto the nations. “And that’s not just to our own fellow Jews, but to the rest of the community,” Bazer told JI. 

A friend of his from the North Dakota National Guard once took Bazer, who served in the Massachusetts Army National Guard, to visit North Dakota’s state partner in Ghana. He sat down with a group of Ghanaian soldiers and told them to ask him anything they might want to know about Judaism. 

“Now, these are all Catholic, Protestant and Muslim chaplains from the Ghanaian army,” Bazer recalled. “I said, ‘You could ask me, like, why Jews don’t believe in the New Testament, or Jesus, whatever.’ That’s part of the role that I love doing, of being, again, ohr l’goyim, a light unto the nations, to be able to share the positive, affirming side of Judaism so that they felt enriched. It was all in true fellowship of, we’re all servants of the Divine.” 

Bazer spent his final years in the military in Washington, working full time in an active duty role at the National Guard’s headquarters. He oversaw the religious response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 racial-justice protests and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. 

“I was advising commanders up to four stars at a senior level about what’s going on religiously, which really meant the moral welfare of their troops,” said Bazer, who had served in New York during the 9/11 attacks and later led the chaplaincy response to the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013. “That emotional level affects readiness, and chaplains are the key to help that readiness.” 

In 2023, Bazer was asked to go to Europe to lead Passover services and programming for Jewish troops. He led Passover Seders in Germany and Poland, and then drove between Lithuania and Latvia, delivering matzah and visiting with Jewish soldiers. 

The Seder at Grafenwoehr took place on a large lawn on the base. After he spoke about opening the door for the prophet Elijah, a symbolic act tied to hope that the Messiah will come, a Christian chaplain on base who had attended the Seder pulled Bazer aside. He pointed to a tower that stood next to the lawn.

“He says, ‘You know, Hitler used to go up there and watch,’” Bazer said. The base — now so central to America’s operations in Europe — was once used by the Nazis. “To think that back then he used to watch the Nazis do formation, and now, in 2023 we’re holding a Passover Seder on the same base in the shadow of that tower is an incredible experience.”

An antisemitic art display at Washington Union Station on Thursday depicting U.S. and Israeli leaders drinking the blood of Gazans is drawing widespread condemnation for echoing the historic blood libel against Jews. 

“This is the kind of stuff that Nazi soldiers were shown during World War II, with the idea to make it that Jewish people were not humans,” Ron Halber, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, told Jewish Insider. “This is exactly what that is in the modern day. It is done to make Jews look like animals.”

The demonstration, displayed both inside and outside of D.C’s main train station, was organized by Hazami Barada and Atefeh Rokhvand, two anti-Israel activists who have been involved in several protests around Washington since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, including leading a protest encampment outside of the Israeli Embassy and outside of then-Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s home for months in 2024. 

Barada protested a community vigil for the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack, which took place at The Anthem, a music venue in the nation’s capital. Rokhvand is an elementary school teacher who spoke at the Muslim Student Association conference in 2024.  

Another local activist, Hasan Isham, took credit on Instagram for 3D printing the masks used in the protest, which featured people dressed in suits wearing masks to resemble Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, former President Joe Biden and Blinken. The five officials were sitting at a long “Friendsgiving dinner” table decorated with the Israeli flag while eating doll limbs drenched in fake blood. A menu placard read: “Starter: Gaza children’s limbs.” “Main: Stolen Organs.” “Dessert: Illegally harvested skin.” “Drink: Gaza’s spilled blood.”

Leading Jewish groups condemned the demonstration, with the Anti-Defamation League calling it “nothing less than abhorrent.” 

The American Jewish Committee said that “blood libel was on full display” and called on “leaders and authorities [to] condemn this display and ensure that public spaces are not used to spread dangerous hate.”  

“This was nothing less than the revival of one of the oldest and most dangerous antisemitic tropes in history. Blood libel has fueled violence, persecution, and massacres of Jews for centuries. Seeing it resurface in our nation’s capital is both horrifying and unacceptable,” AJC said in a statement.

Union Station is within U.S. Park Police jurisdiction, which manages its own permits. Park Police did not respond to an inquiry from JI asking whether a permit was provided for the demonstration. First Amendment permits had previously been granted for a pro-Palestinian encampment outside of Union Station, but were revoked after demonstrators burned American flags in 2024. 

The display on Thursday was removed by Amtrak police within five minutes of being fully set up, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. After being removed from Union Station, the organizers moved the display to outside the station.

“Whether inside or outside, this was absolutely disgusting… and done to incite hatred against Jewish people,” said Halber. “The result is that this could lead to violence against Jews. It was designed to use the worst antisemitic stereotypes against Jews to demonize Jews. It’s nothing more than a modern-day blood libel.” 

“This happened at Union Station where members of Congress and people advocating on Capitol Hill pass through,” continued Halber. “This is seen by a lot of people.”

An anonymous manifesto was sent on Wednesday to two Pomona College student-run newspapers by demonstrators who recently stormed a campus vigil for the second anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. The emailed manifesto states that “Zionism is a death cult that must be dealt with accordingly.” 

It was sent days after an on-campus event commemorating the Oct. 7 anniversary was disrupted by four masked and keffiyah-clad individuals who barged in chanting “Zionists not welcome here.” The memorial, sponsored by Hillel in a university building and scheduled on the Hebrew calendar anniversary of the attacks, featured a talk by Yoni Viloga, who survived the attack on his family’s home in Kibbutz Mefalsim. 

The disruption, which also included chants of “Zionism is still a colonial ideology” and “You’re all complicit in genocide,” lasted about two minutes, until campus safety officers arrived. 

The perpetrators of last week’s demonstration wrote in the manifesto that “Viloga served in the zionist occupational forces and is a settler on stolen land. Knowing this, we had to act.” 

The communiqué included several antisemitic and threatening statements, such as, “this moment demands … making modern-nazis feel unwelcome, not just from these college campuses, but everywhere,” and said about the event that “Claremont Hillel and every single zionist in that room advance the genocide.” 

A Pomona spokesperson told Jewish Insider, “The language we saw today is vile, threatening and highly disturbing. It has no place on our campus.”

The university responded to last week’s disruption by opening an investigation the following day. The spokesperson said about the incident that the university has “every intention of getting to the bottom of what happened. As part of this investigation, we are examining our security protocols, and reviewing security and other kinds of footage, with the intention of identifying and disciplining the individuals involved.”

While the liberal arts college in Claremont, Calif., has faced several anti-Israel demonstrations since the Oct. 7 attacks, last week’s protest was the first to occur in an expressly Jewish space on campus. It also came days after Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire and hostage-release deal. 

The Department of Justice filed a civil suit on Monday against several protesters and anti-Israel groups for their involvement in a demonstration at a New Jersey synagogue, Congregation Ohr Torah, last November.

The DOJ complaint alleges that the Party for Socialism and Liberation-New Jersey, American Muslims for Palestine-New Jersey and six individuals engaged in physical assaults and antisemitic and threatening chants, as well as defying police orders.

The complaint alleges that the defendants broke through a police line, marched onto synagogue property and attempted to physically block Jewish worshippers from entering the synagogue.

Two are accused of using vuvuzelas — large plastic horns typically used at sporting events —  as a “weapon reasonably known to lead to permanent noise-induced hearing loss,” blowing them inches from one attendee’s ear with the intention of causing “serious bodily harm.” One of the same defendants allegedly physically tackled another attendee, grabbed his throat and put him in a chokehold. Another also reportedly “deployed a stink bomb” to obstruct access to the synagogue.

According to the complaint, the event was originally set to take place in a private home, but was relocated to the synagogue “due to credible threats of violence from certain Defendants.” One of the defendants was recorded on camera delivering a threatening letter to that private home, and the home address was posted online.

The complaint alleges that these actions were intended to intimidate Jewish worshipers and prevent their participation in religious observance, in violation of federal law, and that comments captured on video indicate they were motivated by antisemitic animus.

The complaint states that the vuvuzela sounds overpowered the memorial service and Torah sermon.

The suit was brought under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, traditionally used against those who block access to abortion clinics, but which also includes provisions barring the use of force, threats, intimidation or physical obstruction to interfere with the right to worship.

The event in question was an Israel real estate fair and spiritual event, which the complaint describes as “a religious event centered on the Jewish obligation to live in the Land of Israel, a tenet of Jewish faith.” 

According to the complaint, it “was to include prayer, a religious memorial service for the late Rabbi Avi Goldberg, a Torah sermon, religious songs with biblical verses, prayerful dancing, educational activities about the religious obligation to live in Israel, a real estate fair, and a festive barbecue in the synagogue’s parking lot — all part of the religious observance.”

“This Justice Department will vigorously enforce the right of every American to worship in peace and without fear,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who leads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement. “Those who target houses of worship and violate our federal laws protecting people of faith are on notice that they will face the consequences.”

Nathan Diament, the executive director of public policy for the Orthodox Union, praised the DOJ for filing the lawsuit, and said that he had pressed the Biden administration to file similar cases, but was rebuffed.

“We applaud Attorney General Bondi and Assistant Attorney General Dhillon for bringing this suit to protect the Jewish community and all  people of faith who have the constitutional right to worship without fear of harassment,” Diament told Jewish Insider. “OU Advocacy urged the Biden administration to bring FACE Act lawsuits to no avail. Hopefully, violent protestors will now be held accountable, and this lawsuit will send a strong message to anyone who targets houses of worship.”

The complaint further notes that PSL and AMP have histories of organizing violent protests and other incidents targeting Jewish institutions and pro-Israel events, and that “unless restrained, Defendants are likely to continue violating the FACE Act, given their history of targeting Jewish religious events with violence and intimidation.”

The lawsuit requests a permanent injunction against such activity by the defendants, an order that they be banned from coming within 50 feet of the private home or synagogue and that they pay compensatory damages to victims and a fine to the government.

Days after the University of Michigan kicks off the new school year this week, the campus is slated to host two anti-Israel speakers — former Columbia University protest leader Mahmoud Khalil and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of the most outspoken critics of Israel in Congress.  

On Wednesday afternoon, Tlaib is scheduled to speak at an on-campus press conference titled “United Against Genocide, United Against Repression” hosted by The People’s Coalition Michigan. 

“The [UMich] Regents continue to shield their indefensible investments in the genocidal state of israel by attacking anyone who stands in solidarity with Palestine,” the group wrote on social media. “[Tlaib] will join students, workers, and community members to bring attention to the Regents’ long and continuing campaign to suppress free speech.”

Later that evening, the campus chapter of Students Organize for Syria is scheduled to host Khalil, who was released in June from the immigration detention center where he had been held for three months as the Trump administration sought to have him deported. 

One day after his release, the anti-Israel activist appeared at a rally in New York City organized by the National Iranian American Council, a group accused of having ties to the Iranian regime, where he protested U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Khalil, who has repeatedly declined to condemn Hamas, will speak “on liberation and freedom,” according to the campus group. 

The events come days before thousands of pro-Palestinian activists are set to gather in Detroit,  beginning Aug. 29, for the second annual People’s Conference for Palestine, under the slogan “Gaza is the Compass.” 

The three-day conference features several radical anti-Israel speakers including Khalil and Hussam Shaheen, a convicted Palestinian terrorist released from Israeli prison on Feb. 1 as part of a ceasefire and hostage-release deal with Hamas. 

A State Department spokesperson said Friday that all international speakers for the conference will be placed on a visa “look out” status due to concerns surrounding speakers’ ties to terrorism, according to The Jerusalem Post. 

Rev. Johnnie Moore, executive chairman of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, has spent the past two weeks under “24/7 protection while evil wants to kill me,” he told attendees of the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute’s annual National Jewish Retreat, held last week at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington. 

Moore was referring to some 50 anti-Israel demonstrators who have protested outside of his Northern Virginia home multiple times in recent weeks — making death threats and painting graffiti.  

“Johnnie Moore is a war criminal … We will remain on the streets, outside these criminals’ homes, until the siege on Gaza is lifted, until aid is allowed in, until we see an arms embargo against the zionist entity, and until all of Palestine is liberated, from the river to the sea,” the Palestinian Youth Movement wrote Saturday on social media, following its most recent demonstration outside of the entrance gates of Moore’s Prince William County neighborhood, about 30 miles outside of D.C.  

Graffiti and signs near Moore’s home on Saturday read, “Johnnie Moore Kills Palestinians For $$$,” “Johnnie Moore Kills Babies” and “Your Neighbor is a Genocider Johnnie Moore.” Moore told Jewish Insider he has also received “two credible death threats,” which are currently under investigation, adding that police have “done an extraordinary job taking it seriously” and made one arrest for destruction of property. 

The group has also protested outside the nearby home of John Acree, the interim executive director of the GHF. 

“I never thought that it would be so life-threatening to do something so obviously right,” Moore told supporters of JLI, an educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch, at a VIP reception Thursday night, referring to his work with GHF. 

“If they’re doing this to try and force us to quit, in fact it’s going to have the exact opposite effect because every attack, every threat, every lie is only more proof that what we’re doing is right and it’s essential,” Moore, a member of President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory committee, told JI. “These profane efforts to stop us from saving lives only makes us more determined to save lives,” said Moore, adding that he views the attacks as “domestic terrorism.” 

“I believe some things are simple, like when Hamas opposes you, it means you’re probably doing the right thing, whatever the secretary-general of the United Nations thinks about it,” he continued, a reference to the U.N.’s calls for the dismantling of GHF.  

GHF has faced mounting criticism in recent weeks — including from some pro-Israel American Jews — amid the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Recent reports have claimed that since GHF took over aid distribution in May, with backing from the United States and Israel, Palestinians have been crushed in crowds and killed by live ammunition while waiting for aid. The IDF has admitted to firing warning shots near the aid sites. 

Last month, Moore called reports of civilian casualties at GHF’s aid sites overblown but acknowledged that “there have been some civilian casualties of people trying to get to our distribution sites  — [which] the IDF has said it is responsible for, but we think that’s a relatively small number of people, [although] one person is too much.” 

Moore also spoke at the reception about the partnership between Jews and Christians, which he said “fundamentally comes down to a simple fact — your book is also our book.”

“Your values are our values. Your heroes are our heroes. I stand here today as a Christian blessed because of Israel. Blessed because of the Jewish people because the Bible we love and cherish as Christians is a Jewish book. Your care for the Hebrew Bible, the diligence, reverence of your scribes throughout the centuries, changed our lives.” 

Moore continued, “I’ve been trying to do everything I possibly can — and I don’t know another evangelical leader that isn’t trying to do the same —  [to] fight antisemitism when it rears its head, making sure that the hostages remain a bipartisan issue in the United States.” 

In introductory remarks, Rabbi Hesh Epstein, chairman of the National Jewish Retreat and director of Chabad of South Carolina, called Moore “an international leader and advisor on religious freedom.” The reception also featured remarks from former Israeli hostage Or Levy, who was held by Hamas in Gaza for 491 days after being kidnapped from the Nova Music Festival where his wife, Einav, was killed. 

The unrest could be felt everywhere — in traffic jams, on the airwaves, in WhatsApp groups, even in the waiting room of a dental clinic.

Across Israel yesterday, hundreds of thousands joined a nationwide unofficial strike, led by hostage families and bereaved families, demanding an end to the war in Gaza and the immediate release of the hostages still held there. According to the Hostages Families Forum, over 1 million people participated in protests throughout the day. As the government plans to escalate its military campaign against Hamas, emotions ran high across towns, cities and online spaces, deepening a national rift.

Police clashed with demonstrators blocking roads. In Ra’anana, a truck driver was arrested after allegedly attacking a protester. In a Tel Aviv neighborhood mothers’ WhatsApp group, several members condemned local cafés for staying open, while another defended them for “not strengthening Hamas.” At a dental clinic, a man berated staff for opening their doors, shouting, “What about the hostages!?”

At the heart of the tensions is a painful divide: protesters — including the majority of the hostage families — argue that rescuing the captives must come before all else. Meanwhile, the government and its supporters, and even several hostage families, claim such demonstrations weaken Israel’s negotiating hand and embolden Hamas. Israeli President Issac Herzog, speaking at Hostages Square, said “There’s no Israeli who doesn’t want them back home. We can argue about philosophies, but truly, the people of Israel want our brothers and sisters back home.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down on his government’s stance in a public statement, warning: “Those who are calling for an end to the war today without defeating Hamas, are not only hardening Hamas’s stance and pushing off the release of our hostages, they are also ensuring that the horrors of October 7 will recur again and again … to advance the release of our hostages and to ensure that Gaza will never again constitute a threat to Israel, we must complete the work and defeat Hamas.”

Yet recent polls show that a majority of Israelis support prioritizing the hostages’ release and bringing an end to the war.

Israeli journalist and commentator Ben Caspit wrote on social media: “To join the protest strike, you don’t have to be a leftist. Nor a centrist. Nor a rightist…  You need a heart. There on the left side, between the ribs and the lungs. A beating heart that feels the need to express solidarity with our kidnapped brothers, with their families, with the terrible suffering.”

“And no, don’t believe the spin that it ‘helps Hamas.’ It doesn’t. Hamas doesn’t need strike X or demonstration Y to get to know Israeli society. Hamas knows us very well, just as we know them. They are death eaters. We seek life. That’s the whole difference.”

Meanwhile, Amit Segal — a reporter and political commentator often seen opposite Caspit on Channel 12 — offered a more sober take in his newsletter on Sunday: “While the strike will help many Israelis express their frustration and desperation to bring the hostages home, it won’t bring Israel closer to achieving the very thing they’re protesting for.”

Even if that may be, the protests reach further than home: former hostages have recounted the strength they gained from witnessing the demonstrations on the news while in captivity in Gaza. In Tel Aviv, as night fell, thousands of protesters raised their phone flashlights in Hostages Square and the surrounding streets, creating a moment of visual unity. The sea of lights stretched across the plaza and beyond — a simple gesture that carried a message of solidarity for the hostages still held in Gaza.

At the same time, the wheels of war are already turning. While Israelis grappled with grief, anger and hope in the streets, the military was preparing for its next incursion. Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the IDF’s chief of staff, declared yesterday from the Gaza Strip: “Today we are approving the plan for the next phase of the war.”

“We will maintain the momentum of Operation ‘Gideon’s Chariots’ while focusing on Gaza City. We will continue to strike until the decisive defeat of Hamas, with the hostages always at the forefront of our minds,” Zamir said, adding, “Soon we will move on to the next phase” of the operation.

More than 30 anti-Israel demonstrators who occupied a University of Washington engineering building at the end of the spring semester — causing more than $1 million worth of damage — are now being investigated by the university and local attorney’s office for potential criminal charges, Jewish Insider has learned. 

The investigation comes after a recent report put a spotlight on a link between the radical student group that led the takeover and the U.S. designated terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. 

“We have taken this incident very seriously, including having issued emergency suspensions for all students who were arrested in the building and working with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office on potential criminal charges,” a University of Washington spokesperson told JI on Wednesday, referring to the demonstration in May in which masked demonstrators blocked entrances and exits to the building and ignited fires in two dumpsters on a street outside. 

The newly constructed engineering building had been partially funded by Boeing, which the student protest group, Students United for Palestinian Equality & Return (SUPER UW), said makes UW a “direct partner in the genocide of the Palestinian people” due to the IDF’s use of Boeing products. Days later, the university suspended 21 students who were arrested during the anti-Israel protests, a marked shift from the school’s reaction to previous anti-Israel activity. 

The incident also led the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism to open a review into the university. 

The Seattle public university’s investigation into criminal charges comes as the Secure Community Network (SCN), a safety and security network for American Jewish communities, found that a manifesto released by SUPER UW — which the student group published on Medium shortly before its building takeover began — was inspired by a foreign terrorist entity. 

The document praised Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel as a “heroic victory” and said the group looks to “the rich history of struggle in our university for strength and inspiration as we take action.” SUPER UW also released a statement of solidarity with the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, a fundraising arm of the terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine which was designated as a terror group by the U.S. Treasury Department in October 2024. 

“The fact that this action was inspired by a foreign terrorist entity is gravely concerning and should be an alarm for the broader community,” Solly Kane, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, told JI. “When foreign terrorist organizations are allowed to infiltrate university campuses the implications are significant and we hope the university leadership will continue to follow-up on this incident seriously and with consequences for those responsible, after appropriate due process.”

Miriam Weingarten, co-director of Chabad UW with her husband Rabbi Mendel Weingarten, said she hoped that those responsible for the damage from the May protest would be “held responsible in a way that would deter any future actions.” She said doing so would help Jewish students feel safe and comfortable on campus, and, in the meantime, “Chabad continues to be open as a space for Jewish students to become more confident in their Jewish pride.”

Kerry Sleeper, SCN deputy director of intelligence and information sharing, warned in June at a congressional hearing about the rise of antisemitism that the terror ties associated with UW demonstrators are part of a larger pattern at protests on campuses around the country — claiming that “this is not a protest in the traditional sense; it is an information and intimidation campaign targeting Jewish students and institutions, often through violent tactics.”  

“These trends are fueled by a persistent ecosystem of anti-Israel networks operating in the U.S. and online,” Sleeper said. “Groups such as the Students for Justice in Palestine, Within Our Lifetime, Unity of Fields, and online propaganda hubs such as the emerging ISNAD Network consistently amplify messaging aligned with Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Iranian-backed information operations.” 

“While not all are directly tied to designated foreign terrorist organizations, they help blur the lines between protest and incitement, justifying, glorifying and promoting violence against the Jewish community in the name of Gaza.” 

In a statement to JI, Michael Masters, SCN national director and CEO, said that as students return to campus in the coming weeks, “these threats are not dissipating; they’re evolving.”

“These incidents are not isolated; they are part of a coordinated effort, which has included the circulation of terror toolkits, to intimidate Jewish students and disrupt Jewish life.” 

Masters called for universities to “do more to protect their students and secure Jewish spaces, including allocating the necessary resources and funding for security. Jewish students should never have to choose between their safety and fully participating in campus or religious life.”

The day after Israel’s Security Cabinet voted to seize control of Gaza City, the Hostages Families Forum organized a major protest in Tel Aviv against the decision, warning it would put their loved ones’ lives in danger.

But Tzvika Mor, father of hostage Eitan Mor, has been speaking out against the Cabinet decision for a different reason — he thinks the IDF should be pushing even more aggressively to take over the rest of Gaza.

Nearly two years since his son was kidnapped while working as a security guard at the Nova festival on Oct. 7, 2023, Mor, 48, has not wavered from his position that defeating Hamas must be Israel’s top priority in the war in Gaza, above the hostages.

Mor, who lives in Kiryat Arba, a settlement abutting Hebron in the West Bank, normally works as an ADHD coach. But since the Oct. 7 attacks, he has divided his time between advocating for the country’s victory over Hamas and serving as an IDF reservist in the Paratroopers’ Brigade. In the long term Mor wishes to see the entirety of Gaza become part of Israel, telling Jewish Insider in an interview on Sunday, “It is the land of the Tribe of Judah; it is ours.”

As chairman of the Tikvah Forum, a more hawkish minority group of hostage families than the larger and better-known Hostages Families Forum, Mor and several other hostages’ relatives oppose partial deals and the release of large numbers of terrorists, arguing that only sustained military pressure will bring all of the hostages home. Mor spoke out against the Israeli Security Cabinet’s recent decision in his interview with JI.

“The question isn’t what they’re going to do, but what is the goal. If the goal is to lead Hamas to negotiate, it will fail, just like in Gideon’s Chariots, which took five months and didn’t bring back the hostages and didn’t destroy Hamas,” Mor said, referring to the IDF operation that began earlier this year. “The goal cannot be to bring [Hamas] to talks; it must be to destroy them.”

Hamas, he said, is not motivated to return the hostages, because they have the food, fuel and water that they need to survive, but if they feared for their survival, the situation would be different.

Mor compared the situation to the story in Genesis in which Abraham’s nephew Lot is kidnapped by four kings, and Abraham took an army with him to fight the kings.

Abraham “didn’t talk to them. He didn’t pay them. He fought a war until they surrendered. That is the way,” Mor said. 

Mor said fighting to pressure Hamas to return to the table reflects an order of priorities that is both wrong and ineffective.

“The war cannot be about the hostages, and I say that as the father of a hostage. How many soldiers should be killed for the hostages?” he asked. “You don’t go to war to bring back hostages. You go to war for sovereignty, for deterrence. Then, when you win, you get your captives back.” 

Prioritizing the hostages “not only harms national security, but it also hurts the hostages, because Hamas learns that they’re the most important to us and raises the price all the time. It’s indescribable stupidity,” he lamented.

Mor warned that if Israel “concedes in Gaza, Hamas will never give up all of the hostages … And what would the message be to the Arabs in Judea and Samaria” – he asked, using the biblical name for the West Bank – “that kidnapping Israelis is the best thing to do?”

In the past, Mor said, “it was clear that there was no negotiating with terrorists. We would try to save our hostages and take risks, but we could not give in to terrorism.”

Mor cited research by the Yachin Research Center, which he said showed that four times more Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks between the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and 2023 than in 1949-1992.

“That means that since Israel gave in to terrorism, more Israelis were murdered. It’s clear … That needs to stop,” he stated.

Asked about the concerns that other hostage families have expressed about expanded military action in Gaza putting their loved ones at risk, Mor responded with a question: “Is our war in Gaza necessary? If there weren’t hostages, would we still need to go to war?”

“The answer is yes, because [Hamas] cannot remain our neighbors after we saw what they can do, or they would do it again. They are religious people; they live for this. They don’t live for a nice house and a car and social status. Not for coffee shops and pilates. They live to kill Jews. They’re like zombies. You have to destroy them. The war would be necessary even if there were no hostages,” he said.

As such, Mor said, Israel must take the necessary steps to win the war in Gaza: “It cannot be that we will endanger 10 million Israelis because of the hostages. We need to solve that problem such that we are not harming national security.”

“We have fears, too,” he added, “but in war, some are hurt. Soldiers are injured in the war too.”

Mor and another one of his sons have been in combat units in the current war. Thirteen soldiers in Mor’s brigade have been killed.

Early in the war, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with members of the Tikvah Forum, Hebrew news coverage accused the forum members of being Likud plants or, at least, being easier for Netanyahu to talk to than the Hostages Families Forum, whose early leadership included political campaigners involved in protests seeking to bring down his government.

Mor, however, has been and continues to be critical of Netanyahu, who he said he hasn’t spoken to in six months, and of Likud ministers who he has spoken to more recently, including Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel and Agriculture Minister and former Shin Bet director Avi Dichter.

“I tell them these things, but almost all of the ministers in Likud align with the prime minister and say we have to agree to partial [hostage] deals,” Mor lamented.

Mor says that he has faced pressure for raising a different voice from the more prominent hostage relatives, and that “people defame and curse me.” In December 2023, the father of another hostage accused him on live television of giving up on his son, leading Mor to start crying. 

“The Israeli media doesn’t help. They lead the campaign” against him, he said. “But I feel that I am a messenger of the people of Israel. It is clear to me that the people of Israel want to win … They are connected to their roots, to the Land of Israel and to Judaism. They don’t want to be sold dreams and delusions that ‘it will all be OK, we can give in to terror and then deal with it later.’ We can’t deal with it. If we surrender, we will pay a higher price.” 

Mor has not seen pictures or videos of his son Eitan, 25, since Oct. 7, 2023, but he said that the most recent sign of life he received was from Israeli intelligence services in February this year. 

“We don’t know anything except that he’s alive,” Mor said.

In May, Eitan’s mother, Efrat Mor, said she learned from another hostage released in the first deal in November 2023 that Eitan is using his “incredible social skills … both for himself and for the other hostages” to lift everyone’s spirits. 

Eitan is the eldest of eight children.

“He is very strong, physically and mentally. He was very Zionist. He was a fighter and commander in the Golani Brigade” of the IDF, his father said. “He’s not soft; he doesn’t whine. He is strong; he’s a leader. We are sure that if he is with other hostages, he is helping them and strengthening them.”

When Hamas terrorists attacked the Nova rave, Eitan contacted an uncle because his parents do not use phones on Shabbat. He said that he and his friends were hiding, and sent videos of terrorists on pickup trucks. He also sent his location so that his uncle could pass it on to the IDF. The last time he was in contact with his uncle was at 10:04 a.m. His parents did not know that he was at the party, and they did not find out about the Oct. 7 attacks or that their son had been taken hostage until the evening.

Later, Nova survivors said that Eitan left his hiding place and saved their lives, which his father said “tells you the most about him.”

“He could have gone home at 6:29, but he stayed to save people,” Mor said. “He hid people and ran with them until he was kidnapped at 12:30, not by Hamas but by Gazan civilians.”

In a move called for by pro-Israel students at Columbia University, the school announced on Friday that disciplinary action and rules surrounding student protests would be moved out of the purview of the faculty-run University Senate and into the provost’s office.

“This is the most encouraging and commendable action taken by Columbia’s administration to address the systemic problems within the university since [the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks],” Noa Fay, a graduate student entering her last year in Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, told Jewish Insider. 

“Revoking the University Senate’s power over disciplinary and rule-making procedures has been top of the institutional reform list for many Columbians who wish to see our university restored to order and excellence.”

Critics of the University Senate say that since Oct. 7 and the ensuing protests that have roiled Columbia’s campus, the 111-elected member body has blocked discipline against anti-Israel protesters and removed protest regulations aimed at protecting Jewish students. 

Earlier this week, when the university released a list of commitments to address antisemitism on campus, several Jewish students expressed concern that structural reform to the University Senate was missing. 

Fay, a student member of the Columbia-SIPA Anti-Hate Task Force, suggested to JI earlier this week that changes to the University Senate are one of the most important measures that could create a safer climate for Jewish students “as it has served most reliably and forcefully to protect those guilty of antisemitic racism at school.” 

Last August, the University Senate passed revised guidelines for the Rules of University Conduct that removed an interim demonstration policy that the university implemented following disruptive — and sometimes violent — Gaza solidarity encampments that spring, put in place to restrict the location and times that protests were allowed.  

Lishi Baker, a rising senior at Columbia studying Middle East history, wrote in a 2024 Columbia Spectator op-ed that the University Senate had refused to let Jewish students share their experiences of antisemitism on campus when the university’s task force on antisemitism presented its second report to the body. 

“I was one of the students asked by the task force to speak,” Baker wrote. “However, when the task force co-chairs informed members of the Senate leadership of their desire to bring students, those Senate leaders dismissed the idea outright.” 

The Senate has been under university review since April. The decision by Columbia’s trustees to diminish the Senate’s power comes as university leadership is in the final stages of talks with the Trump administration to make a deal that would restore some $400 million in federal funding that was cut by the government in March due to the university’s record dealing with antisemitism.

Protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations that have engulfed San Francisco’s streets this week took an antisemitic turn on Monday night when a local Jewish-owned civic engagement hub and community space had its windows smashed and walls defaced with slurs including “Die Zio,” “The Only Good Settler is a Dead One,” “Death 2 Israel is a Promise” and “Intifada.” 

“There is no justification for attacking me other than the fact that I am Jewish,” Manny Yekutiel, owner of the Mission District event space Manny’s, which is in disrepair following the vandalism and break-in, told Jewish Insider. “My business is not a pro-Israel business. I am not Israeli. This is not a space that represents Israel in any way.”

The space was also the target of antisemitic graffiti in October around the one year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks. The most recent attack is currently being investigated as a hate crime. 

In the Bay Area, over 150 people were arrested on Sunday and Monday following protests against President Donald Trump’s travel ban, latest immigration policies and ICE raids. Similar protests spread across the country — including in Los Angeles where 4,000 National Guard members and 700 U.S. Marines were deployed on Monday. 

Yekutiel believes the protests against ICE are “necessary” because ongoing deportations are “stoking hatred” and “we need to stand with immigrants.” While Yekutiel says he will continue identifying with left-wing causes, he also said the attack on his business makes the protests concerning for Jews.

The attack on Manny’s “undermines the very values such movements claim to uphold” such as “justice and welcome the stranger,” the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area said in a statement.

Monday’s vandalism in San Francisco comes as the Jewish community faces an “elevated threat” following a surge of violent antisemitic attacks across the country in recent weeks, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned last week. Last month, two Israeli Embassy employees were killed in a shooting in Washington. Days later in Boulder, Colo., 15 people advocating for the release of hostages in Gaza were injured in a firebombing by an Egyptian national who overstayed his visa in the U.S. 

Trump announced his travel ban — which bars nationals of 12 countries from entering the U.S. — last week following the Boulder attack.

“The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas,” Trump said. “We don’t want them.”

One of Hamas’ top three sources of funding is the U.K., where it is a banned terrorist organization, an investigation from Israel’s Channel 12 found. That funding includes 25% of Hamas’ donors from non-state actors, as well as tens of millions of dollars from the government of the U.K. to a UNICEF program whose beneficiaries are determined by Hamas.

The U.K., France and Canada threatened Israel last week with “concrete actions” if it does not lift restrictions on humanitarian aid and work with United Nations agencies to distribute it.

The U.K., Canada and the European Union — of which France is a member— as well as Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Mauritius and Croatia, sponsored a project through UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Emergency Fund, for which a Hamas-run ministry provides a list of people to receive funding.

The program provides cash payments of $200-$300 per month to 546,000 needy people in Gaza. UNICEF said that it works with a “beneficiary list from the MoSD,” meaning the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Social Development, to determine who receives the cash. The program uses a digital platform funded by USAID to distribute the cash. UNICEF published an update on the program as recently as November 2024. 

MoSD is led by Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’ politburo, designated a “senior Hamas official” by the U.S. Treasury Department. 

A 2022 document from the U.K. Foreign Office, uncovered by NGO Monitor, showed that London was aware of Hamas’ involvement with the program and that it had the potential for “severe” reputational damage. 

“The cash assistance component will be implemented in coordination with the Ministry of Social Development MoSD. The MoSD in Gaza is affiliated with the de facto authorities and thus UK Aid can be linked directly or indirectly with supporting the de facto authority (Hamas) in Gaza which is part of a proscribed group,” the document reads.

The U.K. gave about $23.1 million to UNICEF projects in the West Bank and Gaza in 2024, and $4.8 million in 2023. 

NGO Monitor’s legal Advisor, Anne Herzberg, noted that it is unclear how much of that funding went to the Gaza cash program.

“There is very little detail from the U.K. side about how much is going in, what oversight is in place, what exactly they are doing to mitigate the risk” of money going to Hamas, Herzberg told Jewish Insider on Sunday. “A lot of countries are giving funds to the U.N. and just leave it in their hands.” 

Herzberg said that while a lot of attention has gone to UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, which was recently banned from Israel after some of its employees participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, “UNRWA is just the tip of the iceberg, because 13 U.N. agencies are operating in Gaza. There is very little information into how these other U.N. agencies are operating.” 

“Aid diversion is the main problem and why there have been so many issues with humanitarian aid in Gaza,” she said. “It’s inconceivable to me that these governments refuse to deal with this issue. They claim they want to help Palestinians, to end the conflict and bring peace, yet they don’t want to tackle this issue.” 

Beyond government aid going to Hamas, what qualifies the U.K. as the leading non-Muslim country funding Hamas is nongovernmental contributions, Channel 12 reported.

In 2001, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi founded the Union of Good, a coalition of 50 Islamist charities with connections to Hamas and other proscribed terrorist groups. The group raised hundreds of millions of dollars for Hamas during the Second Intifada.

The organization was banned in the U.S. and U.K., and Qaradawi, who is Egyptian and lives in Doha, Qatar, has been barred from the U.S., U.K. and France.  

Yet the organizations making up the Union of Good continued their fundraising activities.

The Channel 12 report names specific Hamas operatives based in the U.K., including Zahar Birawi, who is the head of the Palestinian Return Center in London, leads Hamas activities in Great Britain and has been instrumental in organizing weekly anti-Israel protests in London. Issam Yusef Mustafa, a former member of the Hamas politburo, is a U.K. citizen and is the biggest fundraiser for Hamas in Europe as the head of “Interpal,” a former Union of Good group sanctioned by the U.S. and Israel.

Herzberg explained that many of the organizations funneling money to Hamas are registered as businesses so they can avoid scrutiny from the Charity Commission.

“The monitoring in the U.K. does not seem as robust as what you see in the U.S., where there are many more investigations going on at the governmental level and more reporting, even though the U.K. government says it has robust control in its laws,” Herzberg said. “It’s unclear how those laws are being enforced.” 

Erez Noy, a former Shin Bet official dealing with terror funding, told Channel 12 that “Hamas is strong in Britain because over the years they got used to being able to do almost anything they want there, compared to other countries in Europe … For years, Britain, for whatever reason, did not handle preventing and taking care of these systems [to fund terror]. When Hamas realizes there is a permissive arena, it tests the limits.” 

Hamas petitioned the U.K. last month to be removed from the country’s list of banned terrorist organizations. 

According to Udi Levy, the former head of the Mossad’s department for fighting terrorism funding, “these are businesses that raise funds under the guise of humanitarian aid, and reach Hamas in Gaza, Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and anywhere else around the world.”

Levy told Channel 12 that “total victory over Hamas is not just in the Gaza Strip. We are making a huge mistake because even if we kill every last ‘soldier’ in Gaza, there is still a massive Hamas infrastructure that will continue to act and even rehabilitate its activities, unless we start taking care of it.” 

The British Embassy in Israel said in response to a query from JI that “Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization in the U.K. and funding or supporting it is a crime. We categorically reject the false and irresponsible allegations in the Channel 12 investigation that the UK Government funds Hamas run agencies in Gaza. No UK funding was provided to the Ministry of Social Development in Gaza … We are clear that Hamas must play no role in the future of Gaza. FCDO [the Foreign Office] conducted a thorough due diligence assessment of UNICEF, and we identify how U.K. funds are transferred until they reach the final beneficiaries.”

The embassy interpreted the claim made by the U.K. Foreign Office that “U.K. Aid can be linked directly or indirectly with supporting the de facto authority (Hamas) in Gaza which is part of a proscribed group,” as referring to the Ministry of Social Development in Ramallah run by the Palestinian Authority.

In addition, the embassy stated that it does “not recognize the claim that 25% of Hamas’s non-state funding comes from the U.K. To our knowledge, no official Israeli body has ever made such a claim.” 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) condemned the “inappropriate and unacceptable” scene at Barnard College on Wednesday night when anti-Israel demonstrators stormed the college’s main administrative building and assaulted a staff member, sending him to the hospital.

“It is inappropriate and unacceptable that masked intruders forcibly stormed a Barnard campus building, assaulted a college worker and blocked classroom access. All this in support of other protestors who are being justifiably disciplined for inappropriately disrupting fellow students from learning in a history class on Israel, while spreading antisemitic flyers that encouraged violence and more,” Schumer said in a statement to Jewish Insider.

“Barnard College must stand firm against this behavior and take prompt action to maintain a safe and welcoming environment for all its students,” the statement continued.

Schumer’s statement came as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle began to condemn the violent, six-hour protest, which was held in response to the college’s decision to expel two second-semester seniors who last month disrupted a History of Modern Israel class. 

A spokesperson for the NYPD told JI that a police report has been filed regarding the alleged assault itself, though no arrests have been made as of Thursday and the investigation remains ongoing. 

“ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Pro-Hamas mobs have NO place on our college campuses. Barnard College & Columbia University must put an end to the antisemitic chaos on campus,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) wrote on X.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), President Donald Trump’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, wrote on the platform that, “On the same day that the world was mourning the burial of the Bibas family murdered by Hamas terrorists, an antisemitic pro-Hamas mob violently took over Barnard College.”

“Students committing these crimes should be immediately expelled and prosecuted by law enforcement. As President Donald Trump outlined in his executive order, any visa-holding student participating in these antisemitic acts must be stripped of their visa and be deported,” she continued.

Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), the Democratic co-chair of the House Bipartisan Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, posted on X that, “This violation of university rules and city laws must stop. There should never be demands to follow rules and the law. Universities including Columbia must enforce their own rules so all students feel safe. I look forward to learning what consequences these students face.”

“Actions have consequences. Barnard was right to expel the students who disrupted class & distributed fliers calling for the death of Jews. Negotiating with pro-terror protesters who are breaking campus policies should be out of the question,” the House Education and Workforce Committee stated in a post.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the previous chair of the committee, wrote in a separate post on X: “Expel them all.”

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) called the situation “disgraceful.”

“Pro-Hamas protesters force their way into Barnard College, assaulting an employee in the process. This is not “activism” — it’s lawlessness and intimidation. Every student involved should face serious consequences. No excuses,” he said in a statement. 

Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY) said in a statement, “This is despicable: hate-filled anti-Israel protestors stormed a school building at Barnard and assaulted a staff member. The university must hold them accountable.”

It hasn’t been an easy few months for Jacob Frey. 

The 38-year-old Minneapolis mayor, a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, saw his city unravel this spring as demonstrators took to the streets en masse to protest the killing of George Floyd. Frey, who is more than two years into his first term, ran on a campaign to reform the police department, and he supports the structural changes that activists have called for. 

But on a Saturday in early June, he was booed out of a public demonstration in a tense moment that made national news. Asked by a woman standing on a stage before him if he would commit to defunding the police, Frey, in a baseball tee and a black mask hanging loosely on his face, shook his head. “I do not support the full abolition of the police department,” he said quietly to a hushed crowd which, with prodding from his interlocutor, erupted in anger.

“Go home, Jacob, go home!” the protestors yelled in unison as Frey exited the throng, his arms hanging limply at his sides. “Shame, shame, shame!” they yelled later. Reflecting on the episode a month later, Frey seemed calm and composed during his interview with Jewish Insider. “These issues are controversial and they’re tough,” he said. “But that’s what I love.” 

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

What’s going on in your world?

As mayor, the days are always incredibly busy. But when you have one crisis sandwiched on top of another sandwiched on top of another, it’s all around the clock. So now we’ve got, obviously, a homeless crisis on top of an economic downturn, a budgetary crisis on top of a public health emergency, and then, of course, George Floyd, so it’s all of those things kind of compounded on one another. 

The mood in the city was pretty tense not too long ago. What does it feel like now?

There is a sense of urgency to see clear action on everything from economic inclusion to deep structural reform to our police department to addressing our housing crisis. I have that sentiment along with them. There’s a lot of pain and anger and frustration that is not limited to the killing of George Floyd, but obviously includes it. And it’s our task now to harness all of that energy and channel it to something productive, which is what we’re working toward right now.

The Minnesota state legislature just announced some police accountability measures. Do you think they go far enough?

No, not at all. We can go through all sorts of different policy reforms, but culture eats policy for breakfast, and we need a massive culture shift in how our police department, and, frankly, police departments around the country, operate. Culture is about people; it’s about personnel. And so what we need is to have the ability to bring in the officers who have the right mentality, who are subscribing to our chief’s notion of integrity and service and compassion. We need the ability to get out officers that do not have that mentality, and right now we have major impediments in the form of the collective bargaining agreement and the police union contract. 

But for purposes of the state legislature, most importantly, there’s an arbitration provision which requires [that] instances of termination or discipline get appealed up to this arbitration. And around 50% of the cases get returned right back to our police department. So we can terminate and discipline someone, but that person oftentimes gets sent right back to the police departments to continue damaging trust with the community. We need the ability to terminate and discipline, and this is a major impediment. So that was the big thing that they did nothing on.

Where do you stand on police reform now? Do you still think that defunding the police is a bad idea? 

When people say the word defunding, there are some who actually want to get rid of all police and there are some who just want to have changes where we have safety beyond policing. So here’s where I am: If we’re talking about safety beyond policing, I’m all on board. If we’re talking about having mental health co-responders respond to calls as opposed to officers, or with officers, I’m all on board with that, and in fact, we have a mental health co-responder program citywide. If we’re talking about social workers, to the extent we can have social workers take some of the calls that police would otherwise do — assuming the incident is safe — absolutely. If we’re talking about decriminalizing addiction, again, I’m on board. But if we’re talking about just abolishing all police, all law enforcement — no, I’m not. That’s not something that — I mean, we still do need law enforcement to address and to respond to serious and dangerous incidents that take place in our city. 

Can you give a rundown of what happened in June, from your perspective?

There was a group of protesters that came to my home, and they asked me to come out. I came out to sit with them — and, of course, I’m very supportive of deep structural change. I called for the termination of the officers and for the charging of Derek Chauvin, I did that right away — and then at some point they called me up front. They asked me, would I commit to defunding the police, and I asked — you can watch the video — I asked what they mean by that because I wanted to make sure that I was being clear. And the response was, “We don’t want police. No more police. Get the police off the streets. We want no more police in our neighborhoods ever.” That was the response. And I answered honestly. These are difficult times and my first responsibility is to be honest and to do the right thing, and as difficult as it was, it was the right thing to do.

Demonstrators booed Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey out of a rally on Saturday after he declined to commit to defunding the police. Read more about the protests in the U.S. here. https://t.co/zHv8ocIPXj pic.twitter.com/8WPMnyFXjP

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 7, 2020

What was going through your head in that moment? Were you frightened, or nervous?

No. I mean, obviously, it was a tense moment. But no, I stand by my values, and I tell the truth no matter who I’m talking to. And I did. And if you can ground yourself in that, that’s all you can do. It’s what you do. And by the way, since then, the support I’ve gotten has been constant. The support from telling the truth, in that particular event, especially from our Black community, has been overwhelming. 

Were you surprised when they started chanting “shame!” at you? It seems so medieval. 

As mayor, you’re frequently a focal point and a target from all sides. The top two criticisms that you get are too much force/not enough force, or too many police/not enough police. In Minneapolis, we have a very activist-oriented and engaged community, so it’s not the first time I’ve been protested and it certainly won’t be the last. I don’t know about surprised. I mean, I was calm. I told the truth. I was calm and I told the truth. By the way, I didn’t leave either. I was there for 45 minutes afterward answering every last question that any reporter or activist had for me. I do not hide from difficult situations just because the optics are tough.

Did you sleep well that night? 

Yeah, I did. 

Any nightmares?

I’ll tell you what, I would not have slept well had I tried to obfuscate or avoided the question or lied. If you tell the truth, you try and do the right thing, you hold your head high and you can sleep at night — and that’s what I did. And sure, it was tough. It’s tougher for your family and friends to see a video like that. But the response that we’ve gotten from the vast majority of my constituents has been very clear, which is, you know, ‘thank you for telling the truth.’ What we hear is people are appreciative of the willingness to go into some of these situations and still be honest.

What was it like inside your house when you were called out?

I was talking with Sarah, my wife — she was also at our home at the time — and she is just a backbone of steel. She’s so tough and courageous and loving. And we were just discussing, all right, what should we do? We don’t presently have security right now. Or at least in any number. What should we do? And she’s like, you do what you always do. You go out there, you listen, you’re compassionate, and you tell the truth.

You and your wife are expecting a baby in September. How does it feel to be bringing a child into this moment in history?

As unfatherly as this may sound, my focus over the last couple of months has very much been on our city. Not only is Sarah pregnant — she’s working full-time, [and] she’s taking the bar exam in a week. And so she’s been studying non-stop, and I’ve been obviously working around the clock as well. Babies usually bring a sense of optimism, of hope, that the next generation will do things better than we have. And that hope, that sense of optimism, is clearly in the back of my head right now, but front of mind is getting through these crises, with a complete transformation to how our city does business.

Rahm Emanuel famously said you should never let a crisis go to waste.

In a way, yes, it is an opportunity to do things differently: to center Black and brown voices, to see through to true economic inclusion. If we utilize both this opportunity and the energy to reshape a system for the better, that’s an outcome that we can be proud of.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey speaks on July 10, 2020 at a protest by the Oromo people over the unrest in Ethiopia. (Chad Davis/Flickr)

How do you unwind? You’re a runner, right?

I run. Ideally, I’d like to get out the door five times a week or so. I used to run professionally, like as my job, and now it’s really for emotional and physical well-being. Ideally, I get out the door five times a week or so. Not long, but enough to breathe and to sweat, and that certainly helps. I think better, I feel better, I make better decisions when I’m able to get out for runs.

What kind of precautions are you taking to avoid getting the virus, aside from wearing a mask? Do you get tested?

I’m actually going to get tested fairly shortly here. Some of our police administration got the virus — quite a bit of our police administration got COVID-19 — and so I intend to get tested myself. Right now, I’m one of the only people in the office. Much of our connection is done remotely through [Microsoft] Teams or Skype or whatever. And we have a plan that’s instituted at the office for how we still remain relatively socially distant. I’ll say that through certain courses of the pandemic, full social distancing was not possible. And so the likelihood of exposure was almost definite.

Are you saying you were exposed to the virus?

I don’t know that to be the fact. I’m just saying that, during a crisis like the one we faced, you do come into contact with people, inevitably. There were instances where, yes, we had to be closer together.

Like during the protests?

A protest would have been one example, to operating through the emergency operation center, or in the office. Yes, I did come into contact with people. Just to be clear, I’m not saying I was exposed. I’m saying the likelihood is high. 

You attend two Reform synagogues in Minneapolis. Are you a regular, and if so, has it been difficult not being able to go to services recently?

I didn’t go to Shabbat services every week or anything. My wife converted about a year and a half ago. She’s serious. She’s into it. I mean, I’m obviously proud of her and proud to have her as a member of the tribe, but it was not like any sort of pressure from either me or my family. She did so because she wanted to, and she’s informed, she’s well-read, and is very grounded in Jewish thought and philosophy, which I find pretty cool. And so, if anything, she’s been the one to encourage me to attend more often. 

It seems to happen sometimes that people who convert become more devout than their spouses.

That’s definitely the case here.

You’re the second Jewish mayor of Minneapolis, yes?

That is correct. I had previously for a little while thought I was the first, but no, Art Naftalin was also Jewish. Minneapolis, sadly, has a fairly antisemitic history. We have maps to the city that quite literally designate North Minneapolis as a slum for Blacks and Jews. This is dating back, you know, 70 years ago. And Minneapolis is not unique to this, but many law firms in the city — for instance, I believe, including the one that I worked for when I first came out here — previously did not allow Jews. 

Do you feel self-conscious about being a Jewish mayor of a city with that kind of history?

It’s funny. Before, I would say, last year, I had not thought of myself as much as a Jewish mayor. That’s just not how I would have thought of myself. Now, over the last year, the number of antisemitic attacks that we’ve been subjected to has been through the roof, whether it’s from the far right or the far left. Usually, it’s from some of these Donald Trump supporters. Most of them don’t live in Minneapolis. Minneapolis, as you know, is a very progressive city. But the uptick in antisemitic hatred, especially after I asked for Donald Trump to pay his bill, was through the roof.

So that’s changed your perception of yourself?

It has. I don’t know that it’s necessarily changed how I go about my day. I grew up, I would say, quite culturally Jewish but not very religious. You know, I’m not even convinced that my mom believes in God, but she believes firmly in bagels and lox on Sundays. You were there for bagels and lox on Sundays without excuse. And that sort of ethnic and cultural identity, I think, has come to the forefront more over the last year for me personally. I don’t know that it’s really had an impact on my governance, but certainly on a personal level, it has had an impact.

You came to Minneapolis in 2009, and you seem pretty settled there. But could you ever see yourself moving back to your native East Coast? Would you ever want to run for Congress?

I love Minneapolis. God bless congressmembers, and thank you for them, but that’s not my interest. One, because you can kind of work hand-in-hand with the community around a common idea, and it’s complex, it’s controversial. Oftentimes, the most difficult issues get left for cities to handle. And we’re seeing that right now, not just in Minneapolis, but around the country. I mean, you’ve got mayors just getting pummeled. They’re doing their very best — you see it in the news all the time, and these issues are controversial and they’re tough. But that’s what I love. Not to mention, I wouldn’t want to be in Congress just because we’re having a baby, and I don’t want to be flying back and forth between D.C. and Minneapolis. I want to be with my daughter and my wife.

It’s your birthday on Thursday. What are you planning to do?

Right now, nothing. You know, if I could grab a socially distanced beer with a few friends, I’d certainly welcome that. It’s not anything beyond that, though. I mean, 39 is not really a marker, you know? Gosh, before COVID-19 and before all of this — the summers in Minneapolis are extraordinary — and before all this, I was certainly looking forward to enjoying the full scope of summer, with events and activities and Pride Parade and Aquatennial, these big celebrations that we have, and just having this last summer where I don’t have a child and having any freedoms that are associated with that. And it clearly has not worked out that way.