Biden Says U.S. Will Not Supply Israel With Weapons
Dear Editor:
When in the 5,000 years of recorded history has there ever been a more compassionate army than the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces)?
Hamas started a war with Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They violated the 1949 Geneva Conventions by obliterating the lines between combatants and civilians. The Convention explicitly forbids rape or other forms of sexual violence, which were proudly documented by Hamas and celebrated throughout radical Islam’s sphere of influence.
By contrast, no other state has ever recognized the right of civilians to be protected from the dangers of war and to receive the help they need. Only Israel advises civilians to vacate areas where there will be fighting. Hamas does its best to force civilians to remain, to use them as human shields and to increase the death count for propaganda purposes.
Islamists are laser-focused in a manner the West will never be. For almost a hundred years the Muslim Brotherhood has worked to replace us with a Caliphate. Their vision is of the collective, the Ummah, a community of believers bound together to worship Allah and advance the cause of Islam.
Western societies are based on the individual. We believe in “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” or “Peace, order and good government”. Our governments serve the people who elect them. In dictatorships, the people acquiesce to their masters. Islam means submission.
So, why do we have tent encampment polluting some of our most prestigious campuses? While they are being well-financed and organized by forces attempting to bring us down, part of the problem is of our own making.
We sold out to radical Islam’s oil dollars. We welcomed Saudi and Qatari billions into academia. We allowed them to buy chairs of learning. They started with Middle Eastern studies and then migrated to the social sciences and beyond. They filled the chairs with compliant professors. They sponsored thousands of students on visas to populate our classrooms and create a core Islamic belief system that goes unchallenged by pliable immature Western minds.
In the tent parks, the Great Satan is the villain because it won’t crush the Small Satan. Israel is denied the right of self-defense. Hamas is the hero for gang-raping, mutilating and murdering Jewish women, girls and babies. The Palestinians, created in 1964 by the Soviet KGB, are the victims and the rationale for anti-Semitism. Harassing students and interfering with the functioning of the university are merely collateral damage.
Will we ever take appropriate action to reverse the damage to our democracy? Can we reclaim our hallowed halls of learning? It is not likely while Biden is working to keep Hamas in power.
Sincerely Len Bennett, Author of ‘Unfinished Work’ Deerfield Beach, Florida
Stop Playing by Everybody Else’s Rules
Dear Editor:
So now Hamas wants to trade the bodies of dead Jews for the release of live Palestinian terrorists who are in Israeli prisons. Well, here’s an idea: maybe Israel should give them the bodies of dead Palestinian terrorists in exchange for dead Jews. Why do Israel and the Jewish people always have to play by everybody else’s rules? Why do we always have to accept their term and their demands?
Sincerely, George Stern Boro Park
Released Terrorists Will Murder Again
Dear Editor:
I’m horrified by the thought that Israel is going to release hundreds, or even thousands of terrorists in exchange for a handful of hostages, some of whom will be dead. We know from past experience that many of the released terrorists will go out and murder more Jews. So releasing them will lead directly to the deaths others. How can the lives of the Israeli public be sacrificed in this way?
Sincerely, Ned Kahn Flatbush
National Waitress Day
Dear Editor:
Tuesday, May 21st is National Waitress Day. Your neighborhood restaurant waitress is on her feet all day long working long hours. She has to take and deliver meal orders, follow up to make sure your meal is up to expectations, refill your coffee, tea or water glass, box any leftovers you want to take home and prepare the check — all with a smile and friendly disposition.
On this day, why not show your appreciation and honor your favorite waitress? Leave a 25 percent tip against the total bill including taxes. Remember that they usually have to share the tips with the bus boys. Drop off some flowers, a box of candy or some cookies as well.
Sincerely, Larry Penner
Schumer is a Fraud
Dear Editor:
Your May 9 article about Senator Schumer supporting Biden’s cut-off of weapons to Israel shows what a fraud he is. When Schumer recently made that speech calling for the ouster of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he pretended that he wasn’t turning against all of Israel, “only against Netanyahu.” Well, now the mask is off. Biden isn’t cutting off weapons just to Netanyahu—he is stopping them from going to Israel, and Schumer is supporting it. This disgraceful senator has truly abandoned Israel.
Sincerely, David Steinberg Brooklyn
The Marxist Revolution Has Begun
Dear Editor:
I have been scrupulously monitoring your coverage of the pro-Hamas demonstrations at college campuses across the United States and the entire world, for that matter. Allow me to say that reporters have been doing an outstanding job in terms of capturing the dangerous nature of this frightening phenomenon. So, thank you Fern Sidman, Jared Evan and the other cracker jack writers at your fine publication for producing such detailed and exceptionally informative articles.
Having said this, I think that anyone who has eyes to see and ears that hear knows that we are witnessing a Marxist revolution, not only on our campuses but it has permeated our media and our lives. Let’s remember that historically, such revolutions were never built by the “numb and the dumb” as Rabbi Meir Kahane, of blessed memory would always say. So, there is no reason to be surprised that the ivy league universities are the ones leading the way on this pernicious political trajectory.
In my opinion, the Jew is the canary in the coal mine. It always begins with the Jew but never ends there. The ultimate goal of this campus protest movement is to not only eradicate Israel but to bring down the United States. Yes, folks, the future does not bode well for us unless we speak out and offer some concrete pushback.
The campuses of several American and European universities — including, among other places, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and New York University — became sites of acts of pure anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic violence, under the guise of “free speech.” Credit: AP
By: Guy Millière
The genocidal anti-Semitic attack on October 7, 2023 by the Islamic terrorists of Hamas at first aroused horror throughout the Western world. It took only a few hours, however for the horror to fade — long before Israel had even begun to respond. Demonstrations against Israel, and in support of the terrorist group, Hamas — sometimes “cleaned up” to be labeled “pro-Palestinian” — exploded just hours later on October 8, before hundreds of charred bodies had been removed from their homes. These well-planned and well-funded professional demonstrations, complete with instant Palestinian flags and, later, instant identical tents — rapidly metastasized throughout North America and Europe.
The slogan, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” — calls for the total destruction of Israel, which, by coincidence, happens to be located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea – and “Death to America” were chanted by tens of thousands of self-described “progressives,” Muslims and their followers. The campuses of several American and European universities — including, among other places, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and New York University — became sites of acts of pure anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic violence, under the guise of “free speech.” If the demonstrations had been against gays or Blacks, does anyone think that “free speech,” or violence masquerading as “free speech, would have lasted five minutes? Whatever happened to all those demonstrations against China’s genocide of the Uyghurs, or crushing Hong Kong; or Russia’s scorched-earth war in Ukraine; or Iran’s rape, torture and execution of women, children and, now, rappers, or North Korea’s “murder, enslavement, torture, [and] enforced disappearances”?
“Stop Calling Them ‘Pro-Palestine’ Rallies,'” wrote the Rochester Institute of Technology’s A.J. Caschetta. In blunt Australia, euphemisms were dispensed with altogether in favor of “Gas the Jews” and “F—-k the Jews.”
The whitewash of the terrorist group Hamas had begun. European politicians in France and Belgium, supporting Hamas, call it a “resistance movement.”
As Israel’s military response in the Gaza Strip progressed — meticulously crafted to avoid harming Palestinian civilians — many European leaders turned on Israel. They falsely accused it of acting “disproportionately” while Hamas’s widespread use of its own civilians as human shields was almost totally ignored. As Hamas also meticulously plans, the gullible international community accuses Israel of killing innocent civilians, not the Palestinian officials in Gaza who intentionally place them in harm’s way, even shooting at them to keep them from fleeing to safety in the south as the Israelis were urging them to do.
As early as March 19, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, like so many European political leaders, falsely accused Israel, not Hamas, of “causing a famine” in Gaza. He even added that “100 percent of the population in Gaza is at severe levels of acute food insecurity”. Credit: AP
Also ignored is that Hamas officials seize virtually all of the free humanitarian aid, then give it to their terrorists or sell it to civilians on the black market for extortionate prices.
Although there is “‘no food shortage’ in Gaza,” several of Israel’s most steadfastly hostile critics, such as EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell, nevertheless falsely accuse Israel of causing a “famine” in Gaza.
As early as March 19, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, like so many European political leaders, falsely accused Israel, not Hamas, of “causing a famine” in Gaza. He even added that “100 percent of the population in Gaza is at severe levels of acute food insecurity”. Israel is now forced to allow hundreds of trucks into Gaza that Israeli soldiers escort. Gaza, in fact, reportedly receives far more food than the population of Gaza needs. Gee, what could be happening to it?
Soon, all the mainstream European media stopped talking about the horrors of Hamas and instead turned their attention to the suffering Palestinians of Gaza – without noting that the people responsible for their fate and the death count are Hamas. Hamas even freely admits that its strategy is to use human shields. As far as Hamas is concerned, the higher the Palestinian death-count, the better.
The United States has been Israel’s main ally for decades, discounting occasional fluctuations here and there. Historically, American leaders’ support for Israel has been unwavering – until now. In February, America’s Democrat politicians voted to block aid to Israel. As the Israeli author and historian Gadi Taub noted last week:
“The U.S. is holding Israel on a leash by rationing the American-made ammunition on which the war effort depends; it has forced us to supply our enemies with ‘humanitarian aid’ which Hamas controls and which sustains its ability to fight; the U.S. is building a port to subvert our control of the flow of goods into Gaza; it refrained from vetoing an anti-Israel decision at the U.N. Security Council at the end of March; it leaked its intention to recognize a Palestinian state unilaterally; it allowed Iran to attack us directly with a barrage of over 300 rockets and drones without paying any price whatsoever; and then told us that Israel’s successful defense against that strike (which was mostly stopped by a combination of superior Israeli tech and faulty Iranian missiles that crashed all over the Middle East, and to some extent by U.S. interceptors) should be considered “victory”; it consistently protects Hezbollah from a full-fledged Israeli attack; it did all it can to prevent the ground invasion of Rafah, which is necessary for winning the war; it is trying to stop the war with a hostage deal that would ensure Hamas’ survival.
“The U.S. is not protecting Israel from the kangaroo courts in The Hague which now threaten to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and others. Instead, it is goosing those warrants, in part by itself threatening to impose sanctions on a unit of the IDF, thus subverting the chain of command and pressuring IDF units to comply with American demands rather than with orders from their superiors. ”
By now, most mainstream American media are as negative towards Israel as most mainstream European media.
In the days that followed October 7, the Biden administration generously provided arms and ammunition to Israel, as well as positioning several warships in the area, presumably to keep the conflict from spreading. Yet even then, pressure was put on Israel’s government. US President Joe Biden bizarrely asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “not to be consumed by rage”. Soon, as the Israeli military countered the terrorist threat in Gaza, US pressure on Israel was accompanied by harsh –and curiously public — criticism.
On January 9, despite unprecedented Israeli precautions to avoid harming civilians, Blinken announced, “the daily toll of war on civilians in Gaza is far too high”, and accused the Israeli Defense Forces of “indiscriminate bombing” — an accusation, as Blinken must have known, that could not have been less accurate.
Senator Chuck Schumer, after declaring himself a friend and defender of Israel, suggested overthrowing Israel’s democratically elected prime minister, and — as if Israel, and not America, were within his jurisdiction — called for new elections. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point, wrote:
“The Israel Defense Forces conducted an operation at al-Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip to root out Hamas terrorists recently, once again taking unique precautions as it entered the facility to protect the innocent; Israeli media reported that doctors accompanied the forces to help Palestinian patients if needed. They were also reported to be carrying food, water and medical supplies for the civilians inside
“None of this meant anything to Israel’s critics, of course, who immediately pounced. The critics, as usual, didn’t call out Hamas for using protected facilities like hospitals for its military activity. Nor did they mention the efforts of the IDF to minimize civilian casualties.”
Not only were Blinken’s comments untrue, they seemed intended to give arguments to Israel’s enemies.
On February 7, Blinken went further and said that the October 7 massacre did not give Israel — trying to defend itself in a war it did not start — a “license to dehumanize others.” Unfortunately for Blinken, that is the last thing Israel is doing, but the main thing Hamas, Hezbollah, Qatar and Iran are doing.
On February 8, Biden himself said abruptly, “A lot of innocent people are starving. A lot of innocent people are in trouble and dying. And it’s got to stop.”
All right. If it has “got to stop”, why not demand that Hamas, Iran and Qatar stop it?
On March 25, the Biden administration refused to use the American veto and allowed the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution, proposed by Algeria, demanding an immediate unilateral ceasefire from Israel — with no condemnation of Hamas.
On April 4, Blinken tried to create a false moral equivalence between a terrorist group and a liberal democracy by charging that Israel had no reverence for human life and that if Israel did not do more to protect civilians in Gaza, Hamas and Israel could become “indistinguishable”. He then cited an old Jewish saying — that “whoever saves a life, saves the entire world” – contortedly, grotesquely implying that the Israel’s attempt to defend its own country and people is in contravention of the values of Judaism itself.
On April 4, according to journalist Barak Ravid:
“President Biden laid out an ultimatum to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in their call on Thursday: If Israel doesn’t change course in Gaza, ‘we won’t be able to support you,’ he said, according to three sources with knowledge of the call.”
According to the Times of Israel:
“During a security cabinet meeting after the call, Netanyahu noted that the White House readout similarly didn’t explicitly condition a ceasefire on a hostage deal. It said that Biden told the Israeli premier ‘that an immediate ceasefire is essential to stabilize and improve the humanitarian situation and protect innocent civilians…'”
The Biden administration does not appear ever to have issued the slightest threat, warning or ultimatum to the authors of the war: Hamas, Iran or Qatar. Hamas in Gaza, like the Taliban in Afghanistan, is now most likely seen universally as the tail wagging the American dog.
Although the UN Security Council resolution of March 25 was not binding, any further ceasefire would mean Hamas won the war, simply by surviving to repeat the October 7 attack, time and again, until Israel is annihilated, as Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said.
Hamas, on October 6, 2023, had a ceasefire with Israel. On October 7, Hamas violated it. Hamas did accept a second ceasefire a few weeks into the war and exchanged nearly half the hostages it held. A ceasefire now, especially a “temporary” one that would surely be pressured into becoming permanent, would just enable Hamas to regroup, rearm, and replenish its supply of terrorists from Israeli prisons.
US Senator Chuck Schumer, after declaring himself a friend and defender of Israel, suggested overthrowing Israel’s democratically elected prime minister, and — as if Israel, and not America, were within his jurisdiction — called for new elections:
“If Prime Minister Netanyahu’s current coalition remains in power after the war begins to wind down and continues to pursue dangerous and inflammatory policies that test existing US standards for assistance, then the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course.”
Schumer’s speech, yet again putting America’s outsized foot in the middle of Israel’s domestic policy, and ordering its ally to take direction from the Biden administration — including accepting a terrorist Palestinian state on its borders — and effectively disregard what the Israeli people have democratically chosen — was seen by most in Israel as a vicious blow.
Biden immediately backed Schumer up. “He made a good speech,” the president said in the Oval Office during a meeting with Ireland’s prime minister. “I think he expressed serious concerns shared not only by him but by many Americans”.
Biden, it seems, is frustrated that Netanyahu is objecting to humanitarian aid — which basically resupplies Hamas. Hamas, Israel’s argument goes, released hostages only after unremitting pressure. Relieving that pressure by backing Hamas makes the probability of seeing any more hostages released less likely. Biden is also reportedly frustrated that Netanyahu, for some inexplicable reason, objects to the creation of a terrorist Palestinian state next door.
Hamas would doubtless love as many humanitarian aid workers in Gaza as possible; they would provide Hamas with a fresh batch of human shields to prevent Israel from entering Rafah and removing Hamas’s remaining four battalions and terrorist leaders. Hamas is apparently already killing aid workers to steal food. How much better if they could be used to obstruct Israeli soldiers from entering the tunnels where the remaining hostages are believed hidden.
Netanyahu, accused by his adversaries of needing a war to avoid new elections, is being praised by others as “Israel’s Churchill.” Israelis remember that he was the leader who had the courage to address the US Congress in 2015 to counter President Barack Obama lethal, illegitimate “Iran nuclear deal,” officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Netanyahu, who has not been short on courage, either in combat or in refusing to submit to US pressure to go along with the JCPOA — despite the Obama administration’s interference in an Israeli election — may feel an overriding obligation, as he has said from the beginning, to make sure that Hamas will never again be able to launch another October 7; to take out the terrorist leaders presumed to be concealed in tunnels, as well as the four remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah, and above all, to rescue the hostages — many of whom may have since been murdered.
Israeli tanks entering the Gazan side of the Rafah border crossing on May 7th, 2024. Photo credit: Israel Defense Forces via AP
By: Tamar Sternthal
Last week, major mainstream news outlets again displayed a stubborn propensity for taking the Hamas terror organization on its word. When Hamas issued a statement May 6 claiming to accept the ceasefire plan, numerous media outlets uncritically reported as fact that the terror organization had done exactly that.
The next day, the U.S. State Department explicitly stated that in no way did Hamas accept the ceasefire proposal. Yet, the same media outlets which adopted the Hamas fabrication as gospel completely ignored the American clarification debunking the terror organization’s falsehood.
Thus, the unequivocal Reuters headline about Hamas’ supposed approval of the ceasefire plan states: “Rafah: Hamas accepted Gaza ceasefire proposal, Israel ‘will continue its operation.’”
As of this writing, the false headline still stands although five days have passed since State Department spokesman Matthew Miller made absolutely clear on May 7 that Hamas’ claim to accept the ceasefire was untrue.
Thus, the unequivocal Reuters headline about Hamas’ supposed approval of the ceasefire plan states: “Rafah: Hamas accepted Gaza ceasefire proposal, Israel ‘will continue its operation.’”
In that May 7 briefing (1:28), Miller plainly stated:
Let me just make one thing clear which is that Hamas did not accept a ceasefire proposal. Hamas responded and their response made several suggestions. It’s not the same as accepting. That statement that was issued yesterday – that was widely reported – I don’t blame the reporting – it’s what the statement said – is not an accurate reflection of what happened. They responded as people do in a negotiation process but it was not an acceptance.
On May 8, CAMERA contacted Reuters to point out Miller’s important statement and urge correction of the erroneous headline. Reuters has yet to set the record straight.
Moreover, days after the State Department verified Israel’s insistence that Hamas’ claim of acceptance was fraudulent, Reuters continues to ignore the American information.
For instance, yesterday Reuters reported the question of Hamas acceptance as an unresolved he said/she said dispute between Israel and the terror organization (“Hamas says ceasefire efforts are back at square one“):
Hamas had said it agreed at the start of the week to a proposal by Qatari and Egyptian mediators that had previously been accepted by Israel. Israel said the Hamas proposal contained elements it cannot accept.
A second Reuters story yesterday likewise concealed the fact the U.S. confirmed that Hamas falsely claimed to have accepted the proposal on the table (“Israel orders Palestinians to evacuate more areas of Gaza’s Rafah“):
The latest evacuation orders came hours after internationally mediated ceasefire talks appeared to be faltering. Hamas said Israel’s rejection of a truce offer it had accepted returned things to square one. Israel said the terms did not meet its demands.
The Los Angeles Times was another major media outlet to publish a false headline stating as fact that Hamas had accepted the ceasefire proposal. The front-page print edition headline May 7 falsely stated as fact: “Hamas says yes to truce; Israel mulls over terms; Announcement comes after leaflets dropped in Rafah ordered civilians to evacuate.”
Matthew Miller at the May 7, 2024 U.S. State Department press briefing: “Hamas did not accept a ceasefire proposal” (Screenshot from State Department video)
The accompanying article was a touch more cautious. Tracy Wilkinson’s article begins: “Hamas announced Monday that it accepted a cease-fire agreement with Israel in Gaza, a diplomatic breakthrough . . . “
Sixteen long paragraphs later, the article buries: “U.S. officials accused the militant group of moving the goalpost in the negotiations.”
As of this writing, The Los Angeles Times has yet to correct the erroneous print headline. Nor has it reported the American information that Hamas lied about accepting the ceasefire.
The Associated Press also published headlines which stated as fact that Hamas accepted the cease-fire including “Hamas accepts Gaza cease-fire; Israel says it will continue talks . . . ” and “The Latest | Israel launches strikes in Rafah, hours after Hamas agrees to a Gaza cease-fire.”
Similarly, in “Here’s what’s on the table for Israel and Hamas in the latest cease-fire plan,” Samy Magdy and Drew Callister began: “Hamas has formally accepted a cease-fire deal that could end the war in Gaza.”
Even after Miller’s briefing, the AP continued to state as fact on May 8 that Hamas accepted the proposal. For example, “The Latest: Israel forces block Gaza’s Rafah border crossing. . . ” (2:10 AM GMT) stated as fact in the second paragraph: “The Israeli assault into Rafah came just hours after Hamas accepted a cease-fire proposal mediated by Egypt and Qatar” (May 8).
Though AP reporters were present at Miller’s May 7 press briefing and therefore the news agency was well aware of his revelation about Hamas’ fabrication, the wire service nevertheless continued to uncritically report Hamas’ claim to have accepted the deal. Completely disregarding the fact that the United States had debunked Hamas’ fallacious acceptance, AP yesterday reported (“Israel orders new evacuations in Gaza’s last refuge of Rafah as it expands military offensive“):
Another round of cease-fire talks in Cairo ended earlier this week without a breakthrough, after Israel rejected a deal that Hamas said it accepted.
Even with a straightforward State Department statement explicitly substantiating Israel’s information, journalists adamantly refuse to acknowledge that Hamas sold them a lie. Lacking the integrity to set the record straight, journalists reject a longstanding deal — the one in which ethical journalism provides the public with “the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough.”
Tamar Sternthal is director of CAMERA’s Israel Office. She monitors both U.S. publications and English-language Israeli publications, and heads up CAMERA’s “Haaretz, Lost in Translation” project. Her columns have appeared in numerous American and Israeli publications, including the Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post, Ynet, Algemeiner, Philadelphia Daily News, St. Petersburg Times, and the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. Sternthal is interviewed on radio about the media’s coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict and regularly participates in panels about the media, hosted by universities and think tanks in Israel. Twitter handle: http://twitter.com/TamarSternthal
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) is an international media-monitoring and educational organization founded in 1982 to promote accurate and unbiased coverage of Israel and the Middle East. CAMERA is a non-profit, tax-exempt, and non-partisan organization under section 501 (c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code. To learn more or receive our newsletters please visit CAMERA.org.
In response to communication from CAMERA’s Israel office, Agence France Presse has commendably corrected after charging that Israel’s participation in the 2024 Eurovision clouded the whole song contest.
The May 8 article, “Palestinian symbol protest clouds Eurovision contest,” had claimed: “The whole contest has been clouded by the participation of Israel, which has faced criticism over humanitarian conditions in Gaza amidst the war against Hamas.”
It’s not Israel which clouds Eurovision. It’s the haters of Israel who do so.
Eden Golan, the Israeli contestant, did not call for anyone to be excluded from the event. Neither she nor her team threatened any participants or pose any security threats. To the contrary, she was reportedly the target of potential threats, and was instructed to stay in her hotel room for her own safety, aside from official Eurovision events.
And Golan is hardly the only potential target. As Israel’s National Security Agency warned in raising the travel warning from Sweden from level to 2 to level 3:
Malmo is recognized as a hub for anti-Israel protests, given its high concentration of immigrants from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran. These protests are a weekly occurrence and often involve demonstrations, calls for harm against Jews and Israelis, and the burning of Israeli flags, among other actions. Notably, on October 7 (the day of Hamas’ attack on Israel), anti-Israeli elements in Malmo openly celebrated the tragic events that occurred in Israel . . .
Furthermore, alongside the protests in Malmo, there has been a recent surge in calls from global jihadist groups and radical Islamists to carry out attacks against Western targets. This includes specific threats against Israelis and Jews worldwide, with a particular focus on events garnering significant media attention. In light of this, it’s worth mentioning that just recently (on March 19), two ISIS activists were apprehended for plotting an attack on the Swedish parliament.
In response to communication from CAMERA’s Israel office, AFP commendably amended the article, replacing the problematic sentence with the following:
This year’s competition has faced calls for Israel to be excluded over the war in Gaza, which the organizers refused. Thousands of people are expected to attend pro-Palestinian rallies throughout the week in Malmo.
Media outlets including Yahoo, Barron’s and France24 which published AFP’s initial problematic wording subsequently corrected, underscoring the importance of CAMERA’s vital and timely work correcting wire service stories which appear in multiple media outlets around the world.
In addition, AFP’s Eurovision coverage the next day included the following information about threats and fears which clouded Eurovision festivities (“Sweden’s Eurovision brings kitsch in the shadow of Gaza“):
Security is a major concern, especially as Sweden raised its terror alert level last year following a series of protests involving desecrations of the Koran.
Security checks have been stepped up, in particular for access to the various sites, where bags will mostly be prohibited.
The police presence has also been strengthened, with reinforcements coming from Norway and Denmark.
But police spokesman Jimmy Modin said the first days of Eurovision week were calm and that there was no threat directed at the competition.
Some members of the Jewish community are planning to leave the city for the weekend.
“With Eurovision, there’s a kind of intensification. The feeling of insecurity increased after October 7, and many Jews are worried,” said Fredrik Sieradzki, a spokesman for local group The Jewish Community of Malmo.
“I can’t really be happy about Eurovision, even though as a congregation we think it’s good that everyone is welcome here in Malmo, including Israel,” he added.
Security around the synagogue has been stepped up, while on social networks, threats have been directed at Israel‘s singer Golan.
Dan Stone’s The Holocaust: An Unfinished History is a book that is difficult to describe; indeed one might say that it is two books in one, a joining of scholarship and screed. Credit: Amazon.com
By: Meir Y. Soloveichik
Dan Stone’s The Holocaust: An Unfinished History is a book that is difficult to describe; indeed one might say that it is two books in one, a joining of scholarship and screed. One of these books, which comprises most of the pages of the volume, is an eloquent, invaluable, and heartbreaking history of the Holocaust that emphasizes often overlooked aspects of this utterly evil event. The second is Stone’s application of his own research to the political world of the present, to those he sees as the heirs of the anti-Semites of yesteryear, and here his writing becomes suddenly one-sided.
For Stone, parallels to the purveyors of the hate that brought the Holocaust about are to be found today entirely on the political European and American right; he seems to evince little concern for the anti-Jewish sentiment found among the progressive left or in the modern Middle East. Nor is anti-Israel sentiment a source of tremendous concern to Stone; in fact, one target of Stone’s ire in his book is contemporary Germany—which, in Stone’s estimation, is too strongly pro-Israel in its identification of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
All this makes reading Stone’s book a particularly painful experience. The Holocaust: An Unfinished History was clearly written before October 7, 2023; and since then, at least to this author, the anti-Semitism festering in progressive circles, especially in parts of the academy, has become manifestly clear. To read Stone’s piercing descriptions of Germany’s descent into evil, and the embrace of Jew-hate by much of Europe in the 1940s, is to be reminded of the purchase that Jew-hate has had on our world. Yet at the same time, Stone’s descriptions of anti-Semitism of the past sound eerily similar to anti-Semitism manifest today in spheres regarding which the author seems unconcerned. To put it another way, Stone’s analysis of the past has much to teach us about the present—but the lessons to be learned are not necessarily all the same as those derived by Dan Stone.
Why, for Stone, is the history of the Holocaust “unfinished”? The answer, at least in part, lies in the fact that there is much of this terrible tale that has yet to be fully understood. Stone describes how anti-Semitism was not, for the early years of the Nazi regime, merely an effective method of PR; but rather lay at the heart of its ideology and at the center of its policies from the very moment it seized power. Yet another terrible legacy of Nazi Germany is that its victims suffered long after it was defeated. As Stone further tells us, the suffering of Jews continued long after the Holocaust was over, as “survivors quickly found out, with rare exceptions, that their families and communities had been decimated; they were alone in the world.”
But the book’s most important finding is that when the Nazis unleashed its genocide of the Jews, they found willing accomplices across Europe. One incredibly engrossing chapter—and one that should be included in a college course on the Holocaust—is titled “A Continent-Wide Crime,” which documents how European regimes, from Vichy France in the West to Romania in the East—were willing to facilitate the extermination of the Jews when it served their purposes. In one of the most significant passages in the chapter, Stone describes the horrors that unfolded in Bogdanovka, in Transnistria, then part of Ukraine on the Romanian border. The perpetrators there were an international alliance of murderers, committing “the single largest massacre of the Holocaust,” in which “as many as 48,000 mostly Soviet Ukrainian Jews” were “massacred, burned alive and shot by Romanian gendarmes, Ukrainian auxiliaries and local ethnic German militia.”
What, then, are we to learn from the pervasiveness of anti-Jewish evil from the 1940s? One might suggest, to utilize a metaphor of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, that Jew-hate is a virus that mutates and makes itself manifest in region after region and age after age, and from which no society should assume itself immune. But that is not the lesson that Stone himself seems to draw; the danger today, for him, seems to lie particularly in the province of the political right.
It is of course true that anti-Semitism has haunted the history of the European right; and that, sadly, libelous commentary about Jews can be found today in certain spheres of the American right as well, as revealed by the recent ravings of Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. But little mention is made in the book of anti-Semitism on the left; indeed, for Stone it is critics of the extremes of the woke progressivism that are part of the problem. As his book draws to a close, Stone singles out several ideological descendants of the Nazis. Here is part of the paragraph, which contains one of the very few references to the political left in the book:
It suffices only to think of the levels of European collaboration seen above, however, from Croatia to Romania, France to Norway, Ukraine to Latvia, to see that Europe as a whole was susceptible to the “collective intoxication” of Nazism. It remains so, as we see when radical right protestors give Hitler salutes on marches purportedly called to “defend” statues of the likes of Churchill, who, whatever his faults, was no Nazi sympathizer. We see it in the incel culture of the manosphere, in which gender-based complexes merge into fantasies of sexual and racial annihilation. We see it in the “anti-woke” response to attempts to do away with structural forms of racism. (Emphasis added.)
Thus are critics of woke progressivism unfairly tarred not only as racists, but as the heirs to the Nazis themselves. That woke-ism may itself be a hotbed of anti-Semitism is never discussed.
Similarly, while Stone writes movingly about the anti-Semitic “collective intoxication” that occurred in the past, he says little about such intoxication when it comes to any part of the Middle East, despite the region being one in which Holocaust denial is rampant. He tells us: “Even though Holocaust denial has been promoted in countries where it has traditionally been a marginal concern—notably Iran, where President Ahmadinejad sponsored a well-publicized conference on the topic—Holocaust denial per se is less of a concern than the bundle of far-right narratives which it usually comes wrapped up in.” This dismissing of the dangers of Iranian Holocaust denial seems to be joined with the author’s insistence, at the conclusion of the book, that anti-Zionism should not be identified with anti-Semitism. Stone is therefore irked at the fact that in 2019 the German parliament passed a resolution against the movement to “boycott, divest, and sanction” the Jewish state:
Thanks to the Bundestag’s May 2019 decision to pass a resolution branding the BDS campaign as antisemitic, the German attempt to, in [Jürgen] Habermas’s words, create a country in which Jews can breathe has the consequence of shutting down debate about Israel. A well-intentioned ethical position which seeks moral repair with Jews ends by equating Jews as such with Israel, in the fetishized manner of both hardline Zionist and anti-Zionist thought a particularly unfortunate result when one is trying to create an atmosphere for making Jews feel at home.
In truth, however, condemning BDS does not assert that all Jews are Israelis; rather, it asserts, correctly, that Israel, a democracy, is a target of discrimination to which truly tyrannical regimes have never been subjected, leading to the inevitable conclusion that it is the Jewishness of Israelis that is the source of this profoundly dishonest double standard. This is why understanding BDS as a moral monstrosity is not the province only of “hardline” Zionists but of Zionists in general, as a brief Google search would reveal. Stone’s suggestion that German support for Israel should make Jews feel less comfortable in Germany is very strange—and his description of Jewish critics of BDS as “fetishized” is, to put it mildly, entirely inappropriate.
The truth is that the Bundestag’s anti-BDS proclamation is one of the greatest moments in the history of postwar Germany, one of which every German should be proud. And if the proposition was passed because Germany remains haunted by the Holocaust—and if that very same haunting has inspired both Germany and Austria to maintain largely pro-Israel postures in a post October 7 world—then that is a fact for which anyone concerned about anti-Semitism ought to be grateful. For if anything, the terrible events following October 7 have vindicated the German anti-BDS position, revealing before the eyes of the world how profoundly anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are intertwined.
In the past months, we have come to comprehend the evil wrought by an Iran-funded regime that, like the Nazis, placed Jew-hate at the heart of its education and propaganda. We have seen that if there is an heir to the anti-Semitic Nazi regime, it can be found in Hamas, whose society in Gaza produced the ultimate “collective intoxication” of Jew-hate. It was this regime that produced a massacre in which the most Jews since the Holocaust were, to echo Stone’s description of Bogdanovka, “massacred, burned alive, and shot.” If there is one brief recording from October 7 that should be played in Holocaust history courses, one which indicates the way in which anti-Semitism can be made manifest not just in Europe but around the world, it is of a Hamas terrorist calling his parents to crow that he had killed “10 Jews”—not “10 Zionists”—with his bare hands. Recent months have also revealed the willingness of all too many on the progressive left to deny, or even defend, the most unspeakable of acts as long as its victims are Jews. What has also become clear is the festering anti-Semitism within woke circles and the intertwining of anti-Semitism with hatred of the Jewish state.
As I finished writing this review, my internet feed was filled with videos of Jews being told to “go back to Poland,” a phrase which takes on renewed horror thanks to my reading of Dan Stone’s book. The videos were taken at Columbia University, which, we might remember, welcomed the Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad into its midst, revealing the intellectual rot that had laid hold of part of the academy many years before.
The news from Columbia reminds one of the Washington Free Beacon’s report from Stanford, where, already months ago, Jews were told by an instructor to stand in a corner of the classroom as a form of public shaming. I had already been reminded of this article when I read, in The Holocaust, of the first manifestation of Jew-hate in 1930s Germany, in which Jews were “shamed or humiliated on the street, in a tram or at school.” Meanwhile, as I typed this sentence, I paused to ponder another photo of an anti-Israel demonstration at George Washington University, not a bastion today of the American right. It features a man holding a sign featuring both an Israeli and Palestinian flag, a sign emblazoned with two words: “Final Solution.”
This book has helped me appreciate the dangers facing our society. It is my hope that in a post-October 7 world, Dan Stone can see these dangers too.
Meir Y. Soloveichik is the rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York City and the director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University.
After welcoming the visiting rabbis, Kipper put on tefillin and spoke to them for hours about his life and how he lives in Egypt as a Jew. Credit: Mendel Goldman
From Ukraine to Alexandria, Kipper dedicated himself to community
By: Mordechai Lightstone
When news broke of Israeli-Canadian Ziv Kipper’s murder in Alexandria, Egypt, on May 7, a widely shared photo showed him smiling widely, wearing tefillin, with two Chabad rabbinical students at his side. It was taken in the Alexandria home of the frozen fruit and vegetable exporter in the fall of 2023.
Born in the Soviet Ukraine, Kipper’s life journey had taken a circuitous route—emigrating with his family to Israel when he was a child; followed by time in Canada, where he attended college; and then running various businesses that brought him back to Ukraine, and ultimately, to Egypt.
Rabbis Mendel Goldman and Mendy Konikov visited Alexandria in September to lead Rosh Hashanah services at the magnificent Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in the heart of the Egyptian port city. During Roman times, as much as 35 percent of Alexandria’s population was made up of Jews, and it remained home to tens of thousands of Jews until they were expelled after 1948.
Rabbi Mendel Goldman and Rabbi Mendel Konikov stand outside the Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue in Alexandria, Egypt, on their recent trip before Rosh Hashanah.Credit: Mendel Goldman
“We went to Alexandria before Rosh Hashanah to visit the local community,” Goldman says. As he and Konikov walked down the street near their hotel on Friday afternoon before Shabbat, a car pulled up in front of them. “The driver rolled down the window and gave us this huge ‘Shabbat Shalom!’”
The driver left quickly, but later sent a message via mutual contacts that the visiting students should probably swap out their black hats and jackets for something less conspicuous when out on the street.
Goldman and Konikov spent the time before Rosh Hashanah visiting the tiny expat Jewish community, and when the pair went to visit Ziv Kipper—one of their main contacts in the community—they were pleased to see that he was the driver who’d wished them a Shabbat Shalom.
“He was very welcoming,” Konikov recalls. “He put on tefillin, and we spent a few hours speaking.” Later, Kipper drove them around, showing them the sites of the beautiful city once known as the “Bride of the Mediterranean.”
Kipper liked to travel to his hometown in Chernigov, Ukraine for the Jewish holidays and often helped lead them. Credit: Jewish Community of Chernigov
Kipper was shot and killed by unknown assailants on Tuesday in Alexandria. Reports state he was not robbed in the attack, and a previously unknown Islamic terrorist group took credit for the murder. Egyptian security sources told Reuters that the murder was being investigated as a criminal matter and security services said on Wednesday that they’d taken a suspect into custody. On the same day a graphic video purporting to be of Kipper’s murder began circulating online. In the video, shot with a go-pro camera, the attacker can be heard saying “shalom” before shooting, and then “shalom from the children of Gaza.”
‘He Had Such a Warm, Jewish Heart’
The Soviet-born Kipper’s status as a global wanderer meant that over the years, he’d forged many warm relationships with Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries.
“Ziv used to tell me that when he retires, he would be a rabbi’s assistant,” says Rabbi Yisroel Silberstein, Chabad emissary to Chernigov, Ukraine. “He was just this incredibly warm and gregarious person.”
Silberstein recalls meeting Kipper shortly after the rabbi and his family moved to Chernigov in 2010.
“Even when he traveled Ziv always made a point of being back home in Chernigov for the holidays,” Silberstein recalls. There, he would assist the rabbi during the Passover Seder, translating portions of the Haggadah from Hebrew to Russian, or bringing new fruit from Egypt in honor of Rosh Hashanah. A generous person, Kipper would bring suitcases of toys he manufactured for needy children in the Ukrainian cities he lived in. For a while he operated a limousine service in Chernigov, and would treat children from the Chernigov community to a limo drive during the Jewish community’s annual Lag BaOmer parade.
When war broke out in Ukraine in February of 2022, Kipper made Alexandria his home base. Even while in Egypt, he remained in touch with Silberstein. “You know, I’m almost like a Chabad rabbi here,” Kipper would tell him.
Kipper was a favorite of the children in Chernigov, often bringing toys on his visits and treating children to a limo drive during the Jewish community’s annual Lag BaOmer parade. Credit: Jewish Community of Chernigov
The two would text regularly, as recently as this past Sunday, when Kipper sent the last of the Shabbat Shalom GIFs and memes he was known to share via WhatsApp with the many people he knew.
Goldman and Konikov likewise kept in touch with Kipper after they left Egypt.
“There was a depth in the bond we formed with Ziv,” Goldman says. “In many ways, we felt like perhaps the whole trip had been for us to connect with him. He had such a warm, Jewish heart.”
Kipper told the young rabbis that he never hid the fact that he was Jewish from his employees or neighbors. After the Oct. 7 terror attacks in southern Israel, both Silberstein and Goldman asked Kipper if his plans had changed.
“When we spoke in March, Ziv was very clear that he felt safe in Alexandria,” says Silberstein. “He had a sense of purpose about where he was.” (Chabad.org)
Addendum: On Friday, May 10th, the Jewish News Syndicate reported that Ziv Kipper, a Jewish businessman with Israeli, Canadian and Russian citizenship who was killed earlier this week in Alexandria, Egypt, was murdered in an anti-Semitic attack, his wife told Hebrew media on Wednesday.
“He wasn’t robbed,” Oksana Kipper claimed in an interview with Israel’s Kan News public broadcaster, adding that Egyptian authorities had offered her little information on the circumstances of the incident.
An Egyptian security source has told Reuters that Kipper’s death was being investigated as a criminal act, rejecting any link to his Israeli background and denying knowledge of the claim of responsibility.
Also on Wednesday, a previously unknown pro-Palestinian terror organization in Egypt claimed responsibility for the alleged murder.
In unconfirmed footage of the shooting released by the nascent Vanguard of Liberation–Martyr Mohammed Salah terrorist group, a gunman can be seen executing a man sitting in a parked vehicle. JNS has decided not to publish the graphic propaganda video on its website.
Mohammed Salah was a police officer from Cairo who killed three Israel Defense Forces soldiers in a cross-border terrorist attack last year.
“Wait for the next one. Shalom from the children of Gaza,” read a caption on the video, which was shared through the Telegram messaging application. The statement claimed that Kipper had been gathering intelligence on behalf of the Mossad, using his job as a cover.
Rabbi Mendel Goldman (right of image) told Chabad.org that “in many ways, we felt like perhaps the whole trip had been for us to connect with him. He had such a warm, Jewish heart.” Credit: Mendel Goldman
Kipper owned a vegetable processing factory in Egypt for nearly 10 years and used to enter the country using his Canadian passport.
The slain businessman served as the CEO of O.K Group LLC, one of the largest Egyptian exporters of frozen vegetables, citrus, and other fruits and vegetables, “with the head office in Alexandria, Egypt, and offices in Ukraine and Israel,” according to his LinkedIn page.
Kipper’s identity has yet to be confirmed by the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, which is handling the incident along with the Cairo embassy.
Kipper is the third Israeli national to have been killed in Alexandria since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in the northwestern Negev.
On Oct. 8, the day after Hamas launched its latest war against Israel, two Israelis were killed and another was moderately injured in a shooting attack directed at a group of tourists also in the Egyptian port city.
A dozen members of the Jewish fraternity AEPi were among the young men who held the American flag aloft after anti-Israel protesters tore it down. Credit: Parker Ali/Daily Tar Heel
Proud AEPI brothers stand up for Jews and America
By: Faygie Levy Holt
Images of a small group of students at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill holding up an American flag amid violent anti-Israel protests last week captured the attention of the nation. The boys were caught on camera struggling to keep the Stars and Stripes from falling onto the ground after the protesters sought to replace it with a Palestinian flag.
What isn’t as widely known is that about a dozen of the 25 or so students who kept the American flag flying were young Jewish men—brothers from the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi, or AEPi—and members of Chabad-Lubavitch at UNC. All of them participate in Fra-Torah, a weekly Torah class at Chabad, attend Friday night Shabbat dinners, and are part of Chabad at UNC’s Lions of Israel tefillin club.
Among them was 19-year-old Jacob Harris, who told Chabad.org that while he didn’t initially plan to challenge the protesters, when he heard that friends and other supporters of Israel and the Jewish people’s rights to dwell there were being called “fascists and Nazis,” and worse, he had to do something.
“I realized these protests had evolved. For the first time here in college, I felt as if my presence at my university as a Jewish student was being scrutinized,” Harris said.
Joining up with a few friends, Harris went to the quad—the central area on campus—carrying an Israeli flag. What he saw when he arrived upset him deeply.
“We watched in horror and disgust as the protesters tore the American flag in the center of the quad off its pole and replaced it with a Palestinian one,” he recounted. “This demonstration had become completely out of hand.”
Police arrived soon after, and the American flag was returned to its rightful spot. However, once the authorities left, protesters again targeted the flag.
That was when Harris and his friends jumped into action. They encircled the flagpole and held the American flag aloft over their heads to ensure that it didn’t touch the ground. Photos of the young men standing proud in the face of blatant hate quickly spread across the country.
“The scene that stood before us was just awful,” said Harris. “The same people that had promoted their protest as peaceful were pelting us with all sorts of projectiles—a metal water bottle gave my friend a black eye simply for standing up for his identity and defending the Stars and Stripes.
“The American flag is a symbol of freedom—the freedom represented by that flag allows me to express my identity just as it allows individuals to protest. Seeing the flag being taken down by the same people that it gives the right to protest felt like a slap in the face of every American citizen,” Harris said.
‘Standing Up for What They Believe In’
Rabbi Zalman Bluming, co-director with his wife, Yehudis, of Chabad at UNC at Chapel Hill, wasn’t surprised to see the young men jump into action.
“[They] have in spades what so many of their peers are sorely lacking: common sense, love of their country and a willingness to defend it,” he said. “Moreover, these boys see one another as brothers and defend their highest common commitments as brothers should. We Jews will stand up for America’s flag when others are prepared to trample it. And our true brothers in this great country stand united with us.”
While some have sought to define the violent protests on campus as one of fighting oppression, those who have gone to the encampments and watched the protests say there’s much more going on.
“This is an American fight,” Bluming said. “It’s not just Jewish values being threatened on campus; it is American freedom and American values. There is a tremendous synergy between Jewish values and American values, and I am very proud of what these young men did in standing up for what they believe in.”
He added that Judaism encourages people to be upright and upstanding citizens, to take part in their communities and support their government, something he said the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, encouraged. “He wanted people to go vote, to be involved in civic service,” said the rabbi. “The boys weren’t wearing tefillin at the time, but I believe that’s where they get the strength to stand up for what they believe and be successful doing so.
Harris, who participates in Chabad activities at UNC as often as possible, believes that his Jewish identity played a role in his stepping up and getting involved.
“I went out there because I wanted to provide a voice for the Jewish students who felt unwelcome on campus and show that it’s OK to be proud of an identity,” Harris said. “I’ve seen the impact our presence in those protests had on other college campuses as Jewish students have become more comfortable expressing their identities. I’m very grateful for the impact of our actions.”
Chabad at the University of Chicago set up a stand to encourage Jewish students to perform a mitzvah for the People of Israel.
By: Baila Brackman
I want to share with you a snapshot of what has been happening to our community of students—a community to which my husband and I have dedicated the past 23 years of our lives.
The Rohr Chabad Center serves the Jewish students at the University of Chicago, known for its rigorous academics and particularly for its economics department.
For two decades we have cared for the students’ emotional, social, and spiritual needs—as well as providing them with a comfortable home away from home.
We have friends and family who serve as Chabad emissaries in remote and developing countries, and we marvel at their bravery. We thought we had it easy, surrounded by the gleaming ivory towers of academia.
But today, as we look around the once-friendly neighborhood where we raised our children—both our biological children and the many students for whom we’ve become a second set of parents—the place is unrecognizable.
People shout, scream, and curse Israel, Jews, and America, the land that provided them the freedom of expression they’re glibly exploiting. A place of learning and discovery has dissolved into tension and conflict.
Our work began the moment the news broke on Simchat Torah morning that something was amiss. Days later, a student, Yair, came to our Chabad House with a heavy heart, having decided to leave school and return to Israel to fight. I was struck by the gravity of his decision and felt a mother’s instinct to offer him a blessing for safety and success. Watching him leave, knowing the risks he was taking, filled me with a sense of awe and fear.
A Jewish Student at the University of Chicago is assisted with putting on tefillin.
We worked relentlessly to support our students and the wider community in the following weeks. Students came to us from every corner, their souls seeking light amidst the darkness. We distributed mezuzahs and stood on campus—even surrounded by anti-Israel slurs and comments—putting tefillin on the young men, encouraging women to light Shabbat candles, and providing comfort to those grappling with hate and fear on campus.
We even invested in beautifully crafted books of Psalms with English translation, gifting them to students and explaining how these sacred psalms have served as a wellspring of inspiration for the Jewish people through the ages, starting with King David during his tribulations.
The students have been channeling their emotions into positive action, committing to mitzvahs and living more Jewishly.
One woman, a grad student, told me she’d been in a committed relationship with a Christian man and looked forward to marrying him. After the attacks, it became clear to them both that the gulf between them was too great. There was no way for him to understand how deeply she connected to people in a country halfway across the globe. She’s now committed to only marrying a Jew.
There’s Lily, who came to Chabad one day asking for Shabbat candles. She felt that lighting candles was the one mitzvah she could do for Israel. Later, she sent me a photo of her Shabbat table in New York, complete with challah and candles. Her parents, Russian Jews without a strong Jewish upbringing, had joined her in embracing the beauty of Shabbat. Lily now comes to our Shabbat dinners almost every week. These moments of connection and inspiration are what sustain us through the most difficult times.
We did everything possible to shield our young children from the antisemitic shouts and slurs they should never have had to witness. It was hard to explain to their teachers what they were seeing and what they were holding in their hearts each day. Just the other week, during a walk around the neighborhood, they counted over 80 anti-Israel signs and we hadn’t even walked onto the actual campus grounds.
One day, things on campus were especially tense. A loud and aggressive anti-Israel rally was taking place, and a student came rushing into Chabad, crying uncontrollably. I embraced her and held her close as she sobbed. She didn’t need words—just the presence of someone who cared. Later, I learned that a visiting mother had taken a picture of me holding this young woman, her tears soaking my shoulder. She sent me the photo, writing, “I took this so that you would remember, and I could show my friends what a rebbetzin is for during challenging times.”
In such moments, the Rebbe’s teachings have always guided me. I draw strength from his words, whether in times of joy or deep despair.
Preparing for over 250 people for both Seders seemed daunting, but the joy of watching Jewish souls shine made every effort worthwhile. More than ever, students came to us asking where they could find something to eat during Passover.
There were days when we felt like there were two wars, one in Israel and one on college campuses around the country. Unfortunately, this campus war is still strong and frightening to the young Jewish students.
We woke up on the last day of Passover to a Gaza encampment on our quad. It was worse than you can imagine and more disgusting than you can envision. I ran with my son onto the quad to support the students, hug the girls who were crying, and just be a familiar face. We grabbed some kippahs and encouraged the boys to put them on. One young man whom I had never seen before came up to me and asked for a kippah. “I never wear a kippah,” he said, “it’s not my thing, but today I want to. I want to show them that I am a proud Jew.
Last Friday, things devolved to about the worst I had seen.
There were hundreds of students on the quad, and things had erupted terribly, both sides were facing off. It was scary and appalling and I honestly could not believe what I was seeing with my own eyes. I will have these horrific images in my head for a long time. We had our sons and interns setting up emergency tefillin stations, blaring Jewish music over their speakers, which was hard to hear with all the shouting.
The protestors were defacing the American flag, and students loyal to America had come to hold up the American flag and also bring some of their own.
My son was bravely holding one such flag, and his picture ended up on the front cover of the next day’s Chicago Tribune. But it was frightening, sickening, and all-around horrible.
Just as I did not think I could handle another minute of the chaos, a couple came over to us with their son.
He was a prospective student and had simply come to see the campus. Never did they expect to see the anti-Jewish and anti-American display they’d stumbled into. Meanwhile, my son was helping Jewish men put on tefillin.
The boy turned to my husband and asked if he, too, could put on tefillin—something he’d never done before.
I cried as I watched him put on tefillin for the first time in his life, and we sang and danced with chaos erupting everywhere.
His mother, who was also emotional, said to me, “Maybe this is the real reason we came today—so our son could celebrate his bar mitzvah.”
And maybe this is the reason we’ve been here for 23 years—so that young Jewish people, who’d otherwise be swallowed up by the hatred and lies that surround us so thickly, can find a lifeboat of Judaism to tide them over the groundswell of insanity that has engulfed us.
El Al has recently introduced a new slogan: Fly the Flag
By: Chaya Sora Jungreis-Gertzulin
This week’s parsha, Emor, tells us about HaShem’s eternal gift to Bnei Yisroel. The gift of Shabbos.
“Sheishes yomim tay’aseh melacha, Six days you shall do work, u’vayom ha’shvii Shabbos Shabboson mikra kodesh, and the seventh day, a day of complete rest, a holy day…. Shabbos hu l’HaShem b’chol moshvoseichem, a Shabbos for HaShem, in all your dwellings.” (Vayikra 23:3)
Six days we are busy with the daily grind of living. Work, appointments, keeping up with our emails, texts, WhatsApp messages, etc. Come Shabbos, we put it all to rest. We have one day a week to elevate ourselves, to envelope ourselves in spirituality, to connect to HaShem.
Shabbos is spelled shin-beis-tuff. Within the word Shabbos, we find the word “shov – shin, beis”, to return. A message to us. With Shabbos comes the opportunity for the neshama to soar, to reach the heavens, to return and reconnect to HaShem. A bond that fuels us all week long.
Achad Ha’am is famously quoted as saying, “More than the Jewish people have kept Shabbos, Shabbos has kept the Jew.” The late Senator Joseph Lieberman was once asked, “How can you be a senator and still keep Shabbos?” to which he replied, “I don’t think I could be a senator and not keep Shabbos.”
Rabbi Shimshon Pincus zt”l teaches that we prepare for Shabbos as if we are welcoming royalty into our home. We set a beautiful table, dress in special Shabbos clothes, and serve the finest foods. Our discussions are elevated, and we sing heartwarming z’miros. We bless our children, and encourage them to share the Torah teachings of the past week. It’s not just about doing for Shabbos; it’s also about breaking away from the mundane and giving our minds a twenty-four hour rest from the pressures of our week.
All for the seventh day. All for Shabbos.
We even speak as if Shabbos itself is our guest. We’re shopping, cooking, preparing “for Shabbos”. For on Shabbos, we welcome the Shabbos Queen.
Leil Shabbos. Friday night. Time for Kabbolas Shabbos, welcoming the Shabbos. We sing the words of Lecha Dodi, Come my Beloved. Likras Shabbos l’chu v’neilcha, To welcome Shabbos, come, let us go. Kee hee m’kor ha’bracha, For it is the source of blessing.
At the Shabbos daytime seudah, many sing the tune Kee eshmerah Shabbos, If I guard and protect Shabbos, Keil yishmereinee, HaShem will protect me. Shabbos not only elevates us, but protects us.
Prime Minister Menachem Begin understood this message well. It was May 3, 1982. While still in pain from a recent hip surgery, the Prime Minister made his way to Knesset, prepared to deliver a powerful message. A message that cemented a new policy that remains to this day. A message that brought the entire nation to understand the importance and holiness of Shabbos. A message about El Al, the national airline of Israel.
“Forty years ago, I returned from exile to Eretz Yisroel,” he said. “Engraved in my memory are the lives of millions of Jews, simple, ordinary folk, eking out a livelihood in that forlorn Diaspora, where the storms of anti-Semitism raged. They were not permitted to work on the Christian day of rest, and they refused to work on their day of rest. For they lived by the commandment, ‘Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.’ Each week, they forswore two whole days of hard-won bread. This meant destitution for many. But they would not desecrate the Sabbath day.”
Despite the hissing and jeering from secular opposition members of the Knesset, and many in the public gallery, Begin was not deterred. He continued, “Shabbat is one of the loftiest values in all of humanity. It originated with us. It is all sours. No other civilization in history knew of a day of rest. Ancient Egypt had a great culture whose treasures are on view to this day, yet the Egypt of antiquity did not know a day of rest. The Greeks of old excelled in philosophy and the arts, yet they did not know of a day of rest. Rome established mighty empires, and instituted a system of law still relevant to this day, yet they did not know of a day of rest. Neither did the civilizations of Assyria, Babylon, Persia, India, China – none of them knew of a day of rest. One nation alone sanctified the Shabbat. A small nation, the nation that heard the voice at Sinai. Ours was the nation that enthroned Shabbat as our sovereign Queen.”
The jeering intensified, but the approving voices of those who were about to make history overtook them. Begin’s voice reached a crescendo, and he was not going to be intimidated from delivering his message. He was a man on a sacred mission, about to drop the gauntlet. “So, are we, in our own Jewish state, to allow our blue and white El Al planes to fly about, broadcasting to the world that there is no Shabbat in Israel? Should we now deliver a message to all, through our blue and white El Al planes – ‘No, don’t remember the Shabbat! Forget the Shabbat! Desecrate the Shabbat!’ I shudder at the thought.”
“Know this,” Begin told his audience, “We cannot assess the religious, national, social, historical and ethical values of Shabbat by the yardstick of financial loss or gain. In our revived Jewish state, we cannot engage in such calculations when dealing with an eternal and cardinal value of the Jewish people – Shabbat – for which our ancestors were ready to give their lives.”
Begin ended with an enduring statement. “One thing more. One need not to be a pious Jew to accept this principle. One need only to be a proud Jew.”
The Prime Minister’s motion was put to a vote. The tally was 58 in favor, 54 opposed. Menachem Begin breathed a sigh of relief, as he limped his way out of Knesset. He had made history. El Al would no longer fly on the Shabbos and Yomim Tovim.
My mother, the Rebbetzin a”h had the privilege of meeting with Prime Minister Begin on several occasions. At one such meeting he said to her: “Kavod HaRabbanit,” I want to share my most personal tefilla (prayer) with you. When I daven to Hashem in my most serious moments, I always make sure to use the words of Tehillim, asking and beseeching the Master of the world with the prayer, ‘V’ruach kadshecha al tikach mimeni.’ Pease do not remove the spirit of Your holiness from me.’ ” This prayer was certainly on the Prime Minister’s lips as he delivered the powerful “El Al speech” on that historic day.
El Al has recently introduced a new slogan: Fly the Flag. Prime Minister Begin foresaw this over forty years ago, when he declared that the flag of the Jewish nation would not be in the skies on Shabbos.
Yehi zichro boruch. May his memory be for a blessing.
This article was written L’zecher Nishmas /In Memory Of HaRav Meshulem ben HaRav Osher Anshil HaLevi, zt”l and Rebbetzin Esther bas HaRav Avraham HaLevi, zt”l
The essential theme behind the counting of the sefirah is, of course, perfecting our character traits. Photo Credit: 5Townscentral.com
By: Naftali Reich
The essential theme behind the counting of the sefirah is, of course, perfecting our character traits. This is alluded to in the famous words of Rabbi Akiva, the teacher of Rav Shimon Bar Yochai, who explained the verse, “Love your neighbor like yourself,” to mean that this quintessential Torah law is the source from which flows all the Torah’s teachings. ”
In order to fully appreciate the import of Rabbi Akiva’s teaching, let us read the famous narrative recorded in the Talmud Kesuvos (daf 62:2) about Rabbi Akiva and his righteous wife, Rachel.
“Rabbi Akiva worked as a shepherd for the wealthy Kalba Savua, whose daughter, Rachel, recognized Akiva’s modesty and aspiring greatness. She approached him with an offer: “if I become betrothed to you, will you go to the Yeshiva to study Torah?” After he responded in the affirmative, they became secretly betrothed, and he went off to study. Upon discovering his daughter’s marriage to the unlearned shepherd, the wealthy Kalba Savua disowned her.
Rabbi Akiva remained in the Bais Hamedrash learning Torah for 12 years. When he finally returned home, he was accompanied by 12,000 students. As he was about to cross the threshold of his home, he heard an elderly man provoking his wife about his long absence. “How long will you remain a living widow?” the man asked, to which she replied, “If my husband would only listen to me he would devote himself to another twelve years of uninterrupted study.”
With these words of permission and encouragement, Rabbi Akiva turned around and returned to the yeshiva. He studied for another twelve years after which he returned with 24,000 students. His wife, Rochel, went out to greet him. Approaching him, she fell to the ground and kissed his feet. His attendants tried to push her away but were stopped by Rabbi Akiva, who told them, “All that is mine and all that is yours belongs to her.”
With this episode, the Talmud gives us insight into the supreme and selfless dedication of Rabbi Akiva’s wife and Rabbi Akiva. Yet the narrative prompts some basic questions: Is there a significance to the number 12,000 (students) who accompanied him on his first return home? Furthermore, upon his second return after another twelve years, shouldn’t the growth of his students have been exponential, not merely double?
In another interesting twist, the sages teach us that whenever the Talmud refers to Hu Saba, “an elderly man,” it invariably refers to Elijah the prophet. Elijah had come at that specific moment to prompt Rabbi Akiva’s wife to respond with her selfless declaration that she wished he would learn Torah for another twelve years. Clearly, this was all divinely engineered. Why was it so important for Rabbi Akiva to study uninterrupted for another twelve years to the point where Hashem actually sent Eliyahu Hanavi to bring this about?
I believe the answer lies in a basic understanding of Rabbi Akiva’s teaching about the essential meaning and purpose of Torah study, and of life itself. In essence, Hashem is the unifying force that sustains and permeates all of creation. Nevertheless, Hashem created a finite, fragmented and divided world where this unifying force is not easily perceived. The different compounds and elements, components and polarities that comprise the physical world serve to mask the fact that they all emanate from a single primary source.
Our mission is to glimpse what lies beyond the external divide, to see Creator in creation by connecting the dots. We are all essentially souls that flow from one place-the Heavenly throne. We are all thus bonded as one at our source. Nevertheless, our souls are implanted in independent bodies, each uniquely different from the other, each agitating for its own individual needs and operating on its own instincts of self-preservation.
How can we transcend our physical differences and genuinely bond with one another, thereby uniting with our divine source?
Rabbi Akiva provides the answer. Love your neighbor as yourself; this is the noblest and most fundamental doctrine governing a Jew’s life, and it is acquired only through Torah. Through Torah we connect to Hashem’s infinite mind and will. When we study Torah, however, each of us has our own pathway and medium, our own unique way of understanding. We are so certain we have arrived at the truth though our own perceptions, it is difficult to see the bigger picture and to accord the appropriate respect to our counterpart in study.
There is no greater challenge than achieving a true internal synthesis whereby we can maintain our independent mode of thought while recognizing at the same time that everything contains elements of truth, and that all flows from one divine source.
Rabbi Akiva’s greatness as a unifying force among the Jewish people was to raise 12,000 students. The Jewish nation consists of 12 tribes, each invested with its own unique, principled pathway and mission. The number 1,000 in Hebrew is “elef,” represented by the same symbol as the letter one. With 1,000 students in each tribe, reflecting the total diversity of Torah understanding, Rabbi Akiva could nevertheless unify them as one, inspiring and bringing together all the tribes jointly to bond through Torah to their source. A lofty accomplishment indeed!
Yet there was higher level of achievement that Heaven had ordained for Rabbi Akiva and his wife. It required harnessing a form of supernatural energy and it would accomplish a supernatural goal.
A husband and wife are essentially one soul divided into two opposites, and when they unite in harmony and peace the divine presence rests between them. So too, each of these 12,000 were to become zugos, pairs. It is natural for two individuals to argue the finer nuances of their individual line of Torah reasoning and thus approach the matter from all possible angles.
If, while dissenting with one another’s arguments, they would display the appropriate respect and esteem due a Torah scholar of such stature, the opposite, yet cohesive forces produced by their Torah leaning would bring the ultimate revelation of the Divine presence to this world. The highest spiritual goal for human existence would then be achieved.
Beyond the brutality and evil that occurred on October 7, the exhibition captures the enduring spirit of the Nova Tribe with the installation of a healing tent. This special structure is a lighthouse declaring “We will dance again.” This vow is a powerful affirmation of resilience and defiance in the face of terror, a collective commitment to reclaim joy and celebration despite the shadows cast by tragedy. Credit: The Nova Music Festival Exhibition
Edited by: Fern Sidman
The Nova Music Festival Exhibition is an in-depth remembrance of the brutal October 7th attack as it brings the events of that tragic day and the “Tribe of Nova” festival in southern Israel to New York City. The installation, aptly named “October 7th 06:29 am–The Moment Music Stood Still” recreates an event dedicated to peace and love that was brutally cut short by Hamas’s attack on Israel from Gaza on a day that will never be forgotten. This groundbreaking installation is open to the public and located at 35 Wall Street in lower Manhattan. Presented as a way to empower visitors to responsibly explore the events of October 7 and its aftermath, The Nova Exhibition transforms a 50,000 square foot venue, introducing New Yorkers to one of the largest historical installations ever presented.
Visitors are invited to join a plea for the safe return of the 130 hostages who are still held in captivity by Hamas terrorists. Nova survivors of the brutal attack will be attending, to bear as witnesses to the tragedy they experienced that day. Credit: The Nova Music Festival Exhibition
The Nova Music Festival founders, including Omri Sassi, Yoni Feingold, Ofir Amir and Yahil Rimoni gathered once again to conceive a wide & in-depth remembrance that was created, directed and written by Reut Feingold. They partnered with those in the United States including prominent record industry executive Scooter Braun, as well as Joe Teplow, Josh Kadden and many more supporters, to ensure that this important project became a reality. The exhibition premiered in Tel Aviv for 10 weeks to thousands who witnessed and remembered the lives lost.
Together, they have created a sacred space echoing the weight of the victims’ and survivors’ memories, surrounded by remains salvaged from the festival grounds—scorched cars, bullet-riddled bathroom stalls, and personal belongings all left behind.
Those visiting the Nova Music Festival Exhibition can purchase items in the gift shop. Credit: The Nova Music Festival Exhibition
Visitors are invited to join a plea for the safe return of the 130 hostages who are still held in captivity by Hamas terrorists. Nova survivors of the brutal attack will be attending, to bear as witnesses to the tragedy they experienced that day.
Beyond the brutality and evil that occurred on October 7, the exhibition captures the enduring spirit of the Nova Tribe with the installation of a healing tent. This special structure is a lighthouse declaring “We will dance again.” This vow is a powerful affirmation of resilience and defiance in the face of terror, a collective commitment to reclaim joy and celebration despite the shadows cast by tragedy.
Those visiting the Nova Music Festival Exhibition can purchase items in the gift shop. Credit: The Nova Music Festival Exhibition
The artifacts on display are not mere objects; they are relics of a day marred by violence and chaos, each item telling its own poignant story. Among the gathered pieces are empty liquor bottles, remnants of revelry turned to ruin; camping tents, once cozy retreats, now silent witnesses to terror; bullet-pocked portable toilets, stark reminders of the battlefield the festival grounds became; and charred cars, their frames twisted in testament to the fury of the attack. Personal items such as sneakers, jewelry, T-shirts, and more dot the exhibition space, each a fragment of a life interrupted.
Adding a deeply personal dimension to the exhibition are the survivors of the Nova Festival, who are present to share their harrowing testimonies and eyewitness accounts. Their presence brings a human face to the tragedy, bridging the gap between the past horrors and the present memories, making the past atrocities palpable and immediate for visitors.
Adding a deeply personal dimension to the exhibition are the survivors of the Nova Festival, who are present to share their harrowing testimonies and eyewitness accounts. Their presence brings a human face to the tragedy, bridging the gap between the past horrors and the present memories, making the past atrocities palpable and immediate for visitors. Credit: The Nova Music Festival Exhibition
Scooter Braun spoke of the vital importance of the exhibition in a heartfelt statement: “October 7th is a day tragically etched into our history, but music must remain a safe place,” he said. His words resonate with the underlying mission of the exhibition—to honor those lost, while also highlighting the ongoing plight of the remaining hostages still held under dire conditions in Gaza. “Bringing the Nova Music Festival to New York City honors those who were taken from us too soon; while reminding us of the progress we still need to make to bring the hostages home,” Braun continued. His call to action is clear: the music community must not forget the victims, and it must advocate for the safety and release of the innocent.
Braun, whose grandparents survived the Holocaust, was profoundly moved during his visit to the Nova Music Festival Exhibition in Tel Aviv. Recognizing the profound impact of the exhibition, Braun felt a compelling need to bring this powerful showcase to the United States. His motivation was twofold: to amplify the voices of survivors, who had inspired him with their resilience, and to address his growing frustration with the lack of attention the tragedy had received within the industry he had been part of for two decades.
The Nova Music Festival Exhibition team of founders and supporters at the NASDAQ Exchange in the Wall Street area of lower Manhattan. Credit: The Nova Music Festival Exhibition
Braun expressed a fervent desire to refocus the conversation around the events, stressing that the core issue transcended political boundaries. “These kids just wanted peace… I want to give them a voice and have the community see that this isn’t about politics,” Braun told Kirsten Fleming, an op-ed contributor at the New York Post, emphasizing that the essence of the conflict should be seen through the lens of humanity and the universal language of music, not through the divisive perspectives often portrayed.
His frustration is highlighted by the contrast in the global response to other attacks involving the music community. Speaking to Fleming, Braun recalled the overwhelming solidarity and quick action following the 2017 suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England where the music world united in grief and defiance. As was indicated in the Post report, major artists such as Chris Martin, Katy Perry, Robbie Williams, and Justin Bieber rallied around the cause, culminating in a benefit concert that not only raised funds but also demonstrated the industry’s collective resilience and commitment to combating terrorism.
A visitor to the Nova Music Festival Exhibition takes notes and records memories. Credit: The Nova Music Festival Exhibition
Braun drew parallels between the ideologies motivating the attackers in Manchester and those behind the Nova Music Festival tragedy, shining a spotlight on a consistency in the extremist beliefs that led to both atrocities, the Post report affirmed. His comments reflect a deep-seated anger about the selective outrage and support within the music industry, pointing out the disparities in how these events were addressed and remembered.
Through his efforts to bring the Nova Music Festival Exhibition to a broader audience in the United States, Braun is not just seeking justice or recognition for the victims; he is challenging the music industry and the wider community to acknowledge and respond to violence against music lovers worldwide. By doing so, Braun hopes to ensure that music remains a safe space for expression and enjoyment, free from the shadows of violence and fear. This initiative represents not only a tribute to the victims but also a call to action to uphold the sanctity of music as a universal bond that transcends cultural and political divides.
Scooter Braun, a prominent record industry executive, spoke of the vital importance of the exhibition in a heartfelt statement: “October 7th is a day tragically etched into our history, but music must remain a safe place,” he said. His words resonate with the underlying mission of the exhibition—to honor those lost, while also highlighting the ongoing plight of the remaining hostages still held under dire conditions in Gaza. Credit: Instagram
The exhibition also draws a poignant comparison with the nearby 9/11 Memorial Museum. Organizers note the similarities in how both sites serve as solemn repositories of objects that encapsulate moments of national and personal tragedy. The Nova exhibition, like the 9/11 Memorial, becomes a place where the public can engage with the tangible evidence of terror to better understand the enormity of the events and the depth of the grief.
For Yarin Ilovich, a DJ who witnessed unimaginable horror, this exhibition serves a crucial purpose: ensuring that the truth of that tragic day is never forgotten. “For me, it is most important that they know what really happened there,” Ilovich emphasized, according to a report on NY1.com.
To remember those who have lost their lives at Nova Music Festival in October 2023 and beyond, the festival’s founders teamed up with creative director Reut Feingold to bring a remembrance installation to New York City this spring. Credit: Instagram
It was 6:29 a.m. when Yarin’s partner, Nimrod, abruptly instructed him to stop the music. Confusion turned to horror as it became clear that this was no ordinary emergency. “Shut down? Yes, it’s a code red,” Nimrod said, signaling the gravity of the situation, as was indicated in the NY1.com report. Almost immediately, the festive atmosphere was ripped apart by gunfire and the terrifying whistle of rockets overhead.
Scores of Hamas terrorists who had infiltrated Israel had launched a surprise attack on the unsuspecting crowd. The festival, typically a haven of music and celebration, transformed into a chaotic battlefield within moments, according to the NY1.com report. Festival goers found themselves in a life-threatening situation, with Hamas terrorists shooting indiscriminately as people scrambled for safety.
The installation, aptly named “October 7th 06:29 am–The Moment Music Stood Still” recreates an event dedicated to peace and love that was brutally cut short by Hamas’s attack on Israel from Gaza on a day that will never be forgotten. Credit: Instagram
The panic was palpable as people ran in all directions, seeking refuge from the relentless attack. The exits became congested, further complicating the attendees’ desperate attempts to escape, as per the NY1.com report. Roads were blockaded, and jeeps filled with gunmen fired at the fleeing cars, adding to the mayhem and terror.
Yarin found himself ducking for cover under a police vehicle, a temporary shelter that became his hideout for the next four hours. Amidst the sound of gunfire, he lay there, grappling with the immediacy of the threat. “You need to be the most cautious because the aim is on you. If someone sees you, they will shoot you,” he explained, highlighting the peril he faced even while hidden.
Shani Louk, a German-Israeli, was one of the first victims to be identified following the brutal Hamas attack on the Nova music festival. She was officially declared dead on October 30. Louk attended the Supernova music festival near Re’im on October 7 when Hamas terrorists stormed the rave. Credit: @shanukkk/ Instagram
The aftermath of the attack was a grim scene. The festival grounds, once filled with the vibrant energy of music lovers, were now a haunting tableau of abandoned belongings and devastation. Tents were upturned, sleeping bags and sacred scriptures scattered amidst the debris. The NY1.com report also affirmed that cell phones, frozen at the exact moment the attack began, lay amongst forgotten hats, shirts, and shoes. The area bore the scars of violence with portable toilets riddled with bullet holes and cars charred beyond recognition.
The October 7th attack, a meticulously planned invasion by Hamas, not only disrupted a celebration of music and culture but also claimed the lives of about 370 civilians in an instance of brutal violence that has left a permanent scar on the collective memory of the nation. The exhibition itself has become a memorial space, with the walls poignantly covered with the faces of those who perished.
Hamas terrorists drive back to the Gaza Strip with the body of Shani Louk, 22, during their cross-border attack on Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. Credit: i24News.com
Josh Kaden, the organizer of the exhibition, captures the emotional weight of the display: “I think we’ve lost a sense of humanity behind this massacre, and the Israeli people and the festival people,” he told NY1.com. This sentiment reflects a profound loss, not just of lives but of the innocence and unity that festivals such as Nova are meant to foster. Visitors to the exhibition are confronted with a mirror image of themselves in the victims, a reflection intended to foster a deep sense of empathy and connection.
The repercussions of the Hamas invasion were catastrophic, extending far beyond the festival grounds. Across Israel, the attacks resulted in 1,200 deaths and the abduction of 250 people, with 44 from the Nova festival itself, the NY1.com report said. Of those kidnapped, approximately 130 remain unaccounted for, their fates a lingering question that adds to the collective grief and unresolved trauma of the nation.
Israeli soldiers remove bodies of Israeli civilians killed by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, near the Israeli-Gaza border, in southern Israel, October 10, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
“They will never forget, and it will remain with them all their lives. The feeling after this event, it will last forever,” said Ilovich, capturing the enduring impact of such profound loss and terror. This sentiment resonates throughout the exhibition, which not only serves as a space of mourning but also as one of healing.
Yoni Feingold, one of the founders of the exhibit, shared with The Art Newspaper the intent behind the project: “We aimed for the project to be the closest we could bring it to the 9/11 Memorial, because that’s exactly the connection we want people to make.” This statement calls attention to a deliberate and thoughtful approach to presenting the aftermath of the October 7 tragedy, emphasizing collective memory and national resilience in the face of terror.
The camping area from the Supernova desert rave, recreated for the ‘Nova 6.29’ exhibit, remembering the 360 people who were gunned down by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023 (Courtesy Tribe of Nova)
Reut Feingold, the exhibit’s creator, director, and writer, sought to transport visitors back to the festival’s joyous atmosphere before the invasion. Survivor Natalie Sanandaji and Nova Foundation Chairman Reef Peretz stand in the exhibit’s “healing room,” where the words “we will dance again” offer a beacon of hope amidst the darkness.
In a previously published report, Reut Feingold emphasized, “It’s not an exhibition about Nova. It is Nova — we want them to feel — to feel the journey, the light in their hearts before” the attack.
The trance dance floor from the Supernova desert rave, recreated for the ‘Nova 6.29’ exhibit, remembering the 360 people who were gunned down by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023 (Courtesy Tribe of Nova)
Exhibition co-founder Ofir Amir, still bearing the physical scars of the attack, expressed the exhibition’s purpose: to honor the 370 souls lost to the violence orchestrated by Hamas. “This wasn’t a terror attack. This was something much bigger – it’s biblical,” Amir remarked.
The exhibition also comes at a time when concerns about safety and security are paramount, particularly against the backdrop of a national rise in anti-Semitic crimes. Attendees visiting the exhibition can expect rigorous security measures, akin to those at other significant historical sites. These measures include screenings and the necessity of scheduling visits through pre-ticketed entry times, ensuring that every guest’s experience is as safe as possible. This approach not only protects the visitors but also preserves the sanctity of the memories being honored at the site.
The trance dance floor from the Supernova desert rave, recreated for the ‘Nova 6.29’ exhibit, remembering the 360 people who were gunned down by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023 (Courtesy Tribe of Nova)
Further deepening its commitment to healing and support, the exhibition has pledged that donations received will benefit the Nova Healing Journey. This vital organization focuses on providing mental health treatment to the victims and families affected by the events of October 7. By channeling funds into such crucial support services, the exhibition plays an active role in the ongoing recovery and healing process, addressing the often prolonged and painful aftermath of such traumatic events.
Set to remain on view through May 23, the exhibition offers a window into the grief and resilience of those affected by the October 7 attacks. It serves as a poignant reminder of the vulnerabilities that communities face during times of crisis and the enduring strength that emerges from remembering and supporting one another. Through its thoughtful curation and connection to the iconic 9/11 Memorial, the Nova Music Festival Exhibition not only commemorates those who suffered but also educates and inspires visitors towards empathy and action in a world still grappling with violence and intolerance. This exhibition is not just a place to reflect on past horrors but a beacon calling for a better, more compassionate future.
From the ‘Nova 6.29’ exhibit, the personal items left behind by Supernova partygoers, 360 of whom were gunned down by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023 (Courtesy Tribe of Nova)
The Nova Music Festival Exhibition is more than just a recounting of a dark day; it is a crucial part of the healing process, a place where grief is shared and resilience is fortified. It stands as a testament to the enduring spirit of a community determined to remember, heal, and eventually, dance again.
“The Nova Music Festival Exhibition: October 7th 06:29am — The Moment Music Stood Still,” is open Saturday through Thursday 11a.m. to 8pm, Fridays 11a.m. to 4.40p.m. at 35 Wall Street until May 25. Tickets are $1 with an option to donate more to mental health treatment for survivors and the bereaved.
The Healthee app allows users to choose their healthcare plan according to their individual needs (Courtesy of Healthee)
By: Alexandra Bordeisau
In the US, there is no universal healthcare to automatically provide everyone with access to medical treatment, leaving individuals to find their own often costly private coverage.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, almost half of Americans rely on their workplace for healthcare coverage. And in a complex healthcare landscape, finding the right insurance policy from the scores of providers can be daunting for both employees and employers alike.
Now, an Israeli startup is seeking to simplify the process of acquiring and managing coverage, using a proprietary AI-driven platform.
Healthee’s platform analyzes individual health plans and converts the maze of data into operative insights, providing personalized experiences, cost transparency and efficient solutions.
One of the key features of the platform is its plan selection tool, which assists users in choosing the right health insurance coverage based on their medical needs and budget.
This not only helps employees to make informed decisions about their healthcare, but also helps employers optimize expenditure by offering tailored benefits packages.
“Zoe, our AI, goes to your personal health plan that was pre-uploaded to the platform by the employer,” Healthee VP Marketing Omer Maman tells NoCamels.
“Then our system turns the medical plan from hundreds of pages of unstructured data into a structured form, where the AI can give you direct answers in a one-on-one conversation.”
Maman says that unlike other healthcare management platforms, Healthee works with its users through the entire process – starting from enrollment in the healthcare provider, which in the US has to be completed every single year.
Healthee provides users with round-the-clock access to telehealth services (Pexels)
“That sits in the center of the user experience, I would say,” he explains.
Healthee’s platform goes beyond plan selection with a wider range of services, including a breakdown of pricing, the choice of different providers and also customer support.
He cites the example of having an MRI, for which he says the cost can vary widely from $200 to an astronomical $5,000 for the same procedure.
“We give our users the customer experience,” he explains. “They know they can go two blocks away and find an MRI for 50% of the price.”
The platform also connects the user with round-the-clock telehealth services that are free of charge, while AI assistant Zoe provides information such as the pricing, addresses of local clinics and available appointment times.
“We always ensure cost transparency, unusual in the US, where you consume health, and then get the invoice 30 days later, ” says Maman.
“Our customers know in advance how much their service is going to cost and they can already locate the closest clinic that serves them at the best prices on the market.”
An engineer turned product manager and a driving force behind Healthee, Maman first experienced the complexities of navigating the US healthcare system with his own family when they moved to the country two years ago.
“As I’ve been in this industry for so many years, I was quite sure no one can surprise me,” he recalls.
“But right after I moved here, I had to book an appointment for one of my kids to see their pediatrician and realized that we know nothing about the healthcare system in the States. It’s so complicated, that those are the kind of things that you do not know you do not know until you need them.”
Created in 2021, Healthee has already raised $58 million in just two rounds of fundraising, which Maman says is testament to the company’s innovation and potential.
In fact, he says, one of Healthee’s most dedicated partners is TriNet, a major US employee organization company, which provides payroll and healthcare provisions for small and medium businesses.
The relationship started as commercial one, Maman says. But it was not long before TriNet, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, decided to become not just a customer but also an investor.
“Their CEO has a chair on our board,” Maman says. “So I believe this is a prime example of a vote of trust.”
TriNet was among the investors in the company’s Series A round in March of this year, which raised $32 million.
Today, the company is headquartered in Tel Aviv, with offices in the US in New York and Georgia. It employs around 60 people, half in Israel and half in the US. And, according to co-CEO Guy Benjamin, the company is already helping millions of American workers.
The Healthee team, with Omer Maman seated 2nd right (Courtesy of Healthee)
Looking ahead, Healthee believes its vision for the future of healthcare is bright and with its AI-powered platform leading the way, the company plans to revolutionize employee healthcare, one personalized experience at a time.
“Healthee only celebrated its third anniversary on May 1,” Maman says.
“For such a young startup to be already so significantly on the market, with paying customers, strategic partnerships and very strong financial backing is something that I haven’t seen in this industry.”
TikTok said it’s the first video-sharing platform to put the credentials into practice. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)
By: Michelle Chapman
TikTok will begin labeling content created using artificial intelligence when it’s been uploaded from outside its own platform in an attempt to combat misinformation.
“AI enables incredible creative opportunities, but can confuse or mislead viewers if they don’t know content was AI-generated,” the company said in a prepared statement Thursday. “Labeling helps make that context clear—which is why we label AIGC made with TikTok AI effects, and have required creators to label realistic AIGC for over a year.”
TikTok’s shift in policy is part of an broader attempt in the technology industry to provide more safeguards for AI usage. In February Meta announced that it was working with industry partners on technical standards that will make it easier to identify images and eventually video and audio generated by artificial intelligence tools. Users on Facebook and Instagram users would see labels on AI-generated images.
Google said last year that AI labels are coming to YouTube and its other platforms.
A push for digital watermarking and labeling of AI-generated content was also part of an executive order that U.S. President Joe Biden signed in October.
TikTok is teaming up with the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity and will use their Content Credentials technology.
The company said that the technology can attach metadata to content, which it can use to instantly recognize and label AI-generated content. TikTok said it began to deploy the technology Thursday on images and videos and will be coming to audio-only content soon.
In coming months, Content Credentials will be attached to submissions made on TikTok, which will remain on the content when downloaded. This will help identify AI-generated material that’s made on TikTok and help people learn when, where and how the content was made or edited. Other platforms that adopt Content Credentials will be able to automatically label it.
“Using Content Credentials as a way to identify and convey synthetic media to audiences directly is a meaningful step towards AI transparency, even more so than typical watermarking techniques,” Claire Leibowicz, head of the AI and Media Integrity Program at the Partnership on AI, said in a prepared statement. “At the same time we need to better understand how users react to these labels and hope that TikTok reports on the response so that we may better understand how the public navigates an increasingly AI-augmented world.”
TikTok said it’s the first video-sharing platform to put the credentials into practice and will join the Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative to help push the adoption of the credentials within the industry.
“TikTok is the first social media platform to support Content Credentials, and with over 170 million users in the United States alone, their platform and their vast community of creators and users are an essential piece of that chain of trust needed to increase transparency online,” Dana Rao, Adobe’s executive vice president, general counsel and chief trust officer, said in a blog post.
TikTok’s policy in the past has been to encourage users to label content that has been generated or significantly edited by AI. It also requires users to label all AI-generated content where it contains realistic images, audio, and video.
“Our users and our creators are so excited about AI and what it can do for their creativity and their ability to connect with audiences.” Adam Presser, TikTok’s Head of Operations & Trust and Safety told ABC News.
The WHO says up to 40 million people worldwide were suffering from dementia in 2023 (Depositphotos)
By: Sara Miller
A random observation by an Israeli cognitive neurologist about the demographics of Jews with early onset of Alzheimer’s disease has led to a genetic study with the potential to shake up how we diagnose and treat patients suffering from this condition.
The World Health Organization says Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia, with around 40 million sufferers worldwide in 2023. There is no cure for or even a universally accepted cause of the disease, despite it being first diagnosed more than a century ago.
In 2017, Dr. Amir Glik, the director of Cognitive Neurology at Beilinson Hospital, realized that of his Jewish patients experiencing cognitive decline, well over half were Sephardi Jews – those who originate from Spain and Portugal in Southern Europe and later North Africa and the Middle East.
Israel’s relatively homogenous population makes it ideal for genetic investigation, Amir Glik says (Unsplash)
“I started asking myself, why does it happen?” Glik tells NoCamels. “Whether my feeling is something that I can prove with statistical methods or is it just a feeling.”
Glik and his team then began to go through hundreds of patient files at the hospital’s cognitive neurology clinic, some dating back years, to see whether there were statistics to back up this intuition.
“After doing the work, examining hundreds of patients, we saw that this is correct,” Glik says.
What they found was that 64 percent of the Jewish patients with early onset dementia were Sephardi, as compared to 36 percent Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern and Northern Europe.
The team then went to Israel’s Health Ministry and other government bodies to acquire annually updated data, which also bore out the trend that they had uncovered at Beilinson.
Glik stresses that the study relates to people aged around 60, who are below the average age for Alzheimer’s diagnosis but older than those who have genetic inclination to develop the disease in their 40s.
According to Glik, Israel’s relatively homogeneous population makes it easier to identify genetic trends within certain ethnic groups and then expand any findings out to more diverse communities.
“The idea when you do a genetic study is to take a population that is a closed population,” he says. “[And] people who studied genetics said that Israel is heaven from a genetical standpoint.”
Glik explains that in a closed population such as Israel, less diversity means there will be a higher percentage of the population with certain genetic risk factors, making them easier to locate.
Amyloid plaque (stained green) in the brain (Courtesy)
“In order to find a genetic risk factor in a homogenic population like the Ashkenazi Jews, or like the [Sephardi] Jews, you need a much lower number of participants in order to find the genetic risk factors,” he says.
He gives the example of the Israeli research that discovered that Ashkenazi Jewish women are more genetically disposed to developing breast cancer. This is because one in every 40 Ashkenazi Jewish women has a mutation of the BRCA gene, something which increases the risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer at a young age. Conversely, only one in every 140 Sephardi Jewish women has the gene mutation.
Once identified, Glik says, these risk factors can then be examined in more heterogenic populations such as in the United States or Europe.
Glik maintains that in the past few years there has been a subtle “revolution” going on in the study of Alzheimer’s disease, unbeknown to most people.
He highlights the introduction of two new drugs to “clean” the build up of the Amyloid beta protein in the brain, which is thought to be one of the primary factors in the development of Alzheimer’s. A third new drug is expected to receive approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the summer.
“What happened in psychiatry 20, 30 years ago is now happening in Alzheimer’s disease” Glik says.
Indeed, the Beilinson study has drawn attention from the US government. Its National Institute of Health has provided $13 million to expand Glik’s genetic research into a joint study with Boston University School of Medicine and three other Israeli medical centers.
The hope is that this will help advance early detection, treatment and care for sufferers of the disease.
“We want to know what are the mechanisms that cause Alzheimer’s disease,” Glik says.
“If we know the genes that are risk factors for the disease, then we can learn about the mechanisms of the disease and maybe find a drug that can interfere in this mechanism, and postpone disease development. That’s the aim.”
After three days of electrical stimulation, 47 percent of patients reported improvements in loudness, and 36 percent reported improvement in severity.
By: Megan Redshaw, J.D.
A therapeutic, noninvasive therapy may bring relief to millions of Americans suffering from tinnitus, a debilitating condition with no approved pharmacological treatment or cure.
In a proof-of-concept study recently published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, researchers found that electrical stimulation through the ear canal decreased loudness and tinnitus-induced distress in just three days, especially for women and those with tinnitus affecting both ears.
Using an electrode placed in the ear, 66 patients underwent 10 minutes of electrical stimulation for three days while researchers monitored how it affected their symptoms. They analyzed several factors, including the frequency of the stimulation current, the sequence of applying different currents, the severity of tinnitus at admission, whether tinnitus affected one or both ears, sex, and age of the patients.
Of the 66 patients, 47 percent experienced a statistically significant reduction in tinnitus loudness, and 36 percent reported improvements in symptom severity. Moreover, women reported reduced tinnitus loudness immediately after the first ear stimulation session and after subsequent sessions, whereas men didn’t respond positively until after the second and third sessions. The researchers said gender differences in sensory reactivity could explain why women responded sooner and more positively, as women are more sensitive to electrical stimulation.
In patients with tinnitus affecting both ears, symptoms responded more favorably to earlier treatments than those with tinnitus affecting only one ear. Age had no affect on the success of the treatment.
Finally, the study showed that patients with compensated/habituated tinnitus responded differently to electrical stimulation than those with decompensated/unhabituated tinnitus.
According to a paper published in Brain and Behavior, decompensated/unhabituated tinnitus is a “complex psychosomatic process” in which a person experiences considerable suffering from tinnitus and does not become accustomed to it. This sometimes leads to psychological symptoms such as difficulty falling asleep, insomnia, aggression, difficulty concentrating, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Those with compensated/habituated tinnitus hear phantom sounds but become accustomed to them.
The researchers found that patients with both types of tinnitus experienced “significantly reduced loudness” after the second and third electrical stimulation sessions, but only those with compensated/habituated tinnitus experienced a significant reduction in distress after three days of treatment.
What Is Tinnitus?
Tinnitus is a perception of sound without an external source, meaning it’s a sound other people cannot hear. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders estimates that 10 to 25 percent of U.S. adults experience some form of tinnitus—making it one of the country’s most common health conditions.
Although it is commonly described as “ringing in the ears,” people with tinnitus may hear roaring, whooshing, hissing, humming, or buzzing in one ear or both, and the noise can be soft or loud, low- or high-pitched, and sporadic or continuously present. These phantom sounds aren’t actually caused by the ear, but are generated by the part of the brain that processes sound called the auditory cortex.
Tinnitus symptoms can resolve suddenly or become chronic, which may lead to other symptoms such as sleep deprivation, difficulty concentrating, psychological distress, and depression.
Some research suggests tinnitus is caused by damage to the inner ear that changes the signals carried by the nerves to the auditory cortex, while other evidence suggests that abnormal interactions between the auditory cortex and neural circuits could contribute to the condition.
Tinnitus can also be caused by other conditions such as Ménière’s disease, diabetes, autoimmune conditions, heavy metal toxicity, tumors, jaw problems, noise exposure, hearing loss, and medications, including nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen and aspirin, certain antibiotics, anti-cancer drugs, antidepressants, and vaccinations.
For example, according to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, more than 26,000 people have reported developing tinnitus after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.
Dr. Gregory Poland, director of Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group and editor-in-chief of the journal Vaccine, developed “unrelenting” tinnitus after receiving his second dose of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine in early 2021 and says it feels like someone “suddenly blew a dog whistle” in his ear.
In an interview with MedPage Today, Dr. Poland said he believes tens of thousands of people in the United States alone and potentially millions worldwide are struggling with the condition and that more needs to be done to determine the cause and the relief.
“What has been heartbreaking about this, as a seasoned physician, are the emails I get from people that this has affected their life so badly, they have told me they are going to take their own life,” Dr. Poland said.
Other Potential Treatments for Tinnitus
In addition to electrical stimulation, other therapeutic treatments may benefit those experiencing tinnitus, including infrared light therapy, Korean red ginseng, ginkgo biloba, zinc, melatonin, and dietary therapy.
In addition, numerous studies have found that cochlear implants may effectively reduce tinnitus. A cochlear implant is a small electronic device that provides a “sense of sound” to those who cannot hear or are hard of hearing. However, it does not restore hearing.
The authors of the proof-of-concept study suggest their research could be used to develop an extracochlear implant for tinnitus patients that could be used regardless of the degree of hearing loss.
Study Limitations
Although the study may provide hope for people experiencing tinnitus, the authors said their research has several limitations: First, the sample size was relatively small due to limited patient access during the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, there was no control group. Finally, there was insufficient audiometric information on matched tinnitus loudness and frequency and on psychological conditions that could affect the treatments.
The authors said they do not know how long the therapy’s benefits last, but their research could help future studies or be used to create a blueprint for a device that could help tinnitus patients in the near future.
Suzanne Harrison and her family launched a nonprofit dedicated to getting New Jersey residents access to treatment and recovery programs after her brother and Navy veteran, King Shaffer Jr., died from a fentanyl and heroin overdose in 2016, days before he was scheduled to try another treatment program. Credit: AP/Matt Rourke
By: Geoff Mulvihill
Settlement money to help stem the decades-long opioid addiction and overdose epidemic is rolling out to small towns and big cities across the U.S., but advocates worry that chunks of it may be used in ways that don’t make a dent in the crisis.
As state and local governments navigate how to use the money, advocates say local governments may not have the bandwidth to take the right steps to identify their communities’ needs and direct their funding shares to projects that use proven methods to prevent deaths.
Opioids have been linked to about 800,000 deaths in the U.S. since 1999, including more than 80,000 annually in recent years, with most of those involving illicitly produced fentanyl.
Drugmakers, wholesalers and pharmacies have been involved in more than 100 settlements of opioid-related lawsuits with state, local and Native American tribal governments over the past decade.
The deals, some not yet finalized, could be worth a total of more than $50 billion over nearly two decades and also come with requirements for better monitoring of prescriptions and making company documents public.
States alone fought the tobacco industry in the 1990s and they used only a sliver of the money from the resulting settlements on tobacco-related efforts.
“We don’t want to be 10 years down the road and say, ‘After we screwed up tobacco, we trusted small government with opioids — and we did even worse,’” said Paul Farrell, Jr., one of the lead lawyers representing local governments in the opioid suits.
He notes that with settlement money rolling out for at least 14 more years, there’s time for towns to use it appropriately, and resources to help.
The goal, experts say, is to help those who are taking opioids to get treatment, to make it less likely people who use drugs will overdose and to create an environment for people not to take them in the first place.
For many, it’s personal.
Suzanne Harrison and her family launched a nonprofit dedicated to getting New Jersey residents access to treatment and recovery programs after her brother and Navy veteran, King Shaffer Jr., died from a fentanyl and heroin overdose in 2016, days before he was scheduled to try another treatment program.
At the time, he was staying with a sister who lived in Moorestown, New Jersey.
That town’s administration decided to hand its portion of settlement money over to Burlington County, which has used settlement funds to distribute an overdose antidote and run camps for kids affected by addiction.
“The County was in a much better position to handle this subject,” township manager Kevin Aberant emailed, noting reporting requirements and restrictions on how the money could be used.
The major opioid settlements, which include deals with Walgreen Co., CVS Health, Walmart, Johnson & Johnson and one with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma that is before the U.S. Supreme Court, require that most of the funds be used to combat the crisis.
More than half of the funds will be controlled by local governments, according to Christine Minhee, who runs the Opioid Settlement Tracker website. In the biggest agreements, states receive larger amounts by getting eligible local governments with populations over 10,000 to join the settlements.
