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In an unusual alliance, Jewish media and striking journalists are uniting to cover the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — How many times should an alleged synagogue shooter’s name be mentioned in a news story about his trial, now beginning after more than four years?
For the Pittsburgh Union Press last month, the answer was seven. For the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, it was an uneasy five, in a departure from its usual answer of zero — a number chosen out of deference to a community devastated by the shooting.
The slight difference was the only discrepancy between one set of stories published by the two news organizations covering the trial of Robert Bowers, accused of murdering 11 Jews in their synagogue here in 2018.
The anomaly offers a window into an unusual partnership between the two publications — the city’s Jewish paper and the news site established by striking staffers for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — born in February when it became clear that the trial would last months.
Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle editor Toby Tabachnick was dreading the trial coverage, with a staff of just three on the editorial side: herself and two reporters, David Rullo and Adam Reinherz.
“I started getting really nervous. Like, how are we going to do this?” Tabachnick said on the eve of the trial, speaking at the federal courthouse where jury selection would soon begin. “Our regular reporters could have been here. But it would have been extremely taxing, difficult and emotional for us, because we’re so ingrained in the community too.”
Plus, she added, “In addition to this trial, which is going to be every day for three months, we’re covering the synagogues, events and the holidays, the lectures, we still have a regular community newspaper to put out.”
Tabachnick knew Andrew “Goldy” Goldstein, one of the Post-Gazette’s team that picked up a Pulitzer for their coverage of the massacre, from his time as a Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle intern. She also knew he was on strike and wondered whether he could use the extra freelance opportunity.
Instead, Goldstein immediately offered up a better idea: Join with the Pittsburgh Union Progress, the strike paper, in a joint reporting project, organized in part through the Pittsburgh Media Partnership, an incubator for local journalism. (The Jewish Telegraphic Agency is raising funds for the coverage.)
Working together just made sense, Goldstein said. The Chronicle was deeply resourced and credible in the Jewish community, and the Progress had on board Torsten Ove, a local legend.
From left to right, Bob Batz of the Pittsburgh Union Progress, Toby Tabachnick of the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle and Andrew Goldstein of the Progress pose in the Joseph Weis Jr. Courthouse in Pittsburgh, April 21, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
“We have the all-star federal courts reporter in Torsten and we have a lot of really great journalists who love Pittsburgh, love this community, and we’ll do our best to cover it,” Goldstein said, noting that the Chronicle would also have access to the Progress’s photographers. “But the Chronicle brings something different entirely to the table, which is, they’re so deeply sourced in the Pittsburgh Jewish community, and they have such an interest in this trial in particular.”
Newsroom collaborations have become more frequent in recent years as publications realize they can expand their impact and audience by working together. But while there are a growing number of relationships between local and national publications and between daily and investigative outlets, ties between mainstream newsrooms and community or ethnic media are less common.
S. Mitra Kalita, the founder and director of URL Media, a network of Black and Brown community news outlets that share content and revenue, said the value in such partnerships was not just in delivering relief as media staffs shrink, but also in sensitizing mainstream media to minority sensibilities.
“Talking about who [the ethnic media outlet is] serving and why we’re doing it this way — the spirit of real collaboration is a bit of that give and take,” she said. “We make mainstream media way better because it starts to infuse mainstream media with aspects of community and thus redefine the mainstream.”
The residual trauma of the massacre in the Pittsburgh collaboration made it all the more important for the mainstream reporters to be sensitive to the nuances that the Jewish media was bringing, she said.
“Especially a story like this one, which was such an attack on a community — a community that was singled out for their sheer existence, the strategy cannot be ‘let’s just work in parallel,” Kalita said. “It’s not going to work. It has to be kind of a cross-pollination and a real collaboration.”
That’s exactly what is happening, according to the reporters and editors involved in the project, with communication easy between each publication’s editor and expertise flowing in both directions.
Ove a denizen of the Joseph F. Weis Jr. Courthouse for so long that he can tell stories about a sizable stretch of the portraits of judges that line its corridor walls; he may be the only court reporter to seek an interview with a judge after his death, to ask him why he was haunting the place. (The judge never showed, but his widow was less than surprised to hear that he was still working.)
He led a passel of Chronicle and Progress staffers through the warren-like courthouse on the Friday before the trial, handily impressing them with his intimacy with the building — he knew the provenance of the paintings in each courtroom — and its staff. Soo Song, the assistant U.S. attorney who is leading the prosecution team, smiled and nodded as she passed.
Torsten Ove, left, of the Pittsburgh Union Progress and Adam Reinherz of the PIttsburgh Jewish Chronicle confer on the first day of jury selection for the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre trial, April 24, 2023. (Toby Tabachnick)
Ove showed the reporters how to access court records for free, and while they stood around him at one of the computer terminals, the teams’ different emphases emerged: Ove predicted that jury selection, which started last week and is expected to last as long as three weeks, would not be a news generator, because in his experience, it rarely has been.
Reinherz and Tabachnick, attuned to reporting on faith communities, were not so sure: Reinherz wondered whether believing Catholics, who reject the death penalty, would be eliminated, and Tabachnick wondered whether defense attorneys would seek to keep Jews off the jury — and how they would go about doing that.
Reinherz ended up covering the first day of jury selection. “Local and national reporters decided the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle should have one seat during the initial session of day one,” Reinherz explained in a story that appeared on both news sites. He noted that the first member of the public to enter the courtroom was Daniel Leger, one of two survivors of the attack.
Working together across platforms was odd, said Bob Batz Jr., the Progress’s interim editor, but he could get used to it.
“This is uncharted territory for someone like me, and I’ve been doing this for a long time, and we don’t, you know, we don’t collaborate,” he said.
“We compete!” Tabachnick interjected.
“What we’re doing is not common, and it’s not going to be easy,” Batz said. “Surely, we’re going to tick each other off about something or somebody is going to put the wrong word in or there’s a million things that can go wrong, but the breaking of ground where you’re actually working together, it just makes sense in so many ways on this story. We’re really trying to serve the community.”
Tabachnick said she saw added value in keeping journalists she admired in the limelight while they are on strike. Journalists at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette went on strike back in October over wages and working conditions, in a crescendo of mounting tensions between the paper’s longtime owners and the staff that contributed to a newsroom exodus even in 2018, when the paper won a Pulitzer for its synagogue shooting coverage. The strike is now one of the longest in journalism history, and the staffers contributing to the Pittsburgh Union Progress are doing so despite earning well below than their regular salaries.
“I feel good about getting their names, their publication’s name out,” Tabachnick said.
Each story is running in essentially identical form on both publications’ websites, with a line crediting their collaboration. Tabachnick and Batz had a brief and friendly email exchange before each clicked “publish” on their story about debate among victims’ families about the appropriateness of the death penalty.
The Chronicle is minimizing appearances of the name of the accused killer, out of sensitivity to readers who may want to see their community members centered rather than their aggressor. Some researchers and law enforcement officials have also called on journalists not to print mass shooters’ names and photographs, citing evidence that doing so may contribute to their glorification and even copycat crimes.
Batz says he totally gets the Chronicle’s thinking, despite making a different choice in his newsroom.
“We’re still feeling our way, we’re still figuring this out,” Batz said. “They don’t name the defendant in their story, and they haven’t. And our guy Torsten who’s an all-star courts reporter, he’s going to use the guy’s name. And then in real time going back and forth on email and text we came up with his solution and that story was on both websites in minutes and it was really kind of cool.”
Tabachnick picked up the account of the previous night’s collaboration as if she’d been working across a desk from Batz for decades instead of online since February.
“The solution was that I realized that with the trial starting, it really didn’t make sense not to use his name at all anymore that we really needed to as a news organization,” she said. “But that didn’t mean we had to overuse his name. And I’m not saying Torsten overused his name. He used it as much as he needed to use it in terms of style, but I took out a few of them and replaced it with ‘the defendant’ and we were all happy.”
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The post In an unusual alliance, Jewish media and striking journalists are uniting to cover the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Palestinian Islamic Jihad Said to Be Expanding Military Presence in Syria With Government’s Knowledge
Terrorists stand during the funeral of two Palestinian Islamic Jihad gunmen who were killed in an Israeli raid, in Jenin refugee camp, in the West Bank on May 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Raneen Sawafta
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist group is reportedly expanding its military presence in Syria, a move that could put the Syrian government in violation of US conditions for restoring full diplomatic ties and lifting additional economic sanctions.
According to Israeli public broadcaster Kan News, PIJ has expanded its military wing — the al-Quds Brigades — within Syria in recent weeks, notably increasing activity in Palestinian refugee camps near Damascus, apparently with the full knowledge of the Syrian government.
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is said to have appointed an envoy to oversee PIJ’s activities in the country, responsible for facilitating communications between the Palestinian terrorist group and the government, Kan reported.
However, a government security source denied such accusations, saying there is “no intention to allow military operations against Israel,” which borders Syria.
PIJ also denied reports of intensified activity in Syria, saying they are entirely fabricated and intended to provoke hostility against the Palestinian people and their refugee camps
Following the United States’ recent statements that it does not support Israeli airstrikes in Syria, the embattled Middle Eastern country could now provide a particularly convenient base for PIJ, allowing the group to expand its operations with less risk of Israeli retaliation.
Under the Trump administration, Washington has lifted sanctions on the Syrian government to support the country’s reconstruction efforts and pushed for Damascus to normalize relations with Israel. Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump hosted Sharaa for the first-ever visit by a Syrian president to Washington, DC, vowing to help Syria as the war-ravaged country struggles to come out of decades of international isolation.
To pave the way for the full restoration of US diplomatic relations, deeper economic ties, and the lifting of additional economic sanctions, Washington has set five conditions for the Syrian government, including deporting Palestinian militants, joining the Abraham Accords with Israel, and expelling foreign terrorists.
The government must also help prevent an Islamic State (ISIS) resurgence and take responsibility for detention facilities holding ISIS fighters, supporters, and their families in the northeast.
If the Syrian government is aware of the reported PIJ activity, it risks jeopardizing its relationship with Washington by effectively endorsing the operations of a designated foreign terrorist organization — in open defiance of a key condition for improving bilateral ties.
As Damascus seeks to restore international credibility and strengthen its standing on the global stage, Israeli officials have remained highly cautious of Syria’s new leadership.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has previously described the current Syrian regime as “a jihadist Islamist terror group from Idlib that took Damascus by force.”
He has even warned senior European officials that Hamas and PIJ were operating in Syria to create an additional front against Israel
“We will not compromise the security on our border. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are acting in Syria to create another front against Israel there,” the top Israeli diplomat said earlier this year.
According to Hebrew media reports, Defense Minister Israel Katz warned lawmakers in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, this week that armed groups operating inside Syria, including the Yemen-based Houthis, are considering launching attacks on the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria.
Hamas, PIJ, and the Houthis are all backed by Iran, which provides the internationally designated terrorist groups with arms and funding.
Israel has consistently vowed to prevent the Syrian government from deploying forces in the country’s southern region, along its northeastern border.
Sharaa, a former al Qaeda commander who until recently was sanctioned by the US as a foreign terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head, became Syria’s transitional president earlier this year after leading a rebel campaign that ousted long-time Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, whose brutal and authoritarian Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war.
The collapse of Assad’s regime was the result of an offensive spearheaded by Sharaa’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al Qaeda affiliate.
Following Assad’s fall in December, Israel moved troops into a buffer zone along the Syrian border to secure a military position to prevent terrorists from launching attacks against the Jewish state.
The previously demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War. However, Israel considered the agreement void after the collapse of Assad’s regime.
Now, Israel and Syria are reportedly in the final stages of months-long negotiations over a security agreement that could establish a joint Israeli, Syrian, and US presence at key strategic locations.
Jerusalem and Damascus have agreed to form a joint Israeli-Syrian–American security committee to oversee developments along their shared border and uphold the terms of a proposed deal.
Al-Sharaa told The Washington Post earlier this month that his government has expelled Iranian and Hezbollah forces from Syria and is ready for a new phase of ties with the United States. However, Syria’s reported knowledge of PIJ activity may be a hurdle as talks between Washington, Damascus, and Jerusalem proceed.
Earlier this year, tensions escalated after heavy fighting broke out in Sweida between local Druze fighters and Syrian regime forces amid reports of atrocities against civilians.
At the time, Israel launched an airstrike campaign to protect the Druze, which officials described as a warning to the country’s new leadership over threats to the minority group. The Druze, an Arab minority who practice a religion originally derived from Islam, live in Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. In Israel, many serve in the military and police, including during the war in Gaza.
Jerusalem has pledged to defend the Druze community in Syria with military force if they come under threat — motivated in part by appeals from Israel’s own Druze minority.
But the Syrian government has accused Israel of fueling instability and interfering in its internal affairs, while the new leadership insists it is focused on unifying the country after 14 years of conflict, which began with Assad violently cracking down on anti-government protests in 2011.
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The Dangerous Legacy of the 1840 ‘Damascus Affair’ Blood Libel (PART ONE)
Smoke rises from a building after strikes at Syria’s defense ministry in Damascus, Syria, July 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
According to a recent article in Aish:
On November 11, 2025, Dr. Samar Maqusi, a researcher at the University College London (UCL) proudly stated that in 1838 a group of Jews kidnapped and murdered a priest in Damascus and used his blood in order to make special pancakes for their Feast of the Tabernacles (Sukkot). She added that for Jewish people the blood used in their pancakes must be from a gentile. She asserted that a group of Jews admitted to murdering this priest in order to use his blood in their food.
Her lecture was hosted by UCL’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) titled “The Birth of Zionism.”
The Damascus Affair of 1840 (not 1838) was an infamous blood libel that became international news and led to one of the first instances in which Jewish communities around the world worked together to demand justice for another Jewish community.
The Damascus blood libel is recognized as one of the turning points of modern Jewish history, when Jews around the world realized the importance of uniting to advocate for each other.
The Blood Libel
On February 5, 1840, Father Thomas, an Italian Friar of the Capuchin Order who lived in Damascus, disappeared with his Muslim servant Ibrahim Amara.
They were assumed murdered, possibly by businessmen with whom Thomas had had shady dealings, or by a Muslim who was infuriated by an insult to Islam that Father Thomas had uttered.
But the Jews were to bear the blame, as the Capuchin friars began spreading rumors that the Jews had murdered the two men to use their blood for Passover. This led to one of history’s most famous blood libels, the Damascus Blood Libel, better known as the Damascus Affair of 1840.
Damascus was then under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Since the Ottoman Empire was weak, the Ottoman governor of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha, primarily ruled over both Egypt and Syria as quasi-independent principalities, with just nominal subordination to the Ottoman Empire. France also retained some measure of control in Syria, as the French had maintained a presence in the region since the time of the Crusades. The Catholics of Syria, including Father Thomas, were officially under French protection.
Due to the French jurisdiction over this case, the French consul, Ulysse de Ratti-Menton, known for his anti-Jewish views, presided over the investigation.
Along with the governor-general, Sharif Pasha, he conducted a short investigation, and a barber named Shlomo Negrin, among others, was arbitrarily arrested and tortured.
They managed to extort a “confession” from Negrin that the monk had been killed in the house of David Harari by seven Jews. The men whom he named were arrested and tortured. Two of the detained men died, one converted to Islam to be spared, and the statements made under torture by the others were considered adequate as an admission of guilt.
Bones that were discovered in a sewer were “identified” as those of the monk and buried in a funeral on March 2nd, which increased the anger against the Jews. The inscription on the monk’s tombstone stated that this was the grave of a saint tortured by the Jews.
After the “funeral,” attacks began against the Jews, and Sharif Pasha had to move hundreds of soldiers to protect the Jewish quarter.
The focus of the “investigation” was now on the servant, Ibrahim Amara. More torture extracted the “confession” that he had been murdered by Jews, among them members of the prominent Farhi and Picciotto families, and the authorities sought to arrest them.
Knowing the torture that they would be subjected to, some of the accused tried to hide or escape. Rabbi Yaakov Antebi, accused of having received a bottle of the blood of Thomas, was arrested and tortured, yet he held strong under the torture and would not confess to anything.
More bones were found, and the investigators claimed they were the remains of Ibrahim Amara. However, the physician in Damascus, Dr. Lograso, did not believe they were human bones and, considering the pressure on him, requested that the bones be sent to Europe for examination. Ratti-Menton refused and instead announced that based on the confessions of the accused and the remains found of the victims, the guilt of the Jews in the double murder was proven beyond a doubt.
One of the Jews who was arrested during the second round of accusations was Isaac Levi Picciotto, an Austrian citizen and thus under the protection of the Austrian consul. Initially, he was also subject to torture, but on March 8th, there was a sudden turnabout.
The Austrian vice-consul, Caspar Giovanni Merlato, a personal friend of Picciotto, demanded that Picciotto be returned to Austrian jurisdiction and that the investigation be carried out at the Austrian consulate.
With Merlato’s involvement, things changed dramatically. Picciotto proved he was in a different place the evening of the murder, and a Christian corroborated this. Picciotto now moved from the defensive to the offensive and began accusing officials of instigating this blood libel, carrying out investigations under torture, and openly accusing Ratti-Menton of murder.
He demanded that the Austrian authorities carry out the investigation. As torture methods were seen as unjust, cruel, and backward by Western countries, his accusations put Ratti-Menton and his aides on the defensive.
The Blood Libel Spreads
The predictable result of the accusations was that the Jews of Damascus and other parts of Syria began to suffer from antisemitic mobs. Synagogues were destroyed and looted, cemeteries were desecrated, and Jews were attacked all over the country.
News of the atrocities spread throughout the Jewish world, causing waves of shock and anger at what was going on in Syria.
The first Jewish attempt to intervene in the tragic situation came via a petition initiated by Israel Bak addressed to Muhammad Ali, as he was the governor of Syria. At the same time, the Austrian Consul General in Egypt, Anton Laurin, received a report from the Austrian consul in Damascus. Recognizing the tremendous injustice, Laurin became very involved in the case, and he began by using his influence to petition Muhammad Ali to stop the torture methods used by the investigators.
Muhammad Ali agreed, and instructions were issued accordingly to Damascus by express courier. As a result, the use of torture came to an end on April 25, 1840, which caused a new round of riots in Damascus.
The accusation of murder and blood libel remained, and the investigation against the Jews continued, albeit without torture. Now, Austrian Consul General Laurin attempted to influence the French Consul General in Egypt to order his subordinate, Ratti-Menton, to stop the libel, but this effort was unsuccessful.
At this point, Laurin went against all procedures and decided to send the information he received from Damascus to Baron James de Rothschild, the honorary Austrian consul in Paris.
Baron Rothschild appealed to the French government to stop the injustice, but when his appeals were ignored, he chose to turn to the media and publish the report in newspapers worldwide, creating public pressure to halt this travesty of justice.
His brother in Vienna, Solomon Rothschild, worked alongside him and used his influence to speak to Chancellor Klemens von Metternich about the situation. Metternich ultimately supported his consul, Laurin, since the negative publicity for France, archenemy of the Austro-Hungarian empire, was to his benefit. The British also chose to support the Jews in fighting the libel, and the British Consul General of England in Egypt expressed those policies.
As a result of the advocacy, a message was sent to Damascus on May 3, 1840, ordering protection for the Jews from the violence of Muslim and Christian mobs.
Rabbi Menachem Levine is the CEO of JDBY-YTT, the largest Jewish school in the Midwest. He served as Rabbi of Congregation Am Echad in San Jose, CA from 2007 – 2020. He is a popular speaker and has written for numerous publications. Rabbi Levine’s personal website is https://thinktorah.org. A version of this article was first published at: https://aish.com/the-damascus-affair/
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A Personal Perspective From Israel: The Signs Are Small, But We Are Still at War
An Israeli police officer investigates a crater at the site of a missile attack, launched from Yemen, near Ben Gurion Airport, in Tel Aviv, Israel May 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Avshalom Sassoni
Israel is an unusual place, where we balance war and daily life on a constant basis. So today, I’m taking a moment away from deep analysis, and instead sharing something a bit more personal — my weird/normal life as an Israeli.
In addition to my work at RealityCheck, I also teach as an Adjunct Professor at Reichman University (formerly the “IDC”) in Herzliya, Israel. I absolutely love my students — who are enthusiastic, intelligent, and in many cases, actively risking their lives to protect mine.
Last week, a student came to class in uniform — not מדי א׳ , which is the dress uniform that soldiers typically wear when traveling home for the weekend, but מדי ב׳, which is the full combat uniform. I asked if he was in מילואים (reserves) and he said yes, that he’s serving in Syria right now.
Only later I realized that when he said “right now,” he meant RIGHT now: his commander had given him a special pass to come to class for a few hours, after which he was leaving my classroom and returning straight to Syria. I don’t know what’s more impressive — that my students are out there protecting our safety, or that when they have a moment away from combat, their first priority is to come to class.
This is Israel. These are Israelis.
Though it’s not strictly speaking a part of my course, students ask about the legal status of Israel at The Hague so often that I prepared several slides on the topic. Once, a student asked whether she should expect that her boyfriend (a combat soldier) would get arrested on their upcoming trip to Europe. Fortunately, I had the knowledge to explain that topic, and to recommend certain precautionary measures, which gave her a degree of comfort. Sadly, those same precautionary measures may soon be relevant in New York City.
I sometimes enjoy sitting on my balcony, eating dinner, and watching passenger planes fly across the Mediterranean into Israel on their standard flight path toward Ben Gurion International Airport. Yet the other evening, I noticed something unusual: several aircraft turned away from the Tel Aviv shore at the last moment, and took strange detours. Minutes later I saw (and mostly heard) several fighter jets heading northward, intersecting the commercial flightpath.
Perhaps air traffic control needed to clear the skies for the fighter jets? I may never know for certain, but the next morning, I read about an unusually large IDF operation in Lebanon, across Israel’s northern border.
Other days, I see helicopters heading south, most likely to Gaza. But on one special day, October 13, 2025, I saw the very helicopters that were bringing the hostages back home. All this, right from my window.
These small but striking experiences serve as a constant reminder that we are not really at peace.
For the moment we aren’t dodging rockets, running to bomb shelters, or watching the ominous orange glow of Iranian missiles as they heat up upon re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere — on their way to strike our cities and communities. Yet Israel is very much still at war on multiple fronts: we see and feel it every day, in the most unusual and ordinary ways.
Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.