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Israeli expats who organized to protest Netanyahu’s government are now mobilizing to ‘save Israel’
(New York Jewish Week) – In mid-September, a group of Israeli activists projected a message in all capital letters onto the headquarters of the United Nations reading, “Don’t believe crime minister Netanyahu.”
About a month later, the same activist group projected another all-caps message onto the same building. But instead of targeting Israel’s leader, it displayed the photos of some of the country’s youngest and oldest citizens.
“3 year-old Avigail,” read one message, above the photo of a smiling girl. Similar messages followed, depicting the photos, names and ages of Ariel, age 4; Carmela, age 80; and Yaffa, 85. Beneath every photo was the caption “Kidnapped by Hamas.”
Both projections were the work of expatriate Israeli protesters who have organized and gained national attention over the past year. But as of two weeks ago, their cause has changed.
Originally, the activists gathered to protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his effort to weaken Israel’s judiciary, organizing protests and heckling Israeli officials when they visited the city. But after Hamas’ devastating Oct. 7 attack on Israel, in which terrorists killed and injured thousands, and took more than 200 captive, the activists quickly pivoted — repurposing their tools and connections to support Israel’s war effort, aid its vulnerable populations and advocate for the release of the hostages.
“We’re all just thinking about our families and we have sleepless nights and we’re doing whatever we can,” said Shany Granot-Lubaton, a prominent Israeli activist in New York who previously worked in progressive political organizing in Israel. The protest group she helps organize, UnXeptable, has changed its motto from “Saving Israeli Democracy” to “Saving Israel.”
“We know many people who were slaughtered and kidnapped and raped and it’s in our closest circles. We have kids, we used to be their guides at scouts, who were kidnapped and killed,” she said. “As Israelis, being far away from home right now is devastating and we all just want to do something to help.”
For Granot-Lubaton’s family, as for many Israelis, the devastation is personal. Her husband, Omer Lubaton-Granot, found out last Wednesday that four of his relatives are among the captives; two more were murdered in the massacre. He is running an advocacy campaign for the hostages in New York — part of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a larger coordinated effort with activity in Israel and around the world. Israelis have taken an active role in the grassroots “Kidnapped in Israel” project that pastes flyers of hostages on city streets.
“It’s a whole family, and we thought that all six of them are gone, then the family realized that four of them are hostages and held by Hamas, and two of them, the bodies were identified a couple days ago,” he said regarding his captive relatives, adding that despite the initial shock and horror of captivity, it was a small relief to find out some had survived. “It’s not good, but it’s better.”
So far, the activists say they have raised around $1.2 million, in addition to sending supplies to soldiers and civilians, staging rallies, providing services and community to Israelis in the U.S. and organizing efforts aimed at freeing hostages held by Hamas.
The protesters’ mobilization in New York and other international cities parallels the approach of the protest movement in Israel, which brought hundreds of thousands to the streets earlier this year to protest the judicial overhaul. Since Oct. 7, the movement has set aside that fight to focus on relief work — delivering services and supplies to those in need. Granot-Lubaton said her NYC-based group and others in the United States, which coordinate with the Israeli groups, is a “sidekick” to their efforts. American Jewish organizations have also been crucial partners, she said.
Israeli expatriates established branches of the protest movement in dozens of cities in North America and have learned to navigate the intricate landscape of American Jewish organizations and formed ties with many of those groups — connections that proved crucial in rapidly launching a major relief effort in the United States.
“It was very easy to transform because we know how to mobilize people, we know how to reach people,” Lubaton-Granot said. “We know how to organize events, we know how to raise funds.”
Left: A message against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is projected onto UN Headquarters ahead of his appearance at the UN General Assembly in September 2023. Right: An image of a kidnapped Israeli boy is projected onto UN Headquarters after Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023. Israeli expatriate activists projected both messages. (Courtesy)
In one aid operation that began at the war’s outset, the U.S.-based protesters sent four tons of supplies to Israeli soldiers who found that they lacked essential equipment as the military called up 300,000 reservists.
Tali Reiner Brodetzki, an Israeli activist in Philadelphia, was inspired by seeing supporters of Ukraine’s war effort organize Amazon “wish lists” after Russia invaded last year. She asked colleagues from an Israeli combat veterans’ protest group, Brothers and Sisters in Arms, to tell her what the soldiers needed, and began spreading the word about a wish list of her own.
Volunteers responded by buying 80,000 flashlights, 100,000 olive green T-shirts, socks, ceramic body armor, tourniquets and dressing for trauma wounds. The equipment was sent to a volunteer’s house on Long Island near John F. Kennedy Airport, packed into duffel bags and sent as overweight baggage on El Al flights. Activists from Brothers and Sisters in Arms collected the supplies at Ben Gurion Airport and distributed them to troops.
“We got a call from a mother crying her heart out” after her son was shot, said Granot-Lubaton, who assisted with that initiative. “He’s in the hospital and he got a bullet, but the vest we sent saved his life.”
Many Israelis who live in New York and across the United States have flown to Israel to fight in the reserves, and some of those reservists — in addition to medics — arrived on flights organized by an UnXeptable chapter in the Bay Area, led by activist Offir Gutelzon. And some Israeli families who were in the United States on vacation have opted to stay for the meantime. The activists are helping to organize programs for children of the reservists and those here temporarily, assisting new arrivals in gaining admission to Jewish day schools and enlisting kosher restaurants to help out with food deliveries for families.
One of the main ways the protest groups have communicated with and mobilized followers is via Whatsapp groups, and those groups have proven crucial for crowdsourcing support during the past two weeks. One woman was eight months pregnant when her husband went to the reserves, leaving her alone in the city. She was able to access health insurance and find other support through the activist network. A recent request for Hebrew-speaking psychologists in New York who could treat trauma also elicited a long list of recommendations. Some Israelis who were stranded in the city have been able to find temporary free lodging.
Some of the activist programs aim to bring Israelis, including children and their parents, together on the weekends. An event on Oct. 14 at the Manhattan JCC drew more than 300 people, and a David Broza concert on Sunday drew hundreds to B’nai Jeshurun, an Upper West Side synagogue. Many Israelis feel out of place in New York, where life continues as usual, despite the trauma and hardship back home. The Israeli and American Jewish communities have also responded differently to the war, Granot-Lubaton said.
“American Jews, they speak about the war in this very frightening way,” she said. “They’re doing ceremonies, lighting candles, but the Israeli kids in the schools are getting freaked out about it because their fathers are out there and it makes them afraid, so the way we talk about it is very different.”
Now that the immediate needs of troops have been mostly met, the activists hope to aid the communities in Israel’s south that were hardest-hit by Hamas’ atrocities, including by helping fund mental health services. Organizers also hope to support Israel’s economy, which is also battered by the war, by buying aid supplies from local stores rather than U.S. suppliers. That aid effort comes alongside an American Jewish fundraising drive that has directed hundreds of millions to Israel since Oct. 7.
The war has also led to new ties between the Israeli activists and American Jews who opposed their previous anti-government demonstrations. Reiner Brodetzki, the Philadelphia activist, said a group of religious Jews opposed to the protest movement had dropped by her house to borrow her Israeli flags and megaphones to use in their own pro-Israel demonstration.
“It’s amazing to see how people who would not talk to us previously, and had a lot of criticism about us protesting outside of Israel against the Israeli government, how they want to work with us now,” Reiner Brodetzki said. “They understand that we love Israel and we’re supporting Israel and now we’re in this fight together.”
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Here’s a Partial List of Assaults on American Jews in June
Anti-Israel demonstrators outside the Adas Torah synagogue in the heavily-Jewish Pico-Robertson area of Los Angeles, June 23, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
Street protests targeting Jews and Jewish institutions, and institutions deemed supportive of Israel, escalated in June and were characterized by threats of violence and antisemitic rhetoric. Among the most notable incidents was a Los Angeles march by keffiyeh clad and masked protestors organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement and Code Pink, where Jews were physically assaulted outside of a synagogue.
The confrontations spilled over into the surrounding Jewish neighborhood, where a number of Jews were beaten and sprayed with mace. Reports indicate Los Angeles police, who had been warned about the event, were initially instructed to stand down and then protected protestors and prohibited Jews from entering the synagogue. Several injuries and one arrest were reported.
President Biden condemned the Los Angeles attack without naming the perpetrators as did Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass and other local politicians including Governor Gavin Newsom, all within a 30-minute period. The protests were defended by anti-Israel activists and the ACLU (for the non-violent part) on the grounds that the real estate fair was “political activity.”
In another egregious example, protestors from Within Our Lifetime (WOL) in New York City besieged an exhibition about the Nova music festival massacre of October 7. Police rushed the waiting viewers into the exhibition space while protestors lit flares and shouted “long live intifada” and “Israel go to hell.”
In another pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah protest, a two-mile long group organized by the People’s Forum, Palestinian Youth Movement, and the ANSWER Coalition encircled the White House. Protestors shouted “We don’t want no two states, we’re taking back 48” and “kill another Zionist now” while vandalizing local monuments with slogans including “Death to Amerikkka,” “Death to Israel,” “Death to Zionists,” and “Al-Qasam make us proud. Kill another soldier now.”
No arrests were made, and mainstream media reported only slogans such as “free Palestine.”
Other public events have been co-opted by anti-Israel protests, notably gay pride parades. In Philadelphia the pride parade was blocked by anti-Israel protestors who shouted “Now, Now, Now, Now, Burn Israel to the ground.” The Washington D.C., and Denver pride parades were similarly disrupted.
In one June incident, the homes of Brooklyn Museum trustees were vandalized by WOL activists with red paint, red triangles symbolizing Hamas targets, and the words “blood is on your hands.” The home of the head of the board, Anne Pasternak, was painted with the words “White Supremacist Zionist.”
The museum has been targeted repeatedly by pro-Hamas protestors, who have now attacked the institution for permitting arrests of protestors who took over part of the building.
Among the official responses to escalating pro-Hamas violence have been calls to reinstate mask bans which had been aimed at the Ku Klux Klan. New York Governor Kathy Hochul, New York City mayor Eric Adams, and Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass — all Democrats — spoke in favor, while the ACLU and “civil liberties”advocates expressed opposition.
A group took credit for three firebombings on the University of California at Berkeley campus in “in retaliation for UCPD’s violent assaults on vulnerable student demonstrators and to punish the university of kkkalifornia system for supporting the genocidal Zionist-Israel entity.” The Columbia University Jewish Voice for Peace chapter expressed support for the perpetrator.
Efforts were made to disrupt remaining campus activities. At Columbia University, an encampment was set up to harass attendees at alumni weekend. Building takeovers also occurred at Cal State Los Angeles and Oregon State University. At Cal State, the takeover trapped a number of staff members inside the building, including the president, and vandalism was widespread. No arrests have been made.
University and local authorities continue to take little or no action against protestors. Notably, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg dropped most charges against students and others arrested for taking over a building at Columbia University.
Harassment of Jewish students and campus organizations remained steady in June. The University of Southern California Chabad house and the University of Minnesota Hillel building were vandalized. Student for Justice in Palestine (SJP) remains at the forefront of targeting Jews on campus. At the University of Pittsburgh, the SJP chapter demanded , among other things, that the Hillel chapter be banned from campus for its support of Zionism.
Direct SJP protests were also held at the Baruch College Hillel, which included banners stating “Hillel stands with genocide,” “It is right to rebel, Hillel go to hell,” and “Synagogue of Satan.” The masked protestors also wore Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) headbands.
Faculty support for anti-Israel students was highlighted by the events surrounding publication of a tendentious and absurd paper by the Columbia Law Review that alleged “nakba” should be a new category in international law. After secretly soliciting and then circumventing the normal review process the paper was accepted. The board of directors then asked the student editors to delay posting the piece online leading to accusations of censorship.
The student editors then published the piece and leaked the story to the media while the directors shut down the website. The piece was later published with a board disclaimer regarding the irregular process. The incident illustrated how student activists have helped subvert international law by controlling law reviews and surrounding discourse.
In the K-12 sphere, walkouts occurred across the country, and support of anti-Israel activities at the New York City Department of Education was also shown by the fact that it had hired prominent BDS activist Debbie Almontaser to conduct “workshops” on the Gaza war for teachers. Jewish teachers complained that the materials presented were deeply anti-Israel.
The predictable targeting of Jews by teachers and parents reached its peak in June at a fifth grade commencement ceremony in Brooklyn when a Jewish family was physically attacked by an Arabic-speaking family shouting “Free Palestine!” “Gaza is Ours!” and “Death to Israel.”
A presentation made by teachers to high school students in the Fort Lee, New Jersey, Public School District — which described Hamas as “armed resistance,” the “Nakba” as “the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and near destruction of Palestinian society,” and the Gaza war as “genocide” — is another event criticized after the fact. The tendentiousness of the presentation was explicitly recognized by the teachers who confiscated students’ cellphones and warned in advance that it was “biased.”
Most egregiously, efforts are being made by schools to institutionalize anti-Israel bias and Palestinian narratives in the guise of outlawing “anti-Palestinian racism.” At the Toronto District School Board, proposals were adopted in June to outlaw this supposed hatred. While the Toronto proposal was vague, other cases indicate that objecting to the Palestinian narrative of the nakba, Palestinian descriptions of Zionist as racism, and demands for Israel to be erased, are examples of “anti-Palestinian racism.”
The June political primaries showed the pivotal place of Israel and antisemitism at all levels of American politics. In the most closely observed race, Westchester County Executive George Latimer defeated Squad member Rep. Jamaal Bowman by a large margin in a New York Democratic primary. Bowman blamed the loss on Israel supporters, Jews, and AIPAC.
Another key test will come in August when Rep. Cori Bush faces a Democratic primary challenge in Missouri, and Rep. Debbie Wasserstein-Schultz (D-FL) is facing a challenge from a Jewish anti-Zionist.
In the international sphere, the Maldives announced that it was banning Israelis from entering. After an outcry and calls for a boycott of the country by the Jewish community, the Maldive government announced it was reconsidering. One consideration was apparently the fact that the edict as written banned Arab citizens of Israel in addition to Jews.
Anti-Israel bias continues to dominate and divide the various communities in the arts, with attacks from Palestinian supporters leading to sudden revocation of corporate support for festivals and other events. In Britain, Barclays has dropped support for music festivals after protests from artists regarding the firm’s alleged business relationship with Israel. Several festivals boycotted Barclays, which has been long targeted by the anti-Israel movement including recently vandalizing of branches around Britain.
Similarly, the investment firm Baillie Gifford ended its support for all book festivals in Britain after being attacked for its minor business links with Israel and alleged relationship with fossil fuel. Critics note that continued attacks on corporate sponsors will undermine arts funding in Britain and jeopardize the existence of book festivals. A similar process is emerging in the US where the South by Southwest festival announced it would no longer accept support from the US Army or weapons companies after boycott threats from various bands.
The politicization of Wikipedia, where a handful of anti-Israel editors have now elected to ban the ADL as a source, parallels that of the media, albeit behind the fig leaves of anonymity and decentralization. The use of Wikipedia as a source for generative artificial intelligence training promises to expand and cement anti-Israel bias and antisemitism.
The author is a contributor to SPME, where a significantly different version of this article was first published.
The post Here’s a Partial List of Assaults on American Jews in June first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Watchdog Group Calls on Talent Agency to Drop Former ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Star for Promoting Antisemitic Blood Libels
Jesse Williams at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival World Premiere for “FOLLOWING HARRY” held at the SVA Theater in New York, NY, USA. Photo: LJ Fotos/AdMedia/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The watchdog group StopAntisemitism is calling on a global talent agency to drop actor and former “Grey’s Anatomy” star Jesse Williams as its client for sharing antisemitic content, including blood libels and anti-Israel conspiracy theories, on social media.
The American actor recently uploaded a series of posts on his Instagram Stories that additionally support antisemitic tropes of Jewish power and misinformation about Israel’s military actions during its ongoing war against Hamas terrorists controlling the Gaza Strip. One post featured a world map that pinpointed Israel and claimed that “your freedom of speech is being controlled” by the Jewish state.
In another post on his Instagram Story, Williams falsely alleged that in Gaza, Israel “forced a Palestinian captive to have sex with a dog, is siccing attack dogs on elderly woman,” and shot a six-year-old child “355 times.”
One of his accusations appeared to stem from the Qatar-based news network Al Jazeera reporting on footage of what it claimed was an Israeli military dog mauling an elderly Palestinian woman in her home in the northern Gaza city of Jabaliya. However, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) revealed that the dog was actually abducted by the terrorist group Hamas, which used the canine to film an “attack” as anti-Israel propaganda before killing the animal and booby-trapping its body with explosives in the event that Israeli soldiers tried to retrieve their canine comrade.
Williams also reposted a message that falsely claimed Zionists “consider Palestinian deaths a good thing, creating favorable demographic shifts in the direction of a Jewish minority in Palestine.” The post further claimed that “mass Palestinian death is a major Zionist ‘war aim.’”
A fourth Instagram post uploaded by the actor featured a quote attributed to Cairo-based comedian Bassem Youssef, who said recently on the NewsNation show “Cuomo,” hosted by Chris Cuomo, that, “We will only be safe if Israel is safe, and Israel will be safe if all of us are dead.”
Jewish groups and scholars of antisemitism have argued that attributing to Jews a desire to harm Palestinians is a modern iteration of the medieval antisemitic blood libel, which falsely claims that Jews use the blood of non-Jewish children in their religious rituals.
Williams is represented by Creative Artists Agency (CAA), which is the world’s leading entertainment, sports, and media agency, according to its website. CAA did not immediately respond to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment regarding Williams’ social media posts.
Liora Rez, executive director of StopAntisemitism, told The Algemeiner on Tuesday that her organization “calls on CAA to immediately break ties with antisemite Jesse Williams.”
“His propagating such horrifying antisemitic tropes are unforgivable,” Raz added.
The post Watchdog Group Calls on Talent Agency to Drop Former ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Star for Promoting Antisemitic Blood Libels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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No, Israel Is Not at All Comparable to the Nazis
Egyptian trucks carrying humanitarian aid make their way to the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, at the Kerem Shalom crossing in southern Israel, May 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
In a repulsive Guardian op-ed, the New York-based writer John Oakes not only falsely accused Israel of causing the mass starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, but likened the situation to the Nazis’ starvation of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto (“The starvation of Gaza is a perverse repudiation of Judaism’s values,” June 25).
Oakes’ antisemitic trope, comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews during the Holocaust, has sadly been employed or legitimised by Guardian contributors previously.
Oakes begins with a lie:
For many months now, it has been no secret that one of America’s closest allies has been using hunger as a weapon against a civilian population. That hunger is being used by Israel is supremely ironic, given the particular role that privation from food plays both in Jewish philosophy and in the grim history of the Jewish people. It is a charge that the Jewish state has repeatedly denied in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
This is the opposite of the truth.
The starvation narrative was given credibility in the mainstream media following a March report by Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) which alleged that famine was imminent and likely to occur by May in northern Gaza, and by July in other parts of the territory.
However, in early June, the IPC published a follow-up report titled, “Famine Review Committee: Review of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) IPC-Compatible Analysis for the Northern Governorates of the Gaza Strip.”
That report concluded that the analysis published in March was not plausible, pointed out the omission of certain categories of food deliveries, and noted that “the available evidence does not indicate that famine is currently occurring.” The analysis also acknowledged that the daily kilocalories requirements for Palestinians in Gaza were surpassed in April, and found that the food supply in Gaza is increasing each month.
Even prior to that conclusion by the Famine Review Committee, multiple reports and studies — citing fatal methodological and data collection flaws — contradicted the initial warnings of imminent starvation in Gaza by the IPC. One of the reports, by Columbia University professors Awi Federgruen and Ran Kivetz, analyzed available data and found that “sufficient amounts of food are being supplied into Gaza.” According to the paper, “the mean calories available per person per day in Gaza in January was 3,076 kcal, for February that figure dropped to 1,741 kcal, but then rose in March to 3,446 kcal and rose again in April to 4,580 kcal.”
After telling that lie, the Guardian contributor pivots to the Nazi analogy:
Even Germany, which for obvious historical reasons has long been one of Israel’s staunchest allies, finally has begun to warn against using starvation to win a war. The Germans would know about such a tactic. During the second world war, 380,000 people were crowded into the Warsaw ghetto, barricaded, and left to die by the Nazis.
Much of what we know about the effects of long-term starvation comes from a manuscript smuggled out of the ghetto in 1942 and translated into English in the 1970s as Hunger Disease. The remarkable document was compiled by a heroic team of 28 Jewish doctors working under unimaginable conditions.
…
The suffering and the defiance of the inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto have become touchstones for students of Jewish history, a story that every Jew knows well. As Holocaust museums struggle to address the Israel-Gaza war, the idea that we can somehow put what is happening in Gaza at a distant remove from the history of the Warsaw ghetto is grotesque. [emphasis added]
What’s truly grotesque is his comparison between the Warsaw Ghetto, implemented by a regime which murdered two out of every three Jews in Europe, and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. The daily food rations in the Warsaw Ghetto, which housed as many as 460,000 Jews and was completely sealed off from the outside, were the equivalent of “one-tenth of the required minimum daily calorie intake” — causing an 80,000 to die of either starvation or disease. Most of those who survived were sent off to death camps.
By contrast, there have been no credible reports of Palestinians dying of starvation in Gaza, and aid continues to pour in to the Strip.
If there are any Nazi-analogies to be made in this war, it should be directed at Hamas, the genocidal antisemitic terror group whose sent death squads rampaging across southern Israel on Oct. 7th with the sole purpose of murdering, torturing, raping, mutilating, and taking hostage as many Jews as possible — a barbaric assault that represents the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust.
Finally, Oakes’ vilification of the Jewish state reaches a crescendo further into the op-ed, when he reaches the culmination of his big lie, writing that, given the historical and religious history of Jews, “it is remarkable that of all nations, the Jewish state is using mass starvation as a method of warfare“ — a libel against the Jewish collective as morally obscene and toxic as the antisemitic medieval superstitions peddled for centuries against individual Jews.
Amidst an ongoing tsunami of antisemitism in the UK and elsewhere in the Jewish diaspora, the Guardian continues to incite the mob.
Adam Levick serves as co-editor of CAMERA UK – an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared.
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