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Jeff Tweedy’s son became a ‘pariah’ on his college campus after speaking up for Israel
(JTA) — One big turning point in Sammy Tweedy’s Jewish story took place when he was preparing for his bar mitzvah, and his rock star father, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, converted to Judaism as part of the process.
Another occurred in 2020 when he was a sophomore in college and accepted a free Birthright trip to Israel — triggering an avalanche of criticism from his classmates at Sarah Lawrence College just outside of New York City.
“It was just like, I had done something very wrong by going to Israel, which I found to be very hypocritical,” Tweedy recalled to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last week. “Because nobody asked me, ‘Hey, what’s your opinion on this?’ I would have even been OK with someone saying ‘Hey, how do you justify going to Israel?’ because I would have justified it to them.”
Three years later, Tweedy has withdrawn from Sarah Lawrence, vowing never again to return to campus, in part because of the anti-Israel and antisemitic vitriol he said he has experienced there. As a group serving Jewish students in the region raises the alarm about the climate at Sarah Lawrence, Tweedy has become an unlikely standard-bearer in the movement to fight antisemitism on college campuses. He recently appeared in a New York Times article on the topic.
In particular, Tweedy represents what advocates say is a persistent and disquieting trend, made only more intense since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, of liberal Jewish students who do not oppose Israel being made to feel unwelcome in progressive groups and spaces.
“As long as you’re not willing to call for the destruction of the State of Israel and the expulsion or murder of the inhabitants of the State of Israel, you’re in for some trouble as a Jewish young person or college student,” he said.
“I just realized I might as well just be the one person in these environments, in these classrooms, presenting an opinion that is somewhat more sympathetic to Israel,” Tweedy said, adding that he is not a fan of Israel’s right-wing government and its main party. “Like, I’m not a Likudnik … but I think that people misunderstand fundamentally why Jewish people are there.”
Growing up in Chicago — whose iconic Marina City skyscrapers feature on the cover of Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” album — Sammy Tweedy attended the Reform Congregation Emanuel synagogue. He and his brother both celebrated their bar mitzvahs there, but he said he sometimes bristled at the messaging he heard about Israel at synagogue and in other Jewish spaces, recalling that he felt the need to constantly “deprogram” himself.
“There’s … pro-current Israeli government policy propaganda that, you know, you are exposed to as a Jewish young person in America,” he said.
“I was given (at worst) unquestioning perspectives on Israel and (more commonly) just consensus without question that Israel should exist,” he added in a text message. “Which I agree with. But at summer camp and synagogue, those were just Zionist spaces.”
Some young adults who say they were handed a one-sided perspective on Israel have gotten involved in criticizing the country from a Jewish point of view. IfNotNow, for example, was founded in 2014 by graduates of Jewish day schools and summer camps to oppose Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its war on Gaza at the time.
Tweedy went a different direction. After his Birthright trip, he enrolled in history classes about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and found himself defending Israel. When students in class argued that “the Jewish connection to the land of Israel is completely fabricated,” he would speak up, offering historical perspective about the Jewish history in the region that dates back to biblical times. He says he was soon labeled a “racist” around campus.
“I was like, ‘What did I say that was racist? Why are they saying that?’ It’s because ‘you said Jewish people are indigenous to Israel.’ And I was like, that’s not f—ing racist. That doesn’t mean that Palestinians shouldn’t be able to live in that land or call it Palestine or whatever,” he said.
Tweedy also felt dismayed when the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter endorsed “armed struggle” against Israel and honored Khaire Alkam — who shot and killed seven Israelis at a synagogue — on a “wall of martyrs” in a campus building shortly after the attack this past January.
As word got around about his views, Tweedy was hit with a wave of social media messages from fellow students calling him out. Since Hamas’ attacks on Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza, the barrage increased. One post shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency read “the blood of gaza is on your hands.” In another, a student admitted to harassing him. He sometimes joined in arguments, as shown in messages he shared with JTA.
He filed a bias incident report to administrators on Nov. 11, after he saw the campus SJP charter say in an online post that U.S. media is “controlled by Zionists.” He said the school determined that the use of the word “Zionist” made the post acceptable.
A Sarah Lawrence spokesperson told JTA that the school does not share information on students with the media.
But Tweedy is far from the first Jewish Sarah Lawrence student to complain about the school’s handling of reported antisemitic incidents. On Oct. 31, Hillels of Westchester — representing chapters at Sarah Lawrence and a handful of other nearby schools — sent a letter to Sarah Lawrence President Cristle Collins Judd alleging that since at least 2014, Jewish students have been “harassed, intimidated, bullied, and ‘canceled’ for simply expressing themselves as Jews, or discussing or identifying with Israel.”
The group added in their letter that Briana Martin, the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion director, sent a message to student groups after Oct. 7 that did not mention Israeli deaths. “We are aware of the ongoing conflict happening with Palestine, including the most recent events that happened over the weekend,” she wrote. “It is disheartening and tragic, and we know many are deeply impacted by this.” She also promoted an “Hour of Solidarity with Palestine” event organized by SJP.
“Since Saturday October 7th, our focus has been, first and foremost, on the welfare and education of all our students and it remains so,” the Sarah Lawrence spokesperson said in a statement to JTA.
“We are deeply disappointed that, at such a challenging time, misleading claims are circulating, serving to fuel the information wars that have clouded the news these past several weeks,” the statement continued. “We are actively engaged in direct conversations with students from our various Jewish student organizations, and have responded individually and collectively to concerns shared with us by students and families.”
In responding to the Hillel group’s first letter, Judd pointed to the college’s current renovation of the school’s Ruth Leff Siegel Center, which will “support cultural and spiritual student communities.” But she also rejected the group’s involvement in campus affairs.
“Hillels of Westchester has no official relationship with the College, nor do you speak in any official capacity for our students,” Judd added.
A view of the Ruth Leff Siegel Student Center at Sarah Lawrence College. (SaidieLou/Wikimedia Commons)
Now, Hillels of Westchester Co-President Sheila Rennert said the group is in the “evidence-gathering phase” of a potential Title VI lawsuit against the school, alleging that the college has not followed through on its federal legal obligations to keep Jewish students safe.
Any redress through a future lawsuit won’t affect Tweedy directly. The history and music major left to study abroad at Tel Aviv University in August, joining in the mass protests against the Israeli government’s controversial plans to overhaul its judicial system and enjoying the city’s “secular nightlife.”
“I just felt very attached to that vision of Israel, and preserving that sort of modern, more tolerant idea of what Israel could mean, and I was having a really great time there,” he said.
With Israeli universities on hiatus because of the war, he left Israel shortly after Oct. 7 and has been staying with his girlfriend in Florida, where he is finishing up his last semester of classes remotely.
He said he won’t step foot on Sarah Lawrence’s campus ever again.
“The feeling of being a pariah was so intense that I developed these stomach problems that just made life really difficult, and I think they went away since leaving. So just literally for my health I can’t go back there,” he said. “But I’m going to transfer credits and graduate from there and say goodbye and never donate a cent and tell everyone I know to avoid the school at all costs.”
Tweedy wouldn’t share his father’s views on Israel, but he said everyone in the family has their own perspective. His older brother Spencer recently published a post on Substack criticizing “Jewish supremacy” in Israeli governance and calling for a ceasefire in the current war, which Israel and its allies say would allow Hamas to remain in power.
“I’m probably the most vocally pro-Israel, pro-normalizing the existence of Israel so that we can actually work to end this conflict,” Sammy Tweedy said about his family. “But I think we all are united by this idea that you can’t delegitimize the existence of one people or another and expect that to lead to any bettering of the situation.”
After college, Tweedy wants to be a musician like his dad; he and Spencer have both played on some of their father’s solo records. But he also wants to do something that has a concrete impact: He’s considered writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and applying to work for organizations that aim to build peace.
“I care about the region. And I want people to stop killing each other,” he said.
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The post Jeff Tweedy’s son became a ‘pariah’ on his college campus after speaking up for Israel appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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What’s Been Happening in Gaza This Month — and What’s Next for Israel
Palestinians protest to demand an end to war, chanting anti-Hamas slogans, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, March 26, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
While the fighting in Gaza has been renewed, diplomatic efforts to end the war have not abated. The Egyptians and the Emiratis in particular are trying to work out options for ending the war. The Emirati direction is closer to that taken by President Trump and Israel (the removal of Hamas from Gaza plus the evacuation of a portion of the Gaza population, at least temporarily), while the Egyptians are attempting to find a solution that is closer (though not identical) to the demands of Hamas (a non-Hamas government, but with Hamas remaining present in the Strip). The first Egyptian proposal was apparently dismissed out of hand by the US.
The official Hamas red line is its disarmament. Whether it directly governs Gaza or controls it from behind a front of supposedly independent technocrats seems, at present, to be less important to the group.
Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired 20-25 rockets at southern Tel Aviv, Ashkelon and Beersheva from locations across the Gaza Strip (the exact number of rockets is not clear because there were some false alarms). At least one rocket fell inside the Strip. One salvo of 10 rockets aimed at Ashkelon injured nine people. Put together, the salvos wounded about 30 people, almost all through falls they suffered while rushing to shelter.
The rockets were fired from different areas. In one case, the launchers were placed right next to a humanitarian safe zone in Beyt Lahia.
After each launch, the population of the area from which the rockets were launched received orders from the IDF (leaflets, social media messages, etc.) to evacuate. The messages included maps showing which areas to leave and where to go. This was in addition to evacuation orders from areas the IDF ground forces were reentering. UNRWA claims that about 400,000 Palestinians have evacuated the areas as ordered by the IDF.
Israeli airstrikes on identified targets and Hamas senior and mid-level officials and military commanders continue, with more than a dozen killed so far. Among those killed were the Hamas prime minister (he was hiding in a hospital, and a small guided munition was fired into the room) and Hamas’s equivalent of a defense minister.
Israeli ground troops entered the Strip in various locations, increasing the depth of the 1-kilometer perimeter Israel has held since withdrawing during the ceasefire to several kilometers:
- From the northern border, Israeli forces are moving closer to Gaza City, especially along the coast (the same direction they originally entered Gaza in late October 2023)
- South of the city of Gaza, the IDF returned to the Netzarim Corridor, which separates northern and central Gaza. The IDF has not yet completely blocked the corridor. The coastal area is still open for travel
- In the south, the IDF moved back into two areas around the city of Rafah from which it had withdrawn. Another force advanced north along the coast, closer to the al-Muwasi humanitarian area declared by the IDF last year
- A new corridor, called Morag, is being taken north of Rafah, separating it from the rest of the Gaza Strip
The Hamas Ministry of Health, which had published numbers of killed including the missing, has gone back to its previous pattern of not including the missing. Its latest casualty update (24 March) is 50,810 killed and 115,700 wounded. Hamas still does not differentiate between combatants and non-combatants. According to the IDF, the killed include a verified total of more than 20,000 Hamas personnel and at least 3,000 personnel of other terrorist organizations. The number of wounded terrorists is not known but is probably at least similar to the number killed.
Whereas most Western countries have denounced Israel’s renewed offensive, the US government has declared unqualified support.
The humanitarian issue is again being trumpeted by Hamas, which claims that the stopping of supply convoys is threatening the population of Gaza with starvation and a lack of medical supplies. Israel responded that about 25,000 truckloads (enough for 50 days) entered Gaza during the ceasefire and Hamas is hoarding most of their contents – including supplies that arrived prior to the ceasefire – in its own warehouses and is selling them to the population at exorbitant prices to fund its activities.
In Gaza there have been increasing protests demanding that Hamas surrender and leave the Strip and complaining about Hamas not distributing the supplies that have arrived. These protests have been small in scale so far, but the number of participants is gradually increasing as is the spread. Initially, the protests were occurring only in northern Gaza, but they have taken place in central Gaza as well and have recently spread to southern Gaza.
It is still too early to tell if these protests are harbingers of change or just the expressions of a small minority. At first, Hamas did not respond with violence, instead trying to pass off the protests as directed against Israel. Hamas media and Al-Jazeera ignored the statements being made against Hamas and quoted only the demands that the ceasefire be renewed. But after a few days, Hamas began to capture and even kill some of the protesters. This diminished the number of protests but did not halt them entirely. In one case, the clan of a protester killed by Hamas security forces retaliated by killing the Hamas police officer who had shot their family member. There have been a few other skirmishes between clans and Hamas security forces.
There have also been many more posts on social media by Gazans saying they would leave Gaza permanently if only they were allowed to do so. While these posts are increasing in number, they are still relatively rare, and we cannot know how deep this sentiment really is — are they exceptions, or do they represent the feelings of a much larger proportion of the population?
Dr. Eado Hecht, a senior research fellow at the BESA Center, is a military analyst focusing mainly on the relationship between military theory, military doctrine, and military practice. He teaches courses on military theory and military history at Bar-Ilan University, Haifa University, and Reichman University and in a variety of courses in the Israel Defense Forces. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
The post What’s Been Happening in Gaza This Month — and What’s Next for Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Exposed: CBS News Caught Deleting Hamas Propaganda on ‘Martyrs’ & ‘Israeli Aggression’ from Website
Smoke rises from Gaza after an explosion, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, April 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
It was right there, on their website. For all to see. Evidence that a major American news outlet — one with prestige, resources, and supposedly rigorous editorial standards — had quietly published, almost word-for-word, what can only be described as a press release from a designated terrorist organization.
Earlier this month, CBS News ran a story about an alleged Israeli airstrike on a school in Gaza. The headline set the tone: “Israeli strike on Gaza school allegedly kills 31 Palestinians, many kids, but IDF says it hit Hamas.”
Already, the usual red flags: a suspiciously specific death toll, immediate emphasis on children among the casualties, and of course, the requisite skepticism toward the IDF’s explanation — all paired with the now-standard framing of an aggressive Israel recklessly targeting civilians, rather than Hamas.
According to CBS, the death toll was sourced from the “Civil Defense rescue agency in Gaza,” which in turn cited medical records from Al-Ahli Hospital — the same hospital that, just days after CBS published its report, was revealed to contain a Hamas operations center inside the facility. That’s right: inside the hospital. Just to give you an idea of the reliability of the sources CBS deems fit to cite.
And yet, rather than question the reliability of medical records emerging from a Hamas-controlled war zone — or pause to consider the well-documented strategy of placing multiple command centers in civilian institutions — CBS instead cast doubt on the IDF. Why? Because the IDF had issued similar warnings the day before, when targeting a different Hamas site. Apparently, the editorial team at CBS finds it hard to believe that a terror group that has ruled Gaza with an iron grip for nearly two decades might operate more than one military facility embedded in civilian infrastructure.
We know. Shocking. Almost as if tunnel networks, human shields, and base duplication are all part of Hamas’ war strategy.
But the real giveaway came in a line CBS quietly scrubbed from its article after publication — with no correction, no note, no admission. The line that read: “The death toll of the Israeli aggression has risen to 50,609 martyrs.” [emphasis added]
Yes, really. “Martyrs.” And “Israeli aggression.” Directly lifted from Hamas propaganda.
On April 4, @CBSNews referred to 50,000 Palestinian “martyrs” before quietly amending it, hoping nobody would notice.
Pro-tip: Don’t copy-paste Hamas press releases. pic.twitter.com/mV6qa8718u
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) April 14, 2025
At some point, a CBS journalist hit Ctrl+C on that phrasing and dropped it straight into a news story — no quotation marks, no attribution, no context. Just presented as plain, unqualified fact.
This is how warped coverage of Israel’s war with Hamas has become: ideologically blinkered or just plain lazy reporters sourcing claims from the most biased actors in the region and piping them directly into American living rooms under the banner of “journalism.”
We’ve seen it before. HonestReporting has documented how outlets like UPI routinely republish Hamas talking points. The BBC, The Guardian, NPR — all have quoted Hamas press officers and “health ministry” officials as if they were neutral observers rather than representatives of a proscribed terrorist organization.
This is how distortion becomes doctrine. This is how Hamas’ narrative — complete with inflated death tolls, blood-soaked victimhood, and cartoon-villain depictions of Israel — spreads far beyond Gaza’s borders.
When Western news outlets start parroting the language of groups banned in their own countries, it’s not just a lapse in editorial judgment. It’s complicity.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post Exposed: CBS News Caught Deleting Hamas Propaganda on ‘Martyrs’ & ‘Israeli Aggression’ from Website first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Thrive on Palestinian Authority TV
The opening of a hall that the Palestinian Authority named for a terrorist who killed 125 people. Photo: Palestinian Media Watch.
Official Palestinian Authority (PA) TV is the mouthpiece of the PA, and the PA uses it to transmit libels and lies about Israel.
One such libel claims that Israel’s fight against Hamas is just a symptom of an Israeli plot to rule the entire Muslim world:
Speaker at anti-Israeli demonstration in Algiers: “The goal of the Zionist enterprise is not just to eliminate the central cause, which is the Palestinian cause.
Its goal is to harm the [Arab] nation, dismantle it, and tear it apart, and to establish the [Zionist] entity state (i.e., Israel) on the land of Islam, on the land of Palestine, and on all the Muslim lands.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, April 6, 2025]
The PA has repeated this libel for decades as Palestinian Media Watch has exposed, claiming that Israel harbors colonialist aspirations and dreams of ruling the entire Arab world:
Political science lecturer Hareth Halalmeh: “Israel has an expansionist outlook. This expansionist outlook does not only include Palestine, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, but encompasses the entire Arab and Islamic entity… The Arabs are now convinced that we are facing an imperialistic, expanding, occupying, settler state that does not accept a Palestinian partner, nor an Arab partner, but rather only thinks in the language of violence and power. The Arabs are now fully convinced that if this danger will not be nipped in the bud, this danger will reach every Arab state.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Capital of Capitals, March 6, 2025]
One speaker broadcast by official PA TV claimed that “traditional colonialism” was “just Zionist colonialism”:
Political science lecturer Dr. Ibrahim Al-Rifa’i: “Was traditional colonialism just French and British?”
Official PA TV host: “Or Italian?”
Ibrahim Al-Rifa’i: “It was actually Zionist colonialism… They [the Jews] think that the entire world that is outside the circle of Zionism are goyim (i.e., non-Jews) and that Zionist globalization should rule, and they have been waging a world war ever since the time before traditional colonialism. Traditional colonialism was completely Zionist. This colonialism with its various names – British, English, French – was just Zionist colonialism.”
[Official PA TV, Capital of Capitals – Tunis, Feb. 12, 2025]
A Lebanese Shari’ah Judge who was given a platform on PA TV packaged this in the well-known antisemitic libel that “Jews seek world dominion” and recommended that “Arabs, Muslims, and even Christians” should “re-examine” The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was exposed as a Russian antisemitic forgery over a century ago, for proof that “any decision made by the Zionist enemy contains traps and unannounced goals”:
Lebanese Shari’ah Judge Sheikh Khaldoun Oraymet: “We must understand, as Lebanese, Arabs, Muslims, and even Christians, that any decision made by the Zionist enemy (i.e., Israel) certainly contains traps and unannounced goals, which are necessarily not for the benefit of Lebanon [or] the Palestinian cause or the Arabs. For us to know for certain that this is their position, one must re-examine The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and examine – I’m not saying the Bible, but the Talmud that was written by the Jews’ rabbis.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Capital of Capitals, March 18, 2025]
PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor Al-Habbash has presented a different version of this libel, claiming that it is the US that seeks dominion over the Arab world, using Israel as “a pawn state” to reach its “colonialist goals”:
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash: “There is no strategic alliance in the true political sense between the US and Israel. What actually exists is American employment of Israel. Israel is nothing more than an American interest.
It is nothing more than a pawn state or pawn entity whose goal is to serve the American and colonialist goals. The US is making sure to keep this entity and state so that it will serve its goals to keep the Arab region divided, backward, and conflict-ridden… The US is interested in continuing the situation (i.e., Israeli counter-terror operation against Hamas). It wants to pressure the Palestinian people, and to break the willpower of the Palestinian people and the Arab nation that is behind it.” [emphasis added]
[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, Dec. 13, 2023]
Official PA TV has repeatedly served as a means for spreading the libel that Israel’s goal is to expand beyond “Palestine.” A Syrian commentator warned that Israel poses “a danger that will wash over the Arab and Islamic world”:
Syrian commentator Husam Taleb: “Israel wants to expel [the residents from] the entire West Bank, so that not a single Palestinian will remain. Afterwards they will move on to the 1948 Arabs (i.e., Israeli Arabs)… Then the Golan Heights, they want to expel the [Druze] people of the Golan… This plan is being put on the table by the Israelis.”
[Official PA TV, Capital of Capitals – Damascus, Jan. 26, 2025]
The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.
The post The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Thrive on Palestinian Authority TV first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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