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As Antisemitism Becomes Socially Acceptable, Jewish Resilience is More Important Than Ever
People hold an Israeli flag as a helicopter carrying hostages released amid a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel arrives at Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv district, Israel, Nov. 28, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
I would like to share just a few of the antisemitic incidents that have been reported in the news in the past few days. I know, I know – Jews have no right to complain about being targeted, especially while the Israeli army remains in Gaza and there’s no ceasefire. After all, as Antonio Guterres of the United Nations put it, “it is important to recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.” Which means that when a Jew gets murdered, raped or kidnapped – because it didn’t happen in a vacuum, it’s ok. Nevertheless, please indulge me.
Let’s begin with that bastion of higher education, Harvard University, surely now on its best behavior after being disparaged for months over its tolerance of antisemitism on campus. Well, apparently not! Because this week, Harvard’s interim president was compelled to come out and criticize a cartoon that had been shared by pro-Palestinian faculty groups on campus. The controversial image was posted on Instagram, and depicted a hand with a star of David and a dollar sign, holding nooses around the figures resembling Muhammad Ali and Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s former president – a classic antisemitic trope that would have been right at home in the Nazi publication Der Stürmer.
Meanwhile, in Walnut Creek, California, during a city council meeting, an individual suddenly launched into an antisemitic tirade, and no one stopped him. The man, who wore a shirt with a swastika and the words “White Power” on it – which should surely have been a red flag to security! – targeted Jewish council member Kevin Wilk with antisemitic slurs, suggested the possibility of another Holocaust, and then concluded his outburst with a Nazi salute.
And then there were the concerts of Jewish-American musician Matisyahu in Tucson, Arizona, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, that had to be canceled after staff at the venues refused to work on the nights he was due to perform. Matisyahu expressed disappointment over this suppression of dialogue and artistic expression, and labeled the cancellations as antisemitism.
Of course, antisemitic incidents are not confined to the United States. Earlier this week, the leader of Denmark’s Jewish community revealed that there has been a significant rise in antisemitic incidents in the country since October 7th, marking the highest levels of such incidents since World War II. And he said that the rise in Jew-hatred was not just happening in his country. Recent data from his community’s security organization shows that the exponential increase in hatred against Jews – which in Denmark has included 20 death threats made against individual Jews – aligns with similar trends in other European nations. Crucially, it is worth noting that there are only 6,400 Jews in Denmark, in a population of almost 6,000,000 – making Danish Jews just over 0.1% of the population.
And a few days ago, during the World Aquatics Championships in Qatar, Israeli swimmer Anastasia Gorbenko faced jeers from parts of the audience after securing second place in the women’s 400-meter medley. The incident occurred as the 20-year-old was providing poolside remarks following the race at the Aspire Dome in Doha. Gorbenko admitted that she had been provided with full-time security to ensure her safety in Doha, hardly a surprise in a city that hosts the political headquarters of Hamas and is home to its leaders, but clearly an indicator that despite the gulf state and Western ally’s claim to be an “honest broker”, the atmosphere there is deeply antisemitic.
I could go on and on, because there are multiple incidents reported every day, and many more that aren’t reported. Jews are now fair game – old, young, religious, secular – in every country across the world. As Jewish social media influencer Montana Tucker said this week, it is now “popular to be anti-Jew.” According to the TikTok star, social media has made antisemitism “socially acceptable.”
But don’t let any of this get you down. The Jewish people are resilient and strong. A Midrashic passage at the beginning of Parshat Tetzaveh offers a deep, allegorical explanation of both the struggles and the strength of the Jewish people, as represented by the olive tree.
The first verses of Tetzaveh describe the process of producing the purest olive oil possible for the Temple menorah. The use of olive oil for this holy duty is no accident, says the Midrash – because the Jewish nation is compared to an olive tree, based on a verse in Jeremiah (11:16): זַיִת רַעֲנָן יְפֵה פְרִי תֹאַר קָרָא ה’ שְׁמֵךְ – “God has called you a green olive tree, fair, with wonderful fruit.”
The Midrash queries this comparison. “Is Israel only compared to an olive tree? Haven’t they also been likened to all sorts of beautiful and commendable trees?” The Midrash lists several other trees used by scripture as an allegory for the Jewish people: vines, fig trees, palm trees, cedar trees, walnut trees, and pomegranate trees. So why is the olive tree considered the primary allegory?
The Midrash explains that “what is so unique about the olive [is that] while it is in the tree, they beat it; and afterwards they bring it down from the tree and it is beaten [again]; and after being beaten, they take it to the press, and they put them in the mill; and afterwards, they grind them, and then they bind them with ropes, and bring stones, and then they extract its oil. So too Israel – the gentiles come and beat them from place to place, and tie them up, and force them into collars, and bind them in chains. And then they repent, and God answers them.”
The Midrash is using the metaphor of an olive tree to illustrate the resilience and enduring faith of the Jewish people. Just as an olive tree goes through a process of beating, pressing, and grinding to produce oil, so too the Jewish people constantly endures suffering and oppression – but in the final analysis, it always leads them to return to God.
There may be other trees that resonate with Jewish identity, but the olive tree is singled out specifically because of the labored process required to produce oil. The evocative allegory emphasizes the idea that through hardship and adversity, the Jewish people’s true essence and faith emerge more strongly, just as the precious oil is extracted from olives through pressure and adversity.
Rabbi Shmuel Bornsztain (1855–1926), in his Shem MiShmuel commentary, is troubled by this notion. Why would any nation welcome the “olive tree” comparison? The Shem MiShmuel goes on to offer an enlightening perspective, transforming our understanding of hardship and its role in spiritual growth. He suggests that the comparison of the Jewish people to an olive tree reveals a deeper truth about our inherent nature as a people. Just as the olive contains precious oil that can only be extracted through pressing and crushing, so too, the Jewish people have an inherent potential for goodness and holiness that may require adversity to be fully realized.
The essence of this teaching is not that suffering is desired or that it is the only path to spiritual growth. Rather, it highlights the innate capacity for renewal that exists within us all. The Midrash underscores the idea that change for the better is not about external forces compelling us to act against our will. Instead, it is about those external pressures revealing and refining what is already within us—our core values and beliefs that we may have lost touch with.
If anything has become clear over the past few months since October 7th, it is that we Jews – wherever we are and whatever we have had to endure – contain magnificent olive oil within us, in great abundance and of the highest purity. And the more the antisemites come at us, the clearer this becomes.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
The post As Antisemitism Becomes Socially Acceptable, Jewish Resilience is More Important Than Ever first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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New York Times Reader Comments Shows a Global Readership Shifting Against Israel
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
In March 2022, the New York Times unveiled a global strategy that spoke of targeting “every curious, English-speaking person” and playing “an even bigger role in the lives of tens of millions of people around the world.” It didn’t speak of being a New York or American newspaper.
The paper was following through on an effort it announced in 2016 as “an ambitious plan to expand its international digital audience and increase revenue outside the United States.”
The Times reported then, “Just as The Times pushed beyond its local boundaries to become a national newspaper in the 1990s, the executives said in the memo that they now saw the “opportunity to become an indispensable leader in global news and opinion’ by expanding its presence outside the country’s borders.”
How far has the Times gotten toward achieving its objective of shifting its prototypical customer from a housewife in the Westchester County, New York, suburb of Scarsdale to some college professor in Berlin or bureaucrat in Brussels?
An indication is available in the reader comments on a Times news article headlined “Autopsies of Gaza Medics Killed by Israeli Troops Show Some Were Shot in the Head.”
Many of the Israel-bashing comments on the article come from readers based outside of the United States.
“There appears to be no law at all when it comes to Israel’s prosecution of war. No constraints. No real international pressure to try and contain these all too frequent violations,” writes a Times commenter identified as Richard Smith from Edinburgh, U.K. He called Israel’s behavior “sickening.”
Another Times commenter, Hélène Volat of Paris, writes, “each time I thought of having seen the worst, Israel surprises me.”
Another commenter, “Melan” from Berlin, writes to call for sanctions on Israel similar to those on Russia: “Freeze assets, ban travel, and block arms deals for officials behind the killings.”
A Times commenter Michelle from Montreal writes, “I will never buy anything made in Israel ever again.”
Times commenter “Steve” from Toronto writes, “I really wish the USA would stop supporting this country. Have you no morals?”
Another Times commenter, Denis Coakley from Ireland, contends, “Israel has descended to the level of Hamas… Sadly this is a result of the blank-cheque given to Netanyahu by his fellow tyrant in the White House.”
The Times staff is becoming increasingly international just as its readership is. The bylines on this story include those of Christoph Koettl, a graduate of the University of Vienna, according to his LinkedIn profile, who spent eight years as an employee of or consultant to the anti-Israel advocacy group Amnesty International and its affiliates; and of Bilal Shbair, who previously worked in Gaza as an English teacher for UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Reporting was also contributed by “Abubakr Abdelbagi and Naziha Baassiri,” who don’t have biographies available on the New York Times website.
The Times article says the autopsies “were performed by Dr. Ahmad Dhair, the head of the Gazan health ministry’s forensic medicine unit,” without telling readers that the health ministry is controlled by the Hamas terrorist organization, or that Hamas restricts what reporters inside Gaza can report.
Having maxed out of anti-Israel readers on university campuses that provide enterprise-wide Times access to students, faculty, and staff, the Times is now trying to increase its revenues by chasing anti-Israel readers all the way to Europe and Canada. As a business growth strategy it may make some sense. The tradeoff, though, is turning the newspaper’s comments section into an anti-Israel sewer, and also allowing the news section of the paper to be used as a platform for stories that seem calculated to fuel anti-Israel animus. That comes at some cost to whatever is left of the Times’s fading credibility with whatever readers remain from the days when the Times was a New York newspaper, or a proudly American one.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
The post New York Times Reader Comments Shows a Global Readership Shifting Against Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Not Just Hamas: PA Religious Leaders Agree That Islam Prohibits Israel’s Existence
Palestinians walk at the compound that houses Al-Aqsa Mosque, known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, in Jerusalem’s Old City May 21, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
One mistake made by world leaders and even many Israeli leaders, is to see the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a secular Muslim leadership that rejects religious war for Allah — as opposed to Hamas. But this is a fundamental misreading of Palestinians and the conflict.
Fundamentally, the Palestinian Authority’s political leaders, like Hamas’ leaders, and like most of the Palestinian population, are religious Muslims first and Palestinians second.
The message of all PA religious leaders — some appointed by Mahmoud Abbas himself — is to deny Israel’s right to exist on religious Islamic grounds.
According to PA belief, Islamic law states that land that was once under Muslim rule must be liberated from the infidels as a mandatory religious obligation. Since the land of Israel was under Muslim Ottoman rule for four centuries, the PA is prohibited from making a permanent treaty with Israel that it intends to keep.
PA Shari’ah Judge Nasser Al-Qirem explained this “fact” to worshippers at a mosque in Ramallah during a Friday sermon that was broadcast by official PA TV:
PA Shari’ah Judge Nasser Al-Qirem: “The Shari’ah legal law of this land, for anyone who doesn’t know, is that it is a waqf land … from its [Mediterranean] Sea to its [Jordan] River, this is its Shari’ah law, from its sea to its river.
The laws of this waqf determine that its status cannot be changed, not by sale and not by purchase, not by collateral and not by exchange… not by addition and not by subtraction… As for the [end] date of this waqf: It is forever and ever, and for all eternity, until Allah inherits the earth and those on it.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Feb. 14, 2025]
Following other PA religious leaders, Al-Qirem taught listeners that “Palestine” — including all of the State of Israel — is a waqf. A waqf is an inalienable religious endowment in Islamic law.
Palestinians define all of Israel as waqf, and thereby Israel exists on Islamic holy land. Palestinian leaders have explained that under Islamic law Muslims are commanded to free the waqf from non-Muslims.
Similarly, PA Supreme Shari’ah Judge Mahmoud Al-Habbash, who is also PA leader Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations, has taught that the Western Wall is exclusively Islamic — according to Allah -– and that Muslims are obligated to fight anyone who challenges this right:
Al-Habbash: “Islam is truth that is indivisible… The rights are indivisible – Give me 60% or 70% of my rights, and tell me: ‘That’s it, that’s yours, take it.’ Perhaps temporarily, yes. [But] strategically, no! … Our rights are non-negotiable. They want to negotiate over Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque – then by Allah, it is better [to be dead] in the belly of the earth than to be on its surface…
There is no negotiation on one millimeter of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, including the Al-Buraq Wall [i.e., the Western Wall of the Temple Mount[, which is an exclusive permanent Islamic waqf according to Allah’s decree… This is our right, and whoever fights us over our right is an oppressor, and it is a duty to resist the oppressors.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Jan. 20, 2023]
Repeating that Jews have no rights on Temple Mount, Al-Habbash encouraged the “Islamic nation” to “liberate Al-Aqsa with all means,” saying it was their “duty” because it is a waqf:
Al-Habbash: “The Al-Aqsa Mosque is a pure Islamic right. It is an exclusive Islamic waqf for Muslims (i.e., an inalienable religious endowment), and it is an exclusive right of the Muslims… At the UN podium, [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas spoke explicitly about the Muslims’ legal claim to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and [said] that non-Muslims have no right to it… [Israel] knows that it has no right to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and that the Jews have no right to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque. But they are only fanning the fire of hostility and the fire of religious war…
The duty lies on the Islamic nation and the Arabs in general, with the governments, regimes, states, bodies, religious and popular sources of authority and [all] the peoples, to participate in defending the noble Al-Aqsa Mosque, starting with coming to it… and ending with liberating the Al-Aqsa Mosque by all possible means (i.e., including terror).” [emphasis added]
[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, Facebook page, Oct. 1, 2024]
Already a decade ago, Palestinian Media Watch exposed that Al-Habbash considers all of Israel a waqf:
Al-Habbash: “The entire land of Palestine is [Islamic] waqf and is blessed land … It is prohibited to sell, bestow ownership or facilitate the occupation of even a millimeter of it.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 22, 2014]
The author is the founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch.
The post Not Just Hamas: PA Religious Leaders Agree That Islam Prohibits Israel’s Existence first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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This Jewish Rapper Should Be Praised for His Passover Pride
Rapper Kosha Dillz, dressed as Moses, leading a Passover seder at Coachella in 2022. Photo: @chrism_arts.
Antisemites in America — and especially in New York — are trying to make Jews feel fearful of going about their regular activities. One infamous video that went viral had anti-Israel protestors screaming that Zionists should get off the subway.
Jewish rapper Rami Matan Even-Esh — known as Kosha Dillz — decided to have a Subway Seder despite some negative comments he got last year when he did it. Dillz has visited Israel and performed for released hostages and families of hostages, as well as wounded soldiers.
“I love doing the Subway Seder because it was a breath of fresh air and some people joined in who weren’t having their own Seders,” Dillz told me in an interview.
He said his group did it on the Q train at Union Square in Manhattan at about 6 o’clock on Friday.
“People are glued to the Internet waiting for bad news, so it was nice to do something like this,” he said, adding that he dressed as Moses. “There were Black and Hispanic community members who asked what we were doing and they were receptive that we were taking pride.”
Dillz showed the Jewish pride that we all should, and he was unbowed by the threats he faced. He said showing Jewish pride and fearlessness is important in the wake of rising antisemitism.
“Last year, someone gave me the middle finger,” he said. “This year, we had no problems. Though, of course, online people will do their thing, and someone commented that we were colonizing the train. You have to laugh at them.”
Despite the Passover seder being mentioned prominently in the Christian Bible, Dillz said that many people asked him what Passover was and were unfamiliar with the holiday. He also rapped as part of the event.
“We gave the people dinner and a show,” he said, adding that there was both matzah and gefilte fish. “I think there were some worried about safety but we didn’t have one negative comment at all.”
Dillz, who will soon be releasing a documentary called Bring The Family Home about his trips to Israel since October 7 said the Israeli hostages often get forgotten in discussions, and he hopes they will somehow be returned.
Dillz, who has been a cast member of Wild ‘N Out and performs both music and comedy, said whenever possible, people should look at the bright side of things.
“I think as Jews, when we embrace our culture, we show that we are united and we’re not gonna run away in fear as our enemies might like,” he said.
Dillz, who made a music video against Kanye West when he went on an antisemitic rant, said that there should have been more outrage over the arson attack against Jewish Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s residence on Passover.
The rapper has taken to the streets recently not only to rap, but also to ask questions of people at anti-Israel rallies, where he calmly asks their opinions, often revealing that they have little knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Dillz said that he is genuinely curious to know what they think, but at times people responded by showing ignorance and at other times, they would simply respond with chants designed to intimidate.
As for his Subway Seder, covered by Fox 5 New York, he said it was a success.
“It was really great we could do this,” he said. “When we show our positivity and joy, it’s something that I think is really powerful.”
The author is a writer based in New York.
The post This Jewish Rapper Should Be Praised for His Passover Pride first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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