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Pro-Israel Influencer Discusses Jewish Identity After Oct. 7, How to Think About US Election as a Progressive Zionist
Lizzy Savetsky and her three children Stella (11), Juliet (10), and Ollie (3). Photo: Abbie Sophia
Every year, millions of Diaspora Jews visit the State of Israel to see family, pray at the Holy sites, and experience life in the world’s only Jewish state. It is an excursion which brings one’s Jewish identity into focus and connects her to the distant past, when the Jewish people escaped bondage in Egypt to found “a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.”
So it was that on Oct. 6, pro-Israel social media influencer Elizabeth “Lizzy” Savetsky — along with her husband, Ira, three children, and parents — were in the city of Jerusalem at the King David Hotel. They were in “amazing spirits” and there to celebrate Sukkot and Simchat Torah, which would see their youngest son, Ollie, receive his first haircut in accordance with the Orthodox tradition Upsherin. He had just turned three years old.
“I remember the day so well. My youngest daughter does a weekly torah parshah, a little one-minute torah lesson she does every week, and I remember filming it at the hotel and that she was talking about Simchat Torah. Also, I have all these pictures on my phone from Oct. 6. We were all dressed up so nice and really trying to put our best foot forward,” Savetsky told The Algemeiner in a series of interviews this month.
“And there’s nothing like being at the King David Hotel on Friday night before Shabbat or a holiday, because of the energy of all the different Jews coming together to, in this case, bring in both,” Savetsky continued. “Just running into people all over, friends and followers, from across the world made me feel so connected to my people and my land. I had never been more in love with Israel and in love with being a Jewish person. I was feeling so intensely connected to my people and my land.”
The trip was, she explained, a “normal” one like others the family had taken before, and while Israelis were then engaged in a polarizing debate over a series of judicial reforms proposed by the administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the state of affairs was not unusual for Israeli politics as Savetsky knew it. Her first introduction to the nation’s tempestuous disputes over its future came in 1995, just months after her 10th birthday, when an extremist assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to protest the Oslo Accords, a series of ambitious agreements which aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for good.
The peace process ultimately failed at creating a permanent resolution to the conflict, but on Oct. 6, it seemed to many observers that the embers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were flaming out with time. Israel had just three years earlier entered into the Abraham Accords — normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan — and the United States was investing immense energy in brokering what could have a historic normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia that was not preconditioned by the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“And then of course, Oct. 7 happened,” Savetsky told The Algemeiner.
On that morning, Ira Savetsky took the couple’s middle daughter to synagogue while Lizzy remained at the hotel with their eldest daughter, Stella, to finish getting ready for what she knew would be “a long service.” Feeling restive for being delayed by her mother’s morning routine, Stella stepped outside their room and heard “sirens going off” and someone say that a “fire drill” was taking place. She immediately reported the news to her mother.
“I said there are no drills in Israel, and I knew immediately that something was very wrong. And just after she said that, the hotel loud speaker came on and said everyone in the hotel needed to immediately report to the south staircase and into the bomb shelter,” Savetsky recounted. “When we got to the staircase, it was just complete chaos and panic. There was woman behind me in a towel because she had just come out of the shower. Nobody knew what was going on.”
There was an indication of danger that morning, but Ira had refused to believe his own eyes. While walking to synagogue, he thought he saw a rocket being intercepted over Jerusalem, which he deemed an impossibility. Because it was Shabbat, he did not have his smartphone, preventing him from checking for news updates. After being reunited back in the bomb shelter, two Armenian tourists visiting Israel for the first time did have their phones and relayed to Lizzy and Ira “spotty details” of an attack “by land, sea, and air.” Lizzy panicked.
“I was trying to understand what that meant. By land, you mean they came in by foot? There were terrorists in the country by foot?” she told The Algemeiner. “And then, one of the other first reports we heard was that a solider had been kidnapped. That was shocking, and we were enraged hearing that. Little did we know just how horrible the attacks were. By the time that Shabbat ended on the evening of the 7th, we knew a lot more.”
Elizabeth Savetsky was born in August 1985 in Fort Worth Texas, a community she described as pertinaciously “conservative.” However, she embraced the egalitarianism and openness of the progressive movement, which was the basis of her worldview when she arrived on the campus of New York University in the fall of 2003 to study fashion. To this day, she supports abortion rights, gay marriage, and other core tenets of the US Democratic Party.
“I only became more liberal, more radicalized, as one does on a college campus. But of course, at the time, there wasn’t protests happening against Israel nor raging antisemitism, and once those two things started to surface I started to do my digging,” she said.
After graduation, Savetsky treaded an unusual path to becoming a pro-Israel activist. She found several jobs in “the fashion PR [public relations] world” and had moderate success with maintaining a blog, a popular form of writing on what was still, in the mid-2000s, a nascent internet. But Americans were reading less, she explained, and she shifted her focus to emerging social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, which allowed her to exhibit her fashion sense and connect with followers who were making celebrities out of everyday people overnight. Her Jewishness and support for Israel were present on her social media pages, but not, she noted, pronounced.
Then in May 2021, Hamas fired 1,700 rockets into Tel Aviv, killing 17 people and wounding hundreds of others. Anti-Zionists seized the opportunity to flood social media with a barrage of posts which, in addition to promoting ancient antisemitic tropes, vowed to lead a movement for Israel’s destruction. To Savetsky’s dismay, many of the influencers leading the charge were progressives and Democrats she had considered “allies.” Their anti-Zionism and classifying Jews as “white colonists” and “oppressors” prompted a convulsive upending of her long-held beliefs and the way she engaged her social media followers.
“It was the first time as a social media influencer that I had seen being demolished online, and I had this realization that there was this secondary war happening in the digital space,” Savetsky said. “We had always seen the demonization of Israel in the legacy media, but this was new for me and I had literally no idea what to do. You know, there was no manual on how to be a social media advocate.”
Savetsky began recording a series of short video clips about Israel, Zionism, and the war — “Stories” — and posting them on Instagram. She lost thousands of followers but gained hundreds of thousands more. Such is her reach today that when The Algemeiner first encountered her at a rally held near George Washington University in May, she was surrounded by a crush of students clamoring for photographs and conversation.
However, fame has complicated Savetsky’s life by widening the circle of people to whom she is accountable. Earlier this month, she announced to her 350,000 followers her intention to vote for former US President Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election, a decision prompted by yet another unprecedented year for America, Israel, and the world. Doing so unleashed volleys of insults as well as accusations of fascism, fraud, and betrayal. Her decision was not, she told The Algemeiner, cavalier. The events of Oct. 7 left a “permanent mark” in her memory, and one of the first things she did after regaining access to her phone on that day was update her followers about the attack, which was a way for Jews who were in Israel to communicate and share news with the Diaspora in real time.
For Savetsky, the Democratic Party’s hesitation both to denounce the anti-Zionist movement’s blaring antisemitism and to support Israel’s latest war with Hamas is an outrage, but that does not mean, she emphasized, that she endorses Trump’s character or is ignorant of his questionable associations. She explained that she did not have a conversion experience but a realignment of her political priorities, of which Israel is “number one.” She remains conflicted about Trump but believes that his policy toward Israel will be superior to anything implemented by a Kamala Harris administration.
“Israel is my priority, and Republicans and I will never align on everything. I am pro-choice, I am pro-gay marriage, I am very much a liberal valued person, but then again, I don’t believe that the Democratic Party is upholding my liberal values either because it has become so extreme,” she told The Algemeiner. “As voters, we have to prioritize what’s most important to us. And right now, I fear for our and my children’s survival as Jews.”
Asked about Trump’s November 2022 dinner with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes and recent news that Donald Trump Jr. was scheduled to appear at an event with Candace Owens — from which Owens was later removed for reasons that may not have been related to her alleged promotion of antisemitism — Savetsky said: “I called all of that out, and this is why I always say that we can’t put our faith in a human being. I don’t know if I can trust any of them, but what choices do we have?”
She added, “This is not a choice that I want to make, but it’s a choice I have to make, because I’m not pleased with a lot of things about either of them. I don’t necessarily like Donald Trump, and I wouldn’t have dinner with the guy. But he’s the better choice.”
Determined not to make Oct. 7 their children’s last memory of Israel, the Savetsky family once again made a pilgrimage to Israel this month. While waiting for their flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport, their second eldest child, Juliet, celebrated her 10th birthday, which the airport staff announced over the intercom at midnight. Seven hours were shaved off the day because of their traveling to a different time-zone, but she did not complain “too much,” Savetsky said. They were all happy to be going back.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Pro-Israel Influencer Discusses Jewish Identity After Oct. 7, How to Think About US Election as a Progressive Zionist first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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NYC ‘Dyke March’ Bans Zionists From Participating in Annual Demonstration
(Source: Reuters)
NYC Dyke March, a public demonstration held by members of the lesbian community in New York City, has banned self-proclaimed “Zionists” from its annual event, citing a desire to stand against the so-called “genocide” occuring in Gaza.
The group revealed in a statement that their decision to ban Israel supporters from their ranks came after multiple members dropped out of the organization due to differences in “political beliefs and values.” After engaging in discussions with frustrated members, the NYC Dyke March committee agreed to adopt “an explicitly anti-Zionist position.” The organization claims that it will “strengthen our commitment” to fighting against Israel and advocating on behalf of Palestinians.
Last year, the NYC Dyke March previously came under scrutiny after organizers settled on “genocide” as the theme of its 2024 event. In a statement, decrying “ethnic cleansing, violence, and dehumanization,” the organization compared the ongoing war in Gaza, to the mass slaughters occurring in Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Sudan.
The organization plans on recycling the same theme for this year’s march, titling it “Dykes Against Genocide.” The group released a statement clarifying that Jews are allowed to attend and condemned the Oct. 7 slaughters as a “senseless loss of life.” After an apparent uproar from its members, the organization deleted the post and wrote that the group “unapologetically stands in support of Palestinian liberation.” In addition, the group affirmed that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism and any language we put out which is not clearly opposed to a Zionist, imperialist agenda is harmful to us all.”
In the 17 months following the Hamas-led massacre of roughly 1200 people throughout Israel, the NYC Dyke March has produced numerous statements lambasting Israel and declaring “solidarity” with Palestinians amid their so-called “ongoing genocide.” The organization also accused Israel of engaging in supposed “pinkwashing” and “manipulative use of Jewish and queer identities,” with the aim of justifying its war efforts in Gaza.
Israel offers an expansive set of rights for members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transngender (LGBT) community, including recognition of same-sex marriages. Every year in June, Tel Aviv holds one of the largest LGBT Pride celebrations in the world. Meanwhile, members of the LGBT community are routinely imprisoned or murdered in other parts of the Middle East, including the Palestinian territories.
The NYC Dyke March’s announcement was met with widespread condemnation.
“You cannot exclude the majority of Jews and call yourself inclusive,” said the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in a post on X/Twitter, adding that the group “essentially equates Zionism with racism” in their announcement.
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Trump Administration Planning $510 Million Cut to Brown University Budget, Report Says
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with journalists onboard Air Force One en route to Miami, Florida, U.S., April 3, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
The Trump administration reportedly plans to terminate $510 million worth of federal contracts and grants awarded to Brown University, according to media reports.
Brown University’s failure to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its embrace of the diversity, equity, and, inclusion (DEI) movement — perceived by many across the political spectrum as an assault on merit-based upward mobility and causing incidents of anti-White and anti-Asian discrimination — prompted the alleged pending action by the federal government, according to the right-leaning outlet The Daily Caller.
The announcement comes as Brown scrambles to cover a $46 million budget shortfall and other universities across the country have faced similar funding cuts.
Brown University officials, however, denied that the university had received any directives from the Trump Administration.
“We have no information to substantiate these rumors,” Brown University provost Francis Doyle issued a statement. “We are closely monitoring notifications related to grants, but have nothing more we can share as of now.”
Meanwhile, Brown’s Jewish community rushed to the university’s defense, issuing a joint statement with the Brown Corporation which said that the campus is “peaceful and supportive campus for its Jewish community.”
The letter, signed by members of the local Hillel International chapter and Chabad on College Hill, continued: “Brown University is a place where Jewish life not only exists but thrives. While there is more work to be done, Brown, through the dedicated efforts of its administration, leadership, and resilient spirit of its Jewish community, continues to uphold the principles of inclusion, tolerance, and intellectual freedom that have been central to its identity since 1764.”
Brown Divest Coalition — an anti-Zionist group which recently saw its campaign for the university to adopt the boycott, divest, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel defeated by the Brown Corporation — weighed in too, denouncing the reported cut as “a means of suppressing all forms of popular dissent to the renewed violence of the US war machine abroad.” US Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) also criticized the move, accusing the administration “of a broader pattern of behavior…that will negatively impact communities across the country and lead to layoffs, restrict research, and more.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the Trump administration is following through on its threats to inflict potentially catastrophic financial injuries on colleges and universities deemed as soft on antisemitism or excessively “woke.” The past six weeks has seen the policy imposed on elite universities including Harvard and Columbia, rattling a higher education establishment that has for better and worse operated for decades with little interference from the federal government even as it polarized the public and contributed to a growing sense that elites are contemptuous of Americans who live outside of their cultural enclaves.
In March, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced the cancellation of $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, a measure that secured the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Later, the Trump administration disclosed its reviewing $9 billion worth of federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard University, jeopardizing a substantial source of the school’s income over its alleged failure to quell antisemitic and pro-Hamas activity on campus following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. Princeton University saw $210 million of its federal grants and funding suspended too, prompting its president, Christopher Eisgruber to say the institution is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.”
Additionally, 60 universities are being investigated by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights over their handling of campus antisemitism, a project that will serve as an early test of the administration’s ability to perform the essential functions of the agency after downsizing its workforce to increase its efficiency.
One of those universities, Northwestern University, on Monday touted its progress in addressing campus antisemitism, noting that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and begun holding “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions which “all students, faculty, and staff” must attend.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Belgium Joins Hungary in Rejecting ICC Warrant Against Netanyahu, Signaling Shift in International Stance
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, Feb. 16, 2025. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
Belgium announced it would not enforce the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza, should he visit Brussels—marking a significant shift from the government’s previous policies.
In an interview with Belgium’s VRT broadcaster on Thursday, Prime Minister Bart De Wever was asked about Hungary’s decision to not act on the ICC warrant against Netanyahu during the Israeli leader’s visit to Budapest this week.
“To be completely honest, I don’t think we would either,” De Wever said during the interview.
“There is such a thing as realpolitik, I don’t think any European country would arrest Netanyahu if he were on their territory. France wouldn’t do it, and I don’t think we would, either.”
As Hungary welcomed Netanyahu to Budapest with full military honors on Thursday, ignoring the ICC arrest warrant against him, the country also announced its decision to withdraw from the international court.
After their meeting, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said he believes the ICC is “no longer an impartial court, not a court of law, but a political court.”
“I am convinced that this otherwise important international judicial forum has been degraded into a political tool, with which we cannot and do not want to engage,” Orban said during a press conference.
In November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza war.
The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which until a recently imposed blockade had provided significant humanitarian aid into the enclave throughout the war.
Israel also says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
Belgium’s center-right government, led by De Wever’s National Flemish Alliance party, took power this year after defeating a left-wing coalition led by the Socialist Party, known for its anti-Israel stance.
Under the previous government, Belgium joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Since December 2023, South Africa has been pursuing its case at the ICJ accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
Last year, Belgium’s former Deputy Prime Minister, Petra De Sutter, said, “War crimes and crimes against humanity cannot go unpunished,” referring to the ICC arrest warrants against Netanyahu.
“Europe must comply. Impose economic sanctions, suspend the Association Agreement with Israel and uphold these arrest warrants,” De Sutter wrote in a post on X.
In line with this position, former Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said in November that Belgium would “assume its responsibility” towards the ICC, emphasizing that “there can be no double standards.”
After the ICC’s decision to issue the warrants, several countries, including Hungary, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Romania, Poland, France, and Italy, have said they would not arrest Netanyahu if he visited.
Germany seems to have a conflicting stance on this matter. During a press conference, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he could not imagine the ICC arrest warrant against Netanyahu being executed during a potential visit to Berlin.
However, Germany’s Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, criticized Hungary’s refusal to enforce the arrest warrant against the Israeli leader this week.
“This is a setback for international criminal law,” Baerbock said during a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels.
“In Europe, no one is above the law. And this applies to all areas of law,” she said.
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