Two weeks ago, I was on my way home from Israel after leading young Jewish activists across the country to meet with Israelis and Palestinians fighting for peace and justice. But just as my plane at Ben Gurion Airport was beginning to board, I was called to the gate desk, where I was told that I would be further questioned by airport security.

I was interrogated and searched for the next hour; one security agent accused me of having suspect political motivations because my checked luggage contained materials sympathetic to Israeli pro-democracy protesters and Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation. They were trying to scare me. I felt, viscerally, how much Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government wants to deter American Jews from aiding Israelis and Palestinians working toward peace and shared security.

But it didn’t intimidate me. Instead, it left me feeling more convinced than ever that it’s crucial for Jews around the world to take direct action for equality and justice in Israel and the West Bank. Because for every American Jew who, like me, has to endure a little ordeal with airport security, there are millions of Palestinians and Israelis facing far worse repression. And it is our duty to stand with them.

As the director of young leadership and education at the New Israel Fund, an organization that has spent decades building movements that advance freedom, security and equality for all people under Israeli control, I had led a delegation of young people on a trip through Israel and the West Bank, where we met with Israeli peace activists who survived the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023; Negev Bedouin communities demanding the government given them access to water and electricity; and humanitarian organizations fighting to bring desperately needed aid into Gaza.

In my luggage were materials that reflected my politics, among them a poster I had gotten at a protest in Tel Aviv that said, “Only peace will bring security,” and two books — the graphic novel Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City and Daybreak in Gaza: Stories of Palestinian Lives and Culture — that I had purchased at The Educational Bookshop, a renowned Palestinian cultural center in East Jerusalem that Israeli authorities have raided multiple times since Oct. 7.

The first agent to examine me asked about those materials, as well as some T-shirts that referred to Israel’s far-right minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, with a profanity. “If you believe in peace and human rights for all people, then why are these messages so one-sided?” the security agent asked.

I said that I didn’t think they were. Israelis want peace: At well-attended protests led by the Hostage Families’ Forum throughout the war in Gaza, attendees demanded a deal to end the fighting in exchange for a return of the hostages. And most Israelis oppose Ben-Gvir, viewing his Jewish supremacist vision — which would see Israel annex the vast majority of the West Bank, and violent Jewish extremists given a pass — as a major threat to the future of their country.

Then, two agents led me into another room with an array of scanners and equipment. I started to sweat. Just before my trip, two Jewish American activists were deported after volunteering in the West Bank. They were slapped with a 10-year ban from entering Israel. Could that happen to me?

One agent asked me if I visited the West Bank, and who I’d met with. I thought of my friend Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian peace activist murdered by an internationally-sanctioned settler in July.

As soon as I had landed in Israel, I’d rented a car and drove to Awdah’s village of Umm al Khair, to visit his family, whom I’d gotten to know when I lived and worked there as a human rights activist in 2022. As Awdah’s three children, all under 5, ran around our feet, I handed a bouquet of flowers to his widow. Awdah’s cousin recounted how he and a dozen other members of the community had been arrested and tortured for days immediately after Awdah’s killing. With tears in his eyes, he told me how he had been forced to miss Awdah’s funeral — which took place only after a bureaucratic standoff with the authorities, who held Awdah’s body for 10 days before finally releasing it to his family.

His killer, in contrast, was detained for a single day. Upon his release, his gun was returned to him. The police claimed that they couldn’t pursue further investigation for lack of evidence, even though there were multiple videos of the shooting, including Awdah’s own.

Yes, I had visited the West Bank, I told the agent. I’d met with some friends who are struggling to be free.

What I didn’t say: Despite my fury over Awdah’s murder, when I visited Umm al Khair, and stood over the stain of Awdah’s blood on the concrete where he was killed, I felt an odd sense of calm wash over me.

Violence and hatred are magnetic: they have the power to call out the evil in all of us. I’ve felt that disturbing call myself. But I’ve also felt how nonviolence can counteract that dark magnetism. I’ve seen thousands of Jews from Israel and the diaspora choose to intercede in situations of oppression, to be a protective presence against settler and state violence, and to try to use our bodies to repel cruelty and domination. I’ve seen it work in places like Umm al Khair, and that’s why I have hope.

More people who believe in freedom, equality and security for all people need to engage in this work on the ground. Because the authoritarians and Jewish supremacists who wish to repress our movement are, in fact, scared of Jews and Palestinians who partner together. They’re scared because we are bonded not by blood and soil but values and visions of a shared future.

What we want is simple: a land where all Israelis and Palestinians can live free from repression and violence, build homes and watch their families flourish, and travel with whatever books they want. This is the future that my Israeli and Palestinian friends are fighting for. And I will, too, by any nonviolent means necessary.

The post I was interrogated by Israeli authorities — I know why they’re terrified of peace activists like me appeared first on The Forward.

Tom Nesher doesn’t like heavy dramas about grieving families. She wanted her first feature to be a coming-of-age film made while she came of age herself. But when her brother, Ari, was killed in a hit and run accident in 2018, just after his 17th birthday, tragedy kept working its way into her writing.

Rather than avoid the subject — covered extensively in the Israeli press — she resolved to make the movie she and her brother would love.

“A film that is full of life and sexy and funny,” Nesher, 28, said from her home in Tel Aviv, “but also the film that I would want to see as a grieving young person, and a film that I felt like was missing, a film that I was searching for at the time.”

Come Closer, which collected four Ophir Awards, including best picture and best director for Nesher, was the Israeli entry for the 2025 Academy Awards and makes its theatrical debut in New York Dec. 5. Filmed well before Oct. 7, and shaped by her own loss, the film has an eerie prescience.

The story begins when Nati (Ido Tako) is kidnapped, a bag placed over his head and his wrists zip-tied together. We later learn he’s being taken to a surprise birthday party at the beach. On his way home, he’s struck by a car, sending the life of his 20-something club kid older sister, Eden (newcomer and Ophir winner Lia Elalouf), into freefall.

Coping with the loss — which at one point, during the shiva, drives her to try on her brother’s underwear — Eden learns that Nati had a secret girlfriend, the sheepish, high school-aged Maya (Darya Rosenn). The two develop a bond that becomes almost levirate as they grow into something more than friends. Both emerge more bruised and battered than before.

“It was very much of the DNA of the movie, having this feeling of Eros and Thanatos, this falling in love that happens with the backdrop of death,” said Nesher.

One sequence that scandalized European audiences drives the theme home.

We see Maya send texts to Eden from her school trip to Auschwitz (responding to an image of a mountain of shoes, Eden asks her for “a pair in my size”). Eden later twerks to a club remix of the Hannah Szenes poem Eli, Eli — a DJ’s interpretation of her “Holocaust song” request. At the same time Maya is bored touring concentration camps, we see Eden marching in the judicial reform protests, bearing witness to the collapse of democracy. 

“The most huge, historical, tragic events can happen, but they are just people falling in love or people having their small, intimate moments,” Nesher, whose grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, said. “Those things coexist.”

Watching the film today, Nesher is reminded of how every life lost is a tragedy leaving behind a mourning loved one. Come Closer knows something else about grief, true, Nesher believes, both to the war in Gaza, and human nature in general.

“When you are in great pain, you are, sadly, also in a place where you can create great pain for others,” Nesher said.

The post Israel’s 2025 Oscar entry is a story of grief, sex and looming national tragedy appeared first on The Forward.

Anti-Israel protesters march through the streets of the township of Lenasia in Johannesburg, South Africa, Oct. 6, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ihsaan Haffejee

An Israeli tourist recounted being brutally assaulted in Nepal this week by a group of local men after they allegedly heard him speaking Hebrew — the latest in a growing string of violent incidents targeting Israelis abroad amid a broader surge in antisemitic hostility worldwide.

On Monday night, Almog Armoza, a 25-year-old Israeli tourist, was walking back to his hostel in Kathmandu — a capital city popular with Israeli travelers — when a group of unknown men reportedly struck him from behind with an iron rod.

“If I hadn’t managed to run, there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be alive today,” Armoza told the Israeli news outlet Ynet. “If the first blow had knocked me out, it could have ended differently.”

According to the victim’s account, he was recording a voice message in Hebrew when a group of three to five men suddenly ambushed him.

One of the assailants then grabbed his jacket, and the group continued to beat him, leaving the victim with an open wound on his head.

“They chased me, but when they saw I was getting close to the entrance, where there is security, they ran off,” Armoza said.

He was later taken to a hospital, where he spent the night under observation due to his head wound and significant blood loss — causing him to miss his flight back to Israel.

He also said he reported the incident to police, noting that he did not believe the assault was an attempted robbery.

“My phone was in my hand, and they didn’t go for it,” Armoza said. “I have traveled the world for three years. This isn’t how robberies are done. The level of violence was meant to kill.”

This latest incident comes amid a global surge in antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

European Jewish communities in particular have been facing a surge in hostility and targeted attacks, including vandalism of murals and businesses, as well as physical assaults. Community leaders have warned that such incidents are becoming more frequent amid continued tensions related to the war in Gaza.

According to data from the Passport Card Index, Israeli tourists are increasingly choosing alternative holiday destinations amid a climate of growing hostility. Thailand has emerged as the top destination, rising from second place before the war, while the United Arab Emirates — previously number one — has fallen to fifth.

The data also highlights a surge in popularity for countries perceived as particularly friendly toward Israel: Hungary jumped from sixth to second place, the United States climbed from eighth to third, and the Czech Republic now ranks fourth.

By contrast, many Western European countries — including France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, and Italy — have become largely off-limits for Israeli travelers.

Last month, a group of Orthodox Jewish American tourists was brutally attacked at Milan’s Central Station by a pro-Palestinian individual.

The victim, who was with a group of 10 Orthodox Jewish tourists visiting Italy, was checking the departure board when an unknown individual began harassing him. 

The attacker then allegedly chased the victim while punching and kicking him and striking him in the head with a blunt metal ring.

During the attack, the assailant reportedly shouted antisemitic insults and threats, including “dirty Jews” and “you kill children in Palestine, and I’ll kill you.”

In September, a Jewish couple was walking through Venice in traditional Orthodox clothing when three assailants confronted them, shouted “Free Palestine,” and physically attacked them, slapping both.

This incident followed another attack on a Jewish couple in Venice the month before, when a man and his pregnant wife were harassed near the city center by three unknown individuals.

The attackers approached the couple, shouting antisemitic insults and calling the husband a “dirty Jew,” while physically assaulting them by throwing water and spitting on them.

Earlier this summer, a group of Israeli teenagers was physically assaulted by dozens of pro-Palestinian assailants — some reportedly armed with knives — on the Greek island of Rhodes.

This antisemitic incident took place after the Israeli teens left a nightclub, when a group of pro-Palestinian individuals followed them to their hotel and violently attacked them, leaving several with minor injuries.

In Athens, a group of pro-Palestinian activists vandalized an Israeli restaurant, shouting antisemitic slurs and spray-painting graffiti with slogans such as “No Zionist is safe here.”

The attackers also posted a sign on one of the restaurant’s windows that read, “All IDF soldiers are war criminals — we don’t want you here,” referring to the Israel Defense Forces.

Similar incidents of unprovoked violence and discrimination against Israelis or Jews perceived as being pro-Israel have been recorded across Europe and as far afield as Australia over the past two years.