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New York Times Finds a Way to Israel-Bash Even When Recommending the Talmud
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Is there no Jewish subject the New York Times can touch without somehow connecting it back to Israel-bashing?
The Sunday New York Times Magazine features a regular “letter of recommendation” column devoted usually to unreserved endorsements — baseball on the radio, Danish butter cookies. The latest one is about the Talmud. Actually, not quite about “the Talmud,” as the Times headline somewhat misleadingly puts it, but about the “Daily Dose of Talmud” emails published by My Jewish Learning, which are not bad, but which are something different from the full and complete text of Talmud itself, even in translation.
Anyone who expected the Times to treat the Talmud with the same unalloyed positivity and enthusiasm that it applies to cowboy boots, practicing the saxophone outdoors, or other “letter of recommendation” topics is in for a bit of a surprise, because the Times describes the Talmud as useful largely as medicine for the writer’s guilt about Israel’s “brutal” bombing campaign.
“In the days immediately following the attacks of Oct. 7, the Talmudic rabbis felt like a comforting reminder of Jewish resilience. But in the later weeks and months, as the horrors of Oct. 7 gave way to a brutal Israeli bombing campaign, my relationship to the Talmud began to curdle,” the Times article says. “I tried hard to disentangle Daf Yomi from the bombs, from my grief and anger at those who seemed to value retribution over the sanctity of human life and the pursuit of peace.”
The article goes on: “A year later, now, with much of Gaza in ruins and tens of thousands of people killed — tens of thousands of worlds destroyed — I’m still struggling with these questions. Most days, frankly, the only answer I have is to keep reading, to keep returning to the text no matter how angry or ashamed or grief-stricken I might be.”
I guess it’s somewhat reassuring that the Jewish Times writer feels personally connected enough to Israel to be “ashamed” by its actions, rather than entirely disconnected from it. And dealing by studying the Talmud, even a version of it mediated by emails, is better than protesting against Israel on campuses or in the streets.
Yet it takes a certain level of vanity and obtuseness for an American Jew, while Israeli soldiers are risking their lives in Gaza and Lebanon and while Israeli civilians are crowded in bomb shelters to protect against Iranian missile attacks, to be publicly handwringing in the New York Times about his feeling of being “ashamed” by “a brutal Israeli bombing campaign.” The idea that the campaign is about “retribution” rather than itself about the sanctity of life and the pursuit of peace is misleading and simpleminded.
The Times writer, Michael David Lukas, was last noticed in the New York Times back in 2018, publicly proclaiming himself a pork-eater, professing his “fondness for Bernie Sanders,” and denouncing Hanukkah as “an eight-night-long celebration of religious fundamentalism and violence.” At least it’s not just contemporary Israeli violence that bothers Lukas; he didn’t like it when the Maccabees defended Israel, either.
Lukas’s social media feed is full of retweets of non-Zionist and anti-Zionists writers and publications such as Peter Beinart and Jewish Currents and extreme anti-Israel activist groups such as If Not Now.
Leave it to the New York Times to let an article recommending the Talmud drift into an expression of vicarious shame for Israeli brutality. If I drafted such an article as an anti-New York Times parody, people would think it was over-the-top.
So often at the New York Times, in academia, or in mainstream book publishing, though, Israel-bashing is, for Jews, the required price of admission. Lukas, who not only writes for the Times but also teaches at San Francisco State University and is a book author, appears all too willing to perform the public role of American Jew ashamed of Israel. Maybe by the time he finishes the page-a-day cycle a few years from now he’ll wise up. Or maybe by then the Times editors will find some way to write about the Talmud without using it as a vehicle for more Israel-bashing.
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 Finds a Way to Israel-Bash Even When Recommending the Talmud first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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6 Israelis Murdered, 2 Weeks After Palestinian Authority Judge Calls to ‘Kill Them One by One’
People inspect a bus with bullet holes at the scene where a shooting terrorist attack took place at the outskirts of Jerusalem, Sept. 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Two weeks ago, a Palestinian Authority (PA) official called for the genocide of Jews for the seventh time in a year, as documented by Palestinian Media Watch.
On Monday morning, that call was acted upon, as two Palestinian terrorists opened fire at civilians in Jerusalem, killing six Israelis and wounding 12.
“Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality,” according to American author Earl Nightingale, who said this about keeping an optimistic outlook on life and practicing repetition of positive thinking.
The Palestinian Authority uses repetition to incite the murder of Jews.
When PA preachers in mosques repeat the call to “kill Jews one by one, and do not leave even one,” they play into the subconscious mind of their congregation and nurture a justification for murdering Jews and Israelis.
The sermons — all broadcast on official PA TV — create a dangerous reality in which Palestinians see religious value in killing Jews “one by one”:
PA Shari’ah judge Abdallah Harb: “O Allah, strengthen our stance and grant us victory over the infidels … and destroy our enemies. O Allah… strike your enemies, the enemies of the religion, and they cannot overcome You, O Allah. Allah, count them one by one, kill them one by one, and do not leave even one, O Master of the Universe.”
[Official PA TV, Aug. 22, 2025]
Official PA TV has broadcast this call for genocide of Jews by mosque preachers — who receive instructions from the PA Ministry of Religion on what to speak about in their sermons — at least seven times in the past year.
In June, two months prior to this last call, a PA Shariah judge prayed: “O Allah strike the thieving Jews, Allah count them one by one, kill them one by one, and do not leave even one.” [PA TV, June 13, 2025]
The “one-by-one” motif in these calls is particularly insidious, as it turns the murder of Jews into an easily achievable objective.
Rather than encouraging Palestinians to commit mass attacks that face logistical difficulties, killing Jews “one-by-one” presents a practical strategy for anyone and everyone.
And on Monday, Palestinian terrorists answered the PA’s call.
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this story first appeared.
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Union Antisemitism Running Rampant on College Campuses, Experts and Student Tell US Congress
Illustrative: Rutgers University students holding an anti-Zionist demonstration on March 19, 2024. Photo: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect
Experts told the US Congress on Tuesday that antisemitism runs rampant in campus labor unions, trapping Jews in exploitative and nonconsensual relationships with union bosses who spend their compulsory membership dues on political activities which promote hatred of their identity and the destruction of the Jewish homeland.
Testifying at a hearing titled “Unmasking Union Antisemitism” held by the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, the witnesses described a series of issues facing Jewish graduate students represented against their will by the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) union.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW), which was represented among the expert witnesses, has spoken publicly before about a litany of alleged injustices to which UE officials subject Jewish student-employees in the US’s most prestigious institutions of higher education, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to Cornell University.
At MIT, the group said in August, “union officers” aided a riotous mob which illegally occupied a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” participating in the demonstration and even denying access to campus buildings. UE members at Stanford University, meanwhile, allegedly denied religious accommodations to Jewish students who requested exemption from union dues over that branch’s supporting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. And Cornell University UE was accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases as well and followed up the rejection with an intrusive “questionnaire” which probed Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”
During an interview with The Algemeiner after the hearing, Glenn Taubman, staff attorney for NRTW, said union antisemitism highlights the issues inherent in compulsory union representation, which he says quells freedom of speech and association. He pointed to the case of Cornell University PhD candidate David Rubinstein, who testified before the subcommittee on Tuesday about his own tribulations and a climate of hatred which evades being redressed because the ringleaders fostering it hold left-wing viewpoints.
“The only reason that David is forced to be represented by UE and is theoretically forced to pay them dues is because federal labor law allows that and in many cases requires it,” Taubman explained. “What I told the committee is that ending the union abuse of graduate students and people like David requires amending federal law so that unions are not the forced representatives of people who don’t want such representation.”
He added, “Unions have a special privilege that no other private organization in America has, and that is the power to impose their representation on people who don’t want it and then mandate that they pay dues because they quote-un-quote represent you. That is the most un-American thing that I can imagine.”
Rubinstein told The Algemeiner that he is a Democrat who supports many of the causes for which unions advocate but that what he described as UE’s support for Hamas leaves him no choice but to seek every avenue for disassociating with it.
“As a Jew, I cannot support an organization which spends its time not advocating for wages and health care but rather for ‘intifada revolution,’” he said. “The union antisemitism is empowered by the Cornell administration’s persistent weakness and consistent reneging on its promises to defend the rights of Jewish students.”
Rubinstein added that Cornell University president Michael Kotlikoff came close to exempting students from paying UE dues but abandoned the policy change after its members threatened to strike and thereby disrupt university operations.
“The threat of being terminated, the demands for money, and the constant harassment that others and I have experienced from UE would have never been possible had it not been for the weakness of Cornell leadership,” he added.
Campus antisemitism has drawn NRTW into an alliance with Jewish faculty and students across the US.
In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.
That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.
“All Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” NRTW said at the time.
Kyle Koeppel Mann, senior staff attorney at the New York Legal Assistance Group, and Joseph McCartin, professor and executive director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, also testified at Tuesday’s hearing.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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German Police Arrest 5 Anti-Israel Activists After Break-In, Vandalism Targeting Elbit Systems
Demonstrators attend the “Lift the Ban” rally organized by Defend Our Juries, challenging the British government’s proscription of “Palestine Action” under anti-terrorism laws, in Parliament Square, in London, Britain, Sept. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Jasso
Authorities in Germany on Monday arrested five activists linked to the anti-Israel network Palestine Action after the group broke into an Elbit Systems building in the southern city of Ulm, vandalizing the facility with red paint, smoke bombs, graffiti, and smashed windows before occupying an upper floor in an effort to oppose the Jewish state’s war to dismantle the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
The officers who responded surrounded the building and apprehended the suspects. The state’s Security and Counterterrorism Center then took over the investigation.
Video posted by Palestine Action showed masked figures hurling paint, breaking through doors, and damaging equipment inside the facility owned by the Israeli defense contractor, which the activist group and recently proscribed terrorist organization has regularly targeted. The vandals claimed they had sought “to dismantle the tools used to commit genocide in Gaza.”
Elbit released a statement condemning the crime.
“Elbit Systems Deutschland GmbH is a German company and has been a reliable partner of the Bundeswehr for many years in protecting democracy and freedom in the Federal Republic of Germany. In this regard, we condemn in the strongest possible terms the illegal acts of destruction and vandalism committed at our site over the weekend,” the defense firm stated. “It is unacceptable that violent groups, presumably under the influence of foreign agitators, are repeatedly attempting to disrupt production processes in Ulm, seeking to endanger employees and to instill fear.”
The company added that “we have been an attractive employer and a driver of technical innovation in the Ulm region for decades, and we trust in the support of the authorities in quickly solving the latest crimes and restoring the status quo. The company is working that production of systems for the German Armed Forces at the Ulm plant will resume shortly.”
Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, labeled the attack on Elbit an act of terrorism.
“In Ulm, the branch of an Israeli company was attacked by masked perpetrators — presumably motivated by left-extremist, Israel-hostile intent,” he wrote on X. “While Hamas supporters smash windows here, terrorists in Jerusalem murder 6 civilians in a brutal attack on a bus. Anyone who attacks Israel — whether with words, deeds, or weapons — simultaneously assaults our shared security and our values. Antisemitism and terror must have no place in Germany. These attacks are terrorist acts — they must be clearly named and harshly punished.”
Prosor was referring to a terrorist attack in Jerusalem on Monday in which Hamas terrorists opened fire on a bus, murdering six Israelis and injuring several more.
The break-in is the latest in a concerted campaign of vandalism and intimidation carried out by Palestine Action across Europe. Founded in the UK in 2020, the group has specialized in spectacular stunts and property destruction aimed at shutting down Elbit facilities and other companies the group regards as complicit in an alleged genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Its activists have smashed factory windows, chained themselves to gates, poured red paint over equipment, and even attacked military planes at a Royal Air Force base.
The UK regards Palestine Action as a terrorist organization. On Sunday, police announced the arrests of almost 900 at a demonstration organized in support of the group. Charges included 857 alleged to support a banned extremist entity and 17 alleged assaults.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Claire Smart said of the event that “the violence we encountered during the operation was coordinated and carried out by a group of people … intent on creating as much disorder as possible.”
James “Fergie” Chambers, an American heir to the Cox Enterprises fortune, pays the legal fees of arrested Palestine Action members. He once wrote online, “I chant death to America every day” and that “No faction of the Palestinian resistance, Hamas or other, has done *anything* wrong.”
Richard Barnard, a co-founder of the UK-designated terrorist group, is scheduled to face trial next year on “one count of inviting support for a proscribed organization, namely Hamas, under section 12(1A) of the Terrorism Act and two counts of encouraging ‘criminal damage’ against Israeli weapons factories under s44 of the Serious Crime Act.”
Barnard stated in a June 2024 interview that he had previously broken into US Air Force bases in Germany. In October 2023, he said that “when we hear the resistance, the Al-Aqsa flood [Hamas’s name for the Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel], we must turn that flood into a tsunami of the whole world.”
Huda Ammori, another co-founder of Palestine Action, also expressed her enthusiasm for the mass slaughter of Jews on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Zionists spend 75 years stealing Palestinian land but fails [sic] to take away the Palestinian determination for liberation. Palestine will be free!” Ammori wrote on the day of the attack. “If armed thugs stormed your home, forced you and your family to live in the garage, routinely beat you and starved you. Would you fight back? #FreePalestine.”