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The Manchester synagogue attack inspires ‘her skirt was too short’ antisemitism
On Yom Kippur, two people were killed and more were injured in Manchester, England, when a man named Jihad Al-Shamie attacked the Heaton Park Congregation synagogue, in an act of terrorism. As one of those online-during-holidays Jews, I saw the news when it happened, and was, of course, devastated. But no, not surprised. I thought about the security apparatus to enter Jewish buildings of any sort, in Toronto where I live and in my hometown of New York, and how it can seem like an unnecessary fear-heightening approach, until it doesn’t.
I have never been to Manchester, and mainly know it, affectionately, as the hometown of some of my favourite characters on Benidorm. So I attribute the amount I felt personally shaken by this, recent antisemitic incident number lost count, by the sheer Torontonianness of it all. A Jewish community in an English-speaking city not known globally for having Jews, but that does have Jews, not as many Jews as Muslims, and probably not as many Jews or Muslims as whichever xenophobes imagine, but yes, some. Jews engaged in one of the most obviously religious-not-political (not that political speech merits violence!) acts. I’m not going to do a let’s not make this about me-type privilege disclaimer, because this sort of thing absolutely happens in Canada as well. I do not opine on this from some lofty arena where Jews are not targets. No such place exists.
But we’re at least still in the era when mainstream public figures make statements denouncing antisemitism. Progressive New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded to the attack with a Bluesky post that would not, on its face, be a prompt for any kind of discussion: “I am sickened by today’s attack in Manchester. Antisemitism is on the rise around the world, and we must do all we can to stomp it out. I am grateful to first responders and congregants who showed incredible bravery, and I am praying for those who were killed.”
It was a good, does-the-job statement. People killed in synagogue: bad. What could be controversial about that, unless you, personally, go around killing people in synagogues?
Alas, the replies suggest AOC had in fact said something controversial. It’s not permitted, you see, to condemn a violent antisemitic act without affixing not just an aside reassuring the too-online that you also oppose other forms of hatred, but also a bit about how the real villain here is Israel. Without, that is, demanding that everyone interpret this tragedy as a sign that those Jews are getting what was coming to them. A sampling, which you’re welcome to search for but I’m not doing links:
“Pro tip: DO NOT SUPPORT A GENOCIDE. People will usually like you less when you do.”
“Heaton Park synagogue displays Israeli flags on its website.” (This from a man who was so proud of himself for finding this that he posted the same finding again in the same thread, in different phrasing.)
“ACTUAL antisemitism is unacceptable, and so are the FALSE accusations that anyone who criticizes the war crimes of the barbaric Israeli regime is ‘antisemitic’.”
“Antipalestinianism in the form of Western-aided genocide by Israel has been on the rise too. Palestinians are very much a Canaanite Semitic people and I for one would like to see an end to hatred of not just Semites but all people who have suffered for their ethnicity, religion or other attributes”
“Any word about the dozens of Palestinian kids slaughtered by jews in Israel every day for the last 2 years”
All of this and so much more, in response to an American politician—a pro-Palestinian one at that—saying it’s bad to kill Jews in England while they pray on Yom Kippur. She hadn’t said it’s good to kill other people in other countries on other holidays! She said that a terrible thing that had just happened was terrible. Which it was.
But it was another post, not from this thread, that led me to realize something about what we’re looking at:
“They are celebrating while Palestinian children are being killed by Israel. This is an awful tragedy but so is the awful genocide to Palestinians by Netanyahu!”
What’s so striking is that this is coming from someone who knows zilch about Yom Kippur (“celebrating”), and who implies that there’s something unseemly going on when Jews go on existing while Palestinians are being killed. It paints a portrait of Jews gathered specifically to celebrate the devastation of Gaza. As though by merely breathing, Jews everywhere are killing children. Yes, it’s an antisemitic post; what I’m getting at is, of what sort.
One might wonder—I have wondered—how if making life outside of Israel unbearable for Jews came to present itself as an anti-Zionist position. After all, Israel has a right of return. The door is open. If you’re Jewish and choosing to live elsewhere, shouldn’t anti-Zionists be congratulating you on your choice?
The key is that there are (at least) two things calling themselves anti-Zionism. One is a belief in the ability of Jewish life to flourish in the absence of the state of Israel. When someone Jewish says they’re an anti-Zionist, this tends to be what they mean. They think Israel-as-a-Jewish-state is bad in part because they see it as bad—safety-wise or morally or spiritually or some mix—for Jews. Some non-Jewish anti-Zionists see things this way as well, presumably.
This is a position bolstered by the fact that Israel’s creation did not end antisemitism, and, more recently, by the fact that the horrific recent-memory pogrom happened there and not in the Diaspora. It is also, however, a position that rather glosses over the absence of places to turn for Jews fleeing, principally, the Holocaust. It also ignores that Israel’s actions can hardly be the reason Jews feel (are) unsafe globally, given that Jews were as unsafe globally as it gets in the years just before the state’s founding.
What I’ve just described, this first type of anti-Zionism, is not my position. (I am in favour of Israel’s continued existence as a Jewish state, I’m for two states, so I’m not an anti-Zionist!) But it is not a position rooted in ill-will towards Jews.
The other thing calling itself anti-Zionism is a disregard for, or outright antipathy to, Jewish life, wherever it’s located. There are anti-Zionists who don’t want Jews living in Israel, because they don’t want Jews living, period. They are therefore no more pleased with Jews living in England or Canada or America or France or Mars or an as-yet-unknown dimension. The point is not to keep Jews out of the West Bank or Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. It’s to not have Jews around.
Why do I refer to this as a type of anti-Zionism, and not just as a separate thing, antisemitism, which it obviously also is? I do this because Israel is, in these cases, used as the pretext for giving Jews a hard time wherever we’re found. It’s what you’re witnessing in the ‘her skirt was too short’ victim-blaming posts, the ones conflating ordinary Jews in England with the leader of the Israeli government.
And adherents to this second form of anti-Zionism are therefore not bothered by the fact, and it is a fact, that attacks like this if anything make the case for Zionism. The point for them is not to reach some tikkun olam Diasporist Utopia where woman rabbis in kippot bake gluten-free challah alongside religious leaders of all genders and faith traditions. It’s for Jews to simply not.
The CJN’s opinion editor Phoebe Maltz Bovy can be reached at pbovy@thecjn.ca, @phoebebovy on Bluesky, and @bovymaltz on X. Subscribe to her podcast, The Jewish Angle wherever you get your podcasts.
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Bari Weiss, Free Press founder who started as antisemitism crusader, named editor-in-chief of CBS
(JTA) — Bari Weiss, the journalist who first rose to prominence for her campus campaign alleging antisemitism two decades ago, has been named editor-in-chief of CBS News, a stunning ascent that marks one of the most consequential appointments in American media in recent years.
The appointment came as Paramount Skydance, led by David Ellison, announced its $150 million purchase of The Free Press, the publication Weiss founded in 2022. Weiss will oversee both outlets as editor-in-chief, reporting directly to Ellison. The move marks a major shakeup for a legacy news division long associated with mainstream liberalism and a bet on Weiss’s brand of provocative centrism.
Ellison’s involvement adds another layer of intrigue. The son of Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder known for his pro-Israel philanthropy, David has in recent months gained attention as his father helped spearhead a bid to acquire TikTok’s U.S. operations. The forced sale, mandated by a new U.S. law aimed at separating the platform from its Chinese ownership, has drawn political scrutiny and elevated the Ellisons’ influence at the intersection of media, tech, and geopolitics.
For Jewish observers, Weiss’s trajectory carries special resonance. Her public identity has long intertwined with Jewish causes, Israel advocacy and debates over antisemitism and free speech. Under her leadership, The Free Press has become a prominent voice on the American Jewish experience, particularly its coverage and commentary supporting Israel and condemning rising anti-Israel activism after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel.
Born in Pittsburgh and educated at Columbia University, Weiss first emerged as a student activist in the early 2000s when she campaigned against professors she accused of anti-Israel bias, a battle that foreshadowed later campus wars over Zionism and academic freedom. A film she co-produced called “Columbia Unbecoming” documents her account.
Raised in a Reform Jewish household in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, her connection to the community became national news with the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue, the congregation where she had her bat mitzvah. The massacre, she wrote, was an “alarm bell” that shook her out of a “holiday from history.” She channeled the tragedy into a book, “How to Fight Anti-Semitism,” in 2019.
Now 41, Weiss has positioned herself as a defender of open inquiry within liberal institutions and a critic of what she saw as left-wing intolerance. She rose through the editorial ranks at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, where she became known for her critiques of “cancel culture.” Her 2020 resignation letter from the Times, alleging bullying and ideological conformity, went viral and turned her into a hero for many self-described centrists.
When she launched The Free Press, Weiss promised to create a home for “free thought and fearless reporting.” The site quickly grew into a digital media powerhouse, attracting major investors and millions of readers, but also attracting criticism from those who say Weiss’s project is a polished rebranding of right-wing media.
Now she will have the chance to bring her brand of journalism to a much broader audience, as the top editor overseeing coverage at a legacy news organization whose properties include “60 Minutes” and “Sunday Morning.”
“As proud as we are of the 1.5 million subscribers who have joined under the banner of The Free Press — and we are astonished at that number — this is a country with 340 million people. We want our work to reach more of them, as quickly as possible,” Weiss wrote in a letter to readers on Monday. “This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity allows us to do that.”
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On Paramount+, Apple TV, HBO and more, Oct. 7 emerges as a cinematic subgenre
(JTA) — Two years after the Hamas attacks on Israel, the tragedy of Oct. 7 has become its own cinematic sub-genre. Filmmakers have rushed to bear witness, survivors have taken up cameras, and streaming platforms are now filled with documentaries and dramatizations that revisit, reimagine, and attempt to process the day’s horrors.
From raw documentaries of the Nova music festival to scripted miniseries debuting this month, these works show how Israelis, and Jews around the world, are still grappling with a single day that reshaped their lives.
The desert rave that became the site of mass murder has inspired a cluster of films, each offering a different register of witness.
“We Will Dance Again” is a documentary that offers a chronological, minute-by-minute account of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on the Supernova Music Festival in Israel. The film is constructed primarily through the first-hand testimonies of over a dozen survivors, interweaving their accounts with footage they recorded on their cell phones and video recovered from the cameras of the attackers. The documentary is available to stream Paramount+.
“#Nova,” now on Prime Video, adds new layers of forensic detail by synchronizing video captured by the victims on their personal cell phones with footage recovered from Hamas body-worn cameras. “Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre,” on Apple TV and YouTube, stitches together real-time footage and interviews to convey the disorienting chaos of the first hours.
A more intimate companion piece, “Tattooed for Life,” which played across many film festivals but is not currently streaming, follows tattoo artist and survivor Liraz Uliel as she memorializes fellow festival-goers through a shared fractal tattoo design, an act of mourning turned into community ritual.
Other filmmakers have turned their attention to what happened in the homes, fields and kibbutzim of southern Israel.
The PBS documentary “After October 7: A Personal Journey to Kfar Aza” offers a close look at one of the hardest-hit communities, combining news footage with deeply personal reflections on grief, displacement and rebuilding.
Currently in theaters, “The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue” chronicles retired general Noam Tibon’s desperate drive south to save his son, journalist Amir Tibon, and his family. Blending firsthand testimony with security footage of real-time chaos, the film recounts the former general’s 10-hour, high-stakes mission across a country under siege to rescue his loved ones from their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz. The film won the People’s Choice Award when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival after some turmoil.
Two scripted productions expand these same themes. “Red Alert” (known in Hebrew as “First Light”) is a four-part miniseries that dramatizes five intertwined true stories of civilians, police, and first responders, and is executive-produced by Lawrence Bender, of “Pulp Fiction” fame. The series weaves these chaotic narratives together in a race-against-time format and premieres on Paramount+ on Oct. 7, making it one of two major scripted series to debut on the second anniversary of the attack.
The second series, “One Day in October,” an anthology series based on seven distinct personal stories, will debut on HBO Max on Oct. 7, with all seven episodes available for the U.S. audience.
Many documentaries are meant as a bulwark against denial.
“Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre,” a 47-minute film, compiled by the Israeli military, compiles raw footage from multiple sources, including Hamas body-cam recordings, dash cams, CCTV, and victims’ phone videos, to create a chronological record of the atrocities. Due to its graphic nature, the film has not been released to the general public and is only shown in private, invitation-only screenings for policymakers, journalists, diplomats, and community leaders around the world.
A documentary created by Sheryl Sandberg, “Screams before Silence,” address the sexual violence and gender-based atrocities perpetrated by Hamas during the attacks. It is intended to break what critics have described as a moral silence on these war crimes and is streaming on YouTube.
“The Killing Roads” does narrow its focus to the attacks on Route 232 and Highway 34, which were the main arteries where Hamas gunmen ambushed and killed approximately 250 people fleeing the Nova festival and surrounding communities. The film has been released for free viewing on platforms like YouTube and a dedicated website to combat denial of the massacre.
The PBS documentary “October 7th: Through Their Eyes” is focused on a network of Israeli volunteer archivists who immediately set out to preserve the large volume of digital evidence, including social media posts, videos, and messages, from survivors and victims before the content could be deleted or lost. The goal of their project, October7.org, is to create a widely accessible, permanent database of first-hand testimonies.
Several recent works focus on the ordeal of captivity and survival.
“The Children of October 7,” streaming on Paramount+ and hosted by activist Montana Tucker, profiles eight young survivors (ages 11-17) who share harrowing, unscripted testimonies of narrowly escaping death, witnessing the murder of family members, or enduring captivity, and highlights their resilience in the face of unspeakable loss.
Meanwhile, the short documentary “A Letter to David” sees the filmmaker revisit his onetime actor and friend, David Cunio, who remains held in Gaza along with his brother, Ariel Cunio, after being kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz. The film is a collage of family footage and archival material that functions as a cinematic plea for his return.
As the shockwaves of Oct. 7 spread around the world, another crop of films has examined how the attacks reverberated across the Jewish Diaspora and within movements for and against Israel’s war.
The documentary “October 8” (previously titled “October H8te”) captures the anti-Israel protests that erupted across U.S. cities and college campuses in the days and weeks following the attack. It is streaming on Apple TV and Amazon. “The New Jew: Days of War” follows Israeli comedian Guri Alfi as he travels across North America to explore Jewish identity and division in the aftermath.
“Torn: The Israel-Palestine Poster War on NYC Streets” documents the dueling “Kidnapped” and “Free Gaza” posters that turned city lampposts into symbolic battlefields. And “There Is Another Way” portrays the Israeli–Palestinian group Combatants for Peace, whose members struggle to uphold their belief in nonviolence even as both societies harden in grief.
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Poll: 40% of American Jews believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza
(JTA) — Multiple polls have found that about 60% of Americans believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, a biting charge that Israel and the United States reject.
Now, for the first time, a poll has taken the pulse of U.S. Jews specifically — and found that 39% of them hold the opinion.
The new poll by the Washington Post, conducted in early September prior to President Donald Trump’s latest breakthrough in ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, also found that 61% of American Jews said that Israel has committed war crimes against Palestinians.
While allegations that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza have been lodged against the country by international bodies, human rights groups and pro-Palestinian activists, the poll suggests that charge is now resonating more widely among even U.S. Jews — those who are most likely to have a personal connection to Israel.
The poll found that many American Jews still hold strong ties to Israel. Three-quarters of American Jews surveyed said that Israel’s existence is vital for the long-term future of the Jewish people, while over half said that they were “very” or “somewhat” emotionally attached to Israel.
But emotional ties to Israel were far weaker among younger respondents. While 68% of American Jews over 65 said they were emotionally connection to Israel, among those aged between 18 to 34, that share dropped to 36%. Younger Jews were also more likely to call Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, with half of Jews aged 18 to 34 using the term.
The poll found that Jews were almost evenly split over Israel’s actions in Gaza, with 46% approving and 48% opposing. That divide was also split sharply on partisan lines, with 85% of Jewish Republicans approving compared to 31% of Jewish Democrats.
The majority of American Jews also blame Hamas more than Israel for the civilian death toll in Gaza, with two-thirds of American Jews blaming Hamas for starting the war and operating in civilian areas of Gaza, according to the poll.
The poll also found that criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had significantly increased among American Jews in recent years. It found that 68% expressed a negative opinion of the Israeli leader, with 48% rating his leadership as “poor,” compared to 54% disapproving of him in a 2020 Pew Research Center poll.
On the continuation of the conflict between Hamas and Israel, vast majorities of the American Jewish community assigned blame to both Hamas and Netanyahu, with 91% saying Hamas bears responsibility and 86% saying Netanyahu bears responsibility.
As several European countries recognized Palestinian statehood last month, the poll also found that over half of American Jews believe that Israel and an independent Palestinian state can coexist peacefully with each other.
Looking to the relationship between the United States and Israel, about half of respondents said that U.S. support for Israel is at about the right level. A third of respondents said that the United States is too supportive of Israel, a share that jumped 10 percentage points since the 2020 Pew poll, and 20% said it is not supportive enough.
The Washington Post poll surveyed 815 American Jews from Sept. 2 to 9 and had a margin of error of 4.7 percentage points.
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