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A sign in my neighborhood says ‘The Holocaust is fake’ — I wish I felt surprised
When I saw a sign on my streetcorner in Chicago that said “The Holocaust is fake,” I immediately stopped. I had just left the pool and was on my way to shop for Shabbat. Disgusted, I brought an older neighbor to take a look. I knew he had taken down his mezuzah in fear after some of the protests after Oct. 7 and had only recently put another Jewish symbol back up.
I wanted company as I snapped a picture of the sign, but I also wanted him to be aware of what was happening in the neighborhood. Because these days, the truth and lies are blurred.
Later, I learned that similar stickers and graffiti, some of it misspelled, had appeared on other corners and benches on the Far North side of Chicago, traditionally a stronghold of the Jewish community here, which is the third largest in the U.S.
“Holocaust” and “fake” are two words whose meanings used to be clear to all. Yet the doubt cast on both “Holocaust” and “fake” represent two disturbing trends; their convergence is dangerous, and entirely predictable.
Those who traffic in Holocaust minimization and denial have been recent guests on The Joe Rogan Experience, the country’s #1 podcast, which has far more listeners than network television. Rogan, who has hosted the “Holocaust revisionist” Darryl Cooper, has 19.4 million subscribers on YouTube, 19.7 million on Instagram and 15 million on X. Meanwhile, NBC and CBS News average 5.6 and 3.6 million viewers, respectively.
Redefining fake
Meanwhile, the mainstream news media, where fact-checking is prized, has been maligned for years as “fake news,” a term the current U.S. president uses so often that no one blinks when something real is dismissed. When fact-checked information is “fake,” it’s not surprising to see history described that way too.
The Holocaust was the ultimate truth of the 20th century. The ghettos, the crematoria, the gas chambers — so many elements of the industrialized and intentional slaughter of an entire people were without precedent and were the final stop on centuries of anti-Jewish hatred.
In the weeks after Oct. 7, I was haunted by the thought that the “genocide” charge against Israel was not just about criticizing Israel, but at root, about minimizing the Holocaust.
The term “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer who had lost 49 members of his family in the Holocaust.
Yet the world’s oldest Holocaust archive changed its name in September 2019 from the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide to the Wiener Holocaust Library. The Library, located in London, stated that it wanted to clarify “the centrality of the Holocaust” to our work without changing its “commitment to furthering the study of genocide.”
A few years earlier, in 2011, Jeremy Corbyn, who would become Labour Party leader in 2015, sought to change “Holocaust Memorial Day” to “Genocide Memorial Day — Never Again for Anyone” in 2011. That prompted swift backlash.
“Holocaust Memorial Day already rightly includes all victims of the Nazis and subsequent genocides,” Karen Pollock, chief executive of the UK’s Holocaust Educational Trust, wrote at the time on Twitter. “But the Holocaust was a specific crime, with antisemitism at its core. Any attempt to remove that specificity is a form of denial and distortion.”
Changing the meaning of the word ‘Holocaust’
Increasingly, the word ‘Holocaust’ is being used to describe what was not the Holocaust.
Simon and Schuster is currently promoting a forthcoming book edited by Susan Abulhawa that it describes as documenting “the holocaust of our time.” The editor’s note accompanying the copy that reviewers have received is signed “From the river to the sea.”
According to the United States Holocaust Museum, “approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe in 1933, the year Hitler came to power. This number represented 1.7% of Europe’s total population and more than 60 percent of the world’s Jewish population. By 1945, most European Jews — 2 out of every 3 — had been killed.”
The world Jewish population still hasn’t recovered its 1933 levels.
Even in this moment where words and numbers increasingly do not matter, there is no account — not even from the Hamas-run Health Ministry itself—-that suggests that 2/3 of Gazans have been killed in this conflict.
This is not to minimize the tremendous suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians in a war that began with a Hamas-led attack on Israel, in which some Gazan civilians participated. It was a horrible and harrowing two years.
Returned Israeli hostages have described being held in the homes of ordinary Gazans. CNN reported that three hostages were held in the home of a physician whose son was a freelance journalist for the US-based Palestine Chronicle. The son filed dispatches about the war in Gaza while his family held hostages.
Fact-check: A military attack and hostage-taking were not features of the Jewish community’s experience during the Holocaust.
What is real? What is fake?
Who’s a journalist? Who’s a hostage-holder?
What’s “news”? What’s “experience”?
What’s the difference between the Holocaust and the holocaust?
,
In this world where facts can be fake and nothing is taboo, anything seems possible. You can make the Holocaust into a lower-case “holocaust.” You can make Raphael Lemkin, the columnist for Zionist World, into an anti-Zionist, which was what Lemkin’s family asserted that the Lemkin Institute was doing, as it used their relative’s name while attacking Israel. And you can put up a sticker in a Jewish neighborhood claiming that the “Holocaust is fake.”
Holding on to disgust
I wrote to various family members with a photo of the sign in my neighborhood. None reacted too strongly; “I hate to say it, but I’m numb to this already,” one wrote.
I’m glad I’m still disgusted. I’m writing this to encourage you to be disgusted, too. Resist the guests on podcast “experience” forums who claim that antisemitism is being exaggerated, and that the Holocaust wasn’t that bad.
Because once holocaust is just a word, marketing copy from a publisher, devoid of Jewish content, and cleansed of historical accuracy, all words can be redefined to serve this kingdom of lies we increasingly seem to be living in.
The post A sign in my neighborhood says ‘The Holocaust is fake’ — I wish I felt surprised appeared first on The Forward.
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NYC’s Eric Adams condemns anti-Israel art exhibit: ‘Activism is not an excuse for antisemitism’
New York City Mayor Eric Adams used his podium in City Hall Thursday to take aim at an anti-Israel art installation that appeared on Governors Island over the weekend.
In a virtual address, Adams also took thinly veiled aim at Zohran Mamdani, the frontrunner to replace him after next week’s election, suggesting that the kind of antisemitism that he said had festered even under his leadership would explode under Mamdani’s.
Adams’ address centered on an installation, housed in the House 11 cabin owned by the Trust for Governors Island and occupied by Swale, a floating food forest nonprofit, that featured paintings that included the words “F—k Israel Ln” and “Hamas Lover.”
The exhibit, which was displayed on Sunday, was “unsanctioned by Governor’s Island” and was taken down a few hours after it was installed, Adams said.
“This incident disturbs me, and it should disturb anyone with a conscience,” said Adams in a virtual address from City Hall on Thursday. “I’ve talked a lot about how we’ve seen these incidents erode the fabric of cities across the globe, but in New York City, we must never tolerate this type of prejudice.”
Swale denounced the exhibit in a post on Instagram, writing that it was “devastated that someone would use a restorative project for their own personal platform for sowing discord.”
“The individual responsible was not part of our programming and not an artist-in-residence,” the post read. “The unapproved artist was invited into an empty back studio by a current artist-in-residence during seasonal wind-down without authorization to display work. We view this as a deliberate and malicious act by the artist.”
The artist allegedly behind the installation, Rebecca Goyette, who was identified by the New York Post, authored an op-ed in Hyperallergic where she described developing a relationship with a Palestinian dentist after working on a pro-Palestinian protest at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Adams, who dropped out of the mayoral race last month and last week endorsed Mamdani’s rival, Andrew Cuomo, used his address to decry what he described as the normalization of antisemitism in New York City.
“We are now watching as antisemitism is institutionalized right before our very eyes,” said Adams. “Before we know it, hate moves to the mainstream, and once it is in the mainstream, it becomes much harder to mobilize against. We saw that with apartheid. We saw that with the Holocaust, and I would be lying if I said I didn’t see seeds of it planted within our own city government.”
Later, Adams took aim at “those who want to say they want to globalize the intifada,” an apparent reference to mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani who caught fire from Jewish leaders after he declined to condemn the pro-Palestinian slogan during a podcast appearance in June.
A month later, Mamdani told business leaders at a closed-door meeting that he would discourage the use of the phrase.
“I know it is not too late for New York,” said Adams. “We will never surrender our city to hate or to those who want to say they want to ‘globalize the intifada,’ or to choose and believe and not refuse to condemn it, because it’s literally a phrase that means death to Jews all over the world.”
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Heritage Foundation president stands by Tucker Carlson after host platforms antisemitism
The president of the Heritage Foundation, the leading conservative think tank, defended right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson and said the group would not cut ties with him days after Carlson hosted an interview with antisemitic influencer Nick Fuentes.
Kevin Roberts also said in a video on the social network X that Christians should reject calls not to criticize Israel, which he said were coming from a “venomous coalition” of “bad actors,” and that conservatives should further refrain from “canceling” Fuentes.
“We will always defend truth, we will always defend America and we will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda,” Roberts said. “That includes Tucker Carlson, who remains, and, as I have said before, always will be, a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.”
He warned Carlson’s critics: “Their attempt to cancel him will fail.”
It was a striking show of support from the influential conservative organization, which previously put out “Project Esther,” a right-wing plan to counter antisemitism post-Oct. 7. The Heritage Foundation was also behind Project 2025, a right-wing blueprint for President Donald Trump’s second term in office that has been closely adhered to on a policy level, and has farmed many of Trump’s closest associates.
Fuentes has mounted an outside bid for influence within the larger right-wing movement, using overt antisemitism as his main flank. His chummy conversation with Carlson, who agreed with the provocateur on many issues including Israel, was seen as a further mainstreaming of antisemitic views within the right.
Roberts, however, saw it as embodying the conservative ideals of free debate.
“I disagree with, and even abhor, things that Nick Fuentes says,” Roberts said, without elaborating. “But canceling him is not the answer, either. When we disagree with a person’s thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas in debate. And we have seen success in this approach as we continue to dismantle the vile ideas of the left.”
Framing Carlson’s critics as dissatisfied online, Roberts continued, “The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians. And we won’t start doing that now. We don’t take direction from comments on X.”
Elsewhere, the Heritage head staked out a position that was critical of Israel, at a time when once-sacrosanct support for the country on the right is diminishing.
“Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic. And of course, antisemitism should be condemned,” he said. “My loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first, and America always. When it serves the interests of the United States to cooperate with Israel and other allies, we should do so, with partnerships on security, intelligence and technology. But when it doesn’t, conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington.”
(The term “globalist” has a history of being used as an antisemitic dog whistle.)
Roberts’s remarks on only supporting Israel when it suits the United States echoed similar statements made by Vice President JD Vance in Mississippi Wednesday evening — at an event in which Vance, too, was criticized for failing to condemn a question laced with antisemitism. In his video, Roberts also called Vance a friend and positively referenced his comments.
On X, some conservative Jews criticized Roberts.
“There can be no respectful debate with people who have said the things that Fuentes and Tucker have said about Jews,” replied Mike Ginsberg, a Jewish Virginia Republican. “Regarding Jews, neither Tucker nor Fuentes have taken rational political positions one can debate honestly … Choosing to associate with them — consciously, knowing what they have said about Jews — is a choice.”
One person thankful for Roberts’s remarks was Fuentes himself.
“Thank you for your courage in standing up for open discourse and defending Tucker against the Israel First Woke Right,” he wrote to Roberts on X.
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Islamic Group CAIR Protests Expected Sale of TikTok to ‘Anti-Palestinian Billionaires’
CAIR officials give press conference on the Israel-Hamas war. Photo: Kyle Mazza / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a prominent Muslim advocacy group linked to extremist organizations, has sent a letter to US lawmakers claiming that the expected sale of the social media platform TikTok’s US operations to a group of investors that includes Jewish and pro-Israel businessmen could suppress online criticism of Israel.
In the letter, dated Oct. 28, CAIR claimed that some of the rumored buyers — Oracle co-founder and board chair Larry Ellison, Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch, and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell — are “anti-Palestinian billionaires” seeking to silence TikTok users critical of Israel’s defensive military campaign in Gaza. The group urged lawmakers to oppose any sale that, in its words, would replace “Chinese disinformation” with “anti-Palestinian disinformation.”
The letter comes as the Trump administration is reportedly finalizing a deal with China to transfer majority ownership of the popular video-sharing platform TikTok from the Chinese company ByteDance to a group of US investors. The move follows the 2024 passage of the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which required ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a US ban.
CAIR warned that Oracle could play a central role in the new ownership structure, potentially controlling TikTok’s powerful recommendation algorithm. The organization alleged that such control could be used to downrank content critical of Israel while promoting pro-Israel narratives.
Jewish content creators and employees of TikTok have warned over the past two years, amid the war in Gaza, that the platform promotes antisemitism and has pushed an anti-Israel and anti-Western bias among its young base of users. Specifically, many activists have argued that the algorithm systemically peddles anti-Israel content and disinformation and has become a main vehicle driving antisemitism among the youth.
Ellison, a longtime supporter of Israel, has donated tens of millions of dollars to the Friends of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] nonprofit organization and maintained a personal relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. CAIR also pointed to the Ellison family’s recent media acquisition of CBS News through Skydance Media, calling it evidence of growing influence by “anti-Palestinian ideologues.”
The letter further accused Dell of supporting the Israeli military through his company’s technology subsidiaries, while citing the Murdoch family’s record of “anti-Palestinian propaganda” via Fox News. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and private equity firm Silver Lake, also rumored to be part of the deal, were criticized for investing in Israeli defense technology firms.
CAIR said TikTok had already begun limiting pro-Palestinian expression, referencing the company’s July 2025 hiring of a former Israeli soldier to monitor user speech. The group claimed this reflected a troubling pattern that could worsen under the new ownership.
While CAIR framed the sale as a threat to free speech, supporters of the divestment argue that US ownership would better safeguard data privacy and national security. The Trump administration has not publicly addressed CAIR’s allegations, and negotiations with China reportedly remain ongoing.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that China has approved the transfer agreement for TikTok, adding that he expects it to move forward in the coming weeks or months but giving no other details.
CAIR has long portrayed itself as a Muslim civil rights organization but has faced bipartisan criticism for controversial statements about Israel and for defending individuals tied to extremist movements. Israeli officials and Jewish advocacy groups have frequently accused CAIR of spreading anti-Israel propaganda under the guise of civil rights advocacy.
In the 2000s, CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association’” of CAIR with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that it “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”
CAIR leaders have also found themselves embroiled in further controversy since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
The head of CAIR, for example, said he was “happy” to witness Hamas’s rampage of rape, murder, and kidnapping of Israelis in what was the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” CAIR co-founder and executive director Nihad Awad said in a speech during the American Muslims for Palestine convention in Chicago in November 2023. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.”