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Rabbi arrested, banned from Cleveland universities over his anti-Palestinian activism
(JTA) – For days, students and police at Cleveland State University had been trying to figure out who stole a banner belonging to a campus Palestinian rights group.
The banner, which belonged to the student group Palestinian Human Rights Organization, read “CSU Solidarity for Palestinian Rights” and was illustrated with an outline of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip collectively emblazoned in the Palestinian flag. A dove holding an olive branch appeared on top of the image.
Then, on Jan. 19, police charged their top suspect: a local Orthodox rabbi, whose presence on campus had become all too familiar. A few days later the man confessed to the theft on Instagram, announcing that he had stolen the banner from the school’s student center “as an act of civil disobedience.”
“This incitement to annihilation of Israel should have never been permitted at CSU,” Rabbi Alexander Popivker, a 46-year-old Cleveland Heights resident whose neighborhood is six miles from the school, wrote on social media accompanied by a picture of the flag he stole.
It was far from Popivker’s only recent run-in with local university students.
A former Chabad-Lubavitch emissary in Naples, Italy, who now works in the Cleveland area as a handyman and part-time rabbi for a Russian-speaking Jewish community, Popivker has become known around town as a vigilant and omnipresent pro-Israel advocate. He can often be spotted counter-protesting at local pro-Palestinian demonstrations, or putting on displays of his own, with his wife Sarah on hand filming every contentious encounter.
One major theme of his protests, and his worldview, as he explained to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “Palestinians and Nazis are the same thing.”
For the last year, Popivker had been making weekly trips to Cleveland State, occasionally accompanied by other students or community members, to give public demonstrations that elaborate on that idea — sometimes with the aid of swastika-emblazoned props. In the early going, the university provided him with police protection and said his visits to campus were protected by free speech laws.
But he also sought out students online and in-person whom he deemed to be “brainwashed” by anti-Zionist messaging. One such online campaign against a law student prompted the student to file an order of protection against Popivker last fall, an order supported by a prominent Jewish dean at the university. Popivker promptly violated the order by returning to campus.
Cleveland State University main campus, Cleveland, Ohio. (Getty Images)
In late January, university authorities had enough. They arrested Popivker and, following a hearing, declared him persona non grata on campus, banning him from the university grounds for at least two years. Popivker has also been banned from nearby Case Western Reserve University, where he had advocated before focusing on Cleveland State.
In the midst of a nationwide university climate in which pro-Israel advocates claim Jewish students face regular antisemitic harassment for their real or perceived Zionist beliefs, here was a documented case of the opposite: a Jew and outspoken Zionist, who has no affiliation with the schools at which he advocates, accused of harassing anyone he perceived as a threat to Israel, including students who had never sought him out directly.
The Ohio chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has spoken out numerous times against Popivker and praised university police for arresting him; a petition the group backed, labeled “Stop harassment on campus” and mentioning Popivker by name, has garnered close to 700 signatures.
Jewish groups, including civil rights groups, have been less forthcoming about situation. Hillel International declined to comment for this story, and the directors of Cleveland’s regional American Jewish Committee and Jewish Community Relations Council offices did not return requests for comment. Jewish on Campus, a nationwide university antisemitism watchdog group that tracks what it defines as anti-Zionist social media harassment of Jewish students, also did not return a request for comment.
Jared Isaacson, the executive director of Cleveland Hillel, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the center was “not very familiar with this story.” Cleveland Hillel coordinates Jewish student life at a consortium of Jewish universities including Cleveland State and Case Western, where its student center is located, as well as at least one other school where Popivker has made his presence on campus known in some form.
But, Isaacson said, “Cleveland Hillel is deeply committed to countering antisemitism and hate in all forms, and we believe that no student — Jewish or otherwise — should ever feel threatened or intimidated because of their identity.”
Popivker says he has support from the New York-based Lawfare Project, which bills itself as an “international pro-Israel litigation fund.” He told JTA that the organization “is watching over my cases and providing guidance.”
In a statement, the Lawfare Project called Popivker “a Jewish civil rights activist” but did not confirm that it is backing him, saying only that the group is “currently reviewing the matter.”
The group, which frequently files lawsuits on behalf of students who allege antisemitism on their campuses, said in a statement to JTA that the order of protection was a “double standard” that “should be alarming to anyone who cares about the fight against Jew-hatred.”
Lawfar recently settled a multi-year lawsuit with San Francisco State University over student reports of antisemitic harassment on campus stemming from anti-Zionist activists disrupting an event featuring the mayor of Jerusalem. The settlement compelled the university to hire a coordinator of Jewish student life.
Popivker will have his work cut out for him if he fights the charges. He had exhibited “behavior detrimental to the university community” by stealing the Palestinian banner and separately affixing an Israeli flag to university property, Matthew Kibbon, Cleveland State’s associate vice president of facility services, wrote in the university’s decision declaring him persona non grata.
The rabbi “was not banned for the content of his speech, but how he chose to exercise it,” a Cleveland State spokesperson told JTA in a statement. The university also provided JTA a list of recent campus police interactions with him, including the initial Jan. 11 report of the banner’s theft; Popivker’s visit to campus on Jan. 18, during which police advised him that the student’s order of protection did not permit him to be there; and his return visit on Jan. 25, during which he was arrested.
From Popivker’s perspective, he is simply speaking out on Israel’s behalf for a campus that has a large pro-Palestinian activist presence but few Jewish students. (There are fewer than 200 Jewish undergraduates on Cleveland State’s campus out of 11,784 students, according to Hillel International.) His goal is to educate, he says, informed by his status as a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union. And he believes he is being targeted by local pro-Palestinian activists, who, he said, have gone after his kippah and Israeli flags.
“I never attacked anyone. I never raised my hand up to anyone,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, saying that he was motivated by civil rights icons Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis. “I’m going to a public university. I’m staying in the free speech zone. And I raise awareness about what’s going on. There’s a bunch of students that have become my friends that come to study with me regularly.”
One of those students, senior Tyler Jarosz, told JTA he became friends with Popivker after seeing him visiting campus to advocate for Israel. Not knowing much about Jews or Israel himself — “I thought Israel was a very peaceful state,” Jarosz said — the student was taken with Popivker’s demonstrations and said he learned a great deal from them.
“He didn’t just lecture me like a teacher would,” Jarosz said. “He was actually very engaging. He asked questions.”
Jarosz said he never witnessed the rabbi harassing anyone on campus, and said he always tried to engage people in peaceful dialogue, despite what he described as harassment directed at him by some Muslim students. He recalled one Popivker visit to campus for Israel’s independence day, when the rabbi was offering falafel to students, and said he witnessed one student throw the falafel back at him and threaten to “rape” him.
Other students tell a different story. One campus paper, the Cauldron, reported that the rabbi has targeted visibly Muslim and Arab students on campus, demanding to know their views on Israel. Popivker “makes me wary of coming into campus,” a student member of the Palestinian Human Rights Organization group told the Cauldron. “I’m forced to be on constant edge and take the longer way to class in order to avoid him.” Another student told a different campus newspaper, “It’s almost as though he deliberately looks for Palestinian individuals just to target them.”
The chair of the law school’s National Lawyers Guild student chapter told the Cleveland Jewish News that their group’s efforts to engage Popivker in reasonable dialogue failed when he began using “racial slurs and insulting language.”
A swastika Alexander Popivker drew on a Palestinian scarf (alleged by some students to be a keffiyeh, or ritual Muslim prayer scarf) while mounting a pro-Israel demonstration on the campus of Cleveland State University. Popivker then shared the image to his Instagram, Feb. 3, 2023. (Screenshot)
In images from one Popivker demonstration, the rabbi can be seen drawing a swastika with a Sharpie marker on what the Cauldron reported was a keffiyeh, a scarf worn by Arabic men, but which Popivker told JTA was a Palestinian scarf with no spiritual significance. He has also yelled phrases including “Palestinians are Nazis” and “Palestinians are the KKK,” and constructed a stage with images further linking Palestinians to Naziism, according to reports. Popivker’s own Instagram videos show him approaching groups of students to argue about Israel as he films them, calling some of them “terrorists” when they go after his flags. One of his video captions mentions “a Middle Eastern looking student.”
Cleveland State increased its safety protocols as a result of Popivker’s activities, locking some additional entrances around campus. But much of his activities have been online, too.
Last fall Popivker trained his attention on a law student who was involved with campus Palestinian rights groups and had made some anti-Israel posts online, including sharing an image of a child whom pro-Palestinian groups claimed had been a victim of an Israeli bombing, and sharing a socialist group’s post quoting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Documents show that Popivker emailed and called the student’s employer and law school seeking to have her disciplined for her beliefs, writing among other things that she was a “mouthpiece of terrorism and racism against Jews.” He also made Instagram posts targeting her. In response, the student filed for and received the order of protection against him, which Popivker later claimed was unwarranted because he had never met the student in person.
In its statement to JTA, the Lawfare Project homed in on this sequence of events, saying that Popivker’s decision to email the student’s school and employer about what he believed to be antisemitic social media posts was “a tool routinely used by civil rights activists to fight discrimination.”
Popivker asked Jarosz to send a letter attesting to his character for the order of protection hearing, which he did. “Alex understands and respects everyone of every background that he comes across,” the student wrote in his letter. “I have personally witnessed the demonization they have done of him.” Speaking to JTA weeks later, Jarosz said the court case was “bogus,” but said he was unaware of the emails, social media records and phone transcripts reviewed by JTA showing that Popivker had contacted the student’s employer and school.
At the order of protection hearing, a transcript of which Popivker sent to JTA, a key witness who advocated for the restriction was law school dean Lee Fisher, a former attorney general and lieutenant governor of Ohio. Fisher is Jewish.
“We share a hatred of antisemitism,” Fisher told Popivker during the hearing, according to the transcript. The dean also identified himself as “pro-Israel, very much so.” But Fisher made clear he was critical of Popivker’s activities on campus. Asked by Popivker about a specific social media post the student had made, Fisher responded, “Even if she made a mistake by posting it, it did not warrant the kind of reaction I believe that you had.”
Fisher had also met with Popivker previously, in a session mediated by a local rabbi who was a friend of Popivker. “I told him that I was concerned for the health and safety of our students,” the dean said during the hearing. He had implored Popivker to stop his campus activities, but the rabbi refused.
It’s the initial order of protection, which Popivker said had already effectively banned him from campus, that the rabbi says he truly opposes. He saw it as evidence that “they were basically working together with Palestinians” to “cover up the fact that they have an antisemitic group that openly propagates a destruction of Israel.” Popivker visited campus several times after receiving the order of protection but was permitted to stay with only a warning from campus police, Jarosz recalled.
This state of affairs lasted until the rabbi stole the Palestinian student group banner to, he said, “shine a light on this antisemitism.” Popivker described to JTA how he entered the student building, walked up to the third floor where he knew the banner was, and used scissors to remove it and take it with him: “Clip, clip, clip.” He was subsequently thrown in jail — his second such stint in Cleveland for pro-Israel activities, he said, criticizing local law enforcement for not providing him with kosher food while he was behind bars.
Outside of campus, Popivker is active in other areas. Last year, he organized a GoFundMe to support the family of a former classmate of his who was killed by an Islamic State supporter in a terrorist attack in Beersheba, Israel. He also applied to fill a January vacancy on the Cleveland Heights city council, but later withdrew his application.
After being barred from Cleveland State University, Rabbi Alex Popivker took to holding his anti-Palestinian protests on a street outside a local casino. (Courtesy Popivker)
While Popivker may preach nonviolence, his social media activity points to more radical ideologies, as well. On Instagram, he has shared an image of the flag of the Jewish Defense League, an extremist Jewish group that advocates violence against enemies of Jews, founded by convicted terrorist Rabbi Meir Kahane, as well as an image with a logo of Im Tirtzu, a right-wing Israeli group that has in the past been accused of inciting violence against Israeli human rights groups. Popivker told JTA he is not a member of either group, but that “if I think it’s aligned with what I believe in, I’ll share it.”
Popivker says that, for now, he’s done with his brand of “civil disobedience” and won’t be making his weekly visits to Cleveland State’s campus. “I do have five wonderful boys and a loving wife, and as much as Cuyahoga [County’s] jail is an educational experience in life in many ways, I do not want to go there every week,” he said.
Instead, days after his arrest and campus ban, Popivker posted a photo of himself with an Israeli flag to social media — this time outside a casino a mile away from campus.
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The post Rabbi arrested, banned from Cleveland universities over his anti-Palestinian activism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Netanyahu called for unity. His anti-Arab speech to the Knesset may have made it impossible.
Benjamin Netanyahu stood before Israel’s newly sworn-in Knesset this week and called for a national unity government. By the time he finished speaking, he may have made such a government under his leadership all but impossible.
At an occasion associated with festivity, democratic continuity and national purpose, Netanyahu denounced members of the Israeli Arab parties as “terror supporters, haters of Israel” and declared that Ra’am and the Joint List “both agree that the Jewish state must be destroyed.” He questioned his opponents for contemplating a government dependent on their support, asking whether they were prepared to entrust the country’s fate to people bent, in his mind, on its destruction.
Neither Arab party’s platform calls for the destruction of Israel, although the Joint List certainly does challenge elements of the Zionist consensus. Netanyahu’s speech portrayed them as existential enemies, which prompted heckling from former premier Naftali Bennett, part of the leadership team forming a coalition with Gadi Eisenkot. And then Netanyahu called for national unity – as if the one-fifth of Israelis who are Arab citizens are not part of the nation.
Whatever his intentions, the effect was to remind a substantial part of the Israeli electorate why it has become so difficult to contemplate another government headed by Netanyahu.
“I sat and listened to the outrageous, divisive, hateful and disgraceful speech by the outgoing prime minister,” said Eisenkot, the former military chief who was tapped by President Isaac Herzog to form a new government after winning the recommendation of 67 out of 120 Knesset members. “I am even more convinced that he is unfit to remain in office for even one more minute … His continued rule is dividing Israel and endangering its security.”
Political history is full of speeches and interviews that acquire a significance far beyond the circumstances in which they were delivered. Sometimes they capture a leader’s finest qualities. Sometimes they expose weaknesses that opponents had long suspected. And sometimes they become defining moments precisely because they reveal a politician’s lack of self-awareness.
Hillary Clinton’s reference to Donald Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables” became an enduring symbol, evidence of the liberal condescension critics suspected of her. Mitt Romney’s privately recorded remarks about the “47 percent” of Americans he regarded as dependent on government came to encapsulate perceptions of an out-of-touch plutocrat. George W. Bush’s appearance beneath a “Mission Accomplished” banner became a monument to the premature triumphalism of the first Iraq War. Margaret Thatcher’s declaration that “the lady’s not for turning” crystallized the determination that admirers celebrated and critics considered inflexibility.
A few words in a speech can come to define an entire political personality – and Netanyahu already has one such speech to his credit.
In March 2015, he addressed a joint session of the United States Congress to warn against the nuclear agreement the Obama administration was negotiating with Iran. It was a dramatic performance, greeted enthusiastically by Republicans and regarded by many Democrats as an extraordinary intervention in an American political dispute. The lasting significance was the deterioration of Israel’s relationship with Democrats – or at least Netanyahu’s.
Eleven years later, Netanyahu may have delivered another defining speech, this time with consequences much closer to home.
This week’s setting was the swearing-in of Israel’s 26th Knesset. Netanyahu had lost his parliamentary majority, backed by just 53 of 120 seats. Eisenkot had already begun coalition negotiations, and the possibility of a broad national unity arrangement remained part of the political conversation – until, it seems, the speech.
Netanyahu invoked Israel’s grave security challenges, particularly the threat from Iran, to argue that only a unity government could meet the moment. But he grounded that appeal with a vicious attack on the Arab parties and on those prepared to cooperate with them.
His rhetoric will undoubtedly resonate with some Israelis. Many Jewish Israelis, including some who voted for opposition parties, are uncomfortable with the prospect of a government dependent on Arab political support. That discomfort is not simply racism, it reflects a complicated history in which Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel share a country while often identifying differently with the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Arab Israelis share ethnic, cultural, religious and familial ties with Palestinians and with populations across a region whose states have, at various times, fought wars against Israel. In a country that has lived with existential fears since its founding, such ties have sometimes generated suspicions of divided loyalties. Objectively, they could be suspected of being a classic potential fifth column that works covertly with Israel’s surrounding enemies, who share their religion and ethnicity.
But the actual record of Arab citizens’ participation in Israeli society tells a very different story from the one Netanyahu presented or what fear and conspiratorial thinking could suggest.
Arab Israelis are deeply embedded in the country’s institutions, professions and daily life. They constitute roughly half of Israel’s pharmacists and about a quarter of its doctors and nurses. Arab citizens have served as judges, including on the Supreme Court. Justice Salim Joubran, an Arab Christian, chaired Israel’s Central Elections Committee in 2015.
They are integral to the functioning of the Israeli state. And despite decades of conflict, the overwhelming majority of Arab citizens have pursued their lives and political aspirations through civic institutions rather than violence or subversion. Cases of terrorism or disloyalty have been extremely rare.
I am a frequent guest, interviewee and host at events run by Bokra, an NGO and news website run by Ghada Zhoabi, a champion of peace, integration and coexistence. I thought of this fine Israeli Arab leader, presently celebrating a successful get-out-the-vote campaign, besmirched by her prime minister.
There is a crucial distinction between rejecting Zionism as a political ideology, advocating a state of equal citizenship, supporting Palestinian national aspirations and seeking Israel’s violent destruction. Netanyahu’s speech erased those distinctions.
Indeed, Mansour Abbas, the leader of Ra’am, has gone further than many Arab politicians before him in seeking practical accommodation with the Israeli political system. His party joined the Bennett-Lapid coalition in 2021, an unprecedented step for an independent Arab party. Abbas has repeatedly emphasized his commitment to pursuing his constituents’ interests through Israeli politics. And he has accepted Israel as a Jewish state.
Responding to Netanyahu’s accusations, Abbas declared that his party was not seeking to establish either an Islamist or an Arab state in Israel. “We have defined ourselves within the State of Israel as citizens,” he said, reiterating his support for peace and a two-state solution. He also emphasized that his party condemns terrorism. He said the speech created danger to his life and to his family.
For a prime minister to respond to such overtures by portraying Arab political participation as a threat to the state’s very existence is to throw a grenade into a powder keg.
And that explains, in part, why the reaction to the speech was so swift and harsh.
Eisenkot’s Yashar party had scheduled a meeting with Likud representatives to explore coalition possibilities. Following Netanyahu’s speech, Eisenkot canceled it, describing the address as divisive and inappropriate for the ceremonial opening of the Knesset. Likud responded that Netanyahu stood by his remarks but remained committed to national unity.
Even Aviv Bushinsky, a former Netanyahu communications adviser, expressed bewilderment. He contrasted the performance with Netanyahu’s conciliatory appeal for unity in 2019 and recounted receiving calls from foreign ambassadors who had attended this week’s ceremony and wondered what they had just witnessed.
National unity requires something that cannot be measured in parliamentary seats: mutual legitimacy and a minimum of trust. Political adversaries must believe that cooperation will not become another instrument of their humiliation or marginalization.
For many Israelis who voted for parties opposed to Netanyahu, the central obstacle is not necessarily Likud, its voters or even its policy preferences. It is Netanyahu himself.
Years of political conflict, disputes over democratic institutions and the unresolved reckoning over Oct. 7 had already made his continued leadership unacceptable to many opposition voters. But the speech may have hardened that sentiment into something even less negotiable, offering a fresh illustration of the political behavior they had voted to end.
Netanyahu’s speech did not make a unity government under his leadership more plausible. It made it harder to imagine.
The post Netanyahu called for unity. His anti-Arab speech to the Knesset may have made it impossible. appeared first on The Forward.
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Pope praises the bond uniting the Catholic Church with the people of Israel
(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES – Pope Leo XIV reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s spiritual bond with the people of Israel during an interfaith gathering in Buenos Aires, a statement that drew particular attention from Jewish leaders amid growing antisemitism in Europe and elsewhere.
“Following the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, I wish to reaffirm the spiritual bond that unites the Church with the people of Israel,” and “our sincere respect for what is holy and true in the different religious traditions,” the Pope said Nov. 9 during a meeting with representatives of various religious communities at San Martín Palace, Argentina’s Foreign Ministry headquarters. The Second Vatican Council, from 1962 to 1965, shaped the church’s strategies for dealing with the modern era.
“The statement was a pleasant surprise to us, especially at a time when antisemitism is resurfacing, as it is in Europe,” Isaac Sacca, chief rabbi of the Sephardic Community of Buenos Aires, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “That is very meaningful to our people,” he said.
“The meeting was moving on several levels,” added Sacca, who also is the president of Menora, a Jewish youth organization. “All the different religious communities that coexist in harmony and peace in Argentina came together and showed themselves as they truly are before the pope.”
Addressing around 100 religious leaders, Leo highlighted Argentina’s history of religious and cultural diversity, describing the country as a meeting point of different peoples and traditions.
“Hearing those words from Pope Leo himself, just a few meters away, was very comforting,” Rabbi Marcelo Polakoff, commissioner for interreligious dialogue of the World Jewish Congress in Latin America, told JTA. “Moreover, his use of language about honoring the People of Israel struck me as significant, since I don’t think that terminology is commonly used in Church documents. It gives his approach an even greater sense of closeness. He is clearly continuing the strong legacy of interreligious dialogue established by Pope Francis, Benedict XVI, and especially John Paul II.”
Leo praised Argentina’s tradition of welcoming immigrants. “Argentina’s national identity has taken shape as a melting pot of races, cultures and religions, formed by its Indigenous peoples and the many immigrants from different parts of the world who arrived in this land over the centuries, bringing with them their dreams and their faith,” Leo said.
“At first, they were Catholics, Protestants and Jews, and later many others. Despite their differences, they all learned to work together, to form families and communities, and to build settlements and villages, in an admirable blending of their traditions with local customs,” he added.
Rabbi Ariel Stofenmacher, rector of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary, drew a connection between Nostra Aetate, the historic 1965 Vatican recalibration of the church’s relations with other religions, and Leo’s speech.
“The pope emphasized the need to strengthen relations with the people of Israel and with Judaism. He revisited the ideas behind Nostra Aetate, particularly the relationship between the Church and Judaism. He also expressed his gratitude for the spirit of brotherhood,” Stofenmacher said.
“I think Pope Leo is showing that he is a leader on a global scale, someone who is not afraid to address difficult issues and who puts social and family issues at the forefront,” added Stofenmacher, who is also rector of the Isaac Abarbanel University Institute.
In addition to religious authorities and leaders of rabbinical institutions, the pope also invited prominent representatives of Argentina’s Jewish community. Among those present were representatives of AMIA, the main Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, and DAIA, the political umbrella organization representing Argentina’s Jewish community.
“The pope emphasized at the meeting that religions are guardians of human integrity — that is, each person’s dignity in its spiritual, social, and communal dimensions,” AMIA chief rabbi Eliahu Hamra said. “We are united in defending that dignity and in upholding the value of every human being.” The interfaith gathering opened with a live orchestra playing a tango song from iconic composer Astor Piazzolla as religious leaders assembled and waited for the pope. It was a distinctly Argentine musical choice, rather than music associated with any particular religious tradition.
“There was a tango performance at the beginning, so there were no religious elements in the ceremony, precisely out of respect for all faiths, as I understand it. The whole event was a real pleasure, ” Rabbi Sacca told JTA.
“I believe we must remain engaged in this effort,” said Rabbi Polakoff. “At the World Jewish Congress, we presented the document Kishreinu, which was conceived as a Jewish response to Nostra Aetate. That was in November 2022. I believe we must continue working along those lines, and I think we have an exceptional partner in Leo XIV to do so.” The meeting concluded with a minute of silence for world peace and the victims of violence.
Monday’s meeting followed two earlier events in Buenos Aires. Pope Leo XIV first visited a residential care facility for people with disabilities on the outskirts of the city. He then celebrated Mass at Palermo Park, drawing an estimated crowd of more than 2 million people.
The pope’s four-day visit to Argentina began Sunday, Nov. 8, following his visit to Uruguay. It continued Tuesday in Córdoba province, where he celebrated Mass before returning to Buenos Aires. On Wednesday, he plans to visit the city of Luján for another Mass before departing for Lima, Peru, the final stop of his South American tour.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Pope praises the bond uniting the Catholic Church with the people of Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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3 years after Bedouin hero rescued 30 people on Oct. 7, Israel destroyed his family’s homes
(JTA) — Three years after Youssef Ziadna risked his life to rescue 30 Israelis from the Hamas massacre at the Nova music festival, Israeli authorities have demolished the homes of members of the Bedouin driver’s family in the unrecognized village of al-Ziadna.
Dozens more buildings in their village, which has about 5,000 residents and is located near the southern Arab-Israeli city of Rahat, face demolition orders.
Israel has celebrated Ziadna as a national hero. He was awarded Israel’s highest civilian honor for bravery by President Isaac Herzog, and selected to light a torch at Israel’s 2024 Independence Day ceremony. But he said the government’s crackdown on illegal construction made that recognition feel hollow.
“After everything we did on Oct. 7, running around and risking our lives, doing whatever we could, none of it has any meaning,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “In the end, you’re still an Arab.”
The plight of Ziadna highlights long-simmering tensions over Bedouin housing in the Negev.
An estimated 90,000 Bedouins live in dozens of unrecognized villages across the Negev, many without reliable running water, electricity, paved roads or sewage systems, while their homes remain vulnerable to demolition because they are deemed by the state to be illegal.
Many of them pre-date the creation of Israel in 1948, and were never granted official recognition; more recent construction has also taken place without planning approval, sometimes on land designated for other uses.
A bureaucratic maze of Israeli agencies and decades of disputes over land ownership have inhibited a solution that would allow for their legalization, a necessary step for authorized construction. In recent years, the problem has been exacerbated by government figures with a history of anti-Arab animus. Israeli courts have previously upheld demolition orders against individual buildings in al-Ziadna, including while efforts to legalize the community were underway.
The demolitions affected branches of Ziadna’s family that suffered devastating losses following the Oct. 7 attack. His cousin, also named Youssef al-Ziadna, was abducted to Gaza with three of his children. Two were released after 55 days, but the father and another son, Hamza, were killed in captivity. The late hostage’s brother and sister have since had homes and other structures demolished.
On Sunday, authorities posted eviction notices on five more homes in al-Ziadna, including that of Aatef al-Ziadna, whose son Abed al-Rahman was murdered by Hamas at Zikim beach on Oct. 7. Youssef Ziadna said the family had previously appealed to Herzog’s office over an earlier demolition order, which was subsequently canceled.
The president’s office confirmed receiving requests from the family concerning demolition orders and described the Ziadnas as “a bereaved family who suffered grievous losses on October 7th and thereafter,” and further highlighted Youssef Ziadna’s contribution, noting that Herzog had recognized his “life-saving actions” that day.
The president “has maintained contact and supported the family throughout this difficult time,” his spokesperson told JTA, adding that he and his office “have sought to assist the family within the limits of the law on this matter.”
The eviction notice, a copy of which JTA obtained, gives the occupants 30 days to vacate. Ziadna said even those deadlines were not always respected. In one case, he said, officers from the Yoav Unit, a special police force involved in land enforcement in the Negev, arrived just a week after a notice was posted and demolished a relative’s home.
Anger over home demolitions helped drive a surge in voter turnout in the Oct. 27 parliamentary election, with participation in Rahat soaring from 60% in 2022 to 85%, part of a dramatic increase in Arab voting across Israel. Ra’am, the Arab party led by Mansour Abbas, won approximately 85% of the city’s votes. That support helped the party secure eight Knesset seats.
“We are desperate. Everyone I know is going to vote,” Ziadna said on the eve of the election.
Rahat Mayor Talal al-Krenawi also attributed the high turnout to anger over demolitions.
“People who previously didn’t vote went to the ballot box to change the government’s policy,” he told JTA, expressing hope that the next government would be “one that listens, consults and coordinates” with Bedouin communities.
In October, demolition crews arrived in the al-Ziadna neighborhood, north of Rahat, where around 65 homes and other structures faced demolition orders. Ziadna’s cousin tore down a house built for his son, who had married just two weeks earlier. Other relatives, including his brother and nephew, have received demolition orders. One displaced family has been sleeping together in a single room at another relative’s house, he said.
Ziadna, who is a father of seven, dismantled a warehouse on his property after receiving a demolition order rather than face the fines of having the authorities demolish it. His home is not currently under an order, but he said that offered little comfort in a community where extended families live alongside one another.
“What’s the difference between my house, my brother’s house or my nephew’s house?” he said. “For us, it’s the same home. We’re Bedouin, we live together.”
The demolitions in al-Ziadna are part of a wider enforcement campaign that has intensified across the Negev under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, championed by outgoing National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Told that Bedouin families whose homes had been demolished were sleeping in a school, Ben-Gvir declared: “They should prepare many more schools across the Negev, because I’m going to demolish more and more and more.”
Between 2023 and 2025, some 14,280 unauthorized structures were demolished in the Negev, an 81% increase over the previous three-year period, according to figures presented to the Knesset by Ben-Gvir’s ministry.
Al-Krenawi, Rahat’s mayor, slammed the government for embarking on a demolition blitz across the Negev, leaving families “with no roof over their heads and with no solutions.”
The al-Ziadna neighborhood was included in a government-approved plan in 2021 to incorporate it into Rahat and provide for approximately 1,900 housing units, as well as public buildings, roads, commercial areas and livestock facilities.
Yet the Bedouin Settlement Authority, the government body responsible for regularizing Bedouin communities in the Negev, told JTA that not a single residential plot has been allocated under the plan.
According to a spokesperson, implementation of the plan was delayed “partly because residents of the neighborhood have prevented it from being carried out.” The spokesperson cited interference with surveyors, soil drilling and archaeological work but did not provide details of specific incidents or identify those responsible.
Al-Krenawi said agreements had been signed to develop al-Ziadna, which was already within the city’s planning boundaries, but that “unresolved land ownership claims” were holding up the allocation of plots. He said he was unaware of any obstruction of planning work but added that the municipality was not involved in that process, which was handled by the Bedouin Settlement Authority.
Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and former Knesset member who has advocated greater integration of Bedouin citizens, criticized the state’s failure to enforce its laws in the Negev, which covers roughly 60% of Israel’s territory.
“They’re either under Israeli law or they’re not under Israeli law,” he told JTA, criticizing the “lack of application of laws against polygamy, illegal building, tax evasion” in Bedouin communities.
Oren said he supported reaching agreements to legalize unauthorized construction, but argued that Bedouin residents should pay for the land allocated to them, just as Jewish Israelis are required to do. “Why should they charge Jewish residents and Bedouin get it for free?” he said.
But he also acknowledged Bedouin contributions to the military and blamed successive governments for failing to provide adequate economic and educational opportunities, calling the state of education “appalling.”
“Everything that’s happened down there is entirely our fault,” he said.
Haggai Reznik, head of the Rifman Institute for the Development of the Negev and a former Housing Ministry director-general, issued dire warnings about the region’s security, saying in a television interview that “the next Oct. 7 will come from the Negev.”
Reznik pointed to widespread illegal weapons, weak law enforcement and the failure to regularize Bedouin communities, or bring them into the formal planning system, warning that without a national emergency plan, the Negev could become “a Palestinian state whose capital is Beersheba.”
The Regional Council for Unrecognized Villages in the Negev (RCUV), a Bedouin advocacy group, condemned Reznik for spreading a “blood libel,” arguing that crime and the proliferation of illegal weapons were consequences of longstanding neglect, dispossession and other policies that had pushed Bedouin communities into deep poverty.
Reznik’s remarks came as the Shin Bet security agency said it had arrested 72 residents of the Negev and southern Israel since the beginning of 2026 on suspicion of security-related offenses, with roughly 50 indicted.
Around the same time as the demolitions in al-Ziadna, authorities demolished around 80 homes and a mosque in the nearby Abu Wadi community of al-Dahiya, leaving 380 people homeless, according to al-Krenawi, who told JTA that the displaced families were now living in tents.
The Bedouin Settlement Authority said residents had rejected alternative housing. Residents countered that the proposed site was not ready for construction and negotiations over another location were still underway.
RCUV, the Bedouin advocacy group, estimated that demolitions had caused NIS 290 million in cumulative losses to families whose homes were destroyed, including legal fees, demolition costs, alternative accommodation and related expenses.
Marwan Abu Frieh, a Rahat resident and lawyer with the legal rights group Adalah, who has spent nearly 15 years accompanying families through eviction and demolition proceedings, said government housing plans frequently fail to account for Bedouin communities’ traditional way of life, requiring families accustomed to living on agricultural land to move to densely built urban neighborhoods.
“They’re not offering solutions suited to Bedouin society, to traditional or agricultural life,” he told JTA. “They’re offering modern solutions because they want us to become modern.”
Ziadna echoed that concern, saying there was “no way” his family would abandon its rural way of life for apartment blocks.
Most members of the extended family work in agriculture on nearby kibbutzim. Former Rahat Mayor Atta Abu Madegham described the Ziadnas as a noble family with “zero unemployment,” according to a report published soon after Oct. 7 in Makor Rishon.
In August, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a bid to delay the eviction of some 500 residents of Ras Jrabah, near Dimona. An earlier ruling had found that suitable alternatives had been offered and refused, but Adalah, which represents the residents, rejected that finding, saying that none of the options was viable. Even suggestions of temporary housing or rental assistance left basic questions unanswered: where families would live, under what conditions and for how long. Abu Frieh described the ruling as “very simple and very extreme.”
“They were saying that there is no connection between providing an alternative housing solution and carrying out an eviction. This is unprecedented,” he said.
He emphasized the difficulty of transforming an established community, where homes have stood for decades, into a formally planned neighborhood. Recognition, he said, is only the first stage. Completing the planning and infrastructure work can take many years, particularly when the community is already inhabited.
“You can’t demolish people’s homes when they have nowhere else to go and the regularization process hasn’t been completed,” he said.
The Bedouin Settlement Authority confirmed that the buildings facing demolition in the al-Ziadna neighborhood are within the boundaries of the approved 2021 plan, but described them as “new and illegal construction.”
Although the Bedouin Settlement Authority said demolitions were handled by separate enforcement agencies, al-Krenawi said those agencies operated only in coordination with it. JTA contacted the National Land Enforcement Authority, which identified the Israel Land Authority as responsible for the October operation. That authority, in turn, referred JTA back to the Bedouin Settlement Authority.
“The sooner residents take steps to advance regularization, the less need there will be for enforcement action and carrying out demolition orders,” the spokesperson said.
Ziadna objected to his family being treated as trespassers on land they had occupied for generations. “We’ve been here since the British ruled, before Israel was established. We never moved.”
“They call us invaders. Fine, come and sit with us. Talk to us,” he said. “Give us infrastructure, water, electricity. Give us a way to live like human beings. We’re citizens of this country.”
Abu Frieh criticized the Bedouin Settlement Authority’s origins, saying it was created to address what successive governments regarded as the “Bedouin problem,” rather than involving Bedouin communities in decisions about their own future.
“This authority controls every aspect of Bedouin life,” he said, describing its approach as “unilateral” and noting that all government funding for Bedouin communities must pass through it.
Established by the government in 2007, the Bedouin Settlement Authority replaced an earlier body founded in 1986. It has since operated under seven government ministries, with a May 2026 State Comptroller report finding that the repeated transfers had significantly disrupted its operations. Bedouin representation in the authority is also almost non-existent. The authority told JTA that it now employs more than 80 people, only one of whom is Bedouin.
“We’re not refusing a solution,” Abu Frieh said. “We’re just not part of the process.”
Ziadna, now 50, said his health has deteriorated sharply since JTA first interviewed him in October 2023. He has lost substantial weight, has been unable to work for seven months and receives just NIS 1,800 ($570) a month in disability benefits for post-traumatic stress and other health problems.
“I look like an 80-year-old man,” he said.
When JTA interviewed him just days after the Hamas massacre, Ziadna had expressed hope that his actions might change the relationship between Bedouin citizens and the state.
Three years later, asked whether those hopes had materialized, his answer was brief.
“The opposite happened.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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