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10 Israelis, including teen with her dog, and 2 Thais freed from Gaza as ceasefire goes into overtime

(JTA) — Hamas released another 10 Israeli hostages, nine women and a 17-year-old girl, on the first day of a two-day extension of a ceasefire, one the Biden Administration hopes to further extend as it seeks to expand humanitarian relief for Palestinians in the war-ravaged Gaza Strip.

The hostages released Tuesday bring the total of Israeli hostages released to 61. Also released were two Thais, bringing the total number of foreigners released to 20. They are among an estimated 240 hostages taken when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7.

Virtually all of the released hostages and Palestinian prisoners are women and children. Released on Tuesday were:

Gabriela Leimberg, 59, and her daughter Mia, 17. Mia, the only minor released Tuesday, was kidnapped with her Shih Tzu dog, Bella, and was photographed crossing over to the care of Red Cross officials carrying the dog. The Leimbergs are Jerusalem residents who were visiting friends in Nir Yitzhak, a kibbutz, when they were abducted.
Rimon Kirsht, 36, a resident of Kibbutz Nirim. Her husband, Yagev, remains a hostage.
Clara Merman, 63, a resident of Nir Yitzhak. Her partner and her brother remain hostages.
Ofelia Roitman, 77, from Kibbutz Nir Oz. Like Gabriela Leimberg, Roitman is an immigrant from Argentina.
Ditza Heiman, 84, one of the founders of Nir Oz. She was seen being transferred to Red Cross custody in a wheelchair.
Tamar Metzger, 78, from Nir Oz. Her husband, Yoram, 80, remains a hostage.
Noralin Babadilla, who was visiting friends in Kibbutz Nirim with her partner, Gideon Babani, who was murdered on Oct. 7.
Ada Sagi, 75, a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz.
Meirav Tal, 53, who was visiting Nir Oz with her partner, Yair Yaakov. Yaakov’s sons, Yagil and Or, were released Monday. Yair remains a hostage.

Tuesday was the first day of a two-day extension of the four-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, brokered by Qatar, one of a handful of nations that maintains ties with Hamas, Egypt and the United States. Under the terms of the ceasefire, Israel releases three times as many Palestinians imprisoned on terrorism-related charges.

With just one day of the extension remaining, there are talks open about lengthening the ceasefire. Hamas has reportedly offered to release soldiers and men in a next phase, but its terms are not clear. Any exchange of soldiers is seen as likely requiring the release of more and higher-profile Palestinian security prisoners, as well as a longer or permanent ceasefire.

Those terms are unlikely to be accepted by Israel, which does not want to lose the momentum it has gained in six weeks of striking back against Hamas. It has mostly dismantled the terrorist group in the north of the strip, according to reports, in massive air and ground attacks that have also driven half of Gaza’s 2 million population to the southern portion of the strip.

Israel’s stated war aim is the return of all the hostages and the removal of Hamas from power. U.S. President Joe Biden, under increasing pressure from the international community and from within his own Democratic Party, has stood by those war aims and rejected a long-term ceasefire.

But Biden is unhappy with the extent of Israel’s counterstrikes. The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry says more than 13,000 people, including thousands of children, have been killed. It is not known what portion of that number are combatants and what portion were killed by misfired rockets aimed at Israel.

Two top Biden Administration officials told reporters on Monday evening that Biden hoped to extend the humanitarian pauses in order to expand assistance reaching the Palestinians. Israel has opened up corridors for such assistance, under pressure from Biden.

“We would like to see the deal — the current humanitarian pause deal extended as long as possible,” said one of the senior administration officials, who conducted the briefing on condition of remain ing anonymous. “So, we would like to see that going as long as there are additional hostages to get out.”

The officials, in unusually stern language — even for a briefing in which they did not have to be named — said Israel could not resume the war with the ferocity with which it had conducted itself until now.

“You cannot have the sort of scale of displacement that took place in the north replicated in the south. It will be beyond disruptive,” one of the officials said. “It will be beyond the capacity of any humanitarian support network, however reinforced, however robust to be able to cope with. It can’t happen, which means that the manner of the campaign has to be extremely carefully thought through to minimize this consequence of further, significant displacement.”


The post 10 Israelis, including teen with her dog, and 2 Thais freed from Gaza as ceasefire goes into overtime appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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New York City Jews Targeted for Most Hate Crimes in March, NYPD Stats Show

Orthodox Jewish man waiting for the train in the New York City subway. Photo: Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect.

Jews in New York City were victims of more hate crimes in March than any other group even as crime across the Five Boroughs fell to “historic” lows, according to statistics issued by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) on Thursday.

39 hate crimes targeted Jews last month, the Algemeiner reviewed data shows, outstripping the combined total of all other groups combined — 28 — and constituting 58 percent of all hate crimes reported to authorities. So far, there have born 85 antisemitic hate crimes in New York City through the first three months of 2025, with the month of February seeing a 100 percent increase in them over the previous year and March seeing no improvement at all.

The data continues a trend that has persisted for several years and concurred with a rise in antisemitic incidents across the US.

Jews represented a disproportionate share of hate crimes perpetrated in New York City in 2024 as well. Of the 641 total hate crimes tallied by the NYPD that year, Jews were victims of 345, which, in addition to being a 7 percent increase over the previous year, amounted to 54 percent of all hate crimes in the city.

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, antisemitic hate crimes have posed a major threat to the quality of life of New York City’s Orthodox Jewish community, which was the target in many of the incidents. In just eight days between the end of October and the beginning of November, three Hasidim, including children, were brutally assaulted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. In one instance, an Orthodox man was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cellphone in compliance with what appeared to have been an attempted robbery.

In another incident, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn. Days after the week-long antisemitic hate crime spree, three men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the Crown Heights neighborhood.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post New York City Jews Targeted for Most Hate Crimes in March, NYPD Stats Show first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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NYC ‘Dyke March’ Bans Zionists From Participating in Annual Demonstration

(Source: Reuters)

(Source: Reuters)

NYC Dyke March, a public demonstration held by members of the lesbian community in New York City, has banned self-proclaimed “Zionists” from its annual event, citing a desire to stand against the so-called “genocide” occuring in Gaza. 

The group revealed in a statement that their decision to ban Israel supporters from their ranks came after multiple members dropped out of the organization due to differences in “political beliefs and values.” After engaging in discussions with frustrated members, the NYC Dyke March committee agreed to adopt “an explicitly anti-Zionist position.” The organization claims that it will “strengthen our commitment” to fighting against Israel and advocating on behalf of Palestinians. 

Last year, the NYC Dyke March previously came under scrutiny after organizers settled on “genocide” as the theme of its 2024 event. In a statement, decrying “ethnic cleansing, violence, and dehumanization,” the organization compared the ongoing war in Gaza, to the mass slaughters occurring in Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Sudan. 

The organization plans on recycling the same theme for this year’s march, titling it “Dykes Against Genocide.” The group released a statement clarifying that Jews are allowed to attend and condemned the Oct. 7 slaughters as a “senseless loss of life.” After an apparent uproar from its members, the organization deleted the post and wrote that the group “unapologetically stands in support of Palestinian liberation.” In addition, the group affirmed that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism and any language we put out which is not clearly opposed to a Zionist, imperialist agenda is harmful to us all.”

In the 17 months following the Hamas-led massacre of roughly 1200 people throughout Israel, the NYC Dyke March has produced numerous statements lambasting Israel and declaring “solidarity” with Palestinians amid their so-called “ongoing genocide.” The organization also accused Israel of engaging in supposed “pinkwashing” and “manipulative use of Jewish and queer identities,” with the aim of justifying its war efforts in Gaza. 

Israel offers an expansive set of rights for members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transngender (LGBT) community, including recognition of same-sex marriages. Every year in June, Tel Aviv holds one of the largest LGBT Pride celebrations in the world. Meanwhile, members of the LGBT community are routinely imprisoned or murdered in other parts of the Middle East, including the Palestinian territories. 

The NYC Dyke March’s announcement was met with widespread condemnation. 

“You cannot exclude the majority of Jews and call yourself inclusive,” said the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in a post on X/Twitter, adding that the group “essentially equates Zionism with racism” in their announcement. 

The post NYC ‘Dyke March’ Bans Zionists From Participating in Annual Demonstration first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Trump Administration Planning $510 Million Cut to Brown University Budget, Report Says

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with journalists onboard Air Force One en route to Miami, Florida, U.S., April 3, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura

The Trump administration reportedly plans to terminate $510 million worth of federal contracts and grants awarded to Brown University, according to media reports.

Brown University’s failure to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its embrace of the diversity, equity, and, inclusion (DEI) movement — perceived by many across the political spectrum as an assault on merit-based upward mobility and causing incidents of anti-White and anti-Asian discrimination — prompted the alleged pending action by the federal government, according to the right-leaning outlet The Daily Caller.

The announcement comes as Brown scrambles to cover a $46 million budget shortfall and other universities across the country have faced similar funding cuts.

Brown University officials, however, denied that the university had received any directives from the Trump Administration.

“We have no information to substantiate these rumors,” Brown University provost Francis Doyle issued a statement. “We are closely monitoring notifications related to grants, but have nothing more we can share as of now.”

Meanwhile, Brown’s Jewish community rushed to the university’s defense, issuing a joint statement with the Brown Corporation which said that the campus is “peaceful and supportive campus for its Jewish community.”

The letter, signed by members of the local Hillel International chapter and Chabad on College Hill, continued: “Brown University is a place where Jewish life not only exists but thrives. While there is more work to be done, Brown, through the dedicated efforts of its administration, leadership, and resilient spirit of its Jewish community, continues to uphold the principles of inclusion, tolerance, and intellectual freedom that have been central to its identity since 1764.”

Brown Divest Coalition — an anti-Zionist group which recently saw its campaign for the university to adopt the boycott, divest, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel defeated by the Brown Corporation — weighed in too, denouncing the reported cut as “a means of suppressing all forms of popular dissent to the renewed violence of the US war machine abroad.” US Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) also criticized the move, accusing the administration “of a broader pattern of behavior…that will negatively impact communities across the country and lead to layoffs, restrict research, and more.”

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the Trump administration is following through on its threats to inflict potentially catastrophic financial injuries on colleges and universities deemed as soft on antisemitism or excessively “woke.” The past six weeks has seen the policy imposed on elite universities including Harvard and Columbia, rattling a higher education establishment that has for better and worse operated for decades with little interference from the federal government even as it polarized the public and contributed to a growing sense that elites are contemptuous of Americans who live outside of their cultural enclaves.

In March, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced the cancellation of $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, a measure that secured the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Later, the Trump administration disclosed its reviewing $9 billion worth of federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard University, jeopardizing a substantial source of the school’s income over its alleged failure to quell antisemitic and pro-Hamas activity on campus following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. Princeton University saw $210 million of its federal grants and funding suspended too, prompting its president, Christopher Eisgruber to say the institution is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.”

Additionally,  60 universities are being investigated by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights over their handling of campus antisemitism, a project that will serve as an early test of the administration’s ability to perform the essential functions of the agency after downsizing its workforce to increase its efficiency.

One of those universities, Northwestern University, on Monday touted its progress in addressing campus antisemitism, noting that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and begun holding “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions which “all students, faculty, and staff” must attend.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Trump Administration Planning $510 Million Cut to Brown University Budget, Report Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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