The members of Israel’s Olympic bobsled team: (from left, clockwise) Omer Katz, Ward Fawarseh, Uri Zisman, AJ Edelman, Menachem Chen, Itamar Shprinz. With the team’s mascot Lulu. Photo: Provided

Israel is competing for the first time ever in Olympic bobsledding next week, and its team captain spoke with The Algemeiner about the many obstacles the athletes faced even before racing in the Milan Cortina Winter Games — including having to create a new team after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel and being robbed.

“Making the Olympics in bobsled as a team that hasn’t made it before is nearly unheard of,” Adam “AJ” Edelman, captain of the Israeli bobsled team, told The Algemeiner over the phone from Italy. “It just doesn’t happen unless you have an ‘Olympics credit card,’ like China for the Beijing Games, where they have guaranteed spots because they hosted. It is just nearly impossible to do … It is a massive accomplishment.”

The 31-year-old added that Israel’s bobsled team is the only one in this year’s Olympics whose members have not competed in the prior games.

“By making it into the [Winter] Games, Israel has done basically the impossible task of being within Olympic level, which is top 28,” he noted. “We’re very, very proud and content with knowing that in the four-man event especially we’re top 20, which is Olympic finals-worthy.”

On Saturday, Edelman revealed on X that the apartment where his teammates were staying during their final training for the 2026 Winter Games was robbed. Passports and “thousands of dollars” worth of personal belongings were stolen.

The team was training in the Czech Republic before heading to Italy when the incident took place, Edelman told The Algemeiner. He was in Italy at the time of the robbery and said his teammates have since replaced their passports but not their other belongings. The team has changed locations to continue training until their first Olympic competition on Feb. 16, which is a two-man event.

The team remains resilient despite the robbery and they are “just such a fine example of how we push forward in difficult circumstances,” Edelman, who is former Olympian in skeleton, wrote in a post on X.

“Such a gross violation — suitcases, shoes, equipment, passports stolen, and the boys headed right back to training today. I really believe this team exemplifies the Israeli Spirit [sic],” he added. He said in a separate post following the incident: “We are victors, never victims. Our journey is defined by moving forward, always. That’s the Israeli Spirit.”

The Israeli bobsled team is making history at the Olympics. Aside from Israel qualifying for the first time for Olympic bobsledding, Edelman is Israel’s first multi-sport Olympian, after competing previously in skeleton and now in bobsled. He said he is also the first Jewish bobsled pilot in the Olympic Games and one of his bobsled team members, 25-year-old Ward Fawarseh, is the first Druze Olympian.

Edelman — an American-Israeli from Brookline, Massachusetts — is the most decorated observant Jewish Olympian and is believed to be the first Orthodox Jew to ever compete in the Winter Games. The other members of his bobsled team are Menachem Chen, 25; Uri Zisman, 30; and Omer Katz, 25; with Itamar Shprinz as their coach. Their journey to the 2026 Winter Olympics — which has been dubbed “Shul Runnings,” a reference to the movie “Cool Runnings” that tells the story of the Jamaican national bobsled team making the 1988 Winter Olympics — faced obstacles from the start.

Edelman had handpicked members for a different bobsled team several years prior and in 2021 he talked to The Algemeiner about them hoping to secure a spot to compete in the 2022 Winter Olympics. But after the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, members of the team were called up to serve in the Israel Defense Forces as reservists and the team fell apart. Edelman was forced to create a new team and it was several years in the making.

“I just flew in different random people from Israel,” he explained. “People who were athletes who I thought, ‘Maybe let’s give them a try in the sled and if they’re good enough, they might come back.’ And I would tell them, ‘Hold the sled like a shopping cart and imagine that you’re running with a shopping cart.’ And they would do one race at a time and then fly back home. We kind of just pieced the seasons together in a pretty amazing fashion … It was a constant search for years of finding the right people to get into the sled. It was a six-year search.”

The team consists of a pole-vaulter, sprinter, shot-putter, and rugby player. Edelman said they bonded very quickly, despite their different sporting backgrounds.

“It’s been a long journey. It’s probably the most unique bobsled story ever,” Edelman said. “This is the sort of s–t that can only happen in Israel. I think that for Israel, making the [Olympic] Games for Israel in bobsled is far harder than for any other country because none of the things are set up that would give you any sort of help in bobsled. Bobsled requires such a complex infrastructure of logistic support, fundraising, publicity so people know that you exist, mechanics, coaches, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, a prior legacy with sleds and equipment and knowledge that could go down. All of that goes into making a bobsled program successful, and all of that just didn’t exist in the way that you want it to exist prior to now [in Israel].”

Edelman spoke to The Algemeiner during the team’s final training period in Europe before they make their Olympic debut. Aside from handpicking each member of the bobsled team, he also designed their bobsled. The theme for the design is “fire and ice,” and it is meant to represent “Israel is a hot country going down an icy track,” he told The Algemeiner.

He said he views himself as a “shliach” (messenger) for Israel, and that his efforts to help the Jewish state reach the Olympics in bobsled was always more for the country than for any personal gain for himself.

“For the longest period of time, I didn’t care much about being an Olympian or the Olympics itself. It was just about what I could accomplish for the country,” Edelman said. “The journey has always been so centered on what it can do for Israel and so there’s no pressure to represent Israel because that’s what it’s been since day one. And without representing Israel the journey means nothing.”

“There was a lot of pressure that I had post-10/7 to switch to the US team,” he revealed. “It would have been so much simpler and easier to make it on the US team … But there was only one reason to ever do this and it was to get Israel to the games in bobsled. And Israel truly deserves this.”

“I’m doing my part to do something that I think will be good for the people and the country,” Edelman explained. “I’ve always had a dream that the team would make it [to the Olympics] and it would necessitate or catalyze a change in the perception of how Israel and Jews perceive their place in sports in general and what we can accomplish. I just always believe that four-man bobsled being the premier event in the Winter Games … and Israel doing what is just essentially impossible for a country like Israel to do, to make it into the games in bobsled, is just such a phenomenal accomplishment … I truly believe that this is something that could have a hugely positive impact.”

Israel’s participation in the Olympics is taking place amid efforts to boycott or ban its presence in international sports, because of its military actions in the Gaza Strip during the Israel-Hamas war. Edelman was asked what he thought about the boycott efforts.

“I view Israeli athletes as ambassadors of the state; we carry the hopes and dreams of the state forward,” he replied. “As for other people who want to kick us out … I just don’t pay much attention to it. Who has time to go through all the haters?”

“I do hope and know that this is just going to continue to move [Israel] forward,” he added, referring to the Israeli bobsled team’s presence at the Winter Games. “Someone is going to take over from me, who is better than I was, and in the future Israel is going to be a force in the sport … The [bobsled] team stands for breaking ceilings, and when we break ceilings, we want to be the first but not the last. And I really hope that’s what we take from it; that’s what everyone takes from it.”

The Milan Cortina Winter Games kicked off on Friday night with an opening ceremony at San Siro Stadium. Israel’s delegation was booed during the procession. International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesperson Mark Adams said during a press conference on Saturday that he does not “like to see booing,” regardless of “whatever background” or “whatever country” an athlete or team represents.

“We want to see sportsperson-like behavior from everyone. It’s important that we support our athletes,” he added. “The whole idea, or one of the ideas of the Olympic movement, is that the athletes shouldn’t be punished for whatever their governments have done, and I think that’s really important, that we see the athletes and athletic performance for what that says about humanity.”

A new Jewish Federations of North America survey contained a shocking and confusing statistic: While just one-third of American Jews call themselves Zionists, almost 90% say they believe in Israel’s right to exist as a democratic Jewish state.

How could that be?

That finding has been widely read as evidence of a generational collapse in Jewish attachment to Israel. It is nothing of the sort. What it reveals instead is the collapse of confidence in a specific political ideal that, to many, no longer means what it once did.

For much of the 20th century, the term “Zionism” referred to a fairly straightforward and surprisingly normal proposition: that Jews constituted a people, not merely a religion, and therefore had a plausible claim to national self-determination.

The arguments around Zionism were not uniquely Jewish. They echoed similar ideas advanced about Poles, Greeks and Czechs. If Romania could be a Romanian country, the thinking went, Israel could be a Jewish one. Whether Israel should exist was not a particularly hard question. Where its borders should lie, how minorities within those borers should be treated, and how Palestinians displaced by war and state-building should be compensated were.

Even the word itself began modestly. It is widely believed to have been coined in 1890 by Nathan Birnbaum, a Jewish intellectual and activist, to give a name to an emerging political current associated with the Hovevei Zion movement: Jews who believed emancipation would be achieved through collective action.

The idea of a return to Zion was ancient, embedded in Jewish liturgy and longing. The term “Zionism,” by contrast, was new, and political.

That practical spirit carried into the work of Theodor Herzl, who used the term sparingly and without reverence. In his vision, Zionism was not an identity to be worn or a moral credential to be displayed. It was a solution to a political problem: the chronic vulnerability of a stateless people.

“I consider the Jewish question neither a social nor a religious one, even though it sometimes takes these and other forms. It is a national question,“ he wrote in Der Judenstaat, his foundational text. “We are a people — one people.” Herzl laid out certain principles for answering that national question: international legitimacy mattered, minority rights within a future Jewish state were essential, and sovereignty imposed obligations rather than erased them. Zionism, he believed, could coexist with liberal norms and civic equality.

Today, that framework has eroded.

The moral mire of occupation

The occupation of the West Bank beginning after the 1967 Six-Day War fundamentally altered the moral landscape in which Zionism is understood.

Settler violence, seemingly permanent military rule over another people without the rights of citizens, a system of legal inequality and terrible violence resulted. What was once a movement for national self-determination increasingly came, in the public eye, to signify territorial entitlement and moral indifference.

For many Jews, especially younger ones, the word “Zionism” began to feel less like a description of a political belief like any other than a demand for complicity in a reality they never chose.

The rise of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accelerated this corrosion. Because of his omnipresence in Israeli politics for the last three decades, it is his face many think of now when the term comes up. Over time, the idea of Zionism became rhetorically fused with Netanyahu’s political survival strategy, and, with it, with contempt for liberal institutions, and a narrowing of Jewish identity into a blunt instrument of power.

In the past, one could be a Zionist and still oppose specific Israeli governments, criticize military actions, or argue for far-reaching compromises with the Palestinians. Zionism was not an oath of loyalty to power; it was a framework for arguing about how Jewish sovereignty should be exercised and constrained.

In an era defined by occupation and Netanyahu’s political scheming, the term “Zionism” became welded to a politician known for corruption, cynicism, and conflict. So for liberals — which most American Jews are — it became radioactive.

From specific ideal to vague slur

Then came the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023.

The scale of Israeli suffering on that day might have created sympathy for Israel — but the disastrous war in Gaza that followed put an end to any such compassion. Israeli security officials do not dispute the estimate that the war killed 70,000 people in Gaza, of which half or more are likely to have been civilians. The images coming out of the strip for more than two years showed scenes of utter devastation.

Layered onto this awful reality was an online ecosystem that rewards distortion. In activist spaces and on social media, the word “Zionist” became a slur, deployed with deliberate vagueness. It could mean “supporter of occupation,” “apologist for civilian deaths,” or simply “Jew with opinions about Israel.”

Bots and bad-faith actors amplified the worst definitions and drowned out the rest. In that climate, identifying as a Zionist began to feel like inviting a moral indictment.

The result is an increasingly familiar absurdity. I find myself appearing on leftist podcasts, listening to earnest but ill-informed commentators say they “suspect” I might be a Zionist, as though they were uncovering a hidden vice.

The irony is that I am a complete and total Zionist — under the original definition. Does it still apply?

I believe Jews are a people; that they have a right to a state; and that Israel’s legitimacy does not depend on being liked; only on existing within moral and legal constraints.

What I do not accept is the mutated version of Zionism that equates Jewish self-determination with permanent and non-democratic domination over another people.

Why does this definitional change matter?

When Jews stop identifying as Zionists, they abandon the clear, shared language that explains why Israel exists at all. That vacuum can be quickly filled with definitions supplied by Israel’s most illiberal defenders and most hostile critics. Without “Zionism” as an acceptable term, it becomes easier to portray Israel as illegitimate by definition. And it becomes easier for people who hate Jews to pretend that they hate “Zionists” instead.

Can the term be reclaimed? That would require an Israel that behaves better. Even then, undoing the damage will be an uphill battle. And of course, many of Zionism’s critics will never be pacified. The strange durability of the phenomenon known as antisemitism makes that crystal clear.

The post Why do so many Jews support Israel — but reject ‘Zionism’? appeared first on The Forward.

Sign reading “+1000% of Antisemitic Acts: These Are Not Just Numbers” during a march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect

Three Jewish men were harassed by a knife-wielding individual in Paris, in the latest antisemitic incident to spark outrage within France’s Jewish community, prompting local authorities to launch a criminal investigation and bolster security amid a rising tide of antisemitism.

On Friday, three Jewish men wearing kippahs were physically threatened with a knife and forced to flee after leaving their Shabbat services near the Trocadéro in southwest Paris’s 16th arrondissement, European Jewish Press reported.

As the victims were leaving a nearby synagogue and walking through the neighborhood, they noticed a man staring at them. The assailant then approached the group and repeatedly asked, “Are you Jews? Are you Israelis?”

When one of them replied “yes,” the man pulled a knife from his pocket and began threatening the group. The victims immediately ran and found police officers nearby. None of the victims were injured.

Local police opened an investigation into acts of violence with a weapon and religiously motivated harassment after all three men filed formal complaints.

Jérémy Redler, mayor of Paris’s 16th arrondissement, publicly condemned the attack, expressing his full support for the victims.

“I will continue to fight relentlessly against antisemitism,” he wrote in a social media post. “Acts of hatred and violence targeting any community have no place in Paris.”

The European Jewish Congress (EJC) also denounced the incident, calling for a swift investigation and stronger action to safeguard Jewish communities amid a surge in antisemitic attacks.

“An attack targeting individuals because of their Jewish identity is unacceptable and incompatible with the values of our democratic societies,” the EJC wrote in a post on X. 

“Ensuring that Jews can live, worship and participate fully in public life in safety and dignity must remain a fundamental priority,” the statement said. 

The knife threat against three young Jewish men returning from synagogue in Paris is a matter of serious concern.

An attack targeting individuals because of their Jewish identity is unacceptable and incompatible with the values of our democratic societies.

The swift… pic.twitter.com/PsxmP0CeLk

— European Jewish Congress (@eurojewcong) February 9, 2026

Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, France has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

According to the French Interior Ministry, the first six months of 2025 saw more than 640 antisemitic incidents, a 27.5 percent decline from the same period in 2024, but a 112.5 percent increase compared to the first half of 2023, before the Oct. 7 atrocities.

Last week, a Jewish primary school in eastern Paris was vandalized, with windows smashed and security equipment damaged, prompting a criminal investigation and renewed outrage among local Jewish leaders as targeted antisemitic attacks continued to escalate.

Amid a growing climate of hostility toward Jews and Israelis across the country, the French government is facing mounting criticism as the legal system appears to be falling short in addressing antisemitism.

In one of the most recent and controversial cases, a French court tossed out antisemitic-motivated charges against a 55-year-old man convicted of murdering his 89-year-old Jewish neighbor in 2022.

French authorities in Lyon, in southeastern France, acquitted defendant Rachid Kheniche of aggravated murder charges on antisemitic grounds, rejecting the claim that the killing was committed on account of the victim’s religion.

According to French media, the magistrate of the public prosecutor’s office refused to consider the defendant’s prior antisemitic behavior, including online posts spreading hateful content and promoting conspiracy theories about Jews and Israelis, arguing that it was not directly related to the incident itself.

In May 2022, Kheniche threw his neighbor, René Hadjadj, from the 17th floor of his building, an act to which he later admitted.

At the time, Kheniche and his neighbor were having a discussion when the conflict escalated. He told investigators that he had tried to strangle Hadjadj but did not realize what he was doing, as he was experiencing a paranoid episode caused by prior drug use.

After several psychiatric evaluations, the court concluded that the defendant was mentally impaired at the time of the crime, reducing his criminal responsibility and lowering the maximum sentence for murder to 20 years.

In another case last year, the public prosecutor’s office in Nanterre, just west of Paris, appealed a criminal court ruling that cleared a nanny of antisemitism-aggravated charges after she poisoned the food and drinks of the Jewish family she worked for.

Even though the nanny initially denied the charges against her, she later confessed to police that she had poured a soapy lotion into the family’s food as a warning because “they were disrespecting her.”

“They have money and power, so I should never have worked for a Jewish woman — it only brought me trouble,” the nanny told the police. “I knew I could hurt them, but not enough to kill them.”

The French court declined to uphold any antisemitism charges against the defendant, noting that her incriminating statements were made several weeks after the incident and recorded by a police officer without a lawyer present.

In another shocking case last year, a local court in France dramatically reduced the sentence of one of the two teenagers convicted of the brutal gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl, citing his “need to prepare for future reintegration.”

More than a year after the attack, the Versailles Court of Appeal retried one of the convicted boys — the only one to challenge his sentence — behind closed doors, ultimately reducing his term from nine to seven years and imposing an educational measure.