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A Jewish expert on monuments on what Philly’s famous Rocky Balboa statue can teach us about memory
(JTA) — Paul Farber was shocked when he first watched “Rocky” and saw a Star of David on the grave of Rocky Balboa’s coach, Mickey Goldmill.
As a Jew and as the founder of the Philadelphia-based Monument Lab, which has explored collective memory through art installations across the country for over a decade, Farber was well positioned to think about the deeper meaning of that brief shot.
“Anytime I see a Jewish funeral in a film, there’s some kind of call to attention. And I always want to know what that means, especially for a Hollywood production, especially when it may not be branded as a Jewish story,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“We’re not there in a prolonged series of mourning, but in a split second, seeing a Jewish site of a memory is really fascinating,” he added.
That outlook lies behind Farber’s work as the host of the new NPR podcast “The Statue,” a deep dive into Philadelphia’s famed statue of Rocky Balboa, the fictional prizefighter at the center of “Rocky.” The series delves into what sports and society can convey about memory, and in his research, Farber discovered a few Jewish nuggets found in the film series — including the fact that Rocky’s love interest was originally supposed to be Jewish.
“They made an actual gravestone [for her character] and it’s in Philadelphia’s most famous cemetery, Laurel Hill. And you can go there and see this gravestone where a movie character is ‘buried,’” he said. “People leave offerings on the gravestone, including small pebbles as if it’s a Jewish site of memory.”
In an interview with JTA, Farber shared his inspiration for the series, how his Jewish upbringing informed his life’s work and the role statues — such as that of Jewish baseball legend Sandy Koufax — do, and should, play.
This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: To start off, I’d love to hear about how you first got interested in studying monuments.
Paul Farber: I’m really interested in the ways that, in cities, we innovate toward the future, and also come to terms with our past, and it happens often in the same exact places. That could be a statue, a street, a corner store. And so that’s a big part for me.
What really inspired this project is a conversation I had with my mother, quite a few years ago. My mother is a lifelong Philadelphian. Her parents were Jewish immigrants in South Philadelphia. And when I told her I was teaching a class at the University of Pennsylvania about Philly neighborhoods, she asked me if I was covering Rocky. When I said, “Oh, it’s not on the syllabus” — and I may have said it in a way that felt dismissive — she gave me this look that I think a lot of us know: “How could you.” So for her birthday, we watched “Rocky” and we went to see “Creed.” My grandfather went to South Philly High and was in the boxing club. He shared stories in our family about what it meant to have sport and culture and belonging go together in South Philly. I started to see that across generations, from long before “Rocky” to this moment now, almost 50 years after the release of the film, many people’s family stories could be channeled through this statue, including my own, and that was enough of a prompt to go dive in.
“Rocky” is obviously not a Jewish story, but there are some nuggets. There’s the funeral scene, and you mentioned something about Adrian almost being Jewish. I’m curious what you think about the little Jewish pieces you can pull out of this famous story, and what those mean to you as a Philly sports fan.
It blew me away that Rocky’s coach, Mick, passes away and the character Rocky goes to his funeral, and you see a Star of David. Anytime I see a Jewish funeral in a film, there’s some kind of call to attention. And I always want to know what that means, especially for a Hollywood production, especially when it may not be branded as a Jewish story. And it just opened up a whole set of questions for me that blurred between art and life, between the film series and the city of Philadelphia.
In episode two, we showcase this monumental art book that Sylvester Stallone [who played Rocky] created. There was this passage in it that just blew me away, about the first draft of “Rocky,” where he says, “As for Adrian, she was Jewish in the first draft.” And he got feedback and cut that character. We never hear about Mickey’s Judaism. We never hear about Rocky’s bond across culture. But the fact that the first scene in the “Rocky” series is in a place called Resurrection Gym — that is obvious Christian iconography — and to put Jewish characters in is really fascinating to me.
There is another famous grave that is involved in the series. The character Adrian eventually passes away, and like the statue, which was made as a bronze sculpture, for the “Rocky” film series they made an actual gravestone and it’s in Philadelphia’s most famous cemetery, Laurel Hill. And you can go there and see this gravestone where a movie character is “buried.” People leave offerings on the gravestone, including small pebbles as if it’s a Jewish site of memory.
People talk about representation on screen, and I’m not sure a Jewish funeral necessarily does that, but I would imagine for some people, seeing Rocky Balboa say the “Mourner’s Kaddish“ was maybe their first interaction with Judaism in some way. What do you make of that?
Every shot is deliberate. And it’s actually that kind of attitude and outlook that created the Rocky statue, because Sylvester Stallone was the director of that film, and they could have made a styrofoam version or a temporary one, but they spent over a year making a bronze version so that when the camera faced it, it would make contact. I think very similarly, this is part of the artistry of Stallone that plays out in our podcast series. We’re not with him when he sits shiva. We’re not there in a prolonged series of mourning, but in a split second, seeing a Jewish site of a memory is really fascinating. And to see the coach Mickey, to have his Wikipedia page say he’s Jewish, all that we have is mourning.
I think about how for immigrant Jewish communities, there are gaps in our narratives. Throughout the series, and one of the reasons I wanted to share my perspective as a queer Jewish person who grew up loving sports in Philly, I’ve been informed by my own family’s history, and what we’re able to recall and what gaps there are. And I see that being echoed for so many people in the Rocky story.
It’s clearly a very personal story for you. Why did you think it was important to start the podcast with your own identity, and to include your Jewish mother?
I think it’s important that when we talk about sites of memory, we understand that there are shared and collective ways that we bring the past forward, and there are others that are incredibly personal. My hope was to find, in this case, to spotlight, a significant site of memory in the city, but ask questions about it. And I think it was important to note what position I would take, because I don’t believe there’s one story to the Rocky statue. To tell a biography of a statue, you actually have to tell it of the people who make meaning from it. So in the series, we do a lot of work where we want to know other people’s stories and backgrounds, whether they are refugees from Afghanistan, or community organizers in Kensington [a neighborhood of Philadelphia]. My hope was by positioning this from my perspective, almost as a memoir in a way, that it opened up space for others to have their experiences be valued and made meaning of.
The official artwork for Farber’s podcast. (Courtesy)
Both with the podcast and in your work with the Monument Lab, how do you feel that your Jewish identity informs what you do? Do you see overlap between your Jewish values and the values you work on in your organization?
I absolutely think so. I grew up in a Jewish community in Philadelphia, and tikkun olam was a constant refrain. The work of tikkun olam meant a worldview that necessitated building coalitions and understanding across divides, to not diminish or under-emphasize them, but to appreciate how we work in solidarity, whether that’s around racial justice, gender justice, in various struggles. I am a co-founder and director of an organization that focuses on memory, and that I really get from the stories of growing up in a Jewish household, in a Jewish community, where memory lived in different ways. We were always aware of the stories of trauma and loss, as well as reconciliation and transformation, and how you work with the gaps that you have, and you listen, and you learn and you carry the story with you. Because that is the way to bond generations. Jewish memory really grounds what I do, and I seek to use it as a tool to learn more and to feed connection across divides.
Rocky takes on this almost mythical, godlike status, and his statue in Philadelphia is a bit of a pilgrimage site. Do you see any tension there as a Jew, given the prohibition against idol worship?
I think about the importance of memory, against forces of violence and erasure. I also understand that, in a world that is full of pain and difficulty and loss, we seek places to release that. And so I understand the pull to monuments. What I would like to see, and what we try to do through this series, “The Statue,” and also with the work of Monument Lab, is to look on and off the pedestal, and really think about how history lives with us. As we say in the series and other places, history doesn’t live inside of statues, it lives with people who steward them, who create other kinds of sites of memory, who are vigilant in their modes of commemoration. What I try to do in this work is understand the ambivalence around monuments, the pull to try to remember and be enduring through time, and just that constant reminder that whenever you try to freeze the past, or freeze an image of power, you cut out the potential to find connection and empowerment, and thus forms of survival.
In sports, there are so many ways to honor people, especially different ways that, like a statue, take on the idea of permanence. When Bill Russell died, the NBA retired his number 6 across the league. On Jackie Robinson Day, every April 15, the whole MLB honors Jackie Robinson by wearing his uniform number. But statues just have a different level of oomph. Sandy Koufax has a new statue in Los Angeles that was unveiled last year; Hank Greenberg has one. What do you think it should take for an athlete to reach that status?
The pinnacle in sports is to have a statue dedicated to you outside of the stadium. And I do believe the cultures of social media have amplified that, because we grew up with the story of Sandy Koufax not pitching in the World Series during the High Holy Days, and that wasn’t because we learned it from a statue or a plaque. We learned it because it was carried forward and put into different forms of remembering and recalling its importance. I went to several Maccabi Games in the U.S. — I used to be a sprinter. And the culture of memory and sport, they were one in the same.
In professional sports, the pinnacle is the statue, but I think you brought up other really important ways of remembering that operate in non-statue forms that feel like they are living memorials. The idea of retiring someone’s number, and keeping their number up, is a way to acknowledge, in this really public of all public spaces, an intimacy and a care, and especially when an athlete passes away, how that transcends the lines of city geography. Jackie Robinson Day is something that did not occur immediately after Jackie Robinson was the first Black player to play in the major leagues, but was a product of a later moment when people around Major League Baseball sought to activate his memory. So yes, a statue outside of a stadium is like a particular kind of professional accolade. But the other forms are really meaningful.
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ADL says antisemitic incidents dropped by a third in 2025, but assaults reached record levels
(JTA) — Antisemitic incidents in the United States fell sharply in 2025 from record highs in the previous two years, but physical assaults, including deadly attacks, continued to rise, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s annual audit.
In 2025, the ADL recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents across the country, marking a 33% decrease compared to 2024, when it recorded 9,354 incidents. (Antisemitic incidents increased by 5% from 2023 to 2024.)
Still, 2025 marked the third-highest year for antisemitic incidents since the ADL began tracking them in 1979 — after 2023 and 2024.
And incidents of assault involving a deadly weapon, which included the firebombing of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence, increased by 39%, from 23 in 2024 to 32 last year.
“Our 2025 Audit, which shows it was one of the most violent years for American Jews on record, is a reminder of how dramatically the threat landscape has shifted. Numbers that would have shocked us five years ago are now our floor,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO and national director, said in a statement. “People are being murdered because of antisemitism on American soil, and thousands more are threatened. ADL will not stop until that baseline changes.”
While antisemitic harassment and vandalism both declined from 2024 levels, from 6,552 to 4,003 incidents of harassment and 2,606 to 2,068 cases of vandalism, the ADL’s report found that incidents of assault rose from 196 to 203, a 4% increase from 2024 to 2025. At least 300 victims were targeted by incidents of assault, according to the report.
Last year also saw the first time since 2019 that murders were recorded in antisemitic attacks, including two Israeli embassy staffers shot to death outside the Capital Jewish Museum last May and another victim who died of injuries sustained during the June firebombing attack at a Boulder, Colorado, demonstration for Israeli hostages.
“Behind every one of these incidents is a real person: a family threatened at their synagogue, a rabbi attacked on the street, a student harassed on campus,” Oren Segal, the ADL’s senior vice president for Counter-Extremism and Intelligence, said in a statement. “2025 brought some of the most violent antisemitic attacks in recent memory.”
The ADL’s annual antisemitism audit, which has widely been viewed as an authoritative survey of antisemitism in the country, also found a significant drop in antisemitic incidents reported on college campuses, with incidents dropping by 66% from 1,694 in 2024 to to 583 in 2025.
Antisemitic incidents related to anti-Israel protests, including encampments, also decreased by 83% on college campuses in 2025 compared to 2024, according to the survey.
That decline dovetailed with a number of universities across the country that, following the wave of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses in 2024, moved to restrict or dismantle encampments and adopt stricter policies governing demonstrations.
Incidents directed at Jewish institutions decreased from 1,702 incidents in 2024 to 1,129 this year, marking a 34% drop. Bomb threats to Jewish institutions also dramatically decreased, with the ADL recording 59 bomb threats against Jewish institutions in 2025 compared to 627 in 2024 and 996 in 2023.
In non-Jewish K-12 schools, incidents decreased slightly from 860 in 2024 to 825 in 2025, with the ADL reporting that the “vast majority of incidents involve individual, peer-to-peer behavior, such as antisemitic bullying or students vandalizing classrooms with swastikas.”
The audit also reported a nearly 50% drop in the distribution of white supremacist propaganda.
The ADL has long drawn criticism from pro-Palestinian voices for tallying incidents of anti-Israel sentiments as antisemitic. This year, the group reported that 45% of all incidents it tracked were related to Israel or Zionism, down from 58% in 2024.
The ADL said its counts “do not include legitimate political protest of Israeli policies or general pro-Palestinian activism,” and cited examples of antisemitic protest including celebrations of violence against Jews and glorification for terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
The ADL attributed the drop in Israel-related antisemitic incidents to a “lower level of antisemitic activity at rallies organized by anti-Israel groups,” with incidents occurring in the vicinity of anti-Israel protests decreasing by 67% from 2024 and 2025.
Other examples of antisemitic incidents included in this year’s tally were an anti-Israel protest at the University of Oregon in February in which protesters displayed signs that read “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as well as a message spray-painted on a sidewalk in Los Angeles in October that read “Stop the new Holocaust. Boycott, shame Zionism fascists [sic].”
Aryeh Tuchman, an antisemitism researcher who spent two decades at the ADL before joining the rival Nexus Project, said that despite criticism of the audit, it is “the best data set of antisemitic incidents that anyone can compile in the United States.”
“No one agrees with anyone at this point on what constitutes, you know, antisemitism and anti-Zionism, like even those two words don’t mean very much anymore, and so people certainly are going to disagree with ADL,” Tuchman said, later adding. “Everybody who feels maybe a little bit differently than the ADL, or lots differently from the ADL, they need to engage with the audit on their own terms and find the value to them.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post ADL says antisemitic incidents dropped by a third in 2025, but assaults reached record levels appeared first on The Forward.
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Protesters picket Manhattan synagogue over Israel real estate sale, testing Mamdani and new law
Protesters thronged a Manhattan synagogue Tuesday night outside an event promoting real estate in Israel and the West Bank — returning to the scene of a clash last year that prompted a new law shielding houses of worship and put the heat on newly elected mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The demonstration at Park East Synagogue on the Upper East Side drew more than 100 protesters, kept nearly a block away from the house of worship by barricades and a heavy NYPD presence.
Chants of “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “We don’t want a two-state, we want ’48” rose from the crowd — slogans Zionist organizations view as antisemitic and a call for violence and removal of Jews in the region.
At one point, two protesters near the event ripped down a plastered poster of the Lubavitcher Rebbe that read “Messiah is here” from a traffic light and threw it in the trash.
A smaller group of pro-Israel counterprotesters rallied across the street from the pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
A spokesperson for the synagogue said it rented out the space for the Great Israeli Real Estate Event, which advertised properties for sale in Israel and the West Bank.
The standoff comes just days after a new law governing protests outside houses of worship took effect — a measure that City Council Speaker Julie Menin introduced after a November 2025 demonstration at Park East Synagogue.
The protests, combined with what some Jewish leaders saw as slow or equivocal responses from Mamdani, led to calls for legislation that would limit demonstrations near houses of worship.
Menin initially aimed to establish protest-free buffer zones of up to 100 feet outside synagogues but revised the bill after pushback from Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, some progressive Jewish groups and free speech advocates, under threat of legal challenges.
A watered-down version of that legislation that allows the NYPD to determine how large buffer zones need to be on a case-by-case basis passed with a veto-proof majority last month. Mamdani allowed the bill to become law without his signature.
Mamdani meanwhile vetoed a similar bill that would apply to schools. The Council could still vote to override that veto.
Police closed off the entire street where the synagogue sits to the public, while allowing the event’s attendees to enter. The demonstrators were well over 100 feet away from the building — a greater distance than even the largest buffer zone proposed by Menin.
Supporters of the law argued that its flexible standard — allowing the NYPD to determine buffer zone distances rather than specifying them precisely — would protect protesters’ rights. But the security at Park East showed how that discretion can, in practice, expand protest-free zones by granting the NYPD wide latitude to set the distance themselves.
A spokesperson for Mamdani, a vocal critic of Israel, said on Tuesday before the protest that the mayor is “deeply opposed” to the event, characterizing the sale of property in the West Bank as a violation of international law. The spokesperson, Sam Raskin, nevertheless emphasized that the city was ready to ensure the safety of participants entering the venue and those demonstrating.
“Our administration has been clear that we are committed to ensuring safe entry and exit from any house of worship, and that such access never be in question while all protesters are able to exercise their First Amendment rights,” said Raskin ahead of the event.
‘People are outraged’
Tuesday’s event was the first time under the new law, but the NYPD protest plan it calls for is still a work in progress: the police department still has another month to present a plan and 90 days to publicize it.
Local politicians noted the sensitive nature of the protest, saying that alone is reason to condemn it.
Assemblymember Alex Bores and Councilmember Virginia Maloney, who represent the district where the synagogue is located, said in a joint statement that the situation naturally evoked “painful memories of times when people have been harassed while entering houses of worship.”
Micah Lasher, a state legislator who is vying for the open congressional seat on Manhattan’s west side, described the protest as “intended to create fear in the hearts of Jewish New Yorkers and stigmatize the community.” Lasher said leaders should condemn the protest, no matter any disagreement on policy.
Rob Jereski, a local attorney who is Jewish and came to support the Palestinian side, had reservations about the security perimeters, arguing it kept protesters too far from the real estate event.
“I know the new law is supposed to maintain free speech and honor the Constitution, but this doesn’t seem to do it,” Jereski said. “The fact that Jews pray in a place doesn’t mean that crimes that are committed in that place should be without a response if people are outraged.”
Some counterprotesters also criticized the new Council measure — for not going far enough.
“That’s outrageous that it’s not clear that you cannot demonstrate and harass kids or people around religious institutions,” said Tomer Morad, a demonstrator on the Israeli side.
Karen Lichtbraun, an activist affiliated with the Zionist Herut movement in New York, said the new bill was a “joke” that doesn’t address the problem.
“Today, thank God, they’re away from the synagogue,” she said. “But what happens if next time the police commissioner decides that they can be 50 feet or 10 feet away?”
The post Protesters picket Manhattan synagogue over Israel real estate sale, testing Mamdani and new law appeared first on The Forward.
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Canadian Intel Reveals Gaza War Motivated At Least 7 Lone-Wolf Terror Plots in 2025
Dueling pro-Israel and anti-Israel demonstrations at McGill University in Montreal, Canada; May 2, 2024. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS)’s newly published annual report documents how aspiring domestic terrorists have felt justified to plan attacks in response to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
“The threat of a domestic lone-actor attack in Canada increased significantly since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict,” the CSIS report said in a section on religion-motivated crime. “In 2025, at least seven of CSIS’s priority investigations involving mobilization to violence have been assessed as motivated by this conflict in whole or in part.”
CSIS Director Dan Rogers offered examples in the report’s introduction, writing that “we achieved a number of counterterrorism successes that led to law enforcement action, including the arrests of Hide & Stalk members in Québec, and of a minor who intended to violently target Jewish people and police in Montréal.”
The report further described how the war in Gaza “has also fueled violent extremist organization narratives and has the potential to inspire a new generation of extremists. The conflict will likely continue to motivate some extremists in the near term, but understanding the true impact of the conflict will only be clear over time.”
Antisemitism appears in Canada in many forms today, with the report noting continued incidents of vandalism, graffiti, online propaganda, overt racist statements, and bomb threats. The document also said that, since 2014, there has been one attack against a Jewish institution and five plans stopped, including an incident in August 2025 involving a minor in Montreal.
Earlier this year, three shootings targeted Jewish institutions in less than a week in Toronto.
Other terrorist crimes from last year spotlighted in the report included a man in Winnipeg charged in March for offenses motivated by “nihilistic violent extremism,” and a woman in Montreal who pleaded guilty in July to providing material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). That month, law enforcement arrested four members of Hide & Stalk, a far-right conspiracist militia driven by an “accelerationist” ideology which seeks to speed up societal collapse.
In September, the neo-Nazi propagandist Patrick Gordon MacDonald, known by the alias “Dark Foreigner,” received a 10-year prison sentence on three terrorism offenses. The report described how “his objective was to inspire others to engage in violence through his graphic designs and videos he produced in support of Atomwaffen Division (AWD).”
Founded in 2015 by neo-Nazi Brandon Russell — who now serves a 20-year prison sentence after a conviction last year for plotting attacks on electrical substations in Baltimore — AWD draws inspiration from James Mason, a former member of the American Nazi Party (ANP) and leader of the National Socialist Liberation Front (NSLF), who wrote an essay collection titled SIEGE which advocated for a white American ethno-state. The group has often blended with Salafi and Jihadist terrorists, “citing their culture of martyrdom and insurgency as inspiration for their tactics and propaganda.”
Another terrorism conviction in Canada came in October when Matthew Althorpe pleaded guilty for his involvement in the Terrorgram Collective, a neo-Nazi Telegram channel. CSIS explained that “the violent tenets of Terrorgram’s content and manifestos have inspired at least three violent attacks in Slovakia, Brazil, and Türkey, two plots to attack critical infrastructure in the United States, and the attempted assassination of a foreign government official in Australia.”
While a variety of ideologies can inspire terrorist attacks in Canada, the perpetrators fit a familiar pattern, with 93 percent being male and the average age being 34, findings consistent since 2022. However, the report noted increases in both youth and those over 48.
The Canadian government also designated numerous organizations as terrorist organizations. In February, newly proscribed groups included seven transnational criminal organizations reclassified as terrorist entities: Cártel del Golfo, Cártel de Sinaloa, La Familia Michoacana, Cárteles Unidos, La Mara Salvatrucha, Tren de Aragua, and Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación.
Later in the year Canada added Lawrence Bishnoi Gang, 764, Maniac Murder Cult, Terrorgram Collective, and the ISIS-aligned Islamic State-Mozambique.
The report explained how foreign governments engage in espionage in Canada. Tactics range from agents cultivating friendships with targets to manipulate them to using blackmail and launching cyber-attacks to compromise digital devices. “In 2025, the main perpetrators of foreign interference and espionage against Canada remained the People’s Republic of China (PRC), India, the Russian Federation, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and Pakistan,” the report stated.
Canada joined 13 other countries in July 2025, issuing a statement condemning “the attempts of Iranian intelligence services to kill, kidnap, and harass people in Europe and North America in clear violation of our sovereignty.”
The report described the concept of transnational repression as “when foreign governments, or those acting on their behalf, reach beyond their borders to harass, threaten or harm individuals or groups to advance their interests or to silence criticism and dissent.” Methods employed include physical violence, threatening overseas relatives, lawfare, cyberbullying, online defamation, extortion, and community ostracism.
CSIS named Handala Hack Team as among Iran’s henchmen. The group “doxed several Iran International-linked journalists, including a Canadian resident,” the report said. “The Canadian’s photos, provincial driver’s license, permanent resident card, and Iranian passport details were released on the internet and social media platforms. The hacktivist group reproached the Canadian for, among other things, their promotion of 2SLGBTQIA+ issues in Iran.”
The doxxing resulted in death threats and the harassment of family members in Iran. CSIS warned that Iran may use proxies to go after dissidents, sometimes relying on transnational organized crime networks.
Hostile governments may also seek to plant disinformation, false narratives deliberately spread as “part of broader information operations aimed at manipulating audiences.”
One of the report’s most alarming findings was the degree to which extremist groups with differing ideologies draw inspiration from one another. CSIS described finding “an overlap in content, aesthetics, conspiracy theories and grievance narratives, including those that are anti-liberal, anti-2SLGBTQIA+, antisemitic, and Islamophobic … On occasion, similar violent content is consumed, including gore sites, jihadi beheading videos, and attack manuals.”
CSIS warned that “violent extremists with these different ideologies are increasingly finding common causes. They find inspiration and motivation in the events and trends that polarize society or cause them to lose hope for the future. They easily access and amplify content online that radicalizes them and reinforces their view that violence is justified to achieve their extremist goals.”
The report named Islamic State as the most significant threat to Western interests, with CSIS analysts warning the terrorist group “will continue to attempt to influence supporters — particularly from Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan — to plan attacks on targets related to world events, and enable them to do so, while Al Qaeda will continue efforts to reconstitute itself in permissive territories, including through the rise of the Islamic State in Somalia and increased Al-Shabaab terrorism activities in North Africa.”
A recent example of the trend of cross-ideological alliances appeared late last month in Mali, where Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM,) an Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group, joined with Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a Tuareg rebel separatist militia, in a shared effort to overthrow the military junta which has ruled the African nation since Aug. 18, 2020. The coordinated attacks resulted in the killing of Defense Minister Sadio Camara and the seizure of Kidal, a key town in Mali’s eastern region.