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A Note From Israel: When the Media Battlefield and the Home Front Collide
The body of a motorist lies on a road following a mass-infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel October 7, 2023. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
A significant part of my professional life has been spent at HonestReporting. I’ve worked through far too many crises, including several major IDF military operations, mass-casualty terror attacks, and numerous incidents that made the front pages of every international newspaper around the globe.
In this sphere, you have to come to grips with the constant fight ahead. You may win critical battles, but the war itself — a war beyond the military battlefield — is one you may never fully win.
This is a fight for Israel’s legitimacy and its right to be treated as simply another state among the nations.
The past year has been one of the hardest I’ve ever experienced, not just because of the relentless attacks in the international media on Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas terrorists who carried out the worst atrocity against the Jewish people since the Holocaust. It’s also the overwhelming antisemitism and abuse that floods social media — things I force myself to see and respond to every day.
It’s the inability to separate my work from the harsh reality that Israelis are living through — because I’m one of them.
In a country this small, it’s almost a cliché to say everyone is connected to someone directly affected by the situation. But it’s the truth.
I live in Modi’in, a city of 100,000 people situated exactly halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It’s a place proud of its distinction as having the highest percentage of 18-year-olds answering the mandatory call to serve in the IDF.
Tragically, in the days after October 7, it became clear that several of those young soldiers had been brutally killed inside their bases, including some from my own neighborhood.
I’ve lived in the same house for 14 years, yet had never met the neighbors two doors down — until I attended the shiva for their teenage granddaughter who fell that day. At other times, the streets of our neighborhood would fill with residents standing silently, holding Israeli flags, as convoys carried the families of the fallen to lay their loved ones to rest in the local cemetery — a heartbreaking scene echoed across the country.
In my late 40s, I’m at an age where the soldiers on the frontlines are both my peers and the children of many friends and acquaintances.
In my position, I receive constant updates from various governmental and non-governmental organizations, including the IDF, police, and Magen David Adom emergency responders. Far too often, I’d wake up to an IDF notification about the latest casualties. Sometimes, a name would stand out and I’d pray it wasn’t the child of a friend or colleague. Tragically, sometimes it was.
The husband of a former colleague and the son of a family friend were both killed in Gaza. A cousin from my extended family was stabbed to death while serving as a Border Policewoman in Jerusalem’s Old City. The pain and grief are beyond words.
HonestReporting is a microcosm of the country as a whole. One colleague has been on army reserve duty for over 200 days, leaving his wife and two small children to manage without him, while our organization is left without a key team member. Another colleague’s husband has spent many days in uniform, leaving her to care for their baby alone. Everyone is affected in some way, and we are no different from countless workplaces disrupted by the mandatory call to serve.
I will always consider it a privilege to have a level of insider access that many Israelis don’t. At the end of November, I was invited to a breakfast at a foreign ambassador’s residence, alongside colleagues from other organizations and some family members of the hostages.
We sat and listened as the families shared the stories of their loved ones, still held captive in Gaza.
At one point, an attendee broke down in tears. She quickly apologized, wondering aloud how she could be the one crying when others in the room had brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, and children being held by Hamas — yet somehow, they managed to keep their composure while fighting for their release.
There was no shame in her tears. It’s hard for those outside to fully grasp the deep bonds that connect both Israelis and the broader global Jewish community, or the simple truth that this catastrophe touches nearly every one of us in some way.
In the weeks following October 7, I had the opportunity to visit Sderot and several kibbutzim near the Gaza border. It felt like stepping into a vast crime scene, frozen in time since that horrific day. Many of HonestReporting’s staff have been there, witnessing the devastation firsthand, so we can accurately convey to the world the barbarity of what happened there.
Israel is a country still gripped by trauma, and there’s no sign of it easing. Behind every article, video, and social media post is a member of HonestReporting’s staff, living the reality of a nation at war — where the frontlines are also the home front. Workdays spent behind computers are often interrupted by sirens and frantic runs to safe rooms.
A job focused on handling bad news becomes indistinguishable from the constant barrage of terrible events that flood our senses.
In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ rampage, I believed Israel might have three or four days before the global narrative turned against us. In truth, I’m not sure we even had that.
Today, we continue fighting against media bias and anti-Israel slander — not just because it’s our job or career, but because it’s our responsibility as proud Israelis. We’ve been given the privilege to serve our country and people in the best way we know how.
The author is the Editorial Director of HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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Oscar-Winning Jewish Director-Actor Jesse Eisenberg Gets Polish Citizenship After Filming ‘A Real Pain’ in Poland
Jesse Eisenberg holding his Polish citizenship certificate presented to him by President Andrzej Duda during a ceremony at the Polish Mission to the United Nations in New York on March 4, 2025. Photo: Marek Borawski/KPRP/Cover Images via Reuters Connect
Actor and director Jesse Eisenberg recently received Polish citizenship after filming in the Eastern European country the Oscar-winning drama “A Real Pain,” which is about two cousins who go on a Jewish heritage tour through Poland to learn about their family history.
Polish President Andrzej Duda presented Eisenberg with the citizenship certificate during a ceremony at the Polish Mission to the United Nations in New York on March 4. “I want to express my happiness, and the happiness of my compatriots, that we have a new citizen,” said Duda. “I am pleased that people from around the world remember their origins, that their ancestors came from Poland, and want to connect with our country.” Eisenberg, whose has family ties to Poland and the Holocaust, said receiving Polish citizenship is “an honor of a lifetime” and something he had been interested in pursuing for two decades.
“While we were filming ‘A Real Pain’ in Poland, and I was walking the streets and starting to get a little more comfortable in the country, it occurred to me that my family lived in this place for far longer than we lived in New York,” he said at the ceremony. “And of course of the history ended so tragically, but in addition to that, is the tragedy that my family didn’t feel any connection anymore to Poland. And that saddened me and confirmed to me that I really wanted to try to reconnect as much as possible. I really hope this amazing honor is the first step in me on behalf of my family reconnecting to this beautiful country.”
Eisenberg revealed last year that he had applied for Polish citizenship. The Oscar winner told the Polish broadcaster TVN at the time that he feels a deep connection to Poland and wants to help improve Polish-Jewish relations. His wife and the mother of his son, Anna Strout, also has family roots in Poland. The “Social Network” star first visited Poland in 2007. He said last year that much of “A Real Pain” is based on his family’s personal history. His ancestors hailed from the town of Krasnystaw in southeast Poland and many of his family members died in the Holocaust. Last year, the town council of Krasnystaw awarded him honorary local citizenship. His great-aunt Doris fled Poland for the United States in 1938. She died in 2019 at the age of 106.
“I became obsessed with my family’s history during the war when I was 19 years old,” Eisenberg said in 2020. “I would see my aunt every week — she died last year at 106 … She was born in Poland and then when she was about nine she came to America … I became really fascinated and it was interesting for me as an American teenager to have some connection to something that was so much more historically relevant than my own life.”
“A Real Pain” tells the fictional story of two American-Jewish cousins – played by Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin – who reconnect to participate in a Jewish heritage tour in Poland to learn more about their Jewish roots and the Holocaust following the death of their grandmother, who was a Holocaust survivor. The movie was filmed in Poland and included scenes at the former Nazi concentration camp of Majdanek, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial. “A Real Pain” features a scene that was even filmed in the small apartment that Eisenberg’s family fled from during World War II.
Eisenberg wrote, directed, produced and starred in “A Real Pain.” He has won a number of awards for the film, including a BAFTA and Independent Spirit Award, both for best original screenplay, and the Culkin has taken home several honors this season for best supporting actor, including an Academy Award, Golden Globe, Critics Choice Award, BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild Award.
Eisenberg has starred in and wrote other projects that have ties to Poland or the Holocaust, including the 2020 war drama “Resistance” and his 2013 play “The Revisionist.”
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Israel Slams UN Report Charging IDF with Sexual Violence in Gaza
Delegates react to the results during the United Nations General Assembly vote on a draft resolution that would recognize the Palestinians as qualified to become a full UN member, in New York City, US, May 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
Israel has been accused of committing “genocidal acts” and employing sexual violence as a weapon of war in a new report published Thursday by a United Nations commission. The report drew sharp criticism from Israel, which dismissed it as an antisemitic blood libel, while Hamas welcomed its findings.
“Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention,” the report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry stated.
It also accused Israeli security forces of using forced public stripping and sexual assault as a punitive measure in Gaza.
The report, citing testimonies from Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, alleges that civilians were stripped of their clothing in public, sometimes without gender separation. Israel’s permanent mission to the UN in Geneva has rejected the allegations, calling them unfounded and based on uncorroborated sources.
“In a shameless attempt to incriminate the IDF and manufacture the illusion of ‘systematic’ use of [sexual and gender-based violence], the [Commission of Inquiry] deliberately adopts a lower level of corroboration in its report, which allowed it to include information from second-hand single uncorroborated sources,” the mission said in a statement.
Israeli officials say the Commission of Inquiry has applied different standards in evaluating evidence against Israel compared to its assessment of Hamas’ actions on October 7, when it only included corroborated information.
The COI last year released another report last year saying it had “not been able to independently verify” allegations of rape citing “a lack of access to victims, witnesses and crime sites and the obstruction of its investigations by the Israeli authorities.”
It’s three members are Navi Pillay, who orchestrated both the discredited Goldstone Report and the Durban II Zionism is Racism conference and who routinely denounces “apartheid” Israel; UN Special Rapporteur Miloon Kothari who questioned the influence of the “Jewish lobby” and Israel’s right to be a UN member state; and Chris Sidoti, who said accusations of antisemitism are “thrown around like rice at a wedding”.
“All of the people on that commission have expressed hostile views and prejudicial views to Israel, even prior to serving on the commission,”Anne Herzberg, Legal Advisor and UN Representative for NGO Monitor, told The Algemeiner.
“The staffing is completely secret. There’s no way to even know who is writing the reports, how they’re gathering the evidence. So this COI has no credibility.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the report and the UN Human Rights Council, calling it “an antisemitic, rotten, terrorist-supporting, and irrelevant body.”
“Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Hamas terrorist organization in the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the UN is once again choosing to attack Israel with false accusations, including unfounded accusations of sexual violence,” Netanyahu said.
Cochav Elkayam-Levy, who heads the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children, said the report followed many other instances drawing “a false comparison between Israel and Hamas, especially in the context of sexual violence.”
“Sadly, this pattern has repeated itself across various UN bodies since October 7th. This moral comparison is painful and wrong because its purpose is to establish false historical narratives and inflicts irreparable harm both on the victims and on justice,” she said.
Herzberg said the COI was “a main vector of atrocity denial and inversion.”
“Since October 7, the COI has outrageously accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity in Gaza while refusing to say the same about Hamas. It also downplayed the mass sexual violence committed on October 7 against Israeli women and girls, while now issuing an entire report dedicated to defaming the IDF with the false claim of perpetrating systematic gender-based violence against Palestinians,” Herzberg said.
The report will likely be exploited by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and provide fuel for campaigns by the BDS movement against Israel, Herzberg said. She expressed her hope that the Trump administration would defund the UNHRC in the near future. “It should never have been established in the first place,” she said.
The Hamas terror group welcomed the report, saying it confirmed Israel’s “genocidal” campaign against Palestinians. Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem told AFP, “The UN’s investigation report on Israel’s genocidal acts against the Palestinian people confirms what has happened on the ground: genocide and violations of all humanitarian and legal standards.
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Cornell University Pursuing Disciplinary Charges Against Anti-Zionist Hecklers of Pro-Peace Event
Cornell University anti-Israel protesters set up encampment on the University’s Arts Quad, May 3, 2024. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
Cornell University has initiated disciplinary proceedings against over a dozen anti-Zionist students, staff, and non-Cornell-affiliated individuals who disrupted a “Pathways to Peace” campus event that was held to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians on March 10.
According to a statement by interim president Michael Kotlikoff, 17 protesters organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) heckled and jeered a panel comprising “Middle East leaders and US ambassadors,” violating the “educational process” and the university’s community standards. No sooner had they started than they “were swiftly removed,” Kotlikoff said.
Cornell University Police identified 17 people responsible for what Kotlikoff called an “unacceptable disruption.”
Nine students will be referred to the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards for “appropriate action,” he added, which includes the possibility of suspension. Staff members involved in the disruption would be referred “for disciplinary actions through Human Resources,” while outside disrupters were to be issued “issued persona non grata status, barring them from Cornell’s campus.”
As an additional measure, Kotlikoff has also imposed an interim suspension on SJP for its orchestrating the unauthorized protest. The move could, on paper, deactivate the group for the remainder of the semester.
“Events like Pathways to Peace represent our ambition to embrace diverse viewpoints and engage in difficult conversations,” he said. “Cornell must be a place where all voices can be heard and none are silenced.”
Cornell University and Students for Justice in Palestine have sparred all academic year, with SJP pushing the limits of what constitutes appropriate conduct. In Sept., school officials suspended over a dozen students who disrupted a career fair, an action which saw them “physically” breach the area by “[pushing] police out of the way.” In Feb., the university amnestied some of the protesters, granting them “alternate resolutions” which terminated their suspensions, according to The Cornell Daily Sun.
In January, anti-Zionist agitators at Cornell kicked off the spring semester with an act of vandalism which defamed Israel as an “occupier” and practitioner of “apartheid.” The students drew a blistering response from Kotlikoff, who said that “acts of violence, extended occupations of buildings, or destruction of property (including graffiti), will not be tolerated and will be subject to immediate public safety response,” but the university has declined to say how it will deal with the matter since identifying at least one of the culprits in Feb.
Anti-Zionists convulsed Cornell University’s campus during the 2023-2024 academic year, engaging in activities that are without precedent in the school’s 159-year history. Three weeks after Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel, now-former student Patrick Dai threatened to perpetrate heinous crimes against members of the school’s Jewish community, including mass murder and rape. Cornell students also occupied an administrative building and held a “mock trial” in which they convicted school president Martha Pollack of complicity in “apartheid” and “genocide against Palestinian civilians.” Meanwhile, history professor Russell Rickford called Hamas’s barbarity on Oct. 7 “exhilarating” and “energizing” at a pro-Palestinian rally held on campus.
By the end of the year, Pollack announced her resignation as president of the university, a decision which followed the installment of an illegal “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the campus in which pro-Hamas students had lived and protested the university’s investments in companies linked to Israel.
Despite some inconsistencies, the Kotlikoff administration has pursued campus lawbreakers. In Feb., it ordered the arrest of a fourth individual, Sumitra P. Pandit, involved in the Sept. career fair protest, pressing charges for obstruction and unlawful assembly.
“Pandita was identified as one of several people refusing to compl with lawful orders of the police to remain outside…and physically forcing their way past officers who were preventing the group’s entrance to the building,” Cornell University Police Department (CUPD) said on Feb. 7. “The investigation into the incident is continuing. All defendants charged with a crime are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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