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A peace activist, a soldier, a son: Stories of Americans missing or dead in Hamas invasion begin to emerge
(JTA) — One, just out of the army, told his dad “I love you” and “I’m sorry” then went quiet. One who just joined the army has no family nearby, so a stranger is keeping him company in the hospital. One was a peace activist.
These are some of the stories beginning to emerge as Israel strives to identify the hundreds of people who are dead and dozens who are missing after Saturday’s attack on southern Israel by Hamas. There are no figures yet on the number of North Americans killed or abducted in the invasion, but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said Americans have reportedly been killed, wounded and taken hostage.
Tom Nides, who ended his stint as ambassador to Israel in June, said crises like the current one send the U.S. embassy into overdrive.
“They have a large number of people that are responsible for this, and it’s one of the biggest, it’s one of the most important things that an embassy can do,” Nides said in an interview.
Nearly two days after the invasion began, Jon Polin is waiting for news about his 23-year-old son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, and hoping that he is still alive. Goldberg-Polin left home at 11 p.m. on Friday night for an all-night outdoor party near the Gaza border, which Hamas terrorists raided on Saturday morning, killing some 250 young adults and kidnapping others.
The party was supposed to be the kind of revelry that recently discharged soldiers tend to enjoy. Goldberg-Polin, who was born in Berkeley, California, moved to Israel with his parents at age 7 and completed his mandatory army service in April.
Goldberg-Polin’s father said his son loves festivals, music and traveling, and like many discharged soldiers, he was saving up for a trip to India in a couple months. He was working in the meantime as a medic and waiter. But they hadn’t heard from him since Saturday.
“He sent us two short WhatsApps Saturday morning at 8:11,” Polin said, sharing the messages with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“I love you,” read the first one. “I’m sorry,” read the second.
Another American-born soldier from Houston was lying in a hospital in Israel, with no family nearby, after being shot in the face during the attack. Rhoda Smolow, the president of the women’s Zionist group Hadassah, is keeping the soldier company at Hadassah Medical Center until his family could be by his side.
“He is on a tracheotomy, so we couldn’t speak, and apparently, according to the caregivers there, the nurses and the doctors, they felt he is very traumatized,” she said, declining to share his name for privacy reasons. “We felt so terribly that he was in the room alone without anyone.”
Smolow said she told the soldier Hadassah would make sure he received the best care possible. “He gave me a thumbs up,” she said.
The Zionist group’s CEO, Naomi Adler, discussed the soldier in a briefing held by the Jewish Federations of North America and the American Jewish Committee on Sunday. The hospital and the army were having trouble tracking down his family, but Smolow said Adler’s appearance on the webinar may have resulted in a lead.
Other North American Jews are also missing. Peace activist Vivian Silver, 75, was abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri on Saturday, near the border.
Born in Winnipeg, Canada, she was the longtime director of the Arab Jewish Center For Empowerment, Equality, and Cooperation, which organized projects joining communities in Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In 2014, after the last major war between Israel and Hamas, she helped found Women Wage Peace, which promotes peace-building actions among women from all communities and across the political spectrum.
Speaking to Forbes in 2021 for a series on women who assist the vulnerable, Silver said she remembered feeling relief after the government built bomb shelters in Kibbutz Be’eri, which had been subject to rocket fire from Gaza for more than a decade.
“In 2009, the [Israeli] government only built shelters for communities that were four kilometers from the border. The community I live in is four and a half kilometers from the border, so we didn’t have shelters then,” Silver told Forbes. “Now we do, so psychologically we feel better, and we feel safer, and in fact, we are safer, we’re a lot safer than the people in Gaza.”
At a 2018 Women Wage Peace event on the Gaza border in 2018, she said that the Israeli government needed to change its approach in order to bring peace to the area. “Show the required courage that will bring changes of policy that will bring us quiet and security,” she said then, addressing the government. “Returning to the routine is not an option.”
Appealing to women across the border, she said, “Terror does not make anything better for anyone, you too deserve quiet and peace.”
“She’s amazing,” her longtime friend and fellow activist, Ariella Giniger, told JTA on Sunday. “She’s smart. She’s funny, and she does great things. She’s a real peace activist for years and to have her fight in such a situation …” her voice trailed off.
Some families searched for news about their loved ones and learned of tragedy. On Facebook, one mother wrote two wrenching Facebook posts, nine hours apart.
In the first, posted at midnight on Saturday, she wrote that her son “was kidnapped by terrorists today from his home in Kibbutz Holit. If anyone has relevant information please be in touch.”
After 9 a.m. on Sunday, she had an update. “Unfortunately we were informed last night that our beautiful, generous and talented son… was murdered by terrorists in his home in Holit.”
She did not return a request for an interview.
Nides said he was getting calls from Americans anxious about their Israeli family members. He said he was directing them to the embassy in Israel.
“They need information, right?” he said. “They want to know what’s going on. They want to know what’s happening, you know, who’s communicating with [their loved ones] because it’s so unfathomable, how scary this is for someone to wake up in the morning and have this happening to them.”
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The post A peace activist, a soldier, a son: Stories of Americans missing or dead in Hamas invasion begin to emerge appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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New Poll: Majority of NYC Voters ‘Less Likely’ to Support Mamdani Over His Refusal to Condemn ‘Globalize the Intifada’
Zohran Mamdani. Photo: Ron Adar / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
In a warning sign for the campaign of Democratic nominee for mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani, a majority of city voters in a new poll say the candidate’s hardline anti-Israel stance makes them less likely to vote for him.
In the survey of likely city voters conducted by American Pulse, 52.5 percent said Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada” coupled with his backing of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement made them less likely to vote for him in November. Just 31% of city voters polled were more likely to support him because of these positions.
At the same time, a significant share of young New York City voters support Mamdani’s anti-Israel positioning, a striking sign of shifting generational views on Israel and the Palestinian cause.
Nearly half of voters aged 18 to 44 (46 percent) said the State Assembly member’s backing for BDS and “refusal to condemn the phrase ‘globalize the intifada’” made them more likely to support him.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist from Queens, has been under fire for defending “globalize the intifada,” a slogan many Jewish groups associate with incitement to violence against Israel and Jews. While critics argue it glorifies terrorism, supporters claim it’s a call for international solidarity with oppressed peoples, especially Palestinians. Mamdani has also voiced support for BDS, a movement widely condemned by mainstream Jewish organizations as antisemitic for singling out Israel.
The generational divide exposed by the poll comes amid a broader political realignment. Younger progressives across the country are increasingly critical of Israeli policies, especially in the wake of the Gaza war, and more receptive to Palestinian activism. But to many Jewish leaders, Mamdani’s rising support is alarming.
Rabbi David Wolpe, visiting scholar at Harvard University, condemned the phrase with a sarcastic analogy.
“‘Globalize the intifada’ is just a political slogan,” he said. “Like ‘The cockroaches must be exterminated’ was just a housing authority slogan in Rwanda.”
Jewish organizations have reported a surge in antisemitic incidents in New York and across the U.S. since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war last fall. The blending of anti-Zionist slogans with calls for “intifada,” historically linked to violent uprisings, has deepened fears among Jewish communities that traditional red lines are being crossed.
Whether this emerging coalition reshapes New York politics remains to be seen. However, the poll indicates that among younger voters, views that were once considered fringe are quickly moving into the mainstream.
The post New Poll: Majority of NYC Voters ‘Less Likely’ to Support Mamdani Over His Refusal to Condemn ‘Globalize the Intifada’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Report: Jews Targeted at June’s Pride Month Events
A Jewish gay pride flag. Photo: Twitter.
The research division of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) released a report on Wednesday detailing incidents of hate against Jews which took place last month during demonstrations in celebration of LGBTQ rights and identity.
Incidents reported by the group include:
- At a Pride march in Wales, the activists Cymru Queers for Palestine chose to block the path and show a sign that said “Profiting from genocide,” an attempt to link the event’s sponsors — such as Amazon — to the war in Gaza.
- A Dublin Pride march saw the participation of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which labeled Israel a “genocidal entity.”
- In Toronto at a late June Pride march, demonstrators again attacked organizers with a sign declaring, “Pride partners with genocide.”
CAM also identified a recurring narrative deployed against Israel by some far-left activists: so-called “pinkwashing,” a term which the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement calls “an Israeli government propaganda strategy that cynically exploits LGBTQIA+ rights to project a progressive image while concealing Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies oppressing Palestinians.”
The report notes that at a Washington DC Pride event in early June Medea Benjamin, cofounder of activist group Code Pink and a regular of anti-war protests, wore a pair of goofy, oversized sunglasses and a shirt in her signature pink with the phrase “you can’t pinkwash genocide.”
Other incidents CAM recorded showed the injection of anti-Israel sentiment into Pride events.
A musical group canceled a performance at an interfaith service in Brooklyn, claiming the hosting synagogue had a “public alignment with pro-Israel political positions.” In San Francisco before the yearly Trans March, a Palestine group said in its announcement of its participation, “Stop the war on Iran and the genocide of Palestine, stop the war on immigrants and attacks on trans people.”
CAM notes that this “queers for Palestine” sentiment is not new, pointing to a 2017 event wherein “organizers of the Chicago Dyke March infamously removed participants who were waving a Pride flag adorned with a Star of David on the grounds that the symbol ‘made people feel unsafe.’”
In February, the Israel Defense Forces shared with the New York Post documents it had recovered demonstrating that Hamas had tortured and executed members it suspected of homosexuality and other moral offenses in conflict with Islamist ideology.
Amit Benjamin, who is gay and a first sergeant major in the IDF, said during a visit to New York City for Pride month that “All the ‘queers for Gaza’ need to open their eyes. Hamas kills gays … kills lesbians … queers cannot exist in Gaza.”
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IAEA pulls inspectors from Iran as standoff over access drags on
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria, June 23, 2025. REUTERS/Elisabeth Mandl/File Photo
The UN nuclear watchdog said on Friday it had pulled its last remaining inspectors from Iran as a standoff over their return to the country’s nuclear facilities bombed by the United States and Israel deepens.
Israel launched its first military strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in a 12-day war with the Islamic Republic three weeks ago. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors have not been able to inspect Iran’s facilities since then, even though IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has said that is his top priority.
Iran’s parliament has now passed a law to suspend cooperation with the IAEA until the safety of its nuclear facilities can be guaranteed. While the IAEA says Iran has not yet formally informed it of any suspension, it is unclear when the agency’s inspectors will be able to return to Iran.
“An IAEA team of inspectors today safely departed from Iran to return to the Agency headquarters in Vienna, after staying in Tehran throughout the recent military conflict,” the IAEA said on X.
Diplomats said the number of IAEA inspectors in Iran was reduced to a handful after the June 13 start of the war. Some have also expressed concern about the inspectors’ safety since the end of the conflict, given fierce criticism of the agency by Iranian officials and Iranian media.
Iran has accused the agency of effectively paving the way for the bombings by issuing a damning report on May 31 that led to a resolution by the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors declaring Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations.
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi has said he stands by the report. He has denied it provided diplomatic cover for military action.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Thursday Iran remained committed to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“[Grossi] reiterated the crucial importance of the IAEA discussing with Iran modalities for resuming its indispensable monitoring and verification activities in Iran as soon as possible,” the IAEA said.
The US and Israeli military strikes either destroyed or badly damaged Iran’s three uranium enrichment sites. But it was less clear what has happened to much of Iran’s nine tonnes of enriched uranium, especially the more than 400 kg enriched to up to 60% purity, a short step from weapons grade.
That is enough, if enriched further, for nine nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick. Iran says its aims are entirely peaceful, but Western powers say there is no civil justification for enriching to such a high level, and the IAEA says no country has done so without developing the atom bomb.
As a party to the NPT, Iran must account for its enriched uranium, which normally is closely monitored by the IAEA, the body that enforces the NPT and verifies countries’ declarations. But the bombing of Iran’s facilities has now muddied the waters.
“We cannot afford that … the inspection regime is interrupted,” Grossi told a press conference in Vienna last week.
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