Vandals targeted a Jewish-owned real estate business in London on May 28-29, 2025. Photo: Screenshot

A Jewish-owned real estate business in London was vandalized by a radical anti-Israel group overnight on Wednesday into Thursday in an attack that local Jewish leaders called a “traumatic antisemitic targeting.”

Video shows two masked people dressed in all black smashing the windows of the business — which is located in Stamford Hill, a heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood — and spraying it with red paint. Pictures in the aftermath of the vandalism show shattered glass and red paint all over the office, and other reports say computers and furniture were also wrecked.

Last night in London’s Stamford Hill: A Jewish business completely destroyed by vandals who spray-painted “Drop Elbit”—targeting a company with NO ties to Israel whatsoever. Jewish businesses. Jewish people. Targeted for being Jewish. pic.twitter.com/JruV4Si4J9

— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) May 29, 2025

“This should be treated as [an] antisemitic incident without any doubt,” Rabbi Herschel Gluck, president of Jewish security service Shomrim’s branch in Stamford Hill, told the Jewish Chronicle. “[The owners] are visibly Jewish; the people who run the business and this business itself have nothing to do with Israel.”

According to the Chronicle, the authorities were “called as soon as the damage was discovered on Thursday morning and the Metropolitan Police were notified shortly afterwards.”

The Metropolitan Police said in a statement that the investigation is ongoing and that no arrests have been made so far. “This incident is being treated as racially aggravated criminal damage,” the statement continued.

“We understand the concern this may cause members of the Jewish community,” the police noted. “Officers are working with community leaders and patrols have increased across the local area.”

Palestine Action, the group behind the vandalism, took responsibility for it on social media.

BREAKING: Palestine Action target the London-based landlords of Kent’s Elbit weapons factory, Instro Precision.

Instro Precision continues to export targeting gear to Israel, making both the Israeli weapons maker and its landlord, perpetrators of genocide. pic.twitter.com/TDN2yrEump

— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) May 29, 2025

“Palestine Action target[s] the London-based landlords of Kent’s Elbit weapons factory, Instro Precision,” the group posted on X. “Instro Precision continues to export targeting gear to Israel, making both the Israeli weapons maker and its landlord, perpetrators of genocide.”

Along with vandalism of the business itself, “Drop Elbit” was also spray-painted on the pavement outside it, referring to Elbit Systems, an Israeli defense firm that is an industry leader.

A spokesperson for the group said the attack was a “part of our commitment to the Palestinian people” because “we will not allow companies on our doorstep to profit from mass murder.” The real estate group, it claimed, is “the [landlord] of a Kent-based Israeli weapons factory which is exporting targeting gear for the Israeli military.”

However, according to Gluck, the attack “is pure antisemitism” because “the people have no connection to Israel at all. They [the vandals] are accusing this company of having a connection to an Israeli arms manufacturer, which is not true.”

The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) responded to the vandalism on X, asking, “Why is Palestine Action still not banned?”

“Palestine Action is a criminal enterprise operating freely in the UK and terrorizing the Jewish community,” it wrote. “It must be banned and its organizers and activists prosecuted.”

This latest vandalism is part of a general spike in antisemitism in the UK.

The UK experienced its second-worst year for antisemitism in 2024, despite recording an 18 percent drop in antisemitic incidents from the previous year’s all-time high, according to a report released in February.

The Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters, released data showing it recorded 3,528 antisemitic incidents for 2024, a drop of 18 percent from the 4,296 in 2023. These numbers compare to 1,662 antisemitic incidents in 2022, 2,261 in 2021, and 1,684 in 2020.

Last year’s total “is a reflection of the sustained levels of antisemitism that have been recorded across the UK since the Hamas terror attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023,” CST said of its findings. “CST’s Antisemitic Incidents Report 2023 charted the immediacy and scope of the rise in anti-Jewish hate following that attack, before Israel had set in motion any extensive military response in Gaza.”

The post ‘Part of Our Commitment to the Palestinian People’: Anti-Israel Group Vandalizes Jewish-Owned Business in London first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Alfred Dreyfus. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

France’s National Defense and Armed Forces Committee has unanimously voted to posthumously promote Alfred Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general, in a symbolic act of justice more than a century after the Jewish army captain was wrongly convicted of espionage.

On Wednesday, the French Embassy in Israel announced the committee’s approval of Dreyfus’s posthumous promotion — a proposal put forward by former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.

“The French Nation is just and does not forget,” the embassy said in a statement. “This rights an injustice, honors a warrior, and clarifies that antisemitism, from history to today, will never have a place in the Republic.”

“האומה הצרפתית הינה חדורת צדק ואינה שוכחת, והיא מעלה לדרגת תת אלוף את אלפרד דרייפוס לאחר מותו”.

הצעת חוק שהתקבלה הבוקר פה אחד בוועדת הביטחון והצבא של האסיפה הלאומית, ופותחת את הדרך לאישור במליאה ב-2 ביוני הקרוב.

לתקן עוולה. לחלוק כבוד ללוחם. להדגיש שלאנטישמיות – של אתמול כמו של… pic.twitter.com/5GBFhxsLlk

— La France en Israël (@franceenisrael) May 28, 2025

With the approval of lawmakers on the committee, the bill is set to be adopted by the full National Assembly in its plenary session on June 2.

When introducing the legislation earlier this month, Attal said the law would “constitute an act of reparation, a recognition of [Dreyfus’s] merits, and a tribute to his republican commitment,” in an effort to rectify the wrongful conviction, which unfolded amid widespread antisemitism across the country at the time.

“Five years of exile and humiliation irreparably harmed his military career,” Attal said. “It is undeniable that, had it not been for this injustice, Alfred Dreyfus would have naturally ascended to the highest ranks.”

According to the French diplomat, the proposed legislation would also signal that the fight against antisemitism remains urgent, as France has seen a rise in antisemitic hate crimes following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.

Antisemitism in France continued to surge to alarming levels across the country last year, with 1,570 incidents recorded, according to a report by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) – the main representative body of French Jews.

In late May and early June, antisemitic acts rose by more than 140 percent, far surpassing the weekly average of slightly more than 30 incidents.

France is home to the world’s largest Jewish population after Israel and the United States, as well as the largest Muslim community in the European Union.

In 1894, Dreyfus, a 36-year-old army captain from the Alsace region in northeastern France, was accused of leaking secret information to a German military official and was put on trial amid a fierce antisemitic media campaign.

Despite a lack of evidence, Dreyfus was convicted of treason based on a handwriting comparison with a document found in a German official’s wastepaper basket in Paris, sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guiana, and stripped of his military rank.

Years later, French Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart, then head of military intelligence, secretly reopened the case and uncovered that the handwriting on the incriminating document belonged to another officer. But when he brought this evidence to the army’s general staff, Picquart was dismissed from his post and imprisoned for a year.

In 1899, Dreyfus was brought back to France for a second trial, where he was again found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison, before ultimately receiving a pardon — though the charges against him were not formally overturned.

It was seven years later, in 1906, when Dreyfus was officially exonerated after the French High Court of Appeal overturned the original verdict and reinstated him with the rank of major.

He lived until 1935, dying at the age of 76.

The post France Moves to Honor Alfred Dreyfus With Posthumous Promotion Over a Century After Wrongful Conviction first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani stands next to US envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack as he raises the American flag at US ambassador’s residency in Damascus, Syria, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Firas Makdesi

US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack called for a non-aggression pact between long-time foes Syria and Israel during a high-profile visit to Damascus on Thursday, marking a significant diplomatic change in the Middle East.

Barack, who also serves as the US ambassador to Turkey, said he believes a peace agreement between Israel and Syria could be possible, praising the nascent Islamist government in Damascus for indicating openness to normalization with the Jewish state.

“Syria and Israel is a solvable problem. But it starts with a dialogue,” Barrack told journalists in Damascus. “I’d say we need to start with just a non-aggression agreement, talk about boundaries and borders.”

Following his meeting with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa at the presidential palace, Barrack suggested the agreement as a first step toward repairing relations between Jerusalem and Damascus, according to AFP. Barrack also hoisted the American flag over the US ambassador’s residence for the first time since the embassy closed in 2012, highlighting the swift growth of US relations with Syria.

Israeli and Syrian officials have been in direct contact and held a series of meetings in recent weeks aimed at calming tensions and avoiding conflict along their border, according to reporting by Reuters.

Sharaa became Syria’s president after leading the rebel campaign that ousted long-time Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, whose Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war, with an offensive spearheaded by Sharaa’s Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al Qaeda affiliate. Though previously designated as a terrorist organization by the US, HTS has since rebranded itself as a national force concerned with Syria’s wellbeing.

Following Assad’s fall, Israel conducted military strikes against much of Syria’s weapons arsenals and deployed ground troops to the buffer zone along their border to prevent its northern neighbor from becoming a launching pad for terrorist attacks against Israeli communities.

The Israeli government has also pledged to defend the Druze community, an Arab minority sect whose religion is originally derived from Islam, in Syria with military force if they come under threat.

Despite suspicions of Syria’s new Islamist-led government, US foreign policy toward Damascus has shifted dramatically with the change in regime.

Barrack’s visit came after about two weeks after US President Donald Trump met with Sharaa in Saudi Arabia, urged him to normalize relations with Israel, and announced in a surprising turn that the US would lift all sanctions on the Syrian government.

According to Barrack, the Trump administration will remove Syria from the US State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation that has heavily restricted foreign aid and investment in the country, saying the issue was “gone with the Assad regime being finished.”

Barrack told Reuters that Washington wants to give Syria’s new leadership “a fair opportunity to govern without the burden of external pressure,” suggesting a major recalibration of US policy in the Middle East.

“America’s intent and the president’s vision is that we have to give this young government a chance by not interfering, not demanding, by not giving conditions, by not imposing our culture on your culture,” Barrack said on Thursday.

The post US Envoy Pushes for Israel-Syria ‘Non-Aggression Agreement,’ Says Peace Achievable first appeared on Algemeiner.com.