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As Kfir Bibas turns 1 in captivity, supporters from Tel Aviv to Davos mark ‘the saddest birthday in the world’

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Three weeks after her cousin was abducted and taken to Gaza along with her family, Yifar Zailer said she knew one thing for sure: “I don’t want to be here in two months, celebrating Kfir’s first birthday.”
And yet that’s exactly what Zailer did on Thursday, returning to Hostages Square in Tel Aviv for what her family had dubbed “the saddest birthday in the world.”
Zailer was there along with hundreds of others to mark the first birthday of Kfir Bibas, the youngest hostage to be taken hostage when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.
Kfir and his 4-year-old brother Ariel became an early face to the hostage crisis that morning, when Hamas released a video clip showing them being abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz along with their mother Shiri, whose terror was visible. Their father Yarden Bibas was also abducted.
In November, all of the other child hostages and their mothers were released during a ceasefire deal. Shortly afterwards, Hamas said Kfir, Ariel and Shiri Bibas had all been killed in captivity, offering no evidence but releasing a video in which an anguished Yarden exhorted Israel to end its war. Israel has not confirmed or denied Hamas’ claims.
Zailer said there had been no information about the family’s status delivered privately, either. And so both she and the legion of advocates who have converted a central square in Tel Aviv into a lobbying location to bring the hostages home planned a birthday party befitting the lively redheaded boy who has spent a quarter of his life in captivity.
Many people in the crowd were wearing orange in homage to the two brothers’ distinctive red hair and clutching orange balloons. The balloons were released at the end of the event to the tune of “They Call Me Gingi,” a new song composed for the baby by several Israeli performers whose lyrics include, “I was left behind / they say I’m a hero / I don’t know why.”
Judith Paz, who has been volunteering with the Bibas family in charge of English-language content on its social media channels, said she refused to wish Kfir a happy birthday because there was “nothing happy about it.”
“But next year, we’ll all be here celebrating because there will be a huge party for Kfir’s second birthday in Hostages Square, together with Kfir and the rest of his family,” she said.
Other gatherings honoring Kfir took place around the world, with orange balloons being released in several European cities, a candlelight vigil by members of the U.S. Congress, and an art show in Berlin featuring works by a member of the extended Bibas family.
A photo of Kfir was also on display next to Israeli President Isaac Herzog during his address at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday. He revealed that he had met with officials from the Red Cross in Israel two days earlier to discuss “the clear and present danger to our hostages.”
Around 150 high-ranking executives, including prominent Jewish business leaders Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, Dell CEO Michael Dell, Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg, held a meeting with released hostages at the forum.
Judith Paz, who has been volunteering with the Bibas family, says she will celebrate Kfir Bibas’ birthday when he is home. (Deborah Danan)
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersh was taken captive to Gaza after having his arm blown off, called on the corporate leaders to “leverage their global connections to immediately advance a deal without delay,” according to a statement released by the Hostages Families Forum.
Nili Margalit, who was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz and subsequently released during November’s truce, said there was “not enough air to breathe” in the subterranean tunnels she was held in.
“Most of the people I was with in the tunnels are still being held deep underground, and they are terrified and wounded,” she said according to the statement. “The hostages could die any day. Every hour is dangerous for them.”
Zailer, who like the Bibases holds Argentinian citizenship, has been all around the world tirelessly advocating for her family’s release.
“We’re doing everything we can to push our government and other governments to make this deal [with Hamas] to get them out,” she said.
A breakthrough in talks took place this week, with Hamas agreeing for the first time to allow medicine in for the hostages. But it has not yet agreed to allow Red Cross doctors to visit the roughly 100 living Israelis understood to be in Gaza — Hamas is also believed to be holding the bodies of about 30 Israelis, including two whose deaths were confirmed this week — no further progress around releasing additional hostages has been reported.
“We need a deal now,” said Yossi Schneider, another cousin. Referring to Hamas’ chief in Gaza whom Israeli officials say has surrounded himself with hostages, he added, “Yahya Sinwar can be killed any day, but Kfir and the others have no more time.”
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The post As Kfir Bibas turns 1 in captivity, supporters from Tel Aviv to Davos mark ‘the saddest birthday in the world’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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New York City Jews Targeted for Most Hate Crimes in March, NYPD Stats Show

Orthodox Jewish man waiting for the train in the New York City subway. Photo: Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect.
Jews in New York City were victims of more hate crimes in March than any other group even as crime across the Five Boroughs fell to “historic” lows, according to statistics issued by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) on Thursday.
39 hate crimes targeted Jews last month, the Algemeiner reviewed data shows, outstripping the combined total of all other groups combined — 28 — and constituting 58 percent of all hate crimes reported to authorities. So far, there have born 85 antisemitic hate crimes in New York City through the first three months of 2025, with the month of February seeing a 100 percent increase in them over the previous year and March seeing no improvement at all.
The data continues a trend that has persisted for several years and concurred with a rise in antisemitic incidents across the US.
Jews represented a disproportionate share of hate crimes perpetrated in New York City in 2024 as well. Of the 641 total hate crimes tallied by the NYPD that year, Jews were victims of 345, which, in addition to being a 7 percent increase over the previous year, amounted to 54 percent of all hate crimes in the city.
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, antisemitic hate crimes have posed a major threat to the quality of life of New York City’s Orthodox Jewish community, which was the target in many of the incidents. In just eight days between the end of October and the beginning of November, three Hasidim, including children, were brutally assaulted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. In one instance, an Orthodox man was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cellphone in compliance with what appeared to have been an attempted robbery.
In another incident, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn. Days after the week-long antisemitic hate crime spree, three men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the Crown Heights neighborhood.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post New York City Jews Targeted for Most Hate Crimes in March, NYPD Stats Show first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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NYC ‘Dyke March’ Bans Zionists From Participating in Annual Demonstration

(Source: Reuters)
NYC Dyke March, a public demonstration held by members of the lesbian community in New York City, has banned self-proclaimed “Zionists” from its annual event, citing a desire to stand against the so-called “genocide” occuring in Gaza.
The group revealed in a statement that their decision to ban Israel supporters from their ranks came after multiple members dropped out of the organization due to differences in “political beliefs and values.” After engaging in discussions with frustrated members, the NYC Dyke March committee agreed to adopt “an explicitly anti-Zionist position.” The organization claims that it will “strengthen our commitment” to fighting against Israel and advocating on behalf of Palestinians.
Last year, the NYC Dyke March previously came under scrutiny after organizers settled on “genocide” as the theme of its 2024 event. In a statement, decrying “ethnic cleansing, violence, and dehumanization,” the organization compared the ongoing war in Gaza, to the mass slaughters occurring in Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Sudan.
The organization plans on recycling the same theme for this year’s march, titling it “Dykes Against Genocide.” The group released a statement clarifying that Jews are allowed to attend and condemned the Oct. 7 slaughters as a “senseless loss of life.” After an apparent uproar from its members, the organization deleted the post and wrote that the group “unapologetically stands in support of Palestinian liberation.” In addition, the group affirmed that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism and any language we put out which is not clearly opposed to a Zionist, imperialist agenda is harmful to us all.”
In the 17 months following the Hamas-led massacre of roughly 1200 people throughout Israel, the NYC Dyke March has produced numerous statements lambasting Israel and declaring “solidarity” with Palestinians amid their so-called “ongoing genocide.” The organization also accused Israel of engaging in supposed “pinkwashing” and “manipulative use of Jewish and queer identities,” with the aim of justifying its war efforts in Gaza.
Israel offers an expansive set of rights for members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transngender (LGBT) community, including recognition of same-sex marriages. Every year in June, Tel Aviv holds one of the largest LGBT Pride celebrations in the world. Meanwhile, members of the LGBT community are routinely imprisoned or murdered in other parts of the Middle East, including the Palestinian territories.
The NYC Dyke March’s announcement was met with widespread condemnation.
“You cannot exclude the majority of Jews and call yourself inclusive,” said the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in a post on X/Twitter, adding that the group “essentially equates Zionism with racism” in their announcement.
The post NYC ‘Dyke March’ Bans Zionists From Participating in Annual Demonstration first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Administration Planning $510 Million Cut to Brown University Budget, Report Says

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with journalists onboard Air Force One en route to Miami, Florida, U.S., April 3, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
The Trump administration reportedly plans to terminate $510 million worth of federal contracts and grants awarded to Brown University, according to media reports.
Brown University’s failure to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its embrace of the diversity, equity, and, inclusion (DEI) movement — perceived by many across the political spectrum as an assault on merit-based upward mobility and causing incidents of anti-White and anti-Asian discrimination — prompted the alleged pending action by the federal government, according to the right-leaning outlet The Daily Caller.
The announcement comes as Brown scrambles to cover a $46 million budget shortfall and other universities across the country have faced similar funding cuts.
Brown University officials, however, denied that the university had received any directives from the Trump Administration.
“We have no information to substantiate these rumors,” Brown University provost Francis Doyle issued a statement. “We are closely monitoring notifications related to grants, but have nothing more we can share as of now.”
Meanwhile, Brown’s Jewish community rushed to the university’s defense, issuing a joint statement with the Brown Corporation which said that the campus is “peaceful and supportive campus for its Jewish community.”
The letter, signed by members of the local Hillel International chapter and Chabad on College Hill, continued: “Brown University is a place where Jewish life not only exists but thrives. While there is more work to be done, Brown, through the dedicated efforts of its administration, leadership, and resilient spirit of its Jewish community, continues to uphold the principles of inclusion, tolerance, and intellectual freedom that have been central to its identity since 1764.”
Brown Divest Coalition — an anti-Zionist group which recently saw its campaign for the university to adopt the boycott, divest, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel defeated by the Brown Corporation — weighed in too, denouncing the reported cut as “a means of suppressing all forms of popular dissent to the renewed violence of the US war machine abroad.” US Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) also criticized the move, accusing the administration “of a broader pattern of behavior…that will negatively impact communities across the country and lead to layoffs, restrict research, and more.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the Trump administration is following through on its threats to inflict potentially catastrophic financial injuries on colleges and universities deemed as soft on antisemitism or excessively “woke.” The past six weeks has seen the policy imposed on elite universities including Harvard and Columbia, rattling a higher education establishment that has for better and worse operated for decades with little interference from the federal government even as it polarized the public and contributed to a growing sense that elites are contemptuous of Americans who live outside of their cultural enclaves.
In March, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced the cancellation of $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, a measure that secured the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Later, the Trump administration disclosed its reviewing $9 billion worth of federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard University, jeopardizing a substantial source of the school’s income over its alleged failure to quell antisemitic and pro-Hamas activity on campus following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. Princeton University saw $210 million of its federal grants and funding suspended too, prompting its president, Christopher Eisgruber to say the institution is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.”
Additionally, 60 universities are being investigated by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights over their handling of campus antisemitism, a project that will serve as an early test of the administration’s ability to perform the essential functions of the agency after downsizing its workforce to increase its efficiency.
One of those universities, Northwestern University, on Monday touted its progress in addressing campus antisemitism, noting that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and begun holding “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions which “all students, faculty, and staff” must attend.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Trump Administration Planning $510 Million Cut to Brown University Budget, Report Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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