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‘Awakening of unity’: Hamas attack, war spark outpouring of support for Israel in haredi communities
(New York Jewish Week) –When 3,000 Orthodox men packed into a New Jersey event hall late last month to mark a milestone in their 7 1/2-year cycle of Talmud study, they added an unusual component to the celebration.
In addition to sermons from prominent rabbis and collective prayer and study, the men watched videos showing uniformed Israel Defense Forces soldiers studying, singing, dancing with haredi Orthodox men and visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
“It was a remarkable evening and an expression of solidarity with the soldiers of the IDF, and with the people in Israel who are feeling besieged and of course those who have been taken hostage,” Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, the executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America, the haredi umbrella group that organized the event, told the New York Jewish Week.
What was remarkable was the public celebration of Israel’s soldiers at the event. Haredi movements have a range of approaches to Israel and Zionism. Some believe a Jewish state should be established only with the coming of the Messiah, while others are ambivalent and still others vocally supportive of Israel.
But regardless of their attitude toward the state, haredi leaders in New York City emphasize that their communities have a deep affinity for the land of Israel and its Jewish residents, no matter their politics or religious observance. After Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, they say that feeling has sparked an outpouring of support for Israel and its military at a level not seen in decades and — in at least one instance — active disavowal of an anti-Zionist protest group.
“The outrage and sheer brutality of the October 7th attacks has united the Jewish community in common cause in a way I personally have never seen before,” said Chaskel Bennett, a community leader and the co-founder of the Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition who was a pro-Israel activist prior to Oct. 7. “The Orthodox Jewish community always pulled together in times of crisis, but October 7th has touched a raw emotional nerve that has transformed how Jews identify and connect with their brethren in Israel in an unprecedented way.”
Haredi groups in New York do not typically hold organized street rallies, as some Jewish groups have done in recent weeks, but haredi communities have mobilized in their own ways, including by focusing on the traditional practices of prayer and charity.
“In virtually every synagogue people stay a few minutes later beyond the usual closing time of the prayer service and they recite psalms that are appropriate for the situation,” Zwiebel said.
Religious Jews at the March for Israel on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on November 14, 2023. (Luke Tress)
In the days after Oct. 7, thousands of haredi Jews poured into the streets in Brooklyn’s Borough Park and Crown Heights in spontaneous gatherings to pray and show support for Israelis. In the weeks since, haredi communities in New York have collected supplies for the Israeli military, held vigils for hostages held by Hamas, flown the Israeli flag at events, demonstrated support for secular Jewish college students and organized prayers for the terror group’s victims. Several Hharedi groups, including Agudath Israel, attended a mass demonstration in support of Israel last week, alongside crowds of non-Orthodox Jews.
Haredi websites are raising funds, messages of mourning for fallen troops are spreading across haredi WhatsApp groups and haredi news outlets closely track the fighting in Gaza. In one widely shared clip, a large Israeli flag was hoisted above the crowd at a Hasidic wedding.
“The realization of brotherhood and sisterhood is really displayed in a way that I’ve never seen in my lifetime,” said Avi Greenstein, CEO of the Boro Park Jewish Community Council, a social services organization in the heavily haredi Brooklyn neighborhood, calling the moment an “awakening of unity.”
Even haredi opponents of Zionism have taken steps to disavow anti-Israel activism. A leader of the anti-Zionist Satmar Hasidic movement, Rabbi Zalman Leib Teitelbaum, decried the fringe Naturei Karta group for joining anti-Israel demonstrations, accusing the faction of supporting “haters of Israel and murderers.” Satmar rabbis have also pushed back against growing affinity for Israel and the IDF, however.
Religious events have shifted to focus on Israel, including Chabad-Lubavitch’s annual conference of thousands of male emissaries. A rabbi affiliated with Chabad, which often responds to crises by encouraging Jews to perform traditional rituals, is sending ritual fringes traditionally worn by Orthodox Jewish men to the front lines. The movement, which is more outwardly supportive of Israel, has been distributing charity to Israelis in need, and some members of its New York community are IDF veterans who rushed back to their units after the war broke out. At least one soldier from the movement was killed in the Oct. 7 attack.
In another event late last month, neighborhood organizers in Crown Heights, Chabad’s Brooklyn home base, set up an empty Shabbat table with 230 seats to symbolize the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. The event was organized to counter a rally led by hardline pro-Palestinian groups the following day, and drew around 1,200 participants.
The Chabad conference annual gala, in Edison, New Jersey, November 12, 2023. (Luke Tress)
“We prayed, we sang, we cried and we stood in solidarity with both the hostages, the Israeli public and the IDF,” said Rabbi Yaacov Behrman, the president of the Jewish Future Alliance, a community advocacy group. Chabad has also held prayers with families of hostages at the grave of its former leader, the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and at the movement’s headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway.
The IDF is a largely secular institution, and Israel’s haredi men are mostly exempt from the country’s mandatory draft, a policy that has long caused friction in the country’s society and politics. But the outpouring of support for the military in the U.S. mirrors developments inside Israel, where thousands of haredim have enlisted in recent weeks and volunteers have provided meals and prayed with troops. A video showed dozens of haredim dancing in a city square after a female Israeli soldier was rescued from Hamas captivity.
A journalist for a haredi news outlet, Yanki Farber, shared the video on X, writing, “My son asked me right now why I’m crying.”
“Hasidim are dancing in the streets of Ashkelon after the release of a female soldier. I didn’t see anything like this when Gilad Shalit was released,” he wrote, referring to the Israeli soldier freed in a deal with Hamas in 2011. “There is an incredible sense of understanding among all of us that we must not return to being divided.”
The cross-community solidarity in Israel feeds back into the United States, Zwiebel said.
“Attitudes that are developed in Israel proper will have an impact on the broader international Jewish community,” he said. “We’re all in this together and that’s certainly being felt in Israel and yes I think there is some spillover and some sense of greater solidarity here in America.”
The surge in antisemitism in the U.S. has also spurred greater haredi solidarity with non-haredi Jewish communities. In an unusual message late last month, Agudath Israel issued a call to support Jewish college students as antisemitism and anti-Israel activism roiled U.S. campuses. The Chabad movement has a presence on hundreds of U.S. campuses and has also played a central role in supporting students.
“There are Orthodox Jews in the colleges, but if you’re not Orthodox, there are Jews in colleges and we care deeply about them,” Zwiebel said.
Despite the outpouring of support, the conversation about Zionism among haredim has not undergone a sea change, Zwiebel said. But he said antisemitism is leading some families to consider Israel as a future home.
“The hostility that we’re facing here in the United States, or even more so in Europe, is that reminding us that these are not necessarily ideal long-term homes for the Jewish people?” he said. “That kind of conversation is taking place. It’s taking place in homes where parents have sent their children to study in Israel and are wondering, ‘Should we bring them back? Should we let them stay there?’”
Several haredi community members said they hoped that the feeling of solidarity would last after the war ends.
“It took a vicious attack by merciless enemies to somehow bring people together,” Zwiebel said. “If we’re looking for a silver lining in this terrible cloud, I guess that would be it. If only we can keep this going beyond this war.”
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The post ‘Awakening of unity’: Hamas attack, war spark outpouring of support for Israel in haredi communities appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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South African Jews Slam President for Failing to Condemn Hamas Murder of Bibas Children
Israelis sit together as they light candles and hold posters with the images Oded Lifschitz, Shiri Bibas and her two children, Kfir and Ariel Bibas, seized during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, on the day the bodies of deceased hostages, identified at the time by Palestinian terror groups as Lifschitz, Shiri Bibas, and her two children, were handed over under the terms of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Itay Cohen
South Africa’s Jewish community has called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to condemn the murder of Israeli children Ariel and Kfir Bibas, their mother, and another elderly hostage kidnapped by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists, lambasting his silence during a recent address to a major international gathering on the same day that the hostages’ bodies were paraded in Gaza.
In a statement shared with The Algemeiner on Monday, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) — the umbrella group of the country’s Jewish community — slammed Ramaphosa for failing to condemn Hamas’s brutality or even acknowledge the hostage victims in his speech last week to senior diplomats from leading rich and developing countries.
During his remarks at the Group of 20 (G20) foreign ministers’ meeting in Johannesburg, Ramaphosa “only mentioned the suffering of the Palestinians” without noting the Israeli hostages who were killed while in captivity in Gaza, according to SAJBD.
“South Africa welcomes the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas as a crucial first step toward ending the severe humanitarian crisis faced by Palestinians in Gaza,” Ramaphosa said at the gathering.
In response, SAJBD’s president, Zev Krengel, and national chairperson, Prof. Karen Milner, penned an open letter to Ramaphosa in which they denounced his remarks as “reprehensible,” criticizing the South African leader for his failure to call out Hamas for its atrocities and questioning his government’s credibility to lead international forums such as the G20.
“On the same day that these comments were made, Hamas paraded four coffins of Israeli civilian hostages in a macabre ceremony that violated basic human rights principles and every standard of basic human decency,” they wrote.
Last week, the bodies of 84-year-old Oded Lifshitz, Shiri Bibas, and her two sons, Ariel and Kfir — the youngest hostages abducted by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023 — were returned to Israel as part of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal.
Before the handover, Hamas had staged what it called a victory celebration in Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza. The Palestinian terrorist group placed the coffins of the four hostages on a makeshift stage in an abandoned cemetery, turning their deaths into a theatrical condemnation of Israel and its leadership.
Lining the back of the stage was a massive poster of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shown as a vampire dripping with blood, with the four slain hostages in front of him alongside the sentence: “The war criminal Netanyahu and his Nazi army killed them with missiles from Israeli warplanes.” Around the stage, mock missiles bore messages shifting the blame onto Israel and the United States. One read: “They were killed by USA bombs.”
Thousands of onlookers had gathered, including many children and babies, cheering as masked Hamas terrorists brandished weapons. Music blared from loudspeakers, punctuated by chants of victory.
“It is reprehensible that on the very day that these depraved acts that so shocked the world, once again exposing the brutality of Hamas, you chose to omit any mention of this in your comments regarding Palestine in your speech at the G20,” the SAJBD letter read, accusing Ramaphosa and his government of failing to take any action to help secure the hostages’ release, despite their ties with Hamas.
In December, South Africa hosted two Hamas officials who attended a government-sponsored conference in solidarity with the Palestinians. One of the officials had been sanctioned by the US government for his role with the terrorist organization.
Krengel and Milner argued that instead of working toward peace, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) has lost its “moral compass” and further polarized opinions toward the Gaza conflict.
“Your complete lack of any form of sympathy for this elderly man, these babies and their mother, and your failure to call out Hamas for this atrocity shows how far your government has deviated from the moral compass we were recognized as having in 1994,” the SAJBD wrote. “When the brutal murder of babies is ignored, we know that we are no longer a beacon of human rights.”
Ariel was 4 years old and Kfir was 10 months old at their time of death in November 2023, according to the Israel Defense Forces. They were held hostage in Gaza for 503 days.
IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said on Friday morning that based on forensics finding from the identification process, examination of Kfir and Ariel’s bodies showed Hamas terrorists killed the young brothers “with their bare hands.”
Meanwhile, tensions between Israel and Hamas escalated after an Israeli forensic examination revealed that the body of the boys’ mother was not returned. The Israeli military said the received body “is not that of Shiri Bibas, and no match was found for any other hostage. This is an anonymous, unidentified body.” Hamas returned her actual body later in the week, following outcry from Israeli leaders.
“We feel ashamed as South Africans that our leadership has failed the Bibas babies and other hostages whose return could have ended the war to the benefit of both the Gazan and Israeli people,” the SAJBD letter read. “We wonder if South Africa has lost its credibility to lead such an important organization as the G20 during these critical times.”
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the war in Gaza when they murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages during their invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Fighting stopped last month, when both sides agreed to an ongoing ceasefire brokered by Egypt and Qatar, with US support. Talks have begun to extend and expand the ceasefire, which so far has included limited hostage releases in exchange for releasing many times more Palestinian prisoners, including terrorists serving life sentences.
About 60 hostages remain in Gaza, roughly half of whom are believed to be dead.
Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre and the onset of the Gaza war, South Africa has been of the harshest critics of Israel on the world stage.
For the past year, the South African government has been pursuing its case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against Hamas in Gaza.
Ramaphosa led the crowd at an election rally in a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a genocidal call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The post South African Jews Slam President for Failing to Condemn Hamas Murder of Bibas Children first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel’s Top Diplomat Urges Lebanese People to Break Free From ‘Iranian Occupation’
Funeral ceremony for former Hezbollah leaders Hassan Nasrallah and Hashem Safieddine, outskirts of Beirut, Feb. 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has called on the Lebanese people to break free from “the Iranian occupation,” pushing Israel’s northern neighbor to weaken the political and military influence of the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah.
“The images from Nasrallah’s ‘funeral’ now precisely reflect the historic crossroads where Lebanon stands: The continuation of the Iranian occupation in Lebanon, through Hezbollah — or liberation from Iran and Hezbollah and freedom to Lebanon,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X, referring to long-time Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli military strike in September. His funeral was held in Lebanon on Sunday.
“The choice is in the hands of Lebanon and the Lebanese people,” Sa’ar added.
The Israeli diplomat’s comments came as Lebanese President Joseph Aoun told a visiting Iranian delegation on Sunday that the country was “tired” of external conflicts playing out on its territory, asserting that Lebanon is not a battleground for others and hinting at a possible break from Iranian influence.
“Lebanon has grown tired of the wars of others on its land,” Aoun told the Iranian officials, according to a statement released by the newly appointed president’s office. “Countries should not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.”
The images from Nasrallah’s “funeral” now precisely reflect the historic crossroads where Lebanon stands:
The continuation of the Iranian occupation in Lebanon, through Hezbollah – or liberation from Iran and Hezbollah and freedom to Lebanon.
The choice is in the hands of… pic.twitter.com/6aDBZCsfYV— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) February 23, 2025
Iranian officials met Aoun during their visit to Beirut for the funeral of Nasrallah, former leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, which fought a year-long conflict with Israel in parallel with the Gaza war that ended in a November ceasefire. Nearly five months after his death in an Israeli airstrike, Hezbollah buried Nasrallah in a mass funeral meant to showcase political strength despite the group’s weakened state following the war.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killed Nasrallah on Sept. 27 last year in an airstrike as he met commanders in a bunker in Beirut’s southern suburbs, delivering a major setback to the Islamist group amid an Israeli offensive. The campaign went on to decimate much of Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities through air and ground attacks.
Hezbollah’s losses from the war with Israel were further compounded by the fall of its ally, Bashar al-Assad, in Syria, which had long served as a vital supply route for Iranian weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon under Assad’s rule.
During Sunday’s high-level meeting, Aoun said Lebanon wanted “the best relations with Tehran, for the benefit of both countries and people.” According to Aoun’s statement, Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammed Bagher Ghalibaf extended President Masoud Pezeshkian’s invitation for Aoun to visit Iran.
In a televised address at Nasrallah’s funeral in a Beirut stadium, current Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem declared his refusal to let “tyrant America” control Lebanon.
The United States helped broker the Hezbollah-Israel ceasefire after almost a year of fighting. The conflict, which Hezbollah launched in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas during the early days of the Gaza war in October 2023, resulted in thousands of deaths in Lebanon and widespread destruction across the country’s south.
Under the ceasefire agreement, Israel was given 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon, allowing the Lebanese army and UN forces to take over security as Hezbollah disarms and moves away from Israel’s northern border.
Though Israel has largely withdrawn from the south, its troops continue to hold five hilltop positions in the area, as Israeli leaders seek to reassure northern residents that they can return home safely.
Tens of thousands of residents in northern Israel were forced to evacuate their homes last year and in late 2023 amid unrelenting attacks from Hezbollah, which expressed solidarity with Hamas amid the Gaza war.
The meeting between Iranian officials and Aoun took place even though regular flights between the two countries had been suspended.
On Feb. 13, Lebanon banned flights to and from Iran after Israel accused Tehran of using civilian planes to smuggle cash to Beirut to Hezbollah and warned of possible military action against such flights. In response, Iran barred Lebanese planes from repatriating dozens of Lebanese nationals stranded in the country, stating it would not allow Lebanese flights to land until its own flights could resume in Beirut.
The post Israel’s Top Diplomat Urges Lebanese People to Break Free From ‘Iranian Occupation’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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X, Meta Approved Antisemitic and Anti-Muslim Ads Targeting German Voters Before Election, Study Finds
Elon Musk, chief executive officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X/Twitter, gestures as he attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, June 16, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
The nonprofit group Ekō has released research showing that the social media platforms X and Meta approved advertising featuring hate speech against Jews and Muslims that was geared toward users in Germany in the lead-up to the country’s federal elections on Sunday.
The organization submitted 10 German-language ads intended to reach German voters before the election. Meta approved half of the proposed ads while X allowed all 10. Ekō canceled all approved ads before they could appear on the sites.
The five approved for publication on Meta referred to Muslim immigrants as a “virus,” “vermin,” “rodents,” or “rapists” and advocated for them to be sterilized, burnt, or gassed. Another Meta-approved ad called for arson attacks against synagogues in order to “stop the globalist Jewish rat agenda.”
“Our findings suggest that Meta’s AI-driven ad moderation systems remain fundamentally broken, despite the Digital Services Act (DSA) now being in full effect,” an unnamed spokesperson for Ekō told TechCrunch. They added that “rather than strengthening its ad review process or hate speech policies, Meta appears to be backtracking across the board.”
Meta spokeswoman Lara Hesse provided a statement to TechCrunch in response to Ekō’s findings, noting that “these ads violate our policies. None of them were published and our systems detected and disabled the advertiser’s page before we became aware of this research.”
The statement argued that “our ads review process has several layers of analysis and detection, both before and after an ad goes live. We’ve taken extensive steps in alignment with the DSA and continue to invest significant resources to protect elections.”
Ekō’s report said that all of the ads “broke Meta and X’s own policies, and several may have also breached German national laws. Meta rejected five ads on the basis that they may qualify as social issue, electoral or politics ads, but they were not rejected on the basis of hate speech or inciting violence.”
In addition to green-lighting the five ads allowed by Meta, X approved and scheduled five more, according to the study. These labeled immigrants as rodents and said that Muslims were “flooding” Germany in order “to steal our democracy.” Another ad used an antisemitic slur and accused Jews of lying about climate change to sabotage European industry. This ad also included an AI-generated image which featured sinister men at a table surrounded by gold bars with a Star of David behind them.
Researchers used OpenAI’s DALL-E and Stable Diffusion to create the AI imagery included with each ad. One image featured immigrants crowded into a gas chamber while another showed a synagogue on fire.
One X-approved ad specifically targeted the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), accusing the center-left party of wanting to allow 60 million Muslim immigrants into the country. One more ad allowed by X urged for the killing of Muslim rapists and claimed that leftists sought “open borders.” While Meta took as much as 12 hours to approve the submitted ads, X scheduled the ads instantly.
The Sunday election saw an 83.5 percent voter turnout, the highest level seen since Germany reunified in 1990. The center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party Christian Social Union (CSU) won with 28.6 percent of the vote. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) came in second with 20.8 percent. X owner Elon Musk had previously endorsed the populist-nationalist, anti-immigrant party, saying in a livestream on his platform that “only AfD can save Germany, end of story, and people really need to get behind AfD, and otherwise things are going to get very, very much worse in Germany.” SPD came in third with 16.4 percent of the vote, followed by the Green Party with 11.6 percent.
“Our findings, alongside mounting evidence from other civil society groups, show that Big Tech will not clean up its platforms voluntarily,” the Ekō spokesperson said. “Meta and X continue to allow illegal hate speech, incitement to violence, and election disinformation to spread at scale, despite their legal obligations under the DSA.”
The report from Ekō stated that “at the core of the problem is these platforms’ toxic business model – one dependent on digital advertising revenue and fueled by engagement, no matter the cost.” The report explained that the websites’ systems “are built to maximize attention and revenue, creating little incentive to curb hate speech, disinformation, or incitement of violence.”
According to research released last month by the Anti-Defamation League, 6.2 million people in Germany “harbor elevated levels of antisemitic attitudes,” totaling 9 percent of the population and positioning the European nation with one of the lowest levels of antisemitism globally.
The post X, Meta Approved Antisemitic and Anti-Muslim Ads Targeting German Voters Before Election, Study Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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