A man runs on a road as fire burns after rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen

A sewage worker in Britain was fired for causing “significant offense” after calling Hamas “disgusting terrorists” and condemning the Palestinian Islamist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.

Severn Trent Water (STW), one of the largest water and sewerage companies in England and Wales, fired Damon Joshua after he wrote a post condemning the Hamas-led invasion of the Jewish state on the company’s staff portal to mark the anniversary of the attack, The Telegraph first reported.

“One year ago, our valued partners and friends, Israel, were horrifically attacked by a group of violent and disgusting terrorists,” Joshua wrote in his post, which also featured an image of the Israeli flag.

“I can say with confidence today that the vast majority of STW’s employees stand in solidarity with our Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist colleagues against the evil of Islamist terror,” he added.

Due to internal complaints that the post contained “derogatory words” and was “very one-sided,” managers at the company removed it shortly afterward.

“The post reflects poorly on Severn Trent’s reputation as a diverse and inclusive company,” one such complainant said, according to The Telegraph.

Immediately afterward, Joshua was suspended pending a disciplinary hearing. He was later dismissed from his job without notice.

“It happened in a matter of hours,” Joshua told The Telegraph. “I made the post at 7:50 [am] and I got a call from my manager at 10 or 11 telling me that it had been taken down.”

“At 1 pm I got called to a meeting room on the site that I was working on,” he continued. “They didn’t really give an opinion on what I’d written. They just said that it was seen as offensive.”

During his disciplinary hearing, he was informed that the post had caused “significant offense” to three staff members who had filed complaints.

“It seems quite shocking to me,” Joshua said. “How could it be one-sided or derogatory to oppose a terrorist. Surely this is only one-sided.”

Following his disciplinary hearing, managers determined that the alleged offense was “in relation to a protected characteristic, specifically religious belief.” The company then terminated his employment for gross misconduct.

However, Joshua argued that his post only mentioned Jews and referred to “Islamist terror,” not Islam, without addressing any other religious group.

“There’s a distinction that I was trying to make between Islamist terror and Islam,” Joshua told The Telegraph. “I didn’t want to link it with all of Islam. Because there is a big difference. Not all followers of Islam are Islamists, and the attack was perpetrated by Hamas who are an Islamist terror organization.”

He filed an appeal against his dismissal, but it was unsuccessful.

During his hearing, Joshua was also told that “the language used in the post caused offense to employees with different perspectives, particularly those with Muslim or Palestinian backgrounds.”

One of the managers reportedly asked him, “How do you think a Palestinian employee would feel reading this?”

Months later, Joshua found a job elsewhere, but he described this experience as “really stressful” and said it had made him “think twice” when expressing his views.

“The hardest part was all the waiting and the not knowing,” he said. “I got no further details for months after I was suspended.”

“There is a whole war on free speech in this country at the moment,” he continued. “Lots of people know it but are too scared to stand up against it.”

Dr. Ben Jones, director of case management at the Free Speech Union, which represented Joshua in his case, condemned the company’s action as “one of the most egregious cases of cancel culture.”

“We’ve dealt with 3,500 cases, but the facts of Damon’s are particularly shocking,” Jones said. “Sacking somebody for condemning Hamas is one of the most egregious cases of cancel culture we’ve seen.”

In a statement, a Severn Trent Water spokesman explained that there had been previous incidents of misusing what they called “an apolitical work forum” to express personal views, despite warnings not to do so.

“This is a complex employee relations case, and it’s important to be clear that this is not the whole story nor an isolated incident,” the statement read.

Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people, kidnapped 251 hostages, and perpetrated widespread sexual violence during their Oct. 7 onslaught, the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. The United Kingdom, along with several other countries, has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.

The post British Sewage Worker Fired for Condemning Hamas’s Oct. 7 Massacre first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams delivers remarks at Orthodox Union convening on combating antisemitism, Dec. 12, 2022. Photo: New York Governor’s Office

New York City Mayor Eric Adams told Jewish leaders last week that one of his electoral opponents trying to unseat has been “spewing antisemitism,” according to a new report.

Adams made the comment in a closed-door meeting with the Jewish Community Relations Council on Wednesday, the New York Post reported.

“In our great city, with a large population of Jewish residents, one of the candidates running for mayor is spewing antisemitism,” an attendee recalled the mayor as saying in comments to the Post.

While Adams did not specify any specific candidate, the Post’s sources said he was presumably referring to Zohran Mamdani, 33, a democratic socialist who has been a harsh critic of the Jewish state.

Pressed for details about who Adams meant in his comment, the mayor’s campaign spokesman Todd Shapiro chose not to specify, instead claiming that the remark could refer to multiple people.

“More than one has demonstrated an unwillingness to take a strong stance against hate and antisemitism. The mayor believes that our city’s leadership must be unwavering in their commitment to fighting hatred in all forms and ensuring every New Yorker feels safe, valued, and protected,” Shapiro said.

Mamdani’s campaign spokesman Andrew Epstein pushed back against charges of antisemitism, saying that the candidate “is running a positive and visionary campaign to lower the cost of living for working-class New Yorkers being priced out of the city they built.”

“He [Mamdani] believes in universal human rights and strongly denounces antisemitism, as he does all forms of bigotry, racism and hate,” Epstein continued while affirming Mamdani’s support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

Adams’s comments last week came one day after Mamdani condemned Israel for restarting military operations in the Gaza Strip, accusing the Jewish state of committing a “genocide” and citing Hamas-produced casualty statistics.

“Israel’s renewed bombing of Gaza — funded by our tax dollars — has already killed more than 400 Palestinians in just a few hours, including scores of women and children. It is among the deadliest days of a genocide which has taken the lives of more than 50,000 civilians,” Mamdani said in a statement. “‘The Israeli government has chosen to give up on the hostages,’ an organization of Israeli families said this morning. The Trump administration must bring all of its pressure to bear on [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to establish the ceasefire now.”

Mamdani, a representative within the New York State Assembly and progressive firebrand, cited figures from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between terrorist combatants and civilians. Moreover, researchers have shown that casualty figures published by Gaza’s Hamas-run health authorities have been inflated to defame Israel.

A Muslim born in Uganda, Mamdani in May 2023 advanced the “Not on Our Dime! Ending New York Funding of Israeli Settler Violence Act,” legislation which would ban charities from using tax-deductible donations to aid Israeli entites that work in the West Bank. Mamdani argued that the legislation would help the state fight against so-called Israeli “war crimes” against Palestinians. The democratic socialist dismissed critics of the legislation, saying that his anti-Israel proposal is “​​in line with the sentiments of most New Yorkers.”

“What we have is a number of New York state-registered charities that are sending at least $60 million a year to Israeli settlement organizations which then use that funding to continue the history of expulsion and dispossession of Palestinians in the occupied territories that has been going on for decades,” Mamdani said. “There’s a phrase that I grew up hearing: PEP, progressive except Palestine. You’d see how time and again how politicians who espoused universal beliefs would always seem to find an exception when it came to the question of Israel and Palestine. We see that sadly in terms of how our laws are applied in terms of how our policies are applied.”

Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, Mamdani released a statement in which he said that he mourned “the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours. Netanyahu’s declaration of war, the Israeli government’s decision to cut electricity to Gaza, and Knesset members calling for another Nakba will undoubtedly lead to more violence and suffering in the days and weeks to come. The path toward a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.” Many Palestinians and anti-Israel activists use the term “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” to refer to the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.

In January 2024, Mamdani called on New York City to cease sending funds to Israel, saying that “Voters oppose their tax dollars funding a genocide.”

On Oct. 11, 2024, police arrested Mamdani at a protest outside Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) Brooklyn residence, one of approximately 60 people detained by law enforcement that day.

Appearing on anti-Israel podcaster Mehdi Hasan’s program on Nov. 25, Mamdani said that if he were mayor, “New York City would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. This is a city that our values are in line with international law. It’s time that our actions are also.”

Prominent anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour has advocated for Mamdani, urging her 302,000 Instagram followers to donate to his campaign. She wrote that he “cares about the people and it’s showing in his policy plans.’ She instructed her fans to “follow Zohran. Stay up to date on his campaign! Give.”

Mamdani’s father Mahmood has said that “the longtime security of a Jewish homeland in historic Palestine requires the dismantling of the Jewish state” and that “Jews can have a homeland in historic Palestine, but not a state.” The mayoral candidate’s mother, filmmaker Mira Nair, was one of the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who signed a letter demanding the exclusion of Israeli actor Gal Gadot from the March 2 Oscars ceremony.

Although Mamdani is considered a threat to win the New York City mayorship, his position in the race has slipped. Mamdani commands 8 percent of the vote among New Yorkers, good enough for third place, according to a poll by Quinnipiac conducted between Feb. 27-Mar. 3. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo holds a commanding lead at 38 percent, per Quinnipiac.

Comparatively, according to a poll conducted by Honan Strategy Group from Feb. 22-23, Mamdani previously sat in second place with 12 percent of the vote.

A March 5 Quinnipiac poll found that 20 percent of residents approve of Adams’ job performance while 67 percent disapprove, the lowest levels of support for a New York mayor since the university began polling New Yorkers almost 30 years ago.

The post NYC Mayor Eric Adams Tells Jewish Leaders One of His Election Opponents Is ‘Spewing Antisemitism’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

US Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN). Photo: Reuters Connect

US Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) defended her recent vote to block US military aid to Israel, describing the Jewish state’s military operations against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza as “antithetical” to American values.

In an interview with anti-Israel news host Mehdi Hasan published over the weekend, Smith said that her vote in November to impose a partial arms embargo on Israel “was an opportunity to stand up for our values.” She argued that the United States should not be “complicit” in the actions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, adding that Israel’s conduct during the ongoing war in Gaza is “antithetical” to American values and possibly in violation of US policy regarding use of military arms. 

“I think it was [a] bad decision for people not to vote as I did,” Smith said. 

In November, Smith was among the 17 Democratic senators who voted in favor of legislation spearheaded by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to implement a partial arms embargo on Israel. The legislation, S.J.Res.111, was a measure to ban the sale of tank cartridges to Israel, was defeated by a margin of 79 to 18. ​​Other anti-Israel resolutions sponsored by Sanders, S.J. Res. 113 and S.J. Res. 115, which targeted sales of mortar rounds and precision-guided bombs, were rejected on the Senate floor by similar margins. 

Hasan then lamented the supposed “pervasive anti-Palestinian racism” within American society, pointing out that US President Donald Trump has chided Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) as being “a Palestinian.” Smith lambasted Trump’s insult to Schumer as “a disgusting thing to say,” before Hasan slammed former US President Joe Biden for “questioning the Palestinian death toll” and seeming “indifferent” to the mounting casualties in Gaza as a result of the Israel-Hamas war. 

Researchers have shown that casualty figures published by Gaza’s Hamas-run health authorities have been inflated to defame Israel.

Hasan then asked Smith if she believed anti-Palestinian animus motivated the arrest of Columbia University campus agitator Mahmoud Khalil, who led riotous protests against Israel last academic year. The senator agreed, claiming that “at the very least, we should be able to come around the idea that everybody deserves due process in this country.” Smith then suggested that the Trump administration has utilized “authoritarian” tactics to demonize Palestinians and that “we have to stand up to that.” 

Zeteo, the network founded by Hasan that published the interview, has positioned itself as a major source of anti-Israel content creation. Hasan, the network’s main host, has declared the ongoing war in Gaza a “genocide” and repeatedly pressured US lawmakers to implement an arms embargo against the Jewish state. Hosts on Zeteo have also downplayed Hamas’s attacks against Israel, oftentimes referring to the terrorist group as a “resistance.”

Moreover, Zeteo’s high production value and elaborate sets have raised questions surrounding its funding sources, with critics alleging it has received money from Qatar. In response, Hasan has denied receiving “any money from foreign governments or foreign citizens,” adding that “every investor in Z is an American citizen [who] has nothing to do with Qatar.”

The post US Sen. Tina Smith Defends Decision to Vote Against Israel Aid first appeared on Algemeiner.com.