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Despite unrest in Indonesia, a Jewish community finds peace among other faith groups

TAIPEI, Taiwan (JTA) — Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory war in Gaza, massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations have taken place in Jakarta and other Indonesian cities.

They have startled Jews like Maryam, who asked to be identified by only her first name to maintain safety and privacy. She said she has heard shouts of “death to Jews” ringing out in the streets.

“Since the war [in] Israel and Gaza, we are really hiding ourselves because there is a big demonstration almost every day,” Maryam, who is in her 70s and lives in Jakarta, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “At Hanukkah, I used to put the menorah in the window. But now I cannot, I have to put it inside.”

Maryam is one of a tiny but unknown total number of practicing Jews in Indonesia, a Muslim-majority country that does not have diplomatic relations with Israel. Besides her small community in Jakarta, where 10 to 20 Jews meet at her house every Shabbat, 50 people from several Indonesian regions gather online regularly for services by Rabbi Benjamin Meijer Verbrugge. Another 30 to 50 Jews attend Rabbi Yaakov Baruch’s congregation in the province of North Sulawesi, a chain of islands northeast of Java.

Today, Baruch’s synagogue, Shaar Hashamayim in the city of Tondano, is the only brick-and-mortar one left standing in Indonesia, which is thought to have been home to about 2,500 Jews in the 1930s.

Since the Israel-Hamas war began, the protests have also frightened Baruch, but he has leaned on his strong relationships with other faith communities in his Christian-majority region to create what he sees as an umbrella of peace. Christians in the area have offered support to his community and a police officer has begun guarding the synagogue during prayer services.

“When I saw what happened in Jakarta and other cities, I felt like I’m not sure that we will still have a good relationship [with other religious communities] after this,” he said. “So I started to contact a lot of religious leaders, talking about positive things, talking about what projects we can do in the future to keep our relations strong.”

Baruch looks at posters with the names and images of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas. (Courtesy of Baruch)

Baruch hung posters of the Israeli hostages on the walls of the synagogue “so the Jews and non-Jews can come to pray there for the safety of all the hostages,” he said. “I brought interfaith Muslim and Christian leaders to pray for the safety of the Israeli and Palestinian people, not Hamas. I just want to show them that we have empathy.”

“When I do interfaith prayer, it’s not only Christian and Muslim leaders, but also Buddhist leaders, Anglicans,” he said. “They’re always asking about me, asking, ‘What are you doing? Are you safe?’”

It’s an example of solidarity in the midst of a conflict that has scared many Jews around the world, including in Indonesia, into hiding.

Across the globe, Jews have expressed what they call an almost unparalleled fear as antisemitic incidents — from vandalism of Jewish sites to shootings, bomb scares and violent attacks — have skyrocketed. Recent antisemitism statistics are not available, but a Pew survey from 2010 found that 74 percent of Indonesians had unfavorable opinions about Jews.

Indonesia has no formal ties with the state of Israel, but it has long called for a two-state solution and maintains some trade, tourism and security links. The country has recognized a Palestinian state since 1988 and has maintained close relations with Palestinian organizations since 1945, when Palestinian leaders expressed support for an independent Indonesia and encouraged other Arab states’ support through the Arab League.

Since the start of the war, Indonesian President Joko Widodo has repeatedly condemned the violence in Gaza and has urged parties to “stop the escalation, to stop the use of violence, to focus on humanitarian issues, and to solve the root of the problem, namely the Israeli occupation of Palestine.” Outside of politics, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI), the country’s top Islamic clerical body, on Nov. 13 issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, mandating that Muslims support the Palestinians’ fight for independence and forbidding support for Israeli “aggression.” The fatwa recommended that Muslims avoid buying any products affiliated with Israel.

Last week, Israeli forces closed in on Indonesia Hospital — reportedly the only hospital still operating in northern Gaza — where health authorities said 12 people were killed in an Israeli strike on Nov. 20. The hospital, opened in 2016, was built with Indonesian funds and is staffed by Palestinians as well as some Indonesian volunteers.

Israel has accused Hamas of hiding its network of command centers and tunnels beneath hospitals in Gaza, including under the Indonesian Hospital, claiming that Hamas “systematically built the Indonesian Hospital to disguise its underground terror infrastructure.” Indonesia’s foreign ministry has denied those accusations, stating that the hospital in Gaza is used “entirely for humanitarian purposes and to serve the medical needs of the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

Indonesia’s foreign ministry strongly condemned Israel’s attack, calling it a “blatant violation of international humanitarian law.”

Thousands of people spread a giant Palestinian flag as they gather in a rally in Jakarta, Nov. 5, 2023. (Azwar Ipank/AFP via Getty Images)

Indonesia’s first Jewish communities date back to the 19th century, when Ashkenazi and Baghdadi Jews immigrated in search of economic opportunities offered through the Dutch colonization of the East Indies. The community peaked at an estimated 2,500 across Java and Sumatra before World War II. 

Hostilities toward Jews began to rise after the war, during the founding of a modern independent Indonesia beginning in 1945 and especially after the founding of Israel in 1948. Many Jews subsequently left for Australia, Israel and the United States.

Those Jews who remain in Indonesia today are mostly descendants of those colonists, and many hide their Jewish identity in public or have given it up entirely. Meijer Verbrugge, a native Indonesian and coffee trader, has said that many local Muslims see Indonesian Jews as the offspring of colonial occupiers.

A congregation made up partially of those descendants as well as new Jewish converts across eight areas in Indonesia, led by Meijer Verbrugge, has been growing in recent years. He estimates a total membership of 180 people across eight regions.

In 2015, he said a Christian group beat the cantor at a home synagogue in Ambon, a small island in central Indonesia. But he said local authorities stepped in and began helping the community continue their services safely. Similar support has been offered to his communities since Oct. 7.

“We are very proud of our police department and military who protect our country, and even the police department have regular visits to my place to have talks. They are ready to protect us,” he said.

Meijer Verbrugge has been advocating for national recognition of the Jewish religion for nearly a decade. But Judaism is not one of Indonesia’s six recognized religions today — Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism. Although Jewish religious practice is permitted, this has meant that Baruch, Maryam and other members of the Jewish community have been forced to identify as one of those six religions on their official identity cards. Most choose Christianity.

“It’s not nice, but when Indonesia had their independence [in 1945], my grandmother said we are not leaving because we have a chance here. And she is right,” said Maryam. “But we have to change our religion [on official documents]. So we chose Christian because Jesus is a Jew, that’s what she said. And we went to a Catholic school after that.”

“We cannot use our wedding certificate, ketubah, to have a ceremony in Indonesia,” said Meijer Verbrugge. “We are supposed to use any other recognized religion’s wedding certificate. This is not fair.”

In 2009, a synagogue in Surabaya faced protests after it was designated by the Department of City Culture and Tourism as a cultural landmark. Groups demanded its closure several times until 2013, when the synagogue and its adjoining cemetery were destroyed for unknown reasons by landowners. Today, a high-rise hotel stands in its place.

In 2022, Baruch’s North Sulawesi synagogue was targeted by Muslim groups when he set up a small Holocaust exhibit there. Groups protesting the exhibition, including the MUI, pointed to the exhibition’s ties to Yad Vashem and saw it as part of Israel’s attempts to normalize relations with Indonesia and the occupation of Palestinian territories.

“Indonesians do not always distinguish between Jews and Israelis,” Mun’im Sirry, a professor of world religions at the University of Notre Dame, told JTA in 2022. “They also do not distinguish between the foreign policy of the state and the people of Israel. And that is a problem.”

Baruch told JTA that the issue of the Holocaust exhibition has since been resolved through dialogue with opposing parties. He has since adapted it into a permanent museum with the help of donations of artifacts via connections in Europe.

Maryam is less optimistic about the situation in Indonesia compared to Baruch. She describes connections with other religious organizations as a tax that Jews must pay in exchange for safety. Her own community donates money to local Muslim organizations “for our security,” she said.

“We in the Diaspora, we have no choice. You must trust Hashem,” she said, using a Hebrew term for God. “We have nobody. Who else? Hashem must protect us.”


The post Despite unrest in Indonesia, a Jewish community finds peace among other faith groups appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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In Gaza, Hamas Is Medea

Displaced Palestinians, fleeing northern Gaza due to an Israeli military operation, move southward after Israeli forces ordered residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the south, in the central Gaza Strip September 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

In Greek mythology, Medea does the unthinkable. Pursued by her father, Aeetes, and his fleet, she turns on the person closest to her — her own brother, Absyrtus. She drives a sword into his side, then tears apart a body “made of her own flesh.” She places his head and hands in sight of her father’s ship; the rest she scatters across the shore. Aeetes, shattered by grief, must stop to gather the remains while Medea escapes.

The Romanian writer Vintila Horia, in his novel God Was Born in Exile, lingers on this moment. Medea, he writes, was “a plaything of the gods, who drive men to commit these hateful acts so that they can then punish them more effectively.”

Myths survive because they illuminate universal human behaviors. They are metaphors dressed as stories — allegories of devices we see repeated again and again. And in this case, the echoes are uncomfortably clear.

Today, Palestinian leaders, whether from Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, or the PFLP, play Medea’s role. They sacrifice their own people for survival, for wealth, for ideology. Absyrtus is the Palestinian people themselves: torn apart, scattered, turned into propaganda fragments. And the West becomes Aeetes, chasing after the wreckage, desperate to collect the consequences, always behind.

The “gods” are not divine. They are the powers who exploit Palestinians as pawns: Syria, Iran, Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and others. Wrapped in the cloak of a politicized Palestinian identity that seems to grant immunity, leaders and patrons have stolen aid, enriched themselves, and justified repression: homophobia, misogyny, fanaticism, antisemitism, corruption, and endless violence. The cloak also serves to extract concessions abroad — political, diplomatic, and economic.

Meanwhile, Aeetes, the West, pursues the trail. Responsibilities, negotiations, and concessions pile up. Security and rights recede. Appeasement, apologies, and money flow in, offered up as if tolerance alone could undo the crime.

Medea, in this story, is embodied by the Palestinian leaders and their minions. They are directly responsible for the theft, for the indoctrination, and for the tactic Khaled Meshal himself described: sacrificing their own people to wound, however briefly, the image of the Jewish State. Each “martyrdom,” each “jihad,” is sold as a step toward eliminating Israel.

Absyrtus is the people — trapped in a machinery of violence, indoctrination, victimization, and offering, for which UNRWA bears immense responsibility. Reduced to faces on campaign posters, to slogans shouted in Paris, Madrid, or American universities, their deaths are paraded before the world as bait. The West does not insist that Hamas be removed from power — so that the war will end; hospitals, schools, and mosques won’t be turned into fighting locations; and Palestinian civilians won’t be used by their government as human shields. Instead, the West, like Aeetes, dutifully chases after the violent repercussions of Hamas’ tactics, convinced that appeasement, tolerance, and aid can somehow reassemble what their leaders have destroyed.

This ritual has a lineage. From the “Grand Mufti” of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Hassan al-Banna, down to Hamas today, the line runs long and unbroken. Death and hostage releases become theater, staged to desensitize their own people and foreign spectators alike.

Above all, Palestinians are sacrificed for a radical Islamist project of religious totalitarianism that seeks to advance westward, unopposed and unquestioned. This is what Hamas represents, and that is the true tragedy: not simply that people die, but that their deaths are wielded as weapons, as theater, and as excuses for hatred.

So long as the West keeps gathering the carnage that has been left behind, it will remain trapped in the tragedy. The only way out is to name the crime and hold the true Medeas to account.

Marcelo Wio is a Senior Analyst at CAMERA’s Spanish Department.  

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Exposed: AP Freelancer in Gaza Praised Palestinian Terrorist Who Killed 37 Jews

Students at the Dalal Mughrabi Elementary Mixed School, which was built with funds from the Belgian government. (Photo: Facebook)

If the Associated Press (AP), one of the world’s largest news agencies, had done its due diligence before hiring Palestinian photojournalist Ismael Abu Dayyah, it would have seen him praising terrorists and posting anti-Israel content online.

Instead, Abu Dayyah was employed to report on the war in Gaza for the AP in 2024, and the agency still sells his images.

His social media activity, however, casts a shadow over his objectivity and the AP’s hiring practices, which comes at a time when global media outlets are promoting an ongoing campaign on behalf of Gazan journalists.

Abu Dayyah used the social media platform X to glorify Palestinian terrorist Dalal al Mughrabi, who was responsible for the deadliest attack against Israeli Jews before the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre.

Abu Dayyah also praised the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — a proscribed terror group responsible for dozens of attacks against Israelis over the decades, including suicide bombings, rocket attacks, shootings, and in 2014, the barbaric murder of five Jewish worshippers in a synagogue in Jerusalem. He also celebrated its member Laila Khaled, who hijacked an airplane en route to Tel Aviv in 1969.

Abu Dayyah also posted content showing his profile picture on a map of Israel with a caption calling for the liberation of Jerusalem. Other posts by him called Hamas hostages “prisoners,” and labeled the establishment of a Jewish state as “Zionist Colonialism.”

Praise for Terrorists

In a post from March 2021, Abu Dayyah wrote:

And “Dalal Mughrabi” remains the bride of Palestine who chose resistance as her path and the homeland as her beloved, the legend who surpassed all military ranks. – Anniversary of martyrdom 11_March_1978.

Dalal Al Mughrabi was a Fatah terrorist responsible for the horrific 1978 massacre of 37 Jews, among them 12 children, in what was the deadliest terror attack in Israel’s history — until Hamas’ October 7 massacre.

Al Mughrabi led the “Coastal Road Massacre,” as it became known, when she and a group of terrorists infiltrated Israel from Lebanon, hijacked a passenger bus, and detonated it with explosives near Tel Aviv.

But for the AP’s Abu Dayyah, she is an icon. And he has been consistent in celebrating the anniversary of her “heroic” death not only in 2021, but also in previous years.

In 2022, Abu Dayyah also posted praise for Palestinian terrorist Leila Khaled and the PFLP:

Leila Khaled, who is still a PFLP member and regularly calls for violence against Israel, took part in the 1969 hijacking of a TWA flight from Rome to Tel Aviv. A year later, she was part of a two-person team that attempted to hijack an El Al flight from Amsterdam to New York City.

By celebrating her “achievements” online, Abu Dayyah actively promoted and supported terrorism. He also included hashtags delegitimizing a Jewish presence in Israel, such as “Jerusalem is Arab” and “our land wants freedom.”

Abu Dayyah has a documented history of praising, supporting, and promoting violent terrorism, and should therefore have no place in any Western media outlets, where his photos — that only show destruction and casualties in Gaza but not terrorists — promote Hamas’ narrative and serve as an outlet for his bias.

Anti-Israeli Bias

How can Abu Dayyah be expected to cover the Israel-Palestinian conflict professionally and objectively if he is also posting images that express his deep anti-Israeli bias?

In 2021, for example, as Hamas launched rockets at Israel from Gaza, he posted a picture of himself covering Israel’s map, and called for the liberation of Jerusalem.

Another propaganda post Abu Dayyah published that week showed a masked Palestinian youth protecting Jerusalem’s al Aqsa compound — located on Judaism’s holiest site — from Israeli soldiers.

And last February, Al Dayyah called Israeli hostages who were held and tortured by Hamas “prisoners” — a bias so deeply ingrained that it unsurprisingly aligns with his view that the establishment of the Jewish state was “Zionist colonialism.”

Media Hypocrisy

The AP cannot feign ignorance. HonestReporting had already exposed numerous Gaza journalists for their anti-Israel bias, at best, or Hamas membership, at worst, by the time the AP hired Abu Dayyah in 2024.

At the outset of the Israel-Hamas war, we even exposed the antisemitic social media history of the agency’s Gaza correspondent — which led to his dismissal.

So why did the AP not bother checking Abu Dayyah’s background before he was hired? Do AP bosses not believe in due diligence — which should be a given in any respectable organization?

And what do the AP and other media outlets have to say about Abu Dayyah in light of their loud campaign on behalf of Gaza journalists — many of whom share his views or work side by side with Hamas?

“When will AP acknowledge a consistent and serious problem with too many of Gaza’s media workers?” said HonestReporting’s editorial director, Simon Plosker. “Ismael Abu Dayyah didn’t even attempt to hide his extremism from his employers, and it’s clear they didn’t even bother looking. Instead of launching campaigns that ignore journalists’ links to or sympathies for Hamas, it’s high time the media addressed the elephant in the room. Neither AP nor any credible Western media should employ Abu Dayyah again, and we call on AP to publicly state that the news agency will sever ties with him.”

If a global news organization has no problem relying on biased journalists who praise the murderers of Jews, it cannot simultaneously decry their “professional” plight.

HonestReporting is a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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French Dishonor in New York: A Palestinian State as a Reward for Oct. 7

French President Emmanuel Macron is seen at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. Photo: Reuters/Martial Trezzini

In late September 1938, faced with yet one more territorial demand from Adolf Hitler and gripped with fear at the prospect of another European war just after the end of the Great War, British and French leaders decided to meet with Hitler in Munich,

Although wary of Hitler and his repeated threats, Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Edouard Daladier, Prime Minister of France, chose to agree to Hitler’s demand to integrate part of newly-formed Czechoslovakia — known as the Sudetenland — into his Third Reich. The Czechs had no choice but to agree to the partition, which was being imposed on them by outsiders.

Chamberlain seemed persuaded that by giving in to Hitler’s demands and having the Nazi Chancellor sign a treaty whereby he announced that he had no further territorial demands, he had brought the risk of war to an end.  He would even announce that this capitulation meant, as he put it, “Peace in our time.”

Daladier had no such illusion. Although he agreed to the treaty with Hitler, he was profoundly ashamed of the concessions he and Chamberlain had made. In fact, he was so ashamed of his behavior at Munich, that he was afraid to return to Paris. As his plane prepared to land at Le Bourget just outside of Paris, Daladier could see a very large crowd waiting for him. Fearful that the crowd might cause him harm in light of the Munich agreement, he ordered the pilot to circle the airfield and defer landing. Finally, he had no choice but to land, and he prepared to face the crowd’s hostility.

To his amazement, as he exited his plane, he was greeted by shouts of approval. He could barely believe his eyes and ears. He had feared being attacked and, instead, he was being acclaimed. His reaction was to mutter, “Ah, the fools [using a profanity]. If they only understood.” Daladier, the seasoned politician and intelligent student of history, knew very well that signing a treaty with a murderous thug like Hitler was an exercise in futility, or worse.

The experience of Prime Minister Daladier is well worth remembering as we witness the humiliating groveling of French President Emmanuel Macron in New York, as Macron — seemingly seeking to pacify a segment of France’s population — announces France’s recognition of a non-existent Palestinian State. That Macron has chosen to do this in the wake of the brutal massacre perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7, a massacre committed  in the name of and with the seeming approval of many Palestinians, as well as at a time when Israeli hostages remain imprisoned in the tunnels of Gaza, is truly galling.

If Macron believes that by recognizing a Palestinian state at this time he is promoting peace in the Middle East, he needs to reread the history of the Munich conference.

Just as it was obvious that Hitler was lying when he promised that, if he was given the Sudetenland he would not have any further territorial demands, so Palestinian leaders are obviously lying as they suggest that recognition of a Palestinian state might bring an end to their desire to destroy Israel.

It is very likely that, having recognized Palestinian statehood at the United Nations, Macron will be given a hero’s welcome in Paris. But that welcome will be a hollow welcome. Just as Daladier was cheered on his return from Munich, Macron will be cheered by fools. The motley crew of fools will be made up of unassimilated immigrants, radical leftists, and indoctrinated students.

Sadly, Macron, the brilliant and articulate young man who seemed so promising when he first assumed office — quite unlike Daladier, the experienced and cynical politician — may not even be able to appreciate the error of his ways. In spite of his intelligence, Macron appears unable to understand that recognition of a Palestinian state now can only appear as a reward to Hamas for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

That is especially the case since Hamas terrorists continue their intransigence in holding hostages and refusing to lay down their arms, in spite of their evident military defeat. Macron, through his appeasement of terrorists, will simply have prolonged the agony of the very people of the region he purports to be helping and he will have made ultimate peace in the Middle East even more elusive.

Just as Chamberlain’s and Daladier’s negotiation with Hitler merely postponed the inevitable and assuredly encouraged Hitler to believe that intransigence could work, Macron’s false encouragement to the Palestinians will certainly prompt yet more violence and cost yet more lives. It will make France seem naïve and cynical.

Instead of adding luster to the history of France, Macron will have added another disappointing chapter to the roller coaster ride that is French history. In this case, as in 1938, there are plenty of fools, but potentially the greatest fool of them all may be the shameless and feckless French president himself.

Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of a national law firm. He is the author of Lobbying for Equality, Jacques Godard and the Struggle for Jewish Civil Rights during the French Revolution, published by HUC Press.

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