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For 5 days, an endangered seal became a celebrity on an Israeli beach. Locals want her back.
JAFFA, Israel (JTA) — For most of the past week, Israel’s latest unlikely celebrity lounged on the Jaffa beach, drawing throngs of onlookers, constant media attention and round-the-clock protection from the government as she sunbathed and slept the day away.
Then early on Tuesday afternoon, the unwitting star named Yulia — a rare 6-foot species of seal weighing hundreds of pounds who has traveled the eastern Mediterranean — waded into the water and swam away. She left no sign of whether she would ever return.
Her departure has left some local residents bereft and others hopeful that she may find a safer home than a bare beach with little shelter, other animals and litter. News of her departure spread quickly through the area’s social media and WhatsApp groups, one of which had even changed its name from “Friends of Jaffa” to “Friends of Yulia.”
“Of course I know she’s not smiling, but her lips are formed in a way that makes her look like she is. She’s so utterly calm — even while a million people are watching her,” said Jaffa resident Aya Zaken, who added that she was “deeply sad” that Yulia had returned to sea.
Seeing the mammal for the first time was a “much more moving” experience than she had expected, Zaken said — partly because of the seal’s size but also because of the effect she had on onlookers.
“When faced with her, I felt an overwhelming sense of calm, like a deep meditation,” Zaken said. “The feeling that this is so much bigger than me or my troubles.”
Yulia, who was given her name by a local boy who first discovered her, arrived on Jaffa’s beach on Friday. She had since been the subject of 24-hour surveillance both by the press and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, which had sent volunteers to keep watch and ensure that the crowds of people who have gathered since her arrival didn’t disturb her.
Yulia is a Mediterranean monk seal, one of roughly 600-700 left in the world, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, though other estimates put the number even lower. The species is classified as endangered.
Yulia was listless and shaking when she first arrived on Israeli shores, and experts were worried that she was ill. But when Turkish researchers at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, received images of Yulia, they recognized her as a monk seal they had already seen, named Tugra, who is known to have a penchant for both swimming great lengths and napping for extraordinarily long stretches of time. She is over 20 years old and has a reputation for traveling, having been spotted as far off as Greece and Turkey.
“On the one hand, I’m on such a high, I haven’t slept in days,” said Mia Elasar, who has been researching monk seals for 30 years. “As a child I heard that there were once far more seals here; and now, to see one in real life, it’s a legend that has come alive.”
Elasar is the founder of the Delphis Association, an Israeli nonprofit for marine mammals that has partnered with the IUCN on a joint project for the protection of monk seals. She said Yulia’s (or Tugra’s) globetrotting isn’t the only reason for her extreme fatigue. When she arrived in Jaffa, she was spotted with large bite marks in two areas of her body. According to Elasar’s Turkish colleagues, those marks were not present at her last sighting in 2019, off the coast of Lebanon. She was also shedding her fur, a process that requires a lot of energy.
“I worry for her here,” Elasar said. “It makes more sense for her to go back.”
Onlookers view Yulia from a distance. (Deborah Danan)
Some Jaffa residents agreed that the beach — with its crowds, dogs and considerable volume of garbage — wasn’t the best place for their beloved guest. Elasar added that Israel lacks the resources to give Yulia the protection she needs. To provide a more permanent home for her and her fellow seals, she said, authorities would need to build caves along the shoreline where the marine animals could rest.
“I think it is for the best,” said Dan, a resident of Jaffa who declined to give his last name. “It was probably a matter of time until someone would potentially harm her or ‘adopt’ her to live in a bath or aquarium, or even try to eat her.”
In the end, Yulia apparently felt the same way. After 48 hours of sleeping following her arrival, she finally went back to sea. Over the ensuing two days, she was in and out of the water, until, on Tuesday, she left for the longest stretch yet. She was spotted swimming opposite the nearby Jaffa port on Wednesday morning, which gives optimists reason to believe that she will yet return.
“I very much want her to come back,” said Arnon Pinchuk, 14, who came with some of his classmates to see Yulia on Wednesday morning, only to learn that she had left.
Pinchuk was one of only 18 students from the Kehila Democratic School in Jaffa to take the trip. Asked why the rest of his 103-student class did not come along for the adventure, Pinchuk answered, “Because they’re losers who prefer being on their phones.”
Jaffa has a diverse population of Jews, Christians and Muslims and, for many of the residents, Yulia’s arrival was a unifying event. That was especially the case amid recent events in the country, which range from civil strife over a proposed overhaul of Israel’s judiciary to the recent five-day conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Yulia got to Jaffa near the end of that round of fighting.
“She came at a time when people need quiet and solidarity and unity and happiness,” Zaken said. “I hope she gathers her strength and comes back and tells us all how awesome we are.”
Along with locals, Yulia attracted a gaggle of photographers who have spent hours training their lenses on her. Yehiel Lamesh, an amateur photographer, traveled from the southern port city of Ashdod to visit Yulia, and said, “I would go around the world to see such a creature, so of course I would come here.”
To Ziv Binunski, a cameraman for Israel’s Channel 12 News, Yulia’s sojourn was a welcome respite from his other assignments, which include capturing rocket fire over the Gaza border, as well as the anti-government protests roiling the country.
On Wednesday morning, he stood on the beach, hoping to catch her return.
“It’s such a different experience, being connected to the sea and to nature,” he said, “and to be dependent on the whims of animals, and not humans.”
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Vanderbilt launches inquiry into instructor after math question about Israeli occupation draws criticism
(JTA) — Vanderbilt University has launched an inquiry into a mathematics lecturer whose classroom exercise about Palestinian territory drew criticism from the activist group StopAntisemitism.
Tekin Karadağ, a senior lecturer at the university’s department of mathematics, drew the ire of the antisemitism watchdog after it obtained a slide from one of his lectures that used a pro-Palestinian protest slogan and suggested that Israel was shrinking the Palestinian territory.
“Assume Palestine as a state with a rectangular land shape. There is the Mediterranean Sea on the west and the Jordan River on the east,” read the slide. “From the river to the sea, Palestine (…) was approximately 100 km. in 1946. The land decreases by 250 sq. km per year, due to the occupation by Israel. How fast is the width of the land decreasing now?”
Karadǎg, a Turkish national who received his PhD from Texas A&M University in 2021, included the question under “examples related to the popular issues” in a survey of calculus class, according to StopAntisemitism, which wrote in a post on X that Karadǎg was “bringing his anti-Israel, antisemitic bias into his classroom.”
In a statement shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Vanderbilt said that the content had been removed and that an inquiry had been launched into Karadağ.
“The university has received reports alleging a member of the faculty engaged in unprofessional conduct related to content shared during course instruction,” the school said. “The content in question has been removed, and a formal inquiry has been initiated consistent with relevant university policy.”
In recent years, rhetoric about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on college campuses has grown increasingly fraught, with professors’ commentary on the region sparking heavy scrutiny and, at times, disciplinary measures when their universities have determined that they exceeded the bounds of academic freedom. A recent report by Columbia University’s antisemitism task force found that students frequently experienced pro-Palestinian advocacy in classes entirely unrelated to the Middle East — such as dance or math classes.
The inquiry was not the first time that Vanderbilt took swift action against the expression of pro-Palestinian sentiments on its campus.
In March 2024, the university, which has roughly 1,100 Jewish undergraduate students, was among the first universities to expel students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. This year, the school’s antisemitism “grade” from the Anti-Defamation League was bumped up from a “C” to an “A.”
The post Vanderbilt launches inquiry into instructor after math question about Israeli occupation draws criticism appeared first on The Forward.
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Hugh Laurie rejects ‘Zionist’ label after his tribute to Israeli ‘Tehran’ producer sparks social media firestorm
(JTA) — British actor Hugh Laurie pushed back against being labeled as a “Zionist” after facing a wave of online criticism for posting a tribute to the Israeli producer of the hit television show “Tehran.”
“Dana Eden, who co-created and produced ‘Tehran’, died on Sunday, seemingly by her own hand,” Laurie, who played a nuclear inspector in the show’s third season, tweeted last week. “It’s a terrible thing. She was brilliant, and funny, and an exceptional leader. Love and condolences to all who knew her.”
The seemingly innocuous post eulogizing Eden, 52, who was found dead while filming the latest season of the hit Apple TV+ series in Athens last week, quickly drew a volley of backlash on social media.
“She was part of the occupation force’s propaganda arm,” wrote one user in response to Laurie’s post. “What a shame, didn’t expect you to be a closet Zionist.” Another wrote that Eden “creates propaganda for Israel so that they can kill kids more effectively. People should have no sympathy for her.”
The award-winning series, which follows a young Israeli Mossad agent in Iran, was produced by the Israeli public broadcaster Kan and purchased by Apple TV+ in 2020 for roughly $20 million. Eden’s death, for which no cause has been announced, occurred during production of the show’s fourth season, which had already stalled following Oct. 7.
Laurie is not the first actor to spurn the “Zionist” label, as entertainers in recent years have increasingly faced pressure to declare their views on Israel. In December, Jewish actress Odessa A’zion pushed back on claims she was a Zionist after an image of her wearing an IDF shirt as a teenager circulated online.
On Friday, Laurie, who previously starred in the Emmy Award-winning medical drama “House,” shot back at the criticism.
“Nothing I have ever said or done could lead a sane person to believe that I am a Zionist,” wrote Laurie in a post on X. “However. If someone exults in the death of a friend of mine, yes I will block them. If you wouldn’t do the same in my position, you can f—ck off too.”
Laurie’s subsequent post also drew outcry, but this time from pro-Israel influencers who lamented the actor’s disavowal of the Zionist label, calling him “weak” and a “pathetic weasel” in the replies.
Freelance journalist Angela Epstein replied to Laurie’s post, writing, “Not Hugh Laurie as well. I thought he was one of the decent ones….”
“God almighty, why does no one understand English any more?” wrote Laurie in response to Epstein’s critique. “I have not spoken or written a word that would indicate pro or anti Zionism. That’s what those words mean. Blimey.”
The post Hugh Laurie rejects ‘Zionist’ label after his tribute to Israeli ‘Tehran’ producer sparks social media firestorm appeared first on The Forward.
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German anti-Zionist group’s plan to protest at Buchenwald memorial over kaffiyeh ban sparks outrage
(JTA) — An anti-Zionist group in Germany has drawn condemnation after it announced plans for a protest against the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial in response to a ban on pro-Palestinian symbols at the site.
The group Kufiyas in Buchenwald claims that the memorial has become a place of “historical revisionism and genocide denial.” It announced a demonstration for April 11, the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp.
“Instead of honoring the persecuted and resolutely opposing every genocide, the memorial spreads Israeli propaganda and provides the ideological ammunition for the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” the group says on its website.
Buchenwald, one of the first concentration camps built by the Nazis and one of the largest in the country, was the site of the murder of roughly 56,000 male prisoners, including 11,000 Jews, from 1937 to 1945.
Last year, a German court ruled that the concentration camp had a right to refuse entry to visitors who wear a keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian headscarf that has been adopted by pro-Palestinian protesters. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit by a woman who attempted to wear the scarf to an event commemorating the concentration camp’s liberation.
The woman, who was only identified by her first name, Anna, posted a testimony about her actions on the Kufiyas in Buchenwald Instagram page in which she said she was inspired by the resistance of Buchenwald prisoners.
“Our fundamental principle is this: criticism of the Israeli government’s policies, settlement policy, or actions in the Gaza Strip is legitimate,” said the Buchenwald Foundation’s director Jens-Christian Wagner in a statement outlining the memorial’s protocols. “However, it becomes antisemitic when used to relativize the Holocaust and discredit its victims as perpetrators. We will not tolerate this at the Buchenwald Memorial.”
The campaign against the memorial has been signed onto by a host of pro-Palestinian groups, including the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and the German group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East, which has defended the protest on X as evidence of what “commemorating past German crimes has to do with rejecting current ones.”
In a post on Instagram announcing the protest earlier this month, the Kufiyas in Buchenwald group wrote that it would hold a “public protest” in Weimar, the German city located nearby the concentration camp. The group also said it planned to host lectures and a “tour that vividly illustrates the events in the former concentration camp.”
It was unclear whether the protest is intended to take place outside the memorial itself. Kufiyas in Buchenwald did not immediately respond to an inquiry from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the location of the protest.
The protest quickly drew condemnation from German leaders, including the country’s antisemitism czar Felix Klein, who told the Swiss outlet Neue Zürcher Zeitung that the protest marked a “new low point in the unfortunately all-too-common reversal of perpetrator and victim roles.”
Michael Panse, the commissioner for combatting antisemitism for the German state Thuringia, where Weimar is located, told the outlet that the protest was “tasteless and historically ignorant.”
The protests also drew condemnation from the European Jewish Congress, which wrote in a post on X that the demonstration represents a “deeply troubling instrumentalization of Holocaust remembrance.”
“Holocaust memorial sites are places of solemn reflection and respect for the victims of National Socialism,” the post continued. “They must never be exploited to promote agendas that deny Israel’s legitimacy or glorify those who perpetrate violence against Jews.”
The post German anti-Zionist group’s plan to protest at Buchenwald memorial over kaffiyeh ban sparks outrage appeared first on The Forward.