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For Israeli protesters in NYC, Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit is a chance to ‘constantly be in his face’
(New York Jewish Week) — Steven Lax awoke at 3 a.m. on Tuesday to greet Benjamin Netanyahu as he arrived in New York City — enough time for Lax to brew coffee and await the Israeli prime minister at the Loews Regency Hotel in East Midtown with about 100 others.
Lax is the board chair and owner of Naot Worldwide, the Israeli sandal company that has become a recognizable brand across Israel and among American tourists. But before sunrise on Tuesday, Lax wasn’t waiting to talk business or branding with Netanyahu. He and his fellow protesters were there to jeer the prime minister and his ongoing effort to weaken the Israeli judiciary — a legislative package Lax likened to the darkest chapters of Jewish history.
“I’m the son of a Holocaust survivor,” Lax told the New York Jewish Week. “And during the Holocaust, American Jews knew what was going on and stayed silent. We can’t anymore.”
Netanyahu arrived at the hotel a bit before 5 a.m., escorted by a caravan of nearly 30 vehicles, as the crowd of protesters chanted “busha” — the Hebrew word for “shame” that has become a mainstay of the anti-judicial overhaul protests in Israel and abroad.
Those protests have occurred weekly in Israel, drawing hundreds of thousands of people to the streets to oppose the legislative package, which in its original form would have stripped the Israeli Supreme Court of much of its power and independence — and, in the view of many protesters, would pave the way for entrenching the polices of the current government, which includes far-right partners. Protests in solidarity with the Israeli demonstrations have occurred in New York City and elsewhere for months as well.
During Netanyahu’s visit this week, the demonstrations have occurred daily in locations ranging from Times Square to the United Nations to his hotel. Netanyahu met with President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the U.N. on Wednesday, and will address the U.N. General Assembly on Friday before meeting with American Jewish leaders.
But while the demonstrations have been happening week after week, and have dogged government officials as they’ve come to town, Lax and others say that they’re not experiencing protest fatigue.
Rather, they view this week as the culmination of months of organizing and as a way to unite an expanding coalition of Israeli expatriates and American Jews in opposition to Netanyahu and his policies. Lax said that the first protests he attended drew about 50 people. Now, he said, they’re attracting hundreds to oppose Netanyahu.
“We are determined to constantly be in his face,” said Smadar Harush, an Israeli psychoanalyst who has lived in Brooklyn for 24 years, and who has been attending the New York protests since February despite being diagnosed with cancer in March. “We will never stop reminding him that we are not going to give up. We are not going to back off until he backs off.”
The protest movement suffered a blow in July when Netanyahu’s coalition passed the first piece of overhaul legislation, limiting the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down government decisions. But far from deflating the overhaul’s critics, protest organizers say, that moment was a turning point that led to American Jewish leaders taking a more active role in the demonstrations.
“This was a moment of change and people started to reach out to me from the American Jewish community, and not just from me to them,” said Shany Granot-Lubaton, a leader of UnXeptable, an Israeli expatriate group organizing many of the protests. “And I feel like there is a new step in this bridge that we are building towards each other, both communities, because they have been really amazing allies for the fight for Israeli democracy in the past month since the law passed.”
Granot-Lubaton noted that American rabbis in particular have gotten more involved in the protests. Rabbis from across the city have been or are scheduled to be at different events throughout the week, including Rabbi Jill Jacobs, CEO of T’ruah, the liberal rabbinic human rights group; Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue, a Conservative congregation; Rabbi Michelle Dardashti of Kane Street Synagogue, a Reform congregation; Rabbi Josh Weinberg, the Union for Reform Judaism’s vice president for Israel and Reform Zionism; and Rabbi Rick Jacobs, URJ’s president.
“I feel like I got to know a whole new side of my people that I’ve never known,” Granot-Lubaton said. “I never had rabbis on my side. I never quoted from the Bible when I talked about democracy, or women’s rights, or LGBTQ rights, and now I have these amazing partners in this fight…”
Weinberg spoke on Tuesday during a rally in Times Square, and alluded to a famous passage from Pirkei Avot, a rabbinic ethics text: “On three things the world stands: on judgment, on truth and on peace,” he said.
“I couldn’t be more proud of those who have neither slept or slumbered in showing up for 37 weeks to fight for our values — the same values laid out by Israel’s founders and enshrined in its Declaration of Independence… the values of freedom, justice, and peace,” he said.
Jill Jacobs, who is slated to speak at a rally on Thursday evening, also plans to allude to Jewish text — and particularly to the fact that Netanyahu’s visit is occurring during the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a period associated with repentance. In her prepared remarks, Jacobs calls it “a time when Jews reflect on our past wrongs and resolve to do better.”
“This moment reminds us that all is possible, that the past need not determine the future,” Jacobs plans to say. “It is not too late for Israel to recommit to the principles in its declaration of independence, and to commit to democracy and human rights for all.”
Anti-occupation activists protest outside of the Loews Regency Hotel in East Midtown on September 19, 2023. (Tori Luecking)
Jacobs is one of a contingent of protesters who are demonstrating against both the judicial overhaul and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, issues she sees as linked. Harush, the psychoanalyst, agrees.
“How can we be democratic while occupying another people? We can’t. It’s a contradiction,” said Harush, who attended a rally on Tuesday outside of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that was dubbed an “Artistic Protest,” hosted by UnXeptable and Brothers and Sisters in Arms, a protest group made up of Israeli combat veterans. She carried a poster depicting Netanyahu as the subject of a painting that looked similar to Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring.”
Decades ago, Harush worked for the International Center for Peace in the Middle East in Israel, but feels that hope for a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict largely faded after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. She sees the current protest movement as a potential way to raise the subject again in mainstream Jewish Israeli society.
“It’s a topic that now, finally, in the last eight months, moved from the left margin to a little bit in the center,” she said. “A lot of my friends didn’t even want to talk about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and now more and more understand.”
Before the protest at the Met, a group of about 50 anti-occupation activists held their own protest outside Netanyahu’s hotel, denouncing what they describe as his government’s “Jewish supremacist” policies.
Emily Miller, an MFA student who attended the protest, and who immigrated to Israel in 2018, said she didn’t “feel aligned” with the anti-overhaul protest movement, but added, “I am very proud of the liberal Zionist people coming to the streets, and they are close to realizing the obvious elephant in the room, which is that the root cause of all these issues is the occupation.”
Anti-overhaul protesters are now gearing up to rally ahead of Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations on Thursday night and Friday morning.
Thursday will also see right-wing groups, such as the Republican Jewish Coalition and Zionist Organization of America, gather to rally in support of Netanyahu and Israel. Although some right-wing American Jewish leaders, such as ZOA President Mort Klein, have vocally supported the overhaul, a flier for the rally says the legislation will not come up in speeches.
“Thousands will attend this rally as we support Israel and its right to defend itself against Palestinian terror,” said the flier, which also banned Palestinian flags from the rally. “Speakers will not speak in favor or against judicial reform.”
Netanyahu is not expected to focus on the judicial overhaul in his U.N. address, but his coalition may return it to the agenda when Israeli lawmakers come back from a recess this fall. Batell Blaish-Sultanik, a leader in Brothers and Sisters in Arms and one of the first female cadets to graduate from the Israeli Naval Academy, wants to make sure that her fellow demonstrators don’t lose focus while the fate of their cause remains uncertain.
“Speaking as a naval officer, we’re taught that the most dangerous moment is when land comes into sight,” said Blaish-Sultanik. “At that moment when land comes into sight you can relax, you can take a step back, you can become indifferent. But this is exactly the moment when we must redouble our efforts and go the extra mile to stay vigilant.”
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US Democrats Demand Release of Pro-Hamas Columbia University Activist Mahmoud Khalil From ICE Detention
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) addresses attendees as she takes part in a protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza outside the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, US, Oct. 18, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis
Democrats in the US Congress are largely defending a leading anti-Israel agitator at Columbia University in New York following news of his arrest and detainment by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian from Syria who completed post-graduate studies at Columbia in December, was apprehended by federal authorities on Saturday night and transported to an immigration jail in Louisiana. The pro-Hamas activist was informed that his green card had been revoked and that he would be deported from the United States.
In a statement, the US Department of Homeland Security said ICE agents arrested Khalil “in support of” an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump aimed at combating antisemitism on university campuses.
“Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization. ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump’s executive orders and to protecting US national security,” the department said.
US President Donald Trump defended Khalil’s arrest and said it will be the first of many.
“We know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, antisemitism, anti-American activity, and the Trump administration will not tolerate it,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “Many are not students; they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
However, a federal judge in New York City on Monday ordered that Khalil not be deported by the Trump administration until the court ruled on a lawsuit presented by his lawyers. According to ICE, the activist is currently being held at the Lasalle Detention facility in Louisiana. Khalil’s case is set to be heard on Wednesday.
Many observers criticized Khalil’s arrest and detainment, arguing that the Trump administration both violated his right to due process and undermined free speech. Critics also argued that the Trump administration does not possess the right to unilaterally revoke green cards from legal residents.
Congressional Democrats largely condemned the ICE arrest of Khalil, arguing that the Trump administration should release the pro-Hamas activist immediately.
“The warrantless arrest of any legal permanent resident seemingly solely over their speech is a chilling, McCarthyesque action in response to the exercise of first amendment rights to free speech,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY).
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, lambasted the arrest, posted on social media that detaining a legal resident “for exercising his right to free speech is something we’d expect from Russia — NOT AMERICA [sic].”
The official BlueSky account of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee accused the Trump administration of seeking retribution against Khalil for expressing “his First Amendment rights in a way Donald Trump didn’t like” and condemned the White House for practicing “straight up authoritarianism.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of the most outspoken critics against Israel in Congress, said that Khalil’s arrest is part of a broader effort “to shred our constitutional rights to free speech and due process.” In addition, Tlaib spearheaded a letter to US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, demanding that Khalil be “freed from DHS custody immediately.” Thirteen other Democrats signed the letter.
The letter argued that Khalil has “not been charged or convicted of any crime” and that the Trump administration targeted him “solely for his activism and organizing as a student leader,” as well as his efforts in opposing Israel’s “brutal assault of the Palestinian people in Gaza.” The missive also claimed that the arrest of Khalil represents another example of the Trump administration’s purported “anti-Palestinian racism” and accused the White House of trying to dismantle the “Palestine solidarity movement in this country.” The lawmakers warned that the Trump administration’s tactics against Khalil “will be applied to any and all opposition to his undemocratic agenda.”
Some observers noted out that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), one of the most vocal opponents of the Jewish state in the US Congress, did not sign onto the letter calling for Khalil’s release. Though Ocasio-Cortez has spoken out in defense of Khalil, some on the political left have repudiated her for not taking more strident anti-Israel stances in the 16 months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel. The lawmaker came under fire by some of the political left last summer for calling for the release of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas to Gaza.
Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) also repudiated the arrest, writing that Khalil is “entitled to First Amendment protections like everyone in this country.”
Despite the widespread backlash over Khalil’s arrest, many congressional Republicans praised the announcement, arguing that the Trump administration has taken aggressive action to protect Jewish Americans and clamp down on antisemitism.
While at Columbia, Khalil spearheaded multiple pro-Hamas demonstrations on campus. He was a participant in Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a constellation of 100 anti-Israel campus organizations calling for the Ivy League institution to cut ties with the Jewish state.
In the aftermath of Khalil’s arrest, video circulated online showing the activist leading a takeover of a campus building at neighboring Barnard College. During the unsanctioned demonstration, activists spread pamphlets glorifying the Hamas Oct. 7 massacres across southern Israel.
In addition, Khalil helped lead the infamous Hamilton Hall takeover on Columbia’s campus in the final weeks of the 2023-2024 school year.
US Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) defended Khalil’s arrest, saying, “If you are on a student visa and you’re an aspiring young terrorist who wants to prey upon your Jewish classmates, you’re going home.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) condemned Democrats for “fighting for a pro-Hamas foreigner who has made life hell for Jews on campus.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) also lauded the detainment of Khalil, writing that “obtaining a US visa is a privilege, not a right. Friends of Hamas — don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
In the year following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 slaughters across Israel, Columbia University has emerged as a hotbed of anti-Israel student activism. Last spring, anti-Israel students and faculty erected a student encampment, protesting the university’s ties to the Jewish state. Moreover, Columbia has suffered an exodus of financial support from Jewish donors and alumni, alleging that the university has dragged its feet in combating antisemitism on campus.
Last week, the Trump administration cut $400 million in grants originally intended for Columbia, arguing that the university has not done enough to protect Jewish students. Mounting pressure from the Trump administration reportedly caused the university to collaborate with ICE to detain Khalil.
The post US Democrats Demand Release of Pro-Hamas Columbia University Activist Mahmoud Khalil From ICE Detention first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran’s President to Trump: I Will Not Negotiate, ‘Do Whatever the Hell You Want’
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian attends a press conference in Tehran, Iran, Sept. 16, 2024. Photo: WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Majid Asgaripour via REUTERS
President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran would not negotiate with the US while being threatened, telling President Donald Trump to “do whatever the hell you want,” Iranian state media reported on Tuesday.
“It is unacceptable for us that they [the US] give orders and make threats. I won’t even negotiate with you. Do whatever the hell you want,” state media quoted Pezeshkian as saying.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday that Tehran would not be bullied into negotiations, a day after Trump said he had sent a letter urging Iran to engage in talks on a new nuclear deal.
While expressing openness to a deal with Tehran, Trump has reinstated the “maximum pressure” campaign he applied in his first term as president to isolate Iran from the global economy and drive its oil exports down towards zero.
In an interview with Fox Business, Trump said last week, “There are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily, or you make a deal” to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Iran has long denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon. However, it is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, has warned.
Iran has accelerated its nuclear work since 2019, a year after then-President Trump ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six world powers and reimposed sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.
The post Iran’s President to Trump: I Will Not Negotiate, ‘Do Whatever the Hell You Want’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syrians Riot in Front of Jewish Museum in Munich Amid Rise in Antisemitic Incidents
Illustrative: Pro-Hamas demonstrators marching in Munich, Germany. Photo: Reuters/Alexander Pohl
Three young Syrian men rioted in front of the Jewish Museum in Munich this past weekend, spitting on photographs of Israeli hostages and deceased soldiers before one of the assailants threatened security personnel with a knife.
The incident, first reported by German media, was one of the latest antisemitic cases in a country that has experienced a surge in open hatred toward Jews since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
During the Gaza conflict, the Jewish Museum has displayed photographs of hostages taken by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists during their Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel as well as deceased Israeli soldiers, along with candles, to honor and remember them.
On Saturday afternoon, three men — Syrian citizens living in Austria — vandalized the memorial by spitting on it while shouting antisemitic slogans, the German newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Jüdische Allgemeine reported.
After witnessing the attack, two employees from the Jewish community’s security service tried to stop the assailants, who responded aggressively. One of the three men, a 19-year-old, allegedly kicked one of the employees before drawing a knife.
Several police officers assigned to protect the Jewish Center, located next to the museum, noticed the incident and intervened. Soon afterward, more than 30 officers arrived at the scene. Police and security guards had to threaten to use their firearms before the teenager dropped the knife.
According to local police, the man and his two accomplices, a 20-year-old and a 31-year-old, have all been arrested and are under investigation for threats, assault, defamation, and insulting the memory of the deceased.
The Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office has taken over the case, with senior prosecutor Andreas Franck, who also serves as the antisemitism commissioner of the Bavarian judiciary, overseeing the case.
Germany has experienced a sharp spike in antisemitism since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
In just the first six months of 2024 alone, the number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin surpassed the total for all of the prior year and reached the highest annual count on record, according to Germany’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS).
The figures compiled by RIAS were the highest count for a single year since the federally-funded body began monitoring antisemitic incidents in 2015, showing the German capital averaged nearly eight anti-Jewish outrages a day from January to June last year.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), police registered 5,154 antisemitic incidents in Germany in 2023, a 95 percent increase compared to the previous year.
However, experts believe that the true number of incidents is much higher but not recorded because of reluctance on the part of the victims.
“Only 20 percent of the antisemitic crimes are reported, so the real number should be five times what we have,” Felix Klein, the German federal government’s chief official dealing with antisemitism, told The Algemeiner in an interview in 2023.
Earlier this year, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the ongoing discrimination faced by the Jewish community, calling it “outrageous and shameful.”
Last month, Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag, passed a motion to address antisemitism and hostility toward Israel in schools and universities, seeking to combat a surge in pro-Hamas demonstrations on campuses and antisemitic incidents across the country.
Jewish students at German universities widely expressed a growing sense of insecurity and uneasiness following Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, amid a slew of incidents purportedly meant to protest the war in Gaza.
The recently passed parliamentary motion stipulates that the federal government — in collaboration with the ministers of education and the German Rectors’ Conference, an association of state and state-recognized universities — must ensure that antisemitic behavior in educational institutions results in sanctions.
“This includes the consistent enforcement of house rules, temporary exclusion from classes or studies, and even … expulsion,” the motion reads.
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