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Hamas Urges Arson as Wildfires Grip Israel on Memorial Day

Israeli security and rescue personnel work near Latrun in central Israel, as wildfires due to extreme heat and winds broke out in central Israel, April 30, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Oren Ben Hakoon

As wildfires swept through the Jerusalem hills and a national emergency was declared, Israel on Wednesday observed its annual Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terror with nationwide sirens, official ceremonies, and moments of silence.

Hamas posted a message on Telegram on Wednesday afternoon urging Palestinians in Jerusalem and elsewhere to “burn whatever you can of groves, forests, cars, and settler homes,” to seek “revenge” for Gaza.

At 8 pm on Tuesday evening, a minute-long siren sounded across Israel, signaling the beginning of Yom HaZikaron, which commemorates soldiers killed in battle and victims of terrorism since the state’s founding in 1948. Israelis stopped in their tracks, cars halted on highways, and heads bowed in memory. The scene repeated itself with another siren, this time for two minutes, the following day at 11 am.

Israelis stand for a moment of silence as the memorial siren sounds on Israel’s Memorial Day. Photo: Meir Pavlovsky, OneFamily

As the country paid tribute to the fallen, large brushfires burned through forests and communities west of Jerusalem. Fanned by high winds, the fires led to evacuations in several areas and the temporary closure of Route 1, the main highway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The Defense Ministry declared a national emergency and urged the public to avoid military cemeteries. The military was deployed to assist firefighting teams. The blazes come just a week after another in the area consumed nearly 3,000 acres of forest and open land.

Three people were arrested on suspicion of arson, including a 50-year-old resident of Jerusalem’s Umm Tuba neighborhood who was accused of helping ignite the fires near the city. Police said he was caught trying to set fire to vegetation in southern Jerusalem and was apprehended after a short chase. Officers found a lighter, cotton wool, and other flammable materials on him.

Commander of the Jerusalem District Fire and Rescue Services Shmulik Friedman, who ordered the evacuation of six communities in the area, said authorities were possibly facing “the largest wildfire the country has ever seen” that was set to get worse as wind speeds climbed above 60 miles per hour.

Israel’s Transportation Minister Miri Regev canceled the evening’s torch-lighting ceremony, traditionally held at Mount Herzl to open Independence Day, due to the advancing fires

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar contacted his counterparts in Cyprus, Croatia, Italy, and Greece to request aerial firefighting assistance. It was not immediately clear whether any of the countries would respond.

At the state ceremony for victims of terror at Mount Herzl, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was met with heckling from protesters calling for his resignation. Cries of “You are the head, you are guilty” and “The hostages are suffering, bring them home now” interrupted his address.

Netanyahu praised the sacrifices of Israeli soldiers who, he said, “smashed the vice of our enemies.”

Referring to the 1948 War of Independence, he added: “The rebirth of Israel, unfortunately, was bought with pain and blood.” Netanyahu also condemned Palestinian incitement, saying, “The children of our enemies drink this poisonous fanaticism with their mother’s milk in kindergartens, in textbooks, in religious classes, in inciting sermons, in religious rulings that call for our destruction. But we will not allow them to destroy us because our life force is stronger than their force of death and destruction.”

President Isaac Herzog also addressed the audience, referencing the hostages held in Gaza and the broader obligations of Israeli society. “Our covenant with those who have died obligates us to support the soldiers of the IDF and all security forces — whether those performing national service, career soldiers, and reservists — and to care for those wounded in terror attacks and Israel’s wars,” he said.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Photo: Israeli Government Press Office (GPO)

In Jerusalem, more than 1,000 people attended the annual ceremony of OneFamily, Israel’s largest organization supporting terror victims and their families. Among those who spoke were siblings mourning lost brothers. “Being a bereaved twin is walking through this world split in half, knowing that part of your soul is no longer among the living,” said Itamar Weisel, whose twin brother Master Sgt. Elkana Weisel was killed in Gaza in January 2024. Daniel Oren, whose triplet brother Aviel Oren was killed at the Nova music festival during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, also spoke of daily grief and remembrance.

L-R: Daniel Oren, whose triplet brother Aviel Oren, and Itamar Weisel, whose twin brother Master Sgt. Elkana Weisel was killed in Gaza, deliver speeches at the OneFamily memorial ceremony in Jerusalem on the evening of April 29, 2025. Photo: Meir Pavlovsky, OneFamily

An English-language ceremony was held at the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem in partnership with the IDF Widows and Orphans Organization, attended by former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, UN Ambassador Danny Danon, and other dignitaries. Cohen used the occasion to highlight the Iranian threat, saying it was “not just a strategic challenge, but a moral one.”

Israel “must do everything in its power — diplomatically, politically, and if necessary, operationally — to ensure that Iran never acquires nuclear weapons,” the former spy chief said.

“Just as our fallen stood bravely against danger, so too must we stand resolute against those who threaten the very existence of our nation,” Cohen added. 

Still in Jerusalem, around 3,000 people attended an unusual memorial ceremony for ultra-Orthodox soldiers who served in IDF tracks designated for Haredi recruits. The event occurred amid renewed debate over a law to expand Haredi conscription, which remains a politically divisive issue. While the IDF issued about 10,000 conscription orders to eligible Haredi men over the past year, only 2 percent have reported for service. Extremist factions in the Haredi community have at times staged violent protests against the draft, targeting police and recruiters.

Another annual memorial event that often draws controversy was held in Jaffa, jointly organized by Combatants for Peace and the Parents Circle – Families Forum, and attended by bereaved Israelis and Palestinians.

In Hurfeish, a Druze village in northern Israel, hundreds gathered at the local military cemetery to remember fallen soldiers from the community. Diana Zoher Rabah, whose father was killed while serving in the Israel Defense Forces in 1994, said, “Every soldier who is killed brings up fresh memories.” Two Druze soldiers from the village, Anwar Serhan and Jawad Amer, were killed during the current war. “We have lived with this pain for 30 years, and I know what they will go through for the next 30 years,” Rabah said.

At the same event, Jerusalem Affairs Minister Meir Porush addressed recent violence in Syria involving the Druze community. “We will make sure that nobody hurts the Druze in Syria,” he said. More than a dozen people were killed this week in fighting between pro-regime Sunni militias and Druze residents near Damascus. Half of those killed were from the Druze community. Porush also recalled the July attack in Majdal Shams, where 12 Druze children were killed by Hezbollah rockets. 

“The Druze give so much to this nation,” Porush said.

The Druze community has long been recognized for its loyalty to the state, with most serving in the IDF and national service. Sara Bisan, a Druze teenager from the national service told The Algemeiner from Auschwitz on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day last week that “serving the state of Israel is an honor and a privilege.”

The post Hamas Urges Arson as Wildfires Grip Israel on Memorial Day first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Prominent Palestinian Writer Dismisses Victims of Fatal DC Shooting as ‘Genocide Cheerleaders’

Susan Abdulhawa, a Palestinian writer and pundit Source: Democracy Now!

Palestinian American writer and activist Susan Abulhawa. Photo: Screenshot

Prominent Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa has seemingly justified the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, on Wednesday night, dismissing the victims as “genocidal cheerleaders,” warning that “no Zionist should be safe,” and suggesting without evidence that the shooting may have been a “false flag” operation.

“Natural logic: when governments fail to hold Israel accountable for an actual holocaust being committed before our very eyes, no genocidal Zionist should be safe anywhere in the world,” Abulhawa posted on X/Twitter on Thursday, the day after the shooting. “What Mr. Rodriguez did should come as no surprise. In fact, I’m surprised it has not happened sooner. Human beings with a conscience literally cannot bear to witness such evil day and day out being inflicted upon the bodies, minds, and futures of an utterly defenseless people, by such a hateful, racist, colonial state.”

Elias Rodriguez, a 30-year-old left-wing and anti-Israel activist from Chicago, was charged on Thursday in US federal court with two counts of first-degree murder. He is accused of fatally shooting Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, a young couple about to become engaged to be married, as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum for young professionals and diplomatic staff hosted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in the US capital.

An affidavit filed by US federal authorities in support of the criminal complaint charging Rodriguez revealed that he said at the scene of the shooting, “I did it for Palestine; I did it for Gaza.” He also chanted “Free Palestine, Free Palestine” after being taken into custody, according to video of the incident.

In the aftermath of the shooting, many anti-Israel activists rushed to defend the antisemitic attack as justifiable “resistance,” arguing that Lischinsky and Milgrim deserved to be murdered because they support Israel, which they falsely claim has been perpetrating a genocide in Gaza while waging a military campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

“Now we’re supposed to feel bad for two genocide cheerleaders after watching these colonizer baby killers slaughter people by the hundreds every day for two years,” Abulhawa posted to X/Twitter on Thursday. “I’ve seen the inside of too many children’s skulls to give a crap about the human garbage who get off on mass murder.”

Abulhawa then seemingly suggested, without any evidence, that either Israel or the Jewish community was actually behind the shooting to make the public focus on the surge of antisemitism — a surge that she claimed was a lie despite copious documentation providing a historic spike in antisemitic incidents.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if it was a false flag to focus on manufactured antisemitism instead of the actual holocaust being committed by Jewish supremacists,” she wrote.

The author later added, “Once you understand that Zionism and Nazism are two sides of the same coin, the world we live in will make a lot more sense.” She then peddled antisemitic tropes, accusing Israel, the only Jewish state in the world, of possessingworldwide tentacles” and controlling international governments. 

Abulhawa proceeded to compare Wednesday night’s shooting to a Jewish person killing a member of the Nazi party as retaliation for the Holocaust. She declared the terrorist act as legitimate “resistance” to fight the so-called “genocide” occurring in Gaza. 

“A person (Jewish) killed a Nazi as an act of resistance because governments refused to stop a genocide perpetrated by Nazis. Today, a person killed a Zionist as an act of resistance because governments refuse to stop a genocide perpetrated by Zionists,” the writer said.

Abulhawa has an extensive history of publicly condemning those who support Israel’s right to self-defense. In an X/Twitter post, she accused Dana Stroul, a former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, of having a “single loyalty to a foreign country, for which they endlessly extort US tax dollars and spill American blood to maintain.” She also castigated Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), who is Jewish, for being “a major player in the Zionist death cult infecting the world.” She added that that Zionists “aren’t human like us” and that “we’re ruled by spawns of Satan.”

Last year, the writer accused then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken of having a “single loyalty to Israel,” perpetuating the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are inherently untrustworthy citizens more loyal to Israel than their own countries.

Abulhawa has also celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel, saying that the massacre “wasn’t the beginning of violence; it is the beginning of the end of a genocidal colonial entity.” In an article published in the anti-Israel outlet Electronic Intifada just days after the atrocities, Abulhawa wrote that “Palestinian fighters finally broke free on 7 October 2023 in a spectacular moment that shocked the world.” Lauding the Hamas terrorists, she stated that “these brave Palestinian fighters overtook Israeli colonies built on their ancestral villages, seeing their stolen lands for the first time in their lives.”

Despite her comments against Jews, Zionists, and Israelis, Abulhawa’s work has been widely read. Mornings in Jenin, a novel penned by Abdulhawa, sold over one million copies worldwide. The activist also served as the lead organizer for the “Palestine Writes” festival at the University of Pennsylvania in 2023. The event, which featured a litany of anti-Israel speakers, incensed Jewish alumni and donors.

The post Prominent Palestinian Writer Dismisses Victims of Fatal DC Shooting as ‘Genocide Cheerleaders’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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George Washington University Sued in New Antisemitism Lawsuit

Pro-Hamas supporters at George Washington University in Washington, DC on March 21, 2025, to protest the war in Gaza. Photo: Bryan Dozier/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect.

George Washington University enabled an outburst of antisemitic discrimination and harassment on its campus, a new lawsuit brought on behalf of two recent graduates of the institution alleges.

Filed on Thursday in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, the complaint recounts dozens of antisemitic incidents following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel which the university allegedly failed to respond to adequately because of anti-Jewish, as well as anti-Zionist, bias. Among the incidents detailed, the campus Hillel Center was vandalized; someone threw a rock through the window of a truck owned by a Jewish advocacy group; and a Jewish student was told to “kill yourself” and “watch your back” in a hate message which also called her a “filthy k—ke.”

That and more transpired, court documents charge.

“Protesters at GWU raised repulsive, antisemitic signs and shouted slogans like ‘final solution,’ ‘the irony of being what you once hatred,’ a message that equated the swastika to the Star of David; and ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ an express call for violence against Jews,” the complaint adds. “Protesters vandalized university property in what amounted to rioting and blocked Jewish students from traversing campus freely, attending class, and otherwise engaging in educational opportunities.”

The plaintiffs, Sabrina Soffer and Ari Shapiro, say the university’s anemic response to campus antisemitism constitutes a violation of Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act. They are seeking damages and injunctive relief.

“I have long been proud to call George Washington University my academic home. Yet, after nearly four years of bringing attention to the university’s persistent antisemitism problem, I remain disheartened by its failure to take sufficient action to protect against the hostile environment facing the Jewish and Israeli community,” Soffer said in a statement shared with The Algemeiner. “My sincere hope is that this lawsuit marks a turning point — one that restores accountability and reaffirms a genuine commitment to the values the university professes to uphold.”

As previously reported, George Washington University has been a hub of extreme anti-Zionist activity that school officials have struggled to quell. A major source of such conduct has been Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which, among other conduct, has threatened a Jewish professor and intimidated Jews on campus.

Most recently, a student used her commencement speech to lodge accusations of apartheid and genocide against Israel, a notion trafficked by neo-Nazi groups and jihadist terror organizations.

The student, Cecilia Culver, accused Israel of targeting Palestinians “simply for [their] remaining in the country of their ancestors” and said that GW students are passive contributors to the “imperialist system.” An economics and statistics major, Culver deceived administrators who selected her to address the Columbian College of the Arts and Sciences ceremony, the university said in a statement.

GW faculty have also allegedly contributed to the promotion of antisemitism on campus. In 2023, former psychology professor Lara Sheehi was accused of verbally abusing and discriminating against her Jewish graduate students.

As recounted in a 2023 civil rights complaint filed by StandWithUs, Sheehi expressed contempt for Jews when, on the first day of term in August 2022, she asked every student to share information about their backgrounds and cultures. Replying to a student who revealed that she was Israeli, Sheehi said, “It’s not your fault you were born in Israel.” Jewish students said they made several attempts to persuade the university to correct Sheehi’s behavior or arrange an alternative option for fulfilling the requirements of her course. Each time, StandWithUs alleged, administrators said nothing could be done.

Later, the complaint added, Sheehi spread rumors that her Jewish students were “combative” racists and filed misconduct charges against them. One student told The Algemeiner at the time that she never learned what university policies Sheehi accused her and her classmates of violating.

“GWU has obligations under Title VI and other laws to protect its Jewish students and faculty, and our complaint demonstrates that GWU has failed its obligation,” attorney Jason Torchinsky, who is representing Soffer and Shapiro, said in a statement on Friday. “We look forward to this case and to protecting current and future Jewish students at GWU.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post George Washington University Sued in New Antisemitism Lawsuit first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Lebanon, PA Reach Agreement to Disarm Palestinian Refugee Camps; Hamas Excluded From Talks

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon, May 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

The disarmament of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon is set to begin next month, following an agreement between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Lebanese government, as part of the latter’s effort to assert control over its entire territory.

The agreement follows a three-day visit to Beirut by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, during which he met with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to discuss the disarmament of all 12 Palestinian refugee camps across Lebanon.

During their meeting, both leaders agreed that Palestinian factions would not use Lebanese territory as a launchpad for attacks against Israel and that all weapons would be placed under the authority of the Lebanese government.

In a statement, Lebanese authorities announced that both sides agreed to “launch the process of handing over weapons according to a specific timetable, accompanied by practical steps to bolster the economic and social rights of Palestinian refugees.”

Hamas — a rival of Abbas’s Fatah faction that dominates the PA — criticized the agreement for excluding them from the discussions, arguing that the demilitarization process lacked proper representation without their involvement.

The Palestinian terrorist group also urged the Lebanese government to hold a dialogue with all Palestinian factions present in the country.

“We call on the Lebanese government to open a responsible dialogue with the Joint Palestinian Action Committee, which includes all Palestinian factions and forces, to discuss the Palestinian situation from all its aspects,” Ali Baraka, Hamas’s head of foreign relations, said in a statement.

“Limiting the discussion to the security framework alone could open the door to the trap of resettlement or displacement, which is what [Israel] seeks,” Baraka continued.

By a long-standing agreement, the Lebanese army refrains from entering the refugee camps — where Fatah, Hamas, and other armed groups operate — and instead leaves security responsibilities to the factions within the settlements.

According to UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, Lebanon is home to more than 200,000 Palestinian refugees who are subject to government restrictions that bar them from many professional jobs, limit their legal protections, and prohibit them from owning property.

Under the new agreement, Hamas — which has long maintained operations in Lebanon — will reportedly only be allowed to operate in the country for political activities, with no involvement in military matters, Lebanese officials said.

In the past, Hamas has claimed multiple attacks on Israel launched from Lebanese territory, especially during last year’s conflict between the Jewish state and Hezbollah — a war that erupted after the terrorist group expressed “solidarity” with Hamas following the group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

In November, Lebanon and Israel reached a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a year of fighting between the Jewish state and Hezbollah. Under the agreement, Israel was given 60 days to withdraw from Lebanon’s southern border, allowing the Lebanese army and UN forces to take over security as Hezbollah disarms and moves away from Israel’s northern border.

Israel, which decimated much of Hezbollah’s senior leadership during last year’s war, has continued to carry out regular airstrikes in southern Lebanon since the ceasefire.

Israeli officials assert that Hezbollah continues to maintain infrastructure in the south of the country, while Lebanon and Hezbollah accuse Israel of occupying Lebanese territory by refusing to withdraw from five hilltop positions.

The post Lebanon, PA Reach Agreement to Disarm Palestinian Refugee Camps; Hamas Excluded From Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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