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How a Letter From Jewish Clergy Undermines Israel and Harms Jews

Hamas leader and Oct. 7 pogrom mastermind Yahya Sinwar addressing a rally in Gaza. Photo: Reuters/braheem Abu Mustafa

This week, a group of American rabbis, cantors, and student clergy, under the banner of an organization called T’ruah, wrote a letter to President Joe Biden expressing their distress over the ongoing conflict enveloping Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Citing the verse from scripture, “God is close to the brokenhearted; those crushed in spirit, God delivers” (Psalms 34:19), the group called for an immediate ceasefire and urged the American administration to leverage its global leadership to halt the hostilities.

According to them, “A ceasefire is the only reliable, proven means for securing the release of the remaining hostages and ensuring the provision of desperately needed humanitarian relief to Gaza. Lives hang in the balance.”

At face value, T’ruah’s appeal seems to indicate a deep yearning for peace and the alleviation of suffering. But on closer scrutiny, the letter reveals a profound disconnect from the complex realities on the ground and the intricacies of truly achieving lasting peace and security for everyone involved.

The letter from T’ruah fails to acknowledge the necessity of confronting aggression with strength — so that there can be a peaceful future for Israel and the Palestinians. War, with all its ugliness and tragedy, was never Israel’s desire, nor is it welcomed by Israel’s supporters across the globe. But the premature cessation of hostilities, particularly if it is driven by external pressures that are devoid of any kind of nuanced understanding of the security dynamics, just risks emboldening Hamas and sowing the seeds of future turmoil, in which death and destruction will inevitably exceed the current horror.

Truthfully, I wish that was it. I wish this was just a letter written by bunch of naïve peace-seekers trying to shift the needle against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Wouldn’t it be great if the letter was merely a misguided but heartfelt attempt by T’ruah to be true to their humanitarian ideals? The problem is that it isn’t.

Instead, the authors reveal that their stance — despite it being couched in religious language and the platitudes of religious piety — is nothing less than an attack on Israel, on its people, and on its right to defend itself against an existential threat.

How can they claim that their “hearts are broken by the deaths of over 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza — the majority of whom are women and children who bear no responsibility for Hamas’s crimes”? Really? As they well know, the Gaza casualty numbers are provided by the Hamas-run “health ministry” — which, to be clear, is not a reliable source by any stretch of the imagination. And by simply trotting out the mindless mantra that “the majority” of those who have died in Gaza are women and children, T’ruah has demonstrated that it has become nothing more than a propaganda tool for Hamas.

In any event, even if all this were true (and there is strong reason to believe it is not), how many of the “30,000” dead are Hamas combatants — including, tragically, women and young teenagers bearing arms for this evil terrorist outfit? And how many women and children have died because Hamas has cynically used them as human shields? Of course, T’ruah makes no mention of this.

And how is it that T’ruah has not called for President Biden’s administration to use “the full force of America’s leverage and global leadership” to get Hamas to lay down its arms, so that the people of Gaza can begin charting a path towards normalcy and rebuilding? The cause of Gaza’s devastation is not Israel — it is Hamas, which has cynically engineered this crisis so that international sympathy is focused on Gaza, which has been shattered and destroyed as a direct consequence of the October 7th Hamas massacre in Israel.

But it gets even worse. The concluding segment of T’ruah’s letter targets the actions and policies of the Israeli government, and criticizes settlers in the West Bank, accusing them of deliberately escalating violence and of attempting to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. Inexplicably, the letter goes on to call for actions against Israel’s government, and against organizations and individuals that T’ruah accuses of promoting violence.

These calls are ludicrous and one-sided, and they stand out in a letter in which is there no call for the true sources of the conflict, namely Hamas, Iran, and Qatar, to be sanctioned — or even called out — for their endless bloodlust. With this omission, T’ruah has revealed its hand; the signatories to the letter, notwithstanding their attempt to occupy the high moral ground, are no more than political and ideological allies of diehard antisemites and those who wish to see Israel perish.

In stark contrast to the positions outlined in T’ruah’s letter stands the wisdom of the Shem Mishmuel, who offers a timeless perspective on the essence of a genuine rhetorical contribution. In the Shem Mishmuel’s commentary to Parshat Vayikra, he delves into the spiritual significance of contributions to the Mishkan, and Moses’ unique role in this process.

The Midrash Tanhuma on Vayikra tells us that Moses never had the chance to donate anything material to the Mishkan, and that this upset him very much. The Midrash opens with a conversation between God and Moses, in which God tells Moses that because his spoken words are uncontaminated by material desires or concerns, they are considered the ultimate gift towards the Mishkan’s construction. Moses instructing the workers to build the Mishkan was the greatest contribution of all — greater than all the gold and silver, and all precious jewels donated by everyone else.

The Shem Mishmuel finds this idea that the purity of words used by a leader represents the pinnacle of leadership to be exceptionally significant. Moses was above material distractions, so he wasn’t required to contribute physical objects — his words were the purest gift he could give. But had Moses’ words contained even a smidgen of personal interest, they would have been totally devalued.

Which leads us to the question: where does the line between genuine advocacy for peace and the purity of intention stand in the context of T’ruah’s letter? Simply put: had T’ruah’s letter been entirely focused on humanitarian concerns for Israelis and Palestinians, one might have concluded that the signatories had nothing but the purest motives. But by engaging in political attacks and unfounded mudslinging, the letter betrays a nasty streak that disqualifies its authors from saying anything. Only a physical contribution can count. Unless they are in the field, fighting alongside the IDF, or volunteering their time and resources for the welfare of those in Israel they claim to represent, their words have no value whatsoever.

In applying the Shem Mishmuel’s insights to the present conflict, it becomes evident that any call for peace by those who wish to lead must be grounded in a realistic appraisal of the situation, and the avoidance of personal agenda-driven, mean-spirited attacks on ideological adversaries. As we navigate these turbulent and troubling times, the leadership style we need is that of Moses. We certainly don’t need the vacuous clichés and empty words of those who seek to make a name for themselves as contributors to the cause, but whose contribution is destructive and unhelpful.

Instead of betraying their faith and their people, I would urge the T’ruah activists to strive for a lasting resolution — grounded in a realistic set of proposals untarnished by political vendettas and virtue signaling, and that will ensure the well-being of all those who are suffering from the effects of the current war.

The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.

The post How a Letter From Jewish Clergy Undermines Israel and Harms Jews first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote

Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.

The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.

Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.

Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”

“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”

Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.

UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.

Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.

Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.

“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations

Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.

The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.

“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”

On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”

The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.

“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.

Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.

Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.

The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.

“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.

“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.

“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”

During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”

At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”

“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.

The post Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’

Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.

As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.

Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.

For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance. 

On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.

One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”

The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.

These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference. 

Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.

This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students. 

Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.

As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.

These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.

McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction. 

This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.

We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”

Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.

The post Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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