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How do we keep the worst days in the last 50 years of Jewish history from tearing us apart?
This piece originally appeared as a letter to the Hebrew College community.
(JTA) — Like so many others, I spent much of last week searching for language to describe and respond to the new reality in which we find ourselves. As Israeli novelist David Grossman wrote last Thursday in the Financial Times, “I look at people’s faces and see shock. Numbness. Our hearts are weighed down by constant burden. Over and over again we say to each other: it’s a nightmare. A nightmare beyond comparison. No words to describe it. No words to contain it.”
For me, some important language came unexpectedly while I was sitting in shul this past Shabbat morning. Our teacher Rabbi Allan Lehmann was serving as gabbai at our minyan, and as he offered a mi sheberach, a blessing for each person who had been called up to the Torah to recite an aliyah, he concluded with the words, “b’toch she’ar avelei ameinu” — “among all the mourners of our people.”
It was an exquisitely simple and profound gesture of pastoral care. I hadn’t understood until that moment how deeply I needed to be named as a mourner, among all the mourners of our people. I wept with recognition and relief.
Many of you have been reaching out, wondering what to think, what to say, what to do.
Sadly, we know we are only at the beginning of a very long, difficult and uncertain road. A road that will make new demands of all of us as Jewish leaders. Heartbreakingly, it is also a road riddled with the risk of communal rupture and fragmentation — at a time when we so desperately long to come together, to hold one another and to be held, in our shared grief, fear, and love.
I have no road map for this moment, and I am wary of anyone who says they do. But I want to share some thoughts on what I believe this terribly dark hour for our people asks of us.
Allow yourself to be at a loss for words. The speechlessness that we feel in the face of what we have witnessed is a sign of humanity and of humility. Honor it, protect it, do not rush past it.
Listen to the moral voice within you that knows there is no context, no intellectual contortion that can possibly justify Hamas’ acts of horror. These are acts that deserve nothing but our unequivocal condemnation. I have asked myself, again and again and again over the course of the last week, why this seems so hard for some good people to do (I’m not even talking about the shocking celebration of these acts in some quarters). There are many answers to this question, some more sinister than others. I recommend that you listen to the very powerful sermons given on this topic this past Shabbat by Rabbi Sharon Brous and Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl.
For some, blaming the actions of Hamas on Israeli occupation is a way of trying to hold onto a world that makes sense, a world in which all hate flows from hurt, a world in which we can somehow keep horror at bay. I understand this impulse, but I believe its impact — blaming victims of unbearable cruelty for their own suffering, for the sake of preserving our own ideological and moral comfort and convenience — is insidious.
Let yourself be uncertain about what Israel should do next in this impossibly painful and frightening moment. We are already being bombarded with requests to sign petitions, make statements and participate in protests. Many of us understandably feel a growing sense of urgency as conditions worsen in Gaza and we fear an even more severe humanitarian crisis. I trust that every member of this community longs desperately to do what is possible to prevent further suffering and the death of innocent civilians, both Palestinian and Israeli. I hear the same longing from my Israeli friends and family as well. Let us be very, very humble as we share ideas about how best to do so. Beware of facile answers.
Do not equate concern for Palestinian suffering and the loss of innocent Palestinian lives with betrayal of the Jewish people. Let us not allow the inhumanity of Hamas to strip us of our basic humanity. Here I share the powerful words of my colleague, Rabbi Shawn Ruby, an Orthodox rabbi who lives in Zichron Yaakov. We’ve been friends and part of the Bronfman Youth Fellowship community together for the last 30 years. Last Monday he wrote these words to the Bronfman listserve (shared here with his permission):
I live in Israel. I have a child in the IDF. I am attending the funeral tomorrow morning of a young man whom I have known since he was a child who was killed on the first day of fighting. I am in unbearable pain. That said, I have no problem with people raising concern, mourning, sadness or horror about the loss of life in Gaza alongside with that on our side. The human tragedy there is overwhelming. Recognizing that does not diminish from the Jewish/Israeli tragedy … For all of us reacting one way or the other to each other, let’s take a breath, and exercise some compassion and forgiveness for those of us who are reacting to a horrifying situation by being more unwilling to hear the other side than usual. Let’s not let the worst days in the last 50 years of Jewish history fragment us.
Yes. Let’s not let the worst days in the last 50 years of Jewish history fragment us.
Those of us living on this side of the ocean are not living through what they are living through there, but we are feeling our own grief, fear, loneliness and pain. Let us learn from their example. As my friend and colleague, Rabbi Mishael Zion, wrote to his community in Jerusalem last week: “Seek to be in the company of others who can support you and share their warmth with you. In addition, seek to give and act in support of others. … Allow yourself to experience every emotion that arises, but try not to dwell on it too much. Instead, focus on actions and activities that are aimed at doing good and are spiritually uplifting.”
Every day, I hear stories from friends and students and alumni in Israel about the ordinary and extraordinary ways in which people are caring for each other — through daily acts of kindness, concrete expressions of chesed. I am inspired and in awe.
—
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Yale Professor Exposes New York Times’ Systematic Minimization of Hamas, Palestinian Violence in Gaza War
An aerial view shows the bodies of victims of an attack following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip lying on the ground in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
A recent analysis by a Yale professor claimed The New York Times‘ coverage of the Gaza conflict downplayed Israeli losses after the Hamas terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of the Jewish state and minimized the role of Palestinian violence in sustaining the war.
The findings have added fuel to ongoing debates about media bias in reporting on the war, with one prominent critic of the Times arguing that they fit with not only a long-standing pattern of portraying Israel as a belligerent aggressor but also a deep hostility toward the Jewish state among the newspaper’s top leadership.
The study — published last month and conducted by Edieal Pinker, a professor and deputy dean at the Yale School of Management — examined 1,561 articles published by the Times between Oct. 7, 2023, and June 7, 2024. It concluded that the newspaper’s reporting adhered to a “specific narrative” in which Israel was largely portrayed as the primary aggressor while Palestinian suffering received dominant coverage.
“The net result of these imbalances and others is to create a depiction of events that is imbalanced toward creating sympathy for the Palestinian side, places most of the agency in the hands of Israel, is often at odds with actual events, and fails to give readers an understanding of how Israelis are experiencing the war,” Pinker said.
A Question of Emphasis
The study found that The New York Times devoted extensive coverage to Israeli actions in Gaza and their impact on Palestinian civilians, while making significantly fewer references to Israeli casualties, Hamas combatant losses, and Palestinian violence after Oct. 7. According to the data, 70 percent of articles that described the conflict fit this dominant narrative. Nearly half of these did not mention Israeli hostages held in Gaza, and 41 percent omitted any reference to the Israeli casualties from Hamas’s initial attack.
By contrast, Pinker’s analysis found that 1,423 of the 1,561 articles surveyed made no mention of Israeli casualties incurred after the initial Oct. 7 assault — in which Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages across southern Israel — nor of Hamas fighter deaths. The study cited data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data research group indicating that, during the study’s timeframe, Israel lost 364 soldiers, 34 civilians, and suffered hundreds of attacks in Israel and the West Bank during the ensuing war.
In addition, the Times published personal stories of Palestinian or Lebanese suffering nearly every other day, while there were far longer periods in which post-Oct. 7 Israeli casualties were not mentioned at all, according to the study.
The coverage also appeared to minimize Hamas’s role in perpetuating the war, the study claimed. Only 10 percent of articles directly related to the fighting acknowledged Hamas combatant deaths, and 18 percent of war-related articles mentioned Palestinian violence post-Oct. 7. By comparison, Israel was mentioned more than three times as often as Hamas across all articles focused on the war.
A Longstanding Narrative
Author and media critic Ashley Rindsberg, who has written extensively about The New York Times in his book The Gray Lady Winked, argued that the study’s findings are consistent with the newspaper’s historical coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The findings of the Yale study show that The New York Times is framing the current conflict in a way that’s very similar and almost a template to how it’s framed the Israel-Palestine conflict going back to the Second Intifada,” Rindsberg told The Algemeiner. “It was during the Intifada that The New York Times first created this narrative whereby Israel is almost always the sole aggressor and Palestinians are perpetual victims. Very rarely does the paper attempt to break this narrative and even suppresses facts or data that dissent from it.”
Rindsberg further argued that the Sulzberger family, which has controlled the newspaper for over a century, plays a role in shaping its editorial stance. “The Times holds onto this narrative at all costs,” he explained. “The Sulzbergers are almost genetically opposed to the concept of Judaism that underlies the state of Israel, which is an ethnic and national conception of the Jewish people, not just a religious faith. For them, Israel completely disrupts their worldview, and the result is a culture at the newspaper that supports this kind of narrative.”
The Challenge of Bias Measurement
Pinker, a dual US-Israeli citizen with a background in data analysis, emphasized that his research does not attempt to prove bias in the The New York Times‘ reporting, noting that bias is difficult to quantify statistically and would require analyzing journalistic intent.
Instead, the study aimed to assess whether imbalances in coverage could shape public perceptions in a way that diverges from the broader reality of the war. One potential contributing factor, the study noted, is the vastly different levels of press access between Israel and Gaza. Israel generally allows journalists to operate freely, whereas Hamas tightly controls reporting inside the enclave. This disparity could create unintentional biases, the study suggested.
It also did not examine the impact of other editorial decisions that could influence coverage, such as photo selection, headline framing, or the tone of opinion pieces.
New York Times Responds
The New York Times, which has frequently faced criticism from both supporters and opponents of Israel over its coverage, defended its reporting. In a statement responding to the study, a spokesperson said the newspaper had published over 13,000 articles, photos, and videos providing “rich context, confronting truths, and horrific human stories” about the war.
“The New York Times has covered this war with more rigor than virtually any other US news organization, reporting on the conflict from all angles,” the spokesperson said. They pointed to the paper’s investigations into Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, as well as its extensive reporting on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
“Our editors make careful and deliberate choices about every story we publish to ensure our language, framing, prominence, and tone remain true to our mission of independent journalism,” the statement continued. “We remain open to good-faith disagreement but will not change our coverage to buttress entrenched perspectives. Our commitment is to independent reporting that our readers can trust.”
In January, former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken commented on the lack of coverage of Hamas’s role in the war, calling it “astounding” in an interview with the Times.
“You hear virtually nothing from anyone since Oct. 7 about Hamas,” Blinken said at the time. “Why there hasn’t been a unanimous chorus around the world for Hamas to put down its weapons, to give up the hostages, to surrender?”
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UCLA Faculty Group Denounces School’s ‘Ongoing Silence’ Amid Rampant Campus Antisemitism
Illustrative: Anti-Israel protesters set up camp on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, CA on April 25, 2024. Photo: Alberto Sibaja via Reuters Connect.
A Jewish faculty group at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is sounding the alarm about antisemitism on the campus, issuing an open letter calling attention to a slew of indignities to which they are subjected.
The primary agent of anti-Jewish hatred named by the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group (JFrg) is the Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Muslim Racism (AAAR), a university-created body that has allegedly violated its mission to promote pluralism by lodging defaming accusations at the pro-Israel Jewish community in a series of reports, the latest of which contained what JFrg described as intolerable distortions of fact.
“The [AAAR] has released a deeply misleading report that falsely accuses Jewish faculty, staff, and students of harassment while ignoring the documented, escalating antisemitism at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM),” JFrg’s letter said. “DGSOM and UCLA’s ongoing silence concerning rising antisemitism continues to encourage more antisemitism, as we can plainly see in this report. JFrg unequivocally rejects this baseless and inflammatory report, and calls on the UCLA administration, DGSOM leadership, and the public to confront the reality of antisemitism at UCLA.”
JFRG’s letter went on to enumerate a slew of falsehoods included in the AAAR’s report, including that Jewish faculty have conspired to undermine academic freedom with “coordinated repression, involving university and non-university actors,” align itself with conservative groups, and harm minority students by opposing “racial justice.”
The AAAR report, reviewed by The Algemeiner, even stated that its existence was not spurred by documented incidents of discriminatory conduct but what it falsely called “the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
“One particularly egregious falsehood in the UCLA Task Force report accuses JFrg of attempting to ‘silence advocacy’ since 2021 — two years prior to the groupss formation following the tragic events of Oct. 7, 2023,” JFrg continued, “This claim not only discredits the report but perpetuates harmful antisemitic tropes about covert Jewish influence. This is not just a factual error — it is a textbook example of an antisemitic conspiracy theory: the idea that Jews secretly control institutions, dictate policy, and are responsible for all negative events.”
JFrg added that life for faculty at the Geffen medical school has wreaked demonstrable harm on Jewish students and faculty. Student clubs, it said, are denied recognition for arbitrary reasons; Jewish faculty whose ethnic backgrounds were previously unknown are purged from the payrolls upon being identified as Jews; and anyone who refuses to participate in anti-Zionist events is “intimidated” and pressured.
The group charged that school officials neither condemn the alleged behavior nor take steps the correct the hostile environment it has fostered.
“DGSOM’s continued silence in the face of a sustained and deeply troubling rise in antisemitism within its own institution is not just complicity — it is a failure of responsibility,” the letter concluded. “Without strong and principled leadership, this dangerous pattern will persist. We recognize that previous UCLA administrations … failed to respond to our calls for investigations and education — overlooking critical teaching moments that lie at the heart of a university’s mission. However, we remain hopeful that the new UCLA administration will seize this opportunity to engage meaningfully, foster real education and moral clarity, and lead the campus toward a more inclusive and principled future based on respectful, evidence-based dialogue, and academic integrity.”
JFrg’s letter came after the UCLA campus was devastated by anti-Israel protests during last year’s spring semester, including the creation of a so-called “Gaza solidarity encampment” on campus from which Jewish students were barred entry.
Meanwhile, Jewish health and medical professionals have seen a stark rise in antisemitism in their workplaces, according to a recent study conducted by the Data & Analytics Department of StandWithUs, a Jewish civil rights group.
The study found that nearly 40 percent of Jewish American health-care professionals have encountered antisemitism in the workplace, either as witnesses or victims.
Titled “Antisemitism in American Healthcare: A Survey Study of Reported Experiences,” the study included a survey of 645 Jewish health workers, a substantial number of whom relayed harrowing accounts of overhearing their colleagues within their professional or academic environments say that Zionists should not receive medical care, being subject to “social and professional isolation,” and being doxxed as retaliation for reporting antisemitic behavior. The problem has left over one quarter of the survey cohort, 26.4 percent, “feeling unsafe or threatened,” StandWithUs said in a press release which announced that the study has been published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
“This study represents the experiences of health-care professionals from 32 states, offering critical insights into the pervasiveness of antisemitism in our profession,” said Dr. Kelly Michelson, co-author of the study and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine’s director of the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities. “It is imperative for medical institutions to incorporate training that confronts antisemitism to ensure the safety and inclusivity of all health-care professionals.”
The researchers also said that the findings necessitate an expansion of diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings to include antisemitism education.
StandWithUs’s study followed a similar one published in Canada in December, in which Jewish doctors reported being chased not only out of the field of medicine but also out of the country. Commissioned by the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO), that survey found that 80 percent of Jewish medical workers who responded to it “have faced antisemitism at work” since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7 and that 31 percent of Jewish doctors — 98 percent of whom “are worried about the impact of antisemitism on health care” — have weighed emigrating from Canada to another country.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Hamas-Linked Lobbying Network Expands Political Influence in Europe, New Report Shows
LP4Q Europe network held its first press conference in the European Parliament (April 2024). From Left to Right: MEP David Cormand, MP Malik Ben Achour, Michele Piras, Senator Raymonde Poncet Monge, MP Thomas Portes. Photo: NGO Monitor
A Turkey-based lobbying network with ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is working to recruit European politicians to support anti-Israel policies, according to a new investigative report.
NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute that tracks anti-Israel bias among nongovernmental organizations, published a report last week on the expansion of the League of Parliamentarians for Al-Quds and Palestine (LP4Q).
This political lobby network, which was established in 2015 and includes about 1,500 parliamentarians from around the world, is growing its influence across several European countries.
Vincent Chebat, senior researcher at NGO Monitor, authored the report, which exposes the dysfunction in the ways interest groups operate within European parliaments. He noted that the information about LP4Q’s connections to Hamas and the involvement of highly controversial European representatives in a lobby group backed by Turkey and Qatar was easily accessible.
“The lack of basic vetting is remarkable,” he told The Algemeiner. “It is not surprising that far-left MPs, some belonging to parties that have repeatedly refused to recognize Hamas as a terrorist entity, were involved in establishing this network.”
Since 2023, LP4Q members have met with current and former members of parliaments across Europe and activists in the European Parliament, Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, the UK, Ireland, Scotland, and Finland.
The organization is also “preparing to expand” its activities to Portugal, the Netherlands, and eastern Europe.
LP4Q describes itself as an organization established “at the initiative of parliamentarians who support Palestinian rights.”
Last year, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an outspoken supporter of Hamas and a fierce critic of Israel, said that “the League of Parliamentarians for al-Quds has become the voice of the Palestinian issue at the global level.”
Michele Piras, a former Italian member of parliament and current LP4Q board member, leads the group’s expansion in Europe and has reportedly engaged with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization that participated in Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to NGO Monitor.
Last year, LP4Q’s European Network held its first meeting at the French National Assembly, bringing together 20 parliamentarians from several European countries to discuss, as they described, “the pressing need for Europe to take decisive action to halt the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
The New Executive Board of the League of Parliamentarians for al-Quds and Palestine Holds its First Meeting (May 2024). Photo: NGO Monitor
“Participants advocated for measures such as the cessation of military cooperation with Israel, an arms embargo, an immediate ceasefire, and the provision of humanitarian aid to civilians,” LP4Q wrote in a statement.
“Additionally, support was voiced for pursuing legal avenues, including actions before the International Court of Justice, to ensure severe condemnation of Israeli crimes,” the statement continued.
During the meeting, members also argued for “the recognition of an independent Palestinian State … and the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people.”
NGO Monitor reported that 160 current and former European parliamentarians signed a petition outlining their positions on the French communist website L’Humanité as part of the European Network’s launch. The signatories included 99 French, 23 Italian, 12 Belgian, and 14 Spanish MPs, senators, and MEPs (member of European Parliament).
Until its expansion to Europe, LP4Q was originally composed of members of parliament from Muslim countries, with at least two of its board members linked to Hamas and having been sanctioned by the US government.
For example, LP4Q President Hamid bin Abdullah Al-Ahmar, a Yemeni businessman, is considered one of Hamas’s most prominent international supporters, according to the US Treasury Department. He also played a key role in Hamas’s investment portfolio, which managed over $500 million worth of assets at its peak.
In 2021, Al-Ahmar met now-deceased Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh to discuss “the political developments related to the Palestinian issue, the dangers facing it, ways to confront them, and the required national, regional, and international work strategies, especially within the parliamentary framework represented by the Parliamentarians for Jerusalem Association.”
Other LP4Q members and officials also have ties to Hamas. For example, board member Sayed Salem Abu-Msameh has been described as “one of the founders of Hamas” and was reportedly sentenced by Israel to 12 years in prison for helping to establish the terrorist group’s military wing.
LP4Q board vice presidents Hasan Turan, a Turkish member of parliament, and Ahmed Kharchi, an Algerian member of parliament, have also been linked to Hamas, with Turan reportedly facilitating high-level meetings between senior Hamas leaders and Turkish political elites.
According to NGO Monitor, LP4Q already has influence in Muslim states, including Qatar, as well as in Africa and South America, through its observer membership in the Parliamentary Union of the OIC Member States (PUIC), the African Parliamentary Union (APU), the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC), and the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union.
As for LP4Q’s finances, NGO Monitor explained that the Turkey-based lobbying network is not transparent about its sources of funding, and the amounts related to its agreements remain undisclosed.
In 2021, LP4Q signed a “protocol cooperation” with a Turkish governmental institution, the Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities. That same year, it agreed with the state-run news agency Anadolu “to engage and coordinate in order to serve the Palestinian and the cause of Jerusalem in the media and to confront the disinformation and falsification campaigns of the Israeli media machine.”
The Algemeiner reached out to LP4Q for comment for this story but did not receive a response.
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