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IDF Recovers Six Hostages’ Bodies From Southern Gaza
Rachel Goldberg, US-Israeli mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was taken hostage by Hamas terrorists into Gaza while attending a music festival in southern Israel, holds photos of her son in their home, in Jerusalem, Oct. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
JNS.org – Israeli forces recovered the bodies of six hostages from an underground tunnel in Rafah in southern Gaza overnight Saturday.
The hostages were identified as Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Almog Sarusi, 25, Alexander Lobanov, 32, Carmel Gat, 40, and Master Sgt. Ori Danino, 25.
“A few hours ago, we informed the families that the bodies of their loved ones had been located by Israel Defense Forces troops in a tunnel in Rafah. According to our initial assessment, they were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them,” said IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.
All six were kidnapped alive during the Hamas-led assault on the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7.
Daniel Hagari’s eyes say it all.
Our hearts are broken, but our spirit—our spirit will never be broken.
pic.twitter.com/9TyVYFkblK
— daniel hanukha (@israelifihther) September 1, 2024
On Oct. 7, Yerushalmi was working as a bartender at the Supernova music festival. She initially hid in a car, motionless alongside the bodies of friends who had been shot and killed. She then went into the bushes where she remained hidden for hours while on the phone with her family, and was taken by Hamas terrorists from there.
Gat was kidnapped from Kibbutz Be’eri while visiting her parents for the Simchat Torah holiday. Hamas terrorists murdered her mother, Kinneret. Her brother Alon, sister-in-law Yarden Roman-Gat and niece Geffen were also captured. Her brother and niece were able to escape while her sister-in-law was released as part of weeklong ceasefire that freed 105 hostages in November.
Goldberg-Polin was kidnapped by Hamas from the Supernova festival. He tried to escape by car but realized that terrorists were setting up roadblocks and shooting at approaching vehicles. He instead ran to a nearby bomb shelter. Soon, Hamas terrorists converged on the tiny space, murdering most inside and kidnapping those who survived. Before he was taken, Goldberg-Polin’s dominant right arm was blown off at the elbow by a grenade. His parents, Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, recently called for his release at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Lobanov was kidnapped from the music festival where he worked as head barman. His wife, Michal, was pregnant when he was taken and has since gave birth to the couple’s second child.
Danino was also kidnapped from the site of the festival. He had escaped but went back to help rescue Omer Shem Tov and siblings Itay and Maya Regev. The Regev siblings were released during November’s ceasefire while Omer and Ori remained in captivity.
Sarusi was kidnapped from the festival while his partner, Shahar Gindi, was murdered.
‘The blood of our brothers’
“Together with the entire nation, my wife and I share in the families’ deep mourning,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday. “I would like to express deep appreciation for our forces, for the brave IDF soldiers and ISA [Shin Bet] fighters, who risked their lives in order to return our sons and daughters.
“I say to the Hamas terrorists who murdered our hostages and I say to their leaders: You will pay the price,” continued the premier. “We will not rest, nor will be silent. We will pursue you, we will find you and we will settle accounts with you.”
President Isaac Herzog said that “the heart of an entire nation is shattered to pieces with the news. … On behalf of the State of Israel, I embrace their families with all my heart, and apologize for failing to bring them home safely.
“The blood of our brothers cries out to us. Our sisters and brothers are still there enduring hell. The supreme covenant between the state and its citizens is to ensure their safety. We have the sacred and urgent mission to bring them home,” added Herzog.
President Joe Biden stated that he was “devastated and outraged” after the body of U.S. dual citizen Goldberg-Polin was identified.
“Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes,” Biden vowed, adding that the United States “will keep working around the clock” to secure a ceasefire deal to release the rest of the hostages.
Netanyahu spoke with Lobanov’s parents, expressing deep sorrow and apologizing for not being able to save their son and the five other abductees alive, the Prime Minister’s Office said.
“I would like to tell you how much I regret and request forgiveness for not succeeding in bringing Sasha back alive,” he told Oxana and Grigory.
During the conversation, it was revealed that the prime minister’s military secretary Brig. Gen. Roman Gofman returned from Moscow on Sunday, where he discussed advancing a hostage deal and talked about Lobanov and other captives.
The PMO added that Netanyahu will talk with other relatives of the hostages killed during the day.
65-foot-deep
The hostages were found in a 65-foot-deep tunnel with gunshot wounds to the head and other parts of their bodies.
According to the autopsies performed overnight, they were murdered in the past 48 hours. One of the hostages showed signs of being tied up and they all showed evidence of neglect and having not bathed for a long time.
In addition, there was evidence that they sustained injuries during their kidnapping that were treated over time.
The hostages are believed to have been transported from the northern Gaza Strip to the south, where they were murdered.
Last month, the IDF and Shin Bet recovered the bodies of six other hostages kidnapped on Oct. 7, from a tunnel in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.
The bodies of Avraham Munder, Yoram Metzger, Nadav Popplewell, Yagev Buchshtav, Chaim Peri and Alex Dancyg were located more than 10 months after the Hamas massacre.
On Tuesday, Israeli forces rescued a hostage alive from Hamas captivity in Gaza. Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52, a father of 11 from the Bedouin city of Rahat in the Negev, was rescued from a tunnel in southern Gaza, less than a mile from where the six bodies were recovered.
A day later, the IDF recovered the body of a soldier who was killed fighting Hamas terrorists during the Oct. 7 invasion.
At the request of the soldier’s family, his name has not yet been made public.
Increasing concern for remaining hostages
“I heard rumors yesterday, then a close uncle of Carmel got a message confirming it,” Ronen Kohler, the cousin of Carmel Gat, told JNS on Sunday.
The last time that the family had received news of Carmel’s condition was through former captives who were released as part of a November weeklong ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. They said that Carmel had been teaching them yoga in a bid to keep their spirits up.
“Today, I am standing at the Namir/Yehuda Hamaccabi Junction with Carmel’s picture. The redemption of the captives is a Jewish, Israeli, international and humanitarian value. It is forbidden to ignore it and abandon them,” said Kohler.
“While it will not bring back those who are gone, it might help save others,” he added.
“I hope thousands of people will come out today to scream that human lives come first. We are not violent and we are not aggressive. We call on people to mobilize for the values that we raise our children on,” Kohler continued.
Hadas Zubary, the aunt of Hamas captive Naama Levy, expressed sympathy for the families who lost their loved ones.
“I can assure you we didn’t sleep much last night,” Zubary said. “We know these people’s families. I feel like they are my nieces, nephews, brothers and sisters, and it was devastating to see their names.
“We were sure that they would be here soon. Carmel, Eden and Hersh were supposed to be released early on in the prospective deal and there is no more hope for them. It’s devastating,” she added.
Zubary said that her concern for Naama grows with every passing day.
“We understand that we don’t know where the next tunnel that the army will approach is, and who else Hamas will shoot as they run away. The fear is even harder for us to absorb,” she said.
Daniel Lifshitz, whose grandfather Oded is being held by Hamas in Gaza, told JNS on Sunday, “It’s a very hard and difficult mood, it makes us fear that all the captives are in huge danger.
“Personally, I was in high school with Carmel Gat and I am close to her brother. The pain is unbearable,” he said.
“It means we can lose everyone really fast, and that is something pushing us to urge our government to make an agreement with Hamas-ISIS,” he continued.
“We should all see it as the worst war crime after kidnapping a kid [Hersh] who lost his arm from a grenade and succeeded somehow to survive for 328 days only to be executed,” he added.
Lifshitz called on Biden to act, “because bringing up a proposal at the end of May and having no developments since is unacceptable. They should have come to an agreement no matter the cost.
“I also call on Egyptian President [Abdel Fattah] el-Sisi to find a solution for the Philadelphi Corridor [on Gaza’s border with Sinai] so that there is no debate about choosing between saving lives and being present there,” Lifshitz said.
The post IDF Recovers Six Hostages’ Bodies From Southern Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Union Antisemitism Running Rampant on College Campuses, Experts and Student Tell US Congress

Illustrative: Rutgers University students holding an anti-Zionist demonstration on March 19, 2024. Photo: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect
Experts told the US Congress on Tuesday that antisemitism runs rampant in campus labor unions, trapping Jews in exploitative and nonconsensual relationships with union bosses who spend their compulsory membership dues on political activities which promote hatred of their identity and the destruction of the Jewish homeland.
Testifying at a hearing titled “Unmasking Union Antisemitism” held by the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, the witnesses described a series of issues facing Jewish graduate students represented against their will by the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (UE) union.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW), which was represented among the expert witnesses, has spoken publicly before about a litany of alleged injustices to which UE officials subject Jewish student-employees in the US’s most prestigious institutions of higher education, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to Cornell University.
At MIT, the group said in August, “union officers” aided a riotous mob which illegally occupied a section of campus with a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” participating in the demonstration and even denying access to campus buildings. UE members at Stanford University, meanwhile, allegedly denied religious accommodations to Jewish students who requested exemption from union dues over that branch’s supporting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. And Cornell University UE was accused of denying religious exemptions in several cases as well and followed up the rejection with an intrusive “questionnaire” which probed Jewish students for “legally-irrelevant information.”
During an interview with The Algemeiner after the hearing, Glenn Taubman, staff attorney for NRTW, said union antisemitism highlights the issues inherent in compulsory union representation, which he says quells freedom of speech and association. He pointed to the case of Cornell University PhD candidate David Rubinstein, who testified before the subcommittee on Tuesday about his own tribulations and a climate of hatred which evades being redressed because the ringleaders fostering it hold left-wing viewpoints.
“The only reason that David is forced to be represented by UE and is theoretically forced to pay them dues is because federal labor law allows that and in many cases requires it,” Taubman explained. “What I told the committee is that ending the union abuse of graduate students and people like David requires amending federal law so that unions are not the forced representatives of people who don’t want such representation.”
He added, “Unions have a special privilege that no other private organization in America has, and that is the power to impose their representation on people who don’t want it and then mandate that they pay dues because they quote-un-quote represent you. That is the most un-American thing that I can imagine.”
Rubinstein told The Algemeiner that he is a Democrat who supports many of the causes for which unions advocate but that what he described as UE’s support for Hamas leaves him no choice but to seek every avenue for disassociating with it.
“As a Jew, I cannot support an organization which spends its time not advocating for wages and health care but rather for ‘intifada revolution,’” he said. “The union antisemitism is empowered by the Cornell administration’s persistent weakness and consistent reneging on its promises to defend the rights of Jewish students.”
Rubinstein added that Cornell University president Michael Kotlikoff came close to exempting students from paying UE dues but abandoned the policy change after its members threatened to strike and thereby disrupt university operations.
“The threat of being terminated, the demands for money, and the constant harassment that others and I have experienced from UE would have never been possible had it not been for the weakness of Cornell leadership,” he added.
Campus antisemitism has drawn NRTW into an alliance with Jewish faculty and students across the US.
In 2024, it represented a group of six City University of New York (CUNY) professors, five of whom are Jewish, who sued to be “freed” from CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress (PSC-CUNY) over its passing a resolution during Israel’s May 2021 war with Hamas which declared solidarity with Palestinians and accused the Jewish state of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and crimes against humanity. The group contested New York State’s “Taylor Law,” which it said chained the professors to the union’s “bargaining unit” and denied their right to freedom of speech and association by forcing them to be represented in negotiations by an organization they claim holds antisemitic views.
That same year, NRTW prevailed in a discrimination suit filed to exempt another cohort of Jewish MIT students from paying dues to the Graduate Student Union (GSU). The students had attempted to resist financially supporting GSU’s anti-Zionism, but the union bosses attempted to coerce their compliance, telling them that “no principles, teachings, or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees” to the union.
“All Americans should have a right to protect their money from going to union bosses they don’t support, whether those objections are based on religion, politics, or any other reason,” NRTW said at the time.
Kyle Koeppel Mann, senior staff attorney at the New York Legal Assistance Group, and Joseph McCartin, professor and executive director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, also testified at Tuesday’s hearing.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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German Police Arrest 5 Anti-Israel Activists After Break-In, Vandalism Targeting Elbit Systems

Demonstrators attend the “Lift the Ban” rally organized by Defend Our Juries, challenging the British government’s proscription of “Palestine Action” under anti-terrorism laws, in Parliament Square, in London, Britain, Sept. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Jasso
Authorities in Germany on Monday arrested five activists linked to the anti-Israel network Palestine Action after the group broke into an Elbit Systems building in the southern city of Ulm, vandalizing the facility with red paint, smoke bombs, graffiti, and smashed windows before occupying an upper floor in an effort to oppose the Jewish state’s war to dismantle the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
The officers who responded surrounded the building and apprehended the suspects. The state’s Security and Counterterrorism Center then took over the investigation.
Video posted by Palestine Action showed masked figures hurling paint, breaking through doors, and damaging equipment inside the facility owned by the Israeli defense contractor, which the activist group and recently proscribed terrorist organization has regularly targeted. The vandals claimed they had sought “to dismantle the tools used to commit genocide in Gaza.”
Elbit released a statement condemning the crime.
“Elbit Systems Deutschland GmbH is a German company and has been a reliable partner of the Bundeswehr for many years in protecting democracy and freedom in the Federal Republic of Germany. In this regard, we condemn in the strongest possible terms the illegal acts of destruction and vandalism committed at our site over the weekend,” the defense firm stated. “It is unacceptable that violent groups, presumably under the influence of foreign agitators, are repeatedly attempting to disrupt production processes in Ulm, seeking to endanger employees and to instill fear.”
The company added that “we have been an attractive employer and a driver of technical innovation in the Ulm region for decades, and we trust in the support of the authorities in quickly solving the latest crimes and restoring the status quo. The company is working that production of systems for the German Armed Forces at the Ulm plant will resume shortly.”
Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, labeled the attack on Elbit an act of terrorism.
“In Ulm, the branch of an Israeli company was attacked by masked perpetrators — presumably motivated by left-extremist, Israel-hostile intent,” he wrote on X. “While Hamas supporters smash windows here, terrorists in Jerusalem murder 6 civilians in a brutal attack on a bus. Anyone who attacks Israel — whether with words, deeds, or weapons — simultaneously assaults our shared security and our values. Antisemitism and terror must have no place in Germany. These attacks are terrorist acts — they must be clearly named and harshly punished.”
Prosor was referring to a terrorist attack in Jerusalem on Monday in which Hamas terrorists opened fire on a bus, murdering six Israelis and injuring several more.
The break-in is the latest in a concerted campaign of vandalism and intimidation carried out by Palestine Action across Europe. Founded in the UK in 2020, the group has specialized in spectacular stunts and property destruction aimed at shutting down Elbit facilities and other companies the group regards as complicit in an alleged genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Its activists have smashed factory windows, chained themselves to gates, poured red paint over equipment, and even attacked military planes at a Royal Air Force base.
The UK regards Palestine Action as a terrorist organization. On Sunday, police announced the arrests of almost 900 at a demonstration organized in support of the group. Charges included 857 alleged to support a banned extremist entity and 17 alleged assaults.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Claire Smart said of the event that “the violence we encountered during the operation was coordinated and carried out by a group of people … intent on creating as much disorder as possible.”
James “Fergie” Chambers, an American heir to the Cox Enterprises fortune, pays the legal fees of arrested Palestine Action members. He once wrote online, “I chant death to America every day” and that “No faction of the Palestinian resistance, Hamas or other, has done *anything* wrong.”
Richard Barnard, a co-founder of the UK-designated terrorist group, is scheduled to face trial next year on “one count of inviting support for a proscribed organization, namely Hamas, under section 12(1A) of the Terrorism Act and two counts of encouraging ‘criminal damage’ against Israeli weapons factories under s44 of the Serious Crime Act.”
Barnard stated in a June 2024 interview that he had previously broken into US Air Force bases in Germany. In October 2023, he said that “when we hear the resistance, the Al-Aqsa flood [Hamas’s name for the Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel], we must turn that flood into a tsunami of the whole world.”
Huda Ammori, another co-founder of Palestine Action, also expressed her enthusiasm for the mass slaughter of Jews on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Zionists spend 75 years stealing Palestinian land but fails [sic] to take away the Palestinian determination for liberation. Palestine will be free!” Ammori wrote on the day of the attack. “If armed thugs stormed your home, forced you and your family to live in the garage, routinely beat you and starved you. Would you fight back? #FreePalestine.”
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‘End Hate’: Major New Campaign Targets Antisemitism in K-12 Schools

Pro-Hamas activists calling themselves the United Front for Liberation lead march through Valley Plaza Mall. The ‘Ceasefire’ rally began at Wilson Park in Bakersfield, California, on Dec. 16, 2023. Photo: Jacob Lee Green via REUTERS CONNECT
EndJewHatred (EJH), a Jewish civil rights nonprofit group based in New York City, declared war on K-12 antisemitism on Tuesday, launching its new “End Hate in Education” initiative in the US and beginning preparations for a push into the Canadian media market.
“For too long, classrooms have been used as platforms for pushing divisive ideologies that undermine our core values,” EJH founder Brooke Goldstein said in a statement on Tuesday. “Across the United States, K-12 schools and college campuses have become incubators of extremist ideology, including pro-terror and radical Islamist agendas. The End Hate in Education campaign is about reclaiming our schools, defending civil liberties, and ensuring that every child — regardless of background — can learn in an environment grounded in truth, respect, and constitutional values.”
In press materials, EJH outlined six objectives for the campaign — “curriculum transparency,” “rejecting political indoctrination,” “accountability through funding,” “examination of the rule of foreign funding,” “strategic legal action,” and “grassroots mobilization” — all of which serve its larger, ambitious goal of eradicating from public schools not just antisemitism but all forms of “hate and harassment.”
Creeping antisemitism in public education is a growing problem, as The Algemeiner has reported previously. In June, for example, the North American Values Institute (NAVI) raised alarms when the Wissahickon School District (WSD) in Ambler, Pennsylvania presented as fact an anti-Zionist account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to its K-12 students by using it as the basis for courses taken by honors students.
The material, provided by virtual learning platform Edgenuity, implied that Israel is a settler-colonial state — a false assertion promoted by neo-Nazis and jihadist terror groups — while referring to the founding of Israel as the “nakba,” the Arabic term for “catastrophe” used by Palestinians and anti-Israel activists. Based on documents obtained by The Algemeiner, the material does not seemingly detail the varied reasons for Palestinian Arabs leaving the nascent State of Israel at the time, including that they were encouraged by Arab leaders to flee their homes to make way for the invading Arab armies. Nor does it appear to explain that some 850,000 Jews were forced to flee or expelled from Middle Eastern and North African countries in the 20th century, especially in the aftermath of Israel’s declaring independence.
Another module reviewed by The Algemeiner contains a question based on a May 15, 1948, statement from The Arab League — a group of countries which adamantly opposed Jewish immigration to the region in the years leading up to the establishment of the State of Israel and refused to condemn antisemitic violence Arabs perpetrated against Jewish refugees — after Israel declared its independence. The passage denies that Jews faced antisemitic indignities when the land was administered by the Ottoman Empire, a notion that is inconsistent with the historical record, and asserts that “Arab inhabitants” are “the lawful owners of the country.”
Following the passage, students are asked to agree with its content as a prerequisite for proceeding to the next module. That means selecting as the correct answer the choice which says “the creation of Israel failed to consider Arab interests.”
Speaking to The Algemeiner during an interview on Tuesday, Gerard Filitti, senior counsel of EJH and The Lawfare Project, a partner organization, said the Wissahickon case highlights the degree to which antisemitism and anti-Israel bias has planted itself in public schools.
“What we’re seeing in colleges and universities is just the tip of the iceberg. The radicalization in schooling, in reality, starts much earlier,” Filitti said. “We’re seeing lesson plans which push the idea that Israel is a genocidal state, or that it is an illegitimate state. We see faculty and administrators who do not support Zionist identity and reject that it can be the basis of discriminatory hate.”
“College campus antisemitism has gotten a lot of attention because we see the effects, the protests, the barricades, and encampments,” he added. “In K-12, it’s not as flagrant. It’s educational material that’s talked about in the classroom and which parents may not be aware of unless they talk with their children about what’s happening in school. So this has essentially been a secret issue because the American people are not aware of what children are learning in schools or how schools have been handling antisemitism in school.”
Antisemitism in K-12 schools has increased every year of this decade, according to data compiled by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US public schools increased 135 percent, a figure which included a rise in vandalism and assault.
The problem has led to civil rights complaints and lawsuits.
In September 2023, for example, some of America’s most prominent Jewish and civil rights groups sued the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California for concealing from the public its adoption of ethnic studies curricula containing antisemitic and anti-Zionist themes. Then in February, the school district paused implementation of the program to settle the lawsuit.
One month later, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, StandWithUs, and the ADL filed a civil rights complaint accusing the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino County, California, of doing nothing after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was assaulted, having been beaten with stick, on school grounds and teased with jokes about Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
The problem has taken hold in private schools as well, according to a recent Anti-Defamation Leage (ADL) survey.
Among surveyed school parents, 25.2 percent said their children had experienced or witnessed antisemitic symbols in school since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, the data showed. Perhaps more striking, 45.3 percent of surveyed parents reported that their children had experienced or witnessed some form of antisemitism since the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, and 31.7 percent said their children had “experienced or witnessed problematic school curricula or classroom content related to Jews or Israel.”
Parents are displeased with schools’ handling of the issue, the ADL said. Focus groups told its experts that schools decline to denounce antisemitism or resort to denying altogether that it is fostering a negative learning environment which causes student discomfort and precipitous declines in academic performance. In a poll, over a third of parents have said their local school’s response “was either somewhat or very inadequate.”
Moreover, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, which were purportedly meant to improve race relations, abstain from recognizing antisemitism as a form of hatred meriting a focused response from administrators. The Algemeiner has previously reported that many of those programs also ignore antisemitism because they actively contribute to spreading it. Due to this, schools often lack authority figures who understand antisemitism, its subtle and overt variations, leaving Jewish students with no recourse when they become victims of hate.
“These independent schools are failing to support Jewish families. By tolerating — or in some cases, propagating — antisemitism in their classrooms, too many independent schools in cities across the country are sending a message that Jewish students are not welcome. It’s wrong. It’s hateful. And it must stop,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement at the time. “ADL is partnering with parents to demand change.”
ADL vice president of advocacy, Shira Goodman, added: “School administrators and faculty have a duty to ensure safe, inclusive environments for all. ADL will fully invest in bolstering the families who are demanding that their schools meet this obligation.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.