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Incitement Encouraging Violence Against Jews Can No Longer Be Ignored; and Jews Who Participate Must Not Be Tolerated
A pro-Hamas protester with a sign comparing the Auschwitz extermination camp with the current war in Gaza at a demonstration in Paris. Photo: Reuters/Henrique Campos
Last week, a disturbing scene unfolded in the streets of Teaneck, New Jersey. A rally turned into a violent mob, with chants calling for harm against the local Jewish community. These weren’t protests against policies — they were direct threats and attempts to intimidate Jews at places of worship.
This was no routine political demonstration exercising free speech. It was incitement against the local Jewish community, and the larger American Jewish community at large.
The only reason this mob descended on Teaneck was because it is home to one of the largest Orthodox Jewish populations in the United States. Their sole target was the Jewish community itself.
Most chillingly, the protesters turned their vitriol on a synagogue that was hosting ZAKA — an apolitical organization responsible for handling the bodies of Jews for interment, and burying the victims of the October 7 massacre according to ritual traditions. To threaten and attempt to attack those whose role is to ensure kavod ha-met — reverence for the deceased — is an abhorrent violation of human decency and dignity.
This was not an isolated incident either. From Los Angeles to London, we’ve seen an escalating trend of rallies and protests devolving into naked antisemitism, and attempts to harass, intimidate, and terrorize Jewish communities. The perpetrators are fueled by age-old hatreds that are newly energized. They are frustrated because the IDF is too strong, so they take out their aggression on Jewish civilians. Hamas started this war by attacking Israeli civilians, and now, their followers and supporters have learned this tactic and are going after Jewish civilians the world over.
We must draw an unambiguous line. Peaceful protest is a hallmark of democracy, whether objecting to governmental policies or advocating for causes. But when protests metastasize into direct incitements to violence, the paths of peace have been abandoned.
Some may argue that even the most odious chants are protected speech. I disagree. The famous example is that you cannot falsely yell “fire” in a crowded theater, and claim free speech.
Rabble-rousing rhetoric that puts lives at intentional risk is not free speech, but rather provocation with the potential to incite violence — which crosses a bright red line.
We have seen this line crossed time and time again. Academic administrators acted properly when firing faculty members who claimed that genocidal chants against Jews are protected speech. Law enforcement has thankfully started arresting and prosecuting domestic extremists whose virulent speech is a match to domestic terrorism’s powder keg.
The chants and actions in Teaneck — and similar scenes globally — have reached beyond protected speech and into incitement. When protesters move to directly harass, intimidate, and verbally attack worshipers at their synagogues — and Jews in their homes — the right to peaceful protest ends. It becomes illegal harassment, incitement, and a true threat to public safety.
Therefore, I call on municipal leaders, state governments, and Federal law enforcement to treat these “protests” as they would any other situation involving criminal harassment, trespassing, threats, incitement, and potential violence. Aggressive deterrent measures and prosecutions are now required to protect public safety and the civil rights of Jewish communities. We are very thankful to the local police forces who are working tirelessly to keep the peace at these rallies. Unfortunately, they are just barely hanging on, and more steps need to be taken.
More critically, I appeal to all people of conscience — especially those identifying as Jewish — to join in resolutely condemning the Jews who knowingly participate in these vile displays of antisemitism under the guise of “protest.”
If you join a rally featuring blatant antisemitic slurs, bigotry, and calls for violence against your own people, you have turned your back on the Jewish community. There is no room in our ranks for Jews who participate in calls for violence against other Jews. Period. Whether they are Neturei Karta members, or belong to other denominations, this type of behavior has no place in the Jewish community. I call upon all national and local Jewish institutions to come together and join me in saying this clearly with one voice.
Rabbi Steven Burg, Aish’s CEO, also serves on the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency, as an Executive Board Member of the Rabbinical Council of America, and a Board Member of Yeshiva University High Schools and Naaleh High School. Prior to Aish, Rabbi Burg was the Eastern Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, where he oversaw the Museum of Tolerance in New York City and contributed to the Center’s fight against antisemitism.
The post Incitement Encouraging Violence Against Jews Can No Longer Be Ignored; and Jews Who Participate Must Not Be Tolerated first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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