A new art exhibition opening in New York City on Thursday to honor the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre will showcase a variety of memories, stories, and emotions — including grief, resilience and hope — surrounding the deadly attacks in southern Israel.

“Resilience and Reflection: An Artistic Response to October 7th” will be open to the public at the David Benrimon Fine Art Gallery. The exhibit features 24 works of art from emerging and established Israeli artists, and each piece of art included in the exhibit tells a personal story connected to Oct. 7.

“Art has long been a powerful tool for processing collective trauma and catalyzing communal healing. ‘Resilience and Reflection’ aims not only to remember the lives and stories intertwined with October 7th but also to showcase the incredible capacity of human beings to seek hope and renewal in the face of despair,” according to a released statement about the exhibit.

“Resilience and Reflection” features various mediums, including painting, poems, sculpture, video, and mixed media, “each serving as a personal response and reflection on the events of that day.” A print photo by Benzi Brofman showcasing the Bibas family is a mostly black-and-white image, except for some background color and the bright red hair of the Bibas children Kfir and Ariel.

The entire Bibas family was abducted from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7 and remain held hostage by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. Kfir, the youngest hostage to be abducted by Hamas during its deadly rampage across southern Israel, was 9 months old when he was kidnapped.

One Hebrew language poem is featured in a mixed media piece titled “Handful of Dreams,” by Dede Bandaid and Nitzan Mintz. Its translation reads: “A bed bakes my body like bread/filling it with a handful of dreams/When I open my eyes/How great is the hunger/Woe to the walls.” The artists said that the poem is about “hope, hard reality and big dreams.” The duo also created a collage titled “October” that includes different memories connected to the Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

A hand-carved wooden sculpture of a solitary individual standing beside a small house with a red roof was created my mixed media artist Yarin Didi and is titled “Cut Apart.” It is part of an Oct. 7 sculpture series and was made from oak, olive, and eucalyptus woods. Didi said the small house with a red roof “stands as a testament to the horrors around Gaza on that fateful October 7th.”

“The earth beneath the figure, crafted from olive wood, symbolizes peace with its olive branch. The entire composition — from the figure to the ground and the house — captures emotions too heavy for most to bear or speak of,” he added. “In silence, I create. I carve memories and experiences of that October from wood, teetering between hardship and hope — that change may come, and we might yet find healing and joy.”

Danielle R’Bibo is the curator of the exhibit, and this is her first solo curated show.

“Art allows us to communicate the inexpressible, to process pain, and to find hope amid sorrow,” R’bibo said. “The artists in this exhibition are deeply moved by the opportunity to share their work in America. Through their art, they aim to honor the memories of those lost, bringing a human face to the war. This exhibition is not about politics; it’s about the people — their stories, their pain, and their resilience.”

“Resilience and Reflection: An Artist Response to October 7th” will be open to the public Sept. 12-26 at the David Benrimon Fine Art Gallery.

The post NYC Art Exhibit With Israeli Artists Commemorating Oct. 7 Attack Focuses on ‘Resilience and Reflection’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

October 7, 2023, was the largest massacre of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust. Hamas and other Iranian-backed proxies invaded Israel, murdering 1,200 people and taking hundreds of hostages. Many of the victims were killed in the most gruesome fashion imaginable: parents were tortured in front of their children, the elderly were slaughtered at bus stops, families were burned alive in their own homes, babies murdered in cribs, all while gleeful terrorists proudly filmed their handiwork.

October 7 was also the largest invasion and attack by Islamist terrorists in modern history. It was part of an attempted genocide by a group that calls for Israel’s destruction.

The Washington Post, however, calls it “armed resistance.”

This was the phrase used in the Post’s Aug. 28, 2024, dispatch, “What to know about Palestinian militant groups operating in the West Bank.”

Ostensibly a primer about terrorist groups operating in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), the article misinformed more than it informed.

The Post’s Claire Parker claimed that “Palestinians have engaged in armed resistance since the state’s founding in 1948, when an estimated 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes.”

Notably “armed resistance” is a euphemism used by US-designated terrorist groups like Hamas to refer to terrorism. Parker is literally echoing terrorist rhetoric. She’s also dead wrong.

In fact, Arab terrorist groups were targeting, attacking, and murdering Jews decades before Israel was recreated.

Indeed, there are entire books on the subject (Yeshoua Porath’s two volume, The Emergence of the Palestinian Arab National Movement, while 50 years old, is perhaps the most comprehensive). Evidence on the score is both abundant and part of the historical record; it is highlighted in numerous histories, newspaper accounts of the day, and memoirs.

Hamas even names its “Qassam rockets” after Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, an Islamist cleric born in what is today Syria, and who perpetrated terrorist attacks until he was killed by British policemen in November 1935. Hamas also has the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, which perpetrate terrorist attacks.

And Qassam was not alone in his efforts to murder Jews.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Palestinian terrorist groups like the Green Hand, the Black Hand, and others, murdered Jews, officials from the British Mandatory government that controlled the area after World War I, and Arab critics.

CAMERA has highlighted this important history in numerous op-eds throughout the years, including in National Review, Mosaic magazine, and, most recently The Washington Times. As CAMERA noted in an April 14, 2020, essay for Mosaic, “Century-Old Lessons from a Jerusalem Pogrom,” these terrorist groups resented any social and political equality with Jews and perpetrated organized mass violence as early as 1920. In the nearly three decades before Israel was recreated, hundreds of attacks occurred, with hundreds of victims.

As CAMERA detailed in an Oct. 17, 2023 Washington Times Op-Ed, entitled “Palestinian terrorists have been murdering babies for a century,” and the terrorists often murdered their victims in the most depraved manner possible.

In 1929 in Hebron, for example, one British policeman, RJ Cafferata, later testified that he discovered “an Arab cutting off a child’s head with a sword.” Cafferata shot him dead before seeing another terrorist armed with a dagger and “standing over a woman covered with blood.” The policemen killed him. Women were raped en masse. Many were tortured.

A Dutch-Canadian journalist, Pierre Van Paassen, detailed the aftermath at one rabbi’s house: “the rooms looked like a slaughterhouse…Not a single item had been left intact except a large black-and-white photograph of Dr. Theodore Herzl.”

The murderers, he noted, had “draped the blood-drenched underwear of a woman” around the picture frame. Van Paassen later described how he wanted to “gather up the severed sexual organs and the cut-off sexual organs and the cut-off breasts we had seen lying over the floor and in the beds.” A Jewish baker, Noah Imerman, was burned to death in a kerosene stove.

A week after the massacre in Hebron, another unfolded in Safed. One eyewitness, David Hacohen, later testified that he saw “homes set on fire” and victims “stabbed to pieces,” their bodies “mutilated and burned.” The terrorists even targeted an orphanage, where they “smashed the children’s heads and cut off their hands” before burning the building.

These events are thoroughly documented. The British government held hearings on them, and Western newspapers reported on them at the time. The Middle East analyst Oren Kessler highlighted them in his 2023 bestseller Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict, which detailed, at length, the various terror groups operating in British-ruled Mandate Palestine in the 1930s. It is utterly disqualifying for someone to be writing about the Israel-Islamist conflict today not to be aware of this relevant history.

Indeed, many of the details — homes being incinerated, mass rape, and sexual violence, children being murdered, the elderly tortured — keenly illustrate that the Palestinian terrorists who perpetrated the October 7 massacre have much in common with their forebearers who murdered Jews one hundred years ago.

To acknowledge this, however, is tantamount to admitting that Arab terrorists aren’t murdering Jews because of the creation of Israel, or the existence of “settlements,” or “1967 lines.” Rather they resent any political or social equality with Jews. As terrorists screamed during the 1920 massacre in Jerusalem: “the Jews are our dogs.”

This sentiment was highlighted in a May 13, 2011, Hamas Al-Aqsa TV interview with Sara Jaber, a 92-year-old woman who looked back at the Hebron massacre with fondness. “We, the people of Hebron, massacred the Jews. My father massacred them and brought back some stuff,” according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute. “Massacred the Jews.”

Or as the Washington Post’s Claire Parker, would call it “armed resistance.”

Notably, Parker’s claim about terrorism beginning in 1948 omits other relevant details, not least of which is that Zionists accepted, and Arab leaders rejected, numerous offers for a “two-state solution.”

Indeed, the 1948 war — which became Israel’s War of Independence — erupted when the Arab League and Palestinian Arab leaders rejected a UN partition plan that would’ve created something that hadn’t ever existed: a Palestinian Arab state.

Yet Arab leaders were unwilling to accept such a state if it meant living peacefully next to a Jewish one. Accordingly, they sought to “annihilate” the Jewish state, openly seeking to commit another genocide a mere three years after World War II and the Holocaust.

Arab nations, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood and the so-called Army of the Holy War, attacked the fledgling nation. Estimates of Arab refugees vary, with the “750,000” figure cited by Parker being on the high end. Notably, Parker omits the more than 800,000 Jewish refugees from Muslim lands who were exiled because of that conflict. Omitting rejected offers for Palestinian statehood and peace and Jewish refugees, while claiming that terrorism was due to Israel’s creation is, as they say, “a tell” — it reveals Parker’s bias. So too is referring to terrorism as “armed resistance.”

Yet, this isn’t the first time that Parker has regurgitated language used by terror groups like Hamas.

Hours after the October 7 attack, Parker filed a dispatch claiming that an Israeli counterterrorist raid on Al-Aqsa mosque “stoked tensions,” leading to the attack by the terror group. But as CAMERA has highlighted, Palestinian terrorist groups have long used the false claim that Jews seek to damage or destroy the mosque to incite anti-Jewish violence.

The founding father of Palestinian nationalism, Amin al-Husseini, did precisely that leading up to the 1929 massacres detailed above — massacres in which more than 133 Jewish men, women, and children were murdered, and 339 were injured. There are even entire reports highlighting how Palestinian leaders employ what the scholar Nadav Shragai has called the “Al-Aqsa is in danger” libel prior to attacks.

More to the point, evidence indicates that the October 7 massacre — called “Al-Aqsa Flood” by Hamas — took years to plan and was massive in both scope and ambition. This was obvious within hours of the attack itself. Parker’s decision to parrot Hamas claims that the attack was the result of a recent counterterrorist raid indicates more than just ignorance about the history of the “Al Aqsa” libel and terrorist rhetoric — it shows a remarkable lack of common sense or, less diplomatically, intelligence.

As The Washington Post unintentionally proves, there is a great deal of difference between being a reporter with deep historical understanding and being a stenographer for terrorist groups.

The post Arabs Massacred Jews in the Holy Land Before Israel Existed — and the Media Has No Clue first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

When I first met Milagros “Milly” Peña — the president of SUNY (State University of New York) Purchase College — it was in the wake of two incidents involving Jewish safety on campus, both prior to October 7.

In the first incident, a vandalized Israeli flag was adorned with a classic blood libel. In the second, Hillel’s sukkah was intentionally overturned just one day after its construction. 

In response to these incidents, I came prepared to my meeting with a list of ways that President Peña could make Jewish students feel safer on campus, including adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism and establishing antisemitism training. Overall, Peña was incredibly supportive, and I left that meeting hopeful towards the year ahead.

But after zero follow-up and several requests for updates, it became clear that I had received the first of what would be many empty promises.

Now, after having witnessed the turmoil that was unleashed on our campus last semester and Milly Peña’s capitulation to anti-Israel students’ demands, I’ve come to understand that the only way the Purchase administration will address the rampant Jew hatred on campus is if the Federal government orders them to do so.

That’s why on August 20, 2024, I, together with a student and the StandWithUs Saidoff Legal Department, filed a Title VI complaint with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

During the last school year, Jewish students and I faced relentless harassment, threats, and intimidation, repeatedly driving us off of our own campus.

Far too many times, Hillel was forced to redirect funds intended for events to cover hotel rooms and transportation for students frightened to stay in their dorms. Although we consistently reached out to administrators to report incidents, we were largely ignored. 

On February 12, 2024, an unofficial student group by the name of Raise the Consciousness (RTC) began advertising an event in collaboration with Samidoun, an organization known for fundraising for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — a US-designated terrorist organization. The group is banned in Germany for hosting explicitly anti-Jewish rallies.

I alerted Chief Dayton Tucker of the university police department and Lisa Miles-Boyce, Chief Diversity Officer, about the problem — sharing information directly exposing Samidoun’s ties to terrorism and their unabashed antisemitism. I received a quick thank you from Lisa and was redirected to Chief Tucker in case I had “questions or concerns.”

No organizers were contacted, and the event went forward as planned, during which students stood outside of a Jewish administrator’s office and told him to “count your f***ing days.”

The nonchalance with which administrators met RTC’s actions, even as they became more unhinged and outwardly pro-Hamas, continued throughout the year.

Countless acts of vandalism were largely ignored, the only response being facilities staff who were forced to spend their day power-washing pavement in the freezing rain.

Eventually, after months of harassment, conduct violations, and antisemitic remarks, Peña decided to take action — not in the form of consequences for law defying students, but rather a healing circle. Of the roughly 40 attendees, about half were students — yet among them, only four were there to genuinely participate rather than protest. All four were Hillel members.

Curiously, at this event, administrators who had until that point been dismissing or outright ignoring students reporting antisemitism were suddenly eager to greet us as a camera flashed in our direction.

Despite Peña’s healing circle, antisemitism persisted, ultimately culminating on May 2, when RTC erected an illegal encampment.

Jewish safety was threatened, with many students taking refuge in the Hillel lounge to avoid their peers’ glares and shouts of “free Palestine” and “long live the intifada” in their faces. Peña, knowing full well that students were intimidated into hiding, offered to meet with the protestors and shockingly agreed to almost every one of their demands, including full amnesty for the few students that faced consequences for actions such as vandalism, destruction of property, and assault that year. 

Despite Jewish students’ tireless advocacy and strict adherence to campus policy throughout the school year, only the voices of those that had threatened and forced their way to the negotiating table were heard.

Jewish students and faculty tried to resolve the issues on campus behind closed doors countless times throughout the year. We endured antisemitic remarks hurled our way in the presence of administrators, and waited for responses that would never come.

There were many days in which someone would return to the Hillel lounge exasperated after a meeting, having been denied basic acknowledgement of our experiences. 

Now, as the campus reopens and RTC continues to expand on the demands they’d been granted last semester, it’s clear that there’s no more room for negotiation. SUNY Purchase must be held accountable for its dismissal of Jewish students’ rights to safety, dignity, and education. The future of Jewish life at Purchase is at risk, and it cannot afford to wait another moment for action.

Esti Heller graduated from SUNY Purchase with a degree in Creative Writing and Screenwriting in the spring of 2024. During her time at Purchase, she spent two years as president of the Hillel on campus and was the 2023-2024 StandWithUs Emerson Fellow.

The post SUNY Purchase Leaders Violated Students’ Rights and Rewarded Jew-Hating Rhetoric; They Must Be Held Accountable first appeared on Algemeiner.com.