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Israel and Greece: Optimistic Signs Ahead for 2025

Then-Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, and Cyprus’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ioannis Kasoulidis shake hands during a news conference following a meeting, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Athens, Greece, April 5, 2022. REUTERS/Louiza Vradi

The February 2025 visit to Israel by Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs George Gerapetritis, during which he met with his counterpart Gideon Sa’ar, confirmed the healthy state of bilateral relations between Greece and Israel.

In the most recent UN General Assembly vote of December 19, 2024, when countries were asked to support the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion on Israel’s alleged obligations to assist the Palestinians, Greece opted to abstain. (The other EU member states to abstain on this vote were Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia. Czechia and Hungary voted against, while all other EU member states voted in favor, including Cyprus.)

Generally speaking, Greece’s stance during the Israel-Hamas war was rather balanced at the UN level — especially after the initial stage of the conflict, during which it displayed a clear pro-Israel attitude.

On September 18, 2024, for instance, Greece supported the UN General Assembly resolution demanding that Israel end its “unlawful presence” in Palestinian territories. (On that vote, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Sweden abstained, whereas Czechia and Hungary voted against.)

Then, on December 12, Greece backed two UN General Assembly resolutions demanding a Gaza ceasefire and the release of hostages, as well as affirming full support for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). (No EU member state voted against this resolution, but Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, and the Netherlands abstained.)

Throughout 2024, Greece supported Israel’s right to self-defense and condemned Iranian attacks against the Jewish State.

At the same time, Athens focused on the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza and advocated for a two-state solution. Against this backdrop, Greece welcomed both the Israel-Lebanon and the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreements. As a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for the 2025-2026 period, Greece has expressed its determination to act as a “bridge-builder” by leveraging both its strategic partnership with Israel and its historical friendship with the Palestinians and the Arab world.

Regional turmoil in 2024 did not prevent Israel and Greece from elevating their cooperation. The countries started talks to develop a $2.11 billion anti-aircraft and missile defense system similar to Iron Dome in Greece, and Greece is reportedly also planning to buy PULS rocket launchers made by Israeli company Elbit.

Beyond possible arm deals, the two sides signed an agreement to enhance synergies in the energy sector in December 2024. Energy and Infrastructure Minister Eli Cohen has confirmed Jerusalem’s interest in taking part in the Great Sea Interconnector, a project comprising two underwater electrical cable segments, from Israel to Cyprus and from Cyprus to Greece. This project remains ambitious and expensive, however, with several question marks regarding its practicality.

In the economic sphere, prospects are bright. Trade between the two countries recorded a 41.3% increase in 2024 in comparison to 2023, and volume grew from $920 million to $1.3 billion. In 2024, Israeli exports to Greece totaled $353.4 million, including chemicals (41%), basic metals (25%), plastic products (10%), and electrical machinery (8%). Imports reached $902.8 million, comprising basic metals (42.2%), electrical machinery (15.7%), and chemicals (6.8%). In January 2025, an Israeli trade delegation visited Athens to further reinforce this trend. The delegation was hosted by Israeli Ambassador to Greece Noam Katz, and included the presidents of the Israel’s Manufacturers’Association and Export Institute.

A possible return to normalcy in the Middle East — difficult as that will be to achieve — would certainly function as a springboard for Israeli-Greek ties in 2025. Tourism flows could gradually go back to pre-October 7 levels. (In times of crisis in 2024, European airlines such as Aegean cancelled flights to Israel for days or weeks at a time.)

Talking to George Gerapetritis a few days ago in Jerusalem, Gideon Sa’ar mentioned that the current security situation could allow the return of athletic events to Israel. During the Israel-Hamas war, Israeli teams were not allowed to play their home games in Israel, but had to play them abroad. The Maccabi Tel Aviv basketball team, for instance, is still playing its home games in Belgrade. Perhaps Athens should have offered hospitality to the Israeli basketball team to demonstrate its solidarity with Israeli athletes and fans. This was a missed opportunity, as Greek spectators love Euroleague basketball and respect Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Looking toward the future, Israel and Greece are expected to intensify consultations with a holistic agenda. New developments in the Eastern Mediterranean, above all in Syria, ought to be part of this. Both countries are carefully monitoring Turkey’s tactics in the Eastern Mediterranean, and its growing footprint in Syria requires meticulous analysis at the bilateral level.

In January 2025, the Nagel Committee warned about Ankara’s ambitions — a central message that cannot be overlooked. The beginning of Donald Trump’s second administration also reignites optimism in an active American involvement in the regional process after a four-year hiatus. Jerusalem and Athens have new opportunities ahead.

Dr. George N. Tzogopoulos is a BESA contributor, a lecturer at the European Institute of Nice (CIFE) and at the Democritus University of Thrace, and a Senior Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.

The post Israel and Greece: Optimistic Signs Ahead for 2025 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Israel Can’t Be Expected to Give Aid to Gaza Unless it Bypasses Hamas

FILE PHOTO: Palestinians carry aid supplies they collected from trucks that entered Gaza through Israel, in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip August 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas/File Photo

While Israel has denied the tidal wave of lies that it’s causing a famine in Gaza, to what extent is Israel legally obligated to supply aid to Gaza, if the aid also helps Hamas?

Obviously, no one wants to see civilians suffer. But things are not so simple, because while Hamas has been mauled, it has yet to be eliminated, it’s still attacking the IDF and Israelis, it’s still holding hostages, and it’s still stealing and reselling food, often with the effective cooperation of certain “humanitarian” organizations, like the UN-affiliated World Food Programme..

So far, only the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been willing to make sure that its aid goes only to civilians. And a recent whistleblower complaint to USAID outlines how these other “humanitarian” groups have refused IDF offers to work together to ensure that aid was not stolen by Hamas, thereby acting to protect Hamas rather than Gaza civilians.

According to the whistleblower:

A firsthand eyewitnessing of senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials offering any support necessary, including security protection and coordination, to representatives from the World Food Programme (WFP) and the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) only to have WFP and OCHA respond that they were not prepared to discuss such coordination…

[The] IDF is actively helping the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) get food into the hands of civilians while U.N. agencies, including WFP and OCHA, through their unwillingness to coordinate with the IDF, are inhibiting the distribution of such aid … [this refusal] raises serious questions.

Under international law, the refusal by these other “humanitarian organizations” to prevent Hamas from stealing aid makes all the difference in the world. That’s because Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, on Consignment of medical supplies, food and clothing, states that a party to the conflict is not obligated to allow aid convoys if it has “serious reasons for fearing”:

(a) that the consignments may be diverted from their destination,

(b) that the control may not be effective, or

(c) that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy through the substitution of the above-mentioned consignments for goods which would otherwise be provided or produced by the enemy or through the release of such material, services or facilities as would otherwise be required for the production of such goods.

The next paragraphs of Article 23 underscore that Israel has the right to block aid because its “permission is conditional” and it has the “right to prescribe the technical arrangements under which such passage is allowed.”

Prescribing the “technical arrangements” includes working with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is ensuring that the aid goes directly to civilians and that it is not stolen by Hamas. And it also includes not working with the WFP, OCHA, UNRWA, and other “humanitarian” organizations that seem to actually be agents of Hamas.

Not surprisingly, because it is actually aiding Gaza civilians rather than Hamas, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been condemned by the “humanitarian” community, as reported by the BBC:

More than 170 charities and other NGOs are calling for the controversial aid distribution scheme in Gaza run by the Israel- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to be shut down.

Also not surprising is that a UN press release, titled “UN experts call for immediate dismantling of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” has as its lead expert signer Francesca Albanese, the notorious antisemite who has been sanctioned by the United States.

The bottom line is that under international law, Israel has every right to refuse to work with these self-discrediting Hamas-adjacent “humanitarian” organizations, especially when the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is there to pick up the slack.

Alex Safian, PhD, was until recently the Associate Director and Research Director of CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. 

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What the Brandeis Study Gets Shockingly Wrong About Antisemitism on Campus

Brandeis University. Photo: Wiki Commons.

American higher education prides itself on truth-telling. Yet when the subject is antisemitism, the academy often resorts to denial and minimization.

A recent Brandeis University study is a striking case in point. Its authors, Dr. Graham Wright and Prof. Leonard Saxe of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, claim that only three percent of non-Jewish faculty are hostile toward Israel.

In a recent Inside Higher Ed editorial, the authors argue that most professors are in fact allies, not adversaries, in the fight against antisemitism.

This narrative is reassuring — but dangerously misleading. It rests on a narrow definition of “hostility” that excludes far more pervasive expressions of animus.

Wright and Saxe classified as hostile only those faculty who denied Israel’s right to exist and refused to collaborate with colleagues who affirmed it. By that measure, just three percent of professors qualified. Yet their own data tell a different story: a majority — 54 percent — agreed that Israel is an apartheid state; 8 percent said they would not collaborate with a colleague who supports Israel’s existence; and 7 percent denied Israel’s right to exist outright.

Calling Israel an apartheid state — when it manifestly is not — is an act of hostility, one that delegitimizes the Jewish State and stigmatizes its supporters. By any reasonable standard, then, hostility among non-Jewish faculty is not marginal but widespread.

Jewish students’ experiences reinforce this reality about faculty.

Wright and Saxe’s own earlier 2023 report, In the Shadow of War: Hotspots of Antisemitism on US College Campuses, found that at some of the most hostile schools since October 7, 2023, “about 80 percent of Jewish students reported encountering hostility toward Israel from other students ‘sometimes’ or ‘often,’” and 30 percent reported hostility directly from faculty.

Is it remotely plausible that only three percent of faculty are hostile when nearly one in three Jewish students perceive faculty hostility firsthand?

The authors’ subsequent 2024 report, Antisemitism on Campus: Understanding Hostility to Jews and Israel, reached similar conclusions: a majority of Jewish students (60 percent) reported a hostile environment toward Jews on their campus, and 82 percent reported hostility toward Israel.

Non-Jewish students largely agreed: 56 percent said there was a hostile climate toward Israel on their campus. And in February 2025, the American Jewish Committee reported that nearly one-third of Jewish college students believe faculty themselves have promoted antisemitism or hostile learning environments, which matches the 2023 numbers on faculty. These findings make clear that many faculty are part of the problem, not simply neutral bystanders.

Campus incidents drive the point home. At NYU in April 2024, professors formed a human barricade to shield a pro-Hamas encampment from police. At Columbia, professors rallied in defense of encampments accused of harassing Jewish students. At Barnard, a professor proudly supported students in a building takeover and berated a student who challenged her extreme anti-Israel views.

At Sarah Lawrence, where I teach, many faculty openly embrace anti-Zionist narratives, justify calls for violence, and encourage disruptive tactics such as building takeovers. The president of the American Association of University Professors has even endorsed militant “direct action,” betraying its founding mission of protecting academic freedom in favor of raw activism. This posture lends legitimacy to those who would turn campuses into platforms for radical politics and intimidation.

These are not isolated incidents. They reflect a broader pattern of faculty normalizing antisemitic rhetoric, excusing intimidation, and modeling for students that radical activism trumps pluralism. If only a handful — say three percent — of professors were hostile, then the rest would be allies. Yet where are the teach-ins against antisemitism? The op-eds condemning dehumanizing chants? The marches for pluralism led by senior professors with tenure? They scarcely exist, and certainly not in meaningful numbers.

Instead, we see that Jewish and Zionist faculty very publicly retreat in frustration or fear. Many resign or fall silent rather than rally colleagues. Outside groups such as the Academic Engagement Network have tried to fill the void, but on campus, the absence of strong faculty support for beleaguered students is glaring. That silence sustains an anti-Israel culture that cannot credibly be blamed on only three percent of professors.

The Brandeis study also overlooks a structural reality: much of the actual teaching of undergraduates is done not by tenured or tenure-track professors, but by adjuncts, lecturers, and contingent instructors. These are the faculty who most directly shape classroom climate, yet they were excluded from the survey. By extrapolating from a narrower, more insulated slice of faculty, the study presents a portrait of classrooms that is rosier than the reality Jewish students encounter.

The consequences of the study’s myths are profound. Administrators cite it to downplay problems. Policymakers invoke it to avoid reform. Faculty hide behind it to excuse their inaction. The result is a campus environment where hostility toward Israel and its supporters festers unchecked, while institutions point to “data” purporting to show that almost all faculty are allies.

Wright and Saxe close their piece by warning that while the actions of a few faculty can shape the climate of an entire campus, punishing faculty as a whole is unwise. They add that changes are needed, but can only succeed if faculty are part of the process. On that last point, they are right: faculty must be part of any solution. Universities cannot be reformed over the heads of the people who teach and mentor students every day.

But solutions cannot rest on misinterpretation. The Brandeis study’s own data reveal serious problems, yet its framing implies that faculty hostility is statistically marginal. That misleading conclusion obscures the lived reality of Jewish students — and the actual reality on campus.

As I have argued in AEIdeas, faculty bear a responsibility not only to avoid hostility, but to actively sustain pluralism and resist intimidation. When professors retreat into silence, they create a vacuum that the most radical voices inevitably fill. Recognizing that reality is essential if faculty are to become part of the solution rather than bystanders to the problem.

Until faculty themselves prove otherwise, the evidence is clear: too many are not allies of Israel or of Jewish students, but part of the problem itself.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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The Future of Journalism? The Columbia Journalism Review’s Skewed View of Israel & Gaza

A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a bullhorn during a protest at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) on March 11, 2025. Photo: Daniel Cole via Reuters Connect.

The Columbia Journalism Review, the official organ of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, recently published a round table discussion on press freedom in Gaza and Israeli restrictions on foreign journalists entering Gaza.

This was not, however, an academic and nuanced discussion on such hot-button topics. Rather, it was an orgy of radical voices accusing Israel of the most heinous crimes, dismissing any connection between certain Gazan journalists and Hamas, and ignoring the role that Hamas plays in obstructing press freedom in Gaza.

The tone of this piece was immediately set by the introductory remarks by Azmat Khan, the initiator of this discussion, and both an assistant professor of journalism and the director of the Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism at Columbia Journalism School.

Khan engages in a blistering diatribe against Israeli actions in Gaza, accusing the Jewish State of committing genocide, purposefully targeting Gazan journalists in order to stop them from reporting on the war, and manufacturing a “man-made human catastrophe in Gaza.”

Khan dismisses Israeli allegations that certain Gazan journalists and media workers that were moonlighting as terrorists as “poorly evidenced accusations that someone Israel killed was a combatant, rather than well-documented evidence of that person’s work as a reporter” and also goes after “pro-Israel advocacy groups that dub themselves ‘media watchdogs’ and wage systematic campaigns, fomented by Israeli intelligence, to discredit, dehumanize, and blacklist them—and to harass those who defend them.”

There is no doubt that Khan had HonestReporting in mind on that last point, after we exposed the terror links of certain Palestinian journalists in Gaza and how Hamas frames the narrative emerging from the coastal enclave.

Clearly, rather than engaging with the serious questions about the journalistic integrity of some Gazan reporters and media workers, Khan prefers to blindly absolve them of any wrongdoing and vilify those bringing these terror ties to light. This is not the work of an influential academic committed to truth and accuracy but of a propagandist obfuscating reality to serve a prepared narrative.

Khan’s ire then turned toward governments and news outlets, accusing them of turning a blind eye to Israel’s actions in Gaza and endangering the lives of Palestinian journalists.

It is here that Khan turned to a litany of “thinkers from across the fields of journalism, human rights, literature, academia, and advocacy,” asking for new strategies and ideas on how to promote “press freedom” in Gaza. With such a biased introduction, it is no surprise that the respondents all shared Khan’s animus towards Israel and placed all blame at the feet of the Jewish state, completely ignoring the terror organization that still exerts control inside the Gaza Strip.

Here are some of the most radical proposals and claims that were put forward in this piece:

  • Sharif Abdel Kouddous, the Middle East and North Africa editor for Drop Site News (an alternative news organization that has no problem parroting Hamas talking points and sympathizing with the terror group), suggested journalists strike until media organizations include a disclaimer that Israel is responsible for the most journalist deaths around the world. He said the veracity of any Israeli statement “is dubious.”
  • Arwa Damon, a former CNN correspondent who was quick to  contextualize Hamas’ October 7 attacks, recommended “banning Israeli government and military voices from air and print until they let the press into Gaza.”
  • Activist and journalist Mohammed El-Kurd, no stranger to misinformation and bending the truth, suggested a flotilla or march of foreign journalists to Gaza.
  • Lila Hassan, an independent journalist, accused the media of favoring the Israeli narrative and not questioning it, thus violating media ethics.
  • Assal Rad, a media critic, urged journalists and media organizations to platform Palestinian voices from inside Gaza and to stop treating Israeli government statements as “a reliable source of information.”
  • Similarly, Diana Buttu, a former spokesperson for the PLO, called on journalists to stop “interviewing or giving space” to Israeli spokespeople.
  • Abubaker Abed, a Palestinian journalist who glorifies Hamas and incites violence, suggested that media organizations should hire more Gazan journalists and pay them double the current rate while also providing cover for them in the international arena.

The publication of such a one-sided piece in an elite university’s journalism review calls into question the ethics and standards that are being taught to budding journalists. What hope is there for journalistic standards to be maintained in future reporting on Israel and the Palestinians if this is the approach taken by those who are tasked with influencing the next generation of journalists?

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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