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Israeli expats who organized to protest Netanyahu’s government are now mobilizing to ‘save Israel’
(New York Jewish Week) – In mid-September, a group of Israeli activists projected a message in all capital letters onto the headquarters of the United Nations reading, “Don’t believe crime minister Netanyahu.”
About a month later, the same activist group projected another all-caps message onto the same building. But instead of targeting Israel’s leader, it displayed the photos of some of the country’s youngest and oldest citizens.
“3 year-old Avigail,” read one message, above the photo of a smiling girl. Similar messages followed, depicting the photos, names and ages of Ariel, age 4; Carmela, age 80; and Yaffa, 85. Beneath every photo was the caption “Kidnapped by Hamas.”
Both projections were the work of expatriate Israeli protesters who have organized and gained national attention over the past year. But as of two weeks ago, their cause has changed.
Originally, the activists gathered to protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his effort to weaken Israel’s judiciary, organizing protests and heckling Israeli officials when they visited the city. But after Hamas’ devastating Oct. 7 attack on Israel, in which terrorists killed and injured thousands, and took more than 200 captive, the activists quickly pivoted — repurposing their tools and connections to support Israel’s war effort, aid its vulnerable populations and advocate for the release of the hostages.
“We’re all just thinking about our families and we have sleepless nights and we’re doing whatever we can,” said Shany Granot-Lubaton, a prominent Israeli activist in New York who previously worked in progressive political organizing in Israel. The protest group she helps organize, UnXeptable, has changed its motto from “Saving Israeli Democracy” to “Saving Israel.”
“We know many people who were slaughtered and kidnapped and raped and it’s in our closest circles. We have kids, we used to be their guides at scouts, who were kidnapped and killed,” she said. “As Israelis, being far away from home right now is devastating and we all just want to do something to help.”
For Granot-Lubaton’s family, as for many Israelis, the devastation is personal. Her husband, Omer Lubaton-Granot, found out last Wednesday that four of his relatives are among the captives; two more were murdered in the massacre. He is running an advocacy campaign for the hostages in New York — part of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a larger coordinated effort with activity in Israel and around the world. Israelis have taken an active role in the grassroots “Kidnapped in Israel” project that pastes flyers of hostages on city streets.
“It’s a whole family, and we thought that all six of them are gone, then the family realized that four of them are hostages and held by Hamas, and two of them, the bodies were identified a couple days ago,” he said regarding his captive relatives, adding that despite the initial shock and horror of captivity, it was a small relief to find out some had survived. “It’s not good, but it’s better.”
So far, the activists say they have raised around $1.2 million, in addition to sending supplies to soldiers and civilians, staging rallies, providing services and community to Israelis in the U.S. and organizing efforts aimed at freeing hostages held by Hamas.
The protesters’ mobilization in New York and other international cities parallels the approach of the protest movement in Israel, which brought hundreds of thousands to the streets earlier this year to protest the judicial overhaul. Since Oct. 7, the movement has set aside that fight to focus on relief work — delivering services and supplies to those in need. Granot-Lubaton said her NYC-based group and others in the United States, which coordinate with the Israeli groups, is a “sidekick” to their efforts. American Jewish organizations have also been crucial partners, she said.
Israeli expatriates established branches of the protest movement in dozens of cities in North America and have learned to navigate the intricate landscape of American Jewish organizations and formed ties with many of those groups — connections that proved crucial in rapidly launching a major relief effort in the United States.
“It was very easy to transform because we know how to mobilize people, we know how to reach people,” Lubaton-Granot said. “We know how to organize events, we know how to raise funds.”
Left: A message against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is projected onto UN Headquarters ahead of his appearance at the UN General Assembly in September 2023. Right: An image of a kidnapped Israeli boy is projected onto UN Headquarters after Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023. Israeli expatriate activists projected both messages. (Courtesy)
In one aid operation that began at the war’s outset, the U.S.-based protesters sent four tons of supplies to Israeli soldiers who found that they lacked essential equipment as the military called up 300,000 reservists.
Tali Reiner Brodetzki, an Israeli activist in Philadelphia, was inspired by seeing supporters of Ukraine’s war effort organize Amazon “wish lists” after Russia invaded last year. She asked colleagues from an Israeli combat veterans’ protest group, Brothers and Sisters in Arms, to tell her what the soldiers needed, and began spreading the word about a wish list of her own.
Volunteers responded by buying 80,000 flashlights, 100,000 olive green T-shirts, socks, ceramic body armor, tourniquets and dressing for trauma wounds. The equipment was sent to a volunteer’s house on Long Island near John F. Kennedy Airport, packed into duffel bags and sent as overweight baggage on El Al flights. Activists from Brothers and Sisters in Arms collected the supplies at Ben Gurion Airport and distributed them to troops.
“We got a call from a mother crying her heart out” after her son was shot, said Granot-Lubaton, who assisted with that initiative. “He’s in the hospital and he got a bullet, but the vest we sent saved his life.”
Many Israelis who live in New York and across the United States have flown to Israel to fight in the reserves, and some of those reservists — in addition to medics — arrived on flights organized by an UnXeptable chapter in the Bay Area, led by activist Offir Gutelzon. And some Israeli families who were in the United States on vacation have opted to stay for the meantime. The activists are helping to organize programs for children of the reservists and those here temporarily, assisting new arrivals in gaining admission to Jewish day schools and enlisting kosher restaurants to help out with food deliveries for families.
One of the main ways the protest groups have communicated with and mobilized followers is via Whatsapp groups, and those groups have proven crucial for crowdsourcing support during the past two weeks. One woman was eight months pregnant when her husband went to the reserves, leaving her alone in the city. She was able to access health insurance and find other support through the activist network. A recent request for Hebrew-speaking psychologists in New York who could treat trauma also elicited a long list of recommendations. Some Israelis who were stranded in the city have been able to find temporary free lodging.
Some of the activist programs aim to bring Israelis, including children and their parents, together on the weekends. An event on Oct. 14 at the Manhattan JCC drew more than 300 people, and a David Broza concert on Sunday drew hundreds to B’nai Jeshurun, an Upper West Side synagogue. Many Israelis feel out of place in New York, where life continues as usual, despite the trauma and hardship back home. The Israeli and American Jewish communities have also responded differently to the war, Granot-Lubaton said.
“American Jews, they speak about the war in this very frightening way,” she said. “They’re doing ceremonies, lighting candles, but the Israeli kids in the schools are getting freaked out about it because their fathers are out there and it makes them afraid, so the way we talk about it is very different.”
Now that the immediate needs of troops have been mostly met, the activists hope to aid the communities in Israel’s south that were hardest-hit by Hamas’ atrocities, including by helping fund mental health services. Organizers also hope to support Israel’s economy, which is also battered by the war, by buying aid supplies from local stores rather than U.S. suppliers. That aid effort comes alongside an American Jewish fundraising drive that has directed hundreds of millions to Israel since Oct. 7.
The war has also led to new ties between the Israeli activists and American Jews who opposed their previous anti-government demonstrations. Reiner Brodetzki, the Philadelphia activist, said a group of religious Jews opposed to the protest movement had dropped by her house to borrow her Israeli flags and megaphones to use in their own pro-Israel demonstration.
“It’s amazing to see how people who would not talk to us previously, and had a lot of criticism about us protesting outside of Israel against the Israeli government, how they want to work with us now,” Reiner Brodetzki said. “They understand that we love Israel and we’re supporting Israel and now we’re in this fight together.”
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US Democrats Demand Release of Pro-Hamas Columbia University Activist Mahmoud Khalil From ICE Detention
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) addresses attendees as she takes part in a protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza outside the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, US, Oct. 18, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis
Democrats in the US Congress are largely defending a leading anti-Israel agitator at Columbia University in New York following news of his arrest and detainment by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian from Syria who completed post-graduate studies at Columbia in December, was apprehended by federal authorities on Saturday night and transported to an immigration jail in Louisiana. The pro-Hamas activist was informed that his green card had been revoked and that he would be deported from the United States.
In a statement, the US Department of Homeland Security said ICE agents arrested Khalil “in support of” an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump aimed at combating antisemitism on university campuses.
“Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization. ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump’s executive orders and to protecting US national security,” the department said.
US President Donald Trump defended Khalil’s arrest and said it will be the first of many.
“We know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, antisemitism, anti-American activity, and the Trump administration will not tolerate it,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “Many are not students; they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.”
However, a federal judge in New York City on Monday ordered that Khalil not be deported by the Trump administration until the court ruled on a lawsuit presented by his lawyers. According to ICE, the activist is currently being held at the Lasalle Detention facility in Louisiana. Khalil’s case is set to be heard on Wednesday.
Many observers criticized Khalil’s arrest and detainment, arguing that the Trump administration both violated his right to due process and undermined free speech. Critics also argued that the Trump administration does not possess the right to unilaterally revoke green cards from legal residents.
Congressional Democrats largely condemned the ICE arrest of Khalil, arguing that the Trump administration should release the pro-Hamas activist immediately.
“The warrantless arrest of any legal permanent resident seemingly solely over their speech is a chilling, McCarthyesque action in response to the exercise of first amendment rights to free speech,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY).
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, lambasted the arrest, posted on social media that detaining a legal resident “for exercising his right to free speech is something we’d expect from Russia — NOT AMERICA [sic].”
The official BlueSky account of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee accused the Trump administration of seeking retribution against Khalil for expressing “his First Amendment rights in a way Donald Trump didn’t like” and condemned the White House for practicing “straight up authoritarianism.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of the most outspoken critics against Israel in Congress, said that Khalil’s arrest is part of a broader effort “to shred our constitutional rights to free speech and due process.” In addition, Tlaib spearheaded a letter to US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, demanding that Khalil be “freed from DHS custody immediately.” Thirteen other Democrats signed the letter.
The letter argued that Khalil has “not been charged or convicted of any crime” and that the Trump administration targeted him “solely for his activism and organizing as a student leader,” as well as his efforts in opposing Israel’s “brutal assault of the Palestinian people in Gaza.” The missive also claimed that the arrest of Khalil represents another example of the Trump administration’s purported “anti-Palestinian racism” and accused the White House of trying to dismantle the “Palestine solidarity movement in this country.” The lawmakers warned that the Trump administration’s tactics against Khalil “will be applied to any and all opposition to his undemocratic agenda.”
Some observers noted out that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), one of the most vocal opponents of the Jewish state in the US Congress, did not sign onto the letter calling for Khalil’s release. Though Ocasio-Cortez has spoken out in defense of Khalil, some on the political left have repudiated her for not taking more strident anti-Israel stances in the 16 months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel. The lawmaker came under fire by some of the political left last summer for calling for the release of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas to Gaza.
Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) also repudiated the arrest, writing that Khalil is “entitled to First Amendment protections like everyone in this country.”
Despite the widespread backlash over Khalil’s arrest, many congressional Republicans praised the announcement, arguing that the Trump administration has taken aggressive action to protect Jewish Americans and clamp down on antisemitism.
While at Columbia, Khalil spearheaded multiple pro-Hamas demonstrations on campus. He was a participant in Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a constellation of 100 anti-Israel campus organizations calling for the Ivy League institution to cut ties with the Jewish state.
In the aftermath of Khalil’s arrest, video circulated online showing the activist leading a takeover of a campus building at neighboring Barnard College. During the unsanctioned demonstration, activists spread pamphlets glorifying the Hamas Oct. 7 massacres across southern Israel.
In addition, Khalil helped lead the infamous Hamilton Hall takeover on Columbia’s campus in the final weeks of the 2023-2024 school year.
US Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) defended Khalil’s arrest, saying, “If you are on a student visa and you’re an aspiring young terrorist who wants to prey upon your Jewish classmates, you’re going home.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) condemned Democrats for “fighting for a pro-Hamas foreigner who has made life hell for Jews on campus.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) also lauded the detainment of Khalil, writing that “obtaining a US visa is a privilege, not a right. Friends of Hamas — don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
In the year following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 slaughters across Israel, Columbia University has emerged as a hotbed of anti-Israel student activism. Last spring, anti-Israel students and faculty erected a student encampment, protesting the university’s ties to the Jewish state. Moreover, Columbia has suffered an exodus of financial support from Jewish donors and alumni, alleging that the university has dragged its feet in combating antisemitism on campus.
Last week, the Trump administration cut $400 million in grants originally intended for Columbia, arguing that the university has not done enough to protect Jewish students. Mounting pressure from the Trump administration reportedly caused the university to collaborate with ICE to detain Khalil.
The post US Democrats Demand Release of Pro-Hamas Columbia University Activist Mahmoud Khalil From ICE Detention first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran’s President to Trump: I Will Not Negotiate, ‘Do Whatever the Hell You Want’
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian attends a press conference in Tehran, Iran, Sept. 16, 2024. Photo: WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Majid Asgaripour via REUTERS
President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran would not negotiate with the US while being threatened, telling President Donald Trump to “do whatever the hell you want,” Iranian state media reported on Tuesday.
“It is unacceptable for us that they [the US] give orders and make threats. I won’t even negotiate with you. Do whatever the hell you want,” state media quoted Pezeshkian as saying.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday that Tehran would not be bullied into negotiations, a day after Trump said he had sent a letter urging Iran to engage in talks on a new nuclear deal.
While expressing openness to a deal with Tehran, Trump has reinstated the “maximum pressure” campaign he applied in his first term as president to isolate Iran from the global economy and drive its oil exports down towards zero.
In an interview with Fox Business, Trump said last week, “There are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily, or you make a deal” to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Iran has long denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon. However, it is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, has warned.
Iran has accelerated its nuclear work since 2019, a year after then-President Trump ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six world powers and reimposed sanctions that have crippled the country’s economy.
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Syrians Riot in Front of Jewish Museum in Munich Amid Rise in Antisemitic Incidents
Illustrative: Pro-Hamas demonstrators marching in Munich, Germany. Photo: Reuters/Alexander Pohl
Three young Syrian men rioted in front of the Jewish Museum in Munich this past weekend, spitting on photographs of Israeli hostages and deceased soldiers before one of the assailants threatened security personnel with a knife.
The incident, first reported by German media, was one of the latest antisemitic cases in a country that has experienced a surge in open hatred toward Jews since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
During the Gaza conflict, the Jewish Museum has displayed photographs of hostages taken by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists during their Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel as well as deceased Israeli soldiers, along with candles, to honor and remember them.
On Saturday afternoon, three men — Syrian citizens living in Austria — vandalized the memorial by spitting on it while shouting antisemitic slogans, the German newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Jüdische Allgemeine reported.
After witnessing the attack, two employees from the Jewish community’s security service tried to stop the assailants, who responded aggressively. One of the three men, a 19-year-old, allegedly kicked one of the employees before drawing a knife.
Several police officers assigned to protect the Jewish Center, located next to the museum, noticed the incident and intervened. Soon afterward, more than 30 officers arrived at the scene. Police and security guards had to threaten to use their firearms before the teenager dropped the knife.
According to local police, the man and his two accomplices, a 20-year-old and a 31-year-old, have all been arrested and are under investigation for threats, assault, defamation, and insulting the memory of the deceased.
The Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office has taken over the case, with senior prosecutor Andreas Franck, who also serves as the antisemitism commissioner of the Bavarian judiciary, overseeing the case.
Germany has experienced a sharp spike in antisemitism since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
In just the first six months of 2024 alone, the number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin surpassed the total for all of the prior year and reached the highest annual count on record, according to Germany’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS).
The figures compiled by RIAS were the highest count for a single year since the federally-funded body began monitoring antisemitic incidents in 2015, showing the German capital averaged nearly eight anti-Jewish outrages a day from January to June last year.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), police registered 5,154 antisemitic incidents in Germany in 2023, a 95 percent increase compared to the previous year.
However, experts believe that the true number of incidents is much higher but not recorded because of reluctance on the part of the victims.
“Only 20 percent of the antisemitic crimes are reported, so the real number should be five times what we have,” Felix Klein, the German federal government’s chief official dealing with antisemitism, told The Algemeiner in an interview in 2023.
Earlier this year, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned the ongoing discrimination faced by the Jewish community, calling it “outrageous and shameful.”
Last month, Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag, passed a motion to address antisemitism and hostility toward Israel in schools and universities, seeking to combat a surge in pro-Hamas demonstrations on campuses and antisemitic incidents across the country.
Jewish students at German universities widely expressed a growing sense of insecurity and uneasiness following Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, amid a slew of incidents purportedly meant to protest the war in Gaza.
The recently passed parliamentary motion stipulates that the federal government — in collaboration with the ministers of education and the German Rectors’ Conference, an association of state and state-recognized universities — must ensure that antisemitic behavior in educational institutions results in sanctions.
“This includes the consistent enforcement of house rules, temporary exclusion from classes or studies, and even … expulsion,” the motion reads.
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