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It’s on Video: The Vice Tightens on Jewish Life in Boston
A Hanukkiyah, a candlestick used during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, stands on the remains of a burnt windowsill, following a deadly infiltration by Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip, in Kibbutz Be’eri in southern Israel, Oct. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
Anyone who has any doubts about the success enjoyed by the Islamist-led campaign to squeeze Jews out of the public square in the US needs to watch the video of the Boston City Council meeting that took place on February 14, 2024. The success of this campaign was on full display when District Six City Councilor Ben Weber, the only Jew on the council, withdrew a “negotiated ceasefire” resolution from the agenda. It was yet another moment when the Tikkun Olam agenda of “repairing the world” was handed its head by Islamist activism in the United States.
Weber’s resolution was pretty straightforward and “balanced.” In addition to highlighting the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians and calling for a negotiated ceasefire between Hamas and the Netanyahu government, Weber’s resolution asked councilors to call on Hamas to return the hostages it took on October 7, and work for the safe return of Massachusetts residents stuck in Gaza.
Before announcing that he was withdrawing the resolution from consideration, Weber declared that while writing the resolution, he sought input from fellow councilors, officials from Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council, and a prominent Boston-area Palestinian-American lawyer working to get Massachusetts families safely out of Gaza. Weber didn’t say which councilors he spoke to, but The Boston Globe subsequently reported that Weber had spoken with former council president (and Israel supporter) Ed Flynn and anti-Israel zealot Tania Fernandes Anderson.
The dialogue was to no avail. “It has come to my attention that the language of the resolution I drafted may cause more division, which is the opposite of what I hope to do,” Weber said. “So out of my respect to my council colleagues and members of the Boston community, I withdraw this resolution to have further conversations.” In short, Weber, a first-term city councilor, didn’t want to force his colleagues to declare their response to the October 7 massacre openly, because to do so would make him a one-term city councilor.
After the meeting, Weber told me that he felt obligated to withdraw the resolution after unnamed people expressed concerns that it was promoting the involuntary departure of Palestinians from Gaza and that it appeared to promote “one side over the other.” The notion that Weber’s resolution promoted the involuntary evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza is an intentional misreading of the text. Weber’s resolution says nothing about the expulsion of Palestinians. And as far as “taking sides,” the resolution was clearly written as an attempt to mollify “pro-Palestinian” (anti-Israel) activists, including Fernandes Anderson, by highlighting the suffering in Gaza without acknowledging it was Hamas who was responsible for this suffering. The logic is simple. If there would have been no October 7 massacre (and no terrorism from Gaza before that), there would never have been any conflict in Gaza.
If Weber had been paying attention, he would likely have spared himself the humiliation of having to withdraw the resolution by not submitting it in the first place. It’s not as if Boston isn’t in bad need of some Tikkun Olam.
But beyond these problems, speaking openly about Hamas’ October 7 massacre and its aftermath is becoming increasingly out of bounds for Israel and its supporters, Jews especially, in American civil society. Jews on college campuses have been bullied and harassed for years and this bullying has only become more intense in the aftermath of October 7. Jewish students have been forced to seek shelter in libraries and classrooms, as Hamas supporters, campus Islamists, and their progressive allies recreate the modern-day equivalent of the “ghetto bench,” which drove Jews into hiding in Polish colleges and universities in the 1930s.
A good metaphor for the decline of the Jewish condition in American society, which was so evident at the Boston City Council’s February 14 meeting, is that of a shrinking apartment in which the walls move imperceptibly inward — just a centimeter or so — every day, reducing the space available for occupants to move about. The ceiling descends as well, forcing tenants into a crouch upon entering. And as the room gets smaller and smaller, the ceiling lamp is no longer a source of illumination, but a tool of surveillance, scrutiny, and judgement of the increasingly isolated, confined, and stooping inhabitants. Looking out the window, which offers a view of hateful protesters screaming out obscenities against Israel, provides no relief. The inhabitants of these rooms sit fearfully on their sofas listening as the chants, which began in the late afternoon as gentle calls for peace, morph into hateful accusations of genocide and calls for Israel’s destruction once the sun goes down.
Counter-protests by Jews and their allies have become, by fits and starts, less prevalent in Boston and other cities in the US in the years since the Palestinian wave of terrorism know as the Second Intifada, which ended in 2005. Jews and their allies stood their ground during the Gaza War in 2006, and there was some pro-Israel activism during the 2014 Gaza War. But these days, Jews count themselves as lucky if they are to post images of kidnapped children without them being harassed; protesting the perpetrators of these crimes is not allowed.
Anyone who denies that public space for Jews is shrinking needs to compare Weber’s submissive behavior with that of his colleague Tania Fernandes Anderson. Like many elites in Western democracies, Anderson, the first Muslim elected to Boston’s City Council, has surfed the excitement generated by the October 7 massacre like a wave. Soon after the attack, she put forth a ceasefire resolution of her own that called Hamas’ massacre a “military operation.” The resolution failed to pass, but upon leaving the chamber, she was fawned over by green- and purple-haired women in the lobby outside the council chambers.
In early November, she spoke at an an anti-Israel march from Boston Common to the Federal building. At this rally, where Fernandes was a featured speaker, she wept openly for the Palestinian children killed as a result of the conflict, but said little, if anything, about the loss of Israeli life. The following month, she brought two high school students to a City Council meeting to receive a commendation from the body. During the ceremony, the two students started chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” to the dismay of then Council President Ed Flynn. And later that month, she got a resolution passed on the city council’s consent agenda praising Abdullah Faaruuq, the imam of a local mosque who has advocated for a convicted terrorist and engaged in virulent anti-Israel and anti-American radicalism over the years. And as reward for her anti-Israel activism, she was invited to speak at a fundraising gala being held at Faaruuq’s mosque on January 13, 2024, the 100th day after the October 7 massacre.
And while at the gala, Fernandes Anderson spread a patently false narrative of everything being fine between Muslims and Jews in the Holy Land before Israel’s creation.
The massacre that took place in Israel on October 7 — where Jews were slaughtered just for being Jews — hasn’t convinced Israeli Jews to abandon their rights as a sovereign people, but thanks to people like Tania Fernandes Anderson, it is driving American Jews into the shadowy margins of American society. And thanks to the Boston City Council, it’s on video, just like the October 7 massacre.
Dexter Van Zile, the Middle East Forum’s Violin Family Research Fellow, serves as Managing Editor of Focus on Western Islamism.
The post It’s on Video: The Vice Tightens on Jewish Life in Boston first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Lebanon Must Disarm Hezbollah to Have a Shot at Better Days, Says US Envoy

Thomas Barrack at the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse in Brooklyn, New York, U.S., November 4, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo
i24 News – Lebanon’s daunting social, economic and political issues would not get resolved unless the state persists in the efforts to disarm Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy behind so much of the unrest and destruction, special US envoy Tom Barrack told The National.
“You have Israel on one side, you have Iran on the other, and now you have Syria manifesting itself so quickly that if Lebanon doesn’t move, it’s going to be Bilad Al Sham again,” he said, using the historical Arabic name for the region sometimes known as “larger Syria.”
The official stressed the need to follow through on promises to disarm the Iranian proxy, which suffered severe blows from Israel in the past year, including the elimination of its entire leadership, and is considered a weakened though still dangerous jihadist outfit.
“There are issues that we have to arm wrestle with each other over to come to a final conclusion. Remember, we have an agreement, it was a great agreement. The problem is, nobody followed it,” he told The National.
Barrack spoke on the heels of a trip to Beirut, where he proposed a diplomatic plan for the region involving the full disarmament of Hezbollah by the Lebanese state.
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Report: Putin Urges Iran to Accept ‘Zero Enrichment’ Nuclear Deal With US

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of a cultural forum dedicated to the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Turkmen poet and philosopher Magtymguly Fragi, in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Oct. 11, 2024. Photo: Sputnik/Alexander Scherbak/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – Russian President Vladimir Putin has told Iranian leadership that he supports the idea of a nuclear deal in which Iran is unable to enrich uranium, the Axios website reported on Saturday. The Russian strongman also relayed the message to his American counterpart, President Donald Trump, the report said.
Iranian news agency Tasnim issued a denial, citing an “informed source” as saying Putin had not sent any message to Iran in this regard.
Also on Saturday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that “Any negotiated solution must respect Iran’s right to enrichment. No agreement without recognizing our right to enrichment. If negotiations occur, the only topic will be the nuclear program. No other issues, especially defense or military matters, will be on the agenda.”
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Syria’s Al-Sharaa Attending At Least One Meeting With Israeli Officials in Azerbaijan

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, May 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq/Pool
i24 News – Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa is attending at least one meeting with Israeli officials in Azerbaijan today, despite sources in Damascus claiming he wasn’t attending, a Syrian source close to President Al-Sharaa tells i24NEWS.
The Syrian source stated that this is a series of two or three meetings between the sides, with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani also in attendance, along with Ahmed Al-Dalati, the Syrian government’s liaison for security meetings with Israel.
The high-level Israeli delegation includes a special envoy of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, as well as security and military figures.
The purpose of the meetings is to discuss further details of the security agreement to be signed between Israel and Syria, the Iranian threat in Syria and Lebanon, Hezbollah’s weapons, the weapons of Palestinian militias, the Palestinians camps in Lebanon, and the future of Palestinian refugees from Gaza in the region.
The possibility of opening an Israeli coordination office in Damascus, without diplomatic status, might also be discussed.
The source stated that the decision to hold the meetings in Azerbaijan, made by Israel and the US, is intended to send a message to Iran.
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