Ahmed al-Ahmed’s seizure of a gun from one of the two killers in the Bondi Beach massacre over the weekend was irresistible to anyone looking for a sliver of hope in an otherwise completely devastating attack.

And yet that wasn’t how some chose to spin it.

On parts of the left, the focus on al-Ahmed seemed to eclipse what should have been the dominant story — simmering antisemitism exploding into shocking violence — while some on the right scrambled to erase al-Ahmed’s religious identity or claim he was an aberration rather than a reminder of our shared humanity.

Rosy Pirani, a liberal social media influencer, told her nearly 700,000 followers on Instagram that the massacre was “evil” but emphasized another “truth buried under agenda-driven narratives.”

“The man who put his life on the line, stopped the attacker and saved countless Jewish lives was Muslim,” she wrote in a Monday post shared thousands of times. “Muslim violence is amplified. Muslim heroism is buried. Good Muslims don’t fit the narrative, so they’re edited out.”

In fact, al-Ahmed’s courage was being so widely celebrated that Mehdi Hasan, the veteran journalist, focused his analysis of the Bondi shooting on what it meant for Muslims.

“Even the well-meaning liberals who say, ‘Hey, look, look a Muslim saved the day! See, it proves Muslims are peaceful,’ — well it shouldn’t require a hero,” Hasan argued.

A fair point, but one that elided any discussion of the antisemitism that motivated the original massacre, which he described more simply as an inexcusable act of terrorism.

It should be indisputable by now that, among the scores who have protested Israel’s actions in Gaza over the past two years, are some who were motivated by antisemitism — or who have gravitated toward antisemitism over time — and are willing to vent their anger at Israel through violence and discrimination against Jews in the diaspora.

While the motives of the Bondi Beach perpetrators remain less clear than the D.C. and Boulder killers — who both shouted anti-Zionist slogans while carrying out their attacks — police said the younger gunman, Naveed Akram, had ties to an Islamic preacher who was recently convicted of inciting hatred for referring to Jews as a “treacherous” and “vile people” who were “descendants of apes and pigs.”

Wissam Haddad, the preacher, said that he was simply trying to convey that “what the Israeli government is doing to the people of Gaza” is “not something new.”

This kind of antisemitic logic — either that Israel’s faults are the result of it being a country run by Jews, or that its faults justify animosity toward all Jews — has become prevalent. Yet that received little discussion among many prominent left-wing figures who responded to the Sydney attack as if it were a natural disaster.

***

The lack of introspection was also glaring among Jewish leaders who seized on the attack as proof that the framework they’ve used to understand antisemitism in recent years was right all along. As Em Hilton, policy director at the left-wing Diaspora Alliance and an Australian Jew, wrote in +972 Magazine:

Before the blood of the victims had even dried, right-wing politicians and public figures — in Australia and around the world — were declaring the attack a consequence of growing anti-Zionist sentiment and pro-Palestine activism, without any proof or indication of the attackers’ motivations.

Deborah Lipstadt, President Joe Biden’s former antisemitism envoy, claimed that Zohran Mamdani had helped “facilitate” the Sydney killings by declining to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada,” a term Mamdani has never used but which he has been asked about for months.

Meanwhile, Sen. John Fetterman, a darling of the pro-Israel crowd, rather bizzarely responded to the attack by writing on X, “I stand and grieve with Israel.”

And that’s to say nothing of how some on the right responded to al-Ahmed’s bravery. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initially claimed that al-Ahmed was Jewish, while others online tried to insist he was a Maronite Christian rather than a Muslim.

“There were zero Ahmed al-Ahmeds in Gaza,” an anonymous pro-Israel influencer who goes by Max Nordau posted on X.

This kneejerk insistence that any political opposition to Israel — including the Australian government’s recent recognition of a Palestinian state — is to blame for the worst instances of antisemitic violence inevitably pushes Israel’s critics into a defensive posture from which they’re loath to consider whether some of their their broad demonization of “Zionists,” for example, might be fueling antisemitism.

***

The Australian massacre might have put some things in perspective, suggesting that the biggest problem facing Jews is not “globalize the intifada” — a slogan that is neither especially popular, nor described as a call for violence by many of its proponents — but rather murderous violence carried out by antisemitic zealots.

And similarly, those focused on defending Palestinian rights should perhaps have viewed the attack as a wake-up call for considering who they accept as part of their movement and who they shun, whether that’s antisemitic preachers in Sydney or protesters outside a Manhattan synagogue chanting for Hamas to “take another settler out.”

Yet sadly, I have seen tragically few good faith efforts to take stock of how we got here, and to draw an honest line in the sand that sets aside one’s views on Israel in favor of a divide between antisemites who would perpetrate or encourage this kind of horrendous violence from those who believe Jews deserve to live in safety and dignity.

Instead, the discourse on antisemitism has calcified to the point that now it seems like little more than a proxy for views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which those most invested are loath to reconsider their positions even in the face of shocking events.

The post Some people are learning the wrong lessons from Ahmed al-Ahmed appeared first on The Forward.

US President Donald Trump meets with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa at the White House, Washington, DC, US, Nov. 10, 2025. Photo: Screenshot

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced sweeping new restrictions that will bar individuals with Palestinian Authority–issued travel documents along with all Syrian nationals from entering the United States, citing persistent security, vetting, and identity-verification failures.

The White House released a fact sheet explaining that nationals from Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and South Sudan will also be denied entry. Trump administration officials framed the move as a response to what they described as systemic deficiencies in governance, cooperation, and counterterrorism controls.

“The restrictions and limitations imposed by the proclamation are necessary to prevent the entry of foreign nationals about whom the United States lacks sufficient information to assess the risks they pose, garner cooperation from foreign governments, enforce our immigration laws, and advance other important foreign policy, national security, and counterterrorism objectives,” the fact sheet said.

The proclamation places Palestinian Authority travel papers in the same category as documents issued by states deemed unable or unwilling to meet minimum US security standards.

“Several US-designated terrorist groups operate actively in the West Bank or Gaza Strip and have murdered American citizens. Also, the recent war in these areas likely resulted in compromised vetting and screening abilities,” the fact sheet provided by the administration read.

In explaining its decision, the White House cited the “weak or nonexistent control exercised over these areas” by the Palestinian Authority, arguing that governmental failure to mitigate terrorist threats in these areas have made it impossible to ensure that civilians in the West Bank are “properly vetted and approved for entry into the United States.”

The administration said the decision reflects long-standing concerns raised by US security agencies regarding the lack of reliable civil registries, inconsistent identity verification, and the presence of terrorist networks operating in areas under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction. The restrictions are based on documentation and vetting standards rather than ethnicity or religion, underscoring that lawful permanent residents and certain narrowly defined exceptions remain in place.

In addition, the administration has placed an expansive travel ban on Syria, noting that the country is “emerging from a protracted period of civil unrest and internal strife.” The administration also said that the country possesses a high visa overstay rate.

“While the country is working to address its security challenges in close coordination with the United States, Syria still lacks an adequate central authority for issuing passports or civil documents and does not have appropriate screening and vetting measures,” the administration wrote.

The White House has signaled a cautious warming in its relationship with Syria’s new leadership, marked by increased diplomatic engagement. In November, Trump hosted the first-ever visit by a Syrian president to Washington, DC, vowing to help Syria as the war-ravaged country struggles to come out of decades of international isolation.

“We’ll do everything we can to make Syria successful,” Trump told reporters after his White House meeting with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former al Qaeda commander who until recently was sanctioned by the US as a foreign terrorist with a $10 million bounty on his head.

Sharaa led Islamist rebel forces that toppled longtime Syrian autocratic leader Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Iran, last year. Since taking power, he has sought to depict himself as a moderate leader who wants to unify his country and attract foreign investment to rebuild it after years of civil war. Many foreign leaders and experts have been skeptical of Sharaa, however, questioning whether he is still a jihadist trying to disguise his extremism.

The US has moved to lift many crippling sanctions it had imposed on Syria for years when Assad was in power.

In June, Trump had announced that citizens of 12 countries would be banned from visiting the US and those from seven others would face restrictions. The expansion of the policy announced on Tuesday will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2026.

The White House framed the travel ban expansion as part of the administration’s broader efforts to secure the nation’s borders and minimize threats from malicious foreign actors.

“It is the president’s duty to take action to ensure that those seeking to enter our country will not harm the American people,” the fact sheet read

The administration also emphasized the legality of the act, citing Supreme Court precedent which upheld previous travel bans, ruling that it “is squarely within the scope of presidential authority.”

(JTA) — President Donald Trump said Congress “is becoming antisemitic” and warned about what he said was the fading influence of the “Jewish lobby” and “Israeli lobby” in an address to his Jewish supporters at a White House celebration marking the third night of Hanukkah.

During his remarks, the president also honored the victims of the recent Hanukkah terrorist attack in Australia and joked with his largest Jewish benefactor about her bankrolling a third presidential run prohibited by the U.S. Constitution.

“My father would tell me, the most powerful lobby that there is in this country is the Jewish lobby. It is the Israeli lobby,” Trump mused. “It is not that way anymore. You have a lot of people in your way. They don’t want to help Israel.”

Trump celebrated his own Israel policies, including a recent ceasefire agreement brokered with Hamas that returned Israeli hostages from Gaza but has not ended violence in the region. He has vowed to move the ceasefire into its second phase, accounting for Gaza’s postwar governance, in early 2026.

He also warned the room, “You have a Congress in particular which is becoming antisemitic.” He singled out “AOC plus three” — a reference to the progressive House “Squad” led by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — and Rep. Ilhan Omar, whom Trump says “hates Jewish people.” 

Trump also blamed universities for inculcating anti-Israel sentiment, and predicted that Harvard, with which his administration has been embroiled in lengthy settlement talks over antisemitism-related fines, “will pay a lot of money.”

Trump’s audience included Jewish Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Chabad-Lubavitch leader Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Holocaust survivors, and conservative pro-Israel megadonor Miriam Adelson. He brought Adelson to the podium with him, calling her his “number one” financial supporter. 

Adelson, in turn, implied that she and pro-Israel legal scholar Alan Dershowitz believed there would be a way to keep Trump in power beyond his two-term limit.

“I met Alan Dershovitz, and he said, ‘The legal thing, about four more years,’ and I said, ‘Alan, I agree with you.’ So, we can do it. Think about it,” Adelson told a smiling Trump as attendees chanted, “Four more years!”

“She said, ‘Think about it, I’ll give you another $250 million,’” Trump quipped.

Early in his remarks, Trump turned to the Bondi Beach massacre at a Chabad-hosted menorah lighting. “Let me take a moment to send the love and prayers to the entire nation, to the people, of Australia and especially all those affected by the horrific and antisemitic terrorist attack — and that is exactly what it is, antisemitic — that took place on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney,” he said. “What a terrible thing. We don’t learn.”

He also reflected on the meaning of the holiday. 

“Against overwhelming odds, a small band of Jewish fighters rose up to defend the Jewish people’s right to worship freely,” Trump said. “The miracle of Hanukkah has reminded us of God’s love for the Jewish people, as well as their enduring resilience and faith in the face of centuries of persecution, centuries. And it continues.”

Absent from the Hanukkah party was the White House’s own, first menorah, added to its collection in 2022 under President Biden. 

The post At White House Hanukkah party, Trump says Congress ‘is becoming antisemitic’ appeared first on The Forward.