Uncategorized
Meet Tehran Von Ghasri, a Persian Jewish African-American comic
For an American Jewish comedian, Tehran Von Ghasri has an interesting story to tell, as his name suggests. The son of an Iranian-Jewish immigrant father and an African-American mother, Tehran’s heritage includes a mix of Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Zoroastrian, and any part of that mix is fair game for Von Ghasri’s standup.
Yet despite Von Ghasri’s many identities, he has a strong sense of self. In our interview, he discusses how young Jews can also navigate through their own multiple identities and come out stronger.
You juggle so many identities. You’re African-American, you’re Jewish, you’re Persian. How do you think of yourself on any given day?
I don’t think about it often because it’s just a natural part of who I am. Everyone else thinks about it way more than I do. I don’t realize that I’m black or Persian or Jewish or not. I just think of myself as a human being. My family’s mixed ethnicities and race and religion becomes a Venn diagram and I’m stuck in the middle. People often ask me things like, “What religion are you?” Very rarely do they ever ask me if I’m just a good person. There are times when it’s almost as if some people don’t see you as black enough. Some people don’t see you as Persian enough. Some people don’t see you as Jewish enough. And the only thing I simply remind myself is that I’m always enough because I’m just always me.
One other thing that you are is a comedian. But some comedians have found themselves in trouble recently because they perpetuate tropes or stereotypes. Does comedy really need to deal in stereotypes of Jews or African Americans?
When the comedians that you’re mentioning get in trouble, it’s honestly not because they perpetuate stereotypes but because they reach for the low-hanging fruit. They use the stereotype in a very negative way. There’s a way to do comedy where you have fun with people. You don’t make fun of people. And there’s a big difference there. Maybe because I have such a unique, diverse background, when I say something, it comes from such a good place that people usually tend not to get offended. They understand I’m speaking about me. And I push the absurdity, so you realize how silly they often are. But pushing these stereotypes? That’s not funny anymore. Boxes are meant for things and not people. Let’s expand, let’s grow.
Let’s talk about one of your identities, which is African-American. There was a time when African Americans and Jews worked together in the struggle for civil rights. Are those days gone? Or is it just that some of the more divisive voices are finding a platform?
What we see is this loud minority who speaks up as if they’re speaking on behalf of everyone else. And it happens all the time. It’s usually the good people who just stay silent. We need to speak up; we need to show that the black and Jewish communities still very much work together. In the ’60s, Martin Luther King was standing side by side with a rabbi. That’s how it worked. Somewhere along the line, we were privileged enough to not think that anymore; we became a little bit divisive. I think future generations are going to be much different. I think that there’s a new generation coming up that’s realizing we all have way more in common.
What about the Jewish part of you? Where is that in your life?
It’s part of me in every way simply because it is a part of who I am. It’s a part of how I grew up. And that’s why it’s so hard to define. I didn’t see it as if it was something I was, for example, programmed to do or was being written into my life. It just became a blanket of things that were. But the biggest thing that my family taught me was respect. It was one of the things of being diverse, that they respected all the parts of me. And they didn’t define one as better or worse.
The Z3 conference is focused on creating a positive Jewish identity. In light of the current rise in antisemitism, how do we achieve this?
There are 15 million Jews in the entire world. Most people, when you go past New York or the West Coast, they haven’t even seen a Jewish person. So, it’s easy to point at the unknown boogeyman. I think that goes to education. When you know better, you do better. For example, Americans who have traveled outside of the United States have a tendency to be way less racist, way less antisemitic.
You have a strong sense of identity. But there are a lot of Jews on campus now who are dealing with issues like taking blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or assumptions about wealth. What’s your advice to Jewish kids in college?
My advice to all the kids in college is to be proud of who you are. Being proud and having pride are two different things. Pride is part of the fall. Having pride means I think I’m good, but you’re bad. But being proud means, “I think I’m good and you can be good as well.” Be proud of who you are, never hide that identity. The fact that this is happening in college institutions is even more sad because that’s where we’re supposed to be enlightened and learn. So, get out there and be part of the outreach. Get to know people, and that’s how we will grow and know the rest of the world. We will make it better. But don’t let the antisemitic bullies bully you. And there should be nothing anti-Palestinian about being pro-Israeli, and there should be nothing anti-Israeli about being pro-Palestinian. If anyone has a conversation with me where they hate the other in favor of one, then already we’ve started off on the wrong foot.
What do you plan on talking about at the Z3 conference?
I’m going to be speaking on my personal experiences of intersectionality and how that plays into the history of Jews, especially Jewish people of color, and we have to remember how important a role we continue to play in the identity of Judaism and what it means for the diversity of Judaism. Because Jewish isn’t just a religion, it’s also an ethnicity and race. And that race, by the way, encompasses people of so many different shades and different looks and different ethnicities. Ultimately, we’re also going to be exploring how comedy plays a huge part in that. Who has taught us more about politics in the last twenty years other than comedians — whether it’s Jon Stewart or Trevor Noah? Who has made us think about race in different ways more than Dave Chappelle, for example, or Wanda Sykes? Who has been the face of Jewish identity more than Larry David? I just want people to realize that, honestly, we’re all in this together. That’s the biggest thing that we can push out no matter what your background is, what your religion is, whoever you are—we are all in this together.
—
The post Meet Tehran Von Ghasri, a Persian Jewish African-American comic appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
US Senate Vote to Block Arms Sales to Israel Fails — but Raises Questions About Future Democratic Support
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks to the media following a meeting with US President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington, US, July 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
A failed Senate vote to block US arms sales to Israel has further exposed a deepening divide within the Democratic Party, one increasingly defined by younger voters and liberals whose views on Israel are shifting rapidly.
The Senate on Wednesday rejected two resolutions led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that would have halted roughly $450 million in weapons transfers to Israel, including bombs and bulldozers. The measures failed, ensuring the sales will move forward. But the margin, and who supported the effort, marked a significant political inflection point.
Of the 47 Senate Democrats, 40 voted in favor of blocking sales of bulldozers and 36 voted in favor of blocking transfers of so-called “dumb” bombs. The failed vote represents the largest show of opposition to military aid for Israel within the party in recent memory. While previous efforts spearheaded by Sanders drew support from a smaller bloc, this vote saw roughly 80 percent of Senate Democrats vote against transferring aid to the Jewish state, signaling a seismic shift in the dynamic between the Democratic Party and Israel.
Further, many traditionally stalwart supporters of Israel, such as Democratic Sens. Elissa Slotkin (MI) and Cory Booker (NJ), voted in favor of Sanders’s resolution, signaling that anti-Israel sentiment has migrated from the far-left fringes of the party into the mainstream.
That change is closely tied to evolving public opinion, especially among younger Americans.
Recent polling, including newly released data from the Yale Youth Poll, shows that younger voters are far more critical of Israel than older generations. Large shares of voters under 30 now support restricting or even ending US military aid, a position that departs sharply from the long-standing bipartisan consensus in Washington. Polls show that a supermajority of Democrats believe that Israel has committed a so-called “genocide” in Gaza, an assertion which lacks little evidence and has been boosted by foreign entities tied to Iran.
Data also suggests that increased social media consumption aligns with more skeptical attitudes toward foreign policy regarding Israel. Those who receive their news from social media, especially youth-centric platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, are far more likely to exhibit anti-Israel animus than those who consume traditional broadcast news media.
The Senate vote reflects the increasing pressure of Democratic lawmakers to stake an aggressive stance against Israel. Several lawmakers who backed the resolutions argued that continued arms transfers should be reconsidered amid the expanding regional conflict involving Iran and mounting humanitarian concerns. They argued that the Trump White House has not sought out appropriate congressional approval for the ongoing war in Iran. Many also criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct, suggesting that he has escalated hostilities in the region rather than acted in self-defense from existential threats. These same voices expressed dismay at civilian casualties in Iran, Lebanon, and Gaza.
The lawmakers largely framed their votes not as opposition to Israel’s existence, but as a challenge to current policies and the use of US-supplied weapons.
Opponents, including most Republicans, maintained that US military support remains essential to Israel’s security, particularly as tensions with Iran escalate. They warned that blocking arms sales could weaken a key ally in a volatile region.
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), an organization dedicated to increasing support for the GOP among Jews, framed the vote as reflective of a broader anti-Israel sentiment within the Democratic Party.
“There is only ONE pro-Israel party, and it is the Republican Party,” RJC wrote on X.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the group J Street, endorsed the vote as an “encouraging” sign of progress.
“It’s encouraging to see a growing number of senators recognize that unconditional US military support for Israel is no longer tenable in light of the Netanyahu government’s policies. The work now is to translate that shift into action: alleviating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, stopping violence on the West Bank and pursuing paths to end the ongoing fighting across the region,” Ben-Ami wrote.
A self-proclaimed “pro-peace, pro-Israel” lobbying organization, J Street has come under fire for allegedly not doing enough to combat antisemitism or anti-Israel narratives within liberal political circles.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), one of the most strident defenders of Israel in Congress, criticized his party’s turn against Israel, saying in a new CNN interview that they have “boxed themselves in” by supporting Sanders’s resolution. He dismissed the notion that Democrats would become more likely to support Israel with a change in Israeli leadership.
“When Netanyahu goes, and you’re now on record with this, you’re going to revert back and say that now that he’s gone, I can now start sending offensive weapons?” Moskowitz pondered.
Despite the failure of the resolutions, the size of the Democratic vote in favor underscores how quickly the political landscape is changing ahead of the 2028 presidential election.
Uncategorized
Duke University Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine Over Antisemitic Political Cartoon
Aerial view of Duke University on Jan. 6, 2026. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Duke University has suspended its Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter and impounded its money for posting an antisemitic political cartoon on social media, The Duke Chronicle reported on Tuesday.
According to the student paper, the illustration depicts a pig labeled “Zionism” hoisting a Star of David as its arm interlocks with another pig, labeled “US Imperialism,” hoisting the Torch of Liberty. The image was created in 1970 by political cartoonist Emory Douglas, a Black Panther party official who harbored hostility toward the US and Israel.
The Chronicle said the image elicited no fewer than 10 formal complaints from Jewish students for showing a blatant antisemitic trope. Historically, depicting Jews as pigs has been done to reduce them to the status of animals and mock the fact that dietary restrictions forbid Jews to eat pork. The Nazis notoriously did so, but the practice reaches back further into history, when medieval Germans proliferated the Judensau drawings which portrayed Jews drinking pig’s milk and excrement.
In a statement to the Chronicle, SJP denied that it intended to endorse the cartoon’s antisemitic messaging, saying it “was never intended to be antisemitic” and that anti-Zionist activism is “not the same as targeting Jewish people.”
This was not the first time that the anti-Zionist group posted antisemitic imagery. In 2024, the Harvard chapter of its faculty spinoff, Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FJSP), posted a political cartoon of a Jew lynching an African American and an Arab. In the illustration, a left-hand tattooed with a Star of David and containing a dollar sign at its center dangles a Black man and an Arab man from a noose. In its posterior, an arm belonging to an unknown person of color wields a machete that says, “Liberation Movement.”
Such activity is an integral part of the playbook of anti-Zionist and antisemitic messaging on social media, scholars have found.
From 2013 to 2024, the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism (ISCA) at Indiana University studied over 76,000 posts created by Students for Justice in Palestine and its affiliates, finding that over half, 54.9 percent, included only a single, evocative image.
“In contrast, Reels (5.3%) and Videos (4.9%) are used far less frequently,” the institute said in a report based on its research. “Based on these descriptions, we see a strong preference among campus-based anti-Israel groups for static visual formats, suggesting that this type of bimodal content represents the highest form of shareability within activists networks.”
To boost their audience and reach, pro-Hamas groups also post together in what ISCA described as “co-authored posts,” of which there were over 20,000 between 2013 and 2024. Their content set off strong emotions in the individual users exposed to them, inciting incidents of antisemitic discrimination, harassment, and violence. Such outrages, it added, increased in proportion to the concentration of anti-Israel groups on a single campus, evidence of “particularly strong” correlation.
ISCAP’s conclusions can be found in the real world, as SJP and its network of student groups have helped fuel a historic wave of antisemitic incidents on college campuses over the past two and a half years — from spitting on Jewish students at the University of California, Berkeley while calling them “Jew” to gang assaulting Jews at Columbia University’s Butler Library.
SJP has also expressed its hope of inciting insurrection in the US and amassing a jihadist army.
In 2024, the national SJP organization proclaimed on X that the anti-Zionist student movement is a weapon for destroying the US, saying that “divestment [from Israel] is not an incrementalist goal” but enacted with the later goal of initiating “the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself.” On the same day the group issued the statement, Columbia University’s most strident SJP spinoff, created after SJP was suspended, was reported to have distributed literature which called for “popular support for the Palestinian war of national liberation, a war which is waged through armed struggle.”
Sections of the pamphlet were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose is to build an army of Muslims worldwide.
“We call upon the masses of our Arab and Islamic nations, its scholars, men, institutions, and active forces to come out in roaring crowds tomorrow,” it added, referring to a previous event. “We also renew our invitation to the free people and those with living consciences around the world to continue and escalate their global public movement, rejecting the occupation’s crimes, in solidarity with our people and their just cause and legitimate struggle.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
Uncategorized
Netherlands Reports 867 Antisemitic Incidents in 2025 as Cases Remain at Alarmingly High Levels
March 29, 2025, Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands: A pro-Palestinian demonstrator burns a hand-fashioned Israeli flag. Photo: James Petermeier/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Antisemitism in the Netherlands remained at alarmingly high levels last year, according to newly published figures, as Jews and Israelis across Europe continued to face a persistently hostile environment marked by harassment, vandalism, and targeted attacks.
On Wednesday, Dutch authorities released a new annual antisemitism report showing 867 registered cases in 2025, a figure that remains at deeply troubling levels and virtually unchanged from the 880 antisemitic incidents recorded the previous year.
Even though Jews make up less than 0.3 percent of the Dutch population, anti-Jewish hate crimes account for 26 percent of all discrimination cases.
Eddo Verdoner, the Dutch national coordinator for combating antisemitism (NCAB), said the data reflects a worrying normalization of antisemitic incidents and called for sustained, coordinated action to address them.
“We have been recording hundreds of antisemitic incidents each year for years now. What I fear is that we are slowly getting used to figures that are unacceptable, that hatred is becoming the new normal,” Verdoner said in a statement.
“The figures once again paint a worrying picture, underscoring the need for decisive action in schools, online, and in the courtroom,” he continued.
The newly released report shows a decrease in violent antisemitic incidents, with 34 cases compared to 42 in 2024. However, local police registered an increase in antisemitic threats in 2025, with 93 cases compared to 88 the previous year.
Of the 867 registered incidents, more than 400 involved Jewish individuals or institutions in everyday settings, including residential neighborhoods, public streets, and areas around Jewish buildings and cemeteries.
In light of these figures, Verdoner called on authorities to strengthen enforcement and prevention efforts, prioritizing higher detection rates, expanding Holocaust education, and placing greater emphasis on Jewish life as a way to counter ignorance and prejudice.
“At the moment, Jewish life in the Netherlands can almost only continue thanks to the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, the police, and interventions such as cameras and bulletproof glass,” he said.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, the Netherlands has seen a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
In one of the most controversial incidents, local authorities opened an investigation last year into Batisma Chayat Sa’id, a nurse who allegedly stated she would administer lethal injections to Israeli patients.
In another instance, Amsterdam-based Jewish columnist Jonath Weinberger publicly denounced rising antisemitism in health-care settings, saying she was denied medical care by a nurse who refused to remove a pro-Palestinian pin shaped like a fist.