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NFL’s New York Jets Falsely Accused of Firing Muslim Head Coach Robert Saleh for Wearing Lebanon Flag Patch
Sep 29, 2024; East Rutherford, New Jersey, USA; New York Jets head coach Robert Saleh looks on during the first half against the Denver Broncos at MetLife Stadium. Photo: Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images via Reuters
The New York Jets fired head coach Robert Saleh on Tuesday morning, and anti-Israel voices, a sports radio host, and Islamic groups were quick to falsely accuse the National Football League team of firing him because of his Muslim faith and Lebanese heritage.
Jets owner Woody Johnson announced Saleh’s firing, and multiple sources told media outlets that Saleh was escorted out of the Jets’ facility by the team’s director of security after he was informed of the news, which a source described as protocol to ESPN.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) addressed what it called “unusual hostility” that Saleh faced by having to be escorted out of the Jets’ team building, but also suggested that Saleh was fired because at the Jets vs. Vikings game in London, England, on Sunday, Saleh wore a team sweatshirt that had a patch of a Lebanese flag on his arm.
CAIR took it one step further and even suggested that Johnson’s ties to the administration of former US President Donald Trump and “racially charged” comments he made in the past, which Johnson denied, may have also contributed to Saleh’s firing. Johnson served as US ambassador to the United Kingdom during the Trump administration.
“The report that Jets security physically escorted Saleh out of the building does raise concerns about the possible motive for such unusual hostility — especially given that Saleh wore a Lebanese flag pin at a game just days ago and that owner Woody Johnson is a former Trump administration official who has been accused of making racially charged remarks,” CAIR stated.
Sports radio personality Joe Beningo and anti-Israel activists on social media made similar false claims about Saleh’s firing and its ties to the patch he wore of the Lebanese flag. However, Saleh — who was born in Dearborn, Michigan, after his parents were born in Lebanon — has worn the same patch multiple times in the past. Johnson has also made it clear that Saleh was fired as head coach of the Jets due to the team’s poor performance under his leadership.
Saleh was relieved of his position two days after the Jets lost to the Vikings 23-17 in Week 5, the team’s second straight loss. The Jets has lost three of their first five games of the NFL season. Defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich was named the team’s interim coach for the remainder of the season. The move marks the third time in the history of the Jets franchise that it has changed head coaches mid-season. Saleh was the first Muslim head coach in NFL history and is the fourth Arab-American head coach in history.
The patch of the Lebanese flag that Saleh wore on Sunday stirred controversy because of escalating tensions between Israel and Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah.
Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel the day after Hamas-led terrorists carried out a deadly rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Beirut last month, and Israel recently launched a ground incursion into Lebanon, which it has since expanded.
The Israeli army said on Tuesday that about 180 rockets were launched from Lebanon toward northern Israel. While most were intercepted, two people were killed in the strikes in Kiryat Shmona and at least six were wounded in Haifa.
Saleh had worn the Lebanese flag patch on his arm in previous NFL games and for two weeks straight now, according to the New York Post.
One of his first appearances with the patch was at a game in late October 2023, which took place weeks after the start of the Israel-Hamas war but also not long after the NFL announced a heritage program in which players and coaching staff are encouraged to celebrate their “cultural origins” by wearing international flag decals and patches on helmets for the players and jackets for the coaches.
Johnson called the move to fire Saleh “my decision and mine alone.” He said he expects the team to perform better in a statement announcing Saleh’s firing.
“This was not an easy decision, but we are not where we should be given our expectations, and I believe now is the best time to move us in a different direction,” he said. He added that he believes Ulbrich as interim coach “along with the coaches on this staff can get the most out of our talented team and attain the goals we established this offseason.”
At a Jets press conference on Tuesday, interim coach Ulbrich talked about the team “underperforming” recently. “We’re not playing to our potential,” he added. “We’re too talented to be putting the product we put out there the last couple of weeks.”
The Jets had a tumultuous 2023 season, finishing with only seven wins for a second consecutive season. Saleh finished 20-36 in his three-and-a-half years with the Jets and the team never reached the playoffs during his tenure. There have also been reports of tension between Saleh and the team’s star quarterback, Super Bowl champion and four-time NFL Most Valuable Player (MVP) Aaron Rodgers.
Saleh released a statement on Wednesday, responding to his firing. He told the players: “I truly love and appreciate every single one of you. The character of the men in the locker room made coaching you guys the ultimate privilege. Through all the ups and downs, each and every one of you showed up everyday and attacked every moment.”
The Jets have not won more than seven games since 2015, and the last time they made it to the playoffs was in 2010. Their only Super Bowl appearance was in 1968 when they beat the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in Super Bowl III.
The post NFL’s New York Jets Falsely Accused of Firing Muslim Head Coach Robert Saleh for Wearing Lebanon Flag Patch first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Who Is the Biggest Bastard?’ Belgian Politician Equates Israel With Hamas After Refusing Jewish New Year Greeting

Matthias Diependaele, Minister‑President of Flanders, has faced backlash after declining to send a Rosh Hashanah message to Belgium’s Jewish community. Photo: Screenshot
A senior Belgian politician who recently refused to send a Jewish New Year message has once again sparked outrage for equating Israel with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
Matthias Diependaele, Minister‑President of Flanders — the Dutch-speaking region in northern Belgium — was speaking before the Flemish Parliament on Tuesday when he argued the world’s lone Jewish state and only democracy in the Middle East was no better morally than an international designated terrorist group.
“How do you explain who is the biggest bastard?” he asked. “On the one hand, you have an innovative, modern country that should be based on Western standards, but uses disproportionate force and commits human rights violations without any compassion. On the other hand, you see a terrorist organization that doesn’t hesitate to hide behind a human shield. Who is the bigger bastard? The one who shoots at children? Or the one who uses them as a human shield? I don’t know. I choose the innocent victims, and I want to think about how best to help them.”
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the ongoing war with their invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, when they murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages while perpetrating widespread sexual violence. In response, Israel has waged a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths during its war effort to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication. However, Hamas, which rules Gaza, has in many cases prevented people from leaving, according to the Israeli miitary.
Another challenge for Israel is Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
Diependaele belongs to the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), the same center-right party led by Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever. His parliamentary remarks prompted immediate backlash.
“The Flemish Alliance has completely surrendered to leftist pressure and no longer has a moral compass. He compares a free society and democratic state, existentially threatened, to a gang of murderous Muslim terrorists,” said Sam van Rooy, a lawmaker from the right-wing Vlaams Belang party, according to multiple reports. “This is why I continue responding to the anti-Israeli debate, constantly fed by leftist parties and traditional parties — it causes masks to fall. Israel is a litmus test. Now we know that, unfortunately, Flanders is controlled by a prime minister who cannot distinguish between good and evil.”
Diependaele has even received criticism from other members of Belgium’s five-party federal government coalition.
Sammy Mahdi, head of the Christian Democratic and Flemish party (CD&V), described the remarks in an Instagram post as “shameful” and indicative of “a lack of common sense.”
CD&V and Vooruit, another political party in the coalition, said on Wednesday that Diependaele was not speaking on behalf of the government, according to Belgian media.
Diependaele’s comments came after he declined a request last week by the Belgian Jewish newspaper The Centrale to provide a Rosh Hashanah message. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, will take place in late September this year.
“After internal deliberation, we regret to inform you that, given the current situation and sensitivities concerning the tensions in the Middle East, we cannot follow up on your request,” the statement from Diependaele’s office read.
“Anything that bears even the slightest connection to this conflict is being closely monitored and examined under a magnifying glass. For that reason, we do not deem it opportune to go into this any further,” it continued.
According to the Jewish newspaper, requesting a Rosh Hashanah greeting from Belgium’s leaders for the country’s Jewish citizens has been a long-standing tradition.
“This year, even that became radioactive,” The Centrale wrote.
Shortly after the newspaper published Diependaele’s response, which drew widespread outrage from Belgium’s Jewish community, the politician rejected claims of antisemitism and attempted to defend his earlier statement.
“My refusal is purely based on the principle that, for more than 15 years in my role as a representative of the people, I have not supported religious activities,” Diependaele wrote in a new letter sent to The Centrale.
“I have also never accepted invitations for the Eid. I have also never taken part in a Te Deum for Catholics,” the Flemsih leader continued. “By this I am in no way passing judgment on any religion or on the people who practice it. It is, however, my conviction that no religion — including my own — has any role to play in the exercise of my mandate.”
However, the paper rejected Diependaele’s new letter, arguing that his shift from “too sensitive right now” to a “timeless principle” was an attempt to mask his initial fear of public backlash.
The World Jewish Congress denounced Diependaele’s actions as a clear act of antisemitism.
“Holding Jews in the Diaspora collectively accountable for the actions of Israel – is antisemitic. To be a political leader, and to refuse to acknowledge the traditions and culture of your country’s Jewish community – because of Israel – is antisemitic,” the organization said in a statement. “What transpired is quite clear: A political leader declined to acknowledge their Jewish citizens because of Israel and the perceived public backlash about engaging with Jews.”
While members of the Belgian government have been pushing for a tougher stance against Israel amid the Gaza war, the country has been less critical of the Israeli military campaign in recent months than other European countries.
In late April, for example, De Wever rejected a journalist’s claim that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza and argued it is premature to recognize a “Palestinian state.”
Weeks earlier, Belgium announced it would not enforce the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza, should he visit Brussels.
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Palestinian Activist Ahed Tamimi Says ‘We Are Fighting the Jews, Not Zionism’

Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi attends the annual festival of Greek Communist Youth in Athens, Greece, Sept. 22, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Costas Baltas
Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi said on a podcast earlier this month that she is fighting Jews, not Zionism, and that she wishes for World War III.
“I was raised [to believe] that Judaism means occupation, and today, tomorrow, and a million years from now, I will continue to say that Judaism [should] be presented to the children of Palestine – children of my age and younger – as occupation, and that we are fighting the Jews, not Zionism,” Tamimi, now 24, said on “The Enlightenment Podcast” on YouTube on Aug. 8.
Tamimi’s comments were flagged by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which reported on and translated her remarks.
Palestinian Activist Ahed Tamimi: We Are Fighting the Jews, Not Just Zionism; Westerners Patronize Us with Their Aid, They should Shut Up When We Talk; They Will Give Us Aid, Whether They Like It Or Not, and We Will Not Thank Them; I Wish for a Nuclear WWIII, So the Whole World… pic.twitter.com/NNn5Jf7TD6
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) August 15, 2025
“The whole world needs to shut up, when a Palestinian is talking,” she said. “We are superior to the entire world, because we are the only ones in the world fighting injustice, at the expense of our lives, and the expense of our humanity.”
Tamimi continued, “Every night when I go to sleep, I put my head on the pillow, and I pray to God to protect the humanity left inside me, because I don’t want to become a killer. In this West of yours, if a mother screams at her child, he grows up to become a serial killer.”
“I have reached a point where I wish for a World War III. Whoever dies, dies, and whoever lives, lives. The important thing is that we will be over with this. I have reached this point,” she said. “Let the whole world be destroyed, I don’t care. Let them drop nuclear bombs, and destroy the whole world, so it won’t be just the Palestinians.”
These recent comments are the most recent in a long string of radical remarks by Tamimi. In November 2023, she wrote, in an Instagram post, “Come on settlers, we are waiting for you in all the West Bank cities from Hebron to Jenin – we will slaughter you and you will say that what Hitler did to you was a joke.”
Speaking about Israelis who live in the West Bank, she said, “We will drink your blood and eat your skull. Come on, we are waiting for you.”
Tamimi became famous internationally in 2017 when a video of her, then just 16 years old, slapping, kicking, and yelling at Israeli soldiers went viral as a symbol of both Palestinian resistance to Israel, and the asymmetric nature of the conflict. The soldiers did not retaliate but did later arrest her.
Tamimi was convicted on four counts of assaulting an IDF officer and soldier, incitement, and interference with IDF forces in March 2018, and was sentenced to eight months in prison and eight months of probation.
She was released a few months later, in July 2018. Since then, Tamimi has been hailed as a Palestinian human rights activist, received a book deal from Penguin Random House, and consistently received sympathetic coverage from Western news outlets.
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Trump Administration Reaffirms Opposition to Turkey Rejoining F-35 Program

A Lockheed Martin F-35 aircraft is seen at the ILA Air Show in Berlin, Germany, April 25, 2018. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt
The Trump administration has reaffirmed its opposition to Turkey’s rejoining the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, citing Ankara’s possession of Russian S-400 missile defense systems.
In a letter sent on Wednesday to US Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH), a senior State Department official reiterated that Washington remains committed to enforcing the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which penalizes countries with financial ties to Russia’s defense sector.
“The Trump administration is fully committed to protecting US defense and intelligence assets and complying with US law, including CAATSA,” the letter read
The message, signed by Paul Guaglianone of the Bureau of Legislative Affairs, stated that Washington’s position “has not changed” and that Turkey’s continued possession of the Russian-supplied S-400 remains incompatible with US law and defense requirements. The official stressed that the Trump administration was fully committed to protecting American defense and intelligence assets while maintaining its obligations under the National Defense Authorization Act.
Despite the strained relationship, the letter emphasized that Turkey remains a longstanding NATO ally. US officials framed the relationship as critical to the security interests of both countries and signaled a willingness to maintain dialogue with Ankara.
In 2017, despite several US warnings, Ankara purchased the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system, leading to Turkey’s expulsion from the multibillion-dollar fighter jet program in 2019.
“The United States seeks to cooperate with Turkey on common priorities and to engage in dialogue to resolve disagreements,” Guaglianone wrote, while maintaining that Washington has “expressed our disapproval of Ankara’s acquisition of the S-400 and clearly conveyed steps that would need to be taken” in the sanctions review process.
The letter came after a bipartisan coalition of more than 40 US lawmakers pressed Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this month to prevent Turkey from rejoining the F-35 program, citing ongoing national security concerns and violations of US law. Members of Congress warned that lifting existing sanctions or readmitting Turkey to the US F-35 fifth-generation fighter program would “jeopardize the integrity of F-35 systems” and risk exposing sensitive US military technology to Russia.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed during a NATO summit in June that Ankara and Washington had begun discussing Turkey’s readmission into the program.
Under Section 1245 of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, the Pentagon is prohibited from transferring F-35 jets or related technology to Turkey unless Ankara no longer possesses the Russian-made S-400 system and provides assurances it will not acquire such equipment in the future. Because Turkey continues to retain the S-400, US officials are legally barred from approving its participation in the F-35 program.