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On a grim Shabbat, Manhattan Jews gather in solidarity with an Israel under attack
(New York Jewish Week) – As reports from Israel and Gaza painted a picture of the region plunged into chaos, dozens of people came together halfway across the world to process the incoming news, share resources and offer a helping hand and a tight hug to anyone who might need it.
Held in the lobby of the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, an impromptu support gathering for local Jews, Israelis and other New Yorkers in the metro area coincided with Saturday’s Shabbat and Shemini Atzeret celebrations, and took the place of cancelled pro-democracy rallies against the Israeli government.
Reactions around the room from attendees who requested to remain anonymous all spoke to the same feeling: “shocked,” several said. “Terrible,” said one man. “Dead inside,” another woman answered. “It feels like a movie,” said a third. They had come to the JCC for a variety of reasons: to be with other people in a time of fear; to learn more information about what is happening; to find out how they can help and to show their support for Israel.
On Saturday morning in Israel, as many civilians prepared for a day of Shabbat and holiday celebrations. Hamas militants launched a surprise attack out of Gaza, sending thousands of rockets into the country, taking over kibbutzim and kidnapping Israelis. Official reports count more than 300 Israelis dead and over 1,500 wounded, though numbers are expected to rise. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared “we are at war,” in response to the attacks.
The JCC is often a “meeting ground for when anything happens,” Rabbi Joanna Samuels, the organization’s CEO, told the New York Jewish Week. “It’s a huge privilege and responsibility of this space that we can open the doors to our community when something happens and we need to gather.”
There was no formal agenda for the meeting. Rather the hope was to provide a space for community members to simply be with each other in a time of crisis and uncertainty. Messages about the gathering were sent via WhatsApp and text message throughout the morning; as the afternoon wore on, more and more people showed up, decked out in rain gear and many with children in tow.
Huddled over coffee and donuts, attendees chatted quietly; some crying and hugging, others communicating with friends and family over WhatsApp, still more with their phones open to Israeli and American news broadcasts.
“We really just wanted to create a space where we can all come together and support each other and strengthen each other and not sit alone at home in front of the television,” Sivan Aloni, the regional director of the Israeli-American Council in New York, told the room. “So really, thank you everyone for coming. Because you’re not only supporting yourself, you’re supporting everyone here in the room.”
For 86-year-old Aryeh Aloni, who fought in the 1956 Sinai Campaign, the war is the worst-case scenario imagined by those who, like him, have protested Israel’s current government for the last year — and experienced the last 75 years of Israeli and Palestinian history. “My parents are rolling in their graves,” he said. “I feel terrible.”
“It’s shocking. It’s cruel. Now what’s going to happen? Who will pay the price but thousands and thousands of innocent Palestinians and Israelis,” he added. Aloni said that while he has lived in the United States since the early 1960s, he has 21 first cousins living in Israel — and many of their descendants were called up from the military reserves earlier this morning.
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, the Israeli-American founding director of the Lab/Shul community, noted that the attack also coincided In Israel with Simchat Torah (which began in the Diaspora on Saturday evening).
“I’m 54 years old,” he said. “On Oct. 6 ,1973, the middle of the Yom Kippur, the war broke out. I was too young to know. My father and many other men were taken from the synagogue straight to the army. My memory is from the next day in our backyard, with the sukkah half-built and there was a siren. My mother dragged me by the arm to go to the shelter next door.
“I can’t believe that 50 years later, I have to explain to my children what’s going on and that Simchat Torah, the day in which we celebrate our sacred story and our continuity, now, like Yom Kippur, is forever marked with this continuing story of trauma.”
Lau-Lavie encouraged those in the room to share their emotions and not “keep things bottled up” or “sit in front of the phone and doomscroll.”
“This and other gatherings will help us,” he said. “Please hold each other. We’re not alone.”
Also present at the gathering was Tsach Saar, the deputy and acting Israeli consul general in New York. “It’s a very difficult day for all of us. There’s not too much to say, just to be together, I’m very happy to see the Israeli community and Jewish community being together and here for another,” Saar said. He offered a listening ear and to provide as many answers as he could give in the moment.
Some guests asked about canceled flights to and from Israel. Others wanted to know what they could do to help. “Where was the IDF?” Aloni, the veteran of the Israel Defense Forces, wanted to know, wondering like many observers why the military had not anticipated the Hamas assault. Saar answered that the situation is still being investigated.
A QR code was passed around the room for those who wanted to participate in support efforts, including hosting visiting Israelis whose return flights may have been delayed or canceled due to the war.
Across the city, communities were mobilizing to conduct responses. At Anshe Chesed, a Conservative congregation on the Upper West Side, an email was sent out to community members that the Simchat Torah celebration scheduled for Saturday night would be canceled.
“New York City has the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel, and we stand side by side with Israel every day — but we do so with extra resolve today in light of Hamas’ unprovoked terrorist attacks directed at the country and its people,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a press release Saturday morning. “Today’s attack, coming at the end of what is supposed to be a celebratory time at the end of the Jewish High Holy days, is nothing more than a cowardly action by a terrorist organization seeking to undo that peace and divide us into factions. That won’t happen.”
The release added that there is “no credible threat” to the city at this time and that the Adams administration is in touch with Jewish leaders across the city. The NYPD is deploying additional resources to Jewish community organizations and synagogues across the city.
Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation Of New York, was in Israel when the hostilities broke out. “We are working with our partners to provide urgent resources. New York — the largest Jewish community outside of Israel — is in unbreakable solidarity with Israel at war,” he said in a statement. “The global Jewish community stands in unity with the Israeli people and share their grief and anger at this callous, cowardly assault on Israeli citizens.”
The gathering at the JCC concluded with the entire room — which had grown to nearly 100 people over the course of an hour — rising together to sing Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah,” which means “The Hope.” “Our hope is not yet lost, It is two thousand years old,” they sang in Hebrew. “To be a free people in our land, The land of Zion and Jerusalem.”
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The post On a grim Shabbat, Manhattan Jews gather in solidarity with an Israel under attack appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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‘Never Forget’: ADL Files Oct. 7 Lawsuit Against Hamas, Iran, North Korea
The bodies of people, some of them elderly, lie on a street after they were killed by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: Ammar Awad via Reuters Connect
A legal effort to hold the perpetrators of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel is being mounted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and its partners, which on Thursday filed a major lawsuit in US federal court against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and a slew of state sponsors of terrorism, including Iran and North Korea.
“The victims of the Oct. 7 massacre deserve justice, accountability, and redress,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “This lawsuit seeks to do that by holding those responsible for the carnage accountable, from the the state sponsors who provided the funding, weapons, and training to the terrorist organizations who carried out these unspeakable atrocities.”
The suit is made possible by federal laws, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and Anti-Terrorism Act, allowing for the kin of the victims of terrorism to sue those who contributed to their murders. It seeks damages, compensatory and punitive, for the dozens of plaintiffs who brought the action while aiming to expose the funding networks which facilitate mass atrocities and destabilization of the societies subjected to them.
“The world must never forget what happened on Oct. 7. Our son’s life was senselessly cut short,” said David and Hazel Brief, the parents of Yona Brief, whom Hamas fatally injured during its onslaught. “We believe it is critical that those responsible for the horrific terror inflicted that day are held accountable in a court of law, to ensure the record is clear as to who helped support, plan, and carry out the violence that day. We are hopeful that this type of litigation will help prevent attacks like these in the future, so that no other families have to go through losing a loved on as a result of such violence.”
On Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which has controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, invaded neighboring Israel and massacred 1,200 people, mostly civilians, injured thousands more, and kidnapped over 200 hostages. In the days following the tragedy, the brutality of Hamas’s violence shocked the world as numerous eyewitnesses and victims shared accounts of rape, torture, beheading, and the mutilation of the bodies of the deceased.
In March 2024, the United Nation said in a report commissioned by the Representative of the Secretary General that Hamas likely committed mass acts of gang-rape and torture against women during the massacre and continued to abuse women whom it imprisoned. The report came amid a volley of attacks by anti-Israel agitators, who discredited the testimonies of rape victims, attempting to bury them under counter accusations of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia.
“Credible circumstantial information, which may be indicative of some forms of sexual violence, including genital mutilation, sexualized torture, or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment was also gathered,” the report said, as previously reported by The Algemeiner and other outlets. “It also said that the research team “found clear and convincing information that some hostages taken to Gaza have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence has reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing.”
The previous month, the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel issued a report detailing harrowing accounts of Hamas’s sexual violence. In 35 pages, it recounted numerous sexual assaults reported by Israel women, several of which were perpetrated in the presence of their loved ones. Some women were killed after the act, some during it. Hamas terrorists also desecrated the bodies of victims they murdered, mutilating their genitalia, and they raped men.
Hamas’s violence and mission to destroy Israel has inspired hatred across the world, triggering a wave of antisemitic hate crimes, perpetrated by anti-Zionists, in the US unlike any seen in the country’s history.
In June, a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they exited an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by a major Jewish organization. The suspect charged for the double murder, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supporting the criminal charges against Rodriguez stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
Less than two weeks later, a man firebombed a crowd of people who were participating in a demonstration to raise awareness of the Israeli hostages who remain imprisoned by Hamas in Gaza. A victim of the attack, Karen Diamond, 82, later died, having sustained severe, fatal injuries.
Another antisemitic incident motivated by anti-Zionism occurred in San Francisco, where an assailant identified by law enforcement as Juan Diaz-Rivas and others allegedly beat up a Jewish victim in the middle of the night. Diaz-Rivas and his friends approached the victim while shouting “F—k the Jews, Free Palestine,” according to local prosecutors.
“[O]ne of them punched the victim, who fell to the ground, hit his head and lost consciousness,” the San Francisco district attorney’s office said in a statement. “Allegedly, Mr. Diaz-Rivas and others in the group continued to punch and kick the victim while he was down. A worker at a nearby business heard the altercation and antisemitic language and attempted to intervene. While trying to help the victim, he was kicked and punched.”
According to an FBI report issued last month, antisemitic hate crimes are occurring at record-setting rates. Even as hate crimes decreased overall, the report said, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups noted that this surge, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.
Also, a striking 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes that were reported to the FBI in 2024 targeted Jews, with 2,041 out of 2,942 total such incidents being antisemitic in nature. Muslims were targeted the next highest amount as the victims of 256 offenses, or about 9 percent of the total.
“Leaders of every kind — teachers, law enforcement officers, government officials, business owners, university presidents — must confront antisemitism head-on,” Ted Deutch, chief executive officer of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) said in a statement when the FBI report was released.. “Jews are being targeted not just out of hate, but because some wrongly believe that violence or intimidation is justified by global events.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Dozens of Celebrities Call for Ceasefire, Help Raise $2 Million for Gaza Palestinians at Benefit Concert
Billie Eilish and Finneas receive Album of the Year Award for “Hit Me Hard and Soft” during the iHeartRadio Music Awards at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California, US, March 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
A star-studded list of celebrities helped raise money for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip amid the Israel-Hamas war as part of a fundraising campaign and benefit concert that took place at London’s Wembley Arena on Wednesday.
Ahead of the ‘Together for Palestine” concert, the campaign released a video featuring dozens of celebrities who called for a ceasefire in Gaza and to “stop the killing” of Palestinians during the ongoing war. They included Grammy-winning artists Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas, Oscar winners Cillian Murphy, Joaquin Phoenix, Javier Bardem, and Penelope Cruz; “Outlander” star Caitriona Balfe; Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai; and Scottish actor Brian Cox.
“We have to tell the truth on behalf of the people of Palestine,” Cox said in the video.
“It’s important to speak out now, not when this is over, right now, while it’s happening, pressurize your government. Lend your support to those who are peacefully campaigning for Palestine. Call for a ceasefire, stop the killing,” added British comedian and actor Steve Coogan in the clip.
The video also included appearances by “The White Lotus” star Natasha Rothwell, “Bad Sisters” star Sharon Horgan, and “Weapons” actor Benedict Wong. It was released mere hours before the “Together for Palestine” benefit concert at Wembley Arena, which raised more than £1.5 million ($2 million). The event included performances from Bastille, James Blake, Jamie xx, and PinkPantheress, and Palestinian artists such as Sama’ Abdulhadi, Saint Levant, and Nia Barghouti, who is the daughter of Omar Barghouti, a leader of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
Paloma Faith performed live wearing a dress made from a Palestinian keffiyeh. The event also featured a pre-recorded performance by Annie Lennox of her new song “Why? – For Gaza,” which she sang while wearing a T-shirt that said, “Let Gaza Live.”
The event, which was livestreamed on YouTube, was organized by British artist Brian Eno, who read the poem “Oh Rascal Shildren of Gaza” by Palestinian writer Khaled Juma. Speakers at the event included actors Richard Gere, Florence Pugh, and “Bridgerton” stars Nicola Coughlan and Charithra Chandran. Benedict Cumberbatch recited a Palestinian poem while broadcaster Mehdi Hasan led the audience in chanting “You can’t bomb the truth away.”
British-American documentarian Louis Theroux claimed on stage that Palestinians are “living under military occupation [and are] subject to slow, grinding relentless violence.” French former soccer player Eric Cantona called for Israeli athletes to be banned from all soccer competitions around the world, including FIFA and UEFA matches.
“I know that international football is more than just sport,” said the former Manchester United player. “It’s cultural; political. It’s soft power in the way that a country represents itself on a global stage. The time has come to suspend Israel from that privilege.” His comments elicited loud applause from the audience.
“FIFA and UEFA must suspend Israel,” he added. “[Soccer] clubs everywhere must refuse to play Israeli teams. Current players everywhere must refuse to play against Israeli teams … it’s time for everyone to get off the sidelines.” When Cantona asked the audience if they agreed that Israelis should be boycotted from all soccer matches, they replied in unison, “Yes!”
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories said, “Palestinians continue to suffer while our governments turn a blind eye, or worse – they are complicit. They trade weapons. They host Israeli officials.” Both Pugh and Coughlan criticized their colleagues in Hollywood for staying silent about “grave violations of human rights in Gaza.”
“Silence in the face of such suffering is not neutrality. It is complicity. And empathy should not be this hard and it should have never been this hard,” said Pugh. She also applauded Nia’s Bargouti’s performance at the concert in an Instagram story. In the caption of the post, she told Bargouti that “[you] sang so beautifully and so powerfully considering the weight and meaning of this evening. I was blown away by your strength.”
Others who made an appearance at the event included actress Jameela Jamil, “Love Island” host Laura Whitmore, and the “Chicken Shop Date” YouTuber Amelia Dimoldenberg.
“Together For Palestine” said all ticket proceeds from the benefit concert will be given to Palestinian-led organizations on the ground in Gaza, through Choose Love, a British charity that supports humanitarian workers in conflict zones. The groups that will benefit from Wednesday’s concert include Taawon, which runs orphan care programs in Gaza, the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society.
Israel has long expressed concern that Hamas steals much of the humanitarian aid that is sent into Gaza for its own terrorist operations and to sell to Palestinian civilians at inflated prices.
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Italian Port Blocks Arms for Israel as Worker Protests Mount
Illustrative: Demonstrators participate in a pro-Palestinian protest in Piazza Duomo in Milan, Italy, on Nov. 23, 2024. Photo: Alessandro Bremec/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
The Italian Adriatic port of Ravenna on Thursday refused entry to two trucks said to be carrying arms to Israel, as protests mount among Italian dockworkers and other labor groups against the offensive in Gaza.
The center-left mayor of Ravenna, Alessandro Barattoni, told reporters the port authority had accepted the request from him and the regional government to deny access to the lorries carrying explosives en route to the Israeli port of Haifa.
“The Italian state says it has blocked the sale of arms to Israel but it is unacceptable that, thank to bureaucratic loopholes, they can pass through Italy from other countries,” Barattoni said in a statement.
He did not provide details on where the containers had come from or provide evidence of their contents.
Similar action to block arms shipments to Israel has been taken by dockworkers in other European countries such as France, Sweden, and Greece.
Ravenna’s decision reflects growing mobilization in Italy against Israel‘s military campaign and in support of an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to the Palestinians.
A spokesperson from the Israeli embassy in Rome said they did not have sufficiently detailed information about the case and so declined to comment. Israel‘s government sometimes accuses Europea nations of bias against it and swallowing propaganda by the Hamas terrorist group whom it is fighting in Gaza.
On Friday Italy’s largest trade union body, the CGIL, will hold a national half-day strike and marches in Rome and other cities, while on Sept. 22 two other unions will halt work and try to block activity in the large ports of Genoa and Livorno.
“We won’t let a single pin through the port,” said Riccardo Rudino from the Calp dockers’ union in Genoa.
Israel launched its offensive after Hamas-led terrorists attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing more than 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
The CGIL said its protests were aimed at generating pressure on Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government “to suspend all commercial and military cooperation agreements with Israel, lift the humanitarian embargo, and recognize the State of Palestine.”
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Thursday Italy would support EU sanctions against violent Israeli settlers and Israeli ministers who have made “unacceptable” comments on Gaza and the West Bank, and was open to considering trade sanctions.