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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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University of Connecticut Rejects Dialogue With Pro-Hamas Group After Antisemitic Incident Targeting President
UConnDivest, a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spinoff demonstrating at University of Connecticut. Photo: UConnDivest/Instagram
University of Connecticut administrators have canceled a planned meeting with UConnDivest (UDC), a spinoff of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), following the group’s creating what a local newspaper described as an antisemitic caricature of President Radenka Maric, who is Jewish.
According to The Hartford Courant, UDC on Monday distributed an illustration portraying Maric as a devil-like figure with red horns against a backdrop of money and missiles. The tactic continued a smear offensive SJP has been waging against Maric since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, which has included creating altered images in which the face of a clown — graffitied across the forehead with the phrase “I Genocide — is imposed on her visage. In other communications, SJP has accused Maric of being both a puppet and puppet master, one who facilitates a genocide of Palestinians and, as it said in May, “inherently sides with ruling class interests.”
Maric’s administration, aiming to calm the campus months after she ordered the arrests of some two dozen pro-Hamas protesters, still agreed to hold several meetings with UCD to discuss their demands for a boycott of Israel and amnesty for protesters facing criminal charges despite their repeated violations of school rules and promotion of antisemitic tropes. The first of what was to be a series of meetings was held in late August. They were slated to continue throughout the fall semester, but after UCD’s latest outburst, the administration has stated that its patience is exhausted and that a dialogue with the students cannot continue.
“Whatever the intent, these images are examples of grotesque and unacceptable antisemitism that will be instantly recognizable to countless Jews,” high-level university officials on Thursday told UCD in a letter, portions of which were shared by the Hartford Courant. “It is deeply wrong and dangerous to deploy imagery such as this. Depicting a Jewish female administrator with ‘devil horns,’ as a pig, or using obscene and vulgar expressions, are not amusing caricatures — they are dark and troubling images deeply rooted in history that have been associated with hatred and violence for centuries, in addition to being openly misogynistic.”
The letter continued, “We witnessed expressions and actions that are deeply disturbing, counter to our values as an inclusive community, and make further meetings or discussions with your student group at this time untenable.”
UCD responded to the letter by vowing to continue its behaviors until its demands, which include a face-to-face standoff with Maric, are met.
“UConnDivest is fighting to end the genocide of Palestinians and to end the violence and oppression imposed upon so many other peoples around the globe,” the group said in an Instagram post. “UConnDivest will never cease speaking out against human rights abuses and fighting for what is right. Our Palestinian siblings are forever in our hearts.”
Writing to the Courant, the group accused the university of fabricating antisemitism allegations to sidestep Israel’s war with Hamas.
“UConnDivest condemns the administration’s weaponization of antisemitism to deflect criticism over its involvement in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,” it said.
Pro-Hamas and anti-Zionist groups are already resuming the disruptive behavior they perpetrated last academic year, when Jewish students across the US were assaulted, spit on, and threatened with mass murder.
In August, pro-Hamas students at Cornell University vandalized an administrative building, graffitiing “Israel Bombs, Cornell pays” and “Blood is on your hands” on it and shattering the glazings of its glass doors. Earlier this month, several resident assistants employed by Rutgers University left an antisemitism awareness program because a speaker explained that Hamas’s antisemitism and desire to destroy the world’s only Jewish state precipitated the Oct. 7 massacre. Weeks earlier, a masked man poured red paint on the Alma Mater sculpture at Columbia University, symbolizing the spilling of blood.
Anti-Israel activity on college campuses has reached crisis levels in the 11 months since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, according to a new report the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued on Monday.
Revealing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena, the report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — paints a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.
The report added that 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents, 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California, Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, the report continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where in one incident anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.
The ADL also provided hard numbers on the number of pro-Hamas protests which struck campuses across the country following Oct. 7, a subject The Algemeiner has covered extensively. According to the report, 1,418 anti-Zionist demonstrations were held at 360 campuses in 46 states during the 2023-2024 academic year, a 335 percent increase from the previous year.
“The antisemitic, anti-Zionist vitriol we’ve witnessed on campus is unlike anything we’ve seen in the past,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement announcing the report. “Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the anti-Israel movement’s relentless harassment, vandalism, intimidation and violent physical assaults go way beyond the peaceful voicing of a political opinion. Administrators and faculty need to do much better this year to ensure a safe and truly inclusive environment for all students, regardless of religion, nationality, or political views, and they need to start now.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Houthis Prepared for ‘Long War of Attrition’ With Israel, Says Terror Group’s ‘Defense Minister’
Houthi policemen ride on the back of a patrol pick-up truck during the funeral of Houthi terrorists killed by recent US-led strikes, in Sanaa, Yemen, Feb. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia is prepared for a “long war” against Israel and its allies, according to the US-designated terrorist organization’s so-called “defense minister,” who described fighting the Jewish state as a “religious duty.”
“The Yemeni Army holds the key to victory, and is prepared for a long war of attrition against the usurping Zionist regime, its sponsors, and allies,” Mohamed al-Atifi was quoted as saying on Thursday by Iran’s state-owned Press TV network.
“Our struggle against the Nazi Zionist entity is deeply rooted in our beliefs. We are well aware of the fact that this campaign is a sacred and religious duty that requires tremendous sacrifices,” added Atifi, who has been sanctioned by the US government.
His remarks echoed those of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who on Monday said his Palestinian terrorist group was prepared for prolonged fighting against Israel in a message to the Houthis.
“We have prepared ourselves to fight a long war of attrition that will break the enemy’s political will,” Sinwar said, claiming that Hamas and allied Iran-backed groups across the Middle East would defeat the Jewish state.
The Houthis began disrupting global trade in a major way with their attacks on shipping in the busy Red Sea corridor after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, arguing their aggression was a show of support for Palestinians in Gaza.
The Houthi rebels — whose slogan is “death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory to Islam” — have controlled a significant portion of Yemen’s land in the north and along the Red Sea since 2014, when they captured it in the midst of the country’s civil war.
The Iran-backed movement has said it will target all ships heading to Israeli ports, even if they do not pass through the Red Sea, and claimed responsibility for attempted drone and missile strikes targeting Israel. Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught, which launched the ongoing war in Gaza, Houthi terrorists in Yemen have routinely launched ballistic missiles toward Israel’s southern city of Eilat. In July, they hit the center of Tel Aviv with a long-range Iranian-made drone.
Then on Sunday, the Houthis reached central Israel with a missile for the first time. Israeli air defenses intercepted fragments of a surface-to-surface missile launched from Yemen that exploded over Israel’s central region. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would inflict a “heavy price” on the Houthis for the attack.
Sinwar congratulated the Houthis for Sunday’s attempted strike.
“I congratulate you on your success in sending your missiles deep into the enemy entity, bypassing all layers and defense and interception systems,” Sinwar said in his message addressed to Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi.
According to reports, Houthi fighters recently arrived in Syria from Yemen as “a prelude to a new phase of escalation against Israel.” The Algemeiner could not independently verify these reports, although they fit with Sinwar’s stated goal of fighting Israel on all fronts.
“Our combined efforts with you” and with groups in Lebanon and Iraq “will break this enemy and inflict defeat on it,” the Hamas leader said on Monday to his Houthi counterpart.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Iran-backed Iraqi militia Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, another US-designated terrorist organization, also praised the Houthis for their opposition to Israel.
“Yemen’s support for Palestine represents a model to be emulated. Yemenis have proven to the whole world that they are capable of creating miracles and changing the balance of power,” Qais al-Khazali told al-Masirah TV on Thursday. “What the Yemeni nation has obtained under the aegis of leader of the Ansarullah resistance movement Abdul-Malik al-Houthi is a great achievement, which every Arab and Muslim could be proud of.”
The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released a report in July revealing how Iran has been “smuggling weapons and weapons components to the Houthis.”
The report noted that the Houthis used Iranian-supplied ballistic and cruise missiles to conduct over a hundred land attacks on Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and within Yemen, as well as dozens of attacks on merchant shipping.
Iran also backs Hamas, providing the Islamist terror group with weapons, funding, and training.
While the Houthis have increasingly targeted Israeli soil in recent months, they have primarily attacked ships in the Red Sea, a key trade route, having a major economic impact by disrupting global shipping and raising the cost of shipping and insurance. Shipping firms have been forced in many cases to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys around southern Africa to avoid passing near Yemen.
Beyond Israeli targets, the Houthis have threatened and in some cases actually attacked US and British ships, leading the two Western allies to launch retaliatory strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen.
The post Houthis Prepared for ‘Long War of Attrition’ With Israel, Says Terror Group’s ‘Defense Minister’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Singer Eden Golan to Perform at UN ‘October Rain’ Song About Hamas Attack Rejected by Eurovision
Eden Golan performing “Hurricane” for Israel at the second semi-final for the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest at Malmo Arena on May 9, 2024. Photo: Corinne Cumming/EBU
Eden Golan, Israel’s representative in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, will perform her original song “October Rain” at the United Nations to mark the one-year anniversary of the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel.
Golan will perform the track at a ceremony on Oct. 7 that will be hosted by Israel’s Foreign Ministry, according to ILTV News. Families of hostages currently being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip are expected to attend the event along with Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield, and diplomats from other countries, the news outlet reported.
The lyrics of “October Rain” reference the Oct. 7 massacre, and in the chorus, Golan sings: “Dancing in the storm/We got nothing to hide/Take me home/And leave the world behind/And I promise you that never again/I’m still wet from this October rain.”
Golan had originally planned to perform “October Rain” at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden, but the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the contest, rejected the song, deeming it too political. Golan instead competed in the Eurovision with a reworded version of the song that was retitled “Hurricane.”
Golan finished in fifth place in the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest. She made it to the top five after being booed on stage by anti-Israel protesters, experiencing death threats, and having one of the competition’s jury members refuse to give her points because of his personal opposition to Israel. Golan later revealed that she was forced to wear a disguise outside her hotel during the song competition in Malmo, Sweden, because of the threats she faced by those who opposed Israel’s involvement in the contest.
Shortly after the conclusion of the competition, Golan performed “October Rain” at a rally in Tel Aviv in support of the hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7.
The post Israeli Singer Eden Golan to Perform at UN ‘October Rain’ Song About Hamas Attack Rejected by Eurovision first appeared on Algemeiner.com.