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Pennsylvania Man Accused of Setting Fire to Governor Shapiro’s Home
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) holds a rally in support of US Vice President Kamala Harris’ Democratic presidential election campaign in Ambler, Pennsylvania, US, July 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rachel Wisniewski
i24 News – Cody Balmer, a 38-year-old man accused of setting fire to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s house after Passover on Saturday, told police he would have beaten him with a hammer if he would have found him.
The perpetrator allegedly walked an hour from his home before coming upon the governor’s home. He broke a window and threw in two Molotov cocktails he made from empty Heineken beer bottles.
Shapiro said he was awoken early Sunday morning as police banged on his door, warning that his residence was set on fire. He was evacuated along with his family, and the fire was extinguished.
“Every day, we stand with the law enforcement and first responders who run towards danger to protect our communities. Last night, they did so for our family – and Lori and I are eternally grateful to them for keeping us safe,” he said on X.
Balmer is charged with terrorist acts, burglary, aggravated assault, criminal homicide, and aggravated arson after the attack. His mother told media that Balmer is mentally ill and had stopped taking his medication.
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Why Is Duke Letting an Anti-Israel Hate Monger Teach — and Why Are Leaders Not Investigating?
Duke University. Photo: Ilyse Whitney / CC BY 2.0.
Let’s examine one department at Duke University to better understand the antisemitic fervor being experienced throughout academia, the campuses, and in academic publications.
Frances Hasso is Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke “with secondary appointments in the Department of History and the Department of Sociology.” In 2024, she excitedly announced on X, “HAMAS OFFICIALLY DEFEATS ISRAEL!”
In 2024 and 2025, Hasso repeatedly made social media posts using the antisemitic slur “Zio.” For example, she tweeted “Just another Zio grifter … his page is for donations.”
A column in the politically left Slate explained, “‘Zio” [is] an anti-Jewish slur popularized by David Duke and his neo-Nazi followers.”
On Oct. 7, 2023, while Israelis were actively being murdered, raped, tortured, and dragged as hostages into tunnels in Gaza, Hasso shared the following post with her accompanying comment that she agrees “1000 percent”:
Anyone who mischaracterizes legitimate Palestinian resistance against colonial occupation as aggression or any other liberal inspired adjectives is not a friend of the Palestinians but a collaborator with liberal obscurantism & mass confusion that only benefits the colonialists.
The same month, Hasso posted, “The US empire cannot end soon enough.”
In late December 2023, The New York Times published an in-depth report detailing sexual assaults against Israelis during the Oct. 7 Hamas-led pogrom.
Hasso signed a letter calling the Times’ report “disgraceful.” She and the other signatories stated they, “Firmly reject The Times’ discreditable report and its exploitation of women’s bodies and struggles as a means to fabricate assault incidents and push propaganda for an unlawful occupation, thereby abetting the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.”
Just last month, Hasso shared a post on X, in which the original poster said, “Noone was raped on October 7.”
It is concerning — to say the very least — that the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the gender and feminist program at Duke University rejected a prominent report on sexual assaults against Israelis. Perhaps the motto at Duke should be: Believe all women, except Israeli and Jewish women.
In November of 2023, Hasso was a panelist at the scandalous, “A Round-Table Talk about Social Justice in Palestine,” hosted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). The event — which I attended — began with the audience being shown a short anti-Israel propaganda film titled “Gaza Concentration Camp,” chosen by Hasso. The film narrator stated that on Oct. 7, “Palestinians didn’t break through a border to enter Israel. … They destroyed a fence separating them from the homes they were forced out of.”
The film did not mention any of the Hamas-led atrocities on Oct. 7.
In a now-infamous moment at the event, a panelist, Rania Masri, said: “Oct. 7 for many of us from the region was a beautiful day. It was the day in which we saw that, we saw our brothers, we saw our fathers, we saw men break out of a concentration camp.”
Husso made no comment or objection to this.
Students took dutiful notes. Not a single panelist, moderator, or professor in the room objected to Masri’s hateful comments or even looked concerned.
Since the event, UNC administrators have made multiple apologetic statements distancing the university from Masri’s hateful comments.
But as far as I am aware, Hasso did not distance herself from Masri. In fact, the next year, Hasso made a post on X congratulating Masri for speaking out against the Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, tweeting, “Great job @rania_masri.”
Hasso recently shared a post alleging that “Israel keeps trying to kill Israeli hostages… all as [an] excuse to prolong the Genocidal plan of erasing two million Palestinians from Gaza. Israel’s priorities are Nazi’s war-time policies – fastracking Genocide (Final Solution).”
According to the US Department of State, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” is one example of antisemitism.
It is simply depraved to say that the government of Israel is trying to kill its own citizens being held hostage.
The Duke student newspaper estimates that tuition, board, and fees at the university for undergraduates will total $92,042 for the 2025-26 academic year. Why would Jewish families — or any families at all — pay such huge costs to send their children to be “educated” by professors like Frances Hasso?
Peter Reitzes writes about issues related to antisemitism and Israel.
The post Why Is Duke Letting an Anti-Israel Hate Monger Teach — and Why Are Leaders Not Investigating? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Half of Gazans Support Recent Anti-Hamas Protests, New Poll Finds
Palestinians protest to demand an end to war, chanting anti-Hamas slogans, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, March 26, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Nearly half of Gazans support recent anti-Hamas protests that have taken place in the Palestinian enclave, according to a new poll released by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR).
Conducted in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from May 1 to May 4, the poll found that 48 percent of Gazans support the recent anti-Hamas protests that have taken place across the Strip since March. The protests, which have been supported by major clans across Gaza but have also been met with threats by Hamas, have featured chants calling Hamas terrorists and demanding they step down from power.
Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group and offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, violently eliminated its Palestinian opposition in a brief conflict in 2007, taking full control of Gaza after winning legislative elections the prior year.
Nearly two decades later, many Gazans have turned on the Islamist movement, according to the latest PCPSR poll.
However, despite almost half of Gazans saying they agree with the protests, the vast majority of Palestinian residents are not aware that others agree with them. Fifty-four percent said they thought the protests were driven by external parties, while 20 percent said they thought the demonstrations were a mix: both artificial and a genuine reflection of what the population thinks.
Anti-Hamas sentiment was also evident in the decline in support for the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, in which Hamas-led fighters killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
In December 2023, over 70 percent of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank supported the attack, a figure that remained consistent for months.
However, the Israeli military subsequently revealed in August that it uncovered documents showing Hamas had been secretly fabricating polling results from civilians of the war-torn enclave in order to show higher support for the Oct. 7 attack and hide that the Islamist organization enjoys far less support than previously thought.
Nonetheless, as of May 2025, the PCPSR poll found that just 50 percent now support the massacre, a considerable drop.
The number is even lower among Gazans, just 37 percent of whom responded that they support the Oct. 7 atrocities, while 58 percent said they oppose it. This decline in support is likely due to the devastation caused by the war that has been waged on Hamas in the enclave since then — which has resulted in heavy losses for the terrorist group while also displacing nearly all of Gaza’s civilian population.
Additionally, the perception that Hamas would win the war has dropped precipitously since it began. Just 23 percent of Gazans said they think Hamas will win the current war, while 29 percent responded they think Israel will win, and 46 percent put neither side will win. In contrast, 50 percent of Gazans thought Hamas would win back in December 2023, while 31 percent thought Israel would win.
When asked about what method would be best to achieve the end of the “Israeli occupation” and build a Palestinian state, 41 percent said armed struggle, 33 percent said negotiations, and 20 percent said peaceful resistance. Despite armed struggle having the support of a plurality of Palestinians, it is a large drop from December 2023, when 63 percent thought it was the best method to achieve independence.
Among Gazans in particular, negotiations are more popular than armed struggle. Forty percent responded they primarily support negotiations, 26 percent responded they support peaceful resistance, and 31 percent responded they support armed struggle.
Despite certain trends showing decreased support for Hamas, other data points presented a different picture. In the same survey, for example, 77 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza indicated they oppose Hamas disarming (85 percent in the West Bank and 64 percent in Gaza). This is likely due to the fact that 73 percent of respondents saif they do not think Israel will end the war if Hamas releases its hostages and 80 percent do not think Israel will end the war if Hamas disarms.
Additionally, when asked about what political parties they support, Hamas has more backing than Fatah, the main rival Palestinian political faction, among residents in both the West Bank and Gaza. But pluralities also said they do not know who they support.
PCPSR’s poll was conducted from May 1 to May 4, in interviews with 1,270 Palestinian adults from the West Bank and Gaza. The poll had a +/- 3.5 percent margin of error.
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Radiohead Guitarist Jonny Greenwood and Israel’s Dudu Tassa Cancel Concerts After ‘Threats,’ BDS Pressure
Jonny Greenwood performs on stage at Auditorium Parco della Musica Ennio Morricone with his band The Smile.
Photo: Valeria Magri / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
Radiohead guitarist and keyboardist Jonny Greenwood and Israeli Mizrahi singer Dudu Tassa canceled two upcoming concerts together in the United Kingdom following “threats” by supporters of the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, the two performers announced in a joint statement on Tuesday.
“The venues and their blameless staff have received enough credible threats to conclude that it’s not safe to proceed,” Greenwood and Tassa said in the statement. “Promoters of the shows can’t be expected to fund our, or our audience’s, protection.”
Greenwood and Tassa were expected to perform together in Bristol on June 23 and two days later in London. The British musician and Israeli singer released a joint album in 2023 titled “Jarak Qaribak,” which features vocalists and musicians from various countries in the Middle East. Tassa – who is of Iraqi, Jewish, and Yemeni descent – has been collaborating with Greenwood since 2008. Tassa’s band – Dudu Tassa and the Kuwaitis – was also Radiohead’s opening act for their spring tour in the US in 2017.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) claimed the concerts in Hackney Church in east London and the Lantern Hall at Bristol Beacon were canceled following “peaceful BDS pressure.” The anti-Israel campaign believe the shows “would have whitewashed Israel’s genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and underlying settler-colonial apartheid.” They welcomed the cancellation of the two concerts and urged all venues to boycott future concerts by the duo. PACBI also reiterated calls to have venues boycott any future shows by Greenwood, including with Radiohead, “unless they convincingly distance themselves, at a minimum, from his consistent, shameful complicity in artwashing Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”
Radiohead has previously performed in Israel.
In their statement on Tuesday, Greenwood and Tassa condemned efforts by BDS supporters who pushed for the two concerts next month to be canceled.
“Forcing musicians not to perform and denying people who want to hear them an opportunity to do so is self-evidently a method of censorship and silencing,” they said. “Intimidating venues into pulling our shows won’t help achieve the peace and justice everyone in the Middle East deserves. This cancellation will be hailed as a victory by the campaigners behind it, but we see nothing to celebrate and don’t find that anything positive has been achieved.”
The musicians also pointed out that the performers featured on “Jarak Qaribak” hail from countries across the Middle East, including Kuwait, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. “The silencing campaign has demanded that the venues ‘reaffirm [their] commitment to ethical, inclusive cultural programming.’ Just not this particular mix of cultures, apparently,” they said.
“For some on the right, we’re playing the ‘wrong’ kind of music — too inclusive, too aware of the rich and beautiful diversity of Middle Eastern culture. For some on the left, we’re only playing it to absolve ourselves of our collective sins. We dread the weaponization of this cancellation by reactionary figures as much as we lament its celebration by some progressives” Greenwood and Tassa added.
“We believe art exists above and beyond politics,” they further noted. “That art that seeks to establish the common identity of musicians across borders in the Middle East should be encouraged, not decried; and that artists should be free to express themselves regardless of their citizenship or their religion — and certainly regardless of the decisions made by their governments.”
Greenwood and Tassa additionally cited a statement made by a collective of British artists who recently defended the Irish rap trio Kneecap, after some of their concerts were canceled because of hateful comments made by group members, which include calling for the deaths of members of Parliament in the UK.
“We feel the need to register our opposition to any political repression of artistic freedom,” dozens of bands and singers said in defense of Kneecap. “In a democracy, no political figures or political parties should have the right to dictate who does and does not play at music festivals or gigs that will be enjoyed by thousands of people.”
Greenwood and Tassa said in their statement: “We have no judgment to pass on Kneecap but note how sad it is that those supporting their freedom of expression are the same ones most determined to restrict ours.”
“We feel great admiration, love. and respect for all the performers in this band, especially the Arab musicians and singers who have shown amazing bravery and conviction in contributing to our first record, and in touring with us,” they said in conclusion. “Their artistic achievements are toweringly important, and we hope one day you will get to hear us play these songs – love songs mostly … If that happens, it won’t be a victory for any country, religion or political cause. It’ll be a victory for our shared love and respect of the music – and of each other.”
Greenwood and Tassa also faced backlash from BDS supporters, including threats, when they performed together in festivals across Europe in the summer of 2024. The duo’s concert in Israel that same year was also condemned by pro-BDS activists, who seek to isolate Israel internationally as a step toward the Jewish state’s eventual elimination.
Greenwood is married to Israeli visual artist Sharona Katan, whose nephew was killed in 2024 while serving in the Israel Defense Forces during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. Last year, she wrote an op-ed for Haaretz defending her husband’s decision to perform in Israel while condemning boycotters who were “demonizing Israelis and Jews.”
The post Radiohead Guitarist Jonny Greenwood and Israel’s Dudu Tassa Cancel Concerts After ‘Threats,’ BDS Pressure first appeared on Algemeiner.com.