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Pittsburgh Organizers Stopped an Effort to Boycott Israel; But It Was Far Too Close
A man pauses at a memorial for the 11 victims shot by a neo-Nazi at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue. Photo: Reuters/Cathal McNaughton
The city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is known for many things: bridges, steel, sports teams, and sadly, the Tree of Life Synagogue building shooting, where the worst massacre of Jews in US history took place on October 27, 2018.
After the Tree of Life attack, we felt a sense of community, support, and understanding in the area. Non-Jewish social justice and religious groups showered our community with love, and elected officials rallied to help our community recover and rebuild.
Unfortunately, that sense of love and community has shifted dramatically since October 7. After the brutal Hamas attack against Israel, the likes of which we have not seen since the Holocaust, many of us felt that Americans would more deeply understand the threats that Israelis are facing, and the risk that antisemitism poses to communities everywhere.
Sadly, the Jewish community in Pittsburgh has not felt even a fraction of the support we once felt, and we’ve often been left to fight battles with very few allies.
Like many Jewish communities around the world, my Squirrel Hill community has seen a dramatic rise in antisemitic incidents, including graffiti on my synagogue walls and my local Jewish Federation, physical and verbal attacks, hateful rhetoric during ceasefire resolution debates, encampments, and other anti-Israel protests.
In early June, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Pittsburgh tried a new tactic, dedicating their time to trying to introduce a ballot question that would have asked whether the city should participate in a boycott against Israel, and prohibit investments and public funds to “entities that conduct business operations with or in the State of Israel unless and until Israel ends its military action in Gaza.”
Such a referendum would have targeted our city’s synagogues and Jewish organizations, almost all of which have strong bonds — historical, religious, and commercial — with the State of Israel.
Anti-Israel activists spent months going to concerts, farmers markets, festivals, public pools, and anywhere they could think of with petitions for people to sign “if you’re in favor of a ceasefire.”
Of course, in many cases, the DSA activists failed to mention that this was a boycott petition that would force Israel to meet impossible (and unattainable) standards, threaten local Jewish institutions, and bring our city to a grinding halt, since some Israeli companies play an integral role in the day-to-day functions of our local government and institutions.
Those of us who have been fighting back against anti-Israel entities knew immediately how dangerous this was, and that we had our work cut out for us. We watched and waited to see if the DSA would submit the minimum number of signatures required to make it onto the ballot. All the while, we started researching, planning, and mobilizing. We found out the process for petition approval, created legal arguments, recruited legal counsel, mobilized community members, and worked to educate elected officials on the dangers of this referendum.
Finally, on August 6, our fears came true. The DSA submitted their petition, and we got to work. Our legal counsel began drafting our challenge, community leaders started recruiting hundreds of volunteers to challenge the petition, and we worked to encourage elected officials to oppose this petition on separate grounds.
We were overwhelmed with the response from within our community. Within a day, hundreds of Jewish community members were being trained on the very complex way to check signatories. Our legal counsel prepared their arguments, and City Controller Rachael Heisler issued her own challenge. We organized plaintiffs, witnesses, and testimony.
Volunteers spent hundreds of hours combing through signatures multiple times to identify those that did not meet the criteria for submission. The DSA continued to insist that, despite all evidence to the contrary, they had the minimum verifiable signatures to proceed.
However, we were able to find enough invalid signatures to stop the referendum from moving forward, and the DSA had no choice but to concede. On August 19, StandWithUs, the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, and a coalition of four local Jewish clergy, successfully defeated the petition. We were well prepared to argue the legal challenges as well, but never got the chance to do so.
This effort took massive collaboration, mobilization, and community engagement. As the Regional Director of StandWithUs, I was so proud to partner with the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, the Beacon Coalition, local synagogues and Jewish institutions, and community members to fight back against this precedent-setting referendum.
A growing number of anti-Israel entities, including the DSA, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), pose a serious threat to local Jewish communities. Their goal is to spread misinformation and propaganda, and to wear down our community by exhausting us and our resources, but we won’t let them. We’ll continue to fight back against all attempts to discriminate against our community and work to defend Israel against misinformation and propaganda.
This success was truly a community effort that required time, resources, and dedication, in order to defeat the first attempt to put an anti-Israel boycott proposal on a US city ballot. We are grateful for this result and to our partners in this work, and we will continue to fight back against all attempts to harm our community and unfairly attack the State of Israel. At a time of rising antisemitism, these efforts have never been more important.
Julie Paris is Mid-Atlantic Regional Director for StandWithUs, an international, nonpartisan education organization that supports Israel and fights antisemitism.
The post Pittsburgh Organizers Stopped an Effort to Boycott Israel; But It Was Far Too Close first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Indigo wants the law to block an online boycott promotion that appropriates bookstore branding
Canadian bookstore chain Indigo is seeking a court injunction ordering internet service providers to block a website that the company says causes the brand “irreparable harm,” while also infringing on its copyright and trademark. Indigo’s lawyers appeared in a virtual Federal Court hearing Sept. 17 to ask a judge for an injunction that would order […]
The post Indigo wants the law to block an online boycott promotion that appropriates bookstore branding appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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‘F—king Jews’: Protester Interrupts Hate Crimes Hearing at US Capitol Over Focus on Antisemitism
US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaking at a press conference about the United States restricting weapons for Israel, at the US Capitol, Washington, DC. Photo: Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
An anti-Israel agitator on Tuesday unleashed an antisemitic tirade during a congressional hearing in Washington, DC on rising hate crimes across the United States.
The US Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to address growing numbers of attacks against minority religious and ethnic groups in the United States. While Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) delivered a presentation condemning anti-Israel protests on college campuses, an angry demonstrator stood up and hurled expletives targeted at the Jewish community.
“F—king Jews and the Israelis themselves!” the man shouted, apparently frustrated and angry at Cruz for focusing on the deluge of reported antisemitic attacks following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
“Talk about the 40,000 [casualties in Gaza]. Talk about all these people. Why is [this presentation] about antisemitism? F—k the law,” the agitator said before being escorted out by Capitol Police.
“We now have a demonstration of antisemitism. We have a demonstration of the hate,” Cruz responded.
Cruz then slammed Democrats for exhibiting what he described as weakness on antisemitism and vowed to punish antisemites if Republicans secure a Senate majority and the presidency in November. He accused the Biden administration and the US Justice Department of turning a “blind eye” to antisemitism.
“I’ll tell you this. Next year, if there’s a Republican majority on this committee, you will see real leadership. Next year, if there’s a Republican administration, you will see people prosecuted for this sort of violence,” Cruz said.
Senate Republicans criticized Democrats for insisting on broadening the scope of the hearing from antisemitism to a “generic” discussion about all forms of bigotry. Some critics pointed out that Democrats previously condemned use of the phrase “All Lives Matter” in lieu of “Black Lives Matter,” accusing conservatives of attempting to minimize anti-black racism.
Earlier in the hearing, US Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), chair of the Judiciary Committee, defended shifting the focus of the meeting off antisemitism specifically, stating that “prioritizing which group is being discriminated against the worst” is not a “valid exercise of [the committee’s] authority.” He went on to argue that hatred is a problem “that extends beyond the Jewish population” and also affects “the Arab population” and “the Palestinian population.”
Progressive lawmakers have been under fire from pro-Israel voices in the months following the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 for allegedly being too soft on Hamas and placing unrealistic restrictions on Israel’s war effort in Gaza. Recent polling suggests that large swaths of Democratic voters have soured on Israel, with many supporting the implementation of an arms embargo on the Jewish state. Younger Democrats, in particular, are reporting significantly greater sympathy for Palestinians than the citizens of Israel. Many Democratic staffers have also reportedly revolted against party officials, demanding that they adopt a more adversarial posture against Israel.
In response, Democratic elected officials have sharpened their rhetoric against the Jewish state, with some suggesting that Israel has committed a “genocide” in Gaza. Democratic politicians have also sought to pressure US President Joe Biden to withhold certain weapons from Israel.
Tuesday’s hearing came amid a record surge in antisemitism across the US since Oct. 7.
The post ‘F—king Jews’: Protester Interrupts Hate Crimes Hearing at US Capitol Over Focus on Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli Cyber Expert: Explosives Planted in Hezbollah Pagers in Op Planned Months Before War
An ambulance arrives at a hospital as thousands of people, mainly Hezbollah fighters, were wounded on Sept. 17, 2024 when the pagers they use to communicate exploded across Lebanon. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
An Israeli cyber and national security expert has claimed that the exploding pagers carried by Hezbollah members in Lebanon, which left thousands wounded and killed at least nine people on Tuesday, were part of a sophisticated attack that was planned at least half a year before the war in Gaza erupted.
Dr. Eyal Pinko, a former navy commander and senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, dismissed theories that the blasts were caused by lithium batteries that were hacked to become overheated, and said that the nature of the wounds seen in footage emerging from Lebanon was consistent with those caused by explosives such as TNT and HTB.
“To get this kind of wound you need to have between one to two grams of type of explosives, which is not a big technological issue — you just need to open the beeper,” Pinko said during a briefing with reporters on Tuesday evening. He added that a stable explosive that wouldn’t detonate accidentally would have been inserted into the device, along with a small control mechanism capable of receiving remote commands via a call or page.
Such an operation would have required significant infiltration of Hezbollah’s communication systems, according to Pinko, and planting explosives in pagers would necessitate a serious breach of the supply chain. “This is an intelligence operation that was very well planned, prepared for more than one and a half years,” Pinko said
Pinko alluded to the possibility of a coordinated effort, suggesting that Israel may not have acted alone if it was behind the attack in Lebanon, where Hezbollah wields significant political and military clout. He noted efforts by Germany, France, the US, and the UK to prevent escalation in the region.
Israel has so far been quiet about the explosions, but senior Lebanese officials have blame the Jewish state. So too has Hezbollah, which said Israel would receive “its fair punishment.”
The operation clearly appeared to serve as a message to Hezbollah, showcasing vulnerabilities in its security apparatus and serving as a form of deterrence, Pinko said. “It’s saying that, ‘you’re already being penetrated. We know where you are and what you do. Now look what we can do: In one single shot, in less than a second, we can eliminate almost 3,000 terror operatives.’”
Meanwhile, Sky News Arabia quoted an Israeli military source as saying that Hezbollah’s supply chain was infiltrated with the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, placing PETN, a highly explosive stable material, on the batteries of the devices.
A source close to Hezbollah, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that the pagers were “sabotaged at the source” before being imported by Hezbollah, an Iran-backed terrorist organization based in Lebanon.
Al Jazeera said that the pagers had been in use by Hezbollah operatives for five months.
Brigadier General (res) Amir Avivi, founder of the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF), told The Algemeiner that the attack “had the Mossad’s fingerprints all over it.”
“Hezbollah certainly got the message,” Avivi said, adding that war between Israel and the Iran-backed terror group was “imminent.”
However, Pinko said that Tuesday’s coordinated attacks were not a prelude to a full ground invasion into Lebanon and that Israel was likely to adopt a “wait and see” approach. “Israel doesn’t want to go towards further escalation; not in the north, and not with the Houthis in Yemen. They just want to finish the business in Gaza.”
The explosions came hours after a revelation by the Israeli Shin Bet security agency that a Hezbollah cell had infiltrated Israel with the intent to assassinate a former senior defense official in Tel Aviv using a mobile phone, camera, and remote detonation.
Hezbollah has fired barrages of rockets, missiles, and drones at northern Israel almost daily following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists on the Jewish state’s southern region. Since then, both sides have been exchanging fire constantly while avoiding a major escalation as war rages in Gaza to the south.
About 80,000 Israelis have been forced to evacuate their homes in northern Israel and flee to other parts of the country amid the unrelenting attacks from Hezbollah.
Israeli leaders have said they seek a diplomatic resolution to the conflict with Hezbollah along the border with Lebanon but are prepared to use large-scale military force if needed to ensure all citizens can safely return to their homes.
On Monday night, Israel’s security cabinet expanded its war goals to include returning the displaced Israelis from the north.
The post Israeli Cyber Expert: Explosives Planted in Hezbollah Pagers in Op Planned Months Before War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.