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Pro-Israel Influencer Discusses Jewish Identity After Oct. 7, How to Think About US Election as a Progressive Zionist
Lizzy Savetsky and her three children Stella (11), Juliet (10), and Ollie (3). Photo: Abbie Sophia
Every year, millions of Diaspora Jews visit the State of Israel to see family, pray at the Holy sites, and experience life in the world’s only Jewish state. It is an excursion which brings one’s Jewish identity into focus and connects her to the distant past, when the Jewish people escaped bondage in Egypt to found “a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.”
So it was that on Oct. 6, pro-Israel social media influencer Elizabeth “Lizzy” Savetsky — along with her husband, Ira, three children, and parents — were in the city of Jerusalem at the King David Hotel. They were in “amazing spirits” and there to celebrate Sukkot and Simchat Torah, which would see their youngest son, Ollie, receive his first haircut in accordance with the Orthodox tradition Upsherin. He had just turned three years old.
“I remember the day so well. My youngest daughter does a weekly torah parshah, a little one-minute torah lesson she does every week, and I remember filming it at the hotel and that she was talking about Simchat Torah. Also, I have all these pictures on my phone from Oct. 6. We were all dressed up so nice and really trying to put our best foot forward,” Savetsky told The Algemeiner in a series of interviews this month.
“And there’s nothing like being at the King David Hotel on Friday night before Shabbat or a holiday, because of the energy of all the different Jews coming together to, in this case, bring in both,” Savetsky continued. “Just running into people all over, friends and followers, from across the world made me feel so connected to my people and my land. I had never been more in love with Israel and in love with being a Jewish person. I was feeling so intensely connected to my people and my land.”
The trip was, she explained, a “normal” one like others the family had taken before, and while Israelis were then engaged in a polarizing debate over a series of judicial reforms proposed by the administration of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the state of affairs was not unusual for Israeli politics as Savetsky knew it. Her first introduction to the nation’s tempestuous disputes over its future came in 1995, just months after her 10th birthday, when an extremist assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to protest the Oslo Accords, a series of ambitious agreements which aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for good.
The peace process ultimately failed at creating a permanent resolution to the conflict, but on Oct. 6, it seemed to many observers that the embers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were flaming out with time. Israel had just three years earlier entered into the Abraham Accords — normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan — and the United States was investing immense energy in brokering what could have a historic normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia that was not preconditioned by the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“And then of course, Oct. 7 happened,” Savetsky told The Algemeiner.
On that morning, Ira Savetsky took the couple’s middle daughter to synagogue while Lizzy remained at the hotel with their eldest daughter, Stella, to finish getting ready for what she knew would be “a long service.” Feeling restive for being delayed by her mother’s morning routine, Stella stepped outside their room and heard “sirens going off” and someone say that a “fire drill” was taking place. She immediately reported the news to her mother.
“I said there are no drills in Israel, and I knew immediately that something was very wrong. And just after she said that, the hotel loud speaker came on and said everyone in the hotel needed to immediately report to the south staircase and into the bomb shelter,” Savetsky recounted. “When we got to the staircase, it was just complete chaos and panic. There was woman behind me in a towel because she had just come out of the shower. Nobody knew what was going on.”
There was an indication of danger that morning, but Ira had refused to believe his own eyes. While walking to synagogue, he thought he saw a rocket being intercepted over Jerusalem, which he deemed an impossibility. Because it was Shabbat, he did not have his smartphone, preventing him from checking for news updates. After being reunited back in the bomb shelter, two Armenian tourists visiting Israel for the first time did have their phones and relayed to Lizzy and Ira “spotty details” of an attack “by land, sea, and air.” Lizzy panicked.
“I was trying to understand what that meant. By land, you mean they came in by foot? There were terrorists in the country by foot?” she told The Algemeiner. “And then, one of the other first reports we heard was that a solider had been kidnapped. That was shocking, and we were enraged hearing that. Little did we know just how horrible the attacks were. By the time that Shabbat ended on the evening of the 7th, we knew a lot more.”
Elizabeth Savetsky was born in August 1985 in Fort Worth Texas, a community she described as pertinaciously “conservative.” However, she embraced the egalitarianism and openness of the progressive movement, which was the basis of her worldview when she arrived on the campus of New York University in the fall of 2003 to study fashion. To this day, she supports abortion rights, gay marriage, and other core tenets of the US Democratic Party.
“I only became more liberal, more radicalized, as one does on a college campus. But of course, at the time, there wasn’t protests happening against Israel nor raging antisemitism, and once those two things started to surface I started to do my digging,” she said.
After graduation, Savetsky treaded an unusual path to becoming a pro-Israel activist. She found several jobs in “the fashion PR [public relations] world” and had moderate success with maintaining a blog, a popular form of writing on what was still, in the mid-2000s, a nascent internet. But Americans were reading less, she explained, and she shifted her focus to emerging social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, which allowed her to exhibit her fashion sense and connect with followers who were making celebrities out of everyday people overnight. Her Jewishness and support for Israel were present on her social media pages, but not, she noted, pronounced.
Then in May 2021, Hamas fired 1,700 rockets into Tel Aviv, killing 17 people and wounding hundreds of others. Anti-Zionists seized the opportunity to flood social media with a barrage of posts which, in addition to promoting ancient antisemitic tropes, vowed to lead a movement for Israel’s destruction. To Savetsky’s dismay, many of the influencers leading the charge were progressives and Democrats she had considered “allies.” Their anti-Zionism and classifying Jews as “white colonists” and “oppressors” prompted a convulsive upending of her long-held beliefs and the way she engaged her social media followers.
“It was the first time as a social media influencer that I had seen being demolished online, and I had this realization that there was this secondary war happening in the digital space,” Savetsky said. “We had always seen the demonization of Israel in the legacy media, but this was new for me and I had literally no idea what to do. You know, there was no manual on how to be a social media advocate.”
Savetsky began recording a series of short video clips about Israel, Zionism, and the war — “Stories” — and posting them on Instagram. She lost thousands of followers but gained hundreds of thousands more. Such is her reach today that when The Algemeiner first encountered her at a rally held near George Washington University in May, she was surrounded by a crush of students clamoring for photographs and conversation.
However, fame has complicated Savetsky’s life by widening the circle of people to whom she is accountable. Earlier this month, she announced to her 350,000 followers her intention to vote for former US President Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election, a decision prompted by yet another unprecedented year for America, Israel, and the world. Doing so unleashed volleys of insults as well as accusations of fascism, fraud, and betrayal. Her decision was not, she told The Algemeiner, cavalier. The events of Oct. 7 left a “permanent mark” in her memory, and one of the first things she did after regaining access to her phone on that day was update her followers about the attack, which was a way for Jews who were in Israel to communicate and share news with the Diaspora in real time.
For Savetsky, the Democratic Party’s hesitation both to denounce the anti-Zionist movement’s blaring antisemitism and to support Israel’s latest war with Hamas is an outrage, but that does not mean, she emphasized, that she endorses Trump’s character or is ignorant of his questionable associations. She explained that she did not have a conversion experience but a realignment of her political priorities, of which Israel is “number one.” She remains conflicted about Trump but believes that his policy toward Israel will be superior to anything implemented by a Kamala Harris administration.
“Israel is my priority, and Republicans and I will never align on everything. I am pro-choice, I am pro-gay marriage, I am very much a liberal valued person, but then again, I don’t believe that the Democratic Party is upholding my liberal values either because it has become so extreme,” she told The Algemeiner. “As voters, we have to prioritize what’s most important to us. And right now, I fear for our and my children’s survival as Jews.”
Asked about Trump’s November 2022 dinner with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes and recent news that Donald Trump Jr. was scheduled to appear at an event with Candace Owens — from which Owens was later removed for reasons that may not have been related to her alleged promotion of antisemitism — Savetsky said: “I called all of that out, and this is why I always say that we can’t put our faith in a human being. I don’t know if I can trust any of them, but what choices do we have?”
She added, “This is not a choice that I want to make, but it’s a choice I have to make, because I’m not pleased with a lot of things about either of them. I don’t necessarily like Donald Trump, and I wouldn’t have dinner with the guy. But he’s the better choice.”
Determined not to make Oct. 7 their children’s last memory of Israel, the Savetsky family once again made a pilgrimage to Israel this month. While waiting for their flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport, their second eldest child, Juliet, celebrated her 10th birthday, which the airport staff announced over the intercom at midnight. Seven hours were shaved off the day because of their traveling to a different time-zone, but she did not complain “too much,” Savetsky said. They were all happy to be going back.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Pro-Israel Influencer Discusses Jewish Identity After Oct. 7, How to Think About US Election as a Progressive Zionist first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran to Deny UN Inspectors Access to Nuclear Sites, Top Lawmaker Says, Amid Rising Pressure for New Deal
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi arrives on the opening day of the agency’s quarterly Board of Governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, Nov. 20, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Lisa Leutner
Iran will not grant access to its nuclear facilities during next week’s visit by a delegation from the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), amid growing international pressure to reach a nuclear deal and avoid new sanctions, according to a top Iranian lawmaker.
On Monday, the head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iran’s parliament, Ebrahim Azizi, confirmed that the visiting IAEA team will only be authorized to hold “technical and expert-level talks” with Iranian officials and experts.
“According to the laws passed by parliament, Iran will not let physical access to its nuclear facilities under any circumstances,” Azizi said in a press conference reported by Iranian state-run media.
“No inspector from the IAEA team or any other foreign organization will be allowed to be present at our country’s nuclear sites,” the Iranian lawmaker continued.
In June, the Iranian parliament voted to suspend cooperation with the IAEA “until the safety and security of [the country’s] nuclear activities can be guaranteed.”
At the time, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi attributed the decision to IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi’s alleged bias against Tehran and a recent resolution accusing Iran of failing to cooperate with the UN nuclear watchdog over alleged “undeclared nuclear activities.”
“The IAEA and its Director-General are fully responsible for this sordid state of affairs,” Araghchi said in a post on X.
Grossi “directly facilitated the adoption of a politically-motivated resolution against Iran by the IAEA [Board of Governors] as well as the unlawful Israeli and US bombings of Iranian nuclear sites,” he continued.
During a press conference on Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei explained that next week’s visit by IAEA officials to Iran is intended to discuss the “method of interaction” with the agency.
“We are facing exceptional circumstances, as the facilities of a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT] have been illegally attacked by two nuclear-armed regimes,” Baghaei said.
“Unfortunately, the IAEA did not remain impartial, failed to condemn the attacks, and instead issued a report that provided a kind of political ground for making excuses,” the Iranian diplomat continued.
In June, Israel and the US bombed Iranian nuclear sites in an effort to stop the regime from building nuclear weapons. Iran claims its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
The UN nuclear watchdog’s upcoming visit comes as Iran faces growing international pressure to resume negotiations on its nuclear program.
Last month, Tehran made its first attempt at direct talks with European powers since Israel, with the support of the US, launched an airstrike campaign targeting the country’s nuclear facilities and ballistic-missile capabilities.
The United Kingdom, France, and Germany — collectively known as the E3 — have previously warned they would reinstate UN sanctions on Tehran if no new agreement is reached by the end of August.
The sanctions were originally lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal — known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — which imposed temporary restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for large-scale sanctions relief.
Although the United States withdrew from the agreement in 2018 under President Donald Trump’s first administration, Iran and the three European nations have continued to uphold the deal.
Under the UN Security Council resolution implementing the nuclear accord, international sanctions could be reimposed on Iran through a “snapback” mechanism that would take about 30 days.
As for the United States, Iran has insisted that Washington must compensate Tehran for the losses incurred during the recent 12-day war with Israel to pave the way for renewed negotiations.
However, Araghchi made clear that a deal would remain off the table as long as Trump continued to demand that Iran commit to zero uranium enrichment.
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US Sen. Cory Booker Refuses to Endorse Zohran Mamdani for NYC Mayor
US Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). Photo: Reuters / Rebecca Cook.
US Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) declined to endorse New York Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani in his bid for New York City mayor, underscoring a simmering divide within the Democratic party over whether to embrace the anti-Israel politician.
Booker, a former presidential candidate known for his progressive rhetoric and background in community activism, has often walked a careful line when it comes to the party’s internal divisions. When asked last week by CNN reporter Manu Raju whether he would support Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist, Booker said, “I have learned a long time ago, to let New York politics be New York politics. We have enough challenges in New Jersey.”
Citing heated gubernatorial and legislative races, Booker said his energy will be devoted to his home state of New Jersey before adding, “New York City, I love you. You’re my neighbor. You’re about 10 miles from where I live. You guys figure out your elections. I’m going to be focused on mine.”
Booker’s response came after he dodged an initial question from Raju asking if the senator would support Mamdani, who won the New York City Democratic mayoral in June.
“So, you and I are going to have this conversation, and I’m going to say to you one day, I told you so,” Booker responded. “This is not a left-right issue. It really isn’t. It is an authoritarian, versus people who want pragmatic government that makes a difference in the lives of the American people. I’m one of these people that says the lines that divide us in America are not nearly as strong as the ties that bind us.”
“Big corporations, people want to keep our eyes on the screen, want to pit us against each other and tell us how much we should hate each other,” he continued. “I’m sorry, the left-right lens is not the right lens to look at this right now. Right now, it is, can we get back to the pragmatic work of governing?”
Booker’s refusal to endorse Mandani broader tensions within the Democratic party over the rising influence of its far-left, progressive wing, particularly among younger lawmakers who have been outspoken critics of US military aid to Israel. Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has drawn national attention for his calls to end what he describes as unconditional support for the Israeli government, a position that has attracted both praise from progressive activists and backlash from pro-Israel groups and establishment Democrats.
Booker, who has long positioned himself as a supporter of Israel while also advocating for Palestinian rights, has grown increasingly cautious in recent years about aligning with candidates whose positions might alienate key constituencies. Despite the growing anti-Israel sentiment within the Democratic base, Booker has remained outspoken about the need to secure the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza. Booker regularly wears a yellow ribbon pin on the lapel of his suit jacket as a sign of his support for the hostages.
Many observers have argued that the New York City mayoral race, though local, is a proxy battle for the future of the Democratic party, with some claiming that Mamdani’s blend of left-wing economic policies and anti-Zionism are reflective of the party’s increasingly progressive base.
Mamdani, the 33‑year‑old state assemblymember and proud democratic socialist, defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other candidates in a lopsided first‑round win in the city’s Democratic primary for mayor, notching approximately 43.5 percent of first‑choice votes compared to Cuomo’s 36.4 percent.
A little-known politician before this year’s primary campaign, Mamdani is an outspoken supporter of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination.
Mamdani has also repeatedly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, falsely suggesting the country does not offer “equal rights” for all its citizens, and promised to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York.
Mamdani also defended the phrase “globalize the intifada”— which references previous periods of sustained Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israels and has been widely interpreted as a call to expand political violence — by invoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II. In response, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum repudiated the mayoral candidate, calling his comments “outrageous and especially offensive to [Holocaust] survivors.”
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Harvard President Denies Looming $500 Million Deal With Trump to Restore Federal Funding: Report
Harvard University President Alan Garber speaks during the 374th Commencement exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 29, 2025. Photo: Reuters Connect via Brian Snyder
Harvard University President Alan Garber has told faculty that he will not settle the institution’s dispute with the Trump administration by shelling out $500 million, the Harvard Crimson reported on Monday, contradicting a New York Times article which claimed that the move is impending.
Rather, Harvard has resolve to continue on fighting the federal government in court, the Crimson said, even as it faces a $1 billion shortfall caused by US President Donald Trump’s ordering the confiscation of $3 billion in taxpayer-funded research grants and contracts previously awarded to the university. Amid this cash crunch Harvard has resorted to leveraging its immense wealth to borrow exorbitant sums of money.
In March it issued over $450 million in bonds as “part of an ongoing contingency planning for a range of financial circumstances.” It offered another $750 million in bonds to investors in April, a sale that is being managed by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
According to the Crimson, Garber insists that the Times report is erroneous.
“In a conversation with one faculty member, [he] said that the suggestion that Harvard was open to paying $500 million is ‘false’ and claimed that the figure was apparently leaked to the press by White House officials,” the Crimson said, noting that the Times believes its reporting is on the mark. “In any discussions, Garber reportedly said, the university is treating academic freedom as nonnegotiable.”
Garber’s apparent assurances to faculty that the university will not concede to Trump for financial relief comes as it takes conciliatory steps that seem aimed at reversing an impression that it is doctrinally far left, as well as anti-Zionist. In July, it announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions and shuttered its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices, transferring their staff to other sections of the university. These moves came after it “paused” a partnership in March with a higher education institution located in the West Bank. Some reports, according to the Crimson, suggest that Harvard may even found a “new conservative research institute” in any deal with the Trump administration.
Other Ivy League schools have made similar steps while resolving their funding disputes with the US federal government.
On Wednesday, Brown University announced that it agreed to pay $50 million and enact a series of reforms put forth by the Trump administration to settle claims involving alleged sex discrimination and antisemitism. The government is rewarding Brown’s propitiating by restoring access to $510 million in federal research grants and contracts it impounded.
Per the agreement, shared by university president Christina Paxson, Brown will provide women athletes locker rooms based on sex, not one’s self-chosen gender identity — a monumental concession by a university that is reputed as one of the most progressive in the country — and adopt the Trump administration’s definition of “male” and “female,” as articulated in a January 2025 executive order issued by Trump. Additionally, Brown has agreed not to “perform gender reassignment surgery or prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to any minor child for the purpose of aligning the child’s appearance with an identity that differs from his or her sex.”
Regarding campus antisemitism, the agreement calls for Brown University to reduce anti-Jewish bias on campus by forging ties with local Jewish Day Schools, launching “renewed partnerships with Israeli academics and national Jewish organizations,” and boosting support for its Judaic Studies program. Brown must also conduct a “climate survey” of Jewish students to collect raw data of their campus experiences.
Only days ago, Columbia University agreed to pay over $200 million to settle claims that it exposed Jewish students, faculty, and staff to antisemitic discrimination and harassment — a deal which secures the release of billions of dollars the Trump administration impounded to pressure the institution to address the issue.
US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon commented on the resolution, saying it is a “seismic shift in our nation’s fight to hold institutions that accept American taxpayer dollars accountable for antisemitic discrimination and harassment.”
Claiming a generational achievement for the conservative movement, which has argued for years that progressive bias in higher education is the cause of anti-Zionist antisemitism on college campuses, she added that Columbia has agreed to “discipline student offenders for severe disruptions of campus operations” and “eliminate race preferences from their hiring and mission practicers, and DEI programs that distribute benefits and advantages based on race.”
“Columbia’s reforms are a roadmap for elite universities that wish to retain the confidence of the American public by renting their commitment to truth-seeking, merit, and civil debate,” McMahon continued. “I believe they will ripple across the higher education sector and change the course of campus culture for years to come.”
As Harvard debates its future, it continues to be a theater of an unrelenting debate on the Israel-Hamas war and the US-Israel relationship. On Saturday, pro-Hamas protesters instigated their arrests by local law enforcement during an unauthorized demonstration at Harvard Square.
“At least three protesters were pushed to the ground and handcuffed by police officers,” the Harvard Crimson reported on Sunday. “Several protesters were seen pouring water on their eyes, which were red and apparently irritated by a chemical agent.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.