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Queer yeshiva to publish first-ever collection of Jewish legal opinions written by and for trans Jews

(JTA) — In the midst of writing a 13-page analysis of a complex area of Jewish law, Rabbi Xava De Cordova found something she wasn’t expecting to see in the medieval-era sources: flexibility.

De Cordova is transgender and had long wondered whether she could feel a sense of belonging while studying reams of rabbinic writings on halacha, or Jewish law, which stretch back thousands of years and often prescribe different practices for men and women.

The laws of ritual purity, for example, prescribe specific behaviors for women on the assumption that they all menstruate. Trans women do not. De Cordova said that gap and others had her thinking, “I don’t really know if I can find a place for myself in this literature.”

But after digging into Jewish texts on the topic, De Cordova realized she’d sold the sages short: Medieval European rabbis were asking many of the same questions she was — and their answers reflected real-world complexity.

“I just found that the rabbis and the early halachic authorities’ understanding of niddah was so much more conceptual and vague and fluctuating than I ever realized before I started this particular work,” De Cordova said, using the Hebrew term for purity laws. Her conclusion: “Wow, there’s so much space for me within this literature.”

De Cordova’s realization is one of many that a dozen Jewish scholars and rabbis have had over the last year as they have scoured Jewish texts for guidance on how transgender Jews can adapt traditional rituals to their lived experience. Now, the group is preparing to release a batch of their essays, analyses of Jewish law called teshuvot, in hopes that they can inform the experiences of trans Jews who seek to live in accordance with traditional Jewish law.

The release of the essays comes at a time when lawmakers in dozens of states are targeting trans people and their rights, in some cases instigating fights that have heavily involved rabbis and their families.

In that climate, writing trans Jews into Jewish tradition “becomes an act of resistance because it’s about celebrating lives that are being demeaned and celebrating people who are being dehumanized in the public sphere,” said Rabbi Becky Silverstein, co-director of the Trans Halakha Project at Svara, the yeshiva founded in Chicago two decades ago to serve the queer community. The dozen rabbis and scholars are based at Svara and collectively form the Teshuva Writing Project.

Among the questions they have tackled: How could a trans man converting to Judaism have a bris, required for male converts? Is the removal of body tissue after gender-affirming surgery a ritual matter, given Jewish legal requirements for burying body parts? And is there a Jewish obligation, in certain cases, to undergo gender transition?

Just how widely their answers will be consumed and taken into account is a question. Most Jews who consciously adhere to halacha throughout their daily lives are Orthodox, and live in communities that either reject trans Jews or are reckoning with whether and how to accept them. Non-Orthodox Jewish denominations have made efforts to embrace trans Jews, but halacha is less often the starting point for most of their members. The Reform movement, the largest in the United States, expressly rejects halacha as binding.

Still, a growing number of Jews and Jewish communities strive to be inclusive while staying rooted in Jewish law and tradition. There are also a growing number of trans Jews who are connected to traditional communities, or who want to live in accordance with Jewish law.

“I think individual trans Jews who are not part of communities could use these teshuvot to guide their own decision-making,” said Silverstein, who was ordained at the pluralistic Hebrew College seminary. “We live in a time of religious autonomy in Jewish life, and where trans Jews actually are hungry for connection to tradition. And so they could use these teshuvot to help inform their own conversations.”

Organizations and initiatives such as the Jewish LGBTQ group Keshet; Torah Queeries, a collection of queer commentaries on the Bible; and TransTorah.org have created rituals, readings, blessings and customs for trans Jews, and Svara runs a Queer Talmud Camp as well as intensive Jewish study programs throughout the year. But until now, no collection of Jewish legal opinions has been published by and for trans people.

“Halacha has to be informed by the real lived experiences of the people about whom it is legislating,” said Laynie Soloman, who helps lead Svara and holds the title of associate rosh yeshiva, in an approach that they said the group had adopted from the disability advocacy community. “That is a fundamental truth about halacha that we are holding as a collective and taking seriously in the way we are authoring these teshuvot.”

The teshuvot will be published later this month, and follow a long tradition of rabbis setting halachic precedent by answering questions from their followers. Those answers are traditionally based on an analysis of rabbinic texts throughout history. They can address questions ranging from whether smoking cigarettes is permissible to the particulars of making a kitchen kosher for Passover.

Some Jewish legal questions tackled by the group at Svara had not previously been answered, such as how to mark conversion for someone who is male but does not have a penis. In other cases, accepted Jewish law pertaining to gender can be painful for those who are nonbinary or trans, either because the answer is not clear or because the law does not match up with contemporary understandings that gender and sex are distinct.

“[Those are] areas where trans people are sort of most likely to either feel lost themselves or be interrogated by their community. … And so they’re sort of these urgent halachic needs,” said De Cordova, who was privately ordained by a rabbi from the Renewal Judaism movement. “And 99.9% of the literature about them so far has been written by cis people, about us.”

De Cordova concluded that trans women are obligated in niddah, the ritual purity laws. In her teshuva, she provides several approaches to emulate the complicated counting cycle that tallies the days a woman is considered ritually impure following menstruation. She suggests using a seven- and 11-day cycle originally proposed by Maimonides, the 12th-century scholar and philosopher. De Cordova also suggests that the imposition of a cycle not based in biology means ancient and medieval rabbis had some understanding of womanhood as a social construct.

“There’s many cases in which the rabbis sort of choose to orient niddah around their understanding of women, which I would call the social construction of womanhood by rabbis, rather than observable physical phenomenon or actual women’s experience,” she said.

For De Cordova, the experience of writing about niddah provided her with new insights about some of the oldest Jewish legal texts on the subject.

“They’re flexible enough and sort of responsive enough that I can really find a lot of freedom and space in working with them,” she said of the ancient sources. “And that was just a really sort of wonderful and freeing transition to go through.”

Last year, the Conservative Movement approved new language for calling up a nonbinary person to various Torah honors. The rabbis behind the opinion consulted with groups serving LGBTQ Jews and synagogues centered on them, but acknowledged that they were imperfect authors.

“When my coauthors and I published the teshuva, we wrote in it that we are all cisgender rabbis and that we hope that, increasingly, halachic work dealing with nonbinary and trans and queer Jewish life and identity and practice will… come from queer rabbis and scholars themselves,” said Guy Austrian, the rabbi of the Fort Tryon Jewish Center, a synagogue in upper Manhattan. “And I think the publication of the first batch of teshuvot from the Trans Halakha Project shows that that process is underway, and I think that that can only be a good thing for the Jewish world.”

Scholars at Svara, the queer yeshiva based in Chicago, have served the Jewish LGBTQ community for two decades and are now creating the first written set of Jewish law by and for trans Jews. (Jess Benjamin)

Adding to the question-and-answer tradition of Jewish legal opinions means trans Jews will now have new texts to guide their religious practice, Silverstein said. Trans Jews, the writers of the opinions acknowledge, already have their own ways of performing Jewish ritual that accords with their lived experience. But they say that when it comes to Jewish law, informal custom without a sourced legal opinion is not enough.

“I want cis[gender] clergy to realize that there are resources written by and for trans people that they can turn to when they’re trying to help a member of their congregation,” De Cordova said.

The authors of the legal opinions applied to be part of the collective and come from a religiously pluralistic group, ranging in affiliation from Orthodox to Conservative to Jewish Renewal. They have varying expectations for how far-reaching the impact of the new legal opinions will be.

Mike Moskowitz, an Orthodox rabbi and the scholar-in-residence for trans and queer Jewish studies at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, which serves the LGBTQ community, said the teshuvot could provide a model for observant Jews who are also trans.

“I think it’s significant in modeling what an informed conversation can look like, which hasn’t really happened in Orthodox publications,” said Moskowitz, who was not part of the collective that composed the teshuvot on trans Jews’ practice. “I hope this models what can be done in other movements. What’s been tricky is that every movement has a different understanding of what halacha means.”

Even within Orthodoxy, conflicting opinions already exist, in a reflection of how halacha has always operated. For example, Talia Avrahami, a transgender Orthodox woman, follows the opinion of the late Rabbi Eliezer Waldenberg, known as the Tzitz Eliezer, who ruled that a trans woman who undergoes gender affirmation surgery is a woman according to Jewish law. But Avrahami was told she could not sit in the women’s section of her synagogue, because the rabbi who the synagogue follows does not accept Waldenberg’s opinion. Months earlier, Avrahami had also been asked to leave her teaching job at an Orthodox day school after students and parents learned that she was transgender.

Avrahami declined to comment on the new teshuvot, citing restrictions set by her current employer.

Silverstein says some Conservative rabbis have expressed interest in using the opinions to guide practice in their own congregations. But he is less sure if they will be adopted in the Orthodox community, which is the target audience for most traditional literature on Jewish law.

“When it comes to the Orthodox community, I’m not sure I am bold enough to dream that these teshuvot specifically are going to be adopted,” Silverstein said. “I’m not even sure I know what that means. But it is my hope that they will permeate throughout the Jewish community, at least through the Modern Orthodox community.”

The scope of the opinions written by the collective extends beyond the trans community. The first batch of answers, for example, includes an opinion about how to increase physical accessibility to a mikvah, ritual baths used to fulfill some requirements of Jewish law.

“Judaism thrives and Torah thrives when people are bringing their life experiences to the text and asking their questions of the text,” Silverstein said. “That’s how new Torah is uncovered in the world. And that’s how Judaism and Torah has stayed alive through so much of Jewish history.”

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The post Queer yeshiva to publish first-ever collection of Jewish legal opinions written by and for trans Jews appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Why They Deny the Crimes of October 7

The personal belongings of festival-goers are seen at the site of an attack on the Nova Festival by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Oct. 12, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Even as they recorded their crimes in obsessive detail, the Nazis worked to deny and erase them. As the Shoah unfolded, they worked to conceal evidence: destroying documents, dismantling camps, burning bodies, and erasing traces of mass murder. Yet when the war ended and the scale of the Holocaust became undeniable, Nazis and their ideological fellow travelers did not retreat from denial. They escalated it. They sought to rewrite reality itself by denying, minimizing, relativizing, or distorting the crimes they had committed.

This eventually became a global phenomenon despite the Holocaust being one of the best-documented crimes in human history. Mountains of evidence existed: transport records, photographs, films, camp infrastructure, eyewitness and survivor testimony, perpetrator confessions, and the physical remnants of industrialized murder itself. None of it was enough for the deniers. Because Holocaust denial was never about evidence. It was about rehabilitating the perpetrators, delegitimizing Jewish suffering, and once again recasting Jews as manipulative liars, weaponizing victimhood for sympathy, power, or political gain.

Denial as Ideological Warfare

Today, something disturbingly similar is unfolding around October 7, particularly regarding the sexual crimes perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli women, men, and children.

A major new report by the Civil Commission, led by the inimitable Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, presented what CNN described as “the most comprehensive body of evidence yet” documenting systematic sexual violence during and after the October 7 genocide. The report draws upon survivor testimony, released hostages, eyewitness accounts, forensic evidence, therapists, medical experts, and first responders. Its conclusion is unequivocal: Hamas and affiliated terrorists used sexual violence as a deliberate weapon of war designed to maximize pain, humiliation, and terror.

The details are beyond horrifying. Women were raped beside the bodies of murdered friends. Victims were found partially naked, mutilated, tied to trees and poles, shot in the genitals, or executed after assault. Witnesses described gang rapes at the Nova festival. Former hostages spoke of sexual abuse, forced nudity, threats of forced marriage, and prolonged sexual humiliation in captivity.

Hamas terrorists and many Palestinian perpetrators recorded their crimes in sickening detail. Murders, kidnappings, torture, humiliation, and sexual violence were filmed, photographed, celebrated, and distributed online by the perpetrators themselves. In some cases, atrocities were broadcast through the victims’ own phones and social media accounts. Unlike the Nazis, Hamas’ violence was not hidden; it was publicized and glorified.

And yet denial persists.

Almost immediately after October 7, before the bodies were even cold, social media filled with claims that reports of rape were “Israeli propaganda.” Activists and commentators insisted there was “no evidence.” Others claimed Israelis had fabricated the allegations to justify war. Some demanded impossible evidentiary standards that are almost never applied to sexual violence anywhere else on earth. Even now, as testimonies accumulate and further evidence emerges, denial remains deeply embedded within parts of activist, academic, and media culture.

That is because, like Holocaust denial, this is not about evidence. Holocaust denial emerged despite overwhelming proof because the denial itself served a purpose. It protected the moral image of the perpetrators while transforming Jews from victims into deceivers. The denier does not simply reject facts. They reject the legitimacy of Jewish suffering itself. The same mechanism is visible today.

When Jewish Suffering Becomes Inconvenient

For many people invested in a worldview in which Israel represents absolute evil and Palestinians represent absolute victimhood, acknowledging the sexual crimes of October 7 creates tension. Jewish women cannot be permitted to exist as victims because their reality complicates the narrative. Israeli suffering becomes ideologically intolerable. And so it must be doubted, obscured, minimized, or erased altogether. This is why so much October 7 denialism focuses specifically on the sexual crimes.

Sexual violence carries a specific moral weight in contemporary society. To acknowledge that Hamas terrorists and their collaborators committed widespread and systematic acts of rape, mutilation, and sexual torture would require many activists to confront a reality: that individuals and movements they have celebrated, romanticized, excused, or sanitized committed acts of extraordinary brutality.

We should also recognize the profoundly anti-Jewish nature of this phenomenon. Jews are uniquely subjected to suspicion toward their suffering in ways that have become normalized across political and cultural life. The distrust of Jewish testimony has become so deeply embedded that many people no longer even recognize it as prejudice.

The Crime Continued Through Erasure

The tragedy is not only the crimes themselves, but what their denial reveals about the world Jews inhabit. After the Holocaust, many believed humanity had learned something: that there existed a moral obligation to listen to victims, document atrocities honestly, and ensure genocidal violence could never again be erased through propaganda and denial. Yet within hours of October 7, that promise began collapsing in real time.

The lesson of Holocaust denial should have taught us that evidence alone is never enough against ideologically motivated hatred. There will never be enough footage, enough testimony, enough witnesses, enough forensic evidence, or enough reports for those who have already decided that Jewish suffering does not count.

That is the real connection between Holocaust denial and the denial of October 7. Both ultimately rest upon the same underlying premise: that Jews are uniquely unworthy of belief, uniquely suspect in their suffering, and uniquely undeserving of moral sympathy.

Ultimately, when these crimes are denied, minimized, relativized, or erased, the victims are violated a second time. The murdered are stripped not only of their lives, but of the truth of what was done to them. The raped are stripped not only of bodily autonomy, but of the dignity of having their suffering acknowledged. Denial is never neutral. It is the continuation of the crime through erasure.

That is why speaking clearly about October 7, including the systematic sexual crimes perpetrated against women and girls, matters so profoundly. We cannot bring back those who were murdered. We cannot undo the horrors inflicted upon the victims. But we can refuse to abandon them to silence, distortion, and denial. We can bear witness. We can speak plainly. And we can ensure that those who suffered are not erased by a world that too often finds Jewish suffering uniquely difficult to acknowledge.

Founder of the modern Jewish Pride movement, Ben M. Freeman is the author of Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People (2021), Reclaiming our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride (2022) and The Jews: An Indigenous People (2025). Educating, inspiring and empowering, his work focuses on Jewish identity and historical and contemporary Jew-hatred. A Holocaust scholar for over fifteen years, Ben came to prominence during the Corbyn Labour Jew-hate crisis in the UK and quickly became one of his generation’s leading Jewish thinkers and voices against Jew-hate. The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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Remembering Abe Foxman: My Time with a Hero of the Jewish People

ADL National Director Emeritus Abe Foxman. Photo: ADL

Hearing the news that Abe Foxman died last Sunday at the age of 86 triggered a slew of memories about the man now being memorialized as “one of the last great architects of postwar American Jewish public life.”

Historians will surely write books studying Abe and his half-century legacy of fighting antisemitism, including 27 years as national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

But as Foxman was being eulogized by Jewish and non-Jewish leaders around the world, I recalled the amazing experiences I had with him, as I witnessed his quixotic quest to eliminate the infectious plague of antisemitism from the planet.

I come to this exercise with a unique lens; I may be the only newspaper reporter who both covered Abe, and then later went to work for him as ADL’s Director of Interfaith Affairs.

That history afforded me the opportunity to interact with Abe as both an outsider and an insider.

I experienced the little human asides — the famous hugs, as a reporter being called “tattele,” Yiddish for “good boy” which was somewhat cringeworthy for a journalist, and that time during a black-tie fundraiser in West Palm Beach where he came up to me and whispered, “get me out of here.” (I was never quite sure whether he was joking or not.)

So here I share some highlights of my time with the man that many remember so fondly.

As a young Holocaust survivor from Poland who was rescued, raised, and baptized by his Catholic nanny, Abe fully understood the importance of positive interfaith relations for the long-term health and welfare of the Jewish people.

As a reporter covering religion and interfaith issues, he called me one day and asked if I wanted to go to Rome and meet the Polish Pope, John Paul II. I was sure he was joking. The next thing I knew, I was sitting with him in a large conference room in the Vatican with a small contingent of ADL officials and the Pope. It was clear from their honest, direct, and warm exchange that these two sons of Poland held each other with great respect.

Several years later, as ADL’s interfaith director, Abe called me into his office after hearing that the Pope had selected Timothy Michael Dolan, the Archbishop of Milwaukee, to be the next Archbishop in New York City.

Abe’s directive was clear: “Find out when he’s coming to New York and make sure we are the first organization to meet with him.” Several frantic phone calls later, I arranged for Dolan to meet with us in Abe’s office a couple of days after he arrived in Manhattan. Dolan was immediately taken by Abe’s charm and thoughtful gift. It was the start of a long and deep friendship for us, that despite various controversies, held fast over the years.

But when it came to defending Jews and their dignity, Abe the charmer became Abe the bulldog. Late one afternoon in February 2012, he summoned me to his office.

He was clearly upset. It was revealed that the names of Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and his late father had been found in the genealogical database of the Mormon Church, now known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, making them available for posthumous baptism. Abe told me he was immediately calling one of the highest officials at church headquarters in Salt Lake City and demanding they remove the names, apologize, and stop baptizing Holocaust victims. Abe had his direct number. The Church Elder picked up the phone and attempted to explain the situation in bureaucratic terminology. But Abe wasn’t having it, holding fast to his demand. Within a few days, the church apologized stating this was not their policy. Abe tasked me to work with their interfaith director to monitor the situation and make sure they kept their word.

Abe also dedicated himself to defending others — embodying ADL’s mission statement “to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and secure justice and fair treatment for all.” When it became clear that local elected officials around the country were blocking Muslim communities from building or expanding their mosques by using questionable legal loopholes, Abe quickly approved my proposal to create an interfaith task force, ICOM, to support the rights of Muslim Americans to build their houses of worship. In addition, ADL’s civil rights division would file amicus briefs on behalf of the Muslim communities.

When it came to responding to haters of Jews and Israel, Abe generally criticized them with equal force, no matter the political party or the prominence of the person. In this age of polarization, this perhaps is the most important lesson to recall.

At his funeral at the ornate Park Avenue synagogue in Manhattan on Tuesday, more than 500 family, friends, current and former ADL officials, and New York and national Jewish leaders gathered to say goodbye to Foxman.

The funeral included video eulogies by Israeli President Issac Herzog, and Ambassador Susan E. Rice, who served as President Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor, who said she loved Foxman, and that he always had her back. Sara J. Bloomfield, the longtime director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., consistently referred to Foxman as “a giant.” New York Times Columnist Tom Friedman, who first met Abe in summer camp when he was a teenager and Foxman was his camp leader, called him a “modern Maccabee.”

Foxman was also remembered as “a man of gravitas and humor” and as a “person of consequence” — respected and listened to by presidents, prime ministers, and popes.

He especially was remembered as a man who put family above everything, as testified by his two children and four grandchildren, who provided many touching details of his love and devotion to each one of them, being in touch every day with a call or an email, and ending his messages with “LOL” — which despite their corrections, Foxman insisted meant “lots of love.”

His daughter Michelle even located her father’s 1958 high school yearbook from Yeshivah of Flatbush High School in Brooklyn. Standing on the bimah or platform in front of the synagogue pews, she read his moving essay about the importance of the State of Israel to the Jewish people after the Holocaust, and his “secret mission” — conceived as an 18-year-old — to spend his life defending it.

Park Avenue Senior Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, who led the service, stated that with Foxman’s passing, it was now the obligation of the leaders in the room, and future generations, to continue the fight against exploding violent antisemitism and anti-Israelism, and the protection of American democracy.

Rabbi Eric J. Greenberg is ADL’s former national Director of Interfaith Affairs and Outreach, and a national award-winning journalist.

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The Media Keeps Treating Terrorists as Civilians — Here’s the Proof

Palestinians pass by the gate of an UNRWA-run school in Nablus Photo: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini.

Since October 7, 2023, the media has worked tirelessly to accuse Israel of deliberately targeting civilians.

Yet despite Israel’s extensive efforts to minimize civilian harm, the terrorist organizations it is fighting have systematically worked to ensure the opposite outcome.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah have embedded themselves deeply within civilian society, inflating casualty figures while obscuring the military identities of many of those killed.

In both Gaza and Lebanon, this strategy has produced what researchers describe as a “resistance society” — a system in which operatives simultaneously hold civilian professions that provide both legitimacy and operational cover.

Journalism is among the most visible examples.

In Gaza alone, more than 100 terrorists operating under the cover of journalism have reportedly been killed by the IDF since October 7. Meanwhile, Hezbollah-affiliated media figures in Lebanon are routinely portrayed by international outlets as innocent civilians or independent reporters.

But the evidence does not come solely from Israel.

Again and again, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah themselves publish martyrdom posters identifying deceased operatives not only by their military affiliations, but also by their civilian professions.

The pattern is striking: terrorists simultaneously serving as doctors, teachers, paramedics, police officers, lawyers, musicians, and journalists.

Hospitals as Operational Cover

International media coverage has consistently framed Israeli military operations near hospitals as attacks on civilian medical infrastructure. But Hamas and Islamic Jihad have repeatedly embedded operatives inside those facilities, stripping them of protected civilian status under the laws of armed conflict.

Hospitals in Gaza have allegedly functioned not only as treatment centers, but also as operational hubs, weapons storage sites, and cover for terrorist activity. Many individuals publicly described as “medical workers” were later identified by terror organizations themselves as operatives.

One prominent example is Marwan Al-Hams, identified as a Hamas operative who was detained in July 2025 over suspected knowledge regarding the whereabouts of fallen IDF officer Lt. Hadar Goldin.

Palestinian and pro-Palestinian media initially portrayed his detention as the “abduction” of a medical professional — coverage that largely disappeared once his Hamas affiliation became public.

Other documented cases include:

  • Ayman Abu Teir, identified as an Islamic Jihad commander.
  • Khaled Al-Rakiei, who led the Islamic Jihad in the western Gaza Strip while working as a doctor in Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital.
  • Murshid Abu Abdullah, identified as a commander in Islamic Jihad’s Khan Younis Brigade and the managing director of the al-Baraka Specialized Health Center, as well as a radiology technician at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
  • Rami Talal Mohammed Jarghoun, a commander in Islamic Jihad’s al-Balad Battalion’s Support Unit within the Khan Younis Brigade and an administrative supervisor at the European Hospital in Khan Younis.
  • Najm Abu al-Jibeen, a Qassam commander who worked as a nurse.
  • Salem Juma Ishaq Sharab, a commander in Islamic Jihad’s Military Ambulance Unit in the Khan Younis Brigade, a nurse at Nasser Hospital, and treasurer of the Palestinian Nursing Association.
  • Diaa Nafez Abdulhadi Felfel, a commander in Islamic Jihad’s Military Ambulance Unit in its Northern Brigade, and a nurse and the emergency room supervisor for the Indonesian Hospital in north Gaza.

Ambulances and Emergency Services

The same pattern extends to paramedics and emergency medical services.

Hezbollah operates its own medical infrastructure through the Islamic Health Authority, whose personnel have been identified as Hezbollah operatives.

Evidence has suggested that the ambulances are used to transport terrorists between locations discreetly. The IDF has additionally released videos displaying weapons in ambulances.

Hamas has similarly exploited ambulances. Ibrahim Abu Tzakar, a Hamas-affiliated terrorist who participated in the kidnapping of an Israeli civilian, also worked as a paramedic.

The Classroom-to-Terror Pipeline

While Israel has been accused of “scholasticide,” mounting evidence points to extensive terrorist entrenchment within Gaza’s educational infrastructure.

Teachers and professors have repeatedly been identified as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or Hezbollah operatives. Some UNRWA-affiliated teachers were allegedly involved in the October 7 attacks themselves.

Among the documented examples:

  • Muhammad Ghafour, an Arabic teacher in an UNRWA school and a Hamas member.
  • Fathi al-Sharif, a Hamas commander in Lebanon who also headed UNRWA’s teachers’ union there.
  • Dr. Riyad Abu Hashish, a university history professor, and Mahmoud Ahmed Abu Shamala, a physics teacher, were senior Islamic Jihad terrorists.
  • Ali Jaafar Marji, a Hezbollah operative, also worked as a​ physics teacher in Hezbollah’s independent education system.

The consequences extend beyond staffing.

Children as young as 13 have reportedly appeared in the ranks of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, underscoring the extent to which extremist ideology has permeated educational and social systems.

Hamas and Gaza’s Security Apparatus

Hamas’ integration into civilian institutions extends deeply into Gaza’s police and internal security infrastructure.

The terror group has reportedly sought to incorporate 10,000 police officers into a future governing framework in Gaza despite many officers maintaining affiliations with Hamas or other terror factions.

This overlap helps explain why Israel has repeatedly targeted police infrastructure during the war.

Cases cited include:

Terror Embedded Across Civil Society

The phenomenon is not confined to healthcare, education, or policing.

Terror organizations also benefit from embedding operatives in professions that carry social legitimacy or cultural influence.

Examples include:

These dual identities help terrorist organizations blur the line between civilian and combatant while strengthening their entrenchment inside society.

When terrorist organizations systematically embed themselves within civilian infrastructure, that fact is not incidental — it is central to understanding the conflict.

Much of the evidence documenting these affiliations comes directly from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah themselves. Their own martyrdom announcements repeatedly reveal that many individuals later described internationally as “civilians” were active members of terror organizations leading double lives inside civilian society.

The question is whether international media outlets are willing to acknowledge the pattern — or whether they will continue reporting only half the story.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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