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Rabbi David Wolpe, stepping down from a top pulpit, wants you to stop arguing and start listening

(JTA) — David Wolpe has been called one of the most quoted rabbis in the United States, and not always to his advantage. As senior rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, one of the largest and most visible Conservative pulpits in the country, the decisions he makes and things he says are often treated as bellwethers of centrist American Jewry. When he questioned the historicity of the Exodus story or began performing same-sex marriages, for example, he made front-page news.
Wolpe has also led an unusually diverse synagogue, with pews filled both by largely liberal Jews of Ashkenazi descent and Persian Jews with roots in Iran who tend to be more politically conservative. Bridging these divides has been a signature of his rabbinate, and in recent years he has been writing and tweeting about civil discourse in increasingly polarized times.
On Friday, Wolpe, 63, became emeritus rabbi of Sinai Temple, where he had been the senior rabbi since 1997. As he prepared to step aside – he’ll spend the next year as a fellow at Harvard Divinity School — he joined me in a public Zoom conversation Tuesday to talk about what he learned as a rabbi, the changes he has seen in American Judaism, and his hopes and fears for the future. But I especially wanted to talk about the polarized political climate and his views on moral and political discourse (with which I have occasionally disagreed). We also talked about rabbis who speak about politics from the pulpit, a topic which led to a fascinating back-and- forth among Wolpe and his colleagues in the pages of the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles.
“We’re much more polarized than we were in 1997,” Wolpe, the author of eight books and a long-running column in the New York Jewish Week, told me. “Everybody knows that. And you can get into much more trouble by expressing an opinion on one or the other side of a controversial issue than you could back then.”
Our conversation was wide-ranging, and I encourage you to watch the whole thing here. Below is an excerpt, edited for length and clarity, focusing on our discussion of civil discourse.
You have a famously diverse synagogue. What were some of the cultural and political divides that you had to bridge and how have they changed?
There were political divides, first of all. I have right and left. I have some very ardent supporters of Trump and very ardent detractors. And there was a cultural divide because the patterns of language and so on of the Persian community and the Ashkenazi community were different. I wrote about this in a forthcoming New York Times editorial, about the two best ways to bridge [these divides]. I’ll take a step back to explain it more fully than I did there. We don’t have a common culture. Nobody reads the same books. Nobody watches the same movies. Nobody watches the same television shows. I mean, the “Who Shot J.R.?” episode [of “Dallas,” in 1980] drew tens of millions of views, but the finale of something like “Succession” draws a couple million. The one thing everyone has in common is politics. So when people talk, when they meet each other, they start with politics, which is guaranteed to cause division.
Sinai Temple, where David Wolpe was senior rabbi starting in 1997, is known for the political and ethnic diversity of its large congregation. (Courtesy Sinai Temple)
One of the things I tried to encourage in the synagogue was to get people to know each other in different ways than opening the conversation about politics. Talk about your kids. Talk about school. Talk about what you’d like to do on vacation, talk about food. Talk about life so that you know the person as a person before they express their opinion so at the outset of the conversation you wouldn’t totally dismiss them. And the other thing I encourage, which is difficult, is just listening. Understand that growing up in Tehran gives you a different view of the world than growing up in Philadelphia. And I have to respect the fact that it’s a very different orientation. And in order to understand it, I can’t tell someone else what to think. I have to listen to what they think and ask questions about it. Which is not easy. Here’s a little Hebrew lesson: The word “savlanut,” which means patience in Hebrew, comes from the word “seivel,” which means to suffer. Because patience is suffering sometimes, but you have to go through it to understand others.
I want to talk a little bit more about how you bridge those gaps. But I want to go back to a famous moment in your rabbinate. This is in 2001, when in a series of sermons you cited archaeologists who said that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all. The L.A. Times picks up the story. And you were accused by some as being the rabbi who chose science and history over faith and Judaism. I want to ask not just about that, but also what you think a rabbi would have to say today to spark a similar furor.
I’m going to start with the first part. My whole point in the sermon was that it didn’t matter — that actual faith transcends the facts of the case. And that I celebrate Passover the same way despite the fact that archaeologists rebut the historical record, and also that you can’t make historical claims and then tell archaeologists “what you say doesn’t matter.” But that is a separate controversy for another time.
I think today it’s very audience-dependent. If you got up in a Reform congregation and said that, you wouldn’t cause a ruckus, but if you got up in an Orthodox congregation and said that — most, but not all — you would cause a furor. When I came out for same-sex marriage, it was on the front page of The New York Times and the L.A. Times because it caused such a furor in the congregation. When that happened, I said to my daughter, “I want you to know when you go to school tomorrow, people are going to be saying bad things about your father,” and she said to me, “Why?” And I said because I’m sending a letter that I’m going to be doing same-sex marriages. I remember her looking at me and saying, “What took you so long?” Because for her it was like I was saying, “I’m gonna marry brown-haired people to blonde-haired people.” She didn’t understand why that was an issue. The nature of controversies change a lot, but there will always be controversies.
So how did you weather it? What helps you keep congregants on board – or not, and decide it’s okay to let some congregants slip away?
If you believe what you’re saying matters and is true, it helps a lot. I also told my daughter what Churchill said, I think after the Boer War, which is “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” In other words, the people who didn’t like me before didn’t like me after, and the people who loved me before loved me after. You realize that there is an immediate cost to being true to yourself, but there’s a long-range, huge benefit and that it’s worth it. So I was very fortunate. I didn’t lose my job. I didn’t lose my friends. You know, there are people who take stands and they lose much more than I did. And obviously, you know, if you’re in a different kind of country, you lose even more than that. So, I think if you’re given a pulpit, then to the extent that you believe something, it’s really important to enunciate from the pulpit, and that you can [create] change by doing it. You have a responsibility.
Still, there’s a big debate over whether rabbis should be talking politics from the pulpit. Where do you stand on that? What do you think are the limits of literally the bully pulpit?
I’m very, very opposed, actually, to rabbis talking politics from the pulpit, and I’ll tell you why I say that. First of all, it’s not like I know more about politics than my congregants. So if I talked about gun control, for example, about which I have strong feelings, I’m talking to people who know as much or more about it than I do, who see it differently. And it seems to me it is an illegitimate arrogation of my role as a rabbi to say that “because I see it this way, this is Judaism’s position,” which is generally how it’s framed. I actually gave a class years ago where I took a whole bunch of issues — immigration, abortion, women’s rights — and I gave all the Jewish sources on both sides, just so people should realize that Judaism speaks to both sides of these issues.
I always ask rabbis who speak politically from the pulpit, “If you were not a rabbi, if you were not even Jewish, would your political position be different?” In other words, is your political position mandated by what you understand the Torah to be even though it’s not your personal position? Or is it just your personal position filtered through the Torah? And almost inevitably, it’s the personal position, filtered through the Torah. That to me is just basically preaching politics with a little Judaic twist. And I don’t think that’s what a rabbi should be doing. If there is one place that can be a refuge in a country that is saturated with politics all the time, so that you can actually elevate your soul and hear things about your life and about Jewish history and aspiration, it seems to me it would be the synagogue. I should say as a caveat, I exempt Israel from that: Being pro-Israel seems to me a fundamental Jewish tenet and not a political one.
But I want to push back a little bit. Historically, we look back with such pride on rabbis like Abraham Joshua Heschel or Joachim Prinz in Newark, who in a very polarized time in this country took a strong stand and threw their Jewishness, threw their pulpits, they threw their whole selves into the civil rights movement.
That is the example that people always point to: Heschel. And I say that’s exactly right, because it’s the exception, it’s not the rule. If there is a radical injustice being perpetrated — and I felt, for example, [the denial of] gay marriage was a radical injustice — then you speak up. But everything becomes a question of radical injustice now, everything, every political issue. Civil rights was a uniquely morally urgent issue, about which I really believe it was right to speak up, but those are few and far between. And instead what happens is everything gets thrown into the same pot. Minimum wage becomes just as urgent and people will invoke civil rights to argue one way or another on minimum wage and every other issue in the world, and whether you should be a Republican or a Democrat. And the way that they speak about the other part of the country, it’s like, “they’re obviously radically immoral and terrible.” And I don’t think the rabbi should contribute to that discourse, except in the most extreme circumstances, which obviously civil rights was.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (far right) marches with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery on March 21, 1965. (Getty)
You’ve been writing frequently in the journal Sapir about the ethics of dialogue. And in one essay you ask, “How should we respond when someone promulgates a view with which we disagree, or one that we find offensive, repugnant, even dangerous?” So I’ll throw that question back to you. How do we respond?
The first way you respond is you ask the person, “Why do you believe that?” Because you’ll learn much more and you might discover interesting facts both about the person and about the belief that you didn’t know at first. I’ve had this discussion many, many times with people who have political beliefs that differ from my own and once you actually interrogate the belief, then you can respond to it. But we’ve become a culture in which the way you respond is by attacking the person. I also want to say that, in my experience, most of the political diatribes that we hear change nobody’s mind. Instead, they make your team feel good. And the other team doesn’t even listen to you.
What also tends to happen is that if you reach out your own team gets upset, because you’re just supposed to be supporting them and you’re not supposed to be listening to the other side. But the Talmud is filled with argument and debate. And the reason you listen to the house of Hillel and not the house of Shammai [two famous antagonists in the Talmud] is because of the way they conducted themselves during the debate. They let Shammai express their opinion first. They listened. They were kind. They were understanding. So this is a multifaceted question. It’s not just a question of abstract opinion. It’s also a question of the way you bear yourself in the public square.
But I wonder if something’s changed. I don’t know if you’ll agree with me, but in terms of public debate I think there’s a different dialogue when one side is trying to muster facts and good-faith arguments, and the other side responds with straw man arguments and conspiracy theories. I’m wondering when trying to seek an argument for the sake of Heaven falls down because one side isn’t really willing to play by the rules.
First of all, I’ve seen both sides indulge in conspiracy theories and false facts. And while one side may be more egregiously guilty of this than the other, I’m always suspicious of someone who thinks their own side doesn’t do this. So if you’re willing to fess up and say “we do this” and then you turn to the other person and say “I see your side doing this,” that’s the beginning of a dialogue. Instead, what I hear is, “My side does facts. Your side does conspiracy.” That’s not going to start a dialogue. So if you’re willing to look at your own shortcomings, then you have the possibility of actually starting a dialogue. But that isn’t what I see. And I don’t want to make this all about the worst actors on [either] side. Because there’s a range and I see that in the people that I talk to.
You also recently tweeted, along the same lines, “Being right is increasingly favored over searching for truth. A healthy society like a thoughtful individual values discovery over justification.” That sounds like a summary of what you’ve been saying.
I had this proposal that I don’t know will ever be realized. I wanted everybody to have a politics dinner. And the idea was, you had to take the other person’s position. You could not express the opinion you believed in. You just had to take the other person’s position and see how well you could articulate what you think the other believes. Because when you start to do that, you start to realize that the other side actually has things that are worth hearing, and truth never resides entirely on one side of the argument. I want to be clear: That does not mean that I don’t favor certain sides over other sides and there aren’t people in the public sphere that I am not fans of, to say the least. But that alone doesn’t help advance the dialogue. To say that doesn’t move things forward. And I’m really interested in trying to move things forward.
What does “moving things forward” mean in this regard?
Genuine discussions with people who you really disagree with — that’s what I think of as moving things forward. Not ruling them out of court because they support this candidate or that candidate. This is not too crazy. You and I grew up in an America where people actually did this. Let me give you a statistic that I find really striking. When I was young, if you asked the average American, “How do you feel about your child marrying someone of another race?” The percentage was very small of Americans who felt good about that. If you said, “How do you feel about your child marrying someone of another political party?” Overwhelmingly, people were in favor of that. Now the numbers have exactly flipped. Now, that shows you that we can change for good and we can change for ill but the only way to change for good is by actually really engaging with the other. Otherwise, we’re going to dig deeper and deeper bunkers. And that can’t be good for America or for the world.
What are the limits of engagement? I’m thinking of when organizations are pressured to cancel a speaker because one side claims the other poses a threat or is somehow beyond the pale. Are there red lines that Jewish organizations shouldn’t be expected to cross?
I would not invite a Holocaust denier to speak to a Jewish organization.
An anti-Zionist?
I wouldn’t invite an anti-Zionist, but if a Jewish organization did, I would not say that they should never have done that. But I would say that they have an obligation to have somebody speak to the other side of that question. Because anti-Zionism to me often shades into antisemitism — they’re not exactly identical, but they’re closer than second cousins.
My general predisposition is that the way you combat bad ideas is with good ideas, not by saying those bad ideas can’t be heard, because we know this strategy doesn’t work. All it does is give fuel to the people who have bad ideas [to say] “Oh, you see, you don’t even want to engage with me. That’s because my idea is so dangerous that you can’t stand to hear it.”
I can give you other examples. I wouldn’t invite a Jew for Jesus to speak at a Jewish institution either. I have specific reasons. But it’s tricky, and there is no perfect distinction that you can make. I think we should try to err on the side of being a listener, as opposed to a censor.
Israelis and American Jews protest outside a Teaneck, New Jersey synagogue where Israeli politician Simcha Rothman, a leading figure in his government’s push to overhaul the judicial system, was giving a speech, June 1, 2023. (JTA)
I’ll throw out one more example and this is purely hypothetical: perhaps inviting an Israeli cabinet member who represents anti-democratic tendencies in the Jewish state.
If I were in that [institution] I would ask them to have somebody cross-examine this person, as opposed to just have them speak, because I think those views are too important to pretend they don’t exist, but they’re also too toxic to not be challenged.
At the risk of making you repeat yourself, I want to refer to the chat that is accompanying this Zoom. I don’t know if you have been following it but what I’m seeing is people saying that there are political questions that are moral questions, and if we overdo the idea of trying to learn from the other side, we are conceding a moral, just stance.
I hear this all the time. But what you don’t understand is that you hear it from both sides.
But that doesn’t mean both sides are right.
My brother who’s an ethicist [Paul Root Wolpe, director of the Center for Ethics at Emory University] says ethical dilemmas are almost always a choice between two rights, not between a right and a wrong. And in every political question there are usually buried in it two things that are principles that everybody agrees with but just that we favor one principle over another. So for example, with immigration, the humane treatment of human beings, the right of a country to define its own borders and to decide who it is and who it isn’t. And we see this in multiple ways. And it’s not so easy to say this is clearly right and this is clearly wrong. And understand I’m not asking you to not take a stand. If someone wants to ask me my private opinion, I’m always happy to give it. I pull no punches when they ask me what I think of this person or that person in private. That’s not the question. The question is how do we conduct public dialogue so it’s not just two people shouting at each other? And believe me, as soon as you say to the other side, “I’m just right and moral and you’re just wrong” you have just closed down the possibility that you can talk. And if you want to do that, you can, but realize that that will just mean that everybody in your camp will agree with you, and everybody in our camp won’t listen to you, and nothing will get done.
People always hear listening as giving up on your own moral position. But it’s not. It’s listening. It’s being able to hear that someone else also has a moral position, even if you disagree with it. And if you really understand, if you can express the other person’s opinion really well — if you can do that well, then I think you’re ready to say, “and this is why I disagree with it.” But if you’re going to caricature it as just, well, “you’re an immoral jerk,” then honestly, you don’t understand what you’re arguing against.
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Antisemitism at European Universities Has Created ‘Climate of Fear,’ New Report Finds

Krakow, Poland, October 5: Pro-Palestinian activists in front of the Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Photo: Artur Widak via Reuters Connect
Antisemitism on European university campuses rivals what has ensued in the US since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, fostering a “climate of fear” for Jewish students, according to a new report by two Jewish groups and a German watchdog.
B’nai B’rith International, the European Union of Jewish Students, and democ, a Berlin-based organization of academics and media professionals, on Tuesday published a comprehensive report titled “A Climate of Fear and Exclusion: Antisemitism at European Universities.”
“When Jewish students fear being violently harassed on campus, when in the most prestigious universities Jewish students might find swastikas or death threats on their personal property, when they are not allowed access to spaces and events due to their presumed Zionism — the free speech argument is a canard,” B’nai B’rith director of European Union affairs Alina Bricman said in a statement. “The lack of action on the part of academic institutions is shameful.”
The document recounts a slew of incidents that took place at the most prestigious higher education institutions across the continent, including Cambridge University, the University of Amsterdam, and Delft University of Technology. Some were perpetrated by extreme anti-Zionist groups tied to terrorist organizations while others struck as random acts of hatred, terrorizing in themselves for intimidating Jewish members of the campus community.
At the University of Strasbourg, someone assaulted a group of Jewish students while shouting “Zionist fascists”; the University of Vienna hosted an “Intifada Camp,” a pro-Hamas encampment; at the Free University of Brussels campus in Solbosch, a pro-Hamas group illegally occupied an administrative building and renamed it after a terrorist. Throughout Europe, anti-Zionists damaged property to the tune of hundreds of thousands of Euros, desecrated Jewish religious symbols, graffitied Jewish students’ dormitories with swastikas, and carried out gang assaults on Jewish student leaders.
In many cases, university leaders acceded to the demands of these pro-Hamas activists and terminated partnerships with Israeli institutions, as happened in Belgium.
“By renouncing limited partnerships with Israel, the authorities not only gave in to political pressure but also endangered freedom of expression and the diversity of ideas on their campuses,” the report’s authors wrote. “This attitude, far from protecting academic values, allowed ideologies to take precedence over fundamental principles of research and academic freedom.”
It continued, “These events are not isolated acts. They reflect a climate of siege-like hostility towards Israel that now permeates Belgium, from the media to universities, from the north to the south, from the right to the left. The Palestinian cause has gradually become the core of a genuine ‘civil religion’ or ‘secular religion.’”
The situation calls for a prompt defense of the university’s values, as well as the universal principles Europe claims to hold.
“The documentation gathered in this report makes it clear that we are dealing with highly coordinated, transnational networks that operate as part of a global movement,” said Grischa Stanjek, co-executive director of democ. “They strategically disguise an antisemitic agenda in the language of human rights to gain legitimacy. University leaders are making a grave mistake if they treat these events as local flare-ups instead of what they are: calculated manifestations of a global, anti-democratic campaign.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Synagogue in Chile Vandalized With Antisemitic Graffiti, Prompting Outrage, Investigation

The gate of Santiago’s Bikur Cholim Synagogue defaced with red paint and antisemitic graffiti, including a poster targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: Screenshot
Chile’s authorities launched an investigation after a synagogue in Santiago was defaced with antisemitic graffiti and slogans, an act that has sparked outrage in the local Jewish community.
On Friday night, the gate of Santiago’s Bikur Cholim Synagogue was vandalized with red paint and a poster depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a bullet hole in his forehead.
An unknown individual spray-painted antisemitic slogans, including “If you keep silent, you’re part of genocide,” an apparent reference to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Israeli Ambassador to Chile Peleg Lewi condemned the outrage, noting that antisemitic incidents are rare in the country.
Vandalizacion y ataques a Sinagogas anoche en Santiago !
Estoy seguro que @GobiernodeChile luchará contra el antisemistismo en Chile! pic.twitter.com/feWR09cny1— פלג לוי – Peleg Lewi (@peleg_lewi) August 23, 2025
Since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Lewi explained, Chile has seen only a few minor antisemitic incidents — a stark contrast to other countries around the world, which have experienced a surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes.
He also stressed the importance of maintaining calm and warned against bringing the Middle East conflict into Chile.
Local authorities have launched an investigation into the vandalism, but no arrests have been made so far.
The Jewish Community of Chile denounced the incident, stressing that such antisemitic acts cannot be accepted or tolerated.
“Acts of hatred cannot be downplayed, normalized, or justified by political or ideological slogans; they must be forcefully and universally condemned,” the group said in a post on X.
“Chile is a country that values freedom of worship, and that means we must respect, care for, and protect one another, regardless of our beliefs,” the statement read. “Vandalism of a holy site is not just an attack on a community but on the coexistence and peace of the entire country.”
Condenamos rotundamente el ataque a una sinagoga de Santiago. Lamentablemente no es la primera vez que ocurre.
Los actos de odio no pueden ser relativizados, normalizados o justificados bajo consignas políticas o ideológicas: deben ser condenados con fuerza y de manera… pic.twitter.com/CTAHqDs6yh
— Comunidad Judía de Chile (@comjudiachile) August 24, 2025
Alberto van Klaveren, Chile’s Foreign Minister, also condemned the vandalism of the Bikur Cholim Synagogue.
“No expression of hatred or violence can be normalized; there is no argument that justifies intimidation or discrimination,” Klaveren said in a post on X. “The only way to express dissent in a democracy is through open and respectful dialogue.”
On Sunday, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) warned that the incident in Chile was the latest reminder that antisemitism remains a global threat.
“No synagogue should ever be vandalized,” the statement read.
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Trump Admin Reviewing Visas of ‘Terrorist Sympathizers’ Set to Appear at Palestinian Conference in Detroit

Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
The Trump administration is reviewing and may block the visa applications of speakers scheduled to appear at the People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit, Michigan later this week over links to terrorism, The Algemeiner has learned.
A spokesperson for the US State Department told The Algemeiner that officials have “noted” the gathering, set to take place from Aug. 29-31, and will closely monitor visa applications for invited international speakers, citing a preponderance of “terrorist sympathizers” on the program’s lineup.
“Given the public invite lists seems to include a number of terrorist sympathizers, we are going through and ensuring all international speakers slated to attend the conference are being placed on a ‘look out’ status for visa applications, so we are alerted if a request is submitted and can ensure they are appropriately processed,” the spokesperson said.
“In every case, we will take the time necessary to ensure an applicant does not pose a risk to the safety and security of the United States and that he or she has credibly established his or her eligibility for the visa sought, including that the applicant intends to engage in activities consistent with the terms of admission,” the spokesperson added.
The conference will feature dozens of radical anti-Zionist activists, academics, artists, and political organizers, including US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
Tlaib’s appearance at last year’s iteration of the People’s Conference for Palestine sparked intense backlash, with critics pointing out the event’s connections to Wisam Rafeedie and Salah Salah, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization.
The conference is convened by a coalition that includes the Palestinian Youth Movement, Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, among others. Several of these groups have maintained ties with PFLP, openly supported boycott efforts against Israel, and called for an arms embargo in the wake of Israel’s military campaign against Hamas. The programming highlights sessions on “Documenting Genocide” and “Breaking the Siege,” rhetoric that critics argue mischaracterizes Israel’s actions as it seeks to defend itself against terrorist attacks following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The Detroit gathering is expected to attract thousands of attendees, with dozens of speakers and activists scheduled to participate. Among the roster are well-known anti-Israel figures such as Linda Sarsour, Miko Peled, and Chris Smalls. Sarsour has erroneously compared Zionism to “white supremacy in America” and accused Israel of perpetuating “Jewish supremacy.”
Arabs comprise about 21 percent of Israel’s population and include full rights of citizenship, including the ability to serve in parliament and on the Supreme Court as well as the ability to protest openly against the government.
The planned presence of several foreign terror sympathizers has sparked outrage among observers.
Abed Abubaker, a self-described “reporter” from Gaza, is expected to make a physical appearance at the Detroit conference. Abubaker has repeatedly praised the Hamas terrorist group as “resistance fighters” on social media and won a “journalist of the year” award from Iran’s state-controlled media outlet PressTV. In a January 2025 post, he showered praise on long-time Hamas leader and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, saying that the terrorist’s “love of resistance and land is seen very clearly.” In a March 2025 post, Abubaker posted that international supporters of the Palestinian cause should “attack your governments.” He also defended Hamas’s murdering of dissidents, saying that the victims were “collaborating” with Israel.
Some of the speakers have been convicted and imprisoned in Israel for terrorist activity.
Omar Assaf, a former member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and Lama Ghosheh, a Palestinian journalist from East Jerusalem, are scheduled to speak at the conference. Assaf spent eight years in jail for his role in the DFLP, which was previously a US-designated terrorist group, and Ghosheh received a three-year sentence from an Israeli court in 2023 for inciting violence and praising terrorism in the West Bank and Gaza.
Mosab Abu Toha, a Gaza-born writer, is also set to appear at the conference. Abu Toha’s social media posts reveal he has denigrated the Israeli hostages held in Gaza, denied the murder of the Bibas children, and spread fake news and antisemitic remarks. In other posts, he referred to Israeli soldiers as “killers” and criticized international media for “humaniz[ing]” them.
Perhaps most striking, Hussam Shaheen was slated to speak at the conference. He spent 27 years in prison for attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder but was released earlier this year as part of a temporary Israel-Hamas ceasefire that saw Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for Israeli hostages. However, Shaheen’s name no longer appears on the list of speakers on the conference’s website.
US-based speakers also have extremist associations. Hatem Bazian, for example, co-founded Students for Justice in Palestine, a group that has become notorious for intimidating Jews on university campuses, as well as American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a nonprofit he now chairs which has sponsored a series of anti-Israel protests following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. Bazian works as a senior lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. On Tuesday, The Algemeiner reported on recent comments by Bazian in which he accused Jews of exploiting antisemitism to make money and claimed that Israel wants to conquer most of the Middle East, including Mecca and Medina, the holiest sites in Islam.
The event will also host Mahmoud Khalil, one of the leaders of the anti-Israel encampment movement at Columbia University. Khalil rose to national prominence after US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained him in March for what the Department of Homeland Security alleged to be leading “activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” Khalil, who became a permanent US resident last year, was released from detention in June when a federal judge ordered his release. The activist also drew scrutiny last month after he refused to condemn Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities during a CNN interview.
Since returning to the White House earlier this year, the Trump administration has launched an overhaul of the US visa system, part of what officials describe as an effort to root out individuals sympathetic to terrorism or those espousing antisemitic views. The sweeping measures include expanded social media vetting for new applicants, continuous monitoring of the 55 million current visa holders, and the revocation of thousands of student visas.
Panels at this week’s conference in Detroit will touch on subjects such as US military aid, legal accountability, and grassroots organizing, all presented through an anti-Israel lens, according to the event website.