RSS
Reclaiming Jewish Pride in an Age of Rising Hatred — I Am Done Being Quiet
Israeli youths wave flags and sing outside Jerusalem’s Old City May 29, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
To be Jewish in this moment is to be caught between ancestral trauma and modern-day terror. It is to scroll through social media and see our pain dismissed, our history denied, and our people dehumanized. It is to walk into spaces that claim to be progressive only to find that we, Jews, have been erased, vilified, or forced into silence.
But I am not silent. I am here — as a Jew, as an Israeli, as an American, as a Zionist, as a gay man, as every other part of my identity –and I am fighting forward.
The phrase “never again” was never meant to be passive. It was a call to action. A warning. A demand. Yet here we are, witnessing a resurgence of antisemitism so blatant, so emboldened, that it feels ripped from the pages of history we swore we wouldn’t repeat. From mobs calling for the destruction of Israel, to campus chants openly invoking genocidal rhetoric, the world has grown increasingly comfortable with its hate toward Jews, especially when it hides behind the veil of activism or academic theory.
But we are not just targets. We are not just survivors. We are sovereign people with a right — not only to defend ourselves — but to live with pride, to celebrate our culture, and to exist unapologetically.
As a Jewish advocate and a storyteller, I have spent years using my voice to confront hate, bridge communities, and inspire pride. I appear as a commentator on international news networks and write regularly for news publications, bringing Jewish voices and perspectives into the global media discourse.
I meet with US Congress members and Israeli Knesset representatives to advocate on behalf of the US, Israeli, and international Jewish communities — speaking up for our needs, our challenges, and our aspirations. I support Jewish organizations, community groups, and student groups by providing workshops, media training, and strategy sessions that help them move from trauma to resilience. And I work closely with survivors and the loved ones of victims, helping them take their next steps forward — not just in healing, but as examples of leadership and strength. This is what Jewish advocacy looks like — not just standing up to hate, but lifting each other through it.
What I have come to learn is this: The greatest resistance to antisemitism is Jewish joy and Jewish power, rooted in Jewish education. Not power as domination, but power as presence. Power as permanence. Power as pride. Power as knowledge.
It’s easy to vilify Jews when we are painted as invisible or other. But when we speak, create, dance, love, and shine as Jews, we disrupt the lie. We remind the world that we are not a relic of the past, not a scapegoat for political agendas — but a people with a story that continues, despite every attempt to silence us.
This moment demands that we move beyond survival mode. Survival is essential — but it’s not enough. The future of Jewish life depends on sovereignty of spirit. That means reclaiming our narrative in every realm — media, politics, education, and culture. It means rejecting the idea that we must make ourselves smaller or quieter to be accepted. It means holding our heads high when we speak of Israel — not as a footnote or a caveat, but as the indigenous homeland of our people, the miracle of Jewish self-determination.
Yes, I am a Zionist. Not because it’s fashionable — it isn’t. Not because it’s easy — it’s not. I am a Zionist because I believe in the right of the Jewish people to live freely in our ancestral land. I believe in the right to security, sovereignty, and survival — for all peoples — but especially for the one that has been hunted, exiled, and massacred across millennia.
And I reject the false binary that tells me I cannot be progressive and proudly Jewish. I will not choose between justice and my Jewishness — because Judaism is justice. Judaism is the original call for human dignity, for equity, for repairing the world. Our values are not at odds with activism — they are the root of it. I might be “old school progressive,” and I have separated from the misguidedness of today’s overreaching Progressive movement. My values have not changed, yet the movement sure has.
We must be louder — not just in reaction to hate, but in celebration of love. Jewish festivals should fill our streets. Hebrew songs should fill our schools. Israeli innovation should fill our headlines. Our art, our food, our humor, our wisdom — these are all weapons of light against the darkness.
We also need allies who don’t just whisper behind closed doors, but who are bold and visible in their support. Too many people say that they care about Jewish lives, but disappear when it matters most. To those who claim to be our friends: If your allyship isn’t loud when the hatred is loud, it’s not allyship. It’s convenience.
I speak from a place of pain, but more so from a place of power. I am the descendant of Jews who fled pogroms and persecution, who survived extermination attempts across continents and centuries. But I am also the embodiment of their triumph. I am alive, thriving, and proud. And I will not shrink for anyone.
To my fellow Jews: Wear your Star of David like a badge of honor. Speak your Hebrew with pride. Celebrate Shabbat with joy. And yes — defend Israel without shame.
Let us stop playing defense and start playing offense. Not with hatred, but with truth. Not with vengeance, but with vision. The future of Jewish life doesn’t belong to those who hide or blend in — it belongs to those who show up and stand tall.
We’ve spent generations proving we can survive. Now, let’s show the world what it looks like when we truly live and with full meaning say, Am Israel Chai.
Yuval David is an Emmy and Multi-Award-Winning Actor, Filmmaker, Journalist, and Jewish LGBTQ+ activist and advisor. A creative and compelling storyteller, on stage and screen, news and across social media, Yuval shares the narrative of Jewish activism and enduring hope. Follow him on Instagram, YouTube, and X.
The post Reclaiming Jewish Pride in an Age of Rising Hatred — I Am Done Being Quiet first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
New Research Links South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel to Growing Ties With Iran
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Chatsworth, South Africa, May 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rogan Ward
Newly released research links South Africa’s expanding ties with Iran to its contentious genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), raising questions about the motives behind Pretoria’s legal battle.
Last month, the Middle East Africa Research Institute (MEARI) unveiled a report exploring the South African government’s relationship with Iran and the ways in which this partnership has shaped the country’s foreign policy.
The report — “Ties to Tehran: South Africa’s Democracy and Its Relationship With Iran: — argues that deepening ties with Tehran has led South Africa to compromise its democratic foundations and constitutional principles, aligning itself with a regime internationally condemned for terrorism, repression, and human rights abuses.
While Iran maintains support for South Africa’s coalition government in part due to a shared revolutionary, liberation ideology, Pretoria has frequently defended Tehran at the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by voting against sanctions or choosing to abstain, the report says.
In doing so, the study claims that the South African government has both undermined its democratic values and bolstered Iran’s regional ambitions by defending its nuclear program and downplaying its human rights abuses.
Adam Charnas, an analyst at the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD), condemned the government’s long-standing ties with Iran and other regimes with questionable human rights records, calling them deeply troubling.
“This relationship was notably underscored when, shortly after Oct. 7, then-Minister of International Relations, Naledi Pandor, visited Iran for a two-week period to meet with [then-Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi],” Charnas told The Algemeiner.
“South Africa’s foreign policy appears to be more concerned with enhancing relations with rogue states,” he continued. “This narrow and party-led strategy jeopardizes its relationship with key trading partners rather than with addressing domestic challenges or advancing the welfare of its citizens.”
MEARI’s report also questions whether South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ, the UN’s top court, was genuinely rooted in constitutional principles — or driven by outside political pressure.
According to the study, South Africa’s open hostility toward Israel and its biased approach in filing the case — failing to acknowledge Hamas’s role in launching the war with its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel — undermines the government’s credibility.
At the time of the ICJ filing, senior South African officials were holding high-level meetings in Tehran.
The study explains that shortly afterward, the ruling African National Congress (ANC), struggling with financial difficulties, unexpectedly paid off a multi-million-rand debt, fueling speculation about possible covert support from Iran.
“The evidence for such a claim is entirely circumstantial, but bears relating. In early December 2023, the ANC, South Africa’s ruling party, faced imminent liquidation. It allegedly owed R102 million to a service provider, which it could not pay,” the report says.
In prior years, the ANC has on several occasions been unable to pay staff salaries. But just days after the South African government filed its case against Israel at the ICJ, which MEARI drescribes as “an undertaking involving a phalanx of lawyers of international stature that could cost as much as R1.5 billion [about $84.35 million] in taxpayer money,” the ANC announced that it had reached an out-of-court settlement with its creditor to settle its debt and turned its finances around.
However, since the party’s finances were not available to the public, a fact-check by a leading South African newspaper could not find evidence to prove that the ANC had received funding from any particular source, Iran or otherwise.
Although the ANC claimed it complies with South African law requiring the of donor funding exceeding R100,000, the law is “weakly enforced,” MEARI notes.
“It could be pure coincidence that Hamas thanked South Africa for bringing a genocide case against Israel at the ICJ, and that this case aligns perfectly with the ‘mutual bilateral interests’ of South Africa and Iran,” the report says, with a not-so-subtle bit of sarcasm. “It could be pure coincidence that within days of taking this grave step, South Africa’s the ruling party, the ANC, managed to pull back from the brink of bankruptcy by settling a substantial debt out of court after having ignored multiple court orders and left staff unpaid.”
Since December 2023, South Africa has been pursuing its case accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
Both Iran and Hamas have publicly praised the South African government’s legal action.
For its part, Israeli leaders have condemned the case as an “obscene exploitation” of the Genocide Convention, noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign.
Meanwhile, South Africa’s Jewish community has lambasted the case as “grandstanding” rather than actual concern for those killed in the Middle Eastern conflict.
Last year, the ICJ ruled there was “plausibility” to South Africa’s claims that Palestinians had a right to be protected from genocide.
However, the top UN court did not make a determination on the merits of South Africa’s allegations, nor did it call for Israel to halt its military campaign. Instead, the ICJ issued a more general directive that Israel must make sure it prevents acts of genocide.
The ruling also called for the release of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the terrorist group’s Oct. 7 rampage.
“It could be that South Africa simply did not have the resources to respond in international courts to the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the war crimes committed by the latter in the pursuit of that war of aggression,” the MEARI report says. “It could be that it didn’t feel there was sufficient historical solidarity to oblige it to speak out about genocides of Uyghurs in China, or Rohingya in Myanmar, but Israel just went a step too far.”
Since the start of the war in Gaza, the South African government has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel’s military campaign, which seeks to free the hostages kidnapped by the terrorists and dismantle Hamas’s military and administrative control in Gaza.
Beyond its open hostility toward Israel, South Africa has actively supported Iran’s terrorist proxy by hosting two Hamas officials at a state-backed conference expressing solidarity with the Palestinians in December 2023.
In one instance, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa led the crowd at an election rally in a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a genocidal call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
RSS
German Media Investigation Reveals Gaza Photographer Staged Images of Despair, Prompting Agencies to Cut Ties
Palestinians carry aid supplies that entered Gaza through Israel, in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, July 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Two leading German newspapers have released a joint investigation accusing Gaza-based photojournalists of staging images of hungry and despairing civilians, sparking fresh controversy over how the Israel-Hamas war is portrayed in international media coverage.
The report, published by BILD and Süddeutsche Zeitung, followed a recent controversy over a widely circulated image of a Gazan youth portrayed as starving — a photo later revealed to depict a boy with a genetic disorder, prompting outlets such as The New York Times to issue clarifications.
The German investigation focused on Palestinian photographer Anas Zayed Fteiha, a freelancer for the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency, who allegedly staged images to dramatize civilian suffering and depict it as the result of Israeli actions.
Fteiha’s work has been published by major international outlets including CNN, Reuters, and the BBC, despite what the report described as openly biased photojournalism.
According to the German outlets, Fteiha has openly expressed anti-Israel views on social media, sharing inflammatory and antisemitic content.
The report further noted that, by working for a state-run Turkish news outlet whose government maintains longstanding ties to Hamas and a well-known hostile stance toward Israel, his work functions more as propaganda than as objective journalism.
On Tuesday, Israel’s Foreign Ministry praised the German investigation, saying it “reveals how Hamas uses ‘Pallywood,’ staged or selectively framed media, to manipulate global opinion.”
“With Hamas controlling nearly all media in Gaza, these photographers aren’t reporting, they’re producing propaganda,” the statement said.
“This investigation underscores how Pallywood has gone mainstream with staged images and ideological bias shaping international coverage, while the suffering of Israeli hostages and Hamas atrocities are pushed out of frame,” it continued.
Beware of fake news.
A joint investigation by @SZ and @BILD reveals how Hamas uses “Pallywood”, staged or selectively framed media, to manipulate global opinion.At the center is Anas Zayed Fteiha, a Palestinian photographer for Anadolu and an open Israel- and Jew-hater, whose… pic.twitter.com/MrBfvylwCi
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) August 5, 2025
“Pallywood” is a term used to describe the alleged practice by Palestinians of staging fake injuries, deaths, or scenes of devastation to elicit international sympathy and fuel hostility toward Israel.
According to the investigation, Fteiha selectively shares images that reinforce an anti-Israel narrative. For example, one of his widely circulated photos depicts desperate Gazan women and children holding pots and pans outside a food distribution site.
However, other photos taken at the same scene — showing mostly adult men calmly waiting in line and receiving aid — were not distributed by Fteiha and have gone largely unnoticed.
Gerhard Paul, emeritus professor of history and a leading expert on visual propaganda, told Süddeutsche Zeitung that these types of images serve a specific function by shaping narratives and influencing public opinion.
“They are intended to overwrite the brutal images of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Many people don’t even remember these pictures,” Paul said. “Hamas is a master at staging images.”
He also explained that journalists and photographers in Gaza face significant risks and, because of their close proximity to Hamas terrorists, are unable to operate independently.
According to the German newspapers, part of the problem is that Israel restricts access to the Gaza Strip for independent journalists, allowing Hamas-controlled propaganda to dominate the coverage.
Shortly after the investigation was published, the German Press Agency and Agence France-Presse announced they would no longer work with Fteiha and would apply more rigorous scrutiny to photos from other photographers.
For its part, Reuters said Fteiha’s photos “meet the standards of accuracy, independence, and impartiality.”
RSS
Florida State University Grad Student Charged With Battery After Harassment of Jewish Peer Caught on Video
Female student at Florida State University, believed to be graduate student Eden Deckerhoff, who allegedly assaulted male Jewish classmate at gym on campus. Photo: Screenshot/StopAntisemitism
Local law enforcement officials have charged a Florida State University (FSU) graduate student who allegedly assaulted a Jewish classmate at the Leach Student Recreation Center last Thursday with misdemeanor battery, according to a report by The Tallahassee Democrat.
“F—k Israel, Free Palestine. Put it [the video] on Barstool FSU. I really don’t give a f—k,” Eden Deckerhoff said before shoving the Jewish man, according to video taken by the victim. “You’re an ignorant son of a b—h.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Deckerhoff, a student at the FSU College of Social Work, allegedly accosted the victim after noticing his wearing apparel issued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). FSU reportedly employs her mother, Rosalyn Deckerhoff, as a teaching professor in its College of Social Work.
After footage of the incident went viral on social media, the university promptly suspended Deckerhoff and issued a statement condemning antisemitism.
“While this process is underway, the student shown prominently in the video has been prohibited from returning to campus. Our commitment to swiftly and effectively responding to incidents of hate is unwavering. We appreciate the prompt report of this incident, which allowed us to address this instance of antisemitism without delay,” the university said.
It continued, “Florida State University strongly condemns antisemitism in all forms and follows Florida law, which protects Jewish students and employees from discrimination motivated by antisemitism, harassment, intimidation, and violence.”
According to the Democrat, Deckerhoff has denied assaulting the student, telling investigators, “No I did not show him at all; I never put my hands on him.” However, law enforcement described the incident in court documents as seen in the viral footage, acknowledging that Deckerhoff “appears to touch [the man’s] left shoulder.” Despite her denial, the Democrat added, she has offered to apologize.
The Jewish FSU student is not the first victim of violence or harassment motivated by anti-Zionism. In some cases, such incidents have been ftal.
In June, a gunman murdered two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, while they exited an event at the Capital Jewish Museum hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The suspect charged for the double murder, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez from Chicago, yelled “Free Palestine” while being arrested by police after the shooting, according to video of the incident. The FBI affidavit supporting the criminal charges against Rodriguez stated that he told law enforcement he “did it for Gaza.”
Less than two weeks later, a man firebombed a crowd of people who were participating in a demonstration to raise awareness of the Israeli hostages who remain imprisoned by Hamas in Gaza. A victim of the attack, Karen Diamond, 82, later died, having sustained severe, fatal injuries.
Another antisemitic incident motivated by anti-Zionism occurred in San Francisco, where an assailant identified by law enforcement as Juan Diaz-Rivas and others allegedly beat up a Jewish victim in the middle of the night. Diaz-Rivas and his friends approached the victim while shouting “F—k the Jews, Free Palestine,” according to local prosecutors.
“[O]ne of them punched the victim, who fell to the ground, hit his head and lost consciousness,” the San Francisco district attorney’s office said in a statement. “Allegedly, Mr. Diaz-Rivas and others in the group continued to punch and kick the victim while he was down. A worker at a nearby business heard the altercation and antisemitic language and attempted to intervene. While trying to help the victim, he was kicked and punched.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.