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Red Pins at the Oscars: Is the Call for a Ceasefire Antisemitic?
Director Jonathan Glazer, of the United Kingdom, poses with the Oscar for Best International Feature Film for “The Zone of Interest” in the Oscars photo room at the 96th Academy Awards in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, US, March 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
JNS.org – A handful of celebrities wore ceasefire pins to the annual Academy Awards ceremony in California on March 10. The red pins represent the organization Artists 4 Ceasefire, which has crafted a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden that has been signed by roughly 400 actors, musicians and other Hollywood personalities. Many pro-Israel activists have taken issue with the pins, some alleging that their wearers are expressing subtle, if not blatant, antisemitism.
While it may be true that some of the signatories to the Artist 4 Ceasefire letter are indeed antisemitic, it is also certain that many of those who have taken up the ceasefire cause—both Hollywood luminaries and average citizens—are motivated not by any animus to Jews, per se, but by an underlying opposition to war of any kind. To recognize this is not to justify or validate the calls for a ceasefire, but it is an important distinction to make for a number of reasons.
First, it is important to reserve the label of antisemite for those who are actually hateful of Jews. To ascribe this virulent bias to those to whom it does not apply isn’t helpful to the Jewish and/or Israeli cause. It waters down the term by equating true racists with those who oppose the war in Gaza for less malicious reasons. It also deafens the public to genuine claims of antisemitism by crying wolf too often. Furthermore, it immediately alienates those who are falsely accused and decreases the likelihood of productive dialogue in which they may be willing to hear an alternate perspective and eventually alter their opinion.
In order to effectively communicate with those who are calling for a ceasefire for reasons other than antisemitism, it is important to maintain objectivity and to discern their authentic motives and feelings. While Jews generally, and Israelis in particular, are extremely sensitive to the ultimate ramifications and consequences of a ceasefire, many who have no direct relationship to the conflict are not. A ceasefire to the vast majority of Israelis (and to the 82% of Americans who support Israel’s continued war against Hamas) means the following:
Hamas will be left intact to commit future Oct. 7-style massacres as they have stated explicitly that they will do;
The 130-some hostages that remain in captivity will not be released;
And the Iranian mullahs, the Muslim Brotherhood and other fascistic extremist groups around the world will be emboldened to carry out further terrorist attacks throughout the world.
There are certainly those within the ceasefire camp who understand these consequences and continue to assail Israel’s right to defend itself because of an antipathy for Jews and/or the Jewish state. Yet to many Western liberals, including some percentage of the 400 Hollywood figures who signed the Artists 4 Ceasefire letter and/or wore red pins to the Oscars, a ceasefire means, quite simply, the end of war and the cessation of civilian casualties. This, in itself, is a noble goal. If one genuinely believes that a ceasefire will result in this humane outcome, then one would be callous to ignore the suffering and horror of war, and to refrain from advocating for a stoppage of violence.
Yet this belief is shortsighted and unrealistic. The reality, of course, is that a ceasefire will result not in fewer casualties but in far more deaths and carnage. Left in power, Hamas will not only regroup and commit further atrocities against both Jews and Palestinians alike; it, along with a host of other terrorist organizations and Iranian proxies, will be emboldened by what it will deem a victory against Israel and the West. This is not merely speculation. The U.S. director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, testified on Monday that groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda have been motivated by Oct. 7, and this will occasion an upsurge in terrorist attacks around the world. Anything less than a crushing and disabling defeat of Hamas will thus beget additional bloodshed for years and possibly decades to come.
Hollywood endings do not exist outside of Hollywood.
Rather than antisemitism, the refusal of many ceasefire activists to acknowledge this reality can be attributed to naiveté and wishful thinking. The opposition to war and an aversion to violence are shared by all people of morality and conscience. War is indeed horrific, and innocents necessarily suffer—particularly in a case where combatants knowingly embed themselves in civilian populations to exploit them as human shields. Yet there is a time when inaction is not an option. There is a time when a country must defend itself against an enemy that refuses to coexist peacefully. The choice for Israel is not peace or war; it is war now or the inevitable massacre of its innocent civilians again and again until the implacable threat is eliminated once and for all.
It is the obvious reality of Israel’s impossible conundrum that makes it easy to ascribe malice and bias to those promoting a ceasefire: The heinous acts of Oct. 7 (all recorded, publicized, and then scrubbed and denied by the perpetrators); the continued captivity of more than 130 kidnapped and brutalized hostages; the explicit guarantees of future massacres; the clear historic record of Israeli concessions and attempts at peaceful coexistence all met with additional violence and intransigence; the documented indoctrination of Palestinian children with hatred and bloodlust for their Jewish neighbors. How is it possible that a rational person could assess these facts and determine that Israel should be hamstrung in its efforts to finally resolve this conflict by eliminating those who have perpetuated it for generations, and who promise to perpetuate it until there is not a single Jew that remains anywhere in the land?
Yet Hollywood is not known for its moral clarity, and artists are not generally admired for their rationality. They are, rather, feted for their creativity and the pathos that is reflected in their imaginative work. Artists are dreamers, not realists. Israelis, on the contrary, do not have the luxury of indulging in fantasy and ignoring the cold, hard reality that comes from living on the front lines. While all people of hope are inclined to dream of a time of peace, Israelis have long been disabused of the notion that laying down weapons will foster harmony. Sadly, there are those who respect nothing more than force and who perceive any attempt at reconciliation as a sign of weakness and an invitation to further aggression.
Hollywood is not known for its moral clarity, and artists are not generally admired for their rationality.
Western liberals, of whom the Hollywood elite are frequently the most vocal and visible representatives and mouthpieces, do not understand the culture of death and radicalism that pervades Hamas and other terrorist fundamentalists. They are under the thrall of the parochial illusion that all populations think and believe as we do. They are convinced that just as we value life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, so do those who refer to America as the Great Satan. If only we would lay down our weapons and extend our arms to them, then they would abandon their grievances and welcome our embrace. But Hollywood endings do not exist outside of Hollywood.
Israel supporters and Jews worldwide are facing the greatest challenge they have known in generations. Oct. 7 was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and in the past five months, antisemitic incidents have skyrocketed by hundreds of percentages across the Western world. There is certainly the need for vigilance and the development of strategies to combat the resurgence of antisemitism in places where it was erroneously thought to be no more. Yet simultaneously, we must be careful not to cry wolf and misidentify the motives of those who have been misinformed or who have not yet taken the time to rationally evaluate the long-term outcomes of their position.
War is horrific, and the cessation of violence is absolutely the proper goal. Yet were the signatories of the Artists 4 Ceasefire letter presented with the facts of the conflict and reality of the long-term consequences of Israel’s inability to finish Hamas, there is reason to believe that at least some of the red pins would be replaced by yellow ribbons. If one truly cares for humanity—for the lives of Jews, Palestinians, and people of all backgrounds and persuasions—then the only answer is to fight against those who refuse to coexist and to cease fire only when they are unable to murder, maim, rape and torture those who do not accept their tyrannical rule.
The post Red Pins at the Oscars: Is the Call for a Ceasefire Antisemitic? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Vast Majority of US Jews Reject Jewish Voice for Peace, Other Anti-Zionist Groups, Polling Data Shows

Pro-Hamas protesters led by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) demonstrate outside the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 14, 2024. Photo: Derek French via Reuters Connect
A new poll released on Wednesday underscores how far removed Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and other anti-Zionist organizations that claim to represent Jews are from mainstream Jewish views on Israel, Zionism, and the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians.
Commissioned by The Jewish Majority, a nonprofit founded by a researcher whose aim is to monitor and accurately report Jewish opinion on the most consequential issues affecting the community, the poll found that the vast majority of American Jews believe that anti-Zionist movements and anti-Israel university protests are antisemitic.
The findings also showed that Jews across the US overwhelmingly oppose the views and tactics of JVP, a prominent anti-Israel group which has helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza.
Founded in 1996 at the University of California, Berkeley, JVP describes itself as “the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world.” It was infamously one of the first organizations to blame Israel following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust.
“Israeli apartheid and occupation — and the United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence,” JVP said as Israelis were still counting their dead and missing.
American Jews who responded to The Jewish Majority’s poll overwhelmingly reject this line of thinking. Seventy percent said they believe that anti-Zionism of any stripe is antisemitic; 85 percent believe that Hamas, whom JVP described as “the oppressed,” is a genocidal group; and 79 percent support vocally pro-Israel groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization JVP has defamed as “not a credible source on antisemitism and racism.”
Additionally, JVP’s methods of protest are unpopular among American Jews, The Jewish Majority added, noting that 75 percent disapprove of “blocking traffic” and only 18 percent approve of protesters’ wearing masks to conceal their identities. Sixty percent also disagree with staging protests outside the homes of public officials, a common JVP tactic.
“Plain and simple, Jewish Voice for Peace is an extremist group that does not represent the views of the overwhelming majority of American Jews,” Jonathan Schulman, The Jewish Majority’s executive director, said in a statement accompanying the poll results. “American Jews share a strong and consistent stance against anti-Zionists as well as a deep concern over rising antisemitism and the tactics used by organizations like JVP.”
He continued, “It is high time people see through the charade: JVP is not representative of anyone but a marginal fringe, even if a few radical Jews are involved in their movement.”
The Jewish Majority’s poll was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies.
Jewish Voice for Peace’s inner workings, messaging, and political activities were recently documented in a groundbreaking report on the group published last month by StandWithUs, a Jewish civil rights group based in Los Angeles, California.
Titled, “A Shield for Hate, Not a Voice for Peace,” the report noted that JVP has promoted a distorted history of Zionism and Israel, accusing the movement for Jewish self-determination of everything from training US police officers to violate the rights of African Americans to abusing “Jewish history.” In doing so, it has allied with extremist groups such as WithinOurLifetime — whose founder has threatened to set Jews on fire and led a movement to harass Jews on New York City’s public transportation — and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), which celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre and has proclaimed that “the Zionist entity has no right to exist.”
The report also stated that JVP has collaborated with anti-Israel entities such as Samidoun, which identifies itself as a “Palestinian prisoner solidarity network,” to hold rallies. Samidoun described Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities in Israel as “a brave and heroic operation.” The United States and Canada each imposed sanctions on Samidoun in October, labeling the organization a “sham charity” and accusing it of fundraising for designated terrorist groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
JVP has also compared Zionism to Nazism.
“This is Holocaust inversion — an antisemitic tactic in which the genocide Jews faced in the past is used to promote baseless hatred against Jews today,” the StandWithUs report said. “The only group benefiting from JVP’s Holocaust inversion is Hamas — a truly genocidal terrorist group. JVP has helped shield them from accountability for launching the war, ruthlessly militarizing civilian areas across Gaza, stealing humanitarian aid, and rejecting nearly every proposed ceasefire and hostage release deal.”
In June 2024, the Anti-Defamation League filed a complaint with the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) accusing the political fundraising arm of JVP of transgressing federal election law by misrepresenting its spending and receiving unlawful donations from corporate entities, citing “discrepancies” in the organization’s income and expense reports.
The complaint lodged a slew of charges against Jewish Voice for Peace’s political action committee (JVP PAC), including spending almost no money on candidates running for office — a political action committee’s main purpose. From 2020-2023, JVP PAC reported spending $82,956, but just a small fraction of that sum — $1,775, just over 2 percent — was spent on candidates, according to the complaint. The money went elsewhere, being paid out in one case for “legal services” provided by a company which “doesn’t appear to practice law” and other expenses.
JVP continues to have the support of powerful friends in the world of progressive philanthropy, a formidable subset of the American elite, amid these scandals and controversies.
Since 2017 it has — according to a 2023 report by the National Association of Scholars — received $480,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a philanthropic foundation whose endowment is valued at $1.27 billion. Between 2014 and 2015 alone, JVP brought in over half a million dollars in grants from various foundations, including the Open Society Policy Center — founded by billionaire George Soros — the Kaphan Foundation, and others.
According to the recent StandWithUs report, JVP has received substantial financial assistance from organizations tied to Lebanon and Iran.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Vast Majority of US Jews Reject Jewish Voice for Peace, Other Anti-Zionist Groups, Polling Data Shows first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Turkey’s Erdogan Demands Israel Pay Reparations for Gaza, Says Palestinian State ‘Must Not Be Delayed’

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a joint statement to the media in Baghdad, Iraq, April 22, 2024. Photo: AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/Pool via REUTERS
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday demanded Israel pay reparations “for the harm it inflicted through its aggressive actions in Gaza” and urged the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state.
During a press conference with Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in West Java, as part of his Asian tour to Malaysia and Pakistan, Erdogan rejected US President Donald Trump’s plan to “take over” the Gaza Strip to rebuild the war-torn enclave while relocating Palestinians elsewhere during reconstruction efforts.
Like many other Middle Eastern leaders who rejected Trump’s proposal, Erdogan also advocated for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The creation of a sovereign, territorially united State of Palestine within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital cannot be delayed any further,” he said during the press conference, as aired by the Turkish TRT Haber TV channel.
“Any step, proposal, or project that undermines this matter is illegitimate in our view, and it means more conflicts, bloodshed, and instability,” he continued.
During Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House last week, Trump called on Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states to take in Palestinians from Gaza after nearly 16 months of war between Israel and Hamas.
“Until there is peace in Gaza, until the Palestinians achieve peace, peace in the region is impossible,” the Turkish president said.
With talks underway to extend the fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire, Erdogan also demanded that Israel must pay reparations “for the harm it inflicted through its aggressive actions in Gaza.”
“The cost of Israel’s 15-month attacks in Gaza is about $100 billion,” he said. “The law dictates that the perpetrator must compensate for the damage.”
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the war in Gaza when they murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages during their invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Last month, both sides reached a ceasefire and hostage-release deal brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar.
Under phase one, Hamas agreed to release 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are deceased, in exchange for Israel freeing over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are serving multiple life sentences for terrorism-related offenses.
So far, 16 of the 33 hostages have been released during the first phase, which is set to last six weeks.
During the press conference, Erdogan also announced that Turkey and Indonesia will join forces in the reconstruction of Gaza.
Last month, Erdogan met with Hamas leader Muhammad Ismail Darwish in Ankara.
Turkey has been one of the most outspoken critics of Israel during the Gaza war, even threatening to invade the Jewish state and calling on the United Nations to use force if it cannot stop Israel’s military campaign against Hamas.
Last year, Ankara also ceased all exports and imports to and from Israel, citing the “humanitarian tragedy” in the Palestinian territories as the reason.
Erdogan has frequently defended Hamas terrorists as “resistance fighters” against what he described as an Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. He and other Turkish leaders have repeatedly compared Israel with Nazi Germany and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Adolf Hitler.
The post Turkey’s Erdogan Demands Israel Pay Reparations for Gaza, Says Palestinian State ‘Must Not Be Delayed’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Boston University Rejects Proposal to Divest From Israel

College students in the Boston, Massachusetts area hold dueling demonstrations amid Israel’s war with Hamas in April 2024. Photo: Vincent Ricci via Reuters Connect
Boston University has rejected the group Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) call for its endowment to be divested of holdings in companies which sell armaments to the Israeli military, becoming the latest higher education institution to refuse this key tenet of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
“The endowment is no longer the vehicle for political debate; nevertheless, I will continue to seek ways that members of our community can engage with each other on political issues of our day including the conflict in the Middle East,” university president Melissa Gilliam said on Tuesday in a statement which reported the will of the board of trustees. “Our traditions of free speech and academic freedom are critical to who we are as an institution, and so is our tradition of finding common ground to engage difficult topics while respecting the dignity of every individual.”
Gilliam’s announcement comes amid SJP’s push to hold a student government administered referendum on divestment, a policy goal the group has pursued since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Its hopes were dashed on Tuesday when what SJP described as “technical difficulties” caused the referendum to be postponed indefinitely. However, SJP hinted that the delay may have been caused by its failing to draw a “representative sample of BU’s undergraduate population” to the polls.
SJP’s relationship with the university is poor, according to The Daily Free Press, Boston University’s official campus newspaper. In November, the Student and Activities Office issued the group a “formal warning” following multiple violations of policies on peaceful assembly. SJP, the Free Press said, occupied an area of the Center for Computing and Data Sciences for two days and tacked anti-Zionist propaganda — which included accusations that Boston University profits from “death” — on school property inside the building despite being forewarned that doing so is verboten. Following the disciplinary action, SJP accused the university of being “discriminatory towards SJP and our events.”
American universities have largely rejected demands to divest from Israel and entities at all linked to the Jewish state, delivering a succession of blows to the pro-Hamas protest movement that students and faculty have pushed with dozens of illegal demonstrations aimed at coercing officials into enacting the policy.
Trinity College turned away BDS advocates in November, citing its “fiduciary responsibilities” and “primary objective of maintaining the endowment’s intergeneration equity.” It also noted that acceding to demands for divestment for the sake of “utilizing the endowment to exert political influence” would injure the college financially, stressing that doing so would “compromise our access to fund managers, in turn undermining the board’s ability to perform its fiduciary obligation.”
The University of Minnesota in August pointed to the same reason for spurning divestment while stressing the extent to which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict polarizes its campus community. It coupled its pronouncement with a new investment policy, a so-called “position of neutrality” which, it says, will be a guardrail protecting university business from the caprices of political opinion.
Colleges and universities will lose tens of billions of dollars collectively from their endowments if they capitulate to demands to divest from Israel, according to a report published in September by JLens, a Jewish investor network that is part of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Titled “The Impact of Israel Divestment on Equity Portfolios: Forecasting BDS’s Financial Toll on University Endowments,” the report presented the potential financial impact of universities adopting the BDS movement, which is widely condemned for being antisemitic.
The losses estimated by JLens are catastrophic. Adopting BDS, it said, would incinerate $33.21 billion of future returns for the 100 largest university endowments over the next 10 years, with Harvard University losing $2.5 billion and the University of Texas losing $2.2 billion. Other schools would forfeit over $1 billion, including the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and Princeton University. For others, such as the University of Michigan and Dartmouth College, the damages would total in the hundreds of millions.
“This groundbreaking report approached the morally problematic BDS movement from an entirely new direction — its negative impact on portfolio returns,” New York University adjunct professor Michael Lustig said in a statement extolling the report. “JLens has done a great job in quantifying the financial effects of implementing the suggestions of this pernicious movement, and importantly, they ‘show their work’ by providing full transparency into their methodology, and properly caveat the points where assumptions must necessarily be made. This report will prove to be an important tool in helping to fight noxious BDS advocacy.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Boston University Rejects Proposal to Divest From Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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