RSS
‘Show Me One Palestinian Who Tried to Save a Jew on Oct. 7’: Hostage Families Highlight Culpability of Gazan Population
A person stands in front of a montage of images of hostages seized by Hamas during a demonstration in Tel Aviv demanding their release. Photo: Reuters/Amir Cohen
Families of hostages seized by the Hamas terror group on Oct. 7 experienced a mix of relief and anxiety at a rally marking “50 days of hell” on Saturday night as they grappled with the bittersweet reality of the release of some hostages while many others remained in captivity, amid multiple delays on the part of Hamas.
Speakers at the rally, which drew some 100,000 people to the renamed Hostage Square outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, called to “bring home all of them now.”
As of Sunday night, a total of 40 Israeli hostages were released with Hamas indicating that it was interested in extending the ceasefire. Terrorists led by Hamas abducted over 240 people during their Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
Thirteen hostages, mostly from Kibbutz Be’eri, were released on Saturday some six hours after the 4 pm deadline after Hamas accused Israel of short-changing on the promised delivery of fuel and humanitarian aid — a claim that was denied by the International Committee of the Red Cross — and releasing the wrong Palestinian security prisoners in exchange.
Be’eri resident Nir Shani, whose son, Amit, turned 16 in captivity, was not surprised by the delay.
“It’s not unexpected, sadly. It would’ve been weird if it would have gone smoothly as planned. It was obviously going to happen,” Shani told The Algemeiner.
Shani further said he wasn’t surprised by the Oct. 7 massacre perpetrated by Hamas.
“They did exactly what they said they would do if they got the chance. We’ve seen it before,” he said, pointing to terror attacks against Jews even before the founding of the state.
Shani’s views stand in sharp contrast with those of other members of his kibbutz, who maintain that a peaceful resolution to the conflict — likely in the form of two states — is still possible.
He also refused to extend clemency to the Palestinian population in Gaza as being innocent.
“I don’t make a distinction between them and Hamas. We’ve all heard about the righteous among the nations in the Holocaust. Tell me of one Palestinian who tried to save one Jew after Oct. 7,” he said.
Shani cited Daniel Lifshitz, the grandson of 85-year-old released hostage Yocheved Lifshitz, as saying that his grandmother was “spat on by hundreds of Gazans on the back of a motorbike.”
Adi Shachar — aunt to 12-year-old Noam Avigdori, who was released on Saturday night along with her mother, Sharon — said that the wait was “nail-biting.”
“It was very difficult,” she said. “But when we saw them on the [Red Cross] ambulance, we screamed and jumped for joy.”
The family is still waiting for the return of another family member, Tal Shoham.
“We’ve finished the first chapter and now we start the second,” Shachar said on Sunday morning, referring both to the long road to recovery for her family members as well as the ongoing efforts to free the remainder of the hostages in captivity in Hamas-ruled Gaza.
Images of Ohad Munder, who turned 9 in captivity, blowing bubbles and playing with a Rubik’s cube shortly after his release on Friday, flooded Israeli media. He was released along with his mother, Keren, 54, and grandmother Ruth, 78. His grandfather, 78-year-old Avraham Munder, is still in Gaza. Avraham’s niece, Merav Mor Raviv, cited Keren as saying that the food supply in captivity was up and down and on some days there was nothing more than a bit of rice.
She told Israel’s Channel 12 that there “were also many Hebrew speakers [in Gaza], who spoke to them.”
The people who were guarding the hostages were always changing, she said, as was their location.
They were “both underground and not underground,” she said.
Despite Israel’s claim that the ceasefire agreement included the release of mothers whose children were set free, Hila Rotem, a 13-year-old, was captured by Hamas terrorists along with her mother Raya Rotem, aged 54, but only Hila was released on Saturday, leaving her mother still held hostage in Gaza.
“My mother was by my side throughout the entire period of captivity, but two days before my release, Hamas separated us from each other,” Rotem said. “My mother was in good condition, and we were together with [Irish-Israeli] Emily [Hand] when Hamas informed us of a ceasefire and our impending release.”
Back in Hostage Square, attendees of Saturday’s rally gathered around the stage to hear performers sing heartfelt renditions of their hits, including singer Ehud Banai, who hailed the return of the hostages as “the biggest mitzvah right now.”
Anna Kaniel, a dancer who performed with her troupe, AfroCubana, for survivors of the massacre now residing in hotels in the Dead Sea, underscored the “hopelessness” she felt.
“I can’t change the politics. I can’t do anything, really. The only thing I can do is be here to give support and to give energy to the families. That’s why I’m here,” she told The Algemeiner.
Kaniel pointed out a poster of Gali Tarschansky, a 13-year-old girl still in captivity, whose brother, Lior, with whom Tarschansky was said to be inseparable, was murdered as the two tried to make their escape from their safe room window in Kibbutz Be’eri.
“Just think of their father who was with them that day. One child dead and the other still in captivity. It’s just too much,” Kaniel said.
The post ‘Show Me One Palestinian Who Tried to Save a Jew on Oct. 7’: Hostage Families Highlight Culpability of Gazan Population first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
From Iran Nukes to Europe-Israel Diplomacy, New York Times Can’t or Won’t Get the Context Right

The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The New York Times came in with a big editorial denouncing antisemitism and infuriating the Jew-hating readers who populate its comment section — but its news pages keep spreading falsehoods about Israel.
Three recent examples show how Times reporters lack historical or even recent context.
A Times news article about Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway imposing sanctions on Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich includes this passage:
“Britain has already tried once to prevent us from settling the cradle of our homeland, and we will not allow it to do it again,” Mr. Smotrich posted on social media in Hebrew, referring to Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
The intended reference there actually seems to be not “Jewish settlements in the West Bank” but rather the infamous British “White Paper” of 1939 that sharply limited Jewish immigration into the British controlled mandate of Palestine. The White Paper capped Jewish migration at 75,000 over five years, during a moment when millions of Jews were desperately seeking to escape the Nazi onslaught. “After the period of five years, no further Jewish immigration will be permitted unless the Arabs of Palestine are prepared to acquiesce in it,” the White Paper said. It’s astonishing that this has somehow vanished from the Times‘ historical memory.
Another Times news article claimed, “The toll and imposition of a blockade, now partially lifted, in the territory [Gaza] have provoked growing international outrage, including among European states like France and Britain little inclined to sharp criticism of Israel in the past.” The idea that the outrage is “provoked” by Israeli actions rather than motivated by the growing and restive Muslim populations in France and Britain is questionable. There’s no outrage against Egypt, which also borders Gaza. And it’s inaccurate to say that France and Britain have been “little inclined to sharp criticism of Israel in the past.”
For example, in 2019 a French diplomatic statement said, “France condemns the decisions taken by the Israeli authorities on 5 and 6 August allowing for the construction of 2,304 housing units on the West Bank. These decisions come amid the troubling acceleration of settlement building on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. As stated in UN Security Council Resolution 2334, these settlements are contrary to international law. This policy further heightens tensions on the ground and gravely undermines the conditions for a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians based on a two-state solution.”
A brief for the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs reported, “For many years, France has been the driving force behind anti-Israel political attitudes in the EU. In addition, former Israeli UN ambassador Yehuda Blum noted, ‘The French at the UN were the leaders of every anti-Israel initiative originating in Europe throughout. Theirs was a totally unbalanced position. We counted them in the Arab camp.’”
In 2002, British and French foreign ministers met with Yasser Arafat at a time when George W. Bush was trying to freeze Arafat out.
A third example of Times cluelessness comes from the paper’s “live” news coverage of the war between Israel and Iran. “In his first television interview since Israel struck Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli intelligence found that Iran had enough uranium to build nine nuclear bombs but did not provide any evidence for that claim,” the Times said. The “did not provide evidence” phrase is a tic that the Times uses against people it doesn’t like in order to signal to readers that what those people say cannot be trusted.
The Times itself reported in December 2024, “Iran already has enough of a stockpile to make the fuel for four weapons in a matter of weeks or days.” Another recent Times article commented on Netanyahu’s claim of nine weapons by noting, “Other experts put the figure slightly higher, at 10, but the actual number would depend on how efficiently the Iranians prove to be at producing a warhead or a bomb.”
How much more evidence does the Times want? On June 9, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency spoke publicly about Iran, saying, “The agency cannot ignore the stockpiling of over 400 kg of highly enriched uranium.” An analysis put out the same day by the Institute for Science and International Security of the May 31, 2025, IAEA quarterly monitoring report says, “Iran can convert its current stock of 60 percent enriched uranium into 233 kg of WGU in three weeks at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP), enough for 9 nuclear weapons, taken as 25 kg of weapon-grade uranium (WGU) per weapon … Iran could produce its first quantity of 25 kg of WGU in Fordow in as little as two to three days … Breaking out in both Fordow and the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP), the two facilities together could produce enough WGU for 11 nuclear weapons in the first month, enough for 15 nuclear weapons by the end of the second month, 19 by the end of the third month, 21 by the end of the fourth month, and 22 by the end of the fifth month.”
I guess the Times could litigate that Netanyahu is eliding the conversion from highly enriched to weapon-grade, but he’s giving a wartime television interview, not a technical nuclear briefing.
So, when the Times complains that Netanyahu “did not provide any evidence,” the newspaper is just displaying its own bias and lack of knowledge about the context, as surely as it did in the other examples. One thing for which there is surely a lot of evidence: the Times‘s own weak grasp of basic details, history, and context for the events unfolding in the Middle East.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. He writes frequently at TheEditors.com. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
The post From Iran Nukes to Europe-Israel Diplomacy, New York Times Can’t or Won’t Get the Context Right first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Antisemitic Incidents in Argentina Surge by 15% Amid Global Rise, New Report Finds

Argentina’s President Javier Milei attends a commemoration event ahead of the anniversary of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 17, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Martin Cassarini
Argentina experienced a 15 percent increase in reported antisemitic incidents last year, as the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing war in the Middle East sparked a rise in hate crimes, according to a report issued by the country’s Jewish umbrella organization on Thursday.
The Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA) presented the 2024 Annual Report on Antisemitism in Argentina, which recorded 687 anti-Jewish hate crimes — up from 598 antisemitic incidents in 2023 — marking a notable surge in antisemitic activity in the country.
According to the report, X and Facebook were the main platforms where hate messages were spread. However, antisemitic incidents also increased in public spaces, schools, and even neighborhoods.
“Hate may change its form, but it never truly disappears,” DAIA said in a post on X. “Behind every statistic is a story — a person, a community, a wound.”
El odio se transforma, pero no desaparece.
El Informe Anual sobre Antisemitismo en la Argentina 2024 presentado hoy por la DAIA registró 687 denuncias recibidas, un aumento del 15 por respecto al año anterior.
El ataque del 7 de octubre y la guerra en Medio Oriente reactivaron… pic.twitter.com/euEodYmswF— DAIA (@DAIAArgentina) June 19, 2025
The study indicates that 66 percent of the antisemitic incidents originated in the digital realm, with a significant rise in Nazi symbols and conspiracy theories.
There was also a 34 percent increase in reported physical assaults, with such hate crimes rising in schools and neighborhoods.
“At DAIA, we are committed every day to raising awareness, reporting, and eliminating antisemitism in all its forms,” the organization said in a statement. “Because staying silent is part of the problem.”
The report explains that the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel has triggered a surge in antisemitic expressions, with 39.5 percent of the hate crimes involving discourse related to the war in Gaza, followed by 23.5 percent involving Nazi symbolism.
Argentina has been hardly alone in reporting a surge in anti-Jewish crimes. According to the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Israel, there was a staggering 340 percent increase in total antisemitic incidents worldwide in 2024 compared to 2022.
For example, the United States reported a 288 percent increase in antisemitic atrocities last year compared to 2022, while Canada experienced a 562 percent surge over the same period.
In Europe, France saw a surge of over 350 percent in antisemitic incidents, while the United Kingdom recorded a 450 percent spike, with nearly 2,000 acts of antisemitism in just the first half of 2024.
In South Africa, antisemitic incidents rose by 185 percent, while Australia experienced a sharp increase of 387 percent.
At the global level, the report found that 41 percent of incidents involved antisemitic propaganda, 15.5 percent included acts of violence, and around 25 percent were related to Israel.
The research also revealed that online antisemitism surged, rising by more than 300 percent.
With Argentine President Javier Milei among the most vocal supporters of Israel, Argentina has become a key player in global efforts to combat antisemitism and terrorism, while defending democracy and Israel’s right to exist.
Last year, for example, more than 30 countries led by the United States adopted “global guidelines for countering antisemitism” during a gathering of special envoys and other representatives from around the globe in Argentina.
The post Antisemitic Incidents in Argentina Surge by 15% Amid Global Rise, New Report Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Massive Times Square Billboard Denounces ‘Free Palestine’ Movement for Contributing to Rise in Antisemitism

A digital billboard in Times Square organized by the Coalition for Jewish Values that condemns the “Free Palestine” movement. Photo: Provided
A Jewish organization representing more than 2,500 Orthodox rabbis launched a billboard campaign in Times Square on Wednesday that condemns the “Free Palestine” movement for fueling the deadly rise of antisemitism in the US after the attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, The Algemeiner has learned.
The 10-second digital advertisement, organized by the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), reads: “Free Palestine = Support for Hamas = Calling for Genocide of Jews. America, Wake Up. It Never Ends With the Jews!” The ad will appear multiple times per hour and be live in Times Square for 30 days, according to CJV.
“When students on college campuses chant ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ America itself is at risk,” said CJV Executive Vice President Rabbi Yaakov Menken in a released statement. “We call upon all Americans to join us in speaking clearly about who and what the bloodthirsty ‘Free Palestine’ movement stands for, and the need to stamp it out.” CJV is the largest rabbinic public policy organization in America.
The United States has recorded more than 10,000 antisemitic incidents since the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to data presented to the Israeli parliament’s Immigration, Absorption, and Diaspora Commission in January.
Since then, a terrorist set fire to the official residence of Jewish Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro because of the arsonist’s support for “Palestine” and the Palestinian people; two Israeli Embassy workers were murdered in Washington, DC, by a gunman who shouted “Free Palestine” before being arrested; and a man who threw Molotov cocktails at people rallying in Boulder, Colorado, for the Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip yelled “Free Palestine” during the terror attack.
At a congressional vigil last week for the two Israeli embassy employees murdered in May, US House Speaker Mike Johnson said “the ‘Free Palestine’ call has become a violent movement that collaborates with Hamas.”
“Too many Jewish organizations are afraid to say what Speaker Johnson finds obvious: the cry of ‘Free Palestine’ is the call of domestic terrorists,” said Menken. “Israel is the only free country in the Middle East. The one thing Israel is not free of is Jews, and that is what ‘Free Palestine’ aims to correct, in the model of Hitler’s Final Solution. They have no interest in building a nation but destroying one. They do not want to elevate Palestinian Arabs, but to eradicate Jews. This is classic antisemitism, and history proves that there is no greater danger to the continuity of a civilization.”
The post Massive Times Square Billboard Denounces ‘Free Palestine’ Movement for Contributing to Rise in Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.