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The Biggest Victim in Today’s Election Is Jewish Unity
Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump points towards Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris, during a presidential debate hosted by ABC in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
No matter who wins today’s election, the biggest casualty for the Jewish community will be unity. We allowed ourselves to be pulled into a partisan game, where non-Jewish voices — opportunists on both sides — defined which party is “more antisemitic,” leading us to turn on each other. The only people who win from Jewish disunity are antisemites.
We must remember that we are a people apart. We might be Democrats or Republicans — but only as long as these parties allow us to remain. Both parties contain elements that don’t see Jews as “real” members of their ranks. At any moment, the fringes of each side could pull the mainstream in their direction, and we will find ourselves either shown the door or quietly made to feel unwelcome.
To be clear, the Democratic Party is not “The Squad,” and the Republican Party does not believe in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “Jewish Space Lasers.” The parties are more than their loudest extremes. But we have to face the fact that these factions hold influence, and they can pull the broader party platform in directions that aren’t always comfortable — or safe — for us. We can argue over the extent to which these views are tolerated in each party, and we can vote accordingly.
By “unity,” I don’t mean that we should all vote the same way or ignore real issues on either side. I mean that we need to recognize that neither party will always represent what is good for the Jews. Both will court us, both will insist that the other side is a threat, and both will try to lock us into alliances where their interests come first. All our alliances are marriages of convenience.
Take our alliance with Evangelical Christians, for instance. Many of us are fully aware that their pro-Israel stance aligns with our interests today, but this alliance is not without strings. Evangelicals often support Israel because they see it as central to their eschatology, not always because of a genuine affinity with the Jewish people. We are allies — until the day our priorities no longer align. Going “all in” on their agenda is a risk we cannot afford.
This election cycle has exposed just how fractured we are and how much our alliances need rethinking. The old alliances — built on broad social causes, unions, and civil rights movements — are in tatters. We are finding ourselves increasingly pushed to the sidelines of causes we once led. We are not Democrats or Republicans, conservative or liberal. In the end, we are Jews, a people apart, and we must do what it takes to survive.
A few years ago, I spoke with an author who argued that the Jewish community needs to abandon “Tikkun Olam” — the notion that we should dedicate ourselves to repairing the world. His stance was that we should be concerned, first and foremost, with helping other Jews. At the time, I dismissed his viewpoint. As American Jews, we have always taken pride in our sense of justice and duty to broader society. Our pursuit of Tikkun Olam has often been the driver behind our roles in social justice, union organizing, and countless other efforts that uplifted not just ourselves, but all Americans.
Yet here we are, finding ourselves ousted from some of the very movements we helped to shape. The calls for justice are still loud, but our voices are increasingly unwelcome. Now, I am beginning to see the wisdom in that author’s argument.
In this climate, we need a different rallying point. We are not Tikkun Olam and we are not MAGA. We should be wary of both sides’ accusations of antisemitism, for neither side truly has our best interests at heart.
This isn’t to say we need to be centrists. Rather, we need to look both ways, as my mother used to tell me, before crossing the street. We need to hold onto the knowledge that we are a people with a long history, one that has outlasted empires and nations. We need each other to continue that history, no matter the political divisions that try to rip us apart.
Somehow, we allowed these divisions to harden. We forgot that we are one people. Instead, we have looked at our fellow Jews as enemies. We’ve resorted to name-calling, hurling words like “kapo” and “fascist” at each other. Friendships have been broken, families split, and fingers pointed in anger.
Yes, we’re Jews. We argue. Debate is in our DNA. But this has gone beyond debate. Our community’s infighting has provided a gift to our enemies, who look at us — splintered and vulnerable — and smile.
So, when exactly have Jews ever been united? I can think of once within my lifetime. When I was around 12 years old in 1976, my family hosted a violinist named Boris Brant. We lived in Battle Creek, Michigan, at the time, and he was a recent immigrant from the Soviet Union. Brant was one of the Soviet refusniks — Jews who had been denied the right to leave the USSR. He’d been a prominent violin professor in Odessa, but applying to emigrate had cost him his career. He left behind everything he knew to come here and start over as a free man.
His arrival in the US was part of a larger movement. By the 1970s, American Jews of all stripes were rallying around the cause of Soviet Jewry, working to free Jews who wanted to leave. This advocacy led to the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which tied US-Soviet trade deals to the Soviet Union’s willingness to allow Jewish emigration. If they wanted favorable trade, they had to respect basic rights. This was one of the rare times that Jews, across all backgrounds, got behind a single cause.
Jackson-Vanik was groundbreaking. Orthodox, Reform, secular, left, right — everyone joined in. Synagogues held rallies, youth groups raised awareness, and Jewish families like mine opened their homes to tell the stories of Soviet Jews. For once, we felt like one community, and the message was simple: Jewish freedom was non-negotiable.
No matter who wins today, we have a serious antisemitism problem in this country. It is a problem that will take all our talents and efforts to address. So much emotion and time is wasted on blaming our fellow Jews for a problem that is not of our own making. We are a talented, brilliant, driven, creative, clever, stubborn people. Let’s focus all that energy on fighting antisemitism — not one another.
Howard Lovy is a Michigan-based author, book editor, and journalist who specializes in Jewish issues. He is currently working on a book, From Outrage to Action: A Practical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism. His novel, Found and Lost: The Jake and Cait Story, will be released in 2025. You can find him on his website or on X.
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How Does ‘An Eye for an Eye’ Hold Up Today?
A Torah scroll. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” is one of the best-known rules not only in the Torah, but universally. It was recorded in the Hammurabi code of Mesopotamia more than 4,000 years ago. This rule still applies in many legal systems, and is sometimes taken literally. It is clear, however, that this statement in the Torah cannot be taken literally at all.
The Talmud (Bava Kama 83b to 84a) raises an obvious question: Perhaps one thinks it means literally an eye; in that case, if a blind man blinded another or if a cripple maimed another, how would he be able to give an eye for an eye literally?
There are even greater challenges. What if a person who has no teeth puts out the tooth of somebody who has a full set? How are you going to take a tooth for a tooth? Did they have some sort of mechanism for judging a bruise for a bruise? There was indeed a judging system:
If two men are involved in a fight when a pregnant woman comes in between them and as a result there is a miscarriage but there’s no other physical damage [this must have been a pretty common occurrence to be specified], the punishment should be in accordance with what the husband places the value of his lost child and that should be assessed by the judges.
This is then followed immediately by, life for a life, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot, a burn for a burn, a bruise for a bruise, a wound for a wound.
But then in the next verse, the Torah says that if a person has a slave and he damages him, puts out his eye or knocks out his teeth, the slave should go free. On both sides of this law, you have laws that deal with financial compensation assessed by the judges in relation to the injury or the loss — as indeed would happen in most legal systems today.
The second time this law is repeated, slightly changed, is in this week’s reading (Vayikra (Leviticus) Chapter 24:). The context is a sad incident in which the son of an Israelite woman and an Egyptian father was involved in a fight and cursed God. Through his mother, he was part of the Israelite people. But because of his father, no tribe would accept him — an interesting example of how they defined Israelites then. He felt rejected and alienated. In a way I can feel sorry for him.
The law of cursing is phrased differently in verses 24:15 & 16, and expanded by adding different words for the crime of blasphemy, before reiterating the law.
Cursing God was not the way people nowadays curse or insult each other verbally. Curses were taken very seriously. It was the equivalent of rejecting not only God, but also the people. Laws of blasphemy are not only still very strongly adhered to in many countries today, but actually there is pressure now, thanks partly to the Islamic vote, to bring blasphemy back as a serious offense in Britain and elsewhere
There are people who like to make fun of the ancient Biblical laws and say how out of date they are. Yet in many ways, they are far more advanced and humanitarian than many laws that apply in different countries and under different religions around the world today.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York
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New York Times Pumps Out Al-Jazeera-Style Anti-Israel Videos for TikTok
The New York Times building in New York City. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The New York Times is using the Chinese-dominated TikTok video app to amplify and pump out Al-Jazeera-style short videos from Gaza demonizing Israel.
Some of the most-viewed recently posted videos on the Times TikTok account, which has 1.8 million followers, feature dramatic images—with credit omitted—and language describing Israel as an aggressor.
“Israel bombarded a large tent encampment for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza, causing a deadly fire,” is a headline on one Times TikTok video that has been viewed more than 110,000 times.
“Families desperate for food gathered at distribution sites in Gaza as Israel’s halt on humanitarian aid surpassed 60 days,” is the headline on another video, viewed more than 100,000 times. There’s no transparency in the TikTok video of what journalist captured the video and conducted the interviews, or under what conditions or terms—it is simply credited to “The New York Times.”
The videos are also available, in horizontal format, on the Times website. There the videos carry bylines of Times staffers and, in some cases, very brief attribution of the source of the images. For example, an April 7 video headlined “Israeli Strike By a Major Hospital in Gaza Kills and Injures Journalists” is credited to Nader Ibrahim and Jon Hazell. Ibrahim is a “senior video journalist” based in London and came to the Times from the BBC; Hazell is a video editor also based in London. The video carries a brief attribution to “Anadolu Agency, via Reuters.” What the Times doesn’t tell its readers or viewers is that the “Anadolu Agency” is a state-controlled organ of the government of Turkey, which hosts and is ideologically aligned with Hamas.
Text that goes along with the video on the Times website says, “The strike killed one journalist and injured nine others, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate. At least one more person was killed, according to Gaza’s government office. Among those injured was Hasan Aslih, whom the Israeli military accused, without providing evidence, of being a Hamas militant.”
The bias here is clear. “Gaza’s government office” is the Hamas terrorists, but the Times doesn’t say that. Israel gets the “without providing evidence” treatment, but actually the IDF did offer up details, with a statement on social media, “Asilh, who operates under the guise of a journalist and owns a press company, is a terrorist operative in Hamas’ Khan Yunis Brigade. On October 7, he infiltrated Israeli territory and participated in Hamas’ murderous massacre. Asilh documented and uploaded footage of looting, arson and murder to social media.”
The Times is churning out video after video along this model—produced not in the Times Jerusalem bureau, but by workers in London or New York relying on scantily credited video from foreign wire services, advancing a pro-Hamas narrative and giving short shrift to Israel’s point of view. An April 17 video credited to Ibrahim is headlined, “Israeli Strike Kills at Least a Dozen in ‘Humanitarian Zone,’ Gazan Officials Say.” Text says, “Gaza’s Civil Defense, the local emergency rescue service, reported that an Israeli strike overnight into Thursday in the Mawasi encampment area killed at least a dozen people, including children. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.” Gaza’s “civil defense” is the Hamas terrorist organization.
A May 4, 2025 video by McKinnon de Kuyper includes images attributed only to “AFPTV” without disclosing to Times readers that the AFP board includes three representatives appointed by the French government. The Times describes de Kuyper as based in New York as a “weekend video journalist, operating livestreams and producing clips and breaking news packages for our website and social platforms.”
De Kuyper also is credited with a May 14, 2025, video headlined “Dozens Killed in Israeli Strikes in Northern Gaza, Officials Say.”
A May 7, 2025, video headlined “Airstrikes Kill Dozens in Gaza City” is attributed only to “By The New York Times.” It says, “The single deadliest bombing took place near a popular cafe in Gaza City where at least 33 people were killed, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.” The IDF announced May 8 that during a May 7 strike in the area of Gaza City it had eliminated “Muhammad Rasmi Marzouq Barakeh, a terrorist in Hamas’ military intelligence, who infiltrated Israel during the brutal October 7 massacre, and participated in the abduction of Yaffa Adar.” The Times video doesn’t report that.
Another video, also produced from London, amplifies a protest within Israel against the Israeli government’s policies.
I’ve had my quarrels and complaints over the years with print New York Times coverage produced by the newspaper’s journalists in Washington, New York, and Israel. But these propaganda-style videos are so strident and apparently calculated to generate an emotional response that they make previous New York Times news articles in print look, by comparison, like something produced by Israel’s government press office. What’s the point of having the New York Times produce this stuff when anyone can go to the TikTok account of Qatari-sponsored Al Jazeera and get basically the same material, also amplified to US-based viewers by TikTok’s proprietary algorithm?
Perhaps the New York Times management thinks they can profit in the short term by surfing the wave of Jew-hate, but it will be at the cost of eroding for longtime customers whatever credibility it built up over the years. Maybe they think that the legacy print customers aren’t paying attention to what the newspaper is doing on the social media platforms. Not so—we see it, and we are disgusted—not by what the Times is accusing Israel of doing, but by the Times’s abandonment, in the process, of traditional journalistic standards of quality, accuracy, and transparency.
Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.
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Even After Death of Terrorist, the AP Continues to Sell His Photos
The bodies of people, some of them elderly, lie on a street after they were killed during a mass-infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, southern Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
An Israeli air strike on Tuesday, May 13, killed a Palestinian journalist in Gaza whom the IDF identified as a Hamas terrorist, the army said. Despite HonestReporting calling out the Associated Press (AP), the agency continues to sell his photos on its global platform, in what some legal experts say may be considered material/financial support of a designated foreign terrorist organization in violation of US law that prohibits such conduct.
Allegations of Hassan Eslaiah’s links to terrorism should not have come as a surprise to the AP, which officially cut ties with the freelancer after HonestReporting’s November 2023 exposé of his infiltration into Israel during the October 7 massacre, which also saw the resurfacing of a photo of former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar kissing him on the cheek.
Eslaiah’s death also provoked a social media outcry from self-appointed Palestinian “journalists,” as well as from the new Pulitzer Prize winner — people whom we have previously exposed for praising the October 7 massacre, documenting abductions of Israelis by Hamas, or excusing them.
Hassan Eslaiah (r) with former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar (l)
AP’s Deafening Silence
Although we reached out to the AP twice for comment, the wire service continues to ignore our revelation last week of more than 40 photos by Eslaiah on its digital platform, which serves hundreds of media outlets worldwide. The photos’ prices range between 35 and 495 US dollars.
Our story, which detailed the possible legal ramifications of the AP selling Eslaiah’s material, was published after the IDF targeted and wounded him in southern Gaza in early April, while publicly identifying him as a member of Hamas’ Khan Younis Brigade who had been posing as a journalist.
On May 13, he was killed in a precise air strike on the Nasser hospital in Gaza along with other terrorists, the IDF said.
Interestingly, Eslaiah’s specific photos of the October 7 atrocities inside Israel have been removed from the AP’s platform, and it’s not clear whether he received royalties when his remaining photos were purchased.
But the credit Eslaiah still gets from a respected news outlet is certainly a reputation booster. And either way, the AP can still make money off of his propaganda for Hamas:
Social Media Outcry
Meanwhile, some self-appointed Palestinian journalists and the new Pulitzer Prize winner used the X social media platform (formerly Twitter) to eulogize their admired colleague, who also happened to receive a heartfelt send-off from Hamas.
Eslaiah received a prominent lamentation from Mosab Abu Toha, a Gazan poet who won the Pulitzer Prize last week for his New Yorker essays on the war in Gaza, and whom we recently exposed for justifying the abduction of Israelis by Hamas. Incidentally, he also blocked HonestReporting on X.
Hind Khoudari, a self-appointed Gazan journalist who was quoted by various media outlets throughout the Israel-Hamas war, also wrote a moving post about Eslaiah, which prompted us to remind her online fan club that she had collaborated with Hamas, leading to the arrest of Palestinian peace activists.
“Journalist” @Hind_Gaza was outed as a Hamas collaborator whose information led to the arrest of Palestinian peace activists.
Here she is putting lipstick
on a pig
.
No amount of cameras, press vests, or press helmets can disguise who Hassan Eslaiah was.
Behind the… https://t.co/8sh1Qto6iU
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 13, 2025
Khoudari’s reaction was to accuse HonestReporting of responsibility for the deaths of Palestinian journalists, an entirely far-fetched claim with no basis in reality, but repeated by many of her followers on social media.
Motaz Azaiza, another Gazan with an iPhone who became the darling of Western media, called Eslaiah “the most kind human you will ever meet.” Kindness, apparently, does not apply to Jews in Azaiza’s eyes, considering he had posted a video of the kidnapping of Israelis into Gaza and another video replete with a triumphant caption, showing Hamas terrorists inside Israel.
Yeah. Two “kind humans” together.
Reminder: @azaizamotaz9 posted a video of the kidnapping of Israelis into Gaza & another video replete with a triumphant caption, showing Hamas terrorists inside Israel.
No wonder he admired Oct. 7 infiltrator & Hamas operative Hassan Eslaiah. https://t.co/ygkgnk7hBR
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 13, 2025
All of these “journalists” praising their hero, as well as the AP platforming his work, conveniently ignores or denies Eslaiah’s links to terrorism — which comes as little surprise.
Hassan Eslaiah is just the tip of a very big iceberg when it comes to the role of Palestinian journalists in Hamas’ propaganda campaign. And public acknowledgment of this would bring the entire edifice crashing down — something that too many media outlets, as well as Palestinian activists, will try as hard as they can to avoid.
HonestReporting is a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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