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The JTA conversation: Pogrom? Terrorism? What do we call what happened in Huwara?
(JTA) — On Sunday, after a Palestinian gunman shot and killed two Israeli brothers in the West Bank, Jewish settlers rioted in the nearby Palestinian town of Huwara, burning cars and buildings. A Palestinian was killed and dozens were injured.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the Jewish rioters for “taking the law in their own hands,” but many observers — including the top Israeli general in the West Bank and Abraham Foxman, director emeritus of the the Anti-Defamation League — used stronger language, calling the attacks a “pogrom.”
The use of the word, which most famously refers to a wave of anti-Jewish violence in the Russian empire beginning in the late 19th century, in turn became the subject of debate. Does using “pogrom” co-opt Jewish history unfairly and inaccurately by suggesting Jews are no better than their historical persecutors? Does avoiding the term mean Israel and its supporters are not taking sufficient responsibility for the actions of its Jewish citizens?
The debate is not just about language, but about controlling the narrative. Political speech can minimize or exaggerate events, put them in their proper context or distort them in ways that, per George Orwell, can “corrupt thought.”
We asked historians, linguists and activists to consider the word pogrom, and asked them what politicians, journalists and everyday people should call what happened at Huwara. Their responses are below.
Sidestepping the real issue
Dr. Jeffrey Shandler
Distinguished Professor, Department of Jewish Studies, Rutgers University
The meanings of the word “pogrom” in different languages are key here. In Russian, it means a massacre or raid, as it does in Yiddish; in neither language is it understood as specifically about violence against Jews. The Oxford English Dictionary concurs that pogrom means an “organized massacre… of any body or class,” but notes that, in the English-language press, it was first used mostly to refer to anti-Jewish attacks in Russia, citing examples from 1905-1906.
Therefore, though the association of pogrom with violence targeting Jews is widely familiar, its meaning is broader.
That said, because of English speakers’ widely familiar association of the term with Jews as victims, to use pogrom to describe violence perpetrated by Jews is provocative. As to whether it is appropriate to refer to recent attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians, it seems to me that this question sidesteps the more important question of whether the actions being called pogroms are appropriate.
Call it what it is: “settler terrorism”
Sara Yael Hirschhorn
’22-’23 Research Fellow at the Center for Antisemitism Research at the ADL, and author, “City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement”
Let me say first with a loud and clear conscience: What happened in Huwara was abhorrent, immoral, and unconscionable and certainly was not committed in my name.
But to paraphrase Raymond Carver’s famous formulation: How do we talk about it when we talk about Huwara? What kind of descriptive and analytical framework can adequately and contextually interpret that horrific event?
The shorthand of choice seems to be “pogrom” — but it isn’t clear that all who deploy the term are signifying the same thing. For some, pogrom is a synonym for pillage, rampage, fire, property damage and violence in the streets — a one-word general summary of brutal acts. For others, pogrom refers to vigilante justice, an abbreviated story of the non-state or non-institutional actors and their motivations.
More specifically, however, pogrom is seemingly being mobilized as a metaphor to Jewish history, juxtaposing the Jewish victims of yesterday to the Jewish-Israeli perpetrators of today, an implicit analogy to the prelude to the Shoah, recasting Zionists as organized bands of genocidaires (with or without regime sponsorship) like the Cossacks, the Nationalist Fronts or even the Einsatzgruppen. Some would use the word to incorporate all three meanings (and more).
As a historian, I am troubled by the haphazard and harmful use of terms that are attached to a specific time and place — such as the thousand-year history of Jews in the Rhinelands and Eastern Europe, with many layers of imperial, national, local, economic and religious forces that precipitated these events — in such an ahistorical manner. Nor do I find the parallels between Zionists and Nazis to be historically careful (if deliberately offensive) — the State of Israel is committing crimes in the West Bank, but not a genocide. The equivalence also all too easily and incorrectly grafts tropes of racism and white supremacy drawn from American history into the West Bank’s soil.
So what to say about Huwara? Israel — for reasons both political and lexiconographical — has failed to consistently adopt a term for such attacks. (Often the euphemism of “errant weeds” who are “taking matters into their own hands” is the choice of Knesset politicians.) To my mind, the best term is “settler terrorism,” which puts Jewish-Israeli acts on par with Palestinian terrorism. It should also mean that these actions merit the same consequences under the occupation like trial, imprisonment, home demolition and other deterrents enforced against all those who choose the path of violence.
Last but not least, a pogrom was historically an unpunished crime against humanity that led only to war and annihilation. Don’t we aspire for more in Israel/Palestine?
Palestinians call it “ethnic cleansing”
Ibrahim Eid Dalalsha
Director, Horizon Center for Political Studies and Media Outreach, Ramallah, and member of Israel Policy Forum’s Critical Neighbors task force
Palestinians generally view and describe what happened during Sunday’s Huwara attacks as “racist hate crimes seeking to destroy and dispossess the Palestinian people of their homes and properties.” While no specific term has been used to describe these attacks, it was likened to the barbaric and savage invasion of Baghdad by Hulagu, the 13th-century Mongol commander.
Palestinian intellectuals tend to use “ethnic cleansing,” savage and barbaric ethnically motivated violence against innocent civilians, as another way of referring to these attacks. When such events include killing, Palestinian politicians and intellectuals tend to use the term massacre, or “majzara,” to underline the irrational and indiscriminate violence against defenseless civilians. I don’t think the term “pogrom” and its historic connotation are widely known to most people here. From a Palestinian perspective, using such terms, including “Holocaust,” is not considered a mistake. In fact, even using “Holocaust“ to describe violence against Palestinian civilians in and around 1948 was not considered a mistake until very recently when it caused such a saga for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Germany.
View of cars burned by Jewish settlers during riots in Huwara, in the West Bank, near Nablus, Feb. 27, 2023. (Nasser Ishtayeh/Flash90)
In the name of historical accuracy
Rukhl Schaechter
Yiddish Editor, The Forward
The recent attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in Huwara are abhorrent. I commend those in Israel calling them peulot teror, “actions of terror,” and I trust that the perpetrators will be brought to justice. But these riots were not pogroms.
The word pogrom refers to one of the many violent riots and subsequent massacres of Jews in Eastern Europe between the 17th and 20th centuries. These attacks were committed by local non-Jewish, often peasant populations. They were instigated by rabble-rousers like Bogdan Chmielnicki, who led a Cossack and peasant uprising against Polish rule in Ukraine in 1648 and ended up destroying hundreds of Jewish communities. According to eyewitnesses, the attackers also committed atrocities on pregnant women.
Note that the massacres of Jews carried out by the Nazis, and the murders of Armenians by the Turkish government at the turn of the 20th century — as horrific as they were — were never called pogroms because in both cases, there was a government behind it. In the name of historic accuracy, let’s continue to use the word pogrom solely for mob attacks on and massacres of Jews.
When the Poles banned “pogrom”
Samuel D. Kassow
Professor of History, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut
In Poland in the late 1930s, altercations between a Jew and a Pole sometimes ended with either the Jew or the Pole getting badly hurt or even killed. When the victim was a Pole, mobs of Poles rampaged through Jewish neighborhoods smashing windows, looting shops and often beating or even killing Jews. Poles often held Jews collectively responsible for the death of one of their own. This happened in Przytyk, Minsk-Mazowieck, Grodno and other places. Jews called these riots “pogroms,” which they were. But the Polish government banned use of the term in the press. After all, “pogrom” was a Russian word, and “pogroms” happened only in a place characterized by barbarism and ignorance. Since Poland was not Russia, and since Poles were eminently civilized, logically speaking, pogroms simply did not take place in Poland. What happened in these towns were to be called “excesses” (zajscia). But certainly not pogroms!
I take it that since we Jews are so civilized, we too are incapable of pogroms. So should we label what these settlers did “‘excesses”? Or perhaps we should take a deep breath and call them pogroms?
A Jewish, but not exclusive, history
Henry Abramson
Historian
The word “pogrom” is rooted in time and place, although the type of violence it describes is as old as human history. It is a Russian word, but it entered the English language in the late 19th century through the medium of Yiddish-speakers, outraged at the wave of antisemitic disturbances that surged under rule of the last tsar of the Russian Empire, Nicholas II. Russians themselves used a variety of words for the ugly phenomenon, with translations like “riot” or “persecution,” but the term “pogrom” proved the most evocative: the Slavic prefix “po” suggests a directed attack, and the root “grom” is the word for “thunder.” A pogrom, therefore, meant a focused point where a great deal of energy was dissipated in a single dramatic act of violence.
The focused point, in the context of that dark history, was the civilian Jewish population in the tiny shtetls that dotted the Pale of Settlement. In this regard the word could be used to encompass attacks on Jewish populations from as long ago as the year 38 in Alexandria, Egypt. It does not, however, have any specific designation to indicate that Jews are the victims.
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Bondi Gunmen Acted Alone, No Evidence They Were Part of Terrorist Cell, Australian Police Say
A CCTV footage shows Naveed Akram and his father, Sajid Akram, both suspects in the shooting attack during a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, carrying items wrapped in blankets, while exiting 103 Brighton Avenue, Campsie, New South Wales, Australia, in this still image taken from a court document released on Dec. 22, 2025. Photo: NSW Police/Handout via REUTERS
Two gunmen who allegedly opened fire on a Jewish celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach earlier this month acted alone and there was “no evidence” they were part of a terrorist cell, police said on Tuesday.
Naveed Akram and his father Sajid Akram are alleged to have killed 15 people at a Hanukkah event on Dec. 14, Australia’s worst mass shooting in almost three decades that shocked the nation and led to immediate reforms of already strict gun laws.
Police have previously said the men were inspired by Islamic State, with homemade flags of the terrorist group found in their car after the attack, and a month-long trip by the pair to a Philippines island previously plagued by militancy a major focus of investigation.
But on Tuesday, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett said there was no indication the men had received formal training on the November trip to Mindanao in the Philippines.
“There is no evidence to suggest these alleged offenders were part of a broader terrorist cell, or were directed by others to carry out an attack,” Barrett told a news conference.
She added the findings were an initial assessment, and authorities in Australia and the Philippines were continuing their investigation.
“I am not suggesting that they were there for tourism,” she said, referring to the Philippines trip.
Sajid Akram was shot dead by police during the attack, while his son Naveed, who was also shot by police, was charged with 59 offenses after waking from a days-long coma earlier this month. Naveed Akram faces charges ranging from 15 counts of murder to terror and explosives offenses.
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The ‘Zombie’ Caliphate: While the World Celebrates the Muslim Brotherhood’s Demise, Its Billion-Dollar Empire Thrives in Plain Sight
Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Jordanian capital, Amman, chanting pro-Palestinian slogans in April 2018. Photo: Reuters / Muhammad Hamed.
In Washington and Arab capitals, a comforting narrative has taken hold: The Muslim Brotherhood is finished. We are told that the Sisi regime in Egypt has crushed them, that Jordan has shuttered their offices, and that the “Islamist Winter” is finally over. The recent executive order by President Trump to review the group for terror designation is seen as the final nail in the coffin.
But if you look away from the empty political offices and follow the money, you will find a terrifying reality. The Muslim Brotherhood hasn’t gone bankrupt; it has simply gone corporate.
While Western intelligence agencies applaud the closure of dusty headquarters in Amman, they are ignoring the €27 million mega-complexes rising in France, the €4 million real estate fortresses in Berlin, and the terror-linked holding companies trading openly on the Istanbul Stock Exchange. The Brotherhood has transformed from a mass movement into a transnational financial conglomerate — a “Zombie Caliphate” that is legally bulletproof and wealthier than ever.
The Egyptian “Catch-and-Release”
The myth of the Brotherhood’s destruction starts in Egypt. The regime’s “Inventory Committee” boasts of seizing assets worth a staggering 300 billion EGP (approx. $16.7 billion), and liquidating the schools, hospitals, and businesses that formed the movement’s spine.
But the crackdown is porous. In July 2023, an Egyptian court quietly ordered the unfreezing of assets for 146 alleged Brotherhood figures, ruling that the state failed to prove the funds were illicit. This legal “oops” likely allowed millions in liquid capital to flee the country, funneling straight into the offshore networks now appearing in Istanbul and London.
Then there is the case of Safwan Thabet, the tycoon behind Juhayna Food Industries. Arrested for refusing to hand over his empire to the state, he was released in 2023. His survival teaches a harsh lesson: the Brotherhood’s money is so deeply integrated into the legitimate economy that the state cannot tear it out without killing the patient. The “deep state” of Brotherhood finance remains alive, hiding behind the facade of legitimate dairy giants and retail chains.
Turkey: The NATO Safe Haven for Terror Finance
If Egypt is the extraction point, Turkey is the laundromat. Despite President Erdogan’s desperate diplomatic pivot toward Cairo, Istanbul remains the operational heartbeat of this financial insurgency.
Western policymakers need to look closely at the Borsa Istanbul. There, trading openly under the ticker TDGYO, is Trend GYO — a real estate investment trust designated by the US Treasury Department for being 75% owned by Hamas. In a rational world, a NATO member would not host a publicly traded company that funds a designated terror group. In Erdogan’s Turkey, however, Trend GYO continues to develop luxury apartments, such as the recent project in Istanbul’s Alibeyköy district, subcontracting construction to obscure local firms to wash the proceeds.
This is the new model: “Terrorism Inc.” Yemeni billionaire Hamid al-Ahmar, operating freely from Istanbul, chairs Investrade Portfoy, an investment firm that commingles legitimate business with funds allegedly destined for Hamas. Meanwhile, the Brotherhood’s elite send their children to Al-Nahda International Schools in Istanbul — private institutions run by exiled cadres that ensure the next generation is indoctrinated in the ideology of the “Group” while generating tuition revenue.
Europe: The “Concrete” Fortress
As the environment in the Middle East becomes hostile, the Brotherhood has executed a strategic pivot to Europe, replacing “liquid” assets (cash) with “fixed” assets (real estate) protected by Western property laws.
In Austria, the failure of “Operation Luxor” serves as a cautionary tale. In 2020, police raided 60 Brotherhood-linked sites. The result? Zero terrorism convictions. Courts declared the raids unlawful. The Brotherhood didn’t just survive; they lawyered up and won, proving that without a specific designation, European criminal law cannot work against them.
In Germany, the UK-based Europe Trust purchased a massive property in Berlin’s Wedding district for €4 million. This isn’t just a building; it is a command center for the Deutsche Muslimische Gemeinschaft (DMG), insulated from German intelligence by British corporate deeds.
In France, the situation is even more brazen. The Al-Noor Center in Mulhouse — a massive complex featuring a mosque, school, and swimming pool — was built at a cost of €27 million. Intelligence links it to Qatar Charity’s “Ghaith Initiative,” which has poured over €120 million into 140 such projects across Europe. These are not community centers; they are forward operating bases for a parallel society, subsidized by Doha and protected by European property rights.
The West is fighting a 21st-century financial empire with 20th-century police tactics. We raid homes in Vienna while they move crypto in Istanbul. We seize crumbling offices in Jordan while they buy prime real estate in Berlin.
The Muslim Brotherhood is not dead. It is alive, well, and trading on the Istanbul Stock Exchange. Until the US and its allies target the enablers — the Turkish banks clearing Trend GYO transactions, the Qatari transfers to Mulhouse, and the shell companies in London — we are merely cutting the grass while the roots grow deeper.
Amine Ayoub, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco. Follow him on X: @amineayoubx
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The US Coast Guard Keeps Trying to Loosen Restrictions on Swastikas — Have We Passed a Point of No Return?
People waving Nazi swastika flags argue with conservatives during a protest outside the Tampa Convention Center, where Turning Point USA’s (TPUSA) Student Action Summit (SAS) was being held, in Tampa, Florida, US July 23, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Marco Bello
It is hard to describe the insanity of what the US Coast Guard just did — or nearly did — without sounding alarmist. But alarm is warranted.
In a quiet, internal policy change, the Coast Guard downgraded swastikas and nooses from explicit hate symbols to what it blandly called “potentially divisive” imagery. Not in a press release. Not after consultation with Jewish or civil-rights groups. Quietly. Bureaucratically. Almost accidentally — until reporters noticed.
Only after Jewish organizations, veterans’ groups, and US senators demanded answers did the Coast Guard scramble to reverse course, insisting all along that nothing had really changed.
Then the Coast Guard tried to do this a second time. Once again, the plan was exposed, and the Coast Guard reversed course. But no one in the administration condemned it.
It seems clear that something has fundamentally changed.
A swastika is not “potentially divisive.”
A noose is not “context dependent.”
They are not ambiguous. They are not debatable. They are among the clearest symbols of hatred in human history — shorthand for genocide, terror, and racial violence. The fact that a uniformed US service sought to allow these symbols on government property in some contexts should disturb every American.
Semantic Cowardice Disguised as Neutrality
The Coast Guard’s revised guidance did not outright permit swastikas in all cases — but it said there should be nuance in deciding when one could be displayed. And it did something extremely corrosive: it reframed them.
By categorizing swastikas and nooses as “potentially divisive imagery,” the policy stripped them of their categorical moral status. Under the new language, commanding officers might intervene. Or they might not. Everything depended on context, interpretation, discretion.
That is not how institutions fight hatred. That is how they avoid responsibility.
Words matter in bureaucracies. Classification determines enforcement. Once something moves from “prohibited hate symbol” to “potentially divisive,” the burden shifts — from the institution to the offended party, from clarity to contestation, from principle to process.
For Jews, the swastika is not merely offensive; it is existential. It is the emblem under which six million Jews were murdered — grandparents, children, entire communities erased. It is not reclaimed. It is not misunderstood. It is not ambiguous.
Calling it “potentially divisive” is not neutral language. It is moral minimization.
The Gaslighting That Followed
What made this episode worse was not just the policy change — but the response to criticism.
Jewish leaders were told, repeatedly, that no downgrade had occurred. That the Coast Guard maintained a zero-tolerance stance. That reports suggesting otherwise were mistaken.
And yet the language was there, in black and white.
When Jewish organizations pointed this out, the reaction was not contrition but deflection. When senators demanded answers, the response was confusion. Only once political pressure became unavoidable did the Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security quietly remove the offending language — while still insisting there had never been a problem. And then they tried to do the same thing again!
This is institutional gaslighting.
If nothing changed, why was the language altered?
If the policy was always clear, why did it need “clarification”?
If leadership opposed the downgrade, how did it happen on their watch?
Institutions erode trust not only through bad decisions, but through evasive ones.
Why This Keeps Happening
It would be comforting to chalk this up to ideology — to blame wokeness, antisemitism, or a rogue staffer. But that explanation is too simple, and therefore too comforting.
What actually happened here is more unsettling.
This is what happens when institutions treat offense as a liability to be managed rather than evil as something to be condemned.
In modern bureaucracies, the overriding imperative is not truth or justice but risk mitigation. The goal is to avoid complaints, minimize exposure, and keep controversies from escalating. When everything is framed as “potentially divisive,” nothing is clearly wrong.
Accountability Matters — and Someone Approved This
Policies do not downgrade themselves.
Someone wrote that language. Someone reviewed it. Someone approved it. And someone allowed Jewish groups to be told one thing while the written policy said another.
This is not about vengeance or scapegoating. It is about governance.
Public trust depends on knowing that decisions with moral consequences are made deliberately, transparently, and honestly. When leadership cannot explain how such a change occurred — or insists it never occurred at all — confidence erodes further.
If Federal agencies want credibility when confronting antisemitism, they must show that internal processes match public assurances. Anything less invites suspicion that moral clarity exists only when politically convenient.
Why Jews Are Right to Be Alarmed
Some will say this controversy is overblown — that the policy was technical, that no harm was intended, that the reversal proves the system works.
That response misunderstands the moment.
American Jews are living through a historic surge in antisemitism — on campuses, in cities, online, and increasingly in physical space. Swastikas are not abstractions. They appear on synagogues, playgrounds, dormitories, and subway cars. They are not rare provocations; they are routine intimidation.
In that environment, government institutions do not get the luxury of ambiguity.
When a uniformed service wavers on whether a swastika is unequivocally a hate symbol, Jews hear a message — even if unintended: your history is negotiable; your fear is contextual; your dignity depends on discretion.
For Jews, this is not symbolic politics. It is the language of survival.
This episode does not stand alone. It fits a pattern Jews now recognize with grim familiarity — from college campuses to the streets of major American cities.
History’s lesson is not that hatred begins with shouting. It begins with hedging that is tolerated quietly, normalized bureaucratically, and explained away procedurally until institutions discover they no longer know how to draw lines at all.
And when that happens, Jews are never the only ones at risk — just the first to notice.
Every Federal agency should be required — explicitly and publicly — to designate genocidal and terror symbols as categorically prohibited, without modifiers, caveats, or discretion. No euphemisms. No contextual hedging. No bureaucratic laundering of moral truth.
Moral clarity is not extremism. It is the minimum requirement of authority.
A swastika is not a misunderstanding. It is not “potentially divisive.” It is a warning.
And any institution that hesitates to say so is warning us, too.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.