US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a media conference after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers at the Czernin Palace, in Prague, Czech Republic, May 31, 2024. Photo: Peter David Josek/Pool via REUTERS

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday called for a final push for a ceasefire and hostage-release deal to halt fighting in Gaza before outgoing President Joe Biden leaves office on Jan. 20.

“We very much want to bring this over the finish line in the next two weeks, the time we have remaining,” Blinken told a news conference in South Korea when asked whether a deal was close.

While it remains unclear exactly how close Israel and Hamas are to an agreement, Jerusalem has reportedly sent a team of officials to Qatar for talks brokered by Qatari and Egyptian mediators.

Foreign media on Monday published a list of 34 hostages to be released as part of an Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement. According to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, Jerusalem had submitted the list to mediators in July.

Israel’s Channel 12 News reported that Hamas had agreed in principle to the list but was refusing or unable to confirm whether the listed hostages were alive. However, a Hamas official told Reuters the Palestinian terrorist group had cleared the list of who could be freed in the initial phase of a truce.

Of the 251 hostages kidnapped by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists during their invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, approximately 100 remain in captivity — at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Blinken’s latest comments came after he told the New York Times in an interview published over the weekend that Hamas, not Israel, has been the biggest impediment to achieving an elusive ceasefire deal to end the ongoing war in Gaza. 

Blinken batted down allegations that Israel walked away from opportunities to secure an end to the conflict, arguing that Hamas leadership purposefully prolonged the war to the detriment of their Gazan civilian population.

He added that placing on Israel and focusing primarily on its conduct only made achieving a ceasefire more difficult, claiming that the Hamas terrorist group used the perception of “public daylight between the United States and Israel” as leverage against the Jewish state in negotiations. 

“The two biggest impediments to getting that over the finish line — and we’ve been so close on several occasions and as we speak today, we’re also very close — there have been two major impediments, and they both go to what drives Hamas,” Blinken said.

“One has been whenever there has been public daylight between the United States and Israel and the perception that pressure was growing on Israel, we’ve seen it: Hamas has pulled back from agreeing to a cease-fire and the release of hostages,” he said. “And so there are times when what we say in private to Israel where we have a disagreement is one thing, and what we’re doing or saying in public may be another. But that’s in no small measure because with this daylight, the prospects of getting the hostage and cease-fire deal over the finish line become more distant.”

Blinken also argued that Hamas believed that prolonging the conflict could eventually spark a broader regional war involving Iran and its Hezbollah terrorist proxy. 

“The other thing that got Hamas to pull back was their belief, their hope that there would be a wider conflict, that Hezbollah would attack Israel, that Iran would attack Israel, that other actors would attack Israel, and that Israel would have its hands full and Hamas could continue what it was doing,” Blinken said. 

Hezbollah relentlessly pummeled northern Israeli communities with a barrage of missiles, rockets, and drones in the months following the Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel perpetrated by Hamas. Estimates suggest that Hezbollah, an Iranian-proxy terrorist organization, fired between 100-200 missiles into northern Israel nearly every day for over a year. As a result, roughly 80,000 Israelis were forced to evacuate Israel’s north due to the unrelenting attacks.

Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire deal in November, effectively ending a 14-month period of war between the two parties.

During his latest interview, Blinken also refuted notions that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “walked away” from opportunities to broker a ceasefire, saying that Israel oftentimes had understandable rationales for taking bold actions such as eliminating Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. 

“What we’ve seen time and again is Hamas not concluding a deal that it should have concluded. There have been times when actions that Israel has taken have, yes, made it more difficult. But there’s been a rationale for those actions, even if they’ve sometimes made getting to a conclusion more difficult,” Blinked said. 

The State Department leader also expressed frustration over the lack of international outrage against Hamas, wondering why a “unanimous chorus around the world” has not emerged to criticize the terrorist group’s prolonging of the conflict. 

“[Y]ou hear virtually nothing from anyone since Oct. 7 about Hamas. Why there hasn’t been a unanimous chorus around the world for Hamas to put down its weapons, to give up the hostages, to surrender — I don’t know what the answer is to that. Israel, on various occasions has offered safe passage to Hamas’s leadership and fighters out of Gaza. Where is the world? Where is the world, saying, ‘Yeah, do that! End this! Stop the suffering of people that you brought on!’” Blinken added. 

Blinken also emphatically denied the unsubstantiated notion that Israel has committed a “genocide” in Gaza. He argued that although Palestinians have suffered as a result of the war, the ultimate defeat of Hamas could present “the prospect of a much different and much better future.”

“[E]veryone has to look at the facts and draw their own conclusions from those facts. And my conclusions are clear. I think as well, there is, in the wake of this horrific suffering — the traumatization of the Israeli population, the Palestinian population and many others — there’s also a light that one can see that offers the prospect of a much different and much better future,” Blinken said.

The post Blinken Calls for Final Gaza Truce Push Before Biden Leaves Office first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

It’s a commonplace experience of a Diaspora Jew visiting Israel to realize that suddenly, this thing that made you different is actually the least remarkable thing about you.

The character Alexander Portnoy speaks to this in Philip Roth’s novel Portnoy’s Complaint—but I’ve also just lived it when visiting Tel Aviv or Rehovot or wherever. Whether you experience it as being Othered in a bad way or as a point of pride and what makes you special, you get to Israel and lo and behold, no one is surprised that your family doesn’t celebrate Christmas or whatever. Streets are named after Jewish figures, businesses are closed on Jewish holidays, Jewishness is assumed, so distinctiveness requires other sources. Being Jewish isn’t associated with being this way or that—not with being neurotic or good with money—because Jews are everywhere you look. The bimbos and himbos are Jewish, too.

So it took me by surprise, visiting my hometown of New York City over the holiday break, to feel a bit, well, Israel-visit-ish while there. It’s not that everyone is Jewish (nor, for that matter, is everybody Jewish in Israel), but rather that there’s just some crucial difference in population and culture such that it is not a whole thing to be Jewish in post-Oct. 7 New York, not in the way it is in Toronto. Goodness knows that relative to plenty of places, Toronto’s got Jews. But it is, at most, a city with some Jewish areas. We’re Canadian, sure, but one of the city’s many Others.

The streets of Manhattan are not lined with signage admonishing passersby to reflect on Israel’s misdeeds. You can walk for blocks or even days on end and not see a keffiyeh, not because the United States bans free expression but because the interest just isn’t there. The little that remained of post-Oct. 7 signage was more in the hostage-freeing realm than the other sort.

But there isn’t a tremendous amount of pro-Israel this-and-that, either. (I saw maybe one baseball cap expressing support for Israel?) It’s more like, look at all the shiny things you can buy in America, and particularly in Manhattan, so have at it! Shiny things and, uh, MAGA-wear.

But there’s an underlying Jewishness that’s just so much in the air you wouldn’t notice it if it’s part of your everyday life. There are the old standbys (food shops like Zabar’s, etc.) but also newcomers. Breads Bakery is not that new, but it’s newly ubiquitous, and unambiguously, unapologetically Jewish, from the Happy Challahdays signage to the sufganiyot labeled as such. In corporate lobbies and whatnot, no Christmas tree lacks an accompanying menorah. This is not because ‘woke’ or whatever, it’s not a war on Christmas, it’s what the population demands. I heard no shortage of Hebrew.

This is not about better or worse; I am describing the world as it is. Not to suggest anyone up and move (not a trivial thing, even for dual citizens) in either direction. And the thing I experience when I walk out the door in Toronto, where the fact that I’m Jewish is this whole thing, one that is interpreted by some as a prompt for theses on geo-politics that I simply don’t have, is not one in New York, where Jewish is among many unremarkable ways to be. So, Phoebe, you’re Jewish, what’s that about? In New York, no one thinks to start that conversation. Fine not no one, it depends the environment, but it wouldn’t be nearly as regular an occurrence.

Whereas a man in Zabar’s told me that he went to school with the store’s founder, what would have been about 70 years ago. Why did he tell me this? Because it’s what you do while you wait for lox, you tell the person standing next to you your life story. Torontonians would never. We’re too busy not talking to people to whom we haven’t been formally introduced, or, I guess, sorting out the Middle East by leaving what are, in effect, passive-aggressive notes. On the plus side, we can buy our groceries without anyone chatting with us, if we’re not feeling it that day.

Mainly, though, I did not experience public space as a demand to form a coherent position on Middle East politics. This is not because the city lacks anyone who ponders such things (Columbia University is located in Manhattan) but because there’s a level of Jewish presence—or, even in Manhattan, American conservatism—that acts as a buffer against the flags-flyers-keffiyehs blanketing of public space. It struck me the moment I was back in Toronto just how visible the conflict is, including—if less so, in Roncesvalles Village—the pro-Israel side of things.

While I was there, I kept thinking: what are the authors of the anthology On Being Jewish Now, clustered as they are in the part of NYC I come from, experiencing? Or rather, how would they react to so much as five minutes anywhere other than the Upper East or West Sides? Places where a kind of secular-ish cultural Jewishness is so entrenched that you don’t ever really think you’re alone in believing, for example, that Israelis are human beings and not evil abstractions. It started to make sense why so many of the tensions they describe occurred online. I suppose that’s how it goes in areas where you can go to the local coffee shop and forget all that stuff.

The thing one says about Israel is that its existence makes Jews elsewhere safer, even ones who have no interest in packing up and moving there. Can the same be said of New York? Unclear. All I can say with confidence is that I spent what would amount to a zillion Canadian dollars over the course of a few days on the excellent pastries from Breads Bakery.

The CJN’s opinion editor Phoebe Maltz Bovy can be reached at pbovy@thecjn.ca, not to mention @phoebebovy on Bluesky, and @bovymaltz on X. She is also on The CJN’s weekly podcast Bonjour Chai. For more opinions about Jewish culture wars, subscribe to the free Bonjour Chai newsletter on Substack.

The post New York was always a lot more Jewish than Toronto could ever be—but the contrast is more obvious now appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

Car in New South Wales, Australia graffitied with antisemitic message. Photo: Screenshot

The state of New South Wales in Australia has seen its latest antisemitic hate crime involving the destruction of property.

“F—k the Jews” was graffitied on a car that was parked in the Queens Park suburb of Sydney, the state capital, between 7 am Sunday and 5:45 am Monday, according to police. Since being discovered, the incident has prompted responses from national leaders and Jewish civil rights groups.

“There is no tolerance for antisemitism in Australia from my government, nor should there be tolerance from anyone else,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said during  a press conference on Monday. “Antisemitism is a scourge, and any event such as this targeting people because of who they are is not the Australian values that I hold dear and the Australian values that are held dear by, overwhelmingly, Australians.”

The New South Wales (NSW) Jewish Board of Deputies added, “We are appalled and saddened at the antisemitic graffiti which was daubed on a private vehicle in Queens Park this morning. It is unacceptable that Jewish Australians and Australians of all backgrounds have had to wake up yet again and see messages of hate prominently displayed in their neighborhoods.”

The group continued, “We cannot allow ourselves to become desensitized to acts of Jew-hatred and allow illegal conduct such as this to become normalized.”

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, antisemitic hatred in Australia, especially New South Wales, driven both by a wave of “old” antisemitism and a “new” iteration of it fueled by anti-Zionism, is rising. Last month, the home of a prominent Jewish Australian, Lesli Berger, was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti, with the perpetrators spray-painting a swastika on the perimeter wall of the property. Next to the infamous Nazi symbol were the spray-painted words “Jordan Gayter,” believed to be a misspelling of the German phrase for “Juden Gatter,” or “Jewish Gate.”

Berger explained to a local outlet, J-Wire, that he does not believe the crime directly targeted him, noting that the high population of Jewish residents in his neighborhood, the Bellevue Hill section of the city of Sydney, is common knowledge.

“It’s clear this was a hate crime targeting the Jewish area, although not me personally,” he said. “The perpetrators likely understood this is a predominantly Jewish area. It’s highly unlikely that anyone would specifically identify my home — it was more opportunistic.”

Justice has so far been elusive, he added, noting that local police discontinued their investigation of the incident after a forensic analysis of the area near the crime and the perusing of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras failed to yield new evidence that could help with identifying and capturing a suspect. While Berger did not condemn law enforcement’s pausing the criminal inquiry, he stressed the importance of addressing antisemitic hate crimes in the area, a growing problem in Australia in recent years.

Also last month, someone graffitied “Kill Israel” on the garage door of a home in the Woollahra section of Sydney, an incident described by NSW Jewish Board of Deputies leader David Ossip as continuing a “sustained campaign of intimidation, harassment, and terror against the Jewish community.”

Antisemitism across the country quadrupled to record levels between 2023-2024, with Australian Jews experiencing more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, according to a report published by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), an organization which advocates upholding the civil rights of the country’s some 120,000 Jewish citizens.

In the aftermath of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, a total of 2,062 anti-Jewish incidents were recorded in Australia, far more than the 495 documented in the previous 12-month period and the most since the ECAJ began tracking such data in 1990.

Notably, the total did not include antisemitic statements made on social media. However, it did include dozens of assaults and hundreds of incidents of property destruction and hate speech. Physical assaults recorded by the group jumped from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024. The level of antisemitism for the past year was six times the average of the preceding 10 years.

“Whilst the number of reported antisemitic incidents has fluctuated from year to year previously, there has never been anything like an annual increase of this magnitude,” ECAJ research director Julie Nathan said in a statement accompanying the report. “If anything, the raw numbers understate the seriousness of the surge in antisemitism that has occurred. There have been many new forms and expressions of anti-Jewish racism that would once have been considered alien to Australia but which have become commonplace.”

Additionally, the number of attacks on Jews — digital, political, and physical — has skyrocketed in Australia since Hamas’s atrocities last Oct. 7. In just the first seven and a half weeks after the onslaught, antisemitic activity in Australia increased by a staggering 591 percent, according to a tally of incidents by the ECAJ.

In one notorious episode in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, hundreds of pro-Hamas protesters gathered outside the Sydney Opera House chanting “gas the Jews,” “f—k the Jews,” and other epithets.

This explosion of hate has also included vandalism and threats of gun violence, as well as incidents such as a brutal attack on a Jewish man in a park in Sydney. ECAJ’s report detailed other similar incidents. For example, a male assailant repeatedly punched a Jewish man while screaming “dirty rotten Jew c—t”; a group of young men jumped a Jewish boy, whom they called a “dirty Jew”; and pro-Hamas protesters “spat on, threatened, and kicked” an elderly Jewish woman during a demonstration held to raise awareness of antisemitism.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post ‘F—k the Jews’: Car in Australia Vandalized With Antisemitic Graffiti in Latest Incident Against Jewish Community first appeared on Algemeiner.com.