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The World’s Lies About Israel Encourage Worse Conduct by Other Countries
Members of the United Nations Security Council meet on the day of a vote on a Gaza resolution that demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan leading to a permanent ceasefire, and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, at UN headquarters in New York City, US, March 25, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
In six months of fighting in Gaza, Israel has produced the lowest civilian to combatant casualty ratio in history.
Nonetheless, the Jewish State has found itself subject to accusations ranging from being overly aggressive to outright genocide — accusations that are flatly contradicted by well established data. To accuse a country that is being so incredibly careful sends a dangerous message to the world: that being careful doesn’t matter, and that terrorism works.
A case-in-point is the recent statement by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) spokesman Tarek Abu Shaluf, who admitted that terror groups (such as PIJ and Hamas) have taken over all of the hospitals in Gaza, and are using the medical facilities to hide military activities and launch attacks.
Shaluf was speaking while under interrogation by Israeli intelligence, a situation that public audiences typically find non-credible. However, in this case, Shaluf’s statement coincides with multiple international intelligence findings, including by the United States and Europe, not to mention a mountain of specific evidence publicly disclosed by Israel.
Nonetheless, Israel has garnered a general and baseless reputation for being overly aggressive and even malicious. Last week, for example, senior Democrat, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, signed a letter calling on President Biden to withhold arms sales from Israel. This move is especially notable because Pelosi does not represent a niche faction of the party, but is considered to be a senior and mainstream leader within the US political establishment.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board said that Democrats were “play[ing] into Hamas’s hands,” and that, “Cutting off weapons to an ally in wartime would be the definition of betrayal.” There is also opposition to supporting Israel on the political right, though it has yet to reach levels that are quite as senior and mainstream as those represented by last week’s letter.
Internationally, Israel is fighting accusations of genocide in the International Court of Justice at the Hague. Meanwhile, Nicaragua — which for years has been closely tied to both Iran and Hezbollah — brought a similar suit last week against Germany based on the country’s support for Israel. The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, and the United States, in a notable shift of policy, did not exercise its veto power to prevent it.
Notwithstanding the accusations against Israel, which are often dramatic and deeply emotional, the numbers tell a different story.
Currently Hamas claims a total of some 33,000 casualties. It is well established that Hamas’ casualty figures are wildly inaccurate, including such faults as counting combatants and also counting civilians that Hamas itself has killed.
The IDF states a combatant casualty count of some 14,000, putting the civilian to combatant casualty ratio at slightly over 1:1, even if one accepts Hamas’ figures. This 1:1 ratio is nine times lower than the UN published global average, and 4 to 5 times lower than numbers produced by the US and its allies (such as in Iraq and Afghanistan).
In fact, the figure is lower than any urban warfare scenario that has ever been recorded in history. Even now, conflicts are raging in places like Syria and Yemen with death tolls in the hundreds of thousands, with abysmal civilian to combatant ratios, and yet they are receiving precious little global attention.
On the humanitarian aid front, Israel has facilitated the transport of more than a quarter million tons of food and over three million cubic meters of clean water into Gaza since October 7. Hamas habitually steals this aid to supply its military machine at the expense of Gaza’s civilians, a leading factor behind much of the food insecurity in the region. However, Hamas’ food theft has gone mostly unnoticed by international critics.
The global publicity campaign against Israel is no accident: Hamas has little chance of defeating Israel militarily, and their leadership is well aware of this reality. The terror organization has therefore publicly stated that it intends to use public pressure to stop Israel’s military campaign prematurely, and thus achieve an overall victory even despite losing every physical battle. Such tactics are nothing new, but if recent changes in American policy are any measure, it seems that this time, the tactic may actually stand a chance of working.
Israel has lost more than 600 soldiers since October 7, many of whom fell precisely because of Israel’s historic caution in protecting civilians, and the world is watching.
On the one hand, world leaders see the price Israel is paying to protect civilians and they see that this sacrifice goes unacknowledged. On the other hand, terror groups are also watching: they see that hiding behind civilians works, that placing military bases inside hospitals works, and that a campaign of global defamation works as well. If we publicly malign the very caution we wish to see in the world by Israel, if we permit the very abuse of civilians we wish to prevent, then we build the very kind of future we should rationally wish to avoid.
Daniel Pomerantz is an expert in international law, an adjunct professor at Reichman and Bar Ilan Universities in Israel, and the CEO of RealityCheck, an nonprofit NGO dedicated to clarifying global conversations with verifiable data. Daniel lives in Tel Aviv, Israel and can be found on Instagram at @realitycheckresearch or at www.RealityCheckResearch.org.
The post The World’s Lies About Israel Encourage Worse Conduct by Other Countries first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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New York City Jews Targeted for Most Hate Crimes in March, NYPD Stats Show
Orthodox Jewish man waiting for the train in the New York City subway. Photo: Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect.
Jews in New York City were victims of more hate crimes in March than any other group even as crime across the Five Boroughs fell to “historic” lows, according to statistics issued by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) on Thursday.
39 hate crimes targeted Jews last month, the Algemeiner reviewed data shows, outstripping the combined total of all other groups combined — 28 — and constituting 58 percent of all hate crimes reported to authorities. So far, there have born 85 antisemitic hate crimes in New York City through the first three months of 2025, with the month of February seeing a 100 percent increase in them over the previous year and March seeing no improvement at all.
The data continues a trend that has persisted for several years and concurred with a rise in antisemitic incidents across the US.
Jews represented a disproportionate share of hate crimes perpetrated in New York City in 2024 as well. Of the 641 total hate crimes tallied by the NYPD that year, Jews were victims of 345, which, in addition to being a 7 percent increase over the previous year, amounted to 54 percent of all hate crimes in the city.
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, antisemitic hate crimes have posed a major threat to the quality of life of New York City’s Orthodox Jewish community, which was the target in many of the incidents. In just eight days between the end of October and the beginning of November, three Hasidim, including children, were brutally assaulted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. In one instance, an Orthodox man was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cellphone in compliance with what appeared to have been an attempted robbery.
In another incident, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn. Days after the week-long antisemitic hate crime spree, three men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the Crown Heights neighborhood.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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NYC ‘Dyke March’ Bans Zionists From Participating in Annual Demonstration
(Source: Reuters)
NYC Dyke March, a public demonstration held by members of the lesbian community in New York City, has banned self-proclaimed “Zionists” from its annual event, citing a desire to stand against the so-called “genocide” occuring in Gaza.
The group revealed in a statement that their decision to ban Israel supporters from their ranks came after multiple members dropped out of the organization due to differences in “political beliefs and values.” After engaging in discussions with frustrated members, the NYC Dyke March committee agreed to adopt “an explicitly anti-Zionist position.” The organization claims that it will “strengthen our commitment” to fighting against Israel and advocating on behalf of Palestinians.
Last year, the NYC Dyke March previously came under scrutiny after organizers settled on “genocide” as the theme of its 2024 event. In a statement, decrying “ethnic cleansing, violence, and dehumanization,” the organization compared the ongoing war in Gaza, to the mass slaughters occurring in Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Sudan.
The organization plans on recycling the same theme for this year’s march, titling it “Dykes Against Genocide.” The group released a statement clarifying that Jews are allowed to attend and condemned the Oct. 7 slaughters as a “senseless loss of life.” After an apparent uproar from its members, the organization deleted the post and wrote that the group “unapologetically stands in support of Palestinian liberation.” In addition, the group affirmed that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism and any language we put out which is not clearly opposed to a Zionist, imperialist agenda is harmful to us all.”
In the 17 months following the Hamas-led massacre of roughly 1200 people throughout Israel, the NYC Dyke March has produced numerous statements lambasting Israel and declaring “solidarity” with Palestinians amid their so-called “ongoing genocide.” The organization also accused Israel of engaging in supposed “pinkwashing” and “manipulative use of Jewish and queer identities,” with the aim of justifying its war efforts in Gaza.
Israel offers an expansive set of rights for members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transngender (LGBT) community, including recognition of same-sex marriages. Every year in June, Tel Aviv holds one of the largest LGBT Pride celebrations in the world. Meanwhile, members of the LGBT community are routinely imprisoned or murdered in other parts of the Middle East, including the Palestinian territories.
The NYC Dyke March’s announcement was met with widespread condemnation.
“You cannot exclude the majority of Jews and call yourself inclusive,” said the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in a post on X/Twitter, adding that the group “essentially equates Zionism with racism” in their announcement.
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Trump Administration Planning $510 Million Cut to Brown University Budget, Report Says
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with journalists onboard Air Force One en route to Miami, Florida, U.S., April 3, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
The Trump administration reportedly plans to terminate $510 million worth of federal contracts and grants awarded to Brown University, according to media reports.
Brown University’s failure to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its embrace of the diversity, equity, and, inclusion (DEI) movement — perceived by many across the political spectrum as an assault on merit-based upward mobility and causing incidents of anti-White and anti-Asian discrimination — prompted the alleged pending action by the federal government, according to the right-leaning outlet The Daily Caller.
The announcement comes as Brown scrambles to cover a $46 million budget shortfall and other universities across the country have faced similar funding cuts.
Brown University officials, however, denied that the university had received any directives from the Trump Administration.
“We have no information to substantiate these rumors,” Brown University provost Francis Doyle issued a statement. “We are closely monitoring notifications related to grants, but have nothing more we can share as of now.”
Meanwhile, Brown’s Jewish community rushed to the university’s defense, issuing a joint statement with the Brown Corporation which said that the campus is “peaceful and supportive campus for its Jewish community.”
The letter, signed by members of the local Hillel International chapter and Chabad on College Hill, continued: “Brown University is a place where Jewish life not only exists but thrives. While there is more work to be done, Brown, through the dedicated efforts of its administration, leadership, and resilient spirit of its Jewish community, continues to uphold the principles of inclusion, tolerance, and intellectual freedom that have been central to its identity since 1764.”
Brown Divest Coalition — an anti-Zionist group which recently saw its campaign for the university to adopt the boycott, divest, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel defeated by the Brown Corporation — weighed in too, denouncing the reported cut as “a means of suppressing all forms of popular dissent to the renewed violence of the US war machine abroad.” US Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) also criticized the move, accusing the administration “of a broader pattern of behavior…that will negatively impact communities across the country and lead to layoffs, restrict research, and more.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the Trump administration is following through on its threats to inflict potentially catastrophic financial injuries on colleges and universities deemed as soft on antisemitism or excessively “woke.” The past six weeks has seen the policy imposed on elite universities including Harvard and Columbia, rattling a higher education establishment that has for better and worse operated for decades with little interference from the federal government even as it polarized the public and contributed to a growing sense that elites are contemptuous of Americans who live outside of their cultural enclaves.
In March, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced the cancellation of $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, a measure that secured the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Later, the Trump administration disclosed its reviewing $9 billion worth of federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard University, jeopardizing a substantial source of the school’s income over its alleged failure to quell antisemitic and pro-Hamas activity on campus following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. Princeton University saw $210 million of its federal grants and funding suspended too, prompting its president, Christopher Eisgruber to say the institution is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.”
Additionally, 60 universities are being investigated by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights over their handling of campus antisemitism, a project that will serve as an early test of the administration’s ability to perform the essential functions of the agency after downsizing its workforce to increase its efficiency.
One of those universities, Northwestern University, on Monday touted its progress in addressing campus antisemitism, noting that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and begun holding “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions which “all students, faculty, and staff” must attend.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Trump Administration Planning $510 Million Cut to Brown University Budget, Report Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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