A general view shows thousands of Jewish worshipers attending the priestly blessing on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, Sept. 26, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Ammar Awad.

As Israel begins its 77th year, one aligned with the word Oz (“strength”) due to its gematric numerical value, both the State of Israel and the Jewish people worldwide must embrace the concept, not just militarily — but morally, spiritually, and ideologically.

At a time when lies, propaganda, and revisionist history dominate the discourse, especially on Western college campuses, we must meet distortion with clarity and hatred with truth. Our silence or passivity in the face of these attacks is no longer an option. We must speak, not just loudly, but rightly.

Across North America and Europe, a new wave of anti-Israel sentiment is spreading, often masquerading as human rights activism. On too many campuses, students are taught to view Israel as a colonialist aggressor rather than a small democratic nation surrounded by hostile regimes. Jewish students are being harassed, physically threatened, and shouted down for supporting the right of Israel to exist. This is not criticism, but rather demonization. And it must be answered.

Consider just one recent example: Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, publicly denied the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, claiming absurdly that the ancient Jewish Temple was in Yemen. This is not just a historical falsehood, it is part of a long-standing strategy to erase Jewish history from its indigenous homeland. The truth? Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people since King David established it as such 3,000 years ago. It has never served as the capital of any other nation.

During centuries of foreign conquest, including the Arab conquest in the 8th century, Jerusalem was not chosen as the caliphate’s capital. There is a reason that Jerusalem’s center is the Temple Mount, because the Jewish Temple stood there, long before Islam was founded.

Despite the so-called Palestinian “truth” of the sole Muslim claim to Jerusalem and the city’s holiness in Islam, when Jordan occupied eastern Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967 (something that is never mentioned in the media), Jerusalem fell into disrepair, and outside of the Jordanian monarchy, not a single other Arab leader made a pilgrimage there.

During those 19 years of a true “occupation” by the Jordanians, Jews were forbidden from praying at our holiest site, and 58 synagogues throughout the Old City were destroyed.

When it comes to claims of Israeli occupation, in 1917, the British Mandate legally recognized the Jewish right to the land of Israel including Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem. Israel has made multiple peace offers, including full statehood for the Palestinians, at least eight times since its founding in 1948. Each time, the offers were rejected, not because of borders, but because of one simple clause: the one recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. The issue has never been just land. It has always been a religious and ideological rejection of Jewish sovereignty in any form.

In 1948, Palestinian Arabs rejected the UN’s offer for a Palestinian state by aligning with Israel’s Arab neighbors and trying to kill every single Jew in the land, and claim the whole thing as their own. That pattern has not stopped for the past 77 years, and is the real reason there is no peace.

The world accuses Israel of apartheid, a blood libel as obscene as it is false. Arabs in Israel enjoy full civil rights: they vote, serve in the Knesset, sit on the Supreme Court, and attend Israeli universities in large numbers. There are Arab doctors, teachers, soldiers, and entrepreneurs. This is not apartheid. This is democracy. That slur should be denounced, not tolerated.

Mahmoud Abbas is often described as a moderate partner for peace. But is a man who denies the Holocaust, glorifies terrorists, and pays lifetime pensions to the families of suicide bombers truly a moderate? Is someone who names schools after Jew-killers a peace-seeker? Let us not be naïve. We are not dealing with moderation; we are confronting radical, institutionalized antisemitism under the banner of nationalism.

The emblem of Fatah, Abbas’s party, is telling: it shows the entirety of Israel covered in a keffiyeh, with a rifle laid across it. This is not a symbol of coexistence. It is a call for erasure. The world must see these images and understand their meaning. Too many in the West remain blind to the truth, misled by slogans and half-truths.

The Jewish people are not intruders in our land. We are its indigenous people. We are not colonizers, we are homecomers. Despite being exiled, persecuted, and nearly annihilated over generations, the Jewish people have returned and rebuilt. Our presence in the land is not temporary. It is sacred.

So as Israel marks its 77th year, let us rise not just with military might, but with moral clarity. Let our leaders at every level — political, religious, and cultural — speak boldly and empower the Jewish community across the world with the truth. Let our students be armed not just with facts, but with pride in their Judaism.

The world may try to tear us down, but we will stand tall. With courage, with unity, and with the blessing of the Almighty, we will endure.

Morton A. Klein is the National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).

The post In Israel’s Year of Strength, Israel and the Jewish People Must Emerge Stronger Than Ever first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Director-General of the Department of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa Zane Dangor and South African Ambassador to the Netherlands Vusimuzi Madonsela talk at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), at the start of a hearing where South Africa requests new emergency measures over Israel’s operations in Rafah, in The Hague, Netherlands, May 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman

On May 21, President Donald Trump confronted visiting South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with evidence that his country is committing genocide against white farmers. Ramaphosa vigorously denied this. He said that even though some of these farmers have suffered violence, killing, and the threat of discrimination, none of that rises anything close to the level of genocide.

Much of what Ramaphosa said at the White House is nearly identical to claims made by Israel to refute the genocide and apartheid charges brought against it by South Africa. Here are three examples:

1. Julius Malema is leader of a left-wing South African party that won about 10 percent of the vote in the 2024 election. Trump showed a video that included Malema chanting a song understood to be calling for violence against white people — creating an environment of racism and hate that could easily lead to physical harm. Ramaphosa responded that while Malema enjoys freedom of speech, he is not part of the government — and that the government in fact opposes the violence and racism that Malema advocates.

However, in South Africa’s initial filing against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, much of South Africa’s proof that Israel has genocidal intent is based on quotes from a few individual Israelis.

For example, on page 144 of their initial filing, they quote Minister Ben-Gvir as saying that destroying Hamas should include those who celebrate Hamas atrocities and pass out candy. The brief then goes on to quote other less well known government ministers, people serving in the IDF as reservists, and even media personalities saying things that South Africa believes indicate Israel has genocidal intent.

Israel has responded numerous times saying that Ben-Gvir and other ministers quoted are not in the war cabinet and have no role in shaping war policy, and the other people are private citizens who do not represent the government. Israel has said those people have freedom of speech, just the same as Julius Malema, but since they do not give orders to the military, their statements have no bearing on what is happening in Gaza. Nevertheless, South Africa used those quotes in its legal filing, happy to pick up statements of any Israeli that suited their purpose.

2. In his meeting with Trump, Ramaphosa pointed to his country’s white Minister of Agriculture, along with two well-known white South African golfers, as evidence that there cannot be genocide. Ramaphosa told Trump that if there really was genocide against white people going on in South Africa, these prominent white South African citizens wouldn’t have been willing to accompany him to Washington — or be serving in his government or thriving in society.

But how many times has Israel pointed out that it is a diverse society, with Arab political parties represented in the Knesset and with Arab leaders serving in various prominent positions both in government and the private sector, as evidence against genocide and any alleged apartheid? Arab citizens have full civil rights, and are completely equal before the law.

South Africa and others who make this accusation always brush this aside, saying these are exceptions or only a small number of people, and claiming that a few Arabs in sports or government doesn’t mean anything for all the rest. But if pointing to a white minister and some white champion golfers is proof there is no genocide in South Africa, pointing out that there are Arab Knesset members and there was an Arab swimmer on Israel’s 2024 Olympic team ought to be proof for Israel too. There’s much more proof on Israel’s side of course, but this just shows the absurdity of South Africa’s claims.

3. Ramaphosa acknowledged that white farmers have suffered violence, but pointed out that there is violence against black people too. Media fact-checkers added that even when white farmers are killed, race may not be the motive. It could easily just be robbers exploiting the fact that farmers live in isolated locations far from the police to get away with theft and murder. As long as the primary motive isn’t race, regardless of the harm done, it shouldn’t be called genocide.

However, in South Africa’s subsequent March filing asking the ICJ to impose additional provisional measures against Israel, it tells the ICJ to focus only on the result of Israel’s actions, regardless of Israel’s intent. South Africa states explicitly in section 12 that the fact (in its view) that Gaza residents were facing starvation is enough to find Israel in violation of the Genocide Convention, regardless of Israel’s reasons for restricting aid. So by this logic, if a wave of killings motivated by property theft forces South Africa’s white farmers to abandon their vulnerable farms and flee their land, that should be genocide too.

To be clear, my purpose here is not to argue whether South Africa (or Israel) are actually guilty of genocide. It’s only to show that if the roles were reversed, and South Africa found itself facing the same genocide allegations it brought against Israel, it would denounce the process as biased, legally unsound, and part of an international smear campaign — just as Israel has done.

Whether we’re talking about Gaza or white farmers in South Africa, facts and logic are shoved aside, and provoking or preventing outrage becomes the only goal.

Shlomo Levin is the author of The Human Rights Haggadah, which highlights modern human rights issues in this classic Jewish text, and he has a human rights blog. Find him at https://hrhaggadah.substack.com/.

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Elias Rodriguez, 30, from Chicago, taken into custody by police for allegedly shooting two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, on May 21, 2025. Photo: Screenshot

Last Wednesday, 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez, who lived in Chicago, decided to go out and murder some Jews in Washington, D.C., as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. Rodriguez’s victims were a young couple, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim.

Any normal reporting of these events would follow a standard script: identify the alleged murderer and victims, provide the personal details about them that are known, and include a few outraged quotes from political leaders, law enforcement professionals, and affected community members.

Any discussion of the alleged murderer’s motive would be handled delicately, in order to ensure that the facts being reported don’t imply sympathy for the perpetrator or serve as inspiration for copycat attacks.

It’s Journalism 101, and most of the work is in the research and very little in the writing.

Unfortunately, when the victims are Jews, different rules apply.

Enter the Associated Press (AP), a once-proud news outfit that has lost its moral compass, with a Thursday morning scoop about the murders that was both dangerous and callous.

After noting (three times, in fact) that Rodriguez yelled “Free Palestine” after the shooting, the AP’s writers decided that further “context” was warranted — specifically that “Israel’s devastating campaign in Gaza has killed more than 53,000 people, mostly women and children, according to local health authorities, whose count doesn’t differentiate between combatants and civilians. The fighting has displaced 90% of the territory’s roughly 2 million population, sparked a hunger crisis and obliterated vast swaths of Gaza’s urban landscape.”

The piece then went on to note, “Israeli diplomats have a history of being targeted by violence, both by state-backed assailants and Palestinian militants over the decades of the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict that grew out of the founding of Israel in 1948. The Palestinians seek Gaza and the West Bank for a future state, with east Jerusalem as its capital  —  lands Israel captured in the 1967 war. However, the peace process between the sides has been stalled for years.”

In an earlier version of the piece, it was stated that “Lischinsky had bought an engagement ring and was just days away from proposing to Milgrim on a planned trip to Jerusalem.”

That detail was relocated to a separate story, presumably because some AP editor had the sense to recognize that it might be distasteful to note that this couple were about to celebrate an important milestone in the city that the AP’s writers wished to note Palestinians claimed as their own.

A “below the fold” photo featured the victims standing before a wall with a Magen David and “Israel” written several times, and next to an American flag and an Israeli flag.

Immediately beneath the photo were the following three “Related Stories”:

• “Gaza’s main hospital is overwhelmed with children in pain from malnutrition,” with a photo of an emaciated young child;
• “Two of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza are encircled by Israeli forces, staff say,” with a photo of a smoke-filled urban hellscape; and
• “Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ missile defense plan was inspired by Israel’s multitiered defenses,” with a photo of Iron Dome missiles knocking out enemy rockets.

One might wonder what any of the additional “context” or the “related” clickbait have to do with the murder of two innocent victims, but to say the quiet part out loud: we’re talking about Jews here.

If any other person was murdered on the basis of religion, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, national origin, or any other personal characteristic, such a treatment would be considered unseemly at best and outright hateful at worst.

It would be abhorrent and irresponsible, for example, if journalists had narrated white supremacist Dylann Roof’s massacre of worshippers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church with justifications about why Black people were killed.

Or perhaps by giving Pulse nightclub mass murderer Omar Mateen his soapbox by noting that the United States was, in fact, bombing Afghanistan, the country from which his parents came — perhaps with some clickbait stories around the horrific toll on civilians caused by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Additional details in support of a murderer’s claimed motive aren’t merely irrelevant to the story being told — they also lead to the inference that the author believes that the violence is somehow justified, and that the victims are at least to some degree responsible for what befell them.

And yet, when Jews — one American and one German/Israeli — are murdered for being Jews, those rules are suspended.

By Thursday evening, after the damage had already been done, the AP disappeared the story from public view entirely, including from the original author’s own credited pieces. In the new version of the story, she was credited as merely one of more than a dozen contributors.

A helpful mea culpa didn’t acknowledge that the news service had globally syndicated an outrageously tone deaf original article earlier in the day — but rather, the kind of foot fault that only professional journalists could care about: “An earlier version incorrectly said that the suspect in the shooting had been charged with shoplifting in Chicago.”

The Associated Press prides itself on its history — and, as a not-for-profit, hustles donations based on its “mission to advance the power of fact-based journalism.”

Perhaps it ought to try living up to its own press.

Ian Cooper is a Toronto-based lawyer.

The post Why Did the AP Suddenly Make Its Story on Israeli Embassy Murders Disappear? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.