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‘Very much a family thing’: US Jewish summer camps mourn Israeli alumni killed in Hamas war
(JTA) — As news broke of Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, David Weinstein shared the grief and fear of many in the American Jewish community. But as the director of Camp Tel Yehudah, a Jewish summer camp in New York, the violence soon hit very close to home.
“Like everybody else, we were horrified and worried and scared and concerned about our people in Israel,” Weinstein told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “But it became very personal very quickly.”
Weinstein received a call that first morning that a former staff member, Gili Adar, was missing. He would later learn that Adar, 24, who worked at Tel Yehudah in 2019 and 2022 as part of its Israeli scouts program, was one of the more than 250 people killed at the Tribe of Nova music festival.
The devastating news didn’t end there. Three other Tel Yehudah community members were also killed: Yuval Halivni, who was a member of the camp’s Israeli scout delegation in 2012; Reem Betito, a camper in 2018 who served in the Israel Defense Forces’ elite Golani unit; and Laor Abromov, 20, who was a camper in 2019 and was also killed at the music festival.
“Much of that week, again, while keeping an eye on all of the bigger situation, and our concern for everybody, was really, really about the loss of part of our family,” Weinstein said.
Located in Barryville, New York, Tel Yehudah is the teen leadership camp of the Young Judaea network, a group of camps and youth programs specially designed to build connections between young Jews and Israel — including by having Israeli staff and campers at camp each summer.
As more details began to trickle out about the extent of the violence and loss in Israel, the wider Tel Yehudah community gathered, in person and online, to grieve and process together.
A Young Judaea virtual Havdalah service on Oct. 14 attracted around 700 people, Weinstein said, with breakout rooms that lasted for hours afterward. Staff and alumni also came together for a 20s and 30s Shabbat in New York City, as well as other informal gatherings.
“We have so many people over the years who went to Tel Yehudah who have moved to Israel, and are involved in so many important organizations and movements in Israel that people are very much in touch with,” Weinstein said. “Part of the Tel Yehudah family lives in Israel, and part of the Tel Yehudah family lives here. So it’s very much a family thing.”
Tel Yehudah was far from the only American Jewish summer camp to experience the deaths of past campers or staff on Oct. 7 in Israel, though it appears to have been the hardest hit. They may even have been especially vulnerable to loss because of their unique role as supercharged sites of interchange between U.S. and Israeli young adults.
“Israelis coming to camp has been a part of the American Jewish camping enterprise since the founding of the state,” said Sandra Fox, author of “The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America” and herself a Tel Yehudah alum.
Love for Israel is part of the program at Camp Tel Yehudah and other U.S. Jewish summer camps. (Courtesy Tel Yehudah)
Fox said the number of Israelis working at American Jewish camps increased after World War II and particularly in the 1960s and 70s, when air travel became more accessible and affordable. Fox said Tel Yehudah had Israeli staff as early as 1949.
While many synagogues and Jewish communities have Israeli emissaries — “shlichim” in Hebrew — through the Jewish Agency for Israel, Fox said the camp experience can be unique because it’s often younger Israelis, some who work at camp before their army service.
“This is an opportunity to meet more Israelis and create connections, with both campers and staff depending on which camp, and younger ones, so they can connect to people that are closer to their age,” Fox said. “The shlichim that come to the communities are usually young families. But a counselor could be pre-army or post-army, and if you’re a preteen or teenage camper, they’re a lot more relatable. So I think that that has a strong impact on the degree of connection they can make.”
A number of other Jewish camps around the United States are also mourning the loss of former staff and campers. The Ramah camping network has a page devoted to Israel on its website that lists two alumni who are among the more than 200 hostages being held by Hamas — Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who has also participated in programming with Camp Tel Noar in New Hampshire, and Omer Neutra, who also attended Young Judaea’s Sprout Lake camp before moving to Israel after high school.
The page also lists two family members of Ramah alumni who have been killed in the violence: Israeli swimmer Eden Nimri, 22, whose sister Hadar worked at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires in 2016 and 2017, and Adi Vital Kaploun, 33, whose mother is an alum of Camp Ramah in Canada.
Pinemere Camp in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, shared on Oct. 10 that 2022 staff member Ilay Nachman was killed. “His infectious laugh, caring nature, and love of Israel made him a pleasure to be around, and the type of role model both campers and staff could look up to,” the camp wrote in a Facebook post.
Herzl Camp in Webster, Wisconsin, shared that alum Netta Epstein, 21, was killed by Hamas in his home. Epstein attended Herzl from 2014 to 2016 and 2018, and his sister Rona also spent three summers there.
Yannai Kaminka, 20, who was reportedly among the first Israeli Defense Force soldiers killed in the attacks, had attended the Union for Reform Judaism’s Eisner Camp in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in 2016 as part of a program with the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism that brought Israeli teens to American Jewish summer camps.
Ruben Arquilevich, who oversees the URJ’s 14 camps, said the movement has around 350 Israeli staff across its camps each summer, adding that the relationships Israelis build with campers are long-lasting and “transformational.”
According to the Foundation for Jewish Camp, some camps have launched initiatives to support Israeli community members, including through letter-writing campaigns, sending care packages and offering virtual programming for children in Israel.
Weinstein also noted that Young Judaea’s gap year program currently has 75 teens, many of them Tel Yehudah alumni, living at Kibbutz Ketura in southern Israeli, which Young Judaea established in 1973 in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War. The participants are supporting Israelis in the south who have been displaced by the current war.
“Now we’ve got these new kids, the same age as the kids who established the kibbutz 50 years ago, who are down on the kibbutz, and helping once again after a war to rebuild,” Weinstein said.
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The post ‘Very much a family thing’: US Jewish summer camps mourn Israeli alumni killed in Hamas war appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Pro-Hamas Campus Groups Call for Toppling US Government, Killing Soldiers
A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a megaphone at Columbia University, on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, in New York City, US, Oct. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
The National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) organization condemned the US bombing of nuclear facilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran over the weekend, threatening that the American government will be deposed.
The anti-government comments came one day after US President Donald Trump ordered the bombing of three key Iranian nuclear sites — Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz — where Western governments believe the Islamist regime was working to build nuclear weapons. Tehran has claimed its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes
“The empire will fall, from Gaza to Tehran,” NSJP said, writing on the Instagram social media platform. “The unprovoked attacks the US and the Zionist entity have launched against Iran prove only one thing: imperialism in the region will not stop at suffocating Palestine. From Iraq to Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and now Iran, the Empire [sic] demands constant expansion and destabilization.”
It added, “We must be clear: Nuclear development is neither a crime nor the reason for the US’ war against Iran. The US Empire cannot permit the continued existence of a country that dares to stand against Zionism and imperialism.”
On Monday, Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East expert and the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), said that NSJP is mirroring an ideology that university professors have trafficked and taught to their students since the 1960s.
“Left-wing academics have loathed ‘American imperialism’ since the Vietnam War and used it to explain and more importantly justify violent ‘’iberation movements’ around the world. Both communist and Muslim revolutions and insurgencies have been applauded over the years by American academics and their European counterparts,” Romirowsky said. “Some of that has been transmitted to students disinterested in the details of Islamic theology (which underlie Iranian policy). Anti-imperialism situates the Palestinian cause firmly on the political left and glosses over its theological basis in Sunni theology — which is perfectly well expressed in the Hamas Charter and countless other Hamas statements.”
SJP splinter groups across higher education rallied to share NSJP’s post, as noted by the antisemitism watchdog group AMCHA Initiative on Monday. Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapters at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Florida reposted it to their Instagram stories, while an SJP group for graduate students of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) did so as well. At Columbia University, a group which calls itself “Unity Fields” posted a photograph of the coffins of fallen US soldiers, captioning it, “Soon, Inshallah,” which means “God willing” in Arabic.
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), another pro-Hamas group which directs campus activities, said, “From Iran to Palestine, from Lebanon to Syria to Yemen, it is our duty from within the belly of the beast to stand against the US empire and zionist [sic] entity’s barbaric, illegal genocidal aggression, and to stand by all those resisting the ongoing genocide in Gaza by any means necessary.”
The tight coordination of the group’s messaging demands a complete accounting of NSJP’s funding, according to Alex Joffe, a historian and editor of the BDS Monitor for SPME.
“The relationship between NSJP and other action-oriented groups, such as Within Our Lifetime and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, suggest nearly complete overlap in interests and even personnel. Most problematic are the relationships between these Muslim and communist vanguard groups and the nominally legitimate Democratic Socialists of America and Working Families Party,” he explained. “These overlaps and penetrations into broader politics leaves outstanding the question of who is directing whom. The instant pivoting of Communist Chinese Party-backed groups like Code Pink to support Iran points to the fact that they, like NSJP, are not grassroots movements but primarily tools for state actors, above all Qatar, China, Iran, Russia and North Korea.”
He continued, “The question of who funds NSJP is therefore more important than ever. With NSJP and other organizations threatening and engaging in domestic violence, the national security threats have increased and should be addressed by local and federal authorities.”
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, National Students for Justice in Palestine, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, has publicly discussed its strategy of using the anti-Zionist student movement as a weapon for destroying the US.
“Divestment [from Israel] is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself,” the organization said in September 2024. “It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high-cultural repositories without the continuous suppression of populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.”
The tweet was the latest in a series of revelations of SJP’s revolutionary goals and its apparent plans to amass armies of students and young people for a long campaign of subversion against US institutions, including the economy, military, and higher education. Like past anti-American movements, SJP has also been fixated on the presence and prominence of Jews in American life and the US’s alliance with Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.
On the same day the tweet was posted, Columbia University’s most strident pro-Hamas organization was reported to be distributing literature calling on students to join the Palestinian terrorist group’s movement to destroy Israel during the school’s convocation ceremony.
“This booklet is part of a coordinated and intentional effort to uphold the principles of the thawabit and the Palestinian resistance movement overall by transmitting the words of the resistance directly,” said a pamphlet distributed by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spinoff, to incoming freshmen. “This material aims to build popular support for the Palestinian war of national liberation, a war which is waged through armed struggle.”
Other sections of the pamphlet were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose is to build an army of Muslims worldwide.
“We call upon the masses of our Arab and Islamic nations, its scholars, men, institutions, and active forces to come out in roaring crowds tomorrow,” it added, referring to an event which took place the previous December. “We also renew our invitation to the free people and those with living consciences around the world to continue and escalate their global public movement, rejecting the occupation’s crimes, in solidarity with our people and their just cause and legitimate struggle.”
Middle East experts have long suspected that foreign agents are conspiring with SJP chapters — and its spinoffs — in the US to convulse college campuses and lobby for the disintegration of the US-Israel relationship, an outcome that would benefit Middle Eastern powers such as Iran, whose leaders regularly call for the destruction of both the US and Israel.
In July 2024, then-US National Intelligence Director Avril Haines issued a statement outlining how Iran has encouraged and provided financial support to the anti-Israel campus protest movement and explaining that it is part of a larger plan to “undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.” Haines also confirmed that US intelligence agencies have “observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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UK to Ban Group Palestine Action Under Anti-Terrorism Laws
Police officers block a street as pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather in protest against Britain’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s plans to proscribe the “Palestine Action” group in the coming weeks, in London, Britain, June 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
Britain said on Monday it would use anti-terrorism laws to ban the organization Palestine Action, making it a criminal offence to belong to the group after its activists damaged two UK military planes in protest at London’s support for Israel.
The proscription would put the pro-Palestinian group on a par with Hamas, al-Qaeda, or ISIS under British law, making it illegal for anyone to promote it or be a member. Those who breached the ban could face up to 14 years in jail.
Palestine Action has regularly targeted British sites connected to Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems as well as other companies in Britain linked to Israel since the start of the conflict in Gaza in 2023.
In its latest and most high-profile action, two of its members entered a Royal Air Force base in central England on Friday, spraying paint into the engines of the Voyager transport aircraft and further damaging them with crowbars.
“The disgraceful attack on Brize Norton … is the latest in a long history of unacceptable criminal damage committed by Palestine Action,” Home Secretary [interior minister] Yvette Cooper said in a written statement to parliament.
“The UK’s defense enterprise is vital to the nation’s national security and this government will not tolerate those that put that security at risk.”
She said the group‘s actions had become more aggressive and caused millions of pounds of damage.
Under British law, the Home Secretary can proscribe a group if it is believed it commits, encourages, or “is otherwise concerned in terrorism.” The banning order will be laid before parliament on June 30 and will come into effect if approved.
Palestine Action, which says Britain is an “active participant” in the conflict in Gaza because of military support it provides to Israel, called the ban “an unhinged reaction” which it would challenge, and accused Cooper of making a series of “categorically false claims.”
“The real crime here is not red paint being sprayed on these war planes,” it said in a statement.
Earlier on Monday, the group was forced to change the location of a planned protest after police banned it from staging a demonstration outside parliament, otherwise a popular location for protests in support of a range of causes.
The post UK to Ban Group Palestine Action Under Anti-Terrorism Laws first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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MAGA Commentators Clash Over Trump’s Choice to Bomb Iran
Tucker Carlson speaks on July 18, 2024, during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: Jasper Colt-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb three of Iran’s key nuclear facilities over the weekend has divided his longtime supporters, with some prominent voices in the so-called Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement opposing the strikes and others standing with the administration’s military action.
Mark Levin, the longtime conservative talk radio host and vocal pro-Israel voice, called out US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) for her disagreement with the US strikes, known as Operation Midnight Hammer.
On Sunday, Greene wrote on X, “I don’t know anyone in America who has been the victim of a crime or killed by Iran, but I know many people who have been victims of crime committed by criminal illegal aliens or MURDERED by Cartel and Chinese fentanyl/drugs.” She warned that “Neocon warmongers beat their drums of war and act like Billy badasses going to war in countries most Americans have never seen and can’t find on a map, but never find the courage to go to war against the actual terrorists who actually do kill Americans, invade our land, and make BILLIONS doing it day after day, year after year.”
In response, Levin labeled Greene a “shameless nitwit” and asked, “How incredibly dumb is this Marjorie Taylor Green? She doesn’t know anyone in America who has been a victim of crime or killed by Iran? You mean the thousands of Americans, especially military personnel, killed and maimed by the Iranian terrorist regime?”
Levin aimed his ire at other leaders on both left and right who he christened “America’s Iranian nukes coalition.” He wrote that “if the radical Democrats and their Isolationist fake MAGA reprobates had their way, Iran would have nuclear weapons. This is the new gravely dangerous coalition of Marxists-Islamists-isolationists-grifters. They’re represented by the likes of Bernie Sanders- AOC-Schumer-Jeffries and Rand Paul-Massie-MTG- Qatarlson-Bannon. And they’re giving aid and comfort to a regime that has murdered directly and indirectly thousands of Americans. Never forget. They will forever be opposed and challenged by we, the people — America First loving patriots.”
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host-turned-podcaster, has faced recent accusations promoted by social media influencer Laura Loomer, alleging links to Qatar, claims which he denies, thus prompting Levin’s “Qatarlson” epithet. Carlson had clashed over Iran in a recent interview with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), reportedly watched by Trump.
Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart News CEO-turned-presidential adviser-turned America First podcaster, declared his disagreement with Trump’s invocation of America’s potential engagement toward regime change in a Truth Social post on Sunday.
“Is this because the ultimate goal is regime change?” Bannon asked. “And if that’s fine, Israelis, have at it. If you want regime change, go for it, baby. Just no participation by the United States government.”
The Daily Beast reported that according to anti-Trump biographer Michael Wolff, unnamed sources within the administration described how Trump had initially leaned toward the Carlson-Bannon isolationist position until shifting Friday under congressional Republicans’ influence toward seeing the value to his image of a successful strike. “The tenor of the phone calls was him saying, ‘I think I’m gonna look very good if I do this,’” Wolff said.
Further exposing the extent to which the Iran strikes have diverged from the last decade of the MAGA movement’s tilt toward isolationism, two of Trump’s former close allies who later parted ways with him and went on to criticize his actions have now voiced their support.
Former Vice President Mike Pence and former National Security Adviser John Bolton have both historically identified with former President Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” hawkish foreign policy philosophy. Each praised the bombings of Iran’s nuclear sites.
Pence said to Fox News on Sunday that even though “the president and I have had our differences,” he “couldn’t be more proud [sic] of President Trump’s decisive leadership in this moment or the extraordinary professionalism and courage of our armed forces that brought about this historic mission.”
On Sunday morning, the conservative magazine Washington Examiner published an article with the headline “Trump did the right thing in Iran” by Bolton, one of the conservative movement’s most steadfast and robust Iran hawks.
“It was long past time that Washington did more to aid Israel in defeating Iran and took direct action against Tehran’s nuclear proliferation efforts,” Bolton wrote. “There are undoubtedly additional measures now underway to protect American deployed forces and civilian personnel in the region against Iranian retaliation now that we have taken offensive military action. Similarly, we should continue bringing forward additional forces to bolster Israeli and Gulf Arab state defenses against Tehran military retaliation.”
Bolton warned that “peace and security in the Middle East are impossible while the ayatollahs rule in Tehran.” He urged that “overthrowing the current regime is a necessary, even if not a sufficient, condition to reach that goal. The sooner the better.”
Trump said after Saturday night’s strikes that the US was acting to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons but not seeking regime change. The next day, however, he seemed to entertain the idea. Writing on Truth Social, he posted: “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!”
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