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‘When there is a crisis over there … we feel it viscerally here’: New Yorkers march in solidarity with Israeli protesters

(New York Jewish Week) — The hundreds of Israelis and American Jews broke out into song as they filed from the wide crossing of the Brooklyn Bridge through a small passageway: “Kol ha’olam kulo, gesher tzar meod,” “The whole world is a narrow bridge; the main thing is to have no fear.”
It was a fitting tune for the moment, and not just because of the setting: Sunday’s procession was part of a protest against Israel’s government at a moment that its leaders and critics both say is pivotal for the country’s future.
Israeli lawmakers on Monday approved the first piece of a package of judicial legislation that would bar their Supreme Court from striking down government decisions it deems “unreasonable.”
The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says its election last year means that its move to rein in the judiciary, which it says is out of step with Israel’s right-wing voters, reflects the will of the people. But a large portion of Israelis, along with U.S. Jewish leaders and government officials, say the changes would fundamentally undermine democratic norms.
A protest movement that has grown over half a year, since the legislation was introduced, has swelled to new heights in recent days. Tens of thousands of Israelis have marched on Jerusalem, with a tent city filled with protesters rising in a park near the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Businesses are closing in protest, army reservists are vowing to boycott their service and the country’s labor union is considering taking action.
The march over the Brooklyn Bridge was part of a global solidarity movement that has flourished in the city with the most Israelis outside of Israel.
“The ties between New York and Israel are so strong and so deep that when there is a crisis over there, as there is now, we feel it viscerally here,” Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine said at a rally following the march. “So I am incredibly proud that over the past 28 weeks, New York City has emerged as one of the global epicenters of the Israel democracy movement.”
The featured speaker was Erel Margalit, a tech entrepreneur and former member of Knesset, who tied the timing of the crisis to Tisha B’Av, the Jewish day of mourning that falls this week. Tisha B’Av commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples in ancient Jerusalem — known as “hurban habayit” in Hebrew — that, according to Jewish tradition, stemmed from hatred among Jews.
“Like every Jerusalemite, I know that extremism and zealousness lead to destruction,” Margalit said. “This time the destruction is happening within us, and we will not let Netanyahu and his government lead us to the third hurban habayit.”
For Rabbi Michelle Dardashti, the setting of the protest was particularly fitting. Earlier this month, she spoke at a rally outside the U.S. Consulate in Tel Aviv, delivering a message that she titled “We are the bridge.”
Dardashti had encouraged her congregants at Brooklyn’s Kane Street Synagogue to attend the rally, which was convened with short notice. One who responded to the invitation was Lisa Podemski, who said she had “mixed feelings” about participating in the protests, not because she supports the legislation but because she was afraid of inflaming anti-Israel sentiment, which she said was prevalent in her field as a public interest attorney.
“I’m not sure who this is for,” she said, questioning whether the prevalence of Hebrew made the protesters’ message inaccessible to others crossing the bridge. Still, she said, she had decided to come for one reason: “I’m a Zionist.”
Other protesters had answers to that question. Danny, a tech worker who moved from Tel Aviv to New York 12 years ago, said he thought it was important to show up even though the current phase of the legislative fight appeared to be lost. He said he thought the biggest risk to Israel’s future was the potential for the rightward shift in politics to drive out the relatively few Israelis who draw high salaries and fuel the economy.
“One thing to keep these people there is to see more people like them, to see that they are not alone,” said Danny, who declined to share his last name.
The demonstrators were mostly Israelis living in New York, and some could be seen Facetiming with relatives in Israel who were at one of the many protests taking place there. Among the American Jews who turned up in solidarity were Alex Edelman, whose Broadway show pillorying antisemitism, “Just For Us,” is running now, and Jake Cohen, the Jewish food influencer.
A contingent turned out from Park Slope Jewish Center in Brooklyn. Joel Levy, a member who retired after a career in the foreign service, said he believed the protests had and could still influence what happens in Jerusalem. He also said his experience working in politically volatile settings abroad had convinced him that concerns about civil war in Israel — which Israeli President Isaac Herzog has warned about, and polls show Israelis fear — are not overblown.
“These things can happen, and they do,” he said.
One of the first to arrive at the meeting point near City Hall in Manhattan was Bonnie Roche, a member of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side. She said she hadn’t attended many protests but felt emboldened after her rabbi, Ammiel Hirsh, a longtime critic of of those in the Diaspora who criticize Israel, criticized the legislative proposals.
Roche had driven down from the Upper East Side with a friend, Ilana, who has split her time between New York and Tel Aviv for the last 60 years.
“If somebody would have told me seven months ago that everything would look the way it looks now, I would never have believed it,” said Ilana, who declined to share her last name but said she was involved in supporting the arts in Israel. “The Jewish people in the Diaspora should be worried, too. If Israel is not going to be democratic, then God help the Jews.”
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The post ‘When there is a crisis over there … we feel it viscerally here’: New Yorkers march in solidarity with Israeli protesters appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency

The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation

Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack

A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.