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2025’s Jewish highlights — from ‘Marty Supreme’ to Max Fried’s menschy move
Jews have been in the spotlight in the past years for all kinds of reasons, many of them less-than-fun: Gaza, war, hostages, protests. But looking back, we wanted to boil it down into highlights. Or at least things that were just really, really Jewish. Basically, everything we thought was worth making note of in the last year, whether for its merits, its lack thereof, or just for its pure oddity.
You may notice reading that there seem to be a few doubles in these categories. But, you see, the “best Jewish movie” is not necessarily the “most Jewish movie.” That’s because there has been a glut of loudly Jewish content that’s awfully hard to ignore, screaming for our attention. That doesn’t mean it’s good, but it’s notable.
So read on for the Jewish things you should remember — whether you want to or not — from 2025.
Best Jewish movie
It’s apparently a Safdie family tradition to induce anxiety in movie-going Jews on Christmas. (Uncut Gems arrived Dec. 25, 2019.) Josh Safdie’s film, about salesman-hustler-table-tennis dynamo Marty Mauser, accumulates Yiddishkeit as it goes, including a brief cameo by a Forward delivery truck. Timothée Chalamet dons thick-rim glasses and hangs a Magen David over his chest as he jousts with a Holocaust survivor opponent (there were a few ping-pong champs who did, in fact, survive Auschwitz). A character in the tradition of Sammy Glick and Duddy Kravitz, Marty is as magnetic as he is entitled. While the film’s concerns are universal, it is perhaps primarily a portrait of the New Jew, not of the Nordau school, but the American one, who regarded success as something he’s owed.
Most Jewish movie
These days, there is such a glut of Holocaust content that each new book, movie or show has to find a unique niche. Nuremberg did so by focusing on the relationship between Hermann Goering, Hitler’s right-hand man, and the psychiatrist assigned to analyze him before the eponymous trials, a man who hoped to find some genetic or mental component for evil that he can diagnose.
But the movie is so intent on being informative that it neglects to actually develop its characters and give real insight into Goering’s mind and motivations, or anyone else’s. Though it purports to be a movie about the banality of evil, it was actually just banal. It culminates in the shocking realization that evil has no genetic component, and most of its reveals carry just as little weight. Its most impactful moment is actually a piece of another film: the archival footage shown during the actual trial, which the movie excerpts.
Most Jewish movie that isn’t actually Jewish
Sentimental Value
In Joachim Trier’s film, which won the Grand Prix prize at Cannes, aging filmmaker Gustav Borg pursues reconciliation with his daughters by trying to cast them in his next film, which is a dramatization of his life. He wants the younger sister Nora, a theater actress who battles crippling anxiety, to play his mother who died by suicide; he’s cast the preteen son of Agnes, the elder sister, as a younger version of himself.
The Norwegian family depicted in this film isn’t Jewish. But Trier introduces all the classic beats of Jewish cultural concern: inherited trauma, the artist’s struggle, and the allure/disappointment of goyish blondes (this one played distractingly by Elle Fanning).
(Bonus points for Jewish musical-comedy darling Catherine Cohen’s bit part as Fanning’s phone-addicted manager.)
Most Jewish TV
The second season of Netflix’s Hot Rabbi hit rom-com, once again dominated Jewish conversations — and the streamer’s most-watched list. But much like its huge first season, the second left something to be desired in terms of its representation of Jews, who once again seemed to be incredibly limited by their religious identity and beliefs, and yet simultaneously eager to cast them off given the right opportunity. Stereotypes — like Jews being bad at sports or good at complaining — do a lot of the work of making the show Jewish. The effect is that Nobody Wants This doesn’t feel Jewish so much as it screams at the audience “this is a Jewish show!”
The show’s approach to Jewishness is perhaps best captured by the fact that menorahs, inexplicably, constantly appear in the background, even though it’s not Hanukkah at any point in either season. But without a hanukkiah on display — and, sometimes, lit — how would we know it’s Jewish?
Best Jewish TV
Long Story Short
The animated show from the creator of the surrealist show Bojack Horseman, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, managed to avoid the pitfalls that so often plague very Jewish media — namely heavy-handedness around Israel, or antisemitism, or leaning on clumsy exposition to define Jewish practices for a gentile audience. Instead, the show just lets its Jewish family be, while also showcasing a wide range of Jewish diversity; the family includes a Black Jewish convert, both a ba’al teshuva son and another son who struggles to connect with his Jewishness, and a queer couple. Each character feels deeply familiar to anyone who spends time in Jewish community, but the show doesn’t try to make the jokes easy to read to non-Jews. Maybe that means some of them fly over the heads of anyone not in the tribe, but that means it’s pitch-perfect for those of us looking for a deeper, subtler representation of Jewish life.
Most Jewish play
The latest play from writer and actress Liba Vaynberg, imagines how six of the Biblical matriarchs — Miriam, Sara, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah and Tziporrah — would have lived today. Set over the course of decades, the girls start the play as 13-year olds and end it in the late stages of adulthood. Each girl’s path is a smart imitation of their matriarch’s actual story, transposed into the modern day. Sara struggles with infertility. Miriam becomes a rabbi, believing that studying Torah will help her lead a good life and avoid misfortune. Leah’s mandrake root is substituted by weed edibles. With humor and an impressive amount of Jewish references that only those steeped in biblical expertise might catch, the play asks: Why is life full of sacrifices, especially ones that seem unjustified? Vaynberg is not interested in giving a solid answer, but still provides a satisfying ending, assuring that life, no matter what it brings, is meant to be lived in full.
Best Jewish play
Slam Frank
Ragebait maestro Andrew Fox’s opus, which reimagines Anne Frank as Anna Franco, a pansexual Latinx immigrant from the “barrios of Frankfurt,” is a piece with many moving parts: a social media campaign that shames the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum for not including chanclas in their mountains of shoes and, yes, also a “real musical,” despite the doubts of many online who assumed it was pure trolling. In fact, it’s a lucid commentary on the state of woke, where identity boxes serve as proxies for character development, and stops just short of being a full referendum on inclusion.
The piece, riffing on nearly every virtue-signalled mega-musical of the last two decades, is at its most knotty when it takes on Jewishness; Fox knows being Jewish doesn’t map neatly to the fashionable formulas of white privilege and oppressor-oppressed. In the end, it is the reimagined attic residents’ existence as Jews that unravels the simple binaries of progressive politics.
Most Jewish book
Sam Sussman’s novel takes the author’s own nebulous biography as its subject — and the suspicion that Bob Dylan may be his father. If this wasn’t Jewish enough, the initial meeting of his mother and the future-Nobel Laureate took place in the studio of painter Norman Raeben, whose father was Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich (aka Sholem Aleichem). The book generated a lot of interest as a work of a promising debut from a young novelist.
Another extremely Jewish book
Kaplan’s Plot
A rollicking story that toggles between a Ukrainian mobster scraping by and a modern-day tech worker digging through family history, essayist and memoirist Jason Diamond’s first novel digs into Jewish Chicago. Really, as any good Jewish story spanning generations, the book is an examination of the impact of inherited trauma, but it’s not too heavy; it crackles with fast-paced Yiddishisms and the propulsive plot of a thriller. Jewishness isn’t the book’s subject as much as it is its entire ethos.
Funniest Jewish newsletter
One of the brightest and least-talked-about trends in the Jewish world right now is the second wave of Substack newsletters introducing new perspectives on Jewish life. (Read about the first wave here.) Bagel Emoji, a semiregular dispatch from a semi-anonymous, gay semi-Orthodox Jew who lives in Los Angeles, delivers feverish, meandering riffs on niche trends like AI content in Jewish print publications and the notorious odor of a particular kosher grocer to say something deeper about frum life. Bagel’s general sass — thinly masking affection, I think — makes each entry essential reading.
Spiciest Jewish newsletter
Picture a newsletter about Israel discourse so hot it must be handled with gloves. That’s NonZionism, a regular rant from an Israel-based writer who goes by the pen-name Mascil Bina. Skewering the excesses and hollowness of both pro-Israel and anti-Israel ideology, the author’s perspective offers a third position: That Israel is “something that wasn’t inevitable, but cannot now be undone.” His takes are unsparing, and unexpected — one week, it’s the case for Bibi Netanyahu; the next, it’s a withering critique of hasbara titled “Zionism turns your brain to mush.” Just recommending it feels risky.
Best Jewish music moment
Streisand and Dylan duet
Streisand announced an album of duets, The Secret Of Life: Partners, Volume Two, with the likes of Hozier, Paul McCartney, Mariah Carey, Ariana Grande and — finally — Bob Dylan, resolving decades of a great musical will-they-won’t-they.
“The track opens with the sound of harmonica, a sound often associated with Dylan,” wrote the Forward’s Seth Rogovoy. “But this harmonica sounds nothing like Dylan’s style, and it is definitely not Dylan playing.” He is singing though, and Barb comes in by the fourth line. Unfortunately, they have yet to duet on “Lay Lady Lay,” a song Dylan purportedly wrote with Barb in mind.
Best “Good for the Jews” moment
Britney Spears admiring the beards of Chabadniks playing chess
The Instagram post was rizz recognizing rizz.
Best Jewish Food Moment
Manischewitz launches food truck
Since 1888, the Manischewitz Company has been a Jewish household staple. But now, it’s taking its signature products on the road. The Manischewitz Deli on Wheels, an orange truck that serves rugelach, hot dogs, vegetarian egg rolls, and matzo ball soup, launched this March as part of the brand’s plan to market to younger audiences. Last year, the company launched a frozen food line that emphasized convenience, a quality they are also trying to capture in their truck. Manischewitz has a city-wide license and plans to take the truck all over New York and New Jersey. Its creative branding and warm servings of classic Jewish comfort food are a welcome addition to the already bustling food-truck scene.
Most Jewish Food Moment
New York City sets a new record for the world’s biggest Shabbat dinner
On Nov. 20, more than 2,500 Jews — 2,761 to be exact — sat down at the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan and broke the record for the world’s biggest Shabbat dinner. The previous record had been set by Berlin in 2015 with a dinner of 2,322 people. The Forward’s Hannah Feuer was in attendance to get all the details — and do her best to eat all the food served over the multi-course meal. The event included 811 pounds of kugel, 402 challahs, and 22,500 hors d’oeuvres and, in an AI generated video, Albert Einstein, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Golda Meir and the Hebrew patriarch Abraham offered commentary on the dinner. For entertainment, a woman in a leotard, suspended by wires from the ceiling, played “If I Were a Rich Man” on the violin and the Jewish a capella group Six13 sang “We Are the Champions” to celebrate the victorious occasion.
Biggest Jewish sports disaster
A bicycle blowup
Canadian-Israeli billionaire Sylvan Adams had a hobby — competitive cycling — and a dream: using the sport to bolster Israel’s image abroad. That dream crashed hard into reality this summer at the Spanish Vuelta, where Adams’ team — called Israel-Premier Tech, and featuring zero Israeli or Jewish riders — turned out thousands of anti-Israel protesters.
Several of the race’s stages were altered or cancelled, including the final, which was halted several miles short of the finish line. By the Vuelta’s conclusion, some of the other riders were openly campaigning for Israel-Premier Tech’s exclusion and the team had removed “Israel” from its jerseys. The team’s demise became official this month when it was announced that retired Spanish footballer Andres Iniesta had bought IPT and, er, rechristened it.
Best Jewish sports performance
Avdija delivers
Deni Avdija was not supposed to be this good. Yet in his sixth season, the Portland Trail Blazers’ forward has been producing like an All-Star — he’s averaging 26 points, 7 rebounds, 6 assists per game as of this writing, with borderline elite efficiency — and with any justice, he’ll soon become one.
Most heartwarming Jewish sports moment
A very Jewish draft
It’s gotta be the back-to-back selections of Jewish Brooklyn Nets rookies Ben Saraf and Danny Wolf at June’s NBA Draft. Some draft prognosticators were expecting Wolf, a dynamic seven-footer who led Michigan to the Sweet 16, to be picked early in the first round — before Saraf, a spindly Israeli point guard. Instead, when Nets took Saraf with the 26th pick, the Wolf ganze mishpoche was still twiddling their thumbs. Moments later, though, Commissioner Adam Silver called Wolf’s name, sending older brother Jake Wolf into full-blown sobs — and into the unofficial sports meme hall of fame.
Menschiest Jewish athlete
Max Fried
The Yankees ace called reigning Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal to tell him he deserved to start the All-Star game in his stead. “It’s a very professional thing to do, and you got a ton of respect for guys that do stuff like that,” Skubal later told reporters. What we were thinking: This kid must have great parents!
The post 2025’s Jewish highlights — from ‘Marty Supreme’ to Max Fried’s menschy move appeared first on The Forward.
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Is Netanyahu dead? Has Tel Aviv been flattened? AI videos are dominating the Iran war.
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted an unusual video this week: of himself buying coffee at a Jerusalem-area cafe.
It was hardly typical fare for wartime, when Netanyahu can more often be seen giving recorded addresses or touring missile damage within Israel. But the prime minister had come with an important mission: to debunk viral claims of his death.
The claims, which originated on Iranian state media last week, were picked up by social media users on Thursday after Netanyahu gave his first press conference during the war.
Zooming in on details in the seemingly innocuous address, some claimed that Netanyahu had an extra finger on his right hand and missing teeth, signs they said were key tells of AI-generated content.
“Imagine Netanyahu was actually dead this entire past week,” the pro-Palestinian TikTok influencer Guy Christensen wrote in a post on X. “It’s too good to be true but Israel has been using AI generated videos of Netanyahu ever since. One can only hope.”
From the cafe Sataf, Netanyahu issued his response to the conspiracy, posting a video on Sunday of him ordering a coffee, chatting with baristas and telling Israelis that the wars against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon were going well.
“They say I’m what?” the caption read. Mocking the idea that he had been killed, he joked, “I’m dying for coffee!” Then, alluding to the speculation about the earlier video, he asks, “Do you want to count the number of fingers?” before holding up each hand with his fingers outstretched.
JUST IN: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shares proof that he is alive after online users started speculating that he was dead.
Netanyahu also showed off how many fingers he has.
“We’re doing things I can’t share right now, but we’re striking hard in Iran today and… pic.twitter.com/5tyD5HImCG
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) March 15, 2026
But rather than quelling the claims of his death, the Israeli leader’s response instead spurred more speculation, with users on social media calling into question details in the video including the physics of his coffee cup. In another video posted by Netanyahu on Monday, some social media users pointed to a clip where a ring seemingly disappears from his hand in one of the frames.
“ISRAEL: ‘Benjamin Netanyahu is still alive. Here’s another AI video of him as proof. Just trust me, goy,’ the antisemitic podcaster Stew Peters wrote in a post on X.
The churn of conspiratorial claims about the Israeli leader’s death, which also included an AI-generated image of him being pulled from rubble, highlights the growing challenge of combating misinformation in an era of artificial intelligence and viral deepfakes, especially during times of conflict.
The war with Iran has produced an absolute flood of fabricated imagery, from AI-generated clips circulated by pro-Iran accounts purporting to show missile strikes flattening Tel Aviv or the capture of American troops by Iranian forces. The Israeli disinformation detection company Cyabra said it identified networks containing tens of thousands of accounts that generated material garnering 145 million views in the first two weeks of the war — almost all pro-Iranian, and mostly on TikTok. (The company said during the last Israel-Iran war, in June 2025, that Iran’s internet outage had quelled disinformation bot farms located there.)
“The campaign did not spread organically. Clear coordination patterns were identified, including repeated narratives, identical videos and captions, fixed hashtag clusters, and synchronized burst posting,” Cyabra said in its report published Friday. “These tactics allowed the network to rapidly flood the information environment and dominate online discussions during key moments of the conflict.”
The videos have left some of Israel’s critics confident that the country has been battered far beyond what has been officially reported.
But even Israeli television has not been immune, airing its own misinformation too — albeit unwittingly.
Channel 12 News last week aired a night-vision clip that it said showed American B-2 stealth bombers over Iran flying in formation with F-18 fighter jets.
ניר דבורי הציג סרטון של “מפציצי B2 בשמי איראן”
העובדות: מדובר בסרטון שלקוח מתוך משחק מחשב.
בשרשור: הסרטון המקורי שפורסם במרץ 2023 ביוטיוב.קרדיט: @ItayBlumental @manniefabian pic.twitter.com/zJCugreDZM
— בודקים (@bodkim2022) March 8, 2026
Within hours, the clip was identified not as a Pentagon release, as Channel 12 military correspondent Nir Dvori had suggested on air, but as footage from the combat flight simulator Digital Combat Simulator World. Itay Blumental, Dvori’s counterpart at rival public broadcaster Kan, wrote on X that the footage was “indeed incredible, but also lifted from a video game,” sharing the same YouTube clip from March 2023.
During Monday evening’s broadcast, Dvori apologized and said the mistake was “entirely mine,” but did not specify which footage he was referring to, leaving viewers who had missed the earlier segment with little indication of what had gone wrong. The news network also issued an apology, saying it would “examine its procedures.”
The right-wing Channel 14 also aired the clip — more than once.
i24 News made a similar mistake, the Haaretz newspaper reported, airing a video it treated as apparent footage of an American strike on Iran, though the clip was also from Digital Combat Simulator World.
The segments quickly became internet fodder, with social media users lampooning the news networks and posting their own tongue-in-cheek “exclusive war footage.”
Omer Babai, who runs Kan’s social media, posted a GIF on X of shoot ’em up video game Chicken Invaders, saying it showed “American bombers in Iranian skies.”
Another X user quipped: “Nir Dvori: Iran scattered mines across the Strait of Hormuz,” alongside a screenshot of vintage PC game Minesweeper.
A third posted an image of fellow 1990s gaming staple “Digger,” with the caption: “Exclusive footage of Sinwar in the tunnels of Gaza,” referencing the Hamas chief killed by the IDF. Street Fighter and Pac-Man made cameo appearances too.
Channel 14, widely seen as sympathetic towards Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is no stranger to broadcasting dubious footage. Earlier in the war, the channel aired a video it said showed crowds in Tehran appearing to express support for the Israeli premier with chants of “Bibi joon” — a Persian term of affection translated roughly as “dear Bibi.” But the online Israeli fact-checker FakeReporter later said the chant had been generated with artificial intelligence.
But the B2 gaffes are one side of a much wider phenomenon.
One viral clip, shared across X, TikTok and other platforms, appeared to show missiles pounding Tel Aviv and apartment blocks collapsing under a barrage. AFP and several other outlets found it had been generated using AI, citing telltale distortions in cars, rooftops, smoke trails and even the placement of an Israeli flag sans pole. The Grok AI chatbot on X, however, helped amplify the video, with repeated assurances that “the video is real,” AFP reported.
After the video was exposed as AI-generated, an X account under the name Abdulruhman Ismail, one of the first to share the footage in a post that drew 4 million views, said he would leave it up “because the scene reflects, painfully, what Gaza has endured under Israeli bombardment.” He added, “I am keeping this post for transparency. The video may not be real, but the devastation it evokes is real, and it mirrors what Palestinians have lived through.”
During the June 2025 war, pro-Iran accounts similarly circulated fake videos and images claiming to show strikes devastating Tel Aviv as well as Iranian forces downing Israeli F-35s.
Australian wire AAP debunked several fakes from this round of conflict, including a video claiming that an Iranian strike set a CIA facility in Dubai ablaze, as well as a fabricated image purporting to show late Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, dead under a pile of rubble.
A separate fabricated clip that racked up tens of millions of views purported to show the Burj Khalifa engulfed in flames as crowds rushed in its direction.
The Tehran Times also shared false images and false reports of extensive damage to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.
Iran’s embassy in Austria posted an AI image of a child’s backpack, claiming it was taken at the Minab school in Iran that was hit on the first day of the war.
Tasnim, the Iranian state-affiliated news agency, shared an AI-generated image on X purporting to show an American radar installation in Qatar destroyed in an Iranian strike, The New York Times reported. The paper said Iran’s propaganda “appears focused more on swaying international audiences,” portraying the “success of Tehran’s counteroffensive in effusive terms.”
But X’s head of product told the BBC that 99% of the accounts spreading AI-generated war videos were trying to “game monetization,” posting sensational content to rack up engagement and qualify for payments through the platform’s creator revenue program. The social media giant announced that it will temporarily suspend creators from the program if they post AI-generated videos of armed conflict without disclosing that they were fake.
British politician George Galloway posted a video last week containing AI imagery in which he narrates that the “apocalypse is burning Tel Aviv,” that the city “now looks like Gaza,” and that air defenses over Tel Aviv are “no longer operational.” He says his information came from friends on “Sheinkin Street, Tel Aviv, near Dizengoff Square.”
Former Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy seized on the canard, posting reaction videos of sun-soaked beach scenes and one of himself at Dizengoff Square, casually sipping an iced coffee with the very much intact plaza behind him.
Some people responded to the video by cheering Levy on, saying that they, too, were enjoying a beautiful day in a mostly intact Tel Aviv. But others resisted the evidence in front of them. “Cheap Jew propaganda,” one commenter wrote. “It’s basically flattened out.”
The post Is Netanyahu dead? Has Tel Aviv been flattened? AI videos are dominating the Iran war. appeared first on The Forward.
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Jews decry UK newspaper for appearing to justify attack on bakery founded by Israelis
(JTA) — A Guardian column that seemed to rationalize the targeting of a popular Israeli-founded bakery has ignited controversy in the British Jewish community.
The March 14 piece in the British daily, by sports and culture writer Jonathan Liew, came days after the newly opened north London branch of Gail’s was repeatedly vandalized, with its windows smashed and red paint and pro‑Palestinian slogans daubed on its doors.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews denounced the vandalism, saying that “targeting a business on the basis of alleged or perceived Israeli and or Jewish connections reflects a very worrying trend.”
Liew, meanwhile, described the bakery chain’s expansion into diverse neighborhoods as a form of “aggression,” implying that its presence near a Palestinian-owned cafe was inherently provocative.
Critics, including British Jewish media, communal leaders and online commentators, accused Liew of rationalizing an attack on a business they say is being targeted solely because of its founders’ Israeli heritage. Gail’s was founded in the 1990s as a wholesale bakery by Israeli baker Gail Mejia, who with an Israeli partner opened a storefront bakery in 2005. In 2021, the company, today with close to 200 stores, was acquired by the American investment firm Bain Capital.
“We are a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK,” a spokesperson for Gail’s told the Jewish News. “Our focus right now is on working with the authorities and making sure our people feel safe and supported.”
Although the Guardian piece acknowledges Bain’s ownership, it also notes allegations that the investment firm “invests heavily in military technology, including Israeli security companies.” As a result, wrote Liew, “its very presence 20 metres [65 feet] away from a small independent Palestinian cafe feels quietly symbolic, an act of heavy-handed high-street aggression.” High Street is the British equivalent of “Main Street.”
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators had protested the opening of the branch in the days before the vandalism.
A spokesperson for the Israeli embassy in the U.K. told The Daily Mail that Liew’s article was “an astonishing exercise in bigotry disguised as moral commentary.”
“Beneath its surface lies a familiar and ugly trope: the repackaging of anitsemitic prejudice in fashionable political language,” said Alex Grandler.
The debate, playing out in fiery messages on social media, has highlighted broader concerns about Jewish-owned businesses in Britain being cast as proxies in disputes over the Middle East. In 2025, the Community Security Trust, Britain’s main antisemitism watchdog, recorded 20 incidents involving vandalism at Jewish businesses and organizations.
“In the Guardian’s hall-of-mirrors morality, smashing up a shop because it was founded by Jews is just a touching little political tantrum,” Jewish News editor Richard Ferrer wrote in a column.
In the Guardian piece, Liew seemed to sympathize with the Palestinian-owned cafe in the neighborhood, Cafe Metro, for having been the frequent victim of “pro-Israel activists” who “regularly descend on it to slap stickers on its windows reading ‘Stop killing people’ and ‘One of these days you’ll thank us.’” At the same time, he referred to the window-smashing at Gail’s among the “small acts of petty symbolism” that grow out of Palestinian frustration with their failure to exert influence on the Israel-Palestine debate.
Hadley Freeman, a former columnist for the Jewish Chronicle who now writes a column for The Times, called out Liew for applying an apparent double standard.
“So let me get this straight,” she wrote on X. “1. Petty activism against a Palestinian-owned cafe is bad (agreed!) 2. But *violent* activism against a cafe that people associate (wrongly!) with Israel is justified and understandable.
“Update your rule book accordingly!” she added.
CAMERA UK, a media watchdog group that monitors coverage of Israel, said it had contacted the Guardian, asking if Liew’s column met its “editorial standards.”
“We know the answer, but are nonetheless hoping to see how they justify Liew’s latest defense of antisemitism,” CAMERA said in a statement.
A Guardian spokesperson did share a terse reply with The Daily Mail. “Complaints about Guardian journalism are considered by the internally independent readers’ editor under the Guardian’s editorial code and guidance,” the spokesperson said.
The controversy even reached across the Atlantic. “Good grief — Gail’s is just a bakery!” Patricia Heaton, the actress and conservative political activist, wrote on X. Heaton said she ”had no idea it had any connection to Israel or the Jewish people. But now I want to support it even more.”
Public defenses of the article have been limited, though some pro-Palestinian activists online argued that Liew was only describing the motivations of the protesters rather than endorsing vandalism.
Liew hasn’t responded to the criticism of his column, although he pinned the article to the top of his Bluesky social media account, with the message “the war at home.”
The post Jews decry UK newspaper for appearing to justify attack on bakery founded by Israelis appeared first on The Forward.
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Report: Israeli group quietly organized charter flights evacuating Palestinians from Gaza
(JTA) — An Israeli organization headed by a right-wing activist quietly arranged a series of charter flights that evacuated Palestinians from Gaza last year, according to an Associated Press investigation.
The organization, Ad Kan, a right-wing Israeli organization founded by Gilad Ach, an Israeli combat reservist and West Bank settler activist, coordinated the flights via another company called Al-Majd, which describes itself on its website as a humanitarian organization “supporting Palestinian lives.”
Among the evacuations facilitated by Ad Kan was a flight in May that transported nearly 60 Palestinians to Indonesia and other locations, as well as two flights in October and November that transported over 300 Palestinians to South Africa.
It was not clear who had planned or paid for the flights. South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola decried the evacuations as representing “a broader agenda to remove Palestinians from Palestine,” and an investigation was launched into one of the flight’s origins.
At the time, President Donald Trump had walked back his proposal to relocate the population in Gaza to other countries amid criticism, despite getting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s endorsement.
The AP investigation found that Ach had stuck with Trump’s plan after the U.S. president dumped it, publishing a report detailing how he would implement the “voluntary exit.”
The newly revealed origins of the charter flights adds to a history of controversy surrounding small-scale efforts to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza. Last August, France suspended its effort to evacuate Palestinians after a woman who took part in the program was accused of making antisemitic comments online. The same month, the United States also suspended a program designed to give Palestinian medical care after the far-right Jewish influencer Laura Loomer called the effort a “national security threat.”
Several of the passengers on the South Africa flights told the Associated Press that they were unaware of who was behind the flights, but said they did not care and were more concerned with leaving the besieged territory. (Six Palestinians who spoke to the outlet said they paid up to $2,000 per person for the transportation.)
“There was famine, and we had no options. My children were almost killed,” said a 37-year-old Palestinian who arrived in South Africa in November. “Death and destruction was everywhere, all day, for two years, and nobody came to the rescue.”
In a statement to the Associated Press, Ach rejected South Africa’s allegations that the evacuations amounted to ethnic cleansing and decried the “profound hypocrisy” of countries unwilling to accept Palestinian refugees.
“Their continued presence in Gaza, under dire conditions, serves as a tool to pressure Israel internationally and allows Hamas to maintain its rule over this suffering population,” Ach said.
While it was unclear if Ach had coordinated with the Israeli government to facilitate the evacuations, Muayad Saidam, a Palestinian identified on the group’s website as its Gaza humanitarian project manager, told the outlet that travel arrangements for Palestinians must be made with Israeli authorities.
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