Paris 2024 Olympics – Judo – Men -100 kg Victory Ceremony – Champ-de-Mars Arena, Paris, France – August 01, 2024. Bronze medallist Peter Paltchik of Israel celebrates on the podium. Photo: REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

Ukrainian-born Israeli judoka and Olympic medalist Peter Paltchik announced his retirement in an online video and emotional press conference on Monday.

Paltchik, 33, shared a video on social media of him sitting across from his head coach, Oren Smadga, as he announced the shocking news. The former athlete said he has no regrets about his career, reflected on his journey as an athlete, and teared up while thanking Smadga for his support over the years and talking about their close connection.

Paltchik is Israel’s most decorated judoka, winning bronze medals at the Olympics in Tokyo in 2020 and Paris in 2024. He also took home a bronze medal in the International Judo Federation’s 2021 World Judo Masters and won gold in the European Judo Championships’ under-100 kg division in Prague in November 2020. He additionally has gold medals from the 2020 Paris Grand Slam, 2018 Abu Dhabi Grand Slam, 2020 European Judo Championships, and four Grand Prix tournaments.

After Monday’s announcement, the Olympic Committee of Israel praised Paltchik and wished him good luck in all his future endeavors. “Peter proved that a long path of work, discipline, faith, and personal depth can turn a dream into reality,” the committee said in a released statement. “He set an example for an entire generation of athletes and athletes and provided moments that will not be forgotten. Peter, thank you for the way, for the heart, for the values, and for the energy you brought to every scene.”

In September 2024, Paltchik launched the Paltchik Foundation to support talented young athletes. He committed to allocating 3 percent of his business revenues to the foundation, which has all volunteer staff members to ensure that every donation goes directly to helping athletes in need. Paltchik is currently pursing a bachelor’s degree in advertising and marketing communications.

In May, Smadga resigned as the head coach of Israel’s national judo team. A former judoka himself, Smadga was the first Israeli man to win an Olympic medal when he won bronze at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, and he has served as the coach of the men’s team since 2010. Smadga’s 25-year-old son was killed in combat in June 2024 while fighting with the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip during the Israel-Hamas war.

By day, Eid works on a kibbutz, laying bricks and waiting for cement to set. At home, he escapes on Skype, making calls to his beloved in Paris, a married writer and actress, and dreams of one day joining her and producing a play he’s writing. But when his sister gets engaged, he is compelled to marry her fiancé’s sister in a Badal, or exchange, marriage.

Eid, by Yousef Abo Madegem, believed to be the first Israeli Bedouin to direct a feature film, tracks its title character — marvelously played by Shadi Mar’i — as he suffers the whips and scorns of tradition in the face of his own ambition.

Hamlet, indeed, seems like a spiritual basis. Eid is trapped in the expectations of his little life, escaping by rehearsing lyrical monologues responding to sexual abuse he suffered as a child. When he takes a tentative step toward freedom, the irresolution of his lover, waiting at a literal threshold, stops his momentum. (It’s very “now I might do it pat.”)

At its core, the story, written by Yuval Aharoni, director of 2017’s Heritage, is a study of a community rarely seen in Israeli film, that of Bedouin citizens of Israel who rely on Jewish employers, often suffering exploitation at their hands.

What is refreshing about the film, which takes place in the majority Bedouin city of Rahat, is its intimacy and scale. It is not a definitive picture of how the approximately 200,000 Bedouins live, but one man’s story, in which discrimination is largely incidental. (Madegem based Eid’s story on a friend of his.)

Eid is a character of pure potential, fluent in Hebrew, determined to make a life in the theater, but stifled by his demanding father and his duty to a wife he didn’t choose. His bride, played by Angham Khalil, has her own moment to consider her fate, as her mother and mother-in-law slowly unwrap her wedding hijab.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Madegem said he made the film in part to discuss sexual violence against boys and begin a conversation within his community. But the film has universal appeal, and its light touch is impressive for a debut tackling heavy subject matter.

As Eid works through his play, sometimes shouting its lines at his tormenters in the kibbutz, he pokes fun at a suggestion: that it must conclude in a confrontation.

“We’re Bedouins,” he quips “all our stories end in a confrontation.”

They don’t all have to. And, as Eid itself is proof, sometimes the best stories don’t.

The film Eid is having its New York debut at the Other Israel Film Festival at the Marlene Meyerson JCC in New York City on Thursday, Nov. 11, followed by a Q&A with director Yousef Abo Madegem.

The post ‘Eid,’ the first Israeli feature directed by a Bedouin, is a heartfelt portrait of an artist appeared first on The Forward.

Cornell University will pay $60 million to the Trump administration to resolve ongoing antisemitism investigations and unfreeze $250 million in federal funds, becoming the fourth Ivy League school and fifth overall to strike such a deal.

The deal came weeks after another agreement signed by the University of Virginia, and also followed the resolution of an ongoing controversy at Cornell involving a Jewish professor’s course on Gaza.

“With this resolution, Cornell looks forward to resuming the long and fruitful partnership with the federal government that has yielded, for so many years, so much progress and well-being for our nation and our world,” Michael Kotlikoff, the school’s Jewish president, said in a statement Friday announcing the deal.

In a virtual campus town hall after the deal was announced, Kotlikoff linked the university’s negotiation of the settlement to the broader campus climate in the two-plus years since the Hamas attack on Israel and war in Gaza.

“Universities across the country have made significant progress since disruptions on campus on October 7 in articulating our rules, appropriately enforcing our rules and making sure that everybody’s rights are protected,” he said, as reported by the Cornell student newspaper.

As part of the deal, Cornell will pay the federal government $20 million per year for the next three years in exchange for the unfreezing of several grants to the university, many of which are connected to the Department of Defense. Half of the money will be directed to investments in agriculture programs. 

The school also promises to “conduct annual campus climate surveys to ensure that Jewish students are safe and that anti-Semitism is being addressed,” according to a White House release about the deal. In the aftermath of Oct. 7, Cornell’s campus dealt with violent threats against Jewish students as well as a faculty member who had praised the Hamas attacks.

The government, in turn, promises to drop its ongoing Title VI investigations into allegations of discrimination based on shared Jewish ancestry or national origin at the school. Kotlikoff further insisted that Cornell would preserve its academic freedom, and would not be forced to abide by White House guidelines on other campus concerns such as diversity-based hiring and transgender athletes.

Cornell’s agreement follows earlier ones struck by Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown and UVA. UVA, the first public university to strike an antisemitism-related deal with Trump, was not required to make any payments to the federal government, according to the deal it announced last month. 

Instead, UVA agreed to end certain diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, known as DEI, and eliminate language referring to transgender people, among other provisions. None of the public terms of its settlement involved addressing antisemitism.

Momodou Taal addresses fellow students at a Cornell University pro-Palestinian demonstration in April 2024. (Screenshot from Cornell Daily Sun video)

One prominent on-campus critic of Cornell’s handling of antisemitism issues praised the school’s settlement as “pragmatic” in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“I think the fact that all Title VI investigations have been closed is a tremendously important reassurance to students and parents that the university, in fact, is doing all it can to protect Jewish students from any kind of antisemitic discrimination or incident,” said Menachem Rosensaft, an adjunct law professor at Cornell.

Rosensaft added that the agreement “also sends a very clear signal to anyone who is inclined to engage in antisemitic discrimination or violence that they will suffer the consequences.”

Rosensaft had been at the middle of a more recent Israel-related controversy at Cornell after he complained to Kotlikoff about a pro-Palestinian Jewish professor’s plan to teach a class on Gaza. Kotlikoff’s criticisms of the class, in emails published by JTA, prompted campus advocacy groups to admonish what they said were his threats to academic freedom.

That professor, Eric Cheyfitz, prompted an internal investigation after he tried to remove an Israeli graduate student from his Gaza class. Last month, Cheyfitz opted to retire from teaching in order to end the investigation.

The university pressure on Cheyfitz, Rosensaft said, was further evidence — along with the settlement — that Cornell has started to take threats of antisemitism seriously.

“He will no longer be able to propagate his extreme anti-Zionism in the classroom,” Rosensaft said.

Further Trump negotiations with universities remain ongoing, even as more and more Jews say they think such deals are only using antisemitism as an excuse to attack higher education.

The terms of a proposed $1 billion payout from the University of California system, recently made public by a court order, include specific reference to antisemitic incidents that took place on UCLA’s campus. In addition, a closely watched negotiation with Harvard remains ongoing.

—
The post Cornell inks $60M deal with Trump administration to resolve antisemitism claims appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.