Hundreds of thousands of haredi Orthodox Jewish men joined a mass protest in Jerusalem on Thursday to rail against the Israeli government’s efforts to enlist yeshiva students into the military.

The mass prayer demonstration, called the “Million Man March,” was organized by the leaders of Israel’s different ultra-Orthodox groups in response to a spate of arrests of yeshiva students who had dodged the Israeli draft.

“The debate over the law is still ongoing, and it belongs in the Knesset,” one organizer told Haaretz. “If that were the only issue, we wouldn’t hold a rally. But following the arrests of yeshiva students and the persecution against us, it was decided to protest nonetheless.”

The protest comes one year after the Israeli Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Israel must draft haredi Orthodox Jews into its army, a decision welcomed by many Israelis who believe the haredi sector was not bearing its share of the burden of the war in Gaza. The ruling renewed demonstrations from haredi groups who have long argued that they should be exempt for religious reasons.

Earlier this month, upwards of 10,000 haredi Orthodox Jewish men staged another protest in New York City to oppose the draft.

At the demonstration Thursday, two ultra-Orthodox soldiers, a police officer and several journalists were attacked by protesters, including Channel 12 News reporter Inbar Twizer who had objects thrown at her during her broadcast.

ענבר טוויזר pic.twitter.com/HTayK7kJBb

— רינו צרור (@RinoZror) October 30, 2025

Throughout the day, hundreds of protesters were seen entering construction sites, scaling roofs and climbing cranes. One 15-year-old boy died after falling from the 20th floor of a high-rise construction site.

One group of protesters were also seen carrying a banner from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which read, “Bringing back the hostages, bringing back hope.” The group has previously pursued legal action against a yeshiva that appropriating symbols for the hostages to rally for the release of jailed yeshiva students.

After the protests’ organizers called for an end to the demonstration on Thursday evening, some protesters remained near the entrance of Jerusalem and clashed with Israeli border police, according to the Times of Israel.

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US Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday responded to a question from a right-wing student activist who made antisemitic statements against Israel and Judaism, arguing the Jewish state does not control American foreign policy while not countering the questioner’s remarks targeting the Jewish religion.

Vance appeared at the University of Mississippi for an event held by Turning Point USA, the influential conservative advocacy organization led for years by the late Charlie Kirk.

More than 90 minutes into the session, during the questions portion, a man wearing a red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap and a white “Ole Miss” hoodie was given the microphone.

“Thank you for the opportunity to speak,” the individual said. “I’m a Christian man and I’m just confused why that there’s this notion that we might owe Israel something or that they’re our greatest ally or that we have to support this multi-hundred-billion-dollar foreign aid package to Israel to cover this — to quote Charlie Kirk, ethnic cleansing in Gaza. I’m just confused why this idea has come around considering the fact that not only does their religion not agree with ours but also openly supports the prosecution of ours.”

The question — in which the student incorrectly quoted Kirk, an outspoke pro-Israel advocate —prompted applause from the audience.

“First of all, when the president of the United States says ‘America first’ that means that he pursues the interests of Americans first. That is our entire foreign policy,” Vance responded. “That doesn’t mean that you’re not going to have alliances, that you’re not going to work with other countries from time to time. And that is what the president believes is that Israel, sometimes they have similar interests to the United States and we’re going to work with them in that case. Sometimes they don’t have similar interests to the United States.”

Vance used the example of the US-brokered ceasefire to halt fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza to illustrate his point.

“In this example, the most recent Gaza peace plan that all of us have been working on very hard for the past few weeks, the president of the United States could only get that peace deal done by actually being willing to apply leverage to the state of Israel,” Vance said. “So, when people say that Israel is somehow manipulating or controlling the president of the United States, they’re not controlling this president of the United States, which is one of the reasons why would we be able to have some of the success that we’ve had in the Middle East.”

The vice president, who was baptized into the Catholic faith in August 2019, then shifted to theological discourse, apparently wanting to respond to the student’s statement that Judaism “openly supports the persecution of Christians.

“Now you ask about, you know, sort of Jews disagreeing with Christians on certain religious ideas. Yeah, absolutely. It’s one of the realities is that Jews do not believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. Obviously, Christians do believe that,” Vance said. “There are some significant theological disagreements between Christians and Jews. My attitude is let’s have those conversations. Let’s have those disagreements when we have them. But if there are shared areas of interest, we ought to be willing to do that, too.”

Vance continued, “One thing I really, really care about is the preservation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Christians believe that that is the site where Jesus Christ was crucified and also that his tomb is right there as well. My attitude is if we can work with our friends in Israel to make sure that Christians have safe access to that site, that’s an obvious area of common interest, I am fine with that.”

The vice president then emphasized to the student that he would not put Israel ahead of the United States, saying, “What I’m not OK with is any country coming before the interests of American citizens. And it is important for all of us, assuming we’re American citizens, to put the interest of our own country first. That’s what we’re going to do. That’s what we try to do every single day. I promise you. Thank you.”

Antisemitic sentiment on the American political right has surged in the weeks following the murder of Kirk, with prominent social media podcaster figures such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens suggesting Israeli involvement in the shooting without any evidence. This conspiracy theorizing inspired death threats against pro-Israel conservative figures and the arrest of a man now facing 140 years’ imprisonment.

On Monday, Carlson published a more than two-hour interview with neo-Nazi podcaster Nick Fuentes on X. Photos of Carlson with his arm around Fuentes’ shoulder and smiles on both their faces began circulating around social media.

Carlson apologized to Fuentes in the discussion, saying “I’m sorry I called you gay, by the way.” He also referenced the prominent political commentator Ben Shapiro, who is widely known to be an Orthodox Jew, adding, “I don’t think Fuentes is going away. Ben Shapiro tried to strangle him in the crib in college, and now he’s bigger than ever.”

In the interview, Fuentes contrasted himself with Shapiro, stating, “I didn’t come from some strange background. I come from a normal home. My parents are Catholic.”

Fuentes’s comments appear to differ with the views of Pope Leo XIV, the head of the Catholic Church.

Leo on Wednesday condemned antisemitism and affirmed the Catholic Church’s commitment to combating hatred and persecution against the Jewish people, arguing his faith demands such a stance.

Speaking in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican for his weekly “general audience,” the pontiff acknowledged the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, a declaration from the Second Vatican Council and promulgated on Oct. 28, 1965, by Pope Paul VI that called for dialogue and respect between Christianity and other religions.

Since the publication of Nostra Aetate, “all my predecessors have condemned antisemitism with clear words,” Leo said. “I too confirm that the Church does not tolerate antisemitism and fights against it, on the basis of the Gospel itself.”

When I saw a sign on my streetcorner in Chicago that said “The Holocaust is fake,” I immediately stopped. I had just left the pool and was on my way to shop for Shabbat. Disgusted, I brought an older neighbor to take a look. I knew he had taken down his mezuzah in fear after some of the protests after Oct. 7 and had only recently put another Jewish symbol back up.

I wanted company as I snapped a picture of the sign, but I also wanted him to be aware of what was happening in the neighborhood. Because these days, the truth and lies are blurred.

Later, I learned that similar stickers and graffiti, some of it misspelled, had appeared on other corners and benches on the Far North side of Chicago, traditionally a stronghold of the Jewish community here, which is the third largest in the U.S.

“Holocaust” and “fake” are two words whose meanings used to be clear to all. Yet the doubt cast on both “Holocaust” and “fake” represent two disturbing trends; their convergence is dangerous, and entirely predictable.

Those who traffic in Holocaust minimization and denial have been recent guests on The Joe Rogan Experience, the country’s #1 podcast, which has far more listeners than network television. Rogan, who has hosted the “Holocaust revisionist” Darryl Cooper, has 19.4 million subscribers on YouTube, 19.7 million on Instagram and 15 million on X. Meanwhile, NBC and CBS News average 5.6 and 3.6 million viewers, respectively.

Redefining fake

Meanwhile, the mainstream news media, where fact-checking is prized, has been maligned for years as “fake news,” a term the current U.S. president uses so often that no one blinks when something real is dismissed. When fact-checked information is “fake,” it’s not surprising to see history described that way too.

The Holocaust was the ultimate truth of the 20th century. The ghettos, the crematoria, the gas chambers — so many elements of the industrialized and intentional slaughter of an entire people were without precedent and were the final stop on centuries of anti-Jewish hatred.

In the weeks after Oct. 7, I was haunted by the thought that the “genocide” charge against Israel was not just about criticizing Israel, but at root, about minimizing the Holocaust.

The term “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer who had lost 49 members of his family in the Holocaust.

Yet the world’s oldest Holocaust archive changed its name in September 2019 from the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide to the Wiener Holocaust Library. The Library, located in London, stated that it wanted to clarify “the centrality of the Holocaust” to our work without changing its “commitment to furthering the study of genocide.”

A few years earlier, in 2011, Jeremy Corbyn, who would become Labour Party leader in 2015, sought to change “Holocaust Memorial Day” to “Genocide Memorial Day — Never Again for Anyone” in 2011. That prompted swift backlash.

“Holocaust Memorial Day already rightly includes all victims of the Nazis and subsequent genocides,” Karen Pollock, chief executive of the UK’s Holocaust Educational Trust, wrote at the time on Twitter. “But the Holocaust was a specific crime, with antisemitism at its core. Any attempt to remove that specificity is a form of denial and distortion.”

Changing the meaning of the word ‘Holocaust’

Increasingly, the word ‘Holocaust’ is being used to describe what was not the Holocaust.

Simon and Schuster is currently promoting a forthcoming book edited by Susan Abulhawa that it describes as documenting “the holocaust of our time.” The editor’s note accompanying the copy that reviewers have received is signed “From the river to the sea.”

According to the United States Holocaust Museum, “approximately 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe in 1933, the year Hitler came to power. This number represented 1.7% of Europe’s total population and more than 60 percent of the world’s Jewish population. By 1945, most European Jews — 2 out of every 3 — had been killed.”

The world Jewish population still hasn’t recovered its 1933 levels.

Even in this moment where words and numbers increasingly do not matter, there is no account — not even from the Hamas-run Health Ministry itself—-that suggests that 2/3 of Gazans have been killed in this conflict.

This is not to minimize the tremendous suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians in a war that began with a Hamas-led attack on Israel, in which some Gazan civilians participated. It was a horrible and harrowing two years.

Returned Israeli hostages have described being held in the homes of ordinary Gazans. CNN reported that three hostages were held in the home of a physician whose son was a freelance journalist for the US-based Palestine Chronicle. The son filed dispatches about the war in Gaza while his family held hostages.

Fact-check: A military attack and hostage-taking were not features of the Jewish community’s experience during the Holocaust.

What is real? What is fake?

Who’s a journalist? Who’s a hostage-holder?

What’s “news”? What’s “experience”?

What’s the difference between the Holocaust and the holocaust?

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In this world where facts can be fake and nothing is taboo, anything seems possible. You can make the Holocaust into a lower-case “holocaust.” You can make Raphael Lemkin, the columnist for Zionist World, into an anti-Zionist, which was what Lemkin’s family asserted that the Lemkin Institute was doing, as it used their relative’s name while attacking Israel. And you can put up a sticker in a Jewish neighborhood claiming that the “Holocaust is fake.”

Holding on to disgust

I wrote to various family members with a photo of the sign in my neighborhood. None reacted too strongly; “I hate to say it, but I’m numb to this already,” one wrote.

I’m glad I’m still disgusted. I’m writing this to encourage you to be disgusted, too. Resist the guests on podcast “experience” forums who claim that antisemitism is being exaggerated, and that the Holocaust wasn’t that bad.

Because once holocaust is just a word, marketing copy from a publisher, devoid of Jewish content, and cleansed of historical accuracy, all words can be redefined to serve this kingdom of lies we increasingly seem to be living in.

The post A sign in my neighborhood says ‘The Holocaust is fake’ — I wish I felt surprised appeared first on The Forward.