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As jury launches deliberations in Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, defense concedes shooter’s hatred of Jews
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — After 11 days of graphic and emotionally fraught testimony in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial, and a 90-minute closing argument that included gruesome photos and the replay of harrowing 911 calls, it was time for the defense to speak.
A lawyer for Robert Bowers, accused of being the gunman who murdered 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue, on Thursday walked across the courtroom to a podium, faced the jury, and spoke for just 19 minutes.
Elisa Long acknowledged the immensity of the crime on Oct. 27, 2018, and offered only half a defense. Bowers did not intend to keep Jews from worshipping, she said, but he did appear to hate Jews.
“There is no question that his posts on Gab.com and his statements that day reflected animosity and hatred toward Jews,” Long said, referring to a social media site that is a virtual redoubt for extremists.
It was a critical concession that 11 of the government’s charges, that Bowers committed capital hate crimes, may be irrefutable.
A prosecutor took another 20 minutes to rebut Long’s barebones defense, and then Judge Robert Colville ordered the jury to begin deliberations. Seven women and five men filed out of the court at 2:30 p.m., and clerks followed them with wheeled carts piled with evidence. They retired Thursday without arriving at a verdict.
The defense, which barely registered as a presence during the guilt phase of the trial, appears to be reserving its arguments for the death penalty phase, which begins a week after the jury returns a verdict, if it determines that Bowers is guilty of any of the 22 capital crimes out of 63 charges in the indictment.
Defense lawyers in March said they would bring up Bowers’ mental health, including evidence that he suffers from epilepsy and schizophrenia. On the first day of the trial, Colville forbade them from doing so during the guilt phase of the trial, but said they may raise mental health during the penalty phase.
In her closing argument, Long devoted most of her time to sowing doubt about 11 of the capital charges, that Bowers “intentionally obstructed by force … the enjoyment of free exercise of religious beliefs,” resulting in 11 deaths.
“It is vitally important not to convict him of crimes he did not commit,” she said.
The free exercise of religious beliefs “does not include the engagement in good works or conduct that may or may not be part of religious belief,” she said.
Then jurors would have to determine whether Bowers was seeking to stop a religious service “or to stop people who were supporting the resettlement of refugees,” she said.
One of the three congregations housed in the Tree of Life synagogue, Dor Hadash, was partnered with HIAS, the Jewish immigration advocacy group. She quoted Bowers’ Gab posts in which he identified Jews with what he believed was a planned genocide of white Americans to be carried out by immigrants.
“HIAS is a huge enabler of refugee invasions,” Bowers posted on Oct. 25, Long pointed out, two days before the massacre. Dor Hadash, she noted, was on that Saturday planning a “Refugee Shabbat.” His responses were “shocking and irrational,” she said, but “after learning about HIAS” and its advocacy, “Mr. Bowers’ sense of urgency increased.”
Long began her closing argument by acknowledging, as lead defense attorney Judy Clarke had done in her opening argument, that Bowers had carried out the massacre.
“There is no dispute that on Oct. 27. 2018, armed with an AR-15, he shot and killed 11 people and seriously injured two others who were in their sacred space,” Long said. The defense on day one of the trial promised “we would not offer justification, and we have not done so,” she said.
Summing up, Long appeared to anticipate the mental health arguments the defense would make during the penalty phase, while being careful not to violate Colville’s order not to explicitly raise the topic.
She described a 46-year old man “living alone in an apartment” where he slept on a mattress on the floor and who was obsessed with computers, coding and guns. “How and why this man who lived a quiet and law abiding life until 2018” committed the crimes may be “inexplicable,” she said.
In the months before the massacre Bowers “spent an immense amount of time on the internet absorbing hate,” she said.
Long did not argue that the government had proved the 11 capital hate crimes. But she also did not argue that it had not, telling the jury, “These are the charges the federal government has brought and these are the decisions you as jurors must make.”
In his rebuttal, Eric Olshan, a U.S. attorney, ridiculed Long’s claim that obstructing worship was not germane to Bowers’ intentions.
Facing the jury, he spun around and pointed to Bowers.
“On Oct. 27, 2018, that man, Robert Bowers, went into Tree of Life, where three congregations, not just Dor Hadash” were getting ready for services. The other two are Tree of Life and New Light. “He didn’t focus on Dor Hadash, he focused on any Jew he could find to kill or try to kill.”
He accused Long of cherrypicking Bowers’ Gab posts, and reminded jurors of evidence that in the months prior to the attack, Towers had “liked” just two posts mentioning HIAS, while “liking” some 400 mentions of “Kike,” an antisemitic epithet, and some 2,300 mentions of “Jew.”
“Did he go to a refugee resettlement meeting? Did he go to the border to stop Jews” from facilitating the entry of immigrants? Olshan asked. “Did he go to the HIAS office in Maryland? He drove about 30 minutes from where he lived to Squirrel Hill, the center of Jewish life in Pittsburgh.”
Again Olshan pointed at Bowers. “That person intended to obstruct them from free exercise of religion,” he said. “This is not rocket science.”
In any case, Olshan, who is Jewish, said HIAS’s work is inextricable from Jewish faith. “Welcoming the stranger” appears 36 times in the Torah, he said, including in the passage the congregations would be reading that morning. “That just proves his guilt,” he said.
Throughout the day, Bowers never looked toward the jury. Clad in a gray sweater with a collared blue shirt, he stared at a computer screen where he monitored evidence and scribbled notes, occasionally whispering to his lawyers.
Bowers’ aunt and a cousin were present in the courtroom, as were survivors of the attack and families of the victims. There was an expectation that a verdict would be quick; the overflow room for families was packed. Maggie Feinstein, who counsels the victims, was in the court room. So was Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, who testified on the first day that he expected to die where he was hiding, and recited the Shema prayer. He wore a white kippah emblazoned with the synagogue’s symbol, a blue tree.
The day began with Colville warning the jury that his instructions to them would be exceptionally long; he took 80 minutes. Then Soo Song, an assistant U.S. attorney, spoke for 90 minutes, reconstructing the day of the massacre, Oct. 27, 2018, detail by gory detail. Of the 11 people killed, she said, six were shot in the head.
She anticipated the argument Long would advance, repeatedly emphasizing the rituals Bowers interrupted with deadly results. Using bloody photos of victims in their place, she focused especially on religious implements.”The defendant committed mass murder in a synagogue,” she said. “He turned that sacred space into a place littered with prayer shawls and prayer books and 11 deceased worshippers.”
She concluded naming the 11 victims: Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger.
Olshan ended the day holding two evidence bags, each with half of a bloodstained kippah. “No longer a reminder of God’s presence,” he said. “This is what he did to Irving Younger, leaving this tattered reminder found amid the shocks of Irving younger’s white hair.”
The obstruction of worship was “the natural and probable consequence of his actions,” Olshan said.”The only justice is a verdict of guilty in every charge in this case.”
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The post As jury launches deliberations in Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, defense concedes shooter’s hatred of Jews appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The Situation at Colleges and K-12 Schools Is as Bad as It Has Ever Been for Jewish Students
Demonstrators march in support of Palestinians, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, US, Feb. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/David Ryder
University administrations continue to grapple with legal challenges to their handling of antisemitic protests. A series of lawsuits filed by the higher education industrial complex seek to reverse all the Trump administration’s initiatives to control costs, limit foreign students with radical pasts, and protect Jewish students.
University presidents are also being pressured to reverse the trend of institutional neutrality and to resume making statements on political issues. The lawsuits and the renaming and hiding of DEI initiatives indicate that universities are simply waiting out the current administration, but the structural changes being forced by economic conditions including Federal funding and broader demographics will be more enduring.
Reports indicate that the Trump administration is reworking its “compact with higher education” to make it acceptable to more universities, but in the meantime, a number of Federal investigations are ongoing. The University of Pennsylvania, however, has balked at a demand for employee records from the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission as part of an investigation into discrimination aimed at Jewish employees.
The US Department of Education has also chosen not to challenge a Federal court ruling that prohibits it from requiring universities to remove all race based curriculum, student aid, and student services or risk losing funding. The move was represented by DEI advocates as a victory and reflects the industry’s efforts to wait out the Trump administration before restoring DEI as its central pillar.
Data from a new Department of Education website has again showed that Qatar is the leading funder of American universities with $6.6 billion in contracts and gifts. Cornell University received $2.3 billion, while $1 billion was given to Carnegie Mellon University, and more that $900 million each to Texas A&M University and Georgetown. Overall 1223 individual transactions involving Qatar are recorded, pointing to that country’s vast influence buying within the higher education industrial complex.
The influence of foreign funding has always been disputed by universities. A new lawsuit, however, alleges that Qatari funding directly shaped Carnegie Mellon’s neglect of antisemitism and discrimination directed at a Jewish faculty member.
In that case, the school was required to consult with the Qatar Foundation International before hiring the assistant vice provost for DEI and Title IX coordinator, while other DEI officials visited Qatar as part of their work. This pattern of support and collusion with Qatar through DEI is likely replicated across a vast scale across the higher education industry.
A new report has again detailed the manner in which the City University of New York systematically purged all Jews from its leadership and dramatically reduced the number of Jewish students. The university’s move appears to be a deliberate, top down marketing strategy focusing on New York’s Muslim community rather than Jews, which privileged partnerships with CAIR and endorsed BDS supporters within the faculty union.
Finally, in a significant move, the United Arab Emirates has banned scholarships for students studying in Britain. The stated rationale was fear of radicalization by the Muslim Brotherhood, which dominates British campuses.
In an interesting rhetorical shift, Harvard president Alan Garber blamed “faculty activism” in the classroom for chilling free speech on campus. He also stated that “there is real movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom.”
The incorporation of explicitly anti-Israel terms such as “Israel Occupation Forces,” “Apartheid Wall,” and “Zionist regime” into academic papers has expanded immensely since 2019 and has created a self-reinforcing web of citations that gives the additional appearance of legitimacy to anti-Israel standpoints.
As has long been the case, this new guise conveniently aligns with broader left-wing opposition to the West, capitalism, and whiteness.
Faculty also continue to organize conferences on campus that emphasize anti-Israel activism, often without a guise of scholarship or pedagogy.
In one recent example, a conference at the University of Washington was reported to have promoted pro-Hamas activism and included faculty members and activists who defended Hamas, Iran, and campus property destruction. The university recently lifted suspensions on students who had caused over $1 million in damages to an engineering building during a pro-Hamas takeover.
In another example, Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies will host a Gaza Lecture Series featuring a number of prominent defenders of Hamas and other terrorist groups, as well as deniers of October 7th sexual violence.
Institutionally, academic associations continue to be besieged by anti-Israel members. In January the executive council of the American Historical Association vetoed a resolution accusing Israel of scholasticide and the silencing of protests regarding “the U.S.-sponsored genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza.”
The council stated, “As worded the two resolutions fall outside the scope of the American Historical Association’s chartered mission,” adding that “Approving them on behalf of the entire association would present institutional risk and have long-term implications for the discipline and the organization.” Supporters of the resolution complained the move reflected anti-Palestinian bias. The Modern Language Association also approved a similar resolution.
In the first month of the new semester, job fairs and individual corporations were be targeted by pro-Hamas protestors. In one example, the Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine chapter organized a walkout to demand the university sever ties with Palantir, which it accuses of “enabling genocide” and profiting from “ICE raids, police violence, and mass surveillance at home.”
The Yale University “Endowment Justice Collective” also demanded that the university divest from investments in Palantir and other firms. The university rejected the demands. The University of Alabama SJP chapter made similar divestment demands.
Student sponsored events in support of Hamas and other Palestinian terror organizations also continue to be held. The University of Virginia Law School hosted International Solidarity Movement co-founder Huwaida Arraf for a “conversation” about Gaza. In another, the University of Chicago’s pro-Hamas groups promoted an International Week of Action to secure the release of Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
At the University of Washington, the presence of the Tariq El-Tahrir Student Network, “an international network of Palestinian, Arab, and Internationalist youth, students and organizations,” associated with terrorist organizations including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, has provided the local pro-Hamas SUPER UW (Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return at University of Washington) group with continuing support. This includes webinar series featuring terror supporters from Samidoun and other groups. SUPER UW remains banned on campus but the Tariq El-Tahrir provides them with an effective alter ego.
Finally, in a move that demonstrated how the Holocaust is being actively divorced from and turned against Jews, the University of California at Irvine student government passed a motion commemorating International Holocaust Remembrance Day but stripped it of all reference to modern antisemitism and Holocaust denial.
The K-12 sector continues to be manipulated by anti-American and pro-Hamas teachers unions and infiltrated by foreign influence operations. Pro-Hamas pedagogy inside and outside the classroom have now become commonplace, often piggybacked on holidays and commemorations.
In one example, pro-Hamas teachers held a NYC Educators For Palestine MLK Day Teach-In. The organizers are among the leaders of the American Federation of Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers. A number of participants are also linked to pro-Hamas welfare organizations such as the Palestinian Children’s Welfare Fund and ANERA. Teach-ins for “Palestine” were also held on Martin Luther King Day for students in Philadelphia and for teachers in Oakland.
Teachers and parents from the Berkeley Families for Collective Liberation were involved in organizing a student walkout at Berkeley High School to participate in a pro-Palestinian teach-out held on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Organizers claimed the timing was purely coincidental. Speakers also criticized California’s new law addressing antisemitism in public schools.
The complicity of school administrators in permitting and organizing pro-Hamas events inside and outside classrooms is well documented. One recent example is the decision by the Michigan Department of Education to accept teachers’ participation in a professional development seminar about “how to teach about Palestine” organized by the Arab American National Museum, in association with Rethinking Schools, and Visualizing Palestine.
New evidence continues to emerge regarding foreign influence operations, including initiatives by the Qatar Foundation International to insert Arabic language and social justice curriculums into Georgia schools. Both the language and social justice materials are deeply suffused with anti-Israel and antisemitic themes.
British primary and secondary schools provide a roadmap to how teachers and foreign powers reshape curriculum and how demographic change among students have made antisemitism and anti-Israel bias foundational.
British teachers unions are resolutely anti-Israel and have adopted numerous resolutions of condemnation. This has translated into classroom hostility towards Israel, as well as towards Jewish students and teachers, some of whom are told by colleagues that Israel simply does not exist, which is amplified by the growing number of Muslim students.
In one recent case, a school barred a Jewish Member of Parliament from visiting after protests from teachers. The educational oversight authority Ofsted later cleared the school of wrongdoing without speaking to the Member of Parliament. In contrast, reports indicate that Hussein Zomlot, head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK, routinely tours British schools.
The Holocaust has also been co-opted and inverted as an anti-Israel and antisemitic tool. British teachers have begun presenting Israeli actions in Gaza as “genocide” and inverting Holocaust memory into an anti-Jewish concept. Reports also indicate that half of British schools have stopped marking Holocaust Memorial Day for fear of offending Muslim students.
The author is a contributor to SPME, where a different version of this article appeared.
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Israeli-Palestinian restaurant shutters in Berlin, though a TV show will continue its story
(JTA) — An Israeli-Palestinian restaurant in Berlin that became internationally known for its “Make hummus not war” message is closing after 10 years — but a new TV series will extend its story.
Kanaan, a hummus bar run by Oz Ben David, an Israeli, and Jalil Dabit, a Palestinian, has announced it will shutter in March. The partners evolved their restaurant into a platform for promoting peace and dialogue, but in recent years, they fought a string of economic challenges along with local tensions emanating from the Gaza war.
“Running a daily restaurant became too heavy,” they said in a post on Instagram. “The pandemic, the wars and the economic situation, all of those were too much.”
Now, the German production company Traumfabrik Babelsberg says it’s making a new dramedy series based on the Israeli-Palestinian duo. The show called “Breaking the Binary” was announced at a launch party in January, where the creators said they joined Ben David and Dabit over “a shared meal as a symbol of exchange and encounter.”
Ben David and Dabit are contributing to the writing and character development of the series. It will feature Mirna Funk, a German-Jewish author and journalist, as well as Yousef Sweid, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who appeared in the acclaimed Netflix series “Unorthodox” and HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”
The partners briefly closed Kanaan after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, battling doubts about the credibility of their anti-war message. Six days later, they reopened with the determination to leverage their restaurant as a symbol of hope.
They organized free educational programs on cooking and prejudice, joining Palestinian refugees from Gaza with members of Berlin’s Israeli community. In November, they published a cookbook titled “Kochen ohne Grenzen,” or “Cooking Without Borders,” compiling their recipes together with those of rabbis, imams and priests in Berlin.
But while these projects won international recognition, Kanaan was battered by economic uncertainty and a fraught political environment. Far-left and far-right activists protested the “normalization” of an Israeli and a Palestinian working together. Meanwhile, many customers surveyed by the restaurant said they were fatigued by conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and they preferred to unwind with a night of sushi or Italian food.
“‘We don’t understand if you are pro-Israel or pro-Palestine.’ That’s something that we heard a lot,” Ben David said last year.
In 2024, Kanaan was ransacked after hosting a Jewish-Muslim brunch. Months later, an Israeli woman was assaulted by four people while wearing Kanaan’s signature pin, which depicts a heart divided between the Israeli and Palestinian flags.
Ben David and Dabit said they will continue to share their food through other formats, including pop-ups, catering, educational projects and collaborations.
“This chapter is coming to an end — but Kanaan is not,” they said.
The post Israeli-Palestinian restaurant shutters in Berlin, though a TV show will continue its story appeared first on The Forward.
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‘Blue Wave’: Israel Expands Diplomatic, Security Ties Across Latin America Amid Shifting Regional Politics
Argentine President Javier Milei speaks during a Plenum session of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, in Jerusalem, June 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
A new wave of diplomacy in Latin America has seen several governments adopt a friendlier, more supportive stance toward Israel, deepening bilateral ties that Jerusalem is now leveraging on the global stage while signaling a potential shift in regional political alignments.
In a new interview with Israel’s Channel 12, Amir Ofek, deputy director for Latin America at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, explained that the country is undergoing a major shift in its diplomatic engagement across the region, marked by a series of significant developments.
“There have been shifts in countries that were once our allies, and we have faced periods under very critical and challenging governments,” Ofek said. “We respond quickly to these changes, stay in close contact, and we are now beginning to make real progress.”
In a significant regional breakthrough, Israel and Bolivia formally restored diplomatic relations late last year, ending a two-year rupture sparked by the war in Gaza and reopening channels of official dialogue between the two countries.
In December, Bolivian Foreign Minister Fernando Armayo also announced that the country will lift visa requirements for Israeli travelers, a move that Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar praised as helping to “strengthen the human bridge between our peoples.”
Chile and Honduras are also leading the way among other Latin American nations making a striking turn toward Israel
Last year, Chile elected far-right President José Antonio Kast, who promised to reshape the country’s foreign policy toward the Jewish state, overturning the stance of a previously hostile administration.
This year, Honduras also chose a far-right candidate, President Nasry Asfura, who expressed hopes for a “new era” in bilateral relations and stronger ties with Jerusalem.
“The shift in Honduras is part of a broader regional trend: a ‘blue wave’ across Latin American countries that embrace freedom and democracy and align closely with US policy in the region,” Nadav Goren, Israel’s ambassador to Honduras, told Channel 12. “We are in a very optimistic period for Latin America.”
With the official launch of the Isaac Accords by Argentina’s President Javier Milei last year, Israel has been working to expand its diplomatic and security ties across the region, in an effort designed to promote government cooperation and fight antisemitism and terrorism.
Modeled after the Abraham Accords, a series of historic US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries, this new initiative aims to strengthen political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the Jewish state and Latin American governments.
“Israel offers globally recognized expertise that meets the needs of many countries, covering areas such as agricultural technology, water management, food security, cybersecurity, and innovation. Partners understand that Israel can help propel them forward, even in the context of internal security,” Ofek said.
The first phase of the Isaac Accords will focus on Uruguay, Panama, and Costa Rica, where potential projects in technology, security, and economic development are already taking shape as this framework seeks to deepen cooperation in innovation, commerce, and cultural exchange.
The Isaac Accords will also aim to encourage partner countries to move their embassies to Jerusalem, formally recognize Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and shift longstanding anti-Israel voting patterns at the United Nations.
Less than a year after the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Argentina became the first Latin American country to designate the Palestinian Islamist group as a terrorist organization, with Paraguay following suit last year.
Building on a deepening partnership, Saar and Paraguay’s President Santiago Peña also signed a landmark security cooperation memorandum, as the two countries continue to expand their relationship following Paraguay’s move to relocate its embassy to Israel’s capital of Jerusalem in 2024.
“Over the past two very difficult years, our friendship has shown its strength through international forums, mutual cooperation, official visits, and measures against Iran. We have expressed our friendship in meaningful, if sometimes implicit, ways,” Ofek told Channel 12, referring to the country’s growing ties with Paraguay.
In recent years, Latin America has gained strategic importance for Israel as a frontline in countering Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah, whose growing influence and criminal networks in the region — especially in Venezuela and Cuba — have prompted Jerusalem to expand its diplomatic, security, and intelligence presence.
“For us, this is a circle of allies that recognizes the same threat we face from Iran’s growing influence in the region, and it is only natural to cooperate to halt its expansion,” Ofek said. “We have seen firsthand how damaging this is, particularly in the context of attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets.”