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As trial begins in Tree of Life massacre, Pittsburgh’s Jews struggle with what to reveal and what to conceal
PITTSBURGH (JTA) — On Friday afternoon, Squirrel Hill was suffused with spring breezes and pink dogwoods, and alive with the movement that typifies the coming of Shabbat.
Toddlers scrambled up the jungle gym in the JCC playground, while the chatter in cafes was about a looming storm that could soak the walk to synagogue on Saturday. Murray Avenue Kosher was emptying out of challahs.
Barely present, at least on the surface, was any indication that Monday morning would hold a turning point in the community’s greatest trauma. That’s when jury selection was to begin in the trial of the man accused of shattering Shabbat on Oct. 27, 2018, with gunfire. His massacre of 11 worshipers, in a synagogue building a 10-minute stroll from the downtown of this leafy, heavily Jewish neighborhood, was the deadliest-ever attack on U.S. Jews.
But behind the scenes, there are clear signs that the trial’s proximity is being felt. Maggie Feinstein, the director of the 10/27 Healing Partnership, which provides post-traumatic therapy for the community, said that as the trial nears, requests for treatment have spiked.
“The trauma cues that for a while bothered us right after the shooting — for some people it might be ambulances, for other people it might be media, for some people it might be the sound of multiple police cars — you get to a place where they don’t bother you as much,” she said. “But the increased media attention and the increased awareness of this upcoming trial for a number of people is bringing back for them that maybe they didn’t do their own healing the first time around.”
A Starbucks in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh is decorated with a memorial for the victims of the 2018 massacre at the city’s Tree of Life synagogue, April 21, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
There were three congregations in the building: Tree of Life and New Light, both affiliated with the Conservative movement, and Dor Hadash, which is Reconstructionist.
The 11 victims were brothers Cecil and David Rosenthal, couple Bernice and Sylvan Simon, Rose Malinger, Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Jerry Rabinowitz, Daniel Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger. Seven were from Tree of Life, three were from New Light and one was from Dor Hadash.
For their families, their friends, their congregations and their broader Jewish community, the legacy of the massacre is a deep-seated longing for control, a longing to never have to think again of the gunman and of the anguish he left in his wake, while grappling with tender memories of the dead, of the decades spent in celebration and in prayer in the building.
Who narrates this story, the gunman or his victims? That struggle now looms as the alleged gunman goes to trial. The community is wrestling with questions such as where and whether to put the bullet-riddled artifacts, whether to worship at the site, whether to even speak of the massacre and how and whether the gunman lives or dies.
”We believe strongly that this antisemitic attack should not stop people from practicing and being Jewish,” Feinsten said. “For a lot of people, that’s an active choice that they have to work at. It doesn’t come easily after feeling unsafe in that environment to then work to find safety in it. But a lot of people have chosen to do that.”
On Friday, Feinstein was organizing support services for families who would, if they so choose, be sequestered in a separate room in the court where they could view the trial. (Family members may also ask to be seated in the courtroom.) She assigned six therapists to be present with the families.
Compounding the revisited trauma of the event, the families are divided over whether the gunman, should he be convicted, deserves the death penalty. The accused has a lawyer, Judy Clarke, known as “the attorney for the damned” for her determination to keep her clients from execution.
What’s clear is that the Jews of Squirrel Hill are taking the trial on with their characteristic spirit of collaboration. The community has hired public relations specialists to handle media inquiries ahead of the trial, in part to safeguard locals from being pressed to answer questions that could harm them or shatter the sense of unity. Congregants reached by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency dutifully deferred to the list of approved contacts on a list distributed by a PR agency.
On Friday afternoon, signs of unity that flooded the city in the immediate aftermath of the shooting were still visible. In a tobacconist’s window a sign with the slogan “No place for hate/Stronger than hate,” which had proliferated throughout the neighborhood after the attack, remained propped up next to a flag and an ad for the lottery. A Starbucks had on its window white paint drawings depicting “love,” “kindness” and “hope” in English and in Hebrew, alongside symbols: the Star of David, a heart and a dove.
A tobacconist window includes a poster of the “No Place for Hate” slogan that proliferated after the Tree of Life Massacre in 2018, in Pittsburgh, April 21, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
Representatives of the community talk about “doing Jewish” as a means of coping, including redoubling the very activities — allying with the city’s Black minority and advocating for immigration, refugees and gun control — that fueled the rage of the alleged attacker.
The attacker allegedly was driven in part by the partnership between Dor Hadash and HIAS, the Jewish refugee aid group, and the congregation’s sponsorship of refugee families.
“We have, if anything, doubled down on our commitment to immigrants and refugees,” said Dana Kellerman, the chair of the communications committee at Dor Hadash. “We are currently coming up on the end of our first year working with a new resettlement program to resettle a Congolese immigrant family in Pittsburgh, and we have every intention of when the year commitment is up of working with a second family.”
Kellerman said the shooting had “honestly become part of the background of our existence at this point.” In keeping with her congregation’s rules aimed at protecting their community, Kellerman declined to talk about the day of the massacre, the death penalty or about details of the trial. But she was open about the ways in which her congregation has leaned into the values it has long held, and that the gunman so reviled.
“We have become louder and more public about practicing our Judaism,” she said. Now, she said, the congregation incorporates advocacy for refugees into its service, with liturgical readings on immigration.
There are other changes. “We even have hats now! We have baseball caps!” Kellerman said with a smile, unearthing a photo of herself in a white cap with “Dor Hadash” and a stylized Magen David in blue, standing alongside gun control advocates.
“Previously we all would have shown up as our individual selves, and now we show up in our Dor Hadash baseball caps,” she said. “Mine kept blowing off.”
Steve Cohen, the co-president of New Light, said the congregation’s relationship with Black churches in the city has reached new intensity since the massacre. The congregation’s rabbi and congregants who know Hebrew partner with the churches to analyze sacred texts in the original.
“We would bring our Tanachs [Hebrew Bibles], and the Christian congregation would bring their Bible and then we would talk about the Proverbs and go through it, not just what the intention of the author was, but how different ways the same words can be translated in order to imply different things,” he said. “And so we went through the whole Book of Proverbs with the Rodman Street Baptist Church, and this past winter, we did the selected Psalms with the faith and Destiny Church on the north side.”
The interior of the new sanctuary of the New Light congregation, four and half years after a gunman massacred three of its congregants, in Pittsburgh, April 21, 2023. (Ron Kampeas)
New Light took its cue from survivors of the 2015 attack on the Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in which a white supremacist murdered nine Black worshipers, Cohen said. Leaders of New Light traveled to the church and heard from its elders that it was not enough to tend to the traumatized individuals, but to the community; they emphasized outreach, bringing congregants back in.
“That’s a lot of the reason why we have an outpouring of members who never attended shul now attending shul,” he said.
Feinstein, too, said she had an intensification of religious and ritual observance among her clients: more frequent attendance at Shabbat services, forming a daily minyan, finding a study partner for daily Talmud study.
Kellerman said the community has become closer; she sees it in congregants who linger. “It shows up in things like people showing up for Friday night services, and hanging out to chat or getting on a little early to chat,” she said.
A rendition of architect Daniel Libeskind’s plans for the interior of the new Tree of Life synagogue. (Tree of Life)
In the days leading up to the trial, the community bid farewell to the most salient relic of that painful day: the hulking synagogue building on the corner of Wilkins and Shady that has stood empty since then. All three congregations have decamped to nearby synagogues, leaving behind the chain-link fence draped with paintings from children across the country wishing for strength.
“Nobody has been meeting in the synagogue since the day of the shooting,” said Carole Zawatsky, the Tree of Life CEO who is overseeing the plans to replace the building. The only people to have been inside at all, she said, were survivors and “special friends” — donors to the rebuilding and politicians.
Zawatsky said it is wrenching to even contemplate returning for some. “You can walk through the building and see where the gunman was destructive,” she said. “You can see where the gunman was apprehended, where the gunman opened fire. It’s devastating to witness.”
But some intend to: Tree of Life lost seven congregants but plans on returning once the building is rebuilt as a museum and education center focused on the dangers of extremism.
On Sunday, the Tree of Life congregation had an outdoor ceremony to say “L’hitraot,” Hebrew for “until we meet again,” to the building as it has existed up to now.
“We are grateful to God for the thousands of blessings that have passed through these doors,” Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, the rabbi who sheltered congregants and alerted police, said at the ceremony. “We cannot, we must not, permit one day … to define us, nor outweigh all the good.”
The new center is being designed by Daniel Libeskind, the architect who designed the master plan for the World Trade Center site reconstruction in New York and the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
But Dor Hadash and New Light decided their moves were permanent in part because families of their victims swore never to return to the building.
New Light is now ensconced in what once was a secondary chapel at the Beth Shalom synagogue, as if it has been there for decades: Plaques honoring past donors and presidents adorn the walls of the sanctuary. The only signs of the massacre are the 1,000 paper cranes Pittsburgh’s Japanese community gave the congregation, reflecting a Japanese tradition that folding cranes will make a wish come true. They hang at the entrance to the sanctuary, unexplained by any plaque. There is a stained glass monument to the three victims at the cemetery where they are buried.
Even with Tree of Life’s commitment to return, many questions remain about what that will look like. The congregation has yet to decide what objects will stay in the sanctuary, what will stay in storage and what will be part of a separate exhibit, Zawatsky said.
“The first work that’s had to be done for the synagogue is ‘What are the things that need to be saved and go into storage during construction?’” she said.
In some ways, she indicated, the work of rebuilding could bear some resemblance to the balancing act that the community will have to navigate during the alleged shooter’s trial.
“We are thinking deeply about how you exhibit some of these materials,” Zaslavsky said, “in ways that are both teachable moments and don’t retraumatize.”
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Shifka, a new pita shop on the Bowery, aims to be the Chipotle of Israeli cuisine
Fans of Sami & Susu, the Mediterranean-inspired Lower East Side wine bar and restaurant that opened during the pandemic, will be happy to know that its Jewish owners have opened a lower priced, more casual spinoff just a few blocks away.
Shifka at 324 Bowery offers elevated Israeli-style street food — like pita stuffed with schnitzel, Yemenite hot sauce, pickles, hot pepper and red cabbage, drizzled with creamy Har Bracha tahini.
Shifka is named after the spicy, light green pickled pepper that’s a popular condiment at falafel shops across Israel. “It was supposed to be called The Pita Shop, but you can’t trademark that name — it’s too general,” said Amir Nathan, 39, one of Shifka’s store’s four owners and a co-founder of Sami & Susu. “I said, why don’t we call it after the pepper, like Chipotle. I like names that trigger curiosity. You need to think about the experience that you are about to have.”
Nearly a half-decade in the making — Nathan and his partner, executive chef Jordan Anderson, conducted years of pita sandwich experiments at Sami & Susu — Shifka opened its doors on Oct. 14, just after a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza began.
Throughout the development of Shifka, Nathan said that he and his partners were undeterred about opening another Israeli restaurant during a time of heightened antisemitism in New York. “When I see a crisis, I decide to do something positive,” said Nathan, who was born and raised in Beersheba, in southern Israel. “Opening Sami & Susu during the pandemic was a big one. And since Oct. 7, we emphasize more our Israeli and Jewish identity with the food that we do.”
Last winter, Nathan and Anderson took a “R&D trip” to Israel together. The goal, said Nathan, was to share Israeli cuisine with his partner, who was raised Jewish in New Jersey and had never visited Israel before.
“We went to classic pita shops in Israel but also toured the ASIF Culinary Institute and Arabic restaurants,” Nathan said. “How does a pita shop in Israel operate? How do they organize and order? Let’s be up to date with what is happening in the new generation of restaurants. It was a good introduction. We went to Akko to eat hummus and to a Druze restaurant in the north — all of the staples that together make this cuisine what it is.”
Nathan believes that their wide-ranging trip gave Anderson a better understanding of the flavors of the Middle East.
“Baguette, harissa, preserved lemon, hard-boiled egg — a Tunisian sandwich is what I ate in my school cafeteria in Beersheba,” Nathan said. “When I tried to explain to Jordan the idea behind it — now when he saw it in Machane Yehuda Market he said, ‘Wow, this is where it comes from.’ He saw food from Iraq to Yemen to East Jerusalem. The idea that a mash of those cultures can work together actually clicked.”
They also visited two restaurants that Anderson had read about: HaBasta, near the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv and known for the freshness and seasonality of its dishes, and HaKatan, a seafood restaurant in Tel Aviv’s Levinsky Market.
“These chefs are cooking like me,” Anderson, who has a French culinary background, said of his new inspiration.
“We do a lot of upscale food at Sami & Susu,” the 33-year-old added. “It’s refreshing to do sandwiches and fast casual and spread your mind that way.”
At Sami & Susu, the menu is seasonal and changes eight times a year. The menu at Shifka, by contrast, is streamlined and stable. Customers choose from stuffed pita sandwiches and bowls with an option of rice, freekeh — an ancient Middle Eastern grain imported from Israel — and or salad as its base. As for proteins, options include chicken marinated in yogurt, lamb kebabs drizzled with amba and shrimp served with tzatziki, roasted red peppers and red cabbage.
Of course, you can also order shifka peppers at Shifka; served as a side dish ($2), they are imported from Israel. Other sides include french fries coated in zaatar ($8), as well as muhammara, a walnut and roasted red pepper spread, or matbucha, a roasted tomato and smoked paprika salad ($8 each). Alcoholic beverages and dessert — like creamy, nutty soft-serve ice cream made with Israeli tahini ($8) — are on offer, too.
Nathan said he and his partners considered using kosher meat but ultimately decided it was too costly. “Kosher is part of our heritage and history, but it’s not the only way,” he said. “What we do here is not traditional. I hope that people see it as a voice of our new generation of Jews all over the world.”
He added: “We’re going to do breakfast here at some point, and we will have bacon, egg and cheese bourekas and it’s phenomenal. And a shakshuka in a pita — that’s how we want to eat.”
The exterior of Shifka, an new Israeli pita sandwich shop at 324 Bowery. (Courtesy of Shifka)
More than “just” an Israeli restaurant, Nathan stresses that Shifka’s influences are far flung. “Obviously, I’m from Israel but the influences are from all around,” he said. “We have tzatziki in a pita. We have lamb kebab, a hybrid of Romanian kebab combined with Yemenite spices. It is not just Israeli.”
Nonetheless, Nathan said that Sami & Susu — which garnered a Michelin Bib Gourmand award in 2022, 2023 and 2024 — has been subject to some anti-Israel vandalism during the two-year war between Israel and Gaza.
“We got tagged a couple of times,” he said. “People sprayed on our window.”
And yet, Nathan and Anderson say that the war in Gaza impacted their business in an unexpectedly good way.
“It actually gave us more business I think,” Nathan said. “More Jews are coming to Sami & Susu after Oct. 7. Hipster couples from Fort Greene to Upper West Siders. Maybe they are looking for that kind of food — I call it Mediterranean because it is actually not meant to be just Israeli but food of the Diaspora.”
He added: “Israel, as much as I love it, is not the only heritage we have as Jews. We have a long history before the country existed.”
Since its opening three weeks ago, Shifka has garnered rave reviews. According to the Infatuation, “Shifka makes lunchtime in NOHO so much better,” while Grub Street named Shifka to its list of the city’s best new restaurants.
“Knock on wood, said Nathan. “We are fortunate to have a good beginning on this project.”
And like Chipotle — which is named for a smoked, dried jalapeno pepper and operates 3,700 restaurants around the globe — Nathan and his partners are hoping to scale Shifka one day. Unlike the fast-casual juggernaut, which is primarily owned by institutional investors, Shifka’s partners’ plans are more modest.
“We are looking for small growth, not duplicating it dozens of times. We are planning to expand Shifka and move Sami & Susu to a bigger location,” Nathan said. “We never prevent ourselves from dreaming big and maybe expanding to other cities.”
For now, though, the focus is on the Bowery location. On a recent morning, Shifka’s kitchen was abuzz as staffers busily filled dozens of lunch orders for local businesses. By lunchtime, “the whole place is packed,” Anderson said. “Delicious food, fair prices, creative. No fear about all the hate that is going around the city right now.”
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Hezbollah Rejects Israel-Lebanon Talks, Reaffirms Refusal to Disarm as Tensions Escalate Along Border
Smoke rises after Israeli strikes following Israeli military’s evacuation orders, in Tayr Debba, southern Lebanon, Nov. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ali Hankir
Hezbollah has rejected any talks with Israel and reaffirmed its refusal to disarm, even as the Jewish state ramps up military operations in southern Lebanon amid rising border tensions.
On Thursday, the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group condemned the prospect of negotiations between Lebanon and Israel, while reaffirming its refusal to disarm and claiming it has “a legitimate right to resist [Israeli] occupation.”
In an open letter to Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, Hezbollah called for prioritizing efforts to pressure Israel into complying with the US-brokered ceasefire negotiated by the countries last year rather than “being drawn into political negotiations with the Zionist enemy.”
“Any attempt at political negotiations with Israel does not serve Lebanon’s national interest,” the letter read.
“The weapons that defended Lebanon will not be up for negotiation and will remain an integral part of the country’s national defense strategy,” it continued, with Hezbollah seemingly depicting itself as the protector of Lebanese sovereignty.
US and Israel officials have been pressuring the Lebanese government to enter direct negotiations with the Jewish state, with Egypt offering to mediate as fears of renewed conflict in the region intensify.
Hezbollah’s warning came as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out its latest airstrikes against the terrorist group, describing it as a response to ceasefire violations.
In a press release, the Israeli military confirmed it carried out a strike in southern Lebanon, targeting operatives at a Hezbollah site, which the IDF said was used to “produce equipment used by the organization to restore terror infrastructure.”
Under last year’s ceasefire agreement, the Lebanese government committed to disarm Hezbollah, which for years has wielded significant political and military influence across the country while maintaining significant terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon, which borders northern Israel. The deal was reached after Israel decimated much of Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities with an air and ground offensive following the Islamist group’s attacks on northern Israeli communities — which Hezbollah claimed were a show of solidarity with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas amid the war in Gaza.
Hezbollah claimed in its letter on Thursday that “the government’s hasty decision regarding the monopoly of arms” enabled Israel to exploit the situation, making disarmament a prerequisite for halting what the group alleges are Israeli violations of the ceasefire.
“Disarmament should be discussed within a national framework and not as a response to a foreign demand or Israeli blackmail,” the letter read.
“We affirm our legitimate right to resist occupation and aggression, and to stand with our army and our people in defending our country’s sovereignty against an enemy that wages war on us, continues its attacks, and seeks to subjugate our state,” it continued.
New reports indicate that Hezbollah has been actively rebuilding its military capabilities, in violation of the ceasefire agreement with the Jewish state.
With support from Iran, the terrorist group has been intensifying efforts to bolster its military power, including the production and repair of weapons, smuggling of arms and cash through seaports and Syrian routes, recruitment and training, and the use of civilian infrastructure as a base and cover for its operations.
In recent weeks, Israel has conducted strikes targeting Hezbollah’s rearmament efforts, particularly south of the Litani River, where the group’s operatives have historically been most active against the Jewish state.
For years, Israel has demanded that Hezbollah be barred from carrying out activities south of the Litani, located roughly 15 miles from the Israeli border.
Earlier this year, Lebanese officials agreed to a US-backed disarmament plan, which called for the terrorist group to be fully disarmed within four months — by November — in exchange for Israel halting airstrikes and withdrawing troops from the five occupied positions in the country’s southern region.
The Lebanese government is now facing mounting pressure from Israeli and US officials to disarm Hezbollah and establish a state monopoly on weapons.
Meanwhile, the Iran-backed terrorist group has repeatedly defied international calls to disarm, even threatening protests and civil unrest if the government tries to enforce control over its weapons.
Since the Lebanese government has so far been unable to successfully implement the US-backed disarmament plan, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz last week accused Aoun of “dragging his feet” on this issue.
“The Lebanese government’s commitment to disarm Hezbollah and remove it from southern Lebanon must be implemented,” Katz said. “Maximum enforcement will continue and even intensify — we will not allow any threat to the residents of the north.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also warned that Israel would exercise its right to self-defense under the ceasefire agreement if Lebanon failed to disarm the terrorist group.
“We expect the Lebanese government to uphold its commitments, namely, to disarm Hezbollah. But it’s clear that we’ll exercise our right to self-defense as stipulated in the ceasefire terms,” the Israeli leader said. “We won’t let Lebanon become a renewed front against us, and we’ll do what’s necessary.”
For his part, Aoun criticized Israel for escalating strikes after he expressed willingness to negotiate, accusing it of hindering prospects for negotiations while also directing the Lebanese army to confront IDF incursions along the southern border.
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Artist Won’t ‘Surrender to Extremism’ After Mural of Hamas Victims Shiri Bibas, Two Sons Defaced Again in Milan
A look at the mural “October 7, The Hostages” before (left) and after (right) it was vandalized for a second time. Photo: Provided
Italian contemporary pop artist and activist AleXsandro Palombo spoke to The Algemeiner on Thursday about the “antisemitic hatred” that fueled the second vandalism of his mural in Milan, Italy, honoring Shiri Bibas and her two young sons – all three of whom were murdered by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip after being taken as hostages from Israel.
Shiri’s face in the mural was recently covered with white paint, as was the Star of David on the Israeli flag that is draped over her two children Kfir and Ariel, who were 4 and nine months old, respectively, when taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023, along with their mother. The mural shows Shiri, 32, holding her two sons. The three of them were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz when Hamas-led terrorists went on a deadly rampage across southern Israel, and they were later killed in captivity in Gaza.
Palombo titled the mural “October 7, The Hostages.” It is featured in the center of Milan, outside the Qatari consulate, and just a few steps from the famous Via Montenapoleone shopping area. The mural was first vandalized days after it was unveiled in October during an event commemorating the two-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy described the vandalism as “a vile gesture against the memory of the victims.”
“These works are testimonies; they carry memory and truth within them,” Palombo told The Algemeiner on Thursday following the most recent vandalism of his mural dedicated to the Bibas family. “Those who destroy them aren’t just targeting art; they’re trying to erase its meaning, its message, its resistance. It’s a deliberate act meant to extinguish what stands up to hatred, to intimidate anyone who defends freedom of thought and to rewrite history for their own advantage.” He added that stopping his art “would mean surrendering to extremism.”
“The works dedicated to the Bibas family, like all those destroyed by antisemitic hatred, must continue to live,” he said. “Every time art is silenced, the conscience of our civilization is struck. Defending artistic freedom means defending the dignity and memory of the West.”
Yarden Bibas – Shiri’s husband and the father of Ariel and Kfir — was separately kidnapped from Israel by Hamas-led terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. He survived captivity and is the only living member of his immediate family.
Other murals by Palombo that have been dedicated to the Holocaust, antisemitism, or the deadly terrorist attack in October 2023 have all been vandalized in the past, including murals depicting Auschwitz survivors and another featuring a survivor of the Nova music festival. Even a mural created in support of Iranian women protesters was vandalized. Palombo told The Algemeiner he has received hundreds of death threats because of his artwork, mostly from “extremist online communities and radicalized pro-Palestinian movements.” He believes the vandalism of his work tied to the Holocaust, Israel, or antisemitism “is part of a deliberate strategy that uses antisemitism as a weapon to spread fear and destabilize democracies from within.”
“Today, anti-Jewish hatred is no longer just a social or cultural phenomenon; it has become a tool of hybrid warfare, employed by hostile networks to manipulate public opinion and undermine the very foundations of freedom and civil coexistence,” he added. “To attack art is to attack freedom of expression and erase collective memory. It’s a way to weaken democratic consciousness and pave the way for fanaticism. Every defaced mural is not just an attack on an artwork; it’s an assault on the right to remember.”
The only murals tied to the Holocaust and antisemitism that have not been vandalized are those displayed in Rome after being acquired by the city’s Shoah Museum. Palombo explained that they are located near a police booth and in front of a synagogue, which has a constant armed guard stationed in front.
“It’s a paradox: In a Western democracy, art must be protected like a potential target, as if memory itself had become something to be defended by law enforcement,” he told The Algemeiner.