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Fake Massacres, Skewed Stats & Misleading Claims: The 25 Lies The Media Told You About The October 7 War

An Israeli military tank prepares to move atop a truck, after US President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Hamas agreed on the first phase of a Gaza ceasefire, on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza, Oct. 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad

The media has been rife with misinformation and libels about Israel’s conduct during the war that was triggered two years ago by the Hamas-led massacres in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

HonestReporting has worked day and night to combat these anti-Israel lies as they spread through mainstream discourse, shaping a context-free narrative that promotes Israel as the sole aggressor and whitewashes Hamas’ terrorism.

While some lies quickly emerged in the mainstream media and then evaporated after a couple of days, others have persisted in one form or another.

Regardless of their longevity, each lie serves as a building block for the anti-Israel narrative that cast Israel’s defensive war as a crime against humanity and has sought to turn the Jewish State into a pariah within the international community.

The following are the top 25 lies promoted by the mainstream media since October 7:

Lie #1: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Truth: The claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza goes back almost as far as the beginning of Israel’s war against Hamas.

However, all these claims (whether by Amnesty International, scholar Omer Bartov, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, or the UN Commission of Inquiry) fail to meet the legal bar for determining genocide: That the only reasonable inference that could be drawn from Israel’s actions in Gaza is genocidal intent.

Those who claim that Israel is committing a genocide appear to pre-determine that conclusion and then attempt to twist the evidence and legal definition of genocide to find Israel guilty of this heinous crime.

Lie #2: Israel is responsible for famine/starvation in Gaza.

Truth: Throughout the war in Gaza, the media and aid organizations have forecast an imminent famine in the Gaza Strip, intent on finding Israel guilty of starving Palestinians in Gaza.

However, despite the imminent and alarmist nature of these forecasts, famine was never declared in any part of the Gaza Strip until August 2025, and there was no evidence of mass starvation in the enclave.

In an August 2025 report, the UN-backed body that monitors hunger declared famine in the Gaza Governorate, which includes Gaza City and its environs. However, analysts have noted several questionable aspects of the report’s methodology and analysis, which call into question its conclusions.

For a full takedown of the famine report, see here.

Lie #3: Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. On October 7, it had a population of 9 million.

Truth: On October 7, 2023, the Gaza Strip had a population of 2 million people. At the size of 141 square miles, the Gaza Strip does not even crack the top 200 most populated areas on Earth.

Lie #4: After warning them to leave northern Gaza, Israel bombed Palestinians fleeing to the south.

Truth: In October 2023, some media outlets echoed Hamas’ claim that Israel was bombing Palestinians fleeing northern Gaza, publishing images that showed explosions amid convoys heading south.

Analysts noted that there was no evidence for an Israeli airstrike on the convoys and that the explosions could have been caused by IEDs planted by Hamas (in an effort to deter civilians from fleeing the combat zone) or faulty fuel containers that were being transported by those heading south.

Lie #5: Israel bombed Al-Ahli Hospital and killed 500 people.

Truth: On October 17, 2023, an explosion occurred at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. The media initially reported on Hamas’ claim that the hospital had been bombed and hundreds of people had been killed.

In reality, a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket hit the hospital’s parking lot, causing minimal damage to the hospital itself and tragically killing some Palestinians who had taken refuge in the area of the rocket’s impact.

Lie #6: Israel targets Palestinian journalists.

Truth: Since the beginning of the war, various media rights organizations, including the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and Reporters Without Borders (RSF), have claimed that Israel is targeting Palestinian journalists in Gaza.

It is true that, according to the CPJ, nearly 200 journalists and media workers have been killed during the Israel-Hamas war. However, an analysis of these names shows that roughly 40% of those killed had an affiliation with terror groups (including working for terror-run media organizations) and that several had participated in active combat against Israel.

With the embedding of Hamas forces in civilian areas, it is tragic but inevitable that civilians (including journalists) will be killed during military activities. This is not, however, evidence of intentional targeting of journalists.

Lie #7: 500 trucks are needed to meet Gaza’s pre-war levels of aid.

Truth: The claim by the United Nations and aid organizations that prior to October 7, 500 trucks entered Gaza daily, and that number is needed to meet the needs of Gaza’s civilian population, is misleading.

Before October 7, an average of 500 trucks entered Gaza daily, but the vast majority of them carried commercial goods, agricultural products, textiles, and construction materials. Only 100 trucks contained humanitarian aid, which is roughly the same number of trucks that have entered Gaza daily for most of the war.

Lie #8: Israel’s evidence that Hamas used Al-Shifa Hospital as a base is not compelling.

Truth: Contrary to media claims, the IDF has provided considerable evidence that Hamas used Al-Shifa Hospital for terror purposes.

This evidence includes testimonies from captured terrorists, intercepts of communications discussing Hamas’ use of Al-Shifa, the discovery of weapons and military gear in the hospital area, the unearthing of a terror tunnel beneath the hospital, and video footage showing hostages being brought to the hospital on October 7.

Lie #9: UNRWA is not a problematic aid organization and is one of the key humanitarian resources in the Gaza Strip.

Truth: Despite media and UN denials, there is incontrovertible evidence that the UN aid organization for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, plays a problematic role in the Gaza Strip.

1,200 UNRWA employees are members of either Hamas or Islamic Jihad, the organization’s schools teach antisemitism and promote anti-Israeli violence, and the globally-funded agency turns a blind eye to the placement of terror infrastructure and weaponry near its facilities. Even underneath UNRWA’s headquarters, there was a Hamas command center, of which the body claimed blissful ignorance.

Lie #10: Israel slaughtered Palestinian civilians waiting for aid during the “Flour Massacre.”

Truth: On February 29, 2024, scores of Palestinians died while waiting for aid to arrive in Gaza City. The media initially echoed Hamas’ claim that they had been killed in a targeted Israeli strike.

In reality, the vast majority of those who died were either crushed by the crowd during the chaos that erupted upon the arrival of the aid trucks, or were run over by the trucks themselves. Roughly 10 Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire when they rushed toward nearby IDF positions.

Lie #11: During the Israeli operation in Al-Shifa Hospital in March 2024, Israeli forces raped Palestinian women and brutally murdered other civilians.

Truth: This lie was perpetrated by a Gazan woman named Jamila al-Hessi during an interview with Al Jazeera Arabic’s top news presenter.

Less than 24 hours after the interview, al-Hessi’s claim was denounced by both a former director of Al Jazeera and Hamas itself. Al-Hessi admitted to spreading this lie to “arouse the nation’s fervor and brotherhood.”

Lie #12: Mass graves outside two Gazan hospitals are evidence of Israeli executions and desecration of bodies.

Truth: In late April 2024, mass graves were unearthed outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.

Analysts noted that the graves had actually been dug before the arrival of Israeli forces, to bury those who had died in the hospitals but could not be interred in a formal cemetery. It is possible that newer bodies were added during the battles between Israeli forces and Hamas, but they were most likely buried by fellow Palestinians.

Despite claims by some that bodies had been found with their hands tied behind their backs, no independent evidence was ever provided for this claim.

In addition, while Israeli forces did dig up some graves while searching for Israeli hostages, the IDF re-interred any bodies that had been temporarily removed and did not destroy any identifying markers or desecrate the graves.

Lie #13: The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health provides accurate casualty figures.

Truth: Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, the media and the United Nations have sought to convince people that the casualty figures provided by the Gaza Ministry of Health are accurate.

However, there are several indications that the Ministry of Health and its claim of 70% of casualties being women and children are unreliable.

Examples of this unreliability include unverifiable and anonymous “media reports” in the Ministry’s figures, the low proportion of non-combatant men among casualties, and discrepancies between the figures for one day and the next.

For an example of the last point, between December 2 and December 5, 2023, the number of women and children’s deaths surpassed the total number of deaths, an absurd statistical anomaly.

Lie #14: The ICJ ruled that there is “plausible” evidence for genocide in Gaza and that Israel must cease its operations in Rafah.

Truth: In December 2023, South Africa brought a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) claiming that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. In January 2024, the ICJ issued its initial ruling on the matter. As clarified by Joan Donoghue, the Court’s former President, there was no finding of “plausible genocide” in Gaza, only that the Palestinians “had a plausible right to be protected from genocide.”

In May 2024, the ICJ issued a decision on Israeli military activity in southern Gaza, ruling that Israel would have to cease any military activity that “may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

This was not a blanket restriction on Israeli military activity, and Israel’s war against Hamas was allowed to continue in the enclave’s south.

Lie #15: Israel purposefully bombed a refugee camp in Rafah and caused a tent fire that killed tens of civilians.

Truth: In late May 2024, Israel targeted two senior Hamas commanders who were hiding near a civilian population but outside of a designated safe zone.

Based on Israeli and US reports, it is likely that shrapnel from the targeted strike hit something flammable (either munitions or a fuel container) that ignited and led to the lethal fire that swept through the tents. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented, this was a “tragic accident.”

Lie #16: Israel massacred more than 200 Palestinians while rescuing four Israeli hostages in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Truth: On June 8, 2024, Israeli security forces rescued four hostages (Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Shlomi Ziv, and Andrey Kozlov) from civilian homes where they were being held in the Nuseirat refugee camp. During the rescue operation, local Hamas forces attacked the rescue team and hostages as they attempted to escape, leading to a firefight in the middle of a civilian area.

There was no independent evidence to back Hamas’ claim that hundreds of Palestinians had been killed during the rescue operation or that the majority of those killed were civilians and not combatants who took part in the firefight.

Lie #17: Studies in The Lancet prove that many more Palestinians have been killed than is claimed by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health.

Truth: In July 2024, The Lancet published a non-peer-reviewed correspondence that claimed that the number of dead in Gaza could be as high as 186,000. This faulty analysis reached this number by taking Hamas’ questionable casualty count (at the time, 37,000) and then multiplying it by five on the baseless assumption that there will be five times as many indirect deaths as those actively killed during the war.

The pushback to the piece was so great that one of the authors had to admit that it was not a scientifically-based analysis but was “purely illustrative” of what could be.

In January 2025, The Lancet published an article purporting to prove that the Gaza Ministry of Health’s casualty count was an under-reporting of reality.

However, this study came under scrutiny due to several flaws, including that its algorithm comparing social media-reported deaths to other casualty lists was faulty in 30% of cases, that the three casualty lists that were used by the study were intertwined (thus skewing the results), and that the authors disregarded analytic models that showed the estimated casualty figures to be lower.

Lie #18: Ismail Haniyeh was a moderating and pragmatic voice within Hamas that Israel silenced when it assassinated him in July 2024.

Truth: Contrary to how he was depicted in media reports at the time of his death, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was not a moderate.

Haniyeh was a cold-blooded terrorist who celebrated the October 7 attacks, called for “resistance” (i.e. terrorist) activities across Israel, and encouraged the death of Palestinian civilians for the greater cause of fighting Israel and ultimately destroying the Jewish state.

Lie #19: As shown in a New York Times essay, Israeli forces are purposefully targeting children.

Truth: The New York Times published a guest essay entitled “65 Doctors, Nurses, and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza.” Written by medical personnel who had served in Gaza, the piece claimed that they had seen evidence for Israel intentionally targeting children by shooting them in the head.

However, several military, medical, and forensics experts called into question certain aspects of the piece, including x-ray images that purported to show 5.56 caliber bullets lodged in the skulls of these children, but which did not appear to comport with the impact of a bullet of that size. For example, there were no exit wounds, skull fractures, or changes in the bullet’s shape.

In addition, there is no evidence that the bullets were fired from an Israeli gun rather than one operated by a Palestinian terrorist. To further cast doubt on the piece, one of its authors responded to the criticism by falsely claiming that Hamas does not use human shields but that Israel does.

Lie #20: Israel forces burned Kamal Adwan Hospital in December 2024.

Truth: During a counter-terror operation at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, which saw the arrest of 240 Hamas and Islamic Jihad members and the confiscation of a considerable amount of weaponry, a fire broke out in an empty part of the hospital and was quickly contained.

An initial IDF investigation determined that there was no connection between the fire and Israeli forces operating in the area.

Lie #21: Unless aid workers got to them immediately, 14,000 babies would die in the next 48 hours.

Truth: This absurd claim was put forward by the UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, in May 2025 during an interview with the BBC.

When pressed on it, Fletcher provided no evidence for his claim except for asserting that they have capable teams on the ground.

It was further discovered that Fletcher’s claim was a misrepresentation of an IPC report that projected that 14,000 Gazan children could experience acute malnutrition between April 2025 and March 2026.

Lie #22: Israel is planning on interning 600,000 Palestinians in camps in southern Gaza.

Truth: In July 2025, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced plans to build a “humanitarian city” in southern Gaza that would house 600,000 Palestinian civilians from the Al-Mawasi area who would have better access to humanitarian aid. To guarantee the civilian nature of this city, all people would be processed to ensure that they had no affiliation with Hamas. At no time did Katz use the word “camp” when discussing this plan.

According to Israeli reports at the time, Katz’s idea was a contingency plan for aiding civilians while fighting Hamas, but no work had been started on it.

Lie #23: Images of malnourished children are evidence for widespread starvation in Gaza.

Truth: In late July 2025, various media organizations published photos of emaciated and malnourished children, passing them off as evidence of widespread starvation in Gaza.

However, many of these children who were showcased suffered from pre-existing conditions, some of which (such as muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy) have a heightened risk of malnutrition even in times of peace.

In some instances, photos of malnourished children included their well-nourished siblings standing in the background.

While the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is certainly tragic, images of malnourished children with pre-existing conditions are not evidence for widespread starvation.

Lie #24: Israel is preventing aid from entering Gaza.

Truth: Aside from the first two weeks of the war and a two-month blockade in 2025 that was an attempt to force Hamas to surrender, Israel has allowed for the continuous entry of aid into the Gaza Strip.

In fact, between the beginning of the war and the end of August 2025, over two million tons of aid were facilitated into the Gaza Strip. This is one of the largest humanitarian operations during a war in modern history.

Any delay in Gazans receiving this aid is due to the inherent difficulties in delivering it in combat zones, Hamas stealing aid, the UN refusing to pick up the aid, and the refusal of the UN to use Israeli-approved routes.

Lie #25: Israel is massacring Gazans as they seek aid from GHF sites.

Truth: When Israel restarted delivering aid to Gaza in May 2025, both it and the United States backed a new aid organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), that would deliver aid to Palestinian civilians while ensuring that Hamas could not get its hands on it.

While it has delivered millions of meals to Palestinians, it has been maligned by the media, the UN, and other aid agencies.

One of the chief libels about the GHF is that Israel routinely massacres those who are seeking aid. While the IDF does sometimes fire warning shots at those who stray from the designated paths near the aid centers, and sometimes have fired on those who get too close to their positions in unfortunate situations, many cases of reported massacres have proven to be unfounded or have been misreported instances of fire not related to the aid site.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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Iran Expands Child Soldier Recruitment, Cracks Down on Dissent Amid Escalating US-Israeli Strikes

A blaze after Israel’s Fire and Rescue Service said that an industrial building and a fuel tanker at Israel’s Oil Refineries were hit by debris from an intercepted Iranian missile, amid the US-Israel conflict with Iran, in Haifa, Israel, March 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Rami Shlush

As US and Israeli strikes pound Iranian military sites, Iran is lowering the enlistment age for security roles to 12 and threating civilians with death for photographing war damage, fueling international outrage.

Last week, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced a campaign recruiting children as young as 12 to serve as “Homeland Defending Combatants for Iran,” assisting with patrols, checkpoints, and logistics.

With the minimum age for war roles officially lowered to 12, human rights groups are now condemning the move, demanding that Iranian authorities immediately halt the campaign while imposing a complete ban on enlisting children under 18 in all military and paramilitary forces.

“There is no excuse for a military recruitment drive that targets children to sign up, much less 12-year-olds,” Bill Van Esveld, associate director for children’s rights at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “What this boils down to is that Iranian authorities are apparently willing to risk children’s lives for some extra manpower.”

“The officials involved in this reprehensible policy are putting children at risk of serious and irreversible harm and themselves at risk of criminal liability,” Van Esveld continued. “Senior leaders who fail to put a stop to this can make no claim to care for Iran’s children.”

For years, Iran has drafted children under 18 into the Basij militia, with Human Rights Watch documenting boys as young as 14 years old killed in combat, revealing a brutal pattern of exploiting children on the battlefield.

In the past, widely circulated social media images and videos have repeatedly shown children and teenagers in military-style uniforms cracking down on protests, including during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising, which erupted nationwide after Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman, died in a Tehran police station following her arrest for allegedly violating hijab rules.

Under international law, Iran’s latest initiative flagrantly violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which explicitly prohibits the use of children in military activities, marking a dramatic breach of its global obligations.

Human Rights Watch also uncovered multiple other war crimes, including the Iranian government’s relentless use of cluster munitions delivered by ballistic missiles at Israel since the conflict erupted last month. At least four civilians have been killed in these strikes, which constitute clear violations of international humanitarian law.

“Iran’s use of cluster munitions in populated areas in Israel pose a foreseeable and long-lasting danger to civilians,” Patrick Thompson, a researcher in HRW’s Crisis, Conflict, and Arms Division, said in a statement. “Cluster munition bomblets are dispersed over a wide area, making them unlawfully indiscriminate in violation of the laws of war.”

Fired from rockets, missiles, or aircraft, cluster munitions spread dozens of explosive bomblets across large areas, leaving many unexploded and posing a long-term, landmine-like danger to civilians for years or even decades.

Amid relentless US and Israeli attacks and mounting international pressure, the regime is also intensifying its domestic crackdown, now warning that photographing war-damaged areas could carry the death penalty.

Under this newly enacted policy, people accused of spying or cooperating with “hostile states” could face the death penalty and have all their assets confiscated.

Anyone caught photographing damaged sites could be accused of espionage, potentially providing intelligence to coalition forces, and face execution.

“People who take photos or videos of damaged sites and share them are effectively confirming whether strikes hit their targets,” Iran’s judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said on Tuesday, describing the action as the equivalent of cooperating with and providing intelligence to the enemy.

According to Iranian media and watchdog groups, more than 1,000 people have been arrested this month for filming sensitive locations, sharing anti-government content online, or allegedly “cooperating with the enemy.”

Against the backdrop of large-scale US and Israeli strikes pounding key regime strongholds in Shiraz and Isfahan — where critical military infrastructure has been repeatedly hit — tensions have surged to a boiling point as the pressure campaign intensifies

On Tuesday, the Israeli Air Force launched another sustained wave of precision airstrikes against Iranian weapons production and research facilities around Tehran, seeking to disrupt and dismantle the missile supply and manufacturing networks that support Tehran’s military arsenal.

Meanwhile, the IRGC this week threatened 18 American multinational technology and industrial companies, accusing them of involvement in “terrorist operations” and labeling them as “legitimate targets.”

“We advise the employees of these institutions to immediately distance themselves from their workplaces to preserve their lives,” the statement published on Tuesday said. “These companies should expect the destruction of their respective units in exchange for each terror act in Iran, starting from 8 PM Tehran time on Wednesday, April 1st.”

Among the companies mentioned were major corporations such as Microsoft, Google, Apple, Intel, IBM, Tesla, and Boeing.

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Jews paused Indiana’s abortion ban — by turning a religious freedom law against the evangelical right

When Elly Cohen chose to terminate her pregnancy in 2022, it aligned with her understanding of Jewish law that life begins at birth, not conception.

Cohen and her husband were eager to give their then 4-year-old daughter a sibling. But her fetus had been diagnosed with Trisomy 18, a severe chromosomal disorder that, in most cases, leads to death before birth or within the first year of life. She decided to end the pregnancy.

Had she gotten pregnant just a few months later, she might not have had that choice. She lives in Indiana, one of 13 states that enacted near-total bans on abortion following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

Indiana’s law does allow abortion for for lethal fetal anomalies up to 22 weeks, but doctors bear legal risk in determining whether a particular diagnosis meets the statute’s definition — a gray area that can lead to delays or reluctance to provide care.

That reality stirred Cohen into action. She co-founded Hoosier Jews for Choice, a Jewish group that advocates for abortion access, which joined five anonymous women of multiple faiths in a lawsuit backed by the American Civil Liberties Union. Their argument relied on a religious freedom law — the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA — signed by former Indiana governor Mike Pence in 2015. It was one of many such state laws passed amid calls from some evangelical Christians to establish their right not to do business that violated their beliefs, such as baking a wedding cake for a gay wedding.

Reproductive rights activists Amalia Shifriss and Elly Cohen at a rally in September 2022. Courtesy of Amalia Shifriss

Hoosier Jews for Choice saw an opening for Jews to exercise their religious freedom under the same law, but for a purpose at odds with evangelical Christianity: to gain access to abortion. Earlier this month, Judge Christina Klineman of Marion County Superior Court agreed, permanently blocking enforcement of the state’s abortion ban for plaintiffs with sincere religious objections.

Hoosier Jews for Choice is celebrating the ruling as the biggest legal win to date in support of the argument that abortion bans violate Jews’ religious freedom. The group is hopeful that similar cases can build on the Indiana case’s success nationwide.

The ruling could still be reversed: Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has appealed the decision, and the case is headed to the Indiana Supreme Court, where all five justices are Republican appointees. Meanwhile, Klineman, elected to the bench in 2014 after winning a Democratic primary, has faced calls for her impeachment over her decision, in what U.S. Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) called “one of the most ridiculous rulings I’ve seen in a long time.”

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But for Amalia Shifriss, who testified on behalf of Hoosier Jews for Choice in the lawsuit, the latest ruling is a positive sign that the law will be applied consistently. If religious freedom applies to Christians objecting to baking a same-sex wedding cake, she said, then it must apply to liberal Jews, too.

“RFRA should not just be for what some lawmakers see as the religious right,” Shifriss told the Forward. “It should be for all religions.”

‘Perversion of the law’s intent’

In winning the right to an abortion, Hoosier Jews for Choice relied on a law passed by Pence, who would become Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate on the strength of his reputation as a stalwart advocate for evangelical Christians. Pence rose to national prominence based on his unwavering opposition to abortion — and his conservative leadership as Indiana governor.

Then-Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana holds a press conference on March 31, 2015, where he spoke about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images

Anti-abortion advocacy organizations — including Indiana Right to Life and SBA Pro-Life America — supported the law.

Back in 2015, the debate over RFRA centered on small-business owners that sought to refuse service to LGBTQ+ people. Eric Miller, a conservative activist who was in the room when Pence signed the law, wrote then that “Christian bakers, florists and photographers should not be punished for refusing to participate in a homosexual marriage!”

Massive backlash against the law — notably by the NCAA  the weekend before the Final Four basketball game was slated to occur in Indianapolis — led Pence to sign into law a clarification that businesses could not use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to deny services to people on the basis of their sexual orientation.

But the law itself remained on the books — ripe for abortion-rights groups to wield a decade later.

Now, a little over a decade after Indiana first passed RFRA, organizations that once supported  the law’s broad application have changed their tune.

“For the court to rule that taking the life of an unborn child is an exercise of religious freedom is deeply distressing — and a perversion of the law’s intent,” Indiana Right to Life president Mike Fichter said in an online statement following Klineman’s March 5 ruling. Indiana Right to Life did not respond to the Forward’s request for comment.

That shift has been part of a larger legal trend: Conservative Christian groups like Alliance Defending Freedom have long argued that the government must have a compelling reason to force someone to act against their religious beliefs — whether mandating vaccines, serving LGBTQ clients, or covering contraception in employee health care plans.

But when it came to religious plaintiffs who support abortion access, some on the Christian right didn’t think the same expansive view of religious freedom applied.

“Indiana’s religious freedom laws were passed for the purpose of protecting religious practice, not to protect the ending of a human life,”Indiana’s religious freedom laws were passed for the purpose of protecting religious practice, not to protect the ending of a human life,” Alexander Mingus, executive director of the Indiana Catholic Conference, said in an online statement after Klineman’s ruling. “Religions that preach violence are not protected by religious freedom claims.”

Mingus did not respond to the Forward’s request for an interview.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit that has made its name arguing religious freedom cases in front of the Supreme Court, also objected to the Jewish plaintiffs’ interpretation of RFRA. In 2014, Becket successfully argued in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. that employers could refuse to cover contraception on religious grounds. Meanwhile, in the Indiana case, Becket filed a brief questioning the sincerity of the Jewish plaintiffs’ religious beliefs.

“The case fails RFRA’s test for multiple reasons, including allowing people to join Hoosier Jews for Choice by filling out an anonymous Google form with zero requirement to actually agree with Jewish religious teachings,” Lori Windham, senior counsel for Becket, said in a statement to the Forward.

Cohen disputed that characterization. She said that all members of Hoosier Jews for Choice were required to share their name and contact information, which it did not make public in order to protect members’ confidentiality. She added that group members who joined the lawsuit were asked to indicate whether they could connect their view on the abortion ban to their Jewish values and beliefs, and the vast majority of members did.

David Schraub, an assistant professor at Lewis & Clark Law School who has written about the Indiana case, said that courts do assess whether a religious belief seems genuine. But according to Schraub, the bar for establishing sincerity is low — typically an issue only in cases clearly brought in bad faith. For instance, Schraub recalled a case in which a defendant, trying to avoid paying taxes, cycled through various legal arguments before ultimately inventing “the Church of Ayn Rand.”

The Indiana case is fundamentally different, Schraub said, given the long-standing religious grounding for more permissive Jewish views on abortion.

“They tried to argue that this was not a sincerely held religious belief, which I think was really quite disrespectful, because it flies in the face of a lot of evidence about what we know about how Jews conceptualize the relationship to reproductive freedom,” Schraub said. “They’re just not willing to accept that there is such a thing as a sincere and genuine liberal religious tradition.”

Jewish beliefs, Jewish practices

A 2014  Pew Research poll found an estimated 83% of American Jews believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That’s likely because Jews across denominations largely agree that life begins at birth, not conception. Sources in the Talmud say that in the first 40 days of pregnancy, the fetus is considered “mere water.” Jews value the fetus as “potential life,” gaining the legal status of nefesh, or personhood, at birth.

Still, Jews do not have monolithic views on abortion. Orthodox groups are divided, though couples generally consult rabbis on the matter and believe the choice to get an abortion should be governed by Jewish law, not personal choice.

The Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly supports the right to choose abortion in cases where “continuation of a pregnancy might cause severe physical or psychological harm, or where the fetus is judged by competent medical opinion as severely defective.”

Reform Judaism emphasizes bodily autonomy, with the view that “the decision to terminate a pregnancy is one that, in all circumstances, should ultimately be made by the individual within whose body the fetus is growing.”

Rabbi Sandy Sasso — one of three rabbis the ACLU asked to give expert testimony in the Indiana case, and the first woman ordained a rabbi in Reconstructionist Judaism — told the Forward that the diversity of opinion within Judaism underscores the argument for challenging abortion bans.

“That actually is just the point — there are different religious views,” Sasso said. “The Constitution does not allow you, since there is separation of church and state, to enshrine one religious view over the other.”

Rabbi Sandy Sasso, who testified on behalf of the Indiana plaintiffs. Courtesy of Sandy Sasso

Can religion and abortion coexist?

Shira Zemel, abortion access campaign director at the National Council of Jewish Women, is helping lead a national push to reframe “reproductive freedom as religious freedom.”

Each year since 2021, the Council has organized “Repro Shabbat,” which aligns with the Torah portion from Exodus Parashat Misphatim. The portion says that if a man pushes a pregnant woman, causing her to miscarry, he should pay a fine. But if any other damage results, the punishment should be according to the principle of “eye for an eye.” The portion is often interpreted as evidence that Judaism does not view a fetus as having the same legal status as a person.

The group has also backed that argument in court, filing a brief with 21 other organizations of faith in support of the plaintiffs challenging Indiana’s abortion ban — and hoping similar lawsuits will build on that case’s success nationwide.

The legal pathway exists in many places: 29 states have their own versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, including at least 11 that severely restricted abortion after the Dobbs decision. According to Ken Falk, legal director of the ACLU of Indiana, the same legal reasoning used in Indiana could feasibly be applied in any of those states.

Some legal challenges are already underway, including in Kentucky and South Carolina, where litigation is ongoing. Others have faltered: In Missouri, a judge upheld the state’s abortion ban after a group of interfaith clergy sued on religious grounds. In Florida, a Jewish-led challenge to a ban after six weeks of pregnancy fizzled out after Rabbi Barry Silver, who brought the case on behalf of his synagogue, died of colon cancer in 2024.

Zemel said she hopes the Indiana case can serve as not only a legal blueprint, but also as a sign of a broader cultural shift in how religion is understood in the abortion debate.

“It’s incredible to me to see how this legal argument is bolstering what I like to think is a huge narrative shift,” Zemel said. “For far too long, it’s been weaponized that religion and abortion can’t coexist, but we know that that’s not the case.”

 

The post Jews paused Indiana’s abortion ban — by turning a religious freedom law against the evangelical right appeared first on The Forward.

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Syria Will Stay Out of Iran conflict Unless It Faces Aggression, President Says

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa attends the Ministry of Awqaf conference titled “Unity of Islamic Discourse” at the Conference Palace in Damascus, Syria, Feb. 16, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Tuesday that his country will stay out of the US-Israeli war against Iran unless Syria is subject to aggression and has no diplomatic solutions.

“Unless Syria is targeted by any party, Syria will remain outside any conflict,” the Syrian president said at an event hosted by think tank Chatham House in London.

“We do not want Syria to be an arena of war. But unfortunately, today, things are not governed by wise minds. The situation is volatile and random,” the president said.

The month-long conflict has spread across the region, killing thousands, disrupting energy supplies, and threatening to send the global economy into a tailspin.

“We want Syria to have ideal relationships with the entire region, with Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and world powers like the UK, France, Germany, and the US. I think that Syria is qualified to start a strategic relationship network,” he said, responding to a question on whether Syria would stay neutral while the conflict goes on.

Syria has been keen to stay on the sidelines of the regional conflict that has pulled in neighboring countries, including Lebanon, where armed group Hezbollah is locked in fighting with Israeli ground troops, and Iraq, where Iran-aligned factions have launched drone and rocket attacks.

Syria sent thousands of troops to its ‌western border with Lebanon and its eastern border with Iraq earlier this month. Syria‘s defense ministry said the deployment was part of efforts to “protect and control the borders amid the escalating regional conflict.”

“We had enough war. We paid a large bill. We are not ready for another war experience,” Syria‘s president said.

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