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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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Netflix’s ‘Queen of Chess’ tracks the rise of Judit Polgar — but leaves her Jewishness out of it

Watching Queen of Chess, Rory Kennedy’s Netflix documentary about the top-ranked woman chess player and her long contest with world champion Garry Kasparov, I was reminded — of all things — of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

It comes down to one moment. In a montage in the 2018 superhero cartoon, we briefly see Peter Parker’s wedding, where he steps on a glass. This one second of film inspired an avalanche of speculation that Spider-Man (or at least a version of him) was Jewish.

In Kennedy’s film, we see footage from Polgar’s wedding, where her husband breaks a glass. This is the only clue I saw in the entire film that she is Jewish. We need not speculate if this is the case, as we might with fictional characters with arachnid physiology — it’s a matter of public record. And it’s a pretty big part of her story to leave out.

As the film’s early moments make clear, Polgar, now 49, and her older sisters, Grandmaster Susan and International Master Sofia, were not instant prodigies, but the result of a social experiment. The Polgars lived in a ramshackle house with wet walls in the workers’ district of Budapest. The country was poor and, in the Soviet era, topped Europe in suicides.

Their father, László, an educational psychologist, was desperate to make a better life for his children, and so he studied the lives of geniuses and alit on the idea to homeschool his daughters — unheard of in a collectivist country — and from the age of 5 drill them in chess.

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Why chess? Their mother, Klára, explains in an interview for the film: “Very simple. The chess board, it’s easy to have it and very cheap.”

When his daughters started drawing attention for their early victories, and for decades after as they rose to international acclaim, the press would frame Polgar’s regimen as child abuse; one headline called him a “Hungarian Daddy Dearest.” Interviews conducted for the film with László give the impression that he’s a demanding eccentric, but skip over some crucial context: He was born in 1946 to parents who survived Auschwitz.

László’s father, Armin, lost his first wife, six children and his own parents in the death camp. For someone with this background, family, and survival, couldn’t be taken for granted.

As László  told the Jerusalem Post in 2017, “being a Jew gave me extra motivation to succeed.”

Sofia Polgar wrote in her autobiography that the “fighting spirit that is running through my veins,” came from her survivor grandparents.

“My grandparents were the ‘lucky ones,’ with the numbers tattooed on their arms and nightmares for the rest of their lives,” but who had the strength to rebuild, Sofia wrote, adding that she still has “a bad feeling when seeing train tracks.”

In her 2025 memoir, Rebel Queen, Susan Polgar, Judit’s eldest sister, recalls her father returning home from work and finding a letter with no return address.

“Inside was a photo of him with his eyes cut out,” she writes. “There was also a one-page handwritten letter, which he refused to let me read. He only said that it was dripping with antisemitic remarks and violent threats.”

Judit Polgár, Susan Polgár and Sofia Polgár, sisters who rocked the chess world. Photo by Courtesy of Netflix © 2026

Within the country Susan sensed that the Polgars were not regarded as “real” Hungarians. The government denied them travel permits and Klára recalls being woken up by armed police. There were threats to take their children away.

Things changed when, after criticism from the international press, the Polgars were allowed to leave the Eastern Bloc for the 1988 Olympiad in Thessaloniki, Greece. The three sisters and their teammate Ildikó Mádl triumphed over the Soviets women’s team and returned as heroes.

Judit, then 12, soon emerged as the top female chess player and sought out men to compete against. After becoming the youngest grandmaster at 15 and 4 months, beating Bobby Fischer’s record, she faced world champion Garry Kasparov for the first time in Linares in 1994. She was 17, he was 30. Their contests and (spoiler), Polgar’s ultimate victory over Kasparov in 2001, form the arc of the film.

Buoyed by a soundtrack of women-led rock and punk bands like Tilly and the Wall and Delta 5, Queen of Chess is primarily about the first woman to smash the chess world’s glass ceiling, cracking into the top 10 overall world ranking — still the only woman to do so — and defeating the number one-ranked player.

Interviews with younger women chess players speak of her as an inspiration. Kasparov, while he now respects Judit, still comes off as sexist in contemporary interviews with remarks like “one of the typical weaknesses of many female players is that they are panicking if there’s a threat.”

This by itself, is enough material for a film, and Kennedy does an admirable job building suspense using archival video from tournaments and a digital chess board tracking the moves of the match.

What’s fascinating about the omission of the girls’ Jewishness is that Kennedy, a director of a couple dozen documentaries about social issues and historical injustices, and the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and sister of RFK Jr., rightly, acknowledges it as an obstacle in an interview for the press notes.

“The odds were staggering,” Kennedy said. “They were poor. They were Jewish. They were girls.”

The last factor may well trump the others (Kasparov was born Garik Kimovich Weinstein).

Still, Jewishness continues to play a large role in the sisters’ lives. In 2024, Judit and Sofia played matches in Berlin’s parliament in honor of Israeli hostages. Sofia made aliyah in 1999 and is married to Israeli grandmaster Yona Kosashvili. Her parents followed her there.

In the film’s bittersweet final moments, Kennedy asks Judit how she felt being part of an experiment, and missing out on a normal childhood. She takes a while to respond, and does so with a bit of ambivalence.

“I never felt myself being a genius,” Judit says. “I know that the things I could reach, that was definitely like 95% of my work and dedication. And this came from my parents.”

The impetus behind the experiment, to do whatever they could to help their children rise above their circumstances, may be best explained by all that came before them.

In a phone call Thursday, Susan Polgar confirmed that their Jewish history came up in interviews, and acknowledged that a lot was left on the cutting room floor. Within the family, she said, Judit spoke about how this would just be one interpretation of their family’s history.

“What people tell me is actually that probably ideal would be to have a miniseries,” Polgar said.

We may need to wait for that, but for those who want the Jewish story, there’s a 2014 Israeli documentary called The Polgar Variant.

“Obviously that has a lot more of that angle, naturally,” Susan Polgar said.

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Rory Kennedy’s Queen of Chess is now playing at the Sundance Film Festival. It debuts on Netflix Feb. 6.

The post Netflix’s ‘Queen of Chess’ tracks the rise of Judit Polgar — but leaves her Jewishness out of it appeared first on The Forward.

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Could this be the most Jewish musical that never admits its own Jewishness?

There’s a moment in the musical Oliver! when Fagin launches into one of Lionel Bart’s deliciously minor-key melodies, and suddenly the show feels about as Victorian as a hot pastrami on rye. Oliver! may be the most Jewish musical ever written that refuses to admit as much, and watching Simon Lipkin’s sly, buoyant portrayal of Fagin on London’s West End recently, I felt a jolt of something I hadn’t expected:

Home.

Not literal home, but the emotional topography of my family’s Friday night dinner tables where Holocaust survivors, former Yiddish theater actors and comedians filled the empty chairs left behind by Auschwitz itself. Improbably, Oliver! belonged to them too.

The musical’s West End revival underscores this. At a moment when antisemitism is still frighteningly on the rise, and theaters everywhere are re-examining the stories they tell and who gets to tell them, Oliver! has slipped into surprisingly contemporary territory. Matthew Bourne’s production doesn’t necessarily announce that it is a “Jewish” interpretation, but it acknowledges the show’s long, complicated history with a lighter touch and a sharper awareness. Watching Lipkin lean into the character’s humor and inherent Jewishness (“Oy, a broch!” he cries out emphatically at one point, beating his heart with his fist) but without the burden of caricature, I realized how the work has evolved — quietly, confidently — and how audiences have evolved along with it.

Ron Moody, who originated the role of Fagin in ‘Oliver!’, seen here in 1986. Photo by Getty Images

It’s impossible to miss the Jewish musical DNA in Bart’s score. The minor keys, the phrasing (“Such a sky you never did see!”), the cantorial wails that hold joy and heartbreak in the same breath: These were familiar to me long before I knew what to call them. Bart may have been writing about Victorian street urchins, but he couldn’t escape the musical instincts of his upbringing in London’s East End where he was born Lionel Begleiter. The melody of “Pick a Pocket or Two” could pass for a klezmer romp at a Hasidic wedding; “Reviewing the Situation,” sung by Fagin when he finds himself at a moral crossroads, is practically a cantor’s aria, ornamented with flourishes I’ve heard at countless High Holiday services.

There’s nothing explicitly Jewish in the script — no references or labels — yet many of the melodies feel instinctively Jewish in their rhythms and slyness. And that instinct carried me back to a question I’ve often considered since childhood:

How did Ron Moody, who originated this comic version of Fagin in 1960 and reimagined him for the 1968 film, manage to get away with it?

When I first saw Moody’s Fagin on screen, I was captivated by his portrayal. But I also didn’t understand how someone could play such a Jewish rogue at a time when Dickens’ caricature of “the Jew” still hovered uneasily in our cultural memory. Whenever I try to think of famous Jews on stage, the first two that pop into my head are villains: Shylock and Fagin. Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice has been around forever, first published in 1600. But Oliver! debuted only 14 years after the Holocaust — the role should have been a minefield. Yet critics adored him, Jewish audiences embraced him, and Moody’s Fagin became beloved, not reviled.

Years later, when my friendship with Moody began — after he’d expressed interest in playing a villain opposite Carrie Fisher in a horror-comedy film I’d written — I was surprised by how different he was from the man onscreen. Soft-spoken and unmistakably British; nothing like the quicksilver trickster he was so skilled at portraying. He could summon that twinkle instantly, of course, but it wasn’t his resting state. He was in his early 60s then, newly delighted by late-in-life fatherhood, devoted to his younger wife Therese and their first child (whom he called “Boo-boo” with disarming tenderness). As more children arrived — he ultimately had six — I would tease him about assembling his own soccer team, which amused him to no end.

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His Fagin, I came to realize, wasn’t a caricature but a cultural inheritance he carried lightly — a set of rhythms and comic cadences he understood from growing up as Ronald Moodnick in a warm Jewish household. And that was why the performance didn’t offend, and why it felt so familiar.

Though my mother lit the Sabbath candles and whispered the Hebrew blessing each Friday night, our dinners were less about religious ritual than about the rebuilding of a life she had salvaged from Auschwitz with nothing but willpower and the hope of joy still intact. In New York, she fashioned a new family out of survivors, actors from the Yiddish theater, and intellectuals whose humor carried both bruises and brilliance. These friends became surrogate aunts and uncles to my sister and me.

My mother was endlessly curious and had a gift for gathering people. She co-hosted a weekly language club with radio personality Barry Farber, a Southerner who startled me by speaking fluent, musical Yiddish. Occasionally he’d turn up at our Friday night table alongside an unlikely combination of guests, including my Bostonian Jewish piano teacher, a wryly funny family friend who once published an anarchist newspaper in Cuba until Castro forced him to flee, other European Holocaust survivors, and whichever schoolmates of mine my mother decided ought to be fed. The orbit was colorful and improbable, but it made sense. These were people who made her feel alive.

Some of our guests were well-known in the Yiddish arts — like Fyvush Finkel and his wife, Trudi; Broadway stage actors Muni Seroff and Irving Jacobson; Malvina Rappel, who had appeared in the classic Yiddish film Motel the Operator (Motl der Operator) and later hosted a radio program on WEVD back when it still broadcast in Yiddish.

Friday nights tended to unfold the same way: dinner first, then an impromptu cabaret. Someone sat down at the piano; someone else — usually my parents — burst into song or shtick. In an instant, our modest living room became a sort of vaudeville house. It was unself-conscious and exuberant, a weekly affirmation that even those who had lost everything could conjure laughter with astonishing force.

I didn’t know it then, but this was an education. Not in religion, but in rhythm. In timing. In the strange alchemy that binds sorrow to humor. Long before I ever wrote a script, I had already absorbed the comedic cadences that would shape my work.

As I grew older, that early immersion quietly charted the course of my career. Writing my book They’ll Never Put That on the Air brought me into long, generous conversations with some of the greatest architects of American television comedy — Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, Norman Lear, David Steinberg — artists whose work dismantled censorship and altered the medium. They offered insights I hear in my head to this day when I write.

In one of those unlikely, full-circle pinch-me moments, a few years ago I found myself directing Mel Brooks in the recording booth for Flower of the Dawn, an animated musical film I co-wrote and produced. Mel quickly corrected a joke of mine on the spot: “You’re cluttering the line with all this extra stuff at the end. End it here, with the punch!”

What stayed with me wasn’t just the correction; it was the realization that the comic instincts I’d carried since childhood had an architecture. Mel didn’t echo my family’s living room cabaret; he clarified what all that laughter had taught me.

So when I sat in the Gielgud Theatre watching Simon Lipkin give Fagin new life, it felt less like a reinterpretation than a recognition. Lipkin wasn’t parroting Moody — he was putting his own youthful spin on the role, while tapping into the same emotional and musical DNA: a blend of humor, vulnerability and those unmistakable minor-key inflections that carry an entire history inside them.

Not everyone in that audience heard what I heard. But I did. And for a moment, the distance between my family’s living room and a West End stage felt very small.

The post Could this be the most Jewish musical that never admits its own Jewishness? appeared first on The Forward.

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New York City Council pushes action on antisemitism without Mamdani

The announcement Thursday by New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin of a new task force dedicated to combating antisemitism — co-chaired by a critic of Mayor Zohran Mamdani — is setting up potential tension between the City Council and the mayor’s office over how to respond to the rise in antisemitism.

So is the introduction of a measure that could limit protests outside synagogues, part of a package of new Council bills aimed at antisemitism.

Councilmember Eric Dinowitz, a Democrat from the Bronx, who was selected along with Brooklyn Councilmember Inna Vernikov, a Republican, as co-chair of the seven-member working group, said they intend to take a more assertive legislative role in addressing rising concerns among Jewish New Yorkers “in a way that may be different than what the mayor wants to do.”

That includes weighing the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which considers most forms of anti-Zionism as antisemitic, as a framework for investigating hate crimes — a position Mamdani opposes. “I believe that IHRA has a good structure for defining antisemitism,” Vernikov said in an interview. In 2023, Vernikov passed a resolution to create an annual day to “end Jew-hatred.”

On his first day in office earlier this month, Mamdani drew criticism from mainstream Jewish organizations for revoking an executive order by former Mayor Eric Adams that adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Liberal Jewish groups oppose that framework. Some support the Nexus Document, which states that most criticism of Israel and Zionism is not antisemitic. The mayor has declined to say how his administration will define antisemitism when determining which cases to investigate or pursue.

Mamdani has kept open the recently created Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, which he said will pursue his vision to address rising acts of hate against Jews. Mamdani said on Thursday that he’s in the final stages of selecting an executive director for that office.

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Dinowitz, who also chairs the council’s Jewish Caucus, said it was important to move forward in parallel with the mayor’s efforts. “We are a separate, co-equal branch of government that has our own ideas and initiatives that we need to pursue to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe,” he said. Dinowitz, who represents the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Riverdale, added that most members of the task force are not Jewish, underscoring that antisemitism is not solely a Jewish issue.

Antisemitic incidents accounted for 57% of reported hate crimes in 2025, according to the NYPD. The new year started with a rash of antisemitic incidents across the city. On Thursday, a 36-year-old man was charged with attempted assault as hate crimes after repeatedly crashing into the entrance of the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Brooklyn the night before. On Tuesday, a rabbi was verbally harassed and assaulted in Forest Hills, Queens, and last week, a playground frequented by Orthodox families in the Borough Park neighborhood in Brooklyn was graffitied with swastikas two days in a row. In both incidents, the suspects have been arrested.

Vernikov’s past remarks draw scrutiny

Thursday’s announcement also drew controversy.

Vernikov has faced criticism for incendiary remarks on social media and has been a vocal critic of the Democratic Party’s approach to antisemitism. During the mayoral election, she warned that “Jihad is coming to NYC” if Mamdani wins, and called him a “terrorist-lover.” In response to a Yiddish-language campaign flyer, she wrote that Mamdani wants Jews “to burn in an oven.” She called the Jewish liaison for State Attorney General Letitia James a “Kapo Sell Out” for praising Mamdani’s outreach. In 2023, Vernikov was arrested after being pictured with a gun at her waist as she attended a pro-Israel counter-protest near a pro-Palestinian rally at Brooklyn College. A judge later dismissed the charges against her.

The progressive Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, which endorsed Mamdani through its affiliated political arm, The Jewish Vote, called Vernikov’s appointment unacceptable. Sophie Ellman-Golan, a JFREJ spokesperson, said Vernikov “regularly diminishes the seriousness of antisemitism by reducing it to a political cudgel.”

Menin, who some see as a check on the mayor and a potential guardrail on his actions, defended the appointment. “The Jewish Caucus voted to have this task force,” Menin told reporters. “Obviously, I don’t agree with the comments that she made in the past, and I’ve made that known to her.” Menin, the first Jewish speaker of the City Council, has pointed to the symbolism of her elevation alongside Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, as an opportunity to “take the temperature and the rhetoric down.”

Vernikov confirmed that the Jewish Caucus approved her selection, but insisted the speaker was involved in the initiative.

In the interview, Vernikov noted that Mamdani “has said things and done things that make the Jewish community very fearful.” She added that she hopes the mayor will translate his pledge to fight antisemitism into concrete action, “but until then, we have a trust issue with him.”

Mamdani addressed Vernikov’s attacks in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday. “I know that there are so many in this city who have to deal with similar kinds of smears,” he said. “But what I know that New Yorkers want to see, what I want to see, is a humanity embodied in our politics, not the language of darkness that has taken hold.”

Menin’s legislative package to counter antisemitism

Also on Thursday, Menin introduced a legislative package as part of her five-point plan to combat antisemitism, including a proposal to ban protests near the entrances and exits of houses of worship, $1.25 million in funding for the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and the creation of a city hotline to report antisemitic incidents.

Mamdani said he broadly supports the package but expressed reservations about the proposed 100-foot buffer zone around synagogues and other houses of worship. “I wouldn’t sign any legislation that we find to be outside of the bounds of the law,” he said.

At a press conference, Menin said the measure was designed not to restrict protest but to prevent confrontations. “Enforcement is not based on speech or viewpoint,” she said. “It is based on conduct that endangers others.”

The Council will vote on the measures at its next meeting in February.

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The post New York City Council pushes action on antisemitism without Mamdani appeared first on The Forward.

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