Uncategorized
How a Small-Town US Magazine Published Oct. 7 Atrocity Denial
An aerial view shows the bodies of victims of an attack following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip lying on the ground in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
In Northern California, just south of the renowned Silicon Valley, lies the small town of Gilroy, home to roughly 60,000 residents. Gilroy markets itself as a place defined by a tight-knit community and abundant nature. It is best known for its annual garlic festival.
Table of Contents in GMH TODAY magazine – Fall 2025. Photo: Screenshot
That is why it is so striking to find a piece in its community lifestyle publication, Gilroy Morning Hill TODAY, about the Israel-Hamas war that is so far beyond the pale – so riddled with distortions and omissions – that it reads less like a misguided explainer and more like an exercise in moral inversion.
In “Finding Our Feet in a World Upside Down: Why Facts Matter in Our Small Towns,” Mike Sanchez, more troublingly the magazine’s editor, presents a narrative that does not merely criticize Israel, but systematically distorts the war itself: downplaying Hamas’s atrocities on Oct. 7, including sexual violence now attested to by freed Israeli hostages, eyewitnesses, forensic experts, and international bodies, while omitting Hamas’s governing role in Gaza, erasing its responsibility for civilian suffering, and recycling a familiar catalogue of anti-Israel claims stripped of context and agency.
Photo: Screenshot
Rewriting Oct. 7
Sanchez’s description of Oct. 7, 2023, is revealing. He writes that “Hamas fighters breached the fence enclosing Gaza” and overran “21 Israeli settlements,” killing hundreds of Israeli soldiers and civilians. He claims they “stumbled upon” the Nova music festival, where festival-goers were hunted down, gang-raped, murdered, and kidnapped, violence he elsewhere casts doubt upon or dismisses entirely. He further suggests that the IDF was responsible for many civilian deaths that day, alleging soldiers were “instructed to kill everyone in sight, including comrades and civilians.”
Sanchez also writes that “Palestinian civilians who entered through the breaches were also caught in the bloodshed.” This phrasing erases the documented reality that many of those civilians actively participated in looting, assaults, kidnappings, and the abuse of hostages, including the scenes of Israeli hostages being paraded through Gaza and spat upon by crowds.
Perhaps recognizing, at some level, how offensive this framing is, Sanchez briefly acknowledges that Oct. 7 was “horrific.” But the concession is fleeting. Gaza, readers are told, is equally “horrific,” before the article devotes the next page and a half to a familiar catalogue of false accusations against Israel, presented as settled fact.
A Catalogue of Claims, Minus Responsibility
The article reproduces nearly every standard anti-Israel talking point: inflated casualty figures presented without any distinction between civilians and combatants; claims that Israel blocks aid while ignoring Hamas’s theft and diversion of humanitarian supplies; famine declarations treated as uncontested; accusations of deliberate hospital targeting without mention of Hamas’s use of civilian infrastructure; and assertions that journalists and entire families are being systematically wiped out.
International organizations and activist NGOs are treated as final arbiters of truth, despite their documented reliance on Hamas-controlled sources and their failure to interrogate casualty data or distinguish causes of death. One such citation is B’Tselem, invoked as proof that Israel is committing genocide, as though the claim itself settles the question.
Every talking point in the piece systematically omits Hamas’s role in the suffering of Gazans. There is no acknowledgment that Hamas hijacks humanitarian aid, embeds itself in civilian infrastructure, operates an extensive tunnel network beneath homes and hospitals, or infiltrates medical and UNRWA staff. Hamas’s own responsibility for Gaza’s water and electricity infrastructure, long predating this war, is ignored entirely.
When responsibility is stripped away this completely, outcomes are presented as facts, but they function as accusations.
By contrast, Israel has evacuated over 90 percent of Gaza’s population to designated areas in an effort, however imperfect, to mitigate civilian harm. Any analysis that excludes Hamas’s deliberately destructive strategy presents a fundamentally distorted picture of responsibility.
Bringing It Back Home to Gilroy
The article then attempts to explain why this distant war should matter to Gilroy readers. Here again, facts are selectively framed.
US military assistance to Israel is misrepresented as excessive spending beyond the agreed $3.8 billion framework, portrayed as yielding no returns, with no explanation of how US foreign military financing actually functions or who benefits from it.
Anti-Israel campus protests in the United States are described as suppressed expressions of dissent, with universities accused of violating students’ First Amendment rights. HonestReporting spent months documenting these protests. They were frequently aggressive, antisemitic, and openly supportive of terror organizations. Jewish and Zionist students were harassed, blocked from campus spaces, and made to feel unsafe. Universities were slow, and in many cases reluctant, to intervene.
The piece goes on to frame “anti-Zionist” Jewish Americans and other public figures as victims of persecution, while minimizing or ignoring hostility directed at Jews who support Israel. The message is reinforced visually with curated cultural imagery, a familiar aesthetic strategy that softens the article’s accusations while reinforcing its moral framing.
Where You Get Your Facts Matters
Perhaps a small-town lifestyle magazine should avoid topics far outside its expertise. But having chosen to engage, it bears responsibility for accuracy and balance.
Legacy outlets like The New York Times and the BBC deserve sustained scrutiny for biased and reckless reporting. But the ripple effect works both ways. A local publication like Gilroy Morning Hill TODAY can shape perceptions just as powerfully, especially in communities where readers trust it to inform rather than indoctrinate.
Sanchez urges readers to seek facts beyond their confirmation bias, yet relies almost exclusively on sources that reinforce his own. In a publication aimed at neighbors who live alongside Jewish community members, that imbalance is not harmless. It is careless at best, and misleading at worst.
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.
Uncategorized
The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration
ס׳האָט זיך לעצטנס געשאַפֿן אַ נײַער סאָרט לייענקרײַז דורך פֿייסבוק, וווּ מע לערנט תּורה אויף ייִדיש צוזאַמען.
אינעם לייענקרײַז, וואָס הייסט „די ייִדישיסטישע ישיבֿה“, לייענט מען חומש מיט רש״י — סײַ אויפֿן אָריגינעלן לשון־קודש סײַ אויף ייִדיש־טײַטש. „די גרופּע איז אָפֿן פֿאַר אַלע מינים מענטשן,“ האָט דערקלערט דער לינגוויסט און ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסט לייזער בורקאָ, וועלכער האָט אָרגאַניזירט די גרופּע. „פֿרויען און מענער, ייִדן און נישט־ייִדן, געי און ׳גלײַך׳. נײַע תּלמידים דאַרפֿן פֿאַרשטיין ייִדיש גוט, אָבער זיי דאַרפֿן נישט האָבן קיין תּורהדיקן הינטערגרונט.“
די גרופּע טרעפֿט זיך יעדן דינסטיק דורך פֿייסבוק. נאָך מער פּרטים אָדער כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן, שטעלט זיך אין קאָנטאַקט מיט בורקאָ, אויפֿן אַדרעס leyzertag@gmail.com אָדער דורך פֿייסבוק.
The post The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
A century-old Jerusalem photo album sparks search for forgotten images of the Western Wall
(JTA) — When David Freedman discovered a long-forgotten photo album in his parents’ Montreal basement last year, he found nearly 100 pages of century-old photographs from his grandfather’s year in British Mandate Palestine, capturing Jerusalem street scenes, market stalls and holy sites.
The photographs were not only century-old and in near-perfect condition, but included figures who would later become central to Jewish medical and political history, among them Israel’s future first president Chaim Weizmann, Jerusalem ophthalmologist Abraham Ticho, malaria researcher Israel Kligler, future British prime minister Winston Churchill and Herbert Samuel, Britain’s first high commissioner for Palestine.
David Freedman said he knew he had “struck gold” when he found the album, which had been untouched for decades. “I realized in disbelief I was looking at extraordinary images of Jerusalem,” he said.
Though Freedman said the album showed his grandfather’s “passion for skillful, impromptu photography,” it was images of a site that epitomizes endurance that are having the broadest impact.
Freedman’s pictures of the Western Wall has inspired a public appeal by the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum, which is asking people to look through old albums and attics for photographs, postcards and other visual material that could help expand the historical record of Judaism’s holiest site.
The request comes ahead of a major exhibition opening in 2027 marking 60 years since the 1967 Six-Day War brought the wall, known in Hebrew as the Kotel, under Jewish control for the first time in nearly two millennia.
Although the Western Wall is now one of the most photographed sites in the world, museum curators say the visual record of earlier decades remains surprisingly fragmented, with many of the most intimate images likely still tucked away in private collections and family albums.
“The Western Wall, the Kotel, in its simplest form, is a structure of ancient stones. Yet its true meaning has never resided in the stones alone — it has been shaped and elevated by the countless individuals who have stood before it over the centuries,” Eilat Lieber, the museum’s director and chief curator, said in a statement.
Next year’s exhibition, titled “Eyes on the Wall” and curated by Shimon Lev and Yael Brandt, will be the first large-scale exhibition dedicated entirely to the Western Wall, the museum said, and will trace its transformation over nearly 2,000 years. It will be one of the major exhibitions staged by the Tower of David Museum since it reopened in 2023 after a $50 million renovation of its ancient citadel complex.
The wall, the exposed section of an ancient retaining wall around the Temple Mount, the site of the biblical Jewish temples, has long been Judaism’s most sacred places of prayer and pilgrimage. From 1948 until the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel captured the Old City and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Jews were barred from going there.
Among its most iconic images was David Rubinger’s photograph of three Israeli paratroopers standing at the wall shortly after its capture, looking upward in a mixture of awe and disbelief. The picture was taken 59 years ago this week.
Abraham Orkin Freedman, a Canadian physician and Zionist activist, took his photographs before the site was so contested. He arrived in Palestine in July 1920, just as Britain was replacing military rule with a civil administration, and stayed until 1922, serving during that period as managing director of Hadassah Hospital. His grandson David, also a doctor, said the album’s timing gives it much of its historical value, with photographs that capture people in the streets, as well as the terrain and buildings of Jerusalem during the nascent years of the British Mandate.
Among the images Freedman uncovered, the one that struck him most was a photograph of women praying side by side with men at the oldest part of the Western Wall, a scene far removed from the gender-separated prayer sections at the site today. The question of mixed-gender prayer at the Wall remains politically charged, with a recent High Court order to advance the egalitarian section followed by Knesset moves to strengthen Chief Rabbinate control over prayer at the site.
After recognizing the album’s significance, Freedman met with his family who decided collectively to give it to the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum for safekeeping, research and public access. Freedman said the family was proud the album had found “a new home, not many meters from where my grandfather once stood.”
Lev said he hoped the appeal would bring more discoveries like Freedman’s into public view, expanding the visual record of the Western Wall beyond official archives.
“There is something profoundly moving in the moment when an intimate private photograph transcends its original purpose and becomes an important historical testimony,” Lev said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post A century-old Jerusalem photo album sparks search for forgotten images of the Western Wall appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
5th man charged in March arson of London’s Hatzola ambulances
(JTA) — Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service announced Tuesday that an 18-year-old man has been charged in connection with the March arson attack that destroyed four ambulances owned by Hatzola, a Jewish volunteer emergency service.
Subhan Ahmed, a British national, was charged on Monday with “assisting an offender” in connection with the arson.
The ambulances were set ablaze in the early morning of March 23 in Golders Green, a heavily Jewish neighborhood in London. The incident spurred increased patrols in Jewish communities.
The charge is the latest development in an investigation being led by the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism unit.
Four others have already been charged in connection with the attack.
Three British nationals — 20-year-old Hamza Iqbal, 19-year-old Rehan Khan and 18-year-old Judex Atshatshi — along with a 17-year-old dual British and Pakistani national were all charged in April with “committing arson, destroying or damaging property, and being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.”
The four have remained in custody ahead of a trial planned for January. Ahmed, meanwhile, was released ahead of a June 16 court date.
The ambulance arsons came at the early edge of a wave of incidents that have put London Jews on edge and induced the city’s police force to step up their presence in Jewish communities. The incidents have included multiple incendiary devices placed near synagogues as well as the stabbing in April of two Jewish men in Golders Green. The Metropolitan Police reported last week that antisemitic hate crimes in the capital rose 72% in May.
Following the announcement of Ahmed’s charge, the Community Security Trust, a Jewish organization, thanked the police and the Crown Prosecution Service “for their ongoing work investigating this attack and other arson incidents targeting the Jewish community.”
It added in a statement, “These are very serious allegations, and it is right that those responsible are being held accountable.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post 5th man charged in March arson of London’s Hatzola ambulances appeared first on The Forward.
