A look at the mural “October 7, The Hostages” before (left) and after (right) it was vandalized for a second time. Photo: Provided

Italian contemporary pop artist and activist AleXsandro Palombo spoke to The Algemeiner on Thursday about the “antisemitic hatred” that fueled the second vandalism of his mural in Milan, Italy, honoring Shiri Bibas and her two young sons – all three of whom were murdered by Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip after being taken as hostages from Israel.

Shiri’s face in the mural was recently covered with white paint, as was the Star of David on the Israeli flag that is draped over her two children Kfir and Ariel, who were 4 and nine months old, respectively, when taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023, along with their mother. The mural shows Shiri, 32, holding her two sons. The three of them were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz when Hamas-led terrorists went on a deadly rampage across southern Israel, and they were later killed in captivity in Gaza.

Palombo titled the mural “October 7, The Hostages.” It is featured in the center of Milan, outside the Qatari consulate, and just a few steps from the famous Via Montenapoleone shopping area. The mural was first vandalized days after it was unveiled in October during an event commemorating the two-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy described the vandalism as “a vile gesture against the memory of the victims.”

“These works are testimonies; they carry memory and truth within them,” Palombo told The Algemeiner on Thursday following the most recent vandalism of his mural dedicated to the Bibas family. “Those who destroy them aren’t just targeting art; they’re trying to erase its meaning, its message, its resistance. It’s a deliberate act meant to extinguish what stands up to hatred, to intimidate anyone who defends freedom of thought and to rewrite history for their own advantage.” He added that stopping his art “would mean surrendering to extremism.”

“The works dedicated to the Bibas family, like all those destroyed by antisemitic hatred, must continue to live,” he said. “Every time art is silenced, the conscience of our civilization is struck. Defending artistic freedom means defending the dignity and memory of the West.”

Yarden Bibas – Shiri’s husband and the father of Ariel and Kfir — was separately kidnapped from Israel by Hamas-led terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. He survived captivity and is the only living member of his immediate family.

Other murals by Palombo that have been dedicated to the Holocaust, antisemitism, or the deadly terrorist attack in October 2023 have all been vandalized in the past, including murals depicting Auschwitz survivors and another featuring a survivor of the Nova music festival. Even a mural created in support of Iranian women protesters was vandalized. Palombo told The Algemeiner he has received hundreds of death threats because of his artwork, mostly from “extremist online communities and radicalized pro-Palestinian movements.” He believes the vandalism of his work tied to the Holocaust, Israel, or antisemitism “is part of a deliberate strategy that uses antisemitism as a weapon to spread fear and destabilize democracies from within.”

“Today, anti-Jewish hatred is no longer just a social or cultural phenomenon; it has become a tool of hybrid warfare, employed by hostile networks to manipulate public opinion and undermine the very foundations of freedom and civil coexistence,” he added. “To attack art is to attack freedom of expression and erase collective memory. It’s a way to weaken democratic consciousness and pave the way for fanaticism. Every defaced mural is not just an attack on an artwork; it’s an assault on the right to remember.”

The only murals tied to the Holocaust and antisemitism that have not been vandalized are those displayed in Rome after being acquired by the city’s Shoah Museum. Palombo explained that they are located near a police booth and in front of a synagogue, which has a constant armed guard stationed in front.

“It’s a paradox: In a Western democracy, art must be protected like a potential target, as if memory itself had become something to be defended by law enforcement,” he told The Algemeiner.

As the political right navigates Tucker Carlson’s recent decision to host the white supremacist Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes on his podcast, one thing has become clear: There are some people in this country who are eager to pretend that antisemitism on the political right is a new issue.

This is untrue. And understanding the contours of that warped perception are essential to accurately identifying and pushing back on antisemitism in the United States today.

For a long time, much of the political right has held that to be pro-Israel is to be good for the Jews, and to be too critical of Israel is to be an antisemitic security threat.

This has meant that President Donald Trump can be excused for ranting about “globalists” and pushing conspiracy theories about Hungarian-born Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros, because he is such a friend to Israel. For many right-wing American Jews, that friendship was enough.

There is a cost to this calculus. Those who believed conservative support for Israel would keep antisemitism on the right at a level they deemed comfortable are now, perhaps, beginning to see that they have made a devil’s bargain.

The most obvious proof of that is the decision of Kevin Roberts, president of the influential Heritage Foundation, to publicly stand by Carlson. (Nearly a week after his initial statement, Roberts apologized to staff amid profound internal criticism, claiming he didn’t know much about Fuentes. He also issued another video statement proclaiming that even “even when my friend Tucker Carlson needs challenging,” he and Heritage will speak up).

The Heritage Foundation is behind the Trump White House’s antisemitism policy: It developed Project Esther, a plan to instrumentalize antisemitism to crack down on civil society. The group has been enormously influential in turning a purported battle against antisemitism into a trademark effort of Trump’s second term. For Roberts to say that to “cancel” Fuentes — who has compared Jews in death camps to cookies in an oven and deemed Jews “unassimilable” — would be a mistake suggests that the significant sector of the right that they represent sees antisemitism more as an opportunity than as an actual problem.

Because for all the stories about Republicans racing to condemn the antisemites in their ranks in the wake of Carlson’s interview with Fuentes — who for a long time was considered too extremist for more mainstream right-wing figures to touch — the Republican party has been comfortable using antisemitism for years.

They’ve built the modern right on conspiracy theories about Soros, transparent hints at charges of Jewish “dual loyalty,” suggestions that Jews are to blame for electoral losses, and winks and nudges at hateful tropes about Jews and money. The reason that the pro-Israel right is now, suddenly, deeply concerned about these tropes is that Fuentes has a vitriolic hatred of Israel, in violation of longstanding conservative norms.

Which raises the question of why they, or anyone, thought that antisemitism was acceptable or could be contained so long as it came with support for a nation state — or so long as it was only directed against liberal Jews, or was couched in suitably coded language.

Those who practiced that kind of cultivated looking-away overlooked an essential fact: Antisemitism that simmers at a certain level does not check itself. It just makes society as a whole more comfortable with antisemitism.

The idea that antisemitism is a new problem for the right in this country — one that must be condemned now, but was fine before Carlson invited Fuentes on his platform — is contradicted by the reality of the last decade of American political life.

The Republican Jewish Coalition condemned Roberts for standing by Carlson. That’s good. However, the same group was proud to endorse Trump, whom it called “the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history,” in 2024, two years after he had dinner with Fuentes and the rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West, now known for his exceptionally vocal and vicious antisemitism. (Trump claimed he did not know who Fuentes was at the time of the meeting, but also proved unwilling to openly criticize him after details of his past statements were made clear.)

The right-wing Jewish pundit Ben Shapiro is accusing Carlson of helping to sabotage the U.S. by hosting Fuentes. I agree that Carlson’s prominence and widespread influence on the right is bad for the U.S., but I also thought that was true when he repeatedly used his platform to push the so-called “replacement theory,” a conspiracy theory that Jewish-coded shadowy elites are trying to flood the country with non-white migrants.

Several Jews who are affiliated with the Heritage Foundation and Project Esther reportedly threatened to quit over Roberts’ response to the Carlson scandal. But why were these individuals content to be associated with a plan to ostensibly fight antisemitism that did not bother to meaningfully engage with white supremacy — the root of Fuentes’ antisemitism — in the first place?

And still others are apparently hoping that we can go back to playing nice with those who deal in antisemitism, so long as they are sufficiently subtle about it and keep supporting Israel. Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the ADL, which recently dropped “protect civil rights” from its online mission, thanked Roberts for clarifying after his initial statement that he finds Fuentes’s views abhorrent. Ideally, one does not need to clarify that they abhor Holocaust denial.

The truth is that when you decide to look past antisemitism for political purposes, you can’t be shocked when that antisemitism eventually goes too far.

And so when pundits now talk about a “civil war” on the American political right over antisemitism, we should remember is that this is the result of years and years of tacit approval of subtle antisemitism. It may have come with support for Israel, and it may not have actually used the word “Jew,” but it has been a core part of the political movement that is currently ruling the country.

We are not going to be able to put this genie back in the bottle if we pretend it only emerged when Fuentes came onto Carlson’s show.

The post The fundamental miscalculation behind the GOP’s antisemitism crisis appeared first on The Forward.

Right-wing political commentator Candace Owens speaks during an event held by national conservative political movement ‘Turning Point’, in Detroit, Michigan, US, June 14, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rebecca Cook

American political commentator Candace Owens, who often uses her podcast to promote conspiracy theories against Israel and the Jewish people, admitted this week that she has become “obsessed” with Jews.

Owens on Monday wrote a post on the X social media platform that accused an unnamed group of people of plotting to “infiltrate” Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, “control” the US president, and “overthrow” Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and pro-Israel advocate who was assassinated in September.

“Why are you so obsessed with Jews?” a user commented on Owens’ post.

“Because they are so obsessed with me. Feeling is mutual now,” Owens replied, seemingly admitting that she has developed a fixation on Jews since parting ways with The Daily Wire media company last year amid controversy over her comments regarding Jews and Israel.

The user responded to Owens, arguing that”to the contrary, Candice, you were loved and respected by almost all the Jews including myself … [but] you went on your own downward spiral and, instead of stopping to rectify it, you blamed everyone around you and here we are today, with no going back.”

Because they are so obsessed with me. Feeling is mutual now.

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) November 3, 2025

Owens’ initial tweet did not explicitly mention Jews, Israel, or pro-Israel Americans, but she has repeatedly suggested, without any evidence, that Israel was involved in Kirk’s murder. Tyler Robinson, 22, has been charged for murdering Kirk and potentially faces the death penalty. He was romantically involved with his transgender roommate, and prosecutors have reportedly argued that Kirk’s anti-trans rhetoric was a key factor that allegedly led him to shoot the Turning Point USA founder.

However, Owens began to speculate that the official story of the killing was actually just a cover-up for a plot by the US government and Israel. She claimed that Kirk began to turn against Israel in the months leading up to his killing, and that he felt afraid because he was being pressured by Jewish donors.

“About 48 hours before Charlie Kirk died, Charlie informed people at Turning Point, as well as Jewish donors and a rabbi, that he had no choice but to abandon the pro-Israel cause outright,” Owens claimed on her podcast. “He just, 48 hours later, conveniently caught a bullet to the throat, before our on-stage reunion could happen.”

Owens also has alleged that 12 Israeli phones were on the campus the day Kirk got shot and suggested that it is a reason to believe Israel may have been behind it. Users on social media have pointed out that Kirk’s assassination occurred at a university campus with many students from dozens of countries, including Israel, which would likely explain the phones, if her claims were true.

However, there is no proof that Israel or Jews were involved with Kirk’ds assassination in any way. In the aftermath of his killing, there was an outpouring of support and mourning from Israeli officials and the Jewish community.

Moreover, Kirk’s producer and a recently published letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from Kirk both contradict Owens’ claims and reveal the murdered activist was a strong supporter of the Jewish state right up to his death.

Since starting her own show, Owens has made subjects such as Israel and Jews top priorities.

In June, she suggested that New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani was an Israeli plant, that Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel was lying about being in the Holocaust, and that Israel is the “master of the universe” that plants characters into stories so that it can control them.

In January, Owens attacked the Babylon Bee — a conservative Christian satire organization — for making a joke about her fixation on Jews.

“It’s just very obvious they are worshipping Israel,” Owens said. “That they base their jokes on people who don’t worship Israel and ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu.” She also referred to the Babylon Bee as the “Zionist Bee” and the “Babylonian Talmudic Bee.”

Last July, Owens claimed that the Star of David originated from an evil, child-sacrificing, pagan deity and has only become associated with Judaism within the past few hundred years.

In a June episode, Owens argued that “it seems like our country [the US] is being held hostage by Israel.” She lamented, “I’m going to get in so much trouble for that. I don’t care.”

In the same episode, Owens claimed US Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was “wading into some dangerous waters” when, during an interview with host Tucker Carlson, he spoke about how effective the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is at lobbying members of Congress and suggested the group should have to register as a foreign agent that is acting on behalf of Israel.

The reason it was dangerous, Owens said, was because “we know there was once a president that wanted to make AIPAC register, and he ended up shot … so Thomas Massie better be careful.”

Owens was referencing the fact that former US President John F. Kennedy wanted the American Zionist Council, a lobby group, to register as a foreign agent.

However, there is no evidence the group had anything to do with Kennedy’s assassination.

AIPAC is a lobbying group comprised of American citizens that seeks to foster bipartisan support for the US-Israel alliance.

Weeks later, Owens promoted a series of talking points downplaying the atrocities of the Holocaust and said experiments by Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele performed on Jews during World War II sounded “like bizarre propaganda.”