Uncategorized
Meet the 83-year-old Jewish activist who stars in Zohran Mamdani’s campaign ads
(JTA) — When Zohran Mamdani’s first TV ad of the general election went live last week, the first person viewers saw was an 83-year-old Jewish woman from the Upper West Side.
Rosalind Petchesky, a retired political scientist and progressive activist, has become a recurring star of Mamdani’s social media video campaign, which is widely seen as crucial to vaulting him from a local politician in Queens to the frontrunner for mayor.
“I used to love New York,” Petchesky says at the beginning of the 30-second spot. “But now, it’s just where I live.”
The ad then shifts to a hopeful tone centered around Mamdani’s message of affordability, with the title, “Things Can Change.”
The real-life Petchesky says the sentiment didn’t actually resonate with her. “I kept thinking, ‘I wouldn’t say I used to love New York. I still love New York! I never didn’t love New York,’” she said, laughing, in an interview.
But she said she was not bothered that a second, more hopeful line she’d initially spoken — “But now, I feel like everything’s starting to change” — had ended up on the cutting-room floor.
“I think they must have decided the positive part was going to be done by Zohran, so they didn’t need that,” Petchesky said. “To me, it’s just another way of helping the campaign. And they want me to do something? I do it.”
How did Petchesky come to be a loyal volunteer for Mamdani, a half-century her junior? As with many of Mamdani’s earliest Jewish supporters, the answer lies in opposition to Israel.
Petchesky is a longtime critic of the country, since she first visited as a teenager in 1959. Active for the last decade in Jewish Voice for Peace, the anti-Zionist organization, she first met Mamdani in May 2023 when she and other JVP members travelled to the state legislature in Albany to lobby for his Not On Our Dime Act. The legislation, which failed to advance, proposed blocking New York nonprofits from supporting Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Petchesky has been involved with JVP since retiring from teaching at Hunter College in 2013. During her scholarly career, Petchesky earned a MacArthur Fellowship (known as the “genius award”) in 1995, and became recognized as a “leading theorist on international reproductive rights.” A feminist activist and thinker, Petchesky’s work has dovetailed with the Israel-Palestine conflict. In 2021 she co-edited the book, “A Land With a People: Palestinians and Jews Confront Zionism.”
After meeting Mamdani in Albany, Petchesky said the pair had “a number of encounters that were fascinating and fun” in the following months.
Mamdani posted a photo of the two linking arms at a demonstration on Oct. 13, 2023, less than a week after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, calling on Sen. Chuck Schumer to support a ceasefire. The pair were among the 60 New Yorkers arrested that night for blocking traffic outside Schumer’s home.
“Rosalind Petchesky is an 81-year old Jewish New Yorker who deeply inspires me,” Mamdani wrote in his post about that night.
“As we sat handcuffed on the bus to the police precinct, Ros told me that she’d been away from home for two weeks and had only gotten back that day,” he wrote. “She was supposed to be at home that night eating dinner with her partner, but she decided she couldn’t be at home when we were on the brink of genocide.”
A few months later, Mamdani and Petchesky appeared on the “Laura Flander & Friends” podcast together, along with JVP member Jay Saper. The episode, titled “Organizing for Ceasefire Through Policy & Protest: Meet the People of JVP & NY Assemblymember Mamdani,” focused on JVP’s and Mamdani’s pro-Palestinian activism and their efforts with the Not On Our Dime Act.
Petchesky spoke about the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, including through a feminist lens, saying she sees “Israeli persecution of Palestinians as a form of reproductive injustice and attack on families.” She also spoke about Canadian-Israeli peace activist Vivian Silver, who was killed on Oct. 7, 2023 when Hamas attacked and killed over 100 people at her home community, Kibbutz Be’eri.
“Vivian Silver was amazing,” Petchesky said. “She actually helped ferry Palestinian children from Gaza to hospitals in Israel. She worked with Gazans. … It’s horrible that she was killed and we don’t know for sure whose bombs killed her.”
By the time Mamdani launched his mayoral campaign in October 2024, the two had formed a “deep bond of trust,” Petchesky said — enough so that he asked her to be in his announcement video.
“I’ll make buses fast and free,” Mamdani says in the video. “So I can just get where I’m going,” Petchesky says defiantly.
“He called me up at home and said, ‘We’re gonna send a car for you. We want you to come to Astoria and be in this video,’” Petchesky recalled.
She added, “He wanted an old lady to talk about buses. And I’m the person he first thought of, because he knew me.”
Petchesky said she’s most excited to see Mamdani bring together Black, Asian, Latinx and Jewish activists to “stand up to Trump and ICE”; to make a rent freeze happen; and to instate free buses for all New Yorkers — the democratic socialist candidate’s most prominent pledges. But it’s clear that her vision around Israel also overlaps with Mamdani’s — and while some critics say Mamdani’s stances on Israel amount to antisemitism, Petchesky countered that those accusations discount the segment of Jews who share Mamdani’s views.
“There’s a big split in what’s called the Jewish community — there’s no single Jewish community,” she said. “There’s many.”
Petchesky’s own Jewish story involved a decades-long breach — and a return through her involvement with JVP.
During the podcast with Mamdani, Petchesky spoke about her experience growing up in an observant Jewish family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, before recoiling from Judaism after witnessing racism during a 1959 trip to Israel.
She expanded on that experience in a recent interview. She said she sang in the temple choir with her mother but became disaffected after returning from Israel and sharing what she’d witnessed. A local rabbi dismissed her concerns, she said.
“I was very angry, and when I went to college I said, ‘I’m done, I’m not going to synagogue anymore, these people are hypocrites, I have nothing to do with it,’” said Petchesky, who was involved in civil rights advocacy at the time. “I was young, you know, I was just angry.”
After decades of being disconnected from Judaism, Petchesky said she accompanied a grieving friend to a service at B’nai Jeshurun, a non-denominational synagogue on the Upper West Side. Petchesky said she began attending more regularly; she was a fan of the rabbi, and felt particularly moved by the music.
But she stopped attending when she felt the rabbi at the time did not take a strong stance against the Iraq War. After a few years of unsuccessfully trying other places (“They were all, what I would say is too Zionist, they were supporting Israel”), she was introduced to JVP in 2013.
“I felt, after all those years and decades, I had found my political home,” said Petchesky, who attends services at Kolot Chayeinu, the progressive synagogue where Mamdani and City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is a member, attended a Rosh Hashanah service. (Lander has joked that Kolot Chayeinu is a place where JVP Jews and J Street Jews come together, with “minimal side-eye.”)
About a decade after finding her political home with JVP, Petchesky’s path became intertwined with Mamdani’s. And when JVP’s political branch organized a celebratory “Jews for Zohran” event this August, following his primary victory, Mamdani gave Petchesky a shoutout while speaking to the crowd of more than 150.
“It is lovely to see so many of you,” Mamdani said before singling out Petchesky. “It is lovely to see the star of our launch video, who is right here, who ‘just wants to get where she’s going.’”
Petchesky was just one of Mamdani’s many Jewish allies at the event, but her shoutout drew a big applause.
“I don’t know, I mean we kind of bonded,” Petchesky said of her and Mamdani. “I think he’s just fond of me — you know, little old Jewish lady who gets arrested.”
Unlike with her comment in the new ad, Petchesky said her role in the campaign announcement video has resonated with her more as time has passed.
“At the time I thought, ‘Oh, that’s nice,’” she said. “And between that video and now, I’m realizing that will really help me. I mean I stood and waited 15 minutes the other day for the bus. I finally did sit down, but it was very hard.”
She added, “I almost did yell out on the bus, ‘People! Vote for Zohran because we’ll have free fast buses!”
The post Meet the 83-year-old Jewish activist who stars in Zohran Mamdani’s campaign ads appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Hamas Uses Sydney Terror Attack to Reaffirm Its Doctrine of Killing Jews Worldwide
A Palestinian man points a weapon in the air after it was announced that Israel and Hamas agreed on the first phase of a Gaza ceasefire, in the central Gaza Strip, October 9. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Following Sunday’s terror attack in Sydney where Muslim terrorists murdered at least 15 people and wounded 29 others, Hamas’ official television channel, Al-Aqsa TV, published a post seeking to legitimize the killing of one of the victims, Rabbi Eli Schlanger.
The post emphasized that Rabbi Schlanger had traveled to Israel in October 2023 and met with Israeli soldiers to show support following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre. Al-Aqsa TV published photos of the rabbi with Israeli soldiers, portraying this act of solidarity as evidence that he had “assisted” Israel in what Hamas calls a “war of annihilation.”
Posted text:“Pictures published on the pages of settlers of Rabbi Eli Schlanger, an emissary of the Chabad Movement who was killed [on Dec. 14, 2025] in an attack on a Jewish [Hanukkah] celebration in Sydney at a time when he was meeting with soldiers from the occupation [i.e., Israeli] army in order to assist them in the war of annihilation.”
[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), Telegram channel, Dec. 14, 2025]
Under this framework, Hamas portrays a Jewish religious leader attending a holiday celebration in Australia as a legitimate target because he once expressed solidarity with Israelis after October 7.
Hamas, however, does not need a military connection, political activity, or personal responsibility to legitimize the killing of Jews by Muslims.
The claim that Rabbi Eli Schlanger met with Israeli soldiers is merely a post-hoc rationalization, designed to disguise Hamas’ core belief that Jews must be killed because they are guilty of the crime of being Jews.
In one of its music videos calling for Palestinians to murder Jews, Hamas published this poster with the words: “Killing Jews is worship that draws us close to Allah:”
This principle is also enshrined explicitly in its charter — and it defines how Hamas views Jewish civilians and acts of terror against Jews everywhere.
Article 7 of the Hamas Charter presents this as a divine command, quoting an Islamic hadith:
The time (of Resurrection) will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me—come and kill him!’
[Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6985]
This is not a call to fight Israelis. It is not a reference to soldiers. The target is Jews as Jews, wherever they are.
What happened in Sydney was a direct application of Hamas’ ideology.
Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is the Founder and Director of PMW, where a version of this article first appeared.
Uncategorized
Australian authorities confirm that Bondi Beach attackers were affiliated with Islamic State terror group
(JTA) — The father-and-son duo who killed 15 people during an attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney on Sunday were motivated by “Islamic State ideology,” Australian authorities have confirmed.
Australian media had reported on Monday that the country’s intelligence service had previously investigated Naveed Akram, the son, over his ties to members of an Islamic State cell in Sydney.
On Tuesday, officials confirmed the account and revealed that both Naveed Akram and his father Sajid spent most of November in a region of the Philippines where the Islamic State maintains a stronghold. Officials believe the pair received military training there, though they would not say whether the trip had alarmed security officials at the time.
“It would appear that there is evidence that this was inspired by a terrorist organization, by ISIS,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said at a press conference on Tuesday. He confirmed that Islamic State flags had been found in Naveed Akram’s car, abandoned at the scene of the shooting.
The revelations complicate the narrative that emerged immediately after the attack connecting it to Australia’s recent pro-Palestinian protest movement, which has at times featured antisemitic displays and attacks on Jewish sites.
But the Islamic State and Hamas, the leading Palestinian liberation organization whose attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, triggered the war in Gaza, have historically been at odds, with the Sunni Islamic State openly viewing Hamas as insufficiently Islamic and an avatar of Iran and Shia Islam.
The Islamic State is a decades-old terrorist group that for a time acted as al-Qaeda’s affiliate and promotes Islamic fundamentalism; its enemy, broadly speaking, is the West and its targets have ranged from Christian churches to concerts to public festivities. Last year, an Islamic State-inspired operative killed 14 people at a New Year’s street party in New Orleans, and the group claimed credit for an attack on a Moscow concert hall that killed more than 140.
Hamas, on the other hand, sought to impose some strictures of Islamic law in Gaza, which it has controlled, but allows a far more permissive religious and cultural environment. Its express goal is the elimination of Israel, and attacks staged by its affiliates abroad, typically supported by Iranian cells, have tended to target Jewish and Israeli sites — as has been the case in Australia, which recently expelled the Iranian ambassador over his country’s alleged ties to a string of attacks on synagogues.
In the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, the Israeli government promoted an equivalency between the two groups, citing their similarly brutal tactics. But some experts in terror movements balked at the comparison.
“The Islamic State literally views Hamas as apostates and IS supporters have been pillaging Hamas online since Saturday bc they are tools of Shia Iran and also don’t actually implement sharia [Islamic law] according to IS’s interpretations,” Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow Washington Institute for Near East Policy, tweeted at the time.
But two years of war in Gaza that activated pro-Palestinian sentiment in many places around the world may have shifted the distinctions between the movements, according to terrorism experts, who also say the Islamic State has become more decentralized over time.
Rommel Banlaoi, a political scientist focused on terrorism in the Philippines, told the New York Times this week that a December 2023 attack on a Catholic mass there had marked a turning point for the group.
“Before, the focus was on creating an Islamic state,” Banlaoi said. “Now it has transformed to helping Muslims, Palestinians displaced by the Middle East violence.”
In part, the shift may reflect an opportunistic approach to the masses of people activated online in support of the Palestinian cause. A “Worldwide Threat Assessment” prepared by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in May said the Islamic State and al-Qaeda were showing signs of trying to capitalize on a new audience.
“Both groups continue to reference Israeli operations in Gaza to galvanize their global networks, recruit new members, generate revenue, and enable or inspire attacks against U.S., Israeli, Jewish, and European interests worldwide,” the report said.
An unnamed “senior Arab security official” told the Washington Post in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack that online activism tied to the Islamic State had surged during the war in Gaza. “They are exploiting the emotional outrage of Muslims and use reports of [Muslim] women and children being killed or allegedly starved as tools of recruitment,” the security official said.
Counterterrorism experts also believe that an increased focus on threats related directly to the war in Gaza could have undercut those trying to monitor and stop the Islamic State. Brett Holmgren, then a top counterterrorism official in the Biden administration, for example, said at an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies last year that the Islamic State was regrouping “as governments shifted attention and resources to the conflict in Gaza.”
The Islamic State has not claimed responsibility for the Bondi Beach attack, which was immediately condemned by the governments of Arab states that are supportive of the Palestinian cause. Authorities have not said whether the attackers left any record of their intentions or motivation beyond the Islamic State flags found in their car.
The post Australian authorities confirm that Bondi Beach attackers were affiliated with Islamic State terror group appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
New footage emerges of Jewish man trying to disarm Bondi Beach shooters before massacre
(JTA) — An elderly Jewish man sought to stop the Bondi Beach Hanukkah attackers and was their first victim, according to dramatic dashcam footage that emerged on Tuesday.
Boris Gurman, 69, came upon the attackers as they exited their car and confronted them, according to the footage, which first appeared on Chinese social media after being posted by a Sydney resident and has been verified by Australian media as well as his family.
The grainy footage shows Gurman appearing to have been able to take hold of one gun before the attacker retrieves another weapon and shoots him. The footage shows Gurman, wearing a purple shirt, being thrown to the ground during the confrontation with the attackers, whom authorities have identified as Sajid and Naveed Akram.
Boris Gurman’s wife Sofia, 61, was also murdered at the outset of the attack, which ultimately killed 15 people who had gathered for a Chabad Hanukkah celebration on the beach.
The couple, immigrants to Australia, had been married for nearly 35 years and had retired from their jobs as a mechanic and postal worker.
“In the moments before their passing, Boris — with Sofia courageously beside him — attempted to intervene to protect others,” said a statement accompanying a crowdfunding campaign to benefit their family, including son Alex. “This act of bravery and selflessness reflects exactly who they were: people who instinctively chose to help, even at great personal risk. While nothing can lessen the pain of this loss, we feel immense pride in their courage and humanity.”
The footage adds new details to what is known about the massacre, which unfolded over more than 10 minutes on Sunday evening, the first night of Hanukkah.
A different man who tried and failed to stop the shooting by tackling and disarming one of the shooters, Ahmed al Ahmed, has been hailed for his heroism and had more than $1.3 million raised on his behalf, including from Jewish donors from around the world.
Meanwhile the daughter of Reuven Morrison, a Jewish man killed in the massacre, said he had been the one caught on camera throwing bricks at the shooter after al Ahmed’s intervention.
“If there was one way for him to go on this earth, it would be fighting a terrorist,” Sheina Gutnick told CBS News about her father. “There was no other way he would be taken from us. He went down fighting, protecting the people he loved most.”
The post New footage emerges of Jewish man trying to disarm Bondi Beach shooters before massacre appeared first on The Forward.