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Nick Fuentes apologized for assaulting a Jewish woman. This is her story.
(JTA) — Recently Nick Fuentes, the far-right influencer and unrepentant antisemite and misogynist, did something unusual for him: He apologized to a Jew.
Sort of.
The apology was court-ordered, and Fuentes himself was not present for it. His attorney handed a note to the recipient, 59-year-old Marla Rose, and quickly demanded it back before it could appear in public.
And it had nothing to do with Fuentes’s hate speech, but rather with a misdemeanor battery charge stemming from the 27-year-old streamer’s assault of Rose in late 2024 as she approached his front door.
Yet the incident and its aftermath have become one of the few ways in which Fuentes has been held accountable for some of his actions as his public influence has continued to grow. And for Rose, a freelance writer and self-described “jack-of-all-trades progressive activist” who does not typically foreground her Jewish identity, her up-close encounters with Fuentes have proved an education in other ways.
“My Jewish identity is also forged by social justice, of the history of speaking up for those who are oppressed,” she said in an interview. “I think that Jewish people have a long and beautiful history of social justice.”
Rose grew up in a family of “High Holiday Jews,” as she describes it, who came orginally from Russia and Ukraine. While her mother held a leadership role with the sisterhood of their local synagogue, today she doesn’t involve herself much in religious life; she also identifies as agnostic. And despite Fuentes’ constant torrent of antisemitic invective online, Rose said her own Jewish identity had little bearing on her decision to walk up to his door — though it wasn’t entirely absent, either.
“My culturally Jewish background is very aligned with what I did,” she said. “My heroes are people like Emma Goldman” — the Jewish socialist leader of the early 20th century.
Instead, it was the realization that the two lived in the same town — revealed when a Fuentes tweet after President Donald Trump’s reelection (“Your body, my choice”) led to his address being doxxed online.
When Rose saw his address listed as located in the Chicago suburb of Berwyn, Illinois, she drove the 10 minutes to his house and filmed the front of it to send to her friends. As she was filming, she recalled, someone drove by and asked if it was indeed Fuentes’ house. They dared her to knock on the door, and she agreed — a longtime political canvasser, she was used to knocking on strangers’ doors.
“I don’t believe that people should hide behind screens,” she said, about why she did it. “And since he did make this very public statement that contributes to violence against women and reducing our bodily autonomy, I figured … OK, what the hell, I’ll ask. I didn’t expect he would answer the door.”
But Fuentes did open the door. He pepper-sprayed Rose, shoved her off his porch and grabbed and stomped on her phone, breaking it. The experience was harrowing and, Rose says, unexpected: she didn’t think her approaching his property was grounds for assault. (Rose maintains she had not yet rung Fuentes’ doorbell, though the local police report stated she knocked on his door until he answered.)
After she decided to press charges a few days later, the state negotiated a deferred prosecution for Fuentes, rather than a trial. In exchange, Fuentes promised to complete 75 hours of community service, attend an anger management class, compensate Rose for the phone and offer the apology. But his attorneys kept pushing for extensions on completing the work, until Rose last month threatened to take him to trial in response to the delays.
That led to the court appearance last month, in which Fuentes’s attorneys produced two of the four required consequences: the phone repayment and the apology. Arguing that having a public apology circulating online would be unfair to their client, his attorneys instead handed Rose a paper note containing the apology before quickly withdrawing it.
“I was in shock,” Rose recalled, saying she had been blindsided by the new arrangement. “That’s not what we had agreed upon between us.”
Requests for comment to Fuentes’s attorney were not returned.
In her recollection, Rose described the apology as “a ChatGPT-type short letter.” Fuentes stated that he had “overreacted” to her presence, while noting several times that she was “uninvited.” His long history of hate speech was not mentioned, and he attended the hearing by Zoom instead of in person (his camera was also off, to her recollection). His attorneys had pushed for an additional delay on his completion of the community service and anger-management requirements.
“I’m still trying to find some sort of justice with that letter of apology,” she said.
In recent weeks, Fuentes — while keeping up his antisemitism — has staked out positions that some observers have found surprising. He’s loudly opposed war with Iran and even urged his followers to vote Democrat over Republican. His longstanding crusade against Israel is looking more and more in keeping with the growing consensus on the left, as well.
That has led some of Rose’s friends and fellow activists — “quote-unquote, ‘progressive people,’” as she describes them — to send her articles about Fuentes on Facebook, expressing seeming admiration that he has changed his tune. “I get a lot of messages from people who are like, ‘Wow, is Nick Fuentes changing his ways?’”
It dismays her; she knows better.
“It bothers me that people aren’t seeing the larger, broader context in which he’s making these new claims,” she said. “I think it’s 100% opportunistic. He’s trying to get more people to follow him.”
One way Fuentes does that, she acknowledges, is through Israel — a region where the left is vulnerable. “There are people who conflate Israel and Jewish people and Judaism, and whatever your views are on Zionism, conflate all those things together,” she reflected. “And it’s the perfect opportunity for a bad actor like Fuentes to jump in there and stir up more antisemitism and just lean into the tropes that are so ancient.”
The post Nick Fuentes apologized for assaulting a Jewish woman. This is her story. appeared first on The Forward.
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IDF Soldier from Connecticut Killed in Southern Lebanon Combat
Sgt. Moshe Yitzhak Hacohen Katz. Photo: courtesy.
i24 News – The Israel Defense Forces announced on Sunday morning the death of Sgt. Moshe Yitzhak Hacohen Katz, 22, originally from New Haven, Connecticut, who was killed during combat operations in southern Lebanon on Saturday.
According to the military, Katz was killed in a rocket attack targeting Israeli forces operating during efforts to expand a security zone in southern Lebanon. The IDF said the strike occurred overnight between Friday and Saturday, during a large-scale barrage aimed at units deployed in the area.
An initial military investigation found that one rocket directly hit an infantry unit from the 890th Battalion of the Paratroopers Brigade, killing Katz instantly. Three additional soldiers were wounded and are listed in moderate condition.
The IDF said the announcement of Katz’s death was delayed to ensure that all family members, including those in the United States, were properly notified.
The army also said that recent attacks have largely focused on the four IDF divisions operating in Lebanon. In the past 24 hours alone, approximately 250 rockets were launched toward Israeli positions, with 23 crossing into Israeli territory, according to military figures.
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AI-Generated Antisemitic Rabbi Racks Up Millions of Followers with Questionable Financial Advice
i24 News – An AI-generated character known as Rabbi Goldman has attracted millions of followers online by combining old antisemitic tropes with digital-age conspiracy theories. The avatar, presented as a caricature of a New York rabbi, plays off stereotypes of Jewish power and wealth while dispensing unsolicited “financial advice” and conspiracy-laden commentary about global elites.
In his videos, Rabbi Goldman claims that Jews have “known every secret for thousands of years,” weaving age-old prejudice into modern misinformation. Among his assertions: that the moon landing was faked, the US government will soon exert total control over its citizens, and billionaires stage yacht sinkings for insurance fraud—all allegedly foreknown by “the Jews.”
Before being removed on Sunday night, his Instagram account had racked up over 1.5 million followers. Yet the same page remains active on Facebook, which shares an owner with Instagram, with roughly 180,000 followers and thousands of interactions per post. The comments reveal an audience that is genuinely engaged with, and emboldened by, his vitriolic rhetoric.
Rabbi Goldman’s videos follow a simple formula designed to thrive in algorithm-driven ecosystems. They begin with a cryptic slogan implying secret knowledge or hidden wealth — invoking Jews as the keepers of these secrets — to draw viewers in and extend watch time, thus being featured on more people’s feeds. What follows is a cascade of AI-generated, factually dubious monologues, all culminating in a pitch: he can show you how to acquire the same “Jewish wisdom.”
That pitch leads to his website, where a manual titled How to Make and Invest Money sells for $9, and he claims it has been purchased by over 4,000 people. The real product, however, carries a fuller title — How to Make and Invest Money Like the Jews. The 62-page PDF amounts to generic, AI-spun financial advice labeled as “the Jewish method,” occasionally interspersed with random references to the Talmud. Just like the videos, it references how Jews have managed to be successful for thousands of years but offers little backup as to how that can translate to a real-world scenario.
Most of it plays off the stereotype of Jews being financially astute. But some lines, such as “Jews do not day trade… We buy the market — the entire market — and we hold it indefinitely,” remove the mask entirely.
Whether we like it or not, antisemitism thrives online—and platforms’ recent loosening of content restrictions under the banner of “free speech” has only amplified it. Social media has become an ideal environment for grifters to blend prejudice with profit. And that is, to their credit, what the creators of Rabbi Goldman have done.
They have clearly borrowed from the “manosphere” playbook—a cluster of influencers promoting hyper-masculine, materialistic lifestyles infused with misogyny and antisemitism. Like Andrew Tate and similar figures, Rabbi Goldman appeals to disaffected young men who feel alienated by the economy and society in which they live, eager to locate a scapegoat.
In Goldman’s case, the scapegoats are the elites and billionaires. But the framing of the Jews alongside the elites has, by proxy, made them the scapegoat too. By merging coded hatred with generic Instagram-style self-help language, the character transforms antisemitism into a marketable aesthetic.
So essentially, the creator of Rabbi Goldman has found a niche in an emerging market, playing off of antisemitism to sell cheaply produced slop to teenagers. Which is both entrepreneurial and morally awful. But the issue is that social media has bred the ground for this by rewarding shock content and letting antisemitism often go untouched. Even when they deleted his Instagram account, dozens of copycats popped up, including an absurdly ironic German-language version that uses the likeness of British politician Jeremy Corbyn.
And this is what happens when social media companies are reactive rather than proactive. They were chasing shadows after the account became so big. Instead, they need to cut it out at its source, be tougher on antisemitism, and be more vigilant with AI content.
And for social media users, it is hard to tell what’s real and what isn’t anymore. Just try not to get financial advice from an AI rabbi who thinks the moon landing was fake.
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Pezeshkian Clashes with IRGC Over Iran’s War Strategy and Economy
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit 2025, in Tianjin, China, September 1, 2025. Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Deep divisions have reportedly emerged within Iran’s leadership as the war enters its fifth week, with tensions growing between President Masoud Pezeshkian and senior figures in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to a report by Iran International.
The report by Iran International claims Pezeshkian has sharply criticized the military escalation strategy led by IRGC commanders, warning of severe economic consequences if the conflict continues.
He is said to have cautioned that without a ceasefire, Iran’s economy could “completely collapse within three weeks to a month.”
According to the same report, Pezeshkian has called for the restoration of executive and administrative authority to the civilian government, a demand reportedly rejected by IRGC leadership, including Ahmad Vahidi.
Vahidi is said to have pushed back, blaming the current crisis on the government’s failure to implement structural reforms prior to the war and recent protest movements.
Meanwhile, signs of economic strain are becoming increasingly visible across Iran. Reports from several major cities describe ATMs that are empty, out of service, or inaccessible, alongside repeated disruptions to online banking systems.
Public sector employees have also reported delays in salaries and benefits over the past three months.