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On the streets of Tel Aviv, protesters on cusp of a big victory vow to keep fighting
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Yaniv, a resident of Tel Aviv, has lost count of how many protests he’s been to during the past three months. But on Monday afternoon, he headed once again to Kaplan Street, the urban artery that has become ground zero of the anti-government demonstrations, to demonstrate once again.
Israel’s current rupture, said Yaniv, 34, is the “biggest crisis in my lifetime.”
“We’ll keep going until something changes,” he said. “They left us no choice. The damage has been done.”
Week after week, Yaniv and tens of thousands of other Israelis have filled the streets of Tel Aviv to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed overhaul of the country’s judiciary — which would sap the Supreme Court of much of its power and influence. Then, on Sunday night, massive protests again took shape to oppose Netanyahu’s firing of his defense minister, who called for a pause on the legislation.
Now, the following day, the protesters came with a different feeling: that their activism might actually succeed, at least in the short term. After people gathered in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and elsewhere, Netanyahu announced that he would pause the legislation to allow time for dialogue. Several of his ministers had already called for him to do just that.
Justin Jacobs, a recent immigrant to Israel from the United States, said he is hopeful about the outcome of the protest movement. (Deborah Danan)
But even as the campaign to stall the legislation was poised to achieve an at least temporary victory, protesters were not in a celebratory mood. They vowed to continue demonstrating against what some described as Netanyahu’s broader authoritarian impulses.
“You see how the liberal voice that has been missing for so long is returning to the street and has become the mainstream,” said Ben Luria, a resident of Jaffa protesting in Tel Aviv. “It looks like they’ve succeeded in passing the message across.”
But for Luria, that success doesn’t translate into any desire to ease the pressure. “You can’t deny that this is no longer just a question of Bibi being Bibi, this is a dictator in the making,” he added, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “We need to put the line somewhere.”
Even as Israelis were glued to their TV screens, waiting to hear Netanyahu announce a suspension of the legislation, Daria, who immigrated to Israel with her family from what is now Russia, did not pin her hopes on Netanyahu changing course.
“I don’t think that even if they stop this legislation, they will stop anything else,” said Daria, who came to the protest with Yaniv and, like him, declined to give her last name. “Even if they say they’ll postpone until Pesach or for forever, that doesn’t mean that we stop protesting what this government is doing.”
Sunday night’s protests were followed by a countrywide general strike. Blocked streets and canceled bus routes in downtown Tel Aviv meant that a 20-minute journey to a high-risk pregnancy clinic on Monday instead took an hour and a half for Natalie Solomon, who is eight-and-a-half months pregnant. She said she hoped Netanyahu would concede and spare Israelis further disruption.
“Our country is falling apart,” she said, expressing her hope that an end to the political standoff is near. “I really hope Bibi backs down today, that’s the only option. … We care about democracy but we really just care about the health of our baby.
At the end of the day it really does disrupt day-to-day lives.”
Despite being on the cusp of their first major victory, protesters said the potential respite offered by Netanyahu would be a minor gesture, not one that could overcome the hard feelings that have built up over the past three months.
Justin Jacobs, an immigrant to Israel from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said Israel has “turned a corner” after Sunday night’s protests.”So, [there’s] a glimmer of hope that we’ll go back to the status quo, which to me remains not good enough,” he said. “But not good enough is still better than horrifying.”
Others were less optimistic. “My feeling, the feeling of my parents, my grandparents, [is] that there’s no future here, I don’t know if I’ll raise kids here,” said Yotam Weingrad.
Like Weingrad, Daria, recalling her family’s experience, is also considering her future in the Jewish state.
Yariv and Daria, left, walk in Tel Aviv after participating in anti-government protests on Monday, March 27, 2023; at right, Natalie Solomon said her trip to a high-risk pregnancy clinic took more than four times longer than normal because of the protests. (Deborah Danan)
“I grew up in a family with intimate knowledge of what it feels like to live under oppression, and I feel like it’s our duty to do whatever we can to prevent it,” she said. “But if push comes to shove, if nothing’s going to change, I’ll make the same decision my parents did — my kids aren’t going to live in a dictatorship.”
For those not emotionally invested in the Israeli crisis, the streets of Tel Aviv on Monday provided a rare experience, and a sense of uncertainty. Jennifer, a tourist from Utah visiting Israel with her two daughters, Holly and Diana, wanted to know if “it is going to get scary” and wondered if they’d be able to get back to the United States, as airports had closed due to the general strike.
“We’ve never been to this part of the world so we’re kind of like ‘Wow,’ just taking in everything,” said Diana. “We don’t know what it’s like without the protests, and we’re like, ‘This is Tel Aviv. It’s a lot.’”
Support for the protests isn’t unanimous across Tel Aviv, a bastion of left-wing politics in Israel. Josh Eidelshtein called the protests “hypocritical,” and blamed them for fanning the flames of conflict.
“What if the protesters were right-wingers, Orthodox Jews, or Palestinians?” he said. “Would their strategies still be OK? There is too much hate being bred here, and it’s as if the collective stress and anxiety this country has lived on for so long has been set aflame. The same people who went out to vote [for the left] are now trying to work against the system because they didn’t get what they wanted.”
Khalil, who originally hails from the Arab village of Ein Hawd in Israel’s north, and has lived in Tel Aviv for 50 years, also opted to stay away from the protests, which he felt did not speak for him.
“The Arabs are a minority, what do they have to do with these protests?” Khalil said as he walked his dog near a giant yellow sign reading “Nonstop Democracy,” painted by the Tel Aviv municipality on the boardwalk.
“Bibi has done good things but now he’s silent. This is a man who knows how to speak,” Khalil said. Then, referring to Netanyahu’s coalition partners, he added, “He’s not the king of Israel anymore. He made big mistakes by taking those criminals into the government with him. They want to throw out all the Arabs.”
Also sitting out the protests was Meir Dayan, who counts himself among the supporters of Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reform. He is especially in favor of the legislation that was due to be brought for a final vote on Monday, which would have increased the governing coalition’s control over Supreme Court appointments. But Dayan added that he didn’t appreciate the way Netanyahu attempted to pass the measures into law.
The path along the beach in Tel Aviv has been painted with pro-democracy messages. (Deborah Danan)
“The way they went about it was reckless,” he said. “Change to heavy organizational processes — because this is what this basically is, after all — doesn’t happen with legislation, it happens with people. It must be bottom-up and from a place of education, not ignorance.”
Dayan predicted that Netanyahu will halt the legislation now, and then in the summer months “when the left are overseas,” he will return it to the Knesset floor.
Roughly four miles away from the main protest, a smaller demonstration coalesced near Jaffa’s clocktower, a landmark at the entrance to Tel Aviv’s older counterpart. At this protest, children as young as 5 chanted “Shame!” and “Save Democracy!” while their parents stood to the side.
“Here the adults are quiet so the children are taking the lead. It’s exciting,” said Gavri, 10.
There are a few things he’d like to bring about in Israeli society: the failure of the judicial overhaul, as well as an end to fighting between Jews and Arabs. Like the adults protesting across the city, he vowed not to give up.
“I will be here until the end,” he said. “I hope it won’t be a long time.”
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NYC Officials Sue Mamdani Over Failure to Disclose Docs on Decision to Scrap IHRA Definition of Antisemitism
Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Democratic New York City mayoral primary debate, June 4, 2025, in New York, US. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Pool via REUTERS
A group of Queens elected officials and civic leaders has filed suit against New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, accusing his administration of stonewalling a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request related to his decision to revoke an executive order adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
The lawsuit centers on Mamdani’s move on his first day in office in January to rescind a series of executive orders issued by his predecessor, former Mayor Eric Adams, to combat antisemitism. Among the orders revoked was one formally adopting the IHRA definition, which has been widely embraced by governments and institutions across the democratic world.
Plaintiffs include Queens Councilmembers Joann Ariola and Vickie Paladino, along with Queens Civic Congress President Warren Schreiber, the Queens Daily Eagle reported last week.
They argue that the mayor’s office has failed to provide adequate transparency regarding the rationale behind rescinding the IHRA order, a move critics say weakened the city’s formal commitment to combating antisemitism at a time of rising anti-Jewish incidents both locally and nationally.
“The purpose of the FOIL applications at issue in this proceeding is to decipher and obtain the documentary trail of information illuminating Mayor Mamdani’s motives, policies, programs, legislative initiatives, and budgetary priorities implicated within the EO [executive order],” the lawsuit reads.
In their filing, the plaintiffs accuse the administration of having “stonewalled, deflected, delayed, and denied” their FOIL request, calling the response timeline “arbitrary and capricious.” Although the city’s Law Department acknowledged receipt of the request and projected a response date in April, the plaintiffs contend that such delays are unacceptable given the gravity of the issue. The lawsuit characterizes Mamdani’s actions as “anti-Israel” and “anti-Jewish.”
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations. Law enforcement also uses it as a tool for matters such as hate-crime investigations and sentencing.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
Jewish community advocates have expressed alarm that rescinding the executive order could signal a retreat from clear standards at a moment when antisemitic incidents have surged in the two years following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
The Israeli government and leading US Jewish groups sharply criticized Mamdani’s decision.
Mamdani’s supporters say the move was part of a broader action by Mamdani to revoke all executive orders issued by Adams since Sept. 26, 2024, when the ex-mayor was indicted for corruption, charges of which have since been dismissed. Mamdani’s office has framed the move as an administrative reset rather than a targeted policy shift, saying the new mayor sought to begin his term with a clean slate.
However, critics argue that lumping the IHRA adoption together with other rescinded orders was, at best, careless and, at worst, reflective of an ideological discomfort with pro-Israel policy frameworks.
The New York Times reported last month that Mamdani “knew from the moment he won the election” in November that he would revoke the executive orders related to Israel and antisemitism but believed rescinding them would upset Jewish groups whose concerns he spent months trying to allay. Therefore, the report continued, Mamdani’s team laid out a few options, and he chose to rescind every order that Adams issued after his indictment, “allowing him to frame the choice as a matter of good governance.”
The lawsuit now seeks a court order compelling the mayor’s office to produce internal communications and documentation explaining the decision-making process behind the revocation.
The IHRA definition could have been problematic for Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and avowed anti-Zionist who has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career and been widely accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric. A supporter of boycotting all entities tied to Israel, he has repeatedly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state; routinely accused Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide”; and refused to clearly condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been used to call for violence against Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Leading members of the Jewish community in New York have expressed alarm about Mamdani’s electoral victory, fearing what may come in a city already experiencing a surge in antisemitic hate crimes.
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China Unleashes ‘Antisemitic Wave’ Amid Gaza Conflict, New Report Shows
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands as they meet, in Beijing, China, Sept. 2, 2025. Photo: Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
The Chinese Communist Party has embraced overt antisemitic messaging in its domestic propaganda in recent years, according to a new report which ties the move to both geopolitical rivalry with the United States and efforts to curry favor with Arab and Muslim countries hostile to Israel.
The Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), a prominent think tank based in Israel, documents in the report how China’s authoritarian government has deliberately cultivated antisemitism among the population and internationally as a strategy.
One key trend detailed by the study’s author, JPPI senior fellow Shalom Salomon Wald, is the way in Chinese media that Israel, Jews, and Judaism have grown conflated.
“In popular discourse, Israel and Jews are more or less synonymous. This is not much different from the West, where the anti-Israeli presentation of the Gaza war by official and social media is regularly causing verbal and physical violence against local Jews,” Wald writes. “Chinese officials, intellectuals, and news providers are generally aware of the difference between Israel and world Jewry. Officials acknowledge the distinction when it suits them, for example, when they insist that their criticism of Israel has no antisemitic connotation. They often fail to draw the distinction when it does not suit them.”
The report identifies 2021 as when “the Chinese government chose to harden its attitude toward Israel and its Jewish supporters. Chinese contacts informed some Israeli experts of this policy change. Whether [Chinese President] Xi Jinping himself made the relevant decisions is not known. No single reason, but a convergence of events caused this change.”
Writing in The Jerusalem Post, Wald identifies at least three factors driving China’s shift toward anti-Zionism.
The first is economic, with Israel walking back its relationship with China under US pressure.
“Israel, admonished by the United States, made Chinese investments, particularly in hi-tech and infrastructure projects, more difficult,” he writes. “The Chinese expressed their resentment quite openly.”
The second is geopolitical. “China was in the midst of expanding its presence in the Arab Middle East, offering major economic cooperation and long-lasting political ties,” Wald explains. “A harder attitude against Israel was a cheap sweetener for such offers.”
The third is the perception that, due to internal issues, Israel has grown weaker: “Israel’s domestic crisis eroded its ‘strongman’ image in Chinese eyes. A country wracked by mass demonstrations and numerous ineffective elections could no longer be taken as seriously as it had been.”
However, recent Israel-Hamas conflicts in Gaza were also key catalysts for upticks in antisemitism.
“Antisemitic waves washed over China’s social and official media following the Gaza conflicts of 2021 and 2023-25. They were authorized, if not initiated, by the Chinese government in pursuit of China’s political goals and based on anti-Jewish tropes,” states the report, which notes the hostility especially surged following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
“Chinese media began spreading antisemitic tropes under the cover of criticism of Israel’s military actions,” it continues. “While similar denunciations conflating Israel, Zionists, and Jews occurred in other countries too, in China all political speech is tightly monitored and censored if it is not in line with official positions. If antisemitism was spreading on China’s media, it meant that it was officially sanctioned. It appeared in government sources and public media, in social media, and in universities.”
Wald notes in the JPPI report that Beijing’s turn toward antisemitism will have a long-term impact on education.
“Universities are among the most influential promoters of Chinese antisemitism,” he states. “As they train China’s next generation, they risk transmitting current prejudices to some of China’s future leaders. Today, almost all Chinese government leaders and most Communist Party high officials are university graduates.”
The report describes how the rise in academic antisemitism in China has destroyed years of positive scholarship, quoting Prof. Ping Zhang of Tel Aviv University who said that “the foundation of the good relationship built between the two sides over the past three decades has been shattered.”
JPPI’s research notes that during the 20th century, China’s leaders originally supported Zionism. Sun Yat-sen, the first provisional president of the Republic of China and known today as the “father of modern China,” wrote in 1920 to the head of the Shanghai Zionist Association that he favored the “movement to restore your wonderful and historic nation which has contributed so much to the civilization of the world.” Similarly, in 1948 the Communist Party’s People’s Daily praised the founding of Israel.
Since then, however, China’s sympathies have shifted dramatically, recognizing a Palestinian state in 1988 and, more recently, moving closer to Hamas and Iran, whose leaders openly promote antisemitism and seek Israel’s destruction.
This month, for example, a Chinese military attaché in Tehran presented Brigadier General Bahman Behmard, commander of the Iranian Air Force, with a scale model of China’s J-20 fifth-generation stealth fighter. Even though no official contract was announced, experts interpreted the Chinese gesture as a sharp warning to the US and its ally Israel amid mounting fears of renewed conflict in the Middle East.
Days earlier, a new study revealed the extent to which the Iranian regime used Chinese technology to silence dissent during recent nationwide anti-government protests, imposing near-total internet shutdowns and disrupting satellite communications while carrying out a brutal crackdown. According to the international human rights organization Article 19, China has provided material and technical support to Iran since at least 2010, bolstering its surveillance and censorship capabilities as Chinese firms continue operating in the country despite international sanctions.
China, a key diplomatic and economic backer of Tehran, has moved to deepen ties with the regime in recent years, signing a 25-year cooperation agreement, holding joint naval drills, and continuing to purchase Iranian oil despite US sanctions.
China is the largest importer of Iranian oil, with nearly 90 percent of Iran’s crude and condensate exports going to Beijing.
According to some media reports, China may be even helping Iran rebuild its decimated air defenses and ballistic missile program following the 12-day war with Israel in June.
Closer to home, Beijing has also lambasted the Jewish state for its increasingly close ties with Taiwan. China considers Taiwan, a nearby island run by a democratic government, as a renegade Chinese province that must be reunited with the mainland — by force, if necessary.
In September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to a delegation of 250 US state legislators at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, warning of China’s role in demonizing Israel.
There is “an effort to besiege — not isolate as much as besiege Israel — that is orchestrated by the same forces that supported Iran,” Netanyahu said. One is China. And the other is Qatar. They are organizing an attack on Israel … [through] the social media of the Western world and the United States.”
That same month, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an Israeli think tank, released a report examining how China has increasingly used state media and covert campaigns to spread anti-Israel and antisemitic narratives in the US. The effort includes the promotion of conspiracy theories about “Jewish control” of politics, the economy, and the media.
While China’s primary aim is to target and undermine the United States, according to the study, Israel ends up suffering “collateral damage” as a result.
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The real Holocaust history behind ‘Papillon,’ the Oscar-nominated short about a star Jewish swimmer
(JTA) — At first glance, “Papillon” (Butterfly), the 15-minute Oscar-nominated animated short by veteran French filmmaker Florence Miailhe, may appear like a meditative journey through water and memory. An elderly man swims in a hand-painted sea, flashing back to childhood memories of being bullied and a loving mother who makes it all right.
As he cuts through the water and moves through time, the fuller context emerges: The sun-soaked beaches appear to be North Africa, the boy becomes a champion swimmer, a swastika tells you that he is competing in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and the soundtrack echoes with taunts of “Jew” and “kike.”
The film is based on the extraordinary real life of Alfred Nakache, a Jewish athlete whose story of resilience under Nazi persecution has previously been told in two French documentaries but is seldom remembered today.
Born in 1915 in French Algiers (his family immigrated from Iraq), Artem “Alfred” Nakache became one of France’s most celebrated swimmers in the 1930s, specializing in the butterfly stroke — a full-bodied lunge that looks like a bird, or butterfly, in flight. His success brought him to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, where he competed under the shadow of rising antisemitism in Nazi Germany (and was part of a freestyle relay team that didn’t medal, but finished ahead of the Germans).
Under Vichy, the Nazi puppet regime, Nakache was stripped of his French nationality and forced out of Paris. He joined the resistance underground while still competing for Vichy. On Nov. 20, 1943, Nakache and his wife and daughter were arrested by the Gestapo, and the family was separated at Auschwitz. Only Alfred survived. He later endured the death march to Buchenwald before liberation.
Despite these unimaginable losses, Nakache returned to swimming after the war, competing at the 1948 London Olympics. (He, gymnast Agnes Keleti and weightlifter Ben Helfgott are the only known Jewish survivors to have competed in the Olympics after the war.)
Nakache remained a swimmer the rest of his life, and died of a heart attack after a swim in the sea near the Spanish-French border in 1983.
Miailhe, a 70-year-old animator known for her labor-intensive oil and pastel on glass technique, has a personal connection to Nakache’s legacy. As a child, she took swim lessons with his younger brother Bernard and heard stories of his triumphs long before she understood their full historical weight. The end credits explain that her father also knew Alfred, whom he met in the resistance during the war.
“I hope people will be moved by Alfred Nakache’s story and rediscover it, because it’s not well-known in France,” Miailhe said in an interview with Deadline. “Also, we are living in some very troubled times in a world where racism and antisemitism are back.”
Produced by Oscar-winning animator Ron Dyens alongside Luc Camilli for Sacrebleu Productions and XBO Films, Papillon took roughly 100 days to animate — a testament to the craftsmanship that makes every frame an essay on the various qualities of water. The film has earned a César nomination (the French Academy Award) and a nomination at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and won the International Competition for best animated film at the Grand Prix at Stuttgart.
Amid the horrors of the Holocaust, the animated short also depicts the camaraderie among the athletes who swam — and stood — by Nakache’s side before and after the war.
“Some people denounced the Nakache family [to the Gestapo], but others saved Alfred when he returned from the camps,” Dyen told Deadline. “The whole tragedy of human duality is ultimately reflected in Nakache’s story.”
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