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She represents the ‘worst of the worst.’ Now Judy Clarke is leading the defense in Pittsburgh synagogue massacre trial.
PITTSBURGH (Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle via JTA) — When Judy Clarke delivered her opening statement to the jury that will determine the fate of the man charged with committing the massacre in the Tree of Life synagogue building, she did not deny that her client was responsible.
In fact, she sympathized with the victims and their families.
Clarke, 71, began her address by acknowledging the horror of Oct. 27, 2018, and its aftermath.
“The tragedy that brings us together today,” she said in a soft-spoken yet confident voice, is “almost incomprehensible. It’s inexcusable. … Eleven lives were taken, others shattered. The loss that occurred is immeasurable.”
She told the jury there was “no disagreement, no doubt” about the identity of the perpetrator. It was “the man seated at that table,” she said, indicating her client. “He shot every person he saw and, in the process, injured others in their sacred spaces.”
Clarke was appointed to Robert Bowers’ defense team in December 2018, after he requested the counsel of a federal public defender specializing in death penalty cases. He faces 63 criminal counts related to his attack on congregations Dor Hadash, New Light and Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha. Many of the charges carry the death penalty.
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As the trial proceeds, Clarke won’t try to convince the jury her client isn’t guilty. A “win” for her defense team will be for the defendant to avoid a death sentence and instead have him remain in prison for the rest of his life.
Clarke has vast experience defending those whom some call “the worst of the worst.” Her roster of past clients includes Susan Smith, who murdered her two young sons by drowning them in a lake in South Carolina; Theodore Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber; Buford Furrow, a white supremacist who opened fire in a Jewish community center outside of Los Angeles in 1999; Eric Rudolph, who planted a bomb in Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a perpetrator of the Boston Marathon bombing.
Except for Tsarnaev — whose case is under appeal — Clarke succeeded in avoiding a death sentence for all her clients, either by negotiating a plea deal or by convincing the jury that mitigating factors, such as a mental illness, precluded imposition of the ultimate punishment.
Clarke’s team tried to negotiate a deal for a life sentence for Bowers in exchange for a guilty plea but was unsuccessful. Four and a half years after the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, the three-week jury selection process commenced on April 24 and testimony began on May 30.
“This is not a straightforward murder case,” Clarke told the jury in her opening statement. The federal charges — which include obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death — must be proved by showing the defendant had the requisite intent to commit those particular crimes, she said.
She acknowledged that her client’s actions on Oct. 27, 2018, were “reprehensible” and “misguided” and recounted his virulent social media postings and other rantings about Jews. But she also portrayed him as “quiet” and “socially awkward, a man with few friends.” He didn’t live on his own until he was 44, she said, and his family saw him as someone “more likely to commit suicide than kill others.”
It’s clear that Clarke is appalled by her client’s actions. It’s also clear that she is determined to see that his rights are protected and that the judge and the jury faithfully apply the rule of law.
“Judy is one of the best lawyers I’ve ever known,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angles and a former federal prosecutor. “She works insanely hard. She spends the time with the clients that she needs to. She doesn’t believe in the death penalty, and she’s devoted herself to representing people who are, you know — ‘the Voyage of the Damned’ is what she would say.”
Levenson, who has known Clarke for three decades, described her as “honest” and “very humble.”
“She doesn’t stand against the victims,” Levenson stressed. “I think she actually feels very much for the tragedy that occurred. But she has a job to do, which is to try to save her client’s life. And she does it with integrity.”
The two met during the Unabomber case, when Clarke was representing Kaczynski and Levenson was a legal commentator for CBS. Kaczynski at first resisted a plea deal sentencing him to life in prison because he did not want to admit to mental health issues.
Defense attorney Judy Clarke, at right, responds to questions at a press conference after the trial of Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski was delayed in Sacramento, California, Jan. 8, 1998.(Rich Pedroncelli/AFP via Getty Images)
“She had a very difficult client, one that I think a lot of people would just sort of throw up their hands and say, ‘What can I do?’” Levenson recalled. “And she was able to get him to agree to that plea, which probably saved his life.”
Ted Kaczynski’s brother, David Kaczynski, praised Clarke for her ability to see humanity, even in those who have committed unspeakable atrocities.
“She has a really good heart, a really good intention,” David Kaczynski said. “I think she really cares about her clients. I think she has a kind of unconditional commitment to their humanity. And, of course, that meant a lot to me, because as much as I deplore what my brother did in harming people, I love him. He’s my brother.”
“So it’s a very fine line to walk, representing the client who has clearly got some serious personal problem,” he continued. “Ted was quite a loner. He was very shy. He had a very difficult time connecting with anybody. And in this very difficult situation, Judy was able to be there for him, and I think that was really meaningful for Ted, that he had some support, some human connection at this time of crisis in his life.”
David Kaczynski has followed Clarke’s career and continues to be impressed with her “professionalism and sense of humility.”
“I think the legal profession is trained to be strictly analytical and adversarial,” he said. “And she somehow works within this environment in a way that preserves her humanity as she’s trying to make people aware of the humanity of someone whose very right to exist is in question.”
Some question whether a person who has committed a heinous crime deserves a zealous defense. Levenson insists they do.
Our judicial system is “best served” when capital defendants are provided with a high-caliber defense, Levenson said, because “it’s in these situations where people are so emotionally invested that we can get it wrong.”
In addition to being a former prosecutor, Levenson created the Loyola Project for the Innocent, which works to get those who are serving sentences for crimes they did not commit out of prison.
Defense attorney Judy Clarke, seen here in Pittsburgh in 2023, is representing the man accused of murdering 11 Jews during Shabbat services in Pittsburgh in 2018. (Screenshot from KDKA report)
“I’ve seen firsthand that there are far too many lawyers who just immediately assume that their client’s not only guilty but should get the most severe punishment — that there’s nothing to be said on their client’s behalf,” Levenson said. “And you and I both know there’s a lot more to any given case, and that even people who do terrible crimes have other aspects of their lives that the justice system should consider.”
“In our system, we are supposed to consider each case, each individual, the facts, and not only determine whether someone’s guilty but what should happen to them,” she continued. “And that works well. When you have a lawyer who’s just going through the motions — and the one thing you can say about Judy is she doesn’t just go through the motions — I think the public can have more confidence in the verdict. As long as that lawyer is acting honestly and with integrity, it’s so much better to have that zealous advocate.”
The massacre at the Tree of Life building “was just a terrible, terrible, terrible tragedy,” said Levenson, who is Jewish. Clarke “will do her best to keep the case in perspective. In other words, focus not on big messages, but on this individual and any mitigating factors for this individual.”
Jon B. Gould, dean of the School of Social Ecology at the University of California-Irvine, has researched attorneys who specialize in death penalty cases. In 2019, along with Maya Pagni Barak, he published “Capital Defense: Inside the Lives of America’s Death Penalty Lawyers,” a book based on extensive interviews, providing insight into the reasons someone would willingly represent a person who has committed an egregious crime.
“They are an unusual kind of lawyer,” Gould said. “They’re actually an unusual kind of person because for many of these cases, they are representing what is sometimes said to be ‘the worst of the worst.’”
There are a variety of motivating factors for capital defense work, Gould said. Some of these lawyers are strongly opposed to state-sanctioned killing. For others, he said, “it is the excitement of the most complicated kind of law.”
Other death penalty specialists take the cases for “professional prestige,” and some do it for the money because capital defense lawyers get paid more than regular defense lawyers, Gould said. Some take the cases for religious reasons.
“Now, that’s all in the larger context of none of these lawyers looks at the facts of the case and thinks it’s anything other than a horrific tragedy,” Gould stressed. “I also found that for many of them, they are entirely sympathetic to the family members of the victims. They don’t look at these cases and think, no big deal. They look at these cases and think that’s something horrible that happened to the victim’s family, but they also look at the defendant and think, as one of them said to me, ‘No one gets to this place of being the defendant without having something horrible having happened to them earlier in life.’”
Death penalty cases are “really, really, really hard on defense lawyers,” Gould added. “It’s really distressing work. The evidence that they have to pore through is horrific. Many of them have PTSD.”
While many people “look at defense lawyers and think there must be something wrong with them,” Gould said it’s essential to remember “that they are fulfilling a very important function in the criminal justice system that none of us would ever want to have to do.”
“That doesn’t mean that any of us is unsympathetic to the victims,” he emphasized. “No one deserves what’s happened in any of these cases. But if we do believe in the rule of law, then there needs to be capital defense lawyers. And we need to respect the work they’re doing because that’s what it means to live in a system of rule of law and not simply a system where we simply execute people in the town square without the opportunity to have a defense.”
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial by the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle and the Pittsburgh Union Progress in a collaboration supported by funding from the Pittsburgh Media Partnership. It is reprinted with permission.
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European Countries Join France in Demanding Anti-Israel UN Special Rapporteur Albanese’s Resignation
Francesa Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, speaks at a conference, “A Cartography of Genocide” Israel’s Conduct in Gaza,” at the Roma Tre University, in Rome, Italy, Oct. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Remo Casilli
Top diplomats from Austria, Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic have joined France in calling for the resignation of the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, who has an extensive history of using her role to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize the terrorist group Hamas’s attacks against the Jewish state.
Earlier this week, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot accused Albanese of being “a political activist who stirs up hate” after she delivered yet another inflammatory tirade against Israel, this time at an Al Jazeera forum in Doha, prompting renewed calls for her resignation.
He described Albanese’s “outrageous and reprehensible remarks” as targeting “not the Israeli government, whose policies may be criticized, but Israel as a people and as a nation, which is absolutely unacceptable.”
The top French diplomat announced that France will demand Albanese’s resignation “with firmness” at this month’s United Nations Human Rights Council session.
Despite her history of antisemitic statements, the United Nations has consistently refused to fire Albanese, citing her status as one of its “independent experts.”
Now, officials in Austria, Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic have aligned with France in demanding Albanese’s removal, warning that she continues to spread hatred under the cover of her official role.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Albanese’s “conduct, statements, and initiatives are not appropriate for the position she holds within an organization dedicated to peace and security.”
Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger accused Albanese of “spreading incitement” in a way that “undermines the impartiality and highest standards that the role of a UN representative requires.”
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul called her “untenable in her position,” noting that she “has made numerous inappropriate remarks in the past.”
Albanese sparked fresh outrage after seemingly calling Israel a “common enemy of humanity,” drawing sharp condemnation from diplomats and human rights advocates worldwide.
Speaking at the Al Jazeera forum in Qatar last weekend, she accused Israel of “planning and carrying out a genocide” during the country’s defensive war against Hamas.
“It’s also true that never before has the global community seen the challenges that we all face, we who do not control large amounts of financial, algorithms, and weapons,” Albanese said, appearing to invoke a long-standing antisemitic conspiracy that Jews control wealth and technology.
She also accused Western nations of being complicit in the so-called “genocide” by supplying arms and financing Israel, while claiming that Western media helps defend the Jewish state by “amplifying the pro-apartheid, genocidal narrative.”
Facing mounting backlash and renewed calls for her resignation, Albanese defended herself, insisting that her comments targeted a “system” that allowed a “genocide” to unfold in Gaza.
In an interview with France 24, Albanese rejected the allegations against her as “completely false accusations” and “manipulation.”
“I have never, ever, ever said ‘Israel is the common enemy of humanity,’” she said.
On Thursday, Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, acknowledged disagreement with Albanese’s statements, emphasizing that her language does not reflect the tone or approach of the United Nations.
“If member states are not happy with what one or more of the special rapporteurs are saying, it is their responsibility to get involved in the work of the Human Rights Council … and push for the direction they wish to push for,” Dujarric said in a statement.
On the contrary, UN human rights spokesperson Marta Hurtado defended Albanese, stressing concerns over personal attacks and misinformation targeting UN officials.
“We are very worried. We are concerned that UN officials, independent experts and judicial officials, are increasingly subjected to personal attacks, threats and misinformation that distracts from the serious human rights issues,” Hurtado said in a statement.
Since taking on the role of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories in 2022, Albanese has been at the center of controversy due to what critics, including US and European lawmakers, have described as antisemitic and anti-Israel public remarks.
Last year, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) faced intense pressure to block Albanese’s reappointment for another three-year term, with several countries and NGOs urging UN members to oppose the move due to her controversial remarks and alleged pro-Hamas stance.
Despite significant pressure and opposition, her mandate was confirmed to extend until 2028.
In her long history of antisemitic remarks, Albanese has referred to a “Jewish lobby” controlling the US and Europe, compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and stated that Hamas’s violence against Israelis — including rape, murder, and kidnapping — needs to be “put in context.”
Last year, the United Nations launched a probe into Albanese for allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.
In the past, she has also celebrated the anti-Israel protesters rampaging across US college campuses, saying they represent a “revolution” and give her “hope.”
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France Marks 20th Anniversary of Ilan Halimi’s Death as Macron Condemns Rising Antisemitism
France’s President Emmanuel Macron speaks during a ceremony commemorating the 20th anniversary of the murder of Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old French Jew who was tortured and murdered in 2006, at The Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris, France, Feb. 13, 2026. Photo: BERTRAND GUAY/Pool via REUTERS
France on Friday marked the 20th anniversary of the death of Ilan Halimi — the young Jewish man who was brutally tortured to death in 2006 — as Jewish leaders and government officials sounded the alarm over a relentless wave of antisemitism that continues to shadow the nation.
Local communities across France planted olive trees in Halimi’s memory as part of a nationwide initiative responding to the recent surge in antisemitic incidents.
“Twenty years after Ilan Halimi’s death, the situation has only worsened,” Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), the main representative body of French Jews, said during a commemorative ceremony at the Élysée Palace in Paris.
“Antisemitic prejudice is spreading, even among the youngest generations,” he continued. “Schools, once safe havens, can no longer shield children from this hatred.”
French President Emmanuel Macron also attended the ceremony, condemning what he called an “antisemitic hydra” that has spread into “every corner” of French society over the past two decades.
During the tribute, Macron called for elected officials convicted of “antisemitic, racist, or discriminatory acts and statements” to face mandatory disqualification from public office, insisting that politicians must act as “guardians of the Republic.”
“Far too often, those who commit antisemitic crimes face sentences that are shockingly light,” Macron said. “We must ensure transparency and accountability by closely monitoring every ruling and sanction.”
“The government and Parliament will take decisive action to strengthen laws against antisemitic and racist acts,” he continued, vowing a tougher, more consistent approach to combating hatred.
Halimi was abducted, held captive, and tortured in January 2006 by a gang of about 20 people in a low-income housing estate in the Paris suburb of Bagneux.
Three weeks later, he was found in Essonne, south of Paris, naked, gagged, and handcuffed, with clear signs of torture and burns. The 23-year-old died on the way to the hospital.
In 2011, an olive tree was planted in Halimi’s memory. In August, the memorial was found felled — probably with a chainsaw — in Epinay-sur-Seine.
Halimi’s memory has faced attacks before, with two other trees planted in his honor vandalized in 2019 in Essonne.
On the 20th anniversary of his death, IFOP — France’s leading pollster — released a report showing that antisemitic stereotypes about Jews, their wealth, and perceived communal solidarity remain widespread, revealing how deeply such prejudices persist in French society.
“The case of Ilan Halimi shows the deadly consequences of antisemitic prejudice,” Yossef Murciano, president of the French Union of Jewish Students (UEJF), which commissioned the study, said in a statement.
“Twenty years later, remembering him means rejecting the idea that a Jew could be attacked or killed simply for being Jewish,” he continued.
Regards sur les préjugés antisémites 20 ans après la mort d’Ilan Halimi : étude @IfopOpinion pour @uejf
20 ans après l’assassinat d’Ilan Halimi, l’Union des Étudiants Juifs de France (@uejf) publie une étude intitulée « Regards sur les préjugés antisémites 20 ans après la mort… pic.twitter.com/eHIP7B84Ti
— CRIF (@Le_CRIF) February 13, 2026
According to the newly released report, one in four French people still believe Jews are wealthier than others, while 69 percent perceive them as a closely united community.
The poll also found that 44 percent of the overall population are unaware of Halimi’s case, with 73 percent of 18–24-year-olds having never heard of it.
Even though 25 percent of young adults believe that Jews “make too much of” antisemitism, 76 percent of French citizens say a tragedy like Halimi’s could happen again today.
“The change is undeniable: antisemitism is not fading, but evolving. It shows less as overt biological hatred and more as suspicion, expressed through narratives of power, influence, and money. It is becoming diffuse, normalized, sometimes even politically justified — and now, more than ever, it often takes the shape of anti-Zionism,” Murciano said.
According to the latest statistics, 47 percent of young adults believe the existence of the State of Israel is unjustified.
The report also found that half of respondents view Zionism as a racist ideology, while 35 percent see it as an international organization aiming to influence the world for the benefit of Jews — reflecting long-standing conspiratorial stereotypes.
The data followed the French Interior Ministry’s releasing its annual report on anti-religious acts on Thursday. The report revealed a troubling rise in antisemitic incidents documented in a joint dataset compiled with the Jewish Community Protection Service.
Antisemitism in France remained at alarmingly high levels last year, with 1,320 incidents recorded nationwide, as Jews and Israelis faced several targeted attacks amid a relentlessly hostile climate despite heightened security measures, according to the published data.
Although the total number of antisemitic outrages in 2025 fell by 16 percent compared to 2024’s second highest ever total of 1,570 cases, the newly released report warned that antisemitism remained “historically high,” with more than 3.5 attacks occurring every day.
Over the past 25 years, antisemitic acts “have never been as numerous as in the past three years,” the report said, noting a dramatic spike following the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Even though Jews make up less than 1 percent of France’s population, they accounted for 53 percent of all religiously motivated crimes last year.
Between 2022 and 2025, antisemitic attacks across France quadrupled, leaving the Jewish community more exposed than ever.
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Princeton University Anti-Zionist Group Cancels Norman Finkelstein Lecture, School Says He’s ‘Welcome’ to Come Back
Norman Finkelstein participating in pro-Hamas demonstration in New York City in April 2024. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Princeton University’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter has canceled this year’s annual lecture by Norman Finkelstein, a stridently anti-Israel activist and political scientist who for years has been one of the West’s most outspoken critics of the Jewish state.
“We regret having to inform you on such short notice, but due to unforeseen circumstances involving new university policy, this event has been canceled. There are no confirmed plans at this stage for a rescheduled date,” SJP said in a statement. “Please help share this to all who were planning to attend.”
Finkelstein, who has been criticized for reprising antisemitic conspiracies of Jewish influence and power, has remained a regular on Princeton University’s speaking circuit thanks to SJP. As previously reported by The Algemeiner, SJP chapters across the US have been involved in assaulting Jewish students, stalking Jewish and Israeli faculty, and destroying university property during illegal occupations of school grounds.
Princeton University, which at one time had notoriously imposed disciplinary sanctions on conservatives and Zionists that are generally reserved for alleged sexual predators, has not stopped Finkelstein, who was born to Jewish Holocaust survivors, from coming to campus.
Writing in 2000 that the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime, has become an “industry” for Jews and Israelis to exploit, Finkelstein charged that a “handful of American Jews have effectively hijacked the Nazi Holocaust to blackmail Europe” and “divert attention from what is being done to the Palestinians,” whom he describes as unwilling subjects of an “apartheid” country. Meanwhile, he derided advocates of Holocaust commemoration as a “repellant gang of plutocrats, hoodlums, and hucksters.”
Finkelstein, according to The Princeton Tory, is also on record calling a Princeton student who served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) a “concentration camp guard” during a campus event, an allusion to false accusations that Israel is committing a genocide against a Palestinian people whose population, according to the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics has “doubled about ten times since” Israel’s founding in 1948.
In other Princeton events, Finkelstein has said it is acceptable to “shoot them dead,” referring to Israelis,” and said that Israeli Jews are “drinking the blood of those children.”
Writing to The Algemeiner on Friday, Princeton University noted that the institution did not disinvite Finkelstein and that SJP is “welcome” to have him back.
“Princeton University did not disinvite Norman Finkelstein,” a university spokesperson said. “The event could not take place as scheduled because the student organizers did not register it with the required advance notice. We require advance notice for logistical planning, a requirement that is unrelated to the content of this or any event.”
Princeton University has long been a hub of antisemitism on campus, often propagated by anti-Zionist activists who present their call for the destruction of Israel as being consistent with progressive values.
In 2023, week before Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel, Princeton appeared to defend a professor’s assigning his students a book which accuses the Israel Defense Forces of “maiming” Palestinians and harvesting their organs. The book, Rutgers University professor Jasbir Puar’s The Right to Maim, is widely denounced as “pseudo-scholarship” for trafficking in antisemitic blood libels rooted in medieval conspiracies charging that Jews murdered Christian children and drank their blood during the holiday of Passover.
Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber addressed the issue at a faculty meeting at the time, defending the work’s inclusion in Princeton’s curriculum as a routine of academic freedom.
“It has unfortunately become common for university faculty members here and elsewhere to become the target of viral social media storms focused on controversial materials that they assign or teach,” Eisgruber said during a faculty meeting. “That has sometimes extended to demands that the university should ban or condemn a book, cancel a course, or discipline a professor.”
He continued, “We, of course, will not do that. Academic freedom protects your right to decide what to teach and how to teach it. That right, like the right to free speech on campus, is very broad indeed, and we will protect it.”
One year later, students marked the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre by vandalizing the Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO), splattering red paint on the entrance door and graffitiing the perimeter of the building with the slogan “$4genocide.”
Since March 2025, Princeton remains under federal investigation for allegedly ignoring campus antisemitism.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.