Uncategorized
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.
Support JTA’s partnership with the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle throughout this trial.
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.
—
The post She represents the ‘worst of the worst.’ Now Judy Clarke is leading the defense in Pittsburgh synagogue massacre trial. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Top PLO, Fatah Officials: Hamas Should Join Us, No Need to Disarm
Hamas police officers stand guard, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, Oct. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
The Palestinian Authority (PA) appears eager to hijack the Board of Peace’s UN Security Council-approved administration of Gaza and unite with Hamas to control the Strip themselves, according to comments made by a top PLO official in a new interview documented by Palestinian Media Watch.
According to Egyptian reports, PLO Executive Committee Secretary Azzam Al-Ahmad has been in Cairo meeting with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad:
Two informed Palestinian sources said Azzam Al-Ahmad, the secretary-general of the PLO Executive Committee, held talks in Cairo with faction leaders including Hamas and Islamic Jihad about the two movements joining the PLO.
[Manassa.news (Egypt), Feb. 22, 2026]
Officials from the governing PA and its parent political body the Palestine Liberation Organization have been making repeated overtures to Hamas to join the PLO.
In November 2025, Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub called on Egyptian help to “bridge the gaps” between Fatah and Hamas so they can unite against Israel.
The previous month, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash declared “our hands are extended, and our hearts are open to rapprochement with Hamas.”
The implicit hope behind the unity push is that move might satisfy international demands for Hamas to relinquish control of Gaza. Back in October, Al-Habbash said that Hamas needed to disarm, but clearly the PA position has since softened. As a sweetener for Hamas to agree to join the PLO, the PLO says it is now ready to appease the terror group by allowing it to keep its weapons and remain an armed force on the ground.
The PA and PLO are aware that to legitimize absorbing Hamas into the PLO, Hamas – the perpetrators of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – must also be laundered of the stigma of being defined as a terror organization.
During al-Ahmad’s visit, he was interviewed by an Egyptian newspaper, tacitly confirming his mission:
They [US President Donald Trump and the Board of Peace] do not want Hamas to play any role in the Gaza Strip, and we reject this completely, because Hamas is part of the Palestinian national activity. It is true that it has not yet joined the PLO, but we are in a constant national dialogue with them to complete what is required for their entry into the PLO. Therefore, all talk about disarming Hamas and it being a terror organization is unacceptable to us, because Hamas is not a terror organization. [emphasis added]
[Shorouk News (Egyptian paper), Feb. 23, 2026]
The immediate follow-up question in the interview was seen as so important by Al-Ahmad that he made it into a post for his Facebook page:
Shorouk News’ Mohammed Khayal: “You mean clearly that you in the PLO do not view Hamas as a terror organization?”
Azzam Al-Ahmad: “We have never viewed it as a terror organization, and we always oppose when a decision is made by any international institution or any government classifying them as a terror organization, because they are part of the Palestinian national fabric.”
[Azzam Al-Ahmed’s Facebook page, Feb. 23, 2026]
Lest anyone thought that Al-Ahmad had misspoken, his strong statement was soon backed by Rajoub:
“Fatah Central Committee [Secretary and] member Jibril Rajoub emphasized that [PLO Executive Committee member] Azzam Al-Ahmad did not err in defending the weapons of the Hamas Movement and stating that it is part of the Palestinian national fabric.”
[Shahed, independent Palestinian news website, Feb. 24, 2026]
Meanwhile, without referencing Al-Ahmad directly, Fatah Movement Central Committee member Abbas Zaki doubled down on the renewed push for unity with the Islamist terror groups.
“Fatah Movement Central Committee member Abbas Zaki emphasized that national dialogue among Palestinian factions, foremost among them Hamas and Islamic Jihad, constitutes a ‘necessary path and an urgent national need… The real enemy of this unity is the Israeli occupation, and those who stand behind it politically and militarily, foremost among them the US, which is working to rearrange the region in a way that will serve Israel’s sovereignty at the expense of the Arab and Islamic rights.’”
[Sanad News, independent Palestinian news agency, Feb. 26, 2026]
Statements like these are nothing new for PA or PLO officials, who have been making overtures to Hamas for years. Yet the timing and stridency of this particular effort is everything, as it seeks to directly undermine the Trump-brokered ceasefire agreement and Gaza reconstruction plan based on the establishment of a technocratic government.
A technocratic government, to be known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), was chosen as the most effective way to begin to restore services to Gazans, and that makes sense. It provides the administrative structure to deliver essential services while at the same time depriving oxygen to any resumption of warfare against Israel from the territory – at least the parts of Gaza that Hamas no longer controls.
While the PA has decided to go along with the plan, a recent letter from PA Vice Chairman Hussein Al-Sheikh welcoming a PA liaison office with the NCAG stressed the PA’s expectation that this was all just a “transitional” prelude to PA control.
“These constitute practical transitional steps that contribute to alleviating the suffering of our people and providing administrative and security services, without creating administrative, legal, or security duality among our people in Gaza and the West Bank, and while reinforcing the principle of one system, one law, and one legitimate authority over arms.”
[WAFA, official PA news agency, English edition, Feb. 21, 2026]
In the PA’s mindset, whatever moves can hasten the end of this transition, the better, as the notion of suspending conflict with Israel in any Palestinian-populated area even temporarily is anathema to the PLO and Hamas alike.
As evidenced by Al-Ahmad’s latest remarks and others, the PA and PLO have no problem whatsoever with Hamas’ zeal for terrorism – but only appear to differ with the Islamist terror group on who gets to decide when and how it is used.
The author is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.
Uncategorized
Israel Did Not Drag the US Into War
US President Donald Trump speaks with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Secretary of State Marco Rubio during military operations in Iran, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, US. February 28, 2026. The White House/Social Media/Handout via REUTERS
“If anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand,” President Donald Trump exclaimed to a journalist on March 3. He was answering a question posed by ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott, who had just asked the Commander in Chief whether Israel had “pulled the United States into war.”
“Based on the way the negotiation [with Iran] was going, I think they were going to attack first,” Trump replied. “And I didn’t want that to happen.”
The President is completely right.
After a sound bite from Secretary of State Marco Rubio went viral, many on the isolationist right and the pro-Palestinian, “anti-war” left claimed that Israel, a country the size of New Jersey, had dragged the world’s most powerful military into a regional conflict.
“We knew there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio stated on March 2.
“So he’s flat out telling us that we’re in a war with Iran because Israel forced our hand,” responded popular conservative pundit Matt Walsh in a post on X.
But, as often occurs in cyberspace, Rubio’s comments were taken wildly out of context.
During the same press conference, Rubio was asked a similar question again: “Was the US forced to strike because of an impending Israeli action?” Rubio set the record straight unequivocally.
“No … No matter what, ultimately, this operation needed to happen … This had to happen no matter what.”
The Secretary of State is correct. His answer about Israel triggering the operation implied that it was only a matter of when, not if, the mission would be undertaken by the US.
American military power had been amassing in the Middle East for months, and some reports said that planning for the combined strikes began as far back as December. Other reports suggested that the operation was intended to begin a week earlier, but the conditions weren’t right.
Intelligence provided to Israel by the Central Intelligence Agency, combined with actionable intelligence gathered for years by Israel’s Mossad, suggested that February 28, at around 10 am Tehran time, was the optimal starting line for the mission. Why? Because former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was due to meet with nearly 50 of his closest advisors and other senior leaders, above ground. According to The Wall Street Journal, those were the circumstances that nailed down a start date for the ongoing conflict.
That’s why commentators across the aisle got Rubio’s statement so very wrong. In fact, Israel has shown in the past that it would comply willingly should its friends in Washington wish for IDF military action not to go forward.
On June 24, 2025, the Israeli Air Force cancelled planned strikes on Iran after Trump announced that he had told Netanyahu to bring the pilots home and that a ceasefire was in place. The strikes were planned in retaliation for a vicious attack on a Beer Sheva residential building that killed several civilians. Even then, Israel respected the wishes of the United States.
The ongoing conflict in Iran is a combined effort between what US Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander Brad Cooper called, “the two most powerful air forces in the world, the US and Israel,” comments later echoed by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. It began with full coordination and will end the same way.
As Hegseth said, “only the United States of America military could lead this — only us. But when you add in the Israeli Defense Forces — a devastatingly capable force — the combination is sheer destruction for our radical Islamist Iranian adversaries.”
Aaron Goren is a research analyst and editor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
Uncategorized
Shock and Resolve: Responsibility from Afar in Times of War
Emergency personnel work at the site of an Iranian strike, after Iran launched missile barrages following attacks by the US and Israel on Saturday, in Beit Shemesh, Israel, March 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
When my flight to Tel Aviv was canceled in Warsaw, the war had not yet officially begun. Airlines, however, often sense what governments have not yet declared. Within hours, Israel’s airspace closed. Soon after that, the Iranian missile barrage began.
I was en route to join 22 prominent social media voices from the United States and Europe at the Tel Aviv Institute, where I serve as president. We had convened them for four days of intensive work combating antisemitism — a phenomenon that does not subside during war, but metastasizes. Instead, I found myself watching from afar as our participants sheltered in place.
This is not about my disrupted travel plans. It is about what courage looks like when missiles are falling and what responsibility looks like when you are not physically present to hear the sirens.
Among those social media advocates on the ground was Hen Mazzig. His voice has reached millions with moral clarity and unapologetic conviction. When the missiles began, he did not retreat into silence. He did what he has always done: he spoke.
We were able to evacuate a small group of participants by chartered boat after 26 hours at sea. Among them were Karoline Preisler, a non-Jewish German politician and influencer, and Bernice Cohen, a dermatologist whose platform reaches well beyond the Jewish and Israeli ecosystem. Others remain in Israel, including Boston chef Ruhama Shitrit, who, between sleepless nights and repeated dashes to bomb shelters, continues to imagine new ways to present Jewish and Israeli life as vibrant, humane, and dignified — even under fire.
These are not soldiers. They are civilians — influencers, professionals, parents — demonstrating moral steadiness under extraordinary pressure.
If anything is deeply embedded in Jewish consciousness, it is guilt. Even as I insist this is not about me, I would be dishonest not to admit that guilt arrives in waves. I am the kind of person who shows up. I have spent nights in bomb shelters before; I have volunteered in past crises. When a nation you love is under attack, distance can feel like dereliction.
No rational explanation fully quiets that voice.
My flight was canceled. I would have added strain. My team is capable. Strategically, I may be more useful abroad.
The arguments are sound. The emotions persist.
But war clarifies something uncomfortable: showing up is not synonymous with boarding a plane. In modern conflict, the battlefield is not confined to geography. It is informational, diplomatic, and psychological. While missiles fall on Israeli cities, narratives are created abroad. While Israeli families race to shelters, antisemitic incidents spike in Diaspora communities. While soldiers defend borders, others must defend legitimacy.
That work does not happen automatically. It requires voices willing to withstand backlash. It requires influencers who refuse to equivocate when moral clarity is demanded. It requires institutions that remain operational rather than reactive. It requires people positioned outside the blast radius who understand that proximity to danger is not the only measure of courage.
The harder truth is this: guilt often signals an identity conflict. “I am the one who goes.” But leadership sometimes demands a different posture: remaining where you are most effective, even when every instinct pulls you toward physical solidarity.
The participants of our Institute — Hen and those sheltering in place — embody one form of courage: presence under fire. Those of us abroad are called to embody another: disciplined advocacy, amplification without distortion, and solidarity without self-centeredness.
Shock is inevitable in moments like these. But awe should not be reserved for weaponry or even endurance alone. It should be reserved for the character revealed under pressure—in Israeli civilians who continue building and speaking between sirens; in Iranian civilians whose longing for dignity and safety mirrors our own; and in diaspora communities that refuse to retreat when hostility surges.
Shock may be unavoidable. Passivity is not. If we cannot all stand beneath the same sky, we can at least stand within the same resolve.
That is what responsibility from afar demands.
Dr. Ron Katz is President of the Tel Aviv Institute and leads international efforts to combat antisemitism. He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.