(JTA) — The former executive director of Human Rights Watch is defending the group after two staffers quit over allegations that a report accusing Israel of a “crime against humanity” was blocked from publication.

Omar Shakir, the director of Human Rights Watch’s Israel-Palestine team, and assistant researcher Milena Ansari tendered their resignations after they said the organization refused to publish a report concluding that Israel’s denial of the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees amounted to a “crime against humanity.”

“I’ve resigned from @hrw after 10+ yrs—most as Israel/Palestine Director—after HRW’s new ED pulled a finalized report on the right of return for Palestinian refugees on eve of its release & blocked for weeks its publication in a principled way,” Shakir tweeted earlier in the week.

He linked to an article about the resignations in Jewish Currents. Shakir, who formerly worked as a legal fellow for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has long engaged in pro-Palestinian legal advocacy, is on Jewish Currents’ advisory board.

In a resignation letter obtained by Jewish Currents, Shakir wrote, “I have lost my faith in the integrity of how we do our work and our commitment to principled reporting on the facts and application of the law.”

Multiple former Human Rights Watch staffers panned Shakir and his critique, including Ken Roth, the group’s former executive director and himself a vociferous critic of Israel. Roth’s replacement, Philippe Bolopion, was named in November.

“The new @HRW director was right to suspend a report using a novel & unsupported legal theory to contend that denying the right to return to a locale is a crime against humanity,” tweeted Roth, whose father was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. “It had been rushed through the review process during a leadership transition.”

Danielle Haas, who served as the senior editor at Human Rights Watch from 2009 to 2023, criticized Shakir sharply in a post on X.

“‘Nourish a wolf,’ Aesop said, ‘and it will eat you.’ For years, @hrw tolerated, placated, excused, and incubated @OmarSShakir as BDSer-turned-Israel/Palestine director. Now it’s their turn to get the ideological mob treatment,” wrote Haas. “His old tricks used v. others, now turned v. them: petitions, division, politics. Appeasement always bites you in the end.”

Shakir served as the lead researcher and author of a 2021 Human Rights Watch report that argued that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians had crossed the threshold into apartheid. The report was widely criticized by Jewish groups at the time. In 2019, he was deported from Israel in accordance with a law that banned entry to foreigners who publicly call for boycotting the Jewish state or its settlements.

NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based pro-Israel advocacy group, wrote in a post on X that the internal dispute at Human Rights Watch served as “a reminder of what happens when an NGO promotes the most extreme activists to positions of influence.”

The episode is casting light on the issue of Palestinian refugees, who many pro-Palestinian advocates believe should be able to return to the homes and communities their families left in 1948. Such a right is widely seen as both out of step with international precedent and a tactic to undo a Jewish majority in Israel.

While Human Rights Watch has long supported a right of return for Palestinian refugees, Shakir told Jewish Currents that the group is more hesitant when applying that principle in practice.

“The one topic,” he said, “even at Human Rights Watch, for which there remains an unwillingness to apply the law and the facts in a principled way is the plight of refugees and their right to return to the homes that they were forced to flee.”

In a statement shared with Jewish Currents and the New York Times, Human Rights Watch stated that the report “raised complex and consequential issues” and its publication was “paused pending further analysis and research.”

“In our review process, we concluded that aspects of the research and the factual basis for our legal conclusions needed to be strengthened to meet Human Rights Watch’s high standards,” the group said.

The post Human Rights Watch’s top Israel-Palestine staffer quits over shelved report criticizing Israel appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s planned visit to Australia this weekend, which was scheduled in the wake of the Bondi massacre in December, has drawn widespread opposition and planned protests, including from some Jews.

Following Herzog’s invitation to visit the country by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, some Labor party members and pro-Palestinian groups called for the invitation to be rescinded.

Those calls have reached a fever pitch in recent weeks, with Australian human rights lawyer Chris Sidoti calling on Albanese to rescind the invitation or arrest Herzog on arrival for inciting “genocide.”

Australia’s minister of foreign affairs, Penny Wong, defended the visit in an interview with ABC radio, telling the station that it was the wishes of the Jewish community following the December terror attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney that killed 15.

“We have the Australian Jewish community who have been targeted in an overtly antisemitic terrorist attack. We have had 15 Australians die, we have families mourning, and this was a request from the Jewish community for President Herzog to visit,” said Wong, herself a staunch a critic of Israel.

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald published Friday, Herzog called Sidoti’s statements “another lie and another distortion of the facts,” adding that he was visiting the country to “visit my sisters and brothers of the Jewish community to console and pay our respects to the grieving families and to the community.”

Herzog is expected to visit the country from Sunday to Thursday and is slated to meet with Albanese as well as the survivors and the families of the victims of the shooting.

Multiple groups have petitioned for Herzog’s possible arrest. On Thursday, Human Rights Watch cited a U.N. Commission of Inquiry report accusing Herzog and other Israeli leaders of  “direct and public incitement to commit genocide” in calling on Albanese to consider deploying local laws to prosecute him.

“While showing appropriate concern for the Jewish community, the Australian government should not shy away from denouncing and pushing for an end to the Israeli government’s longstanding serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law,” the human rights NGO said.

The progressive Jewish Council of Australia lodged a legal complaint last week calling for Herzog to be “arrested or barred from entering Australia.”

The complaint, which was jointly filed with the Hind Rajab Foundation and the Australian National Imams Council, alleges that Herzog “incited genocide and aided and abetted war crimes, rendering him unfit to enter the country under Australian law.”

Widespread protests against Herzog’s visit have been planned throughout Australia by the Palestine Action Group, including in Sydney, where New South Wales Police have announced restrictions on protests, citing the behavior of some protesters who “continue to incite violence and cause fear and harm.”

New South Wales Police have deployed thousands of officers to ensure the mandate is upheld. They have also warned that they will arrest protesters who breach the restrictions in place.

While officials said during a press conference earlier in the week that there was “no particular known threat” to Herzog known by police, a 19-year-old Sydney man was granted bail on Thursday after he being charged with making online threats to Herzog.

The executive director of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council, Colin Rubenstein, condemned the protest efforts as the group issued a rebuttal on Friday to claims against Herzog.

“We are disturbed and saddened by the groups and individuals determined to politicise this visit by labelling it ‘divisive’ and attempting to misrepresent Herzog’s words after October 7,” he said in a statement. “Our view is that, after Bondi, Herzog’s visit is not only appropriate, but an essential part of the healing process — and we are very confident we represent the overwhelming majority of Australian Jews in saying as much.”

The post Protests roil Australia ahead of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s planned visit appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — A bank account named for an ancient god in Israel. A “synagogue of Satan.” References to “goyim” that hint at a Jewish-run global cabal. The mystery of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s alleged visit to China.

These are among the latest antisemitic conspiracy theories to be born from the Jeffrey Epstein files, following the document dump that has occupied online commentators for days.

Since the financial advisor and sex trafficker’s arrest by federal authorities in July 2019 and death by suicide a month later, antisemitic conspiracy theories about him have circulated widely, often invoking his Jewish identity and connections with Jewish and Israeli leaders.

But the Justice Department’s newly released batch of Epstein files on Friday, which contained over 3 million pages of documents, has taken things to a new intensity.

“If you think Epstein was just some rich pedo, you’re missing the big picture,” wrote the X account Clandestine, which has more than 734,000 followers. “Epstein was part of the satanic global elite that pull the strings from the shadows. Epstein was a Deep State puppet master.”

Mike Rothschild, a writer who researches antisemitic conspiracy theories on the far right, said the amount of material available in the files made them fertile ground for misinterpretation and confirmation bias.

“Whatever your particular brand of conspiracy theory is, there’s something in the files for you,” Rothschild told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “One of the problems that we’re having is that there is so much information and there’s no filter for it.”

Among the real revelations in the documents are a variety of exchanges of relevance to the broader Jewish world. Those include revelations that various Jewish nonprofits had courted Epstein for donations even after his conviction, evidence of Epstein’s financial ties with several Orthodox yeshivas, and new details about his well-known relationship with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Some of the emails also show Epstein referencing the High Holidays and deploying Jewish phrases like “goyim” in a disparaging manner.

“This is the way the jew make money.. and made a fortune in the past ten years„ selling short the shippping futures„ let the goyim deal in the real world,” wrote Epstein in a 2009 email to the cognitive psychologist and onetime Trump University executive Roger Schank.

In another email dated August 2010 to Jewish entertainment publicist Peggy Siegal, discussing a party guest list, Epstein wrote, “No, goyim in abundance- jpmorgan execs brilliant wasps.”

Some of the largest conspiracist personalities seized on the new document dump, claiming that it confirmed their longstanding beliefs about secret Jewish control.

“Remember the end of last year when I was called antisemitic for telling you this is the literal, religious worldview of many people in power?,” Candace Owens, right-wing commentator turned conspiracist, wrote in a post on X responding to a photo of an email where Epstein used the term. “Type in ‘goy’ or ‘goyim’ in the Epstein files and be sure to tag a Christian who needs to wake up and leave the Zionist cause.”

In an hour-long livestream titled “BAAL SO HARD: The Epstein Files,” Owens referred to Jews as “pagan gypsies” and repeated the neo-Nazi conspiracy that B’nai Brith was behind the “ritualistic murder” of Mary Phagan, whose killing sparked the antisemitic lynching of Leo Frank in 1915.

“The Epstein files create an opportunity for us to discuss this, to hear the way they speak about us behind closed doors exactly how Sigmund Freud spoke, it’s racist,” said Owens during the stream, which had reached 2 million views on YouTube Thursday. “I want to make it clear that this is for them a religious philosophy, a racist perspective that we are goyim, meaning cattle, that are meant to be herded and ruled over.”

On Sunday, Owens posted on X, “Yes, we are ruled by satanic pedophiles who work for Israel,” adding “This is the synagogue of Satan we are up against.”

It isn’t just leading antisemitic personalities but rank-and-file social media users who have sought to paint the data dump as an indictment of Jewish power.

“Normies: ‘let’s not jump to any antisemitic conclusions, we don’t know why Epstein did these terrible things.’ Epstein: ‘I love trafficking children, manipulating markets, and don’t believe goyim are human. Also this is all because I am Jewish,’” wrote an Eastern Orthodox Christianity influencer on X.

The Nexus Project, an antisemitism watchdog group, condemned the proliferation of antisemitic Epstein conspiracy theories in a series of posts on X, writing, “The Epstein files are real. The antisemitism they’re fueling is also real. And right now, the second part is getting almost no attention.”

“Jeffrey Epstein was a monster. His crimes were real. His victims deserve justice and are being revictimized right now by the DOJ,” the Nexus Project wrote. “Turning his private emails into proof of a Jewish conspiracy is pure antisemitism. And it is spreading faster than anyone is willing to say.”

Rothschild said he believed the files were “reinforcing stuff that these people already are pushing out.”

“If you are predisposed to believe Candace Owens’ theory that Israel is behind everything bad that’s ever happened, you’re going to find it in the Epstein files, even if it’s not there, because there’s so many mentions and there’s so much intrigue swirling around about it, because it’s just all this raw material you can kind of use it to make whatever you want,” said Rothschild.

New conspiracy theories also stemmed from an email exchange where Epstein requested money be wired to a bank account that some concluded was titled “Baal,” the name of an ancient Canaanite god.

“BREAKING: 🇺🇸 🇮🇱 EPSTEIN NAMED HIS BANK ACCOUNT BAAL,” wrote AdameMedia, a popular right wing X account that frequently posts conspiratorial content. “Baal is a demonic being that was worshipped in ancient israel by some hebrews before they converted to Judaism. Child sacrifice is a ritual of Baal worshippers, usually through burning, like lsraeI did to Gaza. Archaeological discoveries have found thousands of urns with cremated infant and small children remains. Now we have evidence of Epstein’s circle kiIIing and even eating children.” (Similar files say “bank name” where this one says “baal,” suggesting an error.)

Others across the ideological spectrum extended longstanding theories about Epstein’s ties to Israel.

On Friday, the right-wing anti-Israel personality Tucker Carlson hosted Cenk Uygur, the progressive co-creator of The Young Turks, for a podcast interview titled “Cenk Uygur: Epstein, JFK, 9-11, Israel’s Terrorism and the Consequences of Opposing It,” during which the pair claimed that Epstein was an agent of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. (In July, Carlson received pushback from former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett after he said Epstein worked for Mossad.)

“Jeffrey Epstein was much more powerful than we realized. He could set up a meeting with almost any world leader. He can get almost anyone into the White House. Again, Ehud Barak has trouble getting into the White House, Epstein makes a call, boom, he’s in the White House. Israeli spy stays over at Epstein’s house,” said Uygur. “There’s just no question about it. He is definitely intelligence and in every turn he’s looking to help one country and it’s Israel. American media says shut up.”

Left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker also repeated the claim that Epstein was working for Israel in a post on X Sunday.

“Benjamin netenyahu [sic] is in the files and former pm ehud barak has such an extensive relationship w esptein [sic] they might as well call it the israel files what the fuck are you talking about,” wrote Piker in another post on X, responding to influencer Eyal Yakoby’s claims that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not named in the files.

The DOJ’s Epstein database includes 659 search results for “Netanyahu,” but the vast majority of the documents that appear under the search include news articles forwarded to and from Epstein relating to the Israeli leader.

“Going by sort of the raw number of mentions in an email database is not helpful, because there’s no context for it,” said Rothschild. “If there’s 630 mentions of Netanyahu, but 100 of them are just forwarded articles, and 100 of them are people responding to Epstein saying how much they hate Netanyahu, that doesn’t mean anything. It just means that you have this number and people run with it, because people are taking these things and turning them into proof for whatever conspiracy they already believe in.”

On X, another conspiracy theory took hold after users claimed that an email sent from China to Epstein in April 2009 coincided with a trip by Netanyahu that same month. (The article cited said Netanyahu met with the Chinese foreign affairs minister in Jerusalem, not China.)

“Benjamin Netanyahu was in China and it seems likely that he was the man sending Jeffrey Epstein torture videos,” wrote Jake Shields, a far-right influencer and former MMA champion, in a post on X.

Other emails appeared to tie Epstein to Russia, leading to speculation that he had provided intelligence to the country and prompting calls for an investigation by the Polish prime minister.

Some conspiracy theorists online rejected the idea that Epstein might have been a Russian asset, instead suggesting it is a distraction being offered to take the heat off Israel.

“The memo went out, and the media is trying to say that Jeffrey Epstein worked for the KGB,” said the TikTok influencer “contraryian” in a video posted Tuesday that has amassed more than 30,000 likes. “He might have had multiple passports, but he talked to Israeli politicians, Jewish businessmen, and repeatedly invokes his Jewish identity.”

In response to a New York Post article about Epstein’s alleged Russian affiliations, one X user with 300,000 followers and a stream of antisemitic posts claimed that the coverage was evidence of a “Jewish controlled media.”

“Jeffrey Epstein- ‘I work for the Rothschilds, Israel, and world Jewry.’ Jew York Post- ‘Epstein probably worked for the Russians….,’” the post,  read. “You don’t hate the Jewish controlled media enough.”

In a podcast episode Monday, Jewish conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, who has previously criticized conservative rivals for linking Epstein with Mossad, said there was not evidence in the files that Epstein was blackmailing people “on behalf of a foreign power or a cadre of powerful people who are attempting to shape global policy.”

Rothschild, the conspiracy theory expert, said everything he has seen reflects deep-seated antisemitic animus among conspiracy theorists.

“Antisemitism is huge in these circles, it always has been,” he said. “Whether it’s just outright attacks on Jews, or the sort of more crouched globalists, European bankers, you know, antisemitism is a huge part of that world.”

But he emphasized that not all claims about Epstein amount conspiracy theories — which is why the drumbeat of antisemitism can continue unabated.

“Jeffrey Epstein was part of a cabal. I mean, it’s not like the Elders of Zion sitting around in a dark room, you know, deciding on the fates of nations, but it’s pretty clear that Epstein was at the center of a gigantic conspiracy,” said Rothschild. “That’s not a theory. That has nothing to do with Judaism. It has everything to do with greed and perversion.”

The consequences, he said, are bad for the Jews and for everyone else.

“Anything that calcifies our politics and our discourse even more, I think is very dangerous,” Rothschild said. “Certainly there’s always going to be a danger that it falls disproportionately on the Jewish community. I think it’s probably making life difficult for actual survivors of trauma like this to get people to pay attention to them.”

The post Latest Epstein files release unleashes wave of antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media appeared first on The Forward.