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These NYC college students want to kickstart a Jewish arts renaissance
(New York Jewish Week) – On a mild Thursday evening in late March, some 100 people gathered at Kistuné, a hip café and bar in the West Village that’s associated with the French-Japanese “lifestyle brand” of the same name.
Sipping on custom-designed cocktails — like the Refusenik, a Moscow mule with a “resilient mix of vodka, ginger beer and lime” or the Tamar Collinsky, a Tom Collins reimagined and given “very possibly the name of someone you went to summer camp with” — guests mingled, discussing topics as varied as college classes, career choices and their favorite poetry.
Nearly everyone in the room was a Jewish artist or writer; the gathering was to celebrate the launch of “Verklempt!”, a new quarterly print magazine that bills itself as “The Magazine of Jewish Art and Literature.” The 75-page first issue is filled with paintings, photographs, drawings, poetry and fiction solicited from more than 30 Jewish artists around the country.
“We see the Jewish community as a place where people want to engage with fiction and poetry more seriously,” editor-in-chief Yoni Gutenmacher, a 24-year-old creative writing MFA candidate at Brooklyn College, told the crowd, which included two of his brothers and his parents. “This is a personal dream of mine so I’m very happy that it’s real.”
Specialty cocktails were on offer at the launch party of “Verklempt!” (David Gutenmacher)
The aim of “Verklempt!” (Yiddish-English slang for “overcome with emotion”) is to publish and amplify art and literature with a specifically Jewish lens — hopefully in a way that encourages pursuing art as part of a spiritual journey, Gutenmacher explained. A painting of a man praying with tefillin and tallit; a poem about Leopold Bloom, the Jewish anti-hero of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and a collage of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and a drawing of a half-drunk bottle of Kedem grape juice all grace the pages of the first issue, whose theme is, fittingly, “On Creation.”
“I write fiction and I have a whole friend group and community in New York who aren’t Jewish, and if they are, they’re not really interested in religious or communal Jewish life,” Gutenmacher told the New York Jewish Week. “Then I have my Jewish life on the Upper West Side and all my friends from summer camp and school and everything else who are not really interested in engaging with high quality literature and art. At certain points in my life, I felt like I kind of have to choose.”
By working on “Verklempt!” he’s come to understand that those choices shouldn’t have to be so mutually exclusive, he said.
The journal is a project of Havurah (Hebrew for “fellowship”), an organization founded by two Modern Orthodox sophomores at NYU whose lofty but determined vision is to be the “bearer of a new Jewish renaissance” for young Jews in New York, according to their impressively designed website.
Founded by Daniella Messer and Eitan Gutenmacher (Yoni’s younger brother), Havurah aims to create a gathering place, a “kehila (community) of frum Jewish creatives” — both virtual and IRL — where Jewish artists can meet and mingle, make art, perform and share ideas about how all of those endeavors connect them to religious life. One of their goals, according to the “manifesto” on their website, is to “invigorate a generation of young Jews and restore the Jewish artistic impulse.”
While “Verklempt!” has wide-reaching aspirations — the artists they hope to publish can come from anywhere and be of any age — Havurah was founded to appeal to a hyper-specific community: young New York artists who are dedicated to being Jewish and Jews who are dedicated to being artists.
The idea arose during Gutenmacher and Messer’s freshman year of college in the winter of 2022. “I remember going to Israel over winter break, experiencing such an obvious realization that art and creativity is so integral to religious lifestyles,” Eitan Gutemacher, who is studying studio art at NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, told the New York Jewish Week. “But [at NYU] for example, in a lot of the artistic programs, if you’re a religious Jew, you are usually the only religious Jew in the classroom, and, more often than not, the only one in the department.”
“Daniella and I wanted to create a community of lively Judaism expressed in any artistic and creative way,” he added.
With funding from the Next Gen Inc., “a start-up style incubator” that’s a project of the World Jewish Congress and World Union of Jewish Students, Havurah pursues their vision through a variety of avenues, including real-life events and performances, such as art fairs, concerts and Torah study conversations held at bars, cafés, apartments and synagogues.
In addition to the physical journal, the organization’s high-design web site publishes essays, interviews, criticism, reviews and Torah commentaries, as well as “Sessions” for musicians, which are professionally mixed video tapings of live music performances similar to NPR’s “Tiny Desk Concerts.”
“When Eitan and Daniella approached us and told us about Havurah, we knew instantly they would be a great fit for our incubator,” Yoni Hammerman, senior manager of the NextGen, told the New York Jewish Week via email. “Their work, to build a university student-run art community, perfectly aligns with NextGen’s mission of amplifying and supporting the voice and the work of Jewish student leaders.”
The Havurah staff — all eight of them are volunteers — believe that their offerings are the first time people who are both deeply involved in their Jewish communities and in their artistic pursuits have had a definable place to gather and collaborate that celebrate both.
“It’s so simple that you’d think it would already exist,” said Yosef Itzkowitz, a 24-year-old artist and poet who has three drawings in the first edition of “Verklempt!” “Jews love writing and art, and love talking about writing and art,” so why not make it happen?” Itzkowitz got involved, he said, after Eitan Gutenmacher reached out via Instagram.
Of course, similar initiatives have and do exist — for example, the fiction journal JewishFiction.net publishes original and in translation work from Jewish writers around the globe, while CANVAS matches emerging Jewish multimedia artists with funders and grants. The Jewish Book Council puts out their literary journal “Paper Brigade” with art, interviews, essays and fiction, once a year.
On Tuesday, the inaugural Jewish Writers’ Initiative Digital Storytellers Lab showcased works by creators taking part in an eight-month fellowship supported by the Maimonides Fund. The work shown at Manhattan’s Rubin Museum included animation for Jewish kids, pop songs about women in the Bible and a podcast about the gay Jewish dating scene in Los Angeles.
According to Yona Verwer, founder of the Jewish Arts Salon — “a global network for Jewish visual art” that does regular programming in New York — while what the group is doing may not be “new,” one of the most exciting things about Havurah is how young its members are and how dedicated they are to the cause.
“Being geared specifically towards people in their 20s” attracts people who have to be “very enthusiastic and very into it,” Verwer said.
“It’s interesting to see this immense interest in Jewish arts” from younger generations, added Verwer, who started the salon in 2008 and now serves as an advisor for Havurah. “When I started the salon, it was something that a lot of people were not interested in. Things have really changed over the years and it’s great to see people so dedicated.”
Yoni Gutenmacher reads a poem at the launch party of “Verklempt!”, March 30, 2023. (David Gutenmacher)
As of now, contributors are unpaid, though there are hopes that the cover price of “Verklempt!” ($10) may help change that. “There’s a lot of places I see where you submit completely unpaid and it is completely not worth my time,” said Kim Kyne, a 32-year-old painter and sculptor from Los Angeles whose painting was in the first edition of the journal.
“What felt different about this is it feels like everyone’s all in it together,” she added. “Yoni and his brother are super humble and super young. What was really attractive to me about it is being connected with all these other Jewish artists in a way that I haven’t been before.”
Messer and the Gutenmacher brothers understand that the media and literary magazine worlds are very crowded spaces, especially in New York. But for now, they are embracing the heimish vibe and say they’ve seen, first-hand, just how many Jewish artists were looking for a space exactly like this. Submissions are already arriving for the next edition of “Verklempt!”, which is set to be published this summer, and according to Gutenmacher, he doesn’t recognize any of the names — meaning no repeats of last time, and no friends submitting as a favor.
“Of course, there are Jewish artists all over the world. But it feels different because it has more of a modern take and the younger feel,” Kyne said. “It feels like the beginning of a movement.”
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The post These NYC college students want to kickstart a Jewish arts renaissance appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Columbia University Professor Who Praised Oct. 7 Massacre Still Teaching Zionism Course
Pro-Hamas demonstrators at Columbia University in New York City, US, April 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
Columbia University has retained a professor who celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel — where the Palestinian terrorist group sexually assaulted women and men, kidnapped the elderly, and murdered children in their beds — allowing him to teach a course on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Joseph Massad, who teaches modern Arab politics and intellectual history, published an encomium to Hamas in The Electronic Intifada which lauded the Oct. 7 atrocities as “astounding,” “awesome,” “incredible,” and the basis of future assaults on the Jewish state. Additionally, Massad went as far as to exalt the Hamas paragliders who flew into a music festival to slaughter the young people attending it as the “air force of the Palestinian resistance.”
“Perhaps the major achievement of the resistance in the temporary takeover of these settler-colonies is the death blow to any confidence that Israeli colonists had in their military and its ability to protect them,” Massad wrote.
Massad went on to boast that an estimated 300,000 Israelis had been displaced from their homes during the attack while mocking the Biblical story of the Exodus, a foundation stone of the Jewish faith which tells the story of the Jews’ escaping slavery in Egypt.
“Reports promptly emerged that thousands of Israelis were fleeing through the desert on foot to escape the rockets and gunfire, with many still hiding inside settlements more than 24 hours into the resistance offensive,” he continued. “No less awesome were the scenes witnessed by millions of jubilant Arabs who spent the day watching the news, of Palestinian fighters from Gaza breaking through Israel’s prison fence or gliding over it by air.”
According to Columbia University’s website, this academic semester Massad will teach a course titled “Palestinian-Israeli Politics and Society,” which “provides a historical overview of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict to familiarize undergraduates with the background of the current situation.” The class will also go over the history of “the development of Zionism through the current peace process.”
The decision to continue allowing Massad to teach a course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict comes amid Columbia’s insisting that it is combatting antisemitism and ideological bias in the classroom.
In July, university president Claire Shipman said the institution will hire new coordinators to oversee complaints alleging civil rights violations; facilitate “deeper education on antisemitism” by creating new training programs for students, faculty, and staff; and adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism — a tool that advocates say is necessary for identifying what constitutes antisemitic conduct and speech.
Shipman also announced new partnerships with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other Jewish groups while delivering a major blow to the anti-Zionist movement on campus by vowing never to “recognize or meet with” the infamous organization Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a pro-Hamas campus group which had serially disrupted academic life with unauthorized, surprise demonstrations attended by non-students.
“I would also add that making these announcements in no way suggests we are finished with the work,” Shipman continued. “In a recent discussion, a faculty member and I agreed that antisemitism at this institution has existed, perhaps less overtly, for a long while, and the work of dismantling it, especially through education and understanding will take time. It will likely require more reform. But I’m hopeful that in doing this work, as we consider and even debate it, we will start to promote healing and to chart our path forward.”
Columbia University had, until that point, yielded some of the most indelible examples of anti-Jewish hatred in higher education since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel set off explosions of anti-Zionist activity at colleges and universities across the US. Such incidents included a student who proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserve to be murdered and are lucky he is not doing so himself and administrative officials who, outraged at the notion that Jews organized to resist anti-Zionism, participated in a group chat in which each member took turns sharing antisemitic tropes that described Jews as privileged and grafting.
On Tuesday, Columbia again stated its intentions to combat antisemitism and foster intellectual impartiality, saying it has appointed new officials and monitors to oversee its compliance with a $200 million settlement it reached with the federal government, a resolution which returned some $400 million which US President Donald Trump canceled over allegations it had refused to correct the allegedly hostile environment.
That agreement, as told by Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, called for Columbia to “bring viewpoint diversity to their Middle Eastern studies program.”
On Wednesday, Middle East expert and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) Asaf Romirowsky told The Algemeiner that Massad’s remaining on Columbia’s payroll is indicative of the university’s hesitance to enact meaningful and lasting reforms.
“Joseph Massad is a notorious tenured antisemite who has spent his career at Columbia bashing Israel and Zionism, a poster child for BDS and a scholar propagandist activist. Furthermore, he has shown his true colors time and time again defending Hamas and calling the 10/7 barbaric attack on Israel ‘awesome,’” Romirowsky said.
Noting that Columbia’s own antisemitism task force said in a December report that the institution employs few faculty who hold moderate views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he added, “By allowing Massad to continue teaching and spreading his venom, Columbia is only codifying the dearth of knowledge as it relates to the Middle East. It should take the finding of the report and act upon it by getting rid of the tenured radicals they allowed to hijack the institution.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Julie Menin wants to be a bridge in the Mamdani era
Julie Menin, the newly-elected speaker of the New York City Council, understands the significance of becoming the first Jew to lead the city’s legislative body.
“We live in a day with the first Muslim mayor of New York City and now the first Jewish speaker of the Council serving at the same time,” Menin, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, said in her inaugural speech.
In a recent interview, Menin said she views it as a “historic time for the Jewish community” amid rising antisemitism and tension over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and believes it is up to her to “bridge divides, as opposed to the kind of divisiveness that we’ve seen.”
When she was officially selected as speaker – the second-most powerful government position in America’s largest city – Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, remarked, “In medical terms, the word Menin is a protein that suppresses disease. We need more Menin to stop the spread of this disease of hatred.” Potasnik, who is a veteran chaplain of the fire department and was a member of Mamdani’s transition team, called Menin a leader “who knows the way, who shows the way and who goes the way.”
Menin’s leadership and relationship with Mayor Zohran Mamdani will be tested in the coming weeks as he comes under growing scrutiny from New York’s Jewish community over his anti-Zionist worldview and revocation of executive orders tied to antisemitism and pro-Palestinian protests.
Mainstream Jewish leaders see Menin as a check on the mayor and a potential guardrail on his actions. A recent Honan Strategy Group poll of 848 NYC voters found that 39% want Menin to be a check on Mamdani’s agenda, while 38% want her to fully embrace it.
The Menin-Mamdani relationship faces its first test
In her first legislative move, Menin introduced last week a five-point plan to combat antisemitism that includes a bill that would ban protests around entrances and exits of houses of worship; provide$1.25 million in funding to the Museum of Jewish Heritage; and create a hotline to report antisemitic incidents. Mamdani said he broadly supports the package but expressed reservations about the proposal to establish a 100-foot buffer zone around synagogues. A City Hall spokesperson said the mayor would wait for the outcome of a legal review before taking a position.
Mamdani told the Forward on Wednesday he has yet to discuss the specifics of the bill and would veto it if he determines it’s illegal. “I wouldn’t sign any legislation that we find to be outside of the bounds of the law,” he said.
Menin, who has already appeared several times alongside Mamdani — including in a social media clip promoting new public restrooms — said that, given her career as an attorney and her experience serving in a senior role at the New York City Law Department, she would not have introduced legislation that lacks legal standing.
“I feel very confident that the bills that we are going to put forward absolutely meet that legal muster,” she said. Menin declined to say whether she would seek to pass it with a veto-proof majority to get it signed into law, but said that her private conversations with Mamdani on the matter have been productive.
“I feel we’re going to have very broad-based support in the council,” she said. “They do not infringe upon the peaceful right to protest, but they do ensure that both congregants and students can enter and exit their respective facilities without intimidation and harassment. And I look forward to continuing to have productive conversations with the mayor on this topic.”
Menin will also be talking with a powerful group of progressive members, all of whom backed her bid for speaker. The body’s progressive caucus now includes 24 members, two short of a Council majority. The Jewish Caucus, which Menin attended last week, has seven members.
The Council is expected to vote on the set of bills at next month’s meeting.
Menin said passing the plan on an “aggressive and fast timetable” is crucial. “It’s obviously very important to call out antisemitic incidents as soon as they happen,” she said. “But we need far more than words. This is real decisive action to combat antisemitism.”
Fighting antisemitism and hate
Menin said she has a record of confronting antisemitism in public life.
When she was first elected to the City Council in 2021 — after serving as the city’s census czar during the 2020 count — she devoted her first town hall meeting to the issue. The virtual forum, attended by hundreds of constituents, brought together antisemitism experts and law enforcement officials to discuss how to report and prevent hate crimes. The meeting followed two incidents in her Upper East Side district. One involved a social media post by a popular comedy club that likened COVID-19 vaccination mandates to the Holocaust. Menin’s condemnation prompted a defamation lawsuit against her, which was dismissed. The other was the discovery of a swastika stamped on a $100 bill withdrawn from an ATM by a local woman.
Menin stressed the need to build relationships with other faith communities and “take the temperature and the rhetoric down” by focusing on “our commonality of spirit, not the differences.”
When she served as chair of the Community Board 1 in the 2000s, Menin supported the Islamic Cultural Center near Ground Zero, despite facing significant opposition and death threats. Menin mentioned in the interview a Muslim high school student in her district who formed a Muslim-Jewish club with a Jewish best friend after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel as an example of shared values.
Menin said she will continue the tradition of leading a City Council mission to Israel during her tenure, a contentious issue in recent city elections. In 2021, the Democratic Socialists of America local chapter required candidates who sought their endorsement to pledge not to travel on a sponsored trip to Israel. Her predecessor, Adrienne Adams, was the first speaker to break that tradition, in 2022, citing budget negotiations.
Favorite dish at the Shabbat table
Menin is an active member of Central Synagogue, a Reform congregation in Midtown Manhattan.
Her mother, Agnes Jacobs, and grandmother survived the Holocaust hiding in a cellar in Hungary, and her grandfather was killed. They first lived in Sydney, Australia for 6 years and then settled in a rent-controlled apartment in New York City’s neighborhood of Yorkville, known as “Little Hungary.”
Her favorite dish on the Friday night dinner table is palaschinta, a Hungarian crepe, using the toppings her grandfather liked — apricot jam and walnuts, and layered with chocolate.
Her bagel choice: sesame with scallion cream cheese.
The post Julie Menin wants to be a bridge in the Mamdani era appeared first on The Forward.
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Iran Regime Defections Mount Amid Crackdown, Trump Threat: Reports
A demonstrator lights a cigarette with fire from a burning picture of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei outside the Iranian embassy during a rally in support of nationwide protests in Iran, in London, Britain, Jan. 12, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Toby Melville
There are growing signs of cracks in the Iranian regime, with increasing reports of defections as Iran continues its deadly crackdown on nationwide, anti-government protests despite a US military buildup in the region.
Hundreds of junior and mid-level officers have recently defected from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and affiliated Basij paramilitary force, Israel’s channel 12 reported on Wednesday, citing Western intelligence sources.
Such a development could weaken the regime’s ability to suppress the demonstrations.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reportedly ordered the IRGC to take control of the crackdown in part due to fears of defections by the police and regular armed forces.
“He [Khamenei] is in closer contact with the IRGC than with the army or the police, because he believes the risk of IRGC defections is almost non-existent, whereas others have defected before,” a senior Iranian official told The Telegraph. “He has placed his fate in the hands of the IRGC.”
The Institute for the Study of War noted that the regular Iranian military “is generally less ideological and more representative of the Iranian population than the IRGC, which increases the risk that [army] members could defect.”
However, there have been additional signs that the IRGC, an internationally designated terrorist group, could be dealing with internal dissent.
The Intelligence Organization of the IRGC issued a statement earlier this month castigating the protests as part of a “terrorist” plot orchestrated by the US and Israel to topple the regime. In a now-deleted section of the statement, the IRGC also warned that any “defiance, desertion, or disobedience” among the military would be met with “trial and decisive action.”
“The apparent removal of this language likely reflects concerns about triggering a panic, but it nevertheless exposes the depth of anxiety among regime officials,” wrote Janatan Sayeh, a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank based in Washington, DC.
Meanwhile, the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization also said that it was “dealing with possible acts of abandonment,” similarly suggesting that some Iranian security forces may have already defected or that the regime is concerned about such a possibility.
A Kurdish human rights organization reported earlier this month that the regime had arrested “dozens” of security officers in Kermanshah City who refused to fire on protesters.
Meanwhile, multiple Iranian officials outside the security forces have openly defected.
An official serving in Iran’s Interior Ministry told the news outlet Iran International that he has defected from his post and joined the protests, urging US President Donald Trump to intervene against the Islamic Republic.
Iran International also reported that Alireza Jiranieh Hokambad, a minister-counselor and the second highest-ranking official at Iran’s UN mission in Geneva, has defected and sought political asylum in Switzerland.
Meanwhile, US Central Command announced on Tuesday that it is deploying additional fighter jets to the Middle East, citing rising regional tensions as unrest inside the Islamic Republic deepens.
“The F-15’s presence enhances combat readiness and promotes regional security and stability,” CENTCOM wrote in a post on X.
A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle assigned to the 494th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron lands at a base in the Middle East, Jan. 18. The F-15’s presence enhances combat readiness and promotes regional security and stability. pic.twitter.com/QTXgOsOozV
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) January 20, 2026
The US has also deployed other military assets to the region, including the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group.
Amid growing international backing for protesters and intensifying pressure on Tehran over its violent crackdown, several Iranian diplomats have reportedly made quiet overtures to European authorities in recent weeks about seeking asylum, as senior officials are said to be preparing contingency escape plans and stockpiling resources.
British Conservative Member of Parliament Tom Tugendhat said earlier this month that intelligence reports indicate that Iranian senior officials are putting contingency measures in place, “which suggest that the regime itself is preparing for life after the fall.”
“We’re also seeing Russian cargo aircraft coming and landing in Tehran, presumably carrying weapons and ammunition, and we’re hearing reports of large amounts of gold leaving Iran,” the British lawmaker told Parliament.
Meanwhile, Iranian-French journalist Emmanuel Razavi told the French news outlet Nouvelle Revue Politique that Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf is applying for a visa, while a nephew of former President Hassan Rouhani has also reportedly submitted a request to France.
There have been additional reports that Khamenei has a backup plan to flee the country if security forces fail to suppress the protests or begin to defect.
The Iranian leader would reportedly flee to Moscow, following the path of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. However, many experts have cast doubt on reports that Khamenei, who has not left Iran for decades, plans to flee, arguing the 86-year-old leader will likely die in the country.
Defections could tip the scales in favor of the protesters. But even if the regime succeeds in stamping out the unrest, some observers argue the Islamist theocracy has no long-term future in Iran.
With pressure mounting at home and abroad, experts say it remains unclear how Tehran will respond — whether by escalating militarily beyond its borders or by offering limited concessions to ease sanctions and mend ties with the West.
The nationwide protests, which began with a shopkeepers’ strike in Tehran on Dec. 28, initially reflected public anger over the soaring cost of living, a deepening economic crisis, and the rial — Iran’s currency — plummeting to record lows amid renewed economic sanctions, with annual inflation near 40 percent.
With demonstrations now stretching over three weeks, the protests have grown into a broader anti-government movement calling for the fall of Khamenei and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and even a broader collapse of the country’s Islamist, authoritarian system.
According to the US-based human rights group HRANA, 4,519 people have been killed during the protests, with another 9,049 fatalities under review. At least 5,811 people have been injured, and 26,314 arrests have been recorded.
Iranian officials have put the death toll at 5,000 while some reports indicate the figure could be much higher. The Sunday Times, for example, obtained a new report from doctors on the ground, which states that at least 16,500 protesters have died and 330,000 have been injured.
Last week, Trump urged Iranians to keep protesting their government, vowing “help” was coming as the regime continued its brutal crackdown on the nationwide demonstrations.
Over the last few weeks, Trump has repeatedly warned that he will intervene against the Iranian regime if security forces continue killing protesters. He also announced that any country doing business with Iran would face a new 25 percent tariff on exports to the US.
In Europe, Germany, Britain, France, and Italy have all summoned Iranian ambassadors in protest over the regime’s crackdown. British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper condemned what she described as the “brutal killing” of protesters.
Meanwhile, the European Union on Tuesday announced plans to tighten restrictions on exporting drone and missile technology to Iran, following the regime’s deadly efforts to crush the protests.
“Europe stands in full solidarity with the brave women and men of Iran who are risking their lives to demand freedom for themselves and future generations,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote in a post on X.
However, Israeli officials and other observers have lambasted EU for so far refusing to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization.