New York City voters should not repeat Chicago’s mistake by electing a far-left mayor like state representative Zohran Mamdani in the June 24 Democratic primary, the Chicago Tribune editorial board stated on Monday.

Citing the experience of Chicago Mayor Blake Johnson as a warning, whose policy ideas are similar to Mamdani, the editorial stated that “far-left candidates do not make for effective or popular municipal executives in today’s stressful economy.”

The editorial board pointed to several failed policy decisions under the Johnson administration, including a $300 million tax hike, a so-called “mansion tax” that would have driven up real estate prices and a failure to deliver on affordable housing construction.

“Johnson’s approval rating cratered in his second year—a reflection of how quickly progressive promises collapsed under the weight of governance and Chicago’s financial reality,” the editorial board stated. “What sounded good in theory has translated into dysfunction, driven by fiscal missteps and political inexperience.”

“Johnson is one of the most progressive mayors in the U.S., but Mamdani, inarguably, is yet more radical,” it added.

The board noted that New York City’s mayoral race will likely hinge on voter turnout—an area where participation has steadily declined, dropping from 93% of registered voters in 1953 to 57% in 1993, and to just over 20% in the 2021 election.

Low voter turnout makes it easier for radicals to capture public office, according to the board.

“That’s a mistake we hope New Yorkers don’t make,” the board wrote. “If New Yorkers are frustrated with Mayor Eric Adams, they should be careful not to trade him for someone who might preside over a city that is less competitive and less financially secure.”

“Trust us,” the editorial continued. “We’re living that reality.”

Tom Horne, Arizona state superintendent of public instruction, criticized Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs’ June 10 veto of legislation that would have allowed public school students and their families to sue teachers over antisemitic content in the classroom.

“This is a terrible error in judgment on the part of the governor,” Horne stated. “This bipartisan legislation was vital for ensuring that public schools cannot infect students with antisemitic propaganda, and her veto is a slap at the Jewish community and those who fight every day against racism.”

The legislation, HB 2867, sponsored by state representative Michael Way, passed through the state legislature with support from both parties, Horne noted.

“This bill should have been signed into law,” he stated.

A spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Education told JNS that Horne made the statement the day after Hobbs vetoed the bill, but it wasn’t posted on the website until Monday due to a “technical issue.”

Horne highlighted an antisemitic incident at Desert Mountain High School in Scottsdale, Ariz., in which “the sponsor of UNICEF and the sponsor of Amnesty International, both teachers, brought to the school a totally one-sided, pro-Hamas, anti-Israel presentation that caused some impressionable students to develop antisemitic feelings, which made Jewish students uncomfortable.”

“Our country has been witnessing a large and steady increase in antisemitism,” he stated. “Studies show that it is much more so among young people than among the older generation. It is not true that there are no instances of teachers in Arizona schools teaching antisemitism.”

The Israel Defense Forces announced on Tuesday night that one of its soldiers was killed by an Iranian missile launched at the Jewish state.

Cpl. Eitan Zacks, 18, from Beersheva, a member of the IDF's elite 888 "Ghost" Multidimensional Unit, was in combat training when he was killed "as a result of a missile launched from Iran," the IDF stated.

Four Israelis were killed on Tuesday morning when an Iranian ballistic missile struck a residential building in the southern city of Beersheva.

Hebrew media reported that Zacks and the three other casualties, who have yet to be identified, were in a bomb shelter that took a direct hit.

According to the IDF, Tehran fired six volleys totaling 12 missiles at the Jewish state over three hours, beginning at around 5 a.m. The missile launches came around seven hours after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Jerusalem and Tehran agreed to a "complete and total ceasefire" set to take effect at 7 a.m. local time.

Since the beginning of the war on June 13, the Islamic regime has fired nearly 1,000 missiles and drones at Israeli civilians in densely populated population centers—killing 28, including Zacks, wounding dozens and displacing thousands more and causing widespread property damage.

The free world just witnessed a strategic milestone: the most forceful joint military campaign ever undertaken against Iran’s nuclear program. Israel launched it. The United States—thanks entirely to U.S. President Donald Trump—delivered the coup de grâce.

While early assessments suggest a devastating impact, the long-term outcome remains unclear. There are reports that enriched uranium was spirited away before the strikes. The regime’s duplicity demands caution: we simply don’t yet know how complete the damage truly is.

What we do know is this: even a successful military campaign cannot solve the Iran problem. Because Iran’s nuclear program is not the root of the threat—it’s the fruit. The regime itself is the threat.

That’s why the true mission is twofold—and always has been. First: destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Second: dismantle the regime that built them.

The urgency of the first is obvious. No state that pledges genocide and death to America can be allowed nuclear weapons. With intercontinental ballistic missiles—or a high-altitude EMP—Iran could inflict catastrophic destruction on the U.S. mainland—literally killing 90% of America. This regime doesn’t view nukes as deterrents. It sees them as divine instruments.

But it’s the second objective—regime change—that is the long-term strategic necessity. So long as the Islamic Republic endures, it will rebuild. It will re-arm. It will return. We’ve been here before: negotiated freezes, UN inspections, sanctions relief—and all the while, Tehran advanced its capabilities under the cover of diplomacy and deception.

This regime is not merely hostile. It is messianic. Its genocidal fixation on Jews, its hatred for Christianity, the West, even other Muslims—and its endless quest to export jihad are not policy preferences; they are religious imperatives.

Some in the West still flinch at the idea of regime change. They ask: What comes next?

The honest answer is that we don’t know. The next regime may not be friendly. It may even be anti-American.

But it is an easy bet that it will not be worse. No successor could exceed the Islamic Republic’s unique combination of apocalyptic ideology, oil wealth, and global terror reach. And there’s every reason to believe it may be better.

Iran is a proud, sophisticated nation whose people have risked everything to resist their oppressors. Many polls suggest a majority of Iranians seek not only regime change, but a more open society and friendship with both America and Israel.

Some critics—absurdly claiming the mantle of “America First” and “MAGA”—have attacked Trump for assisting Israel in confronting the nuclear threat. This is not only dishonest. It’s dangerous. It is precisely Trump—who personifies both “America First” and the MAGA doctrine—whose leadership was needed to deliver the final, decisive blow.

He understood what too many forget: that preventing a nuclear apocalypse in the hands of a fanatical regime is not a favor to Israel. It is a strategic imperative for America. And he will not be in office forever. The Iranians are extremely patient. They’ve waited out American administrations before. They will again—unless we finish what we’ve started.

That’s why now is the moment for strategic resolve, not retreat. The strikes must not be the end of American engagement. They must be the beginning of a sustained campaign:

• Maximum economic and diplomatic pressure.
• Relentless cyber and covert action.
• Unapologetic support for Iran’s resistance.

The nuclear threat must be eliminated. The regime must fall. The free world cannot afford another cycle of illusions, negotiations, and betrayal. What follows may be uncertain. But unlike the status quo, it holds the possibility of peace, stability—and a future not only for Iranians, but for the United States and Israel.

Israel struck first, for the world. America followed, with overwhelming force. Now both must lead, with vision.

For the past 20 years, I have been teaching a course to college students called “Propaganda and Genocide” to first-year students at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn. While we largely cover content that has occurred in the past, every so often something in the current environment pops up that makes me, as a teacher-scholar, take notice.

In recent days, New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has continued using dangerous rhetoric to dehumanize Jews, disparage Israel and create a hostile environment for his would-be Jewish constituents, specifically with a tactic known as “Holocaust inversion.”

Trying to leverage the recent disdain among many on the left with the Trump administration, Mamdani, when asked on a podcast about banning the use of certain terms, like “globalize the intifada,” claimed that such censorship would be akin to a Trump-style approach to governance. But, more significantly, he argued that “intifada” simply means “uprising” and, therefore, could be used in the context of the famed Warsaw Ghetto Uprising itself.

The reality, however, is that those of us in the Jewish community know exactly what is meant by “globalize the intifada,” and that is, quite simply, the killing of Jews. The Palestinian intifadas led to the murders of thousands of Israeli civilians. In recent months, it has become a call to randomly assail Jews and Israelis, such as those who were murdered or injured in recent attacks in Washington, D.C., and Boulder, Colorado, in the name of “resistance.” This use, as I would tell my students, is a textbook case of Holocaust inversion.

Holocaust inversion is the inversion of reality. In this case, the reality of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising has absolutely nothing to do with the intifadas that have been going on in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. It is used by people like Mamdani to try and draw parallels to events of the Holocaust and distort history, as if history has not been distorted enough already by the unsavory groups and individuals Mamdani has associated with for much of his political career.

Rebuffed by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for his use of the term, Mamdani recently turned on the waterworks to try and deflect from his foray into deliberate use of the inversion technique. When called out on his actions, in a city with nearly a million Jews, Mamdani quoted famed novelist Toni Morrison by stating that “the function of racism is distraction” and focused on the discrimination he has faced as a Muslim American. Of course, the true distraction was Mamdani’s use of the appalling horror of the Warsaw Ghetto to shift concerns about the existential violence happening right now to Jews across America and the globe.

With some branches of my family tree destroyed in the Warsaw Ghetto, let me assure propagandists like Mamdani that no Jews participated in anything at all resembling an “intifada” by any stretch of the imagination. Anyone who has studied the Holocaust for any length of time knows that there are zero parallels to be drawn between the Warsaw Uprising and the intifada. None. Zero. Zip.

With his rhetoric designed to appeal to the uneducated masses who get much of their news and information about the conflicts in the Middle East from TikTok videos and Instagram reels, Mamdani choose to use the word “intifada” out of context in a clear effort to equate what happened in World War II with the current events in Gaza. It is a common trope used by many to deliberately distort the facts, this includes, sadly, Wikipedia editors who have given cover to propagandists like Mamdani.

Instead of constructing a dialogue with the Jewish people of New York, including its many Holocaust survivors, Mamdani has only attempted to defend his use of the term in his ghastly context. In this respect, Mamdani has demonstrated what type of environment he plans to create for New York’s Jewish community if he were to be victorious.

As Israel engages in a life-and-death campaign of historic strategic precision—neutralizing Iran’s nuclear program and striking the heart of its military infrastructure—the silence from many progressive Jewish institutions in America has been conspicuous and shameful. Among those at the forefront of this void is Amy Spitalnick, head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, who has offered nothing resembling leadership at a time when it is most desperately needed.

Israel is engaged in a generational act of self-preservation, not only for the one Jewish state, but for the majority of the world’s Jews. It is the active enforcement of the Begin doctrine—a red line drawn decades ago that no regime committed to Israel’s extermination will be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. That line is now being defended, in real time, by some of the most elite and courageous Jewish heroes in history: fighter pilots, special forces operators and intelligence agents executing precision strikes to degrade and dismantle the Islamic Republic’s genocidal infrastructure.

And while these brave, young Israelis take existential risks to prevent a second Holocaust, Spitalnick only this as the war began: “Just heartbroken and terrified watching the news out of Israel tonight.”

The JCPA’s official statement after Israel began to attack Iran was an anemic and evasive prayer for “Israeli people as they await potential strikes, and with all civilians caught in the crossfire,” devoid of moral clarity, historical context or even a mention of Iran. In the week that followed, there was no elaboration, just more silence. While Iranian missiles continued to fall, Spitalnick’s JCPA commemorated Juneteenth, condemned the Supreme Court’s decision upholding a ban on child gender transitions, saying that “trans safety is Jewish safety.”

She did, however, post on social media after America struck the Iranian nuclear facilities, saying: “Putting everything else aside, I am just terrified about efforts to exploit the escalation with Iran to further undermine Jewish safety and security and our democracy at an already-frightening moment for both.”

But there was no mention of the world of the Islamic Republic’s repeated promises to destroy the “cancerous tumor” of Zionism.

This is not mere omission; it is a kind of ideological confession. Spitalnick and the far-left activist class she represents have constructed an entire political worldview in which the actual lives of Jews are, at best, incidental, and, at worst, a hindrance to the pursuit of progressive absolution. When Jewish lives are on the line, they default to abstraction. When the Jewish state acts with strength and moral seriousness, they vanish.

Israelis, for their part, understand what is at stake. According to polling by the Israel Democracy Institute, 80% of Jewish Israelis supported the strike on Iran. The response was not partisan or controversial; it was unified, sober and necessary. In Israel, questions of sovereignty, deterrence and national security are not theoretical. The threat is known, and so is the obligation to act, even in the face of uncertainty and great sacrifice.

Spitalnick’s career, by contrast, is built on a kind of weaponized irrelevance. She began as J Street’s first press secretary, helping to shape a platform of moral equivocation and public relations warfare against Israel and its security. Founded in 2008 as a counterweight to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, J Street styled itself as “pro-Israel, pro-peace,” but was widely regarded as a Trojan horse for anti-Israel sentiment within the American Jewish community. Its donors, many of whom now fund the JCPA, have also bankrolled organizations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Oxfam, which churn out anti-Israel propaganda under the guise of human rights reporting.

Since Spitalnick moved to head the JCPA in 2023, Israel is the last thing a left-wing organization wants to discuss. Nearly every press release or statement from Spitalnick’s JCPA repeats the same refrain: “Only by ensuring that all communities are protected from discrimination and violence can we ensure that Jews are safe.” What does this mean? While the group never explains why that causal relationship holds, the implication is clear: Jewish safety is synonymous with the march of social justice, and, because the social justice policy wish-list progresses forever leftward, the fate of the Jews is along for the ride. Under this framework, those who insist on a more centrist, rational politics or forthright solidarity with Israel are branded as enemies.

The organization’s 2025 legislative and policy agenda from last month is illustrative as it’s a dense catalogue of progressive domestic priorities, including abortion, “climate equity,” DEI mandates, housing policy and voting access—every agenda item imaginable, except the one now threatening the lives of most of the world’s Jews. When antisemitism is acknowledged, it is only through the filter of the threat of white supremacy. There is no mention of the dominant forms of antisemitism now raging through academia, elite media and leftist organizing, anti-Zionist activism.

This was her posture after Oct. 7, when Hamas committed the most brutal mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. Rather than confront the ideologies and movements that had enabled it, or to help Americans understand the stakes for Israel’s security, Spitalnick and her allies worked to frame the Israel Defense Forces’ response as an overreach. And when Jewish students were harassed, threatened and assaulted on elite college campuses, JCPA did not stand with them. Instead, it criticized Republicans for daring to notice.

The group’s partner organizations, from Bend the Arc to Jews for Racial and Economic Justice to The Shalom Center, allow themselves to be more explicit and radical. They refer to Israel as a white-supremacist or colonialist project, and they do so without consequence or Spitalnick’s rebuke. The JCPA’s alignment with anti-Zionist groups is not a fringe position within this coalition, but its moral center.

Participants at the JCPA’s most recent summit, included Rabbi Rachel Timoner, who presided over a Pride Shabbat the weekend Iranian missiles began falling and mentioned not a word about Israel, not a prayer for soldiers; Aviva Meyer, whose “New Jewish Narrative,” born from the collapse of Americans for Peace Now, has effectively abandoned any pretense of Zionism; and Jill Jacobs of T’ruah, who spent the week accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing.

What all of this makes clear is that the JCPA advances a left-wing political agenda using American Jews as human shields. It is a lobbying arm for left-wing priorities, branded with a Jewish aesthetic for credibility and rhetorical utility. While it retains access to elite forums, press coverage and donor pipelines, it does not speak for the majority of Jews in America. It speaks for a credentialed activist class that has proven incapable of defending Jews under siege, because doing so would mean breaking with ideological allies.

October 7 was a moment of moral reckoning, and the current campaign against Iran is another. Because Spitalnick and the JCPA do not believe in the survival of Jews outside the context of progressive utopianism, they are unwilling to defend living and breathing Jews when it matters.

They may continue to post on social media, host panels, attend summits and issue irrelevant press releases and infographics, but they must not be regarded as representatives of Jewish communal life. They speak for an ideology that cannot see Jews except as props in someone else’s revolution.

An estimated 1,000 people rallied in Toronto to support a free Iran on Sunday.

Amir Epstein, one of the organizers of the event, said the aim was to show solidarity against those who support Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who leads the Iranian regime.

“We were witnessing the lowest form of moral depravity we’ve ever seen when people on the streets are defending an Islamic regime” that tortures, rapes and murders women “simply for not dressing as they are told to,” Epstein told JNS.

It is “shocking, appalling and vile to hear people, who call themselves progressive and liberal, defend evil serpents,” he added.

Goldie Ghamari, a former Ontario parliamentarian who was the first female Iranian politician elected in the country, also addressed the crowd.

“It was important to show unity, because this war is Khamenei’s war with Israel,” she told JNS. “Iranians and Jews are united, and we are fighting to overthrow the terrorist Islamic Republic, to free Iran and bring peace to the Middle East.”

Chants from the crowd included “make Iran great again,” “we reject the 1979 revolt” and “freedom for Iranians.”

Melissa Lantsman, a member of the Canadian Parliament and deputy leader of the Conservative Party who is Jewish, and Conservative parliamentarians Anna Roberts, Costas Menegakis and Roman Baber delivered speeches at the rally, as did Toronto municipal councilor Brad Bradford. (Baber is Jewish.)

Daniel Bordman, a Canadian journalist who gave a keynote address, told JNS the rally was important because “with all the media bias against Israel and Jews and anti-regime Iranians, it was important to show that unity between us is possible on a large scale.”

“When over 1,000 people can mix and sing ‘Ey Iran’ and ‘Hatikvah’ together, it sends a clear message about a new Middle East that can be without the Islamic Republic,” added Bordman, executive director of the Global Cyrus Initiative.

Salman Sima, one of the organizers and a former Iranian prisoner who escaped to Canada, told JNS that “when my fellow Iranians need my support, this is the least thing I can do.”

Epstein noted that the event involved an Iranian Muslim, Sima, “working alongside Canadian Jews, and it’s so easy to see which side is good and which is evil.”

“We did it because we just couldn’t believe that people were defending the ayatollah, pretending to be progressive, when really they are in the same pool as Nazi white supremacists,” he said.

Lantsman told JNS she attended to show Iranian Canadians that “we understand that the tyrannical regime in Tehran has made its intentions clear—regional domination, terror sponsorship and genocidal threats to wipe nations off the map.”

“We stand with them for a safer world where the Iranian people can once again have freedom in their homeland,” she said.

The Jewish lawmaker also wanted to “say loudly and clearly that we must ensure that violence does not spill into our communities at home” and “that those who want to live free of terror must be protected from both the antisemitic hate and pro-regime intimidation that too often accompanies these global tensions,” she told JNS.

“We must support the fight against tyranny abroad and guard against hatred and violence here,” she said.

Ali Siadatan, educational director at Tafsik and an Iranian Canadian, told JNS the rally “brought two ancient people with a common destiny together.”

“We were standing in solidarity against the forces of darkness in the Mideast, led by the Islamic Republic of Iran, and their ideological army, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” he said.

Israel will refrain from carrying out further strikes in Iran despite Tehran’s violation of the ceasefire deal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said following a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday.

During the conversation, Trump “conveyed his deep appreciation for Israel, which he said had accomplished all of the war’s objectives,” the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem stated, adding that Trump had “also expressed confidence in the stability of the ceasefire.”

Netanyahu’s office noted that while the ceasefire was supposed to come into effect at 7 a.m. local time, at 7:06 a.m., Tehran launched a missile toward Israeli territory, followed by two more missiles at 10:25 a.m.

In addition, shortly before the truce took effect, the Islamic Republic fired a barrage of missiles, one of which directly hit Beersheva and claimed the lives of four civilians, the Prime Minister’s Office said.

“In response to these violations, the Israel Air Force destroyed a radar installation near Tehran,” the PMO stated, confirming Hebrew media reports that the military was considering attacking a “symbolic target.”

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir had vowed that the military would “respond with force” to the Islamic Republic’s violations of the ceasefire.

However, Trump, following the phone call with Netanyahu, announced that Jerusalem would not be conducting any major retaliatory attack and that the ceasefire he brokered remained in effect.

“All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the ceasefire is in effect!” wrote the president on his Truth Social platform.

Earlier, Trump had warned in a post: “Israel. Do not drop those bombs. If you do it is a major violation. Bring your pilots home, now! Donald J. Trump, president of the United States.”

Speaking with reporters before leaving for the NATO summit in The Hague, Trump had exclaimed that Israel and Iran “don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.”

“Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’d never seen before, the biggest load that we’ve seen. I’m not happy with Israel,” the president claimed.

“You know when I say, OK, now you have 12 hours. You don’t go out in the first hour, just drop everything you have on them. So, I’m not happy with them,” he said of the window Jerusalem was given to stop striking.

“I’m not happy with Iran either. But I’m really unhappy if Israel is going out this morning because of one rocket that didn’t land, that was shot, perhaps by mistake, that didn’t land,” Trump added.

Since Jerusalem launched Operation Rising Lion early on June 13 against the Iranian regime’s nuclear and missile arsenals, the Islamic Republic has fired nearly 1,000 missiles and drones at Israeli civilians in major population centers—killing 28, wounding dozens and displacing thousands more and causing widespread property damage.

Trump on Tuesday vowed that the Islamic regime "will never rebuild their nuclear facilities" following the Israeli and U.S. military action.

Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani announced on Tuesday that Qatar is actively working to facilitate the resumption of indirect talks between Israel and Hamas in the near future.

The goal of these discussions is to secure both a ceasefire and the release of hostages, following a framework proposed by the United States.

“We remain committed to collaborating with Egypt and the United States to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza,” said Al Thani, as reported by Arab media outlets.

According to Israeli authorities, approximately 50 hostages are currently being held by terrorist groups in Gaza. Most of these individuals were taken during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Of the hostages, at least 28 have been confirmed dead, 20 are believed to be alive, and there are serious concerns for the well-being of two others. Additionally, Hamas continues to hold the remains of an Israeli soldier who was killed in 2014.

IDF reaffirms commitment to hostage release and security

Maj. Gen. Yaniv Asor, who leads the Israel Defense Forces' Southern Command, reiterated on Monday that the Israeli military is determined to dismantle Hamas and ensure the safe return of all hostages. Speaking to soldiers from the 252nd Division, Asor emphasized that the mission will continue until Hamas is no longer a threat and all captives are brought home.

He highlighted the significance of ongoing operations, not only in Gaza but also in countering threats from Iran. Asor stressed the importance of restoring security to communities near Gaza and ensuring the safe return of civilians, stating that the military will persist in its efforts until these objectives are achieved.