Israeli supermodel Sun Mizrahi graces ‘Vogue’ cover, despite antisemitism
Intro
“This is not what Israelis look like,” wrote a racist commentator.
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Despite facing online antisemitism just last month, Israeli supermodel Sun Mizrahi starred on two covers for the summer issue of Vogue Greece, the world's most famous and prestigious fashion magazine.
The magazine created two different covers with the theme of "Mediterranean Touch."
"The diverse facets of the Mediterranean coast make up this unique mosaic, drawing influences from Greece and Italy to the more Middle Eastern roots of Lebanon and Morocco," described the fashion editorial.
The covers faced online backlash.
"Posting an Israeli model on your cover in the midst of current world events is an extremely tone-deaf decision and it really does beg the question of whether you are able to read the room," one commentator said. "This is not what Israelis look like," another added.
Many took to X to defend the model, one saying, "They say that Israelis are white. Let me tell you a secret. Her name is Sun Mizrahi. Do you know what Mizrahi means in Hebrew? It means Eastern!"
Just six weeks ago, Mizrahi faced online hate for being Israeli after the international retailer Zara promoted her campaign photos on social media. Landing a Vogue cover is a massive achievement for a model, making this a source of Israeli pride to see the homegrown beauty grace the cover of the iconic fashion bible.
The U.S. Department of Justice charged three men on Friday who it said were involved in an Iranian plot to assassinate President-elect Donald Trump and to murder Jews, Israelis and an Iranian-American rights advocate.
Prosecutors charged Farhad Shakeri, 51, of Iran; Carlisle Rivera, 49, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; and Jonathan Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island, N.Y., with two murder-for-hire counts and one money laundering count each, carrying a maximum of 40 years in prison total per person.
Shakeri is further accused of terrorism and sanctions violations charges with an additional 60 years of potential prison time.
“The charges announced today expose Iran's continued brazen attempts to target U.S. citizens, including President-elect Donald Trump, other government leaders and dissidents who criticize the regime in Tehran,” stated Christopher Wray, the FBI director.
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—a designated foreign terrorist organization—has been conspiring with criminals and hitmen to target and gun down Americans on U.S. soil and that simply won’t be tolerated,” Wray added.
Police arrested Loadholt and Rivera on Thursday, and the two appeared in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York the same day. Shakeri is at large and believed to be in Iran, according to the Justice Department.
According to the criminal complaint, Shakeri, on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, attempted to orchestrate targeted assassinations of Americans and the mass killing of Israelis.
Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American advocate for Iranian rights whom the regime previously attempted to kill in a thwarted 2022 attack in Brooklyn, identified herself as one of the would-be targets of the murder-for-hire conspiracy on Friday.
“I just learned from the FBI that two men were arrested yesterday in a new plot to kill me at Fairfield University, where I was scheduled to give a talk,” she wrote. “I came to America to practice my First Amendment right to freedom of speech—I don’t want to die.”
Shakeri told FBI agents in a series of telephone conversations between September and November that the IRGC instructed him in mid-September to try to kill Trump and that it was willing to spend a “huge” amount of money to do so.
The terrorist organization also instructed him to kill two “Jewish businesspeople residing in New York City,” identified in the complaint as “Victim-2” and “Victim-3”.
“Shakeri explained that the IRGC provided him with pictures of Victim-2 and Victim-3, which, according to Shakeri, appeared to come from social media and which indicated Victim-2 and Victim-3's support for Israel,” the complaint says.
The IRGC offered $500,000 each for the killing of the two Jews.
The terror group also instructed him to plan a mass shooting of Israeli tourists at Arugam Bay in Sri Lanka that was thwarted by U.S. and Sri Lankan authorities, who arrested three men in October after Israel and the United States issued warning of an impending attack.
Amsterdam police officers arrested a 26-year-old man, whom they suspect of causing public violence during riots on the Spui square in the Dutch capital city, the police department stated in Dutch.
The police department, which had asked the public to share videos and photos that would help it identify attackers, stated that the suspect was recognized from camera footage.
"The suspect is in custody and is being questioned," Amsterdam police stated at about 7:15 p.m. local time. (JNS used translations of the department's Dutch statements.)
The police department is urging those who were involved in the attacks to avoid officers "from being forced to disclose images and engage the public to identify you," it said. "Be responsible and report yourself to avoid further measures."
Amsterdam police also clarified an earlier statement, in which the police chief had said that 200 officers were on duty in the capital city. In fact, there were 200 members of a mobile unit, the department said, and hundreds of others in additional units.
"A total of 1,210 police officers have entered the service until late at night since yesterday afternoon," it said, in Dutch. "This also includes support staff. A large proportion of these police officers worked until it became quiet in the city center, which was between 3 and 4 a.m."
Some 100 people gathered outside the main entrance to Columbia University in New York City on Friday to protest the attack on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam overnight.
Columbia student Noah Lederman attended the rally before going to an event at the campus Hillel.
“I am very concerned about what’s happening on campus,” he told JNS. “I was walking with my ‘I stand with Israel’ t-shirt just now, and a guy said, ‘The Nazis are coming.’ I asked him whether he was calling us ‘Nazis.’ He said, ‘You are all Nazi.’”
Lederman said that Jewish students weren’t safe at Columbia last semester, where there was an anti-Israel encampment in the spring. “Right now, I feel safe on campus but I see how dramatically this can change,” he said. “To be lulled into a false sense of security is very dangerous.”
The student sees a “lack of education” as part of the problem. “People don’t understand what they are standing up for, and that is a major issue,” he said. “A large thing that the other side has been doing so successfully is get people who don’t care to care by feeding them propaganda and misinformation, and saying, ‘This will make you a good person.’”
“These are supposed to be places for learning, and they’ve become places so polarized that nobody can even have any sort of respectful conversation,” he said. “There are compelling arguments to be had about ethical and moral issues that may arise in this conflict, and yet it’s become impossible to have these conversations.”
Shai Davidai, an assistant management professor at Columbia Business School, told JNS that there was a “direct link” between the events in Amsterdam and growing global calls by pro-Hamas students to “globalize the Intifada.” The latter is a reference to the 2000-2005 Palestinian terror war on the Jewish state.
“We saw in Amsterdam Jews being chased on the streets, being beaten up, attackers checking their passports to see if they were Jewish, throwing them into the river, making sure they couldn’t hide,” Davidai said.
“We are here, because it’s time to end Jew-hatred,” he said. “No one is going to save us unless we come and tell the world that it is not acceptable. The community has had enough.”
In the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, anti-Israel protests have surfaced across U.S. campuses, with Columbia at the forefront. Davidai has been one of those who have been most vocal in their criticism of the way that Columbia handled a pro-Hamas encampment on campus.
Hundreds of students have reported increasing Jew-hatred at Columbia, according to an August report released by the university’s antisemitism task force.
Ofri Reiner, a survivor of the Supernova music festival, told JNS that she was “in a battle to fight for Israel and bring the voice of my generation.”
“My brother was killed on Oct. 7 fighting for our lives,” Reiner said. (Her brother Shalev Dagan was an Israel Defense Forces soldier.)
“I came to New York yesterday and seeing what happened in Amsterdam, I felt the need to belong and to feel part of something bigger than me while reminding myself that I am surrounded by people that love me,” she told JNS.
The Amsterdam police department told JNS on Friday that it had “launched a major investigation into multiple violent incidents” and that as of Friday afternoon in Amsterdam, five people had been hospitalized and 62 were arrested.
Witnesses described about 100 men, whom they described as Arabs, assaulting Israelis in a coordinated manner. The country’s largest-scale antisemitic incident in decades has shocked many Dutchmen and especially Jews and Holocaust survivors, who said that recalls the time leading up to the Holocaust.
Amanda Mccallum, who described herself as a Zionist, told JNS that she came to Columbia, because she saw echoes of Nazi Germany in current developments.
“I am proud that I have some Jewish blood,” she said. “You don’t need to be Jewish or have Jewish friends to stand up for what’s right.”
“The Jews are 0.2% of the world and it’s like ‘Oh, they’re the problem.’ It’s insane and so wrong,” she said. “I feel like history repeats itself and antisemitism is coming back, and I am scared for my Jewish friends.”
A 45-year-old New Yorker, who gave his name as David, attended the rally with a combined U.S.-Israeli flag draped on his back and a “make America great again” hat.
“When someone tells you who they are, you must listen,” the man told JNS. “They have been screaming ‘death to America.’ They’ve been burning both Israeli flags and American flags. I’ve been at all these counter protests. I have watched the whole process.”
The man told JNS that wearing the hat, which draws on the catch phrase associated with President-elect Donald Trump, is new to him.
“I’ve always voted Democrat, but I feel betrayed by the party. I am afraid not only for Israel and Jews, but for the United States also when they say bring the Intifada to America,” he said. “When I see white American kids—the same liberals that I used to be aligned with—chanting these things, it makes me rethink everything about what America means.”
“What happened yesterday reminds me of things that I read about, that I thought were in the past, but apparently we are not,” he added, of the attacks in Amsterdam.
Felice Schachter, of the grassroot organization Mothers Against College Antisemitism, addressed the crowd at the rally on Friday, emphasizing that “‘Never again’ is not an empty slogan.”
“It’s a promise,” she said.
“We go around the country to various universities where antisemitism is on display and we show up to protect and support Jewish students, because they are feeling scared and alone right now,” Schachter told JNS.
Sandra Mimran, a member of the group from Montreal, told JNS that Jewish rights are civil rights. “We are here to stand for them,” she said. “Everybody needs to feel safe.”
The return of Donald Trump to the White House may send shivers down the spines of many, if not most, American Jews. Israelis, however, in large part seem relieved by the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. Both reactions are unsurprising.
To the majority of American Jews who are both politically liberal and loyal Democrats, Trump embodies contempt for the rule of credentialed elites—among whom most Jews number themselves—and the woke ideology they have imposed on the nation. Trump is the “bad orange man” around whom working-class voters of all races have rallied. Various exit polls differ on the degree of movement towards Trump, which was in evidence in some but not all sectors of American Jewry. But it’s clear that partisan loyalties overwhelmed concerns about the way left-wing Democrats have embraced antisemitism and hatred for Israel in the year since the massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Most Israelis see Trump solely through the prism of his undoubted record as the most pro-Israel president since the founding of the modern-day Jewish state. The positive memories of Trump moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, holding the Palestinian Authority accountable for its support for terrorism and its pushing for the 2020 Abraham Accords peace agreements with Muslim and Arab states have only grown when compared to the equivocal attitude of President Joe Biden and his foreign-policy team during their four years in office.
A more pro-Israel president
Biden and the rest of his administration spent the last year since Oct. 7 speaking out of both sides of their mouths about Israel’s struggles. On the one hand, they sometimes expressed strong support for Israel’s right to self-defense as well as the eradication of Hamas, and never completely cut off the supplies of arms it needed to continue the war, even if they were slow-walked. At the same time, the drumbeat of criticism and unhelpful advice served to delay and hamper Israel’s efforts to defeat its enemies while giving hope to the Iranian-backed terrorists that the ceasefire for which Washington yearned would allow them to survive and defeat Israel.
Things will be different under Trump, who has repeatedly expressed his support for a green light to the Israelis to do everything in their power to quickly win the war. Though relations between the two allies will be dependent on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ability to manage his relationship with Trump (i.e., flatter him and never get on his wrong side) as well as the people the president names to fill important foreign-policy posts, both Israelis and their American friends are right to assume that, at worst, the ties between Washington and Jerusalem will almost certainly be warmer than they were during the past four years.
But even those Trump critics who acknowledge, as they must, that Trump’s record on Israel is largely exemplary are quick to assert that despite that, Israel will inevitably suffer from a revival of a Trumpian “America First” foreign policy.
Linking Israeli security to Ukraine
Their argument is that an isolationist American administration is bound to lose interest in Israel’s security. Moreover, they believe a policy that hinges on a transactional approach to foreign policy as well as a pronounced disinterest in entangling the United States in foreign wars—whether in the Middle East or the one between Russia and Ukraine—is a recipe for disaster for the Jewish state.
“America first” critics assume that only when Washington embraces a spirit of unbridled interventionism abroad can Israel be safe. They see all of the threats to both the United States and Israel as part of a broad axis of interconnected and dangerous malevolent powers.
In particular, they assert that there is no difference between Israel’s battles against its terrorist enemies and Ukraine’s efforts to resist Russian aggression. The basis of this assertion is that for the United States to hold back from full-fledged involvement in any conflict involving Russia, China or Iran would mean that any other commitment would necessarily be downgraded, if not entirely discarded.
In this way, they reason that Trump’s obvious sympathy for Israel and disdain for its enemies (or even that of those in his inner circle) will eventually fall prey to an isolationist instinct that will cause his administration to backtrack on its commitments. They also assume that anything less than a total victory for Ukraine over Russia—a fanciful vision that they can neither define nor tell us how it will be achieved—will diminish Israel’s security.
All of this is demonstrably untrue. Russia, China and Iran may seemingly all be on the same side in both the conflict in Ukraine and the war against Israel in the Middle East. But Ukraine’s cause has nothing to do with that of Israel. Success for one does nothing to enhance the security of the other.
It is true that China, Russia and Iran seem to have formed a loose alliance. It is equally true that China’s global ambitions have set in motion events that may well, as historian Niall Ferguson argues, be considered a new cold war. But even if that is so, that doesn’t necessarily mean that all the proxy wars generated by this conflict, such as that between Russia and Ukraine, are crucial tests of American will.
Picking and choosing between proxy wars
Much like some of the “minor” proxy wars that arose during the first Cold War, such as the war in Vietnam, rather than obligating the United States to go all in, the outcome of the war in Ukraine may not have much to do with determining whether the United States or China ultimately prevail. The key to wise Cold War statesmanship was not a blind willingness to dive into every possible proxy conflict with the former Soviet Union. It lay in knowing the difference between those battles that demand American involvement and those that the United States would be far better off ignoring—or at least not involving itself in a win-or-die challenge.
In retrospect, the United States would have been far better off refusing to join the war in Vietnam. That is true not because involvement in that war was “morally wrong.” Seeking to halt the spread of communism or even just refusing to allow South Vietnam to fall to its northern Soviet/Stalinist member state was, in fact, a deeply moral cause. The United States should have stayed out of the conflict because control of Vietnam was not a strategic imperative for America. To the contrary, American involvement in the war undermined U.S. security precisely because shedding so much blood and expending so much treasure on it was not justified by any potential benefits that defeating the Communist north might give the United States.
Despite the sympathy that most Americans have for Ukraine's fight for its independence, the same can be said about American involvement in that conflict. The ultimate disposition of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, which were first taken away from Ukraine in 2014, is not an American strategic concern. And now that the fighting has demonstrated that Moscow can’t conquer Kyiv outright any more than the Ukrainians can topple Putin’s authoritarian Russian regime, it’s simply immoral for Washington to be funding a war that can’t be won or concluded on any terms but those requiring both sides to make painful compromises.
The stakes involved in Israel’s war against Iran and its proxies are very different. The notion that Ukraine is a valiant democracy fighting for the freedom of the world is a myth. The regime of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is not as democratic or free from that nation’s antisemitic past as the foreign-policy establishment claims. By contrast, helping Israel defeat these terrorists who seek to spread chaos and genocide in a region central to American interests because of its oil reserves and strategic placement is vital to U.S. security.
All foreign-policy choices are transactional, but every nation has the duty to consider the interests of its own people first.
The choice of “America First” for the title of Trump’s foreign-policy vision has always been unfortunate since it conjures up the pre-World War II movement led by Charles Lindbergh that was both dedicated to appeasing Nazi Germany and antisemitic. Trump’s “America First” is neither dedicated to appeasing a foreign foe or spreading Jew-hatred. It is, instead, more of a realist policy than anything else. That’s because it involves, as we saw in Trump’s first term, a desire to defeat the Islamist terrorists of ISIS, in addition to an aggressive policy of sanctions and anti-terror special operations against Iran.
There is a difference between having the good judgment to pick and choose your battles based on American interests and a policy of isolationism. The notion that an America not willing to commit itself to conflicts anywhere no matter the circumstances will betray Israel is absurd as well as impractical. And it has yet to be explained how Israel is helped by a situation in which American strategic reserves are drawn down to the breaking point to fund and supply an endless war in Ukraine, rather than expended sparingly until they are needed for more important conflicts. Israel needs a strong American ally, not one mired in a conflict that only saps its strength.
Trump’s version of “America First” has other tangible benefits for Israel. Unlike both Obama and Biden, Trump is not interested in bolstering multilateral organizations like the United Nations that are cesspools of antisemitism and irredeemably hostile to the Jewish state. The president-elect has little use for that world body or any of its constituent agencies that do so much to demonize and harm Israel.
And though Biden bragged about how European leaders were thrilled with the return of the Democrats to power in January 2021, Trump is right to regard their good opinion as having no value. The less connected the United States is to international opinion, and especially that of the governments of Western Europe, the better it is for an Israel that Western Europe has already largely written off.
Some observers are so deranged by Trump’s ascendance that they fail to recognize that defending the interests of U.S. citizens “first” is both moral and a wise policy. Though many anti-Trumpers falsely accuse Trump of antisemitism, the opposite is true since he did more to combat Jew-hatred on campuses than his predecessors, who saw the antisemitic mobs as demonstrating idealism that must be heard, if not fully accepted.
While events and changing circumstances can’t be accounted for when determining the future, Trump’s pro-Israel record and opposition to woke ideology represent a harbinger of smoother sailing for the alliance between the two countries in the next four years. Whether successful or not, “America First” is likely to be a better American foreign policy for Jerusalem than the efforts of Biden and Harris.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him @jonathans_tobin.
Amsterdam police detained 62 people in connection with a series of antisemitic assaults against Israeli soccer fans, which resulted in five moderate injuries and about 20 to 30 minor ones, in the Dutch capital, the city's prosecutor René de Beukelaer said at a Friday press.
The five injured people were treated in the hospital and discharged, De Beukelaer said during the briefing with Femke Halsema, the Amsterdam mayor.
Witnesses described about 100 men, whom they described as Arabs, assaulting Israelis in a coordinated manner on Friday morning. The country’s largest-scale antisemitic incident in decades has shocked many Dutchmen and especially Jews and Holocaust survivors, who said that it is a reminder of what led up to the Holocaust.
The Nazis occupied the Netherlands in May 1940. Less than a quarter of Dutch Jews survived the Holocaust, and the country has many Holocaust memorials, including a museum in the former home of Anne Frank, which is one of the nation's most visited sites.
Friday's incidents prompted Israel to send two airplanes to evacuate its citizens from Amsterdam, and the Israeli government told Israelis in the city to remain in their hotels and to remove signs that could identify them as either Jews or Israelis. The attacks also generated an international uproar, including by King Willem-Alexander, the Dutch ceremonial head of state.
“We must not look away from antisemitic behavior on our streets," the king stated. "History has taught us how intimidation goes from bad to worse, with horrific consequences. Jewish people must feel safe in the Netherlands, everywhere and at all times. We embrace them all and hold them close."
Israeli President Isaac Herzog stated that Willem-Alexander told him that "we failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during World War II, and last night we failed again."
"We see with horror this morning, the shocking images and videos that since Oct. 7, we had hoped never to see again: an antisemitic pogrom currently taking place against Maccabi Tel Aviv fans and Israeli citizens in the heart of Amsterdam, Netherlands," the Israeli president added in his own statement.
Gideon Sa’ar, Israel's incoming foreign minister, and Amir Ohana, the Knesset chair, flew to Amsterdam on Friday to help the embassy coordinate efforts to evacuate Israelis who decided to cut their stays short in the Netherlands.
Amsterdam police chief Peter Holla said that 800 officers had been deployed nationwide to prevent attacks on Israelis or Jews ahead of the events in recent days. He noted that before the incidents on Thursday night, there had been “small upheavals” involving Maccabi supporters, who he said had removed a Palestinian flag from a building facade and had "destroyed a taxi."
A journalist asked at Friday's joint press conference about the alleged provocations. "There can be no excuse for what happened," the mayor said.
The incidents, which followed a match between the Ajax soccer club and Maccabi Tel Aviv, also drew a response from French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country is home to Europe’s largest Jewish community. France has also experienced a lot of antisemitism in recent months, and Israeli companies were banned recently from a defense fair in the country.
“The violence against Israeli citizens in Amsterdam recalls history’s darkest hours," Macron stated. "I strongly condemn it and express my sympathy for the injured. France will relentlessly continue to fight against heinous antisemitism."
Dick Schoof, the Dutch prime minister, called the incidents “utterly outrageous and abhorrent antisemitic attacks on Israeli citizens in Amsterdam.”
Christians for Israel, an international organization based in the Netherlands, lowered the large Israeli flag, which flies atop its Nijkerk headquarters, to half-mast in solidarity with those attacked.
“Last night’s attack chillingly echoes the events of Kristallnacht,” wrote Frank van Oordt, the group's director. “That such a violent hunt for Jews could occur again in 2024 in our capital city is both incomprehensible and unacceptable.”
Halsema, the Amsterdam mayor, said that "we have seen an outburst of antisemitism tonight, and it is very unlike Amsterdam."
"Telegram groups where a Jew-hunt is being discussed," she said. "It’s so shocking. I am furious and I’m expressing, in the city’s name, the harshest condemnations over what happened."
"I’m ashamed of the behavior of rioters and criminals," she added.
A journalist asked at the press conference if Halsema had a comment on the accounts of victims, who said that all of the perpetrators looked Middle Eastern.
“This is an issue that needs to be researched. The background and ethnicity of people, that’s not something I can comment on right now, nor do I want to,” she said. (Halsema is a former leader of D66, a pro-immigration, left-leaning party.)
Geert Wilders, leader of the largest political party in the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom, which is right-leaning, showed no such reservations.
In a series of furious posts on social media, Wilders, a strident critic of immigration and Islam, referenced the alleged ethnicity of the perpetrators repeatedly.
“A pogrom in the streets of Amsterdam. We have become the Gaza of Europe. Muslims with Palestinian flags hunting down Jews. I will not accept that. Never," he wrote. "The authorities will be held accountable for their failure to protect the Israeli citizens. Never again."
"We weren’t allowed to speak of Islam as the source of antisemitism, and they didn’t deport criminals. Now we have Jew hunts in Amsterdam,” he added in another post.
Wilders, a passionate supporter of Israel whose party is a senior coalition member, called for the perpetrators to be deported.
The incident, which happened shortly before the anniversary of the Nov. 9-10, 1938 Nazi pogrom called Kristallnacht, comes amid polarizing debate in Europe about Muslim immigration.
In September, Marjolein Faber, the minister of asylum and migration who is part of Wilder's party, unveiled a plan that she called “the strictest asylum policy ever.”
“We need to change course," she said. "We are taking measures to make the Netherlands as unattractive as possible for asylum seekers.”
The Party for Freedom received the highest number of vote in the 2023 elections, amid widespread dissatisfaction with mass immigration, primarily from Muslim countries.
On Sunday, an overwhelming majority of lawmakers in the lower house of Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, passed a resolution that for the first time named Muslim antisemitism as a driver of that phenomenon.
Yanki Jacobs, a prominent Dutch Chabad rabbi from Amsterdam, urged Muslim community leaders to speak out against the assaults. "I think at this moment, Muslim faith leaders need to condemn this vocally," he told JNS. "I will be asking them to do so today."
The incidents in Amsterdam prompted a slew of condemnations from Jewish organizations.
Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, expressed "profound concern and solidarity with the victims of last night’s unprovoked attack on Jews."
“Antisemitism cannot be thwarted by words alone,” stated Dani Dayan, Yad Vashem's chair. "We call upon world leaders to recognize and take immediate and decisive action to fight against antisemitism and hate before the disease metastasizes to catastrophic proportions. History has shown us that we cannot afford to be complacent in the face of antisemitism."
Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, stated that the "unprovoked violence—resulting in serious injuries and reports of missing persons—has not only shaken the Israeli and Dutch Jewish communities but underscores the global resurgence of antisemitism that continues to metastasize across societies worldwide."
"We are horrified by the organized and vicious antisemitic attack on Israelis in Amsterdam," the Orthodox Union stated. "Coming days before the anniversary of Kristallnacht, it is time for world leaders and individuals of conscience to recognize that brazen attacks against Jews is what protestors are calling for when they chant 'globalize the intifada.'"
The Jewish Federations of North America stated that it is "horrified and outraged at the hate-filled antisemitic attacks in Amsterdam, in which anti-Israel mobs terrorized and beat Israelis and Jews trying to enjoy a soccer game."
"This modern-day pogrom, just two days before the anniversary of Kristallnacht, should make it clear that the entire world must act now to condemn and prosecute to the fullest all the perpetrators and take every necessary step to protect the Jewish community," the Federations said. " We are in close contact with our partners in Israel and The Jewish Agency for Israel as we continue our commitment to the security of Jewish communities around the world."
The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI, called for “concrete measures” to be taken to prevent such events from recurring.
The Combat Antisemitism Movement warned that tolerating such incidents would cause Jews to leave Europe. “Europe should remember this: Jews won't wait around like they did in 1939. They'll leave, leaving you to deal with the extremism that has been allowed to fester," Sacha Roytman Dratwa, the group's CEO, wrote.
Israel has an eight-week opportunity before the inauguration of president-elect Donald Trump to attack Iranian oil fields, and the coming year will see the United States herald a landmark peace agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, an American evangelical leader said on Thursday.
The remarks by Mike Evans, founder of the Friends of Zion Museum in Jerusalem, come just days after Trump was elected president of the United States for a second term and as Israel was bracing for a possible Iranian attack.
“Trump wants everything finished by Jan. 20 so he can be the builder,” Evans told JNS. “He does not want to be a wartime president.”
The Christian leader, who launched a billboard campaign across Israel congratulating Trump that was broadcast around the world, opined that the president-elect favored an Israeli airstrike on Iranian oil fields as long as it is done before he takes office since it would necessarily cause a shockwave in the American economy.
“Trump wants Israel to shut down the Iranian cash flow since once you bankrupt them their funding for their terror proxies is over and ultimately the people will overthrow the regime,” Evans said. “You hit the oil refineries and the mullahs are over.”
He asserted that the outgoing U.S. administration was “part of the problem, not the solution.”
“If Israel struck and destroyed oil refineries in Iran, there would be tears of joy in churches throughout the U.S.” he said, referring to the largely supportive evangelical Christian community of tens of millions across America that make up a significant part of the Republican Party.
He said that the relations between the two leaders was deep and personal in no small part because of their common chemistry and political savvy, calling a rift in the past over Netanyahu’s congratulating President Joe Biden on his election four years ago a “nothing burger.”
“Trump says what he feels at the moment. That has nothing to do with his respect for Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader,” Evans said. “There is no world leader Trump respects in the world more than Netanyahu.”
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals voted 6-3 to grant a new trial to Randy Ethan Halprin, 47, after it found that the judge who ruled against him “was biased against him at the time of his trial because he is Jewish,” the Associated Pressreported.
Halprin, who is on death row, is part of the “Texas 7,” which shot and killed a police officer after breaking free from prison in December 2000, per the AP.
He had been serving a 30-year sentence after admitting to brutally attacking a 16-month-old baby.
Sonia Sotomayor, associate Supreme Court justice, wrote on April 6, 2020 of the judge’s antisemitic statements that “the facts underlying this petition are deeply disturbing.”
Since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, universities have witnessed massive demonstrations against Israel. While there is no single cause for the protests, one factor may be that students are following the lead of professors who exhibit hostility toward Israel.
It is now common among so-called progressives, including academics, to condemn Israel for racism, apartheid, occupation, genocide and settler colonialism. These accusations form a political anti-Zionism ideology that concludes that Israel is illegitimate and ought to be eliminated.
It cannot be denied that Israel has societal problems or significant issues with the Palestinians. But the anti-Zionist critique of Israel is extreme: Even if some criticisms of Israel are true, they do not warrant the extinction of the Jewish state.
In light of overwhelming support for Israel among Jews and their rejection of anti-Zionism as abhorrent, teaching that anti-Zionism is valid and advocating for itwithin a university’s Jewish studies program should be out of the question.
Yet such anti-Zionism advocacy is what we are witnessing today at the University of San Francisco’s Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice. There is at least one professor, the program’s assistant director Oren Kroll-Zeldin, who teaches courses on the Israel-Palestine conflict and aims to assist students to “unlearn Zionism.”
Kroll-Zeldin’s approach is outlined his book, Unsettled: American Jews and the Movement for Justice in Palestine. His major point is that young anti-Zionist Jews who engage in “Palestine solidarity” do so as an expression of their Jewish identity. The book more importantly reveals Kroll-Zeldin’s hostility to Israel.
Kroll-Zeldin does not write as a scholar of anti-Zionism, he presents the book as an “autoethnographic account” of his personal journey with “unlearning Zionism” over the last decade and a half.
As he says, “I write this book from the position of an embedded participant in the movement … In many ways, I saw the activists as a reflection of myself…As I researched this community of activists, I became involved with some of the organizations they were part of.”
Kroll-Zeldin characterizes normative American Jewish teaching about Israel as “miseducation” and “indoctrination.” He also writes at length about how his extensive traditional Jewish education was a “process of Zionist indoctrination.”
Kroll-Zeldin writes about these Jewish youths more like stick figures than serious thinkers. “Millennial and Gen [Generation] Z Jews have different generational memories,” he says, than older Americans and know little about the Holocaust and the history of Israel. But, he says, “they are also very familiar with Israel as an occupier and likely were exposed to media images or comments from friends that condemned Israel.”
He never inquires about their ignorance, nor does he even question their views given that ignorance. He just applauds their activism.
In his book, Kroll-Zeldin discusses how as an educator he challenges “the previously held views of my students to enable them to reimagine their connections to Israel, to ‘unlearn Zionism’ and to work in solidarity with Palestinians” in the struggle for justice.
“Unlearning Zionism,” he writes, “recognizes that the implementation of Zionism through a commitment to Jewish supremacy in Israel is at odds with core Jewish values.”
Kroll-Zeldin characterizes, in positive social-justice terms, various anti-Zionist groups, such as Jewish Voice for Peace and the BDS movement, which advocate the dismantling of Israel. To him, for example, BDS is a “nonviolent campaign for Palestinian rights,” with the goals of ending the “occupation and colonization of all Arab lands” and promoting the “rights of Palestinian refugees to return” to live in Israel.
What is required, according to Kroll-Zeldin, is “at the very least, an immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from the territories occupied in 1967 in order to establish a Palestinian state there, thus ensuring Palestinian self-determination. They [the activists] understand this to be a pragmatic goal and a necessary stepping-stone to a just, sustainable, and secure peace in the region.”
The phrase “stepping-stone,” in anti-Zionist terms, points to a subsequent step that would end Israel. This, he says, would be “an antidote to Zionism’s ethnonationalism” and “make Jews safer and to ensure Jewish survival.” He does not, however, describe his vision of how life will be safer for Jews without Israel.
Kroll-Zeldin never finds fault with Palestinians or Arab countries, nor does he ever reflect positively on Israel or mainstream American Jewish communal organizations.
He repeatedly condemns the “American Jewish establishment”—synagogues, Jewish federations, Jewish community centers, Jewish youth groups and political-advocacy organization, such as AIPAC and the American Jewish Committee—as “hypocritical because they emphasize the American and Jewish values of justice, equality and freedom yet do so quite selectively, denying them, for example, to Palestinians.”
It is impossible to know the extent to which Kroll-Zeldin’s beliefs are emblematic of what happens in university classrooms today. But given the massive anti-Israel demonstrations over the past year, Kroll-Zeldin may indeed be representative of a widespread phenomenon.
There is, finally, the irony that Kroll-Zeldin teaches in the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco. The program was established in 1977 as the “Swig Judaic Studies Program,” with an endowment from philanthropist Melvin Swig and the goal of bringing a Jewish perspective to a Catholic university. Swig served as the chair of the board of the University of San Francisco and president of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Israel and also served on boards of national American Jewish organizations. Swig was precisely the type of Jewish leader that Kroll-Zeldin condemns in his work.
“She’d rather sleep anywhere else than inside a bomb shelter, because that’s where she was kidnapped from. That’s where Hamas burst in and took her and Hila,” Tom Hand, the father of former captive Emily Hand, told JNS on Thursday.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Emily Hand was sleeping over at her friend Hila Rotem Shoshani’s house in Kibbutz Be’eri, five miles from the Gaza Strip, when Hamas launched its assault, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 hostages including 40 children, among them Emily, 8, and Hila, 13.
Authorities at the kibbutz told Tom that his daughter had likely been murdered. The family’s plight went viral after a distraught Tom said in an interview that his first reaction to the news that his daughter had been murdered instead of captured had been relief.
However, roughly a month later, the IDF confirmed that Emily’s body was not among the remains of some 120 people killed in Be’eri, and that no traces of blood had been found in the house where she was staying.
Moreover, cell phones belonging to members of the family with whom she had been staying were tracked to Gaza.
On Nov. 17, 2023, Emily spent her 9th birthday in captivity. Just over a week later, on Nov. 26, she was released after spending 50 days in Gaza, as was her friend Hila, as part of a weeklong ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that freed 105 hostages (81 Israelis, 23 Thais and one Filipino), primarily women and children, in return for 240 terrorists.
“I was spending a week in England, there was a massive rally at which I spoke, and then we heard whispers that there was going to be a prisoner-for-hostage swap and we got on the next plane out with our fingers crossed,” Tom told JNS.
He made it back to Israel and was staying at the David Dead Sea hotel in Ein Bokek with the rest of the refugees from Be'eri when the army called to tell him that Emily was on the list of the hostages to be released by Hamas.
“Immediately, it’s hope. You’re ecstatic just at the possibility of being reunited while understanding that anything could go wrong. Hamas could change the conditions, change their mind, and so could our own government,” Tom said. “Anything could have gone wrong at any point from the moment they called me till the handover 24 hours later. You really suppress your excitement and hope and pray for the best.”
As part of its psychological warfare strategy, Hamas delayed Emily’s release by six hours.
"It was torment, terror. It was a hard 24 hours,” a tearful Tom told JNS.
“When we got her back, she was very white, she had not seen the sun in over a month. She was very quiet, afraid to make any kind of noise out of her mouth. At that point, we did not know how traumatized, terrorized or broken she was,” he continued. “Thank God, people talk about the resilience of children, she is a resilient one. I know other kids that have been brought back, and they are still in a bad way, they don’t leave their room, they don’t mix with their friends.”
Hamas still holds 101 hostages captive in Gaza, including Kfir Bibas, who spent his first birthday in the Strip, and his now 5-year-old brother Ariel, who were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz along with their parents Shiri and Yarden.
“There is still a baby, a child and women. My best friend, Lianne Sharabi, and her two daughters were slaughtered on October 7. They took her husband, Eli, we are praying for him to come back. We are praying for all of them to come back,” Tom said.
“It’s inhumane, it shouldn’t be part of any kind of war, but that’s how they operate, they hide behind civilians, they have no moral standards,” he continued.
“We are hoping for [captives from] Be’eri, there are at least three that are still alive, we lost many there, we don’t just want the hostages that are alive back, we want the deceased, to bury them respectfully.”
After nearly a year in the hotel at the Dead Sea, Tom resettled with Emily and the rest of his community in temporary housing in Kibbutz Hatzerim, about five miles west of Beersheva.
Tom said the government has provided a lot of help, not just in the form of housing, for the residents of rampaged towns and villages, but also psychological assistance.
While Emily seems to have gone back to her joyful self, going to school, playing, dancing and making new friends as well as reconnecting with old ones, Tom told JNS that she still gets triggered.
“If she hears loud Arabic, she’s not so comfortable,” he said.
“Two nights ago, she was on her bicycle with her friends in the evening. All of a sudden, she heard gunfire and they all just flew off on the bikes as fast as they could. Unfortunately, as they went around the corner, Emily fell off her bicycle,” Tom recounted.
Hatzerim, he explained, close to an Israeli Air Force base that has three firing ranges. Hearing gunfire is not unusual.
“Somebody called me, I made my way there. She was pretty shook up, pretty white. When I asked her what happened and why she was riding so fast, she told me about the gunfire. There will always be big triggers,” Tom said.
As of now, about 150 people have returned to Be’eri.
“If I didn’t have Emily, if she hadn’t gone through what she went through, I would have moved back there months ago. It’s mainly older couples with grown-up kids, nobody is there with young kids, the memories are too vivid,” he explained.
“We haven’t started rebuilding yet. We are still in destroying and dismantling mode, getting rid of all the houses that were irreparable. Until the demolition is finished, we can’t even start reconstruction,” he said.
Be’eri is the only home Tom has known since he moved to Israel from Ireland in 1992.
“I came at the age of 32 to be a volunteer on the kibbutz, worked the land, I loved it immediately. The weather is great and the people are spiky on the outside but really sweet. I met a girl, got married, had a couple of children,” he said.
While Emily’s mother died when she was just over two years old, Tom’s ex-wife, Narkis, helped raise Emily. Before Emily was born, Tom and Narkis had two children, Aiden, 29, and Natali, 27.
Hamas terrorists murdered Narkis during the Oct. 7 massacre.
For Tom, returning to Be’eri full-time will depend on a change in the political leadership in Israel and on the military progress in Gaza.
“To me, the best solution would be a global coalition composed of the United Nations, Israel, American forces, Egyptian and Jordanian forces looking after the area and making sure Hamas can't terrorize their own citizens, can't get bigger and attack us yet again, which they have vowed to do,” he said.
“We cannot allow this to happen. The world cannot allow this to happen again. If I feel secure enough to go back, Emily will want to go back. We would be going back en masse. All of our friends would be going as well, it would not just be the two of us. That’s how I hope to see it,” he added.
Tom shared a message of hope with the people of Israel and the families of hostages.
“We’ve gone through and we continue to go through absolute terrible times, not just here in Israel but the reaction of the rest of the world. We have to continuously fight for our own existence, for a better government and the return of our hostages both those alive and the deceased,” he said.
“We have to stay strong and positive although it’s almost impossible. I just hope the rest of the families are as lucky as I am in the end,” Tom said.