Rasha Alawieh, a Brown University assistant professor of medicine and clinician educator whom the Trump administration deported last week, went to Beirut last month to attend the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, "a brutal terrorist who led Hezbollah, responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade terror spree," the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on Monday.

"Alawieh openly admitted to this to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, as well as her support of Nasrallah," the department stated. "A visa is a privilege not a right—glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied. This is common sense security."

"If you travel to Beirut to mourn the death of the terrorist leader of Hezbollah, there's no way in hell you should be allowed to keep your visa and stay in America," stated Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.).

Federal authorities found "sympathetic photos and videos" of terror leaders, including Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei, in a folder of deleted items on Alawieh's cell phone, Politico reported. Per the doctor's Brown University profile, she holds undergraduate and medical degrees from American University of Beirut.

Per a court filing, Alawieh told federal authorities of Nasrallah that "so I have a lot of Whatsapp groups with families and friends who send them. So I am a Shia Muslim and he is a religious figure. He has a lot of teachings and he is highly regarded in the Shia community."

"I think if you listen to one of his sermons you would know what I mean," she said of the terror leader. "He is a religious, spiritual person, as I said, he has very high value. His teachings are about spirituality and morality." She added that she admired him "from a religious perspective," per Politico.

Those who "switch" out of Orthodox Judaism tend to begin questioning their role in the community in high school and often find the denomination "insular and rigid." But even when they leave, many remain connected to the community, according to new research from the Orthodox Union's Center for Communal Research.

The study, which centered on interviews with 29 people who left Orthodoxy, also found that rabbis play very important roles and that many who leave the community experience "forms of trauma and instability before, during and after leaving."

"If we truly want to make meaningful, positive change regarding American Orthodox Jewish attrition, our community will need to pursue the data that will inform that change and commit to act based on what we find," stated Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the OU.

Moshe Krakowski, professor and director of doctoral studies at Yeshiva University’s Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration, is one of the authors of the study.

"I was very surprised by the fact that most of the respondents overwhelmingly still had very positive feelings towards the Orthodox Jewish community even while sometimes also having very negative feelings," he told JNS. "Out-and-out hatred or feeling that the Orthodox Jewish community is wrong or bad was really, really tiny. That was not something I expected necessarily, but it was really interesting to see."

"Maybe it should have been more expected, because people are complicated and people will have complex, sometimes contradictory emotions," Krakowski said. "But it was interesting to see that positivity."

One participant in the study told researchers that she doesn't observe Shabbat but still hosts Friday night dinners. "I eat out at a non-kosher restaurant, but if I'm hosting my friends who I know keep kosher, I have kosher pots and pans," she told the interviewers. "I order kosher meat, and I can make a kosher dinner."

Another person told the researchers that she does "the parts of Judaism that bring me joy." The latter includes those that make her "feel connected to God, connected to the universe" and "connected to the traditions my ancestors have been doing since the beginning of time."

"I'm leaving out the rules that feel very constrictive," she said, per the study.

Krakowski told JNS that he thinks, personally, that Orthodox Judaism "does an exceptional job of retention, especially compared to other Jewish groups" but also generally.

"It is very, very difficult to be countercultural in a society where 300 million people don't share your fundamental assumptions about the world," he said. "I think that it's really important to recognize what the Orthodox Jewish community is doing is actually quite hard and you would really expect a lot of people to leave."

Krakowski's sense is that there is much less of a phenomenon of people leaving Orthodox Judaism than one would expect naturally.

"From the point of view of communal leaders, that's not good enough. They want everyone to stay," he told JNS. "They would like it to be the case that we don't lose anyone, and everyone lost is a bit of a tragedy."

"Both things can be true at once," he said. "The Orthodox Jewish community does a very good job and nonetheless, you still want to understand and better respond to the fact that there are many people who leave."

Many in the media have spent the last few days debating the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and activist who led tension-filled campus protests in the past year that targeted Jewish and Zionist students and faculty. Much of the discussion has been on the First Amendment and free-speech rights. Surprisingly, the elephant in the room has been largely ignored.

After the December 2023 congressional hearings that saw three university presidents grilled over their inaction to protect Jewish American students and faculty from discrimination and harassment on campus, one would think that our collective memory would not have forgotten one of the most jarring lines of the hearing. In response to a question by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Liz Magill, said calling for the genocide of Jews would violate Penn’s harassment policy when “speech turns into conduct.”

It is astonishing that so many people refuse to acknowledge that it is Khalil’s conduct that led to him being taken into custody and facing deportation. His attorneys and supporters tout his role as the lead negotiator for the pro-Hamas crowd that occupied a university building during the 2024 anti-Israel demonstrations. But there is a counter-narrative, largely ignored in the mainstream media, that recognizes that Khalil’s conduct includes handing out pro-Hamas pamphlets calling for the destruction of the United States. 

There are a number of questions one must answer when applying for a green card for permanent residency in the United States. Many of them are related to the security of the United States, including the following:

Do you intend to:

• Engage in any activity that violates or evades any law relating to espionage (including spying) or sabotage in the United States?
• Engage in any activity whose purpose includes opposing, controlling, or overthrowing the U.S. government by force, violence or other unlawful means while in the United States?
• Engage in any activity that could endanger the welfare, safety or security of the United States?

Other questions include:

• Have you ever served in, been a member of, assisted (helped), or participated in any armed group (a group that carries weapons), for example: paramilitary unit (a group of people who act like a military group, but are not part of the official military), self-defense unit, vigilante unit, rebel group, or guerilla group?
• Have you ever been a member of, or in any way affiliated with, the Communist Party or any totalitarian party (in the United States or abroad)?

On last week’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” the host defended Khalil, stating “I don’t support his point of view, but you know what, if you’re an honest person you have to defend him, if you believe in free speech because that’s what free speech means. I say it all the time when it’s on the other foot, and I can’t change because it’s now this guy. It’s defending the dirtbags you hate.”

Like many, Maher misses the elephant in the room. Khalil engaged in conduct that violated the conditions of his green card. Maher goes on to tout the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) statement on Khalil, “If the government has got anything other than just somebody who is saying things that they don’t like … they need to show it now because, otherwise, the harm to First Amendment freedoms will be serious.”

Maher ends the segment with the following statement, which may be a forewarning of what’s to come if liberal democracies continue to ignore illiberal conduct from those who are in our country by invitation, “ ... he hates this country, he hates Western civilization, and I defend to his death his right to say it.”

I fear that we are being led down the path of homicidal empathy by those in power who are not only putting themselves at risk but are gambling the entirety of Western civilization. 

Welcome to “Jerusalem Minute,” JNS’s weekly deep dive into the biggest stories shaping Israel and the Middle East, hosted by JNS CEO and Jerusalem bureau chief Alex Traiman and JNS Middle East correspondent Josh Hasten. Broadcasting from the JNS Media Hub in Jerusalem, this episode unpacks Israel’s war, U.S. military actions and internal political battles shaping Israel.

Topics covered in this episode:

• U.S. vs. the Houthis: Trump administration’s airstrikes against Iranian-backed militias
• Hostage Negotiations: The stalled talks with Hamas & impact on Israel’s war strategy
• Netanyahu vs. Israel’s Deep State: Internal power struggles with the Shin Bet
• Hezbollah and Lebanon: Why Israel is staying in Southern Lebanon indefinitely
• The Media War: How terrorist propaganda manipulates Western coverage
• Columbia University Crackdown: U.S. deportations of pro-Hamas agitators

Don’t miss the up-to-minute news on “Jerusalem Minute!” Subscribe to ‪‪@JNS_TV‬.

JNS will host its inaugural International Policy Summit on Monday, April 28, 2025. This daylong event will convene government officials, policymakers, diplomats, security experts, leaders of pro-Israel organizations, and influencers for vital discussions aimed at addressing Israel's critical challenges and opportunities in a post-Oct. 7 world.

Registration at this point is for invitees only. However, you can submit a request for registration in the following link.

Hamas is running out of time to release the remaining hostages before Israel resumes military efforts in the Gaza Strip, Mike Waltz, the U.S. national security advisor, warned on Sunday.

After he was asked on the Fox News Sunday-morning program how long Hamas has to free the hostages captured on Oct. 7, 2023, the U.S. official replied simply, “not long.”

Hamas’s offer to release the hostages is “bogus” and “just another stab in the heart to those poor families,” Waltz said. He said that 31 hostages have been released alive under the current ceasefire.

“President Trump’s determined to get them all out,” he said. “But Hamas cannot and will not be allowed to rule Gaza into the future.”

There are 59 hostages still in captivity, and Israeli negotiators met on Sunday with Egyptian officials to discuss the issue. U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff has proposed that the current ceasefire continue through Passover and Ramadan, during which time Hamas would release 11 living hostages and half of the bodies it holds.

Israel has endorsed the plan, but Hamas remains opposed.

“We put a very sensible proposal on the table that was intended as a bridge to get to a final discussion and final resolution here, that would have incorporated some sort of demilitarization of Hamas, which must happen,” Witkoff said on Sunday on the CBS program Face the Nation. “That’s a red line for the Israelis and maybe could have led to a long-term peace resolution here.”

But it hasn’t happened so far, he said.

“Hamas came up with their own construct, essentially disavowed what we discussed, and to my mind, that was a pretty poor ending, and I hope they reconsider because the alternative is not so good for them,” Witkoff said.

Should fighting resume, Israel plans to be “very aggressive” and target Hamas’s governmental capabilities in addition to the military, according to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, of the Religious Zionism Party.

The Islamification of the West began long ago with Arab and Islamic attacks against infidels, especially the Jews. By the beginning of this century, anti-Zionism characterized the new antisemitism. Israel became the scapegoat of the world for the crimes of their persecutors.

In the last quarter-century, Israel and the Jews have faced large armies, as well as well-funded and relentless propaganda. It has simultaneously been defamed and sanctioned in every language; anti-Israel resolutions and reports have been issued by student bodies, human-rights groups, literary prize judges, academic faculties and the United Nations, whose only accomplishment has been the legalization of Jew-hatred. Students and outside agitators in the West “flood” streets and campuses, Hamas-style; and take over university buildings on behalf of the sadistic and barbarian aggressors they believe are the victims of alleged Israeli apartheid, colonial oppression and genocide.

Thus, as Israel is fighting for its very life and good name, the entire world believes that Israelis are the aggressors and that the true victims are the leaders of an infidel-hating death cult.

How are we to understand such an Orwellian reversal of reality, such a triumph of Nazi-style propaganda? British journalist and JNS columnist Melanie Phillips explains it to us in her new work, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West—and Why Only They Can Save It. In doing so, she joins and updates the work of writers and researchers Steve Emerson, Oriana Fallaci, Daniel Pipes, Bruce Bawer, Douglas Murray and Asra Nomani.

First, Phillips notes that Israel and the West are up against two death cults: one is external and consists of Islamist jihadists; and the other is a fifth column of elite, “politically correct” Westerners who have been persuaded that the West is evil beyond redemption and that barbarians are entitled to destroy what’s left of society. These Westerners refuse to believe that Islamic regimes have been and remain the largest practitioners of gender and religious apartheid. They refuse to believe that various Islamic regimes still own slaves and murder apostates, dissidents, homosexuals and feminists. They ignore any proof that Islamic regimes currently persecute or forcibly convert, but, more often, genocidally murder Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Baháʼí.

Despite all this, Arabs, especially Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, are still always the victims.

None of Phillips’s predecessors had to ponder the world’s unexpected and, at first, unbelievably bizarre reaction to the Hamas-led pogrom on steroids in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. This is something Phillips deftly tackles as she explains why so many “woke” Westerners deny Jewish victimhood, especially the atrocities that took place that day.

The ruling “progressive-regressive” paradigm is Western Caucasians and Jews are colonialist “settlers” who perpetrate ethnic cleansing, and all brown- or olive-skinned people, especially Muslims, are uber-victims. This is true even if such victims are terrorists and rapists.

It is a psychosis, a new kind of virus, the poisonous flowering of 70 years’ worth of Soviet, Arab, Muslim and Western left-wing-funded propaganda. This complete inversion of reality, to which so many true believers cling, is false. The opposite is true. As Phillips puts it:

“No facts could ever trump the images of Palestinian suffering in Gaza and the noble feelings of horror and compassion these produced. Whether these images had been radically decontextualized, distorted or were outright lies was irrelevant. What mattered above all was to deny the Israeli Jews’ status as victims. ... If Israelis or Jews were the victims of Palestinian Arabs, the liberals’ whole narrative would be smashed, and their moral personality smashed with it.”

Such politically correct ideological narratives preempt mere facts. It is as simple as that. But Phillips’s explanation helps us understand not only the denial of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks but the vicious tearing down of the Israeli hostage posters by smug young people around the world. It helps us understand theangry anti-Israeli university encampments—a Western version of jihad, and border- and barrier-smashing. It also explains the hard-hearted silence about Oct. 7 by Western feminists, both radical and liberal, and their continued obsessive focus on the alleged suffering of Gazans and the absolute refusal to be emotionally even-handed about the ongoing suffering of Israelis.

However, Phillips goes well beyond the most relevant previous works in this way: She dares to defend religion, especially Judaism, as essential in the fight for Western civilization, and she makes a good case for it.

She believes that “faith” and the belief in Jewish history, Jewish culture and a Jewish covenant with God are precisely what account for Jewish survival after millennia of almost nonstop persecution. She also tells some haunting stories of Jewish concentration camp survivors who went to great lengths to recite prayers and celebrate some holidays. She quotes a former Auschwitz prisoner, Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Meisels, writing: “Some wrote prayers from memory, usually on cement sacks in lieu of paper … . All these actions, both the reciting and the writing, were carried out at risk to life, in breaks snatched from work time … people would write and then hide the paper on their bodies under their clothes.”

In Phillips’s view, “In the midst of that hell, others may have concluded that existence was rendered meaningless, [but] they found meaning and the will to live through affirming their communal identity.”

We learn that Israeli hostage Danielle Gilboa and four other female lookouts taken by Hamas taught themselves to sing the Friday-night song “Sholom Aleichem” in Arabic rather than Hebrew. Their quiet act of faith became a source of strength in the darkness of captivity.

Another released hostage, Eli Sharabi, told an Arutz Sheva interviewer that while he wasn’t a religious person, during the darkest moments, he discovered the faith. He said: “From the moment I was abducted, every morning I recited Shema Yisrael, something I never did in my life,” Sharabi emotionally recounted. “The power of faith is crazy. I felt I had someone watching over me.”

According to Phillips, “Religion is the elephant in the room. The Jewish people are the elephant in the room. The Hebrew Bible is the elephant in the room. It is the same elephant.”

Phillips is at her best when documenting the many ways in which Christianity and Western civilization are based on Jewish law, Jewish values and the Talmud. If anyone has ever studied the Talmud, they would know that it preserves, not silences or “cancels,” dissident opinions. It tolerates dissent and believes in the rule of law, not the rule of the king, laws that the people must first accept.

Thus, it is no surprise that various American presidents and statesmen are quoted from the Old Testament. Phillips reminds us that Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson “chose for the Great Seal of America, the image of the Israelite’s flight from Egyptian bondage.” Abraham Lincoln turned to the Hebrew Bible when writing his second inaugural address. More than 200 years later, President Bill Clinton envisaged revitalizing the United States with a “new covenant,” the Hebraic term for a binding compact across generations. President Ronald Reagan’s final address likened America to “the shining city upon a hill,” quoting the words of the Hebrew prophet Micah, which had been repeated in 1630 by a pilgrim, Father John Winthrop, who imagined New England being “blessed as ancient Israel.”

Ultimately, Phillips envisions a joint, Jewish-Christian alliance to “save the West.” She writes: “Reconciling Christianity with its Jewish parents … would help re-anchor Western national identity in Christianity. It would promote an overarching structure of basic Western principles shaped by the Bible such as tolerance of minorities, religious dissent, and resistance to abuses of power … and would help the West against the threat of Islamization.”

Her book is a beautifully written volume and will stand the test of time. The Builder’s Stone both clarifies and arms its readers for the great struggle before us—the one in which we either save Western civilization or die out.

The Secure Community Network, the 21-year-old nonprofit that serves as the North American Jewish community’s official safety organization, wants Jewish students to prepare to keep themselves safe by watching tape like a football team would to prepare for its next opponent or the U.S. Secret Service does during its advance work ahead of a presidential visit.

“College years are meant to be some of the best and most formative times in a young person’s life. Our goal is to equip Jewish students with the tools to fully embrace that experience while giving them the confidence to respond effectively in an emergency,” Kerri Reifel, SCN’s director of campus safety and security, told JNS. 

“We want to ensure that fear doesn’t paralyze them,” she added. “It’s not about living in fear but about cultivating an awareness and preparedness mindset that allows them to feel secure and confident in any situation.”

Reifel and SCN walked JNS through an exclusive, first look at the nonprofit’s SafeU training program. It is part of the organization’s larger Operation SecureOurCampuses initiative, which has expanded its intelligence and training efforts across more than 50 high-risk universities. 

SCN helps Jewish students review video footage of real-life situations in interactive sessions with security experts. Situational awareness is key, according to Reifel.

“Once that becomes second nature, you can gradually add more, such as recognizing potential objects that could be used to protect yourself,” she said. “The key is to move at your own pace so the process doesn’t become overwhelming.”

“This is about fostering a new muscle, which will enhance your sense of confidence and control rather than fear,” she said.

Designed with student input, SafeU centers on participatory dialogue and was created for scenarios that have developed since Oct. 7, 2023, including violent protests at Columbia University and Barnard College. It is highly interactive.

“They wanted to make decisions for themselves. They want to feel empowered,” Reifel said of the students. “This is what they’re experiencing. They tell us what they would do, and then we tell them, from all of our law enforcement experience, what we think is the best decision in these situations.”

“At the end of the day, you’re giving students the power to make decisions on their own and feel confident in what those decisions are,” she said. “It’s very unique training.” 

Chad Lotman, the nonprofit’s national trainer and curriculum developer, told JNS that the program’s goal, rather than being specific to scenarios, is to ingrain general principles that students can use to make better decisions. 

The training has four components: awareness, planning, training and action.

“With all the different things that were occurring on campus, it’s impossible to cover every scenario, so we came up with some scenarios—some generic, real-world scenarios, things that actually happened,” Lotman told JNS. “We found videos on social media and news coverage. We look for different videos of real-world events to focus our attention on.”

Awareness has been hard after Oct. 7, with SCN tracking a record 5,409 threat incidents and suspicious activity reports in 2024, according to Lotman. Those include vandalism, harassment, physical assaults, terror plots and support for terrorist organizations. SCN referred 1,364 individuals to law enforcement in 2024, including for threats at universities, he said.

SafeU prepares students to be aware of what events, including protests and rallies, are happening on their campus; what threats or risks face the local community; what rights students have as local residents and students; what university codes of conduct are; and what the laws are on harassment, stalking and assault.

“That’s good awareness for people to understand. Can I defend myself? What should I be reporting when I see these things happen?” Lotman said. “Do I have a code of conduct as a student where there are certain things that limit my responses or may put me in a bad light if I do certain things?” 

Students are also trained to consider whether the force on campus is law enforcement or unarmed security and whether security will protect Jewish students or leave them on their own.

SCN also teaches students to plan departure routes from events that could become volatile in advance and to know alternate routes around established protest sites on campus to avoid walking into hostile environments.

‘When things happen suddenly ... ’

Once students are aware of potential threats and risks, they can make basic plans, like knowing the locations of exits from campus buildings they frequent and, in some cases, using those exits to make sure they are accessible, Lotman told JNS.

“That’s the type of training we can do that can help us in those moments when things happen suddenly,” he said. “You can make those decisions much faster, which leads to action.”

Lotman cited a video from an October 2024 incident in which Jewish students at Cooper Union in Manhattan locked themselves in a library for about 40 minutes after Hamas supporters filed past security and pounded aggressively on the doors.

“We start with that interactive piece of our training, asking a lot of questions and trying to get the students thinking about what would they do if they got trapped in their dorm, in the library,” he said. 

“The more we think about these things ahead of time and do that planning and training, the more options we come up with, and the better options we may have as far as what our actions may be,” he said.

SCN is the official security provider and adviser for Hillel International, but SafeU training is also offered to Chabad branches, Greek life and the larger student population, according to Reifel.

“We tell our students, ‘Hey, bring your friends. They don’t have to be Jewish,’” she said. “This is just training for all college students. Yes, we designed it because of the current climate, but we try to encourage our students to bring anyone that they want, and we offer it.”

Campus administrators have helped coordinate the training sessions, Reifel said. When schools are presented with data and trend lines showing an escalation from more minor events like vandalism to direct targeting of Jewish students on campuses, they have generally been quick to react, often increasing the security presence on larger campuses substantially at potentially volatile events, she added.

Ultimately, though, SCN officials want students to prepare for anything.

“We can come up with those plans and we put those file folders away in our head, and they pop up when needed,” Lotman said. “I remember where that exit is, I remember walking to that door, and I know exactly where it’s at, and it comes to us much more readily than if we’ve never thought about it and are under stress.”

HIAS, which emerged as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society in 1903 and traces its origins to the 1880s, had to fire or furlough more than 100 people in its U.S. office—some 40% of its global staff—due to funding cuts for refugee work under the Trump administration, Mark Hetfield, the HIAS president, told eJewishPhilanthropy.

Hetfield also had to shutter many of the HIAS offices overseas, he told the publication, adding that by Oct. 1, when the U.S. government’s fiscal year ends, “we’ll be a very different agency with a much smaller footprint.”

“We never, ever thought, in our worst-case scenario planning, that they would literally rip up all of our contracts and grant agreements,” Hetfield told eJewishPhilanthropy.

The HIAS leader also told the publication that the group had to let more than 20% of its staff go previously “after a financial error caused them to go over budget by more than $20 million.”

HIAS has “also launched and joined a series of lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s executive orders,” per eJewishPhilanthropy.

Welcome to “The Quad,” the bold and unfiltered JNS show hosted by Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, and a leader in Israeli and global affairs.

This week, we tackle the West’s growing battle against extremism, media bias and political hypocrisy. We’re joined by an all-star panel of panelists including Shoshana Keats-Jaskoll, Barb Heller and comedian Daniel-Ryan Spalding.

• Topics covered in this episode:
• Is the West finally pushing back? A shift in global policy against terrorism
• How academia and media became hijacked by extremist ideologies
• The erosion of free speech and democratic values in the United States and Europe
• Jewish identity under attack: Why young Jews are being misled
• Islamism vs. Reform Movements: The battle inside Muslim communities
• Why woke culture is self-destructing and turning on itself

No topic is off-limits on “The Quad.” Expect passionate debates, hard-hitting truths and unfiltered discussions on the most critical issues facing Israel, the Jewish world and the West.

See more at: @JNS_TV. And don’t forget to hit the subscribe button!

JNS will host its inaugural International Policy Summit on Monday, April 28, 2025. This daylong event will convene government officials, policymakers, diplomats, security experts, leaders of pro-Israel organizations, and influencers for vital discussions aimed at addressing Israel's critical challenges and opportunities in a post-Oct. 7 world.

Registration at this point is for invitees only. However, you can submit a request for registration in the following link.