Mideast War blowback

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The man was identified by police as Aaron Bushnell, 25, of San Antonio, Texas.

Before setting himself on fire, he said he would "no longer be complicit in genocide".
In a video aired live on a streaming site, Twitch, the man identified himself and said he was a serving member of the Air Force.

He said he was "about to engage in an extreme act of protest." After setting himself on fire, he repeatedly shouted "free Palestine".

The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington said that it was "not confirming the authenticity of the video".

It is not the first time someone has turned themselves into a human torch in front of an Israeli diplomatic mission in the US.

In December, a protester self-immolated in front of the Israeli consulate in the US state of Georgia.

A Palestinian flag found at the scene was part of the protest, police said.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is attempting to smooth over Joe Biden’s rough edges ahead of the primary tomorrow in her home state, where the president is facing significant backlash over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

Whitmer, a national co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign, acknowledged in an interview with NBC News on Monday that there will be a “sizable” number of protest votes against the president in Tuesday’s primary, taking place in a critical swing state where the margin of victory in November is expected to be razor thin.

Listen to Michigan, a group advocating for a cease-fire in Gaza, is aiming to get as many people to vote “uncommitted” in Tuesday’s primary as possible to protest Biden’s Middle East policies. The group’s goal: 10,000 votes.

“I think there will be a sizable number of votes for ‘uncommitted,’” Whitmer said. “I think that it is every person’s right to make their statement about what’s important to them.”

But Whitmer shrugged off a question about whether alarm bells should be going off for the Biden campaign in the state looking ahead to the general election.

“I think Michigan is the kind of state you can never take for granted,” she said. “Nor should you. It’s the most diverse swing state in the country. We have our primary earlier than usual and a lot of people are not accustomed to voting this early in the process here.”

Officials with the Biden campaign point out that in 2012, when President Barack Obama ran for re-election, 20,833 people voted “uncommitted” during the Democratic primary. And in 2020, 19,106 people voted “uncommitted.” So, they argue, 10,000 votes for “uncommitted” during this primary is not actually a high threshold.

BBC


There were a number of self-immolations in the United States in protest of the Vietnam War.

Less than two weeks before Aaron Bushnell walked toward the gates of the Israeli Embassy on Sunday, he and a friend talked by phone about their shared identities as anarchists and what kinds of risks and sacrifices were needed to be effective.

Bushnell, 25, mentioned nothing violent or self-sacrificial, the friend said.
Then on Sunday, Bushnell texted that friend, who described the exchange on the condition of anonymity to protect his safety.

“I hope you’ll understand. I love you,” Bushnell wrote in a message reviewed by The Washington Post. “This doesn’t even make sense, but I feel like I’m going to miss you.”
He sent the friend a copy of his will on Sunday. In it, he gave his cat to his neighbor and a fridge full of root beers to the friend.

Twelve minutes later, Bushnell, who was a senior airman in the U.S. Air Force, doused himself with a liquid and set himself on fire.

His suicidal protest instantly won him praise among some antiwar and pro-Palestinian activists, while others said they were devastated that he would take an action so extreme. But how a young man who liked The Lord of the Rings and karaoke became the man ablaze in a camouflage military uniform remains a mystery, even among some of his closest friends.

Bushnell was raised in a religious compound in Orleans, Mass., on Cape Cod, according to Susan Wilkins, 59, who said she was a member of the group from 1970 to 2005. She said that she knew Bushnell and his family on the compound and that he was still a member when she left. Wilkins said she heard through members of Bushnell’s family that he eventually left the group.

Wilkins’s account is consistent with those of multiple others who said Bushnell had told them about his childhood in the religious group or who had heard about his affiliation from his family members.

The group, called the Community of Jesus, has faced allegations of inappropriate behavior, which it has publicly disputed. In a lawsuit against an Ontario school, where many officials were alleged to be members of the U.S.-based religious group, former students called the Community of Jesus a “charismatic sect” and alleged that it “created an environment of control, intimidation and humiliation that fostered and inflicted enduring harms on its students.” The school, now defunct, disputed the allegations. Last year, an appeals court in Canada awarded $10.8 million Canadian dollars to the former students, who attended the Ontario school between 1973 and 1997.

Multiple people who said they were former members of the Community of Jesus described their years after leaving the compound as particularly challenging. They said former members, soon after they depart the group, often long for a sense of belonging.

“A lot of us that got out are very much into social justice, trying to defend those who don’t or can’t defend themselves, because that is what we went through,” said Bonnie Zampino, 54, who said she was a member of the group for three years in the 1980s.

Wilkins also said it is common for members of the Community of Jesus to join the military, describing the transition as moving from “one high-control group to another high-control group.”

Lupe Barboza, 32, said she met Bushnell in San Antonio in 2022 at an event for a socialist organization. She said they bonded over their politics and started working together to deliver clothing and food to people experiencing homelessness.

“He was outraged, and he knew that no one who is in charge is listening to the protesters out there every week,” Barboza said. “He knows that he has privilege as a White man and a member of the military.”

Other friends from San Antonio said they had talked with Bushnell about the Palestinians and their shared distaste for the U.S. role in the Israel-Gaza war. But he had not expressed to them any indication of what would take place in Washington on Sunday.

They also said he moved to Ohio earlier this year for a course for service members transitioning out of the military.

One of his friends, Levi Pierpont, 23, met him for lunch in Ohio in January. Over plates of butter chicken, the two talked about their involvement in the military and what they hoped to do after leaving the force. They had met in basic training in May 2020, when they were both still excited about joining the military and how it could help them experience more of the world, Pierpont said.

Pierpont said he grew disillusioned with the military over time — concerned with what he saw as flippant attitudes toward violence within the force — and said he left as a conscientious objector. (The Air Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his account.) By 2024, Bushnell had become more open about his objections to the military, Pierpont said. In the wake of George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis in 2020, Bushnell told Pierpont he had started to research the history of the United States and wanted to take a stand against all state-sanctioned violence.

Bushnell had considered leaving the military early, Pierpont said, but he had decided he was close enough to the end of his required service to stick it out. Bushnell was scheduled to leave the military in May, Pierpont said.

At the January lunch, Bushnell told Pierpont that he planned to find a job that would let him make enough money to support himself while engaging in political activism on the side. Pierpont said he encouraged his friend to go to university and get a degree in something related to his beliefs.

U.S. service members are prohibited from acts of political protest, under the Pentagon’s long-standing policy of remaining nonpartisan while civilian leaders oversee policy decisions. While no one else in uniform has stepped out against the war in Gaza as stridently as Bushnell, some service members do have misgivings about it and frustration that critics of the war blame U.S. military support for Israeli military actions.

On Monday afternoon, about 80 demonstrators showed up at the Israeli Embassy to support Bushnell and condemn Israel for the war. Among them was Sam Osta, playing an audio recording of Bushnell setting himself on fire.

“I wish I would have known. I would have stopped him,” said Osta, 55, who first met Bushnell at a protest at the Lincoln Memorial in 2022. “His life means a lot, and it’s horrifying what happened.”

Some of Bushnell’s friends, including Barboza, said they last saw him in January at his going-away party in San Antonio. It was at a karaoke bar. He belted out song after song, many of which were from “Les Misérables,” which he was known to love. And one was Mandy Moore’s “Wind in My Hair” from the TV series based on the movie “Tangled.”

“I got a smile on my face,” Bushnell sang, “and I’m walking on air.”

Jewish students at UC Berkeley evacuated from a campus theater Monday night after a mass of protesters, chanting “Intifada! Intifada!” and other slogans, shattered a glass door at the venue and shut down a scheduled lecture by an Israeli attorney and IDF reservist.

Several students who were attending or working the event at Zellerbach Playhouse were injured, including two young women, one of whom sprained a thumb when she wrestled to keep a door shut as protesters muscled it open. Another female student reportedly was handled around her neck, leaving marks. A third student was spit on, he told J.

The lecture was scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. Ran Bar-Yoshafat, who is a reserve combat officer in the Israel Defense Forces and was deployed in Gaza, planned to discuss international law as it pertains to Israel. “He’ll explore whether Israel violates international law, the rules of wartime conduct, and how the IDF can better protect civilians,” a social media post publicizing the event said.

The talk was conceived of as a small lecture in a classroom at Wheeler Hall, but organizers moved it at the direction of campus police for safety reasons after the anti-Zionist group Bears for Palestine, the Cal affiliate of Students for Justice in Palestine, called for a protest to “shut it down,” according to Joseph Karlan, a student leader of campus pro-Israel group Tikvah and one of the event organizers.

Shut it down: Genocidal murderers out of Berkeley,” the Bears for Palestine announcement said. It showed a picture of Bar-Yoshafat with glowing red eyes and a stamp under his face saying “murderer.”

Videos circulated widely on social media, showing protesters outside wearing keffiyehs and masks, yelling “You can’t run! You can’t hide! We charge you with genocide!” and other anti-Israel chants and banging on the glass door until it shattered. Videos also showed the students who were trying to attend the event being led down hallways — what one described to J. as an “underground tunnel of the building” — in order to safely evacuate the premises.

A spokesperson for the university lambasted the conduct of the protesters in an interview with J. Tuesday.

“What happened last night was despicable,” spokesperson Dan Mogulof said.

He said property damage to the theater was still under evaluation, but he confirmed that there were broken windows and at least one broken door, which was damaged after being forced.

Mogulof pushed back on the idea that UC Berkeley was scanty with its police protection. There were 19 officers present, the university said, including the chief of campus police.

“The size of the crowd, the size of what was a mob, and the willingness and readiness of that mob to engage in violent behavior” were shocking, Mogulof said. “We are deeply disturbed by what happened. It was a terrible experience for the audience.”

Jewish students related their experiences in interviews Tuesday.

Senior Vida Keyvanfar, a co-president of Tikvah, was responsible for checking student IDs against a list and stood outside the entrance to Zellerbach.

Keyvanfar said Tikvah worked with police for hours prior to the event to make a plan for student safety.

“We had a ton of protocols,” she said, including allowing in only those students who had RSVP’d.

Members of Tikvah and Students Supporting Israel, among several organizers of the event, arrived at Zellerbach with the speaker around 5:30 p.m., according to Karlan. He said the protesters convened around 5:15 p.m. elsewhere on campus because they didn’t know the event had been moved from Wheeler Hall.

Around 6:15 protesters heard of the location change, and it was blasted on social media. They came to the new location and started shouting,” he said.

“They found us,” said Keyvanfar. “I was the first to notify our security team: ‘OK, they’re coming. I can see them.’ It was a gigantic mob of people stomping, marching and screaming,” she said.

UC Berkeley estimated there were about 200 protesters who “began to surround the building.”

“I was getting calls left and right from students who had RSVP’d,” Keyvanfar said. “They were saying ‘I can’t get through the crowd. How do we get let in?’ I was trying to identify ways for students to get through this crowd safely, which isn’t my job. It should be the job of the school and the police to make sure students are able to get where they want to go safely.”

She said protesters told her they were on the list, but weren’t. They demanded to be let in.

“They were surrounding the table that I was standing at, yelling and screaming. There was spit flying left and right,” said Keyvanfar, who described herself as a “small girl.” “I was pretty nervous, surrounded by this crowd, but I was going to keep doing my job.”

She said a university administrator advised her to shut her laptop, worried that the protesters would take a photo of the RSVP list. “They’re looking at the names,” the administrator said, according to Keyvanfar.

At that point it was determined that it was “too unsafe to stand out there,” she said. “There were protesters to the front of me, to the side of me and behind me. I was getting kind of swallowed.” The whole time, Keyvanfar worried about her younger sister, a freshman, who was inside.

As Keyvanfar moved inside for her safety, she got a message that said the protesters had made it inside the building. The students had “gained unauthorized entry into the building,” Chancellor Carol Christ said in a statement Tuesday.

Elijah Feldman, a junior who belongs to the Jewish fraternity, was also there to help with the event.

“There weren’t many cops, but everyone was trying to keep them out,” he said of the protesters. “They got into doors that were locked from the outside by trying to push through.”

He said he was called slurs and spit at.

“I personally was verbally attacked, being called a Jew and dirty Jew, with a very nasty connotation,” he said. I was also called a Nazi and spit at. All in my face.”

One photo published on social media showed a young woman with several red marks around her neck.

Keyvanfar said the experience was disturbing in part because the demonstrators had their faces covered and it seemed like they could do whatever they wanted.

“When I was standing out there, when they were surrounding me, and they were yelling in my face to let them in, I realized that there were no repercussions for what they were doing. Because there’s no way to identify these people,” she said. “Something clicked in my brain. I was like, wow, they really could do anything to anyone here — and get away with it.”

A frantic police response
Though campus police officers were present at the event, they appeared to be overwhelmed by the size of the demonstration.

Audio of the campus police scanner uploaded to YouTube revealed a chaotic situation. Officers first report around 100 to 125 protesters outside Wheeler Hall, the original venue, then some 150 going inside Wheeler to block the room.

After finding out about the venue change, protesters walked to the plaza outside Zellerbach.

“We have a crowd at the door on the west side,” an officer says. “I’m trying to clear them away from the door.”

“I don’t see how we’re going to clear this,” another says.

At one point an officer describes a door that’s been opened and protesters inside.

“I need more people at this gate,” an officer says, sounding alarmed. “We’re going to lose this.”

“We need cover!” another yells.

Later, police officers confirm that the attendees have been safely moved out of Zellerbach but that protesters have reached the stage and lobby. Officers report vandalism and windows broken.

“We approach events like this with two priorities: to do what we can so that the event can go forward, and to do what we can to safeguard student safety and well-being,” Christ said in her statement. “Last night, despite our efforts and the ample number of police officers, it was not possible to do both given the size of the crowd and the threat of violence.”

Cancellation and aftermath
By 6:45 p.m., Karlan said, the Jewish students inside Zellerbach were told that the event was canceled.

“We are asking all persons to leave,” chief of campus police Yogananda Pittman said over the PA system from the stage of the concert hall, a video showed.

“And then everyone was forced to leave,” Karlan said.

Videos posted on social media show students being led single-file down a concrete staircase to an underground hallway. “We’re like Yahya Sinwar,” one person jokes, referring to the Hamas leader said to be hiding in tunnels underneath Gaza.

At that point, students contacted Leeds and arranged for Bar-Yoshafat to speak at the rabbi’s off-campus home nearby.

Sobkin said more than 20 students managed to make it to the lecture. Leeds said he saw several students arrive in tears, including two women who were injured. He told J. he stayed up past midnight, fielding calls from concerned parents.

The statement on Tuesday from Christ and Provost Benjamin Hermalin expressed “deep remorse and sympathy” to the students and members of the public who fled in fear from Zellerbach and said the incident “violated not only our rules, but also some of our most fundamental values.”

“We deeply respect the right to protest as intrinsic to the values of a democracy and an institution of higher education,” the statement said. “Yet, we cannot ignore protest activity that interferes with the rights of others to hear and/or express perspectives of their choosing. We cannot allow the use or threat of force to violate the First Amendment rights of a speaker, no matter how much we might disagree with their views.”

In a video of Bar-Yoshafat’s opening remarks at Chabad to students, who were seated at long tables set up in Leeds’ backyard, Bar-Yoshafat acknowledged the “very stressful” interruption by protesters.

“Just because some very young people call me a genocidal murderer doesn’t make me one,” he told the audience.

Said Sobkin, “Despite everything that happened — which was probably one of the worst things on campus I’ve yet to experience other than Oct. 7 itself — we had a successful event.”

There's an old joke that Australians are so laid back they're in constant danger of falling over. Known for its sun, surf and occasionally shark attacks, Australia has gone from being the easy-going land Down Under to experiencing a surge of antisemitism that most Jews thought was relegated to the dark annals of Jewish history.

In the line of fire are Australian-Jewish actors, musicians, writers, and others in the traditionally left-wing arts community. They are being pushed by fellow artists to denounce Israel as a modern-day Satan or be banished from the local arts scene.

The attacks and vitriol have shades of Mao's Cultural Revolution where people were publicly humiliated as subversives before being banished to work camps. In this modern-day Australian twist, Jews are simply fired or excommunicated from their artistic communities.

Under attack, these Jewish creatives formed a Whatsapp group where they shared their feelings of alienation with fellow Jewish artists. The group was breached, and chats were stolen and circulated online. Now pro-Hamas keyboard warriors are doxxing and threatening the creatives who used the chat to share their despair as work dried up and friends and colleagues abandoned them.

Saxophonist Joshua Moshe was doxxed and threatened by pro-Hamas supporters simply for being a member of the chat group. The harassment got so bad that his band mates fired him from their neo-soul jazz band via Instagram.

We explicitly condemn any forms of Zionism, racism, bullying, and antisemitism," his bandmates said, without any irony, as they expelled their only Jewish member. Moshe's wife's gift shop has been boycotted and vandalized.

Actress Sarah-Jane Feiglin is not surprised that Moshe's bandmates turned on him. She's been taunted by actors expressing support of Hamas's Oct. 7 atrocities against Israelis during acting workshops. She's no longer in touch with many of her old friends from film school as well as other actor friends.

"People are being bullied into silence. They are afraid of being cancelled and losing work, so they are shunning their Jewish friends publicly and privately," Feiglin said.

Feiglin was removed from a prestigious clowning masterclass of the sort made famous by Sasha Baron-Cohen. She'd spent months preparing for the class with pre-workshop improv courses. Before the masterclass began, her instructor emailed her to say that she couldn't do the class. He said that she was too emotional because she'd been dismayed during a previous workshop by an actor telling Hitler jokes as well as mocking comments by other actors that alluded to the 230 Israelis taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7, including children and young women who released hostages say are being raped by their Hamas captors.

"All of my creative platforms and work opportunities have been taken away from me because I will not be ashamed or apologetic about being Jewish," she said.

Members of the Jewish creatives chat group were largely left-wing artists who disagreed with many policies of the Netanyahu government and were devastated by the loss of life among Palestinians from the Israeli military onslaught on Hamas in Gaza. They are also deeply wounded by the minimization, justification, and denial by fellow artists of the Oct. 7 murders and rapes by Hamas.

One of the turning points for many Jewish artists was a pro-Palestinian protest by several actors, including the son of Hugo Weaving, at the Sydney Theatre Company, in which they donned keffiyehs and made a pro-Palestine speech at the end of a production. Jews were offended not because the actors decried the deaths of Palestinian children but rather because the actors said not a word about the Israeli hostages, including a baby, held by Hamas as well as Hamas's mass murder of 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7.

Based largely on an influx of Holocaust survivors after World War Two, there are just 100,000 Jews in Australia, or 0.4 percent of the population. The community is so small that 'Jewish' isn't listed as a religion on the national census. Jews have to write their religion next to the word "Other." Some leave it blank, remembering how such information was used by the Nazis for deportation lists to concentration camps.

Now there are new lists; lists of names stolen from Jewish chat groups circulating among pro-Hamas activists. They have become hit lists of Jews for doxxing, boycotts, and death threats. Meanwhile, police have done little to stem the hate, arson, vandalism and calls for violence paraded on Australian streets,

When screenshots of a Whatsapp group of Jewish lawyers were leaked to Australia's The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, the newspapers ran articles filled with antisemitic tropes that could have been pulled from the pages of the Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer during Hitler's rise to power in the 1930s. The articles claimed a "secret chat group" of Jewish lawyers had carried out a "coordinated back-channel campaign" to fire a social media personality and pro-Palestine activist hired as a radio presenter by the ABC public broadcaster, which has a statutory duty requiring impartiality. Chat group members received death threats after the articles were released.

The newspapers put a conspiratorial spin on what was in essence a few people on a Whatsapp group spontaneously deciding to write letters of complaint over an eyebrow-raising appointment of an activist at a taxpayer-funded public broadcaster. The activist, Antoinette Lattouf, had put up social media posts perceived as justifying the Oct. 7 massacre.

"Apparently everyone else can lobby on their own behalf except Jews," posted a Jewish former politician, Philip Dalidakis, on X when the articles came out.

Lattouf was subsequently stood down by the ABC for breaching its social media code. She claimed that she was fired over a Human Rights Watch post, and has sued for unfair dismissal. The matter is still pending. Her social media posts have included an Instagram comment hailing as "super important" a call for a "healthy cynicism" of witness testimony of the rape of Israeli women on Oct. 7.

Her social media posts have included an Instagram comment hailing as "super important" a call for a "healthy cynicism" of witness testimony of the rape of Israeli women on Oct. 7.

Home to the survivors whose stories featured in The Tattooist of Auschwitz and Schindler's List the Australian city of Melbourne has the largest community of Holocaust survivors and their descendants in the world outside of Israel. The community thrived until Oct. 7. Since then, Melbourne's Jews, like the rest of Australia's Jewish community, have been hounded by calls to boycott Jewish businesses, vilification of Jewish philanthropists who donated wings to hospitals and collections to art galleries, as well as daily acts of vandalism and threats and occasional violence.

For many Australian Jews, post Oct. 7 Australia has shades of 1930s Germany in which Jewish artists and academics were shunned by their peers, newspapers treated Jews as "Other," and Jewish businesses were boycotted and attacked in what turned out to be a prelude to the Holocaust. While few think it will ever get that bad, Jews have never felt so unsafe and unwelcome in the land Down Under.

Australian police on Monday announced the arrest of a prominent pro-Hamas advocate accused of orchestrating the kidnapping and torture of a man whose perceived offense was to work for a Jewish employer.

Melbourne resident Laura Allam was charged with kidnapping, armed robbery, illegal detention, assault and battery against the 31-year-old man, who has not been named by authorities. Working with an accomplice who has also been arrested and charged with kidnapping, false imprisonment, armed robbery, threats to kill, intention to cause injury, recklessly causing injury, unlawful assault and assault with weapon, the 28-year-old Allam is understood to have targeted the man solely because his employer is Jewish.

According to a statement from police in the State of Victoria, the brutal assault occurred on the night of Feb. 16 in the Melbourne suburb of St. Albans. “It’s alleged a man was pulled from a car near the intersection of Gladstone and Cleveland streets about 9.30pm,” the statement noted. “He was then allegedly placed in another car and assaulted and robbed before being released in Braybrook.” The victim required extensive treatment in hospital for injuries sustained in the “horrific kidnapping and torture.”

Deborah Lipstadt, the US State Department’s antisemitism envoy, is tasked with monitoring discrimination against Jews in countries across the world.

But since October 7, she’s also been paying attention to antisemitism closer to home, in her native New York City, where the NYPD has documented an average spike of over 100 percent in antisemitic hate crimes reported monthly since Hamas’s invasion of Israel and the ensuing war.

In the past four-plus months, Lipstadt said, she has seen antisemites in the United States and abroad inspire and feed off of each other. She told the New York Jewish Week that in New York City, where she gave a speech to a crowd of hundreds on Tuesday night, she hopes Jews will not begin hiding their identity and “go underground.”

“I think we’re going to be fine, but I hope we won’t dramatically change our lifestyle,” she said in an interview ahead of her talk at Central Synagogue, the large midtown Reform congregation. “I really hope people will not remove their mezuzahs from outside their door.”

She urged the audience at Central to “bring the joy” of Judaism to their lives despite growing antisemitism. “Being Jewish is not something you do defensively,” she said.

Lipstadt, a renowned Holocaust scholar who has served in the ambassadorial role since 2022, has helped the Biden administration combat antisemitism, including through the administration’s strategy to counter antisemitism, which was rolled out last year before the October 7 massacre when Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and taking 253 hostages.

She told the New York Jewish Week that the administration had not changed its approach to combating anti-Jewish discrimination since the attack, but that it had “intensified” its efforts.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced Wednesday 54 million pounds ($68 million) of new funding to protect Jewish communities against antisemitism over the next four years.

“It is shocking, and wrong, the prejudice, the racism we have seen in recent months,” Sunak said in a speech to the Community Security Trust’s annual dinner, according to extracts released by his office.

“It is hatred, pure and simple. An assault on the Jewish people. We will fight this antisemitism with everything we’ve got.”

Earlier this month, CST said Britain recorded thousands of antisemitic incidents after the outbreak of war between Israel and the Palestinian terror group Hamas in October, making 2023 the worst year for UK antisemitism since its records began in 1984.

The government had already given the CST, which advises Britain’s estimated 280,000 Jews on security matters, 18 million pounds (some $23 million) for 2024-25, taking the total funding up to 2028 to 70 million pounds ($88.6 million).

The funding will be used to increase security at a range of Jewish buildings across the country, including schools and synagogues, the government said, providing measures such as security guards, closed-circuit TV (CCTV), and alarm systems.

The move came as British MPs have expressed growing concerns about their safety amid a surge in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents since October 7.

Meeting with police chiefs at Downing Street to discuss intimidation of MPs, candidates, and municipal councilors, Sunak warned of “mob rule” eroding British democracy.

Veteran left-wing political maverick George Galloway, known for his heated anti-Israel rhetoric, wins a vote to become the new lawmaker for the English town of Rochdale after a chaotic campaign which saw the main opposition Labour Party withdraw support from its candidate.

After running a pro-Palestinian campaign, Galloway won over many of Rochdale’s Muslim community by attacking both Labour and Britain’s governing Conservatives for supporting Israel in its war against Hamas, making a foreign conflict the major issue — unusual in a by-election when local concerns usually dominate.

Elected to parliament for the seventh time, Galloway will be an irritant to Labour, a party he once belonged to before being ejected for criticizing then-prime minister Tony Blair over the Iraq War. He even went so far as saying the assassination of Blair would be “morally justified” for Britain’s involvement.

His victory underlines the divisions in Britain over the Israel-Hamas war, which is in its fifth month and has brought protesters onto British streets in support of both sides.

With the national election later this year, Galloway’s return to parliament will be short-lived but explosive. He has accused Labour leader Keir Starmer of being in the “pocket of Israel.”

Galloway wins 12,335 votes compared with 6,638 for second-placed David Tully, an independent candidate. The former Labour candidate, Azhar Ali, comes fourth after the opposition party pulled its support from him after claimed Israel allowed the brutal

Following weeks of simmering tension in the UK over the Gaza conflict, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Friday said that the “time has come” to battle extremist forces as he warned “democracy itself is a target.”

In an unusual address from outside his Downing Street home, Sunak said that “in recent weeks and months, we have seen a shocking increase in extremist disruption and criminality.”

Regular marches protesting Israel’s military response to Hamas’s October 7 attacks have seen dozens arrested for antisemitic chanting and banners, inviting support for Hamas, a banned terror organization, and assaulting emergency workers.

Right-wing counter-protesters were also arrested when they descended on London for Remembrance Day events in November.

“Islamist extremists and far-right groups are spreading a poison. That poison is extremism,” said Sunak.

Matters came to a head last week when the Speaker of the House of Commons said he bucked procedure during a debate due to concerns about the safety of MPs.

Sunak said that the protests, a regular occurrence on Saturdays in the capital, “had descended into intimidation, threats and planned acts of violence.”

Sunak said that people had the right to protest and demand the protection of civilian life in Gaza, but could not use that cause to justify the support of Hamas, a proscribed group, and said he wanted police to “not merely manage these protests, but police them.”

He added that “Islamist extremists and the far-right feed off and embolden each other” and were “two sides of the same extremist coin.” He said that people in the country on visas would have their right to be in Britain removed if they “choose to spew hate.”

“Now our democracy itself is a target. Council meetings and local events have been stormed.

“MPs do not feel safe in their home. Long-standing parliamentary conventions have been upended because of safety concerns,” he added.

“I fear that our great achievement in building the world’s most successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith democracy is being deliberately undermined,” Sunak said.

The prime minister said that “police have a tough job in policing the protests” but that “we must draw a line.”

“I say this to the police, we will back up when you take action,” he added.

Sunak’s speech came as left-wing firebrand George Galloway was elected to the UK parliament after tapping into anger over the Israel-Hamas war in a chaotic by-election marred by allegations of antisemitism.

Sunak said it was “beyond alarming” that voters had elected a candidate “who dismisses the horror of what happened on October 7, and who glorifies Hezbollah.”

The government will soon unveil a “new, robust framework” to tackle extremism, which will include backing for the counter-radicalization Prevent program and a demand for universities to stop extremist activity on campus, he explained.

“It is not enough to live side-by-side, we must live together, united by shared values and a shared commitment to this country,” said Sunak.

British lawmakers this week have been given funding for new security provisions after some faced threats for expressing support for Israel in its war with Hamas.

Six US House of Representatives Democrats returned from an Israel trip accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “utter disregard for Palestinian lives” and fearing that he is moving toward Gaza’s “total destruction.”

The Democrats — including the most senior Democrat on the House appropriations committee, Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut — made the comments in a statement issued Friday. They represent the breadth of the party’s ideologies and include several with pro-Israel records.

The recommendations in the joint statement signed by DeLauro, Sean Casten of Illinois, Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, Becca Balint of Vermont, and Salud Carvajal and Mark Takano of California were in line with President Joe Biden’s policies, including a call for a six-week ceasefire to facilitate the release of all hostages held by Hamas and the entry of direly needed humanitarian assistance into the Gaza Strip.

The six Democrats squarely blamed Netanyahu for the failure to get relief to the Palestinians.
“We are deeply worried that Prime Minister Netanyahu is moving toward the total destruction of Gaza and has demonstrated an utter disregard for Palestinian lives,” the statement said. “Nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed – with almost 70,000 more injured and thousands missing.
He has shamefully been unwilling to allow humanitarian services in at the scale needed.”

Biden, too, seemed more ready than he has in the past to squarely place responsibility for aid delivery on Israel.

“We’re going to insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to give more and more people the help they need,” he said. “No excuses. Because the truth is aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough.”

DeLauro, who led the delegation, stands out: In addition to being the top Democrat on the powerful Appropriations Committee, she is a member of the House Democratic leadership and has in the past been close to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the preeminent mainstream pro-Israel lobby. AIPAC’s affiliated political action committee has endorsed her. She is married to pollster Stanley Greenberg, who has been active in pro-Israel advocacy.

But the others are also significant: Casten in 2022 unseated Marie Newman in a primary, a victory propelled in part by pro-Israel anger at her policies. Carbajal is a member of Problem Solvers Caucus, which unites moderates of both parties. Balint is Jewish and a member of the Progressive Congressional Caucus. Dean’s Philadelphia-area district has a substantial Jewish population.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the J Street president who accompanied the delegation, said the lawmakers were moved by how officials across the spectrum — in Netanyahu’s government, in the opposition and in the Palestinian Authority — saw the US role as “indispensable.”

“If the United States doesn’t lead some kind of a very large initiative to come out of this in a better place, nothing is going to happen,” Ben-Ami said.

He said the six saw up close the devastation wrought by the Oct. 7 attacks and their aftermath, staying in a hotel housing evacuees from Israel’s northern border, where Hezbollah is firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas.

“The children are playing on the couches next to the members in the lobby as we’re getting ready to go on a tour,” he said. “It’s in the breakfast hall in the morning. The families are getting ready for school and the members are there, getting food right next to them.”

Student government leaders at the University of British Columbia rejected a ballot measure Wednesday night that would have called for an end to Hillel’s presence on campus, following intense pushback from Vancouver Jewish groups and capping months of discord between the Hillel and its critics in the student body.

According to the student newspaper, the council said the measure was rejected for technical matters and not because of the criticism directed at Hillel amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. The council reportedly rejected the measure because it violated bylaws stating that all referendums be “clear and unambiguous” and that they contain a simple “yes or no” answer.

Known as Referendum 2, the measure would have pushed the university’s Alma Mater Society to “demand where feasible, that the University end Hillel BC’s lease,” in addition to demands that the school end partnerships with Israeli universities; divest from a list of companies that do business in Israel; endorse the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel; and compel the university to state that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza.

An outpost of the Jewish student life organization Hillel International, Hillel BC serves seven campuses in the Vancouver area, of which UBC is the largest. The more than 850 Hillels around the world operate from both on-campus sites and buildings located adjacent to campuses but not owned by the university.

The physical location of its Hillel House is on UBC’s campus, making it a target for students who were motivated by broader anger over the Israel-Hamas war, as well as by two local controversies. The referendum specifically objected to the Hillel having invited a member of the Israeli military to campus, as well as to a November incident during which a contractor affiliated with the Hillel distributed “I [Heart] Hamas” stickers around campus and falsely attributed them to the university’s Social Justice Centre.

Earlier this month, the Social Justice Centre sued the Hillel and its former contractor for defamation over the stickers, saying they were “made with actual malice, knowing it was false, for the improper or ulterior motive of impugning SJC’s reputation.”

At the time of the incident, Hillel BC said it didn’t know its contractor had distributed the “offensive” stickers and that it terminated its relationship with the contractor. Its executive director, Rob Philipp, told the CBC, “This incident has nothing to do with Hillel BC.”

According to the UBC student newspaper, on Wednesday the student council voted down the anti-Hillel measure 23-2 before it could make it onto a student-wide ballot to be distributed Friday.
Referendums can be proposed if a certain percentage of the student body signs onto them, according to the bylaws, but the council still retains the final say on whether to include them on the ballot, according to a statement the student union released Wednesday.

First lady Jill Biden spoke for only 14 minutes on the second leg of her “Women for Biden-Harris” tour — but that didn't stop pro-Palestinian protesters from interrupting her remarks four separate times.

“It’s a genocide, Jill!” yelled one of the four demonstrators in Tucson on Saturday morning as he was being forcibly escorted out of the venue by security.

The main focus of the first lady’s remarks was supposed to be on women’s issues, including abortion rights, which could be on the ballot in Arizona come November.

But within 13 seconds of beginning her remarks, the first protester piped up.

Less than two minutes later, the second followed. And within 30 seconds of the second disruption, the first lady offered an explanation for keeping her appearance there so short.

“I'm sorry to have to come and go so quickly,” said Biden.

“Wind storms in Nevada are impacting my travel,” she added just after the demonstrator was hauled out of the theater.

And just as she was beginning to gather steam in her speech, the third protester shouted out.

Kaliana Venet, 34, is an activist with the Arizona Palestine Solidarity Alliance, one of the organizations behind the Biden disruptions in Tucson. She wasn’t impressed by the first lady’s remarks concerning women.

“When you’re talking about women’s issues, when you’re talking about women in office, and women in Gaza are having C-sections without anesthesia, watching their children pulled out of the rubble, starving to death … it’s absolutely shameful,” said Venet.

“She should have seen it coming,” said Venet.

The unemployed activist voted for Biden in 2020, a decision she now says she’s “very ashamed of.”

Police vehicles crawled through a mob of protesters in the pouring rain as officers tried to make their way to a bomb threat in Times Square on Saturday.

It happened around 4 p.m. Saturday near 42nd Street and 7th Avenue. An Uber had just dropped off a passenger and found a grenade in the back seat. The bomb squad later determined it was an inactive, novelty grenade.

Police were in riot gear, trying to move protesters out of the way. It then escalated to pushing and shoving, and protesters being knocked to the ground.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry posted on X,

"Happy Saturday to all! Except the people who thought it was a good idea to block an NYPD ESU vehicle on the way to a bomb threat call. They will be spending their Saturday where they belong - in jail!"

It all started as a pro-Palestine rally drawing thousands to Washington Square Park - then it evolved into a march.

An anti-Israel blockade at the site of the Montreal Holocaust Museum on Monday night has been roundly condemned by Quebec politicians as a pro-Hamas “hate” mob.

“To the Pro-Hamas demonstrators who gathered outside a Montreal Jewish community building, spreading anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiments: your disgrace is inappropriate and misplaced,” reads a Monday night statement by Jeremy Levi, mayor of the Montreal-area municipality of Hampstead.

Nearby Snowdon is home to the Federation CJA, whose premises include the Montreal Holocaust Museum.

On Monday night, the centre was the site of “Israeli Perspective: Coming to Life,” a public talk by three reservists with the Israel Defense Forces. Organized by DiploAct — a pro-Israel outreach group — the talk included Aby Volcovich, a 26-year-old Mexican-Canadian who joined the IDF as a lone soldier.

As documented in a series of social media call-outs, this event was explicitly targeted by anti-Israel demonstrators who sought to blockade entrances to the site and force the talk’s cancellation.

“Child killers not welcome in Montreal, join us to shut it down,” read one Instagram post that made the rounds of Montreal’s anti-Israel community.

The action was organized by the Concordia University chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights.

This is the same group whose immediate response to the Oct. 7 massacre was a statement explicitly endorsing the Hamas-led attack, and framing the murder of 1,200 civilians as the expression of “an unfaltering desire for liberation.”

SPHR Concordia had already been successful in pressuring Concordia University to cancel a planned on-campus talk by the IDF reservists. Over the weekend, the group declared “victory” in forcing Concordia to “shut down the genocidal Zionist event.”

On Monday, SPHR Concordia knew full well they were marshalling demonstrators to blockade a Jewish community centre, but they chalked up the choice of venue to Jewish perfidy.

“The Genocidal Zionist Army’s event has been set to happen in the vicinity of a Holocaust museum,” reads a message sent out to blockaders on Monday. It added, “we will not fall for your traps,” and accused organizers of “a new low, even for the Zionist entity.”

In a lengthy statement, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs — a co-sponsor of the event — criticized the Montreal police for allowing demonstrators to swarm the building’s entrances and exits without opposition.

“SPVM’s public order unit was not able to maintain buffer zones and failed to ensure access to all entrances and exits,” it read, noting that, “members of our community could not access an event and others were prevented from leaving for hours.”

The incident also attracted special attention from former Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, who has become a particularly outspoken critic of the seeming unwillingness of Canadian law enforcement to oppose anti-Israel demonstrations.

“This isn’t lawful protest. It’s targeted coercion, fueled by antisemitism. It’s against the law,” he said.

As with many anti-Israel actions in Quebec, the Monday blockade was also promoted in part by Montreal4Palestine, a group that has frequently gone on record calling for Israel’s violent destruction. The Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacres were still underway in Israel when Montreal4Palestine responded with celebratory rallies and the distribution of candy.

The Federation CJA demonstration is just the latest in a rising trend of anti-Israel actions explicitly targeting Canadian Jewish sites.

Earlier this year, a freeway overpass adjacent to Toronto’s most Jewish neighbourhood was blockaded for more than two weeks by anti-Israel demonstrators who had referred to the neighbourhood as a “Zionist Infested Area.”

And just last week, a targeted blockade on the campus of McGill University successfully forced the cancellation of classes within the Bronfman Building, a structure seemingly targeted for no other reason than it bears the name of Jewish philanthropist Samuel Bronfman.

Although security has been increased at London's Criterion Theatre, The Merchant of Venice star Tracy-Ann Oberman was still asked not to leave the venue following a performance due to pro-Palestine rallies, the actress has revealed.

Over the weekend, Oberman shared on social media that following the Saturday matinee performance she was asked "not to step out of the theatre" because of "all the demonstrations and marches going on."

Oberman did not note in her post who had advised her to stay indoors or the specific nature of the danger, but the production has had to hire additional security for the actress following death threats, which BroadwayWorld previously reported.

Oberman, who is starring as Shylock in her adaptation of the play, had previously written a column noting that the ordeal has been 'like a dystopian nightmare'.

A Jewish actress putting on a play about antisemitism which needs to be made secure because of Jew-hating extremists. As one reviewer said: ‘Written in 1600, set in 1936, as relevant today in 2023.’ Ain’t that the truth.”

Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that Campaign Against Antisemitism, a UK-based NGO which publishes research, organizes rallies and petitions, and conducts litigation reports that per their polling '90 percent of British Jews say that they would avoid traveling to a city center if a major anti-Israel demonstration was taking place there.'

"Jewish people in Great Britain are suffering hugely for what is going on in a foreign country, it's not right..." Oberman said to Sky News.

This production of The Merchant of Venice sets the drama in 1936 East London in the build up to the Battle of Cable Street, which saw anti-fascist protesters clash with police who were escorting a racist protest led by Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts.

Controversy has engulfed Tufts University following allegations of antisemitic incidents during a student senate meeting that took place Sunday night.

According to a report by NBC Boston, ADL New England condemned the treatment of Jewish students, who were allegedly subjected to comments about their odor, spat on, and exposed to outright antisemitic remarks from their peers.

Responding to the uproar, Tufts University's administration, including President Sunil Kumar, issued a statement revealing their awareness of "some extremely disturbing antisemitic words and conduct" aimed at those opposing the BDS-related resolutions. Additionally, mentioned in a piece by The Boston Globe, were instances of Islamophobic actions targeting the resolutions' supporters. Calling these acts "entirely unacceptable," the university assured that it is thoroughly investigating the accusations and that it will hold any offending student accountable.

The student senate meeting, which spilled into the early hours, resulted in the passage of three out of four BDS-related resolutions. University officials clarified their stance, "To be clear: as we have done in the past, we reject the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement, we wholeheartedly support academic freedom and all our academic and exchange programs, and we will continue to work with all companies that we engage with and do business with now." Officials further emphasized their commitment to fostering a nuanced understanding of the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict, beyond the realm of such resolutions.

Jewish students at Columbia University are experiencing “isolation and pain” and the university isn’t doing enough to discipline unauthorized protests surrounding the Israel-Hamas war, according to a new report by the school’s antisemitism task force.

The report, released Monday, is a landmark in the discourse over whether Jewish and Israeli students have been safe at the Ivy League school since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing war touched off a wave of protests on campuses across the country. The task force was formed in the weeks after Oct. 7 with the mandate of formulating strategies to combat antisemitism at Columbia, and is one of several to be formed at elite universities nationwide.

Now, as Columbia faces investigations by Congress and the Biden administration, and pressure from students, alumni and donors over antisemitism, the task force says Jewish students are treading an ideological minefield and lack support from the administration. Rules to shield them from discrimination, the report says, have gone part way in helping Jewish students feel protected but often go unenforced.

“Some Jewish and Israeli Columbia affiliates have been the object of racist epithets and graffiti, antisemitic tropes, and confrontational and unwelcome questions, while others have found their participation in some student groups that have nothing to do with politics to be increasingly uncomfortable,” the 24-page document says.

It says that Jewish students feel marginalized whether they support Israel or not, and adds, “While there is strong support among Jewish and Israeli Columbia affiliates for the right to protest, as well as widespread heartbreak about the tragic loss of civilian life in Gaza, many have heard chants at protests like ‘Globalize the Intifada’ and ‘Death to the Zionist State’ as calls for violence against them and their families.”

The task force is conducting research on university policies and interviewing community members, and will issue a series of reports in the coming months with the goal of gaining a deeper understanding of the campus climate and making recommendations.

The secret to the effectiveness of “cancel culture” was how it appealed not to mankind’s cruelty but to its infinite reservoir of laziness. Getting large numbers of people to care a great deal about something is harder than convincing most people to go on not caring.

Which is how it became the case that the only real “book banning” epidemic in Western publishing was brought about by convincing people to self-censor. There were two main ways this was done in the publishing industry. In one, the writer would finish the manuscript and the industry would get cold feet after finding out that, to take a real world example, the author of a book with main characters who are black was Filipino. The lesson for the writer: Just don’t write the book to begin with, and save everyone the time and effort. In the other method of squelching books, Amazon would delist a book already for sale based on some ever-changing grievance standard that suddenly sparks a protest. This time the lesson is for the publisher: Just don’t accept books on such topics in the first place.

It has been the case for some time that this Sovietesque approach to killing art was being applied to Jewish creators. That went into overdrive after Oct. 7. I explained in January how that affected television writers and producers, and then in February how it was being carried out against musicians and writers.

Now we have a chillingly banal story of what this looks like from the inside of the publishing industry, via the Telegraph. “A very well-known literary agent of great repute and associated with books that one would immediately recognize said that he is having difficulty with his Jewish authors or writings on Jewish subjects because he just finds that much of literary London is now a no-go zone for Jews,” relayed writer and publisher Stephen Games. “He said there is no point putting proposals up to commissioning editors as they just are not interested.”

Lest anyone try to claim this is about Israel-related books or authors—as if that would be acceptable either—the piece reports out the story of Gillian Freedman, a 67-year-old Jewish woman who, along with her husband, owns and operates a small farm in rural Bedfordshire. Freedman wrote a book titled Jews Milk Goats, about maintaining a Jewish life while living on a farm.

Pretty wholesome stuff, right? Well, not to the magazine editor who spiked a review of the book on the grounds that Jews are too controversial now. This quote from that editor, sent to the columnist who wrote the review, is among the better descriptions of our post-Oct. 7 reality you’ll find: “In the current, rather febrile, atmosphere I think we need to give a wide berth to anything which references Jewish people and Judaism. It just isn’t worth the hassle that will ensue.”

Nowhere in there does it say anything about Israel or Zionism. But that last line explains why it’s been so easy for mainstream cultural, educational, and political institutions throughout the enlightened West to simply close the door on anything or anyone Jewish. It just isn’t worth the hassle

This is why the pro-Hamas demonstrators and activists do what they do. Because they can’t say “don’t serve Jews.” But they can and will make your life hell if you serve Jews.

The hassle, if it isn’t clear by now, is the point. The entire strategy of alienating Jews from polite society relies on cowardice. What few Americans and Brits realize is that their major publishing houses are already in line. They didn’t have to be pushed very far. Indeed, the speed with which the machinery of Jew-baiting came together after Oct. 7 is a reminder that old habits die hard. And there are few habits older than this.