On Tuesday, Australia announced it would expel Iran’s ambassador and suspend operations at Australia’s embassy in Tehran, accusing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of directing two antisemitic attacks, including the firebombing of a synagogue.
“Enough credible intelligence has now been gathered to reach the deeply disturbing conclusion that the Iranian Government has directed at least two of these attacks,” the Australian Foreign Minister’s Office <a href="https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/penny-wong/media-release/response-iranian-attacks">stated</a>. “Iran has sought to disguise its involvement but ASIO assesses it was behind the attacks on: Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Sydney on October 20 last year; and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne on December 6 last year.”
“We have informed the Iranian ambassador to Australia he and three additional Iranian diplomats will be expelled,” the statement continued. “We have suspended operations at our embassy in Tehran and all our diplomats are now safe in a third country. The Government will legislate so we can list Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – the IRGC &#8211; as a terrorist organisation.”
“Western security officials have said Tehran is increasingly turning to criminal networks in the West to target dissidents, critics and Jews. In another recent episode about two months ago, an alleged spy was arrested in Europe and German authorities said that Iran was suspected of <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/iran-suspected-of-scouting-jewish-targets-in-europe-c92367c4?mod=article_inline">collecting information on Jewish targets</a> in Berlin to prepare for possible attacks,” The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/australia-blames-iran-for-antisemitic-attacks-expels-ambassador-bd63cfe6?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAgVTHU-bqkEarVLh3rjMjgp_QGnZrWNhB3D6pX8WHh89JAFMQ6sGxzikxFiEYg%3D&amp;gaa_ts=68ae2537&amp;gaa_sig=JHopOhKaIQX0YV1PohFfgPwH0WR76TCHcZBZ4IoxWtt5LlS7c-4KgSs56yO-5lL9i2dJP6vEhlAVNfNbm8JO8g%3D%3D">reported</a>.
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“For decades, the Iranian regime has posed a threat to Israelis and Jewish communities around the world,” the Israeli embassy in Australia wrote on X. “Today, it became clear that this threat has reached Australian soil.  The international community can no longer be complacent. Australia has taken a principled stand, others should consider following suit.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
For decades, the Iranian regime has posed a threat to Israelis and Jewish communities around the world.
Today, it became clear that this threat has reached Australian soil.
The international community can no longer be complacent. Australia has taken a principled stand, others… <a href="https://t.co/WOBBF2p5u5">https://t.co/WOBBF2p5u5</a>
— Israel in Australia (@IsraelinOZ) <a href="https://twitter.com/IsraelinOZ/status/1960206082456047974?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 26, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Although the current Australian government seems to be intent on protecting local Jews, it is far less interested in protecting Jews in the state of Israel. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has presided over an era in which antisemitism has become pronounced in his country and anti-Israel actions have grown ever more public, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/australia-palestinian-state-albanese-3d32a2d823a430cb85d3f6a83158dd90">said</a> in early August that his country would recognize a Palestinian state.
Australian television presenter Erin Molan, a staunch defender of the West and Israel, denounced the Australian government for asserting they would recognize a Palestinian state in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre of over 1,200 Israelis, bitterly offering congratulations to Hamas and other terrorist groups.
“A big congratulations to Hamas off the news out of Australia that our government, our Prime Minister, and Foreign Minister will be recognizing a Palestinian state,” Molan said acidly. “They are, of course, in control of Gaza. They are terrorists and they carried out October 7. So a big congratulations to them for this wonderful shot in the arm.”
“I’d like to pass on my condolences to the hostages, around 50, who are still trapped in tunnels, are desperate, dying, suffering immensely; to every child in Gaza, my condolences to you as well because this will only prolong your pain because our government has just given a massive big hurrah to the people responsible for your pain: Hamas, the terrorists,” she declared.
“And also a big shout-out to every other heinous, murderous terrorist group in the world who was looking for a kind of way to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the Western world,” she said. “Who now know all they have to do is break into another country, slaughter, rape, chop off heads, hack them off on camera, burn children alive, and take hostages, including babies, then kill them, and ‘Bob’s your uncle’: there you go: statehood.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
A huge congratulations not JUST to H*mas… but to terrorists everywhere 💪 What a win… 🥳
Ohhhh and condolences to the hostages, kids in Gaza and innocents everywhere who will suffer even more so as a result 🙏
Australia has just announced it will recognise a Palestinian… <a href="https://t.co/MF7OF2eAfQ">pic.twitter.com/MF7OF2eAfQ</a>
— Erin Molan (@Erin_Molan) <a href="https://twitter.com/Erin_Molan/status/1954753839061746149?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
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AUSTRALIA-RELIGION-POLITICS-FIRE-POLICE

Australia Expels Iranian Ambassador, Accuses Regime Of Orchestrating Antisemitic Attacks

Anti-Semitism

Australia

Global Politics

Iran

IRGC

terrorist

World

Antisemitism is nothing new. It is an ancient evil, spanning from Haman to Hitler, and now manifesting in Hamas and Hezbollah. This is not just political ideology or a disturbing cultural trend, antisemitism is the primary objective from Hell.
After the Holocaust, the world promised, “Never again.” Yet here we are. The October 7 terrorist attacks against Israel, surge in antisemitic rhetoric, violence targeting Jews and supporters of Israel all reveal an alarming truth: today’s complacency is tomorrow’s captivity.
When antisemitism rises, it doesn&#8217;t stop with the Jewish people. Hatred comes first for the Jews, then for everyone else. In denying the image of God in the Jewish people, antisemitism assaults the Judeo-Chrstian values that undergird peace and prosperity everywhere. That’s why Christians must stand up — against antisemitism and with Israel — now. We need to build a firewall against antisemitism or today’s generation will continue to spiral into moral confusion and spiritual blindness. 
Antisemitism is not just about politics. It’s about truth and the foundation of human flourishing. From Genesis to Revelation, there is no ambiguity whatsoever that there is a Divine purpose for the Jewish people. God’s Covenant with the Jews has not been nullified. Even in the New Covenant through Christ, there is a plan for the Jewish people in Israel.
That’s why I push back against replacement theology, the lie that the Church has replaced Israel in God’s divine plan. The apostle Paul makes the truth clear in Romans: God’s promises to the Jewish people still stand. The Church ought to reject replacement theology and, instead, embrace its calling to bless and stand with Israel.
The tide of antisemitism rises with violence and spiritual crises in our communities. It is a diabolical — truly demonic — attempt to erase the image of God from the Jewish people, undermining morality and humanity everywhere. We must be spiritually vigilant. This means prayer, public engagement and prophetic activism.
Christians must raise their voices. Pray to God, but also call upon your pastors, church communities and elected officials. Call out cowardice disguised as political neutrality. Confront the lies propagated online. Of the 100,000 evangelical churches in America, how many pastors spoke up after October 7? How many feared losing followers or political favor? Silence in the face of evil is complicity, and I call on all Christians to rise up and stand in support of Israel.
The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) is one ministry leading the way. For years, the IFCJ has united Christians and Jews through shared values and compassion, providing aid for Holocaust survivors, helping persecuted Jews immigrate to Israel and strengthening the holy bonds among Christians and Jews.
After October 7, the IFCJ launched the Flags of Fellowship project. The unifying initiative raises Israeli flags alongside Christian banners in churches across America. The public declaration is simple and critical: we will not be silent and we will not stand idly by.
I’ve met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Arab Christians and both Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of Israel. The tiny Jewish state is home to the freest Arabs and Christians in the region. It is the only nation in the region where minority communities — Christians, Muslims, Druze and others — can participate fully in society and serve in the government. Israel is not the villain of the Middle East. The portrayal of Israel as an oppressor is not just wrong; it’s a calculated, diabolical lie. Don’t swallow the lie. Speak up for the truth.
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Every believer can take action. We must. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Speak truth when lies spread. Contact your representatives in Congress. Preach truth from the pulpit, post it on social media and proclaim it in your daily life.
As believers, we are engaged in spiritual warfare, but we have the truth and we must practice prayerful vigilance. Remember Romans 1:16: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation.” God calls us to thwart evil in all its forms, including that of antisemitism.
We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past and let evil persist. We need to engage in bearing witness, in reaching out to the Jewish community. We must not echo the complacency that destroyed Germany in the late 1930’s and led to the systematic murder of millions of people.
When hatred rises again — which it will — let us use our voices to conquer it. Silence is not an option. Silence is antithetical to the Christian faith. Locking arms with the Jewish people, let us stand together, defend truth and proclaim God’s love. For such a time as this, we are called to stand together and speak up.
* * *
Pastor Samuel Rodriguez is the lead pastor of New Season, one of America&#8217;s most influential megachurches, and president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC), which represents millions of Christians worldwide. Rodriguez has advised three U.S. Presidents and is the first Latino to participate in multiple presidential inauguration ceremonies. He is also a best-selling author of 12 books and serves as producer of 7 faith-based films including &#8220;Breakthrough,&#8221; &#8220;Flamin&#8217; Hot,&#8221; and &#8220;Dream King.&#8221;
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Side by side spires with cross and star of david

Silence Is Not An Option: Why Christians Must Stand Against Antisemitism

Bible

Christians

Israel

Jews

Opinion

How is it possible that Jews in New York could support a mayoral candidate that labels Israel genocidal and calls for the “intifada to be globalized?”
The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/nyregion/zohran-mamdani-jewish-voters-gaza.html">New York Times</a> would have us believe that there are many such Jews. I have trouble believing anything the NYT prints on this subject given the overwhelming evidence that they lie, distort and manipulate when it comes to Jews and Israel, as proven by their recent story about starving children in Gaza based on an altered photo, and their infamous lie about a bombed hospital in October 2023. So, it’s no surprise that in their Mamdani story, two of the five Jews interviewed work for the Mamdani campaign.
Even without such distortion, however, it is true that some Jews voted for Mamdani in the Democrat primary, and will vote for him again in the general election. 
I am an Orthodox Jewish film director, author and influencer, which is to say, a visible Jew both on the street and online. So, I’ve been getting asked, “What’s the story with your fellow Jews? How could they vote for a man who hates Israel and hates the Jews?”
To understand this, you first need to know something about Jews, namely, that we’re all different. We’ve been around for so long, and lived in so many countries, and fallen into so many different categories, that there is no such thing as a typical Jew.
Non-Jews, whether they love us or hate us, tend to lump us all together. They’re not entirely wrong because we’re not primarily a religion or a nationality – we’re a family. Now, every family contains different types of and categories of people, but the family remains distinct because relatives resemble each other physically, intellectually, temperamentally and spiritually.
Jews are not only a family, but we are also uniquely bound to God through the Torah and its system of commandments, as well as our shared destiny and connection to the Holy Land of Israel. The question is, why would a Jew who inherits our unbroken wisdom tradition stretching back 3,700 years turn his back on it?
Some chafe at the demands of the commandments. Others simply think they have a better idea, be it a credo they dreamed up or an “ism” to which they subscribed. And some turn their backs on our family to fit in at work, school, cocktail parties or online.
In seeking to curry favor with the Jew-hating mob, these Jews do enormous harm.
They often open their statements about Israel with, “As a Jew…” and then they parrot lies about Israel fabricated by the Gaza Ministry of Health, an entity created by Hamas to serve as the media arm of their terrorist organization. One glance at a fact-based website like StandWithUs.com, or even at a simple map of the region renders the bulk of these lies comically inept. After all, how can one Jewish state among 56 Muslim countries – most of which were not Muslim before the sword brought Islam to their lands – be labeled the “colonizer?”
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Statistically, Jews are well-educated, high-achieving and score above average on IQ tests. Why then do some Jews fall for these obvious fabrications? One reason is that siding with Jew-haters against Israel makes them feel virtuous, and we must never underestimate the power of feeling virtuous. That feeling is so addictive that they indulge in it even at the cost of lives: when the As-a-Jews speak out against Israel and get quoted by the enemies of Israel, they strengthen the hearts of Hamas terrorists.
Senior Hamas official <a href="https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2025/08/03/palestinian-state-is-one-of-the-fruits-of-october-7-emboldened-hamas-credits-its-violence-for-gains-as-released-hostage-video-spurs-outcry/">Ghazi Hamad</a> said on Al Jazeera that the recent push by multiple nations to recognize Palestine as a state is the fruit of October 7. In other words, their plan is working. Why would any government reward a terrorist state for the murder and rape of Israeli civilians? Because Hamas claims, “Israel commits genocide, and even the Jews admit it.” And as long as that plan is working, Hamas will keep firing rockets from their children’s bedrooms so they can shriek with victim-glee when Israel inevitably counter strikes. This is how the Hamas death cult operates. This is the modern version of that ancient evil, child sacrifice.
And the murderous phase of the present cycle is lasting longer than it would otherwise because those As-a-Jews give cover to our enemies. Their virtue-signaling costs lives.
Now let us recall that despite our family resemblances, Jews are all different. Most Jews are not As-a-Jews.
In my <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/u-s-jews-connections-with-and-attitudes-toward-israel/">Orthodox community</a>, Jews are overwhelmingly supportive of Israel, even when they disagree with its government, and we also oppose communism, socialism, and any &#8220;ism&#8221; that privileges people based on their genes rather than merit. In this time of elevated danger to the Jewish people, we’re also profoundly grateful to live in a country that rejects antisemitism like every other racism, and to have allies who can see through Hamas/Iran lies about Israel. Increasingly, we’re also exercising our Second Amendment right to bear arms – with care and training – to protect our families. God forbid the Jew haters who daily chant violence against us come to kill us, we will not be a soft target.
The percentage of Jews who subscribe to these societal views drops significantly when we look at Jews in non-Orthodox denominations, collectively known as liberal Judaism. This term should not be confused with liberal politics, because there are many religiously liberal Jews who are politically conservative. It’s true that religiously liberal Jews do tend to be politically liberal but even so, they are not Mamdani Jews. If they’re affiliated with a synagogue, they tend to support Israel and feel a visceral connection to the Jewish people.
Mamdani Jews are usually those who’ve untethered themselves from Torah entirely. Either they’ve never been exposed to Judaism, or they’re actively against it. They’ll give many reasons why, but their disconnection allows them to generate their own system of morality, and to fit in with the Jew-haters who lionize them. At least for a while. Historically, such Jews get attacked in the end just like the rest of their family.
The Jew-haters offer new and different reasons for their hatred in every generation: we’re too stand-offish or we’re too assimilated, we’re too rich or we’re too poor, we’re stateless or we have a Jewish state. Perhaps the simplest reason is that we’ve lived in exile for so long, that we’ve learned how to arrive on a new shore, identify what success looks like in that culture, and attain it in one generation, even while retaining our ancient traditions and transmitting them to our children. Invariably, we succeed by contributing to the nation that hosts us.
The Mamdani Jews go awry because they jettison the guard rails of Torah and tradition while retaining otherwise positive Jewish qualities like studiousness, generosity of heart, and sympathy for the underdog. Without the Torah’s holistic system for living, these lovely traits can cause an individual’s moral system to skid off the rails and cause great harm.
This process is summed up by an old adage: one who is kind to the cruel will end up being cruel to the kind. In this case, Mamdani Jews support the Hamas death cult because they’re moved by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-hamas-photo-propaganda-dupes-the-west-and-fuels-bds?author=Alyssa+Rosenheck&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=72&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=How+Hamas+Photo+Propaganda+Dupes+The+West+And+Fuels+BDS">pictures</a> of sickly children, and they shut their eyes to the evidence that the sickly child’s well-fed siblings have been cropped out by cynical terrorists and their willing accomplices in the media. The result is more innocent lives lost, not less.
We try desperately to open the eyes of our brethren to these facts, yet they remain clenched shut.
Perhaps they keep their eyes shut because if they were to absorb these facts, they would have to open their eyes to many more. They’d have to make an accounting of their choices in a life untethered from Torah and Jewish tradition – a fearless moral inventory – and such a process is not for the faint of heart.
I pray these Mamdani Jews will remember who they are, and the family they come from, before our enemies force them to remember with a globalized intifada. In the meantime, I hope the rest of the family will join our allies and vote against <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/zohran-mamdani-and-the-jews-14af43f4?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAiXzeTg6rT_DtLVtkWHw22Y7q0ybjI7ZcoEh0OYYjwlT5NyVSaIVojQJVPeQu0%3D&amp;gaa_ts=689cb022&amp;gaa_sig=lT5KNgm62Sfsp4Z8hzGOleVUIcosspzZlBFzbQN9sOr_1OBrZLQwnJiF8THoYFxy3dKjy7fyQE7t-62e3mVs5g%3D%3D">Mamdani</a> because he is an enemy of the Jews, meritocracy, Israel, and America.
* * *
Salvador Litvak is the director of &#8220;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnkqomKfd90">Guns &amp; Moses</a>,&#8221; coming back to theaters across America <a href="https://www.fathomentertainment.com/releases/guns-moses/">Sept. 7-11</a>, and the author of his bestselling book, &#8220;Let My People Laugh: Greatest Jewish Jokes of All Time!&#8221; Learn more at <a href="http://salvadorlitvak.com/">salvadorlitvak.com</a>
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani Holds News Conference

Why Would A Jew Vote For Mamdani?

Intifada

Jewish

Mayor

New York City

Pro-Hamas

Zohran Mamdani

Woke ideas, by definition, are fundamentally flawed. These include policies that can either be written off as unworkable — think high taxes, free health care, and open borders — or ridiculous impulses like gender confusion, environmental extremism, defunding the police, and critical race theory.
Over the past two years, the woke left has increasingly taken up a particularly alarming cause — antisemitism. Disturbingly, one of the most vocal proponents of this toxic ideology is perhaps the one best positioned to disseminate it where it does the most damage — in our children’s ears.
With astonishing regularity, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association (NEA), finds itself embroiled in <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/antisemitism-and-the-teachers-union-education-students-k-12-44cd1fa7?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAio3c5Mt0_L59ZPcvOPJickL051h1PbFLp_tScFw0mRoqrmcVgMIOsA6nnyibM%3D&amp;gaa_ts=688aa84c&amp;gaa_sig=LzMqnMYY5GorvJeQbZTzYtBBy9PjR6F0UEtTrKy5NvNssT-_RRcxOWjxtSm_an-HMy0mXn6s6GiAbh0Hv5M_hQ%3D%3D">controversy</a> around its attitude towards Jews and the conflict in Israel.
In late July, the leaders of the 3-million-member union were forced to walk back a <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/07/08/gaza-war-adl-teachers-union-nea-vote">decision</a> made earlier in the month when its 7,000-member Representative Assembly voted to cut all ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization that has fought antisemitism and other forms of intolerance for over a century.
The body approved a measure stating that the NEA “will not use, endorse, or publicize materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or statistics.”
It reasoned: “Despite its reputation as a civil rights organization, the ADL is not the social justice educational partner it claims to be.”
The hypocrisy is palpable.
A week after its July 6th gathering in Portland, Oregon, members of the union’s Jewish Affairs Caucus penned a <a href="https://www.neajacaucus.org/post/letter-to-nea-leadership">letter</a> to NEA President Becky Pringle, noting that individual Jewish delegates to the event were “vocally mocked, harassed, and threatened in ways that dishonor our union.”
The letter continued, “Most unfortunate of all was how the NEA’s official statement framed the situation, as if U.S. classrooms were an extension of the battleground in Gaza … Presenting human dignity as a zero-sum game is perilous for all minorities. History teaches us that when one minority is deprived of its humanity without comment, others will be, too.”
“Allowing the ADL to determine what constitutes antisemitism would be like allowing the fossil fuel industry to determine what constitutes climate change,” countered NEA delegate <a href="https://labornotes.org/blogs/2025/07/educators-union-rejects-anti-defamation-league-cuts-ties">Stephen Siegel</a> from the assembly floor.
Publicly, Pringle acknowledged the Representative Assembly’s action went too far, <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/weekly-education/2025/07/21/nea-halts-bid-to-cut-ties-with-jewish-organization-00465130">stating</a>, “After consideration, it was determined that this proposal would not further NEA’s commitment to academic freedom, our membership, or our goals.”
Within days, however, the union’s true feelings came to light again when it announced plans to promote a version of Holocaust remembrance that does not even mention Jews, instead referencing, “…victims of the Holocaust from different faiths” and teaching that Israel was founded through “forced, violent displacement and dispossession.”
This wording comes directly from the priorities outlined in NEA’s <a href="https://www.nea.org/">2025 handbook</a>, which the union publishes each year as a guide on the group&#8217;s priorities and strategic goals for its national and state leaders, staff, and members. It includes the NEA&#8217;s bylaws and is updated with any new resolutions and policy positions the union has endorsed.
These aren’t isolated incidents. As ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/antisemitism-and-the-teachers-union-education-students-k-12-44cd1fa7?gaa_at=eafs&amp;gaa_n=ASWzDAjStdmE5Sn12J-E4JPH8q2Os8fljrQpHJrtRWhjqSbFGcFj3jvZuqRKWEX9bFM%3D&amp;gaa_ts=6890e11f&amp;gaa_sig=U7kbLb2MFLOViXFevR2KtAoLAxq3KPM9ZMb_XqIVIbO7hNpInieKcl1KH8QJS1WpqwlpKvfhq2REB_oFm2qzbQ%3D%3D">wrote</a> in the Wall Street Journal:
<blockquote>Local teachers’ unions in California have provided teachers with an anti-Israel script; in Minneapolis, they’ve labeled Israel as “apartheid.” In Chicago, the teachers’ union voted on anti-Israel resolutions and posted on social media that, “Zionists are not welcome.” In New York, the union representing City University of New York professors voted to divest from Israel. Others have gone so far as to prevent teachers from participating in mandatory antisemitism training. When the San Francisco Unified School District scheduled four such trainings for high school teachers, their union said they would support any educator who decided to skip the sessions.</blockquote>
Against this backdrop, Los Angeles District Court Judge Stephen Wilson, on July 21st, <a href="https://www.dailynews.com/2025/07/30/forced-representation-allows-haters-to-speak-on-behalf-of-their-victims/">dismissed a lawsuit</a> filed by seven Jewish teachers represented by United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) — an affiliate of NEA — alleging the union had engaged in a pattern of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist activity for years.
The Freedom Foundation, which is representing the teachers, plans to appeal Wilson’s ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and, if necessary, the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sadly, it isn’t likely to be the last time the teachers&#8217; union’s politics of hatred are on display for a public that’s already had a bellyful of it.
* * *
Aaron Withe is the CEO of the Freedom Foundation.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

UTLA protest in Los Angeles, CA

When Unions Teach Hate: Inside The NEA’s Descent Into Antisemitism

When Unions Teach Hate: Inside NEA’s Antisemitism Problem

Education

National Education Association

Teachers Unions

Woke Culture

I still see his face every time I think of Washington Square Park: a stranger who was unapologetically pro-Hamas and made clear that he cheered the October 7 massacre in Israel.
As an Olympian on Israel’s bobsled team — a team with both Jewish and Arab athletes — I decided to engage with the public following the horrific events of October 7, 2023.
So, on October 15, 2023, I spent eight hours in a folding chair in New York City’s Washington Square Park. I placed a table in front of me with a sign that called Hamas a brutal terror organization and Israel a force for good. “Change my mind,&#8221; the sign read. Passersby questioned Israel’s right to defend itself, some even denied the brutality of Hamas. I spent the day dismantling every excuse for terror. I met them all with history, with personal testimonies, and with the same grit I bring to my Olympic training. Almost no one came by to actually defend Hamas, but most were almost exclusively anti-Israel.
<div id="attachment_958343" style="width: 417px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-958343" class="wp-image-958343 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-29-PM-4687-407x576.jpg" alt="Credit: AJ Edleman" width="407" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-29-PM-4687-407x576.jpg 407w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-29-PM-4687-212x300.jpg 212w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-29-PM-4687-768x1086.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-29-PM-4687-1086x1536.jpg 1086w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-29-PM-4687-1448x2048.jpg 1448w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-29-PM-4687-scaled.jpg 1810w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 407px) 100vw, 407px" />Credit: AJ Edleman</div>
<div id="attachment_958345" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-958345" class="wp-image-958345 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-27-PM-7656-384x576.jpg" alt="Credit: AJ Edleman" width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-27-PM-7656-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-27-PM-7656-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-27-PM-7656-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-27-PM-7656-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-27-PM-7656-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-27-PM-7656-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-27-PM-7656-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" />Credit: AJ Edleman</div>
But then, as the day was coming to a close, a man and his girlfriend approached the table. He was hot. Mad. Angry. He didn’t plead with a nuanced argument or context. He didn&#8217;t come to debate over Israel, he came to both defend Hamas and justify the attacks on October 7. It was deserved, you see. The natural reaction to Israel&#8217;s actions.
For over a decade, I have debated with all kinds of people on the topic of Israel. And there are some occasions when the feeling you are left with is far more powerful than the words the person used. I have hosted over a dozen events just like this one. And after debating hundreds of individuals, I can say that while I may forget the talking points, I can usually remember the overall feeling. This was just such an occasion. I could feel his hatred. This man hated who I was. What I was.
<div id="attachment_958347" style="width: 417px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-958347" class="size-large wp-image-958347" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-31-PM-4724-407x576.jpg" alt="Credit: David Zimand" width="407" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-31-PM-4724-407x576.jpg 407w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-31-PM-4724-212x300.jpg 212w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-31-PM-4724-768x1086.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-31-PM-4724-1086x1536.jpg 1086w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-31-PM-4724-1448x2048.jpg 1448w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/08/MixCollage-07-Aug-2025-02-31-PM-4724-scaled.jpg 1810w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 407px) 100vw, 407px" />Credit: David Zimand</div>
It was only as his story at Columbia University broke into the news that a photographer-friend who had taken a picture of our encounter messaged me to ask if I realized who that was shouting at my face back in Washington Square Park: It was Mahmoud Khalil and his now-wife standing behind him as she nodded along with what he said.
And here’s what gets me: The media elevate voices like his because they somehow echo part of the cultural anger. We cut them slack, grant them platforms, then pat ourselves on the back for “honest debate.” But is shouting like a cheerleader for genocide really “honest”? Or is it moral abdication?
We treat his bloodlust as just another datapoint in a “heated discussion.” We ignore that he stands for rejoicing in the death of children. We gloss over the fact that someone who rationalizes cold-blooded massacre is someone we wouldn’t let babysit our own kids. Yet the legacy media puts them on a rhetorical pedestal and hands them the microphone.
Why do we give leeway to a man whose heart harbors hatred we’d recoil from in our personal lives? Because we in the West neutralize his crime into a “viewpoint” — and pretend there’s no difference between demanding justice and celebrating murder.
This is the hate-validation fallacy: assuming that any hatred we share is enough to legitimize the most extreme expressions of it. The media embrace the worst apologists for atrocity, then wonder why society feels more fractured than ever. Somehow, when it comes to Israel, this fallacy is dialed up to 11.
Are we so starved for certainty that we’ll champion the vilest among us just to prove we’re right? When did we decide that the loudest hate gets respect, while decency gets dismissed as propaganda?
Hamas stands for exulting in death — of Jews and their own people. There is no moral middle ground. And anyone who celebrates terror doesn’t have a “perspective” worth quoting — they’re a warning sign of how low discourse can sink.
That day in Washington Square Park, I saw his contempt up close. I saw how easily we can excuse the worst people when they confirm our biases. And I knew: if we don’t draw a line here, we lose more than a debate — we lose our humanity.
So, the next time you see a genocide apologist splashed across your feed, ask yourself: am I amplifying truth or validating hate? Because there’s a world of difference between making a point and aiding a monster.
We owe it to ourselves — and to every innocent life — to choose wisely. Reject the hate-validation fallacy. Refuse to give hate a stage. And remember: some voices deserve nothing but silence.
* * *
A.J. Edelman is an Israeli Olympian and captain of Israel’s Edelman Bobsled Team, a mixed Jewish/Druze team training for the 2026 Olympic Games, and in line to become Israel&#8217;s first ever multi-sport Olympian. When not sliding down mountains he is a writer and commentator.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Washington Square Park

The Day I Met Mahmoud Khalil In Washington Square Park

antisemitism

Hamas

Mahmoud Khalil

October 7

The University of Maryland has agreed to pay Palestine Legal and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) $100,000 after the university first defended, but then briefly tried to reschedule, a rally on the anniversary of Hamas&#8217;s October 7, 2023 attacks by a campus group that advocates &#8220;the right of Palestinians to carry out armed struggle.&#8221;
The public university&#8217;s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter “will spend every dollar we receive from the $100,000 penalty for banning our vigil on organizing and supporting the movement for a free Palestine,” group member Daniela Colombi said in a <a href="https://www.cair.com/press_releases/palestine-legal-cair-announce-historic-100k-settlement-from-u-of-maryland-for-unlawfully-suppressing-pro-palestinian-student-speech/">statement</a>.
&#8220;Capitulating to bad faith, anti-Palestinian pressure will cost you,&#8221; Ahmad Kaki, a CAIR attorney, added, calling it a &#8220;transparent censorship attempt&#8221;—although even as CAIR fought for the right of students to demonstrate on October 7 on free speech grounds, it tried to force the university&#8217;s medical school to <a href="https://jewishinsider.com/2025/01/umd-medical-school-stands-by-israeli-surgeon-after-cair-played-role-canceling-his-talk/">cancel</a> a lecture by an Israeli surgeon.
CAIR noted that the Maryland public institution agreed to pay the anti-Israel group even as the Trump administration has extracted <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/columbia-university-retreats-as-trump-scores-historic-220m-settlement">massive</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ucla-will-pay-6-million-to-settle-antisemitic-discrimination-complaints">payments</a> from other universities for failing to protect Jews from antisemitism on campus. 
 University president Darryll Pines had in fact gone to great lengths to allow Students for Justice in Palestine to rally on the anniversary of the terror attack — an event advertised as &#8220;honor[ing] the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-will-let-anti-israel-group-hold-oct-7-rally">150,000+ martyrs</a> who have lost their lives within the past year&#8221; — including his personally echoing the false claim that Israel had killed 150,000 people, which not even Hamas contended.
But that freedom appeared to extend only to certain groups. In an email obtained by the Daily Wire, Pines threatened to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/u-of-maryland-prez-said-anti-israel-protesters-could-rally-on-10-7-then-threatened-to-call-police-on-jew-for-complaining">call the police on a Jewish woman</a> if she did not stop emailing faculty and staff with complaints about antisemitism.
When Jewish critics raised that double standard by wondering how Pines, who is black, would respond if it were a KKK rally instead of an anti-Israel rally, or confederate flags instead of Palestinian ones on the campus&#8217;s central quad, the rhetorical device seemed to go over Pines&#8217; head: he took it as a literal assertion that there was actually a KKK rally planned for October 7, and suddenly his prior First Amendment concerns no longer seemed to apply. 
Patricia Perillo, the University of Maryland’s Vice President of Student Affairs, later said in an affidavit that “on August 26, 2024, an individual emailed University President Darryll J. Pines, who is Black, advising that if the University was going to permit SJP’s event to go forward, ‘then my Klan Rally with sheets and a noose are also approved.’”
Pines cancelled all events on October 7, not because of his aversion to the anti-Israel event, but because of what he suggested was anti-black racism and threats by Jewish people, requiring the cancellation of events to protect the safety of the Palestine activists, according to prior Daily Wire reporting and CAIR&#8217;s summary of the lawsuit.
&#8220;The University <a href="https://palestinelegal.org/s/Defendants-Opposition-to-Plaintiffs-Motion-for-TRO-and-PI.pdf">responded to CAIR and Palestine Legal’s lawsuit</a> by claiming that it was forced to cancel all events due to racist threats from pro-Israel individuals, who had threatened to organize a KKK rally and come to campus armed if SJP’s vigil was allowed to proceed. At the hearing, University of Maryland Police Chief David Mitchell testified that pro-Israel individuals even threatened UMD President Darryl Pines’ family and used the N-word,&#8221; CAIR said in its statement heralding the settlement.
But the postponement of all October 7 gatherings on campus was short-lived. Despite Pines&#8217; general sympathy to the group, SJP sued his university in federal court, backed by lawyers from CAIR. On October 2, U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte wrote that the Palestinian group would suffer &#8220;irreparable harm&#8221; if it could not congregate on that date to mark &#8220;what it calls Israel&#8217;s most recent &#8216;genocidal campaign,'&#8221; and ordered the event <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/federal-judge-says-university-must-let-anti-israel-group-hold-oct-7-event">reinstated</a>.
In its statement on the settlement, CAIR cast the planned event as a &#8220;vigil&#8221; somberly mourning the deaths of people in the Israel-Hamas war, but that is not what contemporaneous documents indicate. SJP&#8217;s national headquarters had called for a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/this-student-group-is-calling-for-a-week-of-rage-beginning-october-7">&#8220;Week of Rage&#8221;</a> coinciding with the anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist group&#8217;s slaughter of 1,200 Israelis. 
An application for reserving campus space, filed August 1, contained only a nine-word description of the event (&#8220;One year since the genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza&#8221;), according to documents obtained under public records laws, and Jewish critics have raised questions about whether the group failed to properly comply with the university&#8217;s rules for getting events approved, which would have given Pines a mechanism for blocking the event. 
Pines dismissed complaints from Jews by claiming that the group had &#8220;condemned the horrific attack by Hamas,&#8221; but a Daily Wire review of SJP&#8217;s social media showed no such sentiment. SJP instead said on Instagram that it supports the “<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C_WntvnPe2D/?img_index=5">right of Palestinians to carry out armed struggle,</a>” and “unequivocally states that the Zionist state of Israel has <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C9yDEB3PJv6/?img_index=5">no right to exist</a>.” 
Pines was so invested in defending the anti-Israel group that he resorted to academic misconduct, sending a Jewish critic what he said was original &#8220;faculty research&#8221; from Middle East scholars on campus that proved that the Palestinian flag was not objectionable. The Daily Wire found that what he called the &#8220;consensus opinion from these faculty scholars,&#8221; whom he claimed he personally consulted with, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-plagiarized-from-chatgpt-to-justify-anti-israel-oct-7-rally">actually came from ChatGPT</a>.
That misrepresentation spurred The Daily Wire to check Pines&#8217; past academic work for plagiarism, and it found that nearly one-third of a 5,000-word paper was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-copied-rocket-science-paper-from-aussie-student">copied and pasted from an Australian student</a>, who was never referenced anywhere in the paper. There was evidence that Pines (or his co-author) had not accidentally mixed up someone else&#8217;s work with their own, because the British spellings in the Australian version had — with one exception that was missed — been changed to the American versions.
Pines acknowledged &#8220;recurrent language&#8221; but denied misconduct, and the state&#8217;s university system opened a review into his academic integrity. Ten months later, the review panel has <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;source=web&amp;rct=j&amp;opi=89978449&amp;url=https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/education/higher-education/university-of-maryland-darryll-pines-plagiarism-AHZESFHKN5HA5DLTEF32CER46E/">issued no findings</a>.
The University of Maryland did not answer The Daily Wire&#8217;s questions, but said in a statement that &#8220;the litigation in federal court has been mutually resolved through a settlement agreement with no admission of liability by the University.&#8221;
&#8220;UMD SJP is a registered University student organization in good standing which has had more than 100 events on campus since October 7, 2023, for which it consistently followed the University’s policies and procedures governing such events,&#8221; it added. &#8220;The University reiterates its support for the First Amendment and particularly making campus space available for individuals and groups of all viewpoints to share their opinions pursuant to its Guidelines for Expressive Activities and the First Amendment. The University takes very seriously its responsibilities for the safety and security of all University students and other members of its community.&#8221;
A top senator this week <a href="https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-to-long-investigate-cair-for-ties-to-terrorists">called</a> for CAIR&#8217;s tax-exempt status to be examined due to its &#8220;ties to terrorists.&#8221;

UMD Students for Justice in Palestine / Instagram

University of Maryland Will Pay Anti-Israel Group That Planned Campus Rally On October 7

Free Speech

Maryland

Universities

University of Maryland

The University of California, Los Angeles, will pay more than $6 million to settle discrimination complaints that included a &#8220;Jew Exclusion Zone&#8221; on campus.
The school agreed to enter consent judgment and pay $6.13 million to the plaintiffs in the largest private settlement of its kind, the New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/07/29/us-news/ucla-to-pay-6m-to-settle-discrimination-complaints-including-campus-jew-exclusion-zone/">reported</a>. It will be in effect for 15 years if approved by a judge.
“Campus administrators across the country willingly bent the knee to antisemites during the encampments,” Mark Rienzi, president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and an attorney for the students, said in a statement. “They are now on notice: treating Jews like second-class citizens is wrong, illegal, and very costly. UCLA should be commended for accepting judgment against that misbehavior and setting the precedent that allowing mistreatment of Jews violates the Constitution and civil rights laws. Students across the country are safer for it.”
The settlement includes damages to each of the plaintiffs, charitable contributions to pro-Jewish organizations, and attorneys&#8217; fees and costs. The university also agreed to a permanent court order preventing it from enabling the exclusion of Jewish students and faculty from campus, <a href="https://becketfund.org/media/breaking-ucla-agrees-to-permanent-court-order-stopping-campus-antisemitism-pays-6m-in-damages-and-fees/">according</a> to a press release from the Becket Fund.
Last year, a video <a href="https://x.com/OliLondonTV/status/1785030056617611457">showed</a> masked protestors wearing keffiyehs blocking a Jewish student from entering campus, even though he was an enrolled student.
&#8220;I’m a UCLA student, I deserve to go here, we pay tuition,&#8221; the student said as he tried to pass the students to reach his class building. &#8220;This is our school and they are not letting me walk in.&#8221;
&#8220;We&#8217;re not engaging with that behavior,&#8221; one protestor replied without moving.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said the behavior was &#8220;really inappropriate,&#8221; and students &#8220;could be&#8221; expelled for discriminating against any student because of race, religion, or ethnicity.
Students sued after Block and the Board of Regents admitted they had taken no action against the protestors who blocked the Jewish student.
Yitzchok Frankel, a recent UCLA Law graduate and one of the plaintiffs in the case, called UCLA&#8217;s actions &#8220;shameful.&#8221;
“When antisemites were terrorizing Jews and excluding them from campus, UCLA chose to protect the thugs and help keep Jews out,” Frankel said in a statement. “That was shameful, and it is sad that my own school defended those actions for more than a year. But today’s court judgment brings justice back to our campus and ensures Jews will be safe and be treated equally once again.”
UCLA&#8217;s settlement comes after Columbia University <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/columbia-university-retreats-as-trump-scores-historic-220m-settlement">agreed</a> to pay more than $200 million to settle with the Trump administration over its handling of anti-Israel protests. Harvard University is also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/harvard-open-to-paying-500m-settlement-amid-trump-crackdown-on-campus-antisemitism">considering</a> settling with the administration for $500 million over alleged civil rights violations.

1497993_me-ucla-pro-palestinian-protest_JEY

UCLA Will Pay $6 Million To Settle Antisemitic Discrimination Complaints

Courts

U.S.

UCLA

Federal funds earmarked for increasing “the security and prosperity of the United States” bankrolled the work of the father of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani that would seem to do the opposite.
Columbia University’s Middle East Institute applied for the Department of Education’s “National Resource Centers and Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships” money based on its employment of professors including Mahmood Mamdani, who it called senior faculty, highlighting his recent work on “colonialism” and “native as political identity,” and his “courses on Islam, state violence, and international relations.”
The <a href="https://iris.ed.gov/downloads/applications/P015A180080/P015A180080_GrantApplication.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">application</a> said that Columbia should get taxpayer money because its international professors would shape the views of Americans who would go on to work for the United States government. It &#8220;specifically trains students for employment in positions in the government (State, Defense, Homeland Security, Intelligence agencies, and Congressional Offices),” it said.
The Middle East unit at the lavishly endowed private university asked for more than $1 million from taxpayers to fund the professors&#8217; salaries and other costs for four years under the National Resource Centers program, and $1.6 million for &#8220;institutional payments&#8221; and &#8220;subsistence allowance&#8221; for students under the Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship. Between 2018 and 2024, Columbia University as a whole received nearly $12 million in grants from both programs, with nearly $4 million specifically for the Middle East program, according to data compiled by spending watchdog OpenTheBooks.
That means even as Columbia this week agreed to pay a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/columbia-university-retreats-as-trump-scores-historic-220m-settlement" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$200 million settlement</a> to the federal government and $20 million to Jewish employees it wronged with its culture of anti-Americanism and antisemitism, the federal government has been paying it to shape federal employees and diplomats.
When it comes to the Karl Marx-quoting prospective mayor of New York, who would <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/given-three-chances-zohran-mamdani-wont-condemn-calls-to-globalize-the-intifada?author=Virginia+Kruta&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=Given+Three+Chances%2C+Zohran+Mamdani+Won’t+Condemn+Calls+To+‘Globalize+The+Intifada’">not condemn</a> the phrase “globalize the intifada,” the son’s views appear to have been shaped by his father. In May 2021, Professor Mamdani <a href="https://x.com/mm1124?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweeted</a>: “This is not a conflict between Israel and Hamas. We are witnessing something far more meaningful, the birth of the Third Intifadah against settler-colonialism!”
Even though the United States took in the elder Mamdani after he was cast out of Uganda by a dictator and made him a wealthy university professor, Mamdani&#8217;s 2020 book, &#8220;Neither Settler Nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities,&#8221; criticizes America as oppressive, according to an interview with <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/mahmood-mamdani-nation-state-interview/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Nation</a>. The book reaches back hundreds of years to complain of &#8220;the genocide of Native Americans by Europeans&#8221; and conversion of Muslims by Christians, and casts &#8220;the founding of the state of Israel&#8221; as an act &#8220;of extreme political violence undertaken to create ethnically homogeneous states.&#8221;
He seemed to suggest to The Nation that the cure for Hamas violence was giving in to terrorists.
&#8220;You can fill an unlimited number of jails [with] perpetrators, but it will not bring a solution to the problem unless you acknowledge that the problem is more political than criminal, and that when it comes to political conflicts and political violence, adversaries mobilize around issues,&#8221; Mamdani wrote.
In his 2004 book &#8220;Good Muslim, Bad Muslim,&#8221; he made a similar argument, writing: &#8220;Suicide bombing needs to be understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_891841" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-891841" class="size-large wp-image-891841" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2150306027-864x576.jpg" alt="Columbia University Expels, Revokes Degrees From Students Who Seized Campus Building" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2150306027-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2150306027-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2150306027-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2150306027-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2150306027-2048x1366.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2150306027-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2150306027-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Columbia University. Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images</div>
The professor <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/07/12/us-news/mamdanis-dad-part-of-anti-israel-group-sympathetic-to-suicide-bombers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sits</a> on an advisory council whose goal is &#8220;to awaken civil society to its responsibility and opportunity to stop Israel&#8217;s genocide in Gaza&#8221; — a position that conflicts with that of the U.S. under Democrat and Republican administrations.
Columbia University also used Professor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/doe-program-meant-to-boost-national-security-funds-anti-american-professors-study-finds" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. Joseph Massad</a> as a selling point for federal money. Massad called Hamas’ October 7 attack “a stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance.” According to the Middle East Forum, students said Massad “takes a categorically anti-U.S. tack at every possible opportunity,” and lists “the West’s various cultural crimes ad nauseam.”
George Washington University, located near the State Department’s headquarters, received millions of dollars in Middle East Foreign Language and Area Studies funding from the Department of Education, even as a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/george-washington-university-antisemitism-lawsuit?author=Luke+Rosiak&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=12&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=U.S.+Diplomat+Training+Ground+Let+Antisemites+Take+Over+Its+Faculty%2C+Lawsuit+Says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lawsuit</a> said it let an anti-Israel activist group operate out of its international affairs school, leading to rampant antisemitism on a campus where more than one in four students is Jewish.
Prosecutors said in 2019 that a Texas-born woman charged with spying for Iran had her radicalization “<a href="https://dailycaller.com/2019/02/18/iran-spy-george-washington-university-muslim/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">accelerated while she was in graduate school</a>” at George Washington University, where she earned a master’s degree in its Middle East Studies program.
Also in 2019, the first Trump administration threatened the University of North Carolina and Duke University for their use of the funds, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-demands-unc-duke-revise-joint-middle/story?id=65754681" target="_blank" rel="noopener">writing</a> that &#8220;It seems clear foreign language instruction and area studies advancing the security and economic stability of the United States have taken &#8216;a back seat&#8217; to other priorities at the Duke-UNC CMES.&#8221; But little seems to have changed sector-wide.
<a href="https://www.openthebooks.com">OpenTheBooks</a> CEO John Hart said that the Department of Education’s persistent funneling of millions of dollars for professors who cultivate anti-American sentiment, using funds intended to do the opposite, shows that the National Resource Centers and Foreign Language and Area Studies program, if not the department as a whole, should be abolished.
&#8220;Professor Mamdani&#8217;s embrace of faddish, faculty lounge DEI theories on &#8216;decolonialism&#8217; illustrates why the Department of Education needs to be eliminated or dramatically downsized,&#8221; Hart said. &#8220;I support Professor Mamdani&#8217;s free speech rights, and the rights of his son to call for &#8216;seizing the means of production,&#8217; but that does not mean either are entitled to advance their radical views with taxpayer subsidies.&#8221;

New York City Mayoral Candidates Campaign Ahead Of Primary Election

Federal Money Meant For Training Diplomats Bankrolled Mamdani’s Father’s Anti-Americanism

Columbia University

Department of Education

New York

We live in an age of narrative. Narrative matters more than the facts, and many of the people who know that work in the media, and many of them are opponents of Donald Trump&#8217;s agenda.
That means that any time President Trump tries to forward his agenda, he may face down actual false stories that are promulgated by the media that are antithetical to his actual agenda items.
The latest example is this insane example that has been totally under-covered, but is indicative of the way that so many in the media actually cover these stories. They don&#8217;t actually have personal knowledge of the story. They just report a story.
And it turns out the story is not true.
The Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/20/ice-secretly-deported-grandfather">reported</a>:
<blockquote>An 82-year-old man in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/pennsylvania">Pennsylvania</a> was secretly deported to Guatemala after visiting an immigration office last month to replace his lost green card, according to his family, who said they have not heard from him since and were initially told he was dead.
According to <a href="https://www.mcall.com/2025/07/18/luis-leon-allentown-grandfather-ice-guatemala/">Morning Call</a>, which first reported the story, longtime Allentown resident Luis Leon – who was granted political asylum in the US in 1987 after being tortured under the regime of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet – lost his wallet containing the physical card that confirmed his legal residency. So he and his wife booked an appointment to get it replaced.
When he arrived at the office on 20 June, however, he was handcuffed by two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers, who led him away from his wife without explanation, she said. She said she herself was kept in the building for 10 hours until relatives picked her up.
The family said they made efforts to find any information on his whereabouts but learned nothing.
Then, sometime after Leon was detained, a woman purporting to be an immigration lawyer called the family, they said, claiming she could help – but did not disclose how she knew about the case, or where Leon was. On 9 July, according to Leon’s granddaughter, the same woman called them again, claiming Leon had died.
A week later, however, they discovered from a relative in Chile that Leon was alive after all – but now in a hospital in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/guatemala">Guatemala</a>, a country to which he has no connection.</blockquote>
So his family had said they couldn&#8217;t locate him and were told he died, and then he turned up in Guatemala. The DHS stated, “The family of the individual allegedly told reporters he was handcuffed and taken by federal officers at a green card appointment in Philadelphia. This claim is completely false. There&#8217;s no record of the man appearing at any green card appointment in or around the area of Philadelphia.” Furthermore, said the DHS, ICE has not deported Luis Leon.
Even the idea that he entered as a refugee from Pinochet is not true. This is an effort to demonize ICE agents, who are already facing an 830% increase in assaults against them.
The story is important because it demonstrates how information flows in the modern world, especially in the online world, where this went totally viral on X. 
Why does it work this way? Because X is a machine built for instantaneous response. Mark Twain famously suggested, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” That was somewhat true when Mark Twain was saying that back in the late 19th century, but it is much more true now when the online world means that lies are promulgated at an extraordinary rate, a truly extraordinary rate.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2244-member-exclusive?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=The+Ben+Shapiro+Show&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
And it&#8217;s true over and over and over again.
Take, for example, the case of Mahmoud Khalil, who was freed by a court after the Trump administration tried to deport him. He was a person who had garnered a student visa under false pretenses. He got a student visa claiming that he was coming to the United States to study, when in fact he was coming to the United States in order to act as a professional agitator.
He came to work with Students for Justice in Palestine and various other groups on the Columbia University campus, where he was going to promote wild anti-Semitism and pro-Hamas sentiment.
And so Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that this is not what we are looking for in our immigrants. You&#8217;re gone.
So Khalil argued he was exercising his free speech rights. And Rubio fired back that we get to decide who comes into this country. We have the plenary power at State to decide whether someone is violating the edict, and we make the decision as to whether someone is of benefit to the United States.
The entire media came to Khalil&#8217;s defense, suggesting that Khalil was just a normal student who had no support for terrorist groups, that all the talk about him supporting terrorist groups was just false; he never would do something like that. He&#8217;s just a normal Left-wing guy who just really, really doesn&#8217;t like what Israel is doing in Gaza.
All of that blew up yesterday in an interview on CNN. He said the Trump administration is “weaponizing anti-Semitism.” He&#8217;s not really antisemitic. He&#8217;s not really a threat in any way. It&#8217;s just that the Trump administration is using antisemitism as a way of throwing out people they don&#8217;t like.
In the interview, he was asked multiple times whether he condemned Hamas, a designated terrorist organization in the United States, for what they did on October 7 and beyond. Over and over again, he refused to denounce Hamas.
Do you need people in the United States who don&#8217;t condemn State Department-labeled terrorist groups? That was Marco Rubio&#8217;s entire case. That was the case of the Trump administration when they tried to deport him.
It seems relatively inarguable. It&#8217;s one thing if you&#8217;re already a United States citizen; We don&#8217;t get to kick you out for having terrible views in the United States if you are a citizen.
But if you lie about why you came to the country and you came here as a political agitator on behalf of terrorist organizations, we should probably kick you out.
But the entire media went along with the idea that he was a wounded innocent who was merely parroting the rhetoric of mainstream Democratic officials. That was never true.
And by that time, it was too late for the debunking to happen.
This is happening all over the world. It&#8217;s not just true of the Trump administration immigration agenda. It&#8217;s true all over the world. The claims that are currently being made by mainstream media parroting the Gaza Ministry of Defense —which is controlled by Hamas — saying Israel is shooting people who are trying to get food from the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, are lies.
What is happening, however, is Hamas is infiltrating those lines, and they&#8217;re literally shooting at the IDF soldiers trying to draw fire. In response, Israel is attempting to separate Hamas terrorists from civilians. Hamas is literally killing people who are taking the aid from Israel because they wish to hijack the aid.
Another lie: Extremist local Jewish West Bank residents had set fire to the 1,500-year-old church of Saint George in the Palestinian village of Taiba. This is part and parcel of a broader attempt right now by some to claim that Israel is targeting Christians, which is not true. They&#8217;re doing this based on this false report, and also the lie that Israel purposefully targeted a church in the Gaza Strip. They did not purposefully target a church in the Gaza Strip. That would be a moral, intellectual, and strategic absurdity.
What would generate that? Why would Israel purposefully target a church? Clearly it was an accident. But it&#8217;s been run with by many of the people who are now trying to generate outsized pressure on Israel by claiming somehow that Israel is filled with people who hate Christians, which is very strange, considering that Israel is literally the only place in the entire region where Christians can live safely and securely while practicing their religion.
The story turned out to be false. The report was spread so widely, even American officials repeated it before investigating.
What actually happened? Local Jewish residents were fighting the fire. There are no burn marks anywhere on the church. It doesn&#8217;t have a roof because it hasn&#8217;t had a roof for a long time; it’s essentially an ancient site. There is contemporaneous footage showing young men from nearby farms running up the hill with fire extinguishing equipment, according to The Jerusalem Post.
This is, again, one of these narratives that runs out of control very, very quickly and is spread on services like X that do a terrible job of separating the wheat from the chaff in terms of what is true and what is false.
It is that which leads to wild distrust on every issue.
It is very difficult to lock down the facts. One of the things I try to do on my show is to take enough time when a controversial claim is made to determine whether or not it is true. And so I might wait a few hours to determine what actually happened in a given situation, or even a couple of days in murky circumstances.
But that is not what the internet favors these days. What the internet actually favors is an immediate response, right now, without information. And if you wait, you are condemned for waiting. The idea is that if you wait, you must have some secret sympathies in some way or another. Whereas, if you just react and jump to your preferred conclusion, that somehow means you are more honest in some way.
It’s not true. Waiting is frequently the best thing to do in unclear circumstances so as to allow time for the truth to arise. That is the thing that actually should matter.
You can speculate; you can theorize, but people aren&#8217;t in the business anymore of speculating or theorizing. They simply jump to whatever conclusion is the most advantageous for their narrative and for their position, and then they insist that position is true regardless of the next set of facts that comes out.

The Guardian Newpaper To Stop Using Elon Musk’s Social Media Platform

Media LIE: The Illegal Immigrant Horror Story That Wasn’t

Ben Shapiro

Gaza

Immigration

Legacy Media

President Trump

The Guardian

Anti-Israel activism has turned into criminal acts on college campuses all across America– including mine. Since the massacre of Israeli citizens by Hamas on October 7, 2023, my campus has been the victim of at least three incidents of antisemitic vandalism, with only the most recent garnering any strong public condemnation from the University.
In a follow-up letter sent to President Armstrong less than two months after his testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce in a hearing titled Beyond the Ivy Leagues: Stopping the Spread of Antisemitism on American Campuses, the committee specifically highlighted a recent June 4 vandalism incident during which “pro-Palestinian activists vandalized a Cal Poly building with slogans including &#8216;Free Palestine&#8217; and &#8216;Cal Poly Divest.'&#8221;
I was present on May 7 in the Rayburn House Office on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. when President Armstrong gave that testimony. The hearing was meant to spotlight antisemitism on campuses like mine. During his remarks, President Armstrong asserted that Cal Poly is committed to fostering an environment free from discrimination and religious intolerance.
However, this claim is contradicted by the university’s own actions — including its sponsorship of a Cal Poly Students for Justice in Palestine (CPSJP) event titled “All Day for Palestine” on May 31. Just four days before the group of anti-Israel activists carried out the vandalism attack on a Cal Poly building, two university-run departments — the Multicultural Center (MCC) and Student Diversity and Belonging — co-sponsored the event.
The caption promoting the event on the MCC’s Instagram account read: “Don’t miss out on this opportunity to commune with like-minded people and honor the culture of Palestinian resilience… and as always, Free Palestine!!!” This was not a neutral gathering, and the university did not just permit it – it funded and endorsed it, allowing for antisemitic messaging to be amplified with institutional support.
<div id="attachment_945441" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-945441" class="size-large wp-image-945441" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-1848486361-864x576.jpg" alt="San Luis Obispo California, USA - 11-10-2023: California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo known simply as &quot;Cal Poly.&quot; It was brought into the California State University system in 1960 focusing exclusively on STEM education, applied sciences, engineering, sciences, and technology. California has two other technical schools one in Pomona and the other in Humboldt." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-1848486361-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-1848486361-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-1848486361-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-1848486361-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-1848486361-2048x1366.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-1848486361-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/GettyImages-1848486361-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />JasonDoiy. Getty Images.</div>
The event, hosted at the heart of campus in the University Union, spanned six hours and featured students wearing keffiyehs hoisting Palestinian flags and distributing antisemitic materials. Fliers featured slogans such as “From the river to the sea,” a phrase calling for the elimination of Israel, while another pamphlet promoted the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement, which framed Israeli universities, companies, and cultural institutions as targets for protest and isolation.
These messages are not just hateful in theory — they appear to have inspired the June 4 vandalism, which echoed their rhetoric. Given this context, it is no surprise that a group felt emboldened to carry out the criminal act just days later.
To make matters worse, only hours after the vandalism incident, CPSJP posted a Venmo link titled “SLO Bail Fund” on their Instagram story, soliciting donations for the individuals arrested for committing the act. The post claimed the activists had been arrested for “protesting for a free Palestine” — effectively justifying and even celebrating their actions.
As a Jewish student leader of multiple clubs, I am familiar with the extensive process of requesting and hosting on-campus events, let alone gaining co-sponsorship from a university division. It requires multiple faculty members and administrators signing off and many other logistical hurdles. It is clear that the “All Day for Palestine” event was not an oversight, but a coordinated, institutionally-endorsed initiative which platformed materials and rhetoric that alienated and endangered Jewish students.
This danger is not theoretical. The call for a “Free Palestine” is precisely the same language which has been most recently used in two terror attacks against Jews in Washington D.C. and in Boulder, Colorado. The fact that it has also inspired criminal conduct on our campus demands education and leadership about the harm of misinformation and the vilification of Zionism, or the belief in the Jewish right to self determination in their ancestral homeland, which most Jews around the world agree is central to their Jewish identity.
Cal Poly Students for Justice in Palestine has made its goals unmistakably clear. In an Instagram post celebrating the “All Day for Palestine” event, the group advertised an upcoming meeting to “further define the role of the student intifada for a free Palestine.” The term intifada is historically associated with violence targeting Jews, and its promotion on a college campus by a university-sanctioned group should raise alarms.
It is time for Cal Poly to make a choice: Will the university continue to bolster antisemitic activity under the guise of social justice — such as sponsoring events like “All Day for Palestine” — or will it take meaningful action to protect its Jewish students before the climate worsens? Will it be proactive or reactive? Unfortunately, if a direct call from Congress failed to inspire decisive actions against all forms of antisemitism, it is difficult to imagine what will.
* * *
Adira Fogelman is a third-year student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo studying Business Administration and Law. She is also the Vice President of SLO Hillel and the Vice President of Mustangs United for Israel.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

College Presidents Testify At House Hearing On Antisemitism On Campuses

After Testifying Before Congress On Antisemitism, Cal Poly Hosted ‘All Day For Palestine’

California

Congress

Students

Students for Justice in Palestine

It’s no secret that history’s oldest prejudice is on the rise in the Big Apple. In 2024, the NYPD <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-nyc-jews-targeted-in-hate-crimes-more-than-all-other-groups-combined-in-2024/">recorded</a> an antisemitic attack every 25 hours. All in all, there were 345 antisemitic hate crimes, which constituted roughly 54% of all hate crimes reported in the city.
When it comes to combating these trends, the city’s Department of Education (DOE) has been missing in action. Parents, teachers, and students have repeatedly complained that the city’s public schools have done <a href="https://mjhnyc.org/press/jewish-advocates-demand-policy-changes-to-combat-antisemitism-at-nyc-public-high-schools/">very little</a> to address antisemitic incidents on their campuses.
Moreover, antisemitic propaganda — including an article from Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan declaring that “Jewish behavior has ill-affected Black people and others” — has <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/05/31/us-news/nyc-teachers-getting-anti-israel-literature-in-doe-schools/">dripped</a> into school newsletters, materials, and mass emails at least five times over the past couple of months.
However, the DOE won’t sit on the sidelines for much longer. Its latest initiative? A new Jewish addition to the existing Hidden Voices social studies curriculum, which <a href="https://www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2025/06/16/natalia-mehlman-petrzela-discusses-jewish-america-history-fighting-antisemitism-in-hidden-voices-curriculum/">focuses</a> on “centering diverse historical figures left out of typical textbooks.” In this case, that includes profiles of Jewish figures like WNBA player Nancy Lieberman and sex-positive therapist and talk-show host Ruth Westheimer. These profiles are intended to provide role models for Jewish students and introduce others to Jews’ contributions to society.
But don’t be fooled. This isn’t a serious attempt to battle antisemitism in New York City. It’s just a shallow gesture that lumps Jews into the very DEI bubble that helped create this problem to begin with. While Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives are often well-intentioned, this won’t protect the city’s Jews, it’ll just paint a bigger target on their backs.
Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, the historian behind NYC Public Schools&#8217; &#8220;Hidden Voices&#8221; social studies curriculum made it clear that her &#8220;Jewish American&#8221; history segment is an identity-based curriculum — she <a href="https://www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2025/06/16/natalia-mehlman-petrzela-discusses-jewish-america-history-fighting-antisemitism-in-hidden-voices-curriculum/">told</a> Chalkbeat New York that &#8220;these materials push educators and students to think about who identity-based curricula are for,&#8221; and that she hopes the program &#8220;invigorates [students] to commit to a pluralism and universalism that I personally think is the beating heart of a healthy community.&#8221;
Simply put, Petrzela argues that by lumping Jews — who she calls a “tiny minority” — in with other DEI groups, we can all learn more about each other.
Yet Petrzela’s approach ignores DEI’s fatal flaw. Most DEI programs <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Pedagogy-Oppressed-Anniversary-Paulo-Freire/dp/0826412769">root their philosophy</a> in an oppressor vs oppressed binary, where the oppressed can do no wrong and the oppressors should be treated with contempt. This binary is especially dangerous for Jews because they rose from poverty and persecution around the world to become one of the most successful and enduring subgroups in the United States. Therefore, many DEI advocates, whether they know it or not, <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-dei-complex-will-never-protect-jews">relegate</a> Jews into the “oppressor” category.
New York City’s schools are no exception — after all, state-level officials are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2025/04/06/new-york-schools-dei-trump/">refusing to part</a> with DEI, and the district’s <a href="https://www.studentpathways.nyc/">Office of Student Pathways</a>, which infamously sent a <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=office+of+student+pathways+nyc+jews&amp;sca_esv=ccb8066356fd07b7&amp;sxsrf=AE3TifOxZmNlWkSUmgiFYTMS0tj3sFta0A%3A1750776477842&amp;ei=nbpaaLyZM5yOur8PsPTkyQk&amp;ved=0ahUKEwj826vQpoqOAxUch-4BHTA6OZkQ4dUDCBA&amp;uact=5&amp;oq=office+of+student+pathways+nyc+jews&amp;gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiI29mZmljZSBvZiBzdHVkZW50IHBhdGh3YXlzIG55YyBqZXdzSOgIUJwDWJcIcAF4AJABAJgBnwGgAc4DqgEDNC4xuAEDyAEA-AEBmAIEoALRAsICChAAGLADGNYEGEfCAgsQABiABBiRAhiKBcICBhAAGBYYHsICCBAAGIAEGKIEwgIIEAAYogQYiQXCAgUQIRigAZgDAIgGAZAGCJIHAzMuMaAH_Q-yBwMyLjG4B88CwgcDMi4yyAcD&amp;sclient=gws-wiz-serp#:~:text=NYC%20public%20schools,news%20%E2%80%BA%20nyc%2Dpubli...">newsletter</a> decrying the “genocide” in Gaza back in April, often uses DEI rhetoric. 
These ideas cannot form the foundation of an effective &#8220;anti-antisemitism&#8221; plan. Institutions that hate Jews cannot teach people not to hate Jews.
The bigger problem? Even if the DEI apparatus were willing to give Jews a fair shake, this approach still wouldn’t be successful. Evidence <a href="https://aristotlefoundation.org/reality-check/what-dei-research-concludes-about-diversity-training-it-is-divisive-counter-productive-and-unnecessary/">suggests</a> that DEI training fails to stop bigotry or intolerance. Instead, “when people attempt to suppress unwanted thoughts, these thoughts are likely to subsequently reappear with even greater insistence than if they had never been suppressed.” In other words, if applied here, DEI won’t serve to educate antisemitism away — it could make the problem even worse.
Unfortunately, the problem exists regardless of the quality of the educational materials. Research <a href="https://www.the74million.org/article/kisida-bowen-can-we-educate-hate-away-new-study-of-students-holocaust-education-shows-its-possible-but-only-if-conditions-are-right/">indicates</a> that even when students have access to high-quality educational materials — like first-person accounts of the Holocaust — they don’t always become more tolerant of other people and cultures. In an <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/MFDZAWYKHJGI8EWQPY4N/full?target=10.1080/19345747.2019.1652712">experiment</a> involving the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Houston, some students left slightly less tolerant than when they came in.
If New York City continues on its current path, it may create the very thing it aims to destroy. Fighting antisemitism will require more than teaching children about Jews. It will require a school culture that shows zero tolerance for hatred based on religion, ethnicity, or any other immutable category — that means vigorous policing of social media apps within schools and effective discipline for students who engage in antisemitic activity.
What it should not include is DEI. Identity politics cannot and will not end the antisemitic wave in New York’s schools and streets.
* * *
Garion Frankel is a native of the New York metropolitan area and a Ph.D student in PK-12 educational leadership at Texas A&amp;M University. He is a Young Voices Middle East History and Peace Fellow, and his articles can be found in outlets like Newsweek, USA Today, and the Houston Chronicle.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

New York City Students Head Back To Class For First Day Of School

NYC Public Schools Think DEI Can Fix Antisemitism. It Won’t.

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Public Schools

The following excerpt is taken from the new book &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Proportionality-Israels-Just-Gaza/dp/B0F841ZJTX">Beyond Proportionality: Israel&#8217;s Just War In Gaza,</a>&#8221; by Thane Rosenbaum (Wicked Son/Post Hill Press, May 2025).
* * *
<h3>INTRODUCTION: “J’accuse!” — The Case Against Israel</h3>
At the turn of the nineteenth century, a political scandal in France galvanized public opinion all over the world. Known as the Dreyfus Affair, at its root was the inexorable display and mass hatred of Jews. This same antisemitic fervor, which a few decades later would materialize into the Holocaust, had been around for two millennia. Occasionally, it would manifest itself in pogroms and mass expulsions. Along the way, it went from latent to lethal, and emanated from a lie.
This time, however, the antisemitism was organized, sanctioned by the government, fueled by the press, and openly embraced by many people who regarded themselves as highly cultivated and civilized. Artists and intellectuals took a special interest in joining the mob. And it came pre-packaged with an easily disproved conspiracy theory involving a treasonous Jewish military officer.
Jews in France had long enjoyed the full panoply of civil rights. Indeed, during the French Revolution, France had become the first European nation to emancipate its Jewish population. For nearly a century, French Jews had participated in every facet of cosmopolitan life among the professional classes and cultural elite. But suddenly, they found themselves facing a backlash unlike anything they had experienced before.
The Dreyfus Affair made the unspoken hatred of Jews not just acceptable but fashionable. Seemingly overnight, Jews in France went from being socially accepted and having a sense of security to being on the receiving end of wild denunciations for their clannishness, duplicity, greed, and dual loyalty.
And much like Nazi Germany, the nerve center of these societal convulsions burned brightest on university campuses, in the pages of the mainstream press, and wherever artists and writers congregated. The fact that it all originated from an easily disprovable lie was of little concern. The case against Dreyfus was merely a pretext to something far worse.
<div id="attachment_942309" style="width: 417px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Proportionality-Israels-Just-Gaza/dp/B0F841ZJTX"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-942309" class="size-large wp-image-942309" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-12-29-PM-7049-407x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Post Hill Press/Wicked Son" width="407" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-12-29-PM-7049-407x576.jpg 407w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-12-29-PM-7049-212x300.jpg 212w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-12-29-PM-7049-768x1086.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-12-29-PM-7049-1086x1536.jpg 1086w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-12-29-PM-7049-1448x2048.jpg 1448w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/07/MixCollage-02-Jul-2025-12-29-PM-7049-scaled.jpg 1810w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 407px) 100vw, 407px" /></a>Credit: Post Hill Press/Wicked Son</div>
Captain Alfred Dreyfus was an officer on the French military general staff accused of passing state secrets to Germany — the despised aggressor nation that during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 had humiliated France and annexed Alsace and Moselle. Someone had to be blamed, and Dreyfus, a high-ranking Jewish officer, fully assimilated yet perceived as a foreigner, was an easy fall guy even though there was no actual evidence of his wrongdoing. The French legal system relied upon forged documents — manufactured by military counterintelligence — to falsify his guilt. The letters were not even in Dreyfus’ handwriting.
That’s not to say there was no spy within the ranks of senior military officers. But it wasn’t Captain Dreyfus. Two years after he was court-martialed for treason and shipped off to Devil’s Island, a notorious tropical hellhole where many prisoners died of disease and malnutrition, the French Army uncovered evidence implicating the true culprit — Major Walsin Esterhazy, who had sold secret documents to the German Embassy. But by then the nation was awash in anti-Jewish bigotry. Dreyfus should have been exonerated instantly. Instead, he was returned to France to face a new trial, where he was once again convicted and given an enhanced sentence.
Newspapers around the world covered the trial and its aftermath. A slogan representative of the times referred to Dreyfus as “the Jew who is everywhere but belongs nowhere.” It should come as no surprise to learn that the Dreyfus Affair roughly coincided with the publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, another forged document, this one alleging a Jewish conspiracy to conquer the world.
Events shifted dramatically when one of France’s leading intellectuals, the novelist and playwright Émile Zola, wrote a lengthy front-page essay — famously titled “J’Accuse&#8230;!” — in which he charged the French government and legal system with a coverup. Zola wrote, “Here&#8230;are the facts which explain how a miscarriage of justice could be made; and the moral evidence, the financial circumstances of Dreyfus, the absence of reason, his continual cry of innocence&#8230;the hunting for the ‘dirty Jews,’ which dishonours our time.” Given the public embarrassment to the nation’s institutions, Zola himself was brought to trial and convicted of libel. He fled to London.
Eventually, the obsession with Dreyfus dissipated. The French government and its people finally came to recognize that they had been handed a convenient excuse to shift blame away from France’s military and rest it instead with a familiar villain. National regret ensued, and by 1906, Dreyfus was exonerated, and his rank restored.
But anyone familiar with these events can’t help but see the parallel with what is happening today. The global reaction to Israel’s eighteen-month-long war in Gaza has had many of the same elements: heightened emotions, irrational arguments, distorted histories, the rejection of obvious truths, forged documents, falsified facts, misapplied laws, antisemitic stereotypes, and worldwide anti-Jewish rage. But instead of a single Jewish officer serving as the focal point, this time it was the Jewish state, and its professional military, who stand falsely accused — and with much the same imagery. Thus, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is often depicted as drinking the blood of Palestinian children.
Such fabrications are all the more paradoxical given the events that preceded and fully justified Israel’s retaliatory war against Hamas. These sensationalized condemnations completely overlook and ignore what started the conflict in the first place. On the morning of October 7, 2023, southern Israel was invaded — by land, air, and sea — by six thousand Palestinians from Gaza. Most were terrorists with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but many were ordinary civilians. It was a planned and coordinated attack that lasted several hours and targeted the concert-goers at the Nova Music Festival, most of whom were young peace-loving Israelis.
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<div class="a-cardui-content a-cardui-uninitialized _about-the-author-card_carouselItemStyles_peekableContent__hWM3i" data-a-max-height="80">
Thane Rosenbaum is an essayist, law professor, and author of both fiction and nonfiction titles, including the novels, &#8220;How Sweet It Is!&#8221;,&#8221; The Stranger Within Sarah Stein,&#8221; &#8220;The Golems of Gotham,&#8221; &#8220;Second Hand Smoke,&#8221; and &#8220;Elijah Visible.&#8221; His articles, reviews and essays appear frequently in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Huffington Post and Daily Beast, among other national publications.
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This excerpt from &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Proportionality-Israels-Just-Gaza/dp/B0F841ZJTX">Beyond Proportionality: Israel&#8217;s Just War In Gaza,</a>&#8221; by Thane Rosenbaum is published by permission from Post Hill Press/Wicked Son.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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