Category Archives: Jews

When Jews Turn Against Their Own

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Jewish law still sanctions Jews who deliberately harm other Jews. Why has the community become so reluctant to consider that authority when the harm threatens thousands or millions?

In 1656, the Jewish community of Amsterdam excommunicated a 23-year-old philosopher named Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677). Its leaders pronounced a devastating herem, a religious ban that severed him from communal Jewish life. Members were forbidden to associate with him, speak with him or read his writings. The condemnation became one of the most famous excommunications in Jewish history.

For centuries, Jewish communities disciplined members whose conduct threatened religious obligations or communal life. Jewish law developed several levels of sanctions, most notably nidui and herem.

Nidui was the lesser punishment, a form of temporary religious and social ostracism, traditionally lasting 30 days in diaspora (non-Israel) communities. It restricted ordinary social interaction, sometimes requiring others to maintain a distance of four cubits, roughly six feet. Its purpose was to induce repentance and correction of the offending behavior.

Herem was more severe, imposing deeper and potentially indefinite exclusion from communal life. Depending on the circumstances, it could restrict social relationships, commercial dealings and religious participation. In tightly integrated Jewish communities, exclusion could devastate a person’s livelihood and standing in society.

Maimonides, the Rambam (1138–1204), enumerated 24 grounds for nidui in his Mishneh Torah. They included maintaining dangerous conditions, such as a vicious dog or unstable ladder; refusing to obey a religious court; and preventing the public from performing a commandment.

That last provision is particularly important. Jewish law recognized that obstructing a community’s religious obligations could warrant religious discipline.

These sanctions remain part of modern Jewish life. Orthodox communities still employ religious and social pressure against husbands who refuse to grant their wives a get, the Jewish divorce document required for remarriage under Jewish law. When a rabbinical court determines that a husband must grant a get and he refuses, communal measures may include exclusion from synagogue honors, religious gatherings and other forms of participation. Depending on the circumstances, formal nidui or herem may also be considered.

The Organization for the Resolution of Agunot (ORA) organizes communal pressure against recalcitrant spouses, including public demonstrations and campaigns encouraging synagogues to impose restrictions, with appropriate rabbinic authorization.

Jewish communities recognize that one Jew’s deliberate conduct can cause another such serious harm that communal intervention becomes necessary. Yet these sanctions are rarely discussed when the threatened harm extends beyond an individual to an entire Jewish community.

A husband who refuses a get may face public ostracism for trapping one woman in a marriage. What of a Jew who deliberately works to prohibit circumcision, obstruct synagogue security or prevent entire communities from fulfilling religious commandments?

Three fundamental obligations provide a framework: protecting Jewish lives, preserving religious observance and sustaining Jewish communal continuity.

Protecting Jewish Lives

Jewish law places the preservation of human life, pikuach nefesh, above almost every other religious obligation. Leviticus commands, “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.” The Talmud extends this principle into an affirmative obligation to rescue someone facing danger.

The clearest case involves a Jew knowingly facilitating violence against other Jews or deliberately obstructing their rescue from an immediate threat. Such conduct directly violates the obligation to protect human life and demands serious religious and communal accountability.

Consider a person deliberately sabotaging essential security at a synagogue or yeshiva facing credible threats. Jewish institutions increasingly depend on trained guards, controlled entrances and protective infrastructure. Knowingly interfering with necessary safeguards could expose worshippers and children to foreseeable danger.

A related question arises when someone campaigns to eliminate protective buffer zones around synagogue or school entrances. Where violent intimidation or obstruction threatens access, removing necessary security measures could endanger the community.

The issue becomes more complicated when the discussion moves to Israel’s national defense. Israeli missile-defense systems, including Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow, protect civilians against incoming rockets and missiles. Campaigning to eliminate essential defensive capabilities without adequate alternatives could foreseeably increase the danger to millions of people.

Broader opposition to American military assistance to Israel presents a less direct case. Military assistance encompasses different weapons, defensive systems and strategic objectives. A Jew who advocates eliminating defensive funding despite a demonstrated threat raises different questions from someone disputing a particular military appropriation.

Jewish law has long required Jews to address threats to human life. Religious authorities should be prepared to examine whether deliberately undermining essential security, whether at a synagogue or across Israel, violates that obligation.

Protecting Jewish Religious Observance

A Jewish community can endure poverty, exile and political upheaval while preserving its identity through religious practice. The covenant of circumcision, the laws of kashrut, prayer, Torah study and communal institutions have sustained Jewish life across generations.

Maimonides explicitly includes preventing the public from fulfilling a commandment among the grounds for nidui. This provides a classical foundation for examining deliberate interference with Jewish observance.

Consider a Jew actively working to outlaw brit milah, the covenant established with Abraham. A successful prohibition would directly prevent Jews from performing one of their foundational commandments. A campaign specifically intended to achieve that result should invite serious halachic examination.

A campaign to prohibit kosher slaughter, shechita, presents a similar concern. Such a law would prevent traditional ritual slaughter within the jurisdiction and could make religious observance substantially more difficult.

The same questions arise when Jews advocate prohibitions on synagogue worship, Torah education or the construction of religious facilities such as mikvaot. Restrictions on kippot and other religious clothing can also interfere with Jewish practice, depending on their scope.

These are precisely the kinds of conflicts in which religious authorities should examine whether conduct constitutes the deliberate obstruction of commandments. Where a recognized court determines that a violation warrants nidui, continued defiance may raise the question of stronger sanctions under Jewish law.

Further along the spectrum lies the controversy over government funding for yeshivas. Some advocates want public funding conditioned on students meeting secular educational standards in English and mathematics. Such requirements may create financial pressure on religious schools, while educational oversight also serves legitimate public purposes.

Jewish law must distinguish legitimate public oversight from deliberate obstruction of religious commandments. Where that boundary is crossed, religious authorities should be prepared to act.

Protecting Jewish Communal Continuity

The Jewish connection to the Land of Israel is integral to Judaism. Jerusalem occupies a central place in Jewish prayer, religious memory and law. Nachmanides, the Ramban (1194–1270), regarded settling the Land of Israel as a positive biblical commandment, although later authorities have debated its precise scope and application.

Consider a Jew advocating a prohibition on Jewish immigration to Israel. Such a restriction would interfere with the ability of Jews to settle in their ancestral homeland, an act that major halachic authorities regard as religiously significant.

Preventing Jews from visiting or praying at their holy sites raises related questions about religious access and worship. Restrictions on Jewish homeownership introduce another dimension, particularly where they specifically target Jewish purchasers.

These concerns are already entering American legislation. In October 2026, Representative Joaquin Castro introduced the Stop the Settlements Act, backed by dozens of Democratic lawmakers. The bill would impose sanctions on certain foreign persons involved in “settlement” activities and prohibit imports from covered settlements. Its reference to the West Bank raises a disturbing question: Would eastern Jerusalem, including the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, fall within its reach?

If so, Jewish organizations involved in purchasing and renovating homes, restoring historic synagogues such as Tiferet Yisrael, or supporting archaeological projects at the City of David could face sanctions-related consequences. The bill leaves critical questions about its application to these activities unresolved. Its sponsors should be required to explain whether Jewish religious and communal institutions in Jerusalem could become targets.

The possibility that American Jewish lawmakers would support legislation reaching Jewish religious institutions in Jerusalem is extraordinary. If Jews knowingly work to obstruct other Jews from maintaining synagogues, owning homes or fulfilling religious obligations in Jerusalem, why should their conduct escape the scrutiny of Jewish law?

Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA) co-sponsored the Stop the Settlement Act

Further along the spectrum are efforts to boycott Israeli universities, exclude Israeli rabbis or educators, or discourage purchases of Israeli goods. Such actions may weaken educational, economic and communal relationships, although their connection to established grounds for nidui is less direct.

The case for religious sanctions is strongest where conduct directly obstructs an identifiable commandment or violates another established halachic obligation.

From Nidui to Herem

Jewish communities have historically imposed sanctions on individuals and movements. In 1772, rabbinic authorities associated with the Vilna Gaon (1720–1797) supported bans against the emerging Hasidic movement, a precedent that also illustrates the danger of communal authorities misjudging religious differences. Today, institutions such as Hillel restrict partnerships with organizations supporting BDS such as Jewish Voice for Peace, while the Conference of Presidents rejected J Street’s membership application in 2014. Between silence and herem lies a range of communal measures, from public censure to restrictions on institutional membership and leadership. These measures require clear standards and responsible authority.

The Jewish community is fraying. Its religious institutions, security and connection to Israel face growing internal conflict. Jewish law already recognizes that deliberate harm to another Jew can warrant communal sanctions. Qualified religious leaders should be prepared to examine serious violations, distinguish them from political disagreement and apply appropriate measures where justified.

If Jewish law can sanction a man for trapping one Jewish woman in a marriage, how can Jewish leadership refuse even to consider sanctions against those who deliberately endanger Jewish communities or obstruct their commandments?

Cornell’s Socialist Revolution and Its Jewish Students

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There is something rotten in Ithaca.

In October 2023, Cornell professor Russell Rickford described Hamas’s massacre of Israelis as “exhilarating” and “energizing.” Weeks later, a Cornell student threatened to shoot Jewish students, rape Jewish women and murder Jewish babies. Three years later, Rickford remains on the faculty, socialist organizations have gained political influence across campus, and anti-Israel activists have transformed Cornell’s student government and political culture.

A speaker addresses a crowd at a protest, with a banner in the background reading 'ANTI-ZIONISM IS NOT ANTI-SEMITISM'.
Cornell Professor celebrated the October 7 massacre of 1,200 in Israel

Cornell’s socialist revolution has unfolded alongside a disturbing deterioration in the environment for Jewish students. Organizations promoting socialism and campaigning against Israel have become political partners, winning elections, organizing demonstrations and challenging the university’s institutional relationships with Israel.

Rickford’s October 2023 remarks were captured on video just days after Hamas terrorists murdered, raped and kidnapped Israelis. Jewish students questioned whether they could safely express opposing views in his classroom. Cornellians for Israel president Zoe Bernstein and Hillel executive vice president Simone Shteingart publicly challenged his remarks. Rickford apologized, took a leave of absence and eventually returned to teaching, including a course titled Socialism in America.

Within weeks, Cornell student Patrick Dai threatened to attack the university’s kosher dining hall, shoot Jewish students, rape Jewish women and murder Jewish babies. The threats terrified Cornell’s Jewish community, prompting a police investigation. Dai was arrested, pleaded guilty and sentenced to federal prison.

Mugshot of a young man with glasses, wearing a plain white t-shirt, looking directly at the camera.
Cornell student Patrick Dai

Cornell’s Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter lists more than 300 members in the university’s student organization directory. One Cornell organizer advanced to national YDSA leadership, while another won election to Ithaca’s Common Council.

YDSA increasingly works alongside Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace and Cornell Progressives. Their joint campaigns seek divestment from weapons manufacturers, opposition to Israeli institutions and an end to Cornell’s relationship with Israel’s Technion. The broader Coalition for Mutual Liberation has claimed participation by more than 40 campus and community organizations.

The transformation is particularly striking when measured against Cornell’s recent history.

In 2014, Cornell’s Student Assembly voted 15–8–1 to table an Israel divestment resolution. A decade later, nearly 70% of participating undergraduates supported a divestment referendum. Graduate students approved another referendum in 2025. By 2026, every Student Assembly candidate jointly endorsed by SJP, YDSA and Cornell Progressives had won.

That political ascent was accompanied by increasingly confrontational activism. Protesters established encampments, disrupted a career fair involving defense contractors and interrupted an appearance by former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni. Cornell imposed disciplinary sanctions and temporarily suspended SJP before reinstating it under conditions.

The Anti-Defamation League assigned Cornell a C in its 2026 campus antisemitism report card.

The relationship between socialism and anti-Zionism became especially visible in September 2026, when Hasan Piker addressed approximately 450 students inside Cornell’s Sage Chapel at an event involving YDSA and other anti-Israel organizations.

Piker had previously declared that Hamas was a thousand times better than Israel. When challenged about that comparison on Pod Save America, he responded, “I stand by that.”

At Cornell, Piker celebrated socialist electoral victories, including the rise of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and joined a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Event poster announcing Hasan's talk at Cornell on September 24, from 6:30 to 7:30 pm at Sage Chapel, sponsored by student organizations.

Governor Hochul sits on Cornell’s Board of Trustees by virtue of her office. Together, the university’s leadership and trustees bear responsibility for protecting the freedom of political expression while ensuring that Jewish students can participate in university life without intimidation.

Cornell has spent three years demonstrating how much ideological extremism its academic culture can accommodate. A professor celebrated the slaughter of Israelis. A student threatened to murder Jews. Socialist and anti-Israel organizations expanded their political influence, and a speaker who publicly stood by his favorable comparison of Hamas to Israel was welcomed into Sage Chapel.

Cornell’s Jewish students have watched this transformation from the receiving end of threats and intimidation.

Cornell has decided to shut down fraternity events and parties for the rest of the year after a suit alleging gang rape at a fraternity in 2024 came to public attention. Will the school take similar action against the socialism and anti-Israel clubs?

Sign reading 'FRAT CULTURE IS RAPE CULTURE' held up during a protest.

Democratic Politicians Readying for Jerusalem’s Jews To Get 20 Years in Prison

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Imagine three American Jews participating in their cultural heritage: one American Jew buys an apartment in Jerusalem’s Old City, and hires an Israeli contractor to repair the roof and renovate the kitchen. Another American contributes to archaeological excavations uncovering ancient Jewish Jerusalem, say in Ir David. A third donates to rebuilding a synagogue destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948.

Rebuilding the Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem, which was destroyed by the Jordanian army when it illegally seized the city in 1949 (photo: First One Through 2023)

Under legislation sponsored by 54 congressional Democrats, each may face federal prosecution, a million-dollar fine or even 20 years in prison.

Congressman Joaquin Castro’s Stop the Settlements Act, H.R. 10642, reaches far beyond stopping new Israeli housing construction in disputed territories. It authorizes sanctions against foreign persons involved in the financing, planning, construction, expansion or maintenance of Israeli settlements or outposts, subject to certain determinations.

This is not legislation targeting building a new neighborhood in the middle of the West Bank. It targets even maintaining what already exists, even in cities with thousands of years of Jewish history and presence. Democrats in Congress have chosen language broad enough to raise questions about the ordinary upkeep of Jewish communities.

The bill repeatedly refers to “settlements” in the “West Bank and Gaza.” It never explicitly states whether eastern Jerusalem including the Old City is included.

Palestinians claim “East Jerusalem,” part of a divided city that existed as a result of the 1948-9 war, which lasted for 18 years until 1967, as part of their future state. Israel considers united Jerusalem its capital, including the Old City.

Congress knows these competing positions. Congress knows that the Jewish Quarter contains homes and synagogues predating Israel’s establishment in 1948. Yet 54 Democrats have attached their names to legislation without clarifying whether these historic Jewish neighborhoods fall within its reach. Deliberately.

Consider the consequences. A future Democratic president may decide to state that “East Jerusalem” actually exists and that it is part of the West Bank. The activities described above become a crime.

An American buys an apartment in the Jewish Quarter, where Jews lived for centuries before Jordan expelled its Jewish residents in 1948. He hires an Israeli company to restore the property. If an American administration classifies the Old City as a settlement (at least, any location where a Jew buys land) and sanctions that company for its broader construction or maintenance activities, paying the contractor could become a federal offense.

Now consider Ir David, the City of David, where archaeological excavations uncover the streets, structures and artifacts of ancient Jerusalem. An American donor might contribute money to uncover archaeological remains. But if the recipient organization were sanctioned, that donation could become prohibited.

Ir David excavations unearthing Jerusalem at the time of the Second Temple. (photo: First One Through July 2024)

The ramification would be to halt Jews from connecting to their past and only enable Arabs to excavate or destroy Jewish history.

Then there is Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue. Built in 1877 in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter, the synagogue was destroyed during Jordan’s conquest of the Old City in 1948. Its reconstruction restores a Jewish house of worship that existed generations before Israel recaptured the Old City in 1967.

Could the organization rebuilding it be sanctioned for construction or maintenance in territory an administration considers a settlement? In addition to being obtuse about Jerusalem, the bill contains no express exemption for historic synagogues, religious restoration or Jewish institutions predating 1948.

Domes of the Tiferet Yisrael (top center) and Hurva Synagogues (above right) return to the Old City skyline (photo: First One Through November 2025)

The legislation invokes the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Willful violations of applicable prohibitions can carry criminal fines of up to $1 million and imprisonment for up to 20 years. Civil penalties may apply even without criminal intent.

If an administration designates locations in Jerusalem’s Old City, an American could potentially be barred from ordering a handmade menorah or other merchandise produced there for shipment to the United States.

Castro says his legislation is intended to stop settlement expansion and Palestinian dispossession. Yet its language raises questions about the Old City of Jerusalem, the maintenance of existing homes, archaeological preservation, religious reconstruction and ordinary commercial activity.

Despite the language, the self-declared “pro-Israel” group J Street has endorsed it.

Fifty-four Democrats have attached their names to legislation that could reach into the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. And the list of Democratic co-sponsors and anti-Israel alt-left Jewish groups supporting it continues to grow.

Turning Deep Blue New York, Purple

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The Democratic Socialists of America have discovered that the shortest path to socialist political power runs through the Democratic Party’s safest districts. Their ambitions extend beyond winning elections. They seek to transform American capitalism, foreign policy and the Democratic Party itself.

DSA’s National Political Committee celebrated Chris Rabb‘s congressional primary victory in Philadelphia as a win in “the deepest blue Democratic district in the country.” In districts where the Democratic primary effectively determines the general election, a disciplined socialist organization can acquire political power using electoral majorities built by generations of traditional Democrats. Rabb said of his win ““that the era of establishment politics is coming to an end.”

DSA is remarkably candid about its objectives. Its National Electoral Commission advocates building an independent mass socialist party with a program that will allow the working class to “end capitalism.” Nationally endorsed candidates must support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. DSA leader Sydney Carlson-White celebrated Rabb’s victory as “bringing an anti-Zionist, anti-AIPAC, anti-capitalist voice into Congress in the bluest district in the United States.”

Rabb’s backers included:

  • Democratic Socialists of America
  • Working Families Party
  • Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
  • Hasan Piker

Hasan Piker, the influential socialist commentator who campaigns alongside many DSA candidates, is explicit about the political strategy. Describing the Democratic Party, he declared, “That’s a weak party. That’s a party that you can seize. That’s a party that you can take advantage of.“

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani demonstrates how far that movement has advanced. His victory brought a democratic socialist into one of America’s most prominent political offices, while DSA-backed candidates subsequently defeated established Democrats in congressional primaries.

DSA-backed Zohran Mamdani went on to win deep blue New York City’s mayoral race

The Democratic Party provides the ballot line and historically loyal electorate. DSA supplies the candidates, volunteers and ideological discipline.

In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul faces Republican Bruce Blakeman. Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than two to one, and Hochul entered October with a substantial polling advantage. Mamdani has endorsed her, as have various far-left politicians including Rep. Nydia Velázquez, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Can the Democratic Party continue accommodating an organized socialist movement committed to ending capitalism and advancing anti-Zionism while assuming that traditional Democrats will continue delivering overwhelming electoral majorities?

NY Governor Kathy Hochul with NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani

A narrowing Democratic margin could send a powerful signal that the party’s safest territory is becoming more competitive. The political consequences could extend beyond one election, influencing candidate recruitment, party alliances and the willingness of Democratic leaders to accommodate DSA’s agenda.

DSA has made its intentions unmistakable. Piker has described a party ripe for seizure. The movement has demonstrated that it can defeat Democratic incumbents and turn those victories into growing political power.

Jews in New York have historically voted Democrat by wide numbers are turning to Republicans due to the al-left seizure of the party

Moderate Democratic politician will tell you in confidence in private: New York Democrats should vote for moderate politicians in the primaries and for Republicans in the general election to turn New York purple, to create a wall against the tide of vile hatred stemming from the far-left flank taking over the party.

Related:

The DSA Is Systematically Coming For Zionist Jews (August 2023)

The Jihadists Are Here. They Are Looking for the Opening.

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Islamist terrorists are targeting Jews across the West. The FBI is disrupting plots while the protections around Jewish communities face growing scrutiny and political pressure.

This week, an 18-year-old ISIS supporter allegedly planned to murder 30 to 60 people at Minnesota’s Mall of America. He selected the shopping center because he believed it was Jewish-owned and considered attacking during a Hmong cultural celebration, when thousands would be gathered.

Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud had considered traveling to Somalia – the training ground for children in jihad – to join jihadists before deciding to bring jihad to Minnesota. The FBI had been investigating him since December 2024.

Sheikhdoon Abdullahi Mohamud

He was hardly alone.

In Pennsylvania, Jonathan Hunter Kramer allegedly discussed poisoning food at synagogues while professing allegiance to ISIS. He had previously attracted FBI attention in 2023.

Muhammad Shahzeb Khan pleaded guilty in 2026 to plotting an ISIS-inspired massacre at a Brooklyn Jewish religious center. He selected New York for its large Jewish population and wanted to murder as many Jews as possible.

Federal prosecutors charged Mohammad al-Saadi, an alleged Iranian-backed terrorist operative, in connection with attacks against Jewish institutions in Europe and alleged plans targeting synagogues in New York, Los Angeles and Scottsdale.

In Manchester, British authorities charged two Iranian nationals with preparing an attack against the city’s Jewish community, including alleged surveillance of a synagogue and Jewish museum.

Radical Islamists in UK

The targets were synagogues, community centers, a museum and a shopping mall. The intended victims’ citizenship, political views and relationship to Israel were irrelevant. Jewish identity was enough.

The danger has already been demonstrated in blood. In December 2025, ISIS-inspired terrorists murdered 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration at Australia’s Bondi Beach. Two months earlier, an ISIS-inspired attacker killed two Jewish worshippers outside Manchester’s Heaton Park synagogue. Security personnel prevented him from entering the building, where more worshippers had gathered.

The difference between a massacre and an even greater massacre was a locked door and the people guarding it.

Attack at Michigan school and synagogue by radical Islamist

New York’s Jewish institutions have repeatedly appeared in terrorist investigations. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch has described NYPD operations that disrupted plots against a Manhattan synagogue and a Brooklyn Jewish center. Jews, roughly one-tenth of the city’s population, accounted for more than half its confirmed hate-crime victims this year.

Therefore Within Our Lifetime and other anti-Zionist activists like the Democratic Socialist of America have demanded that Mayor Zohran Mamdani dismiss Tisch. Defending Jews is an impeachable offense to jihadists.

Meanwhile, the FBI’s methods are also under attack.

In March, HBO’s John Oliver devoted a segment to FBI terrorism stings, questioning whether undercover agents were stopping terrorists or manufacturing them. Really? Investigators in Minnesota had followed Mohamud who allegedly discussed mass murder before supplying him with a disabled rifle.

What would have been gained by waiting until he obtained a functioning weapon?

Members of Students for Justice in Palestine tweet about killing Jews

A successful counterterrorism investigation produces no funerals, no photographs of murdered children and no devastated families. The absence of casualties can make the threat seem imaginary.

Jewish communities understand the danger. Intelligence officers investigate plots. Police patrol synagogues. Schools employ armed guards. Community centers install barriers. Religious celebrations require security plans.

Each layer stands between a terrorist’s intentions and his intended victims.

The attacker needs only one opening: an unguarded entrance, an overlooked warning, an intelligence failure or a crowded celebration without adequate protection.

Almost every antisemitic attack in the western world the past few years has come from radical Islamists

The jihadists are already here. They are looking for that opening. The next massacre will begin wherever the defenses fail.

Related:

Jews Ask for Protection. America Responds With Skepticism (May 2026)

CAIR Thinks Protecting Synagogues Is A Political Stunt And Waste Of Taxpayers Money (September 2024)

Politicians In Their Own Words: Why We Don’t Support Defending Jews (January 2022)

Ramifications: Teaching Antisemitism and Whitewashing Antisemitism

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This is going to be part of a new series of articles under the header “Ramifications.” We often see and hear the news but we don’t often consider the underlying consequences of the information, as well as the lack of it.

The News:

Guangtian Ha earned his doctorate at Columbia University and spent eight years teaching religion at Haverford College, the elite Pennsylvania liberal arts institution. His courses included Introduction to Islam, Blackness in Islam, Gender and Sexuality in Islamic Texts and Practices, and studies of Islamic culture in China.

On October 6, 2026, federal authorities arrested Ha on charges of cyberstalking a Jewish colleague. Prosecutors allege he operated at least four anonymous social media accounts, sending approximately 50 threatening messages between October 2025 and May 2026. The messages invoked Hitler, the Holocaust, the extermination of Jews and the victim’s children.

The indictment describes a campaign of terror directed at a Jewish family. Ha allegedly published photographs of the colleague’s mailbox, identified his home and referenced his children by name. The colleague’s wife and three children fled their home twice. The children were prevented from playing in their front yard or waiting outside for the school bus.

The messages attributed to Ha included:

  • “Jew, get the fuck out of my country.”
  • “Lower Merion will be cleansed of the jew filth.”
  • “If jews are so special then they should also be placed in special camps.”
  • “Eliminate the jewish cockroaches.”
  • “Give it another 10 years, and you shall see a true Holocaust.”
  • “The jews are angry because the world has woken up and realized Hitler was right all along.”
  • “the end of American Jews is close.”
  • To Sen. Ted Cruz “You are a slave to the rapist, bloodsucking jews,”
  • In a post directed at Jewish Columbia professor Shai Davidai, Ha allegedly asked what flavor of gas he would prefer.
  • Another post directed at Jewish congressman Randy Fine invoked making candles from his body fat.

Clearly horrible. Clearly anti-Jewish and not anti-Israel.

But what you didn’t see or hear is worse.

Ramification: Teaching Antisemitism

Over eight years, potentially hundreds of students passed through his classrooms, learning about religion, race, culture and society from a professor whom Haverford granted tenure in February 2024. Jewish students were aghast as Ha had long promoted a hateful and divisive environment on campus and filed a lawsuit against the university in May 2024.

In June 2025, the House Education and Workforce Committee specifically asked Haverford president Wendy Raymond whether the college had investigated Ha’s statements equating Zionists with Nazis and advocating their exclusion. Eventually, the college settled the students’ lawsuit in August 2026.

Consider that this vile antisemite wasn’t an irrelevant lunatic ranting on the streets of Times Square.

  • He is a Columbia-trained professor.
  • He was hired at a leading liberal arts school.
  • He taught religion.
  • He was granted tenure.

His students relied on him to explain unfamiliar histories, cultures and beliefs. And he used his credentials, his tenure and his position to teach his rabid antisemitism to over a thousand students over his teaching career. Ha taught that Jews are “filth” as fact, not noxious opinion.

And like all students know, to get a good grade, they needed to parrot the poisonous professor.

CONCERN: Extremist ideas circulate through American academic institutions under the authority of scholarship, tenure and “political expression.” Your tax dollars go to support this student indoctrination in Jew-hatred to poison society.

Ramification: Whitewashing Antisemitism

The New York Times covered the story – and minimized the vicious Jew-hatred.

In the three Ha quotes the Times decided to showcase, none said the word “Jew.” None described his deep hatred – instead they pointed to making the targeted person feel unwelcome with language of “Get out of my country,” “you scums have had it too easy” and “Run. Flee. Leave.” Note that according to court filings, the end of the second post was “Goyim are taking America back, blood-guzzling demons,” which the Times omitted.

To further confuse the Times readers, the article said the targeted “person is a Jewish faculty member, according to three people who know the person.” A reader had to INFER that the get-out-of-town comments were about the person being Jewish – or maybe Ha just had a general beef with this other faculty member.

Were the “jew filth”, “jewish cockroaches” and “rapist, bloodsucking jews” comments too clear that this professor is a vile antisemite?

The New York Times has twisted itself for years to say that hating the Jewish State doesn’t mean hating Jews. Is it also trying to whitewash plain Jew-hatred into a squabble between two faculty members in which one of them could be Jewish according to people who know him?

CONCERN: If even clear and blatant broadcast Jew-hatred cannot be called out clearly and explicitly in leading mainstream media (perhaps because the Jew-hating professor is a minority teaching Islam), there is no chance that more subtle forms of antisemitism will be reported.

RAMIFICATIONS

Americans are being educated in their colleges and in left-wing media that hating Jews is appropriate, and if Jews complain – especially if the actions come from so-called minority groups – they are overly sensitive and should make room for victims of preference. That is a movement of systematic exclusion and expulsion of Jews from the American promise, a much bigger story than a “professor being accused of harassing a colleague.”

ACTION ITEMS

Haverford College. Please read the statement by President Wendy Raymond. She is upset that a professor was harassed. By what about the Jewish students on campus? What about the thousand students who were taught by this evil person? Demand a full audit and review of all class materials that the professor used over his time at the university, and interview the students who took his classes to learn more about how antisemitism might have infused his lectures. president@haverford.edu (610) 896-1021

The New York Times. Demand the paper be more explicit that Jew-hatred is Jew-hatred. corrections@nytimes.com letters@nytimes.com

UK Parties Countermeasure on Israel

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The Green Party charted a new course in British politics, calling for an end of the Jewish State of Israel and demanding a boycott of the country until it allows millions of Arabs into the territory and become a binational state. The alt-left group was immediately rebuked by members of the other British political parties.

Labour’s Bridget Phillipson, the equalities minister said the Green vote “crosses a line” and was “fundamentally wrong.” She explicitly connected her objection to the two-state solution saying “It is shameful to vote against a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.”

David Pinto-Duschinsky, centre, and Bridget Phillipson, right, meet with Jewish school in London with the school’s headteacher

Conservatives shadow home secretary Chris Philp said of the Green vote “I think that’s completely wrong.” He called the resolution a “stereotypical and potentially antisemitic characterisation” and said the Greens needed to do more to combat antisemitism in their ranks. The Conservative Party subsequently issued an even more directly relevant statement through Philp: “British Jews should not have to disclaim a belief in Jewish self-determination and the existence of Israel.”

Liberal Democrats MP Luke Taylor MP said “This is a divisive motion that pours fuel on the fire of tensions in the UK,” and said it would leave many British Jews feeling less safe. Lib Dem foreign-affairs spokesman Calum Miller called the Green vote “deeply wrong” and a “deeply harmful failure of judgement.” Former leader Tim Farron said the Greens had been “captured.”

Green councillor Hau-Yu Tam (centre) pictured alongside Green Party deputy leader Zack Polanski (left). Photo Credit: London Green Party

“Zionism is pure evil and must be abolished.”
“Zionism was undoubtedly and unquestionably the Nazism of our time.” – Green Party’s Hau-Yu Tam

Perhaps it is therefore time to move beyond making statements about the Green Party vote and push forward clear countering platforms: one that unequivocally expresses support for British Jews and their heritage and history in the Jewish Promised Land. And a second that declares that every country – including Israel – has an unambiguous right to decide who to permit into its country and to admit as citizens. As such, there is absolutely no so-called “right of return” of descendants of Arabs who once lived in the territory of Israel.

The Greens put their position to a vote. Now Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats should do the same. At their next party conferences, each should introduce resolutions affirming these two simple principles.

Condemning the Greens is easy. Put the alternative on the ballot and let British political parties tell the country – and British Jews – where they actually stand.

Who Will Protect Britain’s Zionist Jews?

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On October 4, 2026, as Jews marked Simchat Torah and the third Jewish-calendar anniversary of the Hamas-led massacre that killed about 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, Britain’s Green Party voted to declare Zionism a form of racism.

By 1,022 votes to 813, the party formally declared itself anti-Zionist and endorsed replacing Israel with a single Palestinian state throughout the pre-1948 region of Palestine.

An earlier vote at the same conference was even more revealing about the party’s attitude towards Jews.

Jewish Green member Sam Alston proposed an amendment protecting Jewish members from being pressured or disciplined because they belonged to synagogues and other Jewish institutions associated with Zionism. He warned that without such protection the policy could result in “indirect religious discrimination.”

The Greens rejected his safeguard, 1,026 to 684.

So at this same conference, Jewish members were provided a safe room because some feared for their safety during the debate about Jews and the Jewish State, while rejecting their proposed protection from its new racism policy.

“We continue to see antisemitic sentiment appearing with increasing frequency,” – Laurence Taylor, the head of counter-terrorism policing

There may also be a legal problem.

Adam Wagner KC, a prominent British human-rights barrister, has warned of a “strong risk” that the resolution contravenes the Equality Act 2010. British law protects qualifying philosophical beliefs, and Wagner argues that Zionism is likely capable of qualifying for that protection.

There is already precedent from the other direction. David Miller, the former University of Bristol professor, successfully established before an employment tribunal that his anti-Zionism qualified as a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act. Greens for Palestine cited the Miller case in defending anti-Zionist beliefs before the conference.

British law may already protect both the anti-Zionist and the Zionist.

The Green Party is no longer a fringe environmental entity. Membership has surged above 200,000, tripling its total in a single year.

Their electorate also looks markedly different from Britain as a whole. Analysis of the 2024 Green vote found an average age of 42 compared with 49 across the electorate. Green voters were more female, much more likely to be university graduates and less likely to own their homes. They were also twice as likely to be Muslim – 6 percent versus 3 percent nationally – and considerably more likely to have no religion.

The two conference votes reveal something more troubling.

While the voters against Zionism and protection for Jews stayed roughly the same – 1,022 and 1,026, respectively – 16 percent of those supporting Israel did not vote on protections for Britain’s Jewish community.

That leaves a question extending well beyond this conference: As hostility to Zionism moves deeper into the politics of the alt-left, who will insist on protecting Jews whose religious and communal lives remain connected to it?

Two Iranian men – Salam Ahmadyan, 36, and Rahman Salehi, 34 – charged with attempting to bomb a synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur 2026, one year after other Jews were stabbed to death in the city

There is a Missing On Simchat Torah

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This Simchat Torah, I keep thinking about what is missing.

For some families, the absence is unbearable and permanent. A child, a parent, a spouse, a friend who was alive on the last Simchat Torah before October 7 and is no longer here. Every holiday marks time, but an anniversary holiday also measures absence. Another year has passed. Another place at the table remains empty. Another circle forms with someone missing from it.

Aryeh Ziering with his parents, killed as he responded to the massacre by Gazans on October 7, 2023

Loss is embedded in Simchat Torah itself. We reach the end of the Torah and lose Moses.

The man who confronted Pharaoh, led us through the sea, brought down the commandments and carried an impossible people through the wilderness does not cross into the Jewish Promised Land. The Torah does not soften his death or pretend it did not happen. It records it and we read it aloud.

Moses seeing the Promised Land before he dies by James Tissot (1896-1902)

Over the past three years, other things have felt as though they have gone missing as well.

I have watched context disappear from too much of the media coverage of Israel and the Middle East. Iran can threaten Israel and the region through proxies, missiles and terrorism, yet somehow vanish from the frame through which individual events are reported.

I have watched the United Nations lose all credibility as an institution capable of treating Israel with the same standards it applies elsewhere. Its institutions can devote extraordinary attention to Israel while regimes and movements that openly threaten Jews and Israelis often recede into the background.

I have watched universities where “Globalize the Intifada” could become part of the vocabulary of protest after Jews had just experienced the deadliest day since the Holocaust. A recent report on American antisemitism could devote enormous attention to Israel, Palestinian Arabs, race and politics while ignoring the jihadist antisemitism that helped produce October 7 in the first place.

And increasingly, I wonder whether I am losing the Democratic Party I knew.

Senator Chris Coons is not someone I associated with the anti-Israel fringe. Yet he spearheaded legislation that would authorize American sanctions connected to construction in E1, including against foreign persons who simply submit bids for construction tenders. Threatening private parties with the force of the American financial system for bidding on residential construction near Jerusalem represents a place in that debate I never expected mainstream Democrats to reach.

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Coons threaten financial retribution against firms considering building residential homes in Jerusalem suburbs

Some losses happened in a morning. Others have accumulated slowly enough that it took me time to recognize them.

Judaism does not ask us to pretend that loss isn’t real. The Torah certainly doesn’t.

Moses dies. But then we do something remarkable.

We don’t pause to mourn Moses on Simchat Torah. We stand up, sing and dance. We lift the Torahs and our children. And when we have read the Torah’s final words, we refuse to leave the scroll there. We immediately return to Bereishit, to the beginning.

We don’t erase the loss or manufacture comforting explanations for it. We don’t avert our eyes from the people and institutions we have lost or from the lessons their loss may teach us. But neither do we build our lives around the empty spaces.

That may be the lesson I need most this Simchat Torah.

Notice who is missing. Remember them. Look clearly at what else we have lost since October 7 and understand why. Fight where something worth preserving can still be preserved.

Then look around the circle and see who is still there. Hold them a little closer.

And dance.

The Antisemitism Report That Missed The Prevalent Jihadi Antisemitism

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The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a 220-page report on September 26, 2026 on the explosion of antisemitism on American college campuses after October 7, 2023. Search those 220 pages for “jihad,” “Islamist” or “radical Islam” and you find nothing.

Columbia University’s SJP chapter featured “Islamic political activism”

That is an extraordinary omission because October 7 was not the opening battle in a campus dispute between supporters of Israel and Palestine. It was a massacre carried out by Hamas, a jihadist organization with a long history of explicit antisemitism. Yet the Commission largely interprets what followed through a political framework: Jewish and Israeli students on one side, Muslim and Palestinian students on the other, each reporting hostility and discrimination while universities struggled to balance Title VI, political expression and the First Amendment. Indeed, the Commission describes its own inquiry principally in terms of institutional and federal responses to allegations of antisemitism following the Hamas attack, with substantial attention to the distinction between unlawful discrimination and protected political expression.

In that framework, Jews increasingly become the pro-Israel constituency in an Israeli-Palestinian political dispute. What largely disappears is that some of what erupted on campuses reflected a very different phenomenon: jihadist antisemitism.

Brown University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine “by any means necessary”

Hamas’s history should have made that an obvious subject of inquiry. Its 1988 founding covenant placed the struggle within an Islamic religious framework, declared that there was “no solution” to the Palestinian question except jihad, trafficked in antisemitic conspiracy theories and invoked a hadith envisioning Muslims fighting Jews.

Gazan jihadist calls parents to celebrate his slaughter of Jewish civilians

Nor did Hamas remain thousands of miles away from the American campus debate as an abstraction. The Commission itself received evidence of faculty-sponsored protests featuring “Long Live Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas’s name for its October 7 operation, along with a flag of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the report identifies as a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

Berkeley celebrates the “Al-Aqsa Flood” massacre, named for the Islamic shrine atop the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem

The Commission saw the evidence but never seriously followed the ideological trail.

Consider “Globalize the Intifada.” The phrase appears only once in the report, in its discussion of Rutgers. Yet contemporary campus reporting documented it many times among the very universities the Commission selected for study. At Stanford, students chanted “From Stanford to Gaza, globalize the Intifada.” At Cornell, protesters chanted both “globalize the intifada” and “There is only one solution, intifada revolution.”

SJP chapter for D.C., Maryland and Virginia

Cornell was not some campus the Commission lacked information about. The university supplied nearly 2,000 pages of material and received one of the longest individual university treatments in the report. Yet “Intifada Revolution” appears zero times.

Cornell professor said he was “exhilarated” by the October 7 massacre of Jews. The NY Times reported a story about Jews taking away public funds from students.

The gap becomes even more striking when compared with the Commission’s treatment of other ideological sources of antisemitism. The report examines far-right antisemitism, describing Jews portrayed as conspiratorial financial elites, competitors with white Americans and secret manipulators of political power. It discusses neo-Nazis and white nationalism. It also examines antisemitism arising from the political left, including depictions of Jews as privileged, capitalist or oppressive and the intersection between those ideas and hostility toward Israel.

Where is the corresponding examination of jihadi antisemitism?

Rutgers professor online account replete with antisemitism. He denied the posts were anti-Semitic

Where is the history of Hamas’s antisemitic ideology, the examination of Hamas rhetoric about Jews, or the investigation of how the language and symbols of violent extremist organizations appeared in American campus protests immediately after October 7?

The Commission instead devotes considerable attention to deciding when anti-Israel rhetoric should be understood as political speech rather than discrimination. It examines “From the River to the Sea” at length, including competing interpretations of the slogan. It notes that “Intifada” can be frightening while remaining protected expression. At Rutgers, for example, it records “Globalize the Intifada” among the protest activity Jewish students said made them feel unsafe.

Imagine – feeling unsafe around a jihadist cry to kill non-Muslims everywhere.

Rutgers “Glory to the martyrs”, praising the jihadists murderers

But cataloguing whether a slogan is legally protected is different from investigating the ideology being expressed by the people using it. The First Amendment can protect vile political speech. That does not make its ideological origin irrelevant to a federal investigation trying to understand antisemitism.

The omission is particularly consequential because the language of the campus protests did not develop in an intellectual vacuum. American universities have increasingly employed professors who view Israel through a settler-colonial framework. In its most categorical form, that theory casts Jews as foreign colonizers and Palestinians as the indigenous population resisting them. This screed is about Jewish presence in their homeland, not particular Israeli policies. It attempts to sever Jews from the land at the center of their history, religion, language and national identity and then uses that manufactured foreignness to challenge Jewish national self-determination. It is rank antisemitism that provides a logic other than Islamic supremacism to excuse Muslims preventing Jews from living and having self-determination “in any part of Palestine.”

“The conflict is cast in western circles as a local conflict over land between Jews and Arabs which can find compromise, but radical Islamists see it as a global religious matter between Muslims and Jews.” – First One Through July 2025

In such distorted worldview, October 7 becomes “resistance.” Hamas’s “Al-Aqsa Flood” becomes liberation. The intifada becomes something to globalize. Zionists become people to exclude, while Jews who object to any of this are reduced to the pro-Israel participants in a contentious political debate.

This is where the Commission missed the virulent strain of antisemitism it was supposed to investigate. The fear that swept through many Jewish communities after October 7 was not simply that Palestinian students disagreed with Jews about Israeli policy or conduct. Jews had watched an organization steeped in antisemitic ideology slaughter Israelis and take hostages. They then watched people in the West celebrate or rationalize the attack with the vocabulary of “resistance,” “intifada” and “Al-Aqsa Flood.”

While the Commission’s own evidence contained pieces of that story, its analytical framework never assembled them.

Columbia University encampment with “Intifada Revolution”

That failure has consequences. America has learned to recognize white-supremacist antisemitism – your father’s antisemitism – as an ideology rather than merely a collection of offensive statements. A swastika does not need to be accompanied by a dissertation on National Socialism before institutions understand the hatred behind it. The same intellectual seriousness should apply when antisemitism emerges from another extremist tradition.

Instead, this federal civil-rights report has provided universities with a framework that can make jihadist antisemitism remarkably difficult to see. While Jew hatred expressed in the vocabulary of white supremacy arrives already classified as extremism, similar hostility wrapped in the language of decolonization, resistance and intifada can be processed as politics, scholarship or protest. The Jewish student confronting it becomes the “pro-Israel” participant in a dispute, rather than a target of noxious hatred.

Jihadi antisemitism does not become benign when its vocabulary is translated for an American campus. Leaving that vector out of a federal investigation leaves universities less prepared to identify it, challenge it or protect the Jews it threatens.

The Commission set out to expose the forces driving contemporary campus antisemitism and instead helped preserve one of their safest hiding places: the assumption that when hatred of Jews arrives speaking the language of “resistance,” it is merely politics.

Related:

The UN’s Jihadi Exception (September 2026)