Category Archives: Opinion

The New York Times Has Some Questions for the Jews

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The New York Times wants to know what New York Jews think about Israel.

Its new questionnaire asks Jewish New Yorkers whether they think about Israel more since October 7. Whether their opinion of Israel has changed. Whether they call themselves Zionists. Whether they have become more vocal or politically active.

The frame is revealing.

The Times wants to know how Israel has changed the Jews.

It does not ask whether October 7 changed their opinion of Hamas.

Did the murder, rape and kidnapping of Israelis change their understanding of the conflict? Did years of Israelis held hostage in Gaza change it? What have they learned about Hamas, its genocidal antisemitic foundational charter, Palestinian politics or jihadist movements committed to Israel’s destruction?

Those questions aren’t there.

Neither is another actor in the past three years: the New York Times.

Has its coverage changed your trust in the newspaper? Do you believe its reporting on Israel and Gaza has been fair? Has its treatment of antisemitism changed your relationship with the paper? Has its language surrounding “genocide”, “occupation” and “resistance” changed how you understand the conflict or how you perceive of the media?

The newspaper wants to know what changed the Jews without asking whether the newspaper helped change them.

Then there is the matter of which Jews.

The questionnaire asks whether you are a Jewish New Yorker. It does not ask whether you are 22 or 72. Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or secular. Democrat, Republican or independent. Progressive, moderate or conservative. Those differences may explain the answers, as discussed in many other polls.

More important, this is an open call published by the New York Times. It is not a random survey of New York Jews. For years, parts of the Jewish community have fought bitterly with the paper over its coverage of Israel and antisemitism. Many longtime Jewish readers have publicly canceled their subscriptions over that coverage. Thousands more privately.

The Jews most alienated by the Times may also be the least likely to see its callout, trust its reporter or volunteer their thoughts. Jews comfortable with the newspaper and its worldview may be more inclined to respond, biasing the poll results. It could collect hundreds of responses showing its Jewish respondents moving away from Israel without knowing whether the Jews moved or its sample did.

Then comes the missing questionnaire.

Where are the questions for Arab and Muslim New Yorkers?

Did October 7 change your opinion of Hamas? Do you consider Hamas a terrorist organization? Do you believe Jews are entitled to national self-determination? Should Jews be allowed to freely access and pray at their holiest site? Should Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups surrender their weapons? Has your opinion of Israel changed? Of Jews?

Those answers would tell New Yorkers quite a lot too.

And the timing is particularly ugly.

Hasan Piker has recently been asking his own version of precisely this question: How attached are American Jews to Israel?

Piker has called Israel “Jewish ISIS” and previously said Hamas was “a thousand times better” than Israel. More recently, he warned that if American Jews continue presenting themselves as deeply invested in Israel, eventually someone may take action against American Jews rather than Israel.

That is antisemitism dressed up as a warning.

And now the New York Times arrives with a questionnaire measuring whether Jewish New Yorkers still call themselves Zionists and whether their feelings about Israel have changed.

The disturbing convergence is the question itself: How attached are the Jews to Israel now? The New York Times wants to know. Millions of antisemites that follow Piker want to know.

ACTION ITEM

So answer the poll. But not their questions.

Tell the Times exactly how October 7 changed your thinking.

Tell it what you think about Hamas. Tell it what you have learned about jihadism, hostage-taking and fighters operating among civilians. Tell it whether Palestinian Arabs support for the October 7 massacre and Hamas have changed your understanding of the conflict.

Then tell it about the New York Times.

Tell it whether its coverage has increased or destroyed your trust in the newspaper—its language, its emphasis, its omissions, its telling of the Jihadi-Israel conflict.

Hasan Piker and The New York Times are polling Jews for their attachment towards Israel. Tell them what you think of the global jihad sweeping the world.

From Shut Up to Get Out

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There is a progression from intimidation and expulsion.

  • A heckler’s veto prevents you from speaking.
  • A chilling effect teaches you to remain silent.
  • Self-concealment teaches you to hide the identity that makes you a target.
  • Constructive exclusion makes the environment sufficiently hostile that you stay away or leave.
  • Forced expulsion completes the progression: someone else decides you must go.

American Jews have been moving through these stages over the last decade.

Don’t Speak

In 2015, Israeli philosopher Moshe Halbertal came to the University of Minnesota to lecture on the ethical obligations of militaries to protect civilians. Protesters repeatedly interrupted him, delaying his lecture for about half an hour as police removed them.

It was a classic heckler’s veto: make enough noise and the speaker cannot speak.

Eventually, Halbertal did.

Over time, intimidation becomes more efficient. People learn the consequences of speaking and begin censoring themselves. The expectation of the heckler creates the chilling effect.

Then the intimidation moved beyond speech.

Hide Who You Are

In May 2021, Hamas launched thousands of rockets at Israel and antisemitic incidents surged concurrently in the United States.

Aaron Keyak had served as Jewish engagement director for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and would become the State Department’s deputy special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. His advice to frightened American Jews was extraordinary: “If you fear for your life or physical safety take off your kippah and hide your magen david.”

The Jew walking down the street had given no speech and joined no protest. His Jewish identity itself made him a target.

The response from the highest levels of government was self-concealment: take off the kippah and hide the Star of David.

This was 2021, more than two years before the October 7 massacre.

Stay Out

After the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel, the progression took over the Democratic Party.

Dana Nessel is Michigan’s attorney general, the state’s chief law-enforcement officer and its highest-ranking Jewish state official. This June she decided to stay away from the Michigan Democratic Party convention. “I don’t feel safe going,” Nessel said. She feared being chased, harassed, yelled at and booed because, she explained, “it’s been happening to me.”

Consider where the progression had reached: Michigan’s chief law-enforcement officer felt safer staying away from her own political party’s convention out of fear.

And Nessel is not alone.

Earlier in the summer, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht left the Democratic Party and became an independent. Wecht is Jewish, was elected as a Democrat and had once served in the leadership of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. “Acquiescence to Jew-hatred is now disturbingly common among activists, leaders and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party,” he wrote. “I can no longer abide this.”

Nessel stayed away. Wecht walked away. Revulsed by what they saw happening inside the Democratic Party.

Get Out

The next stage has already begun.

In 2024, anti-Israel artists protesting at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts issued a list of demands. Among them: remove all “Zionist Board members and funders.” While the institution rejected the demand, its Jewish interim CEO, Sara Fenske Bahat, subsequently resigned, saying the climate surrounding Israel and Palestine in the Bay Area had become “untenable.”

The demand itself crossed the line into the final stage: Get them out.

If one needs proof, consider how the alt-left treated one of its own, NYC Mayor-endorsed politician Brad Lander. He was tossed from a far-left political rally in August 2026 because he was a “Zionist,” even though he is highly critical of Israel.

Democratic politician Brad Lander – supported by NYC Mayor, DSA’s own Zohran Mamdani – tossed from a rally because he is a “Zionist”

The heckler’s veto was already an assault on a basic American principle: everyone gets to enter the public square and speak. What has grown from it is far uglier and deeply un-American:

Don’t speak.
Don’t be seen.
Don’t come.
Get out.

This is intimidation being rewarded with territory. Each retreat gives the intimidators another piece of the public square: the microphone, the street, the political convention, the institution itself.

And this poison is now flourishing inside the Democratic Party.

A party that claims to champion minorities and protect people from intimidation now has a Jewish attorney general afraid to attend its own convention, a Jewish state supreme court justice who concluded that Jew-hatred had become sufficiently tolerated that he could no longer remain a Democrat, and an anti-Israel DSA-mayor-endorsed Jewish politician run out of the streets of New York.

That is disgraceful. It is frightening.

The American answer to intimidation is to protect the person being intimidated and confront the intimidator. Nobody should gain control of a microphone, a street, a political convention or an institution by making someone else afraid to enter it.

Leaders of the Democratic Party should understand what is happening inside its own tent. The heckler’s veto has metastasized into something deeply toxic and deeply un-American.

The hecklers no longer simply want to only decide what Jews may say. They want to expel Jews from the room.

Stop, Hey, What’s That Sound?

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“There’s something happening here.”

Stephen Stills wrote those words sixty years ago for Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth. He did not tell listeners exactly what was happening. He told them to notice.

“Stop, hey, what’s that sound?”

For Jews today, it is becoming increasingly difficult not to hear it.

In Britain, years of anti-Israel demonstrations were followed by attacks on synagogues and Jewish institutions, the murder of two Jews at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur and the stabbing of two visibly Jewish men in Golders Green.

Finally, Prime Minister Keir Starmer told Britain to “open their eyes to Jewish pain, Jewish suffering and Jewish fear.”

He was even more explicit about a slogan common at anti-Israel demonstrations: “If you stand alongside people who say globalise the intifada, you are calling for terrorism against Jews.”

“Everybody look what’s going down.”

Australia had its warnings too. Antisemitism surged after October 7. Jewish institutions were targeted. Then came Bondi Beach.

On December 14, 2025, gunmen opened fire on Jews celebrating Chanukah by the Sea. Fifteen victims were murdered. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called it an “act of evil antisemitism.”

The warnings had become bodies.

The question is no longer whether every protester is an antisemite or every criticism of Israel antisemitic.

The question is whether something is happening here.

Britain’s leaders now say so. Australia’s leaders now say so.

American Jews should not need another massacre before believing their own eyes and ears.

America has already had Pittsburgh, where 11 Jews were murdered in synagogue; Poway, where a woman was murdered at Passover services; and Jersey City, where Jews were hunted inside a kosher market.

In 2025, two Israeli Embassy employees were murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. Days later, Jews demonstrating in Boulder, Colorado, for Israeli hostages were attacked with Molotov cocktails. Hostages were taken in a synagogue in Texas. An armed man rammed his truck into a Jewish school in Michigan.

The ADL recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents in America in 2025—17 every day. Antisemitic assaults reached a record high.

Yet some institutions still debate the meaning of the sound.

In 2023, the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT were asked before Congress whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their universities’ rules. Instead of an immediate yes came answers about context.

In New York, before becoming mayor, Zohran Mamdani repeatedly refused to condemn “Globalize the intifada.”

Jews understand.

The Second Intifada meant suicide bombers on buses and in cafés and restaurants. It meant the deliberate murder of Jewish civilians. Now the slogan is shouted in America while American Jews are assaulted and Jewish institutions require armed guards.

Rally against antisemitism outside Central Synagogue after man punched a person inside during services. He had social media littered with posts about Israel and Judaism.

Stephen Stills’s sixty-year-old warning suddenly sounds less like history. “There’s something happening here.” Now.

The university presidents wanted context. The mayor of the American city with the largest Jewish population wanted to explain intifada.

Jews have context. Pittsburgh is context. Poway is context. Jersey City is context. Boulder is context. Washington is context. Britain is context. Australia is context.

Stop. Hey. What’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down.

Related:

Antisemitism As Political Currency (August 2026)

When Antisemitism Was Killing Jews, Left-Wing Jews in Congress Backpedaled (January 2026)

Two Democratic Senators Gaslight Jewish Attorney During Confirmation Hearing (March 2025)

The Diaspora Intifada (September 2024)

The Illiberal Global South’s War on the Liberal Global North

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From 9/11 to October 7

On September 11, 2001, jihadi terrorists turned passenger airplanes into missiles and murdered nearly 3,000 Americans.

Only three days later, while bodies were still being recovered, ANSWER—Act Now to Stop War and End Racism—was formed to protest what America might do in response.

The name was important.

ANSWER viewed American military power abroad and racism at home as pieces of the same system: a wealthy, largely Western “Global North” dominating the poorer, disproportionately black and brown “Global South.”

For this anti-Western group, America was not defending itself. It was exercising imperial power. Those fighting it could be engaged in “resistance.”

Seven months after 9/11, Israel was pulled into the same framework.

On April 20, 2002, ANSWER organized more than 100,000 people in Washington under “Free Palestine, No War on Iraq.”

The Iraq War had not even begun.

Later that year, Medea Benjamin, Jodie Evans and others founded CODEPINK to oppose the coming Iraq War. The organizations forming around it had a broader worldview: America and its allies represented imperialism, while their opponents represented oppressed peoples fighting back.

Israel became another perfect target.

It was democratic, prosperous, militarily powerful and allied with America. It therefore became part of the “Global North.”

Never mind that roughly half of Israeli Jews have roots in the Middle East and North Africa. Never mind that Israel’s citizens include Arabs, Druze and other minorities. The supposedly racial framework somehow classified this remarkably diverse Middle Eastern country as the white colonialist.

That classification did something important.

It determined who was allowed to fight back.

Palestinian Arab jihadi violence could be “resistance.” Israeli force became “aggression.” ANSWER could call itself an antiwar organization while defending Palestinian attacks because it wasn’t really applying a rule against war. It was applying different rules to different sides.

Then came October 7, 2023. Thousands of Gazan terrorists invaded Israel, murdered roughly 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 250.

Israelis were still recovering bodies when ANSWER was mobilizing for “Free Palestine.”

The parallel with September 11 was remarkable. America gets attacked. Focus immediately turns to restraining America. Israel gets attacked. Focus immediately turns to restraining Israel.

Twenty-two years separated the attacks, but the ideological framework had barely moved.

The liberal societies being condemned have been spectacularly successful. People from every race, religion and continent continue trying to move to the United States, Canada, Europe and other liberal democracies. Israel itself absorbed Jews fleeing Europe, the Soviet Union, Ethiopia and the Arab and Muslim worlds.

People vote with their feet. They generally flee toward societies with elections, property rights, women’s equality, education, religious freedom and economic opportunity—not away from them.

The divide is not really white versus brown or North versus South. It is between those who view successful liberal societies as achievements worth defending and those who view their success and power as evidence of oppression.

September 11 exposed that divide in America. October 7 exposed it again in Israel.

The anti-Global North’s victims of preference changed from Afghanistan to Iraq to Palestine. And the vocabulary remained: imperialism, colonialism, oppression and resistance.

And so did the fundamental question: When terrorists attack a successful liberal society, who has the right to resist whom?

Data Centers, Golf Courses and America’s Environmental Double Standard

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Data centers have become one of America’s favorite environmental villains. Critics argue that they use too much land, consume too much water and strain the electric grid. Communities increasingly fight proposed facilities on environmental grounds.

The concerns over electricity are real. But put data centers alongside another ubiquitous American land use — golf courses — and the environmental picture looks very different.

Golf uses dramatically more land and direct water and requires harmful pesticides to maintain its turf. Data centers consume dramatically more electricity. And data centers produce roughly four times the overall economic impact already – before the upcoming artificial intelligence boom kicks in.

MetricU.S. Data CentersU.S. Golf Courses
Facilities / courses~3,600 operational16,034 courses at 13,975 facilities
LandNo authoritative national total; far below golf~2.3 million acres
Direct water use~17 billion gallons/year (2023)~531 billion gallons/year (2024)
Electricity176 TWh/year (2023)~2.4 TWh/year*
Pesticides / herbicidesNot materialRegularly used on maintained turf
Total economic contribution / impact$926.9 billion (2024)$226.5 billion
Jobs supported5.5 million~1.65 million

*The national golf electricity estimate is older and should be treated as an order-of-magnitude comparison rather than a current industry census.

Start with volume. There is no universally accepted definition of a data center, so counts vary depending on whether campuses, buildings and individual facilities are counted separately. An August 2026 tracker identifies about 3,579 operational U.S. data centers and roughly 4,700 when facilities under construction and planned are included. Pew Research Center similarly reported in April that the country had more than 3,000 operational data centers. (DC Map) Golf is considerably more widespread. The latest National Golf Foundation figures count 16,034 courses at 13,975 facilities in the United States. (American Golf Industry Coalition)

Then there is land.

The USGA has estimated that American golf courses occupy nearly 2.3 million acres. (USGA) There is no similarly authoritative national accounting of the acreage occupied by data centers. Rather than manufacture precision from commercial databases, the relevant comparison is scale: America’s golf footprint runs into millions of acres, while several thousand data centers occupy a small fraction of that amount.

Water produces an even more startling comparison.

American golf facilities applied 1.63 million acre-feet of water in 2024, according to the latest Golf Course Environmental Profile survey. That equals approximately 531 billion gallons. To golf’s credit, that represents a 31% decline since 2005 as courses have closed and surviving facilities have become more efficient. (GCSAA)

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that U.S. data centers directly consumed approximately 66 billion liters of water in 2023, or roughly 17 billion gallons. (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) So American golf courses use roughly 31 times as much water as data centers directly consume onsite.

Data centers also have an indirect water footprint because generating electricity can consume substantial amounts of water. Golf similarly has indirect resource requirements associated with electricity, fertilizer, chemicals, equipment and maintenance. The 31-to-1 comparison is specifically between water applied at golf facilities and direct water consumed at data centers — not their respective total lifecycle water footprints.

Chemicals produce another imbalance, although one that cannot responsibly be reduced to a current national poundage figure.

Golf courses maintain enormous areas of highly managed turf using fungicides, herbicides, insecticides and other treatments. GCSAA’s national pest-management research confirms continued use of those conventional chemicals while also finding greater use of non-pesticide practices and reductions or little change in reliance on conventional chemistries between its major surveys. (GCSAA)

Data centers, by contrast, do not require herbicides, fungicides and insecticides as a significant part of their core operation. They may have ordinary landscaping needs, but chemicals are not to computing what turf treatment is to golf.

There is one environmental measure where the comparison flips completely: electricity.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that U.S. data centers consumed 176 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2023, approximately 4.4% of total U.S. electricity consumption. Its June 2026 update projects that data centers could reach 11.8% of U.S. electricity consumption by 2030, with scenarios ranging from 9.5% to 15.3%. (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Golf isn’t remotely comparable. A U.S. Department of Energy analysis estimated golf-course electricity consumption at approximately 2.4 TWh annually, with a typical course consuming about 250,000 to 500,000 kWh and irrigation pumping accounting for 25% to 50% of course electricity use. The estimate is old, so it should not be mistaken for a current measurement. But even substantial growth would leave golf far below the electricity requirements of data centers. (U.S. Department of Energy)

Data centers are power infrastructure in a way golf courses simply are not. But power is being converted into something: economic output.

A 2026 PwC study commissioned by the Data Center Coalition calculated that the U.S. data-center industry contributed $926.9 billion to GDP in 2024, supported 5.5 million jobs and generated $204.4 billion in federal, state and local taxes. (Data Center Coalition)

Golf is also a significant American industry. Its national economic-impact study calculated $101.7 billion in direct economic activity and $226.5 billion when direct, indirect and induced effects are included, supporting nearly 1.65 million jobs and $80.1 billion of wage income. (GCSAA)

America has decided that using millions of acres and hundreds of billions of gallons of water for recreation is ordinary, while communities increasingly treat far smaller amounts of land and direct water used for digital infrastructure as an environmental crisis.

That doesn’t make data centers environmentally harmless. It identifies the environmental challenge they actually present: Power.

Data centers consumed 176 TWh in 2023 and could approach 12% of America’s electricity consumption by 2030. That growth demands generation, transmission and grid investment on an extraordinary scale.

The country should scrutinize where that electricity will come from, who pays for the infrastructure required to deliver it and whether utilities can add generation quickly enough without shifting costs onto existing customers.

Golf uses the land. Golf uses the water. Data centers use the power.

The question for data centers isn’t whether America can spare the acreage or the water. It is whether America can build the electricity infrastructure quickly enough to support an industry already contributing nearly $1 trillion to the economy and will drive the innovation and jobs of the future.

The Jetway Jesus Problem

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Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle once watched 20 passengers board a flight using wheelchairs. When the plane landed, only three needed wheelchairs to get off.

“We are healing so many people,” he joked.

Airline executives and frequent travelers have complained for years about what has become known as “Jetway Jesus”: passengers who seemingly need a wheelchair to board but miraculously walk after landing.

Some of those passengers undoubtedly have legitimate needs. Being able to walk off an airplane does not mean someone can walk a mile through an enormous airport. Disabilities can be invisible, intermittent and complicated.

But the incentives to game the system are also obvious.

Airlines for America estimated that its members were providing about 1.77 million wheelchair assists every month in 2018—more than 21 million annually. American Airlines alone reported more than eight million wheelchair-assistance requests in 2023.

The Government Accountability Office found that some international flights can arrive with 50 to 80 wheelchair requests. More tellingly, airport and airline stakeholders told the GAO that some passengers request wheelchairs because they believe assistance will move them through the airport faster.

Why wouldn’t they?

Wheelchair assistance can come with an attendant through a sprawling terminal, help navigating security, preboarding and early access to increasingly scarce overhead-bin space. The passenger pays nothing.

The airline does. So do the passengers waiting for attendants and chairs that have been diverted elsewhere. And ultimately so does the genuinely disabled traveler whose assistance is delayed because a finite system is overwhelmed.

The instinctive solution is to catch the fakers. It is also perhaps the wrong one.

A gate agent cannot determine whether the person standing up from a wheelchair has arthritis, multiple sclerosis, heart disease—or no disability at all. Requiring medical documentation would create another bureaucracy while inevitably making travel harder for people who actually need help.

There is a much simpler answer:

Make wheelchair assistance easier to get, but less valuable to game.

Europe offers the beginning of a model.

In America, wheelchair assistance through an airport is generally the responsibility of the airline. Airlines commonly hire contractors, meaning multiple carriers operating in the same terminal maintain separate obligations for moving passengers through the same building.

Europe largely puts that responsibility on the airport.

That makes intuitive sense. Airports operate the terminal, elevators, escalators, trains and other common infrastructure. Mobility through the terminal can be another common airport service.

America should consider adopting that model—and then go further.

Imagine the passenger’s journey.

At the curb, anyone who needs mobility assistance gets it. No doctor’s note. No interrogation. No charge. The airport’s common mobility service gets that passenger through the terminal and to the gate.

But a wheelchair is transportation, not a Fast Pass.

Needing help traveling three-quarters of a mile through Newark does not necessarily mean someone cannot wait in the ordinary security process. Assistance should help passengers through security without automatically moving them ahead of everyone else.

The same principle should apply at the gate.

A passenger who needs help crossing the terminal does not necessarily need help boarding an airplane. Passengers requiring an aisle chair, additional boarding time, assistance transferring to a seat or other physical accommodation should continue to preboard.

Someone who simply needed a ride to the gate can board with the appropriate regular group.

That distinction matters because early boarding has acquired real economic value. When airlines charge for checked luggage and overhead-bin space becomes scarce, getting onto the aircraft first means getting the bin. Wheelchair assistance should not be the way to acquire it.

Arrival could work similarly.

Passengers who need physical assistance getting off the aircraft receive it. Where operationally appropriate, assistance requiring an attendant could occur after ordinary deplaning rather than creating another potential time advantage. Current federal rules would need modification before airlines could impose a universal last-off requirement, but the principle is worth considering.

The objective is not to punish someone for needing help. It is to make assistance neutral.

And then measure it.

DOT and airports should publish wheelchair-assistance requests per 1,000 passengers, broken down by airport, airline and perhaps domestic and international routes. If comparable flights routinely generate radically different assistance rates, operators and regulators would finally have data to investigate rather than anecdotes about miraculous recoveries on the jetway.

Most importantly, none of these reforms requires deciding who is disabled. That is the elegance of changing the incentive instead of policing the passenger.

The wheelchair should get that passenger exactly what was requested: Mobility. Nothing more—and nothing less.

Frum Fraud

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A sprawling mortgage fraud investigation has been working its way through a corner of American real estate with deep connections to the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

The Real Deal spent months mapping the people and companies caught up in it. Its conclusion was striking: “A commercial mortgage fraud scandal is getting big and ugly.”

The publication estimated that the financial scale of suspected fraud “likely runs well into the billions,” although the exact amount remains unknown. Fannie Mae alone claimed roughly $700 million of exposure to eight sponsors it had blacklisted, according to an internal email obtained by the publication.

Federal investigators have already secured guilty pleas and prison sentences. Others remain under investigation or scrutiny and have not been charged with wrongdoing.

The Real Deal noted another common thread among the sprawling cast of borrowers, brokers, lawyers and title companies it examined: “Many have ties to each other and to heavily Orthodox Jewish communities in Lakewood, New Jersey; Brooklyn; and Monsey, New York.”

The Real Deal graphic of players in wide mortgage fraud, July 2025

The schemes themselves were often surprisingly straightforward.

One method was to inflate a property’s financial performance, particularly its trailing 12-month financial statements, making the building appear more profitable and therefore capable of supporting a larger mortgage.

Another was even more audacious: create a second transaction.

The Real Deal calls it “the flip.” A property would be purchased at one price and then purportedly sold to another party at a substantially higher price. The second transaction could involve an affiliate or straw buyer and no genuine exchange of money. The higher fictional price was then presented to the lender to support a larger mortgage.

In one transaction, the deception became almost literal.

Moshe Silber, Fredrick Schulman and their co-conspirators acquired the Williamsburg of Cincinnati apartment complex for $70 million in March 2019. But that wasn’t the price presented to the lender and Fannie Mae.

Using a stolen identity and fraudulent documents, the conspirators presented a purchase contract for $95.85 million. The lender consequently funded a $74.25 million mortgage—more than the actual purchase price of the property.

And there weren’t merely two numbers on paper. There were two closings on the same day. The Justice Department says one closing reflected the true $70 million purchase price. The other reflected the fraudulent $95.85 million price presented to the lenders.

Silber ultimately pleaded guilty and received 30 months in prison. At sentencing, Judge Robert Kirsch described the conduct as involving layers of “chicanery and deceit.”

A second property followed a similar pattern.

Troy Technology Park in Michigan was actually acquired for $42.7 million. Aron Puretz and his co-conspirators submitted documents supporting an inflated $70 million purchase price, helping obtain a $45 million JPMorgan loan. Puretz ultimately received five years in prison and was ordered to pay more than $22 million in restitution.

Other cases involved different methods.

Jacob and Aron Deutsch pleaded guilty to fraud charges arising from a scheme involving Freddie Mac and HUD. According to prosecutors, false rent rolls and leases were supplied to lenders and appraisers, including leases identifying tenants who didn’t actually live in apartments or overstating rents. Vacant apartments were even staged with furniture to deceive inspectors into believing they were occupied.

The investigation has reached far beyond a handful of borrowers.

The Real Deal’s examination includes sponsors, brokers, brokerages, attorneys and title companies. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have blacklisted or restricted various individuals and businesses while the Federal Housing Finance Agency and other government agencies have investigated suspicious transactions. Some people identified by The Real Deal have not been charged with any crime, an important distinction in a scandal whose perimeter remains unsettled.

The investigation also raises uncomfortable questions about the institutions surrounding the borrowers.

Title companies had visibility into transactions. Brokers arranged financing. Lenders underwrote the loans. Attorneys prepared documents. The Real Deal notes that no lenders or underwriters had been indicted or accused of wrongdoing by federal agencies as of its investigation, while asking how much responsibility lenders have to ensure borrowers and transactions are legitimate.

Federal authorities have already been investigating for years. The prosecutions have involved the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey, with investigations by the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s inspector general, U.S. Postal Inspection Service and HUD inspector general. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have conducted their own reviews and imposed restrictions on industry participants.

There is another institution worth considering: the community itself.

The Real Deal did not identify these communities incidentally. Lakewood, Monsey and Brooklyn contain some of America’s largest and most intensely religious Orthodox Jewish populations. The people implicated in the scandal cannot be generalized to those communities, and many people appearing in the broader investigation have never been charged with wrongdoing.

Yet when a pattern becomes significant enough that a national real estate publication specifically identifies connections among participants and heavily Orthodox communities, it becomes reasonable for the community to ask what is happening in its midst.

One of the convicted participants ultimately asked that question of himself.

Before his sentencing in June 2025, Boruch Drillman apologized to his family, investigators and the financial institutions he had helped defraud. He had pleaded guilty to participating in a $165 million mortgage fraud conspiracy and ultimately received five years of probation after cooperating with investigators.

Then he addressed the contradiction between his conduct and the community and values with which he identified. “I tarnished the Jewish people, and I failed to live by my values that I claim to hold so dear.”

Federal prosecutors can investigate fraudulent closings. Fannie Mae can blacklist borrowers. Freddie Mac can restrict vendors. Judges can impose prison sentences and restitution.

But who is policing the values before the government has to police the people?

Antisemitism As Political Currency

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It is very strange that Sen. Jon Ossoff would make fun of Donald Trump.

Trump has many more followers and, candidly, is much better at insulting people than just about anyone. So it begs the question as to Ossoff’s motivation.

At an Atlanta rally, Ossoff mocked Trump for supposedly not wanting to do the job of president, saying Trump wanted to “build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace,” referring to Trump aide Natalie Harp. He later doubled down, describing Harp and other aides around Trump as a kind of “security blanket” to make him feel good about himself.

Ossoff had to know that would provoke Trump’s ire and generate targeted insults.

And it did.

Trump mocked Ossoff as a “Pee-wee Herman” look-alike, while White House officials piled on with insults of their own.

But those insults would go out to millions of Trump followers. Ossoff’s supporters and anti-Trump people would simultaneously pile on online. Suddenly, Ossoff becomes the topic of conversation, and people start talking about him running for president in 2028. Indeed, that is already part of the discussion surrounding the episode.

It is all manufactured to improve his visibility.

Ugly. Vapid. And that’s politics.

But what about Rep. Jamie Raskin claiming that Trump manufactured the antisemitism-in-schools narrative?

Raskin seized on a whistleblower complaint from former Justice Department attorney Haley Van Erem, who alleged that the Trump administration’s investigations of antisemitism at Harvard, Brown and Columbia were driven by predetermined political objectives and, in some instances, pursued without sufficient factual or legal grounds. The Justice Department disputes those allegations and stands behind its investigations.

Raskin went considerably further in describing what the report meant. He accused Trump officials of abusing Title VI investigations to attack universities while using “antisemitic discrimination as a pretext and a ‘ruse.’”

That is not a silly swipe at Trump. It is an anti-factual smear about Jews under attack.

Why would Raskin do that?

In politics, it is to generate views and, consequently, power. He might get picked up by Hasan Piker or others who trade in Jew hatred online. He chums for antisemites to get their support for his own personal brand while simultaneously scrubbing any scent of Jew from his person.

That is a whole different kettle of fish than silly insults about Trump.

And it says terrible things about the state of the Democratic Party, that Jewish progressive politicians are whitewashing antisemitism in an appeal to votes from antisemites.

The Depravity of Antisemitic Socialism Has Become a Movement

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From his perch at The New York Times, Thomas Friedman wants to be “very clear” about Hamas. Instead, his formulation gets the moral order backwards.

“Hamas is a terrible organization,” he writes, “first and foremost for Palestinians.”

Hamas is not primarily a terrible organization. It is a terrorist organization whose foundational ideology targeted Israel and Jews.

Hamas said so itself. Its 1988 charter declares that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” Article 7 invokes a religious tradition about Muslims fighting and killing Jews. Article 13 rejects negotiated settlements: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.”

October 7 was the depravity of those words turned into action. Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel, attacked civilian communities, murdered families and kidnapped hundreds of people. Terrorism was not an unfortunate byproduct of Hamas rule. It was the method of an organization whose charter had openly described its enemy and objective.

Nor was Hamas imposed upon Palestinian Arabs. In the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, voters handed Hamas 56% of the seats in parliament — 74 of 132 — and control of the legislature.

October 7 did not sever that political connection. In December 2023, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 72% of Palestinians believed Hamas’s decision to launch the October 7 attack was correct, including 57% in Gaza and 82% in the West Bank. Even in October 2025, 53% still called the decision correct.

That context makes Friedman’s criticism of Western Hamas apologists particularly revealing. He calls the “free pass” Hamas receives from some pro-Palestinian progressives “shameful.”

The issue runs much deeper than shame.

There is a straight line from a charter describing the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews, to terrorists carrying out a massacre in Israel, to people defending the decision to launch that attack. The depravity lies in the ideology, the terrorism committed in its name and the willingness to celebrate or excuse it afterward.

And that depravity has migrated into American politics. The Democratic Socialists of America and radical left-wing university professors describe Israel as a colonial project and Israelis as “colonialists,” a framework to erase the distinction between combatants and civilians and recast violence against Israeli Jews as “resistance.” This movement is no longer confined to demonstrations and campuses; DSA member Zohran Mamdani has ridden the democratic-socialist movement into the New York City mayoralty and is now helping other left-wing candidates like Mohamed El-Zayed in Michigan win office.

Friedman’s formulation reverses the danger. Hamas becomes “terrible” rather than terrorist. Palestinians become its primary victims rather than a population which supports Hamas. And those in the United States and elsewhere who give Hamas political cover are merely “shameful.”

That formulation grants absolution to terrorists and their knowing supporters.

The endorsement and celebration of mass violence against Jews — a tiny minority-minority — is becoming a motivating force in American politics. That should terrify Thomas Friedman. It should terrify every decent American.

Because when a movement can watch the mass murder of Jews and explain why their killers were engaged in “resistance,” the problem is no longer simply Hamas.

The depravity has become a movement.

The Eclipse of Jihad

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Staring at the sun is dangerous. It can permanently damage your eyes.

That is true today, during a solar eclipse. It was true yesterday. And it will be true tomorrow.

Yet almost no one spends an ordinary sunny day warning people not to stare at the sun. There are no news alerts. No public-service campaigns. No rush to buy protective glasses.

Then an eclipse arrives, and suddenly everyone is talking about retinal damage.

The eclipse does not make the sun more dangerous. It makes us more likely to look.

On an ordinary day, the sun is painfully bright. We instinctively turn away. During an eclipse, the moon covers much of that brightness. The sun becomes darker, stranger and irresistible. Curiosity tells us to keep looking precisely when the covering makes the danger easier to underestimate. We look at the danger precisely when the danger hides behind a mask.

The danger was always there. What changed was our behavior.

Violent jihad presents a darker version of the same phenomenon.

An ideology that glorifies murdering civilians, suicide bombings and religious war does not become less dangerous because something is placed in front of it. Yet organizations, activists and politicians can provide a kind of ideological eclipse—describing jihadist violence primarily through the language of “resistance,” “liberation” or Palestinian Arab self-determination.

October 7 should have been impossible to romanticize. Thousands of Hamas terrorists murdered families in their homes, slaughtered young people at a music festival and dragged hostages into Gaza. Yet almost immediately, people began searching for language that could place a covering over the horror.

“Palestinian self-determination” became one such covering. It transformed a discussion about what Hamas actually did and what it openly sought into a more familiar political argument about nationalism, borders and statehood. The words did not change the violence. They changed how people were invited to look at it.

The head of the CAIR posted that October 7 was a Martin Luther King moment for Palestinian Arabs while the massacre in Israel was ongoing

And once the horror is covered, something disturbing happens. What should repel people can become a passing fascination. Violence acquires slogans, symbols and intellectual rationalizations. Terrorists are recast as revolutionaries; psychopaths and cowards as heroes. People who would instinctively recoil from the naked ideology are encouraged to stare at a filtered version of it.

That is the danger of an eclipse. It does not destroy the source of the danger. It obscures enough of it to change human behavior.

The sun was dangerous before the moon passed in front of it. It will remain dangerous when the moon moves away.

Violent jihad was dangerous before October 7. It remained dangerous while people explained its atrocities through socialist-jihadi language. And it will remain dangerous after today’s political fascination moves somewhere else.

The eclipse does not change the sun nor does political covering change violent jihad. It only changes whether people recognize the danger when they look at it.