#chief rabbi of gaza

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Jon Levine

Rep. Jamaal Bowman and his campaign were duped by the parody social-media account of the fake “Chief Rabbi of Gaza.”

The phony X account of “Rabbi Linda Goldstein” is infamous for spouting anti-Zionist vitriol to ensnare unsuspecting progressives unaware that it is satirical.

The rabbi messaged Bowman about sponsoring a fundraiser for his Democratic primary campaign.

5Bowman’s X account and the fake “Rabbi Linda Goldstein” were in talks to hold a fundraiser.

Under Hamas rule Jews were not allowed in Gaza, and the only ones there now are hostages and IDF soldiers attempting to rescue them — something Bowman evidently didn’t pick up on when he began corresponding with the account.

Bowman, a member of the far-left House “Squad,” has become one of the most vocal critics of Israel and defenders of Hamas in Congress.

He is currently locked in a fierce primary battle with Westchester County Executive George Latimer, with polls suggesting Latimer could beat him badly.

If you don't know "Rabbi Linda Goldstein," read the rest of the article. And there is more here. And follow "her" on X.

[eretzyisrael]

by Kassy Akiva

In February, Albanese spoke to Harvard University students that Israel did not have a right to defend itself from Hamas terrorists who were raping, murdering, and burning homes and people.

“It didn’t have the right to act in self-defense, meaning waging a war because it couldn’t wage a war against the people it maintains under occupation,” she said. “What Israel had to do was to repel the attack on its own territory, arrest and detain and treat humanely the people who had been arrested and ensure justice.”

Her assistant maintained interest, even after being told it was a speech defending “intifada.”

“[W]e want to hear about the ‘Morality of the Intifada,’ which Zionists have co-opted and turned into a dirty word,” Goldstein wrote. “There is also a small honorarium available.”

De Martin responded days later, asking if Albanese could speak on May 7. “If I understood correctly, you would like Ms Albanese to deliver a keynote speech of around 15/20 minutes to the students,” De Martin said. Regarding the honorarium, De Martin said Albanese could not accept only officially but asked for it to be transferred to the “fellowship of her volunteer.”

“Moreover, concerning the honorarium, she cannot take honorarium for anything she does in her official capacity,” De Martin wrote. “However, she kindly asks for this honorarium to be transferred to the Fellowship of her volunteer which supports her mandate work. Could you please provide some detail on the sum of the honorarium? The research institute will then send you the invoice for payment.”

Sara Troian, another research assistant for Albanese, told the Daily Wire that the special rapporteur “never agreed to Linda Goldstein’s request,” even though emails show her team asked for a Zoom link. She added that she wanted the honorarium to be sent to her university to fund her work.

[workersolidarity]

🇮🇱 🚨 ZIONIST WHO CONDONES RAPE OF PALESTINIAN WOMEN DURING WAR IS APPOINTED CHIEF MILITARY RABBI

Barbaric Israeli Military Chief Rabbi Sparks Outrage with Writings on Defending Israel by "Raping women".

The appointment of Eyal Karim as the Israeli military chief rabbi has ignited a scandal due to his past writings permitting soldiers to rape women during wartime.

Despite this, 150 Zionist rabbis have come to his defense, arguing that challenging his appointment based on his "legitimate Torah positions" would have severe consequences for the Torah world in Israel and the Israel Defense Forces.

Karim, now a brigadier general, holds a prominent position offering spiritual guidance to Israeli soldiers involved in terrorizing Gaza.

Via @QudsNen

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[allthegeopolitics]

Chief rabbi of France Haim Korsia justified Israeli actions in Gaza during a French television interview and urged Israel to "finish the job". Broadcast on BFM TV, Korsia expressed his support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing a potential arrest warrant at the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in Gaza. Korsia described the violence in Gaza as "acts of war" and defended Israel's actions, saying that they were necessary to "protect its nationals". He said that Israel's military response was justified in the context of defending its citizens against Hamas, which he said is responsible for the ongoing conflict.

Continue Reading

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

Today, two Palestinian terrorists from the city of Hevron had carried out a combined, multi-scene terrorist attack in the city of Ra'anana, killing one woman in her 70's and wounding at least 17 more people. The exact details are still being investigated, but the two terrorists are said to be from one family, 24 and 44 years old, they were denied a work permit in Israel due to terrorist activity in the past, but someone in Ra'anana agreed to hire them illegally. They have both been arrested. The combined method they used was a stabbing and vehicular terrorist attack, they stabbed people, stole the first car, used it to run people over until they crashed it, then they stole a second, then a third car, and continued ramming into people across several streets, before they were stopped. 7 of the injured are reportedly kids, and at least 3 are seriously wounded.

As 136 hostages are still held captive in Gaza, 100 days after Oct 7, we got some data on the treatment of those released roughly 50 days ago: 85 are still under a nurse's supervision, 2 are still hospitalized, 54 are receiving mental health treatment of one type or another, only 18 have returned home, all the rest are still displaced, out of 40 kidnapped kids, 38 were released, but only 21 have returned to the education system, some in their own schools, some in schools improvised for their evacuated community.

In Turkey, an Israeli soccer player, Sagiv Jehezkel, who plays for a local team, scored a goal for it, and raised his hand, revealing to the cameras that on his bandage, he wrote "100 days," drew the Star of David, and added the date of Oct 7. It's obviously a gesture to the Israeli victims of Hamas, the ones murdered during or hurt by the massacre, and the ones still held in captivity.

For this, Sagiv was condemned by the Turkish Football Association, suspended from his team, which annoounced he'd be fired, and then he was ARRESTED and interrogated by Turkish police. For making a humane gesture to honor his country's victims. This is how Sagiv was portrayed in an antisemitic Turkish cartoon, with blood dripping from his lips, evoking the antisemitic image of the Jews who feed on the blood of non-Jewish kids:

Sagiv has been released after an appearance at court, and flown back to Israel immediately, but the head of the Israel Football Association said they're still worried for 2 more Israeli soccer players and 2 Israeli basketballers, who are currently playing for Turkish teams.

Shabak, the Israeli equivalent of the FBI (also sometimes referred to in English as Shin Beit), has confirmed today that Iran is operating social media platforms in Israel, that allow it to harass the families of the Israeli hostages, and Israeli security forces (for example, by exposing their addresses, or sending them flower bouquets with offensive messages). The Islamist regime of Iran is also using these to collect from surveys personal info on Israeli citizens.

I wanna share with you this screenshot from the article, as a reminder that just because someone says online that they're Jewish, or puts "Jewish" in their account name, doesn't make it so.

The chief rabbi of South Africa, Rabbi Warren Goldstein, in protest of his country's decision to file a false lawsuit against Israel at the International Court of Justice, has changed the customary prayer for the well being of the country. He said: "This government is on the wrong side of history. Its support of Iran and its proxies - Hamas and Hezbollah - encourages a global Jihad,and harms Jews and innocent people worldwide. It's impossible to pray for such a government."

This is 36 years old Osama Abu Assa.

He was a Bedouin, from the village of Tel Sheva. On Oct 7, he was at the Nova music festival, and one of about 367 people who were murdered there. I got to hear several people talking about what a huge heart Osama had, how he was all about giving to others and helping people. May his memory be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[girlactionfigure]

A known parody X account by the name of "Rabbi Linda Goldstein," who is described in her bio as the "Chief Rabbi of Gaza," invited Francesca Albanese, to speak on the "morality of intifada" at Columbia University at Goldstein's invitation - with a "small "honorarium available."

Albanese serves in the role of the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories. Goldstein said on X that the UN official initially agreed to speak on campus "but when the encampments were broken up and the honorarium dried up, she backed out."

Read More: JPost

H/T @scartale-an-undertale-au

[mirkobloom77]

‼️🇵🇸🇮🇱 Israeli army ‘urgently needs’ more soldiers as Gaza killing continues, is resorting to using over retirement age and ultra-orthodox jewish people

[Plain text: Israeli army ‘urgently needs’ more soldiers as Gaza killing continues, is resorting to using over retirement age and ultra-orthodox jewish people]

🔸 Source: Al Jazeera

🔹 Extra context:

-> Ultra-orthodox jewish Israelis are usually exempt from military service, however, the Israeli army is attempting to get them to join the troops. These people have on multiple occasions refused this, with Yitzhak Yosef, one of Israel’s two chief rabbis, declaring that “If they force us to go to the army, we’ll all go abroad”.

-> This is happening as Palestinian fighter groups, despite numerous attempts to eliminate them by the Israeli army, continue striking at occupation forces. Very recently, ten soldiers died in the same day in Gaza, marking the deadliest day for them since January.

-> Not only that, but Hezbollah has been escalating it’s attacks on Northern Israeli territory. Earlier this month, it launched dozens of rockets at military bases and other places, setting massive fires, and today they released detailed footage of Haifa and it’s surroundings, using aircraft that went undetected by Israeli authorities, so much that it was able to return to Lebanon completely fine.

[seldarinesorcerer]

Ipcha Mistabra

In the Talmud, in Tractate Bava Metzia, Abaye and R. Pappa, two 4th century Babylonian rabbis, got into an argument. And like many arguments in the Talmud, what they disagreed about was which of two earlier authorities held differing opinions on a matter of Jewish law. You could see it either one of two ways – say you have an argument with your brother, for example, about a disagreement that went on years ago between your great aunt and your great uncle. You say it was your great-uncle that loved the Red Sox and your great-aunt who loved the Yankees, but your brother says it was the other way around (she loved the Red Sox) – and then he throws in the fact that Ted Williams was a better baseball player than Joe DiMaggio, now you have a full-blown rabbinic kerfuffle.

Getting back to the case of Abaye and R. Pappa, they were attempting to establish the basis for determining a fair market price for olive oil, which was a precious commodity in the ancient near east. It turns out that olive oil was sold filtered, no sediments were supposed to be in it; and the authorities carefully watched the seller’s and the purchaser’s assumptions about how much of this excess material got through the process anyway, got mixed in, and they’d establish the price based on their divergent assumptions. 

So after Abaye lays out his reasoning, lines up which side took which role in the argument, R. Pappa turns around and says “You’ve got it totally backwards - how they argued it out,” and he offers an 180-degree differing explanation about who (more than a century earlier) took which position and what was motivating them.

"Ipcha Mistabra" – the Talmud says. It’s Aramaic for “Things can be understood the other way around.” It’s the Talmud’s way of saying, hey, you might think that, here, this is the logic behind a certain dispute, but guess what! I’m going to illustrate an opposing, maybe counterintuitive, way of looking at the disagreement. You can see it from a different angle entirely.

Ipcha Mistabra

An editorial writer in Haaretz on August 1st this past summer (Haaretz being a totally secular newspaper) used the term to make his point. He suggested that in political circles we should all be asking what may be counterintuitive, even shocking – about why Netanyahu would assassinate the political leader of Hamas in Tehran, if the guy was a key player in negotiating a diplomatic solution to the hostage crisis and ending the war? (Keep in mind this was before the assassination of Nasrallah and the Hezbollah decapitations in Beirut!) The guy who got killed, Ismail Haniyeh, was a bad guy, for sure, but do you assassinate one of their chief negotiators? At the time, most commentators just drew the conclusion that Israel may have overshot its goals, made a tactical blunder. But the same writer went against the grain, by suggesting that Netanyahu intended it, he did it deliberately – he “outsourced” a tenet of Israeli escalation domination strategy to Iran – by calling its bluff – letting Iran figure out at what level – it would decide to retaliate. The reasoning for this, he continued, is that the Israeli prime minister actually wanted Iran to bear the risk of confronting the US. Force Iran to think about a larger war it can’t control by upping the stakes for itself and its proxies and sucking America into it. And, at the same time, the Israeli prime minister would divert attention away from the war in Gaza!

But I’m not bringing this up to get into politics, we have enough of that. See, what I’m curious about is this way of thinking – going with what’s counterintuitive that’s happening right in front of us. We’re often so sure about how things have reached the stage they’re in right now – but just suppose we pause to ask an alternative set of questions? In the dazzling novel Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, a young woman from East Berlin falls in love with an older married man from the “other” side, only a year or so before Germany is reunited. As the wall falls, her reality and her fantasies disintegrate, better yet, are subsumed within a new mental mapping – and all that remains of a long, illicit affair is a ritual they go on performing whenever they part company (in Erpenbeck’s words): “When they leave a place together, he holds out her coat, she slips into it front-wise, briefly holds him in her arms, then slips it off and puts it on the right way.”

Ipcha Mistabra

I can remember, when I was a child, I used to walk down this (what I thought was a) long hall and peer behind the thin glass of a mirror on the wall, to see if there was something there looking through it – back at me.

Getting to the Truth is more than simply arguing the other side of a debate (that’s hard enough, standing in someone else’s shoes); sometimes it’s looking at the obverse of what we think we know – for everything we commonly think of as true and solid – there may be, in fact, something more unsettling to it. 

At the end of July, it was reported that William Calley died in a hospice in California. For those of you born long after the Vietnam War, Mr. Calley was synonymous with the My Lai massacre, the mass murder of a village filled with defenseless women and children, although in so many ways his conviction told us something more. It stood in for a senseless war fought by Americans for a regime that was terrible and corrupt – a war that our society eventually came to realize it should have no part in. It unmasked a larger issue: that something in our own society was rotten, had failed, and we needed to look ourselves in the mirror. Coincidentally, the same day that it was reported that Calley died, it was also reported that a Palestinian prisoner was abused in the crudest way by Israeli soldiers, and were it not for a whistle-blower, there was a likelihood that others would get away with this abhorrent behavior, and, in fact, probably already have. And yet, there were loud protests in Israel by people who think it’s somehow unfair to accuse prison guards who, after all, are put in charge of the worst of the worst.

Ipcha Mistabra

What do these moments mean for our hopes and illusions in a larger sense? How do they speak to our commitments to one another, to making a better world? Can we, in these Days of Awesome, marshal the fortitude to peer behind the hell-scape of the kibbutzim that were devastated on October 7th, the charred remains of homes, the wreckage of a dance festival? Is there a way to see behind the mirror – or maybe it’s for this very reason that we cover the mirrors in a house of mourning? And then there’s the cruelty to the hostages that keeps us looking away.

Ipcha Mistabra

Have you read Percival Everett’s great literary invention, called James? It takes Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and turns it around, so that we explore, we come to know what’s behind the opaque figure of a slave, however benevolent, the character of Jim is in the original famous book. In Everett’s telling, that same Black human being, invested with dignity and chutzpah is brazen enough to steal… a pencil! He’s hidden it away deep in his pocket, because if he’s caught with it, he’s liable to get hung. The pencil is more valuable than anything else – and in Everett’s words, he writes “himself into being.” In fact, James’ supple use of language is his character’s animating force – he’s not just intelligent, but he’s a human being with his own desires and imagination. What you get is there’s another side to Twain’s story. And, I’d also go so far as to say that Huckleberry Finn in each telling of the story is a child who’s a tabula rasa – he’s malleable, sympathetic, not yet formed, our humanity without the artifice of race, that reflects what could someday be true of all of us. But in the meantime, it’s James who comes into focus in this new telling. 

Ipcha Mistabra

The same pattern of obfuscation-and-recovery holds true for Viet Than Nguyen, the writer of the wonderful novel from a few years ago, The Sympathizer, but who also wrote a scholarly nonfiction work entitled Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and The Memory of War. He calls attention to the design of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, its shiny black granite surface, as bringing not just the names of those lost American soldiers front and center, but, we, the viewers, see ourselves observing it. The wall provokes anxiety – there’s a mirror effect – and suddenly we are implicated; and it subverts the patriotic American framing of this war being our tragedy. We’re looking away! We’re omitting the memories of millions of dead Vietnamese, after all. He calls it a “disremembering”.

I was talking to a rabbi in my community about this, and he told me that he and his wife had taken a trip to Vietnam this past spring. He said that he was hoping naively, as a Jew living at a time when our own prospects for tomorrow are in question, to understand how and to what extent the Vietnamese have come to terms with the past and embraced a different future... But in wishing to see things all “repaired”, he very well could have been disremembering too. I wonder how the Vietnamese will write “themselves into being” again? 

So we know right now we’re standing at a crossroads in modern Jewish history. It’ll take decades to sort it all out: what we in the Jewish world should want, whom it is we think we serve, whom we fail to serve, and the memories that cloud our vision. There’s that mirror we hold up, as does Sarah in Genesis 21, with the opening line:

ויהוה פקד את־שרה כאשר אמר ויעש יהוה לשרה כאשר דבר 

It’s translated “G-d remembered Sarah just like God had said,” but it’s more than remembering – the verb פקד means “G-d performed an accounting, (as if there was something yet owed).” And the commentator Malbim explains that although G-d had predicted the birth of a child in Sarah’s old age, to her it was – until this point – lacking in credibility, unresolved – what with her passive husband yielding to her jealousy, nonchalantly leaving Hagar with her toddler out in the cold, the family in turmoil. After all, Sarah famously laughs out loud, she finds G-d’s prediction funny, even a bit disturbing. In this troubled Torah narrative, amidst her doubts, the future hangs in the balance.

Nachman of Bratslav teaches that when we are despairing, at odds with the people around us, we can become like a blank slate, a book that’s empty – Every one of us can be like “a human being,” שאין לו ספר. There’s nothing in the book – it’s vanished! An empty Torah scroll! So, he says, we begin, this is where we find ourselves, at this place of no place, but we still have this blazing desire in our hearts, a yearning to learn! Maybe we forgot something? 

And how does Nachman set it up? He says it’s like this: that somewhere out there in the world there are two tzaddikim, two righteous people, they’re conversing with one another, however – the only thing is – they’re walking along on two separate paths, this one tzaddik over here on this side of the world and this other tzaddik miles and miles away. Maybe it’s a bit like being online? But he goes on to say that this one tzaddik over here poses a question and the other one over there offers an answer, a way to figure it out. A question and an answer, but again – it’s just speech, our voices, often cacophonous, nothing more than that – but they can add up. It’s the vibrations that unite, and they can produce the purest Sound, the Voice of G-d. And it’s this Voice that ultimately connects one to the other, Nachman says – it’s this Voice that then gets written down as a ספר זכרון, we call the Book of Remembrance. We remember!

We may have during a long, hard year forgotten something about ourselves, what we really stand up for. It’s possible. We may have, on the arduous path – amidst our arguments, our public statements, our gatherings in solidarity or in protest – lost track of who we are, where we can vibrate with the Truth – where the Truth of humanity is. James Baldwin said it: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” 

Ipcha Mistabra

Things can sometimes be explained the other way around, in a way we have as yet not fathomed, or refuse to see. We may never have expected it, we may never have imagined an entirely different future, or maybe we disremembered it all along! – but somehow, in seeing things differently, it might yet help us to get at the Truth. 

On this Yom Kippur, may we loosen the shackles of ideology, slacken just a little bit the cords of fear and recrimination and sanctimony, and help our adversaries, our neighbors, even the ones we love who’ve hidden their faces from us at times – to write ourselves “into being”. May we all be written and sealed for a year that gives us new life and hope and, G-d-willing, a focus on peace.

Amen.

[violottie]

The zionist settler colony and regime is a white surpemacist establishment. zionists are white supremacists. (caption under reel)

from essad_68, 19/Feb/2024:

🇵🇸Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to “liberate” black people in Africa, after killing over 10,000 children in Gaza within 100 days.

⏩ Let’s be clear: Israel is not Africa’s friend, and here are some separate yet related facts to support this statement:

⭕ Haftom Zarhum was the first African refugee to be lynched by Israelis in a public place in full view of CCTV cameras, but he would not be the last. It is worth noting that Zarhum was a 19-year-old Israeli soldier, yet all the perpetrators saw was the colour of his skin. The following year, two Israeli teens killed another African refugee, Babikir Ali Adham-Abdo, beating him to death right outside of the city hall of Petach Tikvah, a Tel Aviv suburb. Source: Al Jazeera. Black lives do not matter in Israel.

⭕ On March 17, 2018, one of Israel’s two chief rabbis, Yitzhak Yosef, called black people “monkeys” and the Hebrew equivalent of the N-word in his weekly sermon. Source: Al Jazeera. Black lives do not matter in Israel.

⭕️ On March 19, 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a public speech that the arrival of non-Jewish African refugees was “much worse” for Israel than “severe attacks by Sinai terrorists.” Source: Al Jazeera. Black lives do not matter in Israel.

⭕️ Under Israel’s Law of Return, any Jew anywhere in the world has the right to immigrate to Israel. But there’s one notable exemption: Ethiopian Jews. For years, Ethiopian Jews have been blocked from joining their relatives living in Israel, while other white Jewish migrants and refugees from Ukraine have been welcomed in their thousands. Put simply, Ethiopian Jews have the wrong skin colour for Israel’s ethno-religious demographic project to be considered fully Jewish. Source: TheNewArab. For Israel, black Ethiopian Jews are not Jewish enough.

⭕️ In 2019, further Black Lives Matter protests took place after 18-year-old Ethiopian Israeli Solomon Teka was shot and killed by an off-duty Israeli police officer. Source: TheNewArab. For Israel, black Ethiopian Jews are not Jewish enough.

[collapsedsquid]

“We prefer dying to serving in the Israeli army,” said Yona Kruskal, 42, a father of 11 and full-time seminary student, as he blocked traffic in Jerusalem with about 200 others last week in one of the frequent protests against the conscription law. “There’s no way you can force us to go to the army, because we are hell-bent that the army and religion contradict one another.” As the Haredim scuffled with police at the protest, other passersby berated them, chanting “Shame! Shame!” “My friends are sitting in Gaza while you’re here, sitting on the ground,” one man yelled. A woman screamed at the protesters that her son was serving in Gaza to protect them. [...] One of the country’s two chief rabbis, Yitzhak Yosef, said this month that the Haredim “will all move abroad” if forced to enlist. The comment drew both condemnation, for encouraging Israelis to leave during a national crisis, and ridicule, because many secular Israelis would have no problem with the Haredim  leaving en masse, said the Israel Democracy Institute’s Malach.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Jon Levine

A parody social media account of the fake “Chief Rabbi of Gaza” has duped another Squad member.

The re-election campaign of stridently pro-Palestinian Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri) was considering a possible fundraiser with “Rabbi Linda Goldstein” — a bogus X account that spews anti-Israel bile to catfish eager-to-believe progressives.

The account — which previously fooled Bush’s congressional comrade Rep. Jamaal Bowman — reached out to Team Bush on June 23 with the fundraising idea, exchanges shared with The Post reveal.

“I’ve been bouncing around different cities since my congregation was displaced from Gaza after Israel’s invasion on October 7,” Goldstein wrote in an email to Ronika Moody, Bush’s finance and engagement director.

Also – would [Bush] travel to the Gaza border for the fundraiser? The optics could be incredible!”

Moody responded on June 27, writing, “Cori is interested in hosting in Gaza and it’s something she has been trying to plan. Unfortunately, we have not been successful with that opportunity as of yet.”

“Theme is Gaza?” Moody asked.

Goldstein — who has boasted of using a menorah made of missiles and digging terror tunnels into American universities among other outlandish antics — suggested the fundraiser’s theme could be “the morality” of intifada.

[eretzyisrael]

Good News From Israel

In the 17th Nov 24 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:

Volunteers at a Gaza border refreshment tent have served half a million IDF soldiers.

Israeli innovations combat cancer, heart disease, PTSD, brain diseases, and aging.

A Druze-Israeli spoke Arabic to save Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam.

The war certainly doesn’t scare off visitors to Israel from the animal kingdom.

Israeli startups can save the planet from plastic pollution.

Israel’s economic indicators are increasingly healthy.

Israeli technology protects more American soldiers.

Two new Israeli Chief Rabbis have been inaugurated.

Read More: Good News From Israel

This week's newsletter sees Israel valiantly advancing in its war to topple Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and its terror proxies. Meanwhile, Israel's citizens have been awarded top national and international honors including as "Lions of Zion", rocket scientists, sports champions, and religious leaders. These achievements are just some of the highlights of Israel's continuing efforts to produce top innovations that benefit humanity.

The photo is of a Netanya school awards ceremony, illuminated by solar powered lighting on top of the playground.

[mariacallous]

WASHINGTON — The killing of an Israeli Chabad rabbi in the United Arab Emirates shocked many, and illustrated the dangers Jews face around the world. 

But if the aim of the attack was to to undermine the Abraham Accords between Israel, the UAE and other Arab nations, Middle East analysts say it could well have the opposite effect: making those ties even stronger. 

“If anything, given the Emirati response, and given that I have not seen any Israeli indication that somehow the UAE didn’t take this seriously enough, it seems to be the opposite, that Israel deeply appreciated the UAE response,” said Michael Koplow, the chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum, referring to a UAE statement calling the killing of Rabbi Zvi Kogan an “attack on our values.”

“In many ways, it’s only going to lead to a stronger diplomatic relationship,” he said.

Israel and the UAE are both still coping with the fallout from the killing of Kogan, 28, a Moldovan-Israeli emissary of the Chabad Hasidic movement who moved with his wife to Abu Dhabi in 2022, and whose body was discovered on Saturday. Authorities in the UAE on Monday arrested three Uzbek nationals suspected of involvement in his murder, which Israel has called an act of terror.

As authorities investigate who is responsible for Kogan’s death, political circles in Washington, D.C., Israel and the Gulf are asking a related question: What will this do to ties between Israel and the UAE?

The stakes of that question have become especially high in recent weeks. The two countries normalized relations in 2020, in what is known as the Abraham Accords, and their ties have proven resilient even as Israel fights a brutal multi-front war against terror groups in Gaza and Lebanon. Now, President-elect Donald Trump, whose first administration brokered the accords, has vowed to expand them in his coming term beyond the four Arab states that have already signed on, including drawing in Saudi Arabia.

His former aides say that that ambition has not been hindered — and could even be accelerated — as a result of the weekend’s tragedy. 

Jason Greenblatt, the former Trump administration envoy to the Middle East, said he was in the UAE when the murder was reported and he encountered nothing but outrage — a sign, he said, that warm feelings are persisting between the countries even as Israel faces protest and opposition across the Middle East and beyond due to the war in Gaza. 

“Everyone I met, Emiratis and other nationalities, including other Arab nationalities, were angry about what happened,” Greenblatt, who travels frequently to the region, said in a text to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

He added that the Abraham Accords were secure, and that the attack reflected the ability of the perpetrators “to penetrate even extremely secure cities” such as Dubai, where Kogan was last seen.

“To those tying the tragic, cold-blooded murder of Rabbi Kogan to the Abraham Accords and suggesting that the Abraham Accords will now weaken or fail, I strongly disagree,” he said. “The Emiratis abhor this kind of behavior. Of course it’s true that at this moment it may be uncomfortable to be openly Jewish or Israeli. That’s natural given what happened. But not because of Emiratis or the countless other nationalities that live in and thrive in the UAE.”

The UAE is an authoritarian state with strict limits on press freedom and protest, and the message the Emirati government has projected since the discovery of Kogan’s body has been anger and indignation at his killers. 

“Zvi Kogan’s murder was more than a crime in the UAE — it was a crime against the UAE. It was an attack on our homeland, on our values and on our vision,” wrote Yousef Al Oitaba, the UAE ambassador to the United States, in a series of tweets on Sunday. “In the UAE, we welcome everyone. We embrace peaceful coexistence. We reject extremism and fanaticism of every kind. We honor Zvi Kogan’s memory by recommitting ourselves to these values.”

Motti Seligson, the director of media for Chabad, told JTA that Chabad, too, was determined to emerge stronger in the UAE following the killing. 

Kogan was one of seven emissaries in the country, and Seligson said Chabad would build a center in the UAE in Kogan’s memory. Donations have already begun to come in: Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who led the Abraham Accords negotiations, pledged $1 million to Chabad in UAE, and soon his brother Josh followed up with a pledge for a matching amount. A fund for Kogan’s widow has so far raised more than $750,000. 

“When we’re faced with adversity, we strengthen; when we’re faced with darkness it just means there’s more light to bear,” Seligson said in an interview.

The Biden administration said it was already working closely with the Israeli and UAE authorities to bring those responsible for Kogan’s death to justice. It reinforced the message that the attack was uncharacteristic of the welcome the Emirates had extended to Israelis, who began traveling to the country in large numbers following the Abraham Accords. 

“This was a horrific crime against all those who stand for peace, tolerance, and coexistence. It was an assault as well on UAE and its rejection of violent extremism across the board,” said a statement from Sean Savett, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his opening remarks Sunday to the weekly Cabinet meeting, also sounded determined to nurture and strengthen the relationship with the UAE.

“I greatly appreciate the cooperation of the UAE in investigating the murder,” he said. “We will strengthen the ties between us in the face of attempts by the axis of evil to harm the relationship of peace between us. We will strengthen them and we will work to expand regional stability.”

Authorities have not yet determined whether an organization or country is behind the attack. Rich Goldberg, a National Security Council Middle East staffer during Trump’s first term, said the killing had the hallmarks of those seeking to undermine the normalization deal, which also encompass Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.

He said the perpetrators may have also hoped “to scare the Emirates and the Saudis that there is some sort of penetration of Islamic terrorism that can somehow blow back on their regimes.”

Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the attack, whoever was behind it, was a sign of weakness — an indication that the perpetrators could not reach Israeli officials or hard targets.

“If this is the most they can do, it’s the softest possible target there is, a civilian who really stands out,” he said, referring to how Chabad officials wear visibly Jewish garb in public. “It’s not a government official, it’s not a ballistic missile barrage.”

Goldberg said if anything, the murder should spur the expansion of the Abraham Accords as a sign that attacks like these are ineffectual.

“This is  a moment where if you don’t respond in that way, if you pull back from normalization, if you say that Islamic terrorism to sabotage normalization will succeed, then you will see more terrorism,” Goldberg said. 

The IPF’s Koplow said one immediate effect could be the diminishment of travel between Israel and the UAE. Currently, there are six or seven flights between the countries a day, a notable exception to other airlines which have stopped flying to Israel while it wages a war on multiple fronts against enemies who fire barrages of missiles.

“If you have fewer Israelis going to the UAE because of security concerns, and that’s obviously an aspect of the relationship that is an important one, that’s going to suffer,” said Koplow.

[salvia-plathitudes]

Hundreds of Jewish anti-war demonstrators have been arrested during a Passover seder that doubled as a protest in New York, as they shut down a major thoroughfare to pray for a ceasefire and urge the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to end US military aid to Israel.

The 300 or so arrests took place on Tuesday night at Grand Army Plaza, on the doorstep of Schumer’s Brooklyn residence, where thousands of mostly Jewish New Yorkers gathered for the seder, a ritual that marked the second night of the holiday celebrated as a festival of freedom by Jews worldwide.

The seder came just before the US Senate resoundingly passed a military package that includes $26bn for Israel.

UN rights chief ‘horrified’ by reports of mass graves at two Gaza hospitals

The protesters called on Schumer – who is among a minority of Democrats to recently criticize the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu – to stop arming Israel’s military, which relies heavily on US weapons, jet fuel and other military equipment.

“We as American Jews will not be used, we will not be complicit and we will not be silent. Judaism is a beautiful, thousands-year-old tradition, and Israel is a 76-year-old colonial apartheid state,” Morgan Bassichis, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace, told the crowd.

“This is the Passover that we take our exodus from Zionism. Not in our name. Let Gaza live.”

The mass arrests came after the seder rituals. Speakers included journalist and author Naomi Klein, Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour, and several Jewish students suspended from Columbia University and Barnard College over the protests that have rocked US campuses in recent days.

Rabbi Miriam Grossman, from Brooklyn, led a prayer before the first cup of ritual wine. “We pray for everyone besieged, for everyone facing starvation and mass bombardment.”

Klein spoke after eating the bitter herbs that represent the bitterness of slavery at the seder. “Our Judaism cannot be contained by an ethnostate, for our Judaism is internationalist by its very nature. Our Judaism cannot be protected by the rampaging military of that ethnostate, for all that military does is sow sorrow and reap hatred, including hatred against us as Jews.”

Jewish communities have often used Passover to protest about global injustice. Tuesday’s protest, organizers said, was inspired by the 1969 Freedom Seder, organized by Arthur Waskow on the anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s death. The original Freedom Seder sought to connect the Jewish exodus story with the struggle for civil rights in the US and against the war in Vietnam.

One protester, a 31-year-old Jewish woman who asked not to be named for security reasons, said: “Passover is about liberation. In our family, Palestinians have always been part of our celebration and mourning. The call for liberation is more important now than ever … As Americans, the billions of our tax dollars in the Israeli military bill is outrageous and horrifying.”

[communistfeminist]

Regarding Zionists' baseless claims of "mass rape" by Hamas and other Palestinian liberation forces of settler women...

There have been zero substantiated reports connecting Hamas or any other Palestinian resistance organization to rape or sexual assault in any capacity SINCE THEIR INCEPTIONS DECADES AGO. These accusations are textbook colonial propaganda predicated on ANTI-ARAB RACISM and ISLAMOPHOBIA.

Israelis have been so blindsided by Al-Aqsa Flood and do not want to believe that the Palestinians are capable of such a sophisticated, surgical military operation, and so are resorting to the age-old, RACIST technique of portraying colonized/Eastern people as violent barbarians who want to rape their precious white women.

DO NOT FALL FOR THEIR PROPAGANDA.

As is often true of empire propaganda, what Israel accuses Palestine of doing, THEY DO THEMSELVES. It is simply projection. In fact, the IOF's chief rabbi Eyal Karim was once asked about wartime rape and responded by saying that, in the spirit of maintaining soldiers' morale during armed conflict, it was permitted to "SATIFY THE EVIL INCLINATION BY LYING WITH ATTRACTIVE GENTILE WOMEN AGAINST THEIR WILL."

How can you call yourself a feminist and support the settler-colonial entity of Israel, which in the past 48 hours ALONE has killed at least 687 people in Gaza, including 140 children and 105 women?

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

Tragically, an IDF helicopter attacked a building in Gaza that had Israeli soldiers inside. At least one of them was killed. I've heard people claiming that there's no such thing as mistakes or collateral damage, that if Palestinian civilians get killed, it's because Israel wanted that, but this is a reminder that mistakes DO happen, and that every army, no matter how good, will get some people killed that it never intended to. This soldier's family asked for his details not to be published. May his memory be a blessing.

Israel is going to open a border crossing into Gaza, which had been closed since the Oct 7 massacre and Hamas attacks on the border crossings, in order to make the entrance of humanitarian aid into Gaza even more efficient.

A man shot at a Jewish synagogue in the US last night, on the first eve of Hanukkah, while shouting "Free Palestine." If it's anti-Zionism, not antisemitism, why do these incidents keep happening?

We're hearing here in Israel more and more reports on canceled Hanukkah festivities and candle lighting due to different claims, but the bottom line remains heartbreaking no matter which excuse is used. The biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust led to further punishment of Jews.

Here's extra Hanukkah candles for all Jews out there, please know that here in Israel, we are always with you!

In NYC, a shop that's a part of an Israeli company decided to have a special sale to raise money for the Israeli rape victims of Hamas. Two of the shop's employees resigned. Reportedly, they're women. The Jewish community replaced them with volunteers.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall sent a letter to media organizations, including the New York Times, warning them about their coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, since their reporters were "clearly embedded with Hamas."

For anyone who still doesn't understand why most Jews have been upset since Oct 7:

Following the discussion in congress about antisemitism, where the presidents of Harvard, MIT and UPenn couldn't bring themselves to denounce a call to genocide the Jews as harassment, Rabbi David Wolpe, a member of Harvard's committee to combat antisemitism, resigned, saying it became evident to him he couldn't help create the change he was hoping for.

I mentioned Gal Eizenkott in my daily update post yesterday, the 25 years old son of Israeli minister Gadi Eizenkott, the IDF's former chief of staff. Gadi is a part of Israel's war cabinet, the small team making the most essential decisions on the fighting. The IDF's spokesman, Daniel Hagari, mentioned yesterday that Gal didn't have to serve in this war, he volunteered to.

This is not that important in the larger scheme of things, but since I've shared vids of IDF soldiers helping Palestinians in Gaza, why not also one of IDF soldiers helping animals in Gaza? Especially since I love donkeys. They are SO sweet. Israeli soldiers fighting in Gaza found, during a break, a donkey that was abandoned in a field, with its legs tied together by a rope. The soldiers set it free:

This is 68 years old Dror Kaplun.

He was believed to be kidnapped by Hamas. Last night, Israeli archeologists working on the scene of the Hamas massacre managed to find frgaments of his bones next to the fence of his kibbutz. He was the son of Holocaust survivors. His wife Marcel was also murdered. May their memories be a blessing.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)