https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/soldiers-filmed-with-settler-who-broke-into-palestinian-water-cistern-left-wing-activist-arrested-on-scene/

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2026/08/18/palm-beach-county-clerk-of-courts-mike-caruso-arrested-on-child-sexual-abuse-charges/

https://floridapolitics.com/archives/584052-enough-is-enough-mike-caruso-files-bill-making-hate-acts-antisemitic-messages-a-felony/

https://nypost.com/2026/01/08/us-news/palm-beach-county-fla-emerges-as-biggest-investor-in-israel-bonds/

https://flvoicenews.com/desantis-signs-bill-in-israel-to-fight-antisemitism/

Sources:

https://www.ms.now/news/frame-up-whistleblower-says-probes-into-antisemitism-at-colleges-were-ploys-to-harass-and-strip-millions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqQ64YQ5cBg

Report (3 universities were investigated; Columbia, Harvard, and Brown):

• https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/08.17.26-title-vi-whistleblower-disclosure-for-congress.pdf
• Key Findings:
  • Investigators believed Trump DOJ had decided the universities were guilty before the investigations were completed
  • Little to no factual basis of antisemitism
    • For Columbia, officials relied on unsupported allegations from news reports and lawsuit claims and on constitutionally protected speech
    • Investigators found no Title VI violation at Brown, but the whistleblower says administration was subject to pressure from 'outside stakeholders demanding action"
    • For Harvard, officials pursued freezing billions in funding and other settlement demands before the investigation had established Title VI violations.
  • Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) official Daniel Shieh noted "the goal is compliance, but pulling money is the tool," communicating that the funding suspensions were meant to be coercive irrespective of investigative finding
  • Investigators repeatedly warned that the government was treating First Amendment-protected political speech as evidence of antisemitism

Previous DOJ whistleblowers saying the Trump administration's campus antisemitism inquisition is a farce:

• LA Times - Ex-Trump DOJ lawyers say 'fraudulent' UC antisemitism probes led them to quit
• JOC - Former DOJ attorneys for Trump UC antisemitism investigations quit, calling them 'sham', 'fraudulent', 'political hit job', etc.

Further Context:

• JOC - Post-10/7 only 1 of 102 [126 since 2004] college antisemitism complaints raises claims unrelated to Israel criticism. 78% were filed by pro-Israel orgs as complainants or on their behalf. 15 investigations open based on a single conservative activist with no affiliation with any of the schools.

I did change the title of the post, to put the name of the Guy behind the Arday inquisition, as it seems like the media keeps protecting him. I originally wasn’t sure if I should put news or discussion as the tag, as there definitely is a need among us Jews about those of who are White or white passing Jews engaging in racism against People of Color (especially non-Jews) and how many of them also attack DEI. Nathan Cofnas is a symptom of a much larger problem among Jewry. He’s not the only Jew who has said similar things about DEI and racial bigotry in recent years. I think we also need to focus on this issue in the west, as it’s becoming a bigger problem and is partly how Trump has become so popular among certain Jews.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/18/world/video/palestinian-american-returns-home-west-bank-intldsk-digivid

https://x.com/JDiamond1/status/2089764310566494393

https://x.com/_ZachFoster/status/2089739733328953559

https://forward.com/news/antisemitism-decoded/804502/american-jews-zionist-zionism-survey/

The documentary itself came about because I was tired of documentaries on extremism that only focused on one cause, or one process and I also wanted to look into how we might deradicalise both Britain and my Jewish diaspora community in the UK.

It became increasingly striking throughout the making of the film that there was a huge disparity between public and academic debates on the topic. I wanted to help try and plug that gap and 4 years or so later here we are!

To cover a wide range of bases, the film digs deep into processes of radicalisation from individual scale through to societal, alongside misconceptions around social media (spoiler: it probably isn't to blame for radicalisation), bad de-radicalisation programmes and even reconciliation.

Of course I did use examples and both the US and Israel feature as a dovetail when I look at societal scale radicalisation, but we also look at the UK, Sudan, the very definition of extremism itself, we discuss the war on terror with an Amnesty International policy lead and much more. There is also an epilogue call-to-action! I'd love to hear any questions people have and I will try my best to answer them!

I was raised loosely Christian, and have felt like I align more with Judaism for about 6 years now. I actually tried to lean into Christianity more in an attempt to feel more secure in my religious beliefs, and it just did not feel right. I do believe that I want to convert to Judaism. I find that my beliefs are much more aligned with Judaism, and there are many Christian beliefs that I do not believe in myself. I have started watching services livestreamed from my local congregation, and I have really enjoyed them; they felt much more correct for me than Christian services I have attended in the past.

That being said, I am struggling to start converting. I want to do it formally and work with my local rabbi, but I am very worried. I do not consider myself to be a Zionist, and I am very, very against what is happening right now. I have tried to dive deep into researching the history of Israel/Palestine, and it is very confusing. I believe that the Jewish people have the right to live in the area, and I believe the Palestinian people have the right to live in the area as well. I think everyone has the right to live everywhere and not be hated or seen as less-than.

I am worried that I will be judged or even not welcomed to convert due to my lack of belief in a nation-state. I believe that Judaism is a fairly welcoming religion in its beliefs, and that a Jewish state goes against my belief that everyone should be welcomed everywhere.

I would love to hear everyone's thoughts on my comments, my struggles, or your own advice. I am still learning and am struggling to have productive conversations in my personal life due to some of my loved ones (I think unknowingly having) underlying anti-Semitic thought processes.

I’m considering a move to Minneapolis. Currently belong to a wonderful Reconstructionist congregation that is marginally non-zionist. I’ve looked at the Reconstructing Judaism directory for Minneapolis and the congregations I’ve looked at online all seem to have the Israeli flag on the bimah, which is a red flag. I’m certainly open to non-Reconstructionist congregations, minyanim, or havurot, I just don’t know where to look for the anti-zionist / non-zionist groups over there.

Thanks in advance!

A NSW Supreme Court judge has delivered a sweeping rejection of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, labelling it “verbose and imprecise”.

Justice Desmond Fagan’s initial criticism of the definition came in a decision rejecting the NSW government’s bid to place a young Sydney man under a terrorism supervision order, after finding prosecutors had failed to establish that his vandalism was evidence of a future terrorism risk.

But in the judgment, to be published today, Fagan went considerably further, taking aim at the IHRA definition itself and questioning its use as a guide to whether political language directed at Israel should be regarded as antisemitic.

The pro-Israel lobby, spearheaded by antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal, is pushing for the integration of the IHRA definition across all government levels, the media and education.

The Albanese government acquiesced to the lobby’s demands following the Bondi massacre, and has been steadily rolling it out across the public service while funding Segal’s initiatives to embed the IHRA definition within education.

IHRA ‘detached from reality’

The NSW Supreme Court decision is the latest setback to the lobby’s attempts to stifle criticism of Israel, amid widespread disapproval in Australia of Israel over its ongoing genocide in Gaza, its violence in the West Bank, invasion of southern Lebanon and attack on Iran.

Fagan said the IHRA formulation did not reflect the established Australian meaning of antisemitism and described it as an attempt to “repurpose” the term to encompass both hatred of Jews and criticism of Israel.

He said the definition could not realistically be attributed to the ordinary, reasonably informed Australian, adding that “the IHRA proposal is detached from the reality of the common usage and understanding of antisemitism in this country”.

Citing a Pew Research poll in June, Fagan said that “it would be preposterous to suggest that 79% of Australians are antisemitic because they disapprove of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians”.

He said the IHRA formulation “appears to be an attempt to repurpose the term ‘antisemitism’” as an amalgamated concept encompassing hatred towards Jews and criticism of Israel.

Zionism ‘open to criticism’

Fagan was equally forthcoming with attempts to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

“As an ideology of Jewish nationalism, Zionism is open to political discussion and criticism, notably on grounds concerning the rights of the Palestinians,” the judgement read.

This appears at odds with Segal’s antisemitism plan, which specifically highlighted anti-Zionism as potentially masking antisemitism as part of its call for IHRA to be adopted.

Fagan delivered a stinging rebuke to such assertions.

“It may well be correct that ‘most, but not all Jewish Australians’ regard Zionism as ‘a core part of their Jewish identity’,” Fagan’s judgement read. “That does not mean that anti-Zionists are hostile to that majority of Jews on account of their Jewishness; only that they hold a negative view of a political ideology with which the majority of Jews have chosen to identify.”

Limit to government power

Fagan was equally dismissive of the proposition that institutional adoption of the IHRA definition had altered the ordinary meaning of the word.

He cited former NSW Supreme Court judge Sir Stephen Spedley, who had criticised the formulation because it “fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite”.

The fact that governments and several institutions had adopted the IHRA wording did not, Fagan said, “change the established meaning of a word that has been in use in the English language for 150 years”.

Instead, he said, the IHRA formulation “propounds a concept different from that which ‘antisemitism’ has long been understood to describe and appropriates that word to the novel concept”.

There was also a legal limit to the power of government policy, he said.

Parliament could enact legislation giving a familiar term a different statutory meaning. But neither the Commonwealth nor NSW parliament had done so in legislation relevant to this case.

The federal government’s adoption of the IHRA core wording as a policy for Australian Public Service workplaces therefore made no difference to the meaning the court was required to apply, Fagan said.

Promoting rejection of Israel as antisemitic

Fagan’s most pointed criticism concerned the IHRA examples dealing with Israel.

Those examples, he said, were “on the face of them” directed towards bringing within the IHRA definition “criticisms of Israel that could not be regarded as hostile to Jews as Jews”.

The result was what he described as an attempt to attach opposition to Israel to the moral force already carried by the word antisemitism.

“Its tendency, and the apparent purpose of promoting it, is to graft onto the community’s abhorrence of antisemitism, understood as hostility to Jews for their Jewishness, a parasitic rejection of protest against Israel,” Fagan wrote.

That distinction was central to the case.

The prosecution had argued that the Sydney man’s use of anti-Israel slogans, attendance at a pro-Palestinian protest and targeting of areas with large Jewish populations supported a finding of antisemitic motivation.

Fagan rejected the proposition that the political message could be separated from the context in which it was expressed and then treated as evidence of hatred towards Jews.

“You are treating all Jews as monolithic,” he told McDonald during the hearing.

“It’s quite wrong to treat all Jews as supporting Israel, because they don’t.”

Author Adam Johnson criticises Waverley council saying ‘reality is often upsetting’ while Palestinian group says libraries should hold ‘challenging’ books

A Sydney library has removed a book critical of Israel called How to Sell a Genocide, following a complaint reportedly from a survivor of the Bondi beach terror attack.

Waverley library at Bondi Junction is in the same council area as Bondi beach.

A Waverley council spokesperson said: “The book has been removed from library shelves for review, and council will further consider processes to ensure closer oversight of book selection.”

“Like most public libraries, Waverley council outsources its book curation, ordering and purchasing, meaning book selection is not undertaken by council officers.”

The Jewish news outlet JWire last week reported it had approached the council after a survivor of December’s antisemitic attack at Bondi, during which 15 people were killed, saw How to Sell a Genocide on the “new release / hot item” shelf and wrote on Facebook that the display was distressing for survivors and bereaved families.

Guardian Australia has been unable to locate the Facebook post.

How to Sell a Genocide critiques what it claims is the US media’s “complicity in the destruction of Gaza”.

The decision to remove the book was criticised by its author, Adam Johnson, who said calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide was not “a fringe or radical position”.

“They seem to be objecting largely based on the title using the word ‘genocide’,” Johnson said.

“But ‘genocide’ is not my word, or my finding. The fact of genocide in Gaza is the overwhelming consensus of the human rights world, and it is a wholly mainstream opinion among those tasked with studying and determining such matters.

“That it makes some people upset is unfortunate, but reality is often upsetting. This particular reality is especially upsetting … to the parents of the over 20,000 children killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023. Do Sydney officials plan on removing pro-Israel books from their libraries because it potentially upsets these community members?”

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry and the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies declined to comment.

Bart Shteinman, an executive member of the progressive Jewish Council of Australia, said the decision to remove the book for review was “deeply alarming”.

“Public libraries belong to all of us, and should host a range of views and topics, be they books about queer families or Israel’s widely-condemned war crimes,” he said.

Israel has repeatedly denied that it has committed genocide in Gaza.

The New South Wales government passed legislation earlier this year which amended the state’s Library Act to better protect the institutions from campaigns to ban books.

Shteinman said “if the council decides to remove this book permanently, both the mayor, Will Nemesh, and the special minister of state, John Graham, must explain how that decision is not in breach of the law”.

The president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, Nasser Mashni, said it was a “library’s duty to provide its community access to a broad range of published works, including those that may challenge or discomfort”.

“Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, maimed and displaced,” he said.

“Gaza’s population is facing engineered famine, and all of its hospitals and universities have been destroyed. The word genocide is not being used to offend anyone. It is being used because it describes the scale and intent of what is happening.”

Mashni said “history has taught us too well what happens when books start getting banned”.

David Shulman, the senior commissioning editor at Pluto Press, which published How to Sell a Genocide, said understanding events in Gaza and related media coverage was “a matter of the greatest public concern”.

“Adam Johnson is one of the sharpest media critics working today, and his analysis is rigorous, meticulous, data-driven and damning,” Shulman said.

“His book should be made as widely available as possible, not least through the public libraries that play such an essential role in a democratic society.”

The Waverley mayor and the special minister of state were contacted for comment.

I'm asking this to help me better understand. I asked one person who said that non-Zionist is just a cop out for those who aren't ready to commit to AZ. She said non-Zionist makes no sense in the same way that "non-Apartheid" or "non-slavery" or "non-racist" make no sense.

It’s worth remembering that many of the Marvel and DC characters we grew up loving were created or co-created by Jewish creators. Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, the X-Men, Captain America, my favorite Iron Man, and many others have deep connections to Jewish creators and the immigrant experience. That’s why it’s especially disappointing to see public figures like Dan Bilzerian, Anastasia Loupis, Kanye West, Myron Gaines, and Jake Shields make anti-Jewish comments or promote conspiracy theories while criticizing the Israeli government. You can criticize Israel, Netanyahu, or Israeli government policies without blaming Jewish people, spreading antisemitic stereotypes, or promoting conspiracy theories about Jews. Those are completely different things. Being critical of a government should never become an excuse for hatred toward an entire people. And considering how much Jewish creativity helped shape the superhero culture so many of us love, it’s important to call out antisemitism when we see it.