A long but important update today with several articles and reports that I encourage you to read through.
The Numbers
Casualties
1,825 Israelis have been killed including 828 IDF soldiers since October 7th (+6 since Sunday)
Staff Sgt. Ido Samiach, 20 (above), a team sergeant in the Nahal Brigade’s reconnaissance unit,was killed in Northern Gaza
Maj. Dvir Zion Revah, 28 and Cpt. Eitan Israel Shiknazi, 24 (below), were killed in northern Gaza’s Beit Hanoun. Both served in the Nahal Brigade’s 932nd Battalion. Revah was a company commander and Shiknazi was his deputy.
Master Sgt. Elad Yaakov Winkelstein (left), 35, Rachel Cohen (center), 73 and Aliza Raiz (right), 70, were killed in a terror shooting attack in the West Bank village of al-Funduq on January 6, 2025. (Credit: Times of Israel)
Master Sgt. Elad Yaakov Winkelstein, a police officer, and Rachel Cohen and Aliza Raiz were killed and at least eight other Israelis were wounded when Palestinian terrorists opened fire on vehicles in the northern West Bank on Monday morning. The shooting attack, which targeted a bus and two cars, occurred inside the Palestinian village of al-Funduq, which straddles a major artery used by thousands of Israelis and Palestinian drivers daily.
The South: 393 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza have been killed (+3 since Sunday)
The North: 131 Israelis (84 IDF soldiers) have been killed during the war in Northern Israel (no change since Sunday)
2,534 (+5 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 484 (+5 since Sunday) who have been severely injured.
5,584 (+8 since Sunday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 821 (+6 since Sunday) who have been severely injured.
According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 45,854 (+493 since Sunday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 109,139 (+1,336 since Sunday) have been injured during the war.
On October 7th, Ohad Hemo with Channel 12 Israel News – the country’s largest news network, a leading expert on Palestinian and Arab affairs, mentioned an estimate from Hamas: around 80% of those killed in Gaza are members of the organization and their families.”
The Associated Press, an outlet with a demonstrated anti-Israel bias, conducted an analysis of alleged Gaza death tolls released by the Hamas-controlled “Gaza Health Ministry.” The analysis found that “9,940 of the dead – 29% of its April 30 total – were not listed in the data” and that “an additional 1,699 records in the ministry’s April data were incomplete and 22 were duplicates.”
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes official details on every civilian and IDF casualty.
Hostages (no change)
There are currently 96 hostages taken on 10/7 currently in captivity in Gaza
On October 7th, a total of 261 Israelis were taken hostage.
During the ceasefire deal in November, 112 hostages were released.
145 hostages in total have been released or rescued
The bodies of 38 hostages have been recovered, including 3 mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
8 hostages have been rescued by troops alive
This leaves 100 hostages still theoretically in Gaza
At least 34 confirmed bodies are currently being held in Gaza
30-50 hostages are assumed to be dead and held in captivity
Thus, at most, 50-70 living hostages could still be in Gaza.
Hamas is also holding 2 Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of 2 IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
X Thread Worth Reading
Uriel Schachter posts on X: Former Head of the Mossad Intelligence Directorate, Zohar Palti, recently gave a very interesting interview on @NadavPerry‘s podcast. Here are his main arguments regarding 10/7, the Iranian nuclear program, the Abraham Accords, and the Syrian regime change:
When I woke up this morning, Iran still did not have nuclear weapons, which means someone is doing something right. They have not yet made a decision to go nuclear.
What happened here in April was insane. What the Israeli Air Force and CENTCOM accomplished during the Iranian attack was incredible. If you want to make a movie, this is the story to tell.
People do not grasp the power of the US: They understood, through our shared intelligence, that an Iranian attack was imminent. The Americans called all the ME leaders and told them, “Friends, listen—starting in two hours, there will be no civilian flights in the entire ME”.
Then, the radar screens were practically empty. No “good guys” were in the air, only “bad guys.” This made it much easier to identify targets. This is a level of power that has never been demonstrated before.
Regarding the pagers and future ops, I won’t address specific ops, but each operation of this kind is a 3-10 years of work. Let’s assume that the people who knew how to execute the pagers operation also know how to conduct similar operations on a larger, state-level scale.
Israel and the USA have invested billions in building a “canopy of defense,” including the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow 2. Soon, we’ll also have laser interceptors, which will upgrade the system.
Nasrallah’s mistake was thinking he understood Israel, but he didn’t. He saw division in Israeli politics but failed to grasp what you and I, as Israelis, understood immediately: at the moment of October 7th, politics no longer mattered.
If anything is most important to Israel, it’s the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. These are the two most stable elements of the past few decades. If, God forbid, anything destabilizes them, we will find ourselves in uncharted territory.
I don’t want to be an alarmist, but we will need to invest significant resources to address the developments around Jordan. Jordan is crucial to many issues—Palestinian matters, the Gulf states’ strategic depth, and the land connection between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
In the meantime, Erdogan is gaining disproportionate power. I don’t yet know his ultimate ambitions, and I have many questions about this new reality.
The Abraham Accords, still “young” at just three years old, have faced their biggest crisis. Yet Bahrain, the UAE, and Morocco have all upheld their agreements. I think that’s remarkable.
Watch
‘We don’t want no Zionists here’: Anti-Israel activists protest against New York City hospital by Luke Tress with The Times of Israel
Several hundred anti-Israel protesters demonstrate outside the NYU Langone Health Center in New York City.
They chant: “Say it clear, say it loud, Gaza you make us proud” and “Say it loud, say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here.”
Protesters carry signs that say “Abolish Israel” and “Right of return.”
The UN Underreported Roughly 2,200 Aid Trucks Entering Gaza in December in The Jewish Onliner
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) released reports on humanitarian aid trucks entering Gaza between December 1 and December 29, 2024. Following its release, data analyst Avi Bitterman, MD published an important analysis revealing that approximately 2,252 aid trucks were not counted by the two UN agencies during those dates—roughly 50% of the actual number that entered the strip during that period, which was 4,457.
Avi Bitterman posts on X: Just so everyone is clear about why @ochaopt/@UNRWA is systematically undercounting trucks (as noted by @cogatonline) they are literally only counting trucks from just 2 humanitarian aid agencies: only UNRWA (11%) and WFP (89%) trucks are counted from the period of Dec 1st – Dec 29th. Literally all other humanitarian aid groups are blank from the dataset as if they never existed. This amounted to thousands of trucks simply wiped, by the way.
Also, even the listed 240 trucks (11%) from UNRWA is misleading as this appears to be backlogged trucks logged at the point of collection, many of which appear to be screened prior to December. In fact in December 1-29th only 32 trucks were screened by COGAT database. By contrast, the WFP truck numbers (1,965) for Dec 1st – 29th more closely match the COGAT (1,439) and fall in line with the expected differences in truck numbers due to differences in truck size between delivery and pickup and some degree reasonable of pickup lag.
A subsequent clarification from Bitterman explained that the undercounting of aid trucks is not due to selective reporting by OCHA or UNRWA, but rather a shared reliance on incomplete and non-comprehensive data.
While UNRWA has recently updated its disclaimers to acknowledge gaps in its reporting, OCHA’s dashboards and snapshots continue to provide misleading or incomplete disclaimers.
The implications of such systemic underreporting are profound. Accurate data is the cornerstone of effective humanitarian operations, enabling organizations to allocate resources efficiently and shape sound policies. By failing to provide a full accounting of aid deliveries, OCHA and UNRWA not only misrepresent the situation on the ground but also jeopardize the success of relief efforts. These lapses erode confidence in their ability to operate as impartial and reliable actors in the crisis.
Herzberg’s statement underscores the dangers of relying on flawed data in high-stakes international decisions, amplifying the need for immediate corrective action.
Inside Columbia University’s ‘Museum of Terror’: A recent exhibit presented the tools and planning behind the Hamilton Hall break-in. A speaker called for a ‘Zionist-free NYC.’ By Maya Sulkin with the Free Press
Even before she first stepped foot on Columbia’s quads this past fall, Shoshana Aufzien was aware of antisemitism on campus. But she didn’t truly witness it until November 10, two months after she started studying at Barnard, Columbia’s sister school. Aufzien was scrolling through Instagram when she spotted a post from Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) and two other pro-Palestinian groups, promoting an event at a Columbia literary society, Alpha Delta Phi (ADP). The two-day event, on November 9 and 10, was entitled “Hind’s House,” in tribute to a 5-year-old Gazan girl, Hind Rijab, who died during Israel’s war against Hamas.
As a concerned Jewish student, Aufzien decided to go to the event to see what her peers were up to. What she saw, she said, shocked her. “The only way I can describe it,” she told me, “is a museum of terror.”
Posters about five members of Columbia’s Board of Trustees tacked to the wall of the exhibit, listing their various “crimes against the Palestinian people.” Credit: The Free Press
On the first floor, she spotted posters pertaining to five members of Columbia’sBoard of Trustees tacked to the wall, listing their various “crimes against the Palestinian people.”
Then Aufzien moved to the focal point of the room: a pool table covered with tools, such as wrenches, hammers, ropes, and wire cutters—all of which were used by anti-Israel protesters to break in to and occupy Columbia’s Hamilton Hall last April.
Across the room, another table was lined with posters; one depicted a hang glider used by members of Hamas to drop into Israel and murder innocent civilians on October 7, 2023.
Photographs on display depicted the occupation of Hamilton Hall in April 2024. Credit: The Free Press
Also on display were photographs depicting the occupation of Hamilton Hall, including masked invaders barricading doors and the viral image of Columbia custodian Mario Torres fending off protester James Carlson, a then–40-year-old with a trust fund.
A pamphlet targeted Laura Rosenbury, the president of Barnard, for “weaponizing Jewish pain to support genocide.” Credit: The Free Press
As Aufzien climbed the stairs to the second floor, she passed a poster detailing tunnel warfare in the Gaza Strip as well as a pamphlet targeting Laura Rosenbury, the president of Barnard, for “weaponizing Jewish pain to support genocide.”
The Hamilton Hall break-in was the culmination of one of the largest Columbia protests in history, which began on April 17 and mushroomed into a weeks-long encampment on the school’s main lawn. During the occupation of Hamilton Hall, protesters bashed in windows and doors and held multiple custodians hostage, leading to the arrests of 109 people in and around the building. Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has since dropped the charges against the majority of students who took part; now just 15 of the original 46 charged still face criminal charges, including second-degree assault and criminal possession of a weapon.
Aufzien’s friend, Alon Levin, a PhD student studying engineering, also attended the exhibit and observed the session on resistance training, led by the CUAD legal team.
Levin told me that about 40 attendees were given instructions on how to covertly protest. They were encouraged to wear masks when demonstrating, taught how to avoid campus surveillance cameras, and given optimal times to arrive on campus so their ID swipes were less likely to correspond with protest participation, he said. “It felt like I was in a training camp,” Levin told me. “It felt like they were preparing for something, but I don’t know what. They were very professional in how they taught resistance tactics. They had PowerPoints and textbooks on building resistance networks.”
On November 14, four days after the Hind’s House event, Aufzien and Levin filed a Title VI complaint with Columbia. In this formal allegation of discrimination, which The Free Press is reporting for the first time, they detailed to the university what they saw at the exhibition, noting the “terrorist propaganda and antisemitic tropes” displayed “in such a blatant manner” that it made them “feel targeted and unsafe.”
The students said the complaint resulted in no action from the school beyond a Zoom call from the university’s Office of Institutional Equity (OIE).
Even after Columbia president Minouche Shafik resigned this past August—largely due to her inability to control violent campus protests—evidence of antisemitism abounds here, even beyond the Hind’s House event.
Joseph Massad, a Columbia professor who, on October 8, 2023, described the Hamas invasion of Israel as “astounding,” will teach a course on Zionism in the spring semester. In a TV interview last month, Massad decried the concept of an “ancient Israel” and the idea that Jews are the “descendants of the ancient Hebrews” as latter-day “inventions,” even going so far as to describe the idea of any kind of genetic link between Jews today and ancient Israelis as a “Hitlerian project.”
Meanwhile, a second report from Columbia’s Task Force on Antisemitism, issued in August, documented incidents of Jew hatred coming not just from students, but professors and administrators.
For example, in the first week of the Masters of Public Health program, a professor discussed Jewish donors by name, calling them “wealthy white capitalists” who “laundered” “dirty money” and “blood money.”
A student writing a thesis on Israeli artists reported that each time she presented in her seminar, her thesis leader said, “I hate Israel.”
And, an Israeli student reported that when she sought help from campus health services, she “overheard a discussion between two healthcare professionals in another room in which one said they would not treat her because she was Israeli.”
“Columbia is treating Jew hatred as though it’s just a PR situation instead of tackling the root of the problem—a core group of racist affiliates and a system that continues to enable their activities. Open antisemitism has been normalized and become banal, and we, the Jewish community, can’t just pretend that the situation is ‘fine’ and go on as before.”
TikTok has been instrumental in fueling antisemitism around the world (see this article from November 2023: Why Do Young Americans Support Hamas? Look at TikTok), so I wanted to include this new report from Joel Finkelstein at the Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI).
New Report: TikTok Brainwashed America’s Youth by Jay Solomon in The Free Press
Since its U.S. launch in 2018, people have worried that the Chinese-owned social media giant TikTok is vacuuming up data on America’s teenagers and transforming them into modern, digital versions of the throngs who once enthusiastically waved Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book.
Now, an updated study conducted by Rutgers University’s Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI)—provided exclusively to The Free Press—finds that those fears may be justified.
The researchers found that TikTok significantly downplayed negative content related to China, such as Beijing’s bloody 1989 crackdown on democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square and the government’s treatment of its minority population of Uyghurs in the western Xinjiang province.
The report presents TikTok as an example of the “persuasive technologies” China is developing to shape public opinion in the West. Another major conclusion of the report, based on online polling, found that the more time users spent on TikTok, the more positively they viewed China’s human rights record and its desirability as a travel destination.
According to NCRI, more than 80 percent of the content generated in an Instagram search on the Uyghurs was negative toward China, compared to around 11 percent on TikTok
TikTok has more than 170 million users in the U.S. and over a billion globally.
The report says searches on TikTok generated videos and other content that was significantly more positive or neutral than what was found during searches on these other sites. Rather than finding political content, for example, TikTok generated videos about Chinese culture or tourism.
A demonstrator wearing a Palestinian Keffiyeh and a mask joins in a protest on International Workers’ Day in Washington, D.C. on May 1, 2025. (Probal Rashid via Getty Images)
We’ve seen this problem repeatedly play out on our streets, on mass transit, and in our schools, such as when a mob of anti-Israel protesters seized a Columbia University building last April. They took two maintenance workers hostage in the process before finally being ousted by police the next day. Dozens were arrested but, in June, the Manhattan district attorney’s office dropped the charges against nearly 70 percent of them. Why? Because it would have been “extremely difficult” to win convictions, one prosecutor explained, partly because some of the agitators wore surgical masks, hoods, and keffiyehs, making it hard to identify which individuals took which actions.
Anti-masking laws have a long history in America; states as culturally and politically varied as Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Virginia have had anti-masking legislation on their books for decades. They often originated at a time when the Ku Klux Klan was intimidating and attacking blacks, Catholics, and other minorities.
The intent of these anti-masking laws was clear: to dismantle the ability of Klan members to operate unseen and unpunished.
The activists staging the pro-Hamas protests that have proliferated on college campuses and city streets conceal their faces to make it impossible to determine who is engaged in violence, intimidation, and property destruction.
These marches and demonstrations often lead to attacks on synagogues, community centers, and Jewish-owned businesses, and cities across the country are struggling to limit this surge in antisemitism.
Stripped of anonymity and the menacing power of the keffiyeh or a balaclava, militants of all stripes are less likely to engage in criminal behavior. Yet many jurisdictions let them mask up with impunity.
As a free-speech advocate, I must acknowledge the reasonable concerns that anti-mask laws could infringe on free expression. But these are not novel issues, and the constitutionality of masking bans has been repeatedly upheld. Courts uniformly affirm that the public’s right to safety and the state’s ability to enforce criminal laws can supersede individual rights to anonymity.
It doesn’t take a degree in criminology to recognize that besides a tiny minority who cover their mouths for bona fide reasons, people who mask in public are up to no good. Properly conceived, these laws can help thwart criminals who cloak their identities not to express themselves, but as a means to terrorize and silence others. And they can help maintain a society where individuals are accountable for their conduct.
Organization with terror ties is trying to get IDF soldiers arrested around the world by Lahav Harkov in Jewish Insider
Yuval, a survivor of the Oct. 7 Nova Festival massacre and an IDF veteran of the war in Gaza, was relaxing in Morro de São Paulo, an idyllic island town in Brazil with a group of friends, when he got a call that disrupted what was meant to be a time of rest and recuperation. There was a warrant for his arrest in Brazil for alleged war crimes, the Israeli Consulate in São Paulo told Yuval.
Similar stories have occurred to IDF soldiers visiting Cyprus and Sri Lanka in the last two months
The organization hounding Israeli soldiers around the globe is called the Hind Rajab Foundation, and it has strong ties to Hezbollah. The foundation posted on its social media accounts a video of a building being blown up, without context, and claimed that Yuval “actively contributed to the destruction of homes and livelihoods” in Gaza.
The Brussels-based organization, founded in September and named for a 5-year-old Palestinian girl alleged to have been killed by the IDF in Gaza, takes legal action against what it calls “perpetrators, accomplices and inciters of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine.”
In October, the foundation submitted a complaint to the International Criminal Court with the names of 1,000 IDF soldiers, claiming that they committed war crimes. The foundation also gave the letter to the embassies of eight countries that have taken an antagonistic stance towards Israel, including Spain, Ireland and South Africa, calling on them to issue Interpol arrest warrants against the individuals.
The Hind Rajab Foundation is led by Dyab Abu Jahjah and Karim Hassoun, longtime anti-Israel activists with ties to terrorist organizations. The Beirut-born Jahjah was once called “Belgium’s Malcolm X” by The New York Times for founding immigrant rights group the Arab European League, which was behind multiple riots in the streets of Antwerp at the beginning of the century, including violence against Jews in the city and burning an effigy of an Orthodox Jew.
Jahjah told the Times that he joined Hezbollah as a young man. “I had some military training; I’m still very proud of that,” he said. He applied for asylum in Belgium at age 19, later admitting that he lied about a dispute with Hezbollah leaders in order to get into the country. In his application for political asylum in Belgium, he said that he “joined Hezbollah in the summer of 1988 in order to fight against the Israeli occupier of South Lebanon … He took part in military operations on Saturdays and Sundays, including commando actions in occupied territory,” and studied at his university on weekdays.
He has said that Jews in Israel have a choice between “the suitcase or the coffin.”
In December 2023, Hassoun posted that he “condemn[s] Hamas … for not having taken 500 or 1000 hostages instead of just 200.” He also claimed that “no evidence of Hamas rape has been provided to date.”
Eugene Kontorovich, head of international law at the Kohelet Forum and an expert on universal jurisdiction, the kinds of laws that would allow countries to arrest visiting Israelis, told JI that “it would be helpful for the government of Israel to provide a list of countries that are very anti-Israel and have laws to exercise this kind of universal jurisdiction.”
Kontorovich noted that Jahjah’s involvement in Hezbollah is a crime in the U.S., and he “would encourage the Trump administration to make clear that [Hind Rajab Foundation leaders] could be arrested for material support for terrorist organizations … The U.S. could even sanction people who have connections to Hezbollah.”
If Congress passes laws sanctioning the International Criminal Court, they may include those who work with the ICC against the U.S. and its allies, and that could be the basis for sanctions on the Hind Rajab Foundation, Kontorovich added.
How Soros-Backed Operatives Took Over Key Roles at Wikipedia by Ashley Rindsberg with Pirate Wares Technology
In 2017, Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, implemented the most profound shift in its history. The Movement Strategy, as this effort is called, would vastly expand Wikipedia’s mission. From its humble roots as a user-contributed encyclopedia, Wikipedia would now set out to become “an influencer in shaping world policy in access to knowledge.” (My in-depth explainer on the Movement Strategy, “How the Regime Captured Wikipedia,” is here.)
Maher’s emphasis of a single, endlessly repeated word — “open” — was loaded with ideological import. This wasn’t about open source software or collaboration. It was about making “the world” an open place.
Since the 1970s, George Soros has built a global political machine, anchored by his biggest NGO, the Open Society Foundations, on the concept of openness. Taken from the work of philosopher Karl Popper, the idea of an open society opposes any creed or system that might privilege one group over another.
Soros has spent more than $22 billion attempting to move the world closer to this vision. In the 1990s, in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of globalism, he advocated for the internationalization of state economies, arguing in The Alchemy of Finance for the creation of an international central bank, an international currency and, later, for an international regulator of state credit. (It’s not a coincidence that Soros’ signature trade, shorting the British pound, took place in the realm of currency disruption.)
As the migration crisis arrived on American shores, Soros funded dozens of organizations in an effort to implement the same policy (successfully, as it were) at the southern border. And as America became engulfed in domestic crisis, he infamously spent years, and tens of millions, electing radical district attorneys with a do-not-prosecute approach to crime.
At that time, Soros (who built his career and his political philosophy on the principle of never letting a crisis go to waste) was focused on leveraging the chaos surrounding the War on Information to advance his open society agenda. In January 2018, he gave a landmark address at the World Economic Forum where he spoke about the threat posed by Big Tech’s control of information:
The business model of social media companies is based on advertising. Their true customers are the advertisers. But gradually a new business model is emerging, based not only on advertising but on selling products and services directly to users. They exploit the data they control, bundle the services they offer and use discriminatory pricing to keep for themselves more of the benefits that otherwise they would have to share with consumers.
It was no coincidence that Soros, the architect and funder of a radical progressive agenda, and Maher, who led the world’s most influential non-profit information platform, were mirroring each other on this issue. The war on information was the new battleground for social and political change. Both understood that advances there would translate into deep, long-lasting gains in the effort to create an open society. It would be the Movement Strategy that would help them seize this opportunity.
The groundwork for the Movement Strategy had been laid in 2016, when WMF commissioned the PR agency Minassian Media to do a major communications audit after suffering a scandal when it attempted to launch a search engine, called Knowledge Engine, to compete with Google. Knowledge Engine had fallen apart amid accusations in the Wikipedia community of backroom dealing, leading its embattled executive director, Lila Treitikov, to step down.
It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that Minassian Media’s recommendations amounted to a full-throated endorsement of Clinton and Soros’ shared ideology. “We have an opportunity to double-down on several elements of the ‘open’ narrative,” Minassian wrote. They also pushed WMF to adopt a globalist approach, writing, “As a global organization, it’s important to be embedded in the global community.”
Powerful as the Clinton connection was, it was another influential WMF figure who proposed the Williamsworks consultancy: Lisa Seitz-Gruwell. Today, Seitz-Gruwell is president of Wikimedia’s $140 million Endowment and serves as the organization’s chief advancement officer. Before joining WMF, she was a fast-rising Democratic Party operative and a consultant at Gruwell and Associates (named after her husband, California lobbyist Chris Gruwell), where one of the biggest clients was the Democracy Alliance, a mega-donor fund co-founded — and primarily funded — by George Soros that has funneled over $1 billion to Democratic Party candidates, including millions to Hillary Clinton.
In 2018, the year of his Davos speech, Soros doubled down on his commitment to the Wikimedia Endowment with a direct $2 million donation. In its announcement of the donation, WMF emphasized Soros’ political philosophy, noting “his extensive philanthropy to support ideals underpinning a free and open society, including access to knowledge.”
WMF followed Zuckerman’s lead. With the resurgence of BLM in 2020, it launched the Wikimedia Race and Knowledge Equity fellowship, with $4.5 million in grants. It published a BLM policy: “We stand for racial justice,” which affirmed Wikipedia’s role as a “social movement” dedicated to “supporting knowledge and communities that have been left out by structures of power and privilege.” It also created an Inclusive Product Development initiative, which sought to design and implement “a DEI-centered software development process.”
WMF is not slowing down in its effort to fulfill the mandate of the Movement Strategy. And Wikipedia itself is only growing in significance. WMF recently noted that Wikipedia is among the most important content sources being ingested by LLMs, with one analysis showing that the site is one of the three most important sources for training data and among the highest for reliability. With the concept of Knowledge Equity shaping not just Wikipedia but the LLMs that shape our future, there’s little doubt that the Movement Strategy has been a success.
NY university opens first legal clinic training future lawyers to combat antisemitism by Luke Tress with The Times of Israel
A new, first-of-its-kind initiative at New York City’s Touro University aims to train future lawyers for those battles. Last semester, Touro opened its first antisemitism legal course and in the spring semester will launch its first legal clinic on the topic. Touro is a Jewish university with around 19,000 students.
The initiative is led by Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfelder, the director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, a nonprofit focused on using legal tools and education to combat antisemitism. The program is part of the group’s long-term plan to use the law to combat antisemitism
“One of those 20-year plans is training the next generation of people who can be professional Jewish advocates. Right now, there’s nowhere in the country where people can go if they want to become a Jewish civil rights lawyer.”
The undergraduate course last semester filled its 18 slots minutes after it was opened, Goldfelder said. Both Jewish and non-Jewish students participated.
The course, titled “Antisemitism and the Law,” aims to educate students on “how the law can be used to define and defend against hate while allowing for legitimate discourse and disagreement,” according to the course listing. The course examines the limits of protected speech and when offensive actions cross the line into harassment or discrimination, through the lens of antisemitism.
Goldfelder said his group is working on a “franchise model” for the training course and is talking to other universities, including non-Jewish institutions
Historians Condemn ‘Scholasticide’ in Gaza at Conference: The measure now goes to the group’s elected council for approval, disapproval or a vote of the organization’s 10,000-plus full membership. By Ryan Quinn with Inside Higher Ed
American Historical Association members attending the group’s annual conference voted 428 to 88 Sunday to approve a resolution opposing “scholasticide” in Gaza and the U.S. government’s funding of Israel’s war.
Scholasticide means the intentional eradication of an education system. The resolution, which says Israel’s military campaign “has effectively obliterated Gaza’s education system,” calls for a permanent ceasefire and for the association to form a committee to help rebuild “Gaza’s educational infrastructure.”
When the vote total was announced, the overwhelming majority was met with chants of “free free Palestine!” But Sunday’s vote is not the end of the process.
…opponent Natalia Petrzela, a professor at the New School, noted the resolution doesn’t mention the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israelis or the hostages Hamas took.
“Passing this resolution as the view of the AHA stands to hurt the historical profession and academia writ large,” Petrzela said. She said it would only lend credibility to accusations of political bias in academe, and “these attacks will only intensify with the coming [Trump] administration.”
Congressman Richie Torres (D-NY)comments on New York City’s end of year hate crime data: Jewish New Yorkers make up 12% of the population yet account for more than 50% of hate crime victims in New York City. New York has fundamentally failed to protect the Jewish community from a historic explosion of hate crimes.
Amnesty International suspends Israel branch for rejecting NGO’s reports by Michael Starr with the Jerusalem Post
Amnesty’s International Board has suspended Amnesty International (AI) Israel’s membership with the nongovernmental organization’s network for two years, according to leaked internal memorandums issued on Monday.
Insiders said, however, that evidence of racism on Israel’s part may have been orchestrated by AI leadership, and the international body has its obsessions and bias against Israel.
Amnesty Israel in December had rejected AI’s findings accusing the State of Israel of committing genocide during the war against Hamas in Gaza, arguing that the allegation of genocide had not been “sufficiently substantiated.”
The anonymous sources also expressed concern about Amnesty’s own “obsession” with Israel, devoting significant portions of the organization’s international, regional, and local resources to the Levantine conflict.
One source said that activists were using their positions to pursue personal campaigns against Israel, noting that one researcher in the 2022 apartheid report later transitioned to working in a BDS group.
Lebanon is not serious about disarming Hezbollah by Hussain Abdul-Hussain in The Asia Times
Lebanon is not serious about enforcing the UNSC Resolution 1701 mechanism agreement that it signed with Israel on November 27 and that ended 14 months of war.
Hezbollah now seems to have a new tactic. Instead of boasting about its capabilities in warring with Israel, the Iran-backed militia has instructed caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati to pretend that Lebanon has lived up to its part of the deal, and that it is now incumbent on the Jewish state to stop its “violations” and accelerate its withdrawal from Lebanese territory.
What Mikati called violations were in fact Israel enforcing 1701 by striking Hezbollah’s rearmament shipments, an arrangement that Lebanon had signed on to. The deal also stipulated that the Israeli military would control up to five miles of Lebanese territory as long as Hezbollah maintains its ability to reconstitute. Israel promised to return the no-man’s land when the LAF has disarmed Hezbollah and neutralized its threat.
In its social media posts, the LAF went farther by depicting Israel not as a partner in disarming Hezbollah but as an aggressor that was prompting the LAF to deploy reinforcements to contain the Israeli “aggression on Lebanon.”
Reasons behind Lebanon’s unwillingness or inability to disarm Hezbollah are many.
First are the political ambitions of presidential hopefuls like Aoun. Election requires two thirds of lawmakers, and that is impossible without the Hezbollah-led parliamentary bloc.
Second is Hezbollah’s bullying of Lebanese politicians and the general population.
Third is the utter incompetence of Hezbollah’s opponents. Even though the parliament has a solid bloc of 31 (out of 128 lawmakers) that calls for the militia’s disarmament, the opposition has failed to expand its ranks or to pose any serious political threat to Safa or his militia.
Fourth is the failure of world capitals to agree on a coherent strategy.
Lebanon has yet to understand that Israel is dead serious about disarming Hezbollah, and that the Jewish state is not in the mood for pretend games.
