NEW FROM FMEP
FMEP Legislative Round-Up October 9, 2025 (Lara Friedman)
- Bills, Resolutions; 2. Letters; 3. Hearings & Markups; 4. Selected Members on the Record; 5. Selected Media & Press releases/Statements
MAGA & the FBI Break Up with the ADL (New Occupied Thoughts podcast)
FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with journalist Mari Cohen and researcher Emmaia Gelman about the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), including the history and current activities of the ADL and the ADL’s approach to advocacy for Palestinian rights and criticism of the state of Israel. They also discuss the ADL’s relationship with the U.S. government, including including the ADL’s role in surveilling Americans and FBI Director Kash Patel’s recent decision to suspend the ADL’s longstanding partnership with the ADL.
GAZA
What to know about the Gaza ceasefire deal as it takes effect (WaPo 10/10/25)
“The Israel Defense Forces announced Friday that civilians would be allowed to return to the north of Gaza after the ceasefire went into effect. Streets running along the enclave’s coast were thronged with people carrying belongings. With the ceasefire in place, Israeli troops began to reposition, withdrawing to an agreed line well within the borders of the Gaza Strip — a move that started the clock on a high-stakes, 72-hour timeline for Hamas to release hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners and detainees held by Israel and a surge of aid, under the terms of the agreement’s initial phase…Many key details of the deal remain unclear. Trump said Thursday that the hostages would be released Monday or Tuesday and that he would travel to Egypt for a signing of the plan. The deal’s first phase, now in force, stems from a framework put forward by Trump to end the war in Gaza. But the initial agreement only addresses several of the 20 points in Trump’s broader proposal, much of which appears to be left for future negotiations. Here is what we know, and what we don’t, about the agreement and what could happen next.” See also Palestinians displaced to southern Gaza begin journey home as ceasefire comes into effect (The Guardian 10/10/25); Israel begins Gaza pullback (Al Monitor 10/10/25); Report: About 250,000 displaced Palestinians return to Gaza City since cease-fire began (Haaretz 10/10/25);
Gaza ceasefire deal: what has been agreed for first phase and why now? (The Guardian 10/9/25)
“An agreement was made between the two sides after indirect talks this week in Egypt and announced by Trump on his Truth Social platform. The deal, signed by both sides on Thursday, was ratified by the security cabinet of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the country’s coalition government on Thursday evening. Israel has said it will pause hostilities “within 24 hours” of the security cabinet meeting and that after that period, the hostages held by Hamas – of whom about 20 are thought to be alive – will be freed within a further 72 hours. The remains of the other hostages will follow. Around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners are to be freed from Israeli jails, including 250 serving long sentences for serious security offences. Israeli troops will pull back to new positions and there is expected to be an increase of desperately needed aid.” See also Israeli Cabinet approves agreement to stop the war in Gaza (Axios 10/9/25); Hamas and Palestinian Factions Agree to Gaza Ceasefire; Trump Confirms Deal Was Reached (Drop Site 10/8/25); Hamas praises Trump but says Tony Blair not welcome in post-war Gaza role (The Guardian 10/10/25); Scoop: Trump plans leaders summit on Gaza during Egypt visit next week (Axios 10/10/25); Israel publishes list of 250 security prisoners slated for release as part of Gaza deal (TOI 10/10/25); Who Are the Hostages Believed Alive in Gaza? (NYT 10/9/25)
Trump promised not to let Israel break Gaza ceasefire to get deal (Axios 10/10/25)
“As negotiations for a Gaza peace deal approached the finish line, President Trump provided a personal guarantee he wouldn’t let Israel abandon it and resume the war, two U.S. officials revealed in a briefing with reporters…Trump’s assurances were a key factor in convincing Hamas to take the deal, the sources say.” See also Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ on Israel won Gaza ceasefire, White House says (WaPo 10/9/25);
UN is ready to surge aid into Gaza and waiting for green light from Israel after deal (AP 10/9/25)
“The United Nations said Thursday that 170,000 metric tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian aid is ready to enter Gaza and that it is seeking a green light from Israel to massively increase help for more than 2 million Palestinians following a deal to pause the war. In the last several months, the U.N. and its humanitarian partners have only been able to deliver 20% of the aid needed to address the dire situation in the Gaza Strip, U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said. Following the announcement Wednesday of a ceasefire deal, he said all entry points to Gaza must be opened to deliver aid at “a much, much greater scale.”’ See also Aid Groups Prepare to Provide Quick Relief to Gaza Under Cease-Fire (NYT 10/10/25); UN official says scaled-up aid deliveries to Gaza will begin Sunday (Haaretz 10/10/25)
‘First Night Without Bombs in Two Years’ Gaza City Residents Return en Masse as Cease-fire With Israel Goes Into Effect (Haaretz 10/10/25)
“With the announcement of the IDF’s withdrawal from the Netzarim corridor about 20 minutes after noon, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians burst into joy and crossed the corridor – which separates Gaza City and northern Gaza from the rest of the Strip. The Palestinian Police Administration in the Gaza Strip announced that it would begin deploying police personnel in all areas from where the IDF had withdrawn…Residents who remained in the areas from which the army withdrew reported extensive destruction…At the same time, thousands of residents remaining in the Gaza City area and the northern Strip began to return to the areas from which the army withdrew earlier on Friday. A spokesperson for the Gaza Municipality said in an interview with Qatari network Al-Araby that the levels of destruction in the city are very high…”This is the first night I have spent without bombs in two years,” Yasmine Saado, 34, told the Palestinian news agency Wafa. “The nightmare is over. My children and I spent a quiet night without fear of death and destruction. A night filled with the confidence we lost during two years of terror.” She described how even her children slept safely, and “they were no longer frightened by the sound of bombs in the middle of the night.” Saado, whose son was killed in an attack on a school in the Shati refugee camp in western Gaza City, said she could now visit his grave without fear.” See also These Horrific Numbers Show the Scale of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza Two Years On (Zeteo 10/8/25);
The Genocide in Gaza (Drop Site 10/10/25)
“Over the past 24 hours, 17 dead and 71 injured Palestinians arrived at hospitals in the Gaza Strip, according to Gaza’s health ministry, while five Palestinians were injured while seeking aid. The total recorded death toll since October 7, 2023 is now 67,211 killed, with 169,961 injured. Among the Israeli attacks on Gaza on Thursday was the bombing of the Ghabboun family home in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City, according to the Civil Defense spokesperson. At least four Palestinians were killed and 40 trapped under the rubble. News outlets reported heavy Israeli bombing across Gaza up until the ceasefire went into effect at 12 p.m. local time on Friday, hours after Israel’s Cabinet approved the deal. The Israeli military announced that its troops have withdrawn to lines still deep within Gaza agreed upon in the plan and warned Palestinians not to approach them.” See also At least 92 Palestinians killed every day in Gaza for 2 straight years (Drop Site 10/7/25); Young lives cut short on an unimaginable scale: the 18,457 children on Gaza’s list of war dead (The Guardian 10/8/25); How Israel’s invasion has shattered lives, livelihoods and learning in Gaza (WaPo 10/8/25)
Famine’s Long Shadow (Alex de Waal//Jewish Currents 10/6/25)
“Even now, the means to end the hunger are readily at hand. The UN and experienced humanitarian agencies have the resources, expertise, and plans to provide food and medicine, and are standing ready just a few miles away. Should Israel give the signal, the basic survival needs of many Palestinians in Gaza could be met within days. But even if food is surged into Gaza today—as it must be—irreparable harms have already been done to those who have endured prolonged starvation. We know from history that a famine’s legacy is generations long, its traumas remaining imprinted on the bodies of the survivors even after sustenance is at hand. In the immediate term, severely acutely malnourished children cannot be saved by food alone—their starvation is so advanced that they need specialized hospital care. In the longer term, children who are malnourished in their first thousand days of life, or in utero, face “potentially irreparable physical and neurocognitive damage,” including increased susceptibility to a range of chronic diseases as adults. The collective harms of famine are no less grave. As humans starve, our bodies seek out and consume every reserve of fat, followed by muscle and essential organs. The drive for food then becomes all-consuming. Hunger overrides social norms as people are forced to scrabble and fight for food…Indeed, because food is not just a source of nutrition but also what binds together families and communities, scholars of mass starvation have long found that wherever famine unfolds, it threatens not just individual lives but also a society’s way of life.” See also Almost 55,000 preschool children in Gaza acutely malnourished, Lancet study estimates (The Guardian 10/9/25);
In One Month, Israeli Fire Killed Over 130 People in ‘Safe Zones’ Designated by the IDF (Haaretz 10/9/25)
“The Israeli military has killed at least 130 people in areas of the Gaza Strip that it had declared safe zones since September 12…Yet the military has continued attacking in these areas almost every day since then.”
REGION//GLOBAL
Top U.S. Officials: Mideast States to Oversee Disarming Hamas, U.S. Will Not Enter Gaza (Haaretz 10/10/25)
“Forces from Qatar, Egypt and Turkey will operate in Gaza when the cease-fire takes effect, working in collaboration with Israel and the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), senior U.S. officials said overnight into Friday. The officials said that the United States would not send forces to the enclave. Rather, it would assist in managing Gaza from abroad, and “initially have 200 people on the ground” to “oversee and observe” enforcement of the agreement in coordination with Israel, one of them said. They said Middle Eastern states will be responsible for disarming Hamas.” See also Pentagon bolsters Gaza ceasefire oversight with 200-troop mission to Israel (Al Monitor 10/10/25); Hamas will be disarmed, Netanyahu vows after ceasefire begins (The Guardian 10/10/25);
Gaza plan: Looks Like peace, acts like occupation (Carol Daniel-Kasbari//Responsible Statecraft 10/6/25)
“Donald Trump’s 20-point plan promises ceasefire, hostages home, Israeli withdrawal, and reconstruction. It sounds complete. It isn’t. Without enforceable mechanics, maps, timelines, phased verification, and real local ownership; it risks being a short-lived show, not a durable peace…The design breaks down where hard agreements usually do. First, it effectively treats disarmament as surrender, demanding that an armed actor relinquish leverage before credible political guarantees and security protections exist. Durable settlements don’t start with a leap of faith over a void…Second, the withdrawal language is vague. If a “pullback” arrives bundled with continuing perimeter control, airspace, crossings, or security carve-outs, residents will experience it as occupation under a new brand…There’s a deeper political absence, too. This deal does not deliver what Palestinians actually hope for: self-determination and a say in their future…If Trump is serious about peace, Jerusalem and the West Bank must be inside the plan, not promised to some later round. Facts on the ground are moving the other way.”
The Recognition Trick (Jonathan Shamir//Jewish Currents 10/6/25)
“By making Palestinian disarmament a prerequisite for statehood, Western countries are still facilitating Israel’s goals.” See also Hundreds of thousands march across Europe in support of Palestinians (AP 10/5/25); Spanish MPs back move to enshrine in law arms embargo on Israel (The Guardian 10/8/25);
Gaza flotilla members allege beatings and insults in Israeli detention (The Guardian 10/6/25)
“International activists, journalists and lawyers deported from Israel after attempting to breach the 16-year maritime blockade of Gaza as part of a humanitarian flotilla have alleged being subjected to brutal physical and verbal abuse by Israeli forces during their detention. The alleged abuses included sleep and medication deprivation, beatings, having automatic rifles pointed at their heads, dogs set upon them, having to sleep on the floor, being subjected to insults and being made to watch footage of the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023. “I was beaten from the moment we entered the port until the very end,” said Saverio Tommasi, an Italian journalist. “Blows to my back, blows to my head – and they [the Israeli soldiers] laughed, laughed at all of it. Anyone who failed to keep their eyes down was punished with a hit to the head.”…The national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has said he was “proud” of the way staff behaved at Ketziot. He said in a statement on the activists: “They should get a good feel for the conditions in Ketziot prison and think twice before they approach Israel again.”…D’Agostino and several other members of the flotilla said Israeli forces appeared to single out Thunberg for harsher treatment than the others.” See also Gaza flotilla activists allege mistreatment while being detained in Israel (AP 10/5/25); Israel Deports Greta Thunberg and 170 Gaza Flotilla Activists Amid New Abuse Allegations (Haaretz 10/6/25);
RIVER TO THE SEA
As Israelis Breathe a Sigh of Relief, Some Ask Why a Deal Took So Long (NYT 10/9/25)
“Despite the general sense of exhilaration, some Israelis expressed frustration that it had taken their government so long to reach this point. “There should be no doubt, this deal came about solely because of President Trump,” Yehuda Cohen, father of Nimrod Cohen, a 21-year-old soldier held in Gaza, told an Israeli TV channel on Thursday…Like Mr. Cohen, many Israelis say they believe that Mr. Netanyahu prolonged the war to stave off a public reckoning and to appease his far-right political partners who wanted Israel to keep fighting and establish permanent rule in Gaza.” See also Hostage families say ‘struggle is not over until all 48 hostages return’ at Tel Aviv demonstration (Haaretz 10/10/25); ‘It feels like a dream’: protests come to end as Israelis sing in ‘hostages square’ (The Guardian 10/9/25); Netanyahu gamble appears to pay off as Israelis cheer Gaza retreat, planned hostage release (Al Monitor 10/10/25); Amid Hope, Parents of Slain Gaza Hostages Fear Their Bodies May Never Be Found (Haaretz 10/10/25);
PTSD and suicides spike among Israeli troops amid devastation of Gaza war (WaPo 10/5/25)
“Two years into Israel’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza, returning soldiers are confronting post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, in numbers unprecedented for Israel, mental health professionals say. Since the start of the war, the longest in the country’s history, more than 11,000 soldiers have been admitted to the Defense Ministry’s psychological rehabilitation program for those who are war-wounded, according to a ministry statement. Tens of thousands more are believed to have PTSD without recognition or treatment. The military is investigating at least 37 cases of suicide since the start of the war, it said — more than triple the total recorded during Israel’s last large war in Gaza in 2014, which lasted only 50 days.” See also Israel at War With Itself (Roger Cohen//NYT 10/5/25); Inside the Minds of Young Israelis Mocking Gaza’s Suffering on TikTok (Haaretz 10/4/25);
U.S. SCENE
Report on Soros Cited by Justice Dept. Does Not Show Funding for Terrorism (NYT 10/10/25)
“When the Justice Department urged federal prosecutors last month to investigate the billionaire George Soros, it cited a report by a conservative watchdog group that accused the liberal megadonor of financing groups “tied to terrorism or extremist violence.” But the report by Washington-based Capital Research Center does not show evidence that Mr. Soros’s network knowingly paid for its grantees to break the law, which legal experts said would be necessary to build a criminal case. In fact, the report does not offer proof that groups that received money from the Soros-backed Open Society Foundations used those donations to commit acts of violence or terrorism…Scott Walter, the president of Capital Research Center, agreed that his group had not found evidence that the Soros network had committed a crime.”
Trump’s war on the left: Inside the plan to investigate liberal groups (Reuters 10/9/25)
“The Trump administration plans to deploy America’s counter-terrorism apparatus – including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department – as well as the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department against certain left-wing groups it accuses of funding and organizing political violence, the officials said. The effort marks an escalation in the administration’s efforts to target domestic opponents, raising alarm among civil rights groups and Democratic leaders about the use of executive power.” See also MAGA erupts after Trump doesn’t win Nobel Peace Prize (Axios 10/10/25); Here are the “8 wars” Trump says he deserves a Nobel Prize for ending (Axios 10/10/25);
Many American Jews sharply critical of Israel on Gaza, Post poll finds (WaPo 10/6/25)
“Many American Jews sharply disapprove of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, with 61 percent saying Israel has committed war crimes and about 4 in 10 saying the country is guilty of genocide against the Palestinians, according to a Washington Post poll. The findings are striking given the long-standing ties between the U.S. Jewish community and Israel, suggesting the potential for a historic breach over the Gaza war…Sixty-eight percent give negative marks to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership of Israel, with 48 percent rating it “poor” — a 20-percentage-point jump from a Pew Research Center poll five years ago. But Jews also overwhelmingly blame Hamas, with 94 percent saying Hamas has committed war crimes against Israelis…Many of those who spoke to The Post in follow-up interviews said they supported Israel’s military incursion at first, given the brutality of the Hamas attack and the need to respond. But as the war has dragged on, with reports of atrocities accumulating and little evident progress, they have recoiled at Israel’s actions.” See also Bari Weiss to Head CBS News as Pro-Trump, Pro-Israel Billionaire Ellison Family Expands Media Empire (Democracy Now 10/8/25); Who is Bari Weiss, the pro-Israel, iconoclast new head of CBS News? (TOI 10/6/25); Legacy Journalists from NYT, CNN Are Mentors in a Fellowship Founded for Pro-Israel “Information War” (Sharif Abdel Kouddous//Drop Site 10/8/25); See also Over 1,000 Rabbis and Jewish Peace Activists in Brooklyn Demand Gaza Ceasefire (Democracy Now 10/3/25)
How Zohran Mamdani Came to Embrace the Palestinian Cause (NYT 10/8/25)
“Mr. Mamdani’s unapologetically pro-Palestinian platform would once have been almost unimaginable for a leading mayoral candidate. Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack tipped the region into all-out war, he has accused Israel of committing genocide, vowed to arrest its leader and said he could not support the country as long as it is an officially Jewish state that gives lesser rights to Palestinians. On the two-year anniversary of the massacre this week, the Israeli Foreign Ministry issued an unusual denunciation, calling him “a mouthpiece for Hamas propaganda” despite his condemnation of the terrorist group’s massacre. Yet polls suggest that as the war drags on, New Yorkers are moving toward Mr. Mamdani’s position, which was once far outside the mainstream.” See also Mamdani attends Israelis for Peace vigil after his 7 October statement draws ire from Israel (The Guardian 10/7/25)
PERSPECTIVES//LONG READS
Two years after October 7, Palestine has become a graveyard of failed strategies (Muhammad Shehada//+972 Magazine 10/7/25)
“My loved ones have become ghosts of their former selves. They have been broken many times throughout 730 days of non-stop bombardment, starvation, and displacement. They have been reduced to scurrying for food and shelter while being attacked wherever they run. Every single aspect of their lives has become an excruciating struggle for survival. Those who manage to escape this concentration camp are physically transformed…For those still trapped inside, the physical toll is almost impossible to describe in words. …And that is before even considering the psychological toll of the genocide on the people of Gaza. The full scale of this will only become clear once the bombing stops, and survivors regain the mental energy required to process the memories and emotions their brains have long suppressed while in survival mode. Gaza has become a place where death is so constant and survival so compromised that even silence now speaks louder than any appeal for justice. And the legacy of this genocide will be with us for generations, because Israel has given every single Gazan a personal vendetta.”
We Are Elated by the Gaza Ceasefire News. Now, the World Must Hold Israel to Account for 2 Years of Genocide (Diana Buttu//Zeteo 10/9/25)
“No one is happier that Israel’s bombs will stop than Palestinians. No one. We can finally start to try to locate and bury our dead, collecting our loved ones from beneath the rubble, and begin to comprehend, collectively, what we went through for the past two years. Every day, for two years, we have held one another, physically and with our words, shielding one another from unending gaslighting and dehumanization. We have watched the most sophisticated technology transformed into the most merciless killing machines, shredding children’s bodies with cruelty I never imagined I would ever see. We saw anew what happened to our parents and grandparents in the last century, with this callous destruction of the remains of Palestine at the hands of people who have never cared for it. I am elated and relieved that it may be over. We all are. I can breathe. We can breathe. Yet, I am worried.”
A ‘magic pill’ made Israeli violence invisible. We need to stop swallowing it (Diana Buttu//The Guardian 10/5/25)
“As I write this, confusion swirls around Donald Trump’s plan to end the war and hope is mounting for a hostage and prisoner swap. While an end to the bombing, the freedom of captives on both sides and allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza would bring some relief in an otherwise unbearably bleak landscape, it would be a mistake to view the plan as a historic breakthrough for Palestine. Trump’s vision is yet another American-Israeli concoction cooked up without any input from Palestinians that would retain Israel’s perpetual control over Gaza’s future. The world has never listened to Palestinian voices or taken seriously the existential threat Israel poses to Palestinian life, and this has not materially changed despite the increase in performative angst. To the contrary, Palestinians have for three-quarters of a century endured the world telling us that Israeli “security concerns” – however defined by Israel – are more important than our rights and lives. As a result Palestinians live with two omnipresent forms of violence: Israeli violence directly inflicted upon our bodies, land and society, and western violence, where only our erasure prompts the world to notice us and see our humanity – but only barely…Rhetoric without consequence has been the west’s modus operandi for decades. The cost has been catastrophic.”
Disappearing people, disappearing morals – how two years has changed Gaza and Israel (Orly Noy//The Guardian 10/7/25)
“It is extremely hard to put into words the unprecedented hell these past two years have brought, but perhaps the single word that best captures their indescribable essence is this: disappearance. It feels as if everything has vanished. Not only the tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza erased without graves, without records, as if they had never existed – so many other things have been hollowed out: basic conceptions of morality, decency, compassion, humanity, hope, future…Two years ago, days after the massacre of 7 October, I warned of revenge that would achieve nothing but yet more violence and suffering. I feared the unbridled Israeli response I knew would follow, but even in my worst nightmares I did not imagine it could amount to such systematic, calculated annihilation. I did not believe Israel would reach the point of starving people to death. I did not believe it would, on average, erase a classroom of children every single day for two whole years. Nor did I believe the world would permit Israel to do all this – a perverse, inverted antisemitism that effectively says: the rules of humanity do not apply to this Jewish collective.”
This war of revenge has lasted two nightmare years. There’s only one hope for peace: Israel recognising Palestine (Raja Shehadeh//The Guardian 10/7/25)
“On the West Bank, we have no previous experience of what it would mean to live next to a state committing genocide against our people and the widespread tolerance of the Israeli people of these actions. We watch in horror what is taking place in Gaza, and also with trepidation. We wonder when our turn will come for the kind of attacks from the air that Gaza has been subjected to…There is no doubt about the Israeli army’s fighting capabilities. But Israel must choose between perpetual war or living in peace. This can only happen if the country recognises Palestinian self-determination – a prospect that, at present, seems remote. At the culmination of this war, Israel might end up destroying Gaza, but it will also destroy itself.”
The Zionist consensus among US Jews has collapsed. Something new is emerging (Shaul Magid//The Guardian 10/7/25)
“In fact, for the American Jewish community, the last two years have seen the collapse of a half-century-old consensus on Zionism itself…For some, that has meant a move to the right; after 7 October many American Jews defended Israel’s actions as necessary and justifiable. Witnessing Israel’s response prompted others to move to the left and question the Zionist project entirely. That is especially true for young American Jews on the left, for whom anti-Zionism has as much to do with redefining their own Jewish identity as it does with their critique of the country.”
A Time That Refuses to Pass (Abdulla Hany Daher//Jewish Currents 10/8/25)
“Two years have passed since October 7th, 2023. I wrote those words in anticipation of publishing this piece on October 7th, 2025. But that turned out to be impossible. From the night of October 6th until the morning of the 8th, the bombing in Qizan Abu Rashwan, the area south of Khan Younis where my family has been staying, was relentless—so fierce that I could no longer tell the difference between the urge to publish and the urge to survive. A hand cannot tremble and write at the same time…This land that once held streets and homes is now a blank space dotted with tents. The only shelter as far as the eye can see: thin sheets fragile enough for a stone to pierce. Walls have been replaced with fabric, entire neighborhoods erased. Will children only remember this white city? Will they know that Gaza once had doors and windows, houses brimming with life? What will remain of all that living?” See also “An Elegy for All of Palestine” (Maram Faraj//Jewish Currents 10/7/25: “The Gazan poet Adel al-Ramadi reflects on making art under genocide.”)
Between a revolution and a whisper (Thawra Abukhdeir//+972 Magazine 10/6/25)
“For Palestinians in Israel, self-censorship has long been a survival mechanism, our silence the condition of our citizenship. But encountering solidarity abroad, I realized my body forgot what it feels like to speak freely.“
These Attempts To Crush Protest Won’t Keep Jewish People Safe (Emily Hilton//British Vogue 10/6/25)
“On Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, there was an attack on a synagogue in Manchester. Two people were killed, several others injured. Our community is in shock, grief and fear…We’d barely had time to absorb what had happened in Manchester before the media kicked into gear, and politicians wasted no time in weaponising our pain to slander the pro-Palestine movement. The Prime Minister called for a Defend Our Juries vigil planned for Saturday afternoon, a protest against the ban on direct action group Palestine Action, to be called off, to “respect the grief of British Jews”…Let’s be clear: you do not keep Jewish people safe by repressing Palestinian solidarity. It is perfectly possible to stand against antisemitism and at the same time to stand against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The rush to suggest otherwise is as harmful as it is offensive…The government’s efforts to shut down protest only further conflate Jews in the UK with the actions of the Israeli state. Politicians using us to bolster their own anti-Palestinian agenda serves only to direct empathy away from our community at a time of enormous grief and vulnerability.”
A long ‘journey’ for Nobel chemistry winner born to Palestinian refugees (WaPo 10/8/25)
“U.S. chemist Omar Yaghi, who on Wednesday became the first Palestinian scientist to win a Nobel Prize, reached the pinnacle of his profession after “quite a journey,” he said in remarks posted to X from the official Nobel account, recorded just after he learned the news. He was born into a family of refugees, he told the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awarded him the Nobel Prize in chemistry for groundbreaking work in molecular architecture, along with collaborators Susumu Kitagawa and Richard Robson. “My parents could barely read or write,” he said. Yaghi grew up in Amman, Jordan, where his parents moved after fleeing Gaza in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes amid the war of 1948 that led to the creation of the Jewish state.”