Israel lifted all restrictions on public gatherings, allowing Israelis to engage in “full activity” as Israel’s ceasefire with Iran goes into effect.

The announcement by the Israeli Defense Force’s Home Front Command allows schools to resume in-person instruction, workplaces to reopen and public transportation to resume.

Some communities that border Gaza will continue to have restrictions on gatherings of over 2,000, a policy that had been in place prior to the launch of Israel’s attacks on Iran.

The lift on restrictions comes 12 days after Israel’s initial strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. Public gatherings as well as air travel to and from the country came to a complete halt. The threat level was also raised Sunday following the United State’s attacks against Iranian nuclear sites.

The Ben Gurion and Haifa airports will also return to full operations following the decision by the Home Front Command, according to the Israel Airports Authority.

“Restrictions on the number of incoming and outgoing flights, as well as the number of passengers on each flight, have been lifted,” the Israel Airports Authority said. “In addition, restrictions on the arrival of passengers and accompanying persons at the airports have been lifted.”

In Beersheba, an Israeli city that suffered one of deadliest attacks from Iran during the conflict, schools will remain closed tomorrow despite the Home Front Command’s announcement, according to Beersheba Mayor Ruvik Danilovich.

The complete lift on restrictions will be in effect until Thursday evening, at which point it will be reassessed.

President Trump was not pleased.

Fresh off putting all the TACO talk to rest (at least for a few news cycles) with the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Trump quickly pivoted. By late Monday night the president was promising a “Complete and Total” ceasefire, instead of a forever war, saying the fighting between Israel and Iran would stop immediately and that he did not believe the two countries would “ever be shooting at each other again.”

Just one problem. Actually two: Israel and Iran. The two foes were back at it within hours. Trump fumed: “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f— they’re doing.”

Big picture, Trump is probably on to something. With the U.S. providing a resounding exclamation point to Israel’s methodical, post-Oct. 7 dismantling of Iran’s proxy network, air defenses, nuclear progress and missile capabilities, it feels as if this decades-long, escalating war between Jerusalem and Tehran is coming to a close, however haltingly. Iran’s supreme leader continues to issue menacing threats, but with each setback for his country it is hard to shake the image of the defeated-but-ever-defiant Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” who taunts his opponent even after losing all of his limbs. (“It’s just a flesh wound… I’ll bite your legs off!”) 

Just don’t get too comfortable. Even if Trump gets his ceasefire and the greater Iranian threat appears neutralized, Israel’s winding history can be understood as a series of confrontational epochs, with momentous transformational victories inevitably leading to a new series of challenges and threats (not to mention humbling tragedies born of triumphalist arrogance — see the Yom Kippur War and Oct. 7).

Israel’s swift and stunning go-it-alone victory in 1967 transformed the Jewish state from a fledgling country to regional superpower. Yet six years later, Israel found itself fighting for survival after Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack of their own. In retrospect, the Yom Kippur War turned out to be a spasm rather than a reversal of the Six-Day War, with Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem and the Camp David Accords bringing a more formal end a few years later to the hot war waged against Israel by its immediate neighbors.

The gloomy take is that Israel’s triumph over pan-Arab nationalism simply shifted the battlefront — to the more elusive and stubborn multi-decade terror war waged by the PLO and other Palestinian groups. The first phase of this battle with Palestinian nationalism was marked by Munich, Entebbe and the endless cycle of Palestinian terrorist attacks and Israeli targeted assassinations and commando strikes throughout the 1970s, with the fight culminating in the Lebanon War and the first Intifada.

Similarly, the Oslo Accords did not bring peace, but instead marked the transition from the fight against secular Palestinian nationalism to the war with the anti-Zionist Islamic fundamentalist axis of Iran and its devout proxies, most notably Hamas and Hezbollah. This Iranian-led front succeeded in sabotaging a two-state solution, but failed to stop Israel’s march to greater acceptance and integration in the region, which in turn may have lulled Jerusalem into a false sense of security and inspired Hamas to unleash the kind of attack Israel’s political and military leaders considered unthinkable.

Will the cycle continue? For now, Israel and the U.S. have delivered a decisive and perhaps fatal blow to Iran Inc. We’ll know soon enough if Trump’s intervention — with bullish airstrikes and diplomacy — has brought this round of fighting to a close. Whether this is the beginning, middle or end of this stage of Israel history — and what comes next — will take more time to figure out. 

Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander spent several minutes discussing their views on Israel and antisemitism on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Monday night, the night before New York City’s closely watched Democratic mayoral primary.

Colbert dedicated about six minutes out of the full 21-minute segment to questions about the progressive mayoral candidates’ views on Israel and antisemitism in New York City, giving most of that time to Mamdani. The 33-year-old Democratic Socialist, who is polling second behind former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary race, has been the target of allegations of antisemitism due to his stalwart pro-Palestinian record, which dates back to his founding of his college’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. 

Lander, the city’s comptroller, who is Jewish, is polling in third. Earlier this month, Mamdani and Lander cross-endorsed each other, looking to boost their chances under the city’s ranked-choice voting system. 

To start, Colbert asked both candidates if they believe that Israel has a right to exist. Lander repeated his usual stance, that he envisions Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state.”

In line with previous comments, Mamdani said, “Yes, like all nations, I believe it has a right to exist and a responsibility also to uphold international law.” He did not mention his views on whether it has the right to exist as a Jewish state; in previous comments he has said that he is “not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else.” 

Throughout the segment, Mamdani referred to the Hamas attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 as a “war crime” — a phrase he has also used in mayoral debates. The State Assembly member had received criticism for not using the phrase earlier, and the first statement he gave after Oct. 7 primarily placed the blame for the attack and ensuing violence on the Israeli government.

“Just a few days after the horrific war crime of Oct. 7, a friend of mine told me about how he went to his synagogue for Shabbat services and he heard the door open behind him and a tremor went up his spine as he turned around, not knowing who was there and what that meant for him,” Mamdani shared with Colbert. “I spoke to a Jewish man in Williamsburg just months ago who told me that the door he left unlocked for decades is now one that he locks. And ultimately, this is because we’re seeing a crisis of antisemitism.”

Part of his platform, he said, is a proposal to create a Department of Community Safety that would increase anti-hate programming.

“Antisemitism is not simply something that we should talk about — it’s something that we have to tackle,” he said. “We have to make clear there’s no room for it in this city, in this country.”

The segment received some backlash on social media for the amount of time devoted to Israel-related questions, in relation to the amount of time given to the candidates’ visions for New York. Some also pointed out that Lander was given less time to discuss Israel or Islamophobia in New York.

“He’s becoming the mayor of New York not the mayor of Tel Aviv,” the top comment on the YouTube clip of the segment said. “This israel stuff is ridiculous.”

On Monday’s episode of “The Late Show,” Colbert asked Mamdani whether he thought there was “justification for violence of any kind.”

“No,” Mamdani replied. “There is no room for violence in this city, in this country, in this world.”

He then quoted former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, who was Jewish, saying, “‘If you agree with me on nine out of 12 issues, vote for me. Twelve out of 12, see a psychiatrist.’” (Mamdani also used this phrase in May at a mayoral candidate town hall geared toward the Jewish community, as did trailing Jewish candidate Scott Stringer.)

Mamdani added that his views on the situation in Gaza are shared by some prominent Jews and Israelis, such as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who recently wrote in a Haaretz column that Israel is committing war crimes.

At that point, Lander chimed in, saying, “No mayor is going to be responsible for what happens in the Middle East, but there is something quite remarkable about a Jewish New Yorker and a Muslim New Yorker coming together to say, ‘Here’s how we protect all New Yorkers. Jewish New Yorkers and Muslim New Yorkers are not going to be divided from each other. We build a city where you have affordable housing and good schools and safe neighborhoods for everyone.’”

The House Jewish Caucus called for answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the promotion of Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon press secretary accused of repeatedly posting antisemitic rhetoric online.

In a letter sent Tuesday, the 21 Democratic representatives in the caucus aired their concerns over “a series of deeply troubling and offensive statements made by Kingsley Wilson.”

“These statements include promoting the antisemitic and racist ‘Great Replacement’ theory, praising far-right political movements using slogans tied to neo-Nazi groups, and repeating patently false statements commonly circulated in neo-Nazi circles about Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was lynched by an antisemitic mob in Georgia in 1915,” the letter read.

The letter, which was led by Rep. Laura Friedman, a California Democrat, said that Wilson’s statement’s “raised questions” about the Department of Defense’s “commitment to opposing extremism and antisemitism.” The letter was first reported by Jewish Insider.

Scrutiny of the former acting press secretary last month showed that in 2024 she had tweeted a neo-Nazi talking point about Frank, whose murder by a Georgia mob spurred the creation of the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL and the American Jewish Committee condemned her appointment.

She has also tweeted several times in support of the “Great Replacement” theory, whose original version contends that Jews are orchestrating immigration in order to undermine white-majority populations.

The caucus letter asked the DOD about steps it has taken to address antisemitism and whether Hegseth finds Wilson’s comments to be “acceptable language for an official representing the Department of Defense.”

It was co-signed by caucus co-chairs Rep. Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, and Brad Schneider, an Illinois Democrat, and 18 other House Democrats.

During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Democrat, also lambasted Hegseth over the appointment of Wilson as press secretary.

“Given the rise in antisemitic violence and hate crimes in our nation, and to show that the Trump Administration does have a zero-tolerance policy for antisemitism, will you dismiss Ms. Kingsley from her role as the U.S. military’s spokesperson today? Yes or no,” asked Rosen.

In his response, Hegseth defended Kingsley, saying that she “does a fantastic job” and that suggesting he, Wilson or others are “party to antisemitism is a mischaracterization attempting to win political points.”

“I’m going to assume that your lack of an answer confirms what we’ve known all along, that the Trump Administration is not serious,” replied Rosen. “You are not a serious person. You are not serious about rooting out antisemitism in the ranks of our DOD. It’s despicable. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

President Donald Trump lashed out at Israel and Iran Tuesday morning, suggesting they continued to exchange fire despite his announcement of a ceasefire. 

“We basically, we have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f— they’re doing,” Trump told reporters at the White House Tuesday morning before departing for a NATO summit.

Trump announced the ceasefire shortly after 6:00 p.m. Monday evening, saying it would go into effect 12 hours later. Overnight, Israel sustained one of the deadliest attacks since the conflict began when four people were killed and at least 22 others injured by an Iranian missile strike on a residential complex in Beersheba.

Israel also accused Iran of launching missiles after Trump’s proposed start time for the ceasefire, and the Israeli military promised a forceful military response.

In his comments to reporters, Trump accused both Iran and Israel of breaking the conditions of the ceasefire.

“I’m not sure they did it intentionally. They couldn’t rein people back. I don’t like the fact that Israel went out this morning at all, and I’m going to see if I can stop it. Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before, the biggest load that we’ve seen. I’m not happy with Israel,” said Trump to reporters.

“I’m not happy with Iran either, these guys got to calm down. Ridiculous,” said Trump.

Shortly after boarding a plane headed for the summit, Trump took to Truth Social to assert that Israel had recommitted to the ceasefire.

“ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect! Thank you for your attention to this matter!” wrote the president.

Minutes later in another post on Truth Social, the president wrote, “IRAN WILL NEVER REBUILD THEIR NUCLEAR FACILITIES!”

Following Trump’s statements, the president spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in an
“an exceptionally firm and direct way” asking Israel not to retaliate against Iran, according to Axios.

Describing the call, Netanyahu said that Trump expressed “confidence in the stability of the ceasefire.”

“In the conversation,” said the Prime Minister’s Office, “President Trump expressed his immense appreciation for Israel — which achieved all of its war goals. The president also expressed his confidence in the stability of the ceasefire.”

The federal government arrested a Maryland man accused of sending threatening letters to the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia and other Jewish institutions for over a year.

Clift A. Seferlis, 55, of Garrett Park, Maryland, was arrested on June 17 and charged with mailing threatening communications, one of which made reference to “Kristallnacht,” a Nazi pogrom carried out in 1938.

In one letter sent on May 7, which Philadelphia Magazine reported was allegedly sent to the Weitzman museum, Seferlis appeared to threaten the institution and accuse its leaders of not caring about Israel’s ongoing offensive in Gaza.

“Do you — deep down — reallycare [sic] — really — about what is going on in Gaza? Will it take something happening to your beloved [institution] to make that happen,” it continued, according to a press release by the United States Attorney’s office.

The museum, which was not identified in the press release, had allegedly received the threatening letters since April 2024. Other targets were described as “Jewish organizations and entities located in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and elsewhere.”

In other letters, Seferlis allegedly referenced the museum’s “many big open windows,” “Kristallnacht,” “anger and rage” and a future need to “rebuild” the institution following its destruction, according to the press release.

“After 18 months of threatening letters sent to Jewish institutions from NY to DC, the FBI has made an arrest,” wrote The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington in a post on X following the arrest.

The arrest comes as Jewish institutions increased their security across the country following the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., last month and the firebombing attack earlier this month on a march for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, that left 15 injured.

Seferlis told FBI agents that he was the individual behind the letters, and that he had previously given tours at the museum and planned to give a tour just days after his arrest, according to Philadelphia Magazine.

According to a Linkedin account that appeared to belong to Seferlis, he had worked as an architectural historian, masonry restoration specialist, and a licensed D.C. and NYC guide since 1992.

Seferlis was released on a $50,000 bond under a litany of stipulations including that he submit to electronic location monitoring, turn in any firearms and agree not to enter any Jewish institution or place of worship.

Iran sent a barrage of deadly missiles at Israel and Israel promised a forceful response in the hours after President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to announce that the countries had agreed to a “complete and total ceasefire.”

In a post sent shortly after 6:00 p.m. ET Monday, the president said the ceasefire would start to take effect about six hours after Israel and Iran “wound down” the strikes against each other that were currently in progress.

After hours of uncertainty, senior Iranian officials appeared to confirm to the Reuters news agency that the country was agreeing to the U.S. proposal. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council claimed victory in the wake of the announcement, saying that Iran’s missile attacks on a U.S. base in Qatar had succeeded in “imposing a cease-fire” on Israel.

The Israeli government’s statement saying it had agreed to the ceasefire came early Tuesday morning Eastern time. On Monday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet and military leadership that that Israel had “achieved all the goals” in its 12-day campaign targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities and top military brass.

“In light of achieving the objectives of the campaign, and in complete coordination with President Trump, Israel agreed to the president’s proposal for a mutual ceasefire,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement. It warned, however, that “Israel will forcefully respond to any violation of the ceasefire.”

Despite both sides’ apparent agreement, hostilities continued overnight and into Tuesday morning. In one of the deadliest attacks on Israel during the conflict, four people were killed and at least 22 others were injured Tuesday morning when Iranian missiles struck a residential complex in Beersheba. The barrage landed in Israel before what Trump had described as the intended  7 a.m. (Israel time) start of the ceasefire. However, Israel accused Iran of launching a fresh set of missiles at Israel shortly before 10:30 a.m. The Israeli government promised a forceful military response.

Israeli jets struck dozens of Iranian military targets in Tehran overnight, the IDF said at a news conference Tuesday morning.

Initially, Trump offered a somewhat convoluted timeframe for the ceasefire, explaining that, “Officially, Iran will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 12th Hour, Israel will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 24th Hour, an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR will be saluted by the World.”

Trump offered his congratulations to both countries. Israel launched attacks on Iran 12 days ago, aiming to cripple its nuclear program. The United States joined the effort on Saturday night, delivering powerful bombs at three Iranian nuclear sites. Iran has responded with missile strikes.

In Israel, at least 28 people have been killed and more than 1,000 wounded in the hostilities. Iran’s health ministry said more than 400 Iranians have been killed since the start of the attacks, although some human rights groups say that number is considerably higher.

WASHINGTON — The last time Israel bombed a nuclear facility in a hostile country, its hopes for what would come next were clear: The regime it deemed too toxic to have nuclear power should stay in place.

A lot has changed in the Middle East since 2007, when Israel took out the nuclear reactor in Syria, then led by Bashar Assad. While he was one of Israel’s most implacable enemies, Israel made clear it preferred a Syria led by Assad than not. 

For decades, Israel was wary of regime change in Syria and other neighboring countries, preferring a menacing stability to whatever might replace it. Middle East analysts say that changed on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas, funded and trained by Iran, invaded Israel and massacred close to 1,200 people, launching the current war in Gaza. 

Israel’s shedding of its former reluctance to bring about regime change is behind the attacks Israel launched on Iran on June 13, said Dan Shapiro, who was ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama.

“Post Oct.7, the environment has changed,” said Dan Shapiro, who is now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Security Initiative. 

“The Israeli thinking that threats that were otherwise recognized but sort of tolerated or managed or addressed through a kind of a mowing of the grass strategy are no longer considered tolerable,” he said. “The Israeli perspective is they need to be addressed before they reach the last minute, before they can threaten you.” 

Israel is not explicitly calling for the overthrow of the theocracy in Iran. In his only interview in Hebrew since Israel launched attacks on Iran’s known nuclear sites, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not count out regime change as an outcome of the conflict, but emphasized that it was not a strategic goal.

“Our first goal is the nuclear threat, to remove it. We are in the process of removing it. The second is to remove the ballistic missile threat; we are in the process of removing it,” Netanyahu said last Thursday on Israel’s government-owned Kan news. 

“The issue of removal of the regime, the fall of this regime is first and foremost an issue for the Iranian people, so I have not presented it as a goal, it could be an outcome, but it is not a formal goal,” he said.

Others in his government have gone further: Netanyahu’s defense minister Yisrael Katz, on the same day the prime minister spoke to Kan, said Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a “modern Hitler” who “must not continue to exist.”

And this week, after the United States joined the conflict alongside Israel, President Donald Trump — who for years reviled the regime change in Iraq secured by one of his predecessors, George W. Bush — seemed intrigued by the idea.

“It’s not politically correct to use the term ‘Regime Change,’” he posted on Truth Social, ”but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change? MIGA!!!”

In years after destroying the Syrian reactor, Israeli officials said they did not trust Assad — but saw him as the devil they knew. For years following the U.S.-led removal of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, the Middle East was roiled by Islamist insurgents, each more extreme than the previous.

“I prefer the political extremism of Assad over religious extremism,” Ayoub Kara, then a top official of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, said in 2011 as Israel warily watched a civil war unfold in Syria. “We don’t want religious extremism on the border.”

With rare exceptions, Israel has since its inception always been wary of regime change — because the new kid on the block is frequently worse than the one he replaced. That was the case with the radical nationalists who in the 1950s and 1960s replaced the Arab leaders installed by Britain and France as they downsized their empires. 

Arab nationalism helped fuel the 1967 Six-Day War, which Israel saw as existential. In 1970, when Israel and Jordan were still enemies, Israel intervened on behalf of the kingdom to keep Palestinian radicals from overthrowing King Hussein.

The rise in the 1970s of political Islamism only entrenched Israeli wariness of change: What at first blush seemed like a democracy replacing Iran’s repressive monarchy in 1979 soon revealed itself as a theocracy implacably hostile to Israel’s existence.

Two years later, Israel nervously watched after an Islamist assassinated Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, who had forged the first peace between Israel and an Arab nation. 

The irony was not lost on Israel’s establishment: Sadat, the strident nationalist who in 1953 with Gamal Abdel Nasser had overthrown a relatively moderate monarchy, was killed by an even more implacably Israel-hating Islamist. 

Hosni Mubarak, Sadat’s deputy and successor, kept the uneasy peace, but in 2012, when the Muslim Brotherhood emerged triumphant after ousting Mubarak, Israel braced for the worst. 

The Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Morsi, maintained the peace, but Israel breathed a sigh of relief when he was ousted by a Mubarak-style general, Abdel Fatha al-Sisi, a year later. 

As for Iraq, in 1992 Israel contemplated assassinating Saddam, in retaliation for the missiles he launched at Israel the previous year, but abandoned the plan after a botched rehearsal. Netanyahu in 2002 testified in Congress in favor of replacing Saddam; at the time he was not in elected office, and did not represent an official Israeli view. 

Netanyahu has for years resisted the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority, although he reviles its leadership, in part because Hamas — and worse — are waiting in the wings.

The main exception to Israel’s regime change aversion, the war it launched in 1982 against the Palestine Liberation Organization in Lebanon, ended up proving the rule. 

Israel’s efforts to install a friendly Christian regime soon collapsed amid assassinations and massacres. Indigenous Lebanese fury at Israel’s occupation of parts of southern Lebanon fueled the rise of Hezbollah, the extremist Islamist terrorist group that conducted multiple wars against Israel, even after Israel ended its presence in the country in 2000.

“That seared into the consciousness of Israel, that it’s very hard to politically engineer an Arab country if you’re a Jewish state,” said David Makvosky, a member of the Obama administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace brokering team in 2013-2014 who is now a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank. 

“That’s why Israel has stayed away” from regime change, said Makovsky — and he noted, has yet to fully embrace it, a posture underscored by how careful Netantyahu was in his interview on Kan.

Israeli officials have put out the word that Netanyahu does not embrace Defense Minister Katz’s call for Khamenei’s elimination, Makovksy said. 

“Regime change is a whole other kettle of fish, and Iran is such a complicated place with all these different ethnic groups, it’s not at all homogeneous,” Makovsky said. “And, you know, there’s not even an armed group that could take over. It’s a can of worms.”

Jonathan Schanzer, the vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Israel’s preeminence since Oct. 7 in its war against Hamas and Hezbollah, and its successes in its recent attacks on Iran, made the prospect of regime change more palatable. 

“The idea of creating something else in its place, or at least just destroying the edifice of this regime, would probably give Israel room to breathe, which that, in and of itself, is big,” Schanzer said

He said one likely outcome would be to cut the lifeline to the network of extremist militias that have targeted Israel and the United States.

“They all lose their patrons. They all lose their arms providers. They all lose their cash providers. They all lose the ideological driver of everything that they’ve been doing against Israel for decades, and so yeah, it makes sense for regime change,” he said.

Israeli caution about regime change in the past had to do with instability on its borders, Schanzer said, but whatever chaos regime change in Iran triggers would take place more than a thousand miles away, he said. 

“It’s so far off, it’s almost hard to understand how this would have an impact on Israel,” he said. What’s more, he said, much of the negative American associations with regime change have to do with the extended U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one is calling for U.S. or Israeli “boots on the ground” in Iran.

Gayil Talshir, a lecturer in political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said Netanyahu had silenced Katz and others in the government who were openly clamoring for regime change — and was wise to do so.

“The framing coming from Netanyahu is, this is something that the Iranian people have to do from within, it’s not something that Israel wants to cause from the outside,” she said. 

“Israel should not be the one to instigate it or to talk politically openly about it, because Israel wants to be part of the economic and the prosperity horizon of the Middle East,” said Talshir, “but it doesn’t want to be looked like the instigator of you know, ‘we decide who is the leader of which of which country’.”

Schanzer noted that if anything, what eventually happened in Syria made the case for regime change. An Islamist insurgency ousted Assad last year — and has shown no appetite for antagonizing Israel.

“The Assad regime falls, and now all of a sudden, you don’t have a regime that wants to destroy Israel,” he said.

A contentious election that is consequential to the local Jewish community is taking place Tuesday in New York City — and it’s not the Democratic mayoral primary, which is also that day.

Tuesday’s board election at Park Slope Food Coop may shape the future of how the 52-year-old cooperatively-run grocery store in Brooklyn makes decisions for its 17,000-plus members — and whether or not that future includes a boycott of Israeli products.

The election will include a vote for two seats on the five-seat board of directors, which has the authority to ratify certain rules, as well as a vote on whether to change a rule that would allow for general meetings to take place in a hybrid manner — simultaneously in-person and over Zoom — as they did during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Among the parties invested in the election are PSFC Members for Palestine, a group of coop members founded in the wake of Oct. 7, 2023, whose mission is to organize a boycott campaign “in solidarity with Palestine.” The group, which is running two candidates for the two available seats on the five-person board, claims some 3,000-plus members and uses the tagline “No Co-operation With Occupation.”

The group is also campaigning for members to vote in favor of the hybrid meeting model, which they believe would allow for more people to participate in general meetings. The idea is that, with more general meeting participation, it would then be easier to lower the coop’s boycott threshold from the currently required supermajority of 75% to a simple majority of 51%.

Meanwhile, a competing activist group, the pro-Israel group Coop4Unity, which was founded in 2024 to prevent an Israeli boycott from passing at the co-op, said in a statement posted to their website on June 6 that there are “good reasons” for in-person meetings.

“We just don’t think that doing a hybrid meeting only, and moving towards a hybrid meeting with the sole goal of creating a boycott makes a lot of sense,” Ramon Maislen, a Jewish co-op member and member of Coop4Unity said. “Because you’re changing the character and the makeup of how the coop has been run for 50-plus years, or however many years it’s been, simply in order to enact a boycott, which is, in and of itself, very contentious.”

The vote over hybrid meetings marks a turning point at Park Slope Food Coop, which, given its size and location in uber-hip and liberal Brownstone Brooklyn, has long been seen as the vanguard of the cooperative grocery movement. Since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023, the coop has been torn apart by internal debates about whether a boycott of Israeli goods represents a much-needed humanitarian stand, or whether or not such a boycott is antisemitic by nature. There have been text-message campaigns, social media posts, canvassing efforts and pieces in the coop’s official newsletter, The Linewaiters’ Gazette, and in The Olive Press, a zine published by PSFC Members for Palestine

The coop is hardly the only progressive space in New York to be riven by fights over the Gaza war and how to respond. But to many observers and members, this one feels different — if only because “cooperative” is literally part of the PSFC name. Unlike a regular grocery store, the coop is owned and staffed by its members, and its policies are discussed at monthly general meetings, put up for discussion with committees and, eventually, brought to a membership-wide vote.

But now, with its members set to finalize the vote on adopting the hybrid-meeting model at Tuesday’s annual membership meeting, the Park Slope Food Coop may find itself one step closer to instituting — or rejecting — a boycott of Israeli goods.

Crown Heights resident Rose Ettleson, 28, who is Jewish, has been a member of the coop since April 2024. Though she is not affiliated with Coop4Unity, she has already cast her vote in alignment with the candidates endorsed by the group, and has voted “no” on hybrid meetings.

“I just don’t support the BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] movement in general, so I definitely want to keep it out of the grocery store,” Ettleson said. “It has no place in the grocery store.”

Adding to the tensions is an email sent June 4 by Joe Holtz, the coop’s co-founder, first-ever paid employee and a current board member, who is retiring later this month after more than 50 years of involvement. Holtz encouraged all PSFC members to vote against Members for Palestine board candidates Dan Kaminsky and Taylor Pate, citing multiple coop principles, including its commitment to autonomy and against discrimination.

“Any group that thinks the Coop should join a boycott should go out and win the necessary support from the overwhelming majority of members,” Holtz wrote in his June 4 email. “A group should not try to take shortcuts or push their agenda without the needed level of support, or by fabricating emergencies in the name of ‘democracy.’”

Holtz, who is also currently employed as the coop’s general manager, added in his email that the only Israeli product recently carried in the store is one type of bell pepper, which is only sold in the winter and therefore not currently on shelves.

Holtz could not be reached for comment.

The brouhaha over Tuesday’s election is hardly the Park Slope Food Coop’s brush with controversy, nor is it the coop’s first BDS-related showdown. Activists tried instituting an Israel boycott in 2012, even gaining the attention of then-mayor Michael Bloomberg. The vote ultimately failed.

In 2016, the coop voted to change how many votes are required to vote on a boycott, shifting from the simple majority to a supermajority, in response to an attempt at boycotting SodaStream, the at-home soda making machine, which until 2015, had its main manufacturing plant in the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. (Supporters of the company cited the collaborative nature between Israeli and Palestinian employees as a peace-building effort.)

The Park Slope Food Coop has taken political stances on selling certain country’s products before, including boycotting Chilean products in 1973 in response to the regime of dictator Augusto Pinochet, and a decades-long boycott of South African products during the apartheid regime.

PSFC Members for Palestine did not respond to a request for comment.

“We care about (we demand!) food justice from Brooklyn to Gaza,” PSFC Members for Gaza wrote in the first issue of their zine in May 2024.

“We embrace practical efforts to make Coop governance more accessible to the vast majority of members, for instance by adopting a hybrid meeting format to serve those who can’t attend in-person GMs due to time constraints, childcare demands, or accessibility issues,” the group added. “Having understood that U.S. government support for the Zionist program means that Palestine is the direct responsibility of people in Brooklyn, we redouble our resolve to make sure that our Coop steps up to do its part.”

On Oct. 7, 2024, on the anniversary of Hamas’ invasion of Israel, Maislen and a group of Jewish co-op members associated with Coop4Unity filed a state human rights complaint alleging antisemitic and anti-Israel harassment that have contributed to a “toxic work environment,” Maislen, who filed the complaint, said at the time.

Maislen declined to explain where the legal complaint currently stands beyond that his lawyer and the coop’s lawyers have been in a “back-and-forth” discussion.

In late May, Rep. Ritchie Torres demanded an investigation into the allegations of antisemitic and anti-Israel harassment at the coop, stemming from Maislen’s complaint.

“The Adams administration is committed to enforcing the law and taking action to protect the rights of Jewish New Yorkers,” a representative for New York City Mayor Eric Adams said in a written statement. “The New York City Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) has responded to Representative Richie Torres’ letter. As the congressman should know, CCHR cannot confirm nor comment on ongoing investigations, as disclosure could interfere with law enforcement efforts.”

PSFC Members for Palestine activists say that any accusations of antisemitism are unwarranted. “If there was a boycott, there’s not going to be a sign at the door that says, ‘Anyone who wants Israeli products is a bad person, and you can’t come in here, and we’ll be discriminating against you,’” organizer Alyce Barr, who is Jewish, told Hell Gate. “They would like everyone to believe that we are hooked up with some international cartel, and nothing could be further from the truth. We’re just trying to get our co-op to live its values.”

In the weeks leading up to the election, the vibe at the co-op has been relatively calm, said Ettleson, who shops there about every two weeks. Last year’s board of directors election, in which Maislen and another Coop4Unity member, Sondra Shaievitz, ran unsuccessfully for two board seats, was far more contentious, she said.

“Every time you would leave the store, there would be people canvassing outside, and there would be the pro groups and the anti- groups,” Ettleson said.

Nonetheless, Maislen said he is feeling pessimistic about Tuesday’s results.

“I’ve been very disappointed with humanity over the last two years,” he said.

A University of Florida law student who posted that Jews must be “abolished by any means necessary” won an award for a paper in which he argued that the Constitution applies solely to white people.

The honor for an avowed white supremacist and antisemite has roiled the campus at the public university, in a state where a 2023 law prevents state funding for university programs that advocate for “diversity, equity and inclusion or promote or engage in political or social activism.”

Preston Damsky, 29, received the “book award” for a paper he wrote for a class last fall. In the paper, he argued for the removal of voting rights protections for non-white citizens and orders to kill “criminal infiltrators at the border,” according to the New York Times.

The award for the paper was given to Damsky by Federal Judge John L. Badalamenti, a Trump administration appointee who taught Damsky’s class.

The law school’s interim dean, Merritt McAlister, initially defended Damsky’s accolade, invoking “institutional neutrality,”arguing n in an email to the law school community that professors must not engage in “viewpoint discrimination” and i according to the Times.

McAlister’s argument underscores a growing tension within academia as the Trump administration escalates its campaign against DEI with policies that have seen Holocaust remembrance pages stripped from government websites but allowed far-right sentiments to go unchecked.

After receiving the class award, Damsky, who told the Times that referring to him as a Nazi “would not be manifestly wrong,” doubled down on his incendiary messages. He opened an account on X in which he repeatedly posted antisemitic and white supremacist sentiments.

Carliss Chatman, a visiting law professor at the school during the spring semester, told the Times that she was struck by the response to Damsky’s essay in contrast to her experience at the school.

A class Chatman had proposed titled “Race, Entrepreneurship and Inequality” was renamed by the school’s administration to just “Entrepreneurship” before being added to the catalogue.

“I just find it fascinating that this student can write an article, a series of articles that are essentially manifestoes, and that’s free speech,” Chatman said. “But my class can’t be called ‘Race, Entrepreneurship and Inequality.’”

Shortly after arriving at the school, a number of Jewish and Black students approached Chatman with concerns about Damsky.

“We should not be giving awards to things that advocate for white supremacy and white power,” Chatman told the Times, adding that she believed the award had “emboldened” Damsky to begin posting his racist and antisemitic comments on social media.

In one post on X, Damsky argued that President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were “controlled by Jews,” a group that he called “the common enemy of humanity,” according to the Times.

In dozens of other posts Damsky made from February to April, he described Jewish people as “parasitizing the West,” described immigrants as “invaders” and advocated for a white ethnostate, according to University of Florida student paper The Independent Florida Alligator.

In a post in late March, Damsky wrote that Jews must be “abolished by any means necessary,” which prompted the school on April 3 to suspend him and issue a trespass order against him, barring him from the university property for three years.

The controversy over Damsky’s antisemitic and racist remarks comes as the Trump administration has cracked down on universities over alleged antisemitism on their campuses stemming from pro-Palestinian protests.

Earlier this month, Florida officials rejected a bid from the university to hire the former president of the University of Michigan to helm the school, citing his response to pro-Palestinian protests on his former campus.

The University of Florida has the highest number of Jewish undergraduate students of any public university in the country with a population of 6,500 Jewish students, or 19% of the student body, according to Hillel International.

Following a request for comment from JTA, the University of Florida replied that they could not provide information on student records or disciplinary processes, but shared that on April 3 the University of Florida Police Department issued a trespass warning to “the person in question.” Administrators haven’t said what led to Damsky’s trespass order, which came following scrutiny of his social media.

In a statement, the University of Florida Hillel condemned Damsky’s rhetoric and said that they hoped the school’s administration would review the policy that allowed him to receive the award for his paper.

“There is no place at UF for this type of hateful rhetoric. We are grateful that the university responded by suspending the student, barring him from campus, increasing police presence around the law school, and initiating disciplinary proceedings aimed at expulsion,” the statement read.

“This “book award” was presented automatically to the student with the top grade in the course, which creates a false impression of endorsement of the student’s work. We hope the administrators will take time to review this policy moving forward,” the statement continued.

On March 21, a University of Florida law professor replied to Damsky’s post calling for the elimination of Jewish people, and asked if he would murder her and her family, according to the Alligator.

In response, Damsky wrote, “surely a genocide of all whites should be an even greater outrage than a genocide of all Jews, given the far greater number of whites.”

One 24-year-old Jewish third-year law student who was only identified by his first name, Daniel, told the Alligator in April that he wanted the law school to denounce Damsky’s views and draw a line between offensive speech and calls for violence.

“From my perspective, it just looks like he got away with it for two years until he threatened a faculty member,” Daniel told the Alligator. “It’s been very concerning. It felt like the administration just thought that they could close their eyes and wait for it to go away.”

McAlister addressed communal outcry over the school’s response to Damsky at a town hall meeting in April in which she said that the law school’s reputation was a “foremost concern” and law school leaders were working with “main campus” to address Damsky’s case, according to the Alligator.