Twenty-four members of the Jewish community in Tehran and Shiraz remain in prison as of Sunday after being arrested along with hundreds of others in a sweeping government crackdown in Iran that began as fighting ended with Israel.

The arrests took in 35 Jews originally, according to a report put out Saturday by HRANA, the Human Rights Activist News Agency, an affiliate of the Human Rights in Iran NGO. Mass arrests began early in the morning of June 23, according to the report. Eleven Jews have been released since the original arrests, according to a former senior Iranian communal leader, who would speak only on condition of anonymity due to concerns for his contacts in Iran..

The charges filed against those being held — having contact with Israel  — have the potential to ensnare many members of the Jewish community, he said. Iranian officials have been hunting alleged collaborators with Israel following Israel’s recent attacks on Iran and the United States’ bombing of the country’s most fortified nuclear facility.  

The former Iranian communal leader, who remains in close touch with the community, said Iranian authorities are checking the cell phones of those they arrest, looking for records of any calls to the Jewish state.

 “Most Iranian Jews have family in Israel,” explained the former high-ranking communal leader, who today lives in Los Angeles. “That’s why they call” the country. During the military conflict earlier this month, as each side targeted the other side’s cities with missiles and drones, many Iranian Jews reached out to check on the safety of their relatives.

“They are completely prohibited from any connection to Israel,” he said. But such communications were quietly tolerated over the years given the reality of Jewish family connections. In the wake of the war with Israel, the authorities are now drastically tightening their policies. Under the new rules, he said, “They can accuse anyone of being a spy for Israel.”

The arrests of the Jews, who reportedly include several rabbis, appear to be part of a crackdown in which more than 700 people have been taken in since June 13, when Israel initiated its attacks on Iran. Jerusalem described the attacks as an effort to stop Tehran’s development of a nuclear program building toward  Iranian nuclear weapons capabilities. 

Tehran denies this. But Israel views Iran, which has vowed to destroy the Jewish state, as an existential threat.

Minorities are especially concerned over the detentions. Last Wednesday, Iran announced that it had executed three men from Iran’s ethnic Kurdish population who were convicted of aiding Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, in the 2020 assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent nuclear scientist.

The sweep comes as Israeli authorities themselves have boasted about the deep penetration into Iran their intelligence agencies achieved as part of Israel’s planning for its  attack. In mid-June Mossad even released footage purporting to show agents within Iran laying the groundwork for air strikes.

But Israel has no known record of recruiting assets from within Iran’s closely monitored Jewish community, which today numbers somewhere around 10,000 people. The community, which stood at over 80,000 before the 1979 Revolution that brought Iran’s Islamic regime to power, has generally remained free to practice their religion and organize themselves communally, including maintenance of their own schools and social welfare institutions. They remain free to emigrate, though taking their assets out with them can be a problem.

Those who remain live with various forms of legal discrimination that sharia, or Islamic religious law, imposes on all non-Muslims in Iran, and social discrimination that prohibits their rising above certain levels in government or military positions. But a 1979 fatwa, or religious ruling, issued by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founding leader, forbade physical attacks on the community. Under Iran’s constitution they are also accorded an official representative in Iran’s parliament.

Nevertheless, in 1999, 13 members of the Shiraz Jewish community were arrested on charges of spying for Israel. Most of them were haredi Orthodox, which set them apart to some extent, from the mainstream of the community. Evidence used against the accused, who included local merchants, teachers and rabbis, included allegations of contacts the group had with people in Israel. 

An intense international campaign on their behalf included the United States, France and Russia, whose governments challenged the fairness of their trials. Local Jewish leaders in Iran also protested their innocence. Ten of the 13 were convicted and sentenced to up to 13 years in prison. But they were eventually all freed early, in stages, with the last prisoners released in 2003.

“Really, it was very bad,” the former senior Iranian communal leader now in Los Angeles said, voicing hope the community would not face the same situation again.

It was a Jewish politician, Bernie Sanders, whose surprisingly strong showing in the 2016 presidential primaries brought the Democratic Socialists of America to prominence. Although not a member of the group, Sanders identifies as a “democratic socialist.” The DSA endorsed him, and his candidacy inspired a surge in membership.

Nine years later, the DSA has endorsed another rising progressive star, and this time he is a member: Zohran Mamdani, a member of DSA’s New York chapter, who last week pulled off a stunning upset in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. 

Mamdani’s victory was hailed by those who share DSA’s progressive domestic platform, characterized by a strong social safety net, support for the working class and significant government involvement in the economy.

At the same time, it sent shockwaves among the pro-Israel leadership and mainstream, who view the DSA’s positions on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as anathema. The DSA platform accuses Israel of apartheid, colonialism  and military occupation, while pledging solidarity with the Palestinian cause. The group considers the Gaza war a genocide; supports BDS, the movement to boycott Israel, and calls for an end to American aid to Israel. 

The platform does not endorse any particular formula for resolving the conflict but says any political solution must be grounded in the right of Palestinian refugees to return, an outcome Israel contends would spell the end of its existence as a Jewish state.

Zamdani won while fully embracing the DSA’s policies on Israel, for which he faced blistering accusations of antisemitism. 

So what is the DSA and does it actually stand on Israel? Read on for a description of how its position has hardened over time, and the Israel-related controversies it has weathered to reach its current popularity.

A fading friendship

Calling itself the largest socialist organization in the country, the DSA claims to have more than 80,000 dues-paying members, with chapters in every state, and promises to represent the interests of the working class.

Although the DSA’s own political platform calls for “the abolition of capitalism and the creation of a democratically run economy that provides for people’s needs,” political candidates backed by the DSA generally don’t advocate the overthrow of the American government or seek to abolish capitalism. They focus on enacting changes that would make the United States resemble Scandinavian democracies. 

Mamdani has himself said that he has “many critiques of capitalism.” 

On June 27 he told CNN, quoting Martin Luther King, “In the words of Dr. King decades ago, he said, ‘Call it democracy or call it democratic socialism; there must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country.’”

DSA was not always the home of some of Israel’s staunchest critics, nor a harbor for those calling to boycott the country. In fact, many of the people who helped found the group in 1982 were sympathetic to Zionism, and some even considered themselves friends of Israel.

“[Michael] Harrington was a deep believer in Israel,” DSA co-founder Jo-Ann Mort once wrote of the group’s most prominent early leader. According to Mort, Harrington, who died in 1989, was a friend of Shimon Peres, the late Israeli prime minister, and for a time shared with Peres a skepticism about the cause of Palestinian statehood.

“It’s unlikely that he would have felt at home, were he alive, in the organization he founded,” Mort wrote in Fathom.

DSA’s position on Israel, if anything, stalled the momentum it gained after Sanders’ campaign and nearly discredited the DSA, as many of the politicians who had risen with the party’s backing publicly denounced its response to the Hamas-led massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023.

Mort, a consultant who has worked with a number of left-leaning Jewish organizations, relayed the history of the movement and Israel in a 2017 essay condemning DSA’s decision to endorse the BDS movement. She argued that democratic socialists should be advocating for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, rather than embracing a political program that would negate Israel’s right to exist.

Losing allies after Oct. 7

Less than two years ago, it seemed that the DSA’s hardline stance on Israel could become too big a liability for progressive politicians, relegating the group back to the political fringe of the pre-Bernie days.

“The Democratic Socialists of America is coming apart at the seams,” Politico wrote in a story about the group’s reckoning on Israel, four days after Hamas and other terrorist groups invaded Israel from Gaza, killing and kidnapping hundreds.

Two prominent progressives who had earned the DSA’s endorsement, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, then also a House representative, condemned a pro-Palestinian rally promoted by DSA, at which some attendees cheered the massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7. Bowman had already nearly been expelled from the group over a trip he made to Israel and later let his membership lapse over disagreements with DSA about U.S. funding for Israeli defensive weapons.

Rep. Shri Thanedar of Michigan also cut ties with DSA at the time, citing the group’s refusal to unequivocally condemn terrorism as the reason for his departure.

On the West Coast, Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, elected with DSA’s support, criticized the organization’s national statement on Hamas’ attack for overlooking the violence carried out by Hamas and for showing a lack of empathy toward Israelis.

And a few months later, in July 2024, DSA withdrew an endorsement from Ocasio-Cortez after she took part in a panel on antisemitism, which DSA claimed was aimed at conflating criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews. 

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is Jewish and was another progressive candidate on the Democratic mayoral primary ballot, revealed during his campaign that after the Oct. 7 attack he left the DSA, which he had joined in 1987, citing the group’s response.

Born to the DSA

Mamdani has echoed views on Israel and the Palestinians that are nearly identical to the DSA platform, which is not surprising given that he found his way to democratic socialism through pro-Palestinian activism. As a student at Bowdoin College, a liberal arts school in Maine, he helped found the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

After graduating, he thought that Palestine activism would be disqualifying in American politics — until he met Khader El-Yateem. Running for city council in New York in 2017, Palestinian-American El-Yateem was a DSA candidate and BDS supporter, and Mamdani went to work on his campaign.

“He was a socialist, he was pro-BDS, and he was running for local office. These are all things that I had been told could never exist simultaneously in a person,” Mamdani said in a 2021 interview with Jacobin magazine. “And their existence was not a cause for fear or anxiety among so many but, in fact, of inspiration.”

Mamdani also credits the rise of Bernie Sanders for his involvement in DSA organizing. Asked why he came to identify as a socialist, Mamdani started with the values instilled in him as a child — he’s the son of the well-known Indian-American filmmaker Mira Nair and Mahmood Mamdani, an Indian expatriate from Uganda and a prominent professor of postcolonial studies at Columbia University.

“But there was definitely a point at which I started to call myself a socialist, and that was Bernie’s 2016 campaign,” he told Jacobin. “Because I saw all of these beliefs and these values that I held so dear, espoused by a man who proudly called himself a socialist as a result of those beliefs.”

From long shot to frontrunner

Early in this year’s Democratic mayoral primary, Mamdani’s bid was seen as a long shot in part because his politics on Israel were historically disqualifying in a city with more Jewish residents than any other city in the world, including Israel’s largest city, Tel Aviv. 

As polling revealed that Mamdani was gaining ground, the race became a contest between him and his chief rival, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who made fighting antisemitism a central campaign promise. Cuomo attacked Mamdani over his views on Israel. Mamdani’s DSA-aligned positions also became fodder for criticism by many Jewish New Yorkers, who blamed the type of rhetoric he espoused for the reported rise in antisemitism in the city.

But rather than back down, Mamdani stood by the views for which he was criticized.

“My support for BDS is consistent with the core of my politics, which is nonviolence, and I think that it is a legitimate movement when you are seeking to find compliance with international law,” Mamdani said at a candidate forum hosted by the UJA-Federation of New York.

He has also declined, when repeatedly asked, to condemn the pro-Palestinian protest slogan “globalize the intifada,” which many see as a call for violence against Jews in the Diaspora.

He has promised to take the concerns of Jewish New Yorkers about safety seriously if he wins the general election and becomes mayor.

In its official statement welcoming Mamdani’s victory, the DSA did not mention his views on Israel, but rather focused on the candidate as “a representative of a working-class socialist movement.”

“These election results are a rejection of the Democratic Party political establishment and point to a widespread desire for an alternative to the status quo, and the need for the working-class political party DSA is building,” their statement read. 

Mort supported Lander, but now that Mamdani has won, she is backing him — and not only because he is the presumptive Democratic candidate. She is willing to look past his affiliation with the DSA because she believes he is not beholden to the group’s “doctrinaire” approach to politics. She also hopes Mamdani changes his position on BDS, if only because taking a position that alienates so many New Yorkers would make it harder for him to govern the city. 

“The more I have looked into the way Mamdani ran his campaign, the depth of the support and the sophistication of it, I just can’t help but be very impressed, and I would hope that that would carry over into the way he would govern,” Mort said in an interview. “He has started to reach out to people who are not in his inner circle. I think that’s a good sign.”

MADRID  — Spanish police dismantled a major criminal network that allegedly falsified thousands of citizenship applications under the country’s Sephardic nationality law, according to El País.

The immigration scheme allegedly exploited a 2015 law, dubbed the “Law of Return,” that allows the descendants of Jews expelled in the 1492 Spanish Inquisition to obtain Spanish nationality. 

The suspects allegedly submitted thousands of fraudulent genealogical certificates, some of which bore the names of popular singers like Shakira and J Balvin, and charged clients between €6,000 and €8,000 ($6,000 and $9,400) for citizenship applications.

The six suspects, among which were three notaries, were arrested in Málaga, a city in southern Spain, this week for the scheme, according to El País.

One suspect believed to be the leader of the operation, who was identified as Y.S., described himself as a representative of Spain’s Sephardic community. 

In the alleged scheme, Y.S. would personally certified clients’ supposed Sephardic lineage by copying genealogical data from the internet. Police discovered over 1,200 fake certificates at the home of Y.S.’s associate.

“The scale of this fraud suggests earnings could easily have reached 10 million euros,” or nearly $12 million, an investigator told El País. “They lived lavishly — luxury cars, upscale apartments in Marbella, the high life.”

Since it was launched in 2015, the “Law of Return” has attracted over 88,000 applications. More than 72,000 of the applications have been approved, but roughly 7,000 have been rejected — most of which occurred after 2021, when authorities began rigorously reviewing thousands of suspicious cases after a police report indicated widespread fraud.

In 2021, the Justice Ministry, then led by Pilar Llop, began rejecting thousands of applications after the National Police alerted officials to rampant fraud involving fictitious applicants, falsified genealogical documents, and patterns of fraud involving lawyers, notaries, and intermediaries. 

Those involved in the fraud responded by publicly accusing Llop’s department of antisemitism, El País reported.

Amid the sudden spree of rejection in 2021, ministry officials told JTA that the applications were undergoing heightened scrutiny due to fears of fraud, but denied changing the criteria retroactively. 

 

“Many lawyers have told me that how the law is being applied to us now is illegal,” Venezuelan applicant Bernardo Pulido, whose application was rejected after extensive genealogical research, told JTA at the time.

The controversy in Spain echoes similar issues in Portugal, where Rabbi Daniel Litvak of Oporto was arrested in 2022 amid investigations into fraudulent citizenship applications linked notably to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. 

Litvak’s arrest heightened tensions between Portuguese Jewish communities. The community denied any wrongdoing. 

Later, a Portuguese appeals court loosened the restrictions on Litvak, allowing him to travel freely while criticizing prosecutors for insufficient evidence against him.

The recent Spanish fraud scheme is currently under investigation by Spain’s National Court continues, underscoring persistent challenges and sensitivities surrounding Sephardic citizenship laws across Iberia.

 

The custodian of a synagogue in Glen Rock, New Jersey was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sparking calls for his release from the mayor of the northern New Jersey suburb.

Jorge Tomas Dagar Aquino, who had been working for the Glen Rock Jewish Center since 2014 and became the center’s full time maintenance supervisor in 2020, was detained by ICE during an asylum interview on June 16.

Glen Rock Mayor Kristine Morieko condemned his detention, asserting it was “in direct violation of due process and without cause.”

“Over the years, he has become an integral part of our community — not only through his work, but also through his relationships, his kindness, and his quiet contributions to the dignity of their shared space,” Morieko said.

The mayor also called on the Glen Rock community to write hand-signed letters of support for Aquino, who had lived in the United States for over 20 years, and send them to the Glen Rock Jewish Center.

Morieko did not immediately respond to a request for an update on Aquino’s arrest by JTA. The Glen Rock Jewish Center declined to comment on Aquino’s case, saying that it could jeopardize his immigration proceedings.

According to the synagogue website, Aquino is originally from Ecuador. He is married with three daughters and two grandchildren.

Aquino’s arrest by immigration enforcement comes as the Trump administration has ordered mass arrests and deportations of undocumented people across the United States.

Earlier this month in California, a volley of immigration raids and detainments sparked mass protests against ICE. As tensions over the protests mounted, rabbis and other Jewish communal leaders in California called for protesters to remain nonviolent.

In February, the governing bodies of the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements joined a lawsuit attempting to block the Trump administration from carrying out ICE raids at houses of worship. But in April, a federal judge sided with the Trump administration in such cases.

An 82-year-old victim of the firebombing attack at a Boulder, Colorado demonstration for Israeli hostages has died from her wounds.

The victim, Karen Diamond, “died tragically as a result of the severe injuries that she suffered in the attack,” according to a statement released by the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office.

Diamond is one of 29 targets in the June 1 attack, of whom 13 suffered physical injuries, according to an amended complaint by the district attorney’s office. The suspect in the firebombing attack, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, will now face two counts of murder as a result of Diamond’s death.

Soliman was indicted on 12 hate crime counts last week, and his lawyer entered a not guilty plea for him Friday. He is accused of trying to kill eight people at the attack on the demonstration, Run for Their Lives, in which he threw two molotov cocktails at the group.

As news of Diamond’s passing broke, several major Jewish organizations released statements expressing condolences for her passing and renewing calls for increased security for Jewish gatherings.

“Karen Diamond, who was severely injured in the antisemitic terror attack on a peaceful demonstration in Boulder earlier this month, has died from her wounds,” wrote the American Jewish Committee in a post on X. “We send our deepest condolences to her family. May her memory be a blessing. 13 other people were injured in this brutal assault on the group advocating for the remaining hostages held by Hamas.”

“We are heartbroken to learn of the passing of Karen Diamond, who was critically injured during the peaceful march in Boulder calling for the release of the hostages held by Hamas. May her memory be a blessing,” wrote the Secure Community Network, an organization that coordinates security for Jewish institutions nationwide, in a post on X.

“We pray for the full recovery of the other victims. This senseless murder is another painful reminder of the unprecedented threat environment the Jewish community faces in North America,” the post continued.

Diamond, a longtime member of Bonai Shalom congregation in Boulder, is survived by husband Lou, sons Andrew and Ethan, their wives, and five grandsons. “This event and the tragic loss of someone who has given so much of herself over the years to the Bonai community and beyond, has impacted us all and we are sad and horrified,” the congregation’s rabbi, Marc Soloway, said in a statement.

Soliman also faces 118 charges, including 28 counts of attempted murder, in Colorado state court. Soliman, an Egyptian national who officials say had been illegally living in the United States, did not speak at the federal hearing last week, and he listened to translations provided by an Arabic interpreter through headphones, according to the Associated Press.

The Supreme Court upheld a law allowing the families of victims of terrorism to sue Palestinian entities in U.S. courts, reviving decades-old lawsuits against the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority.

The ruling, which was delivered June 20 in a case naming the murdered American-Israeli activist Ari Fuld, upheld the 2019 Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act and found that the law did not violate the due process of the Palestinian entities.

The Supreme Court found that the law accounted for “sensitive foreign policy matters within the prerogative of the political branches,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.

The court has “recognized the national government’s interest in holding accountable those who perpetrate an ‘act of violence against’ US nationals — who, even when physically outside our borders, remain ‘under the particular protection’ of American law,” Roberts wrote. “So too the national government’s corresponding authority to make ‘the killing of an American abroad’ punishable as a federal offense ‘that can be prosecuted in (US) courts.”

The ruling will be applied to attacks that occurred during the Second Intifada in the 2000s that killed 33 as well as the 2018 murder of Fuld, who was the named plaintiff in the case before the Supreme Court.

The Palestinian entities have argued that the cases should not be fought in American courts. The federal appeals court in New York had previously ruled in favor of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority.

The Supreme Court’s decision will likely lay the foundation for other U.S. victims of terrorism by Palestinian groups to seek damages through litigation in U.S. courts.

In March, the U.S. Justice Department announced a task force that will seek redress for the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel by prosecuting people who participated in the attack as well as Hamas leaders who orchestrated it.

The Department of Homeland Security announced it would award $94 million in security grants to 512 Jewish organizations Friday.

The agency cited the recent string of violence against Jewish groups, including the attacks in Washington D.C. and Boulder, Colorado, in it announcement, writing that the funds would “help protect Jewish faith-based institutions from further attacks.”

“DHS is working to put a stop to the deeply disturbing rise in antisemitic attacks across the United States,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin in a statement. “That this money is necessary at all is tragic. Antisemitic violence has no place in this country. However, under President Trump and Secretary Noem’s leadership, we are going to do everything in our power to make sure that Jewish people in the United States can live free of the threat of violence and terrorism.”

The grants mark the release of around half of the funding still tied up from a Trump administration review of federal spending.

The funding, which is distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency through he Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP), was expected to include the full $220 million that has yet to be released to recipients.

NSGO provides funding for faith-based institutions including synagogues, schools and Jewish community centers to pay for security measures to protect their buildings from attack. Last month, FEMA lifted the Trump administration’s two-monthslong freeze on funding reimbursements.

Lauren Wolman, the director of federal policy and strategy at the Anti-Defamation League, told Jewish Insider that while the recent funding announcement is welcome, “the job isn’t done.”

“We welcome the Administration awarding $94 million in Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP) funding to help protect over 500 Jewish institutions amid the historic levels of antisemitic threats that ADL is tracking,” said Wolman. “But the job isn’t done. DHS must urgently release the additional NSGP supplemental funds Congress appropriated to meet overwhelming demand and save lives. ADL will continue working with lawmakers and senior officials to underscore both the urgency of increasing funding and moving previously appropriated funding.”

The Trump administration informed Harvard that the school had violated the civil rights of its Jewish and Israeli students in its response to alleged antisemitism on campus.

The letter, reported Monday by the Wall Street Journal, was sent to Harvard President Alan Garber and accused the school of failing to properly address the concerns of Jewish and Israeli students who felt threatened by the pro-Palestinian protests on its campus.

It outlined various instances of harassment against Jewish and Israeli students on campus, including assault and the circulation of antisemitic imagery. The notice of violation called on Harvard to make “adequate changes immediately” to avoid the loss of the remainder of the school’s federal funding.

“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” the letter read. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”

The letter opens the latest front in the Trump administration’s campaign against the school, in which the administration has cited antisemitism as one of the chief reasons for cutting funding and demanding other changes.

Last month, the Trump administration revoked its permission for the school to enroll international students, and also announced its intent to cancel all of its remaining federal funding, approximately $100 million, over the school’s “disturbing lack of concern for the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students.”

Critics of those moves. Included some Jewish leaders, have called many of those demands either unwarranted or heavy-handed.

In April, Harvard released its long-awaited internal antisemitism report which was accompanied by a letter from Garber in which he apologized for the campus climate over the last year and a half.

Harvard has sued the Trump administration for freezing nearly $3 billion in research funding. Last week, the National Jewish Advocacy Center, a recently founded group that has filed lawsuits to protect Jews on campuses, filed an amicus brief in the suit siding with the Trump administration.

“No institution is simply entitled to billions of taxpayer dollars,” the brief read, according to the Harvard Crimson. “The federal government, for good reason, does not believe that Harvard is adequately protecting Jewish members of its community and does not want to support this obnoxious facade.”

The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, another Jewish advocacy group, also filed a brief last Monday siding with the administration, asking the court to reject three amicus briefs supporting Harvard in the case.

In November 1944, she joined the French Army as a nurse, but was soon transferred to the army’s intelligence service. She eventually crossed into German territory as the war was winding down. In her most storied piece of derring-do, she was able to report that the Siegfried Line, a German stronghold northwest of Freiburg, had been evacuated, and pinpoint the  location of German troops lying in ambush in the Black Forest.

In 1945, the French Army awarded Marthe the Croix de Guerre. Germany also later awarded her The Cross of the Order of Merit, Germany’s highest honor.

“I had no idea what I was getting myself into,” Cohn told the Los Angleles Times in 2000. “I’m not a liar or an actor, but when your survival depends upon it… I did it for what Germans had done to us.”

Cohn lived in the United States beginning in 1956, and worked as a nurse anesthetist at Magee-Womens Hospital at the University of Pittsburgh. Only in 1999 did her children and grandchildren learn about her exploits during the war. In a 2002 she wrote a memoir with Wendy Holden, “Behind Enemy Lines.” That year she was awarded the title of Chevalier de la Légion d’honneu, the highest French order for military and civil merits

Her story was also told in a documentary, “The Accidental Spy.”

Cohn later worked as a research assistant in her husband’s neuroscience lab at UCLA/Drew Medical Center. In 2020, at the start of the COVID pandemic, Cohn celebrated her 100th birthday in the driveway of her Los Angeles home, as a parade of well-wishers drove by in cars. A letter of congratulations from Israeli President Reuven Rivlin was read over a bullhorn and Cohn later received a phone call from both Rivlin and the president of Germany, as well as hundreds of emails.

She is survived by her husband of 67 years, Dr. Major Cohn, and their sons, Stephan and Remi.

Dozens of Jewish settlers rioted outside of a multi-million dollar security facility in the West Bank Sunday night and set it ablaze in a continuation of far-right settler protests against the IDF in recent days.

The violence comes after six settlers were arrested overnight Friday for assaulting a group of IDF reservists near the Palestinian village of Kafr Malik. The rioters Sunday were protesting the use of warning shots against settlers who committed the ambush Friday, which apparently resulted in the injury of a teenager.

The IDF denied that they had fired live ammunition at the settlers, writing in a statement that “an initial investigation indicates that IDF forces did not fire live ammunition at Israeli civilians in the area.” But settler groups have claimed this is false, posting a video of shell casings on the ground at the site of the attack.

The escalation of rioting by Israeli settlers comes after a violent attack Wednesday by armed Israeli settlers on two Palestinian villages in the West Bank. Three Palestinians were killed by IDF fire and two homes were set ablaze, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Israeli security forces arrested five settlers over the spree of violence.

Critics of extremist settlers and of the government in recent months have said that attacks by Jews on Palestinians living in the West Bank invariably go unpunished, and have intensified with attention focused on the war in Gaza. Opposition politicians regularly condemn government officials for doing too little to rein in settler violence.

In attacking soldiers, however, there was agreement at the top that the settlers had crossed a line.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz convened an urgent meeting about the settler violence against Israeli security forces Monday.

“This phenomenon must be immediately put to an end. We will take all necessary measures and uproot this violence from its roots — no one will dare raise their hand against IDF soldiers or security forces,” said Katz in a statement according to the Jerusalem Post.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar also condemned the recent attacks by Jewish extremist settlers against IDF soldiers.

“No civilized country can tolerate violent and anarchic acts such as the burning of a military installation, damage to IDF property, and assaults on security personnel by citizens of the state,” said Netanyahu in a statement.

“The settler community is a model and an example of developing the land, meaningful service in the IDF, and contributing to the cultivation of Torah scholars. We will not allow a violent and fanatic few to tarnish an entire community,” continued Netanyahu.

“I strongly condemn the violence against the IDF and security forces,” wrote Sa’ar in a post on X early Monday. “Such incidents are unacceptable, and the offenders must be severely punished. The IDF and security forces work day and night to protect Israel’s citizens and security. They must be supported, their activities must not be disrupted, and under no circumstances should any of them be attacked.”

But Yair Golan, the leader of the Democrats party, rejected the portrayal of the settlers as a fringe minority, writing in a post on X Monday that they are a “violent arm operating with the government’s legitimacy.”

“Some will continue to call them ‘weeds,’ ‘hilltop youth,’ ‘extremist minority.’ But this is no longer a negligible group. This is an armed and violent arm operating with the government’s legitimacy,” wrote Golan.

“These are Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s militias, who see the law and the IDF as an unnecessary obstacle on their path to annexation. And they are no longer content with violence against Palestinians, but have long since turned against the IDF and the Zionist, democratic Israel,” the post continued.