’Tis the season to be jihadi…
Christmas and Chanukah celebrations in Israel contrast with rising instances of hostile Muslim actions during holiday season, perpetuating religious…
The Jewish World Team
7 mins read
Published by
The Jewish World
Christmas trees decorate the city of Bethlehem, which has begun to see a return of international tourism after a two-year void due to Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, reviving hopes for the recovery of the tourism sector, especially during the holiday season, Dec. 1, 2025. Photo courtesy of Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90.
’Tis the season to be jihadi…
It’s that time of year again: Christmas trees and Chanukah menorahs; tinsel and dreidels; plum puddings and potato latkes; Christmas caroling and Adam Sandler’s Chanukah song—and, of course, everyone’s favorite holiday cheer: Many Muslims proving once again that “Peace on Earth and goodwill toward men” is a Judeo-Christian tradition that they want no part of.
Over the past few weeks, Islamists in Nigeria destroyed 100 churches, and killed and kidnapped nearly 300 Christians, many of them children. Combine that with the arson and vandalism of more than 1,000 churches in France, 150 in the United Kingdom, 68 in Canada and 60 in Germany. A year ago, an Islamist mob torched a Christmas tree in Damascus after firing bullets inside a church. The tree was meant as a gesture of interfaith solidarity in Syria.
Europeans Fed Up?
Germany and France are preparing for the seasonal ritual of car-rammings and firing weapons into (and planting bombs inside) Christmas markets. This has happened over the past few years in European cities such as Magdeburg (five killed, including a 9-year old) and Trier (five dead, including a nine-week-old baby) in Germany; Nantes (10 killed), Strasbourg and Dijon in France; Potsdam and Berlin in Germany, where a truck slammed into a Christmas market in 2016. The giddy driver, high not on eggnog but some hadith, could be heard screaming, Allahu Akbar! upon impact.
’Tis the season to be jihadi. I’ll take Scrooge and the Grinch any day over Mohammad’s followers’anti-Christmas humbug.
And let’s not forget the New Year’s Eve surprise white women in Germany, Finland, Sweden and Austria received in 2016 when approximately 1,200 were sexually assaulted by Muslim men who believed the Quran gave them permission.
Europeans are fed up, as they should be. Americans are still mostly unmindful of the edicts compelling Muslims to reject interfaith fealty, and to murder and rape Christians and Jews because Allah is the final word on revelation.
ADVERTISEMENT
This past week, Germany’s interior minister stripped a man of his citizenship for supporting Hamas. His reasoning: naturalized citizens forfeit their citizenship when they are unable to uphold German values. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims made Germany their home over the past decade. Far too few of them—not unlike Muslims in France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom—have any interest in abandoning Islam’s implacable hostility to the West, Christianity and Judaism.
Germany reformed its nationality laws in 2024, specifically requiring that applicants for citizenship declare their commitment to liberal democracy and the separation between mosque and state. Given Germany’s historical responsibility for the Holocaust, new citizens must also recognize the nation’s unique duty to protect Jewish life.
Most Muslims around the world, however, believe themselves to be bound to sharia law alone. And the Quran clearly states that Jews are to be killed, not safeguarded.
To promote the integration that so many Muslims abhor, Austria plans to prohibit girls under the age of 14 from wearing hijabs (headscarves) in schools, both public and private. This would include playgrounds, gymnasiums and sports fields. The government views such Islamic requirements as oppression, not religion.
Back in 2009, French President Nicolas Sarkozy unsuccessfully attempted to ban the wearing of the burqa for similar reasons. Democracies are open societies that depend upon a national acceptance of human dignity and public engagement.
How is that possible when faces are shrouded? Religion is beside the point during the holiday season. Its purpose is mainly to foster feelings of interfaith solidarity and social cohesion.
New York’s Suffering
New Yorkers had an interesting week of disrespectful interfaith snubbing. The City College of New York invited the school’s many religions to a “workshop” dialogue. It didn’t take long before it came to an abrupt end. An imam took the stage and proclaimed the superiority of sharia law.
He then got more specific and anti-social: “I came here to this event not knowing that I would be sitting next to a Zionist, and this is something I’m not going to accept. … If you’re a Muslim, … I ask you to exit this room immediately.”
More than 100 Muslim students felt no qualms leaving their fellow classmates, most of whom were not even Jews. Afterward, the college’s Hillel director stated that had the imam directed the students to “attack this Zionist,” they probably would have unflinchingly complied.
A few days later, outside a Manhattan synagogue, an angry mob of 200 anti-Semites heckled Jews and chanted “Death to the IDF!” and “From New York to Gaza, globalize the intifada!” The leader of the demonstration proudly told the cheering crowd, “It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events. We need to make them scared.”
ADVERTISEMENT
As a longtime law professor, I can assure you that the First Amendment offers no protection to that last statement. Yet the New York City Police Department watched this medieval spectacle play itself out right beside the synagogue’s front door.
What sin was purportedly taking place inside the synagogue that required such a show of Islamist force and intimidation? A Zionist organization that assists Jews in moving to Israel was making a presentation.
What Law?
The newly elected Muslim mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, who promised during the campaign to protect his Jewish constituents, issued a statement: “New Yorkers should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
What international law is he talking about? Is it now illegal in New York City for Jews to even contemplate moving to Israel?
Islamophobic?
Mamdani doesn’t seem to mind that the “sacred spaces” of mosques are used the world over to plot terrorist attacks, awaken sleeper cells and incite violence against Western infidels. Maybe that’s because, unlike Judaism and Christianity, global conquest is integral to Islam. Jesus and Moses, after all, were peacemakers and lawgivers. Mohammad was a warrior general.
Terrorism violates international law, but Mamdani might feel that such a law is worth violating—“by any means necessary.” The world has resigned itself that Islamists are the finest practitioners of the trade, and it just so happens to be Islamophobic to point that out.
New York Christians, beware: The new mayor may soon determine that your scared spaces aren’t being used properly. Bingo games and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings inside your churches might become verboten.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in New York City, Ethiopian Jews, the Beta Israel community (yes, Jews are neither lily-white nor abundant in white privilege), celebrated the holiday of Sigd. It marks the Ethiopian Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the community’s embrace of Judaism. Israel designated Sigd an official holiday in 2008.
Beta Israel traces its ancestry to the Tribe of Dan during the exodus from Egypt. That’s several thousand years before there ever was an Islam. Talk about Jewish continuity and diversity! Here’s something for both Jew-haters and the “Michelin Guide” to consider: A kosher Ethiopian restaurant, Tsion, is doing a brisk business in Harlem.
Yet another inconvenient truth about Israel” Persecuted Jews of color living in Ethiopia in the 1980s and 1990s sought refuge in Israel. I suppose they, too, are among the “settler-colonialists” those protesting outside the synagogue in New York would have strangled had they been given the chance.
Reprinted with permission from The Jewish Journal.
ADVERTISEMENT
’Tis the season to be jihadi…
Christmas and Chanukah celebrations in Israel contrast with rising instances of hostile Muslim actions during holiday season, perpetuating religious…
The Jewish World Team
7 mins read
Published by
The Jewish World
Christmas trees decorate the city of Bethlehem, which has begun to see a return of international tourism after a two-year void due to Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, reviving hopes for the recovery of the tourism sector, especially during the holiday season, Dec. 1, 2025. Photo courtesy of Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90.
’Tis the season to be jihadi…
It’s that time of year again: Christmas trees and Chanukah menorahs; tinsel and dreidels; plum puddings and potato latkes; Christmas caroling and Adam Sandler’s Chanukah song—and, of course, everyone’s favorite holiday cheer: Many Muslims proving once again that “Peace on Earth and goodwill toward men” is a Judeo-Christian tradition that they want no part of.
Over the past few weeks, Islamists in Nigeria destroyed 100 churches, and killed and kidnapped nearly 300 Christians, many of them children. Combine that with the arson and vandalism of more than 1,000 churches in France, 150 in the United Kingdom, 68 in Canada and 60 in Germany. A year ago, an Islamist mob torched a Christmas tree in Damascus after firing bullets inside a church. The tree was meant as a gesture of interfaith solidarity in Syria.
Europeans Fed Up?
Germany and France are preparing for the seasonal ritual of car-rammings and firing weapons into (and planting bombs inside) Christmas markets. This has happened over the past few years in European cities such as Magdeburg (five killed, including a 9-year old) and Trier (five dead, including a nine-week-old baby) in Germany; Nantes (10 killed), Strasbourg and Dijon in France; Potsdam and Berlin in Germany, where a truck slammed into a Christmas market in 2016. The giddy driver, high not on eggnog but some hadith, could be heard screaming, Allahu Akbar! upon impact.
’Tis the season to be jihadi. I’ll take Scrooge and the Grinch any day over Mohammad’s followers’anti-Christmas humbug.
And let’s not forget the New Year’s Eve surprise white women in Germany, Finland, Sweden and Austria received in 2016 when approximately 1,200 were sexually assaulted by Muslim men who believed the Quran gave them permission.
Europeans are fed up, as they should be. Americans are still mostly unmindful of the edicts compelling Muslims to reject interfaith fealty, and to murder and rape Christians and Jews because Allah is the final word on revelation.
ADVERTISEMENT
This past week, Germany’s interior minister stripped a man of his citizenship for supporting Hamas. His reasoning: naturalized citizens forfeit their citizenship when they are unable to uphold German values. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims made Germany their home over the past decade. Far too few of them—not unlike Muslims in France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom—have any interest in abandoning Islam’s implacable hostility to the West, Christianity and Judaism.
Germany reformed its nationality laws in 2024, specifically requiring that applicants for citizenship declare their commitment to liberal democracy and the separation between mosque and state. Given Germany’s historical responsibility for the Holocaust, new citizens must also recognize the nation’s unique duty to protect Jewish life.
Most Muslims around the world, however, believe themselves to be bound to sharia law alone. And the Quran clearly states that Jews are to be killed, not safeguarded.
To promote the integration that so many Muslims abhor, Austria plans to prohibit girls under the age of 14 from wearing hijabs (headscarves) in schools, both public and private. This would include playgrounds, gymnasiums and sports fields. The government views such Islamic requirements as oppression, not religion.
Back in 2009, French President Nicolas Sarkozy unsuccessfully attempted to ban the wearing of the burqa for similar reasons. Democracies are open societies that depend upon a national acceptance of human dignity and public engagement.
How is that possible when faces are shrouded? Religion is beside the point during the holiday season. Its purpose is mainly to foster feelings of interfaith solidarity and social cohesion.
New York’s Suffering
New Yorkers had an interesting week of disrespectful interfaith snubbing. The City College of New York invited the school’s many religions to a “workshop” dialogue. It didn’t take long before it came to an abrupt end. An imam took the stage and proclaimed the superiority of sharia law.
He then got more specific and anti-social: “I came here to this event not knowing that I would be sitting next to a Zionist, and this is something I’m not going to accept. … If you’re a Muslim, … I ask you to exit this room immediately.”
More than 100 Muslim students felt no qualms leaving their fellow classmates, most of whom were not even Jews. Afterward, the college’s Hillel director stated that had the imam directed the students to “attack this Zionist,” they probably would have unflinchingly complied.
A few days later, outside a Manhattan synagogue, an angry mob of 200 anti-Semites heckled Jews and chanted “Death to the IDF!” and “From New York to Gaza, globalize the intifada!” The leader of the demonstration proudly told the cheering crowd, “It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events. We need to make them scared.”
ADVERTISEMENT
As a longtime law professor, I can assure you that the First Amendment offers no protection to that last statement. Yet the New York City Police Department watched this medieval spectacle play itself out right beside the synagogue’s front door.
What sin was purportedly taking place inside the synagogue that required such a show of Islamist force and intimidation? A Zionist organization that assists Jews in moving to Israel was making a presentation.
What Law?
The newly elected Muslim mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, who promised during the campaign to protect his Jewish constituents, issued a statement: “New Yorkers should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
What international law is he talking about? Is it now illegal in New York City for Jews to even contemplate moving to Israel?
Islamophobic?
Mamdani doesn’t seem to mind that the “sacred spaces” of mosques are used the world over to plot terrorist attacks, awaken sleeper cells and incite violence against Western infidels. Maybe that’s because, unlike Judaism and Christianity, global conquest is integral to Islam. Jesus and Moses, after all, were peacemakers and lawgivers. Mohammad was a warrior general.
Terrorism violates international law, but Mamdani might feel that such a law is worth violating—“by any means necessary.” The world has resigned itself that Islamists are the finest practitioners of the trade, and it just so happens to be Islamophobic to point that out.
New York Christians, beware: The new mayor may soon determine that your scared spaces aren’t being used properly. Bingo games and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings inside your churches might become verboten.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in New York City, Ethiopian Jews, the Beta Israel community (yes, Jews are neither lily-white nor abundant in white privilege), celebrated the holiday of Sigd. It marks the Ethiopian Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the community’s embrace of Judaism. Israel designated Sigd an official holiday in 2008.
Beta Israel traces its ancestry to the Tribe of Dan during the exodus from Egypt. That’s several thousand years before there ever was an Islam. Talk about Jewish continuity and diversity! Here’s something for both Jew-haters and the “Michelin Guide” to consider: A kosher Ethiopian restaurant, Tsion, is doing a brisk business in Harlem.
Yet another inconvenient truth about Israel” Persecuted Jews of color living in Ethiopia in the 1980s and 1990s sought refuge in Israel. I suppose they, too, are among the “settler-colonialists” those protesting outside the synagogue in New York would have strangled had they been given the chance.
Reprinted with permission from The Jewish Journal.
ADVERTISEMENT
’Tis the season to be jihadi…
Christmas and Chanukah celebrations in Israel contrast with rising instances of hostile Muslim actions during holiday season, perpetuating religious…
The Jewish World Team
7 mins read
Published by
The Jewish World
Christmas trees decorate the city of Bethlehem, which has begun to see a return of international tourism after a two-year void due to Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, reviving hopes for the recovery of the tourism sector, especially during the holiday season, Dec. 1, 2025. Photo courtesy of Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90.
’Tis the season to be jihadi…
It’s that time of year again: Christmas trees and Chanukah menorahs; tinsel and dreidels; plum puddings and potato latkes; Christmas caroling and Adam Sandler’s Chanukah song—and, of course, everyone’s favorite holiday cheer: Many Muslims proving once again that “Peace on Earth and goodwill toward men” is a Judeo-Christian tradition that they want no part of.
Over the past few weeks, Islamists in Nigeria destroyed 100 churches, and killed and kidnapped nearly 300 Christians, many of them children. Combine that with the arson and vandalism of more than 1,000 churches in France, 150 in the United Kingdom, 68 in Canada and 60 in Germany. A year ago, an Islamist mob torched a Christmas tree in Damascus after firing bullets inside a church. The tree was meant as a gesture of interfaith solidarity in Syria.
Europeans Fed Up?
Germany and France are preparing for the seasonal ritual of car-rammings and firing weapons into (and planting bombs inside) Christmas markets. This has happened over the past few years in European cities such as Magdeburg (five killed, including a 9-year old) and Trier (five dead, including a nine-week-old baby) in Germany; Nantes (10 killed), Strasbourg and Dijon in France; Potsdam and Berlin in Germany, where a truck slammed into a Christmas market in 2016. The giddy driver, high not on eggnog but some hadith, could be heard screaming, Allahu Akbar! upon impact.
’Tis the season to be jihadi. I’ll take Scrooge and the Grinch any day over Mohammad’s followers’anti-Christmas humbug.
And let’s not forget the New Year’s Eve surprise white women in Germany, Finland, Sweden and Austria received in 2016 when approximately 1,200 were sexually assaulted by Muslim men who believed the Quran gave them permission.
Europeans are fed up, as they should be. Americans are still mostly unmindful of the edicts compelling Muslims to reject interfaith fealty, and to murder and rape Christians and Jews because Allah is the final word on revelation.
ADVERTISEMENT
This past week, Germany’s interior minister stripped a man of his citizenship for supporting Hamas. His reasoning: naturalized citizens forfeit their citizenship when they are unable to uphold German values. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims made Germany their home over the past decade. Far too few of them—not unlike Muslims in France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom—have any interest in abandoning Islam’s implacable hostility to the West, Christianity and Judaism.
Germany reformed its nationality laws in 2024, specifically requiring that applicants for citizenship declare their commitment to liberal democracy and the separation between mosque and state. Given Germany’s historical responsibility for the Holocaust, new citizens must also recognize the nation’s unique duty to protect Jewish life.
Most Muslims around the world, however, believe themselves to be bound to sharia law alone. And the Quran clearly states that Jews are to be killed, not safeguarded.
To promote the integration that so many Muslims abhor, Austria plans to prohibit girls under the age of 14 from wearing hijabs (headscarves) in schools, both public and private. This would include playgrounds, gymnasiums and sports fields. The government views such Islamic requirements as oppression, not religion.
Back in 2009, French President Nicolas Sarkozy unsuccessfully attempted to ban the wearing of the burqa for similar reasons. Democracies are open societies that depend upon a national acceptance of human dignity and public engagement.
How is that possible when faces are shrouded? Religion is beside the point during the holiday season. Its purpose is mainly to foster feelings of interfaith solidarity and social cohesion.
New York’s Suffering
New Yorkers had an interesting week of disrespectful interfaith snubbing. The City College of New York invited the school’s many religions to a “workshop” dialogue. It didn’t take long before it came to an abrupt end. An imam took the stage and proclaimed the superiority of sharia law.
He then got more specific and anti-social: “I came here to this event not knowing that I would be sitting next to a Zionist, and this is something I’m not going to accept. … If you’re a Muslim, … I ask you to exit this room immediately.”
More than 100 Muslim students felt no qualms leaving their fellow classmates, most of whom were not even Jews. Afterward, the college’s Hillel director stated that had the imam directed the students to “attack this Zionist,” they probably would have unflinchingly complied.
A few days later, outside a Manhattan synagogue, an angry mob of 200 anti-Semites heckled Jews and chanted “Death to the IDF!” and “From New York to Gaza, globalize the intifada!” The leader of the demonstration proudly told the cheering crowd, “It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events. We need to make them scared.”
ADVERTISEMENT
As a longtime law professor, I can assure you that the First Amendment offers no protection to that last statement. Yet the New York City Police Department watched this medieval spectacle play itself out right beside the synagogue’s front door.
What sin was purportedly taking place inside the synagogue that required such a show of Islamist force and intimidation? A Zionist organization that assists Jews in moving to Israel was making a presentation.
What Law?
The newly elected Muslim mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, who promised during the campaign to protect his Jewish constituents, issued a statement: “New Yorkers should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
What international law is he talking about? Is it now illegal in New York City for Jews to even contemplate moving to Israel?
Islamophobic?
Mamdani doesn’t seem to mind that the “sacred spaces” of mosques are used the world over to plot terrorist attacks, awaken sleeper cells and incite violence against Western infidels. Maybe that’s because, unlike Judaism and Christianity, global conquest is integral to Islam. Jesus and Moses, after all, were peacemakers and lawgivers. Mohammad was a warrior general.
Terrorism violates international law, but Mamdani might feel that such a law is worth violating—“by any means necessary.” The world has resigned itself that Islamists are the finest practitioners of the trade, and it just so happens to be Islamophobic to point that out.
New York Christians, beware: The new mayor may soon determine that your scared spaces aren’t being used properly. Bingo games and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings inside your churches might become verboten.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in New York City, Ethiopian Jews, the Beta Israel community (yes, Jews are neither lily-white nor abundant in white privilege), celebrated the holiday of Sigd. It marks the Ethiopian Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the community’s embrace of Judaism. Israel designated Sigd an official holiday in 2008.
Beta Israel traces its ancestry to the Tribe of Dan during the exodus from Egypt. That’s several thousand years before there ever was an Islam. Talk about Jewish continuity and diversity! Here’s something for both Jew-haters and the “Michelin Guide” to consider: A kosher Ethiopian restaurant, Tsion, is doing a brisk business in Harlem.
Yet another inconvenient truth about Israel” Persecuted Jews of color living in Ethiopia in the 1980s and 1990s sought refuge in Israel. I suppose they, too, are among the “settler-colonialists” those protesting outside the synagogue in New York would have strangled had they been given the chance.
Reprinted with permission from The Jewish Journal.
ADVERTISEMENT
’Tis the season to be jihadi…
Christmas and Chanukah celebrations in Israel contrast with rising instances of hostile Muslim actions during holiday season, perpetuating religious…
The Jewish World Team
7 mins read
Published by
The Jewish World
Christmas trees decorate the city of Bethlehem, which has begun to see a return of international tourism after a two-year void due to Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, reviving hopes for the recovery of the tourism sector, especially during the holiday season, Dec. 1, 2025. Photo courtesy of Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90.
’Tis the season to be jihadi…
It’s that time of year again: Christmas trees and Chanukah menorahs; tinsel and dreidels; plum puddings and potato latkes; Christmas caroling and Adam Sandler’s Chanukah song—and, of course, everyone’s favorite holiday cheer: Many Muslims proving once again that “Peace on Earth and goodwill toward men” is a Judeo-Christian tradition that they want no part of.
Over the past few weeks, Islamists in Nigeria destroyed 100 churches, and killed and kidnapped nearly 300 Christians, many of them children. Combine that with the arson and vandalism of more than 1,000 churches in France, 150 in the United Kingdom, 68 in Canada and 60 in Germany. A year ago, an Islamist mob torched a Christmas tree in Damascus after firing bullets inside a church. The tree was meant as a gesture of interfaith solidarity in Syria.
Europeans Fed Up?
Germany and France are preparing for the seasonal ritual of car-rammings and firing weapons into (and planting bombs inside) Christmas markets. This has happened over the past few years in European cities such as Magdeburg (five killed, including a 9-year old) and Trier (five dead, including a nine-week-old baby) in Germany; Nantes (10 killed), Strasbourg and Dijon in France; Potsdam and Berlin in Germany, where a truck slammed into a Christmas market in 2016. The giddy driver, high not on eggnog but some hadith, could be heard screaming, Allahu Akbar! upon impact.
’Tis the season to be jihadi. I’ll take Scrooge and the Grinch any day over Mohammad’s followers’anti-Christmas humbug.
And let’s not forget the New Year’s Eve surprise white women in Germany, Finland, Sweden and Austria received in 2016 when approximately 1,200 were sexually assaulted by Muslim men who believed the Quran gave them permission.
Europeans are fed up, as they should be. Americans are still mostly unmindful of the edicts compelling Muslims to reject interfaith fealty, and to murder and rape Christians and Jews because Allah is the final word on revelation.
ADVERTISEMENT
This past week, Germany’s interior minister stripped a man of his citizenship for supporting Hamas. His reasoning: naturalized citizens forfeit their citizenship when they are unable to uphold German values. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims made Germany their home over the past decade. Far too few of them—not unlike Muslims in France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom—have any interest in abandoning Islam’s implacable hostility to the West, Christianity and Judaism.
Germany reformed its nationality laws in 2024, specifically requiring that applicants for citizenship declare their commitment to liberal democracy and the separation between mosque and state. Given Germany’s historical responsibility for the Holocaust, new citizens must also recognize the nation’s unique duty to protect Jewish life.
Most Muslims around the world, however, believe themselves to be bound to sharia law alone. And the Quran clearly states that Jews are to be killed, not safeguarded.
To promote the integration that so many Muslims abhor, Austria plans to prohibit girls under the age of 14 from wearing hijabs (headscarves) in schools, both public and private. This would include playgrounds, gymnasiums and sports fields. The government views such Islamic requirements as oppression, not religion.
Back in 2009, French President Nicolas Sarkozy unsuccessfully attempted to ban the wearing of the burqa for similar reasons. Democracies are open societies that depend upon a national acceptance of human dignity and public engagement.
How is that possible when faces are shrouded? Religion is beside the point during the holiday season. Its purpose is mainly to foster feelings of interfaith solidarity and social cohesion.
New York’s Suffering
New Yorkers had an interesting week of disrespectful interfaith snubbing. The City College of New York invited the school’s many religions to a “workshop” dialogue. It didn’t take long before it came to an abrupt end. An imam took the stage and proclaimed the superiority of sharia law.
He then got more specific and anti-social: “I came here to this event not knowing that I would be sitting next to a Zionist, and this is something I’m not going to accept. … If you’re a Muslim, … I ask you to exit this room immediately.”
More than 100 Muslim students felt no qualms leaving their fellow classmates, most of whom were not even Jews. Afterward, the college’s Hillel director stated that had the imam directed the students to “attack this Zionist,” they probably would have unflinchingly complied.
A few days later, outside a Manhattan synagogue, an angry mob of 200 anti-Semites heckled Jews and chanted “Death to the IDF!” and “From New York to Gaza, globalize the intifada!” The leader of the demonstration proudly told the cheering crowd, “It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events. We need to make them scared.”
ADVERTISEMENT
As a longtime law professor, I can assure you that the First Amendment offers no protection to that last statement. Yet the New York City Police Department watched this medieval spectacle play itself out right beside the synagogue’s front door.
What sin was purportedly taking place inside the synagogue that required such a show of Islamist force and intimidation? A Zionist organization that assists Jews in moving to Israel was making a presentation.
What Law?
The newly elected Muslim mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, who promised during the campaign to protect his Jewish constituents, issued a statement: “New Yorkers should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
What international law is he talking about? Is it now illegal in New York City for Jews to even contemplate moving to Israel?
Islamophobic?
Mamdani doesn’t seem to mind that the “sacred spaces” of mosques are used the world over to plot terrorist attacks, awaken sleeper cells and incite violence against Western infidels. Maybe that’s because, unlike Judaism and Christianity, global conquest is integral to Islam. Jesus and Moses, after all, were peacemakers and lawgivers. Mohammad was a warrior general.
Terrorism violates international law, but Mamdani might feel that such a law is worth violating—“by any means necessary.” The world has resigned itself that Islamists are the finest practitioners of the trade, and it just so happens to be Islamophobic to point that out.
New York Christians, beware: The new mayor may soon determine that your scared spaces aren’t being used properly. Bingo games and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings inside your churches might become verboten.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in New York City, Ethiopian Jews, the Beta Israel community (yes, Jews are neither lily-white nor abundant in white privilege), celebrated the holiday of Sigd. It marks the Ethiopian Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the community’s embrace of Judaism. Israel designated Sigd an official holiday in 2008.
Beta Israel traces its ancestry to the Tribe of Dan during the exodus from Egypt. That’s several thousand years before there ever was an Islam. Talk about Jewish continuity and diversity! Here’s something for both Jew-haters and the “Michelin Guide” to consider: A kosher Ethiopian restaurant, Tsion, is doing a brisk business in Harlem.
Yet another inconvenient truth about Israel” Persecuted Jews of color living in Ethiopia in the 1980s and 1990s sought refuge in Israel. I suppose they, too, are among the “settler-colonialists” those protesting outside the synagogue in New York would have strangled had they been given the chance.
Reprinted with permission from The Jewish Journal.
ADVERTISEMENT
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© 2026 The Jewish World · Since 1965 - The Capital Region's gateway to Jewish life
Designed and Developed by Ta-Da Studios
© 2026 The Jewish World · Since 1965 - The Capital Region's gateway to Jewish life
Designed and Developed by Ta-Da Studios
© 2026 The Jewish World · Since 1965 - The Capital Region's gateway to Jewish life
Designed and Developed by Ta-Da Studios