A year ago, after a screening at Baruch College of my documentary “TORN: The Israel-Palestine Poster War on NYC Streets,” four different students asked me the same question: What about the whiteness of the posters? “TORN” follows the fight that broke out on New York’s streets over the “Kidnapped” posters of those taken hostage by […]
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JERUSALEM – For all that Oct. 7 transformed life in Israel, there is one notable place that still appears stuck: politics. Three years after Hamas’s devastating attack, the massacre and the wars that followed dominate the political campaigns for Israel’s Oct. 27 election. Yet according to political analysts and the latest polling, they have done […]
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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani angered some in the mainstream Jewish community with his tribute both to Israelis killed by Hamas attackers in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and to Palestinians killed in the Gaza war that followed. Wednesday “marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, […]
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On the third anniversary of the devastating Oct. 7 terror attack, it is a moment to remember the terrible human cost of that day – and to consider what we are building in its aftermath. Sapir College sits less than two miles from the Gaza border. On Oct. 7, 2023, the reality we had known […]
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SDEROT, Israel – Shalom Aida was at home when the first air raid siren sounded at 6:29 a.m. on October 7, 2023, but he wasn’t initially fazed. Rocket sirens were a common occurrence in his city of Sderot, which is less than a mile from Gaza at its closest point. It wasn’t until he heard […]
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Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly this year came at a critical time for Israel. Talks were underway to resolve the conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, and Israel was awaiting the outcome of the on-again, off-again U.S.-Iran ceasefire negotiations. The country had also just been sanctioned by 12 countries, led by […]
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Within weeks of Oct. 7, 2023, a group of psychologists mobilized to respond to the fear, pain and invalidation experienced by Diaspora Jews. There were no blueprints for clinicians to support a population of Jews whose distress was indescribable and permeated the soul. We knew Diaspora Jews were in crisis and although pain is pain, […]
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TEL AVIV – In the days following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, the families of the hostages held in Gaza turned the plaza next to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art into what became known as Hostage Square. Filled with “Bring Them Home” signs and hostage posters, yellow ribbons and yellow balloons, the […]
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Three years ago this week, the massacre of Oct. 7 accelerated a reckoning in Jewish education that had already been building for a long time. In Jewish schools, camps and youth groups, educators found themselves fielding questions they weren’t prepared to answer. Students were scared. Parents were angry. And many of the adults in the […]
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JERUSALEM – A young girl steps out of the bathroom on a flight and glimpses a bloody scene unfolding in the cockpit: the co-pilot is attacking the pilot with an axe. She screams for help. A handful of unarmed passengers, still tanned from their vacations in Thailand, rushes by her, successfully grabbing the control wheel […]
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