Weekly roundup of world briefs

Yonkers Public Schools fires coach, kicks player off team over Jew-hatred 

(JNS) — The fourth-largest school district in New York, Yonkers Public Schools, announced on Monday that it has fired a high school basketball coach and kicked a student-athlete off the team at Roosevelt High School following an antisemitic incident at a Jan. 4 game.

During that game, a student at the public school told a player from the Leffell School, a private Jewish day school in Hartsdale, N.Y., “I support Hamas, you f**king Jew.”

“The Yonkers Public Schools along with the City of Yonkers sincerely apologize to the students and community of The Leffell School for the painful and offensive comments made to their women’s basketball team during a recent game with Roosevelt High School-Early College Studies,” Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano and Luis Rodriquez, interim superintendent of the school district, announced jointly.

“Collectively, we do not and will not tolerate hate speech of any kind from our students and community. The antisemitic rhetoric reportedly made against the student-athletes of The Leffell School are abhorrent, inappropriate and not in line with the values we set forth for our young people,” the two added.

Spano and Rodriquez added that the coach and a Roosevelt player were “dismissed” following “a thorough review of videos taken at the game and interviews with those who witnessed the incident.” They did not name the coach or the student.

“The investigation is ongoing,” they added. “Should the district determine other students were involved in the incident, further action would be taken by the school district where appropriate.”

Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, wrote that the incident “goes well past poor sportsmanship.”

“This is antisemitism and hate, plain and simple,” said. “What is particularly concerning is that this incident involved high-schoolers—our youth. We have a responsibility to this generation to uphold the values of respect and tolerance.”

NYPD makes 325 arrests after anti-Israel protesters block bridges, tunnel

(JNS) — New York City has been a hotbed of anti-Israel protesters since Oct. 7 and the Hamas terrorist attacks that murdered 1,200 people and took more than 250 men, women and children hostage. Demonstrations were particularly disruptive over the holidays.

On Monday morning, anti-Israel activists organized in groups large enough to shut down the Brooklyn Bridge, Williamsburg Bridge, Manhattan Bridge and the Holland Tunnel for several hours. The New York Police Department and the Port Authority Police arrested a total of 325 people.

John Chell, the NYPD Chief of Patrol, said that many protesters would receive misdemeanor charges and a ticket to appear in court. Of those arrested, 120 went into custody for stopping traffic at the lower level of the Holland Tunnel, a key connection between Manhattan and New Jersey.

Previous anti-Israel protests to impair those seeking to travel include a Jan. 1 effort to stop passengers from reaching their flights at the John F. Kennedy International Airport, where the release of balloons there, a federal crime, has led to an FBI investigation. Other sites of disruption over the past few months have been at Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station and Grand Central Station, both in Midtown Manhattan.

Police arrest anti-Israel agitators as Biden arrives at Dallas airport

(JNS) — A group of anti-Israel activists attempted to block an entrance at  Dallas’s Love Field Airport on Monday night, calling for a ceasefire in the war against the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip and the release of Palestinian prisoners, timed to the arrival of U.S. President Joe Biden aboard Air Force One.

Police arrested 13 people in the protest co-organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement, a group associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Youth movement spokesperson Nashwa Abdelwahed said the demonstrators had put “their body on the line to stand up for the Palestinian people” and claimed that “Biden has essentially been aiding and abetting Israel’s war crimes.”

The United States has supported Israel in its war against Hamas since the terrorist attacks on Oct. 7.

“We’re not going to let any of these politicians rest, including Biden, while Palestinians have no justice,” said Abdelwahed.

Biden traveled to Texas to participate in events celebrating the life of former congressional representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, who died on Dec. 31 at the age of 89. She had served in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1993.

Egyptian smugglers charging Gazans up to $10,000 to leave Strip

(JNS) — Scores of Palestinians are leaving the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip through its southern border by paying up to $10,000 to “brokers” with alleged links to Egyptian intelligence, The Guardian reported this week.

The network of smugglers that operate around the Rafah border crossing has existed for years, but “coordination fees” have surged from $500 to thousands of dollars per person, the British newspaper said on Monday.

One Palestinian-American claimed he paid $9,000 to get his wife and children out of Gaza. On the day of travel, he was told his children’s names were not listed and he would have to pay an additional $3,000.

Everyone interviewed said they had been put in touch with Cairo-based brokers through contacts in Gaza. They said the fees are paid in cash, sometimes through middlemen based in Europe and the United States.

Jordan and Egypt have repeatedly made clear that they will not accept any Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, declaring it a “red line.”

“There will be no refugees in Jordan and no refugees in Egypt,” Jordan’s King Abdullah II said following a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in mid-October.

“That is a red line, because I think that is a plan by certain of the usual suspects to try and create de facto issues on the ground,” added Amman’s head of state.

Egyptian security sources have likewise dismissed proposals to allow Gazans fleeing the conflict to enter that country, with one saying they would not allow safe corridors so as to protect “the right of Palestinians to hold on to their cause and their land.”

Foreign nationals began exiting Gaza through Rafah into Egypt some two months ago after Qatar reportedly brokered a U.S.-backed agreement between Israel, Egypt and Hamas.

Seriously wounded Palestinian civilians have also been transported via the crossing with Sinai to receive medical treatment in Egypt.

19 years on, IDF soldier finds Gush Katif evacuee’s house sign in Gaza

(JNS) — Almost 20 years after Kipa News reporter Amiel Yarchi was evacuated from his home in Netzarim during the 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip, Israel Defense Forces soldiers in Gaza retrieved the name plaque that was on the house, Kipa reported.

“We are left speechless,” Yarchi tweeted on Tuesday. “This morning, an officer of a special unit fighting in Gaza found the sign of our house in Netzarim, the sign that we regretted having left behind.”

Yarchi subsequently shared a picture taken in the year 2000 showing the wooden sign on their house in Gush Katif.

The journalist said Palestinians stole the sign after Israel left the coastal enclave 19 years ago. The placard was reportedly found in the heart of the Strip.

In the summer of 2005, the Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, unilaterally disengaged from Gaza, removing thousands of Israeli residents from their homes and transferring them to Israeli territory.

While the move was designed to bring calm to Israel’s southern border, it ushered in a sweeping victory for Hamas in the January 2006 elections. Within a year and half, Hamas had seized total power in the Strip and evicted the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

In September of last year, Palestinian terrorist organizations fired rockets toward the Mediterranean Sea as they marked 18 years since Israel’s “defeat” and the uprooting of Gaza’s Jewish communities.

The Hamas-led Joint Operations Room, which includes a dozen U.S.-designated terror groups that coordinate attacks on the Jewish state, said the rocket-fire was part of a military exercise that also included guerrilla warfare simulations.

“The defeat of the occupation from Gaza establishes its defeat from [Judea and Samaria] and heralds the liberation of Jaffa, Haifa, Jerusalem and the rest of the country, inshallah [God-willing],” said Muhammad Deif, head of Hamas’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

During its Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, Hamas murdered some 1,200 Israelis and wounded thousands more. It also took roughly 240 civilians and IDF soldiers back to Gaza as hostages.

Marriott no longer hosting Muslim Federation event in South Florida

(JNS) — After the Middle East Forum charged that the Fort Lauderdale Marriott Coral Springs Hotel & Convention Center was to host a Jan. 12-13 event of the “region’s most extreme alliance of Islamist organizations,” the hotel canceled its contract with the South Florida Muslim Federation.

The decision “was a tragic result of fear and misinformation,” the South Florida Muslim Federation stated. “History will show this was a sad day when Muslim Americans were prevented to assemble in some neighborhoods, leaving a stain on our collective conscience.”

The hotel “caved into this assault on the men, women and children in the Muslim American community, dehumanizing all of us as terrorists,” the group added. It noted the hotel said it was “canceling because of the ‘significant undesirable interest.’”

Middle East Forum stated that its article “galvanized residents in Parkland and Coral Springs to take a stand and launch a petition.”

“Business leaders and public officials threatened to terminate their relationships with the Marriott if the event proceeded as scheduled,” it said. “These pressures convinced the hotel to rescind its contract.”

The group’s “leaders and speakers responded to the Oct. 7 massacre of Israeli civilians by voicing support for Hamas and promoting ‘resistance in all its forms’ against Israel,” per the Middle East Forum. 

“The event was to feature a ‘Gaza’ poetry contest and a youth seminar titled ‘Finding Hope from Our Past,’ which focused on the Islamic ‘conquests … of Jerusalem,’” it added.

Court document suggests false accusation against Dershowitz to sell books

(JNS) — Newly released documents from Virginia Giuffre’s civil lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell—a collaborator of the accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in prison—reveal that Alan Dershowitz was suggested as a name for Giuffre to drop to land a book deal.

Giuffre wrote in May 2011 to the U.K. journalist Sharon Churcher that she found a ghostwriter for her story, adding, “I wanted to put the names of these a**holes, oops I meant to say, pedo’s, that J.E. sent me to,” TMZ reported. (She apparently referred in the final clauses to pedophiles and to Jeffrey Epstein.)

“Don’t forget Alan Dershowitz … JE’s buddy and lawyer—good name for your pitch as he repped Claus von Bülow and a movie was made about that case,” Churcher wrote to Giuffre.

“We all suspect Alan is a pedo and tho no proof on that, you probably met him when he was hanging out with JE,” Churcher added. (Dershowitz shared the TMZ article on X.)

The 1990 film “Reversal of Fortune” relied on Dershowitz’s 1985 book, “Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow Case.” The Harvard Law professor emeritus successfully defended Bülow in an appeal after the wealthy socialite had been convicted in 1982 of murdering his wife, Sunny von Bülow.

Dershowitz has denied any charges against him and has urged the release of all the evidence.

IDF releases names of four soldiers killed in Gaza

(JNS) — Early in the morning on Tuesday in Israel, the Israel Defense Forces released the names of four soldiers who were killed in action in Gaza.

Sgt. Roi Tal, 19, of Kfar Yehoshua, from the 94th Battalion, Kafir Brigade, was killed in the southern Gaza Strip.

Sgt. First Class (res.) David Schwartz, 26, of Elazar, from the 8219th Battalion, Combat Engineering Corps, who was killed in the southern Gaza Strip.

Sgt. First Class (res.) Yakir Hexter, 26, of Jerusalem, from the 8219th Battalion, Combat Engineering Corps, who was killed in the southern Gaza Strip.

Sgt. First Class (ret.) Gavriel Bloom, 27, of Beit Shemesh, a combat engineer from the 36th Division, was killed in central Gaza.

To date, 180 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the start of ground operations on Oct. 27.

Robert Reich blames Jewish donors for Harvard president ouster

(JNS) — Even as he cited the “age-old stereotype of wealthy Jewish bankers controlling the world,” a former U.S. secretary of labor wrote in The Guardian that wealthy Jewish donors brought down Claudine Gay as Harvard University president.

“As a Jew, I also cannot help but worry that the actions of these donors—many of them Jewish, many from Wall Street—could fuel the very antisemitism they claim to oppose, based on the age-old stereotype of wealthy Jewish bankers controlling the world,” Robert Reich wrote.

The University of California, Berkeley public-policy professor “purports to oppose the antisemitic stereotype of ‘wealthy Jewish bankers controlling the world’ while simultaneously going out of his way to highlight the Jewish background of a few Harvard Board members, alumni or donors who he claims (falsely) were instrumental in bringing down Gay,” wrote the UK division of the media watchdog CAMERA.

“But, even if ‘many’ of the donors instrumental in Gay’s resignation were ‘Jewish,’ why would that matter?” it said.

“One of the most fundamental truths about antisemitism is that Jewish behavior doesn’t cause antisemitism—just as, for example, white racism towards black Americans isn’t caused by black behavior,” CAMERA added. “It’s a shame that this even needs to be stated, but antisemites—and antisemites alone—are solely responsible for their racist attitudes towards Jews, even if they’re ‘wealthy Jewish donors.’”

Fired high school girls’ basketball coach disputes antisemitic abuse at game

(JNS) — Following his dismissal on Monday from coaching the Roosevelt High School girls’ basketball team after its players hurled antisemitic abuse at Jewish players during a game, Bryan Williams is pushing back, claiming ignorance of the hate witnessed on the court.

The Dec. 4 game featured taunts of “free Palestine” against the Leffell School girls team from a private Jewish day school in Hartsdale, N.Y. One player also allegedly said, “I support Hamas, you f**king Jew.” The Jewish players left the court following the antisemitic statements with Roosevelt High forfeiting the game.

But Williams insists that he didn’t hear it or anything else objectionable and that he did an “excellent job with those girls.” He told the New York Post, “I personally did not hear any of it on the court. … I focus on my team and what we have to try to do to win and be successful. … We were just playing basketball.” 

Williams said the Yonkers school district’s decision to fire him wasn’t right and that he was treated “very unfairly.”

“They needed a scapegoat, and I was it. … They needed a fall guy,” he said. According to Williams, the investigation was not done effectively, and he regretted he could not finish the season.

Williams told News 12 Westchester that his firing “puts me in a bad light and makes people that don’t know me think that I’m a monster or I don’t like Jewish people, or I can’t navigate in a multicultural world, and that’s a lie. A total lie.”

Russell Crowe to play Nazi Party henchman Hermann Göring in ‘Nuremberg’ film

(JNS) — A new drama will feature two acclaimed actors in a film exploring whether madness or malice drove the Third Reich’s reign of terror.

In “Nuremberg,” Oscar-award winner Russell Crowe will play Nazi propagandist Hermann Göring, opposite Oscar-winner Rami Malek as Douglas Kelley, the psychiatrist tasked with determining whether he should stand trial for his crimes against humanity. Göring, one of the most powerful leaders in the Nazi Party, committed suicide on Oct. 15, 1946, the day before his scheduled execution.

The film is being directed by James Vanderbilt. He wrote the screenplay for the film, which he adapted from the book “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist” by Jack El-Hai.

Filming is expected to start next month in Hungary.