News

As we buy our kids clothes for the summer, one can’t help but notice the watermelon all over cute rompers and dresses and t-shirts - the same symbol that the Free Palestine protest movement has adopted as its symbol. What once was a sweet summer print is now tarnished with anti-Israel, anti-Jewish sentiment. You never know when a watermelon is just a watermelon or when it is a signal of Jewish hate (because, let’s face it, these protesters don’t actually care about Palestinians; they only care about spreading anti-Jewish propaganda).

As the post-Oct. 7 pro-Hamas protests and resulting surge of antisemitism have shown, it is the idea of a Jewish state that’s under attack, not Israel’s policies or actions.

(May 13, 2024 / JNS) Amid the celebrations of Israel’s 50th birthday in 1998, there began to be talk of the Jewish state entering into a post-Zionist era. To many Israelis as well as Jews in the Diaspora, the idea of Zionism or identifying as a Zionist seemed irrelevant to the realities of a country that was, for all of its challenges, a firmly established reality. The very term seemed to conjure up a bygone period when advocacy for the right of Jews to sovereignty in their ancient homeland was a heroic struggle against the odds.

“Hamas U.” “Terror on Campus.” “Jihadi Student Body.” “The Columbia Caliphate.” All of these headlines and more dominated the news over Pesach, where most Jews would have happily had a media blackout. Instead, they were forced to wonder how this could possibly happen in America? How could the generation that witnessed 9/11 raise a generation of students that would cheer another 9/11?

A generation of young Americans was taught to universalize the Nazi war on the Jews, leaving them vulnerable to being seduced by antisemitism and woke lies about Israel.

(May 6, 2024 / JNS) For decades, American Jewry has marked Yom HaShoah—Holocaust Remembrance Day—with the same rituals and rhetoric. They heard from survivors, whose numbers continue to dwindle and who bore witness about their horrific experiences. They also heard from scholars, who were part of what had become a growth industry centering on Holocaust studies, which to many Jews and non-Jews became the sum total of their knowledge of the history of the Jewish people. And they also heard from politicians and community leaders, who mouthed empty rhetoric about “never again” letting such an awful thing happen.

This year’s Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, starting on the evening of May 12, will be unlike any in the Jewish State’s history, as it is the first since October 7.

AMIT Children has always been touted as promoting Jewish values. Its part of our mission statement, core to our century old organizational narrative and, at the end the day, our raison d-etre.