Category Archives: News

Agudath Israel Condemns Biased UN Tribute to Terror Victims

The omission of any mention of Israeli victims of terrorism from an International Day of Remembrance of and Tribute to the Victims of Terrorism display at the visitors’ hall of United Nations headquarters is nothing short of despicable.

The U.N. informs us that “Acts of terrorism propagating a wide-range of hateful ideologies continue to injure, harm and kill thousands of innocent people each year,” and that the international body “has an important role in supporting Member States to implement the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy by standing in solidarity and providing support to victims of terrorism.”

And, indeed, the visitors’ welcome area’s display of large photographs of such victims includes tributes to victims of 9/11 and of terrorist attacks in Boston, Indonesia and Kenya, among other places.

Conspicuously missing, though, is any mention of the countless Jewish victims of Islamist terror over so many years. And this, less than a year since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israelis, the most deadly attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

Many have long judged the U.N. as a hypocritical, corrupt and useless institution. Ample evidence for that contention is displayed at the U.N. today.

Rightly Raised Eyebrows

For an assortment of reasons, former President Trump enjoys broad support among Orthodox Jewish Americans. He also, though, enjoys the support of some very unsavory characters. To his credit, one of them, although she denies it, was jettisoned as a featured guest at a recent fundraiser.  Unfortunately, her replacement has problems of his own.

To read about what I mean, please click here.

Letter to the Editor

A letter I wrote to the New York Times was published on Shabbos. It can be read here. Its text is below:

The Evil of Jew-Hatred’

To the Editor:

Re “My Son Is a Hostage. Comparing Hamas to the Nazis Is Wrong,” by Jonathan Dekel-Chen (Opinion guest essay, June 24):

Professor Dekel-Chen misses the point. The parallel indeed fails if all that is analyzed are the particulars of the Third Reich and the Hamas movement. But focusing on the trees here obscures the ugly forest: antisemitism.

The evil of Jew-hatred is a shape-shifter. It may come from political entities on the right or on the left, from one religion or another, from governments and from societal movements. And the ostensible reasons for the hatred vary wildly with time and place. But the target is the same: the Jews.

May the professor’s hostage son, and all those being held by this generation’s Jew-haters, soon be able to rejoin their families.

(Rabbi) Avi Shafran
New York
The writer is the director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.