What the Jewish F*ck
“What the Jewish F*ck” is a new series in which we bring you the most outrageous and absurd developments from around the Jewish world.
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During a rally for the Israeli hostages, Muslims came to publicly pray on the streets of a Jewish neighborhood in Toronto — and police were there to make sure that they had their space to colonize the area.
“Maybe, it’s not all lost, because the Islamic conference dedicated to replacing the Canadian government with a Caliphate was cancelled,” wrote one of our guest writers, Masha Kleiner. “As much as I dislike the current Canadian government, I still prefer it over a Caliphate. To the credit of the Canadian government, its Liberal Minister of Public Safety, David McGuinty, even recommended designating Hizb-Ut-Tahrir as a terrorist organization. Hizb-Ut-Tahrir is already designated as such in many countries, including Muslim ones.”
This week it also came out that, in the aftermath of October 7th, Muslims in the Toronto Police Service gathered together with the chief of police, Myron Demkiw, and then developed a mandatory training module about the “foundations of Islam and how to combat Islamophobia.”
Staying in North America, the battle to expel TikTok from the U.S. is still raging.
The ban, which was due to go into effect last Sunday, stems from a law that requires TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell its U.S. assets in order to continue operating in the United States. While the law only mandated that ByteDance remove TikTok from app stores in the U.S. if it failed to meet the sale deadline, company executives made the decision to shut down the app entirely.
For about 12 hours, users who tried to access the platform found a pop-up message that restricted their access — prompting some Gen-Zers to start calling themselves “TikTok refugees.”
“Since the world diminished the term genocide by falsely claiming Israel was committing it,” wrote David Weiss, “I’m sure once TikTok comes back they will refer to themselves as survivors.”
Penny Wong, Australia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, has been selected to represent the country at the Auschwitz Memorial Day this coming Monday.
After 15 months of unhinged criticism about and against Israel, while disregarding mounting antisemitism in Australia, “it is hard to think of a more insulting or provocative pick,” one of our Australian readers put it. “This is a deplorable decision. An abdication of care and compassion. A cynical and passive-aggressive stunt extraordinaire.”
In somewhat better news, at least the Polish government walked back its threat to detain Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under a rogue International Criminal Court warrant should he arrive in Poland to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
“Imagine for a moment a scene in which the democratically elected leader of Israel, home to the largest community of Holocaust survivors in the world, would be held by Polish authorities on or near the hallowed and accursed grounds of Auschwitz, the largest Jewish cemetery in the world. The outcry would be thundering, the ramifications long-lasting,” wrote one of our guest writers, David Harris, Executive Vice Chair of The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy.
An Israeli history professor confronted by “anti-Zionist” protesters shared that he invited the demonstrators to participate in his class, only to be shouted down.
Avi Shilon, an Israeli historian, was leading a session on modern Israeli history on Tuesday, the semester’s opening day, when anti-Israel activists entered the classroom, read a prepared statement, and threw anti-Israel flyers at the students.
At the time of the incident, Shilon was teaching about the contrasting Israeli and Palestinian perspectives on Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. The protesters, their faces concealed with keffiyehs, interrupted the lecture.
“I was trying to maintain my usual unbiased approach, and then they knocked on the door. To me, as an Israeli, they resembled mehablim,” he said, using the Hebrew term for terrorists.1
Shilon expressed that his primary concern was for the well-being of his students, as he was unsure how to handle the situation.
“I didn’t know how to respond. If you act aggressively, they could claim you assaulted them. If you stay calm, they can keep disrupting,” he explained. “So I invited them to join the class and learn about the conflict, but they just shouted words like ‘genocide’ and ‘criminals’ without engaging.”
Shilon, whose family immigrated to Israel from Baghdad, is a Mizrahi Jew and tried addressing the protesters in Arabic.
“They didn’t understand Arabic, of course,” he said. “They don’t understand the conflict.”
Shortly after the protesters departed, Columbia University’s administration dispatched security to the scene, and Shilon’s department head contacted him immediately. He expects campus security to guard the class moving forward.
Other courses on Israel and Zionism at Columbia are taught by harsh critics of Israel who are not Israeli. Shilon believes the administration hired him, the only Israeli historian teaching at the university, to provide “some balance.”
Recently, longtime American broadcasting giant CBS News issued a memo instructing its staff not to refer to Jerusalem as being part of Israel, explicitly stating: “Do not refer to [Jerusalem] as being in Israel.”2
Then, this week, the network escalated its troubling pattern of undermining Israeli sovereignty. During a special report on Sunday, covering the release of three Israeli hostages, anchor Errol Barnett referred to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, the home of two of the hostages, as “a settlement.”
This characterization is patently false. Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where these two hostages were abducted on October 7, 2023, is located deep within internationally recognized Israeli territory, far from the disputed West Bank. Referring to such areas as settlements mirrors anti-Israel rhetoric often seen in Arabic-language discourse, which seeks to delegitimize Israel itself by labeling even uncontested areas as violations of international law.
Other media outlets have made similar missteps but subsequently issued corrections. Among them are France24 (Arabic), the BBC (Arabic, numerous times since October 7th), Deutsche Welle (Arabic), Reuters (Arabic), Euronews (Arabic), Agence France Presse (English), and even The New York Times back in 2017.
In more and more media appearances, Pope Francis has been speaking of Israel’s “so much cruelty” in Gaza (while making no mention of Hamas’ cruelty). He recently attended an event that portrayed Jesus as a Palestinian Arab, instead of the historically accurate man who lived as part of a Jewish community under Roman rule, who read the Torah, and whose teachings are steeped in Jewish tradition.
This week, the Vatican papal state issued a decree to drastically protect its borders — while Pope Francis constantly urges Catholics to open their arms ever wider to migrants.
As is customary every 25 years, 2025 will mark a jubilee year for the Catholic Church, drawing large crowds of pilgrims to Rome. Just days before Christmas, the Vatican issued a strict decree imposing severe penalties for anyone attempting to enter the world’s smallest state illegally. Italian media only uncovered the existence of this decree on January 12th.
The decree specifically targets “anyone who enters the territory of the State of Vatican City by violence, threat or deception,” referring to individuals who evade or bypass security systems. Violators face one to four years of imprisonment and fines ranging from 10,000 euros to 25,000 euros.
Vatican justice is swift and firm. Those caught in the act can expect to appear in court the day after their arrest, and convictions will carry a ten-year ban on entering Vatican territory.
This decree represents a thorough framework to prevent any unauthorized entry into Vatican City. The stark contrast between these stringent measures and Pope Francis’ impassioned calls for the “unconditional welcome of migrants” highlights a notable discrepancy, as his state’s border policies reflect none of the ideals he advocates publicly.
The publication of the new Programme for Government (PfG) in Ireland briefly raised hopes that center-Right political parties Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael might reconsider their unlawful and punitive policies targeting Israel. However, those hopes were quickly dashed.
The government’s new programme removes any façade that the “Occupied Territories Bill” was about anything other than undermining trade with Israel. It now criminalizes the purchase of religious items from Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank), threatening offenders with up to five years in prison. Meanwhile, the programme includes numerous measures aimed at Israel but conspicuously lacks any actions addressing Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, or the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This is the same government that rewarded the orchestrators of the October 7th attacks by unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state, ignored clear evidence of the UN Palestinian “refugees” agency’s complicity in these atrocities, and remained silent on the surge of antisemitism both at home and abroad. Is it any wonder?
This week, Chapman University bestowed the honor of the MLK3 Community Service Award to — wait for it — their local chapter of “Students for Justice in Palestine.” (The university rescinded the award the next day, but it is completely unconscionable that this organization received the award in the first place.)
For those less clued in, “Students for Justice in Palestine” has become one of the most prominent organizations promoting anti-Israel actions on college campuses and elsewhere. Despite its claims of advocating for Palestinian human rights, the organization habitually engages in rhetoric and actions that are overtly antisemitic, targeting not just Israeli policies but Jewish students and community members who support Israel or even express pride in their heritage.
Students for Justice in Palestine events often feature calls for the complete dismantling of the Jewish state, the celebration of jihad, and aligning with the extreme positions of groups like Hamas.
Its campaigns, such as the infamous “Apartheid Wall” displays, distort history and demonize Israel, fostering an environment of hostility and intimidation for Jewish students — all of which sound completely in line with the honorable legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., one of the most prominent leaders in the American Civil Rights movement.
Mainstream media outlets like the deranged New York Times urgently sends push notifications about Gazan families whose houses were destroyed, but not a peep about this international non-Jewish, non-Israeli cargo shipping crew that was just released after being held hostage by the Houthis — for 14 months!
The crew had been held hostage since November 2023, when armed Iran-backed Houthis — descending from a helicopter bearing Yemeni and Palestinian flags — stormed the ship off the coast of Yemen, in the Red Sea, as part of its campaign of attacks in support of Hamas and its war against Israel.
Never mind that the Houthi attacks forced some of the world’s biggest shipping and oil companies to suspend transit through the Red Sea, one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes.
When Donald Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City last October as part of his reelection campaign for U.S. president, the radical Left smeared him as a modern-day Nazi. For example: “Trump’s MSG event draws comparisons to 1939 Nazi rally,” according to an Axios headline.
This week, when Elon Musk (who has high-functioning autism) spoke at Trump’s presidential inauguration event and told the audience that his heart goes out to them — while doing an awkward gesture that vaguely resembled the “Heil Hitler” salute — the radical Left smeared him as a modern-day Nazi.
Meanwhile, Iran- and Qatar-backed Hamas sent thousands of terrorists to indiscriminately kill as many Jews as humanly possible on October 7, 2023 — and what did the radical Left say?
“From the River to the Sea!”
“Free Palestine!”
“Resistance!”
“By any means necessary!”
“Pray for Gaza!”
To borrow a line from author Gil Shalev, “The Left won’t know a Nazi if he slapped them in the face.”
“Israeli Columbia prof targeted by protesters: I invited them to join the class, they just shouted.” The Times of Israel.
“Does CBS News Know Where Jerusalem Is?” The Free Press.
Martin Luther King Jr., one of the most prominent leaders in the American Civil Rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968
Thank you for your work.
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