MASS SHOOTING INSIDE MANHATTAN HIGH-RISE OFFICE BUILDING

Mass shooter with assault rifle kills four people, including police officer, in terrifying midtown NYC rampage

 

By Emma James, Shawn Cohen and Melissa Koenig 

 

Daily Mail

Jul 28, 2025

 

 

Photos posted online showed the gunman wearing a sport coat and button-down shirt while carrying the large rifle near a midtown Manhattan office building 

 

A gunman seen carrying an M4 assault rifle killed four people, including one police officer, when he opened fire in broad daylight in the heart of New York City, before he reportedly took his own life.

In terrifying security camera photos, the gunman could be seen casually strolling into a midtown Manhattan office building on Monday wearing a sport coat and button-down shirt while carrying the large rifle. 

The gunman was identified as 27-year-old Shane Tamura from Las Vegas. 

He was a former high school football player with a history of mental health issues. The gunman traveled across the country before the shooting, according to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. 

The building houses Blackstone asset management and the NFL. 

Tamura had a silencer on his rifle when he opened fire inside the lobby at around 6.30pm, according to CNN. The firearm also had a scope and strap. 

Officer Didarul Islam, who was working private security at the time, was shot and killed in the lobby of the building. One other shooting victim was fighting for their life on Monday night. 

Meanwhile, the gunman was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on the 33rd floor of the building, where Blackstone has its headquarters.

During a press briefing, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Officer Islam 'was doing the job that we asked him to do. He died as he lived, a hero.'  

 

Officer Didarul Islam, who was working private security at the time, was killed in the broad daylight attack

The gunman was identified as 27-year-old Shane Tamura from Las Vegas 

During a press conference on Monday night, Commissioner Tisch gave more details about the tragedy while emphasizing the city was safe from the gunman's terror. 

'I want to be very clear, we believe this to be a lone shooter, and there is no longer an active threat to the public,” the commissioner said.  

The mayhem started when Tamura entered the lobby of the building at 365 Park Avenue wielding the assault rifle before opening fire on NYPD Officer Islam and three others.

The gunman then proceeded to the elevator bank where he shot a security guard before allowing a female to walk out of an elevator before riding up to the 33rd floor.

When he arrive on the floor he opened fire on at least one other person before turning the weapon on himself. 

Videos shared online showed officers in protective gear entering the building with their guns drawn.

Another video taken by Fox 5 showed several officers carrying a victim, while others appeared to be tending to a person lying on the ground.

Islam, the officer, emigrated from Bangladesh. He was the father of two young boys. His wife is eight months pregnant with their third child.

EMS First shared a tribute to Officer Islam following the news.

'Tonight, a chair at the dinner table is left empty. Tonight, a family grieves a loss that cannot be measured. Tonight, a hero made the ultimate, selfless sacrifice in the line of duty,' it wrote on Instagram.

 

The New York Police Department urged the public to avoid the area of East 52 Street between Park Avenue and Lexington Avenue

New York State Police troopers were seen responding to the scene at 365 Park Avenue

A blood-stained image of the weapon used in the rampage was obtained by DailyMail.com

 

'Remember his name. Honor his service. Never forget his face.' 

Two people, a man and a woman, were also taken into custody at the scene, according to AMNY. 

The woman had a cut on her head and the man allegedly said, 'Free Palestine, I’m not the active shooter.' 

A witness told The New York Post that 'it sounded like a barrage of shots …Like an automatic weapon. Like a high-capacity weapon.'

Another person told the paper that a 'guy came in with an assault rifle and started shooting.' 

A shocking image showed the victim splayed out on the floor of the office building after he suffered the self-inflicted gunshot wound. 

Tamura, the gunman, grew up in Hawaii where he played football in high school. 

 

The gunman grew up in Hawaii where he played football in high school

A police officer and at least six others were injured in the broad daylight attack

 

Sources told NBC News that investigators were probing whether he may have been targeting the NFL offices.

He started the rampage in the lobby of the office building where he first exchanged gunfire with the NYPD Officer Islam, according to CNN.

Tamura then proceeded up the the 33rd floor where police received calls of shooting. The gunman was then found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

'It appears that he knew it would be his last stand,' said CNN chief law enforcement analyst John Miller, a former NYPD deputy commissioner. 

'He fully intended to shoot his way through the lobby and make his way to that target - whatever that might have been.'

A photo of the blood-stained weapon used in the massacre was obtained by DailyMail.com. 

 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams urged the public to 'take proper safety precautions if you are in vicinity and do not go outside if you are near Park Avenue and East 51st Street'

Officers in protective gear were seen entering a building in midtown Manhattan on Monday following reports of an active shooter

 

KPMG, a financial company that has offices in the building, released a statement that said: 'Our hearts go out to the victims of this horrific act and their families. We are incredibly grateful for the bravery of building security and law enforcement.'

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said agents are responding to the scene.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she has been briefed on the situation, and New York Attorney General Letitia James said she is 'praying for our law enforcement and the New Yorkers impacted in the shooting situation this evening in Manhattan.'

NYC Mayor Eric Adams also arrived at the scene and said he would be visiting the hospital. 

WILL HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY KRISTY NOEM DEPORT THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS FROM OUTTA SPACE?

Harvard scientist warns 'hostile' alien craft could strike Earth in just months

 

By Chris Melore 

 

Daily Mail

Jul 28, 2025

A respected Harvard astrophysicist has revealed new evidence suggesting that the mysterious object barreling toward Earth this December is an alien craft. 

Professor Avi Loeb and his team found that the supposed comet known as 3I/ATLAS is on an extremely unusual course that will take it close to three different planets: Venus, Mars, and Jupiter.

Loeb explained that 3I/ATLAS's course is so rare the chance of a natural space rock randomly flying along that path is less than 0.005 percent.

Based on those findings, Loeb, an outspoken believer in UFOs, has concluded that 3I/ATLAS may be an alien probe sent to this solar system by an unknown intelligence.

Moreover, Loeb said that such a craft and the beings who control it would have one of two motives, one being harmless and the other being hostile.

'The consequences, should the hypothesis turn out to be correct, could potentially be dire for humanity, and would possibly require defensive measures to be undertaken (though these might prove futile),' Loeb and his team warned in their new study.

The researchers' theory emerged from a grim scientific concept called the dark forest hypothesis, which assumes that other intelligent civilizations in the galaxy would be hostile and likely view humanity as a threat that needs to be attacked.

In 2021, Loeb theorized that Oumuamua, the first interstellar object which passed through our solar system, may have also been an alien probe, citing its strange cigar-like shape and its ability to speed up without the influence of gravity.

 

Telescopes have been tracking the course of 3I/ATLAS as it travels through our solar system in 2025 and 2026

The interstellar object (circled) is believed to be a comet, but Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb contends it could be an alien craft

 

In May, Professor Loeb was one of the keynote speakers at a congressional hearing regarding UFO sightings. At that event, he said 'there are objects in the sky that we don't understand' while calling for increased funding for UFO detection.

Loeb has also claimed that up to 10 percent of the metal fragments recovered from the Pacific Ocean contain 'alien' elements not seen in our solar system.

Those remnants came from a meteor-like object that originated from interstellar space and crashed off the coast of Papua New Guinea in 2014. However, Loeb has maintained that the object could have been an alien craft, or at least debris from one.

This month, Loeb and co-authors Adam Drowl and Adam Hibberd from the space research non-profit Initiative for Interstellar Studies found other pieces of evidence that suggest 3I/ATLAS is not your average comet.

First, its massive size, which studies estimate as between seven and 12 miles long, would make it significantly larger than Oumuamua (300 to 1,300 feet long).

Scientists have said that interstellar objects that large should be extremely rare in the cosmos, making 3I/ATLAS's visit to our solar system a statistical long-shot.

Loeb's study also revealed 3I/ATLAS does not have a coma, a cloud of gas and dust that typically surround comets.

The team said this suggests the giant object is therefore not a comet, which should have a smaller core and be part of a larger population of interstellar objects.

 

3I/ATLAS is projected to make close passes by 3 different planets: Venus, Mars, and Jupiter

3I/ATLAS (circled) is expected to make its closest approach to Earth on December 17, 2025

 

Combined with the one-in-20,000 chance of making close passes by multiple planets this year, Loeb argued the possibility that the object headed toward Earth could be artificial can't be ignored.

'When viewed from an open-minded and unprejudiced perspective, these investigations have revealed many compelling insights into the possibility that 3I/ATLAS is technological,' Loeb explained. 

Their new study was published to the pre-print server arXiv on July 17, meaning the research has not been peer-reviewed yet.

Whether it's a comet or an alien craft, 3I/ATLAS is expected to pass by Earth on December 17, speeding through the solar system at more than 41 miles per second (roughly 150,000 miles per hour). 

On its current trajectory, it'll come within 2.4 astronomical units of our planet (223 million miles).

An astronomical unit (AU) is equal to the distance between Earth and the sun, 93 million miles. Technically, 3I/ATLAS has been in the solar system for weeks, and was roughly four AU away from Earth in early July.

 

Loeb also suggested that Oumuamua, an interstellar object which passed Earth in 2017, may have also been an alien probe

 

In October, it'll make its closest approach to a planet, coming within 0.4 AU (37 million miles) of Mars.

Loeb's previous analysis of the massive object has found that it has come from a thicker part of the Milky Way galaxy's disk, where older stars are found.

The 12-mile-wide visitor is believed to be older than our sun, which is 4.6 billion years old.

The July 10 study in Astronomy & Astrophysics found 3I/ATLAS took about 800 million years to travel across part of the Milky Way to reach our solar system.

ANOTHER EMBARRASSMENT FOR TEXAS

Woke Dem Rep. Jasmine Crockett's control freakery and monster ego exposed in magazine interview that left her furious

 

By Germania Rodriguez Poleo 

 

Daily Mail

Jul 28, 2024

 

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett shut down a profile by The Atlantic after the journalist contacted her colleagues in congress

 

Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett's obsession with controlling her image, monster ego and shabby treatment of staff has been exposed by a new profile.

The hard left Texas congresswoman, 44, was seen scolding colleagues over scheduling and food by The Atlantic journalist Elaine Godfrey, who profiled her for the prestigious magazine.

Godfrey also remarked on Crockett's obsession with her own image - and cuttingly revealed that the lawmaker's phone lock screen is a picture of Crockett herself. 

The journalist was granted access to Crockett for her profile - only to have it unceremoniously revoked after she contacted other lawmakers to ask their thoughts on the rising star Democrat.

Those secondary interviews are a standard procedure for such profiles - but Crockett was outraged.  

'Four days before this story was published, Crockett called me to express frustration that I had reached out to so many House members without telling her first,' Godfrey wrote.

'[Crockett] was, she told me, “shutting down the profile and revoking all permissions.”'

Godfrey revealed that as many as 33 of Crocket's colleagues in congress declined to comment on her story or ignored her request.

'Staffers for some of those colleagues told me that some of them see Crockett as undisciplined—but are reluctant to criticize her publicly,' Godfrey noted. 

 

The Atlantic journalist Elaine Godfrey shared that an angry Crocket called her to revoke access after she followed basic journalism protocols by contacting the lawmaker's colleagues

 

Journalists took to social media to note that Godfrey's journalistic behavior was the norm and that Crockett's response was not appropriate.

'That is not how any of this works,' wrote NBC political reporter Sahil Kapur.

'Free advice to profile subjects: do not ever do this,' added The Bulwark reporter Joe Perticone.

Before she shut down the profile, Crocket bragged about her newfound notoriety as a firebrand progressive who is willing to 'go low' with populist Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

'I don’t second-guess shit,' she replied when asked if she regretted any of her controversial comments - including when she called Texas governor Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, 'Governor Hot Wheels.'

At the time, Crockett claimed she was referencing Abbott sending migrants to New York City on buses. 

Before losing access, The Atlantic's writer also got to see Crockett interacting with her staff in what she described as a 'brusque manner.'

Crockett reportedly called an aide to scold him for an unclear note on her schedule and told another assistant a bag of food they had brought her, 'looked like crap.'

Godfrey also revealed Crockett's is 'highly conscious of her self-presentation.'

'During many of our conversations, Crockett wore acrylic nails painted with the word RESIST , and a set of heavy lashes over her brown eyes,' Godfrey wrote, before adding that 'The lock screen on her phone is a headshot of herself.'

 

Crockett has repeatedly signaled that she might run for a senate seat when Republican John Cornyn is up for re-election this year

 

In 2024, Crockett became a viral social media sensation after calling Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene a 'bleach blond bad built butch body.' 

Throughout The Atlantic's piece, Crockett lamented that her Democratic colleagues shut her out of the top position on the House Oversight Committee - even though she has the most social media followers.

'It’s like, there’s one clear person in the race that has the largest social-media following,' she said. 

Crockett has repeatedly signaled that she might run for a senate seat when Republican John Cornyn is up for re-election this year. 

'My philosophy is: Stay ready so you don’t have to get ready,' she told The Atlantic about a potential senate run.

PERSONALLY I DO NOT FEEL THE LEAST BIT SORRY FOR THE SUFFERING OF THE GAZANS BECAUSE THEY CHEERED AND CELEBRATED THE OCTOBER 7 MASSACRE AND THE ABDUCTION OF THE HOSTAGES

Trump on Gaza: That's real starvation, you can't fake that

President Donald Trump contradicted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's position on Gaza starvation during a press briefing at his Turnberry golf property in Scotland.

 

by Adi Nirman 

 

Israel Hayom

Jul 28, 2025

 

 

Palestinians crowd at a lentil soup distribution point in Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip on July 27, 2025.

 

 

President Donald Trump directly challenged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's assertions about Gaza's humanitarian situation, telling reporters that Palestinian children "look very hungry" on television and declaring "That's real starvation. I see it, and you can't fake that," during a press briefing at his Turnberry golf property in Scotland. Trump pledged, "We'll be helping with the food ... We're also going to make sure that they don't have barriers stopping people ... We can save a lot of people."

  

The president revealed extensive details about unacknowledged American humanitarian assistance before meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

"We gave $60 million two weeks ago for food for Gaza. And nobody acknowledged, nobody talks about it. And it makes you feel a little bad when you do that. And you know, you have other countries not giving anything... And it would be nice to have at least a thank you," Trump said.

When questioned about Netanyahu's assertion that no starvation exists in Gaza, Trump replied, "I don't know. I mean, based on television, I would say, not particularly because those children look very hungry," adding, "They have to get food and safety right now."

 

 

(L-R) British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, US President Donald J. Trump, and Victoria Starmer pose for pictures ahead of the leaders' meeting at the Trump Turnberry golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland, Britain, 28 July 2025

 

Trump provided detailed accounts of meetings with hostage families, describing his assessment of the situation with Hamas. "I mean, they're [hostages' families] devastated. And I said, when you get it down to a certain number, you're not going to be able to make a deal with Hamas, because once they give them up, then they feel that that's going to be the end of them. And what I said is exactly true. You know, they had a routine discussion the other day and all of a sudden they hardened up. They don't want to give them back. And so Israel's going to have to make a decision."

Trump voiced concerns about widespread theft affecting humanitarian operations in Gaza, saying, "People are stealing the food, they're stealing the money, they're stealing the money for the food. They're stealing weapons. They're stealing everything. It's a mess. That whole place is a mess."

The president criticized Israel's historical withdrawal from Gaza as counterproductive, explaining, "The Gaza Strip, you know, was given many years ago so that they could have peace. That didn't work out too well...It was not exactly a very clever thing to do because that was given so that they finally have peace. And it's actually made the situation worse."

The president clarified his immediate priorities, stating he was not positioning himself on Palestinian statehood recognition but focusing on urgent humanitarian needs, describing his current approach as "dealing with feeding people now, that's the first thing."

HAMAS'S GREATEST STRATEGIC ASSET ISN'T IRANIAN MISSILES OR UNDERGROUND TUNNELS ... IT'S THE GLOBAL MEDIA

Hamas is out-negotiating Israel and Trump

But Hamas has an unfair advantage in a world willing, ready, and eager to swallow every one of its lies.

 

By Ryan Jones

 

Israel Today

Jul 27, 2025

 

 

Hamas militants during the release of three Israeli hostages last February in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. 

 

The playbook is by now all too familiar: Hamas rejects ceasefire terms, claims victimhood, feeds sympathetic media a few recycled photos—and watches Israel scramble under Western pressure to ease restrictions. Again.

This isn’t diplomacy. It’s blackmail with good PR.

Hamas just ran a wildly successful international scam, complete with sick-child photo ops and sanctimonious headlines, and walked away with most of what it wanted—no ceasefire, no disarmament, no hostages released. Just more aid trucks and fewer restrictions.

The ‘No’ that paid off

First, Hamas rejected the latest US-backed ceasefire terms. Rather than being isolated for intransigence, Hamas flipped the script. Cue the “Gaza is starving” campaign, strategically timed for maximal Western guilt. On schedule, the press complied.

The photos? The same handful of faces. Circulated endlessly. A few children who look to be malnourished paired with ominous headlines: “Famine,” “Genocide,” “Urgent.” All while adults in the background—purportedly the parents—looked remarkably well-fed. Experts later debunked some of the images, like one that appeared on the cover of the New York Times, as being of children clearly suffering from preexisting conditions, and not necessarily malnutrition.

Others turned out to be places other than Gaza entirely–a tactic Palestinians have employed in numerous conflicts–such as a clip of a newborn struggling to breathe. Palestinians and their apologists created a viral social media post that was picked up by the mainstream media asserting that the child was so starved by Israel’s cruel siege conditions that he hadn’t even the strength to cry. A rudimentary online check, the kind journalists should be conducting before publishing any story, revealed child in question was from Pakistan, and was suffering from a severe neurological disorder that caused him seizures. The clip was swiped from a Facebook page that documents such cases.

The pro-Hamas camp trawls these sources for images and clips that might serve their agenda. It doesn’t matter that they have nothing to do with reality in Gaza. Because perception beats fact.

Saeed Ziad, a Hamas-linked commentator, spelled it out:

“This pressure brought in the trucks. This pressure must continue.”

No need to hide it. It works.

Israel gives, Hamas gets

So what did Hamas extract?

• Israel resumed humanitarian airdrops—seven-pallet food bundles parachuted in under IDF coordination.
• Daily humanitarian pauses—10-hour halts in combat across Gaza’s main corridors.
• Corridors for aid convoys, even as Hamas loots or blocks them.
• Desalination plant re-energized, with Israel restoring power to boost water output for 900,000 Gazans.

And still, Hamas offers nothing in return.

No concessions. No word from the hostages. Not even a vague promise not to shoot next week.

Instead, Israel did what it often does under pressure: try to out-humanitarian the enemy while getting none of the credit. Meanwhile, the UN and NGOs—tasked with aid distribution—continued bungling logistics and then blaming Israel.

The media: Hamas’s secret weapon

Let’s be blunt. Hamas’s greatest strategic asset isn’t Iranian missiles or underground tunnels. It’s a global media that sees every Israeli act through the lens of suspicion and every Hamas statement through tears.

They report Hamas claims with reverence. They challenge Israeli denials with indignation.

The IDF says, “There is no starvation.” Western outlets counter: “We found a toddler with a distended belly.”

Never mind that the UN has acknowledged distribution failures. Never mind that aid is flowing and getting intercepted by Hamas. Never mind that Israel facilitates entry even under fire. Those aren’t the stories that sell.

And so the narrative endures: Israel starves, Gaza suffers.

Outmaneuvered, but not outsmarted

To be clear, Hamas didn’t outthink Israel or US President Donald Trump and his team. It simply exploited a world eager to believe the worst about the Jewish state. That’s not negotiation—it’s opportunism backed by selective outrage.

And while Israel bends over backward to deliver water, food, electricity, and medical aid—to a territory governed by terrorists—it gets vilified as the aggressor.

The truth? Israel isn’t losing the battle of morality. It’s playing against referees who boo whenever it scores.

Reality check

Humanitarian aid is a moral imperative. But when that aid strengthens the very regime that started the war with one of the most heinous massacres of the past half century, it becomes more than a moral dilemma—it becomes a strategic error.

It’s time to demand reciprocity. Not just for ceasefires, but for truth. And to ask a question no one in the “international community” seems brave enough to ask: Why does Hamas get everything for free?

Until someone asks that question and actually does something about it, don’t expect any real breakthrough in negotiations. So long as Hamas can get what it wants while giving little or nothing in return, it’ll continue playing that game. And winning.

'WE, THE FRENCH, ARE HISTORICALLY CLOSE TO THE PALESTINIAN STRUGGLE'

France held secret meeting with Hamas in 2020

"We don't want to talk only to the Palestinian Authority, but also to you," the French interlocutor told the Hamas officials. 

 

JNS

Jul 27, 2025 

 

French President Emmanuel Macron

 

Paris has been carrying out “secret contacts” with Hamas at least since October 2020, when a high-ranking French intelligence official met two with senior Hamas figures in Doha, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Saturday.

The meeting, initiated by the French, came to Israel’s knowledge through a document captured by the IDF in Gaza, which provided a detailed report on the meeting.

On Oct. 16, 2020, the No. 3 in French intelligence met with Hamas senior officials Moussa Abu Marzouk and Khaled Mashaal, respectively the former and current chairman of Hamas’s so-called political bureau.

The captured document revealed the minutes of the Qatar talks.

“I am happy about this meeting. I come to it with President [Emmanuel] Macron’s approval. We don’t want to talk only to the Palestinian Authority, but also to you. We, the French, are historically close to the Palestinian struggle,” the French intelligence representative told the Hamas officials.

He also said France was highly critical of the way the United States was handling the Palestinian issue, Channel 12 reported.

Abu Marzouk and Mashaal replied: “Even if the international community supports the Zionist entity, be sure that we will defeat it. This land is ours, and our resistance and revolution have been going on for more than a century, and we will continue until victory.”

The document shows no mention of the French protesting the clear statements of Hamas’s intent to destroy Israel.

The revelation comes as Macron announced his intention to recognize a Palestinian state, posting to social media on July 24: “I will make the solemn announcement at the United Nations General Assembly in September.’’

In response to the Channel 12 report, a French diplomat denied the document’s contents. “These baseless accusations are apparently intended to undermine the legitimacy of our efforts toward a two-state political solution,” the diplomat said.

“Hamas is a terrorist organization that has carried out the worst antisemitic massacre of the 21st century. France will continue to work to permanently disarm it and exclude it from any political ‘day after,’ in Gaza and beyond,” the diplomat added.

WHILE SOME EUROPEAN GOVERNMENTS ENCOURAGE JEW-HATRED, PRESIDENT TRUMP FIGHTS ANTISEMITISM IN AMERICA

As antisemitism surges in Europe, Trump’s pushback proves American exceptionalism

As outrages against Jews multiply, the administration’s settlement with Columbia University, though far from perfect, demonstrates that Jews are not alone in the United States. 

 

By Jonathan S. Tobin 

 

JNS

Jul 28, 2025 

 

 

Pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia University 

 

Incidents of blatant Jew-hatred and the indifference, if not outright encouragement, of such outrages from some European governments have mounted in recent weeks. The egregious treatment of a group of French Jewish students, when the Spanish airline Vueling ejected them from a plane and arrested their instructor because they were singing in Hebrew, represents just the latest instance in which Diaspora Jews and Israelis have been singled out and mistreated.

Oscar Puente, Spain’s Minister of Transport and a member of that country’s Socialist Workers Party, added insult to injury by subsequently defending Vueling’s offensive actions and referring to the French kids who had been treated abusively as “Israeli brats.” That made it clear, at least as far as Spain is concerned, that discrimination against Jews is now not only officially sanctioned but is also seen as a good way to curry favor with voters.

A post-Oct. 7 crisis

While some disingenuously claim that what we are witnessing is an understandable reaction to suffering in Gaza and is merely “criticism” of Israel, the list of occurrences in which those who are identified as Jewish are subjected to abuse and discrimination is now too numerous to deny that what the world is witnessing has become a crisis. Since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the orgy of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction that took place that dark day, Jew-hatred is not merely back in fashion. There is no denying that it has been sanctioned by the intellectual, academic, legal and cultural establishments across the globe, which now regard anti-Zionism as a legitimate, even enlightened point of view, even though it is a prejudicial idea that denies rights to Jews—rights denied to no one else.

While there are places in Europe, such as Hungary or the Czech Republic, where this is not the case, such countries are few and far between, and are the exceptions that are proving the rule. The blood libels of Hamas propaganda that falsely claim that Israel is purposely starving the residents of Gaza and committing “genocide” haven’t merely been mainstreamed; they are now viewed as unquestioned truth, and seen as justifying statements and actions in which Jews are viewed negatively and, as a result, increasingly mistreated.

While antisemitism has surged throughout the United States these last 22 months as well, it would be a mistake to think that the situation is no different than everywhere else in the Jewish Diaspora.

Recent actions undertaken by the U.S. government to combat such hatred and bigotry not only show that President Donald Trump is sincere in his dedication to this battle. It also proves that American exceptionalism—the notion that the United States is fundamentally different from the rest of the world—is alive and well, despite ongoing efforts from woke leftists who seek to tear it down along with the rest of the Western canon.

A defeat for progressives

The most recent evidence came with the news this past week that Columbia University had settled a dispute with the U.S. government over its toleration and encouragement of antisemitism since Oct. 7. The terms of the deal are not as far-reaching as Trump’s original demands, which had called for its Middle East studies department to be put into “receivership.” Still, it signals a defeat for progressives, whose “long march” through American institutions in recent decades had allowed it to seize control of the country’s education system.

The university will pay a $221 million fine and agree to institute a far-reaching set of reforms aimed at scrapping the way its acceptance of the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion had institutionalized race-based policies that enabled campus antisemitism. These results exemplify that Trump made a major Ivy League school bow to his will after a vile surge of anti-Israel protests and pro-Hamas encampments post-Oct. 7 that targeted students and faculty. He has demonstrated that even as an anti-Israel and antisemitic movement has gained strength and momentum elsewhere, it is being beaten in the United States.

That’s not just because the Columbia settlement also raises the pressure on Harvard University, an even more important target of Trump’s campaign against academia, to choose to surrender rather than carry on as the standard-bearer of the left’s “resistance” to the president. Rather, it sends a clear signal to the world that even as the bizarre red-green alliance that has united around the cause of anti-Zionism—stigmatizing Israelis and American Jews as pariahs to be shunned and hounded by global elites—the same ideas are in retreat in the United States.

Still, the fight against the left’s war on the canon of Western civilization and American exceptionalism remains far from over. The situation at Columbia in the coming years will require close government scrutiny since the school’s leadership will no doubt do everything it can to evade the terms of the deal it signed to continue the reign of DEI and to enable its almost uniformly leftist faculty to continue indoctrination in toxic ideas like critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism. Indeed, some liberals are proclaiming the agreement as a bargain in which it can save the $1.3 billion in federal funding that Trump had threatened to withhold had it not settled at the cost of $221 million and a raft of promises that could be undone by a policy of subtle non-compliance rather than open resistance.

DEI enabled antisemitism

Trump’s determination to take this issue seriously and stick with it should not be doubted.

The Columbia deal isn’t merely a template that a host of other major universities, both public and private, will be forced to accept lest they lose the fortune in government aid that enables them to thrive. It is merely the start of a wide-ranging offensive the administration is waging to roll back the woke tide that allowed far-left ideologies to take over American education. That includes not only the abolition of DEI and other ideological forms of racism but also restrictions on the acceptance of a flood of foreign students, which has played a significant role in the way schools have become a stronghold of antisemitism in recent years, as well as a mainstay of many of the fiscal bases of these schools.

While Jew-hatred is the issue on which the administration’s efforts to reform higher education have hinged, it isn’t the sole focus of this debate. What the administration recognizes—and what some mainstream Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee have failed to grasp—the abuses and outrages that have occurred on college campuses since Oct. 7 were only made possible by the way progressives had previously seized control of these institutions.

Pro-Hamas propagandists have been remarkably successful in labeling the victims of Oct. 7 as somehow the villains of the war the terrorists started, rather than a democracy fighting for its existence against Islamists who wish to destroy the sole Jewish state on the planet. The way so many students and faculty swallowed such fiction was a result of their having already been indoctrinated to mistakenly believe that Jews and Israel were “white” oppressors who were always in the wrong, and their Palestinian foes “people of color” always in the right.

The only path to ridding academia of antisemitism lies in forcing these schools to give up leftist ideology that enables the kind of illegal discrimination for which Columbia has now finally agreed to give up.

Elections have consequences

It is merely stating the obvious that this wouldn’t have happened had Trump not beaten Vice President Kamala Harris last November. The administration of President Joe Biden had made DEI the law of the land via executive orders, forcing every government department and agency to adopt its own version of this discriminatory idea and name a woke commissar to enforce it in the same way that so many colleges, arts organizations and corporations had already done. Yet as former President Barack Obama was fond of saying during his time in office, “elections have consequences.” And one of the primary consequences of the 2024 presidential election has been Trump’s determination to roll back Biden’s DEI rules that made a mockery of his claim to oppose antisemitism, as well as made the wave of Jew-hatred after Oct. 7 so widespread and troubling.

During the Biden years, DEI and the discrimination against Jews that is integral to it had seemed to be so pervasive and entrenched within the academy and American culture as to be impossible to resist. But as some of us were pointing out last year, all it would take to accomplish that seemingly impossible feat was an administration that would task officials with enforcing the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s prohibitions against racial discrimination and antisemitism. That is exactly what Trump has done. Though some may decry the indiscriminate nature of his efforts to defund schools like Harvard and Columbia, the message those threats have sent to every institution nationwide has been loud and clear. The reign of DEI and its impact on hiring, admissions, programming and curricula that led to the post-Oct. 7 surge in hatred and even violence is now being rolled up like a cheap carpet across the landscape of American institutions.

That is also having an impact on the willingness of so many of these same entities to embrace the false idea that America is an irredeemably racist country, something that was popularized by The New York Times’ fraudulent “1619 Project.” The idea of American exceptionalism was a primary target of that effort. This anti-American and antisemitic concept is still influential throughout the educational system, as teachers’ unions promote that and other toxic leftist theories. Its adherents are also positioned to continue spreading it via legacy media like The Times. But now that the government has shown that it is serious about using the leverage of federal funding to get rid of it, its days are numbered.

An exceptional republic

American exceptionalism is an idea that has gone out of fashion on the left, especially among those who dominate the education system, cultural institutions and the media. It centers on the notion that the republic founded in 1776 is unique among democracies, let alone the world as a whole. Its devotion to individual liberty, as well as political and economic freedom, is the primary reason why the United States has become the world’s most prosperous and powerful nation. Yet to assert this patently obvious fact is now seen as reactionary and chauvinistic. It has come under assault because of the conviction on the left that racism is the primary characteristic of the country’s political culture and the core principle of its historical development.

These claims are false, not just due to historical fact. Despite the original sin of tolerating slavery and the persistence of racism, the arc of the narrative of the American past has always bent toward the expansion of liberty and the rights of all people. This is self-evident not merely because slavery was abolished as a result of a bloody war fought by Americans but because of the enormous progress toward that has been made in the last 60 years as the nation embraced racial equality and even elected a black man twice as its president.

It is also made obvious by the American Jewish experience.

No Diaspora community has ever enjoyed such acceptance or achieved such influence. That was made possible not just by the sometimes fleeting tolerance of the non-Jewish majority. It was the case in other places where Jews experienced “golden ages” that often quickly turned into nightmares, such as in Spain, where intolerance and anti-Jewish discrimination on the part of Muslims alternated with eliminationist hatred from Christians. In the United States, Jews are equal not just because of rights enshrined in the Constitution. That status is also a function of American political culture—first fully articulated by the country’s first president, George Washington, in his letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, R.I., when he proclaimed that Jews were fully equal and that the government of the United States gives “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

The battle for American exceptionalism is ongoing. Yet contrary to the expectations of the left and the fears of conservatives, it isn’t lost. Not nearly so. Thanks to the administration’s dogged resolve that brought Columbia to heel, it’s likely to be won. And as long as that is so, Israel and the Jewish people will not be left alone to fight back against the tsunami of antisemitism that has swept across the globe.

HAMAS DEMANDS VICTORY AS A CONDITION FOR PEACE

The war Hamas wants; the war Israel is fighting

Time and again, it is made abundantly clear: Every food shipment lands in Hamas’s hands, not the people's. 

 

By Fiamma Nirenstein 

 

JNS

Jul 27, 2025

 

An Israeli plane drops humanitarian aid loaded with food supplies to displaced Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip, July 27, 2025.

 

While humanitarian aid drops from the sky, hundreds of trucks carrying the same supplies sit idle at the Gaza border. The failure is not logistical; it is political and moral. Efforts to divide the Gaza Strip into humanitarian zones have collapsed.

The so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is nonfunctional. The United Nations is absent. UNRWA, rather than assist, has reportedly blocked aid entry for fear of upsetting Hamas.

Why? Because Hamas insists on controlling all food distribution. Aid must go through its hands, not for the benefit of civilians, but as a tool of coercion and power. Humanitarian aid becomes a weapon—a currency to purchase allegiance and suppress dissent. This is not a side effect of war; it is the core strategy of Hamas’s rule.

Israel, together with leaders such as United States President Donald Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio, is signaling a strategic inflection point. Trump has called for tighter restrictions on Hamas, whose intransigence has sabotaged every ceasefire framework.

Yet for Israel, the dilemma cuts deeper. Since Oct. 7, 2023, the fate of some 250 hostages taken by Hamas has shaped every military and diplomatic move. Hamas has openly threatened to execute hostages the moment negotiations fail. 

When Israel withdrew its delegation following yet another Hamas rejection, the terror group’s leaders, enjoying luxury accommodations in Doha, feigned shock. “We were ready to talk,” they claimed, so long as talks handed them total control of Gaza.

This is the paradox: Hamas demands victory as a condition for peace. And if denied, it promises murder.

From day one, Israel has fought this war with one hand tied behind its back—restrained by moral obligation to its hostages and hampered by Hamas’s calculated manipulation of international sympathy. The terror group has poured vast resources into tunnels and bunkers, while building a human shield of civilians, whom it uses as both cover and bargaining chips.

And the world? Much of it is not watching. It is reacting—misled by fiction, devoid of context.

It took weeks to debunk viral falsehoods: The “bombed church” was untouched; a child said to have died from starvation was later confirmed to have suffered from a chronic illness; the infamous hospital explosion on Oct. 17, 2023,—immediately blamed on Israel—was, in fact, a result of a misfired Palestinian rocket. Yet outlets such as Reuters continue to run the same discredited headlines.

In this war, misinformation is as lethal as missiles.

This is the battlefield of global opinion, the “eighth front” of the war: one waged not with tanks but with hashtags, NGOs, and headlines. It is a war Hamas has long prepared for, backed by ideological allies and legacy media eager to frame Israel as the aggressor and Gaza as the eternal victim.

Even now, Hamas rejects negotiations, threatening hostages as leverage. And the international community remains functionally complicit. Each refusal to hold Hamas accountable becomes a vote of confidence in its tactics.

Meanwhile, Israel is forced to choose: defend itself or placate global outrage. It tries, still, to do both. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated this week, Israel will continue to pursue every path, including negotiations, to secure the release of the hostages. But time and again, it is made abundantly clear: Every food shipment lands in Hamas’s hands, not the people’s.

And yet, across Europe and North America, anti-Israel protests grow bolder. In Vienna, Israeli musicians were thrown out of a restaurant for speaking Hebrew. Cellist Amit Peled responded with dignity: “I will continue to speak Hebrew and play Hatikvah.” In Italy, effigies of Netanyahu were hanged by self-styled revolutionaries. Israeli students were kicked off a flight for singing national songs.

Back in Israel, young men—raised in peace, trained for restraint—are dying in battle. On one day alone, three more IDF soldiers were buried:

Sgt. Inon Nuriel Vana, 20. His mother apologized for not hugging him enough.

Capt. Amir Saad, 22, a proud Israeli Druze, killed in action in southern Gaza.

Sgt. Maj. (res.) Betzalel Yehoshua Mosbacher, 32, a father of two young girls, succumbed to grave wounds after fighting heroically for weeks.

 

Sergeant Major (res.) Betzalel Yehoshua Mosbacher (left), Cpt. Amir Saad (top right) and Sgt. Yinon Vana (bottom right) died fighting in Gaza

 

Others were seriously wounded, ambushed by terrorists who emerged from tunnels, murdered and disappeared below ground, dragging hostages with them.

This is the reality. Israel does not fight by choice. It fights to survive. And it fights in a world that prefers myths to facts, villains to heroes, silence to truth.

There will be time to assess how and when this war ends. But for now, one thing is clear: The battle for the hostages is also the battle for the soul of the world.