Since 1982, our courageous letter writers have pushed back against false and misleading coverage of Israel and the Middle East—educating journalists and editors, correcting misapprehensions, and calling for corrections when necessary.
As tensions with Gaza and Iran continue, we understand why many people are experiencing war fatigue. But now is not the time to let up. While Israel fights for its security on the ground, it needs all of our help to confront misinformation in the media.
And CAMERA’s dedicated letter-writing community has not stopped. Whether in The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, or local Jewish publications, CAMERA activists are getting the truth into print.
Of course, we can share only a selection of the hundreds of excellent letters our supporters have published. Please take a look at the selection below followed by a link to more of the best—and submit a letter today.
We need YOU more than ever.
J. Weekly (Jewish News of Northern California)
June 12, 2026
Don’t give up on Israel
Regarding “Nearly half of young U.S. Jews want to replace Israel with a binational state, poll finds” (May 27 online): There are currently 56 Muslim countries (search online for Organization of Islamic Cooperation). The OIC claims 57 countries because they have already included Palestine. They all vote against Israel and the United States at the United Nations, of course. Israel, the size of New Jersey, is the only sovereign Jewish country. Those who think it should be shared with people whose national charters, school curricula and religious authorities call for killing Jews either don’t know Jewish history or are delusional. They should not be so quick to give Israel up.
Sheree Roth
Sheree Roth is CAMERA’s 2007 Letter Writer of the Year
The New York Post
May 26, 2026
Iran being prostrate offers a fleeting opportunity to end the evil regime’s near half-century deadly threat to its people, region and the world.
It can’t be trusted to abide by any agreement.
If allowed to survive, with its new exhibited ability to control the Strait of Hormuz, Iran would pose great dangers.
Trump promised Iranians that “help is on the way.”
Now is not the time to turn back.
The end must soon be near!
Richard Wilkins
Richard Wilkins is CAMERA’s 2006 Letter Writer of the Year
The Jewish Voice
May 19, 2026
Jerusalem: Just the Facts
Israelis hold parades every year to celebrate the 1967 reunification of Jerusalem after 16 years of illegal Jordanian occupation.
In 1948, after Britain ended its Mandate for Palestine, the UN suggested dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab States, although under international law all of Palestine is the reconstituted Jewish homeland. Israel agreed to split its country into two states. Regional and local Arab armies rejected the peace plan and launched a war of genocide against Israel.
When fighting ended in 1949, the areas under Egyptian and Jordanian control were ethnically cleansed of all Jews. The Arabs in Israeli areas became citizens of Israel.
During the Jordanian occupation, recognized only by Britain and Pakistan, no Jews were allowed access to their homes, businesses and holy sites on the wrong side of the armistice line. The UN was shamefully silent.
Today, all ethnicities control their special and holy places, and Jerusalem is open to visitors and pilgrims from all over the world.
Is it any wonder Israelis celebrate Jerusalem Day?
Len Bennett
Len Bennett is CAMERA’s 2023 Letter Writer of the Year
Lookout Santa Cruz
May 7, 2026
Jewish American Heritage Month matters more than ever amid rising antisemitism
May is Jewish American Heritage Month (JAHM), and its observance is more important than ever with the rise of antisemitic rhetoric across the political spectrum.
Jewish places of worship, including in Santa Cruz County, require security because of increased threats of violence against the Jewish community. One way to combat antisemitism is through education. It is important to teach about the struggles of Jewish immigrants who encountered discrimination in housing and employment. Country clubs barred Jews and restrictive covenants barred home sales to Jews. Universities like Harvard and Stanford had quotas to limit the number of Jewish students. Many Jews changed their names so as not to sound too Jewish.
Despite these obstacles, American Jews have had a significant imprint on American society, especially in the arts. The American movie industry was pioneered by Jewish filmmakers. Jewish comedians from the Marx Brothers to Sarah Silverman have entertained us, and Jewish musicians from Leonard Bernstein in classical music to Bob Dylan, Barbra Streisand and Carole King have had a major impact on music in America. Many American Nobel Prize winners were Jewish, and Albert Sabin and Jonas Salk developed polio vaccines. Jewish women such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Betty Friedan were leaders in the women’s movement, as was Harvey Milk in the gay rights movement.
Despite these accomplishments, Jews are still victims of hate crimes and prejudices, much due to ignorance. The success of one ethnic group in overcoming poverty and discrimination shouldn’t be used to inflame more hate. Jews have much to be proud about and so when we observe JAHM, we celebrate a success story that will not be complete until Jews feel safe in their homes and places of worship.
Gil Stein
Gil Stein is CAMERA’s 2014 Letter Writer of the Year
The Washington Times
April 2, 2026
Eighty years on, the war continues
After the dust of World War II settled, three superpowers emerged. Two were communist (the Soviet Union and China), and one was a democracy (America).
China and America had their squabbles in Korea and Vietnam. The Soviet Union and America fought the Cold War with a lot of saber-rattling. The Iron Curtain fell, and the Soviet Union was reduced to Russia, still a formidable adversary.
There was no Palestine.
In 1920, the San Remo Resolution defined the British Mandate for Palestine, the reconstituted Jewish homeland. It was split into what are now Israel and Jordan in 1921. The League of Nations unanimously accepted these borders in 1922, and America followed in 1924.
In 1945, the United Nations was formed. Article 80 of the U.N. charter states that what was promised to the Jews could not be taken away.
In 1964, to diminish U.S. influence in the Middle East, the Soviet KGB and Egypt formed the Palestine Liberation Organization. They gathered fighters from throughout the Middle East and North Africa and called them “Palestinians.”
Palestinianism has only one function: to destroy the state of Israel and the “infidels” living there. Israel is the “Small Satan,” a stumbling block to getting at the “Big Satan,” America.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is Russia’s proxy. It established a ring of fire around Israel and launched an invasion against the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023. The war is still being played out.
Len Bennett
Len Bennett is CAMERA’s 2023 Letter Writer of the Year
Chicago Tribune
March 27, 2026
Dems’ support for Israel
Thank you for Michael J. Sacks’ op-ed expressing pride in having always supported Israel. Indeed, it should be unthinkable for any Democrat not to support Israel.
Israel is the Middle East’s only democracy and the region’s only country that protects the rights of women, LGBTQ+ people, and ethnic and religious minorities. While Arab states from Morocco to Egypt to Iraq forced some 850,000 Jews to flee following Israel’s rebirth in 1948, Israel’s Arab population has grown from 150,000 in 1948 to over 2 million today. And like all Israeli citizens, they vote, serve in Israel’s parliament and on its Supreme Court, and work as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, engineers, judges and academics.
Zionism is an indigenous rights movement — Israel is the ancestral home of the Jewish people, who have returned after enduring 2,000 years as a scattered and oppressed minority. The leading lights of the American Civil Rights Movement, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Rep. John Lewis, proudly identified as supporters of Israel.
Sadly, Israel has never known a day of peace. Its neighbors attempted wars of annihilation in 1948, 1967 and 1973. Israel prevailed and traded land captured in self-defense in 1967 for peace with Egypt in 1979, but its similar land-for-peace offers for a two-state solution were rejected by the Palestinians in 2000, 2001, 2008 and 2012 and were responded to with terrorism, including Hamas’ suicide-bomb massacres of Israelis in the early 2000s.
In 2005, Israel withdrew every soldier and settler from Gaza and turned it over to the Palestinians living there. Sadly, a year later, Gazans voted to empower Hamas, a terrorist organization whose charter vows to “obliterate” Israel, beginning two decades of unrelenting terrorism.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists from Gaza invaded the Jewish state and raped, kidnapped and slaughtered Israelis in a massacre that evoked the horrors of the Holocaust. Israel and its supporters have every right to ensure that this can never happen again.
Stephen A. Silver
Stephen Silver is CAMERA’s 2002 Letter Writer of the Year
J. Weekly (Jewish News of Northern California)
March 20, 2026
Letter on AIPAC was wrong
I am responding to the totally wrong-headed letter regarding AIPAC (“Newsom highlights AIPAC failure,” letters, March 5).
I have been a member of AIPAC for over 40 years, and I can honestly attest to the fact that AIPAC has not changed its bipartisan, unbiased approach to Israel. AIPAC’s mission statement clearly states that it is bipartisan and that its only objective is to support the strength of the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Roberta Zucker
The Washington Post
March 20, 2026
Contrary to its description in the March 12 news article “Several Islamic schools excluded from Texas vouchers,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations is not a “civil rights group.”
After the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the current leader of CAIR said: “The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege, the walls of the concentration camp, on Oct. 7. And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in. And yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, have the right to defend themselves, and yes, Israel, as an occupying power, does not have that right to self-defense.” He later walked back his statement, but what leader of a civil rights group could smile upon torture, rape and kidnapping?
Anastasia Glikshtern
Chicago Tribune
March 19, 2026
An Inflammatory Headline
The March 16 Tribune splashed a story on page 1 of the Nation & World section titled “AP: Palestinians Removed From Gaza.” This needlessly inflammatory headline creates the impression that Palestinians are being involuntarily removed. However, the article shows that a few hundred Gazans have chosen to leave the war-torn territory. The headline should have been more reflective of the text, perhaps “Some Gazans Departing Gaza.”
The problem is that “removed” implies force; it indicates an action by Israel, not a decision by Gazans, and for the readers who don’t bother to read the full article, they are led to think Israel is conducting ethnic cleansing in Gaza. The story doesn’t say how many Gazans have left, but for the sake of argument, let’s say 500. That would represent less than 1 percent of Gaza’s population.
The Tribune should issue a clarification of the headline and give it the same prominence as the story. Future headlines about the Israel-Hamas conflict should be less inflammatory.
Gary Katz
San Mateo Daily Journal
March 14, 2026
College protesters demand end to war on Iran
Editor,
“No bombs on Iran,” scream the protesters at Columbia University and other institutions of “higher learning.” They demand America end the war on the fanatic Iranian theocracy, a regime that executes women for not covering their face and murders gays for who they are.
Yet for over two years, these same college protesters righteously proclaimed, “We are HAMAS.” They had no problem cheering for the Hamas terrorists who waged a war to annihilate Israel. Apparently, to these scholarly “warriors for peace,” war is immoral unless it targets Jews.
Scott Abramson
The Los Angeles Times
March 10, 2026
To the editor: The cantankerous tone of this article, which repeatedly and not-so-subtly questions whether the Trump administration knows what it is doing in Iran, is betrayed by its use of the disgraced Rob Malley as a supposed source of expertise (“What is Trump’s true objective in the Iran war? U.S. targets provide a clue,” March 8). This is the same Rob Malley who was forced to quit President Obama’s 2008 campaign because of contact with the terrorists of Hamas and who was relieved of his position as special envoy to Iran in 2023 by the Biden administration after allegedly mishandling classified information.
The aims of wars have often been malleable, evolving with events on the battlefield. It took the Allies until 1943 to decide that their goal in World War II was unconditional surrender. It took the U.N. more than a year of warfare to settle on a demilitarized zone at the 38th parallel as the goal of the Korean War. The U.S. went from a goal of winning the Vietnam War to one of “Vietnamization” as the war effort ran into political opposition at home. The goal of the Iraq war went from turning the country into a Western democracy to propping up a regime minimally friendly to the West.
With this context, the goals of the Trump administration for the Iran war seem at least acceptably clear. A denuclearized Iran without a threatening ballistic missile program — one not inflicting terrorism on its neighbors and around the world — and governed by a figure who will be acceptable to the West.
Semantic quibbles should not be mistaken for opaque wartime goals. Iran has been a threat to Israel, the West and the U.S. for 47 years. Thousands of Americans have been killed, wounded and traumatized by this horrible regime. The destruction of its nuclear, missile and terror apparatuses will make us all safer.
Daniel H. Trigoboff
Dan Trigoboff is CAMERA’s 2018 Letter Writer of the Year
Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle
March 4, 2026
Boycotts of Israel are problematic, but so is blaming the Israeli government for the Gaza war
I salute Marlene Marcus in her protest of a food store’s potential boycott of Israeli goods (“Co-op vote crosses the line into antisemitism,” Feb. 27). But I feel she is incorrect in her feelings about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the recent war in Gaza.
Hamas’ charter plainly states that the Jewish state will exist until Muslims destroy it. And Hamas has been working to make good on this threat ever since it was elected to administer Gaza in 2007. While claiming that an Israeli blockade prevented Hamas from developing the enclave’s economy, Hamas spent $1 billion building an extensive network of underground tunnels, embedded so deeply amidst the Gazan populace that any Israeli response to Hamas’ attacks on Israel would have to result in some casualties among people living under Hamas (mis)rule, despite Israel’s exemplary efforts to avoid harming civilians.
The IDF warned civilians to move away from areas that were going to be attacked; Hamas stored explosives in areas where the Gazans had been told to seek shelter. Homes, mosques and schools were connected to tunnels and used for storing munitions. Hamas held strategic planning sessions in hospital basements and fired missiles from schoolyards. Gazans were denied shelter in tunnels where Hamas fighters were hidden. Hamas stole Israeli-supplied food, intended for the Gazans, and gave that food to the fighters or sold it to the people at black market prices.
Hamas’ vow to inflict a thousand October 7s on Israel was, nonetheless, cheered by the people in Gaza, who were being used as human shields by Hamas. Israel was attempting to demilitarize Gaza and deradicalize the Gazans. Yet, the IDF strictly obeyed the rules of warfare, and achieved the lowest ratio of civilian deaths to combatant deaths ever seen in the annals of modern urban warfare, as attested by Major John Spencer, director of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point’s Modern Warfare Institute.
Toby F. Block
Toby Block is CAMERA’s 2017 Letter Writer of the Year
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The New York Post
March 3, 2026
The Issue: The United States and Israel’s attack on Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The United States and Israel did not start this war. Extremists whose mantra is “Death to America, death to Israel” started it when they seized control of Iran in 1979.
Since then, they have kidnapped American embassy workers, murdered US service members, massacred Jewish civilians in Argentina, sponsored Hamas and Hezbollah’s terrorism and slaughtered 30,000 Iranian civilians for protesting against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s brutal regime.
That’s why American, Israeli and pre-1979 Iranian flags are waving together at rallies.
Stephen Silver
Stephen Silver is CAMERA’s 2002 Letter Writer of the Year
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Cleveland Jewish News
February 19, 2026
Anti-American, antisemitic rhetoric should be categorically unacceptable in any venue. (“Florida’s anti-Israel GOP candidate James Fishback is railing against ‘goyslop.’ What is he talking about?,” cjn.org.) I am deeply concerned by GOP candidate James Fishback’s public statements. The GOP platform strongly supports Israel, backing its security, territorial integrity and right to self-defense against threats like Hamas and Iran, and focuses on combating antisemitism.
President Donald Trump has issued executive orders to address “discrimination rooted in antisemitism.”
Vice President JD Vance has emphasized antisemitism is a “disgusting” form of hatred that should be condemned.
Yet GOP candidate James Fishback has been promoting conspiracy theories and trolling language against Jewish citizens. Antisemitic narratives risk placing Jewish communities in greater danger.
According to the Anti-Defamation League’s 2024 Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, 9,354 antisemitic incidents were reported in the United States in 2024 – the highest number ever recorded. More than half of these incidents involved Israel- or Zionism-related elements. I urge the Republican National Committee to speak out forcefully against antisemitism in all its forms – harassment, intimidation, assault, vandalism and threats – and to disavow candidate James Fishback. Our best future is to unite against hate and defend truth.
Holly Rothkopf
Holly Rothkopf is CAMERA’s 2025 Letter Writer of the Year
The Jewish Voice
February 11, 2026
‘Window of Hope’ Shut Tight
Dear Editor:
There are 15,000,000 Jews and 1,500,000,000 Muslims in the world
There is one Israeli and 22 Arab states.
There is one Jewish and 56 Muslim UN members.
During the Mandate period (1920-48), the Arab population doubled by immigration. Jews were called Palestinians and Arabs identified with their clans or countries of origin.
Most Arabs in Judea and Samaria were Jordanians or Syrians. Those in Gaza were Egyptians.
In 1964, the Soviet KGB created the Palestine Liberation Army to drive the Jews out and diminish American influence. They recruited Arab fighters from throughout the Middle East and North Africa and called them ‘Palestinians’. They renamed Israel, ‘Palestine’ and all Arabs who ever lived there, ‘Palestinians’.
They caused havoc in Egypt, started civil wars in Jordan and Lebanon and supported Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Despite their barbarism, Israel foolishly invited Yasser Arafat and 100,000 followers into Israel under the Oslo Accords.
Whoever is pressuring Israel, rather than the Islamic terrorists, after Gaza’s October 7th massacre of innocents, has their morality in a dark place, either by ignorance or malice. If anyone owes the Palestinians anything, including a safe haven, it is the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, not Israel.
Len Bennett
Len Bennett is CAMERA’s 2023 Letter Writer of the Year
The New York Post
February 10, 2026
It is purely antisemitic of New York City’s Health Department to divert valuable taxpayer resources to investigating the calumny of genocide in — as Article 80 of the UN Charter declares — the established “national home” of the Jewish people: Israel.
This is a Jew-hating diversion embraced by Mamdani that’s bleeding valuable taxpayer resources.
Richard Sherman
Richard Sherman is CAMERA’s 2024 Letter Writer of the Year
The Washington Times
February 3, 2026
Most media ignore hostages’ torture
Former hostage Romi Gonen gave a courageous interview with Israeli television on Dec. 25 in which she detailed the brutality she survived during her 471 days as a captive of Hamas in Gaza.
She defiantly said that Hamas silenced her during her captivity, but “no one is going to silence me anymore.” Sadly, most of the mainstream media are silencing her again by refusing to share her story. While CNN reported on her interview, neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post has done so.
Ms. Gonen was 23 when she was shot and kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, while fleeing the Nova music festival massacre. Her friends Gaya Halifa and Ben Shimoni were murdered.
During her captivity, Ms. Gonen was repeatedly harassed and sexually assaulted by her Palestinian captors, who included a medical worker and a Hamas “journalist” (propaganda cameraman).
Ms. Gonen described one attack in which she was brutally raped by a Hamas terrorist in a bathroom. She noticed the blue sky and birds singing outside, which she could see through a small picture window. She recalled the feeling of “dissonance between the beautiful, normal, clean life outside and the filth, beastliness and disgust[ingness] that is happening here inside this bathroom.”
Tears ran down her face as she thought, “Romi, everyone in Israel thinks you’re dead, and you’re going to be his sex slave for life.” Afterward, the terrorist put a gun to her head and said: “If you tell anyone, I am going to kill you.”
Ms. Gonen was finally released as part of the January 2025 hostage deal.
Her story reminds us of the depth of Israel’s trauma from the Oct. 7 massacre, the inhuman depravity of Hamas and the world’s shameful lack of empathy for the Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism and barbarity.
Stephen A. Silver
Stephen Silver is CAMERA’s 2002 Letter Writer of the Year
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Diariojudio.com
February 3, 2026
As a doctor, it amazes me the number of doctors and nurses today who have abandoned truth and integrity and have become liars in regard to the Jewish people and Israel having taken the Hippocratic Oath is of no consequence. Many of these physicians are ignoring their most fundamental professional obligation: to do no harm. They have forgotten that they swore to protect and keep their fellow man safe and that includes not putting them in further danger by siding with the enemy who wishes to demolish the country of Israel. Ignoring every terrorist attack be it by Hamas, Isis, Hezbollah, etc., they lie and put all blame on the victim (Israel). This is anti-racism and anti-Semitism.
As physicians, we took oaths to protect and help our fellow man, and we will do everything within our knowledge and possibility to help, cure, and save
people. However, there are groups of doctors who may do that, but at the same time they lie about what they see happening to the patient as a victim of the war blaming Israel for it all. This behavior is a ‘shanda’ (disgrace) to the medical profession.
There are groups like Doctors Without Borders, who choose to assume that everything that goes wrong in the world is the fault of the Jews and Israel. They accuse Israelis of killing children even though evidence proves that the harm was caused by the terrorist groups. Even when Israel’s innocence is demonstrated in pictures that it was never caused by one of their own, their error is never recognized nor rectified.
Another troubling example is Doctor Abu Safiya, who condemns Israel, asking them how they committed all these acts of violence. At the same time, this doctor appears in a Hamas uniform. His conduct destroys our trust in medical neutrality.
These physicians betray patients and societies as well as their own oath of truth, objectivity, and moral clarity.
P.S. NEWS BREAK: Doctors Without Borders has been asked by Israel to remove themselves from Gaza!
Pablo Nankin, MD
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Boulder Jewish News
January 25, 2026
This may be a first for me. I agree completely with Bruce Ticker (“Column: Distorted Language Over War Crimes” BJN January 15, 2026). In today’s “woke” world, there are people who believe that “persecuted” people can do anything they want to do against their “persecutors.” And the decision on who is “persecuted” and who is “persecuting” is determined by Woke diktat that doesn’t require any examination of facts. Thus, woke students feel entitled to terrorize “privileged” Jewish students in support of “stateless” Palestinian students, never considering that:
1) Palestinian leaders have rejected multiple U.S. and Israeli offers that should have led to the founding of the first-ever-to-exist Arab State of Palestine because Israel had the temerity to insist that the new state would have to co-exist peacefully with the nation-state of the Jews.
2) Israel unilaterally withdrew Jewish communities and Israel security forces from Gaza years before Hamas was elected to administer the enclave. Yet, Hamas made no effort to develop Gaza’s economy, blaming an Israeli blockade (actually a rather ineffective attempt to prevent weapons from entering the area). Yet, Hamas managed to spend $1,000,000,000 building an extensive network of terror tunnels, embedded so deeply amid the Gazan populace that any Israeli response to Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians was sure to kill some non-combatants despite the IDF’s exemplary efforts to minimize collateral damage.
3) The State of Israel spent the first three decades of its existence absorbing and uplifting 800,000 Mizrachi Jews thrust from their homes in the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa by Arab leaders ashamed that Arab armies had failed to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state in the Jews’ ancestral homeland. In contrast, Arab leaders refused statehood to fewer than 700,000 Arabs who fled Palestine or were displaced during the 1940’s War of Independence.
There are now 6,000,000 Palestine refugees (UNRWA designation) living under UN aegis, insisting that they will remain on the world’s dole until Israel allows them to “return” to the homes the “refugees” claim their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, … lost in Israel four generations ago. The sheer number of the “refugees” and the fact that they have grown up seeing their peers honored and rewarded for killing Jews ensures that taking them in would mark the death knoll of the Jewish state. In contrast, the descendants of the Mizrachi Jews comprise the majority of Israel’s current Jewish population. Every office in Israel’s government, except that of Prime Minister, has been held, at one time or another, by someone with roots in the Mizrachi communities.
Toby F. Block
Toby Block is CAMERA’s 2017 Letter Writer of the Year
J. Weekly (Jewish News of Northern California)
January 10, 2026
Richmond mayor’s calumnies
The article titled “Jewish orgs condemn Richmond mayor’s ‘conspiracy’ posts on Bondi massacre” (Dec. 18) claims that Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez “routinely posts criticisms of Israel on LinkedIn.”
No, Mayor Martinez does not post mere “criticisms” of Israel. He posts calumnies, fabrications, conspiracy theories and false and defamatory statements while asserting they are true.
A criticism is a statement of opinion or judgment about perceived flaws. Maligning is the malicious dissemination of false and defamatory claims. The mayor’s claim that Israel shot and killed 15 people on an Australian beach is malicious, false and defamatory. In other words, it is maligning, not criticism. Do not characterize his hateful bilge as mere criticism.
Seth Watkins
East Bay Times
January 8, 2026
Richmond council punts censure of mayor
Re: “Council’s attempt to censure mayor fails” (Page B1, Jan. 8).
One of the most disappointing and hurtful things I heard at the Richmond City Council meeting on Tuesday was learning that four of the City Council members and the mayor himself did not think that Mayor Martinez’s reposting of antisemitic claims about the murder of Jews on Bondi Beach was severe enough to warrant the City Council taking up the issue immediately.
An in-depth discussion was needed to come up with a respectful and meaningful response that would help to repair the harm that has been done to the Jewish community. The refusal of the majority of the City Council, including the mayor, to do so was a significant failure of leadership. They refused to see how incitement of hatred against Jews leads to violence and the destruction of a pluralistic democracy.
Dorothea Dorenz
Marin Independent Journal
January 7, 2026
Mass shooting in Australia is a reminder for Marin
The tragedy of the Bondi Beach massacre in Australia on Dec. 15 is not an isolated incident; rather, it is part of a disturbing trend of assaults on Jewish residents in English-speaking countries that are becoming increasingly common.
Many in our Marin community may be surprised to learn that every Jewish institution in our county now implements security measures that other organizations do not deem necessary. This is not paranoia.
According to a Bay Area survey conducted in December 2023, over 60% of Bay Area Jews reported feeling less safe in their daily lives since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
Additionally, a study by the University of California at Davis using data from 2024-25 found that more than 60% of Jewish parents surveyed in Northern California reported experiencing some form of antisemitic event.
A majority of participants (56%) expressed being either “very” or “extremely” concerned about antisemitism.
In the broader context of California, the state’s Department of Justice reported a 53% increase in antisemitic hate crimes between 2022 and 2023.
The violence and intimidation faced by Jews should not be viewed solely as a Jewish issue; it is a societal challenge. I hope our neighbors of goodwill understand this and demonstrate their concern for the safety of Jewish residents in Marin.
Quality of life and civic pride have long been hallmarks of life in Marin.
We must work to ensure these values are upheld for everyone.
Jeff Saperstein
Chronicle of Higher Education
January 5, 2026
Giving Credence to Absurdity on a Social Media Scandal
To the Editor:
In “A Professor Said a Threatening Post About Zionists Was Satire. Her University Concluded It Was ‘Disruption.’,” (January 2), Katherine Mangan, like the authorities of the University of California at Davis, tries her best to be fair-minded and judicious about a post, circulated to a “social circle” of its author, which urged readers to terrorize pro-Israel journalists by threatening their homes and families, a post illustrated with ax, knife, and blood symbols. It was posted three days after the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023 (but also in the context of such things as the Boston BDS Mapping project of 2022, which published the locations of institutions in the Boston area that could be associated with Zionism, and was seen immediately by its targets as a physical threat). But the author claimed that the post was “satire” and thus protected as free speech. Apparently, the university authorities accepted this contention, because they sought to balance the author’s free speech rights against the rights of Jews (even Zionist ones) not to be terrorized by threats. Mangan wonders if they got the balance right. What a delicate intellectual problem!
There is another way, however, to think of this allegedly knotty question. Thus, Mangan’s article suggests interesting possibilities for extortionists, bullies, and crime gangs everywhere. Now, if someone seeking protection money goes to, oh, perhaps a barbershop or a small store, and says to the owner, “nice little place you got here. Nice family pictures. It’d be a shame if something happened to them,” if they are apprehended and tried for extortion, their lawyers can claim that their clients weren’t making criminal threats, obviously unprotected by the First Amendment free speech clause. Oh no, they were just engaged in “satire,” in harmless and protected free speech. “Just kidding, folks! Can’t you take a joke?”
What Jemma DeCristo wrote was not satire in any possible sense of the word; it was incitation of her friends to kill Jews (oh yes, only the bad ones, the Zionists, the ones, that is, who care about the fate of seven million other Jews). To put it plainly, DeCristo’s post was criminal incitement to violence. Her post urged on her friends the ease of threatening and hurting journalists, i.e. destroying them physically. And that threat, ironically enough, was blatant intimidation, meant to keep those journalists from using their own free speech rights. That is, DeCristo has the chutzpah to claim the free speech right to threaten the free speech rights (and lives) of others. Oblivious to the irony, Mangan and the U.C. Davis authorities give credence to the absurdity and thus participate in it. Taking DeCristo’s claim of “satire” seriously is thus complicity in the current wave of Jew-hate, in that it provides cover for the most blatant threats against the lives of Jews.
There is an element of satire in Mangan’s article and in your straight-faced publication of it, but it is self-satire, though of the least humorous and most frightening kind.
Fred Baumann
Professor of Political Science
Kenyon College
New York Daily News
March 29, 2026
Safe Distance: Syracuse, NY
Re “Ending violence, not buffer zones, protects Jews” (Op Ed, March 26) by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ): People peacefully visiting houses of worship and educational venues definitely deserved separation from appalling massed crowd harassment and intimidation. It doesn’t, in the least, inhibit those protest mobs’ First Amendment free speech rights. Their vile chants are surely loud enough to be heard from 25 feet away. How short is that? Eight yards, less than the distance needed for a football first down. Those undeserving objects of their contempt ought absolutely to be afforded such minimal dividing space.
Richard D. Wilkins
Richard Wilkins is CAMERA’s 2006 Letter Writer of the Year
The Wall Street Journal
June 10, 2026
Masada Siegel is absolutely right in “West Bank’ Is a Colonial Imposition” (op-ed, June 4). For thousands of years, certain lands west of the Jordan River were known by their ancient Biblical Jewish names, Judea and Samaria. These lands were part of the indigenous homelands of the Jewish people.
After Israel’s establishment in 1948, Jordan attacked and occupied these areas. The Jordanians killed many Jews, destroyed synagogues and desecrated Jewish cemeteries, in some cases using headstones as building materials for latrines. They renamed these areas the “West Bank” to try to legitimize their occupation. Jordan’s control of the area was overwhelmingly considered an illegal occupation by the international community.
After Jordan joined Egypt and Syria in attacking Israel once again in 1967, Israel repelled this attack and liberated these lands from illegal Jordanian occupation. It is time to abandon the settler-colonialist term “West Bank” and restore and recognize the ancient names for these territories given by the indigenous people, the Jewish people: Judea and Samaria.
Daniel H. Trigoboff
Dan Trigoboff is CAMERA’s 2018 Letter Writer of the Year
The Los Angeles Times
April 28, 2026
Voices
Showing respect for the horrors of Oct. 7 is a matter of “simple human decency”
What are they teaching at UCLA these days? Obviously not history, free speech, civil engagement of diverse viewpoints or empathy (“UC Regent Jay Sures condemns UCLA student government for criticizing Israeli hostage event,” April 24).
On April 14, in observance of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), the campus Hillel brought Omer Shem Tov to UCLA to talk about his experiences. Shem Tov, now 23, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in Israel by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, and was held hostage in Gaza for 505 days.
Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre was a microcosm of the Holocaust: Jewish civilians, including children, were kidnapped and slaughtered en masse by members of an organization that had the goal of the annihilation of Jews in its founding documents. There are also numerous harrowing reports alleging that Hamas used rape and sexual violence as a weapon on that horrible day and during the hostages’ captivity.
Showing respect for the memory of the Holocaust and learning about the horrors of Oct. 7 should be matters of simple human decency. Yet instead of lauding the opportunity to learn and engage, members of the UCLA student government, apparently without the student president’s knowledge and without giving proper notice, condemned Hillel for the event.
The entire Board of Regents should join Jay Sures in condemning this action — which was antisemitic in effect if not in intent — as being antithetical to UCLA’s mission.
Stephen A. Silver
Stephen Silver is CAMERA’s 2002 Letter Writer of the Year
Santa Cruz Sentinel
March 26, 2026
Why Israel has right to defend itself against Hezbollah
Headlines regarding Israel military action are indeed slanted against Israel. Israel’s actions are not mere “retaliation.” Israel’s actions against Hezbollah are existential defense.
Are letter writers not aware that a November 2024 ceasefire agreement obligated the Lebanese national government to ensure there were no weapons held by non-state bodies (Hezbollah) in south Lebanon between Israel and the Litani River? Additionally, a 2006 U.N. Security Council resolution had already barred Hezbollah from operating in the region, but it was consistently violated with impunity.
Letter writers might wish to consider the fact that the Hezbollah terror group’s manifesto rejects international and internal Lebanese calls to disarm and halt its attacks on the Jewish state. According to the 2009 New Hezbollah Manifesto, “Our stance on the negotiations and compromises … is a total refusal to any kind of compromise with the Zionist entity, which is based on admitting its legitimate presence.”
Lastly, endless conflict has unfortunately characterized human history on every continent since the beginning of time.
Julia Lutch
Julia Lutch is CAMERA’s 2020 Letter Writer of the Year
Hartford Courant
March 14, 2026
Commentary missed the mark on Iran war
The Courant’s commentary article from The New York Times about the Iran war is overly simplistic. The writer harps on there being no “immediate threat” and then the destruction last June of major portions of Iran’s extensive nuclear infrastructure.
A major issue, however, is that, when there is an “immediate threat,” it may be too late to take effective action. While we miraculously destroyed Iran’s underground enrichment facility, that is not the whole story. Undeterred, Iran has been rebuilding its nuclear weapons program. Reuters reported last month that satellite imagery has revealed new roofs on the Isfahan facility.
Presumably, without the present war, Iran would continue rebuilding until it became too late to stop the nuclear threat.
The Times writer also ignores other aspects of the Iranian threat. It is not only nuclear weapons but Iran’s increasing arsenal of lethal ballistic missiles that pose a grave threat, not to mention funding and, as recently as February, training of terrorist groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both activities pose an ongoing danger to civilian populations and American forces and, hopefully, will be halted if the American and Israeli effort is successful.
While the writer complains about timing, he ignores Iran’s recent wanton murder of 30,000 civilian protesters as a precipitating factor. Because of internal resistance and a poor economy, Iran’s rulers are at a low point. Regime change is more attainable than ever before. Where eventual war with Iran was inevitable, it would be folly to delay until Iran was closer to a complete nuclear rebuilding, a greater ballistic arsenal, a successful revitalization of Hezbollah and more repression and brutality upon its people.
The Times writer’s response is that the United States shouldn’t be attacking Iran when Russia, China and North Korea also threaten us. Is he advocating even more war? Does he have a clear objective other than finding fault?
Mark I. Fishman, president of PRIMER-CT (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting)
The Boston Globe
March 3, 2026
Iran has long been an antagonist — US, Israeli action is a response, not an attack
I write this from Israel on Sunday morning, having been woken up by a red alert and having spent a half hour in a shelter, after already having taken shelter multiple times overnight.
Iran has made the United States its mortal enemy since 1979. Our American attacks launched Saturday against Iran’s illicit nuclear and missile programs aren’t an act of war; they are one more chapter in the continuing war forced upon us. The joint US-Israeli action appears to be well planned and will probably finally bring this continuing war to a conclusion, allowing the Iranian people to take back their country while bringing down the world’s worst sponsor of terrorism.
For members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation to condemn this action shows a profoundly perverse misunderstanding of world affairs and America’s interests that deserves its own condemnation. One prays that these elected officials will come to their senses and work in our interests and in the interests of peace.
Alan Stein
Alan Stein is CAMERA’s 2015 Letter Writer of the Year
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The New York Post
January 15, 2026
Since late December, thousands of protesters have been murdered in Iran. Yet there is a deafening silence on university and college campuses and elsewhere.
No mass protests over the slaughter and suffering in Iran on the streets of New York City or anywhere in America. No endless “human rights” encampments.
Why nothing? The reason is simple. No Jews, no news.
Richard Sherman
Richard Sherman is CAMERA’s 2024 Letter Writer of the Year
The Washington Times
January 13, 2026
Letter to the editor: When in doubt, blame the Jews
The Venezuelan diaspora celebrated upon learning that, in the early morning hours of Jan. 3, the U.S. military had captured Venezuela’s narco-terrorist dictator, Nicolas Maduro, and the man’s wife in their home and flown them to New York to face justice.
Two days later, in Caracas, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez was sworn in as interim president, ignoring the democratically elected Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado.
Ms. Rodriguez condemned the Maduro capture and U.S. incursion, as one would expect. Then she blamed it on the Jews. This is classic psychopathology.
Everything bad that happens in the world is caused by the Jews. The tragedy that befell the Maduro regime was not the result of a conflict between Venezuela and America. It was not the fault of a corrupt, Roman Catholic government that was exporting illicit drugs. It was all instigated by the Jews. How convenient! Problem solved. Venezuelans are good; Jews are bad.
In the 1930s, the Nazis were in power and the Jews suffered. No one intervened. Who will protect Venezuela’s Jews?
Len Bennett
Len Bennett is CAMERA’s 2023 Letter Writer of the Year