sittah

 Coming soon, to Columbia University:

"A State of Passion" is about Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah, a British-Arab plastic surgeon who is described as "a face of Palestinian resistance" from his activities in Gaza during wartime.

The film will not discuss Abu Sittah's penchant for making up lies about Israel. Nor will it discuss his antisemitism. 

During the Gaza war, for example, Abu Sittah claims that he - and he alone - saw photographs taken by Al Jazeera that he says proved that Israeli doctors "expertly" removed organs from living Palestinian prisoners. This is a blood libel; it is absurd to think that any such photographs exist yet they weren't publicized where doctors worldwide could confirm it. Al Jazeera colluded with Abu Sittah - because they know that he will say anything to condemn Israel, no matter how far from the truth it might be.

He has a history of doing exactly that.

I found an Arabic language interview where he claimed that Israel had targeted every Palestinian Red Crescent hospital in the first days of the 1982 Lebanon war. 

It was a lie.

He further claimed that Ben Gurion said "I cannot bear to think that we will have to live in the same country as these people." Another lie.

He further alleged that when Israel arrested Shifa hospital director Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, "They broke his arms. They made him walk on all fours with a chain around his neck. They made him eat from a plate on the floor in front of the other doctors, because he refused to go on TV and say that the Israelis were right."

Salmiya himself never made any such claims when he was released and gave a press conference, and his arms were clearly not broken.  It was a lie.

Abu Sittah also is a fan of terrorists who attack Jews, retweeting one who said  “We congratulate our brothers in Hamas and our comrades in the Popular Front on the anniversary of their inception.”

He also praised the PFLP terrorist who bombed a cinema in Tel Aviv in December 1974, killing two. 

Beyond his lies and love of murderers, Abu Sittah is also a rabid Jew hater. 

He has repeatedly compared Israel to Nazi Germany, for example calling Gaza a "Final Solution." 

Abu Sittah also falsely claimed that 66% of Israelis are allergic to olive tree pollen, linking to a study that says no such thing. It was only looking at people who already had allergies and who lived near olive groves. Allergies are correlated with exposure. Lebanese people with allergies are more likely to be allergic to cedar and cypress pollen. 

When a doctor misrepresents a medical paper to push an antisemitic theory, it casts doubt on his competence as an activist as well as his medical credentials. 

Abu Sittah is not a hero. He is a contemptible, antisemitic terror supporter. 

Maybe Jews of New York should take a page from Abu Sittah's fans and hold a protest outside the Lenfest Center for the Arts on February 10. There is an excellent plaza right in front tailor made for people chanting and holding signs. Call the media ahead of time asking for comments from the Center for Palestine Studies, sponsoring the event, asking them if they support a doctor who praises terrorists and spins antisemitic conspiracy theories. 

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sabsabi

 

A year ago, Australia was in an uproar when the government decided not to send a work by a Lebanese Australian artist, Khaled Sabsabi, to the to represent the country at the 2026 Venice Biennale, after it was revealed that he had created pro-terrorist video artwork installations.

Two of them are shown here. One from 2007, "You,"  repeatedly portrays videos of former Hezbollah terror leader Hassan Nasrallah as angelic figures of light, which the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Sydney said "suggest divine illumination."

The other shows the planes crashing into the World Trade Center and then shows President Bush saying in a stutter, "Thank you very much," which is what Sabsabi named the installation. 

These pieces are not "ambiguous" as the narrator in the videos claims. Sabsabi himself makes that clear even as he ingenuously says that they are about "humanity."

Thousands of Australian artists signed an open letter protesting that this decision was an assault on artistic freedom. 

Yet later in 2025, tens of thousands of artists wrote a letter to the same Venice Beinnale insisting that the Israeli pavilion at the show be closed down: "We demand that the Biennale withdraws any offer to platform a genocidal state."

Australia's Jewish Independent looked at the signatures of both letters and found that over 200 of the same artists protesting censoring Australia platforming a pro-terror artist also supported censoring every Israeli artist.

In fact, Khaled Sabsabi himself signed the letter supporting censoring Israel's exhibit.

The Israeli art piece by Ruth Patir was not about celebrating war or terror. It reimagined fertility goddesses as real life mothers.

Jewish artists in Australia have been under siege. 600 Jewish creatives were doxxed, and several of them have been victims of discrimination in the art world just because they were Jewish. As the newspaper notes:

The Jewish Independent knows of several shocking individual cases including an established artist dropped by a gallery that had represented her for years; a young gallery worker who left her job after being confronted with antisemitic stereotypes; and an emerging artist with a recognisably Jewish family name who went from having several projects a year accepted to having every application rejected since October 7. 

The situation is so dire that sculptor Nina Sanadze has founded Goldstone Gallery for the express purpose of platforming artists cancelled for political reasons, predominantly Jewish and Israeli artists.

We see the same hypocrisy in the academic world every day, where pro-terror and even antisemitic positions are justified as freedom of expression but any pro-Zionist voices are silenced for supposedly moral reasons. 

But here we have a list of people who sign their names to diametrically opposed petitions that prove their own hypocrisy. 

(h/t Jill)

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czar

 Jewish Insider reports today that New York City Mayor Mamdani is expected to replace the existing head of the city's office to combat antisemitism, and the frontrunner is Phylisa Wisdom, part of Mamdani's team and the head of the progressive New York Jewish Agenda.

An incident from 2022 shows that she is profoundly unqualified for the job. 

In May 2022, Waleed Shahid, then communications director for Justice Democrats, reacted to a Jewish Insider tweet about pro-Israel political donations by joking: “Wait until you hear what happened next in next week’s ‘Goy Outsider.’”

Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, publicly called the tweet antisemitic.  His point was that antisemitic tropes appear across the political spectrum, including on the radical left, and that this language was inappropriate and insulting.

The response from parts of the progressive Jewish world was swift and furious. A letter signed by dozens of prominent progressive Jews accused Greenblatt of smearing Shahid and falsely equating a “lighthearted joke” with far-right violence (which he did not do.) Others insisted this was a distraction from “real antisemitism.”

That framing is precisely the problem. The offensiveness is not subtle, and it has nothing to do with intent.

The word goy is not a neutral synonym for “non-Jew.” In contemporary usage, Jews themselves often avoid it because it sounds dismissive or contemptuous, even when used casually. Many Jews, myself included, deliberately teach their children to say “non-Jewish person” instead.

When a non-Jew uses goy as a punchline, it almost always carries an implication: this is how Jews really talk about outsiders. That implication feeds directly into long-standing antisemitic tropes about Jewish insularity, insider language, and "Jewish supremacy." 

If Shahid had said “Gentile Outsider” the joke would not have landed the same way. The choice of goy was the joke. And the joke works only by invoking a stereotype about how Jews supposedly think and speak among themselves. There is a reason the far Right uses the word "goy" so often and ironically refer to themselves that way. For a leftist figure to use the word in the exact same joking way that the neo-Nazis do is not "lighthearted."

You do not need violence, threats, or slurs for something to be antisemitic. Antisemitism has always relied heavily on insinuation, mockery, and claims to secret knowledge about Jews.

Dismissing it as merely a "Dad joke" is missing the point. Humor has always been one of antisemitism’s most effective delivery systems. No one would make a similar joke about Black people's derogatory use of the word "cracker" for white people.  

Phylisa Wisdom does not seem to understand these basic facts about antisemitism. 

In response to criticism of the “Goy Outsider” tweet, Wisdom wrote: “This is not antisemitism from the left.” When challenged, she doubled down with a simple question: “What’s antisemitic about it?”

That question is disqualifying.

Someone charged with combating antisemitism should not need this explained. This is not an edge case or a novel controversy. It is a textbook example of how antisemitic tropes function in modern discourse, on both the right and the left.

If you cannot see why a non-Jew publicly using “goy” to comment on Jewish political dynamics is offensive, then you do not understand antisemitism beyond its most extreme, violent forms. And if that is your threshold, you are not qualified to define the problem, let alone fight it.

There is a deeper pattern here that should make Jews uneasy.

In progressive spaces, other minority groups are granted maximal sensitivity. Language that might reinforce stereotypes is scrutinized closely, regardless of intent. Impact matters more than tone.

Jews are treated differently.

Jews are expected to laugh off jokes about insider language, power, and tribalism. When they object, they are told they are oversensitive, divisive, or distracting from “real” problems. Antisemitism is redefined so narrowly that only physical violence counts, while the cultural and rhetorical groundwork that enables that violence is dismissed.

This asymmetry is now embedded in progressive norms - and this incident proved it.

This is about competence. If someone cannot recognize why the “Goy Outsider” joke is antisemitic, they do not understand how antisemitism actually works. And someone who does not understand that should not be entrusted with leading the fight against it in New York City.

Antisemitism does not begin with bullets. It begins with permission structures – permission to mock, to insinuate, and to minimize. If you respond to antisemitism by minimizing it, you are not fighting it. You are enabling it.

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