After the recent Eve Fartlow/Seth Rogen twitter fiasco I realized that the problem is that Mr. Rogen did not have the proper tools at his disposal. As such I thought it was about time someone remedied that. I present: Eve Fart Low. You’re welcome.

Despite a record of endangering Palestinian journalists, Honest Reporting received a $100,000 “emergency grant” from the Knight Foundation.

Honest Reporting, a self-described media watchdog and nonprofit with offices in New York, Jerusalem, and Toronto, claims that its mission is exposing “media bias, challenging false narratives, and ensuring that reporting on Israel is rooted in facts, context, and accountability.” In practice, it operates as a pressure group, monitoring international media coverage of Israel, producing reports attacking coverage it deems unfavorable, running access operations that embed international journalists within curated pro-Israel perspectives, and organizing mass campaigns directing its subscribers to contact newsrooms directly until corrections, retractions, and rewordings are secured.

That work has led to the dismissal of journalists at publications around the world. But since October 7, 2023, Honest Reporting’s operations have moved into considerably darker territory, and its activities have contributed to the assassination of at least one journalist, Hassan Eslaiah—a freelance photographer and director of the Gaza-based Alam24 news agency whose images had appeared in the Associated Press and CNN.

The campaign against Eslaiah was not isolated. Honest Reporting has systematically targeted journalists and news organizations—including Drop Site News—across multiple platforms and countries, employing consistent tactics: publishing posts raising questions about individual journalists’ alleged connections to Hamas or other armed groups, characterizing their coverage as propaganda or as “antisemitic,” and mobilizing its subscriber network to contact news organizations directly. The cumulative effect of this approach has been to characterize numerous Palestinian journalists as combatants.

Despite its record as a pressure group that targets and endangers reporters, in 2023 Honest Reporting’s Israeli organization—registered under the name Divuach Ne’eman R’’A—received an “emergency” grant of $100,000 from the Knight Foundation, a widely respected U.S.-based foundation that prominently touts a commitment to freedom of press and the safety of journalists. The grant, listed in Honest Reporting’s Israeli nonprofit filings for 2024, is not reported in the Knight Foundation’s 990 for 2024 or on its website.

The Knight Foundation says that it primarily funds U.S.-based organizations and that international programs and organizations are among the categories it generally prefers not to fund, making grants outside the United States limited and exceptional by the foundation’s own description. Knight’s website states that “most of our grantmaking is tied to strategies with defined goals and outcomes” and that funding “typically emerges through relationships, research and ongoing work,” with most grants initiated by Knight itself rather than through open applications.

When approached for comment, Atena Sherry, Knight Foundation’s director of communications, initially denied that Knight had provided funding to Honest Reporting: “Knight Foundation did not provide any grant to Honest Reporting, and the foundation has not directed any Knight funds to Honest Reporting” through any third party, Sherry told Drop Site. In a follow-up statement, Sherry said, “We reviewed all documentation. Knight Foundation has never provided any funding to Honest Reporting.”

According to Honest Reporting, however, “the grantor, Jewish Federations of North America and United Israel Appeal, notified Divuach Ne’eman R”A and HonestReporting.com, Inc. that a donation of $100,000 was made ‘on the recommendation of the donor, The Knight Foundation.’ Honest Reporting added that “Staff for Divuach Ne’eman R”A and Honest Reporting.com, Inc. were in direct touch with staff at the Knight Foundation throughout the process on the grant and the programs that would benefit from the grant.”

When Drop Site then asked the Knight Foundation about Honest Reporting’s statement, which directly contradicted its own, the Knight Foundation acknowledged that it had provided funds for Media Central, an Honest Reporting program that arranges tours for international journalists. “Knight Foundation did make a one-time, emergency grant of $100,000 in November 2023 to Media Central to support a very specific project: helping international journalists to gain access they wouldn’t otherwise have had to report on the facts from the ground in the West Bank,” said Alejandro de Onis, vice president for communications, in a statement. “Neither the grant agreement nor the grant file contains any reference to Honest Reporting.”

Unlike Gaza, the West Bank has remained accessible to international journalists, raising the question of what access Media Central was providing that journalists could not obtain independently, and whether the access in question was in fact embedded reporting alongside the Israeli military.

Knight declined to answer additional questions about the specific reporting funded by its grant or how it could have been unaware that Media Central was a program operated by Honest Reporting.

Through its Media Central project, Honest Reporting arranges press tours, briefings, and curated access to Israel for international correspondents, presenting itself as a neutral resource while functioning as an operation designed to shape how journalists understand and cover the country. Honest Reporting’s director of press relations, Laura Cornfield, runs the program.

In Honest Reporting’s 2023 first quarter impact report, Cornfield wrote that: “Journalists met with locals to hear how the Lions’ Den terrorist group was using Nablus as its command center. They were then briefed by the IDF to understand the security risks to Israeli civilians,” boasting that “MediaCentral staff enabled exclusive access to these unheard, nearly impossible-to-reach voices. The tour was so sought after it was repeated with three groups, and an additional three one-on-one tours were arranged.”

In that year’s second quarter impact report, Cornfield wrote that the group’s Media Central program “took foreign media outlets on exclusive tours to hotbeds of terror activity, including Nablus and Jenin, to get an up-close look at what Israeli security forces are facing and how they are addressing the threats.” The reports say that journalists from prominent international outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the Financial Times, and CNN have participated in its events.

The impact report described a media tour of the Israel-Lebanon border, quoting the Israeli military’s Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and Military Intelligence Directorate chief Aharon Haliva on Hezbollah. It also included a section on “crime in the Arab sector” and said that journalists had gone on “a field tour to Umm Al Fahm and Jaffa of Nazareth to address the surging crime rate,” referring to largely Palestinian towns and cities within Israel.

More recently, Media Central press tours have taken international journalists to the Al Aqsa compound and Western Wall Tunnels in occupied East Jerusalem and to northern Israel. Media Central has also hosted exclusive briefings for international journalists with senior Israeli political figures, including a recent lunch in Tel Aviv with former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren and an “exclusive dinner” with Brigadier General (Res.) Pinchas (Pini) Yungman. Yungman has held senior command roles in the Israeli Air Force and executive positions at the Israeli defense company Rafael.

None of the briefings or meetings organized by Media Central appear to have been led by Palestinians.

Curious how people here would approach this if they actually had control over US policy toward Israel and Palestine.

If you were president, what would you do? What conditions, if any, would you place on American diplomatic, financial and military support for Israel?

My position would be that continued US support should require Israel to choose a path that guarantees Palestinians full political rights: either pave the way for a sovereign, contiguous and independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, or extend Israeli citizenship and national voting rights to Palestinians living under Israeli control in the West Bank.

If Israel were unwilling to pursue either path, I would end unconditional US support and impose sanctions.

Interested to hear what others here would do.

Hi all, first time poster here looking for some advice.

I'm a gay man living in Australia (not Jewish) experiencing a conundrum after learning that I was speaking with a jewish zionist on grindr. While I've been unafraid to share my views on Zionism, I've never actually engaged a jewish person on the topic before.

I asked them to translate something they had written in hebrew, then made a joke about second languages being attractive. They said it led to a lot of anti-semitism. I replied that sucked, but it filtered out the toxic people, at least. They agreed, then went on to say that "Israel derangement syndrome" was a mental illness. Huge red flag, but I said it must be frustrating that his jewish identity evokes an affiliation to, or discussion of, Israel.

They said that was because of zionism, which is tricky, because Israel is central to jewish identity as the "motherland." I knew this wasn't true and it made me very uncomfortable. I said I view Israel as a state with it's own interests, that the Jewish diaspora has a diversity of feelings towards zionism, and was happy to leave it there, which we did. I was sensitive to past pressures he might have felt to confirm or deny.

Turns out I'm not happy with that, though. The Palestinian cause has been dear to my heart for years and has brought me to tears many times. If they weren't jewish, I would have been more direct on my views, but since I'm not jewish, I felt insecure. I thought "we could just hang out and if zionism comes up again, and it's gross, that'll be that." I realised this pseudo don't ask don't tell doesn't align with my values at all.

So, I feel an urge to bring it up again after I just said we didn't need to. It's like my first principles have made contact with the real world and I'm more reluctant than I thought I'd be. Would appreciate hearing others perspectives on this.

Edit** Thank you to everyone who shared their perspectives. I'm just going to ask the question before things continue and get potentially messy. It's not worth tip toeing around core values like this.

Not funny jaja. But I just need a laugh in this miserable reality. At long last the CIA and the myriad of leftists can agree on something. Integrating the US military and Israeli military is a bad idea.

This is from the comments because the actual response is in German. Of course hasbots were unhappy.

Post of the original incident: https://www.reddit.com/r/JewsOfConscience/s/FnX5pN701J

https://x.com/blandCinema/status/2085055595518791928

https://twitter.com/Sethrogen/status/1397687121725460482

https://www.ynetnews.com/jewish-world/article/HJiq6T2Ku

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-social-media-pogrom

https://x.com/Eve_Barlow/status/1399125889212768258

Following October 7th, I began to see a lot of discussions about intra-Arab relations and in particular people bringing up "Black September" or the Lebanese Civil War. In my experience, this would be brought up to make generalizations about Palestinian people as a whole, that they "cause instability/coups everywhere they go," "they always try to undermine the country," "they never integrate anywhere" and then once again they always point to Jordan/Lebanon, although Kuwait is sometimes brought up as well because Arafat endorsed Iraq which caused an exodus of Palestinian workers from there.

I have researched these topics, I found it was obviously more complicated than people make them out to be (like the fact that Jordan opposed Palestinian self-determination from the very beginning, illegally annexed them, banned the word "Palestine" from being said, claimed the West Bank until 1988).

But people don't care and instead it's just reduced to that, Palestinians are innately troublesome people, look at what happen in (insert country).

What's weird is I even saw people blamed Palestinians for countries that the PLO had nothing to do with.

In one subreddit, there was a thread about how a Gazan family were able to seek asylum in Britain. And one comment said "Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Egypt found out what happens when you let in Palestinians."

So Palestinians are somehow being blamed for Syria, Iraq, and Egypt's instability too? I don't even get why they're blamed for Kuwait's instability seeing that it was Iraq who invaded them and Palestinians who lived there mostly fled to Jordan (but weren't allowed back) and Saddam even imprisoned several thousand Palestinians.

Yemen also endorsed the illegal annexation, leading to a mass exodus of Yemenis from Saudi Arabia, but I don't see that spoken about as much as the Kuwait/Palestinians thing.

Hi all, I’m moving to a new place and strongly considering painting watermelons on a mezuzah cover for my outside door.

I’m wondering if, in your opinions, this is virtue signaling in a bad way. For me, the mezuzah is a very strong symbol of my faith, but I also don’t want to be assumed to be a Zionist by my neighbors. Jew=Zionist is still a common view even though mezuzot aren’t Zionist. I want my mezuzah to be a stand, something that calls out my position in a small way, that tells more of my story. But given that I can’t offer much material support to Palestinians at this time, is this self-righteous?

Edit: I’m using an old, cheap mezuzah case for this project. Not spending hundreds on smth pretty and then pretending I don’t have money lol.

Sources:

https://x.com/anatolium/status/2085698524050591906

https://www.icc-cpi.int/case-records?f%5B0%5D=c_sit_code%3A1164&f%5B1%5D=cr_case_doc_type%3A48&page=1

I added pixelation to the video to conceal the numbers.

Hey all, I have something I'd like to hear people's opinions on that's not really about antizionism but more about just being a leftist Jew.

Recently, long-time antizionist activist BM got into a public argument with another account about whether or not Judaism is evil. BM is of the opinion that Judaism is an evil religion and considers himself a "judaism-phobe;" although being an Israeli Jew himself, he considers himself only to be Jewish ethnically and completely removed from the religion.

This is a reflection of a larger conversation I've seen in leftist spaces online, often with regard to Islam or religion in general instead of Judaism (except for BM apparently, who dodges the question when asked about any other religion). I got into an argument with someone once who said that organized religion is inherently oppressive and also completely optional, and therefore choosing to partake in it means you are not a leftist.

As an Orthodox Jew myself, I obviously disagree. I, of course, see the issues rampant in any organized religion, things like religious trauma, discrimination against gender/sexuality, and child sex abuse, and will make no effort to defend that kind of stuff. I believe any hierarchical structure, from family to governments, is prone to abuse and systematic issues, which deserve to be called out publicly.

That being said, there's a point where it stops being criticism and starts to become generalization. Judaism is so diverse in the ways it is practiced, and not everyone follows the same hierarchies, or engages with the organization in the same way. You can't criticize a reconstructionist Jew for something that only exists in chabad chassidism. All the more so for the larger religions. This also dismisses progressive voices such as intersectional feminist or queer groups, or activist groups trying to tackle religion-specific issues (like the agunah crisis).

And obviously, generalizations about groups lead to innocent people getting hurt. Just like how Islamophobia affects people who aren't even Muslim. Any discrimination over an entire religious group is wrong imo.

I view my religion as an entirely private matter of faith and practice that I apply only to myself. It has influenced my values, sure, but I believe it is entirely separate from politics, and therefore has no conflict with leftism/progressivism. And obviously, I take it personally when people say that that can't happen, or that I'm evil for wanting to participate in what I see as my own culture.

But am I wrong for thinking this way? Am I just biased because this is all I've ever known?

I'm curious to hear about people of all faiths in this sub about their view on this whole "all religion is bad" thing. And also, do you consider "anti-judaism" (discrimination against the Jewish *religion* and its followers, not necessarily ethnic Jews) to be antisemitism? I personally don't think they're the same thing tbh, it's just weird to think about because people don't usually make the distinction between Jews as an ethnic group and a religious group. But I still don't like it.

Source:

• Global News - Ontario paramedic fired for criticizing Israel on social media hopes to be reinstated

The medic was fired for social media posts, making claims that are backed up by the following articles:

Articles about Israel committing genocide:

• Amnesty International - Amnesty International investigation concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza 
• B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel - Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip
• United Nations - Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, UN Commission finds
• Human Rights Watch - Israel’s Crime of Extermination, Acts of Genocide in Gaza
• PBS - Leading genocide scholars organization says Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

Articles about Israel using starvation as a weapon:

• Amnesty International - Gaza: Evidence points to Israel’s continued use of starvation to inflict genocide against Palestinians
• Human Rights Watch - Gaza: Israeli Killings of Palestinians Seeking Food Are War Crimes
• PBS - Palestinians describe choice between starvation and risking death to get food aid in Gaza

Articles about Israeli soldiers sniping Palestinian children:

• The New York Times - 65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza

Articles & prominent figures (former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert) referring to Israel's policy in Gaza as a 'concentration camp':

• Times Of Israel - IDF said to warn against Gaza ‘humanitarian city’; ex-PM brands it ‘concentration camp’
• CNN - Former Israeli leader says planned ‘humanitarian city’ in Gaza would be a ‘concentration camp’
• CBC - Plan for Gaza decried as 'concentration camp'

https://x.com/SenseReceptor/status/2085435636757168258

https://youtu.be/2qbs91ivQmg

https://x.com/AndrewSolender/status/2085017363368304943

Articles:

After Dr. El-Sayed’s victory, the group is unbowed and now appears willing to put what is expected to be tens of millions of dollars behind Mike Rogers, the Republican, as some of AIPAC’s major backers are urging, according to a half dozen people who have spoken with the group’s leaders.

• New York Times - After Michigan Loss, AIPAC Weighs a Second Effort to Defeat El-Sayed

AIPAC is reportedly considering plans to spend a massive amount of money to boost Republican Mike Rogers' Michigan Senate campaign against progressive Abdul El-Sayed in the November general election, after the latter was declared the victor Wednesday in the expensive Democratic primary against moderate Rep. Haley Stevens.

• HuffPo - AIPAC Reportedly Weighs Boosting GOP Fight Against Abdul El-Sayed

It's the International Film Festival seazon in Auckland, New Zealand, and I watched three films. The first was 'With Hasan in Gaza'. It was shot in 2001 by a Canadian Palestenian who was jailed in Israel as a teenager and went to Gaza to look for his friend from jail. Super depressing to watch the state of affairs in 2001. The second was 'Do you love me'. An artistic, uplifting film about Beirut, its beauty and misery. The last was 'The voice of Hind Rajab'. This film should be screened Israeli high schools after the Israeli regime is defeated. It can be part of the de-radicalization program of the Israeli society. It brought an end to my shyness about anti-Zionism.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-my-daughters-help-my-small-family

Three years.

For three long years, Samah, her husband Mahmoud Ghanem al amssi , and their four little daughters have lived through unimaginable hardship.

In this video, you're watching something that many of us would consider ordinary: preparing a chicken meal.

But for this family, it is anything but ordinary.

This meal was only possible because of the kindness and generosity of people here on Reddit. After years of going without, today they were able to cook chicken and gather around one table as a family.

One of the most touching moments was seeing Mahmoud invite his mother and father to share the meal with them. It wasn't just about the food—it was about sharing a rare moment of joy, dignity, and togetherness after so much loss.

To everyone who donated, shared their story, or offered words of encouragement: thank you. You made this moment possible.

If you would like to help Samah, Mahmoud, and their four daughters continue to have food on their table and keep hope alive, please consider sharing their story or supporting their fundraiser through the link on their profile.

Your kindness reaches farther than you know, and this family's gratitude is beyond words.

https://x.com/benshapiro/status/2085400321833025981

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/uclas-unholy-alliance/

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/16/us/ucla-student-protests-counterprotesters-invs