25 May 2026 – Utter hypocrisy from the global community and where are we with a deal – the answer to this on The Israel Brief.
26 May 2026 – Put the foot on the gas – Israel intensifies attacks on Hezbollah and Fauxtilla activists arrested. This and more on The Israel Brief.
27 May 2026 – Hamas military chief taken out and who trolled Mojtaba? This and more on The Israel Brief.
28 May 2026 – The UN’s latest moral failure and an Academy Award winning mensch on The Israel Brief.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Jewish family supports historic move for Cape Town to rename Strand town square honouring family founder to recognition of local Muslim community.
By Ben Friedman
Ra’anana in central Israel is my home today. It wasn’t always.
I hail from the Strand, a beautiful False Bay town which is part of the area described as the “Fairest Cape”, bracketed by the majestic Hottentots Holland mountains, Somerset West and the turquoise blue of the Atlantic Ocean. Today, this town is making news in South Africa and it involves my family. Of this I am proud – proud of the past and proud of how we are forging a favourable future.
My family surname – Friedman – is so embedded in that town’s history. However, it is not only the past but the message we are sending for the future that is making news.
In a historic gesture of recognition and reconciliation, our family have approved the renaming of Ben Friedman Plain honouring my grandfather and family founder in South Africa to Strand Muslim Square. The exciting and enriching drama unfolding could not – and maybe not unsurprisingly – escape controversy.
It is no secret that today we live in a polarised, post-truth world where narratives are shaped by people’s prejudices and affiliations that cloud facts and the truth. Israelis and Jews know this more than most, given the sustained campaign of lies against Israel in the mainstream media, by influencers, social media, and sinister state-backed NGOs.
So, when local Muslim leader, Ebrahim Rhoda approached my brother, Barry Friedman with the request to approach the city council to rename the square to finally redress the wrongs of the past and to honour the Muslim contribution to the town, Barry expressed enthusiasm, but said that he would need to discuss it with the family. He knew that their only concern would be that the family’s history not be erased. With full understanding and sensitivity, Ebrahim, after some thought and investigation, suggested that if the renaming was approved, the traffic circle in front of our family store could be renamed Ben Friedman Circle. This, our family considered fair and agreed to the renaming of the town square subject to council approval.
Prime Movers. Taking a stand in the Strand are (l-r) Ebrahim Rhoda, Barry Friedman and Feisal Daniels at a recent Council meeting. (Photo: Carl Punt.)
The process took a few years and now the renaming will proceed but not without an ugly backlash resulting from the usual ‘culprit’ – misinformation.
There were those trying to frame it as a roughshod attempt to erase the “White” history of the Strand, or to view it in terms of a Muslim/Judeo-Christian conflict issue. It is neither. It is simply the long overdue acknowledgement of the Muslim’s community’s enduring history and contribution to the town that had for too long been neglected. I am sure that my late friend, Oesman Wentzel, who owned a classic diesel-powered fishing boat that I spent many happy hours on in my youth catching mackerel and snoek, would be very happy with this historic restitution — reflecting the harmony and unique community relations that characterised our lives in the Strand, in spite of the policy of Apartheid that tried to disrupt it.
Roadworthy. Ben Friedman Plein named after Benjamin Friedman who immigrated from Lithuania to South Africa in 1910 is to be renamed Strand Muslim Square honouring the over 200-year history of the Muslim presence in the town . (Photo: Jamey Gordon).
ENTWINED HISTORY
My grandfather, Benjamin Friedman, who arrived in Cape Town around 1903 as a penniless immigrant from Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania, is the man that the Ben Friedman Plein (square) controversy is all about.
Speaking Yiddish without any knowledge of English or Afrikaans, he started work as a labourer at a salary of 2/- (20 cents) per day at the Cape Town docks.
Friedman & Cohen Department Store — “Since 1903”
Once he had acquired some knowledge of English and had enough funds to buy a bicycle, he cycled to Somerset West where a dynamite factory was opening to supply explosives to the mines. He bought a general dealer’s license, and with no funds and amazing divine providence was able to open a line of credit with JW Jagger, a major wholesaler in Cape Town.
Muslim Festivity. Friedman & Cohen “Wishing our Muslim Customers and Staff a blessed Eid Mubarak!”
He married Anna Cohen and they had five sons, including my father, and two daughters. The business thrived and eventually became a large department store in the Strand that still stands today. Benjamin played a big role in the development of the Strand and was a leader of the Jewish community, and was instrumental in the founding of the Strand Synagogue in 1930.
Strand Shul. The Strand Synagogue which Benjamin (Ben) Friedman laid the foundation stone in 1930
Strand Synagogue Stone. This stone was laid by Benjamin Friedman, April 21st 1930.
PARRALEL PIONEERING
Pioneering and building ingrained in the Friedman family was not only confined to South Africa’s developing coastal town of Strand but also in the future Jewish state of Israel. While Benjamin and most of his family were centered at the Strand, his one son, Solly Friedman, my uncle, was a visionary and a Zionist and emigrated to the then British Mandate of Palestine in the 1930s. He settled in Haifa, opening a law office in 1939 and went on to develop one of the biggest law practices in Israel specializing in marine law with ZIM shipping company being one of his major clients. Founded in 1945 by the Jewish Agency, the Israel Maritime League and the Histadrut, ZIM’s main task during its first years was transporting hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the emerging state. Some of the other ships that had been used for clandestine immigration before the establishment of Israel as a state were confiscated by the British Mandate authorities, and later joined the company’s fleet. My uncle would travel abroad negotiating the purchase of ships that formed the basis of Israel’s merchant marine fleet. In the days of the Mandate, he was constantly active in the courts, defending Haganah men brought up on charges by the British and trying to negotiate the release of impounded refugee ships. Emerging as Israel’s expert in maritime law, it would stand him in good stead as the lawyer for ZIM Shipping Company in the ensuing decades as it developed into one of the world’s top 20 cargo carriers. He relates that when the British left Palestine, most of the ships they had impounded were in Haifa harbour and the new Israeli government simply reclaimed them. How poignant that the biblical word ZIM means “a fleet of ships”. (Number 24:24).
Friedman & Friends. The writer’s uncle (2nd left), pioneer marine lawyer in Haifa, Solly Friedman with friends in British Army uniform during WWII in Tel Aviv.
In parallel at the Strand, the Cape Malays are an ethnic group descended from enslaved and freed Muslims brought to the Cape from Indonesia and Malaysia in the mid-17th century. They were skilled labourers and political exiles, such as Sheik Yusuf, whose Kramat (a sacred shrine or tomb honoring a holy person in Islam) at nearby Macassar Beach is still a place of pilgrimage. This is undertakable as Sheik Yusuf is credited as the founding father of Islam in South Africa, having established the first enduring Muslim community in the region in 1694, during the governorship of Simon Van der Stel.
Friedman Family. Benjamin, his wife Anna and their five sons and two daughters.
Over time, the Cape Malays formed a unique cultural and religious identity with a distinct cuisine and a dialect of the Afrikaans language. They were among the first settlers in the Strand, which was originally called Mostert’s Bay. They were mainly engaged in fishing in False Bay and settled in the area of the current CBD of the Strand, where they had a thriving community of craftsmen, carpenters, builders, small traders, tailors and fishermen.
However, in the 1950s, when Apartheid was being heavily enforced, they were forcibly relocated to an area called Rusthof, located between Strand and Gordons Bay — a low-lying area subject to severe flooding in winter.
Story of a Store in the Strand. The staff today of Friedman & Cohen on the beach (top) and the early days of the store in the Strand.
However, the original mosques that were located around the CBD were maintained and remained, so that their physical link to the area endured.
Benjamin, whose small trading store on the Lourens River where the dynamite factory had opened manufacturing explosives for the gold mines, grew and flourished. He invested in properties and land, many of which were in the centre of the Strand, and where the original store was moved to. Over time, it developed into the modern Friedman and Cohen Department Store, which is now 110 years old.
Family Founder. What began with a bicycle ride, Benjamin Friedman from Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania, founder of the family in South Africa.
The Strand had 25 Jewish families at its peak, but neighbouring Somerset West had 40 Jewish families. Relations between the Jewish and Muslim community was excellent – and many from the Muslim community were, and still are, employees of Friedman and Cohen. Many ‘old-timer’ customers would relate stories of how they used to buy on credit at our store, but when the frequent gale-force south easterly winds used to blow, they were unable to pay their accounts because the fishing boats couldn’t put to sea. Benjamin Friedman would tell them to pay when they could, and never placed any pressure on them.
As the town grew, so did the Jewish community, and Benjamin Friedman was instrumental in founding the Strand Shul (synagogue), where he laid the foundation stone in April 1930. It is interesting to note that the furniture for the new Somerset West shul was made by Muslim carpenters again reinforcing the enriching connection of the two communities.
The writer’s father, Abe Friedman who joined 10,000 South African Jews in the fight against Hitler and Nazism is seen here with his army unit (5th from left back row) on Temple Mount Jerusalem.
ROAD TO RENAMING
A prime mover in the renaming process is local Muslim community leader Ebrahim Rhoda — a school teacher and historian — who when he approached my brother Barry, explained that in spite of their community’s history and contribution to the Strand, there “was not one street name reflecting their heritage.” Most cities and towns name their streets after local residents who have left an enriching legacy and so, “it was time to truly acknowledge the Muslim contribution to the story of the Strand,” said Ebrahim.
Cape Muslim families such as the Rhodas, Gabiers, Wentzels, and Salies were prominent community members, and it is time that their stories and legacies of the Muslim community are honoured.
The proposal to rename Ben Friedman Plein to Strand Muslim Square is rooted in reconciliation and restorative justice — acknowledging a community forcibly removed during the Apartheid era from the Strand CBD under the Group Areas Act in the 1950s, whose 200-year heritage includes three mosques that still anchor the square today: Nurul Anwar, Market Street and Nurul Islam. The first place of worship in Strand, the Market Street Mosque, was built on the square itself.
Historic Gem. Constructed between 1850 and 1870 by freed slaves and free blacks, the Javia Mosque stands as the oldest surviving place of worship in Strand and is today a Provincial Heritage Site. The structure is recognized not only as an architectural gem but a cornerstone of the Muslim community’s heritage in the Western Cape.
Eddie Andrews, the City of Cape Town’s acting mayor and Mayoral Committee Member for Spatial Planning and Environment, expressed during this year’s Freedom Day on the 27 April in his address at City Hall, that the proposed renaming of Ben Friedman Plein to Strand Muslim Square adds weight to both history and reconciliation. Said Andrews:
“Ben Friedman Square stands in an area shaped by the long-standing presence of the Strand Muslim community, whose heritage stretches back over two centuries. Importantly, this process has been characterised by cooperation — supported by the Muslim community, endorsed by civic and faith-based organisations, and undertaken with the support of the Friedman family themselves.”
The renaming reflects what Andrews called Cape Town’s unique tradition of interfaith coexistence. “Cape Town is a city where Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and other faith and cultural communities do not simply coexist — but have, over generations, built relationships of respect, partnership, and shared belonging. This renaming reflects that reality.”
Sheikh’s Shrine. When Sheikh Yusuf, regarded as the father of Islam in South Africa, passed away in 1699, he was buried not far from the Strand on the hill overlooking Macassar. His Kramat or shrine is a place visited by pilgrims.
The proposal has been endorsed by the Strand Muslim Council, Nurul Islam and Aneeqah Congregation, Rusthof Methodist Church, and the Muslim Judicial Council. Business owners bordering the square raised no objections.
The controversy will pass as it should.
However, what must not pass is the good relations between the communities of the Strand. The Muslim and Jewish contributions to the town go back in time and stand to ensure an enriching future.
I look forward in the future when revisiting from Israel my hometown to see the renamed Strand Muslim Square and Ben Friedman Circle.
Benjamin who began this journey on a bicycle well over a century ago would be pleased and proud.
About the writer
A resident of Ra’anana, Israel, Ben Friedman was born and grew up in the Strand Western cape, South Africa and matriculated at Hottentots Holland High school Somerset West. He completed a BCom degree at UCT which was interrupted in 1967 by the Six Day War where he served as a volunteer on Kibbutz Amir. Prior to immigrating to Israel with his family in 2010, he served on the Western Province Zionist Council for two years and was vice Chairman of The Phylis Jowell Jewish Day school Cape Town . Retired after a successful career in fashion retailing, Ben is a lifelong passionate angler and a keen reader especially on Israeli /Jewish and Zionist history.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
What stays with our family most vividly over decades of travel is not famous landmarks – but Friday night tables in unfamiliar cities.
By Karen Kallmann
We arrived in Tehran hours before Yom Kippur with four exhausted children, no contact person, no Farsi, and only the vague address of a synagogue somewhere on Palestine Street — unbeknownst to us the second longest street in the city. After wandering for hours on the Friday night with no success, we finally found the kinnesa (synagogue) on Yom Kippur morning tucked away behind heavy doors. Within minutes, children were racing down the stairs to greet us while adults ushered us inside with warmth and curiosity.
The Wandering Jews Video Clip Karen Kallmann
By the time the fast ended we were being sprayed with rosewater and invited to break the fast in a beautiful family home.
Experiences like these are why my husband, Evan, and I travel.
Our romance began while travelling through Israel and Jordan, followed by a six-and-a-half-month journey through Asia. Like many young couples, we assumed that once children arrived, our travelling days would be over. Instead, much to our surprise and joy, children enhanced our travels, made our social interactions more meaningful and as one child became five, we continued travelling.
Over the years, we have explored the world as backpackers, South Africans and perhaps most significantly, as Jews. Our travels have often intersected with Shabbat (Sabbath) or Chaggim (Jewish festivities), and again and again we have found ourselves welcomed into Jewish communities in the most unexpected corners of the world.
One of the reasons we travelled to Iran was because we had read that it had the second-largest Jewish population in Middle East (after Israel); and when we visited in 2011 that was indeed the case. We chose to go between Yom Kippur and Simchat Torah in order to get the most immersion in the community and it was such an enriching and meaningful experience despite the difficulty we initially had finding the community. Once we did, we were warmly embraced and showered with hospitality.
At every kinnesa we visited, our Ashkenazi family became something of a curiosity. People crowded around us after services, fascinated by where we came from. Strangers delivered meals to our hotel and insisted we join them for elaborate family dinners. The first family we met gave us a sim card so that they could be sure we were safe wherever we travelled. We found a rich Jewish life in Iran, where Jews trace their ancestry to the time of the biblical Daniel. There was however, a darker side too – with some oppressive restrictions on Jewish observance.
The writer and her family enjoying a shabbat meal in 2011 with a Jewish family in Iran.
The kinnesa’s were full of people, and Simchat Torah in Tehran was joyous. Women danced with their own Torah scrolls, children were overloaded with sweets and balloons, and after chag there was even a post-Simchat Torah dance party. At the end of the evening, members of the community thanked us repeatedly for visiting their communities. The irony was not lost on us.
In the wilds, the Robins Kallmann family explore the high mountains of Ethiopia.
We have discovered that children are often the best bridge between cultures. During a trip to Ethiopia in 2014/2015 with our five children, we spent time with Jewish communities in Gondar and Addis Ababa. Many families had been separated from relatives in Israel for decades while waiting desperately for the opportunity to make aliyah. Despite the hardship and uncertainty, their commitment to Judaism and Israel was profound. Our children connected instantly with local Jewish children. Together they sang “Kol Ha’olam Kulo” in Hebrew, English and Amharic. The Ethiopian children spoke better Hebrew than ours, which was both inspiring and slightly humiliating. Many of the Ethiopian Jews we met then may now be living in Israel after the Aliyah policy was relaxed.
Writer’s young daughter (left) having fun with children in Ethiopia.
Some of our most memorable Jewish experiences have happened entirely by accident. During our trip to Tunisia, we found ourselves on Djerba Island over Pesach. Unsure where to go, we sat outside a synagogue with our baby in a pram waiting for services to begin. A young local man walked past, looked horrified that we were sitting outside, and insisted we come home with him instead.
That evening we shared our seventh-night Pesach meal around a table that somehow included his Sephardi Tunisian family, our Ashkenazi South African family and a Chabad woman from Florida travelling with her own carefully prepared non-gebrochts food. Their handmade matzah was brittle and imperfect — truly lechem oni, the bread of affliction.
What fascinated us most about Djerba was the sense of communal interdependence. Before Shabbat, families bring their cholent pots to a communal oven to cook overnight. Before lunch the next day, the men collect the pots and carry them home. If the fire worked well, everyone has good cholent. If it didn’t, nobody does.
In 2023, shortly after the start of the Israel – Hamas war, a historic synagogue was burnt to the ground in Al-Hammah Tunisia.
We were drawn to the Jewish Caucasus by a newspaper article that alluded to the last Jewish village outside of Israel, Qirmizi Qasaba in north eastern Azerbaijan. We were then compelled to explore the whole region inhabited by the Mountain Jews, including Georgia, Armenia and Southern Russia. In Qirmizi Qasaba, we found a modern, wealthy village, barely inhabited as many Jews had left when the then Soviet Union fell but the mikveh, taharah house and the synagogues had all been rebuilt and invested in for the community who visited during the summer. We were lucky to connect with the rabbi who showed us around and joined a heritage tour group for meals and song.
After debating long into the night with our children, we decided to return to Georgia via Chechnya and Dagestan. In Derbent in Dagestan, we visited a beautiful synagogue and community centre, with a pre-school, mikveh and fascinating museum of the Jewish history of the area. Tragically, on the 23 June 2024, this historic centre was attacked and burned to the ground in a terrorist attack.
Undaunted, the youngest member of the writer’s family exposing herself to Iranian culture.
We try stay connected to Jewish communities we have visited and when tragedy strikes, we feel it deeply and it makes us reflect on our own sense of safety in the world.
Visiting India and the Jewish community of Kerela, was a fascinating encounter with the possibility and power of religious tolerance. I happened to stumble upon an article about the Kadavumbagam Synagogue of Ernakulam and was fascinated by the story of cooperation and commitment that characterises the resurrection of this shul and I dragged my family (who were desperate to go to the beach) to check it out. It took us a while to actually find the synagogue as it was behind a tropical fish store. The shul had been severely damaged in floods that had struck the area in 1975 and then in 1976, it was robbed and vandalised. It stood vacant until 1985 when the guardianship of the shul was taken over by Elias “Babu” Josephai, and he set up his tropical fish shop in front of the shul and started repairing and renovating it. What is most incredible about the story is how other faith groups contributed to the repair of the synagogue. Light shades were contributed by the Hindu community, windows by the Muslim community, and the Christian community assisted in the restoration of the bimah. It was a really profound representation of India’s tolerance, respect and embracing of other religions.
“Babu” told us about their tradition of calling men from the ground floor of the synagogue to read from the Torah in the gallery up the stairs in accordance with some verses in the Torah. He also sang some of the songs for us which I recorded. This was the shul he went to as a child, and he had many childhood memories of it and the mischief he and his friends got up to.
It was Babu’s choice to remain in India; the rest of his family are in Israel but he worries greatly about some members of his family, and I spent a long time listening to his concerns while my children were desperate to get to the beach. I tried to explain to them that travel isn’t just about taking – photo’s, experiences, information – but also about giving, even if it is just a listening ear or like we did in Iran, reminding communities just by being there that they are not forgotten.
The writer and her children exploring an ancient religious site in Iran.
Our latest trip to Iraq this year was quite different from a Jewish perspective because sadly, after a 2600-year presence in Iraq, there are no Jews remaining. Jews first came to Babylon after King Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in the 6th century BCE. We walked down the grand ceremonial avenue Street of Procession where the slaves most probably entered the city.
For centuries, Iraq was one of the great centres of Jewish civilisation. Iraq is the where the Babylonian Talmud was written. Jews often prospered in the Babylonian exile and were an integral part of Iraqi society, becoming successful doctors, lawyers, government officials, merchants, and artisans. In Baghdad’s markets, Jews were prominent jewellers, smiths, and cloth dealers while in Basra, many Jews worked at the important port authority. By the early 20th century, Jews made up a significant portion of Iraq’s three largest cities: making up to 40 percent of Baghdad’s population, as well as a quarter of Basra’s and a significant portion of Mosul’s populations. By the late 1940s in Baghdad, the Jewish community was funding over 60 synagogues, schools, hospitals, and health clinics. Within a single generation, almost the entire community disappeared.
An ever-increasing Robins Kallmann family on tour in Iraq.
There are only remnants of this history remaining (the Baghdad museum makes no mention of Jews at all, while the museums in Alqosh and Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan do). You can however, identify the abandoned Jewish suburbs in the major towns by their balconies (Jewish homes had balconies facing the street while Muslim houses are built around a courtyard) and empty mezuzah crevices. Tombs of Jewish prophets, including Ezra, Ezekiel and Nahum also still exist, albeit they are now active mosques with domes over them. However, there is still Jewish writing on the ceiling and walls, and despite our fear of identifying ourselves as Jews, the caretakers seemed to know that we were and were generous in showing us side buildings where we could find more Hebrew inscriptions. We also had the immense pleasure of WhatsApp calling a friend’s grandmother in Israel, who was born in Mosul, and was airlifted out of Iraq by operation Ezra and Nechemiah in the early 1950’s when she was 16. She gave us a guided tour of her Mosul and was overjoyed to be visiting albeit by a video call.
No longer any Jews remaining in Iraq after a 2600-year presence, did not deter the intrepid Robins Kallmann family who visited there this year.
Not all Jewish travel takes place overseas.
Afrikaburn, South Africa’s version of Burning Man, takes place in the Tankwa Karoo, and our family has been a number of times. One year, Afrikaburn coincided with Pesach. Deep in the desert, surrounded by art installations, dust storms and radical self-expression, we hosted two enormous Pesach seders and distributed countless kneidel balls. It may have been one of the more unconventional seders in Jewish history but we could not resist the temptation of celebrating Pesach back in the desert.
Wherever we travel we take our Judaism with us.
Looking back over decades of travel, what stays with us most vividly is not famous landmarks or tourist attractions. It is Friday night tables in unfamiliar cities. It is hearing familiar prayers sung in unexpected accents and tunes. It is strangers insisting we eat more food than we possibly can. It is watching Jewish children who share no common language somehow find ways to sing together.
The Robins Kallmann visiting the famous site where the very first written words in human history were developed in ancient Mesopotamia located in modern-day Iraq.
As budget independent backpackers who are spontaneous and impulsive, rarely booking accommodation in advance and often deciding at the last minute to go on an adventure, our Judaism gives us a focus. We plan our itineraries around Shabbat, making sure that we are either with a community or if this is not possible, we are somewhere special where we can relax and walk around easily.
Travel continues to teach us that Judaism is not only something we inherit. It is something we encounter — unexpectedly and repeatedly — in every corner of the world.
*Feature photo: The writer and her family touring Iran.
To explore more intimately, join a 4-part journey in which Karen Kallmann and family will take you deep into the heart of far-flung Jewish communities in Iraq, Iran, Africa and the Caucasus. See flyer below:
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
People would far rather believe that pigs can fly and Israel trains dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners than that Hamas-led terrorists randomly mass raped and slaughtered women, children and some men on October 7. Here’s why:
There are moments when language fails, when violence outstrips the vocabulary available to describe it.
October 7, 2023, in southern Israel was one of those moments.
The unprecedented violence, mass rape and sexual savagery that the Hamas-led attack unleashed on that day was so deliberately, systematically calculated to destroy bodies and families that no existing legal framework had a word for it.
Until now.
A new, independent report released on May 12, 2026 is the most comprehensive documentation and analysis to date of that violence. It is the work of the Israel-based, internationally focused NGO, CCO7 (Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children).
Buried in it is a word the Commission’s investigators coined soon after October 7, for what they found in their early research: kinocide – from kin (family) and cide (the systematic nature of destruction).
World media have yet to embrace the word.
The Commission’s leader, Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy, an Israel Prize laureate and international law expert, developed the concept of the word with principal contributor, former Canadian justice minister Prof Irwin Cotler.
Founder and chair of the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes against Women and Children, Dr. Cochav Elkayam Levy is an expert in international law and human rights, recipient of the 2024 Israel Prize (Israel’s highest civilian honor) and teaches at Reichman University. After October 7, she represented the Israeli women’s rights protest movement at the UN.
They did so after watching video after video of Hamas terrorists forcing parents and grandparents to watch their children and grandchildren be tortured, raped and murdered, and children to watch their parents and grandparents suffer the same fate.
Elkayam-Levy describes kinocide as:
“The deliberate, systematic torture of families and the weaponisation of familial bonds in order to maximise suffering.”
While looking and analysing the videos, they started seeing the pattern – moments that made them “understand that we were seeing something that needs to be defined,” Elkayam-Levy says in an interview with TheJerusalem Post.
These moments made her move after October 7 to secure evidence before denial could take hold.
“We saw silence and denial .. very quick denial,” she told the Times of Israel. This made her “understand that we have to collect evidence as quickly as possible and establish an archive under stringent international standards.”
The Commission’s two-year investigation has done so. It has drawn on legal scholars, international jurists, researchers, archivists and trauma experts, conducted in collaboration with the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
Prof David Crane, founding chief prosecutor of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone has endorsed the report. So have Hillary Rodham Clinton, former Israeli Supreme Court president Aharon Barak and Anila Ali, president of the American Muslim and Multi-Faith Women’s Empowerment Council.
Their endorsement alone should silence those who would dismiss this as a partisan document.
Investigators documented 13 recurring forms of sexual violence across the Nova music festival, kibbutzim, roadside shelters, military bases, abduction routes and hostage captivity in Gaza. These were rape, gang rape, sexual torture, forced nudity, genital mutilation, executions linked to assault, post-mortem abuse and assaults in front of family members.
Photos of young men and women butchered to death in cold blood at the Nova Music Festival, Kibbutz Re’im. (Photo: Zeev Stein
Some examples: a male survivor of the Nova musical festival slaughter, identified only as D, reportedly passed a polygraph after describing his gang rape:
“They laughed, they were really pleased, as if I was their sex doll … They did whatever they wanted to me.”
A 17-year-old hostage called her mother from Gaza:
“Mum, they’re going to rape me.”
Two related minor children held hostage in Gaza were coerced into sexual acts against one another. Their captors stripped them, touched their genitalia and whipped them.
These are not isolated accounts. They are part of what the Commission documents over two years and 300 pages, in a report titled “Silenced No More: Sexual Terror Unveiled”: a “systematic, widespread and integral” use of sexual violence, designed, planned and organised to terrorise Israeli society as a whole.
The Commission’s legal conclusion is unequivocal – these are war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal acts under international law.
After reading the Commission’s report, Lord Zac Goldsmith, British peer and former Cabinet minister, took to X to ask questions that journalists globally haven’t asked
I include them in full, as a handy reference for journalists who might yet cover it:
What kind of a depraved monster slices off a woman’s breast while she is being gang-raped, and throws it into the dust to be used as a plaything?
What kind of a twisted pervert turns rape into necrophilia by shooting a woman in the head while he is still defiling her?
What kind of ‘freedom fighters’ go into battle with a set of handy Arabic-to-Hebrew phrases, including ‘take off your pants’, ‘lie down’ and ‘spread your legs’?
What self-respecting human being presses nails, scalpels, a hammer, an axe, screwdrivers and other household tools into a woman’s genitals?
How hard do you have to rape someone, and with what, to shatter their pelvis?
Who shoots a young girl in the face and then films her mutilated corpse on her brother’s mobile phone?
“What kind of a depraved monster slices off a woman’s breast while she is being gang-raped, and throws it into the dust to be used as a plaything?” posted British peer and former Cabinet minister Lord Zac Goldsmith (above) after reading the Commission’s report.
The answer is staring us all in the face: Hamas terrorists.
I call them terrorists while many in the media call them “militants”. Unlike “militant”, “terrorist” has a specific meaning – someone who deliberately targets civilians to create fear for political ends. It carries legal weight and moral condemnation.
The October 7 attack meets every legal and common-sense definition of terrorism. Hamas is formally designated a terrorist organisation by the US, the EU, the UK and Australia, among others.
When the Civil Commission’s report landed in newsrooms, many mainstream editors may well have reached for a familiar refrain not to publish: the report is “not new”.
Technically, they are correct. The Civil Commission’s first detailed report was in November 2023. And accounts of mass rape and sexual violence began circulating online in the wake of October 7.
Yet there is not wide acknowledgement of why the full extent of that violence has never found its way into public consciousness – and the media’s role in that.
It’s not because the story is not new. It is because a sustained, organised, sophisticated global propaganda campaign has, over more than two years, successfully seeded doubt, denial and deliberate distraction into the information ecosystem.
This may arguably persuade those in positions of power and influence to give credence to claims that accusations of mass rape and massacre of innocents have been “exaggerated” and that Israel “doctored” all the evidence to make October 7 look worse than it was.
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese lends ongoing institutional cover to this line of thinking. She regularly underplays the extent of the violence of October 7 – when she acknowledges it at all. She has opined that reports of Hamas’s sexual violence “may have been exaggerated.”
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese (left) seen here with Greta Thunberg (center) at an anti-Israel march in Italy, has opined that reports of Hamas’s sexual violence “may have been exaggerated.”
What is new about the “Silenced No More” report is the scope, rigour and forensic depth of its documentation – two years of painstaking evidence-gathering producing the most comprehensive war crimes archive ever assembled on these events.
It is designed to be undeniable.
Yet the denialism goes on, as does the global propaganda campaign.
Acolumn in TheNew York Times on 11 May by the newspaper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Nicholas Kristof is relevant in that regard. The irony of its headline, “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians”, is probably lost on Kristof
It mirrors the moral language condemning the silence around October 7 in the Civil Commission’s own report headline: Silenced No More”. It makes Kristof’s column look like a deliberate attempt to pre-empt precisely the rhetorical space the Civil Commission’s report deserves to occupy.
Kristof’s column is riddled with terminal weaknesses, not the least is its most sensational claim: that Israel trains dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners in its jails.
Kristof is careful not to make the claim himself. He leaves it to his sources.
The claim quickly went viral. It is not only unverified. It is old.
Nicholas Kristhof’s outrageous New York Times article accusing Israel of training dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners relied on sources such as the Euro-Med Monitor, whose Founder and Chairman (seen above) has publicly declared that Israel has “an insatiable appetite for drinking the blood of Palestinian children.”
As Honest Reporting has noted, Euro-Med Monitor, Kristof’s chief source for his column, and a self-described “human rights” NGO, was pushing it in June 2024.
The claim is physiologically and biologically impossible. As veterinary experts could have told Kristof, if he’d bothered to ask
They could have told him that the canine sexual response is governed by species-specific pheromones that humans do not produce; that canine mounting behaviour is non-sexual; and that canine anatomy is incompatible with human anatomy for penetrative acts.
Veterinary scientists call the dog-rapist claim biologically implausible. It is also a fabrication of a fevered mind designed to overwhelm critical faculties before implausibility registers. In the context of the Middle East conflict, it helpfully contributes to demonising Israel and Jews.
It’s tempting to see that Kristof’s column as preparation for undermining the Civil Commission’s report that launched the next day.
TheNew York Times did run an extensive news report of the Civil Commission’s the next day, by its Jerusalem correspondent, Isabel Kershner.
Some analysts see that as giving due credence to the Commission’s report. Others have a more jaundiced view. Whether it constitutes balance, accountability or damage control remains to be seen.
Euro-Med’s record alone should have disqualified it entirely as Kristof’s source.
The NGO spread the debunked claim that Israel harvested organs from Palestinian prisoners. Israel has designated its founder, Ramy Abdu, as a Hamas operative in Europe. Abdu publicly declared on X (formerly Twitter) that Israel has “an insatiable appetite for drinking the blood of Palestinian children.”
(The tweet has since been deleted or made inaccessible, but not before Honest Reporting took a screen shot of it.)
Abdu was just spreading a modern “blood libel”, the word given to the first one that was weaponised in 12th-century England to trigger massacres and expulsions of Jewish communities across medieval Europe for centuries. In its original “glory”, the blood libel claimed Jews kill Christian children and drink their blood for religious ritual.
That TheNew York Times allowed Kristof to present Euro-Med as a credible watchdog over Israeli prisons without flagging any of this context is a notable editorial failure.
Times of Israel senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur gives his views of Kristof’s column in a YouTube video on May 12. He says that Kristof was not tasked with revealing sexual crimes but “covering for them. And it worked.”
Middle East analyst Eitan Fischberger was more blunt on X:
“Utter depravity from (Kristof) for parroting such cartoonishly evil Hamas propaganda that would make Goebbels blush.”
The paper has stolidly defended the column.
In South Africa, the largest news platform, News24 and EWN were practically alone in covering the Commission’s report.
Contrast that with the considerable space and attention South African media gave toevery procedural twist in the ongoing, ill-judged genocide case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel that South Africa launched following October 7.
Some even treated it as a matter of national pride. They also later falsely reported (many journalists still do) that the ICJ found “a plausible case of genocide” against Israel in its ruling in January 2024.
The ICJ did nothing of the sort.
Former ICJ president Judge Joan Donoghue explicitly corrected this publicly in a BBC interview in April 2024: the court “did not decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.” The court did decide that the Palestinians had a “plausible right to be protected from genocide.”
Many Jewish legal and historical scholars consider the genocide claim to rival the original blood libel about Jews killing kids to drink their blood as the worst modern-day libel against Israel and Jews.
Many journalists still make the false claim about the ICJ’s ruling. Many South African media have yet to correct their record.
That’s not incidental. It is an editorial choice that amplifies allegations against Israel and suppresses documented evidence of atrocities against Israelis. It has a cost – paid by the women, children and men whose suffering is erased from public consciousness when false claims are not debunked.
Silence and denialism from journalists on the full extent of the Hamas-led mass rape and other sexual violence of October 7 is one thing; the ongoing silence from feminists globally is another.
Women’s rights organisations built on the principle of believing survivors have still not found their voices. The slogan “Believe Women” turned out to have a gross political limit:
“Believe Women, Except Jewish Women.”
UN Women took weeks to issue even a hedged statement. The UN’s own special rapporteur on sexual violence in conflict reportedly labelled survivor accounts “disinformation”.
When former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg took to the UN podium in December 2023, two months after October 7, to demand that the world acknowledge Hamas’s sexual violence, she was not addressing a hostile audience. She was addressing a silent one.
“The silence on these war crimes is deafening,” Sandberg told the assembly. “Silence is complicity.”
She later added: “I never thought that politics could make any group or feminist leader turn a blind eye to just such clear documentation of sexual violence.”
Her contribution to breaking that silence was to produce a film, titled Screams Before Silence, to give voice to the silenced.
The Civil Commission’s report, which Elkayam-Levy, herself a feminist scholar of international law, built in direct response to that silence, is in part a rebuke to her own field.
The deafening silence still ongoing from feminists over the sexual violence of October 7 is troubling enough. Compounding it with an ironic veneer of respectability is Jewish voices among the loudest dismissing or minimising it.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the American antizionist organisation, blamed Israel for the attack on the day it happened. It has e cast doubt on the sexual violence documentation.
The Antidefamation League (ADL) has noted that JVP “uses its Jewish identity to shield some in the anti-Israel movement from allegations of antisemitism and provide a veneer of legitimacy.” That veneer gives the denialism of October 7 sexual violence a halo it would not otherwise have.
In South Africa, the halo hangs over the quaintly named South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP) and the non-profit Jewish Democratic Initiative (JDI) when it comes to Israel’s war against Hamas.
The implicit message is insidious: if Jews themselves say something didn’t happen or was exaggerated, how could doubting it be antisemitic or antizionist?
When people with professional credentials in women’s advocacy, or the perceived moral righteousness and authority of being Jewish, line up to cast doubt, the propaganda campaign need not argue its case. It simply points at them.
This is the ecosystem in which the Civil Commission’s report lands in 2026.
Of course, none of the above justifies ignoring credible accounts of abuse in Israeli detention facilities. Confirmed abuse allegations demand accountability, no matter the perpetrators or victims.
Rettig Gur is among Jews prepared to acknowledge the existence of documented cases of Palestinian prisoner abuse. These are “real”, he says, but “far smaller” than alleged and mostly not sexual. He identifies Israeli government ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich as responsible for treating prisoner welfare as a political liability rather than a legal obligation.
He also stresses that “the vast majority of (IDF) soldiers are honourable men (and women) who walked into fire so our families may live.”
Israel’s government has served notice that it will sue The New York Times for Kristof’s article. An announcement that it was addressing and investigating concerns about abuse of Palestinian prisoners would have been more helpful.
Rettig Gur posits the way forward: the failures of a minority must be fixed from within and must never be weaponised to erase what Hamas did.
The denialism goes on. As the Civil Commission’s CEO, Merav Israeli-Amarant, told Kershner in TheNew York Times, sexual crimes are “the easiest crimes to deny.” This is especially true of the October 7 attack “because most of the victims were murdered and are unable to testify.”
History has its own power.
It will not remember the perpetrators of kinocide kindly. It will be equally unkind to those who had all the evidence and chose to stay silent.
About the Writer:
Marika Sboros is a South African freelance investigative journalist with decades of experience writing fulltime for the country’s top media titles on a wide range of topics. She started her career as a hard-news reporter in the newsroom of the now defunct Rand Daily Mail, a campaigning anti-government newspaper during the worst excesses of the apartheid era. She commutes between South Africa and the UK.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
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Spanish leaders praised the activists’ commitment until they returned to Spain where they were beaten by police officers.
Hideous Hypocrisy. While quick to criticize Israel’s ‘reception’ of the Gaza-bound flotilla activists, note Spanish police at Bilbao Airport, welcoming the return of these same activists by brutally dragging them across the terminal floor and striking them with batons. https://x.com/IsraelMFA/status/2058209600940212412
ARTICLES
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(1)
THEY ARE SILENCED NO MORE
There are words here that will direct you to look away – DON’T! You need to read, process and bear witness. By Rolene Marks
Sexual Terror Unveiled. “Women were stripped, bound, stabbed, shot and burned. Heads were decapitated andpelvic bones shattered .Even after death, sexual assault continued.” The Civil Commission’s Report on Oct 7th Sexual Violence is out – how can one remain silent?
Can one separate the art from the artist when troubling actions conflict with your values? By Motti Verses
Conduct Unbecoming. From a world class musician to a mega-star footballer, the writer explores how one should respond when one’s idols disappoint by conduct at variance with one’s values.
WHY AMERICANS MUST PROTEST THE IRANIAN SOCCER TEAM’S INCLUSION IN THE WORLD CUP
Beware of what’s under the soccer jerseys the Islamic Republic regime wants to normalize on American soil ByMarziyeh Amirizadeh
Playing Games. A survivor of Iranian state torture for her Christian beliefs, the writer today from the USA, argues that sport platforms like the World Cup, should “unite humanity” and not be abused “…to whitewash systematic evil.”
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
18 May 2026 – Love and talent win at Eurovision, a first historic event and more in The Israel Brief.
19 May 2026 – Has the International Criminal Court issued new arrest warrants and do we have a possible pause in the war? The answers to this question and more in The Israel Brief.
20 May 2026 – Early elections are a possibility, and Roro faces a nervous Prince on The Israel Brief.
20 May 2026 – Trump vs. Bibi? Calls for Ben Gvir’s firing, morons, people and more in The Israel Brief.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Beware of what’s under the soccer jerseys the Islamic Republic regime wants to normalize on American soil
By Marziyeh Amirizadeh
As the United States prepares to host FIFA, the World Cup, I have an urgent appeal to all Americans. While sports in theory should be above international politics, the inclusion of a soccer team from the Islamic Republic of Iran is an afront to the freedoms we celebrate as Americans. If the Islamic Republic soccer team is participating, it must also be a time to use our freedom to protest their presence and the Islamic regime that they represent. I call on all Americans to join me to do so.
On the Way to the USA. Iran supporters cheer during a FIFA World Cup 2026 Asia zone qualifiers between Iran and the North Korea at the Azadi Sports Complex in Tehran on June 10, 2025. (Photo: AFP/ Atta Kenare)
Why is this so important? I was born in Iran just months before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that plunged my beloved homeland into darkness. I grew up under the boot of the ayatollahs’ regime, where being a woman meant living as a second-class citizen, and daring to seek truth outside their intolerant radical Islam could cost you everything. In 1999 I became a Christian and in 2009, my friend Maryam and I were arrested for the “crime” of converting to Christianity. We were thrown into Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, interrogated, tortured, and sentenced to death by hanging for apostasy. Only international pressure secured our release after nine harrowing months. I came to America as a free woman, but my heart still bleeds for the millions left behind.
Beauties and the Beasts. For 259 days, the writer (left) and her friend Maryam Rostampour were imprisoned facing execution for spreading Christianity. Their case gained international attention, and human rights advocates around the world began calling for their release until growing pressure eventually led Iranian authorities to free them. After leaving Iran, both women moved to the US.
Today, as the Islamic Republic prepares to send its national soccer team to the 2026 World Cup on American soil, I raise my voice with urgency and conviction: Americans must protest this inclusion loudly, clearly, and without apology. Allowing this team to compete is not a celebration of sport. It is a betrayal of human rights, a whitewashing of tyranny, and an insult to every victim of the regime’s brutality – including the brave women, Christians, Baha’is, Kurds, and dissidents who suffer daily.
The Iranian national team does not represent the Iranian people. It represents the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the oppressive theocracy that has ruled through terror for nearly five decades. That’s why the Islamic Republic is protesting that the team including all its IRGC guards be allowed to come to America. It is literally allowing terrorists to come for a field day in our own backyards.
Should this murderous regime be represented at the World Cup? Graphic images smuggled out of Iran depict severe violence perpetrated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) against civilians, including attacks on hospitals and the execution of injured protesters.
Players who are not IRGC are also not free. They may not express themselves, or think of defecting, lest the threats they have been made clear to them against their families be realized. God help them if they dare show solidarity with the protests sweeping Iran, or thank their American hosts for helping to free Iran. In past tournaments, we saw courageous gestures of players refusing to sing the regime’s anthem only to be met with intimidation from the IRGC. This is no game; it is propaganda. The regime uses the unifying sport of soccer and the World Cup to project an image of normalcy while executing prisoners by the hundreds, brutalizing and disfiguring women who do not wear the hijab “properly,” and funding terrorism across the Middle East.
Crackdown to Kickoff. Is it acceptable that the regime responsible for mass murdering its own citizens during a crackdown of protests, should be permitted to normalize its crimes by being allowed to participate at the World Cup in the US? Seen here are families searching for their loved ones among bodies outside the Kahrizak forensic center in the suburbs of Tehran, Iran, January 13, 2026. (Photo: SIPA)
I know this evil firsthand. In Evin Prison, I endured conditions designed to break the human body and spirit. Solitary confinement, psychological torment, and the constant threat of execution were tools to silence faith and freedom. Thousands of political prisoners, including Christians like me, have faced the same. The regime hangs people for “enmity against God.” Women are beaten and killed for “improper hijab,” as we saw with Mahsa Amini in 2022. Young girls are imprisoned, and minorities are persecuted. Women are raped before execution because the religion of peace does not allow execution of virgins, and so, according to their perverted Islamic ideology, they will not go to heaven. This is what’s under the soccer jerseys the Islamic Republic regime wants to normalize on American soil.
Sing to Survive. In March 2026, fears mounted for members of the Iranian women’s soccer team following being branded “wartime traitors” by Iranian state media for refusing to sing their national anthem in Australia. (Photo: AP)
My fellow Americans, we live in a land of liberty, founded on principles of God-given rights, where faith is protected and dissent is a cornerstone of democracy. How can you welcome representatives of a regime that executes Christians, stones adulterers (by their laws), subjugates women in every way – including as sex slaves under the banner of Islamic “temporary marriages” – and which calls for the destruction of Israel and America? FIFA officials speak of “inclusion” and “sports diplomacy,” but there can be no diplomacy with evil that slaughters its own citizens and seeks to annihilate other countries. Protesting the Islamic Republic’s participation honors the true spirit of competition one rooted in fair play, not state-sponsored terror.
Our protest also sends an urgent message to the Iranian diaspora and freedom-loving people inside Iran. Many Iranian-Americans fled this very regime. They wave the old Lion and Sun flag, not the blood-soaked emblem of the Islamic Republic. By allowing the team entry, America normalizes the mullahs’ lies. It tells protesters in Tehran – risking their lives in the streets behind an internet blackout – that the world prefers games over justice. It dishonors the memory of those executed, those blinded and disfigured by pellets, those raped in custody, and those who simply wanted to live without fear. It’s all a big show because Iranians living behind the internet blackout won’t even be able to watch an uncensored broadcast of a soccer game, only able to see what the regime allows them.
Most recently, and in an affront to all Americans, FIFA has barred people from displaying the original Lion and Sun Iranian flag which was hijacked and perverted by the flag of the Islamic Republic since 1979. Not only is this an obscene whitewashing of the presence of the Islamic Republic team on US soil, it undermines the First Amendment in a peaceful display of protest. If allowed to be enforced, it’s tantamount to America ceding territory and our freedoms to the Islamic Republic by giving ownership and authority of our rights to FIFA as the gatekeeper. There are and must be an infinite number of ways for Americans to assert that FIFA may be the organizer, but they have no authority on matters of freedom of expression. Would they do what the Islamic Republic does in such an instance: shoot down protesters? The Lion and Sun must be present inside and outside the stadiums and all Americans must resist this violation of our inalienable rights for which Iranians are being slaughtered in the streets.
Football Façade. Crowds gather for a public farewell ceremony for Iran’s national soccer team as they prepare to depart for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, in Enghelab Square in Tehran, Iran, on May 13, 2026. (Photo: Behnam Tofighi/UPI)
My faith in Jesus sustained me through Evin’s darkness. He taught us to stand for the oppressed, to speak truth to power. “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). The Iranian people are crying out for freedom. Women lead the revolution with the cry “Woman, Life, Freedom.” Christians worship in secret house churches, risking everything for their faith. Jews, Baha’is, Kurds and other minorities face systemic erasure. Americans who value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have a moral duty to stand with them.
Protesting does not mean hating Iranian athletes as individuals. Many are victims themselves, coerced by a system that controls their careers and families. True solidarity would be demanding FIFA ban the team until the regime releases political prisoners, ends executions, grants religious freedom, and stops its nuclear ambitions and terror sponsorship. Sport should unite humanity, not provide cover and whitewashing of systematic evil.
As an American citizen now, I urge my fellow citizens: Do not let commercial interests or diplomatic niceties silence you. Organize at stadiums. Rally in cities hosting matches. Protest any hotel that gives lodging to the Islamic Republic team. Contact your representatives. Flood social media with the truth. Demand visas be denied to regime-linked officials and IRGC affiliates. Support true Iranian opposition voices who envision a free, secular, democratic Iran at peace with its neighbors, including Israel. Support Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to return to Iran and lead the country to freedom and prosperity, the one name millions of Iranians support to do so.
I pray that the regime’s days are numbered, that its collapse is coming, through internal revolution and decisive external pressure. But while it clings to power, we must not legitimize it on the world stage, or on the soccer field.
The World Cup on American soil provides a moment of truth. Will we choose silence and spectacle, or courage and conscience? I survived Evin because people around the world raised their voices. My captors were angered by the broad international support and voices which ultimately made a difference in my being released. Now, I ask Americans to raise your voice. Protest the Iranian team’s inclusion. Stand for the Iranian people. Stand for freedom. The God who delivered me from death can deliver an entire nation – if we act with faith and boldness.
Let the games begin without the Islamic Republic’s symbol of oppression. Let the world hear the true voice of Iran: the voice of the oppressed, calling for liberty.
About the writer:
Marziyeh Amirizadehis an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity. She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation. She is author of two books (the latest, A Love Journey with God), public speaker, and columnist. She has shared her inspiring story throughout the United States and around the world, to bring awareness about the ongoing human rights violations and persecution of women and religious minorities in Iran, www.MarzisJourney.com. Marzi also is the founder and president of NEW PERSIA whose mission is to be the voice of persecuted Christians and oppressed women under Islam, expose the lies of the Iranian Islamic regime, and restore the relationships between Persians, Jews, and Christians. www.NewPersia.org.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Can one separate the art from the artist when troubling actions conflict with your values?
By Motti Verses
For years, the music of Oliver Shanti was mainly part of my mornings. His 1996 album Well Balanced, perhaps his most iconic work, blended atmospheric melodies, Tibetan influences, and meditative world music into something that felt almost spiritual. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, his music became deeply associated across Europe with yoga, tai chi, meditation, and relaxation.
Shanti’s soft rhythms and calming soundscapes created a sense of peace that stayed with me long on my way to work. There was something almost healing in the atmosphere he built. Music that seemed disconnected from noise, aggression, and darkness. For years, I woke up to it at 7 o’clock each morning.
But sometimes art and the artist collide in a way that changes everything.
Oliver Shanti, whose real name was Ulrich Schulz, was convicted in Germany two decades ago for serious child sexual abuse crimes involving minors. When I discovered the full story behind the man whose music had accompanied so many quiet moments in my life, I felt a profound internal conflict. It was shocking.
How could music that sounded so spiritual come from someone capable of causing such harm?
For a while, I tried separating the music from the man. Many of my friends argued that art should stand on its own. And honestly, part of me wanted to keep holding onto those melodies because they were connected to memories, emotions, and years of my life.
Eventually I realized I could no longer disconnect the beauty of the sound from the reality behind it. Every song began carrying a shadow I could not ignore. What once felt peaceful no longer felt innocent.
So, I made a personal decision to stop listening to his music.
Fast forward to 2026.
A confession: I have loved FC Barcelona for almost 40 years. Long before football became a global industry driven by endless money and marketing, Barça already felt different to me. It was never only about trophies. It was about style, emotion, identity, and the feeling that football could still be beautiful.
I grew up watching generations of players who played with imagination and soul. In stadiums in Spain as well as other cities across Europe, but mostly on TV. From the influence of Johan Cruyff to Ronaldinho’s joy, Messi’s genius, and now the rise of young talents like Lamine Yamal. Through glorious victories and painful defeats, Barcelona remained part of my life because supporting this club always felt like something bigger than football. It felt like belonging to a story, a culture, and a dream that lasted across generations.
Then came another emotional conflict.
During Barcelona’s recent championship celebrations a few days ago, images circulated showing Lamine Yamal posing with a Palestinian flag among supporters and celebrations. For some fans, it was viewed as a gesture of solidarity with Palestinians – but for me – emotionally affected by the trauma of October 7, and the atrocities committed by Hamas – the image felt painful, political, and deeply uncomfortable.
That is where another dilemma begins.
I have supported FC Barcelona for decades. The club is connected to memories, identity, emotions, friendships, and entire chapters of my life. Then suddenly, a young player, the current symbol of the club who may likely endure for a long time, became associated, at least emotionally in my eyes, with a political symbol that hurts me deeply.
It created an inner conflict between love for the club and discomfort with what I saw.
Of course, becoming a Barça fan and remaining one does not mean agreeing with every political gesture made by every player. Football clubs are enormous global institutions filled with people from different countries, backgrounds, religions, and political beliefs. But this one felt different.
So perhaps the real question is not: “Should I stop being a Barcelona fan?”
Maybe the deeper question is:
“Can I emotionally separate my lifelong connection to the club from one political moment involving the current mega star?”
Unlike the Oliver Shanti story, this situation is fundamentally different. One involved horrific criminal acts against children. The other involves political expression, symbolism, identity, and the emotions these subjects awaken in so many people, wherever they are.
Logically, I understand the difference.
Emotionally, it is far more complicated.
Spain Again. A return to its bleak past, three elderly Israeli women, including a Holocaust survivor, were kicked out of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid on February 14. The response from the museum staff was not to remove the people who were harassing them but to remove the people who were targeted with antisemitic abuse.
What will I feel the next time I watch Lamine Yamal playing for Spain during the upcoming summer FIFA World Cup? A national team representing a country where public attitudes toward Israel have often felt increasingly hostile and uncomfortable to many Israelis and Jews.
After a few days came the team reaction: FC Barcelona officially tried to distance itself from the incident, without attacking Lamine Yamal personally. The club’s message was essentially:
The gesture was spontaneous and not coordinated by the club. Barcelona would not feature the flag moment in official highlight broadcasts or club media. The club acknowledged that many Israeli fans were upset and its response emphasized values of respect and inclusion.
Grave Concerns. Following the desecration of 20 Jewish headstones at Les Corts Cemetery in Barcelona in January, 2026, local Jewish leaders linked it to the sustained normalization of antisemitic hostility in Spain since the October 7th massacre in Israel. They accused authorities of failing to confront a trend of antisemitic violence.
I am relieved, but is the dilemma history?
I have a feeling it is not.
Time will tell.
*Feature picture: Ulrich Schulz and Lamine Yamal – The Shanti Soundtrack of Yamal dilemma (photo generated by AI).
About the writer:
The author is a seasoned hotel expert, traveler, writer, and videographer, and formerly served as Head of Public Relations for Hilton Hotels & Resorts in Israel. Today, as a travel writer and hospitality trends analyst, his insights and experiences are regularly featured in leading Israeli media outlets.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
There are words here that will direct you to look away – DON’T! You need to read, process and bear witness.
By Rolene Marks
[Warning: Sensitive Content]
In 2024 I was invited with a small group of journalists and diplomats to view some of the evidence that was found on the terrorists on 7 October and what was subsequently discovered in the Gaza strip. Under close supervision and military intelligence headquarters, we viewed weapons, maps, books and material – and orders in specific detail to commit acts of appalling sexual violence, including instructions for the victims to remove their clothing.
This article will be extremely uncomfortable and difficult for many to read. I appeal to you to please persist – we must bear witness and be the voices of victims and survivors.
Ushered into another room, phones prohibited, we were shown a 20-minute collation of footage from Hamas body-cam, first responders and desperate family members searching for their loved ones. This we were told, would be evidence submitted to the ICJ where South Africa had filed a case accusing Israel of genocide. The images are seared into my conscience – including that of a partially burnt woman, her legs splayed, dress pushed up and naked, intimate parts for the world to see. There was a slice across her one thigh. I recall another image that I see as clear as day. The body of a woman, on top of a pile of corpses, bleeding from her crotch where she had been shot with the deliberate intent to defile her femininity.
A picture taken during a media tour organized by the Israeli military shows food on a table inside a burned house in the kibbutz Nir Oz on October 19, 2023, following the October 7 attack by Hamas. (Photo: Menahem Kahana / AFP)
The evidence of what I saw is undeniable.
These are two specific examples of the horrific crimes of Sexual and Gender based Violence (SGBV) and crimes against humanity committed against Israeli men, women and children on 7 October 2023 and to hostages in captivity.
Despite irrefutable proof noted in reports by UN Women, the Dinah Project and one from the Association of Rape Crisis Centres, denial, downplaying and even justification of the atrocities still continue – including from feminist organisations. It would appear that the voices of victims matter – unless they are Israeli. What message does this send future victims of SGBV?
This week, the Civil Commission – an independent Israeli non-profit organisation led by human rights expert and 2024 Israel Prize laureate Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy – released their report. “Silenced no more” was meticulously documented and referenced for over two years and is a devastating collation of the crimes against humanity and SGBV committed on that day and to hostages in captivity.
Children were no less a target for Hamas savagery as seen here at a blood-stained kindergarten in Kibbutz Beeri following their bloody barbarous rampage. (Photo: Reuters/ Amir Cohen)
The report is close to 300 pages long and contains documentation of at least 10,000 items including videos, photographs, forensic findings and the testimonies of 430 victims and survivors. Hamas proudly filmed and distributed evidence of their crimes. The hope is that not only will this be documented to fight back against denial – but could lead to further legal action against the perpetrators. Israel’s Knesset has approved the convening of a special tribunal to try the perpetrators of 7 October.
The individual testimonies are absolutely devastating.
In the weeks and months following the atrocities, eye witnesses and forensic experts testified about what they witnessed. Forensic experts spoke about the condition of the bodies that were brought in for identification, saying how they were shot in their eyes, their faces and their breasts, and even targeted in their most intimate parts. Women were stripped, bound, stabbed, shot and burned. Heads were decapitated and pelvic bones shattered. Even after death, sexual assault continued. A Nova survivor testified to a victim being shot in the head while her rapist continued his assault. The intention was clear – to destroy their beauty and femininity. Forensic pathologists spoke of an “obsession with sex organs”. First responders echoed the same sentiment and have addressed numerous NGO’s and global institutions sharing their testimonies to the defilement and horror they saw on the kibbutzim, road 232 and at the Nova festival grounds.
Raz Cohen, a survivor of the Nova Music Festival on October 7 and a key witness to the horrific acts committed by Hamas terrorists provided detailed testimony which included witnessing the rape of a young woman. (Photo: Tomer Shunem Halevi, Hagai Dekel)
“I saw them raping her,” says Raz Cohen, who escaped the Nova Music Festival, “Then they murdered her. And then they raped her again.”
New report details ‘systematic’ rape and sexual violence during Hamas’ Oct 7 attack on Israel. Seen here is an Israeli soldier patrolling the Nova Music Festival sites following the massacre. (Photo: Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images)
Eden Wessely, who came to Nova to rescue a friend, found and filmed a naked, burned body. “Her dress was pulled up, and she wasn’t wearing underwear, not because it burned, because there was no trace. . . . Her legs were spread. Her genitals were exposed.” Was it the same image I saw?
“There were horrific scenes, difficult to take in,” said Eden Wessely who saw “hundreds of corpses, and a girl who had been raped and [her body] burned. Things that human eyes have difficulty looking at.”
Former hostages have spoken about the abuse they suffered in captivity. Guy Gilboa-Dalal spoke about how he was touched on his private parts and how his captor “wanted to make a porn movie with him.” Arbel Yehud testified to daily abuse.
Keith Siegel, a 66-year-old grandfather who was taken from Kibbutz Kfar Aza along with his wife Aviva, 65, testified that he was made to undress in front of a terrorist who then shaved his pubic hair and made comments about his penis.
Former hostage Aviva Siegel seen here speaking to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer reveals in the Civil Commission Report how she was nearly executed after she comforted a young girl who was sexually assaulted in captivity.
Aviva Siegel spoke about how she was nearly executed after she comforted a young girl who was sexually assaulted in captivity. Siegel recalled telling young girls to take feminine products with them to the bathroom so that if their captors thought they were on their period, they would not abuse them.
A male says he was gang-raped at the Nova site, providing medical records and a detailed account:
“They laughed, they were really pleased, as if I was their sex doll.”
The Commission also identified thirteen recurring patterns of sexual and gender-based violence repeated across multiple sites. They include a damning list of crimes:
* Rape, gang rape, and other forms of sexual assault.
* Sexual torture, including intentional burning and mutilation.
* Deliberate shooting in the head, face and genital area.
* Killings and executions following or committed during abuse.
* Postmortem sexual abuse, humiliation, and the desecration of bodies, including cutting off body parts.
* Forced nudity and exposure including to family members.
* Handcuffing, binding, and restraint of victims.
* Public displaying and parading of women and children. One such example is the parading of the body of Shani Louk, whose partially undressed and twisted limbs were paraded on a truck in Gaza while men spat at her.
* Abduction of mothers and children.
* Sexual violence in the presence or near vicinity of family members including Kinocide – the deliberate targeting and destruction of families as a weapon of war or terror, recognized as a distinct form of violence against humanity.
The graphic image by freelance AP photojournalist Ali Mahmoud depicts 22-year-old Shani Louk’s half-naked body being taken by Hamas terrorists on October 7. The Jewish Chronicle has blurred her image. (Photo: Ali Mahmoud)
* Filming and digital dissemination by the perpetrators including the use of social media to document, glorify, and amplify the atrocities.
* Threats of forced marriage.
* Rape and other forms of sexual violence against boys and men.
President Herzog released a statement on social media platform X on behalf of his wife, Michal, who said:
“We must continue to amplify around the world the voices of the victims of sexual violence committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7th and thereafter.”
Mrs. Herzog commended the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes against Women and Children “for their dedicated research and tireless work, resulting in the publication of an important new report that once again gives voice to the victims.”
The victims and survivors of these most evil of crimes will no longer be silenced by those who deny, downplay and justify the atrocities committed by Hamas. Please do not look away. As unbearable as the testimonies are to read and hear, we must bear witness. We have a moral duty to be their voices. Silence is a second violation.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
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As much as they try pull Israel down, it Rises, Survives and Thrives – 2nd place at 2026 Eurovision in Vienna
It was a triumphant finish at the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest in Viena for Israel in a year filled with many European governments, broadcasters, and artists all conspiring to prevent Israel from competing. They failed – and this is the second year running that Israel has finished in second place. Watch here: https://youtu.be/E2aL4xRzNXI (photo: Georg Hochmuth / APA / AFP via Getty Images)
ARTICLES
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JEWS IN EVERDAY LIFE – WHEN VISIBILITY IS A RISK
How do you raise a child to feel proud, rooted, and secure in their Jewish identity while knowing that visibility can sometimes bring risk – an empathetic look at today’s mental health toll caused by antisemitism. By Bev Moss-Reilly
Constantly on Alert. Caution entering a synagogue, unease sending a child to school, weary over displaying a Magen David openly, these are routine anxieties of being a Jew today in the Diaspora. While Israeli Jews run to bomb shelters, their brethren abroad are no less in need of ‘shelter’.
Historically the midterm elections result in a loss of seats by the ruling party in the House of Representatives and a small change in the makeup of the Senate. By Neville Berman
Mindful of the Midterm. The coming midterm elections “will provide the first clue as to what can be expectedafter Trump leaves office.” Apart from domestic politics, the writer is concerned how it will impact the world and particularly an increasingly targeted Israel.
As regional tensions escalated into direct confrontation with Iran, the impact on Dubai’s tourism sector, so beloved by Israeli travelers, was almost immediate. By Motti Verses
Calm before the Storm. It is mid-day and before the war, “Pool Ambassador” Alex from Ghana, dressed in a smoking jacket and top hat, serves juices at the Ritz Carlton in Dubai. Today there are few tourists to serve. An industry as shaky as a tray in one hand over water!
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
