‘Synagogue of satan’ … ‘Zionist undertones’ … Water shortage in Iran — but $1 billion to Hezbollah
Pictures of hate:
• An arsonist targets a Reform temple in Jackson, Mississippi, on Shabbos, no less. The temple, which the suspect called a “synagogue of satan,” is now unusable. Perhaps even worse than the loss of the facility is the loss of two Torah scrolls. Investigators rule out accidental causes.
Beth Israel now has the dubious distinction of joining Tree of Life of Pittsburgh, site of a mass shooting in 2018; Chabad of Poway, Calif., site of a deadly shooting in 2019; Beth Israel of Colleyville, Texas, site of a Jewish hostage taking in 2022.
Note: Reform, Orthodox and Tree of Life (housing Reconstructionist and Conservative) are all targets.
The picture of hate: of the Jewish people as a whole.
• The regime in Tehran puts down demonstrations with live ammunition. More than 500 people killed, perhaps thousands more. No one knows for sure because of the regime’s news blackout — another suppression of freedom.
Iran suffers from extreme water shortages, electricity shortages, a plummeting currency — and what does Iran do? It ships some $1 billion to Hezbollah in Lebanon so that Hezbollah can launch more terrorist attacks on Israel.
The picture of hate: of Israel; more than love of Iranians.
• Delcy Rodriguez, the acting leader of Venezuela, says:
“Governments around the world are simply shocked that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is the victim and target of an attack of this nature, which undoubtedly has Zionist undertones.”
The picture of hate: of evil Zionists everywhere.
• “Say it loud, say it clear, we support Hamas here.” Here. Where? In Gaza? In Qatar? In Tehran? No, these chants were in Queens, New York, Jan. 8, near the Young Israel of Kew Garden Hills.
Upon receiving the news, the governor of New York and other New York politicians condemned the vocal support of a US-designated terrorist organization, but not, at first, Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Rep. Ritchie Torres put it plain:
“Support for Hamas is not sympathy for Palestinians, it is antipathy to Jews.”
The picture of hate: of silence over agony in Iran, and of silence over pro-Hamas terrorists in New York City.
• Rage races across American campuses after Oct. 7, 2023 due, it is said, to unrestrained and unjustified Israeli violence against Muslims in Gaza. Student protests erupt across the land. Campus facilities are taken over. Jews students face “Jew free” spaces. Demands of universities that they divest from Israel proliferate. Accusations of Israeli colonialism take hold.
The picture of hate: of students gone silent as Muslims in Tehran — millions of them — are targeted and suppressed; Muslims, not Jews.
• “Socialist Night School” in Boulder, courtesy of the Democratic Socialists of America, announced a program whose title included, “You know what Zionists do to girls.” The flier also said, “Zionists . . . in 1945-1948, they carried out escalating waves of terror, culminating in the forcible expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians from their homes.”
The picture of hate:
of crimes of omission, such as the unprovoked attack by five Arab armies on the Jews in the land of Israel before the State of Israel even declared its independence, and Arab expectations that they would wipe out the Jews there, instead precipitating the complex departure of some, not all, Palestinians from the area; and of crimes of commission, such as the vile anti-Semitic trope that Jews are sexual predators.
© IJN 2026
