Lauren Booth labeled Hamas’ invasion a “legendary” day for Muslims.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The sister-in-law of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair publicly approved the mass murder of Jews in an interview with Turkish media that was revealed Thursday by the Daily Mail.

Lauren Booth, the half-sister of Cherie Blair, told the pro-Erdogan newspaper Yeni Safak last year, “I got a little bit annoyed with the Palestinians when I met them at first because I thought they had Stockholm syndrome,” when discussing a visit she had once made to Gaza.

Stockholm syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages develop positive feelings, empathy or even loyalty toward their captors.

“Because,” she continued, “not only were they not determined to hate all Jews or just take Jewish life; they said Allah will sort this out for us… we must be steadfast. And I was so angry that I said you really need to be resisting this in a different way.”

Booth expressed enthusiasm for the massacre of nearly 1,200 men, women and children that Hamas-led terrorists carried out during their surprise invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling it a “legendary day” for the Muslim nation.

“After October 7 … a legendary day in the Ummah‘s history, yes, we can say that people are now picking up the Quran because of the steadfastness and sabr [patience] of the people of Gaza,” she said.

Booth converted to Islam in 2010 after visiting Iran and currently lives in Turkey.

She has worked over the years for Iranian state media outlets such as Press TV, which was banned in the UK. Its websites were seized in the US due to the anti-West disinformation and antisemitism it promotes.

In August 2008, she received a Palestinian VIP passport from then-Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

UK-based NGO Campaign Against Antisemitism sharply criticized Booth for praising the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust.

“Claiming to speak as a voice of human justice while describing Oct. 7 as ‘legendary’ was sick and perverse,” a spokesperson said, adding that Booth’s words risked radicalizing people.

When the Daily Mail asked about her statements, Booth sought to walk them back.

“I continue to advocate for the right of Palestinians to live free from occupation,” she said. “The UN recognizes the right to resist against foreign forcible actions that deprive people of their right to self-determination. Within that understanding, I do not advocate for violence against any religious or racial group.”

The British newspaper credited the discovery of the video clip to Israeli journalist Elchanan Groner of Hakol Hayehudi (The Jewish Voice) as part of his work on a Channel 14 documentary.

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Hadeeqa Arzoo Malik declared that American Muslims would be rewarded by Allah for participating in anti-Israel protests, framed demonstrations as part of Islamic holy war against the Jewish State.

By World Israel News Staff

A former intern who worked on far-left mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani‘s campaign described anti-Israel protests in the U.S. as part of an Islamic holy war against Israel, encouraging Muslims to participate in the demonstrations, regardless of potential consequences.

“The true believer knows that none of this is in vain, that this is all Jihad,” said Hadeeqa Arzoo Malik in a clip from a webinar, which she posted to her LinkedIn page.

The video, which was viewed by the New York Post, featured Malik encouraging Muslims to fully commit to the struggle to destroy Israel, without considering the ramifications for their professional and academic careers.

“If you get suspended, if you get doxed, because it’s bound to happen… when you’re doing something for the sake of Allah here in the West…it will never, ever be in vain, and the true believer does not fear that?” Malik continued.

Stressing that pro-Palestinian activists are battling alleged Israeli “genocide and colonization and settler colonialism,” Malik said that any Muslim on the sidelines of the fight is mentally unwell.

“If you’re not seeing this as your issue to deal with, then something is wrong, there is an illness, there is a disease, something messing up the system inside that’s telling you this isn’t your business,” she said.

Malik, a student at City College of New York (CCNY), made her comments during a webinar promoting Islamic political activism, organized by anti-Israel campus group CUNY4Palestine.

Mamdani’s campaign declined to comment to the Post regarding the revelations about Malik’s radical beliefs.

In a previous clip featuring the activist that went viral, Malik was seen berating a New York City police officer whom she believed to be Muslim.

“Let’s read the badges of the pigs,” Malik is heard saying in the video, as she reads the names of officers stationed to maintain order at an anti-Israel protest.

When Malik came across an officer whose last name suggested he is Muslim, she began mocking the man.

“To the pigs who can call themselves by the name of Islam — put some respect on their names!” she is heard yelling.

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“I survived — I will speak for those who can’t,” Noa Argamani vows after pro-Hamas activists target Jewish fundraising event in Canada.

By World Israel News Staff

Former Israeli hostage Noa Argamani spoke out after pro-Hamas activists threatened and harassed attendees of a Jewish fundraiser in Windsor, Canada.

Argamani, who was a featured speaker at the event, pledged that she would continue telling her story despite the attempted intimidation from “terror sympathizers.”

Kidnapped from the Nova music festival alongside her boyfriend Avinatan Or on October 7, 2023, Argamani was rescued in a daring IDF raid after some nine months in Gaza.

Her boyfriend remains in Hamas captivity.

Anti-Israel activists from Windsor University’s Palestinian Solidarity Group surrounded Argamani’s event last Thursday, harassing people attending.

According to local news reports, the demonstrators blocked the sole entry and exit of the space, preventing Argamani from leaving the building once the event had ended.

In a video circulating on social media, an anti-Israel protester can be heard screaming “Hamas is coming!” at attendees.

Despite the antisemitic hostility, Argamani took to social media to declare that she would not be intimidated.

Hamas came. Hamas kidnapped me. Hamas murdered my friends. But I won; I survived. Now, I speak for those who can’t.

I’ll keep exposing Hamas’ crimes and fighting for the hostages’ release — including my partner, Avinatan.

I refuse to let terror sympathizers control the narrative. https://t.co/93jfdPDAKW

— Noa Argamani (@ArgamaniNoa) June 28, 2025

“Hamas came. Hamas kidnapped me. Hamas murdered my friends. But I won; I survived. Now, I speak for those who can’t,” Argamani wrote on her X account.

“I’ll keep exposing Hamas’ crimes and fighting for the hostages’ release — including my partner, Avinatan,” she added.

“I refuse to let terror sympathizers control the narrative.”

Canada’s Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs condemned the harassment in a media statement.

“Blocking a hostage survivor is unconscionable. This is not a protest but intimidation of a vulnerable witness to terror,” the Centre said.

Miriam Kaplan, the event’s organizer, called the demonstration “a disgraceful attempt to intimidate a survivor.”

She urged Windsor University to condemn the actions by its students, saying that they “crossed the line from free speech into aggression.”

Windsor Police confirmed they had received several calls about the protest, but claimed that it was a lawful demonstration and that the authorities are not considering filing criminal charges against participants.

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The Rutgers Law School Center on Security, Race and Rights, led by Palestinian-American activist Sahar Aziz, hosted so-called Know Your Rights seminars as a response to the Trump administration’s crackdown on international students involved in anti-Israel campus protests and others who harbor pro-Hamas sympathies.

By Chuck Ross, The Washington Free Beacon

A Rutgers University center under congressional investigation for its connections to anti-Semitic and pro-terrorism activity is advising Palestinian and Muslim students about how to subvert U.S. immigration officials, suggesting they lock smartphones and take other “digital hygiene” measures to avoid deportation.

The Rutgers Law School Center on Security, Race and Rights, led by Palestinian-American activist Sahar Aziz, hosted so-called Know Your Rights seminars on April 28 and May 7 as a response to the Trump administration’s crackdown on international students involved in anti-Israel campus protests and others who harbor pro-Hamas sympathies.

Golnaz Fakhimi, the speaker at the April 28 event, encouraged students “not to have Face ID or thumbprint ID turned on, to set passcodes that are long and strong” in order to prevent immigration officials from accessing smartphones during immigration stops.

Fakhimi, who referred during the seminar to the “ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” informed students that federal agents at airports and border checkpoints are able to use forensic tools to access “content that is deleted from a device.”

The May 7 seminar, led by Raquel Aldana of the University of California, Davis, asserted that universities “shouldn’t be collaborating with ICE” by providing information on international students and faculty. She also called on schools to “clearly define what is a private space within universities, like dorms, classrooms, clinics, labs,” to prevent student interactions with ICE officials.

While Know Your Rights seminars are common in the nonprofit field, the Rutgers events could raise questions for the public university, which receives around $400 million in federal funds each year. Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee launched an investigation last month into a nonprofit group, the Chinese-American Planning Council, for offering guidance on how to evade ICE officials.

The Department of Education is investigating whether Rutgers and dozens of other universities have emboldened anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activities on their campuses. The Trump administration froze $2 billion in federal grants to Harvard University for its failure to curtail anti-Semitic incidents on campus, and struck agreements with schools like Columbia University. Rutgers has not yet been targeted in the crackdown.

Rutgers received more than $1 billion from the state of New Jersey for its overall budget last year, and more than $560 million from the federal government to fund research projects. The Center on Security, Race and Rights operates under Rutgers Law School, where Aziz teaches courses on national security, “Islamophobia,” and critical race theory. The center receives half of its budget through the Rutgers University chancellor’s budget and through the Rutgers University Foundation, a charity operated by the school. Rutgers has not yet been targeted in the crackdown.

But House and Senate Republicans are already investigating the center, over what lawmakers have said is its record “of virulent antisemitism and support for terrorism.”

In one high-profile incident, the center organized an event on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 with Sami Al-Arian, a former professor who was convicted of helping fund Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Many of the center’s faculty advisers have cheered the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Joseph Massad, a Columbia University professor who called the October 7 attacks “awesome,” “astounding,” “striking,” “innovative,” and “victories of the resistance,” is a distinguished fellow at the Rutgers center. At a Rutgers center event in December 2023, Massad falsely claimed the Israeli military, not Hamas, engaged in the “indiscriminate strafing” of music festival attendees attacked on Oct. 7.

Susan Akram, another Rutgers center distinguished fellow, has called Hamas and Hezbollah “resistance movements.” Lara Sheehi, a Rutgers center faculty adviser, has referred to Hamas as “martyrs” while endorsing their “armed resistance” against Israel, the Washington Free Beacon has reported.

Aziz, who launched the center in 2018, has faced scrutiny for downplaying the Hamas attacks and condemning Israel. After Hamas attacked Israel in May 2021, Aziz signed an open letter with other activists that stated, “We are in awe of the Palestinian struggle to resist violent occupation, removal, erasure, and the expansion of Israeli settler colonialism.”

During the May 7 seminar, Aziz decried what she called the “Israelization of American foreign policy,” and asserted that the Trump administration is targeting largely Palestinian and Muslim students who are “trying to stop the genocide that’s happening right now in Gaza.”

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UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese repeatedly insisted the trip, estimated by the UN Watch NGO to cost around $22,000, was paid for by the UN, calling claims to the contrary “egregiously false.”

By i24 News and Algemeiner

The United Nations Human Rights Office appears to have disseminated intentionally deceptive information in an attempt to cover up travel funding that pro-Hamas organizations provided to a UN official.

UN special rapporteur for Palestinian rights Francesca Albanese took a politically-charged trip to Australia and New Zealand in November 2023.

The trip included a fundraiser for a Palestinian lobby group, participation in media events, as well as meetings with pro-Palestinian politicians and civil society members, and pushing New Zealand’s sovereign wealth fund to divest from Israel.

Albanese has been accused of antisemitism by the American, French, and German governments, among other entities.

Now, the Australian Friends of Palestine Association, which praised Hamas terror mastermind Yahya Sinwar as “incredibly moving,” claimed publicly that it had “sponsored” Albanese’s visit, and Free Palestine Melbourne, the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network, and Palestinian Christians in Australia stated that they “supported” the trip. All four are lobbying groups.

The Israeli i24NEWS channel asked various UN officials and entities for months whether pro-Hamas groups actually did fund the trip.

Albanese repeatedly insisted the trip, estimated by the UN Watch NGO to cost around $22,000, was paid for by the UN, calling claims to the contrary “egregiously false.”

Finally, in July last year, the UN Human Rights Office, acknowledging it was fully aware of documentation that pro-Hamas groups had said they sponsored or organized the trip, told i24NEWS that, “With respect to the Australia trip by the Special Rapporteur, her travel was funded by the UN.”

They ignored requests to provide any documentation showing that to be the case.

Since then, a six-person panel of Albanese’s peers, who have long attacked her accusers, was assigned the task of investigating a host of accusations against Albanese.

In a letter written last month to UN Human Rights Council President Jurg Lauber by that panel, known as the UN Coordination Committee of Special Procedures, they finally acknowledged Albanese had taken “partial external funding for internal trips within Australia and New Zealand.”

i24NEWS asked the media offices for UN Human Rights and Special Procedures for clarity on what seemed to be contrary claims.

Like former US president Bill Clinton’s cagey testimony in the Lewinsky affair, when he famously remarked, “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” for the UN Human Rights Office and Albanese, it apparently depends upon what the meaning of the word “to” is.

The Special Procedures office told i24NEWS: “With regard to the Special Rapporteur’s visit to Australia, her travel was funded by the United Nations regular budget. The Coordination Committee of Special Procedures assessed the allegations concerning partial external funding for internal travel (the bolding of the words is theirs) within Australia and New Zealand and concluded that there was no breach of the Code of Conduct. The Committee noted that it is common practice for conference organizers to cover the participation costs of mandate holders, and such arrangements do not constitute a violation of the established standards.”

With that, the UN finally conceded Albanese had in fact received external funding after all.

In follow-up conversations, it became clear: the UN was drawing a distinction between funding for travel TO a country, and funding for travel WITHIN a country – a bizarre distinction they failed to make for a year and a half, almost certainly to avoid discussing the topic of Hamas-supporting groups paying for a UN official’s anti-Israel business travel.

Even with all this, the UN Human Rights Office continues to ignore requests to clarify which group or groups funded this trip, and how much they contributed.

Accused by i24NEWS of lying, the Special Procedures Media Office said it was a “regrettable and unfair mischaracterization,” though it still made no attempt to reconcile why the UN made no previous mention of external funding, or why the funding for Albanese’s trip “to” Australia should be counted differently from “external funding for internal travel.”

Asked during a press briefing whether UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres would condemn UN spokespeople for intentionally misinforming the media and whether Guterres would support finally releasing the funding information surrounding the trip, Stephane Dujarric, Guterres’ spokesperson, said, “We support transparency in the activities of any official affiliated with United Nations.”

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“Were there some rapes [on October 7]? I guess there were; I have no proof,” Levy said.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy blamed Israel for causing antisemitism on a podcast whose host has expressed sympathy for Hamas and visited the Houthis in Yemen.

Levy, long known for siding with the Palestinians against Israel, told Jackson Hinkle in an interview on his podcast, “Political Targets, “For years, Israeli propaganda was based on a single manipulation, mainly to label criticism of Israel as antisemitism.”

Hinkle, a self-described “conservative Marxist-Leninist,” visited Yemen last month, where he addressed the Houthis and often calls terrorist leaders like the late Yahya Sinwar heroes.

Levy began his comments on the podcast by attacking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and blaming him for the collapse of the hostage release deal, which he alleged was due to the premier’s “political considerations.”

When Hinkle expressed skepticism about accounts and evidence of sexual assault on October 7th, Levy said he believed the crimes did occur, although perhaps it doesn’t matter.

“Does it really matter? I was in the kibbutzim on the 9th of October, and I saw horrible things which I’ve never seen in all my career,” Levy said.

“So, horrible things took place there. They claim there were rapes, and I can only believe because I don’t think there is room to start to put doubts, because there are no doubts that horrible things happened there. Were there some rapes? I guess there were; I have no proof.”

Hinkle characterized Levy’s criticism of the Israeli government and the IDF as “brave” and referred to Zionists as “hardcore genocidal people.

Levy concurred with Hinkle’s claim that Israel dismisses all criticism as antisemitism. “It seems that Israel doesn’t care about fueling it (antisemitism),” he added.

Alleging that claims about antisemitism are merely strategic, Levy said, “This was working excellently; it paralyzed Europe because nobody wants to be labeled as an antisemite. Even in the US, it has an effect, and people are very cautious when criticizing Israel or when giving a platform to someone who wants to criticize Israel.”

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