Jewish Chutzpah Gone Missing

Dear Editor:

In “A Failure of Leadership’: Dov Hikind Slams Jewish Figures Over Controversial Meeting with Mayor Mamdani” Jewish leaders’ chutzpah, along with their moral clarity, is exposed as gone missing. Jewish “leaders” have yet to learn, the more you bend over, the harder they kick you. Chuck Schumer is a typical House Jew. He called this lout Mamdani to congratulate him on his win vs. loudly condemning Mamdani’s anti-Israel actions and words. Mamdani smears Israel as a “genocidal killer” who has “no right to exist as a Jewish State.” He supports BDS, and gives platforms to Hamas supporters.

And so what do Jewish leaders do? “Hug and fawn” over this double talker, smiling bigot who pretends he is just a humanitarian and denies he is a Jew hater. I guess you can fool all of the people, all of the time in 2026. We used to be able to smell the stench of Jew hate. We used to be able to stand up to it. Now we are like prisoners who embrace their captors in the hope of surviving instead of loudly condemning this Mamdani and others like him, instead of standing tall and demanding our full Jewish Civil Rights & the IHRA.

Iris Tratt, 3-26, Algemeiner, “Three Months Into His Term, Mamdani’s Radicalism Rages”, “Mamdani was always transparent about his disdain for Israel. No longer restrained by the campaign guardrails, the mayor has grown bolder in his statements and actions. Whether it’s breaking bread with activists who openly celebrate the slaughter of Jews or creating antisemitic spaces within government-run entities, Mamdani’s anti-Jewish agenda has only been strengthened over the last three months. His political ambitions will not stop at New York City’s doorstep. Mamdani is leveraging his popularity and easing the path for Democrats across America to follow his lead.”

If Jewish “leaders” can’t learn from their own history that the way to survive is to be a loud, proud, brave, Zionist Jew, then no one can help them. They will get what’s coming to them and their children. By gobbling up the crumbs this bigot throws them while he quietly plans to ostracize Jews who support Israel is beyond belief. Aren’t Jews supposed to be smart? When did they get stupid?

Sincerely
Ginette Weiner, A Zionist Jew
Arizona

Sheltering a Palestinian Killer of Americans

Dear Editor:

Last September, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that the Palestinian Authority had arrested a terrorist involved in an attack in Paris years earlier. Macron praised the PA’s “excellent cooperation” and predicted the “swift extradition” of the terrorist to France for prosecution.

Perhaps France has a different definition of “swift” than the rest of the world.

More than six months have passed since Macron’s optimistic announcement—and not only has the killer not been extradited to France, but a senior PA official is declaring that he will never be handed over.

The fugitive, Mahmoud Al-Adra (also known as Hicham Harb), led the Palestinian Arab terror gang that attacked a Jewish restaurant, Chez Jo Goldenberg, in Paris on August 9, 1982. They slaughtered six customers and wounded 22 others.

Among the fatalities were two American women: Grace Cutler, 65, a legal secretary from Skokie, Illinois; and Anne Van Zanten, 31, the curator of architectural collections at the Chicago Historical Society.

Munir Al-Jaghoub, a senior official of Fatah, the main faction of the PA, recently told the Palestinian Arab news agency Wattan that Fatah “certainly will not be in favor of this step” (of extraditing Al-Adra).

He gave two reasons. First, Fatah “has conducted armed struggle for years…The entire Palestinian people with all its layers conducted armed struggle everywhere against the Israeli occupation. Therefore, it is not possible today—at a time when President Abbas [chair of PA and Fatah] defended Hamas at the UN and elsewhere, so that it would not be labeled as terror—that at some point he would turn to such a step [of extradition].”

Second, the Fatah official said, surrendering Al-Adra to France would establish a dangerous precedent: “Germany might come out tomorrow and say it wants those who carried out the Munich operation,” that is, the 1972 Olympics massacre—an inadvertent reminder that the PA is sheltering those killers, too.

(Translations courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch.)

Regardless of what France does, the United States, which has considerable diplomatic and financial leverage with the PA, could demand that Al-Adra be surrendered to the US so he can be prosecuted here for the murders of Grace Cutler and Anne Van Zanten. So far, however, there are no signs that the US will do so.

Sincerely,
Prof. Rafael Medoff