u/Pretty_Dizzy_

>Toward the end of her life, the Austrian-born Jewish scientist Rudolphina Menzel acknowledged a horrifying reality: the dog-training techniques she pioneered had been used by the Nazis to commit atrocities.

>"I suffered a lot knowing that my students in Austria and Germany were using the knowledge they acquired from me to use dogs to exterminate my people and other peoples," she said in an interview roughly 10 years before her death in 1973. 

>But in one of the more remarkable ironies of 20th-century history, Menzel also trained the dogs that helped create the state of Israel. She was a trailblazing Zionist pioneer. 

>A new book, "Canine Pioneer: The Extraordinary Life of Rudolphina Menzel," chronicles Menzel's life and career, exploring her seminal role in the development of cynology (the scientific study of the domestic dog) and modern Jewish, European, and Middle Eastern history. 

>Edited by the anthropologist Susan M. Kahn and published by Brandeis University Press, it details Menzel's role in training the dogs used by the German military and police in the 1920s and early 1930s — and how she helped the fledgling Zionist state secure its independence from Britain and win the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

>"Rudolphina's long, complicated, and eventful life was peppered with triumphs, marred by tragedies, and suffused with ideological tensions," Kahn writes. "She had to constantly negotiate a shifting kaleidoscope of political, scientific, and cultural considerations in order to realize her extraordinarily ambitious scientific goals and activist objectives."

>A blue flag with a Star of David, two swastikas and the letters “NYU” was waving on the roof of the Steinhardt building as hundreds of graduates and family members walked along West Fourth Street during NYU’s annual Grad Alley event shortly after 5 p.m. Wednesday. 

>Passersby at the outdoor celebration spotted the flag — which repeatedly moved up and down the flagpole — before it was removed around 15 minutes later. Shortly after, at least four New York City Police Department officers and five Campus Safety personnel entered the building. An NYU staff member who requested to remain anonymous told WSN the NYPD will review camera footage in the next few days and potentially investigate the incident as a hate crime.

>Israel is preparing legal action against The New York Times after the newspaper published an article describing the rapes of Palestinian prisoners in its custody.

>The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) announced its decision to sue on X on Thursday, after the paper doubled down in its defence of the report.

>"Nicholas Kristof’s deeply reported piece of opinion journalism starts with a proposition to readers: ‘Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemning rape,'" a spokesperson for The New York Times said.

>Kristof's story contained harrowing testimonies of the rape of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers, which included accounts of prisoners being mounted by dogs, penetrated by carrots, and rectums torn by batons. 

>Israeli influencers and politicians responded to the accounts by claiming that the New York Times was perpetuating a blood libel – or an antisemitic canard, used to justify the slaughter of Jews in Europe during the medieval and early modern era.

>Israel's MFA wrote: "Following the publication by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times of one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press, which also received the backing of the newspaper, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times."

>Middle East Eye revealed similar testimonies to Kristof's last month, from a report titled “Sexual violence and forcible transfer in the West Bank: How the exploitation of gender dynamics drives displacement” by the West Bank Protection Consortium.

>The group documented at least 16 cases involving sexual crimes perpetrated by Israeli settlers and soldiers.

>Mathias Dopfner, the CEO of Axel Springer and owner of The Telegraph and Politico, told the World Jewish Congress (WJC) that “anti-Zionism is racism” during a speech in Geneva.

>Addressing the organisation’s governing board on Monday, Dopfner delivered a wide-ranging speech laden with anti-immigrant rhetoric, calls for censorship and attacks on musicians, artists, universities and the UN. The media executive made headlines in April after telling journalists at Politico that they must back Israel or resign, fuelling concerns that the newsroom’s independence is under threat. Axel Springer acquired the political news site in 2021.

>He has also been explicit about his ideological position, telling the audience: "I'm a goy, and I'm Zionist, with all my heart, out of conviction, and with passion."“Europe should introduce preferential immigration and citizenship for Jewish families,” Dopfner prescribed, presenting it as a counterweight to what he described as “Christian and particularly Muslim influences” in Europe.

>“Europe must become more Jewish,” he concluded.
The Telegraph owner also called for the censorship of TikTok in Europe.

>We, the undersigned Jewish anti-zionist communities of New York City and Westchester County condemn Park East Synagogue for hosting “The Great Israeli Real Estate Event,” an event which promotes the sale of stolen Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. The “Israeli” settlements promoted at these events are illegal under international law and created through violent dispossession of Palestinians from their homes. These events, open to Jews only, violate federal fair housing law as well as state and city anti-discrimination law. By promoting these sales, Park East Synagogue is facilitating colonial land theft and participating in racial and religious discrimination. We condemn the use of Jewish religious spaces as a tool of colonialism. We condemn these violations of federal and local anti-discrimination law. We stand with the protestors and the people of Palestine.
Signed,
Brooklyn Shabbat Kodesh
Making Mensches
Northern Manhattan Minyan
Westchester Diasporist Minyan

And what are some options to replace them with?