⚫ Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil is on tour with his new book, No Land to Stand On: Notes from Detention, and is already being attacked by Zionists.
Khalil’s Boston-area stop was scheduled to take place at the city’s Wilbur Theater, but the event was canceled after backlash from pro-Israel groups.
A rally was organized outside the venue by Adar Rubin, director of mobilization for EndJewHatred, a group funded by the pro-Israel Lawfare Project. According to Rubin, Bill Blumenreich, whose event company operates the Wilbur, went inside the building for twenty minutes and then returned to assure the protesters that the event was canceled before shaking everyone’s hand.
Khalil’s talk was moved to Brookline Booksmith due to the cancellation. “It’s disappointing that Brookline Booksmith is still giving Khalil a platform, but this outcome nevertheless shows that activism works,” Rubin told JNS.
The group Massachusetts for Palestine says it reached out to the Wilbur multiple times but received no response.
⚫ Two writers have sued the city of Los Angeles over the Los Angeles Public Library canceling a Palestine event in December 2025.
According to the complaint from Jenan Matari and Nora Lester Murad, the library canceled “Read Palestine Week” just 3 days before the writers were scheduled to discuss their books at the event.
Matari was promoting a children’s book, Everything Grows in Jiddo’s Garden, about a Palestinian girl, and Murad was scheduled to talk about Ida in the Middle, a YA novel about a Palestinian-American girl.
According to documents obtained through a public record request, the event was scrapped in response to a librarian falsely claiming that the authors had “strong terrorist ties and virulently antisemitic views.” Even though the event was online, the librarian claimed it could threaten “the safety of library staff.”
“Palestinian writers and creatives are so exhausted by having to fight every day to have our voices heard,” Matari, who is Palestinian, told The Guardian. “To be censored by an institution like the library is really scary because this is where free speech should be cultivated and nurtured. It sets a very dangerous precedent … Nora and I agreed we had to show these institutions they cannot continue to get away with this.”
Matari told the website that she has consistently posted about the genocide on social media and that her support for Palestinians was being conflated with terrorism.
“I’m vehemently anti-Zionist and all my posts reflect that … I have been watching people back home living every single day with a violent oppressive boot on their neck that I pay for with my tax money,” she said. “Every day for the last 100 years has been 7 October for Palestinians.”
⚫ Just weeks after New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft successfully ousted Macklemore as the opener on Ed Sheeran’s tour, country singer Zach Bryan broke the stadium attendance record at Kraft’s Gillette Stadium wearing a “Free Palestine” shirt.”
His bandmates, Nate Head and Noah LeGros, both wore Palestine soccer jerseys from the clothing company Wear the Peace during their two concerts at Gillette. Head’s jersey featured the name “Hind Rajab,” a 5-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israeli forces in January 2024.
⚫ The Trump administration is trying to deport a Hasidic Jew for protesting against Israel.
Yehonatan Ovadia, a 35-year-old religious teacher in Rockland County, New York, had his visa revoked for participating in an October 2023 protest opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Ovadia, who belongs to the Hasidic sect that opposes Zionism, was initially hit with hate crime charges after the protest, over accusations that he and another member of his community stole an Israeli flag hanging outside a town hall during the protest.
The hate crime charges were dropped after Ovadia pled guilty to a lesser disorderly charge and agreed to pay a fine, but ICE agents arrested him in August and are now holding him at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
“We demonstrated for Gaza, for the liberation of Gaza, for the rights of the Palestinians and to show to the world that the Jews, real Judaism, want to have peace,” Ovadia told the New York Times during a brief phone interview from the detention center.
“It is a privilege to be granted a visa or green card to live in the United States of America,” said the Department of Homeland Security in a statement. “The Trump administration acted well within its statutory and constitutional authority, as it does with any alien who advocates for violence, glorifies and supports terrorists, harasses Jews and steals property.”
Ovadia, who is an Israeli citizen, has been in the United States since 2022 on a visa for religious workers.
Eric Lee, who is one of Ovadia’s attorneys, says that his client is being targeted over his views on Israel.
“He’s against the Israeli government and the existence of the state of Israel for religious reasons, but to claim that he’s an antisemite is the peak of absurdity,” Lee told the NYT.
Lee says that, in a phone call from jail, Ovadia told him that his goal was to “make the world know that Zionism and Judaism are incompatible.”
Lee, and the rest of the legal team, have filed lawsuit claiming that the Trump administration is illegally targeting Ovadia over federally protected speech. They argue that the Department of Homeland Security is favoring “one religious position within Judaism” while punishing “an adherent of another.”
“Trump’s DHS says ICE detention of Yehonatan Ovadia is justified bc he was ‘harassing Jews,'” tweeted Lee. “Wait: a rabbi detained for participating in Hasidic demonstration against Israel 3 years ago was harassing…himself? What a joke!!”
