Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 247 at Background Briefing.org.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll examine a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the hideous murders of young Israeli embassy workers,

which has led Israeli leaders to blame the leaders of the UK, France and Canada

for anti-Semitic and anti-Israel incitement,

with Prime Minister Netanyahu accusing them of, quote, emboldening Hamas

and, quote, siding with

mass murderers, rapist, baby killers and kidnappers. Joining us to discuss the weaponization

of anti-Semitism being deployed by the Trump administration, which has more than its share

of anti-Semites and neo-Nazis in its ranks to bring American academia to heal is Rabbi Stephen Jacobs,

who has spent over five decades as an advocate on behalf of social change,

spirituality and civil rights.

The founder of the Rabbi Stephen B. Jacobs Progressive Faith Foundation,

until his recent retirement. He's also

served as a spiritual leader of Temple Kohl Tikva, a reform congregation he founded in 1984.

Active in the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, he has worked to

promote tolerance and cooperation among the African-American Jewish and Muslim communities

in Los Angeles. Then we'll speak with Mitchell Plitnik, the president of rethinking foreign policy

and a former vice president at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, a political analyst and frequent

writer on the Middle East and U.S. foreign policy, he served

as the director of the U.S. office of Bitsilem and co-director of Jewish Voice for Peace.

He's the co-author with Mark Lemont Hill of Except for Palestine, The Limits of Progressive

...