
Freelance event moderator and podcaster Jessica Shaw Levin amplified New York Times atrocity propaganda framing Palestinian resistance as terrorism against Israeli civilians, then sought a "reprieve" in celebrity news, silencing herself on Israel's genocide in Palestine.
Former SiriusXM host Jessica Shaw Levin shared Zionist-framed narratives of October 7 sans occupation context, abruptly pivoting to pop culture escapism while ignoring 57 years of apartheid and normalizing settler-colonialism by platforming Israeli propaganda.
SOCIAL MEDIA/INFLUENCER
Jessica Shaw Levin, a freelance event moderator, podcaster, and former host of The Pop Culture Spotlight on SiriusXM satellite radio, has leveraged her media presence to amplify Zionist propaganda while evading accountability for Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Married to Steve Levin and sister to AJC's pro-Israel advocate Laura Shaw Frank, Levin's sparse but telling interventions exemplify liberal Jewish complicity in dehumanizing Palestinians — framing them as inherent threats while centering Israeli victimhood and retreating to apolitical frivolity.
On October 13, 2023 — just days after Palestinian resistance breached Israel's Gaza prison fence — Levin urged her followers to "Please listen" to a New York Times podcast episode recounting the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Be'eri. The episode, narrated through survivor Golan Abitbol, portrays the kibbutz as a idyllic, pre-state liberal enclave of 1,000 residents who "donated money yearly to Gazans" and ferried Palestinian children to Israeli hospitals, shattered by "vicious killers" and "animals" in "fighting vests" wielding RPGs and grenades. It details indiscriminate murders, abductions of families (including babies and elders), and safe-room executions, equating the assault to a "second Holocaust" that "fundamentally changed" survivors.
Six days later, amid escalating Israeli bombardment that would displace 90% of Gaza's population and raze infrastructure, Levin posted: "If anyone needs a quick reprieve…." linking to a Times article on Taylor Swift's Eras Tour. This pivot to celebrity escapism — while journalists were slaughtered and hospitals targeted — signals willful disengagement from the genocide, where conservative tallies freeze at 40,000-78,000 Palestinian deaths due to Israel's media blackout, though undercounted totals likely exceed hundreds of thousands, including indirect fatalities from starvation and disease.
Levin's silence persists into 2025, a form of passive endorsement that sustains consent for apartheid by refusing to interrogate the October 7 context: 75 years of Nakba, West Bank land thefts, and Gaza's open-air imprisonment. Her platform as a moderator further normalizes Israeli narratives, erasing Palestinian voices.
In 2020, she hosted a virtual panel on Valley of Tears, an HBO series glorifying Israel's 1973 Yom Kippur War victory over Arab states — romanticizing military prowess without acknowledging the displacement it entrenched. Similarly, in an undated 92nd Street Y event, Levin moderated creators Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff for Netflix's Hit & Run, a thriller centered on intrigue in "Tel Aviv" that exoticizes occupied lands while ignoring the underlying colonial framework. For Shtisel Season 3 at Temple Emanu-El's Streicker Center — another undated virtual discussion — Levin facilitated talk on the ultra-Orthodox Israeli drama, boosting cultural soft power that humanizes Jewish Israelis amid their subjugation of Palestinians, without space for decolonial critique.
Her selective amplification and subsequent hush exemplify how cultural gatekeepers sanitize Zionism, perpetuating dehumanization by framing Palestinian resistance as baseless terror while Gaza endures collective punishment — over 2 million besieged, with famine weaponized and children buried under rubble.
92ny.org
🔒Silence = Complicity:
For those who have passionately spoken out against other instances of genocide and massacres, yet fall silent when it comes to the suffering endured by Palestinians, their silence becomes a glaring indictment of the value placed on Palestinian lives and perpetuates a dangerous narrative that suggests Palestinian suffering is somehow less worthy of outrage, less deserving of empathy and less human than that of others.
By choosing silence in the face of Palestinian suffering, those with influential platforms inadvertently contribute to the erasure of Palestinian voices and experiences. They perpetuate a narrative of invisibility that allows the injustices inflicted upon Palestinians to continue unabated, shielded from the spotlight of global scrutiny.
Their silence sends a chilling message of complicity to the world – one that suggests Palestinian lives are expendable, their struggles inconsequential and their humanity negotiable. It emboldens perpetrators of violence and oppression, granting them impunity under the guise of indifference.
To remain silent in the face of Palestinian suffering is to betray the very essence of activism – the relentless pursuit of justice for all, without exception or equivocation. It’s a betrayal not only of the Palestinian people but of the universal principles of human dignity and equality and instead is a tacit endorsement of the dehumanization and marginalization of an entire population.
True activism demands consistency and integrity, an unwavering commitment to speaking truth to power and standing in solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed, regardless of geography or politics.
Conflating Zionism with Judaism:
While the Jewish faith and cultural identity not only long predate and but have no inherent connection to the racist political ideology of Zionism, the modern Israeli regime has deliberately pursued an ethnic supremacist agenda rooted in Jewish ethno-religious identity — yet built upon the demolition of Palestinian homes, the theft of Palestinian lands and the generational uprooting, displacement and dehumanization of the Palestinian people at large.
The harrowing cost of human suffering, loss of life and deprivation of the most basic liberties and security has been unconscionable and now, Zionism represents an utterly deplorable ethnic supremacist ideology that has enabled unconscionable acts of violence, displacement and subjugation against the Palestinian people for almost a century.
Its real-world impacts have been nothing short of a calculated campaign of ethnic cleansing, cultural erasure and apartheid racism - a horrific legacy that cannot be decoupled from Zionism's founding vision of creating an exclusionary Jewish ethno-state through the denial of Palestinian self-determination and indigeneity.
The forced expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their ancestral homes and villages during the Nakba, rendering millions stateless and exiled as refugees, was an act of premeditated ethnic purging. With the willful destruction of Palestinian property, demolition of homes, uprooting of ancient olive groves, and obliteration of cultural resources further demonstrating a systematic effort to erase Palestinian identity, history and any enduring claims to the land.
Subsequent decades have seen this brutal ethnic persecution, land confiscation and denial of human rights institutionalized through severely discriminatory policies, illegal settlements, violence by occupying forces, arbitrary detentions, torture, and most notably, systemic oppression under Israel's racist apartheid regime.
These are not mere "realities" for Palestinians who remain, but grave crimes against humanity perpetrated through Zionism's new brand of unrelenting, institutionalized cruelty. This utterly shameful legacy of calculated ethnic cleansing, apartheid governance and flagrant violations of international law is inextricably intertwined with how Zionism's racist, supremacist and anti-democratic ideology has been implemented on the ground by Israel.
Any attempt to decouple or whitewash these egregious atrocities from Zionism itself is a form of explicit denialism and complicity in oppression of the highest order. No ethnic, religious or any other group deserves an ethno-supremacist theocratic state constructed through the forcible subjugation of indigenous populations as second-class citizens stripped of all rights, dignity and humanity.
Such an abhorrent exclusionary system based on racial hierarchy is fundamentally incompatible with even the barest notion of true democracy, self-determination or universal human rights regardless of ethnicity or faith.
Statehood, sovereignty and self-determination can never legitimately emerge from such systematic violence, discrimination, forced displacement and ethnic persecution as political Zionism has perpetrated against the Palestinian population.
If a state were to arise organically through democratic processes that enshrine equality, safety and liberty for all citizens regardless of ethnicity or faith, it would have legitimacy. But any racist system of ethnic domination erected through brute force subjugation and calculated ethnic supremacy, as Zionism has done, is an egregious affront to justice and human rights that requires being dismantled - not enshrined - with a new equitable path forward established.
Amplified Zionist Lies:
This individual has used their voice and platform to echo and amplify egregious Zionist lies but also perpetuate the subjugation, torture, brutalisation and murder inflicted by the Israeli-occupation of Palestinian and its attempts to erase Palestinian identity, culture, heritage and statehood. [1] [2] [3] [4]
These egregious and dangerous lies MAY include but are not limited to: [5]
Spreading misinformation and hateful propaganda against Palestinians is a deplorable act of dehumanization that directly enables human rights abuses, ethnic cleansing and violence against the Palestinian people. [35] [36] [37] [38]
By employing such malicious tactics to deny Palestinian realities and whitewash war crimes, home demolitions and the systematic deprivation of human rights under military occupation, this individual has provided racist cover for 75+ years of subjugation. [39] [[40]] (https://www.un.org/unispal/document/human-rights-situation-in-opt-unohchr-23feb-2024/)
This misinformation doesn't just distort the truth, it actively endangers Palestinian lives and inflames hatred, justifies atrocities like the active genocide and obstructs any path to justice through the wilful erasure of the Palestinian lived experience. [41] [42] [43]
For more information about amplified Zionist lies, please visit:
Liberal Zionism:
Liberal Zionism masquerades as a "moderate" or "progressive" strain of Zionism, blending Jewish nationalism with cherry-picked liberal values like democracy and human rights as a means to justify the existence of the illegal settler colonial ethnostate known as “Israel” [1].
And Liberal Zionism is one of the greatest threats because of its political camouflage [2]. By co-opting progressive language, Liberal Zionism inoculates Zionism against true anti-colonial solidarity, dividing the left and derailing BDS movements [3]. It ensures the ongoing Nakba – from Gaza's ruins to Hebron's checkpoints – persists under a democratic veneer, making decolonization seem radical rather than just [4] [5].
Emerging from early 20th-century Labor Zionism — the very movement that orchestrated the 1948 Nakba which ethnically cleansed over 750,000 Palestinians through mass expulsions and village destructions — liberal Zionism has always served as the velvet glove over the iron fist of settler-colonialism [6] [7].
Despite claiming it merely seeks a "Jewish and democratic state," this rhetoric is actually code for an ethnostate where Jewish supremacy trumps Palestinian equality, enshrined in laws like the 2018 Nation-State Law that demotes Arabic and prioritizes Jewish settlement [8] [9].
At its core, liberal Zionism rejects the colonial origins of Israel and instead attempts to frame the Zionist project as a "return" or "liberation" rather than a European settler invasion that erased indigenous Palestinian society [10].
As a political movement, liberal Zionism emerged as a response to antisemitism and the Holocaust but quickly pivoted to justifying land theft under the guise of "self-determination," ignoring how Zionism fits classic colonial patterns: displacement of natives, resource extraction, and demographic engineering to maintain a Jewish majority [11].
As of 2025, amid the Gaza genocide and West Bank annexation pushes, it clings to a fading two-state illusion, providing diplomatic and financial cover for Israel's crimes while silencing Palestinian voices as "antisemitic" [12].
“Zionism is a colonialism, not a simple radical nationalism: even in its left-wing version, it is a colonialist nationalism." – Zeev Sternhell, liberal Zionist historian exposing his own ideology's flaws [13].
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