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With antisemitic incidents on the rise globally, a bipartisan group of senators is calling for a $250,000 funding boost for the office of the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism in 2022, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Letter writing: Twenty-eight senators urged Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — the two ranking members of the Senate Appropriations State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs subcommittee — to provide a total of $1.25 million for the office in the 2022 budget, up from $1 million in 2021, in a letter sent June 28. The House Appropriations Committee approved a draft 2022 State and Foreign Operations budget bill Thursday afternoon, including a recommendation for at least $1 million for the office.

On the rise: The senators point to the recent global rise in antisemitic incidents, as well as the envoy’s elevation to ambassador status last year. “Providing additional funds in [fiscal year] 2021 will ensure the State Department has the resources to… continue building on United States leadership in combating antisemitism internationally,” the letter reads. “Specifically, these funds would support the Special Envoy’s efforts to improve the safety and security of at-risk Jewish communities, combat online radicalization, ensure public officials and faith leaders condemn anti-Semitic discourse, and strengthen judicial systems in their prosecution of anti-Semitic incidents.”

Quotable: Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), who led the letter with Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), told JI: “We can put a stop to these hateful and threatening acts, but we must do so forcefully and with clear resolve… We must ensure that this post is properly funded, and that the United States maintains its leadership role in combating global antisemitism. I am proud to lead my Senate colleagues in this bipartisan effort to fund the fight against antisemitic hate.”

Sign here: All but two of the signatories — Rounds and Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) — are Democrats. They are Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Tina Smith (D-MN), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Mark Warner (D-VA), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Jack Reed (D-RI), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Bob Casey (D-PA), Ed Markey (D-MA), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), Gary Peters (D-MI), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Chris Murphy (D-CT).

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Leah Goldin, whose son Hadar was attacked by a Hamas ambush during Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge and is presumed dead, has not been able to give her son a proper funeral. Hamas has held the remains of 23-year-old Hadar for nearly seven years as Goldin has traveled the world seeking assistance. Now, as conversations begin over rebuilding Gaza, Goldin believes the U.S. government — which brokered the cease-fire during which her son was killed — has a “very narrow window of opportunity,” she told Jewish Insider’s Melissa Weiss, to condition the assistance on the return of her son’s body.

Assigning responsibility: As world and regional powers begin discussions on rebuilding Gaza following May’s 11-day conflict between Israel and Hamas, Goldin argues that the U.S. should condition any aid on the return of the bodies of Hadar and Oron Shaul, another soldier who went missing after an attack by Hamas and is presumed dead, as well as two Israeli civilians who went into Gaza in the months after that summer’s conflict and have not been seen or heard from since. “Hadar is actually a victim of a cease-fire, rather than a victim of a war,” Goldin told JI. “And since this cease-fire was brokered by the United States and by the United Nations, supported by the E.U., they should bear responsibility to rectify and to bring him back. Otherwise, what is the meaning of having a cease-fire?”

To Turtle Bay: Several years after her son’s death, Goldin found an ally in then-U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley. Goldin connected with Haley, whose husband was an officer in the South Carolina Army National Guard, on a personal level. “My heart goes out to the Goldin family who have persevered through such hardship. The withholding of remains is one of many barbaric practices of the Hamas terrorists. We must always keep that in mind when dealing with them,” Haley told JI. In December 2017, Goldin spoke at an Arria-formula meeting of the U.N. Security Council. The gathering, named after a Venezuelan U.N. ambassador in the 1990s who invited witnesses and others involved in global conflicts to meet informally with members of the U.N. Security Council, was convened by Ukraine and provided Goldin an opportunity to share her plight.

Human rights violations: Also speaking at the 2017 meeting was Irwin Cotler, the former Canadian justice minister and founder and chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. Cotler laid out a number of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law that Hamas was committing in refusing to repatriate Hadar Goldin’s remains. Among the violations were Hamas’ refusal to provide information about the soldiers’ situation and status and refusal to allow their families to provide a proper burial. “Hadar Goldin, in particular, was abducted and murdered in the course of a U.N.-mandated, E.U.-supported, U.S.-brokered humanitarian cease-fire,” Cotler told JI. “So the very abduction and murder was itself a standing violation, and a violation of U.N. principles regarding protective international peace and security.”

Bottom Line: Cotler is hopeful that Goldin will be successful amid a change in both Israeli and U.S. administrations. “There’s enormous pain and suffering, [there’s] human faces behind all this,” he said. “So we can talk about resolutions… The Goldin family suffers every day. And it is true, also, for Oron Shaul’s family, and it’s true for the civilians’. So we’re talking about human tragedies here. Families should have a right to be able to bury their sons in dignity, according to Jewish law.”

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“It’s a bunny-eat-bunny world.” This is an oft-repeated, only-sort-of-joking phrase in the world of kid’s literature — or “kidlit,” as those in the business call it — a vast category that includes novels for children, toddlers and young adults, in genres ranging from fantasy to romance to sports. Loosely translated: The adult authors who write books for kids can, and often do, tear each other apart on social media. The siloed drama of the kidlit industry was blown into the mainstream this week, after the leading membership organization for children’s book writers issued a controversial statement that appeared to walk back a June 10 condemnation of antisemitism that was released in response to an uptick in harassment and physical attacks on Jewish communities and institutions around the country. Multiple Jewish authors who write for children and young adults told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch that the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ handling of its antisemitism statement and the attacks on it that followed are a symptom of a larger problem in the industry: a focus on diversity that often does not include Jewish writers and books. 

What they said: “I would like to apologize to everyone in the Palestinian community who felt unrepresented, silenced, or marginalized,” read the June 27 letter from SCBWI’s executive director, Lin Oliver. “SCBWI acknowledges the pain our actions have caused to our Palestinian and Muslim members.” Some Jewish writers said they were disappointed to see what felt to them like a reversal of SCBWI’s previously strong stance against antisemitism. “This statement was ‘all lives matter,’” one writer told JI. 

Israel not included: Oliver’s apology made it appear as though SCBWI had concluded that condemning antisemitism was antithetical to condemning Islamophobia, or that antisemitism could not be addressed without also referring to politics in the Middle East. But SCBWI’s initial statement on antisemitism had not mentioned Israel. (After exchanging numerous emails with JI, senior leadership at SCBWI stopped responding without offering a comment on recent events.)

The back story: What happened in the two weeks between the two statements was more complicated than some initial news reports let on. A Palestinian American writer and activist named Razan Abdin-Adnani expressed concern that anti-Muslim hatred was not addressed by SCBWI, but in the process, SCBWI’s accounts deleted some of Abdin-Adnani’s comments on an SBCWI Facebook post and blocked her on Twitter. Several writers expressed concern that some of her comments were hostile to Israel and at times antisemitic. “It’s upsetting. Our entire team has had our stomachs in knots all week, reading the hate she is spewing about our organization, its ‘Zionist’ ties and more,” said Tzivia MacLeod, a Canadian-Israeli author who is one of the leaders of SCBWI’s Israel regional chapter.

Whisper network: “Everybody’s afraid to speak up. There’s a whisper network of Jewish authors, and the ones who have spoken up, they get a swarm of Twitter attacks,” said another author who asked to remain anonymous and has let their SCBWI membership lapse. But this writer acknowledged that the organization cannot simply be abandoned. “Really, that’s how people break in. It’s very much networking. It’s how you meet agents and editors, and how you learn the trade,” the writer explained. 

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Former President Donald Trump threw North Carolina’s contentious Republican Senate primary into disarray when, during last month’s state GOP convention in Greenville, he surprised the audience by announcing his “complete and total endorsement” of Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC), one of three leading candidates running to succeed outgoing Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) in the 2022 midterms. “It took an unpredictable race and made it positively chaotic,” Chris Cooper, a professor of political science at Western Carolina University, told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel.

Trump boost: “I had a plan to win the primary even without Trump’s very clear endorsement,” Budd, 49, told JI. “But I would say that’s a major accelerator.” A recent poll conducted by Budd’s campaign days after the endorsement suggested that the congressman was trailing by double digits behind Pat McCrory, the former North Carolina governor who announced his Senate bid in April and is widely regarded as a frontrunner with significant statewide recognition. But when voters were informed of Trump’s nod, Budd surged to the front of the pack. While updated quarterly filings from the Federal Election Commission, to be released in mid-July, will provide a clearer picture of Budd’s momentum, Budd’s senior advisor, Jonathan Felt,s told JI that low-dollar donations nearly tripled following the endorsement, “and a lot of folks who were sending us to voicemail are now calling us and requesting meetings.”

Why he’s running: The Senate hopeful, a gun store owner who represents North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District, said he entered the race because of what he regards as an encroaching liberalism that poses a threat to his traditional values. “It’s not your parents’ Democrat Party,” he said. “This is a party of progressivism and cancel culture, and I think it’s very destructive to all people regardless of what party. That’s what I’m against… I want to stop socialism and the things that are destroying our country, continue American prosperity, which is part of the American way of life,” he said. “I grew up in a family of small business owners, and we lived on a family farm. I still live on that same family farm, and so the business that we had is a service business.”

Biblical bona fides: Before entering politics, Budd was a seminarian who took five semesters of Greek and four semesters of Hebrew at Dallas Theological Seminary. “We studied it as a written language, so I could sing the ‘aleph, bet’ to you if you’d like,” he said, referring to the Hebrew alphabet. The congressman, who is dyslexic, joked that the experience of reading Hebrew right to left was likely somewhat easier for him than other seminarians who did not struggle with the disorder. “When I talk with those that studied Hebrew or are Jewish and have an appreciation for the language,” he said, “they like that the dyslexic finally found the language that reads from right to left.” Budd, an evangelical Christian, has visited Israel twice, in 1998 and 2013, both biblical tours of the Jewish state. “As they say, from Dan to Beersheba,” he told JI, alluding to the biblical phrase. “From top to bottom.”

Eye on the Middle East: Budd commended Trump’s foreign policy achievements in the Middle East, including the Abraham Accords agreements between Israel and a number of Arab nations that his administration helped broker. Now, Budd believes that President Joe Biden is undoing that progress. “It just seems with the promotion of the Palestinians, it has, you know, as being hostile to Israel, we’ve just seen a lot of unforced errors in the last six months and so much chaos as a result of that,” he told JI. “We were having increasing peace in the Middle East under Trump and a devolving of peace under Biden.” Still, the congressman boasted of his strong relationship with AIPAC, which is invested in maintaining bipartisan support for Israel. “The people that come with AIPAC, they may be Democrats, they may be Republicans, but their central concern is Israel,” he said, “and so we all are allies in that regard.”

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