Florida State Rep. Omari Hardy

In the crowded special House primary to succeed Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL), no fewer than 11 candidates are competing for the rare open seat that had long been occupied by the former dean of Florida’s congressional delegation, who died in April at 84. Even with just a few weeks remaining until voters cast their ballots on Nov. 2, the race remains somewhat in flux. But experts who spoke with Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel identified a group of top-tier candidates who are likely to emerge from the crowded field, including such elected officials as state Sen. Perry Thurston, state Rep. Bobby DuBose and Broward County Commissioners Dale Holness and Barbara Sharief, the latter of whom earlier this week notched an endorsement from Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL).

Voting no: While the leading contenders all seem largely aligned in their support for Israel — a cause championed by Hastings during his time in Congress — one staunchly progressive wild-card candidate, first-term state Rep. Omari Hardy, is sharing more critical views of the U.S.-Israel relationship. In an interview with JI on Monday, Hardy, 31, expressed his firm opposition to legislation that would grant $1 billion in supplemental aid for Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system. The bill, which is currently stalled in the Senate, was overwhelmingly approved last month by both parties following an emotionally charged House vote in which just eight Democrats and one Republican voted against the measure. “I would have voted no,” Hardy said bluntly. “Some folks have argued that voting against the billion dollars is taking the position that Israel doesn’t have a right to defend itself or that America should not help Israel defend itself,” he added. “I think that’s disingenuous given that we’re still providing $3.8 billion of military aid to Israel this year.”

BDS and conditioning aid: Hardy supports conditioning aid to the Jewish state, arguing that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank amounts to a series of human rights violations that the U.S. is effectively funding by proxy. “I can’t vote to send military aid to Israel as long as the human rights abuses continue,” he said. “My conscience won’t let me support some of the very problematic practices there…The funding is leverage that we have to ensure that Palestinians are not mistreated,” Hardy elaborated, “and to the extent that we have leverage to generate an outcome that is in comportment with our values, we should use that leverage.” Though critics have argued that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement also unfairly targets Israel, Hardy said he supports the cause out of a conviction that non-violent resistance is the last avenue of legitimate recourse available to the Palestinians.

Outside the norm: While Hardy’s positions on Israel stand well outside the Democratic mainstream, they are even more striking because they go beyond what some of the most outspoken Israel critics in the House have been willing to say publicly. Even the leading far-left candidates across the country who are now mounting congressional primary challenges with backing from Justice Democrats, the feisty political group that had at one point labeled Israel a “human rights violator,” have balked at calls to boycott Israel, instead advocating for conditioning aid to the Jewish state.

Varying disapproval: Local Jewish leaders in and around South Florida’s 20th Congressional District, which includes Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, expressed varying levels of disapproval with regard to Hardy’s Middle East foreign policy views, despite his appeal to transparency. “On the BDS stuff, that’s obviously disappointing, and on the Iron Dome stuff that’s obviously disappointing,” said Mitchell Berger, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer and prominent Hardy campaign donor. “On how much you fund Israel, that’s a legitimate topic for debate right now.” He said he would continue to support Hardy in spite of their disagreements on Israel. “I’ll certainly try and educate him as to why he is wrong on these things,” Berger told JI.

Change of tone: “We are concerned about him, there’s no question about it,” said Richard Stark, who chairs the Broward County Democratic Party Jewish Caucus and cohosted a candidate forum last month in which Hardy participated. During the forum, as Stark recalled, Hardy seemed significantly more sympathetic to Israel than his current views would suggest, even explicitly stating his opposition to BDS. “That doesn’t mean that he was not speaking the truth,” Stark told JI. “But what’s getting out is that he may not be so pro-Israel like he portrayed himself in our meeting.”

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Fernando Lottenberg at a ceremony for the International Day in Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust, January 29, 2017

For the first time in its more than 70-year history, the Organization of American States has designated a point person to tackle antisemitism in the Western Hemisphere. Fernando Lottenberg, a Brazilian constitutional attorney who previously served as the leader of the country’s Jewish community, began serving as the OAS commissioner to monitor and combat antisemitism last week. Lottenberg talked to Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutchin a phone interview from São Paulo yesterday about his priorities for the new position and why he’s thinking bigger than South America.

Regional approach: While he is not a well-known figure among Jewish leaders in North America, Lottenberg is committed to working with them in this new role. “It’s important for everybody to remember that [antisemitism] is not something that relates only to Latin America,” said Lottenberg, who added that it is a “common mistake” for people to think that OAS’s purview is only Latin America. In fact, “It includes the U.S. and it includes Canada,” he noted.

Brazil born and bred: Lottenberg comes to the role after serving for six years as the president of the Jewish Confederation of Brazil, the country’s leading Jewish communal group. With 120,000 Jews, Brazil has the second-largest Jewish population in Latin America, behind Argentina. Born and raised in São Paulo, Lottenberg, 59, has spent most of his life there. He earned his bachelor’s, law degree and doctorate at the University of São Paulo, with a brief stint at the University of Texas at Austin through the Fulbright Scholars Program.

Good for democracy: The countries in the Americas share core values, Lottenberg argued, and fighting antisemitism is in line with preserving their commitment to democracy. He pledged to work with antisemitism envoys in Canada and the U.S. to “keep our continent as it was promised, a land where people can come and settle and thrive by keeping their identities, and living together in a place where you’re not asked where you’ve come from, but what you do, what you can contribute to your society.”

Making connections: Lottenberg has reached out to Irwin Cotler, Canada’s former justice minister who currently serves as the country’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combating antisemitism, and to Deborah Lipstadt, a Holocaust historian who is awaiting Senate confirmation as the State Department’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. “This is an important regional and hemispheric appointment,” Cotler told JI. In an email, Lipstadt praised the selection of Lottenberg, whom she does not know personally. “I welcome this appointment and, should I be confirmed by the Senate, look forward to working with Commissioner Lottenberg,” she told JI.

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Eitan Neishlos

After the COVID-19 pandemic hit Australia, entrepreneur Eitan Neishlos and the payments provider company he cofounded repurposed their technology in order to help out with the crisis — a reflection of his philosophy that people’s skills and businesses can be drawn on to perform acts of philanthropy. Previously, people coming to be tested had to manually fill out paper forms and wait in long lines at drive-through testing stations. “That invites data corruption, that slows down processes, it’s arguably unhygienic as people are transferring documents amongst themselves and it’s very tedious and slow,” the Israeli-born, Australian corporate lawyer, businessman and philanthropist told Jewish Insider’s Tamara Zieve in a recent interview at his seaside apartment in Tel Aviv.

Out-of-the-box philanthropy: “[There’s] a way of looking to your own skill sets, your own resources, your own business, your own job, whatever it might be, and actually providing a conscientious service,” Neishlos told JI, part of a philosophy he is now loudly touting as he seeks to cultivate a new generation of philanthropists. “This for me is breaking the mold of philanthropy. My call to action to people is to do something, and if someone can’t write a check, if someone can’t give of their own personal time, maybe they can look to their business or maybe they can look to their skill set.” Philanthropy shouldn’t just refer to donations of grand sums of money reserved for the rich — such as himself — he argues, but a more accessible and sustainable approach to giving. Time, he suggests as an example, is a valuable resource that people can give in addition to or in place of money.

Business with a social conscience: Neishlos’s own experiences in fintech and the banking world — particularly working in developing countries — taught him that investment isn’t just about financial profit, but involves a social conscience. Spending time in developing countries such as Venezuela, Peru and Nepal, where he was heavily involved in projects surrounding the subject of financial inclusion, Neishlos said, exposed him to complex societal issues. He was forced to tackle the question of how to bring the unbanked into the banking world. “And so that was, in a way, a very important touchpoint into philanthropy,” Neishlos said.

The collective power of giving: The entrepreneur has long been involved with the Australian branch of the Jewish National Fund, and more specifically with JNF Future, which targets Jewish young adults in Australia. Neishlos and a group of Jewish young adults, who were perturbed by the ad hoc nature of donations they made at a gala dinner, created JNF Future’s Generation Chai project through which every participant donates $18 a month. The beneficiary of the project is Roim Rahok, or Looking Ahead, an Israeli organization that trains young adults on the autism spectrum in professions required by the IDF and the civilian market. The project was launched in the first quarter of 2021 and garnered hundreds of sign-ups. “And if we can export that model, which I hope we will be able to… then maybe even possibly millions of dollars will be raised.” Neishlos said.

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