Michael Bloomberg

The fight against antisemitism was front and center at UJA-Federation of New York’s Wall Street Dinner, held on Monday night at the Marriott Marquis in Midtown Manhattan, where former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was honored with the UJA’s Gustave L. Levy Award. In addition to Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs ​​Global Co-head of Consumer and Wealth Management Stephanie Cohen received the Alan C. Greenberg Young Leadership Award.

Political problem: The former mayor addressed both political intolerance — singling out Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) by name — and efforts by Jewish groups to combat antisemitism. “On the right, we have heard conspiracy theories about the COVID vaccine being a Jewish plot, and even Jewish space lasers starting the virus out west — you can’t make this shit up, folks,” Bloomberg said. “It would be funny if it were not so dangerous, because when we hear wild conspiracy theories, whether they were about vaccines or wildfires, or the election and [QAnon], or anything else, we must remember, antisemitism is the original conspiracy theory… In some circles on the left and on many college campuses, there are those who are using the political situation in Israel to spread lies and prejudices. They assert that American support for Israel is about nothing more than Jewish money controlling politicians and Jewish people acting as oppressors.”

Learning young: Bloomberg, who noted that his sister had been a member of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, said his family had inspired his commitment to fighting hate in all forms. “When I was a young boy, I remember seeing my father write a check to the NAACP for something like 100 bucks, which was a lot of money for us back then,” he recalled. “And we talked about it at the dinner table, and I asked my father, ‘Why are you writing this check?’ ‘Because,’ he said, ‘discrimination against anyone is a threat to all of us.’”

Community mobilization: Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs’s senior chairman and the event’s emcee, joked that the dinner — which raised $32 million — was the first time he’d worn a suit in two years, before pivoting to UJA’s efforts to combat antisemitism. “This past spring, the conflict in Israel led to a dangerous rise of antisemitic attacks. Jews were targeted on the streets of New York City and around the world. UJA took a strong stance right away by mobilizing our communities and allies to denounce hate by creating the community security initiative to help protect Jewish institutions across the New York region, and by advocating for and obtaining government security grants.”

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Max Rose

Former Rep. Max Rose (D-NY) announced his intention on Monday to reclaim his former Staten Island congressional seat, surprising few in New York’s political establishment following his 2020 loss to Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY). But while his candidacy has been widely anticipated, analysts say that his fate will depend largely on the yet-to-be-determined outcome of New York’s congressional redistricting process,Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Map Mystery: The district, which includes all of Staten Island and portions of South Brooklyn, leans more conservative than the rest of New York City, and is the only one currently represented by a Republican. Rose’s chances of victory in a rematch against Malliotakis likely depend on more heavily Democratic areas of Brooklyn being pulled into the district, several Democratic political strategists told Jewish Insider on Monday. “The question is what will the lines of that district look like? And that will have a lot to do with whether he can win or not,” Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime New York Democratic political consultant, said.

Tricky Geography: Jake Dilemani, another Democratic strategist and leader of the Manhattan Democratic Party, noted that even the inclusion of parts of Brooklyn in the district would not guarantee Rose a win. “The ideal portions of Brooklyn would be to go a little bit farther north and east in Brooklyn because the part of Brooklyn that this district takes in is not the most Democratic-friendly turf necessarily,” he said, a reference to the neighborhood of Bay Ridge, which lies on the Brooklyn side of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. “Historically, it’s been turf that’s also been represented by Republicans.”

Against the tide: If Rose is the party’s nominee, he may face an uphill battle against Malliotakis, who received 53% of the vote to Rose’s 47% in 2020. “Unless the Democrats do a much better job of messaging their successes and their priorities over the next 11 months, we could be looking at another bad year for Democrats,” Dilemani said. “Now a lot of that is out of Max Rose’s control… And Max is going to have to do a very good job of making the case that he’s the best person to deliver for the district.”

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Stuart Force, Robbi Force, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

A new bill introduced by Senate Republicans on Monday takes aim at foreign banks involved with the Palestinian Authority’s “martyr payments” to the families of individuals who carry out attacks against Israelis, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Round two: The Taylor Force Martyr Payment Prevention Act of 2021 was introduced by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Steve Daines (R-MT), and is named in honor of Taylor Force, a U.S. Army veteran killed by a Palestinian in 2016. It is the second bill named after Force; the first, passed in 2018, largely cut off U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority as long as it continues the martyr payments. The new legislation is co-sponsored by Sens. Todd Young (R-IN), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Mike Braun (R-IN), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Rick Scott (R-FL), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Bill Hagerty (R-TN).

Follow the money: The bill would allow the Treasury Department to designate banks that “facilitate or promote” payments to the families of terrorists or “knowingly provide, or cause other financial institutions to provide” financial services to Hamas as money-laundering concerns. That designation would restrict those banks’ ability to do business in the U.S. or with U.S. dollars.

Crackdown: “This bill would stop foreign banks who have no physical presence in the U.S., but do have what’s called correspondence accounts, which allow them to bank in U.S. dollars from continuing these practices,” Cotton explained to Jewish Insider. “No bank that has a correspondence account in the United States that banks in dollars should support these. So the primary targets here will be either foreign organizations or foreign individuals who are supporting these kinds of payments through U.S. dollars.”

Filling the gaps: Stuart Force, Taylor Force’s father, also spoke at a press conference announcing the bill. “We have recently come to the realization that the job is half-done,” Force said. “The truth is [that] payments have continued and those responsible have not been held accountable.”  He described the new legislation as “an important new tool to disincentivize banks from being part of the martyr payment program and deny them access to the U.S. financial system until they stop doing it.”

Read more here.

New York, United States of America – July 8, 2017. The New York Times building in the west side of Midtown Manhattan.

Following the example of several publications that have made the switch in recent months, The New York Times has updated its style guide to replace “anti-Semitism” with “antisemitism,” Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kaasel has learned. The change, which removes the hyphen and lowercases the first S, comes in response to a growing chorus of Jewish activists who argue that the traditional usage is misleading. The paper made no public announcement of the switch, which was adopted in August, according to Phil Corbett, the standards editor for the Times.

‘Hatred toward Jews’: While the new spelling may seem merely cosmetic, it reflects a deeper linguistic debate that has long been brewing within the Jewish community. In 2015, for instance, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance began advocating for “antisemitism” out of concern that the “hyphenated spelling allows for the possibility of something called ‘Semitism.’” That idea “legitimizes a form of pseudo-scientific racial classification,” the IHRA said, and “divides the term, stripping it from its meaning of opposition and hatred toward Jews.”

Industry trend: Over the past year, mainstream media outlets have followed suit, including BuzzFeed and The Associated Press, the latter of which publishes a style guide that is widely consulted across journalism. Both publications adopted the new spelling in April. (JI switched to “antisemitism” in March of 2019.)

‘Discredited notion’: “We are dropping the hyphen and lowercasing the S, which is now the style of The Associated Press and is preferred by many academics and other experts,” the Times said in an internal note to editors on Aug. 16, which Corbett shared with JI. “Those who favor antisemitism argue that the hyphenated form, with the uppercase S, may inadvertently lend credence to the discredited notion of Jews as a separate race.”

Separate switch: The new spelling follows a separate, more public decision from the previous year in which the Times, like many publications that made the change amid a national reckoning over racial justice two summers ago, began “using uppercase ‘Black’ to describe people and cultures of African origin, both in the United States and elsewhere,” as the paper announced in a June 2020 editor’s note on its corporate website and in its print edition.

Read the full story here.