Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), speaking to a gathering of Jewish activists on Capitol Hill, highlighted concerns about rising left-wing antisemitism and the ways that antisemitic narratives are being spread to and by college students.

“We’re used to the right-wing side. What is new and what I think has so many in the Jewish community on our heels is that new left-wing antisemitism and how to approach it,” Slotkin said at a pre-High Holidays security briefing organized by several Jewish communal organizations. “How do we counteract it? How do we protect against it? How do we educate?”

“And certainly, we’re watching, on many college campuses, a lot of young people who actually maybe didn’t grow up with the Jewish community at all, get to campus and maybe repeat what they’re hearing, sometimes not even understanding or knowing,” she continued. “I would just say that one of our responsibilities as Jewish leaders and Jewish activists is to try and really parse through how to deal with antisemitism on the left, since antisemitism on the right isn’t good, but it’s more of a well-known threat.”

The freshman Michigan senator, who is working to establish herself as a leader in the chamber on national security issues, recently backed efforts to stop at least some offensive weapons shipments to Israel and emphasized that she hadn’t accepted endorsements from “Jewish group[s],” naming AIPAC and J Street.

Slotkin said at the Wednesday event that she “[doesn’t] think there’s been a more complicated and dicey time to be Jews in America, period, maybe since World War II.”

Speaking in support of the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, Slotkin said that one of the “most powerful moments that I had” during her time as a member of Congress was when a mosque in her district faced threats, and she worked with the local Jewish federation and her synagogue to help the mosque apply for an NSGP grant.

An emotional Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) referenced the killing of her friend, Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and the mass shooting at the Annunciation Church in Minneapolis as she discussed the rise of violent extremism across the country, including various incidents targeting the Jewish community.

“We have been through this each and every time, but the babies keep dying,” Klobuchar said.

Klobuchar said that in conversations with administration officials immediately after the Annunciation shooting, her top priority was pushing for increased NSGP funding, in addition to gun control measures and action to address extremism and incitement on social media platforms.

She highlighted that the Annunciation Church shooter had left a manifesto spreading hate against a range of targets including Jews, Muslims, Black people and Hispanic people, and emphasized that he and other mass shooters have been “performing for the internet.”

While she noted that data shows that political violence has been coming more from the right than the left, “I don’t want to go tit-for-tat. I care about what we’re doing now and going forward, and words matter right now for bringing America together,” Klobuchar said.

Speaking about threats to the Jewish community specifically, Klobuchar noted the rise in antisemitic hate crimes nationally, saying that “something is seriously wrong in our country.” She said that 25 Jewish facilities had received bomb threats in Minnesota in the past year.

“This has completely shattered people, kids are scared,” Klobuchar said.

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) said, referring to a string of recent antisemitic attacks, “I don’t care what fringe it comes from. This kind of extremism, hate and violence is unacceptable and needs to be condemned. … Foreign policy debates are complicated. Condemning antisemitism is not.”

She added that, as the generation that survived and witnessed the Holocaust shrinks, “we have to decide as a country if we will let their lessons pass.”

Hassan continued, “We can’t afford inaction. We can’t afford indifference, nor should we feel the need to offer qualification or apology, to simply say that the world’s oldest hate should be denounced as loudly as any other.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) also delivered remarks at the event, as did Rev. Russ McDougall, a member of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who was invited in part to discuss the Annunciation Church attack. Sens. James Lankford (R-OK) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV) delivered video remarks.

The session also featured a panel with Jewish Federations of North America CEO Eric Fingerhut, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations CEO William Daroff, Secure Communities Network CEO Michael Masters, Orthodox Union Executive Vice President Moshe Hauer and Anti-Defamation League director of government relations Carmiel Arbit.

Fingerhut told Jewish Insider there is “a domestic terror crisis” in the country “and we need comprehensive, strong action.”

“[Members of Congress] didn’t create the COVID problem either, but they responded with a crisis-level response, and that’s the level of response we need,” Fingerhut said.

He emphasized the need not only for increased NSGP funding but stronger funding for local law enforcement, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to fight domestic terrorism. He said that resourcing and funding at those agencies for the counterterrorism mission isn’t sufficient.

“We’re in an era now of a trillion-dollar defense budget that is aimed at fighting terror and protecting America all over the world,” Fingerhut said. “We have a domestic terror crisis here, and it needs the level of attention and coordinated leadership by the federal government that we get in national defense.”

Advocates with the Anti-Defamation League are set to lobby lawmakers this week on a series of actions related to antisemitism, including pushing to jump-start the stalled Antisemitism Awareness Act.

In connection with the start of the school year, the ADL is bringing a group of around 30 volunteers to the Hill, hailing from 13 states, for meetings with 11 Senate and 11 House offices, including seven Republicans and 15 Democrats, a spokesperson told Jewish Insider.

The group’s agenda for the House includes the Antisemitism Awareness Act, the top-priority legislation for major Jewish groups since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, that failed to pass Congress in 2024 and has again stalled in 2025, after a contentious Senate committee markup earlier this year. The House has yet to take action on the bill.

“Antisemitism is showing up in classrooms, on campuses, and in the daily lives of Jewish students in ways we have not seen in generations,” Lauren Wolman, ADL’s senior director of government relations and strategy, told JI. “Our Back-to-School Lobby Day is about ensuring that Congress takes this threat seriously — not tomorrow, not next year, but now. Every student deserves to learn in a safe and inclusive environment, and that requires action.”

The ADL advocates are also set to lobby in support of the HEAL Act, which would order an audit of national Holocaust education programs; for “robust funding” for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which House Republicans and the Trump administration have aimed to cut significantly; and for lawmakers to send letters to elementary and secondary schools in their districts, calling on the schools to implement clear policies on antisemitic harassment.

In the Senate, the advocates are set to push for the passage of the Protecting Students on Campus Act, which aims to make it easier for students to file discrimination claims, requires schools to report annually on instances of discrimination on campus and requires the Department of Education’s Inspector General to audit schools with high levels of discrimination complaints.

The Senate agenda does not include the Antisemitism Awareness Act, the passage of which in the upper chamber has been complicated by a series of poison-pill amendments added during the committee markup.

The version of the Antisemitism Awareness Act in the House remains unamended and could be passed with bipartisan support as-is, if brought to the floor, whereas additional procedural steps would be needed to bring forward a clean version of the bill in the Senate.

In meetings with Senate offices, the ADL activists are also set to support the HEAL Act, OCR funding and letters to local schools. The ADL will offer a letter template to lawmakers with recommendations including adopting a definition of antisemitism.

“Bringing together advocates from 13 states to meet with both Democrats and Republicans demonstrates the breadth of concern and the urgency of this issue,” Wolman continued. “From first-time volunteers to seasoned ADL leaders, our message is the same: protecting Jewish students is not partisan, it’s a matter of basic safety and civil rights.” 

According to ADL data, there were more than 850 incidents of antisemitism at elementary and secondary schools in 2024, in addition to 1,700 incidents on campus. In total, the two categories account for nearly 30% of antisemitic incidents nationwide.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp called for the Jewish community to step outside its “comfort zone” and look for new strategies to defend itself amid rising antisemitism, during a speech on Tuesday at the American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) annual Lamplighter Awards in Washington.

Karp, who was honored at the Chabad gala, also framed the battle against antisemitism as part of a broader fight for Western civilization and societies.

“Lessons that we’ve learned at Palantir … might be valuable for defending the West, in this particular case a particular tribe of people that are equally associated with the West, the Jewish people,” Karp said. “Palantir is a metaphor for working when there’s no playbook, and currently there is no playbook because institutions that have historically effectively defended people who’ve been discriminated against, especially Jewish people, are kind of not working.”

“If we’re going to have a meaningful chance of fighting, everybody’s going to have to leave their comfort zone a couple times a year,” Karp said. “It’s our job and my job to remind people [of] that, especially younger people here.”

He said that he’s “deeply, deeply grateful” for the Chabad award, “but I think we need a world where I don’t win this award, and there’s huge competition for it. … Why are so few people speaking up? There are very, very few people speaking up.”

“I should not be winning this award,” Karp continued. “I’m the least likely person to win this award, and any award in the Jewish community, ever.”

He said that he sees some who oppose the Jewish community as suffering from “Jewish derangement syndrome” and attacking Jews who are “a metaphor for agency and meritocracy” as part of a broader effort at “annihilating our societies.”

“We have to fight for a rule of law, meritocratic, high-agency society, and everybody’s going to have to help out, and that includes people who don’t like to ever speak out — finance, Hollywood, all sorts of other people,” the Palantir CEO continued.

He said that the Jewish community should focus on building alliances with people “who may not  [already like you]” and that building alliances with non-Jews is crucial — ”this is about higher values in our society.”

Karp also suggested that some Jewish nonprofits are failing to work effectively.

“One of the things we have in corporate America, is when institutions fail, they disappear,” Karp said. “We don’t have that in nonprofits. We’ve got to recognize that what’s [happening] now is not working.”

Karp was introduced onstage by Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American citizen taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and killed by the terrorist group in Gaza.

Goldberg-Polin said that she and her husband Jon had connected with Karp during their efforts to free their son, and that he had worked with the couple to strategize on ways to free the hostages. She said Karp and the Palantir team had offered “access, ideas, contacts, advice [and] connections,” as well as their support on a personal level.

“There were concepts that we had not heard anyone else suggest in the previous 95 days,” Goldberg-Polin said, recounting their first meeting. “This was the beginning of my glimpse into the creative, fearless and independent workings of the exquisitely complex mind of Alex Karp.”

Since Oct. 7, she continued, Karp had “showed up for Israel,” and Goldberg-Polin offered her gratitude on behalf of all of the hostage families.

“You spoke and continue to speak an unpopular truth and to chase justice. You are a righteous man. You are not afraid to jump,” she continued. “To all the people in this room with access to our decision-makers, history will remember all of us, and we will all be judged not based on equities, nor interests, nor politics, but on having the courage and integrity to do the right thing. To jump, even when it feels like there is no way forward.”

Karp, who has a doctorate in philosophy, was presented with a menorah and a signed first-edition copy of Man’s Search for Meaning, a book by philosopher Viktor Frankl about his experience in Nazi concentration camps. Frankl inscribed the book to a fellow survivor of Dachau.

One of the freed hostages who was held with Hersch Goldberg-Polin recounted that Goldberg-Polin had quoted Frankl while urging him to keep fighting to stay alive, speakers said.

Karp and other honorees were also honored with letters inscribed in a Torah scroll that the Chabad movement has been writing in significant locations throughout Washington, D.C.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) was honored at a pre-ceremony reception, and delivered remarks. White House Jewish liaison Martin Marks delivered a message on behalf of President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump.

Attendees from Capitol Hill included Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY), House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), Sens. Jack Reed (D-RI), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Michael Bennet (D-CO) and John Cornyn (R-TX) and Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Rob Menendez (D-NJ), Glenn Ivey (D-MD) and Greg Landsman (D-OH).

Antisemitism envoy-designate Yehuda Kaploun, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, undersecretary of state-designate Jacob Helberg, former Sen. Kirsten Sinema (I-AZ), former Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), who is now head of defense at Palantir, former Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and diplomats from close to 20 countries were also in the crowd.

John Fish, the chairman and CEO of Suffolk, served as the event chairman, and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck founder and chairman Norm Brownstein, Real Estate Roundtable president and CEO Jeff DeBoer and Palantir Executive Vice President Josh Harris served as co-chairs.

Rocky Zislin, the president of Chabad at George Washington University, and Conference of Presidents CEO William Daroff also delivered remarks at the event.

Like most social workers, Jennifer Kogan went into the field to help people. A therapist who works in Ontario, Canada, and Washington, she markets her private practice as “compassion-focused counseling.” Everyone is welcome here, a banner on her website states. 

But Kogan’s understanding of her profession has radically shifted in the two years since the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. Despite its focus on compassion, the field of social work has been engulfed by antisemitism, according to a new report authored by Kogan and Andrea Yudell, a licensed clinical social worker in Washington and Maryland. 

“Since Oct. 7, Jewish social workers have experienced unprecedented silencing, gaslighting, exclusion, isolation and public targeting in professional spaces,” states the report, which was published on Monday by the Jewish Social Work Consortium, an organization founded shortly after Oct. 7. 

Accusations of antisemitism have roiled the mental health field over the past two years. In April, the state of Illinois formally reprimanded a therapist who had created a list of “Zionist” therapists and encouraged colleagues not to refer clients to them. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) warned the American Psychological Association in May to respond to “persistent and pernicious” antisemitism among its members. 

The report describes Jewish social workers being targeted on industry-wide email listservs, doxed and publicly called out during academic courses and lectures. Many of the allegations took place in academic settings related to diversity, like a panel on “whiteness” at Catholic University’s National Catholic School of Social Service that reportedly called Jewish students “racist” and “white supremacists.” 

“While we are concerned with systemic oppression or bias against all other minorities, I believe the social work profession perpetrates it on the Jews,” said Judith Schagrin, the retired administrator of a municipal foster care agency in Maryland. “I never dreamt that there would be this level of hostility and ignorance. On the other hand, I have believed for many years that just like institutional racism against Black folks lingers right beneath the surface, I firmly believe that institutional antisemitism does as well.” 

Social work is a massive field, referring broadly to a profession that can encompass therapists in private practice, people working in public sector social services organizations, school counselors, religious leaders, administrators, social justice advocates and more. 

The report’s authors claim that antisemitic rhetoric — and, in particular, anti-Israel litmus tests foisted on Jewish practitioners — has become endemic in the field. 

Jewish social workers view this discrimination and disrespect as anathema to a key guiding principle of social work: the idea that empathy, and understanding individuals’ personal stories, is critical to “address life challenges and enhance wellbeing,” according to a global definition of social work adopted by the International Federation of Social Workers. They see a double standard applied to Jews, who are often expected to disavow Israel’s actions in Gaza before their concerns are taken seriously. (In January, the IFSW issued a formal “censure” against the Israeli Union of Social Workers because of its members’ history of service in Israel’s military, prompting a rebuke signed by nearly 4,000 Jewish therapists.)

“You’re supposed to extend cultural humility to various different groups, and I saw it extended to so many other groups. There’s Black Lives Matter, and then Asians that were experiencing anti-Asian hate. We were left out of that conversation, even though there were growing statistics that Jewish people were facing antisemitism in many contexts,” said Jodi Taub, a New York-based clinical social worker.

“The whole purpose of the field is, we’re there to support other humans,” added Taub. “Our job is to be supportive individuals, and social justice is supposed to be social justice for all. No one should have to go into graduate school and experience harassment and discrimination.” 

Many of the complaints in the report target the National Association of Social Workers, the field’s leading professional body, with 110,000 members. 

“The silence and negligence of NASW has been especially egregious,” the report’s authors write, referencing the group’s two-month delay in publicly addressing the events of Oct. 7 and its alleged reticence to strongly denounce antisemitism in the nearly two years since. An NASW spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. 

Debates about the war in Gaza have caused turmoil in an NASW listserv, where rhetoric condemning Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza and calls for boycotts of Israel have become increasingly common. Jewish social workers who wrote in the listserv to raise awareness about the hostages in Gaza or to respond to inaccurate messages about Israel often faced harassment.  

Taub said that after posting about the Israeli hostages in Gaza, she was targeted by someone she did not know who shared a screenshot of Taub’s business profile with the word “PROHIBITED” over it in red text, urging people to avoid her. (That social media post was quickly taken down.)

These experiences have colored the way Jewish social workers engage with their colleagues, casting an air of suspicion to interactions between them.

“It’s hard to know who’s safe, like who is someone that basically hates you, or someone who just doesn’t have an opinion whatsoever, or someone that is behind you,” said Kogan. “It’s very dehumanizing to read what people are writing.”

Carole Cox, a professor at Fordham’s Graduate School of Social Service, has worked in the field for decades, with a particular focus on Alzheimer’s caregivers and on grandparents raising grandchildren. Now, she’d think twice about telling a young Jewish person to enter the field.

“”It’s difficult to tell a Jewish person, ‘Yes, go into social work, you will love it,’” Cox told JI. “There were so many Jewish pioneers in the profession, and now many social workers are actually hiding their Jewish identity.” 

Rep. Laura Gillen (D-NY) blasted New York Gov. Kathy Hochul for endorsing Democratic New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, citing Mamdani’s record on antisemitism.

Gillen joins Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), a fellow Long Island swing district representative, in reaffirming her strong opposition to Mamdani at a time when other New York leaders, including Hochul and Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY), are warming to the controversial nominee.

“I completely disagree with the Governor’s endorsement of Mr. Mamdani,” Gillen told Jewish Insider. “At a time of skyrocketing antisemitism, his views are far too extreme and would fuel hate and threats against our Jewish community. His antisemitic views deserve to be condemned, not endorsed.” 

Mamdani recently said he would revoke Mayor Eric Adams’ executive order implementing the use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism in the city, as well as repeated his vow to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at the behest of the International Criminal Court, for committing war crimes if he visits the city.

Over the weekend, the California State Assembly passed a bill that is intended to address what Jewish community advocates describe as crisis levels of antisemitism in the state’s K-12 schools. 

The bill passed despite the objections of the powerful California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers’ union, which had stalled the legislation in July, claiming that efforts to combat antisemitism could impinge on teachers’ academic freedom when it came to discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 

It was just one of several examples of influential state and national teachers’ unions presenting a roadblock against efforts to fight antisemitism in public schools, where discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students has skyrocketed over the past two years — even though many of those efforts have broad support from within the Jewish community, and from outside it, too. 

In California, the CTA and anti-Israel groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations were on one side of the issue, facing a diverse coalition of the bill’s backers that included the legislature’s Jewish, Black, Latino and Asian American and Pacific Islander caucuses. In an effort to appease the CTA during negotiations, some parts of the bill were removed, including language that would’ve defined what constituted an antisemitic learning environment. 

But the union never changed course. 

The CTA debacle began in July, just days after the representative body of the National Education Association — the national union to which CTA belongs — voted to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League, a move that shocked many Jewish educators. And last December, an American Jewish Committee report accused the Massachusetts Teachers Association of promoting anti-Israel educational materials to its members. These developments have come amid a steady trickle of news reports over the last two years showcasing educators bringing controversial and at times antisemitic views into the classroom. 

All of which raises an uncomfortable question for many Jewish parents: Why are unions that are committed to equity and representation often resistant to incorporating protections that Jewish families say will keep their kids safe and supported at school? 

In California, the CTA said that a bill focusing only on antisemitism “might be seen as prioritizing one form of discrimination over others, potentially alienating groups facing other forms of systemic discrimination, such as Islamophobia, ableism or xenophobia.” But a companion bill passed by the legislature this weekend that takes aim at racism, gender discrimination, religious discrimination and homophobia in schools should render that argument moot. A CTA spokesperson declined to comment last week. 

So far, though, the teachers unions have not been successful in their efforts to marginalize Jewish organizations and counter antisemitism measures. 

The NEA’s top leadership quickly backtracked on the anti-ADL resolution (although they took a swipe at the organization in the process). In Massachusetts, a statewide antisemitism committee said in August that K-12 schools should implement the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism. In California, the 300,000-member CTA was not able to muster the political capital to quash the antisemitism bill. Gov. Gavin Newsom now has a month to decide whether to sign it.

“We’ve got a long way to go,” the ADL’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, told Jewish Insider in July, to ensure “our community is respected for who we are.” 

When Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland took the stage on Sunday evening at the Capital Jewish Museum’s gala in Washington, he won over the crowd instantly with his opening line: “Shalom, friends.” 

But as he continued his speech, Moore used the occasion — an introduction of the philanthropist David Rubenstein, one of the dinner’s honorees — to decry rising antisemitism in the United States and, in particular, the murder of Israeli Embassy staffers Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky outside the museum in May. 

“We received, once again, a very unneeded reminder of the fact that this nation still has wounds. That the level of antisemitism that we see in our society is not just intolerable, it’s heartbreaking,” said Moore. “I’m a person of deep faith, and while I might not have shared faith with them, Yaron was my brother and Sarah was my sister.” 

“I know that in their name and in their lives, we are committed in the state of Maryland to making sure that Maryland can be a true safe haven for everybody to know that they should always and will always feel comfortable in their own neighborhoods, comfortable in their own environments, comfortable in their own skin, comfortable in their homes of worship, and comfortable in the thing that gives them peace and joy,” said Moore. 

“In the state of Maryland,” Moore continued, “we will make sure that hate will never find oxygen.”

Moore, a popular Democrat who has been floated as a potential Democratic presidential contender, said on Meet the Press last week that he plans to seek reelection in 2026 and serve his full term — effectively ruling out a 2028 White House run.

When several hundred people gathered on Sunday evening at the French Embassy in Washington for the Capital Jewish Museum’s second annual gala, they did so in service of a simple theme: “preserving history and building bridges.”

That message was particularly resonant as the evening’s honorees and organizers paid tribute to a tragic moment in recent history that will be part of the story of Washington’s Jewish community forever: the murder of Israeli Embassy staffers Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky outside the museum in May.

“It was a horrific, brazen act of antisemitic violence, a wrenching reminder of the importance of what the museum does every day of its existence and the fact that it collects artifacts, but it is a living, breathing place for a viable Jewish community to go, and that’s what was happening that day,” CNN anchor Dana Bash, who emceed the gala, said at the start of the event, as she introduced a moment of silence for Milgrim and Lischinsky. 

The Capital Jewish Museum opened in downtown Washington in 2023 with a commitment to teaching the history of the District’s local Jewish community, in the context of the city’s unique role as a nexus for civic-minded Americans. Speakers throughout the evening, including Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, touted the diversity and warmth of Washington while taking not-so-subtle jabs at President Donald Trump’s recent takeover of the city’s police force. 

“You know that the real D.C. is 700,000 people that actually live here, go to work, raise their families and are tax-paying Americans,” Bowser said. “While we are diverse, we are also a connected city, and so we know in our honorees tonight that they have followed their faith [and] invested in their families, their city and their nation.” 

The Sunday evening gala honored the investor and philanthropist David Rubenstein and Esther Safran Foer, the former longtime CEO of Sixth & I Synagogue and the Capital Jewish Museum’s founding board president. The two were asked, in conversation with Bash, where each traces their love of history.

For Rubenstein, the co-founder of the private equity giant Carlyle, who has supported major American institutions like the National Archives and the Kennedy Center, the answer was a sixth grade teacher who encouraged him to watch President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, sparking a lifelong love of American history. He used historical reference points — immigration quotes from 1915 and the doomed voyage of the MS St. Louis, a European ship with Jewish refugees on board that was turned away by the U.S. — to bemoan antisemitism as “at a level I’ve never seen before in my lifetime.” 

Foer described a lifelong search for answers about her family’s story in Ukraine, which they fled after the Holocaust. She detailed that quest in her 2020 memoir, I Want You To Know We’re Still Here. 

“Pulling together the family history and the context of the history of the times has been kind of a lifelong obsession for me,” said Foer, who was born in Poland in a displaced persons camp soon after World War II ended. 

“My background is a Holocaust background, but when I wrote my book and I was working on the title, my working title was, ‘I Want You To Know We’re Still Here,’ and it ultimately became a title, because that’s our story. The Holocaust happened at a terrible time, a terrible place, but there’s a vibrant Jewish life here, in other countries. We need to celebrate that, and a museum is a way to celebrate that, to keep telling the stories.” 

Desmond Holly, the suspected shooter who critically injured two students at Evergreen High School in Colorado on Wednesday, shared antisemitic and white nationalist views online, according to the Denver Post and the Anti-Defamation League.

Local authorities said Thursday that Holly had been “radicalized by some extremist network,” without specifying further.

According to the Denver Post, one of Holly’s online accounts used a coded slogan for Holocaust denial and reposted antisemitic videos and other videos showing individuals in Nazi uniforms.

The ADL’s Center on Extremism said Friday that Holly’s TikTok accounts were “filled with white supremacist symbolism,” including a reference to the white nationalist “14 words” slogan, and utilized a neo-Nazi symbol in his profile photo.

The ADL reported that Holly, in online interactions, shared photos of patches he had created featuring neo-Nazi symbols, similar to those used by prior mass shooters. He also shared a photo of himself in a mask that featured multiple white nationalist symbols and slogans, including “TJD” — standing for “Total Jew Death.”

According to the ADL, Holly collected tactical gear — inspired in some cases by past mass shooters — which he decorated with extremist symbols, posted internet content mimicking prior shooters and suggested in online comments that he was preparing to carry out an attack. 

His accounts included numerous references to Brenton Tarrant, the far-right killer who murdered 51 at two mosques in New Zealand, among other mass killers.

Holly also maintained an account on an internet forum where users share images and footage of various deaths and murders, and commented on posts about past mass shootings, according to the ADL research. The platform has been used by multiple prior mass shooters.

Similar fascinations with extremist and antisemitic views and prior school shooters, as well as apparent interactions with online extremist networks, have been a feature of several recent mass attacks.

“The deeply disturbing specifics of this case follow a pattern recently discovered by ADL Center on Extremism, which its analysts have found in at least three school shootings committed by young people over the past year,” the ADL report stated, including engagement with some of the same online forums.

The Colorado shooting took place shortly after the killing of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk in Utah.

A key California Senate committee voted on Wednesday to advance an amended bill targeting antisemitism in K-12 schools, following two months of closed-door negotiations that came after the state’s largest teachers’ union announced its opposition to the bill and stalled its passage. 

The version of the bill that came before the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday night was markedly different from an earlier version that had been approved unanimously by the State Assembly in May. But when the 300,000-member California Teachers Association came out against the bill in July, arguing that its targeting of antisemitism could affect teachers’ “academic freedom,” lawmakers scrapped a planned hearing in order to take time to try to assuage the powerful union. 

The CTA never withdrew its opposition to the bill, and the group’s chief lobbyist urged senators to vote against it at a Wednesday hearing that saw more than 500 people testify about the legislation. Tyler Gregory, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area, said the union had been “negotiating in bad faith.” A CTA spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. 

“I am disappointed that they’re still opposing the bill so aggressively. We’ve worked so hard to address their concerns,” state Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat who chairs the Legislative Jewish Caucus, told Jewish Insider. “It’s a narrower and more focused bill than it was before, but it’s still quite impactful and it sets some clear standards, and creates an antisemitism coordinator, so it’s a good bill.” 

The bill would create a statewide Office of Civil Rights, where a new antisemitism prevention coordinator would be located. If the bill passes, that office will track antisemitism in California schools and provide antisemitism education to California teachers and administrators to help prevent and combat discrimination. 

Although the legislation would provide educational materials about antisemitism to school personnel, the biggest change from the prior draft was the removal of a section that defined antisemitism and provided examples of what would constitute an “antisemitic learning environment.” 

These examples included “assertions of dual loyalty directed at Jewish individuals or communities,” “equating Jews or Israelis with Nazis or Nazi Germany,” “denial, erasure, or distortion of Jewish history, ancestry, identity, or culture” and “language or images directly or indirectly denying the right of Israel to exist, demonizing Jewish people, or saying that Jewish people do not belong in a country or community.” 

Instead, the plan endorsed a 2024 antisemitism strategy authored by Gov. Gavin Newsom and the 2023 plan released by the Biden White House. 

“There was a lot of discussion about how antisemitism should be defined, and ultimately there wasn’t sufficient consensus for that to be a part of the bill,” said Robert Trestan, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s western division. “There are sufficient effective provisions of the bill that will make a difference for Jewish students in California, and if we didn’t think it’s going to be effective, we wouldn’t support it.” 

A CTA board member wrote in an August op-ed that the bill’s sponsors “are trying to bring right-wing, Trump-style censorship to California schools while undermining legitimate efforts to fight antisemitism.” 

Wiener said Trump’s heavy-handed approach to antisemitism at U.S. universities has complicated efforts for California lawmakers to address the issues. 

“It’s made our lives harder. I understand the sensitivity given the current political environment,” said Wiener. “That said, when you have a large number of Jews, including Jewish parents and Jewish students, coming forward and saying, ‘We have a problem and we need to solve it,’ you shouldn’t just dismiss that or say, ‘Oh, well, it’s too harsh because of academic freedom.’”

He suggested there’s a double standard at play when it comes to arguments about academic freedom and its connection to antisemitism. 

“If a teacher started teaching that there were good sides of slavery, I am confident that the school would shut that down immediately and that no one would argue,” Wiener said. “But when it comes to Jews, well, then it’s about academic freedom.”

The Senate Education Committee voted the bill out of committee unanimously, and it was approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday night. It still needs to be passed by the full state Senate and then go back to the Assembly, all by the end of the week, when the legislative session ends, in order to make it to Newsom’s desk for his signature. A spokesperson for Newsom declined to comment. 

A delegation of 13 senior police officials from the New York area returned to the U.S. on Friday fresh off an intensive week in Israel designed to increase their counterterrorism training and understanding of antisemitism.

Organized by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora and Combating Antisemitism, along with U.S. Jewish security groups Community Security Initiative and Community Security Service, the trip included a tour of Mabat 2000, the visual surveillance system deployed by Israel Police and visits to the Nova music festival massacre site and several kibbutzim attacked on Oct. 7, 2023. 

“These are all things that these police commissioners will all relate to,” said Mitch Silber, executive director of CSI. 

“This trip has enhanced my understanding of Jewish culture, enabled me to observe firsthand the challenges Israeli law enforcement faces and will help us better protect the Jewish community and the county as a whole,” Kevin Catalina, the police commissioner of Suffolk County on Long Island, told Jewish Insider. “The knowledge and experience gained during this trip will no doubt prove invaluable.” 

Silber reflected on a tour of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum and memorial — describing it as one of the most meaningful parts of the trip. 

“You’ve got American police chiefs from the greater New York area walking through Yad Vashem, hearing about the origins of the Nazi regime and how the Holocaust happened.”

“The goal is to bring New York-area law enforcement and local security partners to Israel for training on antisemitism, how Israel encounters terrorism and [to learn about] the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Silber told JI. “How do you sensitize a police department that’s probably not particularly Jewish and to understand, why is it that they need to have a police car outside of a sukkah? What even is Sukkot? What is Yom Kippur? By helping them to understand the Jewish experience and why Jews seem to be disproportionately the target.”

The delegation was made up of senior police executives, chiefs and commissioners from Long Island, Westchester and Rockland counties and Connecticut. Many were returning to the Jewish state for their second time — following a similar trip that ran in early October 2023, but was cut short due to the Oct. 7 attacks. 

“I was on the CSI/CSS trip that experienced Oct. 7 in Ashdod and had to be evacuated,” Mike Kopy, public safety commissioner of Rye, N.Y., told JI. “Even as we headed to the airport that day I saw the resilience of ordinary Israelis as they headed to their bases. I thought it was important to return now in order to better understand the current situation and take what we have learned about antisemitism and counterterrorism home to New York to better protect our Jewish community and residents.” 

This trip also provided a firsthand glimpse into some of the challenges Israel Police confront. On Monday, six Israelis were killed when two terrorists opened fire at a bus stop in Jerusalem. 

At the time of the shooting, “we were on our way to the Israel National Police Jerusalem command center,” said Silber. “We met with senior Jerusalem police officials to learn how you police a multiethnic, multireligious city like Jerusalem.” 

According to data from early 2025, Jews were the target of 62% of all hate crimes in New York City. “Why is that?” Silber said. “Some of the lectures we’ve gotten are about the history of Jewish people in European countries and the trend of at some point a government deciding it’s not worthwhile protecting those communities and those communities have to move. It all depends on whether law enforcement wants to protect them or not.” 

As The New Yorker refrains from addressing its controversial decision to invite an antisemitic speaker to join its upcoming festival, the magazine has otherwise exhibited a notably hostile emphasis on Israel and related issues over the past few months.

Isaac Chotiner, a staff writer for The New Yorker well-known for conducting blunt and aggressive Q&As on a variety of news-related topics, has recently been fixated on Israel — focusing almost exclusively on the subject in what have often been combative interviews with defenders of Israel who span the political spectrum.

From late July to late August, Chotiner published six consecutive interviews concerning Israel, and conducted nearly a dozen more over the preceding three-month period. His two most recent interviews on the subject featured particularly contentious discussions with Jack Lew, former U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Biden administration, and Norman J.W. Goda, a professor of Holocaust studies at the University of Florida.

Speaking with Lew last month, Chotiner repeatedly challenged the Biden administration’s approach to Israel’s war in Gaza — using a relentlessly skeptical tone that the interviewer has not shown in his questioning of anti-Israel interlocutors. 

In one illustrative exchange, Lew insisted that Chotiner was “putting words in my mouth” on a  point about the Biden administration’s diplomatic engagement with Israel over the course of the war, with the former ambassador calling the issue more complex than he believed their conversation was permitting.

For his part, Goda, who has prominently argued against labeling Israel’s military conduct in Gaza a genocide, sounded frustrated with Chotiner’s line of questioning as they debated the issue during a Q&A conducted in August. At one point, Chotiner said he was “surprised” that Goda, who is widely respected in his field and had characterized “the relationship between Holocaust studies and the war in Gaza” as “very fraught,” would choose to focus on the semantics around allegations of genocide instead of “the actual situation going on in Gaza today.”

“You’re acting like I’m splitting hairs over the word ‘genocide,’” Goda replied, pushing back against the framing. “The word ‘genocide’ has been ricocheting around the internet and around social media.”

Chotiner, whose interviews often feature lengthy, bracketed responses added after his discussions have taken place, has previously engaged in tense conversations about Israel. The New Yorker writer has won praise for his prosecutorial approach on a range of issues — and his consistent ability to push his targets into uttering exasperated or unflattering remarks.

Some of his interviewees have seemed to regret speaking with him, including Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, who took part in a heated debate three years ago about whether anti-Zionism equates to antisemitism. Asked by Chotiner if he would agree that “the debate over Zionism has not necessarily had this ‘anti-Semitic veneer’ for centuries, right? There are a lot of Jews who were anti-Zionists before,” Greenblatt responded: “Give me a—Isaac. Sure, there were Jews who were worried that it would create more anti-Semitism directed against them in America. When you ask me these questions, it suggests to me that you’re coming at this from a particular editorial perspective.”

In 2019, Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., abruptly ended what he criticized as a “hostile” interview with Chotiner as they discussed Israel’s disputed territorial claims to the West Bank. “I don’t think you are actually interested in anything I have to say,” Oren said to Chotiner before hanging up on their call.

But in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and ensuing war in Gaza, Chotiner has taken a hostile approach to interviewing pro-Israel voices who have been sharp critics of the Israeli government, from the Israeli-American author Yossi Klein Halevi to The Atlantic’s contributing writer Eliot Cohen.

Owing to the preponderance of such interviews, media watchers will be scrutinizing The New Yorker over how it handles its upcoming rountable conversation with Hasan Piker, the far-left streamer who has gained notoriety for a range of extreme comments about Israel and Jews, including remarks that have justifed the Oct. 7 attacks and denied reports of sexual violence committed by Hamas.

The magazine’s decision to invite the controversial influencer to speak at its festival next month, where he will join a discussion about how the internet has reshaped politics, has spurred speculation among critics that he will likely continue to receive friendly or nonconfrontational treatment by the mainstream media, which has largely ignored his extreme views as his popularity has risen in recent years.

In an extensive profile of Piker published in The New Yorker in March, for instance, the reporter Andrew Marantz, who will moderate the festival’s upcoming roundtable, only lingered briefly on the streamer’s “relentless” criticism of Israel and his sympathetic remarks about Hezbollah and other terror groups.

The New Yorker has so far avoided commenting on Piker’s upcoming appearance, even as it has drawn condemnation from the ADL as well as the attorney Gloria Allred, among other critics. Chotiner did not return a request for comment.

Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old Trump ally and conservative campus advocacy leader who was fatally shot at an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday, was seen as a crucial bulwark against rising antisemitism and anti-Israel antagonism on the far right, friends and acquaintances told Jewish Insider.

While he was best known as a fierce and unyielding critic of what he assailed as the excesses of left-wing culture, Kirk, the founder of the youth activist group Turning Point USA, also cautioned against the risks of young conservatives embracing antisemitism and online conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel.   

“There is a corner of the internet, of people that want to point and blame the Jews for all their problems,” he said at a recent event. “Everybody, this is demonic and it’s from the pit of hell and it should not be tolerated.”

Jewish conservatives who were close with Kirk both personally and professionally lamented his death as a major loss for the long-term standing of pro-Israel sentiment in the MAGA movement, citing his continued defense of Israel and recent commentary warning against the embrace of antisemitism on the far right while visiting college campuses nationwide with TPUSA.

Kirk’s impact on the online right’s discourse was significant, and his views on Israel were closely watched as other right-wing podcasters turned more critical of the Jewish state. In the runup to the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Kirk drew outsized attention for cautioning the Trump administration against attacking Iran, citing the fallout from young conservatives, who supported the president over his promise to end foreign wars.

But after the attack was successful, Kirk praised Trump’s decision after the strikes degraded Iran’s nuclear threat without the U.S. getting involved in a wider war.

Rabbi Pesach Wolicki, executive director of Israel365 Action, a subset of Israel365, the advocacy group that describes itself as an “Orthodox Jewish institution that believes that Jews and Christians must respect one another,” spoke to Kirk on Tuesday evening for what he referred to as a “work meeting.” Wolicki said he could not get into details of the call, but noted that the two began communicating regularly as Kirk began facing pushback from the far right for refusing to abandon his support for Israel. 

“The fact is, Charlie didn’t agree with every decision that the Israeli government made, but he was one of the most avid defenders of Israel out there,” Wolicki told JI. “Most people’s exposure to Charlie visiting campuses is those viral clips they would release, but 40 to 50% of the questions Charlie would get on campuses for the last year and a half were about Israel. He didn’t go to those campuses to talk about Israel, but that’s where the students would always bring it to. Half the time he was on those campuses, he was defending Israel.”

While he and Kirk did not always align in their conversations about Israel, the GOP activist “was always wanting to learn, wanting to know what the truth is and what are the right ways to answer these questions,” Wolicki said. 

“All I saw in every conversation was sincerity and concern and just a love for Israel, even when he disagreed with Israel, even when Israel frustrated him,” he told JI. 

Even as Kirk faced criticism for defending Elon Musk after the billionaire tech mogul came under scrutiny for amplifying an antisemitic conspiracy theory, his allies said he had a strong connection to Israel and the Jewish community that motivated his advocacy.

Josh Hammer, a conservative political commentator and a personal friend of Kirk’s, argued that Kirk’s affinity for the Jewish people was grounded in his evangelical Christian faith and the fact that some of his earliest professional mentors were conservative pro-Israel champions like David Horowitz and Dennis Prager. 

Hammer said he and Kirk engaged regularly on the best ways to address rising antisemitism within the GOP, and that he was concerned about how Kirk’s absence going forward would impact that surge.

“He was a young conservative leader, and he very much had his thumb on the pulse of the fact that Gen Z is trending in a not so healthy direction on the Israel issue and on antisemitism in general,” he told JI. 

“We would talk about how to turn back the tide against that,” Hammer added. “He was really holding back some really nasty stuff in some very young, far-right online circles. He was doing more than maybe anyone in the country to fight that. Part of me kind of worries, frankly, about what that energy does from here in his absence.”

Kirk, an evangelical Christian, had been working on a book about the Sabbath that is set to be published in December, called Stop, in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life. 

“He would turn his phone off and generally disconnect for 24 to 25 hours,” Hammer told JI. “He was someone who genuinely believed not just in the New Testament and part of the Christian Bible, but he genuinely believed in the Hebrew Bible as well. He had a very special place in his heart for those who were called upon to be God’s chosen people in this world. He was of genuine conviction that the land of Israel was promised to the Jewish people.”

Jewish American and Israeli leaders expressed appreciation on Wednesday for Kirk’s support for the Jewish community and Israel, which he visited at least twice on trips he recounted as personally meaningful.

“Charlie Kirk was murdered for speaking truth and defending freedom,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on social media. “A lion-hearted friend of Israel, he fought the lies and stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization.”

Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a former White House advisor, called Kirk “a close friend and a special human being,” saying he “represented the best of MAGA. Firm in his beliefs, compassionate, curious, and respectful.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition, in a statement on Wednesday, said that Kirk had been “a shining light in these troubled times for the American Jewish community, and we are deeply saddened at his passing.”

“Charlie was a fearless advocate for freedom, a supporter of Israel and the Jewish people, and a friend,” the RJC said. “He was cut down while doing what he loved to do, communicating with the next generation of American leaders on college campuses about the issues that affect us all.”

Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said she was “devastated by the horrific, unconscionable, depraved murder of Charlie Kirk,” adding: “Political violence should have no place in this country, and it’s incumbent on political leaders on both sides of the aisle to make that clear.”

Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Jewish pro-Trump activist and outspoken opponent of campus antisemitism, said that Kirk’s death leaves a vacuum on the right as antisemitic figures including Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes find growing audiences. 

“Charlie repeatedly referred to antisemitism as ‘demonic’” and “hated it viscerally,” Kestenbaum told JI.

“Behind the scenes, Charlie was working with prominent Jewish individuals here in America to change the narrative surrounding Israel,” he said. “He was a mentor to me and millions all over this country. I fear for the future of the conservative movements’ attitudes towards Israel without Charlie.”

Much of the antisemitism on college campuses is fueled by faculty and staff — both on campus and within professional academic organizations — according to a survey released on Wednesday by the Anti-Defamation League and the Academic Engagement Network. 

Seventy-three percent of the 209 Jewish faculty members polled from universities around the U.S. reported observing antisemitic activities or statements from faculty, administrators or staff on campuses, including calls to boycott Israel and doxxing campaigns. Forty-four percent said they were aware of an organized Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapter on their campus.

“My chair is pro-Hamas (explicitly so) and has turned our department into an encampment, full of ‘river to the sea’ slogans and propaganda,” an anonymous faculty member shared in the survey. “When I and a few other Jewish faculty objected, the chair organized about 50 people to verbally attack us, including one who told me that we had all the money and power. Consequently, my department is a hostile work environment, and I can no longer attend events or participate in departmental life there.”

Another wrote that they are “attacked in all directions” and “no longer feel safe on campus.”

Due to these experiences, more than one-third of all of the surveyed respondents (38%) reported having felt a need to hide their Jewish and/or Zionist identity from others on campus. Twenty-five percent of those who are members of academic associations said they feel pressure to hide their identity in those groups. 

The study comes as calls for the adoption of academic boycotts of the Jewish state have gained momentum in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war, within several professional associations and among some prominent classroom professors. 

Last month, the American Association of Geographers faced pressure from its members to adopt a boycott of Israel, and shortly after, the head of the American Association of University Professors said that the United States should not send defensive weapons to Israel amid its war against Hamas, which he called a genocide in Gaza. 

“What we’re seeing is a betrayal of the fundamental principles of academic freedom and collegiality. Jewish faculty are being forced to hide their identities, excluded from professional opportunities, and told by their own colleagues what constitutes antisemitism — even as they experience it firsthand. This hostile environment is driving talented educators and researchers  away from careers they’ve dedicated their lives to building,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement about the survey.  

“Colleges and universities are meant to be open, safe learning environments where faculty and students alike feel comfortable sharing ideas and having open discourse,” said Miriam Elman, AEN’s executive director. “It’s disturbing, but perhaps unsurprising, that Jewish and Zionist faculty on campuses across the country are experiencing antisemitic hostility and retaliation for their beliefs.” 

“What’s even more alarming,” Elman continued, “is that much of this animosity is driven by the faculty and staff themselves, creating an unsafe work environment for their colleagues and an unwelcoming learning environment for their students. Administrators must address these issues head-on and take meaningful action to protect the flow of free ideas and open inquiry on their campuses, or their institutions will suffer for generations to come.”

Over the weekend, The New York Times published a story contending that the momentum for settlements with elite universities was stalling amid divisions between those in the Trump administration looking to make a deal and those looking for more meaningful reforms in combating antisemitism. 

The story glossed over the related development we’ve been hearing from officials involved in the negotiating process: that a zeal for dealmaking from some officials is overshadowing the main reason the Trump administration was playing hardball with these schools in the first place — the rampant antisemitism that has been festering on campus.

In fact, the word “antisemitism” was hardly mentioned in the lengthy NYT story, a sign in itself of the administration’s flagging focus.

Indeed, many of the deals struck — along with the outlines of potential future deals — have focused on the dollar amounts in the settlement, without requiring many significant reforms that would deal with antisemitism at the elite schools.

Columbia University agreed in July, following a lengthy legal battle, to pay a $200 million settlement over three years to the federal government. In addition to the legal penalty, the Ivy League school — which did not admit to wrongdoing in the resolution agreement — pledged to implement a series of commitments aimed at protecting Jewish students. 

These include further incorporating the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism by requiring its Office of Institutional Equity to embrace the definition; appointing a Title VI coordinator to review alleged violations of the Civil Rights Act; requiring antisemitism training for all students, faculty and staff; and refusing to recognize or meet with anti-Israel student coalition Columbia University Apartheid Divest.

On Columbia’s campus, some pro-Israel students expressed disappointment over those “largely symbolic” commitments, which diverged from a list of reforms initially demanded by the Trump administration. 

Soon after Columbia, Brown University entered into an agreement with the Trump administration to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding. The settlement also primarily focused on money rather than reform, although unlike Columbia, Brown was not required to pay a fine directly to the federal government. The university instead agreed to pay $50 million over 10 years to workforce development organizations in Rhode Island. It also agreed to launch a third-party campus climate survey in an effort to protect Jewish students. 

Meanwhile, the conversation surrounding a possible settlement with Harvard has increasingly centered on the significant size of the potential payment — a whopping half-billion dollars — over any of the institutional changes the university will need to make. Sources familiar with the dealmaking confirm to Jewish Insider that President Donald Trump himself is increasingly enamored with the size of the payment, which has led some of his advisors to focus less on reforms and more on the money.

“There’s growing dissatisfaction with the White House letting universities buy their way out of accountability with no meaningful change. It’s clear they’ve been totally out-negotiated,” said one source familiar with the negotiations. 

Reading the Times story, the administration officials working to fight against the universities’ harassment of their Jewish students were caricatured as “ideologically driven aides,” whereas those looking to cut lucrative financial deals were portrayed as the pragmatists. 

The reality is the opposite. Securing government payouts as the primary achievement for using state power to freeze a private university’s funds makes the whole enterprise seem like extortion. Putting in the work to make sure these abuses don’t happen again is what would make the exertion of government power more justifiable.

Indeed, the outcome of this showdown with elite universities — with negotiations with Cornell and Northwestern taking place now — will be a test of whether many of the systemic abuses that led to the extraordinary freeze on research funding will be rolled back, or whether the tolerance of anti-Jewish discrimination on campus could become the new normal.

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) is asking the presidents of the largest colleges and universities in Ohio to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism and ensure that their respective institutions have plans in place to combat campus antisemitism during the upcoming school year, Jewish Insider has learned.

Moreno sent letters on Tuesday to the presidents of The Ohio State University, Miami University, Kent State University, Cleveland State University, Youngstown State University, the University of Cincinnati, Central State University, the University of Toledo, Bowling Green State University, Akron University, Ohio University, Wright State University, Northeast Ohio Medical University and Shawnee State University. 

In the letters, the Ohio senator requested information on how each school was responding to “the unacceptable and disgusting rise in antisemitism” and the ways each plans to “protect students’ safety while on campus from antisemitism and/or other religiously motivated crimes.”

Moreno also urged the schools to adopt the IHRA definition, which he argued “provides clarity on what constitutes antisemitism and can serve as a tool on campus to help combat hate crimes and foster a safer environment for Jewish students.”

“I want to make sure that university leaders are doing all they can to ensure students are free not only to learn on college campuses but also to feel safe while doing so, regardless of their religion,” Moreno wrote.

Moreno praised the Trump administration’s efforts to combat antisemitism in the letters, writing that the White House was “taking strong and necessary action” on the matter.

“Jewish Americans are under attack in this country. Americans have witnessed the manifestation of rampant antisemitism on college campuses all over the country,” Moreno wrote. “Horrifyingly, hate crimes and domestic terrorism have plagued the Jewish community. Recently, in this country, Jewish Americans have been murdered in cold blood and burned alive. These attacks are reminiscent of 1939. It is 2025 – the violence against Jews must stop.”

Growing up at a Reform temple in suburban Boston, Sarah Hurwitz learned that Judaism is just “four holidays, two texts and a few universalistic values.” 

When she left home, she largely eschewed all Jewish observance for two decades, she reflected in a recent interview with Jewish Insider. In that time, she got two degrees at Harvard and reached the pinnacle of Washington success, serving as a senior speechwriter, first to President Barack Obama and then to First Lady Michelle Obama. If she engaged with Judaism at all, it was with a light touch — she was merely a “cultural Jew,” as she usually called herself. 

“I just didn’t realize there was Jewish culture. I just meant, ‘Oh, I’m anxious and kind of funny,’” Hurwitz told JI last month. 

Approaching a midlife crisis, Hurwitz found her way to an intro to Judaism class at a Washington synagogue nearly a decade ago. She embarked on a journey of learning Jewish traditions and studying Jewish texts that sparked her first book, the 2019 Here All Along, a joyful and accessible primer to Judaism. 

“Its thesis was, ‘Isn’t Judaism amazing?’ Not a lot of Jews are going to disagree with that thesis,” Hurwitz said. 

She is doing something different with her new book, As A Jew: Reclaiming Our Story From Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us, which was published this week. 

“This is definitely a book with an argument. It is definitely edgier than my first book,” Hurwitz said. 

That’s because in As A Jew, Hurwitz is grappling with a question that struck at the core of who she is, or at least who she was until a decade ago. Why, she asks, was she always qualifying her Judaism? She was always a “cultural Jew,” an “ethnic Jew,” a “social justice Jew,” she writes. Hurwitz was never simply a Jew, one word, proud, head tall. 

In her new book, as she tackles the millennia of antisemitism that led her to unwittingly minimize her own identity, she is asking questions that others who similarly distort or diminish their Jewish identity may not want to face. 

“I was really trying to make others comfortable with me, right? I didn’t want them to think I was one of those really Jew-y Jews, which … why would that be bad, again?” Hurwitz said. “Why did social justice have to be my Judaism? Why couldn’t Judaism be my Judaism?”

This doesn’t mean Hurwitz is criticizing people who engage with Judaism through a social justice lens, or through culture, or any other avenue besides religious observance. Her own personal Jewish learning journey has not made her an Orthodox Jew. The argument she’s making is that Jews should engage with Judaism … well, Jewishly — by learning what Jewish texts have to say about social justice, rather than taking some universal values like “care for the vulnerable” and calling that your Judaism.

“Social justice is also a gorgeous way to be a Jew when you actually know what Judaism says about social justice,” said Hurwitz. “When I was this kind of contentless Jew, I don’t really know what I was doing. I was often just articulating my own views and opinions and kind of attributing them to Judaism.” 

She begins with a basic question: The Holocaust happened because the Nazis hated the Jews. But why did they hate the Jews? OK, the Jews were the scapegoat after World War I. But why the Jews? That unanswered question makes it hard for anyone to identify modern-day antisemitism, Hurwitz argues.

“These poor kids, it’s very confusing, because they’ve gotten Holocaust education, and they’re like, ‘That’s antisemitism education,’” said Hurwitz. “And then you get to campus and there are no Nazis, and you’re like, ‘What is this?’”

To answer that, she goes back thousands of years. The book examines Judaism in the context of the historical movements that have tried to crush it, or at least confine it: early Christianity, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Enlightenment, the Holocaust. Not each of these eras sought to eliminate Judaism, but each one presented a particular idea of the good kind of Jew. 

Throughout history, some Jews always tried to adapt to the mores of the day and disavow essential parts of Judaism in order to fit in. The only problem, writes Hurwitz, is it didn’t work. You can be Jewish, but not too Jewish. Like when modernity swept across Western Europe in the 19th century, and Jews could suddenly become citizens of France and Germany — so long as they placed their country’s identity above their Jewish identity.

“This book was very much my journey to stripping away all those layers of internalized antisemitism, anti-Judaism, all of that internalized shame from so many years of persecution, and just saying, ‘You know what, no, I’m a Jew,’” said Hurwitz.

Hurwitz pitched this book before the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks that sparked a wave of global antisemitism. But she says the events of the last two years have only furthered her argument that Jews throughout history have felt the need to separate from parts of their community to earn the approval of the rest of society.

“Oct. 7 did not change the overall argument at all. It unfortunately, in many ways, gave this devastating, heartbreaking, new evidence from the argument,” Hurwitz said. 

Hurwitz hopes to reach a broad audience. But she spent a decade and a half enmeshed in Democratic politics professionally, and she particularly hopes to can reach Jews on the left who have distanced themselves from Zionism partly as a condition of their belonging in progressive spaces. 

“I am hoping that I can speak particularly to Jews who maybe have identified as Democrats, who are a little bit more on the left, and I can tell them why I am a Zionist. I can tell them why I think it is so important that Israel exists,” Hurwitz said. “I can make that argument, and I’m hoping that it will be credible coming from me, in a way that maybe it wouldn’t from others.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) said in comments to Jewish leaders in New York City on Monday that anti-Israel protesters and, in some cases, fellow Democratic lawmakers are fueling antisemitism through the rhetoric and slogans they use, though she said that in many cases it is unintentional.

“Some of the rhetoric that comes out of various protests globally, various protests on college campuses is so damaging. When they say words like ‘river to the sea,’ whey they say words like ‘globalize the intifada,’ it means end Israel. It means destroy Jews,” Gillibrand said in a video from a roundtable with Jewish leaders in Borough Park shared by The Forward. “No matter what words they intend to be saying, that is the meaning of these simple phrases.”

Intifada, she continued, is “not a social movement. It’s terrorism, it’s destruction, it’s death.”

The New York senator has been particularly outspoken about the “intifada” rhetoric in the context of the New York City mayoral race. She previously offered strong condemnation of Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani for his refusal to condemn the “globalize the intifada” slogan and said that Jewish constituents were alarmed by his past comments. 

Gillibrand also claimed Mamdani had made “references to global jihad,” but later apologized. She has not endorsed Mamdani’s mayoral bid.

The New York senator said she would work with Democratic colleagues “who sometimes, in my opinion, don’t use the right words or aren’t sensitive to the impact of those words” and explain to them how their comments are being received and contributing to antisemitism, and to rally them to support efforts to fight antisemitism.

“Nine times out of 10, they aren’t trying to be antisemitic or even trying to be anti-Israel. They just think they’re fighting for human rights,” Gillibrand continued, “but the words they often choose to use are very hurtful and harmful and are undermining.”

“It is very hurtful and it makes people feel like sometimes the members of our party do not have their back, and I think that’s very disruptive and damaging for our community, for our state, for our brothers and sisters,” Gillibrand said.

Gillibrand added that leaders and individuals have to “understand the impact of their words in all contexts,” including to the Muslim community and other faith and immigrant communities.

She also insisted that “nine out of 10 Democrats are pro-Israel and want peace in the Middle East,” though a majority of the Senate Democratic caucus recently voted in favor of blocking some arms sales to Israel.

Gillibrand argued that many of her colleagues’ concerns are driven by the political leadership in Israel, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right members of the Israeli government.

“They don’t know how to articulate political disagreement, and sometimes it comes out as anti-Israel,” she said. “I try very hard to explain that your intentions are one thing, but how you’re received is another, and that’s where we get the disconnect.”

The first day of the new school year on Tuesday at Columbia University was met with a wary sense of relief from Jewish students and faculty, who returned to campus unsure whether recent reforms aimed at combating campus antisemitism would make any difference. 

Scenes that have become commonplace on Columbia’s campus over the past two years — masked anti-Israel demonstrators barging into classrooms and the library banging on drums and chanting “Free Palestine” or hourslong demonstrations in the center of campus of more than 100 students calling for an “intifada revolution” — were nowhere to be seen. 

Still, in quieter ways, there were moments behind the tall iron entrance gates reminiscent of the antisemitic turbulence that grew commonplace on the Morningside Heights campus since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. 

Three members of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of over 80 university student groups that Instagram banned earlier this year for promoting violence, protested Columbia Hillel’s club fair, distributing fliers urging Jewish students to “drop Hillel” because it “supports genocide.” 

Elsewhere on campus, an organizer of the 2024 anti-Israel encampment movement, Cameron Jones, paraded a sign that read, “some of your classmates were IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] criminals committing genocide in Palestine.” 

Within hours, Columbia announced it had “initiated investigations into incidents that involve potential violations of the University’s Student Anti-Discrimination and Discriminatory Harassment Policies and University Rules.”

“The individuals involved are being notified that the University will immediately pursue its process for disciplinary action regarding their conduct,” the school said.

Jewish students and faculty praised Columbia’s swift response, which some attributed to the recent reforms, part of a deal made in July between the university and the Trump administration to restore the school’s federal funding that was slashed over the school’s alleged failure to address antisemitism. 

Tal Zussman, a third year PhD student in computer science, called the quick investigation a “significant change from a year ago.” 

“Last year’s first day of classes was marked by a protest that completely blocked the campus entrance and vandalism of [the sculpture] Alma Mater,” Zussman told Jewish Insider. “There were a few isolated instances [on Tuesday] that the university seems to be handling, but they were minor compared to last year’s drama. Hopefully things remain calm, but the university’s clear communication and quick response is a significant change from a year ago.” He said he felt that the change was “absolutely” due to the reforms. 

Civil engineering professor Jacob Fish similarly described a “situation in and around campus [that] is much better compared to previous fall and spring.” Fish, the director of Kalaniyot, the university’s new initiative to bring Israeli researchers to the Columbia campus, lauded the program as a way to further “make a difference on campus,” he told JI. 

“More than 200 first-year students participated in joyful and welcoming on campus activities,” Columbia’s Hillel director Brian Cohen told JI. “Three students disrupted these activities. We will continue to work with Columbia University’s rules process and hope that students who violate University rules continue to be held accountable.”

Columbia’s settlement with the federal government to restore some $400 million in federal funding that was slashed in March was met at the time with cautious optimism from Jewish leaders. 

Some expressed hope that the settlement could lead to a safer environment for Jewish students following nearly two years of antisemitic protests and disruptions on campus in the aftermath of Oct. 7. Others, however, raised concerns that the settlement did not include key structural reforms to protect Jewish students. 

Lishi Baker, a senior studying Middle East history and co-chair of the pro-Israel campus group Aryeh, told JI he is “optimistic” that Columbia’s recent changes, “particularly around discipline and policymaking, will make a big difference in improving life on campus for Jewish students and in preventing campus chaos.” 

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) is set to speak later this month at ArabCon, an annual convention hosted by the Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, joining a lineup that includes numerous speakers with records of support for terrorism and antisemitism.

Khanna, in recent months, has grown more vocal in his criticism of the Israeli government and the war in Gaza, and is leading an effort to call for U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state. Khanna is seen as having aspirations for higher office.

Among the controversial speakers on the ArabCon lineup are Electronic Intifada Executive Director Ali Abunimah, CAIR San Francisco Executive Director Zahra Billoo and activist Linda Sarsour.

Abunimah has repeatedly praised and supported terrorist attacks on Israel as a form of “resistance” and claimed that there is “no credible evidence of a single rape on Oct. 7.” He has also claimed that Zionism is antisemitic and a spiritual continuation of the Holocaust. 

He advocates for a one-state solution that would see Israel erased and has dismissed Palestinian Authority leaders who support peace with Israel as “collaborators.”

Billoo was voted off of the national Women’s March board over her past commentary, including praising and defending Hezbollah and Hamas for attacking Israel, and condemned Jewish federations, the Anti-Defamation League, Hillel chapters and “Zionist synagogues” as “enemies” engaged in fomenting Islamophobia, police brutality and various other issues inside the United States.

Sarsour has argued that Zionists should be excluded from progressive spaces and movements, repeatedly faced accusations of antisemitism, praised a convicted terrorist and supports a one-state solution.

“I have never been to a conference where I agree with every speaker, but speaking at ArabCon is important,” Khanna said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “I will discuss my efforts to recognize a Palestinian state without Hamas as part of a two state solution. Recognition of Palestinian statehood — alongside continued efforts to secure Israel’s safety and guarantee its future as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people — is essential to achieving peace.”

Other speakers on the ArabCon agenda include Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, Dearborn, Mich. Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, Zeteo CEO Mehdi Hasan and “The Young Turks” hosts Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur.

The American‑Arab Anti‑Discrimination Committee’s newly tapped national legal director, Jenin Younes, on Thursday called journalist Bari Weiss a “modern day Goebbels” in response to reports that Paramount is closing in on a deal to acquire Weiss’ The Free Press and give her a senior editorial role at CBS News.

Congregants of a Hindu temple on Long Island that was vandalized last year and worshippers of a Methodist Church in Oklahoma City, who last year put on a musical production of “Fiddler on the Roof” to learn about Jewish culture, may not appear to have much in common. 

But this Sunday, both houses of worship — together with an expected crowd of nearly 1 million congregants around the country — will join forces for the inaugural “Stand Up Sunday,” a show of force in the fight against antisemitism and all faith-based violence. 

As part of the effort, spearheaded by Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism and the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, founded by Rabbi Arthur Schneier, organizers said each congregation “will dedicate their services to raising awareness about the sharp increase of antisemitism and all forms of hate against religious communities in the United States by standing together on September 7.” 

FCAS’ Blue Square pins will be distributed to attendees “as a visible display of solidarity across faiths,” the group said. Congregational leaders will deliver remarks on antisemitism and faith-based hate in their sermons and houses of worship will place signs and posters throughout their buildings. 

The solidarity project comes less than two weeks after a mass shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church and School in Minneapolis, in which two students were killed and 21 others injured. Since 2021, the number of religious-based hate crimes has doubled, according to the FBI. The FBI’s 2024 crime statistics show a record number of hate crimes against Jews in particular, accounting for nearly 70% of all religious-based hate crimes.

Bawa Jain, an Indian advocate for interfaith dialogue, told Jewish Insider that the participation of 11 Hindu temples around the country was a “no-brainer.” 

“People [aren’t aware] that Hindu temples are also vandalized. The media doesn’t cover it to the extent that other acts of violence are covered,” said Jain, secretary-general for the World Council of Religious Leaders and the founder and president of the Centre for Responsible Leadership. 

As Hindu temples across the U.S. have seen a surge of vandal attacks over the past year, Jain said that “the Hindu and Jewish communities share a similar past. We are constantly targeted. Any crime against one of us is a crime against all of us,” adding that in his 35 years as a religious leader, he has “never seen a time where Hindu communities were targeted in such a way. We must stand together.”

“One of the things I hope comes out of this is that people realize other communities are being targeted too, even if you don’t hear about it,” said Jain. “When I was approached to get the Hindu community behind this, it was a no-brainer. [Sunday’s] program will focus on incidents of hate, supporting each other and how we must educate our communities. Our hope is that through this first launch, next year more than 120 temples across the country will participate in Stand Up Sunday.”  

Participants in the day-long event include the Churches of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, New Jersey and the Diocese of Brooklyn, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Armenian Diocese of America, National Council of Churches of Christ, and numerous Christian, African Methodist Episcopal, Episcopal, Presbyterian Churches as well as the Akshardham BAPS Swaminarayan Hindu Temple USA. Synagogues are not taking part. 

For Pastor Bob Long, head of St. Luke’s Methodist Church in Oklahoma City, speaking out against antisemitism goes back to the immediate aftermath of the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, where 11 congregants were shot dead during Shabbat morning services.   

Following a visit to the synagogue with other pastors, Long reflected that he “became aware of a Catholic church in the area that put up a sign that said ‘Love your neighbor, no exception.’”

“That became a theme for us in 2020 and 2021 when we gave away thousands of shirts” with the phrase, he told JI. 

Last year, the church dedicated its annual “St. Luke’s on Broadway” musical production to learning about Jewish heritage by putting on “Fiddler on the Roof.” St. Luke’s also hosted a pilot version of Stand Up Sunday last year. 

“Every Sunday, we have banners at our welcome center that say ‘St. Luke’s stands up to Jewish hate’ and ‘St. Luke stands up to all hate.’ For us, this is something we keep in the forefront all year long,” Long said. 

But he called this Sunday “a special lift” for learning about hate and antisemitism in particular. 

“We will be talking about [antisemitism] in our worship service,” said Long. “The sermon will be dealing with how we chose to participate and reminding people of what happened at Tree of Life but also what happens all across the country [today] and around the world. We will have multiple banners all around the church about standing up to Jewish hate.” 

“Stand Up Sunday is about raising awareness, inspiring action and standing together against hate,” Robert Kraft, founder of the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, said in a statement. “By uniting behind the Blue Square, faith leaders are sending a powerful message, that antisemitism and all forms of hate have no place in our communities. At a time when division and intolerance threaten to pull us apart, this initiative shows what is possible when we unite across backgrounds and beliefs, and that our shared values are greater than what divides us.”

“Sept. 7 is the moment for us to stand shoulder to shoulder as people of faith to say enough is enough. We are all God’s Children and together we can silence the voices of hate and the perpetrators of violence,” Karen Dresbach, executive vice president of Appeal of Conscience Foundation, said in a statement. “In this concerning time of rising antisemitism and faith-based hate, ‘Stand Up Sunday’ underscores our core mission to ‘Respect the Other,’ a call that is more urgent than ever.”

Columbia University’s new hire for senior associate dean of community and culture was a signatory of a 2021 letter supporting the Palestinian “indigenous resistance movement” and rejecting the “the fiction of a ‘two-sided conflict.’” He is tasked with leading “meaningful dialogue” in his new position. 

Jonathon Kahn signed on to the “Vassar Community Members’ Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” while a professor of religion at Vassar College. 

“We affirm that the Palestinian struggle is an indigenous resistance movement confronting settler colonialism, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing, and stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people,” the letter read. It came amid the May 2021 Israel-Hamas conflict, in which at least 13 Israelis were killed by Hamas rocket fire. The open letter also “includes a commitment to academic BDS, which, if put into effect, would restrict the educational opportunities and academic freedom of students and faculty who want to study about or in Israel.” 

In his new role at Columbia, Kahn will “build and lead initiatives that cultivate curiosity, civic purpose and meaningful dialogue — facilitating student engagement with faculty outside the classroom, and helping reimagine what a liberal arts and sciences education can be in the next century,” Josef Sorett, dean of Columbia College and vice president for undergraduate education, said in a statement announcing the appointment on Tuesday. 

Columbia University did not respond to an inquiry from Jewish Insider asking whether the school was aware of the petition before hiring Kahn.

The senior associate dean of community and culture role is a new position, created in the wake of increased antisemitism that has plagued Columbia’s campus since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks in Israel.  

Kahn, who has no known social media presence, said in a statement sent to the Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday regarding the petition that he is “a Zionist” who “believe[s] deeply in Israel’s right to exist and thrive as a Jewish state” and also “deeply value[s] Palestinian life and Palestinians’ aspirations for statehood.”

“My beliefs are not fully captured in this letter that was authored more than four years ago,” he said. “I didn’t agree with every sentence then, and I still don’t. But I put my name to that letter at a time when I felt in deep disagreement with actions taken by the Israeli government and I wanted to signal my support for the Palestinian civilians who were suffering.”

Kahn’s appointment comes just over a month after Columbia reached a deal with the Trump administration, in which it has to pay a $200 million dollar settlement, to restore some $400 million in federal funding that was cut by the government in March due to the university’s record dealing with antisemitism. 

Hasan Piker, the far-left streamer who frequently stirs controversy for using antisemitic rhetoric in his commentary on Israel and Jewish issues, will join a roundtable discussion next month hosted by The New Yorker Festival, the publication announced on Wednesday in a full lineup of events.

The conversation on Oct. 26, which will focus on “how the internet has reshaped political life” and its implications “for the future of democracy,” will also feature Saagar Enjeti, a right-wing populist pundit who co-hosts the “Breaking Points” podcast. It will be moderated by Andrew Marantz, a staff writer for The New Yorker, who published a feature story last March about Piker’s popularity among an audience of young, male voters who have recently gravitated to the right.

Piker, whose videos on Twitch and YouTube reach millions of viewers, has faced criticism for justifying Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks, while forcefully denying some of the terror group’s atrocities — such as widespread reports of sexual violence that he has dismissed as “rape fantasies” and “hallucinations.”

In one stream last year, Piker, 34, argued that “it doesn’t matter if rapes f***ing happened on Oct. 7 — like that doesn’t change the dynamic for me even this much,” adding that “the Palestinian resistance is not perfect.”

He has also described Orthodox Jews as “inbred,” called a Jewish man a “bloodthirsty, violent pig dog” and compared Zionists to Nazis, among other slurs seen as antisemitic.   

His festival appearance drew criticism from the Anti-Defamation League, which denounced The New Yorker’s “decision to platform Piker” as “the latest example of mainstream media normalizing his brand of antisemitism and anti-Zionism.”

The streamer’s “toxic and extreme rhetoric opposing Zionism and the Jewish state normalizes antisemitism, reinforces bigotry and launders terror — and it has no place at a conference devoted to prominent influencers,” an ADL spokesperson told Jewish Insider on Wednesday, arguing that Piker’s “extreme statements” on a range of topics “should permanently disqualify him from appearing at any major media festival.”

“His appearing at a festival alongside such notables as Salman Rushdie, who lived for decades under threat of death from the Iranian regime, is deeply ironic, considering that Iran supports Hezbollah and the Houthis, two groups that Piker has openly admired and celebrated,” the spokesperson added, referring to the British-Indian writer who is among several prominent guests now scheduled to join the event next month.  

A spokesperson for The New Yorker declined to comment when reached by JI on Wednesday. 

In his extensive online monologues, Piker has notably defended the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, compared the Houthis in Yemen to the hero of an anime show and characterized the Oct. 7 attacks as an inevitable response to “violent means of maintaining an apartheid,” among other extreme comments.

Piker, a fierce opponent of Israel’s right to exist, has more recently equated liberal Zionism with Nazism, according to a video of his remarks posted to social media last month.

“Zionism is an exterminationist ideology built around ethno-religious supremacist values,” he said in a conversation with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) at the Democratic Socialists of America’s convention earlier this month. “So when people say, like, ‘Oh, well, I’m a liberal Zionist, I want there to be a Jewish ethno-state,’ I’m like, OK, what do you mean? It’s like saying you’re like a liberal Nazi. Like, you want an Aryan majority ethno-state?”

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) has accused Piker of engaging in “textbook antisemitism” and called on Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, to cut ties with the streamer, describing his comments as a leading contributor to “an explosion of Jew-hatred on social media” in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.

Piker has rejected allegations of antisemitism, while insisting his views have been misconstrued as opposition to Jewish people rather than the Israeli government, a claim his critics have interpreted as disingenuous.

The streamer has otherwise mocked widespread concerns about rising global antisemitism — calling the issue a distraction from Israel’s military conduct in Gaza.

But even as he has faced backlash for promoting antisemitic rhetoric, Piker has continued to draw friendly profiles in mainstream outlets such as The New York Times and GQ magazine, which is owned by The New Yorker’s parent company, Condé Nast. He has also hosted several high-profile lawmakers on his streaming platform, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Ed Markey (D-MA) and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA).

Piker did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday about his planned comments for the roundtable next month. 

The New Yorker Festival, an annual multiday event in New York City featuring well-known figures in arts, media and politics, previously faced backlash in 2018 for inviting Steve Bannon, a former White House chief strategist to President Donald Trump who now hosts a popular MAGA-world podcast, to headline a conversation with the magazine’s editor, David Remnick.

Following major dropouts from participants who protested Bannon’s appearance at the festival — as well as internal objections raised by the magazine’s employees — Remnick announced he had decided to pull the invitation, saying that he did not “want well-meaning readers and staff members to think” that he had “ignored their concerns” regarding the controversial Trump ally.

The House Appropriations Committee’s proposed funding bill for the Department of Education includes sweeping new provisions cutting off funding for colleges and universities that fail to address campus antisemitism, but would also cut $49 million in funding for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in 2026.

New language included in the bill states that no federal funding may be provided to institutions of higher education “unless and until such institution adopts a prohibition on antisemitic conduct that creates a hostile environment in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in all documents relating to student or employee conduct.”

The bill also bans funding to schools that have “failed to take administrative action against any student, staff member, or student group that commits acts of antisemitism while utilizing the facilities, grounds, or resources of such institution.”

The former provision would require schools to specifically implement anti-discrimination policies regarding antisemitism as a precondition of federal funding, while the latter could give the Department of Education additional latitude to cut funding to schools that have allowed antisemitic conduct to go unaddressed or unpunished.

At the same time, the bill would provide $91 million in funding for the Office for Civil Rights, down from $140 million provided in several previous years. The Trump administration, in its budget request to Congress, requested the same cut, as it looks to slash the size of the Department of Education while winding down the department.

The Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Programs voted along party lines to advance the bill to the full committee on Tuesday evening.

The funding proposal sets up a clash with the Senate, which proposed consistent funding at $140 million for the office in its own appropriations legislation, which the Senate Appropriations Committee passed at the end of July. The Senate bill does not include the new language relating to antisemitism.

A large coalition of Jewish community groups across the ideological spectrum previously urged the “highest possible funding” for the Office for Civil Rights, though others in the Jewish community have argued that the office does not require additional funding, instead needing only to better-prioritize resolving antisemitism cases.

House Democrats have frequently pointed to Republicans’ efforts to cut funding for the office as evidence that Republicans are not serious about confronting campus antisemitism. Key Republicans expressed support for the Trump administration’s proposal to cut funding for the office earlier this year.

“The Office for Civil Rights is on the front lines of the fight against rising antisemitism at universities and K-12 schools. It’s absurd to cut their budget when complaints are at an all-time high,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “Republicans have no interest in the hard work of enforcing protections for Jewish students on campus.”

Lauren Wolman, the senior director of government relations and strategy for the Anti-Defamation League, expressed support for the new provisions on campus antisemitism while warning about the OCR cuts.

“We appreciate the committee’s focus on the crisis of antisemitism in education and commitment to ensuring there are consequences when antisemitism occurs. The Appropriations Committee underscores this point forcefully and urgently,” Wolman said. “But if Congress simultaneously defunds the very office charged with investigating and enforcing Title VI, those consequences may never be realized. Jewish students need real accountability, backed by resources, enforcement, and monitoring.”

A spokesperson for the Jewish Federations of North America said, “This is the first step in a long process of appropriations, and we look forward to working with Congress to ensure that OCR has the resources necessary to effectively fulfill its mission.”

Speaking to members of the Florida Democratic Party Jewish Caucus over Zoom on Wednesday, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) accused the Trump administration of not working in good faith to combat antisemitism, discussed recent Democratic National Committee votes on Israel and offered a strong defense of Israel against a growing chorus of critics.

Wasserman Schultz argued that a series of moves by the Trump administration — attempting to place new conditions on Nonprofit Security Grant Program funding, gutting the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and eliminating Justice Department programs focused on hate crimes — show that the administration’s focus on antisemitism isn’t genuine.

“None of that makes us safer, and all of it demonstrates that they don’t really care about taking care of our community. They aren’t concerned about antisemitism, they are concerned about maintaining power,” she said. “Let’s not let our community members believe the rhetoric and the BS.”

Highlighting the administration’s moves on NSGP funding, Wasserman Schultz noted the long freeze in reimbursements from the program, and said that the administration had also tried to demand that all NSGP recipients cooperate with immigration enforcement authorities and eliminate any diversity, equity and inclusion programs to make them eligible for funding.

She said that advocates had worked to ensure that the immigration demands were dropped, but said that “the DEI part is still being litigated.”

She said that universities largely “deserve the criticism and deserve to be investigated by an Office of Civil Rights that would be robustly funded. But if Trump cared about that, he wouldn’t have cut their budget in half and fired half their employees.”

The former Democratic National Committee chair also spoke about the recent DNC debate over a pair of Israel-related resolutions. One, which called for an arms embargo on Israel, was defeated, while one calling for a ceasefire, the release of hostages and humanitarian aid passed the Resolutions Committee but was then withdrawn.

“They moved past the issue, but there were many of us that had to work very hard to communicate our deep concern and opposition” to the resolution calling for an arms embargo, Wasserman Schultz said. “Thankfully, because our party does support the U.S.-Israel relationship, and because our party does believe that Israel should remain a Jewish and democratic state, that resolution was defeated.”

Addressing criticisms of Israel more broadly, Wasserman Schultz affirmed that she is a Zionist and emphasized that Hamas, by carrying out the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, was responsible for starting the war and could end it by releasing the hostages.

“Israel … are not aggressors. They don’t engage in land acquisition. They are only interested in living in peace with their neighbors,” she said. “The wars that have occurred across the millennia have almost exclusively, and certainly in modern times exclusively, been initiated by outside terrorist groups or other countries invading Israel.”

Wasserman Schultz emphasized the need for a ceasefire, the release of hostages, the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza and the end of Hamas as a security threat to Israel and a menace to the Palestinian people.

She blamed Hamas for the issues with humanitarian aid distribution, given the group’s theft of aid and the threat it poses to those who distribute it. “If they continue to be obstructionist and prevent humanitarian aid from getting to their own people, then they will continue to struggle.”

Wasserman Schultz said that “propaganda … is being used to make Israel look like they are the evil aggressors and oppressors,” calling it “outrageous.” She called out media photos featuring emaciated children, many of whom were revealed to have congenital diseases, as proof of mass starvation in Gaza as one example of such a phenomenon.

“We know as Jewish people that, at the end of the day, we’re very easy to blame. It is really like a reflexive, default position for far too many people. It’s embedded, it’s in societal norms,” Wasserman Schultz said. “This is happening regularly and we have to make sure that we are really fighting back.”

She said that criticism of Israel isn’t inherently antisemitic, but that the slogans “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada” are clear calls for the destruction of Israel and the death of the Jewish people, and that “that is a very serious form of antisemitism. That shouldn’t be open for debate.”

xAI, the parent company of the social media platform X and creator of the Grok artificial intelligence chatbot, said in a letter to lawmakers earlier this month that the antisemitic and violent rants posted by the chatbot last month were the results of an “unintended update” to Grok’s code.

The company’s letter, obtained by Jewish Insider, came in response to a letter led by Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Don Bacon (R-NE) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) in July that raised concerns about the screeds posted by Grok, saying they were “just the latest chapter in X’s long and troubling record of enabling antisemitism and incitement to spread.”

Grok, for hours on July 8, praised Adolf Hitler, described itself as “MechaHitler,” endorsed antisemitic conspiracy theories and offered detailed suggestions for breaking into the house of an X user and sexually assaulting him, while claiming that recent changes by X owner Elon Musk had “dialed down the woke filters” and made it more free to make such comments.

Lily Lim, the head of legal affairs for xAI said in response to the lawmakers that the antisemitic Grok posts “stemmed not from the underlying Grok language model itself, but from an unintended update to an upstream code path in the @grok bot’s functionality,” and that the change, implemented a day prior to the offensive posts, “inadvertently activated deprecated instructions that made the bot overly susceptible to mirroring the tone, context, and language of certain user posts on X, including those containing extremist views.”

“Lines in the deprecated code, such as directives to ‘tell it like it is’ without fear of offending politically correct norms and to strictly reflect the user’s tone, caused the bot to prioritize engagement over responsible behavior, resulting in the reinforcement of unethical or controversial opinions in specific threads,” Lim continued.

As noted in the House members’ original letter, Elon Musk, owner of xAI, said days before the antisemitic outburst that the company had “improved [Grok] significantly” and that users “should notice a difference” in its output.

Lim called the issues “a bug, plain and simple — one that deviated sharply from the rigorous processes we employ to ensure Grok’s outputs align with our truth-seeking ethos.” She insisted that the company conducts “extensive evaluations” before any updates to Grok.

“The underlying Grok model, designed to stick strongly to core beliefs of neutrality and skepticism toward unverified authority, remained unaffected throughout, as did other services relying on it,” Lim continued. “No alterations to model parameters, training data, or fine-tuning were involved in this incident; it was isolated to the bot’s integration layer on X.”

Lim said that the Grok posts were “in direct opposition to our core mission” and “antithetical to the principles of neutrality, rigorous analysis, and ethical responsibility that define our work.”

She said that the company had taken multiple other steps in response, including deleting the relevant instructions, implementing additional pre-release testing protocols to prevent repeats of similar incidents and publicly sharing data about the Grok X bot for public examination.

“Moving forward, xAI remains steadfast in mitigating risks through comprehensive pre-deployment safeguards, ongoing monitoring, and a refusal to compromise on ethical standards,” Lim said. “We do not view harmful biases as features but as failures to be eradicated, ensuring Grok serves as a force for good — educating, fact-checking, and fostering open dialogue without promoting division or violence.”

Suozzi thanked xAI for its response, while also warning about the need to combat bias in AI outputs in a statement shared with JI.

“I am encouraged that the Musk team gave such [a] thorough response,” Suozzi said. “However, their investigation highlights a critical point: AI companies, in their race to create the most innovative and commercially successful product, must be vigilant in combatting biased, slanted, bigoted and antisemitic outputs. It’s a very slippery and dangerous slope.”

A separate group of Jewish House Democrats had raised related concerns about Grok in a letter to the Pentagon, focused specifically on the Defense Department’s plans to utilize a version of Grok, announced shortly after the antisemitic meltdown.

The alleged gunman who opened fire on a Catholic school in Minneapolis on Wednesday, killing two children and injuring at least 17 people, most of them students at the school, used a gun that had antisemitic and anti-Israel writings across it, according to the Anti-Defamation League. 

The assailant’s gun also included praise for mass killers “across the ideological spectrum,” including white supremacist, anti-Muslim and anti-government actors, the ADL stated.

Two of the names that appeared on the gun were Natalie Rupnow, who killed a staff member and a student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wis., last December, and Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people at two mosques in New Zealand in 2019. 

Unverified images of the alleged shooter’s gun, taken from a video posted to a YouTube account believed to be associated with the shooter, show scrawlings on the gun and related paraphernalia that say “6 million wasn’t enough,” “Burn Israel,” “Israel must fall” and “Destroy HIAS,” a reference to the Jewish refugee organization.

The gunman who killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 had posted inflammatory messages on social media also targeting HIAS, writing that the organization “likes to bring in invaders that kill our people.” 

A HIAS spokesperson told Jewish Insider on Wednesday that the attack at the Annunciation Catholic Church “echoes the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, when Jews were murdered in their place of worship” and said that because of HIAS’ focus, “our organization is sadly often the subject of hateful antisemitic conspiracy theories.”

Minneapolis law enforcement identified the shooter as 23-year-old Robin Westman, NBC News reported.

Several major Jewish organizations are expected to call on the Senate to “swiftly” confirm President Donald Trump’s nominees for special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism and international religious freedom ambassador. 

The groups, led by the Jewish Federations of North America, are writing in a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that filling the roles is “of utmost importance in fighting growing antisemitism and ensuring freedom of religion or belief worldwide,” according to a draft obtained by Jewish Insider. The letter is set to be sent on Tuesday, according to a source with knowledge of the draft.

“We dare not delay in filling these critical positions that protect human rights around the world,” the letter states. “To that end we strongly urge you to prioritize filling these positions, sending a powerful signal to governments around the world that the United States upholds our constitutionally guaranteed rights to life and liberty, to freedom of religion and belief, and calls on them to do the same.”

In April, Trump tapped Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, an Orthodox businessman and Chabad rabbi who served as a campaign surrogate, to serve as the next U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. In the Biden administration, that role was filled by Deborah Lipstadt, a Holocaust historian at Emory University. In May, the two authored a joint op-ed, with former antisemitism envoy Elan Carr, calling for action after two Israeli Embassy staffers were killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. 

Trump named former Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC) as the U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. Both positions require Senate confirmation, and neither has had a confirmation hearing yet. 

“We believe that these ambassador-at-large positions are crucial to protecting vital human rights, promoting religious freedom and vigorously confronting the global surge in antisemitism,” the Jewish organizations wrote. 

JFNA CEO Eric Fingerhut told JI on Tuesday that the positions must be filled to help Jewish organizations combat rising antisemitism.

“The 141 Jewish Federations across our system are on the front lines of responding to and combatting antisemitism, and every single day we hear from them about the elevated levels of antisemitism our communities are facing,” Fingerhut said. “The government is a critical partner in our fight against antisemitism, both at home and around the world, so we must make sure that these roles do not remain vacant.”

A spokesperson for Thune did not respond to a request for comment. 

A spokesperson for Schumer referred to the hold the Senate minority leader currently has on dozens of Trump nominees, and Trump’s recent message to Schumer to “go to hell” after bipartisan negotiations broke down. The spokesperson declined to comment specifically on Kaploun or Walker. 

“President Trump has focused on promoting religious freedom and fighting antisemitism in a historic way,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told JI in a statement. “He wants all of his nominees confirmed as quickly as possible, including Yehuda Kaploun and Mark Walker, whose roles will be critically important to protecting Americans of faith.”

Current signatories to the letter include the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Anti-Defamation League, the Orthodox Union, the Israeli-American Council, the Zionist Organization of America, Hadassah, American Jewish Committee, Agudath Israel, B’nai Brith International, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, NORPAC, Combat Antisemitism Movement, Religious Zionists of America and the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. 

A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. 

This story was updated at 9:35 a.m. ET on Aug. 27, 2025.

Responding to heightened campus antisemitism, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul will sign legislation on Tuesday afternoon that requires all colleges in the state to designate anti-discrimination coordinators to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, her office confirmed to Jewish Insider.

The new bill, which passed the New York State Legislature unanimously in June, was introduced by Assemblywoman Nily Rozic and state Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky, both Democrats from Queens, amid an uptick in antisemitism on college campuses in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.

“By placing Title VI coordinators on all college campuses, New York is combating antisemitism and all forms of discrimination head-on,” Hochul, a Democrat, told JI. “No one should fear for their safety while trying to get an education. It’s my top priority to ensure every New York student feels safe at school, and I will continue to take action against campus discrimination and use every tool at my disposal to eliminate hate and bias from our school communities.”

The legislation centralizes colleges’ enforcement of Title VI, which prohibits discrimination in federally funded programs based on race, color and national origin, by mandating a designated Title VI coordinator to address student complaints and directing the New York State Division of Human Rights to develop training to support such efforts.

It was backed by several Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League, UJA-Federation of New York and the American Jewish Committee. 

Ted Deutch, chief executive of the AJC, called the legislation “a significant step in protecting Jewish students across the state.”

“This bipartisan legislation signed by Gov. Hochul will combat the alarming rise of antisemitism and ensure Jewish students’ concerns are heard and taken seriously,” he said in a statement. “By requiring every college and university in the state to have a properly trained Title VI Coordinator, this law is a meaningful tool to make our campuses places where students can learn without fear of discrimination.”

The bill comes as Democrats have faced criticism nationally from Republicans over their approach to countering antisemitism and supporting Israel amid its war in Gaza. It also comes as President Donald Trump has moved to dismantle the Department of Education — an effort that has raised questions among Jewish leaders over the government’s ability to investigate Title VI complaints and to hold schools accountable for incidents of antisemitism.

In anticipation of the bill and amid the Trump administration’s ongoing crackdown on campus antisemitism, some schools in the state, including Columbia University, New York University and the State University of New York system, have already announced commitments to hire designated Title VI coordinators.

Hochul, who is facing a potentially competitive reelection campaign as she seeks a second full term, has tackled the issue of rising campus antisemitism during her time in office, meeting with hundreds of college officials last year to address the matter, among other efforts.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a Republican whose viral questioning of university leaders over their handling of campus antisemitism seized the national spotlight, is mulling a challenge to Hochul in next year’s election.

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce will investigate three medical schools over their “failures to address antisemitism,” Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), the chair of the committee, announced on Monday.  

The three schools targeted in the probe are the University of Illinois College of Medicine (UICOM), University of California, San Francisco and University of California, Los Angeles Geffen School of Medicine. 

The investigations come as medical schools and the medical profession have faced increasing scrutiny over rising antisemitism since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. 

In letters sent to the leaders of each institution, Walberg requested that the administrators send a lengthy list of documents to the committee, including materials related to complaints of antisemitism, any discussion of antisemitism among DEI staff after Oct. 7 and all guidelines for antisemitism training and investigations that are utilized on campus. 

“The Committee has become aware that Jewish students, faculty, and patients have been experiencing hostility and fear at the university, and it has not been demonstrated that the university has meaningfully responded to address and mitigate this problem,” Walberg wrote to each institution, followed by a list detailing alleged incidents of antisemitism. 

The allegations at UCLA date back to 2021, when UCLA’s medical school reportedly instituted a mandatory first-year seminar about “structural racism and health equity” that described Jews as “white” and showed them alongside images of “oppressors” and “capitalists” with “long hooked noses.” Other incidents include a student writing in the UCLA Class of 2025 group chat that Hamas’ actions on Oct. 7 were akin to a “slave rebellion” and a professor in the mandatory equity class requiring students to chant “free Palestine” with her.

Last year, the House Energy and Commerce Committee warned UCSF that its federal funding could be at risk if it didn’t do more to address antisemitic harassment. In June, UCSF fired a medical school professor who had posted antisemitic content online and targeted a Jewish faculty member — more than a year after she first made the posts.

Jewish students at UCSF have hidden parts of their Jewish identity, “including removing identifiers on social media,” and the Jewish patients have done the same, according to the letter from Walberg. It also lists several instances of UCSF faculty and staff expressing support for Hamas. 

The allegations at UICOM include the removal of Oct. 7 hostage posters from campus, a student group hosting a lecture with a speaker who expressed support for Hamas and a UICOM surgeon comparing Israel to the Islamic State and to Nazis in social media posts. In a Slack channel, which is used to share information about campus events, multiple posts reportedly rejected the claim that Hamas terrorists raped Israeli women on Oct. 7. Walberg also said the medical school staff member tasked with addressing antisemitism is “not suited” to help the school deal with the problem, because he has “made light of the rise [of] antisemitism on college campuses.” 

Dr. Yael Halaas, a plastic surgeon in New York and the founder and president of the American Jewish Medical Association, praised the investigations.

“We are physicians and healthcare professionals because we believe in healing the sick and helping the vulnerable. Hate has no place in healthcare,” Halaas told Jewish Insider. “Equally, as educators, we know that indoctrination — whether political, antisemitic, or any ideology of hate — has no place in medicine. The practice and teaching of medicine must be grounded in science, compassion, and respect for human dignity.”

The letters request the universities to submit relevant documents to the committee by Sept. 8. 

More than 75 Jewish organizations around the world signed on to a joint letter Monday voicing “unequivocal support” for Katharina von Schnurbein, the European Commission coordinator on combating antisemitism, amid calls for her dismissal by EU parliament members over her support for Israel. 

In the letter addressed to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the groups said von Schnurbein — who has served nearly a decade in the role —  “has worked tirelessly and with great integrity to strengthen European policies and initiatives that protect Jewish communities and ensure that Jewish life can flourish across our continent.”

“Her mandate has always been grounded in European values, democratic principles, and the urgent need to defend the Jewish community against hatred and discrimination,” the letter, spearheaded by the American Jewish Committee, continued. 

The signatories called it “deeply troubling” that von Schnurbein is accused of “‘bias’ simply because she refuses to trivialize or ignore threats against Jews.” Other signatories include the Anti-Defamation League, Conference of European Rabbis, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and World Jewish Congress. 

“To attack her for defending Jewish dignity and security is, in effect, to challenge the European Union’s own credibility in combating antisemitism,” the letter continued.   

A formal request to the European Commission calling for von Schnurbein’s firing was submitted on Friday by 26 EU Parliament members, Israel Hayom reported. The correspondence condemned a leaked presentation she made in May regarding ties between antisemitism and efforts to delegitimize Israel. It claims that von Schnurbein went beyond her institutional authority by attempting to persuade EU member-state representatives against imposing sanctions that would impact Israel’s position in the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

It was 2007 and the Boston Red Sox had just won the World Series in Denver. Back at his hotel, three-time Major League Baseball all-star and World Series champion Kevin Youkilis had a “big party.” 

“All of sudden, we started breaking out [dancing to] Hava Nagila. The pride of celebrating a joyous occasion brought me back to my childhood and the traditions we learned in synagogue,” Youkilis said in a webinar on Wednesday, reflecting on his “proudest” Jewish moment and calling himself “lucky” to have largely avoided antisemitism as an athlete.   

But since his retirement in 2014 — and particularly in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks in Israel — Jewish athletes have been thrown a curveball, facing exclusion and increased antisemitic sentiment both on and off the field. 

At the 2024 Paris Olympics, for example, fans displayed a banner reading “Genocide Olympics” alongside Palestinian flags. In February, the Israeli Under-19 baseball team was refused participation in a German tournament over fears of “troublemakers attacking Israelis” and “the political situation.”  

In response, the Anti-Defamation League and Maccabi USA launched a new web series dubbed “Game Changers,” with the goal of bringing together athletes and advocates “to explore how sports can inspire dialogue and challenge antisemitism.” 

“I was very lucky, I didn’t have many incidents [of antisemitism],” Youkilis, 46, said during the inaugural webinar, which was moderated by Alex Freeman, ADL’s director of sports engagement and also included remarks from Morgan Zeitz, a University of Michigan student and Maccabi USA athlete. 

“Guys would joke around, ripping and good fun, but there was never anything directed at me that I felt was antisemitic,” Youkilis, who primarily played for the Red Sox and had stints with the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox, continued. “People asked questions based on ignorance. Like everything in life, when you are a minority and all these things are happening and there’s a lot of rhetoric out there, you have two ways to go about it. You can get really reactive and angry, or you can educate. I think education is always the best tool.” 

“What we’re seeing is fascinating,” said Youkilis, who since MLB retirement served as hitting coach for Team Israel in 2023 and is currently on the board of directors of Israel Baseball Americas, a nonprofit that brings Israel Baseball to communities across North America and provides resources to Israel’s baseball team. “That spike after Oct. 7 is the most concerning for me. The tragedy occurred and now you see people [emboldened] to be more antisemitic online. The one key thing I’ve learned online is most of these people are anonymous, so you have to be very careful about picking your fights on social media.” 

Throughout his career, Youkilis’ focus “was always on, how do I get better every day? How can I help our team win?” he recalled. “The Jewish side of me was really through family, through my father, brothers and cousins. Judaism for me was more about the community aspect than the religious aspect while I was playing baseball. When we would go to New York, there was no doubt that I was going to Carnegie Deli.”

But his Judaism was top of mind one day each year — Yom Kippur. “Are you going to play on Yom Kippur? That became a big thing,” he said, recalling that while playing for the Red Sox, he attended High Holiday services in Brookline, a heavily Jewish suburb of Boston.  

“Growing up, my dad taught me the Jewish way of working hard,” said Youkilis. “Find your passion, go hard at it and love it. For me, that moment after winning a World Series was a very special moment.” 

Two leading Jewish groups aimed at countering antisemitism, along with several faculty, blasted the American Association of University Professors for moving “even further away from its mission” after its president said in a recent interview that the United States should not send defensive weapons to Israel amid its war against Hamas, which he called a genocide in Gaza. 

“Such rhetoric is deeply troubling and fuels hostility against Jewish and Zionist individuals in academic spaces and beyond,” the Anti-Defamation League and the Academic Engagement Network said Thursday in a joint statement to Jewish Insider, in response to comments made by Todd Wolfson, the president of AAUP, to Inside Higher Ed on Tuesday. 

“We believe strongly that no weapons should be sent to Israel, at all. Not defensive or offensive, nothing,” Wolfson said. “We need to stand up for academic freedom, for freedom of speech, for freedom of assembly for our students so they can protest the war — the genocide, excuse me — that’s taking place in Gaza,” he continued. 

The ADL/AEN statement said that “the role of AAUP leadership should be to encourage robust study and rigorous debate of such contentious issues — not to plant the organization firmly on one political side, thereby silencing dissent and undermining the very academic freedom it purports to defend. With the leadership’s latest move to isolate Jewish and Zionist faculty, the AAUP has moved even further away from its mission.” 

Raeefa Shams, AEN’s director of communications, told JI that there has been a “pattern of escalating extreme political stances” among AAUP leadership since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. “So [Wolfson’s statement] wasn’t surprising, but it doesn’t mean that it’s normal,” said Shams. In April, the AAUP partnered with anti-Israel groups including Jewish Voice for Peace and Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine to co-sponsor a National Day of Action. 

Faculty who are longtime members of the association told JI that Wolfson’s latest remark further enforces a climate where Jewish and Zionist members no longer feel represented or protected within the association.

Jeffrey Podoshen, a professor in the business department at Franklin & Marshall College, where he formerly served as AAUP chapter president, has suspended contributing dues to the association “as the organization has become much more politicized over the past number of years” in relation to Israel. 

“The AAUP unfortunately seems to have found a singular fixation on Israel as of late, and specifically under Wolfson’s leadership,” said Podoshen. “This is problematic. The AAUP has become more of an organization that is interested in politics than it is its core mission when it comes to university professorships. The AAUP has been on a downward spiral and it’s not something that I want to be a part of, which is a shame.” 

Gregory Brown, a professor of history at University of Nevada, Las Vegas and former president of the Nevada state conference of AAUP, views it worthwhile to remain an AAUP member because of its push for campus values such as academic freedom. But in the past, statements from association leaders went through a vetting process including a review by committees, which gave them “credibility,” Brown said. 

“In that sense, I am quite surprised insofar as the statements that have been coming out are not about any of the reasons people join the AAUP,” Brown continued. “Those statements have not been studied, vetted and revised. They appear to be statements that come from just the leadership, maybe just one leader. It is really contrary to what has been the key to the AAUP’s success in advocating for higher education, faculty and students.”  

Wolfson, who was elected president in June 2024 and is on leave from his position as a Rutgers University associate professor of journalism and media studies until 2027, has a history of making hostile comments towards Israel. 

In response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s condemnation of the anti-Israel encampments and building occupations that overtook dozens of campuses around the U.S. in the spring of 2024, Wolfson wrote on X that Netanyahu is a “fascist” who has “no right to talk about peaceful protests in the U.S. as he murders thousands in Gaza.” In July 2024, Wolfson tweeted a petition urging the New Jersey Senate to vote against adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism. “Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism,” he wrote. 

Under Wolfson’s leadership, AAUP dropped its longtime opposition to academic boycotts in August 2024. Although the policy does not mention Israel, the move led to faculty members on several campuses implementing non-official boycotts of Israel by not assigning articles written by Israeli scholars, refusing to invite Israeli academics to conferences and declining to write study abroad letters for students wishing to spend a semester in Israel. 

During Jim Moran’s 24 years in Congress, the Virginia Democrat had a habit of putting his foot in his mouth, particularly when it came to his Jewish constituents. 

In 2003, he blamed the Jewish community for President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, prompting several local rabbis to call for his resignation. Four years later he blamed AIPAC for the war. The blowback was so strong that when then-Sen. Barack Obama accepted Moran’s endorsement of his presidential campaign in 2008, he stated plainly that he disagreed with Moran’s views of the Jewish community. 

Moran retired from Congress in 2015, but the 80-year-old still walks the halls of Capitol Hill. Now, he’s there as a lobbyist — primarily as a registered foreign agent lobbying on behalf of the government of Qatar. 

He is a regular in the offices of high-ranking members of Congress and senators. And last month, during a House Education Committee hearing about antisemitism in higher education, Moran was conspicuously seated directly behind Robert M. Groves, the president of Georgetown University, which has a campus in Doha and has received more than $1 billion from the Gulf monarchy. 

“Jim is one of these guys that people seem to like on both sides of the aisle. He’s been able to keep in contact with a lot of members when needed,” Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia who Moran hired to help represent Qatar, told Jewish Insider. 

A Georgetown source said Moran was not working with the university or sitting in one of Georgetown’s three allotted seats at the hearing. Still, there’s no doubt he is a highly influential foreign policy voice in Washington on behalf of a country with which America has a complicated relationship.

Qatar is a major non-NATO ally of the U.S., an official designation conferred by President Joe Biden, and is home to the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East. But it also has financial and diplomatic ties with Hamas and other terror groups. Qatar’s leaders say that is necessary so the country can maintain its role as a trusted mediator, while its critics say Qatar’s close relationship with Hamas makes it unlikely to put real pressure on the terror group to make a deal with Israel or to release the hostages. Some on Capitol Hill and in the pro-Israel community have expressed concerns that Qatar’s massive investment in American universities has fueled anti-Israel activism and antisemitism on campuses.

With a Boston accent leftover from his childhood, Moran has a penchant for talking tough — and acting tough, too. In the 1990s, at the start of his time in Congress, he occasionally threatened to brawl with fellow lawmakers, and once shoved another member of Congress off the House floor. 

Moran was an early and consistent critic of Israel, long before the wave of anti-Israel sentiment that has exploded on the far left over the past two years. He has kept up ties with Jewish leaders in Northern Virginia, but those relationships grew strained as Moran repeatedly criticized pro-Israel advocates and Jewish activists. 

“Jim is an extraordinarily compassionate man. He has trouble with suffering. His judgment about what constitutes suffering and who’s causing it is not always accurate, and so that has gotten him in a considerable amount of trouble over the course of his long political career,” said Rabbi Jack Moline, who served for 27 years as the rabbi at Agudas Achim Congregation in Alexandria. Moline met regularly with Moran until the rabbi called for Moran’s resignation in 2003, after Moran blamed Jews for the Iraq war, a comment the former congressman later said he “deeply regret[s].”

“His relationship with the Jewish community fell apart,” Moline told JI. “It didn’t surprise anybody when, after he finally did retire from Congress, he was offered and accepted work lobbying for Qatar.” He first registered as a lobbyist for Qatar in 2017. His firm, Moran Global Strategies, has been paid more than $2 million by Qatar in the last two years, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. A spokesperson for the Qatari Embassy did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Moran Global Strategies.

Though Moran expressed contrition for his antisemitic remarks during the lead-up to the Iraq war, his rhetoric toward the Jewish community has only grown more inflammatory in the decade since he left Congress. In recent years, he has appeared on several virtual panel discussions held by the Arab Organization for Human Rights in the U.K., a London-based NGO led by Mohammad Jamil Hersh, a former Hamas activist who has been sanctioned by Israel and was deported by the country more than three decades ago. In those conversations, he regularly blasted the influence of American Jews and the “pro-Israel lobby.”

During a February 2023 AOHR event, Moran tried to explain Washington’s support for “apartheid” in Gaza by pointing the finger at American Jews and suggesting that they are unduly involved in the American political system. 

“It’s about domestic politics and it always has been. The majority of people who contribute to the Democratic Party in America have Jewish surnames. Now think about that,” said Moran. He described them as people “whose principal reason for contributing to the political system in America has been the sine qua non of support for Israel, and unqualified support for Israel.” 

In this and several other interviews, Moran recognized that his language was rather impolitic.
“I don’t want to sound antisemitic, and Palestinians are a Semitic people,” Moran said. “I’m just saying that let’s deal with the political reality in the United States that’s driving and reinforcing the injustice that’s occurring within Palestine.”

Moran and his team have held dozens of meetings with members of Congress since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks in 2023 that spurred the ongoing war in Gaza, mainly to talk about “Qatar’s role in the Middle East peace process,” according to documents he filed with the Justice Department as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act. At the same time, he has continued to question Jewish involvement in the American political system — including just days after Oct. 7, in a call hosted by the Muslim Public Affairs Council. 

“The reality is that campaign contributions have corrupted the United States Congress. One of the motivating factors is, ‘How do I please my political supporters, particularly my financial supporters?’ The reality is that the Jewish community, and frankly to their credit, is deeply engaged in the American political process,” Moran said in the MPAC call. “That’s one of the motivating factors that causes the Congress to look the other way where the Middle East is concerned.” 

Although he expressed skepticism about the supposed influence of American Jews in electoral politics, he encouraged Muslim, Palestinian and Arab Americans to increase their own influence. But his prognosis for their potential efficacy was grim. “I’m not sure they’re ever going to be able to successfully catch up,” Moran said. 

Even as Moran took aim at Jews’ participation in the political process, he routinely downplayed accusations of antisemitism that have been lobbed at him directly and at the broader anti-Israel movement. 

In September 2024, in another AOHR virtual briefing, Moran acknowledged that he would likely be called antisemitic for his comments accusing Israel of committing war crimes “daily” and for describing the situation in Gaza as “comparable to the Holocaust.” 

“Foreign aid going into committing war crimes on a daily basis because of the politics, because of the campaign financing, because of the control of the media — it’s inexcusable. It’s an indictment of what has become of this democracy,” said Moran, without saying who, exactly, he thinks controls the media. “It’s an indictment of the fact that our foreign policy has been Israeli-centric, and let me say one other thing so that people don’t particularly accuse me of being antisemitic, although I’m sure many will: Many of those protests across the country were led by Jewish students.”

This spring, after President Donald Trump returned to office and began targeting universities, Moran was dispatched to Capitol Hill to talk to Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee about Qatar’s funding of American higher education, which has come under the microscope.

It is notable that one of the people tasked with advocating for a country that is close to both America and Hamas seems to have a deeply rooted hostility to Israel and even to American Jews, particularly at a moment when Qatar’s dealings in the U.S. are facing greater scrutiny — such as when Trump said earlier this year that the U.S. would accept a Qatari gift of a luxury jet to use as Air Force One.

But Qatar has a suite of lobbyists who span the political spectrum. Moran primarily deals with Democrats. Qatar has in the past also targeted hundreds of conservative “influencers” to reach Trump’s inner circle, and employs several Republicans as lobbyists. Partisan politics is at play, too; Democratic lawmakers blasted the Air Force One move, while Republicans fell in line behind Trump.

Several prominent Trump administration officials have ties to Qatar, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said in her January Senate confirmation hearing that she remains “very proud” of the lobbying work she did for Qatar ahead of the 2022 World Cup. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy and chief negotiator, has a history of business dealings with the country. 

“If you take a look at the folks they’ve got representing them, they’ve been all over the lot on that issue. It’s certainly not a pro-Arab versus Israel issue,” said Davis, the Virginia Republican who works with Moran on the Qatar file. “There’s nothing there to indicate that their lobbyists have any kind of ideological bent on that issue.”

Correction: This story has been corrected to reflect that Moran began lobbying for Qatar in 2017, not 2023. 

If there is one word to describe the political mood in dealing with rising antisemitism, it would be apathy. Even the most jaw-dropping displays of anti-Jewish hatred — from abject Holocaust denial on far-right podcasts to support for Hamas’ atrocities on the extreme left — are increasingly responded to with shrugs from mainstream political leaders. 

The most recent example of obvious antisemitism being ignored by a party’s political class came out of Minnesota, where we reported about Minneapolis Democratic mayoral candidate Omar Fateh — running as a democratic socialist against sitting Mayor Jacob Frey — hiring top staff who celebrated Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks. 

In normal times, a candidate would be ashamed to be associated with extremists, and would immediately cut ties with the offending staffers. Not long ago, having ties to that type of extremist rhetoric would be disqualifying for the candidate as well. 

But these are not normal times. Not only has Fateh, a state senator, ignored the controversy entirely, but the local and national media has been uninterested in following up on Jewish Insider’s reporting about the radical operatives on Fateh’s team. 

Even more shocking: Two of Frey’s most prominent backers, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — have remained silent when asked about their thoughts about the antisemitism stemming from an endorsee’s political rival. It’s a sign that many mainstream Democrats fear that speaking out against antisemitism or anti-Israel extremism could lead to a backlash from other grassroots supporters. 

At best, it’s a sign that speaking out against hate carries few political benefits these days.

We saw a similar dynamic in Virginia this month, when former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), the Democratic nominee for governor, initially avoided answering questions from our reporters when asked about the rhetoric from an influential Democratic legislator tagging Zionism as “evil.” (After other leading Democrats weighed in, she responded: “One can and must denounce these tragedies without using antisemitic language, whether intentional or not.”)

Unlike in Minneapolis, which is heavily Democratic and deeply progressive, Virginia is a more competitive battleground. But even in battleground states, the makeup of the Democratic Party has changed to the point where speaking out against virulent anti-Israel rhetoric carries the potential for backlash from Arab and left-wing voices within the party coalition.

The apathy towards antisemitism is far from only a left-wing issue. On the right-wing side of the ledger, there are numerous examples of a grassroots infrastructure — from podcasts to social media influencers — that has become openly antisemitic and hostile to Israel. 

Tucker Carlson is the most prominent of these voices, but the number of podcasters and so-called influencers who share his worldview is growing. It’s as much a demand-side problem as a supply-side one. It’s now perfectly plausible to build a niche as a far-right purveyor of hate in the new social media ecosystem, and build a lucrative audience from that base. 

We’ve also seen, on the Republican side, the reticence to confront antisemitism when it’s happening from within its own ranks. When the Pentagon hired a deputy press secretary with a long history of promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, barely a peep of protest was heard from within partisan circles. In fact, she’s since been promoted to become the lead press secretary at the Defense Department.

There’s something broken in our political culture where we’ve, broadly speaking, become numb to the crazy. It’s a bipartisan phenomenon. And it’s happening as real-life antisemitic violence is at record levels, highlighted recently by the firebombing against Jews in Boulder, Colo.; the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington; and the attack on Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home in Harrisburg, Pa. 

The trend only underscores the need for Jewish organizations to speak up in the face of this rising hate, and if necessary, turn up the political pressure on all fronts. 

As students return to school in the coming weeks, four leading Jewish organizations are encouraging university leaders to adopt a new set of recommendations, released on Monday, designed to curb the antisemitism that has overwhelmed many campuses since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, Jewish Insider has learned. 

The guidelines — which call for increased safety measures as well as long-term structural reforms and build upon a four-page set of recommendations released last August —  are a joint effort from the Anti-Defamation League, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Hillel International and Jewish Federations of North America. 

The recommendations urge university leaders to “consistently enforce” codes of conduct around protests; appoint a coordinator to address Title VI discrimination complaints; reject academic boycotts of Israel; conduct annual student and faculty surveys in regard to campus antisemitism; crackdown on online harassment (in addition to physical safety concerns); and hold faculty accountable for political coercion and identity-based discrimination.

Some of the guidelines, such as the appointment of a Title VI coordinator, echo commitments that several university leaders have made in recent months amid battles with the Trump administration over federal funding. At Columbia University, some Jewish students expressed skepticism that the moves would have a significant impact on campus antisemitism. 

“These recommendations aren’t just suggestions, they’re essential steps universities need to take to ensure Jewish students can learn without fear,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Jewish students are being forced to hide who they are, and that’s unacceptable — we need more administrators to step up.”

“We are encouraged by the universities that have taken prior recommendations seriously, implementing changes that have reduced the most severe types of incidents, creating safer and more welcoming environments as a result. But our work is far from complete,” Hillel International president and CEO Adam Lehman said in a statement. “These updated recommendations provide a roadmap for institutions to build on their progress and address the challenges Jewish students continue to face.”

The recommendations released last summer by the same groups, in addition to the American Jewish Committee, called for university leaders to “anticipate and mitigate disruptions” on the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7. Other suggestions included that universities clearly communicate campus rules, standards and policies, support Jewish students, ensure campus safety and reaffirm faculty responsibilities.

In the recent viral debate surrounding American Eagle’s “great jeans” ad campaign with Sydney Sweeney, which used a double entendre that drew accusations of promoting eugenics, it seemed many critics overlooked that the clothing retailer’s chief executive is a leading Jewish philanthropist who has long been committed to fighting antisemitism.

It was the sort of irony befitting Jay Schottenstein, 71, a mild-mannered billionaire entrepreneur from Columbus, Ohio, who oversees a sprawling business network that, in addition to American Eagle, includes DSW, the designer shoe chain he leads as executive chairman, among other holdings in wine, real estate and furniture.

But outside of philanthropic circles — where he is widely recognized as one of the most consequential sponsors of Jewish causes in the United States and Israel — his relatively private lifestyle has otherwise obscured his long-standing dedication to a range of issues including educational efforts, archeological research and translations of ancient Jewish texts.

“I think most people really don’t know who he is,” said Brad Kastan, a Jewish Republican donor who lives in Columbus and has long been friendly with Schottenstein. “He kind of keeps a low profile.”

Still, Schottenstein, who is Modern Orthodox, remains “accessible,” according to Kastan. The retail mogul, he told Jewish Insider, often can be seen walking to synagogue on Shabbat from his home in Bexley, a Columbus suburb, to attend Congregation Torat Emet, which he has endowed. “Because he’s a proud observant Jew,” Kastan added, Schottenstein “literally walks from Bexley to Ohio State, which has got to be six or seven miles, to go to football games on Shabbos.”

Meanwhile, Schottenstein, whose family is friendly with President Donald Trump, is a major player in Ohio politics, contributing to candidates from both parties, even as he largely favors Republicans. Most recently, he has donated to Vivek Ramaswamy, who is the likely GOP nominee in next year’s Ohio governor’s race. 

For years, Schottenstein, who was instrumental in lobbying for legislation to allow Ohio to buy Israel bonds, has been a go-to resource among pro-Israel candidates looking for guidance on key issues about the Middle East. “If you support Israel and you’re running for office and you’re looking for advice or support in the Jewish community in central Ohio,” said Kastan, “you’re going to find your way to Jay’s office.”

The Ohio benefactor has built deep ties to Israel, where the National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel, which is under construction, bears his name. Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, has called him a friend, and he was a top contributor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2015 reelection bid. American Eagle also operates dozens of stores in Israel.