California’s state Senate has delayed consideration of a bipartisan bill meant to strengthen statewide protections against antisemitism, four key senators announced on Tuesday, days after the state’s largest teachers’ union announced its opposition to the legislation. 

The bumpy road for the bill, which is focused on countering antisemitism in K-12 education, stands in contrast to its earlier passage in the state Assembly. In May, the body voted unanimously to pass the legislation. 

It was slated to be debated by the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday in a hearing that has now been postponed indefinitely. 

“Antisemitism must never be normalized, and we must put a stop to it in our schools,” wrote Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire; Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, the education committee chair; and Sen. Scott Wiener and Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, co-chairs of the Legislative Jewish Caucus. All are Democrats. “We are committed to doing so and will be working overtime with a broad coalition over the summer to send an antisemitism bill to the governor by the end of this year’s legislative session in September.”

Wiener told Jewish Insider on Tuesday that the delay is “good news for the bill.”

“We just need more time, and now we have it,” said Wiener, who represents San Francisco. “I’m optimistic we’ll pass a strong antisemitism bill this year to protect Jewish students in our schools.”

The Senate has until Sept. 12 to pass the bill and send it to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk. It is not expected to be considered again until mid-August, after a monthlong summer recess. 

A spokesperson for the California Teachers Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. 

Leading Jewish communal groups in California sharply criticized the CTA on Monday and pledged to lobby hard for the bill’s passage. 

David Bocarsly, executive director of Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California — the umbrella group leading Jewish advocacy efforts for the bill — said the fact that the leader of the Senate and the chair of the education committee signed onto the statement signals that Democratic leadership is taking the bill seriously, though he acknowledged that passage is not guaranteed.

“We lose a little bit of the tangible reassurance, but we’ve gained some significant commitments from Senate leadership, which might be even more important,” Bocarsly told JI.

Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, a Los Angeles Democrat and the bill’s co-sponsor, said the delay will also allow the Legislature to consider concerns from some in the Jewish community that the measure does not go far enough in actually addressing “the kinds of harm, ostracism and incidents that are actually occurring in the schools.”

Navigating the competing concerns of the teachers’ unions and the Jewish community has already been a balancing act for the bill’s authors. When asked if he thinks the bill can pass without the support of the CTA, Zbur did not offer a firm answer.

“I think we are committed to doing what we need to do to get the bill passed,” he told JI. “It can’t wait another year and I think we’ve got the entire Jewish caucus — this is our highest priority, and we’re determined to get this bill passed, and that means doing everything we can to help everyone understand that this is a problem and that there are things that we need to do to try to rectify it.”

As the federal government continues its battles with dozens of colleges over campus antisemitism, the field of Middle East studies has been particularly scrutinized for advancing a one-sided, anti-Israel curriculum contributing to a rise of hostility towards the Jewish state in the classroom and beyond. 

Aiming to address that bias, Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy will launch a new Middle East Policy Studies master’s program this fall. The tuition-free, fully accredited, two-year master’s program on Pepperdine’s D.C. campus is a partnership with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. It will be funded solely by American citizens — unlike many similar university programs that take foreign funds. 

The program comes as critics of the field have long alleged that it imparts to students a one-sided history of the Middle East in which Israel is a perpetual villain, particularly since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks. “We wouldn’t be in these conversations had it not been revealed what’s been happening on college campuses since Oct. 7,” Pete Peterson, dean of Pepperdine’s public policy school, told Jewish Insider. 

“It’s evident that there is next to no viewpoint diversity” in the field, Peterson said. “That was revealed publicly in the days following Oct. 7. A lot of the organizing, staffing and in some cases even the funding of [anti-Israel] campus protests came out of centers and institutions in departments of Middle East studies. It wasn’t the engineering department that was going through the barricades.” 

For example, a 2024 report from the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance took aim at the school’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies for broadcasting the view that “the Palestinian people are innocent victims of Jewish (white) oppression and that known terrorist groups are simply ‘political movements.’” (Two heads of department were let go from their roles in March after the center came under intense scrutiny from the federal government). 

“We hope to not just bring people away from other schools where they know they will have to endure, in some cases, years of difficult experiences, but also attract new people into the field because they understand they’re not going to get that ideological — and in some cases antisemitic —  approach,” Peterson said. 

Robert Satloff, executive director of The Washington Institute and co-creator of the graduate program, told JI that the program intends to “train the next generation of policy makers, analysts and experts,” adding that it was “born out of Oct. 7, although it was percolating in my mind even before that.” The institute has been following critiques of Middle Eastern studies for at least two decades, according to Satloff. 

“At many of our elite universities, it’s quite clear that what students are getting as academic fare was not preparing them for the sort of public service we’re going to need in Middle Eastern studies,” Satloff said. “Instead of complaining about the sad state, I decided, let’s create an alternative.” 

The program will offer all accepted students this fall full tuition scholarships, which is “our way of saying that merit alone is the sole criterion for admission,” Satloff said, noting the the program’s goal is to be tuition-free in the long term — a decision that will be made after inauguration of the first cohort of students. 

“And it’s our way of offering a bit of incentive for those students who may have other options at other universities.”  

Satloff reached out to “dozens” of universities across the country in search of a partner. He said that Pepperdine, a private Christian research university with its main campus in Los Angeles, was “eager and had the right approach, which was commitment to viewpoint diversity, where students are not going to be indoctrinated.” 

Pepperdine has advertised itself in several fields as a counter to the antisemitism that has increased at universities nationwide since Oct. 7 —  and Jewish students are taking note, despite the school’s Christian affiliation.  

Jewish students comprise nearly 20% of the 1L class of Pepperdine’s Caruso School of Law. 

While Jewish students make up 2% of Pepperdine’s undergraduate population, Jim Gash, the school’s president, wrote in the Jewish Journal last year, “We are a place that is honored by the presence of our Jewish students and faculty — where every year, we have a Sukkah constructed on campus so our observant students can have a place to eat and fellowship on Sukkot; where a Menorah is lit to celebrate the holiday of Hanukkah; and where Jewish students gather together over lunch to discuss the weekly Torah portion.”

The policy school has run a longstanding scholarship for Jewish and Muslim students. “We very much have been committed to being a safe space for people of all faiths,” Peterson said. “Middle East studies in particular have become very secularized and in that secularization you see growing antisemitism.” 

Applications for the master’s program are being accepted on a rolling basis until July 25. In the two weeks since the application portal has opened, Satloff said interest in the program is “overwhelming.” 

He believes that reception has been sparked by increasing awareness that the “Middle East is likely to remain a key focus of American foreign policy.”

“There was a dip of interest in these issues, but certainly over the last couple of years, young people have been reminded that America is deeply committed in this region and there are important policy interests that we have in this region,” Satloff said, adding that the recent U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities “confirm that this region will continue to have a tug on American interests far into the future.”  

A grassroots campaign urging educators to stop using teaching materials from the Anti-Defamation League reached the highest levels of K-12 education over the weekend.

Inside a packed conference hall in Portland, Ore., the thousands of delegates who make up the governing body of the National Education Association — the largest teachers union in the country — passed a measure that bars the union from using, endorsing or publicizing any materials from the ADL. 

In the moments before the vote, several Jewish delegates spoke passionately in opposition of the measure. 

“I stand here and ask you to oppose [the measure] to show that all are truly welcome here,” a teacher from New Jersey said, according to audio of the closed-door meeting obtained by Jewish Insider. 

Another Jewish teacher quoted NEA Executive Director Kim Anderson from her keynote address earlier in the weekend. “This union has your back,” Anderson told the more than 6,000 assembled delegates.

“Does that include stopping Jewish hate, antisemitism? Some of our members don’t feel they are safe,” the Jewish teacher said during Sunday’s debate. 

The vote occurred by voice. The margin was so close that delegates had to vote three times as the chair considered whether the loudest cheers were in support of the measure or in opposition, but, ultimately, it still received the backing of more than half the delegates. It now heads to the NEA’s nine-member executive committee, which gets the final word on whether the measure will be put into effect. (The passage of the anti-ADL measure was first reported by the North American Values Institute.)

The episode garnered criticism from Jewish teachers and allies. NEA’s national leadership has not yet weighed in on the measure. 

“At a time when incidents of hate and bias are on the rise across the country, this action sends a troubling message of exclusion and undermines our shared goal of ensuring every student feels safe and supported,” a spokesperson for the NEA’s Jewish affairs caucus said in a statement to JI. The caucus said its members plan to continue using ADL materials in their classrooms. 

The ADL slammed the vote, calling it “profoundly disturbing that a group of NEA activists would brazenly attempt to further isolate their Jewish colleagues and push a radical, antisemitic agenda on students,” according to an ADL spokesperson. 

Staci Maiers, an NEA spokesperson, declined to comment on the specific measure. “NEA members will continue to educate and organize against antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and all forms of hate and discrimination,” Maiers told JI in a statement. “We will not shy away from difficult or controversial issues that affect our members, our students or our schools.” (The NEA assembly also adopted a measure pledging to highlight Jewish American Heritage Month each May.) 

The NEA’s adoption of a measure targeting the leading Jewish civil rights organization may be an escalation, but it is only the most recent example of antisemitism — and divisive politics surrounding the war in Gaza — spilling into K-12 education, and teachers unions in particular. 

Since the 2023 Hamas attacks, Jewish parents have raised concerns about discrimination against Jewish students and about the increasingly frequent use of anti-Israel materials in classrooms. Last week, for instance, the parents of an 11-year-old sued their child’s Virginia private school, alleging school administrators ignored antisemitic harassment directed against her for months. 

The NEA’s vote on the anti-ADL measure grew out of a campaign called #DropTheADLFromSchools, which began with an online open letter and gradually garnered the support of some of the country’s most powerful local unions, including United Teachers Los Angeles, which represents 35,000 LA teachers. 

In March, UTLA president Cecily Myart-Cruz wrote a letter asking the superintendent of the LA Unified School District and the LAUSD school board to stop using ADL materials and “refuse to contract or partner” with the ADL, because of its “focus on indoctrination rather than education.” (An LAUSD spokesperson said no action had been taken in reference to the letter.)

Last year, the NEA joined a campaign to pressure then-President Joe Biden to halt all U.S. military aid to Israel. The Massachusetts Teachers Association, an NEA affiliate, has encouraged members to introduce anti-Israel materials into classrooms. 

Last week, the largest teachers union in California published a letter urging state senators to vote against a bill focused on fighting and preventing antisemitism. 

“While we share the same overarching goal of the AB 715 author and sponsors of combating antisemitism, we have serious reservations about the proposed methods for achieving it,” wrote Seth Bramble, legislative relations manager of the California Teachers Association, a 300,000-member affiliate of the NEA. “We are also concerned with academic freedom and the ability of educators to ensure that instruction include perspectives and materials that reflect the cultural and ethnic diversity of all of California’s students.” 

In May, the state assembly voted unanimously to approve the bill, which was co-sponsored by the Jewish, Black, Latino, Native American and Asian American and Pacific Islander legislative caucuses. The legislation would create a statewide antisemitism coordinator in the state’s Education Department and strengthen anti-discrimination protections, while providing additional guidelines to keep antisemitism out of teaching materials. 

But the bill’s fate is now in jeopardy as senators face pressure from one of the state’s most powerful unions to reject it. The California Senate’s education committee is set to vote on the bill on Wednesday. State Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, the Los Angeles-area Democrat who chairs the committee, did not respond to a request for comment about whether she plans to vote for the bill. 

State Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco and the co-chair of the legislative Jewish caucus, said it is “frustrating” seeing the CTA oppose the bill instead of collaborating with its authors.

“We need, as a matter of state policy, to be very, very clear that antisemitism will not be tolerated in California public schools,” Wiener told JI. “I was really disappointed to see CTA’s letter which basically says, ‘Oh, we hate antisemitism, but we can’t possibly do anything meaningful about it.’” (A CTA spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.)

More than two dozen California Jewish groups released a statement on Monday slamming the CTA, saying that advocates for the bill have already put its passage on hold for more than a year to try to negotiate with the union. The sponsors pivoted from an earlier version of the bill — which was intended to root out antisemitism in the state’s ethnic studies curriculum — at the urging of the CTA. 

“We call on the legislature to stand firmly in support of California’s Jewish students and move the bill forward,” wrote the Jewish organizations, including the ADL, StandWithUs, American Jewish Committee and the Jewish federations in Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and several other communities. 

Jewish community activists plan to spend the next two days lobbying for passage of the bill. Jay Goldfischer, a teacher in Los Angeles County, is traveling to Sacramento to urge lawmakers to vote for it. 

“Jewish students across California are being silenced. Many are afraid to walk into their schools, unsure if they’ll be targeted for who they are,” Goldfischer told JI. “As a CTA member, I am personally disappointed that CTA doesn’t feel Jewish students are worth protecting.”

Good Wednesday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on the North Carolina Democratic Party’s recent approval of a number of anti-Israel resolutions, and cover concerns among Jewish therapists about the politicization of antisemitism in the field. We talk to Rev. Johnnie Moore about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid distribution efforts in Gaza, and report on texts from Columbia University acting President Claire Shipman suggesting the removal of a Jewish trustee over her pro-Israel advocacy. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: S. Daniel Abraham, Eric Goldstein and Dylan Field.

What We’re Watching

• We’re keeping an eye on both Washington and Jerusalem today, ahead of next week’s planned meeting between President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as the leaders and aides provide details of the contours of the talks. Yesterday, Trump said that Israel had agreed to the terms of a 60-day ceasefire with Hamas, shortly after Israeli Strategic Minister Ron Dermer and White House Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff wrapped up an hours-long meeting.

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S LAHAV HARKOV

It might be hard to remember now, with all that has happened in recent weeks, but the Knesset seemed very close to calling an early election a day and a half before Israel commenced its airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs last month.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a post-Iran victory bump, and is once again leading in the polls – but not by much. A poll published on Tuesday showed his Likud party leading a potential party led by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett by only two seats, and tied with Bennett for leading candidate for prime minister. Another pollster showed a similar margin during the Iran operation, but had the two parties tied after the ceasefire. Parties in the current coalition made up less than half of the Knesset in every poll. In a poll from the Israel Democracy Institute published on Wednesday, only 46% of Jewish Israelis said they trust Netanyahu. 

A common accusation heard by Netanyahu’s political opponents at home and abroad is that he is prolonging the war in Gaza to stay in office, because ending the war before his far-right coalition partners deem Hamas fully defeated would likely see the collapse of his government. But the victories under his leadership are seemingly not staunching the Israeli right’s continued collapse in the polls as the war grinds on in its 635th day.

Netanyahu may consider the political advantages of winding down the war as he heads to Washington next week while President Donald Trump is pushing for a broad deal that would encompass a Gaza ceasefire and the release of hostages, the administration of Gaza by moderate Sunni states, normalization between Israel and Syria and perhaps other countries, plus working to ensure Iran doesn’t rebuild its nuclear program. 

If Netanyahu returns to Israel with a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release agreement, an expanded Abraham Accords and a way to keep Israel’s achievement in Iran intact, then he may get a more significant electoral bump. In that scenario, one option for him could be to ride that wave and call a snap election, rather than wait until the official October 2026 date for the vote.

Or, Netanyahu could see this as his legacy-clinching move, a sign that his work is done. In 2021, the prime minister said that he wants his legacy to be that he was the “protector of Israel, because I devoted much of my adult life to preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon.”

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

PUSHING BACK

Immoral’ U.N. ‘sabotaging’ food distribution, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation chairman

Rev. Johnnie Moore, a member of President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory committee, has years of experience with complex situations in the Middle East. He helped evacuate Christian refugees under threat from ISIS and has advocated for religious freedom and tolerance for minorities in the region. But the challenges Moore faces as executive chairman of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the U.S. group, supported by Israel, that began distributing food and humanitarian aid in Gaza in May, have been unique. In a wide-ranging interview this week with the Misgav Institute for National Security’s “Mideast Horizons” podcast, co-hosted by Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov, Moore pushed back against what he claims are false narratives about the group’s work and accused aid organizations of “sabotage” and spreading disinformation, while acknowledging the challenges of aid distribution in an active war zone.

Hamas hurdles: GHF is addressing “a problem that everyone knew and admitted existed … and now everyone has amnesia,” Moore said. “The vast majority of humanitarian assistance that has gone into the Gaza Strip over many, many, many years, was almost immediately diverted into the hands of Hamas, and then used for various nefarious purposes. And I’m not talking about some of the aid — I’m talking about almost all of the aid.” As such, the mission of GHF is to equally and directly distribute aid to Gazans without having it be “used to prolong a conflict or hoarded,” he said.

Let down: Moore said he would have liked to collaborate with major humanitarian organizations, such as the World Food Program, but that the U.N. has “been trying to sabotage us from the very beginning.” He added, “We’d really like the people whose job it has been to do this for many years to decide to help us. Instead, they spread lies that originate in Hamas and try to shut us down, and I can’t think of anything more immoral than trying to shut down an operation that’s … feeding millions and millions of meals every day.”

Read the full interview here.

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PROFESSIONAL SILENCING

When Jewish pain becomes ‘political’: Therapists fired after raising antisemitism concerns

Two Dallas therapists who objected to their supervisors’ handling of antisemitism issues filed a federal discrimination lawsuit last month against their former employer — saying they faced unlawful retaliation for their objections when they were fired days after voicing their concerns, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Shut down: The chain of events began in November last year when Jackie Junger and Jacqueline Katz sat down with their colleagues at a private practice in Dallas for their weekly team meeting. When a non-Jewish therapist asked for help better understanding a Jewish client who was “experiencing trauma with everything going on,” Junger and Katz — both Jewish — were eager to offer insight about the surge in antisemitism in the United States, in the hopes of helping their colleague better serve her client. But before Junger, 29, and Katz, 61, could speak, their supervisor, Dr. Dina Hijazi, shut down the conversation. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, because you’ll get a one-sided response,” Hijazi told the therapists, according to legal filings. 

And then: The next day, Hijazi emailed the team and asked them to avoid discussing the “Palestine Israel topic” because she has “great pain” around the issue. But no one had mentioned the events in the Middle East at that meeting. Junger and Katz each responded to Hijazi’s note: Why, they wondered, would it be considered “one-sided” for Jewish therapists to speak about their understanding of antisemitism and Jewish trauma?  Over the next five days, Junger and Katz would see their lives upended after they chose to raise concerns about antisemitism and double standards against Jewish practitioners and clients. 

Read the full story here.

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SENATOR’S SUPPLICATION

Gillibrand apologizes to Mamdani as he formally claims NYC mayoral nomination

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) apologized to Zohran Mamdani for recently saying that he had made “references to global jihad,” as New York Democrats continue to weigh their response to the 33-year-old democratic socialist’s stunning upset in New York City’s mayoral primary last week that sent shockwaves through the party establishment, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.

Democratic detente: In a Monday night phone conversation, Gillibrand “apologized for mischaracterizing Mamdani’s record” during a radio interview last week, according to a readout of their call first shared with Politico. The news of her apology came shortly after Mamdani had formally clinched the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, in a resounding, 12-point victory over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, his chief rival in the Democratic primary, who had already conceded.

Read the full story here.

State of the race: New York City’s elections board released the unofficial results of the election, finding Mamdani, who won in the third round of ranked-choice voting tabulations, with a 12-point victory over Cuomo.

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TARHEEL TROUBLE

North Carolina Democratic party’s anti-Israel votes frustrate Jewish Democrats — and create an opportunity for Republicans

The State Executive Committee of the North Carolina Democratic Party passed, at a meeting last weekend, a resolution calling for an arms embargo on Israel, along with a series of other anti-Israel resolutions, a move that Republicans are already planning to use against statewide candidates as a sign of the party’s leftward drift, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Seizing the moment: The National Republican Senatorial Committee has already seized upon the resolutions as a political weapon against current and potential Democratic Senate candidates — in the race for the battleground seat of retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) — with pro-Israel voters. “North Carolina Democrats like [former Gov.] Roy Cooper, [and Reps.] Jeff Jackson [and] Wiley Nickel are responsible for their Party’s unapologetic appeasement of pro-Hamas radicals,” NRSC spokesperson Joanna Rodriguez said in a statement. For their part, members of the state Democratic Party’s Jewish caucus had warned ahead of the vote that the resolutions would be needlessly divisive and give political ammunition to Republicans. They say the party should be single-mindedly focused on helping to elect Democrats.

Read the full story here.

Eye on the OC: Esther Kim Varet, an art gallery owner mounting an outsider bid as a Democrat to unseat Rep. Young Kim (R-CA) in California’s 40th Congressional District, which encompasses Orange County, said she wants to help repair and strengthen a Democratic Party she said has been severely undermined by rampant anti-Israel activism. Anti-Israel extremism and its proponents have “really decimated the Democratic Party,” Kim Varet, whose husband and children are Jewish, told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod in a recent interview. 

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BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

Acting Columbia president suggests removal of Jewish board member in texts obtained by House Education Committee

Text messages obtained by the House Committee on Education and Workforce published in a letter on Tuesday revealed that Claire Shipman, acting president of Columbia University, suggested that a Jewish trustee should be removed over her pro-Israel advocacy and called for an “Arab on our board,” amid antisemitic unrest that roiled the university’s campus last year, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports. 

Shipped messages: “We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board,” Shipman, then the co-chair of Columbia’s Board of Trustees, wrote in a message to the board’s vice chair on Jan. 17, 2024. “Quickly I think. Somehow.” Shipman said in a follow-up message days later that Shoshana Shendelman, a Jewish board member who frequently condemned campus antisemitism, had been “extraordinarily unhelpful” and said, “I just don’t think she should be on the board.”

Read the full story here.

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NOMINEE NEWS

Trump administration nominates two former Hawley advisors for senior Pentagon roles

Elbridge Colby, the Trump administration’s under secretary of defense for policy, announced on Tuesday the nominations of Alex Velez-Green and Austin Dahmer to be, respectively, deputy under secretary of defense for policy and assistant secretary of defense for strategy, plans and capabilities, both senior policy roles under Colby in the Department of Defense, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Staffing moves: Velez-Green and Dahmer, both former advisors to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), are aligned with the faction of the Republican Party that advocates for more selective U.S. engagement abroad, particularly limiting involvement in Europe, though both have been generally supportive of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Read the full story here.

Weapons worries: The Pentagon suspended shipments of some air defense missiles and other precision munitions to Ukraine, amid concerns that U.S. stockpiles are too low, a decision led by Colby.

Elsewhere in the administration: Eddie Vasquez was announced as the State Department’s acting deputy assistant secretary for press and public diplomacy at the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

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Worthy Reads

Abraham Accords 2.0: In the Financial Times, senior Emirati diplomat Lana Nusseibeh, who until 2024 served as the United Arab Emirates’ envoy at the United Nations, calls for a “comprehensive” Middle East peace agreement built on the successes of the Abraham Accords. “For years, two false notions have taken hold in the Middle East: first, that force alone can secure stability and security. Second, that states in our region can be built securely on the basis of a zealous ideology. In fact, military victories in the Middle East are often hollow and fragile and extremist ideology can never create safe, stable and successful societies. As the window to de-escalate closes, there is an opportunity for U.S. President Donald Trump to forge a second-term legacy of peace in the Middle East, by building on his landmark first-term achievement: the Abraham Accords.” [FT]

What’s in a Slogan? The New York Times’ Bret Stephens, who was living in Jerusalem during the Second Intifada, reflects on New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s defense of the phrase “globalize the intifada.” “But a major political candidate who plainly refuses to condemn the phrase ‘globalize the intifada’ isn’t participating in legitimate democratic debate; he is giving moral comfort to people who deliberately murder innocent Jews. There are liberals and progressives who’ll continue to make excuses for Mamdani. They will argue that his views on ‘globalize the intifada’ are beside the point of his agenda for New York. They will observe that he has a predictable share of far-left Jewish supporters. They will play semantic games about the original meaning of ‘intifada.’” [NYTimes]

On the Nuclear Clock: The Wall Street Journal’s Jared Malsin and Laurence Norman look at the political calculations affecting the amount of time by which experts and officials believe Iran’s nuclear program has been set back. “If Iran were to make the decision to build a nuclear weapon, it would be betting that it can complete the job and establish deterrence before the U.S. and Israel intervene — through military action, economic pressure or diplomacy — to stop it. A longer timeline increases the risk of being spotted or struck again, which could dissuade Iran from taking such a gamble in the first place. So measured on the Iranian nuclear clock, a delay of a few months could translate into a lot longer than it sounds if it keeps Tehran from moving ahead.” [WSJ]

Word on the Street

Paramount reached a $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump over the comments made about the Israel-Hamas war by then-Vice President Kamala Harris in a “60 Minutes” interview that Trump alleged had selectively edited; the money will be put toward Trump’s legal fees and his future presidential library…

The Wall Street Journal looks at relations between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which appear to be on an upswing following the joint Israel-U.S. cooperation in striking Iran following months of rumored tensions between the two leaders…

As the Senate closed out its marathon session of amendment votes on Republicans’ budget bill, the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, it added back a provision fought for by Orthodox Jewish groups, creating a major new national school choice program, which had been stripped from the bill days earlier, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) and 12 other House Republicans introduced a bill to create a service medal for members of the military involved in the Iran-Israel war…

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed an executive order addressing antisemitism in the state’s schools; under the terms of the executive order, the Iowa Board of Regents is instructed to work with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to ensure that the state’s universities are in compliance with the Civil Rights Act, and will review universities’ handling of antisemitism complaints dating back to October 2023…

Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken was announced as the Ford Foundation’s next president, succeeding Darren Walker…

The Washington Post spotlights the Pentagon Pizza Report social media account, which tracks spikes in activity at pizzerias in the vicinity of the Defense Department’s Northern Virginia headquarters; the tracker noted an increase in activity ahead of Israel’s preemptive strikes on Iran last month, as well as before Trump announced the U.S. attack on Iranian nuclear facilities…

Authorities in Germany arrested a Danish national from Afghanistan accused of surveilling potential Jewish targets in the country on behalf of Iran; prosecutors believe the man was instructed by Iran’s Quds Force to scout Jewish sites and locations used by prominent Jewish communal leaders in the German capital…

Germany summoned the Iranian ambassador in Berlin over the arrest; German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, who is visiting Ukraine, where he visited a synagogue and the Babyn Yar memorial, said if the accusations were proven, “that would once again demonstrate that Iran is a threat to Jews all over the world”…

French President Emmanuel Macron spoke on Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin; the two-hour call, which was initiated following U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last month, was the first conversation between the two leaders in nearly three years…

The U.K. Defence Journal suggests that dozens of social media accounts that promoted Scottish independence have ceased posting following Israel’s strikes on Iran, which caused blackouts across parts of the Islamic Republic…

Iran reportedly moved forward last month with plans to deploy mines in the Strait of Hormuz, which would have effectively shuttered the waterway to commercial vessels; the mines were loaded onto vessels in the Persian Gulf shortly after Israel began its preemptive strikes on Iranian nuclear and military facilities…

Iran’s nuclear regulators are no longer responding to outreach from international inspectors, following Tehran’s decision last week to cut off inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency…

Iranian Rear Adm. Ali Shamkhani, who was believed to have been killed in last month’s Israeli strikes on senior regime officials, was seen, walking with a cane, in footage from the country’s weekend memorial service for military commanders…

Dylan Field’s Figma filed for an IPO, less than two years after the collapse of a planned $20 billion takeover by Adobe; read JI’s profile of Fields here…

Eric Goldstein, the CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, will step down from his position at the end of the next fiscal year, after 12 years in the role, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross reports…

Entrepreneur, Democratic donor and philanthropist S. Daniel Abraham, who in 1989 established an eponymous center to focus on Middle East peacebuilding efforts, died at 101…

Pic of the Day

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul laid a stone at the Babyn Yar memorial in Ukraine this week during an unannounced trip to the country.

Birthdays

Actress, singer and producer, she appeared in her first films as a 14-year-old, Ashley Tisdale turns 40…

Director emerita of Hebrew studies at HUC-JIR, now on the board of trustees of Los Angeles Hebrew High School, Rivka Dori… Nobel laureate in medicine in 2004, he is a professor at Columbia University and a molecular biologist, Richard Axel turns 79… Co-creator of the “Seinfeld” television series and creator of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” comedian and producer, Larry David turns 78… Inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2014 as a member of the E Street Band, Roy J. Bittan turns 76… Swedish author and screenwriter, she wrote a novel about Jewish children who escaped the Holocaust, Annika Thor turns 75… Former CEO of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, she also served as a State Department’s special envoy on antisemitism, Hannah Rosenthal turns 74… Montclair, N.J.-based philanthropic consultant, Aaron Issar Back, Ph.D…. Israeli Druze politician who served as a member of the Knesset for the Kulanu and Kadima parties, Akram Hasson turns 66… Maryland state senator since 2015, Cheryl C. Kagan turns 64… Founder and head of business development of AQR Capital Management, David G. Kabiller turns 62… Member of the Knesset for the United Torah Judaism alliance, Ya’akov Asher turns 60… Chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, Peter E. Baker turns 58… Reading specialist at Wayne Thomas School in Highland Park, Ill., Stephanie Rubin… Co-founder, president and dean at Mechon Hadar in Manhattan, Shai Held, Ph.D. turns 54… Global industry editor for health and pharma at Thomson Reuters, Michele Gershberg… Music video and film director, Alma Har’el turns 50… Motivational speaker, media personality and a senior director of capital markets at RXR Realty, Charlie Harary turns 48… Author of fiction and non-fiction on a variety of Jewish topics, Elisa Albert turns 47… Israeli journalist, TV anchor and popular lecturer, Sivan Rahav-Meir turns 44… Member of Congress (R-NY), she was the chair of the House Republican Conference until earlier this year, Elise Stefanik turns 41… Actress and internet personality, Barbara Dunkelman turns 36… Actress, singer and songwriter, she played a lead role in the 2019 ABC series “Emergence,” Alexa Swinton turns 16…

One November afternoon last year, Jackie Junger and Jacqueline Katz, both therapists at a private practice in Dallas, sat down with their colleagues for their weekly team meeting. This one-hour gathering was a lifeline for the therapists, where they could discuss challenges their clients were facing and receive advice from their fellow practitioners. 

When a non-Jewish therapist asked for help better understanding a Jewish client who was “experiencing trauma with everything going on,” Junger and Katz — both Jewish — were eager to offer insight about the surge in antisemitism in the United States, in the hopes of helping their colleague better serve her client. But before Junger, 29, and Katz, 61, could speak, their supervisor, Dr. Dina Hijazi, shut down the conversation. 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, because you’ll get a one-sided response,” Hijazi told the therapists, according to legal filings. 

The next day, Hijazi emailed the team and asked them to avoid discussing the “Palestine Israel topic” because she has “great pain” around the issue. But no one had mentioned the events in the Middle East at that meeting. Junger and Katz each responded to Hijazi’s note: Why, they wondered, would it be considered “one-sided” for Jewish therapists to speak about their understanding of antisemitism and Jewish trauma?  

Over the next five days, Junger and Katz would see their lives upended after they chose to raise concerns about antisemitism and double standards against Jewish practitioners and clients. 

That’s the key allegation at the heart of a federal lawsuit that Junger and Katz filed last month against D2 Counseling and its co-owners, Hijazi and Rev. Daniel Gowan. The two Jewish therapists claim they were discriminated against for objecting to their supervisors’ handling of antisemitism — and that, ultimately, they faced unlawful retaliation when they were fired days later. On the Monday before Thanksgiving, both received identical voicemails letting them know they had been terminated, saying they were no longer a “good fit” for D2. (An attorney representing Hijazi and Gowan declined to respond to detailed questions, citing the ongoing legal proceedings. The account in this article is based on an interview with Katz and Junger, allegations in their lawsuit and information shared by their lawyer.)

The incident was jarring for both Katz and Junger, they told Jewish Insider this week. But the biggest travesty, they said, is not that they lost their jobs: It’s that Jewish clients at their old practice should no longer expect to receive the highest level of care — because of their religion.

“This Jewish client — I don’t know who it is, obviously, I just know that it’s a Jewish client who is genuinely seeking support for something that they’re having trouble with in their life. It’s real trauma. I think most Jews can appreciate that it’s really traumatic, what’s happening,” Junger told JI. “And they’re not allowed to get competent health care. They have no clue.” 

*****

This case is only a single incident experienced by just two of the nation’s more than 100,000 licensed therapists. But it comes amid what Jewish mental health professionals in the United States have described as an increasingly hostile professional environment, where denunciations of Israel are expected and outright antisemitism is no longer a taboo, particularly after the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks in Israel. 

Earlier this year, the state of Illinois formally reprimanded a social worker who had created a blacklist publicly naming “Zionist” therapists. (The clinicians included on the list said it was just a pretext for targeting Jews.) 

In May, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) warned of a “persistent and pernicious pattern of antisemitism” at the American Psychological Association, the preeminent professional organization for psychologists in the U.S. 

Empathy is supposed to be the central tenet of the mental health field, but compassion and understanding are not always extended to Jewish therapists — or worse, their clients.

“Our role is really to facilitate the discussion, to honor their feelings, and to create a safe space — to create a space that [clients] can communicate what they’re experiencing internally, without any sort of feeling that, ‘I’m going to be shut down or marginalized or not taken seriously,’” Katz explained.  

It was clear to Junger and Katz soon after the Oct. 7 attacks that team conversations about what was happening in the Middle East would be different from other issues they’d been discussing for years. 

“We talk about current events a lot because these things affect our clients,” said Katz. The D2 team had talked about the war in Ukraine soon after it started; abortion access following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022; and gun control after a mass shooting at a Texas mall in 2023. 

A therapist helping a client work through issues with their sexuality might seek advice from a gay co-worker. Past meetings also included discussions of Mormonism and Islam, according to the complaint filed by Katz and Junger. Hijazi led a conversation about how to help clients who were having an emotional reaction to President Donald Trump’s reelection shortly after it occurred, according to the lawsuit.

“It’s very common to seek peer consultation, supervision from someone who has expertise, whether it’s lived experience or clinical experience,” Junger told JI. “If someone, let’s say, had cancer, and I had a client who’s going through cancer, I might reach out and say, ‘Hey, what would be helpful for me to know?’” 

Three days after the Oct. 7 attacks, when the D2 team gathered as they do each Tuesday, Hijazi and Gowan did not address the recent terror attacks. 

“We were all very shocked that we weren’t going to address the elephant in the room, as it were, and it quickly fell apart because one of my coworkers brought it up. ‘Aren’t we going to talk about what happened? We’re all very upset and suffering here,’” said Katz. “And it was shut down.” 

Lesson learned, according to Katz and Junger: Don’t bring up Israel or Gaza again. It wasn’t an overt order, but the palpable discomfort from Hijazi and Gowan kept a lid on future conversations.

Still, Hijazi’s strong reaction to the conversation about antisemitism a year later, in November 2024, surprised Junger and Katz. No one had mentioned Israel or Gaza. But Hijazi followed up with an email requesting that the “Palestine Israel topic” not be discussed. 

“I have great pain around this as I know some of you do as well,” Hijazi wrote in the email, which was shared with JI. “In order for me to work and be present with my clients I have asked that this be kept out of the noon meeting.” (What Hijazi did not share is that her family is Palestinian — a fact her daughter discussed in an online blog post viewed by JI, but one Hijazi didn’t mention to colleagues.) 

Katz and Junger did not see how a question about the trauma of a Jewish patient in Texas could be extrapolated to extend to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nor did they understand why Hijazi chose to shut down future discussions of Jewish trauma. Separately, they each responded with lengthy emails, screenshots of which were included in the lawsuit.

“I believe every single one of us has Jewish clients, and the more we understand, the better we can service our clients,” Junger wrote in her email.

Katz took issue with Hijazi letting her own emotions guide the discussion, a therapist no-no. 

“As a managing partner in this practice I think it was essential for you to be able to manage the inquiry without adopting the victim role and personalizing it to your pain,” Katz wrote in another email. “I understand that you were protecting yourself by leaving the room, however the impact was that some of us felt shut down and unheard.” 

The matter only escalated from there, playing out like most modern office dramas: over email, leaving a lengthy digital record. 

Hijazi banned the expression of “political or religious opinions” in the group meetings, under the rationale of “safety in the workplace.” “Emotional safety for the group,” she wrote, “will always come before personal agendas.” 

But Katz and Junger were still unsure what was political about their earlier meeting and decided to press the point about their concern for Jewish clients. “I think your failure to see that this was not a political conversation is a huge blind spot for you,” wrote Katz. Gowan responded by telling her she was “way over the line,” a sentiment Hijazi echoed. 

Over that weekend, on Sunday night, Junger chimed in, too. “I would love some clarification, as I am feeling lots of confusion,” she wrote. “Would wanting more clarity on a Black client experiencing racism violate that policy as well? How about talking about a client who is part of the LGBTQ community and experiencing trauma and discrimination? Are we allowed to talk about their lived experience? Or does this rule only apply to Jewish clients?” 

That was Junger’s final message to her bosses about the matter. Katz chimed in after, saying she had the same questions. 

A day later, they were both fired. 

“It was just outrageous behavior on their part, I think, and so punishing, really. You open your mouth here, and this is what happens to you,” said Katz. “If we weren’t Jewish, [the other therapist] wouldn’t have asked us for supervision. If we weren’t Jewish, we wouldn’t have spoken up. If we weren’t Jewish, we wouldn’t have been let go.”

Their contract required D2 to give them 30 days to finish seeing clients. But they were forced to move to a different office, and asked to pay tens of thousands of dollars stemming from a part of the contract with buyout options and a non-compete clause. (They have refused to pay.)

“I knew antisemitism was on the rise, but to have it so blatant in my face in this way was really shocking. It was honestly a little scary,” said Junger.

*****

Winning an employment discrimination suit is not an easy task. But the lawyers at the Lawfare Project and Winston & Strawn representing Katz and Junger are confident that they have a strong case. 

“It’s very rare to see a case like this, a discrimination retaliation case like this, where the employer’s actions are so brazen,” said Jaclyn Clark, the Lawfare Project attorney who brought the case. “I strongly suspect that the employer in this instance just thought that they could get away with it … So from my standpoint, beyond just shining a light on the issue of antisemitism in the mental health field, the politicization of Jewish trauma and all of those things, is also to put these smaller employers on warning.”

Orly Lobel, an employment law expert at the University of San Diego who looked over the complaint, described it as “a strong case, since it is all documented with email exchanges and there is no pretextual reason for the termination,” she told JI. 

Junger and Katz’s attorneys allege that they faced discrimination as members of a racial minority, leaning on a 1987 Supreme Court ruling as precedent. L. Camille Hébert, a professor at The Ohio State University’s law school, said the race-based argument could be a tougher bar to clear than if the therapists made an argument about religious discrimination. But she noted that the facts laid out in the complaint paint a picture of discrimination.

“If the facts are as alleged, that all subjects were allowed to be addressed in the meetings other than antisemitism, then there might be a cognizable claim of discrimination based on religion.  The defense of ‘workplace safety’ seems not to be a particularly strong one,” Hébert said after reviewing the complaint. 

*****

Jewish therapists aren’t the only ones worried about antisemitism in the field. People seeking mental health care are, too, and Junger and Katz say they are right to be concerned. 

After she was fired by D2, Junger created a list of Jewish therapists in the Dallas area to share with the people in the Jewish community who come to her asking for a referral. Since Oct. 7, she has seen more people seeking out a therapist who understands Jewish issues — and she understands why. 

“Maybe a while ago I would have been like, ‘No, it’s a therapist job to [listen]. They’re not political. It’s OK,’” said Junger. “Now I’m like, ‘I get that.’ It makes sense to want to have safety and know that you have a real safe space to be able to process things that are directly impacting us.”

Rev. Johnnie Moore, a member of President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory committee, has years of experience with complex situations in the Middle East. He helped evacuate Christian refugees under threat from ISIS and has advocated for religious freedom and tolerance for minorities in the region.

But the challenges Moore faces as executive chairman of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the U.S. group, supported by Israel, that began distributing food and humanitarian aid in Gaza in May, have been unique. 

Since its inception, GHF has faced a pervasive negative narrative in the international media and among aid organizations. More recent statements from U.N. and other aid groups in effect accuse the GHF of being an IDF front luring Gaza residents to one place so they can be attacked, while largely ignoring Hamas violence against Palestinians working with the GHF.

In a wide-ranging interview this week with the Misgav Institute for National Security’s “Mideast Horizons” podcast, co-hosted by Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov, Moore pushed back against what he says are false narratives about the group’s work and accused aid organizations of “sabotage” and spreading disinformation, while acknowledging the challenges of aid distribution in an active war zone.

*****

GHF is addressing “a problem that everyone knew and admitted existed … and now everyone has amnesia,” Moore said. “The vast majority of humanitarian assistance that has gone into the Gaza Strip over many, many, many years, was almost immediately diverted into the hands of Hamas, and then used for various nefarious purposes. And I’m not talking about some of the aid — I’m talking about almost all of the aid.”

As such, the mission of GHF is to equally and directly distribute aid to Gazans without having it be “used to prolong a conflict or hoarded,” he said.

Since the beginning of GHF’s operations on May 26, the organization has opened four distribution sites in southern Gaza, from which it said it has provided Gazans with over 958,000 boxes of food. Moore said the GHF calculates meals with a greater caloric value than what the U.N. aid organizations distribute, and by the GHF’s count, it has distributed over 54.8 million meals.

“In an objective world, this would be viewed as an incredible success,” Moore said. “To my great surprise, we poked a number of bears that I wasn’t anticipating, and not all of them are Hamas threatening our local aid workers and the Americans helping these people. A lot of [the antagonists] wear suits and are in places like Geneva and New York City.”

Moore quipped that he has faced “lots of trouble” in his career advocating for religious freedom for Christian minorities around the world, including death threats and sanctions from the Chinese Communist Party, but that the negative response to GHF is unique.

“Respectable — I don’t even call them respectable anymore — elite organizations that we would assume [have] good intent have just attacked us again and again. The whole time, we’re like ‘cooperate with us … teach us, let’s find ways of solving problems together,’” to no avail, he said.

Moore said he would have liked to collaborate with major humanitarian organizations, such as the World Food Program, but that the U.N. has “been trying to sabotage us from the very beginning.” 

“We’d really like the people whose job it has been to do this for many years to decide to help us,” he added. “Instead, they spread lies that originate in Hamas and try to shut us down, and I can’t think of anything more immoral than trying to shut down an operation that’s … feeding millions and millions of meals every day.”

Moore said details his staff on the ground in Gaza have heard from residents have been “a shock to us,” and revealing about other humanitarian aid groups’ conduct.

“Early on, we had a number of people who wanted to confirm that the aid was free, because in every other circumstance, their experience was that the aid that was coming in from the United Nations and other organizations was being taken and sold to them. It was unbelievable to them that we were giving this stuff away for free,” Moore said. 

Moore pushed back against news stories associating death and killing in Gaza with the GHF and its distribution sites, slamming them as “lies.” 

“We didn’t wait for a ceasefire to start our aid distribution. We’re distributing aid in the middle of a hot war,” he said. “There have been incidents in the Gaza Strip of civilians being killed. But what’s clear is that there is this very intentional disinformation campaign that is trying to say that … the GHF is a death trap, that we exist not to feed people 50 million meals, but to lure people. This is the lie that they keep telling.” 

Hamas has dedicated extensive efforts to delegitimizing GHF in the eyes of the world and trying to threaten and scare Gaza residents seeking food from GHF, Moore said.

“They release these statistics every single day and they say that all these people are being killed at our aid sites or in close proximity to our aid sites,” Moore said. “This is their primary way of both trying to scare Gazans [from] getting our aid, trying to force us to shut down, trying to force European governments not to fund us, for the United Nations to continue opposing us.” 

Moore has been actively pushing back on social media against false claims about GHF, and called on the media and international organizations to scrutinize claims from the terrorist organization in Gaza, “but no one is asking hard questions,” he lamented.

“What about the prolific evidence that we do have of Hamas intentionally killing people and then attributing their murder to the GHF or others?” he added.

Moore said that “sometimes you read all these crazy headlines and you’re like, ‘Am I deceiving myself here?’ but we’re actually talking to the people [of Gaza] every day, and it seems [reality] really is in many cases the exact opposite.”

On the ground in Gaza, Moore says people are adapting to GHF’s mode of distribution, with families often getting together to trade if one needs more of one product than another. GHF also tries to be flexible under the circumstances, having morning and evening distribution times when needed to keep the process more orderly.

Some Israeli politicians have maintained that providing aid for Gaza hinders the achievement of Israel’s war aims. Some on the right, who oppose letting any aid into Gaza, argue that if Hamas can pocket humanitarian aid and make money selling it, they will continue to control the enclave. And Hamas does still retain a significant measure of control over the area, despite more than 20 months of IDF operations.

Moore agreed with the argument that Hamas’ ability to take control of aid was “prolonging the conflict,” but said that GHF’s “mission is not related to the war.” 

Still, he said that he thinks Hamas feels very threatened by GHF: “The fact is that Hamas continues to threaten Gazans and killed 12 of our local workers two weeks ago and nearly killed others and tortured others … Hamas took them to the Al Nasr Hospital and piled the dead and the injured outside … and wouldn’t let them get medical treatment, in order to send a message.”

“So I think it’s a hard argument to make that Hamas doesn’t oppose what we’re doing or isn’t somehow feeling threatened by what we’re doing,” Moore added. “Think of the fact that they issued bounties on the heads of Americans … They’re doing everything they can to shut [the GHF] down, which means that every time our aid workers, local or American, step into [Gaza], they are risking their lives in order to feed people.”

Moore noted that GHF does not operate in northern Gaza, where U.N. trucks continue to enter and are often taken by Hamas: “There was one day where 55 U.N. trucks went in and literally 52 were hijacked at gunpoint by Hamas or Hamas-linked militants,” he said. Another example he recalled was a time when “there was a [U.N.] truck that went in … Hamas wasn’t able to hijack the truck. So what does Hamas do? Hamas kills civilians around the truck to try to keep the civilians from getting what they can.”

“Amidst all of this, the U.N. literally told the BBC that none of their aid had been diverted. Zero. That was the official statement,” Moore said. “The U.N. is just lying through their teeth.”

Moore declined to share who funds GHF, but said that “the seed funding … principally came from a couple of countries, not Israel, that wanted to remain totally secret for political reasons.” Moore said he supports the decision of those countries not to reveal themselves, because of the negative narrative about the GHF, and expressed appreciation for the Trump administration for contributing to the foundation and encouraging others to do the same.

*****

Last month, Moore visited Syria with Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Foundation and a Syrian Muslim refugee who had fled the country. In Damascus, Moore met with al-Sharaa for nearly three hours.

Moore’s approach to al-Sharaa’s new government in Syria, he said, “comes down to two things. Number one … You’re saying nice things, but can we trust you? And number two, if we can trust you, are you actually capable of doing these things?”

Following the meeting, Moore said, “I absolutely believe there will be peace between Syria and Israel.”

“I think the first priority in Syria has to be the stabilization of Syria. But I definitely left that conversation with a very clear idea of what needed to be done, of how it could be done, and of the probability in the right time of it being done in order to see peace all across the region.”

There have been contradictory reports in recent days as to whether al-Sharaa is willing to acknowledge Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights. Moore suggested that peace between the countries may involve things that make both sides “uncomfortable.” 

“I do think many of us, including many people in Israel, misread certain aspects of this new government, all for good reasons,” Moore added, referring to those who highlight al-Sharaa’s history as a leader of an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. “Those of us who focus on the Middle East … have a tendency to be, we can be cynical, we can be conspiratorial, we can be a bit paranoid sometimes … But I always say the most valuable commodity in the Middle East is not oil or gas, it’s trust. If there’s no trust, nothing exists. And our visit was a trust-building exercise, and it was far more beneficial than I expected.” 

Moore called al-Sharaa “a type of unicorn.”

“He comes from an Islamist orientation, no question whatsoever. But I’m not sure you can take this person and easily profile him,” Moore said. “This is the last gasp of a lot of extremists and when I met with Shahra, I viewed him as being more like [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman] as almost any other of the leaders that I’ve that I’ve met with, in terms of his generation, and the way he talks about solving problems and all of these things. This is a younger generation of leaders in a region with a lot of older leaders who think only about the past. I think al-Sharaa, like MBS, and a few other leaders, are future-oriented.”

Moore called for the U.S. to help Syria rebuild, because the country’s economy and infrastructure are in shambles. 

*****

Moore has also been a longstanding advocate for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship and evangelical support for Israel.

Asked about polls showing decreasing support for Israel among young evangelicals, and the rise of figures such as Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson who have used Christianity as an argument against such support, Moore said he thinks the decline is exaggerated as is the influence of the podcasters.

“For a long time, there was exaggerated concern about a rise of antisemitism on the right while we were watching this incredible surging of antisemitism on the left. Well, now, I’m sorry to say, but we’re seeing it on both sides,” Moore said. “Yet, it actually isn’t the right. OK, it’s a type of pseudo-libertarianism. You know that isn’t a part of the institutional right, but because of the internet, it’s much more influential.”

Still, he added, “I’m not seeing some of these actors becoming more influential among evangelicals. I’m seeing evangelicals reject these influencers as they start talking about things that evangelicals actually know quite well … like skepticism about, you know, the evangelical relationship with Israel.”

Moore said he summarizes the relationship between evangelicals worldwide with the Jewish community, and Israel in one sentence: “Your book is our book; your heroes are our heroes; and your values, while we interpret them differently, are our values.”

“You have this massively dispersed religious movement around the world, 700 million people, and they all generally feel the same, 80-90% of them, about the Jewish community and Israel, because they get it from the Bible,” he said. “I’m not focused very much on politics these days, as we try to feed Gaza, but I think the evangelical community all around the world is a positive force and I don’t think the macro trends are changing at all.”

Text messages obtained by the House Committee on Education and Workforce published in a letter on Tuesday revealed that Claire Shipman, acting president of Columbia University, suggested that a Jewish trustee should be removed over her pro-Israel advocacy and called for an “Arab on our board,” amid antisemitic unrest that roiled the university’s campus last year. 

“We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board,” Shipman, then the co-chair of Columbia’s Board of Trustees, wrote in a message to the board’s vice chair on Jan. 17, 2024. “Quickly I think. Somehow.” 

Shipman said in a follow-up message days later that Shoshana Shendelman, a Jewish board member who frequently condemned campus antisemitism, had been “extraordinarily unhelpful” and said, “I just don’t think she should be on the board.”

In another communication on April 22, 2024, according to the texts obtained by the committee, Wanda Greene, vice chair of the board of trustees, asked Shipman — referring to Shendelman — “do you believe that she is a mole? A fox in the henhouse?” Shipman agreed, stating, “I do.” Greene added, “I am tired of her.” Shipman agreed, “so, so tired.”

The messages were referenced in the letter, first obtained by Free Beacon, sent to Columbia on Tuesday by the committee’s chairman, Tim Walberg (R-MI), and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as part of the committee’s ongoing investigation into whether the school is violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by allowing harassment of Jewish students.

The lawmakers wrote in the letter, which was addressed to Shipman, “These exchanges raise the question of why you appeared to be in favor of removing one of the board’s most outspoken Jewish advocates at a time when Columbia students were facing a shocking level of fear and hostility.” 

Columbia responded to the letter, in a statement to Free Beacon, claiming that the text messages were taken out of context. 

“These communications were provided to the Committee in the fall of 2024 and reflect communications from more than a year ago,” the university said. “They are now being published out of context and reflect a particularly difficult moment in time for the University when leaders across Columbia were intensely focused on addressing significant challenges.”

Shipman, a former ABC News reporter, stepped into the role in March after interim President Katrina Armstrong’s abrupt resignation. At the time, Stefanik called the choice of Shipman “untenable.” On campus, the news of Shipman’s hiring was met with cautious optimism from pro-Israel student leaders.

Last April, Shipman testified at a congressional hearing regarding antisemitism at Columbia alongside then-Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who resigned from her post in August, and board co-chair David Greenwald. Shipman told members of the House Committee at the time that she knew Columbia had “significant and important work to do to address antisemitism and to ensure that our Jewish community is safe and welcome.”

The parents of an 11-year-old Jewish student at a private school in Northern Virginia say their daughter faced months of antisemitic harassment that went unaddressed by school officials, who also cancelled an annual event featuring a Holocaust survivor due to concerns that the event might exacerbate tensions related to the Israel-Hamas war. 

Days after the parents addressed the campus environment with school leadership, all three of their children were expelled, according to a complaint filed on Tuesday with the Office for Civil Rights in the Virginia Attorney General’s Office, Jewish Insider has learned. 

According to the complaint, Kenneth Nysmith, headmaster and owner of The Nysmith School for the Gifted in Herndon, Va., canceled the event with the Holocaust survivor and expressed concern that it might inflame tensions within the school community in light of Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.  

The complaint, filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights under Law and Washington-based firm Dillon PLLC, alleges several antisemitic incidents that the parents of the 11-year-old Jewish student say she faced in the months leading up to the cancellation of the Holocaust survivor event. The complaint recounts that in October 2024, their daughter’s history teacher asked students to work together on an art project to create a large drawing featuring the attributes of “strong historical leaders.” The students collaborated on a large artistic rendering of a strong leader, featuring Adolf Hitler’s face. The parents learned of the project only after Nysmith School posted a photo of the children holding up their project, which is reproduced in the complaint.

The complaint also alleges that the 11-year-old student experienced harassment, including being told by other students that Jews are “baby killers” and that they deserved to die because of the Israel-Hamas war. The parents of the student allege that the antisemitic bullying got worse after the school hung a Palestinian flag in the gym.  

The complaint claims that the parents of the student being bullied asked Nysmith to take steps to protect their daughter. Nysmith, according to the complaint, told the parents to tell their daughter to “toughen up.” Two days later, on March 13, the headmaster sent the parents an email stating all three of their children — a son in the second grade and two daughters in the sixth grade — were expelled effective that same day. The complaint does not address any reason that Nysmith provided for the expulsions but noted that the children had no disciplinary record.

“The allegations in this complaint reflect what appear to be a growing trend of the normalization of antisemitism to the extent where a school feels compelled to censor a Holocaust survivor,”  Jeffrey Lang, senior litigation counsel at the Brandeis Center, told JI. “But the antisemitic harassment of a young Jewish student because of what’s happening in Israel is acceptable. It’s that trend that I find very worrisome.”  

According to Lang, the K-8 private school is in violation of the Virginia Human Rights Act’s definition of a “private accommodation,” which requires schools that accept tuition to provide a safe learning environment for all students.  

Several Senate Democrats told Jewish Insider on Monday that calls to “globalize the intifada” are unacceptable and must be condemned, amid concerns from Jewish leaders and organizations over presumptive New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s defense of the slogan.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who has thus far not endorsed Mamdani, told JI he plans to meet with Mamdani in a few weeks, when asked about Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the slogan.

“Sen. Schumer condemns the phrase ‘Globalize the Intifada’ and believes it should not be used because it has such dangerous implications. As Senator Schumer said after the death of Karen Diamond, the attack in Boulder continues to serve as a grave reminder of the deadly consequences of the rise in antisemitism,” a spokesperson for Schumer told JI.

“I don’t know what [Mamdani’s] position is on it, but I certainly think that the call to spread the intifada is the kind of incitement that can lead to extremist violence,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told JI.

Blumenthal added that he is “an advocate of increasing the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which protects against terrorist hate crimes to synagogues, mosques, churches and similar community institutions, and so I’m deeply concerned about incitement and hate speech that can lead to hate crimes.”

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) said calls to globalize the intifada must be condemned.

“At a time when antisemitism is rising at alarming rates in the U.S., leaders of both parties have an obligation to stand up, speak clearly, and unequivocally condemn hatred and bigotry in every form,” Rosen said in a statement to JI. “The intifadas were periods marked by unspeakable violence and terror against innocent Israelis, and it should not be a difficult decision for anyone to condemn the antisemitic call to globalize these violent attacks. Our words matter — and in moments like this, silence is not an option.”

“I’m not a member of the Jewish community or a NYC voter. Personally, I would never use or defend this deeply troubling phrase,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said in a statement to JI. 

Some other Senate Democrats declined to comment or said they hadn’t been following Mamdani’s remarks.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who thus far has declined to endorse Mamdani, said in response to a listener call on WNYC last week that constituents she has spoken to are “alarmed” by Mamdani’s past comments.

“They are alarmed by past public statements. They are alarmed by past positions, particularly references to global jihad,” Gillibrand said. “This is a very serious issue because people that glorify the slaughter of Jews create fear in our communities. The global intifada is a statement that means ‘destroy Israel and kill all the Jews.’”

She emphasized that Mamdani needs to understand and accept that “globalize the intifada” is viewed by the Jewish community as, inherently, a call for violence against Jews.

“It doesn’t matter what meaning you have in your brain,” Gillibrand said, when pressed on Mamdani’s claims that he does not view the statement as a call for violence. “It is not how the word is received. When you use a word like ‘intifada’ to many Jewish Americans and Jewish New Yorkers, that means you are permissive for violence against Jews.”

“It is a harmful, hurtful, inappropriate word for anyone who wants to represent a city as diverse as New York City with 8 million people, and I would be very specific in these words, and I would say, ‘You may not use them again if you expect to represent everyone ever again because they are received as hateful and divisive and harmful, and that’s it,’” she continued. 

She said that Mamdani, if elected, will “need to assure all New Yorkers that he will protect all Jews and protect houses of worship and protect funding for not-for-profits that meet the needs of these communities.”

She said she had spoken to Mamdani about Jewish community security issues last week, and said that he “agreed to work with me on this and to protect all residents. …  I will work with him when he gets elected, if he gets elected, to make sure everyone is protected.”

Speaking on CNN on Monday, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) called the intifada slogan “deeply offensive” and said that “every elected official, without exception, should condemn it.”

Torres said that condemning the language was not the same as criminalizing it, responding to Mamdani’s own comments saying he did not believe he should “police” speech: “No one‘s advocating for imprisonment. I mean, every elected official has an obligation to condemn hatred, whether it‘s antisemitism or Islamophobia,” the New York congressman said.

After Israel waged war against an Iranian regime that has vowed to destroy the Jewish state and diaspora Jews face a heightened atmosphere of antisemitism stemming from the Israel-Gaza war, a new book aims to equip Israel supporters with “a foundation” to refute claims that Jews do not have ancient roots in the land of Israel. 

When the Stones Speak: The Remarkable Discovery of the City of David and What Israel’s Enemies Don’t Want You to Know, written by former IDF spokesperson Doron Spielman, does so by recounting discoveries made in Israel’s largest excavation site, the City of David, where Spielman has worked closely with archaeologists for two decades to uncover and promote the site’s historical significance.

The book, Spielman suggested in an interview with Jewish Insider, is aimed at what he calls “the middle group of people” — “logical, reasonable people” who don’t know whether they’re pro-Israel or anti-Israel. “When they understand that ‘when the stones speak,’ they tell the story of the truth of the Jewish people’s connection to the land,” that could help sway the conversation on college campuses. This middle group will come to understand, he said, that “at the very least [the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] is a fight between two people who think they’re indigenous, and at the very best they understand the Jews are people who have only one land, they’ve been there for 3,800 years and therefore they have a right to defend it.”

That understanding “will have not only a huge impact on [the rise of antisemitism on college] campuses,” Spielman said, it “will have a huge impact on the Jews on those campuses. Jews on campus need to be able to stand on a foundation of truth that Israel is in fact their land. Without this knowledge, they cannot make that statement.”​​

Spielman hopes the book’s impact will also reach supporters of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, the presumptive winner of the city’s Democratic primary last week, amid his refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” and denial that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. 

“He’s denying the Jewish people their right to live as a nation in the one place they ever called home,” Spielman told JI. “When the Stones Speak cuts through the lies with facts on the ground — literally.” 

Spielman, who lives in Jerusalem, wrote the book’s first draft before Hamas launched its Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel. Before the massacre, he had planned to meet with his editor on Oct. 8, 2023. That was put on hold when he was drafted into the reserves for 100 days. “When I came back to the book, I understood how far Hamas was willing to go with its ideology,” Spielman said. “If they aimed to erase our history, then the next thing they were going to try to do was erase us as a people.” So in light of Oct. 7, he reedited the entire book — which made it to The New York Times bestseller list just weeks after its May 13 publication.

“This is not just an academic debate, this is a battlefront,” Spielman continued. “The Jewish people need to understand and own our identity. This is critical — literally life and death — for Jews and Israel supporters to understand this because this is exactly what our enemies are fighting against.”

Since Israel launched its preemptive military campaign against Iran — a move that Spielman said “will prevent a major [worldwide] escalation later on with China,” which backs Tehran — Spielman said that the message of his book has become even more critical. It comes as the Iranian regime has been at the forefront of the effort to deny Jewish connections to ancient Israel. 

“The Quds Force, which is the long arm of Iran and provides support for Hezbollah, Hamas, militias, is based on the very principle that the faith the ayatollahs want to establish reaches all the way to Jerusalem and replaces completely what they call the Zionist state,” Spielman said. “It’s not by chance that Hamas, which is a child of Iran, has taken this idea of denying Jewish history and translated it into absolutely the educational indoctrination of every Palestinian in Gaza and the West Bank, [who] are taught that Jews have no connection to their history in Jerusalem.”

Amid a rise of antisemitism in America, Spielman is hopeful that the book will help combat the movement by left-wing groups to equate the Zionist movement with “settler colonialism.”  

“If we’re looking to understand why Jews are being attacked on campuses, it’s the same ideology of denying the connection between Jews and Jerusalem — that is exactly what is erupting on campuses, the claim that we are settlers and colonialists,” he said. “I wrote this book before Oct. 7 in order to establish firmly that we have the archaeological proof that the Jewish people are more indigenous to Israel than any people are in any area of the world today. We have an unbroken chain.”

Spielman expressed hope that the discoveries and insights from the City of David eventually make their way into textbooks used in American middle and high schools. He also called on the U.S. Department of Education to work proactively to ensure that students are taught about the historic ties of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.

He pointed to one of his findings from several years ago at the entrance of the City of David: the seals of two ministers who in the Book of Jeremiah tried to kill the namesake prophet.

“A massive campaign erupted throughout the Muslim world denying the legitimacy of these findings,” Spielman said. “They also realized what a threat this was to the narrative of the Palestinians which was claiming that the Jews have no connection and therefore they began identifying the City of David as a massive settlement effort, never mentioning the name of the City of David. It’s amazing that they did this because they realized that they can’t stop the archaeology so they tried to stop the entire site … [The] bottom line is that all of the claims that Jews are settlers shatter when they are held up over the bedrock of the City of David and the discoveries we’ve made.” 

Spielman noted that City of David excavations have “widespread acceptance” across the political spectrum in Israel, with politicians from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Yair Lapid, the opposition leader, having visited the site.  

“Within the standard Israeli electorate, the City of David is really a central place of Israeli identity today and therefore the budget is funded by private individuals around the world as well as Israeli tax dollars,” Spielman told JI. 

He urged world leaders to visit as well. “For the same reason that Washington, D.C., is the historical site that you want every diplomat from around the world to see, a diplomat that comes to Israel that only goes to Yad Vashem [Israel’s Holocaust museum] is only getting five years of the Jewish story of exile. When you go to the City of David, you’re getting 2,000 years.”  

At the City of David, there is “something deeper than modern-day geopolitics,” Spielman said. “There is a claim here that goes to the heart. It’s something Israelis have ignored for a long time. We cannot stand strong about our rights to the land of Israel unless we understand the very foundations of our connections to the land. Archaeology, DNA, ancient texts and the stones of Jerusalem prove what history already knows— the Jewish people are not colonizers in their homeland.” 

“It’s not enough to talk about how we carry out our military and that we’re a moral army. We have got to go back to the reason we’re here.”

Three weeks after a Colorado march in support of the Israeli hostages in Gaza was abruptly interrupted by a scene of grotesque violence, one of the victims of the antisemitic firebombing attack that left 29 people injured succumbed to her wounds. 

Karen Diamond died on June 25, Rabbi Marc Soloway, of Boulder’s Congregation Bonai Shalom, announced in an obituary. She was 81, and is survived by her husband, two sons, two daughters-in-law and five grandsons. 

“There are no words to express the pain of this horrific loss of our beloved member and friend,” Soloway wrote.

The alleged attacker, Egyptian national Mohamed Soliman, now faces two counts of first-degree murder connected to Diamond’s death, in addition to 12 federal hate crimes charges and more than 100 state charges related to the June 1 attack. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment. 

Run for Their Lives, the organization that arranges the weekly hostage marches, released a statement on Monday calling Diamond’s death “a heavy and heartbreaking moment for us.” 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced on Friday that it had awarded $94.4 million in security grant funding to a total of 512 Jewish organizations nationwide, around half of a long-delayed supplemental funding round.

Applications for this funding, provided as part of last year’s national security supplemental bill, opened in the fall of 2024, and grant awards were initially expected to be announced early this year. But they were delayed in a government-wide review of federal grant funding implemented by the Trump administration.

“DHS is working to put a stop to the deeply disturbing rise in antisemitic attacks across the United States,” Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary, said in a statement. “That this money is necessary at all is tragic. Antisemitic violence has no place in this country. However, under President [Donald] Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem’s leadership, we are going to do everything in our power to make sure that Jewish people in the United States can live free of the threat of violence and terrorism.”

The grant funding was open to all nonprofits, with a focus on organizations facing higher threats due to the war in Gaza.

But the funding round was expected to include the full $220 million in remaining NSGP funding from the national security supplemental legislation. It’s unclear at this point how and under what procedures FEMA plans to disburse that remaining $126 million.

The agency has yet to open applications for the 2025 full-year grant process.

Asked for comment on these issues, FEMA referred JI back to a press release on the funding grants and did not respond to a subsequent follow-up question.

“We welcome the Administration awarding $94 million in Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP) funding to help protect over 500 Jewish institutions amid the historic levels of antisemitic threats that ADL is tracking,” Lauren Wolman, director of federal policy and strategy at the Anti-Defamation League, said. “But the job isn’t done. DHS must urgently release the additional NSGP supplemental funds Congress appropriated to meet overwhelming demand and save lives. ADL will continue working with lawmakers and senior officials to underscore both the urgency of increasing funding and moving previously appropriated funding.”

The organizers of the annual Glastonbury music festival in the U.K. said they were “appalled” by chants calling for “death to the IDF” led over the weekend by the rap duo Bob Vylan during the five-day event.

“Their chants very much crossed a line and we are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the Festival that there is no place at Glastonbury for antisemitism, hate speech, or incitement to violence,” Emily Eavis, the daughter of Glastonbury co-founder Michael Eavis, wrote Sunday on Instagram.

“With almost 4,000 performances at Glastonbury 2025, there will inevitably be artists and speakers appearing on our stages whose views we do not share,” Eavis continued. “However, we are appalled by the statements made from the West Holts stage by Bob Vylan yesterday.”

In a statement to Jewish Insider, Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights who chairs the Justice Department’s task force to combat antisemitism, said that ahead of Bob Vylan’s upcoming U.S. tour, the task force will be reaching out to the Department of State “to determine what measures are available to address the situation and to prevent the promotion of violent antisemitic rhetoric in the United States.”

Jim Berk, CEO of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said that the response from Glastonbury organizers was “bland.” 

“Saying the chants merely ‘crossed a line’ and offering vague ‘reminders’ to artists is not accountability—it’s cowardice,” Berk said in a statement. “When confronted with explicit calls for violence against Jews, anything short of absolute condemnation and corrective action is complicity.” 

“What happened on the stages of Glastonbury yesterday was not just disgraceful; it was sickening, dangerous, and chillingly reminiscent of a modern-day Nazi rally… This was a calculated act of hate speech, glorifying violence and dehumanizing Jews through the demonization of Israel,” Berk continued. 

U.K. Health Secretary Wes Streeting also called the chants “appalling” but added in a Sky News interview that Israel needs to “get its own house in order.” 

Glastonbury is Britain’s biggest summer music festival and draws some 200,000 festivalgoers annually to Worthy Farm in southwest England. Local police said a review of video evidence would be conducted “to determine whether any offenses may have been committed that would require a criminal investigation.” 

Irish rap group Kneecap also performed Saturday despite one of its members having been charged with a terror offense for displaying a Hezbollah flag at a London concert. Ahead of the festival, U.K. politicians, including Prime Minister Keir Starmer, called for the controversial group to be dropped from the lineup, saying its inclusion was “not appropriate.” 

Also on Saturday, the pop-rock band Haim — comprised of three sisters whose father is an Israeli immigrant to Los Angeles — performed a surprise set. The Grammy-nominated sisters leaned heavily on their Jewish identity since their debut album was released a decade ago. But the band’s Instagram, with 1.5 million followers, went silent after the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks, with some Jewish fans denouncing the sisters’ silence. 

Former Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), now the board chair of Democratic Majority for Israel, blasted the North Carolina Democratic Party (NCDP) leadership for what she described as allowing anti-Israel rhetoric and antisemitism within the state party, in a statement first shared with Jewish Insider.

Manning’s statement comes ahead of anticipated North Carolina Democratic Party Executive Committee votes this weekend on a resolution calling for an arms embargo on Israel and accusing it of apartheid and genocide — along with a resolution drawing equivalence between Israel and Hamas, saying both committed “terrorism” and have taken “hostages” and calling for the U.S. to exert influence to remove Israeli officials from power, among several others.

“Time and time again, the Jewish Caucus of North Carolina has attempted to unify and collaborate with the leadership of the North Carolina Democratic Party, which seems unwilling or unable to reciprocate. Instead, Party Chair Anderson Clayton and First Vice Chair Jonah Garson have continued to tolerate extreme anti-Israel rhetoric and antisemitism from within the party on social media, in executive committee meetings, and even in the exclusion of Jewish members from Interfaith Caucus meetings,” Manning said in her statement.

“DMFI condemns the continued tolerance of bad faith actors within the NCDP, and we stand with the Jewish Caucus in urging all members of the NCDP State Executive Committee to vote for unity tomorrow,” she continued.

Clayton responded in a statement, “Running a big tent party means having many different view points. I have long maintained that there is a big difference between valid criticisms of the Israeli Government and antisemitism and have made abundantly clear that there is no place for antisemitism in our party.”

State party resolutions are generated at the local level, and voted up from precincts, to county to congressional district party groups, before being considered by the party’s Resolutions Committee, which votes on sending resolutions to the State Executive Committee for a final vote.

The resolution votes are the latest development in the ongoing tensions between Jewish Democrats in North Carolina and the state party. The state party, in 2023, voted against recognizing the NCDP Jewish Caucus, a vote condemned by senior leaders in the state, including now-Gov. Josh Stein.

The party has also repeatedly been roiled by heated fights over Israel policy in its state party platform. Party leadership members, including the chair of the NCDP’s Interfaith Caucus, expressed support for the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel in the days following those atrocities.

The NC Jewish Caucus said in a statement that it has been trying for months to work “in good faith with party leaders to promote a balanced, inclusive approach to complex international issues” but “those efforts have been met with resistance throughout the party’s resolutions process.”

The statement called the resolutions, particularly the Israel arms embargo, “troubling” and accused the party’s Resolutions Committee of focusing “on only a select few issues, chief among them matters regarding Israel.”

“I’m deeply disappointed that a vocal minority within our party continues to sow division,” Caucus President Lisa Jewel said. “At a time when antisemitic incidents are on the rise across the state, double the national average according to recent data, the Jewish Caucus has repeatedly called for unity, yet the Resolutions Committee chose to focus on wedge issues that, ultimately, would result in harm to our friends and family.”

She urged the party leadership to “reaffirm party unity, refocus on electability, and reject virtue signaling distractions that divide us at the expense of progress,” and pointed blame toward the Interfaith Caucus as the driving force behind anti-Israel advocacy within the state party.

Though the issues at play in the upcoming votes aren’t new for the NCDP, the votes come at a time when Jewish Democrats nationwide are feeling politically homeless and alarmed by the growing acceptance of antisemitism and anti-Israel extremism — trends underscored by Zohran Mamdani’s nomination as the Democratic standard bearer in the New York City mayoral race. 

The North Carolina Democratic Party did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Brooklyn, if it’s possible, got even more Jewish on Wednesday night, when two members of the tribe were picked back to back by the Brooklyn Nets in the first round of the NBA draft.

The Nets tapped 6-foot-6 Israeli point guard Ben Saraf and Israeli-American 7-footer Danny Wolf, who starred at the University of Michigan, with the No. 26 and 27 picks, marking the first time since 2006 that two Jewish players were selected in the same NBA draft.

“Picking two Jewish players back to back is at worst a pretty kismet coincidence. They know what they’re doing,” James Hirsh, host of the Jewish sports podcast “Menschwarmers,” told Jewish Insider, referring to the Nets’ front office. “This is a pretty cool thing to happen.” 

Hirsh said that the picks reflect a “growth of professional Jewish athletes in New York,” pointing to Max Fried, who signed with the New York Yankees as a starting pitcher last December. “It makes sense to have talent that your fan base is going to automatically support.”  

Saraf, 19, is the son of two former Israeli professional basketball players and was born in Israel. He chose to wear the No. 77, according to media reports, because it is the Jewish numerical value of the word “mazal,” Hebrew for luck. He is currently playing in Germany. 

Wolf, 21, led the Wolverines to a No. 5 seed in last year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament after transferring from Yale University. He has been outspoken about the antisemitism he’s faced on the court, especially in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks while playing at Yale. “There were more than 80 fans who came to the game disguised,” he told the Detroit Free Press in March about a game against Dartmouth. “And then minutes into the game they broke out chanting and holding Palestinian flags. And it was a small gym, so everyone’s focus turned to that.” 

“I would hear it growing up, that noise about me being Jewish, and [so] you don’t expect much from me as a basketball player,” Wolf continued. “When I was younger, I kind of looked at [being Jewish] as an opportunity to prove myself.”

“The most beautiful thing about Judaism is the way it connects me with my family,” said Wolf, who attended a Solomon Schechter Jewish day school in the Chicago suburbs until fifth grade and obtained Israeli citizenship in 2023 to represent Israel at the FIBA U20 European Championship in Greece. “It transcends other things and brings us together.” 

“You can’t teach height,” Hirsh quipped, noting that Wolf is the “tallest Jewish player the U.S. has ever seen.”

“That’s pretty unique for Jewish basketball players,” he said. “There’s a lot of excitement to see whether his game can transfer to the NBA level or not.” 

The newest Nets players follow in the footsteps of Omri Casspi and Jordan Farmar, who  became the first pair of Israeli teammates on an NBA roster when they played for the Sacramento Kings in 2017. Lior Eliyahu and Yotam Halperin were the last two Jewish players to be picked in the same NBA draft in 2006. Another Israeli player, 24-year-old forward Deni Avdija, plays with the Portland Trail Blazers after three years with the Washington Wizards.

The new Jewish players mark a fresh chapter for the team, whose minority owner Oliver Weisberg is an Anti-Defamation League board member. The Nets were embroiled in an antisemitism scandal in 2022 after point guard Kyrie Irving posted a link to a film that denied the Holocaust and blamed Jewish people for slavery. Irving, who refused to apologize for days, was suspended by the NBA. The Nets traded him in 2023. 

Former Obama administration OMB Director Peter Orszag, the CEO of Lazard, sounded an alarm Thursday morning over the leftward direction of the Democratic Party, especially when it comes to its handling of antisemitism.  

He spoke out on CNBC after far-left state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic nomination for New York City mayor. 

“I’m saddened to say the Democratic Party is becoming increasingly antisemitic and anti-capitalism… Turning away from your principles and towards antisemitism never works,” Orszag said on CNBC’s “Money Movers” this afternoon.

He went on: “The Democratic candidate for mayor has embraced the global intifada idea. The DCCC has distributed fundraising emails from a senior Democratic operative [James Carville] saying Jewish donors [are] only interested in tax cuts. The senior leadership in the party seems to have cognitive dissonance on Israel. It’s problematic.”

Orszag has been a major figure in the Democratic Party for years, most prominently serving in the Obama administration as director of the Office of Management and Budget. 

As antisemitism increases, he said that he had expressed these concerns to Democratic leadership, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who has faced his own challenges navigating the ideologically divisive New York City mayoral race.

“I think the New York mayoral race is only part of the broader question. I think the Democratic Party needs to decide what it stands for,” Orszag said. “It needs to decide what its moral principles are and that includes [regarding] antisemitism.”

When asked about how Lazard would respond to a Mamdani mayorship, he said the bar for the company leaving was “very high” and would depend on what policies are implemented.

When Joe Biden announced his presidential campaign in 2019, he stated explicitly, in a slickly edited campaign video, that one of the issues motivating him to reenter politics was fighting antisemitism and hate. He specifically mentioned the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 and the white nationalist protesters who were “chanting the same antisemitic bile heard across Europe in the ‘30s.”

One of Biden’s former high-level aides pointed out to Jewish Insider how different that rhetoric was from the position staked out by Zohran Mamdani, the upstart New York assemblyman who won a surprise victory in the New York City mayoral Democratic primary on Tuesday.

In the closing days of the campaign, Mamdani, who began his activism journey as a Students for Justice in Palestine leader at Bowdoin College, defended the term “globalize the intifada” as an expression of Palestinian rights. Mamdani’s defense of the phrase was strongly criticized by Jewish groups across the ideological spectrum, who view the phrase as a call to violence. While Mamdani has pledged to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe, he has not acknowledged their concerns about his invocation of a phrase tied to a violent, yearslong Palestinian uprising. 

“Biden was elected running a campaign in 2020 premised on combating antisemitism. That was the animating feature that got him into the race. So the politics of this have really moved,” said the former White House official. “This is all about language and people using their microphones, and the fact that someone could feel empowered to double down on these ideas and win a mayoral race in New York City, that doesn’t happen by accident. It takes years of moving the goalposts on this language, on what it means to be antisemitic in America in 2025.”

This Biden administration staffer, who requested anonymity for fear of professional backlash, is one of many Jewish Democrats questioning where their party is heading after a dynamic young socialist with radical anti-Israel politics is on track to become mayor of the largest city in America, which has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. Coupled with Democrats’ reluctance to offer support for President Donald Trump’s targeted strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, which drew support from major Jewish groups, Mamdani’s ascension has some pro-Israel Democrats concerned about the future of their party.

Put more bluntly by another senior Biden administration official: “I feel like a person without a party,” they told JI. 

Those two voices, who served at high levels of the Biden White House, are part of a small cadre of disillusioned former Biden staffers who want to see a more vocally pro-Israel tack from the Democratic Party’s current leaders, although they aren’t yet willing to say so publicly with their names attached. But their frustration represents a simmering undercurrent of concern among Jewish Democrats that has started to spill into the open after Mamdani’s victory.

Lawrence Summers, an economist who served as treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and director of the National Economic Council under President Barack Obama, said in a post on X that he is “profoundly alarmed” about the future of the Democratic Party and the country “by yesterday’s NYC anointment of a candidate who failed to disavow a ‘globalize the intifada’ slogan and advocated Trotskyite economic policies.” 

Some prominent Jewish Democrats acknowledged Mamdani’s shortcomings but tempered that concern by noting that voters were likely drawn in by his economic messaging, not his anti-Israel stance, and by the presence of a scandal-plagued rival in Andrew Cuomo, who ran a lackluster campaign.

“I think it is very disheartening that he was not able to say the phrase ‘globalize the intifada’ feels very threatening to Jews. I find that very distressing, but I don’t think that that’s the issue that the majority of New Yorkers were voting on,” said former Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), the board chair of Democratic Majority for Israel. “I don’t see it as a referendum on, people don’t care about antisemitism.”

Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, expressed concern that New York Democrats elected a candidate “whose views on Israel deeply concern many American Jews.” But, she argued, “Democratic leadership and the vast majority of our elected officials stand with Jewish Americans on the range of issues of importance to Jewish voters.” 

Mamdani’s election came days after a watershed foreign policy moment, in which Trump ordered American strikes on several Iranian nuclear sites. Democrats, even many moderates, responded by criticizing Trump for his unilateral action without consulting Congress, with many — including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) — failing to even acknowledge the threat Iran posed to Israel and the U.S.

“I think overwhelmingly, Democrats have not done a good job, and the proof is in the pudding, that even staunch Democrats who would never consider supporting Donald Trump or ever vote for a Republican are just really pained by what feels like a refusal to even acknowledge the seriousness of the threat of the Iranian nuclear program,” said Amanda Berman, CEO of Zioness, a progressive pro-Israel organization. Manning said she “would have loved to see not just my [former] colleagues but newscasters acknowledge that Iran is a bad actor.”

Wary Jewish Democrats are keeping a watchful eye on how party leaders handle Israel- and antisemitism-related issues. 

“While I believe the majority of Democrats are pro-Israel economic moderates, we will see if our party leadership capitulates to the party’s most radical anti-Israel wing in the city with the most Jews in the world,” Esther Panitch, a Democratic state representative in Georgia and the only Jewish politician in the Georgia Statehouse, told JI on Wednesday. “I’m not optimistic at this moment, given that they have welcomed non-Democrats DSA [Democratic Socialists of America] and WFP [Working Families Party] into the tent.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Jeffries, both of whom live in New York City, each congratulated Mamdani with social media posts on Wednesday, although they did not outright endorse him.  

Sara Forman, the executive director of New York Solidarity Network, which promotes pro-Israel candidates in local races in New York, called Mamdani’s election “a seismic change” for Democratic politics in New York.  Far-left activists, she said, are now firmly inside of the party apparatus in the city, and she pledged to stick around and work to make sure the party is not represented by those activists. 

“I am not advocating Jews leaving the Democratic Party,” Forman told JI. “One of the things that I’m going to work on, and I’ve been working on, is getting people to join me in the chorus and to not sit back and watch the car accident happening in front of their eyes, but instead, speak up. Speak out. Don’t surrender.”

According to Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist and longtime political operative who served as former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s 2009 campaign director, the challenge for Democrats is how to overcome the most ideological voters who turn out to vote in primaries.

“It wasn’t that he was this candidate who had all these interesting, exciting affordability ideas, but also happened to be anti-Israel. The anti-Israel was a big part of what allowed him to succeed,” Tusk told JI. “I think structurally, we have put ourselves in a bind where, when the Democratic Party is only decided by small ideological actors who vote in primaries, and that group tends to lean much more into anti-Israel, antisemitism, the Democratic Party is pretty stuck.”

The 21 members of the House Jewish Caucus — all Democrats — pressed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in a letter sent on Tuesday expressing concerns about Kingsley Wilson, the recently promoted Pentagon press secretary with a history of antisemitic and otherwise controversial comments.

“Recent public reporting has highlighted a series of deeply troubling and offensive statements made by Kingsley Wilson, now serving as Pentagon Press Secretary,” the letter reads. “These statements include promoting the antisemitic and racist ‘Great Replacement’ theory, praising far-right political movements using slogans tied to neo-Nazi groups, and repeating patently false statements commonly circulated in neo-Nazi circles about Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was lynched by an antisemitic mob in Georgia in 1915.”

The letter argues that the remarks are “not isolated or ambiguous and have long been associated with violence and hate” and “their presence boldly and unrepentantly plastered in the public record of a senior Department official raises serious questions about the Department’s commitment to opposing extremism and antisemitism.”

Hegseth, at a recent Senate hearing, defended Wilson and said her comments had been mischaracterized for political gain, but also said he’d need to see her comments in full to evaluate them.

The lawmakers asked Hegseth whether the remarks are acceptable for a senior Pentagon employee in a public-facing role, how the Pentagon evaluates whether public statements necessitate disciplinary action, any steps the administration has taken in the past in response to antisemitic comments from Pentagon employees and whether Hegseth personally finds the comments acceptable for a representative of the Defense Department.

“We look forward to promptly receiving your reply. In the meantime, we urge the Department to affirm its responsibility to uphold the highest ethical standards,” the lawmakers wrote. “That includes an unambiguous commitment to confronting and unequivocally condemning antisemitism — especially within its own ranks — and ensuring that individuals who promote hate are quickly and appropriately held accountable.”

The letter was led by Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA) and co-signed by caucus co-chairs Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Brad Schneider (D-IL) and co-signed by Reps. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Sara Jacobs (D-CA), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Brad Sherman (D-CA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Dan Goldman (D-NY), Seth Magaziner (D-RI), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Eugene Vindman (D-VA), Kim Schrier (D-WA), Mike Levin (D-CA), Becca Balint (D-VT), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL).

Wilson’s record has also previously elicited concern from Republicans.

Top Senate leaders introduced a bipartisan resolution on Monday condemning the recent antisemitic attacks in Washington and Boulder, Colo.

The resolution is being led by Sens. James Lankford (R-OK) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV), joined by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), as well as Sens. Michael Bennet (D-CO), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Dave McCormick (R-PA), John Fetterman (D-PA) and Jerry Moran (R-KS).

The resolution highlights that both attackers professed to have been motivated by the war in Gaza and shouted slogans including “Free Palestine,” during their attacks. It also notes that both suspects have been lionized online as heroes and that both attacks have prompted “calls for more violence.”

It describes the attacks as a “result of antisemitism, extremism, and political violence, which are threats not only to Jewish individuals, but to all of society in the United States.”

“Antisemitism is not just a Jewish problem, but a problem that threatens democracy and all of humanity,” the resolution declares. “Fighting antisemitism will not only protect the Jewish community in the United States but also protect our democracy.”

The legislation mourns slain Israeli Embassy staffers Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, condemns antisemitism, expresses support for the Jewish community and “encourages all of society to denounce and combat all manifestations of antisemitism and ensure that antisemitism is not normalized.”

It also highlights “the importance of resources and action in the aftermath of attacks, including the distribution of resources from the Nonprofit Security Grant Program.”

Lankford said in a statement the two attacks are “horrific reminders of the unfortunate rise in antisemitism across our country.” 

“This resolution makes it clear: we unequivocally condemn antisemitism in all its forms,” Lankford said. “Our Jewish friends and neighbors should not live in fear because of their faith and heritage, and this resolution affirms the right to live their faith freely.”

Lankford and Rosen are the co-chairs of the Senate antisemitism task force. 

“Communities across our country are experiencing an increase in antisemitic vandalism, threats, and violence that endangers the safety of Jewish Americans, like the recent attacks in Washington and Colorado,” Rosen said. “We have a responsibility to call out antisemitism and do everything we can to combat acts of hate in all of its forms. Senator Lankford and I introduced this bipartisan resolution to condemn recent attacks and recommit to doing all we can to tackle the alarming rise of antisemitic incidents.”

McCormick and Fetterman introduced a similar resolution last week, with 34 cosponsors, that highlighted the Washington and Boulder attacks as well as the arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence during Passover.

That resolution is a companion to one that passed with near-unanimous support in the House earlier this month.

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) believes that he was sent to Congress, at least in part, to take a leading role in fighting for the Jewish community against antisemitism.

Fine, during a lengthy interview with Jewish Insider in his congressional office earlier this month, said he sees himself as having a mostly unique ability among House members to help tackle the rise of antisemitism nationwide, as one of only four Jewish Republicans in the lower chamber. 

“I think I can play that role. I’m willing to do it. Certainly happy to share the spotlight with the other three [Jewish Republicans] if they wish to do it, but, but this is deeply personal to me,” the Republican firebrand said. “This affects my children and so I understand it better than others.”

He has recently taken to wearing a kippah on the Hill at the request of one of his sons, as a symbol for those in the Jewish community for those who do not feel safe doing the same.

“I believe that God puts us where he wants us to be,” Fine said, describing his quick rise from the Florida House to the state Senate — where he served for only a few months — and then to an unexpected vacancy in Congress. “This must be why. This is what He wants me to do. … I think this is one of the reasons that I am here, to solve this problem, much like we did in Florida.”

He said that he is in Congress to fight for his district, but that he believes can also be a fighter for the entire Jewish community and “everyone who believes in the idea of Judeo-Christian values.” 

Fine sees the war in Gaza and the global rise of antisemitism as a civilizational battle against extremist groups — both Hamas and anti-Israel forces in the United States — that want to see a global Islamic caliphate and are “spiritual cousins” of the Nazi regime. His often-hardline rhetoric on these issues has frequently sparked controversy.

He argued that it “remains to be seen” if the House Republican caucus and leadership are serious about the issue, saying that there has been a “great willingness to pass strongly worded letters, but I didn’t come here to do strongly worded letters.”

Asked about Trump administration officials with a history of antisemitic rhetoric such as Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson and Office of Special Counsel nominee Paul Ingrassia, Fine demurred, saying he wasn’t familiar with the officials or their backgrounds and would want to examine them further before speaking about them.

At another point in the interview, Fine said that President Donald Trump and members of his team know that he’s not “afraid to call [antisemitism and anti-Israel attitudes] out on our side.”

“I’ve been very critical publicly of Thomas Massie, who I think is an embarrassment to the Republican Party,” Fine volunteered, referring to the libertarian-minded House member from Kentucky. “The guy makes me sick that I have to be in the same room with him at times.”

Massie did not respond to a request for comment.

He also said that, while he hasn’t had a chance to meet many of the Jewish Democrats in Congress yet, he’s willing to “work with anyone who wants to solve this problem, but I think that it helps to have someone in the majority to take the lead.”

He named Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), a former colleague in the Statehouse and his neighbor in the House offices, as a likely Democratic partner on future efforts. He said he’d also spoken on occasion with Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), whose office is across the hall from Fine’s. Goldman also co-chairs the House antisemitism task force.

​​”The fight against antisemitism is a moral one that must cross party lines and transcend political divisions,” Goldman told JI. “I am eager to work with Congressman Fine and anyone else committed to the fight against bigotry and hate towards the Jewish community and anyone else.”

Fine argued that Florida, his home state, has developed a successful strategy for dealing with antisemitism and antisemitic violence, a trend for which he believes he holds significant responsibility, pointing to multiple pieces of legislation he passed while in the Statehouse.

Antisemitic incidents in Florida dropped 24% in 2024, but were still up 277% from 2020, according to Anti-Defamation League statistics.

“This can all be done. We largely solved this problem in Florida,” Fine said in a prior interview with JI. “If you are willing to fight, if you do not let Muslim terrorists scare you, you can win. … We do not have these same problems in Florida and it is because I fought for this for eight and a half years. This is fixable, but not if we continue to be afraid to face evil and not be afraid to call it evil.”

“All the antisemites discover free speech when it comes to the Jews. You can’t call a black student the N word and go, ‘Free speech,’” Fine said. “We said, ‘You’ve got to treat antisemitism the same way. You don’t get to discriminate in how you deal with discrimination.’ We’ve identified certain behaviors, not speech, but certain behaviors that antisemites used to target Jews. We made them illegal, and we put in huge penalties for doing them. They stopped.”

He offered as one example legislation allowing people to run over demonstrators blocking roads — ”blocking roads is a form of terrorism,” Fine said — which he said had stopped that issue in Florida.

As another example, he said that antisemitism is treated “the exact same way as racism” on college campuses in Florida. He argued that free speech has been used as a cover for antisemitic activity that would be unequivocally condemned if it targeted another minority group.

“All the antisemites discover free speech when it comes to the Jews. You can’t call a black student the N word and go, ‘Free speech,’” Fine said. “We said, ‘You’ve got to treat antisemitism the same way. You don’t get to discriminate in how you deal with discrimination.’ We’ve identified certain behaviors, not speech, but certain behaviors that antisemites used to target Jews. We made them illegal, and we put in huge penalties for doing them. They stopped.”

He added that rhetoric like “globalize the intifada” constitutes a call for violence and should be an imprisonable offense.

Fine also noted that he passed legislation to provide dedicated security funding for Jewish day schools in Florida, the first state to do so.

The newly-elected congressman told JI, in the sit-down in his congressional office, that he’s entering Congress in a different position than he did in the Florida House in 2016, when antisemitism was not an issue he expected to work on.

That changed six months into his term, when a spate of bomb threats targeted Jewish day schools in Florida. He said the Orthodox Union approached him at that time to ask him to lead the security legislation for Jewish day schools. He said he was initially reluctant to do so, given that his district contained no Jewish day schools, but was told that “you’re the only one who can.”

“It was incredibly hard to get the funding,” Fine said. “I learned from that, ‘If I don’t do this, no one else will.’ And the difference in coming to Congress is I knew walking in the door that this would be part of what I came here to do.”

His work in Florida earned him the nickname “the Hebrew Hammer,” from a friend in the Florida legislature, Sen. Joe Gruters. That nickname now adorns a plaque gifted to him by the Orthodox Union’s Teach Coalition that hangs on his congressional office’s wall — next to shofar — as well as a mezuzah on his office door.

Fine said he was initially reluctant to accept the nickname, but it caught on anyway.

Looking toward the Middle East, the Florida congressman has attracted controversy for his calls for an aggressive bombing campaign in Gaza to force Hamas into an unconditional surrender. (Contrary to some reports, Fine has denied that he wants to see the territory nuked.) 

He has also argued that “Palestinians in Gaza are on a level of evil that we saw in Japan and we saw in Germany back in World War II.”

Fine’s comments about Palestinians and Muslims — he argues that support for peace and coexistence is more “radical” and unusual in the Muslim community than extremist ideologies — have elicited repeated accusations of Islamophobia.

Asked about the administration’s push for a negotiated cease-fire with Hamas, Fine described Trump as a dealmaker who believes that any deal is possible “and I hope that he’s right.” He said he believes Trump is also focused on returning the hostages. 

Fine said some interim deals with Hamas may be possible along the way, but he does not anticipate that Hamas will agree to a final and full surrender “unless the pain is sufficiently great to do that.”

Beyond the war, he said that there must be a “deprogramming” effort in Gaza, similar to that undertaken in post-World War II Germany, to counter the antisemitic hate and violence inculcated in the Palestinian population. It’s a process that he said may take a long time.

“One of the biggest problems we have in the world is there is evil in this world and people refuse to acknowledge it,” Fine said, pointing to audio that circulated following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorist attacks on Israel of a Palestinian mother and her son crying with joy as the son exclaimed that he had murdered Jews in the attack. “These are not like us. This is not someone that you can sit down and break bread with and just talk it out. This is someone who must be defeated,” Fine said.

Though Fine argues that extremist antisemitic sentiments are mainstream among Muslims, he said that there are countries like the United Arab Emirates that are safe for Jews, and he’d like to see a similar change among Palestinians. 

He said he doesn’t have the answers at this point on which country our countries can organize and lead the deprogramming effort — in an “ideal world, it might be a UAE or a Saudi Arabia,” but they may not “want the headache.” 

“It might be Israel. There are 2 million Muslims who live in Israel,” Fine said. “I don’t think Israel wants the job, but that may be the only solution. I don’t know, but what you can’t do is you can’t have terrorists run the show. That much I know.”

“What I think we need to be doing is taking out Iran’s nuclear capabilities and hope that in the process of that, the Iranian people, who are a great people, will rise up and make Persia great again,” Fine said on CNN.

Asked about the future of the West Bank — which Fine refers to as Judea and Samaria — Fine said that he would prefer that Israelis and Palestinians be able to live in peace, but he is not sure that is a possibility, suggesting that the Palestinians “may have to go to the Palestinian country and live there,” referring to Jordan, which has a large Palestinian population.

“Right now, they live in the Jewish country, so I think the best outcome is they say, ‘Hey, we want to be happy, collaborative, constructive members of Israeli society,’” Fine said. “That’s what I hope happens. I don’t think there’s any reason why everyone shouldn’t be able to get along … But I think you have something broken in that society.”

Fine, who spoke to JI prior to the start of Israel’s military campaign in Iran, has repeatedly praised Israel’s strikes, backing President Donald Trump’s approach to the conflict.

“What I think we need to be doing is taking out Iran’s nuclear capabilities and hope that in the process of that, the Iranian people, who are a great people, will rise up and make Persia great again,” Fine said on CNN.

“The overwhelming majority of Republicans stand with Israel and support what I’m supporting, which is supplying Israel with the material they need to beat this genocidal Iranian regime,” Fine added.

He has criticized individuals like Tucker Carlson who have called for the U.S. to abandon Israel, characterizing opposition to the operation as fueled by “Qatar-funded troll farms.”

“The bombings will continue until morale improves,” Fine has also said, repeatedly invoking one of his catch-phrases: “bombs away.”

Prior to the strikes, Fine said he was skeptical of Iran’s willingness to abandon its pursuit of a nuclear weapon through talks, but said he was going to trust Trump to try to reach a deal, describing a deal as preferable to a war. He emphasized that Iran cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.

And he said he would not support a deal with Iran that does not address its support for terrorism — which Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said was not part of the talks — arguing that funding from sanctions relief is fungible and Iran can divert it toward malign activities.

But he also said that he did not want to “judge until I see the end product,” saying he has “a lot of confidence in the president. He has been Israel’s greatest champion, American Jews’ greatest champion. And I don’t think he’s going to sell us out.”

He noted as well that he is close to Trump and members of the administration and that Trump knew he would be coming to Congress as a Jewish member and a champion for Israel.

The freshman congressman expressed deep criticisms of Qatar, saying he was “convinced” that opposition to him in his congressional special election race, totaling around $10 million in support of his opponent’s campaign, was “largely funded by Qatar.” He suggested that out-of-state volunteers for his opponent he met on the campaign trail had been paid to come to the district.

Democrats, energized by opposition to Trump, mobilized for the race, bringing it closer than most anticipated it would be.

Asked how his views of Qatar color his opinion of the Gulf state’s offer of a Boeing 747 to the administration for use as Air Force One and Trump’s dealmaking with the Qatari government, Fine said, “I think the president, to try to resolve issues, believes sometimes in offering big carrots. He’s a big guy, big carrot, big stick. I think he’s trying to embrace them into our way of thinking. Maybe it will work.”

He said that giving the jet to the United States, purported to be worth around $400 million, will, at minimum, deprive the country of $400 million it could otherwise provide to Hamas, “but I do have real reservations about Qatar. I think there’s a lot of bad that comes out of there, and it’s a concern that I have.”

He said that the kingdom must stop its donations of millions of dollars to U.S. universities and the U.S. should dig into the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar’s relationship with it. He suggested that Qatar’s army of lobbyists in Washington might attempt to block impending efforts to designate that organization as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

“I don’t back down from a fight … I’m not here focused on what’s next or [an] election. I’m here to do the right thing,” Fine said. “I don’t engage in political calculations to do what I do. I think Qatar is a problem, and I think we’re gonna have to deal with it.”

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo spoke out against Zohran Mamdani, his top rival in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday, for defending calls to “globalize the intifada” in a widely criticized podcast appearance this week.

“Yesterday when Zohran Mamdani was asked a direct question about what he thought of the phrase ‘globalize the intifada,’ he dismissed it as ‘language that is subject to interpretation,’” Cuomo said in a social media post on Wednesday. “That is not only wrong — it is dangerous. At a time when we are seeing antisemitism on the rise and in fact witnessing once again violence against Jews resulting in their deaths in Washington, D.C., or their burning in Denver — we know all too well that words matter. They fuel hate. They fuel murder.”

Mamdani, a far-left state assemblyman from Queens who is polling in second place behind Cuomo, has faced backlash over his comments in an interview with The Bulwark, where he characterized the slogan heard frequently at anti-Israel protests as an expression of Palestinian rights and invoked a prominent act of Jewish resistance to Nazi Germany to justify its usage, even as the phrase has been criticized as a call to violence against Jews.

“I think what’s difficult also is that the very word has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic, because it’s a word that means struggle,” Mamdani said on the podcast, in an apparent reference to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

For its part, the museum, which rarely weighs in on domestic politics, dismissed Mamdani’s comments in a sharply worded social media post on Wednesday that did not mention him by name. 

“Exploiting the Museum and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to sanitize ‘globalize the intifada’ is outrageous and especially offensive to survivors,” the museum said. “Since 1987 Jews have been attacked and murdered under its banner. All leaders must condemn its use and the abuse of history.”

Pressed to respond to the outage over his comments, Mamdani said in an emotional press conference on Wednesday that he is frequently targeted for his Muslim faith. “I try not to talk about it,” he said, choking up. “My focus has always been on making this a city that’s affordable, on making this a city that every New Yorker sees themself in,” he added, “and it takes a toll.”  

“The thing that’s made me proudest in this campaign is that the strength of our movement is built on our ability to have built something across Jewish and Muslim New Yorkers,” he said, adding that “antisemitism is such a real issue in this city, and it has been hard to see it weaponized by candidates who do not seem to have any sincere interest in tackling it but rather in using it as a pretext to make political points.”

Ted Deutch, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee, also took offense at Mamdani’s framing, saying his invocation of the Holocaust Museum “is as offensive as it is outrageous” in comments posted to social media on Wednesday. 

“I don’t know this candidate, but I know a lot of fine elected officials in the city he wants to run,” Deutch added. “ALL OF THEM should condemn the use of ‘globalize the intifada’ as the call to violence that it is. And they should tell Mr. Mamdani that if he really wants to keep Jews safe, he must do the same.”

Cuomo, who along with his allies has accused Mamdani of espousing anti-Israel rhetoric amid a recent surge of antisemitic incidents, likewise called on his opponents in the primary “to join together to denounce Mr. Mamdani’s comments because hate has no place in New York.”

“There are no two sides here,” Cuomo wrote. “There is nothing complicated about what this means.”

Whitney Tilson, a former hedge fund executive seeking the Democratic nomination who has been highly critical of Mamdani’s anti-Israel views, also took aim at the state assemblyman in a statement on Wednesday.

“Mamdani’s refusal to disavow terrorism against Jews is utterly disqualifying,” Tilson argued. “His assurances that he will protect Jewish New Yorkers ring hollow.”

A spokesperson for Mamdani did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Brad Lander, the Jewish city comptroller who is polling in third place and recently cross-endorsed with Mamdani, said at a town hall hosted by the UJA-Federation of New York earlier this month that he does not immediately view calls to “globalize the intifada” as antisemitic, arguing the phrase is “really complicated” and that such judgements depend on context.

“The First Intifada was relatively nonviolent, and the Second Intifada was quite violent,” Lander said of the Palestinian uprisings that began in 1987 and ended in the early 2000s, killing more than 1,000 Israelis in a series of attacks targeting civilians and soldiers alike. “So if you say ‘globalize the intifada,’ you are at very least, at the very least, playing with vague language.”

The phrase has also stirred controversy further down the ballot. Shahana Hanif, a far-left city councilwoman in Brooklyn who has clinched endorsements from Lander and Mamdani as she faces a primary challenge, has also drawn scrutiny for amplifying a call to “globalize the intifada” on social media before she took office.

While she had initially dismissed complaints from Jewish leaders who took issue with her decision to endorse the phrase, Hanif, an outspoken critic of Israel, ultimately relented — deleting the post and  expressing regret for boosting a message that many voters had found concerning.

“I unequivocally apologize for this,” Hanif wrote in a letter to Jewish community members last fall. “I understand now that the phrase can invoke feelings of hostility, discrimination and fear for Jewish people. It was never my intention to promote such messaging, and I removed the post as soon as I recognized its harmful implications.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth offered a strident defense of Kingsley Wilson, the recently promoted Pentagon press secretary with a history of espousing antisemitic conspiracy theories, under questioning at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday.

Wilson, prior to her appointment, attacked the Anti-Defamation League for memorializing the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was wrongly convicted for raping and murdering a child, and called the ADL “despicable.” Wilson insisted that Frank was guilty — a niche and discredited theory largely associated with neo-Nazis.

She also has frequently boosted the antisemitic “Great Replacement” theory, advocated for Christian nationalism, used a neo-Nazi linked slogan to praise the far-right Alternative for Germany party, compared the murder of Israeli babies by Hamas to abortion and opposed U.S. aid to Israel, among a host of other controversial comments.

“I’ve worked directly with her, she does a fantastic job, and any suggestion that I or her or others are party to antisemitism is a mischaracterization attempting to win political points,” Hegseth said in a heated exchange with Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), who co-chairs the Senate antisemitism task force.

“Senator, you’re attempting to win political points on the backs of mischaracterizing the statements of a member of my department and I’m not going to stand for that,” Hegseth continued.

“Your lack of an answer confirms what we’ve known all along: The Trump administration is not serious. You are not a serious person, you are not serious about rooting out and fighting antisemitism within the ranks of our DoD,” Rosen responded, as she and Hegseth attempted to shout over each other. “It’s despicable. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

Some Senate Republicans, including the Armed Services Committee chairman, had expressed concern about Wilson prior to her promotion and said that they were probing the issue and expected the Pentagon to address it.

Rosen referenced some of those criticisms in her questioning of Hegseth.

Earlier in her questioning, before mentioning Wilson specifically, Rosen asked Hegseth if he agreed that antisemitic conspiracy theories should not have a role in the government or military and that individuals who promote neo-Nazi conspiracy theories should not be in positions of power.

“Since I don’t believe the characterization of many officials in the news media, I would need to see precisely what’s being characterized,” Hegseth said initially, before affirming that he agreed.

Hegseth was also asked multiple times throughout the hearing about potential U.S. planning for a strike on Iran or to defend U.S. troops should Iran target them. He largely declined to speak publicly on the issue beyond saying that the Pentagon’s role was to plan for a range of potential scenarios. Hegseth will take more questions from senators in a classified setting in the afternoon.

Zohran Mamdani, a leading candidate in next Tuesday’s New York City mayoral primary, refused to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada” during a new podcast interview with The Bulwark released on Tuesday, arguing the phrase is an expression of Palestinian rights.

In an exchange about antisemitic rhetoric on the left, Mamdani was asked by podcast host Tim Miller to share his thoughts on the phrase, which has been invoked at anti-Israel demonstrations and criticized as an anti-Jewish call to violence.

“To me, ultimately, what I hear in so many is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights,” said Mamdani, a far-left assemblyman from Queens who has long been an outspoken critic of Israel. “And I think what’s difficult also is that the very word has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic, because it’s a word that means struggle,” he said, apparently referring to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

He added that, “as a Muslim man who grew up post-9/11, I’m all too familiar in the way in which Arabic words can be twisted, can be distorted, can be used to justify any kind of meaning.”

“I think that’s where it leaves me with a sense that what we need to do is focus on keeping Jewish New Yorkers safe,” Mamdani continued, after noting that antisemitism is a “real issue” he plans to address if elected mayor. “The question of the permissibility of language is something that I haven’t ventured into.”

Mamdani, who is polling in second place behind former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has faced criticism over his approach to Israel during the campaign. He has declined to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and said he would divest from Israel if elected, among other comments and actions that have raised alarms among many Jewish voters.

Cuomo, who has deemed rising antisemitism “the most important issue” in the race, has for his part denounced calls to “globalize the intifada,” saying that such phrases are “giving license to come after Jews.”

Earlier this month, the UJA-Federation of New York and other local Jewish groups called on all candidates running for mayor “to unequivocally condemn dangerous rhetoric — such as ‘globalize the intifada’ — that has inspired deadly acts against Jews, most recently in Colorado, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.”

In early June, Rabbi Eleanor Steinman wrote to members of Temple Beth Shalom, the Reform congregation she leads in Austin, Texas, sharing the synagogue’s plans to celebrate Pride Month with several events in June. 

Steinman also revealed that, for the first time in more than two decades, her congregation would not be marching in the Austin Pride parade, which event organizers say draws 200,000 people each August, because of concerns about antisemitism. 

“The Austin Pride organization took an antisemitic stance in the midst of the Pride Parade and Festival last year,” wrote Steinman, who is gay. 

Ahead of last year’s Pride parade, slides were leaked from a presentation in which Austin Pride organizers said hate speech against Jews wasn’t welcome, including “symbols, images or flags used by terrorist and hate groups.” An accompanying image showed people holding a “Globalize the Intifada” sign, a Hamas flag and a “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” banner. It was part of an education campaign for queer activists as anti-Israel sentiment exploded in the queer community after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza, as it did in many other progressive spaces. 

But the effort to educate about antisemitism backfired. Anti-Israel activists pressured Austin Pride to disavow that message. Austin Pride not only backtracked on barring those slogans; it issued a statement pledging to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and stating that the organization does not work with the Anti-Defamation League. In the months that followed, Jewish leaders and LGBTQ activists pushed Austin Pride’s leadership to consider changing this stance, but they did not. 

“Despite attempts to meet with Austin Pride since then, a coalition of Jewish leaders were unable to create an environment where we felt we would be both safe and respected as Jewish LGBTQ+ and allies,” Steinman wrote in the email. 

It was a remarkable statement, tinged with bitter irony: The synagogue first started marching in Pride so that LGBTQ congregants would feel that they could bring their full selves to the Jewish community. Now some of those same congregants feel that they need to suppress their Jewishness in order to fully belong in the queer community. 

“It’s putting people back in the closet,” Steinman told Jewish Insider in a recent interview. “It makes me so angry and so sad that Jewish queer people are having to choose between those two identities, almost in a hierarchy — Which one am I more? — and decide how they want to live their truth.” (Micah Andress, president of Austin Pride, said in a statement that he was “saddened that members of the Jewish community may have been misled about our intentions,” and said “misinformation” was circulating. “Everyone is welcome at Austin Pride. Hate speech, of any kind, is not,” said Andress.)

Temple Beth Shalom was joined by two other synagogues, the local ADL branch and the leadership of Shalom Austin — the umbrella organization encompassing Austin’s Jewish federation, JCC and Jewish Family Service — in pulling out of Austin Pride and announcing a suite of Jewish Pride events instead, including a “Jewish queer joy and resilience” happy hour and two different Pride Shabbat services. 

“There aren’t really very many queer spaces in this city that allow queer Jews to exist without being interrogated about Israel, Zionism, the war, things like that,” said Emily Bourgeois, director of public affairs at Shalom Austin. “We decided that this was a good moment for us and our community, knowing just how isolated the LGBT Jewish community specifically is, to really uplift and celebrate queer Jews.” 

Austin is not the only place where Jewish members of the LGBTQ community are opting out of large Pride events because of fears of antisemitism and worries that they will face exclusion and ostracization. Similar monthlong Jewish Pride festivities are also taking place in San Diego and Raleigh, N.C., where organizers of the citywide Pride festivals have taken stances that Jewish leaders say put LGBTQ Jews at risk. In New York and San Francisco, grassroots “Shalom Dykes” parties are being planned as alternatives to the cities’ Dyke Marches, where anti-Zionist sentiment is de rigueur. 

“We’re not going to let them take Pride away from us. We’re going to create a really inclusive Jewish Pride,” said Rabbi Denise Eger, interim executive director at A Wider Bridge, which builds ties between LGBTQ communities in the U.S. and Israel.

Even amid rising antisemitism, Jews in many places have and will participate in large Pride celebrations. At WorldPride in Washington early this month, a large Jewish contingent marched together. 

“We encouraged people to show up to the parade, especially wearing Jewish pride and not being afraid of showing the world that we are LGBTQ Jews,” said Josh Maxey, executive director of Bet Mishpachah, an LGBTQ synagogue in Washington. “We have every right to be in the Pride march, just as anyone else.”

But in other communities where Pride organizers have aligned their organizations with anti-Israel movements or failed to offer support to concerned Jewish community members, the counterprogramming is a way for queer Jews and allies to express support for the LGBTQ community without having to hide their Jewish identity. 

“We’re not going to let them take Pride away from us. We’re going to create a really inclusive Jewish Pride,” said Rabbi Denise Eger, interim executive director at A Wider Bridge, which builds ties between LGBTQ communities in the U.S. and Israel. (Eger is married to Steinman, the Austin rabbi.) 

Even if the events are meant to be joyful, they will be enjoyed with a hint of discomfort. After years of fighting for inclusion, many LGBTQ Jews worry that excluding Jews is becoming accepted in queer spaces, particularly if those Jews are believed to be Zionists. 

Seth Krosner, a trauma surgeon in San Diego, has seen enormous progress in Jewish spaces when it comes to LGBTQ inclusion. That makes it even harder for him to watch anti-Jewish sentiment become more common in LGBTQ spaces. 

“I’m in my early 60s, and it wasn’t always that you could easily have a husband and be a surgeon, or have a husband — well, if you’re a man — and be president of a Conservative synagogue,” Krosner told JI. He lives near the city’s Pride Parade route, and for years he has hosted his rabbi overnight on Shabbat to enable the rabbi to walk to the parade. 

San Diego Pride has stood by its decision to feature R&B singer Kehlani as its headliner, despite facing pushback from the Jewish community over the singer’s lengthy history of violent rhetoric targeting Israel and Zionists. Five synagogues, along with the San Diego JCC and the San Diego Jewish Federation, formally pulled out of San Diego Pride as a result. They will be collaborating on a weekend-long Jewish Pride event the same weekend in July. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria also pulled out of the event over Kehlani’s role in it.

“I’m still happy to be a gay man with a wonderful husband. I’m proud to be a Jew, and I insist on being both. I’m not going to be forced to choose. But I can’t go to the parade in all good faith,” Krosner said. A spokesperson for San Diego Pride said the event is “an inclusive space that centers on and celebrates diverse queer identities, voices and joy [and] remains committed to ensuring a welcoming and, above all, safe Pride experience for the entire community.”

“While we respect those from our local Jewish community who have made the decision not to participate in San Diego Pride’s programming this year, we hope everyone will gather during Pride as a sign of solidarity for our queer community,” the spokesperson said. 

“We have been aware for some time of antisemitism within the LGBTQ community,” Rabbi Lucy Dinner, Temple Beth Or’s senior rabbi, told JI. “This promotion of antisemitism by the OUT! Raleigh event leaders is a profound escalation of that expression, so much so that a local police officer advises that our safety may be at risk if Jews participate.”

Jewish communities are already on high alert, following the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside a Jewish museum in Washington last month and the firebombing of a Boulder, Colo., protest for the Israeli hostages in Gaza soon after. A statement by the San Diego Jewish organizations referenced those incidents. “Kehlani’s hateful messages, including calls to ‘eradicate Zionism’ and for an ‘Intifada Revolution’ are not only dehumanizing, but history has shown that when they are normalized and platformed, they can lead to real-world violence against Jews,” they wrote. 

Sometimes, community leaders must take into account security needs and make difficult calls about when it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Temple Beth Or, a Reform congregation in Raleigh, announced in an email to community members last week that the synagogue would not be formally participating in the OUT! Raleigh pride festival after a conversation with a police officer about security concerns. That decision followed the recent uptick in antisemitic violence, but it also came after OUT! Raleigh released a sharply anti-Zionist statement last year adopting BDS and pledging to “unequivocally stand with the Palestinian people” and demand an “end to Israeli occupation of native Palestinian land and the unjust apartheid system.” (JI did not receive a response to an inquiry sent to OUT! Raleigh.) 

“We have been aware for some time of antisemitism within the LGBTQ community,” Rabbi Lucy Dinner, Temple Beth Or’s senior rabbi, told JI. “This promotion of antisemitism by the OUT! Raleigh event leaders is a profound escalation of that expression, so much so that a local police officer advises that our safety may be at risk if Jews participate.” (A Raleigh Police Department spokesperson disputed that the detective in question told the synagogue to pull out of the Pride event. “I want to affirm that RPD fully supports the right of all individuals to come to Raleigh and peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights,” Chief Public Information Officer Lt. David Davis told JI.) 

In 2025, the exclusion of Jews is rarely so cut-and-dry as someone saying “Jews not welcome here,” particularly on the political left. But the New York City Dyke March, an event focused on queer women that draws between 15,000 and 30,000 people to Manhattan every June, came close: It said this year that Zionists aren’t welcome, even as polls show that an overwhelming majority of American Jews feel a connection to Israel. 

“We oppose the nationalist political ideology of Zionism,” Dyke March organizers affirmed in a statement of values adopted this year, over objections from some Jewish activists. One of the activists, Jodi Kreines, was voted off the planning committee as a result. She was not removed for being a Zionist — Kreines never told her fellow committee members if she is or is not a Zionist — but rather for simply voicing that Zionists should be allowed at the Dyke March. 

“Recent public statements attributed to you, expressing support for Zionist inclusion and collaboration, are in direct conflict with our mission and have caused deep concern in our community,” a group of committee members wrote in an email to Kreines that was viewed by JI. “We’d like to ask you to step down from the committee.” When she did not respond to their email, they voted to remove her. 

“What crazy bizarro world is this, where calling for inclusion is a reason to be ousted from an organizing group, from a progressive space?” Kreines told JI on Monday.

This year, many queer Jewish women and nonbinary people will attend a “Shalom Dykes” party instead of the New York Dyke March. Nate Shalev, who organized the first “Shalom Dykes” event in 2024, is excited that it is happening again. But Shalev, who uses they/them pronouns, struggles with feeling they don’t belong in larger activist communities at a time when they want to protest against anti-LGBTQ policies being promoted by conservative politicians. 

“If we set that precedent this year, that we’re siloing Jews to their own spaces, that’s going to continue, and are we ever going to be able to return?” Sarah Haley, a labor organizer in San Francisco asked. “I do think this type of hatred has gone very mainstream. I don’t think it’s fringe anymore. I think it’s pretty popular to be anti-Zionist, to say ‘Zionist scum’ and things like that. To not recognize this as a slur, I think, has become mainstream. If that’s where we are this year, next year, where will we be in five years? Will it be just no Jews allowed, period?”

“I want to be out there protesting and building coalitions around the values and issues that I care about, and I don’t feel like I’m able to do that,” Shalev said. “I don’t know how much we align anymore. Knowing that folks would possibly want to push me out if we had a conversation about it, and my Israeli wife wouldn’t be able to attend these.”

Sarah Haley, a labor organizer in San Francisco, faced harassment and name-calling from other San Francisco Dyke March volunteers when she argued in a planning meeting that Zionists should be allowed to attend the event. 

“In some ways, it feels like we’re backsliding into a time period when Jews were only able to exist in their own spaces, only in their own businesses and their own groups,” Haley told JI. She does not plan to attend the march this year, but worries about what that means for queer Jews in the future. 

“If we set that precedent this year, that we’re siloing Jews to their own spaces, that’s going to continue, and are we ever going to be able to return?” Haley asked. “I do think this type of hatred has gone very mainstream. I don’t think it’s fringe anymore. I think it’s pretty popular to be anti-Zionist, to say ‘Zionist scum’ and things like that. To not recognize this as a slur, I think, has become mainstream. If that’s where we are this year, next year, where will we be in five years? Will it be just no Jews allowed, period?”

For the many queer Jews who do choose to participate in larger Pride gatherings this summer, doing so is often a celebration of their identity — mixed, increasingly, with a quiet apprehension about antisemitism. Idit Klein, president and CEO of Keshet, an organization that fights for LGBTQ inclusion in the Jewish community, marched in WorldPride in Washington this month.

“It really was a day of queer Jewish joy, with these flashes of vulnerability, and looking around, and anxiety about what might happen, and then profound relief and gratitude,” Klein told JI. “I’m really kind of amazed by this: There wasn’t a flicker of negativity.”

As the WorldPride parade marched down 14th Street the first weekend in June, several announcers situated throughout the parade route shouted out the name of each contingent that marched past. 

“Happy Pride, queer Jews of Washington, D.C.!” the announcers said. 

Except one of them didn’t see the group’s banner, and chimed in with a different name, deduced from the sight of an Israeli flag. 

“Happy Pride, LGBTQ people from Israel!” the announcer stated. 

The Jewish marchers paused and held their breath, hoping the reaction from spectators wouldn’t be too harsh.

“All of us froze for a moment and wondered, what is going to happen now?” Klein recalled. Would this be one of those bad stories? 

Then everyone cheered, just like they did for all the other floats and groups. And they kept on marching.

“To have an experience of a parade, and all the more so in Washington, D.C., given the murders that just happened there, that really just felt embracing and celebratory — that felt quite extraordinary,” said Klein.

A new super PAC funded by donors involved in Jewish and pro-Israel causes is targeting Zohran Mamdani as he continues to surge in the final days of New York City’s mayoral primary, tying the far-left Queens state assemblyman to a range of recent antisemitic incidents.

In a 30-second digital ad released by Sensible City, the super PAC takes aim at Mamdani, a democratic socialist polling in second place behind former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, for supporting efforts to defund the police amid a rise in anti-Israel demonstrations and antisemitic violence fueled by Israel’s war in Gaza.

“It doesn’t stop,” the ad’s narrator intones over images of anti-Israel protests as well as antisemitic attacks, notably highlighting the alleged shooter of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington last month. “Day after day, streets blocked, demonstrations, some calling for killing, destruction — it’s not safe. Institution walls defaced with symbols to remind us of what can happen only because of who we are. The haters mean every word they utter. What can we do?”

“Zohran Mamdani wants to defund the police,” the narrator adds. “We need a mayor who puts more cops on the street. What’s your June 24 Democratic primary choice?”

The ad does not mention any other candidates in the Democratic primary, though at least one of the super PAC’s board members and one of the super PAC’s donors have contributed to Cuomo, who has called antisemitism “the most important issue” in the race while touting his staunch support for Israel. He has also criticized Mamdani over his past calls to defund the police.

Mamdani’s hostility toward Israel, whose existence as a Jewish state he has refused to recognize during the campaign, has long raised alarms among Jewish leaders, particularly as polling has suggested that he is gaining on Cuomo with under two weeks until the primary.

But the new ad from Sensible City, which began airing late last week, is one of only a small handful of paid efforts to draw scrutiny to Mamdani’s record of anti-Israel activism, one of several vulnerabilities in his insurgent bid for mayor. 

Whitney Tilson, a former hedge fund executive seeking the Democratic nomination, has also run ads hitting Mamdani ‘s rhetoric on Israel. “The socialists are at the gate and Zohran Mamdani is leading the pack,” a Tilson ad stated earlier this month. “If they take over New York City, this is what they said they’ll do: Defund the police, consequences for genocidal Zionist imperialism.”

Mamdani’s campaign has dismissed both efforts as “desperate,” while calling the new ad from Sensible City “disgusting” and “slanderous.” 

It remains to be seen if the new super PAC will further engage in the primary, after spending just over $100,000 on its digital ad — a relatively small sum in a race that has drawn millions from outside groups. 

The super PAC has raised only $212,000 from seven donors, the latest filings show, including Rob Stavis, a partner at the venture capital firm Bessemer and a vice chair of the Anti-Defamation League’s board of directors, and Modi Wiczyk, a film producer and a board member at the Israel Policy Forum.

Stavis, who contributed $100,000, the single largest amount, declined to comment on the race, but a person familiar with his thinking said he has been personally troubled by Mamdani’s campaign.

The super PAC’s “mission,” it states on its website, “is to advocate for issues and policies focused on supporting and advancing public safety, combating antisemitism and promoting fiscal responsibility.”

“Our mission is more than a statement — it’s a standard,” the website adds. “Everything we do reflects our belief that New Yorkers deserve safe communities, responsible governance, and leaders who stand up to hate. Sensible City exists to hold that line.”

Representatives for the group listed on its website as well as in filings did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

The group’s chairman, Daniel Horwitz, a partner at Tannenbaum Helpern in New York City, gave $500 to Cuomo’s campaign in March, according to filings.

A super PAC launched by allies of Cuomo, Fix the City, has raised more than $12 million, and recently began running attack ads against Mamdani.

Protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations that have engulfed San Francisco’s streets this week took an antisemitic turn on Monday night when a local Jewish-owned civic engagement hub and community space had its windows smashed and walls defaced with slurs including “Die Zio,” “The Only Good Settler is a Dead One,” “Death 2 Israel is a Promise” and “Intifada.” 

“There is no justification for attacking me other than the fact that I am Jewish,” Manny Yekutiel, owner of the Mission District event space Manny’s, which is in disrepair following the vandalism and break-in, told Jewish Insider. “My business is not a pro-Israel business. I am not Israeli. This is not a space that represents Israel in any way.”

The space was also the target of antisemitic graffiti in October around the one year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks. The most recent attack is currently being investigated as a hate crime. 

In the Bay Area, over 150 people were arrested on Sunday and Monday following protests against President Donald Trump’s travel ban, latest immigration policies and ICE raids. Similar protests spread across the country — including in Los Angeles where 4,000 National Guard members and 700 U.S. Marines were deployed on Monday. 

Yekutiel believes the protests against ICE are “necessary” because ongoing deportations are “stoking hatred” and “we need to stand with immigrants.” While Yekutiel says he will continue identifying with left-wing causes, he also said the attack on his business makes the protests concerning for Jews.

The attack on Manny’s “undermines the very values such movements claim to uphold” such as “justice and welcome the stranger,” the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area said in a statement.

Monday’s vandalism in San Francisco comes as the Jewish community faces an “elevated threat” following a surge of violent antisemitic attacks across the country in recent weeks, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned last week. Last month, two Israeli Embassy employees were killed in a shooting in Washington. Days later in Boulder, Colo., 15 people advocating for the release of hostages in Gaza were injured in a firebombing by an Egyptian national who overstayed his visa in the U.S. 

Trump announced his travel ban — which bars nationals of 12 countries from entering the U.S. — last week following the Boulder attack.

“The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas,” Trump said. “We don’t want them.”

Good Tuesday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on the House’s passage of two resolutions condemning antisemitic attacks, and cover President Donald Trump’s comments criticizing Iran’s slow-walking and continued demand for nuclear enrichment capabilities. We also profile former FBI intelligence official John Sullivan, who is mounting a bid to challenge Rep. Mike Lawler in New York’s 17th Congressional District, and report on Jewish communal concerns over legislators’ proposed funding level for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Ken Moelis, Gary Torgow and Argentine President Javier Milei.

What We’re Watching

• It’s primary day in New Jersey. More below on the state’s gubernatorial primaries.
• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is testifying before the House Appropriations Committee this morning, alongside Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine. It’s the first of three hearings Hegseth is slated to sit for this week, and the first since the “Signalgate” incident in which Hegseth and others, including Vice President JD Vance, discussed plans for a strike on Houthi targets in Yemen in a group chat that included journalist Jeffrey Goldberg.
• Also this morning, the House Armed Services Committee is holding a hearing on “U.S. Military Posture and National Security Challenges in the Greater Middle East and Africa” with CENTCOM Commander Gen. Erik Kurilla, while CIA Director John Ratcliffe testifies before the House Intelligence Committee.
• This afternoon, former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom and the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin will discuss human rights in Turkey at a hearing being convened by the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.
• We’re also keeping an eye on the Knesset, where Israel’s opposition is expected to put forward a vote tomorrow to dissolve the government, which would trigger new elections. The motion is likely to pass only if the Haredi parties that are part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition break with the prime minister over Haredi military conscription.

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH MATTHEW KASSEL

As New Jersey’s competitive gubernatorial primary takes place today, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) looks like the front-runner in the crowded Democratic field but without much public polling and a late flurry of advertising, there’s still a considerable amount of uncertainty as to who will emerge as the nominee in the six-way race.  

Sherrill, a military veteran who has represented a suburban north New Jersey seat since 2018, is the favorite of many Democratic Party officials and has been leading in the limited public polling of the race. The congresswoman has also been one of the top fundraisers in the field, along with Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), who has been courting support from the state’s sizable Jewish community.

“Josh has been betting on the Jewish community coming out strong, and there is a realistic possibility that if new voters emerge in places like Lakewood, which is the fifth-largest city in New Jersey now, it could play a decisive role,” one Jewish community activist, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss the primary, told Jewish Insider on Monday.

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.

DOUBLE TALK

Zohran Mamdani says he will not travel to Israel but planned ‘Palestine’ trip in 2020

In his campaign for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, a far-left Queens state assemblyman polling in second place behind former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has indicated he would not visit Israel if he is elected, saying he does not believe that such a trip is necessary “to stand up for Jewish New Yorkers,” Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.

Making an exception: By contrast, in a 2020 Zoom discussion with the Adalah Justice Project, a pro-Palestinian advocacy group, Mamdani said he was planning to organize a trip to the Palestinian territories, suggesting that he would make an exception for an issue he has upheld as one of his top causes in Albany. The comments underscore how Mamdani’s past remarks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have become a source of growing tension as he confronts basic questions on the issue in his mayoral campaign.

Read the full story here.

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ANTISEMITISM ON THE FLOOR

House passes two resolutions condemning antisemitic attacks, amid controversy

The House voted on Monday to pass two resolutions condemning recent antisemitic attacks. One, led by Republicans, which focused on the Boulder, Colo., attack and immigration issues,  split the Democratic caucus. The other, which was bipartisan and highlighted a series of antisemitic attacks, passed nearly unanimously, with just two lawmakers voting present, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Vote breakdowns: The first resolution drew criticism from Democrats ahead of the vote, but it passed, 280-133. Seventy-five Democrats, mostly moderates and pro-Israel members, ultimately voted in favor of the resolution and 113 voted against it. Another five Democrats — Reps. Herb Conaway (D-NJ), Shomari Figures (D-AL), Sarah McBride (D-DE), Johnny Olszewski (D-MD) and Dina Titus (D-NV) — and one Republican, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), voted present. Republicans removed some controversial language from the resolutions ahead of the vote. The second resolution, which condemns “the rise in ideologically motivated attacks on Jewish individuals in the United States,” passed with 400 votes in favor. Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Greene voted present.

Read the full story here.

Time to act: A group of eight Jewish House Democrats called on House and Senate leaders to pass the Antisemitism Awareness Act and increase Nonprofit Security Grant Program funding to $500 million, in advance of the resolution votes. “The Jewish community needs real action, not just resolutions,” the lawmakers said.

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DIPLOMATIC DIALOGUE

Trump criticizes Iran’s continued nuclear enrichment demands after Bibi call

President Donald Trump on Monday criticized Iran’s continued demands on uranium enrichment as part of the terms of a nuclear deal with the United States. Trump made the comments while speaking to reporters from the State Dining Room about his phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in the day, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports. 

What he said: Trump said the call went “very well” but declined to offer specifics beyond acknowledging that Iran was “the main topic.” He also added that the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon were also discussed. Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the call lasted around 40 minutes. “They [Iran] are good negotiators, but they’re tough. Sometimes they can be too tough, that’s the problem. So we’re trying to make a deal so that there’s no destruction and death. We told them that. I have told them that. I hope that is the way it works out. It might not work out,” Trump said.

Read the full story here.

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HE’S RUNNING

Former senior FBI intel agent in Israel joins crowded Democratic field against Lawler

John Sullivan, who recently joined the increasingly crowded Democratic primary race to face Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) in November, brings unique pro-Israel bona fides to the race, even among a field of candidates vowing support for the Jewish state: From 2017-2020, Sullivan was the top FBI intelligence official living and working in Israel, liaising with the Israeli government on counterterrorism operations, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

On the scene: Those three years, Sullivan told JI in an interview in May, gave him on-the-ground experience combating Hamas and Hezbollah and protecting both Israeli and American citizens. He said he’s seen and experienced firsthand the threats posed by both terror groups. “Working really closely with the Israelis to do everything possible to keep Israel safe was a key part of my life and my work for three years while I was overseas,” Sullivan said. “Israel has a very special place in my family’s heart.”

Read the full interview here.

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ON THE STAND

House committee calls Georgetown, Berkeley, CUNY presidents for antisemitism hearing

The House Education and Workforce Committee announced that its next hearing on campus antisemitism will feature testimony from the leaders of Georgetown University, the University of California, Berkeley and the City University of New York, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Looking ahead: The hearing, set for July 9, will include testimony from Georgetown’s interim president, Robert Groves, UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons and CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), the committee’s chair, indicated in a statement that the committee plans to focus the hearing on the issues driving campus antisemitism including foreign funding and antisemitic student groups.

Read the full story here.

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SECURITY FUNDING

Jewish groups say House’s NSGP proposal falls short

Jewish groups said on Monday that the House Appropriations Committee’s 2026 appropriations bill, which includes $305 million in funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program, fails to meet the need for the program. The House Appropriations subcommittee on Homeland Security voted on Monday evening to advance the bill funding the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, with an increase from 2025 of just over $30 million for NSGP funding. The full committee will debate and vote on the bill on Thursday morning, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs and Marc Rod report.

Jewish groups react: Nathan Diament, the executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, said in a statement the House proposal is “a far cry from what is needed in the face of exploding antisemitism. The pro-Hamas calls to ‘globalize the Intifada’ have arrived in America. Jewish communities are facing a real crisis with a real set of threats, and Congress must respond with real action.” The Anti-Defamation League expressed a similar view. “In the wake of the horrific antisemitic violence we’ve seen in Washington, D.C., and Boulder, our communities are living in fear. We appreciate the proposed increase to $305 million for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, but it is not enough,” Lauren Wolman, director of federal policy and strategy at the ADL, said in a separate statement. “Not when Jewish schools are forced to hire armed guards. Not when synagogues are receiving bomb threats during services.”

Read the full story here.

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Worthy Reads

Tunnel Visions: The New York Times’ Isabel Kershner interviews former Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov about the religious journey he experienced while in Hamas captivity in Gaza. “A few days into his captivity, he said, he began to speak to God. He made vows. He began to bless whatever food he was given. And he had requests — some of which he believes were answered. ‘You are looking for something to lean on, to hold onto,’ Mr. Shem Tov said in a recent interview at his family home in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv. ‘The first place I went to was God. I would feel a power enter me,’ he said. … Mr. Shem Tov, who turned 22 in captivity, said he had always had faith, but had never been religiously observant. Many other released hostages have spoken of similar experiences, finding solace and the strength to survive by connecting or reconnecting with God and recalling oft-forgotten Jewish rituals.” [NYTimes]

Tug-of-War on Tehran: Politico’s Rachael Bade and Felicia Schwartz look at the behind-the-scenes efforts by both the isolationist wing of the GOP and Iran hawks to impact President Donald Trump’s final decision on how to address Iran. “The private lobbying and public sniping highlight a vast breach in the GOP over U.S. foreign policy just months into Trump’s first term. While many hawkish members of the old guard have viewed [Mideast envoy Steve] Witkoff’s diplomatic effort with skepticism, the more restrained wing of the party has been adamant about defusing tensions with Tehran. In the middle of the tug-of-war is Trump, who ran on a promise of ending what his followers see as endless U.S. foreign adventurism and war.” [Politico]

Doctor Without Borders: In The New Yorker, Eyal Press spotlights Israeli-Arab Dr. Lina Qasem Hassan, who in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks traveled to treat survivors of the massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri, about her experiences as a medical provider of Palestinian descent treating Israelis in a post-Oct. 7 environment. “But Qasem Hassan wasn’t going anywhere, even as she acknowledged feeling increasingly isolated, not only from her Jewish peers but also from some of her fellow Palestinians, including family members. Her older brother, a successful economist, and her sister, a government lawyer, have repeatedly warned her that her outspokenness could damage not only her career but theirs. … [S]he had sometimes asked herself if going to the Dead Sea after October 7th had been the right decision. She ultimately decided that she was proud of it. She told me, ‘I did it for myself, because it put to the test the idea I was raised on — that all people are equal and that human pain is universal.’” [NewYorker]

Word on the Street

The Justice Department is suing an Oakland, Calif., coffeehouse and its Palestinian owner over a 2024 incident in which a man wearing a yarmulke was denied service and asked to leave the premises…

NBC News reports on the White House’s struggle to hire Pentagon staff to work under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, amid broader tensions between the administration and Hegseth, who was reportedly instructed to cancel a trip to the Middle East because the itinerary included a stop in Israel…

A new poll by the Pew Research Center found that the global Jewish population increased by 1 million between 2010-2020, to 15 million; Pew noted that the total number of Jews in the world is still less than the pre-World War II number of 16.5 million…

Solidarity PAC, a pro-Israel super PAC in New York City, is backing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo as its top choice for mayor and urging supporters not to rank Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in the primary, according to a new voter guide shared first with JI…

The Flatbush Jewish Community Coalition announced it is supporting Cuomo, saying in a statement that the election “presents a stark and urgent choice for Jewish voters”…

Ken Moelis will step down from his eponymous investment bank later this year; Moelis, who launched the firm in 2007, will be succeeded by co-founder Navid Mahmoodzadegan, the bank’s co-president…

The New Yorker spotlights television writer Gertrude Berg, whose 1950s show “The Goldbergs,” about a midcentury Jewish family in the Bronx, was among the first family sitcoms…

Police in Ottawa, Canada, are investigating the vandalism of the city’s National Holocaust Monument that took place earlier this week…

The family of Israeli hostage Matan Angrest released video taken from his capture on Oct. 7, 2023; in the video, Angrest’s limp body is seen being tossed off a tank into the arms of terrorists…

The New York Times interviews former hostage Liat Beinin Atzili, who was released from captivity in November 2023 and whose husband, Aviv, was killed in the Oct. 7 attack…

Argentine President Javier Milei arrived in Israel last night, traveling to the Western Wall in Jerusalem shortly after landing…

Climate activist Greta Thunberg departed Israel on an El Al flight to France on Tuesday morning, a day after the boat she and other activists had attempted to sail to Gaza was intercepted by Israeli forces…

International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi said that Iran’s announcement that it had obtained information about an Israeli nuclear program appeared to refer to Israel’s Soreq Nuclear Research Center, which operates under the IAEA’s supervision…

Israel’s navy conducted strikes against Houthi targets in the Yemeni port of Hodeida, the first time Israel has attacked the Iran-backed group from the sea…

Iran expanded its ban on dog-walking — first instituted in Tehran in 2019 — to several major cities around the country; Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had previously called dog ownership “reprehensible”…

The Jewish Federation of Tulsa, Okla., announced a new initiative, the Elson Israel Fellowship, aimed at making the city a center for Israel-related thought. The four inaugural fellows are: World Zionist Organization advisor Avi Gamulka, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross, author and educator Sarah Sassoon and community organizer and researcher Barak Sella…

The board of trustees of the Jewish Federations of North America elected Gary Torgow, a Detroit-based philanthropist and board president of the Jewish Federation of Detroit, as the group’s chair…

Pic of the Day

Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL) spoke at a ceremony on Monday to rename the Delray Beach post office after Ben Ferencz, who led post-World War II Nuremberg prosecutions of Nazis. Read more about Frankel’s yearslong effort to honor Ferencz here.

Birthdays

Author of award-winning books about her experiences before, during and after the Holocaust, Aranka Davidowitz Siegal turns 95… 

Journalist and author, Jeff Greenfield turns 82… Musician, producer, composer and conductor for film and television, Randy Edelman turns 78… Physical therapist at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, Andrea Sachs… Cathy Farbstein Miller… Senior director of communications for CoGenerate, Stefanie Weiss… Former attorney general and later governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer turns 66… Director of business development at Evergreen Benefits Group, Avi H. Goldfeder… Blogger and columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, Neil Steinberg turns 65… Film, television and stage actress, Gina Gershon turns 63… President and CEO of JINSA, Michael Makovsky… Actress and the older sister of comedian Sarah Silverman, Laura Silverman turns 59… Israeli film and TV actress, Avital Abergel turns 48… Veteran of nine NFL seasons as an offensive tackle, he is now the athletic director of Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, Calif., Mike Rosenthal turns 48… VP of strategic partnerships at the Birthright Israel Foundation and director of community education at NYC’s Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, Rabbi Daniel Kraus… Professor at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, Yascha Mounk turns 43… Economic commentator on Israeli television, Matan Hodorov turns 40… Publisher of The New York Sun and CEO of The Algemeiner, Dovid Efune… Actor, producer, writer and director, Joseph Paul “Joey” Zimmerman turns 39… CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, Tyler Gregory… Singer, composer and entertainer, Simcha Leiner turns 36… CEO of Encounter Programs, Yona Shem-Tov… Belgian singer and songwriter, known as “Blanche,” Ellie Blanche Delvaux turns 26…

The House voted on Monday to pass two resolutions condemning recent antisemitic attacks. One, led by Republicans, which focused on the Boulder, Colo., attack and immigration issues, and split the Democratic caucus. The other, which was bipartisan and highlighted a series of antisemitic attacks, passed nearly unanimously, with just two lawmakers voting present.

The first resolution attracted controversy among Democrats ahead of the vote, but it passed by a 280-133 vote. Seventy-five Democrats, mostly moderates and pro-Israel members, ultimately voted in favor of the resolution and 113 voted against it. 

Another five Democrats, Reps. Herb Conaway (D-NJ), Shomari Figures (D-AL), Sarah McBride (D-DE), Johnny Olszewski (D-MD) and Dina Titus (D-NV), and one Republican, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), voted present.

The resolution stated that the Boulder attack, perpetrated by an Egyptian national who overstayed a visa and work permit who threw a Molotov cocktail at activists raising awareness for the hostages in Gaza, “highlights the need to aggressively vet aliens who apply for visas” and “demonstrates the dangers of not removing from the country aliens who fail to comply with the terms of their visas.” 

It also praised law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement and emphasized the need for “free and open communication” between state and federal law enforcement — an apparent reference to Colorado sanctuary state policies that limit such cooperation.

Prior to the vote, Republicans softened the resolution amid strident criticism from Democrats, stripping out one section that described the slogan “Free Palestine” as antisemitic and another one that explicitly condemned Colorado’s sanctuary state policies.

The second resolution, which condemns “the rise in ideologically motivated attacks on Jewish individuals in the United States,” including the attack in Boulder, the Capital Jewish Museum murders and the arson targeting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, passed with 400 votes in favor. Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Greene voted present. No members voted against the latter resolution.

“We cannot ignore these attacks or dismiss them as isolated incidents,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), who led the bipartisan resolution, said in a statement. “They are part of a serious and dangerous trend that must be condemned by all of us. Today, the House stood firmly in support of respect and dignity for everyone because we know that every American deserves to live without fear in their own community.”

Greene said in an X post that “antisemitic hate crimes are wrong, but so are all hate crimes. Yet Congress never votes on hate crimes committed against white people, Christians, men, the homeless, or countless others.”

She objected to the fact that Congress has voted on “endless resolutions” on antisemitism while “Americans from every background are being murdered — even in the womb.”

“Prioritizing one group of Americans and/or one foreign country above our own people is fueling resentment and actually driving more division, including antisemitism,” Greene continued.

Ahead of the vote, a group of Jewish House Democrats had urged congressional leaders to take substantive action beyond passing nonbinding resolutions to combat antisemitism, primarily by passing the Antisemitism Awareness Act and bolstering Nonprofit Security Grant Program funding.

A group of eight Jewish House Democrats called for action to advance the Antisemitism Awareness Act and increase Nonprofit Security Grant Program funding, in advance of votes on the House floor on a pair of resolutions condemning recent antisemitic attacks.

The statement highlights the recent string of antisemitic violence across the country and argues, “The Jewish community needs real action, not just resolutions.”

The lawmakers said that, “While the House will vote on two non-binding resolutions this week condemning the antisemitic attacks in Washington D.C., and Boulder, Colorado, the Jewish community is reeling, and we need Congressional leaders to come together and support real policy change.”

The statement was signed by Reps. Brad Sherman (D-CA), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Kim Schrier (D-WA), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Brad Schneider (D-IL) and Lois Frankel (D-FL).

“In just the last two weeks, our country has witnessed two back-to-back antisemitic terror attacks that have left two dead and 15 seriously wounded,” the lawmakers said. “These events are an escalation of ongoing antisemitic violence that has become more and more common since Hamas’s October 7th massacre.”

The statement calls on Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to bring a clean, unamended version of the Antisemitism Awareness Act to the Senate floor and for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to bring the bill up for a vote in the House.

“Codifying the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism is long overdue, and is more urgent now than ever as we see one violent anti-Zionist terror attack after another,” the statement reads. “You cannot fight antisemitism if you are unwilling to define it.”

It also calls for President Donald Trump and members of the Appropriations Committees to provide “long-requested levels of $500 million” for the NSGP, arguing, “it will help [Jewish institutions] put in place additional security measures like security cameras, locked doors, security guards, and more that could thwart terror attacks like the one that transpired at the Capital Jewish Museum.”

The statement outlines a series of violent antisemitic incidents in the past year and a half, including the Capital Jewish Museum murders and the Boulder, Colo., attack, as well as the attempted arson of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home during Passover; the death of Paul Kessler, who was killed in November 2023 in Los Angeles by an anti-Israel demonstrator who hit him on the head; and the stabbing of a Jewish barber in Yonkers, N.Y. in August 2024, which the lawmakers say “underlie the need for urgent, serious action.”

The statement’s neutral tone on the two antisemitism resolutions reflects the fact that many House Democrats are condemning one of the resolutions, led by Republicans, which focuses heavily on immigration issues. Controversial language describing “Free Palestine” as an antisemitic slogan was pulled from the resolution ahead of the vote.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said Monday that the resolution is a “desperate attempt to distract,” an “embarassment” and a “joke.”

The statement was also endorsed by Democratic Majority for Israel.

The American Jewish community is facing an “elevated threat” following a surge of violent antisemitic attacks across the country in recent weeks, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned last week. 

In a joint statement, the FBI and DHS called for increased vigilance among Jewish communities, noting the possibility of copycat attacks after a shooting in Washington in which two Israeli Embassy employees were killed and an attack in Boulder, Colo., in which 15 people were injured in a firebombing targeting advocates calling for the release of hostages in Gaza. “The ongoing Israel-HAMAS conflict may motivate other violent extremists and hate crime perpetrators with similar grievances to conduct violence against Jewish and Israeli communities and their supporters. Foreign terrorist organizations also may try to exploit narratives related to the conflict to inspire attacks in the United States,” the agencies warned. 

Jewish organizations that track threats to the community are similarly concerned about online rhetoric following the attacks. 

The Anti-Defamation League highlighted that, one day after the incident in Boulder, videos allegedly recorded by the assailant shortly before the assault began circulated on a Telegram channel called Taufan al-Ummah, which translates to “Flood of the Ummah,” a reference to the Al-Aqsa Flood, Hamas’ name for its Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel. The circulated posts celebrated Soliman’s actions. 

The ADL also noted that extremists responded to the attack by spreading conspiracy theories which blamed Jews for the firebombing. Additionally, the Bronx Anti-War Coalition posted a threat shortly after the attack: “May all Zionists live in perpetual fear and paranoia until the day the criminal entity crumbles.” 

“The volume of alerts when our social media web scraping tools highlight postings that may be real threats is happening at a much higher run rate than before D.C. and Boulder,” Mitch Silber, director of the Community Security Initiative, which coordinates security for Jewish communities in the New York region, told Jewish Insider.

“I would say it’s unprecedented,” Silber said of the threat Jews are confronting.  

Silber also called it “unprecedented that American Jews are being targeted because of Israel’s actions,” referring to the Boulder attack, the killing of the two Israeli Embassy staffers, and an attempted arson attack on the home of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro during the holiday of Passover. The suspect in the Boulder attack told investigators he “wanted to kill all Zionist people” and had planned the attack for a year. The shooter in Washington yelled “Free Palestine” shortly after the attack and the arsonist cited Shapiro’s support for Israel as his motive.   

These attacks, according to Silber, are distinct from other antisemitic incidents that have occurred in recent years, such as the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh — which remains the deadliest attack on Jews on U.S. soil — and the 2022 hostage-taking at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. 

“The key element that’s different here is the motivation of the attacks,” Silber said. The Tree of Life shooter was motivated by HIAS immigration actions and the Colleyville shooter was looking to get an al-Qaida fighter freed. “Of course, antisemitism is the broad brush,” he continued, “but if you look at recent attacks, they are really attacks against Jewish communities in the U.S. because American Jews are stand-ins for the Israelis that these attackers can’t reach.” 

CSI is responding in “a multitude of different ways,” Silber said. “It’s been a tsunami of requests from organizations.” 

“We’re encouraging any Jewish institution or organization to let us know if they are having an event and that way we can let local law enforcement know,” Silber continued, adding that the group’s new plans include subsidizing armed guards to complement law enforcement at outdoor events hosted by Jewish organizations, as well as expanding its team of analysts searching on social media, surface web and dark web for threats.  

“We have more hands on keyboards to give ourselves a better chance of detecting a Boulder or D.C. before it happens,” Silber said. 

Community Security Service, a group that provides self-defense and safety training to Jewish institutions, also told JI it is beefing up services in light of the recent attacks. 

“Both of the attacks within a two-week timespan have been accompanied by the same kind of slogans that we’ve been hearing on college campuses and yelled at synagogues,” said Richard Priem, CEO of CSS. “That is a new manifestation. Of course we are concerned.” 

Following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and ensuing war in Gaza, CSS saw a dramatic increase in Jewish communities requesting security support, which lasted for about a year, according to Priem. “But over the last two weeks, we’ve had dozens of inquiries from organizations,” he said. 

“We are making sure that more quarters of the community use the training that we have for them,” Priem said. “Not just by deploying volunteers for large- or small-scale events but also just giving them guidance and training on how to organize themselves in a way that makes them less vulnerable.”

“We will open some community-wide training sessions in the coming weeks that are open to anyone to give awareness to pre-attack indicators,” he continued. “We have to get out of this mindset that the only way we’re going to solve this is by outsourcing to more companies. We’re not going to get out of this situation unless we as a community start taking ownership and realize we have to do training. We have to pay attention. Whether there’s an increased threat or not, people should do preventative training now.” 

Marc Calcano, a former NYPD officer who runs a New York City-based private security firm with several high-profile Jewish clients, echoed that “the level of terror” American Jews face is “extremely high right now” and warned that the Boulder attack, in particular, could be easily replicated.

“I instruct individuals and large groups but I think it’s time for us to do this on a larger scale, which is creating an institution where many can come, here in New York and other states to learn how to physically defend yourself,” Calcano said.  

The Jewish community can use fear “to its advantage,” he continued. “We have to learn how to protect ourselves.”  

The House of Representatives is set to vote next week on two resolutions condemning antisemitism and the terrorist attack on a hostage march in Boulder, Colo. 

One resolution from Republicans, focused on Boulder, highlights immigration issues and denounces the slogan “Free Palestine,” while the other, which is bipartisan, links Sunday’s Colorado attack to a series of other recent violent antisemitic attacks. 

The first of the two resolutions is already attracting criticism from some Democrats. Led by Reps. Gabe Evans (R-CO), Jeff Crank (R-CO) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO), it includes a line that describes “Free Palestine” — a slogan shouted by both Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the Boulder attacker, and Elias Rodriguez, who killed two Israeli Embassy employees at the Capital Jewish Museum, during or shortly after their crimes — as “an antisemitic slogan that calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and the Jewish people.”

Evans’ resolution also notes that Soliman, an Egyptian national, violated U.S. immigration restrictions and states that the case “highlights the need to aggressively vet aliens who apply for visas to determine whether they endorse, espouse, promote, or support antisemitic terrorism or engage in other antisemitic or anti-American activity” and “demonstrates the dangers of not removing from the country aliens who fail to comply with the terms of their visas.”

It criticizes Colorado’s sanctuary state policies, stating that Colorado “hinders immigration enforcement” activities and prohibits law enforcement officials from providing information to federal immigration officials.

It also “affirms that free and open communication between State and local law enforcement and their federal counterparts remains the bedrock of public safety and is necessary in preventing terrorist attacks” and “expresses gratitude” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel and other law enforcement.

Given Democratic opposition to many of the Trump administration’s immigration policies, those provisions could prove controversial, and some on the left are also likely to oppose labeling “Free Palestine” as antisemitic. 

In statements about the legislation, the sponsors lambast Colorado’s sanctuary state policies, the Biden administration, Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and state lawmakers for their approach to immigration issues.

The resolution goes on to condemn Soliman and his “antisemitic terrorist attack on peaceful demonstrators supporting the release of the hostages” and prays for the victims of the attack.

The second resolution, led by Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), has 53 bipartisan cosponsors, and condemns “the rise in ideologically motivated attacks on Jewish individuals in the United States,” including the Boulder attack, and expresses the House’s “commitment to combating antisemitism and politically motivated violence.”

The resolution describes the Colorado attack, as well as the D.C. shooting and the arson targeting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence on the first night of Passover, as part of a “disturbing pattern of targeted aggression” and “politically and religiously motivated violence directed at Jewish individuals and institutions.”

It states that the three attacks “share a common pattern of targeting Jewish individuals or symbols of Jewish life and civic engagement” and calls antisemitism “fundamentally incompatible with the values of the United States,” saying it must be “condemned unequivocally.”

The Van Drew resolution calls on law enforcement to thoroughly investigate and prosecute the incident and on leaders to “speak out against antisemitism and politically motivated violence in all forms.”

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), a co-chair of the House Jewish caucus and a prominent progressive Jewish voice in the chamber, condemned Republicans for calling up the Evans-led resolution and urged colleagues not to support it.

“I am deeply disappointed in the Republican majority’s decision to put a blatantly partisan antisemitism resolution on the floor next week — especially since there is a bipartisan resolution that appropriately speaks to the horrible tragedy in Boulder that is already scheduled to come to the floor,” Nadler said in a statement to Jewish Insider. 

“Once again, Republicans are using Jewish safety and the rise of antisemitism in America for their own partisan gain and to perpetuate their bigoted immigration propaganda,” Nadler continued. “As a community full of families who fled to America in search of a better life, American Jews will not fall for this cynical tactic, and I urge my colleagues not to take the bait.”

The two resolutions are the latest in a series of resolutions on antisemitism introduced by House members in the weeks since the Washington attack, some of which point to the increasingly fractured and politicized discourse about the issue.

Following the D.C. attack, 73 House Republicans led by Rep. Addison McDowell (R-NC) introduced a resolution condemning the attack and antisemitism, which noted that “the murderer is a far-left activist and has been affiliated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation.” It also called for “the enforcement of existing laws that punish hate crimes, protect religious freedom, and ensure justice for victims of antisemitic violence and discrimination.”

Following the Boulder attack, another Republican-only resolution led by Reps. Randy Fine (R-FL) and August Pfluger (R-TX), co-sponsored by 23 other House Republicans, also noted that Soliman overstayed his visa, said he “should never have been permitted to remain in the country as long as he was” and called for Congress to “take immediate action to secure the border and deport migrants who overstay their visas.”

Separately, six members of Colorado’s House delegation — all but Evans and Boebert — introduced a bipartisan resolution condemning the attack and expressing support for the survivors, as well as calling for additional federal resources to counter antisemitism and hate crimes and protect targeted communities.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), in a blistering statement, accused the U.N.’s special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, of antisemitism and said that her activity has undermined the United Nations and eroded U.S. support for the U.N. and foreign aid in general and will contribute to deaths around the world.

The statement comes in response to a letter from Albanese, who has faced ongoing accusations of antisemitism from U.S. officials and lawmakers who have described her as unfit for her role, to Israel Bonds, accusing the group of involvement in crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

“Only for a demonstrated antisemite like Ms. Albanese could stabilizing Israel’s economy after the worst massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust be something negative,” Sherman said. “This is just the latest instance in Ms. Albanese’s long history of antisemitism – she has regularly used antisemitic terms like the ‘Jewish lobby’ and claims that Israel doesn’t have the right to defend itself or even to exist.”

He said that, “Albanese and her ilk have turned once-legitimate entities like the United Nations into kangaroo courts and clown shows, significantly undermining U.S. support for the funding of international institutions and foreign aid.”

Sherman argued that actions by officials like Albanese make it harder for U.S. supporters of foreign aid to fight the Trump administration’s cuts to U.S. foreign development assistance and to support funding to international organizations. He drew a connection between Albanese and the antisemitism at the U.N. and what he said were 3.3 million anticipated deaths as a result of cuts to U.S. foreign aid.

“There’s a substantial amount of blood on her hands – but her victims live in countries that she doesn’t care about,” Sherman continued. “In fact, it seems the only thing she cares about is justifying attacks on Israel and Jews worldwide.”

Sherman also argued that the goal of Albanese and others in the anti-Israel movement is to weaken Israel economically and militarily so that future terrorist attacks can successfully eliminate the Jewish state.

“Believe that the anti-Israel movement means it when they say they want to eradicate Israel and will use any means to do it,” Sherman said. “Ms. Albanese condemns, and seeks to prevent, every effort of the Israeli government to feed and house its poorest citizens and care for the disabled. Due to her blinding rage of antisemitism, she seeks to hurt the most vulnerable.”

Albanese, in her letter to Israel Bonds, formally known as the Development Corporation for Israel, alleged that the group is responsible for a host of crimes against humanity and human rights violations, and suggested it faces international criminal liability.

“The applicable legal framework and the gravity of the situation on the ground in the occupied Palestinian territory, particularly in Gaza, indicate that there are reasonable grounds to believe that DCI is contributing to gross human rights violations that require the immediate cessation of the concerned business activity, and the remedy of the harm done to Palestinians,” Albanese wrote in the letter, which was obtained by JI.

“The continued failure to act responsibly in line with international law risks implicating DCI in an economy of much more serious violations, and increasing the associated liability. Indeed, given the international crimes being considered by the [International Court of Justice] and the [International Criminal Court], DCI is now on notice of a serious risk of being implicated in international crimes, the disregard of which may give rise to criminal liability, both for DCI and its executives,” she continued.

Dani Naveh, the CEO of Israel Bonds, said in a statement, “We will not be deterred by our enemies driven by antisemitism. Hamas, which carried out the atrocities of October 7, and its supporters, will not prevail. Their efforts have failed time and time again, as evidenced by the billions of dollars Israel Bonds has raised globally since the horrific attacks of October 7, 2023,” and called on supporters of Israel to respond by buying more bonds.

A University of California, San Francisco, medical school professor whom Jewish colleagues allege has routinely posted antisemitic content on social media during the Gaza war has been fired by the university, more than a year after concerns about her behavior first surfaced. 

Dr. Rupa Marya worked at UCSF for 23 years, beginning as a resident before becoming a professor of internal medicine and a regular lecturer on social justice topics. With an active social media presence, Marya began posting about Israel’s war against Hamas soon after the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks. Her posts included attacks targeting Jewish and Israeli colleagues and students. 

In a federal lawsuit filed against UCSF this week, Marya alleged that the university violated her constitutional free speech protections by firing her in a retaliatory fashion over posts published on her personal account, which Marya claimed the university wilfully misconstrued. She asserted that “neither her views nor her posts are antisemitic.” 

In January 2024, Marya published a blog post attacking by name a Jewish colleague who had urged a hospital antiracism task force not to issue a statement calling for a ceasefire, saying it would empower Hamas. She had been criticizing him on social media for weeks. (Marya’s account on X, once a very active home for her commentary, has since been disabled.) 

Marya also published a thread on X arguing that Zionism should not be present in medicine, calling it a “structural impediment to health equity.” 

“There are so many Jewish doctors who don’t espouse an ideology of supremacism and justification of land theft, apartheid and genocide. They are not the issue here,” she wrote in January 2024. “The issue is Zionist doctors who will sit in an ‘antiracism task force’ meeting” — a clear reference to the doctor she later named in her blog — “and try to stop brown doctors who want to issue a Ceasefire statement by saying that a ceasefire would be a bad thing (read: let’s keep killing brown people in Gaza).” 

This post from Marya earned a rebuke by the university — UCSF posted on social media soon after about a “tired and familiar racist conspiracy theory … stating that ‘Zionist’ doctors are a threat to Arab, Palestinian, South Asian, Muslim and Black patients, as well as the U.S. health system.” The university called it a “sweeping, baseless and racist generalization” that “must be condemned,” and identified the trope as antisemitism. 

In September 2024, Marya announced that she had been suspended from her faculty position. The news came after she had raised concerns about an Israeli student attending the medical school. Students are “asking if he participated in the genocide of Palestinians in the IDF before matriculating into medical school in CA,” she wrote. “How do we address this in our professional ranks?” She was fired in May, nine months after her suspension. 

A UCSF spokesperson declined to comment.

A bipartisan group of 41 lawmakers wrote to the CEOs of Meta, TikTok and X on Friday urging them to take action in response to the spike in violent antisemitic content posted on their platforms following recent antisemitic attacks in Washington and Boulder, Colo.

“We write to express grave concern regarding disturbing and inflammatory content circulating on your platforms in support of violence and terrorism,” the lawmakers — the majority of whom are Democrats — wrote in the letter, highlighting the rise of rhetoric praising and justifying the two antisemitic attacks. “This content is effectively glorifying, justifying, and inciting future violence, mirroring the surge in hateful rhetoric and open calls to violence and support of terrorism observed after the October 7, 2023 [attacks], and the ensuing Israel-Hamas conflict.”

They urged the administration to take “decisive and transparent steps to curb these dangerous trends and protect all users from the effects of hate and incitement to violence online.”

There has been a “skyrocketing number of antisemitic conspiracy theories accusing the D.C. attack of being a ‘false flag’ operation” online as well as instances of users “glorifying” the D.C. shooter’s actions, the lawmakers said, arguing that this increases the chances of further violence.

“This is not merely a matter of policy enforcement but one of public safety and national security,” the letter reads. “We regard the unchecked spread of pro-terror content, extremist symbolism, and incitement to violence as a direct threat to U.S. national security and public safety … It is critical that social media companies do not allow coded praise of violence or hate speech to flourish unchecked, as this only encourages others to engage in similar acts.”

The letter draws a direct connection between “Failing to meaningfully curb hate speech, including antisemitic mis- and disinformation, and allowing antisemitic incitement to violence” and the attack in Washington.

The lawmakers asked the three platforms to provide clarity on how they plan to respond, including how they will address “coded language” promoting violence and terrorism, how they determine when content that has incited violence is allowed to remain on the platform, how they will be implementing their anti-terorrism policies and how they are addressing the spread of incitement to violence and terrorism in multiple languages.

The letter was led by Reps. Wesley Bell (D-MO) and Don Bacon (R-NE) and signed by Reps. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), Julia Brownley (D-CA), Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL), Gil Cisneros (D-CA), Steve Cohen (D-KY), Jim Costa (D-CA), Danny Davis (D-IL), Don Davis (D-NC), Cleo Fields (D-LA), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Laura Friedman (D-CA), Laura Gillen (D-NY), Dan Goldman (D-NY), Jonathan Jackson (D-IL), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Seth Magaziner (D-RI), Grace Meng (D-NY), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Donald Norcross (D-NJ), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Chris Pappas (D-NH), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Kim Schrier (D-WA), Brad Sherman (D-CA), Greg Stanton (D-AZ), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Marilyn Strickland (D-WA), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Shri Thanedar (D-MI), Dina Titus (D-NV), Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Juan Vargas (D-CA), Marc Veasey (D-TX), Eugene Vindman (D-VA), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Nikema Williams (D-GA) and Frederica Wilson (D-FL).

Bacon and Fitzpatrick were the only Republican signatories. Krishnamoorthi, Pappas and Stevens are all mounting bids for the Senate in their respective states.

The Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee supported the letter.

The American Jewish Committee criticized President Donald Trump for his executive order barring travel into the United States for citizens of 12 countries as lacking “a clear connection to the underlying problem” of domestic antisemitism and potentially having “an adverse impact on other longstanding immigration and refugee policies.”

The administration framed the announcement as a response to the antisemitic terrorist attack in Boulder, Colo., carried out by an immigrant from Egypt who overstayed a work permit. The AJC’s response echoes the cautious, skeptical approach it and other major nonpartisan Jewish organizations have taken to other actions by the Trump administration to combat antisemitism, including revoking visas from international students and cutting funding from universities.

Trump signed the directive on Wednesday restricting travel from seven countries and outright banned travel from 12 others, arguing the move was necessary to prevent “foreign terrorists” and other national security threats from entering the U.S. The countries whose citizens are now banned from entering the U.S. are Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Some citizens of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela will be restricted from traveling to the U.S. Egypt is not covered under the order.

In a statement released on Thursday, the AJC expressed gratitude that the administration “is trying to mobilize as many levers as it can to counter” the surge in antisemitic attacks while noting its concern that the “broad” order will “prevent those in need of real refuge from entering the U.S. in line with the longstanding American tradition of welcoming those forced to leave their countries to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.”

“We fully agree with the administration that entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted and those who overstay visas can pose national security threats. Being able to enter and stay in the United States is a privilege, and thorough protocols to ensure entry of foreign nationals to the U.S. in a way that protects national security are vital,” the statement reads, calling for proper funding for the State Department to vet visa applicants.

The Trump administration is pushing for sweeping State Department funding cuts.

“Throughout AJC’s nearly 120-year history, we have supported fair and just immigration policies for people of all races, religions, and national origins, and advocated for an inclusive America that provides safe haven for those fleeing persecution and seeking to contribute to the United States. It remains our strong belief that it is possible to allow for just immigration and refugee policies while upholding the national security of the United States,” the statement continued. 

The organization went on to urge the Trump administration to lift its suspension of the U.S. Refugee Assistance Program (USRAP), arguing that the pause had left “many already vetted and cleared applicants for asylum with little hope.” It also called for a refugee admissions cap no lower than 75,000.

Several major Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, pushed in the first Trump administration to overturn its travel ban policy, which targeted seven majority-Muslim countries. ADL did not provide comment on the new announcement.

Many progressive-minded Jewish groups have condemned the new travel ban.

The White House is considering issuing a new executive order banning travel to the United States from certain countries, resurrecting a controversial policy from President Donald Trump’s first term, according to three people who attended a Wednesday White House meeting where the plan was discussed.

The planned executive order was mentioned in a meeting at the White House with Jewish leaders. The meeting, which had several dozen attendees, was organized in response to the deadly antisemitic attack in Washington last month that left two Israeli Embassy staffers dead outside the Capital Jewish Museum. The briefing took place three days after an antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colo., injured 15 people at a march to raise awareness about Israeli hostages in Gaza.

White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf told the group about the order but did not mention which countries would be included in the ban. Scharf said Trump could sign the order as soon as Wednesday. 

“They were just saying that an executive order regarding a travel ban is in the works,” one of the sources told Jewish Insider after the meeting. “Everyone was very careful about what they said and didn’t say.” 

Another source said the planned order was “not directly because of the events in Boulder,” but that the attack in Boulder was mentioned “as a rationale, as proof of why this executive order was so important.” 

The alleged perpetrator in the Boulder attack is an Egyptian national who is in the U.S. illegally, having overstayed his visa, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The suspect’s wife and five children were taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody on Tuesday and were set to be deported to Egypt, but a federal judge on Wednesday halted deportation proceedings against the family members. 

In 2017, days after taking office in his first term, Trump signed an executive order barring travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority nations. Egypt was not one of them. 

Speakers at the meeting included Susie Wiles, White House chief of staff; Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice; evangelical pastor Paula White and Jenny Korn from the White House Faith Office; Noah Pollak, senior advisor at the Education Department; Sebastian Gorka, senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council; Adam Boehler, U.S. special envoy for hostage response; Martin Marks, White House Jewish liaison; and Leo Terrell, chair of the federal antisemitism task force. Yehuda Kaploun, Trump’s nominee to serve as U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, was in the room. 

Attendees at the meeting included a wide range of Jewish communal leaders, with representatives from Chabad, Jewish Federations of North America, the Anti-Defamation League, the Orthodox Union, American Jewish Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, AIPAC, Agudath Israel and several Brooklyn-based Orthodox institutions. 

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

The holiday of Shavuot is one of prayer and celebration, marked by all-night learning, indulging in cheesecake and communal events.

But across the U.S., this Shavuot was marked with a fear and unease that has become abnormally normal in recent months, following the Passover arson at the home of Gov. Josh Shapiro and the murders of two Israeli Embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum last month, and deepened further by the horrific attack in Boulder, Colo., on Sunday in which an Egyptian national threw homemade Molotov cocktails at marchers calling for the release of the remaining 58 hostages being held in Gaza. Twelve people, including a Holocaust survivor, were injured.

The reverberations from the attack are already being felt in Washington, where legislators are reviving a bill to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. 

Two days before the attack, JI reported on the Trump administration’s full FY 2026 budget request for Congress — which did not recommend an increase in funding to the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, instead holding it at its current level of $274.5 million. Fewer than half of the requests — which are submitted by organizations at elevated risk of being targeted in a terrorist attack — were fulfilled in 2024. 

The attack in Boulder is likely to garner additional calls from the Jewish community for increased funding for the program. In the wake of last month’s deadly attack at the Capital Jewish Museum, a coalition of leading Jewish groups called for the federal government to increase NSGP spending to $1 billion. “The rising level of anti-Jewish incitement, which inevitably leads to violent acts … requires governmental action commensurate with the level of danger,” the organizations said.

In the wake of Sunday’s attack, many legislators condemned the attacks, most denouncing the antisemitic nature of the firebombing. But three Squad members — Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Summer Lee (D-PA) — condemned the attacks without mentioning Israel or antisemitism. President Donald Trump, in his response, did not mention Israel or antisemitism either, choosing instead to rail against former President Joe “Biden’s ridiculous Open Border Policy, which has hurt our Country so badly.”

The identities of the victims of the attack and the perpetrators’ declared motivations are political inconveniences to legislators and activists on both sides of the political spectrum — and their decision to erase both perhaps reverberates the loudest.

Other lawmakers focused their comments on the shooter’s immigration status. Mohamed Sabry Soliman had come to the U.S. in 2022 and received a work visa, which expired earlier this year. That the attack was perpetrated by an individual who had been approved for a visa by the Biden administration and remained illegally under the Trump administration is expected to produce more calls for stricter immigration policies. Last night, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that Soliman’s wife and five children had been apprehended by immigration officials and faced potential deportation.

But while politicians debate the best approaches — from designating terror groups to calling for immigration crackdowns — Jewish communities remain on edge, feeling unsafe and unheard. 

Perhaps nothing underscores Jewish communal concerns at this moment better than an op-ed published in The New York Times on Tuesday by National Council for Jewish Women CEO Sheila Katz. 

“When antisemitism emerges within progressive spaces, cloaked in the language of justice, too often it is met with silence and discomfort, creating echo chambers where dangerous ideas are amplified rather than confronted,” Katz wrote. In response to sounding the alarm about antisemitism in left-wing circles, she said, “we have been gaslit, ignored and told that our fear is overblown, our outrage unjustified. Among many groups that have fought to secure and reclaim civil rights, voting rights and reproductive rights, we have seen antisemitism dismissed as not bad enough to matter, our grief met with cynicism, our safety treated as optional.”

Some Americans waking up to their morning news on Tuesday saw “Jews Are Afraid Right Now” as the Times headline accompanying Katz’s piece. But for the first several hours it was posted, the op-ed had a different headline: “American Jews Are Paying for the War in Gaza” — an approach to both the Israel-Hamas war and antisemitism in America that plays into the dual-loyalty tropes that American Jews have fought long before the Oct. 7 attacks.

The Times quietly changed the op-ed’s headline to the milquetoast “Jews Are Afraid Right Now” — which, while correct, missed Katz’s core point: “At rallies and on campuses, in coalition rooms and online spaces, slogans sometimes directly drawn from Hamas’s terrorist manifesto have been chanted and painted on placards, and shouted from stages and in the streets. ‘Globalize the intifada.’ ‘By any means necessary.’ ‘From the river to the sea.’ ‘Zionists out.’ These are not simply words; they can be interpreted as calls for violence.”

The Boulder attacker told investigators he wanted “to kill all Zionist people” — not dissimilar from comments made by the Capital Jewish Museum shooter, who declared, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza,” after gunning down Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. The arsonist who set the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion on fire said he committed the crime because of what Shapiro, one of the most prominent Jewish politicians in the country, “wants to do to the Palestinian people.”

From academia to activism to journalism, there is a reticence in left-wing circles to acknowledge that inciting language around the Israel-Hamas war can have a dangerous impact. 

A year and a half ago, Ivy League administrators were pressed on whether “From the river to the sea” was a genocidal chant. The response, given by the since-ousted presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, was that “it depends on the context.”

In this case, the context is the firebombing of elderly Jews calling for the release of hostages in Gaza. Last month, the context was the gunning down of a young couple outside a Jewish organization’s event focused on humanitarian aid in Gaza. In April, the context was the arson of the residence of a Jewish governor on the first night of Passover.

The recent attacks in Harrisburg, Washington and now Boulder are not surprising. They are what happens when ideology-driven activism trumps ethical journalism, when antisemitism becomes a political football and when the boundaries between free speech and calls for violence blur — creating a dangerous and deadly reality for American Jews.

Following Sunday’s antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colo., on a group marching to raise awareness about the hostages held in Gaza, a bipartisan push is growing on Capitol Hill to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the assailant, an Egyptian citizen who lived in Kuwait for 17 years prior to arriving in the United States, appears to have expressed support for the group and Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who previously served as Egypt’s president.

Law enforcement officials have not announced any further links between Soliman and the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, and the group is closely tied to Qatar.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said on Tuesday that he plans to reintroduce a “modernized version” of the Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act he previously led, adding, “the Muslim Brotherhood used the Biden administration to consolidate and deepen their influence, but the Trump administration and Republican Congress can no longer afford to avoid the threat they pose to Americans and American national security.”

The Washington Free Beacon first reported on Cruz’s efforts.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) separately wrote to President Donald Trump on Tuesday urging him to “conduct a comprehensive investigation” into designating the group as a foreign terrorist organization, noting that multiple U.S. allies and partners including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Austria have already done so, and France is considering doing the same.

“It must be noted that such ideological influence not only fosters division but also encourages radicalization against the United States, our allies and the foundational principals that define our societies,” Moskowitz wrote. “Taking steps to investigate and designate the Muslim Brotherhood as an FTO would enhance the ability of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies to disrupt financial networks and recruitment activities connected to its affiliates.”

The Muslim Brotherhood Designation Act backed by Cruz was first introduced in 2014 by former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN). Cruz and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) subsequently picked up the torch, reintroducing the bill in the subsequent four congressional sessions.

At its high-water mark, in 2016, the legislation picked up additional 71 co-sponsors, most of them Republicans, in the House, and seven in the Senate, and was reported out of the House Judiciary Committee by a 17-10 vote. When it was last introduced, the legislation picked up just 14 co-sponsors in the House and two in the Senate.

The bill as of 2021 would have directed the administration, within 60 days of passage, to assess whether the Muslim Brotherhood meets the criteria for designation as a foreign terrorist organization and to provide a “detailed justification” if it determines it does not.

Near the end of his first term, Trump was expected to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group but that move never materialized.

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), who on Monday told Jewish Insider that the Council on American-Islamic Relations should also be designated as a terrorist group, told JI on Tuesday that he had reached out to Cruz to offer to lead the Muslim Brotherhood legislation in the House.

“That’s really the nexus of all this,” Fine said, accusing the Muslim Brotherhood of funding CAIR, Students for Justice in Palestine and other anti-Israel groups. “None of what we’ve seen in America is organic … Look, if Saudi Arabia and the UAE don’t want them and Egypt doesn’t want them, maybe you ought to take a hint.”

He described CAIR as the “mouthpiece” of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States and said that designating the Muslim Brotherhood would inevitably wrap in CAIR and SJP. CAIR’s leader met with members of the Muslim Brotherhood as recently as 2022, and has been linked to other Brotherhood-affiliated groups. CAIR has praised the Muslim Brotherhood as a moderating force with which the U.S. should engage.

SJP and its parent group, American Muslims for Palestine, have also been accused of having grown out of Muslim Brotherhood networks in the U.S.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) told JI she hasn’t been contacted about the effort to designate the group yet, “but I can think of no reason why I wouldn’t support that.” She added, “I am surprised — how has that not already happened?”

In an unprecedented move, the Florida Board of Governors rejected the confirmation of Santa Ono, the former president of the University of Michigan, as the University of Florida’s next president.

During a three hour meeting on Tuesday, Ono was questioned by the board, which oversees the state’s 12 public universities, about an anti-Israel encampment last year that remained on the Michigan campus for a month, as well as his stance on antisemitism. 

Alan Levine, vice chair of the board, grilled Ono about what he described as an inadequate response to antisemitism at Michigan during Ono’s tenure to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel, The Gainesville Sun reported.

“What happened on Oct. 7 deeply affected the members of my community and me personally, and so at UF I would be consistently focused on making sure antisemitism does not rear its head again,” Ono responded. 

Ono also faced criticism from conservatives on the board for his longtime support of diversity, equity and inclusion programs while leading the Ann Arbor university, although Ono has said he would not bring DEI to the Gainesville school. In March, under pressure from the Trump administration, Ono eliminated centralized DEI offices at Michigan — which have come under intense scrutiny on campuses nationwide for failing to address rising anti-Jewish hate, and at times perpetuating it.  

Ono denounced antisemitism in an Inside Higher Ed op-ed last month. He wrote, “I’ve worked closely with Jewish students, faculty and community leaders to ensure that campuses are places of respect, safety and inclusion for all.”

Prominent conservatives who raised objections to Ono included Donald Trump Jr. and Florida Reps. Byron Donalds, Greg Steube and Jimmy Patronis. His confirmation was not publicly opposed by the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.

The decision by the 17-member Florida Board of Governors comes a week after UF’s Board of Trustees had unanimously approved Ono as its president-elect. The vote to confirm Ono failed 10-6, the first time that the Board of Governors has ever voted down a university trustee board’s leadership selection.

Ono was seen as an ally of Michigan’s pro-Israel community who was quick to condemn acts of antisemitism — leading to pro-Palestinian vandals attacking his home on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. In November, he visited the Nova Music Festival Exhibition in Detroit alongside several students.

Under the leadership of Ben Sasse, a former Nebraska senator who served as UF president until stepping down last year, Ono wrote that the school has been a “national leader in this regard — setting a gold standard in standing firmly against antisemitism and hate.” Sasse was among the first university presidents to immediately condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack — as other campus leaders seemed paralyzed over how to respond.  

“That standard will not change under my leadership,” Ono said last month. He pledged to “continue to ensure that UF is a place where Jewish students feel fully supported, and where all forms of hatred and discrimination are confronted clearly and without hesitation.” Nearly 20% of the university’s student body is Jewish. 

The search for University of Florida’s 14th president will now start over.

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), the newest Jewish Republican member of Congress, argued on Monday, following an antisemitic attack on a group marching in support of the hostages in Gaza in Boulder, Colo., that the federal government should take aggressive action against groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations whose executive director said he was “happy to see” the Oct. 7 terror attack.

Fine added that the federal government also should be deporting all undocumented immigrants and take a strong hand toward college campuses in order to fight rising antisemitism..

“I’m angry that we’ve allowed this to get there, I’m angry that we’ve allowed Muslim terror to operate unfettered in this country,” Fine said in an interview with Jewish Insider on Monday. “Make no mistake, the Palestinian cause is fundamentally a broken, evil philosophy … It’s time to realize there is evil in this world and we have to fight it.”

He said that institutions tied to that ideology, including CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood and Students for Justice in Palestine, should not be allowed to operate in the United States, and should be designated as terrorist organizations, “because that’s what they are.” 

He noted that the executive director of CAIR had celebrated the Oct. 7 attack, and remains in his position. Nihad Awad had in November 2023 said he “was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land that they were not allowed to walk in.”

Fine also said that the U.S. must deport “every illegal immigrant,” as well as closely examine individuals entering the country “from these places that hate us.” The Boulder attacker, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was an Egyptian immigrant who overstayed a tourist visa and was subsequently granted a work permit, which expired in March, according to Fox News.

Fine said that, while security funding is important, it’s impossible to provide individual security to every Jewish American, making it critical to go on the offensive.

“What we need to do is hunt bad guys,” Fine said. “And we can start by throwing out every illegal immigrant. And we can start by taking a hard look at people who are here on visas from Egypt.”

He said the U.S. must also move to stop countries such as Qatar and China “who are not our friends,” from “buying our universities and buying off our media outlets,” and take action to protect Jewish students.

He noted that he has introduced legislation that would explicitly make antisemitism and other forms of religious discrimination illegal on college campuses. Currently, based on guidance in executive orders, antisemitism is banned as a form of discrimination based on shared ancestry. Fine argued that his legislation would “create real legal courses of action” for Jewish students to protect themselves.

Though Elias Gonzalez — who killed two Israeli Embassy staffers outside of the Capital Jewish Museum last month — was not a student or an undocumented immigrant, Fine argued that campuses and immigrants are epicenters of antisemitic incitement and that addressing those would address larger trends.

“When these people hear that the nation’s best universities are saying that Israel is engaged in a genocide or 14,000 babies are going to die, they are radicalizing people through false information with the stamp of approval of universities,” Fine said. “So this guy [Gonzalez] was involved with organizations that are tied back to universities.”

“Also, he may not be an illegal immigrant, he may not be on a visa from another country, but I guarantee he was hanging around people who were and they’re going to rub off,” Fine continued.

Fine said he expects that antisemitic rhetoric and attacks will only get worse after Sunday’s attack in Boulder. He said he hadn’t slept the night after the attack because he was afraid of what might come next.

“What the Muslim terrorists will do is they’ll do what they did before — they double down, they get more aggressive with the rhetoric afterwards,” Fine said. “That’s part of the strategy. Punch and then punch harder … Muslim terrorists have declared open season on Jews. And I think that is a frightening thing. And I think the people who need to be hunted are the Muslim terrorists.”

Pressed on the fact that Rodriguez was not Muslim, Fine responded, “there are white supremacists who aren’t white … it is terrorism that is rooted in the Muslim faith.”

“They call it Christian nationalism, I don’t think every Christian is a bad person, I think very few of them are,” Fine continued.

Fine argued that surveys show a substantial portion of American Muslims are sympathetic to Hamas, that leading Muslim organizations like CAIR have supported Hamas and antisemitism, that there are few in Gaza who have stood up against Hamas and that many of those who participated in the Oct. 7 attack were not Hamas fighters.

“We are told, ‘No, no, no, it’s this tiny, tiny fringe.’ It is not a tiny fringe,” Fine said. “I don’t know whether it’s 30 or 40 or 70 or 90%, I don’t know. But I know it’s not 1% that are bad, and it’s time for us to stop pretending that it is.”

The House Education and Workforce Committee threatened on Monday to subpoena Bowdoin College, accusing the school of failing to comply with the committee’s requests for information regarding antisemitism on campus.

A letter from Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), the committee chair, and Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT), a subcommittee chair, states that the Maine liberal arts college failed to comply with the committee’s repeated requests for documentation regarding disciplinary action taken against those involved with an encampment on the school’s campus earlier this year, as well as all students disciplined for antisemitic incidents since Oct. 7, 2023.

The committee leaders provided a June 16 deadline for the documentation requested, and stated they would pursue subpoenas if the deadline is not met.

The letter states that “Bowdoin provided a narrative response that briefly summarized the administration’s conversations with the encampment participants, but it did not provide documents related to any disciplinary action, documents related to any understanding it reached to disband the encampment, or a list of student disciplinary or conduct cases relating to alleged antisemitic incidents or encampments.”

After being pressed further, the school provided a “a brief summary of Bowdoin’s actions addressing the encampment and noted that the College revoked the charter of Students for Justice in Palestine for the remainder of the 2024-2025 academic year and the next academic year.”

The school subsequently provided 225 pages of documents, including summaries of the school’s actions regarding the encampment, “a generalized summary of disciplinary measures taken against 66 students, and a summary of actions taken against Students for Justice in Palestine.”

According to the committee, the vast majority of the documents included were “publicly available policies and procedures, none of which are directly responsive to the Committee’s requests,” lacked the “individualized detail requested” or were public emails from administrators to the campus community about the encampment.

Good Friday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at how Congress has increasingly ceded its authority over foreign policy to the White House, and interview UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk about his efforts to address antisemitism at the school. We also talk to Rep. Mike Lawler about his recent trip to the Middle East, and report on President Donald Trump’s plan to nominate far-right commentator Paul Ingrassia to a senior administration post. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Rep. Greg Landsman, Mia Schem and Michael Bloomberg.

Ed. note: In observance of Shavuot, the next Daily Kickoff will arrive on Wednesday, June 4. Chag sameach!

For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent Jewish Insider and eJewishPhilanthropy stories, including: Hostages’ long-lasting mental and physical scars of Gaza captivity are treated at ‘Returnees Ward’; Israel can’t compete in checkbook diplomacy. These tech leaders have other ideas; and Sen. Dave McCormick, in Israel, talks about Trump’s Iran diplomacy, Gaza aid. Print the latest edition here.

What We’re Watching

• We’re keeping an eye on ceasefire and hostage-release negotiations, amid reports yesterday that Israel and Hamas were close to reaching an agreement that would have included the release of 10 living hostages and the bodies of 18 deceased hostages. A senior Hamas official last night rejected the U.S.-proposed ceasefire deal that had already been agreed to by Israel.
• Fox News Channel will air a wide-ranging interview tomorrow night with Sara Netanyahu, in which she’ll discuss with Lara Trump how life in Israel has changed since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks.

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH JOSH KRAUSHAAR

Pore over the latest round of polling in the New York City mayoral primary, and it is something of a political analyst’s Rorschach test. The question is what will be a bigger turnoff for Gotham voters: extremism or personal scandal?

Will Zohran Mamdani’s radicalism make it difficult for the DSA-affiliated assemblyman — polling in second place — to win an outright majority of the Democratic vote? Candidates from the far-left wing of the party typically have a hard ceiling of support, but the latest polls suggest he’s not yet facing the elevated negative ratings that candidates in his ideological lane typically encounter. There hasn’t yet been a barrage of attack ads reminding voters about his record, as he slowly inches closer to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. 

Will Cuomo’s personal baggage ultimately be a bigger factor for Democratic voters? Cuomo has been leading the race since jumping in, but holds elevated unfavorability ratings, predominantly stemming from the scandal over sexual misconduct allegations, which he continues to deny, that forced him to resign as governor. 

The city’s ranked-choice voting system requires the winner to receive an outright majority of the vote, and build a broader coalition than would be necessary if one only needed a plurality to prevail. In theory, that would advantage Cuomo, given his high name identification, moderate message and ample fundraising resources. In nearly every contest held under a ranked-choice system across the country, moderates have gotten a significant boost, including in the 2021 NYC mayoral primary, when Eric Adams prevailed. 

But if there’s a broad antipathy to Cuomo that goes beyond ideological lines, it’s plausible that any alternative to Cuomo could benefit, simply because they’re running as a candidate of change. It’s hard to overlook Cuomo’s underwater favorability rating among primary voters; a new Emerson poll found a near-majority (47%) of NYC Democrats viewing Cuomo unfavorably, with 40% viewing him favorably.

Cuomo’s lead over Mamdani in the final round of ranked-choice voting, according to the poll, stood at eight points (54-46%). It’s a lead that is outside the margin of error, but a little too close for comfort considering Cuomo’s other advantages. The poll found Mamdani winning more of the votes from the third-place finisher (Comptroller Brad Lander) in the final round, suggesting that Cuomo could be vulnerable to opponents framing their campaigns as part of an anti-Cuomo coalition.

Cuomo’s strongest support comes from the Black community (74% support over Mamdani), voters over 50 (66%) and women (58%). Mamdani’s base is among younger white progressives, leading big over Cuomo with voters under 50 (61%). 

Cuomo’s margin for success could end up coming from the city’s sizable Jewish community — many of whose members view Mamdani’s virulently anti-Israel record and pro-BDS advocacy as a threat — even though he’s currently winning a fairly small plurality of Jewish votes, according to a recent Homan Strategy Group survey.  

Cuomo only tallied 31% of the Jewish vote, according to the poll, but has a lot of room for growth, especially since he still has potential to make inroads with Orthodox Jewish voters, many of whom became disenchanted with him as governor due to his aggressive COVID restrictions. (For instance: A significant 37% share of Orthodox Jewish voters said they were undecided in the Homan survey; 0% supported Mamdani.)

If those Cuomo-skeptical Orthodox voters swing towards the former governor in the final stretch, especially as the threat of Mamdani becomes more real, that may be enough for Cuomo to prevail. But it’s a sign of the times — and the state of the Democratic Party — that this race is as competitive as it is, given the anti-Israel record of the insurgent.

IN THE BACK SEAT

How Congress became impotent on foreign policy

For decades, Jewish and pro-Israel groups invested significant resources in building bipartisan relationships with key members of Congress to steer legislation, while helping secure foreign aid and blocking unfavorable initiatives concerning the Middle East, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports. But that long-standing playbook has appeared less effective and relevant in recent years as Congress has increasingly ceded its authority on foreign policy to the executive branch, a trend that has accelerated with President Donald Trump’s return to office. The dynamic is frustrating pro-Israel advocates who had long prioritized Congress as a vehicle of influence, prompting many to reassess the most effective ways to advocate for preferred policies.

‘Increasingly irrelevant’: There are any number of reasons why Congress has taken a back seat in shaping foreign affairs, experts say, including Trump’s efforts to consolidate power in the executive branch, most recently by gutting the National Security Council. And Trump’s own power in reshaping the ideological direction of his party, preferring diplomacy over military engagement, has made more-hawkish voices within the party more reluctant to speak out against administration policy. “Congress is increasingly irrelevant except on nominations and taxes,” Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a special envoy for Iran in the first Trump administration, told Jewish Insider. “It has abandoned its once-central role on tariffs, and plays little role in other foreign affairs issues. That’s a long-term trend and we saw it in previous administrations, but it is worsened by the deadlocks on Capitol Hill, the need to get 60 votes to do almost anything, and by Trump’s centralization of power in the White House.”

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UNIVERSITY RECKONING

‘The challenge attracted me’: Julio Frenk brings the fight against campus antisemitism to UCLA

After Oct, 7, 2023, Julio Frenk, then-president of the University of Miami, was swift and clear in his unequivocal condemnation of the Hamas terror attacks on Israel, and in his guidance about the university’s rules around protesting, harassment and violence, and continued disavowals of antisemitism. Now, in his new role as chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles, Frenk is attempting to bring some Florida to deep-blue California as he wraps up his first semester. “When we engage with each other, we do that respectfully and without — obviously no hatred, no harassment, no incitement to violence, but also no expressions that are deeply offensive to the other side,” Frenk told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch in an interview this week.

Protest problems: During UCLA’s large anti-Israel encampment last spring, Jewish students were barred from accessing parts of campus by the protest organizers. The tents popped up just days after Frenk had accepted the offer from Michael Drake, president of the University of California system. “I had already said yes, and he said, ‘Are you going to change your mind?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m not going to change my mind. I think this is a very important challenge to face and fix if I can, and I’m going to give it my all,’” Frenk recalled. “What drew me here is just the reputation, the standing, and I know that that spring, the images of UCLA going to the world were not very enticing. But to be honest, facing that challenge was something that attracted me.”

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STANDING TOGETHER

‘Keep showing up’: Capital Jewish Museum reopens after deadly shooting

As visitors entered the Capital Jewish Museum on Thursday morning, open for the first time after an antisemitic attack killed two Israeli Embassy staffers steps from its doors last week, they walked past a makeshift memorial to Sarah Lynn Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky before security guards wanded them down and checked their bags. The museum might be reopening, but its staff — and the broader Washington Jewish community — now feel a heaviness that did not exist last week, when the museum was on the cusp of unveiling a major new exhibit about LGBTQ Jews ahead of the World Pride Festival next month. The presence of police officers and heightened security precautions in the newly reopened space were stark reminders of the violence perpetrated by a radicalized gunman who said he killed the two young people “for Gaza,” Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.

Stop by: A brief ceremony marking the museum’s reopening began with a cantor leading the crowd in singing songs for peace. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser pledged to continue to support the Jewish community and called on all Washingtonians to do the same. “It is not up to the Jewish community to say, ‘Support us.’ It is up to all of us to denounce antisemitism in all forms,” Bowser told the several dozen people at the event. Bowser, who was instrumental in the creation of the museum, which opened in 2023, urged people in the local community to visit.

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SEEING THE SIGNS

Rep. Landsman: Murder of Israeli Embassy staffers was the culmination of a ‘trajectory’ toward antisemitic violence

For Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH), the murder of two Israeli Embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum last week brought to life fears he has harbored for months, amid rising extremism in anti-Israel demonstrations, Landsman told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod in an interview on Wednesday.

Worst fears: The Jewish Ohio congressman said that days before the shooting, while attending a public event in downtown Cincinnati, he had a “really vivid image of being shot in the back of the head. What I saw was myself laying on the ground in the way in which you would be if you had been shot in the head … I wasn’t alive, I was dead.” Landsman continued, “And then, literally two or three days later, that’s what happened outside the Jewish museum. That’s what happened to these two innocent people.” He said he feels the country has been on a “trajectory” toward such violence by anti-Israel agitators, and that it will continue without a change in course.

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CONTOVERSIAL COMMENTATOR

Latest Trump nominee called Israel-Palestinian conflict a ‘psyop’, promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories

President Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate far-right commentator Paul Ingrassia to head the agency tasked with rooting out corruption and protecting whistleblowers in the federal government, Jewish Insider’s Danielle Cohen reports. Ingrassia, 29, currently serves as the White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security. He briefly served as the White House liaison to the Department of Justice early in Trump’s second term, but was reassigned after clashing with the DOJ’s chief of staff after urging the president to hire only individuals who exhibited what Ingrassia called “exceptional loyalty,” according to ABC News. 

Part of a pattern: Ingrassia has trafficked in a number of conspiracy theories, as have several other controversial administration appointees, including Department of Defense Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson and Acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Darren Beattie. On Oct. 7, 2023, as the Hamas attacks were still underway, Ingrassia posted on X calling illegal immigration to the U.S. “comparable to the attack on Israel,” writing, “The amount of energy everyone has put into condemning Hamas (and prior to that, the Ukraine conflict) over the past 24 hours should be the same amount of energy we put into condemning our wide open border, which is a war comparable to the attack on Israel in terms of bloodshed — but made worse by the fact that it’s occurring in our very own backyard. We shouldn’t be beating the war drum, however tragic the events may be overseas, until we resolve our domestic problems first.” 

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TEHRAN TALK

Lawler: Regional leaders ‘cautiously optimistic’ about nuclear talks, but ‘realistic’ about Iranian bad faith

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), returning from a trip to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, characterized leaders in the region as being open to the Trump administration’s efforts to reach a new nuclear deal with Iran, but also suggested that they are skeptical that Iran will actually agree to a deal that dismantles its nuclear program, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

What he said: “I think folks are realistic about the prospects of Iran coming to an agreement, but still want to give the process a chance and try to avoid a conflict if possible,” Lawler told JI on Thursday. “But ultimately, you know, I think everybody is very clear about the fact that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.” Asked about the potential contours of a deal, Lawler said, “my general view is that the nuclear program, obviously, is a major threat, but so too is their continued funding of terrorism, and all of these issues are going to have to be addressed, one way or the other.”

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Worthy Reads

Gaming Out the Jewish Future: eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross spotlights an initiative launched by philanthropist Phil Siegel using “war games” that simulate potential future scenarios facing the American Jewish community to get leaders to think more about long-term planning. “The Jewish community may not have direct control over nuclear war, global demographic trends or international trade wars, for instance, even though these have a profound influence on the Jewish community. (Most of the scenarios include a geopolitical element as well, such as peace in the Middle East in the first one or an acute housing crisis in Israel that prevents American Jews from emigrating despite harsh conditions in the U.S. in the third scenario.) However, the Jewish community does have control over creating new organizations and initiatives or coordinating existing ones. ‘The game itself and the scenario itself were less important. It was more about how people think — What types of things influence us? Do we have more or less agency over them?’ [Israeli educator Barak] Sella said. ‘Is there an optimal scenario and does the Jewish community have a 2050 outcome that we are working toward?’” [eJP]

Delay of (End) Game: The Washington Post’s David Ignatius calls for an end to the Israel-Hamas war, positing that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has for a year rejected subordinates’ suggested strategies for winding down the conflict. “What’s agonizing is that Israeli military and intelligence leaders were ready to settle this conflict nearly a year ago. Working with U.S. and Emirati officials, they developed a plan for security ‘bubbles’ that would contain the violence, starting in northern Gaza and moving south, backed by an international peacekeeping force that would include troops from European and moderate Arab countries. … The Israeli-Palestinian dispute might seem intractable, but ending this conflict would be relatively easy. I’m told that Israeli military officials keep working on ‘day after’ plans, honing details as recently as this week. But they have had no political support from Netanyahu. ‘The “exit ramp” has been staring us in the face for a long time,’ argues Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. It’s a mix of Arab states and Gaza Palestinians, operating under a Palestinian Authority umbrella, he explains. “It is messy, with overlapping responsibilities and lots of dotted lines. But it checks all the boxes to enable the process of reconstruction and rehabilitation to get off the ground.’” [WashPost]

Mumbai Makeover: In The Wall Street Journal, Howard Husock interviews Rabbi Yisroel Kozlovsky of the Chabad House of Mumbai, India, about the city’s Jewish revival since the terror attack in 2008 in which Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife and unborn child were killed. “Now in his 12th year in Mumbai, the rabbi recalls his unease upon receiving the assignment from Chabad’s headquarters in New York. He arrived in 2013 to find the building untouched since the terror attacks, its walls still bloodstained. His successor had been forced to live and hold services in rented apartments for the Jewish visitors and expats. (There are reportedly no more than 5,000 ethnic Indian ‘Bene Israel’ Jews in the country.) ‘Imagine our feelings when we walk in and see the destruction firsthand. It was still one big mess,’ Rabbi Kozlovsky says. ‘We knew immediately, though, we wanted to bring life back to the building.’ … Rabbi Kozlovsky has nevertheless decided not to shy away from the events of 26/11, as the locals refer to the attack, but to make it the basis of a mission. He has set out to build an artistic multimedia memorial to educate the hundreds of visitors, almost all non-Jewish Indians, who come here each week, mainly through class trips. ‘Restoration and resilience are not good enough responses to terror,’ he says of the project. ‘We are building a memorial and museum to teach history, to be a beacon of light.’” [WSJ]

Word on the Street

U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Thomas Barrack, who is also serving as Syria envoy, said in Damascus on Thursday that relations between Syria and Israel are a “solvable problem” that “starts with a dialogue”; Barrack also raised the U.S. flag over the ambassador’s residence in Damascus for the first time since the embassy’s closure 13 years ago…

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that any nuclear agreement with the U.S. must include the full lifting of sanctions and preservation of Tehran’s enrichment capabilities…

Saudi, Qatari and Emirati leaders reportedly told President Donald Trump during his trip to the region last week that they opposed military strikes on Iran’s nuclear program…

The Wall Street Journal reports on Israeli concerns over Washington’s ongoing nuclear talks with Iran, positing that a deal could put Israel “in a bind with its most important ally on its most pressing national security question”…

Columbia University reached a settlement with a Jewish social work student who had filed a lawsuit against the school alleging antisemitic discrimination…

California’s state Assembly unanimously advanced antisemitism legislation backed by Jewish groups in the state; AB715 would improve the process for making discrimination complaints, as well as create an antisemitism coordinator position for the state’s K-12 schools…

A Yonkers, N.Y., man was sentenced to six years in prison after pleading guilty to attacking a Jewish barber last year…

A Michigan man who in 2022 threatened parents and students at a synagogue preschool pleaded guilty to a federal gun charge…

The Wall Street Journal reports on the efforts of small wine importer and distributor Victor Owen Schwartz to challenge the Trump administration’s tariffs in court…

The board of Ben & Jerry’s issued a statement labeling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, setting up another battle with parent company Unilever, which has for years clashed with the ice cream company’s independent board over its approach to social issues, including Israel…

CBS News profiles Karin Prien, the first Jewish federal cabinet member to serve in post-WWII Germany; the daughter of Holocaust survivors who was born in the Netherlands, Prien moved to Germany with her family when she was 4 and now serves as the country’s minister for education, family affairs, senior citizens, women and youth…

Former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg met with United Arab Emirates National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan for a conversation largely focused on the opportunities presented by AI technology…

The Associated Press reports on efforts to free Israeli-Russian Princeton researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov, who was kidnapped by an Iranian-backed militia group in Iraq in 2023…

Iran’s embassy in India said it is investigating the disappearance of three Punjabi men who went missing earlier this month in Tehran while transiting through Iran en route to Australia, where a local travel agent had promised them jobs…

An increasing number of oil tankers are turning off their transponders as they near Malaysia, an area used to transfer Iranian oil bound for China, as Tehran continues to work to evade U.S. sanctions…

Missouri philanthropist Bud Levin died at 88…

Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who headed the NYPD during the 9/11 terror attacks, died at 69…

Dr. Robert Jarvik, who oversaw the design of the first artificial heart, died at 79…

Pic of the Day

Following her return to Israel, Mia Schem — who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and spent 55 days in Hamas captivity — famously had the phrase “We will dance again” tattooed on her arm. On Thursday night, approximately 800 New Yorkers joined Schem in dancing again at the sold-out inaugural Tribe of Nova Foundation benefit held at Sony Hall, a concert venue in Times Square.

The event was held with the goal of raising at least $1 million to aid families of victims and survivors of Nova, where 411 festivalgoers, mostly young people, were killed and 44 were taken hostage, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports. 

Birthdays

Medical director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s Ethiopia spine and heart project, Dr. Richard Michael Hodes turns 72… 

FRIDAY: Santa Monica, Calif.-based historian of Sephardic and Crypto-Jewish studies, Dolores Sloan turns 95… Real estate developer, landlord of the World Trade Center until 9/11, former chair of UJA-Federation of New York, Larry A. Silverstein turns 94… Partner in the NYC law firm of Mintz & Gold, he is also a leading supporter of Hebrew University, Ira Lee “Ike” Sorkin turns 82… Board member of the Collier County chapter of the Florida ACLU and the Naples Florida Council on World Affairs, Maureen McCully “Mo” Winograd… Cape Town, South Africa, native, she is the owner and chef at Los Angeles-based Catering by Brenda, Brenda Walt turns 74… Former professional tennis player, he competed in nine Wimbledons and 13 U.S. Opens, now the varsity tennis coach at Gilman School in Baltimore, Steve “Lightning” Krulevitz turns 74… Former chief rabbi of France, Gilles Uriel Bernheim turns 73… Encino, Calif.-based business attorney, Andrew W. Hyman… Literary critic, essayist and novelist, Daphne Miriam Merkin turns 71… Israeli physicist and philosopher, Avshalom Cyrus Elitzur turns 68… Former member of Congress for 16 years, since leaving Congress he has opened a bookstore and written two novels, Steve Israel turns 67… Former science editor for BBC News and author of six books, David Shukman turns 67… Founder of Krav Maga Global with 1,500 instructors in 60 countries, Eyal Yanilov turns 66… Editorial writer at The New York Times, Michelle Cottle… Film, stage and television actress; singer and songwriter, she sang the national anthem at Super Bowl XLIX in 2015, Idina Menzel turns 54… Writer, filmmaker, playwright and DJ, known by his pen name Ithamar Ben-Canaan, Itamar Handelman Smith turns 49… Member of Knesset who served as Israel’s minister of agriculture in the prior government, Oded Forer turns 48… Director of engagement and program at NYC’s Congregation Rodeph Sholom, Scott Hertz… Chief of staff for Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), Reema Dodin turns 45… Tsippy Friend… Israeli author, her debut novel has been published in more than 20 languages around the world, Shani Boianjiu turns 38… Rapper, singer, songwriter and record producer, known professionally as Hebro, Raphael Ohr Chaim Fulcher turns 38… Senior counsel at Gilead Sciences, Ashley Bender Spirn… Ice hockey defenseman, he has played for four NHL teams and is now in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga, David Matthew Warsofsky turns 35… Deputy chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Miryam Esther Lipper… Senior reporter for CNN, Eric Levenson… Challah baker, social entrepreneur and manager at Howard Properties, Jason Friend… 

SATURDAY: Investment advisor at Wedbush Securities in Los Angeles, Alfred Phillip Stern turns 92… Businessman and philanthropist, Ira Leon Rennert turns 91… Professor at Yale University and the 2018 winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, William Dawbney Nordhaus turns 84… Food critic at Vogue magazine since 1989 and judge on “Iron Chef America,” he is the author of the 1996 award-winning book The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten turns 83… Founder and retired CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council, Alvin “Al” From turns 82… Author, political pundit and a retired correspondent for HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel,” he has won 14 Emmy Awards during his career, Bernie Goldberg turns 80… Comedian, actress and TV producer, Susie Essman turns 70… Founder and chairman of the Katz Group of Companies with operations in the pharmacy, sports (including the Edmonton Oilers), entertainment and real estate sectors, Daryl Katz turns 64… Reality television personality, best known for starring in and producing her own matchmaking reality series, “The Millionaire Matchmaker” on Bravo TV, Patti Stanger turns 64… Jerusalem-born inventor, serial entrepreneur and novelist; founder, chairman and CEO of CyberArk Software, one of Israel’s leading software companies, Alon Nisim Cohen turns 57… Entrepreneur, best known as the co-founder of CryptoLogic, an online casino software firm, Andrew Rivkin turns 56… Former Democratic mayor of Annapolis, Md., now head of policy at SWTCH, Joshua Jackson “Josh” Cohen turns 52… Program director of synagogue and rabbinic initiatives at the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, Melissa York… Israeli actress, singer and dancer, she played a Mossad agent in the espionage TV series “Tehran,” Liraz Charhi turns 47… Author of the “Money Stuff” column at Bloomberg Opinion, Matthew Stone Levine turns 47… Freelance writer in Brooklyn, Sara Trappler Spielman… Attorney and NYT best-selling author of the Mara Dyer and Shaw Confessions series, Michelle Hodkin turns 43… Senior advisor at the U.S. Department of Commerce until earlier this year, Bert Eli Kaufman… Senior product manager at Tel Aviv-based Forter, Zoe Goldfarb… Stephanie Oreck Weiss… Chief revenue officer at NOTUS, Brad E. Bosserman… Senior rabbi and executive director of Jewish life at D.C.’s Sixth & I, Aaron Potek… Managing editor at Allbritton Journalism Institute, Matt Berman… Medical student in the class of 2027 at the University of Nicosia Medical School, Amital Isaac… Brad Goldstein… Basketball player in Israel’s Premier League until recent years, while at Princeton he won the Ivy League Player of the Year award, Spencer Weisz turns 30… Professional golfer on the PGA Tour, Max Alexander Greyserman turns 30… Rapper, singer, songwriter and producer, known by his stage name, King Sol, Benjamin Solomon turns 27…

SUNDAY: Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, pianist and conductor, he has taught at Yale, SUNY Purchase, Cornell, Brandeis and Harvard, Yehudi Wyner turns 96… Holocaust survivor as a child, he served as the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel for 10 years and twice as Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv for 16 years, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau turns 88… NYC-based attorney, author of two books regarding the history and operations of El Al, owner of 40,000 plus pieces of memorabilia related to El Al, Marvin G. Goldman turns 86… Grammy Award-winning classical pianist, Richard Goode turns 82… Former member of the Knesset for the Yisrael Beiteinu party, Shimon Ohayon turns 80… Retired attorney in Berkeley, Calif., Thomas Andrew Seaton… Pediatrician in the San Francisco Bay area, Elliot Charles Lepler, MD… Former member of the Knesset for the Shinui and the Hilonit Tzionit parties, Eti Livni turns 77… Founding editor of The American Interest, Adam M. Garfinkle turns 74… Former editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News and co-author with Michael Bloomberg of Bloomberg by Bloomberg, Matthew Winkler turns 70… Contributing editor at The Free Press, Uri Paul Berliner… Founding rabbi of Congregation Aish Kodesh in Woodmere, N.Y., Rabbi Moshe Weinberger turns 68… Former IDF officer and now a London-based political scientist and journalist, Ahron “Ronnie” Bregman turns 67… Member of the Knesset for the Shas party for 16 years ending in 2015, Amnon Cohen turns 65… Owner of MLB’s Athletics (temporarily playing in Sacramento), he is the chair of Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) Foundation, John J. Fisher turns 64… Poet, performance artist and essayist, Adeena Karasick turns 60… Founding editor and publisher of the Dayton Jewish Observer, Marshall J. Weiss… Television personality and matchmaker, Sigalit “Siggy” Flicker turns 58… Actress, voice actress and film director, Danielle Harris turns 48… Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and writer, Spencer J. Ackerman turns 45… Comedian, writer, actress, director and producer, Amy Schumer turns 44… Partner in Oliver Wyman, a global management consulting firm, Daniel Tannebaum… President and CEO of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, Yael Eckstein turns 41… Musician, songwriter, author, actor and blogger, Ari Seth Herstand turns 40… CEO of The Good Food Institute, Ilya Sheyman turns 39… Political reporter for NBC News and MSNBC until earlier this year, now a newspaper editor in Maine, Alex Seitz-Wald… Senior writer at Barron’s covering the Federal Reserve, Nicole Goodkind… Former engineering lead at Palantir Technologies, now in a MPP program at Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, Naomi S. Kadish… Executive business partner at Lyft, Isabel Keller… NYC-born Israeli pair skater, she competed for Israel at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Hailey Esther Kops turns 23…

WASHINGTON — As visitors entered the Capital Jewish Museum on Thursday morning, open for the first time after an antisemitic attack killed two Israeli Embassy staffers steps from its doors last week, they walked past a makeshift memorial to Sarah Lynn Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky before security guards wanded them down and checked their bags. 

The museum might be reopening, but its staff — and the broader Washington Jewish community — now feel a heaviness that did not exist last week, when the museum was on the cusp of unveiling a major new exhibit about LGBTQ Jews ahead of the World Pride Festival next month. The presence of police officers and heightened security precautions in the newly reopened space were stark reminders of the violence perpetrated by a radicalized gunman who said he killed the two young people “for Gaza.” 

A brief ceremony marking the museum’s reopening began with a cantor leading the crowd in singing songs for peace. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser pledged to continue to support the Jewish community and called on all Washingtonians to do the same.

“It is not up to the Jewish community to say, ‘Support us.’ It is up to all of us to denounce antisemitism in all forms,” Bowser told the several dozen people at the event. 

Bowser, who was instrumental in the creation of the museum, which opened in 2023, urged people in the local community to visit.

“One of my messages to our community here in D.C. is for people of all faiths to keep showing up for the Jewish community and to keep showing up for the Capital Jewish Museum,” she continued. “Spaces like this that teach us history, that allow us to connect, inspire, reflect people coming together, of all backgrounds, faiths, ages, coming from different places in the world and different places in the city, can talk about important ideas and ways that we move together for a better collective future.”

A group of local faith leaders — a rabbi, an imam and two ministers — addressed the crowd, discussing their faiths’ teachings against violence and reflecting on the legacy of Lischinsky and Milgrim, who were killed as they left an American Jewish Committee event for young diplomats. Throughout the ceremony, speakers said the way to fight such hate is with understanding, built at institutions like the Capital Jewish Museum. 

“This reopening is exactly what our city, our country and our world needs. To keep telling our stories, who we are as a people, to have us be known, what our values are, what we are to the city, what we contribute and the intricacies of what make us who we are — not only so that we don’t shrink from fear, but also because it is the path to better understanding each other,” said Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, senior rabbi at Washington’s Adas Israel Congregation. 

Imam Talib Shareef, president and imam of Masjid Muhammad, described the reopening of the museum as an “invitation to embrace our shared, original identity as fruits of the first human, Adam, from which came the many wonderful, beautiful, diverse expressions of human life that have contributed to the strength and unity of our nation.” 

To close the event, the museum’s executive director, Beatrice Gurwitz, took to the podium, visibly shaken. 

“Last week’s antisemitic attack cannot be our last chapter,” Gurwitz said. “So we reopen today, and we dedicate ourselves to honor Yaron and Sarah and their commitment to repairing the world and building bridges, and we take strength in all of you as we go forward in fulfilling that mission.” 

Attendees finished the event by milling about the museum, including its newest exhibit, “LGBTJews in the Federal City,” which tells the story of Washington’s queer Jewish community. Items on display reflected the community’s struggle for inclusion — within the broader Jewish community, and also within the federal government, where workers were penalized for being gay during much of the 20th century. 

One Washington Post newspaper clipping from 1979, displayed in the exhibit, reported on the formation of Bet Mishpachah, “a synagogue for homosexuals.” The synagogue’s decision to participate in the article was described as a risk — putting its leaders at personal and professional peril. 

More than four decades later, Joshua Maxey, executive director of Bet Mishpachah, delivered remarks to the crowd assembled at the museum on Thursday morning. He described Milgrim as a “passionate advocate” who “made it her mission to ensure that LGBTQ voices were heard and celebrated within our local Jewish community.”

“She made people feel seen, valued and embraced,” Maxey continued. “She approached her work not just as a job, but as a calling. She was a peace broker in the truest sense, someone who lived out our values, our Jewish values of tikkun olam, or repairing the world.”

Concerned with a “persistent and pernicious pattern of antisemitism” at the American Psychological Association, the preeminent professional organization for American psychologists, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) is urging the body’s leadership to investigate antisemitism within its ranks and better respond to the concerns of Jewish members.

“I have spoken directly with whistleblowers — many of them longtime APA members — who accuse the organization of enabling a hostile environment,” Torres wrote in a letter, obtained by Jewish Insider, that he sent to the APA’s president and president-elect on Wednesday. “These incidents collectively suggest that the APA has not only been dismissive of the legitimate grievances of Jewish psychologists but also permissive of content that traffics in malicious falsehoods against Zionism, Israel, and the Jewish community.”

Torres’ letter comes as the mental health field grapples with an antisemitism problem that has grown more acute after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel. The Association of Jewish Psychologists said in 2023 that it was “deeply disappointed and terribly saddened” by the APA’s actions in the aftermath of Oct. 7. 

Torres reported that Jewish and pro-Israel psychologists have been harassed on APA-sponsored listservs, including one email with the phrase “kudos to Hamas,” according to conversations he had with APA members, and that divisions within the organization have “issued politicized and inflammatory statements” accusing Israel of genocide, while “suppressing dissenting academic voices.” 

Torres urged the APA to conduct an independent investigation into antisemitism across its affiliated divisions and listservs; to reform accreditation of continuing education programs “to ensure the APA is not lending institutional legitimacy to bigotry”; to enforce “clear standards for respectful discourse,” including “protections for Zionist Jews”; and to make sure that Jews are represented as the APA works to address antisemitism. 

“The APA’s legitimacy as a scientific and professional institution is at stake,” Torres wrote, if the body does not take action. 

A spokesperson for the APA confirmed that the organization received the letter and that they will reach out to Torres to discuss it.

“In the meantime, I can assure you that the American Psychological Association is categorically not an antisemitic organization,” Kim Mills, APA’s senior director for strategic external communications and public affairs, said.  

As Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) works to come from behind in the closing weeks of the New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial primary, the veteran congressman is counting on support from the state’s sizable Jewish community to launch him to victory in the June 10 election.

“It’s a key part, a critical part of the coalition,” Gottheimer told Jewish Insider on Monday. “These off-year primaries are — despite what we’re all working to do — it’s always a lower turnout in the off years. And I’d say the Jewish community is very engaged, and I think they play a really important role in the election.”

He argued that he has an extensive record both in office and before his time in Congress fighting antisemitism and supporting the U.S.-Israel relationship, and has forged deep bonds with the Jewish community, particularly at a time when it has been subjected to increased antisemitism.

“I think that [the Jewish] community around the state recognizes that,” Gottheimer said. “I think I’ve made a very strong case of why I’d be an excellent governor for the Jewish community, and for all communities.”

Gottheimer recently picked up the endorsement of the Lakewood Vaad, an influential group of rabbis in one of the state’s largest Orthodox Jewish communities, which urged both Democrats and unaffiliated voters to vote for Gottheimer in the Democratic primary. The endorsement came comparatively early for the Vaad, which in the past has endorsed candidates as late as on Election Day.

As of last week, Lakewood had more than 20,000 unaffiliated Orthodox Jewish voters, in addition to nearly 3,000 Orthodox voters registered as Democrats, according to Shlomo Schorr, the director of legislative affairs for Agudath Israel of America’s New Jersey office. In surrounding communities in Ocean County where the Vaad’s sphere of influence extends, there are 3,500 Orthodox Democrats and 2,250 unaffiliated Orthodox voters, Schorr said.

“It’s a three-part punch: it’s Lakewood coming out early, it’s Lakewood saying to the Democrats they should vote for Josh and it’s them saying [to] the unaffiliated who have the ability to show up that day and declare as a Democrat that they should as well show up for Josh,” a Gottheimer-backing New Jersey strategist said. 

Even as Gottheimer has lagged behind other opponents, such as Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), the establishment favorite in the race, in the limited public polling available, one Gottheimer advisor suggested that current polling could be missing the preferences of the Orthodox community. 

“Orthodox communities such as the Vaad are generally missed as a part of traditional polls because the community is not inclined to participate in traditional opinion polling,” the advisor told JI. “If you wanted to look for a hidden vote that wouldn’t be counted, there’d certainly be evidence that that is one.”

The New Jersey strategist predicted that the Lakewood endorsement would produce a “domino” effect: as the largest Jewish community in the state, Lakewood turning out for Gottheimer could drive turnout among other New Jersey Jewish communities, signaling “that Josh has a viable path to victory and to win.” Some other Jewish community leaders, including a Jersey Shore-based Sephardic Orthodox group, have also endorsed Gottheimer.

If those communities turn out in force for Gottheimer, it could total between 30,000 and 50,000 votes, the strategist said, which “is enough to — 100% — win that election.” They continued, “Josh’s path to victory is Bergen County turning out and the Jewish community turning out.”

Gottheimer also emphasized to JI that he’s been speaking to Jewish communities throughout the state for months, and has won endorsements from mayors and other local officials in areas with large Jewish communities statewide, both Orthodox and non-Orthodox.

“We have very big support — I’ve spent a lot of time — because I think the Jewish community wants somebody who’s going to stand up and fight antisemitism and hate, who’s going to make sure we teach children in K-12 about the Holocaust, about what happened on Oct. 7 [2023], actual facts, and who’s going to be a nationwide leader on these issues,” Gottheimer said. 

“A lot of Jewish voters feel abandoned, and they want someone who’s going to be a champion of them and of the community,” Gottheimer said.

Schorr said the Vaad is anticipating that it can convince not only Democrats but an even more significant number of unaffiliated voters in Lakewood and beyond to pull the lever for Gottheimer in a race that is expected to be fought on the margins.

Along with its endorsement, the Vaad is spending heavily on ads and get-out-the-vote efforts to help raise awareness around the primary, for which early voting begins next Tuesday and ends on Sunday.

Schorr, who clarified that he was not involved in the endorsement discussions and that his own group is not taking sides in the race, acknowledged that the Vaad’s endorsement could “heavily tilt” the election. But he said the late push may face some logistical hurdles with just weeks remaining until the primary.

“There’s not that much time,” he told JI on Tuesday. “Their struggle will be to get people to turn out for the Democratic candidate.”

Livingston, N.J. Mayor Ed Meinhardt, a former synagogue president who has endorsed Gottheimer, said he expects the Jewish community in his town and surrounding areas — including two large Orthodox congregations — to support Gottheimer, adding that Gottheimer’s “path to victory very much goes through the Jewish population of western Essex” County.

Sherrill represents Livingston and other areas of Essex, and local observers expect her to carry a significant share of the Jewish vote in her congressional district.

“I think what Congressman Gottheimer is doing is taking the vote away from Congresswoman Sherrill,” Meinhardt said. “I believe what Congressman Gottheimer is doing is actually splitting the vote and taking the vote away from her and putting it back into his camp … That’s why he’s spent so much time in this area.”

Another local source familiar with the race said that “given the way the numbers are looking, having the Jewish community come out and vote would appear to be a boon for [Gottheimer], and if the Jewish community doesn’t come out and vote for him, it’s going to hurt.”

The source said that the Jewish community in New Jersey — totaling more than 600,000, making it the largest non-Christian religious community in the state — could be enough to swing the race if Jewish voters show up in force and if Gottheimer is able to turn out and unify Jewish voters statewide, outside of his existing Bergen County constituency.

“There’s 120,000 people in Lakewood, so let’s say they could deliver 40,000 votes, give or take, maybe less … but there’s enough there that if the entire community came out and voted for one candidate, there’s a good chance that candidate’s going to win,” the source said.

David Bercovitch, the co-founder of a new political advocacy group called Safeguard Jewish South Jersey, which has endorsed Gottheimer, said the congressman “has garnered the support of so many in the Jewish community because he embodies the values of everyday New Jerseyans.”

“He is a strong advocate on the issues of concern for the Jewish community, as his track record in Congress shows,” Bercovitch told JI. “I believe many will be surprised by the results on June 10 in large part because of his tremendous advocacy for the Jewish community.”

In the GOP primary, the Vaad also endorsed Jack Ciattarelli, a former state assemblyman who won Lakewood in his previous bid for governor in 2021, even as Gov. Phil Murphy, a term-limited Democrat, had notched the coalition’s backing at the time.

Mike Sacks was taught as a child to fight antisemitism — literally — with left jabs and left hooks and right crosses.

His father, he said, taught him to box as an elementary schooler “because [my father] had to fight back against Jew hatred as a kid and as a young man,” having been subjected to antisemitic taunts.

Now, the former political journalist turned Democratic candidate in New York’s 17th Congressional District told Jewish Insider, rising antisemitism is a factor in his bid to unseat Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY). But he also accused Republicans of cynically weaponizing the issue with no intent to actually address the problem.

Sacks told JI in an interview earlier this month that local and nationwide antisemitism was a major reason he decided to run, saying “I’m running for my community, my congregation and my country.”

“As a Jewish father raising my kids in the Jewish faith, this is my community. It’s not a political issue for me. It’s personal,” Sacks said. “When I go to Congress, this is not an issue I’ll take on to score political points, but for the rights of my community and my faith.”

“I was raised with an understanding that what is good for the Jews is what’s also good for the community and for the country, and to seek out and vindicate those universal values from which this country is founded,” Sacks continued, “that has helped make it a haven for Jews since we first started arriving in this country.”

“Under the guise of addressing antisemitism, [President Donald] Trump is attacking American values and violating our Constitution in the Jewish people’s name,” Sacks said. “These are values — free speech, due process — that we’ve learned from history, when turned on other people will be turned on us too. It’s un-American, and that’s not how we overcome antisemitism.”

He said that his patriotism and his sense of civic pride is deeply entwined with his Jewish identity, and said he wants to ensure that everyone, regardless of background, can share that sense of pride.

Sacks called antisemitism on college campuses a real problem that must be addressed, but argued that the Trump administration’s policies stripping research funding from universities and rescinding visas from anti-Israel demonstrators are not serious efforts to combat antisemitism.

“Under the guise of addressing antisemitism, [President Donald] Trump is attacking American values and violating our Constitution in the Jewish people’s name,” Sacks said. “These are values — free speech, due process — that we’ve learned from history, when turned on other people will be turned on us too. It’s un-American, and that’s not how we overcome antisemitism.”

If elected, he said he’d speak out against antisemitism, work to facilitate dialogue and support Nonprofit Security Grant Funding. And he said he’d support any legislation to combat antisemitism that he believed was sincere and would be effective, and was not aimed at scoring “political points off our people’s plight and peril.”

He didn’t speak specifically on whether he would support Lawler’s Antisemitism Awareness Act, but accused Republicans of trying to protect those making antisemitic accusations that Jews killed Jesus in amendments to the legislation.

Sacks also accused Republicans of weaponizing antisemitism in the 17th District race, referring to an incident in which a National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson called out Sacks and the other 17th District candidates over the vandalism of an Albany GOP headquarters building with the word “Nazis.” The spokesperson demanded the candidates condemn the vandalism, which occurred more than 100 miles away, in another part of the state.

“What will guide my response to any threat to Israel is … where to find that solution that can lead us back to a path of peace and a path of coexistence where it all might seem bleak and dark and gone in those moments of greatest peril,” Sacks said.

Sacks called the move “cynical” and in “bad faith,” adding, “we need to confront these efforts to use our own identities against us head-on.”

He hinted toward his family’s Jewish background in his campaign launch video, which includes a shot of Sacks working on a Hebrew workbook with one of his sons at their dinner table, a scene that a campaign spokesperson described as a weekly occurrence.

Sacks described himself as a “proud Zionist guided by my belief in our need for a Jewish democratic state,” adding that he associates himself with “the 69% of Israelis who want to bring all the hostages home and have a ceasefire.”

He said he “stand[s] against those on the far left who deny the necessity of a Jewish state” as well as those on the far right who would “sacrifice Israel’s democracy to extend control over all the Palestinian territories.” Sacks said he would oppose any efforts to block weapons shipments to Israel.

Sacks associated himself with those protesting against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and Yair Golan, the leader of a left-leaning opposition party in Israel. (This interview took place before recent comments by Golan sparked widespread backlash.)  He described Israeli figures like Yitzhak Rabin and author Amos Oz as his “heroes,” condemning the “racist extremism” of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and blasting Lawler for meeting with Ben-Gvir during his trip to the U.S. last month.

He said that a two-state solution is the best path to ensure Israel’s security and existence as a Jewish state, which he emphasized must include removing Hamas from leadership in Gaza and fighting for a pathway to Palestinian statehood. “I do not believe [the two-state solution] is dead. I do not believe that it can’t be resurrected if it is dead. I believe that is the only way forward,” he said.

“What will guide my response to any threat to Israel is … where to find that solution that can lead us back to a path of peace and a path of coexistence where it all might seem bleak and dark and gone in those moments of greatest peril,” Sacks said.

Sacks argued that new leadership is needed in the U.S. to help move back toward a two-state solution, arguing “the U.S. needs to be led by a government that does not sympathize with those in Israel who would follow in the footsteps of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin,” referring to Ben-Gvir.

Sacks traveled to Israel in December 2008, as Israel was launching Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. He said that his takeaway from those operations, after which attacks from Gaza on Israel resumed, is that “the answer is not whether to respond, but how. And the solution is political, not military.”

“What will guide my response to any threat to Israel is … where to find that solution that can lead us back to a path of peace and a path of coexistence where it all might seem bleak and dark and gone in those moments of greatest peril,” Sacks said.

Addressing the ongoing nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran, Sacks emphasized that Tehran has “never been weaker” and described the Islamic Republic as a decaying and “sclerotic” regime. He said the U.S.’ path forward should be calibrated to protect Israel from “any rash decision by a wounded Iranian regime looking to stay relevant in the region.”

He expressed skepticism that Trump would be able to achieve an effective deal that would ensure peace and security, pointing to the president’s decision to pull out of the original 2015 nuclear deal during his first term, adding that Trump now appears to be renegotiating something along the same lines.

Sacks said that the original nuclear deal was “a great deal for the time,” but said that the state of affairs now and when he would be in Congress would be very different, and his support for any potential deal would “depend on the details of the deal in context with that geopolitical moment and the security demands of our allies in the region.”

Addressing his candidacy more broadly, Sacks said that his prior career as a reporter gave him a “front row seat to the deterioration of our democracy and billionaires profiting at our expense” and the deep issues in U.S. politics. He said rising costs and the “tepid” response from Democrats to Republican policies were other contributing factors to his run.

He framed himself as fighting to restore American democracy against a “would-be king seizing power for himself from the people to enrich his billionaire best friends at our expense.”

Following the murder of two Israeli Embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), a New Jersey gubernatorial candidate, wrote to federal leaders to call for further action to protect the Jewish community and raised concerns about growing trends of antisemitic violence across the country.

Sherrill wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi to call on the government to provide additional resources and funding to allow houses of worship and nonprofits to protect themselves — including through the Nonprofit Security Grant Program — and ensure that law enforcement can properly investigate and prevent antisemitic violence.

In the letter, Sherrill described the shooting as unequivocally motivated by antisemitism and as  “an assault on the core values and ideals of our nation — particularly the right to religious expression and to practice one’s faith without fear of violence” and said “we must take every effort to prevent it from happening again.” She said the attack “highlight[s] the threat of violence against Jewish Americans and residents across the United States.”

“As antisemitic violence and threats have increased, I remain concerned that synagogues, Jewish faith-based organizations, and nonprofits are under-resourced for the heightened threats that they face,” Sherrill said. “I urge you to take whatever actions you can to ensure that the programs that support these organizations are properly resourced and staffed.”

In addition to NSGP funding, Sherrill expressed concerns that funding cuts will leave “initiatives within your departments meant to combat antisemitism and other hate crimes … unable to address the rising threat that we face today.” She pointed specifically to a range of programs to address and prevent hate crimes.

The administration has sought to cut funding from hate crime grant programs it claimed violate the First Amendment. Sherrill urged the administration to “maintain and expand funding for these programs.”

Sherrill linked the shooting to the April arson attack on the residence of Penn. Gov. Josh Shapiro, pointing to the arson as another example of the “ever-present risk of antisemitism and violence to all Jewish Americans,” given that the arsonist, who targeted the governor’s mansion on the first night of Passover, was allegedly motivated by Shapiro’s support for Israel. Sherrill also highlighted vandalism and firebombing incidents at synagogues in her district. 

“Our country faces a crisis of antisemitic violence and threats that show no signs of abating,” Sherrill wrote. “It is vital that the federal government take urgent action to protect Jewish communities, prosecute perpetrators of antisemitic hate crimes, and support community programs to counter antisemitism. Jewish Americans face the severe threat of antisemitic violence every day, and it is long past time that the U.S. federal government prioritizes their safety.”

Another gubernatorial candidate, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), publicly urged other candidates in the race to support state legislation to codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism last week, in response to the shooting. Sherrill has said she supports that bill.

Some in the Jewish community have seen Sherrill’s record on Jewish issues as spotty at times compared to Gottheimer, but a pair of progressive candidates with more questionable records on such issues have become increasingly competitive against Sherrill, who leads in polling.

Kingsley Wilson, a deputy press secretary at the Department of Defense who has come under fire from Democratic and Republican lawmakers and Jewish communal organizations for promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, has been promoted to serve as the department’s press secretary, the Pentagon announced on Friday. 

“Kingsley’s leadership has been integral to the DoD’s success & we look forward to her continued service to President [Donald] Trump,” Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman and a senior advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, posted on X on Friday. 

When Wilson was named deputy press secretary in March, she faced widespread condemnation for dozens of tweets viewed as antisemitic and racist. On two different occasions, she attacked the Anti-Defamation League for sharing its origin story — the organization was founded after the lynching of Leo Frank, an Atlanta Jew widely believed to have been wrongly convicted of raping and murdering a white child over a century ago. 

“Leo Frank raped and murdered a 13-year-old girl,” Wilson wrote in 2023 in response to a post from the ADL, and repeated the claim a year later. “He also tried to frame a black man for his crime. The ADL is despicable.” (The tweet has not been deleted.) 

Wilson has also called Confederate General Robert E. Lee “one of the greatest Americans to ever live” and regularly promoted the antisemitic “Great Replacement Theory.” 

Her appointment in March drew bipartisan criticism. “Obviously I don’t agree with her comments. I trust the Pentagon will address this,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told Jewish Insider at the time. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called for her firing. 

Spokespeople for the Pentagon and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday. 

Pro-Israel leaders in the United States on Thursday connected the murder of two Israeli Embassy employees outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington to the anti-Israel advocacy seen on the political extremes throughout the country since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, characterizing it as a culmination of such rhetoric and, in some cases, the failure of some politicians to denounce it.

The suspected shooter, Elias Rodriguez, shouted “free, free Palestine” and “I did it for Gaza” following the shooting, according to an eyewitness and video from the arrest. He reportedly published a manifesto railing against Israel.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said that the attack should be a signal to the left that it needs to rethink its rhetoric on Israel and Zionism. He compared the anti-Israel movement in the United States to a “cult” that has been stoked online and is using inherently violent slogans while its members “try to hide behind this idea that it’s free speech to intimidate and terrorize members of the Jewish community.”

He said that too many on the left have failed to call out antisemitism in the anti-Israel movement.

“Why can’t you just call it what it is, and then address and assert the pressure on the aggressor,” which is Hamas,” Fetterman said. “I can’t even imagine having to live with that ever-present antisemitism and what? Why can’t people just acknowledge and call that what it is?”

Fetterman predicted that the same elements of the left that have supported Luigi Mangione, the alleged assassin of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, will also rally behind Rodriguez.

“What part of my party does this come from where it’s like, we try to defend or try to justify assassinating an executive in broad daylight or … somebody [who] guns down” two people at a Jewish event, Fetterman asked incredulously.

Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter connected the shooting to the anti-Israel protests seen on college campuses and elsewhere in the country.

“The point of the matter is that on campuses around this country, where ideas — these are the temples of ideas — where smart ideas, intelligent ideas, moral ideas, truthful ideas, are supposed to be taught, we have useful idiots running around in support of the destruction of Israel,” Leiter said at a press conference.

“This is done in the name of a political agenda to eradicate the State of Israel,” Leiter added. “The State of Israel is now fighting a war on seven fronts. This is the eighth front, a war to demonize, delegitimize, to eradicate the right of the State of Israel to exist.”

He also connected rising global antisemitism to countries like France that have spoken out against Israel and are moving to recognize a Palestinian state.

A coalition of 42 Jewish organizations, in a statement, described the murders as “the direct consequence of rising antisemitic incitement in places such as college campuses, city council meetings, and social media that has normalized hate and emboldened those who wish to do harm.”

William Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said on X, “There is a direct line between demonizing Israel, tolerating antisemitic hate speech in the public square, and violent action.” 

“We are now witnessing the deadly consequences of months of relentless antisemitic incitement — amplified by international organizations and political leaders across the globe — since the horrors of October 7,” Daroff said. “This is not a debate over policy; it is the mainstreaming of hatred, and its consequences are measured in blood.”

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) said on X the attack was “the deadly consequence of normalizing Jew-hatred.”

“Since October 7, antisemitic attacks have surged — fueled by violent chants to ‘globalize the intifada’ and slurs like ‘dirty Zionist,’” Gottheimer said. 

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), highlighting a tweet from a local anti-Israel group that praised the attack, said that, “Violence is not a bug but a feature of virulent Anti-Zionism.”

Arizona state Rep. Alma Hernandez called out a series of progressive lawmakers, saying, “spare us the fake outrage.”

“Two Israeli diplomats were murdered in cold blood—and you dare act concerned? Y’all have spent years fueling the hate and antisemitism that’s now exploding across America. Don’t pretend to care,” Hernandez continued, in an X post. “You are constantly surrounded by keffiyehs and “Free Palestine” and have pushed rhetoric that’s radicalized Americans into thinking murdering Jews and harassing them in the streets will somehow “liberate” Palestine and end the so-called genocide. No thanks.”

“We don’t want prayers from politicians who support individuals and organizations that promote this hate and who are being actively supported by said individuals and organizations while they run for office,” Hernandez added.

“You can’t support chants of ‘Globalize the Intifada’ and then be ‘appalled’ when people act it out,” Georgia state Rep. Esther Panitch said on X in response to a statement on the attack from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) that did not acknowledge that the victims worked for the Israeli embassy and condemned “violence” broadly. Panitch also criticized other progressive Democrats who issued statements on the attack.

Panitch added, “Fascinating that those who campaigned against the Jewish community’s right to define their own experience of antisemitism are the ones who call ‘Globalizing the Intifada’ peaceful protests. The same ones who can’t say the word antisemitism in their posts.”

Jordan Acker, the University of Michigan regent who has been repeatedly targeted with antisemitic harassment and vandalism, drew a direct line between those incidents and demonstrations on the University of Michigan’s campus, and the Wednesday night murders.

“This isn’t protest. It’s a threat. This is what antisemitism looks like — and it’s escalating,” Acker said. “This is part of a terrifying trend: Jews in America being hunted, harassed, and attacked for being visibly Jewish — for existing in public. When we call it antisemitism, we’re told we’re overreacting. That our fear is political. That our pain is inconvenient. We’ve been gaslit for 18 months. Enough.”

He also called out progressives directly, saying “antisemitism isn’t any less dangerous when it comes wrapped in ‘progressive’ language.”

In response to the attack, some of the most prominent far-left critics of Israel on Capitol Hill have offered what many in the Jewish community have seen as half-hearted and inadequate responses.

“My heart breaks for the loved ones of the victims of last night’s attack in D.C. Nobody deserves such terrible violence. Everyone in our communities deserves to live in safety and in peace,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) said, linking to an article highlighting that the victims, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, were Israeli Embassy workers, but not noting their backgrounds or the circumstances of the shooting in her own post.

Omar noted that the shooting took place at the Capital Jewish Museum but did not acknowledge the victims’ backgrounds and condemned violence broadly.

“I am appalled by the deadly shooting at the Capital Jewish Museum last night. Holding the victims, their families, and loved ones in my thoughts and prayers,” Omar said. “Violence should have no place in our country.”

A coalition of 46 Jewish organizations issued a joint statement on Thursday urging additional action from the federal government to address antisemitism in the United States following the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, and particularly expanding funding for a variety of programs to protect the Jewish community.

“The rising level of anti-Jewish incitement, which inevitably leads to violent acts like the one in Washington, DC yesterday, requires governmental action commensurate with the level of danger,” the letter reads.

The demands include a call to massively expand funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program to $1 billion, from its current level of $274.5 million, in addition to $200 million in supplemental funding also expected to be released soon. The new request is double the $500 million request from Jewish groups in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks and the request recently submitted by a bipartisan coalition of House members.

The letter further said the NSGP process should be “made more flexible and accessible,” describing it currently as “cumbersome and lack[ing] transparency.”

The groups also called for additional funding for security at Jewish institutions, for the FBI to expand its intelligence operations and counter-domestic terrorism operations and for local law enforcement to be empowered to protect Jewish establishments.

“The demands on local and state law enforcement far outpace their capacity to meet the need, which disproportionately affects targeted communities like the American Jewish community,” the letter says, of the need for additional funding for state and local law enforcement.

The groups also urged the federal government to “aggressively prosecute antisemitic hate crimes and extremist violence in accordance with the law” and to hold online platforms including social media and gaming sites “accountable for amplification of antisemitic hate, glorification of terrorism, extremism, disinformation, and incitement.”

The letter describes the murders as “the direct consequence of rising antisemitic incitement in places such as college campuses, city council meetings, and social media that has normalized hate and emboldened those who wish to do harm.”

Signatories to the letter include major national Jewish organizations including the American Jewish Committee, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Jewish Federations of North America, Anti-Defamation League and AIPAC, as well as groups representing a wide political and religious cross section of the Jewish community.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) called on the Justice Department and the FBI to investigate the political organizations that Elias Rodriguez, the suspect in the fatal shooting of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum, claims to be an active member of. 

Cornyn made the call in a post on X on Thursday that federal authorities should investigate the organizations allegedly affiliated with Rodriguez and the funding networks that finance their operations. The Texas senator was responding to a post alleging Rodriguez has ties to groups including the Party for Socialism and Liberation, People’s Congress of Resistance and ANSWER Chicago. 

“Every single one of these groups and their funding should be investigated immediately. This attack goes beyond antisemitism. We must know if this is domestic terrorism,” Cornyn said, adding that he was confident Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel “will get to the bottom of this threat.”

Speaking to Newsmax on Thursday, Cornyn applauded the Trump administration for taking an aggressive approach to addressing the surge of domestic antisemitism since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. “There’s been a course correction since the election of President Trump,” he told the network.

“We have a new sheriff in town. We have a new attorney general, a new FBI director that can aggressively do investigations and prosecute individuals who violate the rights of our Jewish citizens, and I think that will go a long way to correcting the direction that we have been on for the last four years,” Cornyn said.

“A lot of the woke programs and policies of universities across this country were a big surprise to a lot of people — the blatant antisemitism in particular, the targeting of Jewish students. This is unacceptable,” he continued.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation quickly disavowed  affiliation with Rodriguez after the attack, saying he “is not a member” of the organization and only had “a brief association” with the group in 2017.

The ANSWER Coalition has organized a series of anti-Israel protests in the United States, including the rally during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s congressional speech in July 2024 that ended in numerous arrests and the vandalism of D.C.’s Union Station. Scripps News published archive footage from 2018 when the news service interviewed Rodriguez at a protest in Chicago, where he identified himself as a member of the group.

Both organizations have been linked to Neville Roy Singham, a financier who has been accused of funding groups to advance Chinese talking points as well as a network of anti-Israel protest groups, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute. 

Separately, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) urged authorities to investigate the murders as a hate crime and a domestic terrorist attack, which Interim U.S. Attorney in Washington Jeanine Pirro said is currently being explored.

“In light of this horrific attack, I respectfully request you immediately launch an investigation into this hate crime and act of domestic terrorism,” Moreno said. “The city of Washington D.C. must also conduct a full review of the security failures that allowed this terrorist attack to happen.”

Moreno also called for full funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program and that Department of Justice law enforcement grants be used to protect religious institutions. He asked local and federal officials to review how the shooting occurred.

Rodriguez was charged in Washington with two counts of first- degree murder, the murder of foreign officials, causing death with a firearm and discharging a firearm in a violent crime. He is eligible for the death penalty, according to Pirro.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is urging colleagues to take steps to address antisemitism in the health care field in the 2026 appropriations process for the Department of Health and Human Services and related agencies.

In a letter sent Wednesday, the lawmakers called on the leaders of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies to demand reports from HHS on the rise of antisemitism in health care.

“Failure to confront this pernicious ideology harms not only Jewish medical professionals, students, and patients but threatens to destroy the very foundations of our healthcare system,” the letter reads. “Dangerous rhetoric from individuals in positions of influence raises fears among Jewish and Israeli students, families, and patients about whether they will receive equitable and compassionate care. Antisemitic hate and bigotry put Jewish patients at risk and undermine the ethical foundations of medicine, where commitment to the patient should be paramount.”

The lawmakers argued that there is growing evidence of a “dangerous erosion of the professional standards that define graduate medical training” and said that medical schools must enforce codes of conduct to prevent antisemitism.

The letter highlights that the vast majority of Jewish medical professionals experienced antisemitism in the year after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks, and points to specific incidents which the lawmakers argue have “directly compromised patient care.” 

It also highlights issues in medical schools that they say constitute a “dangerous erosion of the professional standards that define graduate medical training” and issues in the mental health field including therapists promoting the view that Zionism is a mental illness and who have blacklisted Jewish patients and providers.

The letter urges the lawmakers, in their 2026 funding bill, to instruct HHS to provide a comprehensive report to Congress on antisemitism and civil rights violations in health care and medical schools, arguing that a lack of comprehensive data makes it difficult to tackle the problem.

It also requests a report on all civil rights complaints in health care and medical schools submitted to HHS in the past two years, including spelling out which cases included antisemitism, and how the complaints were addressed.

The letter was signed by Reps. Buddy Carter (R-GA), Dan Goldman (D-NY), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Troy Balderson (R-OH), Brad Sherman (D-CA), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Tim Kennedy (D-NY), Haley Stevens (D-MI), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Don Bacon (R-NE), Shelia Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL), Sarah Elfreth (D-MD), Mike Carey (R-OH), Laura Friedman (D-CA) and Jared Moskowitz (D-FL).

“Far too many Jewish health professionals and graduate students face pervasive antisemitism that often goes unaddressed by the very institutions entrusted with their safety and wellbeing,” Rachel Dembo, the senior manager of government relations and engagement for the Jewish Federations of North America said in a statement. 

“It’s alarming that today’s current and future providers are encountering environments where antisemitism is treated as acceptable — and where it can even distort or impact clinical care,” Dembo continued. “Compassion cannot coexist with discrimination and bigotry. Jewish Federations of North America are committed to ensuring clinical care is safe and fair for all — because bias can never be part of any patient’s treatment plan.”

Lauren Wolman, the director of government relations at the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement, “We commend bipartisan Members of Congress for sounding the alarm on this disturbing trend, and we urge the Appropriations Committee to act.”

“From hospitals to medical schools — the mission of medicine is to heal, not to harm. Antisemitic discrimination in clinical and educational environments violates that fundamental principle,” Wolman added. “Providers, students, and patients deserve an environment rooted in equity, dignity, and safety — free from antisemitism and hate.”

Antisemitic violence struck at the heart of the nation’s capital on Wednesday evening when an assailant shot and killed two Israeli embassy employees outside an event at the Capital Jewish Museum for young diplomats and Jewish professionals hosted by the American Jewish Committee.

“Two staff members of the Israeli embassy were shot this evening at close range while attending a Jewish event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC,” embassy spokesperson Tal Naim Cohen said in a statement. “We have full faith in law enforcement authorities on both the local and federal levels to apprehend the shooter and protect Israel’s representatives and Jewish communities throughout the United States.”

Officials said there was no ongoing threat to public safety and that a suspect had been arrested.

“American Jewish Committee (AJC) can confirm that we hosted an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. this evening,” AJC CEO Ted Deutch said in a statement. “We are devastated that an unspeakable act of violence took place outside the venue. At this moment, as we await more information from the police about exactly what transpired, our attention and our hearts are solely with those who were harmed and their families.”

President Donald Trump said in a statement, “These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW! Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA.”

D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith said that a man and woman were killed in the incident. Israeli Ambassador Michael Leiter said that the two victims were a young couple and embassy employees who were planning to get engaged next week in Jerusalem — the man purchased a ring earlier this week.

Eyewitness Paige Siegel, who was a guest at the event, told Jewish Insider that she heard two sets of multiple shots ring out, and then an individual, who police have since identified as suspected shooter Elias Rodriguez, entered the building appearing disoriented and panicked, seconds after the shooting ended. She said security allowed the man in, as well as two other women separately.

Siegel said she spoke to the man, asking him if he had been shot. He appeared panicked and was mumbling and repeatedly told bystanders to call the police. Siegel said that she felt the man was suspicious.

JoJo Drake Kalin, a member of AJC’s DC Young Professional Board and an organizer of the event, also told JI the man appeared disheveled and out of breath when he entered the building. Kalin assumed he had been a bystander to the shooting who needed assistance and she handed him a glass of water.

Siegel said that the man was sitting in the building in a state of distress for approximately 10 to 15 minutes, and she and a friend engaged him in conversation, informing him that he was in the Jewish museum.

After Siegel said that, she said the man started screaming, “I did it, I did it. Free Palestine. I did it for Gaza,” and opened a backpack, withdrawing a red Keffiyeh. She said that an officer, who had already arrived, detained the man and took him outside. She said that she subsequently saw security footage of Rodriguez shooting the female and identified the shooter as the same individual. Kalin said that some attendees stayed for several hours at the museum into the night to be debriefed by police.

A short video obtained by JI showed an individual in the lobby of the museum chanting “Free, free Palestine” being detained by police and removed from the building.

A video obtained by Jewish Insider shows the suspected shooter, identified by police as Elias Rodriguez, in the lobby of the Capital Jewish Museum chanting “free, free Palestine” as he is detained by police and removed from the building.

Full story: https://t.co/ZGZBj9agQx pic.twitter.com/zZUbTvovFm

— Jewish Insider (@J_Insider) May 22, 2025

Smith said in a press conference that the suspect, Rodriguez, a 30-year-old from Chicago, opened fire on a group of four outside the museum, and then entered the building and was detained by event security. Smith said that Rodriguez, once in custody, implied that he carried out the shooting and chanted “free, free Palestine.”

Smith said Rodriguez had been pacing outside the event before the altercation.

Leiter said that he had spoken to President Donald Trump, who vowed that the administration would do everything it can to fight antisemitism and demonization and delegitimization of Israel.

“We’ll stand together tall and firm and confront this moral depravity without fear,” Leiter said.

Smith said that police would coordinate with local Jewish organizations to ensure sufficient security. She said police had not received any intelligence warning of the attack.

Mayor Muriel Bowser said, “we will not tolerate antisemitism,” and said the city would continue to assist Jewish organizations with security grants.

FBI officials and Attorney General Pam Bondi and interim U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro joined the response alongside D.C. police.

“We are a resilient people. The people of Israel are a resilient people. The people of the United States of America are a resilient people. Together, we won’t be afraid. Together we will stand and overcome moral depravity of people who think they’re going to achieve political gains through murder,” Leiter said. 

According to an invitation to the event viewed by JI, the event planned to discuss efforts to respond to humanitarian crises in the Middle East and North Africa, including in Gaza.

Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, described the shooting as a “depraved act of anti-Semitic terrorism.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told JI, “I’ve been informed of the tragic shooting that occurred outside of the Capitol Jewish Museum tonight in Washington D.C. We are monitoring the situation as more details become known and lifting up the victim’s families in our prayers.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a post, “This sickening shooting seems to be another horrific instance of antisemitism which as we know is all too rampant in our society.”

Richard Priem, the CEO of the Community Security Service, told eJewishPhilanthropy that there are still “so many unknowns” about the shooting, namely if it was a sophisticated attack specifically targeting Israeli Embassy staff or an attack more generally against the Jewish event itself. In any case, the organization called for “increased situational awareness” at Jewish institutions going forward, particularly ahead of Shabbat.

“Anytime there’s an attack, certain people get activated and think, ’Now’s the time,’” Priem said. “But we don’t know yet if there might be a direct correlated threat.”

eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross contributed reporting

Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, says he’s undeterred by critics of the Trump administration’s approach to combating antisemitism, arguing that those dissatisfied with its deportation strategy are “trying to justify, in my opinion, the antisemitic behavior” of those individuals. 

Terrell, who has a career spanning three decades as a civil rights attorney and a conservative media personality, sat down on Monday for his first interview with Jewish Insider since joining the Justice Department earlier this year — at a time when some mainstream Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, have expressed concern that the administration’s approach has violated the due process rights of the individuals being targeted. The Trump administration has argued that non-citizens do not have the same constitutional protections as U.S. citizens, though the Fourteenth Amendment grants due process rights to all people regardless of status. 

“That question is being asked quite often, and I think those people who are raising that issue are trying to justify, in my opinion, the antisemitic behavior,” Terrell said. “If you’re an American citizen, I have due process on a lot of different criminal issues if I’m arrested. I have due process. That term due process needs to be evaluated depending on the status of the individuals who assert it.”

“I will submit to you that individuals who are here on, let’s say, for example, a student visa, who are not American citizens, who are here as a privilege by this country, do not have the same due process rights, do not have the same access to the court system as I do as an American citizen,” he continued, adding, “Your rights depend on your status in this country. You won’t hear that because it’s the truth, it’s not a talking point.”

Terrell said he and Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ, remain confident they are following the law. He also said he wants injunctive relief for Jewish students from U.S. citizens and foreign nationals involved in antisemitic hate crimes. 

“How many times do we see individuals violating the rights of Jewish American students use the lying argument of freedom of speech, and it was adopted by a majority of the left-wing media, but these blue cities allow these individuals to be violent. They were arrested, and then they were released, and they were never prosecuted. They were never prosecuted. And that type of mentality existed not only on the local level, but on the federal level as well. That has stopped under the Trump administration,” Terrell explained.

“One of the first questions you mentioned is, and I’ve heard it the last couple of days, if you think the Trump administration is too hard or being too aggressive? They raise that question, and I’ve heard it in three different locations, but I say no, we’re not aggressive enough. If you’re comparing that there’s been some progress in relationship to the Biden administration, that’s not much of a standard, because they did nothing,” he added.

When asked about Columbia University, where new acting President Claire Shipman oversaw the suspension and arrests of some of the students involved in last week’s takeover of the school’s main library, Terrell said the university’s actions were insufficient because they did not deter future action from the protesters. 

“Some people have said, well, you know, some of these students have been suspended by the college president. Not good enough. There’s no deterrent mechanism. You need deterrence where it doesn’t happen again. And under the Trump administration, I can tell you right now, I’m using the tools of Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act]. I’m using the tools of filing hate crimes as a deterrent mechanism,” Terrell said, later noting, “Trump is dead set on eliminating antisemitism, and besides the litigation that we are contemplating … we’ve got some tools … that we’re going to be disclosing later on, that are going to definitely have a major factor.”

Terrell added that he stood by the decision to target the individuals the Trump administration had sought to deport as part of its antisemitism policy, including the case of Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University doctoral student and Turkish national who was released from detention last week amid criticism from several leading Jewish groups as federal authorities continue pushing for her deportation. Some Jewish leaders and organizations had argued against Öztürk’s detention due to the lack of evidence against her the federal government has made public; currently, her only known anti-Israel activity is a critical op-ed she co-authored in her school newspaper.

“The Civil Rights team is more concerned with getting rid of the problem than making everybody comfortable while they do so. I believe the previous administration expressed commitment, both in speech and in certain actions, to fighting antisemitism, but then allowed antisemitism to get diluted to the point where the effort was regrettably no longer as effective. A wise man once said, when you get too well-rounded, you stop pointing anywhere. An effort to combat and eradicate antisemitism must do that,” Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), told JI. 

Öztürk’s release on bail, Terrell explained, “has nothing to do with the merit as to whether or not she can be removed based on the evidence and the discretion of the secretary of state.” 

“Yes, she got released on bail. So the standard for bail is: Are you a flight risk? Are you a danger? Will you return? That has nothing to do with the merit of her status here. … The decision on the merits as to whether or not she will remain in this country has not been decided,” Terrell said, criticizing the news media’s portrayal of the latest developments in Öztürk’s case as inaccurate.

Asked if any universities had responded to campus antisemitism in ways that he found satisfactory, Terrell pointed to Dartmouth College. “I was very pleased when the president of Dartmouth College came by and spoke to us, and they got a very favorable grade from the ADL as far as battling antisemitism. If I was going to mention one school that is on the right track to combat antisemitism, that has addressed the issue, and not tried to dodge it or look for press coverage because they suspended some students, Dartmouth College would be probably number one on my list,” he said. 

Looking off campus, Terrell told JI he has reached out to the mayors of Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City to try to find ways to work together on campus antisemitism “because I felt those were major cities that had failed to protect Jewish American students, not only on campus, but Jewish Americans period, in the city.” 

Terrell said that he hasn’t heard back from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass or Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, but his message to them is that he’s “not going to run away from that. I’m going to meet it head on.”

“I’m going to do everything I can to get him [Johnson] and those [Chicago City] Council members to change their ways. The federal government has a lot of tools, and we’re going to use all of them. The one thing I can tell you is that I’ve had conversations with the president about this as late as last week, and he said basically in so many words, whatever you need on this subject just call me directly, just talk to me directly. Because I have approached him on certain issues involving resolving some of these issues in schools and he wants complete, 100% compliance,” Terrell said.

While he has some detractors, Terrell also has a number of Jewish leaders in his corner who argue his approach to his current role was bound to ruffle some feathers. 

Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s envoy to the U.S., told JI in a statement, “Leo Terrell has hit the ground running … showing remarkable clarity and passion. From day one, he has demonstrated unwavering commitment to this crucial fight — through strong public statements, meaningful action, and a clear moral compass.”

“The Civil Rights team is more concerned with getting rid of the problem than making everybody comfortable while they do so. I believe the previous administration expressed commitment, both in speech and in certain actions, to fighting antisemitism, but then allowed antisemitism to get diluted to the point where the effort was regrettably no longer as effective. A wise man once said, when you get too well-rounded, you stop pointing anywhere. An effort to combat and eradicate antisemitism must do that,” Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), told JI. 

“We cannot compromise our efforts to deal with the situation just so that everybody’s very comfortable with what we’re doing. Unconventional and illegal are not the same thing, and people facing existential threats cannot be expected to make everybody comfortable while they fight for their survival,” Shemtov continued, later adding: “Any energetic effort might test some limits here or there.” 

Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s envoy to the U.S., told JI in a statement, “Leo Terrell has hit the ground running … showing remarkable clarity and passion. From day one, he has demonstrated unwavering commitment to this crucial fight — through strong public statements, meaningful action, and a clear moral compass.”

“We deeply value our partnership with him and appreciate his willingness to listen, engage, and stand up against hatred in all its forms. His leadership is both encouraging and inspiring at a time when it’s needed most,” Leiter added.

Terrell spent more than two decades amassing a large following on the talk radio circuit and on cable news, serving as a Fox News contributor on legal issues for much of the last decade. He made headlines in 2020 when debuting “Leo 2.0,” his revamped persona, while announcing his move from the Democratic Party to the GOP. 

In his new job, he frequently starts his morning tweeting on X about the rise in antisemitism to his 2.5 million followers.

“The Jewish American community and I have had a love affair for the last 35 years. One of my first jobs as a lawyer, I worked in a Jewish law firm, and I was befriended not only by the Jewish lawyer who helped me get started, but by the community at large. So my relationship with the Jewish American community has been in place for the last 35 plus years,” Terrell said, noting his time leading the California Commission Against Hate Crimes, “where we looked at all hate crimes against Blacks, Browns, Jews, Catholics.”

While Terrell warned in media appearances about the rise of antisemitism in recent years, he was not directly involved in trying to address the issue nationally until 2024, when he began criticizing the Biden administration’s lack of response to incidents of antisemitism taking place amid anti-Israel campus protests. 

Still, Terrell says he’s no stranger to fighting for civil rights protections for all, citing his three-decade “love affair” with the Jewish people and his legal career, which included efforts to address antisemitism in California.

“The Jewish American community and I have had a love affair for the last 35 years. One of my first jobs as a lawyer, I worked in a Jewish law firm, and I was befriended not only by the Jewish lawyer who helped me get started, but by the community at large. So my relationship with the Jewish American community has been in place for the last 35 plus years,” Terrell said, noting his time leading the California Commission Against Hate Crimes, “where we looked at all hate crimes against Blacks, Browns, Jews, Catholics.” 

“I have committed to civil rights and my commitment to the Jewish American community has been so heartwarming based on my experience here in this position and on Fox, but it goes well beyond that. It goes well beyond that. For the last 25 to 30 years, ever since I have been a lawyer, I’ve had a fantastic, strong, great relationship with the Jewish American community and it is going to maintain.”

The American Jewish Committee — together with major groups representing U.S. universities — on Tuesday released a statement asking the Trump administration to reconsider its approach to combatting campus antisemitism, which it said involves steps that “endanger” academic freedom. 

“America’s higher education and Jewish communities share and endorse the Trump Administration’s priority of eradicating antisemitism. We come together to ask the Administration to pursue this important goal in ways that preserve academic freedom, respect due process, and strengthen the government-campus scientific partnership,” said the joint statement, which was co-signed by American Council on Education, Association of American Universities, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, American Association of Community Colleges, National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

The groups — which together represent more than 1,000 colleges and universities — called antisemitism “a plague on humanity” which “has found unacceptable expression on U.S. campuses in recent years, as it has elsewhere in American society, on both sides of the political spectrum.”

The statement continued, “In the name of combating antisemitism, the federal government has recently taken steps that endanger the research grants, academic freedom, and institutional autonomy of America’s higher education sector.”

It urged the U.S. government to instead address antisemitism “through the nation’s powerful anti-discrimination laws, which allow for vigorous enforcement while providing due process rights that are essential to ensure fair treatment of individuals and institutions.” 

The groups pledged “continuing consequential reform and transparent action to root out antisemitism and all other forms of hate and prejudice from our campuses.”

The Trump administration has cut — or threatened to cut — more than $12 billion in research funding from elite schools including Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Brown and Northwestern. The moves to rescind billions in federal funding from colleges and universities, as well as to detain and deport foreign students, have ignited debate in the Jewish community in recent months, with many stressing a need for due process. 

“Our democratic values are not at odds with our vision for classrooms and campuses free from antisemitism – in fact, each is necessary for the other,” Ted Deutch, CEO of the AJC, said in a statement on Tuesday. 

Deutch told Jewish Insider last month that the group is trying to take a nuanced approach to the White House’s response to campus antisemitism. 

“There are campuses [where] so many of the challenges should have been addressed by universities, and weren’t. We’ve been clear that it’s really important that the administration, that the president, is making this a priority,” Deutch said. “At the same time, as we’ve said, due process matters and obviously our democratic principles matter as well, we have to be able to both express appreciation and, when necessary, express concern.”

“When the hammer [of funding cuts] is dropped in a way which winds up cutting life-saving cancer research, that’s when we have concern, which we’ve expressed,” Deutch warned. 

Barbara Snyder, president of AAU, an organization of 69 leading research universities, said in a statement that “cutting funds for life-saving research and threatening academic freedom and constitutional rights such as freedom of speech do nothing to make students safer. Fighting discrimination and supporting due process are two sides of the same coin; you cannot have one without the other.” 

Good Wednesday morning.

In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on a new musical project that aims to mark Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s national memorial day, and spotlight Sen. Bill Cassidy’s efforts to target antisemitism from his perch at the top of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. We also report on President Donald Trump’s dismissal of at least seven members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council who were appointed by former President Joe Biden, and preview today’s Senate markup of the Antisemitism Awareness Act. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Abigail Mor Edan, Tom Barrack and Gov. Phil Murphy.

What We’re Watching

• Today is Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s day to honor and remember those killed in the country’s wars and in terror attacks. Official and unofficial events are being held around the country today. Yom Haatzmaut, the country’s independence day, begins at sundown tonight.
• The Israeli government’s official Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration was canceled due to high winds and adverse weather conditions.
• This morning in Washington, the Senate HELP Committee is voting on the Antisemitism Awareness Act and the Protecting Students on Campus Act. More below.
• The House Foreign Affairs Committee is holding a hearing on State Dept authorization.
• This afternoon, the House Armed Services Committee is holding a hearing on missile defense.
• Later today, the Senate Committee on Aging is holding a hearing on antisemitism targeting older Americans. Read more here.
• The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments today in St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond, which focuses on funding for faith-based charter schools.
• Tonight, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy is holding its 40th anniversary gala dinner in Washington.

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S MELISSA WEISS

As a siren sounded last night at 8 p.m. and then again at 11 a.m. this morning local time, Israel came to a standstill as it honored some 25,000 Israelis killed in the nation’s wars and in terror attacks, Jewish Insider Executive Editor Melissa Weiss reports.

Cars stop on highways and their drivers step out. Neighbors step out onto their balconies, heads bowed. At public gatherings across the country, Israelis are briefly frozen in place — quiet, pensive — before coming to life again as the siren concludes.

As the siren ends and an altered version of normalcy resumes, Israelis are left to grapple with the dual realities of a nation at war that must simultaneously live and mourn, that must fight both an enemy committed to its destruction and tend to the millions traumatized by the Oct. 7 attacks and a year and a half of war, that is forced to fight both internal divisions and external threats.

In comments made at the Jewish News Syndicate‘s International Policy Summit in Jerusalem earlier this week, Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer told attendees that Israel’s war with Hamas — the longest sustained war since the country’s fight for independence nearly eight decades ago — would be over within a year.

But it’s not the first time an Israeli official has given a timeline. In May 2024, Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi predicted that the war would last through the end of the year — which at that point was a nearly unimaginable amount of time.

But today, the idea that the war could last another 12 months is draining to a populace that is fatigued from a year and a half of war, grieving those they have lost both in the war and the attacks that preceded it, and waiting for the return of the remaining 59 hostages. 

Reservists, already struggling to maintain both their home lives and carry out their military duties, are buckling under the strain, amid a growing national anger over the failure of the government to make significant moves to draft soldiers from within the Haredi community, a segment of Israeli society that is among those that have suffered the fewest losses — both on Oct. 7 and in the ensuing war. (Read more on the topic from eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross here.)

And the country’s military — the leadership of which has almost entirely turned over since last Yom HaZikaron — finds itself at odds both internally and with the government, amid debates over war strategy and priorities, as well as accountability for the Oct. 7 attacks. 

In March, when the Israeli Democracy Institute last conducted a survey about how Israelis would prioritize the government’s stated war goals, 68% said that the release of the remaining hostages should be the top priority, with 25% saying that toppling Hamas should be the first priority. It’s a gulf that has widened since the question was first posed in January 2024, when 51% said that the hostages should be the first priority, and 36% wanted to prioritize the destruction of Hamas.

Concerns about the government’s attitude toward the hostages are even less likely to be allayed following a comment by Sara Netanyahu, made in a meeting on Tuesday with individuals selected to light torches in the state’s Independence Day ceremony, that fewer than 24 hostages remain alive — correcting her husband, who said that 24 were alive, in keeping with previous government information. The exchange was widely panned, with Channel 12’s Amit Segal saying it was “truly bizarre and inappropriate” for the families to learn of the devastating news “through an interjection by Sara Netanyahu.”

For the families of the remaining hostages, the prospect of another year of war is unthinkable. 

Emily Damari, the British-Israeli hostage who was freed earlier this year, reflected on Yom HaZikaron in a social media post to her Instagram page. Damari said that last year, she and fellow hostage Romi Gonen realized the significance of the day as their captors watched Al Jazeera. “At 11 a.m.,” Damari said, “we decided to stand for a moment of silence in memory of the fallen, who in their death commanded us to live, in memory of our friends who were killed.”

Today in Gaza, miles from where Israelis commemorate the dead, the living hostages languish after 572 days in captivity, prisoners awaiting the kind of freedom that the rest of the world takes for granted while enduring the kind of inhumanity the rest of the world could not imagine. And across the country, parents, siblings and children mourn those who have died — some who were killed protecting the country, others who died simply for living in it.

More than 300 soldiers and 79 civilians were killed between last Yom HaZikaron and today. It is impossible to know how many of them attended Yom HaZikaron events last year in their communities and on their bases, listening to the stories of those fallen in battle and those killed in acts of terror. Did they think the war would have ended by the next Yom HaZikaron? Did they imagine that their names would be among those mourned this year?

It is in the days leading up to Yom Kippur that Jews ask to be inscribed in the Book of Life. But it is on Yom HaZikaron that many ponder their own mortality, and the country’s — and what it means to be Israeli.

ON THE HILL

Senate committee to mark up Antisemitism Awareness Act, amid growing Democratic opposition

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is set to meet on Wednesday to vote on the Antisemitism Awareness Act, in what could be a contentious meeting with a slew of potential amendments, some of which seek significant changes to the bill, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod and Emily Jacobs report.

State of play: Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO), a HELP Committee member and co-sponsor of the AAA, told JI that “about 50 different amendments” have been introduced, and it remains to be seen what the bill will look like at the end of the committee’s markup. As a co-sponsor, he indicated that he is inclined to support the bill. Sens. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) and Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE), had been seen as potential or likely votes in favor, but are now expected to vote against the legislation. Some Democrats are framing the legislation as a giveaway of additional power to the Trump administration. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who is seeking drastic changes to the legislation, is also likely to oppose it. A largely cosmetic amendment from GOP leadership appears aimed at mollifying freedom of speech and religion concerns from other Republicans.

Read the full story here.

Words of Warning: Matt Brooks, the CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, warned this week that anti-Israel sentiments that he said have taken over the Democratic Party are beginning to infiltrate the Republican Party and require a strong response, JI’s Marc Rod reports.

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targeting hate

Bill Cassidy leans in to fight antisemitism as chair of key Senate committee

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, will bring up the Antisemitism Awareness Act and another piece of antisemitism legislation for consideration today — the latest in a series of steps Cassidy has taken to respond to campus antisemitism since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel. AAA has been a priority for the Jewish community for years and for Cassidy, who told Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs in an interview this week that he expects both pieces of legislation to advance out of committee. 

Legislative affairs: The Louisiana senator has made antisemitism a major focus for the HELP Committee this Congress. Cassidy has leaned in since taking over the chairmanship role from Sanders in January, signing on as a cosponsor of the AAA, reintroducing his Protecting Students on Campus Act with Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) — which will also be marked up today — holding the panel’s first hearing on domestic antisemitism since Oct. 7 and launching an investigation into Americans Muslims for Palestine’s activities on college campuses. Cassidy says he wants to see the response from universities once the two bills become law, but is open to considering further legislative efforts if needed down the line. “I think we have to see how this plays, because, obviously, there’s executive orders, obviously there’s a greater sense of awareness among college and university presidents that they are being scrutinized because of this,” Cassidy said of next steps for Congress in finding policy avenues to address domestic antisemitism. 

Read the full interview here.

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EXCLUSIVE DETAILS

Trump dismisses at least 7 Biden appointees to U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council

The Trump administration has dismissed multiple members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council appointed by former President Joe Biden, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod and Matthew Kassel report.

Who’s out: Sources familiar with the situation told JI that those fired from the board overseeing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and other Holocaust commemoration activities include former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, former Ambassador Susan Rice, former Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer, former presidential senior advisor Tom Perez, former Ambassador Alan Solomont and Mary Zients (an activist and wife of former White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients). “He’s talking all about fighting antisemitism, but he chooses to make a divisive call on the official arm of the federal government that was created to remember the Holocaust,” Solomont told JI. The New York Times also reported that Anthony Bernal, a senior advisor to former First Lady Jill Biden, had been dismissed.

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REPORT RELEASE

Under fire, Harvard releases reports on antisemitism, Islamophobia on campus

Harvard University’s long-awaited dual reports on antisemitism and Islamophobia, released on Tuesday, reveal a campus beset by tension and simmering distrust — as well as a university struggling to handle competing claims of discrimination, animosity and exclusion made by Jewish and Muslim students, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch and Haley Cohen report.

Commitments: In the 300-page antisemitism report, which was made public amid alumni frustration and pressure from the Trump administration, Harvard committed to partnering with an Israeli university; providing additional resources for the study of Hebrew and Judaic studies; hosting an annual academic symposium on antisemitism; asking the leadership of Sidechat, a social media app that allows college students to post anonymously, to enforce its content moderation policies; and launching a pilot program in the business school addressing contemporary antisemitism.

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exclusive

Senate Republicans aim to defund U.N. agencies that penalize Israel

A group of more than 20 Senate Republicans led by Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) is set to introduce legislation on Wednesday that would strip U.S. funding from any United Nations agency that takes action to expel, downgrade, suspend or restrict Israel’s participation, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. “Israel is one of America’s greatest allies, and under President Trump’s Administration, we will no longer tolerate — much less fund — the blatant antisemitism at the United Nations. This bill will send a clear message to the UN and any other antisemitic international organizations: if you want America’s money, you’ll need to respect our Israeli friends,” Risch, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. “America will always stand with Israel.”

On board: The Stand with Israel Act is co-sponsored by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Ted Budd (R-NC), Mike Lee (R-UT), James Lankford (R-OK), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Dave McCormick (R-PA), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Katie Britt (R-AL), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV), John Boozman (R-AR), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Josh Hawley (R-MO), John Barrasso (R-WY), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Jim Justice (R-WV), John Hoeven (R-ND), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Rick Scott (R-FL).

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MEANINGFUL MUSIC

Songs of the fallen set the tone for Yom HaZikaron in Israel

Israelis start Yom HaZikaron, their day to honor those killed in wars or in terror attacks, by standing silently as a siren blares throughout the country. When the siren goes off, first at 8 p.m. and then at 11 the next morning, the nation comes to a standstill. Traffic stops in bustling intersections, and drivers get out to stand next to their cars. Bus drivers pull over on the side of the highway. But what do Israelis do after the evening siren? For many, the answer is easy: They sing. This year, Galgalatz and Army Radio, a news and talk station run by the IDF, worked on a joint project of reported audio features and songs relating to fallen soldiers and victims of terror. Army Radio shared details of the project with Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov before its release to the public planned for this afternoon. 

Living lyrics: One new song, “You’re Out There Traveling,” is based on a poem written by Aharon Danino, brother of Ori Danino, who was kidnapped at the Nova festival on Oct. 7 and murdered soon after. Danino, 25, escaped the music festival in a car, but went back to help save the lives of Maya and Itay Regev and Omer Shemtov, who were taken hostage and later released. The song is performed by “M Hamistaarev,” an IDF reservist who goes undercover as a Palestinian and therefore performs with a mask covering his face. Tiktok videos of M singing in Gaza went viral soon after the war began in 2023, and he has since released original music. M went to the shiva for Ori Danino and became friendly with the family, and Danino’s brother brought him the poem, which they worked together to set to music.

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Worthy Reads

A Country Divided: In his “Clarity” Substack, former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren looks at the schisms dividing the country’s military that underscore deeper divisions across Israel. “Pilots fire from tens of thousands of feet in the air, far from almost any danger, while the ground troops are fighting in the ruins and mud of Gaza with indescribable dangers everywhere. But while seemingly about operational issues, the debate reflects the underlying divisions within Israeli society. The majority of the pilots come from a different socio-economic background than most of the Golani soldiers and paratroopers under the Southern Command. There are ethnic and religious schisms that separate the two groups as well. At stake is not only the differences between the blue uniforms of the air force and the ground forces’ green uniforms, but between people of Israel generally. … We must strive to achieve a compromise which, while not loved by all, will at least prove acceptable. Achieving that compromise is not just the job of the army but above all, the government’s, which must not retreat from its sovereign responsibility. We owe this all to the memory of the approximately 25,000 who fell in our wars and in terrorist attacks. We must honor them all with unity.” [Clarity]

A Pence for Your Thoughts: In The Wall Street Journal, former Vice President Mike Pence reflects on President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. “Similarly, reports of negotiations with the mullahs in Tehran sound increasingly like President Obama’s failed nuclear deal. In the interest of peace, and our cherished ally Israel, the Iranian nuclear program must be verifiably dismantled or destroyed. … President Trump deserves credit for an energetic and effective start. His instincts on security, strength and sovereignty are as sharp as ever. But if we want to see this nation become truly great again, we can’t exchange time-tested conservative principles for populist platitudes. We need to stand with our allies and stand up to our enemies. We need to cut taxes and tariffs, keep our military strong and well-funded, and lead on the world stage. A strong first 100 days is a foundation. But only a return to the conservative principles that guided our administration and achieved peace and prosperity during the president’s first term will ensure that this administration builds something lasting—for the president’s legacy, and for America’s future.” [WSJ]

Piker Problem: The Free Press’ Josh Code spotlights the mainstreaming of far-left anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker, whose rise on Twitch has drawn scrutiny both of his rhetoric and of the platform’s decision to continue hosting him. “In an era when Democrats seem at a loss to counter the bro-y populism of the MAGA right, Piker uses the MAGA-coded activities of weightlifting and trips to the gun range to make socialist politics hip, courting an audience of young and very online men who have been drifting right. Mainstream news outlets have called him ‘The AOC of Twitch’ — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being one of the only other Democrats to successfully wield social media—and ‘a model for the future of progressive media.’ In the past year alone, he’s appeared at the Democratic National Convention, as well the left’s favorite podcast, ‘Pod Save America’ and the tour of Senator Bernie Sanders and AOC herself. He’s also done an interview with Jon Stewart for ‘The Daily Show,’ set to release in mid-May. … But Piker’s rise isn’t just the story of a young man realizing he can get rich by telling young Americans to hate their country and love their enemies — it’s the story of a platform that lets him promote it. Twitch’s 61-year-old CEO, Dan Clancy, is an apparent fan of Piker. In an interview with Bloomberg in April 2023, Clancy said he appreciates the streamer’s ‘frankness and bluntness.’” [FreePress]

Word on the Street

The Senate confirmed Tom Barrack as U.S. ambassador to Turkey by a 60-36 vote, with Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet (D-CO), Chris Coons (D-DE), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Mark Warner (D-VA) supporting him…

The Qatari Diar and Dar Global are slated to announce a deal to construct a Trump International beachside project north of Doha, the company’s first real estate development in the Gulf nation…

The Trump administration is pushing Egypt to allow commercial and military American vessels free passage through the Suez Canal in exchange for the administration’s strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen that have targeted ships transiting through the Red Sea…

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is backing Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, to replace outgoing CENTCOM Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, who is retiring this summer; Hegseth is boosting Cooper over Gen. James Mingus, an Army general who was widely expected to be tapped for the role…

The Treasury Department announced sanctions on six companies in China and Iran for their ties to Tehran’s ballistic missile program…

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is weighing the possibility of cutting the U.S. security coordinator role for the West Bank and Gaza Strip; the position, held by a three-star general, liaises between Israeli and Palestinian security officials…

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, who is traveling in the Middle East with his family, met in Manama this week with members of the Jewish community, including former Bahraini Ambassador to the U.S. Houda Noonoo…

A Native American Democratic Party activist is challenging the results of the Democratic National Committee’s recent leadership vote, arguing that the election process, by which activist David Hogg was selected as one of the party’s vice chairs, had “discriminated against three women of color candidates”…

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is making his bid for reelection as an independent, is gathering signatures on a newly created “EndAntiSemitism” ballot line…

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser is facing questions over an unreported 2023 trip she and four staffers took to Qatar, for which Doha paid more than $60,000; Bowser’s office, which initially claimed the trip was paid for by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, has asked Doha to sign a donation agreement two years after the trip took place…

The Texas state legislature overwhelmingly passed legislation that would codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism; the bill, which has already been passed by the state Senate, will be sent to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk…

A federal judge ruled that Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate who has been detained by immigration authorities for the last month, can proceed with a lawsuit alleging that his detention violates his First Amendment rights…

Germany’s center-left Social Democrats party agreed to join a coalition government with the country’s center-right Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union, positioning CDU leader Friedrich Merz to be the country’s next chancellor…

A new survey by the Jewish Federations of North America found that a third of Jews are more engaged with the Jewish community than they were before Oct. 7, 2023, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross reports…

Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics said in its annual report that the country’s population had exceeded 10 million for the first time in its history…

An Israeli man was sentenced to 10 years in prison for conspiring with Iranian agents to assassinate senior Israeli officials and for illegally entering an enemy country…

Iranian officials cited “false” documentation of the items stored at the Shahid Rajaee port prior to an explosion at the facility earlier this week…

Characterizing Turkey as a “potentially threatening regional power” led by a “pro-Hamas” president, a new report from the Jewish Institute for National Security of America released Wednesday argues that Turkey should not be considered for readmission into the F-35 fighter jet program, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…

Conservative commentator David Horowitz, the founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, died at 86…

Walter Frankenstein, who survived the Holocaust by hiding in locations throughout Germany before going on to fight in Israel’s War of Independence, died at 100…

World War II veteran and avid Mets fan Seymour Weiner, who became a viral sensation after he was honored as the team’s Veteran of the Game during Opening Day 2024, died at 98…

Pic of the Day

More than a dozen House lawmakers met on Tuesday with Abigail Mor Edan, an Israeli-American kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, at age 3, and her family.

Lawmakers in attendance included Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY), Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Susie Lee (D-NV), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), Laura Gillen (D-NY), Eugene Vindman (D-VA), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Grace Meng (D-NY), Sarah McBride (D-DE), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Andrew Clyde (R-GA), Mike Levin (D-CA), Randy Fine (R-FL) and Pete Aguilar (D-CA). 

Birthdays

“Wonder Woman” actress, Gal Gadot turns 40…

Rabbi, scholar and professor of Jewish studies at Yeshiva University, Saul J. Berman turns 86… Founder and CEO of Kansas City-based American Public Square, he was the U.S. ambassador to Portugal during the Obama administration, Allan J. Katz turns 78… Brooklyn-based clinical social worker, Marsha S. Rimler… Psychologist, author of several children’s books and president of the Saban Family Foundation, Cheryl Saban turns 74… Israeli Supreme Court justice until 2021, he was previously attorney general of Israel, Menachem “Meni” Mazuz turns 70… Partner in the communications and ad agency GMMB, he served as an advisor to President Obama in both his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, James David (Jim) Margolis turns 70… London-based international real estate investor and developer, Zachariasz “Zak” Gertler turns 69… Cartoonist and illustrator, best known for his over 100 magazine covers appearing on The New Yorker and other publications, Barry Blitt turns 67… Former commissioner at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, she was a U.S. Supreme Court law clerk, Chai R. Feldblum turns 66… Professor of sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, she served as president of Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Eva Illouz turns 64… Senior fellow at Misgav: the Institute for Zionist Strategy and National Security, David M. Weinberg… Borough president of Manhattan, Mark D. Levine turns 56… CEO of Newton, Mass.-based Gateways: Access to Jewish Education, focused on children with special educational needs, Tamar Davis… Senior director for U.S. Jewish grantmaking at the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, David Rittberg… Executive director of federal affairs at General Motors, Eric Feldman… Legislative director for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Omri Ceren… Senior policy advisor at Alston & Bird in Washington DC, Jonathan Jagoda… Chief communications officer at Business Insider, Ari Isaacman D’Angelo turns 40… Screen, stage and television actress and singer, Dianna Agron turns 39… Founder of Lubin Strategies, he is also an affiliate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center, Nathaniel (Nate) Lubin… Communications director for Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Rachel S. Cohen… Associate in the D.C office of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Daniel E. Wolman… Elementary schoolteacher at Broward County Public Schools, Jenna Luks… Reporter at The Wall Street Journal covering consumer behavior and economics, Rachel B. Wolfe… Director for NextGen at the World Jewish Congress, Yonatan (Yoni) Hammerman… Fund manager for a private foundation, Idan Megidish… Global account sales manager for Isotopia Molecular Imaging, Noam Aricha…