The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, an anti-Israel think tank in Washington that has pushed sympathetic positions on Iran, is sponsoring a panel discussion at the Doha Forum in the Qatari capital on Saturday — further underscoring how the two-day conference is including a range of extreme voices amid more centrist and mainstream figures.

The panel, billed as “Iran and the Changing Regional Security Environment,” will prominently feature former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who has used antisemitic rhetoric and was called the “propaganda arm” of the Iranian regime by officials in the first Trump administration, in a talk with Trita Parsi, executive vice president of Quincy and the founder of the National Iranian American Council, a pro-Iran lobbying group. 

Parsi, a fierce detractor of Israel, has previously faced accusations of operating as an undisclosed foreign agent for the Islamic Republic, which he has denied.

“On June 13, 2025, Israel initiated a war against Iran that lasted twelve days and that also brought the U.S. into direct confrontation with Iran for the first time,” reads a blurb describing the discussion. “This unprecedented event shattered the regional balance and compelled nations to rethink their security strategies. This session will examine the current state of regional affairs, assess its impact on diplomatic and security alignments, and explore potential pathways toward de-escalation and stability.”

The seemingly neutral tone of the summary is belied by omissions such as Iran’s sponsorship of regional terror proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah, among other rhetorical elisions that more broadly highlight Qatar’s own carefully managed approach to diplomatic engagement — which critics have cast as a two-faced effort to play both sides of opposing parties.

To that end, the oil-rich Gulf state, a major U.S. ally that has drawn scrutiny for hosting Hamas leaders and for its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, has attracted a wide assortment of speakers and partners to its annual forum in Doha, touted as a “global platform for dialogue” relating to “critical challenges facing our world.”

Its stated theme this year, according to a press release, is “Justice in Action: Beyond Promises to Progress.”

“As a convener of diverse voices, Doha Forum stands as a leading platform to explore how diplomacy, development, and humanitarian action can intersect to deliver measurable, inclusive progress,” Mubarak Ajlan Al-Kuwari, the event’s executive director, said in an announcement on Thursday.

In addition to Iran-friendly groups and figures like Parsi and the International Crisis Group, formerly led by Rob Malley — the controversial Iran envoy in the Biden administration — the summit is elevating figures who have embraced hostile views on Israel or promoted antisemic tropes. Most notably, Tucker Carlson, who has invited several antisemites to join his podcast for friendly or credulous interviews, will sit for a conversation on Sunday with Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

At the same time, the Gulf confab, which extends through the weekend, is also featuring a variety of establishment-oriented participants, obscuring the extremism and fringe positions of other guests set to receive equal or even more prominent billing at the event. 

Alongside Carlson, the forum, co-sponsored by CNN, the Atlantic Council and other mainstream institutions, includes a more traditional roster of speakers such as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, philanthropist Bill Gates and several world leaders.

More than 1,000 New Yorkers braved the frigid temperatures on Thursday night, stretching across Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side outside of the historic Park East Synagogue, surrounded by heavy police presence and voicing a unifying message: “We are proud New Yorkers, proud Jews and proud Zionists.” 

“The stakes in this moment could not be higher, because how we act will define our community for years to come,” Eric Goldstein, outgoing CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, told the crowd. “We gather outside the sacred space that was targeted weeks ago, standing together to defend our rights as Jews to worship safely and to support Israel’s right to exist as our Jewish homeland.” 

The scene was a sharp contrast from the one two weeks ago on that same street when a mob of anti-Israel demonstrators protested outside of the Modern Orthodox synagogue, which was hosting a Nefesh B’Nefesh event providing information on immigration to Israel, shouting chants including “death to the IDF” and “globalize the Intifada.” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch later called the protest “turmoil.”

The solidarity gathering, organized by UJA-Federation as a response to the Nov. 19 protest, drew a diverse coalition of participating Jewish groups, including more than 70 synagogues, schools and Jewish institutions, representing a wide range of denominations and political leanings. Other major Jewish groups acted as cosponsors, including the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, the Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the New York Board of Rabbis. 

Members of B’nai Jeshurun, a non-denominational and progressive Upper West Side synagogue stood side by side with congregants of The Altneu, an Orthodox congregation on the Upper East Side, to condemn antisemitism; Columbia University Hillel student leaders, who have witnessed some of New York City’s worst antisemitic protests on campus, came out in solidarity, as did Yeshiva University students and high schoolers from the Modern Orthodox SAR Academy in Riverdale and Manhattan’s Modern Orthodox Ramaz School and pluralistic Heschel School. Brooklynites representing the Park Slope Jewish Center and Prospect Heights Shul crossed the river to participate, as did members of Long Island and Westchester Jewish communities.

The rally marked the first major gathering of diverse Jewish groups since the release of the remaining living hostages kidnapped during the Oct, 7, 2023, attacks and a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in October. Throughout the war, such gatherings had become common across the U.S., with a unifying focus on bringing home the hostages. 

Speakers at the hourlong event, in addition to Goldstein, were Rabbi Arthur Schneier, who leads Park East Synagogue; Hindy Poupko, UJA-Federation senior vice president of community organizing and external relations; Rabbi Joe Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis; Rabba Sara Hurwitz, spiritual leader of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale; Rabbi Joanna Samuels, CEO of the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan; Rabbi David Ingber, founding rabbi of the non-denominational Romemu synagogue and senior director for Jewish Life at the 92nd Street Y; NYC Comptroller-elect Mark Levine; and Mark Treyger, CEO of JCRC-NY. The gathering also featured live performances by rapper Matisyahu and the Park East Day School choir. 

“We’re not going back — we’re only going forward,” said Treyger. “We’re going to work and fight to make sure that we see a day where every Jewish New Yorker, every member of our community, is safe, not just in our houses of worship but in every corner of our great city.” 

Schneier, who has served as senior rabbi of Park East Synagogue for more than 50 years, told Jewish Insider that the recent protest was “meant to incite fear and intimidation.”

“Chants of antisemitism, demonizing the State of Israel and its right to exist, and calling for a global intifada. Silence and indifference are not an option. No faith community should ever be met with threats, or fear risking their life to gather and pray. This gathering sends a powerful message,” he said

Schneier called for “safety and security and immediate legislation from the city and state to ban demonstrations in front of synagogues and all houses of worship,” which has been introduced by New York state legislators in recent days.  

“Let our voices be heard in solidarity — and together, we stand united against a surge of antisemitism that threatens peaceful coexistence in our city. What starts with the Jews doesn’t end with the Jews,” Schneier said, remembering his experience as an 8-year-old child in Vienna in 1938.   

“I witnessed my cherished synagogue smoldering to the ground during Kristallnacht — an organized, calculated assault on the Jewish community that was meant to terrorize and intimidate. It was just the precursor of what I lived through during the Holocaust.”

As anti-Israel demonstrators increasingly target synagogues in protests that have turned violent and used antisemitic rhetoric, some Jewish leaders and state lawmakers are now calling for more expansive legislative safeguards to help bolster protections for houses of worship.

The new efforts have come in the wake of threatening behavior outside synagogues in New York City and Los Angeles that drew forceful condemnation from elected officials and raised concerns among Jewish leaders who fear that such incidents will normalize antisemitic harassment disguised as anti-Zionism.

In New York, state lawmakers this week introduced a new bill to ban protests directly outside houses of worship. The legislation seeks to amend the existing state penal law by establishing a 25-foot buffer zone around religious sanctuaries to insulate congregants from facing intimidation and potential clashes with demonstrators that have occurred more regularly in recent years.

The bill, which would also apply to abortion clinics, was advanced in response to a controversial protest last month outside Park East Synagogue, a Modern Orthodox congregation in Manhattan, where about 200 activists disrupted an event educating attendees about immigration to Israel while chanting slogans including “death to the IDF” and “globalize the intifada,” interpreted as calls to violence against Jews.

“We’re in a very troubled time, and that’s going to mean we need to adapt, including with legislation,” Micah Lasher, an assemblyman in Manhattan who introduced the legislation with a fellow Jewish state senator, Sam Sutton, told Jewish Insider on Thursday.

He said that he had weighed free speech concerns while drafting the bill to protect “the right of people to speak out, even when that speech is hateful, with the right of people to express their religion freely.”

“We’re going to see more and more of this until we can more broadly curb antisemitism,” he cautioned, calling the protest in Los Angeles this week, which ended in the arrests of two demonstrators, “a harbinger of things to come” in the absence of further legislative action.

Nily Rozic, a Democratic assemblywoman from Queens who is co-sponsoring the bill, echoed that view. “Houses of worship should serve as peaceful sanctuaries, not punching bags for protesters,” she explained. “Following incidents in NYC and LA, it’s becoming apparent that creating no-protest zones outside houses of worship is absolutely necessary.”

In contrast with the incident in New York City, the protest that erupted in Los Angeles on Wednesday was more intrusive, with video showing anti-Israel demonstrators shouting inside the historic Wilshire Boulevard Temple — where one activist shattered a vase during a public safety event held with Korean community members.

Jewish community activists in California said they viewed the incident, coupled with the recent protest in New York City, as an impetus to take a closer look at state law relating to such demonstrations.

Julia Mates, the director of policy and government affairs at Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area, said that the state already has an existing law that protects access to houses of worship as well as abortion clinics — similar to the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which has been used by the Justice Department under President Donald Trump to target protesters charged with disrupting Jewish spaces.

Mates said that her organization last year had “started to reexamine the act” with an eye toward potentially expanding what she called the “bubble zone” protecting congregants, but tabled that effort in favor of focusing exclusively on legislation aimed at countering antisemitism in public schools.

But now, in light of recent events, “it might be a good time to reexamine a fixed distance rule and gaps in enforcement,” she told JI on Thursday.

“The environment is such that we need to take another look at this,” Tyler Gregory, CEO of the Bay Area JCRC, vowed. “This is getting a lot of chatter in the community. I think that Jewish legislators and organizations haven’t figured out where we want to land yet,” he continued. “But it’s certainly the topic du jour.”

Noah Farkas, who leads the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, said that his organization, for its part, has “been pushing for” legislation to more forcefully regulate such demonstrations “for a long while.”

“While we recognize the right of anyone to assemble lawfully to express themselves,” he explained to JI Thursday, “it should not endanger the lives or limit the liberty of anyone else. And while this is a matter on a legal and political level of balancing one set of rights next to another, there is yet a deeper strain of values that needs to be addressed.”

Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA), a Jewish Democrat from Los Angeles, said the Wilshire demonstration was “deeply personal,” noting that she had attended services at the synagogue during the High Holidays. 

“At a time of surging antisemitism, no one should have to choose between their safety and their right to worship,” she said in a statement shared with JI. “I’ll always protect free speech, but when protests cross into criminal intimidation, threats or blocking access, authorities must step in to uphold the law and protect Americans’ right to gather and worship without intimidation.”

Julie Fishman Rayman, senior vice president of policy and political affairs at the American Jewish Committee, called the Los Angeles protest “horrific and beyond unacceptable,” while citing legal “tools that already exist and should be used to maximum impact” in order to hold anti-Israel demonstrators accountable.

As Jewish community activists are now considering efforts to strengthen such laws, Lasher said his new legislation “strikes the right balance” on free speech and safety issues, and “could potentially be a model for other states.”

“For as long as we’re dealing with these sorts of hateful events,” he said, “we should make sure we are giving appropriate tools that are constitutional to enable people to enter synagogues without fear of intimidation.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, voiced interest in supporting the bill on Thursday, saying that she was “willing to look seriously at a buffer to protect that fundamental right we have, which is to express ourselves and practice the faith we choose to without fear and intimidation.”

“I don’t say whether or not I’ll support bills,” she told reporters, “but if it shows up in another place, I’m taking that very seriously. I think it’s time. I will be supportive of that.”

Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City and a democratic socialist long vocally critical of Israel, has also expressed interest in learning more about such legislation, after he had faced backlash for accusing the Park East Synagogue of promoting activities “in violation of international law,” even as he sought to distance himself from the protesters.

Mamdani’s team did not respond to a request for comment from JI about the newly proposed bill.

Several major Jewish organizations rallied around Ron Halber, the CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, after a spokesperson for Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) attacked Halber as an “apologist for the Netanyahu government” and unrepresentative of his community.

The Van Hollen spokesperson’s comments came in response to remarks by Halber to reporters in which Halber said that many in the Maryland Jewish community feel “betrayed” by the senator and that he has failed to show empathy for Israel and the Jewish people.

The JCRC’s Board of Directors, in a statement late Thursday, offered Halber, who has led the group for nearly three decades, its full support, and applauded his work.

“Recent personal attacks leveled against [Ron] by Sen. Chris Van Hollen are undignified, unwarranted, and untrue. Ron and his leadership team have our full backing and support,” the board said in a statement. “In a time marked by division and discord, political leaders should model respectful behavior and discourse. We are deeply disappointed that Sen. Van Hollen chose instead to malign Ron and our organization, but we are heartened by the outpouring of support from so many partners and friends. They know what we know: Ron and the JCRC support not only Jewish families, but the millions of people who live in the DMV.”

William Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said he’s known, worked with and respected both Halber and Van Hollen for decades, and that Van Hollen has been his representative for much of that time.

“That is why I am stunned, offended, and frankly angry at Senator Van Hollen’s personal attack on Ron,” Daroff said on X. “Ron is a respected communal leader who has spent decades serving Maryland Jews, advocating for security, and giving voice to a community that is anxious and afraid in this moment of rising hostility.”

He said that Halber’s criticism was “not partisan” and was at its core a call for empathy for Israeli lives, Israel’s security dilemmas and the “vulnerability so many Maryland Jews feel today,” but was “met instead with derision.”

“We can disagree about Israeli policy. We can debate strategy and tone. But labeling American Jews as apologists when they challenge you is not discourse. It is a smear. It cheapens the conversation at a time when Jewish anxiety is real and rising, and when we need leaders who hear us rather than dismiss us,” Daroff said. “Our community deserves respect. We deserve empathy. We deserve partnership grounded in good faith. We will speak up for those expectations.”

The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, another major D.C.-area Jewish umbrella organization, also offered support for “the vital role Ron Halber and the JCRC of Greater Washington play in advocating for Israel, Jewish safety, belonging, and connection across Greater Washington.”

“Ron has worked tirelessly for years to build a stronger Jewish community and Greater Washington region,” the organization continued. “At a time of extreme divisiveness in our society, our public officials should not be contributing to these divides through personal attacks.”

AIPAC said the statement by Van Hollen’s team was “shameful.”

“Disagreeing with you, Senator, doesn’t make American Jews apologists for a foreign leader,” the group said on X. “Resorting to this tired and toxic trope only reflects the shallowness of the Senator’s arguments.”

The Jewish Federations of North America, the umbrella group that represents hundreds of Jewish communities and groups around the country, said in a statement that it “stand[s] with our esteemed colleague Ron Halber … following the deeply troubling personal attack leveled against him.”

“Ron and [the JCRC of Greater Washington] understand and speak for their community, and their well-documented concerns should be listened to and addressed on the merits,” JFNA continued. “We are grateful to all the public officials in the Greater Washington DC area who are engaged in productive conversations and collaborations with the Jewish community.”

Yehuda Kurtzer, the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, called the statement “unconscionable” and said Halber deserves an apology from Van Hollen.

“Politicians need to have thicker skins in responding to criticism, especially when it is directed at them by respected representatives of minority communities. That’s part of the job,” Kurtzer said on Facebook. “Van Hollen has the right to cut off contact with the organized Jewish community even though I think that’s a toxic political choice. But he should not respond publicly like this.”

He added that, “to characterize a pro-Israel view as an apologetic for a foreign government is to evoke unfounded suspicion of foreign interference and to cast the[m] as therefore ‘un-American.’ This is dangerous stuff and politicians shouldn’t do it.”

Halber’s counterparts in other parts of the country have also rallied to his defense. “The contempt with which [Sen. Van Hollen] showed for Ron, the DC JCRC, and the Jewish community is unacceptable. He needs to apologize,” Tyler Gregory, the CEO of the Bay Area JCRC, said.

Jeremy Burton, the CEO of the Boston JCRC said that “Labeling American Jews as ‘apologists’ just because you disagree with them & their (our) attachment to the Israeli people is unacceptable” and also called on Van Hollen to apologize.

Amy Spitalnick, who leads the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, lamented both Van Hollen’s attack on Halber as well as New York Jewish figures’ criticisms of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

“We can’t even engage without resorting to ad hominem attacks. A Senator’s office calls a respected Jewish community professional an ‘apologist for Netanyahu.’ Multiple leaders call the Mayor-elect an ‘enemy of the Jewish people,’” Spitalnick said. “Countering antisemitism and hate, protecting democracy, advancing peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians all require us to engage — not disparage and smear — even and especially when we disagree. This is all so dangerous.”

Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, said that “This was a display of bigotry unbecoming a US senator. [Van Hollen] owes the entire community, and especially [Halber], an apology.

Though he did not address the situation or the senator directly, Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore — who addressed a JCRC legislative breakfast the same day as Halber and Van Hollen’s comments and offered praise and thanks to Halber — also reaffirmed his partnership with the D.C. JCRC in an X post on Thursday.

“There’s no higher goal for me than ensuring people feel safe where they live, work, and worship. That’s why our administration is fully committed to combating antisemitism in all its forms, and why I’m proud to announce that my upcoming budget proposal will preserve historic funding for hate crime protection grants,” Moore said, alongside a photograph from his speech in front of a JCRC banner. “Thank you to @JCRCgw for your partnership in this work.”

Eileen Filler-Corn, the Jewish and Democratic former speaker of the Virginia House, said on Facebook that she’s “offended by the personal attack directed at Ronald Halber,” describing him as a “respected leader in our Jewish community” and an “essential” advocate for the community.

“We can and should have healthy debates about the Israeli government and disagreement is part of a vibrant democracy, but labeling American Jews as ‘apologists’ for Netanyahu simply because they express support for the State of Israel is unacceptable, unproductive and entirely out of line,” Filler-Corn said. “Our community is hurting. We are being targeted and antisemitism is surging. At a moment like this, personal attacks on those who advocate for our safety and dignity do nothing but deepen the pain.”

Van Hollen does have some defenders in the Jewish community. Hadar Suskind, the CEO of the left-wing Israel advocacy group New Jewish Narrative, praised Van Hollen’s engagement since the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks and with the war in Gaza.

“Chris has always been there for his Jewish constituents and in support of the people of Israel,” Susskind said on X. “But you know what, like the majority of Marylanders, including Jewish Marylanders, he disagrees with many of the policies and actions of the Netanyahu government. And he is 100% right to do so and to say so.”

“As American Jews who care about Israel we should want all of our elected officials [to] do what Senator Van Hollen is doing, speak the difficult truths that need to be told and support a better future for Israelis and Palestinians,” he continued. “​​The days of demanding that elected officials ‘pick a side’ and show loyalty to ‘one team’ are over.”

Speaking to the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington’s annual Maryland legislative breakfast on Wednesday, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, touted as a prospective presidential candidate, offered support for Israel and for members of the Jewish community facing antisemitism.

“Today, I want to be loud and clear, that Maryland stands with the Israeli people and we support their right to exist in the region with the same sense of safety and security that we all want,” Moore said, echoing remarks he made at a memorial days after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, which had been his most recent address to the JCRC.

Pointing to his background as a veteran and a Rhodes scholar who studied the rise of Islamism in the Western Hemisphere, Moore emphasized that he understands clearly the threat of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and that Hamas “has not been and will never be a faithful partner in any peace process.”

He said that lasting peace requires “humane leadership” for the Palestinians, as well as by Israel, the United States and any other countries involved in the future of Gaza.

“The safety and the peace and security of all people has got to be something that we not just believe in, but we advocate for,” Moore said. “A very clear understanding that the safety of Palestinians is also the safety of Israelis, and the safety of Israelis is the safety of Palestinians.”

“The message that I had on Oct. 13, 2023, has not changed, because I understand that it’s rooted in an internal sense of who I am,” Moore added, explaining that his “foundation comes from faith and with that, an understanding of our commitment to humanity.”

Moore emphasized that many of his ancestors have been ministers, and also recounted the story of how his great-grandfather and his family, who lived in South Carolina, were forced to leave the United States for Jamaica when they faced threats because his great-grandfather preached a message of equality. 

He said that his patriotic foundation comes from his grandfather, who witnessed that rejection from the United States, but later returned to the U.S. anyway. “It birthed an unbelievable love that he held on to [for] the remainder of his life.”

Moore also expressed a strong commitment to ensuring the safety of the Jewish community in Maryland, saying that he wants to see Maryland be a “shining example” where “hate will absolutely find no oxygen.”

He announced that, in his 2027 budget request to the state legislature, he would be maintaining support for $10 million in funding for Maryland’s Protecting Against Hate Crimes Grant Program, which offers funding for nonprofits and religious organizations.

The program, with Moore’s support, was doubled in the 2026 budget from $5 million in the 2026 budget.

“We are going to make sure that people know that not only do we believe in being a loving community, but that we also believe in consequences for those who don’t,” Moore said. “Because as Dr. [Martin Luther] King said, ‘Laws don’t change the heart, but laws do protect it from the heartless.’ For those in our society that choose to foment hate … I want to be very clear, in the state of Maryland, you will find accountability, and in the state of Maryland, you will find consequences.”

He also made reference to the partnership between Black and Jewish leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, who he said were pursuing that same goal, to ensure that everyone can feel safe and have their voice and vote counted.

“We are going to ensure that every single Marylander, including our Jewish Marylanders, that they know that they are coming up in a state that’s loving and supportive … and knows that people should be able to relish in support of their God without knowing that it’s something that is going to cause them to be a target,” Moore said.

Moore said he’d been inspired by a meeting with Sigal Manzuri, who lost two daughters in the Nova Music Festival massacre on Oct. 7. He said he met Manzuri alongside Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and has kept in touch with her since.

“She said to me, as we were praying together, ‘Keep searching for love, because in love there is light,’” Moore said. “I think about her words oftentimes because we’ve seen dark times before, in this state and in this country.”

He connected Manzuri’s words to the need to recognize the dark parts in Maryland and U.S. history, while also recognizing that American democracy is “still the greatest experiment in world history. … Nobody here can argue that our history has been neat, that our history has not had hills and valleys, but it’s always been a history that has been worth fighting for, and it’s always been a history where we fought together.”

Moore also generally praised the attendees — leaders in the Jewish community in various capacities — for choosing to “lean in” in “dark, challenging, difficult times.”

“I’m grateful to walk hand in hand with you today, tomorrow and always to make sure that in this moment we fulfill our promise, tikkun olam,” Moore concluded, using the Hebrew phrase for repairing the world.

Moore and his speech were met with an enthusiastic reception from the crowd.

Several members of Maryland’s congressional delegation also addressed the breakfast meeting.

Notably, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) — who reneged on her pledge as a candidate to support U.S. aid to Israel when she voted earlier this year to suspend some weapons sales to the Jewish state — and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) — who has supported various measures against Israel, including a bill that critics have described as an effective arms embargo for key systems — received warm welcomes and standing ovations from the JCRC crowd.

Alsobrooks made only a brief mention of Israel during her remarks — praising the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas — focusing otherwise on her efforts to combat antisemitism and other broader policy goals and initiatives.

“I know that I am not alone in welcoming the ceasefire in Gaza, urging, still, the return of the final two hostages,” Alsobrooks said, in comments that were made hours before the body of Thai hostage Sudthisak Rinthalak was identified. “It is my profound prayer as we go into 2026 that a permanent end to the war will be there, and that the beginning of healing that leads to a durable peace and the security that Israelis deserve. Peace and security and self-determination for our Palestinians, brothers and sisters as well. This is a fight that must continue every single day.”

She said that the wounds of Oct. 7 have not yet healed, and have continued to fester in part through the surging antisemitism seen across the country.

Alsobrooks said it is “our profound duty to speak up in this moment against rising antisemitism, at a time when we are seeing the vitriol and the violence against our Jewish brothers and sisters rising in a way that we have never, ever seen before.”

Raskin, speaking about security grants for Jewish institutions, said, “We’ve seen a sequence of racist and antisemitic hate crimes around the country that constitute a direct threat to people’s safety and security in their homes, in synagogues, in churches, at nursery schools and so on. … That’s a tremendously valuable investment of money.”

Reps. Glenn Ivey (D-MD) and April McClain Delaney (D-MD) also spoke on a panel alongside Raskin, also offering support for the security grant program.

Despite having publicly spoken out against Raskin for sponsoring legislation that would severely restrict U.S. aid to Israel and expressed concerns about Alsobrooks’ votes to halt certain arms sales to Israel, JCRC CEO Ron Halber said he believes both remain friends and supporters of Israel.

“Jamie Raskin, I believe, is a friend of the Jewish community and I believe he is a supporter of Israel,” Halber insisted to reporters at the close of the breakfast. “We haven’t been happy with some of his votes, but he does it in a thoughtful style. … He is a progressive Zionist who’s disappointed with the Israeli government, but he’s not disappointed with the entire State of Israel.”

He said he’d had an hourlong conversation with Alsobrooks after her votes on the aid measures, and said, “I think that that vote did not represent a shift in her commitment to Israel’s strategic qualitative edge and support for Israel militarily.”

“I consider Angela Alsobrooks a friend of the Jewish people and a friend of the state of Israel,” he added later.

He pointed blame for her and other Democrats’ votes to block arms shipments toward rhetoric online accusing Israel of genocide and deliberate starvation of Palestinians, adding, “those combined created an enormous groundswell that senators who normally wouldn’t have voted that way, voted that way.”

That stands in stark contrast to Halber’s description of Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) as the most problematic anti-Israel leader in the Senate and who has left the “overwhelming majority” of the Maryland Jewish community feeling “betrayed.”

A spokesperson for Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) attacked Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington CEO Ron Halber by name, accusing the Jewish leader of being an “apologist for the Netanyahu government” in response to Halber’s own criticisms of the Maryland senator to reporters earlier Wednesday. 

In his role, Halber works to build bridges between the Jewish community in the Washington area and local elected officials. The comments reflect a remarkable breach between a leading representative of the D.C.-area Jewish community and a senator whom Halber said had once been an ally on a range of issues.

“Sen. Van Hollen, I think, has dramatically lost his way with support for Israel. He’s become the leading senator agitating against Israel in the United States Senate,” Halber told reporters at a JCRC breakfast event in Washington’s Maryland suburbs. “His social media is filled with a lack of empathy for Jewish suffering. It’s filled with a lack of empathy for Israel’s strategic position. It’s almost like [he] cannot wait for the next opportunity to jump down Israel’s throat.”

Halber said that the situation with Van Hollen is a “shame” because Van Hollen and the JCRC have worked together on a range of issues in the past, including funding for Jewish institutions and various domestic policy issues.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) and Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Glenn Ivey (D-MD) and April McClain Delaney (D-MD) were all in attendance at the breakfast, along with numerous local officials.

“I’m very upset about it, and so are many people in this room, because that’s not the Sen. Van Hollen that so many people in this room worked hard to get elected,” Halber continued. “On the issue of Israel, I would say the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community feels betrayed by the senator.”

The Van Hollen spokesperson fired back, accusing Halber of running cover for the Israeli government and failing to represent the range of viewpoints in Maryland’s Jewish community.

“Senator Van Hollen is committed to a values-based foreign policy that holds our friends and our adversaries to the same standards. That’s why he continues to support the people of Israel, but the actions of the Netanyahu Government have increasingly not aligned with our values,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“The Senator often speaks with Marylanders who hold varying perspectives here and has met on many occasions with families of hostages and victims of the heinous Hamas attacks of October 7th. Instead of representing the diversity of views that, in the Senator’s experience, are held by the Jewish community of Maryland, Ron Halber has become an apologist for the Netanyahu government.”

Halber said he’d had a two-hour meeting with Van Hollen a year ago, asking the senator to moderate his rhetoric by showing a greater level of “empathy” and “understanding” of the situation Israel and its people are facing — recommendations Halber said the senator had failed to implement, making Halber “angrier.”

“I think it’s very easy to stand with Israel when you’re crying over Jewish victims, but it’s harder to stand up with Israel when she’s doing the right thing,” Halber continued. “And I think the senator has shown a lack of strategic understanding of Israel’s dilemma. And I’m not saying he’s got to be Israel’s cheerleader, but it would be nice if he had more balance in his remarks.”

He said that many people have delivered a similar message to Van Hollen, asking him to offer greater acknowledgement of Israel’s struggles, but have instead received a “consistent, one-sided narrative.”

“The hard thing is to show up when your friends need you, and right now, we’ve needed him, and he hasn’t been there,” Halber concluded.

Responding to the Van Hollen spokesperson’s accusation that Halber’s views are unrepresentative of the Jewish community, the JCRC head emphasized that more than 60 elected officials joined the breakfast event, with similar participation expected at upcoming Virginia and D.C.-focused breakfasts, and that a diverse array of Jewish organizations — religiously and politically — participate in the JCRC and the gatherings.

“Our job is to articulate a representation that represents the broad swath and mainstream of the Jewish community, which I believe we successfully do, and I’m proud of our record,” Halber said. “[JCRC member organizations] all know that JCRC represents the community with dignity and with the greatest broadest consensus and inclusivity as possible. … I’m very proud of the ability of the JCRC to bring such a diverse Jewish community under one tent where they all feel comfortable and represented.”

At the JCRC breakfast, Halber won plaudits from Moore, Maryland’s Democratic governor, who praised him as a dependable sounding board and advisor on difficult issues. 

“When you’re debating, when you’re trying to understand the moment, when you’re trying to remember how we need to respond, when we are watching walls collapse among us, and who can help you get that clarity, even when I have to call him [Halber] at 11 o’clock at night,” Moore said. “By the end of the conversation, I’m lifted up.”

Speaking at the Israel Hayom summit in Manhattan on Tuesday, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned of the influence of social media in shaping young people’s perceptions on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“There is a great deal of valid concern about how Israel is viewed, not just around the world, but from the United States, how Jewish Americans are viewed, and what is being seen as a significant increase in antisemitism in real life and online,” said Clinton. “It’s time now that the hostages are back and people can breathe again, that everyone needs to take stock of where we are, both in Israel and in this country, learn the lessons that perhaps can help us determine a more productive future.”

Clinton said she believes growing hostility toward Israel is a “generational” issue, rather than a “Republican versus Democrat” divide.

“A lot of the challenge is with younger people. More than 50% of young people in America get their news from social media,” said Clinton, who added that the problem lies in the information users are receiving “and the conclusions they are drawing from it.” 

Clinton recalled teaching at Columbia University, where she is a professor of practice at the School of International and Public Affairs, during and after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks and seeing this impact firsthand.

“We began to realize that our students — smart, well-educated young people from our own country, from around the world — where were they getting their information? They were getting their information from social media, particularly TikTok. That is where they were learning about what happened on Oct. 7,” said Clinton. “What they were being told on social media was not just one sided, it was pure propaganda.”

Clinton said it was often difficult to engage in “reasonable discussion” in such a climate because students lacked historical knowledge and “had very little context,” calling it “frankly shocking.” She also warned that in addition to social media, she saw immediate and planned efforts to distort the context of the Oct. 7 attacks.

“There was an organized effort that was prepared literally on Oct. 8 to begin to try to both provide mis- and disinformation about what had happened on Oct. 7, what the meaning was, what the history between the Israelis and the Palestinians [was],” said Clinton. 

A key way forward, according to Clinton, is finding an effective way to talk about Israel to the younger generation. She added that Israel has “the worst PR.”

“The story that needed to be told was not getting told as effectively as I thought it should. And I think that’s only worse now,” said Clinton. “We have to do a better job of talking through the importance of supporting Israel and Israel’s security in a way that crosses generations.”

Members of the United Nations General Assembly are renewing their push to curb or eliminate the Security Council veto, intensifying concern over whether such a reform would make it easier for the international body to target Israel. 

The “veto initiative,” adopted in 2022, requires the General Assembly to convene a debate any time a permanent member of the Security Council — the United States, United Kingdom, France, China or Russia — blocks a resolution. Since then, 17 vetoes have triggered General Assembly meetings.

During the war between Israel and Hamas, the Security Council attempted multiple times to pass resolutions calling for an “immediate” and “unconditional” ceasefire in Gaza. The United States often cast the lone veto, arguing the measures were one-sided and would ultimately benefit Hamas. 

Delegates from several countries have argued that U.S. vetoes have prevented the 15-member body from taking meaningful action and that the debates prompted by the initiative have produced “little tangible impact.”

“The veto, once envisioned as a safeguard for peace, has too often become a barrier to collective action,” said Latvia’s representative during a Nov. 20 General Assembly meeting, speaking on behalf of the Baltic and Nordic states. “Time and again, we have seen the veto used or threatened to block [Security] Council action to protect civilians in Sudan and Gaza.”

This has led member states to call for abolishing the veto entirely, arguing that a single vote enables permanent members to endorse “the worst levels of cruelty and barbarity,” according to Colombia’s representative.

But many in the pro-Israel community warn that eliminating the veto would dramatically accelerate what they see as entrenched anti-Israel bias at the U.N. The General Assembly has adopted 173 resolutions against Israel and 80 against all other countries combined between 2015 and 2024. In 2025 alone, the GA is projected to pass 16 resolutions on Israel and 10 on the entire rest of the world, according to the pro-Israel watchdog group UN Watch.

If the veto were removed, the United States would no longer be able to block resolutions viewed as hostile or disproportionately focused on Israel, a shift experts said would allow such measures to advance far more easily.

“Anti-Israel bias at the United Nations is pervasive, and the U.S. veto is the only thing standing in the way of the body passing binding resolutions that would pose a danger to the Jewish state,” said David May, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “A U.N. Security Council without a U.S. veto would be indistinguishable from Students for Justice in Palestine or a pro-Hamas rally.”

Elliott Abrams, who served as Iran envoy in the first Trump administration, told Jewish Insider that efforts to restrict or eliminate the veto are not new and that doing so would pose serious risks for Israel.

“Any restriction accepted by the United States would endanger Israel, because the U.S. has so often been Israel’s only defender in the Security Council,” said Abrams. “With an automatic anti-Israel majority in the General Assembly, the U.S. veto is critical.”

“President Trump should adopt a very simple policy,” said Abrams. “Just say no.”

Both the U.S. and Russia defended the use of the veto and rejected any effort to alter it. Julie Rayman, the American Jewish Committee’s senior vice president for policy and political affairs, told JI that this opposition and structural realities make changes to the veto unlikely to occur.

“The veto power can only be changed through an amendment to the U.N. Charter, which requires unanimous agreement of all five permanent members,” said Rayman. “There’s no realistic chance this will happen, so the system isn’t currently at risk of being changed to allow even greater disproportionate targeting of Israel at the U.N.” 

May echoed those sentiments, calling efforts to eliminate the veto “aspirational,” and adding that “the five permanent Security Council members who hold a veto are not inclined to relinquish their power.” 

However, May said there are mechanisms countries could employ to “circumvent” the veto. 

“For example, the Palestinian Authority’s effort to expel Israel from the United Nations came up against the U.S. veto at the Security Council,” said May. “Instead, there was talk of having the credentials of the Israeli delegation revoked, something within the remit of the General Assembly, effectively achieving an expulsion without Security Council support.”

Israel’s Iron Beam system, which intercepts missiles with lasers, will be delivered to the IDF for initial operational use at the end of the month, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Daniel Gold, head of the Israeli Ministry of Defense Research and Development Directorate, said at the International DefenseTech Summit at Tel Aviv University on Monday. 

“With development complete and a comprehensive testing program that has validated the system’s capabilities, we are prepared to deliver initial operational capability to the IDF on Dec. 30, 2025. Simultaneously, we are already advancing the next-generation systems,” Gold said.

According to Gold, “the Iron Beam laser system is expected to fundamentally change the rules of engagement on the battlefield.”

Former Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, chairman of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which developed and produced the Iron Beam system, told the Misgav Mideast Horizons Podcast in an episode to be released Wednesday that the new missile defense system represents a “laser revolution.” (Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov co-hosts the podcast.)

“For the first time in human history, we are able to shoot down missiles, rockets, even artillery shells, mortar shells, cruise missiles, airplanes as well — not with projectiles, not with missiles or artillery shells, but with light,” Steinitz said. 

According to Steinitz, American, Chinese, British, German and Russian companies have tried to develop effective laser weapons for decades. 

“We managed to do it and we already intercepted [projectiles] in tests,” he said, noting that Lite Beam, a smaller version of the Iron Beam system, was successfully used in October 2024 to intercept roughly 50 UAVs shot at Israel by Hezbollah from Lebanon. 

“This is revolutionary, and I am confident that this is just the beginning,” he added.

Iron Beam will initially be used to shoot down short and long-range missiles from Lebanon and Gaza, and the combined use of Iron Beam and the Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defense systems, also produced by Rafael, will bring Israel close to 100% interception, Steinitz said. 

He does not expect Iron Beam to fully replace Iron Dome nor David’s Sling in the coming years, because factors such as poor weather conditions and very large barrages could make the laser systems less effective.

The use of the laser system will also drastically lower the costs of missile defense, Steinitz said, because each use of the Iron Beam system costs around $3, as opposed to about $50,000 per Iron Dome interceptor. As such, it will cost less for Israel to intercept a rocket than it costs for its enemies to produce them, at $5,000-10,000.

In addition, Steinitz said that the Iron Beam system works faster than the Iron Dome.

“Once the [rocket] is rising over Gaza, interception will start immediately, because the laser can reach the incoming rocket at the speed of light,” he said. “With the Iron Dome, it’s two missiles flying, one from Gaza and one from Tel Aviv to meet each other midway.” 

Shooting down rockets over Gaza will also mitigate the need for Israelis to run to shelters and safe rooms due to falling missile and interceptor fragments.

“We won’t sound the alarm in Tel Aviv, because we should be able to see [an interception] immediately if we succeed to intercept, and if we fail to intercept, we will have another opportunity, and then we shall put on the alarm,” Steinitz explained.

Steinitz also said that in the coming years, Rafael is likely to develop laser-based systems to intercept longer range missiles, such as those shot at Israel by the Houthis from Yemen and by Iran in the last two years.

A vote to remove sixth Israeli President Chaim Herzog’s name from a public park was taken off of Dublin City Council’s agenda, after sparking an uproar in the Irish Jewish community, Jerusalem and Washington over the weekend. 

Herzog, father of current Israeli President Isaac Herzog, was born in Belfast and grew up in Dublin, and was the son of Ireland’s Chief Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, who later became Israel’s first chief rabbi. Chaim Herzog fought in the British Army in World War II, taking part in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, and was the head of IDF intelligence and Israeli ambassador to the U.N. — famously tearing up its “Zionism is racism” resolution — before serving as president in 1983-1993.

The park in Dublin was named after Herzog in 1995, to coincide with the 3,000th anniversary of Jerusalem’s establishment. It is adjacent to Ireland’s only Jewish school and close to major Orthodox and Progressive synagogues.

The plan to remove Herzog’s name came after a campaign to replace it with the name of Hind Rajab, a Palestinian girl killed during the Gaza war. Another reported proposal was to name the park “Free Palestine.” 

One member of the Dublin City Council Commemorations and Naming committee, Conor Reddy, wrote a post on X on Oct. 7, 2023 sharing a photo of a bulldozer from Gaza tearing down a barrier with Israel and added the text: “Tear down the fences, demolish the walls.” In another post that day, he said, “Resistance is heroic.” The following day, he wrote on X that the massive Hamas terrorist attacks “should be celebrated and supported … [and] should be embraced by everyone who values justice … It is beautiful.” 

The entire naming committee, except for one member, voted last week in favor of excising Herzog’s name, and to initiate a consultation process to select a new name. 

The next step would have been for the full Dublin City Council to vote on the name removal, which was scheduled for Monday. However, Dublin City Council Chief Executive Richard Shakespeare announced on Sunday that the vote would be withdrawn because the council’s naming committee did not follow the proper procedure. In addition, Dublin Mayor Ray McAdam said the committee had not provided the council with a sufficiently detailed report to make an informed decision. 

The change to the council’s agenda came after leading figures in the Irish government, as well as in Jerusalem and Washington, expressed opposition to renaming the park.

Though Ireland’s national government has taken the most anti-Israel stance in Europe since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin called on Sunday for the motion to rename Herzog Park to be withdrawn. 

“The proposal would erase the distinctive and rich contribution to Irish life of the Jewish community over many decades … The proposal is a denial of our history and will, without any doubt, be seen as antisemitic,” he said in a statement. 

Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee noted that Herzog “is an important figure for many people, particularly for members of Ireland’s Jewish community. The government has been openly critical of the policies and actions of the government of Israel in Gaza and the West Bank … Renaming a Dublin park in this way — to remove the name of an Irish Jewish man — has nothing to do with this and has no place in our inclusive republic. … I urge Dublin City Councillors to vote against it.”

Irish Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Simon Harris said he agreed with McEntee and called the proposal “offensive.” Minister for European Affairs and Defense Thomas Byrne said that Herzog’s “story is an Irish story,” calling for the council to drop the proposal. 

Ireland is also pulling its “Occupied Territories Bill” to boycott Israeli products from the West Bank in light of a “changed political climate” as a result of the ceasefire in Gaza, the Irish Mail on Sunday reported. The legislation faced legal challenges due to its violation of European Union trade rules, and, as several members of Congress pointed out, could run afoul of U.S. states’ laws penalizing those who boycott Israel and damage relations between Washington and Dublin. 

Former Irish Justice Minister Alan Shatter told Jewish Insider that the government responses to the proposed Herzog Park name change, which came about 24 hours after the announcement from Dublin City Council, arose from concern in the government “about the bad international publicity. … I think they’re a little freaked by all the international condemnation,” much of which came from Jerusalem and Washington. 

The city council is independent and does not have to abide by the national government’s direction on naming matters, and parties to the left of the current government have a majority on the council. As such, removing Herzog’s name may have had majority support despite government party leaders’ opposition.

Reddy posted on X that the vote “is being pulled from the agenda after bad faith smears from Zionists [and] Americans. There is nothing antisemitic about removing the name [and] there was nothing wrong with the procedure that brought us to this point! Shocking.” 

Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s office released a statement on Saturday that the name change would “harm the legacy of the sixth President of the State of Israel, the late Chaim Herzog, as well as harming the unique expression of the historical connection between the Irish and Jewish peoples. … Removing the Herzog name, if it happens, would be a shameful and disgraceful move. We hope that the legacy of a figure at the forefront of establishing the relations between Israel and Ireland, and the fight against antisemitism and tyranny, will still get the respect it deserves today.

Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog, another one of Chaim Herzog’s sons, called the proposed name change “sad,” and said it was “painful to see how Ireland, once home to a proud, thriving Jewish community, has become the scene of raging antisemitism. Ireland is now one of the most virulent anti-Israel countries in Europe, blurring the line between criticizing Israeli policies and questioning Israel’s right to exist.” He called on Jewish organizations in the U.S. and worldwide to speak up in “denouncing this shame.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that the proposed name change showed that “there is no decision more accurate and just than my decision to close our embassy in Dublin,” adding that the city “has become the capital of antisemitism in the world.”

“The Dublin Municipality has decided to remove the name of Chaim Herzog … What cannot be removed is the disgrace of the Irish antisemitic and anti-Israeli obsession,” Sa’ar added.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) posted on X: “When you think it couldn’t get worse in Ireland regarding animosity toward Israel and the Jewish people, it just did. … I don’t know what the people of Dublin are trying to say, but this is what I hear: A complete turning upside down of history when it comes to the Jewish people and the state of Israel. Modern Ireland … unfortunately has become a cesspool of antisemitism.”

Graham later wrote that he was “glad to hear efforts to rename Herzog Park in Dublin have been rejected.”

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called the proposal “an incredible insult to the Herzog family whose roots are deep in Ireland. Let’s hope decent Irish people stop this madness!” 

After the motion was withdrawn, Huckabee wrote that “Ireland still has rational and thoughtful people … Hopefully this ends a very targeted form of  bigotry pushed by a few people who should be ashamed of themselves.” 

The Jewish Representative Council of Ireland stated that the motion “sends a hurtful and isolating message to a small minority community that has contributed to Ireland for centuries. We call on Dublin City Councillors to reject this motion. The removal of the Herzog name from this park would be widely understood as an attempt to erase our Irish Jewish history.” 

Shatter, a lifelong Dublin resident who had a 14-year national political career, lamented on X that “Ireland’s politics … has become systematically antisemitic.” 

Following the proposal’s withdrawal, Shatter said that “Dublin City Council’s Mayor should publicly apologize to the Jewish community for the stress [and] hurt caused [and] also apologize to the Herzog family.” 

“Until the government adopts a more balanced approach to the complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, demands Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups end their violence and like [the Provisional Irish Republican Army] decommission their arms and abandons its inflammatory rhetoric, antisemitism in Ireland will continue to escalate and there will be further egregious, shameful examples,” Shatter wrote.

If Dublin eventually moves to change Herzog Park’s name, Shatter told JI that there may be legal recourse against it, should the council move to do so. 

“In my analysis, the city council has violated its legal obligations, both international and domestic,” he said. “They failed to engage in any consultative process with the Jewish community in Dublin, failed to communicate its intentions to the Herzog family and violated its own development plan.”

The plan in question requires the city to “consider cultural and minority sensitivities.”

In addition, as a member of the European Union, Ireland is meant to protect minority cultural rights, he noted.

In 2014, a plaque marking Chaim Herzog’s birthplace in Belfast was removed following multiple occurrences of vandalism and amid concern for the safety of the building’s staff and nearby residents.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil accused Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar of being a “war criminal” after Sa’ar spoke about connections between Caracas and Iran and the latter’s terrorist proxies. 

Sa’ar made the remarks on Monday in a speech before a joint session of Paraguay’s National Congress in Asunción.

“In South America,” Sa’ar said, “criminals are building narco-terror alliances with the Middle East terror states. The nexus of this network is Venezuela.”

Sa’ar added that Venezuela is driving a destabilizing refugee crisis and serving as a base for Hezbollah terrorists.

In addition, he pointed out that Venezuela hosts an Iranian weapons production facility.

“Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has said openly that Venezuela is part of ‘the axis of resistance,’” Sa’ar added, referring to Iran’s partners in terrorism against Israel. “He said that this axis exists in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean. When he says this, we should believe him.”

Gil, who represents the Maduro regime, which remained in office despite losing an election last year, used his social media accounts to call Sa’ar “a war criminal and a genocider.” 

“What he should be doing is not mentioning Venezuela, but preparing to stand trial for the crimes his government commits against the Palestinian people,” he said. “The name of Venezuela is too great for your filthy mouth and hands stained with innocent blood.” 

Gil said that Sa’ar represents “the barbarism and systematic violation of all the rules that govern civilized humanity. We don’t care about your opinion … Sooner than later, you will have to answer to international justice.”

Hezbollah is involved in organized crime in Latin America to fund its terrorist operations worldwide. It has long operated in the border area between Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina, which has a large Lebanese population, and later expanded into Venezuela amid deepening ties between Caracas and Tehran. The Iranian proxy is designated a terrorist organization in Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay, but not in Venezuela or other Latin American states.

For more than two years, Jewish communities around the country —  despite deep rifts over Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza — demonstrated a historic united effort to bring home the hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks. In cities coast to coast, Jewish individuals and groups across different denominations, political affiliations and ages gathered together for rallies, fundraisers and walks, voicing a singular message: “Bring Them Home Now.”  

The efforts culminated last month with the release of the remaining living hostages and a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. But heads of leading Jewish organizations say the work is not done and there are several new consensus issues for American Jews, with many echoing that tackling the increase in antisemitism remains a central and unifying concern.  

“Helping to rebuild Israel, continuing to secure our communities and leaning into a surge in Jewish life” that sparked new energy in the community in the wake of Oct. 7 are the next issues Jewish federations nationwide are addressing, Eric Fingerhut, CEO of Jewish Federations of North America, told Jewish Insider. 

“We all understand that there are serious and long-term issues related to the war in Israel, both related to trauma and mental health issues that have arisen, all of the rebuilding that is needed and support to those who fought and bereaved families,” said Fingerhut. 

“The toxic combination of rising security threats and antisemitism remain a top priority. We still have work to do to make sure our communities are fully secure,” he continued. An October JFNA and Anti-Defamation League survey found that more than half of all Jewish Americans experienced at least one form of antisemitism in the past year; 14% have developed exit plans to flee the U.S. if the situation worsens. 

Additionally, Fingerhut said the “significant rise and interest in Jewish life” that was fueled  by Oct. 7, which JFNA termed “The Surge,” is here to stay. An April survey conducted by JFNA found that while the increased engagement that was documented in the months following the attacks has ebbed over the past year, it remains relatively high, with roughly a third of the respondents — 31% — saying that they are engaging more with the Jewish community than they did in the past, compared to 42% who said so last year.

“There are great opportunities to increase the number of people engaged in Jewish life and education, [including] restarting travel to Israel fully,” Fingerhut told JI.

Even while some donors and Jewish professionals are increasingly facing burnout, Fingerhut said “the level of engagement is very high.”

“We’ve seen growth across the Jewish federations system,” he continued. “Campaigns are up in every community and there’s a high level of cooperation between all of the Jewish organizations working more closely together now than ever. I expect you’ll see lots of consensus and working together to address these issues.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL, wrote in an eJewishPhilanthropy op-ed last month that “the existential crisis that the Jewish Diaspora has experienced over these last 24 months is not going away.”

“We will make no apologies for focusing ferociously on the safety of the Jewish community at a time when that safety is at risk,” wrote Greenblatt. “We will not shrink from the task of ensuring that America remains a place where Jewish people can live, work, worship and thrive openly and proudly. For those that perpetrate antisemitism, spread anti-Zionism, discriminate against Jews, or attack our community in any way, we will use every tool at our disposal to stop you. We will push back in boardrooms, expose the issues in classrooms, and prosecute our case in courtrooms.” 

Similarly, the American Jewish Committee told JI that consensus work will involve “the continued fight against antisemitism.”

“It is imperative that the community calls out antisemitism in all its forms — whether it comes from the far left or far right. AJC will continue working with leaders around the world and across the political spectrum, from local governments to heads of state, to recognize and confront this threat. We are also engaging with businesses and civil society in a multi-pronged approach that counters antisemitism from all angles. The surge of antisemitism that we are currently witnessing requires our community to band together. We cannot and will not succeed if we are not united in this fight,” the group said in a statement. 

AJC, which launched a Center for a New Middle East in 2024, said it also plans to continue focusing on issues in the Middle East, including advocating for the release of the three deceased Israelis still held in Gaza. 

“Expanding the Abraham Accords and the growing circle of peace remains a top priority for us,” the AJC added, noting that “in a post-war Middle East, the substance of the work changes, but our engagement with leaders throughout the region will continue to be a vital part of our work.”

Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, told JI that “the vast majority of American Jews have deep concerns about rising antisemitism and broader threats to our democracy — including the false choice between Jewish safety and democracy offered by extreme voices on both ends of the political spectrum.”

“Our institutions and leaders can all rally behind the recognition that there is no Jewish safety when our democratic norms and the rule of law are threatened, just as there is no democracy without real Jewish safety,” said Spitalnick. 

Aya Shechter, chief programming officer of the Israeli-American Council, echoed an “intense focus” on combating antisemitism, in a statement to JI, adding that the group plans to also “strengthen civic engagement and cultivate Jewish identity.”

Former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), who established himself as a prominent voice on Capitol Hill on foreign policy and national security issues in Congress between 2019 and 2023, told Jewish Insider last week, as he mounts a congressional comeback bid, that he’s “as pro-Israel as I have ever been.”

But he also expressed more openness to policies conditioning or restricting aid, and called for the U.S. to serve as a “counterweight” to the Israeli far right. And he said that U.S. aid shouldn’t be used in furtherance of Israeli actions that the U.S. itself doesn’t support. At the same time, he expressed support for the Trump administration’s Gaza peace plan and strikes on Iran’s nuclear program.

Malinowski is one of the many Democrats who have declared their candidacies in the special election in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, recently vacated by Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill. The 11th District, an affluent suburb with a sizable Jewish population, borders and incorporates portions of the district Malinowski represented for two terms.

Malinowski said that he’s “as pro-Israel as I have ever been, in the sense that I believe that Israel should be safe and secure as a Jewish and democratic state, and that the United States has a moral and strategic interest in defending Israel as that kind of state at the same.” 

Malinowski said that “to be pro-Israel for me also requires listening to what the hostage families have been saying for the last couple of years, to what hundreds of Israeli security officials have been saying to their government and directly to the United States about the need to bring the war in Gaza to an end and to have some plan that addresses the legitimate desire of Palestinians to have their rights respected and to have a future that they can strive towards.”

“I would not seek to enable [any] ally to do something that I thought should not be done. It’s just a basic foreign policy principle that I think most people would agree is straightforward,” Malinowski told JI, when asked about the possibility of conditioning or suspending aid to Israel. “I would make case-by-case judgments given what’s happening on the ground.”

He said he would not support U.S. policies that would hurt Israel’s ability to protect itself, but added that the U.S. should “serve as a counterweight” to the pressure that an Israel government may feel from Israel’s far right and “use our influence and leverage and our honest voice to steer our ally away from policies that are self-destructive.”

He expressed a similar view in public interviews last year when he offered support for President Joe Biden’s moves to suspend some U.S. arms sales to Israel to pressure Israel against mounting a military incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

“I would not seek to enable [any] ally to do something that I thought should not be done. It’s just a basic foreign policy principle that I think most people would agree is straightforward,” Malinowski told JI, when asked about the possibility of conditioning or suspending aid to Israel. “I would make case-by-case judgments given what’s happening on the ground.”

He said he was not committing to supporting conditions on aid but also did not rule them out depending on the situation. “There’s no U.S. ally in the world that I would guarantee a rubber stamp on every request for military assistance, that’s not the way U.S. foreign policy functions,” Malinowski said.

He said on X in April of last year that the U.S. has, in practice, failed to apply the globally applicable U.S. laws conditioning all arms sales on human rights compliance to Israel. He said that a decision to enforce that law last year to suspend arms sales to certain Israeli units was a “step towards treating Israel as we would any other partner.”

He added that the purpose of the law is to seek remediation of the issues to prevent the need to cut off arms, as was the case for most of the Israeli units to which it was applied.

At the same time, Malinowski indicated to JI a level of skepticism of efforts to halt all offensive aid to Israel, which have been pushed by some former colleagues, arguing that the “distinction between defensive and offensive is hard to make and a bit artificial.”

He expressed support for the Trump administration’s 20-point ceasefire plan for Gaza, saying it “offers the best possible hope for a way forward” and said the U.S. should focus on pushing all parties involved to implement it to its fullest extent, to deploy the international security force to neutralize Hamas and to surge humanitarian aid.

He said any decision on Israel in Congress, including with regard to aid, would be geared toward pursuing that goal.

“I think we’re very far from being able to address the issues of sovereignty and what the ultimate answer to those questions should be,” Malinowski said. “Even many of my Palestinian and Arab American friends, I think, would say that they’re not interested in lip service to a two-state solution right now.”

He said that “serious oversight” is needed from Congress on the deal because he is concerned that Trump will be “tempted to just declare victory and claim his Nobel Peace Prize without doing the hard work of securing implementation of the rest of the plan,” when it will require “steady pressure” — on Hamas and its interlocutors as well as on Israel — to ensure that the situation does not return to the pre-Oct. 7, 2023, status quo.

Malinowski was not supportive of an effort led by some progressive lawmakers to recognize Palestinian statehood, arguing that the U.S. focus should be — and that his focus would be — on more immediate humanitarian and security issues, including ensuring the Trump plan proceeds.

“I think we’re very far from being able to address the issues of sovereignty and what the ultimate answer to those questions should be,” Malinowski explained. “Even many of my Palestinian and Arab American friends, I think, would say that they’re not interested in lip service to a two-state solution right now.”

Malinowski said he did not oppose the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities earlier this year, adding that U.S. intervention likely helped bring the war to a quicker close than it would otherwise have, by bringing the U.S.’ superior capabilities to bear on Iran’s nuclear facilities. He also said he’s “very happy” the Assad regime fell, Hezbollah was “significantly weakened” and the “paper tiger of Iran’s defenses has been exposed.”

At the same time, he argued that any “lasting solution” to Iran’s nuclear program will require a diplomatic agreement with “highly intrusive inspections,” and said President Donald Trump had “exaggerate[d] the impact” of the U.S. strikes.

“My hope is that we will continue to pursue that, rather than imagining that this problem can be addressed just by going to war every few years,” Malinowski said.

At home, Malinowski has spoken publicly at various occasions since the Oct. 7 attacks about anti-Israel and pro-Hamas activism in the U.S. and on college campuses. He argued in May 2024 that students who care about protecting innocent Palestinians were being overshadowed by more extreme voices advocating for the end of Israel, which he called counterproductive.

“The loudest voices are using Gaza’s plight to push a sweeping & more radical agenda of defeating Zionism and “colonialism.” This is not about ending the war but about ending Israel,” Malinowski said on X. “But the actual political effect of these protests has been to shift attention away from Gaza at the very moment (after the World Central Kitchen strike) when opinion was shifting against the war. All our attention should be on getting aid to Gazans, freeing hostages, avoiding more deaths, and what happens post-war. Instead, we have to talk about dumb 19 year olds glorifying Hamas & ‘intifada,’ drowning out the voices of others who sincerely care about saving lives.”

He said those voices also gave right-wing “bad faith partisans” fodder to “cast all legitimate criticism of self-defeating Israeli government policies” as support for Hamas and demand police crackdowns.

“Even though there is a significant problem on the far left that involves anti-Israel protests morphing into calls for an end to Israel as a Jewish state, we don’t quite have a Nazi problem in the Democratic Party in a way that leading Republicans are now acknowledging they do on their side,” Malinowski said.

Malinowski told JI that leaders need to speak up and police antisemitism on their own sides, adding that he “probably underestimated the extent of the problem on the far left” during his time on office but argued that the “problem on the right has gotten much worse and is too often dismissed by critics of the Democratic Party.”

He argued that the problem in the GOP is much more severe than in the Democratic Party. “You have leaders of the party rightly worried, as some on the Republican side are, that a significant share of the young people going into administration positions … have something akin to a Nazi ideology,” he said.

“Even though there is a significant problem on the far left that involves anti-Israel protests morphing into calls for an end to Israel as a Jewish state, we don’t quite have a Nazi problem in the Democratic Party in a way that leading Republicans are now acknowledging they do on their side,” he continued.

He also said that holding social media platforms accountable — a longtime priority for Malinowski — for their amplification of content designed to fuel hatred, will be critical. He said that social media platforms “bear the largest share of responsibility” for increased extremism on both the far left and far right.

Asked about New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s record on Israel and antisemitism issues, Malinowski told JI the Jewish community is “rightly feeling a tremendous amount of anxiety” about rising antisemitic rhetoric and violence.

He said Mamdani has “made a lot of decent promises about the need to reject antisemitism and hatred of all stripes, and about his interest, his determination to listen to people and to bring communities together. And he needs to be held to those promises.”

Malinowski said that if Mamdani follows through, he could prove to be a “potentially very powerful ally against antisemitism” and help to rebuild Jewish-Muslim dialogue that has broken down since Oct. 7.

“But I also understand that he has said things in the past and failed to say some things in the present that cause people understandable anxiety, and therefore everyone has to be vigilant and hold him accountable to the better angels of his nature,” the former congressman continued.

Malinowski said he decided to run for Congress again because “it would be nice to have a Congress again, one that can fulfill its basic constitutional function of checking presidential policies that go too far. … I’d like to contribute to making Congress a coequal branch again.” 

And he argued that his experience in foreign policy generally is one of the key factors that makes him stand out from the rest of the field, explaining that there is a “big shortage” in the House of “people who can conduct oversight of the administration’s foreign policy.”

Asked about emerging attacks on him as a carpetbagger — he previously represented a neighboring district that included only part of the district in which he is now running — Malinowski argued he’s the only lawmaker who has represented any part of the district before and he works in the district as a professor at Seton Hall University.

And he argued that voters are looking for a candidate who can effectively pick up Sherrill’s work where she left off from his first day in office, given his previous service. His previous service, he said “is one of the key distinctions” between him and the rest of the field.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike are cheering the implementation of X’s new location feature this week — allowing users to see what countries accounts are operating from — with some expressing hope that the move will expose the level of foreign involvement in domestic online political discourse.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle touted the new feature as a useful way to identify if an account commenting on U.S. political matters could potentially be a foreign actor. 

The new feature has exposed a variety of far-left and far-right accounts engaging in U.S. political discourse and spreading antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiments as they operate from various foreign countries.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said the information gleaned from the platform’s new feature crystalized the degree to which “foreign interests are trying to spread” antisemitic ideas in the United States. “The evidence is insightful,” Bacon, who is leading a bill with Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) aimed at addressing antisemitism on social media, told Jewish Insider.

“On one hand I’m glad much of the antisemitism poison is not coming from the U.S., but it is alarming that so many foreign interests are trying to spread that poison by pushing it in the U.S. and masquerading as Americans,” the Nebraska Republican continued. “We need to keep informing Americans that much of the antisemitism is coming from abroad.”

Several lawmakers argued that the feature would help with the broader effort to prevent worsening domestic partisan divides, especially those fueled by U.S. adversaries.

“Foreign adversaries have spent years flooding social media with hate-filled and antisemitic propaganda to divide Americans,” Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), the GOP co-chair of the Senate Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, told JI. “Americans deserve to know which accounts are run from abroad so we know the true source of these narratives.”

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), who represents a Trump district and has been critical of X owner Elon Musk, said in a statement, “I have always suspected that many anti-Israel, antisemitic, Jew hate accounts are promoted by our adversaries.”

“Beijing, Moscow and Tehran know they cannot defeat us economically or militarily, so they exploit controversial issues, like Israel and antisemitism, and try to divide,” Suozzi told JI. “We must defend America by pushing back on external adversaries seeking to divide us internally.”

Others noted in statements to JI that ensuring transparency from major social media platforms was a necessary step in combating the rise in online antisemitism. 

“Transparency on social media is crucial to fighting misinformation and antisemitism online. We’ve seen cases of foreign actors like Russia, China and Iran attempting to use these platforms to sow division and spread hate,” Gottheimer told JI. “I am glad they implemented this change and hope they will work with Congress to take steps to fight antisemitism and prevent malicious foreign influence.”

Rep. Laura Friedman (D-CA), who led a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in July about X’s AI program Grok expressing antisemitic and pro-Nazi ideas, told JI in a statement, “This transparency is an important step. No matter what side of the aisle you’re on, bad actors spreading antisemitic narratives to divide Americans is a real threat. There’s much more tech companies should do to expose and stop this manipulation.”

Other Republicans also commented on the new feature this week. 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has become a leading voice targeting right-wing antisemitism, posted on X on Tuesday that “America-hating foreign bots are at it again,” in response to a tweet from an account that is based in South Asia, according to the new location feature.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley tweeted her support for the new service, writing on Tuesday, “I have long said foreign actors are using social media to poison our politics and divide Americans. The location feature on X is a huge win for transparency and American security. Other social media platforms should do the same.”

Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City, rolled out an extensive list of more than 400 new transition team appointees on Monday, saying the picks would help “recruit top talent and develop smart policy” on such issues as housing, community safety and economic development.

Despite the wide diversity of his choices, some of the appointees have raised concerns among Jewish leaders who remain skeptical of the mayor-elect and his commitment to fighting antisemitism, especially in moments where anti-Israel sentiment can cross a line into overt bigotry against Jews.

Among the most controversial sources of criticism was Mamdani’s appointment of Tamika Mallory, a former Women’s March leader who stepped down from its board amid allegations of antisemitism, to a newly established community safety committee.

Mallory, who rose to prominence as a leading organizer of the Women’s March after President Donald Trump was first elected, resigned from her role as a co-chair of the organization after facing accusations of having made virulently antisemitic remarks, including a widely discredited claim that Jewish people had played a major part in the slave trade.

The assertion echoed an infamous tract published by the Nation of Islam, whose antisemitic leader, Louis Farrakhan, Mallory had also praised as “the GOAT,” or “greatest of all time,” on social media. 

In a statement to Jewish Insider on Tuesday, the Anti-Defamation League, which launched an online tool to monitor policies and personnel choices of the incoming administration, called Mallory “simply the wrong choice for a committee on community safety” and said that she has “made some highly insensitive remarks about Jews and money, which play directly into antisemitic tropes,” while aligning “herself with people like notorious antisemite Louis Farrakhan.”

“Given the fact that New York’s Jewish community is facing antisemitism and security threats at unprecedented levels, the mayor-elect needs to appoint someone who will unite, rather than divide, communities.” the ADL spokesperson said.

In 2020, Mamdani called on social media for Mallory to be released from custody after she and others were arrested during a social justice demonstration in Kentucky. Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian American activist and former Women’s March leader who also has espoused antisemitic rhetoric, has long been an ally of Mamdani, but was not appointed to a role on any of his transition committees.

Monica Klein, the communications director for Mamdani’s transition, said in a statement shared with JI on Tuesday that the newly announced “subcommittees are preparing to implement Mayor-elect Mamdani’s agenda of safety and security for Jewish New Yorkers and everyone else who calls this city home, including his pledge for an 800% increase in anti-hate crime prevention.”

Mallory did not respond to a request for comment.

After the appointees were publicized Monday, Jewish leaders were scouring the lists in group chats and private texts for signs of how the newly elected mayor, a democratic socialist and staunch critic of Israel, would approach issues of concern to the community.

“There are a lot of bad names,” one Jewish leader told JI, sharing screenshots of exchanges flagging some transition picks seen as problematic, such as an anti-Zionist rabbi and activists affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, which is pushing Mamdani to divest from Israel when he takes office.

Other appointees who drew scrutiny were Alex Vitale, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College who has called for an end to policing and will advise on community safety. 

The list included a number of outspoken detractors of Israel. Tahanie Aboushi, a civil rights lawyer and a former candidate for Manhattan district attorney who, like Mamdani, has endorsed boycotts against the Jewish state, will provide input on legal affairs. Lumumba Bandele, a member and organizer of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement who is joining the community organizing team, has frequently accused Israel of genocide as well as apartheid, while calling Zionism “a crime against humanity,” among several other incendiary social media comments.

The tolerance of such heated rhetoric underscores how Mamdani’s election upended the conventional thinking that a winning candidate in New York — a place with the largest Jewish community of any city in the world — must show strong support for Israel, emboldening like-minded allies who are now poised to shape the administration. 

Still, some Jewish leaders were encouraged that Mamdani had chosen Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, the executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, to join an emergency response committee, despite his past criticism of the mayor-elect’s views on Israel.

Potasnik, who was recently named the first chief chaplain of the New York City Police Department, said he had “no specifics” to share about his role at the moment, noting that Mamdani’s representatives advised new appointees to direct any press requests to the transition team. 

“There are going to be meetings discussing what we’re expected to do,” Potasnik told JI broadly. “I just think that it’s important to have constructive engagement discussing important issues impacting our lives in New York.”

Potasnik was a member of outgoing Mayor Eric Adams’ transition team, which featured more than 700 members and leaned heavily on the Orthodox community.

Mamdani, for his part, named a handful of rabbis to join his transition team, including Abby Stein, a top Jewish ally who identifies as an anti-Zionist and will advise on health issues, and Rachel Timoner, who is the leader of Congregation Beth Elohim, a Brooklyn Reform synagogue that hosted a discussion with the mayor-elect during the campaign. She is serving on the immigrant justice committee.

In addition to clergy members, Mamdani tapped a pair of former Jewish lawmakers, Helen Rosenthal and Ruth Messinger, and community activists such as Masha Pearl of the Blue Card Fund, a nonprofit providing financial support for Holocaust survivors. 

Rabbi Marc Schneier, a critic of Mamdani, spoke with the mayor-elect late last week after protesters had demonstrated outside Park East Synagogue, a Modern Orthodox congregation in Manhattan led by his father. 

He said that Mamdani — who had drawn backlash over his initial statement on the protest, which he revised this week — voiced interest in learning more about legislation to bar demonstrations from taking place outside houses of worship.

But while Schneier was encouraged that Mamdani had been receptive to his recommendation, he told JI that he did “not see things changing” with respect to other key issues, such as the mayor-elect’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

“If he continues to encircle himself with people who are going to support his limited understanding of Israel,” he said, “then we’re going to have a problem here.”

A new federal lawsuit filed on behalf of families of victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks accuses the crypto giant Binance of knowingly facilitating the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars to U.S.-designated foreign terror organizations on an “industrial scale,” helping contribute to the deadly incursion in Israel that killed around 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages.

According to the complaint, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, “deliberately” failed “to monitor inbound funds” to such terror groups as Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, ensuring “that terrorists and other criminals could deposit and shuffle enormous sums on the exchange with impunity.”

“Moreover, when specific customers were designated or particular accounts were subject to seizure orders, Binance allowed those customers and accounts to shift the assets into other Binance accounts, thus negating the effect of any ‘blocking’ or ‘seizing’ of the account,” the complaint states.

Such a policy “demonstrates Binance’s deliberate and conscious effort to enable users to operate on the Binance platform and clearly helps facilitate financial crime on an industrial scale,” the filing adds. 

Among the 306 American plaintiffs are the families of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American hostage murdered by Hamas in Gaza; Itay Chen, an Israeli-American IDF soldier whose body was returned to Israel this month; Eyal Waldman, an Israeli philanthropist whose U.S.-born daughter, Danielle, was killed at the Nova music festival during the Oct. 7 attacks; and Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S.

“The lawsuit details how Binance knowingly facilitated the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars between 2021 and 2023 that helped enable the terrorist organizations responsible for the Oct. 7 attacks,” Gary Osen, an attorney representing the plaintiffs who specializes in civil terror cases, said in a statement to Jewish Insider. “One of our goals is to cast a public spotlight on specific ways in which the Binance platform has been used by Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas to finance terrorism.”

The 284-page complaint, filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota under the Anti-Terrorism Act, targets Binance as well as its founder and former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, and Guangying Chen, a close associate of Zhao whom the lawsuit identifies as the crypto exchange’s “de facto chief financial officer.”

Zhao and Chen could not be reached for comment regarding the lawsuit.

A Binance spokesperson said the company “cannot comment on any ongoing litigation.” 

“However, as a global crypto exchange, we comply fully with internationally recognized sanctions laws, consistent with other financial institutions. For context, the heads of the U.S.Treasury’s FinCEN and OFAC have confirmed that cryptocurrency is not widely used by Hamas terrorists,” the spokesperson told JI in a statement, referring to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and Office of Foreign Assets Control. “Most importantly, we hope for lasting peace in the region.”

The company’s “conduct was far more serious and pervasive than what the U.S. government disclosed during its 2023 criminal enforcement actions,” the complaint says, claiming that Binance “knowingly sent and received the equivalent of more than $1 billion to and from accounts and wallets controlled by the FTOs responsible for the Oct. 7 attacks.”

That figure, the filing states, vastly outnumbers a previous amount of more than $2,000 in known transactions for Hamas disclosed by the federal government in 2023.

In November 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to money laundering charges and agreed to step down from his executive role. He served four months in federal prison and was pardoned last month by President Donald Trump. Binance itself also pleaded guilty to federal charges and paid over $4 billion in fines.

Last May, Binance participated in a $2 billion business deal with World Liberty Financial, a new crypto company founded by the families of Trump and Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy.

“To this day,” the complaint states, “there is no indication that Binance has meaningfully altered its core business model.”

Citing a complex forensic money laundering analysis, the lawsuit identifies a wide range of Binance accounts with alleged terror links and spanning multiple locales, including Venezuela, Gaza, Lebanon and even North Dakota, where an account connected to Hamas was accessed several times from a small city outside Fargo.

The suit refers to Gaza money exchanges, a gold smuggling operation in South America with ties to Hezbollah and a purported Venezuelan livestock entrepreneur allegedly moving millions of dollars for known terror organizations in the Middle East, among other illicit transactions.

“Every tunnel, every missile, every bullet, every attack is paid for by someone,” Izhar Shay, a plaintiff whose son Yaron died defending Kibbutz Kerem Shalom in Israel on Oct. 7, said in a statement shared with JI. “Companies like Binance cannot keep profiting if they enable terrorists to operate in the shadows. This case is about making sure that those who enabled Hamas’ evil are held to account.”

In the wake of Mark Mellman’s death last week, the longtime Democratic pollster is being remembered for his leadership of Democratic Majority for Israel, an advocacy group he helped launch in 2019 to counter a growing hostility toward Israel on the left, a value proposition that proved prescient. 

But his role leading the group, in what turned out to be the capstone to his decades-long career, was serendipitous — and almost didn’t happen. 

The group’s founding board members “reached out to Mark for advice on who we should hire,” one of the board members, speaking anonymously to discuss the details of the group’s founding, told Jewish Insider. “And Mark said, ‘I’ll do it.’ We went, ‘OK.’ We weren’t expecting that.”

San Francisco Democratic fundraiser Sam Lauter, a former AIPAC activist who has been involved with DMFI from the beginning, said Mellman’s role atop DMFI gave the group “instant credibility.” Weeks later, Mellman was weighing in on a series of tweets from then-freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) that trafficked in antisemitic tropes. 

As political activists reflect on Mellman’s life, several Jewish Democrats told JI that his clear-eyed support for Israel — and his ability to articulate its strategic importance to Democrats — will leave a lasting impact on the party.

“He really worked hard to help candidates understand why the U.S.-Israel relationship was so important, why it was important to the United States [and] why it was important to support that relationship,” said former Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), who became DMFI’s board chair this year. “I think he brought clarity to that discussion whenever he had it, and he was unequivocal about it. I think that helped a lot of people think about how you talk about the relationship to people who don’t necessarily understand it or don’t support it.”

While Mellman, who died at 70 last Thursday of pancreatic cancer, has long been involved in Jewish causes and conducted research for Jewish groups, that only became his bread-and-butter in the final years of his life. Over a decades-long career as a leading pollster, he helped elect prominent Democrats across the country. 

“As someone who has come up through Jewish Democratic politics professionally over the past two decades, there’s no bigger giant in the field,” said Aaron Keyak, who most recently served in the Biden administration as deputy antisemitism special envoy. 

Mellman worked for 30 U.S. senators and over two dozen members of Congress, and he advised Israeli politician Yair Lapid and his Yesh Atid party. Nate Silver, the founder of the polling website FiveThirtyEight, once called Mellman the most accurate pollster in the country. Mellman was the chief pollster for John Kerry’s presidential campaign against George W. Bush in 2004. 

According to those who knew him, he never wavered on his core values. He spoke publicly about turning down requests from Democrats who didn’t align with his positions in support of abortion access and gun control. Most of all, he stuck to his support for Israel. 

“He’s as blue of a Democrat as anyone, and also understands that just because you identify as a member of the Democratic Party doesn’t mean you need to support everything all Democrats do, or even specific candidates that are nominated by the party,” said Keyak. “He’s someone who is true to his convictions in a time when far too many in Washington, D.C., shape their policy beliefs based off of the individual politician that the party has nominated.”

Last year, Mellman and DMFI invested heavily to challenge anti-Israel Democratic incumbents Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO). The group’s efforts prevailed. 

“Success in this profession and in this industry is not an easy place to achieve, and very few people achieve it and hold on to their integrity and their ethics and just still be a mensch,” Lauter said. “Accompanying all the ability that he had, Mark was a mensch.” 

As two Democratic Michigan Senate candidates compete for the votes of anti-Israel voters with accusations of genocide against the Jewish state, Abdul El-Sayed, is going after state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, as insufficiently and inauthentically critical of Israel.

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), meanwhile, is solidifying her support for Israel, receiving an endorsement this week from Democratic Majority for Israel and calling herself a “proud pro-Israel Democrat [who] believe[s] America is stronger when we stand with our democratic allies, confront antisemitism and extremism, and keep our promises to our friends abroad and our working families here at home.”

With significant Arab and Muslim and Jewish constituencies, Israel policy issues are poised to play a significant role in Michigan’s Democratic primary next year.

El-Sayed entered the race as a vocal critic of Israel, while McMorrow, in recent months, has joined him in describing the war in Gaza as a genocide, as well as saying she would support efforts to cut off offensive weapons shipments to Israel.

El-Sayed, in a recent event at Michigan State University, criticized McMorrow for not taking that position sooner, describing allegations of genocide in Gaza as a matter of clear and incontrovertible fact. Video of the comments was published by the Michigan Advance.

He compared McMorrow’s position to someone taking months to decide that the sky is blue and saying, “let me give you five caveats about why it might not be blue.”

El-Sayed also suggested that McMorrow’s positions changed because she was seeking support from AIPAC, and only took a more critical stance on Israel after the group declined to support her. The far-left publication Drop Site alleged that McMorrow had been seeking an AIPAC endorsement earlier in the year and had authored a pro-Israel position paper. 

McMorrow’s campaign has denied that she completed a questionnaire for AIPAC and McMorrow said last month she would not accept the group’s support. AIPAC has previously endorsed Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who has maintained her position on Israel, in House races, but has not weighed in on the Senate race.

“When there’s 20,000 kids who died, that’s a genocide,” El-Sayed said in his remarks at Michigan State. “When people who are from the very country that committed — whose government committed that genocide say it’s a genocide, at some point you kind of just gotta be like, ‘Oh it’s a f***ing genocide.’ … “I don’t pretend that when 20,000 babies are murdered by our tax dollars, that there’s hemming and hawing about saying because it’s the truth.” El-Sayed was referring to numbers from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health indicating that almost 20,000 children and teenagers were killed in the war.

He suggested that McMorrow is trying to “package” herself as a progressive changemaker while the “substance” of her policies is “the same old politics.”

Asked last month whether the war in Gaza is a genocide, McMorrow said that it is.

“We have [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu trying to tell us what we’ve been seeing with our own eyes is not true,” McMorrow said. “It is true. And two things can be true at once. … The position of the United States should not be that we support Netanyahu with no check and balances.”

Asked about El-Sayed’s criticisms, McMorrow’s campaign referred Jewish Insider to those remarks.

Amid indications that Hezbollah is rearming itself, Israel assassinated a top official of the Lebanese terrorist group in an airstrike on Sunday in Beirut. The strike, which killed Haytham Ali Tabatabai, the group’s chief of staff, was the first such attack in the Lebanese capital in five months and part of a recent escalation in Israeli strikes to blunt Hezbollah’s rebuilding.

Tabatabai served as Hezbollah’s chief of staff for the last year, when a ceasefire agreement was reached between Israel and Lebanon, according to the Israel Defense Forces. Before that, the army said, Tabatabai oversaw Hezbollah’s combat operations against Israel and had held a series of senior positions since he joined the group in the 1980s, including commander of the Radwan Force unit and head of Hezbollah’s operations in Syria. 

“Tabatabai is a mass murderer,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement on Sunday evening. 

“His hands are soaked in the blood of many Israelis and Americans, and it is not for nothing that the U.S. put a bounty of five million dollars on his head,” Netanyahu said, in reference to a 2016 decision designating Tabatabai as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.

“Tabatabai served as a senior commander in the Radwan Force. This is the force that prepared to conquer the Galilee and slaughter many of our citizens,” Netanyahu added. “Recently, he led Hezbollah’s renewed efforts to rearm, this is of course after the heavy blows Hezbollah suffered in the ‘Pager Operation,’ in the damage to its missile stockpiles, and of course, in the elimination of [Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan] Nasrallah,” the prime minister said, stressing that Israel would not allow the group to rebuild and calling on the Lebanese government to “fulfill its commitment to disarm Hezbollah.”

Israel reportedly did not notify the U.S. in advance of the strike.

The strike killed five people and wounded 25 others, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the strike and called on the international community to intervene “to stop the attacks on Lebanon and its people.”

The Israeli army said in its statement that it “will act against efforts to rebuild and rearm the Hezbollah terrorist organization and will operate to remove any threat posed to Israeli civilians,” adding that it “remains committed to the understandings reached between the State of Israel and Lebanon.”

“Hezbollah’s leadership is studying the matter of response and will take the appropriate decision,” Mahmoud Qamati, deputy chair of Hezbollah’s political council, told reporters, according to the Associated Press.

Israeli intelligence officials told Haaretz they believe that Hezbollah may retaliate with attacks on Jewish, Israeli or Israeli-linked targets in foreign countries, rather than directly attacking Israel.

Israel’s Cabinet approved diplomats to be sent to posts in the U.S. next summer, doing so in a unanimous vote in its weekly meeting on Sunday.

Adi Farjon is set to be Israel’s consul-general to Houston and the Southwest, replacing Livia Link-Raviv. 

Farjon is currently the head of the Central Europe Department in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and was previously a diplomat at the Israeli Embassy to U.N. institutions in Geneva, as well as in Berlin.

Ron Gerstenfeld was appointed consul-general in San Francisco and the Pacific Northwest, replacing Marco Sermoneta.

Gerstenfeld is the director of the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Department for European Economic Affairs, and previously served in the Israeli embassies in Australia and Uruguay.

Both are expected to take their new posts in August.

The Cabinet also authorized new ambassadors to Ukraine, Argentina, Mexico, Costa Rica and Uruguay, as well as consuls-general in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Sami Abu Janeb, previously deputy ambassador to Jordan, was appointed consul-general to Dubai.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), who is among the most vocal Democratic supporters of Israel in the House, will serve as the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Middle East and North Africa subcommittee beginning Friday, replacing Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) following her indictment earlier this week.

As per House Democratic rules, Cherfilus-McCormick surrendered her subcommittee leadership role after being indicted by the Justice Department this week, on allegations that she used misallocated federal disaster funds for personal expenses and to support her campaign.

Sherman was the most senior Democrat on the subcommittee. He had previously declined to pursue leadership of the subcommittee given that he is also the top Democrat on a House Financial Services subcommittee, and would have needed to surrender that post. 

But Democratic rules now allow him to temporarily hold both leadership posts concurrently; Cherfilus-McCormick will resume the Foreign Affairs role if she is acquitted or charges are dropped.

“My views on the Middle East are well known to the readers of Jewish Insider,” Sherman told JI. “I am pleased to serve as the chief Democrat on the House-Knesset Parliamentary Friendship Group and as a Co-Chair of the House Israel Allies Caucus. I particularly want to focus on making sure that any Saudi nuclear program does not lead to a Saudi nuclear weapon. Likewise, I’m concerned about the possibility of transferring F-35 jets to Saudi Arabia.”

Democratic leadership on the subcommittee has been through repeated changes in recent years. Sherman is the fifth Democrat to lead it since 2022: former Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) stepped down when he retired from Congress to lead the American Jewish Committee, former Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) also stepped down when he left Congress in 2023 and Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) declined to run for re-election in 2024.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who entered office in 2021 with a record of espousing antisemitic conspiracy theories and emerged since Oct. 7, 2023, as one of the most vocal opponents of Israel in the House Republican conference, announced on Friday that she will resign her seat, effective Jan. 5, 2026.

Greene’s announcement comes a week after President Donald Trump disavowed her, calling her a “traitor” and indicating that he would endorse a primary challenger, if a viable one emerged.

The Georgia congresswoman rose to political prominence due to her long history of promoting various antisemitic and otherwise fringe conspiracy theories. Greene was elected in spite of efforts from fellow Republicans to defeat her after she won the GOP primary in her district in 2020. She continued to face accusations of antisemitism during her time in office and repeatedly invoked a range of antisemitic tropes.

Though she initially cast herself as a supporter of Israel, she more recently flipped on the issue, now condemning the Jewish state, accusing it of genocide in Gaza and repeatedly attempting to pass measures to cut off all U.S. aid.

In her farewell message, Greene repeatedly railed against U.S. foreign engagement and “foreign interests.”

“Americans’ hard earned tax dollars always fund foreign wars, foreign aid, and foreign interests,” Greene said in a lengthy resignation letter. “America First should mean America First and only Americans First, with no other foreign country ever being attached to America First in our halls of government,” Greene said.

Jewish Republicans have long opposed the congresswoman, and the Republican Jewish Coalition repeatedly backed challengers to her. The RJC responded mockingly to her announcement with a gif of Trump waving, with the caption, “And we say bye bye.”

The controversial Georgia congresswoman spent much of her first term in office in the political wilderness, sidelined by her own party and expelled from her committee assignments by bipartisan House votes led by Democrats.

But she later emerged as a key ally of Trump in the House after Republicans retook the chamber in the 2022 midterms, and also became a close ally of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

Greene’s influence waned, however, after McCarthy was booted from the speakership in 2023, and she has more frequently been relegated to the sidelines as a hard-right opponent of the House Republican leadership’s agenda. She contemplated a run for Senate or governor in Georgia, but Republican leaders declined to back those efforts.

In recent months, she has grown increasingly critical of key elements of the Republican and Trump agendas, including his support for Israel and attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025.

Following Trump’s break with Greene last week, she implied that Israel and pro-Israel interests had pressured him into disowning her.

In her resignation letter, Greene was defiant, insisting that she could beat back any primary challenger but saying that she did not want to put herself, her family and her district through such a challenge.

“I have too much self respect and dignity, love my family way too much, and do not want my sweet district to have to endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the President we all fought for, only to fight and win my election while Republicans will likely lose the midterms,” Greene said. “And in turn, be expected to defend the President against impeachment after he hatefully dumped tens of millions of dollars against me and tried to destroy me.”

She said that she is being cast aside by “MAGA Inc” to be replaced by “Neocons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Military Industrial War Complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class.”

But she also teased plans for a political comeback. Greene has been rumored to have aspirations for a presidential run in 2028, something she has denied.

“When the common American people finally realize and understand that the Political Industrial Complex of both parties is ripping this country apart, that not one elected leader like me is able to stop Washington’s machine from gradually destroying our country, and instead the reality is that they, common Americans, The People, possess the real power over Washington, then I’ll be here by their side to rebuild it,” Greene said.

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), one of the few Jewish Republicans in the House, said on X, “One antisemite down. One to go.”

In a surprisingly chummy press conference, President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani spoke about their “productive” Oval Office meeting on Friday, yet mostly dodged questions on Israel and antisemitism.

“We had a great meeting. One thing in common, we want this city of ours that we love to do very well, and I wanted to congratulate the mayor. He really ran an incredible race against a lot of smart people,” said Trump. “We talked about getting housing built and food prices. The better he does, the happier I am.”

Mamdani said he “appreciated” the opportunity to meet with Trump and that he looks forward to working “together to deliver that affordability.”

Mamdani’s rise to mayor has drawn concern from pro-Israel and Jewish groups over his past rhetoric regarding Israel, including his inability to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which calls for violence against Jews. Mamdani has also threatened to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York 

On Thursday Mamdani distanced himself from protestors who gathered outside Park East Synagogue in Manhattan, however he suggested that the event, which provided information on immigrating to Israel, violated international law.

In response to a question directed at Mamdani regarding Thursday’s incident, Trump allowed the mayor-elect to evade the question, ultimately taking the conversation in a different direction. It was only at the conclusion of the press conference that Mamdani returned to the subject, reiterating similar comments he has made in the past, saying that he will “protect Jewish New Yorkers.” 

During the campaign, Trump said that any Jewish person who votes for Mamdani is a “self-professed Jew hater” and a “stupid person.” However, the president let much of his apparent differences with the mayor-elect on Israel slide. 

When asked whether he would stop Mamdani from arresting Netanyahu, Trump simply replied that the two “didn’t discuss” it, refraining from any confrontation on the issue. 

Mamdani said he “desperately” wants peace in the Middle East, however, he also noted that he wanted an end to taxpayer’ dollars “funding violations of human rights,” seeming at times to gesture toward Israel without calling out the Jewish state by name. 

“I’ve spoken about the Israeli government committing genocide, and I’ve spoken about our government funding it,” said Mamdani. “We have to follow through on international human rights, and still today those are being violated.”

Trump did not interject, instead remaining cordial with Mamdani and proceeding to call him “a rational person” that “wants to see New York be great again.”

In the run-up to the meeting, the president and Mamdani had traded barbs with each other. Mamdani has vowed to “Trump-proof” New York City, sharply criticizing the president’s immigration and economic policies. Meanwhile, Trump has called Mamdani “my little communist mayor” and has threatened to withhold federal funds. 

When asked about whether he will provide Mamdani with federal funding, Trump said he plans to “help him,” adding that he believes the mayor-elect “has a chance to do a great job.” 

“Some of his ideas, really, are the same ideas that I have,” said Trump. “We agree on a lot more than I would have thought. I want him to do a great job.”

As next year’s midterm elections approach, New York City is quickly emerging as an epicenter of Democratic conflict, with a growing number of left-wing primary challengers targeting pro-Israel congressional incumbents as well as an expanding roster of candidates vying for an open House seat that is home to one of the largest Jewish communities in the country.

In races spanning the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, new challengers are eyeing primaries to take on the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, which now finds itself on defense after Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory elevated a staunch democratic socialist and critic of Israel to executive office.

But even as challengers seek to capitalize on the momentum fueled by Mamdani’s rise, it remains to be seen if the mayor-elect will choose to weigh in on the upcoming primaries as he manages a diverse coalition to help advance his affordability agenda, which he has indicated is his top priority. 

While Mamdani has publicly discouraged one fellow democratic socialist in Brooklyn from a brewing campaign to challenge House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who endorsed Mamdani in the final weeks of the election, “the big unknown is the role that Mamdani is going to play” in the June primary elections, Chris Coffey, a Democratic strategist, told Jewish Insider.

It also is unclear whether pro-Israel groups such as AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel will engage in the upcoming primaries. A spokesperson for AIPAC declined to comment. DMFI’s political arm, for its part, is closely monitoring the emerging races and regards the challengers with varying degrees of concern, a person familiar with the group’s internal deliberations told JI.

The activist left, meanwhile, is also confronting its own organizational issues, including the prospect of some split primary fields that threaten to divide the opposing vote, as well as messaging struggles. 

With Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) announcing on Thursday that she will not seek reelection, a crop of candidates is also sure to engage in a spirited competition for her deeply progressive district in Brooklyn and Queens.

Here’s a rundown of the races to watch in New York City as the primary cycle continues to take shape.

NY-10 

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), a pro-Israel Jewish Democrat, is preparing to defend his seat against two rival candidates who have been weighing bids. Brad Lander, the outgoing city comptroller and ally of Mamdani, has told associates that he is planning to challenge the congressman, according to people familiar with the discussions, after he was boxed out of a top job in the mayor-elect’s administration. Mamdani, a staunch critic of Israel, has reportedly urged Lander to run for the seat and promised to support him in a primary. 

Polling has shown that Lander, a Jewish Democrat who has long identified as a “progressive Zionist,” would be a formidable opponent in the left-leaning district — which is heavily Jewish and extends from Lower Manhattan to Brooklyn neighborhoods including Park Slope and Borough Park, a Hasidic enclave. Mamdani performed better in the district than any other in the city, according to data collected by The Center for Urban Research at The CUNY Graduate Center. With 60% of the vote, he nearly doubled his top rival in the race, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a moderate pro-Israel Democrat who ran as an independent after badly losing the June primary.

But Lander could face competition from the far left as a city councilwoman, Alexa Avilés, mulls her own challenge to Goldman, with likely plans to highlight the incumbent’s support for Israel. Avilés was recently endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, setting up a potential clash with Mamdani, who has long been a member. Yuh-Line Niou, a former state lawmaker who narrowly lost to Goldman when he first ran for the seat in 2022, is also mulling a challenge, sources have told JI. 

Among the challenges, DMFI PAC is now taking the Goldman race the “most seriously,” according to the person familiar with its deliberations, particularly if the left manages to coalesce behind one candidate.

NY-15

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), one of the most stalwart allies of the Jewish community in the House, is already facing two left-wing challengers attacking his support for Israel. The most recent entrant, Dalourny Nemorin, is an attorney and DSA member who joined the race last week. Michael Blake, a former assemblyman, is a better-known rival in the Bronx district, due to his past campaign for the seat in 2020. He launched his campaign earlier this month.

While he had once identified as pro-Israel and appeared at a number of  AIPAC events, Blake is now positioning himself as a staunch critic of the Jewish state and is accusing Torres of focusing on “AIPAC and Bibi,” at the expense of local issues. His reversal has raised questions about the authenticity of his positions, and threatens to alienate a sizable Jewish. constituency in the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale, where Torres remains popular. It is also unclear if Blake’s message “makes sense” to voters, even in a district where Mamdani won a majority of the vote, according to Coffey, pointing to issues like affordability and public safety as more galvanizing. 

“He has a chance — everyone does — but not a great one,” a pro-Israel strategist who could engage in the primaries said of Blake.

NY-06

Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) is another House member facing an insurgent challenger who is criticizing her donations from AIPAC as well as corporate donors. Chuck Park, a former City Council aide and foreign service officer, announced his campaign to unseat Meng on Monday, largely echoing the rhetoric used by other challengers in New York City. 

But he is facing an uphill battle in the Queens district that includes a large Asian American population and that Cuomo won with 50% of the vote, underscoring the community’s moderate politics.

NY-08

In an unusually public display of tension on the left, Mamdani has been actively working to shut down a looming challenge to Jeffries from Chi Ossé, a city councilman who filed paperwork this week to run for the Brooklyn seat and is courting the DSA’s endorsement. Mamdani said on Thursday he does “not believe it’s the right time” for such a fight, but clarified that “was not a sweeping statement” about other races such as Goldman’s, where he is backing Lander. 

Ossé, for his part, has indicated that he does not see a path forward without the DSA’s support. While he has built a large social media following and notched some popular legislative successes, his campaign to unseat a possible future speaker of the House would likely be a long shot, even if pro-Israel leaders have not dismissed it. DMFI, for instance, is monitoring the race and has been in touch with Jeffries’ team, according to the person familiar with its outreach.  

Jeffries, who after a monthslong delay endorsed Mamdani in the general election despite profound disagreements over Israel, remains popular in his Brooklyn district, which includes such historically Black neighborhoods as Bedford-Stuyvesant. Still, Mamdani won the district with 52%, suggesting an appetite for political change that Ossé is now hoping to channel if he ends up officially launching a House campaign. 

NY-13

Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) became the latest incumbent in New York City to draw a challenger this week. Darializa Avila Chevalier, an organizer in Harlem with a long history of anti-Israel activism, launched her bid to take on Espaillat on Thursday, with backing from Justice Democrats, the far-left group that is credited with helping Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in her insurgent bid against a powerful House member in 2018. 

Like other rivals, Avila Chevalier, a first-time candidate, is accusing the congressman of taking “money from the very institutions that are making life harder for New Yorkers here,” citing AIPAC as a top example. 

Espaillat, a veteran Democrat, endorsed Cuomo in the primary and then backed Mamdani during the general election. The mayor-elect won the district, which covers Upper Manhattan and a portion of the Bronx, with overwhelming support, claiming 65% of the vote.

NY-12

In the open primary to succeed Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in the heart of Manhattan, no fewer than 10 contenders have launched bids, with more likely to  come. The top candidates include three established state and city lawmakers: Assemblymen Micah Lasher and Alex Bores and City Councilman Erik Bottcher. But some wildcards could complicate the dynamic — including an insurgent campaign from a politically untested Kennedy scion, Jack Schlossberg, and a possible bid from George Conway, a former Republican lawyer and critic of President Donald Trump. 

In contrast with Goldman’s district, the heavily Jewish constituency on the Upper East and West Sides leans more moderate and pro-Israel, favoring Cuomo with 50% of the vote in the mayoral election. With progressives now seeking to defeat moderate Democrats, the crowded primary to claim Nadler’s seat is drawing more pro-Israel voices and is shaping up as a prominent exception to prevailing political trends in New York City.    

Israel has adopted a new mindset in its defense strategy since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, Caroline Glick, international affairs advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Thursday in Washington.

“One of the things that all of Israel’s enemies have to understand, and our friends as well, is that we’re not messing around here anymore,” said Glick. “Whether you’re Turkey, the Houthis, whomever you happen to be, you want to try to kill the Jews, it’s not going to work.”

Glick, speaking in conversation with the Hudson Institute’s Michael Doran at the think tank’s Washington headquarters, discussed opening talks with Syria, eyeing Azerbaijan as a candidate for the Gaza stabilization force and Israel’s new defense mindset amid reemerging threats from Hezbollah. 

Following the fall of the Assad regime in late 2024, questions have remained about the country’s relationship with Israel and whether Damascus will pose a threat to Jerusalem’s security. Reports have indicated that Damascus is seeking an end to the Israeli presence in a U.N. buffer zone inside Syria, which troops entered to protect Israel’s borders. Meanwhile, Israel is calling for the demilitarization of southwest Syria, however no agreement has yet been made. 

Glick said that while an agreement could still be far off, talks between the countries have opened up, adding that the prime minister, defense minister and head of the army were on the Syrian side of the border on Wednesday “to assess the situation there.”

“We’re engaged and we have made our expectations clear,” said Glick. “We hope that we’ll be able to reach an accommodation with them, that’s our hope. But part of reaching an accommodation that’s stable is ensuring our concerns are met.”

“We have a doctrine post-Oct. 7, which is no hostile forces on our border,” Glick added. “It’s important to us that Syria cannot be militarized. We’ve seen some concerning aspects of what the new regime is doing, so we’re distrusting and we’re verifying and like to share our concerns with our American allies.”

Glick also touched on the situation in Gaza. On Monday, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution backing President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan, which was supported by several nonvoting Arab allies. 

“We feel comfortable with the resolution largely because it’s President Trump, the best president that we’ve ever had in the White House, by far,” said Glick. “We know that he shares our commitment to achieving [our] goals.”

Experts told Jewish Insider that the passing of the resolution makes moving to Phase 2 of Trump’s 20-point plan more plausible and creates a legal framework for the international stabilization force. The composition of such a force is still unknown as countries have either been unwilling to provide troops, or their proposed involvement has raised concerns from Israel.

Glick said one country that could be involved in such a force is Azerbaijan, stressing the close partnership the two nations have shared for decades.  

“One of the countries we’ve been looking at is Azerbaijan,” said Glick. “In their lifestyles and in their creed they are definitely not at all sympathetic to jihadists of the ilk of Hamas, and so from that perspective they fit the bill, because you can’t have forces inside of Gaza that are supportive of Hamas. It has to be a force that’s willing to actually confront Hamas.”

During Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Israel in October, reports surfaced that Turkey could be willing to join the stabilization force — a possibility that was strongly objected to by Israel due to Ankara’s deep ties to Hamas and hostile posture toward the Jewish state. Glick reiterated that having Turkish forces in Gaza is “not going to happen,” pointing to the soured relations between the two countries.

“It’s true that they are a NATO ally and it’s true that they have close relations with the United States, and that’s great, but they don’t have great relations with us, and it’s not because of Israel,” said Glick. “Israel is not calling for the conquest of Turkey. So, we’re not on a good base with Ankara.”

Glick noted that while Turkish NGOs operate in Israel and Gaza, military forces are “a different issue.” She added that Turkey has in the past directed Hamas to plan attacks in Europe. 

After Oct. 7, Israel faced threats from across the region, including from Hezbollah in Lebanon, which led to the displacement of over 60,000 residents from northern Israel. In September 2024, Israel eliminated 70% of Hezbollah’s launch capabilities and eliminated leader Hassan Nasrallah, according to a report published by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. Two months later, Israel and Lebanon reached a ceasefire. However, some experts are worried that Hezbollah’s rebuilding could reignite conflict.

“Hezbollah is trying to be tough guys and rebuild their forces with the intention of restoring the pre-war conditions along the northern border,” said Glick. “We have no intention of allowing a situation to arise along the northern border where the citizens in the border communities are going to have to leave again or be subjected to the kind of threat we experienced. It’s just not going to happen”

Glick said that Israel is trying to “destroy weapons and hubs of operations” that are viewed as a threat. 

“[Hezbollah is] moving very quickly. They are highly motivated, they desperately want to get back in the game,” said Glick. “It’s not going to be allowed.”

Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York City, distanced himself from a widely criticized demonstration outside a prominent synagogue in Manhattan on Wednesday night, where anti-Israel protesters were heard chanting “Death to the IDF” and “Globalize the intifada,” among other slogans, even as he suggested that the event, which provided information on immigrating to Israel, violated international law.

“The mayor-elect has discouraged the language used at last night’s protest and will continue to do so,” a spokesperson for Mamdani, Dora Pekec, said in a statement to Jewish Insider on Thursday. “He believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”   

The protest, organized by an anti-Zionist group, took place outside Park East Synagogue, a historic Modern Orthodox congregation, at which an event was being held by Nefesh B’Nefesh, a nonprofit that assists in Jewish immigration to Israel from North America.

Asked to clarify the concluding caveat from Pekec’s statement, Mamdani’s team said it “was specifically in reference to the organization’s promotion of settlement activity beyond the Green Line,” which “violates international law.”

Mamdani’s election has alarmed many Jews in New York City concerned with rising antisemitic activity and how he will respond to such incidents as mayor. He has called for increasing city funding to counter hate crimes as well as boosting police protection at Jewish institutions, vowing to protect Jewish New Yorkers.  

But while he has said he would discourage the slogan “globalize the intifada,” which critics see as a violent provocation against Jews, Mamdani has not condemned the slogan himself, provoking questions about his tolerance for such rhetoric as he prepares to take office. 

The comment from his spokesperson on Thursday was the first instance in which his team responded to unrest related to an anti-Israel protest, many of which he himself attended before he launched his campaign a year ago. A day after he was elected, the mayor-elect condemned vandalism at a Jewish day school that was defaced with swastika graffiti.

For his part, outgoing Mayor Eric Adams, who is now traveling outside of the country on a multiday tour that included a stop in Israel, also weighed in on the demonstration in a social media post, where he denounced the chants as “vile” and the protesters as “sick and warped.”

He said he would be “stopping at Park East to show” his “support” after he returns from his international excursion.

“Pray for our city,” he said. “Today it’s a synagogue. Tomorrow it’s a church or a mosque. They come for me today and you tomorrow. We cannot hand this city over to radicals.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who endorsed Mamdani, also condemned the protest. “No New Yorker should be intimidated or harassed at their house of worship,” she said on social media. “What happened last night at Park East Synagogue was shameful and a blatant attack on the Jewish community. Hate has no place in New York.”

Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-OR) drew comparisons between the Holocaust and the war in Gaza, the latter of which she described as a genocide, in a speech on the House floor on Thursday, explaining her decision to support a resolution with far-left lawmakers, supported by anti-Israel groups, accusing Israel of genocide.

Dexter was backed by AIPAC’s United Democracy Project super PAC in her 2024 primary race against an opponent viewed as further left, and ran on a relatively standard Democratic platform when it came to Israel issues. But she has shifted dramatically to the far left on the issue in recent months, also throwing her support behind efforts to cut off offensive weapons transfers to the Jewish state.

The Oregon congresswoman began her speech by recounting a visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the timing of which she described as “very intentional.”

“I went to reflect on the horrific history of dehumanization and ethnic cleansing that ultimately led the world to create a new term to describe such an unfathomable evil. That word is genocide,” Dexter said. “After the Holocaust, the international community made a commitment that such evil can never happen again to any people, anywhere. Never again, they said. That is why I recently signed on to a resolution recognizing Israel’s actions in Gaza led by the Netanyahu government as a genocide.”

Dexter said that she signed on “with a heavy heart” and “with the utmost respect for the Jewish people” but acknowledged that Jews in her district “may feel abandoned or deeply harmed by my action.” She professed her ongoing opposition to antisemitism and support for “our Jewish neighbors.”

“Many in this body have been reticent to clearly call out the mass suffering, the ethnic cleansing, the war crimes taking place in Gaza. I will not willingly continue to be part of that complicity,” Dexter continued. “As a United States representative, my job is to stand up against the power and our resources of this country being used in such ways.”

She said that “history has and will continue to judge this body, not just for what it did, but for what it failed to do. … I want my children to live in a country where leaders can be relied upon to lead with courage, empathy, and moral clarity. And I urge every Oregonian watching to hold me accountable in a shared unshakable belief in the sanctity of human life.”

Sara Bloomfield, the director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, criticized Dexter’s comments.

“Exploiting the Holocaust to accuse Israel of genocide is unconscionable and adds further fuel to an already raging antisemitic fire,” Bloomfield said in a statement to Jewish Insider.

AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann said, “The claim of genocide by Israel is a mendacious attempt to distort facts, rewrite historyand a dangerous blood libel. The only genocide in this war happened on October 7, when Hamas openly admitted it wanted to kill every Israeli man, woman, and child it could.  To invoke the Holocaust against Israel is a grotesque moral abomination.”

Democratic Majority for Israel on Thursday announced its endorsements of Reps. Haley Stevens (D-MI), Angie Craig (D-MN) and Chris Pappas (D-NH) and former Gov. Roy Cooper as they seek the Senate seats in their respective states.

Stevens faces a particularly competitive primary against state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and former Wayne County health director Abdul El-Sayed, both of whom have sided with the far left on Israel issues and publicly rejected pro-Israel backing. El-Sayed has attacked Stevens over her pro-Israel stance. 

DMFI’s endorsement marks the first formal involvement by a pro-Israel group in the race. AIPAC’s PAC and super PAC, which have previously provided significant support for Stevens, have not yet issued an endorsement.

Craig, another moderate pro-Israel Democrat, also faces a left-wing opponent critical of Israel in Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanangan. Cooper and Pappas, both moderates who have been supportive of Israel, are seen as the clear frontrunners in their primaries.

“Chris Pappas, Haley Stevens, Angie Craig, and Roy Cooper are battle-tested leaders who know how to win tough races, hold the Trump administration accountable, and deliver real results for working families. They’ve stood firm against extremism, antisemitism, and efforts to undermine America’s alliances,” DMFI PAC Chair Brian Romick said in a statement. 

“Each is a champion of the U.S.-Israel relationship and a clear-eyed advocate for Israel’s security and the region’s long-term stability.”

“DMFI PAC is proud to support these exceptional candidates, and we’re firmly committed to helping them win their races,” he added.

Stevens, in a statement thanked DMFI for its support.

“I’m honored to have DMFI PAC’s endorsement in this race. As a proud pro-Israel Democrat, I believe America is stronger when we stand with our democratic allies, confront antisemitism and extremism, and keep our promises to our friends abroad and our working families here at home,” Stevens said in a statement. “In the Senate, I’ll keep fighting to protect our democracy, support Israel’s security, ensure the ceasefire holds in Gaza, and deliver for Michiganders in every corner of our state.”

During Tuesday’s meeting between President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the leaders strengthened their relationship and confirmed the completion of several deals. Any plan to utilize such transactions as part of normalization with Israel, however, was notably absent. 

While taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office, Trump confirmed that the U.S. would sell Saudi Arabia F-35 fighter jets of similar caliber to Israel’s. At a dinner that evening, the president added that a strategic security agreement had crossed the finish line, while also formally naming Saudi Arabia a major non-NATO ally. On Wednesday, the two countries announced a strategic artificial intelligence partnership.

“The main takeaway of the visit was the normalization of the U.S.-Saudi relationship,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former State Department negotiator. “[There was] very little, it seemed to me, not surprisingly, on the side of normalization to Israel. It’s almost as if Israel was sort of an afterthought this visit.”

When asked by reporters why normalization with Israel was not prioritized, Trump did not provide much of a response, instead asserting that Israel is “going to be happy.”

Observers had anticipated that Trump would roll out the red carpet for MBS on his visit to Washington. What remained unknown was whether the deepening ties between Washington and Riyadh would come with progress between Saudi Arabia and Israel, the United States’ closest ally in the region.

But the deals announced this week were made without any apparent requirement of progress toward normalization, leading some experts and leaders of pro-Israel groups to raise questions about the Trump administration’s strategy. 

“By the way this was done, President Trump seems to have elevated the partnerships with Saudi Arabia and maybe, to some degree, with other Gulf states, above pretty much all other U.S. partnerships, including Israel,” said Dan Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel under former President Barack Obama. 

“So that means that other considerations, like ensuring the right incentives are still in place for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel or ensuring that military sales are done in a way that protects U.S. interests and Israel’s security interests, may be less important than they have been under previous administrations.”

Shapiro said that while it is reasonable for the U.S. to strengthen its partnerships with Gulf countries, the deals gave away major incentives for normalization “without knowing whether it can be achieved later.” He also added that it came without guarantees from the Saudi government on limiting military cooperation with China and Russia. 

Anne Dreazen, the vice president for the American Jewish Committee’s Center for a New Middle East, told JI that Saudi-Israeli normalization could not have been achieved on this visit, adding that it was “not in the cards right now.”

“Now the paradigm is shifting where it’s about peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia being logical and good based on its own merits, when they can get the politics right and when they can reach agreement on the Palestinian issue,” said Anne Dreazen, the vice president for the American Jewish Committee’s Center for a New Middle East.

“Right now we’re not there. The politics in Israel and Saudi Arabia are not right for this,” said Dreazen. “I think President Trump realized that it wasn’t going to happen in this visit and wanted to move ahead with these deals because there’s a strong perception that making some deals with Saudi Arabia is in America’s interest.”

Dreazen, however, still believes normalization is “going to happen,” adding that she has confidence from conversations with Saudi officials that political differences will be resolved in the future. 

Trump’s decision to make significant deals with Saudi Arabia while not pressing for normalization suggests the White House is taking a different approach than in the past, Dreazen argued.

“Now the paradigm is shifting where it’s about peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia being logical and good based on its own merits, when they can get the politics right and when they can reach agreement on the Palestinian issue,” said Dreazen, a shift from how former President Joe Biden approached negotiations.

But with MBS leaving Washington with so many deliverables, it’s unclear whether he will still prioritize normalization. 

The Israelis are “going to be right to worry that the Saudis may feel like they’ve gotten everything they want and don’t have any need left for normalization,” Shapiro said. 

Following his Oval Office meeting with Trump, the Saudi crown prince told reporters, “We want to be part of the Abraham Accords, but we want also to be sure that [we] secure a clear path [toward a] two-state solution.”

Leaders of pro-Israel groups said normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia should remain a top policy priority for the U.S.

“The United States would be stronger and more secure if our major non-NATO allies worked together to promote regional peace, stability and prosperity,” said AIPAC spokesman Marshall Wittmann. “This objective would be advanced if Saudi Arabia joined the Abraham Accords, and U.S. leaders should urge it to do so.”

In a statement released on Wednesday, Democratic Majority for Israel’s president and CEO, Brian Romick, said that expanding the Abraham Accords must be “central to U.S. policy,” and urged Congress to play an active role in reviewing U.S. defense agreements with Saudi Arabia.

“Any substantial upgrade in the U.S.–Saudi relationship — including access to advanced U.S. defense systems — must be tied to meaningful, measurable progress toward Saudi-Israeli normalization,” Romick said in a statement. “It is now incumbent on the Trump Administration to use our leverage with Saudi Arabia to make real progress toward normalization.”

“There’s clearly a political dynamic going on here,” said Israel Policy Forum chief policy officer Michael Koplow. “Trump went out of his way to almost poke at the Israelis. He implied that [the U.S. is] OK with the Saudis getting F-35s but [the Israelis] want the Saudis to get a less advanced version, and he almost seemed to boast about the fact that he’s going to give the Saudis whatever he wants no matter what Israel says.”

Trump’s promise of F-35 sales to Saudi Arabia has raised questions about which model and allowances Riyadh will receive and whether Israel will maintain its qualitative military edge, which the U.S. is bound by law to uphold. To date, Israel is the only country in the Middle East to have obtained the fighter jet. 

U.S. officials and experts told Reuters that the F-35 jets the U.S. plans to sell to Saudi Arabia will lack superior features that Israel’s fleet has.

Israel Policy Forum chief policy officer Michael Koplow voiced concerns about the security aspect of the deals. 

“It doesn’t surprise me that all of these things are going ahead,” said Koplow. “What surprises me more is that some of the things that have been discussed over the past couple of days seem to put Israel in a more difficult security position, particularly this question of sales of F-35s.”

Israel’s government, meanwhile, has stayed largely quiet about the F-35 sales, though the Israeli Air Force has objected to the deal, warning that it could damage Israel’s air superiority in the region   

“There’s clearly a political dynamic going on here,” said Koplow. “Trump went out of his way to almost poke at the Israelis. He implied that [the U.S. is] OK with the Saudis getting F-35s but [the Israelis] want the Saudis to get a less advanced version, and he almost seemed to boast about the fact that he’s going to give the Saudis whatever he wants no matter what Israel says.”

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) wrote a letter to President Donald Trump on Wednesday urging him to pressure the Israeli government to intervene to stop attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the West Bank and to oppose settlement expansion.

The clear-cut criticism of Israel is notable coming from two lawmakers generally seen as strong supporters of the Jewish state. The two urged Trump to reimpose Biden-era sanctions — withdrawn by the Trump administration — on those involved in the settler attacks if the Israeli government does not act.

“The Netanyahu government’s lack of action to address extreme settler violence emboldens Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups, and builds resentment in the West Bank, while putting increased pressure on the fragile ceasefire agreement in Gaza that your Administration secured,” the two lawmakers said. “More must be done to stop settler violence and ensure that those who perpetrate acts of violence against civilians in the West Bank are not allowed to operate with impunity.”

The lawmakers called on Trump to “speak out against settlement expansion, demand accountability for settler violence, and continue to publicly oppose annexation.”

“This vigilante violence is not isolated. It is systemic and aims to impede a viable two-state solution,” the letter continues. “It is consistent with broader systemic efforts to approve illegal expansion of settlements, demolitions of Palestinian homes and structures, and annexation of the West Bank, including Prime Minister Netanyahu’s most recent actions regarding the controversial E1 settlement project.”

Booker and Goldman said that these actions by the Israeli government ultimately threaten Israel’s security, isolate it from the international community and undermine “peace efforts in the region. This includes the Abraham Accords, a critical achievement during your first Administration.”

They said that the administration should “press the Israeli government to take significant action to prevent settler violence, hold perpetrators accountable, seek justice for the victims of violent crimes already committed, and ensure the safety and security of civilians in the West Bank” and should reimpose sanctions on those involved in the attacks if the Israeli government fails to do so.

The lawmakers, who previously wrote a similar letter to the Biden administration, highlighted that they were the only members of Congress in Israel during the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and said they “steadfastly support the special U.S.-Israel relationship and a secure and just future for both Israelis and Palestinians.”

“We continue to believe that a two-state solution is the only viable option that affirms and protects Israel’s right to exist as a democratic, Jewish state and ensures the Palestinian people’s right to human dignity, prosperity, self-determination, and a state of their own,” the letter continues. “Unchecked extremist settler violence and de facto or de jure settlement expansion threatens the very seeds of trust and cooperation needed to make progress toward this goal, which is fundamental to an enduring peace in the region.”

As 2,000 Jewish philanthropists, activists and professionals prepared to leave Washington on Tuesday as the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly wrapped up, they heard a stern warning from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX): Americans must confront antisemitism on both sides, including the right; if they don’t, the nation will face an “existential crisis.” 

“I do not want to wake up in five years and find that both major parties in America have embraced hatred of Israel and have tolerated, if not embraced, antisemitism,” Cruz said.

Cruz has become the most prominent Republican elected official speaking out against a rising tide of right-wing antisemitism. But the weeks following podcaster Tucker Carlson’s interview with neo-Nazi provocateur Nick Fuentes have sparked a reckoning for Republicans, including some who until recently considered antisemitism to be primarily a left-wing phenomenon.

That internal tension was on full display at a Tuesday afternoon conference hosted by the conservative National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism. The group was until recently affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, until the conservative think tank’s president came to Carlson’s defense. Earlier this month the task force members voted to cut ties with Heritage.  

The NTFCA gathering, arranged in less than two weeks after the group’s split from Heritage, took place in a basement ballroom at The Line Hotel in Washington. About 100 people were in attendance, among them representatives from Jewish advocacy groups including the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Federations of North America and Combat Antisemitism Movement.

The event’s organizers — NTFCA co-chairs Ellie Cohanim, who served as deputy antisemitism special envoy in the first Trump administration; Mario Bramnick, a Florida pastor and president of the Latino Coalition for Israel; and Luke Moon, a pastor and executive director of the Philos Project — took the opportunity to forcefully reject Carlson and other far-right media figures who are gaining clout among conservatives by attacking Israel and its backers, and to issue a call for conservatives to join them in calling out growing animosity toward Jews. They don’t think enough people are doing so. 

“I remember Luke, early on, said, ‘Mario, keep your eye on the right.’ I said, ‘Well, look, that’s a fringe. It’s not really important,’” Bramnick said. “But now we’re seeing a very troubling development during President Trump’s second administration within the MAGA movement: antisemitic acts coming from MAGA movement leaders.” The Project Esther report that the task force developed with Heritage last year was focused solely on left-wing antisemitism. 

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee delivered remarks via video. “There is so much antisemitism around the world today. But what perhaps is most troubling to me is that it is not just rising up on the far left,” Huckabee said. 

Two other Trump administration officials also spoke: Justice Department senior counsel Leo Terrell, who said combating antisemitism “is the American thing to do,” and former Rep. Mark Walker (R-NC), Trump’s nominee for international religious freedom ambassador. 

Trump, meanwhile, defended Carlson this week when he was asked about the right-wing podcaster’s interview with Fuentes. 

The convening was a launchpad for a new movement of conservative activists willing to take on antisemitism within their own party. It saw staunch partisans stake out surprising positions, like when Zionist Organization of America President Morton Klein said he was “disappointed” that Trump claimed not to know much about Fuentes.

“The fight on the left is still happening. That is not done. That is a work that still has to go on. But we now have an emergent threat on the right,” Moon said. “It’s the early days of this war. I don’t feel like we did win the last battle, but we didn’t lose yet either.”